Ghana Is Leading the Way for Democracy in Africa

Ghana, a West African country, has experienced peaceful transitions of power each time there has been a change in government since the country ended military rule in 1992.

Solidifying its notable status as one of Africa’s most stable democracies, Ghana is about to embark on another handover of power from the sitting head of state to the candidate of a longtime opposition party who won the recent presidential poll.

In a testament to Ghana’s functioning democracy, the country’s outgoing president, John Mahama, who fought hard for re-election, said during his farewell state of the nation address:

I stand here today, Mr. Speaker, holding the baton of leadership prepared to pass it on with pride, goodwill, and determination to Nana Akufo-Addo and to ask all Ghanaians to cheer him on as he runs his portion of this important relay for Ghana.

The president-elect, Akufo-Addo, former attorney general and foreign minister of the county who emerged victorious in his third presidential attempt, will be sworn in as Ghana’s new president on Jan. 7.

In fact, The Heritage Foundation had a unique opportunity to welcome then-presidential candidate Akufo-Addo to Washington and hear about his vision for Ghana in October 2015.

Akufo-Addo remarked in his speech,

I thank The Heritage Foundation for inviting me to speak at one of Washington’s most celebrated centers of thought and intellectual endeavor. It is an honor to be here in such company and to see so many people eager to discuss the future of my country, Ghana, and Africa more broadly … I remain staunchly optimistic about our future. I am proud to be a Ghanaian, the people who were the first in sub-Saharan Africa to free themselves from colonial rule, and who remain the pace-setters in the development of the principles of democratic accountability, respect for human rights, and the rule of law on the African continent. And as we move toward another election, I am reminded—and proud—of how hard we have fought for our democracy.

During his presidential campaign, Akufo-Addo highlighted the damaging effects of government corruption in Ghana and plans to tackle the issue by strengthening the judiciary and enacting constitutional reforms to decentralize power from the executive branch.

At The Heritage Foundation event last year, Akufo-Addo also emphasized that “[t]here is a connection between poor democracy and poor economic performance. Short-termism and political expediency in regard to elections tend to correlate with a lack of vision and incompetence in the economic field.”

In addition to strengthening the rule of law, Akufo-Addo’s vision for Ghana includes reforms in three key areas to transform the economy and set out a path to growth: pursuing economic diversification, unleashing the private sector from burdensome regulation and excessive taxation, and reining in the national debt.

As Ghanaians welcome and embrace this new presidency, Akufo-Addo should follow through with these reforms to enhance Ghana’s economic freedom and advance opportunities for all Ghanaians. (For more from the author of “Ghana Is Leading the Way for Democracy in Africa” please click HERE)

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French Catholics Wake up to Islamist Threat, Despite Their Bishops

The searing novel Submission by Michel Houellebecq is a profane but powerful snapshot of the likely near-future of Europe: Mainstream political parties going through the motions of trying to govern spiritually exhausted and nearly childless Western countries, whose only growing demographic consists of Islamists seeking sharia. In the course of the novel, the godless and bloodless socialists finally give way to the Muslim Brotherhood, whose sole opponent is the angry, right-wing National Front.

Until now, the only real opposition to the Islamic colonization of France has found its home in that party, whose founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, had dabbled in anti-Semitism. While the party’s current leader, his daughter Marine, has firmly rebuked extremists within its ranks, that party still carries for millions of Catholic voters in France a whiff of neo-paganism, and the ultra-nationalism which in the past led right-wing ideologues like Charles Maurras to call themselves “Catholic atheists.” In other words, they didn’t believe in God, but considered Catholicism a part of the French culture worth fighting to preserve.

Church Leaders Clash with the National Front

Such attitudes, real or suspected, repelled the believing Catholics who still make up a fair swathe of the potential conservative vote in France. It didn’t help that French bishops marched well in advance of Pope Francis in discarding the church’s balanced teaching on immigration, for a reckless open-borders stance that helped invite 2016’s wave of Syrian Muslim colonists.

The open hostility between France’s pastors and the National Front was on full display this week, as The Tablet (U.K.) reports:

Three leaders of France’s far-right Front National (FN) have used post-Christmas interviews on leading radio stations to criticise French bishops for urging Catholics to support refugees. They argue that the clergy should focus on filling up their churches rather than interfering in politics.

FN vice-president Louis Aliot said a “large majority of bishops” had “spit in the face” of the party by “systematically denigrating the FN, its leaders and its policies.”

Gilbert Collard, one of the Front’s two MPs in the National Assembly, said the Church was “disconnected from reality — in the name of welcoming others, they reject us.”

Party secretary general Nicolas Bay denied the interviews were a “declaration of war” but said the Front “didn’t need to hear any lessons from the clergy about migration.”

A New Choice for Faithful Frenchmen

However, French voters concerned about the overwhelming influx of sharia-believing Islamists into their country now have another option. In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack and the Bataclan massacre, a conservative movement has arisen with no links to the old, extremist right, with solid Christian credentials. Sens Commun (Common Sense) is a pro-life, pro-family Catholic grass roots group that spans the country, and its members are willing to question the wisdom of their bishops on crucial issues of border control and national identity.

The leading rival Marine Le Pen faces on the right is François Fillon, who has ties to Sens Commun. As The Wall Street Journal reports:

In France, the strict separation between personal faith and public life, known as laïcité, is a pillar of national identity. However, a confluence of events — from the legalization of gay marriage to the more recent string of Islamist terror attacks — has many conservative voters looking to the country’s Christian heritage as a bulwark.

Mr. Fillon’s candidacy is seizing on that impulse. In publicly embracing his faith, the 62-year-old is tapping a wellspring of Catholic voters who have begun coalescing into a potentially decisive voting bloc.

His performance during the country’s first-ever conservative primaries provided the clearest sign yet of the revived Catholic vote.

The Catholic vote is shaping up to play an unusually prominent role in the general election in May, when polls predict Mr. Fillon will face-off against Marine Le Pen , leader of the far-right anti-immigrant and anti-euro National Front party.

Many conservative Catholics shifted to the National Front during recent regional elections, feeling more at home with its call for revived nationalism than with the pro-EU principles — free movement of people and goods — espoused by other parties.

A quarter of self-described practicing Catholics voted for the National Front in December 2015 regional elections, up from 16% in local races in March of that year, according to polling firm IFOP.

Mr. Fillon’s Catholicism reassures voters who want to show support for French traditions. “The National Front has made a lot of progress with this group,” said Jerome Fourquet, director of IFOP. “They could come back to the center-right with Fillon.”

The rise of a Catholic vote in France is a measure of how deeply the continent has been shaken by a series of crises, from the arrival of migrant waves from the Middle East to the surge in political parties questioning the future of the European Union itself. …

[Fillon] voted against the gay-marriage bill and criticized the government for not doing more to protect Christian minorities in Syria, Iraq and other parts of the Middle East, organizing a rally in June 2015 to support them.

“We are all Eastern Christians!” Mr. Fillon told the crowd.

Denial Across the Rhine

Meanwhile, in neighboring Germany Angela Merkel — the architect of the Syrian “refugee” invasion — was granted a prestigious Catholic humanitarian award by that country’s Cardinal Reinhard Marx, specifically for her handling of Muslim immigration. However, in Austria, the prominent Cardinal Christoph Schönborn has recently questioned the wisdom of accepting so many Muslim immigrants, and even called for Europeans to give U.S. President-elect Donald Trump a second look, pointing out that Ronald Reagan was also widely dismissed when he took office. (For more from the author of “French Catholics Wake up to Islamist Threat, Despite Their Bishops” please click HERE)

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North Korea: Cold War Relic, Present Day Threat

You can kick the can down the road, but when Kim Jong Un announces, as he did last Sunday, that “we have reached the final stage in preparations to test-launch an intercontinental ballistic rocket,” you are reaching the end of that road.

Since the early 1990s, we have offered every kind of inducement to get North Korea to give up its nuclear program. All failed miserably. Pyongyang managed to extort money, food, oil and commercial nuclear reactors in exchange. But it was all a swindle. North Korea was never going to give up its nukes because it sees them as the ultimate guarantee of regime survival.

The North Koreans believe that nukes confer inviolability. Saddam Hussein was invaded and deposed before he could acquire them. Kim won’t let that happen to him. That’s why Thae Yong Ho, a recent high-level defector, insisted, “As long as Kim Jong Un is in power, North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons, even if it’s offered $1 trillion or $10 trillion in rewards.”

Meanwhile, they have advanced. They’ve already exploded a handful of nuclear bombs. And they’ve twice successfully launched satellites, which means they have the ICBM essentials. If they can miniaturize their weapons to fit on top of the rocket and control re-entry, they’ll be able to push a button in Pyongyang and wipe out an American city. (Read more from “North Korea: Cold War Relic, Present Day Threat” HERE)

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Palestinian’s Threaten ‘Bloodshed’ After Trump Promises to Move Israeli Embassy

A prominent member of Fatah — the militant political organization that governs Palestinian areas of the West Bank under Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas — has threatened to target the United States in response to the potential American embassy move from Tel Aviv, Israel, to Jerusalem, its capital city.

“I believe that any American act of stupidity will ignite the Palestinian territories,” Fatah Central Committee member Sultan Abu al-Einein said on Alghad TV, in comments translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

The Palestinian official, who serves as an aide to Mahmoud Abbas, added: “We must prepare for a confrontation with the new U.S. administration, which has clearly and audaciously declared that Israel and its settlements are legitimate and legal.”

If President-elect Donald Trump chooses to move the embassy to Jerusalem — which he has pledged to do — both Israel and America “will bear responsibility for the return of the bloodshed in the Palestinian territories,” Abbas threatened.

Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, expects to take up his new post in the Israeli capital.

Sultan Abu al-Einein is well-known for his incitement to terrorist activity. In June, he advised fellow Palestinians, “Every place you find an Israeli, slit his throat,” per Palestinian Media Watch, stressing that killing innocent Jews is an Islamic duty. In 2014, he said that killing Jewish rabbis while they pray is “Allah’s will.”

Fatah, the supposed “moderate” Palestinian organization, has long been associated with terrorist activities. “Fatah” is a reverse acronym of an Arabic phrase meaning “conquest by means of jihad,” and has been responsible for dozens of jihadist attacks over past decades.

The group’s most infamous act of terror occurred during the 1972 Munich Olympics, when its Black September brigade murdered 11 Israeli coaches and athletes at the Summer Games. (For more from the author of “Palestinian’s Threaten ‘Bloodshed’ After Trump Promises to Move Israeli Embassy” please click HERE)

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GOP to Bail out Duplicitous Dems With Sham Anti-UN Resolution

There is no issue that unites Republicans, divides Democrats, and is easier to message to the American people more than cutting funding to the U.N. and the PLO.

Likewise, there is no better time to harness momentum for those goals and permanently refocus our Middle East priorities than now, as we stand at the cusp of a new GOP government. Yet, Republican leaders are not only shirking from this slam dunk initiative, but they are also giving Democrats cover — a loin cloth — for their duplicity on the issue of Israel.

Despite the sleepy news cycle of the holiday season, the U.N.’s assault on Israel captured the rage of Americans across the country. Here we are suffering from the effects of ubiquitous global jihad, and they want to focus on Jews building some homes in land originally designated and then recaptured (in a defensive war) for the only Jewish state in the Middle East. Meanwhile, the “Palestinians,” comprised of Fatah and Hamas, continue to pursue jihad and elect terrorists as their leaders.

With Trump headed to the White House, Republicans have the public support and the political power to finally right the drifting ship of our Middle East policy and defund the U.N. and PLO terrorists. Conservative members were hoping to pass legislation doing just that.

Instead, House leadership plans to vote on a vacuous resolution objecting to U.N. Resolution 2334 and reaffirming our commitment to “the two-state solution” — a myopic pink unicorn that stands contrary to our national interests, yet has become a religion among the foreign policy establishment.

It would be one thing if this “bipartisan resolution” was the beginning of a broader effort to defund the bad actors and finally move away from the two-state solution nonsense. But there is no evidence leadership plans to move anything meaningful to the House and Senate floors. Consequently, not only does this resolution fail to change policy in a meaningful way, but it also serves as loin cloth legislation to bail out Democrats who are on the wrong side of the American people on this issue.

The resolution (H.Res. 11) — sponsored by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Ed Royce, R-Calif., an extremely weak leader on foreign policy — references “the two-state solution” on four occasions. It seems to raise concerns only about creating an Arab “Palestinian” state in Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter and the Western Wall but not the rest of Judea and Samaria. Also, it calls on our government to “work to facilitate serious, direct negotiations between the parties without preconditions toward a sustainable peace agreement.”

Really? Is this our position as Republicans? Do we not desire to strive for something different than the failed Oslo Accords promoted by Bill Clinton? And with whom exactly are we to “facilitate” negotiations given that the PLO is a terrorist group, pursuant to current law — a law, which Clinton suspended but was never repealed?

Indeed, aside from the Western Wall and a tiny area in Jerusalem, there is no difference between the blueprint laid out in this resolution and John Kerry’s plan.

Clearly, the resolution was drafted by Ranking Member Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., who is the de facto chairman of the committee, and was designed to get approval from Democrats. Minority Whip, Steny Hoyer, D-Md., is bragging about his support for this resolution. This is reminiscent of when Republicans passed the Corker-Cardin loin cloth bill on Iran, which provided the veneer of congressional oversight of the Iran deal, thereby giving Democrats much-needed cover, but in fact codified Obama’s unilateral execution of a treaty into law.

It’s never worth pursuing bipartisan support unless the bill will actually further a credible agenda in a meaningful way; otherwise, it just gratuitously gives cover to two-faced “pro-Israel” Democrats. In this case, the resolution codifies a wrongheaded foreign policy.

To his credit, Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa offered an amendment to strike out any references to a two-state solution, an idea that has long been repudiated. Unfortunately, it was rejected by the Rules Committee.

It’s a time for choosing for these supposed pro-Israel Democrats. They are either with America and Israel, or they are with the far Left and PLO terrorists. It’s not the job of Republicans to obfuscate the irreversible party divide on the issue.

How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD [be] God, follow him: but if Baal, [then] follow him.” — Kings 1: 18-19

As for Republicans, why not harness this once-in-a-generation opportunity to end — finally — the foreign policy mistakes of the past. Is it too much to ask that we defund the U.N.? Is cutting off $500 million to PLO terrorists beyond the scope of their agenda? Reforming taxes and entitlements might be a cumbersome issue, but defunding the U.N. and PLO is not. (For more from the author of “GOP to Bail out Duplicitous Dems With Sham Anti-UN Resolution” please click HERE)

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How France’s ‘Right to Disconnect’ Law Is an Assault on Freedom

France passed a new labor law over the weekend that gives employees the “right to disconnect” from their work email and devices such as smartphones and laptops after business hours. According to CNN, the policy was informed by French unions, who have long complained that modern technology has led to an “explosion of undeclared labor” that exceeds the country’s 35-hour work week.

The new law seeks to benefit working mothers and fathers, and others who find their home life interrupted by out-of-office requests. Many of these workers, however, probably aren’t aware of the subtle attacks on freedom a government-mandated work-life balance presents.

Like the minimum wage, the “right to disconnect” policy sounds like a pretty good, and even compassionate, idea at first. Many people desire a clearer separation between work and home, and a rule like this can help to create that.

But what about the 23-year-old bachelor seeking to climb the corporate ladder? For him, uncompensated overtime hours might seem like less of a burden and more of an opportunity to jumpstart his career before other obligations like marriage and family take shape in his life. In this case, the “right to disconnect” policy is likely to provoke hostility toward employees who willingly choose to work beyond the time specified by a particular company.

According to the new rule, companies with 50 or more employees must negotiate after-hours email guidelines with their staff. Further, firms are required to “regulate the use of emails” to ensure employees are getting their promised break.

“If management and staff cannot agree on new rules,” CNN reported, “the firm must publish a charter to define and regulate when employees should be able to switch off.”

Under this provision, individuals like the 23-year-old bachelor could be flagged for violating company policy. In order to comply with the new restrictions, he would have to forego his comparative advantage (i.e. more free time and less out-of-office obligations), and the company would cease to benefit from his (completely voluntary) additional labor.

Policies affecting the private lives of employees should be settled through private contracts between individuals and their employers. The issue of out-of-office email should be addressed in the same way companies determine salary negotiation and paid time off. This way, the 23-year-old bachelor receives the same level of consideration as the working mother of three. His willingness to work overtime may provide him with an advantage when it comes to asking for time off. On the other hand, the working mother may value free time with family in the evening more than a few more vacation days. In both cases, employees are afforded the freedom to negotiate a policy that works for them. (For more from the author of “How France’s ‘Right to Disconnect’ Law Is an Assault on Freedom” please click HERE)

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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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