Virginia Turning radical? Middle East News.

(10) The America I Grew Up In. Jeff Allen - YouTube
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Hope appointment postponed til 19 March.  As long as I feel up to it will send memos on a sporadic basis. Lot happening here, in Israel etc.

Democrats are driven by hatred of Trump and desire to make sure all Americans toe the line and do what big government dictates. That is the new American Way of Pelosi, AOC and several women Muslims who have taken over the Part and introduced fascism and anti-Semitism.  They honestly believe they will beat Trump with this formula.  If they do, who will give a damn because living in America will be gone anyhow.
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Democrat hatred spreading out among the land.

What is it about Virginia which contributed so many great thinkers to our nation? (See 1  below.)

When it came to Trump's, N Korean efforts there were two kind of Trump Haters it seems.  The first were of the view that his preparation for the negotiations were lacking in preparation but they hoped he succeeded.  Their views held credence.

The second Trump Haters placed feelings for his failure above the benefits for the nation and world and were delighted to see him fail in his mission.

Obviously there were an assortment of other attitudes.

When it came to Cohen's simultaneous interrogations my view is he was not credible in most of what he had to say, was credible in some and brought shame on the entire legal profession which is already not held in the highest esteem.

That is an undeserved shame because most of the legal profession deserves greater respect.
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News from The Middle East. (See 2, 2a and 2b below.)
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1) Virginia Democrats Elect Their First Islamist Anti-Semite How the Dems are mainstreaming the worst kinds of Jew-Hate. March 1, 2019 Daniel Greenfield

Posted By Ruth King

While Virginia Democrats were debating whether to oust Governor Northam for wearing blackface, Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax over alleged rape and Attorney General Mark Herring for also wearing blackface, a much more blatant example of contemporary bigotry by a Virginia Democrat had come to light.

It received virtually no coverage by the media.

Ibraheem Samirah, running in a special election for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates, had his social media history exposed. Aside from the usual rants about Israel, Samirah had posted that the Jews had stolen his grandfather’s land and “washed off as the Promised Land for Jews only (using the Torah and Zionist ideology, a 3000 yo religious book and a 100 yo Jew-only philosophy.)”

Samirah’s hatred for Israel wasn’t news. The Jordanian Muslim BDS activist had co-founded a chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace(a misnamed pro-terrorist hate group that is neither peaceful nor Jewish), had served as a spokesman for Students for Justice in Palestine, a hate group whose chapters had been involved in numerous anti-Semitic incidents ranging from hate speech to acts of violence, and had spoken at an American Muslims for Palestine conference: an organization accused of 
supporting Hamas.

But in his 2014 Facebook post, Ibraheem Samirah had trafficked in blatant anti-Semitism, attacking not only Israel, but Judaism and Jews. And had received a pass for his anti-Semitism from Virginia Dems.

Democrats stuck by Samirah and he won with 59% of the vote making him the second Muslim in the Virginia House of Delegates, beating out Gregg Nelson, an Air Force vet who had condemned Samirah’s anti-Semitism. “Racism has no place in our Commonwealth,” Nelson said.

Ibraheem Samirah and his fellow Democrats proved him wrong.

But there are even bigger problems with Samirah than an anti-Semitic post from 2014 whose hateful attacks on Jews and Jewish people he had dismissed in his ‘apology’ as merely “ill-chosen words”.

To understand the true nature of the anti-Semitism being mainstreamed by the Democrats, we have to go back to a field trip by a class of seventh and eighth grade girls in the spring of 1997.

The Island of Peace was territory that Israel had gifted to Jordan in a peace treaty. And that Jordan had agreed to lease back to Israel (before it broke that agreement last year).

On a warm spring day, the high school girls had come to see peace in action.

Instead they were gunned down by Ahmad Daqamseh: a Jordanian soldier wielding an M-16.

Seven Jewish teenage girls, 13 and 14 years old, were murdered in cold blood while they were looking at the bright flowers blooming on the formerly Israeli island.

The Muslim terrorist chased the girls as they ran and fired at their heads at close range.

“I saw a girl who was hit in the shoulder. She rolled over in the bushes and stopped breathing,” a 14-year-old survivor described.

While the deceased King Hussein’s publicity stunt of meeting with the families has eclipsed what followed, other Jordanian soldiers failed to stop him until he was no longer shooting. They assaulted one of the teachers and waited 40 minutes before letting Israeli ambulances in to care for the wounded girls.

The dead included Karen Cohen, 14, who couldn’t wait for her new baby sister to be born, Natali Alkalai, 13, who had enjoyed helping the elderly, Shiri Badayev, 14, who had escaped with her parents to Israel from Muslim Uzbekistan , Sivan Fathi, 13, who enjoyed playing basketball, Yala Meiri, 13, who lost her father to cancer and rescued stray dogs, and Adi Malka, 13, who had helped her deaf-mute parents communicate with the world.

Ahmad Daqamseh was sent to prison and became a hero and role model to millions of Jordanians.

His most vocal supporters were Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood. The Islamic Action Front, the local political branch of the Islamist movement, turned the murderer of 7 Jewish girls into a celebrity.

And when the murderer was released, the Brotherhood party declared, “We congratulate Jordan and the family of the hero Ahmad al Daqmaseh on his release from prison.”

The Muslim Brotherhood believes that murdering Jewish 13-year-old girls makes you a hero.

In 2017, Dima Tahboub, the spokeswoman for the Islamic Action Front, was asked about the movement’s support for murdering Jewish teenage girls.

“You’re a mother. And you’re quite happy to have 13 and 14 year old girls, just because they are Israelis, killed? Unprotected children, killed?”

“Because they are enemies, they are enemies,” she replied.

Another spokesman for the Islamic Action Front was Ibraheem Samirah’s father.

Sabri Samirah had chaired the Islamic Association for Palestine, a Hamas offshoot. The IAP had published material on its website cheering attacks on America before 9/11.

Sabri had come to the United States on a student visa before losing his legal status. After he left to visit his native Jordan, he was banned from returning in 2003 as a “security risk to the United States”.

Under Obama, he, along with other Islamists, was allowed to reenter the United States and took a leading role in Brotherhood groups while still running for public office in Jordan under a Muslim Brotherhood umbrella group.

During his time in Jordan, Al Jazeera described Sabri as a “leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan”. He had also been described as a spokesman for the Islamic Action Front.

Ibraheem Samirah had called his father as a role model who inspired his “Palestinian” activism. His own statements suggest that he identifies with the Muslim Brotherhood.

When Ibraheem was elected, Sabri appeared to post on his Facebook page that his son and Rep. Omar had been attacked over anti-Semitism and that the Democrats were trying to please their Jewish electoral base. During the race, Sabri had been highly active on social media in support of his son.

Anti-Semitism had won in Virginia.

While the media condemned Governor Northam for wearing blackface thirty-four years ago, it gave the anti-Semitism and radicalism of Virginia’s newest Democrat a pass.

In the nineties, a year before the Islamic of Peace massacre, the Islamic Action Front had sent a threat to the U.S. Embassy in Jordan over the detention of a Hamas figure.

“If you hand him over to the Jews, we will turn the ground upside down over your heads,” it warned.

“You will lament your dead just as we did to you in Lebanon in 1982 when we destroyed the Marine House with a boobytrapped car, and there are plenty of cars in our country. You also still remember the oil tanker with which we blew up your soldiers in Saudi Arabia.”

As Americans continue to lament our dead at the hands of Islamic terrorists, the son of the spokesperson for the Islamic Action Front has become an elected Democrat official in Virginia
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2)

The Netanyahu indictments: unfair and inevitable

The charges against the prime minister set an unfortunate precedent in more ways than one. Here are four takeaways from the charges against him.

By JONATHAN S. TOBIN

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s foes are cheering. The prime minister’s critics weren’t able to defeat him at the ballot box over the course of his current 10-year run in power. But regardless of the merits of the accusations or the appropriateness of the announcement just weeks before the next national elections, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit’s announcement that he will charge Netanyahu with wrongdoing in three separate cases may well put an end to the prime minister’s long political career.

The formation of a new centrist coalition—the Blue and White Party, under the leadership of former Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Benny Gantz—had already called into question whether Netanyahu’s Likud Party would win on April 9. But with three indictments hanging over his head and the likelihood that if Netanyahu wins, a sitting premier would be put on trial sometime during the term of the next Knesset, the case for change just got that much stronger.

There are four main takeaways from the announcement.

The first is that Netanyahu must take some responsibility for putting Israel in such an unfortunate situation through his arrogance and sense of entitlement.

The second is that the corruption allegations are, in fact, highly questionable, and it’s hard to believe they can be sustained in a fair court of law.

The third is that the process that led to indictments on the eve of an election after years of discussion and investigation was deeply flawed.

The fourth is that while Netanyahu is certainly down, he’s by no means out.

The first point to be considered is that while the prime minister and many of his supporters may consider him to be irreplaceable, after a decade leading the country, he has clearly overstayed his welcome.

The case for term limits for leaders of nations is persuasive. The charges against the prime minister, even if they should never have been pursued as a criminal matter, speak to a certain arrogance and sense of entitlement that is inevitable when the occupant, as well as their families and underlings, start thinking they are untouchable.

That is certainly the case with Netanyahu. He’s served four terms as prime minister, including the last three in a row, and for all of his brilliance, masterminding and achievements, his act long ago starting wearing thin. The era in which Israel was run by ascetic leaders who lived and acted in a modest manner appropriate to a nation built on pioneering values—David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin wouldn’t have been caught dead accepting cigars and champagne by the caseload from wealthy admirers, as Netanyahu has done—has long been over, but that doesn’t excuse the Netanyahu clan’s often inappropriate behavior.

The alleged corruption cases all speak to Netanyahu’s high-handed manner and willingness to use his power in ways that leave him open to suggestions of wrongdoing, even if it can be argued that he did nothing illegal.

It’s also true that the “indispensable man” argument for keeping him in office is a function of Netanyahu’s unwillingness to promote allies or countenance the idea of a successor. Greater men than Netanyahu have done the same thing—Winston Churchill kept his designated successor waiting for him to retire for nearly a decade after World War II. The roster of talented people he (and reportedly, his wife Sara) has chased out of the Likud is impressive, including leaders of some of the parties that are the Likud’s coalition allies. If there is no one of stature waiting to take over the party that has ruled the country for the last decade, it’s because that’s the way the prime minister wanted it. And that’s why he has persuaded his supporters that fighting the indictments, rather than sparing the country this ordeal is necessary.

But the three cases for which he will be indicted are not the terrible crimes Netanyahu’s foes make them out to be.

The first (called Case 1000) claims that Netanyahu is guilty of fraud and breach of trust because of his acceptance of expensive gifts. While the gifts were egregious, it’s not clear what law he broke when he pocketed the champagne and cigars. Nor is there any proof of a quid pro quo that would make the gifts a bribe. All the prime minister is guilty of is having wealthy friends and a rich man’s tastes.

The second charge (Case 2000) is even more flimsy. It alleges that he committed a breach of trust by discussing a possible bargain with the head of a critical newspaper in which the publisher would give Netanyahu favorable coverage in exchange with the prime minister supporting legislation that would hurt Israel Hayom, the pro-Likud newspaper owned by casino magnate and philanthropist Sheldon Adelson. Here again, Netanyahu broke no law, and since nothing came of the conversation, it’s hard to see how he breached the public trust. The charge is also a joke because the effort to strangle Israel Hayom by the left-wing opposition parties and rival papers was itself an anti-democratic plot against freedom of the press that Netanyahu ultimately foiled.

The third charge (Case 4000) sounds more substantial since it alleges that Netanyahu traded regulatory decisions that favored the Bezeq Company in exchange for favorable coverage on its Walla news site. But since Walla remained critical of the prime minister, it’s hard to see how that constitutes actual bribery. Even if Walla had flipped to favor the Likud, there is no law that says favorable coverage is bribery.

I find it hard to believe that Netanyahu will be convicted of any of these charges, none of which would ever have been brought in an American court. The latter two charges amount to criminalizing a politician’s attempts to gain better coverage in a news media that is well-known to be overwhelmingly biased against him. That’s a shameful interference in the political process.

But whether or not you agree that these charges should never have resulted in indictments, the process that led to their announcement on the eve of the election is outrageous.

The police and the attorney general’s office have been investigating these charges for years. The police made their recommendations many months ago after a probe that lasted far longer than it should have. And Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit sat on his decisions, too. If indictments were in the offing, then they should have been announced months ago or held until after the election. Throwing them out now—a week after the deadline for the parties to file their lists for the election—is as much of an unconscionable intervention in the democratic process as former FBI director James Comey’s last-minute revival of the charges against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified emails in the days before the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

But fair or not, the indictments and the emergence of Gantz and his new party make it seem as if Netanyahu is finally down for the count. Polls were already trending against the prime minister, and that trend may only accelerate now.

Still, he’s not beaten yet. Gantz’s views remain a mystery, and the next several weeks will provide him with a tougher test of his political mettle than he’s ever experienced. And as unfair as the timing of the indictments may be, it actually reinforces the view of most center-right voters that Netanyahu is being treated unfairly. Though Gantz is a plausible alternative because his stand on the conflict with the Palestinians doesn’t seem to differ much from that of the prime minister, the center-right consensus may still feel more comfortable with Netanyahu in charge. Nor would I put it past Netanyahu to mount a comeback once he’s acquitted on all charges—something even his foes concede is more likely than not.

There’s no escaping the fact that Netanyahu’s time as prime minister may be about to end. If so, he may regret its tawdry finish, but it has still been a career filled with enormous achievements in terms of Israel’s economy and in safeguarding its security. Throwing a prime minister out of office who is widely acknowledged as having great success in this manner on such flimsy grounds sets an unfortunate precedent. As much as his enemies damned Netanyahu for standing strong against suicidal concessions on the peace process, as well as for alleged corruption, Gantz will be hard-pressed to match Netanyahu’s record. Even if the outcome of the story was inevitable, Israel will still be the poorer for losing such an able leader in this manner.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS—Jewish News Syndicate. Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin.

2a) Mystery Surrounds Mohammad  Javad Zarif's "Resignation." 

By Seth Frantzman/Jerusalem Post

A day after Mohammad Javad Zarif announced his resignation on Instagram, the foreign minister of Iran is receiving support from members of parliament amid calls for the president not to accept his decision.

The resignation of Iran's most famous diplomat and the man often seen as the foreign face of Tehran has plunged Iran's highest levels of government and media into a momentary sense of bewilderment and lack of certainty.

It illustrates not only the differences within the regime but also the ability of news organizations in Tehran to gather news with some levels of independence, more than in other totalitarian regimes. The Iranian Students News Agency, for instance, provides a discussion about various "sources" close to Zarif and President Hassan Rouhani's office.

According to the report, there are other diplomats who will resign if Zarif indeed leaves the foreign ministry. Rouhani's chief of staff Mahmous Vaezi even initially denied that the resignation had taken place. ISNA also reported that the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamanei, had a say in Zarif retaining his post.

It was not clear if that meant the leader might step in or if Khamenei wanted to push Zarif out. Meanwhile, up to 150 members of parliament have reportedly signed a letter urging Rouhani to reject the resignation. There are 290 seats in parliament.

Fars News noted that Zarif was displeased by his absence from the meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad on Monday. He had not been invited, apparently, or had not received adequate information about the high-level meeting. These were "subtle" and "delicate" matters, Iranian media reported, noting that Zarif and Rouhani had differences of opinion over foreign policy.

There are rumors that Zarif opposed the increasing role of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in foreign policy and that he represented a more "moderate" agenda in Iran. But Zarif has also previously tweeted support for the IRGC, so it is not a simple story of hard-liners and moderates.

Zarif had faced criticism and challenges in parliament dating back to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal discussions. He was frequently accused of a variety of misdeeds. A key antagonist was Javad Karim Ghoddousi, who was involved in a series of challenges to the key diplomat's role. Zarif was critiqued for trusting the US, for traveling to France, for paying respects to Kurds, for mentioning corruption at home, and a litany of other issues. But is that what broke him in the end?

Zarif wants the foreign ministry to have more power. His resignation also must be accepted by the president. However, a Telegram channel linked to the IRGC celebrated his resignation, an indication that there are many people who dislike Zarif. The mystery over Zarif's fate will continue to plague Iran even as the regime seeks to boast of its regional influence.

This is a challenge for Tehran because for the last several years, it has shown a united front to the Middle East and the world, seeking to portray the US as flip-flopping on policies. Zarif was a key in that narrative, accusing the US of isolating itself.

In an interview published on Fars News, Zarif indicated that he believed it was important to combine diplomacy with action on the ground.

"When we do that we have success." This appeared to imply that Iran's government should act as one, with the IRGC and other aspects of state power coordinating with the foreign ministry. "We must remove foreign policy from an issue of party or factional struggle. That is a fatal poison for foreign policy and it must not be the subject of partisan [politics]. There must be a trust in foreign policy workers at the national level; without it everything goes awry."

He may have been predicting and articulating the choice he was about to make in resigning. If so, he has become a victim of the factional fighting and attempts to weaken the foreign ministry that he warned about. If not, it means that Zarif is making a ploy out of this resignation to gain more power either in government or parliament.

Seth Frantzman is The Jerusalem Post's op-ed editor, a Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum, and a founder of the Middle East Center for Reporting and Analysis

2b)Netanyahu’s legal war will wait; it’s his 

political life he’s fighting for now

The PM’s urgent priority, now that the AG has announced the intention to indict him, is to persuade enough of the public that he still should — and still can — run the country

By David Horovitz 

For the first time in the history of Israel, a serving prime minister was informed by the state legal hierarchy on Thursday that he is to be indicted for criminal offenses.

To look at the glass half full, the case indicates that Israel has a robust and independent law enforcement and legal hierarchy, capable of investigating even the prime minister to ensure that all are subject to the law and equal before the law. To look at the glass half empty, the case means that after a former prime minister and a former president went to jail for criminal activities, a serving prime minister will now be put on trial unless he is able, in the course of the hearing process to which he is entitled, to persuade the attorney general to reconsider.

Benjamin Netanyahu insists that he has committed no crime. He claims to be the victim of a political witch hunt led by the left-wing opposition, left-wing media and a biased police force — all relentlessly pressuring Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, a man he appointed to the role but now describes as “weak.”

The presumption of innocence is emphatically with him. It will now be legally tested.

But Netanyahu essentially argues that Mandelblit, in the very act of announcing the intention to indict, has now already denied him the political presumption of innocence, and in so doing has skewed the elections. The attorney general has had his say, runs Netanyahu’s assertion, but since the hearing process cannot possibly be completed by the time Israel votes on April 9, the prime minister’s side of the argument will not be comparably known.

This is a tendentious claim: For one thing, Netanyahu has taken great pains, including via live TV broadcast, to present central aspects of his defense to the public. For another, it was he who chose to bring elections forward from their scheduled date in November.

But it is not a claim to be casually dismissed. A darker shadow does indeed now hang over Netanyahu. Until Thursday, it was widely reported that he would face charges of bribery and breach of trust in the investigations against him. But now, the reported allegations have become allegations formally advanced, after two years of investigation and evaluation, by the guardians of Israeli law enforcement. Coming so soon before the public goes to the polls to elect its next government, the official announcement patently impacts the elections. Whether it unfairly skews them is quite another matter. A counter argument can be advanced that not making the announcement, that not informing the public of allegations sufficiently well-founded as to merit an indictment, would have been a far graver abuse of democracy.

Mandelblit has elected to move toward charges with every awareness of the inherent shattering political consequence

Netanyahu now finds himself with a legal mountain to climb. Initially, the prime minister must seek to marshal a defense so credible as to convince Mandelblit — who has overseen the entire investigation, and has elected to move toward charges with every awareness of the inherent shattering political consequence — that he is wrong. That he has misunderstood. That there is no case to answer.

Suspects have achieved turnarounds in the hearing process. But it seems wildly improbable in this case, given Mandelblit’s central familiarity with the evidence, and given the concern and caution with which he must have weighed that evidence in deciding to proceed.

If Netanyahu fails to deter Mandelblit, the battle will then move to the courts, and a years-long legal process will ensue.

But the protracted legal battle at the heart of this affair is not the prime minister’s urgent priority. First, there is the political battle — to see off opposition calls for his resignation and to persuade his colleagues, many of them potential rivals, that he remains an asset, a vote-winner, the leader who will secure their political good fortune. To persuade them, in short, that despite the announcement or even because of it, he will secure re-election. Ehud Olmert, it should be recalled, was forced to step down as prime minister in 2008 before an indictment had been served against him — because he had become a political liability. Olmert only went to jail, at the end of an exhaustive legal process, a full eight years later.

Opinion polls indicate that Netanyahu has retained significant personal political popularity throughout the investigation. The Times of Israel’s own latest election poll, carried out this week in the run-up to Mandelblit’s announcement, still found him neck-and-neck with his new rival Benny Gantz as Israelis’ preferred prime minister.

His political challenge in the next few weeks will be to retain that popularity including, crucially, by convincing voters that he is entirely capable of running the country and simultaneously mounting his legal defense.

If support for Likud begins to ebb away, as the ToI poll suggested it will, Netanyahu the politician will be in deep trouble. And then, however improbable this may sound in a country where the words “Benjamin Netanyahu” and “prime minister” have become synonymous, Netanyahu the legal defendant could become a matter for an Israel that has moved on.

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