Is Palestine in the Works?

Betzalel Smotritch of Bayit Yehudi, a member of Netanyahu’s government took to Facebook yesterday to slam the Prime Minister into working with the Trump administration in setting up the circumstances for a Palestinian State.

“In recent weeks, there have been too many indications that the Prime Minister is quietly cooking up a process that will lead to the establishment of Palestine. All this talk about a ‘deal’ and a regional peace conference, the freezing of construction outside the blocs (those who do not build outside the blocs essentially say that the State of Israel is not going to remain there), and the reports about a ‘deal’ that Trump proposed to Abbas for negotiations in return for a construction freeze; reports in Haaretz on contacts between Netanyahu and Herzog to establish a unity government based on the renewal of the ‘political process’; Netanyahu’s desire to build an ‘Iran bypass route’ with moderate Arab states in which the price Israel will have to pay in order to build this axis will be on the settlement front.”

Smotritch is referring to Trump’s desire to find a workable solution to the perceived Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a regional understanding with the “moderate” Sunni States. The regional solution is something Netanyahu has long advocated for. With Trump’s past hints that this is indeed in the works and his envoy Jason Greenblatt in Israel working on an understanding with Israel on future building within Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, there appears to be some truth to Smotritch’s claims.

In fact, Trump seems to be far more open on the regional avenue.  In a meeting with Saudi defense minister, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Trump expressed his “strong desire” to achieve a comprehensive, just and lasting settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

How Does Trump’s Vision Differ From Previous Administrations?

It is clear now that Trump views an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord as vitally important, yet the contours of that agreement remain sketchy.  Trump’s envoy to the region, Jason Greenblatt has done the unprecedented by meeting with leaders from Judea and Samaria during his trip to Israel and Jordan. Whatever the contours, it is clear that the approach is very different from before.  In the past a regional approach had meant that in exchange for destroying flourishing Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria in order to create Palestine, the “moderate” Sunni states would make peace with Israel.  Trump’s vision seems to be different. By not demanding a peace agreement based on the 1948 armistice lines it shifts the paradigm between Israel and the Arab states to something new. The shift is necessary, because without assurances that no Jewish community will be dismantled for “peace” Trump knows Netanyahu will not be able to pass a peace deal in the Knesset.

If Trump changes the focus of a potential accord between Israel and its Arab neighbors, the likelihood of a Palestinian State significantly increases.  Of course, the Palestinian State envisioned may be far closer to Luxembourg than Lebanon and if that’s the case then whose to say the Palestinian Arabs in Judea and Samaria and Jordan will go for it.

 

North Korea, Iran, and the War Against Israel

With reports flying across the web that the Trump administration is considering the use of force against the North Korean regime, Seal Team 6 and F-35’s are set to participate in the annual Foal Eagle military drills between the US and South Korea.

South Korea’s Joon Gang Daily reports the following:

“The U.S. Navy’s Special Warfare Development Group, better known as the SEAL Team 6, will arrive in South Korea soon for joint military drills and take part in an exercise simulating the removal of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, according to the Ministry of National Defense Monday.”

A report at the Yonhap News Agency went further:

“A bigger number of and more diverse U.S. special operation forces will take part in this year’s Foal Eagle and Key Resolve exercises to practice missions to infiltrate into the North, remove the North’s war command and demolition of its key military facilities,” the official told Yonhap News Agency asking not to be named.

As the North Korean regime gears up for further ballistic missile tests, the Trump administration appears determined to preemptively stop them.

What Changed?

Successive American Presidents have all considered North Korea to be one of the most dangerous countries around.  A nuclear armed Kim Jong-Un with what looks to be an upcoming ICBM test puts the US in direct harm.  Most observers consider Kim to be mentally unstable, which complicates any policy in handling him. This is precisely why a military confrontation is far more likely now. Trump cannot allow to develop an accurate way of delivering nukes against the USA let alone Japan or South Korea.

The Iran Connection

It has been known for some time that Iranian missile technology was developed in North Korea.  Both regimes see the USA as their number one enemy and have worked together to build a situation where they would pose a serious threat to the USA. To most observers North Korea and Iran are in constant coordination as can be seen from last week’s ballistic missile test in Ira, which followed North Korea’s launch of four missiles near Japan.

Researchers from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies published a research paper (.pdf) in January 2016 outlining Iran’s past and present military dealings with North Korea, concluding that “the signs of military and scientific cooperation between Iran and North Korea suggest that Pyongyang could have been involved in Tehran’s nuclear and ballistic-missile program, and that state-run trading companies may have assisted in critical aspects of Iran’s illicit nuclear-related activities.”

War Against Israel

It should not be lost on anyone that the same Obama administration that failed to curb Kim Jong-Un’s race towards a nuclear arsenal also actively empowered the Iranian regime in its own nuclear development.  The outcome of this is a nuclear Middle East whose Shiite Crescent with Russian backing threatens to engulf Israel. Trump’s move against North Korea must be coordinated with Israel, because when the war starts on the Korean peninsula the Iranian regime will act aggressively against the Jewish state.

In the coming weeks and months expect American forces to ready themselves to invade North Korea before Kim Jong-Un achieves delivery breakout, because if he does, the world as we know it will look very different.

TRUMP EMBRACES THE PLO FANTASY

The PLO is the Siren that drowns US administrations.

US President Donald Trump is losing his focus. If he doesn’t get it back soon, he will fail to make America great again or safe again in the Middle East.

After holding out for a month, last week Trump indicated he is adopting his predecessors’ obsession with empowering the PLO .

This is a strategic error.

There are many actors and conflicts in the Middle East that challenge and threaten US national interests and US national security. Iran’s rise as a nuclear power and regional hegemon; the war in Syria; Turkey’s abandonment of the West; and Russia’s regional power play all pose major threats to US power, security and interests. The Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic State, Hamas and other Sunni jihadist movements all threaten the US, Europe and the US’s Sunni allies in the region in a manner that is strategically significant to America.

None of these issues, none of these actors and none of these threats are in any way related to or caused by the PLO and its interminable, European-supported hybrid terror and political war against Israel. None of these pressing concerns will be advanced by a US embrace of the PLO or a renewed obsession with empowering the PLO and its mafia-terrorist bosses.

To the contrary, all of these pressing concerns will be sidelined – and so made more pressing and dangerous – by a US reengagement with the PLO .

And yet, over the past week, Trump has indicated that the PLO is now his focus.

Last Friday, Trump spoke on the telephone with Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas is head of the PLO and the unelected dictator of the corrupt, terrorism-sponsoring, PLO -controlled Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria.

According to media reports, Trump told Abbas – whose legal term in office ended eight years ago – that he views him as a legitimate leader. According to the official White House report of the conversation, Trump also reportedly told Abbas that he supports reaching a deal between Israel and the Palestinians. Such a deal, to the extent it is ever reached, involves expanding PLO control over Judea and Samaria and parts of Jerusalem at Israel’s expense.

Trump also invited Abbas for an official visit to Washington. And the day after they spoke, the Trump administration moved $250 million in US taxpayer dollars to Abbas’s police state where for the past 25 years, Abbas and his cronies have enriched themselves while feeding a steady diet of antisemitic, anti-American jihadist bile to their impoverished subjects.

To build up his credibility with the PLO , Trump put his electoral pledge to move the US embassy to Jerusalem on ice. The real estate mogul ordered Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to deny Jews the right to their property and their legal right to use state lands in Judea and Samaria.

And swift on the heels of that conversation with Abbas, Trump’s chief negotiator Jason Greenblatt was dispatched to Jerusalem to begin empowering the PLO at Israel’s expense.

According to media reports, Greenblatt intended to use his meeting Monday with Netanyahu was to reject Netanyahu’s commitment to build a new Israeli town in Samaria. Greenblatt was also reportedly intending to dictate the parameters for yet another round of negotiations with the PLO.

After meeting with Netanyahu, Greenblatt continued on to Ramallah to embrace Abbas.

Also during his stay, Greenblatt is scheduled to meet with IDF generals who are responsible for giving money and providing services to the PLO.

And Greenblatt doesn’t have the Palestinians to himself.

Following Trump’s conversation with Abbas, plans were suddenly afloat for Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner and Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump to visit Israel and spend an afternoon with Abbas in Ramallah.

If things develop as reported, then Trump is serious about embracing the PLO and intends to have his top advisers devote themselves to Abbas and his henchmen. If that is the case, then Trump is setting himself, his advisers, his daughter and the US up to fail and be humiliated.

The PLO is the Siren that drowns US administrations. It is to the PLO that America’s top envoys have eagerly flown, gotten hooked on the attention of the demented, anti-Israel press corps, and forgotten their purpose: to advance US national interests.

If Trump is serious about repeating this practice, then rather than repair the massive damage done to the US and the Middle East by his two predecessors, the 45th president will repeat their mistakes. Like them, he will leave office in a blaze of failure.

To understand why this is the case, three things must be clear.

First, the PLO will never make peace with Israel. There will never be a Palestinian state.

There will never be a peace or a Palestinian state because the PLO wants neither. This is the lesson of the past 25 years. Both Abbas and his predecessor Arafat rejected peace and statehood multiple times and opted instead to expand their terrorist and political war against Israel.

Why did they do that? Because they are interested in two things: personal enrichment – which they achieve by stealing donor funds and emptying the pockets of their own people; and weakening, with the goal of destroying Israel – which they achieve through their hybrid war of terrorism and political warfare.

The second thing that needs to be clear is that the Palestinians are irrelevant to the rest of the problems – the real problems that impact US interests – in the region. If anything, the Palestinians are pawns on the larger chessboard. America’s enemies use them to distract the Americans from the larger realities so that the US will not pay attention to the real game.

Iran will not be appeased or defeated if Trump empowers the PLO in its war against Israel and continues feeding PLO leaders’ insatiable appetite for other people’s money.

The Sunni jihadists will not beat their swords into plowshares if the US coerces Israel to cough up land to the PLO . To the contrary, they will be emboldened.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will not move his forces out of Syria or stop giving nuclear technologies to Iran if the US turns the screws on Israel. Putin will come to the conclusion that Trump is either weak or stupid to damage Israel, the US’s most serious ally.

And of course, Israel will not be better off if Trump decides to push it back onto the peace train which has caused it nothing but harm for the past quarter century.

Trump’s election opened up the possibility, for the first time in decades, that the US would end its destructive obsession with the PLO. For three months, Israelis have been free for the first time to discuss seriously the possibilities of applying Israeli law to all or parts of Judea and Samaria. And a massive majority of Israelis support doing just that.

On the Palestinian side as well, Trump’s election empowered the people who have been living under the jackboot of Abbas and his cronies to think about the possibility of living at peace with Israel in a post-PLO era. Polling results indicate that they too are eager to move beyond the Palestinian statehood chimera.

But now, it appears that Trump has been convinced to embrace the PLO obsession. The same entrenched bureaucrats at the State Department and the same foreign policy establishment in Washington that brought the US nothing but failure in the Middle East for a generation appear to have captivated Trump’s foreign policy. They have convinced him it is better to devote his top advisers to repeating the mistakes of his predecessors than to devote his energies and theirs to fixing the mess that Obama and George W. Bush left him with. They have gotten him to believe that it is better to empower the PLO than develop coherent strategies and plans for dealing with the problems of the region that actually endanger US interests and imperil the security and safety of the American people.

Originally Published in the Jerusalem Post.

Trump Administration Working with Putin to Protect the Kurds, is Kurdistan Coming?

Of all the spinoff conflicts connected to the Syrian Civil War and the fight to destory ISIS, the Turkish offensive to wipe out the growing strength of the Kurdish militia in Northern Syria is the most important.

Despite claims to the contrary, Erdogan helped fund ISIS in its early days in order to create enough chaos to further his interests in spreading Turkish power into Northern Iraq and Syria.  He both allowed ISIS fighters to travel from Turkey into Syria and provided the same fighters medical attention when necessary.

When stories of Turkish aid convoys reached the news, Erdogan pivoted and joined the fight to “destroy the group.” Turkey then used their offensives into Syria to achieve three objectives: show the world it is not in collusion with ISIS, stand up to Russia, and most importantly destroy the nascent Kurdistan.

Kurdistan factors heavily into Trump and Putin’s post ISIS Syria and Iraq.  The Kurdish Peshmerga has been the only force that has showed the ability to defeat ISIS. As long as Turkey stayed out of Syria, the Kurdish YPG could continue gaining ground.

The Battle of Manbij Will Prove Pivotal

Manbij is a Kurdish controlled town  just 40km from the Turkish border and this week it has provided the setting for what will no doubt prove to be the beginning of an independent Kurdistan. With Turkey deciding to push out the Kurds who have controlled the town, the Trump administration took the opportunity to team up with Russia in order to thwart Erdogan’s plans.

Bloomberg reports:

A U.S. deployment and a Russian-brokered deal with Syrian forces created buffer zones that headed off any Turkish campaign against the Kurdish forces who hold the town — seen by Washington as key allies against Islamic State and by Turkey as terrorists.

Once again Erdogan’s plans of dominating the Kurds have faltered.  With Russia and the US working together Turkey is forced to deal with the reality that the Kurds are here to stay.

Is Kurdistan Next?

Although rumors of an independent Kurdistan have risen higher in the years since ISIS came to power, the reality of the rumors have never been more actual than now. Kurdistan offers the ability to right an historic injustice by creating a state for the Kurds who have been stateless for centuries.  In fact, it is the Kurds who are indigenous to the area, going as far back as the ancient Medes. An independent Kurdistan would create stability in the Middle East and act as a buffer to the madness of the Arab tribes to the South and Turkish regional aspirations from the North.

Furthermore an independent Kurdistan would quickly become an ally of Israel in its fight against radical Islam.

Will Trump and Putin make it happen?  So far their cooperation in relation to Manbij makes the prospect likely.

#OBAMAGATE: EXPOSING THE OBAMA DEEP STATE

Obama’s third term has begun. Our Republic is in danger.

After Trump secured the nomination, Obama’s people filed a wiretapping request. As he was on the verge of winning, they did it again. After he won, they are doing everything they can to bring him down.

It was always going to come down to this.

One is the elected President of the United States. The other is the Anti-President who commands a vast network that encompasses the organizers of OFA, the official infrastructure of the DNC and Obama Anonymous, a shadow government of loyalists embedded in key positions across the government.

A few weeks after the election, I warned that Obama was planning to run the country from outside the White House. And that the “Obama Anonymous” network of staffers embedded in the government was the real threat. Since then Obama’s Kalorama mansion has become a shadow White House. And the Obama Anonymous network is doing everything it can to bring down an elected government.

Valerie Jarrett has moved into the shadow White House to plot operations against Trump. Meanwhile Tom Perez has given him control of the corpse of the DNC after fending off a Sandernista bid from Keith Ellison. Obama had hollowed out the Democrat Party by diverting money to his own Organizing for America. Then Hillary Clinton had cannibalized it for her presidential bid through Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Donna Brazile. Now Obama owns the activist, OFA, and organizational, DNC, infrastructure.

But that’s just half the picture.

Obama controls the opposition. He will have a great deal of power to choose future members of Congress and the 2020 candidate. But he could have done much of that from Chicago or New York. The reason he didn’t decide to move on from D.C. is that the nation’s capital contains the infrastructure of the national government. He doesn’t just want to run the Democrats. He wants to run America.

The other half of the picture is the Obama Deep State. This network of political appointees, bureaucrats and personnel scattered across numerous government agencies is known only as Obama Anonymous.

Obama Inc. had targeted Trump from the very beginning when it was clear he would be the nominee.

Trump had locked down the GOP nomination in May. Next month there was a FISA request targeting him. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court denied the request, and it is still unknown whether the request targeted Trump, or only his associates, but it’s silly to pretend that the submission of such a request a month after he became the presumptive GOP nominee was apolitical.

The second, narrower, FISA request came through in October.  This one was approved. The reason for getting a FISA request in October was even more obvious than June. October is the crucial month in presidential elections. It’s the month of the “October Surprise” when the worst hit pieces based on the keenest opposition research is unleashed. Obama’s opposition research on Trump involved eavesdropping on a server in Trump Tower. Nixon would have been very jealous.

After the election, Obama Inc. began to spread out its bets. Some of his people migrated into his network of political organizations. Others remained embedded in the government. While the former would organize the opposition, the latter would sabotage, undermine and try to bring down Trump.

An unprecedented campaign for full spectrum dominance was being waged in domestic politics.

Political opposition wasn’t a new phenomenon; even if a past president centralizing control of the organizational and activist arms of his party to wage war on his successor was unprecedented. But weaponizing unelected government officials to wage war on an elected government was a coup.

Obama Anonymous conducted its coup in layers. The first layer partnered congressional Democrats with OA personnel to retain control of as much of the government as possible by the Obama Deep State. They did it by blocking Trump’s nominees with endless hearings and protests. The second layer partnered congressional Democrats with the deeper layer of Obama operatives embedded in law enforcement and intelligence agencies who were continuing the Obama investigations of Trump.

This second layer sought to use the investigation to force out Trump people who threatened their control over national security, law enforcement and intelligence. It is no coincidence that their targets, Flynn and Sessions, were in that arena. Or that their views on Islamic terror and immigration are outside the consensus making them easy targets for Obama Anonymous and its darker allies.

These darker allies predate Obama. The tactics being deployed against Trump were last used by them in a previous coup during President Bush’s second term. The targets back then had included Bush officials, an Iran skeptic, pro-Israel activists and a Democrat congresswoman. The tactics, eavesdropping, leaks, false investigations, dubious charges and smear campaigns against officials, were exactly the same.

Anyone who remembers the cases of Larry Franklin, Jane Harman and some others will recognize them. Before that they were used to protect the CIA underestimates of Soviet capabilities that were broken through by Rumsfeld’s Halloween Massacre and Team B which helped clear the way for Reagan’s defeat of the Soviet Union.

Under Bush, the Deep State was fighting against any effort to stop Iran’s nuclear program. It did so by eliminating and silencing opposition within the national security establishment and Congress through investigations of supposed foreign agents. That left the field clear for it to force a false National Intelligence Estimate on President Bush which claimed that Iran had halted its nuclear program.

Obama broke out the same tactics when he went after Iran Deal opponents. Once again members of Congress were spied on and the results were leaked to friendly media outlets. Before the wiretapping of Trump’s people, the NSA was passing along conversations of Iran Deal opponents to the White House which were used to coordinate strategy in defense of the illegal arrangement with Islamic terrorists.

The same wall between government and factional political agendas that Nixon’s “White House Plumbers” had broken through on the way to Watergate had been torn down. NSA eavesdropping was just another way to win domestic political battles. All it took was accusing the other side of treason.

And worse was to come.

During the Iran Deal battle, the NSA was supposedly filtering the eavesdropped data it passed along.

In its last days, Obama Inc. made it easier to pass along unfiltered personal information to the other agencies where Obama loyalists were working on their investigation targeting Trump. The NSA pipeline now makes it possible for the shadow White House to still gain intelligence on its domestic enemies.

And the target of the shadow White House is the President of the United States.

There is now a President and an Anti-President. A government and a shadow government. The anti-President controls more of the government through his shadow government than the real President.

The Obama network is an illegal shadow government. Even its “light side” as an opposition group is very legally dubious. Its “shadow side” is not only illegal, but a criminal attack on our democracy.

When he was in power, Obama hacked reporters like FOX News’ James Rosen and CBS News’ Sharyl Attkisson. He eavesdropped on members of Congress opposed to the Iran Deal. Two men who made movies he disliked ended up in jail. But what he is doing now is even more deeply disturbing.

Obama no longer legally holds power. His Deep State network is attempting to overturn the results of a presidential election using government employees whose allegiance is to a shadow White House. Tactics that were illegal when he was in office are no longer just unconstitutional, they are treasonous.

Obama Inc. has become a state within a state. It is a compartmentalized network of organizations, inside and outside the government, that claim that they are doing nothing illegal as individual groups because they are technically following the rules within each compartment, but the sheer scope of the illegality lies in the covert coordination between these “revolutionary cells” infecting our country.

It is a criminal conspiracy of unprecedented scope. Above all else, it is the most direct attack yet on a country in which governments are elected by the people, not by powerful forces within the government.

“We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain,” President Lincoln declared at Gettysburg.  “That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Obama’s shadow government is not just a war on President Trump. It is a war on that government of the people, by the people and for the people. If he succeeds, then at his touch, it will perish from the earth.

Obama’s third term has begun. Our Republic is in danger.

Originally Posted in FrontPageMag.