In Europe and the US, Elites Who Live by Lies Despise the Little People Who Don’t

Kevin Crehan is dead at 35. He perished as an enemy of the British state, the victim of de facto judicial murder. Crehan was in prison for a tasteless prank: offended perhaps by the aggressive demands of immigrant Muslims in Britain for the imposition of sharia law, Crehan left a bacon sandwich on the front steps of a mosque. For that he was sentenced to one year in a prison full of violent Muslim criminals who knew about his prank, with no protective custody. (The cause of his death is still unclear.)

In a bitter twist, Julian Lambert, the judge who sentenced Crehan for his crime, in 2015 gave a sentence of only two years to a member of a Muslim rape gang that preyed on toddlers and a baby. So in 2017, that immigrant baby rapist will be a free man, while Kevin Crehan, Englishman, sleeps in the English earth.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn didn’t live to see this travesty, but a close reading of his works would have allowed you to predict it. The Gulag Archipelago, a masterful work of memory, exposed a vast empire of falsehood, injustice, and cruelty — all carefully masked by puffed-up rationalizations and defended by Western intellectuals who lived comfortably far from its labor camps and psychiatric prisons.

Solzhenitsyn’s book with a deft stroke exposed the messianic cult of Marxism, and doomed the Soviet system. Shortly before Solzhenitsyn was expelled from his native country, he begged his fellow citizens to engage in a simple, prophetic act of resistance: to “live not by lies.”

By contrast, the de facto leader of the European Union, Germany’s Angela Merkel, took to the airwaves for New Year’s to deliver the opposite message, to repeat the governing lie which guides EU elites, and demand that Germans live by it. The woman who single-handedly delivered the continent of Europe to the tender mercies of rape mobs, who flooded its cities with unemployable foreigners who flock to extremist mosques and are infiltrated by ISIS, addressed her bewildered citizens. As Breitbart reports:

In the federal chancellor’s New Year address to Germany, Merkel asserted that the terror attacks committed by Islamist migrants in Würzburg, Ansbach, and recently at a Christmas market in Berlin were not attacks on Western civilisation but an attack on ‘refugees’ and Germany’s willkommenskultur (‘welcome culture’).

She stated terrorists “mock [the willingness of Germany to help] with their deeds [acts of terrorism], like they mock those who really need and deserve our protection.”

Adding that it is “particularly bitter and repulsive” when terrorist attacks are committed by migrants, Merkel pushed back against criticism of her unwavering commitment to mass migration, saying that Germany will fight the “hatred” of terrorism with “humanity” and “unity.”

“With the images of bombed-out Aleppo in Syria, it is important to remember once again how important and correct it was that our country has helped in the past year those who need our protection,” she said.

Acknowledging that Islamic terrorism is the biggest test for Germany, Merkel hinted at new security measures for the year ahead – but not at changes to her open-door mass migration policies.

Over one million unvetted migrants from the Middle East and Africa entered Germany alone at Merkel’s invitation, including potentially hundreds of Islamic State fighters and bringing with them the risk of the terror organisation weaponising migrants already in the country.

Asserting that “[the] state is doing everything to ensure its citizens’ security in freedom,” the chancellor said that in the midst of mourning for the dead and injured in these “difficult days,” Germans should seek “consolation” in each other.

Merkel closed her speech, which will be broadcast Saturday, by asserting that Germans need “openness” and “an open view of the world.” She stated she had “confidence” for 2017 – this New Year confidence an extension of her “Wir schaffen das” (“we can do this”) mantra.

The Captive Mind of the Ideologue

Nothing can penetrate the mind of an ideologue. It’s a hypobaric chamber — hermetically sealed, locked off by a thousand logical fallacies and willful refusals of reason. Soviet leaders knew perfectly well for decades that their people were battered and crushed, toiling miserably in pursuit of a hopeless utopia. But they kept on droning out speeches which promised a glorious future, which “proved” from the crabbed arithmetic of Marx’s fatuous arguments that socialism could dissolve human selfishness in the acid bath of coercion.

None of the violence and intimidation of women that’s afflicting Europe’s cities, none of the terrorist attacks conducted by “refugees” or barely foiled by harried security services, none of the strutting demands for sharia by imams scamming European welfare payments, can make the slightest dent in Merkel’s iron pate. Her politics are as delusional as those of the poor mental patient who rocks back and forth in a corner, convinced he’s the queen of Portugal. But unlike him, Merkel is culpable. She knows what she is doing. She must know.

Merkel and the EU elites, and the bishops and pastors, academics and bureaucrats who back that mad agenda, are united by a powerful governing vision, strong enough to insulate them from any argument or data. Like Marxism, that vision projects a shiny kaleidoscope of colorful, idealist fantasies. But its beating heart is hatred. As Marxists despise and scheme to destroy the thrifty farmer, the hard-working shop owner, and the friar who serves the poor, so globalists hate, from the depths of their bones, the bulk of their countrymen:

Patriotic veterans who cling to their nation’s sovereignty, remembering how the Germans (for instance) once marched in and terrorized them.

Women who expect to dress and act as they see fit, regardless of the jeers and threats of the mobs of welfare-dependent Salafists who now haunt the street of their cities.

Overworked taxpayers who wonder why half their paychecks are confiscated, while foreigners lounge around on public assistance.

Christian refugees from the Middle East, who escaped Muslim persecution in their native lands, only to fear such attacks now in Sweden or Belgium.

Ordinary people who expect that the mores and culture, songs and creeds and customs, of their home country can prevail without constant vituperation and periodic terror attacks by angry, aggressive aliens.

The Government has Dissolved the People and Chosen a New One

The current rulers of Europe detest the Kevin Crehans whom they are governing, with all the white-knuckled fury that Hillary Clinton felt for “deplorable” U.S. voters. So those rulers have chosen to dissolve the people, and import a new one. Elaborate schemes will protect those countries’ policies from “populist” resistance, and shield the haughty governors from the benighted hordes whom they govern. The secret police in Germany will monitor social media to crack down on “hate speech”— defined as speech that diverges from official government policy. (See this couple sentenced to prison and fines in Bavaria for opposing the influx of refugees — and this German policeman threatened with a fine of three months’ wages for calling Merkel’s policies “insane” at a public political rally.)

In the U.S., Trump’s win slowed, if only a little, the crackdown by America’s Angela Merkels against our Kevin Crehans. They will go on suppressing the free speech of conservatives on campus, and trying to ruin the livelihoods of those who attend evangelical churches or run Christian businesses. But perhaps, for the next four years at least, the full power of the U.S. federal government will not be turned against ordinary people for believing common-sense things. We must make the most of that time, an unbought grace God granted us, to steel ourselves and our families to the task that lies before us: To live not by lies. (For more from the author of “In Europe and the US, Elites Who Live by Lies Despise the Little People Who Don’t” please click HERE)

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Kerry’s Two-Faced Middle East Solution

In his recent speech excoriating Israel for refusing to commit suicide by allowing a sworn enemy to have a state adjoining the Jewish state, Secretary of State John Kerry claimed the U.S. government “did not draft or originate” the UN resolution critical of Israeli “settlements.”

Kerry said there were no American fingerprints on the resolution and that it was totally the idea of the Egyptians and Palestinians. Except that it wasn’t, if one can believe Egyptian intelligence.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reports on a story published in an Egyptian newspaper with close ties to Egyptian Intelligence. According to the report, a secret meeting took place in Washington in mid-December attended by John Kerry, National Security Adviser Susan Rice and a rather large Palestinian delegation that included PLO Executive Committee secretary and negotiating team leader Saeb Erekat. If the report is true, the Palestinian delegation also supposedly met with representatives of Homeland Security and the CIA. Political discussions were also said to be part of the agenda.

According to the transcribed minutes obtained by the Egyptian daily, Al-Youm Al-Sabi, the secret gathering “reveals U.S. coordination leading up to the UN Security Council vote on Resolution 2334 regarding Israel’s settlements. … It states that the sides ‘agreed to cooperate in drafting a resolution on the settlements’ and that the U.S. representative in the Security Council was ’empowered’ to coordinate with the Palestinian UN representative on the resolution.”

The Egyptian newspaper further reported that the secret meeting in Washington “was aimed at coordinating Kerry’s attendance at the upcoming international Paris Conference set for Jan. 15, 2017, in order to propose his ideas for a permanent arrangement ‘provided they are supported by the Palestinian side.’”

Susan Rice is said to have warned the Palestinians about the “danger” of the incoming Trump administration’s policies, adding that both she and Kerry had advised Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas not to make any preliminary moves that might “provoke the new administration.”

The report also said Kerry and Rice had “fulsomely praised Abbas’ policies and how he handled matters, and harshly criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying that he ‘aims to destroy the two-state solution.’”

This is remarkably cynical even in our cynical age. If the Egyptian newspaper report is true — and the Obama administration has so far not denied it — the administration is guilty of a two-faced solution to the conflict, which is no solution at all from the standpoint of Israel and the Jewish people who have been the targets of unprovoked attacks and wars since Israel’s rebirth in 1948.

Not only has Abbas said he would expel all Jews from a Palestinian State, but neither he, nor any other regional player technically still at war with Israel has said they will ever recognize a Jewish state in their midst. Furthermore, since the Palestinian side now includes Hamas and Fatah in a unity coalition — two entities that have vowed not only to never make peace with Israel, but to seek its destruction and the expulsion of all Jews from the land — only a fool would believe that peace is possible under such circumstances.

Peace, like success, is a byproduct, not a goal that can be reached without certain precursors. Success is achieved by hard work, a good education and right relationships. Peace is achieved when one side is victorious or two sides decide they don’t want to fight anymore. Jordan and Egypt gave up on war, leading to peace with Israel. The Palestinian side fights on. They have an ally in the Obama administration, but only for a few more days.

President-elect Trump has promised things will be different when it comes to U.S. policy toward Israel starting Jan. 20. One can only hope. (For more from the author of “Kerry’s Two-Faced Middle East Solution” please click HERE)

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Obama and Israel, From 2008 to 2016: A Story of Betrayal and Reversal

In June, 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama gave a stirring speech to AIPAC, making strong commitments to the Jewish people and Israel. In December, 2016, President Obama’s Secretary of State John Kerry delivered an important policy speech that directly contradicted some of candidate Obama’s words. The contrast is striking, unnerving, and downright hypocritical.

To be fair, there is some consistency between the speeches, as both advocate a two-state solution, among other parallels. And on a certain level, President Obama has kept some of the commitments he made to Israel, including massive defense contracts and military aid. And it is true that, until last week, Obama had not allowed the UN Security Council to pass any anti-Israel resolutions.

Still, reading Obama’s 2008 speech in light of the last 8 years is a real shocker. Consider the following.

In 2008, candidate Obama pledged:

As president, I will work to help Israel achieve the goal of two states, a Jewish state of Israel and a Palestinian state, living side by side in peace and security. And I won’t wait until the waning days of my presidency. I will take an active role, and make a personal commitment to do all I can to advance the cause of peace from the start of my administration.

Ironically, he has done the opposite, not only failing to move the peace process forward but rather, in “the waning days of [his] presidency,” taking aggressive steps to undermine the peace process and to betray Israel. (It’s even possible that before the transfer of power, he will lash out at Israel once more.)

Dividing Jerusalem

In 2008, Obama declared that, “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.”

This week, John Kerry declared that a peace agreement would “provide an agreed resolution for Jerusalem as the internationally recognized capital of the two states, and protect and assure freedom of access to the holy sites consistent with the established status quo.”

He added, “Most acknowledge that Jerusalem should not be divided again like it was in 1967, and we believe that.” But, he continued, “At the same time, there is broad recognition that there will be no peace agreement without reconciling the basic aspirations of both sides to have capitals there.”

Well, here’s a note from Jerusalem to our Secretary of State and President: You cannot have it both ways. Either Jerusalem is the undivided capital of Israel or it is the divided capital of Israel and Palestine. And if Jerusalem is to be the undivided capital of Israel, then Mr. Kerry has no reason to protest strongly the relocation of our embassy to Jerusalem, which he did this week as well.

Joel Pollack also points out that “through the Obama administration’s acceptance of UN Security Council Resolution 2334 last Friday,” America now “regards the Israel presence in East Jerusalem as ‘settlements’ that are in ‘flagrant violation of international law.’” This means that, “Effectively, the Obama administration has allowed the Palestinians to claim East Jerusalem as their own, with the option of negotiating that claim away. The starting point of negotiations is now a division of Jerusalem ‘like it was in 1967.’”

Dealing with Iran, Endangering Israel

Getting back to 2008, while pledging to work diplomatically with Iran rather than militarily against Iran, candidate Obama was very clear about the danger Iran presented, stating, “There is no greater threat to Israel — or to the peace and stability of the region — than Iran.”

He continued:

The Iranian regime supports violent extremists and challenges us across the region. It pursues a nuclear capability that could spark a dangerous arms race and raise the prospect of a transfer of nuclear know-how to terrorists. Its president denies the Holocaust and threatens to wipe Israel off the map. The danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat.

I doubt that anyone listening to his speech in 2008 would have imagined that he would end up striking such a disastrous deal with Iran, one that not only rewarded the Iranians with billions of dollars, some of which would be used to fund terrorism — Kerry himself admitted to this explicitly — but one which also gave them a clear path to nuclear development in the coming years. Is this not the height of betrayal?

But there’s more. In 2008, then Senator Obama said:

I have long understood Israel’s quest for peace and need for security. But never more so than during my travels there two years ago. Flying in an [Israeli Defense Forces] helicopter, I saw a narrow and beautiful strip of land nestled against the Mediterranean. On the ground, I met a family who saw their house destroyed by a Katyusha rocket. I spoke to Israeli troops who faced daily threats as they maintained security near the blue line. I talked to people who wanted nothing more simple, or elusive, than a secure future for their children.

Yet in 2011, President Obama briefly suggested that Israel return to its totally indefensible pre-1967 borders, which would reduce this “narrow and beautiful strip of land” to as few as 9 miles wide, thereby committing national suicide. And in 2015, it was reported that “President Barack Obama is considering agreeing to a United Nations Security Council resolution ‘embodying the principles of a two-state solution that would be based on the pre-1967 lines between Israel and the West Bank and Gaza Strip and mutually agreed swaps,’ a senior administration official has told the New York Times.”

Will something like this be the last element in the president’s parting shots against Israel?

Obama Teams with Palestinians for the Anti-Israel UN Security Resolution

Making things even worse is the very strong evidence that the Obama administration worked directly with Palestinian leadership to craft and advance the recent UN Security Council resolution, despite the administration’s denials. Evidence includes: 1) discussion months in advance by political pundits that this was one of the options being discussed by the administration (how did they know this?); 2) Prime Minister Netanyahu stating unequivocally that America was behind the resolution, which he would hardly do without “rather ironclad information”; and 3) an Egyptian paper releasing transcripts of a purported meeting between Kerry and Palestinian officials from early December, planning out the strategy.

This is just part of what makes President Obama’s final actions so shameful and why Rabbi Shmuley Boteach was right to say that has Obama “demonized Israel little by little.”

So much for the man who said in 2008 that he spoke “as a true friend of Israel,” explaining, “And I know that when I visit with AIPAC, I am among friends. Good friends. Friends who share my strong commitment to make sure that the bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable today, tomorrow and forever.”

As the old saying goes, with friends like these, who needs enemies? (For more from the author of “Obama and Israel, From 2008 to 2016: A Story of Betrayal and Reversal” please click HERE)

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Obama’s Actions Against Russia Are ‘Too Little, Too Late’

President Barack Obama on Thursday took steps to retaliate against Russia for what he called “aggressive harassment of U.S. officials and cyber operations aimed at our election.”

Obama’s actions include sanctioning Russian intelligence agencies and individuals as well as expelling 35 Russian government officials from the United States.

“These actions follow repeated private and public warnings that we have issued to the Russian government,” Obama said in a statement, “and are a necessary and appropriate response to efforts to harm U.S. interests in violation of established international norms of behavior.”

The Daily Signal asked Luke Coffey, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign and National Security Policy, about Obama’s actions. Here are his answers to our questions.

Some in the media are saying Russian hacking helped Donald Trump win the election against Hillary Clinton. Is there any truth to that?

Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election because the American people rejected her progressive vision of America and the idea of another four years of Obama’s failed policies. She alone is responsible for her defeat.

Russia’s actions are indeed alarming, and they must be taken seriously. Russia has a proven track record of taking an interest in the internal events and election processes of NATO member countries.

In this case, the forensic evidence released by the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI is detailed and persuasive in showing Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee. So Russian denials are not credible.

However, it should be noted that there is no evidence of any interference in the voting and ballot counting processes.

Obama took new measures Thursday to retaliate. What will those measures achieve?

Obama’s announcement of sanctions against sections of Russia’s intelligence community and expelling 35 Russian diplomats from the U.S. is welcome but long overdue. This is too little, too late.

[Russian President Vladimir] Putin respects two things: strength and consistency. Over the past eight years, Obama has shown neither of these traits. This is why Russia felt confident enough to take the actions that it did.

What steps should Congress and the White House take to investigate the extent of Russia’s actions?

Any investigation into this matter needs to be independent, bipartisan, and given enough time to do a comprehensive job. Obama’s rushed internal review lacks creditability.

The U.S. has military superiority over Russia, but technology has become more important than ever to our national security. Just how serious is the cyberthreat from Russia?

As The Heritage Foundation’s 2017 Index of U.S. Military Strength states, “Russia seeks to maximize its strategic position in the world at the expense of the United States,” maintains “incredibly advanced” cyberwarfare capabilities, and assesses “the overall threat from Russia as ‘aggressive’ and ‘formidable.’”

The U.S. intelligence community has continued to serve us skillfully and often gallantly to keep all Americans safe 24/7. That needs to be a priority now and in the future. (For more from the author of “Obama’s Actions Against Russia Are ‘Too Little, Too Late'” please click HERE)

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Trump Says He Will Meet With Intelligence Leaders About Russia

President-elect Donald Trump will meet with the Intelligence Community next week to discuss Russian interference in the election, he said in a vaguely worded statement issued Thursday evening that did not mention sanctions announced by President Obama earlier that day.

“It’s time for our country to move on to bigger and better things,” Trump wrote in the brief statement. “Nevertheless, in the interest of our country and its great people, I will meet with leaders of the intelligence community next week in order to be updated on the facts of this situation.”

The statement did not define “this situation,” but the transition team earlier in the day had promised a response to the announced sanctions would be forthcoming.

Trump has repeatedly denied any Russian involvement in the hacks of the Democratic party that intelligence officials have said were an attempt to “interfere” in the U.S. election.

He has characterized any reports to that effect as an attempt by Democrats to delegitimize his election. (Read more from “Trump Says He Will Meet With Intelligence Leaders About Russia” HERE)

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Boko Haram Remains a Threat to Christians in Nigeria and Cameroon

Showing that the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram remains a threat, a local self-defense group saved Christians gathering to celebrate Christmas in a town in northern Cameroon.

According to AllAfrica.com reports, the self-defense group saw a suspected member of Boko Haram riding a bike toward the Christians. When they tried to search him, he detonated his bomb, said the state’s governor. He killed himself, two members of self-defense group and a nearby civilian. Christmas day attacks on three other towns were also reported.

The Nigerian government claims to have driven the Islamic terrorist group out of their home in the Nigerian part of the large Sambisa forest. It seems to have survived across the border in Cameroon.

Not Yet Safe

However, Nigeria is not yet safe. On the same day as the attacks in Cameroon, two young female suicide bombers tried to attack a market in Maiduguri. Maiduguri is the largest town in the northeastern Nigerian state of Borno.

“One of the bombers was instantly killed in the explosion, while the second was lynched by irate mob in the vicinity,” said a spokesman for the Borno state police. Security forces detonated the other bomb.

Congratulating Nigerian president Mohammadu Buhari for his success against Boko Haram, a leading opposition party warned that other forests where terrorists and criminals hide out needed to be cleared. They “have become killing fields,” said the spokesman for the Peoples Democratic Party.

The previous president, Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian, was a member of the party. Buhari, a retired general, is Muslim.

As reported on Monday, Boko Haram has killed at least 20,000 people and displaced at least 2.6 million since 2009. By keeping farmers from farming, the group has put 14 million people in need outside help.

In October, 21 of the schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram were released and returned to their homes for Christmas. About 250 more remain missing. Many are thought to be have been forced to marry Boko Haram soldiers and convert to Islam. (For more from the author of “Boko Haram Remains a Threat to Christians in Nigeria and Cameroon” please click HERE)

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How Republicans Can Stop Obama’s Jihad Against Israel

Republicans who are looking to commence 2017 with a bang now have an opportunity to put Democrats on defense on the very first day of the new Congress. Together with repealing Obamacare, defunding both the Palestinian Authority and the United Nations would go a long way to creating real change before Trump is even sworn into office.

Obama literally collaborates with terrorists against Israel

At this point, it is no longer an exaggeration to suggest that Obama is more anti-Israel than many Arab heads of state. While many Arab leaders now recognize that both Iran and Sunni grassroots uprisings pose a greater threat to regional and global stability — even in their minds — than the state of Israel, Obama is literally working with Islamo-fascists to destroy Israel.

According to The Times of Israel, the Egyptian Al-Youm Al-Sabea newspaper is now confirming Prime Minister Netanyahu’s allegation that the Obama administration orchestrated the UN gang rape of Israel. They obtained a transcript of a meeting between Kerry and Palestine Liberation Organization officials in early December showing the Secretary Kerry pledging support for a UN assault on Israel.

After eight years of this maniacal administration, there is no denying the fact that this man is either an Islamo-fascist sympathizer or he hates Israel enough that he is willing to work with terrorists against them.

Let’s be very clear: the Palestinian Authority (sanitized from its previous name, “Palestine Liberation Organization”) shares the same fundamental ideology as Al Qaeda and all the other Sunni Islamist groups. And it’s not just because of their unity government with Hamas. The ruling Fatah Party just held new elections and the top two spots for its central committee went to Marwan Barghouti and Jibril Rajoub. Barghouti is currently serving five life sentences in an Israeli prison for orchestrating multiple terror attacks during the Second Intifada (Israel doesn’t administer the death penalty). Rajoub, who is currently a senior official in Abbas’s government, once said that if he had a nuclear bomb he would not hesitate to drop it on Israel.

Yes, folks, these are the people who will be leading any negotiation for “peace” when current Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas retires, not that he was any better. And these are the people with whom John Kerry is plotting to destroy Israel.

Indeed, these people have never changed since their “PLO” days. In an interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw on March 31, 1977, the Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee member Zahir Muhsein said the following:

The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct “Palestinian people” to oppose Zionism.

Nothing has changed since their days in exile other than their candor.

Time for Congress to go on offense

Obviously, the U.S. policy towards Israel is expected to shift dramatically when Trump is sworn in as president on January 20, 2017. However, these is legitimate concern that Obama and Kerry will spend the next few weeks delegitimizing Israel’s sovereignty over the land west of the Jordan River. Doing so would lay the groundwork for an international excommunication of Israel at the January 15 conference in Paris.

This is where Republicans in Congress must step up to the plate.

Congress begins its new session next Tuesday, almost three weeks before Trump is sworn into office. What better way to begin this new era than by putting Democrats on defense on a 62-15% issue with the American public. Democrat leaders in Congress continue to express faux outrage over Obama’s treatment of Israel. However, as they have done throughout Obama’s tenure, and particularly with regards to the Iran alliance, their outrage never translates into action. Now, Republicans will have an opportunity to drive a wedge between the different factions of the party by forcing them to pick a side.

Instead of passing some vacuous resolution, Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. (F, 40%) should immediately move legislation with teeth to cut funding to the U.N. and the PLO until the UN resolution is repealed and until the PLO changes its leadership structure. The best way to counter Obama’s plan to delegitimize Israel is to delegitimize the notion of an Arab Palestinian authority west of the Jordan River and defang the U.N. of any moral authority to bolster such an entity. The tortured soul of Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. (F, 2%) who is now the Democrat Senate leader, will be forced to pick a side once and for all.

For starters, Republicans can pass the The Palestinian Accountability Act (H.R. 1337), which would suspend our $500 million in annual aid to the PLO. It would also suspend $250 million in American aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the organization that harbors Palestinian terrorists under the guise of humanitarian aid, until they are completely reformed.

Congress should also consider The PLO Accountability Act (H.R. 4522 and S. 2537), sponsored by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas (A, 97%), Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla. (F, 24%), and Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C. (A, 94%), which would close all PLO offices in our country until they stop inciting and funding terror. Under existing law, they should not be able to operate diplomatically on our shores, but Bill Clinton gave them a waiver in 1994 to set up shop. Now is a good time to correct the 22-year mistake.

There will be many issues that divide various Republican factions as we enter 2017. This is an issue, however, that unites Republicans of all stripes and divides Democrats. Republicans would go a long way in eschewing their reputation as the stupid party if they went on offense against Obama’s anti-Israel jihad. (For more from the author of “How Republicans Can Stop Obama’s Jihad Against Israel” please click HERE)

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Obama May Have One More Nasty Surprise for Israel up His Sleeve

Abandoning the Jewish state at the U.N. last week may have only been the beginning for what President Obama has in store for Israel. He may have one more grand surprise left up his sleeve just weeks before he is set to officially leave office.

Forget about the chaos in the Middle East, Russia and China’s continuing aggression, Iran’s race to a nuclear bomb, ISIS’ worldwide terror campaign, and a potential genocide in South Sudan — Obama has his mind set on utilizing his last days in office toward sticking it to Israel.

Obama may declare in his final days in office that the United States recognizes an independent state of Palestine, a move that would undoubtedly have devastating security and diplomatic consequences for Israel.

Secretary of State John Kerry, who has been a thorn of moral equivalency in Israel’s side for years, is set to address a Jan. 15 peace conference in Paris. Rumors abound for Kerry’s exact agenda there, but there are worries that he will continue to publicly rebuke the Jewish state, or worse, announce recognition of a Palestinian state.

Kerry will join fellow foreign ministers of the world for a Paris Middle East peace conference. It does not appear that the confab will discuss any actions planned against ISIS or the Assad regime. They will not condemn Russia’s bombing campaign against innocent civilians. They will not address Iran-backed Hezbollah’s sectarian slaughter. Instead, the efforts of this conference will circulate around forcing their will upon Israel, the region’s only democracy.

Israel has refused to even attend the conference, on the grounds that only Israel and the Palestinians should be negotiating terms of statehood, as terms should not be imposed on them by the international community.

Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman has compared the coming Paris conference to a “modern version of the Dreyfus Trial,” referencing the infamous 19th-century verdict against a French Jewish military officer that was stained by overt anti-Semitism. “This time, the whole people of Israel and the whole state of Israel will be in the guilty dock,” Liberman said.

Officials in Jerusalem are concerned that world powers may also use the conference to ready a plethora of vehemently anti-Israel motions in the U.N. Security Council, and utilize Obama’s last days to push them through.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Tuesday that he’s encouraged by the coming conference. He hopes that the conference mandates an end to Israeli housing construction in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Abbas presides over a government in the city of Ramallah that pays the families of terrorists who kill Israeli Jews.

Last week, the Obama administration abstained on a U.N. resolution condemning Israel. The resolution targeted Israeli “settlements” in disputed lands and announced that two of the holiest sites in Judaism — the Western Wall and the Temple Mount — and the entirety of the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem, were all “Palestinian” lands.

As Conservative Review’s Daniel Horowitz has explained, the resolution defies international law. Israel has the right to build in the disputed territories, and this right has been recognized by previous U.S. administrations.

The U.S. government, which has veto power over Security Council resolutions, could have voted no and blocked the measure. Instead, Team Obama chose to abstain, reportedly under the direct orders from the president himself, letting the resolution through.

The move has provided tremendous encouragement for Israel’s enemies, including the terror groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. They celebrated the Obama measure, declaring that it will lead to Israel’s “isolation” and “boycott.”

Israel has responded to the U.N. ruling with decisive ferocity. It has decided to cut funding from United Nations programs and recall ambassadors from countries that sponsored the resolution. Republicans in Congress have suggested that the U.S. should follow suit and slash funding to the U.N. as well. The U.S. contributes approximately $8 billion a year to the international body.

Unilaterally declaring a Palestinian state would cement President Obama as the most anti-Israel president since its founding. Will he betray the American people’s firm support for the Jewish state, and take his administration down the path of demonization and hate? (For more from the author of “Obama May Have One More Nasty Surprise for Israel up His Sleeve” please click HERE)

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Drive the U.N. Into the Sea

This weekend, on the eve of the Jewish holiday that marks that people’s resistance to savage pagan occupation (Chanukah), the U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution that is stunning in its moral blindness. It condemned all Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem — two regions where Jews lived for thousands of years before an Arab set foot in Palestine.

Those regions were captured from Jordan in one of Israel’s many wars of self-defense against genocide. They have never belonged to any Palestinian state, because one has never existed. Jordan doesn’t want them back. In a series of agreements, Israel has accepted that most of those conquered regions would form the basis of a Palestinian state, if it ever felt safe in granting one.

Jews are buying land and moving to the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In theory, this shouldn’t be a problem for a new Palestinian state; these Jews would form a tiny minority of its citizens, much smaller than the Arab contingent of Israeli citizens. So why are Jewish settlements considered an obstructionist “barrier to peace”? Why condemn Israel for letting its citizens buy land and live there?

Need Palestine be Judenrein?

The answer, of course, is obvious: Because the Palestinians are viciously intolerant of Jews, and today only Israeli troops keep the Arab majority in the conquered territories from “driv[ing] the Jews into the sea,” as the charter of Hamas promises. (Hamas is the radical Islamist terrorist organization that most Palestinians support.) Jews were violently expelled from virtually every Muslim country in 1948, from ancient communities that long pre-dated the warrior cult of Islam.

So the assumption on which the UN based its resolution is that of course the Palestinians would do that to the Jews in these territories, the moment they got the chance. Therefore, because the Palestinians are so intolerant and wanna-be genocidal, to plant Jews in the territory which the Palestinians were promised is an obstacle to peace. Have you got that? Such is the moral logic that governs the “international community.”

Israelis, being realists, know this too — and they’re not going to hand over Jews to the tender mercies of a Hamas administration. So in a sense, you could say that by settling Jews in a region, Israel is laying permanent claim to it. That need not be true, of course — if a Palestinian government could be found that wouldn’t demand that every square inch of its territory be judenrein.

The U.N. Only Holds White People to Civilized Standards

The resolution condemning Israel was classic United Nations: A preening, self-congratulatory moralistic veneer that covers blank hatred and a vicious will to power.

Indeed, as Paul Johnson documents in his classic history Modern Times, passing such resolutions and promoting such bankrupt policies has largely been the function of the United Nations since the 1950s, when the loathsome Kantian moralizer Dag Hammarskjold transformed the international body into the action arm of the “non-aligned” nations — which were almost uniformly run by vicious dictators (Castro, Nasser, Idi Amin) who drove their people into unprecedented poverty and misery.

It was Hammarskjold who cozied up to post-colonial despots, some of them guilty of genocide, while damning the Europeans who were trying to leave their colonies in some kind of livable order. According to Johnson, Hammarskjold actually said that black-on-black genocide was none of the U.N.’s business; its job was simply to remove the white man from Africa. In other words, it seems that Hammarskjold invented multiculturalism — which boiled down, is the theory that only white people can be expected to hew to civilized standards. So only they should be condemned.

The U.N. Headquarters is Already a Madhouse

The latest piece of paper from the toxic United Nations applies the same logic to Jews. Of course they should be held to the very highest canons of civil rights legislation — while we take it for granted that Arab Muslims will slaughter Jewish women and children the first time they get the chance. Just accept that moral standard, as President Obama did when he waved the resolution through, and everything makes perfect sense.

The United Nations does not serve the high ideals of peaceful cooperation and human rights for which it was founded so much as it uses them as rhetorical masks for the exercise of power. Human rights panels are frequently chaired by intolerant tyrannies like Islamist Saudi Arabia. Western nations typically send to the U.N. their most utopian, ideological representatives, who use the institution to promote a “globalist” agenda that arrogates power from democratic governments into the hands of unaccountable committees.

Austin Ruse, who for decades has fought to defend the rights of unborn children and the family, has recounted here at The Stream how the U.N. tries to impose manufactured “rights” to abortion and “transgender” recognition on unwilling elected governments. It has invented global “crises” such as “overpopulation” and climate change catastrophe to serve as the pretext for U.N. agencies to grasp for ever more power over the wealth, laws and policies of nations such as ours.

In a sane world, which perhaps President Trump will help to bring about, the U.S. would not fund the United Nations, host it, or even dignify it by being a member. New York City would be a much better place without the lavish consulates of starving Third World countries dotting the Upper East Side. Take the U.N. headquarters, that massive monument to hypocrisy and double standards, and put it to proper use: as a public mental hospital. (For more from the author of “Drive the U.N. Into the Sea” please click HERE)

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Socialism: The Grinch That Stole Venezuela’s Children

The Christmas season is a time to think of those less fortunate. This year, the children of Venezuela certainly qualify.

It’s not merely that they’re suffering through the third year of a crippling recession, although that’s bad enough. Thanks to the wealth-destroying policies of President Nicolás Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, more of them are hopeless, starving and effectively orphaned.

Decked out in black to mourn her murdered son, 40-year-old Dileida Palacios told her daughter that, this year, “everything is tough and Santa Claus isn’t coming.” Who can afford toys when a few food staples can absorb much of the $20 average monthly salary? Hyperinflation caused by runaway deficit spending has made the nation’s currency, the Bolivar, worth less than one U.S. penny, and inflation is expected to climb to 2,000 percent in 2017.

Socialism Drives Parents to Give Away their Children

The crisis has deepened to the point that a growing number of parents are doing the unthinkable: giving away their children. While the government does not release official statistics, Reuters reports that “three local councils and four national welfare groups all confirmed an increase in parents handing children over to the state, charities or friends and family.”

Behold the fruit of the latest failure of socialism: the redistribution of children.

It may be inaccurate to describe as a “failure” one of socialism’s cherished goals. Friedrich Engels, the more obscure co-author of The Communist Manifesto, wrote in his 1884 book The Origin of the Family that Communism sought to transform raising children “into a social industry. The care and education of the children becomes a public affair; society looks after all children alike.” Statists of all descriptions must necessarily seek to undermine the family, and any pre-political or intermediary institution that competes for its loyalty.

It is a miracle that children are able to be born, as the economic crisis led to an increase in voluntary sterilization. Venezuela’s stagflation, crony wealth redistribution, growing indebtedness, punishment of investors, and nationalization of industries have succeeded in fraying the tightest of all bonds.

Parents simply cannot afford life’s necessities since Maduro — who insists that the nation’s economic woes are part of a conspiracy to topple him, and hence the people’s revolution, from power — imposed strict price controls on food and medicine. Shelves immediately cleared out and have only been restocked in areas where he lifted artificial price ceilings. But there are few goods and is even less investment in a market beset, as the World Bank delicately puts it, with “distortions.” (The Heritage Foundation describes the nation’s economy as “repressed.”)

Like Stalin Playing Santa Claus

To divert the people’s attention, this month Venezuelan authorities seized 3.8 million toys from the nation’s leading toy manufacturer, Kreisel, on the grounds that the company conspired to sell them for more than the state-mandated price. The toys were redistributed in the days before Christmas by the Local Committees of Supply and Production (CLAPs), the same committees charged with distributing enough groceries to feed every needy family – and which have been credibly accused of starving Maduro’s critics.

The distribution of toys will be doubly problematic since many of the children, socialism’s refugees from their own families, no longer live at the address the government has on file.

Not Even Big Brother Can Really Run an Economy

All of this bears out Friedrich von Hayek’s observation that even the most enlightened government cannot properly manage an economy, because it lacks the necessary information to do so. Hayek wrote in The Road to Serfdom:

There would be no difficulty about efficient control or planning were conditions so simple that a single person or board could effectively survey all the facts. But as the factors which have to be taken into account become numerous and complex, no one center can keep track of them. The constantly changing conditions of demand and supply of different commodities can never be fully known or quickly enough disseminated by any one center. Under competition — and under no other economic order — the price system automatically records all the relevant data.

Yet Venezuela’s socialists continue to practice the fatal conceit with no signs of mercy or self-knowledge. Upon confiscating Kreisel’s inventory the consumer protection agency, Sundde, tweeted: “Our children are sacred, we will not let you rob them of Christmas.” In a nationally televised speech announcing the toy distribution, Maduro modestly called himself “a reinforcement for Father Christmas” and “Saint Nicolas with a mustache!”

But the children of Venezuela need their families far more than the government’s purloined trinkets. They long to grow up in a society that has the building blocks of human flourishing: respect for the rule of law, inalienable rights, the sanctity of the family unit, and economic policies that reward productivity and private initiative. Far from the saintly bishop, who gave his own money to those in need, Maduro’s socialist policies are like year-round minions of the Grinch, snatching away Venezuelan children’s food, their families, and their future. (For more from the author of “Socialism: The Grinch That Stole Venezuela’s Children” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.