Biden's betrayal worse?

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https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2024/05/12/joe-biden-is-protecting-hamas-leaders-n4928978

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If Raisi Is Dead: Implications for the Islamic Republic of Iran

by Shay Khatiri
Middle East Forum Observer

https://www.meforum.org/65899/if-raisi-is-dead-implications-for-the-islamic

(Photo: Islamic Republic News Agency)

State media report that a helicopter carrying Iran President Ebrahim Raisi had a "hard landing" amidst bad weather. Rescue teams reportedly are struggling to reach the mountainous and forested site. Raisi was returning from a visit to the Iran-Azerbaijan border. If Raisi is dead or incapacitated, there will need to be an emergency succession in Iran.

How Would Presidential Succession Occur?

Raisi's demise, if confirmed, would not the first death of a sitting Iranian president, In 1981, the Mojahedin-e Khalq of Iran assassinated President Mohammad-Ali Rajai. The Islamic Republic's constitution simply states that when a president dies, a new president "would be chosen." In 1981, authorities called a new election but, in 1989, an amended constitution gave the Supreme Leader, currently Ali Khamenei, further power to decide. Under the current constitution, there is no mandate for a new election. If the president is dead or unable to perform his duties for longer than two months, the first vice president, the speaker of the parliament, and the chief justice, with the consent of the Supreme Leader, form a council to choose the succession mechanism.

Continue reading the full article >

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Biden’s betrayal of Israel only means more civilians will die

By Mark Dubowitz and Ben Cohen

A decade ago, former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates famously declared that Joe Biden, ‘has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.’

Secretary Gates – you’ll never believe what Joe’s done now.

President Biden has made, perhaps, his most incompetent policy blunder yet (at least since his disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan).

In an interview Wednesday, Biden threatened to block the transfer of U.S. weapons to Israel, if the Jewish State launches a military operation against Hamas's last remaining stronghold in southern Gaza.

His ultimatum comes nearly seven months to the day of the October 7 slaughter – and after the White House admitted they had already secretly halted the delivery of bunker-busting bombs that Israel requires to root out terrorists hiding in deeply buried underground tunnels.

Indeed, the mastermind of the Hamas massacre, Yahya Sinwar, is believed to be sheltering in these tunnels – cynically dug beneath the feet of about 1.3 million Palestinians.

It’s not only layers of concrete, dirt and sand that shield these terrorists from the Israeli military. These monsters hide under women and children.

But Biden blames Israel.

‘Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those [U.S.] bombs,’ Biden told CNN’s Erin Burnett. ‘…it’s just wrong.’

Consider the impact of this new Biden Doctrine: It is nothing less than an endorsement of Hamas’s use of human shields.

The President’s message to terrorists the world over is that if they embed themselves in mosques, schools, hospitals, homes and refugee camps, the United States of America will protect them.

What an appalling new precedent – and it didn’t need to be this way.

There were many viable policy alternatives that President Biden could have pursued before validating Hamas’s strategy of maximizing civilian casualties.

Block Aid for Egypt, Not Arms for Israel

Instead of cutting off arms transfers to Israel, the Biden administration could have leveraged $1 billion in annual U.S. military aid to Egypt to force President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to take Gazan refugees.

Egypt has all the capability necessary to temporarily shelter Palestinians in the vast empty spaces of the Sinai Peninsula – the region just West of Rafah and nearly the size of West Virginia. This would allow for the evacuation of civilians and the final defeat of Hamas before the phased return of Palestinians to Gaza.

To date, Egypt has refused to accept refugees because el-Sisi sees elements of the Palestinian population, especially the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Hamas, as an extremist threat to his rule.

Western government officials have told the Foundation for Defense of Democracies that several Gulf States have even offered el-Sisi an additional $40 billion in economic aid to open Egypt’s northern border to Palestinian refugees.

Still, he has not budged.

American pressure would surely change that calculus.

U.S. aid to Egypt should be made conditional on Cairo alleviating the humanitarian suffering in Gaza. And el-Sisi should be held accountable for allowing Hamas, for years, to smuggle weapons from Egypt into Gaza exacerbating the current crisis.

Put Mossad Targets on Hamas Leaders

While Palestinians suffer under the thumb of Hamas – the terror group’s leadership lives in luxury more than one thousand miles away in the tiny Persian Gulf nation of Qatar.

Today, Hamas’s political chief Ismail Haniyeh and his commanders living in Doha, Qatar are estimated to be worth $11 billion. They stand in the way of an immediate temporary Israeli ceasefire by refusing to release 132 Israeli hostages still held in Gaza.

But perversely, President Biden rewarded Qatar by naming the country a ‘major non-NATO U.S. Ally’ in 2022, despite its harboring of Hamas, which was designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. as far back as 1997.

The U.S. should give Doha a two-week deadline: Convince your Hamas guests to release the hostages back or the Biden administration will revoke Qatar’s major non-NATO status and designate Qatar as a state sponsor of terrorism.

In the long term, the U.S. should be pressuring Qatar’s Emir to expel Hamas’s leadership altogether – then let Mossad deal with them.

Strangle Hamas’s Patrons

The Islamic Republic of Iran sends $100 million to Hamas, $700 million to Hezbollah, and tens of millions to Islamic Jihad every year, according to Israel. President Biden can take steps today to choke off this terror-funding pipeline.

First, the White House could end its policy of appeasement toward Iran by halting the release of billions of dollars in oil funds, which were frozen during the Trump administration. These monies fund the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and terror proxies throughout the Middle East.

Secondly, the administration can do more to shut down the stream of illicit oil sale revenues that continue to flow into Iran.

For example, Malaysia’s Prime Minister, who refused to condemn the October 7 massacre, has vowed to maintain ties to Hamas even if that leaves Kuala Lumpur vulnerable to Western sanctions. The U.S. Treasury Department has found that Malaysia is buying oil from Tehran is clear defiance of sanctions.

President Biden should make an example of Malaysia by cracking down on this illicit trade that fuels international terrorism.

In contrast, the White House has taken a different approach – and abandoned an ally in the process.

aybe it’s all about presidential politics: Biden has been desperate to rid himself of the ‘Genocide Joe’ label affixed to him by Hamas sympathizers inside and outside of the Democratic Party.

He hopes that by betraying Israel, he will win back far-left supporters who threaten to withhold their support for him in November. But this cynical strategy is fated to fail.

Biden won’t mollify the ‘From the River to the Sea’ radicals on American campuses, bring the war in Gaza to a speedier conclusion or secure the release of a single hostage, alive or dead.

However, he has established a perverse new doctrine that generations of Americans will come to regret.

Mark Dubowitz is Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ chief executive. Ben Cohen is an FDD senior analyst.

https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2024/05/11/bidens-betrayal-of-israel-only-means-more-civilians-will-die/

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STUDENT ACTIVISTS, DO YOU REALLY WANT PEACE?

https://www.jns.org/student-activists-do-you-really-want-peace/

By Marc Erlbaum

There are undoubtedly some amongst the student protesters on campuses around the country who desire peace and believe they are demonstrating for peace. They have been deceived. They have been co-opted by a movement that promotes the opposite of peace. They imagine themselves to be pacifists and defenders of humanity, but they have been duped into chanting war cries and genocidal slogans, and they have become the unwitting pawns of a violent supremacist agenda that aims to overthrow the very democratic system that it exploits.

There are those in the encampments who know precisely what they’re doing. They are ideologues who have been raised in a culture of hatred for Israel and America and the values of democratic liberalism and cultural heterodoxy that the “Great Satan” and the “Little Satan” represent. They ascribe to a religious orthodoxy that demands universal adherence, or at least deference, to a singular the logic ideology. Or alternatively, they are cultural Marxists who are committed to the complete overthrow of any capitalist system.

These leaders of the campus encampment movement initially cloaked their agenda in pathos. Appealing to the compassionate humanitarian principles that undergird the Western liberal ethos, they focused students’ ire on the tragic loss of civilian life as a result of Israel’s campaign to eradicate the Hamas terrorists who had inflicted savage brutality on its populace. Distorting facts, inflating figures, and twisting language, they convinced vulnerable and uninformed youth that Israel was an “apartheid” regime guilty of committing a “genocide” against an innocent civilian population. While the claims were conclusively refuted by objective political and military experts, their emotional impact was more compelling than the facts for a demographic that is influenced more by their gut than their intellect.

Once students had been drafted to the cause, the cause itself began to shift, gradually but intentionally. What originated as a call for the cessation of military force morphed into something far less passive and pacifist. Chants and placards for “ceasefire” soon gave way to calls for the elimination of the State of Israel, and then to violent intolerance for Zionists (that is, any who believe in Israel’s right to exist) worldwide. Jewish students were harassed and refused passage as the virulent antisemitism of the movement’s organizers eventually surfaced. In some cases, calls for “death to America” exposed the protest leaders’ ultimate aim.

It would be interesting to know if there are cases of students defecting from the encampments as the messaging grew increasingly violent, hateful, and anti-American. If they exist, they should be publicized. Yet what is known is that participants are directed to avoid contact with the outside world and to shout down any dissenting or questioning voices. Independent thinking is sacrificed to herd mentality, and individuals become swept up in the fervor of the mob.

None of this excuses the actions or diminishes the responsibility of those who have participated in the encampments. It is likely that many of the student protestors will look back with regret on the hateful and anti-democratic activities in which they were manipulated to take part. Yet there is valuable information in these experiences for parents who are sending their children to college and for students themselves who are at risk of being falsely indoctrinated and cynically co-opted

There are two questions that students should be encouraged to ask themselves as they consider involvement in movements or activities on campus (and beyond). The first is, what are you really promoting?

If one is interested in promoting peace, then it should be clear that peace is the concern for all peoples and the desire for everyone to be safe and healthy and free. There will be those who insist that they seek peace, but what they really mean is that they want something for themselves and for those with whom they affiliate, and in order to get it, they will fight to vanquish those who differ with them ideologically. That is not peace. That is conflict and conquest.

If your love for something is measured by your hate for something else, then this is not love. If your idea of peace is the submission or eradication of those who do not comply with your worldview, then you will always be at war. Peace will only be secured when we learn to coexist, and those who refuse to do so are not genuinely interested in peace regardless of what they tell you.

The second question is, do you truly understand the issue, and are you clear on who is pulling the strings? There is often tremendous pressure to join a movement, and failure to do so is met with ostracism. This demand to immediately pick a side regardless of one’s knowledge or understanding of the issue or situation should be viewed with skepticism.

The attempt to whip people into a frenzy before thorough consideration or communication is a common tactic of those with questionable motives. One should be careful of those forces that are inciting people to aggression and division. There are malevolent players with shadowy agendas who are stirring the pot, shaking the jar, and pulling our strings for all the wrong reasons. They want us at each other’s throats, and we are far too easily allowing ourselves to be their marionettes.

What is needed today are genuine peacemakers, people who are able to put their egos and biases aside, to transcend politics and personal interest, and to band together on the side of compassion and communion. It is wonderful to be young and idealistic and energetic. Yet it is easy to be misguided and misled when passions run high. If peace is what you genuinely desire, then ask yourself the difficult questions and find those on campus who are working to unite rather than those who are grooming you to fight.

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YUP!

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2024 ELECTIONS

Jewish Voters Are Shifting: Experts

SHARE* READ MORE

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Biden ends the US-Israel alliance at a fortuitous moment

By Carolne Glick

So far, administration sychophants have not succeeded in turning the American people against either the Jewish state or the Jewish people. Hamas and the U.S. positions are in complete alignment.

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.

(JS) Delegations to the Egyptian-hosted hostage negotiations left Cairo on Thursday night after talks collapsed. A member of the U.S. delegation led by CIA director Willian Burns briefed reporters that the talks failed “due to Israel’s operations in Rafah.”

Under normal circumstances—circumstances that would see the United States siding with Israel in its demands for the release of all hostages, as well as the eradication of Hamas’s forces and its regime of terror—such a statement could easily have been interpreted as supportive of Israel’s operation in the southernmost part of the Gaza Strip, where terrorist strongholds still function.

Israel made an offer to Hamas that U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken praised as “incredibly generous.” Hamas rejected it completely, so Israel renewed its offensive entering Rafah. Nothing weakens Hamas’s negotiating position more than defeat. And now, having rejected the deal, Hamas can only expect a much worse offer from its perspective whenever talks are renewed.

Unfortunately, that isn’t what the U.S. announcement meant at all. It meant that the Hamas and the U.S. positions are in complete alignment. This isn’t new information. The fact that the United States, like Hamas, views the hostages as a means to force Israel to capitulate to Hamas’s demands—including ending the war with Hamas victorious, leaving more than 100 held captive behind in Gaza and thousands of terrorists freed from Israeli prisons—became clear last Saturday.

On May 4, Arab media outlets reported that behind Israel’s back, Burns had agreed to serve as guarantor that Israel will not renew its combat operations in Gaza in the event that a temporary ceasefire is enacted during the course of a hostage release. Israel never agreed to such a position. Indeed, Israel’s refusal to agree to an end of the war in exchange for a small fraction of the 132 hostages Hamas is holding in Gaza is the only thing preventing Hamas from rightly declaring victory in its jihad against Jerusalem.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rightly felt compelled to stop the story—and the American plot—in its tracks. He issued a statement denying that Israel had agreed to such a deal and rejecting it out of hand as a non-starter.

The news that Washington had now made strategic concessions to Hamas that involved a U.S. guarantee of Hamas victory meant the Biden administration had switched sides. By guaranteeing Hamas’s survival, the administration made it official U.S. policy to stand with a genocidal jihadist terror group against its principal Middle East ally: Israel.

Since then, it’s all been downhill. Biden’s announcement on Wednesday to CNN that he is effectively halting the transfer of vital munitions for Israel’s Air Force and ground forces to prevent Israel from achieving its goal of defeating Hamas’s last four battalions in Rafah marked the official end of the U.S.-Israel alliance.

Thursday’s story that the United States is blaming Israel’s operation in Rafah for the failure of the hostage talks was simply another blow below the belt.

Although the lumps Israel has taken from Washington this week have been unprecedented, they aren’t surprising.

Transformation of the Democratic Party

For the past two decades, the Democratic Party—once the more pro-Israel of America’s two major political parties—underwent a process of radicalization. The first sign that something was shifting came in the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries when a previously unknown former Vermont governor named Howard Dean raised more money than any of his fellow Democratic presidential hopefuls. Dean was funded by Internet portals conceived and financed by far-left billionaires who initiated the party’s transformation by changing its funding mechanisms.

Institutional funders and businessmen, longstanding political arms of lobbies and other funding standard-bearers were suddenly dwarfed by an army of anonymous online donors funneling funds through radical groups. The candidates who received their support were those who adopted the most radical positions on everything from healthcare to cultural issues, education policies to foreign and defense policies.

Just before his first inauguration, Barack Obama announced his intention to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.” While it is still an open question how well he succeeded nationally, there is no question that he fundamentally transformed the Democratic Party both in relation to domestic and foreign policy. Israel and American Jews were central casualties of both.

Obama transformed critical race theory from a reality-denying, racialist crackpot conceptual framework into the foundation of the party’s domestic policies. At the heart of CRT is the notion that people’s characters are determined by their racial, ethnic, national and religious background. And they are either victims—and therefore good, or aggressors—and therefore bad. One’s definition is immutable and determined not by individuals or even societies, but by a group of radical, unelected pseudo-intellectuals. Together, this band of racists decided that the United States and Jews in the United States and the collective Jew, the State of Israel, are successful and powerful—and therefore bad.

Thanks to Obama and his senior officials, coupled with the funding mechanisms they built and institutionalized, a steadily growing number of Democrats embraced the view that far from the last great hope of mankind and the leader of the free world, the U.S. was traditionally the world’s greatest aggressor. U.S. allies were viewed as accomplices to this evil, and as such, undeserving of support.

America’s enemies, on the other hand, were viewed as victims, and “innocent” by nature and incapable of doing wrong. Since the most anti-American actors in the world are Iran and radical, jihadist Arab states like Syria and Qatar were necessarily worthy of support and could be blamed for no wrongdoing.

The chief aggressor in Obama’s CRT taxonomy is Israel. And the chief victims are Israel’s existential enemies: Iran and the Palestinian Arabs. Empowering the latter against the Jewish state was seen as both a moral imperative and the key to repositioning the transformed United States on the “right side of history.”

Slowly, but surely, over his eight years in office, Obama incentivized abidance by CRT catechisms. Its primary expression in foreign policy was hatred of Israel and support for Palestinian terrorists and Iran.

By the time he left office, Obama had reshaped the party leadership and machines in his own image by transforming the funding mechanisms for candidates and officeholders at all levels of national politics to advance candidates aligned with CRT policies.

Although the so-called “Squad” of openly anti-Semitic lawmakers first elected to Congress in 2018 only included four members, their ability to compel House leaders to bend to their will was a testament to the fact that to all intents and purposes, that tiny minority now controlled the party apparatus. Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) refusal to censure Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) for her bigoted slurs of American Jews or Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) for her calls for Israel’s destruction testified to this state of affairs.

All this in the midst of mobs

Far from a surprise, then, Biden’s open breach in relations was simply the high-water mark to date in a 20-year process. It may not have been inevitable, but it was eminently predictable.

Although it is hard to see at first glance, given the seriousness of the circumstances we find ourselves in, it is fortunate that Biden and his advisers chose this time to openly turn against Israel. So far, Obama’s minions have not succeeded in turning the American people against either the Jewish state or the Jewish people. Five months of tracking polls by the Harvard-Harris polling firm have shown support for Israel holding steady at more than 80%.

More than 70% of Americans support Israel’s operation in Rafah; view Hamas as a genocidal terrorist group; and view its invasion of Israel and campaign of rape, torture and murder on Oct. 7 as an act of genocide.

More than 60% of Americans support Israel’s goal of eradicating Hamas, removing it from power permanently and ending the war only after the terrorist group is eradicated and all of the hostages have returned home.

The timing is also fortunate for Israel because Biden’s decision to turn against Israel comes in the midst of ongoing antisemitic mob violence on North American college campuses from coast to coast. Biden’s failure to take any action against students and groups behind the riots has won him no points with the public.

Not only are more than 80% of Americans repulsed by the antisemitism, but according to an Axios poll of university students released this week, 90% of students oppose aggression against pro-Israel students.

And 81% believe that academic institutions need to hold students causing mayhem accountable for their actions.

Moreover, the issue of the conflict in the Middle East is ranked lowest on a list of nine issues concerning college students. Only 13% of students consider it important.

By placing a hold on congressionally approved offensive weapons to Israel, Biden is bowing to antisemites who are opposed by the overwhelming majority of college students and the general public. And he is siding with them six months before Election Day.

Biden’s actions energized Republicans to move harshly against his policy in the Republican-controlled House and in the Senate. Democrats in swing districts and purple states either hope to keep their heads down or speak out directly against the policy.

All of this places upper limits on what Biden can do to Israel before the elections. The White House’s efforts on Thursday to walk back his statement in the face of the furious backlash against it make those limits apparent.

Unfortunately, however, Biden’s willingness to side with Hamas (and Iran and Hezbollah) against Israel as Israel fights a war for its very survival also demonstrates that if he wins a second term, Israel will face a nightmare scenario of relations with Washington.

Everything that Biden has done in minor ways to signal intentions will become his open policies. This includes sanctioning Israelis who oppose his policies. It includes supporting—perhaps through U.N. Security Council resolutions—arms embargoes against Israel.

It includes trade sanctions against Israeli military industries and all firms operating beyond the 1949 armistice lines.

It includes making the ouster of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the official policy of the U.S. government and treating Israel like apartheid South Africa with a boycott on direct contacts with leaders and sanctions on government officials, so long as Israeli voters continue to elect nationalist leaders determined to protect Israeli independence and national security.

The blood libels against “settlers” and against the IDF that officials have engaged in with increasing enthusiasm since Oct. 7 will become more expansive and lead to the ostracism of Israel in the international arena.

On the other hand, the United States will recognize “Palestine” and open an embassy to Palestine in Jerusalem, with or without Israeli permission.

All of these policies have already been adopted at low levels, or have been tried and abandoned due to fierce opposition in Israel and the United States.

But in a Biden second term, there will be no guardrails.

The administration’s decision to abandon Jerusalem and side with its enemies is a terrible development. But the fortuitous timing allows Israel and the American people to minimize the damage in the coming months, and, if Biden is denied a second term, over the next four years.

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God Help Us.

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Serious weapon, but we probably won't need it now that the Biden Administration and the Pentagon have decided that "climate change" is the biggest threat to the Country, along with using the correct "pronoun"!!

And:

Biden bribing Bibi

WASHINGTON POST: The Biden administration is reportedly offering Israel sensitive intelligence to assist the IDF in targeting Hxmas leaders and locating the terrorist organization's hidden tunnels. This offer is made in exchange for Israel refraining from launching a full-scale operation.

What did i just read?

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