Category Archives: Politics – international

The object of power is power

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“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”

                       George Orwell: Nineteen-Eighty Four

Two items have just shown up in my inbox, reminding me that the love of political power is the strongest force in human life whose effects drive agendas we normals can never understand. First Mark Steyn on Tinker, Tailor, Clapper, Carter, Downer, Halper, Spy which translated comes down to this:

Brennan and Clapper and Comey and McCabe. They took tools designed to combat America’s foreign enemies and used them against their own citizens and their political opposition. It was an intentional subversion of the electoral process conducted at the highest level by agencies with almost unlimited power. And, if they get away with it, they will do it again, and again and again. That’s what Brennan’s telling us on Twitter and Clapper on “The View”:

Yeah? So what? Whatcha gonna do about it?

Good question.

And then there’s this: T Minus Two Years for a War with China. And its conclusion:

After the war with China has started, whether in 2020 or a bit delayed, we are likely to say to ourselves that if we had known that was coming, we would have done things differently over the last two years. One important thing we should be doing right now is to have as little as possible to do with China, neither importing what they make nor letting them into the country. One of the first things the Trump administration did was to ban entry by people from countries that were sources of Muslim terrorists. China is setting out to kill a lot more Americans than the Muslims ever will. Proceed accordingly.

Things are never as clear looking ahead as looking back, and they’re not all that clear looking back either.

Some vital statistics

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Monaco on the left has an area of 4 km². Gaza, shown below, has a land area is 365 km². Both have a Mediterranean sea front. Gaza apparently has an area similar to that of Greater Detroit, which has a population of 4.3 million. Gaza has a population of around 2 million. Monaco is where the rich and famous seem to congregate. Detroit produces cars and is known for its music.

Gaza does not produce a thing other than terrorists who have but one ambition, to kill Jews.

So the question is why does the left, along with our ABC, support Hamas’ ambitions to invade and kill Israelis? Why doesn’t Gaza make an effort to be just like Monaco, or if not Monaco, perhaps Detroit? More pertinent to us, why doesn’t the ABC grow up? On this last question, see Janet Albrechtsen and Sharri Markson, both via Andrew Bolt.

The ABC and its moral sickness

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This is the transcript from Q&A on Monday in which the ABC provided oceans of time for a defender of murderers and terrorists to provide excuses why Palestinians were trying to invade Israel as a result of which around 60 ended up dead. Via Andrew Bolt: SHARRI MARKSON: ON THE ABC’S LATEST ANTI-ISRAEL BIAS. The left is morally sick. They cannot bear listening to the other side, and won’t allow anyone else to do so if they can help it. Just look at the paragraph blocks for Randa Abdel-Fattah – who is then followed by Peter Singer, for heaven’s sake – relative to Greg Sheridan.

AMIN ABBAS

Thanks, Tony. Palestinians are often held accountable for crimes committed against them. Last week, the Israeli Army killed 60 unarmed protesters, including many women and children, and injured 2,000, all in a single day. The UN Human Rights Council called for an independent investigation, in which only two countries voted against it – Australia and the US. When will the Australian government stop using the line that Israel has the right to defend itself? And will it, for once, call for the Palestinians’ human rights to be defended?(APPLAUSE)

TONY JONES

Greg Sheridan.

GREG SHERIDAN

Thanks, Tony, for coming to me first on that question.(LAUGHTER)

GREG SHERIDAN

So, look, this is a very emotional and difficult issue. The death of 60 people is a terrible tragedy. And there’s plenty of moral blame to go around. I’ll make a couple of points to you. The United Nations Human Rights Council… Depends where we want to start in the debate, but the United Nations Human Rights Council has zero credibility. It never investigates its members such as Cuba or China, and it has had more resolutions against Israel than against all other nations on earth put together. Now, even if you are a critic of Israel, you cannot believe that it is responsible for more human rights abuses than all the other nations of the whole earth put together – the North Korean labour camp, gulag, 400,000 dead in Syria and so on. So as an organisation, it has zero credibility. And therefore, I think the Australian government was right to refuse to endorse that investigation. Now, the business of the demonstrations is tremendously contested. We’re not going to have time to go through all the detail. If it is the case that the Israelis used unnecessary force, that should be investigated. And I would have faith in the Israeli legal system to investigate it.(AUDIENCE MURMURS)

GREG SHERIDAN

Because it has done so and it has convicted and sent to jail its own soldiers in the past. However, a few things are important to bear in mind. Hamas, which controls Gaza, is a designated terrorist organisation under Australian law, under European law, throughout the states of the European Union, under American law.

TONY JONES

Greg, we’re going to come to a question on Hamas in a moment, so… But just… Australia was one of two countries. The United States and Australia.

GREG SHERIDAN

Yeah, many countries…

TONY JONES

Why did Australia choose to side with the United States?

JANE HUME

Three abstained.

GREG SHERIDAN

Well, I think a number of countries abstained. And in the United Nations…in a similar resolution in the United Nations…

TONY JONES

It makes a point when you vote against something. Abstaining is, “We don’t want to get involved in this argument.”

GREG SHERIDAN

Well, I think we were right to vote against it, because it was…the organisation has no credibility. But, look, a couple of critical points here. In the United Nations General Assembly, many nations, many like-minded nations to us, abstained from the UN Gen…as we did, in the UN General Assembly room. But, look, I just want to continue this thought about Hamas for a second. It’s terribly important.

TONY JONES

No, no. Come back to it, Greg. ‘Cause we are going to have a question on that, I promise you.

GREG SHERIDAN

OK.

TONY JONES

Uh, Randa.

RANDA ABDEL-FATTAH

Where do I start? Let’s start with why Palestinians are protesting in Hamas…in the Gaza strip. I think it’s important to put this into context if we’re really to make sense of this conflict. They are protesting a brutal siege. They are an open-air prison – the largest concentration camp in the world, as it has been described by a prominent Israeli sociologist. They are about 1.8 million people in a size of about 355 square kilometres. There’s about 41km by 10-12km. They have a blockade for the last 11 years. Israel described it as economic warfare, where they were calculating the number of calories that Palestinians could live under, just short of starvation. They have a population of 75% under the age of 25. 51% of those are children. 97% of the water is poisonous. It is undrinkable. And why is that? Because Israel denied them a water desalination plant and bombed their water treatment facility in the 2008 and 2009 siege.It is an area that is trying to send a message to the world that, after 11 years of being besieged, of being traumatised, of having no sense of dignity or hope and being trapped – they’re not even allowed to leave – they’re trying to tell the world, “Wake up. It’s been 11 years now. What more do we have to do for you to take notice?” And they did it in a non-violent protest. And what were they met with? Nuclear-armed state drones. They were met with live fire by snipers. They were met with people who… The IDF tweeted and then quickly took it down, tweeted that they acted precisely, that they knew exactly where those bullets were landing. And as Lieberman said, he said that every person there at the protest was a Hamas operative. Was Leila Ghandoor, an eight-month-old baby who died, a Hamas operative? He said that there were no innocent people in Gaza.And this is the dehumanising rhetoric that we get when it comes to the Palestinians. That when they protest against something that we would all protest against, they are considered terrorists, and they are blamed for their own murder, as Julie Bishop implied in her tweet, where she put first, before any criticism of Israel, that the Palestinians should exercise restraint. So she is clearly siding there with people who are using expanding bullets on children, on people who are protesting, people who are 700m from a perimeter fence.So, yes, I’m angry on behalf of Palestinians that it takes us this long for the world to wake up. Wake up to what’s happening to Palestinians under our watch. It’s a shame. It’s a disgrace that Australia voted against something that doesn’t even need an investigation. It’s no mystery. It’s no mystery what happened. There’s live testimony. There’s video evidence. There’s photographic evidence. We don’t need another investigation, and then what’s going to happen after that? Nothing. Nothing.

TONY JONES

Greg, I’m going to bring you in because…(APPLAUSE)

TONY JONES

OK. Thank you very much. Greg? I think that, like some of the audience, you reacted when Randa said it was a non-violent demonstration. I presume that’s because there were stone-throwers among the crowd?

GREG SHERIDAN

Uh, well, no. Tony, I don’t want to say anything which I haven’t said, if you know what I mean. So, look, you’ve gotta give me a couple of sentences of context if I’m to answer this. The Israelis withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and they said, “Make this place work and we’ll have a partnership together.” They had six open points. They thought a lot of people from Gaza would come in and work in Israel. They left behind their agricultural industry, and so forth. Now, because of Hamas, which took power and murdered many, many Palestinians…

TONY JONES

OK, Greg, I’m going to interrupt you, only to go to…

GREG SHERIDAN

No, you… No, look, you’ve got to let me…you’ve got to let me give context.

TONY JONES

I will, I promise you.

GREG SHERIDAN

It’s not fair…

RANDA ABDEL-FATTAHBut that’s not what it’s like.

GREG SHERIDAN

It’s not fair to allow all this emotion…

RANDA ABDEL-FATTAH

If you have a fish bowl…

GREG SHERIDAN…and then to prevent me from having any…

TONY JONES

I’m not preventing you. I’m going to the audience.

RANDA ABDEL-FATTAH

If you have a fish bowl and you control…

TONY JONES

Both of you, if you just hang on for one second.

RANDA ABDEL-FATTAH

…you control the food that you can give it, don’t you control that fish bowl?

TONY JONES

We’ve got a question from Josh Gladwin. Go ahead, Josh.GAZA00:47:32

JOSH GLADWIN

Hi guys. Um, cool story, Randa. According to American lawyer and academic Alan Dershowitz, the most recent Hamas provocations, having 40,000 Gazans try and tear down the border fence and enter Israel with Molotov cocktails and other improvised weapons, are part of repeated Hamas tactics that he has called the Dead Baby Strategy. Hamas’s goal is to have Israel kill as many Gazans as possible, so that the headlines always begin and often end with the body count. Do you agree?

RANDA ABDEL-FATTAH

Oh, poor Israel. We’re forcing it to murder us. And look at what the Palestinians are up against. And I don’t even need to make this up. The IDF tweeted a pictorial inventory of Hamas weapons of war. Let me explain what was on that inventory – arson kites, Molotov cocktails, wire cutters, rope for fence, disabled civilians, children. So that’s basically telling us, in the IDF’s eyes, these are weapons of war – children, disabled civilians – and they are therefore legitimate targets. So instead of blaming Hamas and blaming Palestinians for being murdered, how about we actually look at the people who are actually shooting people and killing babies?(APPLAUSE)

RANDA ABDEL-FATTAH

And not just that – what I find so contemptible about this is the dehumanisation of Palestinians. The way that we, in a very racist way, assume that they are puppets and pawns of Hamas. They are human beings with free will.

JOSH GLADWIN

Human shields.

RANDA ABDEL-FATTAH

No. Oh, excuse me. Not human shields. They have dignity, they have free will, they have agency, and they are not some monolithic mass of Arabs. Each one of them there is there for a purpose – to protect and to defend themselves. And they haven’t given up on their right to freedom. And this is what frustrates Israel so much, and its apologists – that we are still there. This is the circle that Israel cannot square. That it wants to maintain and establish an ethno-racial exclusive Jewish nation, but the Palestinian people are there, and we won’t disappear.

JOSH GLADWIN

So why does Egypt have a blockade against Gaza?

RANDA ABDEL-FATTAH

It’s disgraceful. Egypt’s complicity…

JOSH GLADWINWhy not blame Egypt as well?

RANDA ABDEL-FATTAH

OK, Egypt, it’s disgraceful. You are complicit. But the problem is Israeli occupation and the siege. (APPLAUSE)

TONY JONES

OK, now, I’ll stop… Greg, that is a question about Hamas. You can talk about Hamas now.

GREG SHERIDAN

OK. OK.(LAUGHTER)

TONY JONES

But I do want to hear from the other panellists.

GREG SHERIDAN

So, very briefly, look, I would honestly urge people to read about this. It’s very difficult to deal with properly in a few sentences in a TV panel. Let me just give you a few points of context. Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and said, “Let’s make this work together. If you work together, you can have a very prosperous economic future.” The situation of life in Gaza is terrible, almost entirely because of the actions of Hamas, which murdered…when it took power, murdered hundreds of other Palestinians. Murdered dissidents, threw homosexuals off the rooftop, murdered Fatah and Palestinian Authority people. One of the reasons conditions in Gaza are so bad today is because the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah decided to sanction Hamas in Gaza and stop paying the salaries of Palestinian Authority workers in Gaza.

RANDA ABDEL-FATTAH

Greg, this is just nonsense. Was Hamas behind Operation Protective Edge, in which 2,200 Palestinians in 2014 were killed? In which 6,000 airstrikes, 50,000 artillery shells, 18,000 homes destroyed, 56 medical clinics destroyed, seven UNRWA schools destroyed, 17 medical clinics? Don’t believe me. Look it up.

GREG SHERIDAN

So…

TONY JONES

Sorry, I’m going to interrupt both of you just for a minute…

GREG SHERIDAN

You’ve got to let me…you’ve got to let me get my defence in.

TONY JONES

Yes, Greg. It’s a flowing discussion, and we’ll come back to you.

GREG SHERIDAN

Yeah, but, I mean, somehow or other, the TV and the people who hate Israel hate this essential context. They hate the context. Now, Hamas is a terrorist organisation, which has murdered many, many, many Palestinians. Don’t believe me. Just google the Hamas Charter and you’ll see it is rank, vicious, foul anti-Semitism. It incites murder. Every time it gets across the border, it kills Israeli civilians. Major General Jim Molan of the Australian Army…

TONY JONES

Greg, he’s on next week and he can talk for himself.

GREG SHERIDAN

…he’s investigated… No, no. Let me finish this sentence.

TONY JONES

No, I have to let the other panellists speak.

GREG SHERIDAN

Let me just finish this sentence.

TONY JONES

OK.

GREG SHERIDAN

He investigated the Israeli Defense Force in detail, and said that it exercises the same moral restraint and the same ethical practice as any Western army would.

TONY JONES

OK. Thank you.(APPLAUSE)

TONY JONES

Now, Peter Singer, you’ve been critical of both Hamas and Israel. So let’s hear your…

PETER SINGER

Exactly. I am critical of both of them, and I think the situation is a tragic one and it has resulted in the tragedy that we’re talking about this time. But clearly there are extremists on both sides. And, you know, there was hope some years ago, when Rabin was prime minister, for example. But, sadly, he was assassinated by a right-wing Israeli and hopes for peace went down. And since then, I think, both sides have gone to extremes. Certainly, the Israeli government has gone to extremes and has not shown signs of really being interested in negotiating peace or stopping settlements. But on the other hand, you have to say, as far as Hamas is concerned particularly, Greg is right – they are a terrorist organisation, they are firing rockets into Israel, they are openly trying to kill Israelis where they can, and they did reject offers of cooperation back when Israel left Gaza. So that’s a tragedy for the people of Gaza. And it’s very hard to see a way out.

TONY JONES

Let’s go to the original question, which was asking about Australia’s vote to reject the investigation into an incident which killed a large number of people and wounded thousands. What’s your view on that?

PETER SINGER

I would have liked to see an investigation, both into why Israel used live fire and could not find a less lethal way of preventing people from attacking and cutting through the fence, but also why Hamas was inviting people to go to the fence when Israel had made it clear that it was going to use force to prevent people, that there clearly was a risk of live ammunition, of people being killed. And why people would go there with their children and babies actually, you know, is mind-boggling to me. What kind of a person would you have to be to say, “I’m gonna take my baby to this area where there’s likely to be firing.”(APPLAUSE)

TONY JONES

Jane.

JANE HUME

The reason why Australia voted against this inquiry was because we believed that it was already being prejudged, that the UN Human Rights Council had already prejudged the outcome. And you could tell that from its language. It didn’t include Hamas in any of the terms of reference of that inquiry. It only included Israel. It included not just Gaza, but also Jerusalem and the West Bank, which weren’t necessarily involved in this particular incident. In fact, it didn’t cite this particular incident at all. And it had an unlimited time period over which it wanted to look at Israeli behaviour. So we felt that it was inappropriate, the way that it had been…the way it had been phrased. Now, Australia has supported these independent inquiries in the past. It supported an independent inquiry into the use of chemical weapons in Syria. So it wasn’t necessarily that…the idea of an inquiry that was the problem. It was the fact that we felt they were already had…had already come up with an outcome.

TONY JONES

OK, we’ve got someone with their hand up over there. I’m going to get a microphone to you. Just hang on. For a comment, hopefully. Go ahead.

MAN

Just a very quick question.

TONY JONES

OK.

MAN

To Greg in particular, but to others. If you were a young man in Gaza, what would you do?

GREG SHERIDAN

Well, uh, look, the quality of life in Gaza desperately needs to be improved. That should be the number one priority of everybody. And it would be improved if Hamas would cooperate with the Palestinian Authority, if it didn’t misuse aid to make attacks on Israel and so on. But the whole… Egypt itself maintains its own blockade with Gaza, because Gaza is constantly threading terrorists back and forth into the Sinai. It is a terrible tragedy for the poor, innocent people of Gaza that they have such a shocking group of terrorists ruling them.

MAN

But what would you do? What would you do if you were there as a young man now?

GREG SHERIDAN

Try to get Hamas out of government. And the courageous Palestinians who have tried to do that have mostly ended up dead.

TONY JONES

OK, Julie, we haven’t heard from you

.JULIE COLLINS

Well, I think the whole…the deaths recently was a bit of a tragedy and, you know, I think the arguments that we’re hearing here tonight at the table show how complex an issue this is. I mean, Labor yesterday called for the government to explain its vote in the UN. We were very concerned that we were one of only two countries to actually vote against it. As we’ve heard, some countries did abstain. But the question would be, well, why didn’t Australia abstain? Why didn’t we talk about, perhaps, supporting another investigation with a differently-worded motion? I mean, we’re not in government, we don’t know what the negotiations around that were. But, clearly, I think both sides, if there was an investigation, would welcome it, so that we can actually get to the bottom of what happened. Let’s not forget, 60 people died. I mean, it is heartbreaking that this continues to happen. This conflict has been going on for a long time. A two-state solution is the only solution, and we need to de-escalate things, not keep inflaming them.

TONY JONES

Randa, I’ll come to you, and you can perhaps answer the question, because I saw you nodding when that gentleman said, “What would you do?”

RANDA ABDEL-FATTAH

I think it’s an excellent question, because what would the international community have the Palestinians do? They have tried armed resistance in response to occupation, they have tried peaceful, you know, non-violent resistance in the first and second intifada, which was brutally, brutally shut down. They have tried poetry – a poet last week was imprisoned for her poetry. They try peacefully protesting, and they are shot down. So how…what would you have the Palestinians do? There are countless United Nations resolutions that Israel is clearly violating and flouting. The idea that this conflict is complex is something people use as a way to sort of…to deflect attention from what is really a very clear issue here, which is that you have an illegal occupation. You have Israel, which has made the possibility of a two-state solution impossible. There is no viable, contiguous Palestinian state for the Palestinians because Israel has, in violation of international law, transferred 750,000 illegal settlers into the West Bank, taken 80% of the water aquifers. I’ve been on the roads that go through the West Bank that are only allowed for settlers, so that settlers never have to meet those pesky Palestinians. They can live in their own little bubble, in their little West Bank colonies. Then you have Israeli Arabs…

TONY JONES

Randa, we’ve got to come to a final question, so I’ll get you to sum up quickly.

RANDA ABDEL-FATTAH

What would you have the Palestinians do? They… What broke me about this protest is not that they were resisting Israel. It’s not that they were sending a message to Israel. They were sending a message to the world. “This is our cage. We’re rattling this cage. Help us, because we are besieged and no-one is coming to our aid.” So that’s what, for me, is the message here. Listen to Palestinians. Don’t believe Greg. Go and read what you can see. Go on Twitter. You’ll see photos, you’ll see video testimony and evidence, and that’s all you need to make a moral decision.

TONY JONES

Alright.

Sometimes your enemy’s enemy is your enemy too

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Sometime around the 1960s, the left decided to switch sides on its allegiances in the Middle East and since then Israel has been the villain. That Israel, with its majority Jewish population, has been threatened with destruction since it was founded in 1948 is of no mind to the Europeans who had tried to do the same thing a few years before, and is part of the mindset of the national socialists of today who would see the outcome worked towards by the National Socialists of an earlier era. Stalin’s death, among other things, forestalled the “Doctor’s Plot” which would have been a Soviet purge of its Jewish population. And to its last days, if you were a child of or a grandchild of someone who was Jewish, it was stamped on your internal passport even if you were not interested in your own Jewish origins, never mind not being allowed to practise your mandated religious identity even if you had wished to. Hamas and Hezbollah and the rest are just part of an anti-Semitic Israeli ethos that has existed since the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948.

But in siding with Israel’s Islamist enemies, these same leftist fools have not just given them official cover and supported their efforts, they have gone well beyond that, not only pretending that their self-declared ideological enemies are the morally virtuous side, but have allowed, if not actually encouraged, mass migration of Islamists into their own societies as a form of showing their virtue and solidarity with the “oppressed”. Sweden is now the textbook example of civilisational suicide, with Merkel’s Germany right up there with the worst of them. I would be of a mind to say they are getting just what they deserve, but this is also my culture they are putting to the torch. And that they most certainly are. Your enemy’s enemy is not your friend, as they are finding out to their immense regret, but to my immense regret as well.

Do people really not know the truth?

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The following is reprinted from The Other McCain which comes with the appropriate title: The Terrorist Riot in Gaza. It works off the assumption that there is anyone who doesn’t know what actually happened but needs it to be explained. Those in the media and on the left know perfectly well that their narrative is entirely lies and distortions, but they have an agenda of their own for which the truth serves no purpose, so they lie. Standard Operating Procedure, but the core here is that for something like 90% of the media, and almost every leader on the left side of politics, they are perfectly content, for reasons of their own, to see Israel defeated in some existential war and cease to exist. These are sick people, but sick people with a will and a right to vote. This is the post.

The shock of events Monday — when a rioting mob attacked the Israeli border and 55 people were killed — is being twisted by the liberal media which misleadingly call this attack a “protest.” The truth is that the people of Gaza are governed by a terrorist organization, Hamas, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel:

An IAF fighter jet struck five terrorist targets in the northern Gaza Strip in response to violent acts by Hamas along the security fence on Monday, according to IDF reports. The targets included military training facilities belonging to Hamas. Earlier [Monday], two additional Hamas military positions were hit by tank- and aircraft fire, after IDF forces were shot at by Hamas from the northern part of the coastal enclave.

“The IDF is determined to prevent massive terror activities constantly being led by the Hamas terror organization,” an IDF statement emphasized, adding that “Each act of terror will be met with a harsh response.”

40,000 Palestinians took part in Monday’s violent riots in 13 locations along the Gaza Strip security fence, marking Nakba Day and protesting the transfer of the US embassy to Jerusalem.

“Nakba Day,” or “Day of Catastrophe,” is observed annually by Palestinians and Israeli-Arabs to commemorate the events following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

Gazans have been protesting along the border with Israel for the past six weeks as part of what organizers have called the ‘Great March of Return’, with demonstrators throwing stones, Molotov cocktails and rocks, as well as launching incendiary kites toward Israeli troops.

Most Americans do not know the history of this conflict well enough to understand the reality of what happened Monday, even if the liberal media were willing to report it accurately (which they are not). Many people talk of “peace” in the Middle East as if there were something that Israel could do to placate the demands of its enemies, but this is an error akin to blaming Czechoslovakia for the 1938 Sudetenland crisis.

The reason there is no peace in the Middle East is because Israel’s enemies don’t want peace. What they want is dead Jews.

Do not let yourself be deceived about this fact. Israel is surrounded by Arab countries, and the so-called “Palestinians” are just Arabs who refuse to recognize the legitimacy of Israel’s national existence. Seventy years after Israel won its independence from British colonial rule, there has grown up an anti-Israel mythology — a false history, created by Jew-hating propagandists — to justify terrorist warfare. The Arabs in Gaza can have peace simply by stopping their attacks on Israel.

Many of my paleoconservative friends dislike the U.S.-Israel alliance, which they perceive as unnecessarily involving us in what George Washington called “foreign entanglements.” Granting the legitimacy of these concerns, it is my belief that the real problem in the Middle East is that the United States erred in the 1990s by attempting to act as a broker in a “peace process” which was always doomed to fail. If the U.S. would simply stop its interference, Israel could bring about peace in the Middle East by the only feasible “process” — victory.

Because I remember the Six-Day War in 1967 and the Yom Kippur War in 1973, I know that Israel is capable of destroying its enemies. Guess what? Israel’s enemies know this, too, which is why they engage in terrorism and propaganda, rather than open warfare. By fomenting violence — and falsely blaming Israel for the bloodshed — Hamas seeks to continue a war that it can never ultimately hope to win. Why? Because killing Jews is the only purpose of Hamas, its raison d’être as a terrorist organization.

We can help advance the cause of peace by speaking the blunt truth. There was no “protest” in Gaza yesterday. It was a terrorist riot.

 

This year in Jerusalem

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EMBASSY IN JERUSALEM! 

The American embassy, that is. And for some background, this is fascinating: How Harry Truman Crossed His Own State Department to Recognize Israel. One of the few businessmen to have been an American president. Read it through. The Deep State has a long history.

And then there’s this from Instapundit.

THE STRATEGIC CASE FOR MOVING THE U.S. EMBASSY TO JERUSALEM IS VERY SIMPLE: Since Oslo in 1993, Israel has allowed Palestinian terrorists to set up a government in Ramallah, made three peace offers within internationally-accepted parameters, withdrawn from Gaza and parts of Samaria, suffered an intifadah, and in return has gotten… a worldwide Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign? The Palestinians have believed that they could win by stalling, waiting until the world’s impatience forced Israel to concede. Moving the U.S. Embassy without a peace agreement demonstrates to the Palestinians that things can and will move on without them, as do the growing ties between Israel and the Sunni powers. Either accept that Israel is here to stay and make the necessary accommodations, or be left in the dustbin of history.

 

Joining the winning team

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I’m just repeating the whole article because there is nothing that I want to leave out. It’s from Steve Hayward at Powerline on Trump is starting to spook the left. No one is getting tired of winning around here and some are starting to come across.

Did anyone happen to catch David Brooks’s latest column, “Donald Trump’s Lizard Wisdom,” in the New York Times? I about fell out of my chair, because Brooks almost tacitly admits that maybe he was wrong about Trump. Referring to Trump’s experience dealing with the mobbed-up New York construction scene in his long real estate career, Brooks says:

And yet I can’t help but wonder if that kind of background has provided a decent education for dealing with the sort of hopped-up mobsters running parts of the world today. There is growing reason to believe that Donald Trump understands the thug mind a whole lot better than the people who attended our prestigious Foreign Service academies.

The first piece of evidence is North Korea. When Trump was trading crude, back-alley swipes with “Little Rocket Man,” Kim Jong-un, about whose nuclear button was bigger, it sounded as if we were heading for a nuclear holocaust led by a pair of overgrown prepubescents.

In fact, Trump’s bellicosity seems to have worked. It’s impossible to know how things will pan out, but the situation with North Korea today is a lot better than it was six months ago. Hostages are being released, talks are being held. There seems to be a chance for progress unfelt in years.

Maybe Trump intuited something about the sorts of people who run the North Korean regime that others missed.

The second piece of evidence is our trade talks with China. Over the past few decades, the Western diplomatic community made a big bet: If we all behaved decently toward Chinese leaders, then they’d naturally come to embrace liberal economic and cultural values and we could all eventually share a pinot at the University Club.

The bet went wrong. . .  The president has pushed back harder on the Chinese and has netted some results. After some Trump swagger, Xi Jinping promised to “significantly lower” Chinese tariffs on imported vehicles.

About Trump’s policy toward Iran, Brooks adds:

Maybe Trump is right to intuit that the only right response to a monster is to enclose it. Maybe he’s right that when you sense economic weakness in a potential threat, you hit it again.

Please don’t take this as an endorsement of the Trump foreign policy. I’d feel a lot better if Trump showed some awareness of the complexity of the systems he’s disrupting, and the possibly cataclysmic unintended consequences. But there is some lizard wisdom here. The world is a lot more like the Atlantic City real estate market than the G.R.E.s.

I imagine that Times readers must be freaking out about this. (I can’t find the comments section on the Times redesigned web format.) Now, Brooks is not a leftist, But Willie Brown, the legendary for speaker of the California State Assembly and mayor of San Francisco, and one of the smartest politicians in America, certainly is a leftist, and he wrote this yesterday in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Trump Is More Popular Than Dems Want to Admit

It’s time for the Democrats to stop bashing President Trump.

It’s not going to be easy, given his policies and personality. It might even mean checking into a 12-step program. But setting a winning agenda is like maneuvering an aircraft carrier. It takes time to change course. And if they want to be on target for the November midterm elections, the Democrats need to start changing course now.

Like it or not, a significant number of Americans are actually happy these days. They are making money. They feel safe, and they agree with with the president’s protectionist trade policies, his call for more American jobs, even his immigration stance.

The jobs growth reports, the North Korea summit and the steady economy are beating out the Stormy Daniels scandal and the Robert Mueller investigation in Middle America, hands down.

So you are not going to win back the House by making it all about him.

If Brown is saying this, you can bet he’s on to something, and knows his party is poised to blow it.

Bonus: Later in his rambling column, Brown tells this interesting story:

Cruise control: Got into a taxi the other day, and the cabbie promptly introduced himself as “Cadillac Jack.”

“I’ve owned 29 Cadillacs, all of them new,” he said, and proceeded to tell me about each and every one of them as we drove across town.

Finally I had to ask.

“How old are you?”

“Sixty,” he said.

“How did you manage to go through 29 Cadillacs?”

“Well, you know, if you don’t pay for them, they take ’em back.”

US opens embassy in Jerusalem

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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s statement on the U.S. embassy opening in Jerusalem:

“Today I am proud to celebrate the opening of the United States Embassy to Israel in Jerusalem. This significant event fulfills a promise made by President Trump. As he proclaimed on December 6, 2017, “Seventy years ago, the United States, under President Truman, recognized the State of Israel. Since then, the State of Israel has made its capital in Jerusalem — the capital the Jewish people established in ancient times. It is therefore appropriate for the United States to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.”

“We remain committed to advancing a lasting and comprehensive peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

“I am delighted to have visited Israel on my first trip overseas as Secretary of State. I look forward to returning soon to visit our new US embassy and Ambassador Friedman in Jerusalem.”

He just keeps rolling on

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From The Diplomad speaking to us on diplomacy with an American perspective but outside the Deep State. All sounds good to me.

Trump Rolls On

OK. Are there any other world leaders out there? If so, they shouldn’t bother coming to work. Take a holiday. Enjoy the coming summer in the northern hemisphere and the coming winter in the south. Just go home. Relax. Trump’s got ya covered.

He does it, yet again.

He has killed the Iran nuclear “deal.”

Trump knows how to do foreign policy.  We’ve had to put up with decades of condescending lectures from the traditional foreign policy “elites” on how difficult foreign policy is; how it’s just more complex than YOU could ever understand; don’t try it at home; and just leave it to the experts. Seems that our President is following in the foot-steps of Ronald Reagan, and even blazing a few paths of his own when it comes to foreign policy. Amazing how a clear articulation of purpose, a demonstration of strength, and a refusal to accept the standard bromides produces different results. What’s that definition of crazy? Shall we say, President Trump is destroying the world order in order to save the world? Sounds good.

The mullahs in Teheran, the murderers in ISIS, Pyongyang and Damascus, as well as the virtue-signaling, pearl-clutching bien pensants in Hollywood, media, academe, and all the capitals of the Far Abroad, now know they’re dealing with a different sort of U.S. President. Thank the Lord this President has followed the Diplomad’s long-standing foreign policy dictum, “Do not listen to the Europeans,”

[T]he surest way to lose American lives and treasure is to listen to the Europeans. Europe has not gotten anything right on the world stage since, well, since . . . well, since at least the French Revolution.

Let’s not forget that since the USA became a significant player, the principal aim of European leaders has been to embroil the USA in Europe’s wars, have the USA fix the messes caused by European leaders, but have the USA take instructions from Europe’s leaders. Even Churchill, whom I admire immensely, was not immune; he desperately wanted the mighty US in WWII, but wanted to dictate the how and the where of the application of US power. We, of course, previously saw the same thing in WWI. In that conflict 100 years ago, the geniuses in the European high commands needed US troops to halt a resurgent Germany after the exit of Russia from the war, but did not want an independent US force. Vietnam and Libya were also two messes in which we became involved to bail out Europe. Pershing successful resisted them. Let us also not forget that the long years of the Cold War involved the US footing the bulk of the bill for defense, allowing Europe to maintain Legoland militaries and spend their own wealth building cradle-to-grave social welfare systems, which, of course, relied on the despised US military for protection.

It goes on and on . . uh, well, not any longer. Just as Reagan did before in rejecting European advice on how to handle the USSR, it seems that Trump has a very clear home-grown idea of how to do things in the interest of the United States. About time.

The “deal” with Teheran was a classic convoluted mess so favored by the Euros and their admirers such as John Kerry. I have written a great deal about that “deal” (here, here, here, and here, for example, and there’s lots more). Don’t want to repeat all I have said before except to restate that this was a classic con job.

Of course, the Iranians and the Europeans are upset over President Trump’s bold announcement that we are walking away from this “deal.” As I have noted before, the “deal” guaranteed Iran’s acquiring a nuclear weapon, while, mostly European and Russian companies make a lot of money off the Iranian regime whose bank accounts became flush with billions of dollars and euros magnanimously provided by the Obama misadministration in the dead of night.

As to American opinion, I conducted my own highly “scientific” poll. Yesterday, I was at my local gun store, doing a little shopping in the wake of having received my concealed carry permit. Four “customers” were siting in the back of the little semi-rural gun store (“Green Acres”!) when the president came on TV to announce the end of the Iran so-called deal. All four broke into spontaneous applause, with one elderly gent wearing a Korean War Vet cap, telling his wife, “The President has done a great thing!”

There the science is settled, and now . . .

Let the fainting begin!

We hear cries of outrage from Obama, Kerry, and Clinton, of course, who see their “legacy” coming apart. The Iranians are running to Russia and Europe trying to save a vestige of the “deal” to make sure the goodies keep flowing. Kerry, of course, is repeating his anti-American antics of decades ago: just as he did with the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong delegations in Paris during the Vietnam War peace talks, he has been in Europe trying to strike some sort of new “deal” with Iran to undermine the US president. Kerry does treason quite well.

Among the many curious things being said is that Trump’s walking away from this “deal,” imperils our ability to reach a deal with North Korea. Well, yes, it does imperil the ability to reach a “deal” like the one with Iran, but that’s what we don’t want! While the fainters fainted, newly minted SecState Pompeo flew into Pyongyang to set up the forthcoming meeting between Kim and Trump, and flew out bringing home three American hostages. Sounds like Kim is more than willing to deal, and Trump has his measure of the man.

Meanwhile, the US Embassy is opening in Jerusalem, and the pearl-clutchers can’t believe that the world has not come to an end, yet again. The Saudis and other Arabs are making friendly noises towards Israel, clearly seeking Israeli support against Iran, and have supported Trump’s move on the faux deal. They know from whence the threat comes, and it’s not from Tel Aviv Jerusalem. The mullahs are rightfully in panic mode.

I can’t wait for President Trump to turn his full attention to the threat on our southern border and put an end to Mexican interference in our politics.

Roll on!