Listen first about fake news and Ty Cobb and then why the fake news regarding Israel is just that.
Click here: (5) Islam and Terrorism (5/23/17) - YouTube
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America's real academic cowards. (See 1 below.)
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Sec. of Defense Mattis' speaks out at West Point: http://breakingdefense.com/201
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Now that Bezos has turned The Washington Post into his personal play toy and uses it to report fake news (has he become the Soros of the newspaper world/) one could ask whether Woodward will remain there. (See 2 below.)
I am more than willing to admit Trump has proven to be his own worst enemy in many ways but that is no excuse for the way Democrats have acted or their lackeys in the mass media. The hysteria, the bias, the steady drumbeats of false reporting will eventually drive people against them. They live in their own bubble and therefore, believe they are immune but the contempt they are creating towards themselves will flare up and extract a severe cost. It is only a matter of time.
American's are fair minded and they know when piling on is taking place and they will eventually react when it goes beyond acceptable limits as it is now.
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Israel must avoid having a relationship with Trump that allows State Department Arabists to rule. (See 3 below.)
Hard to believe. (See 3a below.)
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Noonan ain't buying crocodile tears. (See 4 below.)
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Trump made a big mistake and catered to the advice of the State Department Arabists and thus, messaged Abbas I will continue to coddle you and thus, allow you to lie. (See 5 below.)
Dick
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1)
The Real Cowards of Academia
One of the nice things about summer is that school is out and at least for a few months we’ll get a welcome break – from those sanctimonious liberal snowflakes on college campus who over and over manage to prove that old saying, the one about how the lunatics have taken over the asylum.
One such asylum is Evergreen State College in Washington State where each year they have something called “A Day of Absence” when students who aren’t white leave the campus and get together in some kind of symbolic gesture. This year they reversed it and told all the white people on campus that they had to leave for the day because of … Donald Trump.
According to the student newspaper, students of color “voiced concern over feeling as if they are unwelcome on campus following the 2016 election.” One white professor who protested had his class disrupted by about 50 liberal fascists – and had to teach his students in a park.
But, of course, this is only the latest example of snowflake sanctimony.
Not long ago students at Middlebury College in Vermont yelled and screamed and literally stomped their feet to prevent Charles Murray, the conservative scholar, from speaking on campus.
At Claremont McKenna College in California, an angry mob showed off their liberal tolerance by blocking the entrance to a building where another conservative scholar, Heather MacDonald, was scheduled to speak. She had to go to a safe place on campus where her talk was live streamed to a much smaller audience.
There was a mini-riot replete with smashed windows at Berkeley to prevent a conservative provocateur from speaking on campus.
At Harvard’s commencement recently, the school’s president, Drew Faust, took note of the trend and told students that they needed to hear opinions they didn’t like. “We must remember that limiting some speech opens the dangerous possibility that the speech that is ultimately censored may be our own,” Ms. Faust said. “If some words are to be treated as equivalent to physical violence and silenced or even prosecuted, who is to decide which words?”
That sounds good. But wait, there’s more.
“We can see here at Harvard how our inattentiveness to the power and appeal of conservative voices left much of our community astonished, blindsided by the outcome of last fall’s election,” she said. “We need to hear those hateful ideas so our society is fully equipped to oppose and defeat them.”
Get it? One of the reasons liberals should listen to conservative voices is because they’re hateful and need to be vanquished – by warm and welcoming liberal ideas.
And what should we make of Ulrich Baer, the vice provost for faculty, arts, humanities, and diversity, and professor of comparative literature at New York University who apparently doesn’t believe in free speech – at least not for people with opinions that offend groups that have been targets of discrimination.
When certain “views invalidate the humanity of some people, they restrict speech as a public good” and in “such cases there is no inherent value to be gained from debating them in public,” he wrote in the New York Times.
This is quite remarkable. A professor and administrator at a major American university who isn’t ashamed to admit that unpopular speech is not worthy of debate. The real heroes, according to Baer, are the students who disrupt speech they don’t like.
“We should thank the student protestors,” he writes, “the activists in Black Lives Matter and other ‘overly sensitive’ souls for keeping watch over the soul of our republic.”
With college administrators like that is it any wonder that the lunatics have taken over the asylum?
But there is hope. And it comes from a liberal, Fareed Zakaria, the CNN journalist and Washington Post columnist who recently spoke at graduation ceremonies at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania. He summarized his observations on his CNN program.
“American universities these days seem committed to every kind of diversity excepted intellectual diversity. Conservative voices and views, already a besieged minority, are being silenced entirely. The campus thought police have gone after serious conservative thinkers. …
“Freedom of speech and thought is not just for warm fuzzy ideas that we find comfortable. It’s for ideas we find offensive.
“There is, as we all know, a kind of anti-intellectualism on the right these days – the denial of facts, of reason, of science. But there is also an anti-intellectualism on the left—an attitude of self righteousness that says we are so pure, so morally superior, we cannot bear to hear an idea with which we disagree. Liberals think they are tolerant, but often they aren’t.”
We need to hear more liberal voices like that.
As for liberal snowflakes on campus: They’re young and foolish and pampered — so maybe their cowardice in the face of inconvenient ideas can be understood, though not excused.
As for the grownups on campus, the college deans and provosts and presidents: Some of them are just as radical as their illiberal students. And too many others tolerate liberal intolerance because they’re afraid to speak up, fearing a backlash from either the snowflakes, the faculty, or both. They are the real cowards of academia.
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2) Watergate Journalist Sent A Stunning Message To The Media
The so-called “mainstream” media is salivating over the manufactured Trump scandals.
They are convinced they are on the verge of collecting his political scalp.
But one famed Watergate journalist delivered a message they don’t want to hear.
Bob Woodward was one half of the “Woodward and Bernstein” team that reported on Watergate for the Washington Post.
Journalists revere them because they established the template for how the media could drive a Republican President from office.
Many reporters were hoping to implement that same playbook during the Trump-Russia “scandal.”
Woodward told them to cool their jets and that Trump would serve his full first term and maybe even more.
He also ripped the media for their “smugness” which reveals their anti-Trump bias.
Breitbart reported:
“Wednesday during an Axios interview, veteran Washington Post reporter of Watergate fame Bob Woodward said the press has a “kind of smugness” about President Donald Trump.
When asked about press “smugness,” Woodward said, “Yes. I think that is a giant problem. On television particularly, you will see a White House correspondent deliver a report and then say ‘the Trump White House said…’ and then there’s a kind of smug smile, which is the correspondent undermining what the White House says. And there may be grounds for that, but it should be reported. It should be straight.”
He added, “I think there are so many people that are treating the Trump presidency as if it’s a tryout—as if it’s provisional. I was reading a column this morning that said Trump half won the presidency because he did not get the popular vote. He is president. Odds are he is probably going to be president for a full term, four years and maybe even more. There is hyperventilation. There is this kind of sense of too many people writing things like—when is the impeachment coming, how long will it last, will he make it through the summer, and so forth. No, there may be stuff that comes out, but it has to be hard evidence. I worry for the business and I worry for the perception of the business by people, not to just Trump supporters, but people that see that kind of smugness that they are talking about. You know, he was elected, the Constitution says he gets a full term.”
So far, all the Trump scandals have amounted to a whole lot of nothing.
No one has been accused of a crime.
No evidence of any wrongdoing has emerged.
And no one has been charged with a crime.
The central suspicion — that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia — is collapsing because it was built on a false foundation of zero supporting evidence.
But that hasn’t slowed down the runaway media frenzy.
Instead, they hype “bombshell” revelations that are fake news or they rehash old stories repackaged with new framing to drive the news cycle.
Instead of winning respect, these moves are further alienating Trump supporters.
A post-election survey by YouGov found 69 percent of Americans don’t believe the media is honest or truthful.
Their blatantly transparent hatred of everything surrounding the Trump administration has not helped those numbers.
The Harvard Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy studied the coverage of Trump.
CNN and NBC were found to have aired 93 percent negative coverage of the new President.
It’s all driven by their desire to undo the 2016 election and steal Trump’s victory from the voters.
But Bob Woodward — who knows a thing or two about running a Republican President out of office — threw cold water on the impeachment fires the media is scheming to stoke.
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3) The Paradoxical Peril of Easy U.S.-Israel Relations
A little tension is what keeps Jerusalem from acceding to Washington’s typically poor judgment.
By Daniel Pipes
Despite not moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, President Trump’s evident affection for Israel during his recent visit understandably cheered Israelis after eight years of cool relations with President Obama. Alas, nothing is simple in the Arab-Israeli conflict: A look at historical patterns suggests that, paradoxically, Israel does best with an Obama-style level of tension with Washington.
The explanation of this paradox starts with the observation that all American administrations since 1973, regardless of which party holds the presidency, have been convinced the Arabs are ready for peace with Israel. This problem has been especially acute since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994. American presidents consistently ignore the authority’s revolutionary nature. In this spirit, after a meeting with PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, Mr. Trump deemed him a “strategic partner” for Israel and “ready for peace.”
American leaders often insist that if only Jerusalem handed over yet more money, land and recognition, the Palestinian Authority would be inspired to make peace.In the face of near-infinite deceit, hostility, bellicosity and violence, this touching faith in Palestinian good neighborliness can be explained only by psychology. Former deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams helpfully compares it to Tinker Bell in Peter Pan: “If you believe, clap your hands.”
When Israeli governments concur with this fanciful thinking, as has happened under Labor and Kadima prime ministers, U.S.-Israel relations soar: Think of Bill Clinton’s famously warm ties with Yitzhak Rabin.
But when Israelis resist such wishful assumptions, as does Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, tensions arise. Washington pushes for more concessions and Jerusalem resists. American presidents then face a choice: moan and criticize, or embrace and encourage. Mr. Obama chose the petulant route, as symbolized by his choice to eat dinner with his family in 2010 while Mr. Netanyahu cooled his heels in the Roosevelt Room.
As longtime American diplomat Dennis Ross has said for decades, Israel’s cooperation increases when the White House focuses on building its confidence. Without doubting the sincerity of Mr. Trump’s warmth for Israel, the deal maker in him intuitively seems to understand that wooing Israelis provides the basis for later pressure. During his recent trip to Israel, Mr. Trump took every opportunity to lavish affection on Jerusalem, Jews, Zionism and Israel.
“Jerusalem is a sacred city. Its beauty, splendor and heritage are like no other place on Earth,” he noted. “The ties of the Jewish people to this Holy Land are ancient and eternal,” a point he illustrated with his own experience: “Yesterday, I visited the Western Wall, and marveled at the monument to God’s presence and man’s perseverance.”
“Israel is a testament to the unbreakable spirit of the Jewish people,” he went on. “I stand in awe of the accomplishments of the Jewish people, and I make this promise to you: My administration will always stand with Israel. . . . God bless the State of Israel.”
Israelis fully reciprocated this warmth. David Horovitz, editor of the Times of Israel, spoke for many: “Simply by saying he loves it and stands with it, Trump wins over endlessly criticized Israel. . . . He and Netanyahu disagree on the Palestinians’ peacemaking bona fides. He didn’t move the embassy. But the president showered Israel with praise, and made history by visiting the Western Wall. For now, that was more than enough.”
This sentimental response provides an opening for Mr. Trump to demand that the Israeli government trust Mr. Abbas and make yet more unilateral concessions, a process that has apparently already begun with pressure to hand over territory on the West Bank. Given their bromance, how can Mr. Netanyahu deny Mr. Trump’s requests?
This harks back to a pattern: Israelis and their supporters tend to pay more attention to mood and symbolism than to policies. “Unlike other diplomatic bonds, which pivot on such national interests as trade and security interests, the U.S.-Israeli relationship has an emotional base,” I wrote in 1992. “Feelings, not a cool assessment of interests, drive its every aspect. Tone, style, mood, and perception often matter more than hard facts.”
Sadly, good relations cause Jerusalem to accede to Washington’s consistently poor judgment. That’s the peril of warm U.S.-Israel relations and the solace of poor ones. Better for Israel to be chastised by a lousy U.N. Security Council resolution than to relinquish more territory to genocidal thugs.
Whereas U.S.-Israel relations blow hot or cold depending on the political winds, Israeli concessions to the Palestinians are unalterable mistakes that encourage irredentism, cost lives, prolong the conflict, and impede U.S. interests. Thus my counterintuitive conclusion: Cool relations are better for Israeli—and by implication, American—security.
Mr. Pipes is president of the Middle East Forum
3a) EU PARLIAMENT VOTES IN FAVOR OF ADOPTING ANTISEMITISM DEFINITION
“This is a monumental day for the fight against hate and the protection of the rights of European Jews."
The European Parliament on Thursday voted in favor of a resolution endorsing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, drawing praise from Jewish groups.
The resolution calls on EU Member States and the EU institutions and agencies to adopt and apply the working definition of antisemitism. The text urges members to: protect their Jewish citizens and Jewish institutions from hate crime and hate speech; support law enforcement efforts to identify and prosecute antisemitic attacks; appoint national coordinators on combating antisemitism; systematically and publicly condemn antisemitic statements; to promote education about the Holocaust in schools; and to review school textbooks to ensure that content about Jewish history and contemporary Jewish life stay clear of antisemitism.
“This is a monumental day for the fight against hate and the protection of the rights of European Jews,” Dr. Moshe Kantor, President of the EJC, said. “For too long, Jews were deemed unique, with hate defined by the perpetrators and not by the victims.”
“The only people who will be dismayed by this decision are those who wish to continue the culture of antisemitic impunity and who believe that Jews should not be afforded protection under the law.”
“The only people who will be dismayed by this decision are those who wish to continue the culture of antisemitic impunity and who believe that Jews should not be afforded protection under the law.”
The AJC Transatlantic Institute also lauded the result of the vote.
“The European Parliament must be applauded for taking this significant step toward fighting all forms of anti-Jewish hatred, including the variety that tries to hide its ugly face behind a false veneer of respectability– so-called legitimate criticism of Israel that in reality questions the very legitimacy of the Jewish state,” said Daniel Schwammenthal, Director of the AJC Transatlantic Institute.
“Those who falsely claim the working definition limits freedom of expression are demanding the freedom to deny the Jewish people the right granted to every other people, the right to self-determination–in other words they claim the freedom to engage in anti-Semitism. Parliament has told these people today loud and clearly that this house will not tolerate anti-Semitism, whether in the open or in disguise.”
The IHRA formulated the definition last May amid concerns of rising antisemitism, in an effort to clamp down on discriminatory or prejudicial behavior that might fall between the cracks due to unclear or differing definitions of antisemitism.
The definition adopted by the group’s 31 member countries reads: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
So far, the UK, Austria, Romania and Israel have adopted the definition.
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4) Hillary Lacks the Remorse of Conscience
Oddly, she seems completely sincere, as if she believes the alternative facts she’s peddling.
By Peggy Noonan
I don’t want to beat up on Hillary Clinton. She thought she’d win and she lost, embarrassingly, to a man she considered deeply unworthy. At the same time she won the popular vote by 2.9 million. It would take anyone time to absorb these things emotionally and psychologically.
But wow. Her public statements since defeat have been malignant little masterpieces of victimhood-claiming, blame-shifting and unhelpful accusation. They deserve censure.
Last weekend she was the commencement speaker at her alma mater, Wellesley, where she insulted the man who beat her. This Wednesday she was at the 2017 Code Conference, hosted by the Recode website, where she was interviewed by friendly journalists Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. She eagerly offered a comprehensive list of the reasons she lost the 2016 presidential election.
She lost because America is a hopelessly reactionary country in which dark forces fight a constant “rearguard action” to “turn back the clock.” She lost because Republicans are both technologically advanced and underhanded. Democrats, for instance, use data and analytics to target and rouse voters—“better messaging.” Republicans, on the other hand, use “content farms” and make “an enormous investment in falsehoods, fake news, call it what you will.” Democrats “did not engage in false content.” She lost because of the Russians: “Who were they coordinating with, or colluding with?”
She lost because of “voter suppression” and “unaccountable money flowing in against me.” She lost because the Democratic National Committee didn’t help her. “I inherit nothing from the Democratic Party. I mean it was bankrupt. . . . Its data was mediocre to poor, nonexistent, wrong. I had to inject money into it.”
She lost because FBI Director James Comey told Congress the investigation regarding her email server had been reopened. “So for whatever reason . . . and I can’t look inside the guy’s mind, you know, he dumps that on me on Oct. 28, and I immediately start falling.”
She lost because she was “swimming against a historic tide. It’s very difficult historically to succeed a two-term president of your own party.” She lost because she was “the victim of a very broad assumption that I was going to win.” She lost because the news media ignored her policy positions.
And then there was sexism. “It sort of bleeds into misogyny. And let’s just be honest, you know, people who have . . . a set of expectations about who should be president and what a president looks like, you know, they’re going to be much more skeptical and critical of somebody who doesn’t look like and talk like and sound like everybody else who’s been president. Any you know, President Obama broke that racial barrier, but you know, he’s a very attractive, good-looking man.”
Oh my goodness, how she thinks.
Oddly, she seemed completely sincere, as if she believes her own story. It tells you something about our own power to hypnotize ourselves, to invent reasons that avoid the real reasons. It is a tribute to the power of human denial. And at first you think: I hope it was cathartic. Maybe these are just stories she tells herself to feel better.
But none of this, in truth, is without point. It is purposeful. It is not mere narrative-spinning. It is insisting on alternative facts so that journalists and historians will have to take them into account. It is a monotonous repetition of a certain version of events, which will be amplified, picked up and repeated into the future.
And it’s not true.
The truth is Bernie Sanders destroyed Mrs. Clinton’s chance of winning by almost knocking her off, and in the process revealing her party’s base had changed. Her plodding, charmless, insincere style of campaigning defeated her. Bad decisions in her campaign approach to the battleground states did it; a long history of personal scandals did it; fat Wall Street speeches did it; the Clinton Foundation’s bloat and chicanery did it—and most of all the sense that she ultimately stands for nothing but Hillary did it.
In the campaign book “Shattered,” journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes report they were surprised “when Clintonworld sources started telling us in 2015 that Hillary was still struggling to articulate her motivation for seeking the presidency.” Her campaign was “an unholy mess, fraught with tangled lines of authority . . . distorted priorities, and no sense of greater purpose.” “Hillary didn’t have a vision to articulate. And no one else could give one to her.” “Hillary had been running for president for almost a decade and still didn’t really have a rationale.”
What is true is that throughout her career Mrs. Clinton has shown herself to be largely incapable of honest self-reflection, of pointing the finger, for even a moment, at herself. She is not capable of what in Middle English was called “agenbite of inwit”—remorse of conscience, the self-indictment and implicit growth, that come of taking a serious personal inventory. People are always doing bad things to her, she never does bad things to them. They operate in bad faith, she only in good. They lie and exaggerate, she doesn’t. They are low and partisan, not her. There’s no vast left-wing conspiracy only a right-wing one.
People can see this. It’s part of why she lost.
It is one thing to say, “I take responsibility,” and follow that up with a list of things you believe you got wrong. It’s another thing to say, “I take responsibility,” and then immediately pivot to arguments as to why other people are to blame. “I take responsibility for everything I got wrong, but that’s not why I lost,” is literally what she said Wednesday.
Walt Mossberg asked her about her misjudgments. What about Goldman Sachs ? You were running for president, he said, why did you do those high priced speeches?
“Why do you have Goldman Sachs [at this conference]?” Mrs. Clinton countered.
Mr. Mossberg: “Because they pay us.”
Mrs. Clinton: “They paid me.”
Mr. Mossberg noted they paid her a lot. Hillary replied she speaks to many groups, she had been elected in New York, which includes Wall Street. Then: “Men got paid for the speeches they made. I got paid for the speeches I made.”
The worst part is that she insulted her own country by both stating and implying that America is full of knuckle-dragging, deplorable oafs who are averse to powerful women and would never elect one president. Has she not learned anything? Does she never think Britain had Margaret Thatcher in 1979 and Theresa May now, that Germany has had as its leader Angela Merkel since 2005? Is America really more backward, narrow and hate-filled toward women than those countries? Or was Mrs. Clinton simply the wrong woman, and the wrong candidate?
It would have been helpful if she’d spoken at least of those who’d voted for her and supported her and donated to her campaign precisely because she was a woman.
You should never slander a country that rejected you. Maybe it had its reasons. Maybe her most constructive act now would be to quietly reflect on what they might be
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5)
JERUSALEM POST
Trump reneges on campaign pledge, signs waiver to keep US embassy in Tel Aviv
Trump reneges on campaign pledge, signs waiver to keep US embassy in Tel Aviv
By MICHAEL WILNER
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US embassy stays in place, at least for now. WASHINGTON -- US President Donald Trump has "postponed" moving the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, but remains committed to relocating the facility while in office consistent with pledges he made during his campaign for the White House, a senior administration official said on Thursday.
The president was faced with a June 1 deadline built into the Jerusalem Embassy Act, which compels the State Department to verify the opening of a Jerusalem embassy or else cite "national security interests" for the delay.
The president signed the waiver on Wednesday, May 31, citing national security concerns. The 1995 law requires updates every six months, and thus faces the president with another deadline in December.
"No one should consider this step to be in any way a retreat from the president's strong support for Israel and for the United States-Israel alliance," White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said in a statement. "President Trump made this decision to maximize the chances of successfully negotiating a deal between Israel and the Palestinians, fulfilling his solemn obligation to defend America's national security interests.
Israeli government officials reportedly pushed Trump to make the move last minute, in a series of communications. Arab allies have warned the young administration that the embassy relocation would kill any prospects for a US-led peace process between Israelis and Palestinians.
In making the decision to stall the embassy move Trump has aligned with predecessors such as Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama who have each issued such waivers every six months throughout their tenures.
Israel is currently celebrating fifty years of control over the city, which it declared its unified capital after succeeding in the Six Day War. Palestinians insist that East Jerusalem must be its own seat of government in any future peace agreement.
"As he has repeatedly stated his intention to move the embassy, the question is not if that move happens, but only when," Spicer said.
5a) Netanyahu made last-ditch effort to convince US of Israel embassy move
The president was faced with a June 1 deadline built into the Jerusalem Embassy Act, which compels the State Department to verify the opening of a Jerusalem embassy or else cite "national security interests" for the delay.
The president signed the waiver on Wednesday, May 31, citing national security concerns. The 1995 law requires updates every six months, and thus faces the president with another deadline in December.
"No one should consider this step to be in any way a retreat from the president's strong support for Israel and for the United States-Israel alliance," White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said in a statement. "President Trump made this decision to maximize the chances of successfully negotiating a deal between Israel and the Palestinians, fulfilling his solemn obligation to defend America's national security interests.
Israeli government officials reportedly pushed Trump to make the move last minute, in a series of communications. Arab allies have warned the young administration that the embassy relocation would kill any prospects for a US-led peace process between Israelis and Palestinians.
In making the decision to stall the embassy move Trump has aligned with predecessors such as Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama who have each issued such waivers every six months throughout their tenures.
Israel is currently celebrating fifty years of control over the city, which it declared its unified capital after succeeding in the Six Day War. Palestinians insist that East Jerusalem must be its own seat of government in any future peace agreement.
"As he has repeatedly stated his intention to move the embassy, the question is not if that move happens, but only when," Spicer said.
5a) Netanyahu made last-ditch effort to convince US of Israel embassy move
By HERB KEINON
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Deadline for waiver delaying move is set to expire Thursday. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to US Ambassador David Friedman on Monday in a final and apparently futile attempt to persuade US President Donald Trump to fulfill his campaign promise and move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
Trump is expected to sign a waiver on Thursday that will keep the embassy in Tel Aviv, at least for another six months. The PMO confirmed that the conversation with Friedman took place, and that Netanyahu raised the issue with Trump during his visit here last week.
According to diplomatic officials, Netanyahu, his former National Security Council head Yaakov Nagel, and ambassador to the US Ron Dermer have raised this issue at the highest levels in Washington since Trump came into office in January.
The officials also said that there have been messages coming from Washington over the last two weeks indicating that Trump does intend to move the embassy sometime during the duration of his term.
Netanyahu, according to the officials, made clear that Israel thinks such a move is necessary and important, and rejected the claims by Arab and Palestinian leaders who lobbied Trump against the step, arguing that it would “set the Middle East on fire.”
Israel's argument to the administration is that moving the embassy would both correct a historical anomaly whereby the US does not recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and it would also force the Arabs and the Palestinians to wake up from a long-harbored fantasy that they could disassociate Israel and the Jewish people from Jerusalem.
The officials noted that the promise to move the embassy to Jerusalem was a classic campaign pledge and a promise Trump gave to his voters, not Israel. As such, Israel opted to lobby for the move quietly, rather than through a major public campaign, because it had turned into a domestic US issue.
“In diplomacy there are some things you do quietly,” one senior official said.
A 1995 law compelling the US State Department to relocate its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem requires action from Trump on Thursday. According to the Jerusalem Embassy Act, the administration in power must either confirm a new embassy has opened in Israel's capital city or declare by signing a waiver that such a move would compromise “the national security interests of the United States.”
Thursday is the deadline for signing the waiver, and Trump is widely expected to do so.
Trump is expected to sign a waiver on Thursday that will keep the embassy in Tel Aviv, at least for another six months. The PMO confirmed that the conversation with Friedman took place, and that Netanyahu raised the issue with Trump during his visit here last week.
According to diplomatic officials, Netanyahu, his former National Security Council head Yaakov Nagel, and ambassador to the US Ron Dermer have raised this issue at the highest levels in Washington since Trump came into office in January.
The officials also said that there have been messages coming from Washington over the last two weeks indicating that Trump does intend to move the embassy sometime during the duration of his term.
Netanyahu, according to the officials, made clear that Israel thinks such a move is necessary and important, and rejected the claims by Arab and Palestinian leaders who lobbied Trump against the step, arguing that it would “set the Middle East on fire.”
Israel's argument to the administration is that moving the embassy would both correct a historical anomaly whereby the US does not recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and it would also force the Arabs and the Palestinians to wake up from a long-harbored fantasy that they could disassociate Israel and the Jewish people from Jerusalem.
The officials noted that the promise to move the embassy to Jerusalem was a classic campaign pledge and a promise Trump gave to his voters, not Israel. As such, Israel opted to lobby for the move quietly, rather than through a major public campaign, because it had turned into a domestic US issue.
“In diplomacy there are some things you do quietly,” one senior official said.
A 1995 law compelling the US State Department to relocate its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem requires action from Trump on Thursday. According to the Jerusalem Embassy Act, the administration in power must either confirm a new embassy has opened in Israel's capital city or declare by signing a waiver that such a move would compromise “the national security interests of the United States.”
Thursday is the deadline for signing the waiver, and Trump is widely expected to do so.
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