Subject: Reference to French study +Israeli-made oral vaccine progress +Cell phone contact tracking + Excerpts from New York Times newsletters 3-24-20

Subject: Reference to French study +Israeli-made oral vaccine progress +Cell phone contact tracking + Excerpts from New York Times newsletters 3-24-20


Israeli-made oral vaccine for coronavirus on track, but testing will take months [ …it won’t be available for months because of the lengthy and sometimes bureaucratic testing and approval process  ]

State-funded Migal Galilee institute has been working for 4 years on a vaccine that could be customized for various viruses, so it had a head start when COVID-19 emerged

By Nathan Jeffay11 March 2020,
An effective Israeli-developed vaccine for coronavirus is on track to be ready for testing within “a few weeks,” though it won’t be available for months because of the lengthy and sometimes bureaucratic testing and approval process, a member of the development team said Tuesday.

Chen Katz told The Times of Israel that the new oral vaccine for adults and children could “turn this disease into a very mild cold.” He said that for many people who are inoculated and then infected by COVID-19, “potentially it will not affect them at all.”

The rapid potential progress by the state-funded Migal Galilee Research Institute stems from the fact that the institute has been working for four years toward a vaccine that could be customized for various viruses, and has now adapted that work to focus on the coronavirus, he said.

Nonetheless, while Israel’s science ministry made headlines last week by touting the institute’s work and saying that its vaccine could be three months away, Dr. Asher Shalmon, the Health Ministry’s director of international relations, has warned against placing “false hopes” in it.


The vaccine will consist of a specially produced protein, and Katz said he expects to be clutching a bottle of it within “a few weeks.” But then comes clinical testing, which will take place in conjunction with a partner, and the paperwork, both of which will take time.

Katz, Biotechnology Group Leader at the institute, said: “By the time the protein is ready, we hope to have found the right partner who can take us through the clinical stage. The clinical testing experiments themselves are not so long, and we can complete them in 30 days, plus another 30 days for human trials. Most of the time is bureaucracy — regulation and paperwork.”

Time could also be lost because of “waiting points” between the different stages of the process, until regulators give the nod for things to move forward.



He spoke of the excitement that his team felt when it realized that the research it had been engaged in for four years could be tweaked to combat coronavirus. “The opportunity is amazing here,” he said. “Everyone wants to know we can contribute something to humanity and when we found we had the right tools to do it this became is very exciting.”

Katz’s group at Israel’s state-funded Migal Institute has become a source of hope to many around the world since it revealed on February 27 that it is working on the vaccine, and said it hoped to achieve “safety approval” in 90 days.

For four years, the research of Katz’s team had been focused on developing a vaccine that could be customized to various viruses. It was piloting it with Infectious Bronchitis Virus, but as as coronavirus swept China, started adapting the vaccine for COVID-19.

Its February 27 announcement prompted a widespread expectation among the public that people would soon be protected against coronavirus, which prompted Shalmon’s warning against “false hopes.”

Katz clarified that the 90-day time frame in the February 27 statement was until the product is ready for human testing, and said he still believes this is realistic. He said that skeptics should understand that his team is not working on new research, but rather customizing an existing innovation, meaning that a fast turnaround is realistic. He stated: “The important thing is that we were working on a vaccine, unrelated to this outbreak, and this is a great advantage.”

Katz revealed that the development process is sufficiently advanced that his ten-person team doesn’t need the virus. Instead, it went on the internet soon after the outbreak began, found the sequence of the virus which had been published, and got to work.

He said that the vaccine will be double-barreled, deploying two means to defend people against coronavirus.

The first protection triggers a response in the mouth to stop COVID-19 entering the body. Katz explained: “We are developing the proteins that are needed for our technology of the oral vaccination. They are special proteins which, when sprayed in to the mouth, penetrate the epithelial cells inside the mouth and activate a mucosal immune response, which is the part of the immune response in our body that protects the entry point of the virus.”

The second level of protection kicks in if COVID-19 enters the body. It will bolster the immune system in such a way “that when viral particles penetrate, there will be an immune protection, of antibodies and the right white blood cells.”

He said it will be administered by an oral spray, and will protect people who encounter COVID-19 two weeks after being administered. He stressed: “This is not a drug, not for treatment, only for prevention.”

When The Times of Israel talked to him on Tuesday, Katz’s team, like many in Israel, was also celebrating the Purim festival with fancy dress — in Katz’s case a wig — and hamantaschen. Katz explained that there isn’t much that the team can do to further speed its work along, as it is waiting for scientific processes to chug through in their own time. “This is biology, so it takes its time,” he said.

Much of the work is done by bacteria, he stated, explaining a central part of the process, saying: “We take part of the virus DNA and introduce it to bacteria and make the bacteria produce the viral proteins.”


*****

FRENCH STUDY:
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The coronavirus isn’t mutating quickly, suggesting a vaccine would offer lasting protection

[ By Joel Achenbach]


The coronavirus is not mutating significantly as it circulates through the human population, according to scientists who are closely studying the novel pathogen’s genetic code. That relative stability suggests the virus is less likely to become more or less dangerous as it spreads, and represents encouraging news for researchers hoping to create a long-lasting vaccine.

All viruses evolve over time, accumulating mutations as they replicate imperfectly inside a host’s cells in tremendous numbers and then spread through a population, with some of those mutations persisting through natural selection. The new coronavirus has proofreading machinery, however, and that reduces the “error rate” and the pace of mutation. It looks pretty much the same everywhere it has appeared, the scientists say, and there is no evidence that some strains are deadlier than others.

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease covid-19, is similar to coronaviruses that circulate naturally in bats. It jumped into the human species last year in Wuhan, China, likely through an intermediate species — possibly a pangolin, an endangered anteater whose scales are trafficked for traditional medicine.

Scientists now are studying more than 1,000 different samples of the virus, Peter Thielen, a molecular geneticist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory who has been studying the virus, told The Washington Post.

There are only about four to 10 genetic differences between the strains that have infected people in the United States and the original virus that spread in Wuhan, he said.

“That’s a relatively small number of mutations for having passed through a large number of people,” Thielen said. “At this point, the mutation rate of the virus would suggest that the vaccine developed for SARS-CoV-2 would be a single vaccine, rather than a new vaccine every year like the flu vaccine.”

It would be more like the measles or chickenpox vaccines, he said — something that would likely confer immunity for a long time.

“I would expect a vaccine for coronavirus would have a similar profile to those vaccines. It’s great news,” Thielen said.

Two other virologists, Stanley Perlman of the University of Iowa and Benjamin Neuman of Texas A&M University at Texarkana, both of whom were on the international committee that named the coronavirus, told The Post that the virus appears relatively stable.

“The virus has not mutated to any significant extent,” Perlman said.

“Just one ‘pretty bad’ strain for everybody so far. If it’s still around in a year, by that point we might have some diversity,” Neuman said.

Neuman contrasted the coronavirus with influenza, which is notoriously slippery.

“Flu does have one trick up its sleeve that coronaviruses do not have — the flu virus genome is broken up into several segments, each of which codes for a gene. When two flu viruses are in the same cell, they can swap some segments, potentially creating a new combination instantly — this is how the H1N1 ‘swine’ flu originated,” Neuman said.

It is possible that a small mutation in the virus could have outsized effects in the clinical outcome of covid-19, the experts say. That has been known to happen with other viruses. But there’s no sign this is happening with the novel coronavirus.

The dramatic death rates in Italy, for example, are most likely due to situational factors — an older population, hospitals being overwhelmed, shortages of ventilators and the resulting rationing of lifesaving care — rather than some difference in the pathogen itself.

“So far, we don’t have any evidence linking a specific virus [strain] to any disease severity score,” Thielen said. “Right now, disease severity is much more likely to be driven by other factors.”

Although one team of scientists earlier this year suggested there might be two distinct strains of the virus with different levels of typical disease severity, that conjecture has not been embraced by the scientific community.


***
Is the cure worse than the problem?

Trump’s argument, laid out at length in a Monday night news conference and at Tuesday’s event, comes down to this: No matter how many people may die because of the coronavirus, millions more face ruin if the economy does not operate. “We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem,” he said.
Already, America’s shift to social distancing has caused widespread layoffs, from restaurants to hotels to the oil industry. Unemployment has health consequences as well as economic consequences, economists have noted. Forecasters on both sides of the debate are trying to weigh these losses against deaths from the coronavirus as well as other medical emergencies that won’t be treated properly if the health-care system becomes overrun with covid-19 patients.

“One of the bottom lines is that we don’t know how long social distancing measures and lockdowns can be maintained without major consequences to the economy, society, and mental health,” John Ioannidis, a medical and epidemiology expert at Stanford University, wrote in an essay last week. “Short-term and long-term consequences are entirely unknown, and billions, not just millions, of lives may be eventually at stake.

“I am deeply concerned that the social, economic and public health consequences of this near total meltdown of normal life … will be long lasting and calamitous, possibly graver than the direct toll of the virus itself,” David L. Katz, a preventive-medicine specialist at Yale University, wrote this weekend. “The unemployment, impoverishment and despair likely to result will be public health scourges of the first order.”

Such arguments raise important points about the full impact of the current strategy, said Inglesby, the infectious-disease expert at Johns Hopkins. But those are long-term scenarios, he pointed out. “What social distancing does is buy us time to replenish supplies like masks and ventilators, deal with the immediate crisis in hospitals and come up with additional strategies."

The question in the long run is how to balance competing economic interests and public health needs when basic questions about the pandemic — like how many Americans are infected — are unknown, said Gregg Gonsalves, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health. “If anybody tells you they have the answer to how to thread this needle, they’re lying to you."

While Trump is debating new federal recommendations that the country reopen, orders to stay at home have largely come from state governors, who may simply ignore Trump. But public health experts say the contradictory messaging would make persuading people to comply — already a difficult job — even harder.

******
No easy way back to ‘normal’

While business leaders are ashen about the economic meltdown, very few have been willing to take the argument as far as Trump does.
Instead, they have voiced a more nuanced point — that there should at least be a plan for eventually getting workers back into offices.

Lloyd Blankfein, a former chairman and chief executive of Goldman Sachs, said in a phone interview Monday that U.S. leaders should begin work to identify which milestones would allow the economy, perhaps in stages, to move back toward normalcy. “Let’s have a conversation on what the metrics should be,” he said.

“It would be heartening if people were at least contemplating that this will not go on forever,” he added. “But I’m not really hearing that.”

Even in a hypothetical world where the economy was valued above human life, many economists say it wouldn’t necessarily make sense to sacrifice the elderly, abruptly send everyone back to work and allow the virus to run its course. Restarting international flights, for example, wouldn’t mean consumers would buy tickets. And the shock from the spreading infections and mounting deaths would make any sense of normalcy hard to maintain.

“The best way to get control of the economy is to get through this as quickly as possible,” said Edward Kaplan, who teaches economic policy and public health at Yale University. He said that means adhering to social distancing and drastically increasing testing.

*****
The real question: Are we doing enough?

What allowed South Korea to keep parts of its economy functioning and Singapore to keep its schools open was combining social distancing with tools like large-scale contact tracing — retracing a confirmed patient’s movements to find and quarantine those they had contact with.
[THE TECNOLOGY EXISTS: Israel is using cellphone data to track the coronavirus  Monica ChinMar 17, 2020
Benjamin Netanyahu has authorized the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, to use cellphone location data to help combat the coronavirus. According to a New York Times report, the data will be used to retrace the movements of individuals who test positive for the virus, and identify others who should be quarantined.
The agency has permission to use the data, which the Shin Bet has collected from Israeli carriers since at least 2002, for the next 30 days. By directing individuals who may have come into contact with the virus to quarantine themselves immediately via text message, the government could greatly speed up the isolation process. The agency has not made public precisely what data it collects, but experts told the Times that the Israeli government can use it to track almost anyone’s location.

“We must preserve the balance between individual rights and general needs, and we are doing so,” Netanyahu said yesterday at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, where the plan was announced.

An anonymous security official told the Times that the data would be used narrowly, in a “focused, time-limited and limited activity.”

While this is the first high-profile instance of a government using cellphone tracking for public health purposes, such data has been used for advertising and law enforcement in many countries. Last year, Motherboard reported that AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint have sold customer location data to data sellers, who sold it to over 250 bounty hunters and related firms. The data included the phones’ assisted GPS data, which is intended to help first responders locate 911 callers, and can accurately pinpoint a user within a few meters.]

 South Korea had already honed this ability during an 2015 outbreak of the deadly MERS coronavirus. Singapore deployed its police force to do the work, drawing on digital footprints in security camera footage and credit card records.
*******
Building a new workforce on antibodies

Some offensive strategies that could help ease restrictions and restart the U.S. economy cannot be easily done at a local level and require the leadership of the federal government. They include developing a widespread serological test that could use antibodies to identify the Americans who have already been infected and have recovered.
Those with presumed immunity could then deliver goods, bolster hospitals and restart the economy without worrying about transmitting the virus. Such a strategy has never been used on such a large scale, Rivers said, but during Ebola outbreaks in Africa, survivors were often the ones who provided care, watched over the children of sick patients and buried the dead.

“If we’re serious about restarting the economy and easing restrictions, we need to have strategy for replacing those restrictions,” she said. “It’s doable, but not without a plan.”

Joe Biden: Israel's Fake 'Friend' Mar 16, 2020 John Perazzo

Joe Biden: Israel's Fake 'Friend'

 Mar 16, 2020   John Perazzo

A long destructive track record of undermining Israeli security.


 https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/03/joe-biden-israels-fake-friend-john-perazzo/

Joe Biden has made a habit of describing himself as a loyal, stalwart friend and ally of Israel. At a campaign stop earlier this month, for instance, he declared: “I’m so proud of the Obama-Biden administration’s unprecedented support for Israel’s security.” But a careful examination of Biden's track record reveals his long and extremely troubling history of undermining Israel's security and public image. Some lowlights:

1982: Biden's Angry Exchange with Menachem Begin

At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee meeting on June 22, 1982, an animated Senator Biden, banging the desk in front of him with his fist, warned then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin that if Israel did not stop establishing new Jewish settlements in the West Bank,[1] U.S. aid to that country might be cut off.

Begin responded forcefully:

Don’t threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work. I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid.

And with regard to Biden's theatrical furniture-banging, Begin said:

This desk is designed for writing, not for fists. Don’t threaten us with slashing aid. Do you think that because the U.S. lends us money it is entitled to impose on us what we must do? We are grateful for the assistance we have received, but we are not to be threatened. I am a proud Jew. Three thousand years of culture are behind me, and you will not frighten me with threats. Take note: we do not want a single soldier of yours to die for us.

1995-2020: Biden's Stance on the Relocation of the U.S. Embassy in Israel

Biden voted for the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, which recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and required the U.S. president to relocate the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, though the law allowed the president to waive the move every six months if he believed that a delay would further the interests of national security.

When he ran for vice president with Barack Obama in 2008, Biden said: “I think we should move the embassy, but you don't have a [Israeli] government asking us to move the embassy there. Let them make the judgment.”

Throughout the eight years that followed, the Obama-Biden administration never even hinted that it might contemplate relocating the U.S. embassy. Indeed, the administration refused even to affirm that Jerusalem was Israel's capital. For example, in March 2012, an Obama-Biden State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, told a gathering of journalists: “With regard to our Jerusalem policy, it’s a permanent-status issue. It’s got to be resolved through the negotiations between the parties.... We are not going to prejudge the outcome of those negotiations, including the final status of Jerusalem..... [O]ur embassy, as you know, is located in Tel Aviv.”

When Donald Trump announced in December 2017 that he not only recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital but also planned to move the embassy to that city, Biden remained silent. Nor did he issue a statement when the embassy was actually physically relocated in May 2018. More recently, in a November 2019 interview with PBS, Biden was asked if he, as president, would reverse Trump's move. He replied: “Not now. I wouldn't reverse it. I wouldn't have done it in the first place.”

2009-2017: The Obama-Biden Administration's Strained Relationship with Israel

No American presidential administration ever had so strained a relationship with Israel as did Obama-Biden. As Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren said in 2010, “Israel’s ties with the United States are in their worst crisis since 1975 … a crisis of historic proportions.” Author and scholar Dennis Prager concurred, “Most observers, right or left, pro-Israel or anti-Israel, would agree that Israeli-American relations are the worst they have been in memory.” In the spring of 2011, David Parsons, spokesman for the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, lamented that the “traditional, special relationship between America and Israel” was being thrown “out the window in a sense.” And in October 2012, Israeli lawmaker Danny Danon, chairman of Likud’s international outreach branch, said that the Obama administration's policies vis-a-vis Israel had been “catastrophic.”

2010: The Obama-Biden Administration Criticizes Israeli Settlements:

While Vice President Biden was visiting Israel in March 2010, a Jerusalem municipal office announced plans to build some 1,600 housing units for Jews in a section of that city. In response, Biden told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that this development “endangers regional peace” in the Middle East. In a separate statement, Biden added, “I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem,” calling it “precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now” for constructive peace talks.

Ten days later, Netanyahu traveled to Washington in an effort to put the U.S.-Israel relationship back on more solid footing, but as the Wall Street Journal reported, the prime minister “was snubbed at a White House meeting with President Obama — no photo op, no joint statement, and he was sent out through a side door.” Washington Post columnist and Middle East expert Jackson Diehl wrote that “Netanyahu is being treated as if he were an unsavory Third World dictator.” And ambassador Michael Oren called Israel's rift with America “the worst with the U.S. in 35 years.”

2010-2015: The Obama-Biden Administration's Repeated Leaks to the Press About Israel

In 2010, the Obama-Biden administration – determined to do everything in its power to turn public opinion against a possible Israeli military strike targeting Iranian nuclear facilities – leaked information about a covert deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, whereby the Saudis had agreed that they would allow Israel to use their airspace in order to wage an attack against Iran and its nuclear facilities.

On March 22, 2012, the Obama-Biden administration leaked to The New York Times the results of a classified war game which predicted that an Israeli strike against Iran's nuclear facilities could lead to a wider regional war and result in hundreds of American deaths. Institute for National Security Studies analyst Yoel Guzansky interpreted the motives behind the Obama-Biden leaks as follows: “It seems like a big campaign to prevent Israel from attacking. I think the [Obama-Biden] administration is really worried Jerusalem will attack and attack soon. They’re trying hard to prevent it in so many ways.” In a May 29, 2012 column in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, longtime defense commentator Ron Ben-Yishai noted that the leaks would “make it more difficult for Israeli decision-makers to order the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] to carry out a strike, and what’s even graver, [would] erode the IDF’s capacity to launch such strike with minimal casualties.”

On April 8, 2012, the New Yorker reported that according to information leaked by the Obama-Biden administration, the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad was helping to fund and train the Iranian opposition group Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK). This revelation was intended to portray Israel as being unwilling to negotiate in good faith with the government in Tehran, and to thereby undermine any moral authority that Israel might claim in the event of a future military strike against Iran.

In early May 2013, two Obama-Biden administration officials leaked classified information to the media indicating that Israel was behind a May 3rd airstrike against a shipment of advanced surface-to-surface missiles at the airport in Damascus, Syria. Israeli security analysts said that the leak could not only endanger any Israeli agents who were still on the ground in Syria, but could also increase the likelihood that Syrian President Bashar Assad would retaliate against the Jewish state. Again, the purpose of the leak was to paint Israel as an unnecessarily aggressive, bellicose nation.

For similar purposes, in early November 2013 an Obama-Biden administration official leaked to CNN the fact that Israeli warplanes had attacked a Syrian base in the port of Latakia. The planes were specifically targeting Russian-made SA-8 Gecko Dgreen mobile missiles, so as to prevent their delivery to the terrorist organization Hezbollah. Israeli officials called the leak “scandalous” and “unthinkable.”

In January 2015, the Obama-Biden administration -- which opposed the notion of imposing any new economic sanctions against the Iranian regime -- leaked information indicating that an unnamed Mossad official had recently acknowledged that the enactment of such sanctions would be akin to “throwing a grenade into the [nuclear negotiation] process.” The leak's implication was that the Mossad official was privately opposed to sanctions. But approximately 12 hours later, that official – Mossad leader Tamir Pardo – stepped forth and, by means of a written statement issued by his office, clarified exactly what he had said and meant:

Contrary to what has been reported, the head of the Mossad did not say that he opposes imposing additional sanctions on Iran.... Regarding the reported reference to 'throwing a grenade,' the head of the Mossad did not use this expression regarding the imposition of sanctions, which he believes to be the sticks necessary for reaching a good deal with Iran. He used this expression as a metaphor to describe the possibility of creating a temporary crisis in the negotiations, at the end of which talks would resume under improved conditions.

2013: The Obama-Biden Administration's Secret Negotiations with Iran

In early November 2013, it was reported that the Obama-Biden administration had begun softening U.S. sanctions against Iran (vis-a -vis the latter's nuclear program) soon after the election, five months earlier, of that country's new president, Hassan Rouhani. This move set the stage, in turn, for the United States -- in conjunction with Britain, France, Russia, China, and Germany -- to propose a short-term “first step agreement” with Iran at a November meeting in Geneva. The deal, which sought to freeze Iran’s nuclear program for approximately six months in order to create an opportunity for a more comprehensive and lasting bargain to be negotiated later, required Iran to stop enriching uranium to a weapons-grade level, to refrain for six months from activating its plutonium reactor at Arak, and to stop using its most advanced and powerful centrifuges. “In return,” said the London Telegraph, “America would ease economic sanctions, possibly by releasing some Iranian foreign exchange reserves currently held in frozen accounts. In addition, some restrictions affecting Iran’s petrochemical, motor and precious metals industries could be relaxed.”

On November 8, 2013, the Israeli government, which the Obama-Biden administration had not informed of the negotiations, was stunned to learn of the secret talks with Iran. News of the agreement led to the canceling of a joint media appearance between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. One Israeli official was quoted saying that “the Iranians are leading the Americans by the nose.”

Netanyahu, outraged at the prospect of this agreement, said that the Iranians “got everything … they wanted” – most notably “relief from sanctions after years of a grueling sanctions regime” – “and paid nothing.” “It’s the deal of a century for Iran,” Natanyahu added, “it’s a very dangerous and bad deal for peace and the international community.”

Eventually, this 2013 agreement would evolve into the famous Iran Nuclear Deal of 2015 – officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – where the Obama-Biden administration joined the governments of Britain, France, Russia, China, and Germany in signing an accord with Iran.

2014: The Obama-Biden Administration Threatens to Shoot Down Israeli Fighter Jets

In 2014, not long after Israel had discovered that the U.S. and Iran had been involved in the aforementioned secret negotiations regarding Iran’s nuclear program, the Netanyahu government prepared a military operation designed to destroy that program. The Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida reported that when an unnamed Israeli minister revealed the attack plan to Secretary of State John Kerry, President Obama threatened to shoot down the Israeli jets before they could get within striking distance of their targets in Iran.

2014: The Obama-Biden Administration Tells Israel to Stop Assassinating Iranian Nuclear Scientists

On March 3, 2014, the Associated Press reported that the Obama-Biden administration had told Israeli authorities to stop their targeted killings of Iranian nuclear scientists. According to AP: “Israel's Mossad spy agency has supposedly taken out [mostly with car bombs] at least five top Iranian nuclear experts in an attempt to slow the country’s nuclear program … An unidentified U.S. official disclosed the program to CBS while claiming [that] the … administration is leaning on its Middle Eastern ally to stop the targeted killings and wait for the current deal to disarm to play out.”

2015: The Obama-Biden Administration Is Enraged by Netanyahu’s Acceptance of John Boehner’s Invitation to Address Congress

On January 21, 2015, Republican House Speaker John Boehner invited Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who was strongly oposed to the emerging U.S. agreement with Iran regarding the latter’s nuclear program, to speak (on March 3) to a joint session of Congress about the security threat posed by Iran. In response to Boehner’s action, an outraged Obama-Biden administration accused the House Speaker of having violated “protocol” by extending the invitation on his own initiative instead of asking the executive branch to extend an invitation.

When it was subsequently announced that Obama would not be meeting personally with Netanyahu during the latter's March 3rd visit, the president offered this explanation: “We don’t meet with any world leader two weeks before their election. I think that’s inappropriate.” “As a matter of long-standing practice and principle,” added White House officials, “we do not see heads of state or candidates in close proximity to their elections,” so as to “avoid the appearance of influencing a democratic election in a foreign country.”

The Obama-Biden administration also urged members of the Congressional Black Caucus to boycott Netanyahu’s speech, and to speak out against it publicly as well. Vice President Joe Biden, for his part, vowed to skip the speech.

In early February 2015, it was learned that the Obama-Biden White House’s tale of having been blindsided by Boehner and Netanyahu was a lie. This was made evident by a correction added to a New York Times article that stated: “Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel accepted Speaker John A. Boehner’s invitation to address Congress. He accepted after the [Obama-Biden] administration had been informed of the invitation, not before.”

Also in February 2015, it was learned that the Obama-Biden administration's claim that its decision not to meet with Netanyahu in Washington was based on a desire to avoid “inappropriate[ly]” influencing the upcoming Israeli election, was also a lie. This was evidenced by the fact that during the weekend of February 7-8, Vice President Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry traveled to Munich, Germany to meet with Israeli Labor leader Isaac Herzog, Netanyahu’s opponent in the election.

2015: Declassification of a Document Revealing Israel's Nuclear Program

In early February 2015, – when the Obama-Biden administration was enraged by the recent announcement that Prime Minister Netanyahu would soon be addressing a joint session of the U.S. Congress regarding Iran's nuclear program -- the Pentagon quietly declassified a top-secret, 386-page Defense Department document from 1987 containing extensive details of Israel's nuclear program. The document was entitled “Critical Technological Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations.” As the Israel National News (INN) explained, the Jewish state's nuclear program was “a highly covert topic that Israel has never formally announced [so as] to avoid a regional nuclear arms race, and which the U.S. until now has respected by remaining silent [about it].” Added INN: “[A] highly suspicious aspect of the document is that while the Pentagon saw fit to declassify sections on Israel's sensitive nuclear program, it kept sections on Italy, France, West Germany and other NATO countries classified, with those sections blocked out in the document.”

2015-2018: Biden & The Iran Nuclear Deal

On July 14, 2015, the Obama-Biden administration – along with the leaders of Britain, France, Russia, China, and Germany – together finalized a nuclear agreement with Iran. The key elements of the deal were as follows:

Iran would be permitted to keep some 5,060 centrifuges, one-third of which would continue to spin in perpetuity.
Iran would receive $150 billion in sanctions relief – “some portion” of which, according to Obama-Biden National Security Adviser Susan Rice, “we should expect … would go to the Iranian military and could potentially be used for the kinds of bad behavior that we have seen in the region up until now.”
Russia and China  would be permitted to continue to supply Iran with weapons.
Iran would have the discretion to block international inspectors from military installations and would be given 14 days’ notice for any request to visit any site.
Only inspectors from countries possessing diplomatic relations with Iran would be given access to Iranian nuclear sites; thus there would be no American inspectors.
The embargo on the sale of weapons to Iran would be officially lifted in 5 years.
Iran's intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program would remain intact and unaffected; indeed it was never even discussed as an issue in the negotiations.
The heavy water reactor in Arak and the underground nuclear facility in Fordo would remain open, violating the “red lines” that Obama had repeatedly cited.
Iran would not be required to disclose information about its past nuclear research and development.
The U.S. would provide technical assistance to help Iran develop its nuclear program, supposedly for peaceful domestic purposes.
Sanctions would lifted on critical parts of Iran’s military, including a previously existing travel ban against Qasem Suleimani, leader of the terrorist Quds force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Iran would not be required to release American prisoners like Iranian-American Christian missionary Saeed Abedini, Iranian-American Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian, or U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati.
The U.S. and its five negotiating partner nations would provide Iranian nuclear leaders with training courses and workshops designed to strengthen their ability to prevent and respond to threats to their nuclear facilities and systems.
Iran would not be required to renounce terrorism against the United States, as the Obama-Biden administration deemed such an expectation to be “unrealistic.”
Iran would not be required to affirm its “clear and unambiguous … recognition of Israel's right to exist” – a requirement that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had pleaded for. As Obama-Biden State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said, “This is an agreement that is only about the nuclear issue … [and] doesn't deal with any other issues, nor should it.” Similarly, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said “we do not see a need that both sides recognize this position [accepting Israel's right to exist] as part of the final agreement.”
Whatever restrictions were placed on Iran's nuclear program, would begin to expire – due to so-called “sunset clauses” – at various times over the ensuing 5 to 26 years. Specifically: the ban on Iranian arms exports would expire in 2020; the ban on Iran's manufacture of advanced centrifuges would begin to expire in 2023; unilateral or multilateral nuclear sanctions against Iran would become extremely difficult to re-impose after 2023; the cap of 5,060 IR-1 centrifuges at Iran’s Natanz facility would expire in 2026; and restrictions on the number and types of centrifuges and enrichment facilities operated by Iran, would expire in 2031.
Joe Biden took on the role of being the administration's leading public promoter of the Iran deal. He casually dismissed the concerns of critics – most notably Netanyahu – who warned that the sunset clauses for key parts of the agreement would “pave Iran’s path to a bomb.” Those people, Biden said, simply “don’t get it, they’re wrong.”

2017-2020: Biden Opposes Trump's Withdrawal from the Iran Nuclear Deal

After President Trump decided to pull America out of the Iran nuclear deal, Biden characterized Trump's strategy as “a self-inflicted disaster” that would make “military conflict” and “another war in the Middle East” much “more likely.”

During a January 2020 presidential campaign event, Biden called on Trump to rejoin the Iran agreement. “The seeds of danger were planted by Donald Trump himself on May 8, 2019 — the day he tore up the Iran Nuclear Deal,” said Biden, forgetting that the date on which the U.S. withdrew from the agreement was actually May 8, 2018. Biden added that Trump had “turned his back on our closest European allies” by selfishly “decid[ing] that it was important to destroy any progress that the Obama-Biden administration did.”

2015: The Obama-Biden Administration Criticizes Netanyahu for Seeming to Abandon Support for a Two-State Solution

The Obama-Biden administration was angered in March 2015 when Israeili Prime Minister Netanyahu, late in his re-election campaign, told the Israeli news outlet Maariv that he would not allow the creation of a Palestinian state on his watch -- a position which Obama-Biden viewed as a shift away from Netanyahu's previous assertion (in 2009) that his “vision of peace” included “two free peoples” -- i.e., Israelis and Palestinians -- living in separate, independent, adjacent states. Responding to Netanyahu, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said: “The prime minister's recent statements call into question his commitment to a two-state solution. We're not going to prejudge what we would do if there was a U.N. action” -- implying that Obama-Biden might depart from America's customary practice of vetoing United Nations Security Council resolutions opposed by Israel.

Netanyahu subsequently clarified that he remained open to a two-state solution, but only if “the Palestinian leadership [would agree] to abandon their pact with Hamas and engage in genuine negotiations with Israel.” Notwithstanding the prime minister's clarification, White House spokesman Josh Earnest stated that “[w]ords matter” and that there could be “consequences” for Netanyahu's initial remarks in this instance.

2016: Biden Publicly Ridicules Israel After a Terrorist Bombing Wounds 21 Jews

Just a few hours after an April 18, 2016 terrorist bus bombing in Jerusalem had wounded at least 21 people, Vice President Biden delivered a speech to the Israel advocacy group J Street, an organization that traces the Mideast conflict chiefly to the notion that “Israel’s settlements in the occupied territories have, for [many] years, been an obstacle to peace.” In the course of his talk, Biden said: “I firmly believe that the actions that Israel's government has taken over the past several years -- the steady and systematic expansion of settlements, the legalization of outposts, land seizures -- they're moving us, and, more importantly, they're moving Israel in the wrong direction.” “The present course Israel’s on is not one that’s likely to secure its existence as a Jewish, democratic state,” Biden added. Conversely, he singled out for praise a young left-wing member of Israel's parliament, Stav Shaffir, who was a harsh critic of Benjamin Netanyahu: “May your views begin to once again become the majority opinion in the Knesset,” Biden said to Shaffir.

2016: The Obama-Biden Administration Urges Israel to Exercise “Restraint” in the Wake of Palestinian Terror Attack

In the immediate aftermath of a June 7, 2016 terrorist attack in which two Palestinian gunmen had shot nine Israelis (killing four) in a Tel Aviv shopping complex, the Obama-Biden State Department cautioned the Israeli government to “exercise restraint” in carrying out its vow to increase security control over the West Bank and its residents.

2016: The Obama-Biden Administration Again Condemns Israeli Settlements

In the summer of 2016, the Obama-Biden administration renewed its attacks against Israeli settlements.  In what journalist and scholar Caroline Glick characterized as a “shockingly hostile assault” against Israel, the State Department issued the following statement:

We are deeply concerned by reports today that the government of Israel has published tenders for 323 units in East Jerusalem settlements. This follows Monday’s announcement of plans for 770 units in the settlement of Gilo. We strongly oppose settlement activity, which is corrosive to the cause of peace. These steps by Israeli authorities are the latest examples of what appears to be a steady acceleration of settlement activity that is systematically undermining the prospects for a two-state solution.... We are also concerned about recent increased demolitions of Palestinian structures in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which reportedly have left dozens of Palestinians homeless, including children.... This is part of an ongoing process of land seizures, settlement expansion, legalizations of outposts, and denial of Palestinian development that risk entrenching a one-state reality of perpetual occupation and conflict. We remain troubled that Israel continues this pattern of provocative and counter-productive action, which raises serious questions about Israel’s ultimate commitment to a peaceful, negotiated settlement with the Palestinians.

2016: The Obama-Biden Administration Abstains on U.N. Vote Regarding Israeli Settlements

On December 24, 2016, the Obama-Biden administration – in a major departure from traditional U.S. policy – abstained from voting on a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning the existence and construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The resolution also declared that all of eastern Jerusalem – including Judaism’s most sacred site, the Temple Mount – was “Palestinian territory” that was being illegally “occupied” by Israel in “a flagrant violation under international law.” The Obama-Biden abstention allowed this resolution to pass, prompting Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to condemn the administration's “shameful betrayal.” “From the information that we have,” Netanyahu added, “we have no doubt that the Obama administration initiated [the abstention], stood behind it, coordinated on the wording, and demanded that it be passed.”

2019: Biden Draws a Moral Equivalence Between Israel & the Palestinians

During his current presidential campaign, Biden, drawing a moral equivalence between the Israelis and the Palestinians, has stated that “neither the Israeli nor Palestinian leadership seems willing to take the political risks necessary to make progress through direct negotiations.”

2019: Biden Reaches Out to J Street

In November 2019, Biden sent a video message conveying his support and friendship to a conference of the aforementioned organization J Street. One of the featured speakers at this conference was Osama Qawasma, a spokesman for the terrorist Fatah organization created by the late Yasser Arafat, mass murderer of Jews. Qawasma is also a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council; an advisor to the Palestinian Authority's current anti-Semitic president, Mahmoud Abbas; and an opponent of “the American-Israeli attempts to denounce Hamas as terrorist.”

Another Islamic extremist who spoke at the J Street conference which Biden saluted was Saeb Erekat, Secretary-General of the PLO Executive Committee, who has openly defended Hamas and the funding of Islamic terrorists.

2019-2020: Biden Demands a Two-State Solution and Condemns the Israeli “Occupation”

Biden today maintains that “there’s no answer” to the Arab-Israeli conflict other than “a two-state solution,” adding that “I think the [Israeli] settlements are unnecessary.” Asked if he considers the “occupation” to be “a human rights crisis,” Biden replies, “I think occupation is a real problem, a significant problem.” He reaffirms that “I will insist on Israel, which I’ve done, to stop the occupation of those territories, period.”

2020: Biden Again Draws a Moral Equivalence Between Israel & the Palestinians

On March 1, 2020, Biden called on both Israelis and Palestinians “to work together to address the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, because it is a crisis.” “And we’re not going to achieve that future if we don’t condemn steps on both sides that take us further from peace,” he added. By Biden's telling:

Palestinians need to eradicate incitement on the West Bank. Eradicate it. They need to end the rocket attacks from Gaza. Stop it. And Israel, I think, has to stop the threats of annexation and settlement activity, like the recent announcement to build thousands of settlements in E1 [an undeveloped area outside Jerusalem]. That’s going to choke off any hope for peace. And to be frank, those moves are taking Israel further from its democratic values, undermining support for Israel in the United States especially among young people in both political parties.

2020: Biden Dismisses Trump's Mideast Peace Plan Without Even Reading It

When President Trump in February 2020 unveiled a new Mideast peace initiative, Biden, claiming to have “spent a lifetime working to advance the security and survival of a Jewish and democratic Israel,” characterized the plan as nothing more than “a political stunt that could spark unilateral moves to annex territory and set back peace even more.” He based his opinion not on having read the full plan, but on merely having read “some outline” of it.

Conclusion

Joe Biden routinely tells the American public that he is a devoted friend of Israel. The evidence presented in this article demonstrates that he clearly is not. While he is by no means the open anti-Semite that, say, Bernie Sanders has proven himself to be, Biden has a long history of being unduly critical of Israel; conspiring in secret to undermine the security and public image of the Jewish state; and, in the case of his open and passionate support for the abominable Iran nuclear deal, laying the groundwork for Israel's ultimate destruction at the hands of a genocidal Islamist regime that has repeatedly declared its commitment to wiping the Jewish state off the face of the earth.

If that's a friend … well, you know the rest.

NOTE:

[1] The Basic Facts About Israel's “Settlements” and “Occupation”: The term “settlements” as it pertains to Israel has evolved into a politically charged word whose meaning is widely misunderstood. The following brief excerpts from the Jewish Virtual Library (JVL) serve to clarify:

“The term 'Settlements' usually refers to the towns and villages that Jews established in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and the Gaza Strip (prior to the 2005 disengagement) since Israel captured the area in the Six-Day War of 1967. In some cases, the settlements are in the same area where flourishing Jewish communities have lived for thousands of years.”
“Following Israel’s resounding victory over the [invading] Arab armies in the Six-Day War, strategic concerns led both of Israel’s major political parties … to support and establish settlements at various times. The first settlements were built … from 1968 to 1977, with the explicit objective to secure a Jewish majority in key strategic regions of the West Bank … that were the scene of heavy fighting in several of the Arab-Israeli wars.”
“The overall area in dispute is very small. According to one organization critical of settlements, the built-up areas constitute only 1.7% of the West Bank. That is less than 40 square miles.”
“The idea that settlements are illegal derives primarily from UN resolutions and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which is an arm of the UN. The UN does not make legal determinations, only political ones.”
“The ICJ opinion that the settlements violate international law … was largely based on a fallacious interpretation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which says an occupying power 'shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.' The ICJ presupposes that Israel is now occupying the land of a sovereign country; however, as [Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs president] Dore Gold notes, 'there was no recognized sovereign over the West Bank prior to Israel’s entry into the area.' The area had previously been occupied by Jordan.”
“A country cannot occupy territory to which it has sovereign title; hence, the correct term for the area is 'disputed territory,' which does not confer greater rights to either Israel or the Palestinians. The Palestinians never had sovereignty in the West Bank, whereas the Jews did for hundreds of years.”
“UN Security Council Resolution 242 gives Israel a legal right to be in the West Bank. According to Eugene Rostow, a former undersecretary of state for political affairs in the Johnson administration, 'Israel is entitled to administer the territories' it acquired in 1967 until 'a just and lasting peace in the Middle East' is achieved.”
Regarding Israel's so-called military “occupation” of the West Bank in particular, it began after the Six Day War of 1967, in which five Arab nations joined forces to attack Israel in a failed but brutal war that was intended to permanently destroy the Jewish state. Scholar David Meir-Levi explains:

Even one of the most critical of Israel’s historians, Professor Avi Schlaim, acknowledges that Israel was the victim of Arab aggression in the Six-Day War. This is an important point with regard to the issue of Israeli settlements in and sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza Strip. International law is very clear. Had it been the aggressor, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip would have been illegal, as would all future expansion of Israeli population into these territories. However, as the victim of aggression, Israel’s legal position is exactly the opposite.

As blogger Rochelle Kipnis elaborates: “Israel’s presence in the West Bank is a result of self defense during a war on Israel’s right to exist. The West Bank cannot be considered 'occupied' because there was no previous sovereign in the area. While it is considered a 'disputed territory,' it’s not 'occupied.'”

Nor is there currently any “occupation” of Gaza. By September 2005, the Israeli government had evacuated every single Jew who had been living in the Gaza Strip, so as to give the inhabitants of the region an opportunity to freely govern themselves. They responded by electing a terrorist government run by the genocidal madmen of Hamas, and by constructing a vast network of secret subterranean tunnels for the storage and transport of weaponry and terrorist operatives.

The True Cost of Coronavirus the Media Won’t Tell You About: by Emily Laitin 3-12-20

The True Cost of Coronavirus the Media Won’t Tell You About:

by Emily Laitin  3-12-20

As a university instructor, I am able to see students transition from adolescents into young adults during their pivotal years at university. I watch them learn how to live on their own, learn to handle interpersonal conflict with roommates, learn time management, and learn where their own interests lie. I watch them all get colds and flus every year as it wanders through the dormitories. I watch them all bounce back a few weeks later, learning why their mothers always had a few cans of chicken soup in the house. I watch them learn through mistakes, difficulties, and creativity, how to be independent beings in the world. And this year, I watched this beautiful dance fall apart. 

My campus recently moved to an online only system as a response to Coronavirus scares, sending students home and canceling all activities on and off campus. Mid semester, the whole university system came to a dead stop. The campus that had been so full of life became dead silent. This decision was uncalled for and unfair. This was not for students’ best interests. It was a large scale reaction to media hype. 

A worse pandemic already plagues college-aged adults and has grown exponentially in recent years: depression. Increased social isolation as well as the anonymity of the digital age are some of the factors leading to increased depression in young adults. 

Most university students are relatively healthy 18-25 year olds. The best thing for their overall well being would be if they could still eat in university dining centers, engage in on-campus classes and labs, work out in student recreation centers, and partake in university sponsored activities. 

However, because of the closures, these same students are now going to be eating non-perishable junk food, struggling to complete classes online, missing out on hands on experience of research labs, staying indoors rather than exercising, and losing out on campus leadership opportunities. These young adults who could be learning independence through the university system are being sent back home to sit in front of their computers. 

The psychological costs of isolation at this stage in life are worse than the physical costs of a flu. Students are already spending more time than ever in front of screens and less time learning to interact with others. Factors that lessen chances of depression include physical activity, social connectedness, and feelings of agency. All these are taken away in the midst of this scare. While attempting to avoid one pandemic, we have unintentionally kindled the flames of another.   

I had one day of class between the announcement and the closure of campus, and I utilized it to attempt to educate my students on the myths versus facts associated with the virus as well as best practices going forward. I had an open discussion about their fears and interpretations of the virus. We workshopped together how to create a beneficial online learning environment going forward.  And finally, I advised all of them to still go outside, to exercise, to keep connected to each other, and to critically examine the information they will see on social media concerning the virus before believing or repeating it. I encourage all faculty lucky enough to still have in person interactions with your students to do the same. 

The true cost of Coronavirus on college students isn’t shortness of breath, a fever, or flu like symptoms. It’s the loss of a semester of growth and education for millions of young adults due to media overreaction and the perpetuation of misinformation. 

Alan Dershowitz Says He Was ‘Conned’ By Barack Obama –Says He Would Now Reconsider His 2012 Vote For Him

Alan Dershowitz Says He Was ‘Conned’ By Barack Obama

–Says He Would Now Reconsider His 2012 Vote For Him

By LifeZette, POLITICAL INSIDER | March 9, 2020 4:11 PM

Top Democratic lawyer and legal expert Alan Dershowitz just spoke out to slam Barack Obama, saying that he was “conned” by the former president.

In a new interview with Ben Shapiro that aired yesterday, Dershowitz accused Obama of betraying Israel and lying to him personally. He explained that Obama had promised him in a private meeting that he would defend Israel vigorously, but he proceeded to do the exact opposite.

“I think President Obama, for whom I voted twice, and would now reconsider my second vote for him, he conned me,” Dershowitz said, according to The Blaze. “He called me into the Oval Office and he said ‘I have Israel’s back’ and I didn’t realize what he meant is to put a target on it and stab them.”

Dershowitz was referring to former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power’s abstention vote during a vote condemning Israel back in December of 2016.

“As he was leaving office, he ordered his representative to the U.N. to not veto a resolution which declared…the Western Wall, the holiest place in Judaism to be occupied territory,” the Harvard Law professor added.

“It was outrageous,” Dershowitz continued, going on to describe how Obama’s decision “legitimized” anti-Israel activism within the political center-left and the Democratic Party as a whole.

This comes one month after Dershowitz claimed that he had evidence that Obama ordered the FBI to investigate someone at the request of billionaire liberal donor George Soros.

“I have some information as well about the Obama administration — which will be disclosed in a lawsuit at some point, but I’m not prepared to disclose it now — about how President Obama personally asked the FBI to investigate somebody on behalf of George Soros, who was a close ally of his,” Dershowitz alleged.

In his new interview with Shapiro, Dershowitz also blasted the “idiots” who misrepresented the arguments he made as to what constituted an “impeachable offense.”

“When I did my argument in front of the Senate, no one ever took it on based on the merits,” he explained. “If I had been on Hillary Clinton’s side, if she had been impeached, I’d be the greatest scholar in the history of constitutional law, according to the left. But they don’t like where I came down on this case, so they attacked me personally.”

ISRAEL....Too Much Democracy?? By Victor Rosenthal

ISRAEL....Too Much Democracy??

By Victor Rosenthal

The idea that there should be an independent sovereign Jewish state in the world is, to understate the fact, controversial. Much of the European-oriented West and certainly the Arab Middle East opposes it. Even many diaspora Jews either don’t see it as essential to Jewish survival, or are no longer concerned with the continuance of the Jews as a people.

But recent events in Israel’s politics have brought us to a crossroads. The direction that we go now will be critical for the continued existence of Israel as a Jewish state, and therefore for the survival of the Jewish people.

The history of modern Israel can be viewed from various vantage points: religious, geopolitical, military, ethnographic, and perhaps others. One dimension is the struggle between the Jews who reestablished the Jewish state after several millennia of diaspora, and the Arabs of Eretz Yisrael and the surrounding region.

Jabotinsky, in The Iron Wall (1917) understood, long before the reestablishment of the state, that there is no way that we are going to make Zionists out of the Arabs. They will not be interested in minority status in a Jewish state, no matter what rights or economic benefits this gets them. They will only accept Jewish immigration and ultimately sovereignty, he said, if they have absolutely no choice. Hence, the “Iron Wall.”

But Jabotinsky also expressed the optimistic view that – if the Wall was truly impregnable – at some point the Arabs would decide that there was no hope of getting rid of the Jews, and that they would moderate their demands. And then “we may expect them to discuss honestly practical questions, such as a guarantee against Arab displacement, or equal rights for Arab citizen [sic], or Arab national integrity.”

It has turned out that Jabotinsky was right in the first instance and wrong in the second. Perhaps – prescient as he was in other matters – he didn’t realize that it was impossible to separate Arab resistance from worldwide Jew-hatred and anti-Zionism, and that outside powers (in particular, Nazi Germany and later the Soviet Union) would adopt the Arab cause as instrumental for their wider geopolitical programs. Or maybe we just weren’t capable of building an iron wall high enough or strong enough.

In any event, the rejection of Jewish sovereignty between the river and the sea by the Arabs of Eretz Yisrael did not diminish over time. It was fed by the rejectionism of the British-appointed Mufti of Jerusalem, al-Husseini, amplified by the Soviet adoption of the PLO and Husseini’s heir, Yasser Arafat. It received a massive boost from Israel’s astonishingly stupid decision to accept the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian Arabs, and to breathe life into its corpse by signing the Oslo accords and inviting Arafat and his coterie back to Eretz Yisrael. With the creation of the Palestinian Authority, the realization of the initial steps in Arafat’s “phased plan,” Jabotinsky’s wall was breached. It became possible for Arabs to imagine finally ending the Jewish “occupation” of all of Eretz Yisrael.

The Arab citizens of the State of Israel have followed a more moderate trajectory than the Arabs of the territories, but its direction has been the same. When the state was declared by Ben Gurion in 1948, it was defined as a “Jewish state,” the realization of “the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State.” At the same time, the Declaration of Independence affirmed that the state would be a Western-style democracy,

…based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

It also explicitly invited the Arabs of Eretz Yisrael to “participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.”

I am not sure why Ben-Gurion and the other founders didn’t grasp the fundamentally contradictory nature of the promises they made in the Declaration of Independence. How could the Jews be “masters of their fate in their own sovereign state” and still promise full equality of political rights to the Arabs, who would always vehemently oppose that objective?

Meir Kahane pointed this out some decades ago. The response of the Zionist establishment was to kick him and his party out of political life in the country, and even to imprison him.

Today there are four parties in the Joint List; three are Arab parties and one is the Arab-Jewish Communist Party. All four oppose the idea of Israel as a Jewish state. They are in turn composed of various factions that espouse everything from Islamism to Palestinian nationalism and Pan-Arabism. In the past few years the number of Arabs voting for the Joint List has grown, and in the last election it obtained 15 seats in the Knesset, making it the third largest party in the Knesset.

One of Israel’s Basic Laws – in effect, its constitution – disqualifies anyone who “[negates] the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state,” engages in incitement to racism, or supports armed struggle against the state from sitting in the Knesset. But the Supreme Court has insisted on the highest standard of proof in these cases, and as a result, since 1965 no Arab candidate or party has been disqualified. The Court has been harder on Jews, in the case of Kahane and his party, and more recently, upholding the disqualification of Baruch Marzel, Benzi Gopstein, and Michael Ben Ari on the grounds of incitement to racism.

This is where we are today. We have swallowed the contradiction inherent in the Declaration of Independence, and we are facing the political heartburn that results from trying to digest it. The most moderate of the Arabs and the Israeli Left find the idea of a “Jewish” state objectionable, and would prefer that Israel be a “state of its citizens” like the United States. The Right passed the Basic Law: Israel – the Nation-State of the Jewish People, to explicate the precise meaning of the concept of a Jewish state, and it faces strong opposition from the Left and the Arabs, who see it as anti-democratic and racist. Almost certainly it will soon be taken up by the Supreme Court.

No Arab party has ever been part of a ruling coalition, both because the Arabs didn’t want to support a Zionist government, and the Jewish parties didn’t want them. However, in July 1992, a 62-seat left-wing coalition of Labor, Meretz, and Shas (yes, Shas joined a left-wing coalition!) was supported in the Knesset by the votes of Hadash and one other Arab party, which kept it alive when Shas quit in November of that year, and they dropped to 56. A similar arrangement has been proposed for Blue and White and its proposed Jewish coalition partners with their 56 seats. The votes of the Joint List would allow them to pass a law that would prevent PM Netanyahu from forming the next government, and to form a government even though they will not have the required 61 seats by themselves.

The degree to which the key people in Blue and White – as well as their partner Avigdor Lieberman – have both personal and political animus against Binyamin Netanyahu can’t be overemphasized. But the fact that they appear to be ready to become indebted to and wholly dependent on anti-Zionist parties in order to accomplish their goal of forcing him out is shocking.

Such a government would in effect give the anti-Zionist Arab parties a veto on all of its actions. It would certainly not proceed with the extension of sovereignty in the Jordan Valley or to Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. It would certainly try to repeal or emasculate the Nation-State Law. And it is not clear how it would react to provocations from Hamas or Hezbollah.

Preventing this is the immediate problem, but there is an even bigger one on the horizon: in order that the State of Israel can continue to fulfill its function as the sustaining force of the Jewish people, it must continue to be a Jewish state, constitutionally and essentially, and not just an ordinary state that happens to have a Jewish majority.

Anyone who does not support that objective should not be part of the governing body of the state, whether they are Jewish or Arab.

Jewish advocacy organizations and publications who are working tirelessly to combat the relentless assaults of the Jew- and Israel- haters include:

Jewish advocacy organizations 

& publications  who are working  

tirelessly to combat the relentless  

assaults of the Jew- and Israel- 

haters  include:

include:

AFSI (Americans for a Safe Israel)
1751 Second Avenue
New York, NY 10128www.AFSI.org
Tel: 1-212-828-2424
Mark Langfan, Chairman

Americans for Peace & Tolerance
5 Main Street, Suite 118
Watertown, MA 02472https://www.peaceandtolerance.org
Founder: Charles Jacobs

CAMERA–Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis
PO Box 35040
Boston MA 02135-0001
Andrea Levin, Founder

Campus Watch (a project of the Middle East Forum) monitors bias on American campuses, issues reports, and takes strong action where indicated.https://www.meforum.org/campus-watch/
E-mail: info@meforum.org
Tel: 1-215-546-5406

Canary Missionwww.canarymission.org
Canary Mission documents individuals and organizations that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses.

Coalition of Pro-Israel Advocates (COPIA)
10507 Tanager Lane
Potomac, Maryland 20854info@copma.net

Combat Anti-Semitismwww.combatantisemitism.org
info@combatantisemitism.org
Email: sacha@combatantisemitism.org
Tel: +1- 646 417 4046

EMET (Endowment for Middle East Truth)
PO Box 66366
Washington, DC 20035https://emetonline.org
Sarah Stern, Founder

Gatestone Institute
14 East 60 Street, Suite 705
New York, NY 10022Www.GatestoneInstitute.org

HonestReporting.com
165 East 56^th Street, 2^nd Fl
New York, NY 10022-2709
Tel: 1-847-745-8284
E-mail: action@honestreporting.com

Jews Choose Trump
62 William Street
New York, NY 10005
Jewschoosetrump.orgwww.jewschoosetrump.org

NCJA (National Conference of Jewish Affairs)
90 Washington Valley Road, Suite 1261
Bedminster, NJ 07921www.conservativehq.com
Attn: Rabbi Aryeh Spero

Republican Jewish Coalition
50 F St NW, Suite 100
Washington, D.C. 20001www.rjchq.org

The Exodus Movement, founded by Elizabeth Pipko for “proud Jewish Americans who reject the hypocrisy, anti-Americanism, and anti-Semitism of the rising far-left.”

Elizabeth Pipko, founder and president of The Exodus Movement.

The Exodus Movement
740 South Mill Avenue, #200
Tempe, AZ 85281www.theexodusmovement.com
Elizabeth Pipko, Founderhttps://theexodusmovement.com

The Lawfare Project
633 3^rd Avenue, Fl 21
New York, NY 10017-8157https://www.thelawfareproject.org/
Brooke Goldstein, Founder/Director

PRIMER- Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting
P.O. Box 0591
West Hartford, CT 06137-0591http://primerct.org/index.php?content=index&title=PRIMER-Connecticut
info@primerct.org
Founder: Alan Stein
President, Mark Fishmanhttp://www.jewishledger.com/2014/07/primer-israel-advocacy-in-good-times-and-bad/

Stop Anti-Semitism,orghttps://www.stopantisemitism.org/
Features Anti-Semite of the Month and Anti-Semite of the Year
Contact: Liora Rez at Liora@stopantisemitism.org.

Understanding the Threat
Provides tools to leaders, police and citizens to identify and dismantle jihadi/terrorist networks in their local communities.
P.O. Box 190772
Dallas, TX 75219www.UnderstandingtheThreat.com
Founder: John Guandolo

ZOA (Zionist Organization of America)
633 Third Avenue, Suite 31-B
New York, NY 10017https://zoa.org
Morton Klein, President

E-Mail Joan Swirsky: joanswirsky@gmail.com