U.S. Embassy Opening in Jerusalem, Israel's Historic Capital, in May

Long before Arab marauders slaughtered their first Jewish victims,

Jerusalem was the capital of Israel.

There has never been a Palestinian State, and NEVER will be a Palestinian State inside of Israel.

Jerusalem has always been the capital of Israel.

It really is time for America to be realistic and stop playing “nice” with the Arabs, we don’t need their oil anymore, and they don’t share our values.
There are no Palestinians, there  are Arabs occupying Jewish land in Judea and Shomron and Gaza that call themselves “Palestinians”.

They should relocate to live in a country where they have the same aspirations as the inhabitants,  i.e. Jihad, “martyrdom” misogynism, intolerance and  “religious” warfare.

mfbsr


WASHINGTON — The Trump administration plans to officially move the United States Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in May to mark the 70th anniversary of the creation of the state, two American officials said on Friday.

The timetable is earlier than the one offered as recently as last month by Vice President Mike Pence, who said during a visit to Israel that the embassy would open by the end of 2019.

The State Department will formally designate a facility in Jerusalem’s Arnona neighborhood, currently used for consular affairs, as an embassy, even as plans proceed to eventually build a new compound that could take several more years to open.

President Trump on Friday boasted of his decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland, drawing enthusiastic applause.

While other presidents held back from such a move for fear of triggering a backlash among Arabs and prejudging final peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, Mr. Trump said he defied “incredible” pressure to do what he considered the right thing.
“You know, every president campaigned on, ‘We’re going to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,’ everybody, for many presidents, you’ve been reading it, and then they never pulled it off, and I now know why,” Mr. Trump said. “I was hit by more countries and more pressure and more people calling, begging me, ‘Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it.’ I said, ‘We have to do it, it’s the right thing to do.”

The Israeli Foreign Ministry declined to comment. But a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition welcomed the plan to go ahead with an embassy move.

American officials on Friday did not comment on why they decided to move up the date for the opening, but it will carry special emotional resonance in Israel coming on its Independence Day on May 14, the anniversary of the state’s founding in 1948.

President Harry S. Truman recognized Israel minutes after it declared independence, making the United States the first country to do so.

A new embassy building will take six to eight years to construct, said a State Department official, who like others demanded anonymity because she was not authorized to discuss the issue.

The Arnona building, where visas and passports are processed, is not nearly big enough for the embassy’s entire staff. Only the ambassador, a chief of staff and a staff secretary will be situated there in its first years of operation, the official said. Much of the rest of the embassy personnel will remain for now in Tel Aviv.

Israel has always made Jerusalem its capital but the Palestinians have also claimed the city as the capital of a future state. Until Mr. Trump’s decision last year, no other country located its embassy in Jerusalem to avoid seeming to take sides in the dispute.

Most American peace negotiators have assumed that Jerusalem would ultimately serve as capital of both Israel and a Palestinian state in an eventual agreement, but advised against preemptively declaring it the Israeli capital before negotiations are finalized.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is in preliminary discussions with Sheldon Adelson, a casino magnate, Republican donor and prominent Israel backer, for a donation to potentially pay for at least some of the cost of constructing a new embassy complex, the State Department official said. The Associated Press reported that State Department lawyers are looking into the legality of such a move.

Mr. Adelson declined to comment on Friday through a representative.

The confidant, Morton A. Klein, said Mr. Adelson “called me as soon as he walked out of Trump Tower, and got into his car to say that President Trump said that he is going to fulfill his promise to move the embassy.”


“It is a critically important issue to Sheldon Adelson,” said Mr. Klein, who runs a nonprofit group called the Zionist Organization of America that is funded partly by Mr. Adelson.

Mr. Klein, though, said he opposes private funding for the embassy.

“I’m concerned that people will think that this is being done because of a group of people — evangelicals and Jews — who care about it and not because it’s the U.S. government that cares about it,” said Mr. Klein. “It should be crystal-clear that this is the U.S. government making the decision to move it.”

Follow Peter Baker and Gardiner Harris: @peterbakernyt and @GardinerHarris.

Isabel Kershner contributed reporting from Jerusalem and Kenneth P. Vogel from Washington.

By PETER BAKER and GARDINER HARRISFEB. 23, 2018

We’re in an all-out war against Iran’s presence in Syria

IDF OFFICIAL: RESPONSE TO FUTURE IRANIAN VIOLATIONS WILL BE MORE FORCEFUL"The next incident is only a matter of time," the official warned.
A senior official in Israel’s defense establishment warned on Sunday that Iran is determined to entrench themselves in Syria and will continue to try to attack Israel. Israel's responses to these further violations, he added, will be even more forceful.

“As far as we are concerned, the event is over but the Iranians are determined to continue to establish themselves in Syria and the next incident is only a matter of time,” he said, warning that Israel does not rule out that that the Islamic Republic will continue to try to attack Israel.

On Saturday, an Iranian drone was intercepted by an Israel Air Force Apache helicopter near the town of Beit She’an. In response, Israeli aircraft targeted the drone’s launch site deep inside Syria. Two Israeli pilots were wounded after ejecting from their F-16 which crashed down in Israeli territory.

Bennett: We’re in an all-out war against Iran’s presence in Syria
Syrians suffering under Iranian-supported regime praise Israel’s strikes
“We do not know what the mission of the Iranian drone was, it is their most advanced drone and they did not expect our radar to detect its penetration into our territory,” the senior official stated. “Our aerial freedom will not be harmed. We will continue to destroy targets.”

By ANNA AHRONHEIM

Trump's History of Sexual Abuse, A Review

Donald Trump’s reputation as a serial abuser is well-known.

So is his history as a misogynist.
We have heard him admit to abusing women.

"I don't even ask. I just walk up to them and start kissing them.

You can do anything you want to them if you're a star.

You can grab them by the pussy."

According to legal documents, Trump has been accused of raping a 13-year-old child, raping his ex-wife, and attempting to rape a former business associate.  The accusations are chilling.

The first and most famous accusation comes from Trump’s ex-wife Ivana Trump. During a deposition in the ‘90s, Ivana described a harrowing scene in which Trump held her arms back, pulled at her hair, and raped her in a fit of rage. She herself used the word “rape.”

The details of the incident were made public in the 1993 book Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump, written by the journalist Harry Hurt III.

Trump denies this incident took place, and before the book hit shelves his lawyers required that it include a statement at the front written by Ivana, in which she walks back her use of the word “rape.”

“During a deposition given by me in connection with my matrimonial case, I stated that my husband had raped me,” the statement said. “I referred to this as a ‘rape,’ but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense.”

In her statement she added instead that she felt “violated.”

The second accusation of sexual assault comes from a 1997 lawsuit. Jill Harth says she and her romantic partner were working with Trump on a business deal, when The Donald started making unwelcome sexual advances. In a lawsuit filed against Trump, she says he leered at her inappropriately, groped her on several occasions without her consent, and even “attempted rape.”

In her lawsuit, Harth describes a scene in which Trump took her into one of his children’s bedrooms at his Florida estate Mar-a-Lago, threw her against the wall, began touching her all over, and lifted up her dress.

In an interview with The Guardian, Harth says she had to physically prevent him from advancing and shouted out: “What are you doing? Stop it.” Adding, “It was a shocking thing to have him do this because he knew I was with George [her partner], he knew they were in the next room. And how could he be doing this when I’m there for business?”

Trump denies any of this ever happened, calling the allegations “meritless.” While Harth withdrew her lawsuit shortly after Trump settled a separate lawsuit with her romantic partner over a business matter, she stands by her claims. (Harth and Trump had a cordial relationship until recently, when the allegations resurfaced and he denied them. At that point, according to The Guardian, Harth decided to speak out.) She also says Trump’s camp has contacted her on several occasions in an attempt to make her change her story and deny it ever happened. “I said I’m not doing that,” she told The Guardian.

The third case against Trump comes via a recent federal lawsuit filed in June 2016 in the State of New York by “Jane Doe.” In the suit, Doe alleges that Trump raped her back in 1994, when she was just 13 years old. According to legal docs, Doe says she attended parties with Trump and his friend Jeffrey Epstein—a registered sex offender known in the media as the “billionaire pedophile.” Doe, who was trying to become a model, says it was during these parties that Trump initiated sexual contact with her on several occasions and on one occasion allegedly raped her.

According to the suit, Trump tied her to a bed, exposed himself to her and then raped her in a “savage sexual attack.” Doe says she screamed for him to stop at which point he struck her in the face while screaming “that he would do whatever he wanted.” In a statement filed with the lawsuit, Doe says Trump threatened to ruin her life and her family’s life if she ever told anyone about the incident:

Immediately following this rape Defendant Trump threatened me that, were I ever to reveal any of the details of Defendant Trump’s sexual and physical abuse of me, my family and I would be physically harmed if not killed.

The lawsuit also includes a witness statement from a “Tiffany Doe,” who says that, in the ‘90s, she was in charge of recruiting adolescent women to entertain guests at Epstein’s parties—and she personally saw the incident occur.

I personally witnessed the Plaintiff being forced to perform various sexual acts with Donald J. Trump and Mr. Epstein. Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein were advised that she was 13 years old.

In her statement, Tiffany Doe also says she witnessed Trump force other minors to perform oral sex on him and witnessed his “physical abuse” on them .


Taryn Hillin 

Jimmy Carter, Anti-Semite

Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid is so biased that it inevitably raises the question of what would motivate Jimmy Carter to write such an indecent book.

Sometimes you really can tell a book by its cover. President Jimmy Carter's decision to title his anti-Israel screed "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" (Simon & Schuster, 288 pages, $27) tells it all. His use of the loaded word "apartheid," suggesting an analogy to the hated policies of South Africa, is especially outrageous, considering his acknowledgment buried near the end of his shallow and superficial book that what is going on in Israel today "is unlike that in South Africa -- not racism, but the acquisition of land." Nor does he explain that Israel's motivation for holding on to land it captured in a defensive war is the prevention of terrorism. Israel has tried, on several occasions, to exchange land for peace, and what it got instead was terrorism, rockets, and kidnappings launched from the returned land.

Mr. Carter's book is so filled with simple mistakes of fact and deliberate omissions that were it a brief filed in a court of law, it would be struck and its author sanctioned for misleading the court.
In fact, Palestinian-Arab terrorism is virtually missing from Mr. Carter's entire historical account, which blames nearly everything on Israel and almost nothing on the Palestinians. Incredibly, he asserts that the initial violence in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict occurred when "Jewish militants" attacked Arabs in 1939. The long history of Palestinian terrorism against Jews -- which began in 1929, when the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem ordered the slaughter of more than 100 rabbis, students, and non-Zionist Sephardim whose families had lived in Hebron and other ancient Jewish cities for millennia -- was motivated by religious bigotry. The Jews responded to this racist violence by establishing a defense force. There is no mention of the long history of Palestinian terrorism before the occupation, or of the Munich massacre and others inspired by Yasser Arafat. There is not even a reference to the Karine A, the boatful of terrorist weapons ordered by Arafat in January 2002.

Mr. Carter's book is so filled with simple mistakes of fact and deliberate omissions that were it a brief filed in a court of law, it would be struck and its author sanctioned for misleading the court. Mr. Carter too is guilty of misleading the court of public opinion. A mere listing of all of Mr. Carter's mistakes and omissions would fill a volume the size of his book. Here are just a few of the most egregious:

Mr. Carter emphasizes that "Christian and Muslim Arabs had continued to live in this same land since Roman times," but he ignores the fact that Jews have lived in Hebron, Tzfat, Jerusalem, and other cities for even longer. Nor does he discuss the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab countries since 1948.

Mr. Carter repeatedly claims that the Palestinian Arabs have long supported a two-state solution and the Israelis have always opposed it. Yet he makes no mention of the fact that in 1938 the Peel Commission proposed a two-state solution, with Israel receiving a mere sliver of its ancient homeland and the Palestinians receiving the bulk of the land. The Jews accepted and the Palestinians rejected this proposal because Arab leaders cared more about there being no Jewish state on Muslim holy land than about having a Palestinian state of their own.

He barely mentions Israel's acceptance, and the Palestinian rejection, of the United Nation's division of the mandate in 1948.

He claims that in 1967 Israel launched a preemptive attack against Jordan. The fact is that Jordan attacked Israel first, Israel tried desperately to persuade Jordan to remain out of the war, and Israel counterattacked after the Jordanian army surrounded Jerusalem, firing missiles into the center of the city. Only then did Israel capture the West Bank, which it was willing to return in exchange for peace and recognition from Jordan.

Mr. Carter repeatedly mentions Security Council Resolution 242, which called for return of captured territories in exchange for peace, recognition, and secure boundaries, but he ignores that Israel accepted and all the Arab nations and the Palestinians rejected this resolution. The Arabs met in Khartum and issued their three famous "no's": "No peace, no recognition, no negotiation." But you wouldn't know that from reading the history according to Mr. Carter.

Mr. Carter faults Israel for its "air strike that destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor" without mentioning that Iraq had threatened to attack Israel with nuclear weapons if Iraq succeeded in building a bomb.

Mr. Carter faults Israel for its administration of Christian and Muslim religious sites, when in fact Israel is scrupulous about ensuring those of every religion the right to worship as they please -- consistent, of course, with security needs. He fails to mention that between 1948 and 1967, when Jordan occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the Hashemites destroyed and desecrated Jewish religious sites and prevented Jews from praying at the Western Wall. He also never mentions Egypt's brutal occupation of Gaza between 1949 and 1967.

Mr. Carter blames Israel, and exonerates Arafat, for the Palestinian refusal to accept statehood on 95% of the West Bank and all of Gaza pursuant to the Clinton-Barak offers at Camp David and Taba in 2000–2001. He accepts the Palestinian revisionist history, rejects the eyewitness accounts of President Clinton and Dennis Ross, and ignores Saudi Prince Bandar's accusation that Arafat's rejection of the proposal was "a crime" and that Arafat's account "was not truthful" -- except, apparently, to Mr. Carter. The fact that Mr. Carter chooses to believe Arafat over Mr. Clinton speaks volumes.

Mr. Carter's description of the recent Lebanon war is misleading. He begins by asserting that Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers. "Captured" suggests a military apprehension subject to the usual prisoner of war status. The soldiers were kidnapped, and have not been heard from -- not even a sign of life. The rocket attacks that preceded Israel's invasion are largely ignored, as is the fact that Hezbollah fired its rockets from civilian population centers.

Mr. Carter gives virtually no credit to Israel's superb legal system, falsely asserting (without any citation) that "confessions extracted through torture are admissible in Israeli courts," that prisoners are "executed," and that the "accusers" act "as judges." Even Israel's most severe critics acknowledge the fairness of the Israeli Supreme Court, but not Mr. Carter.

Mr. Carter even blames Israel for the "exodus of Christians from the Holy Land," totally ignoring the Islamization of the area by Hamas and the comparable exodus of Christian Arabs from Lebanon as a result of the increasing influence of Hezbollah and the repeated assassination of Christian leaders by Syria.

Mr. Carter also blames every American administration but his own for the Mideast stalemate with particular emphasis on "a submissive White House and U.S. Congress in recent years." He employs hyperbole and overstatement when he says that "dialogue on controversial issues is a privilege to be extended only as a reward for subservient behavior and withheld from those who reject U.S. demands." He confuses terrorist states, such as Iran and Syria, to which we do not extend dialogue, with states with whom we strongly disagree, such as France and China, but with whom we have constant dialogue.

It's obvious that Mr. Carter just doesn't like Israel or Israelis.
And it's not just the facts; it's the tone as well. It's obvious that Mr. Carter just doesn't like Israel or Israelis. He lectured Golda Meir on Israeli's "secular" nature, warning her that "Israel was punished whenever its leaders turned away from devout worship of God." He admits that he did not like Menachem Begin. He has little good to say about any Israelis -- except those few who agree with him. But he apparently got along swimmingly with the very secular Syrian mass-murderer Hafez al-Assad. Mr. Carter and his wife Rosalynn also had a fine time with the equally secular Arafat -- a man who has the blood of hundreds of Americans and Israelis on his hands:

Rosalynn and I met with Yasir Arafat in Gaza City, where he was staying with his wife, Suha, and their little daughter. The baby, dressed in a beautiful pink suit, came readily to sit on my lap, where I practiced the same wiles that had been successful with our children and grandchildren. A lot of photographs were taken, and then the photographers asked that Arafat hold his daughter for a while. When he took her, the child screamed loudly and reached out her hands to me, bringing jovial admonitions to the presidential candidate to stay at home enough to become acquainted with is own child.
There is something quite disturbing about these pictures.

"Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" is so biased that it inevitably raises the question of what would motivate a decent man like Jimmy Carter to write such an indecent book. Whatever Mr. Carter's motives may be, his authorship of this ahistorical, one-sided, and simplistic brief against Israel forever disqualifies him from playing any positive role in fairly resolving the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. That is a tragedy because the Carter Center, which has done much good in the world, could have been a force for peace if Jimmy Carter were as generous in spirit to the Israelis as he is to the Palestinians.

by Alan M. Dershowitz