Is Israel Doomed?

31 12 2015

 By Timothy D. Naegele[1]

I am forever reminded of what a prominent American—who is a Jew and a strong supporter of Israel, and who has written for the Wall Street Journal many times—told me several years ago:

I have long thought that Israel will not make it, if only because of what are cavalierly called WMD [weapons of mass destruction] and its very tight geographical compression. All else is immaterial, including the Palestinians, or us, or the nature of Israel’s [government].

WMDs come in many forms, such as deadly viruses, biological and chemical agents, and of course nuclear and nation-ending EMP attacks.[2]  Neither Israel’s military, its security forces nor its “Iron Dome” can protect against such threats.[3]

The Israeli Apartheid vis-à-vis the Palestinians may have sown the seeds of the tiny Jewish state’s destruction.  Indeed, one prominent Jew has asked about the treatment of Palestinians: “Is this how I wanted to be treated when I was a minority in another people’s country?”

Months and years from now, Benjamin Netanyahu and his ilk will confront the legacy of their crimes against the Palestinians, including an estimated 2,200 deaths in Gaza last year alone.  He has morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors. He must be tried by the International Criminal Court, and arrested whenever he sets foot outside of Israel.

Barack Obama and other world leaders “detest” him, just as the Rabins and Ariel Sharon hated him. Indeed, Leah Rabin blamed Netanyahu for her husband Yitzhak’s assassination. She saw “only doom for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process” with Netanyahu at Israel’s helm; and her views were prescient.[4]

Each day that Netanyahu remains in power[5] brings Israel closer to its demise, and Jews globally closer to the first holocaust of the 21st Century—which may make the Nazi Holocaust of the last century seem like “child’s play.”  The human carnage might make even mass murderers like Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-tung wince.[6]

The massacre and mindless slaughter of Jews—and especially Orthodox Jews—may be coming and might surpass anything that ISIS/ISIL or other global terrorist groups have done thus far.  The rape and enslavement of Jewish women—prior to their brutal torture and death—may make what the Soviets and Japanese did to German women[7] and Korean “comfort women”[8] pale by comparison.

The goal of Israel’s enemies would be to annihilate all Israelis, and then systematically focus on Jews around the world until they are exterminated.[9]  Today, Jews can be targeted globally and there is nothing that Israel or its vaulted Mossad can do to protect them.  This will only get dramatically worse.   Tragically, Jews are the most hated group of human beings on the planet, yet they respond out of fear and anger—and lash out with hatred toward others, including Islamophobia.[10]

American president—and the father of today’s Left—Franklin D. Roosevelt, turned away the MS St. Louis from docking at American ports, and consigned most of the Jewish refugees aboard to their deaths in Europe.[11]  The other anti-Semites in FDR’s administration knew of the Nazi concentration camps, yet did nothing about them.  Soon, the world may turn a “blind eye” to the fate of Israel and global Jewry.[12]

Like the Jews aboard the MS St. Louis, they may be truly on the last “Voyage of the Damned.”[13]

© 2015, 2016, Timothy D. Naegele

Israel flag burning

See also Will The United States And Israel Cease To Exist?https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/01/19/emp-attack-only-30-million-americans-survive/#comment-15839

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[1] Timothy D. Naegele was counsel to the United States Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and chief of staff to Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal recipient and former U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass). He and his firm, Timothy D. Naegele & Associates, specialize in Banking and Financial Institutions Law, Internet Law, Litigation and other matters (see www.naegele.com and http://www.naegele.com/documents/TimothyD.NaegeleResume.pdf). He has an undergraduate degree in economics from UCLA, as well as two law degrees from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, and from Georgetown University. He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army, assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, where he received the Joint Service Commendation Medal. Mr. Naegele is an Independent politically; and he is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in Finance and Business. He has written extensively over the years (see, e.g., www.naegele.com/whats_new.html#articles), and can be contacted directly at tdnaegele.associates@gmail.com; see also Google search: Timothy D. Naegele

[2]  See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/01/19/emp-attack-only-30-million-americans-survive/ (“EMP Attack: Only 30 Million Americans Survive”)

[3]  See, e.g.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Dome#Effects_on_Israeli_society

[4]  See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/ (“Israel’s Senseless Killings And War With Iran”)

[5]  See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/ (“Ariel Sharon Is Missed”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/the-madness-of-benjamin-netanyahu/ (“The Madness Of Benjamin Netanyahu”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/ (“Israel’s Senseless Killings And War With Iran”) (see also the comments beneath these articles)

[6]  See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/the-silent-voices-of-stalin’s-soviet-holocaust-and-mao’s-chinese-holocaust/ (“The Silent Voices Of Stalin’s Soviet Holocaust And Mao’s Chinese Holocaust”)

[7]  See id. (“[A]s the Soviets moved through Germany, they raped at least two million German women in what is now acknowledged as the largest case of mass rape in history”)

[8]  See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/28/human-trafficking/#comment-7778 (“The Tragic Story of Comfort Women”)

[9]  As I have written:

Years ago when I was in Germany visiting friends, I was told by someone that the only thing wrong with Hitler was that he did not “finish the job” of killing all of the Jews.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/#comment-544 (“Why I Write And Say What I Do”)

[10]  Jews cowardly try to stifle debate at Web sites, and label anyone who does not agree with Netanyahu, AIPAC and the AIPAC-bought Republican lackeys in Congress as anti-Semites, which of course is absurd.

Labeling people as anti-Semites, much less on a wholesale basis, reverberates to the detriment of Jews, Israel and Israelis. Indeed, Jews are being urged to flee to Israel, as anti-Semitism spreads dramatically in Europe and globally.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/#comment-7039 (“Is Night Falling Again For European Jews?“)

Netanyahu’s critics—Jews and non-Jews alike—are falsely labeled as “Israel haters,” “self-hating Jews” and anti-Semites.

Aside from the traitor Jonathan Pollard, no American should ever forget:

(A) The unprovoked Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, which killed 34 brave Americans and maimed many more (see http://www.gtr5.com); and

(B) The Iraq War, which Israel and its “neocon” surrogates pushed us into—which resulted in thousands of Americans killed or maimed, and vast economic treasures wasted.

And these are only the ones that are generally known.  No friend or ally does this.

Yet, the “Israel Firsters” will leap to its defense as always, claiming that anyone who criticizes the tiny country and its practices is an anti-Semite, including Jews themselves.

Perhaps their most “unhinged” vitriol is reserved for those who believe in Islam—even though Islam has 1.8 billion followers, while at most Judaism has 14 million followers.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/06/islamophobia-is-un-american/ (“Islamophobia Is Un-American”) (see also the comments beneath the article)

[11]  See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis (“MS St. Louis“); see also infra n.13.

[12]  See, e.g.https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/#comment-7039 (“Is Night Falling Again For European Jews?“); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/#comment-544 (“Why I Write And Say What I Do”)

[13]  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_of_the_Damned     (“Voyage of the Damned”—”[M]ore than 600 of the 937 passengers [aboard the MS St. Louis], who did not resettle in the United Kingdom but in the other European nations, ultimately were deported and died in Nazi concentration camps”)


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180 responses

31 12 2015
Jonathan Buttall

Hello, Timothy. I have some knowledge of this situation, not just from historical knowledge and my reading of genetic studies, but from having ethnic Jewish background (religiously I’m a Christian and have ignored my Jewish heritage most of my life) and having visited 5 Middle Eastern countries including Israel.

Israelis do seem to have learned the wrong lessons from the Holocaust. The whole point in not letting it happen again (the common slogan, “never again”) is also to not perpetuate one yourself. Apartheid, making Gaza into a modern day Warsaw Ghetto and denying all human rights to millions of people under their control does not legitimize them as a nation.They lack any Constitution.

In addition, well publicized genetic studies reveal that Ashkenazim (European Jews) are more than 80% lacking in any genetic connection to the Arabic Semitic Hebrews of the Bible. So, the Israel of today is not the Israel of the Bible.

This was true long before Netanyahu, bad as he is, and Ariel Sharon was worse, given his ordering of widespread massacres in Lebanon of Palestinian women and children during the Lebanese Civil War. It’s about Israel itself, not about the current leader. Previous leaders committed many crimes against humanity.

But some good news…………..according to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (discussed in their Facebook site last year), the rejected Jews of the SS St Louis were taken in by other countries and did not return to Nazi Germany.

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1 01 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you, Jonathan, for your comments as always.

First, Happy New Year to you and your family. 🙂

Second, I have lots of articles in draft form, and decided to publish this one before year’s end.

Third, I agree with your second paragraph. As I have written:

The famous Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal once spoke about the duty owed by survivors of the Nazi Holocaust to Jews and non-Jews alike to insure that other holocausts did not occur again, and of course he was correct.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/the-silent-voices-of-stalin’s-soviet-holocaust-and-mao’s-chinese-holocaust/ (“The Silent Voices Of Stalin’s Soviet Holocaust And Mao’s Chinese Holocaust”)

Tragically, Netanyahu has morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors.

Like the Iraq War, he has been trying desperately to push the United States and the American people into a war with Iran—to do Israel’s bidding. Again, no friend or ally does this.

Fourth, I agree with your conclusion:

[T]he Israel of today is not the Israel of the Bible.

Yet, as you know all too well, there is an attempt made constantly to “preserve” the historical connection, which of course is nonsense. It is fostered in part by rabid Evangelical Christians, who represent a small sect within Christianity. Most Christians reject them and their views categorically.

Fifth, again, I cite to one source about the fate of the MS St. Louis survivors.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis (“MS St. Louis“)

Sixth, as I have written, I grew up in West Los Angeles and have had lots of Jewish friends. They are my elementary school, junior high, and high school classmates; fraternity brothers in college; law school classmates; friends with whom I worked on Capitol Hill; law firm partners; other lawyers with whom I have worked; hiking and other friends; and clients.

With two exceptions, their families came to the United States long before World War II and the Nazi atrocities. They are Americans through and through; and they are wonderful and loving human beings. I will treasure our friendships for the rest of my life.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless- killings-and-war-with-iran/#comment-544 (“Why I Write And Say What I Do”)

However, there are totally-vicious and un-American “Israel Firsters”—and devout supporters of the murderous Netanyahu—who are as vile and evil as Adolf Hitler’s Nazis, and employ methods and tactics against their perceived “enemies” not unlike what the Nazis used.

Netanyahu—and his ilk—and Russia’s murderous Putin are moral equivalents, and deserve similar fates that cannot come fast enough.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/11/29/the-death-of-putin-and-russia-the-final-chapter-of-the-cold-war/ (“The Death Of Putin And Russia: The Final Chapter Of The Cold War”)

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1 01 2016
Jonathan Buttall

Thanks for your nice reply, Timothy. Your link seemed to flesh out the statement about the SS St.Louis made by the Holocaust Museum. We are in agreement on the subject of Israeli hypocrisy and it’s cruel ironies. Netanyahu is likely one of the most despised leaders in the world, and seems to do more harm than good to his country, yet is supported there all the more to defy the world.

As I write this, we’re moving towards another new year, another hypothetical chance to grow and improve, or make the same mistakes. Our visiting grandson during the holiday season makes us happy as we enter 2016……..extended family issues had made it hard to see him for some time, but now at 18, he makes his own decisions and made sure he will see us regularly. I wish the same happiness for you and yours in the soon to come new year. Jonathan.

Liked by 1 person

1 01 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

Enjoy. 🙂

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1 01 2016
Richard

Timothy, sometimes I think your blind hatred for Benjamin Netanyahu, taints your perspective beyond reason.

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1 01 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you, Rick, and Happy New Year to you and your family. 🙂

Tragically, everything that Netanyahu has done has inured to the detriment of Israel and innocent Jews globally.

Barack Obama and other world leaders know this: the Rabins and Sharon knew this; the world knows this, which is among the reasons why anti-Semitism has grown dramatically; and lots of Jews know this, albeit many are scared and in denial.

This time period is reminiscent of the period before and during World War II, when the collective denials of so many led to their tragic deaths.

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4 01 2016
RayUSA

Mr. Naegele,

As always, a very interesting article with much thoughtful insight. I also found your comments, along with Jonathan Buttall’s observations well worth the read.

Also, your comments regarding meeting David Rockefeller, etc. (from a previous blog) was quite interesting to say the least. You certainly have had some rare and unique experiences!

Liked by 1 person

4 01 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you for your kind words, Ray; and Happy New Year to you and your family.

Actually, the experiences that I have touched on are merely a small part of the rare, unique and truly interesting experiences that I have enjoyed thus far.

Having grown up in LA and worked in WDC has produced some very special times, to say the very least.

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5 01 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

American Jews Stay Silent As Israeli Democracy Withers [UPDATED]

Netanyahu Nazi

This is the title of an article by Chemi Shalev in Haaretz, which states:

On Sunday, The Washington Post denounced the Israeli government’s proposed new legislation against leftist NGOs, euphemistically called “The Transparency Law.” In a sharply worded editorial, “A Danger to Israeli Democracy,” the newspaper wrote: “The proposal reflects the kind of tactic that Russia and China have employed to squelch dissent, and it is not in keeping with Israel’s core values as a democratic state.”

The editorial was one of the strongest reactions yet in the United States to Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked’s efforts, transparent indeed, to suppress antigovernment NGOs and human rights groups by branding them, in effect, as foreign agents. And it resonates doubly loud when juxtaposed against the deafening silence of most American Jews in response to the waves of chauvinistic antidemocratic legislation and incitement in which Israel is increasingly drowning.

The authoritarian campaign, waged by Israel’s ruling coalitions since Likud returned to power in 2009, has accelerated in recent months. It is now all-encompassing. It is being waged in the Knesset, in government ministries, in universities, in schoolrooms and in the media, both social and general.

It includes legislative assaults on free speech, incitement against dissenters, the withholding of government funds for political reasons, regulatory measures against – and greater government control over – television and other media, compulsory changes to school curricula, reinforced Orthodox hegemony over religious affairs and repeated attacks on the Arab minority. All this is accompanied by the constant drone of victimhood and xenophobia emanating from Israeli cabinet ministers, from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on down.

Cynically or genuinely, the proponents of this antidemocratic surge have convinced themselves and many others that Israel faces a grand conspiracy of internal, backstabbing “enemies of the state” who have joined forces with an irredentist Israeli-Arab fifth column and malicious anti-Semites abroad.

They have already succeeded in curtailing freedom of expression, chilling academic and media criticism of the government’s policies and inflaming vicious hostility against left-wing politicians and spokespeople – up to and including the Israeli president himself – on Facebook, Twitter and other social media. With every success they get bolder and more ambitious, while Israelis who disagree with their policies grow more despondent about the present and more apprehensive about their future.

Imagine the outcry among American Jewish liberals if the U.S. government in 2016 banned a book from public schools because it could promote racial intermarriage. Try to conjure the reaction to congressional legislation stipulating that Native Americans could not be taught in their own schools about the tragic history of their own people.

Picture the outpouring of horror and dismay if a desperate GOP presidential candidate tried to spur his white constituency to vote by telling them that Hispanics were flowing to the ballot boxes in droves. Envisage the shock if a U.S. president reacted to a murder or even a terrorist act carried out by an individual African American by pledging to “eradicate lawlessness” in the entire black community, as Netanyahu did Saturday regarding Israeli Arabs after the murderous attack on innocents in Tel Aviv.

Yet American Jews have kept mostly mum as such events and countless other manifestations of this dangerous drift have unfolded in Israel. Even though they rightly pride themselves on being the most liberal religious group in America, they have remained closemouthed about the Israeli assault on the values they hold most dear, the same values they describe as “shared” when lauding the supposed bedrock of U.S.-Israeli relations.

When Peter Beinart wrote in his famous 2010 New York Review of Books article that “the Jewish establishment has asked American Jews to check their liberalism at Zionism’s door,” he was referring to the great divide between the military occupation of Palestinians and Israeli democracy inside the Green Line. Six short years later, it seems American Jews are “checking their liberalism at Zionism’s door” even when the malignant side effects of the occupation have infiltrated across the 1967 borders and are eroding the democracy that they and many Israeli Jews hold most dear. What’s good for the American-Jewish goose, it seems, is not necessarily applicable when it comes to the Israeli gander.

I am not talking about groups such as the Zionist Organization of America, whose chairman Morton Klein wrote this week in support of Shaked’s offensive against “phony NGOs that seek to demonize the Jewish State with falsehoods.” I would not expect Klein, whose organization has been heavily funded by Sheldon Adelson and others of similar ilk, to be bothered by the blatant hypocrisy of a right-wing government exempting its own interventionist billionaires from its war against so-called “foreign intervention.” I would expect, perhaps naively, that other American Jews would be up in arms.

In his end-of-year appeal for last-minute donations, for example, American Jewish Committee Executive Director David Harris proudly noted his organization’s main activities in 2015, a year marked by what he described as “fear and anxiety.” We convened a strategy conference in Brussels to fight global anti-Semitism, he boasted, “worked shoulder to shoulder with our elected leaders to help America show the necessary leadership abroad” and “leveraged our unparalleled diplomatic infrastructure to facilitate new and deeper friendships between Israel and countries around the world.”

Harris seems to have missed the “fear and anxiety” gripping a sizable portion of Israelis as they watch their country grow estranged from the values embodied in the Declaration of Independence, a document increasingly derided and undermined by Israel’s new leaders. Perhaps the AJC differentiates between Advocacy for Israel, the first item on its website agenda, and advocacy on behalf of Israelis themselves.

Of course, there are countless valid reasons as well as lame excuses for the American Jewish reluctance to confront the Israeli government or to dedicate funds or efforts to constrain it. First and foremost, it is not in the Jewish community’s nature. Whatever the faults of the current government – and they are too grievous and too blatant for anyone but the most zealous right-wingers to deny – the bulk of American Jews who remain committed to Israel are wary of lambasting Israel or, even worse, handing its enemies valuable ammunition. And contrary to last year’s divisive dispute about the Iran nuclear deal, there is no powerful U.S. administration pulling American Jews in the opposite direction.

Many Jewish groups are also wary of jeopardizing their own ties to Netanyahu and his ministers: trans-Atlantic hobnobbing at the top is often a measure of their own influence and prestige in Washington and other world capitals. They are understandably concerned about operating outside their comfort zone of helping Israel fend off its external adversaries, not least of which because their increasingly conservative, militant and influence-wielding benefactors might withhold financial support in return.

Most American Jewish groups, national or local, JCC or synagogue, are also afraid of joining the ranks of J Street and the New Israel Fund on the right wing’s Enemies List; the two organizations are wrongly but consistently ostracized and delegitimized as BDS-backers and Israel-haters. The same chilling effect that is already palpable in Israel can probably be felt in New York, Los Angeles and other U.S. cities as well.

Perhaps American Jews remain unconvinced by the cries of anguish emanating from Israel’s peace camp; it is certainly more convenient for them to accept the government’s reassurance that it’s all much ado about nothing. And they can certainly point to the lack of any convincing counterbalance to Israel’s persuasive prime minister, someone who could rally the troops and enlist American Jews in a just war for decency and democracy.

“We need a leader, we need a leader” is the mantra voiced nowadays by Israelis who oppose the government, and while it is an accurate reflection of the sad political situation of Israel’s center-left, it is also an excuse to continue sipping lattes and planning the next family trip abroad while moaning and doing nothing. If Israelis themselves aren’t up in arms, why should American Jews be bothered?

One can empathize with many American Jews, especially older ones, who prefer to keep on supporting the Israel of their dreams, the Israel of their youth, while averting their eyes and ears from the clear and the present. And one can understand why they would prefer to postpone a confrontation with Israel as long as its very real enemies such as Iran and Hamas continue to threaten its security and perhaps its existence. That is the fight they are used to, the battle that they feel most comfortable with, the war that has kept them united for so many decades.

But time is running out. By staying silent, by refraining from the kind of forceful, game-changing protest that the current situation warrants, American Jews are not only abandoning like-minded Israelis, they are betraying Israel itself. They don’t owe it to Israeli liberals to come to their aid: They owe it first and foremost to themselves.

After all, the biggest existential danger facing the Middle East’s only Jewish and democratic state may not be Iran, but Israel itself. And the time for American Jews to cry foul and raise hell against a government that is running roughshod over Israel’s liberal legacy while intentionally alienating a large part of the population will soon be gone. Notwithstanding the thousand differences, it would not be the first time American Jews stayed silent and hoped for the best as clouds gathered and a storm threatened their brothers and sisters – nor would it be the first time they came to regret it forever more.

See http://www.naegele.com/documents/Thegreatbetrayal-AmericanJewsstaysilentasIsraelidemocracywithers.pdf (“The Great Betrayal: American Jews Stay Silent as Israeli Democracy Withers”) (emphasis added); see also http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.695351 and https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-danger-to-israeli-democracy/2016/01/02/22f90a2e-af3d-11e5-b711-1998289ffcea_story.html (“A danger to Israeli democracy”—”[T]he legislation is aimed at delegitimizing progressive groups in Israel that have long been advocates for human rights and opposed to Jewish settlements in the West Bank”—”Israel’s nongovernmental organizations are already required, under an earlier law, to file disclosure reports of their funding, so the only effect of the new requirement would be to force them to wear a public badge in a way that is odious”—”Vladimir Putin of Russia has made NGO groups register as ‘foreign agents,’ as if they were enemies of the state. In China, the new restrictions on nongovernmental organizations will forbid support from abroad and give oversight to the security apparatus. In both cases, dissent is being purposefully silenced, and valuable services will be denied to people who need them. Israel should not allow itself to be lumped with these regimes”)

This is so so tragic.

It has been described as:

[A} frontal assault on the democratic soul of the state of Israel . . . and it’s being met by deafening silence from most of the American Jewish community’s established leadership.

This bill did not come out of nowhere, and it’s not a small or isolated problem. It is part and parcel of a broader campaign being waged in Israeli society to undermine liberal democratic values, freedom of speech and those who believe that the settler dream of Greater Israel is strangling the Zionist dream of a Jewish democracy.

. . .

[I]t doesn’t apply requirements for transparency to right-wing organizations that engage in hateful incitement against fellow Israelis and who receive the majority of their funding from wealthy foreign individuals, as opposed to foreign governments. It does nothing to impede those who funnel millions into building settlement outposts in the occupied territory.

As stated in the article above, Netanyahu “has morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors.”

He is as evil and sinister as his moral equivalent, the murderous Putin of Russia. Both must share fates similar to that of the fascist dictator Mussolini.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/11/29/the-death-of-putin-and-russia-the-final-chapter-of-the-cold-war/ (“The Death Of Putin And Russia: The Final Chapter Of The Cold War“)

Is it any wonder that anti-Semitism is rising dramatically in Europe and globally, which may represent a precursor of epic tragedies to come.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/#comment-7039 (“Is Night Falling Again For European Jews?“); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/#comment-7737 (“Netanyahu Sets Off Firestorm Of Criticism“)

. . .

Mexico has recaptured the notorious druglord “El Chapo.” Now, the murderer Netanyahu must be captured and tried by the International Criminal Court for his crimes against the Palestinian people—including an estimated 2,200 deaths in Gaza during 2014 alone.

He is an enemy of the United States and the American people.

Like Adolf Eichmann before him, Netanyahu must sit inside a bulletproof glass booth; and after the trial, he must be executed by hanging. Nothing less will suffice.

Netanyahu as a Nazi

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5 01 2016
Rick

Tim, I just got back from Israel,and I spoke to many, many people about Netanyahu , and most people love and respect him.. I just don’t understand where you are coming from… I think it’s personal..

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6 01 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

With all due respect, Rick, the Germans loved Hitler too.

And the Soviets loved Stalin, and the Chinese loved Mao, and the list goes on and on.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/the-silent-voices-of-stalin%E2%80%99s-soviet-holocaust-and-mao%E2%80%99s-chinese-holocaust/ (“The Silent Voices Of Stalin’s Soviet Holocaust And Mao’s Chinese Holocaust”)

As I have written in the article above:

Barack Obama and other world leaders “detest” him, just as the Rabins and Ariel Sharon hated him. Indeed, Leah Rabin blamed Netanyahu for her husband Yitzhak’s assassination. She saw “only doom for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process” with Netanyahu at Israel’s helm; and her views were prescient.

Denial may have tragic consequences for Israel, Israelis and Jews globally.

. . .

If Israel disappeared off the face of the Earth tomorrow, it would not change Barack Obama’s life—or that of non-Jews globally—although he might feign sympathy.

He has hated Apartheid in South Africa all of his life; and he equates Israel with South Africa.

See also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/#comment-544 (“Why I Write And Say What I Do”)

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6 01 2016
Rick

That’s an oversimplification of the facts on the ground. The Israeli people are not stupid. The are very brave, and conditioned to their environment. They’ve been through numerous prime ministers, and the concensus is, that Netanyahu is who’s best for the survival of Israel..

Not to blow smoke here Timothy, you are an excellent writer, and your experience in government and world affairs, makes you an expert, as opposed to me, a self proclaimed ‘keyboard warrior’.you certainly deserve the respect of that acknowledgment.. But even with my limited knowledge, I can tell beyond a shadow of a doubt, that your blatant distane for Netanyahu, has become more of a personal vendetta… Does he not have any positive attributes?

Moreover, if not Netanyahu, then who? Who would be better for Israel? Please, name a solution, as opposed to only critiquing and hating Netanyahu.

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6 01 2016
Jonathan Buttall

Hello again. I’m a regular commenter here. I’ve traveled widely in six continents over my lifetime. I’m a Christian but was raised Jewish in a non orthodox household and like most US Jewish families, our family came to America escaping from the Russian Czarist empire. My wife (Hispanic) and I have been to 5 Middle Eastern countries before the failed revolutions, including a few weeks in Israel where I have relatives (oddly, former settlers and very right wing). I’m anti apartheid and haven’t seen a good Israeli leader since Yitzhak Rabin was killed by his own.

Just to add to my previous comments, a few factoids;

(1) Many American Jews do speak up against Israeli outrages. 70% voted for Barack Obama in 2012, no friend of Netanyahu, and thus against Netanyahu’s puppet, Romney. There is a popular anti apartheid site on Facebook named “Jewish Voice for Peace”. Netanyahu is a magnet for World revulsion and Israel support.

(2) Israel does not have a Constitution. Human rights thus are not protected. Over a million Palestinians each in the occupied West Bank and the blockaded Gaza do not have human rights and can lose their homes or lives on a whim by settlers or gov’t. This is not a democracy, only those within Israel itself have a limited democracy.

(3) Jewish women in orthodox areas do not have equal rights. Non orthodox women may face this if in a public bus (Egged lines) riding thru an orthodox neighborhood, where they must go to the back of the bus. They must circumcise their male children or face court.

(4) Israel is probably not in danger of destruction from without- there have been many leaks from excellent sources over the last decade about their nuclear weapon programs (Israeli scientists, Der Speigal investigative reporters, etc). They have a full nuclear Triad that includes Dolphin I and II submarines made by Germany. The Cruise missiles are fitted by Israel after delivery with nuclear warheads and they have a proven ability to get thru the Suez canal and be submerged for months (are they today in the Persian Gulf near Iran? Just my guess).

(5) I have traveled in 35 countries. Israelis are very different than other cultures; they appear to have virtually no social skills at all, with a level of rudeness and dishonesty to be found no where else. My wife and I have seen some unpleasant behaviors in some ME marketplaces, but even being long exposed to Jewish culture in the US, we were truly shocked at how Israelis interact and behave. Two Israelis, one a nephew, one a nieces boyfriend, told me Israelis can’t even stand each other. They are in a class of their own.
Well, that’s my two cents worth for the day. The friendliest and most impressive people we’ve met, by the way, are English, Australians, Peruvians and Nubians (upper Egypt).

Liked by 1 person

6 01 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you, Jonathan, for your comments.

One observation: the death of Yitzhak Rabin was so so tragic; and perhaps history will record that it changed the course of Israel forever.

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6 01 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you again, Rick.

With respect to your first paragraph, I will never forget what a Jew and strong supporter of Israel told me some years ago: (1) Israelis are stupid politically; and (2) their form of government permits the “tail to wag the dog” (e.g., giving small right-wing groups the opportunity to effectively control government policies).

Regarding your second paragraph, I appreciate your kind words. However, as I have cited, Netanyahu is hated globally—by Obama and others, just as he was hated by the Rabins and Sharon. If he died tomorrow, there would be few if any non-Jewish tears shed.

As for “positive attributes”—and not to be flippant—Hitler had them (e.g., he liked German Shepherds; he built the Autobahn, which was the forerunner of our freeway system; his scientists gave birth to our space program). And no, I do not believe Netanyahu has any.

What he, AIPAC and the AIPAC-paid GOP lackeys in Congress, and “Israel Firsters” tried to do with respect to the Iran deal will never be forgotten or forgiven. All participants should be indicted, tried, convicted and imprisoned, inter alia, for monies paid (directly or indirectly) by a foreign government to influence the American political process.

Also, as stated in my article above:

[Netanyahu] must be tried by the International Criminal Court, and arrested whenever he sets foot outside of Israel.

Nothing less will suffice.

Netanyahu and his ilk peddle Islamophobia far and wide—to all who will listen—which is just as insidious as anti-Semitism. Also, they have been playing the Nazi Holocaust “card” for sympathy since Jews terrorized the British before Israel was founded; and it too is falling on deaf ears globally.

As Jonathan Buttall has written in comments above:

Israelis do seem to have learned the wrong lessons from the Holocaust. The whole point in not letting it happen again (the common slogan, “never again”) is also to not perpetuate one yourself.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/31/is-israel-doomed/#comment-7976

Also, as Joseph Miksis stated at the Wall Street Journal‘s Web site:

The Israelis murdered 34 American sailors and wounded another 174 in their assault on the intelligence ship USS Liberty during the Six Day War. I was there when [former Secretary of Defense Robert] McNamara had our Navy fighters return to their carrier rather than engage the Israeli Air Force jets and Naval boats that were killing all those Americans. I remember it like it was yesterday. So do the Liberty survivors whom I know.

That murderous Israeli attack on America was done to cloak the IDF assault on Lebanon and the takeover of the Golan the next morning. Israel has held on to the water aquifers under the Golan since that Israeli War in 1967. Israel is no ally of America.

See http://www.wsj.com/articles/irans-hostage-triumph-1453053424; see also http://www.gtr5.com; see also http://www.chicagotribune.com/chi-liberty_tuesoct02-story.html (“New revelations in attack on American spy ship”—”[F]our Israeli fighter jets flew out of the afternoon sun to strafe and bomb the virtually defenseless vessel [Liberty] on June 8, 1967″—”For [the] survivors, the anger is mixed with incredulity: that Israel would attack an important ally, then attribute the attack to a case of mistaken identity by Israeli pilots who had confused the U.S. Navy’s most distinctive ship with an Egyptian horse-cavalry transport that was half its size and had a dissimilar profile. And they’re also incredulous that, for years, their own government would reject their calls for a thorough investigation”—”[T]he Liberty’s survivors and their supporters, including a distinguished constellation of retired admirals and generals, have persisted in asking Congress for a full-scale formal investigation”)

No American should ever forget or forgive the unprovoked Israeli attack on the Liberty and the loss of American lives, and:

(1) The Iraq War, which Israel and its “neocon” surrogates pushed us into.

(2) The murderous Netanyahu’s and Israel’s efforts to push us into a war with Iran.

(3) The traitor Jonathan Pollard—who sold our secrets and jeopardized this country, and should be returned to Israel in a body bag, or as ashes.

At a minimum, Pollard must serve a five-year term of probation in the U.S.

And these are only the ones that are generally known.

No friend or ally does this!

Yet, the “Israel Firsters” will leap to its defense as always, claiming that everyone who criticizes the tiny country and its practices is an anti-Semite, including Jews themselves.

Next, Donald Trump is correct: let the parties in the Middle East fight it out; and when the dust settles—or the nuclear clouds part—we can then see who is still standing, if anyone.

The Middle East is not our fight, just as the Iraq War and the Vietnam War were tragic mistakes. The U.S. is the largest energy producer in the world again, and essentially energy independent. We do not need the Middle East anymore, including Israel—which has been a burden without benefits for almost 70 years.

Lastly, I do not see any alternatives to Netanyahu, given Israel’s political climate and structure, which is why I believe its future is not bright. The Middle East is imploding; and at some point in time, Israel may be “engulfed” and “consumed.”

Please reread the quote that I began my article with—which came from someone who cares about Israel just as deeply as you apparently do.

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8 01 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

The Middle East Implosion And The End Of Israel?

Obama crying

The Washington Post‘s Charles Krauthammer has written:

If you’re going to engage in a foreign policy capitulation, might as well do it when everyone is getting tanked and otherwise occupied. Say, around New Year’s Eve.

Here’s the story. In October, Iran test-fires a nuclear-capable ballistic missile in brazen violation of a Security Council resolution explicitly prohibiting such launches. President Obama does nothing. One month later, Iran does it again. The administration makes a few gestures at the U.N. Then nothing. Then finally, on Dec. 30, the White House announces a few sanctions.

They are weak, aimed mostly at individuals and designed essentially for show. Amazingly, even that proves too much. By 10 p.m. that night, the administration caves. The White House sends out an email saying that sanctions are off — and the Iranian president orders the military to expedite the missile program.

Is there any red line left? First, the Syrian chemical weapons. Then the administration insistence that there would be no nuclear deal unless Iran accounted for its past nuclear activities. (It didn’t.) And unless Iran permitted inspection of its Parchin nuclear testing facility. (It was allowed self-inspection and declared itself clean.) And now, illegal ballistic missiles.

The premise of the nuclear deal was that it would constrain Iranian actions. It’s had precisely the opposite effect. It has deterred us from offering even the mildest pushback to any Iranian violations lest Iran walk away and leave Obama legacy-less.

Just two weeks ago, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards conducted live-fire exercises near the Strait of Hormuz. It gave nearby U.S. vessels exactly 23 seconds of warning. One rocket was launched 1,500 yards from the USS Harry S. Truman.

Obama’s response? None.

The Gulf Arabs — rich, weak and, since FDR, dependent on America for security — are bewildered. They’re still reeling from the nuclear deal, which Obama declared would be unaffected by Iranian misbehavior elsewhere. The result was to assure Tehran that it would pay no price for its aggression in Syria and Yemen, subversion in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, and support for terrorism.

Obama seems not to understand that disconnecting the nuclear issue gave the mullahs license to hunt in the region. For the Saudis, however, it’s not just blundering but betrayal. From the very beginning, they’ve seen Obama tilting toward Tehran as he fancies himself Nixon in China, turning Iran into a strategic partner in managing the Middle East.

This is even scarier because it is delusional. If anything, Obama’s openhanded appeasement has encouraged Iran’s regional adventurism and intense anti-Americanism.

The Saudis, sensing abandonment, are near panic. Hence the reckless execution of the firebrand Shiite insurrectionist, Sheik Nimr Baqr al-Nimr, that has brought the region to a boil. Iranians torched the Saudi Embassy. The Saudis led other Sunni states in breaking relations with Tehran.

The Saudis feel surrounded, and it’s not paranoia. To their north, Iran dominates a Shiite crescent stretching from Iraq, Syria and Lebanon to the Mediterranean. To the Saudi south, Iran has been arming Yemen’s Houthi rebels since at least 2009. The fighting has spilled over the border into Saudi Arabia.

The danger is rising. For years, Iran has been supporting anti-regime agitation among Saudi Arabia’s minority Shiites. The Persian Gulf is Iran’s ultimate prize. The fall of the House of Saud would make Iran the undisputed regional hegemon and an emerging global power.

For the United States, that would be the greatest geopolitical setback since China fell to communism in 1949. Yet Obama seems oblivious. Worse, he appears inert in the face of the three great challenges to the post-Cold War American order. Iran is only the most glaring. China is challenging the status quo in the South China Sea, just last week landing its first aircraft on an artificial island hundreds of miles beyond the Chinese coast. We deny China’s claim and declare these to be international waters, yet last month we meekly apologized when a B-52 overflew one of the islands. We said it was inadvertent.

The world sees and takes note. As it does our response to the other great U.S. adversary — Russia. What’s happened to Obama’s vaunted “isolation” of Russia for its annexation of Crimea and assault on the post-Cold War European settlement? Gone. Evaporated. John Kerry plays lapdog to Sergei Lavrov. Obama meets openly with Vladimir Putin in Turkey, then in Paris. And is now practically begging him to join our side in Syria.

There is no price for defying Pax Americana — not even trivial sanctions on Iranian missile-enablers. Our enemies know it. Our allies see it — and sense they’re on their own, and may not survive.

See https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/defy-america-pay-no-price/2016/01/07/7d8da57c-b57c-11e5-9388-466021d971de_story.html (“Defy America, pay no price”)

To understand what Barack Obama is doing, one must first understand the man. His core beliefs were set forth in his book, “Dreams from My Father,” which should be read and reread by anyone who cares about our great nation.

To him, Africa and the Middle East in particular represent the products and vestiges of colonialism and Apartheid—which he has hated all of his life.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/ (“[T]hroughout the book, he expresses his intense dislike for ‘colonialism,’ which is perhaps summarized by his thoughts as he rides a train and imagines how a British officer might have felt on its maiden voyage: ‘Would he have felt a sense of triumph, a confidence that the guiding light of Western civilization had finally penetrated the African darkness? Or did he feel a sense of foreboding, a sudden realization that the entire enterprise was an act of folly, that this land and its people would outlast imperial dreams?’”)

If the Middle East implodes, quite literally, and if Israel is eradicated from the face of the Earth, Obama will not care. Yes, he might feign concern and sympathy but little more. His life will continue as if nothing had happened.

Krauthammer is naïve and tilting at windmills if he fails to understand this. By arming Iran, Obama brings the region closer to chaos, helter skelter and the end of Israel.

This will be his legacy; and on some level, he will be proud of it. To think otherwise is to delude oneself and engage in utter naiveté.

Just as Obama has feigned crying over gun control (see photo above), so too will he muster up a tear or two when Israel ceases to exist. Yet, Krauthammer—the consummate Washington “insider”—either does not realize this, or he is simply blinded and perhaps too stupefied to admit it publicly.

The best Hollywood actors cannot do it any better than Obama is doing.

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12 01 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

Is The Wall Street Journal Islamophobic? [UPDATED]

Wall Street Journal

In an article entitled “Denying the Obvious About Islamist Terror,” Dorothy Rabinowitz—a member of the Journal’s editorial board—has written:

It required only half a minute for the mayor of Philadelphia, Democrat Jim Kenney, to achieve national fame. On Friday, an already sensation-crowded day, it fell to the mayor to take part in the official pronouncements on the attempted murder of city police officer Jesse Hartnett, shot and severely wounded as he sat in his patrol car when a would-be assassin emptied his gun at him—13 shots in all.

Police Commissioner Richard Ross Jr., appointed just three days earlier, delivered the details with noteworthy eloquence: The wounded officer, bleeding heavily from three wounds, one arm useless, had gotten himself out of the car, chased the attacker and shot him.

The drama of this recital needed no amplification, but there it was anyway: Clear security video images showed the assailant in his flowing white dishdasha—a robe favored by Muslim men—running toward the patrol car, shooting, sticking his hand in the window, and racing speedily away. Pictures too of the police officer lurching out of the car to give chase.

The wounded shooter, Commissioner Ross revealed, told police after his capture that he had mounted the attack in the name of Islam, that he believes that “the police defend laws that are contrary to Islam.” The man apparently wanted to talk only about his devotion to Islam.

Undaunted by anything he’d heard so far, Mayor Kenny then came to the microphone and declared: “In no way, shape or form does anybody in this room believe that Islam or the teaching of Islam” had anything to do with the attack. “This was a criminal with a stolen gun.”

Mr. Kenny’s tone was fervent. Out of this event—involving a murderous assault on a police officer, and a heroic response by that officer—the mayor, awash in excitation, had divined what was, for him, the most important concern of this day. Namely, persuading citizens that this attack had nothing to do with allegiance to Islam.

It added to the surreal wonders of this scene that, immediately after the mayor’s pronouncement, the commander of the police department’s homicide unit calmly took the microphone. Capt. James Clark reported that the shooter (later identified as 30-year-old Edward Archer) had said, repeatedly, that he followed Allah, that he pledged allegiance to Islamic State and “That is the reason I did what I did.”

The mayor’s comments, so bizarre in their determined denial of the deluge of facts delivered by top police officials standing next to him, were, nonetheless, familiar enough. Americans have learned to expect, after every Islamist terror attack, lectures instructing them that such assaults should in no way be connected to Islamic faith of any kind.

To hear the mayor of Philadelphia was to grasp, more clearly than ever, the fury that has led to Donald Trump’s success in attracting voters—the fury of citizens who know official lies when they hear them, whether about border security, immigration, or the ever-expanding requirements of multiculturalist dogma.

These are not the easiest of times for the enforcers of such dogma, especially in Europe, as another mayor, a German, has reason to know. Much of Germany is, today, still in shock over the coordinated assaults that took place New Year’s Eve, when bands of young men surrounded, sexually molested and robbed women in the streets of Cologne—molesters unanimously described by eyewitnesses to have been of Arab and North African origins. For four days following the mass assaults, Germany’s ZDF public TV station reported nothing about the attacks.

Cologne’s police chief would soon stand accused of concealing that the assailants were Middle Eastern males. The mayor of Cologne, Henriette Reker, found herself in instant trouble when she advised women that if they wanted to protect themselves, it was certainly possible to keep strange men at arm’s length. She ventured no explanation of how this might be done when a woman was tightly encircled by men grabbing at her private parts while others stole her handbag, as was typically the case during the assaults.

Mayor Reker also announced that it was “absolutely impermissible” to suggest that the perpetrators could have been part of the recent refugee flood into Germany. Within days investigators were able to report that most of the 33 suspects rounded up were asylum seekers.

The current political piety dictating what is and is not permissible to say about terrorism and Muslims didn’t spring from nowhere. Nor did the compulsion to preach on the subject. The Philadelphia mayor’s bewitching half-minute lecture on Friday was only the most recent example. The sermonizing reflex—a quintessential element in Barack Obama’s notion of leadership—has by now taken on a life of its own. Who doesn’t know now to expect, in a speech by the president, or in some exchange of his with reporters, the glum rebuke, “That’s not who we are”?

On no subject has there been more sermonizing than on Muslims and terrorism and on what the real Islam is and is not—no surprise in an administration which has from its outset tended to the apparent view that the American nation is essentially composed of yahoos whose barely controlled instincts to riot require regular monitoring and checks by their enlightened betters.

All this notwithstanding the history that shows that, after the slaughter of 9/11 and through all the bloody assaults since that were committed against them by rampaging soldiers of Islam—Fort Hood, the Boston Marathon, San Bernardino—Americans have conducted themselves with exemplary courage and dignity. Neither the president nor other moral instructors who hasten forth after every terror attack to bring light unto the nation appear to have noticed.

Years of effort by this administration to deny, conceal and sermonize the nation out of its awareness of facts clearly evident to them is the sort of thing that doesn’t escape Americans in this election season, shadowed by the threat of terrorism. That is a fact Hillary Clinton might consider as she goes forth to celebrate her identification with the Obama years.

See http://www.wsj.com/articles/denying-the-obvious-about-islamist-terror-1452556011 (emphasis added)

One commenter responded:

I sense that politicians in particular really bend over backward to avoid offending just this one religion [Islam] . . .

Nonsense, that religion is Judaism.

Indeed, some Jews cowardly try to stifle debate at Web sites such as the Journal, and label anyone who does not agree with Netanyahu, AIPAC and the AIPAC-bought Republican lackeys in Congress as anti-Semites, which of course is absurd.

I have read Dorothy Rabinowitz’s articles for many years; and I cannot recall disagreeing with any of them.

However, this one is clearly Islamophobic.

There is no other way to describe it. Both explicitly and with innuendos, she has targeted all followers of Islam—and labeled them, just as surely as Hitler’s Nazis labeled the Jews.

One must never forget that Christianity has 2.2 billion followers. Islam has 1.8 billion followers. At most, Judaism has 14 million followers. Yet, it was a Jew who killed Yitzhak Rabin.

Indeed, to her credit, the courageous Leah Rabin blamed Netanyahu for her husband’s assassination. She saw “only doom for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process” with Netanyahu at Israel’s helm; and her views were prescient.

Should the world be targeting Netanyahu and his ilk, who were responsible for an estimated 2,200 Palestinian deaths in Gaza during 2014 alone?

The U.S. and the American people are not at war with Islam or its followers. Anyone who suggests otherwise is Islamophobic.

Islamophobia is evil and un-American, just as racism, anti-Semitism and other forms of discrimination are.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/06/islamophobia-is-un-american/ (“Islamophobia Is Un-American“)

Fear spawns anger, unbridled hatred and retribution. Too much of it is evident in many of the articles and comments at the Journal‘s Web site, and in the writings of the Journal’s Bret Stephens and others.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/#comment-7951 (“The Ugly Face of Islamophobia: Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens“)

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19 01 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

More Islamophobia From The Wall Street Journal And Bret Stephens [UPDATED]

Wall Street Journal

In an article entitled “Normalizing Iran,” the Journal‘s resident Islamophobe from Tel Aviv, Bret Stephens, writes:

In Syria, Bashar Assad is trying to bring his enemies to heel by blocking humanitarian convoys to desperate civilians living in besieged towns. The policy is called “starve or kneel,” and it is openly supported by Hezbollah and tacitly by Iran, which has deployed its elite Quds Force to aid Mr. Assad’s war effort.

So what better time for right-thinking liberals to ask: “Is Iran really so evil?”

That’s the title of a revealing essay in Politico by Stephen Kinzer, a former New York Times reporter now at Brown University. “The demonization of Iran is arguably the most bizarre and self-defeating of all U.S. foreign policies,” Mr. Kinzer begins. “Americans view Iran not simply as a country with interests that sometimes conflict with ours but as a relentless font of evil.”

Mr. Kinzer’s essay was published Sunday, as sanctions were lifted on Tehran and four of America’s hostages came home after lengthy imprisonments. The Obama administration publicly insists that the nuclear deal does not mean the U.S. should take a benign view of Iran, but the more enthusiastic backers of the agreement think otherwise. “Our perception of Iran as a threat to vital American interests is increasingly disconnected from reality,” Mr. Kinzer writes. “Events of the past week may slowly begin to erode the impulse that leads Americans to believe patriotism requires us to hate Iran.”

What a weird thought. My own patriotism has never been touched one way or another by my views of Iran. Nor do I hate Iran—if by “Iran” one means the millions of people who marched alongside Neda Agha-Soltan when she was gunned down by regime thugs in the 2009 Green Revolution, or the fellow travelers of Hashem Shaabani, the Arab-Iranian poet executed two years ago for “waging war on God,” or the thousands of candidates who are routinely barred from running for Parliament for being insufficiently loyal to the Supreme Leader.

This is the Iran that liberals like Mr. Kinzer ought to support, not the theocratic usurpers who claim to speak in Iran’s name while stepping on Iranian necks. But we are long past the day when a liberal U.S. foreign policy meant shaping our interests around our values—not the other way around—much less supporting the liberal aspirations of people everywhere, especially if they live in anti-American dictatorships.

Today’s liberal foreign policy, to adapt Churchill, is appeasement wrapped in realism inside moral equivalency. When it comes to Iran policy, that means believing that we have sinned at least as much against the Iranians as they have sinned against us; that our national-security interests require us to come to terms with the Iranians; and that the best way to allay the suspicions—and, over time, diminish the influence—of Iranian hard-liners is by engaging the moderates ever more closely and demonstrating ever-greater diplomatic flexibility.

That’s a neat theory, proved wrong by experience at every turn. The Carter administration hailed the Ayatollah Khomeini as “a saint.” Our embassy was seized. Ronald Reagan sent Khomeini a birthday cake, along with secret arms, to facilitate the release of hostages in Lebanon. A few hostages were released, while others were taken in their place. The world welcomed the election of “moderate” President Mohammad Khatami in 1997. Iran’s illicit nuclear facilities were exposed during his second term.

In 2009, on the eve of presidential elections, the New York Times’s Roger Cohen celebrated “the vibrancy of a changing, highly educated society” that he had found on his visits to Tehran. “The equating of Iran with terror today is simplistic,” he wrote. After the election, he ran for his life from the terror of the same street militia that had murdered Agha-Soltan.

Now we’re supposed to believe that the change Mr. Cohen and others had hoped for has finally arrived. The proof, supposedly, is that the regime has so far kept to its nuclear promises (in exchange for a $100 billion windfall), that it swiftly released U.S. sailors (after scoring a small propaganda coup), and that it let the other hostages go (though only after very nearly taking the wife and mother of one of those hostages in his turn, and then after an additional $1.7 billion reward from the U.S.).

Are these signs of a new-and-improved regime? Or merely one that is again being given good reasons to believe that it can always extract a bribe for its bad behavior? The notion of moral hazard, fundamental to economics, has a foreign-policy dimension, too. Any country that believes it will never be made to pay the price for the risks it takes will take ever-greater risks. It’s bad enough when the country in question is Greece. This is Iran.

Iran will become a “normal” country only when it ceases to be an Islamic Republic. In the meantime, the only question is how far we are prepared to abase ourselves in our quest to normalize it.

See http://www.wsj.com/articles/normalizing-iran-1453162144 (emphasis added)

Another Islamophobic article by Stephens, who was previously editor in chief of the Jerusalem Post. Indeed, he and his fellow Islamophobes at the Journal regularly attack others like Stephen Kinzer, but the Journal rejects and censors any serious criticism of them.

They have crusaded with the murderous Netanyahu, AIPAC, and the AIPAC-bought GOP lackeys in Congress against the Iran deal. This is what “Israel Firsters” do—just as Israel and its “neocon” surrogates pushed us into the Iraq War, and as Netanyahu and his ilk have been trying to push us into a war with Iran.

Indeed, all participants must be indicted, tried, convicted and imprisoned, inter alia, for monies paid (directly or indirectly) by a foreign government/Israel to influence the American political process. Stephens is an un-American Islamophobe and a vile “Israel Firster,” and he is certainly not an American patriot.

The “$100 billion windfall” to which Stephens refers is actually closer to $150 billion, but the funds constitute Iranian assets that were frozen by the United States. The release of Americans by Iran must be juxtaposed against the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, which killed 34 brave Americans and maimed many more.

See http://www.gtr5.com and http://www.naegele.com/documents/USSLibertyMemorial.pdf (USS Liberty Memorial Web site) and http://www.chicagotribune.com/chi-liberty_tuesoct02-story.html and http://www.naegele.com/documents/NewrevelationsinattackonAmericanspyship.pdf (“New revelations in attack on American spy ship”)

While writing about Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Stephens fails to mention that Netanyahu and his ilk have consistently tried to bring the Palestinians to heel by employing similar tactics that are equivalent to “starve or kneel.” Indeed, Israel is an Apartheid state; and Netanyahu—who has morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors—must be tried by the International Criminal Court for his crimes against the Palestinian people, including an estimated 2,200 deaths in Gaza during 2014 alone. At the very least, he must be arrested whenever he sets foot outside of Israel.

He is an enemy of the United States and the American people; and to his credit, Barack Obama realizes this. Indeed, our president is not alone. Netanyahu is “detested” by other world leaders, just as the Rabins and Ariel Sharon hated him. The courageous Leah Rabin blamed Netanyahu for her husband Yitzhak’s assassination. She saw “only doom for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process” with Netanyahu at Israel’s helm; and her views were prescient.

Is it any wonder that anti-Semitism is rampant all over the world?

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/#comment-7039 (“Is Night Falling Again For European Jews?“)

It is a sad day in America when a major publication like the Wall Street Journal is Islamophobic, and employs vile Islamophobes like Stephens who attack Kinzer and others.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/31/is-israel-doomed/#comment-8012 (“Is The Wall Street Journal Islamophobic?“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/#comment-7951 (“The Ugly Face of Islamophobia: Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens“); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/06/islamophobia-is-un-american/ (“Islamophobia Is Un-American“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/ (“Ariel Sharon Is Missed“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/the-madness-of-benjamin-netanyahu/ (“The Madness Of Benjamin Netanyahu“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/ (“Israel’s Senseless Killings And War With Iran“)

Bret Stephens

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19 01 2016
Jonathan Buttall

Good new comments, Timothy. I’d love to see our politicians find the courage to speak the truth about our troublesome client state. The entire US Senate voted in favor of the Gaza atrocities a year ago and I won’t forget that come election time.

I remember when Cruz embarrassed himself badly when he spoke to a group of visiting Coptic Christians from Egypt, one of the oldest Christian communities in the world. He stupidly thought they would be pro-Israel because they were Christians….so knowing nothing at all about Middle Eastern culture and history he praised Israel in a speech to them. When roundly booed, he insulted them. The media kept this a back page story, it should have been widely shown (and a video did appear on U-Tube).

Liked by 1 person

19 01 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you, Jonathan, for your comments as always.

The tragedy is that so many of these actions inure to the detriment of Israel and Jews globally—which is among the reasons why anti-Semitism is growing dramatically.

Stephens’ attack on Kinzer and others is merely the latest.

I have stressed again and again the tragic issue of “denial,” which existed before and during World War II, and it is present now.

The Israeli Apartheid and oppression of the Palestinians continues unabated; and Israel and Jews globally will pay a terrible price for this.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/#comment-7039 (“Is Night Falling Again For European Jews?“); see also http://freebeacon.com/national-security/lawmaker-obama-admin-fueling-campaign-destroy-israel/ (“Lawmaker: Obama Admin Fueling ‘Campaign to Destroy Israel’”) and http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/01/israel-gaza-blockade-bennett-objects-failure-netanyahu.html (“Why hasn’t Israel lifted the Gaza blockade?”)

Also, I have made my position crystal clear with respect to Israel—in the article above, and previously.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/#comment-544 (“Why I Write And Say What I Do”)

It can be argued that there will be no peace, ever; and that “might will make right.”

Today, the Israelis “own” the land, after it was seized from the British by Zionist terrorists.

Clearly, history has twists and turns. “Tomorrow,” who knows who will own it.

One thing is certain: lots of American Jews are worried. Israel is rebuked on the international stage—and hated—and they realize the dangerous path that the country is on. As U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro has stated:

Settler outposts are being legalized—despite earlier pledges to the United States not to do so—while routine, administrative demolition of Palestinian structures continues.

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9qCCRlR6zI (“What Ambassador Shapiro Really Said During His ‘Controversial’ Speech”); see also http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21690180-blockade-stays-place-while-network-tunnels-expands-fears-are-growing (“Fears are growing of fresh hostilities in Gaza”)

Indeed, it has been said by American Jews who believe in Israel:

[T]he current Israeli leadership is protecting and prioritizing the settlement movement at the expense of Israel’s future. . . .

Sadly, if unsurprisingly, Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government have expressed outrage in response to these statements by the United States and the EU. They have refused to acknowledge even an ounce of legitimacy to the critiques of their policy, to recognize that under international law Israel is occupying the West Bank illegally and that it is unacceptable to the world for Israel to control millions of West Bank Palestinians who lack the rights of the Israeli settlers who live alongside them.

The Netanyahu government and its close allies in the settler movement are choosing to stake Israel’s reputation on the legitimacy of the occupation. In their insistence that Israel is the settlements and the settlements are Israel, they have begun to treat all those who oppose the occupation and actively support the two-state solution as enemies of the state—including those who are in reality some of Israel’s best friends.

See also http://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/press-releases/gaza-2020-liveable-place (Report of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East: “GAZA IN 2020: A LIVEABLE PLACE?”); see also http://issuu.com/unrwa/docs/gaza_in_2020/1?e=0

Is it any wonder that anti-Semitism is rising dramatically, and both Israel and Jews are hated globally?

Again and again, the Journal‘s editors “carry water” against Iran, and—both explicitly and implicitly—for the murderous Netanyahu, Israel, AIPAC, the AIPAC-bought GOP lackeys in Congress, and of course the “Israel Firsters.”

Not satisfied with having lost, they continue to spew venom whenever possible, and berate Barack Obama, John Kerry and others who worked to make the Iran deal possible.

I voted against Obama twice, and against Kerry’s bid for the presidency. I am not a “fan” of Iran by any means. However, absent from the pages of the Journal are the facts that Netanyahu and his ilk are responsible for an estimated 2,200 deaths in Gaza during 2014 alone. Clearly, they did more than “capture and humiliate” their victims.

Indeed, as stated previously, Netanyahu has morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors. He must be tried by the International Criminal Court, and arrested whenever he sets foot outside of Israel.

But of course the Journal‘s editors are silent about this.

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3 02 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

Obama Blasts Islamophobia [UPDATED]

Tolerance

John Stanton has reported for BuzzFeed News:

During his first visit to a mosque as leader, President Barack Obama on Wednesday called on Americans to combat Islamophobia and slammed Republicans’ use of increasingly hostile rhetoric towards Muslims, calling it inexcusable and blaming them for a surge in attacks on Muslims.

“We’ve seen too often people conflating horrific acts of terrorism with the beliefs of an entire faith,” Obama said in his speech at the Islamic Society of Baltimore in Maryland.

“For some time, we’ve been asking for pushback,” Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said to the AP. “Perhaps this will start a trend.”

Obama also slammed Republicans, arguing their “inexcusable political rhetoric against Muslims…has no place in our country.”

“It’s no surprise than that threats against Muslims have surged,” he said.

Obama’s historic visit to the mosque comes as conservatives, particularly those on the campaign trail, have been using harsh language in talking about the Muslim world.

Donald Trump has staked out the most extreme position, calling for a complete ban on allowing Muslims to enter the United States. Sen. Ted Cruz has called for a halt on immigrants from countries with active Islamic terrorist organizations, which would amount to a de facto ban on Muslim immigration into the U.S.

Jeb Bush, meanwhile, has argued that Syrian refugees of Christian descent should be given priority over Muslim refugees in any future resettlements. All of the Republican candidates support at least a temporary halt on bringing refugees to the country.

At the same time, Muslim leaders say they’ve seen a spike in incidents of vandalism, threats, and physical assaults across the United States, particularly in the wake of the Paris and San Bernardino terrorist attacks.

Earlier in the day, Obama and senior advisor Valerie Jarrett participated in a roundtable with Muslim leaders from around the country, during which they discussed how Muslims contribute to their communities as well as the challenges of Islamophobia, according to White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest.

See http://www.buzzfeed.com/johnstanton/president-obama-visits-us-mosque#.xkkxj2bOb0 (emphasis added); see also http://www.wsj.com/articles/obama-to-make-first-visit-to-u-s-mosque-1454515229 (“Obama Makes First Visit to U.S. Mosque”—”Outreach to Muslim community comes as terror fears, hate crimes against believers are rising”—”Obama also argued against profiling Muslims in the fight against terrorism and called on Muslim leaders to more vocally combat what he described as a ‘radical, tiny minority’ seeking to hijack their religion”—”[C]onflating extremist attacks with all Muslims fuels the threat of terrorism”—”According to a survey published Wednesday by the Pew Research Center, . . . 68 % of Americans believe that the problem is with violent people using religion to justify actions, not religion itself”—”Former President George W. Bush visited a mosque six days after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, telling a group at the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C. that ‘the face of terror is not the true faith of Islam,’ and that those who intimidated Muslims in the wake of the attacks ‘represent the worst of humankind'”)

What the president failed to address is the blatant Islamophobia spewed by the Wall Street Journal‘s Bret Stephens and others, by Israel’s murderous Netanyahu and others of his ilk, and by fanatical Jewish “Israel Firsters” and related groups.

They constitute the “800-pound gorilla” that neither Obama nor other American leaders dare to address politically.

The tragedy is that it is a two-way street. Anti-Semitism is increasing dramatically in Europe and globally—which may represent a precursor of epic tragedies to come.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/#comment-7039 (“Is Night Falling Again For European Jews?“); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/31/is-israel-doomed/ (“Is Israel Doomed?”)

At the same time, Islamophobia is increasing—spawned at least in part by those who suffer from anti-Semitism.

It must never be forgotten that Christianity has 2.2 billion followers. Islam has 1.8 billion followers. At most, Judaism has 14 million followers.

The United States and the American people are not at war with Islam or its followers. Anyone who suggests otherwise is Islamophobic.

As I have written in the article above:

Islamophobia is un-American, and inconsistent with Jesus’ teachings as set forth in the New Testament—just as racism, anti-Semitism and other forms of discrimination are evil. Fear spawns hatred, anger and retribution. Too much of it is present in America and other countries.

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4 02 2016
Jonathan Buttall

I agree with your latest write up, Timothy. I have no personal Islamic friends except on Facebook (more than half of them Egyptians), but we were impressed by the four Islamic countries (Western friendly at the time) we visited years ago. My best friend is a Lebanese immigrant from a wealthy Christian family. Prejudice of any kind towards any ethnic or religious group reduces our national moral standing in our nation.

The Wall Street Journal has good financial articles, but their politics follows a party line.

Liked by 1 person

4 02 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you as always, Jonathan, for your comments.

I agree.

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16 02 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

Former Israeli Prime Minister Olmert Reports To Jail, But What About Netanyahu? [UPDATED]

Ben Caspit has written for Al-Monitor:

Ehud Olmert, Israel’s prime minister from 2006 to 2009, has reported to jail, where he will become a run-of-the-mill prisoner. Olmert, 70, will spend 19 months behind bars, serving a sentence for corruption for his involvement in a bribery scandal that occurred while he was mayor of Jerusalem.

In the brief history of the Jewish state, nothing like this has ever happened before at the prime minister level. In 2011, Israel’s eighth president (2000-2007), Moshe Katsav, was sentenced to seven years in prison for aggravated sexual assault, a sentence he is currently serving. Before that, former Finance Minister Avraham Hirschson was sent to prison in 2009 for white-collar crimes. But never before has an Israeli prime minister been sent to prison. In Israel, the prime minister is the equivalent of the American president. He is the leader; he is the captain, the Israeli version of the “commander-in-chief.” And now he is going to jail.

Apart from the legal precedent and aside from all the tragedies — personal, familial and national — the situation is also a logistical nightmare. As a former prime minister, the Shin Bet’s VIP Security Unit provides Olmert with a security detail 24/7, no matter where he goes. He travels in a government limo and his home and office are under constant protection because Olmert is considered one of Israel’s “emblems of government” who requires round-the-clock security. The reason for that is simple: Olmert knows state secrets. He knows everyone and everything. Some of the most intricate and important classified military decisions were made personally by him. Someone like him would be a treasure trove of information for terrorist groups or foreign intelligence agencies. How can such a person be sent to prison?

The first question raised was what would happen with his security once he begins his sentence. Will the former prime minister bring his security detail to prison with him? Since Israel has never faced this kind of dilemma before, the prison service and the Shin Bet were forced to ponder the problem in depth before coming up with a special protocol to handle the logistics. It was decided that the VIP Security Unit will remain outside the prison walls, only joining Olmert in the event that he leaves the prison on furlough. Within the prison itself, he will be protected by a team of security guards who received special training under Shin Bet supervision. It isn’t every day that a prime minister becomes an ordinary prisoner, so the system must get used to dealing with this bizarre situation.

Another question raised was whether Olmert would be allowed to serve his sentence with other prisoners. The authorities came up with a creative solution here. A new wing, “Division 10,” was created in the minimum-security Maasiyahu Prison. Olmert will be kept in a cell designed for three prisoners in an isolated wing that will house only white-collar criminals, traffic offenders and other inmates convicted of bribery. Prisoners who will be in contact with him will be screened first. The prime minister’s cell will be covered by security cameras, which will keep track of everything happening there 24/7, and a special sentry will be posted by the door. Olmert will not come into contact with any unvetted prisoners, out of fear that they might attack him or attempt to extort him.

The big problem is how he will pass the time, as he will not be able to work like other prisoners. As of now, he is sentenced to 19 months, which is considerable, but there is certainly a chance that this time will be increased once the appeals process in other scandals in which Olmert has been convicted eventually ends. Olmert’s sentence could grow by many more months.

It is hard to believe that this is the very man who won an election less than a decade ago and served as the prime minister of Israel for almost three years. The rise and fall of Olmert could be the basis of a Greek tragedy or a Latin American telenovela. He reached the pinnacle of power in a historical twist of fate, after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a debilitating stroke in January 2006. Olmert, who was then the deputy prime minister, benefited from the sudden lack of leadership. After winning the election, he led Israel through the Second Lebanon War (2006) and Operation Cast Lead in Gaza (2008-2009). According to foreign sources, during Olmert’s tenure, Israel also bombed the nuclear reactor that the Mossad allegedly uncovered in Deir ez-Zor, Syria, effectively eliminating President Bashar al-Assad’s top-secret nuclear ambitions in a matter of minutes in a smooth operation that went completely under the radar (2007). The ongoing civil war in Syria erupted three years later.

As far as Olmert is concerned, he would prefer to go down in history not as someone who went to war, but as the person who went farther than anyone in the history of modern Israel to reach peace with the Palestinians. During his final year in power, Olmert held a long series of personal, intimate meetings with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. These concluded with Olmert presenting Abbas with a written proposal, which expressed his readiness to give up almost all (94%) of the West Bank so that a Palestinian state could be formed. The proposal included the transfer of Jerusalem neighborhoods to the Palestinians and a creative solution to the problem of the right of return. No other Israeli leader had ever made such a far-reaching proposal to a Palestinian leader. When Olmert informed US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about the details of his offer, she was visibly moved by it. In fact, she could hardly believe what she was hearing. Rice devoted an entire chapter to the issue in her book “No Higher Honor,” claiming that Olmert went even further and risked more than late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Ultimately, Abbas did not even reply to Olmert’s proposal, just as he did not respond to a proposal he received from President Barack Obama in the White House on March 17, 2014. Olmert eventually did not survive politically, but for entirely different reasons. Today, he has his own intriguing conspiracy theory about what actually happened next, claiming that his willingness to go so far unleashed great and powerful forces that financed a long campaign to depose him.

Olmert’s legal struggle to prove his innocence dragged on for years before it ended in his excruciating fall. His final appeal was accepted in part by the Supreme Court, which reduced his original six-year sentence to just a year and a half in prison. And yet, regardless of all that, as of today, Olmert will go from being a free citizen, a former prime minister and a respected Israeli public figure to a prisoner serving his sentence.

There are those who believe that putting an Israeli prime minister behind bars testifies to the resilience of Israel’s democracy. They say that it is evidence that Israel still has an independent judiciary and law enforcement system. The problem is that much has changed in Israel ever since the authorities went after Olmert. Today’s circumstances are completely different from those in which the police could investigate the prime minister fearlessly and without bias.

See http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/02/ehud-olmert-moshe-katsav-prison-security-democracy-rice-book.html (“From Israeli prime minister to prisoner“) (emphasis added)

Instead of being a shining city on a hill and a beacon to the oppressed peoples of the world, Israel and the likes of Netanyahu have morphed into their ancestors’ Nazi oppressors.

He must be captured and tried by the International Criminal Court for his crimes against the Palestinian people—including an estimated 2,200 deaths in Gaza during 2014 alone.

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5 03 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

What The Israelis Have Done

Israel's victims
[WARNING: The photos are graphic and disturbing]

These animals were left without food due to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as staff were unable to feed or care for them properly.

The UK’s Daily Mail has reported that Mohammed Awaida opened South Forest Park in 2007, and invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into the zoo.

However, during the three-week 2014 Israeli offensive, Awaida said he could not reach the zoo, and many animals died of neglect and starvation.

As indicated above, Netanyahu has morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors. He must be captured and tried by the International Criminal Court for his crimes against the Palestinian people—including an estimated 2,200 deaths in Gaza during 2014 alone.

See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3478261/Horrifying-mummified-corpses-remains-dozens-animals-starved-death-world-s-worst-zoo-Gaza-Strip.html (“Starved to death and left to MUMMIFY: Once proud animals including lions and crocodiles are now no more than horrifying ‘statues’ after carers had to stop feeding them”)

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6 03 2016
Jonathan Buttall

Hello, Timothy. Just a few thoughts. I like your two articles on this, but thought the Daily Mail, a British Tabloid, tried to blame the zoo keepers and the Gaza gov’t for what happened, calling it the “worlds worst zoo” and that it wasn’t regulated. They clearly avoided blaming the only people responsible for what happened to those zoo animals; the blitzkrieg by the IDF. Perhaps “worlds worst neighbor” would be more apt.

On Olmert, interesting thought. Leaders who try to make peace with Palestine end up badly. While on a bus with our niece in Tel Aviv, she pointed out a spot on the street where Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated for making a peace treaty with Palestine (like Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat, he was killed by his own for making peace with the other side). Our niece, raised by a settler family, didn’t agree with my politics, of course, so we kept that out of our conversations.

With international heat on Israel, Olmert paid a lesser but still significant price for trying to make peace with Palestine. Every politician has a scandal somewhere that can be used to take him out if needed for unrelated reasons.

The gall of using this to make it look like it proves Israel is a fair democracy where criminals are brought to justice!!

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6 03 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you, Jonathan, for your comments as always.

I agree that the Daily Mail consciously avoided blaming Israel and the murderous Netanyahu for what happened to the animals. There is systematic censorship in the news, certainly in the UK and US, which is deplorable.

To believe that this serves the long-term well being of Israel, Israelis and Jews worldwide is to ignore what is happening globally. Anti-Semitism is rising in Europe and elsewhere, and Jews are being urged to flee to Israel.

There is a cause and effect with respect to everything.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/#comment-7039 (“Is Night Falling Again For European Jews?“)

I agree too with your comment: “Leaders who try to make peace . . . end up badly.”

Whether it is Neville Chamberlain, Yitzhak Rabin, Anwar Sadat or countless others, they seem to pay heavy prices—with their lives and political careers.

I agree too with your statement:

Every politician has a scandal somewhere that can be used to take him out if needed for unrelated reasons.

A recent example is Gen. David Petraeus.

Perhaps the real question is whether Hillary Clinton will pay a heavy price for her wrongdoing.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/washington-is-sick-and-the-american-people-know-it/#comment-7185 (“Clinton Fatigue“)

Only time will tell.

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11 03 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

The Holocausts And Jewish identity

Israel flag burning

The Nazi Holocaust of the last century, and a 21st Century holocaust are explicit and implicit in an article written by the Washington Post‘s Charles Krauthammer:

Bernie Sanders is the most successful Jewish candidate for the presidency ever. It’s a rare sign of the health of our republic that no one seems to much care or even notice. Least of all, Sanders himself. Which prompted Anderson Cooper in a recent Democratic debate to ask Sanders whether he was intentionally keeping his Judaism under wraps.

“No,” answered Sanders: “I am very proud to be Jewish.” He then explained that the Holocaust had wiped out his father’s family. And that he remembered as a child seeing neighbors with concentration camp numbers tattooed on their arms. Being Jewish, he declared, “is an essential part of who I am as a human being.”

A fascinating answer, irrelevant to presidential politics but quite revealing about the state of Jewish identity in contemporary America.

Think about it. There are several alternate ways American Jews commonly explain the role Judaism plays in their lives.

1. Practice: Judaism as embedded in their life through religious practice or the transmission of Jewish culture by way of teaching or scholarship. Think Joe Lieberman or the neighborhood rabbi.

2. Tikkun: Seeing Judaism as an expression of the prophetic ideal of social justice. Love thy neighbor, clothe the naked, walk with God, beat swords into plowshares. As ritual and practice have fallen away over the generations, this has become the core identity of liberal Judaism. Its central mission is nothing less than to repair the world (“Tikkun olam”).

Which, incidentally, is the answer to the perennial question, “Why is it that Jews vote overwhelmingly Democratic?” Because, for the majority of Jews, the social ideals of liberalism are the most tangible expressions of their prophetic Jewish faith.

When Sanders was asked about his Jewish identity, I was sure his answer would be some variation of Tikkun. On the stump, he plays the Old Testament prophet railing against the powerful and denouncing their treatment of the widow and the orphan. Yet Sanders gave an entirely different answer.

3. The Holocaust. What a strange reply — yet it doesn’t seem so to us because it has become increasingly common for American Jews to locate their identity in the Holocaust.

For example, it’s become a growing emphasis in Jewish pedagogy from the Sunday schools to Holocaust studies programs in the various universities. Additionally, Jewish groups organize visits for young people to the concentration camps of Europe.

The memories created are indelible. And deeply valuable. Indeed, though my own family was largely spared, the Holocaust forms an ineradicable element of my own Jewish consciousness. But I worry about the balance. As Jewish practice, learning and knowledge diminish over time, my concern is that Holocaust memory is emerging as the dominant feature of Jewishness in America.

I worry that a people with a 3,000-year history of creative genius, enriched by intimate relations with every culture from Paris to Patagonia, should be placing such weight on martyrdom — and indeed, for this generation, martyrdom once removed.

I’m not criticizing Sanders. I credit him with sincerity and authenticity. But it is precisely that sincerity and authenticity — and the implications for future generations — that so concern me. Sanders is 74, but I suspect a growing number of young Jews would give an answer similar to his.

We must of course remain dedicated to keeping alive the memory and the truth of the Holocaust, particularly when they are under assault from so many quarters. Which is why, though I initially opposed having a Holocaust museum as the sole representation of the Jewish experience in the center of Washington, I came to see the virtue of having so sacred yet vulnerable a legacy placed at the monumental core of — and thus entrusted to the protection of — the most tolerant and open nation on earth.

Nonetheless, there must be balance. It would be a tragedy for American Jews to make the Holocaust the principal legacy bequeathed to their children. After all, the Jewish people are living through a miraculous age: the rebirth of Jewish sovereignty, the revival of Hebrew (a cultural resurrection unique in human history), the flowering of a new Hebraic culture radiating throughout the Jewish world.

Memory is sacred, but victimhood cannot be the foundation stone of Jewish identity. Traditional Judaism has 613 commandments. The philosopher Emil Fackenheim famously said that the 614th is to deny Hitler any posthumous victories. The reduction of Jewish identity to victimhood would be one such victory. It must not be permitted.

See https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-holocaust-and-the-jewish-identity/2016/03/10/0cfe842c-e702-11e5-b0fd-073d5930a7b7_story.html (emphasis added)

I have made my views clear on this subject—in the article above, in comments that I have made, and in three other articles. I have not changed my beliefs.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/#comment-544 (“Why I Write And Say What I Do”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/ (“Ariel Sharon Is Missed”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/the-madness-of-benjamin-netanyahu/ (“The Madness Of Benjamin Netanyahu”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/ (“Israel’s Senseless Killings And War With Iran”)

Perhaps the biggest issue facing American and non-Israeli Jews globally today is whether the end of Israel would affect their identity.

The tiny country was founded by Jewish terrorists, and it may end at the hands of non-Jewish terrorists.

What Krauthammer refers to as “Tikkun”—”Seeing Judaism as an expression of the prophetic ideal of social justice,” and “Love thy neighbor, clothe the naked, walk with God, beat swords into plowshares”—are at odds with the actions of Netanyahu and his ilk, who have morphed into their ancestors’ Nazi oppressors.

Regarding the question of “Why is it that Jews vote overwhelmingly Democratic,” a devoutly Jewish friend of mine—whose parents were survivors of the Nazi Holocaust—believes that Jews are not very smart politically.

Indeed, they have embraced the Democratic Party since the days of FDR, even though (1) FDR turned away the MS St. Louis from docking at American ports, and consigned most of the Jewish refugees aboard to their deaths in Europe; and (2) the other anti-Semites in FDR’s administration knew of the Nazi concentration camps, yet did nothing about them.

Lastly, if Israel disappears, it should not affect the identity of other Jews globally. Presumably they do not derive their identities from Israel, any more than I derive my identity from Germany, Britain, Ireland or Scotland—from which my ancestors hailed.

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11 03 2016
Jonathan Buttall

Hello., Timothy. I didn’t realize you were of Jewish ethnic background. Although I became a Christian in Middle age (I think my daughter and wife were an influence in this), I am also of Jewish background. My family had not been in the Holocaust. Like many US immigrants, my grandparents on both sides were from Czarist Russia or one of it’s subject countries, as with Russo Poland. The Grandfather I knew growing up told me about a Pogrom he experienced in the Polish farming town he lived in.

I’m afraid my experiences in the Jewish culture were very negative ones for many years and I found myself repulsed by all of it. That, and my negative opinion of Israel, a country I’ve traveled in to visit a niece (from a settler family run by my fanatical brother) and for my wife and I to see the holy land. I did not see my brother there; he refused to attend my wedding many years before as my wife is Hispanic.

I sometimes think that my making the US Holocaust Museum as my charity of choice is some sort of unconscious repentance for my distaste of all things Jewish. An odd irony.

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11 03 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you as always, Jonathan, for your comments.

I am not Jewish, but—as I have written—I have had friends who are Jewish all of my life, since I was growing up in West Los Angeles.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/#comment-544 (“Why I Write And Say What I Do”)

Some of their families were in the movie business; and in fact, the father of one headed what was perhaps Hollywood’s largest and most prestigious studio at the time. He came to elementary school (K-6) in a limousine—which, needless to say, was unusual even then.

He and I remain in touch to this day.

However, to put these comments into perspective, most of my Jewish friends have had no connection to the movie business, nor have they enjoyed the luxuries that this friend has.

Second, I understand your feelings. Guilt is rooted in the Old Testament (or Torah), while it is not in the teachings of Jewish, as reflected in the New Testament. You have spoken of “some sort of unconscious repentance for [your] distaste of all things Jewish.” I do not believe any guilt or repentance is necessary, for Jews or non-Jews, albeit lots of people attempt to “saddle” others with a sense of guilt.

Third, I have cited “a Jewish lawyer from the Midwest with whom I was working on a lawsuit. He came to Washington, D.C. and had never seen the Holocaust Museum, so I took him there. His family came to the United States in the 1800s, and he told me that none of his relatives were victims of the Holocaust, nor did he know anyone who was affected by it. In many ways, he did not relate to it, although he was moved emotionally after we toured the museum.”

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/#comment-1825

There are lots of wonderful Jews like you and him, who have their own “identities” as Americans, just as I do. Indeed, most of us do not question where our ancestors came from, or the religious beliefs of others.

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12 03 2016
Jonathan Buttall

Thanks for your nice and insightful response, Timothy. I found becoming a Christian gave me a faith I could believe in, and writing that reply gave me a chance to explore my complexities.

Liked by 1 person

11 03 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

J Street’s Jeremy Ben-Ami And The Republican Jewish Coalition’s Matt Brooks Debate in Las Vegas

[Note: The fine moderator was journalist, political commentator, and talk show host Jon Ralston of Las Vegas. See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Ralston]

See also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/31/is-israel-doomed/#comment-8968 (“Is Political Change Coming To Israel?“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/#comment-1825 (“Jeremy Ben-Ami, “A New Voice For Israel”—A Wonderful Book That Should Be Read By Anyone Who Cares About And Wants To Understand Israel’s Past, Present And Future”)

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14 03 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

The Political Stupidity Of The Jews Revisited [UPDATED]

American Jews

This is the title of a Wall Street Journal article by Joseph Epstein, which states:

The story has it that during the George H.W. Bush administration, James Baker proposes to his boss an idea that would go against Israeli interests. “The Jews aren’t going to like it,” President Bush says. Mr. Baker replies: “They don’t vote for us anyway—screw ’em!” Fast forward 15 years, when Rahm Emanuel proposes a different idea to his boss that would also go against Israeli interests. “The Jews aren’t going to like it,” President Obama says. Mr. Emanuel replies: “They vote for us anyway—screw ’em!”

Such, one might say, are the advantages of bloc voting for ethnic groups. Just as Democratic politicians assume the support of black voters, the Jews have been in the pocket of the Democratic Party at least as far back as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and though there are few Jews alive today who were old enough to have voted for FDR, they, the Jews, are still in that pocket. This despite the fact that we now know that FDR was not such a grand friend to the Jews, for he did nothing to stop or even slow the Nazi genocide of Jews during World War II, and instead, when told by Rabbi Stephen Wise of the death camps, counseled silence on the subject.

The best face that can be put on this unwillingness, bordering on a genetic-inability, of Jews to vote Republican is that Jewishness, if not Judaism, has at its center a hatred of injustice and a concomitant yearning for equality. All this, presumably, has been ingrained in Jews by their own long history as the scapegoats of tyrants. Being underdogs, the Jews ipso facto are themselves for underdogs. Republicans, traditionally, have been top dogs. Don’t, something in most Jews tells them, go there.

Older Jews, of whom I am one, have memories of so-called “restricted” neighborhoods and clubs—restricted meaning No Jews Allowed. They remember quotas against Jews put in place by private universities. I recall the writer Clifton Fadiman telling me that when he applied to graduate school at Columbia, he was told it wasn’t a good idea, for the English Department there already had accepted his undergraduate classmate, Mr. Trilling, the implication being that one Jew was enough. Large corporations in those days did not hire Jews, or if they did it was made clear that their chances for promotion were greatly limited.

All these arrangements against Jews—real-estate covenants, university quotas, job restrictions and more—were thought to be the handiwork of a WASP establishment that was, with only rare exceptions (FDR, Dean Acheson, Adlai Stevenson), at its heart, if not officially, Republican. To vote for a Republican now, more than half a century later, even though these arrangements are no longer in place, would for most Jews constitute a betrayal. They can’t do it; they simply can’t do it.

In 1999, Irving Kristol, a Jew who could do it, published in the quarterly journal Azure an essay called “On the Political Stupidity of the Jews.” The essay took up the yearning for universalist Enlightenment values on the part of many Jews—values that, on the subject of Israel, for example, worked directly against Jewish particularist interests. “Just because I’m Jewish,” I recall hearing an anti-Israel Jew named Mitchell Plitnick say on television, “doesn’t mean I have to be for killing”—this when the Israelis were defending themselves against Hamas attacks.

Irving Kristol also thought it foolishness for heavily Jewish-funded organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union to litigate against Christian prayer and symbols in national life, since the United States is a country that is Christian at its foundation and is overwhelmingly Christian in its population. Backing the ACLU and other groups in such matters, in the name of a utopian belief in a humanistic, therapeutic, universalist culture in which everyone will agree that none of us has any differences worth maintaining, seemed to Kristol what he called chutzpah—sheer effrontery and stupid in the extreme.

In his essay, Kristol made no mention of the Jewish difficulty in voting for Republicans, no matter how conservative individual Jews may be by instinct and in temperament and, often, even by interest. In the matter of interest, the Jewish vote, along with Jewish money in Hollywood and elsewhere, has helped put in office a president who can scarcely be called a friend to Israel. Jews have voted for Democrats who have over the years instituted such essentially anti-Jewish programs as racial preferences in higher education (the religion of contemporary Jews, it has been said, only half-jokingly, is diplomas). Through federal regulation and high taxation, the Democratic Party has done what it could to strangle the entrepreneurial spirit that was once the pride of the Jewish middle class. Only a schmuck works for someone else is, in some quarters, the 11th Jewish commandment.

For the current political season, I propose a 12th [Jewish commandment]: Vote your mind, not your ethnicity.

See http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-political-stupidity-of-the-jews-revisited-1457906933 (emphasis added)

As indicated in my comments above:

I will never forget what a Jew and strong supporter of Israel told me some years ago: (1) Israelis are stupid politically; and (2) their form of government permits the “tail to wag the dog” (e.g., giving small right-wing groups the opportunity to effectively control government policies).

The parents of my friend—who is a first generation American—and the parents of my friend’s spouse are survivors of the Nazi Holocaust.

Also, as indicated in my article above:

American president—and the father of today’s Left—Franklin D. Roosevelt, turned away the MS St. Louis from docking at American ports, and consigned most of the Jewish refugees aboard to their deaths in Europe. The other anti-Semites in FDR’s administration knew of the Nazi concentration camps, yet did nothing about them.

Thus, from a purely rational standpoint, the allegiance of Jews to the Democrats does not make sense. However, “tradition” often governs. As much as Barack Obama treats Netanyahu as a “lesser being,” American Jews still vote as a bloc for Democrats.

At a time when so many Americans are angry and turning away from both political parties, it is not surprising to see U.S. Jews do the same. After all, like the rest of us, they are Americans first and proudly so.

Also, like the rest of us, some have chosen to follow Judaism or not. Each of us has freedom of choice; and we must do what we feel most comfortable doing.

Even if Israel disappeared tomorrow, they would still be Americans, just like the rest of us.

See also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/#comment-544 (“Why I Write And Say What I Do”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/11/boycott-the-gop-and-ignore-foreign-naysayers/ (“Boycott The GOP And Ignore Foreign Naysayers“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/washington-is-sick-and-the-american-people-know-it/#comment-7185 (“Clinton Fatigue”)

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31 03 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

The Nazi Holocaust Remembered

Ike at Dachau
[General and later President Dwight D. Eisenhower speaking with survivor at Dachau death camp, Germany]

The UK’s Daily Mail has reported:

The only British survivor of a Nazi concentration camp was forced to relive harrowing tales of ‘rampant’ cannibalism and brutal torture at the hands of the Gestapo, newly-released records show.

Harold Osmond Le Druillenec was one of thousands of Nazi persecution victims forced to confront the horrors of their past to get compensation for their suffering.

In a letter he wrote applying for compensation, he revealed the shocking ‘kill or be killed’ nature of the camp at night.

His experiences came to light as details of applications for financial assistance made in the 1960s by UK victims and their families were released by the National Archives for the first time.

In 1964 the Federal Republic of Germany agreed to pay the British Government £1 million – about £17million in today’s money – to those who had suffered, or to their dependants if they had died.

More than 4,000 people applied and 1,015 awards of compensation were made by the Foreign Office.

For many, filling in the applications marked the first time they had confronted their harrowing experiences. But compensation was far from guaranteed – only those who spent time in a concentration camp or similar and were a British citizen would get payments.

Among the files released by the National Archives at Kew, west London, is an application from Mr Le Druillenec.

The only British survivor found at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, who went on to give evidence at the Belsen Trials, was arrested in Jersey in 1944 for harbouring Russian prisoners and not cooperating with the Nazis.

In his application for compensation, he describes how he survived three concentration camps ‘by a bit of luck’.

‘Rarely do I admit, even to myself, any physical weakness, ailments or discomforts and only see a doctor when it is imperative to do so,’ he wrote in his application for disability compensation.

‘The filling-in of this form has been somewhat of a trial and I apologise for any incompleteness therein.’

Mr Le Druillenec’s first-hand account laid bare the horrors endured by prisoners under the Nazi regime.

He recalled his time at the Hamburg Banterweg camp, describing it as a ‘tough camp with torture and punishment’, in a tale of harrowing brutality as he fought to get compensation for his suffering.

‘Means of putting inmates to death included beating, drowning, crucifixion, hanging in various stances,’ he added.

He described Belsen as ‘not as malicious as Banterweg but infinitely more uncomfortable – no food, no water, sleep was impossible’.

‘All my time here was spent in heaving dead bodies into the mass graves kindly dug for us by ‘outside workers’ for we no longer had the strength for that type of work,’ he added.

‘Jungle law reigned among the prisoners. At night you killed or were killed; by day cannibalism was rampant.

‘The bulk of Auschwitz had been transferred to Belsen when I arrived and it was here that I heard the expression ‘there is only one way out of here – through the chimney [crematorium]!’

The camp was liberated just hours before he was due to die.

He was freed after 10 months’ imprisonment, during which he lost more than half his body weight, and spent almost a year recovering from the dysentery, scabies, malnutrition and septicaemia he suffered.

He interrupted his convalescence to give evidence against camp staff at the Belsen Trial in Luneburg in 1945 and went on to help the War Crimes Investigations teams as they examined atrocities at other concentration camps.

In his application for compensation he described how his experiences had left him ‘generally weak’, with his heart and lungs affected and how he had lost most of his memories of pre-war life.

He wrote of his life back in Jersey: ‘All in all I am in good shape but must needs live a quiet life’.

He was awarded £1,835 in compensation – equivalent to £28,707 now. Mr Le Druillenec died at the age of 73 in 1985.

Some 900 files have been released so far, with more than 3,000 to come by spring 2017.

See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3516690/The-British-survivor-Belsen-concentration-camp-battle-rampant-cannibalism-torture-hands-Gestapo-harrowing-new-records-show.html (“‘At night you killed or were killed – by day cannibalism was rampant’: Harrowing details of the horrors of Nazi concentration camps revealed in a letter from the only British survivor of Belsen”) (emphasis added)

I have been very critical of Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, and of Israel itself. I have written about anti-Semitism that is spreading in Europe and globally. In my article above, I have questioned whether Israel will survive.

Yet, there is no question that the Nazi Holocaust took place. I toured Dachau 20 years after Eisenhower was there; I have visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.; and I have been moved emotionally. Whether exactly 6 million Jews died is not the issue. The fact is that unspeakable atrocities occurred, which decimated global Jewry—and killed or maimed countless more, whether they be Brits, Americans or others.

I have been critical of the fact that billions of dollars in reparations were “extorted” from Germany and other sources, to compensate the survivors, yet monies were “siphoned off” by lawyers and others, and never reached the intended surviving victims, most of whom are dead now. In Japan, the issue is compensating “comfort women” who were forced into sexual slavery.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/#comment-544 (“Why I Write And Say What I Do”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/28/human-trafficking/#comment-7778 (“The Tragic Story of Comfort Women“)

The global issue is always the same: human tragedies of unspeakable terms must be remembered forever, to prevent their recurrence again—whether they were visited on the human race by Hitler, Stalin or Mao, or in Armenia, Africa and elsewhere, or by human trafficking or war.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/the-silent-voices-of-stalin’s-soviet-holocaust-and-mao’s-chinese-holocaust/ (“The Silent Voices Of Stalin’s Soviet Holocaust And Mao’s Chinese Holocaust”)

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6 04 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

Israel-Palestine Conflict Resolution By Obama In November? [UPDATED]

Israeli and Palestinian flags

Akiva Eldar—a columnist for Al-Monitor’s “Israel Pulse,” and formerly a senior columnist and editorial writer for Haaretz, who also served as the Hebrew daily’s U.S. bureau chief—has written:

Over the past century, the month of November has seen a slew of ground-breaking events in the annals of the Jewish state. There was the Balfour Declaration, the British Empire’s declaration of support for the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel (November 1917); the UN resolution on the establishment of a Jewish state (November 1947); the visit by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to Jerusalem (November 1977); and the Annapolis Conference, which launched the important negotiations between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on a permanent status arrangement (November 2007).

In between, following the Palestine Liberation Organization’s declaration of an independent state and its recognition of the State of Israel, US President Ronald Reagan decided to launch an official dialogue with the organization on reaching a peace arrangement with Israel. He made his move in November 1988, after the presidential elections and before George H.W. Bush was sworn in as the 41st president of the United States. The outgoing president, who had completed two terms in office, was no longer under pressure from Jewish voters. The incoming president, who inherited the PLO, was no longer under pressure from Jewish lobbyists. Before the Reagan-Bush handover, the right-wing government of the “Greater Land of Israel” led by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir was struck a crippling blow.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is very familiar with the maneuver of taking on a difficult resolution at the end of a term. In 1988, he wrapped up four years in New York as head of the Israeli delegation to the United Nations. Before that he served as deputy chief of mission at the Israeli Embassy in Washington. These days he is busy preparing for a possible diplomatic tsunami to hit at some point between Nov. 8, 2016, and January 2017. A senior diplomatic source in Jerusalem who asked to remain anonymous told Al-Monitor this week that Israel is operating on the assumption that President Barack Obama will not leave the White House with a failing grade in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Based on that assumption, the question is not whether Obama will make a diplomatic move, but what kind it will be.

The answer to this intriguing question is clutched tightly to the president’s chest. Obama learned the hard way that any hint of a measure that could threaten the status quo in the occupied territories will immediately provide fodder for Republican propaganda. According to a diplomatic source familiar with the hectic deliberations conducted recently by the Mideast Quartet, including a March 28 meeting in Jerusalem, Obama is weighing three formulas. One possibility is to support a proposed UN Security Council resolution recognizing a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders. The second is pushing through a decisive resolution against the settlements. The third option is a combination of the two.

When the time comes to decide, shortly before Obama clears off his desk in the Oval Office, he will be handed a document summing up each of the three alternatives. The National Security Council and the State Department are cautiously examining how the sides involved will react to each move. The way it looks on the surface, the Israeli side is expressing vehement opposition to any move that is not tiny baby steps, such as pulling Israeli military forces out of the West Bank Palestinian towns of Jericho and Ramallah and allowing more Palestinians to work in Israel.

But Netanyahu knows this won’t cut it. Therefore, the National Security Council in Jerusalem is formulating alternative proposals to an international initiative. Netanyahu, too, is keeping his cards close to his chest. If he veers slightly away from the radical right, for instance by even temporarily expressing reservations about an Israeli soldier’s execution of a wounded Palestinian, he risks the wrath of his coalition partners from HaBayit HaYehudi and from his own political home, the Likud.

The Palestinians are adopting the defensive tactics of a tennis player who waits patiently for his opponent to make a mistake and tries to avoid making any himself. They don’t budge from their demand for a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails and a resolution of the Palestinian refugee problem in the spirit of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative. These principles are accepted by a decisive majority of the international community. Netanyahu is lobbing hollow balls into the Palestinian court in an attempt to score public opinion points. But Israel anticipated that Abbas would contemptuously reject the offer to pull troops out of Jericho and Ramallah. Accepting it would have been interpreted as agreeing to the continued presence of the Israel Defense Forces in Area A, in violation of the Oslo Accord.

Attempting to counter accusations that the Palestinian Authority incites terror, Abbas is once again proposing to reconvene the joint Israeli-Palestinian-American committee on the prevention of incitement. Netanyahu is once again ignoring the suggestion. With nothing to lose, Abbas tried to address the Israeli public over the heads of its leaders. In an interview with journalist Ilana Dayan on the popular program “Uvda,” aired March 31 on Channel 2, Abbas said that the PA’s security forces go into schools to search for knives in the children’s schoolbags. According to him, at one school they found 70 boys and girls carrying knives and confiscated them, with the message that “We want you to live, and for the other side to live as well.”

In consultations ahead of the November decision, the United States is reserving a special role for Egypt. In addition to Cairo’s traditional role as conciliator/mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as of January, Egypt is a member of the UN Security Council. Its vote could tip the scales in favor of a proposed Obama resolution on resolving the conflict or a resolution that Obama will not veto.

Cairo also has a symbolic value. In June 2009, five months after being sworn into office, Obama delivered a speech in Cairo in which he pledged to “personally” bring about the implementation of the two-state solution. He promised that “America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity and a state of their own.” He added, “It is time . . . for all of us to live up to our responsibilities.” The last chance to live up to his promise to the Israelis and the Palestinians will come on Nov. 8, 2016, the day of the US presidential elections, and expire on Jan, 20, 2017, when the newly elected president and vice president are sworn in.

See http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/04/israel-palestine-conflict-resolution-obama-three-initiatives.html (emphasis added); see also http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/12/opinion/international/israels-unsung-protector-obama.html?_r=1 (“[T]he president has grown so frustrated with trying to revive Middle East peace talks that he may lay down his own outline for an Israeli-Palestinian two-state peace agreement, in the form of a resolution in the United Nations Security Council”—”[S]ince 1967, every other American president allowed, or even had America vote for, Security Council resolutions taking Israel to task for actions and policies toward the Palestinians and other Arab neighbors”—”[T]he United States permitted resolutions saying that all Israeli settlement in the West Bank and East Jerusalem violated international law”—”The two-state solution is the only path to preserving Israel’s security and its character as a Jewish state and a democracy, while delivering freedom, dignity and sovereignty to the Palestinians. We can hope that President Obama may now recognize that preserving this solution for the future is the most important legacy he can leave in this arena. But to accomplish that, he must be willing to resist, rather than court, the anti-peace bullies in Israel and the United States; he must be willing to stand up for American interests in obtaining a Middle East peace, and to stand with America’s allies in the Security Council in supporting a two-state solution. If he does that, President Obama will not be betraying Israel. He will be Israel’s true friend. And he will walk in the footsteps of all eight other presidents since 1967, Democrat and Republican alike) and http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Politics-And-Diplomacy/Is-Obama-planning-his-revenge-on-Netanyahu-451162 (“Is Obama planning his revenge on Netanyahu?”—”During his final year in the White House, US President Barack Obama is preparing a metaphorical roadside IED for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/#comment-7220 (“The Green Line Between Israel And The Palestinian Territory“) and http://www.timesofisrael.com/iran-claims-to-successfully-test-missile-that-can-reach-israel/ (“Iran claims to successfully test missile that can reach Israel“)

Both the first and second options should be adopted.

In terms of Barack Obama’s successor, it is likely that Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders would abide by such actions by Obama, but ultra-right-wing demagogue Ted Cruz would not—which is among the many reasons why so many Americans will never vote for him.

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10 05 2016
Kish

Tim, even lawyers can appear stupid. Your writing here solidifies that fact. Why are you so worried about Jewish fate? Or are you? Jerk. Or worse.

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10 05 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you, Kish, for your comments.

I have made my views very clear in the article above, and in other writings.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/#comment-544 (“Why I Write And Say What I Do”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/#comment-7039 (“Is Night Falling Again For European Jews?“)

You might wish to open your eyes and mind. The very dark clouds of anti-Semitism are gathering again.

I have seen their results when I toured Dachau, and when I visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington with an American Jew from the Midwest, whose family came to the States long ago and was not affected.

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11 05 2016
Jonathan Buttall

What was the point of your comment? Your own views were not clear, nor the purpose and meaning of the insult. You seemed offended, but by what?

Liked by 1 person

18 05 2016
Rick

Why shouldn’t he be worried about the fate of Jews..? Without Jews, the world would not have half of the advances in technology that it has today..Do you have a problem with Jews, Kish?

Liked by 1 person

15 05 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

Netanyahu: Iran Mocks Holocaust, Prepares Another [UPDATED]

Netanyahu Nazi

The Associated Press has reported:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lashed out at Iran Sunday for staging a Holocaust-themed cartoon contest that mocked the Nazi genocide of six million Jews during World War II and said the Islamic Republic was busy planning for another one.

Iran has long backed armed groups committed to Israel’s destruction and its leaders have called for it to be wiped off the map. Israel fears that Iran’s nuclear program is designed to threaten its very existence. But Netanyahu said that it not just Iran’s belligerent policies that Israel opposed, but its values.

“It denies the Holocaust, it mocks the Holocaust and it is also preparing another Holocaust,” Netanyahu said at his weekly Cabinet meeting. “I think that every country in the world must stand up and fully condemn this.”

State Department spokesman Mark Toner, traveling with Secretary of State John Kerry in Saudi Arabia, said the United States was concerned the contest could “be used as a platform for Holocaust denial and revisionism and egregiously anti-Semitic speech, as it has in the past.”

“Such offensive speech should be condemned by the authorities and civil society leaders rather than encouraged. We denounce any Holocaust denial and trivialization as inflammatory and abhorrent. It is insulting to the memory of the millions of people who died in the Holocaust,” Toner said.

The denial or questioning of the genocide is widespread in the Middle East, where many regard it as a pretext Israel used for its creation and to excuse its actions toward the Palestinians.

“Holocaust means mass killing,” said contest organizer Masuod Shojai Tabatabaei. “We are witnessing the biggest killings by the Zionist regime in Gaza and Palestine.”

He said the purpose of the Tehran event was not to deny the Holocaust but rather to criticize alleged Western double standards regarding free expression – and particularly as a response to depictions of the Prophet Muhammad by the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and others. The exhibit featured some 150 works from 50 countries, with many portraying Israel as using the Holocaust to distract from the suffering of the Palestinians. Others depicted Palestinian prisoners standing behind concentration camp-style barbed wire fences, Netanyahu likened to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and a Jerusalem mosque behind a gate bearing the motto “Arbeit Macht Frei” that appeared at the entrance to the Auschwitz death camp.

The contest was organized by non-governmental bodies with strong support from Iran’s hard-liners. A previous contest in 2006 got a boost from then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a hard-liner who referred to the Holocaust as a “myth” and repeatedly predicted Israel’s demise.

See http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ML_ISRAEL_IRAN?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-05-15-05-26-29 (emphasis added)

Like “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” of Aesop’s Fables, Netanyahu’s words are falling on deaf ears.

The world has tuned him out.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_Who_Cried_Wolf (“The Boy Who Cried Wolf“); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/ (“Ariel Sharon Is Missed“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/the-madness-of-benjamin-netanyahu/ (“The Madness Of Benjamin Netanyahu“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/ (“Israel’s Senseless Killings And War With Iran“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/#comment-2066 (“The Spymaster, Former Mossad Chief Meir Dagan, Compelled To Speak Out Because He Is So Opposed To Preemptive Israeli Strike Against Iran“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/#comment-7059 (“Former Mossad Chief: I Don’t Trust Netanyahu, His Actions Will Cost Us“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/#comment-6443 (“Netanyahu Took Part In The Incitement Against Rabin That Preceded His Murder“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/#comment-7039 (“Is Night Falling Again For European Jews?“)

Also, Netanyahu is viewed as an impediment to the peace initiatives that President Obama is expected to advance later this year.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/31/is-israel-doomed/#comment-8656 (“Israel-Palestine Conflict Resolution By Obama In November?“)

As I have written in the article above:

Barack Obama and other world leaders “detest” him, just as the Rabins and Ariel Sharon hated him. Indeed, Leah Rabin blamed Netanyahu for her husband Yitzhak’s assassination. She saw “only doom for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process” with Netanyahu at Israel’s helm; and her views were prescient.

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30 05 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

No One Should Be Surprised

Netanyahu Nazi

A Wall Street Journal editorial entitled “Democrats v. Israel” states:

Not too long ago Democrats were America’s pro-Israel party. Harry Truman recognized Israel moments after the Jewish state declared independence in 1948. JFK sold advanced anti-aircraft missiles to Jerusalem, ending a de facto U.S. arms embargo. Bill Clinton was famously close to the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

If that party isn’t dead, it’s close. This week Bernie Sanders named James Zogby of the Arab-American Institute and professor Cornel West to the party’s platform-drafting committee. The pair are expected to push hard for a more “even-handed” position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which in practice means denouncing Israel at every turn.

Mr. West offered a flavor of his even-handedness on Facebook in 2014 during Israel’s last war with Hamas. “Let us not be deceived,” he wrote. “The Israeli massacre of innocent Palestinians, especially the precious children, is a crime against humanity! The rockets of Hamas indeed are morally wrong and politically ineffective—but these crimes pale in the face of the U.S. supported Israeli slaughters of innocent civilians.”

Mr. Zogby has prominently endorsed the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, calling it “a legitimate and moral response to Israeli policy.” BDS has gained steam in recent years on college campuses, where Palestinian victimology plays well and students are easily misled about the causes of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

These views go well beyond the usual bounds of fair criticism of Israel. No other country—including a genuine occupier like China in Tibet—is being singled out for boycotts the way Israel is. The suggestion that Israel deliberately “massacres” innocent Palestinians is false based on everything we know about Israel’s military restraint and war practices. If Palestinians wanted to end Israel’s occupation, they could have taken the deal offered to them at Camp David in 2000 when Bill Clinton was President.

Pro-Israel Democrats might reply that Messrs. West and Zogby are only two of a 15-person panel, and Hillary Clinton has taken a more mainstream line. But there’s no gainsaying the increasingly anti-Israel tilt of progressive politics. A Pew poll from April found that while moderate Democrats still sympathized with Israel over the Palestinians by a 53% to 19% margin, self-identified liberal Democrats now tilt to the Palestinians, 40% to 33%.

Even Mrs. Clinton is only moderate on Israel when compared to the Democratic left. Her State Department was notorious for its denunciations of Israel, and some of her closest advisers are often quicker to denounce Israeli self-defense than Palestinian terror.

The shame of all this is that support for a robust liberal democracy like Israel should come naturally to the Democratic Party. Last we checked, it was better to be a woman, or homosexual, or environmentalist, or political dissident in Tel Aviv than in Gaza. As they write their party’s platform, Democrats might ask why Israel, the one Middle Eastern country that fully shares their values, should be the one they most seek to condemn.

See http://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-vs-israel-1464389180 (emphasis added)

Barack Obama may have a post-election “surprise” coming for the oppressive Netanyahu regime, which will make this editorial seem like a whimper.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/31/is-israel-doomed/#comment-8656 (“Israel-Palestine Conflict Resolution By Obama In November?“)

The president and the Democrats’ stance vis–à–vis the oppressive Netanyahu regime is understandable and totally justifiable.

It is utter nonsense to state that an “‘even-handed’ position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict . . . in practice means denouncing Israel at every turn.” Like so many other editorials and articles in the Journal, this one is undergirded by Islamophobia, which is un-American.

Israel deserves and has earned—certainly under Netanyahu—no special or favored status. Indeed, Cornel West’s comments that are cited in this editorial are shared by many Americans, and certainly by the world.

Why should the Journal‘s editorial board be surprised in the least about “the increasingly anti-Israel tilt of progressive politics,” or the growing anti-Semitism in Europe and globally?

Barack Obama and other world leaders “detest” Netanyahu, just as the Rabins and Ariel Sharon hated him. Indeed, Leah Rabin blamed Netanyahu for her husband Yitzhak’s assassination. She saw “only doom for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process” with Netanyahu at Israel’s helm; and her views were prescient.

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3 06 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

Bernie Sanders Whacks Israel

Israel flag burning

This is the thesis and title of an article by the Washington Post‘s Charles Krauthammer, which states:

Part of Bernie Sanders’ charm is that for all of his arm-waving jeremiads, he appears unthreatening. He’s the weird old uncle in the attic, Larry David’s crazy Bernie. It’s almost a matter of style. Who can be afraid of a candidate so irascible, grumpy, old-fashioned and unfashionable?

After all, he’s not going to win the nomination, so what harm can he do? A major address at the party convention? A say in the vice presidential selection? And who reads party platforms anyway?

Well, platforms may not immediately affect a particular campaign. But they do express, quite literally, the party line, a written record of its ideological trajectory.

Which is why two of Sanders’ appointments to the 15-member platform committee are so stunning. Professor Cornel West not only has called the Israeli prime minister a war criminal but openly supports the BDS movement (boycott, divestment and sanctions), the most important attempt in the world to ostracize and delegitimize Israel.

West is joined on the committee by the longtime pro-Palestinian activist James Zogby. Together, reported the New York Times, they “vowed to upend what they see as the party’s lopsided support of Israel.”

This seems a gratuitous provocation. Sanders hardly made Israel central to his campaign. He did call Israel’s response in the 2014 Gaza war “disproportionate” and said “we cannot continue to be one-sided.” But now Sanders seeks to permanently alter — i.e., weaken — the relationship between the Democratic Party and Israel, which has been close and supportive since Harry Truman recognized the world’s only Jewish state when it declared independence in May 1948.

West doesn’t even pretend, as do some left-wing “peace” groups, to be opposing Israeli policy in order to save it from itself. He makes the simpler case that occupation is unconscionable oppression and that until Israel abandons it, Israel deserves to be treated like apartheid South Africa — anathematized, cut off, made to bleed morally and economically. The Sanders appointees wish to bend the Democratic platform to encourage such diminishment unless Israel redeems itself by liberating Palestine.

This is an unusual argument for a Democratic platform committee, largely because it is logically and morally perverse. Israel did in fact follow such high-minded advice in 2005: It terminated its occupation and evacuated Gaza. That earned it (temporary) praise from the West. And from the Palestinians? Not peace, not reconciliation, not normal relations but a decade of unrelenting terrorism and war.

Israel is now being asked — pressured — to repeat that same disaster on the West Bank. That would bring the terror war, quite fatally, to the very heart of Israel — Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Ben Gurion Airport. Israel is now excoriated for declining that invitation to national suicide.

It is ironic that the most successful Jewish presidential candidate ever should be pushing the anti-Israel case. But perhaps not surprising considering Sanders’ ideological roots. He is old left — not the post-1960s, countercultural New Left. Why, the man honeymooned in the Soviet Union — not such fashionably cool communist paradises as Sandinista Nicaragua where Bill de Blasio went to work for the cause or Castro’s Cuba where de Blasio honeymooned. (Do lefties all use the same wedding planner?)

For the old left, Israel was simply an outpost of Western imperialism, Middle East division. To this day, the leftist consensus, most powerful in Europe (which remains Sanders’ ideological lodestar), holds that Israeli perfidy demands purification by Western chastisement.

Chastisement there will be at the Democratic platform committee. To be sure, Sanders didn’t create the Democrats’ drift away from Israel. It was already visible at the 2012 convention with the loud resistance to recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. But Sanders is consciously abetting it.

The millennials who worship him and pack his rallies haven’t lived through — and don’t know — the history of Israel’s half-century of peace offers. They don’t know of the multiple times Israel has offered to divide the land with an independent Palestinian state and been rebuffed.

Sanders hasn’t lifted a finger to tell them. The lovable old guy with the big crowds and no chance at the nomination is hardly taken seriously (except by Hillary Clinton, whose inability to put him away reveals daily her profound political weakness). But when he makes platform appointees that show he does take certain things quite seriously, like undermining the U.S.-Israeli relationship, you might want to reconsider your equanimity about the magical mystery tour. It looks like Woodstock, but there is steel inside the psychedelic glove.

See https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/lovable-bernie-whacks-israel/2016/06/02/28fe3334-28e3-11e6-b989-4e5479715b54_story.html (“Lovable Bernie whacks Israel“) (emphasis added)

With due respect for Krauthammer whom I like, this column could have been written in Tel Aviv by Netanyahu and his vicious thugs. Far too often Krauthammer turns a blind eye to Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians and its other atrocities.

Netanyahu is a war criminal who should be arrested and tried for his crimes, when he sets foot outside of Israel. As I have written in the article above:

Barack Obama and other world leaders “detest” him, just as the Rabins and Ariel Sharon hated him. Indeed, Leah Rabin blamed Netanyahu for her husband Yitzhak’s assassination. She saw “only doom for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process” with Netanyahu at Israel’s helm; and her views were prescient.

Both American political parties should end their lopsided support of Israel, which propelled the United States into the Iraq War—in which thousands of Americans died for nothing, while others were maimed for life and trillions of dollars were wasted. Not satisfied, Netanyahu and his thugs have tried to push us into another war, this time with Iran. Enough is enough. Israel, under Netanyahu, has ceased to be our friend or ally.

Also, I disagree vehemently with Krauthammer that Sanders cannot win his party’s presidential nomination. Hillary Clinton is dead in the water. It is likely that she will be indicted criminally, which will mean “game over” for her political aspirations; and she will spend the rest of the Obama presidency trying to get a pardon from the president so she does not wear an orange prison “jumpsuit” during the Trump presidency.

There is enough dirt on her to sink 10 battleships; and her e-mail scandal is only part of her problems. FBI director Comey and more than 100 FBI agents are “dedicated” to taking her down. She is on her way to becoming a political cipher.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/11/boycott-the-gop-and-ignore-foreign-naysayers/#comment-8826 (“Hillary And Her Coke Habit“)

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10 06 2016
Jonathan Buttall

Well, interesting different views there……..I never agree with Krauthamer (the name is ironic). Bernie’s being Jewish is simply ethnic background, he is not part of the Jewish Religion or culture. Most American Jews voted for President Obama in 2012, an enemy of barbaric Netanyahu, and against Netanyahus puppet, Romney. The US must not be a tool and colony of Israeli atrocities. Odd that Krauthamer hates Hillary, an rabid Israeli supporter and puppet.

On a related note, high profile politicians do not get indicted. McCain committed very serious crimes of banking corruption and cost the tax payers 250 billion dollars in bail out money and only got a censure. Chris Christie, Joe Arpaio, Sarah Palin and Trump have committed crimes. They will never be charged for them nor will Hillary. These people are above the law.

At the time I’m writing this, Hillary got enough delegates to win the nomination. She had best pick Bernie as a VP. Having him waste time on Party platforms and convention rules is just busy work, no one pays attention to those. Without Bernie supporters voting for Hillary…….and they won’t if he isn’t on the ticket…………..she could well lose to Trump. I’m in the Sierra Club and a local officer in it. There’s controversy in the club right now as the leadership ignored Bernie and just endorsed Hillary. The club is aging and not enough young people have joined. They seem to face a similar disunity as the DNC and GOP now are. Ah, coming to the end of my rant……………

I suspect a major fight at both conventions would be good in the long run for both parties and for America as well. The status quo isn’t working and a nice shake up would move things along. Jonathan

Liked by 1 person

10 06 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you again, Jonathan.

I actually like Krauthammer, but do not always agree with him (e.g., Netanyahu, Trump). He has certain “hot buttons” that when pushed, the results are very predictable.

You have written:

Bernie’s being Jewish is simply ethnic background, he is not part of the Jewish Religion or culture. Most American Jews voted for President Obama in 2012, an enemy of barbaric Netanyahu, and against Netanyahus puppet, Romney. The US must not be a tool and colony of Israeli atrocities.

I agree.

With respect to Hillary being indicted and forced to drop out of the race, I would bet this would happen, albeit I am not a betting man. There is too much against her, and it is mounting.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/washington-is-sick-and-the-american-people-know-it/#comment-7185 (“Clinton Fatigue”)

Indeed, if she is not indicted and forced out, it will signal that the United States is truly a lawless country; and that only the “little people” pay a price for not following our laws. It will underscore and perhaps galvanize the anger even more, which is reflected in both the Trump and Sanders campaigns.

If Hillary is the Dems’ standard bearer, I doubt she will pick Sanders.

I agree with your comments about the Sierra Club. I am a hiker, and spent time with Ansel Adams when he was alive.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/12/ansel-adams-has-an-heir/ (“Ansel Adams Has An Heir”)

However, the Club does not reflect my views, which is why I dropped out years ago and do not anticipate ever rejoining.

Lastly, you said:

I suspect a major fight at both conventions would be good in the long run for both parties and for America as well. The status quo isn’t working and a nice shake up would move things along.

I agree completely, but believe the two conventions will be “canned” now, with Trump staging quite a show, and Sanders being “sidelined” beyond belief, which will be very sad. My guess is that his followers will not have any real choice except not to vote.

That was my only choice in 1972, when McGovern ran against Nixon, and I was a young attorney working in the U.S. Senate. I could not vote for either of them; and I predicted that Watergate would take down Nixon.

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19 06 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

Is Political Change Coming To Israel? [UPDATED]

Israel flag

Jeremy Ben-Ami, the enlightened leader of J Street—whose family members were among those who founded Tel Aviv—has written:

Political change is coming to Israel.

That’s the conclusion I came back with from a recent Congressional delegation to Israel and the West Bank.

Most Americans who care deeply about the future of Israel have watched in agony as Prime Minister Netanyahu has led the country ever further to the right politically in ways that challenge the democratic nature and Jewish character of the state.

I’m sure many viewed the replacement of Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon with Avigdor Lieberman and the addition of his right-wing party to the governing coalition as simply a further reason for despair.

Yet what I saw on my visit — and what we saw this week in other political developments there — is the emergence of a fracture in Israeli politics that may well spell the end of two decades of Netanyahu dominance.

At the annual Herzliya Conference this week, Ya’alon announced his intention to challenge Netanyahu for Prime Minister in the next election.

His critique of Netanyahu and his leadership was scathing — accusing the government he quit of cynically using fear to divert attention from the nation’s real problems and expressing deep concern over the emerging fissures in Israeli society and the erosion of basic values.

Laying out a vision that he said could speak to the “sane majority” of the country, Ya’alon said, “The leadership of Israel in 2016 is busy with inflaming passions and causing fear between Jews and Arabs, between right and left and between different ethnic groups in order to survive in power and earn another month or year. The job of leadership is to bring together the people and not to tear it apart, incite and urge attacks.”

The number of figures on Israel’s political right and center who are alarmed by the rhetoric, ideology and policy emanating from the Prime Minister and his allies like Lieberman and Naftali Bennett is large and growing.

Bernie Avishai in a recent post in the New Yorker referred to this as a fissure between the ideological right, “driven by religiously inflected zealotry for the Land of Israel … and valorizing the settlement project as messianic” and the nationalist right that puts security concerns first, doubts its neighbors’ intentions and prioritizes military and national strength.

This nationalist right — now led by Ya’alon — is concerned that a government increasingly dominated by the “messianic” right is undermining the Israeli Defense Forces, threatening Israeli democracy and increasing the country’s international isolation.

In challenging the Prime Minister, Ya’alon could well be joined by other popular leaders formerly of the Likud — like current finance minister Moshe Kahlon and former minister Gideon Saar.

Polling released Friday in Israel shows such an alignment getting 25 seats and leading the typically crowded political field.

Most importantly, this new party reduces the bloc held by Netanyahu’s Likud, the settler party and Lieberman to under one-third of the Knesset and makes it possible to envision a re-alignment in Israeli politics after the next election that could put a centrist coalition back in charge.

Those who care about two states and ending occupation should have no illusion that this represents an impending shift to the left in Israeli politics.

And similarly let’s have no illusions about Ya’alon’s personal politics. This is a man who called John Kerry obsessive and messianic in his pursuit of peace, questioned whether Palestinian society grieves the loss of its children as Israeli society does and has expressed doubts about Palestinian readiness to accept or achieve a two-state solution.

But what we can now see is a political path to power for a government that puts the future of the state of Israel, its security, its democratic nature — not a Greater Israel ideology — at the heart of its agenda.

Above all else, driving such a government would be the question Ya’alon put at the center of his remarks: “What kind of state do [Israelis] want to live in and raise our children and grandchildren in?”

That is the question the founders of Israel asked themselves.

That is the question that Prime Ministers like Begin, Rabin, Barak, Sharon and Olmert asked as they tried to end the conflicts with Israel’s neighbors.

None of them pursued peace as doves. And several — like Ya’alon — were truly right-wing in their politics.

But they all sought to establish Israel’s borders and affirm its place in the region because it was in Israel’s national interest to do so.

And that is what will motivate the leaders who set Israel back on a path that ensures its security, reaches a regional agreement ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and integrates the country with its neighbors to address the strategic and economic challenges they must face together.

That is the first meaningful sign of potential change I’ve seen in quite some time.

Emphasis added. See also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/#comment-1825 (“Jeremy Ben-Ami, “A New Voice For Israel”—A Wonderful Book That Should Be Read By Anyone Who Cares About And Wants To Understand Israel’s Past, Present And Future”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/#comment-544 (“Why I Write And Say What I Do”) and http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Iranian-military-official-We-have-100000-missiles-in-Lebanon-ready-to-hit-Israel-459350 (“Iranian military official: We have 100,000 missiles in Lebanon ready to hit Israel“)

Let us hope and pray that Ben-Ami is correct.

. . .

On December 6, 2017, he wrote poignantly about Jerusalem:

It’s a family home where I lived for years, where my parents are, where my ancestors immigrated to in the 19th century. It’s where my father-in-law fought in 1948 in Israel’s War of Independence to defend the newly established state.

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20 06 2016
Jonathan Buttall

Hello as always, Timothy!
I think I may have mentioned that our cruise with our grandson went well. Now he faces the real world of looking into college and/or work, but he has help for this.

It sounds like you’re still quite involved with Washington, as you were part of that Congressional delegation. Our trip to Israel in 2010 taught my wife and I a lot. I think I once also mentioned that despite my opposition to the Israeli system, I have relatives there, and we spent part of the trip visiting a niece of mine, although I did not visit my brother, a hard core ultra orthodox ex-settler who had his family in both the West Bank and Gaza,but now is in a town called Nitzan, which is mostly ex-settlers.

Ben-Ami will hopefully be safe……..I haven’t forgotten what happened to Yitzak Rabin, who, like Gandhi and MLK, died for wanting peace between warring cultural factions. Netanyahu has had a free ride for some time now, thanks to high profile Islamic terrorist attacks around the West, most of it domestic Muslims, and high profile economic concerns and news like Brexit (the Brits are smart….like the people in Catalunya, Puerto Rico and Scotland, they will reject independence).

Israels problems will not go away……I learned that the job and housing market there is scarce and the country has a very high cost of living, high taxes and mediocre salaries…….it’s been a few years since the last big protests there. The issue of Palestine will not go away, given that it’s been around (with a long interruption) for 3000 years.

On a different note but ultimately related to the Israeli future, Donald seems not to have toned down his message even though he’s now campaigning in the general election, when moderation is the tradition at this stage. This cannot be good for him, as he’s no longer just playing to the base. He has the charisma, but not the caution nor good advisement. Interestingly, Donald is apparently less supportive of Israel than Hillary is, which is more of a plus than a minus.

Hillary’s chances are likely influenced by whether Bernie supporters will vote for her………..internet comments by them are not favorable. It will be a close race and most voters will not be happy with the choices, including me, but I will still vote as I always do.

Glad you’re still involved in the process, gives you up to date intel.

Jonathan.

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20 06 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you as always, Jonathan.

It is wonderful that you and your grandson are spending quality time together. You are blessed.

What is an “ex-settler,” and I see that Nitzan “is a religiously observant communal settlement in southern Israel[, l]ocated among the Nitzanim sand dunes,” which seems like an inhospitable place.

See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitzan

You have written:

Ben-Ami will hopefully be safe. . . .”

He and J Street are based in Washington, D.C.; and he is a very special and caring person. He has built J Street from nothing into one of the two most prominent Jewish organizations in the United States. I believe his future and that of J Street are very bright.

You added:

Donald seems not to have toned down his message even though he’s now campaigning in the general election, when moderation is the tradition at this stage. This cannot be good for him, as he’s no longer just playing to the base. He has the charisma, but not the caution nor good advisement.

The Donald is the Donald. His appeal is to (1) the “best” of the GOP; (2) “Reagan Democrats,” who are fed up with the Clintons and the direction of their party; and of course, to (3) Independents, who comprise approximately 42 percent of the American electorate.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/03/31/the-rise-of-independents/#comment-3244 (“Record-High 42 Percent Of Americans Identify As Independents”)

I have been an Independent for almost 30 years, after first being a Democrat and then a Republican.

You have written:

Hillary’s chances are likely influenced by whether Bernie supporters will vote for her………..internet comments by them are not favorable. It will be a close race and most voters will not be happy with the choices, including me, but I will still vote as I always do.

My guess is that if Hillary Clinton is not forced out of the race (e.g., because of her criminal indictment), Bernie Sanders’ supporters will not support her; and either they will not vote, or they will switch to Trump. As you have gathered, he is courting their support.

Next, you said:

Interestingly, Donald is apparently less supportive of Israel than Hillary is, which is more of a plus than a minus.

I agree. However, he spoke before AIPAC recently, and was very warmly received.

Lastly, this is an exciting race, and so far one of the most exciting of my lifetime. 🙂

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21 06 2016
Jonathan Buttall

Thanks for the interesting feedback, Timothy!

Liked by 1 person

12 07 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

Obama Uses Taxpayer Money To Oust Netanyahu [UPDATED]

Netanyahu as a Nazi

The Washington Times has reported:

The State Department paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayers grants to an Israeli group that used the money to build a campaign to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in last year’s Israeli parliamentary elections, a congressional investigation concluded Tuesday.

Some $350,000 was sent to OneVoice, ostensibly to support the group’s efforts to back Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement negotiations. But OneVoice used the money to build a voter database, train activists and hire a political consulting firm with ties to President Obama’s campaign — all of which set the stage for an anti-Netanyahu campaign, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said in a bipartisan staff report.

In one stunning finding, the subcommittee said OneVoice even told the State Department’s top diplomat in Jerusalem of its plans in an email, but the official, Consul General Michael Ratney, claims never to have seen them.

He said he regularly deleted emails with large attachments — a striking violation of open-records laws for a department already reeling from former Secretary Hillary Clinton’s handling of official government records.

Mr. Netanyahu survived the election, and the U.S. spending was not deemed illegal because the State Department never put any conditions on the money. Investigators also said OneVoice didn’t turn explicitly political until days after the grant period ended.

“The State Department ignored warnings signs and funded a politically active group in a politically sensitive environment with inadequate safeguards,” said Sen. Rob Portman, chairman of the investigative subcommittee. “It is completely unacceptable that U.S. taxpayer dollars were used to build a political campaign infrastructure that was deployed — immediately after the grant ended — against the leader of our closest ally in the Middle East. American resources should be used to help our allies in the region, not undermine them.”

Sen. Claire McCaskill, the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, said the Obama administration followed the law.

But she said their investigation exposed “deficiencies” in the State Department’s policies.

OneVoice had been politically active in Israel’s 2013 elections, which should have been a red flag to U.S. officials to put strict controls on how American taxpayers’ money was spent, the investigation said.

While it wouldn’t have necessarily disqualified the group, the State Department should have written a specific prohibition against using American money to influence a foreign election, the subcommittee said.

It’s part of a pattern of bad behavior at the State Department. The Government Accountability Office reviewed more than five dozen department grants and found officials cut corners and missed red flags in 80 percent of them.

The State Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

See http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jul/12/obama-admin-sent-taxpayer-money-oust-netanyahu/ (“Obama admin. sent taxpayer money to campaign to oust Netanyahu“) (emphasis added)

While I disagree with Barack Obama’s policies in large part, I agree completely with his stands vis-à-vis Netanyahu and Russia’s Putin, who are moral equivalents. Indeed, the United States has used the vast measures at its disposal to oust hostile regimes around the world since our great nation was founded, and there is no difference here.

As my article above states clearly and emphatically:

Barack Obama and other world leaders “detest” [Netanyahu], just as the Rabins and Ariel Sharon hated him. Indeed, Leah Rabin blamed Netanyahu for her husband Yitzhak’s assassination. She saw “only doom for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process” with Netanyahu at Israel’s helm; and her views were prescient.

Netanyahu has morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors, and he should be removed. The Obama Administration is correct in this regard.

See also http://jstreet.org/blog/post/i-ran-israels-atomic-energy-commission-i-know-the-iran-deal-is-working-_1 (Uzi Eilam, former Director of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission: “I ran Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission. I know the Iran deal is working”)

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13 07 2016
Jonathan Buttall

Hi, Timothy.

There’s quite a bit of irony in this article you just posted. The Washington Times is a conservative publication, which by itself isn’t a bad thing; I like to read the WSJ and Market Watch, for example. However, it was created by the Moonies, a religious cult, not known for it’s clear thinking.

They complain of this use of tax payers dollars by the State Department like it’s a bad thing LOL. Netanyahu directly tried to manipulate the US 2012 election and virtually declared himself the foreign policy adviser to failed candidate Romney. So, why not turn the tables on him? He’s a menace to us, after all.

The idea that Israel, a client state, is “our closest ally in the Middle East” was never true. Turkey, a Nato ally giving us bases to fight ISIS and a long time fighter against terrorism, along with Jordan, where US troops “secretly” are stationed on their military bases and train with Jordanian troops……..those are our allies in the Middle East.

We’ve been to all of the above countries, BTW. However, my knowledge of our soldiers and their activities with Jordanian soldiers on Jordanian bases comes from (1) two mothers of US soldiers stationed in Jordan who brag about their sons and (2) comments by Jordanian soldiers on comment sections who like to brag whenever they beat US troops on their base in a soccer game. Loose lips don’t sink ships, I guess, if you’re in sand instead of water.

Leaders, be they somewhat shady people with their own agenda like Erdogan in Turkey or Netanyahu in Israel, and controversial Presidents like George W. Bush or Dilma Rousseff in Brazil are usually re-elected. The reason, I once read, is that citizens don’t like changing leaders in times of significant crisis. This, even if the leaders are not optimum.

Liked by 1 person

13 07 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you as always, Jonathan, for your comments.

You began:

They complain of this use of tax payers dollars by the State Department like it’s a bad thing LOL. Netanyahu directly tried to manipulate the US 2012 election and virtually declared himself the foreign policy adviser to failed candidate Romney. So, why not turn the tables on him? He’s a menace to us, after all.

I agree completely.

The Washington Times is trying to get a “rise” in WDC, knowing that Israel is perceived as being a “sacred cow” because of AIPAC’s efforts, and an “untouchable” politically. Needless to say, your comments and my beliefs echo the sentiments of the Rabins and Sharon.

I agree with your third paragraph too. Netanyahu has created a “climate” in Israel that does not bode well for its future. As we know, anti-Semitism is spreading in Europe and globally; and I believe Netanyahu’s policies of “Apartheid” have contributed mightily to this reemerging tragedy.

He has always been an ego-driven Narcissistic politician, who has not served Israel’s long-term best interests or those of global Jewry, or so I believe.

Indeed, it bears repeating:

I am forever reminded of what a prominent American—who is a Jew and a strong supporter of Israel, and who has written for the Wall Street Journal many times—told me several years ago:

I have long thought that Israel will not make it, if only because of what are cavalierly called WMD [weapons of mass destruction] and its very tight geographical compression. All else is immaterial, including the Palestinians, or us, or the nature of Israel’s [government].

WMDs come in many forms, such as deadly viruses, biological and chemical agents, and of course nuclear and nation-ending EMP attacks. Neither Israel’s military, its security forces nor its “Iron Dome” can protect against such threats.

I agree too with your last comments:

[C]itizens don’t like changing leaders in times of significant crisis. This, even if the leaders are not optimum.

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13 07 2016
Jonathan Buttall

Thanks as always for your insightful replies, Timothy.

Liked by 1 person

25 10 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

The New Chosen People? [UPDATED]

Israel flag burning

This is the title of an editorial in the New York Sun, which states:

Of all the scandals that have come to light with the internal communications of Secretary Clinton’s campaign, the most startling is the degree to which it has been infected by what could be called liberal supersessionism. Classical supersessionism is the notion that Judaism has been superseded by Christianity. “Supersessionism, in its more radical form,” according to the Christian Web site Theopedia, “maintains that the Jews are no longer considered to be God’s Chosen people in any sense.

This idea has been in retreat in recent years, with Pope Francis going so far as to call for an end to evangelization of Jews. What, though, are we to make of the emergence of the idea that secular liberalism supersedes all religious doctrine and is even superior to it? This is showing up in, among other places, the email messages in respect of Catholics that went back and forth among of members of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign camarilla, including her chairman, John Podesta.

One of the emails complains about how “Friggin’ Murdoch” had his children baptized where, according to the Christian Bible, John baptized Jesus. That cable is from John Halpin of the Center for American “Progress.” Mr. Halpin complains that “many of the most powerful elements of the conservative movement are all Catholic (many converts),” from the Supreme Court “and think tanks to the media and social groups.” They “must be attracted,” he speculates, to Catholicism’s “systematic thought and severely backwards gender relations.”

Notice in respect of the Supreme Court the glancing religious test (it has long since crept in to the Democratic critique of the high bench). The emails among Mrs. Clinton’s campaign intelligentsia also include a wire from the president of a group called Voices for Progress, Sandy Newman, discussing the idea of fomenting a “Catholic Spring, in which Catholics themselves demand the end of a middle ages dictatorship and the beginning of a little democracy and respect for gender equality in the Catholic church.”

Mr. Newman writes that he worries about his own “total lack of understanding of the Catholic church, the economic power it can bring to bear against nuns and priests.” Does he imagine that, say, the Little Sisters of the Poor would just love to purchase birth control insurance for their employees were but the dictators in Rome prepared to permit it? It’s for the rest of us a glimpse of how progressives think of themselves as the new chosen people. They are chosen not by God — Heaven forfend — but by themselves.

Then again, too, that would be fine were it not for the lunge for the political — meaning state — power that the Democrats are preparing to use against religious Americans in the new secular age. We didn’t start out our long newspaper career expecting to be ringing this alarm 50 years later. But that’s where the story has taken us in the 21st century. The biggest problem with the Democratic Party today is not its liberalism but its illiberalism, born of a secular supersessionism that has run amok.

See http://www.nysun.com/editorials/the-new-chosen-people/89770/ (emphasis added)

Of course Judaism was superseded by Christianity; and Jews are not God’s “Chosen people” in any sense—except that it can be argued they were “chosen” to suffer, if history is any indicia.

Christianity has 2.2 billion followers. Islam has 1.8 billion followers. At most, Judaism has 14 million followers.

Again, I am forever reminded of what a prominent American—who is a Jew and a strong supporter of Israel, and who has written for the Wall Street Journal many times—told me several years ago:

I have long thought that Israel will not make it, if only because of what are cavalierly called WMD [weapons of mass destruction] and its very tight geographical compression. All else is immaterial, including the Palestinians, or us, or the nature of Israel’s [government].

WMDs come in many forms, such as deadly viruses, biological and chemical agents, and of course nuclear and nation-ending EMP attacks. Neither Israel’s military, its security forces nor its “Iron Dome” can protect against such threats.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/31/is-israel-doomed/ (“Is Israel Doomed?“); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/#comment-544 (“Why I Write And Say What I Do“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/05/12/what-and-where-is-god/ (“What And Where Is God?“)

All of God’s children have been chosen; none more so than any other—or so I believe.

Israel burns

See http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Arab-social-media-ablaze-with-viral-Israeli-is-burning-posts-473538 and https://www.yahoo.com/news/hundreds-evacuated-bushfires-near-israels-haifa-112640037.html (“Tens of thousands flee raging Israeli bush fires“) and http://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-fires-idUSKBN13J0YJ (“Wildfires tear across Israel; police chief suspects ‘political’ arson“)

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25 10 2016
Jonathan Buttall

Hi, Timothy. I just read what I think was the latest comment or article here, which was about Israel and some issues about liberalism having something to do with atheism.

There is a common superstition that the media and many conservatives perpetuate- that liberals are atheists and conservatives are Christian. My entire lifetime experience with people shows this not to be true. I’ve known many atheists, worked with them or they were a friend. Most Atheists I’ve met were staunch conservatives, even very right wing. At least half the liberals I’ve met in my life…….and I’ve worked around them all my adult life………believed in God although they weren’t part of church culture (which isn’t really Christian that much) or organized religion in general.

It’s like assuming all Christians are right wing due to the evangelical movement, while forgetting real Christians created and led the Civil Rights movement.

To sum up, Religion (or lack thereof), Politics and education/intelligence/science are three different things. One does not negate the other nor predict the other. It’s best never to mix them up in any way. They each deal with a different part of our universe, don’t contradict each other, and become corrupted when any attempt is made to mix them up in a negative or positive manner……….it makes a good meal into a toxic stew. Just my opinion based on experience. My apologies if I’m responding to a long letter that wasn’t current.

Best wishes as always, Timothy, have missed your articles lately. Jonathan.

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25 10 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you as always, Jonathan.

Yes, I agree with you: for the most part, it is impossible to generalize, and wrong to do so.

The Sun editorial that I cited did so, based on the release of e-mails. It set forth an interesting theory that is not consistent with your experiences.

You may be totally correct.

. . .

More articles will follow. Some are essentially complete; and I am just waiting for the right timing to release them. 🙂

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26 10 2016
Jonathan Buttall

Thanks for your feedback, Timothy. We’ll be out of country in a week, so Wifi will be sporatic, but I’ll be able to check your articles periodically during that time (Wifi on a cruise ship is very expensive so we don’t get it). Best wishes, Jonathan.

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26 10 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you for the update, Jonathan.

Have a wonderful time. 😊

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28 10 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

Obama’s Devastating Parting Shot At Israel And Netanyahu

Israel flag burning

The Washington Post‘s Charles Krauthammer has written:

Last week, the U.N.’s premier cultural agency, UNESCO, approved a resolution viciously condemning Israel (referred to as “the Occupying Power”) for various alleged trespasses and violations of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Except that the resolution never uses that term for Judaism’s holiest shrine. It refers to and treats it as an exclusively Muslim site, a deliberate attempt to eradicate its connection — let alone its centrality — to the Jewish people and Jewish history.

This Orwellian absurdity, part of a larger effort to deny the Jewish connection to their ancestral homeland, is an insult not just to Judaism but to Christianity. It makes a mockery of the Gospels, which chronicle the story of a Galilean Jew whose life and ministry unfolded throughout the Holy Land, most especially in Jerusalem and the Temple. If this is nothing but a Muslim site, what happens to the very foundation of Christianity, which occurred 600 years before Islam even came into being?

This UNESCO resolution is merely the surreal extreme of the worldwide campaign to delegitimize Israel. It features the BDS movement (Boycott, Divest and Sanction), now growing on Western university campuses and in some mainline Protestant churches. And it extends even into some precincts of the Democratic Party.

Bernie Sanders tried to introduce into the Democratic Party platform a plank more unfavorable to Israel. He failed, but when a couple of Hillary Clinton campaign consultants questioned (in emails revealed by WikiLeaks) why she should be mentioning Israel in her speeches, campaign manager Robby Mook concurred, “We shouldn’t have Israel at public events. Especially dem activists.” For whom the very mention of Israel is toxic.

And what to make of the White House’s correction to a news release about last month’s funeral of Shimon Peres? The original release identified the location as “Mount Herzl, Jerusalem, Israel.” The correction crossed out the country identifier — “Israel.”

Well, where else is Jerusalem? Sri Lanka? Moreover, Mount Herzl isn’t even in disputed East Jerusalem. It’s in West Jerusalem, within the boundaries of pre-1967 Israel. If that’s not Israel, what is?

But such cowardly gestures are mere pinpricks compared to the damage Israel faces in the final days of the Obama presidency. As John Hannah of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies recently wrote (in Foreign Policy), there have been indications for months that President Obama might go to the U.N. and unveil his own final status parameters of a two-state solution. These would then be enshrined in a new Security Council resolution that could officially recognize a Palestinian state on the territory Israel came into possession of during the 1967 Six-Day War.

There is a reason such a move has been resisted by eight previous U.S. administrations: It overthrows the central premise of Middle East peacemaking — land for peace. Under which the Palestinians get their state after negotiations in which the parties agree on recognized boundaries, exchange mutual recognition and declare a permanent end to the conflict.

Land for peace would be replaced by land for nothing. Endorsing in advance a Palestinian state and what would essentially be a full Israeli withdrawal removes the Palestinian incentive to negotiate and strips Israel of territorial bargaining chips of the kind it used, for example, to achieve peace with Egypt.

The result would be not just perpetual war but incalculable damage to Israel. And irreversible, too, because the resolution would be protected from alteration by the Russian and/or Chinese veto.

As for the damage, consider but one example: the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem, destroyed and ethnically cleansed of Jews by its Arab conquerors in the war of 1948-1949. It was rebuilt by Israel after 1967. It would now be open to the absurd judicial charge that the Jewish state’s possession of the Jewish Quarter constitutes a criminal occupation of another country.

Israel would be hauled endlessly into courts (both national and international) to face sanctions, boycotts (now under color of law) and arrest of its leaders. All this for violating a U.N. mandate to which no Israeli government, left or right, could possibly accede.

Before the election, Obama dare not attempt this final legacy item, to go along with the Iran deal and the Castro conciliation, for fear of damaging Clinton. His last opportunity comes after Election Day. The one person who might deter him, points out Hannah, is Clinton herself, by committing Obama to do nothing before he leaves office that would tie her hands should she become president.

Clinton’s supporters who care about Israel and about peace need to urge her to do that now. It will soon be too late. Soon Obama will be free to deliver a devastating parting shot to Israel and to the prime minister he detests.

See https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-obama-preparing-a-parting-shot-at-israel/2016/10/27/770e7fb6-9c79-11e6-b3c9-f662adaa0048_story.html (“Is Obama preparing a parting shot at Israel?“) (italics in original; other emphasis added)

We can only hope!

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29 10 2016
Jonathan Buttall

Heh heh, Timothy, as a Christian of Jewish ancestry, I think Charles Krauthammer is full of it. He should realize he’s giving loyalty to a foreign power that’s often hostile to us instead of his own country. All President Obama is calling for, along with the rest of the world, is a two state solution, instead of permanent apartheid and occupation. I know you’re not an Obama fan, but I believe your views on Israel are the same as mine.

Islam was largely modeled after Judaism, with most of the same prophets and holy places. What Israel calls the Temple Mount is “the Holy Santuary” or “Nobel sanctuary” to Muslims. The Romans destroyed the Jewish Temple and six centuries later a Muslim of the new religion, Omar, built the Dome of the Rock on what had become a garbage dump. The modern, European and mostly secular, version of Israel came to being 2000 years after Biblical Israel, and needs to learn to share the land instead of stealing it.

I’m happy about the renovation of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which was in bad shape and contains the tomb of Christ. We were there in 2010.

I voted for Hillary by early ballot, a second choice when Bernie lost the primaries (I know you’re voting for Trump). Ironically, she’s very pro Israel, and Trump, who Netanyahu refused to meet with, is kind of neutral about it. Krauthammer seems unaware of that.

A bit of irony; the original Arabic Semitic Hebrews were the Jews of the Bible. My wife is from Mexico, looks a bit Native American and is partly Sephardi on her mothers side. These were Arabic Semitic Jews from North Africa who lived in Spain for a few centuries who were expelled in 1492 and returned to North Africa or went to Mexico when occupied by Spain some years later. Her family is Catholic. As an Ashkenazim, per genetic studies, I, like all “white” people of Jewish ancestry, am over 80% likely to have no ancestry from the Middle East………..so my wife is more Jewish than I am! My very racist brother (a former settler) in Israel, with his very European appearance, would not like to hear that! God is great, but humans are just goofy…………….Jonathan.

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29 10 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

Great comments, Jonathan. I thought you were out of the country already, with no wi-fi. Also, I thought of you when I posted the Krauthammer article. 😊

What a history lesson you have provided. Yes, I agree with Obama regarding this issue, and his treatment of Putin.

As I have wriiten in my article above and elsewhere, Netanyahu has done more harm to Israel, Israelis and Jews globally than any other leader of the tiny country.

The Rabins and Sharon were right about him, in spades. He has spawned antisemitism worldwide; and he is a tragic figure in history.

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29 10 2016
Jonathan Buttall

Thanks, Timothy. We leave November 3rd. Agree with your comment.

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26 12 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

The UN Vote Condemning Israel [UPDATED]

Israel flag burning

Ira Stoll has written in the New York Sun:

One of the paradoxes of Zionism is that a movement for Jewish national self-determination has found itself so often at the mercy of gentiles. Precedent for this goes all the way back at least to Cyrus the Great, the Persian king who 2,600 years ago allowed the Jews to return to the promised land and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem.

In modern times, Lord Balfour, the British foreign secretary, issued the landmark declaration on November 2, 1917: “His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” In 1947, the United Nations voted at Lake Success in favor of Israel’s creation.

President Truman formally recognized the modern state of Israel at its founding in 1948. In the 1950s, France supplied Israel with weapons and nuclear equipment. More recently, the United States has sent billions of dollars in military aid to Israel.

For Israel, the assistance of foreign powers, while crucial, has also proven erratic. The same United Nations General Assembly that had approved Israel’s creation later passed a resolution denouncing Zionism as a form of racism. The Persia of Cyrus has become the Islamic Republic of Iran, funding Israel’s deadly terrorist enemies and denying the reality of the Holocaust.

The same Britain that had issued the Balfour Declaration also, in 1939, issued the White Paper restricting Jewish immigration to the promised land at a time when the Jews of Europe were desperately seeking a refuge from the Nazi onslaught. The French who were so helpful with their arms sales to Israel in the 1950s also later helped build the Osirak nuclear reactor for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, which aimed to destroy Israel. During the Vichy period of the 1940s, France had collaborated in sending 77,000 Jews to die in Nazi camps.

If it seems excessive to mention the Holocaust in response to Friday’s vote at the United Nations Security Council condemning the Jewish presence in Jerusalem and in its suburbs, forgive me. I invoke the authority of the late senator from New York, Daniel Patrick Moynihan. The U.N. Security Council vote sent me to my bookshelf and to the collected letters of Moynihan that were edited by Steven R. Weisman and brought out by PublicAffairs in 2010.

Moynihan had been President Ford’s ambassador to the United Nations in 1975 when the notorious “Zionism is racism” resolution passed. In 1991, looking back on it, Moynihan wrote a letter to a friend describing that vote as “the last great horror of the Hitler-Stalin era.”

As Moynihan put it in that letter: “I never came near to understanding the Holocaust until I encountered the Zionism resolution … It was the secret behind the Holocaust. The charge was too hideous to believe. The mind goes blank; denial sets in; avoidance. I thought of the voyage of the St. Louis in 1939. Outward bound from Hamburg with 930 German Jews. Twenty-two allowed to land in Havana. Then back up the Atlantic coast of the United States. Lights ablaze at night. Refused entry. Back to Antwerp and the death camps. We had denied the possibility of death camps.”

If Moynihan erred in that letter it was only, alas, in describing the 1975 vote as “the last great horror of the Hitler-Stalin era.” At the end of last week, a new horror was added. The Security Council voted to condemn as illegal the Israeli presence in the Jewish quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, the Jewish presence at the Western Wall, the Jewish presence at the tombs of Abraham and Rachel, the Jewish presence in Jerusalem suburbs and in West Bank cities and towns whose positions secure the major population centers of the modern Jewish state from obliteration.

Among the Security Council members who voted to condemn Israel were France, Britain, Spain, Malaysia, Russia, China, Venezuela, Japan, Ukraine, and Egypt. The votes were reminders of Vichy France, of the Britain of the White Paper. They were a reminder of the Spain of the Inquisition, which not only expelled all its Jews but also, as Benzion Netanyahu recounts in his masterpiece “The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth-Century Spain,” put to death, by torture, even those Spaniards with Jewish ancestry who had genuinely converted to Christianity.

Malaysia’s prime minister between 1981 and 2002, Mahathir Mohamad, banned the showing of Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List” from movie theaters; instead, the bookstores prominently feature Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.” Russia, under Soviet rule, long forbade Jews from learning Hebrew or emigrating to Israel; dissenters, like Natan Sharansky, were banished to the gulag. China’s treatment of its Uighur Muslim and Tibetan minorities would be a fine subject for an actual Security Council resolution; they make the cruelest things Israel has done to Palestinian Arabs look, by comparison, like gentle acts of loving kindness.

Venezuela’s strongman, Hugo Chavez, welcomed and embraced Iran’s Holocaust-denying president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; the two countries cooperate militarily. Japan was allied with the Nazis in World War II. One and a half million Jews in Ukraine were killed in the Holocaust, 33,771 of them in two days at Babi Yar. Egypt has been cruel to the Jews back to the time of Moses and Pharaoh.

As for America, its abstention at the U.N. Security Council was reminiscent of how it treated the passengers on the St. Louis.

The point here is not to dwell on Jewish victimhood. It is simply to observe, from the extensive historical record, that not a single one of these nations other than Israel itself could be dependably relied on for Jewish security or even survival. If America does want to try to turn this around, the U.S. Constitution provides a path forward for both the Congress and President-elect Trump.

Article Two of the Constitution gives the president “Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.” Article Six adds the emphasis that, along with the Constitution, “all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land.”

In the absence of such a treaty, the U.S.-Israel relationship will rest on tenuous legal ground no matter how deep it is in other ways. The United States and Israel do have a free trade agreement enacted in 1985. We have a memorandum of understanding on military aid reached earlier this year. There have been countless other documents governing the relationship, some of which were undercut by Friday’s vote.

There was the letter from President Bush to Prime Minister Sharon of April 14, 2004, which stated, “the United States reiterates its steadfast commitment to Israel’s security, including secure, defensible borders… As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338.

In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.”

That letter was effectively torn to shreds by Friday’s U.N. Security Council resolution.

There was the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, a law that stated as the “policy of the United States” that “Jerusalem should remain an undivided city in which the rights of every ethnic and religious group are protected” and “Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel.”

That law, too, was effectively shredded by Friday’s U.N. Security Council resolution — as it has been, on an ongoing basis, by the State Department’s refusal even to stamp the words “Jerusalem, Israel” on the passports of American children born in the Israeli capital.

What President-elect Trump and Congress could do with a treaty is to make it clear that neither America nor Israel recognize the validity of or will be bound in any way by the U.N. Security Council resolution passed on Friday. A treaty could make clear that the two nations are united in their dedication to pursuing peace and security in the face of the threat of extremist Islamist terrorism, which has emerged as the national security challenge of the 21st Century in the way that Nazism and Communism were the challenges of the 20th Century.

That doesn’t mean that America needs to embrace every Israeli settlement or every act by every settler. Nor does it necessarily mean that America or Israel needs to give up on the land-for-peace approach and replace it with a peace-for-peace approach. Israelis have their own internal differences on West Bank settlement policy. If the choice were living side by side with a peaceful Palestinian Arab state, a large majority of Israelis would happily give up the arduous responsibility of policing the West Bank. But that’s not the choice. Each time Israel has withdrawn from land — Gaza, Lebanon, Sinai — the land has been used as a staging ground for indiscriminate terrorist attacks on the civilians in the remaining Jewish-controlled territory.

A formal Senate treaty ratification vote, with the constitutionally required two-thirds margin, is something to which President Obama was never willing to submit his precious Iran nuclear deal. Such a vote on a future U.S.-Israel treaty has the potential to demonstrate dramatically in Washington — the city where President Obama has chosen to live after he leaves office — how far outside the American mainstream is Mr. Obama’s approach to Israel.

The depth of the bipartisan disgust with Mr. Obama’s handling of the issue is clear not only from the many Republican denunciations, but also from the furious statements by Democratic senators and senators-elect. Senator Schumer, the incoming Democratic leader, called the Obama administration’s action “extremely frustrating, disappointing and confounding.” Senator Blumenthal of Connecticut, another Democrat, called the American abstention “unconscionable.” Senator Donelly, a Democrat of Indiana, said he was “profoundly disappointed by the lack of American leadership shown at the U.N.”

Senator Mark Warner, another Democrat, said he was “dismayed.” Senator Wyden, a Democrat of Oregon, said, “I am deeply disappointed that the administration set aside longstanding U.S. policy to allow such a one-sided resolution to pass.” Senator Cardin, a Democrat of Maryland, said he was “greatly disappointed” by the U.S. abstention. Senator-elect Hassan, a Democrat from New Hampshire, also opposed the U.N. resolution.

The signing ceremony for an Israel-America treaty could be held in a place with symbolic resonance. Perhaps at Brooklyn, or at Lake Success, or at St. Louis, or outside the United Nations at Turtle Bay, or on Ellis Island. Or at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Or perhaps in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, where Prime Minister Rabin and Senator Moynihan gathered in 1995 for a commemoration of 3000 years of Jerusalem and Rabin said, “In Israel, we all agree on one issue: the wholeness of Jerusalem, the continuation of its existence as capital of the State of Israel. There are no two Jerusalems. There is only one Jerusalem. For us, Jerusalem is not subject to compromise, and there is no peace without Jerusalem. Jerusalem, which was destroyed eight times, where for years we had no access to the remnants of our Temple, was ours, is ours, and will be ours — forever.”

Any of those spots would be fine for a treaty signing. The U.S.-Israel relationship is special and deep, and it would be useful for both countries to get that relationship back on the right track after the damage wrought by Friday’s Security Council abstention. If the repair is successful, one measure of it would be to make sure that Moynihan’s phrase “the secret of the Holocaust” is not ever again applicable to a resolution approved by a body where America has a veto.

See http://www.nysun.com/foreign/an-israel-america-treaty-beckons-as-a-strategy/89850/ (“Israel-America Treaty Beckons as a Strategy Against a Hostile U.N.“) (emphasis added)

This is an articulate and well-reasoned presentation of a Zionist’s view of the world. It neglects to mention, however, that Senators Schumer, Blumenthal, Wyden and Cardin are Jewish.

It fails to add too that not one nation stood against the UN resolution; and that anti-Semitism is growing in Europe and elsewhere. Indeed, European Jews have been urged to flee to Israel for a long time now.

Also, it does not state that the father of today’s Left—Franklin D. Roosevelt—turned away the MS St. Louis from docking at American ports, and consigned most of the Jewish refugees aboard to their deaths in Europe. The other anti-Semites in FDR’s administration knew of the Nazi concentration camps, yet did nothing about them.

Barack Obama does not stand alone today. Far from it. He and other world leaders “detest” Mr. Netanyahu, just as the Rabins and Ariel Sharon hated him. Indeed, Leah Rabin blamed Netanyahu for her husband Yitzhak’s assassination. She saw “only doom for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process” with Netanyahu at Israel’s helm; and her views were prescient.

I am forever reminded of what a prominent American—who is a Jew and a strong supporter of Israel, and who has written for the Wall Street Journal many times—told me several years ago:

I have long thought that Israel will not make it, if only because of what are cavalierly called WMD [weapons of mass destruction] and its very tight geographical compression. All else is immaterial, including the Palestinians, or us, or the nature of Israel’s [government].

WMDs come in many forms, such as deadly viruses, biological and chemical agents, and of course nuclear and nation-ending EMP attacks. Neither Israel’s military, its security forces (including Mossad) nor its “Iron Dome” can protect against such threats.

These are the facts that the author ignores, which add up to a far different reality than the one he presents, however well intentioned he may be.

Needless to say, this point of view will not be presented by the Sun, inter alia, because it does not comport with this fine publication’s worldview and biases.

Next, some will attack it and yours truly as being anti-Semitic, which is labeling that seeks to stifle legitimate dissent and debate by Jews and non-Jews alike.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/#comment-544 (“Why I Write And Say What I Do”)

The murderer Netanyahu has lashed out in defiance.

See, e.g., http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/26/world/middleeast/israel-settlements-un-security-council-benjamin-netanyahu-obama.html?_r=0 (“Defying U.N., Israel Prepares to Build More Settlements“) and https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-12-27/israel-to-build-in-jerusalem-mulls-more-steps-against-un-bodies (“Israel to Build in Jerusalem, Mulls More Steps Against UN“) and https://www.yahoo.com/news/israel-says-reducing-ties-nations-over-un-vote-102205471.html (“Israel says ‘reducing’ ties with nations over UN vote“) and http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/27/israel-urges-jews-leave-france-benajmin-netanyahu-continues/ (“Israel urges Jews to leave France as Benajmin Netanyahu continues to lash out after UN vote“); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/#comment-7039 (“Is Night Falling Again For European Jews?“)

He has morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors. He must be tried by the International Criminal Court, and arrested whenever he sets foot outside of Israel.

Ultimately, he should share the fate of Adolf Eichmann. Nothing less will suffice.

Lastly, Thomas Ras wrote at the Wall Street Journal:

I served in the IDF and guarded the settlements. Expanding them does nothing positive. Mr. Stephens and many others think “Pro-Israel” means let Israel do whatever it wants. They are gravely mistaken. The worst thing to happen to Israel since 1973 was the invasion of Iraq, and Israel was for it. Netanyahu and many in the Israeli right cannot see 3 feet in front of their face.

See http://www.wsj.com/articles/obamas-fitting-finish-1482795381

Amen!

Lots of us are pro-Israel too, but have been turned off by its policies and “leadership.”

We were pushed into the Iraq War by Israel and its “neocon” surrogates; and thousands of Americans died or were maimed for life, with trillions of dollars wasted.

After Vietnam, this is the next greatest debacle in American history.

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28 12 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

Kerry Response To Netanyahu [UPDATED]

Watch Kerry Response To Netanyahu

The Wall Street Journal has emphasized:

[Kerry’s] principles included borders between Israel and a Palestinian state based on 1967 lines with land swaps, recognizing Israel as a Jewish state and Palestine as a state for the Palestinians, recognizing Jerusalem as a capital for both states, enabling normalized relations and providing for Palestinian refugees and Israeli security needs.

See http://www.wsj.com/articles/john-kerry-defends-u-s-approach-to-israeli-settlements-1482944129 (“John Kerry Defends U.S. Approach to Israel After U.N. Vote on Settlements“)

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28 12 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

American Jews, Especially Younger Jews, Are Turning Away From Israel

Israel flag burning

Bruce Stokes wrote in Foreign Policy earlier this year:

No one ever said this would be easy. U.S.-Israeli relations are heating up as Vice President Joe Biden criticizes Israeli plans to build new housing units for Jews in East Jerusalem against a backdrop of reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declined to meet with President Barack Obama due to the U.S. election — even while Washington and Tel Aviv are negotiating new U.S. military aid to Israel. This latest flurry of activity comes in the wake of a new Pew Research Center survey highlighting the differences between American Jews and Israeli Jews and between Israeli Jews and Arabs within Israel on a range of contentious issues surrounding the Middle East peace process.

As might be expected, Israeli society is deeply divided on Jewish-Muslim relations. On a fundamental issue, nearly three-quarters of Israeli Jews say they do not see much discrimination against Muslims in their country. But roughly eight in 10 Israeli Arabs say there is a lot of discrimination in Israeli society against Muslims.

Such divisions between Jewish and Arab views are also reflected in their perspective on the peace process. A majority of Israeli Jews (56 percent) think their government is making a sincere effort toward peace. But 88 percent say the Palestinian leadership is not sincere in its efforts. In contrast, half of Israeli Arabs (50 percent) think the Palestinian leadership is making a sincere effort in the peace process, but 72 percent say the Israeli government is not.

Such differences between Jews and Arabs in Israel highlight the challenge their leaders face in reaching some accommodation. And differences between Israeli Jews and American Jews are a reminder of the divergence in perspectives between Washington and Tel Aviv on issues involving Israel and the peace process.

Jews in the United States and Israel have strong bonds. A majority of Israeli Jews feel they share a common destiny with Jewish Americans. And a 2013 Pew Research Center survey found that most U.S. Jews say they are either very or somewhat emotionally attached to Israel.

However, despite their connection to the Jewish state, Israeli Jews and American Jews have very different perspectives on a number of issues. And these differences are, at times, accentuated by political ideology and degree of religiosity.

They differ, for example, on the impact of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. A plurality of Jews in Israel (42 percent) say the continued building of these settlements helps the security of Israel. Only 17 percent of U.S. Jews agree. By contrast, in the United States, a plurality of Jews (44 percent) says the settlements hurt Israel’s own security interests; fewer Israeli Jews (30 percent) take this position.

Jewish Americans (38 percent) are also considerably less likely than Israeli Jews (56 percent) to say the Israeli government is making a sincere effort to achieve peace with the Palestinians. But, as with Israeli Jews, relatively few American Jews believe the Palestinian leadership is sincere in its peace efforts.

Meanwhile, Israeli Jews complain about a lack of support by Washington. About half (52 percent) feel their country should be getting more backing from the U.S. government, while roughly one-third (34 percent) say the amount of support the United States gives Israel is about right. Among Jewish Americans, these figures are flipped: Roughly three in 10 (31 percent) say the United States does not support Israel enough, while more than half (54 percent) say support for Israel is about right (as of 2013).

Notably, the ideological divide on these issues among Jews in Israel and in the United States only further complicates U.S.-Israeli relations around the peace process. About six in 10 self-identified politically conservative Israeli Jews (62 percent) believe that the United States is not supportive enough of Israel. Only 33 percent on the Israeli left agree. Among American Jews, a majority of conservatives (55 percent) say Washington is not doing enough, but just 17 percent of liberal Jews agree.

This division also exists along religious lines. Orthodox Jews in both countries are about equally likely to say the Israeli government is making a sincere effort to bring about a peace settlement. But non-Orthodox Jews in America are considerably less likely than their Jewish counterparts to say the Israeli government genuinely seeks a peace settlement (36 percent vs. 55 percent).

And, in a demographic finding that may portend U.S.-Israeli friction in the future, younger American Jews (those between the ages of 18 and 29) are more likely than their elders to take a more liberal stance on political issues involving Israel: They are more likely to say that a two-state solution is possible and that the United States is too supportive of Israel.

Recent events — Secretary of State John Kerry’s failed effort to restart the peace process and recent deadly attacks by Palestinians on Jews and Israeli security forces’ shootings of Palestinians — may have created a dispiriting sense of progress. American Jews surveyed in 2013, before the 2014 Gaza war and waves of violence in recent months, were more optimistic about the prospects for a two-state solution than Israelis surveyed in 2014-15. Most U.S. Jews (61 percent) said they believe a way can be found for Israel and an independent Palestinian state to coexist peacefully. Fewer Israeli Jews (43 percent) take this view, while 45 percent say a two-state solution is not possible and 10 percent volunteer that it depends on the situation.

The United States and Israel are home to an estimated 80 percent of the world’s Jews. But their faith does not mean they share a common perspective on the peace process. On the issue of the continued building of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the prevailing view among Israeli Jews is that settlements help the security of Israel. By contrast, American Jews are more likely to say the settlements hurt Israel’s own security. And the most common view among Israeli Jews is that the United States is not supportive enough of Israel, while the most common opinion among American Jews is that the level of U.S. support for Israel is about right.

The recent contretemps between Washington and Tel Aviv may fade, as other disagreements have in the past. But differences in public sentiment between Jews in Israel and Jews in the United States suggest a divide regarding the peace process between Israeli Jews and their American counterparts. This could only complicate future efforts by the next U.S. president and the future Israeli government to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

It bears repeating. No one ever said this would be easy.

See http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/10/are-american-jews-turning-away-from-israel/ (“Are American Jews Turning Away from Israel?“) (emphasis added); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/31/is-israel-doomed/#comment-9430 (“The UN Vote Condemning Israel“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/31/is-israel-doomed/#comment-9434 (“Kerry Response To Netanyahu“)

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30 12 2016
Timothy D. Naegele

Obama’s Final, Most Shameful, Legacy Moment

Israel flag burning

This is the title of a Washington Post article by Charles Krauthammer:

“When the chips are down, I have Israel’s back.”

— Barack Obama, AIPAC conference, March 4, 2012

The audience — overwhelmingly Jewish, passionately pro-Israel and supremely gullible — applauded wildly. Four years later — his last election behind him, with a month to go in office and with no need to fool Jew or gentile again — Obama took the measure of Israel’s back and slid a knife into it.

People don’t quite understand the damage done to Israel by the U.S. abstention that permitted passage of a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel over settlements. The administration pretends this is nothing but a restatement of long-standing U.S. opposition to settlements.

Nonsense. For the past 35 years, every administration, including a reelection-seeking Obama himself in 2011, has protected Israel with the U.S. veto because such a Security Council resolution gives immense legal ammunition to every boycotter, anti-Semite and zealous European prosecutor to penalize and punish Israelis.

An ordinary Israeli who lives or works in the Old City of Jerusalem becomes an international pariah, a potential outlaw. To say nothing of the soldiers of Israel’s citizen army. “Every pilot and every officer and every soldier,” said a confidant of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, “we are waiting for him at The Hague,” i.e. the International Criminal Court.

Moreover, the resolution undermines the very foundation of a half-century of American Middle East policy. What becomes of “land for peace” if the territories that Israel was to have traded for peace are, in advance, declared to be Palestinian land to which Israel has no claim?

The peace parameters enunciated so ostentatiously by Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday are nearly identical to the Clinton parameters that Yasser Arafat was offered and rejected in 2000 and that Abbas was offered by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2008. Abbas, too, walked away.

Kerry mentioned none of this because it undermines his blame-Israel narrative. Yet Palestinian rejectionism works. The Security Council just declared the territories legally Palestinian — without the Palestinians having to concede anything, let alone peace. What incentive do the Palestinians have to negotiate when they can get the terms — and territory — they seek handed to them for free if they hold out long enough?

The administration claims a kind of passive innocence on the text of the resolution, as if it had come upon it at the last moment. We are to believe that the ostensible sponsors — New Zealand, Senegal, Malaysia and a Venezuela that cannot provide its own people with toilet paper, let alone food — had for months been sweating the details of Jewish housing in East Jerusalem.

Nothing new here, protests deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes: “When we see the facts on the ground, again, deep into the West Bank beyond the separation barrier, we feel compelled to speak up against those actions.”

This is a deception. Everyone knows that remote outposts are not the issue. Under any peace, they will be swept away. Even right-wing Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who lives in one of these West Bank settlements, has stated publicly that “I even agree to vacate my settlement if there really will be a two-state solution.” Where’s the obstacle to peace?

A second category of settlement is the close-in blocs that border 1967 Israel. Here, too, we know in advance how these will be disposed of: They’ll become Israeli territory and, in exchange, Israel will swap over some of its land to a Palestinian state. Where’s the obstacle to peace here?

It’s the third category of “settlement” that is the most contentious and that Security Council Resolution 2334 explicitly condemns: East Jerusalem. This is not just scandalous; it’s absurd. America acquiesces to a declaration that, as a matter of international law, the Jewish state has no claim on the Western Wall, the Temple Mount, indeed the entire Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem. They belong to Palestine.

The Temple Mount is the most sacred site in all of Judaism. That it should be declared foreign to the Jewish people is as if the Security Council declared Mecca and Medina to be territory to which Islam has no claim. Such is the Orwellian universe Israel inhabits.

At the very least, Obama should have insisted that any reference to East Jerusalem be dropped from the resolution or face a U.S. veto. Why did he not? It’s incomprehensible — except as a parting shot of personal revenge on Benjamin Netanyahu. Or perhaps as a revelation of a deep-seated antipathy to Israel that simply awaited a safe political interval for public expression.

Another legacy moment for Barack Obama. And his most shameful.

See https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obamas-final-most-shameful-legacy-moment/2016/12/29/ee04bcca-cdfc-11e6-a747-d03044780a02_story.html (emphasis added)

Krauthammer is an American Jew who is passionate about Israel. He is an American, not a despicable un-American Israel Firster. I respect his points of view, always, even though I may disagree with them, sometimes vehemently.

The notion that New Zealand “cannot provide its own people with toilet paper, let alone food” is ludicrous.

As stated previously, I believe Jerusalem should become an international city administered by the UN, and the capital of both the Jewish state and State of Palestine.

More importantly, genuine American patriots and lovers of Israel like Krauthammer do not comprehend the damage that Netanyahu has done to the tiny country, to Israelis, and to Jews globally. This may be their tragic mistake, as my article above suggests.

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3 01 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

A Despicable Israel Firster Rants Against Trump

Israel flag burning

Bret Stephens has written in the Wall Street Journal:

Donald Trump says “I know things that other people don’t know.”

He says: “I know a lot about hacking.” And: “Hacking is a very hard thing to prove.” And: “It could be someone else.”

He says he will tell us what he knows “on Tuesday or Wednesday.”

Let’s hope so. The president-elect has taken it upon himself to be skeptic-in-chief when it comes to the U.S. intelligence community’s contention that the Russian regime hacked U.S. computer networks in an effort to swing the election to Mr. Trump. It’s entirely possible to believe that the basis for his skepticism is sound and prudent.

Then again, what if it isn’t?

The benefit-of-the-doubt case comes in three letters: WMD. As Mr. Trump noted Saturday, “If you look at the weapons of mass destruction, that was a disaster and they were wrong,” referring to the intelligence consensus that Iraq had a robust and active WMD program at the time of the 2003 invasion. He added: “And so I want them to be sure. I think it’s unfair if they don’t know.”

Fair enough. The media spent the better part of a decade swearing they wouldn’t be fooled again by intelligence assessments the way they were before 2003. So why do they now seem prepared uncritically to accept President Obama’s conclusion that “the highest levels of the Russian government” had directed “data theft and disclosure activities” to influence the election? Why are we supposed to believe, as ironclad certainties, the judgment of intelligence officials who recently failed to anticipate the rise of Islamic State?

If these are the reasons for Mr. Trump’s skepticism, so much the better: “Intelligence,” as Daniel Patrick Moynihan used to say, “is not to be confused with intelligence.” But perhaps there are less creditable reasons.

Long before there was any hint of Russian meddling in the election, Mr. Trump had made no secret of his admiration for Vladimir Putin.

In 2007, Mr. Trump told Larry King that the Russian president is “doing a great job in rebuilding the image of Russia and also rebuilding Russia period.” In 2015 he called Mr. Putin “a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond.” Last week, he tweeted that Mr. Putin was “very smart!” for not responding in kind to Mr. Obama’s expulsion of 35 Russian embassy officials.

The most innocent reading of these comments is that Mr. Trump is seeking to flatter his Russian counterpart into a cooperative relationship, much as George W. Bush and Mr. Obama sought to do in the early days of their presidencies. Maybe he thinks he’ll get a better result because he fancies himself a better deal-maker. Maybe he hopes Mr. Putin will see him as a kindred spirit: Big hombre, instinctive nationalist, zero use for liberals and their pieties.

Mr. Trump is likely to be disappointed in these hopes: Michael Flynn, his soon-to-be national security adviser, has described Russia as a key member of “an international alliance of evil countries” against which the U.S. is at war. And Mr. Putin’s idea of a tough leader probably looks more like a Spetsnaz commando than a former beauty pageant impresario.

However Mr. Trump’s overtures to Moscow work out, they raise the possibility that his desire for a better relationship is shaping his attitude toward the intelligence. This is the same approach the Obama administration adopted in its first term. Hoping to smooth Senate ratification of the 2010 New Start arms-control treaty, it played down information showing that Russia was violating the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

This is called politicizing intelligence, and it’s reprehensible whether done in the service of starting a war or passing a treaty. Since Mr. Trump shrugged off Mr. Obama’s actions against Russia last week by saying “we ought to get on with our lives,” it’s worth wondering whether the president-elect isn’t committing the same sin.

There’s something else worth wondering about.

It isn’t a secret that the Trump Organization has long been entwined with Russian business interests: “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of our assets,” Donald Trump Jr. told a real-estate conference in 2008. It isn’t a secret that Mr. Trump’s campaign was curiously studded by figures with deep business ties to Russian or pro-Russian figures, including Paul Manafort, Rick Gates and Carter Page. It isn’t a secret that businessmen from Russia and other former Soviet states have been major investors in marquee projects such as the Trump Soho in New York and the Trump hotel in Toronto.

All this has been the subject of fascinating if inconclusive reporting, most recently by James Henry in the American Interest. Peter Schweizer, the author of “Clinton Cash,” also recently warned that he sees parallels between the Clinton Foundation and the Trump Organization.

If Mr. Trump wants to dispel the nagging suspicion that his views on Russia are driven by less-than-honest motives, he can begin by telling us what he knows about his Russia ties that the rest of us still don’t.

See http://www.wsj.com/articles/what-does-trump-know-about-russia-1483398736 (“What Does Trump Know About Russia?“) (emphasis added)

What does the despicable un-American Israel Firster Stephens know about anything?

The raving Islamophobe has crusaded nonstop on the Journal‘s pages against our President-elect effectively since Trump launched his presidential campaign.

He should be fired summarily by the Murdoch family on or before Day One of the Trump presidency, and sent packing back to Israel where obviously he will feel more comfortable.

For Stephens to raise the spectre of the Iraq War is ludicrous. Israel and its “neocon” surrogates pushed us into that human tragedy—in which thousands of Americans were killed, while others were maimed for life, and trillions of dollars were wasted . . . for nothing.

Stephens’s rants are deplorable, but this one is worse than ever.

Lastly, I have been outspoken in my hatred of the killer Putin for years now, and believe he should be terminated.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/11/29/the-death-of-putin-and-russia-the-final-chapter-of-the-cold-war/ (“The Death Of Putin And Russia: The Final Chapter Of The Cold War“)

But there are reasons to believe that Russia may not have been responsible for the hacking at all.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2013/03/01/is-obama-the-new-nixon/#comment-9456 (“Obama Is Trying To Delegitimize Trump“)

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10 01 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Hasn’t Israel Killed Enough Brave Americans Already?

Israel flag burning

It began with the premeditated and unprovoked Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, which killed 34 brave Americans and maimed many more.

See http://www.gtr5.com

Next, came the Iraq War that Israel and its “neocon” surrogates pushed us into—which resulted in thousands of Americans killed or maimed, and trillions of dollars wasted, for nothing.

Now, Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has written about Israel and the “War Party” (or Israel’s despicable shills in the GOP), and their efforts to push us into a war with Iran:

Though every Republican in Congress voted against the Iran nuclear deal, “Tearing it up … is not going to happen,” says Sen. Bob Corker, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.

Hopefully, the chairman speaks for the president-elect.

During the campaign, Donald Trump indicated as much, saying that, though the U.S. got jobbed in the negotiations — “We have a horrible contract, but we do have a contract” — he might not walk away.

To Trump, a deal’s a deal, even a bad one. And we did get taken.

In 2007 and 2011, all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies assured us, “with high confidence,” that Iran did not have an atomic bomb program.

Yet our folks forked over $50 billion for an Iranian show and tell to prove they were not doing what our 17 intelligence agencies told us, again and again, they were not doing.

Why did we disbelieve our own intelligence, and buy into the “Chicken Little” chatter about Iran being “only months away from a bomb”?

Corker also administered a cold shower to those who darkly warn of a secret Iranian program to produce a bomb: “In spite of all the flaws in the agreement, nothing bad is going to happen relative to nuclear development in Iran in the next few years. It’s just not.”

Under the deal, Iran has put two-thirds of the 19,000 centrifuges at Natanz in storage, ceased enriching uranium to 20 percent at Fordow, poured concrete into the core of its heavy water reactor at Arak, and shipped 97 percent of its enriched uranium out of the country. Cameras and United Nations inspectors are all over the place.

Even should Iran decide on a crash program to create enough fissile material for a single A-bomb test, this would take a year, and we would know about it.

But why would they? After all, there are sound reasons of state why Iran decided over a decade ago to forego nuclear weapons.

Discovery of a bomb program could bring the same U.S. shock and awe as was visited on Iraq for its nonexistent WMD. Discovery would risk a pre-emptive strike by an Israel with scores of nuclear weapons. Saudi Arabia and Turkey would have a powerful inducement to build their own bombs.

Acquiring a nuclear weapon would almost surely make Iran, a Persian nation on the edge of a sea of Arabs, less secure.

If, however, in the absence of a violation of the treaty by Iran, we tore up the deal, we could find ourselves isolated. For Britain, France and Germany also signed, and they believe the agreement is a good one.

Do we really want to force these NATO allies to choose between the deal they agreed to and a break with the United States?

If the War Party is confident Iran is going to cheat, why not wait until they do. Then make our case with evidence, so our allies can go with us on principle, and not from pressure.

Also at issue is the deal signed by Boeing to sell Iran 80 jetliners. Airbus has contracted to sell Iran 100 planes, and begun delivery. List price for the two deals: $34.5 billion. Tens of thousands of U.S. jobs are at stake.

Is a Republican Congress prepared to blow up the Boeing deal and force the Europeans to cancel the Airbus deal?

Why? Some contend the planes can be used to transport the Iranian Republican Guard. But are the Iranians, who are looking to tourism, trade and investment to rescue their economy, so stupid as to spend $35 billion for troop transports they could buy from Vladimir Putin?

The Ayatollah’s regime may define itself by its hatred of the Great Satan. Still, in 2009, even our War Party was urging President Obama to publicly back the Green Movement uprising against the disputed victory of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

In 2013, moderates voted Hassan Rouhani into the presidency, where he began secret negotiations with the USA.

New elections will be held this year. And while the death of ex-President Rafsanjani this weekend has removed the powerful patron of Rouhani and strengthened the hard-liners, Ayatollah Khamenei is suffering from cancer, and the nation’s future remains undetermined.

Iran’s young seek to engage with the West. But if they are spurned, by the cancellation of the Boeing deal and the reimposition of U.S. sanctions, they will be disillusioned and discredited, and the mullahs will own the future.

How would that serve U.S. interests?

We still have sanctions on Iran for its missile tests in violation of Security Council resolutions, for its human rights violations, and for its support of groups like Hezbollah. But we also have in common with Iran an enmity for the Sunni terrorists of al-Qaida and ISIS.

We are today fighting in Libya, Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, as the War Party works to confront Beijing in the South China Sea, Russia in Ukraine and North Korea over its nuclear and missile tests.

Could we perhaps put the confrontation with Iran on hold?

See http://buchanan.org/blog/iran-nuclear-deal-alive-dead-126399 (“Iran Nuclear Deal — Alive or Dead?“) (emphasis added)

Of course, Buchanan is correct. Indeed, he asks the right question:

Why did we . . . buy into the “Chicken Little” chatter about Iran being “only months away from a bomb”?

These were the same falsehoods that were sold to us about Saddam Hussein’s WMDs, as a basis for the tragic Iraq War.

Enough is enough. Never again. Not one more American life lost for Israel—even if its survival is at stake!

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10 01 2017
Rick

I usually agree with you Tim, but not this time.. Your anti Netanyahu stance skews your judgment in respect to Israel, which otherwise is usually spot on…

Liked by 1 person

10 01 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you, Rick, as always. Happy New Year to you and your family.

Yes, you are correct that I am very anti-Netanyahu, for many of the same reasons that the Rabins and Sharon hated him. All of my reasoning is set forth in various articles and comments at this blog, which I will not repeat here.

However, I believe that if Netanyahu had his druthers, he would provoke a war with Iran, and let the United States fight it, with the attendant losses being of a magnitude equal to or greater than the tragic Iraq War.

I do not trust Iran, but I do not trust Netanyahu either. As I have written, I believe Netanyahu and Putin are moral equivalents. The ayatollahs in iran are equally despicable.

My grandfather believed that the United States should not be in the Middle East. I never discussed his reasoning with him, because I was too young. However, I share that view today. We are essentially energy independent, and the largest energy producer in the world, with truly vast and untapped resources.

We should open our “floodgates” wide, and export vast quantities of energy products to Europe, Asia (including China), and other parts of the world. This is in our best interests; and it would bolster our economy dramatically.

To get bogged down in the Middle East is insanity, or so I believe. If the countries of the region want to blow up each other, so be it. It is not our fight.

Food for thought.

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11 01 2017
Rick

Trump need to provide Israel with the required bunker busting bombs and delivery system required to flatten Iran, and their murderous regime. Trump has to keep Putin in line, while that goes on.

We don’t belong in the middle east, true. Obama made the war a joke. To be one of the parents that gave their life for nothing..its a tragedy. However, we helped put Israel in the middle east, and they are like our child in that way. An oasis in the middle of the desert. A democracy. How could we turn our backs on them? Netanyahu is a strong nationalist. So is Trump. You like Trump. Do you not see the similarities between the two men? Israel is there, because we, and the UN made it so. We must defend them, at least with air and naval power. We will never be out of that region, because terrorism is not going away. Especially when Iran funds so much of it. I respect you opinion, but I stand with Israel, 100%. Let’s see what Trump, Tillerson and General Matis handle this raw deal..

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11 01 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you again, Rick. I respectfully disagree.

General George Marshall, among others, opposed the establishment of Israel, inter alia, believing it was not in the best interests of the United States. Indeed, if FDR had lived, he might have opposed it too.

As I have noted in the article above:

American president—and the father of today’s Left—Franklin D. Roosevelt, turned away the MS St. Louis from docking at American ports, and consigned most of the Jewish refugees aboard to their deaths in Europe. The other anti-Semites in FDR’s administration knew of the Nazi concentration camps, yet did nothing about them.

What Truman did, or so I believe, was done for domestic political reasons, not as a matter of righteous altruism.

Also, Israel was founded by Jewish terrorists, who fought the British. What goes around comes around.

As you know, many American Jews do not favor continued aid to Israel. I agree with them. The tiny country has been “suckling” at our economic and military “teets” far too long. It should stand on its own, or not at all. Enough is enough.

You have said:

We must defend them, at least with air and naval power.

I respectfully disagree. I do not believe we should defend them at all.

Next, I have written:

Israel could disappear off the face of the earth today, and it would not affect my life one iota. I could wake up tomorrow and go about my life as if it never happened—similar to the disappearance of Moldova as a nation, which is even larger. However, it might affect the lives of Jewish friends whom I love and care about.

. . .

I want Israel to survive and prosper, and for my Jewish friends and others to live in peace without worrying about their futures or those of their loved ones. This will not happen as long as Benjamin Netanyahu leads Israel and creates a climate of fear, hate and oppression.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/#comment-544 (“Why I Write And Say What I Do”)

Lastly, I agree with what Jeremy Ben-Ami wrote in his book, “A New Voice For Israel.” His grandparents were one of the founding families of Tel Aviv, and his father was an activist and leader in the Irgun, working for Israel’s independence and the rescue of European Jews before and during World War II.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/#comment-1825

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11 01 2017
Jonathan Buttall

That was an even handed and balanced analysis, Timothy. I support the Iran Deal, it delays any nuclear bomb ambitions, should they ever change their mind and decide they want it. There’s a political TV show called “Madame Secretary” in which Israel attacks Iran, ignoring US warnings.

I’m anti war, have been since Vietnam. I was one of those “radicals” in my late teens who was in many of those large anti Vietnam war rallies in New York and sometimes in Jersey. I think the only justified wars were the Revolutionary War, the Civil War and WWII. I outgrew the need to be a “radical” and joined the Army National Guard for six years at 20 (was not deployed during that time). Jill Stein is kind of a throwback to those “radical protester” days.

Some say Trump is an isolationist…….I’m okay with that if that means anti war, anti intervention, although we would go broke without continued international trade. Others say he’ll start WWIII. I hope the first idea is the accurate one. Predicting him is kind of a lost cause, it’s a wait and see.

We’re busy moving this month to a larger place, a whole 150 meters away in the same gated community. Quite a hassle, movers looked our place over today. Hope you and your family are doing well. Jonathan.

Liked by 1 person

11 01 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you, Jonathan, for your kind words; and happy new year.

I am anti-war too, since the Vietnam War in which friends of mine died for nothing.

I served as an Army officer assigned to DIA at the Pentagon before going to Capitol Hill.

I have a healthy respect for our military, and do not believe one American life should ever be wasted.

General and later President Grant, whom Lincoln credited with being his finest general along with Sherman, believed the same thing, as did Eisenhower.

Indeed, Grant wrote in his memoirs, which are considered the finest written by any American president:

To maintain peace in the future it is necessary to be prepared for war. . . . [U]nless we are prepared for it we may be in danger of a combined movement being some day made to crush us out.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/03/21/ulysses-s-grant-an-american-hero/ (“Ulysses S. Grant: An American Hero”)

I believe President-elect Trump is much like Ronald Reagan: peace through strength. After all, we defeated the USSR without a shot being fired.

Good luck with your move, and enjoy your new home. 😊

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30 01 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Zionists: Trump Should Rectify Painful Omission

Israel flag burning

Newsmax has reported:

President Donald Trump failed to mention Jews in his Holocaust remembrance statement on Friday and made no qualms about the omission, an oversight the national president of the Zionist Organization of America is calling “painful.”

Morton Klein is also asking Trump and his chief of staff Reince Priebus to rectify the flub.

“We, at ZOA, know and appreciate that President Donald Trump is a great friend and supporter of America’s greatest ally, the Jewish State of Israel and the Jewish people. We also know that he was the Grand Marshall at NYC’s Israel day parade and has an orthodox Jewish daughter and grandchildren attending an orthodox day school,” Klein wrote on the ZOA website on Sunday.

“Nevertheless, especially as a child of holocaust survivors, I and ZOA are compelled to express our chagrin and deep pain at President Trump, in his Holocaust Remembrance Day Message, omitting any mention of anti-Semitism and the six million Jews who were targeted and murdered by the German Nazi regime and others.”

Trump’s statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day did not mention the details of the death of six million Jews under the leadership of German dictator Adolf Hitler, but pointed to remembering the victims, survivors and heroes of the Holocaust.

“Yet, we know that in the darkest hours of humanity, light shines the brightest.‎ As we remember those who died, we are deeply grateful to those who risked their lives to save the innocent,” he continued, again referring only to “the innocent.”

Klein said he lost dozens of family members to genocide and that his father was a survivor of Auschwitz who lost his entire family.

Priebus on MSNBC said there weren’t any regrets about the statement and that he wasn’t whitewashing anything.

“As Elie Wiesel frequently stated, ‘while not all victims were Jews, all Jews were victims,'” wrote Klein. “Thus we were especially shocked by the disgraceful statement by Chief of Staff Reince Priebus proclaiming on “Meet The Press,” when asked about the conspicuous omission of Jews from the Holocaust statement, “”I don’t regret the words, Chuck [Todd].”

See http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/donald-trump-trump-holocaust-zionist/2017/01/29/id/770954/ (emphasis added)

So what?

There have been lots of holocausts in history, not just the Nazi Holocaust that killed Jews, Gypsies, the mentally and physically disabled, and others.

It is estimated that Stalin was responsible for the deaths of more than 30 million men, women and children—his own countrymen—including millions during the collectivization of the Soviet farms in the 1930s.

China’s Mao Tse-tung was directly responsible for an estimated 30-40 million deaths between 1958 and 1960, as a result of what Mao’s regime hailed as the “Great Leap Forward.”

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/the-silent-voices-of-stalin’s-soviet-holocaust-and-mao’s-chinese-holocaust/ (“The Silent Voices Of Stalin’s Soviet Holocaust And Mao’s Chinese Holocaust“)

The United States is not a Zionist country, or even remotely close. Christianity has 2.2 billion followers. Islam has 1.8 billion followers. At most, Judaism has 14 million followers, worldwide.

Anti-Semitism is growing in Europe and elsewhere, and European Jews are being urged to flee to Israel. Are the dark clouds gathering again?

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/#comment-7039 (“Is Night Falling Again For European Jews?“)

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2 02 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Is The Two-State Solution Dead, And The Fate Of Israel Sealed? [UPDATED]

Israel flag burning

Barring a miracle, it is arguable that (1) the two-state solution is “dead,” (2) Netanyahu and his ilk have won, and (3) the proponents of a lasting peace between the Israelis and Palestinians have lost, inter alia, because they are “bone-tired” of beating their heads against the wall, pushing for things that are not likely to happen.

The Rabins and Ariel Sharon hated Netanyahu. Indeed, Leah Rabin blamed him for her husband Yitzhak’s assassination. She saw “only doom for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process” with Netanyahu at Israel’s helm; and her views were prescient and are proving prophetic.

In a very real sense, the proponents of peace have been like salmon trying to “swim upstream” against the current. They have had boundless courage, and have been threatened and vilified in the process. Many have done so because of their love of Israel, and their hope that it will survive and prosper, as the homeland of the Jewish people.

But as my article above states unequivocally, it cannot be taken for granted that Israel will survive. Population growth/demographics alone will “kill” it as a Jewish state over time. Even more ominous is what a prominent American—who is a Jew and a strong supporter of Israel, and who has written for the Wall Street Journal many times—told me several years ago:

I have long thought that Israel will not make it, if only because of what are cavalierly called WMD [weapons of mass destruction] and its very tight geographical compression. All else is immaterial, including the Palestinians, or us, or the nature of Israel’s [government].

WMDs come in many forms, such as deadly viruses, biological and chemical agents, and of course nuclear and nation-ending EMP attacks. Neither Israel’s military, its security forces nor its “Iron Dome” can protect against such threats.

If this is true, or that demographics will “destroy” the Jewish character of Israel, then there is reason for the proponents of peace to change course. Some Jews may pursue a new agenda or direction of “all-things-Trump” are evil. However, they need to realize that the forces arrayed against such an agenda—be it the DNC’s agenda or otherwise—are mighty, fierce and more dedicated than the Left or far-Left imagines.

They learned from the impeachment of Richard Nixon that the next battles would be “war.” They watched as attempts were made to destroy Ronald Reagan and his presidency as a result of Iran Contra. Today, his image is “Teflon-coated,” and they control the White House and both branches of Congress. It is entirely possible that their political gains across the country will be enhanced as a result of next year’s elections.

They watch with horror and disgust—and ever-increasing anger—the violence at my alma mater Berkeley, and the violence of the “Black Lives Matter” group and others. Despite the strongly-held beliefs of the Left (much less the far-Left), the “grass roots” folks supporting Donald Trump and his presidency want this country to come together in unity. They want to rebuild the United States economically, and for all Americans to prosper.

But they are prepared to fight viciously against opposing forces if necessary. And yes, they have learned the lessons of the past very well; and surrender is not an option. They held firm and persevered, and now they control state houses and political offices across the country; and they are determined to expand their gains, and implement their agenda.

Anti-Semitism is growing in Europe and globally; and European Jews are being urged to flee to Israel. The UN vote and Barack Obama’s “abstention” were significant, in that not one country voted to support Israel. Is night falling again for European Jews? Jews can be targeted globally and there is nothing that Israel or its vaulted Mossad can do to protect them.

These are very sobering issues, which cannot be taken lightly by anyone. And no, Donald Trump is not the genesis or progenitor of these issues or trends. To the contrary, he has large numbers of Jewish friends and supporters; and he may turn out to be a far greater champion of Israel than Barack Obama ever was.

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3 02 2017
Rick

Tim, I have to ask… Do you want Israel to survive? Do you think that the two state solution was ever a realistic and viable option? We’re the so called ‘Palestinian people’, ever really interested in peaceful coexistence with Israel?

Liked by 1 person

3 02 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Your questions and comments are always good, Rick. Thank you.

Yes, I want Israel to survive, and to achieve all of the expectations for it. I have been criticized for this, which I take as a given.

Compare https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/#comment-544 (“Why I Write And Say What I Do”) with https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/#comment-547 and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/#comment-549; see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/31/is-israel-doomed/ (including its footnotes)

Second, with respect to the viability of the two-state solution, people who are much more experienced than I am believe that it was and is viable.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/#comment-1825 (“Jeremy Ben-Ami, ‘A New Voice For Israel’—A Wonderful Book That Should Be Read By Anyone Who Cares About And Wants To Understand Israel’s Past, Present And Future”)

Third, I believe almost all human beings everywhere want peace. It is an innate human striving.

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23 02 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Sick Anne Frank Center Director Blames Trump For Anti-Semitism [UPDATED]

Israel flag burning

The UK’s Daily Mail has reported:

The executive director of a human rights organization founded in Holocaust victim Anne Frank’s name exploded on President Donald Trump today as a ‘purveyor’ of anti-Semitism and called on him to fire a senior White House aide accused on making insulting statements about Jews.

Steven Goldstein blasted Trump on CNN on behalf of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect for waiting to respond to telephone terror at Jewish community centers and the desecration of Jewish graveyards until today.

‘His silence was deafening. His silence is why there is a cancer of anti-Semitism in the White House,’ Goldstein said. ‘It was just a Band-Aid on a cancer.’

Goldstein said the president and ‘his henchman’ Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, whom Goldstein also referred to on CNN as ‘a notorious anti-Semite,’ have ‘done nothing to change the circumstances.’

‘Our president is creating an incubator of hatred,’ he said. ‘When you don’t respond to anti-Semitism as well as Islamophobia and racism in real time, when you wait days and sometimes a week to respond to attacks, you are sending a signal to the haters.’

This morning the president denounced anti-Semistism in remarks at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. and said the threats to Jewish centers are ‘horrible and are painful.’

On Facebook, the Anne Frank Center responded with a statement from Goldstein that said the speech was ‘too little too late.’

‘The President’s sudden acknowledgement is a Band-Aid on the cancer of Antisemitism that has infected his own Administration,’ Goldstein said. ‘His statement today is a pathetic asterisk of condescension after weeks in which he and his staff have committed grotesque acts and omissions reflecting Antisemitism.’

Goldstein claimed that ‘the Antisemitism coming out of this Administration is the worst we have ever seen from any Administration.’

‘When President Trump responds to Antisemitism proactively and in real time, and without pleas and pressure, that’s when we’ll be able to say this President has turned a corner. This is not that moment.’

Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, scoffed at Goldstein’s accusations in his daily briefing. The president was ‘unbelievably forceful’ today, Spicer said, and has ‘been very clear’ prior to this about his position on anti-Semitism.

‘He has brought a diverse group of folks into his administration . . . and I think he has been very forceful with his denunciation,’ Spicer said. ‘It’s ironic that no matter how many times he talks about this, that it’s never good enough.’

It was Goldstein’s turn to jeer over at CNN after the White House responded to his statement.

‘I’m furious. I look at Sean Spicer and what he said, it’s preposterous. Sean said, no matter how many times President Trump condemns anti-Semitism – he’s never condemned it before today.’

Last weekend more than 100 gravestones were assaulted at a Jewish cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri, its director said. Eleven Jewish centers received bomb threats.

A total of 54 Jewish Community Centers in 27 states have been hit with the hoax calls since the beginning of January, CNN reported, for a total of 69 bomb threats, many of which occurred on January 9, 18 and 31, in addition to yesterday.

‘Where was the president?’ Goldstein asked Brooke Baldwin on CNN. ‘There has to be a fire storm for this president to respond, Brooke, he doesn’t respond unless groups like mine just go crazy pleading, begging Mr. president condemn anti-Semitism.’

Baldwin pointed out that Trump this morning said it’s time to put a stop to anti-Semitism, before The Anne Frank Center’s latest statement came out.

‘This tour was a meaningful reminder of why we have to fight bigotry, intolerance and hatred in all of its very ugly forms,’ Trump said. ‘The antisemitic threats targeting our Jewish community and community centers are horrible and are a painful and a very sad reminder of the work that still must be done to root out hate and prejudice and evil.’

Trump told MSNBC’s Craig Melvin in a one-on-one before his Tuesday speech that he ‘of course’ denounces anti-Semitism and does so ‘whenever I get a chance.’

‘I do all the time. And I think it’s terrible. I think it’s horrible, whether its anti-Semitism or racism or anything you want to think about having to do with the divide,’ he said. ‘Anti-Semitism is horrible, and it’s gonna stop. And it has to stop.’

After watching the clip of Trump’s speech replay, Goldstein asked, ‘So what’s he going to do? Is he going to fire Steve Bannon, who is a notorious anti-Semite?’

Bannon’s ex-wife said her husband made slurs against Jews in their 2007 divorce proceedings. The former Mrs. Bannon said Steve ‘did not want their daughter to attend a Los Angeles school because of the numbers of Jews who went to school there.’

‘He said that he doesn’t like Jews and that he doesn’t like the way they raise their kids to be “whiny brats” and that he didn’t want the girls going to school with Jews.’

The Trump aide has said through a spokesman that the charges are not true.

The Trump aides former news website, Brietbart, also referred to The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol as a ‘renegade Jew’ in a May 2016 article.

David Horowitz, who is Jewish, wrote the article and said after the November election that he alone was responsible for the comment.

Bannon is also associated with the ‘alt-right’ movement, which has been castigated as racist, although the White House official has said it’s nationalist.

Trump’s daughter Ivanka converted to Judaism when she married Jared Kushner, now a senior advisor to the president, and their three children, Trump’s grandchildren, are Jewish.

‘America is a nation built on the principle of religious tolerance. We must protect our houses of worship & religious centers,’ she said last weekend on Twitter.

Her father had an opportunity last Thursday to speak out, but chided a Jewish reporter asking him a question about anti-Semitism, instead.

The reporter stated that he did not think that Trump was anti-Semetic as he asked him for his response to the increasing amount of threats.

But Trump didn’t want to listen, telling him to be ‘quiet’ and ‘sit down’ during the East Room news conference, all the while claiming he was the ‘least anti-Semitic person you’ve ever seen in your entire life.’

Reacting on Tuesday, Goldstein said the president has a ‘tin ear for the symbolism of love and hatred in our country.

‘He couldn’t even accept that there was a reporter who was Jewish, who was not controversial, who was not looking to be confrontational. Yet the president saw somebody dressed in a kippah, in Jewish garb, and thought that that person was going to be hostile. That says it all, Brooke.’

He had previously suggested, in a Facebook post just after the incident, that [T]rump had been ‘adding magic mushrooms’ to his ‘chopped liver on matz.’

‘To be fair, perhaps you appointed a blue-ribbon panel to come up with the assessment,’ he said of Trump’s anti-Semitic declaration. ‘We can only guess the Judeophiles you appointed: Steve Bannon, Pat Buchanan and David Duke.’

See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4246942/Anne-Frank-Center-director-blames-Trump-anti-Semitism.html#comments-4246942 (“Anne Frank Center director blames Trump and his ‘henchman’ Steve Bannon for the ‘cancer’ of anti-Semitism currently in America: ‘Our president is creating an incubator of hatred'”) (emphasis added)

This very sick, evil and filthy publicity-seeking vermin should crawl back into the rat hole from which he emerged, after first being fired by the Anne Frank Center.

He has soiled Anne’s wonderful and timeless legacy, which lots of us have loved and revered for decades—in the case of yours truly, since I saw the 1959 film, “The Diary of Anne Frank,” in Beverly Hills, and the audience was briefed by the celebrated actor Joseph Schildkraut who played Anne’s father—and furthered the currents of anti-Semitism that have been growing in Europe and spreading globally.

European Jews are being urged to flee to Israel, and the dark clouds of anti-Semitism are rising again.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/#comment-7039 (“Is Night Falling Again For European Jews?“); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/#comment-544 (“Why I Write And Say What I Do”)

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23 02 2017
Jonathan Buttall

Hello, Timothy.
I have mixed feelings about all this, and will end with a theory.
A few observations;
(1) I’m a Christian from about 1999. I’m of Jewish background but rejected the culture after my Bar Mitzvah at 13, and than to be hostile to the culture due to bad experiences with it growing up.

(2) I don’t think Trump is Anti Semitic, no evidence there.

(3) There is an oddness about some Trump supporters; Steve Bannon and Pat Buchanan most definitely do have a history of Anti Semitic beliefs and statements and some associations. On the other hand Jared Kushner has a lot of influence with his father in law, practices the Jewish religion and supports Settlements on occupied land with his money. He and Bannon seem to be working together, so perhaps they’ve made some accommodation. If Nixon could go to China and meet with Mao, than Jared and Steve Bannon could work with each other, I suppose.

(4) As an aside, the Kushners are not orthodox as the media says….they don’t wear any of the “uniform” of Orthodox Jews (and I have a brother who is). I think Ivanka has the potential to be a good influence in that administration, by the way.

(5) Nationwide threats against Jewish community centers…..that is serious, some in the past have been blown up, as in Argentina by Iranian agents, and hundreds have died this way.

But I don’t think it’s about Trumps allies in the US. I think it could have to do with that press conference he did with Netanyahu recently. They both strongly implied, in a round about way, that the two state solution that would allow an independent Palestine was dead. This means no end to apartheid, no end to occupation (Trumps objection to this was very weak), no freedom for Palestinians. The threats may be coming from that realization and the desperation it leads to, although not clear who is making the threats.

Netanyahu is a deadly ally for Trump to have, he used to believe in being even handed in the Middle East, but his supporters wouldn’t like that so he changed course. Trump should have kept Netanyahu at a distance, many Jews don’t like Netanyahu anyway, based on how they’ve voted in the US and for who (Obama over Romney, for example; Romney was a Netanyahu puppet). Anyway, that’s my take on it, it’s not the clearest of matters. Jonathan.

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24 02 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Thanks, Jonathan. I agree with everything you have said.

There is nothing to add except anti-Semitism raises its ugly head periodically, like both Islamophobia and anti-Christian actions do.

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31 05 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Donald Trump Is Securing Israel’s Future

Israel flag burning

George Melloan, a former deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, has written in the New York Sun:

Shortly before the Six-Day War broke out, I attended an Israeli Defense Forces demonstration of military prowess at a site outside Tel Aviv. We foreign reporters were unimpressed as young Israeli recruits scrambled clumsily over the sand dues.

That was exactly what the Israelis intended. The show of ineptitude was part of the Israeli plan to generate over-confidence among Arab forces threatening Israel’s southern and eastern borders. The Israelis even sold a highly respected New York Times military analyst on the myth that their tanks were so decrepit that they had to be hauled into battle on semi-trailers. It turns out that was the fastest way to move them — fueled, stocked with ordnance and with fresh crews — from front to front.

Egypt, Syrian and Jordan would learn the truth on June 5 when the Israeli air force launched a pre-emptive strike against Egyptian and Syrian air bases and wiped out most of their planes on the ground. The IDF thereby gained air superiority which turned Egyptian tanks in the Sinai, Jordanian armor on the west bank, and Syrian forces on the Golan Heights into shooting gallery targets for Israeli fighter-bombers.

The thing I remember best about that earlier flailing pretense of weakness was the pacifist-sounding talks I heard from a young IDF lieutenant involved in the exercise. “Wars don’t solve anything,” he said to a group of reporters with some fervor. Maybe it was premonition. He was killed in the Sinai on the first day when an Egyptian rocket-propelled-grenade hit the half-track from which he was directing fire on Egyptian infantry.

It’s a bitter irony that he was both wrong and right. The war did resolve some important matters, such as whether Israel would survive as a nation state. Israel indeed survived and has strengthened its position in the half-century since. It now has a formal peace with Egypt, thanks to the 1976 Camp David Accords and a largely tacit understanding with Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the Arab emirates that the main threat they all face is Iran.

He was right, though, in that the war that would kill him and those fought since would only further aggravate the personal hostility that separates Jews and Arabs living in the territory Israel now controls. I flew back to Israel on the fourth day of the war, landing in a blackout at Lod airport in a DC-10 piloted by the middle-aged managers of El-al, who had taken over from the younger pilots fighting the war. The few passengers, mostly reporters, cheered when they landed us safely.

On the way up to Jerusalem in a rented car next day, I gave a ride to four Israeli soldiers who were hitch-hiking, not unusual in an army noted for improvisation. I asked them if Israel was going to return the land they had just conquered. These were not the clumsy recruits the IDF had put on display weeks before, but tough, battle-hardened men with faces leathered by the desert sun. One, perhaps a Yemeni Jew, used an Arab word, sounding like “feesh,” in reply. Another, who spoke English, translated: “Nothing doing.”

Well, they were wrong about that too. Israel did give back the vast Sinai in return for peace with Egypt. It pulled its settlements out of Gaza with more ambiguous consequences. But it has kept the West Bank of the Jordan River with its largely Arab population under its effective control and shows little inclination to give up this contentious barrier to future aggression.

Israel is now a powerful state with its alliance with America under repair by the Trump administration. It has become a center for technological innovation as it has shed many of the cumbersome trappings of its socialist beginnings. With Syria crippled by civil war, the main threat it now faces is from the Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah militia in Lebanon and its array of missiles.

No one can predict the future, especially in the Middle East, but the young IDF lieutenant would probably be reassured by Israel’s strategic position today, had he lived to see it.

See http://www.nysun.com/foreign/how-guile-and-guts-won-israels-future-and-todays/89994/ (“How Guile and Guts Won Israel’s Future, And Today’s Optimism“) (emphasis added}

If anyone thinks that Israel’s future would be bright with a Hillary Clinton presidency (i.e., a continuation of Barack Obama’s policies), they would be star-gazing.

Donald Trump is securing Israel’s future. No one should forget that, as the Democrats work toward his ouster.

Compare https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/ (“America’s Newest Civil War: 2017 And Beyond“) with https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/31/is-israel-doomed/ (“Is Israel Doomed?“)

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31 05 2017
Jonathan Buttall

Hi, Timothy. I received two notifications of new discussions on your blog. Have been busy with visiting relatives so will read the newer material and comment on it this coming week. Jonathan.

Liked by 1 person

31 05 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you, Jonathan. We look forward to your return.

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8 08 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

NETANYAHU: I WON’T BE TOPPLED, I HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR [UPDATED]

Israel flag burning

The Jerusalem Post has reported:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected criminal suspicions leveled against him in recent days, amid speculation that his tenure will end soon.

According to a report on Kan, the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation, Netanyahu lashed out – in private conversations with Knesset members – at the press, the opposition and members of his own party, whom he accused of conspiring to unseat him.

“They are trying to get me and attempting to topple the Right,” Netanyahu told senior officials in his coalition, according to the report. “This is not new. They have been trying for many years. I don’t see us going to elections now.”

Netanyahu mocked reports about his former chief of staff, Ari Harow, who has turned state’s witness against him, and Case 2000, in which he is accused of conspiring to harm one newspaper and help another.

“It’s not like I am going tomorrow and they are going to replace me,” he said. “I don’t know what they want from me. I have nothing to fear. I don’t think I have a problem.”

Netanyahu slammed Transportation Minister Israel Katz for “undermining” him, and accused him of being behind an anonymous quote in Yediot Aharonot, attributed to a senior Likud figure, saying he would not permit Netanyahu to remain in power if he is indicted.

“The senior minister in the Likud can continue trying to replace me,” Netanyahu said.

Katz’s office denied that he tried to undermine Netanyahu.

Netanyahu posted on his Facebook page an article quoting senior Palestinian sources saying they hoped the investigations would topple him, and wrote: “It won’t happen.”

Various Hebrew media outlets published comparisons on Monday between what politicians said when former prime minister Ehud Olmert was investigated and what they are saying now about Netanyahu.

Likud politicians who called on Olmert to quit when he was under investigation spoke very differently about Netanyahu, while politicians who defended Olmert are now saying Netanyahu should resign.

Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely (Likud) said the comparison was invalid because in 2008 American businessman Moshe Talansky had already testified that Olmert had received an envelope of money in his hand with more than NIS 500,000 in cash.

“Now, the media is attempting – which I find contemptuous – to draw a comparison between Olmert and Netanyahu,” she said. “I call on all of you to be patient. Don’t accept the poisoned arrows that are being served up each evening as though they were the real truth and, most importantly, remember: Netanyahu is not Ehud Olmert.”

See http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Netanyahu-I-wont-be-toppled-I-have-nothing-to-fear-501847 (emphasis added); see also http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Netanyahu-to-supporters-I-love-you-well-lead-the-nation-for-years-502015 (“NETANYAHU TO SUPPORTERS: ‘WE’LL LEAD THE NATION FOR YEARS’“)

I have never been a “fan” of Netanyahu. In fact, I have written blistering articles (and numerous comments beneath them) about him.

He has oppressed the Palestinians; he has been an impediment to peace; he has been directly responsible for the increase of anti-Semitism globally; and he is pure evil in many if not most respects.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/31/is-israel-doomed/ (“Is Israel Doomed?“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/the-madness-of-benjamin-netanyahu/ (“The Madness Of Benjamin Netanyahu“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/ (“Israel’s Senseless Killings And War With Iran“)

However, he and Donald Trump admire and respect each other; and with the two of them at the helm of their respective countries, there might be a real chance for peace.

Such opportunities died with the tragic assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, and again with the decline and then death of Ariel Sharon.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/ (“Ariel Sharon Is Missed“)

Will another chance for peace be lost? Will Netanyahu come crashing down?

Donald Trump’s enemies are working toward the same result in America.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10559 (“CIVIL WAR IF TRUMP TAKEN DOWN“); but see http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/israel-rock-star-trump/2017/08/10/id/806955/ (“Trump Is a Rock Star in Israel“)

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7 12 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

JERUSALEM [UPDATED]

Jerusalem

The UK’s Economist has noted:

EVEN before Donald Trump issued his proclamation recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, stiff opposition was brewing. Pope Francis and the Supreme Leader of Iran denounced his plan to move America’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. So did the UN Secretary-General, the prime minister of Italy and a global chorus of diplomats. If anything, opposition from such grandees emboldened Mr Trump. On December 6th he jettisoned most of the conventional wisdom about the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Without preconditions, Mr Trump recognised Jerusalem as the historic capital of the Jewish people, “established in ancient times”, and the seat of Israel’s government. In the first taste of a peace plan he is expected to unveil next year, he failed to mention Jewish settlements in the West Bank or the Palestinians’ claims to Jerusalem. It was, as he said, “very fresh thinking”. The proclamation delighted Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, who hailed it as “a historic day” for which Israel is “profoundly grateful”.

Since David Ben Gurion moved his government to Jerusalem in 1949, Israel has been the only country with a capital that is not formally recognised by the rest of the world. The city is still considered by the UN a corpus separatum—a separate entity under international jurisdiction. On the ground this has never been the case. Until 1967, Jerusalem was split between Israel and Jordan, and since that year’s six-day war, it has been solely under Israeli control. But even Israel’s closest allies have continued maintaining their embassies 40 miles (65km) to the west in Tel Aviv.

Saeb Erekat, secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, and previously the Palestinians’ chief negotiator with Israel, said that Mr Trump had “disqualified his country from any possible role in the peace process”. But Mr Trump insisted that he still intends to honour his earlier promise to achieve the “ultimate deal”—peace between Israel and the Palestinians. He stressed: “we are not taking a position on any final status issues, including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, or the resolution of contested borders.” But it will be hard from this point to get the Palestinians to return to the negotiations that they abandoned three years ago.

The move of the embassy could in theory be stalled by a future president, though that is unlikely. Meanwhile, protests are erupting. The Palestinians still insist that part of Jerusalem should serve as the capital of a future Palestinian state, as a condition of any peace deal. Some 300,000 Palestinians live in Jerusalem—nearly a third of the city’s population. They carry Israeli identity cards and can travel and work throughout Israel. But they are not Israeli citizens and cannot vote in national elections. Their status remains to be resolved.

Mr Trump has based much of his Middle East policy on building a closer alliance with Saudi Arabia. The Saudis, along with America’s other Arab allies, publicly opposed the recognition of Jerusalem. But it is unlikely that Mr Trump would have gone ahead if they had not privately assured him that they had bigger things to worry about. The Sunni Arab states are less concerned about Palestine than about Iran’s growing influence, and finding ways to contain it. Israel, behind the scenes, has become a tacit ally of the Saudis in the Sunni-Shia conflict.

Holy city, unholy mess

This leaves the Palestinians isolated, a sentiment palpable on the streets of East Jerusalem this week. They feel abandoned not only by America but by the Arab world and even by their own leaders. Jawad Siam, a local leader in Silwan, an Arab district of Jerusalem, has harsh words for Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president. “Abbas is always saying there is still a chance for diplomacy, and now Trump is making Abbas very small in front of his people.” Ever since his election in 2005, Mr Abbas has rejected violence and called upon his people to pursue statehood through diplomacy. Now the calls from within the Palestinian national movement for a return to intifada, ie, a violent uprising, are growing.

However, many Palestinians remain weary of conflict with the Israelis. “Why should we start another intifada and lose our sons?” asked Fowzi Iyad, a trader from Jerusalem’s Muslim Quarter. “Just because Trump said he’s going to build an embassy? Let’s see Trump building something. All he does is talk.”

See https://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21732093-campaign-promise-kept-problem-aggravated-world-reacts-donald-trumps (“The world reacts to Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital“) (emphasis added); see also http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5153669/Why-Jerusalem-important-SAM-GREENHILL-explains.html (“Why is Jerusalem important, what makes Donald Trump’s intervention so toxic and does anyone else recognise the city as Israel’s capital?: All you need to know about why Trump’s announcement is so incendiary“) and http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5164199/Israeli-PM-Netanyahu-Paris-Jerusalem-talks.html#article-5164199 (“Israeli prime minister Netanyahu says ‘the sooner Palestinians come to grips with reality the sooner there will be peace’ as violence flares around Middle East over Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital“)

Netanyahu is delusional—and predictable.

As discussed in my article above, and in the footnotes and comments beneath it, Netanyahu morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors many years ago. Nothing has changed with him since then.

Also, the UN and international condemnation of President Trump’s decision with respect to Jerusalem may represent another sign of growing anti-Semitism, globally.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/#comment-7039 (“Is Night Falling Again For European Jews?“)

Israel flag burning

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21 12 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Jerusalem And Global Anti-Semitism [UPDATED]

Jerusalem vote in UN

Noa Landau has written for Haaretz:

In a major diplomatic blow to Israel and U.S. President Donald Trump, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution rejecting the American recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, with 128 member states voting in favor of the resolution and a mere nine voting against it.

Among the countries that voted in favor of the resolution are India, Russia and China, all countries Netanyahu has touted as allies recently. However, some countries surprised Israel by breaking the conse[n]sus at the UN, such as Hungary, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Romania, Croatia and Poland. 

“Israel completely rejects this preposterous resolution,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said minutes after the results were announced. 

“Jerusalem is our capital, always was and always will be. But I do appreciate the fact that a growing number of countries refuse to participate in this theater of the absurd,” the premier charged in a live Facebook video.

Netanyahu went on to add: “So I appreciate that and especially I want to again express our thanks to President Trump and Ambassador Haley for their stalwart defense of Israel and their stalwart defense of the truth.”

Netanyahu used strong words to bash the international body even before the vote, calling it a “house of lies” and proclaiming that “the State of Israel rejects this vote outright” and that “Jerusalem is our capital, we will continue to build there and additional embassies will move to Jerusalem.”

The General Assembly’s emergency discussion was being held at the request of Turkey and Yemen, who turned to the UN after an Egyptian draft resolution was presented to the Security Council and was vetoed by the United States, although the other 14 member states voted in its favor.

Throughout Thursday, Israel attempted to convince a few dozen countries to at least abstain or absent themselves from the vote. Israel has also asked that at the very least for these countries not to speak at the session. The Israeli efforts have been coordinated with the United States.

Speculations on how certain countries will vote emerged earlier Thursday, and according to Reuters both Canada and Mexico are expected to abstain. 

Netanyahu himself participated in the efforts directly, speaking personally to dignitaries such as the prime minister of the Czech Republic.

Fiery debate

During the discussion, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley threatened member-states that the United States may retract its funding as she spoke in defense of Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem.

“We have an obligation to demand more for our investment. And if our investment fails, we have an obligation to spend our resources in more productive ways. Those are the thoughts that come to mind when we consider the resolution before us today,” Haley said. 

“America will put our embassy in Jerusalem. It is what the American people want us to do and it is the right thing to do,” the U.S. envoy pledged.
 
Haley went on to defend the American recognition of Jerusalem: “The decision does nothing to harm the peace process. The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack at the United Nations. We will remember it when so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do.

Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Dannon ripped into those supporting the resolution, saying: “You are puppets being pulled by the strings of the Palestinian puppet masters. You are blind to the lies, blind to the manipulations, just like puppets. The Palestinians know this resolution is a fraud.

“This resolution is nothing more than a distraction. I have no doubt that today’s resolution will end up in the trash bin of history,” Dannon said.

The Palestinian Observer in the UN, Riyad Mansour, retorted by saying that the Palestinian people “will not accept religious excuses to justify annexation.” 

Mansour went on to add that Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem “will not impact the status and position of the Holy City whatsoever, but it will impact the status of the United States as a mediator of peace.”

“We cannot help but ask- what does this decision serve?” Mansour charged. “It serves the Israeli government in implementing its colonial plans,” he said.

Mansour added that the Palestinians “will not accept a religious excuse to justify an annexation of land. This [organization] is now undergoing an unprecedented test with ‘Palestine’ being its headline.”

Yemen’s Permanent Representative at the UN, Khaled Hussein Mohamed Alyemany, began the session by introducing the draft resolution his country brought before the world body along with Turkey, which set in motion the emergency session.

Alyemany called Israeli presence in Jerusalem a “forceful annexation of land, serious threat to peace and stability” and urged that “East Jerusalem continues to be occupied, Palestine has the right to sovereignty” in the city.

He went on to say that Yemen calls “on all states to not recognize any steps and any measurements that run counter to that.”

Bashar Jaafari, Syria’s Ambassador the UN, said that the “U.S. has never been and will never stand as a neutral party or a qualified mediator in any attempt to solve the American-Palestinian conflict.

Jaafri further slammed the U.S., saying: “The arrogance of this country… that treats this organization like school children that have to be scolded when they don’t yield to their authority.”

Liu Jieyi, the Chinese ambassador the UN said his nations “supports the cause of the Palestinian people,” adding that “This will never change.”

House of lies

Speaking hours before the vote, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used strong words to bash the world body, calling it a “house of lies” and proclaiming that “the State of Israel rejects this vote outright” and that “Jerusalem is our capital, we will continue to build there and additional embassies will move to Jerusalem.”

Netanyahu also said that various countries around the world are changing their attitude toward Israel, “and this will eventually seep into the walls of that house of lies.”

The General Assembly’s emergency discussion is being held at the request of Turkey and Yemen, who turned to the UN after an Egyptian draft resolution was presented to the Security Council and was vetoed by the United States, although the other 14 member states voted in its favor.

Throughout Thursday, Israel attempted to convince a few dozen countries to at least abstain or absent themselves from the vote, even if they do not vote against it. Israel has also asked that at the very least for these countries not to speak at the session. The Israeli efforts have been coordinated with the United States.

Speculations on how certain countries will vote emerged earlier Thursday, and according to Reuters both Canada and Mexico are expected to abstain. 

Netanyahu himself participated in the efforts directly, speaking personally to dignitaries such as the prime minister of the Czech Republic. 

On Wednesday evening, the Israeli Foreign Ministry sent a cable to Israeli missions around the world providing further instructions, asking them to turn to the Jewish organizations in their countries and ask them to apply pressure on their local governments on the vote.

Nonetheless, Israel has asked its envoys worl[d]wide to avoid embarrassment and to carefully consider their reactions to the results of the vote.
 
U.S. President Donald Trump spoke in defense of Israel and his monumental declaration, threatening to cut off financial aid to countries that vote in favor of the resolution.

“They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars, and then they vote against us,” Trump said. “Well, we’re watching those votes. Let them vote against us. We’ll save a lot. We don’t care.”

. . .

Speaking to reporters at the White House Wednesday, Trump also expressed support for a letter sent by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, in which she warned member states against supporting the resolution.

“The president will be watching this vote carefully and has requested I report back on those who voted against us,” she wrote in a letter obtained by Haaretz. “Thank you for your consideration, and please do not hesitate to contact my team with any questions or concerns.”

See https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.830498 (“In Blow to Trump and Netanyahu, UN Rejects U.S. Recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital“) (emphasis added; diagrams and video omitted); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/31/is-israel-doomed/#comment-11515 (“JERUSALEM“) and http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5202459/Erdogans-warning-vote-Jerusalem.html (“UN votes 128-9 to declare US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital ‘null and void’ – as Britain jeopardises its special relationship with America by voting AGAINST Trump“) and https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/12/israel-us-nikki-haley-ultra-orthodox-women-discrimination.html (“How Israel enables discrimination against ultra-Orthodox women”—”Israel is among the few states in the Middle East, and the only one in the West, that has for decades practiced gender-based discrimination — in addition to discrimination on grounds of nationality, ethnicity and religion”—”The State of Israel is complicit in the fact that in its almost 70-year history, only one ultra-Orthodox woman has served in the Knesset — Tzvia Greenfeld, a member of the liberal Meretz Party. The top echelons of public service elected for local and national governing bodies will continue to exclude some 400,000 ultra-Orthodox women who constitute 4.5% of the population”—”[H]ow can [Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley] representing a major democratic power such as the United States praise a democratic regime that discriminates against women?”)

The two-state solution remains the only viable means of resolving the conflicts between the Israelis and Palestinians. Undergirding this UN vote is rampant and rising anti-Semitism, globally.

Indeed, anti-Semitism is growing in France and elsewhere in Europe, and in the UK and globally, fanned in no small part by Netanyahu’s actions since he has been in power. For years now, European Jews have been urged to flee to Israel, and they have done so—which is both sad and tragic.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/#comment-7039 (“Is Night Falling Again For European Jews?“)

Settlement expansion and brutality toward the Palestinians are Netanyahu’s hallmarks, and who he is. Leah Rabin blamed him for her husband Yitzhak’s assassination; and she saw “only doom for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process” with Netanyahu at Israel’s helm. Her views were prescient, and courageous.

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27 03 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

IS ISRAEL PUSHING AMERICA INTO ITS SECOND MIDDLE EAST WAR? [UPDATED]

Israel flag burning

Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has written:

The last man standing between the U.S. and war with Iran may be a four-star general affectionately known to his Marines as “Mad Dog.”

Gen. James Mattis, the secretary of defense, appears to be the last man in the Situation Room who believes the Iran nuclear deal may be worth preserving and that war with Iran is a dreadful idea.

Yet, other than Mattis, President Donald Trump seems to be creating a war cabinet.

Trump himself has pledged to walk away from the Iran nuclear deal — “the worst deal ever” — and reimpose sanctions in May.

His new national security adviser John Bolton, who wrote an op-ed titled “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran,” has called for preemptive strikes and “regime change.”

Secretary of State-designate Mike Pompeo calls Iran “a thuggish police state,” a “despotic theocracy,” and “the vanguard of a pernicious empire that is expanding its power and influence across the Middle East.”

Trump’s favorite Arab ruler, 32-year-old Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman, calls Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei “the Hitler of the Middle East.”

Bibi Netanyahu is monomaniacal on Iran, calling the nuclear deal a threat to Israel’s survival and Iran “the greatest threat to our world.”

U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley echoes them all.

Yet Iran appears not to want a war. U.N. inspectors routinely confirm that Iran is strictly abiding by the terms of the nuclear deal.

While U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf often encountered Iranian “fast attack” boats and drones between January 2016 and August 2017, that has stopped. Vessels of both nations have operated virtually without incident.

What would be the result of Trump’s trashing of the nuclear deal?

First would be the isolation of the United States.

China and Russia would not abrogate the deal but would welcome Iran into their camp. England, France and Germany would have to choose between the deal and the U.S. And if Airbus were obligated to spurn Iran’s orders for hundreds of new planes, how would that sit with the Europeans?

How would North Korea react if the U.S. trashed a deal where Iran, after accepting severe restrictions on its nuclear program and allowing intrusive inspections, were cheated of the benefits the Americans promised?

Why would Pyongyang, having seen us attack Iraq, which had no WMD, and Libya, which had given up its WMD to mollify us, ever consider given up its nuclear weapons — especially after seeing the leaders of both nations executed?

And, should the five other signatories to the Iran deal continue with it despite us, and Iran agree to abide by its terms, what do we do then?

Find a casus belli to go to war? Why? How does Iran threaten us?

A war, which would involve U.S. warships against swarms of Iranian torpedo boats could shut down the Persian Gulf to oil traffic and produce a crisis in the global economy. Anti-American Shiite jihadists in Beirut, Baghdad and Bahrain could attack U.S. civilian and military personnel.

As the Army and Marine Corps do not have the troops to invade and occupy Iran, would we have to reinstate the draft?

And if we decided to blockade and bomb Iran, we would have to take out all its anti-ship missiles, submarines, navy, air force, ballistic missiles and air defense system.

And would not a pre-emptive strike on Iran unite its people in hatred of us, just as Japan’s pre-emptive strike on Pearl Harbor united us in a determination to annihilate her empire?

What would the Dow Jones average look like after an attack on Iran?

Trump was nominated because he promised to keep us out of stupid wars like those into which folks like John Bolton and the Bush Republicans plunged us.

After 17 years, we are still mired in Afghanistan, trying to keep the Taliban we overthrew in 2001 from returning to Kabul. Following our 2003 invasion, Iraq, once a bulwark against Iran, became a Shiite ally of Iran.

The rebels we supported in Syria have been routed. And Bashar Assad — thanks to backing from Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and Shiite militias from the Middle East and Central Asia — has secured his throne.

The Kurds who trusted us have been hammered by our NATO ally Turkey in Syria, and by the Iraqi Army we trained in Iraq.

What is Trump, who assured us there would be no more stupid wars, thinking? Truman and LBJ got us into wars they could not end, and both lost their presidencies. Eisenhower and Nixon ended those wars and were rewarded with landslides.

After his smashing victory in Desert Storm, Bush I was denied a second term. After invading Iraq, Bush II lost both houses of Congress in 2006, and his party lost the presidency in 2008 to the antiwar Barack Obama.

Once Trump seemed to understand this history.

See http://buchanan.org/blog/is-trump-assembling-a-war-cabinet-128988 (“Is Trump Assembling a War Cabinet?“) (emphasis added); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/31/is-israel-doomed/#comment-9488 (“Hasn’t Israel Killed Enough Brave Americans Already?”)

As I have asked before: “Hasn’t Israel Killed Enough Brave Americans Already?”

There continue to be those in Israel—and un-American “Israel Firsters” and other cockroaches in the U.S.—who do not think so, and they must the thwarted forever.

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30 04 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

HOW SICK [UPDATED]

Israel flag burning

The AFP news agency has reported:

Israel hopes Jonathan Pollard, an American spy who served 30 years in prison for selling secrets to the Jewish state, will be allowed to emigrate there as the US moves its embassy to Jerusalem, a minister said on Monday.

“I hope that President Donald Trump will offer another gift to Israelis by allowing Jonathan Pollard to come and celebrate the opening of the American embassy in Jerusalem,” Israel’s Transport and Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz told army radio.

“I hope that President Trump will agree to that request with Jonathan Pollard having spent so many years in prison.”

The United States is due to open its Jerusalem embassy on May 14 in a controversial move that coincides with the 70th anniversary of Israel’s founding.

Pollard was released from prison in November 2015 after three decades in jail. He was given a five-year probation period during which he is not allowed to travel outside the United States.

Israel, which had long deemed his punishment unreasonable, welcomed his release.

The 63-year-old was granted Israeli citizenship in 1995 and his family says he wants to settle in Israel.

Pollard was a US Navy intelligence analyst when he was arrested for passing sensitive security documents to Israel in 1985.

Over the years, Israeli right-wing activists have sought to turn him into an icon and a fierce defender of Israeli security, even when it meant spying on Israel’s closest ally.

But US security officials remain angry about his leak of classified defence documents, and he has been accused of seriously damaging US interests during the Cold War.

Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the US embassy from Tel Aviv deeply angered Palestinians and broke with decades of international consensus that the disputed city’s status must be negotiated between the two sides.

See https://www.afp.com/en/news/826/israel-hopes-spy-pollard-can-emigrate-us-embassy-opening-doc-14f82x1 (“Israel hopes spy Pollard can emigrate for US embassy opening“) (emphasis added)

This is equivalent to celebrating and honoring those Israelis who participated in or were otherwise responsible for the unprovoked Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, which killed 34 brave Americans and maimed many more.

See http://www.gtr5.com

Is it any wonder that Israel is hated, and anti-Semitism is rising globally?

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/#comment-7039 (“Is Night Falling Again For European Jews?“); see also https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/apr/30/israel-ready-bomb-iran-if-necessary-report/ (“Israel ready to bomb Iran if necessary: Report“) and https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-03/israel-sees-iran-war-looming-as-mideast-tinderbox-awaits-a-spark (“Israel and Iran on Path to War as Mideast Tinderbox Awaits Spark“)

Israel and its “neocon” shills pushed us into the tragic Iraq War, in which more than 5,000 Americans lost their lives and many more were maimed, and trillions of dollars were wasted, for nothing.

Never again, even if Israel’s existence is at stake.

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1 05 2018
richard hameroff

Why Tim? Why are you so against Netanyahu? Do you not believe that Iran is looking to eliminate Israel/

Liked by 1 person

1 05 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you, Rick, for your comments as always.

Obviously, I respect your point of view, and always have. Indeed, I have the utmost respect for you.

My views about Netanyahu are long held. They are by no means new.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/ (“Israel’s Senseless Killings And War With Iran”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/the-madness-of-benjamin-netanyahu/ (“The Madness Of Benjamin Netanyahu”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/ (“Ariel Sharon Is Missed”)

I am not alone in such views. As stated in my article above:

Barack Obama and other world leaders “detest” him, just as the Rabins and Ariel Sharon hated him. Indeed, Leah Rabin blamed Netanyahu for her husband Yitzhak’s assassination. She saw “only doom for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process” with Netanyahu at Israel’s helm; and her views were prescient.

Israel and its “necon” surrogates/shills pushed us into the tragic Iraq war, in which more than 5,000 Americans lost their lives, and many more were maimed, and trillions of dollars were wasted, for nothing.

Now, Netanyahu is trying desperately to push us into a war with Iran and/or Syria. Never again, even if Israel’s survival is at stake.

The United States is moving toward a position of energy dominance again, globally, where we may supply the needs of Europe and China in the future. We do not need the Middle East for anything anymore.

Yes, the un-American Israel Firsters plead the case for Netanyahu, but it falls on more and more deaf ears, in the United States and globally. As you know, Israel is hated, and anti-Semitism is rising in Europe and globally.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/#comment-7039 (“Is Night Falling Again For European Jews?“)

What Netanyahu has done and continues to do inures to the detriment of Jews, wherever they are located, which is tragic. You know this, and I have known it for a very long time.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/#comment-544 (“Why I Write And Say What I Do”)

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11 05 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

IS ISRAEL’S NETANYAHU EVEN MORE DESPICABLE THAN IN THE PAST? [UPDATED]

Netanyahu as a Nazi

Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has written:

Brushing aside the anguished pleas of our NATO allies, President Trump Tuesday contemptuously trashed the Iranian nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions.

Prime Minister Theresa May of Great Britain, President Emmanuel Macron of France and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were put on notice that their ties to Iran are to be severed, or secondary sanctions will be imposed on them.

Driving the point home, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin ordered Airbus to cancel its $19 billion contract to sell 100 commercial planes to Iran.

Who is cheering Trump’s trashing of the treaty?

The neocons who sought his political extinction in 2016, the royals of the Gulf, Bibi Netanyahu, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The IRGC had warned Iranians that the Americans were duplicitous.

When Trump finished speaking, Bibi launched strikes on Iranian bases in Syria, and flew to Moscow to persuade Vladimir Putin not to give the Iranians any air defense against Israeli attacks.

Iranian forces responded with 20 missiles fired at the Golan, which ignited a massive Israeli counterstrike Thursday night, a 70-missile attack on Iranian bases in Syria.

We appear to be at the beginning of a new war, and how it ends we know not. But for Bibi and National Security Adviser John Bolton, the end has always been clear — the smashing of Iran and regime change.

Tuesday, Trump warned that Iran is on “a quest for nuclear weapons,” and “if we do nothing … in just a short period of time, the world’s worst sponsor of state terror will be on the cusp of acquiring the world’s most dangerous weapon.”

And where is the evidence for this Bush-like assertion?

If Iran is on a “quest” for nukes, why did 17 U.S. intel agencies, “with high confidence,” in 2007 and 2011, say Iran did not even have a nuclear weapons program?

Saddam Hussein could not convince us he had no WMD, because the nonexistent WMD were the pretext, the casus belli, for doing what the War Party had already decided to do: invade Iraq.

We were lied into that war. And how did it turn out?

Why has the Foreign Relations committee not called in the heads of the U.S. intelligence agencies and asked them flat out: Does Iran have an active nuclear bomb program, or is this a pack of lies to stampede us into another war?

If Iran is on a quest for nukes, let the intel agencies tell us where the work is being done, so we can send inspectors and show the world.

Efforts to pull us back from being dragged into a new war have begun.

The Europeans are begging Iran to abide by the terms of the nuclear deal, even if the Americans do not. But the regime of Hassan Rouhani, who twice defeated Ayatollah-backed candidates, is in trouble.

The nuclear deal and opening to the West were the reasons the children of the Green Movement of 2009 voted for Rouhani. If his difficulties deepen because of reimposed U.S. and Western sanctions, his great achievement, the nuclear deal, will be seen by his people as the failed gamble of a fool who trusted the Americans.

Should Rouhani’s regime fall, we may get a Revolutionary Guard regime rather less to the liking of everyone, except for the War Party, which could seize upon that as a pretext for war.

What happens next is difficult to see.

Iran does not want a war with Israel in Syria that it cannot win.

Iran’s ally, Hezbollah, which just swept democratic elections in Lebanon, does not want a war with Israel that would bring devastation upon the nation it now leads.

The Russians don’t want a war with Israel or the Americans.

But as Putin came to the rescue of a Syria imperiled by ISIS and al-Qaida, to save his ally from a broad insurgency, he is not likely to sit impotently and watch endless air and missile strikes on Syria.

Trump has said U.S. troops will be getting out of Syria. But Bolton and the generals appear to have walked him back.

There are reports we are reinforcing the Kurds in Manbij on the west bank of the Euphrates, though President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has demanded that the Kurds vacate all Syrian border towns with Turkey.

Americans are also reportedly on the border of Yemen, assisting Saudi Arabia in locating the launch sites of the rockets being fired at Riyadh by Houthi rebels in retaliation for the three years of savage Saudi assault on their country.

Meanwhile, the news out of Afghanistan, our point of entry into the Near East wars almost a generation ago, is almost all bad — most of it about terrorist bombings of Afghan troops and civilians.

Is the foreign policy that America Firsters voted for being replaced by the Middle East agenda of Bibi and the neoconservatives? So it would appear.

See http://buchanan.org/blog/are-bibi-and-bolton-in-the-wheel-house-now-129294 (“Are Bibi and Bolton in the Wheel House Now?“) (emphasis added)

As I have written in the article above:

Leah Rabin blamed Netanyahu for her husband Yitzhak’s assassination. She saw “only doom for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process” with Netanyahu at Israel’s helm; and her views were prescient.

Each day that Netanyahu remains in power brings Israel closer to its demise, and Jews globally closer to the first holocaust of the 21st Century—which may make the Nazi Holocaust of the last century seem like “child’s play.” The human carnage might make even mass murderers like Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-tung wince.

Arguably Netanyahu and his Gestapo tactics have done more to harm Israel and Jews globally than any other leader is the tiny country’s brief history.

Do Netanyahu and the equally-despicable and un-American “Israel Firsters” (e.g., his “neo-con” shills) want even more Americans killed to save Israel—like the Iraq War, in which more than 5,000 Americans died and many more were maimed, and trillions of dollars were wasted, for nothing . . . other than the protection of Israel?

Never again, even if Israel’s survival is at stake. Barack Obama was right on this issue. Bolton has been and continues to be an unabashed and un-American Israeli shill.

Is Netanyahu doing all of this in the hopes of saving his political hide in Israel, amidst corruption charges that conceivably might result in his imprisonment—like another former Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert?

See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehud_Olmert (“Ehud Olmert“)

Lastly, what will the establishment of an American embassy in Jerusalem accomplish other than to achieve a pyrrhic victory, at the cost of increased Israeli, Jewish and other bloodshed? What a horrific price to pay.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/#comment-7039 (“Is Night Falling Again For European Jews?“)

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15 05 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Ashamed To Be Jewish [UPDATED]

Israel flag burning

Allison Kaplan Sommer has written for Haaretz:

The opening ceremony for the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem was, essentially, an invitation-only Trump campaign rally.

Those in attendance had all sworn loyalty to the president and belonged to one of the groups that has hailed him as a modern-day Cyrus the Great: Orthodox Jews, right-wing Israelis (including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) and the pro-Trump Republican base – particularly those in the evangelical community.

This was all on display from the ceremony’s opening blessing, by Texan Baptist megachurch pastor Dr. Robert Jeffress. His eyes squeezed closed in prayer, he thanked God for “our great president, Donald Trump,” lauded how Israel “has blessed this world by pointing us to you, the one true God, through the message of her prophets, her scriptures, and the Messiah,” and praying for Jerusalem “in the name of the spirit of the Prince of Peace, Jesus our lord.”

Standing beside him, also offering prayers in praise of Trump and Netanyahu, was ultra-Orthodox Chabad Rabbi Zalman Wolowik – a personal friend of U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman.

The ceremony was bookended with a benediction by another Trump stalwart: The televangelist founder of Christians United For Israel, Pastor John Hagee, who noted that “Jerusalem is where [the] Messiah will come and establish a kingdom that will never end,” and led the crowd in a final shout of “Hallelujah!”

In the front row, flanking Netanyahu and his wife Sara, were Jewish first daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner – who attend a Chabad synagogue – as well as Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson, who has just committed $30 million to GOP election races across the country and offered to pay for at least part of the new Jerusalem embassy himself. (His offer was ultimately declined).

The presence and visibility of the evangelical leaders at Monday’s inauguration demonstrated the true source of the political muscle that made the embassy move a reality. Even the banners around Jerusalem in praise of Trump were paid for by Friends of Zion, the brainchild of evangelical leader and Christian Zionist Mike Evans.

Conspicuously absent from the stage were any mainstream Orthodox, Conservative or Reform rabbis. In the audience, high-level representatives of the U.S. non-Orthodox Jewish majority were few and far between, though not entirely absent. Anti-Defamation League Director Jonathan Greenblatt was in attendance, for example.

Prominent Democratic political leaders – even the long-term, pro-Israel Jewish ones – were nowhere to be found. Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro, who still lives in Israel, was pointedly not invited to the event, despite the fact he went against many of his former colleagues from the Obama White House by supporting and praising the embassy move. No matter: As a non-Orthodox Democrat, he too was persona non grata.

For mainstream American Jewry, being so visibly shut out of an event that many had previously hoped and lobbied for – allied to the event’s dominance by evangelical leaders with controversial views on Jews, Muslims, Mormons and homosexuality – was disturbing enough.

But the fact they were being represented by the likes of Ivanka, Kushner and Adelson, while simultaneously being bombarded with disturbing images of the violence on the Gaza border, triggered a full-on crisis for many.

Sadness and confusion permeated the statements of Jewish leaders, and these sentiments – intensified with anger – exploded across social media.

Union for Reform Judaism President Rabbi Rick Jacobs said he was “alarmed, concerned, and profoundly saddened by the growing number of Gazan dead and wounded. It does not have to be this way.”

Regarding the embassy ceremony, Jacobs said, “The Trump Administration declared its commitment to promoting a peaceful solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict by celebrating the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem. We also celebrate the opening of the Embassy as an affirmation of the deep and lasting ties between the U.S. and Israel. However, we remain very much aware of the lack of progress toward a long-term just solution for Israelis and Palestinians.”

J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami harshly criticized the timing of the ceremony, saying the decision to hold it to “coincide with both the anniversary of Israeli independence and the Palestinian ‘Naqba’ [sic]” has “thrown more fuel on an already raging fire.” Ben-Ami was referring to the Palestinian term for the establishment of the State of Israel, which means “Catastrophe” in Arabic and is marked yearly on May 15.

Ben-Ami added that “opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem and official American recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital should be a moment of celebration for all of us who feel deeply connected to Jerusalem and recognize its importance to the Jewish people over the millenia [sic]. However, the manner and timing of this move were designed to advance the agenda of right-wing political leaders in the US and Israel, rather than the interest of Americans, Israelis and Palestinians in resolving the conflict.”

He continued: “One only has to observe the campaign rally atmosphere in Jerusalem today to realize that the greatest interest being served is President Trump’s desire to fulfill a campaign promise – and to cater to the views of ‘Greater Israel’ advocates like Ambassador David Friedman, Sheldon Adelson, bigoted pastor Robert Jeffress and their friends in the Israeli government.”

The views of American Jews were expressed in far rawer form on Twitter, with many confessing to feelings of shame about events in Jerusalem and Gaza.

A typical tweet came from Christina Duval, who wrote: “I am very proud to be Jewish, but I am completely ashamed of what’s going on in Israel. After all our people suffered, you’d think we’d value human lives a lot more.”

Ivanka Trump and Kushner, meanwhile, were targeted by Jewish celebrities like Chelsea Handler and Bette Midler, who took aim at the couple on Twitter.

Handler wrote, “I’m glad Ivanka and Jared could take time away from their busy schedules of not being qualified to represent the US to go represent the US, and celebrate moving the capital in exchange for the adelson’s donations, while 50+ Palestinians have been killed.” Midler added, “You lose the PR advantage on this one, #MrTrump, with those two images side be [sic] side, Ivanka and Jared yukking it up in Jerusalem while the Palestinians get shot at. Perfect, you moron.”

Ultimately, though, any criticism by American Jews, liberals or the media about the embassy ceremony or distress over U.S. responsibility for the deaths in Gaza was utterly irrelevant, as far as the White House was concerned.

If Adelson was happy enough to continue plowing his millions into Republican campaigns, and if Jeffress, Hagee and the rest of the pro-Trump evangelical base believe the embassy move has brought them one step closer to redemption and will turn out in force for the 2018 midterms – for President Trump, his mission has been accomplished.

See https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-as-trump-base-celebrates-embassy-move-u-s-jews-mourn-gaza-deaths-1.6092560 (“‘Ashamed to be Jewish’: As Trump base celebrates embassy move, horrified U.S. Jews mourn Gaza deaths”) (emphasis added); see also https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/.premium-a-predictable-disaster-in-gaza-israel-did-nothing-to-prevent-clashes-1.6091797 (“A Predictable Bloodbath in Gaza: Israel Did Not Lift a Finger to Prevent Lethal Clashes“) and https://apnews.com/07d64de68b5f4e67b83f96174e779926 (“Israel faces diplomatic fallout after dozens killed in Gaza“) and https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-usa-embassy-turkey/turkey-tells-israeli-ambassador-to-leave-over-gaza-killings-idUSKCN1IG1ZK (“Turkey tells Israeli ambassador to leave over Gaza killings“) and http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2018/05/15/561820/Turkey-OIC–Binali-Yildirim–Recep-Tayyip-Erdogan (“Turkey urges Islamic world to unite against Israel“)

J Street’s Jeremy Ben-Ami was prescient in seeking reconciliation between Israel’s Jews and the non-Jews who inhabit Greater Palestine, when he evoked the wisdom of his Jewish forebearers in asking about the treatment of Palestinians:

Is this how I wanted to be treated when I was a minority in another people’s country?

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/#comment-1825 (“Jeremy Ben-Ami, ‘A New Voice For Israel’—A Wonderful Book That Should Be Read By Anyone Who Cares About And Wants To Understand Israel’s Past, Present And Future”)

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25 05 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

ISRAEL AND ITS SHILLS ARE MOVING US TO WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST, AGAIN

Israel flag burning

Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has written about Israel and its despicable shills in Washington, and their efforts to push us into a war with Iran and/or Syria:

U.S. threats to crush Iran and North Korea may yet work, but as of now neither Tehran nor Pyongyang appears to be intimidated.

Repeated references by NSC adviser John Bolton and Vice President Mike Pence to the “Libya model” for denuclearization of North Korea just helped sink the Singapore summit of President Trump and Kim Jong Un. To North Korea, the Libya model means the overthrow and murder of Libya strongman Col. Gadhafi, after he surrendered his WMD.

Wednesday, North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui exploded at Pence’s invocation of Libya: “Vice-President Pence has made unbridled and impudent remarks that North Korea might end like Libya … I cannot suppress my surprise at such ignorant and stupid remarks.

“Whether the U.S. will meet us at a meeting room or encounter us at nuclear-to-nuclear showdown is entirely dependent upon the decision and behavior of the United States.”

Yesterday, Trump canceled the Singapore summit.

Earlier this week at the Heritage Foundation, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo laid out our Plan B for Iran in a speech that called to mind Prussian Field Marshal Karl Von Moltke.

Among Pompeo’s demands: Iran must end all support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and Hamas in Gaza, withdraw all forces under Iranian command in Syria, and disarm its Shiite militia in Iraq.

Iran must confess its past lies about a nuclear weapons program, and account publicly for all such activity back into the 20th century.

Iran must halt all enrichment of uranium, swear never to produce plutonium, shut down its heavy water reactor, open up its military bases to inspection to prove it has no secret nuclear program, and stop testing ballistic missiles.

And unless Iran submits, she will be strangled economically.

What Pompeo delivered was an ultimatum: Iran is to abandon all its allies in all Mideast wars, or face ruin and possible war with the USA.

It is hard to recall a secretary of state using the language Pompeo deployed: “We will track down Iranian operatives and their Hezbollah proxies operating around the world and crush them. Iran will never again have carte blanche to dominate the Middle East.”

But how can Iran “dominate” a Mideast that is home to Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt, as well as U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea and Syria?

To Iran’s east is a nuclear-armed Pakistan. To its west is a nuclear-armed U.S. Fifth Fleet and a nuclear-armed Israel. Iran has no nukes, no warships to rival ours and a 1970s air force.

Yet, this U.S.-Iran confrontation, triggered by Trump’s trashing of the nuclear deal and Pompeo’s ultimatum, is likely to end one of three ways:

First, Tehran capitulates, which is unlikely, as President Hassan Rouhani retorted to Pompeo: “Who are you to decide for Iran and the world? We will continue our path with the support of our nation.” Added Ayatollah Khamenei, “Iran’s presence in the region is our strategic depth.”

Second, Iran defies U.S. sanctions and continues to support its allies in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen. This would seem likely to lead to collisions and war.

Third, the U.S. could back off its maximalist demands, as Trump backed off Bolton’s demand that Kim Jong Un accept the Libyan model of total and verifiable disarmament before any sanctions are lifted.

Where, then, are we headed?

While our NATO allies are incensed by Trump’s threat to impose secondary sanctions if they do not re-impose sanctions on Tehran, the Europeans are likely to cave in to America’s demands. For Europe to choose Iran over a U.S. that has protected Europe since the Cold War began and is an indispensable market for Europe’s goods would be madness.

Vladimir Putin appears to want no part of an Iran-Israel or U.S.-Iran war and has told Bashar Assad that Russia will not be selling Damascus his S-300 air defense system. Putin has secured his bases in Syria and wants to keep them.

As for the Chinese, she will take advantage of the West’s ostracism of Iran by drawing Iran closer to her own orbit.

Is there a compromise to be had?

Perhaps, for some of Pompeo’s demands accord with the interests of Iran, which cannot want a war with the United States, or with Israel, which would likely lead to war with the United States.

Iran could agree to release Western prisoners, move Shiite militia in Syria away from the Golan Heights, accept verifiable restrictions on tests of longer-range missiles and establish deconfliction rules for U.S. and Iranian warships in the Persian Gulf.

Reward: aid from the West and renewed diplomatic relations with the United States.

Surely, a partial, verifiable nuclear disarmament of North Korea is preferable to war on the peninsula. And, surely, a new nuclear deal with Iran with restrictions on missiles is preferable to war in the Gulf.

Again, we cannot make the perfect the enemy of the good.

See http://buchanan.org/blog/is-us-bellicosity-backfiring-129375 (“Is US Bellicosity Backfiring?“) (emphasis added)

Having given us the Iraq War—in which more than 5,000 Americans died and many more were maimed and trillions of dollars were wasted, for nothing—Americans must block all future attempts by Israel and its despicable shills to push us into another war in the Middle East.

Never again, even if Israel’s survival is at stake!

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29 06 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

At Some Point, Iran’s Rulers Might Become Desperate [UPDATED]

Israel flag burning

Parisa Hafezi has written for Reuters:

Mounting pressure from the Trump administration combined with discontent among many Iranians at the state of the economy are rattling the Islamic Republic, with little sign that its leaders have the answers, officials and analysts say.

Three days of protests broke out on Sunday in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, with hundreds of angry shopkeepers denouncing a sharp fall in the value of the Iranian currency.

The disturbances are a major challenge, but analysts expect the leadership will survive despite factional infighting and growing economic problems.

However, the weekend protests quickly acquired a political edge, with people shouting slogans against Iran’s ultimate authority, Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and other top officials, calling them thieves who should step down.

Bazaar merchants, mostly loyal to the leadership since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, are angry at what they see as the government’s muddled response to the crisis, which they said had sent prices soaring and made trading almost impossible.

The rial has lost 40 per cent of its value since last month, when President Donald Trump pulled out of Iran’s 2015 nuclear accord and announced draconian sanctions on Tehran.

These include an attempt to shut down the international sale of Iranian oil, Tehran’s main source of revenue, a threat that has cast a chill over the economy.

“The country is under pressure from inside and outside. But it seems there is no crisis management plan to control the situation,” said an official close to Khamenei’s camp.

The full impact of Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal and Washington’s move to stop foreign countries from doing business with Iran, may not be clear for months.

European signatories are hoping to salvage the deal – under which most sanctions were lifted and Iran curbed its nuclear program – but there are doubts they can keep it alive.

Already French companies Total and Peugeot, for example, have said they will pull out of Iran rather than risk being shut out of the U.S. financial system, as Washington threatens to use the dollar’s reserve currency status to punish anyone who gets in the way of its ramped-up Iran policy.

Iran has blamed U.S. sanctions for the fall in the rial, saying the measures amount to a “political, psychological and economic” war on Tehran – although some officials recognize that the threat has exposed serious failings at home.

“Sanctions cannot be blamed for all the internal problems. They have yet to be implemented,” said a second official, familiar with Iran’s decision-making process.

To pile on the pain, Washington says all countries must end crude imports from Iran by Nov. 4, hitting the oil sales that generate 60 percent of the country’s income. Iran says this level of cuts will never happen.

“DEATH TO THE DICTATOR”

Tehran’s Grand bazaar is traditionally the biggest financial ally of the establishment, and it helped bankroll the 1979 Revolution.

But while cries of “Death to the Dictator” resembled chants of “Death to the Shah” four decades ago in the bazaar, analysts and insiders ruled out any chance that Iran is once more on the brink of a seismic shift in its political landscape.

“With severe economic pressure ahead of us, the protests will not die easily,” said an Iranian diplomat in Europe. “But the chance of a regime change is zero because Iranians do not want another revolution and are skeptical it would be for the better.”

Police and security forces maintained a heavy presence in the area after days of clashes with protesters. Though officials say the bazaar has resumed normal business, the rial crisis and its political reverberations are surely far from over.

Video on social media showed protests continuing in several towns and cities, with some participants demanding regime change.

While pragmatist President Hassan Rouhani’s government has tried to stop the currency slide with a combination of threats and persuasion, many Iranians remain unconvinced.

“The rial’s fall is disrupting my business. The cost of imports has skyrocketed. If it continues, I will not be able to continue my business,” said Reza, a shopkeeper in the bazaar who refused to give his full name.

Despite calls for unity by Khamenei, divisions have emerged among Iran’s ruling elite, with some hardliners calling for a snap presidential election, and criticizing Rouhani for economic mismanagement.

Factional power struggles are endemic in Iran, where hardliners around the Supreme Leader, such as the Revolutionary Guards and the judiciary, face off against the president, and pragmatists and reformists in elected institutions such as parliament.

“Both sides will try to use the combination of external and internal pressure to advance their causes,” said Sanam Vakil, an adjunct professor teaching Middle East politics at SAIS Europe.

“If the government fails to find an immediate solution to the crisis … a snap presidential election will be inevitable in the coming months,” said Tehran-based analyst Saeed Leylaz.

AN OUTSIDE CHANCE

Some analysts see an outside chance that Iran’s hardline leaders might seek an accommodation with the United States, with the prospect of sanctions bringing Iran’s economy to its knees.

But Trump may be in no hurry to embark on negotiations that might bolster Iranian clerical leaders.

The leadership “might lean toward a compromise with America to preserve the establishment”, said one official involved in Iran’s nuclear talks with foreign powers. “But of course America should show flexibility as well.”

While more pragmatic elements in Iran have indicated an interest in dialogue with America and a diplomatic solution to the standoff, Khamenei has resisted direct negotiations, partly because of internal power politics.

“Despite their radical public approach, hardliners want a compromise with America, but they don’t want to give Rouhani the upper hand at home by championing talks,” said a source, familiar with Iranian thinking.

See https://ca.news.yahoo.com/irans-rulers-face-discontent-u-pressure-mounts-140111749.html (“Iran’s rulers face discontent as U.S. pressure mounts“) (emphasis added)

Ultimately, the question will become whether Iran’s leaders are such zealots that they are suicidal, and willing to launch devastating and nation-ending attacks against Israel—or to encourage and enable their surrogates to do so.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/01/19/emp-attack-only-30-million-americans-survive/#comment-15839 (“Will The United States And Israel Cease To Exist?“)

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28 07 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

SICK: How Israel’s Secret Service Has Become The World Leader In Assassins [UPDATED]

Israel flag burning

As I have written in the article above:

Months and years from now, Benjamin Netanyahu and his ilk will confront the legacy of their crimes against the Palestinians. . . .

[Many] world leaders “detest” him, just as the Rabins and Ariel Sharon hated him. Indeed, Leah Rabin blamed Netanyahu for her husband Yitzhak’s assassination. She saw “only doom for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process” with Netanyahu at Israel’s helm; and her views were prescient.

After the tragic assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, and the prophetic words of his widow Leah, the world might think that Israel would have learned important lessons.

Dominic Sandbrook has written for the UK’s Daily Mail:

Forty years ago, Wadie Haddad was one of the world’s most wanted men. Bold, determined, ruthless, Haddad was the founder of the far-Left Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

He trained notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal and masterminded the hijack of an Air France plane that was flown to Entebbe in Uganda and later rescued by Israeli commandos.

Not surprisingly, the Israeli secret service, Mossad, wanted him dead. But six years after they first put out a ‘kill order’, Haddad was still very much alive, living in apparent comfort in Baghdad.

What happened next was worthy of a James Bond thriller. On January 10, 1978, a Mossad agent inside Haddad’s inner circle, known only as Sadness, switched his toothpaste for an identical tube laced with a deadly toxin, developed in a secret laboratory near Tel Aviv.

Every time Haddad brushed his teeth, a tiny quantity of the toxin worked its way through his gums into his bloodstream.

Little by little, he began to die. His Palestinian friends contacted the East German secret police, who flew him to a hospital in East Berlin. Ten days later, bleeding from every orifice, Haddad died in agony.

The doctors were baffled. But back in Israel, Mossad congratulated itself on a job well done.

What happened to Haddad, argues Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman in a riveting new book, was merely the most melodramatic example of what is now an enduring pattern.

Israel, a country born in bloodshed, has become the world leader in assassinations.

The numbers alone are extraordinary. Not only have Mossad’s secret agents killed more people than the agents of any other state since World War II, but the pace has rapidly increased, with some 800 operations in the past decade.

The number of deaths will never be known for sure, but they are in the thousands.

There is, of course, something irresistibly fascinating about the idea of the globe-trotting secret agent, moving through the murky world of Middle Eastern politics with a licence to kill. And some of Bergman’s stories do have the flavour of a Hollywood spy blockbuster.

One operation in 1968 was directly inspired by the film The Manchurian Candidate, with Mossad hiring a Swedish-born psychologist to brainwash a Palestinian prisoner into murdering Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

The psychologist picked a suitable prisoner and spent three months hypnotising him with the simple message: ‘Arafat bad. He must be removed’.

The prisoner, known only as Fatkhi, was trained to shoot at pictures of Arafat, hidden in a specially prepared room.

On December 19, 1968, a Mossad team smuggled Fatkhi across the River Jordan, from where he was supposed to infiltrate Arafat’s headquarters.

Then they waited. Five hours later, news came. Fatkhi had wasted no time. He had gone straight to a police station and accused Mossad of trying to brainwash him. The operation was an abject failure.

In recent years, however, Mossad has lived up to its reputation as the most efficient secret killing machine in the world. One operation in Dubai proves the point. In January 2010, a team of several dozen Mossad agents flew to the oil-rich emirate on false passports, wearing wigs and false moustaches.

Disguised as tourists and tennis players — some of them even carried racquets — they broke into a room at the luxurious Al-Bustan Hotel.

There they waited for their quarry, top Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. As soon as al-Mabhouh let himself into his room, they grabbed him and used a high-tech ultrasound instrument to inject poison into his neck without even breaking the skin.

He died within moments. Four hours later, most of the team had already flown out of Dubai. Job done.

All this might sound swashbuckling or heroic. In reality, there is nothing glamorous about Bergman’s story.

Indeed, the first man to die in his book is not some Palestinian terrorist or Left-wing extremist. It is a British policeman: Detective Superintendent Tom Wilkin, from Aldeburgh on the Suffolk coast.

In the autumn of 1944, Wilkin was in Jerusalem, where he was in charge of cracking down on Zionist guerillas.

At the time, Jerusalem was part of British-governed Palestine, where the authorities were struggling to keep a lid on the tensions between Zionists — who wanted an independent Jewish state — and their Palestinian neighbours.

To the Jewish militants in the terrorist Stern Gang, Wilkin was not a man. He was a target. In September, 1944, as he was strolling down a street, a boy sitting outside a grocery store threw down his hat — a sign the target was in range.

Moments later, two young Jewish men opened fire with revolvers. Wilkin ‘managed to turn around and draw his pistol,’ one assailant, David Shomron, recalled, ‘but then he fell face first. A spurt of blood came out of his forehead, like a fountain.’

Shomron did not feel the slightest remorse. ‘Not even a little twinge of guilt,’ he said later. ‘We believed the more coffins that reached London, the closer the day of freedom would be.’

That terrible phrase — ‘the more coffins that reached London’ — captures the mood of Bergman’s book. For, as cold-blooded as this sounds, Shomron was proved right.

Faced with a wave of killings, including the infamous 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, in which 91 mostly British officials were killed, Clement Attlee’s government decided to get out. The Zionists got what they wanted.

But the blood that gushed from poor Tom Wilkin’s head would soon become a torrent.

The state of Israel was born amid brutal ethnic cleansing, with Jewish and Palestinian neighbours slaughtering one another in their thousands, while the new country’s Arab neighbours tried to strangle it at birth. It is hardly surprising that, ever since, Israel’s leaders have been driven by insecurity. After all, Israel has always been surrounded by hostile states, most of which deny that it even has the right to exist.

On top of that, no Israeli can ever forget the awful shadow of the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis.

Even today, hatred of Jews remains a monstrous feature of Europe’s political landscape — as evidenced by the appalling goings-on inside the Labour Party, where leader Jeremy Corbyn and his friends have turned a blind eye to the resurgence of the most poisonous anti- Semitism. No wonder, then, that in the struggle for survival, Israel’s leaders have reached so often for the bomb and bullet.

‘If someone comes to kill you,’ says the sacred Jewish text, the Talmud, ‘rise up and kill him first.’

As Bergman argues, that has been the principle guiding Mossad, as well as Israel’s internal security service Shin Bet and the army intelligence agency Aman, since the state’s foundation 70 years ago.

Former Mossad director Meir Dagan, who ordered hundreds of assassinations between 2002 and 2011, kept a picture of his Polish-born grandfather, on his knees and surrounded by German soldiers, moments before he was shot and thrown into a mass grave.

The lesson, Dagan told Bergman before his death in 2016, was that ‘most of the Jews in the Holocaust died without fighting. We must never reach that situation again, kneeling, without the ability to fight for our lives.’

Bergman’s own story, by the way, is fascinating. Although this book has earned him a reputation as a whistle-blower, he is the very antithesis of a simplistic, bleeding-hearted activist.

Born in 1972 to parents who were both Holocaust survivors, he did his national service in the intelligence unit of Israel’s Military Police Corps, has a PhD from Cambridge and is now a senior correspondent for Israel’s largest newspaper.

Based on 1,000 interviews and vast numbers of leaked documents, his book often reads like a John le Carre novel. But it took considerable courage for him to publish it.

While he was working on it, the chief of the Israel Defense Forces accused him of ‘aggravated espionage’ and even asked the security services to take action against him.

Why? The reason is that Bergman sheds an unsparing light on the human cost of Israel’s targeted killings policy. He shows, for example, that when operations have taken place overseas, Israel’s agents were, and probably still are, unforgivably casual about civilian victims.

Perhaps the most chilling section of his book concerns an operation in 1973 — and which was about as far from the glamour and romance of a James Bond thriller as you could possibly imagine.

That summer, Mossad was on the hunt for Ali Hassan Salameh, one of the most wanted men in the world. Salameh was chief of operations for Black September, the Palestinian terrorist group that murdered 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics.

Mossad wanted him dead, but the trail had gone cold. Then came a miracle. In Lillehammer, Norway, an Israeli secret agent spotted Salameh in a cafe. Word went back to Tel Aviv and a hit squad was assembled. On July 21, as Salameh and his girlfriend got off a bus on their way home from the cinema, the assassins were waiting in a rented Volvo. They leaped out of the car, fired eight shots, jumped back in their car and screeched away, leaving their target in a pool of blood.

It was almost the perfect hit, but for just one problem. They had killed the wrong man.

It was not Salameh, but Ahmed Bouchikhi, a Moroccan waiter with a heavily pregnant wife.

In the aftermath, Norwegian police arrested six Israeli agents. Five served time in Norway, though all were released quickly under a secret deal. When the five returned to Israel, they were greeted as heroes. Few questioned the basic morality of the operation; it was just a shame, they thought, that Mossad had got the wrong man.

But they did get him eventually. On January 22, 1979, Salameh had just left his Beirut apartment when a female Israeli agent, watching from her balcony, pressed a button and a gigantic car bomb ripped through the street.

Eight bystanders were also killed, including a German nun and a British student, but nobody at Mossad cared. ‘You get used to killing,’ explains former security chief Ami Ayalon. ‘Human life becomes easy to dispose of. You spend a quarter of an hour, 20 minutes, on who to kill.’

In a chillingly familiar phrase, Ayalon even calls this the ‘banality of evil’ — words borrowed from the German philosopher Hannah Arendt, who used it to describe the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. That tells its own story.

And although Bergman shows why decent people can feel they have no choice but to take terrible decisions, he also shows the consequences of crossing the line between good and evil.

In the early Eighties, for example, Israeli defence minister, and later prime minister, Ariel Sharon’s obsession with killing Yasser Arafat led him into one of the darkest chapters in Israel’s modern history. At the time, Israel was embroiled in a horrific civil war in Lebanon, which killed at least 120,000 people.

There, on Sharon’s orders, his army colluded with the local Christian Phalange, a militia who murdered hundreds, if not thousands, of Muslims in a Beirut slaughterhouse, cut off their ears as souvenirs and buried their bodies in lime pits. Almost incredibly, Sharon did not stop there.

Some of Bergman’s interviewees told him that on five occasions in 1982, Sharon seriously contemplated shooting down an ordinary civilian airliner when he heard that Arafat might be aboard.

On each occasion the Israeli military refused to obey, sometimes deliberately dithering until it was too late. Had they not done so, hundreds of ordinary passengers would have died in what Bergman calls ‘an intentional war crime’.

No doubt all this will be grist to the mill of Israel’s critics. On the Left, in particular, criticism of Israel has become an automatic reflex, often tinged with more than a hint of anti-Semitism.

There are, of course, good reasons to be critical of Israel. I find it impossible to justify its harsh treatment of the defeated Palestinians, or its callous, cynical policy of expanding Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.

Yet after all the Jews have suffered — pogroms, persecution and the unspeakable obscenity of the Holocaust — what reasonable person would begrudge them a homeland of their own?

And who can blame them for fighting to defend that homeland from those who would destroy it?

Ever since 1948, as Bergman himself points out, the threats to Israel’s existence have been only too real. One of his book’s most powerful images is a picture of an Israeli woman, drenched in her own blood, being carried away after a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv.

Sharon used to show it to foreign diplomats whenever they questioned Israel’s targeted assassination programme. Given Israel’s bloody history and dangerous present, I understand why its agents feel they must act as they do.

The question, though, is whether the killings are working. For the past 70 years, the deaths have piled up, yet still there is no peace. The blood flows, but still Israel is not safe.

Its enemies, of course, deserve a large share of the blame. But perhaps killing has become so easy that Israel’s leaders have stopped looking for other solutions. Either way, the end is nowhere in sight — and so Mossad’s killings go on. Because of their secretive nature, they rarely make the headlines.

But even as you are reading these words, someone, somewhere, is planning the next hit.

See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6001335/How-Israels-secret-service-world-leader-assassins.html (“Poison toothpaste, prisoners hypnotised to kill: How Mossad, Israel’s secret service, has become the world leader in assassins with 800 operations in the last decade“) (emphasis added)

Anti-Semitism continues to grow in Europe and around the world; and European Jews are urged to flee to Israel. Is the cost of being hated truly worth it? Israelis and global Jewry must ask themselves this question.

They seem to blithely ignore the effects that Russian Putin’s more limited assassinations in the UK have produced.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/#comment-7039 (“Is Night Falling Again For European Jews?“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/russias-putin-is-a-killer/ (“Russia’s Putin Is A Killer“)

Netanyahu is Israel's Hitler

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1 08 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Jerusalem: Repression Of Non-Jews Like The Japanese In California During World War II

U.S. embassy in Jerusalem

Isabel Kershner has written in the New York Times:

The historic opening of the United States Embassy in Jerusalem . . . seals the Trump administration’s recognition of the holy, and hotly contested, city as the capital of Israel.

For many Jewish Israelis, the move is a long overdue expression of reality in the city. But the recognition upends decades of American foreign policy and an international consensus that holds that it prejudges negotiations over the final status of the city. Palestinians claim East Jerusalem, with its holy sites sacred to Christians, Muslims and Jews, as the capital of a future Palestinian state and vehemently oppose the American decision.

The Talmud teaches that “10 measures of beauty were given to the world; Jerusalem received nine while the rest of the world received one.”

Earthly Jerusalem is complicated. Here are nine things worth knowing about the city.

It All Began in Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv was the first seat of government for the embryonic State of Israel.

Under the United Nations partition plan of 1947 to create a Jewish state and an Arab state from Mandatory Palestine, Jerusalem, with its holy sites, was designated as a “corpus separatum” — a separate, international entity under the auspices of the United Nations. Zionist forces conquered West Jerusalem during the 1948 war, after five Arab armies attacked the newly declared state. The Arab, eastern part of the city came under Jordanian control.

West Jerusalem, which had been under siege during the hostilities, was not set up to serve as a capital and remained a relative backwater. There was no mention of Jerusalem in the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel signed by the state’s founders on May 14, 1948, in the old Tel Aviv Museum.

David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, instructed Parliament to transfer its operations to Jerusalem only in December 1949, after the General Assembly of the United Nations began debating how to carry out its partition plan. Citing 3,000 years of Jewish history in the city, Mr. Ben-Gurion declared Jerusalem to be an inseparable part of the State of Israel and its eternal capital.

A Work in Progress

A report issued on Sunday by Israel’s state comptroller, the government watchdog, chided the government for failing to carry out its own development plans going back to 2005 to strengthen Jerusalem.

One goal was moving about 140 branches of 25 government ministries and offices to Jerusalem, along with their 2,700 employees. These include branches of the prime minister’s office and the ministries of health, finance, transportation, culture and sports, education and welfare. The decision was made 11 years ago.

A 2015 deadline for the move was missed and reset for 2019. The state comptroller, Yosef Shapira, a retired judge, said that, too, was unlikely to be met.

“In order to bring about a significant change in the status of Jerusalem, it is not enough to make solemn declarations, but actions must be taken,” Mr. Shapira wrote.

The report was released to mark the 51st anniversary, according to the Hebrew calendar, of Israel’s capture of East Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 war.

Who Lives in Jerusalem?

Jerusalem, the largest city in Israel, has a population of close to 900,000, about 10 percent of the total number of residents of Israel, according to the latest figures released by the national Central Bureau of Statistics.

Jews make up 62.3 percent of the city’s population, down from 69.5 percent 20 years ago. The Palestinian population has grown to 37.7 percent from 30.5 percent in 1998.

Still, experts say Jews have been the largest religious group in the city for the last 150 years. Given the high birthrate among strictly Orthodox Jews, the character of Jewish Jerusalem is changing.

Of 77,000 pupils in the city’s Hebrew-language elementary schools, about 50,000 are now studying in the ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, system, which is ambivalent, at best, about Zionism. About 14,000 study in modern Zionist Orthodox schools. Only about 13,000 study in secular schools.

Not All Jerusalemites Are Israelis

After Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 war, it vastly expanded the city boundaries and set about building huge Jewish housing developments in the newly won territory, which most of the world considers occupied. About 200,000 Israeli Jews now live in those neighborhoods, or settlements, among at least 320,000 Palestinians.

The vast majority of East Jerusalem’s Palestinian inhabitants are permanent residents of Israel, can work anywhere in the country and are eligible for Israeli social benefits. But they are not full citizens of Israel.

While the Palestinian residents may apply for citizenship, few do for political reasons and even fewer are approved.

“One could argue that Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem is largely ‘hollow,’” Amnon Ramon, a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research, an independent think tank, wrote in a 2017 paper marking 50 years of the 1967 war. “It relates, first and foremost, to territory,” he added, “not to the people who reside there.”

The Unfinished War

The day after the United States Embassy opens in Jerusalem, Palestinians will mark the 70th anniversary of what they call the Nakba, or the catastrophe, of 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes in what is now Israel and became refugees.

By the end of 1949, about 40 Palestinian villages in the Jerusalem area, with a total population of more than 70,000, were emptied of their inhabitants. About 45,000 Palestinians lost their homes in urban areas on the west side of the city, according to the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Negotiations Affairs Department.

“We are still living that Nakba,” said Fuad Hallaq, the department’s Jerusalem adviser, during a recent tour of the area around the new embassy.

An Economic Divide

About 76 percent of the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem live below the poverty line compared with about 23 percent of Jewish residents. In the Arab neighborhoods, the average monthly income is 40 percent lower per person than in the Jewish neighborhoods of the city.

Churches and Real Estate

According to a study by Israel Kimchi of the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Studies, the churches in Jerusalem hold some 5,000 dunams (approximately 1,235 acres) of land in prime areas of the city, including in the so-called Holy Basin around the Old City and in prestigious neighborhoods like Rehavia, Nayot and Talbieh.

Deals were made to transfer the rights to the land where the Israeli Parliament and the president’s official residence are, but according to Mr. Ramon, the researcher, part of Parliament’s grounds may still be church property.

In recent years, he said, private promoters and companies have managed to buy land, or lease rights for an additional 200 years, from Christian bodies, particularly the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, leading to some uncertainty in the real estate market.

Diplomatic Maneuvers

For a period in the 1960s and ’70s, about 18 foreign embassies were in Jerusalem, mostly representing African and Latin American countries. El Salvador and Costa Rica were the last of the group to leave the city, in 2006, reopening their embassies in Tel Aviv. Now, Guatemala, which moved to the Tel Aviv area in 1980, when Israel passed a law formalizing the unification of Jerusalem and effectively annexing the eastern part, is relocating to Jerusalem on Wednesday. Several other countries have announced their intention to move back.

Name Recognition: Team Trump

The Beitar Jerusalem Football Club, a symbol of the city founded in 1936 that has long been linked with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party and is notorious for episodes of racism and violence, announced on Sunday that it was changing its name to Beitar “Trump” Jerusalem. “President Trump has displayed courage, vision and true love for the people of Israel and their capital,” the soccer club said in a statement.

In December, Israel’s minister for transportation, Israel Katz, said he wanted to put Mr. Trump’s name on a proposed new train station in the Old City.

See https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/13/world/middleeast/israel-jerusalem-us-embassy.html (“9 Things to Know About Jerusalem as U.S. Embassy Opens“) (emphasis added); see also https://il.usembassy.gov/embassy/ (“U.S. Embassy in Israel“) and https://www.google.com/search?q=U.S.+Embassy,+Jerusalem&client=gmail&rls=aso&authuser=0&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiI3fux7srcAhUEKKwKHYGnDFcQ_AUIDCgD&biw=1301&bih=701 (Photos of new embassy)

Japanese-Americans were removed to internment camps on our West Coast, and lost everything in the process. This tragic chapter in U.S. history has been repeated in Netanyahu’s Israel.

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3 08 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Israeli Madness: War With Iran [UPDATED]

Israeli flag burning

Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has written about Israel and the “War Party” (or Israel’s despicable shills in the GOP), and their efforts to push us into a war with Iran:

A war with Iran would define, consume and potentially destroy the Trump presidency, but exhilarate the neocon never-Trumpers who most despise the man.

Why, then, is President Donald Trump toying with such an idea?

Looking back at Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen, wars we began or plunged into, what was gained to justify the cost in American blood and treasure, and the death and destruction we visited upon that region? How has our great rival China suffered by not getting involved?

Oil is the vital strategic Western interest in the Persian Gulf. Yet a war with Iran would imperil, not secure, that interest.

Mass migration from the Islamic world, seeded with terrorist cells, is the greatest threat to Europe from the Middle East. But would not a U.S. war with Iran increase rather than diminish that threat?

Would the millions of Iranians who oppose the mullahs’ rule welcome U.S. air and naval attacks on their country? Or would they rally behind the regime and the armed forces dying to defend their country?

“Mr Trump, don’t play with the lion’s tail,” warned President Hassan Rouhani in July: “War with Iran is the mother of all wars.”

But he added, “Peace with Iran is the mother of all peace.”

Rouhani left wide open the possibility of peaceful settlement.

Trump’s all-caps retort virtually invoked Hiroshima: “Never, ever threaten the United States again or you will suffer consequences the like of which few throughout history have suffered before.”

When Trump shifted and blurted out that he was open to talks — “No preconditions. They want to meet? I’ll meet.” — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo contradicted him: Before any meeting, Iran must change the way they treat their people and “reduce their malign behavior.”

We thus appear to be steering into a head-on collision.

For now that Trump has trashed the nuclear deal and is reimposing sanctions, Iran’s economy has taken a marked turn for the worse.

Its currency has lost half its value. Inflation is surging toward Venezuelan levels. New U.S. sanctions will be imposed this week and again in November. Major foreign investments are being canceled. U.S. allies are looking at secondary sanctions if they do not join the strangulation of Iran.

Tehran’s oil exports are plummeting along with national revenue.

Demonstrations and riots are increasingly common.

Rouhani and his allies who bet their futures on a deal to forego nuclear weapons in return for an opening to the West look like fools to their people. And the Revolutionary Guard Corps that warned against trusting the Americans appears vindicated.

Iran’s leaders have now threatened that when their oil is no longer flowing freely and abundantly, Arab oil may be blocked from passing through the Strait of Hormuz out to Asia and the West.

Any such action would ignite an explosion in oil prices worldwide and force a U.S. naval response to reopen the strait. A war would be on.

Yet the correlation of political forces is heavily weighted in favor of driving Tehran to the wall. In the U.S., Iran has countless adversaries and almost no advocates. In the Middle East, Israelis, Saudis and the UAE would relish having us smash Iran.

Among the four who will decide on war, Trump, Pompeo and John Bolton have spoken of regime change, while Defense Secretary James Mattis has lately renounced any such strategic goal.

With Israel launching attacks against Iranian-backed militia in Syria, U.S. ships and Iranian speedboats constantly at close quarters in the Gulf, and Houthi rebels in Yemen firing at Saudi tankers in the Bab el-Mandeb entrance to the Red Sea, a military clash seems inevitable.

While America no longer has the ground forces to invade and occupy an Iran four times the size of Iraq, in any such war, the U.S., with its vastly superior air, naval and missile forces, would swiftly prevail.

But if Iran called into play Hezbollah, the Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq, and sectarian allies inside the Arab states, U.S. casualties would mount and the Middle East could descend into the kind of civil-sectarian war we have seen in Syria these last six years.

Any shooting war in the Persian Gulf could see insurance rates for tankers soar, a constriction of oil exports, and surging prices, plunging us into a worldwide recession for which one man would be held responsible: Donald Trump.

How good would that be for the GOP or President Trump in 2020?

And when the shooting stopped, would there be installed in Iran a liberal democracy, or would it be as it was in Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt, with first the religious zealots taking power, and then the men with guns.

If we start a war with Iran, on top of the five in which we are engaged still, then the party that offers to extricate us will be listened to, as Trump was listened to, when he promised to extricate us from the forever wars of the Middle East.

See http://buchanan.org/blog/would-war-with-iran-doom-trump-129815 (“Would War With Iran Doom Trump?“) (emphasis added); see also https://naegeleblog.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/reactions-to-israels-nation-state-law.pdf (“Reactions to Israel’s Nation-State Law“) and https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2018/08/israel-palestinians-us-george-bush-bill-clinton-arafat-plo.html (“Israel’s nationality law knows no boundaries“)

After the Iraq War—in which more than 5,000 Americans died and many more were maimed, and more than a trillion dollars were wasted, for nothing—Americans vehemently oppose another war in the Middle East.

Israel and its “neocon” surrogates pushed us into the last war; and the hue and cry across our great nation must be “NEVER AGAIN,” even if Israel’s survival is at stake. John Bolton has been an unabashed and paid Israeli shill for years; and his views on this critical issue must not be allowed to count, or given any credence.

Those of us who have been staunch supporters of President Trump, since he began his quest for the presidency, would abandon him in droves. Hopefully Pat Buchanan’s sobering warnings about a potential American war with Iran never materialize. At the very least, it would doom the Trump presidency.

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12 10 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Inside New US Embassy In Jerusalem With Ambassador David Friedman [UPDATED]

But see https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/#comment-14807 (“An Eloquent Voice Of Enlightenment“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/#comment-14706 (“7 Days To Stop More Of Netanyahu’s Madness“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/06/islamophobia-is-un-american/#comment-14650 (“Former Clinton Consigliere And Trump Supporter, Dick Morris, Trumpets Unbridled Zionist Hate For Palestinians“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/31/is-israel-doomed/#comment-14408 (“Israeli Madness: War With Iran“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/31/is-israel-doomed/#comment-14393 (“Jerusalem: Repression Of Non-Jews Like The Japanese In California During World War II“)

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1 11 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Israel Is Silent As Iran Is Hit By Computer Virus More Violent Than Stuxnet

Israel flag burning

The Times of Israel has reported:

Iranian infrastructure and strategic networks have come under attack in the last few days by a computer virus similar to Stuxnet but “more violent, more advanced and more sophisticated,” and Israeli officials are refusing to discuss what role, if any, they may have had in the operation, an Israeli TV report said Wednesday.

The report came hours after Israel said its Mossad intelligence agency had thwarted an Iranian murder plot in Denmark, and two days after Iran acknowledged that President Hassan Rouhani’s mobile phone had been bugged. It also follows a string of Israeli intelligence coups against Iran, including the extraction from Tehran in January by the Mossad of the contents of a vast archive documenting Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and the detailing by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the UN in September of other alleged Iranian nuclear and missile assets inside Iran, in Syria and in Lebanon.

“Remember Stuxnet, the virus that penetrated the computers of the Iranian nuclear industry?” the report on Israel’s Hadashot news asked. Iran “has admitted in the past few days that it is again facing a similar attack, from a more violent, more advanced and more sophisticated virus than before, that has hit infrastructure and strategic networks.”

The Iranians, the TV report went on, are “not admitting, of course, how much damage has been caused.”

On Sunday, Gholamreza Jalali, the head of Iran’s civil defense agency, said Tehran had neutralized a new version of Stuxnet, Reuters reported. “Recently we discovered a new generation of Stuxnet which consisted of several parts . . . and was trying to enter our systems,” Jalali said.

The Stuxnet virus was uncovered some eight years ago, and was widely reported to have been developed together by US and Israeli intelligence. It penetrated Iran’s rogue nuclear program, taking control and sabotaging parts of its enrichment processes by speeding up its centrifuges.

Netanyahu is adamant that the Iranian regime remains determined to attain a nuclear weapons arsenal, and has bitterly opposed the P5+1 powers’ 2015 deal with Iran. US President Donald Trump, with whom Netanyahu is closely allied, withdrew from the accord in May.

Referring to Stuxnet, Wednesday’s TV report noted that “in the past, the US and Israel have been alleged to have worked together on operations.” Trying to establish whether Israel had any role in the latest cyberattack, the TV report said: “We’ve tried to clarify here. They’re refusing to comment.”

The TV report noted that “behind the scenes lately, the Mossad,” under its director Yossi Cohen, has been “fighting a real shadow war.”

Without attributing responsibility to the Mossad, the report mentioned the tapping of Rouhani’s phone, noting that the Iranians “had to switch it for an encrypted model because they understand that someone has been listening to him for days and weeks.”

On Sunday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged intensified efforts to counter enemy “infiltration,” Reuters said.

In a speech to officials in charge of cyber defense, Khamenei said: “In the face of the enemy’s complex practices, our civil defense should… confront infiltration through scientific, accurate, and up-to-date… action,” the report said, quoting Iranian state TV.

Earlier Wednesday, Israeli officials said the Mossad provided its Danish counterpart with information concerning an alleged plot by Tehran to assassinate three Iranian opposition figures living in the Scandinavian country. According to the officials, the Mossad gave Denmark information about a plot to kill three Iranians suspected of belonging to the anti-regime Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz.

The intelligence reportedly provided by the Mossad prompted the arrest of a Norwegian national of Iranian origin earlier this month. Denmark on Tuesday recalled its ambassador to Iran over the incident.

“What Iran hides, Israel will find,” Netanyahu declared in his September UN speech.

See https://www.timesofisrael.com/tv-report-israel-silent-as-iran-hit-by-computer-virus-more-violent-than-stuxnet/ (“TV report: Israel silent as Iran hit by computer virus more violent than Stuxnet“) (emphasis added)

The Israelis should not be sanguine, much less celebratory about this.

As discussed in my article above and elsewhere, Iran and/or its surrogates may strike back now or in the future, in ways that are deadlier than the world has seen thus far.

Peace, not war, must be the goal.

This should be the lesson learned from the tragic attack in Pittsburgh.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/#comment-15082 (“Finally A Voice Of Sanity, Instead Of Partisan Hatred In America“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/#comment-7039 (“Is Night Falling Again For European Jews?“)

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13 02 2019
Timothy D. Naegele

A Voice Of Reason In A Sea Of Hate And Madness [UPDATED]

Israel flag burning

Jeremy Ben-Ami—the president of J Street, and former Deputy Assistant to President Clinton for Domestic Policy—has written:

On the floors of the House and Senate, in social media and across opinion pages, the debate over Israel is intensifying.

Over the past 48 hours, the firestorm around one 28-character tweet has exposed a tremendous amount about what’s wrong with this debate. But two recent op-eds in the prestigious New York Times — a medium that would seemingly allow for far more nuance and complexity than Twitter — are even more illustrative of how these issues are being used to deepen divides in our community and in our politics.

One, by Michelle Alexander, provided a scathing critique of Israel’s occupation wrapped in the mantle of Martin Luther King and civil rights, while the other, by Bret Stephens, paints such criticism of Israeli policy as nothing less than a “progressive assault on Israel.”

Neither piece speaks to, or for, the majority of Americans who support both Israel’s right to exist and defend itself and the right of the Palestinian people to freedom and self-determination — twin goals best achieved through compromise and a diplomatic two-state solution to the conflict between them.

The two Times columnists have articulated the outer poles of the debate.

Those on the left-most pole see, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, a minority of Jews denying political rights to a majority of Palestinians and a regime deserving of the same types of boycotts, divestment and sanctions that South Africa received a generation ago.

Those on the right-most pole sees such criticism of Israel as transparently anti-Semitic and a threat to the “moral health” (Stephens’ words) of the Democratic Party and broader progressive movement.

Those at the poles of any debate are prone to paint the argument in black and white. For one side, Israel is in the “wrong,” and its very nature — rooted in its identity as the national homeland of the Jewish people — is racist and antithetical to liberal democratic norms. For the other, Israel is in the “right;” attacks on it are unfair, disproportionate and rooted in anti-Semitism.

The truth — as always — is most likely to be found in the nuance and gray that lie between these black and white poles.

For instance, shouldn’t those drawn to support the Palestinian cause be able to acknowledge that the Jewish people too have suffered? And that they too — and not just the Palestinians — have a right to national self-determination?

Can’t those most inspired to defend Israel step back for a moment to acknowledge that — whatever the failings of Palestinian leaders of yesteryear and today — Israel’s treatment of Palestinians beyond the Green Line today runs counter to core Jewish and democratic values?

How about an acknowledgement from Israeli and Palestinian advocates that both Jews and Palestinians have a historical claim to a nation-state in the land bounded by the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea?

While we’re at it, why can’t both sides acknowledge that both peoples have suffered mightily at the hands of others? In reality, these two peoples have so much more that unites them than sets them apart.

Instead of rallying those most angered by Israeli behavior for battle against those most inclined to defend Israel at all costs, why don’t more highly-respected political observers with access to significant platforms like the Times op-ed pages make the case that both Jews and Palestinians should have self-determination in states to which their diasporic communities can have a right to return?

My bottom line — in response to both Alexander and Stephens — is that their parallel failures to express empathy and seek nuance does a disservice to the causes they hope to advance.

For our part, J Street believes that fruitful engagement in the Israeli-Palestinian discourse should be grounded not in choosing sides and deepening divides but in bringing the sides together to build a better future.

Our movement will continue to advance that message in the Jewish community and in our national politics. And, more importantly, we will continue to advance policies that build that better future for both Israelis and Palestinians.

See https://jstreet.org/the-israel-debate-requires-empathy-and-nuance/#.XGOLuCMrJPO (“The Israel Debate Requires Empathy And Nuance“) (emphasis added); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/#comment-14807 (“An Eloquent Voice Of Enlightenment“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/#comment-1825 (“Jeremy Ben-Ami, ‘A New Voice For Israel’—A Wonderful Book That Should Be Read By Anyone Who Cares About And Wants To Understand Israel’s Past, Present And Future“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/01/19/emp-attack-only-30-million-americans-survive/#comment-15839 (“Will The United States And Israel Cease To Exist?“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/06/islamophobia-is-un-american/#comment-8058 (“More Islamophobia From The Wall Street Journal And Bret Stephens“)

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23 10 2019
Timothy D. Naegele

Anti-Semitism Is Alive And Well In America, And Globally

This is one of the conclusions reached in an important survey that was just released by the American Jewish Committee (AJC); and it should be viewed in its entirety at the link that follows.

See https://www.ajc.org/AntisemitismSurvey2019 (“AJC Survey of American Jews on Antisemitism in America“); see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Jewish_Committee (“American Jewish Committee“)

This is not a unique American phenomenon. It has been occurring in Europe and globally for a very long time now.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/#comment-7039 (“Is Night Falling Again For European Jews?“)

Non-Jews are not affected by it, but they too are concerned.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/#comment-544 (“Why I Write And Say What I Do“)

And yes, those who responded to the AJC survey were largely Democrats and anti-Trumpers, who were quick to blame our President, even though arguably he has done more to help the tiny state of Israel than any other American president.

And yes too, lots of us began as Democrats but will never vote for one again. Many of us believe that growing anti-Semitism is a byproduct and the direct result of Benjamin Netanyahu and his policies, which are perceived as implementing Apartheid in Israel.

Leah Rabin believed that peace was not possible with Netanyahu as the prime minister of Israel, and that he was responsible for her husband’s tragic death.

If only someone like Yitzhak Rabin would lead an “enlightened” Israel again, it might change the trajectory of anti-Semitism in America and globally.

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22 02 2020
Timothy D. Naegele

Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street and Israel

Ten years ago, I wrote about Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street and Israel. His credentials were impeccable. His grandparents were one of the founding families of Tel Aviv; and his father was an activist and leader in the Irgun, working for Israel’s independence and the rescue of European Jews before and during World War II.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/#comment-1825 (“Jeremy Ben-Ami, ‘A New Voice For Israel’—A Wonderful Book That Should Be Read By Anyone Who Cares About And Wants To Understand Israel’s Past, Present And Future“); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/#comment-14807 (“An Eloquent Voice Of Enlightenment“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/31/is-israel-doomed/#comment-16049 (“A Voice Of Reason In A Sea Of Hate And Madness“)

In the intervening decade, much has happened. Barack Obama came and went. Benjamin Netanyahu has survived for now, which might change at any moment. Donald Trump has brought about changes vis-à-vis Israel that were not thought possible. And anti-Semitism has grown dramatically in Europe and globally, with no end in sight.

Eric Cortellessa conducted a fascinating and far-ranging interview with Ben-Ami—which is worth reading in its entirety—having been published in the Times of Israel:

By Jeremy Ben-Ami’s own admission, J Street was widely viewed as radical 10 years ago. Now, the Mideast advocacy group is one of the American left’s most influential organizations — if not the most influential — when it comes to Israel.

Case in point: Five of the Democrats running for president attended its annual conference last year, including former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who finished in the top two slots in the fraught and technologically challenged February 3 Iowa caucus and February 11 New Hampshire primary.

Other leading candidates, such as former vice president Joe Biden and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, addressed the confab via video.

None of these candidates attended the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) 2019 conference. It’s not clear how many will attend this year’s; a source with the pro-Israel lobby said it was still “finalizing” its speakers for the confab and would be announcing them over the few days.

Still, no other Israel-related gathering over the last year and a half has garnered as much attention from the 2020 Democrats. J Street, it appears, is playing an outsized role in setting the agenda on Middle East policy in this year’s Democratic primary.

As Ben-Ami explained in a recent interview with The Times of Israel, “We hold our conferences as a way to project political power.”

Now, since US President Donald Trump unveiled his long-awaited proposal to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that issue may gain even more urgency.

Under the Trump plan — which allocates roughly 30 percent of the West Bank, including all of the existing settlements, to Israel — Jerusalem has been given the green light to annex West Bank settlements. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has suggested he would move forward with annexation after Israel’s March 2 election.

In a statement last week, Ben-Ami argued that Trump’s team designed the proposal to advance the Israeli right agenda. “It is absolutely clear that the ‘plan’ released by the Trump administration stands zero chance of serving as the basis for renewed diplomacy to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” he said.

“Instead,” he insisted, “it is the logical culmination of repeated bad-faith steps this administration has taken to validate the agenda of the Israeli right, prevent the achievement of a viable, negotiated two-state solution and ensure that Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territory in the West Bank becomes permanent.”

It’s the politics, stupid

Part of what makes J Street unique among US foreign policy groups is that, while most tend to be policy oriented, J Street is an unapologetic political operation that involves itself in the rough-and-tumble of lobbying and advocacy on Capitol Hill.

One of Ben-Ami’s key realizations upon J Street’s founding, he said, was that a “political problem” was getting in the way of progress on Israeli-Palestinian peace, not a policy one.

For decades, there was effectively no counterweight to AIPAC, which lobbies on behalf of the Israeli government’s positions in Washington. As a consequence, there was only a domestic drawback for lawmakers who criticized the Israeli government, and no reward.

But as Jerusalem veers further to the right under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, Ben-Ami emphasized, there is a larger number of Americans who want a different kind of advocacy vis-a-vis Israel.

Additionally, Netanyahu’s adversarial relationship with former US president Barack Obama — and chummy relationship with Trump — has alienated an increasing number of American Jews, who tend to vote Democratic.

That alienation, in part, created an opening for J Street to emerge from the sidelines and take center stage. A growing number of Jewish and non-Jewish Americans, Ben-Ami said, want to be able to support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish democracy, but not enable the Netanyahu government.

A look at the 2020 primary shows that Democratic voters seem to support that point of view.

The candidates who have spoken the most against the current Israeli government — Sanders and Buttigieg — are among those polling the best.

Sanders has openly considered cutting American aid to Israel to pressure the nation to roll back its settlement enterprise, enter peace talks with the Palestinians, and improve the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Buttigieg said he would consider using American aid to “leverage” Israel to change its policies. And Warren has said she would pressure Israel to end the occupation.

Biden has made clear he wouldn’t touch aid to Israel — he called the idea “outrageous” — but said the country was “on the wrong trajectory” under Netanyahu’s rein.

All in all, Ben-Ami believes the nuanced positions on Israel that the candidates have staked out represent a validation for J Street.

“It is a truism that nature abhors a vacuum,” he said of the organization’s place in American politics. “And this was a really big vacuum.”

Below is an edited and condensed version of our interview, which took place before Trump released his Mideast peace plan.

The Times of Israel: Have you been in touch with the Democratic candidates? What is their level of energy and interest in prioritizing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict if they get elected?

Jeremy Ben-Ami: We have been really engaged with the candidates since January of last year. We made this a priority coming right out of the 2018 election, and we said the number one goal for us is to ensure that we are really in the center of the discussion on these issues in the Democratic Party.

We have had personal engagement with a large majority of the candidates. If we haven’t worked with them directly, we’ve worked with their team. We had five of them at the conference, with videos from others. We’ve been very actively involved. We’ve sent them debate prep questions before every debate. So, the short answer is “yes.”

It’s our perspective that J Street’s take on these issues is the best place for a Democratic candidate to come out. There are more traditional voices that are scared about being critical in a political context of what the Israeli government is doing. Then there are new voices that are much harsher and more critical and not particularly balanced. In a way, they’re much more pro-Palestinian than balanced.

Our case to the candidates is that, politically speaking, the J Street line in 2020 is the place that will be best — both offensively and defensively — for you on these issues.

How are you making that argument politically? How are you making the case that the J Street line is a political winner?

It’s not that it’s a winner. It’s, how do you navigate? It’s less that we’re urging them to make this a top-tier issue in their stump speech. It’s more, how do you navigate when you’ve got people coming at you from all sides?

Polling is obviously very helpful to show them where the majority of Democratic primary voters are at on these issues. We did a poll in May where we said: If you are given the choice between a candidate who is pro-Israel, pro-Palestinian, or seeking to have a balance between two sides, who would you choose? The overwhelming majority of Democrats and Americans want the balance. So much of the old polling was, are you more supportive of Israel? Are you more supportive of the Palestinians? You sort of had to choose a side. It turns out, it was a really bad question.

That’s at the core of our case. You can talk about security and of being a friend of the state of Israel — the people of Israel want to make sure they are safe — and you can also talk about Palestinian rights. You can say the Palestinians should have freedom and self-determination as a state, and that Israel should have security. Neither is going to have what they want if the other doesn’t get what they want.

Do you identify the candidates, publicly at least, who are closest to the J Street line?

No, we feel pretty comfortable with the field as a whole. Some of them have been a little bit more explicit in the things they are calling for.

Biden was part of the Obama team and spoke to our conference twice. He’s been very clear that there are things that Netanyahu and the government have done over the years that are really unhelpful.

The other top-tier candidates — Sanders, Warren and Buttigieg — they’re all newer in a sense to the issue. They haven’t had jobs and roles so they’ve had to say more in the last six to nine months, but every time they’ve spoken, it’s been really in line with J Street.

Were you surprised that Amy Klobuchar came to your conference? She tends to be more traditionally supportive of Israel, she’s close to AIPAC. But she felt like she had to come talk to you. That seemed to be significant.

I think that the Iran nuclear deal was a big moment for somebody like her. When you had the president and 90 percent of the Democratic Party lined up for this agreement, and you had AIPAC really hitting hard against, I think people really saw J Street’s place.

It became clear that during this break between these two camps on these issues: We’re the camp that aligns with pro-diplomacy, pro-two states, wanting to find diplomatic solutions to these complex Middle East problems. And that’s where people like Amy Klobuchar want to be.

The debates around the Iran nuclear agreement — and Netanyahu’s behavior — had a huge impact on the thinking of a lot of Democrats on this issue.

So was that really the moment that you solidified your place among the Democratic mainstream — the fight around the Iran deal?

Yeah, I think that was a real seminal moment in the whole structure of this issue. Other things had happened. The Israeli government over the course of the last decade of J Street’s existence has just gone so far off to the right. AIPAC and many Jewish organizations have to follow them in a sense, because to be uncritical is part of the DNA.

As the Israeli government has become more and more pro-settler, anti-democracy and questionable in the way it treats minorities, peace, all these issues, AIPAC ends up in that camp. It makes the space for us that much more needed.

Then, there’s Trump: His embrace of Bibi and Bibi’s embrace of Trump. There’s been this sense that you’re getting a package deal between them.

I also think it was the emergence of a serious left. We were viewed as radical when we started — simply for saying you can support Israel but you don’t have to support the government. It’s not that radical of a concept really.

What is radical is to say, “I question whether there really should be an Israel. I do really favor the Palestinians over Israel.” There’s a much more vibrant pro-Palestinian left now than there was 10 years ago. So it’s clear that we’re not that. So I think all of those developments together have solidified the position that we hold.

After the J Street conference, I heard a lot of people affiliated with J Street say that the organization’s position on conditioning aid to Israel was misunderstood. Can you explain how?

The distinction is the wording between “conditioning” and “restricting.” If you put a condition on providing something to someone, then you’re not providing it until they do X, Y and Z, or they fulfill some set of pre-actions that they need to take. Restrictions mean you’re going to give them the money, but there are certain things they can’t do with it. We’re saying, the question that should be on the table is, what should Israel be doing with the $3.8 billion?

We’re not saying, “Don’t give them the $3.8 billion unless they change course,” or anything like that. What we’re saying is, the time has come to start asking: What is the $3.8 billion being used for? We’re very much in the camp of say, Buttigieg, who says this isn’t a blank check. We’re not just handing you $3.8 billion and saying “do what you want with it.”

The $3.8 billion is because you’re in a really bad neighborhood, there are very serious security threats, and we want you to do things that make you more secure and not less.

If you’re building settlements and roads and using the equipment to demolish villages and houses, you’re making yourself less secure. And we don’t want our aid to be used that way. We’re not saying that we’re not going to give them the MOU [Memorandum of Understanding], or that the United States is backing away from its commitment to your security.

In fact, I testified in front of Congress that the United State should provide this aid. We support codifying the MOU in legislation. So we are for aid to Israel and living up to the MOU, but we also need to ask what the money’s being used for. And we never do that and we should.

What happens when you tell Israel it can’t do something, and then it does it anyway?

Well, the first question is, are we even asking for a report about where exactly our money is going? There is no transparency. Congress, at a minimum, should start asking questions.

The $3.8 billion should be put into an account and as Israel spends money out of it, it should report back to us on what it’s buying. If it’s buying the bulldozers out of the account that are knocking down Palestinian homes in Area C, that doesn’t seem like a really great use of American taxpayer dollars. If it’s using it to buy an air defense system, then that is an appropriate use.

That has nothing to do with occupation. Our money should be going to defend the State of Israel from the security threats around it and not to protect the settlers and disenfranchise the Palestinians, and not to deepen the occupation.

Some would argue that the money is fungible. If you give it to them, it still frees up money to be spent elsewhere.

If you put it in its own account and track every dollar, at least that set of dollars is not going to do these things. That’s our money, and we’re giving it for a reason. And that particularly money should go to what we intended for it to go for.

Let’s say Trump wins in 2020, Netanyahu maintains his grip on power, and then follows through on his pledge to annex the West Bank settlements. What would come next for J Street if that happens? Would that kill the liberal Zionist dream?

The thing that J Street has seen in these three years is that you grow when you’re in full-on opposition. The worse things get, the more important it is to say these aren’t our values and this isn’t in our interests.

Our role is 10 times more important if there’s a Trump-Bibi redux in the 2020s — God forbid — than if there’s Gantz and Biden and they’re trying to figure it out, that’s much less urgent.

But could annexation of the settlements really be reversed? What’s the threshold for when you can’t go back?

My line is always that every single problem being created is being created by human beings. So everything can be undone by human beings, whether it’s a road or a fence or a building. If you’re Ariel Sharon in 2030 or 2040, and you come into office and say, “F*ck it, I need to get out, and we’re going to take 100,000, 200,000, 300,000 settlers out.” You just do it, right? You take a bulldozer and you move the fence. There’s no reason why these physical obstacles can’t be overcome. The only issue is political will.

What are the most important lessons you’ve learned institutionally over the last 10 years?

When we first started, we were pretty narrow — so focused on solving the conflict now. And that wasn’t possible, and it’s certainly not possible now. What we actually realized was: If you’re fighting for the principles and not the specific policy solution, that’s actually more important. The principle of diplomacy. The principle of undoing occupation. The principle of our values. That’s really what’s at stake.

See https://www.timesofisrael.com/has-j-street-become-us-jewrys-democratic-kingmaker-on-israel/ (“Has J Street become US Jewry’s Democratic kingmaker on Israel?“) (emphasis in original)

Whether one agrees in whole or in part with Ben-Ami, or not at all—and I began as a Democrat, but am an Independent and Trump supporter now—one cannot help but admire what he and J Street have accomplished, and how far they have come. They remain Pro-Peace and Pro-Israel, which is a tall order in this perilous world.

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26 08 2021
Timothy D. Naegele

See https://www.nysun.com/foreign/could-america-lose-its-jews-to-israel-its/91632/ (“Could America Lose Its Jews To Israel? It’s a Complicated Question”)

This is a fascinating, well-written article, even for those of us who are not Jewish.

Afghanistan is imploding before the eyes of the world, and terrorist groups may become emboldened like never before, certainly in the Middle East.

Americans have had their fill of interventionism, and wars. If on the heels of our crushing defeat in Afghanistan, Israel were to be attacked, there is no way that the United States would come to her aid, period.

She would be on her own, sink or swim. As indicated in my article above, it is increasingly likely that Israel’s enemies will obtain access to WMDs that can/will be used against it.

See, e.g., https://buchanan.org/blog/cacophony-and-confusion-in-foreign-policy-156200 (“Cacophony and Confusion in Foreign Policy”)

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9 09 2021
Timothy D. Naegele

See https://www.nysun.com/foreign/jailbreak-in-israel-a-major-failure-of-security/91649/ (“Jailbreak in Israel, a Major Failure of Security, Threatens To Ignite Firestorm”)

America’s crushing defeat in Afghanistan is likely to produce ripple effects globally. The Taliban have a vast arsenal of weapons, for use/sale against the United States and its allies.

Israel may become target #1; and there is little or nothing that the IDF, Mossad, or Israel’s vaulted “Iron Dome” (or other sophisticated defense systems) can do the prevent it. For example, one missile launched from a barge offshore carrying a single EMP or biological weapon might shut down the tiny Jewish nation completely.

See also https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10001507/Trump-evoked-anti-Semitic-trope-Kushner.html (“‘Jared’s more loyal to Israel than the United States’: Trump evoked anti-Semitic trope to describe Jewish son-in-law, new Woodward book claims”)

The former President simply described his son-in-law as an “Israel firster,” of which there are many in the United States.

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18 09 2021
Timothy D. Naegele

See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10004269/How-Irans-nuclear-scientist-assassinated-killer-robot-machine-gun-kitted-AI.html (“How Iran’s top nuclear scientist was assassinated by a killer robot machine gun kitted out with AI that allowed sniper thousands of miles away to fire 15 bullets after disguised spy car had pinpointed his location”)

Some day the tables may be turned on his killers, who have perpetrated Apartheid. They may reap what they have sown, in spades.

See also https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10006891/Netanyahu-suggests-Facebook-Biden-fell-asleep-meeting-new-Israeli-PM.html (“Benjamin Netanyahu mocks Biden claiming he fell ASLEEP during meeting with Israel’s new Prime Minister”) and https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-just-hit-gaza-harder-israel-s-unrelenting-collective-punishment-of-palestinians-1.10218784 (“‘Just hit Gaza harder’: No end in sight for Israel’s collective punishment of two million Palestinian civilians”) and https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/18/world/middleeast/iran-nuclear-fakhrizadeh-assassination-israel.html (“The Scientist and the A.I.-Assisted, Remote-Control Killing Machine”)

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27 09 2021
Timothy D. Naegele

See https://www.wnd.com/2021/09/bolton-warns-taliban-access-pakistans-nukes/ (“Bolton warns Taliban could access Pakistan’s nukes”)

I have never been a “fan” of John Bolton, but I believe he is right about this. Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is potentially unstable, and may be accessible to the Taliban and/or ISIS, and used against Israel at the very least.

Former cricket star Imran Khan’s regime in Pakistan may be “easy pickings” for the Taliban/ISIS.

See also https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10032795/The-Taliban-hands-150-nuclear-weapons-says-John-Bolton.html (“The Taliban could get their hands on up to 150 Pakistani nuclear weapons after America’s catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan, says Trump’s former security adviser John Bolton”) and https://www.wnd.com/2021/10/iran-promotes-kamalas-approval-student-accusing-israel-genocide/ (“Iran promotes Kamala’s approval of student accusing Israel of ‘genocide'”)

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10 10 2021
Timothy D. Naegele

See https://www.wnd.com/2021/10/conference-considers-jews-not-killed/ (“Conference considers which Jews ‘should and should not be killed'”)

Ominous?

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24 10 2021
Timothy D. Naegele

See https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-said-set-to-okay-3000-new-settlement-homes-1300-palestinian-homes/ (“Israel set to okay 3,000 new settlement homes, 1,300 Palestinian homes”) and https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-said-to-approve-1-5-billion-budget-for-potential-strike-on-iran/ (“Israel said to approve $1.5 billion budget for potential strike on Iran”)

It should not surprise anyone why Israel is hated globally, and why anti-Semitism grew dramatically under the reign of Benjamin Netanyahu. Years ago, he morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors.

He was hated by Ariel Sharon and the Rabins; and Leah Rabin blamed him for her husband’s tragic assassination. The present regime in Israel seems to be Netanyahu 2.0. And innocent Jews will continue to suffer globally because of its actions.

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30 10 2021
Timothy D. Naegele

See https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/29/politics/iran-us-talks-skepticism/index.html (“Iran nuclear talks: US is deeply skeptical and considering taking tougher action as Iran says it will return to talks”)

Iran may be “yesterday’s news.” Since the United States’ humiliating defeat in Afghanistan, Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal may be accessible to the Taliban and/or ISIS, and used against Israel at the very least.

Indeed, former cricket star Imran Khan’s regime in Pakistan may be “easy pickings” for the Taliban and/or ISIS. And Israel’s Mossad and its once-vaulted — but now porous — Iron Dome may afford little or no protection for the tiny Jewish state.

One nuclear-tipped missile launched against Israel by a terrorist group might have the strategic effect of a nation-ending EMP attack, which would cripple or destroy Israel forever.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/01/19/emp-attack-only-30-million-americans-survive/ (“EMP Attack: Only 30 Million Americans Survive”) (see also the comments beneath the article)

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11 11 2021
Timothy D. Naegele

See https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-11/israel-holds-war-games-to-prepare-for-more-lethal-covid-strain (“Israel Holds ‘War Games’ to Prepare for More Lethal Covid Strain”)

As discussed in my article above, nation-ending WMDs can come in a variety of devastating forms.

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14 12 2021
Timothy D. Naegele

See https://thepoliticalinsider.com/trump-claims-israels-netanyahu-never-wanted-peace-with-palestinians/ (“Trump Claims Israel’s Netanyahu ‘Never Wanted Peace’ With Palestinians”)

Years ago, Netanyahu morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors. He was and is evil incarnate; and his detractors sized him up correctly years ago.

He was hated by Ariel Sharon and the Rabins; and the “Lioness” Leah Rabin blamed him for her husband’s tragic assassination. She concluded that peace was impossible with Netanyahu at Israel’s helm, and her views were prescient.

He should be arrested and tried by the International Criminal Court when he sets foot outside of Israel. And yes, he has hurt innocent Jews globally by fanning the flames of anti-Semitism, which have grown exponentially during his reign.

Tragically, the present regime in Israel is Netanyahu 2.0.

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14 01 2022
Timothy D. Naegele

See https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2022/01/could-netanyahu-opt-plea-bargain (“Could Netanyahu opt for plea bargain?”)

Regardless of what is done in Israel, Netanyahu must be tried by the International Criminal Court, like the Nuremberg trials, and subjected to similar punishment. Nothing less will suffice.

Years ago, he morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors; and the present regime in Israel is Netanyahu 2.0.

He was hated by Ariel Sharon and the Rabins; and the “Lioness” Leah Rabin blamed him for her husband’s tragic assassination. She believed that peace was impossible with Netanyahu in power; and her views were prescient.

During his reign, anti-Semitism has risen dramatically; and innocent Jews have been hurt globally. Netanyahu must pay a heavy price for this as well.

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7 03 2022
Timothy D. Naegele

TOTAL TRIPE

See https://m.jpost.com/international/article-700429 (“With the world in crisis, Israel steps up – analysis”)

Israel has been playing both sides, and currying favor/colluding with the psychopathic megalomaniac KGB-trained killer Vladimir Putin in Russia. He is the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, whom Israel has been aiding and abetting.

There are real heroes in Ukraine, including its Jewish President; and they are not the two-faced Israelis — who are pathetic shameless cowards, and have killed Omar Assad and others.

See, e.g., https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10594341/President-Zelensky-survived-DOZEN-assassination-attempts-close-adviser-claims.html (“President Zelensky has survived ‘more than a DOZEN assassination attempts’ with various killers ‘liquidated’, one of his close advisers claims”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10583509/Moment-surface-air-missile-takes-Russian-jet-Putin-launches-BLITZ-Kharkiv.html (“Downed in the Kharkiv blitz: Residents cheer as Ukrainian surface-to-air missile takes down ANOTHER Russian jet over second city – taking Kyiv’s claimed tally of downed aircraft to 45 of Putin’s aircraft”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10584571/Zelenskys-wife-pleads-media-tell-terrible-truth-Putins-forces-killing-children.html (“‘How many more children must die to convince Russian troops to stop firing?’ President Zelensky’s wife pleads with media to ‘tell the terrible truth’ that Putin’s forces are killing children ‘consciously and cynically'”) and https://www.state.gov/statement-on-israeli-defense-forces-report-on-death-of-omar-assad/ (“Statement on Israeli Defense Forces Report on Death of Omar Assad – United States Department of State”)

Years ago, Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors. He was hated by Ariel Sharon and the “Lioness” Leah Rabin, who blamed him for her husband’s tragic assassination. The present regime in Israel is Netanyahu 2.0.

Putin hasn’t changed; and the Israelis knew exactly who and what he was. Netanyahu has been and continues to be Putin’s moral equivalent.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/russias-putin-is-a-killer/ (“Russia’s Putin Is A Killer”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10585475/Children-HOSPICE-stand-snow-shape-Z-support-Putin.html (“Russia’s most immoral propaganda yet: Children at a HOSPICE are made to stand in the snow in the shape of a Z to show support for Putin’s troops”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10586193/Up-five-MILLION-refugees-flee-Ukraine-carnage-bombing-continues-EU-warns.html (“Putin sinks to new low as Russia continues to shell civilians trying to flee Ukrainian cities after LANDMINES were discovered along one ‘humanitarian corridor’ amid warnings FIVE MILLION will try to leave the country”) and https://news.yahoo.com/putin-1999-apartment-bombings-ukraine-175001959.html (“‘Capable of anything’: How the ’99 apartment bombings explain Putin’s rise and regime”) and https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2022/03/israels-bennett-undertakes-diplomatic-blitz-ukraine (“Israel’s Bennett undertakes diplomatic blitz on Ukraine”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10587231/Ukrainian-girl-7-killed-school-shelled-hero-grandfather-tried-save-her.html (“Ukrainian girl, 7, is killed after Russians shell school with ‘cluster bomb’ while her hero grandfather desperately tried to shield her from the blast”) and https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2022/03/israeli-pm-offers-rare-uncertain-diplomatic-channel-putin-zelenskyy (“Israeli PM offers rare, uncertain diplomatic channel for Putin, Zelenskyy”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10590863/Ukraine-war-Elderly-civilian-couple-blown-car-Russian-tank.html (“Elderly civilian Ukrainian couple are blown up in their car in completely unprovoked attack by Russian ‘special peacekeeping force’ tank”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10592485/Tatyana-Perebeynos-cut-alongside-two-children-Russian-ceasefire-shelling-Irpin.html (“Much-loved mother, son, 18, and daughter, nine, who were all wiped out by Putin’s bombs as they tried to flee city of Irpin during sham ‘ceasefire’ in photo that sickened the world”) and https://kyivindependent.com/national/russian-soldiers-murder-volunteers-helping-starving-animals-near-kyiv/ (“Russian soldiers murder volunteers helping starving animals near Kyiv”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10593177/Ukraine-war-Russia-reopens-evacuation-routes-besieged-cities.html (“Putin sinks to new low: Maternity hospital is bombed, with children buried under rubble in Mariupol, where ‘3,000 babies are without food or medicine’, while Russian troops round up 400 Ukrainian ‘hostages’ in Kherson”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10602461/Ukraine-war-Russia-bombs-disabled-care-home-near-Kharkiv.html (“Now Putin bombs a disabled care home: Ukrainians claim Russians are killing MORE civilians than soldiers and have destroyed 48 schools – but Kyiv says its breaking stranglehold on cities as another helicopter is blown out the sky”) and https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2022/03/bennetts-shuttle-diplomacy-impresses-few-israel (“Bennett’s shuttle diplomacy impresses few in Israel”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10603179/Third-Russian-general-killed-Ukraine-eight-days-latest-blow-Vladimir-Putins-forces.html (“Third Russian general ‘killed’ in Ukraine in eight days: Commander of armoured unit is the latest senior officer to be claimed dead by Ukrainian forces”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10602157/Ukraine-Inept-Russian-tactics-baffle-military-experts.html (“‘Inept’ Russian tactics baffle military experts: Tank commanders allowed Ukrainians to ambush them by driving straight up a main road as analysts say they’ve lost enough armoured vehicles to equip the ENTIRE German army”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10604601/Putin-attacks-cities-including-Dnipro-Lutsk-locals-experience-attacks-time.html (“‘Our people are being tortured’: Zelensky vows to get food, water and medicine in to besieged Mariupol while Russia prepares to launch its all-out assault on Kyiv and the UK warns new attacks on western cities are indiscriminately shelling civilians”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10604517/Ukrainian-woman-31-blown-Russian-tank-finds-medicine-sick-mother.html (“Ukrainian woman, 31, is ‘blown up by a Russian tank as she finds medicine for her sick mother’ as friend hails ‘brave’ medic who stayed to help locals under siege from Putin’s forces”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10611835/Israel-says-no-haven-sanctioned-Russians-Roman-Abramovichs-jet-arrives-Moscow.html (“Roman Abramovich ‘was part of organised crime group that cheated Russia out of £2BILLION’: Chelsea owner waits in Tel Aviv VIP lounge to catch private jet to Turkey as Panorama makes fresh claims over how he became a billionaire in 1990s”) and https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/03/14/world/ukraine-russia-war/israel-insists-it-wont-offer-a-route-to-bypass-sanctions-against-russia and https://www.timesofisrael.com/abramovichs-plane-lands-in-moscow-hours-after-he-was-spotted-at-israeli-airport/ (“Abramovich arrives in Moscow, flying in from Israel via Turkey”) and https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-701041 (“Bennett advises Zelensky to surrender to Russia, Zelensky refuses”)

NO ONE should trust the Israeli government, the IDF, or the country’s despicable settlers. They are butchers, traitors, sinister and evil cowards, and the moral equivalents of Putin and the Nazis. Not surprisingly, they are loathed and hated globally. Israel lost its moral compass years ago, and its raison d’être.

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19 04 2022
Timothy D. Naegele

See https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2022/04/israeli-coalition-verge-collapse-jerusalem-roils (“Israeli coalition on verge of collapse as Jerusalem roils”)

Israel is an Apartheid state, which long ago lost its raison d’être.

. . .

Netanyahu morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors, and should be tried by the International Criminal Court, with a Nuremberg-like result. Today’s regime in Israel is Netanyahu 2.0.

Hence, it is not surprising that anti-Semitism has risen dramatically since Netanyahu came to power, and that innocent Jews globally are hurt the most.

See, e.g., https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/german-intel-agency-says-antisemitism-filtering-into-mainstream-discourse/ (“German intel agency says antisemitism filtering into mainstream discourse”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10749543/Jewish-NYU-student-shames-fellow-law-school-students-vowing-death-Israel.html (“‘The left has a big, fat Jew-hatred problem’: Jewish NYU student shames his fellow students for vowing ‘death to Israel’, claiming that Jews control the media and that ‘Zionism is Islamophobic'”)

Clearly, Israel is a state sponsor of terrorism, again with no raison d’être. Its IDF and despicable settlers killed Omar Assad and other innocents.

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9 05 2022
Timothy D. Naegele

Airline Rules Apply To Everyone

See https://www.thejc.com/news/news/over-100-visibly-jewish-passengers-barred-from-lufthansa-flight-after-mask-dispute-6QvlZ3OPwppR66yPwnMpDc?reloadTime=1652118124714 (“Over 100 Jewish passengers barred from boarding Lufthansa flight after mask dispute”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10799895/Orthodox-Jews-NYC-barred-boarding-connecting-flight-refused-wear-masks.html (“More than 100 Orthodox Jews from NYC are barred from boarding flight”)

Rightly, Lufthansa barred these passengers for not following the rules.

Also, on an American Airlines flight to London, I remember the odors emanating from some male Jewish passengers being foul, strong and totally obnoxious. It was as if they hadn’t bathed in months, or ever – and were filthy swine.

Like those barred from the Lufthansa flight, they too thought they were special, which they were not.

See also https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10804425/Israeli-soldiers-accused-assassinating-female-Al-Jazeera-reporter-shooting-face.html (“Israeli soldiers are accused of ‘assassinating’ female US citizen Al Jazeera reporter by shooting her in the face during refugee camp raid”) and https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-jerusalem-israel-journalists-veterans-4a1a8ae8584be0aa46ace7973ffec72b (“Palestinians mourn slain Al Jazeera journalist, blame Israel”)

Israeli animals – like the IDF soldiers and despicable settlers who killed Omar Assad and other innocents – will be hunted.

See https://www.nysun.com/article/death-of-a-journalist-in-the-fog-of-war-becomes-a-tragedy-for-journalism-too

No one believes the Israelis, or their propaganda, except their lackeys.

See also https://jcpa.org/article/president-truman%E2%80%99s-decision-to-recognize-israel/ (“President Truman’s Decision to Recognize Israel”) and https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2022/05/funeral-shireen-abu-akleh-stormed-israeli-police (“Funeral of Shireen Abu Akleh stormed by Israeli police”) and https://www.the-sun.com/news/5334711/israeli-forces-attack-mourners-journalists-funeral-coffin-ground/ (“Shocking moment Israeli forces attack mourners at Al Jazeera journalist’s funeral causing coffin to topple to the ground”) and https://apnews.com/article/politics-middle-east-jerusalem-israel-0a6080b491cebc2aa830986029816976 (“Israeli nationalists chant racist slogans in Jerusalem march”)

Lastly, Donald from Toronto commented on MailOnline:

“Barbaric to have killed this journalist…it’s nothing short of murder…she [had] blue helmet, blue vest, no chance of mistaken identity or error.”

See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10813121/Israel-admits-sniper-killed-TV-journalist-video-blaming-terrorist-debunked.html?ito=twitter_share_comment_text#comments; see also https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nc/coastal/ap-top-news/2022/05/14/israel-police-to-investigate-conduct-at-journalist-funeral

Israel’s days may be numbered; and Jews are hated globally. Years ago, Benjamin Netanyahu morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors; and this has taken its toll. Today’s regime in Israel is Netanyahu 2.0.

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4 12 2022
Timothy D. Naegele

Zionists Are Zealots

And the ruthless Netanyahu is the very worst of them. He is condemned by J Street’s founder Jeremy Ben-Ami, and rightly so.

See, e.g.,
https://mondoweiss.net/2022/12/israel-support-is-a-threat-to-the-american-jewish-community-ben-ami-warns/ (“Israel support is a threat to the American Jewish community – Ben-Ami warns”)

Netanyahu was hated by Ariel Sharon and the Rabins; and the “Lioness” Leah Rabin blamed him for her husband’s tragic assassination.

Years ago, Netanyahu morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors; and he should be arrested and tried by the International Criminal Court — in a Nuremberg-like setting — for his many crimes.

See also https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11500559/benjamin-netanyahu-donald-trump-endorse-2024.html (“‘I will not step on that landmine’: Benjamin Netanyahu REFUSES to endorse his ex-ally Trump for 2024 and pledges to ‘deal with’ whoever’s in the White House – while calling on ex-president to CONDEMN Nick Fuentes and Kanye West”)

Netanyahu has zero morality, and should be tried and fried. Israel is an Apartheid state, which may get even worse.

See https://jewishcurrents.org/for-the-biden-administration-there-are-no-red-lines-on-israel (“For the Biden Administration, There Are No Red Lines On Israel”)

Israel’s raison d’etre ended ages ago.

See, e.g., https://mondoweiss.net/2022/12/blinken-tells-j-street-biden-will-change-nothing/ (“Blinken tells J Street Biden will change nothing”); see also https://www.foxnews.com/world/are-progressives-demonizing-incoming-israeli-prime-minister-netanyahus-right-wing-coalition (“Are progressives demonizing incoming Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition?”)

Worth reading as well:

“As Far-Right Come to Power in Israel, J Street Struggles for Relevance”

See https://www.mintpressnews.com/as-far-right-come-to-power-in-israel-j-street-struggles-for-relevance/

Clearly, Netanyahu morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors. Will his offspring be demonized?

See https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-the-son-of-hitlers-architect-helped-bring-the-world-cup-to-qatar/ (“How the son of ‘Hitler’s architect’ helped bring the World Cup to Qatar”)

Arab solidarity with the plight and oppression of the Palestinians is laudable

See https://dawnmena.org/palestinian-solidarity-at-the-world-cup-and-the-bankruptcy-of-u-s-policy/ (“Palestinian Solidarity at the World Cup and the Bankruptcy of U.S. Policy”)

Israel is a rogue, Apartheid state, which is hated. Its IDF and despicable settlers have killed Omar Assad and other innocents.

See, e.g.,
https://freebeacon.com/national-security/peace-between-jordan-and-israel-unraveling-report-says/ (“Peace Between Jordan and Israel Unraveling, Report Says”)

The Middle East is a cesspool, and America should extricate itself from the region.

See, e.g., https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2022/12/egypts-sisi-gets-warm-welcome-pentagon-cairo-assumes-naval-role (“Egypt’s Sisi gets warm welcome at Pentagon as Cairo assumes naval role”)

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16 03 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

Poll Questions And Answers Can Be Skewed

See https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/mar/15/jews-most-favorably-viewed-religious-group-us-pew-/ (“Jews most favorably viewed religious group in U.S., Pew study says”)

“[M]ost favorably viewed religious group” is poppycock. Yes, many or most of us have Jewish friends. And having grown up in Los Angeles, I have Jewish friends who were neighbors and classmates, and who will be my friends for life.

But as my article above states, Benjamin Netanyahu is a plague on Jews globally. He should be arrested whenever he sets foot outside of Israel, and tried by the International Criminal Court for his many crimes.

Anti-Semitism has been rising globally for decades; and the idea that he and his pro-settler thugs are back in power is untenable. Even Jewish groups like J Street are “campaigning” against his regime.

See, e.g.,
https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_qmf56fbbQWW0YhKxxBDgVw

Perhaps I feel sorriest for young American Jews who believe in Israel but deplore its thuggery. And tragically, the idea of a two-state solution, and a peaceful resolution of relations between Israelis and their non-Jewish neighbors, seems impossible.

Innocent Jews outside of Israel and the USA may be feeling the effects of anti-Semitism in ways that we cannot fathom. Decades ago, Netanyahu morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors; and the idea that he has returned to power is obscene.

. . .

See also https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/03/17/world/russia-ukraine-news?smid=em-share (“International Criminal Court Issues Arrest Warrant for Putin”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11872853/International-Criminal-Court-issues-arrest-warrant-PUTIN.html (“Putin’s fury as International Criminal Court issues warrant for his arrest for war crimes and abducting Ukrainian children: Kremlin slams ‘outrageous’ decision but Kyiv says ‘the wheels of justice are turning'”)

An arrest warrant needs to be issued for Netanyahu too; and he must be tried in a Nuremberg-like setting, just as the Nazis were — and receive similar punishment.

Today, Israel is a vicious Apartheid state because of him.

See, e.g., https://m.jpost.com/israel-news/article-734950 (“Alarmed by judicial reform, more Israelis are seeking to move abroad”)

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23 03 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

The Latest

“Pentagon has ‘multiple options’ ready if Iran builds nuclear bomb, top U.S. general says”

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/mar/23/pentagon-has-multiple-options-ready-if-iran-builds/?bt_ee

There are a number of nations that have nuclear weapons — such as Pakistan — from which such weapons can be obtained and launched against Israel (e.g., as a nation-ending EMP Attack).

. . .

See also https://www.wsj.com/articles/antisemitic-incidents-rise-to-new-high-report-says-3687ca77?reflink=share_mobilewebshare (“Antisemitic Incidents Rise to New High, Report Says”)

This is a direct result of Benjamin Netanyahu. Years ago he morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors. He was hated by Ariel Sharon and the Rabins; and the “Lioness” Leah Rabin blamed him for her husband’s tragic assassination. She believed peace was impossible with Netanyahu at Israel’s helm; and her views were prescient.

Netanyahu should be arrested whenever he sets foot outside of Israel, and tried by the International Criminal Court for his many crimes, with no mercy shown.

Israel is an amoral Zionist — or Nazi-esque — apartheid state that has lost its raison d’etre.

See https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2023/03/avalanche-security-chiefs-warn-netanyahu-israel-brink-abyss (“Avalanche of security chiefs warn Netanyahu: Israel on brink of the abyss”) and https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-if-calls-for-idf-refusal-spread-you-will-not-have-a-country/ (“Netanyahu: If calls spread for refusal to serve, State of Israel in ‘terrible danger’”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11904849/Chaos-Israel-Netanyahu-fires-defence-minister-Tens-thousands-protest-Tel-Aviv.html (“Chaos in Israel as Netanyahu fires minister: Tens of thousands protest in Tel Aviv and block a main highway after PM abruptly removes defence chief a day after he called for a halt to judicial overhaul”) and https://apnews.com/article/israel-netanyahu-politics-legal-overhaul-protests-a61c758ad1e523d38006b3e0ea972be2 (“Israeli unions launch strike, upping pressure on Netanyahu”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11910243/Netanyahu-admits-Israel-brink-CIVIL-WAR-postpones-judicial-reform.html (“Netanyahu admits Israel is on the brink of ‘CIVIL WAR’ as he postpones judicial reform amid another night of violent protests”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11916473/Netanyahu-rejects-Bidens-suggestion-walk-away-judicial-overhaul.html (“Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects Biden’s suggestion he walk away from a judicial overhaul, saying the country resists ‘pressures from abroad'”)

ALL American aid to Israel should cease immediately; BDS should be implemented; and Netanyahu should be tried as a war criminal by the International Criminal Court, in a Nuremberg-like setting, or like Adolf Eichmann was tried.

See, e.g., https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Eichmann (“Adolf Eichmann”)

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7 04 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

When Will Israel’s Enemies Cease Counterproductive Pin Pricks?

See, e.g., https://apnews.com/article/israel-jerusalem-al-aqsa-temple-mount-d5eb317fe2a0083db0160297c4f494d7 (“Israel stages strikes in Lebanon, blasts reported in Tyre”)

EMP weapons would penetrate Israel’s porous Iron Dome, and might destroy the Apartheid state completely.

See also https://m.jpost.com/middle-east/article-738692 (“Muslim world must unite against Israel, Erdogan says to Iran’s Raisi”)

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10 04 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

No Peace With Netanyahu

idlapac from Liverpool, UK commented on MailOnline:

“No peace with bibi in power.!!!”

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11956799/Mother-two-British-sisters-20-15-murdered-West-Bank-shooting-dies-hospital.html?ito=twitter_share_comment_text#comments and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11956799/Mother-two-British-sisters-20-15-murdered-West-Bank-shooting-dies-hospital.html (“‘Our family of seven is now a family of four’: Heartbroken rabbi father of two murdered British-Israeli sisters peppered with 20 bullets in West Bank drive-by shooting reveals his wife died after operation to get two bullets out of her head and spine”)

Netanyahu is a heinous criminal who must be tried by the International Criminal Court — in a Nuremberg-like setting — for his many crimes, too many to count. And then executed.

Decades ago, he morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors. He was hated by Ariel Sharon and the “Lioness” Leah Rabin, who blamed him for her husband’s tragic assassination. She believed peace was impossible with Netanyahu at Israel’s helm; and her views were prescient.

Indeed, innocent Jews — especially those who live outside of Israel and the United States — have been suffering from rising anti-Semitism because of Netanyahu.

Like

21 04 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

Anti-Semitism Is Everywhere

See, e.g., https://m.jpost.com/opinion/article-739584 (“Florida’s ongoing battle with Jew hatred”)

Benjamin Netanyahu has fanned the flames of anti-Semitism globally. His return to power in Israel has done so already, and will continue to hurt innocent Jews globally, in ways not seen since World War II.

Decades ago, he morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors; and as stated previously, he was hated by Ariel Sharon and the Rabins. Indeed, the “Lioness” Leah Rabin blamed him for her husband’s tragic assassination.

She believed that peace was impossible with Netanyahu at Israel’s helm; and her views were prescient. He needs to be arrested and tried by the International Criminal Court for his many crimes. Nothing less will suffice.

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29 04 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

Israel’s Apartheid Continues Unabated

See https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-house-passes-pro-israel-measure-401-19-but-growing-number-of-dems-vote-against/

Clearly, the Israeli lobby in our nation’s capital is not influenced one iota by Benjamin Netanyahu’s racist regime in Israel. Only J Street engaged in feeble efforts to have a two-state solution mentioned, which came to naught.

No wonder anti-Semitism has grown in the United States and globally. No one should be surprised in the least.

See also https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog-may-2-2023/ (“IDF begins Gaza counterstrikes, prompting additional rocket fire at southern towns”)

With nuclear weapons available from a number of sources (e.g., Pakistan), it’s surprising that a nation-ending EMP Attack has not been launched against Israel by now.

. . .

See also https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/05/04/israel-ultra-orthodox-equality-protests/ (“Israelis call out perks for ultra-Orthodox in latest protests”)

The ultra-Orthodox and settlers are a plague on the tiny state.

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9 05 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

Why Do Tit-For-Tat Attacks Continue?

See, e.g., https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/09/israel-bombs-gaza-strip-killing-three-islamic-jihad-leaders (“Israel bombs Gaza Strip, killing three Islamic Jihad leaders”)

At some point, an EMP Attack or other major attack may occur, which might end Israel’s existence. The “Iron Dome” is penetrable and porous.

Are Israel’s enemies suicidal, such that they are willing to engage in “Tit-For-Tat” warfare, when instead they could deliver a “knock-out punch”?

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9 05 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

It Is Likely That FDR — The Father Of Today’s Democratic Party — Would Have Agreed with Her

See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12063711/Rashida-Tlaib-fire-event-marking-catastrophe-founding-Israel.html (“Pro-Palestinian Squad member Rashida Tlaib under fire for hosting event marking the ‘catastrophe’ of the founding of the Jewish state of Israel”)

. . .

Pure madness. What did it accomplish?

https://www.npr.org/2023/05/13/1176041866/israel-and-palestinians-reach-cease-fire-to-end-5-days-of-fighting (“Israel, Palestinians reach cease-fire to end 5 days of fighting”)

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14 06 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

Tucker’s Third Video On Twitter

See https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1668747661028081664?s=20

Both Trump and Tucker were and are correct: there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It was a lie, foisted on the world by the Apartheid state, Israel, and its despicable fellow travelers.

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22 06 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

Nothing Ever Changes In The Apartheid State Of Israel

Earlier today, Adina Vogel Ayalon, Chief of Staff, J Street wrote:

We’ve seen a series of extremely concerning events in Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territory over the past week – including a deadly terror attack, a violent settler pogrom, dramatic moves to expand settlements, and new plans by Netanyahu to advance the anti-democratic judicial overhaul:

• On Sunday, the Netanyahu government announced it would accelerate the settlement construction process and approve another 4,500 settlement units on Palestinian territory. The Biden administration said it was “deeply troubled” by the decision.

• Prime Minister Netanyahu also said his government will “begin the practical steps” to press forward with his judicial ‘reform’ agenda. Mass pro-democracy protests against the plan continued into their fifth month over the weekend.

• On Monday, there was intensive violence in the West Bank city of Jenin during a major IDF operation. During an exchange of fire between the IDF and Palestinian militants, six Palestinians were killed, including two 14-year-olds. 91 Palestinians were wounded along with seven members of Israeli security forces.

• On Tuesday, near the West Bank settlement of Eli, two Palestinian gunmen launched a terror attack killing four Israelis, including two 17-year-olds.

• Late Tuesday night, dozens of Israeli settlers descended on a West Bank village north of Ramallah, torching businesses, cars and homes while families hid in fear. Israeli security forces were present but failed to stop the violence and have not yet held any perpetrators accountable. Settlers launched several other attacks on Palestinian civilians and property across the West Bank, claiming retribution for the Eli terror attack.

This is a deeply alarming moment for anyone who cares about Israel’s safe, democratic future and the rights of all people to live freely and raise their families in peace.

Time and time again, in incident after incident, we are seeing callous and violent religious and nationalist extremists push the situation in precisely the wrong direction. Choosing retribution instead of safety. Impunity instead of accountability. Brutality instead of humanity. Escalation instead of peace.

They are pushing us toward a one-state nightmare, spelling disaster for Israeli democracy and catastrophe for the safety and freedom of every Israeli and every Palestinian.

As the situation continues to spiral, much stronger leadership from the Biden Administration is urgently needed.

At J Street, we represent the overwhelming majority of American Jews who know that truly standing up for the safety of Israelis means working to peacefully resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and to end the unjust, deteriorating status quo of endless occupation.

The US must firmly and truthfully confront the forces driving this conflict. We must pursue real accountability to prevent spiraling violence. We cannot take a “hands off” approach – and risk the outbreak of another massive escalation, more violence and suffering, and permanent damage to Israeli democracy.

In Washington, DC and in communities across the country, J Street is continuing to make the stakes clear, to organize for change, and to lobby for strong, credible US action to protect lives and stop this spiral toward more violence, chaos and injustice.

These words might have been written 15 years ago when J Street was founded. Nothing really changes within the rabidly-Apartheid state of Israel.

See also https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-on-verge-of-apartheid-hopes-for-peace-fading-away-says-former-un-chief/ (“Israel on verge of apartheid, hopes for peace ‘fading away,’ says former UN chief”)

De facto Apartheid has existed in Israel for many years, which has been more pronounced under the regime of Benjamin Netanyahu, who morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors long ago.

He was hated by Ariel Sharon and the Rabins; and the “Lioness” Leah Rabin blamed him for her husband’s tragic assassination. He should be tried by the International Criminal Court in a Nuremberg-like setting, and imprisoned whenever he sets foot outside of Israel.

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3 07 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

The Ravenous Apartheid State Strikes Again

See, e.g., https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/03/palestinians-killed-israeli-strike-west-bank-jenin (“Israel attacks Jenin in biggest West Bank incursion in 20 years”)

As Mike Evans—a Jew who heads the Jerusalem Prayer Team—has stated correctly:

All across Israel today Jewish people know that they are hated. Every day brings new reminders and new threats and new attacks. They also know that much of the world either shares the opinions of the Jew-haters or doesn’t care enough to do anything about it.

For many non-Jews globally, the end of the Apartheid state cannot come fast enough.

See, e.g.,
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/04/middleeast/jenin-israel-operation-not-over-intl/index.html (“West Bank: Angry Palestinians mourn 12 killed in Israeli military operation in Jenin”)

Also, innocent Jews—who live outside of Israel and the United States—have been bearing the blunt of anti-Semitism for a long time now.

Many years ago, Netanyahu morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors. He was hated by Ariel Sharon and the Rabins; and the “Lioness” Leah Rabin blamed him for her husband’s tragic assassination. She believed that peace was impossible with Netanyahu at Israel’s helm; and her views were prescient.

Netanyahu and the ravenous settlers and Zionists must be brought to justice, now.

Like

7 07 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

The Apartheid State Of Israel Has Engaged In Nonstop War Crimes Since Its Existence Began

UN chief: Israel ‘obviously’ used excessive force in Jenin. Guterres dodges question on UN war crimes allegation, blames Israel for ‘worst violence’ in West Bank in years.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/un-chief-says-israel-obviously-used-excessive-force-in-jenin/ (“UN chief: Israel ‘obviously’ used excessive force in Jenin”)

The UN chief says what the world knows to be true, which is among the reasons why anti-Semitism flourishes globally.

Like

15 07 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

Like Vladimir Putin, Hopefully This Is The Beginning Of The End For Benjamin Netanyahu

See https://m.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-750170 (“Prime Minister Netanyahu admitted to hospital after collapsing at home”)

Years ago, Netanyahu morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors. He should have been arrested and tried by the International Criminal Court years ago — in a Nuremberg-like setting — for his many crimes.

He and the settlers and Zionists have perpetuated an Apartheid state, which has oppressed the Palestinians and others. Indeed, he was hated by Ariel Sharon and the Rabins; and the “Lioness” Leah Rabin blamed him for her husband’s tragic assassination. She believed that peace was impossible with Netanyahu at the helm of Israel; and her views were prescient.

Innocent Jews outside of Israel and the United States suffer from rampant anti-Semitism today because of Netanyahu. The sooner that he and his ilk are gone forever from Israel, the better.

And yes, Israel is a racist, Apartheid state whose raison d’être ended decades ago. All American aid to Israel should cease immediately. It does not occupy a moral high ground, any more than do the enemies that are arrayed against it.

https://jewishinsider.com/2023/07/rep-pramilia-jayapal/ (“House Democratic leaders reject Jayapal’s remarks: ‘Israel is not a racist state’”)

Like

18 07 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

Why Is A Leftist Goon From An Apartheid State Like Israel Permitted To Speak Before America’s Congress?

Isaac Herzog’s speech should be canceled.

See, e.g., https://spectator.org/ilhan-omars-squad-boycotts-the-israeli-left/ (“Ilhan Omar’s Squad Boycotts the Israeli Left”)

Also, the UN, EU and United States should designate Israel as a terror state, which should be boycotted.

Like

21 07 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

Finally . . .

https://www.timesofisrael.com/at-least-15-arrested-as-protests-turn-fiery-after-pm-doubles-down-on-overhaul/ (“At least 15 arrested as protests turn fiery after PM doubles down on overhaul”) and https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/wake-up-israel-civil-war-is-on-its-way/ (“Wake up, Israel! Civil war is on its way!”) and https://m.jpost.com/israel-news/article-752051 (“Another 10,000 IDF reservists announce they won’t serve anymore”)

. . . Israelis are standing up against the Hitler-esque Netanyahu, but it is too little, too late.

The world knows what Israel is today: an Apartheid state whose raison d’etre ended decades ago. Netanyahu, the settlers and Zionists have underscored that in spades.

All American aid must cease; and Israel must be recognized as the global pariah that it is.

. . .

Both Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin need to meet at the Gates of Hell, ASAP.

See, e.g., https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/21/netanyahu-israel-judicial-reform-protests/ (“Netanyahu defiant as vote to limit Israel courts looms amid rising protests”) and https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/23/world/middleeast/netanyahu-hospitalized-heart-implant.html (“Netanyahu Fitted With Pacemaker for Heart Defect as Israel’s Turmoil Intensifies”)

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3 08 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

The Exception

See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12368501/Never-seen-footage-reveals-moment-troops-saved-thousands-Jews-Nazi-death-train-bound-Theresienstadt-concentration-camp-dramatic-eleventh-hour-rescue.html (“Saved from Hell: Never-before-seen footage reveals moment US troops rescued thousands of Jews from Nazi death train bound for Theresienstadt concentration camp”)

Franklin D. Roosevelt prevented the MS St. Louis from docking at American ports, thus consigning its Jewish passengers to their fate in Europe. Other anti-Semites in his administration knew of the death trains, but did nothing about them.

Like

17 08 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

Of Course Israel Is An Apartheid State

See, e.g., https://mondoweiss.net/2023/08/washington-post-and-msnbc-voices-say-apartheid-and-j-street-inches-closer/

This has been true since its founding.

It should be treated as such, like South Africa.

See, e.g., https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandela:_Long_Walk_to_Freedom (“Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom”)

. . .

See also https://www.ynetnews.com/article/hymelzgan (“Settlers burn tires on major road as troops arrive and hurling rocks at Palestinians passing through”)

The settlers should be annihilated.

Like

29 08 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

The Tragic Parallels Between Netanyahu’s Israel And Joe Biden’s America

See, e.g., https://act.jstreet.org/mailings/view/334252?t=9&akid=334252%2E205736%2EswzCt8 (“Netanyahu’s One-State ‘Solution’: The Reality in the West Bank”)

Years ago, Netanyahu morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors. He was hated by Ariel Sharon and the Rabins; and the “Lioness” Leah Rabin blamed him for her husband’s tragic assassination.

With the passage of time, he has only gotten worse. Similarly, America-hating Barack Obama’s puppet Joe Biden and his rabid Leftists have done everything in their power to transform the United States into the ultimate fascist state.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/ (“Is Barack Obama A Racist?”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12453245/Emails-Hunter-Biden-tried-help-shut-Burisma-probe.html (“Hunter Biden helped devise plan to ‘close down’ Viktor Shokin’s investigation into Burisma, emails reveal”)

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8 09 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

Has Netanyahu Spawned A War Over The Apartheid State’s Right to Exist?

See, e.g., https://m.jpost.com/israel-news/politics-and-diplomacy/article-758162 (“Civil War? ‘Blood will be shed,’ warns fmr. Israeli security chief”)

Decades ago, Netanyahu morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors. He was hated by Ariel Sharon and the Rabins. Indeed, the “Lioness” Leah Rabin blamed him for her husband’s tragic assassination.

She believed peace was impossible with Netanyahu at Israel’s helm; and her views were prescient. Anti-Semitism has continued to grow, hurting American Jews and innocent Jews globally, and fueled at least in part by the actions of Netanyahu, the Settlers and rabid Zionists.

See, e.g., https://www.ktvu.com/news/los-altos-synagogue-evacuated-after-bomb-threat-2nd-bay-area-synagogue-swatted-in-a-month

Clearly, the Apartheid continues unabated.

See, e.g., https://www.newsrael.com/posts/gyu6qf4uib (“Legal Borders of Three New Judea Communities Approved”)

Like

27 09 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

In Addition To Being An Apartheid State, Israelis Discriminate Against Women By Making Them Second-Class Citizens

See, e.g.,
https://jerusalemworldnews.com/e/?id=139178&mkt_tok=NTkxLUhXVS0zNjEAAAGOd221ajXbiU-bu8Xz1UOb7ic81Al0hrn-cXTr6Eoef69ETXsuJqfgMHKk3W7-VB9R-PJ-FMq5lTtgc-E4ZauE_kjz7hbsiaLgMZPrThgLdFuEog

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5 10 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

Ignoring The 800-Pound Gorilla In The Room

See https://m.jpost.com/opinion/article-761854#761854 (“Combating antisemitism on college campuses like UPenn”)

This is a fine and laudable statement. But the rise in anti-Semitism did not occur overnight. It’s been building for decades, globally. And perhaps those most affected are innocent Jew who reside outside of Israel and the United States.

The reasons are discussed in the article above and the other comments beneath it. But to summarize, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Settlers and rabid Zionists have engendered a climate in which reasonable voices are stifled, and the “deranged” prevail.

Perhaps Ariel Sharon and the Rabins articulated it best. They hated Netanyahu; and the “Lioness” Leah Rabin blamed him for her husband’s tragic assassination. She believed that peace was impossible with Netanyahu at the helm of Israel.

Indeed, he should be tried before the International Criminal Court, in a Nuremberg-like setting, and arrested when he sets foot outside of Israel.

Nothing less will suffice.

. . .

Lastly, Jewish students at college campuses must not be required to defend the indefensible, or cowed into doing so. They know what Netanyahu, the Settlers and Zionists have done, and keep on doing. Also, Jewish women are often treated as second-class citizens by Jewish men, which is absurd.

Perhaps this is among the factors that emboldened Harvey Weinstein and others to abuse so many women.

Like

7 10 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

Why . . .

. . . are Israel’s enemies using “pin pricks” against it, when an EMP Attack or WMD might be decisive?

See https://justthenews.com/world/middle-east/surprise-attack-israel-gaza-saturday-morning-rockets-and-terrorist-infiltration (“Surprise attack on Israel from Gaza Saturday morning, with rockets and terrorist infiltration”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12604497/Israel-says-striking-Gaza-targets-Hamas-announces-new-operation.html (“Israel declares ‘state of war’: Militants Hamas fire ‘5,000’ rockets into Israel and target Tel Aviv and Jerusalem as gun battles break out in border towns and Israeli soldier ‘is kidnapped'”)

All the “pin pricks” do is invite massive retaliation by the IDF. Because its Iron Dome is “porous,” the Apartheid state is vulnerable.

See, e.g., https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20231007-hamas-surprise-attack-a-historic-failure-for-israeli-intelligence-services (“Hamas surprise attack a ‘historic failure’ for Israeli intelligence services”)

. . .

Does the world really care?

Henry Harvey Henry from London commented on MailOnline:

“Not our problem, we should stay out of it.”

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12604497/Israel-says-striking-Gaza-targets-Hamas-announces-new-operation.html?ito=twitter_share_comment_text#comments

Katie Prices Teeth from the UK commented on MailOnline:

“How is the occupation of Ukraine by Putin any different from Palestine being occupied by Israel?”

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12604497/Israel-says-striking-Gaza-targets-Hamas-announces-new-operation.html?ito=twitter_share_comment_text#comments

But the evil Netanyahu is determined to make it our problem.

See https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/oct/07/hamas-launches-attack-on-israel-with-5000-rockets-live (“Israel ‘at war’, says Netanyahu, after Palestinian air and land attack kills dozens and injures more than 700”)

. . .

Next, Steve Scalise is pandering to America’s Jews.

See https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/oct/7/steve-scalise-calls-joe-biden-be-held-accountable-/ (“Scalise calls for Biden to be held accountable for Hamas attack”)

. . .

Lastly, are brain-dead Joe Biden and his corrupt administration going to plunge Americans into another war? Aren’t Ukraine and the risk of war with China over Taiwan enough?

See https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3551580/statement-from-secretary-of-defense-lloyd-j-austin-iii-on-the-attacks-against-i/ (“Statement From Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III on the Attacks Against Israel”) and https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3551716/statement-from-secretary-lloyd-j-austin-iii-on-us-force-posture-changes-in-the/

The United States should not be aiding the Apartheid state in any way.

. .

And its propaganda is predictable.

See, e.g., https://www.nysun.com/article/israel-vows-victory-in-war-launched-from-gaza-catching-the-jewish-state-off-guard-on-one-of-its-holiest-days-and-leaving-citizens-staggered-at-the-catastrophe (“Israel Vows Victory in War Launched by Hamas From Gaza, Catching the Jewish State Off-Guard on One of Its Holiest Days and Leaving Citizens Staggered at the Catastrophe”); see also https://www.breitbart.com/middle-east/2023/10/07/nolte-joe-biden-blamed-for-funding-attack-on-israel-by-paying-iran-6b/ (“Joe Biden Blamed for ‘Funding’ Attack on Israel by Paying Iran $6B”)

. . .

Netanyahu needs to be tried in a Nuremberg-like setting for his many crimes, like Adolf Eichmann. Decades ago he morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors. He and the Settlers and rabid Zionists have oppressed the Palestinians and others.

Compare https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12605083/hamas-gunmen-kidnap-israeli-grandmothers-gaza-strip-reports-civilians-golf-carts.html (“Netanyahu vows to turn Gaza into ‘rubble’: Israeli PM tells Palestinians to ‘leave now’ and says Hamas will pay an ‘unprecedented price’ after they kidnapped grans and launched shocking attack that has left hundreds dead on both sides”) with https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/ (“Ariel Sharon Is Missed”); see also https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12607611/A-world-split-Middle-East-massacre-Western-nations-support-Israel-desecrate-flag-applaud-onslaught-solidarity-Hamas.html (“A world split by Middle East massacre: Western nations show support for Israel – while others desecrate its flag and applaud onslaught in solidarity with Hamas”)

The fact that our flag has been lowered to half-mast at the Capitol, “in solidarity with [the Apartheid state] Israel,” is certifiably crazy and abhorrent. It sends a message loud and clear to the world that America supports Netanyahu and his Israeli fascists, which we don’t.

Like

14 10 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

Will Israelis Be Given Such A “Window” Before Nation-Ending WMDs Rain Down On The Tiny Zionist State?

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/14/middleeast/gaza-israel-evacuation-saturday-intl-hnk/index.html (“Israel announces 6-hour window for Gazans fleeing south, as troops gather near border”)

When is the totally-evil Netanyahu going to attack our fleet, and kill Americans, like the USS Liberty was attacked?

See, e.g.,
https://www.usslibertyveterans.org/ (“USS Liberty Veterans Association”); see also https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/15/gaza-ground-invasion-israel-us-second-carrier-group-hamas?CMP=share_btn_link (” As Gaza ground invasion nears, second US carrier group deployed to prevent ‘escalation’”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12630635/Israeli-airstrike-Gaza-convoy-fleeing-south-route-approved-IDF-kills-70-including-women-children-young-two.html (“Israeli airstrike on Gaza convoy fleeing south on route approved by IDF kills up to 70 – including women and children as young as two”) and https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67102956 (“BBC journalists held at gunpoint by Israeli police”)

. . .

Next, is free speech dead and buried in the UK?

See, e.g., https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12630283/Hamas-arrested-Met-Police-pro-Palestinian-protesters-London-officers.html (“Thousands of pro-Palestine supporters take to the streets around the country setting off flares and brandishing signs as Met Police warns: Support Hamas and you will be arrested”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12631159/protesters-paragliders-Hamas-chant-England-terrorist-state-London.html (“UK pro-Palestine protests turn ugly with police making 15 arrests as demonstrators place paragliders stickers on their backs in reference to Hamas’ atrocities, stamp on flags and tell Israelis to ‘remember where they were in 1940′”)

. . .

Lastly, Netanyahu morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors decades ago. He is the enemy, and must be tried by the International Criminal Court for his many crimes — in a Nuremberg-like setting — and incarcerated for the rest of his life, at the very least.

He will be welcomed at the Gates of Hell by Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-tung.

See, e.g., https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12630839/Israeli-army-says-preparing-significant-combat-operations-Gaza-darkly-warns-remember-Hamas-Benjamin-Netanyahu-visits-troops.html (“Israeli forces surround Gaza Strip and prepare for ‘land, sea and air assault’ to eliminate Hamas – as Benjamin Netanyahu warns ‘the next stage is coming’ and the IDF claims terrorists are blocking thousands of desperately fleeing Palestinians”) and
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12632165/israel-ground-invasion-gaza-idf-plans.html (“Israel’s strike on Gaza ‘has been delayed until next week because of bad weather, with new rules making it easier for IDF troops to shoot enemies’ in invasion that could last 18 MONTHS”)

Like our wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and now Ukraine, the United States must not become involved in another war in the Middle East. We must not take sides. Among other things, we might lose our access to critical oil from the region, which would cripple us and inure to the benefit of our enemies, China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

. . .

This is outrageous. . .

https://theintercept.com/2023/10/13/j-street-israel-gaza-resolution/ (“J Street to Democrats: Back Resolution Supporting Gaza War or Lose Endorsement”)

A better alternative?

See https://www.ifnotnowmovement.org/ (“IfNotNowMovement”)

. . .

Tragically, every Jew in the world may be targeted . . . but Netanyahu does not care. He is “milking” this whole catastrophe, and trying to stay out of prison.

See, e.g., https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12632599/star-david-jewish-homes-berlin-israel-palestine-war-hamas.html (“Star of David is graffitied on Jewish homes in Berlin after Hamas attacks on Israel – in chilling echo of anti-Semitic persecution of the Jews under the Nazis”)

Like

25 10 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

Rania Is Correct: Netanyahu And The Israelis Are Butchers

See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12669115/queen-rania-jordan-cnn-interview-palestine-gaza.html (“Queen Rania of Jordan denounces the West for its ‘glaring double standards’ in response to Israeli and Gazan deaths and calls out Biden for supporting ‘butchery at a mass scale’ in fiery interview”); see also https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231025-erdogan-says-cancelling-plans-to-visit-israel (“Erdogan says cancelling plans to visit Israel”)

If the Apartheid state ceases to exist because of WMDs (e.g., an EMP Attack), few non-Jewish tears will be shed globally.

See also https://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/many-reasons-netanyahu-may-delaying-israeli-ground-offensive-gaza-rcna122012 (“The many reasons Netanyahu may be delaying an Israeli ground offensive in Gaza”)

Has a price been put on his head?

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27 10 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

The Day Is Coming Closer . . .

. . . when the prediction of Israel’s demise may come true.

Anti-Semitism is growing globally, as a direct result of Benjamin Netanyahu’s reign of terror, and that of the “Settlers” and rabid Zionists.

See, e.g., https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-antisemitism-israel-hamas-war-20231028-xsyjgts46fdmva4ifwvpjbcbdq-story.html (“Surge in antisemitism amid Israel-Hamas war marks ‘frightening time’ for Jews in US and globally”)

No one should ever forget the words of J Street’s founder, Jeremy Ben-Ami: “Is this how I wanted to be treated when I was a minority in another people’s country?”

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2023/10/23/sadly-this-book-is-out-of-print-because-its-wisdom-is-needed-now-in-the-middle-east-and-globally-more-than-ever/ (“Sadly, This Book Is Out Of Print, Because Its Wisdom Is Needed Now In The Middle East And Globally More Than Ever”)

The day that Israel is destroyed, loud cheering may be heard around the world. But it would mean that those brave Jews in Israel who opposed Netanyahu, the Settlers and Zionists had perished too.

See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12681607/Hezbollah-rockets-force-thousands-flee-homes-near-Lebanese-border-second-opens-no-one-quite-sure-Israel-victorious-RICHARD-PENDLEBURY-reports.html (“Hezbollah rockets force thousands to flee their homes near the Lebanese border… And if a second front opens, no one is quite sure Israel would be victorious”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12681927/Hundreds-protestors-clash-police-storming-Grand-Central-demand-ceasefire-IDF-steps-airstrikes-Gaza-warns-Palestinians-flee.html (“Pro-Palestine and Jewish protestors are ARRESTED in NYC after hundreds stormed Grand Central to demand a ceasefire – as Israel pummels Gaza with ‘unprecedented’ airstrikes, steps up ground operations and ‘cuts all communications'”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12683935/Fury-streets-NYC-members-Brooklyns-orthodox-Jewish-community-join-THOUSANDS-pro-Palestine-protestors-rally-slamming-Israels-war-Gaza.html (“Thousands of pro-Palestine protestors shut down Brooklyn Bridge after flooding NYC streets alongside orthodox Jewish members to condemn Israel’s war in Gaza – as businesses are plastered with ‘Zionism is Terrorism’ stickers”) and https://www.wnd.com/2023/10/appalling-watch-enraged-muslim-mob-storm-airport-hunting-jews/ (“Watch enraged Muslim mob storm airport hunting for Jews”)

Zionism is terrorism . . .

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4 11 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

Will Israel Be Inhililated?

See https://news.yahoo.com/hamas-aims-trap-israel-gaza-220318093.html (“How Hamas aims to trap Israel in Gaza quagmire”) and https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/americas/1699168321-pro-palestine-protesters-threaten-to-storm-white-house-call-for-israel-s-elimination (“Pro-Palestine Protesters Worldwide Call For Israel’s Elimination”)

Why are its enemies engaged in half measures?

. . .

See also https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12707881/israel-gaza-democrats-alan-dershowitz.html (“The great betrayal tearing the Democrats to shreds: ALAN DERSHOWITZ says vile Leftist anti-Israeli hate will turn millions of American Jews from Blue to Red – and he’s one”)

What happens in the United States politically has no effect on the anti-Israel hate that is growing globally. A tragic byproduct of that hate is the growth of anti-Semitism globally. Innocent Jews will be targeted and suffer.

See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12710855/Pro-Palestine-march-Washington-DC.html (“Thousands of pro-Palestine protestors calling for ceasefire in Gaza storm Washington DC – with some waving signs calling Biden a child murderer”)

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6 11 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

Ominous

“The spike of antisemetic incidents across Europe has reached extraordinary levels in the last few days, reminiscent of some of the darkest times in history. European Jews today are again living in fear.”

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/statement_23_5527 (“European Commission Statement on antisemitic incidents in Europe”)

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6 11 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

Have The Israelis Morphed Into Their Ancestors’ Nazi Oppressors?

See, e.g., https://www.the-sun.com/news/9553820/israel-attack-dogs-hamas-tunnel/ (“Israel to deploy ferocious attack dogs to maul Hamas tunnel terrorists as training vid shows hound on rampage”) and https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2023/11/06/settlers-are-causing-mayhem-in-the-west-bank (“Settlers are causing mayhem in the West Bank”)

When the state of Israel was born in 1948, tragically many of the practices used by the Nazis were adopted by the Zionists. For more than a decade, there has been little doubt that Benjamin Netanyahu morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors.

Hence, anti-Semitism has been rising dramatically on a global basis; and innocent Jews are bearing its weight, which is not likely to recede in the future, certainly the near future.

Quite to the contrary, we may be on the cusp of World War III.

See, e.g., https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2023/10/live-updates-gaza-death-toll-passes-10000-irans-khamenei-hosts-hamas-leader-us (“Gaza death toll passes 10,000 as Iran’s Khamenei hosts Hamas leader, US sends submarine”) and https://en.majalla.com/node/303591/science-technology/how-hamas-cyber-force-hacked-israeli-army%E2%80%99s-secrets (“How Hamas Cyber Force hacked the Israeli army’s secrets”)

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15 11 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

This Is Outrageous

See https://thepoliticalinsider.com/speaker-mike-johnson-joins-hands-with-democrats-at-march-for-israel-schumer-vows-they-wont-rest-until-israel-gets-all-the-assistance-you-need/ (“Speaker Mike Johnson Joins Hands With Democrats At March For Israel, Schumer Vows They ‘Won’t Rest’ Until Israel Gets ‘All the Assistance You Need’”)

Zero aid of any kind should be given to the Apartheid state until Netanyahu, the “Settlers” and rabid Zionists are imprisoned or otherwise removed from any positions of power.

Decades ago, Netanyahu morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors. He was hated by Ariel Sharon and the Rabins; and the “Lioness” Leah Rabin blamed him for her husband’s tragic assassination. She believed that peace was impossible with Netanyahu at the helm of Israel’s government; and her views were prescient.

Netanyahu needs to be tried by the International Criminal Court for his many crimes — in a Nuremberg-like setting — and suffer a fate similar to that of Adolf Eichmann. Nothing less will suffice.

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16 11 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

Who Is The “New” Osama Bin Laden, And Will The Target Be The USA Again, Or Israel’s Elimination, Or Both?

See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12756843/osama-bin-laden-letter-america-viral-tiktok-debate-israel-hamas-war.html (“Terror warlord Osama Bin Laden’s 2002 ‘Letter to America’ explaining why he murdered 2977 people in 9/11 atrocity goes viral on TikTok 21 years later”); see also https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12756843/osama-bin-laden-letter-america-viral-tiktok-debate-israel-hamas-war.html (“Anti-Israel Gen Zers send Bin Laden’s 2002 ‘Letter to America’ VIRAL: Terror chief’s 9/11 justification wins support among pro-Palestine Americans who claim their ‘eyes have been opened’ after The Guardian linked to it”)

To be fair and even-handed, political observer and advisor Dick Morris — a Jew himself — recognizes the rise of anti-Semitism globally, but seeks to rebut the Bin Laden letter, and give it historical context and meaning.

See https://www.dickmorris.com/rebutting-bin-ladens-letter-lunch-alert/ (“Rebutting Bin Laden’s Letter”)

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17 11 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

The Zionists Are Naive

See, e.g., https://www.timesofisrael.com/spotlight/the-negev-now-and-the-day-after/ (“A proactive response to the current crisis is a new vision for Zionism in the 21st century. This vision needs to transcend political differences”)

The schisms in Israel between (1) Netanyahu, the “Settlers” and Zionists, and (2) non-Jews, has reached a fever pitch, certainly as manifested on a global scale. It had been building for decades, and has burst into the open now. Indeed, anti-Semitism has reached levels not seen since World War II; and it is likely to get far worse.

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18 11 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

Finally, Justice For The Palestinians And Others Who Have Been Killed And Suppressed By Netanyahu And His Israeli Thugs

See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12765271/osama-bin-laden-letter-america-kara-kennedy.html (“What’s even more terrifying than hand-wringing Gen Z-ers suddenly embracing 9/11 terror kingpin Bin Laden? One day, despairs KARA KENNEDY, they’ll be running America”) and https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8428552/erdogan-calls-israel-terror-state-after-germany-visit/ (“Erdogan calls Israel ‘terror state’ after Germany visit”)

Like

19 11 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

Just Deserts?

RobboDobbo2012 from Manchester, UK commented on MailOnline:

“Oh, the irony! Land thieves being targeted by ship thieves!”

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12767701/Cargo-ship-hijacked-Yemens-Houthi-rebels-Red-Sea-22-crew-members-board-none-Israeli-citizens-IDF-says.html?ito=twitter_share_comment_text#comments (“Cargo ship with 22 crew onboard and part-owned by an Israeli tycoon with ties to the former boss of Mossad is ‘hijacked by Yemen’s Houthi rebels’ in the Red Sea – after the Iran-backed militia vowed to target Israeli-linked vessels”)

Also, Netanyahu appears to be “toast.” It’s just a matter of time, and long overdue.

See https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2023/11/poll-only-4-israeli-jews-find-netanyahu-reliable-source-gaza-war (“Only 4% of Israeli Jews find Netanyahu reliable source on Gaza war”)

And Israeli defenses are porous at best.

See, e.g., https://www.the-express.com/news/world-news/118947/israel-military-base-destroyed-hezbollah-rocket-strike-hamas-war (“”Key Israeli military base destroyed ‘by Hezbollah rocket strike’ as fears surge”)

Will anyone really care if Israel ceases to exist? Among non-Jews, will any genuine tears be shed?

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2023/10/09/does-anyone-really-care/ (“Does Anyone Really Care?”)

. . .

More perplexing is why Israel’s enemies haven’t use WMDs (e.g., nation-ending EMP weapons) against it? They can be acquired from Pakistan or Russia; and Israel is vulnerable. Why engage in “tit-for-tat” exchanges?

See https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/gaza-news/article-774397 (“Israel-Hamas war: Hamas morale suffers as IDF gains ground in Gaza”)

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25 11 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

Is Israel Doomed?

The world is standing up against the evil Netanyahu, the “Settlers” and rabid Zionists, and exposing the unspeakable atrocities that the Apartheid state has inflicted on the Palestinians and others since 1948. They have truly morphed into their Nazi oppressors; and to hide the truth, they seek to suppress free speech globally.

See, e.g., https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12790169/Cops-line-streets-Palestine-rally-hits-London-amid-four-day-ceasefire-Gaza-police-make-arrest-warning-Arabic-speaking-officers-watching-hate-speech-crowd.html (“Palestine protesters defy hate speech warning with anti-Semitic banners: Thousands march on London shouting controversial ‘from the river to the sea’ chant amid Gaza ceasefire – as seven arrested”)

Also, never trust the Israelis.

See, e.g., https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12790379/Hamas-hands-Israeli-hostages-day-2.html (“Hamas BLOCKS release of second group of hostages: Terror group refuses to free 14 prisoners and accuses Israel of breaking terms of four-day pause by failing to allow enough aid trucks into Gaza – as Egypt desperately tries to resolve delay”); see also https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12791487/Queens-Jewish-teacher-pro-Israel-rampage.html (“Jewish teacher is forced to HIDE in her classroom at a Queens high school as ‘radicalized’ students rampage through hallways while demanding she be fired for attending pro-Israel rally”)

When will Netanyahu stage a USS Liberty-like attack on American forces in the region?

Compare https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12794147/Houthi-rebels-MISSILES-Yemen-American.html (“Iran-backed Houthi rebels fire MISSILES at US destroyer off Yemen in ‘significant escalation’ after American troops freed Israeli-linked tanker from pirates”) with https://www.usslibertyveterans.org/ (“USS Liberty Veterans Association”)

Why are we even in the region? Why are we helping the Apartheid state at all?

See, e.g., https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-yemen-ship-attack-526842504dc9f6bb7ca6e1d5104f77a3 (“US Navy seizes attackers who held Israel-linked tanker. Missiles from rebel-controlled Yemen follow”)

. . .

See https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/26/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-netanyahu-gaza.html (“Prime Minister Netanyahu Visits Israeli Troops in Gaza”)

He should be visiting them in Hell . . .

Like

26 11 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

An Atrocious Double Standard

See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12792659/boris-johnson-wife-carrie-campaign-against-antisemitism-rachel-riley-vanessa-feltz.html (“More than 100,000 march through London ‘in largest protest against anti-Semitism since 1936’: Huge crowds waving Israeli flags and placards descend on capital and are joined by ex PM Boris Johnson, Rachel Riley, Eddie Marsan and Vanessa Feltz”)

It’s fine to march against anti-Semitism, but those who march against the atrocities perpetrated by the despicable Netanyahu, the “Settlers,” rabid Zionists and their Israeli thugs are arrested. Will the Brits arrest those who march for peace too?

Like

26 11 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

Tragically, Jews Have Reasons To Worry Globally

See, e.g., https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-antisemitism-europe-massacre-war-protests-1d26266dfd9b2b8dd4c795f420abab47 (“With antisemitism rising as the Israel-Hamas war rages, Europe’s Jews worry”)

This is what the evil Netanyahu, the “Settlers,” the rabid Zionists and Israeli butchers have produced.

Like

28 11 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

This Is A Fine Article, But . . .

See https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/11/26/israeli-gaza-hamas-hostage-crisis-change-world-forever/ (“How Israel is interfering with Hamas’s route to victory”)

. . . it misses the boat completely. Israel has lost the war already: the war of public opinion globally. The “scorched earth” policy that the author advocates would condemn every Jew on Earth to anti-Semitism not seen since World War II.

And it leaves open the question of when — not whether — the next Osama Bin Laden will launch one or more attacks against Israel using WMDs (including EMP weaponry), which will end the Apartheid state’s existence and make the author’s advocacy moot.

Clearly, Israeli intelligence is faulty; its Mossad missed the events of October 7 completely; and its Iron Dome and other sophisticated “sensors” are porous at best.

Like

30 11 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

Clearly, Erdogan Is Correct

See https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/turkey-israel-netanyahu/2023/11/29/id/1144143/ (‘Turkey’s Erdogan Calls Netanyahu ‘Butcher of Gaza'”)

Like

1 12 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

If True, This Is Tragic

See https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-attack-intelligence.html (“Israel Knew Hamas’s Attack Plan Over a Year Ago”)

So many lives — on both sides of the conflict — might have been saved!

Like

1 12 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

When Will A Nation-Ending WMD (Or EMP) Attack Be Launched Against Israel?

See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12812857/Hamas-rockets-Israel-ceasefire-deadline-EXPIRES.html (“IDF pounds Gaza as ceasefire crumbles: Explosions rock Palestinian territory as hostilities resume against Hamas despite hostages remaining trapped after terror group fired rocket into Israel in final minutes of the six-day truce”)

Why trade punches with Netanyahu and his Israeli thugs, when 15,000 Gazans have been savagely killed?

See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12812557/joe-biden-gaza-protest-state-department-israel.html (“Biden faces MUTINY over Israel war: State Department insiders warn of ‘remarkable and unprecedented’ internal turmoil over White House’s support for Jerusalem”)

Israel is losing the war: the war of global opinion, which is why anti-Semitism is rising to levels not seen since World War II. But Netanyahu doesn’t care. He wants to stay out of jail, when in fact he should be tried by the International Criminal Court for his many crimes.

See also https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12822113/Pennsylvania-governor-slams-anti-Semitic-mob-screamed-hide-charge-genocide-Jewish-owned-Philly-FALAFEL-restaurant-weeks-students-nearby-UPenn-called-intifada.html (“Pennsylvania governor slams anti-Semitic mob who screamed ‘You can’t hide, we charge you with genocide’ into Jewish-owned Philly FALAFEL restaurant…hours after students at nearby UPenn called for ‘intifada'”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12825653/hamas-trades-stock-exchange-short.html (“Hamas’ spoils of war? Terror group’s associates are accused of making more than $900 MILLION by shorting shares in Israel’s biggest bank weeks before October 7 massacre”)

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6 12 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

Sobering

See https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israel-s-netanyahu-is-fighting-two-wars-and-may-not-win-either/ar-AA1l0COi (“Israel’s Netanyahu is fighting two wars, and may not win either”)

No one should forget that Netanyahu was hated by Ariel Sharon and the Rabins; and the “Lioness” Leah Rabin blamed him for her husband’s tragic assassination. She believed that peace was impossible with Netanyahu at the helm of Israel’s government; and her views were prescient.

Decades ago, Netanyahu morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors; and he should be arrested and tried by the International Criminal Court for his many crimes. Nothing less will suffice.

Like

6 12 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

Barbarians At The Gates

See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12831871/First-images-Israel-preparing-flood-Hamas-tunnels-sea-water-troops-set-pipes-pumps-Gaza.html (“First images ‘show Israel preparing to flood Hamas tunnels with sea water as troops set up pipes and pumps in Gaza'”); see also https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nc/triad/ap-top-news/2023/12/05/in-a-rare-action-against-israel-us-says-extremist-west-bank-settlers-will-be-barred-from-america?cid (“In a rare action against Israel, US says extremist West Bank settlers will be barred from America”)

Also, what goes around, comes around.

See https://www.newsweek.com/israel-warning-renewed-gaza-offensive-hamas-no-immunity-civilians-1849680 (“Israel Issues Stark Warning Amid Renewed Gaza Offensive: ‘No Immunity'”)

In the award-winning film “Lawrence of Arabia,” the words “no prisoners” became the battle cry. Indeed, anti-Semitism is rearing its ugly head globally in ways that have not been seen since World War II, as a direct result of Netanyahu’s butchery.

Like

8 12 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

Israel Has “Sleeper Cells” All Over The World, Which Try to Justify The Apartheid State’s Butchery, And Snuff Out Opposing Views

See https://www.the-sun.com/news/9806021/fears-hamas-terror-network-will-be-activated-over-christmas/ (“Fears ‘vast Hamas terror cell network’ will be ACTIVATED over Christmas in UK & Europe as Israel issues urgent warning”); see also https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12841543/IDF-says-targeting-centres-gravity-terrorists-fighting-arresting-left-areas-interrogate-defend-images-stripped-Palestinian-prisoners-paraded-Gaza.html (“Hamas accuses Israel of a ‘heinous crime against innocent civilians’ after images of Palestinian prisoners stripped to their underwear in Gaza go viral”) and https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/12/09/penn-president-magill-antisemitism-harvard-mit/ (“Penn president Liz Magill faces calls to resign; Harvard president apologizes after House hearing”)

Benjamin Netanyahu morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors decades ago. He should be arrested whenever he sets foot outside of Israel, and tried by the International Criminal Court for his many crimes.

Clearly, the Biden Administration is in the pocket of those who champion Netanyahu’s savagery.

See, e.g., https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-un-resolution-ceasefire-humanitarian-6d3bfd31d6c25168e828274d96b85cf8 (“US blocks UN resolution demanding humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza”); but see https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/dec/9/human-rights-watch-warns-us-risks-complicity-war-c/ (“Human Rights Watch hits U.S. with war-crime alert after cease-fire veto”)

Is Joe Biden “carrying water” for Netanyahu and his murderous regime, and hence “guilty” of war crimes? He too should be tried by the International Criminal Court for his many crimes.

Next, nothing should be sold or given to the Apartheid state of Israel

See, e.g., https://www.npr.org/2023/12/09/1218407156/israel-tank-ammunition-sale-gaza-congress-state-department (“State Department approves tank ammunition to Israel, bypassing Congress”)

Lastly, like Hitler before him, Netanyahu is pure evil and needs to be eradicated now

See, e.g., https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12847679/Netanyahu-Hamas-terrorists-surrender-IDF-Gaza.html (“Netanyahu urges Hamas terrorists to ‘surrender now”) and https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-hamas-war-hostages-killed-idf-white-cloth-protests-netanyahu-rcna130049 (“Anger at Israeli government mounts after military admits to mistakenly killing hostages”)

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23 12 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

More Savagery By Netanyahu And His Thugs

See, e.g., https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/23/israeli-airstrike-kills-gaza-aid-worker-and-70-of-his-extended-family-un-says (“Israeli airstrike kills Gaza aid worker and 70 of his extended family, UN says”) and https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/dec/25/israel-gaza-war-live-dozens-killed-as-israeli-strikes-on-gaza-continue-on-christmas-day (“Israel-Gaza war live: Israeli airstrikes kill 100 people in one of war’s deadliest nights, say Gaza officials”)

In turn, the response globally is dramatic — which may escalate with no end in sight, producing anti-Semitism that has not been seen since World War II. .

See, e.g., https://www.ynetnews.com/article/hk1zqobdt (“Europe and its Jews: Is the clock ticking until they part ways?”)

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30 12 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

The Apartheid State’s Genocide Continues Unabated

See, e.g., https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12911203/150-000-Palestinians-forced-south-Israel-steps-assault-Gaza-amid-demands-humanitarian-deliveries-besieged-territory.html (“150,000 Palestinians forced south as Israel steps up assault in Gaza”) and https://news.yahoo.com/biden-administration-once-more-bypasses-200133481.html (“The Biden administration once again bypasses Congress on an emergency weapons sale to Israel”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12912399/Smoke-rises-Gaza-Hamas-say-165-Palestinians-killed-Israel-24-hours-desperate-civilians-say-exhausted-no-end-war-sight.html (“Smoke rises over Gaza as Hamas say 165 Palestinians killed in 24 hours”)

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30 12 2023
Timothy D. Naegele

When Will Osama Bin Laden 2.0 Launch A Nation-Ending Attack Against Israel?

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_Laden (“Osama bin Laden”)

October 7th underscored the facts that (1) Israeli “intelligence” is essentially nonexistent; (2) the Mossad is worthless; and (3) Israel’s once-vaulted “Iron Dome” is porous at best.

Surely, Osama bin Laden 2.0 exists in Pakistan or somewhere else, and is plotting a WMD attack against the Apartheid state, which will be cheered globally when it occurs.

Both anti-Israel demonstrations and anti-Semitism are growing globally, with no end in sight.

See, e.g., https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12920501/antisemitism-Jewish-American-Dream-Mall-New-Jersey.html (“Jewish family targeted by anti-Semitic abuse in New Jersey’s American Dream Mall over teen daughter’s IDF jacket say ‘dozens’ of bystanders stood by just WATCHING as they were attacked”); see also https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12865563/Israels-public-enemy-number-one-Yahya-Sinwar-rose-ranks-Hamas-mastermind-murder-thousands-innocent-Israelis-October-7-attacks-IDF-brand-dead-man-walking.html (“In Gaza, no figure looms larger in determining the future trajectory of the war than Sinwar. Now, Israeli officers say Sinwar is a ‘dead man walking'”)

Is Benjamin Netanyahu a “dead man walking”? After all, he morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors decades ago.

See, e.g., https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/only-15-of-israelis-want-netanyahu-to-keep-job-after-gaza-war-poll-finds (“Only 15% of Israelis want Netanyahu to keep job after Gaza war, poll finds”); see also https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12919625/Israeli-drone-strike-kills-four-Hamas-members-terror-groups-Beirut-office.html (“Israeli drone strike in Beirut kills top Hamas official”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12921629/How-Israels-war-Hamas-spiralling-Middle-East-deputy-leader-killed-Beirut.html (“How Israel’s war with Hamas is spiralling across the Middle East”) and https://www.axios.com/2024/01/02/us-condemns-israeli-ultranationalist-smotrich-ben-gvir-gaza (“U.S. condemns Israeli ultranationalist ministers’ call to push Palestinians out of Gaza”)

Lastly, are brothels (e g., in Washington, D.C.) “honeypots” for Israeli intelligence?

See, e.g., https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12904363/Sex-ring-Boston-Virgiinia-honeypot-China-South-Korea-ensnare-officials.html (“High-end sex ring in Boston and D.C. areas was ‘honeypot’ scheme by Russia, China, South Korea or even Israel – to ensnare US officials, intelligence experts believe”)

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3 01 2024
Timothy D. Naegele

Ominous . . .

“Binyamin Netanyahu is botching the war. Time to sack him”

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/01/03/binyamin-netanyahu-is-botching-the-war-time-to-sack-him

Also, is Israel inherently evil?

See, e.g., https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12926465/jeffrey-epstein-list-friendship-israeli-prime-minister-ehud-barak.html (“Epstein list reignites suspicion the pedo financier was working for Mossad and blackmailing the elite with help of ‘useful idiot’ Prince Andrew – after meeting Israeli PM Ehud Barak at least THIRTY SIX times”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12930889/fbi-demanded-release-jeffrey-epstein-documents-names.html (“FBI is demanded to release HUNDREDS of ‘missing’ Jeffrey Epstein documents including tapes, CDs, passports and pictures raided from his $51 million NYC townhouse amid suspicions pedo was linked to Mossad”); see also https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/white-house-protests-resignation/2024/01/04/id/1148288/ (“WH Dodges Questions Over In-House Rift on Israel”) and https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/05/israel-defence-minister-yoav-gallant-gaza-plan-after-war-hamas-palestine-control-antony-blinken-visit (“Israeli defence minister outlines postwar plan for Gaza as Blinken flies in”)

Will any non-Jewish tears be shed when Israel ceases to exist, as a result of a nation-ending WMD attack? Like Netanyahu who morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors decades ago, so did the Apartheid state of Israel.

See, e.g., https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israel-s-talk-of-expanding-war-to-lebanon-alarms-us/ar-AA1mzBk3 (“Israel’s talk of expanding war to Lebanon alarms U.S.”)

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8 01 2024
Timothy D. Naegele

The Latest

See https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/08/netanyahu-israeli-leader-losing-control-00134146 (“Benjamin Netanyahu is losing control”) and
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12939129/Al-Jazeera-Gaza-bureau-chief-journalist-son-killed-IDF-drone-attack-wife-children-Israeli-airstrike.html (“Heartbreaking moment Al-Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief weeps over the body of journalist son killed in IDF drone attack – weeks after his wife and other children were wiped out in another Israeli airstrike”); see also https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12939163/palestine-protest-israel-gaza-brooklyn-manhattan-bridge-holland-tunnel.html (“Anti-Israeli protesters cut off Manhattan as they block off Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan Bridge, Williamsburg Bridge and Holland Tunnel by sitting across middle of road in human chains chanting ‘free Gaza'”)

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10 01 2024
Timothy D. Naegele

Understandably Israel Is Hated . . .

See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12945491/A-new-low-Pro-Palestine-protesters-vandalize-deface-Los-Angeles-National-Cemetery-90-000-war-veterans-buried.html (“Pro-Palestine protesters vandalize and deface Los Angeles National Cemetery where 90,000 war veterans are buried”)

. . . but why deface a veterans cemetery — where I learned to drive — when there are Jewish cemeteries in Southern California?

See also https://justthenews.com/nation/extremism/antisemitic-incident-reports-us-surged-360-after-oct-7-hamas-attack (“Antisemitic incident reports in US surged 360% after Oct. 7 Hamas attack”) and https://www.ajc.org/news/majority-of-american-jews-feel-less-safe-after-october-7-hamas-terror-attack (“Majority of American Jews Feel Less Safe After October 7 Hamas Terror Attack”)

“The Jewish people know they are hated.”

https://pages.jerusalemprayerteam.org/index.php/email/emailWebview?md_id=36000&email=NTkxLUhXVS0zNjEAAAGQlDcx0-6lARZ7dmZgLFU6WtMtkQZRwpfroaJqQdFTgZxbemV5W9J28u-eX6J_7kgNaLbqeI2WE2YW5NgN7bWGGxknH3-x1agFow

So so sad, but true. What Netanyahu, the “Settlers” and rabid Zionists have done for decades is reverberating globally, with no end in sight.

See https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-face-gaza-genocide-charges-world-court-2024-01-11/ (“Israel faces genocide charges at World Court; Gazans return to wasteland”); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2023/10/31/americas-jews-are-americans/ (“America’s Jews Are Americans”)

Of course South Africa is correct.

See https://news.yahoo.com/top-un-court-opens-hearings-051130068.html (“South Africa tells the UN top court Israel is committing genocide in Gaza as a landmark case begins”); see also https://www.timesofisrael.com/hague-hearing-begins-as-south-africa-accuses-israel-of-genocide-in-war-with-hamas/ (“The Hague hearing held as South Africa accuses Israel of ‘genocide’ in war with Hamas”)

Yet, on college campuses like Berkeley where free speech once reigned, those who oppose the genocide are silenced or their careers are ruined.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2023/10/19/is-free-speech-dead-and-buried-at-berkeley-and-elsewhere/ (“Is Free Speech Dead And Buried At Berkeley, And Elsewhere?”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2023/05/29/the-criminalization-of-free-speech-and-thoughts-will-increase-anti-semitism/ (“The Criminalization Of Free Speech (And Thoughts) Will Increase Anti-Semitism”)

When the Apartheid state ceases to exist, the world will cheer.

See also https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12956083/Biden-faces-fury-left-launching-airstrikes-Houthi-targets-Yemen-without-going-Congress-Democrats-rage-unacceptable-violation-constitution.html (“Biden faces fury from the left for launching airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen without going to Congress: Democrats rage at the ‘unacceptable violation of the constitution’ as Turkey accuses US and UK of turning Red Sea into a ‘bloodbath'”)

Netanyahu needs to be put down like a rabid animal. He is a menace to mankind.

See, e.g., https://english.alarabiya.net/News/middle-east/2024/01/13/Netanyahu-says-ICJ-won-t-stop-Israel-fighting-until-victory-in-Gaza (“‘No one will stop us – not The Hague, not the Axis of Evil, no one,’ says Netanyahu”) and https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/jan/14/middle-east-crisis-live-netanyahu-says-world-court-cannot-stop-israel-in-gaza-as-war-enters-100th-day (“Netanyahu says world court cannot stop Israel in Gaza as war enters 100th day”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12962229/Israel-Hamas-hostages-Benjamin-Netanyahu-protests-Tel-Aviv-war.html (“Thousands of Israelis take to the streets demanding Netanyahu resign after failing to stop October 7 attack as prime minister faces mounting backlash against relentless bombing campaign”) and https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/19/israel-gaza-war-largest-remaining-hospital-nasser-khan-younis-attack-fears-strike?CMP=share_btn_link (“Fears grow for largest remaining hospital in Gaza as Israeli forces bombard Khan Younis”)

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19 01 2024
Timothy D. Naegele

Not Surprising

See https://www.thedailybeast.com/israeli-president-isaac-herzog-subject-of-criminal-complaints-in-switzerland (“Israeli President Hit With Criminal Complaints in Switzerland”)

Israel’s sadistic Benjamin Netanyahu should be arrested whenever he sets foot outside of Israel, and tried for his many crimes — in a Nuremberg-like setting, similar to that of Adolf Eichmann — and receive the ultimate punishment.

Decades ago he morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors; and genocide is among his many crimes. He was hated by Ariel Sharon and the Rabins; and Leah Rabin blamed him for her husband’s tragic assassination. She believed that peace was impossible with Netanyahu at the helm of Israel’s government; and her views were prescient and prophetic.

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19 01 2024
RayUSA

What’s also disgusting is the enthusiastic support for Netanyahu’s treachery that is being verbalized by the so-called ‘Christian Zionists.’ They name the name of Christ, and yet, like a gang of blood thirsty savages, they continue to cheer on the ongoing murder of over 20,000 innocent civilians in Gaza. Christian Zionists think that they are ‘serving’ God with their blind allegiance to all things Israel. What they don’t realize is this; Zionism is not Judaism. Zionism is secular to its very core. And, what’s more, Zionism is violently opposed to Orthodox Judaism and Christianity.

Professing Christians need to wake up. They are siding with the enemy of God and they don’t even realize it.

Liked by 1 person

19 01 2024
Timothy D. Naegele

Well said, Ray.

Tragically, in the USA, large numbers of Americans are cowed into supporting Israel, right or wrong. They do not differentiate between legitimate behavior, and oppression — much less genocide.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2023/10/23/sadly-this-book-is-out-of-print-because-its-wisdom-is-needed-now-in-the-middle-east-and-globally-more-than-ever/ (“Sadly, This Book Is Out Of Print, Because Its Wisdom Is Needed Now In The Middle East And Globally More Than Ever”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2023/09/21/netanyahu-is-destroying-israels-democracy-and-biden-is-destroying-america/ (“Netanyahu Is Destroying Israel’s Democracy, And Biden Is Destroying America”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/the-madness-of-benjamin-netanyahu/ (“The Madness Of Benjamin Netanyahu”)

However, that may be changing a bit.

See, e.g., https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/19/israel-netanyahu-hamas-war-00136571 (“Democrats ‘appalled’ by Netanyahu’s bashing of two-state solution”) and https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/former-pm-ehud-barak-calls-on-netanyahu-in-the-name-of-god-go/ (“Former PM Ehud Barak calls on Netanyahu: ‘In the name of God, go’”)

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25 01 2024
Timothy D. Naegele

Are The Israelis In The Process Of Launching World War III?

See, e.g., https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13003593/Top-Israeli-minister-says-Iran-legitimate-target-missile-strikes-fears-grow-war-countries.html (“Top Israeli minister says Iran is a ‘legitimate target’ for missile strikes as fears grow of an all-out war between the countries”); see also https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/26/middleeast/netanyahu-letter-israel-national-security-intl/index.html (“Netanyahu must be removed, say top former Israeli national security officials”) and https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240127-south-africa-president-israels-crimes-are-clear-we-will-not-back-down-from-truth/ (“South Africa president: ‘Israel’s crimes are clear, we will not back down from truth’”)

ALL American funding of the Apartheid state — not just part of it — must end immediately. Nothing less will suffice. It is a pariah globally.

Why are we even in the Middle East? McConnell is as senile as Biden!

“GOP hawks press Biden to target Iran directly over soldiers’ deaths”

https://www.axios.com/2024/01/28/gop-biden-iran-soldier-deaths

Liked by 1 person

1 02 2024
Timothy D. Naegele

The Amount Of Aid . . .

. . . for the Apartheid state that has engaged in genocide should be a big fat zero!

https://justthenews.com/government/congress/house-speaker-johnson-announces-he-will-put-forth-clean-stand-alone-israel-aid (“House Speaker Johnson announces he will put forth a clean stand-alone Israel aid bill”); see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_deicide (“Jewish deicide”)

Also, totally-biased articles should be flagged as such.

See, e.g., https://www.wsj.com/articles/welcome-to-dearborn-americas-jihad-capital-pro-hamas-michigan-counterterrorism-a99dba38 (“Welcome to Dearborn, America’s Jihad Capital”)

I seldom agree with Joe Biden, but he’s right about the Nazi Netanyahu, who is marching us to war, in which both American men and women will be drafted..

See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13045643/Biden-calls-Israeli-leader-Benjamin-Netanyahu-bad-f-guy-latest-foul-mouth-tirade-81-year-old-president.html (“Biden calls Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu a ‘bad f****** guy’ in latest foul-mouth tirade from 81-year-old president”)

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6 02 2024
Timothy D. Naegele

No Wonder They Are Hated Globally . . .

. . . and anti-Semitism has risen to levels not seen since World War II. The Israelis are genocidal killers.

See https://www.thedailybeast.com/israeli-military-slams-troops-deplorable-conduct-in-gaza-war-videos-report (“Israeli Military Slams Troops’ ‘Deplorable’ Conduct in Gaza War Videos”) and https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/feb/08/middle-east-crisis-live-hamas-delegation-heads-to-cairo-for-more-israel-gaza-ceasefire-talks (“Israel bombs overcrowded Rafah as UN warns of ‘humanitarian nightmare’”) and https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-war-gaza-benjamin-netanyahu-rafah-evacuation-plan/ (“Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu indicates war in Gaza may escalate, orders evacuation plan for Rafah”)

Their butchery continues, unabated.

The good news, at least momentarily: zero money for the diabolical leeches in Israel.

See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13053233/speaker-johnson-israel-bill-collapses-democrats-join-republicans.html (“Speaker Mike Johnson’s $17B Israel aid standalone bill COLLAPSES after Democrats join hardline Republicans to tank measure following days of internal turbulence in Congress”)

ALL aid to Israel should cease; and the Naziesque Netanyahu needs to be put down like a rabid animal.

See, e.g., https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-news-02-11-2014-785309c668e15728c6aac9905f290b4d (“Egypt threatens to suspend peace treaty if Israel pushes into Gaza border town, officials say”) and https://www.newsweek.com/biden-faces-new-problem-over-israels-rafah-offensive-1869263 (“Biden Faces New Problem Over Israel’s Rafah Offensive”); see also https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13101837/Jewish-father-reveals-feels-family-target-birth-certificate-returned-ripped-birthplace-Israel-scribbled-out.html (“‘It’s like we’re in 1930s Germany’: Jewish Londoner fears his family is ‘a target’ after his five-month-old’s birth certificate was returned TORN with birthplace of Israel scribbled out after he sent off for UK passport, sparking ‘urgent’ investigation”)

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16 02 2024
Timothy D. Naegele

Like The Genocidal Netanyahu, Putin Must Pay With His Life For This And His Other Crimes

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13092187/Putin-answer-did-husband-Alexei-Navalnys-tearful-wife-makes-emotional-vow-Russian-opposition-leader-murdered-prison-evil-regime.html (“‘Putin, you will answer for what you did to my husband’: Alexei Navalny’s tearful wife makes emotional vow after the Russian opposition leader is ‘murdered’ in prison by ‘this evil regime'”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13092301/How-Putin-took-pleasure-Alexei-Navalnys-penal-colony-plight-demanded-updates-brutal-punishment-receiving-demanding-footage-cell.html (“How Putin took pleasure in Alexei Navalny’s penal colony plight and demanded updates on the brutal punishment he was receiving while ‘demanding footage’ of him in cell”); see also https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13107933/How-Kremlins-enemies-die-poison-staged-suicides-windows.html (“How the Kremlin’s enemies die: Poison, staged suicides, falling out of windows… the many different ways Moscow’s opponents meet their maker, as Alexei Navalny is ‘killed using KGB heart punch'”)

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20 02 2024
Timothy D. Naegele

Tragically, The World Is Unsafe For Jews . . .

. . . as anti-Semitism reaches levels globally that have not been seen since World War II.

“Londoner whose baby’s birth certificate was ‘defaced’ feels ‘unsafe'”

https://mol.im/a/13105397

Netanyahu, the “Settlers” and rabid Zionists have led Israel and global Jewry down a dark path, the end of which may be tragic beyond all belief, and worse than the Holocaust.

. . .

Netanyahu and his IDF butchers continue to commit atrocities.

See, e.g., https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/21/middleeast/un-food-convoy-gaza-israel-strike-cmd-intl/index.html (“Israeli forces fired on food convoy in Gaza, UN documents and satellite analysis reveals”) and https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68355436 (“Israel Gaza: China condemns US veto of call for immediate ceasefire at UN”) and https://www.timesofisrael.com/brazils-lula-doubles-down-on-claim-israel-committing-genocide-in-gaza/ (“Brazil’s Lula doubles down on claim Israel committing genocide in Gaza”)

. . .

Sadly, the headline of email messages sent out by a self-promoting Jewish “evangelist” is:

“They want to eliminate Jews.”

See https://pages.jerusalemprayerteam.org/index.php/email/emailWebview?md_id=36166&email=NTkxLUhXVS0zNjEAAAGRcauXQfD7xfy3LTM2LUyCFMs-_qWZSdUUKSWhgafsZq068zKsTtuZp7q8v9vnH8piaeZwhTM1OxeqYTiXhxl-ao3CCRMQ7FH-Eg

The reality is that anti-Semitism is growing dramatically, here in the United States and globally.

See, e.g., https://thepoliticalinsider.com/jerry-seinfeld-accosted-by-anti-israel-protesters-in-nyc-nazi-scum/ (“Jerry Seinfeld Accosted By Anti-Israel Protesters In NYC – ‘Nazi Scum!’”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13132909/mob-University-California-Berkeley-IDF-soldier-Jewish.html (“Terrifying moment huge mob bangs on doors of University of California-Berkeley theater after IDF soldier was invited to speak there, forcing Jewish attendees to evacuate”)

Some believe that the sooner Israel is vaporized, the better.

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1 03 2024
Timothy D. Naegele

Yes, Israel Is Doomed

The following article should be read in its entirety by anyone who wants to know the truth about Israel’s multi-decade genocide. And yes, it is why courageous Jewish students who speak out against such atrocities are criticized or intimidated by other Jews who wish to perpetuate the madness.

“Israel’s killing rage”

https://aje.io/wgl20p

Israel is a global pariah; and its IDF are butchers

See, e.g., https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13151595/Israel-military-Gaza-aid-truck-died-crowd-crush-gunfire.html (“Israel’s military insists most of the Palestinians killed in Gaza aid truck disaster that claimed more than 100 lives died in crowd crush – after IDF were accused of opening fire”)

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8 03 2024
Timothy D. Naegele

Is The World A “No-Go-Zone” As Anti-Semitism Increases To Levels Not Seen Since World War II?

See, e.g., https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13171151/Pro-Palestine-protesters-turning-London-no-zone-Jews-claims-Britains-counter-extremism-tsar-blasts-Government-letting-extremists-unchallenged-long.html (“Pro-Palestine protesters are turning London into a ‘no-go zone for Jews’, claims Britain’s counter-extremism tsar as he blasts the Government for letting extremists go ‘unchallenged for too long'”)

Tragically, censorship is rampant on the Web, as the depicable Netanyahu’s followers try to snuff out the voices of those who would tell the truth about his multi-decade genocide — Jews and non-Jews alike.

No one should be the least bit surprised about the rise of anti-Semitism globally, which may reach every corner of this Earth. No Jew may be safe, and they know it. This is the “gift” that Netanyahu has given to world Jewry.

See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13178913/Joe-Biden-remove-Benjamin-Netanyahu-Israel-Gaza-ceasefire-Rafah.html (“Biden Administration consulted Israel expert on how to ‘force the Netanyahu coalition to collapse’ as president accuses the prime minster of ‘hurting Israel more than helping’ and insists Rafah invasion is ‘red line’ that must not be crossed”) and https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/11/politics/us-intelligence-report-netanyahu/index.html (“US intelligence report states Netanyahu’s viability to lead Israel is in jeopardy”)

Netanyahu and his genocidal Israelis need to be eliminated.

See, e.g., https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/world/middleeast/palestinians-al-aqsa-mosque-ramadan.html (“Navigating Israeli Restrictions, Many Palestinians Find It Hard to Reach Al Aqsa”) and https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/over-10-palestinian-children-lose-limbs-daily-amid-famine-threat-1723890 (“Over10 Palestinian Children Lose Limbs Daily Amid Famine Threat”) and https://www.timesofisrael.com/accepting-oscar-glazer-says-dont-use-our-jewishness-and-holocaust-to-justify-gaza-war/ (“Accepting Oscar, Glazer says don’t use our Jewishness and Holocaust to justify Gaza war”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/ (“Ariel Sharon Is Missed”)

Are we witnessing the “Holocaust II” globally, or even worse? When will it reach Hollywood’s Jews, who require allegiance to the Apartheid state’s genocide?

See, e.g., https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-13183727/real-reason-bradley-cooper-snubbed-oscars-maestro-overshadowed.html (“Cooper’s ‘flip-flopping’ over his support for Israel is believed to have played a part in his 12th Oscars snub, with some reportedly feeling like he should have stayed ‘neutral’ as opposed to wading in”) and https://www.wnd.com/2024/03/meathead-gets-broiled-hateful-attack-christians/ (“‘Meathead’ gets broiled for his hateful attack on Christians”)

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14 03 2024
Timothy D. Naegele

When Netanyahu Is Ousted, Will He be Tried By The International Criminal Court For His Many Crimes Including Genocide?

“Schumer criticizes Netanyahu leadership amid war on Hamas, calls for Israel to hold elections”

https://justthenews.com/government/congress/schumer-slams-netanyahu-and-calls-israel-hold-elections

When the Apartheid state ceases to exist, cheers will sweep the world.

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23 03 2024
Timothy D. Naegele

When Will The Apartheid State Cease To Exist?

See, e.g., https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/22/israel-seizes-800-hectares-of-palestinian-land-in-occupied-west-bank (“Israel seizes 800 hectares of Palestinian land in occupied West Bank”) and https://www.newsmax.com/world/globaltalk/israel-benjamin-netanyahu-cancels/2024/03/25/id/1158520/ (“Israeli Delegation’s Trip to US Nixed After UN Vote”)

And when will Netanyahu be eradicated, like a rabid animal?

Hollywood’s Steven Spielberg is savvy enough to realize what is happening. Anti-Semitism is spreading globally, with much worse yet to come.

See https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/steven-spielberg-increasingly-alarmed-anti-semitism-usc-shoah-foundation-1235859852/ (“Steven Spielberg Accepts USC Shoah Foundation Honor, Says He’s ‘Increasingly Alarmed’ by Antisemitism”)

And global Jewry needs to lay much or most of the blame with Benjamin Netanyahu, the “Settlers” and rabid Zionists who have perpetuated genocide for decades.

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28 03 2024
Timothy D. Naegele

Who Will Mourn Netanyahu?

See https://www.newsmax.com/world/globaltalk/lieberman/2024/03/27/id/1158888/ (“Netanyahu Mourns Lieberman as Loyal Friend of Israel”)

Few, if anyone will mourn Netanyahu. Indeed, the world will cheer his long-overdue descent to the Gates of Hell.

See, e.g., https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13257871/Tens-thousands-Israelis-streets-Jerusalem-biggest-protest-against-Benjamin-Netanyahu-start-Hamas-war.html (“Tens of thousands of Israelis take to the streets in Jerusalem in biggest protest against Benjamin Netanyahu since start of Hamas war”)

No more aid of any kind to the Apartheid state:

“Netanyahu ‘continues to essentially give the finger’ to Biden over Gaza, Sen. Van Hollen says”

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/netanyahu-continues-essentially-give-finger-biden-gaza-sen/story?id=108683738; see also https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4565728-bowman-calls-netanyahu-a-maniac-demands-removal-from-office/ (“Bowman calls Netanyahu a ‘maniac,’ demands removal from office”) and https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ar-BB1kDArA (“Most Americans oppose Israel’s war in Gaza, poll finds”) and https://www.axios.com/2024/03/31/netanyahu-critics-mobilize-in-israel (“Netanyahu critics mobilize in Israel”) and https://nypost.com/2024/03/31/world-news/israeli-prime-minister-benjamin-netanyahu-to-undergo-hernia-surgery/ (“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to undergo hernia surgery”)

Will Netanyahu be “wacked,” like Benito Mussolini?

https://www.timesofisrael.com/blaming-un-vote-israel-pulls-negotiators-from-qatar-after-hamas-rejects-truce-deal/ (“Blaming UN vote, Israel pulls negotiators from Qatar after Hamas rejects truce deal”)

Eradicate the Apartheid state, and the world will cheer.

https://www.ft.com/content/6d9607eb-05a0-4403-92aa-07f722ed1f27 (“Israel accused of killing dozens in Syria air strikes”)

In the interim, ultra-Orthodox should be the first on the front lines, as cannon fodder.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/29/netanyahu-faces-huge-challenge-after-israeli-court-ruling-in-military-exemption-row (“Netanyahu faces huge challenge after court ruling on military exemption”)

If anyone has been around them, they stink — quite literally, as if they have never taken baths. And they are rude, and treat women (e.g., their wives) as second-class creatures or lower.

No one will miss them if they are eradicated. Will it happen at the “Wailing Wall”?

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Wall (“Western Wall”)

Lastly, all of the following makes sense, except no more aid of any kind to the Apartheid state, which has engaged in genocide for decades.

“Rising global threats force ‘epoch-making’ shift in world order”

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4564367-rising-global-threats-shift-world-order/

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6 04 2024
Timothy D. Naegele

The Apartheid State Needs To End Now

See, e.g., https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/world-central-kitchen-aid-worker-killings-israel-deconfliction-rcna146550 (“World Central Kitchen aid worker killings were not an isolated incident, but a systemic failure”) and https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-gaza-war-oct-7-327bfeb7bfce5cb0de1568bf41a0ff06 (“Israel’s isolation grows six months into a war against Hamas in Gaza”)

And the genocidal Benjamin Netanyahu — who morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors decades ago — needs to be eradicated. Nothing less will suffice.

See, e.g., https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13280967/israel-ground-troops-southern-gaza-ceasefire.html (“Defiant Netanyahu vows ‘there will be no ceasefire’ as he pulls ALL TROOPS out of southern Gaza amid fears Israel will launch bloody offensive on Rafah despite Western outcry over soaring civilian death toll”) and https://www.msnbc.com/ali-velshi/watch/j-street-president-netanyahu-must-go-the-only-question-is-when-208498245994 (“J Street President: Netanyahu must go, the only question is when”)

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16 04 2024
Timothy D. Naegele

So, So Tragic

The American media are shills for the genocidal monster Benjamin Netanyahu and the Apartheid state of Israel; and this includes ALL of the media, without exceptions.

Totally off their radar screens — by conscious design to distort our news — is the fact that anti-Semitism has been rising globally to levels not seen since World War II, with much worse yet to come.

If Israel is destroyed by a nation-ending EMP Attack or other assault, the world will cheer. But this fact is buried today by those who curry favor with Jews. Tragically, those who will be hurt the most are innocent Jews outside of Israel and the United States.

The “Holocaust 2.0” may be coming for each of them; and like Anne Frank and her family, they won’t know what hit them.

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