Category Archives: UN United Nations Fraud Corruption

Why the U.S. Will Continue Funding the Palestinian Authority

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BDS in London is taking part in the protests and violence in Israel.

WashingtonExaminer: With all the recent yet constant violence in Jerusalem and the West Bank in Israel, the culprit for the incitement and bloody conflict is at the hands of the Palestinians. The United States for years has provided funding and will continue to do so even with Israel’s blessing. The ‘why’ is even more terrifying.

Why the U.S. won’t cut off aid to Palestinians

Lawmakers want to reduce or eliminate the $500 million a year in aid and security assistance the United States gives to the Palestinian Authority amid evidence that its leaders are inciting violence against Israelis.

While that might be satisfying in some ways, concerns that a cutoff would make the situation worse are likely to win out. Israeli officials oppose such a move, fearing that it may cause the Palestinian Authority to collapse.

“Israel doesn’t want a collapse because it will collapse in Israel’s lap,” David Makovsky, director of the Project on the Middle East Peace Process at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday.

Still, the problem of anti-semitic incitement in Palestinian society, much of it officially created and encouraged, remains a serious obstacle to a peaceful settlement of the basic conflict with Israel and the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state.

The issue is at the center of talks this week between Secretary of State John Kerry and leaders in the region, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordanian King Abdullah II.

“We have to stop incitement, we have to stop the violence. And I think it’s critical,” Kerry said before his meeting Thursday with Netanyahu in Berlin. He’s set to meet with Abbas and Abdullah on Saturday.

The Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday adopted a bipartisan resolution calling on Abbas to “discontinue all official incitement and exert influence to discourage anti-Israel and anti-semitic incitement in Palestinian civil society.”

It also directs the State Department to track and publicize incidents of incitement by Palestinian authorities.

But there’s a bipartisan desire in Congress for a more active U.S. approach to the problem. At a hearing before Thursday’s vote, experts gave lawmakers options besides an aid cutoff.

“The problem is we’ve been condemning incitement for decades but we never do anything about it.” said Elliott Abrams, a former top adviser in the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations, who argued for targeting the personal finances of Palestinian leaders who incite violence, and barring them from the United States.

Abbas “keeps doing it because he never pays a price for doing it,” Abrams said. “It’s a very cynical game. And as long as he pays no price, he’ll keep it up.”

He and others also suggested U.S. officials target the Palestinian Liberation Organization, which is dominated by Abbas’ Fatah movement, by closing its office in Washington and cutting off funding to incitement activities.

The PLO is “a bloated and opaque organization that has consistently stymied democracy,” said Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for research at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

The United States also needs to think beyond the leadership of Abbas, who’s in the tenth year of a four-year term largely because there are no good alternatives to his rule, and nurture a new generation of Palestinian leaders, he said. More here.

The genesis of the recent violence per Congressional testimony:

by: Foundation for Defense of Democracies

A Third Intifada?

Mr. Chairman, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has flared again. The violence can best be characterized as a concerted campaign of knife attacks against Israeli civilians and military personnel, peppered with other attempts at vehicular homicide and even bombings. Since October 1, eight Israelis have been killed while dozens have been wounded in no less than 44 attacks.  It’s unclear yet whether we can call this a third intifada. For it to be characterized as such, it would require the full backing of Palestinian leaders across the political spectrum. Despite the incitement of both the Fatah and Hamas factions, it’s safe to say that neither has committed fully to an all-out conflict right now with Israel. I will explain below why they are holding back.

Temple Mount Tensions

Mr. Chairman, the Palestinian narrative right now focuses on their rage over purported Israeli attempts to change the status quo on the Temple Mount/Haram ash-Sharif, the site holy to both Jews and Muslims. There are troubling signs that this unrest was premeditated. Indeed, it looks like the resumption of the unrest that erupted in June 2014 before last summer’s 50-day war between Israel and Hamas. The name given to the unrest, then as today, was the “Jerusalem Intifada.” The epicenter of that violence, then as today, was the Temple Mount.

The Temple Mount is one of the thorniest issues in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It is a deeply meaningful and holy site to both Muslims and Jews. Keeping the peace at this site has been a delicate issue since Israel conquered the Old City in 1967. The Israelis control the territory, but they have allowed for Jordan, with input from Palestinian religious authorities, to administer the site.  For years, Israeli law prohibited Jews from praying on the site, but Israel’s Supreme Court overruled this in 1993.  In recent years, the number of Jews that have gained access to the site during hours proscribed by Israel and the administering authorities has increased. This includes some Israeli politicians and religious groups who seek to assert Israeli sovereignty.  But according to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, access to the Temple Mount compound is still overwhelmingly Muslim. Indeed, over the last year, there have been approximately four million entries by Muslims, 200,000 by Christians, and just 12,000 by Jews.

To be clear, the status quo has not changed. Israel controls access to the site as a means to maintain the delicate peace, but it does not involve itself in matters of religious practice or prayer. Yet, over the last year, a disturbing pattern has developed. Palestinian elements, apparently led by the PLO, have led an effort to stoke religious tensions at the sensitive site with wild reports that Israel is trying to “Judaize” or undermine Muslim rights to pray there. At the forefront of this campaign to foment hate is WAFA, a news agency effectively controlled by the PLO. As one Arab newspaper noted, WAFA is one of the Palestinian “governmental media institutions.”

In January of this year, the chairman of the PLO’s Jerusalem Affairs Department, Ahmed Qurei, warned of an Israeli plan to register the al-Aqsa Mosque as an Israeli state property to be officially run by the so-called Tabu (land registration) office. The Al-Aqsa Foundation for Endowment and Heritage (AFEH) claimed this was setting the stage for a Jewish synagogue over parts of the holy Mosque. Qurei further stated that Israel was “Judaizing” the mosque and re-building the “alleged” Jewish Temple. “This is the most serious [action taken by Israel] that jeopardizes the future of the holy city,” he said.

The following month, WAFA cited Qurei warning about assessments made by Israeli engineers and contractors for new archeological excavations under the Temple Mount. In a press release, Qurei said that the Israeli government was trying to “empty the area [of] its indigenous citizens as a prelude to take over the land for the sake of settlement expansion.”  The PLO news agency, WAFA, added to the tensions claiming that nearly a thousand Israelis “stormed” the al-Aqsa compound during the previous month.

In March, WAFA issued a report stating that Jewish settlers were preparing to storm the al-Aqsa compound. The report alleged, “Jewish groups that define itself by the name of the alleged ancient Temple are preparing for the Jewish holiday Passover by mobilizing the largest number of settlers to enter Al-Aqsa Mosque and perform religious prayers in its yards.”  This was followed by a report that Israeli police, “physically assaulted and beat up [a ten-year-old girl], who along with other worshipers chanted religious slogans against a group of Jewish fanatics who entered the Mosque to perform religious rituals.”

The wild and unsubstantiated charges continued through the spring. WAFA in April claimed that, “Jewish settlers…broke into Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound through [the Dung Gate] bridge, and toured its yard under the heavy protection of Israeli police units.” In May, the PLO mouthpiece claimed several Palestinians were arrested “at the gates of al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the Old City for chanting religious slogans to fend off settlers’ attempts to tour the mosque’s yards. The two elders…were physically assaulted by the police before they were arrested.”

During the summer, the Palestinian leadership called for an emergency Islamic summit “in light of latest Israeli escalations at al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem.”  This came on the heels of reports that Israel had seized land adjacent to the eastern wall of the al-Aqsa mosque,  and that settlers were continuing “attacks against al-Aqsa mosque,”  and insulting the Prophet Mohammed while on the al-Aqsa compound.

In September, Mahmoud Abbas complained to the UN General Assembly that, “extremist Israeli groups are committing repeated, systematic incursions upon Al-Aqsa Mosque, aimed at imposing a new reality and dividing Al-Haram Al-Sharif.”  Soon after, Hamas declared a “day of rage” in the West Bank. Several Palestinians were wounded in clashes with Israelis.  Abbas took this as a cue to warn of an “intifada that we don’t want” if escalations at al-Aqsa continue.

As violence gripped Jerusalem, WAFA continued to complain that, “Jewish fanatics resumed their provocative visits to al-Aqsa Mosque.”  The rhetoric has only increased, fanning the flames of conflict as Palestinians have taken to lone-wolf style attacks to stab Israelis on the streets.

In an effort to calm tensions, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently ordered police to prevent Israeli ministers and members of Knesset from entering the Temple Mount.  The Israelis continue to make it clear that even when Jews visit the Temple Mount, they are not to pray there. Israeli security personnel enforce this strictly. However, the PLO continues to fan the flames of conflict. Their problem appears to be the very presence of Israelis and Jews on the Temple Mount.

– See more at: http://www.defenddemocracy.org/testimony/words-have-consequences-palestinian-authority-incitement-to-violence#sthash.h7XR057c.dpuf

 

 

The Assignment of the CIA Annex in Benghazi

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We keep asking what the CIA annex was actually tasked with doing in Benghazi. It was nothing nefarious but more to control what Hillary and her team were doing. Remember, the CIA is subservient to the White House and State Department. The Hillary-Benghazi testimony on Thursday is not about emails or the server. That track has already been established. The thrust of the questions will center on exactly what Hillary’s State Department intended to do about Libya after Qaddafi. Questions will be about mission pieces coming into play and being installed for deposing Qaddafi with regard to buying back weapons and buying others that were NOT bound for Syria but for the Transnational Council to take over the Qaddafi regime with particular emphasis on Tripoli and Benghazi. As noted from Politico below, this is the posture taken by Gowdy as his team.

Politico: The seven GOP members of the panel aim to strike the right balance during Thursday’s hearing with the former secretary of state. They’re hoping a professional approach, coupled with tough questions about security in Libya, U.S. foreign policy under Clinton and her email practices will help put to rest accusations that they’re ideologues bent on hurting the Democratic front-runner in the polls — or that the panel is a waste of taxpayer money. The hearing, which could last, sources say, until 8 p.m. or 9 p.m., will delve into U.S. policy toward Libya under Clinton, who encouraged U.S. support of the rebels fighting Qadhafi. Republicans want to know what the goal of that policy was and whether she was trying to make Libya a centerpiece of her foreign policy.

Gowdy said he’s particularly interested in asking Clinton about “the increase in violence juxtaposed with the decrease in security” at the mission that was attacked, because “it’s counterintuitive.”

A 1999 report after the East African embassy bombings recommended that the secretary of state take a “personal and active role” in security issues, Republicans — including Gowdy — have noted. Clinton, however, has testified previously that she was not aware of Stevens’ requests for more protection. And while it’s unclear whether the panel has any evidence suggesting that she was, Gowdy says there’s still the issue of “why” those pleas for help didn’t reach her.

When it comes to the machinery that Hillary’s team, it does involve weapons and the contracts and routes they took to reach the destination of Libya, all while doing so against rules and sanctions. Hillary may be actually guilty of much more than we can begin to define.

*** The facts begin to surface:

Washington Times – Tuesday, October 20, 2015
The State Department initially approved a weapons shipment from a California company to Libyans seeking to oust Moammar Gadhafi in 2011 even though a United Nations arms ban was in place, according to memos recovered from the burned-out compound in Benghazi.

The documents, obtained by The Washington Times, show U.S. diplomats at the Benghazi compound were keeping track of several potential U.S.-sanctioned shipments to allies, one or more of which were destined for the Transitional National Council, the Libyan movement that was seeking to oust Gadhafi and form a new government. At least one of those shipments, kept in a file marked “arms deal,” was supposed to come from Dolarian Capital Inc. of Fresno, California, according to an end use certificate from the State Department’s office of defense trade controls licensing that was contained in the file.
The shipment was to include rocket launchers, grenade launchers, 7,000 machine guns and 8 million rounds of ammunition, much of it new and inexpensive hardware originally produced in the former Soviet bloc of Eastern Europe, according to an itemized list included in the end use certificate.

Dolarian Capital, part of a small network of U.S. arms merchants that has worked with U.S. intelligence, confirmed one of its licensing requests to ship weapons via Kuwait to Libya was approved by the State Department in spring 2011 and then inexplicably revoked before the armaments were sent. “Dolarian Capital submitted the end user certificate in question to the U.S. Department of State for review and issuance of a license to transfer the arms and ammunition to Libya. The U.S. Department of State responded with a approval, which was revoked shortly thereafter,” one of its attorneys said in a statement issued to The Washington Times. “As a result no arms or ammunition was shipped or delivered to Libya under the end user certificate.”

Nonetheless, the existence of the documents and the temporary approval of at least one U.S. arms shipment provides the most direct evidence that Hillary Rodham Clinton’s State Department was aware of efforts to get weapons into the hands of rebels seeking to oust Gadhafi.

Mrs. Clinton is set to testify Thursday during a highly anticipated appearance before the House Select Committee on Benghazi.

The Obama administration has been ambiguous about the exact role the United States played in arming the rebels who overthrew Gadhafi, even as arms merchants and former CIA officials have stated publicly that a covert program facilitated such weapons transfers through a network of friendly weapons brokers and third-party countries.

The issue is sensitive because a U.N. ban on weapons shipments to Libya was in place at the time, although the State Department had the authority to deem a specific shipment in the United States interest and permit its transference, officials said.

State Department spokesman Alec Gerlach declined to comment Tuesday, as did the CIA public affairs office.

To date, the public evidence of U.S. involvement in weapons trafficking to Libya has been episodic.

Reuters reported in 2011 that President Obama signed a special presidential directive that authorized covert U.S. action to destabilize Gadhafi and stand up a new regime, up to and including facilitating weapons transfers if it was deemed in the U.S. interest.

The New York Times, quoting anonymous officials, reported a year later that the Obama administration gave its secret blessing to some weapons shipments to Libyan rebels routed through Qatar during the height of the country’s revolution.

Fox News this summer quoted a former CIA official as providing testimony in a court case that the U.S. almost certainly ran a covert weapons operation to help arm the Libyan rebels.
But to date, no evidence has emerged publicly that the State Department had direct knowledge or involvement in reviewing potential shipments.

The Benghazi documents, however, show that U.S. diplomats in the consulate were monitoring a series of potential exports in spring and summer 2011 to third-party countries and that one or more were likely to land in Libya.

For instance, a June 28, 2011, email chain contained in a file titled “arms deal” documents an exchange among State Department employees about eight export licensing application numbers, indicating one or more of the shipments involved Libya’s Transitional National Council.

“DRL recommends BA L181-11 T6-F RWA — need decision from higher level on TNC,” reads one of the notations in the email.

DRL stands for the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, and TNC is the interchangeable acronym for the Transitional National Council, the NATO-supported Libyan rebel government.

The email also references the office of defense trade controls licensing, the State directorate in charge of registering arms exports.

The Dolarian Capital papers, dated May 18, 2011, include an end-user certificate that outlines a long list of heavy former Eastern-bloc weaponry and artillery to be shipped from the California-based arms dealer first to Kuwait, and then to Libya.

“This is to certify the following items are to be delivered by Dolarian Capital, Inc. [of] Fresno, California, United States and secured by M/s Specter Consultancy Services G.T.C. [of] Kuwait City, Kuwait to the Ministry of Interior of the Translational [sic] Government of Libya. The Ministry of Interior has agreed the items are for the exclusive disposition of the Ministry of Interior of the Translational [sic] Government of Libya and will not be re-exported or transferred to any third countries,” the certificate reads.

Just one month earlier, Mrs. Clinton privately endorsed inside the State Department the idea of using arms merchants to help the Libyans. “Fyi. The idea of using private security experts to arm the opposition should be considered,” Mrs. Clinton wrote in an email to her most senior aides.

Dolarian Capital and other U.S. arms merchants — all legally registered with the State Department — have worked with U.S. intelligence over the years to move covert shipments into hot spots around the globe such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

It applied for several State Department licenses to ship weapons to Libya, but only one got approved and then only temporarily before being revoked. The one export listed in the certificate was among the smaller shipments the company proposed for Libya, according to people familiar with the applications. In each instance, State and other U.S. agencies were directly aware the end destinations for the weapons were in Libya.

Dolarian Capital also is listed in court records as the source of weapons for another U.S. arms dealer, Marc Turi, who sought permission to ship weapons to Libya during the same time frame. Mr. Turi since has been charged criminally with making false statements in his application for those shipments, and has publicly asserted that Mrs. Clinton’s State Department and other U.S. officials sanctioned his involvement.

His attorney, J. Cabou, told The Times on Tuesday his client intends to show the United States facilitated the possible weapons shipments to Libya, which never occurred.

Mr. Turi strongly believes he had the permission of the U.S. government to engage in the actions for which he is now charged with and he is vigorously trying to prove that fact,” Mr. Cabou said in a phone interview.

Supporting Mr. Turi’s case is a former CIA officer named David Manners, who has told a federal judge in the case that “It was then, and remains now, my opinion that the United States did participate, directly or indirectly, in the supply of weapons to the Libyan Transitional National Council (TNC).”
The end-user certificate for the one Dolarian transfer, obtained by The Times, details an itemized list of Soviet developed weapons including 10 Konkrus missile launchers, 6,900 RPK, AKM, SPG-9 machine guns and 100 grenade launchers. It also included two Soviet SVD sniper rifles and nearly 8 million rounds of ammunition.

An authorization letter signed by TNC Defense Minister Omar Hareery accompanied the certificate “call[ing] upon” TNC Interior Minister Esam M.T. Shibani and representatives from Specter Consultancy GTC to “supply all military surplus and hardware to the Transitional National Council of Libya [and] provide military and security consultancy for both civilian and government elements within Libya.”

The sensitivity of U.S. involvement in arming the Libya rebels stems from a U.N. embargo.

On March 17, 2011, the U.N. passed Resolution 1973, which imposed a no-fly zone over Libya and also established a panel of experts to monitor the arms embargo.

However, on March 27, 2011, only days after the intervention began, Mrs. Clinton argued that the arms embargo could be disregarded if shipping weapons to rebels would help protect civilians, a claim that came under immediate fire from British defense officials who disagreed with her interpretation of international law.

“We’re not arming the rebels. We’re not planning to arm the rebels,” British Defense Secretary Liam Fox told the BBC the same day Mrs. Clinton hinted otherwise.

In February, The Times published as part of a series on the 2011 NATO intervention classified Libyan intelligence reports including a 16-page weapons list corroborated by Gadhafi aide and U.S. intelligence asset, Mohammed Ismael.

The weapons list revealed where and when arms were brought to both terror and jihadi groups in Libyan cities including the rebel fortress of Benghazi by the country of Qatar. It did not detail the weapons’ point of origin, but in February 2012 Qatari officials sent a letter to the U.N. “categorically” denying they had “supplied the revolutionaries with arms and ammunitions.”

Tape recordings obtained and released by The Times earlier this year depicting secret calls between a U.S. intelligence asset and members of the Gadhafi family revealed the then Libyan regime believed NATO was helping Qatar and other countries illegally smuggle arms across their country’s borders to aide rebel forces in an attempt to destabilize Libya.

In a May 2011 telephone call between U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich and heir apparent Seif Gadhafi, Mr. Gadhafi alleged illegal arms shipments were coming into his country.

Mr. Kucinich, an outspoken critic against the Libyan intervention who has since retired from the Congress, told the Times he would not be surprised to learn the U.S. violated the arms embargo.

“Violating the arms embargo to send heavy weapons to Libyan rebels was a phase in engineering a crisis to establish a pretext for U.S. intervention and overthrow of the Libyan government, a very dirty business indeed,” Mr. Kucinich said.

The U.N. Security Council unanimously reinforced the embargo in May when the 15-member panel declined a request from the TNC for fighter jets, attack helicopters and munitions, fearing the weapons could get into the wrong hands.

This blogger has written about the operations in Benghazi, 3 days directly after the attack:

https://founderscode.com/look-who-hillary-hired-for-benghazi-help/admin/

https://founderscode.com/13-hours-of-benghazi-hat-tip-to-the-heroes-rip-to-the-heroes/admin/

https://founderscode.com/wall-street-and-5th-avenue-planned-for-benghazi/admin/

https://founderscode.com/tanto-explains-13-hours-of-benghazi/admin/

https://founderscode.com/the-chase-in-benghazi/admin/

 

 

Western Wall as Muslim territory….WHAT?

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Does the Bible matter? Does archeology matter? Does history matter? Does the United Nations matter? Defund the United Nations…PERIOD.

Israel’s Ambassador to UNESCO says the resolution is “a total Islamization” of a site that is revered by both the Jewish and Muslim faiths.

JPost: Israel is working to thwart a draft UNESCO resolution which declares that the Western Wall in Jerusalem – the most holy site in Judaism – belongs to al-Aksa Mosque compound.

The draft text to be voted on Wednesday in Paris states that UNESCO “affirms that the Buraq Plaza is an integral part of al-Aksa Mosque/al-Haram al-Sharif.”

Israeli Ambassador to UNESCO Carmel Shama Hacohen called the resolution “a total Islamization” of a site that is revered by both Jews and Muslims.

The six-page draft resolution – submitted by Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates on behalf of the Palestinian Authority to the UNESCO Executive Board – broadly condemns Israeli actions in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza.

At no point does the resolution mention the Jewish historical connection to Jerusalem, which dates back to biblical times. Nor does it reference the Temple Mount or the Western Wall, which was part of the retaining wall King Herod built for the Temple Mount more than 2,000 years ago. It also relies solely on Arabic names for the holy sites on and around the Temple Mount. More here.

Arab nations ask UN to designate Western Wall as Muslim territory

FNC: False rumors about Israel’s designs on a site held sacred by both Jews and Muslims helped trigger the bloody wave of attacks plaguing Jerusalem, but a tangible plan by six Arab nations to purge the Jewish State’s claim to its holiest location will be voted on Wednesday by the United Nations’ cultural arm.

A UN draft decision circulated by Algeria, Egypt, Kuwait, Morocco, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates reviewed by FoxNews.com “affirms that the Buraq Plaza is an integral part of the Al-Aqsa Mosque” –  a statement that would specifically fold the Jewish Western Wall into Islamic domain on the Temple Mount.

“This is a clear endeavor to distort history, in order to erase the connection between the Jewish People and its holiest site, and to create a false reality,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a Monday statement.

“This is a clear endeavor to distort history”

– Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement

The glut of recent attacks by Palestinian terrorists is partially a reaction to unsubstantiated rumors that Israel sought to change the status quo at the Temple Mount, a location of iconic Jewish and Muslim structures which is overseen by an Islamic trust known as the Waqf. Ironically, Arab countries responded to the rumors of a status quo shift with a concrete proposal for a status quo shift.

The Western Wall is a remnant of a retaining wall that supported the second Jewish temple. Jews are not permitted to pray on the Temple Mount by rabbinic decree, so the Western Wall is the closest they can venture to their most hallowed grounds.

 

A vote had initially been expected Tuesday in Paris, but UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova sought to delay it. The Bulgarian diplomat, who could be a candidate for UN Secretary General when the position opens up, issued a statement Tuesday saying she “deplores the recent proposals under discussion by the UNESCO Executive Board that could be seen to alter the status of the Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls, inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage list, and that could further incite tensions.”

The statement adds: “The protection of cultural heritage should not be taken hostage.”

The five-page draft decision, which only acknowledges the Jewish state as “Israel, the Occupying Power,” was circulated by the six Arab states because Palestine is not a member of the UNESCO Executive Board. The portion that would push the Western Wall into Islam’s purview is only a sentence on the second page. Much of the rest of the document largely blames Israel for past and present violence and further stresses an Islamic claim to everything on the Temple Mount.

The final page attempts to strengthen Palestinian links to other contested areas by reaffirming traditional burial sites for several major biblical figures claimed by both Jews and Muslims “are an integral part of Palestine.”

UNESCO initially approved a resolution designating Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem and the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron as “integral” parts “of Palestine” in 2010. That decision prompted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to ask, “If the places where the Jewish nation’s forefathers and mothers – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel – were buried 4,000 years ago is not part of the Jewish nation’s heritage, then what is a heritage site?”

Fox News’ Jonathan Wachtel contributed to this report.

Arab Spring: Business Over Diplomacy

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Courtesy of Sharyl Atkisson’s FullMeasure show and hard investigative work, matters come to the surface of where the White House misplayed countless missions in foreign policy especially as it relates to the Middle East, Syria, Libya and Yemen to mention a few.

When it comes to Libya, was the Hillary Clinton State Department more focused on business opportunities than equalizing countries? The answer appears to be yes and the hearing on Tuesday will be structured to prove that over security and diplomatic objectives.

Bloomberg: By

When Hillary Clinton testifies this week before the House Select Committee on Benghazi, expect Republicans to focus on her old friend, Sidney Blumenthal.

The chairman of the Benghazi committee, Trey Gowdy, alleges that in the run-up to President Obama’s intervention in Libya in 2011, Blumenthal was encouraging Clinton to support the war that he might personally profit from.

Recently released e-mails do show that Blumenthal was advocating in this period for a U.S. military contractor that sought business with the government that replaced the dictator, Muammar Qaddafi. But that contract was never signed. The contractor even lost money trying to win that business.

Blumenthal himself may have overstated his connections to the Libyan officials who would take power after Qaddafi fell. A lawyer who represented Libya’s transitional government in Washington at the time, David Tafuri, told me he didn’t recall running into Blumenthal in this period.

If Gowdy’s portrait is accurate and Blumenthal was trying to be a war profiteer, it appears he wasn’t a very good one.

Blumenthal did not respond to an e-mail request for an interview.

Gowdy’s allegations stem from Blumenthal’s connection to Osprey Global Solutions, a military contractor that sought to build field hospitals in Libya during the 2011 revolution and train the country’s national police after the fall of Libya’s dictator. According to e-mails received by the committee in late September, Blumenthal promoted Osprey to Clinton in a July 14, 2011, memo to prep her for an upcoming meeting with the transitional Libyan government’s ambassador to the United Arab Emirates.

The memo touts Osprey’s founder and chief executive, retired General David Grange, as the man who can help whip Libya’s opposition — the Transitional National Council, or TNC — into shape so it can take Tripoli. Blumenthal wrote that Grange’s company would provide direct training for Libyan fighters without the U.S. military having to be on the ground. “This is a private contract. It does not involve NATO. It puts Americans in a central role without being direct battle combatants,” Blumenthal wrote. “The TNC wants to demonstrate they are pro-US. They see this as a significant way to do that.”

Grange told me last week that he met Blumenthal only once, after being approached by Bill White, the chief executive of the consulting firm Constellations Group, to gauge his interest in doing business with the post-Qaddafi government in Libya. Constellations Group specializes in connecting people. In a 2013 interview, White said he helped put together the sale of Blackwater — the military contractor that became a target of Democrats during the George W. Bush presidency — to Academi. Grange said his understanding was that if he won any contracts in Libya, Constellations Group would get a percentage of the revenue as a finder’s fee. He did not know what Blumenthal’s relationship was with Constellations Group. “At that time I didn’t know if Blumenthal was doing this as a favor for Bill or if he was getting paid,” Grange told me. “I had no idea.”

Grange said Blumenthal in the meeting indicated that he could help expedite matters of licensing with the State Department. Mainly though, Blumenthal was promising to connect Grange to the Libyan opposition leaders who stood to take power after the fall of Qaddafi. “I knew that he was going to try to set up some meetings for us,” he said. Grange also said Blumenthal did not specifically talk about his relationship with Clinton.

Osprey never won any contracts in Libya. Grange said he spent $60,000 overall in pursuing the business in Libya. “We met with lots of people in positions of power, but they could never write a check,” Grange told me.

Blumenthal’s memo to Clinton also misstated Grange’s experience. Blumenthal wrote that Grange had helped devise the plan for U.S. Special Forces to take Baghdad in 2003. Grange told me that he was already retired from the Army by then and had nothing to do with the operation.

Democrats on the Benghazi committee say all of this strays far from the initial mandate, which was to learn more about what happened before, during and after the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on U.S. diplomatic and intelligence facilities in Benghazi. On Monday, the committee’s Democrats released a report on the investigation that said the transcript of Blumenthal’s deposition in June before the committee would show that Republicans asked him about things that had “nothing to do with Benghazi.”

The probe’s new focus on Blumenthal is nonetheless a serious matter. Gowdy’s letter earlier this month said nearly half the personal e-mails Clinton received about Libya prior to the Benghazi attack were from Blumenthal. This includes the period when the Obama administration was deciding whether to intervene against Qaddafi in 2011.

These e-mails show that Blumenthal was often a cheerleader for the intervention, even suggesting that Qaddafi’s ouster would benefit Obama in the polls. His messages often contained freelance intelligence about the situation in Libya, some of it wrong.

Blumenthal has said he never profited from his work for Osprey. In June following his closed testimony to the committee, he said the Osprey venture was one “in which I had little involvement, [that] [n]ever got off the ground, in which no money was ever exchanged, no favor sought and which had nothing to do with my sending these emails.”

But the July 14 memo from Blumenthal to Clinton says that he and two associates “acted as honest brokers, putting this arrangement together through a series of connections, linking the Libyans to Osprey and keeping it moving.”

Republicans on the committee tell me that they will be calling Blumenthal back soon to clarify answers he provided to the committee in June.

The irony is that Republicans are sounding a lot like the Democrats of 10 years ago, who accused some Republicans of seeking to profit from the war President Bush waged in Iraq.

But there is an important difference. In Iraq, the U.S. invested hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild the country after the dictator fell, and many American companies like Halliburton profited from this nation building. In the case of Libya, Obama lost interest after Qaddafi’s regime fell and never committed the resources to keep the country together after the dictator was gone.

That decision was likely one reason Osprey never won the contract that Blumenthal tried to set up. That decision also lies at the heart of the Benghazi committee’s mandate: President Obama allowed Libya to descend into a state so chaotic that terrorists could murder a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans only a year after the nation’s liberation.

Never Before in History Now the Doomsday Supply

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It boils down to Syria, the failed policy to control Bashir al Assad or remove him when the 5 year civil war has caused a global crisis. A country that once had a population of more than 20 million, today, an estimated 11 million Syrians are no longer in their home country. The crisis? The United Nations and member countries are out of money and resources to aid and provide humanitarian support for refugees any where they are located.

The United States as the historic world’s equalizer, failed to act in Syria for up to now 5 years….shameful as the consequences are worldwide and deaths are reported to be approaching 300,000 if not more.

The decision was made last month with no fanfare to break into the Doomsday inventory.

Arctic ‘Doomsday Vault’ opens to retrieve vital seeds for Syria

Svalbard, Norway (CNN)Humanity has had to cash in on its insurance policy earlier than expected.

Deep in the side of a mountain in the Arctic archipelago is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

 

Known as the “Doomsday Vault,” this seed bank — operated by the Norwegian government and containing a seed of just about every known crop in the world — is meant to be humanity’s backup in the event of a catastrophe that devastates crops.

But it was not a natural disaster that has caused scientists to have to dip in and make the first significant withdrawal from the vault. Rather, it was the most preventable of man-made disasters — war.

The bloody conflict in Syria has left scientists at an important gene bank in Aleppo — where new strains of drought- and heat-resistant wheat have been developed over time — unable to continue their work in recent years.

Now, with no sign of conditions in Syria improving, scientists have begun recovering their critical inventory of seeds, sourced from around the Fertile Crescent and beyond, that have been in safekeeping beneath the Arctic ice.

The seeds are being planted at new facilities in Lebanon and Morocco, allowing scientists to resume the important research they’ve been doing for decades, away from the barrel bombs of Aleppo.

READ: Syrian war forces first ‘Doomsday Vault’ withdrawal

An important storehouse in the Fertile Crescent

The gene bank in Aleppo, run by the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, is one of the most important in the world and includes more than 135,000 varieties of wheat, fava bean, lentil and chickpea crops, as well as the world’s most valuable barley collection.

“These are land races that were inherited from our grand-grandparents, most of them are unfortunately extinct now,” ICARDA Director General Mahmoud El-Solh said. “And this is where the cradle of agriculture (was)10,000 years ago. In this part of the world, many of the important crops were domesticated from the wild to cultivation.”

ICARDA representative Thanos Tsivelikas, who is overseeing the withdrawal from the vault, describes the operation as “a rescue mission; these seeds cannot be replaced.”

The ICARDA Aleppo center had sent nearly 80% of the seeds and samples to the Global Seed Vault as a backup by 2012, with its last deposit being in 2014.

And now, Solh and his ICARDA team have the challenge of keeping and reproducing one of humanity’s most important collections of food crop genetic lines.

Moved to neighboring Lebanon

Relocated to Lebanon, Solh opens the door to a vault on the Agricultural Research and Educational Center of the American University of Beirut campus in the Bekaa Valley. This is where the seeds ICARDA received back from Svalbard are housed.

Solh carefully shakes out a few wisps of what looks like wheat from a brown envelope. It is the plant from which the wheat we eat today originated 10 millennia ago.

“This is a source of desirable traits including drought tolerance, including heat tolerance, including resistance to disease and so forth. So this had lived through natural selection for over hundreds of years,” he said.

A 10-minute drive away and just across the mountain range from Syria, a new vault is being built by ICARDA.

To begin replenishing the stock, there are greenhouses nearby where the seeds will be planted, grown and reproduced. Once restocked, the seeds will once again become available for researchers and other seed vaults.

A parallel project is being set up in Morocco to ensure that humanity always has access to this irreplaceable cache of genetic material.

“Two-thirds of material is coming from dry areas which … are adapted to very harsh environments and have desirable traits” for drought, heat, cold, salinity and pests, Solh said.

Researchers are looking at ways to improve food crops with existing and extinct-in-nature genetic lines that are more adapted to the challenges that may lie ahead with global warming.

The answers could very well be in these specific seeds harvested from a specific moment in time. “This variety could help us adapt to climate change,” Solh said, holding up a small fava bean.

“You know that climate change is a reality and climate change is changing the whole environment in terms of more drought, hotter environments and even new diseases.”

ICARDA and others know that the past could very well contain the key to our future, though no one thought they would see such a mass withdrawal in their lifetime.