1 Elul 5777
23 August 2017
The News on the Israel Street
Palestinian terror yesterday . . .
Palestinian terrorists threw “rocks” and Molotovs at a variety of locations including Hizma, in the Judean Hills near Hevron, and near Nabi Saleh.
A Palestinian terrorist was captured near Burin before he could carry out a stabbing attack with the knife he was armed with.
Palestinian terrorists throwing Molotovs set fire to an area near the “Worshipers Road” that leads from Kiryat Arba to the Cave of the Patriarchs.
The community of Kedumim was put on lockdown last night as IDF troops searched for but did not find a Palestinian terrorist from Jit who penetrated the community perimeter security fence.
Two Palestinian terrorists driving a truck loaded with dozens of M-16s and M-16 parts were captured on their way into Hevron.
An outright lie from the U.S. State Department . . .
Here is a quotation from the “International Religious Freedom Report for 2016” issued by the American State Department:
“The [Israeli] government continued to enforce a prohibition on non-Orthodox (including mixed gender) Jewish prayer services at the Western Wall.”
False, fake . . . an outright lie.
Mixed gender prayer has taken place at the Kotel for the last decade. Just a month ago, your humble servant published a video on this blog showing me in the mixed gender section.
The Kushner-Greenblatt-Powell Middle East peace process farce continues . . .
Yesterday, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner was in Saudi Arabia to meet in Jeddah with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Their main subject was how to reach a “real and lasting peace” between Israel and the Palestinians.
There is one thing for sure.
Real and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians will not come from any idea of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman because all he wants to do is push the long-dismissed Arab Peace Initiative which was concocted by Saudi Arabia in 2002.
Why was it dismissed by Israel? Because it called for “all Palestinian refugees” to be given homes in Israel.
But never mind any of this. After the revelation a few days ago that it is Kushner who stopped the move of the American Embassy to Jerusalem, whatever currency Kushner had with everyday Israelis has evaporated.
We are all asking the question: “What in the world makes Kushner qualified to negotiate a peace agreement?”
The answer is: “nothing.” Negotiating his family’s way out of possible bankruptcy by making shrewd real estate deals hardly qualifies Kushner to make decisions about what goes on here.
What Kushner has led us into, at the urging of Trump, is another fruitless “peace process” that will drag on for years.
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TODAY’S BLOG:
After Seven Months: The Trump-Israel Report Card
The discussion of Kushner brings us to our blog today which is a Trump-Israel report card. Donald Trump has now been president for seven months which is sufficient time for us to evaluate how he and his administration are doing.
Let’s start with a list of “positives”:
1. The most positive actions that Trump has taken toward Israel have been in the United Nations. Ambassador Nikki Haley is all that Israel could ever wish for, and more. After the December disaster of last year’s Obama abstention in the Security Council, Haley has stood up proudly for Israel in every U.N. venue.
2. The Trump Administration continues to send mixed signals about construction in Jewish communities and neighborhoods in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria. On the one hand, the White House says that it opposes “unrestrained settlement construction”, but on the other hand has not condemned Israel for such community construction (not that Israel is constructing anything). Just last month an Administration official said that “past demands for a settlement freeze have not helped advance peace talks.” The lack of condemnation and lack of a demand for a settlement freeze, compared to the actions of the last 8 years of Obama, Kerry, and Clinton, is a definite plus.
3. President Trump continues to avoid using the phrase “two-state solution”, saying that it is up to the Israelis and Palestinians to decide what kind of solution they want.
Let’s move to the “neutrals”:
1. The appointment of David Friedman as U.S. Ambassador to Israel which seemed to be such a refreshing change from the last 8 years of Obama has turned out to be something of a disappointment. Sure, his daughter just made aliya to Israel, and he continues to make occasional supportive statements about this and that. However, the firebrand that we thought Friedman was disappeared in his Senate confirmation hearings when he backtracked on virtually everything he ever said. The firebrand that was Friedman appears to have been permanently muted by Trump.
2. The naming of Jared Kushner as a primary member of the Middle East negotiating team (see above). This could easily be put into the negative column, but for the moment we will leave it here.
3. For all of his talk about being strongly pro-Israel, Trump has surrounded himself with a mix of advisors some important ones of whom are decidedly less so. Mattis, McMaster, and Dina Powell are all on record as having made remarks which were not ones we think of as being “pro-Israel.” Remember the Trump visit to Israel during which he refused to go to the Kotel (Western Wall) with Netanyahu because it would show bias toward “the Jewish claim” to the Wall–that refusal was apparently engineered by McMaster.
4. The Trump Administration has sent mixed signals about supporting the Taylor Force Act which would cut funding to the PLO unless the PLO stops paying the salaries of imprisoned terrorists and the families of dead terrorists. The Trump State Department ludicrously claims that the PLO is already cutting such payments.
And finish with the “negatives”:
1. Trump broke his promise to move the Embassy to Jerusalem. Period. Exclamation point. There is nothing else to say.
2. Trump broke his promise to scuttle the Iranian Nuclear Weapons Appeasement Agreement. Yes, it is true that the US Treasury department imposed sanctions on six Iranian companies in July because of their involvement in ballistic missile development, but Trump minions went to great lengths to say that the sanctions are not related to the Agreement. For all of his pre-election bluster, Trump and his cohorts do not seem to want to rock the boat–and have even found Iran in compliance with the Agreement when international agencies have not.
3. Trump refuses to guarantee that Iranian and Iranian-proxy (read Hezbollah and the Shi’ite mercenary militias from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq) troops will leave Syria at the end of the war there. A delegation of Israeli representatives has just returned from Washington, disappointed that no such guarantee was forthcoming.
4. The Trump Administration opposed last month a $558 million increase in allocated aid for Israel for 2018 that was slated to come out of “Overseas Contingency Operations”.
So where does this leave us?
Your humble servant reads the above as a “C-“.
Trump inaction on Iranian involvement in Syria alone constitutes an existential threat to this country as does his Administration’s continued adherence to the Nuclear Weapons Appeasement Agreement. The failure to move the Embassy was a major disappointment here as is the return to the same old “peace process.”
This is counterbalanced by the stellar performance of Ambassador Haley and the change in tone from the White House and State Department about construction in Jewish communities and neighborhoods.
Compared to the Obama Administration’s F— (that’s three minuses) for eight years, the Trump Administration is faring better, but it could be much better.
A student from Malawi, who had worked with an Israeli health volunteer in his country battling AIDS, came up to us as we walked down the street in the UC-Davis Picnic Day Parade and wanted to carry the Israeli flag.