Biden Faces Fury over Revival of Iran Nuke Deal

Video Of The Week -New U.S.-Iran Nuclear Deal? https://tinyurl.com/4jpayheb

 For the full Article go to “GC NewsDesk” https://tinyurl.com/f4sa8aak

Washington: US Republican Jim Banks has slammed Joe Biden-led administration for returning to the Iran nuclear deal and said it would make the President “biggest funder of terrorism in the world”. In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, Banks said, “This is absurd that the Biden administration would go back to a deal that was disastrous under Barack Obama and are now hell-bent again on renegotiating a new deal that rewards Iran for their bad behavior.

“Now, the only thing I can guess is that the Biden administration is so desperate for oil they would rather negotiate with terrorists than work with American energy workers to open up oil and make America energy-independent once again. But that’s exactly what the Biden administration is well on its way to doing.” He further said that Biden will be sending billions of dollars to a terrorist group by passing this deal.

“And if it passes, Joe Biden will be the biggest funder of terrorism in the world, and American taxpayers are going to be the ones paying for it. “And lifting a terrorist designation on the IRGC just goes to show that this administration is more interested in dealing with bad guys than dealing with the good guys right here at home in America to put America back on top, to put America back where it can be, project strength instead of weakness like this White House does every single day,” he added.

Former President Donald Trump had aborted Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal despite International Atomic Energy Agency’s certification that Iran was abiding by the pact, known as Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Trump not only withdrew from the agreement but also re-imposed sanctions on Iran.

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OBAMA’S MALICE, MAY’S SHAME. DRAIN THE UN SWAMP

Video Of The Week - Danny Dannon condemns the Anti-Israel UN Resolution-http://tinyurl.com/gvzn7rd

 24-12-2016 Melanie Philips

For the full article go to: http://tinyurl.com/jffamf7

President Obama’s refusal to veto the sickening UN Security Council resolution against Israel yesterday was an act of pure malice.

The resolution, demanding an immediate halt to all Israeli “settlement” construction, was proposed by New Zealand, Malaysia, Venezuela and Senegal after its original sponsor, Egypt, had withdrawn. No-one can be in any doubt, though, that the resolution’s real sponsor was Obama, acting behind the backs of the US Congress and the American people.

Clearly it makes a negotiated settlement between Israel and the Palestinians very much harder, since the Palestinians will now have no incentive to negotiate the boundaries of a future Palestine state.

Worse than that, it seeks to draw the border of Israel along the ceasefire lines established in 1949, when Israel fought off the Arab attempt to exterminate it at its rebirth. These ceasefire lines have been called the “Auschwitz borders” because they leave Israel militarily indefensible against its enemies. These include the Palestinians who remain committed to destroy Israel – and whose infernal cause the UN, manipulated by Obama, has now backed.

Worse even than that, the resolution is legally illiterate and perpetrates the Big Lie about Israel: that the “settlements” violate international law and that they are the major obstacle to peace.

They do not violate international law and no UN resolution can make them unlawful. Israel is legally entitled to build on this territory. This is principally because 1) it was never sovereign land belonging to any other state and 2) because it was land where the UN’s precursor body pledged that the Jews should be settled on account of their unique right to do so.

The idea that the settlements are the greatest obstacle to peace is ludicrous. There were no settlements before 1967, yet the Arab war of extermination against Israel had already gone on for decades.

There are two actual reasons for the Middle East impasse: first, that the Palestinians continuously incite their people to hatred of the Jews and mass murder of Israelis on the back of a narrative of lies which writes the Jews out of their own history in the land; and second, that America, Britain and Europe fund, sanitise and incentivise that genocidal Palestinian agenda.

What this vote so clearly demonstrates is what has been clear for years: that the UN is no longer fit for purpose. Dominated by states implacably hostile to Israel and the Jewish people, the UN has long demonstrated through its egregious application of double standards against Israel alone that it has become nothing less than an instrument of extermination against a member state. Only the US restrained it; now Obama has allied America to this agenda of infamy.

The US Congress and new American president must now finally hold the UN to account. It is insupportable that the American people should be financing this rogue body which is not just motivated by ideological and religious malevolence against the Jewish people but actively damages world peace.

There is another country, however, whose behaviour over this resolution must be noted with grim dismay (we can forget New Zealand, a stupid country of no other significance). As one of the five permanent Security Council members, Britain could have vetoed the resolution. Instead it actually supported it.

Since she came to power last July the British Prime Minister, Theresa May, has gone out off her way to express her warm affection for the Jewish people and her strong support for the State of Israel.

Her words now stick in the throat. If Obama has committed a foul and final act of malice towards Israel, Mrs May has done something just as bad, if not worse: presented herself as the friend upon whom the Jewish people can rely while her government stuck the knife not into Israel’s back, as did Obama, but its front.

Two weeks ago, Mrs May told the Conservative Friends of Israel that the 1917 Balfour Declaration, in which the British government committed itself to the re-establishment of the Jewish homeland in Palestine, was “one of the most important letters in history” and that next year’s anniversary of the Declaration was one that Britain would be “marking with pride”.

There is no reason to doubt that she is personally warmly disposed towards the Jews and Israel. But her understanding seems terribly limited. The reality, of which she seems to be genuinely unaware, is that for three decades after the Balfour Declaration the British did everything they could to undo it.

They turned a blind eye to Arab pogroms against the Jews of Palestine. They tore up Britain’s internationally binding obligation to settle the Jews throughout that land, making Britain an accessory to the Holocaust by refusing Jewish refugees entry to Palestine during the Nazi period. And they offered the Arabs, as a response to their murderous violence against both the Jews and the British, part of the Jews’ own entitlement to the land.

Britain’s wholesale disregard of international law, its craven appeasement of the Arabs’ violence and its further punishment of their Jewish victims cemented permanent Arab aggression and rejectionism towards Israel. Yesterday at the UN, making common cause with ideologues, appeasers and tyrants, perfidious Albion continued its betrayal of the Jewish people.

The scene is now set for the US to tackle the reservoir of evil that the UN has become. Not before time. This is one swamp that most urgently needs to be drained.

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Hands off Jerusalem's neighbourhoods!

For the full article go to: JPOST EDITORIAL \ 11/05/2016 http://tinyurl.com/qxrrson

The expansion of Jerusalem’s neighborhoods to accommodate the city’s growing population is a matter for the municipality.

Last week’s latest US State Department condemnation of Jerusalem’s decision to approve new housing for residents of its Gilo neighborhood should not be shrugged off as just another routine example of its ongoing obtuseness regarding Israel’s sovereign capital. Its timing so close to the American election and the uncertainty of President Barack Obama’s intentions during the interim before his successor’s inauguration raises the question whether this does not in fact herald the approach of yet another unnecessary confrontation between our countries.

Amid a growing international campaign by the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions Movement to delegitimize Israel, the State Department’s continuing refusal to acknowledge simple facts of history must be taken in the same context of denying Israel’s legitimacy.

Last Wednesday the Jerusalem Municipality approved the addition of 181 housing units for the capital’s southwestern neighborhood of Gilo, home to some 40,000 mostly Jewish residents. In July, the US, EU and UN criticized Israel for plans to build there as counterproductive to – non-existent – peace negotiations for a future Palestinian state with a capital in east Jerusalem.

The municipality’s approval was swiftly condemned by State Department spokesman John Kirby, who has previously said such a decision “raises serious questions about Israel’s ultimate commitment to a peaceful, negotiated settlement with the Palestinians.” As he added Wednesday, “We strongly oppose settlement activity.”

Housing construction in a long-established Jerusalem neighborhood – Gilo was founded in 1973 – cannot by definition be located in a “settlement.” But the meaning of words doesn’t matter to the European Union as well, which said the decision to build in “the settlement of Gilo, built on occupied Palestinian land in east Jerusalem, undermines the viability of a two-state solution.”

Almost half a century since Israel reunited its bitterly divided capital city – divided, like Berlin once was, by war – the media ignorantly parrot the Palestinian narrative that claims east Jerusalem as its future capital, as if the section of the city that the invading Arab Legion captured and which Jordan occupied for 19 years had been an historic entity. Consistent with this warped view, the foreign media insistently refer to Jews living in the heart of their historic capital as “settlers.”

They capitalize the term “East Jerusalem” as if it were a historical fact, like the erstwhile East Berlin. In simple truth, it is an ideology-driven, but geographically impossible term, especially with regard to Gilo. The capital’s southernmost neighborhood is on the other side of town from the area misnomered as “East” Jerusalem. Purchased by Dov Joseph for the Jewish National Fund during the 1930s, Gilo was once indeed occupied territory: it was Jordanian-occupied Israeli territory from 1949 to 1967, after which its Israeli sovereignty was restored.”

One country stands out in its defense of truth from those who seek to delegitimize Israel: Australia. Its attorney- general told the Senate last week that Australia will no longer refer to east Jerusalem as “occupied” territory. “The description of east Jerusalem as “Occupied East Jerusalem” is a term freighted with pejorative implications, which is neither appropriate nor useful,” George Brandis said.

For three millennia, Jerusalem has been the capital of only three native Jewish states – Judah, Judea and Israel.

Jews have constituted the majority of Jerusalem’s residents since the pre-Zionist 19th century.

In contrast, Palestinian Arabs have not ruled Jerusalem for a single day. Arab dynasties have ruled it temporarily, between 638 and 1099, under the Ottoman Empire, and under the Jordanian occupation between 1949 and 1967.

Political influence over language is also reflected in the use of the term “West Bank.” In the best of rainy seasons, the Jordan River is only a few meters wide. The claim that its western bank extends for some 65 kilometers, encompassing Judea and Samaria, demonstrates how politicized terminology drives the ongoing conflict. In fact, the Jordanian government marketed the term in the 1950s in an attempt to legitimize its occupation of the region.

Before Israel’s War of Independence, the British Mandatory authorities referred to the region as Judea and Samaria.

The expansion of Jerusalem’s neighborhoods to accommodate the city’s growing population is a matter for the municipality. It is not the concern of third parties such as the US State Department, which would be doing all of us a favor by simply studying the facts.

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PASSOVER GREETINGS BY PUTIN AND OBAMA COMPARED

by Tom Gross - 24^th April 2016

For the full article go to: http://tinyurl.com/jhbgtt4

Jews in Israel and around the world have been celebrating Passover these past two days.

It is, of course, remarkable given the course of anti-Semitism, “the longest hatred” as it is often called, that the presidents of the U.S. and Russia both now give official public Passover greetings.

However, what is being noted by Jews in Israel and elsewhere is that Putin’s message is specifically Jewish, whereas Obama chooses to use Passover to give a more universal message. There is a perception (whether fair or not) that Putin (whatever else his flaws) has in some ways been more friendly and understanding of Jewish concerns than Obama has. As was noted in this dispatch last year, Putin has gone out of his way to make sure Russia enjoys good relations with Israel:

“Putin has determinedly kept the channels to Israel open, making a point to personally visit Israel and in June 2012, Israel was the first country he visited after his election. He frequently speaks warmly about the Jewish state, expressing pride that it contains the largest diaspora of former Russian citizens. At the Western Wall, accompanied by Russian Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar, he donned a kippah, which would undoubtedly have made his Bolshevik predecessors turn in their graves. He also seemed quite indifferent to the rage this created among his Arab allies.”

Only last Thursday (April 21), Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was again in Moscow holding consultations with Putin (mainly concerning Syria, Iran and Hizbullah), Israeli President Reuven Rivlin was also in Moscow only a few weeks ago, and Israeli leaders seem to be invited to Moscow more than to Washington these days. (Putin again invited Netanyahu to visit Moscow in June to mark 25 years since the reestablishment of diplomatic relations.)

While Obama has kept his distance from Israel, (he has made only one brief visit there during his two terms in office, he has been, for example, to Saudi Arabia four times and visited countries such as Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, and Myanmar more than once), Israel has been forging ever closer relations with countries in Asia (including some Arab ones), Africa and elsewhere.

Just this month, leaders from China and Singapore, among others, have visited Jerusalem. (U.S. Senators and other U.S. officials continue to visit Jerusalem regularly, just not the president.) I also attach below remarks made by Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on his visit to Israel last Tuesday April 19 (which also include Passover greetings). Singapore has long enjoyed close relations to Israel, especially in the fields of business, water management, biotechnology, and cyber security.

Trade between the two nations reached $1.35 billion in 2015, which was greater than trade between Israel and most European countries. (Several senior Singapore government security officials have for many years subscribed to this Middle East email list.)

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Video of the week: Israeli Innovations in Life Sciences; http://tinyurl.com/grsxg42

DERSHOWITZ DEMANDS ANSWERS FROM OBAMA.

Article by Prof. Alan Dershowitz 13-8-2015.

For full article go to: http://tinyurl.com/pxwkgso

President Obama, in his desperation to save his Iran deal, has taken to attacking its opponents in personal ways. He has accused critics of his deal of being the same Republican warmongers who drove us into the ground war against Iraq and has warned that they would offer “overheated” and often dishonest arguments. He has complained about the influence of lobbyists and money on the process of deciding this important issue, as if lobbying and money were not involved in other important matters before Congress.

These types of ad hominem arguments are becoming less and less convincing as more Democratic members of Congress, more liberal supporters of the President, more nuclear experts and more foreign policy gurus are expressing deep concern about, and sometimes strong opposition to, the deal that is currently before Congress.

QUESTIONS THAT DEMAND CREDIBLE ANSWERS

The President would be well advised to stop attacking his critics and to start answering their hard questions with specific and credible answers. Questions that need answering include the following:

1. Even after the expiration of the nuclear agreement, will American policy remain that Iran will never under any circumstances be allowed to develop nuclear weapons? Or is it now our policy that Iran will be free to do whatever it wants to do once the deal expires?

2. After the major constraints contained in the deal end, or were the deal to collapse at any point, how long would it take Iran to produce a deliverable nuclear bomb?

3. Would the United States allow Iran to begin production of a nuclear arsenal when the major constraints of the deal end?

4. Does the deal reflect a reversal in policy from President Obama’s pre-reelection promise that “My policy is not containment; my policy is to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon”?

5. If not, will President Obama now announce that it is still the policy of the United States that Iran will not be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon?

6. How exactly will the inspections regime work? Precisely how much time will the Iranians have between a request for inspection and the inspection itself? What precisely will they be permitted to do during this hiatus? And why do they need so much time if they don’t plan to cheat?

7. What will President Obama do if Iran is caught cheating on this deal during his administration?

8. Precisely when will which sanctions be lifted under the agreement? Do provisions that prevent the P5+1 from imposing new sanctions apply even if Iran is found to be in violation of its commitments under the agreement? When exactly will sanctions prohibiting the sale of weapons, and particularly missile technology, be lifted?

If and when these and other important questions about the deal are answered — directly, candidly, and unambiguously — Congress will be in a better position to answer the fundamental questions now before it: would rejecting this deeply flawed deal produce more dangerous results than not rejecting it? If so, what can we now do to assure that Iran will not acquire a nuclear arsenal? The answers to those questions may profoundly affect the future of the world.

So the President should spend more time on substance and less on personal attacks.

Video of the week: “OBAMA MOST RADICAL PRESIDENT EVER” http://tinyurl.com/px744av

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ISRAEL ALONE

  

Bret Stephens in this WSJ article, April 20, 2015,  is suggesting that Israel be more independent! 

Recent conversations with senior Israeli officials are shot through with a sense of incredulity. They can’t understand what’s become of U.S. foreign policy.

They don’t know how to square Barack Obama’s promises with his policies. They fail to grasp how a president who pledged to work toward the abolition of nuclear weapons is pushing an accord with Tehran that guarantees their proliferation. They are astonished by the nonchalance with which the administration acquiesces in Iran’s regional power plays, or in al Qaeda’s gains in Yemen, or in the Assad regime’s continued use of chemical weapons, or in the battlefield successes of ISIS, or in Russia’s decision to sell advanced missiles to Tehran. They wonder why the president has so much solicitude for Ali Khamenei’s political needs, and so little for Benjamin Netanyahu’s.

In a word, the Israelis haven’t yet figured out that what America is isn’t what America was. They need to start thinking about what comes next.

The most tempting approach is to wait Mr. Obama out and hope for better days with his successor. Israel and the U.S. have gone through bad patches before—under Ford in the 1970s, Reagan in the early ’80s, Bush in the early ’90s, Clinton in the late ’90s. The partnership always survived the officeholders.

So why should it be different this time? Seventy percent of Americans see Israel in a favorable light, according to a February Gallup poll. The presidential candidates from both parties all profess unswerving friendship with the Jewish state, and the Republican candidates actually believe it. Mr. Obama’s foreign policy is broadly unpopular and likely to become more so as the fiascoes continue to roll in.

Yet it’s different this time. For two reasons, mainly.

First, the administration’s Mideast abdications are creating a set of irreversible realities for which there are no ready U.S. answers. Maybe there were things an American president could have done to help rescue Libya in 2011, Syria in 2013, and Yemen last year. That was before it was too late. But what exactly can any president do about the chaos unfolding now?

Shakespeare wrote that there was a tide in the affairs of men “which taken at the flood, leads men on to fortune.” Barack Obama always missed the flood.

Now the president is marching us past the point of no return on a nuclear Iran and thence a nuclear Middle East. When that happens, how many Americans will be eager to have their president intervene in somebody else’s nuclear duel? Americans may love Israel, but partly that’s because not a single U.S. soldier has ever died fighting on its behalf.

In other words, Mr. Obama is bequeathing not just a more dangerous Middle East but also one the next president will want to touch only with a barge pole. That leaves Israel alone to deal as best as it can with a broadening array of threats: thousands more missiles for Hezbollah, paid for by sanctions relief for Tehran; ISIS on the Golan Heights; an Iran safe, thanks to Russian missiles, from any conceivable Israeli strike.

The second reason follows from the first. Previous quarrels between Washington and Jerusalem were mainly about differing Mideast perceptions. Now the main issue is how the U.S. perceives itself.

Beginning with Franklin Roosevelt, every U.S. president took the view that strength abroad and strength at home were mutually reinforcing; that global security made us more prosperous, and that prosperity made us more secure.

Then along came Mr. Obama with his mantra of “nation building at home” and his notion that an activist foreign policy is a threat to the social democracy he seeks to build. Under his administration, domestic and foreign policy have been treated as a zero-sum game: If you want more of the former, do less of the latter. The result is a world of disorder, and an Israel that, for the first time in its history, must seek its security with an America that, say what it will, has nobody’s back but its own.

How does it do this? By recalling what it was able to do for the first 19 years of its existence, another period when the U.S. was an ambivalent and often suspicious friend and Israel was more upstart state than start-up nation.

That was an Israel that was prepared to take strategic gambles because it knew it couldn’t afford to wait on events. It did not consider “international legitimacy” to be a prerequisite for action because it also knew how little such legitimacy was worth. It understood the value of territory and terrain, not least because it had so little of it. It built its deterrent power by constantly taking the military initiative, not constructing defensive wonder-weapons such as Iron Dome. It didn’t mind acting as a foreign policy freelancer, and sometimes even a rogue, as circumstances demanded. “Plucky little Israel” earned the world’s respect and didn’t care, much less beg, for its moral approval.

Perhaps the next American president will rescue Israel from having to learn again what it once knew. Israelis would be wise not to count on it.

US BREACHES AGREEMENT WITH ISRAEL

In shocking breach, U.S. declassifies document revealing some of Israel's nuclear capabilities.

by Tom Gross, 26-3- 2015 

For the full article go to: http://tinyurl.com/py9uaxb

On February 12, the Pentagon quietly declassified a top-secret 386-page Department of Defense document from 1987 detailing Israel's nuclear program – the first time Israel’s alleged nuclear program has ever been officially and publically referenced by the U.S. authorities.

In the declassified document, the Pentagon reveals supposed details about Israel’s deterrence capabilities, but it kept sections on France, Germany, and Italy classified. Those sections are blacked out in the document.

The two main exceptions in the international media that wrote about the declassification at the time were the state-funded Iranian regime station Press TV and the state-funded Russian station RT. 

Both these media were rumored to have been tipped off about this obscure report at the time by persons in Washington. (Both the RT and PressTV stories falsely claim that the U.S. gave Israel help in building a hydrogen bomb. This is incorrect.)

Israel has never admitted to having nuclear weapons. To do so might spark a regional nuclear arms race, and eventual nuclear confrontation.

The declassification is a serious breach of decades’ old understandings concerning this issue between Israel and its north American and certain European allies.

The Pentagon’s February declassification coincided with intense pressure on the Netanyahu government by the Obama administration, trying to force the Israeli prime minister to cancel a planned speech to Congress questioning the wisdom of a highly risky nuclear deal with the Iranian regime.

However, in the past 24 hours several media in the U.S. and elsewhere have now chosen to report on the February declassification by the Pentagon. This coincides with stepped up efforts this week by the Obama administration to weaken Israel’s deterrent capabilities, including leaking to the Wall Street Journal incorrect allegations that Israel directly spies on the U.S. 

An informed person connected to the government in Jerusalem, tells me: 

“Over the years there have been backhanded references and comments made by individuals with some familiarity with this issue. But there has never before been any official description of the quality and capacity of installations. This kind of declassified document constitutes a whole different level of acknowledgement. It is part of a pattern of carefully controlled leaking of information which is very hard to attribute to a specific government agency or individual. Nevertheless it is clear what is happening.

“The failure to maintain the degree of mature and cooperative discretion that officials from several governments have exercised up to now, marks a serious change in the code of conduct. It is not wise to draw attention to this issue because it would tend to destabilize the international order and encourage others to pursue nuclear capabilities.”

The Pentagon declassification is not the first time the Obama administration has seemingly tried to curtail or control Israeli efforts to stop the Iranian nuclear program.

In May 2011, the State Department revealed that the Israeli business tycoon brothers Sami and Yuli Ofer, were sending their cargo ships to Iran, as reported, for example, here in the Financial Times. 

The Sunday Times of London, again on the basis of tip-offs, reported on June 5, 2011 that cargo ships owned by a subsidiary of the Ofer Brothers Group were being used to shuttle Israeli agents and reconnaissance equipment into Iran.

According to the report, at least eight ships belonging to companies owned by the Ofer group docked in Iranian ports to load and offload cargo in the years prior to 2011, as Israel made substantive efforts (aided by some European countries) to slow down and hamper Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Sami Ofer died on June 2, 2011, three days before that report was published.

The full story of the Obama administration’s effort to undermine, and effectively attempt to take control of, Israel’s deterrent capabilities in various spheres is yet to be written. There have been several other aspects to these efforts.

Many might say that the Israeli government has had little choice but to turn for assistance to Congress and to persons in the U.S. defense and intelligence communities, who share Jerusalem’s intense concerns about the nature of the anticipated deal with the Iranian regime Obama seems determined to sign.

WHO WANTS A TWO-STATE SOLUTION, ANYWAY?

By Amir Taheri March 20, 2015

For the full article go to: http://tinyurl.com/pyk7n37

For months, the Obama administration conducted a campaign of denigration against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, depicting him as “an obstacle to peace” in the Middle East.

The campaign found greater intensity after Netanyahu, seeking a new term in office, committed himself not to allow the creation of a Palestinian state, before walking his comments back after the election.

Although the idea of a two-state solution did not originate with him, President Obama’s advisers regarded the results of the Israeli election as a setback for him.

And because they think that whatever Obama says should never be challenged, they fomented a mood of doom and gloom about the Middle East, a region which has enough of both for reasons beyond the perennial Israel-Palestine issue.

However, as an Arab proverb has it: “There is always something good in whatever happens.”

To start with, as some of us predicted at the outset, the two-state formula, which has been the flavor of the day since 2009, has not worked.

We are as far from any peace between Israel and its Palestinian neighbors as ever.

Even the so-called “peace process” has been exposed as a sham. Obama’s peace envoy, the honorable George Mitchell, pulled out as fast as he could. And last week it was the turn of Tony Blair, the Peace Quartet envoy, to throw in the towel.

There is no evidence that a majority of Israelis want a two-state formula.

In fact, if we add up votes won by all parties implicitly or explicitly opposed to the two-state formula, we will have a whopping 75 per cent of Israelis.

Thus what Netanyahu mastered enough courage to say aloud is what most Israelis think in silence.

The picture is hardly different on the Palestinian side. To start with, the Palestinians are divided in at least three camps.

In one camp we have Fatah and its allies who have never formally committed to a two-state formula but have dropped hints that they might accept such a solution as a first step toward liberating the rest of historic Palestine, that is to say, what is now Israel, later.

The second camp is dominated by Hamas, which is committed to the destruction of Israel in no uncertain terms.

However, Hamas does not want a Palestinian state either. As the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas is a pan-Islamist group dedicated to fighting for the creation of a global caliphate.

In the third camp, there are more radical Palestinian groups, including the Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine, now the favored protégé of the Islamic Republic in Tehran.

The IJLP leadership has repeatedly declared its support for a one-state formula sponsored by Iranian “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei. Under Khamenei’s formula, Jews who “came to Palestine from other places” will return to their original homelands. The remaining Jews will join the Palestinians in today’s Israel as well as Gaza and the West Bank to set up one state.

Those familiar with Palestinian public mood in the West Bank and Gaza know that, although a majority resent Israeli domination and the hardships incidental to occupation, there is great concern about the possibility, not to say certainty, that any Palestinian state manufactured through diplomatic games may become as corrupt and despotic as almost all Arab states are today.

Gaza, which is already a Palestinian state in all but name, is a bad poster for a future state created by the terrible trio depicted above.

Proportionally, Gaza has more political prisoners than any Arab country. Hamas imposes a regime of censorship and intimidation little better than those of Saddam Hussein in Iraq or Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

Palestinian friends tell me they were happy Netanyahu decided to “puncture” the two-state illusion, something that neither Israelis nor Palestinians really want.

So, what is to be done?

First, let’s take stock of the status quo, which, as is often the case, has a certain justification compared to a range of worse options.

Let us also accept that living with a problem, by managing it better, may be wiser than rushing into a mirage of a solution that could produce even bigger problems.

Having created an opportunity for debate, Netanyahu must now work to put it to good use by asking Israelis to think and talk about how they see the future of relations with Palestinians and what they are prepared to give in exchange for what they hope to receive.

For their part, Palestinians, too, should for the first time engage in a genuine debate over their vision of future relations with Israel — coexistence, and if so, in what form.

THE APPALLING TALK OF BOYCOTTING NETANYAHU

Latest video of the week:  Jerusalem Market at Night: http://tinyurl.com/my6aynn

========================== 

Congress has every right, and even an obligation, to hear the Israeli leader speak about the Iranian threat.

By ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ  Feb. 23, 2015

For the full article go to: http://tinyurl.com/luj58ob

As a liberal Democrat who twice campaigned for President Barack Obama , I am appalled that some Democratic members of Congress are planning to boycott the speech of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on March 3 to a joint session of Congress. At bottom, this controversy is not mainly about protocol and politics—it is about the constitutional system of checks and balances and the separation of powers.

Under the Constitution, the executive and legislative branches share responsibility for making and implementing important foreign-policy decisions. Congress has a critical role to play in scrutinizing the decisions of the president when these decisions involve national security, relationships with allies and the threat of nuclear proliferation.

Congress has every right to invite, even over the president’s strong objection, any world leader or international expert who can assist its members in formulating appropriate responses to the current deal being considered with Iran regarding its nuclear-weapons program. Indeed, it is the responsibility of every member of Congress to listen to Prime Minister Netanyahu, who probably knows more about this issue than any world leader, because it threatens the very existence of the nation state of the Jewish people.

Congress has the right to disagree with the prime minister, but the idea that some members of Congress will not give him the courtesy of listening violates protocol and basic decency to a far greater extent than anything Mr. Netanyahu is accused of doing for having accepted an invitation from Congress.

Recall that President Obama sent British Prime Minister David Cameron  to lobby Congress with phone calls last month against conditionally imposing new sanctions on Iran if the deal were to fail. What the president objects to is not that Mr. Netanyahu will speak to Congress, but the content of what he intends to say. This constitutes a direct intrusion on the power of Congress and on the constitutional separation of powers.

Not only should all members of Congress attend Mr. Netanyahu’s speech, but President Obama—as a constitutional scholar—should urge members of Congress to do their constitutional duty of listening to opposing views in order to check and balance the policies of the administration.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with Speaker John Boehner ’s decision to invite Mr. Netanyahu or Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to accept, no legal scholar can dispute that Congress has the power to act independently of the president in matters of foreign policy. Whether any deal with Iran would technically constitute a treaty requiring Senate confirmation, it is certainly treaty-like in its impact. Moreover, the president can’t implement the deal without some action or inaction by Congress.

Congress also has a role in implementing the president’s promise—made on behalf of our nation as a whole—that Iran will never be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. That promise seems to be in the process of being broken, as reports in the media and Congress circulate that the deal on the table contains a sunset provision that would allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons after a certain number of years.

Once it became clear that Iran will eventually be permitted to become a nuclear-weapon power, it has already become such a power for practical purposes. The Saudis and the Arab emirates will not wait until Iran turns the last screw on its nuclear bomb. As soon as this deal is struck, with its sunset provision, these countries would begin to develop their own nuclear-weapon programs, as would other countries in the region. If Congress thinks this is a bad deal, it has the responsibility to act.

Another reason members of Congress should not boycott Mr. Netanyahu’s speech is that support for Israel has always been a bipartisan issue. The decision by some members to boycott Israel’s prime minister endangers this bipartisan support. This will not only hurt Israel but will also endanger support for Democrats among pro-Israel voters. I certainly would never vote for or support a member of Congress who walked out on Israel’s prime minister.

One should walk out on tyrants, bigots and radical extremists, as the United States did when Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad   denied the Holocaust and called for Israel’s destruction at the United Nations. To use such an extreme tactic against our closest ally, and the Middle East’s only vibrant democracy, is not only to insult Israel’s prime minister but to put Israel in a category in which it does not belong.

So let members of Congress who disagree with the prime minister’s decision to accept Speaker Boehner’s invitation express that disagreement privately and even publicly, but let them not walk out on a speech from which they may learn a great deal and which may help them prevent the president from making a disastrous foreign-policy mistake. Inviting a prime minister of an ally to educate Congress about a pressing foreign-policy decision is in the highest tradition of our democratic system of separation of powers and checks and balances.