Dear America, Please Honor my Presidency. Love, Barack

Posted on January 5, 2017January 5, 2017 by Denise Simon

Cabinet Exit Memos: Our Record of Progress and the Work Ahead <– Click for the charts/graphs included. Obama is expected to deliver a farewell address on Tuesday in Chicago.

Obama defends legacy in letter to American people

To my fellow Americans,

Eight years ago, America faced a moment of peril unlike any we’d seen in decades.

A spiraling financial crisis threatened to plunge an economy in recession into a deep depression. The very heartbeat of American manufacturing — the American auto industry — was on the brink of collapse. In some communities, nearly one in five Americans were out of work. Nearly 180,000 American troops were serving in harm’s way in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the mastermind of the worst terror attack on American soil remained at large. And on challenges from health care to climate change, we’d been kicking the can down the road for way too long.

But in the depths of that winter, on January 20, 2009, I stood before you and swore a sacred oath. I told you that day that the challenges we faced would not be met easily or in a short span of time — but they would be met. And after eight busy years, we’ve met them — because of you.

Eight years later, an economy that was shrinking at more than eight percent is now growing at more than three percent. Businesses that were bleeding jobs unleashed the longest streak of job creation on record. The auto industry has roared its way back, saving one million jobs across the country and fueling a manufacturing sector that, after a decade of decline, has added new jobs for the first time since the 1990s. And wages have grown faster over the past few years than at any time in the past forty.

Today, thanks to the Affordable Care Act, another 20 million American adults know the financial security and peace of mind that comes with health insurance. Another three million children have gained health insurance. For the first time ever, more than ninety percent of Americans are insured — the highest rate ever. We’ve seen the slowest growth in the price of health care in fifty years, along with improvements in patient safety that have prevented an estimated 87,000 deaths. Every American with insurance is covered by the strongest set of consumer protections in history — a true Patients’ Bill of Rights — and free from the fear that illness or accident will derail your dreams, because America is now a place where discrimination against preexisting conditions is a relic of the past. And the new health insurance marketplace means that if you lose your job, change your job, or start that new business, you’ll finally be able to purchase quality, affordable care and the security and peace of mind that comes with it — and that’s one reason why entrepreneurship is growing for the second straight year.

Our dependence on foreign oil has been cut by more than half, and our production of renewable energy has more than doubled. In many places across the country, clean energy from the wind is now cheaper than dirtier sources of energy, and solar now employs more Americans than coal mining in jobs that pay better than average and can’t be outsourced. We also enacted the most sweeping reforms since the Great Depression to protect consumers and prevent a crisis on Wall Street from punishing Main Street ever again. These actions didn’t stifle growth, as critics predicted. Instead, the stock market has nearly tripled. Since I signed Obamacare into law, America’s businesses have added more than 15 million new jobs. And the economy is undoubtedly more durable than it was in the days when we relied on oil from unstable nations and banks took risky bets with your money.

The high school graduation rate is now 83 percent — the highest on record — and we’ve helped more young people graduate from college than ever before.

At the same time, we’ve worked to offer more options for Americans who decide not to pursue college, from expanding apprenticeships, to launching high-tech manufacturing institutes, to revamping the job training system and creating programs like TechHire to help people train for higher-paying jobs in months, not years. We’ve connected more schools across the country to broadband internet, and supported more teachers to bring coding, hands-on making, and computational thinking into our classrooms to prepare all our children for a 21st century economy.

Add it all up, and last year, the poverty rate fell at the fastest rate in almost fifty years while the median household income grew at the fastest rate on record. And we’ve done it all while cutting our deficits by nearly two-thirds even as we protected investments that grow the middle class.

Meanwhile, over the past eight years, no foreign terrorist organization has successfully planned and executed an attack on our homeland. Plots have been disrupted. Terrorists like Osama bin Laden have been taken off the battlefield. We’ve drawn down from nearly 180,000 troops in harm’s way in Iraq and Afghanistan to just 15,000. With a coalition of more than 70 nations and a relentless campaign of more than 16,000 airstrikes so far, we are breaking the back of ISIL and taking away its safe havens, and we’ve accomplished this at a cost of $10 billion over two years — the same amount that we spent in one month at the height of the Iraq War.

At the same time, America has led the world to meet a set of global challenges. Through diplomacy, we shut down Iran’s nuclear weapons program, opened up a new chapter with the people of Cuba, and brought nearly 200 nations together around a climate agreement that could save this planet for our kids. With new models for development, American assistance is helping people around the world feed themselves, care for their sick, and power communities across Africa. And almost every country on Earth sees America as stronger and more respected today than they did eight years ago. All of this progress is due to the service of millions of Americans in intelligence, law enforcement, homeland security, diplomacy, and the brave men and women of our Armed Forces — the most diverse institution in America.

We’ve also worked to make the changing face of America more fair and more just — including by making strides towards criminal justice reform, making progress towards equal pay, repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and advancing the cause of civil rights, women’s rights, and LGBT rights. I appointed two extraordinary women to the Supreme Court, marking the first time in history that three women sit on the bench, including the first Latina. And today in America, marriage equality is finally a reality across all fifty states.

This is where America stands after eight years of progress. By so many measures, our country is stronger and more prosperous than it was when we started — a situation I’m proud to leave for my successor. And it’s thanks to you — to the hard work you’ve put in; the sacrifices you’ve made for your families and communities; the way you’ve looked out for one another.

Still, through every victory and every setback, I’ve insisted that change is never easy, and never quick; that we wouldn’t meet all of our challenges in one term, or one presidency, or even in one lifetime. And for all that we’ve achieved, there’s still so much I wish we’d been able to do, from enacting gun safety measures to protect more of our kids and our cops from mass shootings like Newtown, to passing commonsense immigration reform that encourages the best and brightest from around the world to study, stay, and create jobs in America.

And for all the incredible progress our economy has made in just eight years, we still have more work to do for every American still in need of a good job or a raise, paid leave or a dignified retirement. We have to acknowledge the inequality that has come from an increasingly globalized economy while committing ourselves to making it work better for everyone, not just those at the top, and give everyone who works hard a fair shot at success.

And here’s the thing — over the past eight years, we’ve shown that we can. Last year, income gains were actually larger for households at the bottom and the middle than for those at the top. We’ve also made the tax code fairer. The tax changes enacted over the past eight years have ensured that the top one percent of Americans pay more of their fair share, increasing the share of income received by all other families by more than the tax changes in any previous administration since at least 1960. Simply put, we’ve actually begun the long task of reversing inequality. But as the global economy changes, we’ll have to do more to accelerate these trends, from strengthening unions that speak for workers, to preventing colleges from pricing out hardworking students, to making sure that minimum wage workers get a raise and women finally get paid the same as men for doing the same job. What won’t help is taking health care away from 30 million Americans, most of them white and working class; denying overtime pay to workers, most of whom have more than earned it; or privatizing Medicare and Social Security and letting Wall Street regulate itself again — none of which middle-class Americans voted for.

We will have to move forward as we always have — together. As a people who believe that out of many, we are one; that we are bound not by any one race or religion, but rather an adherence to a common creed; that all of us are created equal in the eyes of God. And I’m confident we will. Because the change we’ve brought about these past eight years was never about me. It was about you. It is you, the American people, who have made the progress of the last eight years possible. It is you who will make our future progress possible. That, after all, is the story of America — a story of progress. However halting, however incomplete, however harshly challenged at each point on our journey — the story of America is a story of progress.

Recently, I asked each member of my talented and dedicated Cabinet to prepare a detailed report on the progress we’ve made across the board these past eight years, and the work that remains to make this country we love even stronger. Today, I’m sharing them with you. And I hope you’ll share them with others, and do your part to build on the progress we’ve made across the board.

It has been the privilege of my life to serve as your President. And as I prepare to pass the baton and do my part as a private citizen, I’m proud to say that we have laid a new foundation for America. A new future is ours to write. And I’m as confident as ever that it will be led by the United States of America — and that our best days are still ahead.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama

Bill to Freeze $$ to State Dept, Until Embassy in Jerusalem

Posted on January 3, 2017January 3, 2017 by Denise Simon

Read the proposed legislation here.

Currently in Tel Aviv

Congress to Freeze State Department Funds Until U.S. Embassy Moves to Jerusalem

Bill seeks to counter Obama admin refusal to call Jerusalem Israel’s capital

FreeBeacon: A delegation of Republican senators is moving forward with an effort to freeze some funding to the State Department until the U.S. embassy in Israel is formally moved to Jerusalem, according to new legislation.

The legislation comes as the Obama administration continues to face criticism over its behind-the-scenes effort to forward a United Nations resolution condemning Israel.

The Obama administration, like previous administrations, does not formally recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city and has worked to stymie efforts to move the U.S. embassy there.

While Congress first approved legislation to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem in 1995, the new bill threatens to cut State Department funding until the relocation is complete.

The effort is being spearheaded by Sens. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), and Dean Heller (R., Nev.), all of whom support efforts by the incoming Trump administration to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem after years of debate.

“Jerusalem is the eternal and undivided capital of Israel,” Cruz said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the Obama administration’s vendetta against the Jewish state has been so vicious that to even utter this simple truth—let alone the reality that Jerusalem is the appropriate venue for the American embassy in Israel—is shocking in some circles.”

“But it is finally time to cut through the double-speak and broken promises and do what Congress said we should do in 1995: formally move our embassy to the capital of our great ally Israel,” Cruz said.

The legislation orders the White House to identify Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, which the Obama administration has refused to do. The bill will freeze a significant portion of the State Department’s funding until it completes the relocation.

In the past, the Obama White House has been caught scrubbing captions on official photographs that labeled Jerusalem as part of Israel. The administration also was entangled in a Supreme Court case when it refused to permit an American family to list its child’s birthplace as “Jerusalem, Israel.”

Heller said the legislation could help repair America’s relationship with Israel, which has become strained under the Obama administration.

“For years, I’ve advocated for America’s need to reaffirm its support for one of our nation’s strongest allies by recognizing Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel,” Heller said in a statement. “It honors an important promise America made more than two decades ago but has yet to fulfill. While administrations come and go, the lasting strength of our partnership with one of our strongest allies in the Middle East continues to endure.”

Rubio also championed the bill in a statement, saying it will finally close loopholes that have permitted the Obama administration to ignore congressional calls to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s official capital.

“Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish state of Israel, and that’s where America’s embassy belongs,” Rubio said. “It’s time for Congress and the president-elect to eliminate the loophole that has allowed presidents in both parties to ignore U.S. law and delay our embassy’s rightful relocation to Jerusalem for over two decades.”

Netanyahu will not Attend Paris Peace Summit

Posted on January 3, 2017January 3, 2017 by Denise Simon

Did any of those votes at the UN for the recent resolution endorsed by John Kerry, Samantha Power and the Obama White House remember this?

Now would be a good time to refer to an earlier post on this site:

Documents: Mahmoud Abbas Former KGB, Syria

The documents reveal an extensive relationship between the Soviet Union and the nascent Palestinian nationalist movement that began in the late 1960s. At the time, the Soviets established a covert channel with Yasser Arafat’s terror-inclined guerilla group, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, or PLO. Abbas held an integral role in these backdoor communications, functioning as liaison. Accordingly, the PLO closely collaborated with the KGB, receiving Soviet arms to launch asymmetrical warfare against the State of Israel. More from DailyWire.

January 15, there is a Peace Summit in Paris, Prime Minister Netanyahu will not attend. Below could be the reason for that decision.

TEL AVIV, January 2. /TASS/. A meeting of Palestine’s major forces Fatah and Hamas alongside representatives of other factions seeking to restore unity among the Palestinians will be held in Moscow on January 15, Wasel Abu Yousef, a PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) Executive Committee member, said cited by Israel’s The Jerusalem Post daily on Monday.

“The Russians will host a meeting of Fatah, Hamas and other Palestinian officials in Moscow in the middle of January to discuss reconciliation,” Yousef said.

The PLO official added that the talks in Russia would be held simultaneously with an international peace conference in Paris scheduled for the same day, January 15.

“The Palestinian leadership wants to demonstrate that it is working on both the peace process through the Paris conference and reconciliation by way of the Moscow meeting,” he said.

On June 3, 2016 Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, the special presidential envoy for the Middle East and Africa, at the first international conference on the Israeli-Palestine settlement in Paris called “the split among Palestinians” as “another negative factor hampering the peace progress.”

“This issue should be resolved as the priority task so that the Palestinians present a single and united delegation at the talks on the final status,” Bogdanov said at the time.

“Russia fully supports efforts on soonest restoration of inter-Palestinian unity on the basis of PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) and Arab Peace Initiative, holds dialogue with representatives of the whole range of Palestinian forces, first of all Fatah and Hamas, in the interests of achieving appropriate agreements. We hope that such approach is shared by other members of the international community,” the diplomat concluded.

In May 2011, a first meeting behind closed doors took place at a health resort near Moscow in an attempt to reconcile major Palestinian groups, including Fatah and Hamas. High-ranking officials of key Palestinian movements arrived in Russia after Fatah and Hamas had sealed a deal in Cairo to form a Palestinian government of “professionals.”

A split between Palestine’s two major forces, Fatah and Hamas, occurred after the parliamentary elections in Palestine in 2006 when Hamas won. In June 2007, its militants seized power in Gaza Strip. Since then, Palestine has been divided into two parts: Fatah controls West Bank and Hamas controls the Gaza Strip.

RCA Building FBI Operatives were Civilians, Latin America

Posted on December 30, 2016December 30, 2016 by Denise Simon

They operated under a cover business name and they investigated activities that could possibly be a threat to the United States. It was a big mission and much was discovered.

RCA Building Lobby - Rockefeller Center Archives

Employees and visitors board an elevator inside the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center (circa 1940), site of the FBI’s first cover office for its covert program known as the Special Intelligence Service. (© 2015 Rockefeller Group Inc/Rockefeller Center Archives)

Everyone knows that the holiday season is well under way when the giant Christmas tree is lit at Rockefeller Center in New York City. What is less well known, however, is the connection between Rockefeller Center and the birth of America’s civilian foreign intelligence efforts.

It was 1940 and the world had plunged into war the previous summer. Although America remained neutral at that time, it did not ignore the massive international threat, and an FBI operation—small but critical to America’s response to that threat—was centered in the heart of New York City in Rockefeller Center. It was called the Importers and Exporters Service Company and operated out of room 4332 at 30 Rockefeller Center—the RCA Building—beginning in August 1940.

Importers and Exporters was the Bureau’s first attempt to set up a long-term cover company for our covert program, the Special Intelligence Service (SIS). The SIS was the United States’ first civilian foreign intelligence service and was less than a year old. Under a 1940 agreement signed by the Army, Navy, and FBI and approved by President Roosevelt, the FBI was given responsibility for “foreign intelligence work in the Western Hemisphere.” This saw us gathering intelligence about espionage, counterespionage, subversion, and sabotage concerns—especially about Nazi activities—pertaining to civilians in South America, Central America, and the Caribbean. We were to create an undercover force that would proactively protect America’s security from threats in our international neighborhood. Given that our past success was mostly in criminal matters, taking on this task would be a steep learning experience.

To begin, we wanted to center the operation away from traditional FBI facilities and wanted to anchor it in commercial efforts, because they would provide the freedom of movement and access our agents would need. Although it is not clear why the Bureau chose to establish a presence at 30 Rock, it likely had something to do with the support that Nelson Rockefeller had provided to President Roosevelt’s intelligence work. Furthermore, on multiple occasions after the SIS’s creation, our personnel were afforded cover by Nelson Rockefeller’s Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs.

The RCA Building placed the FBI within a hotbed of foreign activity, both allied and enemy. The Rockefellers provided space in the same building at little or no cost to British Security Coordination, an intelligence agency/liaison service. It also hosted Italian, German, and Japanese tenants until the U.S. government detained them as enemy aliens when America entered World War II. And the Soviet Union had office space in the building as well.

Of course, the sign on the door did not read “FBI/SIS—Spies Welcome.” Instead, the Importers and Exporters Service Company—which never imported or exported anything—was supposed to be completely unidentifiable with the Bureau and would provide “backstopping” or cover identities, employment, and other necessary tools for our agents to operate undercover. With these new identities, representatives of the company were to travel throughout the hemisphere to collect intelligence and help to disrupt the Axis threat.

It looked good on paper; however, the plan took an unexpected turn because Bureau personnel had to fend off daily advances from unsuspecting salesmen and other parties knocking on the door wanting to do business with the new company. The FBI ended up shutting down the Importers and Exporters business in June 1941, but we kept the office itself open until November 1945, using it to quietly handle logistics for deploying SIS personnel.

Exterior of the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center during the 1940s. (© 2015 Rockefeller Group Inc/Rockefeller Center Archives)

Although the Importers and Exporters Service Company was a short-lived enterprise, its method of operation, providing what is known as “non-official cover” in the spy business, became crucial to the SIS’s intelligence activities and its subsequent successes. Learning from its Importers and Exporters experience, the Bureau—instead of maintaining one single cover company—enlisted the assistance of accommodating U.S. companies that agreed to provide cover jobs for Bureau personnel. (And in a boon for some of those companies, many of the individuals who filled these positions worked so enthusiastically that they became nearly indispensable to their cover employers.)

Room 4332 at 30 Rock and what went on there more than 70 years ago is little remembered now—the room itself doesn’t even exist anymore because the floor it was located on has an open plan today. However, those who enjoy the Christmas tree and skating rink at Rockefeller Center during the holiday season might take a minute to reflect on the building’s role in America’s first civilian foreign intelligence service.

*** The History Channel is running a series titled ‘Hunting Hitler’, where a large team is tracing high ranking Nazi regime officers through a ratline around the globe ending in Latin America. This is due to documents being declassified.

So, in case you are wondering if Hitler really did take his own life in a bunker in Berlin, that is no longer a proven fact. It is also important to note that the German regime under orders from Hitler was building countless advanced weapons many of which the United States gained possession and exploited them in domestic production as well as relocating German engineers. This includes the production of early versions of nuclear weapons of which too, the Germans sold the research papers and associated documents to Japan.

It is suggested to review the document below for what the SIS operation did uncover as it relates to German, Argentina, Paraguay, Japan and other areas in Latin America. This is but one of eight segments.

SIS History_Vol 2

Countries in Latin America have a nasty history not only with the Nazi regime but more recently with Iran. Adolf Eichmann was tracked to Argentina and captured, brought back to Israel, put to trial and found guilty. More recently is the case of the murder of Alberto Nisman who was investigating the case of Iran/Hezbollah 1994 bombing of the AMIA center in Buenos Aires, where 85 people were killed.

The recent former president of Argentina, Cristina Kirchner is implicated in the cover-up and complicity of the operation with obstruction of justice. Don’t think many of these tactics are not being applied today and Latin America is a southern neighbor where many countries are corrupt, ungoverned and remain a threat.

Obama’s Position is Jews Cannot Pray at Wailing Wall

Posted on December 27, 2016December 27, 2016 by Denise Simon

How about the first item of order in this decades long debate is eliminating 2 words: ‘occupation’ and ‘settlement’. Beyond that, read on.

Threats to Israel Posed by Resolution 2334

In terms of Israel, the approach underlying Resolution 2334, whereby “the Western Wall is tantamount to the Yitzhar settlement,” or “the Ramot neighborhood in Jerusalem is equivalent to the settlement of Elon Moreh,” eliminates any chances of negotiations toward a two-state arrangement.

The resolution rewards Palestinian obduracy, the Palestinian strategy of avoiding negotiations with Israel, and the expectation that the international arena will dictate the parameters for the arrangement. Therefore, the resolution will encourage the Palestinians to adhere to their refusal to return to the negotiating table and exhibit the flexibility required in any genuine negotiation.

The resolution increased the risk of Israelis at certain political and military echelons being brought to trial before the International Criminal Court in The Hague. It will be difficult to conduct peace negotiations in an atmosphere of “a legal witch hunt” of Israeli leaders and commanders.

The delegitimization movement and the boycott of Israel will become stronger and receive moral and political encouragement, which can be translated into legal, political, public, and economic measures.

The resolution places the Israeli issue as a bone of contention between American Democrats and Republicans and threatens America’s longstanding bipartisan support of Israel.

The resolution damages Israeli deterrence, since a significant portion thereof is based on the strategic alliance with the United States and its support of Israel.

The report on issues referred to in the resolution, which the UN Secretary-General is requested to release every three months, will guarantee constant preoccupation with these topics at the expense of more important issues and will nourish an ongoing anti-Israeli campaign.

At the same time, Resolution 2334 was not passed pursuant to Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter, and, therefore does not allow the UN to impose sanctions and other practical measures against Israel without a further resolution. One can assess that the new administration in the United States, which is more sympathetic toward Israel than the Obama administration, will veto any attempt to pass resolutions pursuant to Chapter 7.

****

CR: Here we go again with the U.N. peddling the biggest geo-political hoax of all time — that Israel’s control over Judea and Samaria is illegal, that it belongs to a distinct Arab people called “Palestinians,” and that the source of Islamist mayhem across the globe is a smattering of Jewish homes being built in their ancestral land. Land, which by the way, is virtually invisible on a map compared to the mass of land controlled by Islam.

While Islamic jihadists are blowing up every corner of the world, what is “the international community” focused on? Yup, those pesky little Jewish homes built in their ancestral home on a parcel of land not even visible on the map. The U.N. Security Council passed a resolution before the Christmas weekend that “reaffirms that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law.”

Obama instructed the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations to abstain from vetoing that resolution, an unprecedented step given our history of vetoing anti-Israel resolutions. Worse, it appears that Obama was likely the ringleader behind the resolution because, according to Israeli sources, Vice President Joe Biden convinced Ukraine to support the resolution, a move that shocked Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Actually, Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria is enshrined into international law

The notion that there is any moral equivalence between Jews building homes in their homeland that they won back in a defensive war (after it was illegally occupied by Jordan) and brutal terrorists illegally occupying land that was never given to them, is reprehensible. But first, a brief history lesson …

The only binding resolution of international law, a resolution which has never been countermanded to this very day, is the July 1922 Mandate for Palestine. Adopted by the League of Nations, that resolution recognized the “historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.” It called for the creation of a Jewish national homeland anywhere west of the Jordan River.

Once the League of Nations was disbanded and the United Nations formed in its stead, the international community agreed to maintain all agreements and not “alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which Members of the United Nations may respectively be parties.” [Article 80, UN Charter, emphasis added] This provision wasn’t inserted by accident; it was known as “the Jewish People’s clause” at the time it was adopted in 1945 in order to enshrine the 1922 Mandate into international law.

The Mandate for Palestine adopted by the League of Nations was the last legally binding document delineating regional borders. In Article 5 of the Mandate it explicitly states “The Mandatory shall be responsible for seeing that no Palestine territory shall be ceded or leased to, or in any way placed under the control of the Government of any foreign Power.”

The Palestine Mandate (and Iraq) was given to Britain to serve as a temporary trustee based on the resolution between the four principle Allied Powers in April 1920 at the San Remo Conference in Italy, which was signed by 51 nations. It was at that conference where the world powers adopted the 1917 Balfour Declaration (which originally allocated the eastern part of the Mandate for a Jewish state as well) creating a Jewish state. This same conference that created the Jewish state west of the Jordan River also created Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Iraq as Arab states.

The legality of the 1922 Mandate was adopted that same year by the U.S. Congress in H.J. Res. 360 and signed by President Warren Harding. The newly created Arab country of Jordan attacked Israel in 1948 seeking to annihilate its inhabitants and illegally occupied Judea and Samaria until 1967. That year, Israel won back the territory originally allocated for a Jewish State as part of the 1922 League of Nations agreement.

There is no such thing as “’pre-67 borders.” They were merely 1949 armistice lines between Israel and neighboring countries after they launched an illegal war of extermination. It has nothing to do with the notion of a unique Arab “Palestinian” entity west of the Jordan River. There was never any internationally recognized legal sovereign occupying Judea and Samaria from the time the British Empire fell until 1967. Jordan’s occupation of the area west of the Jordan River was never recognized. To the extent there is an Arab Palestinian state it is the modern state of Jordan, which already sucked up 77% of the original Mandate of Palestine allocated for a Jewish State under the first plan of the Balfour Declaration.

In many respects, this is the biggest global fake news story of our time.

Although the U.N. has bloviated time and again about Israel “withdrawing” from the region, those are merely recommendations and political arguments. They are not legal arguments because once that land was allocated for the Jewish state by the binding charter of the U.N., it cannot be rescinded without Israel’s consent any more than Florida can be taken away from the U.S. and be returned to Spain without our consent.

Until fairly recently, even the Left was forced to admit this legal and historical reality. During an interview with Matt Lauer on October 1, 1997, then-Secretary of State Madelaine Albright reluctantly admitted that although she was unhappy about recent construction in Judea, it was indeed legal:

SECRETARY ALBRIGHT: I wasn’t happy. We had had a conversation, and I felt
that going forward with those kinds of buildings was not helpful. It is not
in any way not part of what they can do, but they shouldn’t do it.MR. LAUER: It’s legal.SECRETARY ALBRIGHT: It’s legal. But I think that, in this kind of an
atmosphere, it’s very important not to take actions that are viewed by the
other side as creating more difficulties.

Unfortunately, over the past generation the geo-political elites and the media has repeated the lie about an Arab “Palestinian state” and “illegal Israeli settlements” so many times that it has become true in the minds of so many people. It’s a classic strategy domestic liberals employ when they conflate political arguments with legal arguments. In many respects, this is the biggest global fake news story of our time.

The reality is that Arab squatters living in that region have no legal right to a state in that land, much less a right to murder Jews who build homes in the rightful territory of their state duly adopted by international law. But even those who subscribed to this nonsense over the past few decades must wake up and smell the Jihad. The fact that Jihad has spread to every corner of the world, including in the West itself, should demonstrate incontrovertibly that the source of the problem is not a few homes built in the Samarian hills by Jews. The problem is global Islamic supremacism.

It was heartening to see Donald Trump release a statement opposing the U.N. resolution and threaten their funding. But he needs to take it a step further and end the entire policy of promoting a second Palestinian State (the first being Jordan) altogether. Pursuit of an Arab “Palestinian” state has been one of the most wrongheaded failed policies in modern history and it’s time for the Republican Party to formally abandon it forever.