Nikki Haley’s Right: Time to Start ‘Taking Names’ at the U.N.: Jonathan S. Tobin, National Review, Dec. 21, 2017— United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley’s recent threat — that the United States would be “taking names” of those who vote against it in the U.N. General Assembly — summed up everything liberals and the foreign-policy establishment hate about the Trump administration.
Moving Jerusalem From Heaven to Earth: Donna Robinson Divine and Asaf Romirowsky, Ynet, Dec. 18, 2017 — Heaven and earth are said to meet on Jerusalem’s sacred esplanade where the city’s most famous resident is called God.
Identifying the Enemy: David M. Weinberg, Jerusalem Post, Dec. 21, 2017— Former US president Barack Obama’s last speech at the United Nations in September 2016 expressed deep disappointment with conflict around the world.
Dining with Bahrainis at a Jerusalem Mall: Manfred Gerstenfeld, Arutz Sheva, Dec. 14, 2017— It was a surreal experience on the first night of Hanukkah. I was invited to a dinner with interfaith visitors from the kingdom of Bahrain.
Vote Shows Israel Making Little Headway at United Nations: Herb Keinon, Jerusalem Post, Dec. 22, 2017
Europe's Governments Fail the Jews – Again: Giulio Meotti, Arutz Sheva, Dec. 20, 2017
The Secret Backstory of How Obama Let Hezbollah off the Hook: Josh Meyer, Politico, Dec., 2017
Tokyo Support Rally for Israel (Video): Youtube, July 31, 2014
NIKKI HALEY’S RIGHT: TIME TO START ‘TAKING NAMES’ AT THE U.N.
Jonathan S. Tobin
National Review, Dec. 21, 2017
United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley’s recent threat — that the United States would be “taking names” of those who vote against it in the U.N. General Assembly — summed up everything liberals and the foreign-policy establishment hate about the Trump administration. That President Trump subsequently embraced Haley’s idea in a tweet, and threatened to cut off aid to those who thumb their nose at their American benefactor in U.N. votes, only made it worse. To those who remember President Obama’s devotion to multilateralism and support for international institutions, Haley’s and Trump’s statements reek of arrogance and contempt for world opinion.
But there are two things wrong with the liberal huffing and puffing. The first is that the administration’s threats are bound to be immensely popular even among Americans who aren’t Trump fans. The second is that it is high time that someone reminded the inhabitants of the U.N. that while the U.S. may be considered the dull child in the classroom in their realm, the balance of power in the real world is very different, even on issues where Trump has supposedly isolated the U.S., such as Jerusalem and the Arab–Israeli conflict.
Haley’s threat came in a letter sent to U.N. member countries in which she urged them not to support a General Assembly resolution condemning the U.S. for Trump’s statement recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. On Monday, Haley exercised America’s right to veto a U.N. Security Council resolution when a similar resolution received the approval of every other member except the U.S. Encouraged by the 14–1 vote, the Palestinian Authority and its allies will stage another vote in the GA today, which will undoubtedly pass by a huge majority, although (unlike a Security Council measure) it will have only symbolic significance.
But Haley isn’t taking the attempt to isolate the U.S. lying down. As she did in her eloquent defense of the American position before the Security Council, the ambassador said not only that Trump had done the right thing when recognizing Israel’s rights in Jerusalem, but also that other nations had no business telling the U.S. where to put any of its embassies.
Trump and Haley aren’t the first American leaders to ponder the irony of the U.S. distributing billions in foreign aid over the years to countries that have no compunction about condemning the U.S. every chance they get. Foreign aid takes a minuscule percentage of the federal budget and is, in many instances, both altruistic and very much in the interest of the United States. However, it remains unpopular. That is especially true when recipients not only lack gratitude for American largesse but actively resent their indebtedness to Washington.
Trump’s predecessor encouraged this attitude, since he often seemed more inclined to apologize for America’s sins, and to deprecate the presumption that it could teach the world a thing or two about freedom, than to make demands on international organizations. Career diplomats may loathe language they think makes the U.S. appear to be a bully. But one needn’t embrace Trump’s “America First” mantra — though the foreign-policy doctrine published under that name is more realist than isolationist — to understand that the U.S. has every right to call aid recipients and allies to account when they cross the line into unfair attacks on Washington.
Trump’s and Haley’s threats are appropriate, but they won’t be easy to carry out. Some of the nations who will cross the U.S. today in the Jerusalem vote are precisely those that even Trump wants to keep supporting. Egypt, which receives approximately $1.5 billion per year from the United States, sponsored the GA Jerusalem resolution. But since its military government is vital to efforts to resist Islamist terror, undermining it with an aid cut would be foolish.
But the disconnect between U.N. votes and real-world concerns is precisely why it is equally foolish to think that Trump’s Jerusalem decision has isolated the U.S., as the president’s domestic and foreign critics contend. Though the 14–1 Security Council vote and what will happen in the General Assembly make it appear as if the U.S. is standing alone with Israel, outside of international forums, it is actually the authors of these resolutions — the Palestinians — who are isolated…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
MOVING JERUSALEM FROM HEAVEN TO EARTH
Donna Robinson Divine and Asaf Romirowsky
Ynet, Dec. 18, 2017
Heaven and earth are said to meet on Jerusalem’s sacred esplanade where the city’s most famous resident is called God. But theological principles travel well beyond the splendor of these precincts turning ordinary struggles for power into battles between good and evil sanctified as much by ritual as by death.
If failing to remember its holiness is unusual, as the Psalmist says, forgetting the Jerusalem inhabited by ordinary people who work, attend school, open and close businesses is normal. As Israel’s national capital, the site of its parliament and most government offices, Jerusalem has become the symbolic battleground for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict even though the sacred texts of Islam and Judaism could just as easily render the site a force for shared celebration and peace as for war. For notwithstanding the current chorus of political and religious leaders denying the legitimacy of Jewish claims and thereby casting doubt on their own canonical sources, Jerusalem’s sanctity for Islam derives from the special status first accorded it by Jews.
Into this mix stepped President Donald Trump, who announced the US’ recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital with instructions to move the embassy from Tel Aviv into this most contested of holy cities. It is a long overdue move. A mark of sovereignty is the capacity to designate a capital city. Israel deserves nothing less. Nor does it adversely affect the so-called peace process. Nothing the President did with his declaration of recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital precludes the realization of any of the principles of the Oslo Accords and the expected discussions concerning the possibility of part of Jerusalem becoming the capital of a Palestinian state should it ever be established.
Whatever the president's motivations, the timing of the declaration has some important consequences. First, it dismantles the UN Resolution (2334) passed in the last months of President Barack Obama's second term, which declared even the construction around Jewish holy sites, like the Wall, a violation of International Law. By contrast to proclamations issued by UNESCO, ignoring Jerusalem’s Jewish heritage—passed without opposition from European countries like France and Spain—President Trump’s declaration restores some balance to recognizing the reality of Israel as a Jewish state. Second, the American policy comes at a time when many of the Arab states are more concerned with Iran than with Israel and with a turmoil they are desperate to contain in a world no longer as beholden to their oil and natural gas as in the past.
Third, Trump is saying something profound about the so-called peace process that most pundits and even experts are unwilling to recognize or have forgotten. No American or foreign initiative has ever moved Palestinians and Israelis into a peace process. From the very moment of Israel's founding, there have been many efforts to bridge the gaps or forge a plan to bring the parties together. Only after the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) suffered defeats in Jordan and Lebanon, and then was marginalized in the 1980s by the Iran-Iraq War, did it embrace the idea of a political process. And even then, it was difficult to give up the idea of a resistance allowing, if not encouraging, violence against Israel or against what it termed its occupation of Palestinian lands.
Whether or not Arafat actually wanted to rule out the possibility of confronting Israel, he, in fact, called for jihad on a visit to South Africa less than a year after signing the Oslo Accords. Resistance was expected to strengthen international deference to Palestinian demands as a political settlement was pursued. That strategy played out in the second intifada, as Palestinian militants received stipends from other Middle Eastern countries willing and able to pay for the violence. But funds in the region are now tight and channeled to militants waging other battles in other lands. When the Palestinian plight is no longer the major source of Middle Eastern violence, it is also not a regional priority.
Finally, unlike the diplomatic activity set in motion by President Obama, this declaration signals that time may not be on the Palestinian side. The Obama administration tried to aid Palestinians by establishing preconditions that met their demands even before negotiations began. Indulgence of Palestinian hopes to reverse history and shrink Israel’s borders are no longer on offer from President Trump. And with the global shift of energy resources, such deference is no longer necessary.
There may be broad international encouragement for Palestinian leaders to stew in their rage against this declaration and the American policies it implies, but anger is not a strategy that can advance the Palestinian cause. Most importantly, this declaration moves Jerusalem from heaven to earth. If Jerusalem is a symbol and myth of spirituality and grandeur, no political power has a right to claim it. President Trump has recognized the real Jerusalem that is firmly planted on the ground, the one that Israelis—Jews, Christians, and Muslims—live in and with.
David M. Weinberg
Jerusalem Post, Dec. 21, 2017
Former US president Barack Obama’s last speech at the United Nations in September 2016 expressed deep disappointment with conflict around the world. He seemed baffled by the stubborn refusal of the world to reform itself in his exalted image. All he could do was exhort lamely for “global brotherhood.”
How can there still be “deep fault lines in the international order,” Obama wondered aloud, with “societies filled with uncertainty, and unease, and strife? Hasn’t the very identity of man “made up of the flesh and blood and traditions and cultures and faiths from a lot of different parts of the world” served as a shining and irresistible example of blended global peace? How can it be that after eight years of his “visionary” leadership, Obama asked, people everywhere weren’t marching to the tune of his self-declared superior “moral imagination”? It is indeed a “paradox,” Obama declared.
After all, hadn’t he won the Nobel Peace Prize early in his tenure? Shouldn’t that have been enough for everybody else to follow suit and sing kumbaya, including the lions and the lambs? Alas, missing from Obama’s UN address – indeed from his entire presidency – was willingness to project power. In Obama’s view, there are no hard enemies. And if there were bad guys out there, Obama made it clear that under his watch America wasn’t really willing to confront the adversaries.
In fact, the words “enemy, “threat” and “adversary” did not appear even once in Obama’s 5,600-word address. They were not part of his lexicon, nor were concepts like “victory” for the West or “beating” the bad guys. He wouldn’t even name foes, like “radical Islam” or “Islamist terrorism.” And of course, Obama was ashamed of America’s “overbearing” record of decisive global leadership. Even in that final UN speech, he was apologizing for American megawealth, “soulless capitalism,” “unaccountable mercantilist policies,” insufficient foreign assistance, and “strongman” pushing of its liberal democratic preferences.
So it has fallen to the next US president to redirect US policy, based on less wayward beliefs and on more hard-nosed reassertion of Western interests. President Donald Trump has begun to do just that, this week unveiling a new National Security Strategy that triggers the process of rehabilitating US foreign and defense policy in the post-Obama era. It starts by naming America’s adversaries.
Trump’s blueprint warns of a treacherous world in which the US faces rising threats from an emboldened Russia and China, as well as from explicitly labeled “rogue governments” like North Korea and Iran, and from other “jihadi extremist” elements. This is Step One in bringing America back to global leadership: Identifying the enemy. Trump’s 68-page document and accompanying speech also dare to hint at the tools of power that America is prepared to employ in order to secure a safe world for Americans. This explicitly includes “preventive war” (i.e., perhaps a preemptive strike on North Korea or Iran) and the rebuilding of America’s armed forces and its nuclear arsenal.
Obama eviscerated the US military and deemphasized nuclear weapons as a key to American defense. Trump is rebuilding the US armed forces and calls nuclear weapons “the foundation of our strategy to preserve peace and stability by deterring aggression against the US.” Even if you discount for Trump’s braggadocio, the security document is still a robust statement of American strategic realism; a necessary corrective to Obama-era enfeeblement and self-flagellation. There are enemies out there and the US has to lead in confronting them. In one fell swoop, Trump dismissed Obama’s blind faith in multilateralism and international organizations. He also formally rejected isolationism as the correct path for America, as well as hard-to-implement neo-con democracy promotion as a guiding principle for American policy. There are, of course, contradictions between Trump’s newly articulated defense worldview and his first-year record, so it remains to be seen whether the doctrine amounts to much.
Trump wants to promote American power and influence, but his pay-as-you-go version of alliances complicates Washington’s relations with its partners. He wants to be tough on Iran, but his talk of rolling-back Iranian hegemonic advances hasn’t yet amounted to much. Trump also has been as reticent as Obama to confront Vladimir Putin. The strategy paper’s description of the challenge posed by Russia seems at odds with Trump’s own refusal to criticize Putin for the latter’s seizure of Crimea, takeover of Syria, efforts to destabilize Ukraine, support for Iran, violations of a key nuclear treaty with the US, and meddling in US domestic politics.
Here in Israel, Trump’s strategy paper generated headlines for one sentence which unambiguously debunks what is known as “linkage theory” – the argument that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the root of the broader region’s instability. “For generations the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has been understood as the prime irritant preventing peace and prosperity in the region,” the blueprint reads. “Today, the threats from jihadist terrorist organizations and the threat from Iran are creating the realization that Israel is not the cause of the region’s problems.”
Well, hallelujah. Finally a bit of realism from Washington, after a decade or more of unfriendly diplomatic orthodoxy that laid the primary responsibility on Israel for Mideast turmoil! It is the same realism tinged with a modicum of moral conviction that was on display last week when Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. He slapped down Palestinian denialism and effectively punished the Palestinian Authority for its rejectionism. He brushed aside Palestinian and radical Islamic threats of cataclysmic violence. By refusing to hold US policy hostage to threats and to the inability of the Palestinians to compromise, Trump is setting the stage for a more realistic Mideast diplomatic process.
DINING WITH BAHRAINIS AT A JERUSALEM MALL
Manfred Gerstenfeld
Arutz Sheva, Dec. 14, 2017
It was a surreal experience on the first night of Hanukkah. I was invited to a dinner with interfaith visitors from the kingdom of Bahrain. The delegation from this Gulf state was hosted by the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC). Like many other Arab countries, Bahrain has no diplomatic relations with Israel and until recently it had boycotted Israel.
On the way to the restaurant at the Jerusalem Mamilla Mall the Bahraini delegation passed the mall’s Chabad’s candle lighting festival. So many people attend these festivities that the visitors were almost prevented from passing through. I was told that several delegates danced together with the Chabad representatives and bystanders. The Bahraini delegation included Sunni and Shiite Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and Christians. A Syrian Orthodox priest told me that the originators of his church were Jews. The gathering started with Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles lighting the first candle of Hanukkah. He then passed the shamash, the lighting candle, to several Bahrainis who each touched the burning candle with it to participate in the lighting.
This unofficial delegation visited religious and other sites in Israel. It was only able to come because the authorities of the Arab Kingdom did not oppose the visit. The King of Bahrain, Hamad bin Isa al Khalifa, had invited Rabbi Marvin Hier who heads the SWC and Rabbi Cooper in February this year to visit him at the island’s capital, Manama. That meeting was not kept secret and even reported on local TV. Prince Nasser bin Hamad al Khalifa, son of the Bahraini king came with a large delegation to the headquarters of the SWC in Los Angeles in September 2017. They also visited the SWC’s Museum of Tolerance and participated in a dinner attended by hundreds of interfaith leaders. When the Israeli national hymn Hatikvah was played, the prince and the delegation stood.
During that visit a declaration by the Bahraini king about religious freedom was released. It said: "Every individual has the freedom to practice their religion, providing they do no harm to others, respect the laws of the land, and accept responsibility, spiritually and materially, for their choices." Rabbi Hier said that the King of Bahrain now opposes the Arab states' boycott of Israel. The king also intends to allow citizens from his kingdom to visit Israel freely. There are still some Jews living in Manama, where there is a synagogue. According to a secret US cable published by Wikileaks, the King had mentioned to an American official that Bahrain had contacts with Israeli intelligence…
During the dinner I sat next to a Buddhist monk from Thailand who lives in Bahrain. He had been a monk for 17 years. He is the head of the local community of Thai Buddhists — which has some members from Sri Lanka — and has 2.000 followers. He didn't partake in the dinner because he never eats after lunchtime. A Hindu gentleman opposite me also didn't eat. He told me that he fasts for more than 24 hours, every 15 days. He is the sales and marketing manager of a Bahraini trading company. He explained that he starts every day with 2 hours of prayer. In Israel he visited a temple close to Ariel where there is a small Hindu community.
Next to him sat the priest of his temple in Bahrain. He said that he doesn’t fast and called the fasting man a “devotee.” In Israeli terminology this probably translates as ‘ultra-orthodox.” The priest also mentioned that out of the 350,000 Indians of various religions living in Bahrain, about 100,000 are Hindus. There are about 7 or 8 Hindu temples in the country. On a festive day his temple could be visited during the day by up to 15,000 people. The man sitting next to him, a business man, was the chairman of the temple.
On my other side sat an American-born universalist living in a village in Mid Java, Indonesia. He said that he considers himself a Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Christian. He added that it was difficult to also be a Jew. We agreed that unless one was born into this faith, a lot of education was required to become a Jew. Next to him sat the leader of the Bahraini delegation, Betsy Mathieson. She heads an organization, "Sharing the Humble Bahraini Way of Life." It wasn't exactly like in the time of the Maccabees, but I considered this dinner a small miracle taking place on the first day of Hanukkah.
CIJR Wishes All Our Friends & Supporters: Shabbat Shalom!
Vote Shows Israel Making Little Headway at United Nations: Herb Keinon, Jerusalem Post, Dec. 22, 2017—Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s foreign policy doctrine is based on a simple idea: Israel’s position in international organizations will improve as its bilateral relations with individual countries gets better.
Europe's Governments Fail the Jews – Again: Giulio Meotti, Arutz Sheva, Dec. 20, 2017—The resolution at the UN Security Council, in which Egypt asked not to move the embassies to Jerusalem, as the United States pledged to do two weeks ago, ended with 14 votes for the resolution against 1 – the US veto. For the first time in a year, the United States vetoed a United Nations Security Council resoluton aimed precisely at Israel.
The Secret Backstory of How Obama Let Hezbollah off the Hook: Josh Meyer, Politico, Dec., 2017—In its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States, according to a POLITICO investigation.
Tokyo Support Rally for Israel (Video): Youtube, July 31, 2014— July 31, 2014, rally support for Israel was held Israel embassy in Japan front. In Tokyo.
