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Putin-Xi summit should be a wakeup call on worldwide threats facing America
By John Bolton
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin is more evidence of the increasingly worldwide nature of the threats facing the United States and its allies.
Beyond discussing Xi’s “peace plan” for the Ukraine war, the Moscow meeting further crystallizes the 21st-century’s anti-Western Axis
Putin wrote that Russian-Chinese relations “today practically represent the cornerstone of regional, even global stability.”
He greeted his “dear friend” Xi, who proffered his “deep gratitude,” adding that China’s “friendship” with Russia is “growing day by day.”
There is little joy in Kyiv over the Chinese proposals, and there should be even less in Washington, since they amount to little more than a Sino-Russian propaganda exercise.
Putin characterized Russia’s war of unprovoked aggression against Ukraine as an “acute crisis,” which is certainly one way to put it.
Beijing’s Western sympathizers, during the nearly 13 months of Moscow’s unprovoked aggression against Ukraine, have repeatedly contorted themselves to explain that China was embarrassed by Russia’s conduct, China wanted to “separate” itself from Russia and China was not significantly aiding Russia’s war effort.
These assertions were palpably untrue even when the apologists were making their apologia and now stand fully exposed.
Today, it is the West’s China apologists who should be embarrassed.
In reality, China is the Ukraine war’s biggest winner no matter how it ends.
If Russia prevails in whole or in part, it is China’s ally that is victorious, over bitter Ukrainian resistance and substantial US and NATO assistance, thereby increasing the threat to other former constituent parts of the Soviet Union and to Western Europe generally.
And if Moscow is defeated, Beijing’s ally will be even more heavily reliant on China and thus even more in its thrall. It is hard to describe a range of scenarios more to Xi’s liking
Unfortunately, Ukraine and the rest of the former Russian empire will not be the only targets of this new Eurasian Axis.
By denying the legitimacy of the basis on which the USSR dissolved, the Kremlin is calling into question the security of all former Soviet republics, including the three Baltic states, now NATO members.
In East Asia, Taiwan is urgently strengthening its defenses, while the United States, Japan and other allies consider larger structures of collective self-defense to blunt any hegemonic Chinese ambitions.
Others along China’s Indo-Pacific periphery are growing understandably nervous.
Xi JinpingTaiwan, the US, and Japan have been bolstering their defense against China. SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images
Russia and China, Security Council permanent members, immunized by their United Nations Charter-granted veto powers and deemed legitimate nuclear-weapons states by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, are on the move, accompanied by assorted hangers-on like North Korea, Iran, Belarus and other nations not yet out of the closet.
Following China’s recent, surprising brokering of an agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran to restore their sundered relations, who can predict what their next diplomatic ploy might be?
Even more graphically, after decades of the West pretending there was a “rules-based international order,” and the supposed deterrent impact of the International Criminal Court, Xi arrived in Moscow just days after the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Putin.
The Kremlin’s leader had immediately disdained the warrant by traveling to Russian-occupied Ukraine, both Crimea and the Donbas.
Neither China nor Russia are parties to the ICC’s Rome Statute, and neither is likely to sign up any time soon. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman directly contradicted the ICC’s action, calling on the court to “respect the jurisdictional immunity of a head of state under international law.” (America is also not an ICC member, largely because of its fundamental illegitimacy.)
Moreover, during the COVID pandemic and until the present day, China has shown exactly what it thinks of the World Health Organization, systematically obstructing UN investigation of COVID’s origins and protecting China’s interests against other affected nations’.
And neither Russia nor China will contribute significantly toward substantive agreements or action in international climate-change negotiations.
Even on international trade and investment, the increasing prospects of long-term struggle between the Eurasian Axis and the West are growing rapidly.
So much for the benefits and protections of multilateral diplomacy. The only good news that might emerge from the Putin-Xi meeting is that Westerners who didn’t previously perceive the malign intentions of Russia and China will be awakened — and not a moment too soon.
John Bolton was national security adviser to President Donald Trump, 2018-19, and US ambassador to the United Nations, 2005-06.
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Democrats’ attitudes towards Israel reach a tipping point
The rise of the intersectional left is the primary reason why, for the first time, Gallup says Democrats sympathize more with the Palestinians than with the Jewish state.
By JONATHAN S. TOBIN
(March 21, 2023 / JNS) The history of the pro-Israel movement in the United States was always predicated on one goal: creating a bipartisan consensus in favor of support for the Jewish state. And for many years, it succeeded in doing just that. There is a strong tradition of support for the ideas of a Jewish state that dates back to the earliest days of the American republic so Zionism is baked deep into the nation’s DNA.
AIPAC activists, therefore, had little trouble cultivating rising politicians from both major parties. The result was that in the last half-century, the ranks of Congress were filled with politicians who could be counted on to support Israel, even if they had few Jewish constituents.
But it’s time to acknowledge that the era of bipartisan support for Israel is over.
As the latest Gallup tracking poll of attitudes towards Israel and the Middle East conflict indicate, when broken down by party affiliation, Democrats now sympathize more with the Palestinians than with Israel. Currently, 49% of Democrats favor the Palestinians with only 38% backing Israel. By contrast, Republicans now back the Jewish state by a staggering 78-11% margin.
That’s the culmination of a trend decades in the making as the two parties have largely swapped identities when it comes to Israel in the last 60 years. In the first years of the Jewish state in the aftermath of the Holocaust, Democrats were overwhelmingly sympathetic to Israel and took pride in President Harry S. Truman’s recognition of the fledgling nation on its first day of existence.
In that era, Republicans were largely split with many either indifferent or openly hostile—something that was reflected in the policies of the administration of President Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s.
That began to change in the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War and eventually led to the Republicans electing an ardently pro-Israel president in Ronald Reagan in 1980 while winning a modern record 40% of the Jewish vote. Today, the Republicans are virtually a lockstep pro-Israel party with the only few dissenters being libertarians who, while not opposing Israel, are against any aid to any foreign country.
Both parties changed
Meanwhile, at the same time that the GOP was embracing Israel, a shift began on the other side of the aisle.
Part of that was due to political changes in the Jewish state. The end of the domination of the Labor Party and the election of Menachem Begin as prime minister in 1977 made it a bit more difficult for American liberals to identify with Israel. The policies of Labor-led governments on security issues prior to the Oslo Accords in 1993 were not that different from those of the right. But the rise of Begin’s Likud Party, coupled with the camp of nationalist and religious parties, was hard to fathom for Americans who had come to define their Jewish identity solely through the prism of their political liberalism and social-justice issues.
More than that, it was during this period that the far left of the Democratic Party began to regard the Jewish state through the prism of anti-Zionist propaganda, which falsely depicted it as an expression of colonialism.
Still, the vast majority of Democrats rejected those ideas and the leadership of the party, which was reflected in the views of the geriatrics that have led its congressional caucuses up until this year, and many in the rank-and-file were still happy to identify as pro-Israel.
In 2001, Gallup reported that Democrats still backed Israel by a 51% to 16% margin. While that’s still true of some congressional Democrats, they are now out of touch with their party’s left-wing base.
It’s not as if strong sympathy for Israel across the board is gone. When Gallup asked respondents how they feel about Israel without adding in the contrast with the Palestinians, the numbers are more encouraging. The survey says 56% of Democrats have a favorable view of Israel, a number that has shown little change since 2001 when it stood at 60%. But it’s still much lower than independents, 67% of whom view Israel favorably (up from 59% in 2001)—let alone Republicans, 82% of whom view it favorably (up from 75% in 2001).
And only a minority of Americans think well of the Palestinian Authority—36% of Democrats, 28% of independents and only 9% of Republicans.
But the problem is that when you ask people how they feel about Israel vis-à-vis the Palestinians, the intersectional mindset kicks in for those who are influenced by the left. That explains why, when given the choice, more Democrats now favor an entity that has repeatedly rejected peace than those who back Israel.
What explains this shift?
Gallup claims it might be a reflection of the “high number of Palestinians killed” in the ongoing conflict, though without mentioning that those figures are largely composed of slain terrorists. But they’re not wrong to see it as connected to the “waning religiosity” of most Americans since the remaining people of faith, who are more likely to be Republicans, are strong supporters of Zionism.
They’re missing the real answer: the rise of the intersectional left that falsely analogizes the Palestinian war on Israel to the struggle for civil rights in the United States, as well as falsely depicts the Jewish state as an expression of “white privilege” and an oppressor of Palestinian “people of color.”
A generation of Americans has been soaking up toxic critical race theory myths in academia. These bad ideas are now parroted in much of the corporate liberal media and pop-culture entertainment outlets. They don’t understand that the majority of Israeli Jews are themselves people of color and that Jews are the indigenous people of the country, not interlopers. They also don’t know that it is the Palestinians who have rejected compromise peace offers by different Israeli governments in the last 30 years. Yet even supposedly pro-Israel Democrats blame the impasse on current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, settlements in areas over the so-called “Green Line” and other Israeli policies, many of which are not explained or understood by American Jews.
Obama, Trump and ‘The New York Times’
There are other factors at play as well. The hostility of the Obama administration to Israel’s positions on security and territory influenced a generation of Democrats who idolized the 44th president. His decision in 2015 to support a disastrous nuclear deal with Iran that endangered Israel’s existence—and that served as a partisan litmus test—led many in his party to be angry when Netanyahu went all out to persuade Congress to oppose it earlier that year. Obama’s stand also essentially legitimized anti-Zionist sentiment on the left.
The fact that his successor, former President Donald Trump, became the most pro-Israel U.S. president also caused many partisan Democrats who despised him to take an increasingly antagonistic stance towards the Jewish state. Since some think anything Trump did, including historic stances like moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in May 2018, is inherently wrong (if not outright evil) that also allowed anti-Zionists to go mainstream.
As a result of these factors, so-called progressives dominate congressional Democrats with the Marxist “Squad” leading the way and being feted as their party’s current rock stars.
That’s also reflected in the liberal media, which also plays a role in shaping the opinions of Democrats. For example, the two editors who currently run The New York Times opinion section—Allison Benedikt and Max Strasser—are openly anti-Zionist.
And so, the poll numbers come as no surprise.
Contrary to antisemitic “Squad” member Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), support for Israel isn’t “all about the Benjamins.” Jews have not bought Congress. Until the American educational system was hijacked by Marxist radicals, Israel was popular with Americans of all backgrounds. And it remains so among those, like many independents and most GOP voters, who don’t buy into the left’s lies about history and race.
But as Gallup’s results demonstrate, from now on, it’s not possible to pretend that both parties are equally committed to Israel’s defense. Thanks to the influence of the ideology to which even President Joe Biden bends his knee, the Democrats have reached a tipping point on Israel from which there may be no road back.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS.org. Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS.org, a senior contributor for The Federalist and a columnist for Newsweek. He is also the host of the Top Story podcast that can be viewed on YouTube and listened to on Spotify and other platforms. He can be reached via e-mail at: jtobin@jns.org. Follow him on Twitter at @jonathans_tobin and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/JonathanSTobincolumnist/.
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A nuclear war with the US is more likely than ever, Russia warns
Ryabkov said Russia was committed to keeping the world "safe and free" from the threat of nuclear war, but added that business could not continue as usual
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Wednesday that the risk of a nuclear clash was at its highest level in decades, warning that Moscow was in a "de-facto" open conflict with Washington over the war in Ukraine.
Relations between Russia and the United States, long strained, have worsened even further since Russia's invasion of Ukraine last year. In February, Moscow pulled out of the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty with Washington.
Speaking at an event entitled "A World Without START: What's Next," Ryabkov said there was "no question" of Russia restoring the treaty for now, criticizing what he called Washington's "hostile course" towards Moscow.
"I wouldn't want to dive into a discussion about whether the likelihood of a nuclear conflict is high today, but it is higher than anything we have had for the past few decades, let's put it that way," the Interfax news agency quoted him as saying.
Russia committed to keeping world "safe and free"
Ryabkov said Russia was committed to keeping the world "safe and free" from the threat of nuclear war, but added later that business could not continue as usual, given that Moscow was now "in a de facto state of open conflict with the United States."
A year on since the invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has repeatedly accused Washington of directly participating in the conflict by supplying weapons to Kyiv, while casting the war as a battle for Russia's very survival.
Both the United States and Russia - by far the world's largest nuclear powers - have said that a nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought, but the conflict in Ukraine has raised fears of a direct confrontation with the West.
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‘Totally Exculpatory’: Trump Reveals Cohen Attorney Letter He Says Will Undercut Manhattan DA’s Case
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My liberal friends fall into three categories:
1) There are the heavy bleeders and if they stand next to them you get blood all over your clean shirt. You might as well talk to the wall. They are beyond impenetrable. Conversation is a sheer waste of time.
2) then there are the bleeders who tend to be biased but if you do not echo back, present a rational response you can move them. They begin by patronizing/defending Palestinians, let's say, and then you respond by reminding Palestinians hate Israelis and allowing that to go unanswered increases their appetite for bullishness.
They eventually embrace there is no free lunch so you can, at least, engage in a back and forth conversation once you help extricate them from their initial biases. They teach terrorism to their children and when you feed bullies your response sort of paints them into a corner and they will recognize, mend and adjust.
If you stand your ground they will allow conversation and when they walk away you have planted a seed but their eyes do not reveal they have conviction. What you have planted is hope.
3) The third liberal type is more a leaker. Takes a lot of effort but their stand is so specious you can break the lock that binds them fairly easily. They mostly believe God put them here to do a "mitzvah - good deed." They are often superficial in their thinking and logically will bend to a sensible response. You can engage them for a more extensive conversation but they eventually fallback into their grove so here there is some flickering modicum of hope and success so furthering the pursuit could bring a pay day. The odds favor continuance.
My conservative friends also fall into categories.
Some so extreme you immediately want to distance yourself for fear they will paint you with their biased brush..
The second category are smack on but are not intelligent enough or disorganized and have not thought through their own reasoning. The third category have at least honed their message but fear social rejection and want to be part of the crowd and do not have the guts to handle social rejection and I believe those most disturb me because of the lack of a trust factor.
Finally there is me. The conservative who knows why he is so, has put together a response based on factual empirical evidence that is irrefutable and holds water. I also so am willing to allow the opposition, whatever category save for first to express themselves because the more they talk the weaker their argument becomes.
I recently told a category two liberal a joke that was cynical and got the kind of reaction one should expect from a liberal who, broad brush, tends to be humorless, arise looking to change something so they can feel "good deedy" all day. and feels compelled to defend the "poor soul."
Two insane people pass a pool and the male jumps in the pool and stays at the bottom. His female companion eventually jumps in and rescues him. A worker saw the response and told the director who called the female into his office and told her because of her rational act she was no longer considered insane and would be released. He also said he had bad news when she wanted to say goodbye to her male friend. The director said they found him hanging on a line with the belt from his robe wrapped around his throat. She responded I did that to put him out to dry.
My liberal friends remained totally deaf silent.
These are the types that cannot separate their hatred for Trump and acknowledge his success regarding government policy. They would rather endure and inflict the pain of Biden failures, penalize the lower socio level of our society economically because of inflation, crime etc. and then profess how much they care about the black population etc. Utter hypocrisy in my view.
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CTC Sentinel | March 2023
VOLUME 16, ISSUE 3
Published by Combating Terrorism Center
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From the Editor
This month’s feature article focuses on the challenge posed by the evolving Islamic State insurgency in Mozambique. Emilia Columbo writes: “The deployment of regional military and police forces to Cabo Delgado Province in northern Mozambique to assist the Mozambican government against what was then a growing jihadi insurgency nearly two years ago has introduced new dynamics into the conflict, expanding the insurgency’s presence in the region and increasing the importance of the information space as each side works to persuade its constituencies that the conflict is proceeding in its favor.” She assesses that the sustainability of security gains along the coast “will depend largely on the government’s willingness to develop and implement a more balanced counterterrorism approach that addresses the underlying grievances driving this conflict.”
Our interview is with Jessica White and Galen Lamphere-Englund, co-conveners of the Extremism and Gaming Research Network, which started a little over two years ago as a practitioner- and researcher-led initiative to try and unpack concerning developments in the online space.
Alexander Ritzmann writes that “the alleged plot against the German government by the Reichsbürger group Patriotic Union, whose key members were arrested on December 7, 2022, is best understood as a thwarted, possible early-stage terrorist plot, rather than a preempted imminent violent coup attempt. The Reichsbürger, who are comprised of different groups and networks, claim that the German state of today does not legally exist. Many Reichsbürger ascribe to a version of the anti-Semitic ‘New World Order,’ others believe in ‘QAnon.’” He notes that “although the vast majority of Reichsbürger are neither considered violent nor right-wing extremists by German security agencies, the threat posed by a minority of violent and extremist Reichsbürger persists, with German security agencies continuing to thwart alleged violent activity linked to different Reichsbürger groups.”
Francesco Marone examines how an ongoing hunger strike by the imprisoned insurrectionary anarchist terrorist Alfredo Cospito has amplified the threat in and beyond Italy posed by “a transnational extremist tendency that promotes ‘self-organized’ illegal and violent actions, even against people.”
Paul Cruickshank, Editor-in-Chief
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Honest Reporting Recant.
New York Times Reporter’s Biased Temple Mount Piece Latest in History of Misinformation
ByChaim Lax
In anticipation of the concurrence of the upcoming Jewish holiday of Passover and the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, as escalating tensions could possibly spill over into further violence, the New York Times’ Palestinian affairs correspondent, Raja Abdulrahim, recently published a piece on the fears of the Muslim artisans who renovate the Muslim shrines on the Temple Mount.
However, instead of providing a balanced and nuanced piece of journalism, Abdulrahim’s report, par for the course when it comes to her reporting on the Jewish state, is full of misleading statements and claims that reek of an anti-Israel bias.
The following are some of the more egregious examples:
Diminishing the Jewish Connection to the Temple Mount
She writes “Jews believe that the [Temple Mount] compound is the location of two ancient temples,” implying that the existence of the First & Second Temples is more a matter of faith than historical fact.
In actuality, a number of ancient remnants discovered by archaeologists in the area by the Temple Mount (the Mount, itself, has never been excavated) point conclusively to the existence of both Temples.
In addition, aside from the archaeological evidence, the existence of the Temple at this site was even confirmed in the early 20th century by none other than the Supreme Muslim Council, which stated in a 1925 pamphlet that “[The Mount’s] identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute.”
No, @nytimes, those two ancient temples are not merely a “belief.” They are an accepted historical fact with archaeological evidence to back it up.@RajaAbdulrahim, stop diminishing the indisputable Jewish physical connection to the Temple Mount. https://t.co/gFuMVrLTRa pic.twitter.com/47ZWo7C6x1
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) March 23, 2023
Erasing the Context Behind the Palestinian Casualty Rate
Raja Abdulrahim seeks to contextualize her piece by writing:
The atmosphere is already tense amid an escalation of violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. It has been the deadliest start of a year for Palestinians in the territory in more than two decades as settler violence increases and as Israel steps up lethal raids in response to a series of attacks by Palestinian armed groups.
This is, however, far from accurate context.
Abdulrahim seemingly seeks to place the blame for the latest wave of violence entirely on the backs of Israelis by failing to mention that the majority of those Palestinians killed are aligned with Palestinian terror groups, that the “attacks by Palestinian armed groups” were lethal and led to one of the bloodiest years for Israelis in recent decades, and that the entire wave of violence began with a string of Palestinian terror attacks, not Israeli actions.
THREAD: 2023 has seen increased terror attacks & IDF counter-terror operations, with an equal number of Israeli & Palestinian civilian casualties.
Yet the media reports all Palestinian deaths equally, choosing not to mention that 49/60 deaths were confirmed terrorists. pic.twitter.com/4dBvqg9QoH
Historical Revisionism on the Cause of the Second Intifada
One further example of Abdulrahim’s inaccurate reporting is her claim that Ariel Sharon’s 2000 visit to the Temple Mount “set off the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising.”
As HonestReporting has previously explained, Palestinian, Israeli and American officials have all gone on record to state that Sharon’s visit was an excuse exploited by the Palestinian leadership, which was already planning anti-Israel violence and terrorism.
Thus, to blame Ariel Sharon for the instigation of the Second Intifada is not only historical revisionism but also dangerous exculpation for those Palestinians who took part in one of the most violent periods in Israeli history.
A History of Inaccurate Reporting: Raja Abdulrahim and Israel
It is unsurprising that Raja Abdulrahim’s latest New York Times report is replete with anti-Israeli bias and misinformation. As HonestReporting and other organizations have highlighted, Abdulrahim has a long history of using her position as a journalist to spread falsehoods about Israel and to smear the Jewish state.
The following are some of the most notable examples of anti-Israel bias within Raja Abdulrahim’s reporting:
In late 2022, Abdulrahim used her column in the New York Times to whitewash Palestinian terrorism, claiming that the majority of Palestinians killed by Israel (including those claimed as members by Palestinian terror groups) were innocent civilians. HonestReporting’s analysis proved that Abdulrahim’s claim was misleading and intended to sully Israel’s reputation.
The New York Times was forced to issue a clarification in November 2022 after the media watchdog organization CAMERA disproved Abdulrahim’s claim that Israel and Egypt’s blockade of Gaza had crippled the Gazan fishing industry. In fact, Palestinian statistics show a marked increase in Gaza’s fishing sector over the blockade’s duration.
In a July 2022 report, Abdulrahim falsely claimed that Israel “is attempting to criminalize certain aspects of the collective Palestinian identity” and that the Palestinian flag is “practically absent” from the streets of Jerusalem. As well, she ignored Palestinian violence while sanctioning Israel for its response.
In June 2022, Abdulrahim wrote a one-sided report on convicted Hamas member Mohammad al-Halabi, which took claims made by his supporters at face value while seemingly discounting any evidence put forward by the prosecution.
While a Florida University student, during the height of the Second Intifada, Raja Abdulrahim wrote an op-ed that blamed Israel for the scourge of Palestinian suicide bombing and terrorism.
Raja Abdulrahim’s latest screed for the New York Times is therefore not unique in its portrayal of the Jewish state but rather another installment in her journalistic career of anti-Israel bias, falsehoods, and misinformation.
Found this article informative? Follow the HonestReporting page on Facebook to read more articles debunking news bias and smears, as well as others explaining Israel’s history, politics, and international affairs. Click here to learn more!
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