Anger may cloud the mind but hate conquers
everything.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
If it comes from Harvard even our Left Wing media and press might not be able to duck but, rest assured, most of those who drink Liberal Kool Aid and believe all conspiracies come from the Right will. (See 1 below.)
===
Sowell on the war on police. (See 2 below.)
Dennis Prager on The New York Times. (See 2a below.)
If black lives matter then where are the black fathers? (See 2be below.)
Obama's lies prevail regarding the Iran Deal which Iran has consistently violated according to Bret Stephens. (See 3 below.)
Our crooked State Department erases history. (See 3a below.)
Israel's Ambassador discusses the future relationship between our two countries. Ron is one of the closest friends of my cousin who is soon to come to Los Angeles as Israel's Consul Genera;. (See 3b below.)
===
Now let's hear from the king of lies.
You would think Americans, with any sense of decency and objectivity, would tire of observing Obama appear at tragedies to renounce that which he helped cause. Today Obama appears in Dallas to heal a city which is in mourning over events because of his attitude and public incitements towards our police and we are supposed to hang on his every word hoping he will say something akin to throwing oil on the troubled waters and healing.
How many more disasters can this man help cause and then preside over as a healer before he leaves office in the next 6 months? (See 4 and 4a below.)
For 7 1/2 years this president offered solutions for our health care issues, for the discord between Israel and the Palestinians, for disputes between Russia and America, for racial animosity between blacks and whites, for the economy, for employment , for our energy independence and for shovel ready infrastructure among others. In virtually every case whatever path Obama chose he left us either lost or bleeding. Name me one thing he resolved and please don't suggest it is Syria and/or Libya, illegal immigration and American unity, how to live within a budget or honesty and effectiveness in government.
Every day that passes Obama sinks lower and lower taking our nation with him. If he were a nurse I would not trust him to apply a band aid.
I did not hear Loretta Lynch's testimony today but everything I heard about it suggests she stonewalled Congress and the American people so she could cover for Clinton. (See 5 below.)
===
Dick
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1)
By Jonathan TobinHarvard Study Debunks Shooting Myth
What if the popular narrative about police racism that’s being pushed by Black Lives Matters and others in the wake of last week’s fatal shootings is based on unfounded assumptions? That’s the question we are forced to confront today after the publication of a new study conducted by Harvard University’s Rolando G. Fryer Jr. that shows there is no evidence that blacks are more likely than whites to be shot by cops.
Fryer, an African-American economics professor, characterized the results as “the most surprising result of my career.” While FBI director James Comey is quoted in a New York Times Upshot piece about the study saying that reliable statistics about interactions between African-Americans and police have been lacking, Fryer’s effort — which was published under the rubric of the National Bureau of Economic Research — seems to fill in the gap. As the Times notes, Fryer began this effort because of his anger about the controversial shootings in Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore that put the wind in Black Lives Matters’ sails. But what he discovered doesn’t back up the notion that trigger-happy white cops have declared open season on blacks.
Fryer studied more than 1,332 police shootings involving ten major American police departments in Texas, Florida, and California between 2000 and 2015. While he found that blacks were more likely to be touched or handcuffed by police during the course of investigations or confrontations, they were not more likely to be shot. To the contrary:In officer-involved shootings in these 10 cities, officers were more likely to fire their weapons without having first been attacked when the suspects were white. Black and white civilians involved in police shootings were equally likely to have been carrying a weapon. Both of these results undercut the idea that the police wield lethal force with racial bias.However, that left the researchers asking whether the police were more likely to fire if the suspect was black. Fryer and his team found that the answer to that question was no. In Houston, the city he spent the most effort studying, he found that blacks were 20 percent less likely to be shot by cops than whites.
Just as interesting is the fact that, again contrary to everyone’s assumptions, the ability of citizens to record encounters with police on their cell phones and post them to social media had no impact on the number of shootings reported. The racial breakdown in the shootings was no different in the era of Facebook videos than it was before then.
These results don’t mean that there are no rogue shooters wearing police uniforms or that racism must be dismissed as an issue not worth addressing. The disproportionate amount of crime that takes place in black neighborhoods can explain some statistics but not all of them. But the study does show that the blithe assumption that cops with impunity are massacring blacks has no connection to reality. Whatever problems that we must still address in a nation where racism has been an integral part of our history, the narrative about police racism that has been promoted by Black Lives Matter and racial hucksters like Al Sharpton and legitimized by the Obama administration is basically false.
Each individual instance in which a police officer has killed a black person deserves tough scrutiny, And shooters should be held accountable if their actions are judged to be unlawful. Nor should we dismiss out of hand worries that police continue to stop blacks for questioning far more often than they stop whites. The higher rates at which cops touch and handcuff blacks may be related to the much higher crime rates in black neighborhoods, but that still doesn’t excuse the statistics.Yet on the main issue of police shooting, the one that has dominated our discussing of late, Fryer found that not only are blacks not more likely to be shot; such shootings are extremely rare altogether.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++How, then, is it that Americans have been persuaded to believe something that just isn’t true?The answer is simple. The notion that blacks are at risk from police fits in nicely with liberal myths about law enforcement and a general refusal to admit that the America of 2016 is a different country than the place that existed a half century earlier, when Jim Crow Laws were still being erased by the newly successful Civil Rights movement. It is that lie that has kept a group like Black Lives Matter going with its destructive agenda that has led to anti-police violence and caused law enforcement to back down in many black neighborhoods, something that is actually costing African-Americans their lives.
2)
The War on Cops
By Tom Sowell
Nor is this war against the police confined to Dallas. It is occurring across the country. Who is to blame?
There is a ton of blame, more than enough to go around to the wide range of people and institutions that have contributed to these disasters. In addition to the murderers who have killed people they don't even know, there are those who created the atmosphere of blind hatred in which such killers flourish.
Chief among those who generate this poisonous atmosphere are career race hustlers like Al Sharpton and racist institutions like the "Black Lives Matter" movement. All such demagogues need is a situation where there has been a confrontation where someone was white and someone else was black. The facts don't matter to them.
The same is true of the more upscale, genteel and sophisticated race panderers, including the President of the United States. During his first year in the White House, Barack Obama chastised a white policeman over his handling of an incident with a black professor at Harvard -- after admitting that he didn't know the specific facts.
Nor did he know the specifics when he publicly announced that, if he had a son, that son would look like Trayvon Martin. Are we to decide who is right and who is wrong on the basis of skin color? There was a long history of that in the days of the old Jim Crow South. Are we fighting against racism today or do we just want to put it under new management?
No one should imagine that any of this is helping the black community. The surge in murder rates across the country, in the wake of the anarchy unleashed after the Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore riots, has taken a wholly disproportionate number of black lives.
But, to the race hustlers, black lives don't really matter nearly as much as their chance to get publicity, power, money, votes or whatever else serves their own interests
The mainstream media play a large, and largely irresponsible, role in the creation and maintenance of a poisonous racial atmosphere that has claimed the lives of policemen around the country.
That same poisoned atmosphere has claimed the lives of even more blacks, who have been victims of violence by thugs and criminals who have had fewer restrictions as the police have pulled back, or have been pulled back, under political pressure.
The media provide the publicity on which career race hustlers thrive. It is a symbiotic relationship, in which turmoil in the streets gives the media something exciting to attract viewers. In return, the media give those behind this turmoil millions of dollars' worth of free publicity to spread their poison.
It is certainly news when there is turmoil in the streets. But that is very different from saying that giving one-sided presentations at length of the claims of those who promote this turmoil makes sense.
The media have also actively promoted the anti-police propaganda by the way they present the news. This goes all the way back to the Rodney King riots of 1992. Television stations all across the country repeatedly played a selectively edited fraction of a videotape covering the encounter between the police and Rodney King, who had been stopped after a wild, high-speed chase.
The great majority of that video never saw the light of day on the TV networks that incessantly played the selectively edited fraction.
When the police were charged with excessive violence in overcoming Rodney King's resistance to arrest, the jury saw the whole video -- and refused to convict the policemen. That is when people who had seen only what the media showed them rioted after the jury verdict.
Today, the media keep repeating the mantra that there was a "peaceful demonstration," even when it ends in violence. How many people have to die in "peaceful demonstrations" before the media admit that those who promote mob disruptions have to know what is likely to happen when you put mobs in the streets at night?
Mob rule is not democracy. It threatens democracy, as it threatens lives -- black or white -- and all lives should matter.
2a)
The New York Times and the Left Have Blood on Their Hands
By Dennis Prager
It was very appropriate that on Friday, the day after the massacre of five Dallas police officers, The New York Times devoted nearly the whole top half of its front page to four enormous photos of the death of Philando Castile, a black motorist killed by a Minnesota police officer.
Of course, the paper was printed prior to the Dallas murders; and even The New York Times might not have so prominently featured the Minnesota killing on its front page had the Dallas murders occurred a few hours earlier.
Nevertheless, it was completely appropriate. The New York Times has been in the forefront of the left's hysterical, hate-filled attacks on police officers and whites.
Also appropriately, on the day of the Dallas murders, the Times published two white-hating, police-hating pieces.
One was by Michael Eric Dyson, a radical black professor of sociology at Georgetown University.
The Dyson column is nothing more than a racist hit piece on "white America."
An example:
"At birth, (whites) are given a pair of binoculars ... Those binoculars are privilege; they are status, regardless of your class. In fact the greatest privilege that exists is for white folk to get stopped by a cop and not end up dead when the encounter is over."
Dyson wrote these words based on the police killings of two blacks last week, about which he knows nothing except the narrative of the (left-wing) media and what he has seen on some grainy phone videos.
And not once does Professor Dyson mention that the Minnesota police officer was Latino. Why would he? That would suggest that Latinos, too, are given racist binoculars at birth. But Dyson would never say so, because it is white America he loathes.
Nor does he note, or perhaps even know -- because of his left-wing binoculars -- facts such as these:
In 2015, of the 990 people shot dead by police, 93 were unarmed and 38 of them were black. Of the 505 people shot dead by police thus far in 2016, 37 were unarmed and of them 13 were black. Given that blacks murder and rob more than whites -- they committed 62 percent of robberies, 57 percent of murders and 45 percent of assaults in the 75 biggest counties in the country in 2009 (despite comprising about 15 percent of the population in these counties) -- an unarmed black is less likely to be killed by police than an unarmed white.
Does Dyson, a professor of sociology, not know these statistics? Does he not know that, statistically, whites have more reason to fear being murdered by a black than vice versa? If he doesn't, he shouldn't be teaching sociology. If he does, students should be aware that he is a left-wing, black nationalist propagandist, not a teacher.
The same day the Times published Dyson's piece, it published a second anti-white, anti-cop, hate-America piece by the mother of Michael Brown, the young black man killed in Ferguson, Missouri. That black grand jurors and even Obama's Department of Justice found the policeman who killed Brown was acting in self-defense after being attacked and thus justified him in doing so means nothing to The New York Times. So it published the grieving mother's anti-cop hate.
The blacks and whites of the left have led much of America, especially black America, to believe that cops are generally racist, that there is "systemic" racism and that whites are privileged and racist. It's all a lie that has had -- and will continue to have -- murderous consequences.
America has become the least racist multiracial, multiethnic country in world history. This drives the America-hating left crazy. That's why leftists manufacture fantasies like "microaggressions" -- non-racist statements that the left labels racist, foolishness like "white privilege" and the dangerous rhetoric of "Blacks Lives Matter."
Just yesterday The New York Times published the results of a study conducted by a black Harvard professor of economics that shows that "when it comes to the most lethal form of force -- police shootings -- the study finds no racial bias."
"It is the most surprising result of my career," said Roland G. Fryer Jr., the author of the study.
One assumes that this Harvard professor has never read Heather Mac Donald or any other conservatives who have been writing this for years.
The New York Times -- as the flagship publication of the left -- and the rest of the left have the blood of police on their hands. And not just cops' blood -- the blood of the blacks murdered because of police reticence to vigorously patrol black areas. What is known as the "Ferguson effect" was created entirely by the left.
2b)
Obama, the divider-in-chief: Intemperate remarks stoke racial divide
By Ron Hart
In spite of all the facts, the media are again taking a hit off the bong of the Black Lives Matters lies in pursuit of their political agenda – and higher ratings.
In the wake of Ferguson, the left seems to wonder what sort of country we live in. Michael Brown, who had just committed a strong-armed robbery and assaulted a store owner, then threatened the policeman arresting him and, with drugs in his system, tried to take the officer’s gun during the arrest – and it was the police’s fault he got shot?
The very event that launched the Black Lives Matter movement, “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot,” turned out to be a lie.
Obama has fueled the racial divide he was so well positioned to extinguish. He has stoked the fires of misplaced anger among African Americans by speaking out prematurely in every case involving race – and has been proven wrong. When he said “The Cambridge Police acted stupidly” in the Professor Gates case, it turned out he was wrong. Ditto for the cases of Trayvon Martin and Ferguson, Missouri’s Michael Brown. Now the courts in Baltimore have vindicated those police officers so far tried in the Freddy Gray case.
This contrived “police war on black males” is a demonstrable lie. Even a black Harvard professor concluded there is no bias in police shootings.
In her new book, “The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe,” Heather MacDonald cites simple FBI crime statistics which disprove the lie on which Black Lives Matter is based. First, black and Hispanic cops are far more likely (3.3 times) than a white cop to shoot an unarmed black suspect. While they are only 6 percent of the population, black males make up 40 percent of all cop killers. Thus, she determines that a police officer is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is likely to be killed by a cop.
One other inconvenient truth in the stats: 6,000 blacks died of homicide last year, 93 percent of whom were killed by another black person. Blacks commit homicide at a rate eight times higher than whites and Hispanics combined. Blacks are 13 percent of the population, but commit 52 percent of all murders. This puts them into more tense and regular contact with police; it is understandable why occasionally there are problematic shootings.
To save innocent black lives, police have to aggressively patrol problem neighborhoods. Blaming the police, instead of condemning criminals, has led us to what is being called the “Ferguson Effect.” Police officers daily risk their lives in crime-ridden neighborhoods, only to be vilified and second-guessed, so they naturally slow their efforts. The result: crime is up 17 percent in major cities.
Another Ferguson effect is that property values are down 30 percent; not only has crime increased, but businesses have left. The St. Louis Rams fled to Los Angeles.
The decline of dysfunctional cities like Ferguson, Mo.; Baltimore; Chicago and Flint, Mich. has accelerated under Obama. These cities have in common longtime, socialist/liberal, Democratic rule; inept and race-obsessed government; teachers’ unions whose members get paid more for poorer student outcomes; and high local taxes that run businesses out of town.
Obama has turned our Midwest into the Middle East, with gun violence climbing in places like Chicago. He blames Republicans, not the thugs and gang-bangers shooting each other in the streets of these “gun free zones” he so loves. Chicago is now saying it will be a sanctuary city for Syrian refugees. Haven’t those people suffered enough?
Mindless celebs feel the need to support the lie that is BLM. Kanye West, Quentin Tarantino and Samuel L. Jackson are big supporters. So if thieves break into their gated L.A. homes, they should be provided a police escort to the pawn shop.
Obama praised BLM leaders when he invited them to the White House. Hillary Clinton, afraid she will not own the blind loyalty of black voters like Obama did, tweeted a “BlackLivesMatter” hashtag the day before Dallas. Afterward, she lectured white Americans on race. Then, out of habit, she asked for $300,000, her normal fee for lecturing a big audience of white folks.
The admirable police chief of Dallas, David Brown, summed it up for these misinformed protesters: “If you really want to do something to make things better, we are hiring.”
Ron Hart is a libertarian op-ed humorist and award-winning author, Ron is a frequent guest on CNN. He can be contacted at Ron@RonaldHart.com or @RonaldHart on Twitter.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++3)Truth Catches the Iran Deal
Obama trumpets an agreement that Tehran violates at every turn.
By BRET STEPHENS
What diplomats call the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—known to the rest of us as the Disastrous Iran Deal—was agreed in Vienna a year ago this week. Now comes a status update, courtesy of our friends at the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, or BfV.
In its fascinating 2015 annual report, published late last month, the German domestic intelligence service reports a “particularly strong increase” in the number of Salafists, describes the reach of Russian and Chinese espionage efforts in Germany, and notes a growing number of right-wing extremists.
Then there’s this:
“The illegal proliferation-sensitive procurement activities [by Iran] in Germany registered by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution persisted in 2015 at what is, even by international standards, a quantitatively high level. This holds true in particular with regard to items which can be used in the field of nuclear technology.”
The report also notes “a further increase in the already considerable procurement efforts in connection with Iran’s ambitious missile technology program which could among other things potentially serve to deliver nuclear weapons. Against this backdrop it is safe to expect that Iran will continue its intensive procurement activities in Germany using clandestine methods to achieve its objectives.”
The BfV report arrived days before Germany arrested a Pakistani national, identified as Syed Mustufa H., accused of spying for Iran. It also corroborates another German intelligence report, this one from the intelligence service of North Rhine-Westphalia, that Iran’s nuclear procurement efforts have increased dramatically in recent years, from 48 known attempts in 2010 to 141 in 2015. Seven other German states have reported similar Iranian procurement efforts. This violates Iran’s explicit commitment to go through an official “procurement channel” to purchase nuclear- and missile-related materials.
All this was enough to prompt Angela Merkel to warn the Bundestag last week that Iran “continued to develop its rocket program in conflict with relevant provisions of the U.N. Security Council.” Don’t expect German sanctions, but at least the chancellor is living in the reality zone.
As for the Obama administration, not so much. For the past year it has developed a narrative—spoon-fed to the reporters and editorial writers Ben Rhodes publicly mocks as dopes and dupes—that Iran has met all its obligations under the deal, and now deserves extra cookies in the form of access to U.S. dollars, Boeing jets, U.S. purchases of Iranian heavy water (thereby subsidizing its nuclear program), and other concessions the administration last year promised Congress it would never grant.
“We still have sanctions on Iran for its violations of human rights, for its support for terrorism, and for its ballistic-missile program, and we will continue to enforce those sanctions vigorously,” Mr. Obama said in January. Whatever.
The administration is now weighing whether to support Iran’s membership in the World Trade Organization. That would neutralize a future president’s ability to impose sanctions on Iran, since WTO rules would allow Tehran to sue Washington for interfering with trade. The administration has also pushed the Financial Action Task Force, an international body that enforces anti-money-laundering standards, to ease pressure on Iran, which FATF did last month by suspending some restrictions for the next year.
And then there’s the Boeing deal to sell $17.6 billion worth of jets to Iran, which congressional Republicans led by Illinois’s Pete Roskam are trying to stop. Iran uses its civilian fleet to ferry weapons and fighters to its terrorist clients in Syria and Lebanon.
“The administration is trying to lock in the Iran deal and prevent a future president from doing anything, including pushing back on Iran’s malign behavior,” says the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Mark Dubowitz, who knows more about Iran sanctions than anyone in Washington. “Instead of curbing Iran’s worst behavior, the administration effectively facilitates it.”
One last detail: In June, the Journal’s Jay Solomon reported that the International Atomic Energy Agency had discovered “traces of man-made uranium” at Iran’s military facility at Parchin. The agency reported this finding in a footnote to a report in December, but the administration made no comment then and now dismisses it as old news. The IAEA is no longer allowed to inspect Parchin, or any other military installation, under the deal.
So let’s recap. Mr. Obama says Iran is honoring the nuclear deal, but German intelligence tells us Tehran is violating it more aggressively than ever. He promised “snapback” sanctions in the event of such violations, but the U.S. is operating as Iran’s trade-promotion agent. He promised “unprecedented” inspections, but we’re not permitted to inspect sites where uranium was found. He promised an eight-year ban on Iran’s testing of ballistic missiles, but Tehran violated that ban immediately and repeatedly with only mild pushback from the West. He promised that the nuclear deal was not about “normalizing” relations with a rogue regime. But he wants it in the WTO.
Is Mr. Obama rationalizing a failed agreement or did he mean to mislead the American public? Either way, truth is catching up with the Iran deal.
3a)State Department Purged Emails About Secret Anti-Netanyahu Campaign
3a)State Department Purged Emails About Secret Anti-Netanyahu Campaign
Key emails deleted despite requirement to archive
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu / AP
A State Department official deleted emails that included information about a secret campaign to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the country’s last election, according to a Senate investigatory committee that determined the Obama administration transferred tax funds to anti-Netanyahu groups.
The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations disclosed in a massive report on Tuesday that the Obama administration provided U.S. taxpayer dollars to the OneVoice Movement, a liberal group that waged a clandestine campaign to smear and oust Netanyahu from office.
OneVoice, which was awarded $465,000 in U.S. grants through 2014, has been under congressional investigation since 2015, when it was first accused of funneling money to partisan political groups looking to unseat Netanyahu. This type of behavior by non-profit groups is prohibited under U.S. tax law.
The investigation determined that OneVoice redirected State Department funds to anti-Netanyahu efforts and that U.S. officials subsequently erased emails containing information about the administration’s relationship with the non-profit group.
The disclosure comes amid a massive effort by Congress to reform the State Department’s email practices in light of former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential frontrunner’s Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified materials.
The Washington Free Beacon revealed early Tuesday that new legislation would ban all State Department officials from using private email accounts and servers, as well as mandate annual reports about the leak of classified information.
A senior State Department official admitted to congressional investigators that he deleted several emails pertaining to the administration’s coordination with OneVoice.
“The State Department was unable to produce all documents responsive to the Subcommittee’s requests due to its failure to retain complete email records of Michael Ratney, who served as U.S. Consul General in Jerusalem during the award and oversight of the OneVoice grants,” the report states.
Investigators “discovered this retention problem because one important email exchange between OneVoice and Mr. Ratney … was produced to the Subcommittee only by OneVoice,” the report continues. “After conducting additional searches, the Department informed the Subcommittee that it was unable to locate any responsive emails from Mr. Ratney’s inbox or sent mail.”
Ratney was ultimately forced to tell investigators that “[a]t times I deleted emails with attachments I didn’t need in order to maintain my inbox under the storage limit.”
While Ratney had the option to archive emails—as required by the department—he did not do this. Ratney claimed he was not aware of the rule, stating he “did not know [he] was required to archive routine emails.”
The deletion of the email chains appears to be a violation of the Federal Records Act, which mandates official records be archived for future disclosure purposes.
One source with intimate knowledge of the situation told the Free Beacon that the deletion of these emails is highly suspicious given the seriousness of the claims about the administration’s behavior.
“The Obama administration had the money, skills, and personnel to build a gigantic campaign infrastructure that was used to try to defeat the prime minister of an ally,” the source said. “But apparently they didn’t have what they needed to store the emails in which they did all of those things. That’s certainly a lucky break for the State Department.”
State Department officials did not immediately respond to a request for further information about the investigation and the deletion of emails.
3b)
ISRAEL-US TIES ARE GOING TO GET STRONGER
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Tonight, I would like to talk to you about the alliance between Israel and America – an alliance that is without question the single most important relationship Israel has in the world.
It is the most important relationship but certainly not the only one. Today, Israel has relations with over 160 countries. Despite the effort by some to paint Israel as facing unprecedented international isolation, it is perhaps more accurate to say that by most metrics Israel is less isolated today than at any time in its history.
The Prime Minister is wrapping up an historic five-day visit to Africa. His visit is part of the broader effort he has led over the past seven years to expand Israel’s relations with countries across the world. That effort, which has gone largely unnoticed, has resulted in significant improvements in ties with powerful countries like China, India, Japan and Russia, as well as dozens of smaller countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe who see Israel as a great partner for developing their own countries.
Israel has also dramatically upgraded its relations with our Mediterranean neighbors — Greece and Cyprus — and after many years of negotiations, we have now completed the agreement to normalize our relations with Turkey. I should note that even as diplomatic, military, and intelligence ties with Turkey were largely severed over the last six years, trade between Israel and Turkey actually doubled over that same period. In the Middle East, our relations with Egypt and Jordan are better than ever, as are our ties with many countries in the region with which we do not have formal diplomatic relations.
The fact that you don’t read or hear about that every day is not because things aren’t happening. It’s because Israel wants things to continue to happen.
And despite the differences of opinion that we have with some Western European countries — particularly on the Palestinian issue — we have also worked over the past few years to strengthen our relationships with these same countries by increasing intelligence sharing, expanding trade and economic ties, enhancing scientific and academic cooperation and in many other ways.
The two-way street of Israel-US ties
Yet notwithstanding all these developments, there is still only one indispensable relationship for Israel – our alliance with the United States. That the United States is Israel’s most important ally should be obvious to everyone.
For decades, the United States has helped Israel shoulder our enormous defense burden with generous military assistance – something that we hope will continue under a new 10-year Memorandum of Understanding that we are working to finalize with the Obama Administration. In recent years, America has also enabled Israel to fund and develop one of the world’s finest missile defense systems – which includes the Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Arrow missile systems. Israel hopes to include this funding in the new Memorandum Of Understanding for the first time. And crucially, as a matter of both law and policy, the United States is committed to maintaining Israel’s qualitative military edge so that Israel can defend itself by itself against any threat.
Alongside strengthening Israel’s security, the United States has also extended critical diplomatic and economic support to Israel — by vetoing anti-Israel resolutions in the UN Security Council, by signing America’s first-ever free trade agreement with Israel over 30 years ago, and by providing essential loan guarantees to Israel during times of economic crisis.
In fact, if I were to list everything that America has done for Israel, I would be here all night.
But what is often forgotten about the US-Israel alliance is that it is not a one-way street. To understand what Israel means to America, I could talk about the Israeli technology and know-how that improves American lives, the Israeli science and medicine that prolongs American lives, or the Israeli intelligence and security cooperation that saves American lives. But a better way to appreciate what Israel means to America is to simply imagine a Middle East without Israel.
Imagine if the United States did not have in this region an anchor of democracy, an island of unabashed pro-American sentiment, an ally with soldiers willing and capable of defending the interests and values that both countries share. Now imagine a Middle East with three Israels. Imagine two more countries that shared American interests and values in the unstable swathe of territory that stretches from Morocco to Pakistan. What a profound difference that would mean for America! What a profound difference that would mean for the peace and security of the region and the world!
So while there is absolutely no question that Israel benefits immensely from having such a broad and deep alliance with the most powerful country on earth, there is also no question that America also benefits a great deal from its alliance with Israel. American leaders have understood as much for many decades. Thirty-five years ago, former American Secretary of State Alexander Haig said that “Israel is the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk, does not carry even one American soldier and is located in a critical region for American national security.” Vice President Biden expresses a similar sentiment when he often says that if Israel didn’t exist, America would have to invent it.
The long history of US-Israel contention
The long history of US-Israel contention
Ladies and Gentlemen, in addition to not appreciating the strategic benefits Israel provides to America, what is also often rarely appreciated is that Israel and the United States did not always have the strategic alliance we have today.
Most people know that after David Ben Gurion declared our independence, it took President Truman all of 11 minutes to make the United States the first country to formally recognize Israel. But while some think this recognition was the beginning of the strategic alliance between our two countries, it wasn’t. Truman’s decision was an historic act of moral clarity. But it came at a time when an American arms embargo was being imposed on a fledgling Jewish state fighting for its life against five invading Arab armies.
Remember, in 1948, Israel fought its War of Independence with Czech rifles. Two decades later, Israel flew French fighter planes during the Six Day War.
The truth is that the strategic alliance between our two countries began to be forged only after Israel proved its prowess and resiliency on the battlefield. Only then did American policymakers begin to appreciate that Israel was not merely a moral cause but also a strategic asset. What had started out as a moral imperative of some to help the Jewish people overcome the horrors of the past soon turned into an effort by many to strengthen a reliable ally that could help America address both present and future challenges in the Middle East. That was true for the last two decades of the Cold War and that has been true since the rise of militant Islam as a force in the region and the world, particularly since 9/11.
Now, some of you may be saying to yourselves that that is all well and good but that this sentiment is a product of the past. Today, some will argue, Israel and the United States have serious disagreements on important issues that will ultimately fray our strategic alliance. History suggests otherwise. The truth is that the alliance between America and Israel grew from a moral commitment to a strategic partnership despite having to weather many serious disagreements along the way, even on vital issues.
In 1948, then Secretary of State George Marshall warned the soon to be Israeli government not to declare its independence.
In 1967, as Nasser was tightening the noose around Israel’s neck, President Johnson made clear to Israel that if it acted alone, it would be alone.
In 1981, after Israel bombed the Osirak nuclear reactor, the Reagan administration joined in condemning Israel at the UN Security Council and held up arms transfers to Israel for three months.
In 2002, after Israel responded to the worst terror campaign in its history by launching Operation Defensive Shield, the Bush administration insisted that Israel withdraw its forces immediately from all Palestinian areas.
These are only a few of the many instances when there was serious turbulence in the US-Israel relationship. But despite these bumps, the alliance between America and Israel grew stronger and our friendship grew deeper, decade after decade. And I believe our alliance will continue to grow stronger and deeper in the years ahead despite the serious disagreement Israel has with the Obama administration over the best way to prevent a nuclear armed Iran.
Diverging on Iran
I don’t want to spend too much time rehashing the debate over the nuclear deal with Iran. But the differences remain clear. The Obama administration sincerely believes the nuclear deal with Iran makes America and Israel safer. Israel disagrees. The Obama administration believes that this deal blocks Iran’s path to the bomb. Israel believes that the deal ultimately paves Iran’s path to the bomb.
The best that can honestly be said about this deal is that it may temporarily block that path. Yet the price for that temporary delay is not only removing the tough sanctions that were crippling the economy of the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. The even heavier price is that in 10 to 15 years, Iran will have a fully legitimate industrial-sized nuclear enrichment program, as the restrictions placed on Iran’s nuclear program are automatically removed. Those two words – “automatically removed” – are at the heart of Israel’s opposition to the deal.
All the restrictions the deal puts in place will be automatically removed even if Iran’s regime continues its aggression against its neighbors, continues its support for terror across the world and continues its commitment in both word and deed to annihilate Israel. No amount of spin can change the fact that in 15 years, Iran will be able to spin as much uranium as it wants without consequence. And as the Prime Minister said last year in his speech to Congress, 15 years may seem like a long time in politics, but it is a blink of an eye in the life of a nation.
Partners in security and tech innovation
Still, despite the profound disagreement between Israel and the Obama administration on such a vital issue — as well as ongoing disagreements on the best way to advance peace with the Palestinians — I am confident that the alliance between America and Israel will continue to grow stronger in the years ahead. First, because the most dangerous security challenges facing the United States will continue to emanate from the Middle East for a long time to come. Some in the United States hope that America can pivot away from the Middle East. But for the foreseeable future, I don’t think the Middle East is going to pivot away from America. In the coming years, Israel’s importance to America as a reliable ally and a formidable military power in a very dangerous region is likely to become more critical not less critical for protecting America’s security interests. In fact, the fewer troops America has on the ground in the Middle East, the more important having a reliable Israeli ally becomes.
Second, the 21st century is a century of knowledge, in which prosperity in the developed world will be driven primarily by a country’s ability to innovate. There are two great centers of innovation in the world today. One is in Silicon Valley. The second is here in Israel. In the coming years and decades, Israel’s value as a leader in technology — in medicine, science, agriculture, water and cyber — will continue to cement our relations with countries around the world, including America.
The statistic that I think most powerfully illustrates Israel’s disproportionate value as an ally in technology is what is happening in cyber. In 2014, Israel accounted for over 10% of global investments in cybersecurity. Think about that. Israel is 1/10th of 1% of the world’s population. But in cyber, Israel in 2014 was punching 100 times above its weight. That sounds impressive. But in 2015, that number jumped to 20%. That means Israel is punching 200 times above its weight. So in cyber, do not think of Israel as a small country of 8.5 million people. In cyber, Israel is a China.
And as the United States looks at the top cyber powers, the only one that is a potential ally is Israel.
While most people seem to appreciate the hasbara value of Israel being branded the start-up nation, fewer seem to fully appreciate the strategic significance of the technology ecosystem that has been created in Israel. America’s leading technology companies — the Intels, Microsofts, Apples, Googles and dozens of others — are not in Israel because they are Zionists. They are here because they want to tap into our remarkable culture of innovation and position themselves to continue to lead the world into the next century. That is why the BDS movement will ultimately fail, and that is also one of the reasons why Israel’s alliance with America will continue to grow stronger.
In fact, I believe that for these two reasons alone – security and technology – Israel is likely to be America’s most important ally in the 21st century. I know that’s a strong statement. But if an Israeli Ambassador would have stood here thirty years ago and said that Israel would become a global technological power, it would have sounded no less far-fetched. But that happened. And if that same Ambassador would have also told you that Israel would one day be selling gas to its neighbors that would have sounded downright crazy. But that’s going to happen as well.
In fact, the significant energy resources we have discovered — and may yet discover — will not only enhance Israel’s strategic position in the region, it will affect our relationship with the United States as well by turning Israel into an even more powerful ally.
An alliance of shared values
Beyond security and technology, my confidence in the future of the US-Israel alliance also comes from my appreciation that our alliance is rooted in things that run much deeper. It is rooted in our most cherished values and in a shared sense of destiny. The idea that all are created equal in the image of God, that no one is above the law, that compassion for the most vulnerable is a sacred obligation — ideas which have been a moral compass for generations of Americans — were ideas first championed thousands of years ago by the prophets of the Jewish people and which today are fused into the national identity of the Jewish state.
As so much of the Middle East continues its descent into chaos and barbarism, as our values come under further attack in a region where women are treated like chattel, Christians are beheaded en masse, minority populations are decimated, and gays are hanged in town squares, Israel will increasingly stand out as a beacon of humanity and decency. This will inevitably bring America and Israel closer together.
But there is something even beyond interests and values that goes to the very core of the unique alliance between Israel and America. You see, both America and Israel are not merely countries. They are also causes. America has long been what Lincoln called the last best hope on earth — a beacon of opportunity for people across the world, carrying the torch of freedom for all humanity and entrusted by history with securing liberty’s future.
Israel is the hope of the Jewish people, offering opportunity for all its citizens — Jewish and non-Jewish alike — safeguarding freedom in the darkest region on earth and entrusted by history with securing the Jewish future.
These causes imbue each country with a deep sense of purpose – and because these purposes are not at odds with each other but rather compliment and reinforce one another, they also imbue the two countries with a deep sense of solidarity. That is why I believe tens of millions of Americans support Israel in a way they support no other country in the world and why Israelis mourn America’s tragedies and rejoice in America’s triumphs as perhaps no other country in the world does. That is why from New York to California, from Alabama to Montana, Israel resonates with Americans in a way no other country does and why so many Israelis fly American flags on our own Independence Day.
I believe that to truly appreciate the unique alliance between America and Israel, you must appreciate what having such a sense of purpose means to both countries. Those who don’t share this sense of purpose or who are too cynical to even believe in a sense of purpose will never truly appreciate the power of the friendship between America and Israel. But this sense of purpose is bigger than any leader or any issue. It is the DNA of both countries and it lies at the bedrock of our unique alliance.
That is why the real danger to this alliance will not come from disagreements over policy, demographic changes, or the numerous other reasons that are routinely cited as potential signs of trouble. The real danger would be for either America or Israel to lose its sense of purpose, for either country to no longer believe in its own exceptionalism. It would come if those who work day in and day out to tear down that sense of exceptionalism succeed.
I believe they won’t succeed. I believe that the sense of purpose of both countries will continue to remain strong. In fact, it may even get stronger in the face of a fanaticism that is lashing out across the world, from San Bernadino and Orlando to Paris and Brussels to Istanbul, Tel Aviv and Hebron. And with that strong sense of purpose buttressed by common interests and anchored in shared values, I believe that the alliance between Israel and America will become stronger than ever.
Thank you.
Ron Dermer is Israel’s
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By Jonthan B. Tobin
President Obama stated something that was incontrovertibly true on Saturday when he said, “America is not as divided as some have suggested.” He’s right. The awful nature of two police shootings of African-Americans last week followed by the horror of the murder of five police officers in Dallas has left some Americans feeling as if their country is falling apart. The comparison being mooted in many places was to 1968 when race riots and political assassinations seemed to drive the country to the brink of chaos. So President Obama did the right thing when he sought to use the bully pulpit of the presidency to remind us that this perception is highly misleading. As bad as the last week felt—and it felt very bad indeed—there is no comparison to that moment of crisis.
But if many Americans feel as if the nation is heading toward an abyss, it is due in no small measure to the same person who is, belatedly, trying to calm public opinion. Throughout his presidency and in particular during the last two years since the shooting in Ferguson, Missouri in August 2014, he and other administration figures, such as former Attorney General Eric Holder, have worked hard to promote a false narrative of resurgent American racism. If the president is now trying to assert that individual acts of violence, whether an arguably unjustified shooting by a police officer or a mass shooting by a disturbed individual, should not cause us to jump to conclusions about that act representing the intentions of an entire group, then it is he, as much as anyone who has encouraged Americans to think in this manner. Having helped to encourage that fundamental misreading of American society as irremediably racist despite the fact that we twice elected an African-American to the presidency, it is a little too little and far too late for him to be offering wiser counsel.It must be understood that the Black Lives Matter movement, which has done its best to perpetuate the myth that all blacks are in danger from the police everywhere, did not operate in a vacuum. Though their hateful statements were more extreme than anything said by the president or Holder, the administration helped legitimize the now widely held belief that police are an out-of-control force that is over-militarized and inclined to murder minorities with impunity.The closer one looks at many of the individual episodes that form the core of the racism narrative, the harder it is to fit them into a pre-existing context. Some of the iconic incidents that sent people into the streets and provoked outrage from the White House and were held up as “proof” that it is open season on blacks by cops have turned out to undermine the racism narrative. The death that set off this movement—the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri—was judged by legal authorities to be justified.To state this is not to deny that there are instances of police misconduct. Like all governmental agencies and employees, police departments and officers are fallible. But if there is a heightened sense of an adversarial relationship between police and some of the minority communities they serve, it has been exacerbated by forces like Black Lives Matter in an irresponsible manner. They have seized on every tragedy that could be possibly viewed through a racial lens and done their best to use it to promote an inchoate agenda that promoted hatred. Racism is an integral element of the history of this country and should never be ignored or underestimated. It has even reared its ugly head at times during the presidential campaign. But it cannot explain every crime or action taken by the police.If that is what President Obama is trying to tell us now, then that is to his credit. After the latest tragedies, the country desperately needs to be reassured that what unites is far greater than those things that can tear us apart. But even as we look to the president for the sort of uplifting rhetoric that first brought him to national prominence, we can’t ignore the cognitive dissonance at the heart of what he has said.If he’s right that we shouldn’t interpret the Dallas shooting as proof that all those who protest against the police support sympathize with individuals who seek to kill whites and police officers, he should take some responsibility for how the false narrative of racism helped divide us in the first place. Doing so should also serve as a reminder that the primary victims of the war on police have been minority communities where crime rates have gone up in response to the inability of cops to do their jobs.Moreover, though he’s right that we must judge all Americans as individuals and not hold innocents responsible for the crimes of others, his comparison of last week’s violence to shootings by ISIS sympathizers is just as misleading. An armed, concerted international movement that genuinely seeks the destruction of the West–not a generalized perception of racial bias–inspired those attacks. Nor does it help when he responds to these incidents by trotting out his familiar denunciation of guns and promotion of laws that would do nothing to prevent mass shootings. Doing so only feeds the cynicism that continues to eat away at our civic discourse on his watch.Sensible Americans know that it is possible to be as outraged by unjustified police shootings as they are about attacks on police. But they must also acknowledge that those that have done so much to widen a racial divide are responsible for much harm. We need to hear calming rhetoric from the president now. But he has no standing to lecture us without owning up to his part in the mess in which we find ourselves.
4a)
Healing After Dallas, Without Obama
When the president repeatedly assumes the worst about police, he sends a dangerous message.
By Jason Riley
President Obama is scheduled to speak in Dallas Tuesday at a memorial service for the five police officers gunned down last week—but haven’t we already heard enough from him?
Mr. Obama’s initial response to the shootings was more of the same: equivocation mixed with an attempt to change the subject. He said there is no possible justification for violence against law enforcement, but then added a line about racial disparities in the criminal-justice system and finished with a nod to more gun control. “When people are armed with powerful weapons,” said the president, “it unfortunately makes attacks like these more deadly.”
Time and again during his presidency, in matters large and small, Mr. Obama has assumed the worst about police. Officers in Massachusetts, he told us months into his first term, “acted stupidly” when they responded to a 911 call about a possible burglary and arrested the black suspect for disorderly conduct.
After the Baltimore riots last year that followed the death in police custody of Freddie Gray, Mr. Obama once again condemned the lawbreakers, but not without adding: “We have seen too many instances of what appears to be police officers interacting with individuals, primarily African-American, often poor, in ways that raise troubling questions.” That’s trying to have it both ways.The 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown,who attacked a cop after robbing a store inFerguson, Mo., led to a Justice Department report criticizing the racial makeup of Ferguson’s police department and municipal workers, and concluding, without any evidence, that it is “critically important” for law enforcement “to strive for broad diversity among officers and civilian staff.”
Like others on the political left, Mr. Obama has made a habit of minimizing or ignoring the high black crime rates that obviously underlie tensions between poor minority communities and cops. More than 95% of black shooting deaths don’t involve the police, which would seem to undercut the notion that trigger-happy cops are hunting black men. Sadly, rates of murder, rape, robbery, assault and other violent crimes are 7 to 10 times higher among blacks than among whites, but liberals who don’t want to alienate black voters go to great lengths to explain away this behavior and focus instead on police conduct.
Yes, Mr. Obama has denounced what happened in Dallas, but he has also been winking at a Black Lives Matter movement that has spent the past two years holding rallies that call for (and sometimes feature) violence against cops. Like the president, these protesters maintain that the police are motivated by racial prejudice, not by the behavior of suspects. They insist that a biased criminal-justice system explains the black crime rate, not antisocial behavior. By indulging this narrative, Mr. Obama and his fans in the liberal media were playing with fire, and the Dallas carnage was the result.
Just last week, after the police shootings in Louisiana and Minnesota that sparked the Dallas protests, the Washington Post ran a long feature sympathetic to the left’s racist-cops narrative. The story offered a detailed breakdown of police shootings by race, but nowhere did it offer a racial breakdown of criminal behavior. By focusing on one and ignoring the other, the paper showed that it is most interested in pushing a political agenda.
In fact, America’s ghettos had lower levels of black crime and violence in the pre-1960s era, before major civil-rights legislation had even passed and in an era when racial discrimination was legal and more widespread. The racial makeup of the Ferguson police department may not have reflected that of the city, but the same cannot be said of other locales—Chicago, New York, Baltimore—where relations between police and black civilians are also strained despite the presence of black police chiefs, beat cops, prosecutors, judges, mayors and municipal workers. Dallas’s population is about 25% black, as is the police force, yet murders in the city were up by more than 70% in the first part of this year, according to the Dallas Morning News.The Dallas shootings have liberals requesting more national conversations about race. But these calls are mostly disingenuous. What liberals have in mind is more of a lecture, where they do the talking and everyone else nods in agreement. The left wants America to acknowledge that white racism explains black pathology; that the racial makeup of police departments and elected officials is crucial to good relations between law enforcement and black communities; and that reducing gun ownership will reduce gun violence.
And if gun ownership rates drive gun violence, how do you explain the fact that rural areas of the country, where people own firearms at twice the rate of their urban counterparts, are significantly less violent?
Some good may yet come out of this Dallas tragedy if political leaders and the press stop treating Black Lives Matter like it’s the NAACP circa 1955. But don’t count on Mr. Obama to lead that effort.
Mr. Riley, a Manhattan Institute senior fellow and Journal contributor, is the author of “Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed” (Encounter Books, 2014).
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5)
Testifying in front of the House Judiciary Committee Tuesday, Attorney General Loretta Lynch refused to answer questions surrounding the FBI's recommendation not to prosecute presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for using multiple private email servers to host and transmit top secret, classified information during her time as Secretary of State.
5)
Lynch Refuses to Answer Questions About FBI's Failure to Bring Charges Against Hillary Clinton
By Katie Pavlich
Testifying in front of the House Judiciary Committee Tuesday, Attorney General Loretta Lynch refused to answer questions surrounding the FBI's recommendation not to prosecute presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for using multiple private email servers to host and transmit top secret, classified information during her time as Secretary of State.
"As you are aware, last week I met with [FBI] Director Comey and career prosecutors and agents who conducted that investigation. I received and accepted their unanimous recommendation that the thorough, year long investigation be closed and no charges be brought against any individuals within the scope of the investigation," Lynch said in her opening statement.
When pressed by Chairman Bob Goodlatte to explain her decision to accept Comey's recommendation without further analysis, Lynch referred back to Comey. She was also asked whether she believes Clinton's claim, made under oath, that she never sent or received classified information on a private server. The FBI confirmed last week Clinton in fact hosted and transferred hundreds of pieces of classified information on her private servers.
"Director Comey has decided to provide great detail into the basis for his recommendations that were ultimately provided to me. He's chosen to provide detailed statements and I would refer you to those statements. I as Attorney General am not able to provide any further comment on the facts or the substance of the investigation," Lynch said.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz and Goodlatte formally submitted a request to the FBI yesterday for an investigation into whether Clinton committed perjury about her email server during Congressional testimony last fall.
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