+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
If you believe I am going overboard about the fact that the Democrat Party, mass media and their assorted like minded lackeys have lost their connection with reality and that they have literally become unhinged then how do you explain this. (See 1 below.)
I received this from a friend and fellow memo reader in response to a recent comment I made in a memo. I also acknowledge that Democrats do not have a monopoly on nut cases.I do, however, believe their's are more dangerous and prone to kill and act upon their hate. (See 1a below.)
I, myself, receive constant garbage from Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat running for the Senate. (See 1b below.)
===
Noonan speaks to the wilderness? Rage is in and reason is out.(See 2 and 2a below.)
+++++++++++++
I often find Caroline Glick's writing and thinking a bit too strong but I believe this reasonable . You decide. (See 3 below.)
Dershowitz believes the effort to rid the nation of Trump will eventually fail. (See 3a below.)
++++++++++++++
Dick
++++++++
1)
The 7 Most Despicable Reactions to the Virginia Ballpark Shooting
Blogger with a Kos. The Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas Zuniga. (AP Photo/J. Kamp)
Social media is unfortunately a place where a lot of people -- particularly on the left -- allow the darkest side of themselves to find expression. We see it daily, but especially after a national tragedy.
So it should be no surprise that in the wake of the horrifying political shooting in Alexandria, Virginia, Wednesday morning, some astoundingly ugly "hot takes" appeared on Twitter and Facebook.
1.GRANDMA SAYS REP SCALISE 'DESERVED' IT:
A grandmother responded to a reporter's tweet about Rep. Steve Scalise being in critical condition in the hospital by saying he "deserved it" because he was trying to hurt and kill people by taking away their healthcare. WUSA9 Anchor Adam Longo was appalled.
2. WASHINGTON POST CONTRIBUTOR CROSSES FINGERS THAT SCALISE DIES FROM HOSPITAL ERRORS:
Malcolm Harris, who recently wrote an analysis piece for The Washington Post, deleted the tweet, but not before screenshots were taken.
3. HUFFPOST WRITER JUST WISHES THE 'VIOLENT RESISTANCE' WERE A LITTLE MORE 'ORGANIZED':
Jesse Benn wrote an article at HuffPost last week explaining why a violent response to President Trump is "logical." So naturally, he's not against political violence per se -- it just has to be done right.
4. SHOOTER'S FACEBOOK GROUP CELEBRATES ATTACK:
An anti-Republican Facebook group celebrated after one of its members shot up the GOP baseball practice.
James T. Hodgkinson, who shot Rep. Steve Scalise and others during a GOP congressional baseball practice Wednesday morning, was a member of a left-wing Facebook group called “Terminate The Republican Party.”
He was a regular commenter in the group, and some members decided to celebrate his disgusting act in a post.
5. MARKOS SAYS 'REPUBLICANS ARE GETTING WHAT THEY WANT':“And it’s one, two, three shots you’re out at the old ball game!!!” member Mari-Ellen Cain wrote.
The always repellent founder of Daily Kos, Markos Moulitsas, responded to a year-old tweet from Sen. Rand Paul (quoting Judge Napolitano):
1a)Hi Richard:
This is what the Left is up to. My friend who forwards these messages to me, receives something from
.@Judgenap: Why do we have a Second Amendment? It's not to shoot deer. It's to shoot at the government when it becomes tyrannical!
6. TWIDIOT TARIQ NASHEED IMPLIES REP. SCALISE DESERVED TO BE SHOT:
Not this idiot again.
"Twitter personality" Tariq Nasheed implied that Scalise deserved to be shot because he's a white supremacist.:
So Rep. Steve Scalise, who once spoke at a white supremacist event sponsored by David Duke (google it) was SHOT today in Alexandria.
7. 'WRITER' SORT OF SUGGESTS SHOOTING IS JUSTIFIED BECAUSE GOP IS TRYING TO KILL PEOPLE WITH THEIR HEALTHCARE BILL:
Kind of a reoccurring theme. Democrats sure have their constituents riled up about the GOP bill to replace ObamaCare
1a)Hi Richard:
In response to your most recent posting. Yes, Soros is stirring the cauldron of violence.
groups like this at least twice daily. Others come from: Left Action 2017; CREDOACTION.COM;
CHC Bold Pac; DemocracyforAmerica.com;
who continually tear at the fabric of our democracy. Make no mistake about it, these and allied groups are driven by a
radical socialist agenda.
The invitation below is a good example of how they operate and why we should be concerned.
Please read it.
If we do not better organize, mobilize and energize, we could lose.
L----
Begin forwarded message:From:Subject: Fw: A Resistance Summer Community Cookout near youDate: June 14, 2017 at 2:57:22 PM EDTTo: <------ a="" href="mailto:tmgdial@comcast.net" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">@comcast.net
Dear MoveOn member,
We are almost six months into the new presidency. We have marched, protested, called, written, and resisted the alarming acts of the Trump administration and the complicit Republican Party. The work to defend of our democracy has aroused a deeper passion for political activism among newcomers and longtime organizers alike.
However, we know the Resistance is a marathon, not a sprint. And we must take time to recharge regularly if we're going to remain effective in the long campaigns ahead. That means connecting with each other—over food, fellowship, and even having a little fun. It's time to take a moment to celebrate what we’ve achieved—and recharge for the work ahead—with a summer social gathering: a Resistance Summer Community Cookout!
On June 24–25 and July 1–3, MoveOn and partner organizations will launch Resistance Summer Community Cookouts all across the U.S. These cookouts are an opportunity to
- come together with friends old and new,
- build relationships,
- build momentum for the campaigns in the months ahead,
- recharge our self-care batteries, and
- celebrate the diversity that makes the Resistance strong and resilient.
Excitement for these cookouts is palpable. There are hundreds already scheduled around the country. Just click here to find the one closest to you.
We’ll provide everything you need to plan a successful cookout—including a Host Guide, Checklist, Sample Agenda, and more—and we'll be with you every step of the way, coaching, answering questions, and helping to recruit fellow MoveOn members to attend your event. (We may even give you a recipe for a refreshing and timely beverage. Mmmm...peach-mint tea!)
Hosts are responsible for finding a venue—at a home, park, or community space—and arranging the food and refreshments. We offer you ideas on how to do this in ways that are easy, cost-effective, convenient, and communal. And while we have plenty of suggestions for making this fun, you know your community and your neighbors better than we do! So we encourage you to bring your own ideas to make your cookout great!
These events will also be a kickoff to Resistance Summer, during which we'll host monthly national events to rebuild progressive power and fight the Trump Republican agenda. Through this program, we will train and support 1,000 mobilizers across the country, gear up for the big August congressional recess, and lay the groundwork to bring Resistance energy to next year's midterm elections. It's a lot of work! And we'll do that work if we take a moment to get to know each other, take a step back to relax, and enjoy a Community Cookout as summer heats up.Thanks for all you do.
—Chris, Anna, Gabby, Michael, and the rest of the team
P.S. After months of Resistance, it is time to reflect, recharge, and reconnect with each other. Click here to register your event and we'll support you every step of the way.Want to support our work? The MoveOn community will work every moment, day by day and year by year, to resist Trump's agenda, contain the damage, defeat hate with love, and begin the process of swinging the nation's pendulum back toward sanity, decency, and the kind of future that we must never give up on. And to do it we need your ongoing support, now more than ever. Will you stand with us?
1b) Richard –
Today is the 148th day of the Trump administration – but honestly, it already feels like it’s been years. Fighting President Trump’s backward agenda can be exhausting, but one thing gives me energy every day: seeing this team speak out for our most fundamental values.
This work is just too important for us to lose momentum. I have some ideas about what issues to take on next, but I want to hear what’s on your mind. Is it health care? Climate change? Defending our democracy?
Thanks,
Kirsten
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
2)
Rage Is All the Rage, and It’s Dangerous
A generation of media figures are cratering under the historical pressure of Donald Trump.
By Peggy Noonan
What we are living through in America is not only a division but a great estrangement. It is between those who support Donald Trump and those who despise him, between left and right, between the two parties, and even to some degree between the bases of those parties and their leaders in Washington. It is between the religious and those who laugh at Your Make Believe Friend, between cultural progressives and those who wish not to have progressive ways imposed upon them. It is between the coasts and the center, between those in flyover country and those who decide what flyover will watch on television next season. It is between “I accept the court’s decision” and “Bake my cake.” We look down on each other, fear each other, increasingly hate each other.
Oh, to have a unifying figure, program or party.
But we don’t, nor is there any immediate prospect. So, as Ben Franklin said, we’ll have to hang together or we’ll surely hang separately. To hang together—to continue as a country—at the very least we have to lower the political temperature. It’s on all of us more than ever to assume good faith, put our views forward with respect, even charity, and refuse to incite.
We’ve been failing. Here is a reason the failure is so dangerous.
In the early 1990s Roger Ailes had a talk show on the America’s Talking network and invited me to talk about a concern I’d been writing about, which was old-fashioned even then: violence on TV and in the movies. Grim and graphic images, repeated depictions of murder and beatings, are bad for our kids and our culture, I argued. Depictions of violence unknowingly encourage it.
But look, Roger said, there’s comedy all over TV and I don’t see people running through the streets breaking into laughter. True, I said, but the problem is that, for a confluence of reasons, our country is increasingly populated by the not fully stable. They aren’t excited by wit, they’re excited by violence—especially unstable young men. They don’t have the built-in barriers and prohibitions that those more firmly planted in the world do. That’s what makes violent images dangerous and destructive. Art is art and censorship is an admission of defeat. Good judgment and a sense of responsibility are the answer.
That’s what we’re doing now, exciting the unstable—not only with images but with words, and on every platform. It’s all too hot and revved up. This week we had a tragedy. If we don’t cool things down, we’ll have more.
And was anyone surprised? Tuesday I talked with an old friend, a figure in journalism who’s a pretty cool character, about the political anger all around us. He spoke of “horrible polarization.” He said there’s “too much hate in D.C.” He mentioned “the beheading, the play in the park” and described them as “dog whistles to any nut who wants to take action.”
“Someone is going to get killed,” he said.
That was 20 hours before the shootings in Alexandria, Va.
The gunman did the crime, he is responsible, it’s fatuous to put the blame on anyone or anything else.
But we all operate within a climate and a culture. The media climate now, in both news and entertainment, is too often of a goading, insinuating resentment, a grinding, agitating antipathy. You don’t need another recitation of the events of just the past month or so. A comic posed with a gruesome bloody facsimile of President Trump’s head. New York’s rightly revered Shakespeare in the Park put on a “Julius Caesar” in which the assassinated leader is made to look like the president. A CNN host—amazingly, of a show on religion—sent out a tweet calling the president a “piece of s—” who is “a stain on the presidency.” An MSNBC anchor wondered, on the air, whether the president wishes to “provoke” a terrorist attack for political gain. Earlier Stephen Colbert, well known as a good man, a gentleman, said of the president, in a rant: “The only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin’s c— holster.” Those are but five dots in a larger, darker pointillist painting. You can think of more.
Too many in the mainstream media—not all, but too many—don’t even bother to fake fairness and lack of bias anymore, which is bad: Even faked balance is better than none.
Yes, they have reasons. They find Mr. Trump to be a unique danger to the republic, an incipient fascist; they believe it is their patriotic duty to show opposition. They don’t like his policies. A friend suggested recently that they hate him also because he’s in their business, show business. Who is he to be president? He’s not more talented. And yet as soon as his presidency is over he’ll get another reality show.
And there’s something else. Here I want to note the words spoken by Kathy Griffin, the holder of the severed head. In a tearful news conference she said of the president, “He broke me.” She was roundly mocked for this. Oh, the big bad president’s supporters were mean to you after you held up his bloody effigy. But she was exactly right. He did break her. He robbed her of her sense of restraint and limits, of her judgment. He broke her, but not in the way she thinks, and he is breaking more than her.
We have been seeing a generation of media figures cratering under the historical pressure of Donald Trump. He really is powerful.
They’re losing their heads. Now would be a good time to regain them.
They have been making the whole political scene lower, grubbier. They are showing the young what otherwise estimable adults do under pressure, which is lose their equilibrium, their knowledge of themselves as public figures, as therefore examples—tone setters. They’re paid a lot of money and have famous faces and get the best seat, and the big thing they’re supposed to do in return is not be a slob. Not make it worse.
By indulging their and their audience’s rage, they spread the rage. They celebrate themselves as brave for this. They stood up to the man, they spoke truth to power. But what courage, really, does that take? Their audiences love it. Their base loves it, their demo loves it, their bosses love it. Their numbers go up. They get a better contract. This isn’t brave.
If these were only one-offs, they’d hardly be worth comment, but these things build on each other. Rage and sanctimony always spread like a virus, and become stronger with each iteration.
And it’s no good, no excuse, to say Trump did it first, he lowered the tone, it’s his fault. Your response to his low character is to lower your own character? He talks bad so you do? You let him destabilize you like this? You are making a testimony to his power.
So many of our media figures need at this point to be reminded: You belong to something. It’s called: us.
Do your part, take it down a some notches, cool it. We have responsibilities to each other.
2a)
Unity didn’t last long for Nancy Pelosi
WASHINGTON — It didn’t take long for the capital’s post-shooting talk of unity to begin fraying.
Some Republicans on the far right are suggesting that vitriolic rhetoric on the left could be to blame for the gunfire that hit a GOP leader and others at a congressional baseball practice. GOP Rep. Steve King of Iowa says that “the violence is incited by the leading cultural voices of the Left.”
“How dare they?” responded Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, citing a year of venomous talk from Donald Trump — as well as attacks on her in a special House race in Georgia.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
3)Column one: Burying Obama’s legacy
By CAROLINE B. GLICK
|
The fact is that Trump has given Netanyahu support as he has walked away from the failed policy paradigm of the Obama years. It may very well be that this week was the week that Israel and the US put to rest former president Barack Obama’s policies and positions on Israel and the Palestinians.
If so, the move was made despite the best efforts of Obama’s team to convince the Trump administration to maintain them.
The details of Obama’s policies and positions have been revealed in recent weeks in a series of articles published in Haaretz regarding Obama’s secretary of state John Kerry’s failed peacemaking efforts, which ended in 2014.
The articles reported segments of two drafts of a US framework for a final peace treaty between the PLO and Israel. The drafts were created in February and March 2014.
The article series is predicated on the assumption that Kerry and his team were on the precipice of a historic breakthrough between PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. But a close reading of the documents shows that the opposite was the case.
There are two reasons that Kerry had no prospects for reaching a deal.
First, he, Obama and their advisers were too hostile to Israel and its citizens to ever convince Netanyahu that Israel’s interests would be secured.
A February 2014 draft framework agreement, which was based on conversations Kerry and his team held with Netanyahu and his advisers, makes this clear. The draft includes Netanyahu’s demand that Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria not annexed to Israel would remain “in place” after the implementation of a peace deal, and presumably, become towns in the future Palestinian state.
In other words, Netanyahu demanded that the Israelis in Judea and Samaria whose towns would be located in the territory of “Palestine” would enjoy the same rights and protections as Israel’s Arab citizens enjoy.
Kerry and his team would have none of it. The February draft agreement notes, “[US] negotiators need to check with PM [Netanyahu] on whether he wants to [maintain this position]... They believe that if so, he will push strongly for ‘in place.’ ‘In place’ is inconsistent with US policy and therefore unacceptable to us as well as the Palestinians.”
In other words, the position of the Obama administration was that all Israelis living in areas that would become part of the Palestinian state must be forcibly removed from their homes and communities.
Haaretz reporters Barak Ravid and Amir Tibon recalled that in previous rounds of negotiations, the Palestinians – unlike the Obama administration – had not rejected this Israeli position out of hand. That is, in demanding the mass expulsion of Israeli Jews from their homes, the administration adopted a policy more extreme than the PLO.
Then there is the problem with the PLO.
Abbas rejected Kerry’s February 2014 draft framework agreement, which was based on conversations with Netanyahu and his advisors. But he also rejected Kerry’s March 2014 agreement, which was based on the US’s conversation with him and his advisors.
The March 2014 draft was presented to Abbas by Obama himself during a meeting between the two in the White House. Not only did Abbas not accept Obama’s offer, he refused to respond to it.
This should have surprised no one. Abbas did the same thing in 2008 after then-prime minister Ehud Olmert presented Abbas with his peace proposal. Abbas’s predecessor, Yasser Arafat, responded in the same way in July 2000 to then-prime minister Ehud Barak’s peace offer, and in December 2000, to then-president Bill Clinton’s peace offer.
Given the consistent track record, it is beyond foolish to believe that anyone – even Trump – will fare differently from his American and Israeli predecessors.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the Haaretz series is what they tell us about Netanyahu.
Like him or hate him, the Netanyahu revealed in the articles is a brilliant statesman. In difficult diplomatic conditions, with the US openly siding with the PLO against him, Netanyahu managed to parry and duck. Although Haaretz tries to present Netanyahu as weak and compliant, the text shows that the opposite was the case.
In the face of massive pressure from Obama, Netanyahu refused to commit to anything. His only recorded position was that all Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria remain in place in perpetuity.
Rather than confront Kerry directly, Netanyahu stood aside and watched as the Americans drafted their anti-Israel proposals. He nodded. He smiled. He refused to commit to anything.
And he waited patiently for Abbas to walk away from the table.
Until this week, much to the dismay of many of his supporters, Netanyahu appeared unwilling to move beyond the defensive position he maintained throughout the Obama presidency. This week he took three great big steps forward.
First, Netanyahu announced that he supports amending Israel’s NGO law to ban foreign governments from funding political nonprofits registered in Israel.
For the past 20 years, Israel has been subjected to ever-escalating subversive campaigns funded and often directed by foreign governments and carried out by Israeli-registered NGOs. The purpose of these campaigns is to legitimize political and economic warfare against the Jewish state by European and other Western governments. The campaigns legitimize political and economic warfare against Israel by demonizing the Jewish state, its citizens and its soldiers.
In recent years, lawmakers have tried repeatedly to block the funding. But due to US pressure, Netanyahu scuttled all their attempts. Proposed reform bills were watered down until they were limited to instituting weak reporting requirements. Foreign government funds continue streaming into the coffers of NGOs whose positions are supported by no significant domestic constituencies.
By announcing that he now supports passing legislation that will bar foreign government funding of nonprofits, Netanyahu is striking a strategic blow at the political and economic war being waged against Israel by the EU and by the international Left.
This war, waged in the name of the Palestinians, has harmed Israel’s relations with the Palestinians by discouraging them from living peacefully with their Israeli neighbors.
Then there is UNRWA. The UN’s refugee agency dedicated to the Palestinians is arguably one of the central reasons for the perpetuation of the Palestinian conflict with Israel. Indeed, UNRWA was formed by the Arab governments to specifically block all prospect of peace between Israel and its neighbors.
UNRWA prevents the permanent resettlement of the Arabs who left Israel in 1948 and 1949 as well as their descendants. It has doomed five generations of “refugees” to live in the squalor of its camps, blocked from receiving citizenship in the countries of their birth and prevented from being resettled in other countries.
After Hamas took over Gaza in 2007, then-secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and then-foreign minister Tzipi Livni decided that the best way to respond to the move was by massively increasing UNRWA’s budget. They were unmoved by the fact that UNRWA employs Hamas terrorists. They ignored the fact that UNRWA schools in Gaza and elsewhere indoctrinate their students to embrace jihad and the cause of Israel’s annihilation.
Under Obama, the US increased its payments to UNRWA even as UNRWA schools, clinics and other facilities have been used as missile launching pads and storage depots in Hamas’s war against Israel.
This week, Netanyahu finally put to rest the dangerous folly that UNRWA is a foil to Hamas and a positive force in the region. He called for UNRWA to be dismantled and for the Palestinians and their descendants to be treated like every other refugee group in the world and be resettled by the UN’s high commissioner for refugees.
If Netanyahu’s move against UNRWA is translated into actual Israeli and US policy, it will mark the beginning of the end of one of the primary causes of the Palestinian conflict with Israel.
Finally, there is incitement. Palestinian terrorism would vastly diminish were it not for constant incitement that encourages terrorism and rewards and celebrates terrorists.
Since it was established by the Qatari regime in 1996, Al Jazeera has been a central engine of antisemitic and jihadist indoctrination of the Palestinians. And yet, Israel has never moved to close Al Jazeera’s bureau in Israel.
Israel has given the terrorist network a pass largely because it hasn’t wanted to deal with the Western outcry that such a move would provoke.
This week, for the first time, Netanyahu, along with Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, announced they support Al Jazeera’s closure and have directed their staff to consider the best way to do so.
In so doing, Netanyahu and Liberman are making the most of the opportunity afforded Israel by the Arab states’ open cleavage with Qatar. Last week, Saudi Arabia and Jordan closed Al Jazeera’s bureaus in Riyadh and Amman. Egypt, which closed Al Jazeera’s offices in 2013, blocked its website.
Taken both separately and together, Netanyahu’s moves this week strike strategic blows at three central components of the Palestinian conflict with Israel. Incitement, political warfare and the eternalization of Palestinian refugee status all render the conflict intractable and prevent peaceful Palestinian leaders from emerging.
Notably, whereas the Obama administration would have subjected Israel to hysterical condemnations if Netanyahu had dared to take the steps he took this week, the Trump administration has taken no position on Netanyahu’s announcements.
The real reason that Trump appears to be burying Obama’s legacy is because unlike the ideologically- driven Obama, Trump is willing to consider evidence and facts when determining his opinions.
In May, Abbas came to the White House and told Trump that he abjured terrorism. Israel then presented Trump with evidence that Abbas publicly incites terrorism and uses the Palestinian Authority budget to support terrorists and their families.
Trump took in the information and upbraided Abbas for lying to him.
True, this week Secretary of State Rex Tillerson falsely told Congress that Abbas had cut off the payments. And true, Tillerson doubled down on his assertion after both the Palestinians and Israel said the payments have not been cut off.
True as well that Trump continues to believe that he can make “the deal” that his predecessors failed to secure.
But the fact is that Trump has given Netanyahu support as he has walked away from the failed policy paradigm of the Obama years.
In other words, Netanyahu’s moves this week, and the fact that the Trump administration has left him alone to make them without being second-guessed or condemned by Washington, indicates that we have finally moved past Obama’s legacy.
Where we are going is still unknown. But what is certain is that by going after the sources of the continued malignancy of the conflict and pushing back against the lies that informed Obama’s policies, both Israel and the US have abandoned them.
If so, the move was made despite the best efforts of Obama’s team to convince the Trump administration to maintain them.
The details of Obama’s policies and positions have been revealed in recent weeks in a series of articles published in Haaretz regarding Obama’s secretary of state John Kerry’s failed peacemaking efforts, which ended in 2014.
The articles reported segments of two drafts of a US framework for a final peace treaty between the PLO and Israel. The drafts were created in February and March 2014.
The article series is predicated on the assumption that Kerry and his team were on the precipice of a historic breakthrough between PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. But a close reading of the documents shows that the opposite was the case.
There are two reasons that Kerry had no prospects for reaching a deal.
First, he, Obama and their advisers were too hostile to Israel and its citizens to ever convince Netanyahu that Israel’s interests would be secured.
A February 2014 draft framework agreement, which was based on conversations Kerry and his team held with Netanyahu and his advisers, makes this clear. The draft includes Netanyahu’s demand that Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria not annexed to Israel would remain “in place” after the implementation of a peace deal, and presumably, become towns in the future Palestinian state.
In other words, Netanyahu demanded that the Israelis in Judea and Samaria whose towns would be located in the territory of “Palestine” would enjoy the same rights and protections as Israel’s Arab citizens enjoy.
Kerry and his team would have none of it. The February draft agreement notes, “[US] negotiators need to check with PM [Netanyahu] on whether he wants to [maintain this position]... They believe that if so, he will push strongly for ‘in place.’ ‘In place’ is inconsistent with US policy and therefore unacceptable to us as well as the Palestinians.”
In other words, the position of the Obama administration was that all Israelis living in areas that would become part of the Palestinian state must be forcibly removed from their homes and communities.
Haaretz reporters Barak Ravid and Amir Tibon recalled that in previous rounds of negotiations, the Palestinians – unlike the Obama administration – had not rejected this Israeli position out of hand. That is, in demanding the mass expulsion of Israeli Jews from their homes, the administration adopted a policy more extreme than the PLO.
Then there is the problem with the PLO.
Abbas rejected Kerry’s February 2014 draft framework agreement, which was based on conversations with Netanyahu and his advisors. But he also rejected Kerry’s March 2014 agreement, which was based on the US’s conversation with him and his advisors.
The March 2014 draft was presented to Abbas by Obama himself during a meeting between the two in the White House. Not only did Abbas not accept Obama’s offer, he refused to respond to it.
This should have surprised no one. Abbas did the same thing in 2008 after then-prime minister Ehud Olmert presented Abbas with his peace proposal. Abbas’s predecessor, Yasser Arafat, responded in the same way in July 2000 to then-prime minister Ehud Barak’s peace offer, and in December 2000, to then-president Bill Clinton’s peace offer.
Given the consistent track record, it is beyond foolish to believe that anyone – even Trump – will fare differently from his American and Israeli predecessors.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the Haaretz series is what they tell us about Netanyahu.
Like him or hate him, the Netanyahu revealed in the articles is a brilliant statesman. In difficult diplomatic conditions, with the US openly siding with the PLO against him, Netanyahu managed to parry and duck. Although Haaretz tries to present Netanyahu as weak and compliant, the text shows that the opposite was the case.
In the face of massive pressure from Obama, Netanyahu refused to commit to anything. His only recorded position was that all Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria remain in place in perpetuity.
Rather than confront Kerry directly, Netanyahu stood aside and watched as the Americans drafted their anti-Israel proposals. He nodded. He smiled. He refused to commit to anything.
And he waited patiently for Abbas to walk away from the table.
Until this week, much to the dismay of many of his supporters, Netanyahu appeared unwilling to move beyond the defensive position he maintained throughout the Obama presidency. This week he took three great big steps forward.
First, Netanyahu announced that he supports amending Israel’s NGO law to ban foreign governments from funding political nonprofits registered in Israel.
For the past 20 years, Israel has been subjected to ever-escalating subversive campaigns funded and often directed by foreign governments and carried out by Israeli-registered NGOs. The purpose of these campaigns is to legitimize political and economic warfare against the Jewish state by European and other Western governments. The campaigns legitimize political and economic warfare against Israel by demonizing the Jewish state, its citizens and its soldiers.
In recent years, lawmakers have tried repeatedly to block the funding. But due to US pressure, Netanyahu scuttled all their attempts. Proposed reform bills were watered down until they were limited to instituting weak reporting requirements. Foreign government funds continue streaming into the coffers of NGOs whose positions are supported by no significant domestic constituencies.
By announcing that he now supports passing legislation that will bar foreign government funding of nonprofits, Netanyahu is striking a strategic blow at the political and economic war being waged against Israel by the EU and by the international Left.
This war, waged in the name of the Palestinians, has harmed Israel’s relations with the Palestinians by discouraging them from living peacefully with their Israeli neighbors.
Then there is UNRWA. The UN’s refugee agency dedicated to the Palestinians is arguably one of the central reasons for the perpetuation of the Palestinian conflict with Israel. Indeed, UNRWA was formed by the Arab governments to specifically block all prospect of peace between Israel and its neighbors.
UNRWA prevents the permanent resettlement of the Arabs who left Israel in 1948 and 1949 as well as their descendants. It has doomed five generations of “refugees” to live in the squalor of its camps, blocked from receiving citizenship in the countries of their birth and prevented from being resettled in other countries.
After Hamas took over Gaza in 2007, then-secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and then-foreign minister Tzipi Livni decided that the best way to respond to the move was by massively increasing UNRWA’s budget. They were unmoved by the fact that UNRWA employs Hamas terrorists. They ignored the fact that UNRWA schools in Gaza and elsewhere indoctrinate their students to embrace jihad and the cause of Israel’s annihilation.
Under Obama, the US increased its payments to UNRWA even as UNRWA schools, clinics and other facilities have been used as missile launching pads and storage depots in Hamas’s war against Israel.
This week, Netanyahu finally put to rest the dangerous folly that UNRWA is a foil to Hamas and a positive force in the region. He called for UNRWA to be dismantled and for the Palestinians and their descendants to be treated like every other refugee group in the world and be resettled by the UN’s high commissioner for refugees.
If Netanyahu’s move against UNRWA is translated into actual Israeli and US policy, it will mark the beginning of the end of one of the primary causes of the Palestinian conflict with Israel.
Finally, there is incitement. Palestinian terrorism would vastly diminish were it not for constant incitement that encourages terrorism and rewards and celebrates terrorists.
Since it was established by the Qatari regime in 1996, Al Jazeera has been a central engine of antisemitic and jihadist indoctrination of the Palestinians. And yet, Israel has never moved to close Al Jazeera’s bureau in Israel.
Israel has given the terrorist network a pass largely because it hasn’t wanted to deal with the Western outcry that such a move would provoke.
This week, for the first time, Netanyahu, along with Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, announced they support Al Jazeera’s closure and have directed their staff to consider the best way to do so.
In so doing, Netanyahu and Liberman are making the most of the opportunity afforded Israel by the Arab states’ open cleavage with Qatar. Last week, Saudi Arabia and Jordan closed Al Jazeera’s bureaus in Riyadh and Amman. Egypt, which closed Al Jazeera’s offices in 2013, blocked its website.
Taken both separately and together, Netanyahu’s moves this week strike strategic blows at three central components of the Palestinian conflict with Israel. Incitement, political warfare and the eternalization of Palestinian refugee status all render the conflict intractable and prevent peaceful Palestinian leaders from emerging.
Notably, whereas the Obama administration would have subjected Israel to hysterical condemnations if Netanyahu had dared to take the steps he took this week, the Trump administration has taken no position on Netanyahu’s announcements.
The real reason that Trump appears to be burying Obama’s legacy is because unlike the ideologically- driven Obama, Trump is willing to consider evidence and facts when determining his opinions.
In May, Abbas came to the White House and told Trump that he abjured terrorism. Israel then presented Trump with evidence that Abbas publicly incites terrorism and uses the Palestinian Authority budget to support terrorists and their families.
Trump took in the information and upbraided Abbas for lying to him.
True, this week Secretary of State Rex Tillerson falsely told Congress that Abbas had cut off the payments. And true, Tillerson doubled down on his assertion after both the Palestinians and Israel said the payments have not been cut off.
True as well that Trump continues to believe that he can make “the deal” that his predecessors failed to secure.
But the fact is that Trump has given Netanyahu support as he has walked away from the failed policy paradigm of the Obama years.
In other words, Netanyahu’s moves this week, and the fact that the Trump administration has left him alone to make them without being second-guessed or condemned by Washington, indicates that we have finally moved past Obama’s legacy.
Where we are going is still unknown. But what is certain is that by going after the sources of the continued malignancy of the conflict and pushing back against the lies that informed Obama’s policies, both Israel and the US have abandoned them.
3a) Dershowitz: Findings of Any Wrongdoing by Trump Would Be Moot
An investigation reportedly launched to determine if President Donald Trump is guilty of obstruction of justice in the FBI's Russia probe might be moot regardless of its conclusions, according to renowned civil-rights lawyer Alan Dershowitz.
The Washington Post cited unnamed officials as confirming that special counsel Robert Mueller is "interviewing senior intelligence officials as part of a widening probe that now includes an examination of whether Trump attempted to obstruct justice."
"The fact that Mueller is opening an investigation on obstruction doesn't answer the two basic questions. One — can a president be indicted while sitting? And two — can a president be indicted for obstruction — which is simply doing his job, being the head of the executive branch?"
"I think the answer to both of these questions is still going to be no and no," Dershowitz told Newsmax.
Trump on Thursday morning called the report a "phony story" and "the single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history."
"They made up a phony collusion with the Russians story, found zero proof, so now they go for obstruction of justice on the phony story," he wrote in a post to his personal Twitter account. "Nice."
Dershowitz also told Newsmax he doubts the Democrats and Congress will be able to successfully pursue an obstruction of justice narrative.
"I don't think there's enough there. And I think the objective of the investigation is to uncover, to see if they can uncover enough," Dershowitz said. "There's neither fire nor smoke coming from a constitutional point of view."
He said Mueller, who has reportedly hired experts to weigh in, "is looking to see if there is anything that would justify a prosecution of anybody on the president's [team]."
"I think Trump benefits from the fact that he's hiring experts on a president's power, because I think they'll tell him that the president's power [is legitimate] ending the investigation," Dershowitz said.
He added that the fact Mueller is looking into obstruction of justice is not surprising and has to be viewed in context.
"I think people should not overstate the significance of a special counsel's investigation. That's his job. That's what he's supposed to do. Anything else would've been surprising. I don't think there's anything surprising," Dershowitz said.
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