Posted on 06/27/2017 3:45:45 PM PDT by Mr. Mojo
Should the United States pay Palestinian terrorists? For the overwhelming majority of Americans and Israelis this is a rhetorical question.
The position of the American people was made clear – yet again – last week when US President Donald Trump’s senior envoys Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt met with Palestinian Authority chairman and PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas and repeated Trump’s demand that the PA cut off the payments.
Not only did Abbas reject their demand, he reportedly accused the presidential envoys of working as Israeli agents.
Abbas’s treatment of Kushner and Greenblatt was in line with his refusal to even meet with US Ambassador David Friedman, reportedly because he doesn’t like Friedman’s views.
The most amazing aspect of Abbas’s contemptuous treatment of the Trump administration is that he abuses Trump and his senior advisers while demanding that Trump continue funding him in excess of half a billion dollars a year, and do so in contravention of the will of the Republican-controlled Congress.
Abbas’s meeting last week took place as the Taylor Force Act makes its way through Congress.
Named for Taylor Force, the West Point graduate and US army veteran who was murdered in March 2016 in Tel Aviv by a Palestinian terrorist, the Taylor Force Act will end US funding of the PA until it ends its payments to terrorists and their families – including the family of Force’s murderer Bashar Masalha.
The Taylor Force Act enjoys bipartisan majority support in both the House and the Senate. It is also supported by the Israeli government.
Given the stakes, what could possibly have possessed Abbas to believe he can get away with mistreating Trump and his envoys? Who does he think will save him from Congress and the White House? Enter Commanders for Israel’s Security (CIS), stage left.
CIS is a consortium of 260 left-wing retired security brass. It formed just before the 2015 elections. CIS refuses to reveal its funding sources. Several of its most visible members worked with the Obama administration through the George Soros-funded Center for a New American Security.
Since its inception, CIS has effectively served as a PLO lobby. It supports Israeli land giveaways and insists that Israel can do without a defensible eastern border.
Last Wednesday CIS released a common-sense defying statement opposing the Taylor Force Act.
The generals mind-numbingly insisted the US must continue paying the terrorism-financing PA because Israel needs the help of the terrorism-incentivizing PA to fight the terrorists the PA incentivizes. If the US cuts off funding to the PA because it incentivizes terrorism, then the PA will refuse to cooperate with Israel in fighting the terrorism it incentivizes.
If you fail to follow this logic, well, you don’t have what it takes to be an Israeli general.
Moreover, if you fail to follow this logic, and you defy the position of Israel’s retired generals, then you may well endanger Israel.
After all, they know what’s best even better than the Israeli government because they are retired Israeli generals.
The CIS group would be bad enough for Israel on its own. But unfortunately, the radical politics of its members – and their anonymous funders – are all too resonant inside of the IDF itself.
And just as CIS members use the ranks they received in the past to undermine the powers of the government today, so the current crop of serving generals use their positions to advance policies that are contrary to the expressed position of the government.
This is nowhere more evident than in the behavior of the Civil Administration in Judea and Samaria.
Until Israel formed the PLO-controlled PA in 1994, the Civil Administration was responsible for governing Judea and Samaria as the governing arm of the military government that Israel set up in the area after the Six Day War.
In 1996, Israel transferred all Palestinian population centers in Judea and Samaria to the PA. Since then, the Civil Administration has been responsible only for Area C where all Israeli communities are located and where between 100,000 and 200,000 Palestinians also live.
The question of what the ultimate disposition of Area C will be is the top issue on the national agenda today. The majority of government ministers and the majority of the public support applying Israeli law to all or parts of the area.
Yet while the government debates the issue and formulates policies to advance whatever policies it adopts on this issue, the Civil Administration has for the past several years been acting independently to undermine and constrain the government’s ability to make strategic decisions relating to Area C.
Among other things, the Civil Administration has been independently initiating Palestinian settlement projects in Area C that undermine Israel’s ability to govern the areas. By the same token, the Civil Administration has used its powers to scupper, delay and prevent Israeli construction projects in the area.
The story of the Civil Administration’s rogue policymaking was catapulted to the headlines last week when Channel 2 reported that it was advancing a plan to massively expand the Palestinian city of Kalkilya into Area C. Among other things, the plan endangers Israeli communities whose territory abuts the expanded boundaries of Kalkilya advanced by the plan.
Channel 2 reported that the Netanyahu government’s security cabinet had given the Civil Administration a green light to begin construction.
The story caused a political outcry not only from Likud voters but from the security cabinet members themselves. Led by Minister Ze’ev Elkin, the Likud ministers insisted that they had been misled by the Civil Administration which deliberately hid the nature of the plan from them when it brought it to the cabinet for approval.
The ministers’ protests ring true because the Civil Administration has a history of acting in this manner.
In 2008 for instance, the Civil Administration initiated a building scheme in the Jordan Valley that would have taken land from Moshav Tomer to build Palestinian settlements.
The head of the local council complained to the government only to discover that the ministers had no idea what he was talking about. The Civil Administration had undertaken the plan, which undermined Israel’s control over a strategically vital area, without government knowledge or approval.
In contrast, and again against the wishes of the government, the Civil Administration has repeatedly acted to block Israeli construction in Area C. For instance, the IDF insists that no land deal between Israel and Palestinians is final until the IDF approves it. The policy harms Israeli construction in two ways.
First, it gives the Civil Administration the power – which it uses – to delay Israeli construction indefinitely.
Second, by forcing parties to land deals to come forward publicly, the Civil Administration intimidates Palestinian land sellers. They know that if their land deals with Israelis become public they will face execution by the PA.
Returning to Abbas for a moment, the PLO chief may have overplayed his hand by insulting Trump and his senior envoys. All the politicized retired and currently serving Israeli generals together cannot convince Trump to send US tax dollars to a terrorism supporting leader who trashes him and his senior officials. Consequently, there is every reason to believe that the Taylor Force Act will soon be signed into law and the US will end its financing of Palestinian terrorism.
But even if Washington cuts off funding to the PA, Israel is still left to deal with its radicalized generals who exploit their rank to undermine the government.
The best way to end this situation is for the government to shut down the Civil Administration and get the IDF out of the governing business in Judea and Samaria. So long as the government continues to empower unaccountable generals to administer civilian areas instead of its accountable, civilian bureaucracy, we will continue to be confronted with the surreal spectacle of Israeli generals lobbying for Palestinian terrorists.
If the government applies Israeli law to Area C, it can still negotiate with the PLO, just as it has negotiated about the Golan Heights and Jerusalem. But in the meantime, it will remove one of the most corrupting and corrosive forces preying on our generals and our democracy for the benefit of the Israeli and Palestinian residents of Area C alike and indeed for Israel as a whole.
Not exactly a surprise. I'm sure their "pensions" are plenty cushy.
We are SICK AND TIRED of America funding and protecting and lending “respectability” to Moslem mass-murderers and terrorists like PLO/PA/Abbas/Fatah
This is REVOLTING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!This is NOT what America stands for!!!! DISGUSTING to the Max!
they need to be Eliminated ASAP, not paid to murder more innocent people.
Disgusting.
Is Teump waffling on this because he is obsessed with deal making? This is ridiculous. There is no deal with incivilization, it is contrary to peace. Peace is not between two parties but between oneself and civilized behavior and self control.
Is Trump waffling on this because he is obsessed with deal making? This is ridiculous. There is no deal with the uncivilized, it is contrary to peace. Peace is not between two parties but between oneself and civilized behavior and self control.
As for the Israeli Generals, I thought the elitist Hollywood and NYC JAPs in America were bad enough pretending they were of the oppressed people, but this one takes the cake. Of course Sorros corruption and BS is a quite the helping hand for relevancy.
By the way, a lot of rhe so called Russian immigrants to Israel are not even Jewish, or have very little in relation to their past jewishness. There is a big fraud going on of them passing through Germany pretending to be jewish on immigration papers. A Ulrainian jew even noted to me that the Eussians at rhe market sell “kosher meat” to the religious which happens to be pork inbeknownst to them.
The US should never have paid the first penny .
Agreed fully and completely!
it is a black mark on our nation’s history
We used to fight Moslem terrorists (ask the Marines), not finance them
The Israeli IDF top brass are comprised of Left-wing doves and right wing hawks like any major (and Democratic) country. The historical base of the IDF was originally Labor party (Left but tough) operatives who had a monopoly on the country from 1920-1977. Things have changed a lot since then.
The argument goes like this:
The people in the know, with years of combat experience under their belts know the score, right? Who is to say that their collective conclusions are wrong or correct? Maybe they’re right, there’s only a diplomatic “solution” to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Note I did not say, “Paleostinian-Israeli Conflict”?
Generals in Israel have often been wrong.
Take for example, the brilliant and daring Ehud Barak who is Israel’s most decorated officer, formerly held every important post including Prime Minister. He inherited another former great Israeli General, Yitzak Rabin’s policies, namely the Oslo Peace Debacle, (1993-2002). He totally mismanaged the concepts of what he had learned as a soldier and screwed up as a politician. It was also his (and many Left-Wing generals’) idea to give the Golan Heights back to Syria in 1999!!
The people of Israel, (remembering the Syrians shelling 1948-1967) would have none of it. The Barak leadership even played a silly pretend game of offering a referendum vote on the issue if it came to that. They never really intended on offering the people a say.
Fortunately, time passed, Barak was ousted (though he DID pull IDF troops out of the South Lebanese “Security Zone” in 2000), and now we have seen Syria disintegrate to Iran and Russia.
WHAT WOULD BE HAPPENING on the shores of the Sea of Galilee had Israel returned the Golan under the intelligent recommendations of Israel’s Left wing leadership???
What this all proves is that Israeli leaders have to stop PRETENDING they have a serious partner on the other side of the chasm and live with the fact that the Arabs do not want peace.
It’s pretty sobering but until such time the Arab’s (not just Paleostinians) mature, grow up, get real and desire peace, there won’t be peace. On the other hand, we now see them forming secret alliances with Israel to counter the Iranian threat to the region (thank you President Obama). Hold onto you hats folks...
...but, but...the US is funding the “moderate” murderers...
...but, but...the US is funding the “moderate” murderers...
Free Republic is a place very resistant to accepting the reality that Israeli military and intelligence are dominated by Leftist kooks. “Mossad” isn’t going to take down Obama or Soros because, for the most part, they agree with them.
We can’t wait for DJT to drain the Snake Department Nazi swamp once and for all. Islamonazis especially included.
Not dominated by any stretch. But they're there. Just like they are here.
In the U.S., the trend of the military brass has been leftward for quite some time. They're becoming more PC by the day.
In Israel, it's going in the right direction.
The 260 kooks mentioned in the article are all retired. From another generation were leftists predominated.
Your description of the trends seems accurate. Israel going in the right direction, while America still drifts left, at least until now.
If you'd like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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