* This is a follow-up to last week’s dispatch:
ADL and Trump unite to condemn Obama for anti-Israel move
CONTENTS
1. Obama and Kerry dismay Israeli and American moderates
2. “More Catholic than the Pope”
3. Incoming Senate Democratic leader: “Kerry has emboldened extremists”
4. “Kerry … seems disconnected from reality” (ADL statement)
5. Alan Dershowitz: “Obama is one of the worst foreign policy presidents ever”
6. New Zealand, Ukraine reveal they were pressed by Obama to vote against Israel
7. Bloomberg news agency: “Move the US embassy to Jerusalem now to save peace”
8. “A vote against peace” (Editorial, The Times of London)
9. “UN must be an honest broker, not bash Israel” (Editorial, London Daily Telegraph)
10. “Obama’s Fitting Finish” (Wall Street Journal)
11. It will be “double the trouble” now to make peace (Los Angeles Times)
12. “Kerry will have blood on his hands” (Washington Examiner)
OBAMA AND KERRY DISMAY ISRAELI AND AMERICAN MODERATES
[Note by Tom Gross]
There has been widespread criticism, in both the American and European media, of Barack Obama and John Kerry’s latest maneuverings against Israel. For space reasons I attach only a few extracts and comments below.
On the face of it, to some people, Obama and Kerry’s actions may seem benign or even helpful for peace -- which is why some European diplomats have welcomed them. The reality is that they are more likely to embolden not only Palestinian rejectionists (the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, for example, welcomed Obama’s actions) but also Israeli right-wing ones too, by making a two state solution harder to achieve, which is why there is so much dismay about the foolishness of Obama’s actions among many American and Israeli moderates of both left and right.
Dating back to the aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War, and reflected in the wording of the UN resolution that followed it, the entire idea of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process was based on the principle of changed borders and land swaps so that Israel would not have to return to what Abba Eban described as Israel’s indefensible “Auschwitz borders”.
In various negotiations over recent decades, Palestinian negotiators had already agreed to such land swaps.
That principle is now being undone by Obama and Kerry.
As a piece in The Los Angeles Times today (extracts below) points out: “Since Palestinian leaders already have trouble justifying to their people the abandonment of territorial claims to the Jewish quarter in Jerusalem, and so forth, they will have double the trouble now that the United States has endorsed these demands. What Palestinian leader can sign away territory to which Washington and the Security Council have declared Israelis have no legitimate claim?”
With their one-sided assault on Israel, Obama and Kerry seem to care little about Israel’s very real security concerns.
Centrist Israeli journalist David Horovitz writes in The Times of Israel today: “We left south Lebanon. Hezbollah took over. We left Gaza. Now it’s ruled by Hamas. When Secretary Kerry expresses his ‘total confidence’ that Israel’s security requirements in the West Bank can be met via sophisticated multi-layered border defenses, he quite simply loses Israel.”
“MORE CATHOLIC THAN THE POPE”
One senior former U.S. diplomat (a Catholic) wrote in private:
“That was kind of an odd, disjointed speech by Secretary of State John Kerry, basically a big exercise in virtue signaling, ‘more Catholic than the Pope or more Royal than the King’ – divorced from the greater geopolitical reality in the region, much of it caused by an aggressive Iran emboldened by the current Administration’s disastrous policies. Given the reality that he will be gone in three weeks, it just seemed like a very vain, self-involved exercise in revisionism. I almost wondered if he is doing this for his memoirs or hoping for a special envoy job at the UN or Quartet. But America’s senior diplomat giving a 74 minute speech on Israeli settlements - whatever you think about them - as he heads out the door and the world is on fire (often because of the incompetence of US foreign policy) seems more than a bit self-indulgent.”
Obama and Kerry’s actions are “a gift to Netanyahu, who can now more easily argue to Israelis that the bad relationship with America these last eight years wasn’t his fault,” adds the American writer Jonah Goldberg.
INCOMING SENATE DEMOCRATIC LEADER: “KERRY HAS EMBOLDENED EXTREMISTS”
Senior Democrats, having criticized Obama last week for the UN vote, yesterday slammed Secretary of State John Kerry for his speech.
Incoming Senate Democratic leader, Senator Chuck Schumer said: “While he may not have intended it, I fear Secretary Kerry, in his speech and action at the UN, has emboldened extremists on both sides.”
Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland, the most senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said he would now be “exploring congressional action that can mitigate the negative implications” of Obama’s policies against Israel.
Representative Eliot Engel, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called Kerry’s speech “gratuitous” and “wrong.” “There doesn’t seem any purpose to this other than to embarrass Israel. It just pained me to watch it,” he said.
Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said: “Secretary Kerry’s speech today was at best a pointless tirade in the waning days of an outgoing administration. At worst, it was another dangerous outburst that will further Israel’s diplomatic isolation and embolden its enemies.”
ADL: “KERRY … SEEMS DISCONNECTED FROM REALITY”
Moderate and centre-left organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Jewish Committee also expressed dismay at Kerry’s speech.
The ADL, led by former Obama loyalist Jonathan Greenblatt, said: “We are deeply disappointed by elements of Kerry’s speech. Despite Secretary Kerry’s explanation, the U.S. abstention has the potential to set in motion many initiatives that delegitimize and demonize Israel, rather than advancing the peace process.
“Kerry’s remarks … seem to be disconnected from reality that there are two parties involved in this process, both of whom will need to make difficult choices to resolve the conflict.
“The speech and the resolution will strengthen the belief among Israelis – even those most supportive of negotiations – that the Palestinian leadership would prefer symbolic protest and unilateral measures rather than the hard work and difficult choices associated with direct negotiations with Israel. Further, they reinforce the unhelpful perception that the international community is dictating terms to Israel with the demands of the Palestinians.
“As an organization committed to a two-state solution, we want to see trust and confidence nurtured among the parties so that we can achieve this outcome.
“However Kerry’s speech – combined with the recent UNSC abstention – only pushes those prospects farther out. It is a truly upsetting final note from this administration on this issue of critical importance.”
ALAN DERSHOWITZ: “OBAMA IS ONE OF THE WORST FOREIGN POLICY PRESIDENTS EVER”
Many other liberals have also criticized Obama.
For example, Alan Dershowitz, in this video clip, says “Obama stabbed Israel in the back”.
NEW ZEALAND AND UKRAINE REVEAL THEY WERE LEANED ON BY OBAMA TO VOTE AGAINST ISRAEL
There are also now many press revelations that Obama personally “cooked up” the vote against Israel.
The New Zealand Herald reports that New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully was leaned on by John Kerry last month to sponsor the anti-Israel resolution at the UN Security Council.
The Ukrainian media report that U.S. Vice President Joe Biden personally called Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, and persuaded (or threatened) him to change Ukraine’s vote on the UN resolution to a “yes.”
Obama is said to have needed a 14-0 vote to justify “the theatre” of its own abstention, when in fact the whole vote against Israel was orchestrated by Obama and his aides.
BLOOMBERG NEWS AGENCY: “MOVE THE US EMBASSY TO JERUSALEM NOW TO SAVE PEACE”
In an editorial titled “Obama’s Betrayal of Israel at the UN Must Not Stand”, the Bloomberg news agency writes:
“Obama’s ill-advised decision to order the U.S. to abstain on a United Nations resolution… breaks with past U.S. policy, undermines a vital ally and sets back the cause of Middle East peace….
“If the Palestinians want a lasting peace based on a two-state solution, they must accept that Israel, not the UN or the “international community,” is their negotiating partner. That means negotiating in good faith, not embracing empty resolutions that ignore agreements they have already reached to redraw Israel’s borders…
“Fortunately, the bipartisan uproar sparked by Obama’s UN decision provides an opportunity for Democrats and Republicans to rally around a more constructive policy. They should start by agreeing to President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem -- a step envisioned but never taken by presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. That would provide a powerful reaffirmation to Israel –- a nation born after the slaughter of six million Jews, and under siege since its birth -- of the U.S.’s enduring commitment, and to the world of Israel’s right to exist. That reaffirmation, in turn, is essential in providing Israel with the confidence to move ahead with a two-state solution.”
“A VOTE AGAINST PEACE”
In its lead editorial (December 27, 2016), titled “A vote against peace,” The Times of London writes:
“The vote will embolden Palestinian hardliners, and enemies of Israel in the region and beyond. Within Israel it will force Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu further to the right as he shores up his coalition among pro-settler parties in the Knesset. The two-state solution is the most likely victim…
“The vote wrong-footed Israel, for which it has a right to feel aggrieved. As Mr Netanyahu implied, America’s abstention was hardly the act of an ally.”
“UN MUST BE AN HONEST BROKER, NOT BASH ISRAEL”
In its lead editorial, December 28, 2016, titled “UN must be an honest broker, not bash Israel,” the (London) Daily Telegraph writes:
The UN vote will do nothing to advance the cause of the Palestinians while making a peaceful settlement in the region even harder to achieve.
The fact that the Americans abstained when in the past it could be relied upon to use its Security Council veto was a deliberately provocative act by the outgoing administration of President Barack Obama – who has signally failed to achieve any of the fulsome foreign policy objectives he set himself on taking office in 2009.
His speech that year in Cairo, grandly titled “A New Beginning”, promised much but – like much of his presidency – delivered little. The power of rhetoric could not overcome the intractable problems that beset the region. The Middle East has been in turmoil ever since…
During Ban Ki-moon’s tenure as UN secretary-general, there have been over 200 resolutions condemning Israel and only eight critical of Syria…
“IN THE LIST OF LOW POINTS IN U.S. FOREIGN POLICY, THE BETRAYAL OF ISRAEL RANKS HIGH”
Bret Stephens, writes in The Wall Street Journal (Dec. 27, 2016):
“Obama’s decision to abstain from, and therefore allow, last week’s vote to censure Israel at the U.N. Security Council is a fitting capstone for what’s left of his foreign policy. Strategic half-measures, underhanded tactics and moralizing gestures have been the president’s style from the beginning. Israelis aren’t the only people to feel betrayed by the results.
Also betrayed: Iranians, whose 2009 Green Revolution in heroic protest of a stolen election Mr. Obama conspicuously failed to endorse for fear of offending the ruling theocracy.
Iraqis, who were assured of a diplomatic surge to consolidate the gains of the military surge…
Syrians, whose initially peaceful uprising against anti-American dictator Bashar Assad Mr. Obama refused to embrace, and whose initially moderate-led uprising Mr. Obama failed to support, and whose sarin- and chlorine-gassed children Mr. Obama refused to rescue…
Most betrayed: Americans. Obama promised a responsible end to the war in Iraq. We are again fighting in Iraq. He promised victory in Afghanistan. The Taliban are winning. He promised a reset with Russia. We are enemies again. He promised the containment of Iran. We are witnessing its ascendancy. He promised a world free of nuclear weapons. We are stumbling into another age of nuclear proliferation. He promised al Qaeda on a path to defeat. Jihad has never been so rampant…
“IT WILL BE DOUBLE THE TROUBLE NOW TO MAKE PEACE”
Gregg Roman writes in today’s Los Angeles Times (Dec. 29, 2016)
… The first assumption Kerry outlined in his speech, is that a freeze on Israeli settlement growth makes it easier for Palestinian leaders to make painful compromises at the negotiating table. It supposedly does this by easing Palestinian suspicions that Israel either won’t make major territorial concessions, or won’t implement these concessions once made.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put this assumption to the test in November 2009 when he imposed a 10-month moratorium on new housing construction (East Jerusalem excepted) at the urging of the Obama administration.
What happened? Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas refused to return to talks until the very end of the moratorium and remained every bit as intransigent as before.
The main impediment to Palestinian compromise is not Palestinian suspicion; it is the fundamental unwillingness of Palestinian leaders across the spectrum to accept the existence of a Jewish state…
The Obama administration’s second assumption is that pressure from the international community or from the United States will bring about this supposedly desirable settlement freeze.
However, by collapsing the distinction between East Jerusalem and bustling Israeli towns just inside the West Bank – which no major Israeli political party will contemplate abandoning – and the remaining settlements, most of which Israelis are willing to give up, this policy does the opposite…
Since Palestinian leaders already have trouble justifying to their people the abandonment of territorial claims to Ma’ale Adumim, the Jewish quarter in Jerusalem, and so forth, they will have double the trouble now that the United States has endorsed these demands. What Palestinian leader can sign away territory to which Washington and the Security Council have declared Israelis have no legitimate claim? …
“KERRY WILL HAVE BLOOD ON HIS HANDS”
Michael Rubin writes in the Washington Examiner:
“… It is deeply ironic that Kerry seeks to make peace between Israel and Arabs when ties have never been better between Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia and the Gulf Cooperation Council states despite the U.S. rather than because of it. What Obama and Kerry have achieved is manna for rejectionists and a huge setback for those who seek to build upon diplomatic precedent. Kerry’s ban on settlements, if confirmed by the United Nations, will be the death blow to diplomacy and a guarantee that unilateral actions determine the future of the region. Kerry will have blood on his hands.”
(His full piece is here.)
***
(Many of those quoted are subscribers to this list.)
* Please “like” these dispatches on Facebook here www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia, where you can also find other items that are not in these dispatches.
RARE HARMONY IN THE MIDDLE EAST
[Note by Tom Gross]
As I have reported before, the royal family of Bahrain stand out among other Gulf leaders for their outwardly friendly attitudes towards Jews and Judaism.
This year, for the first time in four decades, Hannukah and Christmas coincide. And on Saturday evening the King of Bahrain, Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, hosted a menorah (candle-lighting) ceremony. It was the second year in a row that he hosted a Hannukah event, but this year orthodox Jews and traditionally dressed Gulf Muslims danced joyfully together to Jewish songs. Many of the Jews were guests from France but local Bahraini Jews also joined the celebrations at the invitation of the king.
You can watch a video here:
***
Only four dozen Jews remain in Bahrain, which has a population of almost 1.5 million. 1,500 Jews lived in Bahrain until 1948 when, like Jews throughout the Arab world, most fled or left.
One of remaining Jews, Houda Ezra Ebrahim Nonoo, is a female lawyer and former MP who became the first Jew and the first woman to serve as Bahraini Ambassador to the U.S., from 2008-2010. She is a subscriber to this email list.
I wrote about her here:
Bahrain set to appoint Jewish woman as its ambassador to the U.S. (& Yemeni girl, 8, gets divorced) (April 29, 2008)
***
See also last year’s dispatch on Bahrain:
King of Bahrain hosts Chanukah celebration, while Obama compares Chanukah to Star Wars movie (December 11, 2015)
* You can also find other items that are not in these dispatches if you “like” this page on Facebook www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia
* “Obama breaks with decades of U.S. policy to declare Western Wall ‘Occupied Territory’ at the UN.”
* This isn’t about settlement policy. This is about totally biased resolutions that increase Palestinian intransigence and make peace far less likely.
ADL AND TRUMP UNITE TO CONDEMN OBAMA FOR ANTI-ISRAEL MOVE
[Note by Tom Gross]
The left-leaning Anti-Defamation League (ADL), run by a former Obama aide and Obama loyalist Jonathan Greenblatt, within the last few minutes has issued a fierce attack on President Obama for his failure to veto a highly biased UN resolution passed against Israel this afternoon.
“We are outraged over the U.S. failure to veto this biased and unconstructive UNSC resolution on Israel,” said Greenblatt. “This resolution will do little to renew peace efforts between Israel and the Palestinians. It will only encourage further Palestinian intransigence vis-à-vis direct negotiations with Israel in favor of unilateral, one-sided initiatives.”
And within 5 minutes of the anti-Israel UN resolution today, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump tweeted: “As to the U.N., things will be different after Jan. 20.”
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/812390964740427776
“FOR SEAN PENN, MAYBE”
The ADL press release is below. But before that is a piece for Tablet magazine by Lee Smith which went online a short time ago.
In it, Smith writes:
“The Obama Administration’s abstention isn’t just about Israel or bilateral relations with a vital partner in a key region. It’s also about the prestige of the United States and its power – the power, for instance, undergirding international institutions like the United Nations. Consider how the Obama Administration has used the UN the last several years – to legalize the nuclear program of Iran, a state sponsor of terror, and make it illegal for Jews to build in their historical homeland. In Turtle Bay, the White House partners with sclerotic socialist kleptocracies like Venezuela in order to punish allies, like Israel. Is this American moral leadership? For Sean Penn, maybe...”
“What matters is dismantling the alliance system that has kept America and much of the rest of the world secure in favor of a new system of the President’s own devising, in which the U.S. partners with Iran and stands idly by while 500,000 civilians are massacred in Syria, and Russia and China launch cyber-attacks targeting key U.S. institutions without fear of retribution or reprisal – actions that are reserved only for America’s friends.”
OBAMA BREAKS WITH DECADES OF U.S. POLICY TO DECLARE WESTERN WALL ‘OCCUPIED TERRITORY’ AT THE UN
Obama Breaks With Decades of U.S. Policy to Declare Western Wall ‘Occupied Territory’ at the UN
The lame-duck president is dismantling the alliance system that has kept America and much of the rest of the world secure
By Lee Smith
Tablet
December 23, 2016
This afternoon several non-permanent members of the UN Security Council will submit a resolution that declares all settlements illegal under international law and demands that the country cease construction in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and other territories captured in the 1967 Middle East war. There is nothing new about such wildly unbalanced resolutions at the UN, of course – except this time, the Obama Administration will reportedly refrain from using the U.S. veto and will rather abstain from the vote, breaking with decades of American statesmanship that has protected its strategic Middle East ally from the legal consequences of UN rhetoric.
The resolution was authored by Egypt, which shelved the draft after the Netanyahu government reached out to the transition team of President-elect Donald Trump, which then pressured Cairo to drop the resolution. Venezuela, Malaysia, Senegal, and New Zealand say that if Egypt doesn’t push forward, they will. The resolution will permanently enshrine as a matter of international law that the Western Wall is “occupied Palestinian territory,” and that Jews building homes in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem is illegal. One prominent member of the pro-Israel community in Washington called the resolution “a nuclear bomb.”
The Obama Administration is already briefing friendly press organizations that they’re showing no animus toward the Jewish state in refusing to veto the resolution. Rather, it’s “tough love”: for an Israel that seems not to have the will or vision to take chances for peace.
That’s not how Israel sees it. As a senior Israeli official in Jerusalem told Tablet: “President Obama and Secretary Kerry are behind this shameful move against Israel at the UN. The US administration secretly cooked up with the Palestinians an extreme anti Israeli resolution behind Israel’s back which would be a tailwind for terror and boycotts and effectively make the Western Wall occupied Palestinian territory. President Obama could declare his willingness to veto this resolution in an instant but instead is pushing it. This is an abandonment of Israel which breaks decades of US policy of protecting Israel at the UN and undermines the prospects of working with the next administration of advancing peace.”
In a sense, the UN vote is a perfect bookend to Obama’s Presidency. A man who came to office promising to put “daylight” between the United States and Israel, has done exactly that by breaking with decades of American policy. It is also seeking – contrary to established tradition and practice, which strictly prohibit such lame-duck actions – to tie the hands of the next White House, which has already made its pro-Israel posture clear.
No doubt that many of those critical of the U.S.-Israel relationship will defend and applaud the administration’s action, even as the effects of the resolution are obscene. So what if it enshrines in international law the fact that Jews can’t build homes or have sovereign access to their holy sites in Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish people for more than 3000 years? Israel, as Kerry said, is too prosperous to care about peace with the Palestinians. Maybe some hardship will shake some sense into the Jewish State – which after all, could easily have made a just and secure peace with the Palestinian leadership at any time over the past two decades, if that’s what it wanted to do. Accounts to the contrary, from Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, say, or left-wing Israeli politicians like former Prime Minister Ehud Barak and the late Shimon Peres, are simply propaganda generated by the pro-Israel Lobby, whose wings the President has thankfully clipped.
But the Obama Administration’s abstention isn’t just about Israel or bilateral relations with a vital partner in a key region. It’s also about the prestige of the United States and its power – the power, for instance, undergirding international institutions like the United Nations. Consider how the Obama Administration has used the UN the last several years – to legalize the nuclear program of Iran, a state sponsor of terror, and make it illegal for Jews to build in their historical homeland. In Turtle Bay, the White House partners with sclerotic socialist kleptocracies like Venezuela in order to punish allies, like Israel. Is this American moral leadership? For Sean Penn, maybe.
Israel is likely to profess not to care that much about the actions of a lame-duck President in a forum that has long been famous for its antipathy to the Jewish State. But in private, Israeli officials are said to be panicking at the fresh gust of wind that the President Obama has blown into the sails of the BDS movement, especially in Europe.
Also panicking are Democratic members of Congress whose re-election prospects in 2018 may have just been sacrificed by the departing leader of their Party. Democratic Senator and reputed Presidential hopeful Sherrod Brown of Ohio, a J Street favorite who is up for re-election in 2018 in a state that Donald Trump won by a 9 percent margin, showed the extent of his own distress on Friday by issuing a statement opposing a U.S. abstention. That statement read in part: “Earlier this fall I joined Senate colleagues urging the Administration to uphold its position opposing one-sided resolutions at the U.N. Security Council regarding Israel. Any lasting peace must be negotiated between Israelis and Palestinians, not imposed by the international community.”
Whether issuing such statements will be enough to keep swing-state Jewish voters and other pro-Israel Democrats in line in 2018 remains to be seen – but clearly, the health of the Democratic Party, which lost over 1000 officeholders during Obama’s tenure, is hardly the first thing on the President’s mind, either. What matters is dismantling the alliance system that has kept America and much of the rest of the world secure in favor of a new system of the President’s own devising, in which the U.S. partners with Iran and stands idly by while 500,000 civilians are massacred in Syria, and Russia and China launch cyber-attacks targeting key U.S. institutions without fear of retribution or reprisal – actions that are reserved only for America’s friends.
ADL CONDEMNS U.S. FAILURE TO VETO BIASED SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION AGAINST ISRAEL
http://www.adl.org/press-center/press-releases/united-nations/adl-condemns-us-failure-vet-un-sec-council-resolution-israel.html
ADL Condemns U.S. Failure to Veto Biased Security Council Resolution Against Israel
New York, NY, December 23, 2016 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today condemned the passage of a United Nations Security Council resolution that holds Israel and its settlement policy “in the West Bank and East Jerusalem” responsible for the lack of progress on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. ADL stated that it was outraged with the U.S. failure to veto this “biased and unconstructive” resolution, which only further complicates efforts to renew trust and restart peace efforts between Israel and the Palestinians.
The resolution, which initially had been introduced and then postponed by Egypt, was reintroduced today by New Zealand, Malaysia, Venezuela and Senegal. It effectively blames the current impasse on Israel, pointing out specific Israeli policies as responsible for “imperiling the two-State solution” while only referring to other issues, including terrorism and violence, in a generic, unspecific manner. The resolution passed with a vote of 14-0, with the U.S. abstaining.
Jonathan A. Greenblatt, ADL CEO, issued the following statement:
We are outraged over the U.S. failure to veto this biased and unconstructive UNSC resolution on Israel. This resolution will do little to renew peace efforts between Israel and the Palestinians. It will only encourage further Palestinian intransigence vis-à-vis direct negotiations with Israel in favor of unilateral, one-sided initiatives.
We know that Israeli settlement activity is of concern to the U.S. and many members of the international community and are pleased that Ambassador Samantha Power recognized the centrality of other issues obstructing the peace process, including Palestinian incitement and a complete unwillingness to engage in bilateral negotiations. However, we are incredibly disappointed that the U.S. still chose not to exercise its veto power and stop this resolution at the Security Council.
The Obama Administration repeatedly stated that a solution to the conflict cannot be imposed on the parties but must be achieved directly by the parties themselves. It is deeply troubling that this biased resolution appears to be the final word of the Administration on this issue.
ADL previously called on the U.S. to veto the Egyptian resolution, and made a similar request in a letter to Ambassador Power. In November, ADL urged U.S. restraint at expected action at the Security Council.
* You can also find other items that are not in these dispatches if you “like” this page on Facebook www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia
* Senior British political figure: “So let’s celebrate the centenary of the Balfour Declaration by moving our embassy to Jerusalem next year and inviting Her Majesty to open it. What are we afraid of? Earning the enmity of those who hate Israel? To my mind, there could be no greater compliment.”
David Friedman, the choice of Donald Trump to be the next ambassador to Israel, with the president-elect
“UK SHOULD MOVING ITS EMBASSY TO JERUSALEM AND THE QUEEN SHOULD OPEN IT”
[Note by Tom Gross]
I attach an article below from this morning’s Times of London by Michael Gove.
In it, Gove becomes (to the best of my knowledge) the first senior non-Jewish British politician to call for the British embassy in Israel to be moved from Tel Aviv to Israel’s capital, Jerusalem.
By coincidence, Gove’s article went online a couple of hours before Donald Trump announced the appointment of David Friedman as the next U.S. ambassador to Israel. Friedman, along with Trump and other senior Trump advisors, have called on the U.S. to move its embassy to Jerusalem soon, much to the annoyance of left-wingers in the American media.
(The day after Trump won the election, I wrote here about some background on who David Friedman is, and said he was a likely next U.S. ambassador to Israel.)
The New York Times, true to form, has today immediately published a thoroughly one-sided attack on Friedman, which is being widely shared on social media this morning.
I don’t agree with all Friedman’s positions but the fact that he is fluent in the language of the country where he will be ambassador and knows Israeli society is surely a positive factor.
Many of Barack Obama’s ambassadors, for example, have been persons rewarded with ambassadorships for fundraising for Obama’s campaigns despite the fact they often had little connection to, or knowledge of, the countries they were sent to.
THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX
And over 20 years of “peace processing” have achieved very little in terms of peaceful relations between Israelis and Palestinians (in fact relations are in many ways worse than in pre-Oslo days). So thinking outside of the box, as Trump and Friedman are likely to do, will not necessarily produce worse results than the professional peace negotiators such as John Kerry.
And although at first trying something different might worry some, a different approach may indeed yield positive results, especially in a region where being strong is respected. A proper recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital may finally force the Palestinian leadership to compromise and accept the two-state offers they have rejected from Israeli prime ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert (and behind the scenes from aides to Benjamin Netanyahu too) which included parts of east Jerusalem as part of Palestine.
The American embassy could be moved quite quickly to Jerusalem by housing it in the U.S. consulate building in west Jerusalem before constructing a more permanent embassy on the site that U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz purchased in Talpiot (in west Jerusalem) on behalf of the U.S. government for this purpose during the Reagan Administration.
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(Michael Gove is a subscriber to this email list and a long-standing friend with whom I sometimes meet to discuss international affairs including the Middle East and Brexit -- although we differ on Brexit.)
THERESA MAY: WE SHALL MARK THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BALFOUR DECLARATION WITH PRIDE
After Gove’s article I attach the transcript of a speech that British prime minister Theresa May gave about Israel in London earlier this week.
In it, she said that the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, on November 2, 1917, is “an anniversary we will be marking with pride” and that “It is one of the most important letters in history”.
She lavishes praise on Israel’s achievements but adds (correctly of course) that “no-one is saying the path has been perfect – or that many problems do not remain.”
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See also:
Is it really the position of the White House that Rabin and Peres are not buried in Israel?
COWBOY IN ACTION. AMERICA. 2016.
On a lighter note, away from the Middle East, here is a short news clip of a cowboy making a citizen’s arrest of a thief, using his lasso outside Walmart.
“ONCE JEWS HAD TO LIVE IN THE GHETTO, NOW THEY CANNOT LIVE IN THEIR HISTORIC HOME”
Left’s hatred of Israel is racism in disguise
Critics of the Jewish state cannot bear the fact that it is a beacon of western values in a sea of tyranny and despotism
By Michael Gove
The Times (of London)
December 16 2016
How do you know if someone’s an anti-Semite? They don’t all perform stiff-arm salutes for the camera and offer interesting 140-character thoughts about race theory on Twitter. Although those are helpful clues, as the American alt-right, Hezbollah and Iran’s leadership prove.
But anti-Semitism isn’t a prejudice restricted to the likes of Richard Spencer, Hassan Nasrallah and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. As befits the world’s oldest and most durable hatred, it has many more adherents and has taken many different forms.
In medieval times, when individuals made sense of their world through the prism of faith, anti-Semitism was a religious prejudice. In the 19th and early 20th centuries – the age of Darwinism – anti-Semitism clothed itself in the white coat of the scientist. Biological metaphors were deployed to modernise hate. The Jews were carriers of “racial contamination” who had to be eliminated as a pathological threat to humanity’s future.
That belief led to history’s greatest crime. The extermination of six million powered by hatred of one thing – Jewish identity. It should have been the case that anti-Semitism died in the furnaces of the Holocaust. But the hatred survived. And, like a virus, mutated.
Anti-Semitism has moved from hatred of Jews on religious or racial grounds to hostility towards the proudest expression of Jewish identity we now have – the Jewish state.
No other democracy is on the receiving end of a campaign calling for its people to be shunned and their labour to be blacklisted. The Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions movement is a growing force on our streets and campuses. Its campaigners argue that we should ignore ideas from Jewish thinkers if those thinkers come from Israel and treat Jewish commerce as a criminal enterprise if that business is carried on in Israel.
This is anti-Semitism, impure and simple. It is the latest recrudescence of the age-old demand that the Jew can only live on terms set by others. Once Jews had to live in the ghetto, now they cannot live in their historic home.
It is to this country’s eternal credit that we rejected centuries of prejudice one hundred years ago and pledged to extend to the Jewish people the rights enjoyed by Germans and Italians, Japanese and Mexicans – the right to a land they could call their own. The Balfour Declaration in 1917 was followed in 1948 with the creation of the state of Israel. Since then, that state’s success has been near miraculous.
No other democracy is on the receiving end of a campaign calling for its people to be shunned and their labour to be blacklisted
Surrounded by enemies who sought to strangle it at birth, continually threatened by war and constantly under terrorist attack, a nation scarcely the size of Wales with no natural resources, half of whose territory is desert, has become a flourishing democracy, a centre of scientific innovation, one of the world’s major providers of international humanitarian relief and the only state from Casablanca to Kabul with a free press, free judiciary, a flourishing free enterprise economy and freedom for people of every sexual orientation to live and love as they wish.
And that is the reason it attracts such hostility. Not because of what Israel does. But because of what it is.
For those on the left addicted to guilt-tripping and grievance-mongering, who believe that poverty is a consequence of western exploitation and that bourgeois ethics lead to oppression, the existence of a political entity that is a runaway success precisely because it is a bourgeois-minded, capitalist-fuelled, western-oriented nation state is just too much to bear. Their ideological prejudices have collided with a stubborn, undeniable, fact.
So what do they do? Keep the prejudices, of course, and try to get rid of the fact. Try to undermine, delegitimise and reduce support for Israel. Make it the only country in the world whose right to exist is called continually into question. Make the belief in that state’s survival, Zionism, a dirty word. Denounce, as the NUS president has, a British university for being a “Zionist outpost”. And instead call organisations pledged to eliminate Israel such as Hezbollah and Hamas “friends”, as Jeremy Corbyn has.
Antizionism is not a brave anti-colonial and anti-racist stance, it is simply anti-Semitism minding its manners so it can sit in a seminar room. And as such it deserves to be called out, confronted and opposed.
Because the fate of the Jewish people, and the survival of the Jewish state, are critical tests for all of us. The darkest forces of our time – Islamic State, the Iranian leaders masterminding mass murder in Aleppo – are united by one thing above all: their hatred of the Jewish people and their home. Faced with such implacable hatred, and knowing where it has always led, we should not allow anti-Semitism any space to advance, or incubate.
Instead we should show we’re not going to be intimidated by those who want to treat Israel as a second-class state, we’re not going to indulge the anti-Semitic impulse to apply the double standard. Israel is the only state where we don’t locate our embassy in the nation’s capital and the only ally the Foreign Office has refused to let the Queen visit. So let’s celebrate the centenary of the Balfour Declaration by moving our embassy to Jerusalem next year and inviting Her Majesty to open it. What are we afraid of? Earning the enmity of those who hate Israel? To my mind, there could be no greater compliment.
SPEECH IN LONDON BY BRITISH PRIME MINISTER THERESA MAY
December 12, 2016
“These Conservative Friends of Israel lunches are always special.
But this year feels extra special. Not only is this CFI’s biggest ever lunch, with over 800 people and over 200 Parliamentarians.
It is the first time that I have come here as Prime Minister and Leader of the Conservative Party.
BALFOUR DECLARATION
And it is a special time, for we are entering the centenary year of the Balfour Declaration.
On the 2nd of November 1917, the then Foreign Secretary – a Conservative Foreign Secretary – Arthur James Balfour wrote:
“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
It is one of the most important letters in history.
It demonstrates Britain’s vital role in creating a homeland for the Jewish people.
And it is an anniversary we will be marking with pride.
VISITING
Born of that letter, and the efforts of so many people, is a remarkable country.
No-one is saying the path has been perfect – or that many problems do not remain.
Of course, people are correct when they say that securing the rights of Palestinians and Palestinian statehood have not yet been achieved.
But we know they can be achieved. We in Britain stand very firmly for a two-state solution. And we know that the way to achieve that is for the two sides to sit down together, without preconditions, and work towards that lasting solution for all their people.
None of this detracts from the fact that we have, in Israel, a thriving democracy, a beacon of tolerance, an engine of enterprise and an example to the rest of the world for overcoming adversity and defying disadvantages.
As most of us here know – and as I realised during my visit in 2014 – seeing is believing.
For it is only when you walk through Jerusalem or Tel Aviv that you see a country where people of all religions and sexualities are free and equal in the eyes of the law.
It is only when you travel across the country that you realise it is only the size of Wales – and appreciate even more the impact it has on the world.
It is only when you meet our partners in eradicating modern slavery – one of the main reasons I visited in 2014 – that you see a country committed to tackling some of the world’s most heinous practices.
And it is only when you witness Israel’s vulnerability that you see the constant danger Israelis face, as I did during my visit, when the bodies of the murdered teenagers, Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Shaer and Eyal Yifrah, were discovered.
So seeing isn’t just believing; it is understanding, acknowledging and appreciating.
That is why I’m so pleased that CFI has already taken 34 of the 74 Conservative MPs elected in 2015 to Israel.
We saw in that video what a powerful experience it can be. We are so grateful to the people in this room for making it happen – but, of course, there is more to do.
OUR GLOBAL FUTURE
We meet at a moment of great change for our country. In the wake of the referendum, Britain is forging a new role for itself on the world stage – open, outward-looking, optimistic.
Israel will be crucial to us as we do that. Because I believe our two countries have a great deal in common.
As the Ambassador Mark Regev said, we have common values; we work together, on health, counter-terrorism, cyber security, technology; and we can help each other achieve our aims.
ECONOMIC (TRADE AND INVESTMENT)
First, we both want to take maximum advantage of trade and investment opportunities, because we know enterprise is the key to our countries’ prosperity.
Our economic relationship is already strong.
The UK is Israel’s second-largest trading partner.
We are its number-one destination for investment in Europe, with more than 300 Israeli companies operating here.
And last year saw our countries’ biggest-ever business deal, worth over £1 billion, when Israeli airline El Al decided to use Rolls Royce engines in its new aircraft.
We should celebrate that, we should build on that – and we should condemn any attempt to undermine that through boycotts.
I couldn’t be clearer: the boycotts, divestment and sanctions movement is wrong, it is unacceptable, and this party and this government will have no truck with those who subscribe to it.
Our focus is the opposite – on taking our trading and investing relationship with Israel to the next level.
That is why one of the first places Mark Garnier visited as a minister in the Department for International Trade was Israel.
It’s why other ministers plan to visit in the New Year.
We have the captains of British business and industry here in the audience, from a range of sectors, who will be vital to that effort.
I can assure them, and everyone here, that the UK is striving to be the world’s foremost advocate of free trade, working with a range of partners such as India, Norway and New Zealand to achieve that.
I am looking forward to adding Israel to the list – once again, working together to achieve our aims.
INTERNATIONAL (GLOBAL OBLIGATIONS)
Second, we both take our global obligations seriously.
As I have said, Israel does a huge amount for the rest of the world.
I think of the injured Syrians appearing at night at the Israeli border and being taken in and given treatment in hospital.
I think of the Israeli field hospital, which has saved lives from Nepal to Haiti, recently being rated the best in history by the World Health Organisation.
And I think of the project “Save a Child’s Heart”, which, as you saw in that video, conducts heart operations for children who would never be able to afford the treatment.
This is Israel at its best.
And there was one man who did so much to inspire this spirit of service, a man whose death we mourn this year: Shimon Peres.
Britain is proud to meet its moral obligations too, fulfilling our commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of our national income on aid.
Lives are being saved right now because of it.
But part of that duty is making sure the funds go to the right places.
Let me be clear: no British taxpayers’ money will be used to make payments to terrorists or their families.
It is right that Priti Patel has called for an examination of aid spending in the Occupied Palestinian Territories to ensure that every penny is spent in the right places and in the right way.
And she is looking at options for the UK to support co-existence projects in the region – something I know so many people in this room have called for.
We are determined to get the right help to those who need it most – and I pay tribute to Priti for leading that work.
When talking about global obligations, we must be honest with our friends, like Israel, because that is what true friendship is about.
That is why we have been clear about building new, illegal settlements: it is wrong; it is not conducive to peace; and it must stop.
SOCIAL (TOLERANCE AND OPPORTUNITY)
Third, both our countries are working to build fair, tolerant and meritocratic societies.
Indeed, that is the driving mission of the government I lead: to build a country that works for everyone, not just a privileged few.
As I have said, Israel guarantees the rights of people of all religions, races and sexualities, and it wants to enable everyone to flourish.
Our aim in Britain is the same: to create a better, fairer society, helping everyone to reach as far as their talents will allow.
That is why we should be so proud of the contribution Britain’s Jewish communities make to our country. From business to the arts, public services to education, that contribution is exemplary.
In order to help people of all backgrounds reach their potential, we need to remove the barriers that stand in their way – and that includes bigotry, discrimination and hatred.
Let me be clear: it is unacceptable that there is anti-Semitism in this country.
It is even worse that incidents are reportedly on the rise.
And it is disgusting that these twisted views are being found in British politics.
Of course, I am talking mainly about the Labour Party and their hard-left allies
In fact, I understand this lunch has a lot to live up to after the extraordinary scenes at the Labour Friends of Israel event.
It began, unusually, with Tom Watson giving a full-throated rendition of Am Yisrael Hai.
The audience joined in as his baritone voice carried across the hall.
“Am Yisrael Hai – the people of Israel live.” It is a sentiment that everybody in this room wholeheartedly agrees with.
But let me say this: no amount of karaoke can make up for turning a blind eye to anti-Semitism.
No matter what Labour say – or sing – they cannot ignore what has been happening in their party.
Anti-Semitism should have no place in politics and no place in this country.
And I am proud to lead a party that takes the firmest stand against it.
As a government we are making a real difference.
Indeed, when I was Home Secretary we took what I believe was an important step in gauging a truer picture of the problem, requiring all police forces to record religious hate crimes separately, by faith.
And I made sure we kept extremism – including the sort that peddles anti-Semitic vitriol – out of our country.
That is why I said no to so-called comedians like Dieudonne coming to Britain.
It’s why I stopped Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and Pastor Terry Jones coming too – since Islamophobia comes from the same wellspring of hatred.
It is why I kicked out Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada as well.
And it is why I brought together internet companies and government to tear down the poisonous propaganda that infects minds online.
Today I want to announce how we are going even further.
In response to the work of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, Britain will be adopting a formal definition of anti-Semitism.
Just last week, we were at the forefront to try to ensure that the definition was adopted across the continent too, at the summit of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
The result was 56 countries in favour. One country opposed it: Russia. But, as I said, we will adopt it here in the UK.
That means there will be one definition of anti-Semitism – in essence, language or behaviour that displays hatred towards Jews because they are Jews – and anyone guilty of that will be called out on it.
And we have to thank someone who has worked tooth and nail to get that agreed. He’s our Parliamentary chairman; he’s my Post-Holocaust Issues Envoy; and he’s a stalwart of our party: Sir Eric Pickles.
And let us pay tribute to Sajid Javid too, for all his work in this ground-breaking step towards eradicating anti-Semitism.
Of course, as the people of Israel know, there is no better way of stopping the wrongs of the past being repeated than remembering where hatred can lead.
I have visited Yad Vashem. I remember standing in the Hall of Names – gazing up at all those victims’ pictures – and then looking down into the abyss and thinking of the millions more who were murdered.
It is an experience which is unforgettable – the closest thing we have to conveying what happened and why we must never repeat it.
That is why I am continuing David Cameron’s vision to build a National Memorial to the Holocaust next to Parliament, together with an accompanying educational centre, which will include the first-hand testimony of Britain’s Holocaust survivors.
The design competition for the memorial and centre has had almost 100 entries from teams stretching across 26 different countries.
I look forward to unveiling the short-listed designs next month when we mark Holocaust Memorial Day.
For we must honour our promise to Britain’s Holocaust survivors; we must never forget the Holocaust; and we must teach every generation to fight hatred and prejudice in all its forms.
CONCLUSION
When we talk about our countries achieving our aims together, that isn’t just for the good of Israel and Britain; it’s for the good of the world.
When our scientists come together, they are working to cure diseases that affect millions of people.
When we work together on our mutual security at the highest level, it makes the world safer.
When we increase trade and investment with one another, it brings more opportunities and prosperity to the wider world.
It is that collaboration that this organisation, CFI, so wonderfully celebrates and builds upon.
I want to end by wishing you well for something else Britain and Israel will be shortly collaborating on.
For Christmas and Chanukah fall at the same time this year.
So as we light up our trees and menorahs; sing Silent Night and Ma’oz Tsur; cook the turkey and the latkes, let us look to 2017 with gratitude and optimism.
So Happy Christmas, Happy Chanukah – and a Happy New Year to you all.
Thank you.”
You can also find other items that are not in these dispatches if you “like” this page on Facebook www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia
CONTENTS
1. Trump’s attentive interview style
2. Fearing the Donald
3. Inconsistent standards
4. In favor of free speech and tolerance only when it suits you
5. The Guardian: there is fake news on the left too
6. Fake news and Israel
7. Denzel Washington: the choice is between being uninformed and misinformed
8. Time magazine: Anti-Semitic bullies on the alt-left
9. The rights of the disabled
10. “The World Fears Trump’s America. That’s a Good Thing” (By Mark Moyar, NY Times, Dec. 9, 2016)
11. “What It’s Like to Apply for a Job in Donald Trump’s White House” (By Julie Hirschfeld Davis, NY Times, Dec. 8, 2016)
12. “Opposite Day in Dems’ world: Post-election flip-flops abound” (By Howie Carr, Boston Herald, Dec. 9, 2016)
TRUMP’S ATTENTIVE INTERVIEW STYLE
[Notes below by Tom Gross]
I attach below three new pieces on Donald Trump.
The first is an interesting account from the New York Times about the manner and style in which Trump has been interviewing those he may give jobs to in his administration. “Trump has been more hands-on in the interviews than his predecessors were,” notes the New York Times.
This piece comes against the background of discussions in the media about so-called fake news, and the claims made in some mainstream media that Donald Trump has been particularly slow to put together a cabinet, when in fact he has generally been quicker than many of his recent presidential predecessors in making appointments.
FEARING THE DONALD
The second piece is an op-ed in the New York Times claiming it is “a good thing” if the world fears Trump.
The author writes: “During the last eight years, President Obama showed what happens when the world’s greatest power tries strenuously to avoid giving fright. He began his presidency with lofty vows to conciliate adversaries, defer to the opinions of other countries and reduce America’s military commitments. Consequently, he received rapturous applause in European capitals and a Nobel Peace Prize. In the real world of geopolitics, however, the results have been catastrophic.”
INCONSISTENT STANDARDS
The third piece (which many of you may not agree with) is from yesterday’s Boston Herald and highlights the double standards at play regarding Trump:
“Penny Pritzker, Obama’s secretary of commerce – great pick. She knows business. She’s worth $2.5 billion, you know. Trump picks Wilbur Ross as his secretary of commerce – how dare he? Ross is worth … $2.5 billion.” And so on.
IN FAVOR OF FREE SPEECH AND TOLERANCE ONLY WHEN IT SUITS YOU
As someone who supports liberal positions on many issues, from gun control to women’s rights to universal healthcare, I find it upsetting that many liberals appear to only favor free speech when it suits them.
For example, the co-host of “Morning Joe” on MSNBC (the most liberal of the major American news channels) revealed yesterday that the Clinton campaign tried to force her off air during the election for daring to suggest that Trump might win if the Clinton “campaign did not understand that perhaps there was an arrogance, that they needed to sort of get off their high horse and understand that this isn’t over.”
THE GUARDIAN: FAKE NEWS ON THE LEFT TOO
This piece in The Guardian, the influential British and international newspaper, discusses the whole phenomenon of “fake news” and the attempts to control the internet, reminding us that there is plenty of so-called “fake news” on the left as well as on the right.
FAKE NEWS AND ISRAEL
Indeed regarding fake, or (the equally dangerous phenomenon of) deliberately distorted news, one of the key reasons that I started this dispatch and email service is that, having worked as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East and elsewhere, I frequently observed respected journalists from respected news outlets, deliberately distorting news to suit their political agenda, usually to Israel’s detriment.
DENZEL WASHINGTON: THE CHOICE IS BETWEEN BEING UNINFORMED AND MISINFORMED
It’s the mainstream media that’s selling “BS,” the actor and director Denzel Washington pointed out on Tuesday in a talk at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
He said: “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you do read it, you’re misinformed.”
TIME MAGAZINE: ANTI-SEMITIC BULLIES FOUND ON THE ALT-LEFT
As we know from many cases around the world, anti-Semitism comes from the left (for example, among some Labour party politicians in Britain) as well as the right, even though many in the mainstream American media prefer to pretend it only comes from the right.
In a rare example of a mainstream publication allowing attention to be drawn to “alt-left” anti-Semitism, Time magazine this week provided a platform for Canadian professor Gil Troy (a subscriber to this list) to explain how Bernie Sanders’ supporters bombarded him with messages after he appeared to be sympathetic to Hillary Clinton, calling him a “kyke” (their spelling), a “greedy Jew” and asking how he could help this Jewish politician?” [Clinton] and so on.
Gil Troy is far from the only American or Canadian professor or student to suffer anti-Semitism on campus in recent years – from the left, as much as, if not more so, than from the right.
THE RIGHTS OF THE DISABLED
It is not just fake news that can be problematic. It is the question of what journalists choose to leave out of a story.
For example, USA Today has run a piece claiming that many are angry about Trump’s expected nomination of Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington to be his secretary of Interior. But the paper didn’t mention that campaigners for the rights of the disabled are thrilled with her prospective appointment since McMorris Rodgers (who is raising a Down’s Syndrome child) has, they say, been at the forefront of highlighting the rights of the disabled.
(One can recall how in 2008, Sarah Palin, who also has a Down’s syndrome child, was ridiculed by some on the left for being “stupid enough” not to abort her Down’s syndrome child.)
In any case, Trump has not assumed office yet so we need to reserve judgment on whether he will prove to be a good or a poor president.
-- Tom Gross
ARTICLES
DONALD TRUMP’S INTERVIEW PROCESS
What It’s Like to Apply for a Job in Donald Trump’s White House
By Julie Hirschfeld Davis
New York Times (news page)
December 8, 2016
WASHINGTON – When former Gov. Sonny Perdue of Georgia stepped off the elevator on the 26th floor of Trump Tower last week for his interview with Donald J. Trump, he expected a grilling by the president-elect and a phalanx of associates, something along the lines of the confrontational boardroom scenes at the sleek conference table in the television show “The Apprentice.”
What he found instead was Mr. Trump, calm and solicitous behind a desk cluttered with papers and periodicals, in a large corner office with a hodgepodge of memorabilia and décor that appeared little changed from the 1980s. Nick Ayers, an aide to Vice President-elect Mike Pence, and Stephen K. Bannon, who will serve as Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, listened from the sidelines. Mr. Trump, who offered Mr. Perdue a seat across from his desk, was in charge.
“He was approaching this from a deal standpoint, and he wanted to know if he was on the right track,” said Mr. Perdue, who is being considered for secretary of agriculture and wore a tie adorned with tractors to the meeting. “He believes that we in the United States have been sort of patsies over the years in the way we’ve dealt with our foreign competitors and international trade – and I agree with him – and he wanted to know what I would do about it.”
For more than a decade, millions of Americans tuned in to watch Mr. Trump interrogate prospective employees on “The Apprentice” with a mix of arrogance and disdain. But in private over the past few weeks, a less theatrical spinoff of the spectacle has unfolded in Mr. Trump’s office in Manhattan, and occasionally at his golf resort in Bedminster, N.J., or at Mar-a-Lago, his getaway in Palm Beach, Fla.
Mr. Trump’s interview style in the real world is direct but conversational, according to people who have sat opposite him. He did not take notes or appear to refer to a set list of questions, but he did have dossiers on his visitors and often displayed intricate knowledge of their backgrounds and experience. He rarely drank or ate. He kept his suit jacket on. In New York, he liked to show off the sweeping views of Central Park visible over his shoulder.
Job seekers, who must parade before the news media in the marble and bronze lobby of Trump Tower – “It was almost like walking the red carpet in Hollywood,” said Representative Lou Barletta, Republican of Pennsylvania, who has offered himself up as a secretary of transportation or labor – said that the president-elect often asked open-ended questions and had little patience for meandering answers.
“If you filibuster, he’ll cut you off,” said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who was initially in the running to be Mr. Trump’s secretary of state but has since said he is not interested in a cabinet post. “He wants to know what you can do for him.”
Mr. Gingrich said Mr. Trump’s approach to putting together his administration was the same one he has used with his multibillion-dollar business. “He’s used to defining jobs, measuring capability and making a judgment: ‘Do I think you can run my golf course? Do I think you can run my hotel? Do I want your restaurant in my building?’” Mr. Gingrich said.
Mr. Trump has been more hands-on in the interviews than his predecessors were. George W. Bush rarely spoke in person to more than one finalist for each cabinet post, said Clay Johnson III, who directed his transition effort in 2000. President Obama also interviewed a single finalist for each post in most cases, usually in a one-on-one discussion meant to confirm an already well-established conclusion that the candidate would be right for the job, said Dan Pfeiffer, a senior transition official in 2008.
“In some cases, he knew who he wanted and it was a question of convincing them to do it,” Mr. Pfeiffer said, citing examples like Hillary Clinton, who became Mr. Obama’s secretary of state, and Robert M. Gates, whom he persuaded to stay on as defense secretary.
Mr. Obama was also adamant that the deliberations not spill out into the open, but that has not been the case with Mr. Trump.
Members of Congress, generals, business executives and others mingle outside his office, waiting for an audience with the president-elect. Mr. Barletta waited more than 45 minutes for his meeting, passing the time chatting with his Republican colleague Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, who was waiting for his turn to audition for secretary of homeland security.
“It was like a green room, a waiting room of people you know or you know of, all waiting their turn,” said Robert L. Johnson, the founder of the television network BET, who visited Mr. Trump at Bedminster to discuss ways the incoming president could reach out to African-Americans. As Mr. Johnson was coming in, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York whom Mr. Trump is considering for secretary of state, was going out.
Mr. Trump wants a gut sense for a potential hire, people close to him said, prizing personal chemistry and an entrepreneurial spirit. But he also leans on the judgment of trusted advisers – particularly Mr. Pence and his elder daughter, Ivanka Trump – when assessing a candidate.
It was Ms. Trump who reached out to Mr. Johnson, the businessman and BET founder, after she saw a statement he issued the week after her father’s victory. In it, Mr. Johnson urged black voters to participate in elections and insist that both political parties address their concerns in order to earn their support.
Days later, Mr. Johnson was being led into a room at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster to meet with Mr. Trump, along with Reince Priebus, whom Mr. Trump has named chief of staff, Mr. Bannon and Ms. Trump’s husband, Jared Kushner. Mr. Trump asked what jobs he might consider taking in the administration, but Mr. Johnson said he quickly made it known he was not seeking a post.
“I told him as we sat down in the room that, ‘President-elect Trump, you shouldn’t ask African-American voters what they have to lose, as you did in your campaign; what you should have said, and what you should be talking about now is, this is what you have to gain from a Trump administration,’” Mr. Johnson said.
Mr. Trump seemed to take the advice. He said, “ ‘So I should focus on the aspirational aspects,’ “ Mr. Johnson said.
Mr. Trump has taken advice from other job seekers as well. During his interview with James N. Mattis, who was selected last week to be the secretary of defense, Mr. Trump questioned the retired general about whether torture works as a tool for extracting vital information from terrorism suspects. General Mattis told him it did not, a view Mr. Trump later said surprised him and gave him reason to reconsider his position on the matter.
Mr. Trump, who prizes loyalty, also wanted to know precisely what the job seekers did to propel him into the White House.
“He asked about what I had done to help in Georgia,” said Mr. Perdue, who told the president-elect that he and his cousin, Senator David Perdue, had repeatedly reassured campaign officials about Mr. Trump’s prospects there and encouraged them to focus their energies elsewhere.
Scott Brown, a former Massachusetts senator who met with Mr. Trump last month about becoming his secretary of veterans affairs, said that Mr. Trump asked how he could help him deliver on his campaign pledges and how to ensure a “good value” for veterans receiving services from the agency or private contractors.
“He made it clear that he’s a businessman and he’s going to delegate to people like me, potentially, and others,” Mr. Brown said. “He’s going to say, ‘Do your job, and do it well, and otherwise – you’re fired.’”
THE WORLD FEARS TRUMP’S AMERICA. THAT’S A GOOD THING
The World Fears Trump’s America. That’s a Good Thing.
By Mark Moyar
New York Times (opinion page)
December 9, 2016
Among global elites, Donald J. Trump’s recent phone call with Taiwan’s president has induced fear on a scale seldom matched since Ronald Reagan’s “Evil Empire” speech. The Sydney Morning Herald warned that the phone call “risks provoking a cold war between the United States and China with potentially catastrophic economic and security implications.” The fright appears to confirm the narrative formed earlier this year by headlines like “Donald Trump Terrifies World Leaders.”
The fear is real. Mr. Trump has indeed terrified foreign leaders with his “America first” mantra, his promises to enlarge the American military and his tough talk on everything from the Islamic State to Air Force One. The good news is that his administration can turn this fear to the benefit of the United States.
During the last eight years, President Obama showed what happens when the world’s greatest power tries strenuously to avoid giving fright. He began his presidency with lofty vows to conciliate adversaries, defer to the opinions of other countries and reduce America’s military commitments. Consequently, he received rapturous applause in European capitals and a Nobel Peace Prize. In the real world of geopolitics, however, the results have been catastrophic.
Mr. Obama’s passivity in the face of provocations and his failure to enforce the “red line” in Syria led Russia, China and other adversaries to seek new gains at America’s expense. His promises to “end the wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan satisfied the cosmopolitan chatterers of Stockholm, Paris and New York, but they deflated American allies in Baghdad and Kabul, and emboldened adversaries in Iran and Pakistan. So severe was the damage that he had to send troops back to Iraq in 2014, and had to abort his plans to withdraw all American forces from Afghanistan before leaving office.
The Obama presidency is but the latest chapter in a post-1945 saga that has been dominated by international fear of the United States, or lack thereof. In 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea because Harry S. Truman’s exclusion of South Korea from America’s “defense perimeter” removed fears of intervention. By contrast, Dwight D. Eisenhower employed rhetorical threats and high military spending to fill the Communist powers with fear of nuclear Armageddon, an approach that kept the Communists from launching further invasions.
Lyndon B. Johnson tried to avert a major war in Vietnam by showing restraint, in expectation of North Vietnamese reciprocation. Hanoi responded by pouring troops into South Vietnam. Richard M. Nixon revived fears of the United States with his “madman theory,” whereby he took seemingly reckless actions to convince America’s enemies that he just might be crazy enough to do it. Those fears, and the caution they instilled in the Communist powers, dissipated when the Watergate Congress kicked the legs out from under South Vietnam. The world continued to live without fear of a strong America under Jimmy Carter, whose timidity caused nations to fall to Communism and the United States Embassy in Iran to fall to anti-American extremists.
In 1980, as in 2016, Americans elected someone who made clear his intent to put fear back in the nation’s enemies. Nowadays, even liberal Democrats applaud Reagan for bringing the Soviet Union to its knees. Back in 1980, however, Reagan’s tough, nationalist stances on foreign policy aroused the same condemnation of “fearmongering” currently emanating from the world’s enlightened critics of Mr. Trump.
The trembling of the rest of the world does not ensure that American foreign policy will be successful. Like any other strategic advantage, it works only when properly exploited through sound strategic decisions. Tough talk must be used judiciously. As the Syrian red line debacle demonstrated, the White House should issue specific threats only when it is prepared to follow through on them.
In its diplomacy, the new administration must seek the proper balance between fear and more positive motivations like respect and admiration. Under Mr. Obama, and his like-minded predecessors, American foreign policy created plenty of fear among some of America’s allies – fear that the United States would let them down. The Trump administration will need to reverse those expectations, so that fear of the United States is once again stronger among enemies than friends.
At times, nevertheless, even allies ought to have cause to worry about White House decisions. They must know that the world’s most powerful nation is prepared to practice tough love if they take actions inconsistent with the strength of the United States or the stability of the international system. Without such worries, they are liable to keep doing as they have often done in recent years – skimping on military spending and international commitments in expectation that the Americans will reflexively pick up the slack.
As the world’s most powerful country, and the only one whose leadership can safeguard the world order, the United States must care more about whether it commands international respect than whether it is loved by international elites. The incoming administration appears poised to return the United States to this precept after an eight-year drought. Americans and America’s allies should be relieved. America’s enemies are right to be afraid.
WHAT WAS GOOD IS NOW BAD
Opposite Day in Dems’ world: Post-election flip-flops abound
By Howie Carr
The Boston Herald
December 9, 2016
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/howie_carr/2016/12/carr_opposite_day_in_dems_world
Up is down and down is up since Nov. 8.
Have you noticed? Everything the left once lauded is now bad, and all the stuff they once despised is now great.
Complaining that the election is rigged was a threat to democracy when Donald Trump brought it up. Then Hill and Jill wanted their phony-baloney recounts – wow, what a great idea!
Remember the Al Smith dinner in October, when Hillary made a joke about how Trump wasn’t really a billionaire? Now – how can Trump relate to the working man when his “sprawling” business empire is worth so many billions of dollars?
Time magazine (who knew they were still in business?) names Trump Person of the Year. If Hillary had gotten the nod, it would have been about breaking another glass ceiling blah-blah-blah. But when Trump gets it – big deal, Hitler and Stalin got it too, you know?
Penny Pritzker, Obama’s secretary of commerce – great pick. She knows business. She’s worth $2.5 billion, you know. Trump picks Wilbur Ross as his secretary of commerce – how dare he? Ross is worth … $2.5 billion.
Fake news under Obama – Benghazi caused by video, “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot!”, Gruber and Obama lying about Obamacare, Obama aide bragging about misleading reporters on Iran nuke deal – nothing to see here, folks, move along. Pizzagate fake news – OMG, it’s the end of the world!
Stock market hits new high under Obama – happy days are here again. Stock market hits new high under Trump – big deal, it’s a bubble, everybody knows that.
Michelle Obama – most wonderful first lady ever. Melania Trump – Why are we squandering money on a budget for the office of the first lady?
Texas wants to secede to escape Obama authoritarianism – those Confederate racist nullifiers. California talks secession – yeah, let’s show those deplorables!
Obama flushes $500 million down a black hole for his bundlers at Solyndra – yawn. Trump gets Carrier $7 million to save 1,100 real jobs at a real factory in Indiana – crony capitalism at its worst.
Obama appoints generals – wow, what a brilliant concept from a New Democrat. Trump appoints generals – scary, the DOD is supposed to be under civilian control.
Millions upon millions spent on Obama vacations – how dare you even bring that up, you racist. Many fewer millions spent on security at Trump Tower – what a terrible waste of money.
When Dems control Senate and do away with the 60-vote threshold for stopping filibusters – about time we got rid of these archaic rules and put the GOP in its place.
When Senate Republicans plan to use the exact same rules the Democrats rammed through in 2013 – hey, wait a second, what about the wishes of the Founding Fathers?
I wish I’d said it first, but it’s worth repeating. The last time the Democrats were this mad at Republicans was when the Republicans took their slaves away from them.
Because of a technical fault, the last 19 dispatches on this list were not posted on my website until two days ago. For those interested, you can now read them here, including:
(1) Concerns about the Alt-Right (and Alt-Left)
(2) East Aleppo’s last clown, RIP (& Arabs donate wood to rebuild burned synagogue)
(3) Abbas orders Palestinian flags be flown at half-mast for Castro (& CNN apologizes)
(4) Sheikh Qaradawi retracts Fatwa encouraging Palestinian suicide attacks
(5) Hamas leader says Trump may be a Jew
(6) Pakistan birther theory: Trump was born Muslim
(7) I’m a Muslim, female immigrant and voted for Trump
(8) Trump’s Israel advisors likely to usher in era of improved US-Israel ties
(9) British MP: Parliament needs to apologize to Israel and the Jews
(10) Bystanders to Genocide (& Why some wars get more attention than others)
You can also find other items that are not in these dispatches if you “like” this page on Facebook www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia
* Guantanamo inmate Mohammed Abed al-Malik Bajabo is suspected of involvement in the 2002 Mombasa attack in which three Israeli tourists and 14 Kenyans were killed, and the attempt to shoot down an Arkia airlines flight from Mombasa to Tel Aviv. Israel is said to have agreed to take Bajabo, but the FBi is refusing to hand over the necessary files so Israel can’t move forward with the process.
* ThyssenKrupp, the German maker of Israel’s new fleet of (allegedly nuclear-capable) submarines, has been the victim of a “massive cyberattack”.
* British intelligence spied on Israeli diplomats, new Edward Snowden leaks reveal. Britain’s GCHQ reportedly collected information on the second highest ranking official in the Israeli foreign ministry, as well as Israeli envoys at embassies elsewhere.
* Le Monde: The U.S. and Britain have refined their ability to tap into airline passenger’s mobile phones while they are in the air. “The NSA and the GCHQ are able to intercept data from passengers traveling on board commercial aircrafts. France’s national airline, Air France, has been a prime target.”
FROM ONE HERO TO ANOTHER
I attach several pieces from the last two days connected to intelligence and security matters.
But first, on a different note, regarding John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth, who died on Thursday at the age of 95:
New York magazine reports that Glenn’s closest friend was Henri Landwirth, a Holocaust survivor. Like many Holocaust survivors, through fear and anxiety, Landwirth was in the habit of covering up the tattoo on his arm, even in hot weather, in the years following the Holocaust.
But after Glenn saw the tattoo on Henri Landwirth’s arm, Glenn said, “I’d wear that number like a medal with a spotlight on it.”
-- Tom Gross
* See also: Revealed: US and UK broke Israeli encryption codes, have been spying on Israel for past 18 years (Jan. 29, 2016)
CONTENTS
1. “U.S. reportedly asked Israel to take in and try Guantanamo inmate” (By Barak Ravid, Haaretz, Dec. 9, 2016)
2. “German maker of Israeli submarines says secrets stolen in “massive” cyberattack” (Reuters / Haaretz, Dec. 8, 2016)
3. “British intelligence spied on Israeli diplomats, new Edward Snowden leaks reveal” (JTA, Dec. 8, 2016)
4. “La surveillance de la diplomatie israélienne” (Le Monde, Dec. 7, 2016)
5. “U.S. and Britain refine their ability to tap into airline passenger’s mobile phones while they are in the air” (Le Monde, Dec. 8, 2016)
U.S. REPORTEDLY ASKED ISRAEL TO TAKE IN AND TRY GUANTANAMO INMATE
(You can read the fill piece from the Miami Herald on which the Haaretz piece is based, here.)
U.S. Reportedly Asked Israel to Take in and Try Guantanamo Inmate
By Barak Ravid
Haaretz
December 9, 2016
The Obama administration requested in April that a Kenyan Islamic terrorist, jailed at Guantanamo Bay since 2007 be transferred to an Israeli facility and tried by Israel, according to a Friday report in the Miami Herald.
American intelligence has connected the inmate, Mohammed Abed al-Malik Bajabo, to a terror attack against Israeli tourists in Mombasa in 2002. Senior American sources said that Israel said it was prepared to accept and try the prisoner but that the process hasn’t moved forward since because the FBI has yet to give Israel the interrogation transcripts and other documents.
Over the past few years, the Obama administration has tried to pass all of the suspected terrorists held in Guantanamo in Cuba to third-party countries with the end goal of shutting down the prison. Guantanamo is infamous for a lack of judicial procedure and its use of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” labeled as such by the administration of George W. Bush, but considered torture by many others.
Some of the prisoners from Guantanamo were eventually tried in U.S. courts, others were released and the remaining few, 29 in all, can’t legally be tried in the U.S. on one hand, and can’t be released on the other, due to the alleged danger they pose. This situation led the administration to search for other countries across the world that would agree to try the prisoners in their territory.
In April, the U.S. Foreign Ministry’s Special Envoy for Guantanamo, Lee Wolosky, visited Israel and met with senior Israeli officials who expressed interest in accepting the Kenyan prisoner. According to the Miami Herald report, the Israeli government asked the U.S. for relevant information from the investigation into Bajabo in order to move forward with the process, but the FBI refused to pass along the material, which includes Bajabo’s confession of involvement in the Mombasa attack.
Without the materials, the process cannot move forward and has effectively remained blocked for several months.
Three Israeli tourists and 14 Kenyans were killed in Mombasa on November 28, 2002 when terrorists from an al-Qaida-affiliated organization detonated a car bomb and their suicide vests at the hotel Paradise. On the same day, terrorists attempted to shoot down an Akria airlines flight from Mombasa to Tel Aviv, firing two anti-air missiles during take off.
GERMAN MAKER OF ISRAELI SUBMARINES SAYS SECRETS STOLEN IN “MASSIVE” CYBERATTACK
German Maker of Israeli Submarines Says Secrets Stolen in “Massive” Cyberattack
Reuters and Haaretz
December 8, 2016
ThyssenKrupp, the German maker of Israel’s new fleet of submarines, has been the victim of a “massive” cyberattack, the company said Thursday.
The company, which owns the shipyards now building new warships for Israel, has been in the center of a scandal in recent weeks involving Netanyahu’s personal lawyer and the role he might have played in Israel’s deal to buy the submarines.
According to ThyssenKrupp, technical trade secrets were stolen earlier this year in the hack, the steelmaker said on Thursday. “ThyssenKrupp has become the target of a massive cyberattack,” the German company said in a statement.
In attacks discovered in April and traced back to February, hackers stole project data from ThyssenKrupp’s plant engineering division and from other areas yet to be determined, the company said.
Israel has bought submarines from ThyssenKrupp for billions of dollars. Iran, which indirectly owns stock in the group, has received the equivalent of tens of millions of euros in dividends from ThyssenKrupp, a Haaretz investigation of the company’s financial reports revealed.
ThyssenKrupp, one of the world’s largest steel makers, attributed the breaches to unnamed attackers located in southeast Asia. It did not identify which documents were stolen and said it could not estimate the scale of the intellectual property losses.
A criminal complaint was filed with police in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, it said.
Secured systems operating steel blast furnaces and power plants in Duisburg, in Germany’s industrial heartland in the Ruhr Valley, were unaffected, the company said.
No breaches have been found at other businesses ranging from elevators to its marine systems unit, which produces military submarines and warships.
ThyssenKrupp is a major supplier of steel to Germany’s automotive sector and other manufacturers.
It said the attack was uncovered by ThyssenKrupp’s in house computer emergency response team. State and federal cyber security and data protection authorities were informed.
The management board was made aware of the attacks at an early stage, it said.
BRITISH INTELLIGENCE SPIED ON ISRAELI DIPLOMATS, SNOWDEN LEAKS REVEAL
British Intelligence Spied on Israeli Diplomats, Snowden Leaks Reveal
JTA (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, New York)
December 8, 2016
British intelligence spied on Israeli diplomats and defense firms in addition to its military, the French daily Le Monde reported based on leaked documents.
The report Wednesday was based on documents that came into the possession of Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who worked for U.S. intelligence before publishing in 2013 classified material and fleeing to Russia, Le Monde reported.
According to the newspaper, Britain’s GCHQ intelligence-gathering apparatus collected information on a person described by Le Monde as the second highest ranking official in the Israeli foreign ministry. That person was not named. The British also spied on the Palestinian Authority, the report said.
Email correspondence belonging to the Israeli ambassadors to Nigeria and Kenya was also the subject of British intelligence-gathering efforts as was Ophir Optronics, a firm deemed to be tied to the Israeli defense establishment that specializes in fiber optics.
The Le Monde report followed a previous publication based on documents stolen by Snowden dealing with spying by U.S. and British intelligence on Israeli military aircraft.
GCHQ and its American counterpart, the NSA, had collected for 18 years drone transmissions after cracking the Israeli army’s encryption for communication among fighter jets, drones and army bases.
The information was reported in January by The Intercept and the German newspaper Der Spiegel.
Britain and the United States reportedly have used this access to monitor Israel Defense Forces operations in the Gaza Strip, watch for a potential strike on Iran and keep tabs on the drone technology that Israel exports.
LA SURVEILLANCE DE LA DIPLOMATIE ISRAÉLIENNE
This is an excerpt from the longer article in Le Monde on which the above JTA report is based:
La surveillance de la diplomatie israélienne
http://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2016/12/07/espionnage-d-air-france-d-israel-et-de-l-autorite-palestinienne-ce-qu-apportent-les-nouvelles-revelations-snowden_5044727_4408996.html
Officiellement, Israël et les deux agences de surveillance anglo-saxonnes les plus puissantes, l’Agence nationale de sécurité (NSA) américaine et son homologue britannique, le GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters), sont unis par une sacro-sainte alliance. Intense du fait des enjeux de survie pour Israël, confiante au regard de l’excellence reconnue aux Israéliens en matière d’espionnage, et en forte croissance depuis dix ans, cette coopération unique a pourtant une face plus obscure.
Les documents consultés par Le Monde montrent que les Britanniques ont espionné la diplomatie israélienne, aussi bien à Jérusalem qu’à l’étranger. Ils visaient aussi des sociétés privées du secteur de la défense, des organismes d’Etat chargés de la coopération internationale ou encore des centres universitaires connus pour leur très haut niveau scientifique.
The Wall Street Journal et Der Spiegel avaient déjà montré que les services anglais et américains avaient surveillé les communications du premier ministre Benyamin Nétanyahou et celles du bureau du premier ministre Ehoud Olmert. Selon nos informations, les espions ratissent beaucoup plus large. Ils visaient des services de l’Etat, notamment ses diplomates. Parmi ces identifiants figurent ainsi le numéro de téléphone du numéro deux du ministère des affaires étrangères israélien ou encore les e-mails d’ambassadeurs en poste à Nairobi, au Kenya, et à Abuja, au Nigeria. Mais on trouve aussi parmi les cibles de ces agences des employés de sociétés de défense, comme Ophir Optronics, l’un des fleurons de la fibre optique et du laser, deux éléments-clés des armements modernes et des industries de pointe, ou encore des centres de recherche de l’université hébraïque de Jérusalem.
Au Proche-Orient, la NSA et le GCHQ ne font pas d’exceptions : tout comme Israël, l’Autorité palestinienne a été mise sous surveillance serrée par les agences américaines et britanniques. Là encore, la NSA et son homologue britannique entretiennent pourtant d’étroites relations avec la monarchie jordanienne et l’Autorité palestinienne dans le domaine du renseignement. La NSA et l’EWD, le service de renseignement électronique jordanien, sont même de très proches alliés : « A lui seul, l’EWD fournit une grande part des noms d’individus ciblés par la NSA » dans cette région, reconnaît une note des services américains. Pourtant, dans les longues listes d’interceptions du GCHQ, se trouvent les coordonnées de la cour royale de Jordanie, du chef du protocole du roi et de l’ambassade de Jordanie à Washington.
L’Autorité palestinienne a également fait l’objet d’une surveillance intensive, loin de se limiter aux hauts responsables. Fin 2008 et en 2009, le GCHQ a ainsi ciblé les communications du cabinet du secrétaire général de l’OLP et celles d’un grand nombre de délégations palestiniennes dans le monde. Notamment en France, en Belgique, au Portugal, au Pakistan, en Afrique du Sud ou en Malaisie. Des figures palestiniennes modérées étaient également espionnées : le Dr Ahmed Tibi, homme politique et député arabe israélien, chef du Mouvement arabe pour le renouveau, ou encore Ahmed Qoreï, premier ministre de l’Autorité entre 2003 et 2006. Autant d’éléments qui rappellent une règle ancienne de l’espionnage : les amis n’existent pas.
See also from Le Monde (in English), December 8, 2016:
U.S. and Britain refine their ability to tap into airline passenger’s mobile phones while they are in the air.
Because of a technical fault, the last 19 dispatches on this list were not posted on my website until two days ago. For those interested, you can now read them here, including:
http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/
(1) Concerns about the Alt-Right (and Alt-Left)
(2) East Aleppo’s last clown, RIP (& Arabs donate wood to rebuild burned synagogue)
(3) Abbas orders Palestinian flags be flown at half-mast for Castro (& CNN apologizes)
(4) Sheikh Qaradawi retracts Fatwa encouraging Palestinian suicide attacks
(5) Hamas leader says Trump may be a Jew
(6) Pakistan birther theory: Trump was born Muslim
(7) I’m a Muslim, female immigrant and voted for Trump
(8) Trump’s Israel advisors likely to usher in era of improved US-Israel ties
(9) British MP: Parliament needs to apologize to Israel and the Jews
(10) Bystanders to Genocide (& Why some wars get more attention than others)
* Please “like” these dispatches on Facebook here www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia, where you can also find other items that are not in these dispatches.
[Note by Tom Gross]
The far right candidate Norbert Hofer may win the Austrian presidential elections being held today. Final pre-election polls showed his support at 50 percent.
If he does, he will become arguably the most extreme right wing president of a democratic western country since the Second World War. (Hitler was, of course, also Austrian, though to date Hofer is not Hitler.)
But he is dangerous. “When we speak about Norbert Hofer, we speak about someone fascinated with the ideology of a Greater Germany... someone pulled from the hat of a party chief with links to the neo-Nazi scene,” wrote Christian Rainer, the editor-in chief of Austrian current affairs magazine Profil.
In a joint public appeal, several leading Austrian conservative politicians urged voters to vote for the left-wing opposition candidate today rather than allow the far-right into power.
I attach a piece below, from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
***
[UPDATE - The results are now in. The extreme rightist candidate received 46 percent of the vote -- still a very disturbing amount for a party founded by a former member of the SS. Please read the piece below.]
DESPITE ADMITTING TO TAKING JEWS TO THE GAS CHAMBERS AT MAJDANEK…
Austria’s rising far-right seen as proof of failure to address Nazi past
With country on the verge of electing president from nationalist Freedom Party, experts blame Vienna’s reluctance to confront its history
By Cnaan Liphshiz
December 2, 2016
JTA — Despite admitting to taking Jews to the gas chambers at Majdanek, Erna Wallisch lived as a free women in Vienna until she died at the ripe age of 86.
An Austrian former Nazi guard at two concentration camps, Wallisch died in 2008 after evading three attempts to prosecute her in Austria for crimes against humanity. In their final review of her actions, Austrian prosecutors said they decided to let her off the hook because she played only a “passive” role in facilitating genocide.
Wallisch, who allegedly beat some of her prisoners, is not an isolated case in Austria, where no one has been convicted for Nazi war crimes in at least 35 years. The SS commander of the Vilnius ghetto, Franz Murer, was acquitted after a weeklong trial in 1963, as was the architect of Auschwitz, Walter Dejaco, in 1973.
To prominent historians of the Third Reich, these cases exemplify Austrian society’s failure to confront its Nazi past — a failure they say is key to understanding why Austria is poised on Sunday to become the first European country to elect as its president a far-right politician from a party that was founded by a former SS officer.
“There is no question that Austria has done very little de-Nazification relative to Germany, which is the obvious object for comparison,” said Efraim Zuroff, the Nazi hunter and Israel director for the Simon Wiesenthal Center. “And that’s a big part of why the far right is far more popular in Austria than it is in Germany.”
The popularity of the Austrian far right was on display in May when 49.7 percent of voters in the country’s presidential elections opted for Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party, an anti-Islam movement with a history of anti-Semitism. Its critics have accused the party of fascism since its establishment in 1956 by Anton Reinthaller, a former Nazi functionary and SS officer.
The Freedom Party lost the presidency – a largely ceremonial post in Austria — by a hair’s breadth to Alexander Van der Bellen, a left-leaning environmentalist. But due to irregularities, a new election was called for Dec. 4. Polls are generally too close to call, but some predict a slight advantage for Hofer.
To be sure, the Freedom Party has joined other far-right movements in Europe in their efforts of recent years to move into the mainstream, shed their Nazi image and leave behind the anti-Semitic rhetoric of some of their former leaders.
Last year, the Freedom Party kicked out former lawmaker Susanne Winter for complimenting on Facebook a user who wrote: “The Zionist money-Jews worldwide are the problem.” That user, Winter said, “took the word[s] out of my mouth.” And in 2012, party chairman Heinz-Christian Strache apologized for posting on Facebook a caricature depicting an obese, hook-nosed banker wearing Star of David-shaped cuff links.
To some, these incidents indicate a persistent problem. They are part of the reason that, despite the support of some Jews in Austria for the Freedom Party, the country’s Jewish leaders have shunned the movement completely.
But the current situation is still notably different to the open embrace of Nazism by the Freedom Party’s previous leader, the late Joerg Haider, who called concentration camps “punishment facilities” and praised SS veterans as “decent people of good character” deserving of “every honor and recognition.”
The Freedom Party’s rise under Strache is part of a wave of support for far-right populists across Europe fueled by economic stagnation and social issues, including jihadism and sectarianism in established Muslim communities, coupled with the arrival in Europe of some 1.5 million additional Muslim immigrants since 2014.
In France, where the final round of the presidential election is scheduled to take place in May, polls are predicting a record 25 percent for the National Front party under Marine Le Pen. In the Netherlands, the anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders, who was convicted recently of incitement to hatred against Moroccans, has leapfrogged the center-right ruling party in polls ahead of the March general election.
But Austria, the birthplace of Adolf Hitler and the only country fully incorporated into the Nazi Third Reich during its reign of terror, is not just another European country because of its society’s complicity in the murder of Jews.
And whereas Germany, the other perpetrator nation, undertook massive educational and judicial efforts to delegitimize ultranationalism, Austria has taken no comparable actions. To Zuroff, the difference is evident in the popularity of the far right in those countries.
Germany’s far-right party, Alternative for Germany, is milder in its rhetoric than the Freedom Party, and enjoys only about 13 percent of the vote, according to numerous polls.
The dramatic difference in popularity between the far right in Germany and its Austrian counterpart reflects the different attitudes to Nazism in the postwar years, according to Stephan Templ, a Jewish-Austrian historian and an expert on the plunder of Jewish property in his country.
“For decades Austria perceived itself as Nazi Germany’s first victim,” he said.
Despite the wealth of evidence of Austrian society’s complicity in the Holocaust and other World War II atrocities, the victim narrative began to crack only in the 1990s, said Tina Walzer, a historian of Vienna and Templ’s partner.
Meanwhile in Western and Eastern Germany, de-Nazification committees screened public officials and removed tens of thousands of former Nazis from positions of influence. Tolerance education prepared millions of Germans for life in a multicultural society.
Austria did have its moments of soul searching, especially after the 1988 discovery that then-President Kurt Waldheim had concealed his service as an intelligence officer in Nazi Germany’s army in Yugoslavia and Greece. That army murdered civilians and sent tens of thousands of Greek Jews to the Auschwitz death camp.
“There was a generational clash, with the young wanting change,” Templ said. “But obviously this movement was not strong enough to prevent what we are seeing.”
* You can also find other items that are not in these dispatches if you “like” this page on Facebook www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia
I attach four pieces below.
The first, by Christopher Caldwell in today’s New York Times, is well worth reading. It examines the dangers and nastiness of the “alt-right” without being overly sensational or exaggerating their influence on Donald Trump.
After that, I attach a piece by the Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt from last week’s edition of the New York weekly, The Forward, titled “Didn’t Slam Anti-Semitism On the Left? Don’t Expect Credibility When You Slam It On the Right.”
And then, in the interests of balance, I attach a (not particularly well-written) piece titled “Liberals get hysterical over the ‘alt-right’ but we are living in their ‘alt-left’ world”.
The fourth piece is Maureen Dowd’s column from last week’s New York Times, in which she allows her brother Kevin to explain why he voted for Donald Trump.
Finally, I attach the three readers’ letters that the New York Times published in response to Kevin Dowd’s column.
(These pieces are sent to stimulate debate. It doesn’t mean I agree with them.)
-- Tom Gross
WHAT THE ALT-RIGHT REALLY MEANS
What the Alt-Right Really Means
By Christopher Caldwell
New York Times
Dec. 4, 2016
Not even those most depressed about Donald J. Trump’s election and what it might portend could have envisioned the scene that took place just before Thanksgiving in a meeting room a few blocks from the White House. The white nationalist Richard B. Spencer was rallying about 200 kindred spirits.
“We are not meant to live in shame and weakness and disgrace,” he said. “We were not meant to beg for moral validation from some of the most despicable creatures to ever populate the planet.” When Mr. Spencer shouted, “Hail, Trump! Hail, our people! Hail, victory!” a scattered half-dozen men stood and raised their arms in Nazi salutes.
Mr. Spencer, however you describe him, calls himself a part of the “alt-right” – a new term for an informal and ill-defined collection of internet-based radicals. As such, he poses a complication for the incoming president. Stephen K. Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart News, whom Mr. Trump has picked as his chief White House strategist, told an interviewer in July that he considered Breitbart a “platform for the alt-right.”
Perhaps we should not make too much of this. Mr. Bannon may have meant something quite different by the term. Last summer “alt-right,” though it carried overtones of extremism, was not an outright synonym for ideologies like Mr. Spencer’s. But in late August, Hillary Clinton devoted a speech to the alt-right, calling it simply a new label for an old kind of white supremacy that Mr. Trump was shamelessly exploiting.
Groups such as Mr. Spencer’s, which had indeed rallied behind Mr. Trump, were delighted with the attention. Mr. Spencer called the days after the Clinton speech “maybe the greatest week we ever had.” While he does not consider either Mr. Trump or Mr. Bannon alt-right, Mr. Spencer has expressed hope that the press’s describing them as such will help his own group grow.
The alt-right is not a large movement, but the prominence that it is enjoying in the early days of the Trump era may tell us something about the way the country is changing. At least since the end of the Cold War, and certainly since the election of a black president in 2008, America’s shifting identity – political, cultural and racial – has given rise to many questions about who we are as a nation. But one kind of answer was off the table: the suggestion that America’s multicultural present might, in any way, be a comedown from its past had become a taboo. This year a candidate broke it. He promised to “make America great again.” And he won the presidency.
Mr. Trump’s success is bound to embolden other dissenters. This could mean a political climate in which reservations about such multiculturalist policies as affirmative action are voiced more strenuously. It could mean a rise in racial conflict and a platform for alarming movements like Mr. Spencer’s. More likely, it is going to bring a hard-to-interpret mix of those things.
Mr. Spencer, 38, directs the National Policy Institute, which sponsored the Washington meeting. Despite its name, the institute has little to say about policy, although it has called for a 50-year moratorium on immigration. What it mostly does is seek to unite people around the proposition that, as Mr. Spencer put it, “Race is real, race matters, and race is the foundation of identity.”
There are many such groups, varying along a spectrum of couth and intellect. Mr. Spencer, who dropped out of a doctoral program at Duke and worked, briefly, as an editor for The American Conservative, has his own online review, Radix Journal. The eloquent Yale-educated author Jared Taylor, who hosts the American Renaissance website and magazine, was at the conference, too. Kevin MacDonald, a retired psychology professor whose trilogy on Jewish influence is a touchstone for the movement, also came. There were cheers from the crowd at the mention of Andrew Anglin, who runs a neo-Nazi website called The Daily Stormer, but he was not there. Neither was Greg Johnson, whose online review Counter-Currents translates right-wing writings from various European languages. Some of these groups sprouted on the internet. Others have been around since before it existed.
There is no obvious catchall word for them. The word “racist” has been stretched to cover an attitude toward biology, a disposition to hate, and a varying set of policy preferences, from stop-and-frisk policing to repatriating illegal immigrants. While everyone in this set of groups is racist in at least one of these senses, many are not racist in others. Not many of the attendees at the Washington gathering favored the term “white supremacist.” The word implies a claim to superiority – something few insisted on. “White nationalist” is closer to the mark; most people in this part of the alt-right think whites either ought to have a nation or constitute one already. But they feel that almost all words tend to misdescribe or stigmatize them.
Almost all of them are gung-ho for Mr. Trump. That is a surprise. “I’ve been watching these people for 17 years,” said Heidi Beirich, who follows extremist movements for the Southern Poverty Law Center. “It’s the first time I’ve seen them come out for a candidate.”
Mr. Trump disavowed the alt-righters once the excesses of Mr. Spencer’s conference went viral. But as a candidate, Mr. Trump called the government corrupt, assailed the Republican establishment, flouted almost every rule of political etiquette, racial and otherwise, and did so in a way that made the alt-righters trust his instincts. And whether or not he exploited them as shamelessly as Mrs. Clinton alleged, he did little to put the public at ease on the matter – retweeting posts from someone called @WhiteGenocideTM and dawdling before disavowing the endorsement of the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.
“I don’t think that Trump is a rabid white nationalist,” the alt-right blogger Millennial Woes said at a speech in Seattle days after the election. “I think that he just wants to restore America to what he knew as a young man, as a child. And I think he probably does know at some level that the way to do it is to get more white people here and fewer brown people.”
Mr. Spencer speaks of Mr. Trump’s campaign as a “body without a head” and considers many of his policies “half-baked.” But for him, that is not the point. “Donald Trump is the first step towards identity politics for European-Americans in the United States,” he said.
There is no good evidence that Mr. Trump or Mr. Bannon think in terms like these. Not even the former Breitbart editor at large Ben Shapiro, who has become an energetic critic of Mr. Bannon and his agenda, says that Mr. Bannon is himself a racist or an anti-Semite. Mr. Shapiro considers fears that Mr. Bannon will bring white nationalism to the White House “overstated, at the very least.”
To be sure, Mr. Bannon holds right-wing views. He believes that a “global Tea Party movement” is underway, one that would fight crony capitalism and defend Western culture against radical Islam. In a 2014 speech he showed an interest in linking up American activists with certain European populist movements, including opponents of both the European Union and same-sex marriage. But while he recognized that some groups, such as France’s National Front, had “baggage, both ethnically and racially,” he expressed confidence that their intolerance “will all be worked through with time.”
Until Hillary Clinton’s speech last summer, a similarly broad idea prevailed of what the alt-right was. The Southern Poverty Law Center’s webpage on the movement traces some of its roots to libertarian followers of Ron Paul and traditionalist Christians. Neither were in evidence at the National Policy Institute conference in Washington. The adjective “alt-right” has been attached in the past to those, like the undercover documentarian James O’Keefe (known for his secret recordings of Planned Parenthood encounters), whose conservatism is mainstream, even if their tactics are not. Understood this way, the alt-right did look as if it might be a pillar of Mr. Bannon’s world Tea Party.
This was especially so if you worked for one of Mr. Bannon’s enterprises. Last March, Breitbart’s Milo Yiannopoulos, a peroxide-blond gay Trump supporter, critic of feminism and internet “troll” of a particularly aggressive kind, helped write “An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt-Right,” which painted the movement as “born out of the youthful, subversive, underground edges of the internet,” treating the neo-Nazis in its ranks as unrepresentative.
But since then, and certainly since the National Policy Institute event, alt-right has come more and more to mean white nationalist. Mr. Yiannopoulos’s exuberant youths look peripheral to the movement, the extremists central. William Johnson of the American Freedom Party even wrote Mr. Spencer a letter accusing him of squandering what might have been a “start-over moniker” – a gentler term that didn’t invite immediate dismissal – for his fellow white nationalists.
How big is the movement? There is a “hard core” of thousands or tens of thousands who are “taking us seriously on a daily basis,” Mr. Spencer said. But both members and detractors have an incentive to exaggerate the alt-right’s size. The National Policy Institute, at this point, would have trouble holding a serious street rally, let alone turning into a mass political party.
Even so, this more narrowly defined alt-right may be a force. In the internet age, political consciousness can be raised not just through quarterlies, parties and rallies but also through comment boards, console games and music videos. The internet solves the organizing problem of mobs, even as it gives them incentives not to stray from their screens. The adjective “alt-right” does not just denote recycled extremist views – it also reflects the way those views have been pollinated by other internet concerns and updated in the process.
For example, the alt-right has an environmentalist component, centered on a neo-pagan group called the Wolves of Vinland. The Norwegian heavy-metal musician Varg Vikernes, after serving 16 years for murder, has an alt-right blog that contains his musings on everything from Norse mythology to the meaning of the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik. There are sci-fi and video-game enthusiasts, too, including many who participated in the “GamerGate” uproar of 2014, which pitted (as the alt-right sees it) feminist game designers trying to emasculate the gaming world against (as the feminists saw it) a bunch of misogynist losers.
But most of all there is sex. The alt-right has a lot of young men in it, young men whose ideology can be assumed to confront them with obstacles to meeting people and dating. Sex-cynicism and race-pessimism, of course, often travel in tandem. At the National Policy Institute conference, the writer F. Roger Devlin gave a talk on why young Norwegian women in Groruddalen, outside Oslo, preferred dating Somali and Pakistani gang members to ethnic Norwegian boys-next-door. “The female instinct is to mate with socially dominant men,” he explained, “and it does not matter how such dominance is achieved.”
Likewise, the common alt-right slur “cuckservative,” a portmanteau combining cuckold and conservative, is not just a colorful way of saying that establishment conservatives have been unmanly. According to Matthew Tait, a young ex-member of the far-right British National Party, the metaphor has a precise ornithological meaning. Like the reed-warbler hatching eggs that a cuckoo (from which the word “cuckold” comes) has dropped into its nest, cuckservatives are raising the offspring of their foes. One can apply the metaphor equally to progressive ideas or to the children of the foreign-born. Type “reed warbler” into YouTube, and you will find a video with more than a million views, along with a considerable thread of alt-right commentary.
The internet liberates us to be our worst selves. Where other movements have orators and activists, the alt-right also has ruthless trolls and “doxers.” The trolls bombard Twitter and email accounts with slur-filled letters and Photoshopped art. Doxing is the releasing of personal information onto the internet. Last month, several alt-right writers, including Mr. Spencer, had their accounts suspended by Twitter. Mr. Spencer says he appreciates the “frenetic energy” of trolling but doesn’t do it himself.
The alt-right did not invent these tactics. But during this election the trolling reached a sadistic pitch. Journalists who opposed Mr. Trump received photos of themselves – and in some cases their children – dead, or in gas chambers. Jewish and Jewish-surnamed journalists were particular targets, especially those seen to be thwarting Mr. Trump’s rise: Jonah Goldberg, Julia Ioffe and Ben Shapiro, among others. The Daily Stormer has been particularly aggressive in deploying its “troll army” against those with whom it disagrees. A signature punctuation of the alt-right is to mark Jewish names with “echoes,” or triple parentheses, like (((this))).
One got a strange sensation at the National Policy Institute gathering that everyone in the room was either over 60 or under 40. There was a lot of tomorrow-belongs-to-me optimism, as if the attendees felt the ideas being aired there were on the verge of going mainstream. Whether this had anything to do with Mr. Trump’s victory or the effect of alt-right rebranding was hard for a newcomer to say. As Mr. Spencer spoke, a dapper guy named Ryan looked on. Ryan was a 27-year-old who sported the common “fashy” haircut – close-cropped (like a skinhead) on the sides, free-flowing (like a mullet) on the top. Mr. Spencer was lecturing journalists about how it took courage to embrace a movement that was “quite frankly, heretical.”
“For the moment,” Ryan muttered.
Mr. Tait, who hopes to start an alt-right movement in England, said: “What you’re seeing now is young people who have never been affiliated to any kind of politics, ever. They don’t remember what it was like before the war or in the 1960s or even in the 1980s. Their motivation isn’t a sense of loss.” That is what is “alt” about the alt-right. These people are not nostalgic. They may not even be conservatives. For them, multiculturalism is not an affront to traditional notions of society, as it would have been in the Reagan era. It is society.
The Vanderbilt University political scientist Carol Swain was among the first to describe the contours of this worldview. In her 2002 book, “The New White Nationalism in America,” she noted that young people were quick to identify double standards, and that they sometimes did so in the name of legitimate policy concerns. “I knew that identity would come next,” she recalled. “It had to come. All they had to do was copy what they were hearing. The multiculturalist arguments you hear on every campus – those work for whites, too.” Mr. Spencer, asked in an interview how he would respond to the accusation that his group was practicing identity politics in the manner of blacks and Hispanics, replied: “I’d say: ‘Yuh. You’re right.’ “
Professor Swain’s analysis does not just pertain to radicals. It is a plausible account of what is happening in the American electoral mainstream. The alt-right is small. It may remain so. And yet, while small, it is part of something this election showed to be much bigger: the emergence of white people, who evidently feel their identity is under attack, as a “minority”-style political bloc.
DIDN’T SLAM ANTI-SEMITISM ON THE LEFT? DON’T EXPECT CREDIBILITY WHEN YOU SLAM IT ON THE RIGHT
Didn’t Slam Anti-Semitism On the Left? Don’t Expect Credibility When You Slam It On the Right.
By Deborah E. Lipstadt
The Forward
November 27, 2016
For the past few decades, we have witnessed the rise of anti-Semitism from the left. From Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party in the United Kingdom to college campuses across America, the phenomenon is real, and it is dangerous. Yet, all too often, some Jews – both individuals and organizations – who inhabit the liberal or left end of the spectrum have tried to explain it away with the classic “yes/but” rationalization: “Yes, it’s wrong, but if only Israel would… then the anti-Semitism would disappear.” Maybe their fear of losing their left-wing bona fides blinded them to the fact that the only proper response to prejudice of any kind – anti-Semitism included – is unambiguous condemnation.
Now, some of these same Jews are excoriating establishment Jewish leaders who have failed to condemn anti-Semitism from the right. They lambast these leaders for cozying up to Donald Trump and his newly appointed White House chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, who has proudly supported the rise of the so-called “alt-right,” the self-serving marketing term for a group rife with anti-Semites and white supremacists.
These left-wing Jews, who are currently exhibiting so much indignation, should examine their own record. When they do, maybe they’ll understand why they don’t exactly have a ton of credibility right now.
This is not to say that I think the establishment Jewish leaders have been wise in their approach to Trump and Bannon. Not at all. In recent months and days, much of the organized American Jewish community has indeed failed the test of recognizing and condemning the very real anti-Semitism streaming from the right. The left is absolutely correct about that.
During the presidential campaign, Jewish reporters and pundits who were critical of Trump were widely subjected to virulent anti-Semitic attacks from people who openly identified as his supporters. With the exception of the Anti-Defamation League, most leading Jewish organizations said nothing. More recently, when Trump named Bannon as his chief strategist, most Jewish organizations chose to remain mute or adopt a “wait and see” position. They argued that the president-elect and those around him should be given a chance to establish their own record. Groups willing to fight for pro-Israel presidential appointees suddenly discovered a new agnosticism when faced with an anti-Jewish presidential appointee. One suspects that, in light of Trump’s record of nursing grievances, they feared being denied a future place at the table, failing to see that such a place is worthless if it telegraphs weakness and lack of principle.
Some did more than sit on the sidelines; they gave Bannon precious political cover. The head of the once venerable Zionist Organization of America, Morton Klein, lauded both Bannon and Breitbart News, which Bannon used to lead, for their “friendship and fair-mindedness towards Israel and the Jewish people,” and insisted that “Breitbart bravely fights against anti-Semitism.” Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador to America, expressed satisfaction about working with Bannon.
Did they not see how Bannon, in his capacity as Trump’s campaign manager, deployed anti-Semitic rhetoric for political purposes in Trump’s speeches, particularly in the campaign’s carefully produced “closing argument” advertisement? That ad featured four supposed enemies of the American public – Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and three Jews: financier George Soros, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. Over images of them, Trump thundered: “The establishment has trillions of dollars at stake in this election for those who control the levers of power in Washington and for the global special interests. They partner with these people who don’t have your good in mind.” These insinuations of greedy global Jewish conspiracies are worthy of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
This is not playing with fire. It is lighting one.
We cannot know whether, on a personal level, Bannon is an anti-Semite. He and his defenders always cite an Orthodox Jewish aide to whom Bannon wishes a “Shabbat Shalom” each week. We cannot know what is in his heart, but we know plenty about what is in his publications and speeches. At the very best, he is an enabler, peddling racist and anti-Semitic views because he thinks it politically advantageous to do so. I might prefer dealing with a “genuinely” prejudiced person. At least I would know that he has the courage of his ugly convictions.
For American Jews, particularly those aligned with the new administration, to remain silent is to send a signal that anti-Semitism and racism can be tolerated – and injected into the heart of American politics. Expediency, or tactical thinking, can have its place. But in this case, it is completely trumped by the need for honesty – and a bit of backbone.
The established leadership (with the exception of ADL) failed this first test regarding the Trump administration. Only after an outcry from many quarters – including from the editor of this publication – did they begin to issue somewhat lukewarm condemnations.
Yet it’s not only anti-Semitism from the right, but also anti-Semitism from the left, that should have been met with steel, not mush. The protesters from the left end of the political spectrum have also failed a test. Let’s hope they’ll do some soul-searching, too. Sadly, given the tenor of recent events, Jewish organizations from all ends of the political spectrum will probably have other opportunities to stand up. Let’s hope they do. Far more than just their already wounded credibility is at stake.
LIBERALS GET HYSTERICAL OVER THE ‘ALT-RIGHT’ BUT WE ARE LIVING IN THEIR ‘ALT-LEFT’ WORLD
Liberals get hysterical over the ‘alt-right’ but we are living in their ‘alt-left’ world
By Dan Gainor
FoxNews.com
December 2, 2016
(If you want to read the many hyperlinks in this piece, you can do so through this link: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/12/02/liberals-get-hysterical-over-alt-right-but-are-living-in-their-alt-left-world.html )
The traditional media are obsessed with tying conservatives to the “alt-right.” There have been more than 50 major news network mentions this year alone as journalists try to do what they always do -- paint conservatives as racist, sexist, and a few other words that end in ist. All in the name of “tolerance.”
But when it comes to the left, then they abandon that strategy. There is no alt-left. They are not alternative. Their mainstream is radical and out of the American mainstream on almost everything.
This was quite obvious as liberals bemoaned the death of Fidel Castro, a man his own daughter called “a tyrant.” The Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr. summed up years of devotion, recalling how, “the oppressed the world over joined Castro’s cause of fighting for freedom & liberation.”
Some liberals distanced themselves from that love affair, though many have embraced left-wing dictators from Stalin to Chavez. But, the left is even worse when it comes to policy, where it shows its true colors (red).
On every major issue of the day, the left is unified. Taxes. Climate. So-called “free” college. Citizens United. Transgender bathroom/locker rooms/showers. ObamaCare. In each case and thousands more, the left wants more, bigger, better-funded government.
Liberals want higher taxes because they know how to spend your money better than you do -- on what they want. They have turned climate science into a religion where disbelief is to be persecuted or even prosecuted.
Look at The New York Times’ obsession with the topic and the bogus Paris “treaty” when staff interviewed Trump. And rather than examine the causes for spiking college costs, the left wants taxpayers to spend another $50 billion a year as the national debt nears $20 trillion.
They also don’t care that the Citizens United ruling let political opponents make a film about Hillary Clinton, that young girls might be forced to disrobe or shower next to men or that ObamaCare rates have skyrocketed.
This is the essence of the liberal world view. The solution to every problem is bigger government.
If there are no regulations, then they are needed. If they exist, then there needs to be more and a better-funded enforcement agency.
It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
This is what we must start thinking of as the “alt-left.” “Alt,” not because they are out of the liberal mainstream. They aren’t. Alternative because they are out of the mainstream of an America where 37 percent are conservative and 35 percent are moderate. Just 24 percent are liberal.
Yet the most extreme of that 24 percent dominate our culture. Our TV, movies, music, plays and, yes, our news are controlled by those who three-fourths of America consider wildly out of step. The progressive, far-left agenda has conquered the traditional left’s agenda.
The alt-left is everything bad the left claims about the right. It is extreme and doesn’t want compromise. It wants to demonize or destroy opponents and intrude into every aspect of our lives.
Media outlets that bemoan Trump turning America to the right forget the alt-left support a Socialist had running in the Democrat primary. Good, old-fashioned liberalism has been replaced by a far-more radical brand.
It’s not just the policy positions. It’s how the left enforces them. Opposing views are suppressed in any space liberals control -- academia, Hollywood and media.
Colleges and universities have become safe spaces for liberal thought while conservative speakers are regularly chased off campuses or harassed by rabid alt-left protesters.
Hollywood spent a quarter century promoting Hillary Clinton for president and has already used nearly 30 TV shows to target the man who eventually defeated her.
Traditional media outlets accuse conservative websites of offering “fake” news but skip the rampant lunacy in places like The Huffington Post, Slate and, God help us, Salon.
None of this is new. Liberals saw the Obama presidency as a chance to kill off conservativism and they used the tactics honed by brown shirts of the 1930s -- including violence, vandalism and intimidation. They and their media allies then treat every such incident as the reincarnation of Gandhi.
The alt-left has been growing more publicly extreme since the arrival of Occupy Wall Street in 2011. Then, protesters vandalized, blocked traffic, intimidated and threatened police and set fires -- all under the banner of “revolution.” Even the protest-friendly New York Times admitted Occupy Oakland had been a “riot.” “Packs of protesters charged into businesses, overturning tables, shattering windows and smashing A.T.M.’s.”
When the Occupy protests were over, 7,700 Occupiers had been arrested. Three were convicted “in a failed plot to bomb an Ohio bridge,” according to The Los Angeles Times. The rallying cry for Occupy, “We are the 99 percent,” can be traced directly back to alt-left stalwarts like Vanity Fair, PBS and others.
Liberals don’t recall Occupy as criminal or dangerous. HuffPo’s “Occupy Wall Street” page shows no evidence of any controversy, any violence. In fact, the site’s page celebrates Occupiers with “10 Iconic Photos Of Occupy Wall Street, 3 Years Later” and a call to “Occupy Congress.” Rich celebrities also supported the Occupiers -- Yoko Ono, Russell Simmons and Alec Baldwin, to name just a few. Michael Moore wanted police to leave their posts and join the unrest like Egypt (which led to revolution). And the major media celebrated them almost as much.
The alt-left didn’t end with the Occupy movement. It got worse. New groups appeared, embracing the aggressive tactics and a similar radical agenda, ranting “against the ravages of global capitalism.”
They rioted in Ferguson, based in part on false news reports about what Michael Brown allegedly said. “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” was born and we got more riots, more protests and more disruption. The actual phrase was never uttered, even The Washington Post and the Obama administration admit that.
It doesn’t matter. The expression continues to be used throughout the left, as well as in major media from ABC to ESPN. In 2014, five St. Louis Rams players even held their hands up in a protest at a game. Their protest was based on a lie. The alt-left didn’t care.
That protest has evolved and included the Black Friday, Ferguson, and ShutItDown protests, the Freddie Gray riot, Black Lives Matter and now the #NotMyPresident protests and riot. In the Freddie Gray riot alone, 130 police officers were injured, more than at any incident since 9/11.
There was lots of ink in the alt-left media to support the rioters, very little that even mentioned the injured police. The same thing happened when Black Lives Matter protesters injured 21 police in Minneapolis in July.
Those weren’t the only alt-left unrest. Trump supporters were victims of similar assaults during the campaign. They were punched, attacked, egged and threatened. Major media blamed Trump by a factor of 15-1. Alt-left media were worse. Liberal Prof. David Coates wrote in HuffPo to blame the right, saying the violence was all on angry Republicans, “an anger that has no parallel in and around the base of the Democratic Party.” Classic misdirection.
The alt-left doesn’t just use violence to enforce its will. It smears its opponents as racists and Nazis while journalists help them do it. Together they dredge up 30-year-old comments from Sen. Jeff Sessions to say he’s racist. Yet they ignore how liberals have helped kill 60 million mostly minority babies and never once accuse them of trying to genocide African-American and Hispanic communities. Only liberals are allowed to use ist words.
When that doesn’t work, the alt-left turns to its deep bench of celebrities. We are flooded with climate change stories, many featuring Hollywood stars. Actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Woody Harrelson and director James Cameron are go-to, alt-left climate scolds.
Liberal outlets never tell us about the carbon footprint of the 400-foot royal yacht DiCaprio rented. Or maybe how Harrelson had his vegan belt and shoes flown to France special.
Cameron, for his part, owns a collection of motorcycles, cars, dirt bikes, a yacht, a helicopter -- even a fleet of submarines. Yet he’s a climate hero.
None of that matters to either the alt-left or the major media. But it matters to the rest of us.
The alt-left is more than just a web of sometimes-demented liberal websites and pundits. It is the major media outlets and journalists who credential those sites and ideas. Some of Huffington Post’s most-devoted readers are the very journalists who then claim neutrality on national issues.
If this election didn’t prove the traditional news media are devoted left-wingers, nothing will.
Is there any doubt that The Times is just as alt-left as Huffington Post? They share a common world view. They promote the same agendas. They mirror each other’s disgust for things not liberal. So when Trump skewers Times liberals, he is taking on the massive creature that is the alt-left.
It’s the 800-ton Godzilla in the room. It’s about time we called it a monster.
ELECTION THERAPY FROM MY BASKET OF DEPLORABLES
Election Therapy From My Basket of Deplorables
By Maureen Dowd
The New York Times
November 27, 2016
WASHINGTON – First I had to deal with the president-elect scolding.
During his interview with The New York Times on Tuesday, Donald Trump chided me twice for being too tough on him.
Sitting next to our publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Trump invited everyone around the table to call him if they saw anything “where you feel that I’m wrong.”
“You can call me, Arthur can call me, I would love to hear,” he said. “The only one who can’t call me is Maureen. She treats me too rough.”
Then I had to go home for Thanksgiving and deal with my family scolding me about the media misreading the country. I went cold turkey to eat hot turkey: no therapy dog, no weaving therapy, no yoga, no acupuncture, no meditation, no cry-in.
The minute I saw my sister’s Trump champagne and a Cersei figurine as the centerpiece – my brother, Kevin, nicknamed Hillary “Cersei” during this year’s brutal game of thrones – I knew I wasn’t in a safe space.
My little basket of deplorables, as I call my conservative family, gloated with Trump toasts galore, and Kevin presented me with his annual holiday column with an extra flourish.
My colleague Paul Krugman tweeted Friday that “affluent, educated suburbanites” who voted for Trump are “fools.” What else is there to say, he asked.
Well, here is what Kevin, an affluent, educated suburbanite, has to say in his column, titled an “Election Therapy Guide for Liberals”:
[Kevin Dowd writes]
Donald Trump pulled off one of the greatest political feats in modern history by defeating Hillary Clinton and the vaunted Clinton machine.
The election was a complete repudiation of Barack Obama: his fantasy world of political correctness, the politicization of the Justice Department and the I.R.S., an out-of-control E.P.A., his neutering of the military, his nonsupport of the police and his fixation on things like transgender bathrooms. Since he became president, his party has lost 63 House seats, 10 Senate seats and 14 governorships.
The country had signaled strongly in the last two midterms that they were not happy. The Dems’ answer was to give them more of the same from a person they did not like or trust.
Preaching – and pandering – with a message of inclusion, the Democrats have instead become a party where incivility and bad manners are taken for granted, rudeness is routine, religion is mocked and there is absolutely no respect for a differing opinion. This did not go down well in the Midwest, where Trump flipped three blue states and 44 electoral votes.
The rudeness reached its peak when Vice President-elect Mike Pence was booed by attendees of “Hamilton” and then pompously lectured by the cast. This may play well with the New York theater crowd but is considered boorish and unacceptable by those of us taught to respect the office of the president and vice president, if not the occupants.
Here is a short primer for the young protesters. If your preferred candidate loses, there is no need for mass hysteria, canceled midterms, safe spaces, crying rooms or group primal screams. You might understand this better if you had not received participation trophies, undeserved grades to protect your feelings or even if you had a proper understanding of civics. The Democrats are now crying that Hillary had more popular votes. That can be her participation trophy.
If any of my sons had told me they were too distraught over a national election to take an exam, I would have brought them home the next day, fearful of the instruction they were receiving. Not one of the top 50 colleges mandate one semester of Western Civilization. Maybe they should rethink that.
Mr. Trump received over 62 million votes, not all of them cast by homophobes, Islamaphobes, racists, sexists, misogynists or any other “ists.” I would caution Trump deniers that all of the crying and whining is not good preparation for the coming storm. The liberal media, both print and electronic, has lost all credibility. I am reasonably sure that none of the mainstream print media had stories prepared for a Trump victory. I watched the networks and cable stations in their midnight meltdown – embodied by Rachel Maddow explaining to viewers that they were not having a “terrible, terrible dream” and that they had not died and “gone to hell.”
The media’s criticism of Trump’s high-level picks as “not diverse enough” or “too white and male” – a day before he named two women and offered a cabinet position to an African-American – magnified this fact.
Here is a final word to my Democratic friends. The election is over. There will not be a do-over. So let me bid farewell to Al Sharpton, Ben Rhodes and the Clintons. Note to Cher, Barbra, Amy Schumer and Lena Dunham: Your plane is waiting. And to Jon Stewart, who talked about moving to another planet: Your spaceship is waiting. To Bruce Springsteen, Jay Z, Beyoncé and Katy Perry, thanks for the free concerts. And finally, to all the foreign countries that contributed to the Clinton Foundation, there will not be a payoff or a rebate.
As Eddie Murphy so eloquently stated in the movie “48 Hrs.”: “There’s a new sheriff in town.” And he is going to be here for 1,461 days. Merry Christmas.
LETTERS TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
Answering a Trump Supporter’s Message to Liberals
Letters
The New York Times
December 1, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/30/opinion/answering-a-trump-supporters-message-to-liberals.html
To the Editor:
Re “No Blubbering, Just Trump Bubbly” (column, Nov. 27):
I take issue with Kevin Dowd, Maureen Dowd’s brother, who excoriates liberals for believing that all Donald Trump voters are “homophobes, Islamophobes, racists, sexists, misogynists.”
I don’t think for a second that most liberals believe that; however, I do believe that many Hillary Clinton supporters are alarmed by the complacency and lack of outrage by Trump supporters over the jubilation expressed by the burgeoning white supremacy movement and the appointment of Steve Bannon as chief strategist.
We are not “whining” in “preparation for the coming storm.” Rather, we are speaking out against bigotry and hate and coming together to ensure that all Americans feel safe in our own country. I wish most of the 62 million who voted for Mr. Trump would do the same.
MINDY SCHLOSSBERG
Eugene, Ore.
To the Editor:
Even though I am an unapologetic Democrat, I have often been grateful for the annual column in which Maureen Dowd gives her conservative brother, Kevin, a voice. Frequently, he has inspired me to think through the issues from a different point of view. Not so this time, I’m afraid.
This time, Kevin marched gleefully in lock step with many other Donald Trump supporters who, having tasted victory, would rather continue their campaign against the “liberal establishment” than face the challenge of governing this complex, diverse and difficult country.
Really, why bother to continue to castigate Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama? You won! You’re in charge! Good luck!
Journalism that matters.
More essential than ever.
BROOKS B. YEAGER
Silver Spring, Md.
(The writer was deputy assistant secretary of state for environment and development from 1998 to 2000.)
To the Editor:
Kevin Dowd’s sentiments echo what many Donald Trump supporters say and illustrate how differently liberals and conservatives see the world. We have to make the country functional again, and though we may not succeed, we must make a genuine effort to listen.
Setting aside who’s right or wrong for now, it’s clear that too many on both sides mock the other’s assumptions, vilify their opinions and believe that their opponents are idiots. Liberals mischaracterize conservatives by calling them all bigots and misogynists, and conservatives mischaracterize liberals by claiming we’re all obsessed with political correctness and hate American values.
It will take radical faith on both sides to trust that most of their opponents actually love America and aren’t evil, even if their words infuriate us.
MARK D. SIEGEL
New Haven
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East Aleppo’s last clown was killed on Wednesday. Anas, 24, is survived by his wife, who remains trapped in Aleppo. They married two months ago.
CONTENTS
1. East Aleppo’s last clown
2. Saudi woman pictured without hijab faces calls for her execution
3. Moroccan state TV teaches women to hide evidence of domestic abuse
4. Over two-thirds of the world’s battle-related deaths
5. Israeli Arabs donate wood to rebuild Haifa synagogue
[Notes below by Tom Gross]
EAST ALEPPO’S LAST CLOWN
Syrian opposition journalist Rami Jarrah, writes:
“He dedicated himself to helping children cope with the horrific surroundings in Aleppo. Putting a smile on a child’s face was no momentary thing for Anas.
Day and night he would jump from one place to the other trying desperately to do what he considered was his duty; a protector of the children, a man they all loved.
Anas has died as a result of severe wounds endured from a missile fired by Assad’s forces on eastern Aleppo.
RIP Anas al Basha”
***
Anas al Basha died on November 30.
More here from the Associated Press.
Or in French here.
In all probability Anas was killed by a missile fired not by Russians but by Iranian troops or by Hizbullah or one of the other non-Syrian Iranian-commanded Shia militia who are doing the bulk of the killing in Aleppo and elsewhere in Syria.
But pro-Obama media such as the New York Times and BBC are so eager not to portray the Iranian regime as the deadly force it is, given their eagerness to pretend it is somehow moderate and therefore that the Iran nuclear deal was a wise rather than an utterly foolish course of action, continuously avoid explaining the central Iranian role in the Syria war, preferring instead to mention the Russian role.
***
I previously reported that Israeli charities who are distributing food and medical aid in Syrian refugee camps in Jordan, have brought along a professional clown to perform for the children while food is being handed out. Robert Fulford, a columnist for the Canadian paper The National Post, points this out and links to my website (in paragraphs 10, 11 and 12) here.
SAUDI WOMAN PICTURED WITHOUT HIJAB FACES CALLS FOR HER EXECUTION
A woman was photographed briefly not wearing a hijab in Saudi Arabia’s capital city Riyadh. Many Saudis are now demanding her execution.
One social media user said: “Kill her and throw her corpse to the dogs”, reports the British newspaper, The Independent.
See also:
Interview (by Tom Gross) with the wife of Raif Badawi
UK ambassador to Saudi completes Hajj after conversion to Islam (& a leader too radical for IS)
MOROCCAN STATE TV TEACHES WOMEN TO HIDE EVIDENCE OF DOMESTIC ABUSE
A Moroccan state television channel has broadcast a tutorial showing women how to conceal the evidence of domestic violence with make-up, sparking fury within the country.
Video here.
OVER TWO-THIRDS OF THE WORLD’S BATTLE-RELATED DEATHS
The current issue of The Economist reminds us of the conflicts that are rife throughout the Arab world:
“Although home to only 5% of the world’s population, in 2014 the Arab world accounted for 45% of the world’s terrorism, 68% of its battle-related deaths, 47% of its internally displaced and 58% of its refugees. War not only kills and maims, but destroys vital infrastructure accelerating the disintegration.
“The Arab youth population (aged 15-29) numbers 105m and is growing fast, but unemployment, poverty and marginalisation are all growing faster. The youth unemployment rate, at 30%, stands at more than twice the world’s average of 14%. Almost half of young Arab women looking for jobs fail to find them (against a global average of 16%).”
http://www.economist.com/news/ middle-east-and-africa/2171093 4-arabs-make-up-just-5-worlds- population-they-account-about- half
ISRAELI ARABS DONATE WOOD TO REBUILD HAIFA SYNAGOGUE
A sign of hope.
Following the massive forest fire which gutted a synagogue in Haifa, Israeli-Arab wood suppliers have decided to donate wood paneling to help rebuild the synagogue, Israel’s bestselling Yediot Ahronot newspaper reports.
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