This from a very longtime dear friend and fellow memo reader: "Let’s get rid of the elephant for the Republicans’ mascot. Even if elephants are afraid of mice, their memories are too good for Republicans. Instead, Republicans ought to adopt as their mascot armadillos, or as the unseeing, stupid, & ubiquitous road kill are known in the Deep South, “possums on the half shell. J--"
I suggested a weasel.
New York's re-elected mayor is a certified idiot.
He does not believe Muslim fanatics and Islamist terrorists are busy tunneling their way into our lives, our university campuses, and using our freedoms to destroy our freedoms. Ask the Israelis. They know about radical Muslim tunneling.
http://www.gopusa.com/?p=
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Stratfor and ubiquitous Russia. (See 1 below.)
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The FBI has chosen to become a secret organization and believes it can withhold information from Congress which has authority over the Agency.
The FBI was a gumshoe organization under Hoover and was eventually cleaned up by subsequent Directors.
The FBI seems to have retrogressed and are back to having gum on their shoes. Sad indeed.
If they are allowed to prevail, in time, they could look more like the American equivalent of The Gestapo and that would not be healthy. (See 2 below.)
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Keep smoking that peace pipe. (See 3 and 3a below.)
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Is this the world in which American millennials will live. Are they up to the challenge? I have serious doubts. (See 4 below.)
And
Sent by a friend and fellow memo reader. (See 4a below.)
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Dick
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1) In The Middle East, Russia Seems Toe Be Everywhere
Russia's growing prominence in the Middle East was on full display Dec. 11 when Vladimir Putin visited three key Middle Eastern countries in one day. The Russian president followed a surprise trip to Syria with a quick stop in Egypt before ending his day's travels in Turkey. He met with his presidential counterparts in all three countries, and the economic deals, military agreements and political settlements he discussed highlighted Russia's role in the region. While Russia has its own reasons for bolstering its relationships with Syria, Egypt and Turkey, it also benefits from being visible where its regional rival, the United States, is not.
Russia's diplomatic reach in the Middle East varies significantly per country. Its fair-weather relationship with strategic powers such as Iran goes back centuries, while its pursuit of a strong relationship with Saudi Arabia is developing, for example. Russia's relationship with Turkey has yielded friction and fruit over the decades, depending on which way the pendulum has swung. But what is striking about Russian diplomacy over the past couple of years is how Moscow's diplomatic presence has saturated the region. Its activity in such areas as the Palestinian territories, Libya, Israel, Lebanon, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia is in some ways reminiscent of the Soviet Union's broad presence across the region. The juxtaposition with a United States that seems to want to draw down its regional commitments and focus on other issues, such as turning at long last to Asia instead of attending to fires in the Middle East, is noticeable, and it is heightened by Russia's appearing to be everywhere at once.
In all three of the countries Putin visited, Russia's goals contravene those of the United States, or the relationship is more pragmatic where Washington's is less so, and more heavily weighted toward a couple of specific names. In Syria, the United States plays a strong counterterrorism role but has stepped away from the civil conflict almost entirely, which gives it less leverage to bring about any sort of political solution aligned with U.S. interests. Meanwhile, Russia will be bringing Turkey, Iran and the Syrian government to the table to pursue a political settlement. In Turkey, Russia's warming relationship stands in contrast to the coldness currently plaguing U.S.-Turkey ties (although the U.S.-Turkey relationship goes through peaks and valleys). While the Syrian policies of both the United States and Russia have disappointed Turkey, Russia has made itself more indispensable to achieving what Ankara wants: a political settlement that denies the Syrian Kurds a federal state. By nature of Moscow's tight relationship with Damascus, clear in the multiple tete-a-tetes between Putin and President Bashar al Assad in recent months, there is a possibility of Russia offering Turkey what it needs from the Syrian conflict.
Russia's relationship with Turkey is important beyond its contrast with the U.S.-Turkey relationship, but Russia relishes bolstering its image as a mediator, interlocutor and friend as the United States struggles to be the same. The United States also has struggled to pressure Turkey and other Middle Eastern powers to improve their human rights behavior while relying on them to carry the weight of its regional policy. European Union countries drive an even tougher bargain on human rights with their Middle Eastern allies. Russia ignores the issue, much to the relief of its regional partners.
Russia has used its strategic footprint in Syria to deepen its relationships across the region. Egypt, which has a long-standing pattern of turning alternately to the United States or Russia for external security and economic agreements, is swinging toward Russia again. A plan to build a Russian nuclear power plant in Egypt is in the works, and Putin said in Cairo on Dec. 11 that Russia was ready to resume civilian flights to Egypt after a two-year disruption. An accord to allow Russia the use of Egypt's military bases, if finalized, will solidify Egypt's importance to Russia's military posture in the region.
Increased visibility and diplomatic energy don't mean, of course, that Russia can achieve whatever it wants in the Middle East. Moscow has scant history of exercising soft power to fully achieve its ends in the region, and despite Russia's solidifying position in Syria, the U.S. military and diplomatic presence across the Middle East still dwarfs Russia's. The timing of Putin's whirlwind day trip is also linked to Russian domestic politics, with presidential elections approaching in March 2018. Putin uses Russia's successes in Syria to promote Moscow's global role as the standoff with the United States continues, and to bolster the Russian image in the wake of the Winter Olympics doping scandal. Russia will discover limits as it seeks to deepen its presence in the Middle East — the Syrian peace process likely will stall, for example. In Iran, Egypt and Turkey, the pendulum will no doubt swing again to a less cordial place for Moscow. But Russia is building a deeper economic component into these relationships to help mitigate any limitations.
To Middle Eastern states, Russia is angling to portray itself as a benevolent mediator — a superpower that does not interfere domestically but can provide diplomatic, economic and security assistance. In this way, Russia benefits from the void left by a U.S. Middle East strategy skewed decidedly in favor of Saudi Arabia and Israel.
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2)Secrets the FBI Shouldn’t Keep
Sen. Ron Johnson demands answers about the bureau’s political biases.
By Kimberley A. Strassel
Congress persists in its effort to pry the real story of the 2016 election out of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, an agency notoriously reluctant to share secrets. The trick is telling the difference between legitimate secrets and self-serving ones.
The FBI—and the Department of Justice—would rather blur that distinction. In recent congressional appearances, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein tossed around the word “classified” like confetti. Neither man answered a single substantive question, citing their obligation to protect the “integrity” of investigations, safeguard “sensitive” information, and show deference to an “independent” and “internal” inspector general reviewing the FBI’s handling of the 2016 election.
True, the FBI has plenty of things it needs to keep secret regarding national security and law enforcement. Let’s even acknowledge the bureau may be rightly concerned about turning some information over to today’s leak-prone Congress. Even so, in the specific case of its 2016 election behavior, the FBI is misusing its secrecy powers to withhold information whose disclosure is in the public interest.
Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson exposed two such instances this week, from his perch as chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Mr. Johnson received a letter Wednesday from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who graciously and nimbly provided information that the committee had requested last week.
That letter included some notable dates. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team is emphasizing its ejection of FBI agent Peter Strzok immediately upon learning about anti-Trump texts he exchanged with another FBI employee, Lisa Page, before the 2016 election. But when did the FBI learn of the messages? The inspector general’s investigation began in mid-January. The letter explains that the FBI was asked for text messages of certain key employees based on search terms, which turned up “a number of politically-oriented” Strzok-Page texts. The inspector general then demanded all of the duo’s text messages, which the FBI began producing on July 20.
But when did the FBI dig up and turn over that very first tranche? How long has the bureau known one of its lead investigators was exhibiting such bias? Was it before Mr. Mueller was even appointed? Did FBI leaders sit by as the special counsel tapped Mr. Strzok? In any case, we know from the letter that the inspector general informed both Messrs. Rosenstein and Mueller of the texts on July 27, and that both men hid that explosive information from Congress for four months. The Justice Department, pleading secrecy, defied subpoenas that would have produced the texts. It refused to make Mr. Strzok available for an interview. It didn’t do all this out of fear of hurting national security, obviously. It did it to save itself and the FBI from embarrassment.
This week’s other revelation of jaw-dropping FBI tactics came from a separate letter from Mr. Johnson. In November 2016, the Office of Special Counsel—a federal agency that polices personnel practices and is distinct from the Mueller probe—began investigating whether former FBI Director Jim Comey violated the Hatch Act, which restricts political activity by executive-branch officials, while investigating Hillary Clinton’s private server. The office conducted interviews with two of Mr. Comey’s confidantes: FBI chief of staff James Rybicki and FBI attorney Trisha Anderson.
Sen. Johnson in September demanded the full, unredacted transcripts of the interviews. But it turned out the FBI had refused to let the Office of Special Counsel interview them unless it first signed unprecedented nondisclosure agreements, giving the FBI full authority to withhold the information from Congress. The bureau has continued to insist the office keep huge swaths of the interviews secret from Congress, including the names and actions of key political players. (The Office of Special Counsel closed its investigation in May.)
In his letter this week, Mr. Johnson demanded that Mr. Wray authorize the release of the full transcripts and other documents. Even the redacted ones have revealed important information, for instance that Mr. Comey was drafting his Hillary Clinton exoneration statement well before she was interviewed. Congressional investigators believe the unredacted versions contain pertinent information about the actions of former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and key investigators such as Mr. Strzok.
Mr. Johnson has given the FBI until Dec. 27 to come clean. Congress and the public have a right to know what went on in the Comey investigation, and the FBI and Justice Department seem to be attempting desperately to hide their actions.
Yes, the FBI has secrets the public needs it to keep. But don’t let the agency and its defenders muddy the difference between necessary secrecy and evasion of responsibility.
Write to kim@wsj.com.
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3) Fruitless, drawn-out high-level negotiations could buy time for other, less diplomatic efforts to work.
By Peter Harrell
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said this week that the U.S. was “ready to talk” to North Korea. The White House and State Department walked back that statement, but Mr. Tillerson may be on to something. With time running out for a peaceful solution, the U.S. should pursue a high-level, bad-faith diplomatic initiative with Pyongyang.
The purpose would not be to reach an agreement but to buy time—to induce the North Koreans to temporarily slow their nuclear and missile programs, giving the U.S. more time to step up the sanctions, military defenses, and covert operations that can actually resolve the crisis.
For the past year, the Trump administration has largely rejected high-level diplomacy on the ground that Kim Jong Un will not make meaningful concessions. Instead, the U.S. has strengthened offensive and defensive military capabilities and launched a sophisticated campaign of economic warfare.
President Trump is right that North Korea is unlikely to make meaningful nuclear concessions, and that economic strangulation and stepped-up covert activities are needed to force change in Pyongyang. But even maximally tough sanctions take time to bite. It took nearly three years of sanctions pressure before Iran got serious about negotiating over its nuclear program in 2013. Sanctions will take at least that long to change North Korea’s strategic calculus, given the Kim family’s well-documented history of starving North Korea’s people as it perseveres through economic hardship.
Military and covert options also take time. The Pentagon is developing new missile-defense technologies, and South Korea this month appropriated the first funds for its new “decapitation unit” designed to take out North Korean leaders. But these tools will take months, possibly longer, to become operational. The current U.S. sanctions and military timelines are almost certainly longer than North Korea’s nuclear one.
Offering the North Korean regime a set of high-level, public bilateral or multilateral meetings to discuss a resolution of the North Korean crisis could slow things down. Mr. Tillerson could offer to meet with North Korean officials or appoint a high-level special envoy to open negotiations. That would be attractive to the North Koreans, who have long sought the opportunity to negotiate with senior U.S. officials over issues like a peace treaty formally resolving the Korean War.
But contrary to Mr. Tillerson’s comment this week that the U.S. is willing to talk “without precondition,” the U.S. should make one demand: that North Korea pause its nuclear and ballistic-missile tests—tests that North Korea needs to finalize its program—for the duration of the talks.
U.S. negotiators should then seek to drag out the process as long as possible. They could make a series of complex offers, introduce procedural delays, and throw up obfuscations in order to keep the talks going, while their colleagues who work on sanctions, military technology and covert operations press ahead. The administration would know the talks would almost certainly fail to reach a diplomatic resolution—but that’s not the point.
The North Koreans could reject an offer of diplomacy. But that would show the world that North Korea has no intention of a peaceful resolution to its nuclear ambitions and justify U.S. demands that China put more pressure on Pyongyang.
Assuming Pyongyang did agree to the pause and talks, it would at some point tire of the fruitless negotiations and pull out. But in the interim, the U.S. would have bought time to let economic sanctions work, to improve military defenses, and to launch new covert options. There is even a remote chance that time would bring change to Pyongyang. For a crisis with no good resolutions, simply buying time to develop new solutions may be the best of the bad options we have.
Mr. Harrell is an adjunct senior fellow of the Center for a New American Security.
3a)
Has Trump Really Isolated the U.S.?
Despite Europe’s anger and Palestinian threats over Trump’s Jerusalem decision, the only path to peace still goes through Washington.
By Jonathan S. Tobin
In the days since President Donald Trump made his historic announcement about Jerusalem, the foreign-policy establishment has fumed about his decision. But even though all the predictions from the so-called “wise men,” as well as the “adults” in the administration, that any change in America’s Jerusalem policy would stand the world on its ear turned out to be wild exaggerations, Trump’s critics are reduced to weakly arguing that he has isolated the United States.
Even if that is true, the notion that this proves Trump was wrong is a fallacy. America’s European and Arab allies may not agree with the president, but that can’t be the factor determining U.S. policy any more than the so-far largely empty threats of violence from the “Arab street.” Trump’s decision to try to foster some realism about the Middle East can only have a beneficial affect on a near-hopeless problem. More to the point, if the Palestinians and their allies and enablers in the international community really want to pursue peace, the path to an agreement will still run through the United States, whether Trump’s critics like it or not.
Making the case for the establishment’s conventional wisdom on Trump was the Washington Post’s deputy editorial-page editor and veteran foreign-policy commentator Jackson Diehl. His column, “Will someone save Trump from this disastrous decision?” dismissed both the Jerusalem statement and the refusal to recertify the Iran deal as “impulsive” and “egotistical” decisions that “endangered the status quo.” In refusing to take the advice of those who knew better than him, Trump had, Diehl wrote, essentially “flipped over the table” and left the U.S. alone in the world in a manner that Clinton, Bush, or Obama would never have considered doing. The main point here is not just that the moves on Jerusalem and Iran were unwise but that they were foolish because they strayed from the consensus of the experts and caused the U.S. to stand alone.
On its face, this last assertion is true. Outside of Israel, whose capital has been located in Jerusalem since 1949, no nation has joined the U.S. in recognizing this reality. Like Trump’s tough talk on moving toward changing or ending the Iran nuclear deal, America’s European allies are having none of it. Moderate Arab nations have also voiced disapproval, though in some cases with far less vehemence that might have been expected.
But the problems with the establishment’s argument are painfully obvious.
The first is that when it comes to the Middle East, the wise men have spent decades proving their lack of wisdom. Refusing to acknowledge that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital didn’t bring the region closer to peace. On the contrary, the longer the world persisted in denying reality, the more it served to convince the Palestinians that they had no incentive to make peace. In the past, the Palestinians have repeatedly rejected Israeli offers of statehood that included a share of Jerusalem for their own capital and refused to negotiate seriously even as President Obama sought to tilt the diplomatic playing field in their direction by allowing more “daylight” between the positions of the U.S. and Israel. The Palestinian Authority has fostered a political culture in which rejectionism and glorification of terror (which the PA continues to subsidize financially) is the norm, and the refusal of the West to hold them accountable for it has only perpetuated the standoff.
The conventional wisdom held that doing anything on Jerusalem, even if (as was the case with Trump’s carefully calibrated statement) it didn’t preclude the possibility of a two-state solution with a partitioned holy city also serving as the Palestinian capital, was that a policy shift would set off an earthquake of violence and bloodshed. The assumption was that simply saying that at least part of Jerusalem is in Israel would be the equivalent of the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed by a Danish newspaper in 2005. But what has happened since Trump spoke hasn’t come anywhere near to that debacle.
While the Palestinian Authority has sought to orchestrate demonstrations and rock throwing in Jerusalem and the West Bank that have caused injuries and at least one Palestinian fatality, the effort has been underwhelming even by their own standards of ginned up violence. The dire warnings issued to Trump were overblown. The same is true for the demonstrations held elsewhere in the Arab world and Europe. As Aaron David Miller, veteran State Department peace processor and a stern critic of Trump’s decision noted, the reaction from the Arab world demonstrated that belief in the “centrality of the Palestinian cause” as the root of conflict in the Middle East has collapsed. As he put it, “the Palestinian street is exhausted” and “the Arab street has disappeared.” The prospect of a U.S. embassy in Jerusalem didn’t engender nearly as much anger or violence as a cartoon of the Prophet.
What Trump has done is to begin a necessary discussion that the experts and other Western nations have refused to face. Trump is right to demand that the sunset provisions in the nuclear deal that will lead within a decade to an Iranian bomb be revoked. He’s equally right that the West must begin to prod the Palestinians to give up their rejectionism. In both cases, demanding that the status quo be preserved is ultimately more dangerous than overturning it.
Until the Palestinians are forced, one way or the other, to acknowledge that their century-old war on Zionism has ended in defeat, the conflict will continue. Recognizing Israel’s right to its capital is a way to send them that message. If the Palestinians really want a two-state solution — and there is no indication that a Palestinian Authority that is tangled up in negotiations with its Islamist rivals of Hamas would even think about that — there is only one path to such negotiations, and it runs through the United States.
Despite the lip service they are getting from the EU and its members, it is the Palestinians who are isolated. The refusal of Saudi Arabia to issue anything more than a low-key statement of disapproval to Trump makes that all too clear. The PA’s days of “rage” have been a bust, as has the EU’s temper tantrum about Trump.
Try as they might to pretend that they can be the interlocutors for Middle East peace, the European nations now complaining loudly about Trump are fooling no one. As with their desire to avoid thinking about the implications of the Iran deal so as to further their own economic interests, the Europeans don’t have clean hands on this issue. By refusing to try, as Trump has done, to hold the PA accountable for its terror subsidies, which are indirectly paid for by aid from them, the European Union is complicit in the problem. Their warnings about anger from the “Arab street” also ring false when countries like Sweden, who have helped demonize Israel’s government, now see a rash of anti-Semitic violence on their own streets.
If the foreign-policy establishment is angry, it’s mostly because the falsity of their assumptions have been exposed by a president with an instinctual contempt for experts that led him closer to wisdom than the advice of the adults. Far from helping Iran or triggering a religious war, the reaction to Trump’s move has shown that the ability of radicals to hold the world hostage on Jerusalem and other issues is a gigantic bluff that only a policy ingénue had the chutzpah to call. Instead of calling for a way to restrain Trump from ignoring more of their bad advice about the status quo, it’s the experts who should have the grace to admit that a president without much background on the issues, but who has the wit to want to avoid repeating their mistakes, isn’t as dumb as they have claimed.
— Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS.org and a contributor to National Review Online.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS.org and a contributor for National Review, the New York Post, the Federalist, Haaretz, the New York Jewish Week, the Gatestone Institute and MiDA. He can be reached via e-mail at: jstobinpa@aol.com.
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4)4)A German's view of Islam and History Lesson
'In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends'.Martin Luther KingA German's View on Islam - worth reading. Hard to argue with this:This is one of the best explanations of the Muslim terrorist situation I have ever read. His references to past history are accurate and easy to understand, and well worth the read.The author of this email is Dr Emanuel Tanya, a well-known and well-respected psychiatrist. A man, whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II, owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.'Very few people were true Nazis,' he said, 'but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come.' My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.'We are told again and again by 'experts' and 'talking heads' that Islam is a religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace.' Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the specter of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.'The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honour-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers.'The hard quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the 'silent majority', is cowed and extraneous. 'Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant.'China's population was peaceful, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.'The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet.'And who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery? Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were 'peace loving?
'History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt Yet for all our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our Enemy if they don't speak up. Like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them and the end of their world will have begun.
'Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.
'Now Islamic prayers have been introduced in Toronto and other public schools in Ontario, and, yes, in Ottawa, too, while the Lord's Prayer was removed (due to being so offensive?). The Islamic way may be peaceful for the time being in our country until the fanatics move in.
'In Australia, and indeed in many countries around the world, many of the most commonly consumed food items have the halal emblem on them. Just look at the back of some of the most popular chocolate bars, and at other food items in your local supermarket. Food on aircraft have the halal emblem just to appease the privileged minority who are now rapidly expanding within the nation's shores.
'In the U.K, the Muslim communities refuse to integrate and there are now dozens of "no-go" zones within major cities across the country that the police force dare not intrude upon. Sharia law prevails there, because the Muslim community in those areas refuse to acknowledge British law.
'As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts - the fanatics who threaten our way of life.'
'Lastly, anyone who doubts that this issue is serious and just deletes this email without sending it on, is contributing to the passiveness that allows the problems to expand.
Extend yourself a bit and send this on. Let us hope that thousands world-wide read this, think about it, and send it on before it's too late, and we are silenced because we were silent.
__________________________________________
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4a)
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Fatah calls for rage
k
"Continue the intifada," "Rage for Al-Aqsa,"
"Jerusalem is ours"
by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
Since US President Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel Abbas' Fatah Movement has encouraged Palestinians to riot and "rage" in several posts on Facebook. The posts have included images of Palestinians with rocks and slingshots, demonstrations and burning tires. (See below.)
One post quoted a Fatah song that encourages terror:
Posted text: "I am coming towards you, my enemy, from every home, neighborhood, and street
#Jerusalem_is_our_capital"
[Official Fatah Facebook page, Dec. 11, 2017]
The text is a quote from a song by Fatah exposed by PMW in 2014. The full lyrics promise violence with "cleavers and knives":
"I'm coming towards you, my enemy, from every house, neighborhood and street
Our war is a war of the streets...
We're going down from every house with cleavers and knives
With grenades we announced a popular war
I swear, you won't escape, my enemy..."
[Facebook, Fatah - The Main Page, Nov. 22, 2014]
A branch of Fatah's military wing the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades called for continuation and escalation of "the intifada":
Posted text: "The Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades at the Al-Fawwar refugee camp south of Hebron: 'It is necessary to continue the intifada and escalate it, and to see days of popular rage in the coming days.'"
[Facebook page of the Fatah Movement - Bethlehem Branch, Dec. 8, 2017]
Similarly, Secretary-General of the Palestinian Liberation Front and PLO Executive Committee member Dr. Wasel Abu Yusuf described Trump's declaration as "declaration of war against our Palestinian people," thereby justifying his call for "continued popular uprising" and "intifada":
"Secretary-General of the Palestinian Liberation Front and PLO Executive Committee member Dr. Wasel Abu Yusuf... said the American administration's decision to transfer the US embassy to Jerusalem is a sort of declaration of war against our Palestinian people, and a prelude to carrying out the plots that strive to eliminate the Palestinian cause through what is called 'the deal of the century' or 'the regional solution.'
Abu Yusuf said in an interview with the media outlets that the popular uprising in response to [US President Donald] Trump's decisions will continue and become an intifada of return, freedom, and independence."
[Wattan, independent Palestinian news agency, Dec. 12, 2017]
Responding to Hezbollah Secretary-General Mr. Hassan Nasrallah's call for "a third intifada," Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki said
"We will not disappoint you."
[Website of Al-Mayadeen, Lebanese satellite TV channel, Dec. 11, 2017]
Additional posts encouraging violence and riots on Fatah's Facebook page included:
Posted text:
"For you, O our Jerusalem
#Jerusalem_the_eternal_capital_of_Palestine"
Text on image: "For you, O our Jerusalem"
[Official Fatah Facebook page, Dec. 12, 2017]
In the upper left corner appears the Fatah logo that includes a grenade, crossed rifles, and the PA map of "Palestine" that presents all of Israel as "Palestine" together with the PA areas. The logo is accompanied by the text: "Information Office of the Fatah Movement Mobilization and Organization Commission."
[Official Fatah Facebook page, Dec. 12, 2017]
The image shows a masked Palestinian woman using a slingshot while wearing a
keffiyeh, yellow Fatah headband, yellow Fatah scarf, and a black shirt featuring the Fatah logo.
Posted text:
"The rage continues
#Jerusalem_is_our_capital"
Text on image:
"#The_rage_of_Jerusalem
The rage continues"
In the bottom of the image is written "The Fatah Movement Mobilization and Organization Commission."
[Official Fatah Facebook page, Dec. 11, 2017]
Posted text: "Rage for the Al-Aqsa Mosque"
Text on image: "#The_rage_of_Jerusalem"
In the bottom of the image is written "The Fatah Movement Mobilization and Organization Commission."
[Official Fatah Facebook page, Dec. 11, 2017]
Posted text:
"Nothing will break us
#Rage_for_the_Al-Aqsa_Mosque"
Text on image:
"Nothing will break us
This morning we will triumph, and we will unite the flags and the sad nations with a Palestinian banner
#The_rage_of_Jerusalem"
In the bottom of the image is written "The Fatah Movement Mobilization and Organization Commission."
[Official Fatah Facebook page, Dec. 11, 2017]
Posted text: "#Jerusalem_is_our_capital"
Text on image: "Jerusalem is our capital"
In the bottom of the image is written "The Fatah Movement Mobilization and Organization Commission."
[Official Fatah Facebook page, Dec. 11, 2017]
The following are longer excerpts of some of the reports above:
Headline: "Wasel Abu Yusuf: The uprising will continue and become an intifada of return, freedom, and independence"
"Secretary-General of the Palestinian Liberation Front and PLO Executive Committee member Dr. Wasel Abu Yusuf emphasized that the Palestinian leadership firmly refuses any meeting with American Vice President [Mike Pence] or any party from the American administration. He also said that the American administration's decision to transfer the US embassy to Jerusalem is a sort of declaration of war against our Palestinian people, and a prelude to carrying out the plots that strive to eliminate the Palestinian cause through what is called 'the deal of the century' or 'the regional solution.'
Abu Yusuf said in an interview with the media outlets that the popular uprising in response to [US President Donald] Trump's decisions will continue and become an intifada of return, freedom, and independence. He added that this requires that all of the Palestinians - as we are on the verge of the [PLO] Central Council convening - outline a unified strategy that will unite the national activity and effort, aid the popular uprising to continue, and assemble popular defense committees to stand against the terror of the occupation and settlers."
[Wattan, independent Palestinian news agency, Dec. 12, 2017]
Headline: "Zaki to Nasrallah: We will not disappoint you!"
"Palestinian Fatah Movement Central Committee member [and Fatah Commissioner for Arab and China Relations] Abbas Zaki said that the [Fatah] Movement is no longer interested in any relations with the US, as it and Israel are currently two sides of the same coin. He also said that [US President Donald] Trump will no longer have a role in the political process or a [peace] agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians.
Zaki's statements came after Hezbollah Secretary-General Mr. Hassan Nasrallah's speech at a mass demonstration for Jerusalem held in the southern quarter of Beirut, in which he called on the Palestinian people to carry out a third intifada in response to American President Donald Trump's recent decision, as part of which he recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Zaki addressed the secretary-general of Hezbollah and said: 'We will not disappoint you.'"
[Website of Al-Mayadeen, Lebanese satellite TV channel, Dec. 11, 2017]
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