Frontline Tours In The Holy Land
Ted Cruz has always been a staunch supporter of Israel. Now that Obama is on his way out, Cruz takes the gloves off and let’s him have it over the administration’s overt antagonism toward Bibi Netanyahu and the Jewish State.
Sens. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), and Dean Heller (R., Nev.) are pushing forward with a bill that will effectively freeze State Department funding until the US embassy is moved to Jerusalem.
“Jerusalem is the eternal and undivided capital of Israel,” Cruz said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the Obama administration’s vendetta against the Jewish state has been so vicious that to even utter this simple truth—let alone the reality that Jerusalem is the appropriate venue for the American embassy in Israel—is shocking in some circles.”
“But it is finally time to cut through the double-speak and broken promises and do what Congress said we should do in 1995: formally move our embassy to the capital of our great ally Israel,” Cruz said.
The legislation forces the White House to identify Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, which they have refused to do. The bill will freeze a big portion of the State Department’s funding until it completes the relocation.
[huge_it_share]
The Washington Free Beacon is reporting that Congress is quietly preparing a string of measures when they come back in session next week as a counterpunch to Obama and Kerry’s onlaught against the State of Israel.
Some of the actions reportedly being considered are:
“The disgraceful anti-Israel resolution passed by the UNSC was apparently only the opening salvo in the Obama administration’s final assault on Israel,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) told the Free Beacon. “President Obama, Secretary Kerry, Ambassador Power, and their colleagues should remember that the United States Congress reconvenes on January 3rd, and under the Constitution we control the taxpayer funds they would use for their anti-Israel initiatives. The 115th Congress must stop the current administration’s vicious attack on our great ally Israel, and address the major priorities of the incoming administration.”
Ted Cruz and other Senators are aware that Obama, Kerry, and Powers plan on continuing with harsher resolutions against Israel in the days to come, with a possible declaration of final borders of a Palestinian State just before Trump takes over.
Can Obama Be Stopped?
Yes. If the congress goes as far as withdrawing funds from the UN, it would lack the ability to function. According to Fox News the USA covers 22% of the UN’s budget.
In 2015, 35 countries will be charged the minimum regular budget assessment of 0.001 percent which works out to approximately$28,269 each. Twenty countries will be charged the minimum peacekeeping assessment of 0.0001 percent or approximately $8,470 apiece.
By contrast, the U.S. is assessed 22 percent of the regular budget (approximately $622 million) and over 28 percent of the peacekeeping budget (approximately $2.402 billion).
Put another way, the U.S. will be assessed more than 176 other member states combined for the regular budget and more than 185 countries combined for the peacekeeping budget. Who says America isn’t exceptional!
Right now congressmen are quiet, but if some of the rhetoric being leaked is an indication of anything, expect some serious salvos thrown at the outgoing administration in the weeks ahead.
In 1989, following her tenure as President Ronald Reagan’s ambassador to the UN Jeane Kirkpatrick described how the Palestinians have used the UN to destroy Israel.
Following outgoing US President Barack Obama’s assault on Israel at the UN Security Council last Friday, longtime UN observer Claudia Rossett wrote an important article at PJMedia where she recalled Kirkpatrick’s words.
In “How the PLO was legitimized,” published in Commentary, Kirkpatrick said that Yassir Arafat and the PLO worked “to come to power through international diplomacy – reinforced by murder.”
Kirkpatrick explained, “The long march through the UN has produced many benefits for the PLO. It has created a people where there was none; a claim where there was none. Now the PLO is seeking to create a state where there already is one. That will take more than resolutions and more than an ‘international peace conference.’ But having succeeded so well over the years in its campaign to delegitimize Israel, the PLO might yet also succeed in bringing the campaign to a triumphant conclusion, with consequences for the Jewish state that would be nothing short of catastrophic.”
As Rossett noted, in falsely arguing that Obama’s support for Friday’s UN Security Council Resolution 2334 is in line with Reagan’s policies, Obama’s UN ambassador Samantha Power deliberately distorted the historical record of US policy towards Israel and the PLO-led UN onslaught against the Jewish state.
In stark contrast to Power’s self-serving lie, neither Reagan nor George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton nor George W. Bush would have ever countenanced a resolution like 2334.
Obama’s predecessors’ opposition to the war against Israel at the UN was not merely an expression of their support for Israel. They acted also out of a fealty to US power, which is directly targeted by that war.
It is critical that we understand how this is the case, and why the implications of Resolution 2334 are disastrous to the US itself.
Resolution 2334 is being presented as an “anti-settlement” resolution. But it is not an anti-settlement resolution.
Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and neighborhoods in Jerusalem are being used – as they always have been used – as a means of delegitimizing the Jewish state as a whole, and legitimizing Palestinian terrorists and Islamic terrorists more generally. Resolution 2334 serves to criminalize Israel and its people and to undermine Israel’s right to exist, while embracing Palestinian terrorists and empowering them in their war to annihilate Israel.
America’s historic refusal to countenance such actions at the UN Security was never a purely altruistic position. It was also a stand for American power and the inherent justice of American superpower status and global leadership.
Throughout most of its history, the UN has served as a proxy battlefield first of the Cold War, and since the destruction of the Soviet Union, for the war against the US-led Free World.
Beginning in the early 1960s, the Soviets viewed the political war against Israel at the UN as a means to undermine the moral basis for the US-led West. If Israel, the only human rights defending state in the Middle East, and the US’s only stable ally in the region could be delegitimized, then the very coherence of the US-led Western claim to moral superiority against the totalitarian Soviet empire would be undone.
Hence, the first Soviet attempt at the UN to castigate Zionism, the Jewish national liberation movement, as a form of racism was made in 1965, two years before Israel took control of Judea and Samaria and united Jerusalem in the Six Day War.
That attempt failed. But nine years later the wording first raised in 1965 was adopted by the UN General Assembly which passed resolution 3379 slandering libeled Zionism as “a form of racism.”
With their automatic majority in the General Assembly and all other UN organs, the Soviets used the Palestinian war against Israel as a proxy for their war against America. After the demise of the Soviet Union, the Islamic bloc, backed by members of the former Soviet bloc, the non-aligned bloc and the Europeans continued their campaign. The only thing that kept them from winning was the US and its Security Council veto.
When Obama chose to lead the anti-Israel lynch mob at the Security Council last week, he did more than deliver the PLO terrorist organization its greatest victory to date against Israel. He delivered a strategic victory to the anti-American forces that seek to destroy the coherence of American superpower status. That is, he carried out a strategic strike on American power.
By leading the gang rape of Israel on Friday, Obama undermined the rationale for American power. Why should the US assert a sovereign right to stand against the radical forces that control the UN?
If US agrees that Israel is committing a crime by respecting the civil and human rights of its citizens to live in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, then how can America claim that it has the right to defend its own rights and interests, when those clash with the views of the vast majority of state members of the UN?
Following Obama’s assault on Israel Friday, Senators Lindsay Graham and Ted Cruz called for the US to end its financial support for the UN at least until the Security Council abrogates Resolution 2334. They are correct.
But it isn’t anger at how Obama has and is expected to continue to use the Security Council to imperil Israel that should inform the incoming Trump administration’s actions. Rather a determination to maintain US power and secure its national security requires that the UN be permanently defunded and defanged.
For eight years, through his embrace and empowerment of US enemies, betrayal and weakening of US allies, emaciation of the US armed forces and repeated apologies for America’s past assertions of global leadership Obama has waged a determined war against US superpower status. The last vestige of the strategic and moral rationale for US power was the protection America afforded Israel at the Security Council.
Now with that gone, it has become a strategic imperative for the US to render the UN irrelevant. This can only be undertaken by permanently defunding this corrupt institution and using the US’s Security Council veto to end the UN’s role as the arbiter of international peace and security, by among other things, ending the deployment of UN forces to battle zones.
Only by stripping the UN of its financial wherewithal to assault US allies and American interests and by denying it the institutional and operational capacity to serve as an arbiter of disputes morally and legally superior to the US can America protect its sovereignty and advance its interests.
Only by denying those associated with the UN the prestige that confers to an institution legitimized by democrat and autocrat alike can the incoming Trump administration rebuild America’s reputation and power.
It is not surprising that Obama is carrying out the final act of his presidency at the UN. Obama has made no attempt to hide his desire to eliminate America’s independence of action. By elevating the post of UN ambassador to a cabinet level position at the outset of his presidency, Obama signaled his conviction that this corrupt institution is the equal of the US government.
This early signal was transformed into an open policy when Obama used the Security Council as a means to bypass the US Senate in implementing his nuclear deal with Iran.
Now, by ignoring the near consensus position of both parties that the US should block anti-Israel resolutions from being adopted at the Security Council and plotting further action against Israel at the Security Council in his final weeks in office, Obama has made clear his position and his aim.
Obama is not leading the war against Israel at the Security Council simply to advance the PLO’s war for the annihilation of Israel. He is acting in this manner to undermine the legitimacy of American power.
Obama’s strategic campaign against his country can only be defeated by a counter campaign by his successor.
Luckily, by eschewing multilateral entanglements in favor of bilateral partnerships during his presidential campaign, President-elect Donald Trump has demonstrated that he understands the threat and will adopt the only possible means of countering it. To reassert and rebuild the rationale for American power, the Trump administration must permanently defund the UN and reject its legitimacy as an institution of global governance.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.
[huge_it_share]
I have often times shocked my friends in admitting I never vote in American elections. As a dual citizen of both the United States and Israel I am fully eligible to vote, but refrain from doing so. Why? I am what you call a one issue candidate. That issue is the security of the State of Israel. Although I believe our security here is of importance to the electorate in the USA, I feel it is wrong to help sway their vote in order to help my cause, which is overly and rightfully Israel centric.
With all of that being said, I cannot help but comment on the state of politics in my former country. Jews in America have done well in politics. There are Jewish congressmen, senators, and now even Presidential candidates. We have always excelled in all of the countries we have called home. From Joseph in Egypt to Daniel in Babylon/Persia.
We also have a habit (especially in modern times) of overplaying our hand. Nowhere do we see this in the current presidential race as explicitly as the attacks coming forth from the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) against Ted Cruz. These attacks are focusing on Pastor Mike Bickle’s comments in 2004.
““Let me tell you, these 20 million — less than 20 million Jews worldwide, there’s about 5 million in Israel, about another 15 million worldwide, a little bit less than that — those 15 million, God is going to bring them all back. Two-thirds will die in the rage of Satan and in the judgments of God and one-third, every one of the one-third, will be in the land before it’s over and they’ll be worshipers of Jesus … The Lord says, ‘I’m going to give all 20 million of them the chance. To respond to the fisherman. And I give them grace. And I give them grace …if they don’t respond to grace, I’m going to raise up the hunters … And the most famous hunter in recent history is a man named Adolf Hitler.’”
Bickle has endorsed Ted Cruz for President saying the following:
“Our nation is in a great crisis in this hour. We need a president who will first be faithful to honor God’s Word. We need a president who will work to defend religious liberty, uphold our Constitution, keep our country safe and our economy sound, and speak truth to the nation. We have been praying for righteous leaders and Ted Cruz is such a leader. I am enthusiastically endorsing Ted Cruz.”
Ted Cruz has touted the endorsement saying, “I am grateful for Mike’s dedication to call a generation of young people to prayer and spiritual commitment. Heidi and I are grateful to have his prayers and support. With the support of Mike and many other people of faith, we will fight the good fight, finish the course, and keep the faith.”
The above statements are fact. There is no denying what was said and the outlook Bickle has. The real question is, why does it matter? Secondly why is the NJDC making such a big deal about the viewpoint of Bickle?
The Liberal Jewish establishment in America have for years supplanted traditional Jewish teachings with the philosophy of the modern liberal and social justice movements. Judaism, being the moral foundation of the Jewish Nation is covenant centered in outlook. The law was given by the Almighty to be followed and help direct a truly just society. The Liberal Jewish approach to the world is opposite. Liberalism has become the foundation for all things, even Judaism. If a piece of the Law does not fit into a “modern” outlook then it is ejected. By no means am I implying this is an all or nothing affair, but rather I am attempting to stress that way one views the basis of his or her life outlook essentially becomes pivotal foundation for which they judge morality.
Liberal Jews have taken to picking apart anything connected to conservative principles as archaic and primitive. The weapon of choice is often the anti semitic card. This has increasingly become more and more maligned by non-partisan observers, but organizations like the NJDC continue to deploy it. The fact is, many of us Jews on the right in America and in Israel cringe when mostly Democratic Jews who have little or no connection to observancy play the Jewish victim and are “appalled” at the religious viewpoints of devout Christians.
Let’s put it more clearly. Liberal Jews are liberals. Their religion (not their ethnicity) is liberalism. Any theological convictions are at their core in opposition to liberalism. This would go equally for any dedicated co-religionist. Being an observant Jew, I have no qualms in my belief set. I also understand my co-religionists disagree on my eschatological outlook. This is of no surprise since each of us believes our side is right. The question is not how one views the “End of Days,” but rather how an individual acts towards their fellow man up until that point.
From Israel things are Viewed Differently
Israelis do not care if a particular person believes in a different ending to the redemption process. We care about developing our country and want the strongest allies possible. Ultimately our foreign policy is increasingly becoming a neutral one. This means, we have to do what is best for the Jewish Nation. Since what is important to Israel is Israel, then it is very easy to decide who would be the best President. All one has to do is look at a candidate’s record. There has been perhaps no greater supporter of Israel and the Jewish people’s rights to all of the Land of Israel in the Senate than Ted Cruz.
In September of 2014 Ted Cruz was booed off stage at an event supporting the Christians of the Middle East. Why was he booed off stage? For supporting Israel.
“Those who hate Israel hate America,” Cruz told the people attending the event, which he had been invited to address as the dinner’s keynote speaker. “Those who hate Jews hate Christians. If those in this room will not recognize that, then my heart weeps. If you hate the Jewish people you are not reflecting the teachings of Christ. And the very same people who persecute and murder Christians right now, who crucify Christians, who behead children, are the very same people who target Jews for their faith, for the same reason.”
The last statement Cruz made as he walked off stage was, “If you will not stand with Israel and the Jews, then I will not stand with you. Good night, and God bless.”
Calling Ted Cruz an Anti-Semite is despicable. It’s true, he may very well have a Christian eschatological outlook, after all he is a Christian and he is in fact entitled to his religious beliefs. Organizations like NJDC and leading Liberal Jewish politicians would do well to separate Liberalism from their Judaism. When they do that, they may see the only thing they can accuse Ted Cruz is disliking Liberals. In my book, that is perfectly fine.