I and my son were even in an elevator in Houston with the song's writer and his beautiful date(?). It was all serendipitous.
America is still physically here but emotionally the flame is flickering. Whether it will be restored to its brightness remains to be seen.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/
===
While I am at it, I would like to propose state, local, federal governments should be small enough so when there is corruption and a foul up it is easy enough to locate the person(s) responsible and to extract and levy justifiable penalties. I know this is unrealistic and will never happen.
Nevertheless, I say this because a recent investigation has identified tens of millions spent on a filling station and facilities for civilians serving in Kabul. The Defense Department authorized the expenditures which were outrageous and yet, no one has been identified who approved and then supervised same. This is one of the most recent boondoggles which burn tax payer money and cause outrage and disgust.
The person investigating said the record keeping was so bad the truth may never be known.
But then what difference does it make seems the prevailing attitude. No wonder citizens have lost faith in government and those who run the asylum.
No wonder they are willing to turn to the likes of Trump, Hillarious and Sanders out of frustration and contempt for the establishment in both parties. We are made to feel we are hijacked passengers on a ship of fools! Far too many of us are fools. (See 1 below.)
===
For those of us who do not have United States Code committed to memory, here's what it says:
(a) Whoever willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys, or attempts to do so, or, with intent to do so takes and carries away any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
(b) Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States. As used in this subsection, the term “office” does not include the office held by any person as a retired officer of the Armed Forces of the United States.”
Yes, it explicitly states "shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States."
===
Krauthammer presents his thoughts on why Republicans got the Iran debate and prisoner swap wrong and why Iran is now the dominant force in The Middle East.
Thank you Obama. You blew negotiations with Russia, Cuba and now we can add Iran to your failed list. (See 2 below.)
And then there is Melanie Phillips' commentary. (See 2a below.)
====
I have great respect for Caroline Glick who may be a bit hawkish but she has the guts to speak her mind. (See 3 below.)
http://www.israelvideonetwork.
===
A blonde met a man on line who said he lived in a gated community. She went to visit him and he was in prison.
Dick
====================================================================
1)Do Emotions Trump Facts?
By Thomas Sowell
Those of us who like to believe that human beings are rational can sometimes have a hard time trying to explain what is going on in politics. It is still a puzzle to me how millions of patriotic Americans could have voted in 2008 for a man who for 20 years -- TWENTY YEARS -- was a follower of a preacher who poured out his hatred for America in the most gross gutter terms.
Today's big puzzle is how so many otherwise rational people have become enamored of Donald Trump, projecting onto him virtues and principles that he clearly does not have, and ignoring gross defects that are all too blatant.
There was a time when someone who publicly mocked a handicapped man would have told us all we needed to know about his character, and his political fling would have been over. But that was before we became a society where common decency is optional.
Yet there are even a few people with strong conservative principles who have lined up with this man, whose history has demonstrated no principles at all, other than an ability to make self-serving deals, and who has shown what Thorstein Veblen once called "a versatility of convictions."
With the Iowa caucuses coming up, it is easy to understand why Iowa governor Terry Branstad is slamming Trump's chief rival, Senator Ted Cruz, who has opposed massive government subsidies to ethanol, which have dumped tons of taxpayer money on Iowa for growing corn. Iowa's Senator Charles Grassley has come right out and said that is why he opposes Senator Cruz.
Former Senator Bob Dole, an establishment Republican if ever there was one, has joined the attacks on Ted Cruz, on grounds that Senator Cruz is disliked by other politicians.
When Senator Dole was active, he was liked by both Democrats and Republicans. He joined the long list of likable Republican candidates for president that the Republican establishment chose-- and that the voters roundly rejected.
With both establishment Republicans and anti-establishment Republicans now taking sides with Donald Trump, it is hard to see what principle-- if any-- is behind his support.
Some may see Trump's success in business as a sign that he can manage the economy. But the great economist David Ricardo, two centuries ago, pointed out that business success did not mean that someone understands economic issues facing a nation.
Trump boasts that he can make deals, among his many other boasts. But is a deal-maker what this country needs at this crucial time? Is not one of the biggest criticisms of today's Congressional Republicans that they have made all too many deals with Democrats, betraying the principles on which they ran for office?
Bipartisan deals -- so beloved by media pundits -- have produced some of the great disasters in American history.
Contrary to the widespread view that the Great Depression of the 1930s was caused by the stock market crash of 1929, unemployment never reached double digits in any of the 12 months that followed the stock market crash in October, 1929.
Unemployment was 6.3 percent in June 1930 when a Democratic Congress and a Republican president made a bipartisan deal that produced the Smoot-Hawley tariffs. Within 6 months, unemployment hit double digits -- and stayed in double digits throughout the entire decade of the 1930s.
You want deals? There was never a more politically successful deal than that which Neville Chamberlain made in Munich in 1938. He was hailed as a hero, not only by his own party but even by opposition parties, when he returned with a deal that Chamberlain said meant "peace for our time." But, just one year later, the biggest, bloodiest and most ghastly war in history began.
If deal-making is your standard, didn't Barack Obama just make a deal with Iran -- one that may have bigger and worse consequences than Chamberlain's deal?
What kind of deals would Donald Trump make? He has already praised the Supreme Court's decision in "Kelo v. City of New London" which said that the government can seize private property to turn it over to another private party.
That kind of decision is good for an operator like Donald Trump. Doubtless other decisions that he would make as president would also be good for Donald Trump, even if for nobody else.
2) The GOP gets the Iran prisoner swap wrong
Give President Obama credit. His Iran nuclear deal may be disastrous but the packaging was brilliant. The near-simultaneous prisoner exchange was meant to distract from last Saturday’s official implementation of the sanctions-lifting deal. And it did. The Republicans concentrated almost all their fire on the swap sideshow.
And in denouncing the swap, they were wrong. True, we should have made the prisoner release a precondition for negotiations. But that preemptive concession was made long ago (among many others, such as granting Iran in advance the right to enrich uranium). The remaining question was getting our prisoners released before we gave away all our leverage upon implementation of the nuclear accord. We did.
Republicans say: We shouldn’t negotiate with terror states. But we do and we should. How else do you get hostages back? And yes, of course negotiating encourages further hostage taking. But there is always something to be gained by kidnapping Americans. This swap does not affect that truth one way or the other.
And here, we didn’t give away much. The seven released Iranians, none of whom has blood on his hands, were sanctions busters (and a hacker), and sanctions are essentially over now. The slate is clean.
But how unfair, say the critics. We released prisoners duly convicted in a court of law. Iran released perfectly innocent, unjustly jailed hostages.
Yes, and so what? That’s just another way of saying we have the rule of law, they don’t. It doesn’t mean we abandon our hostages. Natan Sharansky was a prisoner of conscience who spent eight years in the gulag on totally phony charges. He was exchanged for two real Soviet spies. Does anyone think we should have said no?
The one valid criticism of the Iranian swap is that we left one, perhaps two, Americans behind and unaccounted for. True. But the swap itself was perfectly reasonable. And cleverly used by the administration to create a heartwarming human interest story to overshadow a rotten diplomatic deal, just as the Alan Gross release sweetened a Cuba deal that gave the store away to the Castro brothers.
The real story of Saturday, Jan. 16, 2016 — “Implementation Day” of the Iran deal — was that it marked a historic inflection point in the geopolitics of the Middle East. In a stroke, Iran shed almost four decades of rogue-state status and was declared a citizen of good standing of the international community, open to trade, investment and diplomacy. This, without giving up, or even promising to change, its policy of subversion and aggression. This, without having forfeited its status as the world’s greatest purveyor of terrorism.
Overnight, it went not just from pariah to player but from pariah to dominant regional power, flush with $100 billion in unfrozen assets and virtually free of international sanctions. The oil trade alone will pump tens of billions of dollars into its economy. The day after Implementation Day, President Hassan Rouhani predicted 5 percent growth — versus the contracting, indeed hemorrhaging, economy in pre-negotiation 2012 and 2013.
On Saturday, the Iranian transport minister announced the purchase of 114 Airbuses from Europe. This inaugurates a rush of deals binding European companies to Iran, thoroughly undermining Obama’s pipe dream of “snapback sanctions” if Iran cheats.
Cash-rich, reconnected with global banking and commerce, and facing an Arab world collapsed into a miasma of raging civil wars, Iran has instantly become the dominant power of the Middle East. Not to worry, argued the administration. The nuclear opening will temper Iranian adventurism and empower Iranian moderates.
The opposite is happening. And it’s not just the ostentatious, illegal ballistic missile launches; not just Iran’s president reacting to the most puny retaliatory sanctions by ordering his military to accelerate the missile program; not just the videotaped and broadcast humiliation of seized U.S. sailors.
Look at what the mullahs are doing at home. Within hours of “implementation,” the regime disqualified 2,967 of roughly 3,000 moderate candidates from even running in parliamentary elections next month. And just to make sure we got the point, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, reiterated that Iranian policy — aggressively interventionist and immutably anti-American — continues unchanged.
In 1938, the morning after Munich, Europe woke up to Germany as the continent’s dominant power. Last Sunday, the Middle East woke up to Iran as the regional hegemon, with a hand — often predominant — in the future of Syria, Yemen, Iraq, the Gulf Arab states and, in time, in the very survival of Israel.
And we’re arguing over an asymmetric hostage swap.
2a)Melanie Phillips on Iran for dummies
Israel is counting the days until the American presidential election. It only needs, it says to itself, to get through this year, this month, this week.It must just keep on ducking and feinting to protect its security and the lives of its citizens until the nightmare of this most hostile US president in memory finally ends. Just as it has been forced to do these past seven years.For Iran, in stark contrast, President Obama’s remaining year in office offers a window of unparalleled opportunity. By gifting its regime more than $100 billion in sanctions relief, Obama has not only released funds with which the world’s most dangerous jihadist entity can ratchet up its terrorist and genocidal program, pumping money into its al-Quds force, Revolutionary Guards and Hamas.These are also months during which the president of the most powerful country in the world has signaled that the Iranian regime can act with total impunity.Obama is trapped by his fear that Iran might at any time renege on the nuclear deal and restart its manufacture of nuclear weapons – which a State Department official nevertheless tells us with a straight face the regime has abandoned for ever more. With this blackmail threat now paralyzing the Obama administration, Iran knows it can do what it wants.It acted upon that understanding even before the nuclear deal was completed, when it almost scuttled the simultaneous and hitherto secret prisoner exchange by detaining the family of the American hostage Jason Rezaian for several hours at Tehran airport.When they were finally released and the prisoner swap completed, US officials sighed with relief – too soon. For following the lifting of sanctions, Iranian- backed militias promptly kidnapped three Americans contractors in Iraq.According to CBS News, the US Embassy in Baghdad was warned days previously that a Shi’ite militia intended to seize American hostages. Officials had hoped the Iranian regime would tell it to back off because of the prisoner swap. So the militia waited until that exchange was done and dusted. How Tehran must have smirked.Iran is intent upon stepping up its four-decade jihadi war against the US and humiliating it in the process.Just a few days before sanctions were lifted, the Revolutionary Guards held at gunpoint 10 US sailors whom they captured on two American patrol boats which for some reason had entered Iranian territorial waters. On December 26, the Revolutionary Guards test-fired rockets close to an American aircraft carrier, the USS Harry Truman, in the Strait of Hormuz.Such actions are designed to convey to the world the message that the US is now powerless and Iran invulnerable.And with its reaction to every such incident, the US underscores that message.It behaves like someone who, punched repeatedly in the face, insists through a split lip that his attacker is reforming himself and invites him to hit him again.Its prisoner swap has positively incentivized the further taking of American hostages. The deal released seven Iranians convicted or charged with violating sanctions and halted proceedings against 14 others, two of whom the US had accused of funneling weapons to Hezbollah and the Assad regime.This was in exchange for five detained Americans who had done nothing wrong. Exchanging suspected and convicted criminals for innocent hostages now puts other Americans at far greater risk.After Iran revealed it was continuing with its illegal ballistic missile program, the US merely applied sanctions to some of the firms involved. To which limp response the regime unsurprisingly declared that it would now continue its ballistic missile program “more seriously.”Iranian threats to ditch the nuclear deal almost certainly pushed the International Atomic Energy Authority to close the file on investigating whether Iran had pursued a nuclear weapons program in the past, despite finding that it had continued such activities until at least 2009 – after which the IAEA just didn’t know.Iran has now announced that it will build advanced nuclear centrifuges capable of enriching uranium, the key component in a nuclear weapon, faster than its previous models.Who can possibly be surprised that, presented with craven and groveling appeasement, Iran responds by evermore brazen and defiant aggression? Step forward the US.Apparently, the White House was shocked – shocked! – by the kidnapping of its three contractors in Iraq. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. The nuclear deal was supposed to moderate Iranian behavior.Can the Obama administration really be that stupid? Yes it can.One official said sanctions relief would dilute “the hold on power of the old guard.” Well, here’s how that one is playing out. Since the deal was agreed on last July, the regime has stepped up arrests of political opponents in order to ensure that the political allies of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, dominate next month’s national elections.And in the first two weeks of this month no fewer than 53 Iranians were hanged.The implications of America’s strategic, military and moral collapse go far beyond Iran itself. By giving that regime a free pass for its behavior, the US has sent the clearest signal to every other rogue state in the world – that it will not push back against them either.Accordingly, other countries are also contemplating the next 12 months with intense alarm. Geopolitical realities are being reshaped. Saudi Arabia’s belief that the US has hung it out to dry has already hugely exacerbated Saudi/Iranian tensions.That means their proxies will be battling it out in Syria and elsewhere for the foreseeable future.And Saudi will now be intent on getting its own nukes, doubtless off the shelf from an obliging rogue state.Which brings us back to the Iranian bomb. There are some who believe it already has it, or at least already has access to nuclear weapons having outsourced the testing of the bomb to North Korea. Iran is now pondering how to use the weapon to maximum destructive effect and without leaving its fingerprints on it.I have no idea whether that is true.But given Iran’s close association with the North Korean nuclear program, with Iranian scientists and other personnel having been present at three of North Korea’s four nuclear tests at least, does anyone believe that it could not get the bomb from Pyongyang even if it has not already done so? In which case, maybe the Iranian nuclear negotiation was a blind from start to finish. The real action was going on in North Korea while the dummies of the free world were looking the other way. The actual point of the deal was to lift sanctions by appearing to give ground on the nuclear program in Iran itself – thus releasing those billions to ratchet up Tehran’s deniable, proxy war upon the rest of the world.Which, thanks to Obama, the UK government and the rest of the Western dummy class, Iran is now about to do.
=================================================================================
3)
That’s what the father of Dafna Meir’s murderer said when the Palestinian media asked him what he thinks of his cold-blooded son Murad Adais.
On Sunday afternoon, Adais butchered Meir in her home, in front of her children.
Whether Adais Sr. is really happy that his son will rot in prison is less important than the fact that he said what he said to his home crowd.
He knows that his audience thinks his son is a hero. And so he played to his audience.
Since last September when the Palestinians began their current terrorist onslaught, killers like Adais have been characterized as lone wolves. But a study published last November in Mosaic online journal by Shalem College’s Daniel Polisar shows that this characterization is both wrong and unhelpful.
Polisar studied Palestinian public opinion data from surveys conducted by four independent research groups over the past 25 years. His data exposed three key aspects to Palestinian positions about Israel that all bear directly on the current Palestinian terrorist offensive.
His first finding is that throughout most of the past quarter-century a solid majority of Palestinians have supported terrorism against Israelis.
Moreover, the more murderous an attack, the more it is supported.
Polisar’s second finding was that the vast majority of Palestinians hate Israelis and believe that Jews have no right to the Land of Israel, and therefore our state has no right to exist.
Taken together, these first two insights lead to one clear conclusion about the nature of the current Palestinian terrorism campaign against Israelis. As Polisar explained, they show that this campaign is not being carried out by “lone wolves,” who have been incited by Palestinian Authority propaganda. Rather, that propaganda reflects the murderous hatred that the vast majority of Palestinians feel toward Israelis and Israel.
Adais and his comrades may or may not be members of terrorist groups. But they are the loyal representatives of their terrorism-supporting society.
Obviously, any talk of a peace process in this climate is utter folly. The most Israel can aspire to is to deter the hate-soaked Palestinians from attacking us.
This brings us to the third insight of Polisar’s study. Twenty-five years of survey data make clear that most Palestinians believe that terrorism pays.
And the plain fact is that they are right. For the past generation, the Palestinians have only benefited from killing Israelis through terrorism.
The fact that Israeli concessions to the Palestinians have strengthened their conviction that terrorism pays rather than convinced them to make peace shows that all concessions in the face of terrorism are dangerous.
While the majority of Israelis have learned this lesson and so elected governments that oppose appeasement, the Palestinians have learned that the Israeli public does not have the final word on whether or not they will be rewarded for their crimes against humanity.
The Palestinians believe that Israel is dependent on Western goodwill. So to the extent that the West pressures Israel surrender to Palestinian demands, the US and the EU work hand in glove with Palestinian terrorists and prove that they are right to murder mothers in their homes in front of their children.
This week US Ambassador Dan Shapiro proved the Palestinians right, yet again.
At the outset of his speech before the Institute of National Security Studies on Monday, Shapiro issued a pro forma condemnation of “barbaric acts of terrorism” against Israelis at the outset of his remarks.
But that was just clearing his throat. In his substantive remarks, Shapiro accused Israel of institutional racism in Judea and Samaria.
Shapiro’s slanderous accusation channeled and escalated his boss Secretary of State John Kerry’s anti-Israel libel from two years ago. In early 2014, Kerry alleged that if Israel didn’t cough up Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem soon, it risked becoming a criminal apartheid state in the future.
Shapiro maligned Israel just as the Council of Europe announced it was firming up its rules for labeling Jewish-made products from Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem and published a document on its plans for handling a unicorn called “the Middle East Peace Process.”
Both the EU’s announcement about labeling Jewish products and its document about the nonexistent “Middle East Peace Process” were notable for two reasons. First, they made no mention whatsoever of terrorism. As far as the Europeans are concerned, the only side preventing peace is Israel. And to bring peace, the EU calls for the Jewish state to be treated like Jews in Europe – that is, singled out for discrimination, abuse and insults.
The near simultaneity of Shapiro’s slander and the EU’s latest discriminatory steps against Israel tells the Palestinians that they should keep up their attacks. Israel will be hard pressed to launch an effective counterattack with the Americans and Europeans breathing down its neck demanding concessions.
The message these statements communicate to Israel is actually worse than that. The simultaneity of these remarks was not coincidental.
Neither was State Department spokesman James Kirby’s condemnation of Israel’s lawful land policies in the Jordan Valley, which was followed immediately by a similar condemnation by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and a call by the PA for a UN Security Council resolution against Israel. Taken together they show that we are in the midst of a coordinated US-led political offensive against Israel.
How is Israel supposed to defend itself against this coordinated terrorist-diplomatic onslaught? How can Israel keep the Americans and Europeans at bay and deter the Palestinians from murdering its citizens? Beyond the counterterror measures that are already being carried out, Israel needs to act on three levels.
On the diplomatic front, the government needs to change the focus of its public diplomacy.
The government currently accepts the false claim that the Palestinian terrorist onslaught is being carried out by lone wolves. Its public diplomacy is limited as a consequence to condemning official Palestinian Authority incitement.
This line is wrong and counterproductive.
It lends credence to the false conclusion that the assault is limited and can therefore be overlooked by Westerners eager to attack Israel.
In their public pronouncements, our officials should direct their remarks against Palestinian society as a whole. So too the government should attack the radical Left in Israel and in the West that supports a society that seeks to annihilate Israel, applauds barbarism and kills anyone who wishes to live at peace with Israel.
Wednesday, a storm erupted in England following The Sun’s publication of the findings of an undercover investigation of so-called human rights groups broadcast on Channel 2’s investigative news magazine two weeks ago. That investigation showed senior “human rights” activists Ezra Nawi from Ta’ayush and Nasser Nawaja from B’Tselem plotting to turn over to the Palestinian security forces a Palestinian who wished to sell land to Jews. Nawajah and Nawi acted with the full knowledge that he would be tortured and killed. In a heated debate in the British Parliament, lawmakers demanded to know why the government was funding B’Tselem with taxpayer funds. In other words, the lawmakers showed that a policy of exposing the barbarism of Palestinian society and the fanaticism of its Western supporters is effective.
The second area where the government must act is in its settlement policies. Although it will be difficult for Israel to face down the Obama administration and respect Jewish property rights in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem in the coming year, nothing is stopping it from destroying illegal EU-financed Palestinian construction in Area C.
The government should act forcefully to remove all of the EU-constructed illegal Palestinian settlements in Area C of Judea and Samaria. The place the government should begin demolition is at the illegal Palestinian settlement outside the national heritage site of Sussiya, just kilometers from where Dafna Meir was murdered. The dual purpose of that specific EU-financed illegal building project is to threaten the Israeli communities of Sussiya and Mitzpe Yair and to deny the historic significance of the ancient Jewish city of Sussiya.
Destroying the squatter community will send a potent message to the Palestinians and their Western abettors.
At the same time, the government should speed up the pace of building new Israeli communities across the armistice line from Sussiya in the northern Negev around Arad in state lands being threatened by the EU-supported Beduin who are working in coordination with the Palestinian squatters in the South Hebron Hills.
The final thing that Israel needs to do in the face of the Palestinian terrorism supported by Western political warfare is to rub the EU bureaucrats’ faces in the fact that Israel is succeeding where their governments are failing. It isn’t enough for Israel to call for the Jews of France and the rest of Western Europe to make aliya. Over the past two years, aliya from Western Europe has reached all-time highs. As the governments that single out the Jewish state for abuse prove on a daily basis that they cannot protect their Jewish citizens, more and more European Jews are heeding the call and moving to Israel.
But over the past several months, it has become apparent that for all our goodwill, Israel has not figured out how to absorb its newest citizens. Dentists, pharmacists and other professionals are chewed up and spit out by a bureaucracy of professional guilds whose protectionist licensing requirements are convincing many people to turn around and go back to Europe. The government must make it an urgent priority to break the guilds. It is far more important to enable Jewish professionals from France to work in their fields in Israel than to protect the antiquated licensing requirements of hidebound professional cliques.
Israel is under a coordinated assault by the Palestinians who hate us and the Europeans and Americans who are hostile to us.
Our options for dealing with this assault are not optimal. But they are formidable. If we make judicious use of them, we can flummox the White House and the EU, and at a minimum, we can begin to prove to the Palestinians that their faith in terrorism is no longer justified.
============================================================================================
3)
Terrorism pays: How to flummox the White House, the EU --- and defeat the 'Palestinians'
By Caroline B. Glick
‘I’m proud of him.”
That’s what the father of Dafna Meir’s murderer said when the Palestinian media asked him what he thinks of his cold-blooded son Murad Adais.
On Sunday afternoon, Adais butchered Meir in her home, in front of her children.
Whether Adais Sr. is really happy that his son will rot in prison is less important than the fact that he said what he said to his home crowd.
He knows that his audience thinks his son is a hero. And so he played to his audience.
Since last September when the Palestinians began their current terrorist onslaught, killers like Adais have been characterized as lone wolves. But a study published last November in Mosaic online journal by Shalem College’s Daniel Polisar shows that this characterization is both wrong and unhelpful.
Polisar studied Palestinian public opinion data from surveys conducted by four independent research groups over the past 25 years. His data exposed three key aspects to Palestinian positions about Israel that all bear directly on the current Palestinian terrorist offensive.
His first finding is that throughout most of the past quarter-century a solid majority of Palestinians have supported terrorism against Israelis.
Moreover, the more murderous an attack, the more it is supported.
Polisar’s second finding was that the vast majority of Palestinians hate Israelis and believe that Jews have no right to the Land of Israel, and therefore our state has no right to exist.
Taken together, these first two insights lead to one clear conclusion about the nature of the current Palestinian terrorism campaign against Israelis. As Polisar explained, they show that this campaign is not being carried out by “lone wolves,” who have been incited by Palestinian Authority propaganda. Rather, that propaganda reflects the murderous hatred that the vast majority of Palestinians feel toward Israelis and Israel.
Adais and his comrades may or may not be members of terrorist groups. But they are the loyal representatives of their terrorism-supporting society.
Obviously, any talk of a peace process in this climate is utter folly. The most Israel can aspire to is to deter the hate-soaked Palestinians from attacking us.
This brings us to the third insight of Polisar’s study. Twenty-five years of survey data make clear that most Palestinians believe that terrorism pays.
And the plain fact is that they are right. For the past generation, the Palestinians have only benefited from killing Israelis through terrorism.
The fact that Israeli concessions to the Palestinians have strengthened their conviction that terrorism pays rather than convinced them to make peace shows that all concessions in the face of terrorism are dangerous.
While the majority of Israelis have learned this lesson and so elected governments that oppose appeasement, the Palestinians have learned that the Israeli public does not have the final word on whether or not they will be rewarded for their crimes against humanity.
The Palestinians believe that Israel is dependent on Western goodwill. So to the extent that the West pressures Israel surrender to Palestinian demands, the US and the EU work hand in glove with Palestinian terrorists and prove that they are right to murder mothers in their homes in front of their children.
This week US Ambassador Dan Shapiro proved the Palestinians right, yet again.
At the outset of his speech before the Institute of National Security Studies on Monday, Shapiro issued a pro forma condemnation of “barbaric acts of terrorism” against Israelis at the outset of his remarks.
But that was just clearing his throat. In his substantive remarks, Shapiro accused Israel of institutional racism in Judea and Samaria.
Shapiro’s slanderous accusation channeled and escalated his boss Secretary of State John Kerry’s anti-Israel libel from two years ago. In early 2014, Kerry alleged that if Israel didn’t cough up Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem soon, it risked becoming a criminal apartheid state in the future.
By falsely alleging that Israel uses one (lenient) law against Israelis and another (iron fisted) law against Palestinians, Shapiro gave substance to Kerry’s two-year-old assault. And in claiming that this state of affairs exists today, he transformed Kerry’s incendiary claim of an apartheid future into a defamatory rap sheet for current imaginary offenses.The timing of Shapiro’s blood libel was significant for two reasons. First, the day after a Palestinian murdered Meir, and hours after another Palestinian stabbed another Jewish mother in the late stages of pregnancy, the US ambassador told the Palestinians that America blames Israel for their barbarism.
Shapiro maligned Israel just as the Council of Europe announced it was firming up its rules for labeling Jewish-made products from Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem and published a document on its plans for handling a unicorn called “the Middle East Peace Process.”
Both the EU’s announcement about labeling Jewish products and its document about the nonexistent “Middle East Peace Process” were notable for two reasons. First, they made no mention whatsoever of terrorism. As far as the Europeans are concerned, the only side preventing peace is Israel. And to bring peace, the EU calls for the Jewish state to be treated like Jews in Europe – that is, singled out for discrimination, abuse and insults.
The near simultaneity of Shapiro’s slander and the EU’s latest discriminatory steps against Israel tells the Palestinians that they should keep up their attacks. Israel will be hard pressed to launch an effective counterattack with the Americans and Europeans breathing down its neck demanding concessions.
The message these statements communicate to Israel is actually worse than that. The simultaneity of these remarks was not coincidental.
Neither was State Department spokesman James Kirby’s condemnation of Israel’s lawful land policies in the Jordan Valley, which was followed immediately by a similar condemnation by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and a call by the PA for a UN Security Council resolution against Israel. Taken together they show that we are in the midst of a coordinated US-led political offensive against Israel.
How is Israel supposed to defend itself against this coordinated terrorist-diplomatic onslaught? How can Israel keep the Americans and Europeans at bay and deter the Palestinians from murdering its citizens? Beyond the counterterror measures that are already being carried out, Israel needs to act on three levels.
On the diplomatic front, the government needs to change the focus of its public diplomacy.
The government currently accepts the false claim that the Palestinian terrorist onslaught is being carried out by lone wolves. Its public diplomacy is limited as a consequence to condemning official Palestinian Authority incitement.
This line is wrong and counterproductive.
It lends credence to the false conclusion that the assault is limited and can therefore be overlooked by Westerners eager to attack Israel.
In their public pronouncements, our officials should direct their remarks against Palestinian society as a whole. So too the government should attack the radical Left in Israel and in the West that supports a society that seeks to annihilate Israel, applauds barbarism and kills anyone who wishes to live at peace with Israel.
Wednesday, a storm erupted in England following The Sun’s publication of the findings of an undercover investigation of so-called human rights groups broadcast on Channel 2’s investigative news magazine two weeks ago. That investigation showed senior “human rights” activists Ezra Nawi from Ta’ayush and Nasser Nawaja from B’Tselem plotting to turn over to the Palestinian security forces a Palestinian who wished to sell land to Jews. Nawajah and Nawi acted with the full knowledge that he would be tortured and killed. In a heated debate in the British Parliament, lawmakers demanded to know why the government was funding B’Tselem with taxpayer funds. In other words, the lawmakers showed that a policy of exposing the barbarism of Palestinian society and the fanaticism of its Western supporters is effective.
The second area where the government must act is in its settlement policies. Although it will be difficult for Israel to face down the Obama administration and respect Jewish property rights in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem in the coming year, nothing is stopping it from destroying illegal EU-financed Palestinian construction in Area C.
The government should act forcefully to remove all of the EU-constructed illegal Palestinian settlements in Area C of Judea and Samaria. The place the government should begin demolition is at the illegal Palestinian settlement outside the national heritage site of Sussiya, just kilometers from where Dafna Meir was murdered. The dual purpose of that specific EU-financed illegal building project is to threaten the Israeli communities of Sussiya and Mitzpe Yair and to deny the historic significance of the ancient Jewish city of Sussiya.
Destroying the squatter community will send a potent message to the Palestinians and their Western abettors.
At the same time, the government should speed up the pace of building new Israeli communities across the armistice line from Sussiya in the northern Negev around Arad in state lands being threatened by the EU-supported Beduin who are working in coordination with the Palestinian squatters in the South Hebron Hills.
The final thing that Israel needs to do in the face of the Palestinian terrorism supported by Western political warfare is to rub the EU bureaucrats’ faces in the fact that Israel is succeeding where their governments are failing. It isn’t enough for Israel to call for the Jews of France and the rest of Western Europe to make aliya. Over the past two years, aliya from Western Europe has reached all-time highs. As the governments that single out the Jewish state for abuse prove on a daily basis that they cannot protect their Jewish citizens, more and more European Jews are heeding the call and moving to Israel.
But over the past several months, it has become apparent that for all our goodwill, Israel has not figured out how to absorb its newest citizens. Dentists, pharmacists and other professionals are chewed up and spit out by a bureaucracy of professional guilds whose protectionist licensing requirements are convincing many people to turn around and go back to Europe. The government must make it an urgent priority to break the guilds. It is far more important to enable Jewish professionals from France to work in their fields in Israel than to protect the antiquated licensing requirements of hidebound professional cliques.
Israel is under a coordinated assault by the Palestinians who hate us and the Europeans and Americans who are hostile to us.
Our options for dealing with this assault are not optimal. But they are formidable. If we make judicious use of them, we can flummox the White House and the EU, and at a minimum, we can begin to prove to the Palestinians that their faith in terrorism is no longer justified.
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