Tag: Mahmoud Abbas

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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.

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Mr. Obama, your legacy is secure

The recent reluctance of the US to veto UN resolution 2234, which essentially singles out Israeli construction as the main obstacle to a two state solution has been seen by some as the final nail in the coffin in a combative relationship between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu that has endured throughout both terms of the Obama presidency.

While this may be obvious, I doubt it will silence those who are still convinced Obama is a strong, reliable friend to Israel. Indeed, in his post UN resolution justification speech at the State Department, Secretary of State John Kerry said “no American administration has done more for the security of Israel than Barack Obama.”

Such self-promoting observations make convincing sound bites, regardless of their accuracy. However, since the door is about to close permanently on the Obama administration, it might be worthwhile to check Kerry’s comment against the facts.

A stroll down memory lane of the Obama tenure recalls the following:

Right out the starting gate his first phone call to a foreign leader in January, 2009 was to Mahmould Abbas, letting him know he was the first foreign leader he called as President of the United States.

In June 2009 his first foreign speech was delivered in Cairo where he signaled a new era in US-Muslim relations. He made the following comments during the speech:

“the United States does not accept the continued legitimacy of Israeli settlements.”

“they (Palestinians) endure daily humiliation, large and small, that come with occupation.”

He signaled a new approach toward Iran (the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism) by letting Israel know their flexibility toward the Palestinians would influence Obama’s approach to Iran. In effect he was invoking diplomatic blackmail against Israel.

He demanded Israel sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and threatened to expose a 40 year old confidential understanding between Israel and the US about its Dimona nuclear facility if Israel didn’t sign the NNPT. Israel did not. Obama retaliated by interrupting routine travel of Israeli nuclear scientists between the two countries.

In 2010 after seeing a clear pattern of hostility toward Israel, over 50 retired US Generals signed a letter to Obama demanding he stop treating Israel so poorly and treat them like ally they are.

Also in 2010, in an unprecedented move, both houses of Congress having seen the same hostile pattern,  signed letters telling Obama to stop treating Israel so poorly.

Apparently Obama didn’t get the message. The same year he walked out on a White House meeting with Netanyahu, leaving him sitting alone. While Obama had dinner with his wife Michelle Netanyahu was let in and out of a side door to the White House with no diplomatic fanfare.

Subsequent to this Mahmoud Abbas was welcomed with full diplomatic protocol and fanfare.

In 2011 Egypt ousted Hosni Mubarak, a 30 year US ally, replacing him with Mohammed Morsi, a Muslim fundamentalist and member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Obama openly supported Morsi. This brought a further chill in US-Israel relations.  A little over a year later the Egyptians voted Morsi out. Obama voiced his opposition to Morsi’s purging. Today, Morsi remains in prison.

In May 2011 while Netanyahu was airborne in route to Washington, to address a joint session of Congress Obama spoke to Congress urging any two state solution should be based on ’67 lines, with mutual land swaps. The timing of Obama’s speech was seen as an effort to sabotage Netanyahu. Following Obama’s speech, in an unprecedented bi-partisan move, Republican and Democratic leaders condemned Obama’s speech and publically distanced themselves from the President.  When Netanyahu delivered his speech to the joint session of Congress he received 30 standing ovations, which was largely seen as a rebuke of President Obama, who along with Vice President Biden and John Kerry, were noticeably absent during Netanyahu’s speech.

In March 2013 in Ramallah Mahmoud Abbas referred to Israel’s 1948 rebirth as “the Nakba,” (the catastrophe), while Obama stood next to him in silence.

During Operation Protective Edge, the 2014 war with Hamas (who has fired over 15,000 rockets into Israel against innocent civilians) Obama threatened to stop US arms supply to Israel.

In 2015 Israel was gearing up for new elections. Jeremy Bird, a democratic strategist who helped the 2012 Obama campaign, was dispatched to Israel in an effort to help defeat Netanyahu. This brought harsh criticism of Obama for what was seen as a direct effort to influence Israeli elections. In the end the effort failed as Netanyahu was re-elected. Today he has become the longest serving Prime Minister in Israel’s history.

Finally, in what was called by many as the single most damaging decision Obama made is the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. No other move has caused greater concern for Israel’s security than this agreement. While there remains robust disagreement on the deal’s justification, there is little doubt Israel has the most to lose.

To be fair to Obama, there has been an occasional bright spot. For example the US did award Israel a $38 billion 10 year defense package, which is the largest ever. Yet,  it does part from previous such packages in that by year three 100% of the funds must be spent in the US. Prior agreements allowed Israel to award up to 24% of the funds to their own defense contractors.  The absence of this option will have a severe impact on small – medium companies and put thousands of Israeli’s out of work.

There are numerous other examples of how the Obama administration has been a blight on relations with the strongest ally the US has in the Middle East, however I believe the short list contained herein constitutes more than enough facts to render Kerry’s words about the Obama Administration commitment to Israel’s security little more than what they are- mere words, with little or no facts to corroborate them. The reality shows the Obama administration has been one of, if not the most hostile ever toward Israel.

Meanwhile 4 more Israeli’s were just murdered in the ongoing wave of Palestinian terrorism which began in October, 2015. To date President Obama has not held Palestinian leadership accountable for a single Israeli death.

As the old saying goes, with “friends” like this…..

President Obama, your legacy has been secured. Time for an actual friend of Israel to take over…..

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JOHN KERRY: OBSTACLE TO PEACE

Kerry believes that peace is what happens when the bad guys win.

Before Obama decided to “abstain” from standing with Israel in a UN vote condemning the Jewish State, he had abstained from voting in defense of America in a UN resolution condemning the United States.

Obama, like Power and Kerry, have treated Israel just like they treated the United States.

John Forbes Kerry began his miserable career as a traitor seeking “peace” by pandering to the Communist leader negotiating on behalf of the Viet Cong. He concludes his miserable career in the Senate and as Secretary of State by going to war in the name of “peace” against the only democracy in the Middle East on behalf of a totalitarian Islamic ideology and its terrorist bands of killers.

Half a century has passed. The Berlin Wall fell. So did the Soviet Union. But John Kerry remains the same.

A few months after he slimed his way into the Senate, Kerry flew to Nicaragua to meet with the ruling Communist thugs to try and sabotage aid to the resistance against their regime in the name of “peace”. The Sandinistas treated Kerry like a pathetic patsy, humiliating him by allying openly with the USSR right after their man in Washington D.C. had successfully pleaded their case to his colleagues.

Comandante was only the first of many dictators and terrorists to humiliate John Kerry. But Kerry has never resented any of his Communist or Islamist tormentors. You can set Kerry’s hair on fire and dunk his head in the toilet to put it out… and he will still come crawling back to take your side of things.

But there is one thing that Nantucket’s greatest windsurfer will not forgive or forget. Freedom.

For the worse part of five decades, Kerry has waged a vicious war against countries that have freedom on behalf of those that don’t. Nothing gets his goat like a civilized country, his own or any other, staving off a murderous band of thugs and terrorists. And no country has endured so well in that fight as Israel.

Kerry’s career as Secretary of State has been a miserable failure highlighted by stretches of spectacularly incomprehensible stupidities, from his Syria WMD non-offer to boycotting the solidarity march after the Charlie Hebdo massacre and then trying to compensate by flying in James Taylor to sing, “You’ve got a friend.” Less publicized though was his spectacular failure to negotiate “peace” between Israel and the Islamic terrorists of the Palestinian Authority who are still trying to destroy it.

The Ketchup Gigolo threw everything he had into making “peace”. Just like his effort to make peace with the Viet Cong and the Sandinistas, not to mention sundry other tyrants and terrorists, he went in assuming that the bad guys were the good guys and the good guys were the bad guys.

In the twisted mind under those Frankenstein hair plugs, peace is what happens when the bad guys win.

John Kerry didn’t try to implement the two-state solution that he keeps raving about by encouraging Israel and the Islamic terrorists to negotiate with each other. That would have been absurd. Instead he pretended to act as an intermediary between the two sides while actually representing only the PLO.

As one Israeli official said, “We discovered that throughout the entire period, the Americans didn’t actually talk to the Palestinians, only to us.” Why bother talking to the side that you’re already on?

But, just as it had in Nicaragua, that proved to be a serious mistake. While Kerry focused on pressuring Israel to make concessions, he, like Bill Clinton, hadn’t figured out how to get the Islamic terrorists to accept them.

Kerry brought his wonderful peace proposal to Mahmoud Abbas, a fine graduate of the USSR’s Peoples’ Friendship University, along with Timochenko, the head of the Marxist FARC narcoterrorists. Kerry would, very predictably, meet with Timochenko earlier this year, despite his own State Department having a $5 million reward on his head, in yet another failed bid to force an ally to make peace with terrorists.

Excitedly, the traitor revisited the scene of his past treason, meeting with Abbas in Paris, to give him the good news. Kerry expected the terrorist leader to be overjoyed as the gift that he had brought over. Instead the terrorist turned up his nose. Kerry desperately passed the gift, of land, blood and security, extracted from Israelis, over to Obama to give to Abbas. Obama and Abbas met for two hours in the Oval Office. Abbas told Obama he might think it over and call. Like the bad date he was, he never did.

Kerry desperately wanted to be friends with the terrorists. But the terrorists didn’t want to play. “I have exhausted my time with John Kerry,” Abbas cried. “This is it.”

Instead of negotiating any kind of peace, Kerry relayed blackmail threats from the terrorists. If Israel didn’t release large numbers of convicted terrorists with innocent blood on their hands, Abbas would go to the UN. Israel released most of the prisoners. Abbas went to the UN anyway. Kerry went to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and blamed Israel for the lack of peace.

Since then John Kerry has nursed a special hatred for the Jewish State.

When Muslim terrorists murdered Jews, John Kerry blamed Israel. When ISIS kills other Muslims, John Kerry also blamed Israel. And when John Kerry’s creme brulee donut is stale, he also blames the Jews.

And you can understand why.

John Forbes Kerry isn’t just a traitor. He’s a failed traitor. His treason has never amounted to anything except publicity stunts. The terrorists and tyrants used him, abused him and threw him away. For five decades, Kerry has been trying to defect, but no one, not the Viet Cong, the Sandinistas, Assad, FARC, Iran or the PLO would take him and keep him.

Israel was his last big bid to achieve something. And it failed. And like Carter, he blames the Jews.

Kerry and the rest of Obama Inc. have tried to cloak their campaign against Israel by claiming that they are only attacking the Jewish State because they are just so very devoted to peace.

The Hero of the Purple Band-Aid has denounced Jews living in Israel as the “obstacle to peace”. But the peace that Kerry and his boss are devoted is not the peace of coexistence, but of the triumph of evil. Instead of trying to mediate, Kerry, as always, took the side of the terrorists. He failed because it is the terrorists who refuse to make peace. It does not take a Solomon to understand this simple truth.

But it takes a radical leftist to persistently refuse to see it.

The greatest obstacle to peace is not Israel. It’s John Kerry. It’s all the other leftists like him who believe that peace comes when the terrorists win, not when they are defeated. There could have been peace long ago if Israel had been allowed to win. Instead the promised two-state solution peace has never materialized. And instead of admitting that they were wrong, the peacemakers blame Israel.

It’s either that or admit that the false promises of peace were only an excuse for destroying Israel.

The obstacle to peace does not come from Israel. It comes from its enemies. It comes from the PLO and Hamas, from Obama and from Kerry. Kerry and his ilk believe that peace is what happens when the bad guys win. But that’s their big lie. Peace is what happens when the terrorists and their allies lose.

Originally posted on FrontPageMag.

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Will Margot Wallstrom Be Known as the Mother of Palestine?

Margot Wallstrom, the outspoken anti-Israel Swedish Foreign Minister is at it again. This time she sent out the following tweet as she left a meeting in Ramallah:

And then there is this one:

Of course Wallstrom is not new to the anti-Israel camp. 2 years ago she accused Israel of executing “Palestinians” without trial.  She has continuously attacked Jews living in Judea and Samaria as “obstacles to peace” while ignoring terror attacks carried out by Arab terrorists against Jews in Israel.

With Sweden taking the reigns at the UN Security Council after January 1st Wallstrom is more than ready to take aim at Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.

“We discussed our (upcoming) presidency,” Wallstrom said after meetings in Ramallah with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki, according to the Swedish Expressen newspaper. “We hope that it will be possible for the Security Council to adopt a resolution on the settlements.”

All of this would be typical of the EU and many of its more anti-Israel members. In most years these statements and votes barely cause a yawn, but with Obama looking to make some sort of world changing impact before he leaves office in 33 days, abstaining from a Swedish resolution that would in effect delineate the final borders of Israel is all too possible.  If the resolution passes Wallstrom will become the mother of Palestine. A mantle she will cherish.

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As Trump Charts New Mideast Policy, White House Contemplates Sabotage

Originally published under the title “Trump Is No Obama on Middle East Policy.”

After their first meeting, with cameras broadcasting their every word across the globe, President Obama turned to Donald Trump and pledged “to do everything we can to help you succeed.” Media outlets across the spectrum fawned over his magnanimity.

Guess again. Washington DC insiders widely expect the president to launch a bold effort to constrain the president-elect’s options in dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by supporting unilateral international recognition of Palestinian statehood, possibly in the UN Security Council.

U.S. policy has long maintained that a Palestinian state should be established in conjunction with a comprehensive peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA).

While Israel has said time and time again that it is eager to live alongside a Palestinian state, the Palestinian leadership has remained unwilling to make the necessary concessions for a final status agreement, such as accepting the existence of a Jewish state alongside their own. Indeed, PA President Mahmoud Abbas has steadfastly maintained that millions of Palestinians must have the “right of return” to Israel – a move that would effectively eviscerate a Jewish Israel.

Instead of pursuing a peaceful path to statehood, Palestinian leaders have incited violence against Israel, while trying to persuade the rest of the world to recognize Palestinian statehood in the absence of peace.

Amid surging anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, European governments have come under intense pressure to recognize a Palestinian state. Sweden was the first Western European government to do so in 2014. Legislatures in the United Kingdom, Spain, and France have passed (largely non-binding) resolutions doing so.

Successive U.S. administrations have vocally opposed unilateral recognition of Palestinian statehood by the United Nations and other international actors, maintaining correctly that it would irreparably damage the prospects for a viable, secure two-state solution.

In a position paper released last week, the Trump campaign emphasized that “the U.S. cannot support the creation of a new state where terrorism is financially incentivized, terrorists are celebrated by political parties and government institutions, and the corrupt diversion of foreign aid is rampant,” pledged to veto any UN action that unfairly targets Israel, and affirmed that Palestinians must first “renounce violence against Israel or recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state” before being granted statehood.

In seeking to overturn longstanding precedent and thwart the expressed policy positions of his successor, Obama presumably hopes that supporting (or not vetoing) a UN Security Council resolution on Palestinian statehood will create an irreversible fait accompli that will eventually spur Israel to make concessions, like a settlement freeze, which will in turn strengthen moderates on the Palestinian side.

It’s the same thinking that led the United States to make concession after concession in the Iran nuclear deal, and it is likely to backfire in the same way. Unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state will communicate to Palestinian leaders that they do not need to concede anything and validate the use and incitement of violence, vindicating hardliners.

Until the Palestinian leadership can recognize and accept a Jewish state in the land of Israel, the United States must continue working to prevent international recognition of a Palestinian state.

A Trump national security adviser warned the Obama administration last week not “to try to push through agenda items that are contrary to the president-elect’s positions.” President-elect Trump should follow up by publicly reaffirming that his administration will vigorously oppose unilateral recognition of Palestinian statehood and will not be bound by commitments the current administration has made or will make regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The rest of us should do our part by calling on President Obama to respect the will of voters and allow his duly-elected successor to chart a new course in Mideast policy without any impediments.

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