Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) revealed on Saturday that she is open to withholding billions of dollars in military aid to Israel until the government ceases building settlements in the country&#8217;s West Bank.
While speaking to reporters at a campaign stop in Iowa, Warren was asked if she was open to making &#8220;American aid conditional on a freeze to settlement building.&#8221;
&#8220;Right now, [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu says that he is going to take Israel in a direction of increasing settlements, [but] that does not move us toward a two-state solution,&#8221; Warren responded. &#8220;It is the official policy of the United States of America to support a two-state solution, and if Israel is moving in the opposite direction, then everything is on the table.&#8221;
&#8220;Everything is on the table,&#8221; she interrupted as the reporter tried to inquire further.
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren: &quot;It is the official policy of the United States of America to support a two-state solution, and if Israel is moving in the opposite direction, then everything is on the table.&quot; <a href="https://t.co/GjumaLoZ9k">pic.twitter.com/GjumaLoZ9k</a>
&mdash; The Hill (@thehill) <a href="https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1186052533405528067?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 20, 2019</a></blockquote>
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While virtually all of the candidates in the Democratic presidential primary field have advocated for a two-state solution, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg has been the lone candidate to openly call for making Israeli military aid conditional.
&#8220;A two-state solution that achieves legitimate Palestinian aspirations and meets Israel&#8217;s security needs remains the only viable way forward, and it will be our policy to support such a solution actively,&#8221; Buttigieg said. &#8220;And if Prime Minister Netanyahu makes good on his promise to annex West Bank settlements, he should know that a President Buttigieg would take steps to ensure that American taxpayers won&#8217;t help foot the bill.&#8221;
The Democratic presidential hopeful was <a href="https://www.jns.org/graham-zeldin-slam-buttigieg-for-threat-to-cut-us-aid-over-potential-west-bank-annexation/">subsequently slammed</a> for being especially critical of the Jewish state, one of the United States&#8217; strongest allies, while remaining silent on the terror emanating from Gaza and the West Bank, which are under control of the Palestinian Authority (PA).
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), a fierce critic of Netanyahu, has been especially critical of Israel and its treatment of Palestinians. In August, the socialist lawmaker threatened to withhold billions of dollars in military aid to Israel to combat what he called &#8220;racism&#8221; on behalf of the Jewish state.
While Sanders has recently referred to himself as a &#8220;proud Jewish person,&#8221; the Vermont lawmaker has largely distanced himself from Judaism. Not only does he refrain from observing Jewish customs, he is also not a member of any congregation and doesn&#8217;t attend a synagogue.
&#8220;I&#8217;m not actively involved with organized religion,&#8221; Sanders <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bernie-sanders-finally-answers-the-god-question/2016/01/26/83429390-bfb0-11e5-bcda-62a36b394160_story.html?postshare=9611453895803704">revealed to reporters</a> in 2016.
Sanders, however, has spoken of his Jewish heritage during his second bid for the presidency, especially when discussing his stance on the U.S.-Israeli alliance and Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
&#8220;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,&#8221; Sanders said in April. &#8220;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;
&#8220;The United States gives billions of dollars in military aid to Israel,&#8221; he 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;

Democratic Presidential Candidates Discuss LGBTQ Issues At Human Rights Campaign Foundation Forum

WATCH: Elizabeth Warren Says She&#8217;s Open To Cutting Off Aid To Israel

Bernie Sanders

Elizabeth Warren

Israel

Pete Buttigieg

&#8220;Up, up, down, down, right, left, and all around.&#8221; That is what supporters of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS) think when they think about Israel.
Yet, Israeli-Arabs have served in the Israeli Supreme Court, Knesset (parliament), military, and national police force. Following the national elections in September 2019, the joint Arab party became the third-largest in the entire Knesset. But the area over the “Green Line” is disputed territory and, therefore, BDS (il)logically claims everything in Israel is tantamount to apartheid.
The latest example of this nonsensical idea is the BDS movement’s recent call to join it in opposing the “<a href="https://bdsmovement.net/news/join-global-climate-strike-oppose-israels-climate-apartheid">climate apartheid</a>” Israel inflicts upon the Palestinian-Arabs. Sound familiar? Indeed, it is eerily similar to the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that somehow Jews <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2018/03/19/dc-councilman-blames-snow-jewish-family-controlling-climate-later-apologizes/437639002/">control the weather</a>, or that Israel is “<a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/iranian-general-blames-water-woes-on-israeli-cloud-theft/">stealing</a>” Iranian rain clouds. Yes, these theories actually exist.
But don’t worry, it gets even better. BDS claims that one of the main components of climate apartheid is the Palestinians’ lack of control over their land and resources. This is vintage BDS foolishness. Palestinians have complete control over both what the Oslo Accords deem “Area A” and the Gaza Strip — the two areas where the vast majority of Palestinian-Arabs reside. They claim Israel pollutes the Palestinians’ water, air, and soil. Maybe, just maybe, the air pollution stems from the thousands of acres of farmland burning in the Gaza border communities due to the onslaught of incendiary kites launched by Gaza-based terror groups? Maybe the water pollution arises from Hamas’ unwillingness to invest in proper sewage treatment systems and actually better the lives of the citizens it purports to govern? Maybe the soil is polluted by the constant digging of terror tunnels for the sake of murdering Jews? Could be.
Other classic examples of the allegedly omnipresent apartheid in Israel are the “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/jun/03/israel">apartheid beaches</a>,” “<a href="https://www.rt.com/news/449193-israel-hospital-bus-apartheid/">apartheid hospitals</a>,” and “apartheid roads.”
The claim of a beach apartheid is obviously ridiculous, as Haaretz so graciously documented in this <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/travel/MAGAZINE-in-photos-israeli-arabs-celebrate-eid-al-fitr-outdoors-1.5407877">photo gallery</a> of Arabs celebrating Eid al-Fitr (end of Ramadan) on the beaches of Tel Aviv.
Apartheid hospitals are another frivolous piece of propaganda. Anybody who has stepped one foot into an Israeli hospital knows that they are filled with Israeli-Arab patients, Palestinian-Arab patients, and even Syrian refugees. Israel has even <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/11174416/Hamas-leaders-daughter-treated-in-Israeli-hospital.html">treated the daughter</a> of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. There are also an abundance of Arabs playing pivotal roles in Israel’s medical field — be they doctors, pharmacists, or nurses.
The accusation of apartheid roads, a prevalent one over the years, has repeatedly been debunked. There is simply no such thing as “Jew-only” roads or “<a href="https://ukmediawatch.org/2018/10/14/ukmw-prompts-guardian-to-acknowledge-theres-no-settler-only-roads-in-the-west-bank/">settler-only</a>” roads. There are roads meant specifically for Israeli citizens and foreign nationals, just like there are roads meant specifically for Palestinian-Arabs and foreign nationals in both Area A and the Gaza Strip. This allegation resurfaced once again in 2019 with the opening of route 4370 near Jerusalem. As the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) has <a href="https://www.camera.org/article/haaretz-ny-post-turn-anti-israel-slogan-into-journalistic-shorthand/">pointed out</a>, the road was essentially a set of parallel highways on both sides of the Green Line that were meant to ensure the safety of Israeli citizens who were targeted by Palestinian-Arab violence. Additionally, the roads help ease heavy traffic congestion that plagued both Israelis and Palestinians alike in the vicinity of the E1 project and provided a direct route between Jerusalem and Ramallah for Palestinians working in the area.
Gideon Levy, writing for Haaretz, falsely accused Israel of creating “<a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-this-place-is-only-for-jews-the-west-bank-s-apartheid-springs-1.7767344">apartheid springs</a>,” where Jews can play leisurely in the pools while Arabs cannot. As evidence, he quotes an unnamed Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier who declared that the spring in question was “only for Jews.” Levy provided neither a name for the soldier nor proof that his statement was actually true. It is doubtful that such evidence exists, since Israeli-Arabs enjoy freedom of movement in Israel just like any other citizen. This would also not be the first time Mr. Levy has lied in an article. It is not even the first time he has lied about water. In 2015, CAMERA <a href="https://www.camera.org/article/gideon-levy-s-swimming-pool-falsehood-resurfaces/">prompted a correction</a> to one of Levy’s articles in Haaretz wherein he claimed that there “are no swimming pools in the Gaza Strip.” Seems like old habits die hard.
Finally, this brings us to the most obvious examples: The “apartheid wall” and “apartheid settlements.” First of all, the “wall” is actually a security fence, and only about <a href="https://www.idf.il/en/articles/palestinian-terror/setting-the-facts-straight-on-the-security-fence/">5% of it </a>was made of concrete in 2015, according to IDF statistics. Secondly, not only did the fence help to almost immediately reduce terrorist attacks in Israel <a href="https://embassies.gov.il/MFA/FOREIGNPOLICY/Terrorism/Palestinian/Pages/Anti-terrorist%20fence%20cuts%20Samaria-based%20attacks%20by%2090%20percent.aspx">by over 90%,</a> but Israeli-Arabs are permitted to enter all territories on the Israeli side, including Oslo Accords-designated Areas B and C — where Jewish “settlements” are located. In fact, Israeli-Arabs are permitted to freely enter and exit these “settlements.”
“Apartheid,” as it turns out, is not in fact here, there, and everywhere. An actual apartheid can be seen in Area A, which the Palestinian Authority (PA) runs in a completely judenrein fashion. A standing <a href="https://news.walla.co.il/item/1831456">IDF warrant from the year 2000</a> forbids Israeli citizens from entering Area A, out of safety concerns (though Israeli-Arabs regularly enter uninhibited). BDS willfully ignores the fact that Israeli Jews could be killed simply by entering PA territory. For example, <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/police-to-investigate-israelis-evacuated-from-ramallah/">peace activists have been attacked in Ramallah</a>, Israeli cars have been <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-israelis-attacked-by-locals-at-joseph-s-tomb-1.5410287">set ablaze</a> in Nablus, and <a href="https://972mag.com/the-left-cannot-ignore-violence-against-jews/111458/">Jewish tourists</a> (not Israeli citizens) were nearly lynched in Hebron. Despite these incidents and more like them, few would dare use the “A-word” to describe PA territory. Therefore, it is our duty to continue to shine a light on the hypocrisy of BDS, so that activists can oppose the real apartheid — the one right in front of their faces, but that few of them tend to notice.

Hamas checkpoint Gaza

FISCHBERGER: Apartheid Here, Apartheid There, Apartheid Truly Everywhere

Israel Defense Forces (IDF)

Judaism

Middle East

Palestinians

On Thursday&#8217;s episode of &#8220;The Ben Shapiro Show,&#8221; the Daily Wire editor-in-chief talks about the recent synagogue shooting in Germany and the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe. Video and partial transcript below:
Over Yom Kippur, there were a bevy of anti-Semitic incidents — as we have become used to. In the United States, there [was] apparently a fire set on the grounds of a synagogue in Brooklyn, which has become sort of rote, frankly. We&#8217;ve seen a bunch of these sorts of attacks in New York, this Brooklyn synagogue was apparently — again somebody who set a fire, right there on the front steps during Yom Kippur, according to the police. New York City has seen a massive surge in hate crimes, many of them have been targeting Jews. 
Also over Yom Kippur, there [was] an attack on a shul in Germany. The attack on the shul in Germany was by a white supremacist, who [livestreamed] this thing on Amazon. It was hideous, obviously. According to the <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7554173/Gunman-shoots-dead-woman-outside-German-synagogue-goes-run.html">UK Daily Mail</a>: 
<blockquote>A gunman in a German synagogue rants about feminism, immigration and the Holocaust before he shot two people dead in a live-streamed, anti-Semitic rampage on Judaism&#8217;s holiest day. 
The shooter killed a man and woman, threw a grenade into a Jewish cemetery, and left explosives near the synagogue in Halle after failing to force his way inside while worshipers prayed on Yom Kippur &#8230;
[The suspect] was later arrested after trying to flee in a taxi, according to German media.
Germany&#8217;s interior minister said it appeared to be an anti-Semitic attack, possibly motivated by right-wing extremism, while Chancellor Angela Merkel offered her &#8216;deep sympathy&#8217;. 
[The suspect] was wearing military fatigues and a helmet camera, and he shot a woman dead in the street after she confronted him outside the synagogue where about 80 people were praying.</blockquote>
Now I happen to be in Israel right now, and I will just note that many of the same people who claim that Israel is the rationale for anti-Semitism — the reason people hate Jews is because of Israel, because Israel is so cruel and terrible, and because of how they treat the Palestinians and all of us — these are the same people, where if Israel didn&#8217;t exist, people would still be shooting Jews, there would just be no place for Jews to go. The fact is that thousands of Jews every year are leaving Europe, and good for them, because Europe is becoming a hellhole for Jews. 
Everybody knows this. The Wall Street Journal has reported on it, the New York Times has reported on it. It is not safe for Jews in places like France. It is increasingly not safe for Jews in places like Sweden, places like Germany, [and] places like Great Britain. People are leaving en masse, [and] where they are going is to the state of Israel because the state of Israel is still a safe haven for the Jewish people. And the same people who are claiming that it&#8217;s only Israel&#8217;s presence that is causing anti-Semitism seemed to forget that Jews were killed in the millions when Israel didn&#8217;t exist, specifically because no country would take in the Jews, and because the Jews had no place to go. The British Empire was banning the Jews from entering the nascent State of Israel, before it was the state of Israel — from entering British Palestine during the actual holocaust itself. 
So for all the talk about why Israel was bad, why it shouldn&#8217;t exist, why Israel is terrible and horrible and all of us; the reason that Israel exists is because of stuff like this. It&#8217;s because Jews have been the victims of anti-Semitism, will continue to be the victims of anti-Semitism, and so long as people keep maintaining the absolute stupid fiction that if Israel didn&#8217;t exist everybody would be nice to the — you know how historically accurate you&#8217;d have to be to actually believe that, if Israel didn&#8217;t exist, everyone would be nice to the Jews? 
Within living memory, three-quarters of the Jewish population on planet Earth was slaughtered. So I&#8217;m going to go &#8220;no&#8221; on that. The state of Israel wasn&#8217;t there then. It&#8217;s a &#8220;no&#8221; on that. It&#8217;s just it&#8217;s absurdity at the highest level. Israel is not the cause of anti-Semitism; Israel is a place where people are fleeing anti-Semitism, and that continues to be the truth, certainly in Europe.
<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ben-shapiro-show/id1047335260">Listen to full episodes of &#8220;The Ben Shapiro Show&#8221; on iTunes. </a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-ben-shapiro-show">Watch &#8220;The Ben Shapiro Show&#8221; on-demand!</a>

Anti-Semitic attach in Germany

SHAPIRO: Europe Is Becoming Unsafe For Jews

Anti-Semitism

The Ben Shapiro Show

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.”
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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>
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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.”
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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>
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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

Benjamin Netanyahu

Iraq

Kurds

On Thursday, outgoing U.S. Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt posted a video indicative of how much has changed in the Middle East in recent years, with a Saudi citizen singing the moving Jewish prayer “Avinu Malkeinu,” which is sung frequently during the ten days between Rosh Hashanah, which marks the Jewish New Year and was celebrated at the beginning of this week, and Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, in which Jews ask God for forgiveness for their sins.
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Inspiring to see <a href="https://twitter.com/mohsaud08?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@mohsaud08</a> sing these words during the Days of Repentance between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The times are changing indeed! Let’s all keep moving in a positive direction&#8230;. <a href="https://t.co/yEL1s0G2B6">https://t.co/yEL1s0G2B6</a>
&mdash; Jason D. Greenblatt (@jdgreenblatt45) <a href="https://twitter.com/jdgreenblatt45/status/1179793394215915520?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 3, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Mohammed Saud was singing the version of “Avinu Malkeinu” written by the composer Max Janowski.
According to Jewish belief, on Rosh Hashanah God opens the book of life and death to decide who will live or die in the coming year; he closes the book on Yom Kippur, making the ten days noteworthy for serious introspection. On Yom Kippur, Jews are permitted to ask for forgiveness for their sins against God and sins they are unaware they have committed, but any sins against their fellow man must be dealt with by having apologized to the person who was hurt in the process and asking for their forgiveness personally.
The text of the prayer begins: “Our Father, our King, we have sinned before You. Our Father our King, we have no King except You. Our Father, our King, deal with us kindly for the sake of Your Name. Our Father, our King, bless us with a good year. Our Father, our King, annul all harsh decrees concerning us.”
In an astonishing historical turn of events, the machinations of the Obama Administration as former President Barack Obama seemingly supported Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, triggered a massive shift in the alliances of the Middle East, as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, traditionally enemies of Israel, tacitly joined Israel out of common concern regarding Iran.
Those alliances have created an opportunity for dialogues to take place that once would have been considered unthinkable. As <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/saudi-crown-prince-recognizes-israels-right-to-exist-talks-up-future-ties/">The Times of Israel</a> reported in April 2018. &#8220;Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in an interview published Monday, recognized Israel’s right to exist and extolled the prospect of future diplomatic relations between his kingdom and the Jewish state.” Bin Salman stated, “Our country doesn’t have a problem with Jews. Our Prophet Muhammad married a Jewish woman. Not just a friend — he married her. Our prophet, his neighbors were Jewish. You will find a lot of Jews in Saudi Arabia coming from America, coming from Europe. There are no problems between Christian and Muslims and Jews. We have problems like you would find anywhere in the world, among some people. But the normal sort of problems.”
Bin Salman said of Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei:
<blockquote>Hitler didn’t do what the supreme leader is trying to do. Hitler tried to conquer Europe. This is bad. But the supreme leader is trying to conquer the world. He believes he owns the world. They are both evil guys. He is the Hitler of the Middle East. In the 1920s and 1930s, no one saw Hitler as a danger. Only a few people. Until it happened.</blockquote>
For the full version of the Janowski Avinu Malkeinu as sung by the legendary tenor Jan Peerce, see <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU5x5UuIFjE">here</a>.

Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur series

Times Are A Changin’: Saudi Citizen Sings Jewish Prayer Marking Jewish New Year

Saudi Arabia

You may have read about the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/devlin-californias-new-ethnic-studies-model-bradley-devlin">proposed ethnic studies curriculum</a> developed for California public high schools, which caused an uproar because of its biased treatment of Jews and Israel, support for the <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/boycott-divestment-sanctions-movement-bds">Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions</a> movement against Israel, and fear that it fomented anti-Semitism. That is one of many battles over curricula as Islamists attempt to rewrite history and erase any mention of Islamic extremism.
The “Islamophobia” industry is engaged in a systemic effort to whitewash the history of Islam and perpetuate the myth that Islam has always been nothing but peaceful toward non-adherents. These propagandists seek to silence and smear their critics as “Islamophobic.”
We have seen this effort across college campuses, which have received nearly $3 billion since 2012 from Arab/Muslim states and individuals who hope to influence the next generation of Americans to adopt their view of Middle East geopolitics. These investments have paid off via the hiring of apologists for Islamist terror who teach, write textbooks, and serve as sources for the media.
Historian Martin Kramer has <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jihad-as-unarmed-struggle">noted</a> how American scholars have made “a deliberate effort to &#8230; turn Islam into a pacifist faith — a kind of oriental Quakerism.”
Equally disturbing, as I wrote in my book <a href="http://mitchellbard.com/lobby.html">The Arab Lobby</a>, is an increasing effort to shape the views of children from kindergarten through high school. The 9/11 terror attacks provoked fear and misunderstanding about Muslims and Islam, while political correctness allowed the lobby to present its sanitized version of events aimed at downplaying Arab/Muslim distinctions, ignoring differences in values and interests, and dismissing links between radical Islam and terror.
U.S. taxpayers underwrite some of these efforts through government-funded Title VI Middle East Studies centers at major universities. Today’s “Islamophobia” lobby has an exponential impact through these centers, whose mandate is to educate teachers about the region. As I’ve <a href="https://www.algemeiner.com/2017/11/08/taxpayer-funded-bias-on-middle-east-invades-k-12-classrooms/">documented</a>, as part of their obligation to engage in outreach, these Title VI-affiliated centers often produce materials that reflect the lobby’s views. Teachers then pass on these views to their students.
Advancing the same politicized agenda that rules academia, Islamist organizations have allied with left-wing interest groups and pressured publishers to revise textbooks to better reflect multicultural ideologies. The result is a reluctance to discuss negative aspects of sharia law (such as the discriminatory treatment of non-believers, women, and gays), the role of radical Islam in pervading terrorism, and the Islamist animus toward the United States, Israel, and the West. A 2008 <a href="http://mylifepath.info/library/index.php?keyword=The+Trouble+with+Textbooks%3A+Distorting+History+and+Religion&amp;subid2=2019-08-28&amp;first_subid=34-290-201909290545463ac5b6ddc">study</a> by Gary Tobin and Dennis Ybarra concluded:
<blockquote>Discovering in our schools a pervasive set of erroneous beliefs about such a vital topic should alarm every taxpayer, every parent, and every school official. To allow biased textbooks and outright propaganda in supplemental materials into the schools is to pervert the very purpose of public education and a misuse of our democratic system.</blockquote>
One such battle occurring in Virginia’s Loudoun County centers around the misrepresentation of the meaning of jihad. Loudoun’s presentation of <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jihad">jihad</a> and Islamic terrorism were criticized for bias. While it is understandable that American Muslims would not want their religion associated with radicalism, teaching that jihad is a wholly benign concept related to a believer’s internal struggle distorts the term’s meaning by ignoring its relationship to extremism, even as terrorist organizations — such as <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/palestine-islamic-jihad">Palestine Islamic Jihad</a> — use the very word itself to convey their malignant mission.
As Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis once <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-evolution-of-the-concept-of-jihad">explained</a>: “Conventionally translated ‘holy war,’ [jihad] has the literal meaning of &#8230; ‘striving in the path of God’ (fi sabil Allah). Some Muslim theologians … have interpreted the duty of ‘striving in the path of God’ in a spiritual and moral sense. The overwhelming majority of early authorities … discuss jihad in military terms.”
The “Islamophobia” lobby could veto Lewis, a Jew smeared by critics as a Western-oriented propagandist. But textbook authors could also cite the medieval Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun, who <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/wcpa/servlet/org.oclc.lac.ui.DialABookServlet?oclcnum=318070877">wrote</a>: “In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the (Muslim) mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force.”
Students can find a more contemporary definition in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, where Emile Tyan <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jihad-as-unarmed-struggle">wrote</a>: “Jihad consists of military action with the object of the expansion of Islam.”
Learning the meaning of jihad is also key for students to understand the Middle East today, where the commitment to jihad by terrorist organizations such as Palestine Islamic Jihad and Hamas perpetuates the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Students should learn, for example, that Palestine Islamic Jihad considers jihad the only way to liberate Palestine. A Tel Aviv University analysis explains how the group believes that a “Muslim victory and the elimination of Israel are foreordained by God’s words in the Quran.”
By reading primary documents, students can see for themselves the true meaning of jihad. To understand the ideology of <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/hamas-table-of-contents">Hamas</a>, teachers can direct them to the group’s <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/hamas-covenant-full-text">charter</a>, which states that “[t]here is no solution for the Palestine question except through jihad” and calls on Muslims to “raise the banner of jihad” to “rid the land and the people of their uncleanliness, vileness and evils.”
American public schools could also use material taught about Islam in Muslim schools. A <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/a-survey-of-saudi-textbooks">study</a> of Saudi textbooks, for example, found that many “encourage both violent and non-violent jihad against non-believers.”
A Palestinian <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/palestinian-textbook-calls-for-jihad-and-martyrdom-november-2003">textbook</a> for eleventh graders offered a definition of jihad very different from the one proposed for Loudoun school children: “Jihad is an Islamic term that equates to the term war in other nations. The difference is that jihad has noble goals and lofty aims and is carried out only for the sake of Allah and for His glory.”
Unquestionably, students should learn more about Islam. But they should learn it from unbiased sources, not from apologists for Islamism. It is a disservice, and intellectually dishonest, to teach them a sanitized version of history that whitewashes the extremist elements of the religion. If the “Islamophobia” lobby has its way, the next generation will grow up unaware and unprepared to face the danger from Islamists who threaten American lives, values, and interests.
&nbsp;
Mitchell Bard, a <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/fellows.php">Campus Watch Fellow</a> with the <a href="https://www.meforum.org">Middle East Forum</a>, is the author/editor of 22 books, including the 2017 edition of Myths and Facts: A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict, The Arab Lobby, and the novel After Anatevka: Tevye in Palestine.

elementary school classroom

BARD: In Whitewashing Islamism, Some K-12 Programs Advance Jihad

Education

Radical Islam

The recent attack on Saudi Arabian oil is a watershed moment in the Middle East balance of power. It is also an opportunity.
It is yet unclear what exactly happened. A combination of drones and missiles coming directly from Iran or from their associates — the Houth rebels in Yemen — struck at the Khurais oil field and the al-Abqaiq facility, Saudi Arabia’s largest oil processing plant. The strike may have knocked out potentially half of the Saudi oil production, and has already affected global crude oil prices.
Sword Dancing is Not Enough
The danger of the Persian war machine, about which Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and former U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton have repeatedly warned, is once again rearing its ugly head. No longer content with small attacks against Israel from proxies in Gaza and Southern Lebanon, Iran is now brazenly striking the strategic installations of its most hated foe — Saudi Arabia.
The greatest ire of Iran’s Shiite leaders is not reserved for the Jewish state. Rather, the mullahs crave control of the Arabian peninsula&#8217;s Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina in order to prove that their interpretation of Islam has Allah’s mandate. The Sunni House of Saud is thus the Iranian mullahs&#8217; ultimate target.
Indeed, the Saudis know all too well how serious the Iranian threat is — and they understand the brilliant way in which Iran has learned to use proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah against Israel. Now, with the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula being infiltrated by the Houthis, the Saudis feel the Iranian noose tightening around their necks. And while the Saudis are the world’s third largest military spenders and are pretty good at doing the proverbial sword dance with dignitaries, the truth is that the Kingdom is just not that good at actually fighting.
Filling the American Power Vacuum
For years, the American defense umbrella has been the real protection of the Saudi kingdom. The deal was straightforward: The Saudis provide steady oil and buy expensive military hardware and America provides defense. But now things are changing. America’s shale oil revolution has transformed the U.S. into a leading oil producer and, consequently, Saudi oil reserves are simply less critical to the U.S. than they have been in the past. Coupled with the Trump administration’s &#8220;America First&#8221; mantra and a concomitant disinclination to be the world’s police force, a reality has emerged in which U.S. forces may be less likely to come to Saudi aid.
For the Saudis, Kuwaitis, Emiratis, and denizens of other smaller Sunni states, the Iranian attack on the Saudi oil installations — and the thus-far weak American response — is a harbinger of a horrific and not-so-distant future. If left unchecked, it could mean a historic change in the regional balance of power with the aggressive Shiite movement overshadowing historic Sunni regional domination.
The West, the Sunni Arab states, and Israel cannot allow Iran to fill the regional power vacuum that may be left in America’s wake. The solution to the crisis may be an Israeli defense umbrella.
Israel is the natural candidate to become the regional power broker, peacekeeper, and defense provider for Saudi Arabia and the Sunni states. Israel has the intelligence capability, the firepower, the air force, and even the naval capacity to contain the Iranian regime and help maintain a healthy regional balance.
Instead of the U.S. global policing model, Israel would take its place locally as a regional power that is closely allied with the U.S.
A Change in Arab Thinking
To achieve an Israeli defense umbrella, the Saudis are going to have to swallow their religious and nationalistic pride and accept the Jews as, well, their de facto saviors.
This is not such a stretch, since the House of Saud was able to stomach American (Christian) military defense. Israeli (Jewish) power may therefore not be all that different. Moreover, Israel is a better bet for Saudi defense, considering that it is closer and more nimble in dealing with Iran.
The change in Saudi attitudes toward Israel, furthermore, is already taking place with bloggers and broadcasters making overt comments of acceptance towards the Jewish state.
A Change in Jewish Thinking
Israel has long self-identified as a small, defensive minority in the Middle East. The Jewish state would have to mentally adjust to a more robust and muscular disposition in order for regional realignment to work.
Israel possesses the military might and has already engaged Iran in various ways, including bombings of secret Iranian weapons shipments to Syria. However, the mindset of the big boy on the block — the regional leader, the keeper of the peace — is not yet fully developed in Israel.
The Cost of Israeli Protection
Israel has a self-interest in pushing Iran back. But still, saving the House of Saud is not a foregone conclusion. If Israel is to spread its defense umbrella over the Sunni states, it should demand payment in kind.
The price for Israeli protection? Getting rid of the Palestinian-Arab problem.
The Saudis must commit to ending support for the &#8220;two-state solution,&#8221; which calls for an independent Palestinian-Arab state on Jewish land. Among other alternatives, the Saudis can force their own Jordanian Hashemite family to give back to Palestinians the Jordanian citizenship that was taken away from them in 1988 by Jordan&#8217;s King Abdullah. Under this approach, Palestinians can continue to live in the Israeli territories as Israeli residents, but would exercise their right to vote in the nearby Jordanian kingdom.
And obviously, if the Saudis want Israeli defense, they must dry up all remaining funding for jihadist education throughout the Arab world and abroad.
In the end, an Israeli defense umbrella would allow for steady oil flow, would mitigate the Iranian threat, and would lead to a Middle East that is more stable, more prosperous, and more cooperative. However, the Arabs, the Jews, and the Americans alike would have to break out of calcified notions of the past in order to make room for an advantageous regional realignment of the future.
Yishai Fleisher is the International Spokesman for the Jewish Community of Hebron.

MBS Saudi Arabia

FLEISHER: The Much-Needed Israeli Defense Umbrella

Foreign Policy

Iran

This past Thursday night, The Exodus Movement, an organization focused on raising awareness of the increasing anti-Semitism of the far Left, held an event in Manhattan. It was the group&#8217;s first event since the addition of its PAC branch last month.
The event was hosted by Elizabeth Pipko, founder of The Exodus Movement, as well as Andrea Catsamatidis, who was just recently re-elected as the chairwoman of the Manhattan Republican Party.
“The fact that Thursday’s event was such a success and members of the Jewish community and supporters of Israel turned out in such force to support the Exodus Movement is so encouraging and exciting. People are finally waking up to the anti-Semitism and hatred coming from the Left and standing up for Jewish values and our great ally Israel. I was extremely proud to be a part of the event and to stand with my Jewish friends,” stated Catsamatidis.
Also in attendance was special guest Lara Trump, the daughter-in-law of President Donald Trump and senior advisor to Trump’s 2020 campaign. In her speech, she addressed all of the actions the president has taken to show his support for Israel — including moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv and recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. She also spoke about how the Democratic Party has turned its back on Israel and has welcomed blatant anti-Semites into its ranks.
“Watching everything come together and seeing a room filled with people all fighting for the same thing and all hopeful for the future was an incredible moment for me. I’m honored to have the support of both Lara and Andrea. And I so look forward to everything the Exodus Movement has planned for the future. This is just the beginning!” stated Pipko.
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Since its addition of its organizational PAC branch, the Exodus Movement is now focusing on moving to more aggressively target persuadable Jewish voters in key states — including Florida, Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. When announcing the PAC launch this summer, Pipko stated, “This new 527 organization will hold those to account who don’t support Jewish voters and the issues they care about the most.”
The organization’s chapter program was also announced this summer. Since then, the organization has grown from 11 nationwide chapters to 25.
Note: Author Jeremy Frankel serves as the head of the Bergen County, New Jersey Exodus Movement chapter.
RELATED: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/49224/exclusive-exodus-movement-announces-nationwide-jeremy-frankel">EXCLUSIVE: The Exodus Movement Announces Nationwide Chapter Program</a>

Pharoah&#8217;s Downfall

EXCLUSIVE: The Exodus Movement Holds First Event As A PAC

Conservatism

Leftism

The progressive Democrats&#8217; coordinated attempt to take down the relatively moderate Democratic frontrunner has ratcheted up in recent days, and freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar is adding her radical left voice to the anti-Joe Biden chorus.
As a recent poll of likely Iowa Democratic caucus-goers found Biden now losing to progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren in Iowa, the more radical wing of the party held a &#8220;people&#8217;s forum&#8221; in the state Saturday put on by various far-left grassroots groups designed to serve as an &#8220;antidote,&#8221; as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/22/ilhan-omar-joe-biden-iowa-peoples-presidential-forum">The Guardian</a> put it, to the Polk County Steak Fry, a much larger event which drew 17 of the Democratic presidential candidates and some 12,000 attendees.
Among those at the Iowa People&#8217;s Presidential Forum were Warren, democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, and former housing secretary Julián Castro. Notably absent from the progressive grassroots event was Biden, who wasn&#8217;t invited by the event organizer, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement Action, after his campaign failed to fill out a questionnaire.
In comments that quickly made headlines, Rep. Omar, who has repeatedly come under fire for anti-Semitic comments and her openly hostile stance toward Israel, offered her rather blunt opinion on Biden as the potential Democratic nominee to The Guardian.
In her remarks at the event, Omar declared that the Democratic Party needs &#8220;a president who realises we are not just fighting for one election, we are fighting for the very soul of our democracy and what society we want to become.&#8221;
When The Guardian asked Omar if Biden could fill that role, she made clear she does not believe he could.
&#8220;There are few people who fit into the kind of progress that we all want to see in this country. And I would say he is not one of them,&#8221; she told the outlet.
&#8220;I think it has been very clear to many of the people who have been creating the kind of movement that is exciting generations, that we want somebody who really has a plan that is going to tackle a lot of the systematic challenges that we have, and he doesn&#8217;t,&#8221; she added.
In its report on Omar&#8217;s comments, The Guardian describes her as &#8220;one of four new members of the House of Representatives racially abused by Donald Trump,&#8221; an apparent reference to Trump telling the four radical congresswomen known as &#8220;The Squad&#8221; to &#8220;go back&#8221; to where they came from (Omar alone of the four is an immigrant). The Guardian notably fails to mention Omar&#8217;s own <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/49607/ilhan-omar-introduce-pro-bds-resolution-bds-ryan-saavedra">racially inflammatory rhetoric and actions</a> directed at Jews and Israel.
A new <a href="http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2019/images/09/21/desmoinescnnpoll.pdf%E2%80%8B">Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom</a> poll of &#8220;likely Democratic caucusgoers&#8221; in Iowa released Saturday found Warren surging ahead of Biden for the first time.
&#8220;Sen. Elizabeth Warren came out on top with 22% of respondents selecting her as their first choice, and 20% as their second choice,&#8221; <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/52095/poll-elizabeth-warren-blows-past-joe-biden-iowa-frank-camp">The Daily Wire</a> reported. &#8220;Former Vice President Joe Biden, long considered the front-runner of the Democratic race, came in second, with 20% of respondents selecting him as their first choice, and only 10% as their second choice. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) came in a distant third place, with just 11% selecting him as their first choice, and 10% as their second.&#8221;
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/50823/palestinian-authority-cracks-down-lgbt-group-ilhan-james-barrett">Palestinian Authority Cracks Down On LGBT Group; Ilhan Omar Responds By Bashing Israel</a>

ilhan_omar_gi

Ilhan Omar Declares War On Joe Biden

Ilhan Omar

Joe Biden

Julian Castro

Progressivism

Mainstream media outlets have derided President Trump&#8217;s yet-to-be-released Israeli-Palestinian peace plan as a <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/06/24/trumps-deal-century-palestine-sideshow">&#8220;sideshow divorced from reality&#8221;</a> that is &#8220;<a href="https://forward.com/opinion/426481/trumps-deal-of-the-century-is-destroying-israel/">destined to fail</a>,&#8221; and it&#8217;s become fashionable to attribute this to the shortcomings of his soon-to-be-departed Middle East special envoy, Jason Greenblatt. But claims that Greenblatt <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/09/jason-greenblatt-kushner-envoy-peace-plan-deal.html">&#8220;wasn&#8217;t the right guy&#8221;</a> for the job are dead wrong. Whatever the outcome of the plan, he has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/51599/israel-jason-greenblatt-has-done-crucial-work-gideon-israel">arguably done more</a> to advance the cause of peace between Israel and the Palestinians than any American diplomat in recent memory.
Though coming into government with comparatively little knowledge of, or experience dealing with, the Middle East, Greenblatt keenly understood that the primary source of the festering conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is the unwillingness of Palestinian leaders to accept a Jewish state as a legitimate political entity. Hamas and Palestinian Authority (PA) leaders may disagree over tactics and political vision, but they share an absolute rejection of living alongside Israelis as equals, and thus see no need to tone down the viciously anti-Semitic content of their educational curriculum, halt violent anti-Israel incitement on state-run media outlets, or take other steps essential to a good-faith conflict resolution.
For a quarter century, Greenblatt&#8217;s predecessors glossed over such harsh realities in their zeal to coax PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and his successor as Palestinian Authority (PA) president, Mahmoud Abbas, into signing agreements and smiling for the cameras. Much of the language used to do the glossing has changed little. In 1988, U.S. Secretary of State <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1988-12-15-8802240683-story.html">George Schultz</a> coached Arafat on the words he needed to utter so that the Reagan administration could say the PLO had &#8220;renounced&#8221; terrorism. Nearly three decades later, <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/03/17/remarks-president-obama-and-president-abbas-palestinian-authority">President Obama</a> and his Middle East envoy, <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?417988-2/after-words-george-mitchell">George Mitchell</a>, could be found repeating the mantra that Abbas had &#8220;long since renounced violence&#8221; &#8212; never mind that the bloodiest period of Palestinian terrorism was sandwiched between. As rejectionism and incitements to violence running rampant in Palestinian society continually thwarted any movement toward peace, high-level U.S. diplomats continued their incessant glossing.
From his first days on the job, rather than parroting the false narratives and biased framings that had become staples of ineffective American diplomacy, Greenblatt set out to publicly discredit them.
This is most striking in his use of terminology. In his frequent public statements, Greenblatt <a href="https://www.jns.org/greenblatt-israel-is-the-victim-in-the-israeli-palestinian-conflict/">rejected</a> both the term &#8220;occupied&#8221; to describe disputed territories controlled by Israel and the word &#8220;settlements&#8221; to describe Jewish towns and villages there. He pointedly abstained from using the term &#8220;refugees&#8221; to describe the 5.4 million Palestinians registered by UNRWA, on the <a href="https://twitter.com/jdgreenblatt45/status/1164176698218295297">grounds</a> that &#8220;only a very small fraction&#8221; of them are true refugees who fled their homes during the 1948 war for Israel&#8217;s independence.
So eager was Greenblatt to fundamentally recast the lexicon of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that he declined even to use the well-worn phrase &#8220;two-state solution&#8221; in characterizing the ultimate aim of American diplomacy. &#8220;You can&#8217;t take &#8230; a conflict as complex as this and boil it down to those three words,&#8221; he <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-trump-thinks-this-is-the-moment-to-resolve-israeli-palestinian-conflict">explained</a> to PBS in July 2019.
Greenblatt discarded the longstanding U.S. practice of suggesting moral equivalency between Israel and its adversaries (e.g., routinely responding to outbreaks of violence by calling on both sides to &#8220;refrain from provocative actions&#8221;). Indeed, he <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-is-the-victim-in-conflict-with-palestinians-says-us-peace-envoy/">stated openly</a> what most in Washington believed privately &#8212; that Israel is &#8220;more the victim than the party that&#8217;s responsible&#8221; for the violent conflicts in which it&#8217;s embroiled.
While acknowledging that Palestinians have suffered, Greenblatt laid the blame not on Israel, but on their own leaders. Hamas &#8220;doubles down on vicious incitement while the Palestinian people pay the price,&#8221; he <a href="https://twitter.com/jdgreenblatt45/status/1058032383029600259">tweeted</a> in November 2018, while even officials of the supposedly moderate PA &#8220;would rather Palestinians suffer than at least explore a different path for a better future,&#8221; in Greenblatt&#8217;s <a href="https://twitter.com/jdgreenblatt45/status/1142056015136985088">estimation</a>. He <a href="https://twitter.com/jdgreenblatt45/status/1169272187460698122">understood and publicly decried</a> the fact that the PA&#8217;s educational curriculum &#8220;is radicalizing kids &#8230; teaching them about martyrdom and jihad instead of how to thrive in a peaceful world,&#8221; while <a href="https://twitter.com/jdgreenblatt45/status/1169995829467340801">calling</a> its perennial financial troubles &#8220;self-generated&#8221; because of its continued funding of terrorists and their families under its so-called &#8220;pay to slay&#8221; program.
Most importantly, perhaps, Greenblatt <a href="https://usun.usmission.gov/remarks-at-a-un-security-council-open-debate-on-the-middle-east-9/">called out</a> much of the international community for having done &#8220;nothing to encourage the parties to sit down at the negotiating table and make the hard compromises necessary for peace.&#8221; He condemned the &#8220;fictions of international consensus&#8221; on the supposed necessity of dividing Jerusalem, <a href="https://twitter.com/jdgreenblatt45/status/1169995829467340801">urged</a> donor countries to &#8220;think twice&#8221; before giving economic aid to the corrupt PA, and <a href="https://twitter.com/jdgreenblatt45/status/1164642121636294662">denounced</a> the fact that <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/43792/pro-palestinian-frauds-unrwa-called-out-lying-josh-hammer">UNRWA</a> is &#8220;allowed to teach&#8221; an anti-Semitic curriculum.
In July, Greenblatt <a href="https://usun.usmission.gov/remarks-at-a-un-security-council-open-debate-on-the-middle-east-9/">slammed</a> the international community&#8217;s bias against Israel at the U.N. Security Council. Last month, he rightly <a href="https://freebeacon.com/national-security/u-s-knocks-germany-in-row-over-middle-east-peace-process/">dismissed</a> &#8220;U.N. Security Council resolutions passed with the intent of providing a framework for resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict&#8221; as having &#8220;failed to create progress,&#8221; and warned that &#8220;reflexive reference to these ambiguously-worded, highly controversial resolutions serves as a cloak to avoid substantive debate about the realities on the ground and the complexity of the conflict.&#8221; He seldom missed an opportunity to call out Western media for their bias against the Jewish state.
Greenblatt&#8217;s tireless assault on the sacred cows that circumscribe Western thinking (and the vigorous debates that have ensued) should help bring about a turning point in how future U.S. administrations, and others globally, approach the conflict. The critical point in a paradigm shift is not when consensus forms around something new, but when consensus about the old framework of assumptions begins to unravel.

EJ Kimball is the director of the <a href="https://www.meforum.org/israel-victory-project/">Israel Victory Project</a> at the <a href="https://www.meforum.org">Middle East Forum</a>.

gettyimages-1134211540_0

KIMBALL: Jason Greenblatt And The Inconvenient Truth Of Palestinian Rejectionism

Trump Administration

In a truly saddening but by no means unpredictable development, the <a href="https://amchainitiative.org">AMCHA Initiative</a>, which is a watchdog organization dedicated to investigating and combating anti-Semitism on university campuses across America, reported this week a <a href="https://mailchi.mp/amchainitiative/eliminationist-anti-zionism-report">70% rise</a> over the past year in anti-Semitic incidents directed against pro-Israel students on college campuses. As <a href="https://freebeacon.com/issues/report-anti-semitic-harassment-at-u-s-college-campuses-hits-historic-levels/">reported</a> by Adam Kredo of The Washington Free Beacon, AMCHA noted a drop in &#8220;classical&#8221; white supremacist-inspired Jew-hatred targeted against Jews on university campuses, but a huge spike in Israel-related acts of harassment against Jews and other non-Jewish Zionists who stand in solidarity with the Jewish state.
The trend is hardly new, and The Daily Wire has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/38722/pitzer-college-faculty-goes-full-anti-israel-votes-hank-berrien">extensively</a> <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/47153/shocking-there-absolutely-appalling-anti-semitism-josh-hammer">covered</a> the years-long development of escalating anti-Semitic incidents on the American campus. Indeed, the <a href="https://www.algemeiner.com/2018/11/30/bds-in-politics-and-on-the-college-campus/">problem has been so bad</a> that a group wholly distinct from AMCHA but similarly dedicated to combating on-campus anti-Semitism was founded in 2015: <a href="https://www.maccabeetaskforce.org">Maccabee Task Force</a>. The question now facing the American Jewish and pro-Israel communities is simple: How can we begin to shift the on-campus narrative away from anti-Semitism and the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46068/hammer-yes-united-states-was-right-deny-entry-bds-josh-hammer">Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions</a> movement and back toward a pro-Jewish, pro-Israel stance?
I have personally observed this ongoing fight across numerous college campuses and have been a part of more than one pro-Israel university event that was protested and/or forcibly shouted down by the Jew-hating miscreants of the misnamed hate group &#8220;Students for Justice in Palestine.&#8221; I have seen the vicious faces of those who yell &#8220;<a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/nakba-day-catastrophe-palestinians-israel-benjamin-netanyahu-gaza-west-bank-hamas-a8346156.html">Nakba</a>!&#8221; and the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/38814/watch-cnns-hill-appears-call-elimination-israel-ryan-saavedra">genocidal eliminationist phrase</a>, &#8220;from the river to the sea, &#8216;Palestine&#8217; shall be free.&#8221; (One must wonder whether these people feel similarly about liberating other legally fictitious locales, such as Mordor or Narnia.) I also have seen many Israeli flag-wielding students push back with hapless pleas for &#8220;peace!,&#8221; &#8220;tolerance!,&#8221; and (<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/50850/hammer-yes-palestinian-state-far-more-dangerous-josh-hammer">unfortunately</a>) &#8220;two states!&#8221;
Do my fellow proud Zionists see the problem here? The Palestinian-Arab side of the argument may be genocidal and jihad-loving, but at least they present a morally framed narrative (no matter how grossly immoral that narrative actually is). The pro-Jewish/pro-Israel side, by contrast, tends toward an overly defensive, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/45203/hammer-what-exactly-current-role-aipac-josh-hammer">AIPAC-inspired</a> defensive posture that relies on a non-substantive, purely procedural narrative.
Interestingly, then, the fight against Israel-inspired Jew-hatred on the university campus can actually learn much from the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/51891/hammer-american-mind-our-constitutional-order-josh-hammer">ongoing conservative dialogue</a> between the New York Post&#8217;s Sohrab Ahmari and National Review&#8217;s David French. Procedure-based arguments, especially when confronted with a substance-based argumentative opposition, are unlikely to be sufficient; the only way to truly make a dialectic dent is to argue on the substantive merits of an issue and argue in overtly moral terms. I <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/47964/hammer-conservatives-must-make-their-arguments-josh-hammer">wrote as much</a> in June: &#8220;Advocates for Israel on the American university campus must transition away from pleas for &#8216;peace&#8217; and &#8216;tolerance&#8217; and toward arguments grounded in the inherent, biblically derived morality of a Jewish state existing between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.&#8221;
This simply must be the path forward for Jewish and pro-Israel students on campus who are invested in helping to turn back the tide of rising on-campus anti-Semitism. Jewish and Zionist students must make the moral, historically informed case that Zionism &#8212; which is simply the Jewish right to self-determination in the Jews&#8217; biblical, ancestral homeland &#8212; is an inherently beautiful phenomenon. These courageous students must argue that the culmination of Herzl&#8217;s Zionist vision, the establishment in 1948 of a sovereign Jewish state in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_Israel">Eretz Yisrael </a>for the very first time in millennia, represents one of the most profoundly beautiful developments in human civilization over the course of the last century. These students must advance direct, overt, morally based arguments that defend the beauty of that Zionism. These students must also advance historically and legally informed arguments that rebut the utter <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYZBjoeeehg">mendacity that is &#8220;Nakba&#8221;</a> and other purported Palestinian-Arab <a href="https://www.prageru.com/video/why-isnt-there-a-palestinian-state/">&#8220;national&#8221; humiliations</a>.
Appeasement and unilateral disarmament &#8212; here, in terms of the use of overt moral terminology &#8212; never work. The students who take the lead on this initiative will necessarily be bold. They will be valiant. And they will face mighty resistance from the leftist/Islamist alliance all across the nation. But these students will have the benefit of standing for truth, morality, and, fundamentally, justice. It&#8217;s time to get the ball rolling and begin to defeat on-campus Jew-hatred in America.

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HAMMER: How Pro-Israel Students On Campus Can Fight Back Against Jew-Hatred

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Students

Students for Justice in Palestine

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It is <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/51924/mike-pence-warns-iran-were-locked-and-loaded-jacob-airey">increasingly likely</a> that Saudi Arabia and Iran, longtime regional foes and proxies for the broader Sunni/Shiite theological divide in the Islamic world, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-aramco-iran-rouhani/irans-rouhani-says-aramco-attacks-were-a-reciprocal-response-by-yemen-idUSKBN1W12AE">could be heading for war</a>. Both nations are governed by sharia-based legal regimes, and each has a troubled history when it comes to promoting, financing, and exporting Islamist extremism over the course of the past century. At first glance, one might be inclined to look at this internecine Islamic spat and conclude as Sarah Palin <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/sarah-palin-let-allah-sort-it-out-096128">once did</a>: &#8220;Let Allah sort it out.&#8221;
But cynicism of this magnitude is not actually warranted. The United States has a clear and strategically unmistakable interest in any potential armed conflict that were to escalate between the Saudis and the Iranians. That interest, put simply, is to stand firmly with our <a href="https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/10/media-war-saudi-arabia/">Saudi allies</a>.
For decades, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was the preeminent funder and exporter of radical Sunni jihadism. The hardline Wahhabist- and Salafist-inspired brand of Sunni Islam that dominated the Saudi clerisy resulted in tangible detrimental outcomes for the liberal West. The Saudis funded more radical Sunni madrasas the world over than any other Arab nation and were oftentimes the leading miscreants in the Arab world&#8217;s decades-long (technically, still ongoing) <a href="http://www.sixdaywar.org/content/khartoum.asp">diplomatic</a> campaign against the legitimacy of Israel. Concomitantly, the Saudis were long viewed as the leading Arab cheerleaders for Yasser Arafat and his <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46068/hammer-yes-united-states-was-right-deny-entry-bds-josh-hammer">inherently jihadist</a> &#8220;Palestinian liberation&#8221; cause. The Kingdom funded and promoted the global <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46714/hammer-designating-muslim-brotherhood-terrorist-josh-hammer">Muslim Brotherhood</a>, the 20th-century progenitor of contemporary Sunni jihadism and the over-arching organization for which the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/44732/hammer-israel-must-destroy-hamas-once-and-all-josh-hammer">genocidal death cult</a> of Hamas merely serves as the Palestinian-Arab branch. Many Saudi elites and clerics famously <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/documents/evidence-of-financial-links-between-saudi-royal-family-and-al-qaeda">mollycoddled</a> al-Qaeda in the years leading up to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2013/07/27/us/september-11th-hijackers-fast-facts/index.html">September 11, 2001</a>. And so forth.
That is all undoubtedly very, very, very bad. But it is crucial to recognize that much has changed in the Islamic world over the past decade or two.
Over the past ten to fifteen years, and rapidly accelerating under the recent leadership of the more forward-thinking and realpolitik-inclined Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), the Kingdom has taken tremendous steps to diminish the influence of the Wahhabist clerics, to cease the funding and exportation of radical madrasas abroad, and to unequivocally distance itself from the Muslim Brotherhood. MBS has even gone so far as to (accurately) <a href="http://www.egypttoday.com/Article/1/46574/Bin-Salman-Muslim-Brotherhood-incubator-for-terrorists">dub</a> the Brotherhood an &#8220;incubator for all terrorists.&#8221; Jared Kushner and other Trump administration officials, seeing a natural anti-Islamist ally in the crown prince, have <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/03/jared-kushner-saudi-arabia-mbs-meeting">cultivated and nourished</a> a reinvigorated bilateral relationship. The Saudis have also <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Palestinians-in-bid-to-avert-real-crisis-with-Saudi-Arabia-597538">all but completely forsaken</a> the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/48018/hammer-jared-kushner-right-palestinians-do-not-josh-hammer">noxious</a>, anti-Jewish Palestinian-Arab &#8220;liberation&#8221; cause, preferring instead to dramatically warm up to Israel in hitherto unimaginable ways. The Saudis, while still prone to military and strategic crassness, are more so than ever before manifestly allied with the United States on our key geopolitical interests and priorities in the Middle East.
The elephant in the room for much of the Middle East&#8217;s broader realignment is, of course, the so-called &#8220;Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action&#8221; — then-President Barack Obama&#8217;s harrowing nuclear deal capitulation to the mullahs of the world&#8217;s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/43339/hammer-iranian-revolution-forty-years-old-stand-josh-hammer">number one state sponsor of jihadism</a>, Iran. Obama, under the cataclysmic &#8220;guidance&#8221; of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/magazine/the-aspiring-novelist-who-became-obamas-foreign-policy-guru.html">failed novelist</a> Ben Rhodes, sought to reorient America&#8217;s interests in the Middle East away from Israel and its historic Sunni allies — namely, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt — and toward Iran and the <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/mohamed-morsi-who-brought-the-muslim-brotherhood-to-the-egyptian-presidency">Muslim Brotherhood</a>. In addition to empowering the terrorist, jihad-exporting mullocracy in Tehran, Obama&#8217;s disastrous shift strategic also unshackled the region&#8217;s preeminent funders of the Brotherhood and Hamas: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/47456/hammer-al-jazeeras-disgraceful-holocaust-denying-josh-hammer">Qatar</a> and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/44954/report-ilhan-omar-met-2017-infamous-islamist-josh-hammer">Turkey</a>. The increasingly public thawing of tensions between the Saudis and the Emiratis — each of whom considers Iran to be something akin to an existential hegemonic threat — and Israel, in addition to the still-ongoing <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017–2019_Qatar_diplomatic_crisis">embargo</a> implemented (primarily) by the Saudis and Emiratis against the <a href="https://www.meforum.org/57690/ensconced-doha-islamists">Brotherhood-funding</a> Qataris, can only be <a href="http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/israel/2019-08-05/friends-caveats">understood through this broader prism</a>.
Iran, furthermore, is as malevolent and vicious a global actor as ever before. The mullahs still seek nuclear weapons, routinely preach &#8220;death to America&#8221; and &#8220;death to Israel,&#8221; fund Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthi rebels, and all sorts of other jihadist outfits the world over, plot <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20190109-eu-sanctions-iran-over-assassinations-peoples-mujahedeen-france-bomb-plot">targeted assassinations</a> across Europe and the broader West, and engage in deeply hostile and destructive acts of <a href="https://www.euronews.com/2019/09/16/iran-seizes-oil-tanker-allegedly-smuggling-diesel-fuel-to-uae-isna">aggression</a> and <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-tells-saudi-arabia-oil-attacks-were-launched-from-iran-11568644126">war</a> against regional foes. The Islamic Revolutionary Iranian regime has been in a state of war against the West ever since the ayatollahs&#8217; takeover in 1979, and Iran today remains one of the world&#8217;s two most rogue geopolitical actors, along with North Korea. It is a deeply hostile and repressive theocracy that has never missed an opportunity to fund jihadism against the West. Countering and thwarting Iran, in addition to the Brotherhood, is <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/43151/hammer-ted-cruzs-non-interventionist-hawk-foreign-josh-hammer">very much</a> in America&#8217;s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/51661/hammer-never-forget-911-we-need-rethink-how-we-josh-hammer">strategic interest</a>.
Fundamentally, the bipartisan Wilsonian foreign policy ruling class must be tempered. There is a role for morality in foreign policy, but that role is minuscule when compared with the foremost goal of a nation narrowly pursuing its own self-interest. Yes, the Saudi regime is sharia-based and is oppressive in many ways. But no, that ultimately should not deter our pursuit and defense of an indispensable strategic alliance. As I <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/45699/hammer-america-needs-re-think-its-global-alliances-josh-hammer">wrote</a> in April:
<blockquote>[C]onservatives must articulate a hard-headed foreign policy that, if need be, subordinates amorphous &#8220;values&#8221;-based concerns in favor of much more tangible — and much more legitimate — concerns about prioritizing and maximizing America&#8217;s national security. And in so doing, American foreign policy hands ought not to elevate the interests and clout of unaccountable transnational institutions. &#8230;
America ought to ally with self-sufficient nation-states who care about their sovereignty and share our core national security interests in deterring Russian hegemony, Chinese ambitions, and/or Islamist aggression. &#8230; [I]n the Islamic world, that means focusing more on nations like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates than it does on Islamist-exporting, Muslim Brotherhood-cozy states like Turkey and Qatar.</blockquote>
Americans should not be duped by <a href="https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/10/media-war-saudi-arabia/">well-oiled Qatari duplicity</a> or the Iran nuclear deal&#8217;s subversive <a href="https://thefederalist.com/2017/10/13/iran-deal-supporters-willing-sell-u-s-jihadists/">Obama bro echo chamber</a>. With Saudi-Iranian tensions flaring, America has an unambiguous interest in standing firmly with MBS and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

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HAMMER: The U.S. Must Side With Saudi Arabia Against Iranian Aggression

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Islam

Nuclear Weapons

United Arab Emirates (UAE)

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>

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

Democratic Party

Amy Jean Klobuchar has served since 2007 as a U.S. senator from Minnesota. Initially the state&#8217;s junior senator, Klobuchar has served as Minnesota&#8217;s senior senator since Democrat Al Franken&#8217;s <a href="https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/peter-roff/2010/07/20/al-franken-may-have-won-his-senate-seat-through-voter-fraud">controversial</a> defeat of incumbent Republican Norm Coleman in 2008. A member of the Democratic Party — or, more specifically, the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party — Klobuchar previously served as county attorney for Hennepin County, Minnesota. Although hardly centrist by recently historical, Bill Clinton-era Democratic Party standards, Klobuchar now seeks the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination by orienting herself as centrist-inclined and possessing a vague aura of Midwestern sensibility. In current 2020 Democratic presidential nomination <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/democratic_nomination_polls/">polling</a>, Klobuchar currently gets national support in the low single digits.
Klobuchar, a Minnesota native, has a bachelor degree from Yale University and a law degree from the University of Chicago. Earlier in her legal career, Klobuchar worked as a corporate attorney before becoming a local prosecutor. Her name was sometimes floated as a possible U.S. Supreme Court nominee during President Barack Obama&#8217;s presidency. Klobuchar serves on the influential U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, where her tone and demeanor during the inflammatory Brett Kavanaugh nomination saga placed her, alongside Committee member Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), firmly on the less hysterical wing of the raucous Senate Democratic caucus. Klobuchar still voted against Kavanaugh&#8217;s nomination.
Klobuchar is married to fellow attorney and legal academic John Bessler. They have one daughter, Abigail.
Electoral History: Klobuchar first entered the public sphere in 1994, where she initially declared a run for county attorney of Hennepin County before dropping out. She successfully sought the same position in 1998, winning narrowly. In 2002, she was easily re-elected to the local prosecutor perch.
In 2006, Klobuchar announced her U.S. Senate run for the seat vacated by incumbent Sen. Mark Dayton (D-MN). She won the DFL Party primary in a landslide and easily won the general election. Klobuchar was subsequently re-elected by huge margins in both 2012 and 2018.
Klobuchar now seeks the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination.
On The Issues: Klobuchar&#8217;s prosecutorial background, gentle public (though <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/43852/klobuchar-abusive-toward-staff-stories-eating-hank-berrien">perhaps not private</a>) demeanor, and background from a largely rural state combine to make her somewhat more centrist-oriented than many of her 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination rivals. However, Klobuchar can still be fairly characterized as a full-spectrum leftist/progressive. Her 2020 presidential campaign <a href="https://amyklobuchar.com">emphasizes</a> universal/socialized medicine and climate change, among other issues.
Constitution: Klobuchar consistently supports a leftist/progressive view of the Constitution and rule of law. She supports Roe v. Wade and <a href="https://amyklobuchar.com/issues/a-strong-democracy/">opposes</a> Citizens United v. F.E.C., the Supreme Court&#8217;s landmark political speech-affirming ruling in 2010. Klobuchar is generally defensive of Fourth Amendment-inspired civil liberties, although she had a more centrist record on the National Security Agency&#8217;s surveillance programs earlier in her Senate career. She supports gun control measures that would restrict Americans&#8217; Second Amendment rights. Klobuchar <a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/pressrelease/historic-comprehensive-lgbt-non-discrimination-legislation-re-introduced-in-congress/">supports</a> the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/47176/hammer-house-democrats-equality-act-both-josh-hammer">Equality Act</a>, which would expand LGBT protections at the behest of private property rights and religious conscience rights alike. Her expansive view of the federal government&#8217;s role in regulating the economy is consistent with legal progressivism.
Economy: Klobuchar supports a robust role for the federal government in matters pertaining to economic regulation and, more generally, her views on economics reflect those of modern progressivism. Klobuchar&#8217;s 2020 campaign website touts her belief in the need for &#8220;<a href="https://amyklobuchar.com/issues/shared-prosperity-and-economic-justice/">shared prosperity</a>,&#8221; and supports a greater governmental role in <a href="https://www.brainerddispatch.com/news/government-and-politics/4427911-klobuchar-leads-roundtable-discussion-child-care-shortage">child care</a>. Like many of her 2020 Democratic presidential rivals, she <a href="https://twitter.com/amyklobuchar/status/1098652573685477378?lang=en">supports increasing</a> the federal minimum wage to $15. Klobuchar supports greater governmental investment in infrastructure. She supports strong labor unions and opposes &#8220;right to work&#8221; laws that would increase worker freedom.
Health Care: Klobuchar supports &#8220;universal health care,&#8221; which effectively would amount to socialized medicine in America. Earlier in her Senate career, Klobuchar voted for Obamacare. She has recently <a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/pressrelease/u-s-senator-tammy-baldwin-helps-reintroduce-legislation-to-create-state-public-health-care-option/">co-sponsored legislation</a> that would expand Medicaid access across the 50 states.
Immigration: Klobuchar has taken a hard line in support of the DREAM Act and other amnesty legislative initiatives that would undermine America&#8217;s sovereignty and empower brutal Mexican cartels and human trafficking rings. She supports a full <a href="https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1097709817404235777?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1097709817404235777&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.twincities.com%2F2019%2F02%2F18%2Fklobuchars-cnn-town-hall-five-questions-and-how-she-answered-them%2F">pathway to citizenship</a> for the vast majority of America&#8217;s illegal alien population. She has been a consistently harsh critic of the Trump administration&#8217;s attempts to secure our border amidst a hitherto unprecedented influx there of Central American migrants. Klobuchar has been harshly critical of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the Trump administration. She has been <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/439339-20-dems-demand-no-more-money-for-ice-agents-trump-wall">very skeptical</a> of the utility of a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Foreign Policy: Klobuchar&#8217;s 2020 campaign <a href="https://amyklobuchar.com/issues/a-safer-world/">website</a> seems to pinpoint China and Russia as America&#8217;s two top national security threats. More generally, throughout her Senate career, she has taken a harder line on China than have many of her Democratic colleagues. Klobuchar was an Iraq War skeptic earlier in her Senate career, and has supported arms reductions measures with Russia. Klobuchar supported President Obama&#8217;s 2011 intervention in Libya, which resulted in Libya turning into a destabilized jihadist stronghold. She supported President Obama&#8217;s 2015 Iran nuclear deal and opposed President Trump&#8217;s decision to remove the U.S. from the <a href="https://www.cotton.senate.gov/?p=press_release&amp;id=120">non-binding</a> accord. In February 2019, she <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/why-these-democratic-presidential-hopefuls-voted-no-on-an-anti-bds-bill-1.6919089">voted for</a> Senate Republicans&#8217; introduced anti-BDS legislation.
Abortion: Klobuchar is emphatically pro-abortion, vigorously supports Roe v. Wade, and <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/05/19/sen_amy_klobuchar_new_abortion_restrictions_are_a_violation_of_civil_rights.html">opposes restrictions</a> on late-term abortion. Like many of her 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination rivals, she <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/democratic-candidates-hyde-amendment-abortion_n_5cf964b5e4b06af8b50570bd">supports overturning the Hyde Amendment</a>, which has historically proscribed taxpayer funding of abortion.
Guns: Despite her representation of a largely rural state, Klobuchar has a historically poor record on Second Amendment issues. Klobuchar supports &#8220;universal&#8221; background checks, which often serve as a rhetorical euphemism for the government serving as an intermediary in all private firearms transfers. She <a href="https://amyklobuchar.com/issues/a-safer-world/">supports</a> a ban on the undefinable sub-class of firearms referred to as so-called &#8220;assault weapons&#8221; — a line of thought that, if taken to its logical conclusion, could lead to the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/42837/hammer-kamala-harriss-flirtation-banning-all-semi-josh-hammer">banning of all semi-automatic firearms in America</a>.

gettyimages-1158530010

Where Does Amy Klobuchar Stand On The Issues? Here’s Everything You Need To Know.

2020 Election

Abortion

Amy Klobuchar

China

Constitution

Economy

Last week’s announcement that U.S.-led peace talks with the Taliban had been called off relieved many, but distressed others who were hoping for an end to our longest war. After a suicide bombing killed 12 people on Thursday, September 5th, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/08/world/asia/afghanistan-taliban-camp-david.html">acknowledged</a> that the Taliban failed to live up to its commitments. Trump tweeted: “What kind of people would kill so many in order to seemingly strengthen their bargaining position?” Welcome to the Art of the Deal, Taliban-style.
Perhaps Trump is learning from his experiences with Israel’s longest war with the Palestinians and the difficulty he has experienced with his <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/51599/israel-jason-greenblatt-has-done-crucial-work-gideon-israel">“Deal of the Century”</a> proposal. While each situation differs in some significant ways, both serve as illustrations that wars don’t end when only one side wants it to end. Until one side wins and the other acknowledges defeat, a war will continue.
The Trump administration’s desire to “finally get the hell out of Afghanistan” might be an admirable one, but our departure before the Taliban has acknowledged its defeat will be interpreted as victory and embolden the group to return to its old ways. Though the Taliban and the Afghan ISIS groups are currently at least in part rivals, no one should preclude the possibility of a union between the two.
After the first Gulf War, enough Israelis believed that their war with the Palestinians could finally come to an end. But their generosity to the dispersed PLO, exiled to Tunisia, was interpreted as weakness. The PLO exploited it to recruit a new generation of fighters — a generation they educated with their newfound autonomy. Palestinian terrorism escalated dramatically, both in the number and severity of attacks.
Soon after the talks with the Taliban were scuttled, word came out that there was a plan for members of the Taliban to join members of the Afghan government and U.S. representatives at Camp David. Some believed that having Taliban negotiators on U.S. soil on September 11th, 2019 would be worse than “bad optics” — their presence would defile the venerable retreat in Maryland. But here too, the PLO’s Yasser Arafat had already accomplished that feat, soiling the grounds with his presence in 2000. During the Clinton presidency, Arafat <a href="http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/ArafatArticles.html">spent more time</a> in the White House than any other foreign “leader.”
Inviting bad actors, even those with American blood on their hands, is acceptable only after they have been defeated and have acknowledged their defeat. Until both the Taliban and whomever the Palestinians choose as their leaders acknowledge their defeat, their presence should not be tolerated on U.S. or Israeli soil, respectively.
Perhaps neither our war against the Taliban nor Israel’s war against the PLO/PA/Hamas is actually winnable. But both are certainly lose-able.
A complete pullout of all U.S. troops and advisors from Afghanistan will be celebrated from Kandahar to Quetta as a Taliban victory. Recall how Taliban propagandists compared Obama to Gorbachev when the new U.S. president simultaneously announced both a troop surge and a subsequent date for their departure from Afghanistan.
Likewise, any Israeli offer of more accommodations, cash, and autonomy to the PLO/PA/Hamas will be seen as weakness and will be exploited. Recall Arafat’s not so-secret messages to the Palestinian critics of Oslo that the “peace process” would buy them time to gain strength and continue the fight.
For American and Israeli lawmakers, the time to talk about peace will only come when the Taliban and the Palestinians feel their defeat and believe that they have better options than continuing to fight. Until then, the best we can hope for is a managed conflict, limiting our own casualties, and inflicting more severe casualties on our enemies.
A.J. Caschetta is a Ginsburg-Ingerman fellow at the <a href="https://www.meforum.org">Middle East Forum</a> and a principal lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

U.S. And Afghan Forces Battle Taliban In Kunar Province

CASCHETTA: War Isn’t Over Just Because You Want It To Be Over

Afghanistan

Donald Trump

Hamas

Military

Radical Islamic Terror

Last week, Trump Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt announced that he was leaving his position. While still too early determine, Jason Greenblatt&#8217;s biggest achievement may prove to be his involvement in a group that facilitated the death of the Oslo &#8220;peace process&#8221; framework and created the space for new paradigms for addressing the broader Arab-Israel conflict.
Skeptics may query: Almost three years of the Trump administration have passed and only the economic part of the so-called &#8220;deal of the century&#8221; has been revealed; what have Jared Kushner, Greenblatt, and company accomplished?
Two and half decades ago, the Oslo Accords were signed. On paper, it was meant to be a temporary framework for a final status agreement that would be agreed upon within five years. In reality, it was the beginning of an industry, albeit with good intentions, that has consistently undermined Israel&#8217;s legitimacy and distanced any chance for an agreement between the Palestinians and Israelis for at least a generation. This industry is made up of think tanks, consultants, NGOs, international organizations, career bureaucrats who have made their living on the false premises that an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians is just a matter of straightening out small details. It&#8217;s an industry worth hundreds of millions of dollars — private donors and government appropriations that have enriched the wrong people, given false impressions of the likelihood of a settlement, stimulated Palestinian violence, and are now responsible for the political obliteration of the Israeli Left.
The Oslo industry is nothing less than a carrier group sailing in the open waters, guarding in its holy of holies the &#8220;land-for-peace&#8221; paradigm. Its behemoth strength was even able to overtake the Bush administration, which at one point tried to change the paradigm. The Oslo carrier group quickly swallowed up the idea and regurgitated it with a plan that fit its own paradigm.
The Oslo industry has retained its hegemony as the only game in town for the past two decades — so much so that differing ideas and alternate paradigms are met with suspicion. Having been demonized and relegated as the propaganda of radicals, mainstream publications rarely entertain these alternate ideas.
Needless to say, this industry could not have consolidated its power toward the end of the 1990s without help from the Israeli government to keep the Oslo framework on life support as buses blew up, pedestrians were gunned down, and cafes were ravaged. Indeed, as Oslo was about to utter its last words, the Israeli government shocked it back to life with a 2005 unilateral withdrawal from Gaza that bewildered many.
Into this hegemony and industry entered Kushner, Greenblatt, and their group. While the details of the political side of the Trump plan have yet to be revealed, the economic plan — lengthy and detailed — gives insight that this plan was a case study as to how to create the foundations for a prosperous society. It was the culmination of a two-year learning session trying to draw on the lessons of history. The input of all players was to have a stake in making this plan work.
To the Palestinian Authority&#8217;s (PA) dismay, the PA realized that it was actually being asked to provide constructive solutions that could help its people, and to internalize that it doesn&#8217;t possess an inalienable right to all of Judea and Samaria (i.e., the &#8220;West Bank&#8221;). Unlike past peace plans, there was no predetermined outcomes, and there was also a penalty for not participating.
By writing a lengthy plan, both economically and politically, and including all the regional actors who bear responsibility for perpetuating the Palestinian quagmire, the Trump peace plan will become a paradigm that future presidential administrations will be unable to ignore. It is not an executive summary that can be easily dismissed as recyclable ideas regurgitated from two decades of failures.
The strength in the plan is that there was a real effort to find solutions — and to base it on empirical evidence. Ideology didn&#8217;t guide the plan; rather, it has been an effort in conflict resolution where all sides are consulted. Though future administrations may reflexively shun anything that came out of the Trump administration, intellectually honest statesmen may just be tempted to enter a secure room while nobody is watching, learn the plan, and try to build on some of the ideas presented therein.
To be brutally honest, the Trump plan will probably fail, because the Palestinian Authority — or any Palestinian leadership — cannot make peace at this juncture, and the generosity of Israeli governments to relinquish large swaths of its heartland has substantially contracted since then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s 97% withdrawal offer in 2001. In fact, it&#8217;s the opposite: Palestinian terror, in all its malicious forms — missiles, mortars, suicide bombers, bus bombs, random shootings, lynchings, kidnappings, and more — has convinced many Israelis that there is no peace partner.
If one were looking for an overnight revolution to change the Oslo paradigm to one that has the potential to work, it&#8217;s not going to happen. But should the Trump administration receive a second term, this plan, spearheaded by Kushner and Greenblatt, will become the beginning of a paradigm change that will facilitate a process for more realistic ideas to succeed.
The Trump plan will offer new proposals grounded in reality that will open the waters for new ideas and paradigms to be built upon its foundations — a clear and present danger to the Oslo framework. Metaphorically, the plan will become a group of torpedoes hitting the hull of aircraft carrier Oslo. And once that happens, and while that happens, the many ideas and paradigms which have been disparaged, shunned and kept at bay, will begin to occupy the waters of public discourse. This will lead to a more earnest and reality-based discussion of the ideas that can provide for a better future in the Middle East. When that happens, we can look back and say that it was the hard work of Kushner, Greenblatt, and company that first put this process in motion.
Gideon Israel is the founder and president of the <a href="https://www.jw-center.org">Jerusalem-Washington Center</a>, which works to strengthen the relationship between the U.S. and Israel.

Jason Greenblatt

ISRAEL: Jason Greenblatt Has Done Crucial Work For The Trump Administration

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>
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&#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;
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<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

Rashida Tlaib

On Wednesday, for the first time ever, an Israeli man won a gold medal at the Judo World Championships in Tokyo, but earlier, when he won his quarter-final match against an Egyptian judoka, the loser rejected judo etiquette and refused to shake the Israeli’s hand.
<a href="https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Sports/Israeli-judoka-Sagi-Muki-wins-gold-medal-at-World-Championship-599958">The Jerusalem Post</a> reported of Israeli judoka Sagi Muki, 27, “Muki showed impressive fighting abilities in Wednesday’s tournament, having beaten most of his opponents by ippon (the highest score a fighter can achieve in Japanese martial arts), including in a fight that lasted merely 25 seconds. In the quarterfinals, Muki faced Egyptian Mohamed Abdelaal, who refused to shake Muki’s hand after having lost to him.” <a href="https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/israeli-judo-star-makes-history-with-gold-medal-at-world-championships/?utm_medium=Social&amp;utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1567015589">The Times of Israel</a> noted, “Other Arab opponents have acted similarly after losing to Israelis, including Egyptian and United Arab Emirates judokas.”
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">The amazing Sagi Muki won Gold at Judo World Championships and his opponent wouldn&#8217;t even shake his hand..for shame.<a href="https://t.co/Ni2ACeOMiD">https://t.co/Ni2ACeOMiD</a> <a href="https://t.co/nZuGT3G1Eb">https://t.co/nZuGT3G1Eb</a>
— Anna Ahronheim (@AAhronheim) <a href="https://twitter.com/AAhronheim/status/1166687206813175809?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 28, 2019</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">The Israeli-Arab conflict explained in 16 seconds&#8230;. <a href="https://t.co/2NjLwe0O6f">pic.twitter.com/2NjLwe0O6f</a>
— SussexFriendsofIsrael (@SussexFriends) <a href="https://twitter.com/SussexFriends/status/1166699451630702593?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 28, 2019</a></blockquote>
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But after Muki defeated Belgium&#8217;s Matthias Casse in the final, the two men hugged:
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Israeli?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Israeli</a> Judoka Sagi Muki wins Gold at the World Championships in Tokyo. Mazal tov!!! <a href="https://t.co/MFwNdrnHeC">pic.twitter.com/MFwNdrnHeC</a>
— StandWithUs (@StandWithUs) <a href="https://twitter.com/StandWithUs/status/1166689567333855232?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 28, 2019</a></blockquote>
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An emotional Muki sang the Israeli anthem after he won:
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">WATCH-An emotional Sagi <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Muki?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Muki</a> and the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Hatikvah?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Hatikvah</a> after winning his first gold medal at the Judo World Championships <a href="https://t.co/ycFqQceDpw">pic.twitter.com/ycFqQceDpw</a>
— SussexFriendsofIsrael (@SussexFriends) <a href="https://twitter.com/SussexFriends/status/1166686456200519680?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 28, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Muki, “You’ve proven what I always say, that thanks to talented wonderful people such as yourself we turned Israel into a judo powerhouse.” Muki responded that it is a “privilege to represent Israel.”
The Jerusalem Post noted, “The biggest question coming into this tournament was whether Muki, ranked second in the world, would face Iranian judoka Saeid Mollaei in the finals, and whether the Iranian judoka would forfeit in order not to play an Israeli, as has happened in the past. But the Iranian lost the semifinals and did not get to face Muki.”
In August 2016, after he lost his first-round judo match at the Rio Olympics to Israel&#8217;s Or Sasson, <a href="http://www.intjudo.eu/upload/2016_07/26/146952304736955292/ijf_sen_wrl_2016_07_25.pdf">ranked fifth in the world</a>, Egyptian judo fighter Islam El Shehaby <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rio-olympics-2016-egypt-judo-fighter-islam-el-shehaby-refuses-to-shake-hands-israeli-or-sasson/">refused to shake Sasson’s hand</a>, prompting boos from the crowd. El Shehaby was automatically defeated when Sasson threw him twice with roughly a minute and a half remaining in the bout. El Shehaby lay flat on his back, then stood with Sasson in front of the referee. Sasson extended his hand, but El Shehaby backed away, shaking his head, prompting the referee to tell El Shehaby he should return to the mat and bow. Instead, El Shehaby simply nodded his head.
International Judo Federation spokesman Nicolas Messner tried to put the best spin on the situation, asserting, &#8220;This is already a big improvement that Arabic countries accept to (fight) Israel,&#8221; adding that shaking hands was optional, but bowing was mandatory. El Shehaby ultimately bowed, said Messner, but &#8220;his attitude will be reviewed after the games to see if any further action should be taken.&#8221;
Anti-Israel media in Egypt had urged the 25th ranked El Shahaby to avoid competing against Sasson; Mataz Matar, a TV host on Al-Sharq, warned, &#8220;My son watch out, don&#8217;t be fooled, or fool yourself thinking you will play with the Israeli athlete to defeat him and make Egypt happy … Egypt will cry; Egypt will be sad and you will be seen as a traitor and a normalizer in the eyes of your people.&#8221;
In October 2017, when Tal Flicker, the Israeli judo champion, won the gold medal in Abu Dhabi, which refused to play the Israeli national anthem or display the flag of Israel, and played the theme of the International Judo Federation instead, he decided he would protest in the only way left to him: he quietly sang the Israeli national anthem himself.
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">Wow. Israeli wins gold in Judo in Abu Dhabi, which refuses to show Israeli flag or play its national anthem. So he sings it quietly himself. <a href="https://t.co/EuJbcP4wTu">pic.twitter.com/EuJbcP4wTu</a>
— (((Yair Rosenberg))) (@Yair_Rosenberg) <a href="https://twitter.com/Yair_Rosenberg/status/923594619534958592?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 26, 2017</a></blockquote>
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Judo Championship

Israeli Wins World Judo Championship: Egyptian Quarter-Final Loser Refused To Shake Hands

Egypt

Earlier this week, a site run by the terrorist group Hezbollah in Beirut was attacked by what some people suspect was an Israeli drone. That attack, according to <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/world/israeli-drone-attack-targeted-iranian-guided-missile-technology-5680836b9">The Times</a>, targeted machinery used to mix high-grade propellant for precision missiles.
The Times reported, “Western intelligence sources said a storage facility near the building contained a high-end &#8216;industrial planetary mixer,&#8217; a machine that is necessary to mix solid-fuel propellants specifically for high-grade precision missiles … The high-end &#8216;industrial planetary mixer&#8217; said to have been targeted is a vital component in the machinery used to build a precision guided missile, which requires solid fuel. The item is thought to be manufactured in Iran.&#8221;
After the attack, Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, ranted, &#8220;I say to the Israeli army along the border, from tonight be ready and wait for us. What happened yesterday will not pass. Do not live, do not rest, do not be reassured, and do not bet for a single moment that Hezbollah will allow aggression of this kind.&#8221; Hezbollah claims it has 100,000 missiles ready to strike Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded, &#8220;I heard what Nasrallah said. I suggest to Nasrallah to calm down. He knows well that Israel knows how to defend itself and to pay back its enemies.&#8221;
The United States and Israel are not alone in labeling Hezbollah a terrorist organization; the Arab League, Argentina, Australia, Canada, the European Union, the Gulf Cooperation Council the Netherlands and Paraguay agree. Despite the fact that German intelligence says the number of members and supporters of the terrorist group Hezbollah has increased in Germany, Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/48034/germanys-merkel-stubbornly-refuses-name-hezbollah-hank-berrien">has refused</a> to name Hezbollah a terrorist group. A German Intelligence report stated, &#8220;Hezbollah denies the right of existence of the State of Israel and fights it with terrorist means. In Germany, the followers of Hezbollah maintain organizational and ideological and cohesion in local mosques associations that are financed primarily by donations. Hezbollah is against the idea of ​​international understanding and the peaceful coexistence of peoples.&#8221;
In 1983, 241 U.S. service personnel, including 220 Marines, were murdered in a terrorist attack at a Marine compound in Beirut, the deadliest attack against American Marines since the battle over Iwo Jima near the end of World War II. As <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2013/06/13/world/meast/beirut-marine-barracks-bombing-fast-facts/index.html">CNN reported</a>, &#8220;The bombing was traced to Hezbollah.&#8221; In May 2003, a U.S. federal judge ruled that the terrorist group Hezbollah carried out the attack directed by the Iranian government.
The <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-men-arrested-terrorist-activities-behalf-hizballahs-islamic-jihad-organization">DOJ has noted</a>:
<blockquote>Hezbollah is a Lebanon-based Shia Islamic organization with political, social, and terrorist components. … Since Hezbollah’s formation, the organization has been responsible for numerous terrorist attacks that have killed hundreds, including U.S. citizens and military personnel. In 1997, the U.S. Department of State designated Hezbollah a Foreign Terrorist Organization, pursuant to Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, and it remains so designated today. …
In 2010, State Department officials described Hezbollah as the most technically capable terrorist group in the world, and a continued security threat to the U.S. The Islamic Jihad Organization (&#8220;IJO&#8221;), which is also known as the External Security Organization and &#8220;910,&#8221; is a component of Hezbollah responsible for the planning and coordination of intelligence, counterintelligence, and terrorist activities on behalf of Hezbollah outside of Lebanon.</blockquote>

Nasrallah

Report: Israel Drone Hit Hezbollah Site Holding Machinery For Precision Missiles

Terrorism

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