U.S. National Security Advisor McMaster: “Hezbollah Poses No Danger”

Wouldn’t it be nice if there had been no Palestinian terrorists throwing IEDs and pipe bombs at Rachel’s Tomb, and on the tunnel road leading into Jerusalem, and near Bethlehem, and at the Etzion Industrial Park, and, and, and . . .?

Wouldn’t it be nice to have one day with no Palestinian terrorism?

There are no such days.

Dark financial days ahead for the PLO? . . .

Probably not, however it was interesting yesterday how various Arab news media reported that Oman, Qatar, and Egypt have officially informed the PLO that they are cutting off all money to the PLO as October 1.

There are plenty of countries and entities ready to step in and fill the slack ranging from Turkey to Iran to the European Union–but still it was an interesting announcement.

The High Court gives and the High Court takes away . . .

At this time yesterday, the orthodox were jumping for joy when the High Court rejected the petition of the Reform movement to allow transportation on Shabbat.

Today, the same orthodox are jumping up and down in anger. The High Court issued these two rulings:

1. In the first ruling, the Court took away the monopoly the Chief Rabbinate has had on declaring that food businesses, particularly restaurants, are kosher. The ruling says that a restaurant can put up a description of its “kosherness” on the wall of the restaurant, and can operate without a certificate from the Chief Rabbinate attesting to its kosherness.

2. In the second, the Court ruled that the 2015 Knesset amending of the draft law is “unconstitutional” (unconstitutional is in quotation marks because Israel has no constitution). The 2015 amendment had provided an exemption to the Orthodox from the fact that they either had to serve in the IDF or complete national service.  The Court has given the Knesset one year to come up with another compromise.

It was reported last evening that a dangerous incident took place in the Trump White House two weeks ago.

Senior IDF officers were in the office of Trump’s National Security Advisor, Gen. H.R. McMaster. They were briefing McMaster about the large-scale military exercises taking place this week along the Lebanese border.

Suddenly, McMaster stopped the meeting and asked that a “terrorism expert” come into the room. That “expert” was Mustafa Javed Ali whom McMaster appointed as Senior Director of Counter Terrorism a few months ago. If you can believe this, before Ali was appointed, he was the “Diversity Outreach Coordinator” of CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations. 

When Ali entered the room, the IDF officers got up to leave because Ali is on record saying that “Hezbollah is not a terrorist organization.”

When that happened, McMaster began yelling at the officers and declared that “Hezbollah poses no danger.”

In one sense, this comes as no surprise; it has long been believed that McMaster played an integral role within the Administration to keep the American Embassy in Tel Aviv, a viewpoint he underscored when he refused to allow PM Netanyahu to accompany President Trump to the Kotel when the President was here a few months ago. McMaster is actually on record as saying that the Western Wall does not belong to Israel.

But to claim that Hezbollah poses no danger?

This is like saying that Hezbollah’s patron Iran poses no danger. And if that is the Trump Administration’s viewpoint, things in the Middle East are even worse off than we thought and will continue spiraling out of control.