The Front Page Cover
The Events of the Week -- Featuring:
Israel and the Rising New West
by Caroline Glick
.
James Madison Thwarts liar-nObama From
Beyond the Grave
Louis DeBroux: In his last press conference of the year, Barack liar-nObama began whining when asked about the Electoral College, which on Monday voted for Donald Trump to become the next U.S. president, and in the process [denied the Oval Office to liar-Hillary Clinton, who would have continued and expanded liar-nObama's lawless behavior and his trampling of the Constitution.
And therein lies liar-nObama's disdain and contempt for the Constitution; it is an impediment to his desire for imperial executive rule and the creation of a permanent socialist democracy in America. The "fundamental transformation of the United States," if you will.
"So there are some structures in our political system, as envisioned by the Founders, that sometimes are going to disadvantage Democrats," liar-nObama bitterly complained. Fortunately, he's right.
After tossing a bone to our electoral process — "it's the American people's job, and now the electors' job to decide my successor" — liar-nObama proceeded to complain about the Electoral College, which gave Donald Trump an overwhelming electoral victory despite losing the aggregate popular vote by more than 2.5 million votes, or 2.1%.
liar-nObama described the Electoral College as "a vestige [and] a carryover from an earlier vision of how our federal government was going to work that put a lot of premium on states." He continued, "It's the same type of thinking that gives Wyoming two senators with about half a million people, and California with 33 million gets the same two."
For once, when speaking of the Constitution, liar-nObama is right. The Founders did put a premium on the power and influence of the states in limiting the power of a majoritarian government, which they saw as a necessary evil but a danger to the rights of citizens. Democrats constantly speak of America as a democracy, when the truth is that America has never been a democracy — it's a republic. In fact, the Founders took great care to prevent the evils of democracy, which is little more than mob rule.
To better understand the brilliance of the Electoral College, one has only to look at where Trump won versus where liar-nClinton won. There are 3,142 counties in the United States. In the 2016 election, as the election map by county shows, Trump won 2,623 to liar-Hillary's 490. America is a sea of Republican red with densely populated pockets of Democrat blue in the major urban areas like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. In fact, if you take away liar-Clinton's 4.3 million vote margin of victory in California, Trump wins the rest of the country by about 1.5 million votes.
And that is exactly why the Founders created the Electoral College; so that presidents would be forced to represent every American, and not just those in the major cities.
Make no mistake. liar-nObama, though feigning an air of detachment, is livid with the results of the election. Why? Because liar-nObama knows full well that his policies have been extremely unpopular, and that without liar-Hillary in the White House, his legacy, such as it is, is toast.
He has run roughshod over the Constitution and the separation of powers, achieving most of his "accomplishments" through "a phone and a pen," as he liked to say. His so-called achievements were primarily the result of unlawful executive orders, regulatory overreach and blatant violations of the Constitution. All the while, he mockingly told Republicans to sue him if they didn't like it — which they did, winning an astonishing 44 cases in which the Supreme Court issued unanimous rulings against liar-nObama. He lost even more in lower courts.
The liar-nObama years have been a case study in abuse of power, unconstitutional actions and despotism. liar-nObama's signature achievement, "liar-nObamaCare," barely passed on a party-line vote near midnight on Christmas Eve, and only then after Harry dinky-Reid openly bribed and/or threatened any Democrat senator who did not fall in line. Once signed into law, the bastardized monstrosity, cobbled together in a festering tapestry of legislative creepy-crawlies oozing forth from the minds of radical leftist Democrats, immediately began to run into major logistical and actuarial problems.
"No worries," cried liar-nObama, "I'll rewrite the law myself!" And he did, literally dozens of times, extending deadlines, issuing waivers to Democrat donors, shifting money from Medicare to liar-nObamaCare without an appropriation by Congress, issuing ACA tax credits for illegal immigrants, exempting labor unions, refusing to enforce abortion restrictions, etc.
This, of course, was just one of many times that liar-nObama showed his utter contempt for the Constitution's limitations on his power.
liar-nObama weaponized the IRS, using it to attack and harass conservative critics. He declared the right to determine when the Senate — part of a co-equal branch of government — was officially in session, making recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board despite the Senate still being in pro forma session (this was one of the unanimous SCOTUS decisions against liar-nObama). He threatened colleges with loss of federal funding and investigations by the Justice Department if they didn't crack down on "unwelcome" speech (i.e., conservative speech), and, as reported in Forbes, demanded that sexual harassment complaints at colleges be heard in "quasi-judicial procedures that deny legal representation, encourage punishment before trial, and convict based on a mere 'more likely than not' standard."
liar-nObama also instituted a de facto amnesty for illegals. He launched an unauthorized war against Libya. His EPA interpreted the Clean Water Rule so broadly that the feds can regulate large water puddles on private property. The same EPA vastly expanded the scope of the Clean Power Plan such that it was able to begin forcing dozens of coal plants to shut down.
Even all this is just the tip of the iceberg, as evidenced by this list of liar-nObama's unconstitutional actions compiled by Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), including his unlawful dismissal of work requirements for welfare recipients, his demand for Boeing to fire 1,000 employees and shut down a new plant in right-to-work South Carolina, his unlawful moratorium on oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, his violation of decades of bankruptcy law in bailing out GM/Chrysler by giving favored terms to unsecured creditors — the UAW — while forcing secured creditors — including pension plans for millions of middle class Americans — to take massive losses.
Sadly, decades of horribly inadequate or inaccurate public education has left a vast portion of American citizens ignorant about the principles and structure of our republican/federalist government, and why it's a safeguard for individual liberties against the encroaching power of a leviathan government.
liar-nObama spent the last eight years acting like a king, when in reality he is nothing but a petty tyrant with a slick PR machine and obedient legions of minions willing to do his bidding.
Luckily, James Madison, the "Father of the Constitution," foresaw such tyranny, and created a complex system which distributed powers among the branches and levels of government, and in doing so he has thwarted liar-nObama's aims from beyond the grave. ~The Patriot Post
.
.
Secret ISIS list IDs U.S. churches
for attack during holidays
by Leo Hohmann
{wnd.com} ~ The Islamic State has allegedly published a secret list in Arabic of thousands of churches in all 50 states and called on its followers to attack them during the holidays... ISIS, according to a report by Vocativ.com, posted the list late Wednesday night in the group’s “Secrets of Jihadis” social media group using the encrypted app Telegram. WND asked several Arab speakers to search for the list and after an exhaustive search online they came up empty, leading some question whether such a list even exists. If it does, it is well hidden within the encrypted app... http://www.wnd.com/2016/12/secret-isis-list-ids-u-s-churches-for-attack-during-holidays/
.
A State of Permanent War
by Linda Chavez
{townhall.com} ~ The vicious attack on a Christmas market in Berlin this week reminds us that terrorism has become a fact of life in our world. How do we stop a hate-filled fanatic from ramming a truck into a crowd of holiday shoppers anywhere, anytime?... Now that terrorist networks have decided that trucks can be as effective at mass killings as bombs, it will be increasingly difficult to discover and disrupt such attacks. The planning and access to materials required to build, transport and detonate bombs demand a level of sophistication beyond the level of all but the dedicated and connected would-be terrorists. But hijacking a truck and using it as a weapon takes no more skill than that of a common criminal. The wonder is that there have not been more of these attacks on civilian populations in the West. Increasingly, many people believe that the only way to stop the carnage is to shut our borders to those who might be terrorists. In the wake of the Berlin attack, President-elect Donald Trump said, "You know my plans." But he left open whether he was referring to the wholesale ban on Muslims entering the U.S. he proposed early in his campaign or his revised plan to limit travel from countries with a history of Islamic extremism, which would rule out much of the Arab world...
.
liar-nObama’s parting UN shot
at Israel a long time coming
by William A. Jacobson
{legalinsurrection.com} ~ Back in February 2012, I wrote that I expected that in his second term liar-nObama would force his vision of a “peace” deal on the Israelis... We’ve had several close calls, with the John hanoi-Kerry negotiation fiasco and flirtation with various European and Arab initiatives through the UN. The mechanism would be a failure to veto a Security Council resolution setting the terms of a deal. Part of it is liar-nObama hatred of Bibi Netanyahu, dating back to the beginning of liar-nObama’s presidency. The snubs and dislike was palpable long before Netanyahu’s address to Congress opposing the Iran nuclear deal. Aside from the personal, ideologically liar-nObama at least implicitly signs onto the view that Jews living beyond the 1949 armistice line is an act of illegitimacy at best, illegality at worst, and the heart of the problem. (We have refuted those claims both factually and legally many times.)... http://legalinsurrection.com/2016/12/obamas-parting-un-shot-at-israel-a-long-time-coming/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LegalInsurrection+%28Le%C2%B7gal+In%C2%B7sur%C2%B7rec%C2%B7tion%29
.
Lawless EPA Is Deliberately Destroying
Federal Records
by streiff
{redstate.com} ~ This is not a surprise. At Justice, EPA, Energy, IRS and HHS — those agencies that had the greatest roles in liar-nObama’s various un-Constitutional actions... they have probably brought in industrial strength shredders and file server erasers to be rid of the evidence before January 20. Few agencies, though, have been as brazen as the EPA in carrying out a deliberate destruction of federal records: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials only archived 86 text messages out of 3.1 million agency employees sent and received in 2015, according to a federal watchdog’s report made public Wednesday by House Committee on Science, Space and Technology Chairman Lamar Smith. The EPA Office of Inspector General (IG) released the report requested by the Texas Republican, which described enormous text message retention problems within the EPA. One unnamed senior official configured his phone to automatically delete texts after 30 days...
.
Suspect in Berlin market
massacre killed in shootout
by David Rosenberg
{israelnationalnews.com} ~ Authorities in Milan, Italy say a man matching the description of the key suspect in this past Monday’s attack on a Berlin Christmas market was shot and killed during a shootout Friday morning... According to the Italian Ansa news outlet, the man was shot after he drew a gun during a security check outside of the Sesto San Giovanni train station. Anis Amri, a 24-year old Tunisian whose ID was found inside the truck used to run down shoppers in Monday’s attack, has been the main suspect since Tuesday, after a Pakistani migrant was initially detained following the massacre, but later released for lack of evidence... http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/222183
..
Israel and the Rising New West
by Caroline Glick
{truthrevolt.org} ~ US President Barack liar-nObama has but a month left in office. But he has a month left. And he is using it. In the days remaining, liar-nObama is using the full authority of his office to advance his policies with the hope of rendering permanent his mark on American policy.
Domestically, liar-nObama is working to undercut the capacity of his successor, President-elect Donald Trump, to implement his plans of expanding domestic oil and gas exploration and development.
On Tuesday, liar-Obama banned offshore drilling in large swathes of the Artic and Atlantic oceans.
In foreign affairs, liar-nObama has Israel in his crosshairs.
It is now apparent that the lame duck president, bereft of any partisan restraints, intends to make good on his eight years of promises to use his last month in office to stick it to Israel at the UN.
The opening act of liar-nObama’s onslaught on Israel came on Wednesday, with State Department Spokesman James Kirby’s fatuous and unprecedented claim that Israeli communities built beyond the 1949 armistice line – the so-called settlements – are illegal.
Late Wednesday, the UN suddenly announced it would hold a vote on an Egyptian resolution parroting that language, and calling for a complete halt on construction projects for Jews in the areas, including Jerusalem.
The draft resolution included a call for an international governmental embrace of economic warfare against Israel. It called upon member states “to distinguish in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967.”
An indication of the depth of liar-nObama’s commitment to enabling the resolution to pass came amid reports that Secretary of State John hanoi-Kerry was planning to address the Security Council ahead of the scheduled vote.
In any event, following massive pressure from Israel and a statement by President-elect Donald Trump calling for liar-nObama to veto the resolution, Egypt postponed the vote on its resolution “indefinitely.”
But with or without the resolution – and there are at least two others also poised for a vote – liar-nObama is using his remaining time to empower the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions operation aimed at destroying Israel’s economy and international position.
As Anne Bayevsky reported in the Washington Examiner on Wednesday, liar-nObama is supporting the UN budget which allocates funding toward the implementation of a UN Human Rights Council resolution promoting BDS. The resolution requires the Human Rights Council to compile a blacklist of companies worldwide with direct or indirect business ties to Israeli communities built beyond the 1949 armistice lines. Since all businesses doing business with Israeli entities have indirect or direct ties to the areas where some 750,000 Israeli live, the resolution represents a bid to conduct total war against the Israeli economy.
And liar-nObama is funding its implementation.
Moreover, liar-nObama is trying to box the Trump administration into continuing his supportive stance on the Human Rights Council. Whereas the Bush administration refused to join the inherently and incurably anti-Israel body, liar-nObama has lavished it with legitimacy and funding.
This month the administration won a new three-year term for the US on the council beginning on January 1. This means that regardless of Trump’s approach to the phony human rights body, the US is now saddled with membership for the bulk of his presidential term.
One of the things operating in Israel’s favor as it seeks to undo liar-nObama’s hostile legacy once he is gone, is that Trump’s election is part and parcel of a wide-scale change in Western politics that is fundamentally transforming the so-called “international community” that provides knee-jerk support for BDS and every other anti-Israel initiative.
The term “international community,” of course, is just a grandiose name for the collective views of the Western European elites and those of their counterparts on the US coasts. And as Trump’s victory and the British decision to withdraw from the European Union indicated, the elites’ capacity to impose their views on voters is fast disappearing.
The populist wave that approved Brexit and brought Trump to power is far from spent force. Next year will see general elections in Holland, France and Germany, and nationalist parties in all three countries are likely to win or at a minimum be profoundly strengthened. This means that the likelihood the EU will break apart is rising with each passing day. And the foreign policies of the separate states of Europe will be far different than their collective positions under the EU.
The main cause of the swift rise of the nationalist Right throughout Western Europe is the mass Muslim migration to Europe. Profound public opposition to the deluge of migrants from Muslim states is bringing about wholesale popular rejection of the multicultural and anti-nationalist values that dictated the tone and substance of European politics for two generations. The implications of this revolutionary shift in values and its impact on European politics are enormous. And Israel stands to be one of the first beneficiaries of this transformation, if our foreign policy bureaucracy is capable of understanding what is happening.
Unfortunately, actions by the Foreign Ministry this week indicate that our diplomatic bureaucrats haven’t the vaguest idea of what is happening, or why these developments can be beneficial for Israel.
The Foreign Ministry announced this week that the government was boycotting a delegation of visiting European lawmakers because Kristina Winberg, a member of Sweden’s rightist Swedish Democrats party, was among its members.
In recent weeks, the Foreign Ministry has managed to boycott Sweden’s entire political spectrum. Last week, the ministry announced that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had rejected Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom’s request for a meeting due to scheduling difficulties.
Wallstrom richly deserves the government’s unofficial boycott. Among other things, Wallstrom blamed Israel for the massacres in Paris last November.
While the Foreign Ministry used a procedural excuse to brush off Wallstrom, it threw diplomatic protocol to the seven winds when it announced that Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely’s scheduled briefing of the delegation of European lawmakers was canceled due to Winberg’s participation.
Foreign Ministry Spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said that the Swedish Democrats party “has neo-Nazi tendencies, and therefore the Foreign Ministry decided not to include Winberg in the meeting with Hotovely.”
Winberg’s colleague, who included a member of Trump’s transition team, were appalled by the boycott. To protest the move, the entire delegation canceled its meeting with Hotovely.
The delegation was in Israel to participate in a leadership summit in Jerusalem. Due to its position on the Sweden Democrats, the Foreign Ministry caused Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked to cancel her scheduled remarks at the conference.
In other words, the Foreign Ministry adopted and implemented a comprehensive, public and undiplomatic boycott of the rightist party.
It is unclear who stands behind this policy. But whoever is responsible should be subjected to a career review. The policy is as destructive to Israel’s national interests as it is unjust to the Swedish Democrats.
The Swedish Democrats party is the only pro-Israel political party in Sweden. It is the only party that opposed Sweden’s recognition of “Palestine.”
The Foreign Ministry’s claim that the party has “neo-Nazi tendencies” is tendentious. Earlier this month, the party took the extreme step of banning one of its own lawmakers from the party after she made an antisemitic statement. In the past it disbanded its youth wing and formed a new one amidst allegations of antisemitism. How many Nazi parties expel their members or disband their youth wings for hating Jews? The Swedish Democrats party, which is identified with the nationalist right, has built is political position around its unqualified opposition to immigration. For its opposition to immigration, the Democrats are castigated continuously as racists by their political rivals.
There is every reason to believe there are Jew-haters among the party’s members. But unlike members of Wallstrom’s Social Democratic Party, Swedish Democrats don’t participate in anti-Israel demonstrations where Hezbollah and Hamas flags are prominent. Indeed, they don’t participate in anti-Israel demonstrations at all.
Moreover, they are the fastest growing and largest party in Sweden. This fact makes the Foreign Ministry’s treatment of Winberg not only unjust, but deeply stupid as well. A mere decade after it won its first representation in parliament, the Swedish Democrats have been leading political polls for the past year. And the Foreign Ministry just called it a Nazi party.
Sadly, it isn’t much of a surprise that the Foreign Ministry has failed to read the writing on the walls in Sweden and act appropriately. Our foreign and defense bureaucracies have a storied record of missing major developments. They are too busy talking to their bureaucratic counterparts to pay attention to what the public is saying.
In Egypt for instance, no one was more surprised at then-president Hosni Mubarak’s overthrow and the concomitant rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt than the defense establishment, whose members were largely responsible for handling Israel’s bilateral relations with Mubarak.
In the decade or more that preceded Mubarak’s overthrow, anyone paying attention to open source polling data of public opinion in Egypt, or to what was being said in the Egyptian media, was aware of the deep-seated and rising public frustration and disgust with Mubarak, his sons and his cronies. But since the only people that Israel’s defense establishment spoke to were Mubarak, his sons and his cronies, they were taken by complete surprise when he was overthrown and replaced with the Muslim Brotherhood.
liar-nObama will continue to be the president until 12:00 p.m. on January 20. And Israel can expect him to use this time to take the actions against Israel that he has been threatening to take for eight years. One way or another, he will exact his pound of flesh.
But at 12:01 on January 20, a new era will begin.
And in the coming months, as the next wave of populist right-wing parties rise to power in Europe, the “international community” that has been unanimous in its backing of the anti-Israel policies for a generation will become an altogether different body.
This new era presents Israel with profound, indeed unprecedented opportunities. But if our foreign and defense bureaucrats continue to behave as though nothing has happened, we will fail to benefit from any of them.
Domestically, liar-nObama is working to undercut the capacity of his successor, President-elect Donald Trump, to implement his plans of expanding domestic oil and gas exploration and development.
On Tuesday, liar-Obama banned offshore drilling in large swathes of the Artic and Atlantic oceans.
In foreign affairs, liar-nObama has Israel in his crosshairs.
It is now apparent that the lame duck president, bereft of any partisan restraints, intends to make good on his eight years of promises to use his last month in office to stick it to Israel at the UN.
The opening act of liar-nObama’s onslaught on Israel came on Wednesday, with State Department Spokesman James Kirby’s fatuous and unprecedented claim that Israeli communities built beyond the 1949 armistice line – the so-called settlements – are illegal.
Late Wednesday, the UN suddenly announced it would hold a vote on an Egyptian resolution parroting that language, and calling for a complete halt on construction projects for Jews in the areas, including Jerusalem.
The draft resolution included a call for an international governmental embrace of economic warfare against Israel. It called upon member states “to distinguish in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967.”
An indication of the depth of liar-nObama’s commitment to enabling the resolution to pass came amid reports that Secretary of State John hanoi-Kerry was planning to address the Security Council ahead of the scheduled vote.
In any event, following massive pressure from Israel and a statement by President-elect Donald Trump calling for liar-nObama to veto the resolution, Egypt postponed the vote on its resolution “indefinitely.”
But with or without the resolution – and there are at least two others also poised for a vote – liar-nObama is using his remaining time to empower the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions operation aimed at destroying Israel’s economy and international position.
As Anne Bayevsky reported in the Washington Examiner on Wednesday, liar-nObama is supporting the UN budget which allocates funding toward the implementation of a UN Human Rights Council resolution promoting BDS. The resolution requires the Human Rights Council to compile a blacklist of companies worldwide with direct or indirect business ties to Israeli communities built beyond the 1949 armistice lines. Since all businesses doing business with Israeli entities have indirect or direct ties to the areas where some 750,000 Israeli live, the resolution represents a bid to conduct total war against the Israeli economy.
And liar-nObama is funding its implementation.
Moreover, liar-nObama is trying to box the Trump administration into continuing his supportive stance on the Human Rights Council. Whereas the Bush administration refused to join the inherently and incurably anti-Israel body, liar-nObama has lavished it with legitimacy and funding.
This month the administration won a new three-year term for the US on the council beginning on January 1. This means that regardless of Trump’s approach to the phony human rights body, the US is now saddled with membership for the bulk of his presidential term.
One of the things operating in Israel’s favor as it seeks to undo liar-nObama’s hostile legacy once he is gone, is that Trump’s election is part and parcel of a wide-scale change in Western politics that is fundamentally transforming the so-called “international community” that provides knee-jerk support for BDS and every other anti-Israel initiative.
The term “international community,” of course, is just a grandiose name for the collective views of the Western European elites and those of their counterparts on the US coasts. And as Trump’s victory and the British decision to withdraw from the European Union indicated, the elites’ capacity to impose their views on voters is fast disappearing.
The populist wave that approved Brexit and brought Trump to power is far from spent force. Next year will see general elections in Holland, France and Germany, and nationalist parties in all three countries are likely to win or at a minimum be profoundly strengthened. This means that the likelihood the EU will break apart is rising with each passing day. And the foreign policies of the separate states of Europe will be far different than their collective positions under the EU.
The main cause of the swift rise of the nationalist Right throughout Western Europe is the mass Muslim migration to Europe. Profound public opposition to the deluge of migrants from Muslim states is bringing about wholesale popular rejection of the multicultural and anti-nationalist values that dictated the tone and substance of European politics for two generations. The implications of this revolutionary shift in values and its impact on European politics are enormous. And Israel stands to be one of the first beneficiaries of this transformation, if our foreign policy bureaucracy is capable of understanding what is happening.
Unfortunately, actions by the Foreign Ministry this week indicate that our diplomatic bureaucrats haven’t the vaguest idea of what is happening, or why these developments can be beneficial for Israel.
The Foreign Ministry announced this week that the government was boycotting a delegation of visiting European lawmakers because Kristina Winberg, a member of Sweden’s rightist Swedish Democrats party, was among its members.
In recent weeks, the Foreign Ministry has managed to boycott Sweden’s entire political spectrum. Last week, the ministry announced that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had rejected Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom’s request for a meeting due to scheduling difficulties.
Wallstrom richly deserves the government’s unofficial boycott. Among other things, Wallstrom blamed Israel for the massacres in Paris last November.
While the Foreign Ministry used a procedural excuse to brush off Wallstrom, it threw diplomatic protocol to the seven winds when it announced that Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely’s scheduled briefing of the delegation of European lawmakers was canceled due to Winberg’s participation.
Foreign Ministry Spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said that the Swedish Democrats party “has neo-Nazi tendencies, and therefore the Foreign Ministry decided not to include Winberg in the meeting with Hotovely.”
Winberg’s colleague, who included a member of Trump’s transition team, were appalled by the boycott. To protest the move, the entire delegation canceled its meeting with Hotovely.
The delegation was in Israel to participate in a leadership summit in Jerusalem. Due to its position on the Sweden Democrats, the Foreign Ministry caused Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked to cancel her scheduled remarks at the conference.
In other words, the Foreign Ministry adopted and implemented a comprehensive, public and undiplomatic boycott of the rightist party.
It is unclear who stands behind this policy. But whoever is responsible should be subjected to a career review. The policy is as destructive to Israel’s national interests as it is unjust to the Swedish Democrats.
The Swedish Democrats party is the only pro-Israel political party in Sweden. It is the only party that opposed Sweden’s recognition of “Palestine.”
The Foreign Ministry’s claim that the party has “neo-Nazi tendencies” is tendentious. Earlier this month, the party took the extreme step of banning one of its own lawmakers from the party after she made an antisemitic statement. In the past it disbanded its youth wing and formed a new one amidst allegations of antisemitism. How many Nazi parties expel their members or disband their youth wings for hating Jews? The Swedish Democrats party, which is identified with the nationalist right, has built is political position around its unqualified opposition to immigration. For its opposition to immigration, the Democrats are castigated continuously as racists by their political rivals.
There is every reason to believe there are Jew-haters among the party’s members. But unlike members of Wallstrom’s Social Democratic Party, Swedish Democrats don’t participate in anti-Israel demonstrations where Hezbollah and Hamas flags are prominent. Indeed, they don’t participate in anti-Israel demonstrations at all.
Moreover, they are the fastest growing and largest party in Sweden. This fact makes the Foreign Ministry’s treatment of Winberg not only unjust, but deeply stupid as well. A mere decade after it won its first representation in parliament, the Swedish Democrats have been leading political polls for the past year. And the Foreign Ministry just called it a Nazi party.
Sadly, it isn’t much of a surprise that the Foreign Ministry has failed to read the writing on the walls in Sweden and act appropriately. Our foreign and defense bureaucracies have a storied record of missing major developments. They are too busy talking to their bureaucratic counterparts to pay attention to what the public is saying.
In Egypt for instance, no one was more surprised at then-president Hosni Mubarak’s overthrow and the concomitant rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt than the defense establishment, whose members were largely responsible for handling Israel’s bilateral relations with Mubarak.
In the decade or more that preceded Mubarak’s overthrow, anyone paying attention to open source polling data of public opinion in Egypt, or to what was being said in the Egyptian media, was aware of the deep-seated and rising public frustration and disgust with Mubarak, his sons and his cronies. But since the only people that Israel’s defense establishment spoke to were Mubarak, his sons and his cronies, they were taken by complete surprise when he was overthrown and replaced with the Muslim Brotherhood.
liar-nObama will continue to be the president until 12:00 p.m. on January 20. And Israel can expect him to use this time to take the actions against Israel that he has been threatening to take for eight years. One way or another, he will exact his pound of flesh.
But at 12:01 on January 20, a new era will begin.
And in the coming months, as the next wave of populist right-wing parties rise to power in Europe, the “international community” that has been unanimous in its backing of the anti-Israel policies for a generation will become an altogether different body.
This new era presents Israel with profound, indeed unprecedented opportunities. But if our foreign and defense bureaucrats continue to behave as though nothing has happened, we will fail to benefit from any of them.
http://www.truthrevolt.org/commentary/glick-israel-and-rising-new-west
Comments