From a very long time , good friend and fellow memo reader: "Abraham Lincoln could not have grabbed Ruth B.G. in 1862. He was too busy inventing the Internet with Al Gore. J--"
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I have another long time dear friend and fellow memo reader who recently bought some Cannabis stocks and is making a quick killing.
This kind of market action, as with IPO's that double on the first trade, are symptomatic of a more feverish market. This does not mean the Bull is over running but it is a sign that the market could be entering the "long in the tooth" phase and that is generally the most exciting and dangerous period. As long as the economy rocks along, trade issues get resolved and the Republicans retain control of both Houses that would be comforting. Short of that one needs to consider preparing to head for the exits.
Some of my ideas have panned out but,my highly speculative one sank because the SEC has asserted the Chairman was engaged in stock manipulation. I have no details but this man's history belies the charge. He was represented by a dear lawyer friend for years and built a biotech empire. He is a pre-eminent doctor and charitable public citizen. That said, the SEC is very careful about making such a charge without strong evidence.
MRK has done well, TEVA has recovered a good bit, KMI remains stuck in a narrow range, QCOM has begun to move but OPKO has suffered from the SEC charge.
I believe, as the market rotates, T and IBM should begin to rise modestly above their current levels. Both offer decent yields, sell at low multiples but are plagued with issues that have restrained investor enthusiasm.
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Perhaps I am over-dramatizing but it seems every legitimate and worthy cause that begins by rectifying long held wrongs eventually is taken over by radical elements and thus, loses much of the support, reason d'etre that gave it the initial momentum.
The Civil Rights Movement was radicalized by those who wanted to set up a separate nation, Huey Newton, and now Black Lives Matter. The support enjoyed by AIPAC, which exists to strengthen the United States- Israeli Relationship, is being challenged by J Street which is run by a misguided anti-Israel crowd. Feminism has morphed into a group led by "MeToo" hot heads who seem to be itching to pick fights at the drop of a bonnet. 9/11 began with a united nation and eventually became identified with a woman who marched in front of GW's Texas ranch and other women who interrupted funeral's of veterans of the Iraq War.
Perhaps Americans tire easily and "Move On .Org" is more descriptive of who we actually are, an impatient and impetuous people. Maybe the pace at which change occurs lends itself to those who want to move the ball down the field faster and they are able to bull their way into taking charge.
I admit to being perplexed. One thing for sure, when the radicals take over I quickly lose interest and no longer wish to support causes I once embraced.
I have not become an anti-feminist but I am totally turned off by recent events and find Sen Gillebrand sickening. If she ever became president kiss trial by jury goodbye.
Nor am I a racist but my sympathy for Civil Right causes no longer is a burning issue.
Meanwhile my defense of Israel has actually heightened by reason of J Street's nonsense and rhetoric.
My support of the mass media remains intellectually positive but until these enterprises mend their ways and alter their bias, I spend far less time watching and reading about the news. We even canceled our subscription to the local paper partly because their price increase is not justified by the quality of what they consider newsworthy. I always thought Tom Barton was special.
My interest in politics remains strong but any mild party allegiance I once had has certainly diminished and I no longer contribute money at the level I have in the past because I am turned off by politic's voracious appetite for what is in my pocket The recent Supreme Court decision allowing corporate money to intrude sent me a clear message the big boys are in control.
I now understand Ms.. Ford has decided there are three conditions under which she will testify and because she is a delicate women the Senate has to tread lightly for fear of hurting her sensibilities. One of her conditions is that Kavanaugh cannot be in the room while she testifies because he was in the room when he allegedly attacked her. Second, he must go first and apparently specify the charges she is bringing so he can then rebut himself.
This is the level of nonsense jurisprudence has sunk because a manipulative woman believes she can dictate to Congress what the constitution specifies. Does she also get to chose Kavanaugh's attire?
Even a kangaroo in the Outback is given more respect. (See 1 below.)
(https://www.naturalnews.com/
And:
Finally, the Politically Correct Movement began by elevating awareness of those who were"crippled." Then we were encouraged to refer to them as "handicapped." Now there is another preferred name, "challenged," as if everyone is not challenged in life. Street curbs were modified so the "challenged" could maneuver in their motorized wheel chairs or maybe they now call them "support vehicles."
Subsequently, everything began to be impacted by the PC Movement and that is when I got off the train and began to hold my nose because now the object of PC'ism is to curb free speech..
Today, even our campuses are drowning in PC'ism and a most liberal law professor, who served in Obama's Administration, has written an op ed regarding same.
The PC Movement has eliminated my ability to be biased, to be crude, to tell off color jokes and has made my life more somber but the mass media can continue their bias. Strange how the PC Movement has a short right arm and a long left one. (See 2 and 2a below.)
I invite your own comments. (See 3 below.)
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In politics often the first thing to get crushed are facts. (See 4 and 4a below.)
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Dick
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1) The Most Plausible Theory Has Surfaced About Professor Ford's "Assault"
By Erick Erickson
This is a sordid business, but Ed Whelan provides a more compelling narrative than Professor Ford.
While I am still not convinced there was an assault on Professor Ford, an intriguing theory has come forward that embraces the idea she was assaulted and makes a far more plausible case than that Brett Kavanaugh did it.
I am not comfortable identifying the individual who may have been involved. One innocent man is having his reputation destroyed. I see no reason to drag in another.
Ed Whelan of the Ethics and Public Policy Center decided to put up a more compelling story that embraces Ford's theory of assault, while filling in the details she provided. And while I continue to find it unseemly to drag another innocent person into a fraudulent claim, the facts are very compelling that this is the location and things make more sense if you assume Ford was assaulted.
The facts, as Ed Whelan laid them out, are that Brett Kavanaugh did go to school with someone who has a striking resemblance. That person lived within walking distance of the club Ford claims she had been at. The home matches the limited description Ford provided. I suspect more information will roll out as well over the coming days.
I continue to believe Ford's accusation is not credible. If you find it credible, Whelan's evidence is compelling unless you're just trying to stop Kavanaugh for partisan or ideological reasons. You will also note the Democrats have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to debunk the look-alike theory over the past 48 hours largely because they know just how credible Ed Whelan's chain of tweets is.
This whole sordid mess is gross and had the Democrats handled this properly, we would not be at this point. The Senate should move on to confirm Kavanaugh now.
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By Cass Sunstein
Suppose that you start college with a keen interest in physics, and you quickly discover that almost all members of the physics department are Democrats. Would you think that something is wrong? Would your answer be different if your favorite subject is music, chemistry, computer science, anthropology or sociology?
In recent years, concern has grown over what many people see as a left-of-center political bias at colleges and universities. A few months ago, Mitchell Langbert, an associate professor of business at Brooklyn College, published a study of the political affiliations of faculty members at 51 of the 66 liberal-arts colleges ranked highest by U.S. News in 2017. The findings are eye-popping (even if they do not come as a great surprise to many people in academia).
Democrats dominate most fields. In religion, Langbert’s survey found that the ratio of Democrats to Republicans is 70 to
1. In music, it is 33 to
1. In biology, it is 21 to
1. In philosophy, history and psychology, it is 17 to 1. In political science, it is 8 to 1.
The gap is narrower in science and engineering. In physics, economics and mathematics, the ratio is about 6 to 1. In chemistry, it is 5 to 1, and in engineering, it is just 1.6 to 1. Still, Lambert found no field in which Republicans are more numerous than Democrats.
True, these figures do not include the many professors who do not have a political affiliation, either because they are not registered at all or because they have not declared themselves as Democrats or Republicans.
For two reasons, these numbers, and others like them, are genuinely disturbing.
The first involves potential discrimination on the part of educational institutions. Some departments might be disinclined to hire potential faculty members based on their political convictions.
Such discrimination might take the form of unconscious devaluation of people whose views do not fit with the dominant perspective. For example, young historians who cast Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in a terrible light might not get a lot of job offers. And talented people might not pursue academic careers at all, because they expect that their potential professors will not appreciate their work.
The second reason is that students are less likely to get a good education, and faculty members are likely to learn less from one another, if there is a prevailing political orthodoxy. Students and faculty might end up in a kind of information cocoon. If a political-science department consists of 24 Democrats and 2 Republicans, we have reason to doubt that students will exposed to an adequate range of views.
It is far too simple, of course, to say that professors of history, political science, philosophy and the like should “look like America” in political terms. What matters is that they are experts in their fields, able to convey what they know. In faculty hiring, affirmative action for those with conservative political positions is not likely to serve anyone well.
Nonetheless, the current numbers show that those who teach in departments lacking ideological diversity have an obligation to offer competing views and to present them fairly and with respect. Also, those who run departments lacking ideological diversity have an obligation to find people who will represent competing views — visiting speakers, visiting professors and new hires. Faculties need not be expected to mirror their societies, but students and teachers ought not live in information cocoons.
2a)
Sunstein's Legal philosophy (edited)
Sunstein is a proponent of judicial minimalism, arguing that judges should focus primarily on deciding the case at hand, and avoid making sweeping changes to the law or decisions that have broad-reaching effects. Some view him as liberal,[22] despite Sunstein's public support for George W. Bush's judicial nominees Michael W. McConnell and John G. Roberts,[23] as well as providing strongly maintained theoretical support for the death penalty. [24]
Much of his work also brings behavioral economics to bear on law, suggesting that the "rational actor" model will sometimes produce an inadequate understanding of how people will respond to legal intervention.
Sunstein has collaborated with academics who have training in behavioral economics, most notably Daniel Kahneman, Richard Thaler, and Christine M. Jolls, to show how the theoretical assumptions of law and economics should be modified by new empirical findings about how people actually behave.[citation needed]
According to Sunstein, the interpretation of federal law should be made not by judges but by the beliefs and commitments of the U.S. president and those around him. "There is no reason to believe that in the face of statutory ambiguity, the meaning of federal law should be settled by the inclinations and predispositions of federal judges. The outcome should instead depend on the commitments and beliefs of the President and those who operate under him," argued Sunstein.[25]
Sunstein (along with his coauthor Richard Thaler) has elaborated the theory of libertarian paternalism. In arguing for this theory, he counsels thinkers/academics/politicians to embrace the findings of behavioral economics as applied to law, maintaining freedom of choice while also steering people's decisions in directions that will make their lives go better. With Thaler, he coined the term "choice architect."[26]
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3) Can We Solve What's Happening to America?
by Frosty Wooldridge
In 2018, Americans face excruciating problems on multiple fronts. It’s almost beyond our emotional ability to turn on the TV at night to watch the news. It’s beyond depressing, and worse, it never gets better.
House members like California’s Maxine Waters calls for violence toward anyone she doesn’t like. She calls for impeachment of the president of the United States along with dozens of other House members. All with no basis in facts.
You watched a Supreme Court nominee with a spotless record become embroiled in sexual and violence scandal from a woman 36 years ago. How does anyone counter or combat the aftermath of such accusations?
We’ve got millions of immigrants pouring into our country with no end in sight. They overwhelm our welfare systems, social services and educational systems. They wreck our food banks and classrooms for our own students. They’re bastardizing our culture, language and ethos.
An astounding 52.2 million Americans live on welfare in the United States. That ranges from housing,food stamps, school lunches, schooling for illegal aliens, medical care, dental care, home heating, electrical support, EBT, day care and the list grows. (Source:www.censusgov.org)
Government source, “Approximately 52.2 million (or 21.3 percent) people in the U.S. participated in major means-tested government assistance programs each month in 2012, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released today. Participation rates were highest for Medicaid (15.3 percent) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as the food stamp program (13.4 percent).”
Over 100,000 immigrants land on America’s shores every 30 days without pause, without end and without any ability to work or skills of any kind. And, we pay for them and their children.
An average of 350,000 pregnant women violate our borders annually to birth their child on our cities, on our dollar, our hospitals, and our costs for the next 18 years. Anchor babies must be one of the longest and biggest scams on the U.S. taxpayer, ever. And, there’s no end in sight as Congress won’t stop it.
We’ve got over 20 million illegal aliens living and working in our country in violation of our laws, but they get paid in cash from employers who beat the system and never pay taxes. Thus, we suffer the largest underground economy in the world. Some make a lot of money and the rest of us pay all their taxes.
Immigrants both legal and illegal send $120 billion in cash back to their home countries annually. That’s our money being shipped out of our country. We’re being financially bled to death.
At the same time, Mexico sells us $62 billion in drugs annually to quench our voracious appetite for getting stoned, altered mental state, altered heroin highs and more.
All those opioids caused over 65,000 deaths in America in 2017. And, no one in Congress will lift a finger to stop the drug flow. We’ve got high school kids dying of heroin overdoses…football captains, homecoming queens and water boys.
We’ve got Black Lives Matter marching to stop violence against African-Americans by police, when 97 percent of black Americans die from other black Americans killing them in the ghettos from Detroit to Chicago to Los Angeles and most major cities.
America, once a first world country, with laws and an advanced culture, features an average of 23 to 27 Muslim honor killings of their women, annually. Additionally, 500,000 cases of female genital mutilation now in the USA, which proves the most barbaric, horrific and God-awful operation on a little girl that the Islamic religion could ever create or import into our country—now flourishes in our country. It’s a flat-out assault and battery on a little girl before she has any choice. Yet, none of our laws will stop it. We’re being degraded into a 6th century Dark Ages religion by importing Muslims. (Source: White House Press, October 2, 2018,”Honor Killings in America” Ed O’Callihan, DHS)
We see Muslims running for 90 public offices in the USA all the way to the governorship of Michigan on their way to installing Sharia Law, which, by the way, negates all our Constitutional rights, women’s rights, children’s rights, religious rights and animal rights. There’s nothing good about Islam in America.
Worse, Detroit, Miami and Minneapolis face being turned into Muslim caliphates where only Muslims live, welfare and produce more offspring at record levels.
We’re being so multi-culturalized that we face countless parallel societies that possess nothing in common with Americans or the American Way of Life.
Many of the resident intellectuals, overanxious to avoid all appearances of bigotry, support the radical ethnics in their resistance to assimilation. Cosmopolitans terrified of “ethnocentrism” embrace what can only be called “ethnofugalism”—a flight from the ethnic center of their own upbringing. Those who promote limitless diversity seem not to have noticed the disorder and violence associated with massive diversity in Africa and the Balkans. The faster the rate of immigration and the more diverse the reluctantly conjoined cultures, the greater is the threat of balkanization….
It cannot be too often repeated that an extravagantly multicultural nation is poorly positioned to compete with nations that have not succumbed to the siren call for more “diversity.” Think of Japan. In facing the real dangers of overpopulation following World War II, Japan showed that she could achieve a unanimity of purpose that is hard to imagine in a multicultural nation. Whatever measures may be required to tame population growth, their difficulty will increase strictly in proportion to the amount of diversity in the population. In a multicultural nation patriotism withers under the onslaught of internal competition between ethnic groups. The nation is then less favorably positioned to deal with external competition. Everyone within the multi-ethnic nation suffers.
Garrett Hardin, Living within Limits: Ecology, Economics, and Population Taboos,
We feature 42,000,000 (million) Americans who cannot read, write or perform simple math. These functionally illiterate end up with alcoholism, drugs, tent cities and human misery beyond imagination. San Francisco gives 11,000 homeless drug addicts clean needles that get tossed all over the sidewalks. Defecation in the streets. Another 90,000 homeless create blue tarp cities for miles along the cement canals and old roads. (I traveled in San Francisco this summer to see it firsthand. It’s pretty sickening.)
We’ve got millions of Americans out of work and hopeless ghetto dwellers rampaging around in gangs, while everything could be made in our country, unfortunately sells in Walmart and Home Depot, “Made in China.” Yet, Chicago provides a black killing ground more deadly than the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
And what about law and order? How about $52,000,000,000 (billion) annually in shoplifting theft in the USA? Can you wrap your arms around that number? It means you pay more for all your food and mercantile goods because somebody steals billions in goods and gets away with it.
We stare into the bank vault of a $21 trillion debt brought to us by our own U.S. Congressional critters. Our second President John Adams said, “There are two ways to conquer a nation: one is by the sword and the other is by debt.” We owe China $1.7 trillion in trade deficits brought to you by our own Congressional officials over the past 20 years.
Along the way, we burn up our resources and soldiers in useless, stupid and insane wars that last for 17 years! Are we back in the Dark Ages?
This column touches only a few of our mounting problem, that, at some point, will prove irreversible and unsolvable. Man, do you think we’re going to make it out of this mess?
In 2018, Americans face excruciating problems on multiple fronts. It’s almost beyond our emotional ability to turn on the TV at night to watch the news. It’s beyond depressing, and worse, it never gets better.
House members like California’s Maxine Waters calls for violence toward anyone she doesn’t like. She calls for impeachment of the president of the United States along with dozens of other House members. All with no basis in facts.
You watched a Supreme Court nominee with a spotless record become embroiled in sexual and violence scandal from a woman 36 years ago. How does anyone counter or combat the aftermath of such accusations?
We’ve got millions of immigrants pouring into our country with no end in sight. They overwhelm our welfare systems, social services and educational systems. They wreck our food banks and classrooms for our own students. They’re bastardizing our culture, language and ethos.
An astounding 52.2 million Americans live on welfare in the United States. That ranges from housing,food stamps, school lunches, schooling for illegal aliens, medical care, dental care, home heating, electrical support, EBT, day care and the list grows. (Source:www.censusgov.org)
Government source, “Approximately 52.2 million (or 21.3 percent) people in the U.S. participated in major means-tested government assistance programs each month in 2012, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released today. Participation rates were highest for Medicaid (15.3 percent) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as the food stamp program (13.4 percent).”
Over 100,000 immigrants land on America’s shores every 30 days without pause, without end and without any ability to work or skills of any kind. And, we pay for them and their children.
An average of 350,000 pregnant women violate our borders annually to birth their child on our cities, on our dollar, our hospitals, and our costs for the next 18 years. Anchor babies must be one of the longest and biggest scams on the U.S. taxpayer, ever. And, there’s no end in sight as Congress won’t stop it.
We’ve got over 20 million illegal aliens living and working in our country in violation of our laws, but they get paid in cash from employers who beat the system and never pay taxes. Thus, we suffer the largest underground economy in the world. Some make a lot of money and the rest of us pay all their taxes.
Immigrants both legal and illegal send $120 billion in cash back to their home countries annually. That’s our money being shipped out of our country. We’re being financially bled to death.
At the same time, Mexico sells us $62 billion in drugs annually to quench our voracious appetite for getting stoned, altered mental state, altered heroin highs and more.
All those opioids caused over 65,000 deaths in America in 2017. And, no one in Congress will lift a finger to stop the drug flow. We’ve got high school kids dying of heroin overdoses…football captains, homecoming queens and water boys.
We’ve got Black Lives Matter marching to stop violence against African-Americans by police, when 97 percent of black Americans die from other black Americans killing them in the ghettos from Detroit to Chicago to Los Angeles and most major cities.
America, once a first world country, with laws and an advanced culture, features an average of 23 to 27 Muslim honor killings of their women, annually. Additionally, 500,000 cases of female genital mutilation now in the USA, which proves the most barbaric, horrific and God-awful operation on a little girl that the Islamic religion could ever create or import into our country—now flourishes in our country. It’s a flat-out assault and battery on a little girl before she has any choice. Yet, none of our laws will stop it. We’re being degraded into a 6th century Dark Ages religion by importing Muslims. (Source: White House Press, October 2, 2018,”Honor Killings in America” Ed O’Callihan, DHS)
We see Muslims running for 90 public offices in the USA all the way to the governorship of Michigan on their way to installing Sharia Law, which, by the way, negates all our Constitutional rights, women’s rights, children’s rights, religious rights and animal rights. There’s nothing good about Islam in America.
Worse, Detroit, Miami and Minneapolis face being turned into Muslim caliphates where only Muslims live, welfare and produce more offspring at record levels.
We’re being so multi-culturalized that we face countless parallel societies that possess nothing in common with Americans or the American Way of Life.
Many of the resident intellectuals, overanxious to avoid all appearances of bigotry, support the radical ethnics in their resistance to assimilation. Cosmopolitans terrified of “ethnocentrism” embrace what can only be called “ethnofugalism”—a flight from the ethnic center of their own upbringing. Those who promote limitless diversity seem not to have noticed the disorder and violence associated with massive diversity in Africa and the Balkans. The faster the rate of immigration and the more diverse the reluctantly conjoined cultures, the greater is the threat of balkanization….
It cannot be too often repeated that an extravagantly multicultural nation is poorly positioned to compete with nations that have not succumbed to the siren call for more “diversity.” Think of Japan. In facing the real dangers of overpopulation following World War II, Japan showed that she could achieve a unanimity of purpose that is hard to imagine in a multicultural nation. Whatever measures may be required to tame population growth, their difficulty will increase strictly in proportion to the amount of diversity in the population. In a multicultural nation patriotism withers under the onslaught of internal competition between ethnic groups. The nation is then less favorably positioned to deal with external competition. Everyone within the multi-ethnic nation suffers.
Garrett Hardin, Living within Limits: Ecology, Economics, and Population Taboos,
We feature 42,000,000 (million) Americans who cannot read, write or perform simple math. These functionally illiterate end up with alcoholism, drugs, tent cities and human misery beyond imagination. San Francisco gives 11,000 homeless drug addicts clean needles that get tossed all over the sidewalks. Defecation in the streets. Another 90,000 homeless create blue tarp cities for miles along the cement canals and old roads. (I traveled in San Francisco this summer to see it firsthand. It’s pretty sickening.)
We’ve got millions of Americans out of work and hopeless ghetto dwellers rampaging around in gangs, while everything could be made in our country, unfortunately sells in Walmart and Home Depot, “Made in China.” Yet, Chicago provides a black killing ground more deadly than the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
And what about law and order? How about $52,000,000,000 (billion) annually in shoplifting theft in the USA? Can you wrap your arms around that number? It means you pay more for all your food and mercantile goods because somebody steals billions in goods and gets away with it.
We stare into the bank vault of a $21 trillion debt brought to us by our own U.S. Congressional critters. Our second President John Adams said, “There are two ways to conquer a nation: one is by the sword and the other is by debt.” We owe China $1.7 trillion in trade deficits brought to you by our own Congressional officials over the past 20 years.
Along the way, we burn up our resources and soldiers in useless, stupid and insane wars that last for 17 years! Are we back in the Dark Ages?
This column touches only a few of our mounting problem, that, at some point, will prove irreversible and unsolvable. Man, do you think we’re going to make it out of this mess?
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4) How Israel defeated the PLO
By Caroline B. Glick
The so-called “Oslo process,” is really two processes. The first was the Oslo peace process. It began with secret negotiations between Israeli leftists with ties to then-foreign minister Shimon Peres in Oslo, Norway, in 1993. It led to Israel’s recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the establishment of the PLO-controlled Palestinian Authority to run the Palestinian autonomy in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. It also led to a seven-year attempt by Israel to make peace with the PLO.
The Oslo peace process failed in July 2000 when the PLO rejected peace and statehood.
The failure of the Oslo peace process was followed quickly with the initiation of the Oslo terror war by the PLO-PA and its partners in Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Its goal was to demoralize Israeli society and foment a collapse of Israel’s national will to reject the PLO’s maximalist demands, which in turn would lead to the eventual destruction of Israel.
To a large degree, the Oslo war ended in 2004 when Israel secured its control over the Palestinian population centers in Judea and Samaria and killed Hamas’s senior leadership in Gaza.
The Israeli Left never accepted the failure of the Oslo peace process. And the PLO-PA never abandoned its efforts to destroy Israel – in the name of peace and justice.
The refusal of both the Israeli Left and the PLO-PA to own up to the failure of both Oslo processes, has engendered a strange symbiotic relationship between the two sides. No, of course the Left hasn’t joined or supported the PLO-PA’s terror war. To the contrary. There is little if any distinction in the positions of the Israeli Left and Right on the need to defeat Palestinian terrorism.
What the Left and the PLO-PA do share is an assessment of who is to blame for the absence of peace. Never accepting that the PLO-PA was disingenuous in its expressions of peaceful intentions, the Israeli Left has looked elsewhere for culprits to blame the Oslo peace process’s failure. Its chosen culprits have always been the Israeli Right and their American supporters. The PLO-PA for its part, has always happily agreed with the Israeli Left’s indictments.
The symbiosis between the two parties was very much in evidence in an interview Maariv’s Ben Caspit published last Friday with Saeb Erekat, PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s right-hand man and the chief Palestinian negotiator for peace talks with Israel.
The interview was both noteworthy and unoriginal. It was noteworthy because both men knew precisely whom to blame for the absence of peace – US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.Erekat went straight for the kill and accused Trump of committing “genocide” against the Palestinians. How is Trump committing mass murder?
By ending US funding of two Palestinian hospitals in east Jerusalem.
As for Netanyahu, according to Erekat, Netanyahu “killed Rabin.” Once Netanyahu was done murdering his predecessor Yitzhak Rabin, according to Erekat, he proceeded to “kill the idea of peace. [He killed] the attempt to create a culture of peace.”
Caspit for his part, was far less extreme. But he shared Erekat’s basic conceits. In an attempt to convince his readers that we need to take heed of Erekat’s words, Caspit expressed scorn for Trump.
“Even after Trump is consigned to history and leaves behind his presidential library of pornography, they [the Palestinians] and us, we remain here together,” he wrote.
Caspit then attacked the normal Israeli suspects. He accused “the Israelis, particularly the Israeli Right of preparing themselves for the coming of the messiah,” in the face of Trump’s friendship.
While Erekat didn’t attack the Israeli public specifically, his demonization of Netanyahu was instrumental. Netanyahu after all did not seize power by force. He was elected prime minister four times. And in the next elections, he is expected to win a fifth term.
Erekat claimed that Netanyahu killed peace by rejecting the PLO’s demand to base all negotiations on the 1949 armistice lines. But Netanyahu isn’t a free agent when he rejects this demand. He is the loyal representative of the Israeli people, which keeps electing him.
This begins to bring us to the reason that the Oslo peace process was rejected and the reason the Oslo war also failed.
Both of these initiatives were launched first and foremost against the Israeli people.
From the time the Rabin-Peres government unveiled the Oslo peace process in late August 1993, until today, at its heart is an assumption that rejects the foundations of Zionism and Jewish identity more generally.
The Oslo peace process assumed that Israel’s prosperity, its survival and its morality were functions of its willingness and its success in making peace with the PLO by appeasing it. That assumption gave Yasser Arafat, Abbas and their comrades veto power over Israel’s success and survival. After all, it was up to them to decide if Israel gave enough.
Zionism and Jewish national identity have always placed the power to determine the fate of the Jewish people, its survival and its success on the Jews themselves. Jewish national identity has never been defined by other nations. It has always been defined by the Jews themselves.
Over the years, since the peace process failed, one of the things that the Israeli Left has been hard pressed to comprehend has been Israel’s high rankings on happiness indexes. Most recently, ahead of Rosh Hashanah, the Central Bureau of Statistics reported that 89% of Israelis say they are happy and satisfied with their lives.
This report, like all of its many predecessors, plunged the Israeli Left into a fit of despair. How can Israelis be happy when there’s no peace, nor even a peace process? How can Israelis be happy when the Palestinians in Gaza and Judea and Samaria reject them?
The explanations are always forthcoming. Then-secretary of state John Kerry said in 2014 that Israel’s economic prosperity – which was supposed to only come after peace was achieved – has made Israelis too rich to care about the Palestinians.
The problem with that view is that in the CBS’s 2002 survey – taken at the height of Israel’s economic recession and the darkest moments of the Oslo war – 83% of Israelis said they were happy and satisfied with their lives in Israel.
Israeli commentators like Ron Ben-Yishai have argued that the constant wars and security threats have strengthened social cohesiveness and unity, which serve ironically as the foundations for happiness.
The problem with this view is that happiness levels rise both when Israel is at war and when the security situation is stable.
The reason Israelis are so happy – despite Oslo’s failure – is unquestionably tied to the basic reason that the Oslo peace paradigm never won the sustained support of a majority of Israelis.
Israelis are a dynamic people. In the quarter-century since the handshake on the White House lawn, Israeli society has been transformed in every sphere. The percentage of Israelis with an academic degree rose to 47% from 20% between 1990 and 2012.
In the past 25 years, Israel’s economy has changed from a socialist command economy to a free-market economy and today Israel’s GDP per capita is higher than Japan’s. Israel’s annual GDP overall will likely reach a half trillion dollars within a decade.
Israel’s fertility rates dwarf those of every Western country.
Unemployment is at record lows.
All of this occurred as the Palestinians under the PLO have been robbed of their wealth by kleptocratic terrorists who run their autonomous governments like mafia bosses. To excuse their failures and mask their crimes, the PLO tells the Palestinians to blame their misfortune on the Jews and exhorts them to murder Jews at every opportunity.
One of the central narratives repeated ad nauseam over the past 25 years by the PLO and Israeli leftists alike is that the PLO is the only moderate and secular group in Palestinian society. If Israel fails to support it, then Israel will be forced to fight a war with Islam. In his interview with Erekat, Caspit gave prominent voice to this contention.
This would be an important insight, if were true.
But there isn’t.
4a)
When experts ignore the truth about the Palestinians
The latest Middle East peace plan from Thomas Friedman of “The New York Times” ignores the key fact about why such schemes always fail.
When New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman offers up a Middle East peace plan, the world stops and listens. Or at least it used to. The three-time Pulitzer Prize winner has been opining about the region for decades, and the shopworn feel to his advice is beginning to feel about as tired as a prose style that remains as awash in clichés today as it ever was.
In 2002, when Friedman sought to play midwife to a peace initiative from Saudi Arabia, the result was a public-relations coup for the columnist/author, even if it turned out that there was less to the idea than met the eye. But it isn’t likely that his latest set of suggestions for Middle East peace—in which he offers the Palestinians a plan for putting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a pickle—will cause much of a splash. Friedman still writes as if he was uniquely positioned to speak truth to both sides and the world is hanging on his every word.
It isn’t. But that doesn’t mean that his writing is insignificant—and that’s not only because he retains his influential perch at the Times. Friedman has evolved over the years into a pitch-perfect indicator of conventional wisdom. If you want to know what is wrong with the thinking that dominated U.S. foreign policy until the Trump administration—and what the people who believe they will run things again after they hope U.S President Donald Trump is swept out of Washington—then you should read Friedman’s columns.
That’s why his latest contribution to the ever-growing pile of schemes to fix the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is worth a look, even if it is as much of a non-starter as the rest of the genre. It also demonstrates anew that although Friedman has almost certainly forgotten more about the Middle East than Trump has ever learned, the administration for which he has so much contempt may actually have a better handle on the conflict than the veteran commentator.
The passage of time since the publication of his book From Beirut to Jerusalem in 1989, which made him a foreign-policy rock star, has not been kind to Friedman. The conversation, especially at the left-leaning Times, about foreign policy has fundamentally changed in the last two decades. At a moment when the paper’s readers are far more interested in resisting Trump than in helping him succeed, Friedman’s columns seem out of touch. Though his pretensions are still insufferable, his goal remains the creation of a kind of consensus about policy that doesn’t fit in with the polarized environment in which we now live. As such, even the most critical of his readers can almost sympathize with the plight of a writer who seems to want everyone, even Trump, to be smart as he thinks is, rather than to simply eviscerate the administration.
Friedman’s latest column states a great deal that is true about the situation. He’s right that Hamas is “a curse on the Palestinian people,” and that it is “pursuing a strategy of human sacrifice in Gaza.” The columnist is also correct to sum up the strategy of the Palestinian Authority as one of “I’m going to hold my breath until you turn blue.” Its refusal to negotiate with the United States and Israel is as unhelpful to Palestinians as its endemic corruption. The latter could use some smart advice, and Friedman is only too ready to pluck some from the bottomless pit of his self-proclaimed wisdom from which he has been drawing for decades.
He urges the P.A. to tell America’s moderate Arab allies that they will engage with the United States if the Trump negotiating team, led by presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner, agrees to redraw its peace proposal to include a demand for a contiguous Palestinian state in the West Bank with a capital in part of Jerusalem. That would, Friedman argues, give the plan the support of the Arab world and put Netanyahu in a spot where he can’t say no. The result would mean an end to the prime minister’s center-right government and its replacement by one that would be pro-peace.
Like all the smart-aleck wisdom Friedman’s been selling since he gave the first President George H.W. Bush’s secretary of state, James “bleep the Jews” Baker, the idea to tell Israelis to call him if they were ever serious about wanting peace, it all sounds so simple.
But it never occurs to Friedman to ask why they have rejected similar proposals in the past. After all, John Kerry spent years begging the Palestinians to accept just such a deal to no avail when he was President Obama’s secretary of state. The P.A. walked away from a similar scheme when Ehud Olmert and the George W. Bush administration pressed it upon them. The same thing happened when Ehud Barak and the Clinton administration made similar proposals at Camp David and Taba in 2000 and 2001.
The problem with the blind faith in a two-state solution to the conflict isn’t with the logic of two states for two peoples as an abstract idea; it’s that the Palestinians have never been particularly interested in the concept. While the chances of Trump and Kushner brokering the “ultimate deal” are virtually nil, they understand that their predecessors’ refusal to hold the Palestinians accountable for their support for terror and refusal to seriously negotiate are part of the problem, not the solution.
Friedman considers such insight to be intolerably pro-Israel, and the result of a corrupt deal between Trump, Jewish campaign donors and Christian supporters. Leaving aside Friedman’s history of being willing to encourage anti-Semitic smears about U.S. support for Israel in order to attack his bête noire Netanyahu, the problem here is that he simply won’t accept that even the “moderates” of the Fatah Party that run the West Bank are as bogged down in irredentism and hate as Hamas.
If the Saudis and other Arab governments have seemed to give up on the Palestinian cause in recent years (even if they can’t say so publicly), it’s because they know this. They regard their tacit strategic alliance with Israel is a higher priority than pandering to the Palestinians.
Friedman thinks that Trump should listen to him and get to work “twisting everyone’s arms” or else stick to “building condos and golf courses.” If peace on those terms were possible, Trump would probably do just that. But he isn’t willing to make the same mistakes as the last four presidents, who thought that Friedman knew what he was talking about. Which just goes to show that even though Friedman knows a lot more about the subject than Trump, the president’s instinctual distrust of experts like the famed columnist is actually pretty smart.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS — Jewish News Syndicate. Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin.
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