Tag Archives: Israel

Another Reason To Leave The United Nations

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On Sunday, CBN News reported that on Friday, the United Nations voted 98-17, with 52 abstentions to have the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to advise the world body concerning Israel’s “occupation” of territories in the West Bank (biblical Judea and Samaria, including Jerusalem), maintaining that it is a form of de facto annexation. Thankfully, the United States voted against the resolution. The measure will next go to the UN General plenary in December to be officially ratified.

The article reports:

Lapid  (outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid) cautioned that the vote could prompt more violence from Palestinians. “This step will not change the reality on the ground, nor will it help the Palestinian people in any way; it may even result in an escalation,” he warned. “Supporting this move is a prize for terrorist organizations and the campaign against Israel.”

Israel’s UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan tweeted, “there is no authority that can declare that the Jewish nation is an occupier in its homeland,” and added that the appeal to the ICJ in The Hague was “the last nail in the burial coffin” of reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinians. Defense Minister Benny Gantz said the resolution was “disconnected from reality.”

The resolution contains language stating that Israel’s continued control of territories it won in the 1967 Six-Day War can be considered a form of annexation, and therefore is not legal. Since 1967, Israel declared sovereignty over Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, but military law still applies in other parts of the West Bank. 

The Biden administration had campaigned against the UN resolution and urged Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas not to introduce it. Part of Abbas’s strategy may be to cement his legacy, since the 87-year-old president has not held elections in 16 years and a succession struggle is in its early stages.

The resolution also calls for investigations into Israeli actions concerning its capital which are “aimed at altering the demographic composition, character, and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem.” It also says Israel has adopted “discriminatory legislation and measures.”

Until the Palestinian Authority removes from its charter the goal of removing Israel as a nation, there is no possibility of a peaceful, two-state solution. The Palestinian people may want peace, but their leaders do not. We need to remember that when the Arabs controlled the Old City part of Jerusalem, the Jews were not allowed to worship there. Jews are still not allowed to pray on the Temple Mount. Israel is a democracy. Arab states generally do not support democracy.

Ignoring The History

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On Tuesday, NewsMax reported that Australia has changed its position on recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The article reports”

Australia has reversed a previous government’s recognition of West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the foreign minister said Tuesday.

The center-left Labor Party government Cabinet agreed to again recognize Tel Aviv as the capital and reaffirmed that Jerusalem’s status must be resolved in peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said.

Australia remained committed to a two-party solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, and “we will not support an approach that undermines this prospect,” Wong said.

A two-state solution is a wonderful idea, but there is a problem.

“PA presents the PLO Charter as currently calling for Israel’s destruction,” by Itamar Marcus and Maurice Hirsch, Palestinian Media Watch, March 16, 2021:

As part of a TV series entitled “Lexicon of the Revolution” official PA TV broadcast a filler about the 1964 Charter of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

While presenting the historical overview of the Charter, the PA chose to cite the Charter’s declarations denying Israel’s right to exist and the PLO’s goal of destroying Israel, even claiming that it is supported by the UN. For example:

“The Palestinian Arab people is the one with the legitimate right to its homeland”

“The 16th clause [of the Charter] states that the liberation of Palestine, from an international perspective, is a defensive operation necessitated by self-defense, as determined by the UN Charter.”

[Official PA TV, Aug. 10, 2018; March 6 (twice) 2021]

This second message is stated both by the narrator and reinforced by a slide on the screen.

Text: “Clause 16 states that the liberation of Palestine, from an international perspective, is a defensive operation necessitated by self-defense, as determined by the UN Charter” alongside the old Fatah logo that includes crossed rifles and the map of “Palestine” that includes all of Israel, together with this text: “Al-Asifa – the Palestinian National Liberation Movement”

What was left out of the PA TV broadcast is just as significant as what was included. Most specifically, there is no reference to the fact that the PA obligated itself to cancel all the clauses of the PLO Charter calling for Israel’s destruction, under the terms of the Oslo Accords.

The narrator’s introductory explanation likewise denies Israel’s right to exist – saying Israel exists on Arab “stolen homeland” and therefore “returning it” is an act of “self-defense”:

It’s hard to form a two-state solution with people who want to annihilate you.

Eliminating The Terrorists One By One

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On Monday, Scott Johnson at Power Line Blog reported that IRGC Colonel Hassan Sayad Khodayari was killed yesterday.

The article reports:

IRGC Colonel Hassan Sayad Khodayari was assassinated yesterday Sunday in broad daylight outside his home by two men on a motorcycle who rode off into the sunset. Iran blamed the assassination on “elements linked to the global arrogance,” which the Times of Israel’s story translates as “the term for the United States and its allies including Israel.”

I think Iran is fingering Israel, but they don’t want to let the Great Satan off the hook either. The mullahs have their assassins working on Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, if not President Trump himself. The Jerusalem Post notes: “The IRGC also reported that Khodayari was involved in the security of the Shiite holy places in Damascus and that he had a close relationship with Qasem Soleimani, an IRGC commander who was killed in a US airstrike in 2020.”

The ToI story adds one more translation: “Reports identified [Khodayari] as a ‘defender of the sanctuary,’ a reference to Iranians who carry out Tehran’s operations in Syria and Iraq within the Guard’s elite Quds Force that oversees operations abroad.” The Jerusalem Post covers the techniques employed in the assassination here (also linked above).

The Jerusalem Post also notes: “According to Iranian sources, Khodayari was responsible for attempts to abduct and assassinate Israelis in Cyprus, Turkey and Colombia, N12 reported.” There’s a war underway. However, I’m quite sure the United States has quit fighting back President Trump left town. The Post’s analysis separately concludes “Assassination of IRGC official shows Israel has shifted gears.”

If America chooses to sit on the sidelines while Israel deals with terrorist attacks, Israel will successfully deal with those attacks on her own. It would be nice if America helped, but not necessary. The Israelis have a way of getting things done on their own.

The article notes:

Unsourced reports in the Israeli media state that Khodayari had planned kidnappings and other attempts to attack Israeli and Jewish targets worldwide. Israel Hayom has more here.

I guess those plans are at least temporarily on hold.

Incredible Coincidence Or Medical Fact?

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On Friday The Epoch Times reported the following:

A new study found a correlation between an increase in emergency cardiovascular events among people under 40 years of age during the launch of Israel’s COVID-19 vaccine program.

Published in the Nature journal, researchers utilized data from the Israel National Emergency Medical Services between 2019 and 2021 that evaluated emergency, or EMS, calls among 16- to 39-year-olds across Israel “with potential factors including COVID-19 infection and vaccination rates.”

They found that there was a 25 percent increase in EMS calls between January 2021 to May 2021, as compared with the years 2019 and 2020. Israel, which primarily uses Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine, launched its COVID-19 vaccine program in late December 2020.

“The weekly emergency call counts were significantly associated with the rates of 1st and 2nd vaccine doses administered to this age group but were not with COVID-19 infection rates,” they found. “While not establishing causal relationships, the findings raise concerns regarding vaccine-induced undetected severe cardiovascular side-effects and underscore the already established causal relationship between vaccines and myocarditis, a frequent cause of unexpected cardiac arrest in young individuals.”

They recommend that when evaluating possible vaccine side-effects and COVID-19 outcomes, officials should incorporate EMS data and relevant data to identify potential new health trends such as an increase in EMS calls, and “promptly investigate potential underlying causes.”

The article concludes with the expected pushback:

“As COVID-19 vaccine rollouts often take place with background community COVID-19 infections, it could be challenging to identify whether increased incidence of myocarditis and related cardiovascular conditions … is driven by COVID-19 infections or induced by COVID-19 vaccines,” it  (The Israeli research team) added.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and most health agencies worldwide have said that the benefits of COVID-19 vaccines outweigh the potential risks. The CDC on its website says that most patients who develop myocarditis or pericarditis and got medical care have responded well to treatment.

Symptoms include chest pain, shortness of breath, and feelings of a fast-beating or fluttering heart.

Children and teenagers are not generally at serious risk from Covid. It is becoming evident that they may be at risk from the vaccine. Please proceed with caution.

Spreading Lies In The Name Of Human Rights

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On Monday, The Wall Street Journal posted an editorial about a recent report by Amnesty International. The more than 200-page report accused Israel of being an apartheid state. When you consider that Arabs in Israel have more freedom than Arabs anywhere else in the Middle East, this is an amazing accusation.

The editorial notes:

Perhaps you thought Israel had long ago established its right to exist as a Jewish state. Guess again. Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran want to eliminate Israel as we know it, but who would have thought they’d find allies in Amnesty International?

Perhaps we should have known this given some of Amnesty’s sympathies with the global left. But the nonprofit advocate for political prisoners is going far beyond that with its 211-page report labeling Israel an “apartheid” state that deserves the world’s opprobrium and sanction. The report is embargoed until Tuesday, but we’ve obtained the draft from a source other than Amnesty. It deserves condemnation for its bias and lack of understanding about why Israel survives amid hostile neighbors.

…The Amnesty report is a long indictment of Israel that attempts to show it is an apartheid state in how it treats Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza. “Israel has established and maintained an institutionalized regime of oppression and domination of the Palestinian population for the benefit of Jewish Israelis—wherever it has exercised control over Palestinians’ lives since 1948,” says the report summary.

No one was claiming to be a Palestinian in 1948, but that doesn’t stop Amnesty International from attempting to undermine Israel’s right to exist. As I have reported before, Walid Shoebat once stated, “One day during the 1960s I went to bed a Jordanian Muslim, and when I woke up the next morning, I was informed that I was now a Palestinian Muslim, and that I was no longer a Jordanian Muslim.”

The editorial concludes:

The Amnesty report is especially ill-timed in an era when Israel and Arab states are negotiating new deals for commerce and travel since the Abraham Accords. A fair assumption is that Amnesty’s drafters hope to block such progress by inflaming world opinion with the “apartheid” slander. Amnesty also calls on the United Nations to sanction Israel, and the International Criminal Court to investigate and hold Israelis criminally responsible.

We assume the Biden Administration will denounce this calumny and oppose all efforts to use it as a cudgel against America’s best friend in the Middle East.

Don’t count on the Biden administration coming to Israel’s rescue.

Disconcerting At Best

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On Tuesday, Trending Politics posted an article about a statement from Dr. Fauci about vaccines that is far from comforting.

This is the statement:

“This would not be the first time, if it happened, that a vaccine that looked good in initial safety actually made people worse,” Fauci said. “There was the history of the Respiratory Syncitial Virus vaccine in children, which paradoxically made the children worse.”

The article continues:

“In the late 1960s, children in Washington, DC received an RSV vaccine in which the virus was inactivated with formalin,” Reuters reported. “Eighty percent of the children given the shot were hospitalized with severe respiratory disease, and two died. Many scientists had thought the formalin was responsible for the vaccine’s problems, but the chemical has been used safely in other vaccines.”

“The problem, they report this month in the journal Nature Medicine, was that the children’s antibodies were not binding strongly enough to the inactivated virus to produce a protective immune response,” the report noted. “Instead, the antibodies were dragging the dead virus with them, triggering a massive attack by other arms of the immune system.”

It should be noted that in 2019, the NIH admitted that “we are still lacking a safe and effective RSV vaccine.” But it somehow developed a “safe and effective” Covid-19 vaccine in a matter of months?

As noted before, the American public has no way of knowing if the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was rigorously tested, because the FDA refuses to fully release the documents for 75 years. A “whistleblower” on the inside of Pfizer’s clinical trials has documented many alleged serious issues, including “falsifying data.”

The phenomenon that Dr. Fauci is alluding to, “leaky vaccines,” has been well-documented. A Penn State University study showed that “leaky” vaccines can cause viruses to become lethal for the unvaccinated.

“Not all vaccines prevent infection,” PSU noted. “Some, known as leaky vaccines, prolong host survival or reduce disease symptoms without preventing viral replication and transmission. Although leaky vaccines provide anti-disease benefits to vaccinated individuals, new research by CIDD’s Andrew Read, David Kennedy and colleagues at the Avian Oncogenic Virus Group in the United Kingdom, and The University of New England in Australia, has demonstrated that leaky vaccines can make the situation for unvaccinated individuals worse.”

How in the world can anyone justify a vaccine mandate if they are aware of the problems with the vaccine?

In July 2021, Deseret News posted the following:

Israel — the poster child for COVID-19 vaccination and the first country to reach herd immunity — has seen a recent rise in cases. Recently, most of the people testing positive are vaccinated, reported The Washington Post.

The trend has brought a slew of questions about the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines and the implications of new strains for future outbreaks. While these trends initially seem like cause for vaccine skepticism, a closer look at Israel’s current outbreaks shows that vaccines are effective and working — even against the delta variant.

No. If people are getting sick, the vaccines are NOT working. People may be getting less sick, but if they are still getting sick and still spreading the virus, maybe the vaccine is not working as well as it should.

The article also includes the following:

The people who are not testing positive in the current outbreak are those who have had COVID-19 previously and recovered. These people account for 9% of Israel’s population but less than 1% of recent infections, according to Kovler’s analysis. This has brought new questions about whether natural infections are more protective against the delta variant than vaccinations — but the answer is not yet certain.

Yet, America does not consider natural immunity in its vaccine mandates. Europe does.

Shouldn’t We Be Alarmed At This?

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On Thursday American Greatness posted an article about a recent statement by President Biden about Israel’s Six-Day War.

The article reports:

Either Joe Biden’s faulty memory or his lifelong habit of padding his resume was on display Wednesday during a menorah lighting at the White House in celebration of Hanukkah.

During his remarks before the lighting, Biden bragged about “the many times” he’d been to Israel, and then decided to alter history and insert himself as an important player in the Six-Day War.

“I have known every — every prime minister well since Golda Meir, including Golda Meir,” Biden said to applause. “And during the Six-Day War, I had an opportunity to — she invited me to come over because I was going to be the liaison between she and the Egyptians about the Suez, and so on and so forth.”

This would be an impressive story, except Meir wasn’t Israel’s prime minister during the Six Day War of 1967 (she was PM from March 17, 1969 to June 3, 1974), and Biden was still in law school at the time, (where he ranked a dismal 76th in his class of 85).

Golda Meir became Prime Minister in 1969. Levi Eshkol was Prime Minister from 1963 to 1969.

The article at American Greatness quotes a National Review article from December 2 of this year.

The National Review article reports:

Biden did indeed meet Golda Meir in 1973 — six years after the Six Day War — but that is . . . not how the Israelis remember that meeting, at least according to a contemporaneous classified Israeli memo from that time:

Biden warned that Israel’s actions in the territories it had captured during the Six Day War, including the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, were leading to “creeping annexation.”

Since he believed Israel was militarily dominant in the region, he suggested the Jewish state might initiate a first step for peace through unilateral withdrawals from areas with no strategic importance.

The official said Biden criticized the Nixon administration for being “dragged by Israel,” complaining that it was impossible to have a real debate in the Senate about the Middle East as senators were fearful of saying things unpopular with Jewish voters.

Meir rejected Biden’s call for unilateral steps, launching into a speech about the region and its problems (possibly the spiel Biden alluded to in his own comments years later).

The official added his own personal impressions regarding the young senator at the bottom of the document, saying Biden was full of respect toward the Israeli leader and repeatedly said he had come to learn, “and yet while speaking displayed a fervor and made comments that signaled his lack of diplomatic experience.”

In August 2021, The Washington Times reported:

You have to give President Biden credit for consistency. Unfortunately, he has been consistently wrong. As Robert Gates, former defense secretary in the Obama administration, once put it, Biden has “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”

Unfortunately President Biden is the person currently leading our country.

Sowing The Seeds Of War In The Middle East

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The Biden administration has drastically changed President Trump’s Middle East policies. President Trump worked to form alliances between Arab countries and Israel. Those alliances were based partially on economic gains for the countries involved, but those alliances were also based on a mutual fear and distrust of Iran. Iran is the major funding source of terrorism in that region and around the world. The Biden administration has chosen to undo a lot of the good work done by the Trump administration.

CBN News posted an article today about the shift in policy.

The article reports:

Relations between the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) and the Biden administration have shifted dramatically from the former administration of President Donald Trump.

Palestinian leaders hope to make the most of this new relationship and Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh wants the world to know he’s satisfied so far with what he’s hearing from Washington.  

“Our relationship with the new American administration has been going very well based on the promises that were made by the Biden administration,” Shtayyeh told reporters at a press conference on Wednesday.

Just for the record, when the Palestinian Authority Prime Minister is happy with the direction things are going, chances are you are going in the wrong direction.

The article continues:

Shtayyeh said those specific promises include restoring funding to the UN agency devoted to Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), opposing Israeli construction in Judea and Samaria – what’s also referred to as the West Bank, and maintaining the status quo in Jerusalem on the Temple Mount, which only permits Muslims to pray at the holy site.

A State Department official told CBN News that senior U.S. officials have been consistent in their private discussions with P.A. officials and their public comments “on all of these issues.”

“Regarding assistance, the United States is currently providing about $450 million in assistance to the Palestinian people—all of it consistent with United States law,” the official said, adding that “we intend to provide an additional $75 million in development and economic assistance in the West Bank and Gaza over the next year.”  

The official also said the State Department has “made clear both privately and publicly” that it supports maintaining the status quo on Temple Mount and that “it is critical for Israel and the Palestinian Authority to refrain from unilateral steps that exacerbate tensions and undercut efforts to advance a negotiated two-state solution. This certainly includes settlement activity.”

Let’s look at some of the direction of these changes in American policy. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has not been a neutral player in disputes between Israel and her Arab neighbors. (article here). Funding the Palestinian Authority means funding terrorism (article here). Preventing Jews from praying on the Temple Mount (the status quo) is also not a move that creates peace or trust. Teaching young children in Gaza to become martyrs to reclaim Jerusalem and drive the Jews into the sea is also not a recipe for peace (article here).

At some point the Biden administration and those who support the idea of a two-state solution in the Middle East will realize how unrealistic that idea is. The ‘Palestinians’ do not want a two-state solution–their leaders have turned down the offer numerous times. The ‘Palestinians’ want a one-state solution where they drive the Jews in Israel into the sea. That is really sad when you consider that Israel is a democracy that allows Arabs full rights within their country. The Arabs in Israel have more freedom and a higher standard of living than anywhere else in the Middle East. You would think that the Arabs  would be trying to emulate Israel instead of trying to destroy it.

 

A Short History Lesson

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When Israel became a nation in May 1948, it was promptly invaded by all of its Arab neighbors. Israel was not able to maintain control of the entire city of Jerusalem, and part of the city fell into Arab hands and was controlled by Jordan. From 1948-1967 Jews were denied access to their holy sites by the Jordanians. In 1967, when Israel regained control of the entire city of Jerusalem, Christians, Jews, and Muslims were all given access to their holy sites. That is one illustration of the difference in the way Jews treat Arabs and the way Arabs treat Jews.

In 2001 Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat refused a deal brokered by President Clinton that would have established a Palestinian State.

The deal included the following (source: The Jewish News of Northern California):

control over some 95 percent of the West Bank, 100 percent of Gaza, predominantly Arab areas of Jerusalem (including the Temple Mount and most of the Old City), the Muslim holy sites and the limited return to Israel for at least some of the Palestinian refugees.

That is not all: The Palestinians would have been compensated for the missing 5 percent of West Bank territory with an equivalent area inside pre-1967 Israel, presumably in the Negev Desert, contiguous with the Gaza Strip.

Arafat refused the deal. Had he accepted the deal, he probably would have met the same fate as Anwar Sadat, who was assassinated after signing a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.

It needs to be understood that the ‘Palestinians’ do not want peace with Israel–they want to drive Israel into the sea. The Palestinians are teaching their kindergarten children to be martyrs to reclaim Jerusalem. Below is a picture of a Palestinian kindergarten class.

Fast forward to today…

The Times of Israel is reporting today:

The intention of the U.S. Biden Administration to reopen a consulate for the Palestinians in Jerusalem should be a trigger warning for Israel.

The consulate was closed in 2018 by former President Trump when the U.S. embassy was moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The closure shut down our enemies’ hope for the division of Israel’s capital, a hope that will be revived if it is reopened.

A unilateral decision by the Biden Administration in that regard without Israel’s consent would not only contradict international law, but would also send a message that day by day we are giving up increasing control over almost everything —over Jerusalem and the territories, over the nation’s fabric and identity, over the exorbitant transfer of money to Gaza which afterwards transforms into weapons against us. We would be giving up on ourselves, on our right to be in the Land of Israel.

The Biden administration is not leading us toward peace–they are leading us to war. Please follow the link to read the entire Times of Israel article. This is not a smart move by the Biden administration.

In Genesis 12:3, the Bible says, “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

The earth has been blessed by Israel–Israel has received more Nobel Prizes for scientific discoveries than any other nation. We put ourselves at risk when we work against the interests of Israel.

What We Are Not Being Told

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CBN News posted an article today about an Israeli doctor who has been doing research on Ivermectin as a treatment for the coronavirus.

The article reports:

Professor Eli Schwartz is with the Sheba Medical Center in Israel, considered one of the world’s top hospitals. For decades, Prof. Schwartz has traveled the world fighting outbreaks like Dengue Fever and Ebola. He also began the Travel Medicine and Tropical Disease Institute at Sheba. At the beginning of the pandemic and months before any vaccine, Israel’s Defense Ministry assigned Schwartz to find a medical solution for COVID-19.

“Since Ivermectin is one of the drugs that we are using in daily life in the Tropical Institute, I knew it. I know the safety profile of it. And since there was some hints of in-vitro studies, which show the efficacy against specifically, even against COVID-19, we decided to go for it.”

That meant putting the drug through a clinical trial that lasted ten months.

“Our study, which was done here, it’s a randomized controlled trial, double-blind. It’s really, I would say, this is the best method that you are doing studies. And our conclusion is that it really has antiviral activities,” Shwartz told CBN News.

From his international experience in the field, Schwartz knew Ivermectin targeted parasites. Since its development in 1987, nearly 4 billion doses with few side effects and at low cost have protected millions of people from insidious parasitical diseases like River Blindness and Elephantiasis.

That success won its developers the Nobel Prize for medicine in 2015. Schwartz’s study made headlines in Israel when his trial showed Ivermectin to also be anti-viral.  

“This is the first drug to show antiviral activity. And then, I think, there’s a good reason to continue with a much more thorough investigation to see, for example, whether people who are at high risk, may not deteriorate to be hospitalized, to be mechanically ventilated, or to death.”

Schwartz’s clinical study found that by day four, 86% of his patients who took ivermectin recovered. By day six, 94% recovered.

“The bottom line is that … Ivermectin decreased faster the viral load, and also sterilized the culture much better compared to the placebo,” he said.

Schwartz explained to CBN News this means Ivermectin killed the virus and his patients were non-infectious. Schwartz says this could save lives and reduce quarantines by days.

“It’s a huge change in life. It’s a huge change for the patient. It’s a huge change for his family. And from the economical point of view, it’s a dramatic change. You know, it’s how much money you can save for the economy of the country, if you can shorten the isolation time,” he said.

But ivermectin is not accepted by the global health establishment. A major FDA concern is that a number of people have tried to self-medicate using a form of the drug intended for livestock.

“Don’t do it. There’s no evidence whatsoever that it works and it could potentially have toxicity, as you just mentioned, with people who have gone to poison control centers because they’ve taken the drug at a ridiculous dose and wind up getting sick,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci.

The World Health Organization advises “that Ivermectin only be used be used to treat COVID-19 within clinical trials.”

The doctor notes the problems with getting this drug into general use against the coronavirus:

The National Institutes of Health says, “Ivermectin is not approved by the FDA for the treatment of any viral infection” and that “well-conducted clinical trials are needed to provide more specific, evidence-based guidance on the role of ivermectin in the treatment of COVID-19.”

For studies to be accepted by the broader medical community, it must be peer-reviewed and published in a medical journal. That’s where Prof. Schwartz hit a roadblock.

Several journals turned him down, but one is currently reviewing his study.

“It’s something really very odd. I mean, in my career, I published, I think at least 300 papers and chapters, and I never heard the story that they have with Ivermectin. I think that this kind of international campaign, anti-Ivermectin; same that we have anti-vax, anti-vaccine, we have anti-Ivermectin. I don’t understand,” said Schwartz.

Schwartz added that while many health agencies want better studies, no large-scale trials on ivermectin happened until Oxford University began one in June of this year.

“I mean, it took them 18 months from the beginning of the pandemic to try to do it. I mean, people dying all over the world. And you have drug under your hand and you have to wait so long until you get any conduction of a good study,” he said.

Now, the pharmaceutical company Merck, which developed Ivermectin, and Pfizer are in a race to produce an oral anti-viral drug for COVID that some believe is what Ivermectin could do already.

We need the answer to some very basic questions regarding the coronavirus–

Who makes money if vaccines are mandatory?

Who makes money if new drugs are discovered rather than using traditional drugs?

Who gains if Americans continue to isolate and shop online?

Who gains if small businesses in America fail?

And finally, can anyone disprove to me that the way the coronavirus has been handled can be totally understood by the phrase ‘follow the money’?

When You Leave Out The Details In Order To Defame Israel

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Jihad Watch posted an article today that included the following screenshot:

Wow. That’s awful. It’s very easy to sympathize with the mother. However, there is a whole lot more to the story.

The article reports:

On August 28, United States Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) ignited a firestorm after posting a claim on Twitter that Israel was dehumanizing Palestinians by not returning the body of an assailant who in June had attempted to ram a car into IDF soldiers before exiting the vehicle while wielding a knife. She was subsequently shot dead.

The assailant was Mai Afana, who had tried to kill Israeli soldiers, first with a car-ramming at a checkpoint and then with the knife she wielded after exiting the car, with which she intended to stab them.

Nevertheless, Tlaib wrote the following on the social media platform:

Meet Mai Afana’s mother, Khuloud, who is fighting to be able to bury her daughter & begin her healing. Mai was a mother, loving daughter & successful PhD student. She was killed by the Israeli government last June. Israel won’t release her body to her family.

“First, there is the obvious fact that Tlaib failed to even note that Afana had committed an act of terrorism.

In the current Palestinian culture, it is an honor to have your child die while killing or fighting Israelis. In fact, the group that rules the Palestinian territories pays families generously when one of their children is killed. Not returning the body of a terrorist is standard policy for Israel–experience tells them that returning the body will only result in more terrorism.

This tweet is an example of the way social media can be used to frame a story in a way that is totally misleading. In that tweet, Representative Tlaib is showing her support for terrorist activity. She sits in the U.S. House of Representatives as a Representative. That is not acceptable.

The Only Reliable Numbers We Have

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Yesterday The Epoch Times posted an article about people being hospitalized for Covid.

The article notes the following:

As reported by the Associated Press, “The CDC itself has not estimated what percentage of hospitalizations and deaths are in fully vaccinated people, citing limitations in the data.”

At the same time, data collection is done on a state by state basis. In most states, a person is only considered fully vaccinated fourteen days after they have had the full series of the vaccine.

This means that anyone coming into an American hospital who has only had one dose, or who has had both vaccines but had the second one less than two weeks prior, will likely be counted as “unvaccinated.”

So what information is the CDC basing its decisions about Covid on? The only honest numbers we are getting are coming from Israel.

The article includes the following chart:

There is a lot of information in this chart that totally contradicts what the American media is reporting. Note the high number of cases in people between the ages of 40 and 49. Also note the low number of cases in those over the age of 70.

The article concludes:

In countries with the highest numbers of vaccinated individuals, we are also seeing high numbers of infections. Iceland has one of the most vaccinated populations in the world (over 82 percent) and is reporting that 77 percent of new COVID cases are in fully vaccinated Icelanders, according to Ásthildur Knútsdóttir, Director General of the Ministry of Health.

According to news reports, over 85 percent of the Israeli adult population has been vaccinated. But a July report from Israel’s Ministry of Health found that Pfizer’s vaccine is only 39 percent effective. Though Israeli health officials are telling the public that the cases are more mild in vaccinated individuals, this upsurge in COVID cases and deaths is leading Israel’s prime minister to issue new restrictions.

Dr. Peter McCullough, an academic internist and cardiologist in practice in Dallas, Texas, says that a large number of people in the hospitals right now have, indeed, been fully vaccinated. “Fully vaccinated people are being hospitalized, and … 19 percent of them have died,” McCullough says. “This is not a crisis of the unvaccinated. That’s just a talking point. The vaccinated are participating in this.”

Other physicians are seeing the same thing. “In my practice multiple patients who are fully vaccinated have been admitted to local hospitals,” says Dr. Jeffrey I. Barke, a board-certified primary care physician based in Newport Beach, California. Barke believes part of the problem is exaggeration of the efficacy: “If the vaccine works so well, why are we now pushing a booster?”

That’s a very good question.

Following The Science

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There are still a lot of things we don’t know about Covid-19 or the Covid-19 vaccine. However, as time goes on, the medical community is collecting statistics that will at least give us a partial picture of the disease and immunity to it.

On August 6th, Sharyl Attkisson posted an article on her website summarizing some of the research on natural immunity and vaccine immunity to Covid-19. Please follow the link to read the entire article. It is detailed and complex, but I will post a few highlights.

The article notes:

Updated Aug. 6 with CDC analysis of Kentucky (unvaccinated Kentuckians had “2.34 times the odds of reinfection“ compared with fully vaccinated) and national analysis in Israel (vaccinated Israelis were 6.72 times more likely to get infected after the shot than after natural infection). More below.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) became one of the latest high-profile figures to get sick with Covid-19, even though he’s fully vaccinated. In a statement Monday, Graham said it feels like he has “the flu,” but is “certain” he would be worse if he hadn’t been vaccinated.

While it’s impossible to know whether that’s the case, public health officials are grappling with the reality of an increasing number of fully-vaccinated Americans coming down with Covid-19 infections, getting hospitalized, and even dying of Covid. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) insists vaccination is still the best course for every eligible American. But many are asking if they have better immunity after they’re infected with the virus and recover, than if they’re vaccinated.

Increasingly, the answer within the data appears to be ”yes.”

The article included the following:

The article notes:

Unfortunately, virologists say no commonly-used test can detect with certainty whether a person is immune. A common misconception is that antibody tests can make that determination. But experts say immunity after infection or exposure often comes without a person producing or maintaining measurable antibodies.

Because of that reality, people who have had asymptomatic infections — infections where they suffered no symptoms — have no easy way to know that they’re immune. However, a growing body of evidence indicates that the millions who know they got Covid can be assured they’re unlikely to suffer reinfection, for at least as long of a time period that scientists have been able to measure. Possibly far beyond.

This is an experimental vaccine. Remember that when you make your decision as to whether or not you are going to receive the vaccine. Meanwhile, there is nothing wrong with washing your hands frequently.

 

The New Face Of War

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A website called “Partially Politics” posted an article on July 7th about a new weapon Israel has been using against terrorists.

The article reports:

In a massive step forward into a new world of future warfare, Israel has become the first nation to use AI (artificial intelligence) drones in battle against Hamas terrorists. With no human input after mission orders have been set, a drone swarm team has been utilized to seek out targets. The drones link together and use artificial intelligence to map out geography and locate targets, making mission decisions on their own. The drone swarm continues the mission until completion, even if some of the drones are destroyed in the process. A human operator sends out mission details as the machines gather information data to move forward from satellites, air vehicles, ground troops and other recon drones.

Unit 8200 of the Israeli Defense Force Intelligence Corps has developed and implemented the new technology. Algorithms by the IDF use signal data, geographical information and human intelligence together to build a framework of how to execute the desired mission. Artificial Intelligence and supercomputers locate targets and plan strikes to remove any strategic forces that could give opposing forces any advantage, while machine learning technology improves the capabilities of the system itself through action.

The article concludes:

Israel isn’t the only country getting involved in the new technological advances. The United States, Britain, Russia and China have all been developing artificial intelligence technologies designed for autonomous warfare. Concerns around the world here are that there is a vast potential for a new arms race. But that idea has been a reality in motion since the dawn of the potential for the technology was created. Whether you like it or not, that is the truth of the matter. This is only the beginning of what the future of modern warfare is going to look like. And whoever has the best technology will be the most secure. The idea of peace through strength comes to mind here. And the United States and its allies should be investing heavily on creating the best possible technology to protect our freedoms and to help stand for our way of life.

In a recent interview, retired U.S. Navy officer and author Jocko Willink said while talking to artificial intelligence podcaster Lex Fridman that he approved of the new technology despite some human concern around the world. Jocko said, “… if they could make a machine that could do more surgical attacks on enemy individuals, would I be for it? Yes, I would be for it”.

If you are interested in hearing the full interview, check out the new podcast. It is one of the best talks on autonomous war technology, leadership and human nature of recent times.

Although I am glad to see Israel gaining more ways to defend itself, I don’t think this is good news.

This Is Troubling News

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Yesterday The Epoch Times posted an article about the recent outbreak of Covid-19 in Israel.

The article reports:

About 90 percent of new COVID-19 infections in Israel were caused by the CCP virus’s Delta variant, officials said, while adding that about half of the adults infected in the recent outbreak were fully vaccinated.

Ran Balicer, who leads an expert advisory panel for the Israeli government, in announcing the finding on Friday, said that the country might end up implementing another lockdown after opening up earlier this year, according to the Wall Street Journal. The fully vaccinated individuals were inoculated with the Pfizer COVID-19 shot commonly used in Israel.

The article notes:

Earlier this month, for example, nearly 4,000 fully vaccinated people in Massachusetts tested positive for the CCP virus, according to health officials in the state.

“We’re learning that many of the breakthrough infections are asymptomatic or they’re very mild and brief in duration,” said Boston University infectious diseases specialist Davidson Hamer, the Boston Herald reported. “The viral load is not very high.”

“Breakthroughs are expected, and we need to better understand who’s at risk and whether people who have a breakthrough can transmit the virus to others,” Hamer said. “In some cases, they’ll be shedding such low levels of the virus and won’t be transmitting to others.”

And on April 30, the CDC reported that some 10,626 breakthrough cases were reported in 46 states and territories.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says on its website that COVID-19 vaccines should work against the Delta strain as well as other COVID-19 variants.

However, the U.N. agency warned that  “changes or mutations in the virus should not make vaccines completely ineffective,” adding that if the “vaccines prove to be less effective against one or more variants, it will be possible to change the composition of the vaccines to protect against these variants.”

The Epoch Times has contacted Pfizer for comment.

Any medical decision involves a risk/benefit scenario. It seems to me that the vaccines currently on the market do not reach the level of benefit needed to protect the population fully from a virus that is only fatal to a particular segment of the population. I think it’s time to reconsider the push to vaccinate everyone.

Debunking The Myths

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A lot of what the mainstream media is telling you about Israel is simply not true. On Friday, The Daily Wire posted an article detailing four of the biggest myths being spread about Israel.

Here is the list:

1) Jews did not “steal” Israel after World War 2. There has been a Jewish presence in Israel for thousands of years

2) Israel is not the roadblock to peace, or a Palestinian state. Israel agreed to give the Palestinians their own state on multiple occasions.

3) Israel is not occupying the Gaza Strip.

4) Israel is not an apartheid state

The article includes the history of the area being called Palestine:

Contrary to the notion that “Palestinans” pre-existed Jews in Israel, the name “Palestine” wasn’t even introduced until the Romans applied the name Palaestina to Judea in the second century C.E. “in an attempt to minimize Jewish identification with the land of Israel.” Indeed, the Arabic word, “Filastin” is derived from this Latin name.

Another factor in the false narrative that Jews “stole” Palestinian land is the fact that Jews legally purchased land in the decades leading up to Israel’s declaration of independence as part of the early Zionist movement. Between the 1880s and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Jews actively purchased land in Ottoman and Mandatory Palestine — as it was known at the time — procuring the land from British or Arab landowners. By the end of 1945, various Jewish organizations had purchased 906.8 square kilometers of land.

The article notes that a two-state solution has been proposed an turned down:

The Jewish Agency, representing the region’s Jewish residents, accepted the plan. Had the Arab Higher Committee accepted it too, there would have been an independent Palestinian state since 1947. Instead, Arab nations refused and invaded, violating Resolution 181 and the UN Charter. They were later defeated by Israeli forces.

This pattern of refusal is common, with Palestinian leaders refusing to negotiate or accept generous offers, despite their repeated military failures to achieve their goals through force. In 2000, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat rejected a proposed peace plan known as the “Clinton Parameters,” which would have provided the Palestinians with “‘custodianship’ over the Temple mount, sovereignty on all Islamic and Christian holy sites, and three of Jerusalem’s four Old City quarters,” choosing instead to return home and arguably oversee a flood of terrorist violence, including suicide bombing attacks against Jewish civilians.

Just for the record, I believe that if Yasser Arafat had accepted the “Clinton Parameters,” he would have been assassinated very quickly. It needs to be understood that the Arabs want a one-state solution–an Arab state–and that peace is not the goal of their leaders although it may be the goal of some of the Arab residents in the area.

The article notes that Israel is not occupying the Gaza Strip:

However, when it comes to the Gaza Strip, Israel has not been an “occupying” force — ignoring that the term occupying implies an illegitimate presence — for 16 years. Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, dismantling Israeli settlements, removing military members, and evacuating Jewish civilians — sometimes by force. Gaza is now under complete Palestinian control.

When the people living in the Gaza Strip took over the land in 2005, one of the first things they did was destroy the greenhouses that supported the area. The economy in that area has never recovered–the leaders live very well and the poor people barely survive.

The article notes that Israel simply does not qualify to be an apartheid state:

This is demonstrably false. Not only do Arabs in Israel have equal voting rights, but Israel is also one of the few countries in the Middle East where Arab women are even permitted to vote. Four members of Israel’s parliament — the Knesset — are members of “Ra’am – United Arab List.”

As Rich Lowry of National Review noted, “Arab Israelis are full participants in Israeli society.”

“There are Arab justices on the Supreme Court. About 20 percent of doctors in Israel and about half of pharmacists are Arab,” Lowry added. “Roughly 17 percent of students seeking an undergraduate degree are Arab, a number that has roughly doubled over the past decade.”

As usual, the media follows a narrative whether it is true or not. We all need to learn to look beyond the media narrative.

Notes On A Truce

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The first thing to remember when viewing the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is the Islamic concept of “hudna.” RELIANCE OF THE TRAVELLER  (is a classical manual of fiqh for the Shafi’i school of Islamic jurisprudence) describes the rule for making “hudna” (or truce) as follows:

If the Muslims are weak, a truce may be made for ten years if necessary, for the Prophet (Allah bless him and grant him Peace) made a truce with Quraysh for that long, as it related by Abu Dawud. It is not permissible to stipulate longer than that, save by means of new truces, each of which does not exceed ten years. (from CATASTROPHIC FAILURE by Stephen Coughlin)

In the eyes of Islam, the purpose of a truce is to give the Muslims time to rearm and grow stronger. That is one of many reasons I am not impressed with the current truce.

The Center for Security Policy posted an article today which mentions some other problems with the truce. One of the main unresolved issues is the right of Jews to go to the Temple Mount. This issue has the potential to unravel the Jordan-Israeli peace treaty.

The article reports:

The fact is, since the rioting escalated to the Temple Mount surrounding the Muslim holiday of Laylat al -Qadr two weeks ago, the Israeli government barred any Jew from setting foot on the Temple Mount since May 5. It did so as a temporary tactical move to calm unnecessary tensions. However, the war is now over, which means in the coming days, Israel will have to make a decision as to whether it will lift that ban. If it does lift the ban, Jews will again be able to go to the Temple Mount, at which point Hamas will ensure that there will be violence so that it maintains and emphasizes its control of events. Israel will either have to lift that ban and a Jew will go to the mount. That event will represent an immediate escalation and Jordan will be unable to take a neutral position given the col de sac into which it has rhetorically maneuvered itself. The resulting violence which Hamas will instigate now that it has such immense currency on the Palestinian street will not only threaten the survival of the Palestinian Authority, but it could even reverberate enough to destabilize the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan.

The article concludes:

In short, Hamas has positioned itself in a win-win position over all its enemies, presenting the world with the final verdict in this 12-day war and positioning itself to gut Judaism and threaten both Jordan and the PA.

We will see shortly whether Israel lifts the prohibition and a Jew ascends the Mount. If so, then we have a crisis in which Jordan, because of its imprudent intervention, will be forced to react with such intensity that it may cause the peace treaty to falter materially. If on the hand the ban is not immediately lifted, then Hamas has successfully changed the status quo to ban Jews, leaving Jordan and Abu Mazen fatally weak.

This ceasefire is fraught with great peril, and the President should be careful not to attach too much of his or the United States’ reputation and stature to it. It may indeed turn out to be a historical turning point, but not a positive one.

The current ceasefire in Israel is as much of a minefield as the war. We need to step very carefully. Unfortunately, I am not convinced we have leadership that knows how to do that.

 

A Cease-Fire Will Be Called If Israel Is Winning

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For a short time in 2020, it looked as if peace might break out in the Middle East. Instead, the ending of the policies that were moving in the direction of peace has brought us war. It is interesting to see the divide in America regarding this war. Yesterday John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line Blog about what is happening in America and in the Middle East.

The article reports:

The current round of violence that was initiated by Hamas firing thousands of rockets into Israel is depressing on a number of fronts, not least because we are once again hearing brain-dead shibboleths from the White House. After a four-year respite under President Trump, ignorance again reigns. Today Jen Psaki was pressed by White House reporters on why President Biden had not yet called for a cease fire. She bobbed and weaved, saying that “we all know” that the only way to end violence is “for there to be a two-state solution.”

Really? How do we all know that? The Arabs were offered a two-state solution in 1948, and they turned it down, preferring to try to destroy Israel and kill the Jews. They have made the same choice consistently over the last 73 years. And if Gaza were a “state,” why would Hamas be any less prone to launch missiles against Israel?

The article notes that President Biden has called for a cease-fire and asked Israel to make every effort to protect innocent civilians.

The article concludes:

This is the weird false equivalence that we see all the time where Israel is concerned. How about if the world’s “leaders” demand that Hamas “make every effort to ensure the protection of [Israel’s] innocent civilians”? But that wouldn’t make sense, since the whole point of Hamas’s terrorist offensive is to kill innocent civilians. The Palestinians have sown the wind, and yet the world’s prime concern is that they not reap the whirlwind. Why?

Similarly, world “leaders” tell Israelis that their response to Hamas’s thousands of rockets must be “proportionate,” which means, apparently, that no more Palestinians than Israelis should die. Evidently Israelis are supposed to downgrade their own competence to match Hamas’s primitive, if brutal, rocketry.

This is a standard never before known to warfare. If you are attacked by an enemy, it is appropriate to respond with overwhelming force so as to devastate your enemy and disable him from further attacks, not at the least cost to your enemy, but at the least cost to your own citizens. See, e.g., the U.S. response to Japanese and German aggression in World War II. Hamas started this war, and Israel has every right to inflict maximum damage until it is satisfied that Hamas can never again pose a threat.

Of course, for reasons I will never understand, that is not how things play out in the Middle East. I suppose Israel will stop too soon, under pressure from “world leaders” and public opinion, and leave Hamas more or less intact to fight again another day. This is, I think, the real reason why the “cycle of violence” that is such a cliche in the region persists.

The definition of insanity is ‘doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.’ That is exactly what the Biden administration is doing in resurrecting the failed Middle East policies of the Obama administration. Until Hamas stops lobbing rockets at Israeli civilians, there will not be peace. Until the world stops trading with Iran who is supplying the rockets, there will not be peace. Meanwhile, if Israel begins to win this war, the United Nations will demand a cease-fire. That’s how things work in the Middle East.

Some Background On A Story That Is Generally Being Misreported

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Right now the media is reporting that the Palestinian residents in Sheikh Jarrah are being evicted. Somehow the media is not explaining the history and background of this eviction.

 

The Kohelet Policy Forum provides the background on the situation:

The current dispute in Sheikh Jarrah involves several properties with tenants whose leases have expired, and in a few cases squatters with no tenancy rights at all,against owner–landlords who have successfully won court orders evicting the squatters and overstaying tenants. The litigation has taken several years, and the owners have won at every step. The squatters and overstaying tenants have appealed against the eviction orders to the Supreme Court. The only decision that stands before the Israeli government is whether to honor the courts’ decisions and enforce the eviction orders if affirmed by the Supreme Court, or whether to defy court orders and deny the property owners their legal rights.

 Fox News did not accurately report on the situation:

…Trey Yingst’s May 8 report, which aired on FOX at about 1:57 PM Eastern time. Yingst claimed that the court decision to evict certain residents of that neighborhood was based on “an obscure Israeli law.” Yingst also quoted the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs claiming that the residents are at risk “if the [Israeli] Supreme Court sets a new standard.” Of course, there is nothing “obscure” about the requirement that tenants pay rent, nor is it a “new standard.”
 
NGO Monitor reports that, “according to a 1989 High Court decision, and re-affirmed repeatedly in subsequent cases, as in the case of any tenant living on someone else’s property, residents … were required to pay rent to the organizations that owned the properties. Their failure to do so, along with instances of illegal building and illegally renting properties to others, resulted in the current legal proceedings against them, culminating in the District Court decision.”
 
And the Kohelet Policy forum explains, “the leasehold and trespass legal issues at stake are similar to those found throughout the world, other than the unusually strong rent control and tenant protections given to the protected tenants (Palestinian Arabs in this dispute).”
 
While Yingst interviewed two residents of the neighborhood on camera, he did not interview anyone who could reliably give an accurate legal perspective.
 
While a decision on the case has now been postponed for up to a month, the violence that it has spurred continues to escalate, so it’s important for journalists and the public to understand the facts. Moreover, as described below, Yingst’s reporting on continuing events also adds new errors.  

Be aware that the media often reports on events in Israel without knowing or including the background information that explains what is happening.

 

Correcting Misinformation

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On March 25th, I posted an article about an upcoming documentary to be aired on the Public Broadcasting Corporation stations yesterday. The article contained information I had received in my email from The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA).

Today I received the following email from CAMERA:

On Friday March 26, PBS notified CAMERA senior staff that the network would be postponing its broadcast of ‘Til Kingdom Come to enable an independent review of the work. We welcome this important action. As reported last week, we had alerted PBS to the issue of a falsified presidential quote in the film, and the network corrected it.
 
Given the filmmakers’ flagrant doctoring of that quote to reverse the meaning of a proposal regarding Middle East peace and disposition of the West Bank – a manipulation evidently intended to promote an inflammatory message about Christian Zionist support for Israel – we had urged a thorough vetting of the entire documentary by the network.
 
We commend PBS for its commitment to editorial integrity in choosing to review the rest of the film and look forward to learning of the results of the analysis.
 
Thank you to all who contacted PBS to protest the broadcast. We will update you as we learn of any developments.

Obviously, I have no idea if or how the correction will be made, but I am posting this to show you that every person can make a difference. When a media outlet distorts information, your letters or emails matter. The news media in America is owned by five major corporations that are in business to make money. When they hear from news consumers and realize that their ratings are dropping, they will eventually take action. Notice that CNN is no longer in airports. I have no idea what their current viewership is, but I suspect it has dropped significantly. When cable contracts come up for renewal, viewing numbers matter. Even if it doesn’t seem like it, you have a voice. Your letters and emails matter.

A Misleading Documentary From The Public Broadcasting Corporation

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A watchdog group that sends out alerts about false reporting on the Middle East sent me the following:

A documentary scheduled to air on PBS on Monday, March 29 distorts facts about and caricatures American Christian supporters of Israel – and includes a doctored quote.
 
The documentary, titled ‘Til Kingdom Come, was produced and directed by Israeli filmmaker Maya Zinshtein. It portrays American Evangelicals and Jews living in the West Bank as nefariously working together to convince the White House to hand the entire West Bank over to Israel.
 
To promote the false narrative, filmmakers spliced words President Trump said in the latter parts of a January 28, 2020 press conference announcing his Israeli-Palestinian peace plan into a statement made at the beginning of the same press conference.

This is the quote:

The doctored quote appears 68 minutes into the 76-minute movie. The film’s audio quotes the president as saying: “The United States will recognize Israeli sovereignty over the territory that my vision provides to be part of the State of Israel, including the West Bank described so vividly in the Bible.”
 
The president did not say this.
 
A publicly available YouTube video of the press conference in question, from the Washington Post, shows that he said this instead:
 
“The United States will recognize Israeli sovereignty over the territory that my vision provides to be part of the State of Israel.” (He said this soon after the 14-minute mark of the YouTube video.)
 
In the actual statement, there is nothing whatsoever about handing “the West Bank described so vividly in the Bible” over to Israel, although he did say some of these words  later in the press conference in a different context when he declared:

“There are many Muslims who never visited Al Aqsa [Mosque] and many Christians and Jews who never visited the holy sites in the West Bank described so vividly in the Bible. My vision will change that. Our majestic biblical heritage will be able to live breathe and flourish in modern times. All humanity should be able to enjoy the glories of the Holy Land.”
 
In neither one of these phrases did the former president use the word “including.” This word likely came from another section of the press conference (at about 12 minutes and 53 seconds into the YouTube video) where he did use this word.
 
That is, the quote heard in Zinshtein’s film includes snippets from three different parts of the press conference that are spliced together.
 
To obscure the alteration, the film shows the president saying the first part of the quote, then inserts a shot of the audience during the middle of his statement, and then returns to show Trump speaking the last section of the fabricated quote.

The alert concludes:

Altering a presidential statement to misrepresent the content of a key policy address is obviously a blatant violation of journalistic ethics. It appears the filmmakers felt the measured language of the actual quote was insufficient to reinforce their storyline, so they spliced together separate and different passages to create a more extreme – and false – message.
 
This is an egregious distortion of the historical record and must be corrected before it is aired on PBS.

How many people trust the Public Broadcasting Corporation as an accurate source of news? Obviously they shouldn’t.

 

Back To A Failed International Policy

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On March 17th, The Times of Israel reported the following:

The Biden administration will reportedly push for a two-state solution based on the pre-1967 lines, with mutually agreed upon land swaps, reinstating US policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to more traditionally held positions than those of former president Donald Trump.

A memo titled “The US Palestinian Reset and the Path Forward,” which was revealed Wednesday to the Abu Dhabi-based The National, also showed that the Biden administration is planning on announcing a $15 million aid package in coronavirus-related humanitarian assistance for the Palestinians as early as this month.

Is anyone going to be checking on the Palestinians to see how that money is spent? Will the Biden administration enforce the Taylor Force Act?

The article reports:

Amr (Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israeli and Palestinian Affairs Hady Amr) recommends in the memo that the White House back a two-state framework “based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps and agreements on security and refugees.”

While behind closed doors, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has participated in peace negotiations based on the 1967 lines, publicly the formula is not very popular in Israel, particularly among the right wing, which is expected to further expand in the Knesset after next week’s election.

The memo discusses “rolling back certain steps by the prior administration that bring into question our commitment or pose real barriers to a two-state solution, such as country of origin labeling.”

The memo was referring to a last-minute policy change announced by Trump’s secretary of state Mike Pompeo, which requires all US exports from the settlements to be labeled as having been “made in Israel.”

The 1967 lines were an armistice agreement–they were never meant to be permanent boundaries. History has shown that the 1967 lines were not conducive to peace because they rendered Israel indefensible. If those lines are reinstated, the more radical Arabs in the Middle East will immediately go to war against Israel. This is not a recipe for peace.

Forgetting Our Friends, Empowering Our Enemies

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I suspect that at some point in the next six months sanctions on Iran will be dropped and we will enter into a flawed nuclear agreement with Iran. I know President Biden said he would not drop the sanctions, but I suspect that they will be dropped. This creates a problem in our relationship with Israel. Israel has been our most faithful ally in the Middle East and does not deserve to be treated like the red-headed-freckle-faced kid at the family reunion.

Yesterday One America News posted an article about the current situation.

The article reports:

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki denied criticism that claimed the Biden administration intentionally neglected Israel. In a press briefing Friday, Psaki blamed the administration’s brief time in office for the lack of communication between Joe Biden and his Israeli counterpart.

She also would not confirm if Biden plans to reach out to Israel in the near future. Psaki then attempted to assure reporters the lack of communication with Israel’s prime minister was not intentional.

The article concludes:

Meanwhile, an Israeli official took to Twitter earlier this week to urge Biden to contact the “closest ally of the U.S.” He noted Biden called several other ally nations since his time in office, adding now might be the time to communicate with Israel’s prime minister.

Somehow I suspect the Biden administration will treat Israel as badly as the Obama administration did–a lot of the same people are running the show.

Being Prepared

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The Daily Wire reported yesterday that the U.S.S. Nimitz and its strike group have been ordered to the Persian Gulf in case there is an Iranian response to the killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, 59, the Head of Iran’s nuclear program.

The article reports:

“There were no specific threats that triggered the return of the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group,” Commander Rebecca Rebarich, spokeswoman for the U.S. Navy’s Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet, said in a statement. “This action ensures we have sufficient capability available to respond to any threat and to deter any adversary from acting against our troops during the force reduction.”

“The official said the move was decided before news came of the assassination of a prominent Iranian nuclear scientist. But the movement of the US forces is an increased deterrence message to Iran regardless the official noted,” CNN reported. “The movement puts increased American military firepower and thousands of personnel into the region through the end of the Trump Administration. It may be up to President-elect Joe Biden to decide when to withdraw them.”

The sending of this Carrier Strike Group is a way for America to say we are not leading from behind and we will protect our interests in the area. The fact that America has so strongly stood with Israel is one of many reasons that peace treaties are being made between Israel and Arab countries. President Trump’s foreign policy has beautifully illustrated the concept of peace through strength.

More Good News From The Middle East

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Yesterday Don Surber posted an article on his blog about the killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, 59, the Head of Iran’s nuclear program.

The article reports:

“According to Iran Front Page News, Fakhrizadeh was killed by shooting, but before the shootout, his car has been stopped with an explosion at Mostafa Khomeini Blvd. Several others are also reportedly killed in the incident, but haven’t been identified yet.”

In the past, we could have credited Mossad with another fine job well done, but now I do not know about that this time.

Arab nations are normalizing relations with Israel after a decade or so of casual and unofficial cooperation among Israel and Saudi Arabia. Obama siding with Iran — giving the rogue state $170 billion to blow on building nukes and terrorizing Israel — sealed the deal.

Maybe Mossad had a little help.

Israel and its Arab nations share two things in common. They cannot allow Iran to beef up, and they cannot trust the United States to help them. President Donald John Trump may be the last friend they ever have in the White House.

They also know Red China is an ultimate threat.

The New York Times described the incident as “A brazen killing takes place in a drive-by attack.”

The article notes The New York Times comments:

“The killing is bound to provoke sharp reaction in Iran.

“Mr. Fakhrizadeh’s killing, whoever was responsible, could have broad implications for the incoming Biden administration. It is bound to set off a sharp reaction in Iran, as did the American attack on Jan. 3 that killed Qassim Suleimani, the Iranian major general who ran the elite Quds force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

“The killing of Mr. Fakhrizadeh could complicate the effort by President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. to revive the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, as he has pledged to do, if the Iranians agree to return to the limits detailed in the accord.

“Israel has long opposed the deal, and if its agents were responsible for the killing of a man considered a national hero — in Iran, they will almost certainly be accused of being behind it — there could be political pressure in Iran to move forward with its current effort to gradually rebuild the stockpile of nuclear fuel that it gave up in 2015.

“American officials would not comment on the assassination on Friday morning, saying they were seeking information.”

The article at Don Surber’s blog concludes:

If the Supreme Court allows Democrats to steal the election, the new administration will quickly throw away President Trump’s gift of peace in the Middle East and side with Iran once again.

Follow the money. Red China owns Democrats now, and Red China supports Iran.

Israel and her Arab neighbors are on their own. Pray that they are strong enough to withstand the maelstrom Chairman Xi and his marionettes in Washington want to unleash.

Today, the allies showed they may be able to. They do not seem to have a choice.

Stay tuned.