Tag: Donald Trump

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How the Korean Crisis is a Key Next Step in Israel’s Redemption

Today is the Day of the Dry Bones (Yom HaAtzamot HaYevashot) when the first half of Yechezkel’s prophesy on the Dry Bones occurred on the Fifth of Iyar 5708 aka Israel’s Independence Day (Yom HaAtzma’ut).  The difference in spelling is that Atzma’ut has one extra Aleph, the Aleph of Elokim, who decided that the time of PHYSICAL wandering for the Jewish people was coming to a close.  The spiritual prophesy on the Arba Ruchot, the second half of Yechezkel’s vision, the spirit of the Messianic Era, has yet to occur.

This post is based on the previous two posts:
The Light of Mashiach Courtesy of the Korean Peninsula Leaving the Twilight Zone
and
The Two Legged Goat .

It is also based on all other posts that I have written on this blog since its inception in 2005.  Some of those posts are linked to in the first post above.  I suggest everyone review the material in all those posts because this post will incorporate in it the combined work of all posts discussed before on this blog dealing with the Korean Peninsula at the halakhic international date line.

As discussed previously according to the Vilna Gaon and others, B’itah and the ingathering of the exiles “officially” began with Rosh HaShanah 5751 (19 September 1990 at sundown) which was 3/4 of the way through the 6th Millennium and which corresponded to high noon on Friday, the 6th day of the week.  In came the Lost in the Land of Ashur (Russian Jewry) and the castaways in the Land of Egypt (Ethiopian Jewry) like clockwork as if the shofar blast at high noon on Friday to call Jews in from their fields for Yom SheKulo Shabbat had been blown precisely on time…. because it WAS blown in Heaven precisely on time.  So it was time for those two groups of Jews to come home.  (This was discussed in post #1 above.)   Keep in mind that Yom sheKulo Shabbat, the day that will always be Shabbat is the entire 7th Millennium which should “officially” begin b’itah no later than Rosh HaShanah 6001, the first year of the 7th Millennium.  Now every observant Jew knows halakhically we are allowed to bring on Shabbat as early as Plag HaMincha which is half way between Mincha Ketanah and sunset.  This would correspond with approximately being 1 and a quarter halakhic hours before sunset on Friday afternoon.  Depending on the time of year 1 1/4 halakhic hours could last 1 hour and 20 or 25 minutes in the Summer OR 1 hour and 5 or 10 minutes in the Winter.  Usually those who bring Shabbat on early do it in the Summer time when the sun sets rather late such as at 8:20 pm.  So they bring on Shabbat at 7:15pm in order not to have Shabbat dinner at an unG-dly hour late at night every week.  Now 1 1/4 hours before sunset can be calculated as being the last 1/8th of the 2nd half of the 6th Millennium or the last 1/4 of the last 250 years of human history between 5751 and 6001.  Each quarter of 250 years is equal to 62.5 years.  So from this simple calculation it would seem that b’itah cannot begin until 62 1/2 years before the end of the year 6000 in the year 5938.  That date would be a long way off, and talking about b’itah bringing the Utopian Age of human history that far into the future would be a big let down.  So why would one want to anticipate Mashiach’s coming since it is obvious that he is not coming because of our merits Achishena at any hour of any day?  He is obviously coming B’itah while we are hanging on at the 49th level of impurity while Edom has beaten us to the Sewer of -50 last Shavuot 5776.  He is coming In its time very likely, and even those who say that Mashiach could come in the next five minutes agree that after Mincha Gedolah of the 6th Millennium which was in Av 5771, he is almost assuredly coming B’itah.  See our conundrum?

Into this fray comes the Zohar HaQodesh VaEira 32.  We are told that B’itah, the third battle of Gog UMagog will begin when “wicked” Rome has to fight a war against a nation  at the edge of the World for about three months.  Since the world is round, there is only one way to understand what is the “edge of the world”.  The edge of the world is the halakhic international dateline.  This dateline is determined when it is high noon in Yerushalayim, for if Rosh Chodesh is sanctified for the entire world by the Sanhedrin BEFORE high noon, then Rosh Chodesh is that very day not just in Yerushalayim but all over the world.  If the Sanhedrin delayed until after high noon to sanctify the new month, then Rosh Chodesh for the entire world is not that day but the following day.  So from this we learn that at High Noon in Yerushalayim, the actual day or date of the month on the calendar is determined for the Entire World!  Since Yerushalayim is at 35 degrees longitude on the Globe, then at the moment it is high noon in Yerushalayim, it is sunset 90 degrees to the east at the 125 degree longitude mark, separating between one day and the previous day.  So 125 degrees to the east of Yerushalayim at this 125 degree mark IS the halakhic international dateline!  From a Global map we can see that this 125 degree line separates China from the Korean Peninsula in the Yellow Sea.  Approximately 2000 miles to the south of Pyongyang, N. Korea is the southern Philippines island of Mindanao where ISIS terrorists are trying to take over the island (and where President Duterte has threatened to eat them!).  The importance of this will become clearer later on either in this post or in comments.  Here we are just noting the geographical facts.  If we extend this 125 degree line into the Southern Hemisphere, we see that it cuts in half the Island nation of Indonesia through the island of Timor.  And further south, it cuts through the western deserts of the Australian continent in what is for the most part a sparsely inhabited part of Australia.  The two places where we will concentrate our understanding though will specifically be in the Northern hemisphere (Korea and the Philippines) because Yerushalayim, and its high noon timepiece is specifically in the Northern Hemisphere.  So it seems much more likely that the places of final war of GogUMagog will be at least experiencing the same season as Eretz Yisrael at the time of its onset.

Yet, as we see from previous posts about this matter, it is at this 125 degree line or “Sunset” line that we begin to have a problem.  D’Oraita, that is according to the Torah, the day may begin at Sundown, but it does not end until the stars come out the following day approximately 45 minutes AFTER sundown.  So for each potential day during Twilight, between Sundown and “Tzeit Kochavim” it is BOTH the day before Sundown and the new day after Sundown at the same time!  On the Globe we know that there are 15 degrees for each hour time zone.  So for let us say 42 minutes of Twilight, 42/60 = 10.5/15, we have 10.5 degrees of Twilight where at high noon in Yerushalayim on Rosh Chodesh or on Shabbat or on Yom Kippur, it is both the day before and the day after at the same time.  Anyone who would live in that “Twilight Zone” would need to keep two days of Shabbat out of every seven days, and they would need to fast for 48 hours on Yom Kippur!  This actually happened to the Mir Yeshivah when they escaped Nazi Germany and ended up at first in Kobe, Japan which is just inside this Twilight Zone shaded area.  The Chazon Ish ruled that the Mir refugees would need to do just that (two days of Shabbat every week and fasting for 48 hours on Yom Kippur).  They did not stay in Kobe long. They quickly moved to Shanghai in order to NOT have to live with these halakhic issues because Shanghai is significantly less than 90 degrees to the east of Yerushalayim.  So in Shanghai there is no doubt D’Oraita what day it is.  So there in Shanghai, one day of Shabbat every week and 24 hours of fasting on Yom Kippur are just fine.

Now why mention a Twilight Zone of 42 minutes?  Isn’t that arbitrary?  Well actually not.  I went to MyZmanim.com, and looked up Seoul, South Korea, the capital city in the Korean Peninsula a mere 30 kilometers from the DMZ (DeMilitarized Zone or No Man’s Land between N. and S. Korea).  Now here is the table that came up for the month of Nissan.  In order to view this table, you may have to log in with a UserName and Password.  You might even have to make a contribution.  They are a private site that needs funding, and who am I to complain if they want me to give them a few bucks to have access to their exact Zmanim times over the course of an entire year.  They even have a new feature to take into account the altitude of the place you might be at!    I started with Nissan because I noted that the it was at the very beginning of Tekufat Nissan that Trump sent those 59 missiles to destroy the Syrian Airforce base because Assad used chemical weapons.  Almost immediately after that the situation of the Korean Peninsula began to explode into the headlines, and Trump used his military action against Assad as a show of force to convince the Chinese to help him against Kim Jong Un.  So the Whisper of War against the country at the edge of the world did begin during the month of Nissan 5777.  Notice that the time between sunset and Tzeit Kochavim (stars coming out) is between 41 and 42 minutes for Seoul, South Korea at least during the entire month of Nissan.  Again this corresponds with an additional 10.5 degrees on the Globe AFTER the 90 degree mark east of Yerushalayim for 100,5 degrees on the Globe.

Now let us put two concepts together.  High noon on Yom ShiShi (Friday) was at Rosh HaShanah 5751 which kicked off the “official” period of intense ingathering of the Exiles.  Ostensibly it could last 250 years until the year 6001.  At the same time it is Sunset through Tzeit Kochavim on the entire Korean Peninsula.  So it is a Saffeik (a halakhic doubt) that at high noon in Yerushalayim on Friday whether that Saffeik area, between 125 degrees and 135.5 degrees, is going into Shabbat or into Thursday night at the same time.  Assuming that the Saffeik assertion that they are entering Shabbat is true, then there are 100.5 degrees on the Globe that enter Shabbat before Israel enters Shabbat.  Over the course of those 250 years, places to the east of Eretz Yisrael enter Yom sheKulo Shabbat BEFORE Eretz Yisrael enters Yom SheKulo Shabbat, that is especially with places which are within either 90 to 100.5 degrees to the east of Yerushalayim.  Yet because the first 10.5 degrees to enter are a Saffeik (A DOUBT) UNTIL those 10.5 degrees have fully entered Tzeit Kochavim so that the 90 degrees to the east then begin to enter, the period of time from Rosh HaShanah 5751 until the 10.5 degrees to the east of 125 degrees fully enter into the darkness of the starlight, Yom sheKulo Shabbat could not begin b’itah.  Upon entering the darkness of twilight, the light of Shabbat would begin to shine upon the world from the places on the Globe furthest East of Yerushalayim once there is no doubt that those places entering are now within the 90 degrees east of Yerusahalayim!  At the point that the area 90 degrees east of Yerushalayim begin to enter Yom SheKulo Shabbat, the entire area 10.5 degrees further to the east enters Yom SheKulo Shabbat with it.  From the number above we see the following:  Over the  course of 250 years, 100.5 degrees on the Globe enter Yom SheKulo Shabbat.  That is 2.5 years per degree on the Globe starting in the year 5751.  If the Twilight Zone shaded area of doubt is 10.5 degrees as it is at the DMZ and Seoul on the Korean Peninsula, then it takes 2.5 years/ degree x 10.5 degrees to bring the Korean theatre and places to the west of it in the Yellow Sea into Yom SheKulo Shabbat.  2.5 x 10.5 = 26.25 years.  Rosh HaShanah 5751 + 26.25 years is precisely Tevet of the year 5777!, this year at the beginning of the Nine Months!  From this we see that the entire Korean Peninsula has now entered Yom SheKulo Shabbat, and on Shabbat the wicked are judged.

From the Psalm 92 for the Day of Shabbat:

  ח  בִּפְרֹחַ רְשָׁעִים, כְּמוֹ עֵשֶׂב, וַיָּצִיצוּ, כָּל-פֹּעֲלֵי אָוֶן:    לְהִשָּׁמְדָם עֲדֵי-עַד. 8 When the wicked spring up as the grass, and when all the workers of iniquity do flourish; it is that they may be destroyed for ever.

ט  וְאַתָּה מָרוֹם–    לְעֹלָם יְהוָה. 9 But Thou, O LORD, art on high for evermore.

So as the entire Korean Peninsula now has its time guaranteed as entering Yom SheKulo Shabbat, it is from there that G-d brings judgement upon a Wicked world less that 250 years before the end of the year 6000 long before Plag HaMinchah.

Originally published under the title: The Timepiece for B’itah, the Koreas Leaving the Twilight Zone

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[watch] A Palestinian Leader Trump Can Trust?

With May 3rd touted as the date for the face to face meeting between President Trump and Mahmoud Abbas, the Trump administration should watch the above video and find there is a growing movement f Palestinians led by Mudar Zahran, Secretary General of the Jordanian Opposition Coalition that are pushing for Jordan to be recognized as the actual Palestinian homeland.  Trump can choose to meet with an old terrorist murderer and push the same old “peace-process” lies or meet with Zahran a real leader.  The choice is his.

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PUSHING BACK ON TRUMP? Iran Rolls Out New Long Range Missile

In an almost coordinated response with North Korea, the Iranian government rolled out its newest missile developments at a massive parade held yesterday South of Tehran for National Army Day. According to the Tasnim news agency, the Iranian military displayed “Sayyad-3 (Hunter-3), a homegrown long-range missile used for air defense.”

The Sayyad-3 is designed to knock out targets at long ranges with high accuracy.  The parade also showcased the vaunted S-300 air defense missile system, Zolfaqar tank, personnel carriers, cannons, various missiles, radars, missile defense systems, speedboats, torpedoes, military vehicles and bombs.

Trump Sets Up Team to Review Nuclear Accord with Iran

Although Iranian compliance in connection to the Nuclear Accord has been assured by the US State Department, the Trump administration has gone ahead and set up a task force to review the logic of continuing to lift sanctions.

The North Korean connection to the Iranian nuclear arms program is well documented.  With Trump turning up the heat on North Korea, the Iranians fully understand that their loophole around the deal may becoming to an end.  With this in mind, the new long ranges missiles and other warlike posturing maybe a foreshadowing of coming Iranian military provocations.  With nothing to lose the Ayatollahs are game for anything.

 

 

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THE COMING WAR: Iran vs. Israel, North Korea vs. America

With America and North Korea rapidly heading towards a direct conflict, the wider ramifications of such a conflict are far-reaching. Given the fact that North Korea built Syria’s now destroyed nuclear weapons program and continues to aid Iran’s nuclear development, the two programs are linked.

In the coming days as Donald Trump sends more and more firepower to the Korean penninsula, the Iranians will most likely stir up trouble against Israel. Although government officials are insisting that the summer time is likely for renewed hostility between Hamas and Israel, North Korea will likely cause a flare up with Iranian proxies much sooner.

The Iranians will turn Hezbollah loose on Israel as a means of drawing the Trump administration away from full out war with North Korea.  With half of their program under attack in the East, Iran will have nothing to lose against Israel.

Winning is Not So Easy

A North Korean war may end in the North’s defeat, but not without Seoul’s devastation and depending on the time frame Japan’s capital in Tokyo suffering from direct missile hits.

Israel too can repel both Hamas and Hezbollah, but if reports of Hezbollah tunneling and Iranians plans to take the Golan are true, the war will likely cascade into something far more dangerous for Israel’s security.

The above assessment does not count Russia and Chinese involvement in either theater as well as Iranian direct attacks on Sunni states in the Gulf.

Whatever the scenario, the next few days have the potential to trigger an all out war in multiple areas around the globe.

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Get Ready for the Trump Doctrine

When Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad launched the 21st century’s second deadliest chemical weapons attack on Tuesday, President Trump must have paged through President Obama’s playbook in responding to this century’s deadliest chemical attack less than four years earlier and resolved to do exactly the opposite. It turns out he’s onto something.

When pro-regime Syrian forces gassed the Damascus suburb of East Ghouta in 2013, a year after President Obama warned Assad that use of chemical weapons would cross a red line, the Obama administration spent three weeks preparing to do something.

Cognizant that the American public was overwhelmingly opposed to military action, it decided to win congressional authorization first. Unwilling to act alone, the administration worked to secure international support for and participation in U.S.-led retaliatory air strikes.

Concerned that U.S. military action against the Assad regime would raise expectations of a broader policy shift against Assad, making it even harder to persuade the rebels to attend U.S.-brokered peace talks, Obama administration officials worked to deflate these hopes. Secretary of State John Kerry famously assured the world that the planned strikes would be “unbelievably small.”

Obama’s response to Assad’s 2013 chemical attack was a legendary failure.

The result was a legendary failure. Angry over the intentionally negligible scope of the planned air strikes, congressional Republicans withdrew their support. Britain’s parliament voted against air strikes, while NATO allies demurred with the exception of France. Moves to secure an Arab League resolution fizzled.

President Obama ended up abandoning the planned attack in favor of a Russian-brokered commitment from Assad to dismantle his chemical weapons arsenal. Not only was the agreement not fully implemented — smaller-scale chemical weapons use continued intermittently until this week — but it forced the international community to acknowledge and deal with Assad for the first time since the civil war began, leading Sunni governments to step up support for militant Islamists and paving the way for Russia’s military intervention the following year.

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Obama’s former defense secretary, Leon Panetta, later conceded that his handling of the crisis, “sent a mixed message, not only to Assad, not only to the Syrians, but to the world.”

President Trump appears to have learned all these lessons in the wake of the Syrian regime’s chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town in Idlib province on Tuesday. He acted unilaterally, neither waiting for nor requesting the participation of other nations. He felt no inclination to shield himself from public backlash by seeking authorization from congress. And he acted quickly, with airstrikes coming less than three days later.

Trump’s response was quick, unilateral, and politically courageous.

Rather than assuring everyone beforehand that the planned strike would not change Washington’s posture in Syria, Trump hinted at further action, “to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria” and “end terrorism of all kinds and all types.”

Although Trump’s military action was every bit as limited as the air strikes planned by the Obama administration four years ago, it is likely to be far more effective in achieving its aims.

In addition to sending a clear message to the Assad regime that the U.S. will not hesitate to punish further use of chemical weapons, Trump’s military action signals unmistakably to other states in possession of unconventional weapons that the U.S. will respond forcefully to their use. The fact that the Trump administration was visibly warming to Assad as of the beginning of this week underscores that improved relations with Washington won’t offer much protection against the consequences of WMD use.

By washing away the stain of Obama’s shameful handling of the 2013 Ghouta attack, Trump’s bold action will make it easier for the U.S. to establish and enforce red lines regarding other adversaries on a range of other issues without having to resort to force.

But here’s the kicker. Ordinarily, an American president launching unilateral military action without United Nations approval or anything but pro forma consultation with allies would elicit howls of protest from the international community — doubly so, you’d think, if his name happened to be Donald Trump. The astonishingly favorable reaction to the strike throughout the world underscores that bold American leadership and decisive action are the way to win friends, not multilateralism and diplomatic nicety.

Originally published in the Hill under the title “Trump Learned from Obama’s Mistakes and Took Action.”

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SYRIA CONFLICT: 59 Missiles That Changed the World

With America firing 59 missiles into Syria as retaliation for Assad’s sarin gas bombing of innocent civilians, the genie is now out of the bottle not to be put back in.

President Trump said the following:

“Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the life of innocent men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many, even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror.

“I ordered a targeted military strike on the airbase in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons and ignored the urging of the UN Security Council.”

The attack on Syrian targets places the US in direct odds against Russia who has used former President Obama’s lack of an asserted approach in Syria and the rest of the Middle East to enter its forces into Syria, thus prolonging the civil war. If Trump brings American forces into the region again both Russia and Iran are in a far more formidable position than before Obama’s term.

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In response to the attack Russian Prime Minister Medvedev said the US strikes were illegal and were “one step away from military clashes with Russia.” Russia has sent its most advanced Black Sea frigate into the eastern Mediterranean late Friday, putting it into direct confrontation with the same US Navy destroyers which were used to attack Syria.

What’s Next?

Given Putin’s response, direct conflict between the two superpowers seems more and more inevitable. The US does not seem to view this attack as a one-off, but rather the beginning of a serious push back against Iranian and Russian influence in the region.

Moscow has suspended the famous deconfliction hotline and has threatened to retaliate.

Expect both sides to continue to build up their armaments in expectationof a broader conflicts, as well as a more determined Trump that will attempt to push back on Putin and the Iranians.  If there is to be a direct conflict, it will be in Northern Syria with the US building up its arms there.

By reasserting the USA into a Middle East that now has Russia and Iran firmly established within it, Trump’s attack on Syria has changed the world forever.

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ISRAEL AND OBAMA’S POLITICAL WAR

Eli Lake from Bloomberg set off a firestorm in the US this week with his revelation on Monday that in the last six months of the Obama administration, Susan Rice, former president Barack Obama’s national security adviser, requested that the US intelligence community enable her to use foreign intelligence collection as a means of gathering information about Donald Trump’s advisers.

According to Lake’s story, during the course of the US presidential campaign, and with steadily rising intensity after President Donald Trump won the November 2016 election, Rice used her access to intercepted communications of foreign intelligence targets to gather information on Trump’s advisers. Some of those reports were then leaked, injuriously, to the media in violation of US criminal statute.

Whereas in the normal course of events, the identities of American citizens whose conversations with foreigners are intercepted by the US intelligence community are shielded, in the final months of the Obama administration, Rice repeatedly – on “dozens of occasions” – asked that the identities of Americans who conversed with foreigners be exposed.

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The Americans in question were Trump’s advisers.

Lake’s scoop both confirmed and expanded House Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes’s charges from two weeks ago against the Obama White House. Nunes said that he had seen evidence that the Obama administration collected information on incoming Trump administration officials that had no intelligence value. In other words, Nunes alleged that the data gathering was not for national security purposes.

This week’s discovery that Rice played a central role in the intelligence collection regarding Trump’s advisers brings Nunes’s allegations that the outgoing Obama administration conducted surveillance of the Trump team to the highest reaches of the administration. Now that Rice has been exposed, it is impossible to claim that in the event such surveillance occurred, it did not reflect the Obama administration’s concerted policy.

With the exceptions of Obama and his top adviser and confidante Valerie Jarrett, Rice was the top official in the White House.

Lake’s story and subsequent stories have obvious implications for the public’s assessment of Trump’s March 4 allegation on Twitter that Obama spied on him. But the Rice story is equally, if not more, important for what it teaches us about Obama’s mode of governing.

The Rice story strengthens the assessment that for eight years, Obama and his associates weaponized the federal government to wage a political war against their domestic political opponents in a manner that is simply unprecedented.

On Wednesday, Lee Smith noted in Tablet online magazine that the Obama administration’s apparent exploitation of intelligence reports to harm the Trump team was not the first time that the Obama administration acted in this manner.

As Smith recalled, in December 2015 The Wall Street Journal reported that during the domestic political battle surrounding the nuclear deal the Obama administration struck with the Iranian regime, the administration used intelligence intercepts of conversations of Israeli officials to spy on its domestic opponents inside the pro-Israel community and on Capitol Hill.

In the latest iteration of the Obama White House’s abuse of intelligence data, administration officials collected and leaked information about members of the incoming Trump administration to undermine its ability to chart a new course in foreign affairs.

The Obama administration’s campaign against the incoming Trump administration was wildly successful.

Due to their efforts, Trump’s national security adviser Lt.-Gen. (ret.) Mike Flynn was forced to resign in a cloud of controversy just three weeks after Trump took office.

Revelations by Lake and others exposed that Flynn was targeted in the Obama White House’s abuse of intelligence. The administration used its intelligence intercepts and unmasking of Flynn to cultivate the sense – with no evidence – that Flynn was a Russian plant.

On January 12, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius published that Flynn had spoken numerous times to Russia’s US Ambassador Sergei Kislyak after Obama levied sanctions on Russia on December 26.

Ignatius reported that in their conversations the subject of those sanctions arose, but that Flynn made no policy determination regarding how the Trump administration would view the sanctions upon entering office.

In other words, Flynn did nothing wrong. He did his job.

But immediately after the story was published, Flynn was tarred and feathered as a Russian agent. He entered office with Trump on January 20, but was declared “controversial,” “embattled” and “compromised” from his first day in office.

The innuendos followed Flynn like a cloud until he was forced to resign, less than three weeks after entering the White House.

Regardless of whether or not Flynn did anything wrong – and no evidence has been proffered to suggest that he did anything wrong – his loss was a severe blow to the Trump administration. In one fell swoop, the Obama administration’s weaponization of foreign intelligence intercepts had brought down the national security adviser.

This brings us to 2015, and the fight in Washington and throughout the US about Obama’s nuclear deal with Tehran. In the 2015 operation, the White House allegedly used intercepted communications between US citizens and Israeli diplomats and between Israeli diplomats in Washington and Jerusalem to defame opponents of the nuclear deal. Lawmakers and private citizens were repeatedly subjected to condemnations in the media where unnamed administration sources questioned their loyalty, alleged that they were serving the interests of a foreign power against the US, and that in the case of lawmakers, they were bought and paid for by rich Jewish donors.

Speaking to Smith, a pro-Israel activist who had participated in the battle against the nuclear deal explained how the White House operation worked.

“At some point, the administration weaponized the NSA’s [National Security Agency’s] legitimate monitoring of communications of foreign officials to stay one step ahead of domestic political opponents….

“We began to notice that the White House was responding immediately, sometimes within 24 hours, to specific conversations we were having. At first, we thought it was a coincidence being amplified by our paranoia. After a while, it simply became our working assumption that we were being spied on.”

Weaponizing intelligence reports was only one way that the Obama administration abused its power to weaken, silence and criminalize its domestic opponents.

Weaponizing the IRS was another way.

And just as Obama’s IRS was used to hound conservative groups that opposed Obama’s domestic agenda, so it was used to discriminate against pro-Israel groups that opposed Obama’s Middle East policies.

The most well-known case of such abuse was the IRS’s failure to approve the request for nonprofit status submitted by Z Street, a pro-Israel educational organization.

After being told by the IRS that its application for nonprofit status was being subjected to “special scrutiny” due to its Israel-centric agenda, and the fact that it advocated views that “contradict those of the administration,” Z Street sued the IRS for viewpoint discrimination.

The IRS attempted to get the case dismissed, but a panel of three irate federal judges rejected its request.

After slow rolling its response to the lawsuit, ahead of Obama’s departure from office, the IRS suddenly approved Z Street’s request for nonprofit status, seven years after it was first requested.

At the same time, the IRS continued to refuse to provide Z Street with the documents that informed its decision to discriminate against it. And it refused to explain how its decision to discriminate against US citizens in its tax policies on the basis of their political opposition to the administration’s policies was legal.

There are several aspects of the story of Obama’s abuse of power, and the fact that Israel and its US allies were key targets of that abuse, that are important beyond the domestic discourse in the US.

First, the Obama administration’s abuse of foreign intelligence to wage political warfare against pro-Israel activists and lawmakers who support Israel during the Iran battle tells us that the Obama administration viewed supporters of a strong US-Israel alliance as its political enemies. This is remarkable.

Moreover, the fact that Z Street and other US nonprofit groups that espouse positions on Israel at odds to the Obama administration’s views were specifically targeted for discrimination by the IRS indicates that the Obama administration’s political war against US support for Israel was all-encompassing. It wasn’t limited to the realm of foreign policy. It related as well to the ability to Americans to educate their fellow citizens on the need for a robust partnership with a strong Israel.

The second thing that we learn from our deepening understanding of the Obama administration’s apparent weaponization of the federal bureaucracy as a means to defeat and undermine its political opponents is that apparently, Obama’s top aides deliberately acted to undermine Trump’s ability to govern. This is particularly apparent in everything related to foreign policy.

As Adam Kredo from The Washington Free Beacon has documented, in its last months, the Obama administration ensured that the National Security Council’s budget would be depleted, in order to deny the Trump administration the ability to hire new staffers. It hired political appointees into the civil service and then burrowed them in the National Security Council and other key government departments, to undermine and discredit the Trump administration from within.

For instance, in its waning days, the State Department extended Yael Lempert’s tenure at the National Security Council for two years. Lempert is a foreign service officer notorious for her rabid opposition to Israel.

In another example, last July, Obama moved Sahar Nowrouzzadeh from his National Security Council, where Nowrouzzadeh served as Iran director, to the State Department, where he is now in charge of policy planning on Iran and the Persian Gulf.

As professional foreign service officers, both Lempert and Nowrouzzadeh are essentially impossible to fire or move.

In an interview with PBS following Nunes’s revelations, Susan Rice falsely denied that the Obama White House had “unmasked” incoming Trump administration personnel whose conversations with foreigners were intercepted by the intelligence community.

After denying the charges, Rice was asked her view of Trump’s foreign policy so far. Rice responded derisively.

She noted that despite Trump’s criticism of the Obama administration’s lackadaisical and stalled campaign against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, the policy the Trump administration is enacting against ISIS on the ground is essentially the same policy that the Obama administration implemented, “as it should be,” she added, with a smirk.

In reality, if indeed Trump is implementing Obama’s ISIS policy, his failure to enact a new policy there, and indeed, the perceived chaos and disarray of his foreign policy across the board, is not a function of Trump’s incompetence or of the inexperience of his advisers. To the extent that Trump has failed to date to enact a clear foreign policy, this week’s disclosures strengthen the sense that his failure owes primarily to the deliberate subversion of his administration by his predecessor.

Originally Published in the Jerusalem Post.

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IS THE TRUMP ERA ALREADY OVER?

When Republicans stop apologizing, then they can start winning.

In 1992, Congresswoman Maxine Waters called President George H.W. Bush a “mean-spirited man who has no care or concern about what happens to the African-American community in this country.”

This was part of a National Press Club rant in which the fright wig from California also announced, “I believe George Bush is a racist.”

Waters tepidly backed Bill Clinton even though he, like “most whites in America are not good enough on the race question.”

Vice President Dan Quayle demanded an apology. No apology was forthcoming. “Dan Quayle doesn’t know me,” Waters told a cheering audience. “My mother couldn’t make me do that.”

Maxine Waters doesn’t apologize to anyone. But Republicans apologize to her.

When Bill O’Reilly joked about her wearing a James Brown wig, he was intimidated into apologizing. “Unfortunately, I also made a jest about her hair, which was dumb. I apologize.”

Meanwhile Maxine went right on hurling insults and threats at the President of the United States. “I’m out to get him. I’m gonna see him out of office.”

So much for that.

The left doesn’t apologize. It expresses no regrets. It just goes right on steamrolling its way forward. And if Republicans want to get anything done, they will have to fight the left just as hard as it fights them.

The big question is can Republicans fight? Or can they just fight among themselves?

First they couldn’t get anything done because the Democrats controlled Congress. Then they couldn’t get anything done because they controlled the White House.

It’s 2017. Republicans control the White House, the House and the Senate. Republican victories have swept states around the country.

So what’s the excuse now?

Republicans hold as much power as democratic elections are likely to give them. The goalposts can always be moved to utterly bulletproof majorities in the House and the Senate, 9 members of the Federalist society on the Supreme Court and the crowns of all the kings of Europe.

Instead Republicans may have achieved a golden moment that would be dangerous to squander. GOP gains have at least as much to do with the dysfunction of the Democrats under leftist rule. If Republicans are often the Stupid Party, Democrats have become the Crazy Party. And Republicans won record victories around the country in the expectation that they would stop the Crazy Party’s madness.

Instead it’s 2017 and Republicans continue to allow the left to set the agenda.

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It’s time to realize that it’s not about which parts of government Republicans control, but about whether they are ready and willing to use whatever parts of government they do control in a coordinated effort to fight the left and force through a conservative reform agenda that will break the left’s hold on America.

Every time Republicans win, they try to work with Democrats. And every time Republicans win, Democrats do every single thing that they can to cut them off at the knees.

After Republicans won, they decided to give Hillary Clinton and her scandals a pass. The left repaid their gentlemanly generosity by manufacturing a dozen fake scandals involving Trump and his people.

And Republicans were foolish enough to be roped into investigating them.

Instead of bringing those responsible for Benghazi, the Clinton Foundation, the IRS targeting and so much else to justice, Republicans decided to live and let live. But the left didn’t get the memo.

It never does.

Obama funneled planes full of foreign currency to terrorists through Iran. He was caught on a hot mic assuring Putin’s man that he would have more flexibility after the election. China hacked our biggest national security secrets due to the actions of Obama appointees. But instead Republicans took the pressure off and let the Democrats manufacture a fake scandal out of every Trump hotel.

The left will not allow Republicans to implement their agenda. The only way for President Trump and Republicans to stop the scandal train and get anything done is to expose the crimes the left committed.

The Democrats have made it clear that they will only work with Republicans if they are in charge. They’ll confirm Supreme Court justices if Schumer picks them. They’ll legislate, instead of obstruct, if it’s to protect ObamaCare. And too many Republicans are still eager and willing to fall for it.

If Republicans want to get anything done, they will have to fight for it with courage and conviction.

Democrat majorities in Congress managed to set much of the agenda under Reagan and Bush, and Obama got almost anything he wanted done despite the opposition of a Republican legislature. All that happened because the left knows what it wants to get done and it doesn’t get bogged down for long.

Republicans get bogged down easily because they lack the same degree of conviction. It’s all too easy to run the same Alinsky games on them, to shame them, to make them doubt themselves, to drag them into aimless arguments and to control their actions by inducing a reflexive fear of political leaps of faith so that they don’t stray too far from the left’s policy plantation.

It’s 2017. Republicans control the White House, the Senate and the House. And they’re arguing with each other, investigating each other and waging an internal struggle that can only weaken their majority. And while many important executive orders have been issued and legislative steps taken, Republicans still find it easier to fight each other than to step up and fight the left.

As Freedom Center founder David Horowitz has frequently pointed out, Republicans don’t know how to fight. They think that winning elections is a substitute for the daily battles that the left loves to fight. The left doesn’t stop fighting once the election is over. That’s when it really begins fighting.

Republicans still believe that they can win on points. Too many of them think that some referee will step in and commend them for playing fair. And when that doesn’t happen, they panic and start surrendering. If the Trump era stands for anything, it’s a refusal to play the left’s game.

No amount of elections will ever be enough. When Republicans win elections, the left doesn’t recognize them. Republicans can hold the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court and it still won’t be enough because the left isn’t beholden to any values, laws, norms or standards. You can’t beat the left through any form of abstraction, whether it’s an election or a moral high ground. Republicans can only win by bringing real change and sweeping away the left’s power city by city and state by state.

The left refuses to surrender and apologize. It never backs down. If conservatives want to win, those are good places to start. When Republicans stop apologizing, then they can finally start winning.

Published in FrontPageMag.

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Has Trump’s War Against Russia-China Already Begun?

With North Korea growing increasingly belligerent as China turns the other way and Russia’s Putin finding Trump to be far less pliable than he thought, the Trump administration has set out on a course to push back on the Russia-China alliance.

In a move that sets up a direct diplomatic clash with Russia and China, the US is pushing for the UNSC to discuss the possibility of focusing more on human rights. This has angered both the Russians and Chinese who have threatened to block the initiative.

Russia holds that human rights are already discussed on the United Nations Human Rights Commission and the General Assembly.

“Human rights are addressed by various peacekeeping missions, by special political missions, if we can just try to liaise those mandates with human rights then maybe we can agree (on a meeting),” Russia’s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Petr Iliichev told reporters. “But (the) general statement that international peace and security are threatened by human rights violations is not true.” 

US Ambassador to the UN former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley said the following concerning America’s proposed discussion on human rights:

“It will be a broad debate, not intended to single out any countries, but more just to talk about the topic and how that relates to conflict and if there are things that we can be doing going forward.”

Trump is Pushing Back on the Democrats Phony Russian Narrative

With everyday that goes by investigations to the Trump team’s alleged “collusion” with Russian officials before and after the 2016 elections turn up zero evidence of any wrong doing on the part of the Trump team.  The Democrats’ McCarthy style weapon to bring down their enemy number one is turning out to be a dud. This, given the fact that Trump has taken a surprisingly tough stance against Russia has thrown much of the Democrats’ talking points out the window.

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This of course does not mean that Trump has followed Obama’s strategy against Putin, which for the most part saw the Russian autocrat as a serious enemy to the West.  Trump has been less critical of Putin than others, but the tone is as far as the change goes.  Trump has always been a mastermind in throwing out statements that are meant to misdirect. With Russia we are seeing this tactic on steroids.  One day, Trump hints he would like to partner with Putin against ISIS and just days after that, Nikki Haley throws out the following statement on ABC:

“I am beating up on Russia,” Haley said. “[The president] has got a lot of things he’s doing, but he is not stopping me from beating up on Russia… He’s not stopping me on how we’re working together [with Russia] to defeat ISIS.” 

“There’s no love or anything going on with Russia right now,” Haley also said.

Watch the interview below:

Where is this Headed?

With Trump set to meet the Chinese President in Marlo Largo this week, the President wants to firmly establish the USA as the preeminent leader of the world. Part of his strategy with Russia is to find out where Putin stands on issues of importance when it comes to the growing conflict between the USA and China over North Korea and the South China Sea. After all, he has clearly stated that he would be prepared to face North Korea alone, if “China fails to rein them in.”

By playing Russia and China off each other, he wants to test if it is the Russia-China “alliance” that is the true paper tiger.

 

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ISRAEL’S SILENCED MAJORITY

All previous attempts to reach a deal by extracting concessions from Israel did nothing but weaken Israel.

During Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting with US President Donald Trump at the White House in February, the premier was reportedly taken by surprise when Trump gently prodded – ahead of their meeting – for Israel to “hold back on settlements for a little bit.”

Since their meeting, Trump’s prod that Israel curtail the property rights of Jews in Judea and Samaria has been the central issue Trump’s chief negotiator Jason Greenblatt has discussed with Netanyahu and his representatives.

From the moment Netanyahu returned from Washington, his government ministers have been asking him to brief them on his discussions with Trump. He has refused. But on Thursday, Netanyahu finally agreed to update his security cabinet.

His agreement is long past due. It is vital for Netanyahu to tell his cabinet ministers what is happening in his conversations with the Americans about Judea and Samaria. It is imperative that the cabinet determine a clear response to Trump’s apparent demand for a full or partial freeze on Jewish property rights in Judea and Samaria.

Such an agreed response is urgent because Trump’s position is antithetical to the position of the vast majority of Israelis. If the government caters to Trump’s demands it will breach the trust of the public that elected it.

This state of affairs was brought home this week with the publication of a new survey of public opinion regarding the Palestinian conflict with Israel. The survey was carried out among adult Israeli Jews by veteran Israeli pollster Mina Tzemach for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

The results of the poll are straightforward. Since Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, Israeli support for territorial concessions to the Palestinians has collapsed. Whereas in 2005, 59% of Israelis supported the establishment of a Palestinian state in Gaza, Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria in exchange for peace, today a mere 29% of Israelis support such a policy.

And levels of Israeli opposition to territorial giveaways only grow when the specifics of withdrawal are considered.

Seventy-seven percent of Israelis oppose full withdrawal from Judea and Samaria in the framework of a peace deal. Sixty-four percent oppose a pullout under which Israel would trade sovereignty over the so-called “settlement blocs” for sovereignty over lands inside of the 1949 armistice lines.

Fifty-seven percent of the public opposes an Israeli withdrawal from everything outside the settlement blocs even without such a trade.

The dramatic drop in Israeli support for the establishment of a Palestinian state over the past 12 years has nothing to do with ideology. The Israeli public has not turned its back on the Left’s ideological vision of two-states west of the Jordan River because it has adopted the ideological convictions of the religious Zionist movement.

The Israeli public has abandoned its support for the two-state paradigm because it believes that Israel’s past moves to implement it have weakened the country and that any attempt in the future to implement it will imperil the country.

This conviction is revealed by the fact that 76% of Israeli Jews want Israel to permanently retain sole responsibility for security in all of Judea and Samaria.

Eighty-eight percent say that Israel must permanently control the territory bordering Ben-Gurion Airport. Eighty-one percent insist that Israel must permanently control the land that bordering the Tel-Aviv-Jerusalem highway Route 443.

Eighty-one percent of Israelis say that Israel must control the Jordan Valley in perpetuity. Fifty-five percent say that Israel cannot defend itself without permanently controlling the Jordan Valley. Sixty-nine percent of Israelis reject the notion that Israel can subcontract its national security to foreign powers that would deploy forces to the Jordan Valley in the framework of a peace deal.

In other words, Trump’s desire to mediate a deal between Israel and the PLO places him in conflict with anywhere between 60 and 85% of the Israeli public.

Throughout the US presidential race, Trump said repeatedly that his mastery of the art of the deal would enable him to succeed where his predecessors failed. His experience as a negotiator in the business world, he said, makes him more capable of mediating a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians than any of his predecessors.

It is possible that Trump is right about his relative advantage over his predecessors. But how well or poorly he negotiates is completely beside the point.

Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama didn’t fail to bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians because they were bad negotiators. They failed because there is no deal to be had. This reality is what informs the Israeli public.

The Israeli public rejects the two-state model that is now informing Trump, because it has become convinced that Israel’s partner in a hypothetical deal – the PLO – has no intention of ever making a deal with Israel.

The people of Israel has come to realize that the PLO demands Israeli concessions – like a freeze on Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria – not because it wants to make peace, but because it wants to weaken Israel.

The reality that informs the position of the Israeli public has been borne out by every PLO action and position since July 2000, when the PLO rejected peace and Palestinian statehood and opted instead to initiate a terrorist war against Israeli society and launch a campaign to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist.

In contrast to the Israeli public, the American foreign policy establishment never accepted the obvious meaning of Yasser Arafat’s rejection of then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak’s peace offer at Camp David in July 2000, and his subsequent initiation of an all-out war of terrorism against Israel.

The Americans responsible for determining US Middle Eastern policy, along with the American Jewish community, never acknowledged the significance of the Palestinians’ refusal to accept sovereign responsibility over Gaza after Israel withdrew from the area in 2005.

They never accepted the obvious meaning of Hamas’s victory in the Palestinian elections in 2006 or the post-Israeli withdrawal transformation of Gaza into a hub of global jihad and a launching pad for continuous aggression against Israel.

Unlike the Israeli public, the Americans closed their eyes to the significance of Mahmoud Abbas’s campaign to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist, to the PA’s refusal to accept Israel’s right to exist, to the PA’s finance of terrorism, and its indoctrination of Palestinian society to support and work toward the destruction of Israel.

This week, the willful blindness of the American foreign policy establishment and the American Jewish establishment to the reality that informs the position of the Israeli public was on display at AIPAC’s policy conference. Although the conference was held under the banner, “Many Voices, One Mission,” precious few voices were heard that reflected the view of the overwhelming majority of Israelis.

The view of the Israeli public that the two-state policy is entirely divorced from reality because there is no one on the Palestinian side who is interested in living at peace with a Jewish state, and that further Israeli concessions to the PLO endanger the Jewish state, was virtually ignored, particularly by the American speakers.

No senior American policy-maker explained that given the Palestinians’ commitment to the destruction of Israel, any policy that requires Israel to make territorial and other concessions is an anti-Israel policy – in substance if not in intent.

The reason the position of the majority of the Israeli public was ignored by the largest pro-Israel lobbying organization in America is that no senior American policy-maker on either side of the partisan aisle is willing to allow the reality that informs the Israeli public to influence its thinking. Although an ideological chasm separates Martin Indyk – John Kerry’s chief negotiator – from Elliott Abrams – George Bush’s point man on Israel – the substance of their views of the goal of US policy-making toward Israel and the Palestinians is largely the same. They both believe that Israel should surrender the vast majority of Judea and Samaria to the PLO.

And this again brings us to Israel and the security cabinet meeting on Thursday evening.

Ahead of the meeting, Netanyahu said that he intended ask his ministers to approve his plan to establish a new town in Judea and Samaria for the residents of the recently destroyed community of Amona.

There is no doubt that from a political perspective, and indeed from a humanitarian perspective, Netanyahu’s commitment to establishing a new community for the former residents of Amona is a positive development. But the question of whether or not Israel should build a new community in Judea and Samaria is not the main issue. Indeed, the issue of Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria has never been the main issue.

The pressure the Trump administration is exerting on Israel to constrain the rights of Jews to property in Judea and Samaria is the direct consequence of the refusal of the American foreign policy establishment to reckon with the reality that Israelis have internalized.

The Israeli public today recognizes that there is no deal to be had. The Palestinians will never make peace with Israel, because they remain committed to its destruction.

It doesn’t matter how effective the Americans are at negotiations. It doesn’t matter how many concessions they are able to extract from Israel in their endless attempts to coddle the Palestinians and convince them to negotiate. Indeed, the Americans’ collective refusal to come to terms with the reality that guides the Israeli public indicates that regardless of what their actual feelings toward Israel may be, in demanding Israeli concessions to the PLO, the Americans are implementing a policy that is stridently anti-Israel.

Under the circumstances, Netanyahu’s task, and that of his ministers, is not to convince the new administration to respect the legal rights to property of Jews in Judea and Samaria. Their duty is to represent and advance the interests and positions of the public that elected them.

Netanyahu and his ministers must make clear to Trump and his advisers that there is no point in trying to reach a deal with the PLO. Trump’s predecessors’ failure to reach an accord had nothing to do with their failure to master the art of the deal. They failed because there is no one on the Palestinian side who is interested in making a deal.

Moreover, Netanyahu and his ministers must explain to Trump that all previous attempts to reach a deal by extracting concessions from Israel did nothing but weaken Israel. And the Israeli public will no longer accept any such concessions from their government.

Originally published in the Jerusalem Post.