Tag: State Department

Posted on

The Crashing Iranian Economy and the Mullahs’ Last Stand

There are reports now that Iranian officials are in a panic as they race to save the nuclear deal and stave off a return of crushing sanctions on their fragile economy. Although European officials have claimed they will stay in the nuclear deal despite President Trump decertifying the it and reapplying crushing sanctions last week, there is little they can do.  Iranian government representatives and their European counterparts have been huddling with ex State Department officials last week, but with little success with a way forward as Congress has been cool to the idea of discussing any relaxing of sanctions.

The Washington Free Beacon reported the following:

European diplomats are said to be blaming the Obama administration for drumming up business with Iran and telling these allies that they could engage in economic transactions without penalty. The reaction from lawmakers has been unsympathetic, source said, explaining that congressional opponents of the deal long warned these European countries the deal would be subject to harsh scrutiny after President Barack Obama left office.

A State Department official familiar with the progress of new negotiations surrounding the deal said the Trump administration is set on fundamentally changing Iran’s behavior, including its buildup on ballistic missiles and support for terrorism, before it agree to any Iranian demands.

One veteran U.S. adviser close to the White House told the Washington Free Beacon that Iran’s reaction indicates its desperation to remain in the Obama-era agreement and continue receiving cash windfalls.

“As President Trump has always said, the Iran deal was great for the mullahs and terrible for the American people,” the source said, speaking only on background. “Obama gave Iran more than they could ever have imagined, and now Trump is taking it away. The Iranians are rushing to grab and save whatever they can. Europe will have to choose a side.”

Despite public calls for doing business with Iran, there is little the EU can do as corporations are pulling out of doing business with the rogue state due to fear from banking sanctions.  Russia has no interest in saving the deal either despite public comradery, since Putin finally has an Iran that is becoming pacified before it grows out of control.




All of this pressure on the regime in Tehran makes it far more likely that a military confrontation is in the offing. This is not a bad thing.  A war was expected eventually between the Ayatollahs in Iran and Israel and the Sunni block. If the JCPOA had been kept, Iran would have waited and been far too powerful to stop.  Now they are in a weak position and except for Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen, Iran cannot sustain a warfront for too long unless they have other actors enter on their behalf.

With North Korea threatening to pull out of the Trump-Un meet up and China becoming a serious threat, the Mullahs may be banking on making a last stand. Yet they will have to do this before their economy crashes and their citizens revolt.

Posted on

“Israel is Off the Hook Again?” State Department Reporter asks Heather Nauert

In the following video an unnamed State Department reporter is heard harrassing Heather Nauert over the administration’s support for Israel’s right to defend itself.




Nauert rebuffs the reporter, but he inists on questioning the adminstration’s defense of Israel’s actions on the Gaza border.

“How is it not justification for killing, for Israel killing, when you say ‘Israel has a right to defend itself?’” the reporter asked. “Israel has a right to defend itself and there are no Israeli casualties and there are literally tens of thou-, over ten thousand Palestinian casualties and a hundred deaths.”

The above questioning uses the often made equalization statement, which makes it all about body count.  Of course that is offensive and border line anti-semitic as it inisists that the only time Israel has the right to defend itself is if Jews are killed first and of course in equal amounts to enemy numbers.

This is of course ridiculous.  If the IDF had not opened fire, hundreds and potentially thousands of Israelis would be killed from the hoardes of people carrying grenades, guns, and molotov cocktails.

The reporter also made a comparison between border patrols on the US-Mexico border to Israel-Gaza border.  “The U.S. isn’t mowing down people along the U.S.-Mexican border, isn’t that accurate?” the reporter said.

As bad as the border situation is on the US-Mexico border, Mexico is ruled by a terrorist entity willing to pay tens of thousands of people to ram the border fence, fly burning kites in US territory, and throw grenades and rocks at US soldiers.

This sort of thinking is what is driving leftists like Bernie Sanders to make statements like the following: “Instead of applauding Israel for its actions, Israel should be condemned. Israel has a right to security, but shooting unarmed protesters is not what it is about.”

The David-Goliath trope running through the left is what is driving their perception of reality disconnected from the real world. Then again this is the same group that doesn’t believe in national borders.

Posted on

UN Official Gives Speech to U.S. Group That Advocates Destruction of Israel

Amid funding showdown, top official welcomed by BDS group

A top United Nations official is facing criticism following a recent speech before a well known anti-Israel organization that supports boycotts of the Jewish state, denies Israel’s right to exist, and has promoted anti-Semitic materials.

Elizabeth Campbell, director of the UN Relief Works Agency’s office in Washington, D.C., recently spoke before the Jerusalem Fund, a Washington-based pro-Palestinian activist group that promotes boycotts of Israel as part of the Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment movement, or BDS.

Campbell has appealed to the Trump administration not to cut funding to UNRWA, the Palestinian aid organization that has long been criticized for employing members of Hamas, participating in anti-Israel political activism, and allowing its facilities to be used by terrorists groups. Campbell discussed the issue in a speech earlier this month before the Jerusalem Fund.

The United States has been withholding more than $65 million in taxpayer funding to UNRWA as the Trump administration considers demanding reforms to the organization or permanently reducing funding.

White House-allied policy advisers with knowledge of the talk told the Washington Free Beacon that it is just another example of UNRWA’s biased attitude towards Israel and its efforts to legitimize groups that take a hardline stance against the Jewish state.

One foreign policy official who has worked with the Trump administration on its effort to reform UNRWA said he views the speech by UNRWA’s Washington director at a BDS group as providing the group with undue legitimacy, particularly in light of U.S. efforts to reform the UN group.

“UNRWA explains away its scandals by protesting, in essence, that you can’t expect Palestinians in Gaza not to support terrorism,” the source said. “But there’s no way to explain away the Washington-based head of a taxpayer-funded group supporting a notorious hate group. The anti-Israel culture at UNRWA is toxic—and it extends from Gaza City to Washington, D.C., as this incident shows.”

UNRWA officials did not respond multiple requests for comment on Campbell’s speech.

The Jerusalem Fund regularly holds events that suggest the group’s affinity for Hamas and make explicit its support for BDS. The title of a recent event was “Hamas: From Resistance to Government.” Another was titled, “Building the BDS Movement.” Another asked, “Israel: Democracy or Apartheid State?” with the speaker endorsing the latter.

A State Department official declined to comment directly on the appearance of an UNRWA official at the Jerusalem Fund, but emphasized the administration’s efforts to see UNRWA reformed or face a further cut off in U.S. aid.

Richard Goldberg, a former senior adviser to retired Sen. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) who helped spearhead efforts to hold UNRWA accountable for its anti-Israel advocacy, told the Free Beacon that Western nations footing the bill for the agency are growing weary of its anti-Israel activism.

“There’s a growing consensus among UNRWA’s largest donors that the time has come for fundamental changes,” said Goldberg, now a senior adviser for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “The agency was established nearly 70 years ago by Arab states as a political weapon in their ongoing fight to destroy the fledgling State of Israel—a war the Arab states now understand they lost.”

“Rather than keeping Palestinians in a perpetual state of poverty and hopelessness, Palestinians deserve to see a path toward prosperity and self-sufficiency,” Goldberg explained. “Before the United States hands over its next tranche of contributions to UNRWA, at a minimum the Trump administration should get a commitment from all parties to prepare for the transition of UNRWA to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. If the Palestinians truly want an independent state, they need to show they can step up and care for their own citizens.”

A second Trump administration adviser who works on Middle East issues told the Free Beacon that appearances such as this have become routine for UNRWA.

“No one is surprised by this, least of all the Trump administration’s UN and Middle East officials,” the source said. “Ambassador Haley has spent an enormous amount of time trying to call attention to the UN’s hostility toward Israel, which exists at every level. Of course a UN official is being hosted by a group that advocates economic attacks against Israel. They’re on the same side.”

Originally Published in the Free Beacon.

Posted on

Pompeo’s Entry Into the State Department May Be Seismic

Now that Rex Tillerson is on his way out and CIA Director Mike Pompeo set to replace him, it appears that President Trump may beginning to put together a core team for foreign policy that not only reflects Trump’s views but totes a particular ideological line.

Three aspects surrounding the Mike Pompeo appointment to the State Department should make it clear that this is no ordinary appointment.

Focus on China

Mike Pompeo has said numerous times that Russia, while a geopolitical concern is not really the main threat to the USA.  In Pompeo’s mind China is far dangerous to the USA in the long run and this threat must be tackled before it’s too late.

Pompeo may stand for protection of intellecutual property, says Jim Cramer from CNBC.

Standing with Israel

Mike Pompeo is known to be fierce critic of the Iran deal as well as a hawk when it comes to Israel.  This may be the first truly pro-Israel Secretary of State.  After 70 years of Arabists in the State Department, a real shift o Israel may finally be at thand.

Cleaning Out the Swamp

It seems one of the biggest reason Trump want Mike Pompeo is to clean out the State Department.  It may seem like a tall order, especially since the Deep State has been embedded in there since the early 20th century, but Pompeo is clearly has been given cart blanche to drain Foggy Bottom of its swamp creatures.

In conclusion, Pompeo’s appointment to Secretary of State presents a rare opportunity to entrust the position to someone whose ideology may finally gut the department and replace it with people aligned with America’s intrest.

Posted on

Trump, Netanyahu and the Post-Oslo era

If the peace process ends, Netanyahu will present his own plan.

You wouldn’t know it from the news, but this week, the probability that Israel will apply its law to areas of Judea and Samaria rose significantly.

This week was first time that either Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu or the Trump administration ever addressed the possibility of Israel applying its law to areas of Judea and Samaria.

Lawmakers from Bayit Yehudi and the Likud have prepared separate bills on the issue. MK Bezalel Smotrich’s Bayit Yehudi party bill calls for Israel to apply its law to Area C – the parts of Judea and Samaria located outside Palestinian population centers.

The second bill, proposed by Likud MK Yoav Kisch, calls for Israel to apply its law to the Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria. The Likud’s central committee unanimously passed a resolution in December calling for the government to implement such a policy.

On Monday, Netanyahu met with the Likud Knesset faction to convince the lawmakers to postpone consideration of Kisch’s bill. Netanyahu gave two justifications for his position.

First, he said that he wants to discuss the issue with the Trump administration. Netanyahu explained, “On the topic of applying sovereignty [in Judea and Samaria], I can tell you that for some time now I have been discussing the issue with the Americans.”

Netanyahu continued, “Our relationship with them is a strategic asset to the State of Israel and the settlement enterprise.”

Netanyahu’s statement was very general. The media chose to interpret it to mean that Netanyahu was lobbying the Trump administration to support the application of Israeli law to parts of Judea and Samaria.

But that is not at all what he said. He said that he is discussing the issue with the Americans and that he wants to maintain the good relations Israel now enjoys with the Trump administration because those relations are a strategic asset for Israel.

The second guiding principle Netanyahu said inform his position on applying Israeli law to parts of Judea and Samaria contradicts the notion that he wants the Trump administration to adopt the cause of applying Israeli law in Judea and Samaria as an American position.

Netanyahu said he opposes Kisch’s bill because he believes that applying Israeli law to the Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria is “an historic undertaking.”

Netanyahu said, “This has to be a government initiative and not a private one, because this is a historic undertaking.”

Before considering the implications of Netanyahu’s second guiding principle, we need to examine carefully consider the US position on the issue.




Netanyahu’s general statement to the Likud Knesset faction provoked a media maelstrom. The outcry compelled the Trump administration to respond. The manner it responded to the media storm was instructive.

The administration’s first response came at the conclusion of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s meeting with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry in Cairo. Tillerson was in Egypt on the first leg of his regional tour to Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Given his hosts’ opposition to President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital last December, the State Department was certainly not interested in having the US embroiled in Israeli discussions about applying Israel law to areas in Judea and Samaria.

And yet, in his media appearance, Tillerson ignored the issue. He told reporters, “The Trump administration remains committed to achieving a lasting peace agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians.”

As the media storm in Israel and the region over Netanyahu’s remarks expanded with Palestinian condemnations of his statement, a senior diplomatic source in Jerusalem clarified Netanyahu’s remarks to reporters.

The senior diplomatic source explained that Netanyahu “has not presented the United States specific proposals for annexation, and the US has not expressed its agreement with any such proposal. Israel updated the US on the varying proposals that have been raised that the Knesset. The US expressed its clear position that it wishes to advance President Trump’s peace plan. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s position is that if the Palestinians maintain their refusal to negotiate, Israel will present its own alternative.”

This statement is the most revealing statement any senior official has made on the issue of applying Israeli law to areas of Judea and Samaria. The senior official told us several things we didn’t know.

First, Netanyahu plans to wait to present any new Israeli position on Judea and Samaria until after Trump presents his peace plan.
Second, Netanyahu will postpone consideration of any plan to present an independent Israeli initiative if the Palestinians agree to return to the negotiating table.

Finally, like Tillerson, the senior Israeli official did not say that the US opposes Israeli plans to apply Israeli law to parts of Judea and Samaria.

Later on Monday, in response to virulent criticisms of the US following Netanyahu’s remarks, the Trump administration stiffened its tone.

White House spokesman Josh Raffel issued what the media presented as a harsh rebuke of Netanyahu’s statement before the Likud Knesset faction members.

“Reports that the United States discussed with Israel an annexation plan for the West Bank are false, Raffel said.

“The United States and Israel have never discussed such a proposal, and the president’s focus remains squarely on his Israeli-Palestinian initiative.”

Did Raffel’s statement tell us anything new? Not really.

The senior diplomatic source said Netanyahu has updated the administration on the various proposals for applying Israeli law to areas of Judea and Samaria. He didn’t say Netanyahu held discussions with administration officials about the various proposals. And the senior diplomatic source said that the US remains committed to advancing Trump’s peace plan.

In other words, there is no inherent contradiction between Netanyahu’s statement at the Likud faction meeting, the statement by the Israeli senior diplomatic source, Tillerson’s statement and Raffel’s statement. None of them said that Israel is interested in having the US support applying Israeli law to Judea and Samaria. None of them said the Trump administration opposes applying Israeli law to Judea and Samaria.

They all said the Trump administration is committed to advancing its own peace plan.

The sense that the dispute between Netanyahu and the White House was more apparent than real was reinforced on Tuesday at the State Department press briefing.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Neuert had no response to the news that the Knesset passed legislation placing Ariel University under the auspices of the Council of Higher Education, instead of a designated special council that deals specifically with higher education institutions in Area C. Like everyone else, she restated the administration’s commitment to advancing its own peace plan.

And this brings us to the peace plan the administration is now preparing.

Diplomatic sources in Jerusalem say that Netanyahu has presented two positions that he believes must be incorporated in any peace plan to ensure that the plan, if implemented will produce peace rather than war.

First, Netanyahu insists that the Palestinians must recognize Israel’s right to exist.

Second, Netanyahu insists that Israel must maintain permanent control over the eastern border with Jordan.

These goals are eminently reasonable. Israel cannot share sovereignty west of the Jordan River with an entity that rejects its right to exist. So any peace deal must involve Palestinian acceptance of the Jewish state’s right to exist.

By the same token, even in an era of peace, Israel cannot surrender its ability to defend itself. Since Israel cannot defend itself without perpetual control over the Jordan Valley, Israel cannot sacrifice its control over the Jordan Valley. Any deal Israel strikes with the Palestinians that does not include perpetual Israeli control over the Jordan Valley is a recipe for war.

If Trump accepts Netanyahu’s position and incorporates it into his peace plan, then as far as Netanyahu is reportedly concerned, the negotiations can begin in earnest.

On the other hand, if the Palestinians refuse to accept these conditions, then the peace process will be over.

And if the peace process ends, Netanyahu will present his own plan. That plan, apparently will look a lot like the Likud central committee’s plan to apply Israeli law over the Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria.

Rather than supporting someone else’s bill, Netanyahu will present the plan to the cabinet for approval and then introduce it as a bill to the Knesset, just as then prime minister Menachem Begin applied Israeli law to the Golan Heights in 1981.

While all of these developments may appear odd, we have been here before.

In many ways, the situation today recalls the situation in 1992. In 1992, the US was sponsoring peace talks between Israel and its Arab neighbors in Washington. Without informing the Americans, after taking office in 1992, the government of Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres began carrying out secret talks with the PLO under the auspices of the Norwegian government in Oslo.

After the first Oslo deal was concluded in August 1993, Rabin sent Peres and then-Foreign Ministry legal adviser Joel Singer to the US to brief then-secretary of state Warren Christopher on the agreement. Rabin hoped Christopher would agree to present the deal as an American peace plan. Rabin believed that the Israeli public would be more supportive of a deal with an American imprimatur.

In a 1997 interview with Middle East Quarterly, Singer described the meeting with Christopher. Singer recalled that as Christopher read the agreement for the first time, a shocked look came over his face. “His lower jaw dropped, and for the first and last time in my life, I saw Warren Christopher smile.”

But Christopher rejected Rabin’s request, all the same.

“Secretaries of state are not supposed to lie,” he told Peres and Singer.

Just as the Clinton administration was not willing to take the lead on a new strategic trajectory that placed Israel and the PLO on equal footing, so the Trump administration is not willing to initiate a new post-Oslo Middle East.

That is Israel’s job today just as it was Israel’s job in 1993.

A close reading of Netanyahu’s statement to the Likud Knesset faction makes clear that he understands this basic truth. And a close reading of the statements and counter-statements from Jerusalem and Washington following his briefing to the Likud Knesset faction indicates that if and when Netanyahu embarks on a new course, like Bill Clinton and Warren Christopher in 1993, Trump and his advisers will not stand in his way.

Posted on

State Department Hiding ‘Game Changer’ Report on Myth of Palestinian Refugees

Classified report could bust myth that millions of refugees need UNRWA

Originally published in Free Beacon

The State Department is hiding a classified report on Palestinian refugees that insiders say could be a game changer in how the United States approaches the situation and allocates millions in taxpayer funds to a key United Nations agency, according to multiple sources briefed on the situation.

As the United States moves forward with a decision to slash funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the agency responsible for providing education and support to some five million Palestinian refugees, officials on Capitol Hill and elsewhere have been pressuring the State Department to declassify a report that is believed to show the actual number of refugees is far fewer than the U.N. claims.

Multiple sources with knowledge of the situation told the Washington Free Beacon that the State Department first classified the report under the Obama administration and still refuses to provide U.S. officials with the information despite laws mandating its release.

The report was described to the Free Beacon as a potential tipping point in the debate over UNRWA and its mission, which has come under increased criticism in Congress for what many claim is the agency’s anti-Israel bias and routine promotion of pro-terrorism doctrines.

Some State Department officials have acknowledged in private meetings that there is no reason the report should remain classified, according to sources who said the over classification is part of an effort to suppress this information from Congress and the public.

“I was informed that there is no justification for classifying the report. Rather, it is the officials at State Department who do not want this information out as it could and would lead to a call to reform UNRWA,” said one source briefed on the matter.

While UNRWA provides support to some 5.3 million Palestinians they claim are refugees, the actual number could be closer to 20,000. This disclosure could fundamentally shift the narrative with UNRWA and lead the United States to consider cutting even more of its funding to the agency.

Currently, any U.S. official seeking to read the little-known report’s findings must have top-secret security clearance and access to a secure facility containing the documents.

Revelations of this classified report’s existence and the potential implications come as the Trump administration announced that it would slash UNRWA’s funding by half, from $125 million to $65 million, in order to force the organization to implement a series of reforms.

UNRWA has come under fire from pro-Israel activists and some lawmakers for anti-Israel bias and complicity with radical elements of Palestinian society.

In addition to reports that UNRWA is using anti-Israel content in its classrooms, it has been caught hiding Hamas rockets in its schools on at least three separate occasions.

The U.S. report on UNRWA was first commissioned in 2015 by former senator Mark Kirk (R., Ill.), who was spearheading an effort to increase the organization’s transparency.

Kirk forwarded a congressional amendment to require the State Department to provide Congress with a report on the number of refugees served by UNRWA who actually lived in the territory now known as Israel between 1946 and 1948.

The State Department never acknowledged having completed the report, sources said, and instead classified it.

“State had neglected to tell Sen. Kirk’s office,” said one source with knowledge of the situation. “It seems that this was intentional.”

Once the report’s existence was confirmed, Congress, in a 2017 measure, directed the State Department to provide an unclassified version of the report. This, too, was ignored, sources said.

The report is said to confirm that, as opposed to what UNRWA and its supporters claim, the number of refugees is actually in the tens of thousands, not the millions.

Richard Goldberg, a former deputy chief of staff for Kirk, told the Free Beacon that the UNRWA effort was always about exposing the myth that there are millions of refugees who still require aid.

“This is about basic taxpayer oversight of an agency that gobbles up hundreds of millions of dollars ever year,” said Goldberg, the author of the original amendment that required the report. “Are we funding a refugee agency or are we funding a welfare agency that nurtures a culture terrorism and violence?”

“There’s a moral difference when it comes to U.S. policy and foreign assistance,” said Goldberg, now a senior adviser to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “American aid for true refugees is one thing; American aid to subsidize a culture of welfare and terrorism is entirely different.”

Pro-Israel advocates are now urging the UNRWA report be provided to the public.

EJ Kimball, director of the Israel Victory Project, a coalition of pro-Israel lawmakers, told the Free Beacon that those under UNRWA’s care should be compelled to admit they are not actually refugees in the technical sense.

“If the State Department is interested in resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the number of actual refugees from Israel’s War for Independence must be publicized,” Kimball said. “For the approximately 5 million Palestinian Arabs in need of aid, they should be helped after acknowledging they are not refugees. By doing this, we can break the yoke of victimhood and oppression and give these ‘refugees’ the human dignity they deserve. UNRWA has failed and it either needs to be drastically reformed or tossed into the dustbin of history.”

The State Department declined to comment on the report or its status when approached by the Free Beacon.

Posted on

The State Department Strikes Back Over Jerusalem

Originally Published in the Washington Free Beacon under the title:

U.S. Still Won’t List Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital on Official Docs, Passports, Maps

State Department: ‘Specific boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem are subject to final status negotiations’

The United States still will not formally recognize Jerusalem as being located in Israel on official documents, maps, and passports, despite President Donald Trump’s announcement earlier this week that America is formally recognizing the holy city as Israel’s capital, according to State Department officials who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon about the matter.

Despite Trump’s declaration, which was formally codified on Wednesday into U.S. policy, the State Department is taking a more nuanced position on the matter, drawing some ire in Congress among pro-Israel lawmakers who accuse the State Department of undermining Trump’s efforts.

State Department officials this week had difficulty stating as fact that Jerusalem is located within Israel, instead trying to parse the issue as still subject to diplomatic negotiations.

State Department officials who spoke to the Free Beacon about the situation said that while it supports Trump’s declaration that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, it is not yet at the point where it will list Jerusalem as part of Israel on passports, maps, and official documents. This means that official documents, such as passports, will not, at this point, list “Jerusalem, Israel” as a place that exists.

The State Department’s careful parsing of the issue has already drawn outrage on Capitol Hill, where some lawmakers are describing this as part of an effort to undermine the Trump White House’s clear-cut declaration on the matter.

“The president is the commander-in-chief and America’s sole organ when it comes to conducting foreign policy,” Rep. Ron DeSantis (R., Fla.), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told the Free Beacon.  “Article II of the Constitution does not vest this authority in bureaucrats in the State Department.”

“The State Department must permit Americans born in Jerusalem to list ‘Jerusalem, Israel’ on their passports and must follow the logical implications of this historic recognition in other policy areas,” DeSantis said. ” President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was the right thing to do and enjoys broad support from the American people; an entrenched bureaucracy has no right to stymie this decision.”

A State Department official who spoke to the Free Beacon about the matter made clear that the United States now “recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and its seat of government.”

However, “the specific boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem are subject to final status negotiations,” the official said, explaining that the holy city’s exact location and placement in Israel proper is still up for debate.




“While we are affirming the current and historic reality of Jerusalem’s role as Israel’s capital and seat of government, any ultimate determination of sovereignty over Jerusalem will flow from the results of negotiations between the parties,” the State Department official explained.

With regards to U.S. passports for Americans born in Jerusalem, there will be no formal change in American policy on the matter.

The issue of listing “Jerusalem, Israel” as a person’s birthplace has been a hot button issue over the years, with a case even being adjudicated by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Americans born in Jerusalem still will not be able to list Israel as the birth nation on their passports.

“There is no change in policy at this time,” according to the State Department official. “We will provide any new guidance as and when appropriate.”

With regards to official maps and documentation, the State Department is still engaged in a process to figure out how exactly to classify Jerusalem.

“The president is taking a specific step in affirming that the United States believes that Jerusalem has and will continue to serve as Israel’s capital—and the U.S. is not backing off efforts towards encouraging the parties to resolve their differences over final status issues in a comprehensive peace agreement,” according to the State Department official.

However, the president’s declaration is limited in nature and is being reviewed by the State Department as it moves forward.

“The specific boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem are subject to final status negotiations,” the official said. “The United States is not taking a position on boundaries or borders.”

When asked if official documents will bear the words, “Jerusalem, Israel,” the State Department could not provide a concrete answer.

“This is quite a complex issue that we continue to study and work through,” the official said.

One senior official at a large, national pro-Israel organization cautioned against viewing the State Department’s stance as an effort to subvert Trump’s declaration on Jerusalem.

“It’s too early to panic,” the official, speaking on background, told the Free Beacon. “The administration was focused on getting the broad policy correct and meeting the president’s demand that we finally acknowledge the simple reality Jerusalem is Israel’s capital.”

“Now they’re going to take a month to figure out the consequences,” explained the official, who has been briefed on the situation. “Implementing pro-Israel fact-based policy is a new thing for some of our diplomats, and many others have forgotten how that works in recent years, so people are willing to give them some time. If at the end of the process nothing has changed, there will be broad criticism – to say nothing of pro-Israel voters around the county who will be bitterly let down.”

 

Posted on

THE STATE DEPARTMENT’S STRANGE OBSESSION

The decision to follow through with sending Iraqi Jewish archives back to Iraq is part of a disturbing pattern.

The law of Occam’s Razor, refined to common parlance, is that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.

If we apply Occam’s Razor to recently reported positions of the US State Department, then we can conclude that the people making decisions at Foggy Bottom have “issues” with Jews and with Israel.

Last Friday, JTA reported that the State Department intends to abide by an agreement it reached in 2014 with the Iraqi government and return the Iraqi Jewish archives to Iraq next year.

The Iraqi Jewish archives were rescued in Baghdad by US forces in 2003 from a flooded basement of the Iraqi secret services headquarters. The tens of thousands of documents include everything from sacred texts from as early as the 16th century to Jewish school records.

The books and documents were looted from the Iraqi Jewish community by successive Iraqi regimes. They were restored by the National Archives in Washington, DC.

The Iraqi Jewish community was one of the oldest exilic Jewish communities.

It began with the Babylonian exile following the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem 2,600 years ago. Until the early 20th century, it was one of the most accomplished Jewish communities in the world. Some of the most important yeshivas in Jewish history were in present-day Iraq. The Babylonian Talmud was written in Iraq. The Jewish community in Iraq predated the current people of Iraq by nearly a thousand years.

It was a huge community. In 1948, Jews were the largest minority in Baghdad.

Jews comprised a third of the population of Basra. The status of the community was imperiled during World War II, when the pro-Nazi junta of generals that seized control of the government in 1940 instigated the Farhud, a weeklong pogrom. 900 Jews were murdered.

Thousands of Jewish homes, schools and businesses were burned to the ground.

With Israel’s establishment, and later with the Baathist seizure of power in Iraq in the 1960s, the once great Jewish community was systematically destroyed.

Between 1948 and 1951, 130,000 Iraqi Jews, three quarters of the community, were forced to flee the country. Those who remained faced massive persecution, imprisonment, torture, execution and expulsion in the succeeding decades.

When US forces overthrew the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein in 2003, only a dozen or so remained in the country.

Today, there are none left.

As for the current Iraqi government that the State Department wishes to support by implementing its 2014 agreement, it is an Iranian satrapy. Its leadership and military receive operational orders from Iran.

The Iraqi Jewish archive was not created by the Iraqi government. It is comprised of property looted from persecuted and fleeing Jews. In light of this, it ought to be clear to the State Department that the Iraqi government’s claim to ownership is no stronger than the German government’s claim to ownership of looted Jewish property seized by the Nazis would be.

On the other hand, members of the former Jewish community and their descendants have an incontrovertible claim to them. And they have made this claim, repeatedly.

To no avail. As far as the State Department is concerned, they have no claim to sacred books and documents illegally seized from them.

When asked how the US could guarantee that the archive would be properly cared for in Iraq, all State Department spokesman Pablo Rodriguez said was, “When the IJA [Iraqi Jewish archive] is returned, the State Department will urge the Iraqi government to take the proper steps necessary to preserve the archive, and make it available to members of the public to enjoy.”

It is hard not to be taken aback by the callousness of Rodriguez’s statement.

Again, the “members of the public” who wish to “enjoy” the archive are not living in Iraq. They are not living in Iraq because they were forced to run for their lives – after surrendering their communal archives to their persecutors. And still today, as Jews, they will be unable to visit the archives in Iraq without risking their lives because today, at a minimum, the Iraqi regime kowtows to forces that openly seek the annihilation of the Jewish People.

And the State Department knows this.

Then there is the second story that came out this week, whose implications are no less dismal.

Friday, the Washington Free Beacon reported that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is leading an effort by State Department officials to convince President Donald Trump to force Israel to return $75 million in congressionally authorized supplementary aid.

On the face of it, the demand is part of a turf war that the State Department has long fought with Congress regarding the scope of Congress’s power to engage in foreign policy. In the final year of the Obama administration, Obama forced Israel to agree not to accept supplementary appropriations in defense aid from Congress beyond what was agreed upon in the memorandum of understanding he concluded. Obama’s position was rightly viewed as a means to undermine Israel’s relations with members of Congress.

But it was equally a means to undermine Congress’s ability to assert its constitutional power to appropriate funding.

As negotiations between Israel and the Obama administration progressed last year, Senator Lindsay Graham implored Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to accede to Obama’s demand.

But in the empty hope of averting a last-minute move by the Obama administration to enable an anti-Israel resolution to pass at the UN Security Council, and concerned that a Hillary Clinton administration would offer Israel less assistance than Obama had offered, Netanyahu signed the deal.

Graham reacted to the MOU’s conclusion by stating that it is unconstitutional and therefore Congress would disregard it.

After Trump was elected, his advisers assured Israel that they would not enforce the MOU’s restrictions on supplementary funding. And yet, now, the State Department is seeking to do just that.

While in many ways this is an internal American fight, the unmistakable fact is that the State Department always seems to fight its turf war with Congress over issues relating to Israel. Moreover, the fight always involves bearing down on some of the dumbest aspects of traditional US Middle East policy.

Over the past 20 years, the State Department has fought and won two major battles against Congress relating to Israel. First, the State Department has continuously blocked the 1996 Embassy Act that requires the State Department to move the US embassy to Jerusalem.

Second, the State Department fought and won a Supreme Court battle to block implementation of the law requiring it to permit US citizens born in Jerusalem to have Israel listed as their country of birth on their passports.

In both cases, the State Department’s actions reflected a longstanding policy of mollycoddling antisemitic Arab regimes and terrorist groups at Israel’s expense. No US interest has been advanced by these efforts. To the contrary, as Senator Tom Cotton argues in relation to the State Department’s current efforts to force Israel to return the $75m. supplemental appropriation for missile defense projects, the US harms itself by undermining its key ally in fighting the enemies it shares with Israel.

Moreover, the $75m. supplemental assistance for development of missile defense technologies is not a gift to Israel. As the current standoff between the US and North Korea makes clear, the US itself is in dire need of just the sort of anti-missile technologies that Israel is developing. Indeed, the US stands to lose if Israel cuts back its missile defense programs due to lack of funding.

So again, we return to Occam’s Razor.

The State Department’s determination to return the purloined Iraqi Jewish archive to the Iraqi government, like its efforts to convince Trump to demand that Israel return the supplemental aid, doesn’t appear to be guided by any underlying concern for US interests.

Why would Egypt or Saudi Arabia object to Israel developing new means to intercept Hamas, Hezbollah or Iranian missiles? So like its fights against congressional efforts to recognize Israel’s capital city, and indeed like the State Department’s insistence that the US has no option other than recertifying Iranian compliance with Obama’s nuclear deal with the ayatollahs despite overwhelming evidence of Iranian noncompliance, there is an undercurrent of obsessive vindictiveness to the State Department’s current efforts.

In issue after issue, the same officials engage in behavior that appears to reflect a compulsive habit of always demanding that the US adopt positions that weaken US-Israel ties and undermine Jewish rights in Israel, and throughout the Middle East.

Perhaps there is another explanation for this consistent pattern of behavior.

But the simplest explanation is that the State Department suffers from an unhealthy obsession with regard to Jewish rights and the Jewish state.

Originally published by the Jerusalem Post. 

Posted on

TRUMP SHOULD BLOCK OBAMA MOVE TO SEND STOLEN JEWISH RELIGIOUS ARTIFACTS TO IRAQ

The Point has been covering this story for a while. This goes back to 2013.

Iraq in the 40s had 350,000 Jews. Today it has somewhere between four and none.

Despite that the Obama administration plans to send the Jewish Archive consisting of religious artifacts, bibles, marriage contracts, community records and private notebooks seized by the Iraqi Secret Police from the Jewish community back to Iraq.

The material is not the property of the Iraqi government, either Saddam’s regime which stole it, or its Shiite successor which claims to want it, but not the Jews who owned it. It’s the property of Iraqi Jewish refugees and their reconstituted communities in America, Israel and anywhere else.

The personal material, like marriage contracts and school books, should go to the families that owned them and to their descendants. The religious material, which a Muslim country that purged its Jewish and Christian communities has no use for, should go Iraqi Jewish religious communities wherever they are now.

Jewish bibles seized from the custody of the Nazi SS would not be sent to the German government. There is no reason to send Jewish bibles into the custody of the Iraqi government.

Despite that, the State Department has announced that the stolen Jewish property will be sent to the Iranian puppet regime in Baghdad.

The United States will return to Iraq next year a trove of Iraqi Jewish artifacts that lawmakers and Jewish groups have lobbied to keep in this country, a State Department official said.

A four-year extension to keep the Iraqi Jewish Archive in the U.S. is set to expire in September 2018, as is funding for maintaining and transporting the items. The materials will then be sent back to Iraq, spokesman Pablo Rodriguez said in a statement sent to JTA on Thursday.

Rodriguez said the State Department “is keenly aware of the interest in the status” of the archive.

“Maintaining the archive outside of Iraq is possible,” he said, “but would require a new agreement between the Government of Iraq and a temporary host institution or government.”

No, it doesn’t. The archive doesn’t belong to the Iraqi government, but to the Jewish population that was ethnically cleansed from Iraq.

The United States recovered the archive and should have turned it over to the Jewish community. Instead we had a bizarre Kafkaesque process in which the archive was restored to be turned over to the thieves who stole it.

Jewish political leaders have invested a lot of energy into looted art in Europe. And that’s a worthwhile cause. Yet this is a far more compelling issue. The archive contains the history of a Jewish community. It matters far more than a Klimt painting. Sadly, the priorities are those of a secular Ashkenazi leadership that is uninterested in the Iraqi Jewish archive because it’s Sephardi and religious. Meanwhile the American Sephardi Federation’s Ashkenazi boss Jason Guberman-Pfeffer seems far more interested in defending the hateful anti-Israel prejudices of David N. Myers, than in fighting for the archive.

And, another factor was the reluctance of a largely liberal leadership to stand up to Obama.

The archive is set to be exhibited at the Jewish Museum of Maryland Oct. 15-Jan. 15. The exhibit page says the items include a Hebrew Bible with commentaries from 1568, a Babylonian Talmud from 1793 and an 1815 version of the Zohar, a Jewish mystical text.

“There is no justification in sending the Jewish archives back to Iraq, a country that has virtually no Jews and no accessibility to Jewish scholars or the descendants of Iraqi Jews,” Gina Waldman, founder and president of Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, said Friday in a statement to JTA. “The U.S. government must ensure that the Iraqi archives are returned to its rightful owners, the exiled Iraqi Jewish community,”

Stanley Urman, executive vice president for Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, echoed Waldman in saying there was no justification for sending back the archive.

“This is Jewish communal property. Iraq stole it and kept it hidden away in a basement. Now that we’ve managed to reclaim it, it would be like returning stolen goods back to the thief,” Urman told JTA on Friday.

It’s exactly like it. Meanwhile here’s the bizarre anti-Semitic justification on the Iraqi side for wanting the archive. Here’s Al Arabiya’s explanation

Experts add that Israel is keen on obtaining the manuscripts in order to prove their claim that the Jews had built the Tower of Babel as part of its attempt to distort the history of the Middle East for its own interests.

Wonderful.

Harold Rhode, who discovered the trove while working as a Defense Department policy analyst assigned to Iraq’s transitional government, said he is “horrified” to think the material would be returned when it had been “stolen by the government of Iraq from the Jewish community.”

“It would be comparable to the U.S. returning to the German government Jewish property that had been looted by the Nazis,” he told The Jewish Week.

It’s exactly like it.

I don’t expect Tillerson to care. Between McMaster at the NSC, Mattis on Defense and Tillerson, foreign policy is under the control of the usual Islam Firsters who are very concerned with Muslim feelings, particularly in the oil states, and very little else. And so the old Obama plan to turn over stolen Jewish religious items to a hostile Islamic regime is moving forward.

But President Trump can and should block the move. It’s the right thing to do. And Jewish activists should make that case.

Originally Published in FrontPageMag.

Posted on

Why is the US Selling Fighter Jets to Nigeria’s Islamist Leader?

Sahara Reporters wrote the following on August 3rd:

“The US State Department has approved the sale of 12 Embraer A-29 Super Tucanos to Nigeria.” Sahara Reporters further stated that “The [State] Department notified the US Congress, which has 30 days to approve the deal, of the $593 million foreign military sales on 2 August” and that “the package includes the aircraft, weapons, training, spare parts and facilities to support the program.”

The Buhari regime is known for deep ties to Islamic militants based in Northern Nigeria.  Since taking over Nigeria with the support of the Obama administration, Buhari has set out to Islamify the country while spreading hate to the Biafra region to the Southeast, especially against Igbo tribe there.

The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) appealed to the US Congress not to approve the deal.  The organization who represents millions of Igbo and Biafrans in Southeast Nigeria said the following:

“We want to remind the world that within three weeks of becoming the president of Nigeria on May 29, 2015, Retired Major General Muhammadu Buhari bombed Biafraland using a low-precision and less sophisticated attack aircraft with bombs that have Napalm as the warheads. In that genocidal act which occurred from June 17 to June 19, 2015, scores of Biafrans were roasted while others had their bodies mangled by the torrents of these bombs with Napalm warheads. With the A-29, there is no doubt that Muhammadu Buhari and his genocidal government will wipe out the entire people of Biafra with ease in a matter of a few sorties. The DOS wishes to remind the US Congress that Nigeria is not among the ‘Fast Track’ countries but a country indicted continually on human rights abuses.”

With the above in mind, it appears strange that Rex Tillerson would want to contiue the policy of his predecessor in arming Islamists, especially those with close ties to Iran.

I wrote the following over a year ago:

“Either the Obama administration is ignorant of Buhari’s human rights abuses against the Igbo in Biafra or they are complicit. Buhari has often used Boko Haram as a foil to generate arms and sympathy from the West.

The United States has begun to strengthen ties with Buhari ever since he attained power in Africa’s most populous country.  The previous President, Goodluck Jonathan was a friend of Israel and yet spurned the Obama administration. With Buhari now as President the tables have turned.  Nigeria is now ruled by a former military leader and an avowed Islamist. “

The Trump administration, with its various upheavels over the last few months does not seem aware of the disaster looming from this sale.  Not only will Igbo’s who are 30 to 40 million strong be targeted, the idea that Buhari will use these planes to fight Boko Haram is just absurd. Buhari wil continue to use “the need to fight Bop Haram” as the reason for the West to supply him with arms while ethnically cleansing the majority non-Muslims of the South.

The Igbo South is Key to Israel’s Ring of Defense in Africa

If Buhari would succeed in subjugating the Igbo majority areas of Southeast Nigeria, Israel’s strategy of building a bulwark against radical Islamic regimes would be broken in half. To Nigeria’s West is Ghana, Togo, Benin, who have all begun to grow close to Israel. to Nigeria’s South East, Cameroon, another friendly country.  By forcing the Igbo into a secondary status, Buhari would effectively disconnect the Christians of the Gold Coast from their brethren to the East.

Buhari sitting with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (Source – Khamenei)

The further Nigeria slides into forced Islamism, the harder it will be to pull it out when the time comes. Many observers are even questioning the need to hold the artifical former British colony together as it combines the Islamist North with the Christian Southwest, and the Judeo-Christian Southeast.

The British Want the Oil Near Igboland

The real reason for arming Buhari appears to be oil related.  The British in particular have a staked interest and have since the formed Nigeria in 1914 to forcibly subjugate the Igbos and related tribes in Biafra in order to gain a stranglehold over their natural resources.

Like other former colonies, the British backed the Islamic Hausa in the North to control what is an identifiably culturally unique area in Igboland also known as Biafra.  This worked until 1967, when Biafra attempted to gain independence. After a three year war and a British blockade on humanitarian supplies caused over 3 million Igbos to die the war ended.

The British policy of pushing Islamic regimes to hold back indigenous peopes in order to exploit the area’s natural resources appears to be continuing, except this time the State Department appears to be complicit. Either this is purposeful in helping the British control the oil reserves of the Ogbo dominated Biafra region or Rex Tillerson and the others at the State Department truly buy into Buhari’s rhetoric.

Either way, the sale represents a slipery slope which calls into question the veracity of America’s fight against radical Islam.