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Why the Amnesty ‘apartheid’ smear of Israel can’t be ignored
The anti-Semitic lies spewed by leftist “human-rights” groups are absurd. But this attack is part of a dangerous U.N. campaign against Zionism whose goal is to isolate the Jewish state.
By JONATHAN S. TOBIN
(February 2, 2022 / JNS) Say this for Amnesty International, its outrageous report alleging that Israel is an “apartheid state” has brought nearly all of the Jewish world together to condemn the organization. Groups from the Jewish right, left and center all agree that its claims are bogus and that its goal is not to criticize specific policies or push for it to withdraw from the 1967 borders. The purpose of the report is to brand Israel as not so much a rogue state as an illegitimate one. By damning modern-day Israel’s establishment in 1948 and calling for the results of the War of Independence to be reversed by instituting a “right of return” for descendants of the Arab refugees, Amnesty’s objective is to eliminate the one Jewish state on the planet. As such, there is no way to regard its efforts as anything but an act of anti-Semitism.
There is also no way to ignore the fact that this obsession with Israel on the part of Amnesty and other international groups that masquerade as advocates for “human rights” is a function of Jew-hatred, not an intellectual argument about Zionism or an effort to promote the interests of the Palestinian Arabs, let alone peace.
But there is a problem with the denunciations of Amnesty from across the Jewish spectrum—outside of the far left anti-Zionist groups like Jewish Voices for Peace or IfNotNow, who are themselves guilty of promoting anti-Semitic canards—and even from the State of Israel and the Biden administration. While it’s a good thing that liberals, centrists and conservatives all reject the “apartheid” lie, it’s not clear that Jerusalem, Washington or most Jewish groups fully understand the context of this assault and how dangerous it is.
The Amnesty report doesn’t come out of nowhere. It’s timed specifically to support the U.N. Human Rights Council’s open-ended inquiry into all alleged violations of international law in Israel, Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. This has created what is in effect a new U.N. agency inside the UNHRC that will be a permanent institution whose sole purpose will be to demonize Israel and advance efforts to isolate it and label it as a pariah state. It builds on the despicable anti-Semitism that was seen on display at the U.N. Durban Conference in 2001 when the effort to use the racism charge first gained steam.
The potential damage that this permanent inquiry can do to Israel goes beyond merely making mischief. By insinuating it into the structure of the United Nations and the pretense that its bogus findings are an expression of international law, the stage is being set for a revival of the old Soviet “Zionism is racism” lie. More than that, by employing the imprimatur of the world body to bolster the BDS movement’s efforts to isolate Israel, it can breathe new life into an anti-Semitic campaign that hasn’t gotten as much traction on a global scale.
Moreover, it is vital to point out that, contrary to the claims of Israel’s critics, none of this stems from any legitimate criticism of policies or even the Jewish presence in the territories. Rather, it is an open assertion that a Jewish state is illegitimate, no matter what its policies are or where its borders are drawn.
Still, most of the Jewish world seems not overly alarmed by the U.N. inquiry much in the same way that they failed to understand the full significance of what happened in Durban and three more similarly named conferences that followed, even if they denounced them.
Observers of the Middle East have grown used to the drumbeat of anti-Israel incitement from groups like Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, as well as from leftist Israeli groups like B’Tselem, which routinely denounce its policies and even throw around the “apartheid” smear. The frequency of these attacks and their disconnect from the reality of life in Israel or, for that matter, in the West Bank makes it hard to take them seriously. As a result, most Israelis and supporters of Israel have grown numb to these assaults on Israel’s good name. The enthusiasm for the effort required to respond to their lies is often lacking.
The traditional Israeli attitude of self-reliance and dismissal of—if not indifference towards—hostile world opinion can also breed indifference to such threats. If the Zionist movement had listened to world opinion, it would have given up long before 1948.
Also acting to mute the response to such organizations is an outdated belief that those who call themselves human-rights activists may have good intentions.
Amnesty is also counting on observers and the press to respond to its activities as they would have done in the distant past, when it was seen as an apolitical group solely interested in opposing tyranny around the globe. Similarly, many Jewish liberals long saw B’Tselem as merely liberal Zionism in action, seeking to hold the Israeli government accountable for its behavior, and not as a group that is opposed to the state’s existence as its own recent “apartheid” accusation made clear.
Many also believe that worrying about this is unnecessary because it is contradicted by the willingness of Israeli Arabs—one of whose political parties now sits in Israel’s government as a partner—and of much of the Arab world to accept Israel in recent years. The Abraham Accords showed that Arab and Muslim nations now understand that allowing themselves to be held hostage by Palestinian intransigence wasn’t in their own interests. They recognize that the Jewish state is a valuable trading partner and an ally they can count on for support against aggression from Iran, and its terrorist allies and auxiliaries.
Many Jews and friends of the Jewish state think that in a world where Israel’s president is warmly greeted in an Arab capital, worrying about what leftist ideologues and U.N. bureaucrats say about Zionism is a waste of time.
They’re right if they think this isn’t 1939. Israel is strong, prosperous and here to stay. But they’re wrong if they think the Amnesty report and the U.N. inquiry can’t hurt Israel by using the blunt instrument of international law against it, even if its claims will be utterly false and flatly contradicted by any notion of justice.
That’s why the reaction to the Amnesty report can’t be just a series of press releases expressing outrage followed by the Jewish world moving on to other seemingly more important matters.
Pro-Israel groups must make opposition to the U.N. inquiry and associated efforts a top priority. That’s also true for liberal groups like the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and the Anti-Defamation League, which have denounced Amnesty but are far more interested in aiding the Biden administration’s domestic agenda and likely preparing to give cover to Washington’s Iran appeasement strategy in spite of how dangerous that is for Israel.
Israel’s government and the Biden administration also need to understand that the latest apartheid smear is a shot fired over their bows that must be answered. More than that, they must mount a full-scale offensive aimed at making clear to the United Nations that if the inquiry is allowed to go forward as currently planned, then it will call into question further American financial support, as well as leaving open the possibility of a complete withdrawal from the world body.
Granted, it’s hard to imagine a Biden State Department—filled with leftists and liberals who believe in diplomacy for its own sake and regard multilateralism as a far more important value than Israel’s legitimacy—acting with the urgency that is needed on this matter.
The point to be understood, however, is that the Amnesty apartheid propaganda is not just a terrible libel of Israel. It’s the beginning of a struggle at the United Nations that can undermine the Jewish state’s ability to function on the world stage. Those who underestimate the potential danger involved with this effort are unable to see the forest for the trees.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin.
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Amnesty International claim that Israel is an apartheid state is recklessly ill-informed
Arab citizens are represented throughout the nation, including the powerful Supreme Court.
By David Harris
(RNS) — Amnesty International’s report on Israel, issued on Tuesday (Feb. 1), is a litany of reckless accusations, the most toxic of which is the claim that Israel is an “apartheid” state.
The report’s repeated use of the word — a reference to the institutionalized, decades-long racism of white-minority rule in South Africa — is meant to stigmatize Israel, isolate it in the community of nations and, ultimately, delegitimize the very moral foundation of its existence.
Any state that would operate through a system of racial hierarchy, reserve political power for a minority of the population, deny equal protection under the law, enforce residential patterns based on skin color, restrict sexual relations between communities and control all the sources of wealth must be declared a pariah. The only way forward for such a state would be to cease to exist.
The fundamental problem with the Amnesty International report is that it is disconnected from reality. Israel has nothing to do with apartheid, and apartheid has nothing to do with Israel.
Let’s begin with the situation of Israel’s Arab citizens, who comprise roughly 20% of the population.
The country’s current governing coalition is entirely dependent on the participation of one of the Arab political parties. Without it, the coalition would collapse in an instant. Apartheid? Hardly.
More broadly, Arab citizens have the full right to vote, and their electoral choices represent the political, ethnic and religious spectrum of a remarkably diverse country. Apartheid? Hardly.
Arab citizens are represented throughout the nation, including the powerful Supreme Court. Indeed, it was an Arab judge who sent a former Israeli president to prison. Apartheid? Hardly.
Arab citizens also serve in the diplomatic corps, starting with ambassadors representing Israel around the world, not to mention the Israel Defense Forces, responsible for defending the country in a rough-and-tumble region. Apartheid? Hardly.
And a visit to any hospital — from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, from Haifa to Ashkelon — reveals an entirely interdependent medical ecosystem, with Arab and Jewish doctors, nurses and technicians working shoulder-to-shoulder to treat Arab and Jewish patients alike. Apartheid? Hardly.
Are there social shortcomings in Israel? Yes, just as there are in any democratic nation, including, most assuredly, the United States. But to suggest that Israel’s open, liberal and pluralistic society is in any way akin to South Africa’s policy of apartheid is nothing short of a slanderous fiction.
Amnesty International’s report shows no understanding of the reality of Israeli society, any more than it does of Israel’s challenges in finding an enduring answer to the long-standing Palestinian question.
The Palestinians could have had a state of their own alongside Israel as early as 1947-48. They rejected it. From 1948 to 1967, the West Bank and Gaza were in Arab hands, but no effort was made to establish a Palestinian state. And that record of rejection, tragically, has continued ever since.
Meanwhile, Gaza has been under Hamas control since 2007, yet Amnesty International inexplicably fails to note that Hamas is a genocidal terrorist organization that, with the help of Iran, openly seeks Israel’s annihilation.
And finally, Amnesty International would essentially deny the Jewish people the right to sovereignty even in a tiny sliver of land — a land with which the Jewish people have been uninterruptedly linked for nearly 4,000 years, and which in the 20th century was endorsed by the Balfour Declaration, San Remo Conference, League of Nations and the U.N. General Assembly.
That land, it should be noted, is just 1% the size of Saudi Arabia, 2% of Egypt and roughly similar to pocket-sized New Jersey or Wales.
It is that land which, in the modern era, when the world repeatedly turned its back on the Jews, whether Holocaust survivors in Europe, or in Arab lands, or under communist rule behind the Iron Curtain, offered safe haven, full protection and a new start.
Sadly, Amnesty International, a once venerable defender of human rights, has chosen to lend its voice to those who wish, however they choose to package it, to bring to an end Israel as the world’s only Jewish-majority country. The ploy won’t work, though.
The truth about Israel is there for any fair-minded visitor to see. And, given Israel’s expanding population, growing foreign investment and expanding circle of peace, Israel’s future as a vibrant democratic, Jewish-majority country is bright.
(David Harris is CEO of the American Jewish Committee. Follow him on Twitter @DavidHarrisAJC. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)
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Will a true investigation actually occur or just one for appearance to remove the stench before the Mid Year so as to "kosher" the Biden Family?
Surprise Numbers Show Dems Jumping Ship from CNN and MSNBC to Tucker Carlson
ALERT: Hunter Biden Probe HEATS UP After Latest Move By Investigators
Read About It Here >>
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This is an excellent explanation of what the "Whoopi" furor is all about and why it is critically important. It is easy to sluff off something when your understanding is superficial but when you get a better insight perhaps it can change one's mind and then one's response, if any.
Since the mass media no longer probes one must resort to social media sources and, even they can be misleading but we have no alternative today since the mass media sources are no long trustworthy and that is tragic.
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Whoopi Goldberg Suspended from The View
Whoopi Goldberg made headlines recently for controversial comments on the Holocaust. She made the comments on a far-left show called The View, where establishment liberals sit around, whine about conservatives, and gossip. It’s unwatchable.
Believe it or not, some people do watch The View. They even added token conservative Meghan McCain to try to get more folks tuned in.
During a discussion on Texas schools banning the Holocaust graphic novel Maus, Goldberg ended up saying persecution of Jews in World War Two was just an issue of inhumanity, not related to race.
That is completely false. She’s now suspended from the show for two weeks, according to the president of ABC, Kim Godwin.
ABC: Goldberg is Out for Her ‘Hurtful’ Statements
As of now, Goldberg still has a job with The View, but she’s being put on ice for two weeks because Godwin says her comments were both “hurtful” and “wrong.”
What Goldberg said is hard to sort out stupidity from hate. She obviously is unaware or doesn’t care about real history and the Holocaust. Jews were targeted specifically for their race and not for their religion.
Secondly, what Goldberg said isn’t just random or innocent; it’s actually exactly what critical race theory believes. They consider Jews white because they want to portray the world as a place where skin tone determines right and wrong.
Because many Jews have paler skin, CRT racists have been trying for years to define them as white or “white-adjacent.” This has, unsurprisingly, been used to justify sickening anti-Semitism against Jews from the left.
Whoopi’s Fake Apology
In a fake apology to liberal TV host Stephen Colbert, Goldberg said she was sorry for anyone she hurt. Also, she said because she’s black, race means “something different” to her.
The thing is, race is race. It doesn’t matter what it means to her or whether she thinks race is just skin color.
The Jewish race is mixed with many cultures and peoples who have been, and are, part of Jewish history, but it is definable and real. The attempt by Black Hebrew Israelites (black supremacists) and CRT nutjobs like Goldberg to delete the Jewish race is hateful and false.
Goldberg wants to live in a world where you are superior based on having darker skin. Her hate came out against Jewish people who have lighter skin in a very disturbing way.
However, she shouldn’t have been suspended. Here’s why.
Why Whoopi Shouldn’t Have Been Suspended
Goldberg should be kept on. Bad speech shouldn’t lead to termination or suspension; it should be met with good speech.
Keeping her on The View is what they deserve as their audience fades away and as they go broke. Let the leftists speak and let them go broke.
And:
Response to Whoopi: Why the Jews?
The unconstrained, ideological drive to murder every Jew distinguishes the Holocaust from prior and later ethnocide and mass murder. Op-ed
By Dr. Alex Grobman
To the Nazis, they were a satanic force that supposedly ruled the world through their control of Wall Street and the communist regime in the Soviet Union. A sophisticated individual would probably have recognized the inconsistency of this logic as well as the false assertion that Jews are a separate race. Yet, however simplistic, for the common German, and later for the rest of Europe, this absurd claim served as a useful rationalization.
Sadly, there are people throughout the world who still subscribe to this and like myth
Believing in all sorts of pseudoscientific and racial nonsense, the Nazis saw the Jews as a cancer, a dangerous virus, a bacillus that, if left unchecked, would allow the Jews to dominate the world completely. [1]
In 1942, Hitler told Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, that “The discovery of the Jewish virus is one of the greatest revolutions that has taken place in the world, the battle in which we are engaged today is one of the same sort as the battle waged, during the last century, by [Louis] Pasteur and [Robert] Koch. How many diseases have their origin in the Jews. We shall regain our health only by eliminating the Jew. Everything has a cause, nothing comes by chance.” [2]
Hitler believed that the Jews, through miscegenation, were race polluters whose aim was to obliterate the white race: “With every means he tries to destroy the racial foundations of the people he has set out to subjugate. Just as he himself systematically ruins women and girls, he does not shrink back from pulling down the blood barriers of others, even on a large scale. It was and it is the Jews who bring the Negroes into the Rhineland, always with the same secret thought and clear aim of ruining the hated white race by the necessarily insulting bastardization, throwing it down from its cultural and political height, and himself rising to be its master.[3]
Failure to confront the Jew would spell disaster for the human race, Hitler thought, as the following excerpt from Mein Kampf shows:
If, with the help of his Marxist creed, the Jew is victorious over the other peoples of the world, his crown will be the funeral wreath of humanity and this planet will, as it did thousands of years ago, move through the ether devoid of men.... by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting the work of the Lord. [4]
In other words, as philosopher Steven Katz has noted, “the Holocaust was intended as, and received its enormous power from, the fact that it aimed at restructuring the cosmos anew-now without the Jews.” [5]
Those who understood national socialism as "nothing more than a political movement," Hitler rightly observed know “scarcely anything of it. It is more than a religion: it is the will to create mankind anew.” [6]
This abiding obsession with destroying the Jewish people can also be seen in Hitler's Political Testament. In his last communication with the German people, written on April 29, 1945, at 4 a.m. just before he and his mistress Eva Braun committed suicide, Hitler declared that “Above all I charge the leadership of the nation and their followers with the strict observance of the racial laws and with merciless resistance against the universal poisoners of all peoples, international Jewry.[7]
It is this unconstrained, ideologically driven imperative that every Jew be murdered that distinguishes [the Holocaust] from prior and to date subsequent, however inhumane, acts of collective violence, ethnocide, and mass murder. [8]
No longer did the Jews have the option to convert to Christianity and escape being killed. As long as the Nazis viewed them a separate race, the Jews were destined for extinction. Nothing the Jews could do would change that.
When the Nazis attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, they did so not only for political and strategic reasons, but also for the eradication of their mortal enemy-the Jews. [9] They pursued this ideological war even when it meant diverting resources from their troops at the front. When the need for trains to transport soldiers and supplies conflicted with the requirement to transport Jews to the extermination camps, both received equal consideration.
In June 1942, the Germans were preparing a new summer offensive in southern Russia, to which they were committing all of their 266 reserve divisions on the Eastern front. In preparation for the attack, a two-week ban on civilian traffic had been declared. After Wilhelm Kruger, Himmler's top agent in Poland, objected to the head of the railroad authority about this arrangement, they reached an agreement whereby some civilian transports would be permitted during this period. Himmler felt this was inadequate, so he intervened, leaving no doubt that regardless of the military needs the "Jewish problem" was still of the highest priority. As a result, from July 22 a train containing 5,000 Jews left Warsaw for Treblinka each day. In addition, twice a week a train containing 5,000 Jews from Przemyśl left for Belzec. [10]
During the following winter, the position of the German military began to deteriorate. The German troops who were besieging Stalingrad had been surrounded by the Red Army. To break through the Russian lines, the Germans sent in a fresh Panzer division in mid-December. At the same time, the Germans imposed a one-month ban on civilian railroad transport beginning on December 15, 1942. Even after the ban ended, the disaster at Stalingrad required extensive rail transport. But Himmler again intervened, this time on January 20, 1943, to ensure that trains were available for moving Jews to the extermination camps.
From February 1943, trains were used to deport Jews from Berlin to Auschwitz and from the Bialystok ghetto to Treblinka. By March, Jews from all over Europe were being transported to their death. In July 1944, when the Germans were evacuating Greece and needed all available rail transport, the deportation of the Jews remained on schedule. [11]
As the late Richard Rubenstein pointed out, “The Jews, during World War II, were the first victims of an all-out attempt at the physical annihilation of a people, but there is no guarantee that such an effort will not be repeated against some other group.... The mere fact that every modern government possesses such power cannot but alter the relations between those who govern and those who are governed. This power must also alter the texture of foreign relations. In a very real sense, Auschwitz has enlarged our conception of the state's capacity to do violence. A barrier has been overcome in what for millennia had been regarded as the permissible limits of political action.” [12]
“Our continued interest and fascination with the Nazi period” waned the late historian Jacob Talmon, “should keep us vigilant.it is entirely possible that this is the end that awaits many races and nations-maybe all of them. And the Jews will then prove to have been the first victim of this new experiment. The question remains, Has Auschwitz become an eternal warning or merely the first station on the road to the extermination of all races and the suicide of humanity?” [13]
Ms. Goldberg, is it clear now?
End Notes
[1] Alex Bein, "The Jewish Parasite," Leo Baeck Year Book IX (New York: East and West Library,1964): pp.3-40; Franklin H. Littell, The Crucifixion of the Jews (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1986); Joshua Trachtenberg, The Devil and the Jews: The Medieval Conception of the Jew and Its Relation to Modern Anti-Semitism (New York: Meridian Press, 1961); Jacob L. Talmon, "European History: Seedbed of the Holocaust," Midstream XIX (May 1973): pp. 3-25; Jackson Spielvogel and David Redles, "Hitler's Racial Ideology: Content and Occult Sources," Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual 3 (New York: Kraus International Publications, 1986), 227-246; Shmuel Ettinger, "The Origins of Modern Anti-Semitism," in The Catastrophe of European Jewry: Antecedents, History, Reflections, eds. Yisrael Gutman and Livia Rothkirchen (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1976), 3-39; Alex Grobman, License to Murder: The Enduring Threat of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Noble: Oklahoma: Balfour Books, 2011); Robert Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (New York: Random House, 2010); Richard Landes and Steven T. Katz, The Paranoid Apocalypse: A Hundred Year Retrospective on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (New York: New York University Press,2012); Phyllis Chesler, The New Anti-Semitism (Jerusalem, Israel: Gefen Publishing House, 2015).
[2] N. Cameron and R H. Stevens, trans., Hitler's Table Talk (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 332.
[3] Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1969), 293-296.
[4] Ibid. 60.
[5] Steven .T Katz, The Holocaust in Historical Context, vol.1, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 7.
[6] Hermann Rauschning, Gesprache mit Hitler, 231 ff., quoted in Katz, op. cit. 7.
[7] Quoted in The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler by Robert Payne (London: Jonathan Cape LTD., 1973), 591.
[8] Katz, op. cit., 10
[9] Yehuda Bauer, "Against Mystification," in The Holocaust in Historical Perspective (Seattle: Washington University Press, 1978), 41-42.
[10] Lucy Dawidowicz, The War Against The Jews (New York: Bantam Books, 1975), 188-190.
[11] Ibid. 190-191
[12] Richard Rubenstein, The Cunning of History (New York: Harper Colophon, 1975),2.
[13] [13] Jacob L. Talmon, "European History as the Seedbed of the Holocaust," in Holocaust and Rebirth (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1974), 69 and 72.
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Surprise Numbers Show Dems Jumping Ship from CNN and MSNBC to Tucker Carlson
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Speaks for itself:
Russian Appeasement Was a Left-Wing Monopoly Forgotten in the Left’s hypocrisy on Russia is the terrible damage done to American security, institutions, and the lives of innocents.
By Victor Davis Hanson and Posted By Ruth King
One way of understanding the 2009-2014 Obama Administration policy of “reset” with Vladimir Putin’s Russia is to recall two iconic incidents.
The first was the 2009 “reset.”
Newly appointed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that she would pursue a “reset” détente with Russia. America would relax the prior Bush Administration’s mild ostracism of Russia after its 2008 invasion of Georgia and softly start anew.
The second was President Barack Obama’s hot mic moment in March 2012 in Seoul, South Korea. Obama got caught asking Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to reassure Vladimir Putin.
Or as Obama put it: “After my election I have more flexibility . . . On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me space . . . This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility.”
Both Obama and Putin apparently got their quid pro quo wishes.
Obama was reelected in 2012. The United States was abandoning missile defense in Eastern Europe. Vladimir Putin gave space and so did not invade Eastern Ukraine and the Crimea—until 2014.
During this 2009-2014 reset, a confused United States invited Russia back into the Middle East after a nearly 40-year hiatus. It refused to provide a beleaguered Ukraine with offensive weapons.
NATO members increasingly ignored their promised military contributions. The United States cut defense spending.
Obama discouraged domestic gas and oil production. The world price of oil soared, enriching Putin’s Russia.
At a time when Secretary of State Clinton was overseeing a controversial sale of North American uranium deposits to a Russian-affiliated company, her spouse Bill Clinton mysteriously received $500,000 for a single speech in Moscow.
Renaissance Capital, a Russian bank with ties to the company, put up the cash. During the reset period, Russian-owned or affiliated companies gave several million dollars to the Clinton Foundation.
Contemporaneously, Hunter Biden, son of then-Vice President Joe Biden, received a mysterious $3.5 million wire transfer from Elena Baturina. She was supposedly the wealthiest woman in Russia and the widow of Yury Luzhkov, the former mayor of Moscow who had strong ties to the Putin government.
The Obama Administration internally expressed concerns about the Biden family’s connections abroad, worried about the appearance of undue foreign influence on U.S. policies.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign funneled money to Christopher Steele, an ex-British spy. In return, he concocted Russian-related dirt on then presidential candidate Donald Trump.
The ensuing “Steele dossier” was lavishly funded by Clinton. But her payments were hidden by several liberal firewalls—the Democratic National Committee, the left-wing Perkins-Coie legal firm, and the opposition political operation Fusion GPS.
The “Russian collusion” hoax that followed was based largely on Steele’s fabrications, gleaned from Clinton’s friends and associates in Washington and Moscow. The scam fed wild rumors in the media and was seeded among the Obama Administration intelligence, investigatory, and diplomatic corps.
It took nearly two years and $40 million for special counsel Robert Mueller and his liberally biased “dream team” of government lawyers to disprove, begrudgingly, the obvious Russian collusion hoax.
When the fraud was finally discredited, the FBI, the CIA, and the Department of Justice were discredited along with them for their roles in trafficking in the malicious Russian yarn.
In contrast, from 2017 to 2021, the Trump Administration pumped lots of oil. The world price crashed, to the detriment of Putin’s Russia.
In 2018, U.S. soldiers fought Russian mercenaries in Syria who attacked American installations.
Trump got out of an asymmetrical missile treaty with Russia. He increased U.S. defense spending. He hectored NATO into upping aggregate military expenditures. And he sold offensive weapons to Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin did not invade his neighbors.
Then Joe Biden became president in January 2021.
Within months, he cut oil production—only to beseech Putin to help pump more to lower escalating world oil prices.
Biden also requested that Putin order Russian hackers to keep key U.S. infrastructure “off limits” when attacking America. (He even gave Putin a list.) The humiliation in Afghanistan further eroded both U.S. deterrence and NATO unity,
Senate Democrats recently filibustered attempts to sanction the Russian-German Nordstrom II pipeline deal.
Given all that, are we surprised that once again Putin is eyeing Ukraine and resuming his aggressive behavior of 2014—after his quietude between 2017 and 2020?
There is an Orwellian moral to U.S.-Russian relations over the last 13 years.
The American Left has appeased Russian autocrats. Key iconic Democratic political families profited from Russian companies, regardless of the appearance of quid pro quo arrangements.
Yet the culpable Left falsely accused the Trump campaign, transition, and administration of “collusion.” That charge instead best summarizes Democratic years of accommodation with Putin’s Russia.
A psychiatrist would call this self-serving deception “projection”—the pathology of falsely accusing innocent others of what the accusers are guilty of themselves.
Forgotten in this hypocrisy is the terrible damage done to American security, institutions, and the lives of innocents.
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Sen. Menendez calls Biden's bluff regarding Iran.
As a Senator he has a somewhat unsavory history but he is also an excellent hawk and solid Senator when it comes to being faithful to his Committee Responsibilities..
'Time for new strategies to roll back Iran nuclear program' - Menendez
“Three to four weeks. A month or less. That’s how long most analysts have concluded it would take Iran to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb,” Sen. Bob Menendez said.
WASHINGTON – Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Sen. Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey) laid out “growing concerns” with the indirect negotiations between the US and Iran on Tuesday.
“As someone who has followed Iran’s nuclear ambition for the better part of three decades, I am here today to raise concerns about the current round of negotiations over the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and Iran’s dangerously and rapidly escalating nuclear program that has put it on the brink of having enough material for a nuclear weapon,” Menendez said in a speech on the Senate Floor.
“Three to four weeks. A month or less. That’s how long most analysts have concluded it would take Iran to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb, if they choose to do so. That is not a timeline we can accept.
“That is why I’m calling on the Biden administration and our international partners to exert more pressure on Iran to counter its nuclear program, its missile program, and its dangerous behavior around the Middle East, including attacks on American personnel and assets,” said Menendez.
“Today, many of the concerns I expressed about the JCPOA back in August of 2015 are coming back to haunt us in the year 2022,” he continued. “First and foremost, my overarching concern with the JCPOA was that it did not require the complete dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Instead, it mothballed that infrastructure for 10 years, making it all too easy for Iran to resume its illicit nuclear program at a moment of its choosing.”
He went on to say that Iran was “back in business at Fordow, spinning its most advanced centrifuges and enriching uranium to a higher level of purity than before it entered the JCPOA.”
“We are not dealing with a good faith actor here,” he said. “Iran’s consistent obfuscation, continual stalling, and outlandish demands have left us flying blind, especially when it comes to verifying that Iran is not engaged in activities related to the weaponization process – activities related to the design and development of a nuclear explosive device – activities which were explicitly banned in Section T of the JCPOA.”
Menendez noted that Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the administration’s goal is to create a longer and stronger agreement.
“A year later, I have yet to hear any parameters of ‘longer’ or ‘stronger’ terms or whether that is even a feasible prospect,” he said.
“It’s time to start thinking out of the box and consider new strategies for rolling back Iran’s nuclear program and addressing its dangerous and nefarious activities. These new efforts should include creative diplomatic initiatives, stricter sanctions enforcement, and a steely determination from Congress to back up President Biden’s declaration that Iran will ‘never get a nuclear weapon on my watch.’
“One critical first step is vigorously enforcing the sanctions we have in place,” said Menendez. “Of course, we must be realistic here. Former president Trump’s disastrous withdrawal from the JCPOA hampered our ability on the sanctions front.”
He said the Biden administration “must rigorously enforce our sanctions, including targeting Chinese entities in a way that will impose a serious cost,” and to use sanctions “to crush the illicit, underground economy of Iranian oil shipments throughout the world.”
“We have to urge our P5+1 partners to call for snapback sanctions on Iran under the parameters of the JCPOA,” said Menendez. “And we should be urging the EU to re-impose its pre-JCPOA sanctions on Iran.”
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After Scathing Attack on the Iran Deal, Will Menendez Hold Public Hearings?
By BENNY AVNI, Special to the Sun
As the Capitol Hill’s most senior elected official on foreign policy loudly protests, a little-known, unelected bureaucrat is negotiating to revive President Obama’s article’s of appeasement with Iran.
The chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, Robert Menendez of New Jersey — and a Democrat — delivered a scathing critique Tuesday of the negotiations in Vienna, Austria to revive the 2015 nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. He called instead for renewed pressure on Iran.
In Vienna, meanwhile, President Biden’s Iran point man, Robert Malley, is conducting months-long, highly-secretive negotiations alongside colleagues from other JCPOA member countries. Three of Mr. Malley’s underlings have recently resigned, or — as the State Department would have it — were “reassigned.” None of the three made public their reported disagreement with Mr. Malley’s negotiation tactics.
Although Iran refuses to negotiate directly with the Americans, it seeks to reduce economic sanctions that were tightened under President Trump. Even as Washington’s relations with Moscow are at a low ebb, Russia, an Iranian ally, is helping Mr. Malley’s efforts to breathe life into the old agreement.
Will Mr. Menendez’s call to revive the largely dormant debate over those efforts bring the efforts to a halt? Several sources in Washington tell me that Mr. Malley is only lightly supervised by Secretary of State Blinken and Mr. Biden. Both have allowed their Iran-friendly negotiator much leeway to push forward.
Mr. Menendez was widely applauded by JCPOA detractors, but few believe his speech would change much at this point. “I don’t think it moves the needle,” said a senior Senate staffer. “Malley is allowed to do whatever he wants to do, and he will do whatever he can.”
Back in 2015, Mr. Menendez joined Republican colleagues, as well as such fellow Democrats as Senators Schumer and Manchin, in opposition to the pending deal. Facing insufficient support, President Obama therefore shrank from offering the deal for Senate approval, as was done in past disarmament agreements.
Instead, Mr. Obama, along with three European countries and Communist China and Russia, made the deal with the rulers at Tehran. The mullahs also stopped short of offering the deal for approval at the legislature, the Majlis. There, any negotiations with the Great Satan are unpopular. As no side signed or ratified it, the JCPOA remained, as the acronym suggests, a mere presidential-level plan of action.
The only legal stamp of approval came from the United Nations Security Council, which passed a resolution endorsing the JCPOA. In 2018 Mr. Trump withdrew from the deal. Mr. Biden announced his intention to renew the JCPOA . While Iran stalled after electing a hardliner president, Washington all but begged to revive the Vienna diplomacy, which resumed in November. Since then, only a trickle of hard news emerged from Vienna, where another round of talks resumed this week.
“At this point, we seriously have to ask what exactly are we trying to salvage?” Senator Menendez asked on the senate floor Tuesday. After detailing the many flaws of the original JCPOA and reviewing Iran’s current nuclear advancement and its growing abilities to bypass existing sanctions, Mr. Menendez added: “I’m calling on the Biden administration and our international partners to exert more pressure on Iran to counter its nuclear program, its missile program, and its dangerous behavior around the Middle East, including attacks on American personnel and assets.”
At the same time, some American officials leaned toward a Russian proposal of an interim agreement. Far from a “longer and stronger” Iran deal, as Mr. Blinken promised during his Senate confirmation last year, Moscow’s proposal would temporarily lift some Iran sanctions in return for some nuclear restrictions. In other words, it would be shorter and weaker.
At the height of Washington current tensions with Moscow over Ukraine, Mr. Blinken met his Russian counterpart, foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. They didn’t agree on much, but after listening to Moscow’s Iran ideas, Mr. Blinken said the Vienna talks have reached a “decisive moment.” He added, “there’s still a window, a brief one, to bring those talks to a successful conclusion.”
How brief? “If a deal is not reached in the next few weeks, Iran’s ongoing nuclear advances will make it impossible to return to the JCPOA,” Mr. Blinken said.
That was nearly two weeks ago. Since at least the resumption of talks in November, Biden officials have publicly stated, darkly insinuated, and endlessly leaked to the press that same line about a “few weeks.” The Vienna talks, these officials forever repeat, must conclude within a short time, or else. Except the “else” never materializes while Mr. Malley pushes on.
Tonight Mr. Menendez announced he’d summon Mr. Malley to a closed-door hearing with the Senate committee. He should also invite Richard Nephew, Arianne Tabatabai, and the third negotiator who resigned the negotiation team after disagreement with Mr. Malley. And those hearing should be made public, for all Americans to know what’s negotiated on our behalf
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I believe David will make a better, stronger Governor though Kemp was a decent one but a poor politician. David ran a lousy campaign as Senator seeking re-election. David's run for Governor could give Georgia to Stacey, which would be a disaster because he could divide Republicans.
Politician's have huge ego's and often mess up what they are trying to accomplish. David proved a solid businessman, a solid conservative Senator. Can he carry his goal off or just foul matters up?
I sent David a small check. Whether I will vote for him depends on the campaign. Certainly the mass media want Stacey to win as does radicals like Soros. Outside Democrats will flood our state with money for Stacey. Their money is backed by a political philosophy that is foreign to Georgia but fits nicely with the Atlanta progressive crowd. and America's coastal weirdo's, as a matters of fact. Stacey is a dangerous fire breathing power seeker who lies.
Will blacks go with Stacey and the Democrats or have they matured enough to break their chains, think for themselves and do what is best for Georgia and for the nation,for that matter?
Time will tell.
Meanwhile:
Rabbi/Lawyer Dov Fischer gets it:
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David Perdue Releases New Ad in Georgia Gubernatorial Election
Things are heating up in the Georgia governor’s race. Right now, the top two contenders for the Republican nomination are incumbent Governor Brian Kemp and former GOP Sen. David Perdue.
Perdue is running to go up against Democrat Stacey Abrams in the Georgia general election. The former GOP senator argues that Kemp has lost the confidence of Georgia residents and isn’t in the best position to lead.
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Corey Lewandowski and his sidekick David, spoke for us at The Landings several years ago.
Is Corey back serving Trump's interests? Sununu has been a decent governor from my limited perspective but Trump seeks loyalists and wants all to bend to him.
Trump’s Latest Goal: Get Rid of Gov. Sununu
New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu has found himself in Donald Trump’s crosshairs yet again, but this time it’s serious. Trump has reportedly employed the help of former advisor Corey Lewandowski to help him get Gov. Sununu out of the Governor’s mansion.
According to a report from NH Journal:
“When we spoke earlier in the day, you told me that [President Trump] assigned you a couple of duties and one is in your home state of New Hampshire,” Carr said to Lewandowski. “What’s your assignment for President Trump in New Hampshire?”
“The president is very unhappy with the chief executive officer of the state of New Hampshire, Chris Sununu,” Lewandowski replied. “And Sununu, in the president’s estimation, is someone who’s never been loyal to him. And the president said it would be really great if somebody would run against Chris Sununu.”
Lewandowski said Trump gave him two jobs in New Hampshire.
“One is making sure we’ve got a great candidate in U.S. Senate race who can beat Maggie Hassan, another failed, hack, Washington, DC politician who never delivered. And the second is potentially finding someone to run against Chris Sununu, to make sure they understand that the ‘America First’ agenda is more than just a saying. It’s actually about putting people first and listening to what constituents have to say,” Lewandowski said.
Lewandowski referenced Sununu’s recent appearance on “Jeff Zucker’s former network” (CNN), in which the governor said he wasn’t interested in campaigning with Trump in New Hampshire. Lewandowski also noted President Joe Biden’s shout-out to the New Hampshire governor during his most recent press conference.
Lewandowski’s comments about Trump are surprising because the longtime Trump aide was suddenly removed from Trump’s inner circle after allegations that Lewandowski sexually harassed the wife of a wealthy Republican donor began to circulate. Lewandowski said claims of his exile were premature.
Per The Washington Examiner:
“I know I spoke to [Trump] Sunday. I spoke to him Monday,” Lewandowski told Carr. “It hasn’t been reported, Howie, because I’m not the guy who runs to the media every time I have a conversation with Donald Trump, but I was at Mar-a-Lago with the president a couple of weeks ago.”
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