This video is not one of a Trump Hating Actor who mistakenly shot an actress, because he claimed the pistol was not loaded. It is not a video of peaceful Palestinians who elected Hamas to rule them after Israel voluntarily returned a beautiful area called Gaza. No, this is a video American snowflakes refuse to believe because some Muslim "bitch" in Congress convinced them she is to be believed instead of their own eyes.
Billionaire Cooperman referred to these snowflakes as having "s---"for brains.
Frankly that is giving them more credit than I would. Not sure they even have brains.
+++.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Join Us Sunday for Classes on Jewish War Ethics, Gaza's History & Future, and the Left, Right, and Israel
|
|
+++++++++++++++++++++++
Caroline Glick suggests Biden has placed himself in the current conundrum because he is weak, does not understand the temperament of the advisory and continues barking up the wrong tree because of his relationships with "evil doers."
Biden proves Cooperman's charge against "snowflakes."
+++
Biden’s Hamas conundrum
The president’s continued reliance on his anti-Israel, pro-Iran officials is not merely a policy disaster. It is a political problem. Op-ed.
By Caroline Glick
Caroline B. Glick is the senior contributing editor of Jewish News Syndicate and host of the “Caroline Glick Show” on JNS. She is also the diplomatic commentator for Israel’s Channel 14, as well as a columnist for Newsweek. Glick is the senior fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at the Center for Security Policy in Washington and a lecturer at Israel’s College of Statesmanship.
(JNS) Since Oct. 7, American Jews have seen their civil rights trampled every day. Jewish students are subjected to constant intimidation, assault, battery and threats from Hamas supporters on campus. From coast to coast, the stories are depressingly similar. University authorities refuse to protect them from their pro-Jewish genocide peers.
Then, too, on Thursday, the New York Police Department told the Jews of Brooklyn to stay off the streets on Shabbat afternoon. Pro-Hamas will be demonstrating, and the police said that they will be unable to protect Jewish residents as the terror supporters march through their neighborhoods.
How is this happening? How is it that at a time of maximum peril, law-enforcement bodies are doing all but nothing to defend the Jewish community? Why is the FBI not arresting terror supporters as required under U.S. law? Why is the U.S. Justice Department not directing local authorities to defend the Jews?
A good place to begin to look for answers is the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. That powerful division is led by Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke.
Clarke’s appointment in 2021 caused an uproar in Jewish circles because she has a record of anti-Semitic activism and was an ardent supporter of the pro-Hamas, anti-Jewish Black Lives Matter movement.
In 1994, as the head of the Black Students Association at Harvard Law School, Clarke invited Wellesley College Professor Tony Martin to speak at Harvard. Martin had just written a Protocols of the Elders of Zion-style anti-Semitic book called The Jewish Onslaught.
Clarke defiantly defended Martin at the time and attacked the Jewish students who expressed concern about her move. She never apologized for her actions. Instead, ahead of her Senate confirmation, she told progressive, anti-Israel Jewish reporters and activists that she “regretted” the invitation. That was enough for them to declare that the allegation that Clarke remains hostile towards Jews is slander.
U.S. President Joe Biden has a problem. He staffed his administration at all levels and across departments with hardened ideologues, many of whom have records of hostility towards Jews and support for Hamas, Iran, and other terror groups and regimes. Under Biden, these officials have advanced his Middle East policies that until Oct. 7 were largely aligned with the interests of Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis.
Now that those policies have been shown to be counterproductive, and at least partly responsible for the threats America now faces to its core Middle Eastern interests, the same officials remain in their positions and continue to direct the Biden administration’s policies.
Consider the Palestinians.
U.S. policy towards the Palestinian Arabs is directed by the U.S. Special Representative to the Palestinians, Hady Amr. Amr is a longtime supporter of Hamas. In 2018, at the Qatar-based offices of the Brookings Institute, Amr was the lead author of a Brookings policy paper titled, “Ending Gaza’s Perpetual Crisis–A New U.S. Approach.”
Amr’s basic recommendations were to change terror financing laws to permit U.S. contractors to work with Hamas, as well as to use any new round of war between Israel and Hamas to launch a new three-pronged policy towards Israel and Hamas.
Amr’s plan accepted Hamas as a legitimate actor. It called for the Palestinian Authority to unite with Hamas and reorganize under Hamas’s leadership in light of Hamas’s stronger support among Palestinians. Finally, it called for the United States to coerce Israel into making unreciprocated concessions to Hamas and the P.A., even though Amr acknowledged that the concessions would endanger Israel. Among other things, he called for Israel to end its maritime blockage of the Gaza coast and permit Hamas free access to the sea.
As the architect of Biden’s Palestinian policies, Amr’s Brookings paper was a blueprint for many of the policies adopted by the administration, including its willingness to fund Hamas indirectly through the P.A. and U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the U.N. agency operating in Gaza. Some 90% of UNRWA employees are Hamas members.
Amr remains in his position.
The ongoing Iran problem
Then there is Iran.
Biden appointed Iran apologist Robert Malley to lead the administration’s Iran policy. Malley’s policy was so pro-Iranian that several career U.S. State Department officials—not known for their hostility to Tehran—resigned in protest. As Semafor and Iran International exposed last month, Malley surrounded himself with advisers in and out of government with records of serving as Iranian regime agents in Washington. One of those aides, Ariane Tabatabai remains in her position as Chief of Staff to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict, with her security clearance intact, a month after her direct ties to the Iranian regime became public knowledge.
Although Malley was booted from his position under a cloud of suspicion of misuse of classified information and is reportedly under FBI criminal investigation, his policy of courting Iran and enabling its rise as a nuclear power and regional power remains in place.
This week many observers, including former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, expressed shock when they discovered that the Biden administration gave a U.S. entry visa to Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian to speak at the United Nations. The move signaled that despite the fact that Iran trained Hamas terrorists in Iran ahead of the atrocities on Oct. 7, oversaw the planning of the Oct. 7 slaughter, green-lighted the atrocities and finances Hamas, the administration is still implementing Malley’s Iran policy.
And to repay the administration for its appeasement, Abdollahian used his speech to threaten the United States with war if it continues to support Israel. Since Oct, 7, and as the administration clings stubbornly to Malley’s pro-Iran policies, Iranian proxies in Syria, Yemen and Iraq have repeatedly attacked U.S. forces in the region.
The Pentagon’s continued refusal to fully acknowledge Iran’s direction of Hamas’s acts of genocide is further indication that Malley’s policy remains Biden’s Iran policy.
Biden’s continued reliance on his anti-Israel, pro-Hamas and pro-Iran officials is not merely a policy disaster. It is a political problem. As Democratic pollster Doug Schoen explained at The Hill on Thursday, public support for Israel among both Democrats and Republicans is sky-high. Americans don’t merely support Israel; they support Israel passionately.
As Schoen noted, 81% of Republicans and 74% of Democrats support providing Israel with military support. Some 80% of Republicans and 72% of Democrats feel that it is important for the United States to protect Israel. And 74% of Americans believe that supporting Israel is more important than other geopolitical priorities.
Schoen concluded his article by noting, “Frankly, in my five decades of experience in politics, including polling extensively on issues related to Israel and the America-Israel relationship, the current support for Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorists who seek its destruction is like nothing I’ve seen before.”
Sensitive to public opinion on the one hand and his administration officials on the other, Biden tried to thread the needle on Wednesday. The results weren’t pretty.
At a press conference with Australian Prime Minister Tony Albanese, Biden restated his administration’s commitment to provide Israel with the arms it needs to defeat Hamas. But he then demanded that Israel resupply Hamas under the euphemistic headline: “Humanitarian aid.”
A brewing rebellion
While Palestinian election results, polling data and the wide-scale celebrations of Hamas’s atrocities across Gaza, Judea and Samaria are evidence that Hamas represents a large majority of Palestinian Arabs in Gaza, and Judea and Samaria, Biden insisted that Hamas does not represent the Palestinian Arabs.
His false assertion is a necessary component of his administration’s strategic goal, which he restated at the press conference—the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state in Gaza, Judea, Samaria and portions of Jerusalem.
To defend the proposition that Israel must agree to establish a state in its heartland for a people that supports and engages in acts of genocide of Jewry and seeks the annihilation of the Jewish state, Biden turned to Amr’s playbook: He demonized the half-million Israeli Jews who live in Judea and Samaria.
“I continue to be alarmed about extremist settlers attacking Palestinians in the West Bank that—pouring gasoline on fire is what it’s like. They’re … attacking Palestinians in places that they’re entitled to be, and it has to stop. They have to be held accountable. And it has to stop now,” he said angrily.
Biden’s broadside is unsupported by facts. Although several dozen Palestinian Arab terrorists in Judea and Samaria have been killed in gun battles with IDF forces in Judea and Samaria since Oct. 7, no Israeli civilians were involved in any of the clashes.
On the other hand, the morning after Biden launched his slanderous broadside, a Palestinian Arab mob outside a Jewish farm in the Binyamin region attacked two Israeli shepherds, critically wounding one.
Many Israeli media outlets responded with shock and anger at Biden’s demand for Israel to accept that the goal of the war is to establish a Palestinian state. One headline blared: “Biden deceived us.”
In an effort to play to both sides, at the same press conference, Biden rejected claims by Hamas’s “Gaza Health Ministry” that Israel has killed 6,000 civilians, including 2,700 children in Gaza, saying, “I have no confidence in the numbers the Palestinians are using.”
If Israelis were stunned and angered by Biden’s hostile messages directed against them, Biden’s rejection of Hamas’s casualty propaganda enraged Hamas’s allies in Washington. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) demanded that Biden apologize. Furious Hamas supporters at the State Department showed The Huffington Post 20 department cables where Hamas’s “Gaza Health Ministry” numbers were accepted as credible.
To quell the brewing rebellion of their own officials, both National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Tony Blinken have reportedly conducted “listening sessions” with these pro-Hamas staffers to make sure they feel “listened to” by their bosses. There have been no reports that any of these pro-terror officials have been fired.
The rancor in the ranks of the Hamas supporters in the administration and their supporters in the progressive base is also a political issue. Biden’s support for Israel, limited though it has been is costing him support among Muslim Americans and pro-Hamas progressives. A Gallup poll of Democrats from Oct. 3 to Oct. 23 shows that Biden’s support among Democrats went down 11% in three weeks and now stands at 75%.
These numbers, aligned with Schoen’s data, expose Biden’s conundrum. If Biden maintains his support for Israel, then he will anger, alienate and perhaps permanently lose the support of his administration and the activist progressive base of his party. And if he stands with his base—and his pro-Iran and pro-Hamas officials and voters—he will alienate the American public. Either way, he undermines his standing as he moves towards an election year.
In “The Caroline Glick Show” this week, historian Victor Davis Hanson argued that with the public’s stalwart support for Israel, and Iran’s escalating attacks against the United States through its proxies, Biden will be forced to stand with Israel even more forthrightly in the weeks to come.
If the opposite occurs, if Biden opts to stand with Hady Amr, Robert Malley’s acolytes, and their allies and comrades throughout the administration, as well as with the Democrat Party’s pro-Hamas camp, and against three-quarters of the American public, it will be a testament to the brittleness of the administration’s extremism. It will also constitute a rejection of the democratic norms of governance that have underpinned American society and politics for 250 years.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Another Rabbi chimes in:
+++
Israel’s War in Gaza: Painful Lessons We Have Learned
From: Rabbi Neil Cooper
The older I get the more I forget. I know I am not alone in recognizing the fact that my memory is not as good as it had been when I was younger. And so, I do have sympathy for those with short memories. But when, on October 7, Hamas terrorists entered Israeli kibbutzim and communities located on the border of Gaza, murdering, maiming, and raping as they went, the world expressed its horror and sympathy. In a matter of days, specifically, when the report emerged about the bombing of a hospital in Gaza, for which Israel was falsely blamed, the world promptly forgot about October 7.
Most recently, the United Nations has focused its attention on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, upon which blame falls exclusively on Israel, expressed in words of horror and condemnation for Israel. Yet not a word of sympathy is spoken in reference to 1400 men, women and children murdered by Hamas, not a word of concern for over 200 hostages held by Hamas. I have tolerance for those with short-term memory deficits. But what is occurring in the world today is more than an issue of memory. It is something else.
I take this moment to share my thoughts about what is happening in Israel at this moment. Contrary to the odious and instinctively hateful message we hear throughout the media, and in much of the world, about Israel, there are other ways to understand what Israel and I have been experiencing during all of this. I share with you two ideas.
1. Truth vs Lies
There’s a well-known saying, that one is entitled to their own opinions but not to their own facts. When the hospital in Gaza was bombed, before anyone could deny responsibility, before Israel or Hamas could provide images and documentation supporting their respective claims and denials of culpability, Palestinians, the Arab world, and, as it seemed, the entire news media, accepted, hook, line and sinker, the immediate designation by Hamas of Israel as the perpetrator. What was so clear at that moment and since, is that the facts have become irrelevant.
As I followed the stories emerging from the horrific slaughters of October 7, and the accounts of terror, martyrdom, and heroism, I could not help but be moved to tears. I am deeply saddened, as well, by the stories recounted by those who suffer under the Israeli bombardment of Gaza. But in recounting the events which have transpired, whether from the Arab world, from politically far-left students and others, or from the mainstream media, it is only the suffering of the Palestinians that seems to be recalled. Yes, of course, if I ask, some might say that the massacres of October 7 can be retrieved from the recesses of their memories, but it is the ongoing suffering of the Palestinian people that must be addressed.
The horrible, ISIS-like maiming, torturing and murder of Israeli men, women and children has now been relegated to the dustbin of history. Jewish suffering is an old story. Our detractors have heard enough. It is not terror against Israel but the plight of the Palestinians which must remain in the forefront of our consciousness.
The narrative of national suffering has now been uprooted from Israel’s story, absconded, and replaced by the pain of the Palestinian People and their leaders. The King of Jordan, the President of Egypt, not to mention the political and religious leaders in Iran and their proxies, all bemoan the suffering of the Palestinians.
Of course, one might ask of these Arab leaders, if they are so concerned about the Palestinian people why not offer their own humanitarian aid? Why not open their borders to Palestinian refugees fleeing violence in Gaza? Why not offer their help in mediating the release of over 200 hostages? Any positive response, to any of these questions, let alone positive responses to all of these questions, would alleviate suffering and pain experienced by thousands of innocent Palestinians. But those sorts of responses do not fit the narrative that is being peddled.
The only narrative, the big lie, is that this is all Israel’s fault. Israel is the unrepentant usurper of Arab lands and occupier of a territory not their own. For this reason, Israel brought upon itself the terrorism, which resulted in the brutal murders of 1400 innocent citizens, and the capture of over 200 hostages. For Arab leaders, the UN or others to intervene would suggest that others assume responsibility for the pain and suffering of the Palestinians, suffering and pain initiated by, perpetrated by, and perpetuated by the Israelis. Better the Palestinian people should suffer and die in order to support the big lie. In that way, all of this remains at the feet of the world’s most reviled, evil and most convenient devil: Israel. To understand the response of the world to Israel’s situation, one must internalize a narrative which begins and ends with Israel’s culpability, and let the facts go to hell.
2. Love vs Fear
For the Jewish people, whose hallmark includes the sanctity of all human life, the suffering of the Palestinian people is, to say the least, hard to watch. The rabbis of the Talmud considered the most important verse of the Torah to be the reminder to love the Other, as we love ourselves (Lev. 19:18). There is no question that the suffering of “the Other” is being caused by the bombs of the IDF falling in Gaza. All of this creates within us a moral dilemma.
In the face of human suffering, the Jewish people have always been the first to extend a loving hand. Even when our enemy has been in pain, we offer assistance. The Palestinian people are not our enemies and our inclination, therefore, is strong to stop the suffering, to suspend the bombings and to create a pathway for humanitarian assistance. Why do we not do this? I would like to suggest that our humanitarian instincts, proper and noble as they are, cannot be invoked at this time.
In the past, it has been our unspoken assumption that, if we demonstrate our love and concern for “the Other”, that love, and concern would be reciprocated. In the past, it has been our assumption that if we offer assistance the response would be gratitude. We thought that if we fought for a two-state solution, forces of moderation on both sides of the Israel - Palestinian divide, would prevail, pursuing that, with serious intent. And yet, time and again, with numerous offers of peace, coexistence, and security for all, over many decades, we have been rebuffed and, often, rebuked. We thought that the formula for a lasting peace would be motivated by humanitarianism and love. We were wrong.
Among the lessons we learned on October 7 was that this formula of peace through love was neither realistic nor viable. The notion of the sanctity of all human life can no longer be for us the basis for a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Despite our humanitarian inclinations, we now understand that it is not love, but fear which must be instilled before any peace can prevail.
The incursion of October 7, if nothing else, showed Israel that Israel is not feared. The blatant breach of, purportedly, impenetrable borders revealed that our impression of ourselves was not shared by our enemies. What we saw as our strength, they saw as weakness. When we built what we thought were unbreakable walls, they saw unimpeded opportunities for terror. And when we relied on the power of our shared humanity, they relied on their power to perpetrate evil. And we have paid dearly for our mistaken self-perception.
The war in Gaza has required the establishment of a new paradigm for our relationship with our neighbors. Although I believe that our goal remains a future of peace and security for both Palestinians and Israelis, that goal can no longer be contingent on how we are loved and admired for our humanity. Any future peace must begin with a realization of fear, the fear of the potential for cataclysmic destruction, the fear of total debilitation, and the fear of the dire consequences of any further attempts to terrorize the Jewish People.
The current situation requires of us to re-evaluate the narratives, the premises and the postulates of the past before we can move forward. Rising Antisemitism, disguised as anti-Zionism, remains a pernicious and immutable constant, brought into broad relief by this war. Our job cannot be simply to acknowledge this reality and bemoan its ongoing place in the world. For the sake of our future, and out of reverence for our past, we must change the paradigm and focus on what we know to be the truth, on facts for which we have proof and, for now, assume a posture which inspires fear in those who oppose us. And the, perhaps, might we find the peace which has evaded us for far too long.
Neil Cooper
Rabbi Emeritus
++++++++++++++++++++++++
No comments:
Post a Comment