Tag: Donald Trump

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Has the Trump Administration been Arabized?

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_btn title=”FOR $5/MONTH YOU CAN SUPPORT ALLAN’S WRITING” color=”primary” size=”lg” align=”center” button_block=”true” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.paypal.com%2Fcgi-bin%2Fwebscr%3Fcmd%3D_s-xclick%26hosted_button_id%3DPBTQ2JVPQ3WJ2|||”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The struggle between the US Deep State and the Trump administration can probably be felt the most in foreign policy, especially when it comes to Israel. It is no secret that Donald Trump wants to arrive at a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. Despite the goal, administration or at least many in the administration believe the method rto arrive at such a coveted agreement should be far different than those attempted before.

According to a Channel 20 report, the White House has presented a set of principles to restart negotiations between both sides. The principles include:

  • Tempering construction in Judea and Samaria
  • Security measures in coordination with Jordan and the Gulf States 
  • Normalization of relations between Israel and the Arab states

The thorny issues of Jerusalem and the refugees will dealt with after real normalization takes place.

The same report cites Israel as wanting to add two more principles to the list:

  • Cessation of incitement to violence on the part of the Palestinians
  • Cessation of payments to terrorists and their families

The important part to this report is the fact that the White House is demanding that real normalization between the Sunni Arab world takes place first. At first glance, this appears to be a break through in approach. However, lets keep in mind that the Saudi Peace Plan, which calls for a full Israeli retreat to the arbitrary green line expects the same thing. There is an argument to be made that Trump has succeeded in calling for a change in order in that this normalization must come first, but at the end of the day normalization can be reversed if the Arabs feel Israel is not “retreating” fast enough.

Any connection between an Israeli retreat and the ethnic cleansing of its Jewish citizens to normalizing ties to Arab states who only yesterday were funding Hamas, ISIS, and the Muslim Brotherhood smacks a severe disconnect with the issues at the core of the conflict.

With all of that being  said the Trump administration seems intent on battling back the State Department’s classic approach on the subject of Israel-Palestinian peace by disconnecting Foggy Bottom from the process altogether. The truth is that any process will have negative effects, yet there is something to say in battling back the Deep State, which has been embedded at the State Department for decades.

The key person to look at it in all of this is the President’s long time lawyer and confidant, Jason Greenblatt.  As one source involved in the White House said:

“There’s basically only one guy – Jason Greenblatt. That’s it. There’s no office, there’s no bureaucracy.”

 

Greenblatt is an orthodox Jew and deeply connected to the right-wing in Israel. The crafting of the above principles clearly came from him. Once again, this seems excellent for Israel. On the other hand, the State Department, which has been Arabized since the 1940’s has clearly convinced the Trump administration by way of Rex Tillerson and Gen. McMaster that the Arab peace proposal should be considered as an important part of an overall framework.

So how much has their influence crept into an overall policy by the President?  This is hard to know and won’t be known until negotiations reach a decisive phase where Trump’s loyalties to one of the sides will be tested.

Regardless of this, Tillerson’s comments to a Senate Committee regarding Palestinian payments to terrorists should be noted and done so with concern:

“They have changed their policy,” Tillerson said, referring to the Palestinians. “At least I have been informed they’ve changed that policy and their intent is to cease payments.”

 

The problem with this statement is that the Palestinians admit themselves that they did not change their policy concerning payments to terrorist families.

“There have been talks about making the payments in a different way, but not ending them,” said one official, according to Reuters who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on discussions held with the Americans. “They could perhaps be labeled differently,” he said, suggesting the description “martyr” could be dropped, but he added: “They are not going to be stopped.”

 

Israel concurred and added:

“Israel is unaware of any change in the policy of the Palestinians, who continue to make payments to the families of terrorists.”

 

This purposeful obfuscation presents a challenge to those who understand that the peace process is nothing more than a globalist imperative to break down Israel’s ancestral rights to Land with a false occupation narrative. Will Tillerson and McMaster win out? That depends on the coordination between Greenblatt and Israeli officials who are being very careful to point out the Arabs true reasons for normalizing relations with Israel.

At the end of the day, if Donald Trump wants a deal no matter the cost and the Arabs continue to shower accolades on him, then the peace process he hopes to invigorate will turn out to be a disaster.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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Qatar Crisis Puts Hamas on the Ropes as Israel Cuts Electricity to Gaza

In the latest twists and turns in the unfolding Sunni crisis with Qatar, Israel has been drawn into the Saudi stand-off with its fellow Gulf country by way of cutting the Gaza Strip’s electricity to only two hours a day. In coordination with PA president Mahmoud Abbas, the Israeli security cabinet has further reduced electricity to the Hamas run strip.  Qatar has been Hamas’ foremost backer. One of the points the Saudis have required Qatar to follow through on in order to lift their blockade is for Qatar to break off ties to the terror group.

With Abbas and Israel coordinating against Hamas, while Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE, and Egypt tighten the screws on Qatar, the potential for war is increasing daily.  Abbas has cut off payments to PA workers in the Gaza Strip as well as pulling back on transferring vitals to Gaza Strip residents.

Hamas has responded with the following statement feeding fears of an open conflict:

“The decision of the occupation to reduce the electricity to Gaza at the request of PA President Mahmoud Abbas is catastrophic and dangerous. It will accelerate the deterioration and explode the situation in the Strip,” said Hamas spokesperson Abdel Latif al-Qanua. “Those who will bear the consequences of this decision are the Israeli enemy, who is besieging the Gaza Strip, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.”

What is most surprising about Israel’s move to cut Gaza’s electricity is the amount of coordination between Egypt, Israel, and the PA to ensure that Israel can follow through with the electricity reduction.  The Qatar crisis has given the emerging Sunni-Israel alliance its first opportunity to test their ability to work together despite not reaching a coveted peace agreement.

Regional Peace First

The coordination between the Sunni alliance and Israel has been unprecedented. It sets the stage for Trump’s path to peace, which is to arrive at a regional deal before Israel and the Palestinians reach an improbable agreement on final status issues. This puts both the Gaza front and the Qatar blockade into focus as a real test to to Israel-Sunni coordination against common regional adversaries like organized terror groups and Iran.

 

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Did the US Create ISIS?

Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made the following statement yesterday:

“You (the United States) and your agents are the source of instability in the Middle East…who created Islamic State? America … America’s claim of fighting against Islamic State is a lie.”

Iran’s Supreme leader went on to claim that Iran has proof that the US did indeed create ISIS.

As I wrote last year, there is overriding evidence that this is indeed true.

Department of Defense documents that have been declassified in the last year confirm that the Obama administration encouraged the flow of weapons into the moderate rebel groups in Syria, knowing they would eventually fall into Jihadists.  This worked well as it helped grow an independent Sunni state in Eastern Syria and Western Iraq.  Of course, when this state, later to be renamed ISIS refused to play by the rules, the game had turned dangerous.  Far worse was the West’s Sunni Caliphate than Assad or Iran.  Now to destroy the Frankenstein they built, the USA is forced to work with its sworn enemies.

Furthermore, it was Qatar and Obama’s willingness to work with Qatar’s leaders in helping to sow chaos that makes the current conflict between the Saudis and their allies and Qatar, Turkey, and Iran so interesting. The theory has been that the Obama administration sought to create a new Al-Qeida that would pave way for a Muslim Brotherhood run Sunni Middle East, it has been Russia, Iran, and Turkey that has benefited most from the chaos.

Instead of an anti-Iran Sunni caliphate, the Iranians have used the chaos to reach the borders of Israel.  Turkey has attempted to use the chaos to wipe out the Kurds, who have successfully repelled Erdogan’s advances. In fact, one can see a pattern far more sinister at play.  Obama, knew that the chaos could be used to give a now friendly Iran the ability to create real stability in the Middle East.

What about the DOD document above?  For Obama and his pro-Iranian advisers, the reasons are not important.  They understood the DOD had their own reasons to build ISIS. Obama only had to encourage it in order to use its creation to give Iran the go ahead to create their version of “stability” in the Middle East.

Iran, their proxies, and Russia are now in control of the Northern Levant, a situation no one thought possible a few years ago. ISIS became Obama’s perfect foil to give the Shiites what they always wanted. The Middle East Obama handed Trump on January 20th became a region in chaos, whose only savior appeared to be Iranian hegemony.

Trump is Dismantling Obama’s Chaos Creation

President Trump understood that ISIS was a dual creation of NATO, mainly the US and Turkey, which is why he has spent weeks demolishing the ISIS network with serious bombing missions, which Obama never meant to carry out. More than this, the Trump administration is actively arming the Kurds to destroy ISIS, no matter the consternation felt in Turkey. There is no question ISIS is going down. The only question is if Obama’s true master plan, that of Iranian control in the region can rolled back or not.

With that, the Ayatollah is correct, but it is his country who has truly benefited from the America’s 44th President’s misguided world vision.

 

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Why the Deep State Hates Bibi Netanyahu

With the reporting last week that Prime Minister Netanyahu has quietly dropped the “Two-State Solution” from his verbiage, one of his trusted ministers came out and admitted publicly that “The Prime Minister as well no longer supports the two-state [solution].” This shift is of course not much of a shift, but rather a revelation of Netanyahu’s true core beliefs.  This is not to say that Bibi Netanyahu wouldn’t ink a deal if one that is amicable enough was presented, but at the end of the day, we all know that the parameters in which Netanyahu has laid down are not rooted in the present Palestinian reality.

This is why the Deep State, which has its fingers here in Israel hates the Prime Minister. Netanyahu was able to navigate the “Two-State Solution” during Obama’s tenure as if he owned it and yet in the the mere few months after Trump’s victory, Bibi’s support for it is a lonely asterisk in history. This ability to constantly change publicly while continuously putting into action Israel’s master plan for Judea and Samariais is nothing short of remarkable. As a student of the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, Netanyahu learned that the only thing that matters is to keep building and increasing the population of Judea and Samaria. Sometimes this mean a lot and sometimes just a little, but the important part is to constantly grow.

Bibi Netanyahu has been a faithful student, even if his base has not always understood his motives.  Now, with a friendly administration in the White House, one which supports a united Jerusalem under Israel, Netanyahu can once again increase building and development in Judea and Samaria to a point not seen since Bush.  True, the embassy is not moving to Jerusalem, but that is just a superficiality. The most important prize, the one which secures Israel’s control over its Divinely gifted heartland in Judea and Samaria seems to be won.

This is why the Deep State hates Bibi Netanyahu, because he knows how to outsmart them like no other.

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Donald Trump, NWO, and the Deep State’s War Against Jerusalem

Donald Trump’s first international trip, like the President himself, broke many previous policies of the USA in regards to major geopolitical issues.  The one that has been most noted is his visit to the Western Wall, which is a first by a sitting American President.  Beyond that, the White House YouTube labeled Jerusalem as part of Israel on their channel.  This is in stark contrast to his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and NSA head General McMaster who do not regard Jerusalem as being part of Israel.

Trump is certainly aware that his actions flew in the face of a globalist agenda, which seeks to destroy the Jewish link to Jerusalem. It is no accident that a peace deal favorable to Israel is coinciding with increased leaks from behind Trump’s back as well as a focused witch-hunt against his team.

The NWO (New World Order) and the Deep State, view Israel’s control over Jerusalem as a threat to their hegemony. Why? The global security state  seeks to undermine the miraculous nature of Israel’s existence and triumph, especially the gains made in just six days 50 years ago. By forcing Israel to give up their Divine connection to these lands, the globalists can prove that they and only they are the rulers of the world. G-D? The globalists want a world where they play that role.

By Israel continuing to do the impossible by returning to their homeland and holding onto their eternal capital, the ability for the globalists and their soldiers in the Deep State to cement their control over the hearts and mins of the world citizens remains elusive.

By Trump essentially declaring that Jerusalem belongs to Israel, he has out flanked the global elite.  By doing that, the President has pushed them to increase their animosity to himself and his agenda.  McMaster and Tillerson will try to derail Trump’s accomplishments he made between the Arab world and Israel.  Expect the leaks to increase and the investigations to begin to focus on the President himself. All the while the North Korean crisis will erupt and drag America into a serious war, leaving Israel vulnerable to attack.

Trump has done the unthinkable, but the Deep State and the globalist agenda have tremendous power behind it, enough to harm the President and his backers. The war over Jerusalem is beyond politics and intersects with who we and the world as people truly want to be. Children of G-D or servants of man.

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[watch] Enough with the ‘Peace’ promises

Ron Lauder, against whom the film clip is directed, is a Jewish American man who has many merits in Israel’s fight for legitimacy and is the president of the ‘Jewish Congress’.

However, today he serves as President Trump’s unofficial adviser and envoy for the Middle East and is one of the central figures pressing Trump to “close the deal” between Israel and the Palestinians. [To add insult to injury, on the eve of Trump’s meeting with Abu Mazen, the latter met with Lauder explicitly in order to prepare himself for this meeting].

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Will Trump Triumph or Will Abbas Mimic Arafat

Will President Trump achieve the impossible breakthrough his predecessors were unable to accomplish? Or, like his predecessors will he fall victim to two-faced Arab Palestinian leadership?

Let’s not forget how hard President Bill Clinton tried to forge an agreement between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and PLO founder Yasser Arafat during the Camp David ll negotiations in 2000. Prior to negotiations Arafat was all smiles and sounded committed to peace between the Arab Palestinians and Israel. Negotiations dragged on and on. Barak provided Arafat with an incredible offer, which would have placed Israeli security at great risk. Virtually 100% of Judea/Samaria, commonly called the West Bank was offered to Arafat. Jerusalem would have been divided and eastern Jerusalem would be awarded to the Arab Palestinians. A land bridge between Judea/Samaria and the Gaza Strip was included, effectively splitting Israel in half. Compensation for so-called refugees was included.

President Clinton would later say he could not believe how good the offer was. Yet all Arafat said was “no.” in the end Clinton was furious with him and publically blamed him for the collapse of the talks. Subsequent to the failed negotiations the Arab Palestinians rioted and an extended intifada ensued.

Arafat fell from favor as far as Clinton was concerned. He learned a painful and embarrassing lesson. Arafat could not be trusted.

In 2002 when the late Ariel Sharon was Prime Minister President George W. Bush was attempting to persuade Arafat to stop his terrorist activity and pursue peace with Israel. Sharon then dropped the hammer on the two-faced Arafat. He provided documents which proved that while Arafat kept up the diplomatic chatter, he was signing off on terrorist operations. Bush was angry and embarrassed. He had faith that Arafat could be a genuine peace partner.

However, when Sharon proved Arafat to be a liar, Bush publically called for his ouster. Relations between the Bush administration and Arafat went flat and never recovered.

Abbas Echoes Arafat

Subsequent to Bush came 8 years of an Obama administration. In 2008 another incredibly generous offer was put forth by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. This time the recipient was Mahmoud Abbas who had succeeded Arafat who passed away in 2004. Abbas rejected the offer out of hand. Abbas demanded Israel halt “settlement” construction as a pre-condition for peace negotiations.

In an effort to entice Abbas to the table, Israel did stop construction for 10 months. However, Abbas failed to return to negotiations. Obama was never able to achieve measurably diplomatic breakthrough during his 2 terms as president.

Enter the Trump Era

He’s called a peace agreement between Israel and the Arabs the “ultimate deal.” He’s met with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and PA President Abbas. This past week he made his first foreign trip as President. The first stop was Saudi Arabia where he spoke to an assembled audience of 50 Arab leaders.  The Saudi Royal Family rolled out the red carpet, signaling a clear departure from uneasy relations with the Obama administration.

In Trump’s speech to the audience of Arab leaders he said they must “drive out” the terrorists from their countries and from the earth. These are the strongest words ever spoken by a US President while in an Arab nation, and speaking to Arab leaders. Trump also signaled the Saudi’s are warm to his efforts to achieve a peace agreement with Israel.

Trump moved on and flew to Israel. He met with Mahmoud Abbas, who has already told Trump he is ready to begin negotiations with Israel right away….without preconditions. This is a departure from his long held position of demanding Israel halt all construction before he would consider coming to the table. The question begs, is Abbas sincere? Will he come to the table while Israel continues to build?

Something else noteworthy took place while President Trump delivered his remarks as he stood next to Abbas. Not once did Trump mention the words “Palestinian State,” nor did he use the phrase “two state solution.”

While in Israel Trump became the first sitting US President to visit the Kotel (Western Wall). He also paid a visit to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial museum. While in Israel he restated the US commitment to Israel’s security and promised a continued qualitative edge in weaponry for Israel.

Yet, as was the case in Bethlehem with Abbas, in all of Trump’s remarks while in Israel he neglected to use the words “Palestinian State,” or “two state solution.”

A Quid Pro Quo?

One cannot help but wonder what took place in the private discussion between Trump and Abbas as well as with Netanyahu. Did the Saudi’s whisper something in Trump’s ear while he was there? Is there a quid pro quo brewing?

Will Donald Trump be able to achieve the impossible and forge an agreement between Israel and the Arab Palestinians as well as the Arab world in general? Is Mahmoud Abbas changing his colors and expressing genuine interest in peace with Israel? Will he sign off on what no other Palestinian leader has been willing to? Will he recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state? Will he accept Israeli sovereignty over Temple Mount?

President Trump seems to suggest there is a fresh wind of optimism blowing through the halls of power in the Middle East. He is eager to facilitate the most dramatic diplomatic breakthrough ever in the Middle East. He deserves an opportunity to do the unthinkable.

However, what remains to be seen is what Abbas will do. Will he follow in the footsteps of his predecessor and say one thing publically in English, while continuing his Islamic agenda of terror when he speaks in Arabic? Will he string President Trump along, only to ultimately show his true colors and embarrass President Trump as Arafat did with two previous presidents?

Or will Abbas do what no other Arab Palestinian leader has done?

We will wait, watch and witness…

Read more articles by Dan Calic on his Facebook page.

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ICONOCLAST IN THE PROMISED LAND

How the Israeli people are gauging Trump.

Israelis are greeting US President Donald Trump with cautious optimism. Their optimism stems from President Trump’s iconoclasm. Trump won the US presidential election based on a campaign of rejecting the prevailing narratives on US domestic and foreign policy that have long held sway among the elites. These narratives dictate and limit the boundaries of acceptable discourse in the US. Unfortunately, their relationship with facts and truth was never more than incidental. Indeed, in recent years that incidental link has vanished altogether along a wide swath of policy areas. On the domestic front, the most obvious examples of this disconnect between the prevailing narratives that dictate policies and the facts that guarantee the failure of those policies relate to US immigration policy and US healthcare policy.

American voters elected Trump because whether or not they supported his specific immigration and healthcare policies, they appreciated his willingness to state openly that the policies now in effect are having devastating impacts on American society.

Finally, Trump’s enthusiastic, unqualified support for Israel, his refusal to endorse the establishment of a Palestinian state and his pledge to move the US Embassy to Israel’s capital city Jerusalem were second importance only to his pledge to appoint Supreme Court justices that oppose abortion to his success in winning near wall-to-wall support from evangelical Christian voters.

It was because of his foreign policy iconoclasm that Israelis were, by and large, euphoric when Trump was finally inaugurated in January.

Since then, however, in significant ways, Trump has bowed to the narratives of the establishment. As a result, Israel’s euphoria at his election has been replaced by cautious optimism.

During his speech in Riyadh, in relation to both Iran and Islamic terrorism, Trump kept his promise to base his strategies for dealing with the threats on facts rather than narrative.

As far as Iran was concerned, Trump broke with convention by ignoring the meaningless presidential “elections” in Iran last Friday. Rather than embrace the common delusion that ballots mean something in Iran, when Iranian dictator Ali Khamenei decides who can run for election and decides who wins, Trump concentrated on facts. Iran is the primary engine of terrorism in the region and the world, he explained. Moreover, the world would be a better place, and the Iranian people would be better off, if the regime were overthrown.

On Islamic terrorism, Trump again ignored the advice of his national security adviser H.R. McMaster and refused to embrace the false narrative that Islam has nothing to do with terrorism. Rather, standing before the leaders of the Islamic world, Trump exhorted them to confront “Islamist extremism and the Islamist terror groups it inspires.”

Trump’s decision to make the case outright to the Muslim leaders was all the more astounding because on the eve of his speech, McMaster demeaned his refusal to embrace the narrative that Islam is peace in an interview with ABC News. In McMaster’s insubordinate words, “The president will call [Islamic terrorism] whatever he wants to call it. But I think it’s important that whatever we call it, we recognize that these are not religious people and, in fact, these enemies of all civilizations, what they want to do is to cloak their criminal behavior under this false idea of some kind of religious war.”

McMaster then insisted that despite the fact that his boss continues to talk about “radical Islamic terrorism,” Trump is coming around to embracing the official narrative that Islam is unrelated to Islamic terrorism. “This is learning,” he said.

But while Trump has maintained his fact-based rhetoric on Iran, for instance, his actual policy is very similar to Obama’s. Rather than keep his campaign pledge and cancel the nuclear deal which guarantees Iran a nuclear arsenal in ten years, Trump chose to punt. He certified – wrongly – that Iran is abiding by the terms of the deal even as the Iranians are stockpiling uranium in excess of the amounts permitted under the deal and are barring weapons inspectors from entering their nuclear sites. So too, Trump has kept up Obama’s practice of keeping the public in the dark regarding what was actually agreed to with Iran by refusing to reveal the nuclear agreement’s secret protocols.

In other words, his policies have yet to match his rhetoric on Iran.

But then again, there is reason to give Trump the benefit of the doubt on Iran. It is more than possible that Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia and Israel is entirely about Iran. After all, Trump has enthusiastically joined the anti- Iran coalition that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu built with the Sunni regimes to try to mitigate the destructive consequences of Obama’s embrace of the ayatollahs. And he seems to be interested in using this coalition to rebuild US power in the Middle East while ending Iran’s unimpeded rise as a nuclear power and regional hegemon, just as Israel and the Sunnis had hoped.

The same inconsistency and lack of clarity about Trump’s intentions and his level of willingness to reject the establishment narrative on foreign policy is even more blatant in everything related to Israel and the Palestinian war against it.

During his speech in Riyadh, Trump repeated the obnoxious practice of his predecessors and left Israel off the long list of countries that are afflicted by terrorism. The notion at the heart of that deliberate snub is that terrorism against Israel is somehow different and frankly more acceptable, than terrorism against everyone else.

During his brief visit to Israel, Trump will also go to Bethlehem to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. This will be the two men’s second meeting in less than a month. By insisting on meeting with Abbas during his lightning visit to Israel, Trump signals that he agrees with the narrative view that the US cannot support Israel without also legitimizing and supporting the PLO and its terror funding kleptocracy, the Palestinian Authority.

Finally, even when Trump has adopted a position that repudiates the establishment’s line, the fact is that the establishment’s members dominate his foreign policy team. And as a consequence, they do everything they can to dilute the significance of his moves.

This was clearly in evidence in relation to Trump’s decision to visit the Western Wall on Monday. In the week that preceded his visit, embassy officers angrily rejected Israel’s request that Netanyahu join Trump during his visit to the Jewish holy site, insisting that the Western Wall isn’t in Israel.

In so acting, these Obama holdovers were backed by McMaster, who refuses to admit that the Western Wall is in Jerusalem, and by his Israel-Palestinians director at the National Security Council, Kris Bauman, who served on Obama’s anti-Israel foreign policy team and supports US recognition of Hamas.

In other words, even when Trump tries to embrace fact over narrative, his failure to populate his foreign policy team with iconoclasts like himself has made it all but impossible for him to abandon the anti-Israel narrative guiding US policy. None of this means that Israelis have lost hope in Trump. To the contrary. They have enormous hope in him. But they recognize that so long as the same hostile false narrative about Israel, and the establishment that clings to it dominate Trump’s thinking and policies, the promise of his presidency will not be met.

Originally published by the Jerusalem Post. 
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Manchester, Trump, and the Lies of Abbas

On December 1, 2001, two suicide bombers detonated themselves on Ben Yehuda Street, followed by a car bomb set to go off as paramedics arrived. There was mayhem and fear.Thirteen people were killed, including a number of soldiers out of uniform, and 188 were injured. I was 23 then and had been learning in Yeshiva for close to six months.  That night my friends and I decided to finally get out of Yeshiva and do to downtown Jerusalem.  We were sitting in a nearby cafe when the blasts went off. Our hearts were pounding.  We had friends up in the area of the bomb blasts and did not know their condition.  As we waiting inside the cafe, the owner’s boy came inside in a state of shock.  He was holding a bag and inside was an organ from one of the bomb blast victims or even the bomber.  Someone quickly ran to get Zaka to ensure the body part was properly taken care of.  The suicide bombers and the car were packed with nails. One of our friends from yeshiva was hit and spent the next days in the hospital until he recovered.

This was not the first time I had experienced “Palestinian” terror.  Months earlier I was shot at while spending Shabbat in Hebron.  My group and I ran down the street as groups of Palestinian Authority funded terror gangs opened fire on all of us.

In those days Arafat was in control and he had made a direct covenant with Hamas to fight Israel. It was Arafat who came up with the idea of the suicide bomber who would decimate countless innocents with nail bombs. This was his gift to the world.  Suicide bombers with nail bombs.  This was the weapon of choice used to kill at least 22 people in Manchester.  Arafat’s deputy is the very same Mahmoud Abbas who President Trump claims is serious about peace.  The problem with this is that Abbas knew, funded, and supported the suicide attacks on Israel.  In fact it his Fatah who killed many people in last year’s spate of stabbing and car ramming attacks, including our first grader’s rabbi and son, our daughter’s friend, and father to her schoolmate.

For the President to condemn the Manchester attack as undertaken by “evil losers” while standing next to Mahmoud Abbas, a man responsible for the murder of thousands, including the 1976 Israeli Olympic Wrestling team as well as those murderous attacks on innocent Jews throughout Israel that continue today is nothing sort of hypocritical.

I believe Donald Trump is serious about peace, but if he truly want to move it forward the arch terrorist and Holocaust denying dictator of the PA should be the first person he boots if not arrests. By displaying Abbas as a pedestal of peace, President Trump will only encourage more attacks like the terror attack in Manchester. In fact as long as Abbas is not taken to task for his crimes, there is little hope for peace.

The choice is President Trump’s.  He can stop worrying about his image or grandstanding and either decide to stay out of the region or engage it with a bit more humility. After all, it is not the lives of his family or friends that will suffer for misguided policies and peace overtures that keep repeating themselves. Rather it is my family and friends that will ultimately be burdened by his ill fated attempt to make peace in a region whose parties have never been held accountable for their past actions.