01/16 Links Pt1: A farce in Paris; Paris Peace Conference: Wrong Message, Wrong Time, Wrong Place ~ EoZ

From Ian:

The conference in Paris belongs to the legacy of U.S. President Barack Obama's administration: A moment before it all falls apart, strike a blow at the Jews. Just before French President Francois Hollande's government falls apart (the candidates from his party are "hiding" their involvement in his administration), the French have remembered to strike a blow at the Jews. For one long moment -- too long -- the enormous massacre in Syria, in Aleppo, was forgotten. Also forgotten is the ongoing return of Arab states to tribal and clan structures and the dismantling of the nationalist structures forced upon them by Colonial France and England after the World War II. The crazed rise of jihadi Islam has been forgotten, too. The hundreds of murdered citizens of France and Germany, killed in bizarre manners by Muslim fanatics, have been forgotten. Everything has been forgotten, because the reason for all this chaos has been discovered: the settlements.
Hollande said that "the two-state solution is threatened by the continued building of settlements, by the weakness of the peace camp, by mistrust between the two sides, and by the terrorists who have always feared a peace settlement." We have grown far too accustomed to this intellectual disgrace, having heard it from U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in his last speech, from Hollande on Sunday evening and from other leaders (including the U.N. Security Council's scandalous resolution), according to which there is a correlation between the settlement enterprise and terrorism. We must not agree with this lie, which indirectly justifies the murder of Jews and ignores the reasons for the murder of Christians on European land. This approach is a recipe for the defeat of Europe at the hands of those seeking to destroy it.
We are focusing too much on the war against the Islamic State group, Hollande complained, and if we want to "stabilize the Middle East," we must not forget the "oldest conflict," the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Absolutely not, Mr. Hollande. The oldest conflict, which began several hundreds of years prior, is that between Islam and Christianity. The first Crusade left primarily from France toward Jerusalem some 920 years ago, at the encouragement of Otho de Lagery, or Pope Urban II.
Now, it has become clear that almost a millennium later, the French have submitted to the Muslims. They are seeking to liberate Jerusalem from its rightful owners and to transfer it to Muslim occupiers, in the hope that they will be spared and that the killing campaign in the streets of Europe will stop. What a shameful defeat.

Senior State Department Correspondent Says Paris Peace Conference ‘Marks End to Obama’s Failed Mideast Diplomacy’

Ahead of the Mideast peace summit held in Paris on Sunday, Associated Press correspondent Matthew Lee, known for his piercing questions at State Department briefings, indicated that the gathering of world representatives in the French capital would be the culmination of the “Obama administration’s eight years of unsuccessful Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy.”
Analyzing the reason for US participation in the conference, which he said “isn’t expected to produce any tangible progress,” Lee wrote:
At a time when President-elect Donald Trump’s administration is promising a fundamental shift toward Israel, the State Department said Kerry was only participating in the French-hosted event to ensure America’s interest in a two-state solution to the conflict is preserved. The blunt statement reinforced the dwindling hopes for a diplomatic breakthrough.
Lee said that because no representatives from either Jerusalem or Ramallah were among the diplomats from more than 70 countries attending the summit, “[T]he US is primarily focused on shielding Israel from unfair criticism and ensuring concerns about Palestinian incitement to violence aren’t ignored.”
However, he wrote, “[T]he administration may find its voice ignored. While the US received credit from close allies in Europe and elsewhere for abstaining” from the vote on the anti-settlement UN Security Council Resolution 2334 last month, “America’s partners have grown tired with its leadership on the peace process.”

Hillel Neuer: No, President Hollande, focusing on Israel won’t bring “stability” to Syria, Iraq or Yemen

My open letter to French President Francois Hollande in response to his speech at the Paris Middle East Peace Conference.
January 15, 2017
Dear President François Hollande,
In your speech thjs afternoon, after you cited the wars in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, and the struggle against the Islamic State, you sought to justify the focus of today’s Paris summit on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by saying the Middle East cannot “regain its stability” unless we address “the oldest of its conflicts.”
Are you not aware that today’s Middle East wars in the name of Jihad, and internecine conflicts such as the Sunni-Shiite schism, are 1300 years older than the Arab-Israeli conflict?
Do you really believe that increased world focus on the Israeli-Palestinian issue will cause Syria—a country that has disintegrated from Bashar Assad’s genocidal bombings of his Sunni population, backed by Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia—to somehow “regain stability”?
Do you really believe that what Israel does or doesn’t do will affect the Islamic State’s genocidal massacre, abductions and rape of Yazidis and Christians in Iraq?

David Keyes - BBC Interview on Paris Conference

Crying "Wolf" over Israeli Settlements

"Illegality in international law" applies neither to the Israeli settlements that existed prior to Oslo II nor to any continued subsequent Israeli building that was confined to the official boundaries of those settlements (including Jerusalem in its entirety) on the day when Oslo II was signed, on September 28, 1995.
In negotiations over the final status, on the other hand, the Palestinians are not excluded from demanding a total Israeli withdrawal to the ceasefire lines of 1949, but Israel is likewise not excluded from demanding the retention not merely of the settlements but also of any other part of the Mandatory Palestine of 1947.
Almost all of Israel's settlement activity has not been illegal. Israel's Supreme Court has been vigilant in forbidding any violations.
In practice, no final status can be achieved unless both Parties abandon their claims to the whole former territory of the British Mandate, accept each other's minimal existential needs, and acknowledge the long-established current realities.

Obama says Netanyahu was repeatedly ‘fired up’ over US policy

US President Barack Obama said in an interview broadcast Sunday that his decision not to veto a UN resolution against Israeli settlements did not rupture US-Israel relations and that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu getting “fired up” over it was nothing new.
“I don’t think it caused a major rupture in relations between the United States and Israel,” Obama told CBS’s 60 Minutes. “If you’re saying that Prime Minister Netanyahu got fired up, he’s been fired up repeatedly during the course of my presidency, around the Iran deal and around our consistent objection to settlements.”
“So that part of it wasn’t new,” Obama said, noting that military and intelligence cooperation continues unabated. “We have defended them consistently in every imaginable way.”
The US abstention at the Security Council on December 23 allowed Resolution 2334 to pass, with a vote of 14-0. Netanyahu led a furious response that included summoning ambassadors of countries that backed the resolution for a dressing down on Christmas Day, and a one-to-one with US Ambassador Dan Shapiro.

Foreign Ministry chief chalks up Paris conference as win for Israel

Israel’s new Foreign Ministry chief on Monday hailed the lackluster outcome of Sunday’s Paris peace conference as a victory for Israel, saying Israel’s decision not to show up sent a message to the international community.
Director General Yuval Rotem took over as head of the Foreign Ministry at the end of December and gave his first interviews to the Israeli media a day after diplomats gathered in Paris to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and reinforce the need for a two-state solution.
“The fact that the Paris conference has no followup is from our perspective the most meaningful accomplishment,” Rotem told Israel Radio Monday morning.
As far as Israel is concerned, the most important outcome from Paris was that it imposed “no new obligations” on Israel and “finished without any mechanism to apply or follow up” on the provisions it laid out for achieving peace, Rotem said.
“We also succeeded to a certain extent in preventing any followup, any new enforcement mechanism and any new supervision mechanism,” he said.

Fred Maroun: An Arab’s view of the Paris peace summit

A worthless and costly “peace” conference ended in Paris, and issued a joint declaration. Even the main organizer, the highly unpopular French President François Hollande, admitted at the conference that it was useless when he said, “the world cannot impose a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”.
I am an Arab, lucky enough to be one of the few Arabs who live far enough, both physically and intellectually, from Arab thugs to be able to speak my mind. So I will speak my mind.
Let’s start with the ludicrous title – the “Middle East” peace conference, as named in official French government communiqués. Do the organizers realize that Israelis and Palestinians represent only three percent of the population of the Middle East? And do they realize that there are other places in the Middle East in much more desperate need for peace than Israel and the Palestinians? Syria and Iraq come to mind – perhaps the attendees have heard of those places…
The summit represented mostly countries that have always been hostile to Israel’s very existence, yet it was somehow expected to help resolve the 69-year-old conflict. Besides the fact that these people, who did not include Israeli or Palestinian representatives, have no business deciding or even advising on the future of the conflict, the conference is not anchored in reality but in a parallel universe.

Nice try, France

So we hear it was a bust. I guess it’ll be a year before you try again? Or are you already preparing for another go against Israel?
This round failed because no matter how much honey you put on it, it still smelled like garlic.
Leaders from 70 countries came to Paris and departed without a deal to deny Jewish rights to the Jewish people in their Biblical and ancestral home.
You tried. Yes you did and generally I leave the Bible to my rabbis, but there is no way to forget Balaam, the prophet-for-hire who was hired to curse the Hebrews along their march to the Holy Land. Instead, every curse was turned into a blessing. Something like that happened in Paris.
Give me one more moment to get religion. So I say that it was a Hand from above that intervened and that gave us Donald Trump in the nick of time.
They’d have to answer to Trump.
John Kerry left the Big Conference hangdog and positively out of sorts. Things did not go as planned. They’d have to answer to Trump so the Paris conferees said, never mind.
Trump wanted no part of this and as you’ve noticed, Trump gets entire countries shivering in their boots as the result of a tweet.

Mark Langfan: Israeli two-staters, wake up!

J’accuse . . .!! I accuse the Israeli court of anti-Israelism and anti-Judaism in scapegoating Elor Azariya for definitively neutralizing a blood-thirsty Arab terrorist. However, today’s case of the 2017 Israeli government’s actions are a good repeat of the anti-Semitism practiced by the government of France in 1898 when Emile Zola published his famous article “J’accuse . . .!!” that exposed France’s anti-Semitism and unlawful jailing and falsely rigged trial of the Jewish French General Staff officer Alfred Dreyfus for espionage.
Today, in 2017, the Israeli Dreyfus-style actions are practiced by the Jews of Israel themselves against other Jews. What’s worse, Israel is falsely and unjustly imprisoning Jews who are on the front lines protecting the Jews of Israel from Arab terrorist monsters. The sad fact is with Jewish Israelis like the Israeli Two-Stater VIPs, who needs enemies?
Now, how did we get here? How did the Israeli government itself become the instrument of world anti-Semitism? The real Israeli security criminal is the entire Israeli “Peace” Two-State-Solution establishment including the late Peres, Rabin, Yossi Sarid and today's Uri Savir, Ehud Barak, Tzipi Livni. These Israeli officials and their useful idiots have placed Israel into the historic arc that can only end in the annihilation of country of Israel-itself.
Through years of their holding Israel government positions, they filled the career government positions with Two-State-Solution Israelis. These former and current Israeli Two-State-Solution officials knew the Palestinian Arabs could and would easily smuggle katyusha rocket parts into any "West Bank" Palestinian State and fire those deadly rockets into the highly populated Tel Aviv/Netanya coast-line. Despite seeing tens of thousands of rockets fired from Gaza into Israel’s south, they still cling to the messianic Two-State Solution.

David Singer: Paris Buries Palestine and UN Security Council Resolution 2334

72 States and Organizations meeting in Paris on 15 January have repudiated Security Council Resolution 2334 (“UNSCR 2334”) just – three weeks after it was passed on 23 December 2016.
UNSCR 2334 had reiterated the Security Council’s
“vision of a region where two democratic States, Israel and Palestine, live side by side in peace within secure and recognized borders”
The final Paris communique dumped this “two democratic states solution” by reaffirming:
“that a negotiated solution with two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security, is the only way to achieve enduring peace”.
The word “democratic” was in fact omitted in the Paris communique in nine places – signalling that Paris did not accept the definitive terms of the “two-state solution” proposed by the Security Council.

Hollande: World cannot impose peace deal on Israel, Palestinians

French President Francois Hollande on Sunday said the world cannot impose a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a lasting peace accord can only be clinched through direct talks.
Addressing a Paris peace conference in Paris with the representatives of 70 countries in attendance, Hollande also warned the international community not to forsake peace efforts as it focuses on the fight against the Islamic State, as the region cannot be stabilized without a resolution to the “oldest conflict in the Middle East.”
The French president noted in his address to diplomats that the “fight against ISIS has occupied the international community.”
“But how can you think that the Middle East can be stabilized if you don’t deal with its oldest conflict? The world must not resign itself to the status quo,” said the French president.

Paris peace conference declares: No ‘acceptable’ solution except two states

The 70 participants in the Paris peace initiative stressed the need for a two-state solution and rejected any unilateral moves by Israelis or Palestinians to prejudice a final peace deal.
In a joint declaration at the conclusion of the conference Sunday, the countries’ representatives restated that a two-state solution is the only one acceptable to the international community and called on both sides to act accordingly.
The participants “reaffirmed that a negotiated solution with two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security, is the only way to achieve enduring peace.
“They emphasized the importance for the parties to restate their commitment to this solution, to take urgent steps in order to reverse the current negative trends on the ground, including continued acts of violence and ongoing settlement activity, and to start meaningful direct negotiations,” the declaration said.

PMO: Netanyahu: Paris Conference Pushes Peace Further Away

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting, made the following remarks:
"The conference convening in Paris today is a useless conference. It is being coordinated between the French and the Palestinians. Its goal is to try and force terms on Israel that conflict with our national needs. Of course it pushes peace further away because it hardens the Palestinian positions and it also pushes them away from direct negotiations without preconditions. I must say that this conference is among the last twitches of yesterday's world. Tomorrow's world will be different – and it is very near.

Ron Prosor: Paris Peace Conference: Wrong Message, Wrong Time, Wrong Place

Last week, a number of European capitals were kind enough to screen the Israeli flag in a show of solidarity following the vehicular attack in Jerusalem. While we were very excited to see our flag being raised, the Europeans unfortunately proved once again that they can only be trusted to do too little too late. Their empathetic gesture stands in complete contradiction to the destructive policy they are leading against Israel.
Only several weeks ago, the French and Brits raised their hands in favor of an anti-Israel resolution at the Security Council, and on Sunday they convened the world’s countries in Paris for another march of folly aimed at enforcing the resolution’s content under the misleading title of a conference promoting peace. The Paris conference is conveying the wrong message at the wrong timing and in the wrong place.
The message: The conference won’t change anything on the ground. Just like nothing changed on the ground after the United Nations General Assembly resolution which recognized the Palestinians as a non-member observer state. All it will do is raise the expectations, which will only increase the frustration and violence. Albert Einstein defined “insanity” as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. When will the international community finally realize that granting the Palestinians unilateral achievements, time and again, is simply the wrong way?

Five reasons the Paris Conference failed

As we said repeatedly in the build-up to Sunday’s gathering in Paris of representatives of 70 countries to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian issue, AJC has long supported the search for an enduring peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians based on a two-state accord.
It is precisely in that spirit that we voiced our concerns about this conference, believing it would be irrelevant at best, harmful at worst, to the pursuit of a deal.
Our concerns, following the conference’s conclusions, can be summed up in five points.
First, as should have been crystal-clear by now, the Palestinians have avoided the only place where an agreement can be reached – the bargaining table with the Israelis. Therefore, every such diplomatic end-run only emboldens the Palestinians to believe, mistakenly of course, that they can achieve their goals without the tough negotiating required of face-to-face talks.

Five Anti-Israel Offenses In Paris ‘Peace’ Summit Final Declaration

Instead of convening a summit on the ongoing civil war in Syria, or the migrant crisis threatening Europe, or the rampant anti-Semitism plaguing its own country, France on Sunday held a convention attended by over 70 nations to affirm the international community’s commitment to creating a Palestinian state.
At the end of the farcical display, and with neither Israel nor the Palestinian Authority in attendance, the Paris summit representatives released a brief concluding declaration unanimously agreed to after negotiations between the countries.
Reports here credited Israeli diplomats with helping to water down the anti-Israel language of the final declaration, calling the text a “significant weakening” and “less harsh than was initially expected.”
Still, the text was anything but fair. Here are five anti-Israel offenses in the 658-word final declaration:
1 – The text draws a moral equivalency between “violence,” which would include Palestinian terrorism targeting civilians, and “settlement activity,” meaning Israelis building homes in the West Bank or eastern sections of Jerusalem.
The text states:
They emphasized the importance for the parties to restate their commitment to this solution, to take urgent steps in order to reverse the current negative trends on the ground, including continued acts of violence and ongoing settlement activity, and to start meaningful direct negotiations.

French Jews Decry ‘Anti-Israel’ Paris Peace Summit

French Jews decried Sunday’s Mideast peace summit in Paris, attended by diplomats from more than 70 countries, on the grounds that it encouraged Palestinian intransigence at Israel’s expense.
Yonathan Arfi, vice president of France’s umbrella Jewish organization Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France (CRIF) – which, along with other groups, held a rally in front of the Israeli Embassy in Paris to express support for the Jewish state while it was being “singled out and marginalized by world powers” — called the conference “counterproductive for the peace process.”
Arfi told The Algemeiner that the summit “rewarded the continuous refusal of the Palestinian Authority to reach any final agreement with Israel. And by focusing on the settlements, the conference did not take into account the key role of Palestinian terrorism in the failure to achieve peace.”
He continued: “At a time when the Syrian crisis has killed more than 350,000 people, it is surprising that these countries and organizations from across the globe decided to focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which remains, thankfully, a very low-intensity conflict compared to other current disasters.”

UK refuses to sign Paris declaration, warns summit may harden Palestinian positions

Dramatically breaking ranks with participants from 70 other countries, the United Kingdom criticized Sunday’s Middle East peace conference in Paris, arguing that it might harden Palestinian negotiating positions and refusing to sign a joint statement issued after the summit that called for a negotiated two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
A Foreign Office spokesman said London had “particular reservations” about the Paris meeting taking place without Israeli or Palestinian representatives, especially since a new US administration is being sworn in later this week.
Indeed, the spokesman’s statement noted that the confab took place against Israel’s expressed wishes and “just days before the transition to a new American president when the US will be the ultimate guarantor of any agreement.”
“There are risks therefore that this conference hardens positions at a time when we need to be encouraging the conditions for peace.”

Trump: Britain should veto anti-Israel UN resolutions

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is urging Britain to veto any new UN Security Council resolution critical of Israel.
Trump made the comments in an interview published Sunday with The Times of London and was quoted by the Reuters news agency.
In the interview, Trump also confirmed he would appoint his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to broker a Middle East peace deal. Last week Trump announced he would appoint Kushner as senior White House adviser who would, among other things, deal with Middle East related issues.
The interview with the Times of London was published on the day of the Paris peace conference, to which Britain chose to only send a delegation of junior diplomats.
Britain explained the move in the fact that hit had "particular reservations" with the nature and timing of the conference. The reservations given were the lack of representatives from Israel or the Palestinian Authority (PA) at the conference and it taking place "just days before the transition to a new American president."

Australia Distances Itself From Final Middle East 'Peace' Statement

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has distanced the Turnbull government from a communique agreed by ministers and diplomats of 70 nations, including Australia, concerning the pathways to peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
The concluding statement called on both sides to “take urgent steps in order to reverse the current negative trends on the ground”, including acts of violence and the construction of Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories.
The communique specifically welcomed resolution 2334, passed by the UN Security Council last month, which declared the settlements violated international law and called on Israel to immediately cease all settlement activity.

Palestinians welcome Paris peace summit declaration

The Palestinians on Sunday welcomed the closing statement from the peace conference in Paris calling on both Israel and the Palestinians to restate their commitment to a peace settlement and to refrain from unilateral actions.
“It’s a message to Israel, the occupying power, to abide by international law and international humanitarian law and to end its military occupation of Palestine towards the achievement of peace and stability in the region and the world,” said senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat on Sunday night in a statement.
“It is time to stop dealing with Israel as a country above the law and to hold it accountable for its systematic violations of international law and the rights of our people,” he added.
The one-day summit came to a close on Sunday evening with a joint declaration, backed by the 70 countries, calling on Israel and the Palestinians to restate their commitment to a peace settlement and to refrain from unilateral actions.

Watchdog: French Government’s Funding of Groups With Alleged Links to Palestinian Terrorists Highlights Hypocrisy of Mideast Peace Summit It Hosted

The head of a Jerusalem-based organization that documents the activity and funding of non-governmental human rights groups explained to The Algemeiner on Sunday – at the close of the Mideast peace conference held in Paris – why he released a report ahead of the summit revealing the French government’s support for NGOs that promote anti-Israel BDS efforts and have alleged ties to terrorists.
Prof. Gerald Steinberg, president and founder of the research institute NGO Monitor, said that though France is not the only country whose “hypocrisy” at hosting a peace conference was worthy of highlighting – since Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Denmark, Switzerland, Germany, the European Union and others are just as deserving of scrutiny – “Its hosting of the event, while supporting some of the most immoral and viciously anti-Israel and anti-peace organizations,” made it the most urgent to expose.
The report, released Tuesday, revealed that:
The French government funds numerous French, Israeli, and Palestinian organizations that support and promote BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) campaigns against Israel, despite the fact that such boycotts are illegal under French law.

The Bigotry against Israel in the UN

"[U]nlike America, Europe is inherently anti-Semitic. This anti-Semitism is spread more or less evenly across the political spectrum and, therefore, it translates into widespread hostility to Israel. Europeans hate the Jews. Consequently, they hate the Jewish state." — Robin Shepherd, A State Beyond The Pale: Europe's Problem With Israel.
No "Palestinian" leader has publicly disavowed jihad against Jews. Instead, every aspect of engagement by "Palestinians" with Jews and Israelis is considered an obligation for advancing this jihad until its final expected objective of pushing the Jews out of "Palestine" has been reached.
The doublespeak of the Palestinian leadership made no difference within the UN. Since the June 1967 war, the UN began to tilt away from being fair and balanced toward Israel, and extended support to Arabs of the "occupied" West Bank and Gaza as an indigenous "Palestinian" people supposedly wronged by Jews.
"The long march through the UN has produced many benefits for the PLO. It has created a people where there was none; an issue where there was none; a claim where there was none. Now the PLO is seeking to create a state where there already is one." — Jeane Kirkpatrick, U.S. ambassador to the UN (1981-85).
All of this occurred with the complicity of member states of the once-Christian West in the UN against one single and much maligned Jewish state, Israel, surrounded by hostile Arab and Muslim states in the Middle East.

Israel thanks Jamaica for skipping controversial UNESCO vote

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked his Jamaican counterpart for his country’s refusal to participate in the UNESCO vote that ignored Jewish ties to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
“Our relations are always friendly. We appreciate the fact that you didn’t join the recent vote against Israel, the absurd vote in UNESCO,” Netanyahu told Andrew Holness during his three-day visit to Israel that ended on Sunday, reported the Jamaica Observer newspaper.
In a secret ballot, the resolution passed in Paris on October 26 with less than a majority of the World Heritage Committee’s 21 members — 10 states voted in favor and two were opposed, with eight abstaining and one absent — Jamaica. Among Latin American countries, Cuba voted in favor and Peru abstained.
Both prime ministers met Thursday in Jerusalem in the first such visit by a leader of the Caribbean nation to the Jewish state. They discussed possibilities for cooperation in water, agriculture and domestic security.
“I think this is the first visit ever by a prime minister of Jamaica to Israel, so it has a double significance for us,” Netanyahu told Israeli media, citing a “natural affinity” between Israel and Jamaica and stressing that the visit is a “hallmark of cooperation.”

Trump says he’ll tap ‘natural talent’ Kushner to broker Mideast peace

US President-elect Donald Trump has confirmed that he intends to use his Jewish son-in-law Jared Kushner to try to broker an elusive peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.
Speaking to The Times of London and Germany’s Bild just days before his inauguration, Trump “confirmed that he would appoint Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, to broker a Middle East peace deal,” the Times said.
Asked by Bild precisely what role Kushner would play, he replied: “You know what? Jared is such a good lad, he will secure an Israel deal which no one else has managed to get. You know, he’s a natural talent, he is the top, he is a natural talent. You know what I’m talking about – a natural talent. He has an innate ability to make deals, everyone likes him.” Trump said his daughter Ivanka, Kushner’s wife, would play no role in government.
Trump also urged the United Kingdom to veto any new UN Security Council resolution critical of Israel, said the US abstention on December 23’s Resolution 2334 was terrible, and that he wished the UK had vetoed it. “I would hope for a British veto (on any fresh resolution in the next few days). I think it would be great if Great Britain would place a veto, because I’m not sure if the US would do so – extraordinarily enough,” Trump told Bild, according to a Guardian translation. “They won’t do it, right? Do you believe the US will place a veto? I have Jewish friends who organised a donor event for Obama. I say to them: ‘What on earth are you doing? Okay – what are you doing?’”
Asked about whether he intended to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, he replied: “I’m not going to comment on that. But we’ll see.”

Israeli Minister: Palestinians Can’t Prevent Trump From Moving Embassy to Jerusalem

An Israeli minister said Monday the Palestinians had no way to block incoming US President Donald Trump from moving his country's embassy to Jerusalem.
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas has said such a move would have consequences as it was a "red line" whose crossing would ruin hopes for a two-state solution.
But regional cooperation minister Tzachi Hanegbi, of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, said the Palestinians were powerless to stop it.
"What can they do? What can they do?," he said in a briefing to reporters in Jerusalem.
"There are not going to be any consequences."
Trump -- who takes office Friday -- has pledged to acknowledge Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and relocate the US embassy there from Tel Aviv.

Will Holocaust survivor, longtime presidents’ tailor, dress Trump?

There are many unknowns about the approaching Donald Trump presidency. One of them is whether he will wear suits made by Martin Greenfield in the Oval Office. President Barack Obama wore them, as did other former White House occupants, so for connoisseurs of custom-made men’s apparel, it’s natural to wonder whether the new Commander in Chief will do the same.
Greenfield is a Holocaust survivor who built a thriving Brooklyn-based bespoke men’s clothing business after arriving as a post-war refugee in the United States. Having made suits for Trump in the past, he told The Times of Israel he would welcome the opportunity to do so again.
“We made some suits for him right before he decided to run, but we haven’t made any since he began the campaign. We’d be honored if he asked us to make him some more suits,” Jay Greenfield, Martin Greenfield’s son and vice president of Martin Greenfield Clothiers told The Times of Israel.
According to the younger Greenfield, the family-owned and run company focuses on making people look good, without regard to partisan positions.
“We make clothing for people. We don’t care about political affiliation. We are pleased to make people look good on both sides of the aisle,” he said.

Obama to Finally Intervene in Syria After Assad Signs Controversial ‘Bathroom Law’ (Satire)

With just days left in office, President Obama has reversed course on one of his major policies, deciding to intervene decisively against President Bashar al Assad after the Syrian leader passed a controversial “bathroom bill.”
The law, vehemently opposed by Democrats and the Obama administration, would require Syrians to use the bathroom based on the gender listed on their birth certificate. While the US had refrained from military action even as Assad’s government killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, Obama said he could no longer stay silent following the latest outrage.
“While I may have been willing to look the other way when President Assad was gassing his own people, there comes a time to draw a line in the sand,” Obama told The Mideast Beast. “I warned them not to cross my red lines.”

Palestinian Cleric in Al Aqsa: Columbus Stole the Manuscripts of Islamic Scholars

Palestinian Cleric Abu Taqi Al-Din Al-Safafi in Al-Aqsa Mosque Address: Columbus Stole the Manuscripts of Islamic Scholars
In an address delivered at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Palestinian cleric Sheikh Abu Taqi Al-Din Al-Safafi said that Islamic scholars had preceded the West in great scientific achievements and that the 16th-century Ottoman seafarer Piri Reis had drawn a map that "astonished NASA" and had revealed that he had discovered the Americas prior to Columbus. Columbus, according to Sheikh Al-Safafi, had "stolen the manuscripts of the Muslim scholars," . He further said that the West "are nothing but so-called 'thieves'," and that their contribution to science "has no spiritual, humanistic, or moral dimension" but is "utilized only in order to serve their devils - human and jinn - and in order to destroy humanity." A video of his address was posted on the Internet on December 31.

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