The Middle East - Again.....

[swordfish]

SF thinks Israel is serious this time.

SF was impressed how the last administration handled the Middle East.  Recognizing that the Palestinian side wasn't really interested in brokering a compromise that could bring peace to the reason, the Trump administration met with just about every other player in the region and brought them to the table and put together the Abraham Accords in an effort to bring peace to the region.

I also find it interesting that the AP didn't realize they were sharing a building with Hamas.....Or so they say....

https://nypost.com/2021/05/17/ap-slammed-for-claiming-it-was-unaware-of-hamas-presence/

The Associated Press has been blasted for claiming it had no clue Hamas militants maintained a presence at the news agency’s Gaza headquarters that was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike.

Israel said it shared “smoking gun” evidence with Biden administration officials that Hamas was operating out of the Al-Jalaa Tower, which housed the AP, Al Jazeera and other news outlets, according to a report Sunday.

The strike destroyed the 12-story building an hour after the Israeli military ordered it evacuated, saying the high-rise was targeted because it was being used by Hamas military intelligence, Fox News reported.

The AP condemned Israel for the attack and claimed to have “no indication” that the terror group operated from the building.

“We have had no indication Hamas was in the building or active in the building,” AP president and CEO Gary Pruitt said in a statement. “This is something we actively check to the best of our ability. We would never knowingly put our journalists at risk.”

He added that he was “shocked and horrified that the Israeli military would target and destroy the building housing AP’s bureau and other news organizations in Gaza.”

However, a 2014 article in The Atlantic written by a journalist in the region described a questionable history between the news agency and Hamas.

“When Hamas’s leaders surveyed their assets before this summer’s round of fighting, they knew that among those assets was the international press,” Matti Friedman wrote.

“The AP staff in Gaza City would witness a rocket launch right beside their office, endangering reporters and other civilians nearby — and the AP wouldn’t report it,” he wrote.

Friedman claimed the Hamas militants would regularly “burst into the AP’s Gaza bureau and threaten the staff — and the AP wouldn’t report it.”

[Muda69]

Interesting that all this strife and violence in the middle east flairs up when Biden becomes POTUS.  The military-industrial complex must completely own the dems.

 

[swordfish]

The Palestinians knew they didn't have a friend in the former President.  

[swordfish]

[DanteEstonia]

Just nuke 'em. 

[swordfish]

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/violence-in-israel-is-the-price-of-bidens-weakness/?fbclid=IwAR025KrGr5fg8X1Jfzo6oPZYefraSfO6OCZDps2Zjkd86wBNJtpk3Pqt2r4

The Trump-Pence administration opened the door to a future of peace in the Middle East founded on our strong and unwavering commitment to the state of Israel. But now Israel is enduring the worst outbreak of violence in at least seven years — a direct result of the weakness shown by the Biden administration from its first day in office.

Many Americans witnessing the recent bloodshed in Israel are perplexed by how quickly violence erupted after years of calm. The answer is that President Biden and congressional Democrats have abandoned unambiguous support for our ally Israel, emboldened our enemies, and turned their back on the policy that yielded historic peace deals in the Middle East.

Under the Trump-Pence administration, we made it crystal clear to the world that America stands with Israel. We withdrew from the dangerous Iran nuclear deal brokered by the Obama-Biden administration, which put the world’s leading state sponsor of terror on the path to nuclear weapons while sending pallets of cash to the mullahs in Iran. We acknowledged Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights and the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. And President Trump kept the promise made by countless Republican and Democrat politicians by actually following through in moving the American embassy to Jerusalem, the capital of the state of Israel.

Every step of the way, Democrats and self-proclaimed foreign-policy “experts” derided our administration’s approach and issued dire warnings that blood would soon flow in the streets of Israeli cities. As usual, they were wrong.

In fact, last year, our administration brokered the Abraham Accords, a series of historic peace agreements between Israel and Arab-Muslim countries — the most significant breakthrough for peace in decades.

These groundbreaking peace accords happened not in spite of America’s support for Israel, but because of it. Other nations knew where America stood with absolute certainty. They knew America would respond forcefully if our citizens or allies were threatened. As a result, they responded rationally by pursuing peace and harmony.

But now, President Biden has sent the world a profoundly different message. Instead of seeking peace through strength, he has invited violence through weakness.

President Biden has emboldened anti-Semitic terrorist groups such as Hamas by shunning Israeli leaders and restoring more than $200 million in aid to the Palestinians that had been canceled by the Trump-Pence administration. He unilaterally took the Iranian-backed Houthis off the list of designated terrorist organizations. And worst of all, he has announced his intention to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal, destabilizing the entire region.

When asked, Biden’s press secretary couldn’t even say whether Israel remains an “important ally” of the United States.

Every tepid statement uttered by the Biden-Harris administration is built on a false equivalency between Israel and Hamas. One is a sovereign nation with a legitimate government, and a trusted ally. The other is an internationally recognized terrorist organization that has fired more than 3,000 rockets at Jewish families and businesses in the past week. There is no moral equivalency between Israel and the terrorist group Hamas. President Biden and every American leader should uphold Israel’s right to self-defense and condemn the terrorists of Hamas — as well as their supporters and apologists — in the strongest possible terms.

Apparently, Biden learned nothing from the tragic foreign-policy blunders made during his time as vice president. President Obama’s thin “red line” in Syria, his decision to “lead from behind” in Libya, and his slipshod withdrawal from Iraq each created power vacuums that were quickly filled by America’s enemies.

Now Biden is repeating those grave errors by creating a power vacuum of his own. He has replaced strength with weakness, moral clarity with confusion, and loyalty with betrayal. Biden’s void, too, is being filled by America’s enemies — and Israelis are paying the price in blood.

 

Americans should pray for the peace of Jerusalem and stand without apology for our most cherished ally, Israel, until the violence is quelled and Israel’s security is restored.

 

Well stated Op-Ed from the former Vice President.

[swordfish]

https://nypost.com/2021/05/18/no-the-gaza-flare-up-didnt-kill-trumps-wildly-successful-abraham-accords/

America’s foreign-policy establishment and peace-process industry are having a field day: The latest round of fighting between Israel and the terror group Hamas, they insist, has sounded the death knell for the Abraham Accords, the Trump-brokered peace treaties between the Jewish state and several Muslim nations.

Leading the Schadenfreude Brigade was White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, who on Tuesday declared from her podium: “We don’t think [the accords] did anything constructive, really, to bring an end to the longstanding conflict in the Middle East.” The peace-processors failed for decades to make Mideast progress, and the Gaza flare-up gives them and their DC mouthpieces (like Psaki) a cheap chance to crow, “I told you so.”

Reality disagrees, however.

The monumental agreements signed last year will continue to flourish, because their foundations remain solid — whereas doing things the peace-processors’ way will return America to the failures of the past.

The peace-process industry (or syndicate) represents the elite’s thinking on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the wider Middle East. It is composed of former diplomats, left-leaning think tanks, nearly all of corporate media and academia and the wealthy donor class that underwrites their work.

The maverick Trump administration’s Mideast breakthroughs in the final months of 2020 gravely threatened the interests of this group. After all, the Abraham Accords challenged several key assumptions of the peace-processors: above all, the notion that Arab reconciliation with Israel could only be achieved after resolving the Palestinian question.

This belief springs from the false notion that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the central drama of the region, linking it to all other problems, which will finally find their panacea only in a “two-state” solution.

Equally destructive is the peace-processors’ belief that a solution can be found by leveling the playing field between America’s regional allies and bad actors like the Palestinians. Put simply, they believe that for negotiations to succeed, Israel must be weakened, while Palestinian leaders must be empowered. There is no evidence for why this should be the case, but that hasn’t stopped peace-processors from summiting the commanding heights of American foreign policy for decades.

It’s easy to see how President Donald Trump and his advisers wounded the egos of these processors with the Abraham Accords. The accords started from diametrically opposed assumptions: that the Palestinian drama isn’t central to the region and that diplomacy requires bolstering, rather than weakening, allies. And they succeeded brilliantly.

Middle East peace deals were Trump’s mission impossible made possible: Goodwin

The accords won’t soon die, because all of the structural reasons that made them possible remain intact. For starters, the Iranian threat that impelled Arab leaders to embrace their former archenemy, Israel, is still there.

Plus, the economic benefits of the rapprochement are too tangible to ignore, including opportunities in tourism, civil aviation, science, technology and innovation, energy, water, environment and agriculture, food security and more.

Then, too, the Arab elite increasingly views Jews as indigenous to the region. Both the UAE and Bahrain correctly pride themselves as nations of tolerance, and they take pride in extending that tolerance to the region’s Jews. Communications technology is also fostering more dialogue and relationships beyond the control of diplomats or the state.

While Arab leaders sympathize with the Palestinian people, the accords showed that Mideast states have wearied of a corrupt and intransigent Palestinian leadership. For four years leading up to the accords, the unmistakable message to Palestinians and their leaders was that the proverbial train was leaving the station, and it was in their interest to get on board, rather than cling to the slogans of the past; the Palestinians didn’t get the message.

These fundamental dynamics remain beyond the grasp of the dangerously deluded peace-process industry, which remains bent on pulling the region backward, all to fit its disproved theories. There is plenty of more work to be done to expand the peace and normalization framework. This work will continue, regardless of predictable regional forces that periodically lash out and in spite of those who gleefully mistake this beginning for the end.

I hope this continues to be the case.

[Muda69]

Does America Need To Be Involved in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?

https://reason.com/2021/05/19/does-america-need-to-be-involved-in-the-israeli-palestinian-conflict/

Quote

An American bomb was used to destroy an American news bureau in the Middle East last week.

On Friday, Israeli forces blew up a building in Gaza which housed several foreign news bureaus, after warning the journalists inside to evacuate.

Israel has claimed, without providing evidence, that the Palestinian militant group Hamas was operating out of the building. The Associated Press, the American news agency whose office was destroyed in the attack, denies the claim and has demanded an independent investigation.

The bomb used to destroy the Associated Press bureau appeared to be an American-made Joint Direct Attack Munition, according to the Qatari news outlet Al Jazeera, whose office was also in the building.

In fact, U.S. military aid pays for about one-fifth of Israel's military budget, and ensures that Israeli forces are the best-equipped in the region. All of that material support is on top of U.S. diplomatic involvement, which has largely favored Israel.

Israel has been "the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II," according to the Congressional Research Service, the nonpartisan think tank housed in Congress. The Middle Eastern republic has received $104.5 billion in military aid in $34 billion in economic aid since its independence in 1947.

The Biden administration is requesting $3.8 billion in aid to Israel this fiscal year, making up about 59 percent of all U.S. foreign military aid. But numbers don't tell the whole story: U.S. law also requires the United States to help maintain Israel's "qualitative military edge"—its technological advantage over its neighbors.

Because of that legal requirement, Israel is granted earlier access to and better versions of American weapons technology than other Middle Eastern countries. The United States sometimes even "offsets" its weapons sales to Arab countries by providing Israel even more advanced weapons at the same time. And the U.S. military stores part of its global emergency stockpile of munitions in Israel, allowing the Israeli military to dip into it from time to time.

All of this largess dates back to a time when Israel was a small, weak state surrounded by hostile neighbors.

But times have changed. Israel is now a wealthy, technologically advanced nation armed with nuclear weapons. The Jewish state has peace treaties with six Arab nations. Several of those nations even joined Israel in an alliance called the Abraham Accords last year after receiving generous offers of U.S. assistance and arms sales.

Rather than relying on the American defense industry, Israel now produces its own high-tech weapons, which much of the world is clamoring to buy.

And the biggest issue Israel faces no longer comes from other states, but from the Palestinian territories, which Israeli forces captured in 1967 and have continued to occupy ever since.

The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians continues despite, or perhaps partially because of, heavy U.S. involvement. The United States has ostensibly been trying to broker a deal for Palestinian independence for years, while sometimes single-handedly blocking dozens of U.N. Security Council resolutions critical of Israeli actions.

The United States also provides around $200 million per year in economic assistance to the Palestinians, and $40 million dollars per year training and equipping the Palestinian Authority security forces, which patrol part of the territories and could become the police force of an independent Palestinian state. Some Israeli officials consider Palestinian security cooperation vital to keeping the peace, but the Palestinian Authority is widely seen as corrupt and has not held an election since 2006.

American critics on the right also criticize the Palestinian Authority for its payments to the families of Palestinian prisoners, which critics say incentivize terrorism. (Congress has cut aid to the Palestinians over this issue.) Critics on the left, meanwhile, note that U.S. aid to the Palestinians subsidizes Israel's occupation by paying for services the Israeli authorities should be providing themselves.

In 2007, an ill-fated covert operation by the Bush administration provoked a civil war in Gaza. Islamists led by Hamas then took over the Palestinian enclave, provoking an Israeli blockade and nearly 14 years of sporadic warfare that most recently flared up this month.

The latest round of fighting began when several issues in Jerusalem—mob violence by Israeli nationalists, the attempted removal of Palestinian families from their homes, clashes between Palestinians and the police over holy sites—exploded into civil unrest all at once. It escalated after Hamas fired rockets at Israeli cities.

Israeli officials have rejected ceasefire offers, vowing to continue operations "until we achieve complete calm." Over a dozen Israelis and over 200 Palestinians have been killed in the violence so far.

The Biden administration has stated its "unwavering support" for Israeli operations and blocked a U.N. Security Council statement calling for a ceasefire, although the White House also told Israeli leadership that it expects "a significant de-escalation today on the path to a ceasefire" on Wednesday.

Some members of Congress are now attempting to pull the United States out of the conflict or, at the very least, impose some limits on U.S. involvement.

Rep. Betty McCollum (D–Minn.) is now sponsoring a bill to ban Israel from using U.S. taxpayer money to detain Palestinian children, demolish Palestinian homes, or annex Palestinian land.

"A budget is a reflection of our values. I'm committed to ensuring that our government does not fund state violence in any form, anywhere," Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D–Mass.) said in a floor speech last week supporting McCollum's bill. "American government dollars always come with conditions, no matter the context. The question at hand is: should our taxpayer dollars create conditions for justice, healing, and repair, or should those dollars create conditions for oppression and apartheid?"

But proponents of U.S. restraint face an uphill battle. The U.S. foreign policy establishment has long been sympathetic towards Israel, and two thirds of Congress signed a letter last month calling for "robust funding for Israel's security without added conditions."

"As America's closest Mideast ally, Israel regularly provides the United States with unique intelligence information and advanced defensive weapons systems," the letter states. "Reducing funding or adding conditions on security assistance would be detrimental to Israel's ability to defend itself against all threats."

In fact, the Biden administration had approved a $735 million weapons sale to Israel shortly before the latest round of fighting in Gaza broke out.

The sale included Joint Direct Attack Munitions—the same kind of bomb that smashed into the Associated Press office on Friday.

All U.S. support of any kind to Israel needs to stop,  they are big boys now and take care of themselves.  Of course virtually any criticism of Israel and it's policies tends to get the critic labeled as anti-Semitic, which is an ignorant accusation.  Israel is not Judaism or ethnic Jews,  after all one does not have to be "Jewish" to be a citizen of Israel, right?

   

[swordfish]

You do realize that building that housed the news agencies ALSO housed a large part of the Hamas terrorist team along with weapons.....?  This latest response from Israel has devastated the extensive tunnel systems the terrorists used along with much of it's infrastructure it used to attack Israel. 

FYI - The Palestinians are NOT interested in peace.  President Clinton literally gave Yassar Arafat EVERYTHING they asked for when he was in office and they immediately turned him down.

https://www.newsweek.com/clinton-arafat-its-all-your-fault-153779

[Muda69]

3 minutes ago, swordfish said:

You do realize that building that housed the news agencies ALSO housed a large part of the Hamas terrorist team along with weapons.....?  This latest response from Israel has devastated the extensive tunnel systems the terrorists used along with much of it's infrastructure it used to attack Israel. 

That is in dispute:  https://www.businessinsider.co.za/ap-contradicts-israel-says-no-indication-hamas-used-gaza-building-2021-5

 

[DanteEstonia]

21 minutes ago, swordfish said:

President Clinton literally gave Yassar Arafat EVERYTHING they asked for when he was in office and they immediately turned him down.

Two wrongs don't make a right; and in the future it might be better to negotiate with Jordan and Egypt over the future of Palestine. 

[DanteEstonia]

And for the record- Dante is in favor of the three-state solution. 

[Bobref]

8 hours ago, DanteEstonia said:

8 hours ago, DanteEstonia said:

And for the record- Dante is in favor of the three-state solution. 

Is Dante now speaking of himself in the 3rd person? It’s funny when someone does that.

 

Edited May 21, 2021 by Bobref

[DanteEstonia]

1 hour ago, Bobref said:

Is Dante now speaking of himself in the 3rd person?

It's a tribute to kf. 

[Bobref]

Just now, DanteEstonia said:

It's a tribute to kf. 

👍

[DanteEstonia]

On 5/20/2021 at 5:43 AM, swordfish said: