Everyone that lives in Jerusalem is condemning UN Security Council Resolution 2334Even American Jews are complaining:
From israel matzav: Oh, what a tangled web we weave. When first we practice to deceive!חֲנֻכָּה Hanukkah is here. Hopefully people will do Teshuvah. Just look at the Hanukah GeographyWe need to go to the field and beg Hashem to help us. Trusting in flesh and blood rulers will not work. Only Hashem is our true King of Kings. We need to turn to our Gedolim for guidance.The Remarkable ShepherdFriday, 05 December 2014 http://lazerbrody.typepad.com/lazer_beams/2014/12/bedouin_shepher.html “Such a sheep is less remarkable,” replied Rabbi Yehoshua, “than the shepherd that’s capable of protecting it from the seventy wolves!” Interpretation: The seventy wolves – the nations of the world, inherently hostile to Israel; the sheep – Israel; the shepherd – Hashem.Wolves and BriarsThursday, 10 June 2010 http://lazerbrody.typepad.com/lazer_beams/2010/06/pick_a_path_of_.html “If a flock of sheep is so inane as to stray from the shepherd – thinking that they know a better way to green pastures than the shepherd does – they’ll definitely run into a pack of wolves.” One who strays off the path shouldn’t complain when scratched by the briars. Emuna – a Working DefinitionEmuna is the firm belief in a single, supreme, omniscient, benevolent, spiritual, supernatural, and all-powerful Creator of the universe, whom we refer to as G-d. He alone cares for each of us in a unique, tailor-made fashion according to our own individual needs. Everything that happens to us in life is the product of G-d’s will and personal intervention in our lives, which we refer to as Divine providence, or DP. DP is designed to help us perform our task in life and to assist us in realizing ou personal potential to the hilt. |
So-You-Want-to-Boycott-Israel |
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“I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”– Genesis 12:1-3 |
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Hanukah Geography21December2019 http://myrightword.blogspot.com/2019/12/hanukah-geography.html Eventually, a revolt broke out, sparked by the actions a priestly family, the Hasmoneans, in Modiin led at first by Mattityahu and then his sons. They became known as the Maccabees and were quite successful in their tactics of guerrilla warfare. The Syrian-Greek occupiers were defeated. Returning to liberated Jerusalem and led by Judah, they entered the Temple courtyards, removed the idols placed there by the Syrians, built a new altar and dedicated it on the twenty-fifth of the month of Kislev, in the year 139 BCE. Seeking oil to light the Menorah, they found only a small cruse of pure olive oil bearing the seal of the High Priest Yochanan. It was sufficient to create light for only one day. By a miracle of God, it continued to burn for eight days. This is, in concise form, the Hanukah story. But where did the story take place? Where were the battles? Where was the Temple? What is the geography of Hanukah? Here is a map of the major sites of the Hanukah story: Here is another: Here is a map of the entire period of the Hasmonean reign which continued until 63 BCE or so when the territory controlled expanded across the Jordan River as it was previously from Biblical times: In other words, if we apply contemporary terms, the main site of the miracle we celebrate by lighting candles for eight days, Temple. is now in… “occupied East Jerusalem”. The major battles the Maccabees waged were:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maccabean_Revolt#Timeline Battle of Wadi Haramia (167 BCE) Battle of Elasa (160 BCE) All in what is mistakenly called the “West Bank”. Of course, this would mean that we would might think that we are celebrating a holiday of occupation. But that would be wrong. In fact, it is the language and rhetoric of “occupation” used today that is what is wrong and incorrect. What we need is a linguistic revolt, especially among Jews. Jewish control/administration over Judea and Samaria and all of Jerusalem is not wrong, not immoral but a return to the true geography of the Jewish national home, Judaism and Jewish history. |
Rabbi Meir Kahane Tells the Truth AZZ Conceal |
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Greatest Speech Ever Delivered at U.N. * Moynihan on Zionism is Racism, 1975 |
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6 Facts That You Need to Know About Israel’s Legal Rights |
So in the last one Hundred years the Arabs have rejected Peace. Israel needs to take Option Two and Three.Failed Two State Solution ‘אולי הסרטון הכי חזק נגד ‘שתי מדינות לשני עמים |
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New poll shows Palestinian Arabs don’t want peace, under ANY circumstancesFriday, January 26, 2018 http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2018/01/new-poll-shows-palestinian-arabs-dont.html A joint poll by the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research (TSC), Tel Aviv University and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) shows that Palestinians are against any possible solution to the conflict. Their press release doesn’t say it, but the poll itself does. A series of options are given to Palestinians: Mutual recognition of Palestine and Israel as the homelands of their respective peoples. The If in addition to the above items of the permanent settlement package, Israel agreed to accept the The agreement states that the state of Palestine will have a democratic political system based on rule of law, periodic elections, free press, strong parliament, independent judiciary and equal rights for religious and ethnic minorities as well as strong anti-corruption measures. 58.6% oppose. The agreement includes formal guarantees by the US, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, who will create a joint commission to ensure proper implementation on both sides. 68.1% oppose. The agreement states that Palestinians, including refugees, are allowed, if they wish, to live as permanent residents inside Israel while maintaining their Palestinian citizenship, as long as they are law abiding 70.4% oppose The agreement allows the current Palestinian National Security Force to become an army with light weapons but without heavy weapons 80.8% oppose The agreement states that Israel recognizes the Nakba and the suffering of refugees, and provides compensation to refugees? 58.1% oppose Also, when given a choice of options (status quo, armed resistance, unarmed resistance, peace treaty) a plurality of Palestinians preferred armed resistance over peace, 38% to 26%. The only thing that Palestinians agree on is that they do not want peace. The poll didn’t ask the obvious question, because the people behind it don’t want the world to know the answer, but the real question should have been: Do you hope to see Israel destroyed and replaced by Palestine? Other questions that would illuminate how Palestinians feel might include “would you support an Iranian nuclear attack against Tel Aviv, even if it would kill thousands of Arabs in Jaffa?” The Palestinian zero-sum mentality, now proven by a poll
72% of Palestinians agreed that peace is a zero-sum game. If it is good for Israel – meaning, peace and having normal relations with the Arab world – then it must be bad for Palestinians. Don’t expect the media to notice, though. Take our JerusalemCats Poll:
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Column One: Obama and Israel, strike and counter-strikeBy CAROLINE B. GLICK 12/29/2016 http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Column-One-Obama-and-Israel-strike-and-counter-strike-476948 UN Security Council Resolution 2334 was the first prong of outgoing President Barack Obama’s lame duck campaign against Israel. US Secretary of State John Kerry’s speech on Wednesday was the second. On January 15, stage 3 will commence in Paris. At France’s lame duck President François Hollande’s international conference, the foreign ministers of some 50 states are expected to adopt as their own Kerry’s anti-Israel principles. The next day it will be Obama’s turn. Obama can be expected to use the occasion of Martin Luther King Jr. Day to present the Palestinian war to annihilate Israel as a natural progression from the American Civil Rights movement that King led 50 years ago. Finally, sometime between January 17 and 19, Obama intends for the Security Council to reconvene and follow the gang at the Paris conference by adopting Kerry’s positions as a Security Council resolution. That follow-on resolution may also recognize “Palestine” and grant it full membership in the UN. True, Kerry said the administration will not put forward another Security Council resolution. But as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained in his response to Kerry’s address, there is ample reason to suspect that France or Sweden, or both, will put forth such a resolution. Since the draft will simply be a restatement of Kerry’s speech, Obama will not veto it. Whether or not Obama gets his second Security Council resolution remains to be seen. But whether he succeeds or fails, he’s already caused most of the damage. A follow-on resolution will only amplify the blow Israel absorbed with 2334. Resolution 2334 harms Israel in two ways. First, it effectively abrogates Resolution 242 from 1967 which formed the basis of Israeli policy-making for the past 49 years. Second, 2334 gives a strategic boost to the international campaign to boycott the Jewish state. Resolution 242 anchored the cease-fire between Israel and its neighbors at the end of the Six Day War. It stipulated that in exchange for Arab recognition of Israel’s right to exist in secure and defensible borders, Israel would cede some of the territories it took control over during the war. Resolution 242 assumed that Israel has a right to hold these areas and that an Israeli decision to cede some of them to its neighbors in exchange for peace would constitute a major concession. Resolution 242 is deliberately phrased to ensure that Israel would not be expected to cede all of the lands it took control over in the Six Day War. The resolution speaks of “territories,” rather than “the territories” or “all the territories” that Israel took control over during the war. Resolution 2334 rejects 242’s founding assumptions. Resolution 2334 asserts that Israel has no right to any of the lands it took control over during the war. From the Western Wall to Shiloh, from Hebron to Ariel, 2334 says all Israeli presence in the areas beyond the 1949 armistice lines is crime. Given that Israel has no right to hold territory under 2334, it naturally follows that the Palestinians have no incentive to give Israel peace. So they won’t. The peace process, like the two-state solution, ended last Friday night to the raucous applause of all Security Council members. As for the boycott campaign, contrary to what has been widely argued, 2334 does not strengthen the boycott of “settlements.” It gives a strategic boost to the boycott of Israel as a whole. It calls on states “to distinguish in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967.” Since no Israeli firm makes that distinction, all Israeli economic activity is now threatened with boycott. Tnuva is an “occupation” dairy because it supplies communities beyond the 1949 lines. Bank Hapoalim is an “occupation” bank because it operates ATM machines in post-1967 neighborhoods in Jerusalem. The Fox clothing chain is an “occupation” chain because it has a store in Gush Etzion. And so on and so forth. Resolution 2334 gives Europe and its NGOs a green light to wage a complete trade and cultural boycott against all of Israel. Obama is not using his final weeks in office to wage war on Israel because he hates Netanyahu. He is not deliberately denying 3,500 years of Jewish history in the Land of Israel because the Knesset is set to pass the Regulations Law that will make it marginally easier for Jews to exercise property rights in Judea and Samaria, as Kerry and UN Ambassador Samantha Power claimed. Obama’s onslaught against Israel is the natural endpoint of a policy he has followed since he first entered the White House. In June 2009, Obama denied the Jews’ 3,500 years of history in the Land of Israel in his speech in Cairo before an audience packed with members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Instead of the truth, Obama adopted the Islamist propaganda lie that Israel was established because Europe felt guilty about the Holocaust. Throughout his presidency, Obama has rejected the guiding principle of Resolution 242. His antisemitic demand that Israel deny its Jewish citizens their civil and property rights in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria simply because they are Jews is just as antithetical to 242 as is Resolution 2334. In his speech, Kerry repeatedly castigated the government while flattering the Israeli Left in yet another attempt to divide and polarize Israeli society. Kerry’s professed support for the Israeli Left is deeply ironic because Israeli leftists are the primary casualties of Obama’s anti-Israel assault. In the post-242 world that Obama initiated, the UN makes no distinction between Jerusalem and Nablus, between Gush Etzion and Jenin, or between Ma’aleh Adumim and Ramallah. In this world, Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog’s plan to retain a mere 2-3% of Judea and Samaria is no more acceptable than Bayit Yehudi leader Naftali Bennett’s plan to apply Israeli law to 60% of the area or to other plans calling for Israeli law to be applied to all of Judea and Samaria. All are equally unlawful. All are equally unacceptable. For the next three weeks, the government’s focus must be centered on Obama and minimizing the damage he is able to cause Israel. Since Israel cannot convince Hollande to cancel his conference or Obama not to give his speech, Israeli efforts must be concentrated on scuttling Obama’s plan to enact a follow-on resolution. To scuttle another resolution, Israel needs to convince seven members of the Security Council not to support it. Only measures that secure the support of nine out of 15 Security Council members are permitted to come to a vote. The states that are most susceptible to Israeli lobbying are Italy, Ethiopia, Japan, Egypt, Uruguay, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Russia. Netanyahu’s furious response to 2334 advance the goal of blocking a vote on a follow-on resolution in two ways. First, they create Israeli leverage in seeking to convince member states to oppose voting on an additional resolution before January 20. Second, Netanyahu’s seemingly unrestrained response to the Obama administration’s onslaught enables Donald Trump to join him in pressuring Security Council members to oppose bringing a new resolution for a vote. By taking an extreme position of total rejection of Obama’s actions, Netanyahu is enabling Trump to block a vote while striking a moderate tone. In three weeks, Obama’s war with Israel will end. His final legacy – the destruction of the landfor- peace paradigm and the two-state policy-making model – obligate Israel, for the first time in 50 years, to determine by itself its long-term goals in relation to the international community, the Palestinians and Judea and Samaria. Regarding the international community, the Security Council opened the door for its members to boycott Israel. As a result, Israel should show the UN and its factotums the door. Israel should work to de-internationalize the Palestinian conflict by expelling UN personnel from its territory. The same is the case with the EU. Once Britain exits the EU, Israel should end the EU’s illegal operations in Judea and Samaria and declare EU personnel acting illegally persona non grata. As for the Palestinians, Resolution 2334 obligates Israel to reconsider its recognition of the PLO. Since 1993, Israel has recognized the PLO despite its deep and continuous engagement in terrorism. Israel legitimized the PLO because the terrorist group was ostensibly its partner in peace. Now, after the PLO successfully killed the peace process by getting the Security Council to abrogate 242, Israel’s continued recognition of the PLO makes little sense. Neither PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas nor his deputies in Fatah – convicted, imprisoned mass murderer and terrorism master Marwan Barghouti, and Jibril Rajoub who said he wishes he had a nuclear bomb so he could drop it on Israel and who tried to get Israel expelled from FIFA – has any interest in recognizing Israel, let alone making peace with it. The same of course can be said for the PLO’s coalition partner Hamas. An Israeli decision to stop recognizing the PLO will also have implications for the Trump administration. In the aftermath of 2334, calls are steadily mounting in Congress for the US to cancel its recognition of the PLO and end US financial support for the Palestinian Authority. If Israel has already ended its recognition of the PLO, chances will rise that the US will follow suit. Such a US move will have positive strategic implications for Israel. There is also the question of the Palestinian militias that are deployed to Judea and Samaria as part of the peace process that Obama and the PLO officially ended last Friday. In the coming months, Israel will need to decide what to do about these hostile militias that take their orders from leaders who reject peaceful coexistence with Israel. Finally, there are the territories themselves. For 50 years, Israel has used the land-for-peace paradigm as a way not to decide what to do with Judea and Samaria. Now that 242 has been effectively abrogated, Israel has to decide what it wants. The no-brainer is to allow Jews to build wherever they have the legal right to build. If the UN says Israel has no rights to Jerusalem, then Israel has no reason to distinguish between Jerusalem and Elon Moreh. More broadly, given that for the foreseeable future, there will be no Palestinian Authority interested in making peace with Israel, Israel needs to think about the best way to administer Judea and Samaria going forward. The obvious step of applying Israeli law to Area C now becomes almost inarguable. Shortly before Obama took office eight years ago, he promised to “fundamentally transform” America. Trump’s election scuttled any chance he had of doing so. But by enabling Resolution 2334 to pass in the Security Council, Obama has succeeded in fundamentally transforming the nature of the Palestinian conflict with Israel. Israel’s actions in the coming weeks will determine whether it is fundamentally transformed for better or for worse. |
How Obama Cracked Jewish Solidarity (Michael Lumish)01January2017 https://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2017/01/how-obama-cracked-jewish-solidarity.html While future historians may join Alan Dershowitz in considering him among the worst foreign policy presidents in U.S. history, he will probably hold a very special place in the hearts of Jewish people throughout the world. This is true because he will likely be known as the American president who, whatever his honest intentions, did more than any to divide the Jewish people from one another and from the Jewish state. The genius in this bit of Jewish slicing-and-dicing is in its multifaceted aspect. Obama did not merely rub poison into the cleavage between progressive-left Jews and the rest of us. Nor did he merely drive a wedge between American Jews and Israeli Jews. He even managed, much to my astonishment, to divide pro-Democratic Party Jews among themselves and between themselves and, increasingly, the party as a whole. Now that is quite an accomplishment. Let’s briefly go through it. Dividing American Jews from One Another Barack Obama can hardly be blamed for creating Jewish divisions over Israel, as Edward Alexander and Paul Bogdanor would readily agree. Nonetheless, it must be understood that while Obama may appreciate certain Jews as individuals he has never been friendly or sympathetic to the Jewish people as a whole… or so we can reasonably deduce from his posture toward the Jewish state. On the contrary, along with figures like Mahmoud Abbas, Louis Farrakhan, George Galloway, Rashid Khalidi, Jeremy Corbyn, and Keith Ellison, Obama regards Israel as a rogue state imposing itself upon the “indigenous” Palestinian-Arab population. The Jewish people who live there are considered by their very presence, an impediment to peace. Among the various ways that Obama’s influence, therefore, served to crack Jewish solidarity, the first was in hammering the wedge between progressive-left Jewish Democrats, who generally show greater sympathy toward his views on Israel, and the rest of us who do not. By insisting that Jews in Israel should be allowed to live in some places, like Tel Aviv, but not in others, like Hebron, the Obama administration animated a confrontation within American Jewry. Those loyal to the Democratic Party, like Peter Beinart and Alan Dershowitz, agreed that the Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria, in and of itself, represented an obstacle toward resolving the conflict. Beinart and Dershowitz may not agree on much, but they definitely agree on that. Others, like Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), believe (along with me) that Jewish people have every right to build housing on the lands of our ancestry. Furthermore, in a recent piece for the Jerusalem Post Isi Liebler acknowledged Klein as the ONLY American Jewish leader of national consequence to be consistently critical of Obama’s transparent flaws and who, he says, “has been more than vindicated” in his views. I couldn’t agree more. Given the existential nature of the long Arab aggression against the Jews in the Middle East, Obama’s hostility toward Jews who live in the wrong place set Jew upon Jew in a manner that grew increasingly acrimonious throughout the period of his tenure. By supporting J-Street while devaluing AIPAC, Obama agitated this split. He also put his sincerest American-Jewish friends on the defensive before those of us who believe in Jewish property rights in Judea and Samaria. Obama thereby forced his Jewish devotees into the position of justifying an unjustly racist stance toward the Jews of Israel. Dividing American Jews from Israeli Jews If Obama encouraged political divisions within the American Jewish community he also encouraged political divisions between American Jews and Israeli Jews. Because Israeli Jews understood how Obama’s policies encouraged Palestinian-Arab violence and intransigence on the so-called “peace process,” the vast majority of Israeli Jews quickly learned to distrust the man. Jewish Democrats who wished to maintain their progressive bona fides were thereby leaned into ideological tensions with friends and relatives in Israel. In order to maintain good-standing with their fellow Democrats, Jews who care about Israel were put into an exceedingly uncomfortable position. They could support Obama or they could support Jewish rights to property on ancestral Jewish land, but they could not do both. And, again, Obama did not create this dilemma, he simply forced the issue. Obama used the two-state solution as a reason for opposing Jews like our friends Joseph and Melody Hartuv who live in Hebron and thereby allegedly stand as an obstacle to peace. He was not even the first president of the United States to do so, but he was certainly the most insistent. Hebron, of course, is the site of the Cave of the Patriarchs. This is a place that, with a little encouragement from Obama, the United Nations decided belongs to Arabs. Through the unjust, if not racist, insistence that the “settlers” represent an obstacle to peace by their mere presence, Obama encouraged his American Jewish supporters to join him in condemning their fellow Jews. He managed this while still maintaining a pro-Israel face to his Jewish followers. Furthermore, by playing along with the erasure of Jewish history on the ancestral lands of the Jewish people, Obama also encouraged the dilution of American-Jewish support for that country and those people. Dividing American Jews within the Democratic Party I have considerable sympathy for Jewish Democrats. Many in their own party hold them in contempt for defending Israel, while much of the rest of the American Jewish population casts a gimlet eye upon their never-ending pro-Obama apologetics and sycophancy. These are Jews who, from political and ideological standpoints, are getting smacked around by all sides and finding it increasingly difficult to walk the “progressive Zionist” tightrope. Divisions thereby emerged between the true Obama devotees and those going wobbly watching Obama’s year-in-and-year-out hostility toward Israel. In this way, within the Democratic Party, there are good Jews and bad Jews. Good Jewish Democrats support Barack Obama while bad Jewish Democrats question the wisdom of breathing life into the corpse of Oslo. Good Jewish Democrats believe that if only Netanyahu had pushed Yosef and Melody out of their home in Hebron then peace could be achieved through the offices of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. Bad Jewish Democrats tend to doubt this. They understand that Palestinian-Arabs have no desire to create a state for themselves in peace with Israel. Indeed, why should Palestinian-Arabs hope for a conclusion of hostilities via a negotiated two-state settlement when Obama and the UN want to give them a state on Jewish land in a manner that maintains those hostilities? Whatever happens going forward, however, the Jewish people and the Jewish State of Israel are, and will continue to be, one. Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under. |
Temple Talk Radio: United Nations Resolution 2334 and Chanukah: Same Old Same Old |
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A “Judenrein” Jerusalem? New Zealand’s ShameAt least someone from New Zealand has brains |
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What Starts Online, Doesn’t Stay There |
In the first Purim Haman gave King Achashverosh ₪15 Million NIS for the right to kill the Jews. (Megillah 13b-14a) With Obama and Ahmadinejad, who is Haman and who is King AchashveroshOne compared the Jews to a mound of dirt and the other to a ditch in their field. Both needed their field to be level. Obama-era cash traced to Iran-backed terroristsBy Bill Gertz – – Wednesday, February 7, 2018 https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/feb/7/inside-the-ring-obama-era-cash-traced-to-iran-back/ The U.S. government has traced some of the $1.7 billion released to Iran by the Obama administration to Iranian-backed terrorists in the two years since the cash was transferred. According to knowledgeable sources, Iran has used the funds to pay its main proxy, the Lebanon-based terrorist group Hezbollah, along with the Quds Force, Iran’s main foreign intelligence and covert action arm and element of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. The U.S. money supplied to Iran as part of an arms settlement dating back to the 1970s also has been traced to Iran’s backing of Houthi rebels seeking to take power in Yemen. Iran has been supporting the Yemen rebels as part of a bid to encircle and eventually take control of Saudi Arabia. The intelligence tracing the American funds to Iranian-backed terrorists is likely to further fuel President Trump’s effort to undo the Iran nuclear deal, the Obama administration’s main foreign policy initiative codified in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as the Iran nuclear deal is called. Despite promises to reject the deal during the presidential campaign, Mr. Trump announced in January the U.S. would not pull out of the Iran nuclear accord for now. But the president criticized the transfer of money to Tehran and signaled that Washington is going after Iran’s funding of terrorism. “The enormous financial windfall the Iranian regime received because of the deal — access to more than $100 billion, including $1.8 billion in cash — has not been used to better the lives of the Iranian people,” Mr. Trump said Jan. 12. “Instead, it has served as a slush fund for weapons, terror, and oppression, and to further line the pockets of corrupt regime leaders.” Mr. Trump said the United States is countering Iranian proxy wars in Yemen and Syria and cutting the regime’s money flows to terrorists. The American money sent by the Obama administration was first flown to Switzerland aboard an unmarked chartered aircraft, and then converted into euros, Swiss francs and other currencies. An Iranian transport aircraft flew the cash to Iran in January and February 2016 in three shipments. The first aircraft arrived in Tehran on Jan. 16, 2016, with $400 million piled on wooden pallets. Two other aircraft shipments of cash were sent on Jan. 22, 2016, and Feb. 5, 2016, totaling $1.3 billion. The first $400 million coincided with the release of four Americans held hostage by Iran, a move by Iran to make the money appear as if the Obama administration had paid a ransom to Tehran for the release of the Americans. The Obama administration sought to justify the cash transfers to the world’s leading state-sponsor of terrorism by claiming the U.S. government was set to lose a legal arbitration case over arms purchases from the United States made by the government of the Shah of Iran, the predecessor government to the Islamist regime that took power in 1979. However, the primary motivation was President Obama’s effort to woo the Iranian regime and seek to change its backing for terrorism in the Middle East. The Trump administration has sharply reversed course and is working hard to punish Iran for its terrorist activities. Iran has been linked to the deaths of scores of Americans through its backing for terrorism. Defense Secretary James N. Mattis has been one of the administration’s main hawks on Iran, although he recently softened his opposition to jettisoning the Iran nuclear deal. In the administration’s recently released defense strategy blueprint, Mr. Mattis shifted the focus of American defenses from countering terrorists to confronting nation-states. He said Iran “continues to sow violence and remains the most significant challenge to Middle East stability.” “In the Middle East, Iran is competing with its neighbors, asserting an arc of influence and instability while vying for regional hegemony, using state-sponsored terrorist activities, a growing network of proxies, and its missile program to achieve its objectives,” he stated. Joint Staff revising strategy The Pentagon’s Joint Staff is working on a revision of U.S. military strategy following the release of Defense Secretary James N. Mattis’ new national defense strategy and the updated Nuclear Posture Review. Both the strategy and review outline significant shifts in approaching foreign threats and in directing American responses. Air Force Gen. Paul J. Selva, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced the launch of the military strategy revision at a hearing Tuesday before the House Armed Services Committee. “The national defense strategy provides detailed defense policy guidance for military strategy, planning and operations,” Gen. Selva said in his prepared statement. “Therefore, the chairman’s 2016 classified national military strategy will require an update to maintain complete consistency with the national defense strategy and the president’s national security strategy released in December.” The process of revising military strategy began shortly after the new defense strategy was announced. Gen. Selva did not provide any details on the revisions, but he noted that the revisions will be “a step toward increasing the lethality and flexibility of the joint force in light of the reemergence of great power competition.” The revision is expected to alter the military’s approach to dealing with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, and terrorism — the main threat matrix that, like almost everything in the Pentagon, has been given its own acronym: CRIKT. Countering terrorism will continue to be focus but no longer the military’s main focus. The Joint Staff, the military group at the Pentagon that supports the chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, also is getting a makeover. “We have begun a review of the Joint Staff’s organization and processes to determine if we need to make adjustments to support the chairman’s global integrator responsibilities and to better position the chairman to support the secretary’s decision making,” Gen. Selva said. Treasury sanctions Asian terrorists The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control targeted South Asian terrorist financing and support networks on Wednesday by designating three people as major terrorist backers. The three were identified as Rahman Zeb Faqir Muhammad, Hizb Ullah Astam Khan, and Dilawar Khan Nadir Khan. The sanctions block all property and interests in property subject to U.S. jurisdiction and are aimed at preventing the financiers from moving money and fundraising. The Treasury Department “continues to aggressively pursue and expose radicals who support terrorist organizations and run illicit financial networks across South Asia,” Sigal Mandelker, undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, in a statement. “We are targeting operatives who have provided logistical support, improvised explosive devices and other technological assistance to al Qaeda, Lashkar-e Taiba, the Taliban and other terrorist groups,” she said. The sanctions are part of stepped up efforts by Treasury to disrupt terrorism fundraising. Ms. Mandelker said the Trump administration is calling on Pakistan’s government and others in the region “to work with us to deny sanctuary to these dangerous individuals and organizations.” Raham Zeb is a financier and technology operator for the Pakistani terror group Lashkar-e Taiba, known as LeT, involved in Afghan terror operations. Hizb Ullah is a bombmaker and financier for terrorists linked to Shaykh Aminullah, a designated terrorist. He was linked to shipments of improvised explosive device precursor chemicals sent from Pakistan to Afghanistan and used by the Taliban and another terrorist group. Dilawar also worked with Shaykh Aminullah and helped communicate the shaykh’s message among terrorists and facilitated fund transfers, including international transactions. • Contact Bill Gertz on Twitter at @BillGertz. |
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