Saturday, March 10, 2018

Achieving AIPAC's Mission - Caroline Glick




by Caroline Glick

Seeking the approval of leftist Israel-haters is a losing strategy.




Originally published by the Jerusalem Post

AIPAC’s mission to cultivate and maintain bipartisan support for Israel in the United States is an important mission. Unfortunately, the messages AIPAC’s leaders delivered during the organization’s annual policy convention this week in Washington indicate that they are at a loss for how to achieve their mission in the contentious political environment now prevalent in post- Obama America.
Their befuddlement is not surprising. For the eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency, AIPAC’s leaders showed a consistent inability to understand the challenges they faced. And since they were unable to understand how or why the Obama administration was undermining AIPAC, they couldn’t protect AIPAC or advance its mission during his tenure in office.


At this week’s AIPAC convention, the message emanating from the speeches AIPAC’s senior leadership delivered was that they still don’t get what happened.
And largely as a consequence, they do not understand the challenges they face as an organization moving forward. And again, since they don’t understand what happened, or what is happening, they are incapable of meeting today’s challenges to AIPAC’s mission in a constructive way.

In a 2014 article in Tablet online magazine, Lee Smith set out precisely what Obama was doing to AIPAC and what his motivations were. Smith’s article was published shortly after Obama brutally scuttled AIPAC’s attempt to lobby Democrats to support additional sanctions against Iran for its illicit nuclear program. In the course of the Obama’s White House’s onslaught against AIPAC, administration officials were quoted referring to AIPAC lobbyists as “warmongers” for seeking additional sanctions against Iran – sanctions that enjoyed the support of huge majorities of lawmakers in both parties and houses.

In the end, Obama strong-armed Democrats to oppose the sanctions bill. Republicans were willing to pass the sanctions without Democratic support, but AIPAC – in the name of bipartisanship – told the Republicans to lay off. In other words, AIPAC sacrificed its central goal and its credibility with Republican lawmakers to placate the White House, which had just used a veiled antisemitic slur to delegitimize AIPAC.


Moreover, as Smith noted, AIPAC’s refusal to strike out against the Democrats who abandoned their support for the sanctions bill exposed the lobby as a paper tiger. It was willing to sacrifice its credibility, its policy goals and its reputation as a powerful power broker to maintain the myth that there was no distinction between Republican and Democratic support for its signature initiative.
Smith argued that Obama didn’t attack AIPAC because he hated Israel per se. Rather, he did it because he opposed the foundational assumption of AIPAC’s entire existence.

Obama didn’t support the US alliance with Israel.

Obama supported a rapprochement with Iran, even if it came at Israel’s expense. Obama wasn’t pursuing his nuclear deal with Iran because he wanted to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

He was pursuing his nuclear deal with Iran because he wanted to develop an alliance with the Iranian regime even at the cost of harming Israel and the US’s Sunni allies and even at the cost of Iranian nuclear empowerment.

As Smith put it, Obama opposed the AIPAC-backed sanctions “because he agrees with academics like Stephen Walt and US policy-makers like his former secretary of defense Robert Gates and his current one Chuck Hagel that the pro-Israel lobby often prevents the United States from pursuing its national interests.”

Obama never admitted that his goal was rapprochement with Iran regardless of its implications for Israel, for the Sunni Arab states and for Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. He couldn’t. The vast majority of Americans – including Democrats – opposed Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons.

Indeed, at the time, a Pew survey showed 58% of Americans supported bombing Iran’s nuclear sites.

But the fact that Obama’s goal was rapprochement, not nuclear nonproliferation, was exposed by his opposition to the AIPAC-backed sanctions.

As AIPAC’s leaders argued at the time, if passed, the sanctions would have strengthened the US’s negotiating position. They were only supposed to be imposed if negotiations failed. Knowing that it faced the certain destruction of its economy if it failed to make the requisite concessions on uranium enrichment, nuclear inspections and ballistic missile development would surely concentrate the minds of the Iranian negotiators, AIPAC argued, rationally.

Obama went to war against AIPAC to defeat the sanctions precisely because his goal wasn’t nuclear nonproliferation. Obama didn’t care what the agreement said. The purpose of the negotiations was to develop an alliance with the Iranians, not to keep them away from nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles.

But AIPAC refused to see what was happening and folded rather than confront Obama, betraying its Republican backers – in the interests of bipartisanship.

And then, in the summer of 2015, as the Senate debated his nuclear deal which ensured Iran would acquire nuclear weapons within 15 years while receiving the financial means to implement its hegemonic ambitions throughout the Middle East, Obama declared open war on AIPAC. He used National Security Agency wiretaps to spy on AIPAC lobbyists. Administration officials attacked Democratic lawmakers who opposed the nuclear deal, intimating that they were Israeli agents.

In a thuggish campaign laced with antisemitism, Obama made clear that there were two goals to his campaign: To secure Senate approval of his nuclear deal; and to render AIPAC toxic for his partisan and ideological supporters.

And to a significant degree, he succeeded. The post-Obama Democratic Party is more anti-Israel than it has ever been. Whereas in the past, presidential hopefuls from both parties courted AIPAC’s support while eagerly parading their pro-Israel bonafides, today’s Democratic presidential hopefuls are courting the anti-Israel factions in the party. Sens.

Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) and Kirsten Gillibrand, (D-New York) were once outspoken in their support for Israel. Last year, both announced their opposition to key pro-Israel bills.

Which brings us to this week’s AIPAC conference.

In his address, AIPAC CEO Howard Kohr placed AIPAC in opposition to both the Trump administration and the Israeli government on the issue of Palestinian statehood. The White House and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have refused to endorse Palestinians statehood as the preordained outcome of an eventual peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Most Israeli government ministers openly oppose Palestinian statehood.

But Kohr ignored them all.

“We must all work toward that future: two states for two peoples. One Jewish with secure and defensible borders, and one Palestinian with its own flag and its own future,” he said.

Netanyahu has explained repeatedly, and explained this week in Washington to the US media, that Israel cannot secure its territory without permanent security control over Judea and Samaria.

Kohr rejected Israel’s position.

“Israel’s security cannot be fully assured and her promise cannot be fully realized until she is at peace with all her neighbors,” he insisted.

Then Kohr said AIPAC’s position on Palestinian statehood is as central to AIPAC’s identity as its commitment to the enhancement of Israel’s military capabilities.

“Preparing for conflict may require forever vigilance.

But working for peace demands forever faith – a faith that there is a future beyond bloodshed and war,” he said.

Why did AIPAC’s CEO use his speech before 18,000 pro-Israel activists to advocate a policy that neither the US government nor the Israeli government supports? The answer is that Kohr’s statement wasn’t addressed to either Israel or the White House. It was directed to an audience that wasn’t in the room.

As a former senior official at AIPAC explained, Kohr undercut both the Israeli government and the Trump administration to court J Street supporters.

Kohr and AIPAC were telling J Street supporters that AIPAC is just as pro-Palestinian state as J Street.

This is a counterproductive policy for two reasons.

First, J Street doesn’t have a lot of followers. J Street wasn’t formed, and it has never operated, as a means to convince pro-Israel lawmakers not to support Israel or pro-Israel activists not to support Israel.

J Street’s mission is to serve as a Jewish fig leaf for anti-Israel politicians and activists. It flourishes because of the radicalization of the Left and of factions of the Democratic Party. That radicalization has nothing to do with anything AIPAC did or anything AIPAC stands for.

AIPAC has no way of reaching forces that have embraced J Street as a fig leaf. They were never in the AIPAC tent to begin with. If J Street hadn’t been created, then another Jewish fig leaf like Jewish Voices for Peace or Peace Now would have sufficed.

True, J Street presents itself as a left-wing alternative to AIPAC. But no one believes it is a pro-Israel organization. Everyone understands what this game is about.

And this brings us to the second reason AIPAC’s outreach to J Street supporters makes no sense. The radical Left is certainly the rising force in the Democratic Party. It may even have captured or be about to capture the majority of party members and party lawmakers.

But it isn’t the only force in the party. There are plenty of Democratic lawmakers who support Israel and don’t want to join the Keith Ellison faction of the party.

New York Sen. Charles Schumer spoke up for that pro-Israel faction of the party at the AIPAC convention this week. Schumer rejected one of the main articles of faith of Obama and the far Left – that Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are the obstacle to peace with the Palestinians. “It’s sure not the settlements that are the blockage to peace,” he insisted.

AIPAC has a substantive case to make to Democrats.

And a lot of them will listen, because they care about the issues and aren’t interested in becoming servants to the radical agenda being pushed by powerful elements in their party. They are willing to listen to AIPAC and support the US-Israel alliance because Israel’s case is stronger than the Palestinians’ case. And they would be happy if their faction of the party grew.

By aping J Street, AIPAC is making the same mistake it made with Obama. It is trying to win over those who will never join it, by abandoning its mission and its substantive goals. It does so while ignoring, and so weakening, the many Democrats who support its mission and goals, in the hopes of winning over Democrats who are hostile to its mission and its goals. AIPAC does this because it either doesn’t understand or doesn’t want to admit that this hostility from the far Left is not the result of a misunderstanding. Ellison, Sen.

Bernie Sanders and their supporters oppose AIPAC because they do understand AIPAC’s mission. And they oppose it.

AIPAC was always strong because most Americans always supported Israel. Most Americans – including many Democrats – still support Israel. For AIPAC to become relevant and respected again, its leaders need to cultivate its ties with those Americans – Republicans and Democrats alike – and not waste its energies and passions and national convention begging the minority of Americans who oppose Israel to love it.



Caroline Glick is the Director of the David Horowitz Freedom Center's Israel Security Project and the Senior Contributing Editor of The Jerusalem Post. For more information on Ms. Glick's work, visit carolineglick.com.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/269544/achieving-aipacs-mission-caroline-glick

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Cali vs. USA - Matthew Vadum




by Matthew Vadum

Can leftists win the legal fight over sanctuary cities?




The Trump administration launched a long overdue legal assault this week on grotesquely unconstitutional new state laws in California that punish compliance with federal immigration laws and provide legal cover for state and local officials to continue brazenly flouting immigration laws and obstructing federal agents trying to enforce them.

Under the longstanding doctrine in American constitutional law known as “dual sovereignty,” states cannot be compelled to enforce federal immigration laws, but they are obliged not to hinder their enforcement. The so-called sanctuary cities that form the bulk of the sanctuary movement really ought to be called traitor cities because they are in open rebellion against the United States, just like the slave states that seceded from the Union before the Civil War.

The sanctuary movement gave illegal aliens permission to rob, rape, and murder Americans by, among other things, stigmatizing immigration enforcement. Some left-wingers use the dreadful euphemism "civil liberties safe zones" to describe sanctuary jurisdictions. The phrase deliberately blurs the distinction between citizens and non-citizens by implying illegal aliens somehow possess a civil right to be present in the U.S.

“Immigration law “is the province of the federal government” and while there may be “a wide variety of political opinions out there on immigration,” the law is on “the books and its purpose is clear,” U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions told law enforcement officers attending the California Peace Officers Association’s 26th Annual Law Enforcement Legislative Day on Wednesday in the state capital of Sacramento.

Sessions continued:
There is no nullification. There is no secession. Federal law is "the supreme law of the land." I would invite any doubters to Gettysburg, and to the graves of John C. Calhoun and Abraham Lincoln. A refusal to apprehend and deport those, especially the criminal element, effectively rejects all immigration law and creates an open borders system. Open borders is a radical, irrational idea that cannot be accepted.
The United States of America is not "an idea;" it is a secular nation-state with a Constitution, laws, and borders, all of which are designed to protect our nation's interests.
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), a radical leftist, bristled at the attorney general’s Civil War rhetoric, moaning that he has no “credibility.”

“As far as I’m concerned, Jeff Sessions should be advised, and I’ll advise him right now, that it’s a bad idea for him to start talking about anything to do with the history of slavery or Reconstruction or the Civil War in the United States,” Harris said in the leftist echo chamber known as MSNBC.

“His credibility is pretty much shot on those issues.”

“I think that these folks are really mired in rolling back the clock in time, and that’s not going to happen,” Harris said.

“California represents the future, and they don’t like it,” the deluded lawmaker said. “Jeff Sessions has clearly put a target on the back of California, and California’s going to fight.”

Gov. Jerry Brown (D) blasted the lawsuit, describing it as “an act of war” against California that is part of “a reign of terror” against illegal aliens.

But California cannot win this battle without tearing the republic apart. Either the Golden State is part of the United States of America, bound by its laws and the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, or it is not.

This cannot end well for California where radical leftist office-holders like Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf (D) are doubling down in their reckless defiance of the federal government. Schaaf now tips off illegal aliens about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids to applause from the mainstream media.

Schaaf piously insists her actions have not endangered ICE officers. “How can it be dangerous and illegal simply to tell people what the law is, what their rights are, what their resources are?” she said disingenuously. “That’s all I did.”

California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), the former San Francisco mayor who is running for governor, hailed Schaaf. "We can and must protect immigrant families from Donald Trump's mass deportations,” he said. “I want to thank Mayor Schaaf for her courage and hope more local leaders will follow her lead."

The new federal lawsuit unveiled by Sessions targets three new statutes in the chaotic, crime-ridden, failing “sanctuary state” that is home to more than 2 million aliens whom the Left is using taxpayer money to groom as loyal voters for Democratic Party candidates. The state laws curb the power of California’s state and local law enforcement to hold, question, and transfer detainees at the request of federal immigration authorities, and punish employers for cooperating with those authorities. The seditious laws were enacted to sabotage immigration enforcement efforts and in the process protect Democrats’ base.

The legal action seeks to strike down AB 450, which prohibits private employers from voluntarily cooperating with federal immigration officials—including officials conducting worksite enforcement efforts. It attacks SB 54, which prevents state and local law enforcement officials from providing information to the feds about the release date of deportable criminal aliens in their custody. The suit also places a bullseye on AB 103, which imposes a state-run inspection and review scheme of the federal detention of aliens held in facilities pursuant to federal contracts.

“We are a strong, prosperous, and orderly nation,” Sessions said. “And such a nation must have a lawful system of immigration,” he said. “I am not aware of any advanced nation that does not understand this fundamental tenet.”

Americans are “right to insist that this country should end the illegality, create a rational immigration flow, and protect the nation from criminal aliens,” Sessions said.

He continued:
It cannot be that someone who illegally crosses the border and two days later arrives in Sacramento, Dubuque, Louisville, and Central Islip is home free – never to be removed. It cannot be the policy of a great nation to up and reward those who unlawfully enter its country with legal status, Social Security, welfare, food stamps, and work permits. Meanwhile those who engage in this process lawfully and patiently and wait their turn are discriminated against at every turn.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration won a rare legal victory on the Left Coast in a sanctuary jurisdictions case.

In a lawsuit brought by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra against Attorney General Jeff Sessions, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California Judge William H. Orrick ruled Monday that he could not compel the federal government to hand over a specific $1 million grant it is withholding because the state is shielding illegal aliens from federal immigration authorities.

“The weighty and novel constitutional issues posed in this litigation deserve a complete record before they are adjudicated,” the slippery black-robed politician wrote, Anthony Kennedy-style.

This decision may be good news for the Trump administration even though Orrick of March 2018 is rather baldly contradicting Orrick of November 2017.

The judge, who was appointed by President Obama, already ruled on the “weighty and novel constitutional issues” he references pretty conclusively a few months ago, coming down hard against Trump’s executive order. (The judge’s rulings on sanctuary jurisdictions may be read at the court’s website.)

In a separate lawsuit brought by Santa Clara County and San Francisco against President Trump, Orrick granted summary judgment on Nov. 20, 2017 to the two localities. The judge made permanent his previously issued preliminary injunction against Executive Order 13768.

EO 13768, signed by President Trump on Jan. 25, 2017, states it is official administration policy that:
Sanctuary jurisdictions across the United States willfully violate Federal law in an attempt to shield aliens from removal from the United States. These jurisdictions have caused immeasurable harm to the American people and to the very fabric of our Republic.
Section 9(a) of EO 13768 is the specific provision by which federal monies are being withheld from sanctuary jurisdictions. It is also the provision specifically enjoined until the end of time by Orrick three-and-a-half months ago.

Section 9(a) states that to enforce the funding ban, “the Attorney General and the [Homeland Security] Secretary, in their discretion and to the extent consistent with law, shall ensure that jurisdictions that willfully refuse to comply with 8 U.S.C. 1373 (sanctuary jurisdictions) are not eligible to receive Federal grants, except as deemed necessary for law enforcement purposes by the Attorney General or the Secretary.”

Orrick found Section 9(a) was “unconstitutional on its face” and that the counties proved it “has caused and will cause them constitutional injuries by violating the separation of powers doctrine and depriving them of their Tenth and Fifth Amendment rights.”

Maybe between Nov. 20 and March 5, the legal meaning of the infamous Section 9(a) somehow changed in Orrick’s calculating mind. Maybe the permanent injunction isn’t so permanent anymore; intellectual consistency is not, after all, something for which left-wing jurists are known.

For what it’s worth, in the California v. Sessions lawsuit, Becerra appeared to be taunting Sessions in the title of the proceeding itself by referring to the Alabama-born official by his full, mouthful of a name, to wit, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions. As a white man from the Deep South, Sessions is an irresistible target for slimy leftists like Becerra (and Harris).

During Sessions’ U.S. Senate confirmation process, left-wingers relished using the then-nominee’s Southern-sounding, eight-syllable name over and over again as they tried to tar the public servant as a vicious racist. Never mind that Sessions desegregated his state’s schools and crippled the state’s Ku Klux Klan before coming to Washington.

Lawbreaking officials in California may be about to get a surprise, courtesy of the Trump administration.

It was previously reported that federal prosecutors are considering filing criminal charges against elected officials harboring illegal aliens in sanctuary jurisdictions, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told the Senate Judiciary Committee in mid-January.

Jailing the leaders of sanctuary jurisdictions who obstruct ICE agents is long overdue.

Oakland’s Libby Schaaf should be the first leftist politician in California to be perp-walked.


Matthew Vadum, senior vice president at the investigative think tank Capital Research Center, is an award-winning investigative reporter and author of the book, "Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts Are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers."

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/269547/cali-vs-usa-matthew-vadum

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What Is a "Refugee"? The Jews from Morocco versus the Palestinians from Israel - Alan M. Dershowitz




by Alan M. Dershowitz

A visit to Morocco shows that the claim of Palestinians to a "right of return" has little historic, moral or legal basis.

  • The Arab exodus from Israel in 1948 was the direct result of a genocidal war declared against the newly established Jewish state by all of its Arab neighbors, including the Arabs of Israel... approximately 700,000 local Arabs were displaced.
  • Approximately the same number of Jews were displaced from their Arab homelands during this period. Nearly all of them could trace their heritage back thousands of years, well before the Muslims and Arabs became the dominant population. ...The most significant difference is between how Israel dealt with the Jews who were displaced and how the Arab and Muslim word dealt with the Palestinians who had been displaced by a war they started. Israel integrated its brothers and sisters from the Arab and Muslim world. The Arab world put its Palestinian brothers and sisters in refugee camps, treating them as political pawns — and festering sores —in its persistent war against the Jewish state.
  • The time has come – indeed it is long overdue – for the world to stop treating these Palestinians as refugees. That status ended decades ago. The Jews who came to Israel from Morocco many years ago are no longer refugees. Neither are the relatives of the Palestinians who have lived outside of Israel for nearly three quarters of a century.
A visit to Morocco shows that the claim of Palestinians to a "right of return" has little historic, moral or legal basis.

Jews lived in Morocco for centuries before Islam came to Casablanca, Fez and Marrakesh. The Jews, along with the Berbers, were the backbone of the economy and culture. Now their historic presence can be seen primarily in the hundreds of Jewish cemeteries and abandoned synagogues that are omnipresent in cities and towns throughout the Maghreb.

I visited Maimonides's home, now a restaurant. The great Jewish philosopher and medical doctor taught at a university in Fez. Other Jewish intellectuals helped shape the culture of North Africa, from Morocco to Algeria to Tunisia to Egypt. In these countries, Jews were always a minority but their presence was felt in every area of life.

Now they are a remnant in Morocco and gone from the other counties. Some left voluntarily to move to Israel after 1948. Many were forced to flee by threats, pogroms and legal decrees, leaving behind billions of dollars in property and the graves of their ancestors.

Today, Morocco's Jewish population is less than 5,000, as contrasted with 250,000 at its peak. To his credit, King Mohammad VI has made a point of preserving the Jewish heritage of Morocco, especially its cemeteries. He has better relations with Israel than other Muslim countries but still does not recognize Israel and have diplomatic relations with the nation state of the Jewish People. It is a work in process. His relationship with his small Jewish community, most of whom are avid Zionists, is excellent. Many Moroccans realize that they lost a lot when the Jews of Morocco left. Some Israelis of Moroccan origin, maintain close relations with their Moroccan heritage.


The Jews who came to Israel from Morocco many years ago are no longer refugees. Nor are the Palestinians. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

How does this all relate to the Palestinian claim of a right to return to their homes in what is now Israel? Quite directly. The Arab exodus from Israel in 1948 was the direct result of a genocidal war declared against the newly established Jewish state by all of its Arab neighbors, including the Arabs of Israel. If they had accepted the UN peace plan — two states for two people — there would be no Palestinian refugees. In the course of Israel's fierce battle for its survival — a battle in which it lost one percent of its population, including many Holocaust survivors and civilians — approximately 700,000 local Arabs were displaced. Many left voluntarily, having been promised a glorious return after the inevitable Arab victory. Others were forced out. Some of these Arabs could trace their homes in what became Israel hundreds of years back. Others were relatively recent arrivals from Arab countries such as Syria, Egypt, and Jordan.

Approximately the same number of Jews were displaced from their Arab homelands during this period. Nearly all of them could trace their heritage back thousands of years, well before the Muslims and Arabs became the dominant population. Like the Palestinian Arabs, some left voluntarily, but many had no realistic choice. The similarities are striking, but so are the differences.

The most significant difference is between how Israel dealt with the Jews who were displaced and how the Arab and Muslim word dealt with the Palestinians who had been displaced by a war they started.

Israel integrated its brothers and sisters from the Arab and Muslim world. The Arab world put its Palestinian brothers and sisters in refugee camps, treating them as political pawns — and festering sores — in its persistent war against the Jewish state.

It has now been 70 years since this exchange of populations occurred. It is time to end the deadly charade of calling the displaced Palestinians "refugees." Almost none of the neatly five million Arabs who now seek to claim the mantle of "Palestinian refugee" was ever actually in Israel. They are the descendants — some quite distant — of those who were actually displaced in 1948. The number of surviving Arabs who were personally forced out of Israel by the war started by their brethren is probably no more a few thousand, probably less. Perhaps they should be compensated, but not by Israel. The compensation should come from Arab countries that illegally seized the assets of their erstwhile Jewish residents whom they forced to leave. These few thousand Palestinians have no greater moral, historic or legal claim than the surviving Jewish individuals who were displaced during the same time period seven decades ago.

In life as in law there are statutes of limitations that recognize that history changes the status quo. The time has come – indeed it is long overdue – for the world to stop treating these Palestinians as refugees. That status ended decades ago. The Jews who came to Israel from Morocco many years ago are no longer refugees. Neither are the relatives of the Palestinians who have lived outside of Israel for nearly three quarters of a century.

Alan M. Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law Emeritus at Harvard Law School and author of The Case Against BDS.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12014/refugee-jews-morocco-palestinians-israel

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Exposing Eric Holder's Obstruction of Justice - Daniel John Sobieski




by Daniel John Sobieski

Holder's obstruction of justice and lying to Congress were crimes that went unpunished.

Have they no shame? Just days before it was announced that documents regarding the Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal were to be released after being hidden for six years under executive privilege, there was former Obama attorney general Eric Holder responding to a question on Bill Maher's show:
"Did you protect President Obama?" Maher asked Holder on Friday.
The former attorney general drew applause from the studio audience when he quipped: "The difference between me and Jeff Sessions is, I had a president I did not have to protect."
Holder had used nearly the same line in an interview with The Washington Post last month. Maher didn't challenge him to defend it, but some critics have accused Holder of protecting Obama for years.
In 2012, Holder became the first sitting attorney general to be held in contempt of Congress – in a 255-to-67 vote – for refusing to turn over documents related to a botched gun-running investigation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Holder did have a president to protect, as well as himself, partners in a criminal scheme to run guns into Mexico and into the hands of Mexican drug lords, guns that led to the deaths of border agents Brian Terry and Jaime Zapata. He was protecting a president who recently made his own self-serving and false claim:
When Barack Obama spoke at the 12th annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston, MA, many of us scratched our heads as to why the event was off-the-record. No photography, recording, or social media posting about Obama's appearance was allowed. Obviously, he would not be talking about golf. But, with over 3,500 people in attendance, there was no way this speech would be hidden for long. As expected, a recording of Obama's appearance was leaked.
Obama said a lot of things over the course of an hour, but I'd like to focus on his claim that, while some people in his administration made mistakes, "We didn't have a scandal that embarrassed us." ...
Obama may not be embarrassed by Fast and Furious, Benghazi, the IRS scandal, the VA scandal, Solyndra, the OPM hacking scandal, the GSA scandal, the Iran Ransom scandal, Uranium One, or the FISA abuse scandal currently being unraveled, but he should be. And the media should be embarrassed at how they failed the American public by pretending these scandals didn't exist, or weren't important.
You can't be embarrassed if you are incapable of feeling shame over causing the death of two border agents and hundreds of Mexican nationals targeted by Mexican drug lords. This may change with the announced release of the documents hidden away by Eric Holder:
The Justice Department said Wednesday it will turn over documents withheld by former Attorney General Eric Holder related to the Operation Fast and Furious scandal during the Obama administration.
The Justice Department entered into a conditional settlement agreement with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The settlement agreement was filed in federal court in Washington D.C., and ends six years of litigation arising out of the previous administration's refusal to produce records requested by the committee.
"The Department of Justice under my watch is committed to transparency and the rule of law," Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement Wednesday. "This settlement agreement is an important step to make sure that the public finally receives all the facts related to Operation Fast and Furious."
Holder's obstruction of justice and lying to Congress were crimes that went unpunished. As Rep. Darrell Issa, who headed the House Oversight Committee during the Fast and Furious investigation, has noted. But as with the current scandals involving Hillary Clinton and Uranium One, pay-for-play at the Clinton Foundation, and the corruption of the FISA court process by the FBI and DOJ to aid one party's attempt to collude with the Russians to overturn a sitting president, Holder was not counting on a Trump election to expose his corruption:
Estimates peg the number of deaths as a direct result of the gun-running scheme – which evidence indicates was intentional – at a staggering 200 or more. In Fast and Furious: Barack Obama's Bloodiest Scandal and Its Shameless Cover-Up, Townhall editor Katie Pavlich made the compelling case that former President Barack Obama and then-Attorney General Eric Holder. Holder "did willfully and knowingly sanction the program in order to advance their anti-second amendment agenda." ...
"They (the new documents) will show what we already know. That Eric Holder was directly involved in the cover up. He is a lawyer and should be disbarred," Rep. Issa said. "Eric Holder has systematically obstructed justice not just against the Senate and House but against the Terri [sic] family's legitimate right to know. And then he lied to me personally about all the documents that were necessary to be fully compliant with our requests."
Holder and Obama tried to hide the truth not only from the American people, but from the grieving family of Brian Terry. Recently, in the shadow of the Russia investigations and the testimony of former FBI director James Comey, the House Oversight Committee produced a fact-laden report documenting the collusion between the administration of President Barack Hussein Obama and Mexican drug cartels and the obstruction of justice by Attorney General Eric Holder in this...er, "matter." As Fox News reported:
Members of a congressional committee at a public hearing Wednesday blasted former President Barack Obama and his attorney general for allegedly covering up an investigation into the death of a Border Patrol agent killed as a result of a botched government gun-running project known as Operation Fast and Furious.
The House Oversight Committee also Wednesday released a scathing, nearly 300-page report that found Holder's Justice Department tried to hide the facts from the loved ones of slain Border Patrol [agent] Brian Terry – seeing his family as more of a "nuisance" than one deserving straight answers – and slamming Obama's assertion of executive privilege to deny Congress access to records pertaining to Fast and Furious[.] ...
Terry's death exposed Operation Fast and Furious, a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) operation in which the federal government allowed criminals to buy guns in Phoenix-area shops with the intention of tracking them as they were transported into Mexico. But the agency lost track of more than 1,400 of the 2,000 guns they allowed smugglers to buy. Two of those guns were found at the scene of Terry's killing.
"More than five years after Brian's murder, the Terry family still wonders about key details of Operation Fast and Furious," the committee's report states. "The (Holder) Justice Department's obstruction of Congress's investigation contributed to the Terry family's inability to find answers."
Former ATF agent Dodson has long tried to reveal the truth about Fast and Furious and the running of deadly weapons to Mexican drug lords. Dodson repeatedly attempted to spread the truth on the Obama administration's effort to supply Mexican drug lords with semiautomatic weapons:
ATF Special Agent John Dodson is a national hero who in 2011 blew the whistle on Operation Fast and Furious, the Obama administration's gun-running operation to Mexico.
Testifying before Congress, he disclosed that his supervisors had authorized the flow of semiautomatic weapons into Mexico instead of interdicting them, weapons that found their way into the hands of Mexican drug cartels with deadly results.
Dodson has put his intimate Fast and Furious knowledge into a book titled "The Unarmed Truth." It provides the first inside account of how the Obama administration permitted and helped sell some 2,000 guns to Mexican drug cartels, guns used in the murder of two federal agents and hundreds of Mexican citizens[.] ...
The operation was exposed when Brian was killed in December 2010 by an illegal immigrant [sic] working for the Sinaloa Cartel near Nogales, Ariz., just 10 miles from Mexico. Two Fast and Furious weapons were found at the murder scene.
Two such weapons also were used to murder Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Jaime Zapata in Mexico on Feb. 15, 2011, came [sic] from suspects who were under ATF watch but not arrested at the time[.] ...
"Allowing loads of weapons that we knew to be destined for criminals, this was the plan. It was so mandated," Dodson, then attached to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' (ATF) Phoenix office, testified before Rep. Darrell Issa's House Government Reform and Oversight Committee on June 15, 2011.
"Rather than conduct enforcement actions, we took notes, we recorded observations, we tracked movements of these individuals for a short time after their purchases, but nothing more," Dodson testified.
"Knowing all the while, just days after these purchases, the guns that we saw these individuals buy would begin turning up at crime scenes in the United States and Mexico, we still did nothing."
Hopefully now we will learn everything and do something about the criminal enterprise that was the Obama administration and the criminal who was Eric Holder.


Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/03/exposing_eric_holders_obstruction_of_justice.html

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Popular protest mounts over never-ending police probes against Netanyahu - debkaFile




by debkaFile

Ordinary people are saying they would vote Likud for the first time, although they had never done so before, as a mark of protest




The police are still short of evidence for a bribes suit against Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, even after a third state witness and a second year of probing.

The latest opinion polls attest to two parallel trends on the Israeli street: The prime minister’s right-of-center Likud would come out ahead in a general election today, improving its current 26 seats in the 120-member Knesset to 30 or even 36; and 56 percent don’t trust the law enforcement authorities, i.e. the police, the state prosecution and the courts, including the supreme court.

These trends are growing out of popular outrage over the way the prime minister and his family are being treated by the police and the mainstream media, which refer to them as convicted criminals without benefit of due process. There is a sense that if these authorities are powerful and ruthless enough to persecute the highest in the land – presenting them as guilty before being proven innocent – it could happen to anyone.

Ordinary people are saying they would vote Likud for the first time, although they had never done so before, as a mark of protest – especially after the police performance on Friday, March 2. As the country celebrated Purim with parades, funny costumes and parties, Netanyahu and his wife Sarah were closeted separately for police grilling sessions lasting five hours, during which they were confronted with testimonies by witnesses held at separate facilities. The police spokesman proudly boasted later about their “military-style” operation and leaked word from “unnamed sources” that hundreds of millions of shekels were now known to have changed hands in bribes.

This performance occurred three days before the prime minister was scheduled to sit down with President Donald Trump at the White House and discuss matters of vital importance to national security.

But that was not the end of it. Word that the Netanyahu family’s former spin doctor Nir Hetetz had turned state witness was dropped on the prime minister’s head on the day he and his wife Sarah were received at the White House with great affection and respect.  The prime minister retorted: “One or a thousand state witnesses won’t change the fact that I have nothing to hide.”

People were further shocked when television reporting that night relegated the Netanyahu-Trump talks to a minor slot in the newscast and led off with long harangues by “reporters” about how state witness Hefetz had described ugly family scenes between Netanyahu, his wife with a tantrum by their son Yair, over a decision on a security matter by the prime minister. The reporter knew all about it,  although the Hefetz testimony was covered by a gag order. Even if this piece of cheap gossip was gospel, people were asking how it supported a criminal case against the prime minister?  So what was the point of running it? And couldn’t it wait until Netanyahu had returned home?

Media reporting from “unnamed sources” almost certainly draws on pointed leaks, either from the police probe and the prosecution – for pressure on suspects – or from the lawyers involved in the case to drum up custom. Yet scraps of damaging gossip, smears and speculation are presented in TV newscasts and screaming news headlines day by day as fact. Each time, it is claimed that the police have the last nail for driving into the prime minister’s coffin – and it leads nowhere. On Monday night, one TV reporter went all the way. He announced: “A senior source told me that [the police] had completed Dossier 4000. Bribery equals jail.” (This dossier covers the allegation that Netanyahu gave illicit benefits to Shaul Elovitch, owner of the Bezeq telecom company and the Wallah online news site, for favorable coverage).

The TV presenter then sneered that Netanyahu, who was sitting at that moment in the Oval Office with the US president, was no doubt more preoccupied with the case against him than the subjects of their conversation – yet another “fact” fed to a by now highly skeptical audience.

This skepticism is all the more serious when it extends to the police. If all they have to offer the media are smears and gossip, how solid can their case be? is a common question. Three suspects, former close aides or confidants of the prime minister, have turned state witness – Hefetz claimed he had been held for two weeks in inhuman conditions to break him down – yet the police have so far gathered at the most material for a breach of faith charge, a humiliating letdown for the police after more than a year of serious corruption charges against a sitting prime minister. Their conduct in the case has given rise to a spreading consciousness that something is seriously wrong with law enforcement, if the axiom that no one is above the law in a democratic society can be twisted around to mean that no one is safe from the law.


debkaFile

Source: https://www.debka.com/popular-protest-mounts-never-ending-police-probes-netanyahu/

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Is Greece about to Recognize Jerusalem as Israel's Capital? - Maria Polizoidou




by Maria Polizoidou

On his return from a recent two-day trip to Israel -- Adonis Georgiadis, the vice president of Greece's opposition party, New Democracy, declared his support for recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

  • Two distinguished members of Greece's parliament, whose party has a good chance of defeating the current leadership, are breathing new life into the political system and reinvigorating crucial partnerships with Israel and the United States.
  • "The positions of the Palestinians are maximalist and dangerous, since they actually propose the Islamization of the city. Palestinian Islamist organizations, like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, have repeatedly launched threats against the non-Muslim population of Jerusalem. Islamists visualize a Jerusalem without churches and synagogues. On the other hand, the Israeli Knesset has recognized since 1980 the multi-religious character of Jerusalem and is committed to the unimpeded access of all believers to places of worship..." — MP Makis Voridis, a former minister from the New Democracy party, writing in the Greek daily Kathimerini.
On his return from a recent two-day trip to Israel -- where he met with high-level officials -- Adonis Georgiadis, the vice president of Greece's opposition party, New Democracy, declared his support for recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

In an interview with Skai Radio on March 7, Georgiadis called it "almost funny to discuss whether Jerusalem is a Jewish city or not."
"[It] was founded by the Jews... in ancient times. You can read Flavius Josephus or read Diodoros Siceliotis and see the references to the city of Jerusalem, where there was the High Priest of Solomon's Temple and that it was the city of the Jews. This is the reality."
When challenged by the interviewer, who said, "But as time went by, many things happened in the city's history," Georgiadis, a historian, replied:
"I don't disagree, but this city is from the beginning a Jewish city. They [Jews] made it; they founded it; it's theirs... Now, President Trump's decision to transfer the US Embassy to Jerusalem is a little bit provocative... But I have to say... that I am in favor of this decision rather than against it."
Two days earlier, on March 5, MP Makis Voridis, a former minister from the New Democracy party, expressed a similar position in an op-ed in the Greek daily Kathimerini:
"President Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is right and fair. The country [Israel] deserves the full support of the US and Europe, because it is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. Israel is neighboring states with authoritarian regimes that do not sufficiently safeguard human rights. Despite numerous external threats, this small country still retains its liberal and pluralistic character. Individual freedoms are constitutionally guaranteed; women's rights are fully respected; and Arab-Israeli citizens (20% of the population) have a high standard of living."
He continued:
"The Palestinian side has not shown any intention to negotiate seriously with the Jerusalem government. The positions of the Palestinians are maximalist and dangerous, since they actually propose the Islamization of the city. Palestinian Islamist organizations, like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, have repeatedly launched threats against the non-Muslim population of Jerusalem. Islamists visualize a Jerusalem without churches and synagogues. On the other hand, the Israeli Knesset has recognized since 1980 the multi-religious character of Jerusalem and is committed to the unimpeded access of all believers to places of worship (Basic Law 5740)."
Both Georgiadis and Voridis entered the New Democracy party at the behest of former Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, who is reported to be a personal friend of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. During his term as prime minister, from 2012 to 2015, Samaras worked hard to enhance the Greece-Israel relationship, which had been stagnant for decades. Judging by the polls -- according to which the New Democracy party is almost certain to beat the ruling Syriza party, headed by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras -- strengthening ties with Jerusalem and Washington is supported by a majority of the Greek public.


Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (right) meets with then Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras on October 8, 2013 in Jerusalem, Israel. (Photo by Amos Ben Gershom/GPO via Getty Images)

Many political analysts are predicting that by autumn 2018, the Tsipras government will announce new elections; it has lost a large share of its base, due to exorbitant taxation, on the one hand, and a loss of voter confidence in the government's foreign policy and domestic security on the other.

It is very encouraging for the future of Greece that two distinguished parliament members, whose party has a good chance of defeating the current leadership, are breathing new life into the political system and reinvigorating crucial partnerships with Israel and the United States.

Maria Polizoidou, a reporter, broadcast journalist, and consultant on international and foreign affairs, is based in Greece. She has a post-graduate degree in "Geopolitics and Security Issues in the Islamic complex of Turkey and Middle East" from the University of Athens.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12009/greece-jerusalem-israel

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Hoping for regime change in Iran - David M. Weinberg




by David M. Weinberg

Lubrani was convinced that Iran's nuclear program and revolutionary ambitions threatened the entire world, and that the only way to stop the ayatollahs was by supporting change from within Iran.

The legendary Uri Lubrani died this week at age 91. His foremost desire was to see the Islamic revolutionary regime in Iran overthrown, and he passionately believed that Israel and Western powers could and should do much more to bring this about. Lubrani's passing is an opportunity to revisit this important issue.

Lubrani was a fixture in the Israeli foreign affairs and defense establishment from day one, and I was fortunate to know him. He smuggled Jewish immigrants into British Mandate Palestine while serving in the Haganah, and fought in the War of Independence. He was bureau chief to Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett, and Arab affairs adviser and bureau director to Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. He served under every administration since then, all the way through to Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon.

While serving as ambassador to Ethiopia, he orchestrated Operation Solomon, which brought 20,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel. In the 1980s, he was coordinator of operations in Lebanon and made ultimately unsuccessful efforts to repatriate captured Israeli airman Ron Arad.

Most notably, he was the Israeli mission's head in Tehran from 1973 to 1978, the final years of the Jewish state's warm relations with Iran before the fall of the shah. He claimed that he foresaw the fall of the shah six months before it happened, but nobody believed him, including CIA analysts.

After that, Lubrani embarked on a one-man campaign to foment regime change in Iran. He wrote articles and briefs arguing that this was possible and should be a priority program, and he presented his arguments to anyone in Washington and Jerusalem who would listen to him. He was convinced that Iran's nuclear program and revolutionary ambitions threatened the entire world, and that the only way to stop the ayatollahs was by supporting change from within Iran.

When the Green Revolution rocked the streets of Tehran and other major cities following the corrupt Iranian elections of 2009, Lubrani was joined by many other experts and officials who felt that an opportunity was at hand to reinforce the protesters and bring about an end to the regime of the ayatollahs.

But then-U.S. President Barack Obama was deaf to the pleas of the Iranian protesters and to free-Iran advocates like Lubrani. Instead, Obama already was secretly promising goodies to the ayatollahs in exchange for a nuclear deal.

Lubrani was out of commission when the latest round of protests rocked Iran beginning last December, but you could hear echoes of him in the ensuing public policy debates. Could this lead to regime change in Iran? Should America and other important actors weigh in with moral and perhaps material support for the protesters? And would such Western "interference" only delegitimize the protesters and ultimately backfire?

Sure enough, the usual suspects (mainly former Obama administration officials) argued that Washington should stand back and do no more than pray for the protesters. They noted that the Islamic republic's apparatuses were vast and sturdy, the Iranian machine of oppression was well-oiled and brutal, and Iran's regional and international alliances were impressive and empowering – so the likelihood of overthrowing the regime was slim. Wishful thinking, at best. And anyway there was Obama's signature "achievement," the JCPOA nuclear agreement, to protect.

Other analysts, however, noted a qualitative difference in the recent protests and saw opportunities to weaken the regime. As opposed to past protests, which had focused on the economy and corruption, the new ones had a nationalist edge to them, with the demonstrators calling for a return to a pre-Islamic Revolution Iran.

"Stop investing in Syria, start investing in us," "Clerics, go home, free the country," and "Death to Khamenei, we want [Shah] Pahlavi," were some of the protest slogans.

Consequently, notable Iran experts including former CIA agent Reuel Marc Gerecht of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former State Department official Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations have argued that it is in U.S. interests to see the Iranian regime's internal conflicts intensify.

Specifically, they see a worsening struggle between President Hassan Rouhani and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that threatens Iran's governing edifice. The result of the factional fighting is paralysis at a time when the theocracy is facing popular disaffection, economic decline (with unemployment among young people at 40%) and imperial overstretch.

Gerecht and Takeyh argue that the U.S. can help crack the regime. They say that President Trump should use his bully pulpit and economic sanctions aggressively to expose and punish the regime's tyrannical behavior. Pushback against Tehran's gains in Syria would help too, as would a tidal wave of sanctions against the Revolutionary Guards. "Iran is a volcano," they assert. "We want it to erupt."

The Trump administration has taken some advantage of the unrest to back up its portrayal of the Iranian government as a "rogue regime" and an "evil dictatorship" not supported by most Iranian people. The State Department used its Farsi-language Twitter and Facebook accounts to offer support for the protesters, despite warnings from Iran and other countries, such as Russia, not to get involved. And U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley said that "all freedom-loving people must stand with the cause [of the Iranian protestors]."

That's a lot more support than the Iranian protestors got in the Obama era, but as far as I can tell, it remains merely rhetorical.

Speaking at the annual AIPAC conference this week, Prime Minister Netanyahu also sounded a note of support.

"As we counter Iran's aggression, we should always remember the brave people of Iran ... [including] students that are tortured and shot for advocating freedom. We stand with those in Iran who stand for freedom. I believe that a day will come when this horrible tyranny will disappear ... and at that point, the historic friendship between the people of Israel and the people of Persia will be re-established," he said.

Fine words and a fine sentiment. But again, might more be done to advance an Iranian counterrevolution? Uri Lubrani certainly thought so, and he was not naive.



David M. Weinberg is vice president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies, jiss.org.il. His personal website is davidmweinberg.com.

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/hoping-for-regime-change-in-iran/

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Two Opposing Black Views of America - Lloyd Marcus




by Lloyd Marcus
 

Justice Clarence Thomas epitomizes the self-reliant mindset far superior to and more empowering than bitterly viewing oneself as a victim.

I had a fascinating phone conversation with a black longtime friend. Though we've had passionate political clashes over the years, including periods of not speaking, we remain friends. He is a clergyman and college professor in his 70s.

While discussing black movies Fences, Get Out, and Black Panther, my friend said something outrageous. He said it is impossible for a white person in America not to be racist because racism is entwined in all things American. Folks, he sincerely believes his absurd view of America.

He went on to recount horrific incidences of racial injustice: a black boy sharing an elevator with a white girl igniting a race riot, black inventions stolen, and black businesses destroyed. These events happened in the 1920s. And yet the passion with which my friend reported them was as if they had happened yesterday.

My friend's anger at America is as if eight years of Obama never happened and Oprah is not worth three billion dollars. He believes that police routinely murder young black men. He believes that America's evil white power structure labors 24-7, scheming to undermine blacks economically and culturally.

In his circles of black academia, his erroneous beliefs are deemed inarguably true. His colleagues think any black who doesn't subscribe to these obvious truths is either an idiot or an Uncle Tom.

Throughout our phone conservation, my friend repeatedly referred to whites as "crackers." It never dawned on him that his derogatory use of the term "cracker" is as racist as whites calling us the N-word.

My friend was even annoyed by praises showered upon Billy Graham in response to his death. Though he would deny it, my friend has a deep hatred for whites. And yet I have witnessed God use him to bless people. I've come to realize that neither facts nor truth can penetrate my friend erroneously viewing white Americans as blacks' nemesis. Therefore, I am praying for God to heal his vengeful heart against white Americans.

On the bright side, I caught an interview with black Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, a hero of mine.

Justice Thomas said he is worn down by what is going on in our country's culture. Justice Thomas said, "At some point, we're going to be fatigued with everybody being the victim." Justice Thomas recounted a conversation he had with a young black woman who said, "I am really tired of having to play the role of being black. I just want to go to school."

Folks, I know where this black sista is coming from. She just wants to be an American pursuing her dreams without being forced to carry the baggage of viewing herself as a victim of her skin color. Isn't this what civil rights pioneers fought, suffered, and died to achieve?

Decades ago, we allowed leftists to infiltrate public education, transforming our kids into their operatives. Consequently, black Millennials who have never suffered an ounce of racism believe that racial loyalty requires them to riot in the streets demanding racial justice. Leftists have our kids hating and fighting a war with a nonexistent enemy.

If a black awakens on a sunny morning, grateful to be born in the greatest land of opportunity on the planet, viewing the world as his oyster, knowing that between him and God, they can achieve great things – leftists will call that black an Uncle Tom traitor to his race. Leftists have decreed that we black Americans must view ourselves as victims in this evil, eternally racist country.

Clarence Thomas grew up in extreme poverty, familiar with feeling cold and hungry. He was sent to live with his grandfather. Justice Thomas said regarding his grandfather, "He is the single greatest human being I've ever met." Clarence's grandfather would not allow him or his brother to wallow in their bad circumstances, whine, or complain.

With only nine months of education, Clarence's grandfather never saw himself as a victim. He never knew his father, and his mother died when he was 7. His grandmother, who was a freed slave, took him in. And then she died. His uncle, a hard man with 13 kids, took him in. And yet Clarence's grandfather never complained.

Whenever young Clarence wanted to complain, his grandfather would say, "You have to play the hand you're dealt." Clarence's grandfather became a great businessman, including owning his own farm.

Justice Thomas has a bust in his office with his grandfather's favorite quote: "Old Man Can't is dead. I helped bury him." Justice Thomas said that is the mindset his grandfather grew up with. 

Isn't Justice Thomas's self-reliant mindset far superior to and more empowering than bitterly viewing oneself as a victim, placing one's success or failure in the hands of someone other than himself? Justice Thomas marveled that he grew up in a world of total illiteracy only to find himself in the Library of Congress. Justice Thomas is expressing the greatness of America, folks.

Why isn't Justice Thomas's grateful and hope-filled vision of America, a land ripe with opportunity, being touted by civil rights activists, inspiring black youths to make right choices to become all they can be? Instead, leftists demand that black Americans view themselves as victims. I choose to live in Justice Thomas's America.


Lloyd Marcus, The Unhyphenated American
Help Lloyd spread the Truth
http://LloydMarcus.com

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/03/two_opposing_black_views_of_america.html

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