Jewish babies illegal under a new UN international law.

Think upon this...

Did you know that if you are an Israeli Jew and live in towns such as Maale Adumim, Ariel, Gilo or parts of Jerusalem you can't have children and continue living there?

Find this shocking? You should. It is an integral part of the infamous Security Council Resolution 2334 which clearly states that "natural growth" is forbidden in these locations if you are a Jewish family.

“Recalling the obligation under the Quartet Road map, endorsed by its resolution 1515 (2003), for a freeze by Israel of all settlement activity, including “natural growth”, and the dismantlement of all settlement outposts erected since March 2001”

3. Underlines that it will not recognise any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations;

4. Stresses that the cessation of all Israeli settlement activities is essential for salvaging the two-State solution, and calls for affirmative steps to be taken immediately to reverse the negative trends on the ground that are imperilling the two-State solution;

The OECD definition of natural growth is when births outnumber deaths which is, well, natural.

https://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=2239

God forbid a Jewish couple should have a baby. They may be in breach of international law.

Please share.

Ethnic cleansing of Jews goes unnoticed

One of the false mantras of the so-called Palestinian leadership and their BDS supporters is that they are being ethnically cleansed by brutal Zionist occupiers. This despite that the Arab population is increasing by leaps and bounds and thanks to Israel their health and medical care has improved greatly.

So where is the ethnic cleansing?  It is against Jews by the Palestinian leadership supported by the BDS activists and now with the help of the United Nations.

On a visit to Cairo in July of 2013 Mahmoud Abbas said that “no Jew, civilian or otherwise, would be permitted to live in the future Palestinian state.”  He repeated it several times to his own people before someone whispered in his ear that this was being construed as anti-Semitic and not helpful to their cause, so he switched the word “Jew” to “Israeli.” But it was too late. He had already set the marker. This Holocaust denier had said what he meant. Further proof  that the main obstacle to a two-state solution is not the settlements, as UNSC 2334 would have us believe, but the absolute refusal of Abbas to acknowledge the presence of the Jewish state of Israel. This is too abhorrent a reality for Mahmoud Abbas and certainly also Hamas on the other side of the Palestinian political divide.

The most egregious errors of UN Resolution 2334 is that it attempts to replace Resolution 242 with a demand that all of the territories, known as Judea & Samaria in Israel but defined as “illegally occupied Palestinian territory” dated 4 June 1967 by the Security Council, must be considered as “Palestinian.”

As both sides of the Palestinian divided leadership demand that a Palestine must be Judenrein – cleansed of Jews – this UN resolution by default calls for the ethnic cleansing of Jews and is therefore an anti-Semitic decision in the spirit of the notorious Nuremberg laws of Nazi Germany.

Further evidence of this was the inclusion of “east Jerusalem” into 2334. Putting aside that an undivided Jerusalem is not only the capital of Israel but a working municipality, by calling for splitting the eastern side of the city and calling it Palestine cuts out the central beating heart of Judaism and hands it over to a malevolent and proven anti-Semitic entity.

East Jerusalem means the Old City that contains most of Judaism’s precious treasures. The Kotel (Western Wall), the Temple Mount, the Jewish Quarters with its numerous synagogues and study centers, the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives as well as major institutions such as Hadassah Hospital, Hebrew University, the Rockefeller Museum and of course the archaeological discover of David’s City, including the palace of the Jewish King David of biblical fame.

People should be made to understand, as the Palestinians and their followers clearly do, that by removing the most holy Jewish sites from Israeli possession would leave Israel spiritually bankrupt and unable to call itself a Jewish state no matter how many Jews are its citizens.

The anti-Semitism of the Palestinians, and the Muslim world as a whole, is undeniable, but this is not a new phenomenon. Ethnic cleansing by Arabs has being going on for a hundred years in this part of the world.

My upcoming book   ‘1917. From Palestine to the Land of Israel’ reveals the expulsion of tens of thousands of Jews from Jaffa and Tel Aviv in 1914 and 1917. It details the background to the Nebi Musa Arabs riots in Jerusalem in 1920 that left Jews killed, raped and wounded. That was before the 1929 wholesale massacre of Jews by local Arabs in Hebron. All this before there was a state of Israel.

When Israel was established in 1948 the first act of the Arabs was to invade the nascent state in a multi-force war of aggression. One consequence was the expulsion and murder of Jews by the Jordanians in Gush Etzion, Kalya and other places. The ethnic cleansing of Jews by murder and expulsion from the Old City of Jerusalem added to the destruction of all its synagogues by the Arab Legion remains a car on our collective memory.

No Jews remained in Judea & Samaria, called the West Bank by the occupying Jordanians, or in east Jerusalem. It was ethnically cleansed and the United Nations had little concern.   Only now do they agitate to remove Jews from Judea & Samaria and the Old City of Jerusalem, once again turning our ancient heritage into Judenrein territory as demanded by the Palestinians – and they think they are doing this in the name of justice and human rights. For shame!

Jordan occupied territory captured from the newly-born Israel from 1948 until they lost another aggressive war in 1967. Nothing was said in the United Nations. No outcry from Palestinian supporters because there weren’t any. No Palestinian leaders pressed claims of Jordan illegally occupying Palestinian land because there weren’t any Palestinian leaders and there wasn’t any Palestine to lobby for.

What we are witnessing is a continuation of the evil Arab tradition of murdering and expelling Jews. When we see the hand of Britain approving of its implementation we are reminded, as I have laid out in my book, the duplicity and moral corruption of the British government when it came to Jews in Palestine and now to Jews in Israel.

This has to be a time when Western nations in particular rediscover their moral compass. It does not lie in appeasement of the grievances of haters and anti-Semites.

We cannot expect better from the Arab world with its ancient culture of violence and Jew hatred but we do expect better from a democratic world that has lost its tradition of enlightenment and replaced it with a misguided sense of secular morality that has allowed those who do not share once cherished values to make our world a far more dangerous place.

Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.  He is the author of the upcoming book ‘1917. From Palestine to the Land of Israel.’

The Security Council vote was not about settlements.

The Security Council vote was not about settlements. It was about something far worse.

The UNSC vote was not about “settlements.”  It was an Arab subterfuge, a trap into which the United States, the UK, New Zealand and other naive or cynical diplomats took an active role.

It was all smoke and mirrors, a con trick holding up the settlement issue to dazzle the voters while the real intent was to disown Israel of territories to which they have genuine claim and turn them into “illegally occupied Palestinian territory.”

For certain, President Obama latched on to the idea. It was pay-back time, a golden opportunity not to be missed to hit back at Bibi before handing in the keys to the White House. For shame!

Now we know that Obama was cooking up this evil brew back in November.

Not too many people noticed that Obama’s Secretary of State sneaked into New Zealand in November for a quick visit. The visit was to discuss the impending Security Council meeting. The press was given to believe that the burning issue was Syria, but nobody is putting it past Kerry that he didn’t get into a huddle with Kiwi leaders about supporting this anti-Israel settlement resolution. New Zealand has a seat in the Security Council.

When Egypt withdrew their sponsorship of the anti-Israel proposal due to the intervention of President-Elect Trump it probably took nothing more than a quick phone call to get New Zealand to step up and join Malaysia, Senegal and Venezuela in sponsoring the treacherous United Nations act.

That Obama’s finger was all over it was confirmed by Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Obama was pulling the strings but it was the Palestinian/Arab narrative that was written into the resolution. Israel’s voice, its legitimate rights and claims to all or parts of the territory, were ignored.  

So, how did it go beyond the issue of settlements?

The wording of a flagrantly biased resolution wrongly claimed that “settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including east Jerusalem has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law.”

This is blatantly incorrect.

It corrupted UN Resolution 242 of 1967 that called on Israel armed forces to withdraw from territory according to a timetable. 242 did not call on Israel to withdraw from all the territory as does this UNSC demand.

Resolution 242 acknowledged Israel’s right to protect itself and live in peace within secure and recognized borders. Although the UNSC resolution restates these essential prerequisites it has the chutzpah to impose where these borders should be by renaming anything beyond the so-called 1967 lines “occupied Palestine territory.”  As such, the Security Council converts a false definition into international law.

It also ignored ongoing Palestinian belligerency (terror) and their absolute lack of respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial claims and political independence of every State in the area to live in peace, particularly Israel, as demanded in UN Resolution 242. Formally, the UN Resolution 242 was sent to and approved by the Security Council. They have now obliterated these commitments. Packed with demands of Israel to meet specific obligations, it makes no such demand of the Palestinian Authority and not of Hamas. Actually, Hamas is not mentioned once. It is as if Hamas didn’t exist.

Instead the UNSC Resolution blankets Israel as the sole perpetrator of international lawlessness overlooking ongoing Palestinian belligerency save for asking the PA to confront those engaging in terror as if those engaging in terror had nothing to do with the Palestinian Authority and their incitement to and glorification of Palestinian terrorism against Israel.

There are international laws that permit states to retain territory acquired in wars inflicted on them by aggressive enemies for the defensive state’s security and its citizen’s safety. That was the case of Israel which acquired territory in defensive wars against invading Arab armies.  This gives international legitimacy to Israel’s claims to territories gained not in one war of aggression against the Jewish state (1948) but two (1948 and 1967).

All this was ignored by a Security Council determined to plough its way to legal impositions against Israel in their haste to establish a Palestinian entity on land on which Israel has longstanding and legal claims.

The United Nations brushes aside the fact that the Palestine they crave to establish is and will remain a dysfunctional, divided, violent, undemocratic society that refuses to recognise Israel’s right to exist as the Jewish state. Both sides of the Palestinian political divide have permanent agendas to eradicate the Jewish state at some convenient future time. As proof, the charters of both the PLO and Hamas call for the eventual destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews. As further proof just listen or read the exhortations emanating out of their official statements and the official Palestinian media.

This was not addressed by the UNSC. It was not called unlawful. It was ignored, irrelevant to their sole ambition to create this monster and leave the parties to sort out the consequences.

The UNSC vote also obliterated the Oslo Accords signed on the White House lawn between Yasser Arafat and Yizhak Rabin in the presence of President Bill Clinton and witnessed by the EU and Russia.

The Oslo Accords divided the territories known as Judea & Samaria or the West Bank into three zones. Area A was put under the civil and security administration of the Palestinian Authority. Area B was given to the PA for their civil rule while the security elements were agreed to be a joint Israeli-PA project.  Area C was designated to be under complete Israel civil and security control until some future permanent peace agreement depending on the terms and conditions of such an agreement.

Currently in Area C there are almost 600,000 Jews and just under 100,000 Arabs residing there although the Palestinian Authority with the physical and financial assistant of European countries and the EU are creating facts on the ground by transferring Bedouin Arabs into Area C. These people live in buildings provided by the EU in defiance of the provisions of Area C.

According to the Oslo Accords, Area C will be negotiated in the permanent status negotiations which have not taken place because the Palestinian Authority, and certainly not Palestinian Hamas, has any inclination to sit with the Israeli leadership to negotiate mutual recognition, borders, or any other final status provisions.

The wording of new UNSC vote would have us believe that this Oslo Accord provision is null and void. Area C has been replaced and given the status of “illegally occupied Palestinian territory.” Not so.  The presumption that Israel must withdraw from all territories or that Jews will not continue to live and work on Judea & Samaria is a gross and deliberate aberration.

What was most abhorrent in the wording of the unanimously approved UNSC resolution was the removal of all Israeli claims to the most holy Jewish sites placing them at the feet of the Palestinians.

When the United Nations Security Council calls the Jewish Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem with its synagogues, yeshivot, Jewish population and businesses, the Jewish Temple Mount and the Western Wall and all its antiquities, and the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, the Hadassah Hospital and other profoundly Jewish/Israeli institutions and heritage as “Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem” it is a surrender that no Israeli government or any caring Jew are prepared to accept.

I doubt that many Jews in the global community would permit the United Nations to dispense so glibly with three thousand years of Jewish history.

The fact that the United States, New Zealand, the UK and France lent their hand to this infamous act is appalling.

Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies and the author of the upcoming and timely book ‘1917. From Palestine to the Land of Israel.’

DENIAL. The connection between a Holocaust denier and BDS.

I was reading a review of a new movie called ‘Denial’ in the Jerusalem Post.

The movie depicts the libel suit brought by Deborah Lipstadt, portrayed in the movie by Rachel Weisz, against the infamous Holocaust denier, David Irving.

There is a scene in the movie where Irving taunts a young and inexperienced Lipstadt as she was trying to deliver a college lecture about the Holocaust and I was struck by the similarities between that incident and the anti-Israel bullies who intimidate anyone presenting an Israeli perspective.

Lipstadt explains that she felt like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck, without a strategy, uncertain how to respond. 

How familiar this emotion sounds to anyone confronted by BDS antagonists.

Explaining the feeling she had in compiling her case against Irving she described Irving as employing what TV comedian, Stephen Colbert, later called “truthiness.” That is compiling a list of half facts and distortions and yelling about it to make it stick you give it credibility and prove your point to a wide audience. But, deeply and profoundly Irving was a fraud and an anti-Semite. 

Pro-Israel advocates are very familiar with the “truthiness” of the BDS bullies.

She was increasingly disturbed by students asking her if Anne Frank’s diaries were genuine or questioning whether gas chambers really existed. She began to realise that Holocaust denial was making inroads into students’ minds.  She understood that something profoundly wrong was happening.  So Lipstadt began to research Holocaust denial making Irving her test case.

By comparison, we can see the relevance to the inroads that have been made by Israel deniers. They get into people’s heads with insinuations that sound reasonable even emotionally seductive in their imagery and too many people are caught in the headlights of onrushing criticism and condemnation of the Jewish state, floundering to find the right answers.

Deborah Lipstadt did the research. Methodically she went through every statement made by Irving and began to find discrepancies. As a historian bringing a case against this noted Holocaust denier she was aware that the accuracy of her work was essential to expose the fraud. She had to prove that he distorted the truth. She studied how he constantly changed facts, lied and obscured events and avoided unpleasant truths that would have exposed his ultimate intention to besmirch the murder of six million Jews.

People like David Irving are people driven by prejudice and hate.  So it is with people obsessed in bringing down Israel. Like David Irving they can be humiliated by studying their distorted arguments and exposing them.

I have made it my obligation to prove that the majority of BDS activists who profess to be passionately pro-Palestinian are, quite bluntly, using the Palestinian cause as the instrument to attack the Jewish state and that they do not really care a hoot for Palestinian human rights and are firmly against any justice or Israeli human rights, not even the right to exist.  I have researched their arguments and discovered they are as flawed as David Irving’s denials.  Here are just a few examples;

They spend a week on global campuses promoting the notion of an Israeli apartheid, yet have nothing to say about the apartheid practices of many Arab regimes against fellow Arabs who claim to be Palestinian including keeping them stateless and deprived of many of the rights of normal citizens in their countries. 

Worse still, these activists have nothing to say about the apartheid policy of a Palestinian Authority that has a United Nations organisation house and feed thousands of Palestinians in refugee camps under their territorial and administrative control for fifty years. How obscene is that? One would expect BDS to demonstrate against this if they really cared about the abuse of Palestinian human rights. But they are totally silent.

The same applies with the slander that Israel is “ethnically cleansing” Palestinians when statistics show that numbers have dramatically increased under Israeli supervision. On the other hand, pro-Palestinian human rights groups have failed to protest the Assad-led ethnic cleansing of Palestinians living in Syrian camps.

Just as Irving lied so do anti-Israel activists in solidarity for Palestinian rights. They accuse Israel of imposing a total and “illegal” blockade on Gaza when, in fact, up to a thousand trucks a day roll into the Strip carrying materials and equipment that Israelis know will fall into the hands of Hamas and be used to reconstruct their anti-Israel terrorist infrastructure at the expense of the Palestinians these protesters profess to support.  No protest against the oppressive and cruel Hamas regime. No demand to ‘Boycott Egypt’ while this Arab country maintains an almost total blockage on Gaza.

Just as David Irving was exposed for conducting a fraudulent campaign of denial against the Jewish people so BDS, SJP and other haters are conducting a fraudulent campaign of denial against the Jewish State.

At the heart of both lies an anti-Semitism that cannot be denied.

Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.  

He is the author of ‘Fighting Hamas, BDS and Anti-Semitism’ and the Amazon 2016 best-seller ‘BDS for IDIOTS.’  

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Fighting+Hamas%2C+BDS+and+Anti-Semitism

OBAMA’S INACTION DISGRACED THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

Attempts to achieve peace through inaction are bound to fail. Just ask the people of Aleppo. Attempts to achieve peace through appeasement are bound to fail. Just ask Neville Chamberlain. Peace only comes from assertive action that destroys a rampaging enemy’s will to survive. Just ask Winston Churchill.

World War Two should have taught us that. Doing nothing in the face of an Assad-inflicted genocide - supported by Iran and Russia – has shown us where inaction leads.

Obama’s legacy to live up to the vain philosophy of the Nobel Peace Prize panel lies in the ashes of Aleppo.

Obama’s dereliction of his international and humanitarian responsibilities by failing to implement his infamous “red lines” warning made a mockery of the Nobel Peace Prize. His non-violent policy and impotence to act decisively to save lives gave the green light to the resultant Syrian genocide.  

It follows in the awful tradition of Ruanda, Darfur, Sudan. Collectively it shows us that only force against evil-doers will protect innocent lives against acts of unchallenged heinous massacre.

When good men of influence do nothing but complain evil triumphs.  Obama was a complainer, not a doer.

In the summer of 2013, John Kerry called Assad’s early chemical attacks on his citizens “a moral obscenity” for which there needed to be “accountability.”  We have yet to hear from the accountants as the death toll reaches half a million souls.

The world was watching and waiting as Obama did nothing. Was he burdened by the weight of his Oslo peace medal, or was he an eager proponent of “doing nothing brings peace”? Either way, the lofty goal of peace does not come without action or sacrifice.

The Middle East remains the same Middle East as it was before the misnamed “Arab Spring.” Powerful dictators retain their seats of power. Erdogan, Assad, Sisi, the Ibn Sauds, the Mullahs in Tehran. Al-Qaida has been outmatched by the more lethal ISIS, another hideous apparition that was dismissed and untouched by Obama.

To stay alive in this bloodbath of a region one must remain strong, tough and vigilant. Appeasement is not an option. It is perceived as weakness and the weak are devoured by the predators of which there are many, hunting alone or in packs for their prey.

To intolerant regimes with global agendas, extending an olive branch is a joke. Realism, sharp awareness of the reality of the neighbourhood, a clear-eyed identification of the players and their ambitions is required. This, not the faulty pretence of viewing a virtual utopian world, is the only strategy to navigate the dangerous course to calmer waters.

So, although Obama, in his final days, tells whoever cares to listen that Russia is the evil enemy. Putin is no Mr. Nice-Guy but neither was Josef Stalin. He killed more people than Hitler but that didn’t stop Roosevelt and Churchill from collaborating with this bloody dictator in the war against Nazi Germany.

Israel is an example of the application of pragmatic politics. It has collaborated with Moscow in its national security needs. Recently it has taken essential military actions against selected targets within Syria. Israel is well aware that Moscow controls Assad’s territory. There is an operational agreement borne out of a number of high profile meetings between Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu and Russian leader Putin and lower level coordination between the two sides that allows Israel to take out and destroy sophisticated weaponry supplied by Iran via the Syrian regime to Lebanese Islamic Hezbollah that could be used in potential future attacks against the Jewish State.  The silence from Russia to these Israeli attacks is significant.

With Assad regaining territory strengthening his once teetering grip on power it seems increasingly certain that no one is going to remove this Syrian dictator. Obama had the chance and blew it.

Assad, for all his faults, never seriously threatened Israel. Under a Trump presidency, the possibility opens up to coordinate with Putin over a future Syria in which the Russians will continue to protect Assad, but also coordinate with America and operate jointly to defeat ISIS, persuade the Iranians to withdraw their Hezbollah proxies so as not to threaten Israel from the Golan Heights, and to dedicate safe zones in which Syrian refugees can be returned, housed and fed until it becomes possible for them to be more permanently housed. 

This could be a joint Russian-American led operation with the funding coming from the surrounding Arab states and supervised by United Nations agencies. 

In other words, the noble purpose of the Nobel Peace Prize will be revived through affirmative, even military, action.

Barry Shaw,

Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy,

Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.

The Short-Memory of Hillary-lovers.

Much has been written about Hillary Clinton’s atrocious foreign policy failures. Much has been written about the suspicious activities of the Clinton Foundation and Hillary’s involvement while acting as Secretary of State. This may be subject to an FBI investigation. She seems to have avoided punishment for her private email server.

Little has been said about why she lost a presidential campaign against someone perceived to be the worst adversary in political history.

These issues were all overlooked by her passionate supporters determined, come what may, to elect the first female president in American history. Past, present and future crimes and failures were brushed aside in an emotion-laden crusade to trash her opponent, they closed eyes and ears to evidence of culpability by their champion in order to bring her triumphantly into the Oval Office. Breaking the glass ceiling took preference over, if not breaking the law, then breaking the barriers of sound judgement.

Her ardent supporters make claims about her achievements during her years of service to the country domestically.  So, when I received information about the tasks that her presidential husband, Bill, gave her to execute, her home record matched her utter failures abroad.

Here are some examples for you to consider;

President Bill Clinton assigned her to overlord an attempt at healthcare reform. Remember this was pre-Obama.

Even with her husband’s support and with a Democrat-controlled Congress she couldn’t get her proposals pushed through.  The cost of this bureaucratic failure to the American taxpayers was about $13 Million.

The forever feminist, Hillary insisted that her husband appoint a female Attorney-General. The first two selections were Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood. Both had to withdraw their names after the “Nannygate” scandal. Then Janet Reno, who died recently, was selected. Reno made the awful decision to attack the Waco compound in Texas held by the weird David Koresh cult with tanks and tear gas which led to a massacre, including many women and children. Over 80 people died due to FBI bungling ordered by Reno.

Then Lani Guinier was selected to be Assistant Attorney-General for Civil Rights. Guinier was a long-time friend of Bill and Hillary since their days at Yale. When probing exposed Guinier’s radical leftist views her name had to be withdrawn.

Going back through other serious scandals connected with Clinton former business partners, Webb Hubbell (who ended up in prison), Vince Foster who committed suicide in mysterious circumstances and William Kennedy who was forced to resign, the Clintons were embroiled in what became known as “Travelgate” which resulted in a three year investigation and numerous convictions.

With statements of Hillary Clinton’s “gross negligence” in handling official emails by FBI Chief, James Comey, ringing in our ears it is worth recalling that her insensitivity over security matters had been raised way back in 1996.

Craig Livingstone was appointed as Director of security in the Clinton White House. Livingstone was investigated for improper access to 900 FBI files in Clinton “enemies” in the Republican Party. Under investigation no one in the White House claimed responsibility for appointing Livingstone although a former FBI White House agent, Gary Aldrich, confirmed that Livingstone was hand-picked by Hillary Rodham Clinton.  Livingstone had a past record of drug use.   Following this embarrassment, after thirty years of service the FBI closed its White House office.

Much was made of Hillary Clinton’s memory loss when under recent FBI enquiry into the use of her server. She had a case of concussion to fall back on, although this did not seem to affect her memory during three presidential debates. Clinton’s memory loss seems to be selective. Going back to another Clinton scandal, the White Water case went on for twenty years. In that scandalous real estate case she repeated the “I don’t recall” excuse over fifty times. At the start of this case she was a bright young lawyer, head of a major local law firm, and with no concussion.

After leaving the White House, following the end of her husband’s presidency, she was forced to return over $200,000 of furniture, artwork and china she had “mistakenly” taken with her.

The history of Hillary Clinton’s poor decision-making acted as the background for her more recent record as Secretary of State, the head of the Clinton Foundation, and a losing presidential candidate where her poor judgement and character flaws affected the outcome, both in the recent past and potentially into the future.  

Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.

WHY TRUMP WON.

The most unhappy person in America as Donald Trump won a remarkable historic presidential election victory was the man on the second floor of the White House.  

His legacy is about to lie in shatters.

Obama’s presidency will go down as a domestic and foreign policy disaster.

As president you either change Congress or you change their minds to get your policies pushed through. Obama did neither. With imperial disdain he ruled by executive orders.  He did it with the connivance of the Washington Establishment.  His style was resented by the electorate. As were his policies.

Hillary Clinton was irrevocably tied to his failures. Indeed, she was the architect of much of the events that worsened the world. But apparently it wasn’t this that lost Clinton the hearts of the American people. It was her behaviour pattern that topped any resentment Americans felt for Trump in the battle between the two worst candidates ever presented to the voting public.

Although, at the last minute, she escaped FBI charges over the use of a private server, the accumulation of her exposed lies and suspicions of corruption over her Clinton Foundation while serving as Secretary of State raised sufficient red flags to make people take a fresh look at Trump.  The shadow of the “pay for play” and the dubious grifting for favours will loom over the Clintons as the need for understanding and judgement will be clarified by the FBI.

Clinton spent the last month of her campaign dumping down on Trump rather than spelling out new policies that would improve the lives of tens of millions of suffering Americans. While she was trashing the Republican candidate he was explaining how he was going to bring jobs back to America, how he will replace a hugely unpopular Obamacare, how he would reduce taxes, how he would bring education control back to the states, how he would build a wall and keep America safe, how he will strengthen the military abroad and law enforcement at home,  and how he would renegotiate the trade deals that was ruining America not only in jobs but also economically.

In short, to rephrase a Clinton stump slogan, while she went low, he went high.

The media was complicit in becoming the propaganda arm of the Clinton campaign. With too many exposures including CNN’s Donna Brazille passing questions to Clinton top aides in advance of televised debates, the recruiting of “Get Trump” investigative reporters, the whitewash of a tsunami of shocking emails and document distributed by Wikileaks that exposed the Clinton campaign plans and payments for provoking violence at Trump rallies,and the subterfuge of the DNC against Bernie Sanders candidacy including plotting to use his Jewish faith against him in certain states.

In conversations with some pro-Clinton friends and family it was apparent that many Clinton supporters were so incensed against Trump that they refused to relate to questions about any character faults in their Democratic favourite. 

They were sticking their heads in the sand refusing to see her flaws or to understand that neither of them felt the hurt caused by poor policies and a negligence that made the world and America a far worse place.  It was this myopia that prevented them from seeing that the guy they detested was reaching into the wounded souls of too many Americans who find themselves far worse off after the election of Obama and absolutely didn’t trust Hillary Clinton to improve their lives.  The late-breaking news of massive increases in their Obama-Clinton healthcare costs confirmed that Clinton would do nothing to lift this financial yoke off their shoulders, a burden they can ill-afford to carry.

I found it incredible how my American progressive friends and relations were oblivious to this. If I could see it from Israel why couldn’t they see it from there?

We have witnessed an America too progressively concentrating on changing society for the worst. Safe spaces got preference over a safe America. Toilets for people who don’t know if they are male or female make the headlines rather than forty million Americans on food stamps. When petty criminals get shot the police are accused of criminality, but murderous illegal immigrants are protected in sanctuary cities.

Trump got it right. The people want to get America back on track, a track based on traditional values, common sense, hard work, security and patriotism. It’s a society based on the same values we love and need in Israel for our welfare and safety.  

In this Trump shares much in common with Israel, other patriotic European nations struggling to shrug off the ravages of Big Brother Socialism, and Britain who exited Europe to regain its independence and national pride.

Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.

The Temple Mount. The UNESCO vote and Western shame.

UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization voted on 13th October against the very principles that it was created.

UNESCO was founded in 1945 after World War Two to establish humanity's moral and intellectual solidarity. It says it strives to build networks among nations to enable this kind of solidarity. 

These were its founding principles. Oh, how have the mighty fallen.

With shocking disregard to historic evidence, it insulted and denied the heritage of two of the world's greatest religions, Judaism and Christianity, when it passed a resolution that denied Jewish, and therefore Christian, ties to the Temple Mount.

The October vote shattered thousands of years of faith, belief, historical, archaeological and literal fact.

It reconfirmed its ignorance five days later by ratifying its insult against Judaism and Christianity.

In UNESCO, Islam rules and truth is dead. So is Jewish and Christian heritage.

Questions must be raised about why they made such an egregious mistake. Some will point to the Islamic regimes and undemocratic countries that dominate too many United Nations forums and are now dictating how they see the world.

But my beef is with the cynical politics of countries that should know better and must act with moral authority but went missing at this significant resolution.

It is high time to name and shame those responsible for the passing of this historic upheaval.

It is hardly surprising to learn that among the nations that eagerly voted for the UNESCO principle that Jerusalem's Temple Mount is strictly Islamic were Algeria, Bangladesh, China, Egypt, Iran, Lebanon, Malaysia, Morocco, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Oman, and Vietnam. 

For the most part that is a given. They are all in denial, ignorant or uncaring about the Scriptures as geographic and historic evidence that the Temple Mount was a Jewish construct.

If the tale of Abraham sacrificing Isaac on Mount Moriah, the site on which the Temple was built is too far-fetched, how about the recorded histories of King Solomon and King David who built the first and second Temples together with the corroborating historic timeline that links both events? 

And if that doesn't convince you there is a treasure trove of artefacts that are scientifically proven to be intricately traceable back to specific periods that prove the authenticity of the Jewish temples and the events that unfolded there. 

Russia voted in favor of the motion, ignoring the millions of Russian Orthodox Christians it insulted by its vote. But, shockingly, both SOUTH AFRICA and Mexico also voted that the Temple Mount is Islamic. Where was their Christian-based conscience? Mexico switched its position by abstaining in the ratification procedure. Not good enough!

Will we be hearing from the radical South African Christian leader, Archbishop Desmond Tutu who often struts the world stage spouting moral and humanitarian values now that the deep center of his religious heart has been surgically removed by UNESCO?  

And what will the Pope say about the decision of Italy to abstain rather than oppose a vote that strikes at the origins of his faith? 

He was born in Argentina and now the nation of the birth of the Pope voted on a resolution that says the Jewish Temple Mount did not exist. Ergo – no Jesus!

For, if there was never a Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount there couldn't have been a Jesus. Ergo - no Christianity!

Not only has UNESCO, with this vote, announced that the Old Testament is a lie, a historical fiction. It also declared that the New Testament is null and void.

There were only six nations that voted against the motion that the Temple Mount has always been and will continue to be an exclusive Islamic holy site were the United States, Great Britain, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Germany and Estonia. That's it! Only six nations had the moral courage to deny an obvious and internationally impactful lie.

Perhaps the greatest shame lies with some of the nations that, with the moral cowardice and political cynicism we have come to expect from them in other UN chambers, decided to go along with the intolerant and stupid regimes by abstaining. 

These nations included Albania, Argentina, SPAIN, FRANCE, Ghana, Cameroon, GREECE, Guinea, Haiti, India, ITALY, Japan, Kenya, South Korea, SWEDEN, Togo and Ukraine.

I know that Europe was once a Christian continent but I did not suspect that the religious disorientation of countries like Spain, France, Sweden and Greece would lead them to not look at the meaning of this UNESCO resolution and vote against it for the lie that it is. Have they really abandoned their Christian origins so much that they have already disowned them? 

Perhaps Sweden will now remove the cross from its national flag?

As for Italy, what can I say? Together with Spain, they were once the strong upholders of Catholicism, the Jews will say to an intolerant and anti-Semitic degree. Jews suffered badly in the past in both these countries. We recall the Spanish Expulsion and Inquisition of its Jews, a genocide inspired by the leaders of the Catholic Church.

But, Italy?  I invite all Italians, especially their politicians and diplomats that enabled the passing of this obscene vote, to revisit the Roman Forum in Rome and stand under the Arch of Titus to look at the ancient carvings depicting the Roman rape of the Jewish Temple. They will see the Hebrew slaves being forced to carry the Jewish relics they plundered from Jerusalem during their conquest, pillage and destruction of our Jewish Temple.

And yet they abstained from this motion? Were they reliving yet another plunder of the Jewish Temple by cohorting with the Islamic world? For that's what it looks like to me.

Can we now expect the Pope, as head of the Catholic Church, speak up and denounce UNESCO?

So far only silence. 

Can we expect to hear the voices of any Christian leader as we are starting to hear the voices of rabbis in every Jewish denomination?

The shame of UNESCO displays itself in the myopia of countries that were once considered "enlightened nations."  Not any more.

The political cynicism and dereliction of their traditional values has diminished their once valuable influence and enabled intolerant nations to dominate.

It seems the light of truth and courageous honesty has dimmed in the democratic world. Will we see a new reformation and a return to the moral leadership that the world so desperately needs right now as a result of the profoundly disturbing lurch of UNESCO that has failed in its educational, scientific and cultural responsibilities?

Don't hold your breath.

   

Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies. 

He is the author of 'Fighting Hamas, BDS and Anti-Semitism.'

Shimon Peres has died.

Shimon Peres has died.

One of the builders of the State of Israel who served alongside David Ben Gurion, Peres contributed greatly to the national security and developing infrastructure of the Jewish State.

Prime Minister and President, Peres was a controversial figure in his search for a lasting peace, including the peace agreements with Jordan and Egypt.

His exploits for Israel are legendary. He order Israeli naval special ops teams to the French port of Cherbourg to covertly take over and sail 5 new naval frigates that Israel had paid for but which Charles de Gaulle refused to deliver.
Peres pressed the Israeli Cabinet to allow the raid on Entebbe when Palestinian terrorists, under the protection of Uganda's Idi Amin's army were holding Jewish hostages. Israel Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu's brother, Yoni, who led the raid was killed.
Pere was also the architect of the secret Israeli nuclear program. 

On his watch, Israel made serious concessions and painful sacrifices to the Palestinians which have been received with hatred, violence and terror, and a total rejection of ever accepting a two-state solution alongside the Jewish State of Israel.

Peres will be buried in a state funeral at Mount Herzl in Jerusalem on Friday.

Overseas dignitaries attending will be President Obama, former president Bill Clinton, Vice-President Joe Biden, Secretary of State, John Kerry leading the US delegation.
French President, Francois Hollande, will head the French delegation.
Tony Blair, former British Prime Minister, who was closely associated with Peres will accompany Prince Charles.
Others attending will be;
Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.
German Premiere, Angela Merkel.
German President, Joachim Gauck.
Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau.
Romanian President, Klaus Iohannis.
Mexican President, Enrique Pena Nieto.
Togo President, Faure Gnassingbe.
Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull.
Australian Governor-General, Peter Cosgrove.
Singapore's Deputy-Prime Minister, Teo Chee Hean.
Austrian Foreign Minister, Sebastian Kurtz.
Portuguese Foreign Minister, Augusto Santos Silva.
Swiss President, Johann Schneider-Ammann,

A World in Denial.

In his UN General Assembly speech, President Obama spoke about “deep fault lines in the existing international order.”  He’s right. He’s responsible for a lot of the mess.

Unfortunately, politicians like Obama like to see what they want to see and ignore gross realities that do not jive with what they want to achieve. (Can someone tell me what Obama wanted to achieve?)

Take the Israeli-Palestinian issue, for example. At the UN podium Obama said, “Surely Israelis and Palestinian will be better off if Palestinians reject incitement and recognize the legitimacy of Israel, but Israel recognizes that it cannot permanently occupy and settle Palestinian land.”

To the uninitiated (i.e. the progressives who live in a virtual world that enables them to block out sounds and truth that invades their cocooned ‘safe spaces’), incessant Palestinian terror launched against Israeli civilians from the Hamas political front based in Gaza and the Fatah political front based in Ramallah is ignored, tippexed out of their song sheet. In their narrative, Palestinian terror and an agenda to eliminate Israel simply don’t exist.

In this mindset, Obama is backed by Ban Ki Moon, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, who sang off the same song sheet.

“Ten years lost to illegal settlement expansion. Ten years lost to intra-Palestinian divide, growing polarization and hopelessness. This is madness.”

Yes it is, Ban Ki. It’s madness not to see the violent passion to destroy Israel. He spoke as Israel was enduring yet another weekend of Palestinian terror attacks, eight in number. 

It’s madness for them to talk about Israel “illegally occupying Palestinian land” when 2000 year old Jewish coins were recently dug up on land that was evidently Jewish. No mention of Palestine on these ancient coins. How forgetful of them!

Did anyone ever call it “Palestinian land” when, in 1948, the Jordanians in an aggressive war attacked the nascent State of Israel and captured part of the land in a truly illegal occupation. They retained it until 1967 without a peep of protest. No UN resolutions or condemnations about “illegally occupied Palestinian land” against a nineteen year old Jordanian occupation. Only total silence.

If you want to hear three lies in four words try “illegally occupied Palestinian land.” As long as Israel does not build on private land owned by non-Israeli Arabs it’s not “illegal,” it’s not “occupied,” and it’s not “Palestinian land” until we say it is, and no hick talk about “international law” can make it so.

The fanatical obsession of the United Nations against Israel permits it to have one standing order in every session of their Human Rights Council meetings. The laser concentration on Israel in its Article 7 permanent agenda item  condemns all the perceived evils of the world onto the tiny Jewish State while denying enduring massive human suffering the right to receive the attention it needs. Genuine human rights abuses are overlooked as they beat down on Israel.

The United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization denies the authenticity of its own name when it ignores the architectural, archaeological, literal and historic evidence of the Jewish heritage to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City by declaring it to be Islamic, naming it exclusively as “al-Aqsa Mosque” or “al-Haram al Sharif.” Even the Western Wall of the Jewish Temple, until recently called “The Wailing Wall” where Jews wept over the destruction of their holy shrine, is referred to by UNESCO as “al-Buraq Plaza,” after a mythical winged horse.

The global organization and these world leaders follow in the tainted footstep of Mahmoud Abbas who denies the right of Jews to have a nation of their own in their ancient land while denying Jews the right to live in any future Palestine.

After fifty years of failure in trying to impose a two-state solution isn’t it time for these diplomatic experts to wake up to the fact that the so-called Palestinian society is so divided its political chasm looks wider than the Grand Canyon.

So what Palestine are they so desperate to create?  Is it the one headed by the corrupt, undemocratic Fatah rule of Mahmoud Abbas, he of the “Palestine must be Jew-free” and “Haifa, Jaffa, the Negev and the Galilee is Palestine” persuasion? Or is it the one headed by the “Oh Muslim, there’s a Jew hiding behind me. Come out and kill him” Hamas regime?

Either way, by the ballot (if they should ever hold free and open elections) or the bullet (a more likely outcome if Gaza is an example) Hamas would inevitably usurp control of this Palestine should Israel be foolish and retreat to a defenseless slim coastal strip wedged between a lethal Hezbollah in the north, a rampant Hamas in the south and a seething new entity, a forced creation of a blind, deaf international community who chooses not to use their Realpolitik spectacles and see things as they really are, to the east, a short fifteen minute car ride from the cliffs of the Mediterranean, and within RPG range of our major Ben-Gurion Airport, not to mention having us poor suckers sharing  a capital with these malcontents.

Anyone who thinks that the imposed creation of a Palestinian state will turn these people ,with an ongoing agenda for the termination of the Jewish state, into liberal democrats is in such a radical form of denial that they need psychological therapy.

Anyone who thinks that such a state will remain demilitarized for longer than five minutes is delusional. What, you mean demilitarized like the Gaza Strip, or southern Lebanon that was supposed to be patrolled by United Nation peacekeepers. Peacekeepers? Give me a break!

The problem is that these career politicians have mortgaged their personal and professional prestige to the cause of a Palestinian state and they will discover, after they have forced yet another rabidly anti-Semitic, Islamic regime onto the world they will cover their embarrassment by washing their hands of any responsibility for the inevitable inability of a Palestine to be a pragmatic, peace-loving democracy.

Why should it? Show me one Middle East regime that is a tolerant liberal democratic society sharing the free values of the West and Israel. So why is Palestine being touted in the highest diplomatic circles? What is the inevitable outcome of such a phenomenon? Polls, surveys and historic evidence show us that it will be a repressive regime that will not abandon their determination to continue their struggle to liberate the rest of Palestine (i.e. Israel).  This is why they continue to call Israeli Arabs “Palestinians of the Interior.”  

When they insist that Israel must sign a deal with Abbas, make dangerous concessions to him and then let the chips fall where they may, what they are ordering us to do is to go to bed with Mahmoud and wake up in the morning with Hamas.

The international community headed by President Obama and Ban Ki Moon may be in denial, but Israelis, having to deal with the real and gruesome facts on the ground, are not.

Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.

He is the author of “Fighting Hamas, BDS and Anti-Semitism.”

America’s Desperately Wrong Foreign Policy.

If you want to study the weakness of American foreign policy under the Obama-Clinton-Kerry Administration, just look at the Turkish-Kurdish-Syrian triangle.

America’s formal position is that it opposes the Assad regime, that it looks on Turkey as a close ally, and that it arms the Kurds in their fight against ISIS.

ISIS is considered a potentially major threat within America and must be eliminated. The Kurds have been the bravest, boldest fighters against Islamic State. Yet, recently Vice President Biden, during a visit to Turkey, demanded that the Kurds return back over the river from Syria into Iraq.  The Kurds were the first and only force that took on ISIS in Iraq on behalf of the slaughtered Yezidi people. They were the first to win significant victories and drove much of ISIS back into Syria where they pursued them. 

What Biden seems to be unaware of is that Kurds have always had a presence in Syria and, if America is genuine about seeing the end of Assad, the Kurds are the ones that America should be supporting in the joint effort to rid the suffering Syrians from the cruel reign of Assad and the world of the abomination of ISIS.

Biden was also silent about Turkey who sent tanks and troops over their border into Syria to attack and kill Kurdish fighters who are there, at great risk, to annihilate Islamic State.

Furthermore, there is something pathetic about Pentagon officials rebuking Turkey for going after the Kurds both in Iraq and Syria and then watch Turkey ignore them and continue targeting the Kurds.

As Eran Lerman of the Begin-Sadat Strategic Studies Center and an expert on Turkey, put it, “That is very telling on the state of US authority right now.”

As Herb Keinon wrote in the Jerusalem Post, “Turkey’s move I n Syria against US-backed Kurdish forces who have fought against Syrian President Bashar Assad and Islamic State is more evidence that the US right now carried little strategic weight in the region.”

Lerman agrees. “The will of the United States of America has rarely carried less weight than it does now in regional affairs. And that means that those of us who worry about regional stability have to work together for ourselves.”

It’s complicated, but the US should tell the Turks to lay off the Kurds. Biden told the Kurds that they could be left without American support and defenseless to face Turkish planes, artillery and tanks if they pressed further into Syria against ISIS. How wrong-headed is that?

America also gave Turkey close air support in the first two days of their incursion into Syria until they discovered the Turks were going after the towns and villages near Jarabulus. This is where Kurdish-led Syrian rebels are located.

Understandably, the Kurds are furious with American inconsistency. 

It does look as if the Turks see that America needs them more than they need America. 

This is evident following Erdogan’s recent meetings with Putin, the Chinese President and the Iranian Prime Minister.

The United States needs to get its act together, or vote in a very different Administration.

Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.