Kushner on FZ

Saudi Arabia and Bahrain next to normalize with Israel?

Maybe.

How to make the endlessly uncooperative Palestinians irrelevant.

Kushner not bad in front of the camera.

Totally loyal to Trump, of course.

Bit of a stone face, but smart.

Had more than one good point about a massive switch to mail in voting.

He cited friends in New Jersey, reporting a ballot came in the mail for a dead relative and another friend got two ballots in the mail.

That's not anecdotal evidence of fraud or vulnerability to it but anecdotal evidence of the messy state of voter rolls.

I myself got 2 ballots for the primaries, though I only voted once.

Do I know it was properly counted?

If I had voted both ballots would they both have been counted?

FZ irrelevantly objected K was citing mere anecdotes in support of the idea of widespread fraud in mail in voting rather than analysis of aggregate data.

We are not talking about some quack cure for a virus.

He should have objected K was providing evidence of impending mess.

K knew this, anyway, and pointed out a national transition to reliance on mail ins could be properly carried out only by a planned and organized program over at least 5 years.

Even off the top of the head that's persuasive.

It means we're in for mess.

Watching BBC News

It's all about the pandemic.

Months ago, Putin said that time of pandemic called for a relaxation of tensions, global cooperation, and specifically for dropping or lessening of trade barriers, tariffs, and sanctions.

He was right.

Trump refused to step up.

A little weird, but yes, that happened.

But Putin was speaking primary of sanctions on Iran.

And the Duce is an even more rabid Zionist than Bibi.

Well, perhaps I exaggerate.

A needed brake on criminal regimes or a cat's paw for anti-American, anti-Israeli politics?

Great taste or less filling?

Did you walk to school or carry your lunch?

Trump targets ICC with sanctions after court opens war crimes investigation

Netanyahu is right

He wants to absorb the West Bank.

And probably, eventually, the Gaza Strip, as well, into Israel and American Christian Zionists, and particularly Evangelicals, and particularly that atheist-at-heart, Donald Trump, support him in that.

The security needs of Israel call for at least that much expansion of the lawful Jewish State.

As for the claims of Palestinians to a state of their own in Palestine, there already is such a state, and its name is "Jordan".

You would be right to protest the Palestinians of the camps, the West Bank, and Gaza will never accept that in the foreseeable future.

But neither will they accept the right to exist in Palestine of any Jewish State at all, however tiny, unobtrusive, and weak.

And it is not only the Jewish state in Palestine they would eradicate.

Everyone knows the popularity of Jew-hating among them.

Is the threatened extermination of Israeli Jews the only threatened genocide Americans are supposed to not care about?

So the Israelis shrug and try for the course they see as safest in the long run.

Meanwhile, among others, even the Iraqis are outraged

France, Russia and China condemn slaying of Soleimani as a destabilizing act

Britain and France urge deescalation after US strike on Iranian general; Moscow blasts ‘adventurist step,’ praises Quds Force chief’s ‘devotion’ to Iran’s national interests

Iraq’s deputy parliament speaker said an emergency parliament session was set for Saturday to discuss the US airstrike in Baghdad.

Hassan al-Kaabi said it is time to put an end to “US recklessness and arrogance,” adding that Saturday’s session will be dedicated to taking “decisive decisions that put an end to US presence inside Iraq.”

Iraq’s caretaker prime minister Adel Abdel Mahdi slammed the US strike as an “aggression” that would “spark a devastating war.

“The assassination of an Iraqi military commander in an official post is an aggression against the country of Iraq, its state, its government and its people,” Abdel Mahdi said in a statement.

Not these guys, though.

Netanyahu lauds Trump for killing of Iran’s Soleimani, says Israel stands by US

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday praised the United States and President Donald Trump for killing Iranian top commander Qassem Soleimani in an airstrike in the early morning hours.

“Trump is worthy of full appreciation for acting with determination, strongly and swiftly,” he told reporters before departing Greece to head back to Israel. “We stand fully by the United States in its just battle for security, peace and self-defense.”

The prime minister said “Israel has the right to defend itself. The US has the same right exactly. Soleimani is responsible for the deaths of innocent US citizens and many others. He was planning further attacks.”

Netanyahu cut short his visit to Greece amid concerns Iran could exact revenge on the Jewish state for the US killing of the powerful head of Iran’s elite Quds Force. He had been visiting the country to sign a major deal for a gas pipeline.

Netanyahu’s chief political opponent, Blue and White chief Benny Gantz, praised Trump for his “brave decision” which he said showed leadership.

“The killing of Soleimani is a message to all the head of global terror: on your own heads be it,” Gantz said. The assassination was “fitting for anyone whose action brings about the murder of innocents and the destabilization of the region and the world.”

Gantz added that on matters of national security “there is no coalition and opposition.”

Can we allow the Taliban their own state in which to aid and abet terror attacks, maybe nuke attacks, on the US?

The Israelis have been essentially fighting a forever war against unyielding and unrelenting Arab attacks aimed at their very existence for as long as Israel has existed.

Better a forever war than utter destruction, eh?

The Lessons of the Afghanistan Papers

While the anti-warriors are all gloating, and all, let's hope they don't lose sight of the genuine threat posed by an entire state controlled by as mad an Islamist ideology as that of ISIS, a Muslim terrorist movement we felt the need to deny control of its own state.

These people really and truly would nuke us if they could, and who is to say that with a little help from others who hate us equally and would love to cheaply put us in check they could not actually do it?

Remember the Axis of Nuts?

With all his stupid bluster, Trump has been totally unable to prevent North Korea from become a nuclear power with the actual capability of nuking the continental United States.

And also with his stupid bluster he has provided an occasion for Iran to resume efforts to join the nuclear club with the idea of at least holding the Great Satan in check.

How do we feel about the idea of Iran holding us in check?

Or North Korea, come to that?

The great thing about non-proliferation was that it kept the number of enemy states capable of keeping us in check - and so immune to the reverse - to a very small minimum, none of them actually crazy enough to nuke us in a purely aggressive move.

That moron Trump just absolutely doesn't see it.

There is so much he is just too stupid to see.

Trump's PC of the right

I drafted the definition of antisemitism. Rightwing Jews are weaponizing it

Trump's own version of a PC attack on the First Amendment.

Trump clears the path for Likud and Greater Israel

Pompeo announces reversal of longstanding US policy on Israeli settlements

From the egregiously unstable moron in the White House.

Repugnant, repulsive, disgraceful filth, that man in the White House.

He is scum, a thug, a tool of Putin, a traitor to his country, and he belongs in jail.

He will never see the inside of a cell, but he belongs in prison for the rest of his sorry life.

He makes me much more ashamed of America than even Reagan or Nixon.

I would like to be able to vomit him up and out of the White House.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday announced a major reversal of the US' longstanding policy on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, rejecting a 1978 State Department legal opinion that deemed the settlements "inconsistent with international law."

The announcement, which breaks with international law and consensus, is the latest in a string of hardline, pro-Israeli moves that are likely to inflame tensions between the Trump administration and Palestinians and widen the divide between the Trump administration and traditional US allies in Europe.

Whose $ 50 billion are these?

Kushner unveils economic part of 'deal of the century' Middle East peace plan

The Saudi government is fine with this?

And the Jordanians?

U.S. Ambassador Says Israel Has Right to Annex Parts of West Bank

Trump and Israel, enemies of Shiite Iraq and Shiism in Iraq and Shiite terrorists or political groups in the Levant and quiet enablers of the corrupt Saudi despotism that imposes barbaric Wahabbist Sunni savagery at home and exports it abroad, meet with quiet acceptance of Greater Israel by the regime in turn.

Did Bozo hand over control of portions of US foreign policy to Bolton, the Saudis, and Israel in return for Sheldon Adelson's millions?

So says Chris Matthews on Hardball, right now, with the agreement of his guests.

Bolton wants to send 120,000 troops to the Persian Gulf, and Trump seems to be ready to let him do it.

Bolton who fluffed a coup in Venezuela only recently.

Trump, the whore who sold his policy on NATO, Ukraine, and the EU and maybe even North Korea to Putin, is so fucking out of his depth.

His entire party are whores.

And we are so fucked.

Trump’s Choice Of Bolton Satisfies His Biggest Donor

Sheldon Adelson: the casino mogul driving Trump's Middle East policy

He had thrown $150m into a futile effort to unseat the “socialist” and “anti-Israel” Barack Obama in the 2012 election. 

His credibility as a political player was not enhanced by his backing of Newt Gingrich for president.

But three years on from the court case, Adelson’s influence has never been greater.

The imprint of the 84-year-old’s political passions is seen in an array of Donald Trump’s more controversial decisions, including violating the Iran nuclear deal, moving the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and appointing the ultra-hawkish John Bolton as national security adviser.

“Adelson’s established himself as an influential figure in American politics with the amount of money that he has contributed,” said Logan Bayroff of the liberal pro-Israel group, J Street. 

“There’s no doubt that he has very strong, very far-right dangerous positions and that – at very least – those positions are really being heard and thought about at the highest levels of government.”

Sheldon Adelson’s $82 million+ donation bought U.S. Israel policies

The 85-year-old and his wife Miriam gave $82 million+ to Republicans and candidate Trump in 2016, and within two years watched their man execute two major Adelson asks: moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal.

This was accomplished in consultation with Adelson comprador John Bolton, who in December 2016 promised members of the American Friends of Beit El that Trump would not only move the embassy—declaring Jerusalem the true capital of Israel—but that he would not oppose any Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank territories. 

Adelson is also credited with opening the door for Bolton’s appointment to national security adviser in March

Follow the Money: Three Billionaires Paved Way for Trump’s Iran Withdrawal

Indeed, today’s unpopular announcement may have been exactly what two of Trump’s biggest donors, Sheldon Adelson and Bernard Marcus, and what one of his biggest inaugural supporters, Paul Singer, paid for when they threw their financial weight behind Trump. 

Marcus and Adelson, who are also board members of the Likudist Republican Jewish Coalition, have already received substantial returns on their investment: total alignment by the U.S. behind Israel, next week’s move of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and the official dropping of “occupied territories” to describe the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Adelson, for his part, was Trump and the GOP’s biggest campaign supporter. 

He and his wife Miriam contributed $35 million in outside spending to elect Trump, $20 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund (a super PAC exclusively dedicated to securing a GOP majority in the House of Representatives), and $35 million to the Senate Leadership Fund (the Senate counterpart) in the 2016 election cycle.

Hilarity ensued

Netanyahu Seeks to Name a Golan Settlement for President Trump

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said on Tuesday that he would ask his government to approve naming a new Jewish settlement in the Golan Heights for President Trump, in appreciation of the American leader’s proclamation recognizing Israel’s authority over the long-disputed territory.

Mr. Netanyahu’s announcement, made during a Passover tour of the Golan Heights with his family, came a month after Mr. Trump’s proclamation, which delivered a valuable pre-election gift to Mr. Netanyahu even as it upended decades of American policy in the Middle East.

Despite facing corruption charges, Mr. Netanyahu has since won a fourth consecutive term in office — a fifth over all — setting him on course to become Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, surpassing the record of the founding premier, David Ben Gurion.

“All Israelis were deeply moved when President Trump made his historic decision to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a video on Tuesday, against the backdrop of the sunny, windswept strategic plateau that Israel captured from Syria during the Six-Day War of 1967.

“Therefore, after the Passover holiday,” he said, “I intend to bring to the government a resolution calling for a new community on the Golan Heights named after President Donald J. Trump.”

Situated above the Sea of Galilee, the Israeli-controlled portion of the Golan Heights covers less than 500 square miles, with commanding views over much of northern Israel and into Syria. 

Syrian forces tried to reclaim the territory in 1973 but were beaten back.

The armistice that ended the war left most of the Golan Heights in Israeli hands, and in 1981 Israel passed a law that effectively annexed it.

About 50,000 people live in the area, with Israeli Jewish settlers making up nearly half. The rest are mostly Druze Arabs with Syrian roots. 

The area contains a handful of Druze villages and more than 30 Jewish settlements that have been built since 1967.

No accident this happened while they are so savaging Ilhan Omar

Anti-Zionists Deserve Free Speech

Michelle Goldberg.

Subtitle: The Trump administration bars a critic of Israel from America.

They would like to force her to resign (Trump has demanded it), or force the House to deny her her seat.

Yes, pour encourager les autres.

The Palestinian activist Omar Barghouti, one of the founders of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, was supposed to be on a speaking tour of the United States this week, with stops at N.Y.U.’s Washington campus and at Harvard. 

He was going to attend his daughter’s wedding in Texas. 

. . . .

Yet when Barghouti, a permanent resident of Israel, showed up for his flight from Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport last week, he was informed that the United States was denying him entry.

. . . .

Around two dozen states have laws and regulations denouncing, and in many cases penalizing, B.D.S. activities, and the Senate recently passed a bill supporting such measures. 

According to the American Association of University Professors, some public universities in states with such laws require speakers and other contractors to “sign a statement pledging that they do not now, nor will they in the future, endorse B.D.S.” 

It’s hard to think of comparable speech restrictions on any other subject.

It's also hard to imagine any of that is constitutional.

The B.D.S. movement doesn’t engage in or promote violence. 

Its leaders make an effort to separate anti-Zionism from anti-Semitism; the Palestinian B.D.S. National Committee recently demanded that a Moroccan group stop using the term “B.D.S.” in its name because it featured anti-Semitic cartoons on its Facebook page.

Barghouti couches his opposition to Zionism in the language of humanist universalism. 

The official position of the B.D.S. movement, he says, is that “any supremacist, exclusionary state in historic Palestine — be it a ‘Jewish state,’ an ‘Islamic state,’ or a ‘Christian state’ — would by definition conflict with international law and basic human rights principles.”

The movement is agnostic on a final dispensation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

But it calls for the right of Palestinian refugees — both those displaced by the creation of Israel and their descendants — to return to their familial homes, which would likely end Israel’s Jewish majority. 

A one state solution increasingly popular among liberal Americans.

Quite different from the one state solution Bibi is moving toward, one far less dangerous to the Jews of Israel than the liberal one.

And less dangerous, probably, than a two state solution relying perilously on arrangements even more restrictive than those of the Versailles Treaty that ended the Great War.

We know how well that worked out.

Fortunately for the French, the Germans at no point threatened, considered, or even entertained their complete annihilation.

Yet exactly that is the proclaimed desire of many of the Palestinians, many in important leadership positions, who would live in that other state, disarmed and humiliated.

Disarmed?

Well, at least officially, probably.

And at least at first.

Barghouti told me he personally believes in the creation of a single state in which Israeli Jews, as individuals, would have civil rights, but Jews as a people would not have national rights.

I’d planned to argue with him about this view, which is largely dismissive of Jewish claims on Israel, and would likely lead to oppression or worse for Israeli Jews. 

My guess is that many if not most Jews find such a position offensive, even frightening.

. . . .

A government that tries to prevent Americans from engaging with his views cannot claim a commitment to free speech.

. . . .

Ultimately, Barghouti threatens Israel’s American defenders not because he’s hateful, but because he isn’t. 

Israel has aligned itself with the global far right. 

Recently re-elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to unilaterally annex the West Bank, which would create a single state where Jews rule over Arabs. 

That prospect makes it ever more difficult for Israel’s American defenders to make coherent arguments against the sort of one-state solution that Barghouti espouses. “

The logic of this thing leads straight to ethic cleansing

Maybe not soon. Maybe it's not even really in his head, yet. But it's coming.

Final Israeli Election Results Bolster Netanyahu’s Lead

A final count of ballots on Thursday gave Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party an additional seat in Parliament, making it the largest faction and punctuating the Israeli leader’s victory.

The results released by Israel’s central election commission showed Likud capturing a total of 36 seats in the 120-seat Parliament, compared to 35 seats for its main rival, the centrist Blue and White party. 

An earlier count had the two parties deadlocked.

Altogether, Likud and its traditional Jewish ultra-Orthodox and nationalist allies command a 65-55 majority, putting Mr. Netanyahu in position to head the next coalition government. 

On Wednesday, Blue and White’s leaders conceded defeat.

A little context.

Remember this?

Israeli Law Declares the Country the ‘Nation-State of the Jewish People’

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has long demanded that the Palestinians acknowledge his country’s existence as the “nation-state of the Jewish people.” 

On Thursday, his governing coalition stopped waiting around and pushed through a law that made it a fact.

In an incendiary move hailed as historic by Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition but denounced by centrists and leftists as racist and anti-democratic, Israel’s Parliament enacted a law that enshrines the right of national self-determination as “unique to the Jewish people” — not all citizens.

The legislation, a “basic law” — giving it the weight of a constitutional amendment — omits any mention of democracy or the principle of equality, in what critics called a betrayal of Israel’s 1948 Declaration of Independence, which ensured “complete equality of social and political rights” for “all its inhabitants” no matter their religion, race or sex.

The new law promotes the development of Jewish communities, possibly aiding those who would seek to advance discriminatory land-allocation policies. 

And it downgrades Arabic from an official language to one with a “special status.”

Why not plead self defense?

Pompeo flounders on why annexation is good for the Golan but not for Crimea

The Israelis acted in self-defense against aggression.

The Russians were the aggressors who attacked Ukraine for the purpose of seizing territory.

Will that do?

But I guess it didn't occur to Pompeo.

Under intense questioning about why the Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights was good but the Russian seizure of Crimea was bad, the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, told senators that there was an “international law doctrine” which would be explained to them later.

It turned out there was no doctrine. The state department’s clarification of Pompeo’s remarks contained no reference to one, and experts on international law said that none exists.

It's like they're a different species or something

Republicans.

This holy roller bullshit works for them!

FL Governor DeSantis Announces Cabinet Meeting In Israel

Bibi wins

Kiss that two state solution goodbye.

Unless by the second, Palestinian state you mean Jordan.

As Gantz Concedes, Netanyahu Set for Victory

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in position to win a fourth consecutive term on Wednesday, with nearly all of the votes counted. By Wednesday evening, the rival Blue and White alliance led by Benny Gantz had conceded the race, though ballots were still being counted.

After the final tally, it will be up to President Reuven Rivlin to choose the party leader he believes has the best chance of assembling a parliamentary majority. 

But Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud bloc had a strong numerical advantage in being able to form a governing coalition.

Trump congratulates Netanyahu on his apparent reelection

President Donald Trump on Wednesday congratulated incumbent Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on his apparent win in the country’s elections.

“I’d like to congratulate Bibi Netanyahu, it looks like that race has been won by him,” Trump told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House. 

“It may be a little early, but it looks like he’s won it in good fashion.”

“He’s been a great ally and he’s a friend,” Trump said.

“That was a well thought out race.” Trump later called Netanyahu on the phone to congratulate him, the prime minister’s office said in a statement.

Evangelicals don't care if he's an atheist libertine.

And Jewish Zionists don't care if he's an anti-Semite.

He gave the Supremes to the Evangelicals and he's giving the occupied territories to Israel, along with permission to stick with the ethnonationalism of the Zionist vision.

Pro-Trump Republicans plan big-money play for the Jewish vote in 2020

I'm guessing only a minority of American Jews are not OK with that.

But Trump is all in, and so are the Republicans, and so is Sheldon Adelson.

Absolutely no surprise

Netanyahu Vows To Annex West Bank Settlements If Re-Elected

If the rationale was good for the Golan Heights it's good for the West Bank.

Next up, I guess, will be the Gaza Strip.

And then the ethnic cleansing?

Some people have been saying for a long while that there is already an arab state in Palestine and its name is "Jordan".

Things are moving toward the triumph of supporters of that view.

Are Evangelical Christians the stupidest of all Americans?

Watching a video on why Evangelicals support Israel.

Because God gave them that land and because as soon as Israel fills historic Israel again as a Jewish state the Apocalypse will begin.

So yay!

Yeah, I think they have to be the stupidest people in America.

Possibly in the world.

Mike Pence, how do you get yourself to believe this nonsense?

Or anyway say you do?