Dear Family & Friends, This one took awhile. Happily busy with grand-daughter from Philly & whole family.

T Then, all of a sudden tonight, just when I wanted to go to sleep, came the wonderful news that the dangerous French Conference Fails, Thanks to Trump! & the story about the lawsuit in the French Court of Appeal at Versailles ruled that Israeli Occupation does not violate any international law & the PA lost in a decision that ruled that Israel is the legal occupant of Judea & Samaria!! I like the sound & look of Rex Tillerson – he’s tough when needed & very smart when badgered. Plus 2 Daniel Greenfields! Etcetera & so forth. You must read below to get all the good news tonight before the morning papers! All the very best, Gail/Geula/Savta/Savta Raba x 2/Mom Our Website is always current & prescient: WinstonIsraelInsight.org

1.FRENCH CONFERENCE FAILS THANKS TO TRUMP

2.French Court of Appeal rules Israel is legal occupier of West Bank

3.Settlement leaders invited to inauguration for the first time

4.Trump’s Jews & Obama’s Jews By Daniel Greenfield

5.Caveats of 2016 US-Israel Aid Deal Come Into Focus by Barbara Opall-Rome

6.Obama’s Transparent Presidency By Caroline B. Glick, JPost

7.After day of 16 bomb threats, FBI to coordinate with JCCs

8.Stained-glass windows of Philly synagogue smashed 2^nd time in 2 months.

9.Jewish Group Screens ‘Jerusalem Eternal Capital of Israel’ on UNESCO’s Paris HQ

10.Secretary of State nominee: Israel is our most important ally

11.IDF commander advises Azariya’s father not to appeal verdict

12.The UN & Obama’s Act of Aggression by Maria Polizoidou

1.FRENCH CONFERENCE FAILS – THANKS TO TRUMP

Israeli occupation does not violate any international law:French court

Propaganda is not international law

1.FRENCH CONFERENCE FAILS – THANKS TO TRUMP

Thanks go to Trump for intervening

Trump Advisers Tell French Officials: We Strenuously Object to Paris Peace Conference

Kerry calls PM from Paris, vows no further UN action US secretary promises to soften text of final communique at peace summit, says there will be no followup moves

Kicking off summit, Paris says now not time to halt peace effort

UK signals closeness to Trump with snub to French Middle East summit

FRENCH CONFERENCE FAILS – THANKS TO TRUMP

2.French Court of Appeal rules Israel is legal occupier of West Bank By Jerry Gordon

h/t Imre Herzog. Here’s a stunner. M. Jean Patrick Grumberg of French blog Dreuz made a useful discovery & that somehow Israeli & world media didn’t cover. The PA brought suit in France against French companies building light rail system in Jerusalem. The PA lost in a decision that ruled that Israel is the legal occupant of Judea & Samaria.

So, why isn’t the Israeli & world media hopping all over this? Perhaps because they are intimidated by the threat of Islamic violence as their god Allah granted possession of any conquered lands in perpetuity. Which will never be held up in a Western court that doesn’t recognize Sharia law ruling based on fiction rather than fact. But then the pack of Israel’s enemies gathering in Paris for tomorrow’s hatefest doesn’t care about the facts & law. That would include that self-promoting ‘stalwart defender of Israel’, Secretary of State Kerry. Read this important French court case findings in this Dreuz blog post by the estimable M. Grumberg.

Grumberg, a French lawyer by training wrote:

In an historical trial carefully « forgotten » by the media, the 3rd Chamber of the Court of Appeal of Versailles declares that Israel is the legal occupant of the West Bank*.

When I first learned that the Court of Appeal of Versailles ruled that West bank settlements & occupation of Judea/Samaria by Israel is unequivocally legal under international law, in a suit brought by the Palestinian Authority against Jerusalem’s light rail built by French companies Alstom & Veolia, that received no media coverage, I decided to put to work my years of Law Studies in France, and I meticulously analyzed the Court ruling.

To my astonishment, pro-Israeli media did not cover it either. The few who mentioned the case did not have any legal background in French law to understand the mega-importance of the ruling, &, as a few lefty English speaking Israeli websites reported it, they thought that it was a decision strictly pertinent to the Jerusalem light rail. It’s not!!

To make sure I did not overestimate my legal abilities & that I wasn’t over optimistic – as usual, I submitted my analysis & the Court papers to one of the most prominent French lawyers, Gilles-William Goldnadel, President of Lawyers without borders, to receive his legal opinion. He indeed validated my finding. Then I decided to translate it to English, and it will soon be submitted to Benjamin Netanyahu thru a mutual friend.

First and foremost, the Versailles Court of Appeals had to determine the legal rights of Palestinians & Israelis in West Bank. Their conclusion: Palestinians have no right – in the international legal sense – to the region, unlike Israel, who is legitimately entitled to occupy all land beyond the 67 line.

The context:
In the 90s, Israel bid for the construction of the Jerusalem light rail. The tender was won by French companies Veolia & Alstom. The light rail was completed in 2011 & it crossed Jerusalem all the way to the east side & the « occupied territories » (more about this term later).

Following this, the PLO filed a complaint with the High Court (Tribunal de Grande Instance) of Versailles France, against Alstom & Veolia, because according to PLO, « the construction of the tram is illegal since the UN, the EU, many NGOs & governments consider that « Israel illegally occupy Palestinian territories ».

In the quest for the International Legislation to establish the rights of each party.
In order to rule whether the light rail construction was legal or not, the court had to seek the texts of international law, to examine international treaties, in order to establish the respective rights of the Palestinians & the Israelis.

To my knowledge, this is the first time that a non-Israeli court has been led to rule on the status of the West Bank.

Why is this an historical ruling: it is the first international case since the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948

It is the first time since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 that an independent, non-Israeli court has been called upon to examine the legal status of West bank territories under international law, beyond the political claims of the parties.

Keep in mind though, that the Court’s findings have no effect in international law. What they do, & it’s of the utmost importance, is to clarify the legal reality.

The Versailles Court of Appeal conclusions are as resounding as the silence in which they were received in the media: Israel has real rights in the territories, its decision to build a light rail in the West Bank or anything else in the area is legal & the judges have rejected all the arguments presented by the Palestinians.

The Palestinian arguments

• The PLO denounces deportation of the Palestinian population & destruction of properties in violation of international regulations. Relying on Geneva & Hague Conventions & UN resolutions, it considers that the State of Israel is illegally occupying Palestinian territory & is pursuing illegal Jewish colonization. Thus, construction of the light rail is itself illegal (1).

• The PLO adds that the light rail construction has resulted in the destruction of Palestinian buildings & houses, almost total destruction of Highway 60, which is vital for Palestinians & their goods & has conducted many illegal dispossessions. Therefore, several clauses from the annexed Regulations to the Oct. 18, 1907 Fourth Hague Convention were violated (2).

• Finally, the PLO alleges Israel violates the provisions relating to the « protection of cultural property » provided for in Article 4 of the Hague Convention of May 14, 1954, Article 27 of the Hague Regulations of 1907, Article 5 of the Hague Convention IX of 1907, & Article 53 of Additional Protocol No. 1 to the Geneva Conventions.

The Court of Appeal does not deny the occupation, but it destroys one after another all the Palestinian arguments
Referring to the texts on which the PLO claim is based, the Court of Appeal considers Israel is entitled to ensure order & public life in the West Bank, therefore Israel has the right to build a light rail, infrastructure & dwellings.

Article 43 of the Fourth Hague Convention of 1907 stipulates « The authority of the legitimate power having in fact passed into the hands of the occupant, the latter shall take all measures in his power to restore & ensure, as far as possible, public order & safety ».

Israeli occupation does not violate any international law

« The Palestinian Authority misread the documents, they don’t apply to the occupation »

The Court explains that the Palestinian Authority misinterprets the texts & they do not apply to the occupation:
• First of all, all the international instruments put forward by the PLO are acts signed between States & the obligations or prohibitions contained therein are relevant to States. Neither the Palestinian Authority nor the PLO are States, therefore, none of these legal documents apply.

• Secondly, said the Court, these texts are binding only on those who signed them, namely the « contracting parties ». But neither the PLO nor the Palestinian Authority have ever signed these texts.

Propaganda is not international law
The Court, quite irritated by the presented arguments, boldly asserted that the law « cannot be based solely on the PLO’s assessment of a political or social situation.«

Humanitarian law was not violated

The PLO mistakenly refers to the wrong legal document because the Hague Convention applies in case of bombing. And … « Jerusalem is not bombed. » The PLO invokes the violation of humanitarian law contained in the Geneva & Hague Conventions.
• But on the one hand, says the judges of the Court of Appeal, international conventions apply between States & the PLO is not a State: « the International Court of Justice has indicated that [the Conventions] only contain obligations for the States & that individual have no rights to claim the benefit of those obligation for themselves ».

• Then the Court says that only the contracting parties are bound by international conventions & neither the PLO nor the Palestinian Authority have ever signed any of them.

• The Court draws the conclusion that the PLO is mistakenly referring to the wrong legal document because the Hague Convention applies in case of bombing. &… « Jerusalem is not bombed.«

The PLO & the Palestinians were dismissed
The PLO cannot invoke any of these international conventions, said the Court.
« These international norms and treaties » does not give the « Palestinian people that the PLO says he represents, the right to invoke them before a court.«

The Court of Appeal therefore sentenced the PLO (and Association France Palestine Solidarité AFPS who was co-appellant) to pay 30,000 euros ($32,000) to Alstom, 30,000 euros to Alstom Transport and 30,000 euros to Veolia Transport.

Neither the PLO nor the Palestinian Authority nor the AFPS appealed to the Supreme Court, therefore the judgment has become final.

This is the first time that a Court has legally destroyed all Palestinian legal claim that Israel’s occupation is illegal.

Reprint or redistribution of this copyrighted material is permitted with the following attribution and link: © Jean-Patrick Grumberg for www.Dreuz.info

• (1) The PLO relies on article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of August 12, 1949, which states that « the occupant power may not deport or transfer part of its own civilian population in the Territory he occupies » & article 53, which states that « the occupant Power is prohibited from destroying movable or immovable properties belonging individually or collectively to private people, to the State or to public authorities or social or cooperative organizations, except in cases where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary for military operations ».

• (2) The PLO refers to the Fourth Geneva Convention of August 12, 1949: ? Article 23 (g), which prohibits « the destruction or seizure of enemy properties except in cases where such destruction or seizure are imperatively ordered for the necessities of war. »

? Article 27 according to which « in the sieges and bombardments, all necessary measures must be taken to spare as much as possible the buildings devoted to worship, the arts, sciences, charitable institutions, historical monuments & hospitals … »

? Article 46 which states that « private property can not be confiscated ».
http://www.dreuz.info/…/israel-is-the-legal-occupant-of-the West Bank…/

Israel is the legal occupant of the West Bank, says Court of Appeal of Versailles, France
In a historical trial carefully « forgotten » by the media, the 3rd Chamber of the Court of Appeal of Versailles declares that Israel is the legal occupant of the West Bank*. When I first learned that the Court of Appeal of Versailles ruled that West bank settlements & occupation of Judea/Samaria… DREUZ.INFO

3.Settlement leaders invited to inauguration for the first time by Jewish Press

The heads of Moetzet Yesha – The Council of Judea and Samaria, received an invitation to President Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony in Washington D.C., according to a report in Makor Rishon. The invitation was passed on to them via the Chamber of Commerce of Orthodox Jews (US), who are connected to Trump’s special advisor Jason D. Greenblatt.

The settlement council will most likely be represented at the inauguration by Mayor of Efrat, Oded Revivi, who also heads the foreign desk for Moetzet Yesha & Beni Kashriel, Mayor of Ma’ale Adumim.

In addition, several other people connected to Jewish life in Judea & Samaria have been invited, but according to the report, they prefer not to publicize their invitations.
This is the first time that settlement leaders have been invited to a presidential inauguration.

Yigal Dilmoni, spokesperson for Moetzet Yesha, praised the move, saying it “foretells the new spirit emanating from the US regarding the change in [Washington’s] attitude towards Israel, & in particular, [Jewish] settlement in Judea, Samaria & the Jordan Valley. This new spirit was also expressed by the recent visit of Governor Mike Huckabee last week to Ma’ale Adumim.

We are preparing for it.”

PM Netanyahu won’t be attending the ceremony & will instead be represented by Israel’s Ambassador to the US, Ron Dermer.

4.Trump’s Jews & Obama’s Jews By Daniel Greenfield, FPM

The Left is losing the culture war within the Jewish community.

Seen from above, the 2016 electoral map of New York City is blue with dots of red. Trump’s home district is blue, but across the water a red wedge slices into Brooklyn. Around that red wedge are districts where Hillary won 90 percent of the vote and Trump was lucky to get 5 percent. Inside it, he beat her in district after district.

The voters who handed him that victory are the Chassidic Jews of Williamsburg who dress in fur hats and black caftans. Their districts, crammed in by hipsters and minorities, are a world away from the progressive activist temples whose clergy went into mourning at Hillary’s loss.
East of Prospect Park, in a vast sea of blue, is what looks like a red sofa. Trump won here with the Chabad Chassidim of Crown Heights. He won in the more mainstream Orthodox Jewish communities of Flatbush. He won by huge margins among the Russian Jewish immigrants of Brighton Beach who listen to a man dubbed the “Russian Rush Limbaugh.”

As the left-wing Forward put it, “Nearly every election district that Trump won in Brooklyn was in a Jewish neighborhood.” But it was a certain type of Jewish neighborhood. The wrong type.

“You can compare them to Rust Belt voters,” a Forward source states. “They are hardworking people, not college educated.”

In Far Rockaway the housing projects by the beach give way to the red Orthodox Jewish communities that extend into Long Island.

There’s a line that recurs again and again in the attacks on David Friedman; the man picked by President-elect Trump to serve as the ambassador to Israel. It’s not stated openly. It’s implied.

“David Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer from Long Island,” is the sneering summary.

Remnick, the New Yorker’s left-wing editor, took the sneering to a new level, titling his smear as “Trump’s Daily Bankruptcy.” Jewish identity, he declares, has never been a matter of “bankruptcy law.”

To a certain class of elites, it is self-evidently absurd that a bankruptcy lawyer from Long Island be appointed to anything or be listened to about anything. David Remnick is a Washington Post man married to a New York Times woman who went on to inherit the editorship of the New Yorker & turn it into a left-wing echo chamber. He lives in a $3.25 million four-bedroom Manhattan apartment with a wood-burning fireplace.

David Friedman is the Orthodox son of a Rabbi from Woodmere who still lives there. His father was a Republican who hosted President Reagan. He might occasionally be allowed to read the New Yorker.

That’s about it.

Yet it’s hard to think of anything that might recommend Friedman more to Trump.

Over at New York Magazine, Frank Rich and Fran Leibowitz famously chuckled over Trump being “a poor person’s idea of a rich person.” David Brooks, the token slightly right of the left voice at the New York Times, full of contempt for Trump, in an infamous moment, studied Obama’s “perfectly creased pant” and came to the conclusion that, “he’ll be a very good president.”

“I divide people into people who talk like us and who don’t talk like us,” Brooks has said.

Obama spoke like one of the collective “us”. Trump and Friedman don’t talk like “us”. Their voices are distinctly working class. Their New York values are those of a grittier & grimier country.

Trump’s calling card was, “Make America Great Again”. Obama’s was a memoir about race & identity that was a hit on college campuses. Two cultures could hardly be further apart.

The internal war in America & among Jews over Trump is not just politics, it’s also about class. Trump’s victory was the uprising of a cultural underclass. That is equally true among Jews.

The same divide exists between the slick branding of J Street’s conferences stocked with self-appointed thought leaders who have never worked for a living & the hard-working Jewish communities who loathe the New York Times for its hostility to Israel. These are the Jews who have never been represented in national politics – most of the left didn’t even know they existed.

Friedman’s appointment led leftists like Remnick to undertake a baffled archeological survey of Arutz Sheva: a popular pro-Israel news site that no one at the New Yorker had ever heard of. The elites of the left have suddenly had to grapple with the existence of people who don’t talk like “us” or think like “us”.

For many voters, non-Jewish & Jewish, encompassed the thrill of Trump. Voting for Trump forced the elites that had ignored them out to acknowledge their existence for the very first time.

The split is as real among Jews as in the rest of America. Trump’s victory allowed Jewish communities that had been shut out of the national dialogue to have a voice. The divide over Israel is not only about policy, but about culture & class. The divide between readers of the Jewish Press & The Forward is as real as the yawning gap between country music listeners & NPR audiences.

Trump and Obama both have inner circles filled with Jews. But they are as different as David Remnick is from David Friedman, as Jan Schakowsky is from Boris Epshteyn, or as J Street’s Jeremy Ben Ami is from Jason Greenblatt, a Trump advisor who performed armed guard duty while studying in Israel.

Obama is legitimately baffled by accusations of anti-Semitism. His inner circle of left-wing Jews agree with him that the Jewish State is the problem & aiding Islamic terrorists is the solution. His echo chamber elevated marginal left-wing organizations like J Street or Yeshivat Chovevei Torah into representatives of American Jews. Meanwhile his people, like ADL boss Jonathan Greenblatt, took over already liberal Jewish organizations & turned them into lobbies for his anti-Israel agenda.

Now suddenly the President-elect is surrounded by a very different breed of Jews. Instead of tenured academics, progressive journalists & irreligious clergy for whom Jewish values, like American values, mean appeasement & surrender to terrorists, a very different kind of Trump Jew is now on the rise.

Trump’s Jews are scrappy businessmen & tough lawyers. They live in traditional suburban communities instead of hip urban neighborhoods. They are more likely to be religiously devout and have large families. And they don’t look or sound like the “us” of the leftist elites. They don’t have the “perfectly creased pant”. Instead they look like the suburban dads & granddads that they are.

They believe that you have to work hard to get ahead. They know that you have to be tough to succeed. They’ve learned to get ahead without caring what the liberal elites think of their manners & style.

In that they’re a whole lot like Trump. A whole lot like the stereotypical Israeli.

It’s not just the substance of their message, pro-American, pro-Israel & pro-work, that horrifies the Remnicks of the Left. It’s the conviction that they’re part of a social underclass that doesn’t belong on stage. The Remnicks have worked hard to ape the manners & attitudes of their progressive betters. Once his ilk dared to be pro-Israel. But when the liberals went Left, they went with them. They justified their betrayal by blaming Israel for “moving to the right” and alienating them.

But Trump’s Jews, whether it’s his advisers, who look like every other professional or small businessman in Long Island or Teaneck, or the Chassidic and Haredi Jews of Brooklyn who voted for him, make no apologies for who they are. They pray toward Jerusalem, not Martha’s Vineyard. They do not cringe inwardly when Israel takes out a terrorist. They are not politically correct. They are Biblically correct.

They are not ashamed of their Jewishness. And now their voice is being heard.

In the fall of ’84, President Ronald Reagan showed up at the home of a Long Island Rabbi for a Sabbath meal. David Friedman’s mother spent three days shopping & prepared stuffed chicken cutlets, apricot noodle pudding & an apple crumb cake. Reagan toasted her as “a woman who makes a meal better than a state dinner.” Meanwhile outside, left-wingers protested hysterically against the visit.

At Rabbi Friedman’s synagogue, President Reagan declared, “the so-called anti-Zionists that we hear in the United Nations is just another mask in some quarters for vicious anti-Semitism. And that’s something the United States will not tolerate wherever it is, no matter how subtle it may be.”

The United States has tolerated it for far too long from Barak Hussein Obama.

When Rabbi Friedman passed away, Donald J. Trump, a future Republican president, drove to Long Island through a snowstorm to pay a condolence call to his son. Trump has chosen the man who sat at the table with President Reagan, that “bankruptcy lawyer from Long Island” as ambassador to Israel.

5.Caveats of 2016 US-Israel Aid Deal Come Into Focus By: Barbara Opall-Rome, DEFENSE NEWS January 10, 2017

TEL AVIV – More specifics about congressional restrictions on US military aid for Israel have emerged with the State Department release of the memorandum of understanding (MOU) governing the bilateral pact signed nearly four months ago.

Details of the $38 billion deal, which covers fiscal years 2019 to 2028, provide context to a fact sheet released by the White House when the agreement was inked on Sept. 14, 2016.

As previously announced, it commits to providing Israel with $3.3 billion each year in grant Foreign Military Financing (FMF) aid, along with $500 million per year for missile defense.
What was not included in the White House fact sheet are the specific terms and conditions under which the US aid will be made available to its top Mideast ally:

No Congressional Plus-ups

Under the agreement, both countries “jointly commit to respect the FMF levels specified in this MOU, and not to seek changes to the FMF levels for the duration of this understanding.”

With regard to the 2017 and 2018 budget years that precede the new agreement, the State Department posted a letter from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Secretary of State John Kerry in which the Israeli leader pledged to refund any congressionally-appropriated FMF funds that exceed the $3.1 billion earmarked for Israel under the existing MOU.

As for the $500 million in annual missile defense funding, the MOU stipulates that both sides commit “not to seek additional missile defense funding from the United States for the duration of this understanding, except in exceptional circumstances as may be jointly agreed by the US administration and Israel, such as in the event of a major armed conflict involving Israel.”

‘Buy American’ Provisions

Under the new MOU, the administration underscored “the importance of making FMF resources available to finance the purchase of US military goods and services in the United States.” As such, Washington will gradually reduce so-called Off Shore Procurement (OSP), the amount of FMF funding that Israel has been allowed to convert into Israeli shekels for local defense research, development and procurement.

For decades, Israel had the unique privilege of being able to convert 26.3 percent of its FMF funds for OSP; an amount in the last years of the current agreement has totaled $815.3 million. But in consideration of Israel’s claims that removal of the OSP privilege would harm its defense industrial base, the agreement will phase it out gradually.

The new MOU allows Israel to retain its current level of $815.3 million OSP in the first year (FY2019), which represents some 24.7 percent of the $3.3 billion earmarked in annual FMF over the life of the agreement. Over the next four years (FY2020-2023), OSP falls by a mere $10 million. But by fiscal year 2024 – year number five of the accord – Israel’s OSP allowance drops $50 million to $725.3 million.

The following year (FY2025), OSP falls by $275 million, leaving Israel $450.3 million to spend locally. It drops by another $200 million in the two years after that (FY2026-FY2027) until finally, by fiscal year 2028 – the tenth and final year of the agreement – Israel will no longer be able to spend US aid in country.

Missile Defense Matching Funds

The MOU imposes no conditions on how Israel can spend the $5 billion in missile defense funds allotted over the ten-year period, as long as such funds are used “primarily for the purposes of developing and procuring articles and services necessary to missile, rocket and projectile defense systems for the defense of Israel.”

The last five words of that caveat – “for the defense of Israel” – means that Israel cannot use US missile defense funding for spinoff programs destined for export; something Israeli experts say will be exceedingly difficult to enforce.

As for matching funds, the MOU states that “both sides jointly understand” that US missile defense funding “should be made available on the basis of best efforts at matching financial and non-financial contributions by Israel for such systems.”

Furthermore, the MOU highlights the importance of US-based co-production of missile defense-related parts and components “at a level equal to or greater than 50 percent of US-appropriated” production funds.

The MOU allows for leeway in Israel’s prescribed use of US missile defense funding for Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Arrow-3-related system elements, provided that departures from the text are codified in separate bilateral agreements governing bilateral cooperative missile defense programs.

Transparency and Accountability

The MOU clearly states that FMF funding aims “to help enable Israel to defend itself by itself and develop long-term capacity, primarily through the acquisition of advanced capabilities that are available from the United States.” As such, it calls on Israel not to use FMF for purchase of fuel or other consumables, as it has done in recent years to the tune of $1.2 billion annually.

It also calls on both parties to “maximize understanding and transparency regarding how US funding is used” through active dialogue and regular consultations. At the same time, the MOU calls for Israel to be transparent in how it uses its own national funds to safeguard its security.

To that end, it obliges Israel to provide “detailed programmatic information related to the use of all US funding, including funds used for OSP.” It also calls for Israel to provide annual updates on all cooperative defense programs – “to include progress reports and spending plans” – along with topline figures from the budget of Israel’s Missile Defense Organization.

Wild Card?

The last line of the agreement, signed by Thomas Shannon, US undersecretary of state for political affairs, and Jacob Nagel, acting Israel National Security Advisor, has been interpreted in Israel as a possible escape route should Washington encounter unanticipated budgetary constraints.

It reads: “Both sides acknowledge that the funding levels in this understanding assume continuation of adequate funding levels for US foreign assistance and missile defense overall, and are subject to the appropriation and availability of funds for these purposes.”

6.Obama’s Transparent Presidency By Caroline B. Glick, JPost

Obama and his followers in the US and around the world refuse to see the connection between the policies borne of that ideology and their destructive consequences.

Pres Obama promised that his would be the most transparent administration in US history.

And the truth is, it was. At least in relation to his policies toward the Muslim world, Obama told us precisely what he intended to do and then he did it.

A mere week remains of Obama’s tenure in office.

But Obama remains intent on carrying on as if he will never leave power. He has pledged to continue to implement his goals for the next week and then to serve as the most outspoken ex-president in US history.

In all of Obama’s recent appearances, his message is one of vindication. ‘I came. I succeeded. I will continue to succeed. I represent the good people, the people of tomorrow. My opponents represent the Manichean, backward past. We will fight them forever and we will prevail.’

Tuesday Obama gave his final interview to the Israeli media to Ilana Dayan from Channel 2’s Uvda news magazine. Dayan usually tries to come off as an intellectual. On Tuesday’s show, she cast aside professionalism however, and succumbed to her inner teenybopper. Among her other questions, she asked Obama the secret to his preternatural ability to touch people’s souls.

The only significant exchange in their conversation came when Dayan asked Obama about the speech he gave on June 4, 2009, in Cairo. Does he still stand by all the things he said in that speech? Would he give that speech again today, given all since happened in the region, she asked.

Absolutely, Obama responded.

The speech, he insisted was “aspirational” rather than programmatic. And the aspirations that he expressed in that address were correct.

If Dayan had been able to put aside her hero worship for a moment, she would have stopped Obama right then and there. His claim was preposterous.

But, given her decision to expose herself as a slobbering groupie, Dayan let it slide.

To salvage the good name of the journalism, and more important, to understand Obama’s actual record and its consequences, it is critical however to return to that speech.

Obama’s speech at Cairo University was the most important speech of his presidency. In it he laid out both his “aspirational” vision of relations between the West and the Islamic world and his plans for implementing his vision. The fundamentally transformed world he will leave President-elect Donald Trump to contend with next Friday was transformed on the basis of that speech.

Obama’s address that day at Cairo University lasted for nearly an hour. In the first half he set out his framework for understanding the nature of the US’s relations with the Muslim world and the relationship between the Western world and Islam more generally. He also expressed his vision for how that relationship should change.

The US-led West he explained sinned against the Muslim world by colonialism & racism.

It needed to make amends for its past and make Muslims feel comfortable and respected, particularly female Muslims, covered from head to toe.

As for the Muslims, well, September 11 was wrong but didn’t reflect the truth of Islam, which is extraordinary. Obama thrice praised “the Holy Koran.” He quoted it admiringly. He waxed poetic in his appreciation for all the great contributions Islamic civilization has made to the world – he even made up a few. He insisted falsely that Islam has always been a significant part of the American experience.

In his dichotomy between two human paths – the West’s and Islam’s – although he faulted the records of both, Obama judged the US and the West more harshly than Islam.

In the second half of his address, Obama detailed his plans for changing the West’s relations with Islam in a manner that reflected the true natures of both.

In hindsight, it is clear that during the seven and a half years of his presidency that followed that speech, all of Obama’s actions involved implementing the policy blueprint he laid out in Cairo.

He never deviated from the course he spelled out.

Obama promised to withdraw US forces from Iraq regardless of the consequences. He did.

He promised to keep US forces in Afghanistan but gave them no clear mission other than being nice to everyone & giving Afghans a lot of money. Those have been his orders ever since.

Then he turned his attention to Israel and the Palestinians. Obama opened this section by presenting his ideological framework for understanding the conflict. Israel he insisted was not established out of respect of the Jews’ national rights to their historic homeland. It was established as a consolation prize to the Jews after the Holocaust.

That is, Israel is a product of European colonialism, just as Iran & Hamas claim.

In contrast, Palestinians are the indigenous people of the land. They have been the primary victims of the colonial West’s post-Holocaust guilty conscience. Their suffering is real & legitimate.

Hamas’s opposition to Israel is legitimate, he indicated. Through omission, Obama made clear he has no ideological problem with Hamas – only with its chosen means of achieving its goal.

Rather than fire missiles at Israel, he said, Hamas should learn from its fellow victims of white European colonialist racists in South Africa, in India & with the African-American community.

Like them Hamas should use non-violent means to achieve its just aims.

Obama’s decision attack Israel at the UN Security Council last month, his attempts to force Israel to accept Hamas’s cease-fire demands during Operation Protective Edge in 2014, his consistent demand that Israel renounce Jewish civil & property rights in united Jerusalem, in Judea & Samaria, his current refusal to rule out the possibility of enabling another anti-Israel resolution to pass the Security Council next week & his contempt for the Israeli Right all are explained, envisioned & justified explicitly or implicitly in his Cairo speech.

One of the more notable but less discussed aspects of Obama’s assertion that the Palestinians are in the right & Israel is in the wrong in the speech, was his embrace of Hamas. Obama made no mention of the PLO or the Palestinian Authority or Fatah in his speech. He mentioned only Hamas – the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which shares the Brotherhood’s commitment to annihilating Israel & wiping out the Jewish people worldwide.

Sitting in the audience that day in Cairo were members of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.

Then-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak rightly viewed Obama’s insistence that the brothers be invited to his address as a hostile act. Due to this assessment, Mubarak boycotted the speech & refused to greet Obama at the Cairo airport.

Two years later, Obama supported Mubarak’s overthrow & the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood to replace him.

Back to the speech.

Having embraced the Muslim Brotherhood & its Palestinian branch, branded Israel a colonial implant & discredited the US’s moral claim to world leadership, Obama turned his attention to Iran.

Obama made clear that his intention as president was to appease the ayatollahs. America he explained had earned their hatred because in 1953 the CIA overthrew the pro-Soviet regime in Iran & installed the pro-American shah in its place.

True, since then the Iranians have done all sorts of mean things to America. But America’s original sin of intervening in 1953 justified Iran’s aggression.

Obama indicated he intended to appease Iran by enabling its illicit nuclear program to progress. Ignoring the fact that Iran’s illegal nuclear program placed it in material breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Obama argued that as an NPT signatory, Iran had a right to a peaceful nuclear program. As for the US & the rest of the members of the nuclear club, Obama intended to convince everyone to destroy their nuclear arsenals.

In the succeeding years, he took a hacksaw to America’s nuclear force.

After Obama’s speech in Cairo, no one had any cause for surprise at the reports this week that he approved the transfer of 116 tons of uranium to Iran. Likewise, no one should have been surprised by his nuclear deal or by his willingness to see Iran take over Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. No one should be surprised by his cash payoffs to the regime or his passivity in the face of repeated Iranian acts of aggression against US naval vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.

Everything that Obama has done since he gave that speech was alluded to or spelled out that day. Certainly, nothing he has done was inconsistent with what he said.

Consequences of Obama’s worldview & the policies he laid out in Cairo are an unmitigated disaster for everyone. The Islamic world is in turmoil. The rising forces are those that Obama favored that day: The Jihadists.

ISIS, which Obama allowed to develop & grow, has become the ideological guide not only of Jihadists in the Middle East but of Muslims in the West as well. Consequently it has destabilized not only Iraq & Syria but Europe as well. As the victims of the Islamist massacres in San Bernardino, Boston, Ft. Hood, Orlando & beyond can attest, American citizens are also paying the price for Obama’s program.

Thanks to Obama, the Iranian regime survived the Green Revolution. Due to his policies, Iran is both the master of its nuclear fate & the rising regional hegemon.

Together with its Russian partners, whose return to regional power after a 30-year absence Obama enabled, Iran has overseen the ethnic cleansing & genocide of Sunnis in Syria & paved the way for the refugee crisis that threatens the future of the European Union.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s Islamist leader, was a principle beneficiary of Obama’s admiration of Islamism. Erdogan rode Obama’s wave to destroy the last vestiges of the secular Turkish Republic.

Now he is poised to leave NATO in favor of an alliance with Russia.

Obama & his followers see none of this. Faithful only to their ideology, Obama & his followers in the US & around the world refuse to see the connection between the policies borne of that ideology & their destructive consequences. They refuse to recognize that the hatred for Western civilization & in particular of the Jewish state Obama gave voice to in Cairo. His parallel expression of admiration for radical Islamic enemies of the West, have had & will continue to have horrific consequences for the US & for the world as a whole.

Cairo is Obama’s legacy. His followers’ refusal to acknowledge this truth means that it falls to those Obama reviles to recognize the wages of the most transparent presidency in history. It is their responsibility to undo the ideological & concrete damage to humanity the program he first unveiled in that address & assiduously implemented ever since has wrought.

7.After day of 16 bomb threats, FBI to coordinate with JCCs

FBI & Dep’t of Homeland Security to assist US JCCs after 16 centers receive bomb threats in 1 day. JTA, 10/01/17 21:31

FBI (Illustration) – Flash 90

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security will be assisting local Jewish community centers in bolstering security after 16 JCCs received bomb threats on the same day.

On Wednesday, officials from the FBI and Homeland Security will conduct a conference call with US Jewish communal leaders to discuss Monday’s incidents, what they stem from and how to craft protocols to handle such incidents in the future. Some communities already receive federal grants to provide for security.

The bomb threats, none of which appear credible, hit JCCs up and down the East Coast, in addition to two in the United Kingdom, prompting evacuations of buildings and campuses. According to Jewish communal security officials, the bomb threats came both from robocalls and from live telephone calls. It remains unclear whether one person or group was behind all the threats.

The U.S. JCCs affected ranged from one in northern New Jersey to several in the Southeast — including in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. In addition, JCCs in Maryland, Delaware, Tennessee & Pennsylvania received threats. Several Jewish institutions also received bomb threats last week.

The simultaneous threats were unprecedented, according to Paul Goldenberg, the director of the Secure Community Network, a group affiliated with the Jewish Federations of North America that coordinates security for the Jewish community.

“We’re in a completely different world now than we were a couple years ago,” Goldenberg told JTA. “What is unprecedented is in the shortest period of time we received a substantial number of bomb threats. These offenders are leveraging technology to intimidate and/or terrorize communities.”

The FBI is investigating the bomb scares, according to Goldenberg.

One of the threatened communities, in Wilmington, Delaware, received a bomb threat at 11:45 a.m. Monday & evacuated some 200 people from a complex housing 4 Jewish organizations. Everyone from preschoolers at a Jewish day school to senior citizens eating lunch left the building within a few minutes. They returned about 90 minutes later.

Seth Katzen, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Delaware, said communal officials were in touch with local FBI & police, who responded immediately & that the evacuation was completed without panic.

“There was a scare, but a manageable uneasiness,” he told JTA. “Everyone moved extremely well. It was to create panic & inconvenience, which it did. That is our new reality.”

Neither Goldenberg nor the Anti-Defamation League explicitly tied the bomb threats to the rise of anti-Semitic attacks during & after the 2016 presidential campaign. Goldenberg said making such a link may be tempting, but would be premature given that the offender has not been identified.

The New York Police Department, as well as the Southern Poverty Law Center, have released reports of a rise in hate crimes following the election. Goldenberg expects more attacks on religious institutions to take place in 2017.

“In the last 16 months we’ve seen an increase in harassment, intimidation & as a direct result of some of the rhetoric & usage by extremists of social media,” Goldenberg said. “It’s easy to tie this into the election. I think the current situation in the US & abroad has allowed for some extremists to have a methodology.”

Over the past two years, Jewish federations in major urban areas have hired coordinators — mostly former federal law enforcement officials — to ensure that all local Jewish institutions are secure & prepared to face threats. More than 20 such security coordinators have been hired.

Brenda Moxley, director of community security for the Greater Miami Jewish Federation, was hired last year after serving as assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s criminal branch in Miami. She ensures that more than 120 area Jewish institutions are prepared for incidents such as Monday’s, in addition to being in touch with law enforcement officials.

Moxley said the need for such procedure first arose following the 9/11 attacks in 2001 & Jewish institutions are beginning to be proactive in responding to threats.

“Every day, it’s important to be vigilant,” she told JTA. “It’s not about being paranoid; it’s just about being prepared.”

Others point out that Jewish institutions began “hardening” their security after the 1999 attack on the North Valley Jewish Community Center near Los Angeles, when a white supremacist opened fire in the JCC lobby and wounded five people.

In April 2014, a 73-year-old neo-Nazi opened fire at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City, Kansas & Village Shalom, a nearby Jewish retirement community, killing three people.

8.Stained-glass windows of Philly synagogue smashed 2^nd time in 2 months. JTA, 09/01/17 20:43 Synagogue (Illustration) – Public domain

The stained-glass windows of a Philadelphia synagogue were shattered by rocks for the second time in two months. Rocks the size of a baseball were thrown through three windows at Temple Menorah Keneseth Chai, a nearly century-old Conservative synagogue in the city’s historic Tacony neighborhood, shortly before 7:30 p.m. Friday, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

On Dec. 2, a rock was thrown through one of the same windows in the second-floor sanctuary just before the start of Friday night Sabbath services, according to the report.

No one was injured in either attack.

The building is clearly marked as a synagogue.

Synagogue president Malcolm Adler told the Inquirer that members of the congregation are “very hot, very upset.

9.Jewish Group Screens ‘Jerusalem Eternal Capital of Israel’ on UNESCO’s Paris HQ e ‘ By: JNi.Media JewishPress.com Published: January 11th, 2017 Eternal Capital Headquarters

Jerusalem message superimposed on UNESCO building Photo: Israel Is Forever France Facebook

The French branch of the organization “Israel Is Forever” on Tuesday announced it had decided to take strong action “on behalf of many French Jews & Israeli Francophones” to show their dissatisfaction with the upcoming international conference on the Middle East to be held in Paris January 15, whose only goal is to harm Israel.

According to IIF France, its members proposed on Tuesday evening to project the image of the Western Wall with the text “Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the State of Israel” on many facades of the UNESCO building in Paris, as well as on the building fronts of the “disinformation” news agency AFP & on the Arc de Triomphe.

IIF France argued that France’s voted at Unesco and the UN, along with its initiative for an international conference Sunday, January 15, can only promote terrorism against Israel. They suggested that last Sunday’s terrorist truck ramming attack in Jerusalem was further proof for the notion that the more the PA Arabs sense that the international community is anti-Israel, the more inclined they are to resort to terrorism.

They also issued “An open letter to the President of the French Republic,” which “draws attention to France’s harmful role vis-à-vis the island of stability and democracy in the Middle East.” The letter condemned a policy that undermines prospects for peace and expresses its solidarity with the State and people of Israel.

An Open Letter to Monsieur François Hollande, Elysee Palace, Paris.

Mister President,

You took the initiative to convene an international conference in Paris to impose on the State of Israel a solution of dismemberment.

It was under your mandate that the vote was taken by the National Assembly recognizing “Palestine,” the vote at UNESCO denying any connection between Jerusalem and the Jewish people, the vote at the World Health Organization on Israeli health policy, the marking of Israeli products, and the iniquitous vote at the UN to try to make “Judenrein” the Biblical Lands of Judea and Samaria.

All that was missing was an international conference in Paris in the absence and against the will of the State of Israel.

At a time when the Middle East is on fire and mired in blood, Syria is in ruins, Iraq is resonating with permanent explosions, Libya is in the hands of Muslim terrorists, Iran is preparing its nuclear future thanks to the agreements you have signed, Turkey lives under a dictatorial regime, the Kurds still have no recognized independent territory, refugees number by the millions, civilian and military victims are in the hundreds of thousands – your crucial problem remains support for an unlikely terrorist Arab state.

Indeed, in this context, it is urgent to weaken the only island of stability and the only democracy in this region –the Jewish state – in Europe and in this European Union, no problem! Britain slammed the door of Europe; Greece crumbles under the weight of financial constraints; Italy is in danger for its banking institutions; millions of “migrants” sweep over the old continent; Crimea is annexed by Russia and the fighting takes place in Ukraine.

But the urgency lies in the action against the State of Israel! Your only problem and your ambition remain the push to share the capital of Israel and the Jewish people, to force them to withdraw from their historical lands of Judea and Samaria. Yours is a tenacity that touches on obsession!

Not wishing to make more trouble, but this policy smacks of Dreyfus and the yellow star.

You should know, Mr. President, that when you leave the Elysee, the Jewish people will be jubilant. Indeed, we will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the victory of the IDF which brought about the liberation of Judea and Samaria and the reunification of Israel’s eternal and indivisible capital: Jerusalem.

Jacques KUPFER, President, Israel Is Forever

JNi.Media provides editors and publishers with high quality Jewish-focused content for their publications.

10.French Ambassadors Declare War on Israel by Yves Mamou
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9754/france-ambassadors-israel January 12, 2017 at 5:00 am

Do not forget these names: Yves Aubin de La Messuzière; Denis Bauchard; Philippe Coste; Bertrand Dufourcq; Christian Graeff; Pierre Hunt; Patrick Leclercq; Stanislas de Laboulaye; Jean-Louis Lucet; Gabriel Robin; Jacques-Alain de Sédouy & Alfred Siefer-Gaillardin.

These men are retired French ambassadors. They are apparently well educated, very polite & aristocratic people and they regularly publish op-eds in Le Monde. However, they publish in Le Monde only to threaten Israel.

Their most recent op-ed in Le Monde on January 9, 2017, was to explain how an international conference on the Middle East, the one which scheduled for January 15 in Paris, would be beneficial for the “security” of Israel. Their text is a discouraging enumeration of traditional clichés of France’s hypocritical diplomacy.

Example: “For the Palestinians, nothing is worse than the absence of a state”. In which way is it the worst? As Bret Stephens wrote this week in the Wall Street Journal: “Have they experienced greater violations to their culture than Tibetans? No: Beijing has conducted a systematic policy of repression for 67 years, whereas Palestinians are nothing if not vocal in mosques, universities and the media. Have they been persecuted more harshly than the Rohingya? Not even close.”

Stephens also noted that: “a telling figure came in a June 2015 poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion, which found that a majority of Arab residents in East Jerusalem would rather live as citizens with equal rights in Israel than in a Palestinian state. “

The French ambassadors, however, do not explain. They just add: “The Proclamation of a Palestinian state will certainly not change anything on the ground,” but they say that they hope this symbolic move will create “a new dynamic imposing new realities”. Hmm. Now what could these “new realities” be in a Palestinian state in the middle of a war-torn Middle East?

“Today,” reflects Diana B. Greenwald of the Washington Post, “with Fatah in charge in the West Bank, the main threat comes from Islamist groups, such as Hamas & even militant groups associated with Fatah that have chafed under Abbas’s heavy-handed rule.”

This evaluation was backed up by the landslide vote for Hamas, not in Gaza, but at Birzeit University in the West Bank.

For these French ambassadors, all Israeli governments & especially Netanyahu’s, are seemingly driven by a “religious nationalism” which supposedly makes Israel’s prime minister deaf to the national aspirations of Palestinian people — the same Palestinian people who pursue a state by killing Jews with knifes, bus-bombs or vehicular ramming attacks, at the same time shouting, “Allahu Akbar” [“Allah is Greatest”]. For our ambassadors, terrorism does not exist in “Palestine”. They just whisper Quixotically about “the need for security” for Israel.

Their article is a long & boring lament about the oh-so-difficult conditions of the Palestinian people. But after this complaint, our ambassadors finally get to their real intent: they threaten to banish Israel. If Israel does not comply with its condemnation; if Israel refuses to go back to the “Auschwitz borders” of 1949 as UN Security Council Resolution 2334 dictates; if Israel does not renounce Jerusalem, the soul of its civilization for more than 3,000 years, to make room for a Palestinian state — they also conveniently leave out that it would most likely soon be an Islamic terrorist state — then the process of international sanctions will be launched.

“It is unfortunate, however,” the ambassadors wrote, “that Mr. Netanyahu from the outset announced that he did not want to meet Mr. Abbas in Paris. But this refusal shows the need for international pressure to reframe an impossible dialogue.”

“Otherwise, how would Israel escape the danger of sanctions? By calling for the labeling of products from the Israeli settlements, the European Union, was being consistent with its condemnation of the settlements & paved the way. It is a perilous process for Israel, open to the outside world & therefore vulnerable. We recall the role of sanctions in the end of apartheid in South Africa”.

They are not precise about what “sanctions” would be. But in an earlier op-ed, published on Feb. 3, 2016, the same group of retired French ambassadors gave some examples of their wishes.

1. Immediate recognition of the State of Palestine by France & all countries of the European Union.

2. A suspension of the association agreement between the European Union & Israel.

3. The end of economic & scientific cooperation between the European Union & Israel.

These pedantic diatribes against the Jewish state are a pathetic illustration of the traditional blindness of European diplomacy, and especially France’s. These ambassadors make the statement that “the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is eclipsed in world opinion by the misfortunes of Syria, Iraq and Yemen, and by the perilous presence of the Islamic state”, but they continue to think that “the resentment of Arab public opinion against the Western world” exists because this same Western world is “accused of complicity with Israel”.

The obvious conclusion is that they are just trying to hide their own detestation of Israel behind the Arab one. The problem is not Jewish “settlers” in “Palestine”. Before 1967, there were no settlements. So what was the Palestine Liberation Organization “liberating” when it was created in Cairo in 1964? The answer, of course, as the PLO was the first to admit, was “Palestine” — meaning the entire state of Israel, regarded by many Arabs as just one big settlement. Just look at any Palestinian map.

Middle East expert Gregg Roman straightens out the factual history distorted by the UN and Europe: “[W]hen taking into account 3,000 years of history and context, Palestinian Arabs, not indigenous Israeli Jews, become the offending party…. Around 1,300 years ago, descendants & followers of the Prophet Mohammad from Arabia poured out of the (Arabian) Peninsular in an orgy of conquest, expansionism & colonization. They first annihilated ancient Jewish tribes in places like Yathrib (known today as Medina) & Khaybar before sweeping north, east & west, conquering what is today known as the Middle East, North Africa & even southern Europe…. Wherever Arab & Islamic rulers conquered, they imposed their culture, language & — most significantly — their religion…. At first, Arab settlers & conquerors did not want to intermingle with their indigenous vassals. They often lived in segregated quarters or created garrison towns from which they imposed their authority on native populations…. while slavery became rampant & unfettered…. Slowly, but surely, the ‘Arab world’ that we know today was artificially & aggressively imposed.”

Arabs, who have been trying to kill Jews there for nearly a hundred years, long before 1967, represent a problem — there are 1.5 million Arab people in Israel, but no one considers them “settlers”. The problem is that these ambassadors are not as dangerous to Israel as they are to Europe & the free world, as they keep on succumbing to the demands of Islam.

Yves Mamou is a journalist and author based in France. He worked for two decades for the daily, Le Monde, before his retirement.

10.Secretary of State nominee: Israel is our most important ally

Rex Tillerson blasts the Obama administration’s attitude towards Israel, says PA must demonstrate it is serious about peace talks.

By Elad Benari, 12/01/17 00:05

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Rex Tillerson – Reuters

Rex Tillerson, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State, on Wednesday stressed the importance of the U.S.-Israel relationship & condemned the outgoing Obama administration’s decision not to veto UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which criticized Israeli construction in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

Speaking at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Tillerson said the resolution was “not helpful” & “undermines” the conditions for peace talks to continue, reported The Washington Post.

The former ExxonMobil chief also described Secretary of State John Kerry’s subsequent speech criticizing Israel as “quite troubling.”

He added that the Palestinian Authority must show that it is serious about negotiating with Israel before any progress can be made.

“Until there is a serious demonstration on their part, it’s going to be very difficult to create conditions at the table for parties to have any productive conversation about settlements,” said Tillerson, according to The Washington Post.

He stressed the importance of the United States recommitting to its alliance with Israel, which he said “is, was & always has been our most important ally” in the Mid East.

Tillerson also stressed that a 2-state solution as an outcome to the conflict would be “the dream that everyone is in pursuit of”, but added, “Whether it could ever be a reality remains to be seen.”

11.IDF commander advises Azariya’s father not to appeal verdict

Major-Gen. Gai Hazut, Kfir brigade commander, advised Elor Azariya’s father not to appeal verdict in return for reduced jail time. By Yoel Domb, 11/01/17 22:35

Elor Azaria – Flash 90

The commander of the Kfir Brigade, Major-General Gai Hazut, attempted to persuade Elor Azariya’s father this week not to appeal the military court’s verdict against his son, according to a Channel 2 report,

According to the report, in a conversation between Hazut & Charlie Azariya, the officer advised the father to maintain a low profile & not submit an appeal & in return his son would receive defense from the army & would be sentenced to a short jail period.

During the conversation Hazut said “I can tell you, with friends who are lawyers & from what I read & from the verdict, it is so clear cut, the chances of a successful appeal are minimal.”

The father stressed that he intended to appeal. “I am not willing to have my 21-year-old son charged with manslaughter when he served the country & didn’t do anything. I have no problem with all of this if there wasn’t a manslaughter charge. I don’t want to cause damage to the army. When I hear soldiers calling me & saying ‘listen, I don’t know when to shoot & when not to shoot’, I don’t want that kind of damage.”

In response the father was offered a deal which involved exchanging his defense team for a military defense team & even allowing Elor in the future to carry a pistol around in self-defense despite the conviction for manslaughter.

The father stressed that he was not willing to have his son sit in a military jail & the officer replied that the affair could not end without jail time.

In the past the IDF claimed that it had not been involved in the legal procedure but the new report belies that claim.

If US President Barack Obama were uneducated, if his staff consisted of people who had never been taught history at school, if the government consisted of savages who have just emerged from the Amazon jungle, we could somehow “justify” their ignorance about the history of the Mediterranean and the Middle Eastern people.

But that is not what is going on. This ambush against Israel in UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which considers the Jewish people “occupiers” in their own ancient capital and the holiest part of it, is an act of jihad and an act of political violence – perpetrated by governments to achieve political goals.

This resolution did not randomly emerge from a historical moment, or as the result of political choices based on reasonable criteria to provide peace and stability in the region. It does not help either the Arabs living in the disputed territories — Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip – or the Israelis in any peace process. It is an act of vengeance against the foundations of Judeo-Christian civilization and should be treated as such. The Jewish nation has every right to consider this attack an act of war against it. It certainly is an act of war against the history of the Jews and the freedom, democracy, human rights, pluralism and rule of law that Israel represents in the Middle East.

President Obama and his government at the beginning of their service eight years ago turned against the history of the Greek nation with the same political aggression. Obama had a chance to do that when he went to the Turkish Parliament, on April 6, 2009.

Sadly, he did not acknowledge the genocide of the Greeks by the Turkish army under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Between 1913 and 1923, millions of Greeks who had lived in Turkey since before the great Christian Byzantine empire, were either slaughtered or driven out. According to some Greek historians, between 800,000 and 1,200,000 Greeks were slaughtered during this period; every year on September14, the State of Greece officially honors the memory of those who died in Asia Minor.

Instead, Obama gave political cover to what the Turks did by saying at the Turkish Parliament on April 6, 2009: “You freed yourself from foreign control, and you founded a republic that commands the respect of the United States and the wider world”.

The “foreign control” to which President Obama refers is the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, where the League of Nations was established. [1]

President Obama, in evident his enthusiasm to flatter the ego of Turkey’s current president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, “forgot” to mention some important events of that era. President Obama “forgot” all about the genocide of Greeks and Christians in Asia Minor by Mustafa Kemal’s Ataturk Turkish. Barack Obama methodically “murdered” historical truth, by ignoring the fact that the Greek army, after the end of World War I in 1918, was sent to Asia Minor under the instructions of the great powers and the winners of the war, to protect Christian populations from persecution, murders and rapes of Muslim Turkish. The Greek army did not go as an occupier but as a protector of human life and human rights.

President Obama sometimes seems to have an indifference to historical truth that often borders on antagonism.[2]

The Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs immediately responded by saying that “history cannot be rewritten”.

Now, this is what President Obama has tried to do again: to re-write history by claiming that Greece, with the winners’ help of World War I, was an aggressive and imperialistic State that cared only to re-build its Empire against the Turks. In other words, President Obama seemed to mean that the winners of WW I were some Christian Countries who wanted through Greece to establish a Christian Empire, such as the Byzantine Empire, and that Muslim territories and the International Community should, as he was the leader of such a powerful nation, “adopt” his view of history.

The notion that ancient nations which are not Muslim are occupiers in their own lands, is repeated in the UN Resolution 2334.

Obama was complimenting Turkey on not returning to the Ottoman Empire, which officially ended in 1922.

Democracy in Turkey now -what is left of it, that is – consists of all the military and the judiciary purged of anyone who believed in government by the people. Just since August, Turkey has arrested more than 26,000 people, including 120 journalists and has closed 150 news outlets.

“There is no more critical journalism, 90 percent of the free press is destroyed directly or indirectly,” according to Erol Onderoglu, the Turkish representative for Reporters Without Borders. “Investigative journalism is considered treason. Journalism has been stolen by the government.”

Is that kind of clampdown what Europeans would eventually like to see happen here, too?

Historically, Muslim forces began invading Syria in 634, and ended by conquering Constantinople in 1453.

They invaded not only all of Turkey – obliterating the great Christian empire of Byzantium – but then went on to conquer all of North Africa, Greece, Southern Spain, parts of Portugal, and eastern Europe, including Hungary, Serbia and the Balkans.

Emperor Constantine the First had moved the capital of the Roman Empire from Rome to Constantinople and laid the foundation for Christianity to become the official religion of the Roman-Byzantine State and the Western world in general. Emperor Constantine had given the citizens of the Roman Empire the right of the religious tolerance, a liberal action 1700 years ago; today, many leaders in the Arab world say they cannot tolerate Christian Churches in their territories.

The Greeks wanted during the World War I to re-establish the Byzantine Empire, but the Turkish-Muslim world prevented it from happening. Instead, commencing in 1914-15, they conducted a genocide against both the Armenians, and the Greeks until 1923.

At present the Greek community in Turkey numbers around 3000 and are not allowed to attend Greek schools.

For President Obama, the Turkish “victory” seems to have been a sensational win against the Western-Christian world, even though it was this world that had made him President of the United States.

President Obama apparently “forgot” the American’s testimonies who helped the Greeks to escape from Kemal’s Turkish massacres. He “forgot” the 1.5 million Greek refugees who were expelled from their homes in Asia Minor by the Turkish army. The Turkish “democracy” which Mr. Obama so admires, built on seas of blood of other people who were living in those areas. Perhaps, refugees for President Obama and his government, are only those who are Muslims. All the others are “occupiers”…

But even if the Greek army went to Asia Minor as an occupier — if we adopt the most distorted view of history, where exactly it would be an occupier? In the cities that were inhabited by Greeks from the beginning of recorded history?

President Obama apparently did not learn about the Trojan War in school; he apparently never read Homer to know that the inhabitants of the Bosporus and much of Asia Minor were Greeks – just as he apparently never read the Bible, or the Greek and Roman historic records of the Jewish people and their capital, Jerusalem.

The Obama administration, to cover the president’s shameful ambush against the Jewish state, sought through Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor, Ben Rhodes, to shift the responsibility for the UN resolution onto the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu. Where does the US Democratic party’s downhill plummet end?

The US and the UN – both the Security Council and UNESCO – are not who determine what is historically true and what is not. These shameful votes should be reversed immediately; if not, all funding should be withdrawn from the United Nations, by United States and all freedom-loving democracies. They are now, to paraphrase the words of the Soviet Union’s Vladimir Lenin, “paying for the rope with which members of the UN will hang them.”

Maria Polizoidou, a reporter, broadcast journalist, and consultant on international and foreign affairs, is based in Greece.

[1] President Obama also said in the same speech: “At the end of World War I, Turkey could have succumbed to the foreign powers that were trying to claim its territory, or sought to restore an ancient empire”. The “ancient empire” that Obama refers to, is unclear – Ottoman or Byzantine – and the “foreign powers that were trying to claim its territory” were the winners of World War I, including the USA.

[2] Such as claiming for weeks that a video had caused the attacks on the US Embassy in Benghazi, Libya; his knowingly false promises to his own people about the effects of his Affordable Care Act; lies about the Internal Revenue Service; or his endless lies about the “Iran deal”.

Recent Articles by Maria Polizoidou

13.Kill the Two State Solution by Daniel Greenfield

Posted: 09 Jan 2017 10:18 AM PST
The 2-state solution, a perverse euphemism for carving an Islamic terror state out of the land of Israel and the living flesh of her people, is in trouble. The solution, which has solved nothing except the shortage of graves in Israel & Muslim terrorists in the Middle East, is the object of grave concern by the professionally concerned from Foggy Bottom to Fifth Avenue. Obama set up his betrayal of Israel at the UN to “save” the 2-state solution from Trump. The media warns that David Friedman, Trump’s pick for ambassador, is so pro-Israel he’ll kill the “solution.” But you can’t kill something that was never alive. The 2-state solution is a zombie. It can’t be dead because it never lived. It was a rotting shambling corpse of a diplomatic process. If you stood downwind of the proceedings, it looked alive. Up close there was only blood and death. Like the Holy Roman Empire, the 2-state solution didn’t solve anything & it wasn’t in the business of creating 2 states. Not unless you count a Hamas state in Gaza & a Fatah state in the West Bank. What problem was the 2-state solution solving? It wasn’t the problem of terrorism. Turning over land, weapons & power to a bunch of terrorists made for more terrorism. It’s no coincidence Islamic terrorism worldwide shot up at the same time. The consequences of giving terrorists their own country to play with were as predictable as taking a power drill to the bottom of a boat or running a toaster in a bubble bath. The least likely outcome of handing guns to homicidal sociopaths was peace. Most likely was murder. That was intended. The problem the 2-state solution was solving was the existence of Israel; the Jewish Problem. Spray the 2-state solution over an irritating country full of Jews who managed to survive multiple Muslim genocides. Apply & wait for as long as it takes until the Jewish Problem is solved again. The 2-state solution didn’t end the violence. It turned it up to eleven. It didn’t even create a Palestinian state. But it did a moderately decent job of solving the Jewish Problem by killing Jews. It killed thousands of them. It filled cemeteries, ethnically cleansed towns & villages, brought war to Jerusalem & Tel Aviv for the first time in a generation. It turned terror from aberration into routine. It made death into a way of life for the Muslim population – controlled by the terrorists & the Jewish population targeted by them. It endangered the existence of Israel for the first time since 1973. The 2-state solution isn’t dead. It is death. The “solution” has turned children into orphans & left parents weeping at the graves of their daughters. It has sown hilltops with dragon’s teeth of rockets & sent cities fleeing to bomb shelters. It has ushered in an endless age of wars against terrorists who can’t be utterly defeated because that would destroy the 2-state solution. It can’t get any better. Only worse. Death is the only thing that the 2-state solution has ever accomplished. That’s the only thing that it was meant to accomplish. It’s all that it will ever accomplish. The 2-state solution is a zombie. Its existence has no purpose except death. As long as it goes on moving, it will go on destroying. But, like a zombie, the two-state solution is weak. It’s a slow and shambling thing. It’s absurdly easy to escape it. The only way it can catch you is if you let it. In the nineties, the two-state solution looked like a living thing. There were negotiations & big plans. Ceremonies & Nobel prizes were being handed out like party favors. Equally big bombings & mangled body parts smeared along sidewalks & storefronts. But it was easier to listen to another round of peace songs & pay no attention to the ghastly carnage. But by the oughts, the Muslim settler population in ’67 Israel, for whose benefit the 2-state solution had been crafted, made the same “democratic” decision the Egyptians & other Arab Spring countries would later make. They chose the Muslim Brotherhood & the Islamic law that demands that non-Muslims must surrender & be ruled by Muslims as before. Or be massacred & subjugated. Then the zombie solution began to rot from the head. The 2-state solution was kept alive by pretending Hamas had never won. An illegal takeover by Fatah, the “good” Islamic terrorists who were willing to pretend to negotiate in exchange for enough foreign aid from the United States, led to 2 Islamic terror states, one in Gaza & one in the West Bank. These states occasionally tried to form a united government, but couldn’t even get along with each other. Never mind getting along with Israel. The 2-state solution had become a ghoulish joke. Some 2-state solutionists urged embracing Hamas. A crazed collection of leftist activist “Rabbis” even signed a petition calling for outreach to the Muslim Brotherhood terror state despite their Charter which called for exterminating all Jews. Kerry aided a Code Pink mission to Hamas. Most 2-state solutionists decided to pretend that nothing had gone wrong. The zombie solution was in the best of health. Pay no attention to the stench of decay & the way it keeps trying to eat you. They wanted to strengthen the “good” Islamic terror state in the West Bank to discredit the “bad” Islamic terror state in Gaza. Anyone who opposed the “good” terror state was accused of trying to kill the “2-state solution” which had already killed more people than the average natural disaster. But then the “good” terror state stopped even pretending to negotiate. Since the terrorists wouldn’t negotiate, Obama & Kerry just propped up the corpse of the two-state solution on their shoulders, Weekend at Bernie’s style, and tried to pretend it was still alive by negotiating with Israel on behalf of the terrorists without telling either Israel or the terrorists. But the “good” terrorists rejected the unsolicited deal that Obama and Kerry got for them. Obama and Kerry solved that problem the way that the solutionists had been solving it for decades. They blamed Israel. The insane logic of the 2-state solution demanded it. An Islamic terror state is the “solution” offered by the two-state solution. If you blame the terrorists, you undermine the credibility of the solution. If you admit the terrorists don’t even want to negotiate, you kill the two-state solution. Then how will you justify destroying Israel? The great two-state solution began incrementally with an autonomous territory of disarmed terrorists. This fantasy led to a 2-state solution of heavily armed terrorists inside Israel. The next stage is a one-state solution in which Israel will be forced to take in every single Muslim claiming to be a refugee. You can’t get from one stage to the next without blaming Israel when the previous stage fails. As it was always intended to. Each planned failure advances a more extreme incarnation of the “solution”. All the way up to the final solution. Each failure has to be blamed on Israel to justify an even more extreme solution. Each attack on Israel, like Obama’s UN treachery, is justified as a defense of the 2-state solution. As long as the lie that the 3-state solution is a pro-Israel policy lives, it can be weaponized as a pro-Israel attack on Israel. In its terminal stage, the ‘solution zombie’ will kill Israel & then die. Unless we kill it first. The 2-state solution hasn’t solved anything. It is the problem. Now, it’s time to solve the problem of the 2-state solution. Like the rest of the Jihad, the 2-state solution is not a potent threat. It is a lie that we have become too weak to resist. Lies die when we see them for what they are. Like the old Monty Python bit, the 2-state solution is a dead parrot. The shopkeepers of the press who keep trying to sell us its stiff unmoving body insist that the peace process is just pining for the Norwegian fjords of the Oslo peace accords. Feed it some more of Israel and it’ll fly back to life. It’s never worked before, but there’s always an Nth time. Lies are zombies. They are mimicries of the truth that feed off what we wish to be true. The 2-state solution is a parasite that thrives by feeding off our hopes & fears, our optimism on the one hand & our inability to imagine an alternative on the other. When we see the lie for what it is, when we turn our hopes & fears to sustaining what we truly care about, then it will fall. Real solutions, such as Caroline Glick’s Israeli Solution, already exist. The 2-state solution however never existed. There will only be one state in Israel. The question is whether it will be a Jewish State or an Islamic terror state.
Kill the Two-State Solution by Daniel Greenfield