<a href="https://jstreet.org">J Street</a> has long been one of the most pernicious anti-Israel groups operating in the open. Untold amounts of ink have been <a href="https://www.chicagomaroon.com/article/2013/12/3/letter-j-street-liberals-fundamentally-misunderstand-pro-israel/">spilled</a> revealing the self-described &#8220;political home of pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans&#8221; for the <a href="https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/222366-j-street-pro-progressive-not-pro-israel">highly biased</a>, anti-Israel, <a href="http://www.thetower.org/article/anti-zionism-of-j-street/">Palestinian-Arab apologist</a> organization that it is.
For years following its 2007 founding by leftist activist Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street operated on the outermost fringes of the institutional pro-Israel and Jewish communities. But the years-long success of the <a href="http://www.thetower.org/article/open-hillel-is-a-much-bigger-problem-than-you-think/">insidious</a> &#8220;Open Hillel&#8221; movement helped to ingratiate J Street, which routinely assails Israeli governmental policy and never seems to find any fault with Islamist terror acts committed against the Jewish state, within some more mainstream elements of the American Jewish community. And as Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro recently wrote, the modern Democratic Party feels more at home within the J Street fold than it does within the ambit of the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-what-exactly-current-role-aipac-josh-hammer">moderate</a> pro-Israel group AIPAC:
<blockquote>[T]he heart of the Democratic Party has moved against Israel. &#8230; So the Democrats built up and gave credence to J Street, a Trojan horse group dedicated to undermining American support for Israel and justifying left-wing hatred of the Jewish state. J Street was founded by Clinton operative Jeremy Ben-Ami and Israeli far-left political figure Daniel Levy in late 2007. One of its chief sources of funding — a source obscured in the early years by its founders — was anti-Israel radical George Soros.</blockquote>
Accordingly, four candidates for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination — South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Rep. Julian Castro (D-TX), and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) — spoke last month at the <a href="https://jstreet.org/conference/">J Street National Conference</a>. By contrast, not a single 2020 Democratic Party presidential candidate spoke at the <a href="http://www.policyconference.org">AIPAC Policy Conference</a> last spring.
Now, the indispensable Legal Insurrection website has <a href="https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/11/j-street-radicalization-conference-speaker-compares-netanyahu-to-louis-farrakhan-and-stands-by-tamika-mallory/">highlighted</a> a particularly vile and irksome exchange that emanated from the bowels of the conference. It appears that April Baskin, who has the titles of &#8220;Racial Justice Director, Jewish Social Justice Roundtable&#8221; and &#8220;Founder/Principal, Joyous Justice Consulting,&#8221; defended noted <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-womens-march-president-suggests-jews-are-ryan-saavedra">anti-Semite Tamika Mallory</a> and expressly compared infamous <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1984/07/17/us/farrakhan-again-describes-hitler-as-a-very-great-man.html">anti-Semite</a> Louis Farrakhan to longtime Israeli Prime Minister <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-after-much-electoral-fanfare-israelis-once-josh-hammer">Benjamin Netanyahu</a>. Per <a href="https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/11/j-street-radicalization-conference-speaker-compares-netanyahu-to-louis-farrakhan-and-stands-by-tamika-mallory/">Legal Insurrection</a>:
<blockquote>[P]anelist April Baskin said that white supremacy is &#8220;woven into Jewish life in America.&#8221; She also said there are things she &#8220;hates&#8221; about the Jewish community — including her belief that Jews have a &#8220;propensity&#8221; to &#8220;complain.&#8221; &#8230;
Later in the session, Baskin declared her support for the disgraced Tamika Mallory. Mallory’s downfall culminated in early 2019 when when it emerged that she maintained a close relationship with the anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist and Nation of Islam leader, Louis Farrakhan. Mallory, the ex-Women’s March leader, refused to condemn Farrakhan and even posted a picture calling the anti-Semite &#8220;the GOAT (greatest of all time).&#8221;</blockquote>
Perhaps most egregiously of all, Baskin compared infamous Jew-hater Farrakhan to Netanyahu: &#8220;Tamika Mallory being pictured with with Louis Farrakhan, honestly, isn’t that different to me than my former boss, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, being seated with prime minister Netanyahu. In both cases, they both largely don’t agree with their politics, but in both cases, those are leaders who are connected to a large body of people.&#8221;
As of publication time, it seems that none of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates who spoke at last month&#8217;s J Street National Conference have condemned Baskin&#8217;s vicious smear. Surprise, surprise.

Netanyahu election night

J Street Conference Speaker Compares Benjamin Netanyahu To Louis Farrakhan

American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)

Benjamin Netanyahu

Israel

J Street

Leftism

Louis Farrakhan

Palestinians

Progressivism

Last week, Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer, who frequently opines on issues pertaining to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/44424/hammer-stark-choice-facing-jewish-democrats-josh-hammer">Jewish politics</a>, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/43388/hammer-anti-semites-ilhan-omar-and-rashida-tlaib-josh-hammer">anti-Semitism</a>, and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/50850/hammer-yes-palestinian-state-far-more-dangerous-josh-hammer">Israel</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9hH2jloilc">joined</a> &#8220;Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler&#8221; on One America News Network to discuss the revelation that 2020 Democratic Party presidential <a href="https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/3633/Who-will-win-the-2020-Democratic-presidential-nomination">statistical frontrunner</a> Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is now <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/elizabeth-warren-could-pull-military-aid-israel-settlements-1466680">threatening</a> to withhold U.S. military aid to Israel if Israel does not make the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-yes-palestinian-state-far-more-dangerous-josh-hammer">&#8220;two-state solution&#8221;</a> land concessions that a President Warren might envision. As The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-elizabeth-warren-says-shes-open-to-cutting-off-aid-to-israel">reported</a> last week, Warren said that &#8220;everything&#8221; — meaning aid — would potentially be &#8220;on the table.&#8221;
Hammer began his segment with Wheeler by explaining how clearly Warren telegraphed her <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/schachtel-elizabeth-warren-completes-her-total-jordan-schachtel">hard turn</a> against Israel — including her hiring of ex-<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-israel-bashing-group-ifnotnows-recent-josh-hammer">IfNotNow</a> co-founder Max Berger as a high-ranking <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/ifnotnow-co-founder-max-berger-brings-progressive-fight-to-warren-camp/">campaign staffer</a>:
<blockquote>Elizabeth Warren is now running for the Democratic presidential nomination in a year in which the Democratic Party has just gone crazy. &#8230; [Warren] hired someone named Max Berger as one of her progressive campaign outreach chairs. Max Berger is a co-founder of a despicable, far-left, self-hating, Jew-hating group, IfNotNow. IfNotNow is so radically left that they <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hellenized-jews-ifnotnow-protesters-disrupt-josh-hammer">protest Shabbat services</a> — for Jews observing Sabbath. They&#8217;ve been known to say Kaddish, the traditional Jewish mourners prayer, for Hamas jihadists who have been fired at or had been killed by IDF rocket fire.
She surrounds herself, much like Bernie Sanders, with Israel-hating, I would say Jew-hating, anti-Semites. And this is honestly very sad, but it&#8217;s hardly unexpected. As soon as I saw that she hired Max Berger this summer, I thought, okay, we&#8217;re gonna get to exactly where we now see that she&#8217;s gotten. Well, the only positive thing — the only silver lining here — is that we at least are seeing her true colors before it&#8217;s too late</blockquote>
Wheeler continued by additionally pointing out that Warren&#8217;s narrative is factually misleading, to boot, because it is simply dishonest to objectively view the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and conclude that Israel is the barrier to peace. Hammer agreed:
<blockquote>My friend David Brog, who used to be the executive director of Christians United for Israel and now runs a group called Maccabee Task Force, he did a really wonderful <a href="https://www.prageru.com/video/why-isnt-there-a-palestinian-state/">video for PragerU</a> &#8230; where he really nicely goes back to the history to the beginning of the 20th century and he systemically shows, over and over again, that it is the Palestinian-Arabs who are the obstacles for peace. They have turned down Israeli offers for peace as far back as the United Nations&#8217; original two-state partition in November 1948, where the Jews accepted a tiny sliver of land — barely enough to sustain a civilization — and the Arabs said no and then tried to kill the Jews the very next day. The same thing happened in 2000 at Camp David, it happened in 2008 when Ehud Olmert [offered two states, much like Ehud Barak in 2000].
And then also, in 2010, Prime Minister Netanyahu, as a sign of goodwill to Barack Obama, did exactly what Liz Warren wants Israel&#8217;s to do: A <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/06/world/middleeast/06mideast.html">10-month freeze</a> on so-called &#8220;settlements.&#8221; The so-called &#8220;settlements&#8221; are actually <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYZBjoeeehg">legally fine</a> — the Left is wrong, but we can talk about that perhaps another day — but he actually froze so-called &#8220;settlements&#8221; for 10 months and you know what? Mahmoud Abbas, currently in the 15th year of his four-year term &#8230; he did not even come to the negotiating table after a 10-month full-on &#8220;settlement&#8221; freeze from Netanyahu. So the Palestinians, over and over again, Liz, show who they really are. &#8230; They have no interest in peace. All they want are dead Jews.</blockquote>
WATCH:
<iframe title="Elizabeth Warren Threatens To Withhold Aid To Israel" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qyMOT_2sZ4Q?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Hammer OANN 10.22.19

WATCH: Hammer On ‘Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler’: Elizabeth Warren Is An Israel-Hater

2020 Election

Democratic Party

Elizabeth Warren

Foreign Policy

Israel Defense Forces (IDF)

Middle East

On Thursday, Sarai Idan, who was Miss Iraq, lauded Israel for its commitment to help the Kurdish people in the face of what Turkish dictator Recip Erdogan’s brutal assault on them. Israeli prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted Thursday morning, “Israel strongly condemns the Turkish invasion of the Kurdish areas in Syria and warns against the ethnic cleansing of the Kurds by Turkey and its proxies. Israel is prepared to extend humanitarian assistance to the gallant Kurdish people.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Israel strongly condemns the Turkish invasion of the Kurdish areas in Syria and warns against the ethnic cleansing of the Kurds by Turkey and its proxies. Israel is prepared to extend humanitarian assistance to the gallant Kurdish people.
&mdash; Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) <a href="https://twitter.com/netanyahu/status/1182268451269857281?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 10, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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Idan commented, “And people wonder why I stand with Israel … heard many countries say ‘They condemn’ but not a single one said they will extend assistance to #Kurds.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
And people wonder why I stand with Israel&#8230; heard many countries say “they condemn” but not a single one said they will extend assistance to <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Kurds?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Kurds</a> <a href="https://t.co/xsPEgpXlRD">https://t.co/xsPEgpXlRD</a>
&mdash; Sarai (Sarah Idan) Miss Iraq (@RealSarahIdan) <a href="https://twitter.com/RealSarahIdan/status/1182359755517358081?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 10, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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As <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/miss-iraq-posed-miss-israel-then-radical-muslims-hank-berrien">The Daily Wire</a> reported in December 2017, at the Miss International Beauty Pageant, Idan <a href="https://www.jta.org/2017/11/14/life-religion/miss-israel-and-miss-iraq-pose-together-on-instagram">posed for photos</a> with Miss Israel, Adar Gandelsman, for their respective Instagram accounts. Idan’s caption read: “Peace and Love from Miss Iraq and Miss Israel.” Gandelsman <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/peace-and-love-as-miss-israel-and-miss-iraq-pose-together-on-instagram/">wrote</a>on her Instagram post, “Get to know, this is Miss Iraq and she’s amazing.” She added on Facebook, “Practicing bringing world peace.”
The backlash from parts of the Muslim world targeting Idan, 27, was so fierce that she posted a defense on Istagram, writing in Arabic on Instagram, “I want to stress that the purpose of the picture was only to express hope and desire for peace between the two countries,” but adding that the photo did not indicate support for the Israeli government and offering an apology if the photo was harmful to the Palestinian cause.
It didn’t help; as the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Culture/Family-of-Miss-Iraq-flee-country-after-photo-posted-with-Miss-Israel-518090?utm_source=dlvr.it&amp;utm_medium=twitter">Jerusalem Post reported</a>. Gandelsman, who had become good friends with Idan, told Hadashot that Idan’s family, which still lived in Iraq, had been forced to flee the country after receiving death threats for Idan’s photos with Gandelsman as well as Idan’s posing in a bikini.
Gandelsman added that Idan said she did not regret posting the photos. She said, “She did it to so that people can understand that it’s possible to live together. In order for people to see that we can connect, in the end we are both human beings.”
Seven months later, months after they had posted the selfie together at the Miss Universe competition Miss Israel and Miss Iraq <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5839563/Miss-Iraq-visits-Miss-Israel-Jerusalem-fury-selfie-together.html">reunited in Jerusalem</a>. Idan joined Gandelsman, for dinner in Jerusalem, then posted a picture online captioned, “Sister&#8217;s reunion.” The two also posted a video in which Idan told her followers “Shalom” while Gandelsman told her followers, “Salaam.” Idan told Israel’s Channel 2 News, “I don&#8217;t think Iraq and Israel are enemies; I think maybe the governments are enemies with each other. There&#8217;s a lot of Iraqi people that don&#8217;t have a problem with Israelis.” She told <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/13/middleeast/miss-iraq-miss-israel-reunited-selfie-controversy/index.html">CNN</a>, “When I posted the picture I didn&#8217;t think for a second there would be blowback. I woke up to calls from my family and the Miss Iraq Organization going insane. The death threats I got online were so scary. The director of the Miss Iraq Organization called me and said they&#8217;re getting heat from the ministry. He said I have to take the picture down or they will strip me of my title.&#8221;

ISRAEL-IRAQ-INTERNET-MISS UNIVERSE-2017

Netanyahu Promises Aid To Kurds. Miss Iraq: That&#8217;s Why I Stand With Israel

Iraq

Kurds

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu&#8217;s &#8220;existence&#8221; problematic on Sunday as she called for Israel to vote him out and promoted the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which is designed to destroy Israel.
Omar, who is a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/42998/ocasio-cortez-omar-tlaib-take-democrats-anti-ryan-saavedra">well-documented</a> anti-Semite, appeared on CBS News&#8217; &#8220;Face The Nation&#8221; with host Margaret Brennan, who brought up the fact that Israel barred her from entering their country.
&#8220;You were specifically banned by the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, from visiting that country,&#8221; Brennan said. &#8220;He faces a very tough election in the next few days. If he doesn&#8217;t win, are you going to try to go back, and do you stand by your call for a boycott of Israel?&#8221;
&#8220;I certainly hope that the people of Israel make a different decision. And my hope is that they recognize that his existence, his policies, his rhetoric really is contradictory to the peace that we are all hoping that that region receives and receives soon,&#8221; Omar responded. &#8220;Just right now if you look at the annexation that&#8217;s taking place, for many of us in Congress, there has been long standing support for its two-state solution, and this annexation now is going to make sure that that peace process does not happen, and we will not get to a two-state solution. I think what is really important is for people to understand that you have to give people the opportunity to seek the kind of justice they want in a peaceful way. And I think the opportunity to boycott, divest, sanction is the kind of pressure that leads to that peaceful process.&#8221;
WATCH:
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">Anti-Semitic Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) says she hopes Israel does not re-elect Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu because his “existence” is problematic
Omar also continued to champion the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement which is designed to destroy Israel <a href="https://t.co/bIWvuPQHDx">pic.twitter.com/bIWvuPQHDx</a>
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) <a href="https://twitter.com/RealSaavedra/status/1173249361658073090?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 15, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
Full transcript provided via <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/transcript-representative-ilhan-omar-on-face-the-nation-september-15-2019/">CBS News</a>:
<blockquote>BRENNAN: Congresswoman, it&#8217;s good to have you here.
REP. OMAR: Thank you so much for having me, Margaret.
BRENNAN: You heard what Chairman Schiff said. We know more than half of the Democratic caucus supports impeachment, now. You&#8217;re among them. Do you think Speaker Pelosi is being too hesitant?
REP. OMAR: Well, what I&#8217;ve always said was that it wasn&#8217;t if we were going to impeach, it&#8217;s when we were going to impeach, and I think it is okay for some people to have hesitations, for other people to catch up to where some of us have been for a really long time. And I think with Chairman Nadler, he understands that, you know, we have a constitutional duty and we must exercise that constitutional duty.
BRENNAN: Do you think, though, because of the sheer numbers, now – I think there are 136 Democrats who support an impeachment inquiry at least – are we at a tipping point where those decisions need to be made?
REP. OMAR: Yes, and the decisions are being made. This is why they took the vote to begin the investigation, and I really feel confident that they are in the process of getting everybody else who is still lagging to come along.
BRENNAN: Now, we said in the introduction you&#8217;re controversial. The Republican National Committee has released a video of you and it – I want to read you just some of it. You&#8217;re comparing migrant shelters to dungeons used about 400 years ago in Ghana that you recently visited. And you toured those caves in Ghana recently. It&#8217;s getting a lot of attention. Did you mean, when you were talking there, to compare U.S. border agents to slave traders?
REP. OMAR: So, I&#8217;m only controversial because people seem to want to – controversy. What I talked about at our panel that was the plight of black immigrants was about the experience I was having as I went through the dungeons. There were stories that were being told, and I talked about how at that moment I had an image of what&#8217;s happening in Libya as people are being sold. We&#8217;ve all seen that video, that auction of somebody being sold for 400 dollars. And then I talked about the separation stories that he told about how families were being torn apart, how children were being separated from their parents, how husband and wife would be forcibly separated. And I said that kind of reminded me of what was happening at our border here.
BRENNAN: But you didn&#8217;t mean it as an attack on U.S. border agents?
REP. OMAR: Absolutely not. I think this is always the point, right? There is always an implied intent to every conversation I have, and if you listen to the video, one comparison of what the dungeons looked like and people being sold was to what&#8217;s happening in North Africa and the other one was &#8230; family separations. And of course we obviously have a crisis here with our family separation policies.
BRENNAN: You feel very passionately about immigration. You came to this country as a refugee.
REP. OMAR: I did.
BRENNAN: The Trump administration had a victory in the courts this week because, at least temporarily, they&#8217;re upholding the ability of the administration to put into place new restrictions on the ability to claim asylum here.
REP. OMAR: I believe that decision is morally and legally wrong. Seeking asylum is a legal right that people have and we know that the Supreme Court has been wrong before. They&#8217;ve been wrong in the equal but separation doctrine decision, they&#8217;ve been wrong in the Dred Scott decision, and so what we now have an opportunity to do as legislators is make sure that we are creating immigration policy that is humane and just.
BRENNAN: Well, the Trump administration say they have to go and implement these regulations, that their hands are being tied because Congress just isn&#8217;t doing its job.
REP. OMAR: Alright. We certainly, in the House, have been doing our job since the first day we got there. And –
BRENNAN: So do asylum rights, as you argue, need to be more specifically laid out? Are you working on something like that?
REP. OMAR: Yeah, we are trying to make sure that we fix our broken immigration system. I mean, people have to understand that the immigration crisis that we have is one that we could avoid. And many of the policies that we&#8217;ve been advocating for, many that are currently sitting at the doorsteps of Mitch McConnell, will create a positive impact on how our immigration system is carried out.
BRENNAN: This was the anniversary this week, the 18th, of the 9/11 attacks on our country. And at a Ground Zero, well, remembrance ceremony I&#8217;ll call it, the son of one of the victims stood up and specifically called out language you had used in the past that he characterized as not respectful when referring to the three thousand people who were killed by Al-Qaeda. You said, &#8220;some people did something,&#8221; and he put it right there on his t-shirt. Do you understand why people found that offensive?
REP. OMAR: I mean so, 9/11 was an attack on all Americans. It was an attack on all of us. And I certainly could not understand the weight of the pain that the victims of the families of 9/11 must feel. But I think it is really important for us to make sure that we are not forgetting, right, the aftermath of what happened after 9/11. Many Americans found themselves now having their civil rights stripped from them. And so what I was speaking to was the fact that as a Muslim, not only was I suffering as an American who was attacked on that day, but the next day I woke up as my fellow Americans were now treating me a suspect.
BRENNAN: Do you feel like it&#8217;s been tough for you, here in Washington, to change your rhetoric, to be less of an activist and try to be a legislator? That sometimes the language you use has gotten in your own way?
REP. OMAR: I certainly don&#8217;t think that. You know, when we were celebrating few nights ago, I talked about how some people would say, &#8220;Ilhan, you should speak a certain way. Ilhan, you should do something a certain way,&#8221; and I think that&#8217;s contradictory, really, to the purpose of my existence in this space. I believe that my constituents sent me to make sure that I was bringing in a conversation that others weren&#8217;t having, that I was speaking for people who felt voiceless for a long time. And I think it&#8217;s really important for us to recognize that it&#8217;s a new Congress. It&#8217;s a diverse Congress and we&#8217;re not only diverse in our race or ethnicity or religion, but we are also diverse in our perspective, in our pain and our struggles, and in the hopes and dreams that we have, and the kind of America that we want to shape for all of us.
BRENNAN: You were specifically banned by the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, from visiting that country. He faces a very tough election in the next few days. If he doesn&#8217;t win, are you going to try to go back and do you stand by your call for a boycott of Israel?
REP. OMAR: I certainly hope that the people of Israel make a different decision. And my hope is that they recognize that his existence, his policies, his rhetoric really is contradictory to the peace that we are all hoping that that region receives and receives soon. Just right now if you look at the annexation that&#8217;s taking place, for many of us in Congress, there has been long standing support for its two-state solution, and this annexation now is going to make sure that that peace process does not happen, and we will not get to a two-state solution. I think what is really important is for people to understand that you have to give people the opportunity to seek the kind of justice they want in a peaceful way. And I think the opportunity to boycott, divest, sanction is the kind of pressure that leads to that peaceful process.
BRENNAN: Congresswoman, thank you for coming here to &#8220;FACE THE NATION.&#8221;
REP. OMAR: Thank you so much for having me.</blockquote>

ilhan_omar.jpg

WATCH: Omar Says Netanyahu’s ‘Existence’ Is Problematic, Promotes BDS

Ilhan Omar

Writing in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/09/opinion/israel-election-netanyahu.html?action=click&amp;module=Opinion&amp;pgtype=Homepage">The New York Times</a>, Matti Friedman, author of &#8220;Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel,&#8221; offers his cogent perspective on the primary reason Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the <a href="https://nypost.com/2019/07/19/netanyahu-to-become-israels-longest-serving-prime-minister/">longest-serving prime minister in the history of Israel</a>, has remained in office as long as he has: during his reign, the terrorist attacks and the carnage reaped by Palestinian bombers and terrorists have been reduced from their terrifying ubiquity in the early 2000&#8217;s to a level at which Israelis could try to lead normal lives without fear of being blown apart at any moment.
Friedman notes the upcoming election on Sept. 17, then points out that the best way to understand the feelings of many Israelis is to see the film &#8220;Born in Jerusalem and Still Alive,&#8221; which recently won best first feature at the Jerusalem Film Festival. The film&#8217;s main character, Ronen, triggered by a young tour guide telling tourists that downtown Jerusalem is &#8220;beautiful,&#8221; and the &#8220;center of night life and food for the young generation,&#8221; Ronen interjects, &#8220;Don&#8217;t believe her. You see this market? Fifteen years ago it was a war zone. Next to my high school there was a terror attack. Next to the university there was a terror attack. First time I made sex — terror attack.&#8221;
Friedman uses that episode to segue to Netanyahu&#8217;s longevity in office, noting, &#8220;No single episode has shaped Israel&#8217;s population and politics like the wave of suicide bombings perpetrated by Palestinians in the first years of the 21st century. Much of what you see here in 2019 is the aftermath of that time, and every election since has been held in its shadow. The attacks, which killed hundreds of Israeli civilians, ended hopes for a negotiated peace and destroyed the left, which was in power when the wave began. Any sympathy that the Israeli majority had toward Palestinians evaporated.&#8221;
He continues, &#8220;More than any other single development, that period explains the durability of Benjamin Netanyahu, which outsiders sometimes struggle to understand. Simply put, in the decade before Mr. Netanyahu came to power in 2009, the fear of death accompanied us in public places. There was a chance your child could be blown up on the bus home from school. In the decade since, that has ceased to be the case. Next to that fact, all other issues pale. Whatever credit the prime minister really deserves for the change, for many voters it&#8217;s a good enough reason to keep him in power on Sept. 17.&#8221;
Freidman points out that the Second Intifada &#8220;killed more Israelis than the Six-Day War of 1967 … Though other forms of violence persist, the last Israeli fatality in a Palestinian suicide bombing was in 2008.&#8221;
Freidman writes that the memories of the violence and wanton murder Israelis had to endure explains why Israelis are afraid to leave Judea and Samaria, why the Left in Israel has receded, why a separation barrier exists. He recalls, &#8220;I remember standing at a bus stop when I heard a suicide bomber blow himself up and murder 11 people one street over, at Café Moment. My mother passed through the Nahariya train station right before a suicide bomber struck there, and my sister was in a cafeteria at the Hebrew University campus when Palestinians blew up a different cafeteria. I&#8217;ve got many more memories like that, all of them standard for the time.&#8221;
As Shoshanna Bryen wrote in <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/50865/bryen-risk-further-upsetting-ms-tlaib-shoshana-bryen">The Daily Wire</a>:
<blockquote>It thus seems fair to note that while not one Jordanian was killed by a terrorist Palestinian to liberate &#8220;Palestine&#8221; from the Jordanian government in the 19 years of occupation, <a href="https://mfa.gov.il/MFA/ForeignPolicy/Terrorism/Palestinian/Pages/Victims%20of%20Palestinian%20Violence%20and%20Terrorism%20sinc.aspx">2,143 Israelis</a> have been killed and nearly 10,000 wounded by Palestinians in deliberate attacks. It seems fair also to emphasize the word &#8220;deliberate.&#8221; Dead Jews were the goal. Fair, too, to remind her that 19 of the dead and 172 of the wounded were victims of a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/03/27/mideast/">massacre during a Passover Seder</a>; Nava Applebaum and her father David were murdered sitting in a café <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/11/world/a-healer-of-terror-victims-becomes-one.html">the night before her wedding</a>; <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/koby-mandell">Kobi Mandell and Yosef Ishran</a>, two 13-year-old boys, had their heads smashed against rocks; 3-month-old Hadas, 4-year-old Elad, 11-year-old Yoav, and parents Ruth and Udi Fogel were <a href="https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1463738/jewish/My-Neighbors-Were-Murdered.htm">murdered in their beds</a>. Eighteen people, including Americans Malki Roth and Shoshana Yehudit Greenbaum, were killed in a Sbarro pizza parlor (their killers received an <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/18-years-after-Sbarro-suicide-attack-PA-has-paid-910823-to-the-culprits-598106">estimated $910,823 in &#8220;salary</a>&#8221; from the Palestinian Authority).</blockquote>
Friedman concludes, &#8220;The events Ronen describes to his tourists seem hard to believe. But he knows they happened, and so does the Israeli electorate. As a psychiatrist might tell us, the deeper something is repressed, the more power it exerts. So when Mr. Netanyahu declares in an <a href="https://twitter.com/i/status/1161307059247357953">election ad</a> that &#8216;in the stormy Mideastern sea we&#8217;ve proven that we can keep Israel an island of stability and safety,&#8217; we all know what he means, even if we don&#8217;t vote for him. That&#8217;s his strongest card, and if he wins, that will be why. The scenario we&#8217;re afraid of is clear even if it doesn&#8217;t have a name. It doesn&#8217;t need one.&#8221;

Netanyahu

One Israeli’s Perspective: The Most Important Reason Why Netanyahu Has Lasted

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) claimed on Thursday that she was &#8220;actively excited to pursue&#8221; a trip to Israel until the country blocked her two far-left colleagues from entering over their avowed support for an anti-Israel movement.
&#8220;Absolutely,&#8221; Ocasio-Cortez responded to a Haaretz reporter who questioned if the New York congresswoman would be interested in visiting Israel herself.
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">Rep. <a href="https://twitter.com/AOC?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@AOC</a> tells Haaretz she was “actively very excited” to pursue a trip to Israel before Netanyahu barred entry to <a href="https://twitter.com/RashidaTlaib?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@RashidaTlaib</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/IlhanMN?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@IlhanMN</a> and hopes to have the opportunity to go in the “near future”. This at her Bronx townhall on Public Housing <a href="https://t.co/7kYp4r3mhd">pic.twitter.com/7kYp4r3mhd</a>
— Danielle Ziri (@DanielleZiri) <a href="https://twitter.com/DanielleZiri/status/1167258955896242177?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 30, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
&#8220;I think that that&#8217;s absolutely something that I look forward to and it&#8217;s something that I was actively excited to pursue before the Prime Minister Netanyahu decided to ban Rashida Tlaib, congresswoman Tlaib and Omar from office,&#8221; she continued. &#8220;I think it&#8217;s a critically important experience to go visit and see firsthand a lot of what&#8217;s happening. There&#8217;s no way, I think that one can really dig deep without being able to have that experience. It&#8217;s one that I think that&#8217;s extremely important to have and I hope to have in the near future.&#8221;
Ocasio-Cortez&#8217;s remarks come nearly two weeks after the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/50657/israel-blocks-tlaib-and-omar-visiting-trump-agrees-molly-prince">Israeli government barred</a> progressive Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) from visiting the Jewish state over their advocacy of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to economically and politically starve the country.
The Israeli Knesset enacted anti-BDS legislation in 2017, which blocks foreign activists from gaining entry to the country. Netanyahu cited the law when he confirmed Israel&#8217;s decision.
Ocasio-Cortez, however, accused Israel of discriminating against women of color for banning her fellow &#8220;Squad&#8221; members.
&#8220;[Members of Congress] are frequently asked to visit Israel to &#8216;see things for ourselves.&#8217; But Netanyahu choosing to ban the only 2 Muslim women in Congress from entering tells the US that only some Americans are welcome to Israel, not all,&#8221; she <a href="https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1162056415206264832?s=20">said in August</a>. &#8220;[President Donald] Trump is exporting his bigotry [and] making matters worse.&#8221;
She later followed up her statement declaring that she would not visit Israel until the country reverses its decision and allows both Omar and Tlaib to enter.
&#8220;Netanyahu’s discriminatory decision to ban members of Congress from Israel harms [international] diplomacy. Visiting Israel [and] Palestine are key experiences towards a path to peace,&#8221; Ocasio-Cortez said. &#8220;Sadly, I cannot move forward [with] scheduling any visits to Israel until all members of Congress are allowed.&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">Netanyahu’s discriminatory decision to ban members of Congress from Israel harms int’l diplomacy.
Visiting Israel &amp; Palestine are key experiences towards a path to peace.
Sadly, I cannot move forward w scheduling any visits to Israel until all members of Congress are allowed. <a href="https://t.co/WTP5vnt5IH">https://t.co/WTP5vnt5IH</a>
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) <a href="https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1162073287163146240?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 15, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
Ocasio-Cortez had declined to travel to the region with her Democratic delegation earlier in the month, as well as with Omar and Tlaib’s planned trip. It is unclear if she previously had any plans to visit Israel, but she confirmed <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-ocasio-cortez-wanted-to-visit-israel-before-netanyahu-banned-omar-tlaib-she-says-1.7769111">to Haaretz</a> that she doesn&#8217;t intend to plan any trips in the future.
While the freshman congresswoman has previously claimed to have Sephardic Jewish ancestry, she has also made some eyebrow-raising statements downplaying the plight of the Jewish people.
Ocasio-Cortez has compared migrants illegally trying to enter the United States to Jews fleeing the Holocaust, the effects of Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt&#8217;s New Deal to the Holocaust, and illegal immigrant detainment centers to Nazi concentration camps.
She also is a member and staunch supporter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The <a href="https://twitter.com/RealSaavedra/status/1090329128975224832?s=20">Daily Wire uncovered</a> a video of the DSA voting in favor of BDS while chanting &#8220;from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,&#8221; an infamous Hamas rallying cry.
Like Omar and Tlaib, Ocasio-Cortez has <a href="https://www.jpost.com/American-Politics/Alexandria-Ocasio-Cortezs-activist-group-calls-to-annihilate-Israel-579183">repeatedly praised</a> the anti-Israel BDS movement.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Holds Public Housing Town Hall In The Bronx

WATCH: Ocasio-Cortez Claims She Was ‘Actively Very Excited’ To Visit Israel Before Squad Members Barred

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Anti-Semitism

Rashida Tlaib

While criticizing a remark made by President Donald Trump, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) finally acknowledged on Thursday that Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) circulated an anti-Semitic cartoon days earlier.
“The growing anti-Semitism in our political dialogue is repugnant. [Trump’s] comments about disloyalty are a vicious and dangerous anti-Semitic trope,” Nadler said. “And the Carlos Latuff cartoon forwarded by [Tlaib and Omar] can surely be read for its vile underlying message.”
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">The growing anti-Semitism in our political dialogue is repugnant. <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@realdonaldtrump</a>’s comments about disloyalty are a vicious and dangerous anti-Semitic trope. And the Carlos Latuff cartoon forwarded by <a href="https://twitter.com/RepRashida?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@RepRashida</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/Ilhan?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Ilhan</a> can surely be read for its vile underlying message.
— (((Rep. Nadler))) (@RepJerryNadler) <a href="https://twitter.com/RepJerryNadler/status/1164646317500567552?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 22, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
Nadler’s remarks came roughly a week after the Israeli government blocked the two progressive lawmakers from entering the country over their advocacy of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
At the time, Trump commended the decision. However, Democrats and the left-wing media overwhelmingly condemned it, including Nadler.
“I strongly condemn this decision by the Israeli government, which undermines the ability for our two allied countries to have the frank, open, and, at times, difficult discussions that we must have in order to ensure Israel remains a secure and democratic nation,” he wrote <a href="https://twitter.com/RepJerryNadler/status/1162024956353495040?s=20">in a statement</a>.
Omar and Tlaib subsequently attacked the Jewish state for its “inhumane” treatment of Palestinian-Arabs living in Gaza and the West Bank, and further accused the country of being “oppressive” and “racist.”
As part of a days-long rant against Trump and the Israeli government, both congresswomen shared an anti-Semitic image by Carlos Latuff on their social media accounts. Latuff is a political cartoonist who is celebrated for his anti-Semitic and anti-Israel cartoons. He was notably the runner-up in the 2006 Iranian “International Holocaust Cartoon Contest” for a drawing comparisons between Israel’s West Bank and Nazi concentration camps.
The cartoon that Omar and Tlaib circulated only a week earlier showed Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with their hands over the congresswomen’s mouths, forming an Israeli flag.
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">Oof. Looks like both Rep. Omar and Rep. Tlaib shared this awful Carlos Latuff cartoon in Instagram stories yesterday. In 2006, Latuff came in second in Iran&#8217;s International Holocaust Cartoon Contest, which is a thing that exists, in case you thought the TL couldn&#8217;t get any worse. <a href="https://t.co/uwyBPAsz7T">pic.twitter.com/uwyBPAsz7T</a>
— Batya Ungar-Sargon (@bungarsargon) <a href="https://twitter.com/bungarsargon/status/1162898365769748480?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 18, 2019</a></blockquote>
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The caption read: “The more they try to silence us, our voices rise. The more they try to weaken us, the stronger we become. The more they try to discredit us, the truth prevails.”
In the midst of the media firestorm over Israel’s decision to block Omar and Tlaib, Trump questioned why Jewish Americans would support Democrats, who have elevated a host of anti-Semitic members within the ranks of their party.
“Where has the Democratic Party gone? Where have they gone where they’re defending these to people over the state of Israel?” Trump asked regarding Omar and Tlaib. “I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or a great disloyalty.”
The president faced immediate backlash from individuals claiming his remarks were promoting the “dual loyalty” trope, an age-old anti-Semitic canard.
While ripping Trump’s comments, Nadler was finally forced to acknowledge the anti-Semitic actions emanating from within his own party.
Nadler notably spoke out against Omar in February after the Minnesota congresswoman claimed that Republicans’ support for Israel is bought by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
“It is deeply disappointing and disturbing to hear Rep. Ilhan Omar’s choice of words in exchange with a journalist yesterday wherein she appears to traffic in old anti-Semitic tropes about Jews and money,” he <a href="https://twitter.com/scottwongDC/status/1094990643544379395?s=20">said at the time</a>. “Her words are deeply hurtful and offensive, particularly as they build on previous comments she made about Jews ‘hypnotizing’ the world in support of Israel — another old trope born of hate-filled texts like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
However, Nadler has largely defended the two freshman Democrats, who have been embroiled in allegations of anti-Semitism and anti-American sentiments. Collectively, the two members are the first Muslim congresswomen to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Rep. Jerry Nadler Discusses Upcoming Mueller Testimony To Congress

Top Democrat Finally Acknowledges Anti-Semitic Cartoon Circulated By Omar, Tlaib

Donald Trump

Jerrold Nadler

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) announced on Friday that she would not be traveling the state of Israel only hours after the Israeli government approved her special request to visit her family in the West Bank.
&#8220;My sity wanted to pick figs [with] me. I broke down reading this [and] worry every single day after I won for my family&#8217;s safety,&#8221; Tlaib said in a series of tweets. &#8220;My cousin was texting me which photo of [Omar] &amp; I they should put on a welcoming poster when I heard the news. I couldn&#8217;t tell her.&#8221;
&#8220;When I won, it gave the Palestinian people hope that someone will finally speak the truth about the inhumane conditions,&#8221; she continued. &#8220;I can&#8217;t allow the State of Israel to take away that light by humiliating me [and] use my love for my sity to bow down to their oppressive [and] racist policies.&#8221;
<div>
<blockquote>Silencing me &amp; treating me like a criminal is not what she wants for me. It would kill a piece of me. I have decided that visiting my grandmother under these oppressive conditions stands against everything I believe in&#8211;fighting against racism, oppression &amp; injustice. <a href="https://t.co/z5t5j3qk4H">https://t.co/z5t5j3qk4H</a>
— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) <a href="https://twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/status/1162346455593619457?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 16, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
The Israeli government initially blocked Tlaib from visiting the country citing her vocal support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to punish the Jewish State by politically and economically starving the country.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has referred to BDS as &#8220;the most prominent effort to undermine Israel&#8217;s existence.&#8221; Accordingly, the Israeli Knesset passed an anti-BDS law in 2017 that blocks foreign activists from gaining entry to the country.
&#8220;No country in the world respects America and the American Congress more than the State of Israel,&#8221; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement. &#8220;As a free and vibrant democracy, Israel is open to critics and criticism with one exception: Israeli law prohibits the entry into Israel of those who call for and work to impose boycotts on Israel, as do other democracies that prohibit the entry of people who seek to harm the country.&#8221;
<div>
<blockquote>with one exception: Israeli law prohibits the entry into Israel of those who call for and work to impose boycotts on Israel, as do other democracies that prohibit the entry of people who seek to harm the country.
— PM of Israel (@IsraeliPM) <a href="https://twitter.com/IsraeliPM/status/1162039729988280320?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 15, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
Following Israel&#8217;s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/50657/israel-blocks-tlaib-and-omar-visiting-trump-agrees-molly-prince">decision to bar Tlaib</a>, the Michigan congresswoman followed up with a special humanitarian request to gain entry into the country and visit her grandmother. In the letter, she expressed the need to see her aging grandmother and vowed not to promote any boycotts against Israel while in the country.
<div>
<blockquote>Breaking: Israel’s interior minister just approved <a href="https://twitter.com/RashidaTlaib?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@RashidaTlaib</a>’s petition to enter Israel &#8216;on humanitarian grounds&#8217; to visit her Palestinian grandmother @ the West Bank. She had to promise not to promote <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BDS?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BDS</a> during the visit <a href="https://t.co/e8K2ZgtOUQ">https://t.co/e8K2ZgtOUQ</a> <a href="https://t.co/q9ULe25xX2">pic.twitter.com/q9ULe25xX2</a>
— Noa Landau נעה לנדאו (@noa_landau) <a href="https://twitter.com/noa_landau/status/1162284988315951104?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 16, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
Interior Minister Ayre Deri subsequently granted her request, but Tlaib swiftly turned it down.
&#8220;Silencing me [and] treating me like a criminal is not what she wants for me. It would kill a piece of me,&#8221; she said. &#8220;I have decided that visiting my grandmother under these oppressive conditions stands against everything I believe in – fighting against racism, oppression [and] injustice.&#8221;
Tlaib became the first Muslim woman in the United States Congress after she won election in the 2018 midterm cycle. Her time in office has been embroiled in allegations of anti-Semitism. The member of the so-called &#8220;Squad&#8221; has faced widespread backlash for her close ties and periodic meetings with extreme anti-Israel activists and terrorist supporters.
Tlaib has a close relationship with pro-Hezbollah, anti-Israel activist Abbas Hamideh, who she invited to her congressional swearing in ceremony and the following private dinner. She also invited Palestinian activist <a href="https://dailycaller.com/2019/04/17/tlaib-catron-hezbollah-pflp/">Joe Catron</a>, an avowed supporter of the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Hezbollah, in her Capitol Hill office in April.
Tlaib was also a member of <a href="https://dailycaller.com/2019/01/28/rashida-tlaib-anti-semitism-ties/">multiple anti-Semitic groups</a> on social media, which includes the Facebook group &#8220;Palestinian American Congress,&#8221; where members constantly demonize Israel and the Jewish people. The founder of the aforementioned Facebook group, Maher Abdel-qader, is an anti-Israel activist and was a key fundraiser for Tlaib&#8217;s congressional campaign.

Israel Grants Rashida Tlaib’s Request To Visit The Country. She Declines.

America and Israel have long been considered great allies, but it would be difficult to argue that the relationship has ever been as strong as it has been during the Trump-Netanyahu era.
The friendship makes sense. President Trump&#8217;s policies, especially as they pertain to Israel, are almost completely synchronized with the preferences of Netanyahu. In peace discussions, the Trump administration has uniquely implied that it isn&#8217;t married to a <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/trump-envoy-says-no-use-for-two-state-framework-in-peace-talks/">two-state solution</a> peace plan &#8212; thereby alleviating pressure former presidents had placed on the prime minister.
On a political level, it also makes sense. Trump is <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-two-years-later-israelis-love-trump-more-than-almost-any-other-nation-poll-shows-1.6515377">popular</a> in Israel and he likes Netanyahu a great deal. Netanyahu even named a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/netanyahu-inaugurates-trump-heights-israels-newest-town-on-the-golan-heights/2019/06/16/2207cd24-9041-11e9-956a-88c291ab5c38_story.html?noredirect=on">town in Israel</a> after the American president. Trump, on the other hand, is more than glad to appeal to the large pro-Israel base that consists of Republicans, independents, and some moderate Democrats by engaging positively with Netanyahu. By doing so, he can make his Israel policy critics appear to the laymen as fringe, anti-Israel extremists.
But perhaps, between the lines, there is a deeper reasoning that explains the nature of their relationship.
Since the beginning of Trump&#8217;s administration, and over the last few years of Netanyahu&#8217;s, both have had to deal with unreasonable political opponents, an overtly adversarial media, and distracting politicized investigations. These challenges have been specific to these two individuals; each is thus uniquely qualified to understand the other&#8217;s predicaments. Perhaps that explains their tremendous relationship.
But the core similarity has been the joint investigations into their respective actions. Specifically, the similarities lie in the way opponents and media alike have responded to the investigations. Instead of allowing the investigations to go to completion, foes and the media have turned them into distractions for political gain. This commenced before either of the investigations reached its natural conclusion.
The willingness of the media and politicians to assume and report negative outcomes prior to any information being released was simply irresponsible. In the American case, the media were made to look foolish when the results contradicted two years&#8217; worth of &#8220;bombshells.&#8221; Indeed, President Trump was correct to call the process &#8220;a hoax,&#8221; and Netanyahu has wisely borrowed some of the language Trump used in describing the investigations in Israel. Only Trump and Netanyahu can understand each other&#8217;s frustration in dealing with folks who were so blatantly willing to make brazen and, sometimes, even fabricated claims.
Both are also forced to deal with foes who are irrationally not accepting the results of democratic elections. In Trump&#8217;s case, Democrats continue to bemoan the results of an election that took place almost three years ago. They now refuse to accept the result of an investigation that they desired. Now, with all other options off the table, many Democrats are going with an impeachment narrative, which has no basis in reality.
In Netanyahu&#8217;s scenario, his political nemeses didn&#8217;t allow him to form a governing coalition, which has forced a repeat election for the <a href="https://www.jta.org/2019/05/29/israel/why-israel-could-hold-a-second-national-election-in-2019">first time in Israeli history</a>. Thus, Israel will be forced to undergo a nearly identical election to the one it recently completed, and undertake the tremendous costs associated with that. This occurrence has led one Israeli <a href="https://twitter.com/LahavHarkov/status/1133840375133724674">reporter</a> to refer to the situation as &#8220;the dumbest thing [she has] ever seen in the Knesset.&#8221; Both Netanyahu and Trump have made attempts at bringing their adversaries to the table for the sake of compromise instead of partisan politicking, but to no avail. Not due to fault of their own, but because no one has come forward ready to have a reasonable discussion.
The media has also been complicit in the partisan onslaught each leader has faced.
Since the beginning of the Mueller investigation, the media have been <a href="https://insider.foxnews.com/2017/06/28/networks-obsessed-trump-russia-probe-media-research-council-study-shows">obsessed</a> with it. One study found 353 minutes of nightly news airtime devoted to the Mueller probe. The fact that an investigation (particularly one that concluded what this one did) so significantly outweighed tangible policy results, like a historically strong economy, is asinine. Frankly, it&#8217;s worse than that: It&#8217;s media malpractice.
Netanyahu faces a similar barrage. Throughout his career, <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-unable-to-charm-the-media-netanyahu-sought-to-control-it-1.6704268">&#8220;Netanyahu would frequently complain about the media&#8217;s negative attitude toward him [and these claims have] some merit.&#8221;</a> As one writer <a href="https://www.jns.org/different-election-same-old-bias-media-takes-aim-at-netanyahu-yet-again/">put it</a>, &#8220;another re-election, another case of media bias against Netanyahu.&#8221; It forced Netanyahu to speak about how he and the media are looking at <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/how-netanyahus-media-war-nearly-split-his-government/2017/04/09/87a62022-1951-11e7-8598-9a99da559f9e_story.html?utm_term=.0188792798c0">two completely different realities</a>.
Despite being geographically distant, Trump and Netanyahu face different, yet similar, challenges. And these challenges are, for the most part, imposed by the same types of people. It&#8217;s understandable that they seem to appreciate each other on a level more significant than what we have previously seen between the holders of these two offices. Maybe it&#8217;s that exact closeness that compelled Trump to support Netanyahu via <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1133031322912473093">Twitter</a> upon learning that a new election would be held. Indeed, during the electoral process, <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/trump-israeli-politics-messed-up-country-needs-to-get-their-act-together/?utm_source=dlvr.it&amp;utm_medium=twitter">&#8220;Trump was widely seen as overtly pushing to get Netanyahu elected, with a series of steps aimed at boosting Netanyahu&#8217;s popularity.&#8221;</a>
And so it is wholly feasible to suggest that their alliance stands on the fact that, when you pull back the curtains, these two leaders are working hard to serve their citizenry despite the intransigent obstacles they each face. It is a task that no one but the two of them can truly understand.

Elliot Fuchs is a political consultant and writer. You can follow him on Twitter <a href="http://twitter.com/Elliot_Fuchs">@Elliot_Fuchs</a>.

President Donald Trump Welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu To The White House

FUCHS: Trump And Netanyahu: The Alliance Behind The Alliance

Media

Media Bias

Robert Mueller

Trump Administration

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) defended Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday against accusations from within the Democratic party that the Israeli government, under Netanyahu’s leadership, is racist.
“I don’t think he’s a racist. Period. No,” Hoyer told the <a href="https://www.jpost.com/American-Politics/Steny-Hoyer-to-Post-Netanyahu-not-racist-598128">Jerusalem Post</a> when asked directly what he thought of the characterization.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), a top candidate for the Democratic nomination for president and an outspoken critic of Israel has labeled Netanyahu and his administration as racist on multiple occasions.
“The goal must be to try to bring people together and not just support one country, which is not run by a right-wing, dare I say, racist government,” Sanders said during a CNN event in April. He added at the time that while he was “100 percent pro-Israel,” Netanyahu is also “treating the Palestinian people extremely unfairly.”
Tzachi Hanegbi, a senior member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, immediately <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-sanders-israel/israeli-minister-condemns-sanders-remarks-on-racist-netanyahu-government-idUSKCN1RZ20U">issued a statement</a> condemning Sanders’ accusation and slamming the idea that conservatism is discrediting.
“The Israeli government is not a racist government, nor does it include a single racist minister,” Hanegbi said. “To be right wing is not illegitimate and it is odd that the Democratic Party allows one of its senior members to not respect the democratic choice of the State of Israel.”
Sanders, however, doubled down months later while explaining that as president, he “absolutely” would use American aid as leverage over the state of Israel.
“In recent years under Netanyahu, you have an extreme right-wing government with many racist tendencies,” Sanders said on the “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKbXU_4yVE4&amp;feature=youtu.be">Pod Save America</a>” podcast in July.
The “racist” accusation was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/apr/08/benjamin-netanyahu-is-racist-says-democratic-hopeful-beto-orourke">later echoed </a>by Sanders’ Democratic challenger former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX), who was a rank-and-file member under Hoyer’s leadership until 2018.
“The U.S.-Israel relationship is one of the most important relationships that we have on the planet,” O’Rourke said while campaigning in April. “That relationship, if it is to be successful, must transcend partisanship in the United States, and it must be able to transcend a prime minister who is racist.”
The Democratic Party has been embroiled in allegations of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiments, especially since a host of far left lawmakers were elected to Congress during the 2018 midterms.
Freshman Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), America’s first Muslim congresswomen, have notably advocated for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to punish the Jewish state of Israel by politically and economically depriving the country. BDS has been linked to terrorist organizations such as Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
Both congresswomen have also <a href="https://dailycaller.com/2019/04/17/tlaib-catron-hezbollah-pflp/">touted their relationships</a> with Palestinian activists who are closely tied to multiple Islamic terror organizations.
Omar received widespread criticism for promoting ages-old anti-Semitic canards such as that Jews’ support of Israel is purchased and that they have dual loyalty to the U.S. and Israel.
Hoyer, who is not Jewish and does not represent a majority Jewish district, has been an outspoken defender of the American-Israeli alliance, even going so far as to take aim at the Minnesota congresswoman.
“I stand with Israel, proudly and unapologetically. So, when someone accuses American supporters of Israel of dual loyalty, I say: accuse me,” Hoyer <a href="https://www.majorityleader.gov/content/hoyer-delivers-remarks-aipac-annual-policy-conference">said while addressing</a> the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) 2019 conference. “I am part of a large, bipartisan coalition in Congress supporting Israel. I tell Israel’s detractors: accuse us. And millions of Americans, regardless of race or faith or partisan label, stand with Israel because they understand why our relationship with Israel is so important. Accuse us all!”
Hoyer has <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/03/25/steny-hoyer-condemned-shameful-and-unhinged-aipac-speech">faced massive backlash</a> for his fiery speech from the progressive-wing of his base, who referred to his remarks as “shameful” and “unhinged.” He subsequently issued an apology.
However, the Maryland congressman told the Jerusalem Post on Thursday that he is not concerned that the growing number of anti-Israel members in his caucus will paint all Democrats as anti-Israel.
“I am not worried because I know that the Democratic Party has been one of Israel’s strongest supporters throughout its history,” Hoyer said. “And continues to be so.”
He also contended that Omar and Tlaib, along with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who also supports the BDS movement and has been embroiled in her own allegations of anti-Semitism, have only gotten so much attention “because the press likes controversy.” He pointed out that they are only three representatives in the House out of 239 Democrats.

ISRAEL-PALESTINIAN-CONFLICT-NETANYAHU

Top House Democrat Defends Netanyahu From Progressive-Wing: He’s Not Racist

Steny Hoyer

This week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once again sounded the alarm on the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/47905/hamas-admits-it-receives-arms-and-money-irans-josh-hammer">uniquely venomous</a> threat posed by the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/43339/hammer-iranian-revolution-forty-years-old-stand-josh-hammer">terrorist mullocracy</a> that governs Iran. In sharp and overt language that stands in pointed contrast to the ham-handed obfuscations of many less morally righteous figures of the political Left, Netanyahu spoke of how Iran seeks to build an &#8220;arsenal of nuclear bombs.&#8221;
Per <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-tehran-working-toward-arsenal-of-nuclear-bombs/">The Times of Israel</a>:
<blockquote>
Iran is actively trying to obtain an &#8220;arsenal of nuclear bombs,&#8221; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday, amid ongoing tensions between the Islamic Republic and the US after the unraveling of the 2015 landmark nuclear deal.
&#8220;It&#8217;s very clear Iran is lying. Iran is continuing to work toward an arsenal of nuclear bombs, and we&#8217;re committed to stop it,&#8221; he said during a meeting with Olli Heinonen, a former deputy director-general at the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Heinonen, in a series of interviews and lectures this week, repeatedly accused Iran of violating its commitments under the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The Islamic Republic would be theoretically be able to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon within six to eight months, he said, though building an actual bomb would take longer.
&#8220;Thank you for your forthright analysis and your clear-cut conclusion. I thank you for pointing out what Iran is doing,&#8221; Netanyahu told the Finnish-born scientist at the Prime Minister&#8217;s Office in Jerusalem.
</blockquote>
As the Times further notes, last year Netanyahu, on the eve of President Donald Trump&#8217;s ultimate removal of the United States from the harrowing capitulation to fundamentalist jihadist evil known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (i.e., Iran nuclear deal), unveiled a stunning Israeli Mossad intelligence operation that revealed the depths of Tehran&#8217;s decade-long commitment to assembling nuclear weaponry. &#8220;Last year, Mossad agents smuggled out some 100,000 documents on 55,000 pages on 183 CDs from an unmarked Tehran warehouse,&#8221; the outlet stated. &#8220;According to Israeli officials, the documents proved that the Islamic Republic had actively worked on building a nuclear weapon, something Tehran has always denied and continues to deny.&#8221;
Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/30045/iran-lied-netanyahu-reveals-israel-smuggled-100000-ben-shapiro">opined</a>, at the time, on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu&#8217;s dramatic revelation of the Mossad intelligence:
<blockquote>
According to Netanyahu, Iran had a comprehensive program, Project Amad, to design and develop nuclear weapons, and they have now disassembled the program for later reassembly. The specific goal of Project Amad: designing nuclear weapons; developing nuclear cores; preparing nuclear implosions; preparing nuclear tests; integrating nuclear warheads on missiles. Iran devised a plan after the beginning of the Second Gulf War to further develop its nuclear weapons program in secret &#8212; and to form new organizations to continue the work of Project Amad. Today, Netanyahu said, the work was carried out inside the Iranian Defense Ministry, and many of Amad&#8217;s key personnel continued to work on the project. The Iranians did not declare their program to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Iran instead denied the existence of a program and specifically denied the Amad plan.
This presentation was undoubtedly carried out with the knowledge of the United States; Netanyahu said that the information had been shared with the United States.
</blockquote>
Netanyahu&#8217;s moral clarity is a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/45868/hammer-after-much-electoral-fanfare-israelis-once-josh-hammer">unique hallmark</a> of his statesmanship.

Iran Is Seeking An ‘Arsenal Of Nuclear Bombs,’ Netanyahu Says

Iran

Nuclear Weapons

As The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/45829/its-final-bibi-blue-and-white-netanyahus-main-josh-hammer">noted</a> last month, Benjamin &#8220;Bibi&#8221; Netanyahu was seemingly re-elected to serve a fifth term as Israel&#8217;s prime minister &#8212; thus placing the Likud leader at the precipice of surpassing iconic national founder David Ben-Gurion as the longest-serving prime minister in the history of the Jewish state. At the time, here is how I <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/45868/hammer-after-much-electoral-fanfare-israelis-once-josh-hammer">explained</a> Israeli voters&#8217; collective decision to once again trust their nation&#8217;s fate in Netanyahu&#8217;s sturdy hands:
<blockquote>
[I]t is &#8230; Netanyahu who, admirable prudence and occasionally <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/44732/hammer-israel-must-destroy-hamas-once-and-all-josh-hammer">excessive</a> restraint aside, demonstrates an intuitive understanding of the threats that Israel &#8212; and, by extension, all of the West &#8212; ultimately faces. Netanyahu famously sparred with the pro-Palestinian Obama, but, as Quin Hillyer <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/414636/netanyahu-not-obama-speaks-us-quin-hillyer">put it</a> in 2015, Netanyahu &#8220;spent far more of his formative years on the American mainland than Obama did, &#8230; took enemy fire at the age when Obama was openly pushing Marxist theory, and &#8230; earned and practiced free enterprise at the same age when Obama was practicing and teaching Alinskyism.&#8221; He is a hardened man &#8212; his character forever shaped and his fortitude forever calcified by the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Letters-Jonathan-Netanyahu-Commander-Entebbe/dp/9652292672">tragedy</a> that befell his dear older brother Yoni in Entebbe. He intuitively grasps the nature of genocidal, irredentist sharia supremacism in a way that perhaps no other Western leader can &#8212; and he is hardly shy in <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/30045/iran-lied-netanyahu-reveals-israel-smuggled-100000-ben-shapiro">sounding the alarm</a>, when need be.
</blockquote>
In the election&#8217;s immediate aftermath last month, all seemed well for Bibi and his right-of-center Likud Party. It seemed all but inevitable that there would soon be yet another durable Likud-led conservative Israeli government.
Alas, it now seems that that purported inevitability may have been a mirage. Specifically, an ongoing and still-unresolved debate regarding a longtime hot-button Israeli political issue &#8212; whether Haredi (or &#8220;ultra-Orthodox&#8221;) Jews should be mandatorily conscripted, as are most other Jews, into the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) &#8212; may topple the new governing coalition before it has even started.
Reuters <a href="http://news.trust.org/item/20190526152348-u6x9g">reported</a> yesterday on the looming Wednesday deadline for Netanyahu to successfully thread the needle and solidify a governing coalition:
<blockquote>
In power for the past decade, Netanyahu has unexpectedly struggled to seal an agreement with a clutch of right-wing, far-right and ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties that would align with his Likud party and ensure him a fifth term following Israel&#8217;s April 9 election.
Divisions between former Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman&#8217;s ultranationalist Yisrael Beitenu party and United Torah Judaism over a military conscription bill governing exemptions for ultra-Orthodox Jewish seminary students have plunged the coalition talks into stalemate.
Lieberman has long said ultra-Orthodox men must share other Israeli Jews&#8217; burden of mandatory service. Ultra-Orthodox parties say seminary students should be largely exempt from conscription as they have been since Israel was founded in 1948.
</blockquote>
As Reuters notes, Avigdor Lieberman, who has long headed the secular right-wing Russian Jewish-centric Yisrael Beitenu party, is a longtime adamant opponent of a Haredi exemption for IDF conscription. And as The Times of Israel <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/liberman-reiterates-threat-to-go-to-new-elections-if-likud-rejects-demands/">noted</a> over the weekend, Lieberman seems positively obstinate on holding his ground this time around:
<blockquote>
&#8220;Both in the election campaign and after the elections, we said clearly and publicly that we would only support Netanyahu as a candidate for prime minister &#8230; Even today, we say unequivocally that we will not endorse any other candidate for prime minister,&#8221; Liberman wrote on Facebook.
However, he said, Yisrael Beytenu has also made it clear &#8220;before the elections, during the elections and after the elections&#8221; that the party &#8220;would not move an inch&#8221; on its demand for the passage, unamended, of a long-discussed bill formalizing exemptions to mandatory military service for seminary students, a condition rejected by ultra-Orthodox parties.
</blockquote>
Netanyahu, for his part, seems none too happy with Lieberman right now.
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
BB tells his ministers: Open fire on <a href="https://twitter.com/AvigdorLiberman?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@AvigdorLiberman</a>
&#8212; Gil Hoffman (@Gil_Hoffman) <a href="https://twitter.com/Gil_Hoffman/status/1133084901769715719?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 27, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
Regardless of the outcome, this will undoubtedly be a fascinating week for all observers of Israel&#8217;s rambunctious political system.

Over Already? New Bibi-Led Israeli Government On Verge Of Collapsing Before Even Starting.

In the lead-up to Israel&#8217;s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/45829/its-final-bibi-blue-and-white-netanyahus-main-josh-hammer">national elections last month</a>, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, publicly floated the idea of annexation of the biblical Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria &#8212; or what most of the &#8220;international community&#8221; refers to as the &#8220;West Bank.&#8221; At the time, some believed that Netanyahu, who had sometimes previously spoken of annexation but had never taken meaningful steps to act upon it, simply needed to court staunchly right-wing votes for his Likud Party and hemorrhage as few votes as possible to smaller parties aligned further to the right of Likud.
Jewish Telegraph Agency <a href="https://www.jta.org/2019/04/08/israel/netanyahus-promise-to-annex-the-west-bank-settlements-explained">analyzed</a> Netanyahu&#8217;s flirtation with annexing large swaths of Judea and Samaria, finding a logical comparison to the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/44608/excellent-trump-first-time-ever-us-recognizes-josh-hammer">United States&#8217; recent formal recognition</a> of Israeli control of the strategic Golan Heights border region:
<blockquote>
Netanyahu is in a close race for re-election and wants to shore up his base. During the last campaign, in 2015, he did that by saying he would not establish a Palestinian state. The annexation pledge takes him one step further to the right.
It&#8217;s a play to draw voters away from smaller parties that are running even further to Netanyahu&#8217;s right, like the New Right Party headed by Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked, two of Netanyahu&#8217;s longtime frenemies.
The annexation promise also comes a few weeks after President Trump recognized Israel&#8217;s annexation of the Golan Heights, another controversial (although less so) territory that Israel captured in 1967. Israel annexed the Golan Heights in 1981, but no U.S. president officially recognized the move.
Netanyahu saw Trump&#8217;s Golan decision as a signal that annexation, in a broader sense, is kosher now.
</blockquote>
Ultimately, Netanyahu was successful, and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/45868/hammer-after-much-electoral-fanfare-israelis-once-josh-hammer">Israelis returned home yet again</a> to the leader who has proven, above all else, that he knows how to keep Israel safe in a deeply turbulent region of the world.
But the popular prediction that Netanyahu was engaging in political posturing may turn out, in fact, to be wrong. As The Times of Israel <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-doubles-down-on-west-bank-annexation-after-ex-generals-speak-out/">reports</a> today, Netanyahu has boldly doubled down in defense of annexation after some ex-Israel Defense Forces officers spoke out critically against the plan:
<blockquote>
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and top lawmakers from his Likud party on Tuesday spoke out forcefully in support of extending Israeli sovereignty over parts of the West Bank, after a group of former senior security officials warned the move would endanger the country.
In a letter to Netanyahu first reported on by Channel 12, Commanders for Israel&#8217;s Security, which describes itself as a nonpartisan body of nearly 300 retired senior officers, urged him to hold a public referendum before making any moves to effectively annex the territory.
They said such a step would bring about the collapse of security cooperation with the Palestinian Authority and strengthen terrorist organizations.
Netanyahu dismissed their concerns. Using the biblical Hebrew names for the West Bank, he wrote on Twitter that &#8220;swaths of land in Judea and Samaria are not just a guarantee of Israel&#8217;s security &#8212; they are also our patrimony.&#8221;
</blockquote>
Netanyahu also <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-doubles-down-on-west-bank-annexation-after-ex-generals-speak-out/">ridiculed</a> the anti-annexation &#8220;Commanders for Israel&#8217;s Security&#8221; group, jesting that the group comprises &#8220;the same &#8216;experts&#8217; [who] supported the Iran nuclear deal and warned that &#8216;Bibi [Netanyahu] is taking a wrong turn and ruining the alliance with America.'&#8221;
It is noteworthy that Netanyahu&#8217;s defense of partial annexation was framed not merely in strategic, but also moral, terminology. The <a href="https://twitter.com/josh_hammer/status/1077983885542207488">biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria</a>, Netanyahu claims, is the Jewish people&#8217;s rightful &#8220;patrimony.&#8221; Before he was recently <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46672/pro-israel-professor-condemned-other-faculty-tells-hank-berrien">shamed and slurred in vile fashion by leftist Palestinian activists</a>, DePaul University Professor Jason Hill made a similar argument at <a href="https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/16/moral-case-israel-annexing-west-bank-beyond/">The Federalist</a>:
<blockquote>
Since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) have enjoyed joint rule by Israeli military government and the Palestinian Authority with around 98 percent of the Palestinians living in areas under jurisdiction of the PA. In such areas, the PA has destroyed the freedom Palestinians enjoyed under Israeli rule and their economy through kleptocracy, corruption, nepotism, and authoritarian forms of governance subject to none of the checks and balances that characterize Israel&#8217;s Knesset.
Jewish exceptionalism and the exceptionalist nature of Jewish civilization require an unconditional space for the continued evolution of their civilization. What&#8217;s good for Jewish civilization is good for humanity at large. Jewish civilization is an international treasure trove that must be protected. &#8230;
Given Fatah and Hamas&#8217;s genocidal aspirations toward Israel and universal Jewry and, in the case of Hamas, of a global caliphate, a moral goal would be to reverse the potential sovereignty of every Palestinian movement in the region. It ought to force Jordan to re-revoke its citizenship status of the Palestinian majority in Jordan.
</blockquote>

Bibi: Annexing ‘West Bank’ Would NOT Endanger Israel’s Security

&#8220;It&#8217;s like déjà vu all over again,&#8221; once <a href="https://yogiberramuseum.org/about-yogi/yogisms/">quipped</a> the ever-quotable New York Yankees Hall of Fame catcher Yogi Berra.
Has there ever been a more depressingly apt descriptor for the unrelenting horror of the dastardly duo of Muslim Brotherhood <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46714/hammer-designating-muslim-brotherhood-terrorist-josh-hammer">jihadist franchise</a> Hamas and <a href="https://freebeacon.com/national-security/irans-hand-behind-the-latest-flare-up-in-gaza-israel/">Iran-managed</a> Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46797/israel-faces-massive-barage-rockets-gaza-attack-emily-zanotti">teaming up to rain</a> recalcitrant rocket fire hell on Israeli civilians?
This weekend marked yet another deeply tragic and harrowing time for our Israeli allies. Hamas, the <a href="http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp">genocidal</a> Sunni sharia supremacist death cult democratically elected by a radicalized Gazan populace after then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon&#8217;s disastrous unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, combined with PIJ to rain approximately 700 missiles this past weekend upon Israeli civilian infrastructure. Due to a seemingly providential combination of jihadist technological incompetence and Israel&#8217;s Iron Dome missile defense system having an 80+% success rate, the weekend death toll for Israelis was a mere &#8212; still deeply saddening &#8212; four.
Internal Palestinian-Arab politics are infamously messy. PIJ, which operates as somewhat of a rogue outfit in the Strip and takes direct orders from the terrorist Shiite regime in Tehran, first initiated this round of rocket escalation. But it is longtime Israeli policy to hold Hamas, which nominally governs Gaza, as solely responsible for all rockets fired from Gaza into Israel. And it is Hamas, furthermore, which shows increasingly strong gains throughout Judea and Samaria, where it repeatedly undercuts the <a href="https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/306179-palestinian-kleptocracy-west-accepts-corruption-people">kleptocratic</a>, venal Palestinian Authority (PA) government. Indeed, <a href="http://www.thetower.org/article/how-holocaust-denial-shaped-mahmoud-abbas-worldview/">Holocaust-denying</a> PA chieftain Mahmoud Abbas, who is currently in the 14th year of his four-year term, refuses to hold elections due in no small measure to the fact that he knows Hamas would win them.
The Palestinian-Arabs are a wholly radicalized and generally Jew-hating populace. But don&#8217;t take it from me: According to the liberal Anti-Defamation League&#8217;s 2014 <a href="https://global100.adl.org/#map">survey</a>, an <a href="https://global100.adl.org/#country/west-bank-and-gaza/2014">astounding 93%</a> of Palestinian-Arabs hold anti-Semitic views. The following video from this past weekend is, as the adage goes, worth (at least) a thousand words:
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Palestinians in Gaza cheer and chant &#8220;Allahu Akbar&#8221; (God is great) as rockets targeting Israeli civilians are launched from nearby. <a href="https://t.co/I7vA5dpRfU">pic.twitter.com/I7vA5dpRfU</a>
&#8212; Avi Mayer (@AviMayer) <a href="https://twitter.com/AviMayer/status/1124799274267619328?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 4, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
This is not a healthy culture. Indeed, one cursory glance at the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict ought to axiomatically reveal the Left&#8217;s multiculturalist idolatry as the massive lie that it is. All cultures are <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Israel-Test-George-Gilder/dp/0980076358">not, in fact, equal</a>.
The upshot is that it is not at all clear what potentially gruesome horror might succeed Hamas in Gaza. True, some Gazans have recently taken to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/24/world/middleeast/gaza-protests-hamas.html">protesting</a> Hamas quite publicly &#8212; but this is still a largely Jew-hating, pro-Islamist civilian population.
And yet, Israel &#8212; as a sovereign nation that has a moral duty to protect its civilians against enemy combatants, and which cannot be held to a different standard than any other nation of the world &#8212; increasingly has no choice but to act decisively. Indeed, with urban centers such as <a href="https://freebeacon.com/national-security/irans-hand-behind-the-latest-flare-up-in-gaza-israel/">Tel Aviv now under threat</a> from longer-range missiles, the situation is increasingly dire. In March, I <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/44732/hammer-israel-must-destroy-hamas-once-and-all-josh-hammer">laid out the case</a> for Israel to utterly destroy Hamas once and for all:
<blockquote>
Try as the Israel Defense Forces might to keep on &#8220;<a href="https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Column-One-Mowing-the-lawn-in-Gaza-569775">mowing the grass&#8221;</a> when the &#8220;infidel&#8221;-loathing jihadists of Hamas flare up in impulsive paroxysms of &#8220;anti-Zionism&#8221; Jew-hatred, the status quo in Gaza is completely unsustainable. No other sovereign country on Earth would deal so passively with such a cancerous threat living on its border &#8212; with its <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/44688/dramatic-escalation-terrorist-rockets-gaza-reach-josh-hammer">biggest civilian centers</a> under constant fear of city-wide sirens signaling the incoming threat of crude Iran-manufactured rockets fired haphazardly from a bordering terroristic death cult. Indeed, no sovereign country on Earth should have to deal with such a threat. If the Sinaloa Cartel or Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion ever decided to shoot terrorist rockets at Texan or Arizonan ranchers, the United States would (rightfully) send in M1 Abrams tanks across the Rio Grande tomorrow. &#8230;
It is long past time for the Israeli government to commence a full-on, comprehensive land/air invasion to hunt down and permanently root out every last one of the Hamas leadership there. Israel surely has no interest in formally re-annexing Gaza &#8212; calamitous as Sharon&#8217;s withdrawal was, the Israeli government could not be any less interested in now re-absorbing the radicalized Arab populace there. And while the Israel Defense Forces would no doubt suffer high and tragic casualties as a result of a prolonged land invasion, one is forced to consider the tradeoff of inaction &#8212; the continuance of the status quo. And that status quo is truly terrible for all parties involved.
</blockquote>
But in addition to the moral and strategic calculation of deciding whether to commence such a comprehensive land/air invasion, it is important to emphasize the timing aspect of such a decision. Specifically, it is imperative that Israel launch such an operation within &#8212; at the latest &#8212; the next calendar year.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who leads a right-wing, pro-Israeli sovereignty coalition, was just <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/45789/all-3-major-israeli-tv-channels-declare-netanyahu-hank-berrien">re-elected</a> to once again lead the Jewish state. As Daniel Polisar recently <a href="https://mosaicmagazine.com/response/israel-zionism/2019/04/the-common-sense-of-israels-voting-public/">explicated</a> at the indispensable Mosaic Magazine, furthermore, Israel&#8217;s decision to once again hand the reins of government to Netanyahu <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/45868/hammer-after-much-electoral-fanfare-israelis-once-josh-hammer">makes ample sense</a>. A man forever hardened by the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Letters-Jonathan-Netanyahu-Commander-Entebbe/dp/9652292672">tragedy</a> that befell his dear older brother Yoni in Entebbe, Bibi grasps the nature of genocidal, irredentist sharia supremacism in a way that perhaps no other Western leader can. In the <a href="http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/04/the-israeli-elections-can-the-left-be-saved.html">bloody aftermath</a> of the Oslo Accords-induced Second Intifada, Israelis trust Bibi to keep them safe. Period.
But not only does Israel have a present leader uniquely capable of summoning the will to plan and execute an extended land/air invasion to extirpate in Hamas in Gaza. From the perspective of American politics, the time to launch such an investigation is also right now. Because while the Jew-hating ignoramuses of the &#8220;international community&#8221; &#8212; best embodied by that wretched hive of Western values-hating scum and anti-Semitic villainy known as the <a href="https://www.themaven.net/theresurgent/contributors/destroy-the-united-nations-MRHU9AcfJUW0v67EHdQI-Q/">United Nations</a> &#8212; would inevitably howl and shriek regardless of any extended extra-territorial Israeli military operation, there can be no serious doubt that this, the most <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46364/menken-president-trump-defender-israel-ignores-rabbi-yaakov-menken">pro-Israel</a>, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46504/watch-poway-synagogue-rabbi-reveals-what-trump-ryan-saavedra">pro-Jewish</a> presidential administration in a century or more, would enthusiastically have Israel&#8217;s physical and proverbial back.
Israel simply cannot risk waiting until the eve of the 2020 presidential election &#8212; not with a menagerie of anti-Israel dunderheads competing for the nomination of what is an increasingly <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/44424/hammer-stark-choice-facing-jewish-democrats-josh-hammer">openly anti-Semitic</a> Democratic Party. A comprehensive Gaza operation to root out and destroy Hamas simply must be commenced with Trump as president. There is no other choice.
The status quo in Gaza is unsustainable. Israel has the best possible governing coalition to go in guns blazing and systemically eradicate a Sunni jihadist outfit raining perpetual hill on the Jewish state&#8217;s civilians. Furthermore, the best possible American president is in office right now &#8212; although an election looms next year.
All that is missing is Netanyahu summoning the requisite political will to call the right shot.

HAMMER: With Israel’s Election Over, The Time Is Now For An Operation To Utterly Destroy Hamas

Hamas

Radical Islam

Radical Islamic Terror

Militants in Gaza launched an estimated 600 rockets at Israelis in civilian areas all day Saturday and into Saturday night, and Israel has responded with a series of targeted airstrikes meant to take out terrorist enclaves.
Three Israelis have been killed, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/05/middleeast/israel-airstrikes-gaza-rockets-intl/index.html">according to CNN</a>, including a 58-year-old man whose home was hit by a rocket before he was able to get to safety. The three deaths represent the first Israeli deaths from Palestinian rocket fire since 2014, international media report.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health, a notoriously untrustworthy source, says four Palestinians have also been killed, including a pregnant woman and her toddler, though it appears the latter two were killed in a &#8220;friendly fire&#8221; incident when a Gaza militant&#8217;s rocket went awry, and not from an Israeli attack.
Israeli Defense Forces responded to the overwhelming barrage of rocket fire by targeting specific locations in the Gaza strip known to harbor members of Hamas and other terrorist organizations. As of Sunday morning, Israel officials say they&#8217;ve carried out around 260 targeted strikes, and that more targeted strikes against &#8220;terrorist elements&#8221; are planned unless rocket fire from Gaza ceases.
So far, Israeli forces have targeted tunnels, visible rocket launcher sites, and a mosque they said was being used as a strategic military headquarters. The IDF also reports that they targeted &#8220;several Hamas military compounds in the Gaza City neighborhoods of Tel Alawah and Shajiya used for training and manufacturing weapons,&#8221; <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/gaza-news/Multiple-rocket-sirends-heard-in-Gaza-strip-border-communities-588669">according to JPost</a>. &#8220;Other targets struck belonged to Hamas&#8217; naval force and a joint military compound used by Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PLO) in Beit Lahiya.&#8221;
&#8220;Hamas is the sovereign entity in Gaza, and it operates in coordination with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad,&#8221; IDF spokesman Brig.-Gen. Ronen Manelis told media Saturday. &#8220;At this moment, we are attacking military targets of the two organizations, and from last night there are five or six terrorists killed by the two organizations.&#8221;
Israeli officials have also closed off all border crossings between the Gaza strip and Israel proper, and limited fishing and other activities along the coastline.
&#8220;Hamas bears the responsibility not only for its own attacks and actions but also for the actions of Islamic Jihad, and it is paying a very heavy price for this,&#8221; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a press conference Sunday morning.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) say the rocket fire began Saturday morning, and may be meant as retaliation &#8220;after two militants from Hamas&#8217; armed wing, the Qassam Brigades were killed in an Israeli strike on Hamas posts in Gaza.&#8221; Militants in Gaza first fired around 50 rockets, but the grand total is now more than 600.
Last night, video emerged of Palestinians cheering in the streets as visible rocket fire flew overhead into Israel.
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Palestinians in Gaza cheer and chant &#8220;Allahu Akbar&#8221; (God is great) as rockets targeting Israeli civilians are launched from nearby. <a href="https://t.co/I7vA5dpRfU">pic.twitter.com/I7vA5dpRfU</a>
&#8212; Avi Mayer (@AviMayer) <a href="https://twitter.com/AviMayer/status/1124799274267619328?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 4, 2019</a></blockquote>
Israelis are being told to shelter in place, and are being instructed not to attend any funeral services for those killed in Saturday&#8217;s attacks, out of fear that Hamas will deliberately target any memorial gathering.
This is a developing story and The Daily Wire will continue to follow it.

Israel Faces Massive Barrage Of Rockets In Gaza Attack, Responds With Airstrikes

Last week, The New York Times published a cartoon so anti-Semitic that Bret Stephens wrote in his Times column that it was &#8220;an image that, in another age, might have been published in the pages of Der Sturmer.&#8221; Der Sturmer was the Nazis&#8217; major anti-Semitic newspaper.
A Times columnist charging the Times with publishing a Nazi-like cartoon is quite a moment in American publishing history.
For those who haven&#8217;t seen the cartoon, here is Stephens&#8217; description:
&#8220;The Jew in the form of a dog. The small but wily Jew leading the dumb and trusting American. The hated Trump being Judaized with a skullcap. The nominal servant acting as the true master. The cartoon checked so many anti-Semitic boxes that the only thing missing was a dollar sign.&#8221;
The dog leading Trump had the face of Benjamin Netanyahu and was wearing a Star of David necklace. Trump was wearing a back yarmulke.
For those naifs and Israel-haters who dismiss such depictions as merely &#8220;anti-Zionist&#8221; or &#8220;anti-Israel&#8221; but not anti-Semitic, the yarmulke on Trump&#8217;s head should be the giveaway, as should the theme itself &#8212; the Jew leading the Gentile astray, one of the oldest anti-Semitic canards.
Of course, the cartoon is not just about Israel or Jews. It is about Trump, whom the left so hates. It depicts him as the stooge of both Vladimir Putin and Netanyahu. There is no truth to either depiction, but if truth mattered to the left, there would be no left. Truth is a liberal value, and it is a conservative value, but it is not a leftist value. Truth to the left is pravda. Pravda, the Russian word for &#8220;truth,&#8221; was also the name of the Soviet Communist Party newspaper.
So, the question is: Why would The New York Times, published in the city where more Jews live than any other city in the world outside of Israel, whose publisher is a Jew and whose editors are disproportionately Jewish, publish a Nazi-like anti-Semitic cartoon?
Here is Stephens&#8217; answer:
&#8220;For some Times readers &#8212; or, as often, former readers &#8212; the answer is clear: The Times has a longstanding Jewish problem, dating back to World War II, when it mostly buried news about the Holocaust, and continuing into the present day in the form of intensely adversarial coverage of Israel. The criticism goes double when it comes to the editorial pages, whose overall approach toward the Jewish state tends to range, with some notable exceptions, from tut-tutting disappointment to thunderous condemnation.
&#8220;For these readers, the cartoon would have come like the slip of the tongue that reveals the deeper institutional prejudice. What was long suspected is, at last, revealed.&#8221;
Stephens continues:
&#8220;How have even the most blatant expressions of anti-Semitism become almost undetectable to editors who think it&#8217;s part of their job to stand up to bigotry?
&#8220;The reason is the almost torrential criticism of Israel and the mainstreaming of anti-Zionism, including by this paper, which has become so common that people have been desensitized to its inherent bigotry. So long as anti-Semitic arguments or images are framed, however speciously, as commentary about Israel, there will be a tendency to view them as a form of political opinion, not ethnic prejudice. But as I noted in a Sunday Review essay in February, anti-Zionism is all but indistinguishable from anti-Semitism in practice and often in intent, however much progressives try to deny this.&#8221;
Exactly right. As I wrote in &#8220;Why the Jews? The Reason for Anti-Semitism&#8221; 40 years before Stephens wrote his column, there is no difference between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Of course, one can criticize Israel, just as one can criticize any country, but that is not anti-Zionism. Anti-Zionism is not criticism of Israel. It is a hatred of Israel &#8212; a hatred greater than that of any other country and a delegitimization of Zionism, the movement to reestablish the Jewish national home. Imagine someone who argued that the establishment of the Italian state &#8212; Italy &#8212; was illegitimate and who hated Italy more than any other country in the world yet claimed that he was in no way anti-Italian, as he had Italian friends and loved Italian culture. No one would believe such an absurdity.
Why aren&#8217;t most American Jews troubled by the Times&#8217; cartoon? Why were all American Jews horrified by the anti-Semitic shootings at the California synagogue this past weekend, while most barely had their feathers ruffled by the anti-Semitic cartoon in one of the most influential media in America?
The answer is most American Jews, while ethnically Jewish, are ethically leftist. And ethics trump ethnicity &#8212; as they should. For most American Jews, therefore, the Times is far more consonant with their ethical values than are Jewish values (if, by Jewish values, we are talking about the Torah and traditional Jewish religious/moral teachings). So, then, when you combine hatred of the right-wing prime minister of Israel and reverence for the left-wing Times, even a Nazi-like cartoon &#8212; if it negatively depicts Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump and is published in The New York Times &#8212; is no big deal.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in April 2018, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Exodus. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

PRAGER: Why Most Jews Aren&#8217;t Bothered By The Times&#8217; Anti-Semitic Cartoon

New York Times

The New York Times drips with venomous anti-Semitism, as already noted after the uproar following their monstrous Nazi-like cartoon last Thursday that depicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a dog on a leash held by a blind President Donald Trump, who was wearing a yarmulke. That incident prompted the Times at first to issue a statement but no apology on Saturday morning, and only after the terrorist shooting at the Poway synagogue in California later on Saturday did the Times issue another statement with an apology on Sunday.
But what almost went unnoticed while the Times was stubbornly refusing to apologize was another anti-Semitic cartoon the Times ran in their weekend edition depicting a sour-faced Netanyahu in sunglasses taking a selfie while holding what looks like a stone tablet with a Star of David on it.
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Wait&#8230;the <a href="https://twitter.com/nytimes?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@nytimes</a>&#8297; featured ANOTHER Netanyahu cartoon? This one AFTER the Thursday cartoon depicting Netanyahu as a dog? Am I reading this right? Is the Times obsessed with Israel&#8217;s prime minister? <a href="https://t.co/r1KsSaYWtw">pic.twitter.com/r1KsSaYWtw</a>
&#8212; Dan Senor (@dansenor) <a href="https://twitter.com/dansenor/status/1122831931991785472?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 29, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Another disgusting display of vile antisemitic trope celebrated in the <a href="https://twitter.com/nytimesworld?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@nytimesworld</a>. The <a href="https://twitter.com/nytimes?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@nytimes</a> is signaling to the world that antisemitism is real, here, and welcome. <a href="https://t.co/crv9vvVUAw">pic.twitter.com/crv9vvVUAw</a>
&#8212; Adam Milstein (@AdamMilstein) <a href="https://twitter.com/AdamMilstein/status/1121898439569133569?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 26, 2019</a></blockquote>
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The Times initially reacted to the furor over the Nazi-like cartoon by releasing this statement on Saturday:
<blockquote>
A political cartoon in the international print edition of The New York Times on Thursday included anti-Semitic tropes, depicting the prime minister of Israel as a guide dog with a Star of David collar leading the president of the United States, shown wearing a skullcap. The image was offensive, and it was an error of judgment to publish it. It was provided by The New York Times News Service and Syndicate, which has since deleted it.
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An Editors&#8217; Note to appear in Monday&#8217;s international edition. <a href="https://t.co/1rl2vXoTB3">pic.twitter.com/1rl2vXoTB3</a>
&#8212; New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) <a href="https://twitter.com/nytopinion/status/1122143162506596354?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 27, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Among the reams of criticism of the Times for its refusal to apologize was this response from the American Jewish Committee: &#8220;Apology not accepted. How many <a href="https://twitter.com/nytimes">@nytimes</a> editors looked at a cartoon that would not have looked out of place on a white supremacist website and thought it met the paper&#8217;s editorial standards? What does this say about your processes or your decision makers? How are you fixing it?&#8221;
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Apology not accepted. How many <a href="https://twitter.com/nytimes?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@nytimes</a> editors looked at a cartoon that would not have looked out of place on a white supremacist website and thought it met the paper&#8217;s editorial standards? What does this say about your processes or your decision makers? How are you fixing it? <a href="https://t.co/HD5LdeZ9z3">https://t.co/HD5LdeZ9z3</a>
&#8212; AJC (@AJCGlobal) <a href="https://twitter.com/AJCGlobal/status/1122180983854211074?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 27, 2019</a></blockquote>
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After the terrorist shooting at the Poway synagogue on Saturday, in which a 60-year-old woman was murdered, the rabbi at the synagogue had two fingers blown off, and an eight-year-old girl and her uncle were shot and wounded, the Times decided it would finally apologize, <a href="https://fox40.com/2019/04/28/new-york-times-says-it-is-deeply-sorry-for-running-anti-semitic-cartoon/">writing</a> on Sunday:
<blockquote>
We are deeply sorry for the publication of an anti-Semitic political cartoon last Thursday in the print edition of The New York Times that circulates outside of the United States, and we are committed to making sure nothing like this happens again. Such imagery is always dangerous, and at a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise worldwide, it&#8217;s all the more unacceptable. The matter remains under review, and we are evaluating our internal processes and training. We anticipate significant changes.
</blockquote>
As <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46501/nyt-ripped-anti-semitic-cartoon-non-apology-ryan-saavedra">The Daily Wire</a> reported, Bret Stephens of the Times had ripped the paper for the initial cartoon, writing on Sunday:
<blockquote>
The Times wasn&#8217;t explaining anti-Semitism. It was purveying it. It did so in the form of a cartoon&#8230;in which a guide dog with a prideful countenance and the face of Benjamin Netanyahu leads a blind, fat Donald Trump wearing dark glasses and a black yarmulke. Lest there be any doubt as to the identity of the dog-man, it wears a collar from which hangs a Star of David &#8230; Here was an image that, in another age, might have been published in the pages of Der Stürmer. The Jew in the form of a dog. The small but wily Jew leading the dumb and trusting American. The hated Trump being Judaized with a skullcap. The nominal servant acting as the true master. The cartoon checked so many anti-Semitic boxes that the only thing missing was a dollar sign&#8230; The image also had an obvious political message: Namely, that in the current administration, the United States follows wherever Israel wants to go.
</blockquote>
Yet in the midst of this, the Times ran a second anti-Semitic cartoon, leaving their apology looking empty.

Anti-Semitic  New York Times Runs ANOTHER Cartoon Attacking Netanyahu

During Monday night&#8217;s CNN Townhall, presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders (VT-I) called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu&#8217;s government &#8220;racist.&#8221;
Sanders made the comment after a young man asked him about how he plans to maintain the U.S.-Israel relationship with Sanders&#8217; past critiques of Netanyahu, who just won a fifth term.
&#8220;You&#8217;ve been an outspoken critic of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yet Israel is also one of America&#8217;s most important allies in the world. Given that Prime Minister Netanyahu just won another term in office, how do you plan to maintain the strong U.S.-Israel relationship despite those critiques?&#8221; the young man asked.
&#8220;Look, what I have said over and over again, and I repeat to you, and I happened to&#8212; as a young man, at your age&#8212; I spent a number of months in Israel. I worked on a kibbutz for a while. I have family in Israel. I am not anti-Israel. But the fact of the matter is that Netanyahu is a right-wing politician who I think is treating the Palestinian people extremely unfairly,&#8221; Netanyahu said to an applauding audience.
&#8220;So, you know, what I believe, you know, the United States gives billions of dollars in military aid to Israel,&#8221; Sanders added. &#8220;What I believe is not radical. I just believe that the United States should deal with the Middle East on a level playing field basis. In other words, the goal must be to try to bring people together and not just support one country which is now run by a right-wing, dare I say, racist government.&#8221;
Sanders also added that he is &#8220;100 percent pro-Israel&#8221; and that Israel has &#8220;every right in the world to exist and to exist in peace and security and not be subjected to terrorist attacks, but the United States needs to deal not just with Israel but with the Palestinian people as well.&#8221;
<div class="embed video fluid-video"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3ZzjMuXNBrw" width="560"></iframe>&#8203;</div>
Sanders did not attend last month&#8217;s American Israel Public Affair Committee&#8217;s annual bipartisan Policy Conference, with his spokesman <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/45195/leftist-organization-claims-false-victory-dem-kassy-dillon">claiming</a> Sanders was &#8220;concerned about the platform AIPAC is providing for leaders who have expressed bigotry and oppose a two-state solution.&#8221; Leftist organization Move On initially declared victory over the annoucements by several Democratic presidential candidates that they would not be attending the event, but Sanders was the only one who did not attend due to issues with AIPAC, while the others were not invited or had scheduling conflicts, The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/45195/leftist-organization-claims-false-victory-dem-kassy-dillon">reported</a>.
Last month, presidential candidate Beto O&#8217;Rourke claimed, &#8220;we don&#8217;t have the best negotiating partners,&#8221; in regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. O&#8217;Rourke added that Netanyahu &#8220;openly sided with racists,&#8221; and Palestinian political leader Mahmoud Abbas is &#8220;ineffectual,&#8221; The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/node/44914">reported</a>.&#8203;
In response to Netanyahu&#8217;s election victory earlier this month, President Donald Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/45835/trump-says-irsaeli-palestinian-peace-deal-more-kassy-dillon">claimed</a> that there would be a &#8220;better chance&#8221; at creating a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians.&#8203;
&#8220;The fact that Bibi won, I think we&#8217;ll see some pretty good action in terms of peace,&#8221; Trump said to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House, <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/10/trump-netanyhu-reelection-israel-1265205">Politico</a> reported. &#8220;Look, everyone said &#8212; and I never made it a promise &#8212; but everybody said you can&#8217;t have peace in the Middle East with Israel and the Palestinians. I think we have a chance. I think we have now a better chance with Bibi having won.&#8221;

WATCH: Bernie Sanders Calls Netanyahu’s Government Racist During Townhall

Bernie Sanders

It is no Earth-shattering revelation that President Donald Trump and recently re-elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu get along famously well. Trump&#8217;s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46149/warrior-israel-he-was-inaugurated-trump-fought-hank-berrien">track record</a> of staunch support and advocacy for Israel, since taking office, is long and remarkable. Recently, as The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/44948/excellent-trump-potus-calls-full-recognition-josh-hammer">reported</a>, Trump called for U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights for the very first time since Israel formally annexed the strategic mountainous border region in 1981:
<blockquote>
On Thursday, President Donald Trump, whose tenure in the White House thus far has been characterized by a profound attachment to and continuing adamant defense of the Jewish state, extended that attachment and defense one step further by calling for the United States government to formally and fully recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights border region.
The Commander-in-Chief <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1108772952814899200">tweeted</a>: &#8220;After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel&#8217;s Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability!&#8221; &#8230;
The State Department similarly dropped the term &#8220;occupied&#8221; in a separate report headline that discussed Israel&#8217;s (entirely lawful) presence in Judea and Samaria &#8212; which much of the &#8220;international community&#8221; refers to as the &#8220;West Bank.&#8221;
But now&#8230;the U.S. government is preparing to go further and formally and fully recognize Israel&#8217;s sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu&#8230;took to Twitter to celebrate the news.
&#8220;At a time when Iran seeks to use Syria as a platform to destroy Israel, President Trump boldly recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Thank you President Trump! @realDonaldTrump,&#8221; Netanyahu <a href="https://twitter.com/netanyahu/status/1108777011227619329?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1108777011227619329&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailywire.com%2Fnews%2F44948%2Fexcellent-trump-potus-calls-full-recognition-josh-hammer">tweeted</a>.
</blockquote>
Trump soon issued a formal presidential proclamation while Netanyahu was in Washington, D.C. for the annual AIPAC Policy Conference, and official U.S. governmental maps were subsequently updated to reflect the change, Algemeiner <a href="https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/03/29/us-to-update-maps-to-display-golan-as-belonging-to-israel/">reported</a> last month. &#8220;The U.S. State Department announced&#8230;that it will update its maps to reflect the Trump administration&#8217;s move this week to officially recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights,&#8221; the outlet noted. &#8220;A department spokesperson told Voice of America that the map modifications would be &#8216;consistent&#8217; with the [presidential] proclamation the president signed on Monday, remarking that the United States &#8216;recognizes that the Golan Heights are part of the State of Israel.'&#8221;
Now, as The Jerusalem Post <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Netanyahu-I-will-name-a-Golan-town-after-Trump-587690">reports</a>, Netanyahu plans to thank Trump as perhaps only he can: By naming a new community after him in the Golan Heights. Yes, seriously.
From The Jerusalem Post:
<blockquote>
If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has his way, alongside Katzrin, Ramot and Ramat Magshimim on the Golan Heights, there may someday soon be a community named Kiryat Trump.
Netanyahu, who on Tuesday toured the Golan with his wife and sons, said a community or neighborhood on the Golan Heights should be named after U.S. President Donald Trump in appreciation for his decision last month to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the strategic plateau.
&#8220;I am here with my family and many citizens of Israel at the foot of the Golan Heights, happy with the joy of the holiday and our beautiful country,&#8221; Netanyahu said in a video post. &#8220;And there is more joy &#8212; a few weeks ago I brought President Trump&#8217;s official recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights forever.&#8221;
</blockquote>
Suffice it to say the Trump-Netanyahu bromance has never been stronger.

Netanyahu Vows To Name New Golan Heights Community After Donald Trump

As <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/45789/all-3-major-israeli-tv-channels-declare-netanyahu-hank-berrien">The Daily Wire</a> has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/45829/its-final-bibi-blue-and-white-netanyahus-main-josh-hammer">reported</a>, the right-of-center Israeli Likud Party&#8217;s Benjamin Netanyahu was recently re-elected by the Israeli electorate and will serve a record-breaking fifth term as the Jewish state&#8217;s prime minister. Interestingly, The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/45829/its-final-bibi-blue-and-white-netanyahus-main-josh-hammer">noted</a> two weeks ago how even Likud&#8217;s main electoral opposition campaigned in similar fashion to Likud:
<blockquote>
It is noteworthy that &#8220;Blue and White,&#8221; despite being the main electoral alternative to firmly right-of-center Likud, is best described as a centrist/mildly right-of-center political party. Labor, the once-mighty left-of-center Israeli party that had a near-unanimous stranglehold on Israeli politics for two to three decades following the country&#8217;s 1948 founding, has collapsed into utter irrelevance. As the reality of the failures of the Labor-induced Oslo Accords becomes ever clearer, Israelis have come to cherish above all else one political issue: Their own existential survival.
</blockquote>
The primary reason for Netanyahu&#8217;s re-election, <a href="http://evelyncgordon.com/the-problem-isnt-racism-its-the-electoral-system/">argued</a> the always-incisive Evelyn Gordon last month, is that Netanyahu properly learned the lessons of the Israeli national catastrophe that was the Second Intifada-inducing Oslo Accords and forever foreswore any future unilateral land concessions:
<blockquote>
In the 17 years preceding Netanyahu&#8217;s 2009 victory, Israelis thrice elected former generals who campaigned against diplomatic concessions, which they promptly turned around and implemented once in office. Yitzhak Rabin promised no negotiations with the PLO in 1992, then signed the Oslo Accords in 1993. Ehud Barak promised not to divide Jerusalem in 1999, then offered the Palestinians half the city at the Camp David summit in 2000. Ariel Sharon campaigned against a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2003, then implemented one in 2005.
These U-turns reflect a fundamental fact of Israeli life: All prime ministers are under massive, continuous international pressure to make concessions to the Palestinians. Premiers with leftist coalition partners&#8212;which Rabin, Barak and Sharon all had, and Gantz almost certainly would as well&#8212;are also under pressure from their own coalitions to make such concessions. And most people simply can&#8217;t withstand such immense pressure.
But Netanyahu has proven for 10 years now that he can. Thus anyone fearful of further territorial concessions has good reason to stick with him rather than gambling on Gantz.
</blockquote>
Similarly, as Yoram Hazony argues, &#8220;The 1993 Oslo accords destroyed the left in the eyes of the Israeli public.&#8221;
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The 1993 Oslo accords destroyed the left in the eyes of the Israeli public. <a href="https://t.co/NeAGDfnkEQ">https://t.co/NeAGDfnkEQ</a>
&#8212; Yoram Hazony (@yhazony) <a href="https://twitter.com/yhazony/status/1117524605466488832?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 14, 2019</a></blockquote>
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But in the lead-up to Israel&#8217;s recent election, Netanyahu did not merely foreswear unilateral land concessions. On the contrary, he <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/04/07/netanyahu-said-israel-would-annex-settlements-west-bank-palestinians-pledge-resist/">vowed to move to apply Israeli law</a> to Jewish &#8220;settlements&#8221; in the portions of Judea and Samaria that Oslo refers to as &#8220;Area C&#8221; (which forms the majority of the land of Judea and Samaria, and where Israeli Jews outnumber Palestinian-Arabs). Netanyahu has historically bluffed on such annexation measures, but perhaps he means business this time around.
In a <a href="https://coalitionforjewishvalues.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Letter-to-the-President.pdf">letter</a> sent to the White House last week, leading pro-Israel leaders urged President Trump to support Netanyahu&#8217;s determination of Israel&#8217;s own sovereignty with respect to the Palestinian-Arabs. According to the <a href="https://coalitionforjewishvalues.org/2019/04/coalition-of-pro-israel-organizations-asks-president-to-let-israel-decide-on-sovereignty/">Coalition for Jewish Values</a>, which helped organize the letter, the missive &#8220;urg[es Trump] to permit Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a free hand to extend Israeli sovereignty over Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.&#8221; The letter came in response to a similar letter, sent by a group of politically and religiously liberal Jewish organizations, who called upon the president to oppose any prospective partial annexation from Netanyahu.

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