Tag Archive for: Antony Blinken

Bidenites Quash Rumor That They Might Slow Weapons Sales to Pressure Israel

The only thing now slowing weapons sales to Israel is the failure of Congress to pass an appropriations bill which contains provisions for military aid to both Ukraine and Israel. What is holding those sales up has nothing to do with any loss of support for Israel, but merely reflects the failure of the parties to come to an agreement on controlling the southern border.

But a malicious rumor has been started by government employees who bear an anti-Israel animus. In late November, more than 500 officials from some 40 agencies signed a letter protesting Biden’s Israel policy, which they found too indulgent toward the Jewish state. The letter was ignored.

In mid- December, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken approved the sale of of M107 155 mm. artillery shells and related equipment, bypassing congressional review. Blinken had determined that an emergency existed requiring the immediate sale to Israel, thereby waiving congressional review requirements, according to the Pentagon.

The administration continues to stand up for Israel at the UN, in both the General Assembly and the Security Council. It dismissed as “outrageous” South Africa’s charge before the International Court of Justice that Israel in Gaza has engaged in “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide.” It has backed up Israel’s version of disputed events in Gaza, such as the so-called “Israeli airstrike” (in truth, a misfired rocket by Palestinian Islamic Jihad) on the Al-Ahli Hospital, and the killing of Abu Sahloul, not by an Israeli sniper, but by a Hamas gunman. More on this suggestion that there might be a slowdown in weapons sales to pressure Israel, and the swift, firm rejection of such a possibility by the Administration, can be found here: “White House rejects report US considering slowing weapons sales to Israel,” Jerusalem Post, January

The Biden administration is considering slowing weapons sales to Israel to place pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to scale back the war in Gaza, US officials told NBC News on Sunday, although the White House later rejected the report.

This bit of malicious musing on a Sunday news program about a possible slowing of weapons sales to Israel reflects the desire of some in the administration to make such pressure happen, but within hours the administration had rejected the suggestion as false.

According to the NBC report, the Pentagon was reviewing what weaponry Israel has requested that could be withheld as leverage, although no decisions had been made yet.

Among the weaponry being considered as leverage are 155 mm artillery rounds and joint direct attack munitions (JDAMs). JDAMs are used to convert regular bombs into precision-guided bombs….

Of course, withholding 155 mm artillery rounds would only lead to the IDF relying more on airstrikes, which are likely to cause greater destruction of civilian buildings and larger numbers of civilian casualties than the use of artillery. Similarly, withholding JDAMS would mean that the Israeli Air Force would not be able to convert regular bombs into precision-guided bombs, resulting again in more civilian casualties and greater destruction of infrastructure around the target. This is exactly what the Israelis, and the Americans, wish to avoid.

Israel has a right and obligation to defend themselves against the threat of Hamas, while abiding by international humanitarian law and protecting civilian lives, and we remain committed to support Israel in its fight against Hamas. We have done so since Oct. 7, and will continue to. There has not been a change in our policy,” a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council said.

That sounds good. I think they mean it. The administration still may fondly believe in that will-o’-the-wisp of a “two-state solution” — almost everybody does, alas — but in its reiterated statement of support for Israel in Gaza, and its assurance that weapons deliveries to Israel will not be slowed, it is keeping the faith.

AUTHOR

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Blinken Unveils Grand Plan for Mideast Peace, and Yes, It’s Ridiculous

If you’re a leftist in the Washington establishment, it doesn’t matter how often your fail or how frequently you’re proven wrong. That’s how we ended up with Old Joe Biden as president and Antony Blinken as Secretary of State.

Blinken was in Davos Wednesday for the big Commie shindig, uh, that is, the World Economic Forum, and he was peddling the same faulty analysis and failed remedies that have caused so much trouble in the world already as the cure-alls for the world’s problems. He has done this before. And he’ll do it again.

Blinken unveiled his grand plan for Middle East peace: a Palestinian state. Yes, that’s right: Hamas murdered 1,200 Israelis, many in unimaginably gruesome ways, with Palestinian civilians gleefully cheering them on, and Blinken wants them to end up being the ones who emerge the winners from this present conflict.

A Palestinian state would seem to be the last thing any sane person would recommend now after we have seen Gaza become a jihad terror statelet, but Blinken has not bothered to let the experience of history, much less the power of common sense, revise his preconceived notions. As far as he is concerned, the Palestinians are violent because they lack self-determination.

Giving them self-determination (you know, like when they elected Hamas in Gaza) will therefore fix the problem. Never mind that they’ve turned down numerous quite generous offers to give them a state. Remember: the facts don’t matter in Washington.

Nor do they matter in Davos. And so Blinken said Wednesday that Israel could only attain “genuine security” if it allowed the Palestinians another base for jihad attacks in addition to Gaza, that is, a Palestinian state. He even had the audacity to present this tired, multiply failed, ill-conceived “solution” as a daring new idea that the Israelis needed to have the imagination and courage to seize upon.

“The problem is getting from here to there,” he explained, “and of course, it requires very difficult, challenging decisions. It requires a mindset that is open to that perspective.

Blinken appears deeply committed to this idea. The Jewish Press reported that he also brought it up last week at a press conference about his latest trip to Israel: “We continue to discuss how to build a more durable peace and security for Israel within the region. As I told the prime minister, every partner that I met on this trip said that they’re ready to support a lasting solution that ends the long-running cycle of violence and ensures Israel’s security. But they underscored that this can only come through a regional approach that includes a pathway to a Palestinian state.”

As far as Blinken was concerned, Israel was the problem. Regarding a Palestinian state, he added: “To make this possible, Israel must be a partner to Palestinian leaders who are willing to lead their people in living side by side in peace with Israel and as neighbors. And Israel must stop taking steps that undercut Palestinians’ ability to govern themselves effectively.”

Unfortunately, this foreign policy wizard didn’t bother to explain what “steps” Israel has taken to “undercut Palestinians’ ability to govern themselves effectively.” Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has done that well enough by himself; he is now 88 years old and is in the eighteenth year of his four-year term as president. Then there are the Hamas top dogs Ismail Haniyeh, Khaled Mashal, and Mousa Abu Marzouk, who have become billionaires by siphoning off aid money the witless Western left has sent to the Palestinians.

Nor did Blinken elucidate his fantasy that Palestinian leaders “are willing to lead their people in living side by side in peace with Israel and as neighbors.” Is there even one? If Blinken had been asked to name one, he wouldn’t have been able to do so without lying.

Arab intransigence has been clear from the beginning of the conflict: back on Nov. 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 181, calling for the creation of an Arab state and a Jewish state in Palestine. The Arabs had rejected it immediately. Neither Biden nor Blinken nor anyone else who still advances the “two-state solution” ever seems to ponder why.

What Blinken and the rest of the foreign policy establishment fail to realize, or refuse to realize, is that the UN partition plan failed for one reason only: The Muslim Arabs of Palestine and the surrounding Arab countries will never accept a Jewish state, even if it were the size of a postage stamp.

As “The Palestinian Delusion” shows, that refusal is rooted in Islamic concepts and commands, most notably the Qur’anic command to “drive out those who drove you out” (2:191) and its underlying assumption that any land that has been ruled by the Muslims at any time belongs to the Muslims forever and can never be ruled by anyone else. If a Palestinian state ever were established, it would quickly become a jihad terror base, as did Gaza when the Israelis withdrew from it.

AUTHOR

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Iraqi PM Meets With Iranian Leadership, Praises Hamas One Day After Meeting With Antony Blinken

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani met with Iranian leadership in a show of support for Hamas one day after he met with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, according to multiple reports.

Blinken traveled to Baghdad on Sunday to express concerns to al-Sudani about increased attacks by Iranian-backed militia groups on U.S. troops stationed in Iraq, according to the State Department. al-Sudani met with Iranian leadership one day later in Tehran to praise Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attacks and denounce Israel’s counteroffensive, according to a press release from Iran Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s office.

al-Sudani met with Khamenei in Tehran on Monday to jointly condemn Israel’s counteroffensive in the Gaza Strip, according to a press release from Khamenei’s office. During their meeting, al-Sudani described Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks as a “heroic operation.” “Despite this joy [referring to the Hamas Oct. 7 attacks], we are all deeply devastated by the brutal massacre in Gaza, which is a collective revenge on the people of this small region,” al-Sudani said.

al-Sudani also met with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and criticized the U.S. for supporting Israel’s “crimes against humanity and genocide,” according to a press release from Raisi’s office. The two agreed that a broader regional conflict could only be avoided if Israel halts its counteroffensive. “Those who want the scope [of] this crisis not to expand to all over the region, must put pressure on the Zionist regime to stop this aggression and organized killing,” al-Sudani said on Monday.

During his visit with Blinken a day prior, al-Sudani “made very clear” that he condemns attacks by Iranian-backed militias against U.S. troops stationed in Iraq, according to a press release from the U.S. Embassy in Georgia. There have been 47 attacks on U.S. targets in the Middle East, including Syria and Iraq, since Hamas carried out its attacks against Israel on Oct. 7.

“I had a good, productive, candid meeting with Prime Minister al-Sudani,” Blinken told reporters on Sunday. “It was very important to send a very clear message to anyone who might seek to take advantage of the conflict in Gaza to threaten our personnel here or anywhere else in the region: don’t do it.”

The State Department did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

JAKE SMITH

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.


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The Biden Administration has Blood on its Hands

Ignored Warnings from His Own State Department.


Hamas And Amoral Clarity

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON | October 12, 2023

One unexpected blowback from the medieval Hamas’s barbaric murdering of hundreds of Israeli civilians is the revelation of current global amorality.

More than 20 Harvard University identity politics groups pledged their support to the Hamas murderers — to the utter silence for days of Harvard President Claudine Gay.

Americans knew higher education practiced racist admission policies. It has long promoted racially segregated dorms and graduations. And de facto it has destroyed the First Amendment.

But the overt support for Hamas killers by the diversity, equity, and inclusion crowd on a lot of campuses exposes to Americans the real moral and intellectual rot in higher education.

Democratic Socialist members of the new woke Democrat Party openly expressed ecstatic support for Hamas’s bloodwork.

Their biggest fears were not dead fellow Americans or hostages, or some 1,000 butchered Jewish civilians. Instead, they were fearful that righteous Israeli retaliation might destroy the Hamas death machine.

Palestinians for years fooled naïfs in Europe and the Obama and Biden administrations into sending billions of dollars into Gaza.

These monies were channeled to tunnel into Israel, to obtain a huge rocket arsenal, and to craft plans to wipe out Jews.

The Biden administration has blood on its hands.

As soon as President Joe Biden took power, he resumed massive subsidies to radical Palestinians, canceled by the prior Trump administration.

He ignored warnings from his own state Department that such fungible monies would soon fuel Hamas terrorism.

His administration dropped sanctions against Iran, ensuring that Tehran would enjoy a multi-billion-dollar windfall to be distributed to Israel’s existential enemies — another fact well-known to the Biden administration.

If the Biden administration had announced overtly that it was rabidly anti-Israel, it would be hard to imagine anything it could have done differently from its present nihilist behavior.

Biden and company quickly restarted the defunct Iran appeasement deal — a leftover from the anti-Israeli Obama administration. No surprise, they appointed radical pro-Iranian activist Robert Malley to head the negotiations.

Malley allegedly has leaked American classified documents to Iranian officials and is under investigation by the FBI. He did his best to place pro-Iranian, anti-American activists into the high echelons of the U.S. government.

Biden was intent on forcing South Korea to release to Iran $6 billion in sanctioned frozen money.

That expectation of cash ensured Iran would be reimbursed for its present terrorist arming spree.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken shamefully tweeted that Israel should settle for an immediate ceasefire. No wonder he soon withdrew his unhinged posting.

That idiocy would be the moral equivalent of an American ally in December 1941 urging the U.S. to seek negotiations with imperial Japan after its surprise bombing of Pearl Harbor — to avoid a “cycle of violence.”

The Biden team has drained strategic arms stockpiles in Israel, designed to help the Jewish state in extremis.

It recklessly abandoned a multibillion-dollar arms trove in Kabul, some of which reportedly made its way from Taliban killers to the Hamas murderers.

Once the mass murdering started, the amoral clarity of our “allies” was stunning.

NATO partner Turkey openly sided with the killers. It — along with Blinken — called for a cease-fire — at the moment the Hamas death squads had finished, and Israel was ready to hold Hamas to account.

Qatar, where the U.S. Central Command is based, proved little more than a Hamas front.

It offers sanctuary to the architects of Hamas killing. And Qatar ensures a safe financial pipeline to Hamas from Iran and the radical Arab world.

Some of the most vehement current supporters of the Hamas death squads were immigrants to America from the Middle East.

Oddly, they apparently had fled just such illiberal Middle East regimes to reach a tolerant, democratic, and secure United States.

Yet they now endorse the Hamas butchering of Jewish civilians. Its savagery is aimed at executing, raping and beheading Jews, and then mutilating their bodies.

Hamas apparently hopes to shock the Israeli government into voluntarily committing suicide — in line with the ancient Hamas agenda to destroy the Jewish state.

In a strange way, this reign of death has become a touchstone, an acid test of sorts that has revealed the utter amorality of enemies abroad and quite dangerous people at home.

It is past time that Americans deal with the medieval world that was revealed this week rather than keep dreaming in the fantasy world of our government.

Americans need to stop illegal immigration and restore their southern border, while ceasing all immigration from unhinged, hostile nations.

The military must return to its deterrent role and fire its woke commissariat.

Our leaders must accept that in the last three years of the Biden administration, serial American appeasement abroad, disunity at home and social chaos have encouraged an entire host of enemies — China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Middle East illiberal regimes and former friends like Turkey and Qatar.

And our enemies dream of doing to us what we just saw in Israel.

Hamas is not fighting for a Palestinian State that shares borders with Israel. Hamas’s goal is the total annihilation of the Jewish people and the Nation of Israel.

It’s time to get informed and equipped for another wave of Islamic Terrorism! Here is my gift to you, in October, with your annual Substack subscription. Receive critical information and action alerts to make a real impact on our national security, freedoms, and culture.

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EDITORS NOTE: This ACT for America column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

Biden’s Coup in Israel

The puppet masters and puppet regime defeat democracy.


In the early days of March, a small crowd of leftists gathered outside the U.S. consulate in Tel Aviv holding up signs reading, “Biden help!” and “Biden, Blinken, Our democracy is sinking”.

A speaker at the rally appealed to Biden to “save us from ourselves”.

The consulate rally was held under the banner of “Defend Israeli Democracy” which had organized international protests against democratic judicial reform that would have restored checks and balances. International rallies, including one in Berlin which featured women dressed as the ‘handmaids’ from the TV show and signs accusing Israel of “fascism” and being an “apartheid state”, were not speaking to Israelis, but to the international anti-Israel Left.

Clips from the Tel Aviv rally were remixed by another of the interchangeable anti-democracy groups, Yalla Tikva, urging Biden to save Israeli democracy. The operation was as slick with professional videography, editing and branding as it lacked a clear transparent structure.

Protests like these were not so much appealing to Biden as coordinating with the administration.

The anti-democracy rallies by organizations claiming to be fighting for democracy paralleled an unprecedented degree of interference from the Biden administration.

“We don’t want to interfere,” Biden told reporters after Israel had surrendered on reforming the judiciary. “Anyway, we’re not interfering.”

“They cannot continue down this road,” he warned.

On Monday morning, Biden’s ambassador delivered an ultimatum to Netanyahu ordering him to stop the reforms. Later that day, Netanyahu officially announced a pause on judicial reform.

This followed public statements from every Biden administration official, including Secretary of Defense Austin, warning Israel not to proceed and urging the democratically elected government to turn over the process to its political opponent: leftist figurehead Herzog who had served as Marc Rich’s lawyer when negotiating a pardon with the Clinton administration.

Why was the Biden administration so obsessed with internal questions such as who picked Israeli Supreme Court justices and whether they could ever be overruled by the legislature?

While the leftist rioters in the streets clamored that they were fighting for democracy, the Supreme Court is the least democratic institution and the mobs were demanding that it stay that way. None of the American media outlets or politicians accusing the Israeli government of threatening democracy ever got around to explaining why elected officials selecting justices is a good thing in America and a bad thing in Israel. As Ruth Wisse, the greatest living Jewish academic, pointed out in the Wall Street Journal, some of the same advocates of weakening the United States Supreme Court violently denounced efforts to check the power of Israel’s court.

The Israeli Supreme Court is mostly immune to democratic influences like elections, and is not governed by a constitution, but derives its power from claiming unlimited standing to take on any cases it likes. But to trigger this superpower, it needs nonprofit groups to bring cases to it. These nonprofits are primarily funded by foreign interests from George Soros, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund  and the Tides Center to foreign governments in the European Union and America.

How it works is simple enough. A leftist nonprofit funded by a foreign government sets out to stop a policy by a democratically elected government. Even though it is in no way affected by a policy, such as building homes in Judea or cracking down on terrorism, it sues anyway. And even though it lacks any standing, the Supreme Court takes the case anyway and rules for it.

The actual case however was really brought by Soros or the EU or D.C. The Israeli Supreme Court acts as a rubber stamp for rule by foreign governments through leftist groups.

While a lot of the online protest groups conducting anti-democracy rallies were unknown, the larger Israeli rallies were led by the Movement for Quality Government. MQG is a serial plaintiff which repeatedly brings cases to the Supreme Court. In 2020, MQG hired a D.C. law firm to investigate Netanyahu. That same year, MQG began getting money from the State Department.

State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel claimed that this was false because MQG “received a modest grant from the State Department that was initiated during the previous administration” meant to promote civics in schools.

“Any notion that we are propping up or supporting these protests or the initiators of them is completely and demonstrably false,” Patel fumed.

But money is fungible and the State Department was well aware that MQG’s primary field of activity was lawfare. The plague of leftist nonprofits funded by foreign governments is an old problem that predates this administration. And touching it is the real red line.

In 2016, there was outrage when the Israeli legislature passed a law requiring nonprofits to disclose foreign funding. Even though the government bureaucracy refused to enforce the law, it nonetheless resulted in MGQ disclosing its funding from the State Department.

The State Department had claimed then that asking nonprofits to reveal foreign funding would “have a chilling effect on the activities that these worthwhile organizations are trying to do”.

Examples of such worthwhile activities had included the State Department funding a previous protest campaign against Netanyahu in 2015 using a “peacebuilding” nonprofit named One Voice.

In 2021, Israel cracked down on six nonprofits tied to terrorist organizations. The State Department warned, “we will be engaging our Israeli partners for more information regarding the basis for the designation. We believe respect for human rights, fundamental freedoms and a strong civil society are critically important to responsible and responsive governance.”

The pattern is not difficult to spot.

The Biden administration, the EU and other leftist foreign governments use nonprofits and the legal system to control Israeli policy. When those tools of control are threatened, they step in.

The Obama and Biden administrations had fumed when Israel began forcing nonprofits to follow the law, but judicial reform was a line in the sand. Had judicial reform passed, democracy would have come to Israel. And a bunch of leftist governments couldn’t have used their puppets to overrule the will of the people. That was why they did everything they could to stop it.

What the media portrayed as organic protests were nothing of the kind. They were often backed and organized by tech companies. Some of those same companies, to protest judicial reform, announced that they were pulling their money out of Israel and sending them to SVB. The collapse of the bank, closely associated with leftist interests in the United States, was only a brief inconvenience since the Biden administration rushed to bail out its depositors.

Israeli startups draw on investments from American companies and investors: many of them close to the Biden administration. The SVB connection, a clearinghouse for woke capital, just spelled out the obvious. The coup against democracy was backed by foreign interests and implemented by the billionaires, who control much of the Israeli media, and leftist activists who are employed by nonprofits funded by foreign governments and foundations.

Political consultants rushed to brand the coup as a “democracy” movement even though there’s nothing less democratic than protecting an undemocratic institution from democratic change.

The Biden administration, which had been in on it all along, pushed for a “compromise” from Marc Rich’s former lawyer that would have kept the Left in power even while denying what it was doing, or that judicial reform was shut down after a Biden ultimatum.

Prime Minister Netanyahu backed down, as he often has, but the confrontation was revealing because the puppet masters were forced to show their hand. American Jews were largely fooled by the media’s propaganda campaign, but Israelis saw all too clearly who the activists and, more importantly, the Supreme Court really works for and whose power it serves.

The Israeli Left has consistently lost elections while clinging to power through undemocratic institutions like the Supreme Court and fake third parties. It’s fighting a war on democracy that it’s bound to lose. The ‘handmaids’ marching in Berlin and the radicals holding up posters accusing Israel of fascism in Hitler’s city have shown Israelis what they really are.

The greatest threat to democracy in Israel has always come from the Left. What was once a domestic oligarchy has evolved into a puppet regime. And the Israeli Zionists have learned that they can expose the puppet masters by pulling on the puppets and seeing who comes for them.

“Biden help!”, “Biden, Blinken, Our democracy is sinking”, “save us from ourselves”.

AUTHOR

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Blinken announces $150,000,000 in ‘humanitarian aid’ for Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali and Mauritania

The dough is supposed to help them care for the victims of “Islamist insurgencies,” but as we have abundantly documented here, these countries have been singularly inept or indifferent in fighting these “insurgencies.” The money is really to try to keep these countries from falling completely into China’s sphere of influence.

Blinken brings U.S. aid to Sahel for fight against Islamist insurgencies

by Daphne Psaledakis, Reuters, March 16, 2023:

NIAMEY, March 16 (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced $150 million in new humanitarian aid for Africa’s Sahel region during a visit on Thursday to Niger, a country Washington views as an important ally in the fight against Islamist insurgencies.

Blinken’s visit to Niger is the first by a U.S. Secretary of State and a strong show of support for an impoverished nation that has had relative success in containing rebel groups and managed a democratic transition in a coup-prone region.

“It will help provide life-saving support to refugees, asylum seekers, and others impacted by conflict and food insecurity in the region,” Blinken said in a statement about the new aid, which will go to Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali and Mauritania as well as Sahelian refugees in Libya.

Blinken’s trip is the latest in a series of visits to Africa by U.S. government figures as Washington seeks to boost ties with a continent where China’s influence is strong and many countries maintain cordial relations with Russia.

Landlocked Niger and its neighbors Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Chad are all struggling to repel Islamist insurgents who have killed thousands of people, displaced millions more and in some cases seized control of vast swathes of territory.

Groups linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State have carried out dozens of attacks in southwestern Niger, including some in which dozens of Nigerien soldiers were killed, but the violence has not spread across the whole country as it has done elsewhere.

Shortly after landing in the capital Niamey, Blinken met with people involved in a program, partly funded by the U.S., to disarm and rehabilitate defectors from extremist groups.

‘RIGHT CHOICES’
While violence in Mali and Burkina Faso led to military coups and a shift in alliances away from Western nations and towards Russia, Niger managed a democratic transfer of power in 2021 and has retained smooth relations with the West.

“They’re making the right choices, we think, to help deal with the kind of threats that are common across the Sahel. So, we’re trying to highlight a positive example,” a senior State Department official told reporters….

When thousands of French soldiers were kicked out of Mali during a dispute with the junta there last year, they moved their base into Niger….

AUTHOR

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

After Biden Sent $1,000,000,000 to PLO, Israeli Deaths Rose 900%

It cost $10,000 to kill a 6-year-old boy and the terrorists have the money. 


When Secretary of State Blinken met with PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas, he boasted of the over billion dollars in aid that the Biden administration had programmed for the terrorist territories.

That aid has come with a very heavy price.

In Feb 2019, President Trump’s total cutoff of aid became official. That year, 10 Israelis or people in Israeli controlled areas were killed in stabbings, shootings, rocket and other attacks, down from 12 the previous year, and 15 in 2017, and 16 in 2016.

In 2020, however, only three Israelis were killed.

These numbers reflected the diminished capacity of the Islamic terrorists. The reduction in numbers was not due to the pandemic. 2020 still saw attacks, including firebombings, rocket launches and stabbings, but the success and lethality rates for these attacks were lower.

The numbers turned around dramatically once again in 2021.

In April 2021, the Biden administration restored aid to the PLO. Terror incidents, reflecting attack attempts, shot up sharply from 91 in February and 89 in March to 130 in April.

By May, major fighting resumed with 13 Israelis, including two children, killed.

By the time the year was over, 17 people in Israeli areas had been killed. The over 400% increase in deaths was only the beginning. In 2022, 31 Israelis or people in Israeli areas were killed, up from only 3 in 2020, for a massive 900% increase in casualties since the restoration of foreign aid to the terrorists. This was the worst death toll since 2015 under Obama.

But in January and the first half of February of 2023, 10 Israelis have already been killed, including a 6-year-old boy and an 8-year-old boy.

Three times as many have been killed in a month and a half of 2023 as in all of 2020. That’s a 233% increase over 2020 in just a fraction of a year, but it’s also a marked month-to-month escalation from 2022 which featured no attacks at all in January or February. More people have already been killed by terrorists in 2023 than through most of March in 2022.

What a difference a billion dollars makes.

While the media has tried to portray the terrorism as “lone wolf” attacks, they’re crowdsourced violence of the kind that Al Qaeda and ISIS helped innovate. But the PLO’s version is unique through its ‘Pay-to-Slay’ program which rewards terrorists, regardless of their formal affiliation, including ISIS and Hamas members, with salaries and payments for their families.

Terrorists are paid based on the length of their prison sentence. That means successful killers can earn $2,000 to $3,000 a month in a part of the world where the average salary is around $700 a month. It’s five times more profitable to be a terrorist than a teacher.

The Palestinian Authority calls for the murder of Jews, praises it and then rewards it.

Muhammad Al-Lahham of the Fatah Revolutionary Council, which runs the political movement behind the terrorists of the Palestinian Authority, was caught on video praising the “patriotic conscience” of a terrorist who had killed a rabbi taking his 2-year-old son for a walk in 2022.

The Trump administration cut off aid to the PLO’s Palestinian Authority and Congress passed the Taylor Force Act banning funds from going to finance Pay-to-Slay.

Throughout all this, PLO leadership have been consistent in refusing to stop financing terrorism.

“We will neither reduce nor prevent [payment] of allowances to the families of martyrs, prisoners and released prisoners, as some seek, and if we had only a single penny left, we would pay it to families of the martyrs and prisoners,” Abbas had bragged. By “martyrs”, he meant those Islamic terrorists who were killed while carrying out terrorist attacks.

Despite this, the Biden administration had restored aid and rebuilt diplomatic relations. Biden and Blinken have met with Abbas. And while they have attacked Israel over everything from letting Jews pray on the Temple Mount (due to Jewish prayers offending Muslim sensibilities) to democratic judicial reform that will limit the unilateral authority of pro-terrorist judges, Biden and Blinken have had nothing to say to the terrorists about the program funding the murder of Jews.

America First Legal, under Stephen Miller, filed suit against the Biden administration on behalf of the parents of Taylor Force: a non-Jewish Afghanistan war vet murdered in Jerusalem.

“The Biden Administration is well aware that the PA pays Palestinian terrorists to injure or kill innocent Americans and Israelis in Israel. Yet, in blatant violation of  the Taylor Force Act, a federal law that prohibits the government from sending American taxpayer dollars to the PA until it stops supporting terrorism, President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken have resumed payments to the PA after the Trump Administration had stopped these payments in compliance with the Taylor Force Act,” America First Legal declared..

“The Taylor Force Act, named after our son, was passed by Congress and signed by President Trump to stop this Pay to Slay. Yet the Biden Administration has resumed payments to the PA notwithstanding its Pay to Slay program,” Stuart Force, Taylor’s father, said.

The Biden administration’s decision to fund the Palestinian Authority has consequences beyond Israel. Islamic terrorism is a global threat and has been a reliable killer of Americans abroad.

“Robbi and I call upon President Biden to stop sending fungible taxpayer dollars to the PA that will end up funding terrorism,” Stuart Force appealed.

And the latest wave of violence shows just how ‘fungible’ that money is.

The massive uptick in successful terrorist attacks is not a coincidence. The numbers become more significant when we distinguish between so-called “lone wolf” attacks which are most directly impacted by ‘Pay-to-Slay’ and rocket attacks by other terrorist groups. 14 people were killed in direct terrorist attacks in 2018. That number dropped to 5 in 2019, the year Trump cut off aid to the PLO. By 2020, it fell to 3, in 2021, the year Biden restored aid, it rose to 4 and then shot up to 32 in 2022 reflecting the ‘slow burn’ effect of fungible aid money being taken away and then restored within a government bureaucracy even if it’s run by and for terrorists.

As the Biden administration continues pumping money into the terrorist entities occupying parts of Israel, the violence is drastically increasing. 2023 is already on track to top 2022 which had the worst numbers since 2015. The level of Islamic terrorism is returning to that of the Obama administration and that means that we can expect an even higher death toll in Israel.

The billion dollars in aid is a factor, but an even bigger factor is that the Biden administration, like its Democrat predecessor, has made no secret of its support for the Palestinian Authority. And the Biden administration has gone even further with its diplomatic support for the PLO regime and its pressure on Israel. The latest murders are the work of a terrorist group that knows that Washington D.C. has its back and will intervene to protect it from Israel.

The Biden administration’s decision to appoint Hady Amr, an open supporter of Islamic terrorism and opponent of the Jewish State, as its key liaison to the PLO, who was inspired by the intifada, has consequences, and dead bodies in Jerusalem are among the most obvious ones.

Islamic terrorism runs on money and foreign support. The Biden administration has provided both. The Palestinian Authority spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year on Pay-to-Slay.

The pipeline of terror may end with a 6-year-old boy lying dead on a Jerusalem street but it begins with cash coming out of Washington D.C. The attacks of September 11 cost Al Qaeda about half a million dollars. The cost to the PLO of killing that little boy, his brother and a newly married man going to spend the Sabbath with his wife’s family probably comes out to about $30,000 a year. Or $10,000 per dead Jewish person. That’s a fraction of the millions of dollars in foreign aid which could be used to finance hundreds and thousands of more murders of Jews.

$10,000 to kill a six-year-old boy, another $10,000 to kill his 8-year-old brother. Thanks to the financiers of murdering Jews in the Biden administration, the terrorists have the cash.

And we’re the ones providing it.

AUTHOR

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

State Department Funded Foreign Think Tank Working To Censor Americans

  • The State Department funded the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a foreign organization that works to police online platforms.
  • ISD has partnerships with YouTube and Spotify to inform their content moderation decisions, and claims it helps platforms curb “misinformation.”
  • “By funding organizations – including foreign organizations, no less – that put their thumbs on the scale of hot-button domestic political debates, the federal government is wading into a dangerous Constitutional minefield,” Michael Chamberlain, director of government watchdog Protect the Public’s Trust, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. 

The U.S. State Department funds and partners with a U.K.-based think tank that collaborates with online platforms to censor perceived mis- and disinformation.

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) is a British nongovernmental organization that styles itself as a research group working in partnership with several online platforms to combat extremism, hate and disinformation. However, the organization frequently classifies typical conservative discourse and journalism as hate and/or disinformation and has received funding from the U.S. government.

The State Department awarded the organization a grant in September 2021 to “advance the development of promising and innovative technologies against disinformation and propaganda” in Europe and the U.K. after it won the U.S.-Paris Tech Challenge. The event, which was held in collaboration with the “U.S. Embassy Paris, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) [and] the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO),” was also won by the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), an organization which reportedly seeks to demonetize conservative news sites.

The State Department confirmed that its Global Engagement Center funded ISD to study Russian disinformation tactics against Wikipedia through a grant to Park Advisors. The department told the Daily Caller News Foundation that it plays no role in content moderation decisions on social media platforms.

“By funding organizations – including foreign organizations, no less – that put their thumbs on the scale of hot-button domestic political debates, the federal government is wading into a dangerous Constitutional minefield,” Michael Chamberlain, director of government watchdog Protect the Public’s Trust, told the DCNF. “The government cannot get around First Amendment restrictions by outsourcing or using surrogates or agents for prohibited activities.”

Additionally, the State Department and ISD partnered to create the Strong Cities Network, a United Nations-affiliated initiative that seeks to combat “hate, polarisation and extremism” abroad; the State Department solicited several grants as part of this arrangement, naming ISD as a sub-awardee.

The organization also lists as funders left-wing billionaire Pierre Omidyar’s Omidyar Group, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, along with several European government agencies.

ISD maintains several partnerships with platforms to inform their content moderation decisions, largely regarding extremist and terrorism-related content, but also, significantly, what it deems hate and misinformation.

The organization has a special advisory role with Spotify to “curb” misinformation on the audio streaming platform, and is tasked with flagging content for YouTube.

“The State Department’s partnership with the ISD is problematic at best and unconstitutional at worst,” Mike Davis, president of the Internet Accountability Project, told the DCNF. “Taxpayer dollars essentially funding the censorship of conservatives under the guise of ‘misinformation’ shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s followed the Biden administration’s assault on the marketplace of ideas.”

While much of ISD’s work focuses on various forms of extremism such as radical Islam and white supremacy, a significant portion involves “disinformation” and online hate. However, the organization frequently characterizes staples of conservative discourse as hateful and/or as disinformation.

For instance, ISD appears to consider the comparison of abortion to murder as misinformation, admonishing social media platforms for not enforcing their abortion misinformation policies against such claims.

Moreover, in a 2022 report on “climate disinformation,” ISD profiled a form of discourse it labeled “delayism,” which accepts as a premise the existence of climate change but does not, in ISD’s view, advocate strong enough or urgent enough policy solutions. Criticism of particular policies designed to address climate change, such as the promotion of electric vehicles, were also included within the “disinformation” report.

“In contemporary discussions on what actions should be taken, by whom and how fast, proponents of climate delay would argue for minimal action or action taken by others. They focus attention on the negative social effects of climate policies and raise doubt that mitigation is possible,” the report read.

ISD cited as an example a Facebook post from Republican Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw that warned of the “radical obsession with wind and solar as the only clean energy solution” and argued instead for nuclear energy and natural gas with carbon capture technology.

Another example was a meme that compared an electric vehicle to a Flintstones-esque rock car.

“This outlandish form of censorship cannot be allowed to happen in America, such as simple policy preferences related to electric cars being labeled as misinformation,” Davis told the DCNF.

The organization characterized Libs of Tik Tok, a conservative Twitter account that publicizes examples of left-wing pedagogy including Critical Race Theory (CRT) and gender ideology, as a “prolific spreader of hate,” and classified conservative journalist Scott Morefield as an individual “known to spread disinformation and amplify hateful right-wing talking points.”

ISD also considered “misgendering” an example of “anti-trans hatred” in a report on social media discourse surrounding the participation of men in women’s sports. ISD concluded by urging platforms to take action against posts that misgender trans individuals.

While ISD’s work is primarily research-oriented, the organization has successfully embedded itself in roles informing content moderation decisions within hugely influential social media and technology companies. Much of ISD’s work with online platforms focuses on terrorism and violent extremism, but the organization’s purview also includes mis- and disinformation.

ISD is a member of Spotify’s Safety Advisory Council, formed in 2022 as a response to criticism of the audio streaming platform for Joe Rogan’s December 2021 interview with COVID-19 vaccine skeptic Dr. Robert Malone.

The council, though not tasked with directly making content moderation decisions, is nevertheless empowered to “inform” Spotify’s policies and enforcement actions regarding “misinformation.” In ISD’s own words, the group will help Spotify “curb the spread of misinformation” on its platform and “independently keep watch over the platform’s content and safety policies.”

Additionally, ISD is part of YouTube’s “Trusted Flagger program,” an initiative in collaboration with several nongovernmental organizations and government agencies designed to improve YouTube’s enforcement of its guidelines. Trusted Flaggers are able to flag more content than average users, The Wall Street Journal reported in 2014, and receive special treatment from YouTube.

“[O]ur teams prioritize flags from Trusted Flaggers for review,” Google’s description of the program reads.

ISD partnered with Google.org for its Impact Challenge on Safety grant initiative which distributed €10 million to organizations working to “counter hate and extremism” in Europe, and also received a $1.3 million grant from Google in 2017 to counter hate in the U.K.

The organization also boasts partnerships with Microsoft, Amazon’s audiobook platform Audible and Facebook.

“The State Department exists to represent the American public’s interests abroad,” Chamberlain told the DCNF. “If they are interested in countering concerns about weaponizing the government, they could start by not assisting outside groups that target the speech of American citizens.”

ISD did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

AUTHOR

AILAN EVANS

Associate Editor.

RELATED ARTICLE: A Dem-Linked Dark Money Network Is Quietly Funding The ‘Misinformation’ Research Industry

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Secretary of State Blinken to Address Anti-Israel Group Along With ‘Infected With Jew-Hatred’ Activist

The Biden administration really hates Israel.


One would think this would be a problem. But it’s also routine in the Biden administration which, in recent weeks, elevated Hady Amr, a terrorism supporter, to a top-tier emissary to the PLO and sent the FBI after Israel. This is just one in a series of ugly hate messages, the latest being to dispatch Secretary of State Blinken to address an anti-Israel group set up by George Soros and some Hong Kong money laundering.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will be the keynote speaker at leftwing J Street’s annual conference in Washington, D.C., the organization announced on Wednesday.

Blinken on Wednesday announced that he will serve as the headline speaker at the annual conference for J Street, which as recently as last month trashed Netanyahu, accusing the incoming prime minister of “building and bulldozing [his] way to permanent, undemocratic control of the West Bank.” The group also advocates conditioning U.S. aid to Israel, routinely attacks the Jewish state for defending itself against Palestinian terrorism…

The conference kicks off this weekend, with Blinken set to address the confab on Sunday, alongside former Bernie Sanders adviser and longtime Israel critic Matt Duss, Daily Beast writer Wajahat Ali, a cadre of pro-Palestinian activists, and several Democratic members of Congress, including Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.) and senator-elect Peter Welch (D., Vt.).

Duss, a Sanders ally, has gone well beyond being a critic.

Duss, whose writings have been described by a watchdog group, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, as “infected with Jew-hatred,” has been a leading voice in the anti-Israel movement for the better part of the last decade. His criticisms of Israel were too much even for the Obama White House, which said it was “troubled” by blog posts penned by Duss and his colleagues at the now-defunct ThinkProgress.

The Sanders ally gained notoriety in 2011 when he and several other writers at the Center for American Progress’s now-defunct ThinkProgress leveled charges of dual loyalty against Israel’s American supporters, calling them “Israel firsters,” a term that was widely condemned at the time as anti-Semitic.

In one 2010 posting on Israel’s deadly confrontation with a violent mob seeking to break its naval blockade of the Gaza Strip, Duss claimed the country’s policies are like “segregation in the American South” and a “moral abomination.” Duss is also a defender of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and said in 2019 that congressional efforts to counter the anti-Israel crowd are a “con and Democrats need to stop playing along.”

Also there is Daniel Seidemann who had tweeted, “Israel’s policies have become so aggressive and unapologetic – defiant even – that even our staunchest supporters, if they have any intellectual and moral integrity – are compelled to acknowledge the systematic manifestations of apartheid in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.”

The anti-Israel program also includes panels such as, “Resisting Occupation: Non-Violent Activism on the Ground”, and “Demolitions, Evictions, and Displacement in East Jerusalem and the West Bank”.

A helpful reminder that the Biden administration is and always will be an anti-Israel operation.

AUTHOR

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden Fights 9/11 Victims in Court to Protect Taliban Cash

The unspeakable betrayal over Afghanistan continues.


White House Democrats have a history of fighting against terror victims suing Islamic terrorists. The Obama administration battled American terror victims suing the PLO. In 2015, after they won a $218 million judgement against the terror group, Blinken, then only a deputy secretary of state, intervened claiming that the lawsuit threatened “several decades of US foreign policy.”

But now Biden is fighting 9/11 victims on behalf of the Taliban. At stake are billions being held by the Afghan central bank fund in the United States.

A decade ago, 9/11 families sued the Taliban, Al Qaeda and Iran. The court found that the Islamic terrorists were responsible and a judgement of $6 billion was handed down.

The verdict was described as “symbolic” at the time. CBS News commented that “it would be near impossible to collect any damages, especially from the Taliban or al Qaeda.” But that was before Biden turned over Afghanistan to the Taliban. Since Afghanistan has assets in this country, including $7 billion in bank funds, it’s now entirely possible to collect that money.

Or it would be if the guy who let the Taliban take over wasn’t also in the White House.

Biden officially announced that he was splitting the $7 billion between the families of the victims and a “trust fund” to provide “humanitarian aid” for the people of Afghanistan.

But that was just another one of his many lies and double crosses involving Afghanistan.

The $3.5 billion was placed in a separate trust that would be “separate and distinct” from the around $800 million the Biden administration has already spent on aid to Afghanistan. Officials admitted that the money could actually be used for matters other than “humanitarian aid”.

The media headlined it as, “Biden frees frozen Afghan billions for relief, 9/11 victims”. But a Biden official admitted that it was done to stop 9/11 families from getting access to the money.

“Absent action by us, these funds were likely to be tied up in courts for years, while the action we have taken stands the best chance of more quickly freeing up a large portion for humanitarian support,” the official argued. As a Lawfare blog post noted, “the administration’s plan would insulate nearly half of the Afghan assets at issue from these attachment efforts.”

What Biden actually did was take the money off the table for 9/11 victims. And it got worse.

Secretary of State Blinken claimed that the administration “will continue to support these victims and their families, recognizing the enduring pain they have suffered at the hands of terrorists, including those who operated from Afghanistan prior to the September 11 attacks. These victims and their families should have a full opportunity to set forth their arguments in court.”

Blinken, like his boss, lied.

While the 9/11 families would have their claims “heard in court”, neither Biden nor Blinken mentioned that the administration would be advocating against them.

On the same day as Biden’s executive order reserving $3.5 billion for the terrorists, his Justice Department filed a statement of interest in court arguing that the judgement for the victims of terrorism was too large and that actually turning over the money to them would interfere with the Biden administration’s foreign policy in Afghanistan.

Now a magistrate judge has repeated back most of the DOJ’s arguments, ruling against the 9/11 families who were laying claim to the other half of the money. Judge Sarah Netburn’s arguments closely mirror the contradictory positions of Biden and the DOJ. And they reveal the underlying corruption behind the ambiguous status of Afghanistan’s central bank.

Netburn, like the Biden administration, contends that the Afghanistan bank enjoys “sovereign immunity” because the country itself was not sanctioned as a terrorist state, only the Taliban were. And that the Taliban once again control Afghanistan is irrelevant, according to the judge, because Biden hasn’t recognized the reality that this is actually the case.

Banks don’t enjoy “sovereign immunity” and neither do the Taliban. Netburn and Biden act as if there were some entity representing Afghanistan that is not the Taliban. That position might make sense if they were backing a resistance movement to the Taliban. But they’re not.

Instead the Biden administration has maintained a deliberately ambiguous position for Afghanistan’s central bank as being both under and not under Taliban control. This is convenient because it allows the Biden administration to use the financial institution as a vehicle and to restrict its access at the same time. The bank’s leadership, a mixture of terrorists and wonks linked to the former government, maintains that same calculated ambiguity.

The deputy governor of the bank is Noor Ahmad Agha, a Taliban leader listed as a specially designated global terrorist. Shah Mohammad Mehrabi, a member of the board of governors of the bank, lives near Washington D.C. and teaches at Montgomery College, has made his own media tour demanding that the United States release funds to the bank.

Biden is unable to do that until he thoroughly defeats the 9/11 families in court.

If Biden releases the money to the Afghanistan bank before that happens, the 9/11 families will be able to argue that the administration is contradicting its own position. Biden wants to reserve all $7 billion for the terrorists and so he has to hold off long enough to defeat the terror victims.

The level of betrayal here is worse than even the Obama administration.

The Biden administration claims that the money will be used for “humanitarian aid” and will not go to the terrorists. That’s another lie and it’s been disproved by its publicly stated policies.

The Biden administration has issued global licenses authorizing financial transactions with the Taliban and the Al Qaeda allied Haqqani Network that include, in the Treasury Department’s own words, “delivery and provision of humanitarian aid or shipments”, “administrative issues”, “donor coordination meetings”, “sharing descriptions of projects”, “coordination with regard to travel”, “participation in technical working groups” and “sharing of office space”. Not to mention the “payments of taxes, fees, or import duties to, or the purchase or receipt of permits, licenses, or public utility services from, the Taliban, the Haqqani Network.”

While Biden and his corrupt cronies insist that they don’t recognize the Taliban, that’s purely a formality. Not only do they recognize the Taliban as the government, but they’ve been extensively coordinating with the Islamic terrorists and helping to fund them.

At the end of July, Biden’s representative met with “senior Taliban representatives” to discuss  “ongoing efforts to enable the $3.5 billion in licensed Afghan central bank reserves to be used for the benefit of the Afghan people”.

Even while the Biden administration and its allies insist that the other $3.5 billion set aside to meet the claims of terror victims can’t be released to them because that would “implictly” mean that the Taliban are being recognized as the government, Biden’s diplomatic representatives can meet with them and conduct negotiations about giving them the other $3.5 billion.

Releasing money to 9/11 terror victims would “implictly” recognize the Taliban, but engaging in sustained diplomatic negotiations with them as the governing authority somehow does not.

The Taliban privately understand that Biden can’t release the $3.5 billion to them until he beats the 9/11 families in court. And then they’ll potentially get access to the whole $7 billion. This corrupt charade is being played out for the benefit of the equally complicit judiciary and media which is cheering the downfall of the 9/11 families and waiting for the cash to go to the Taliban.

Reuters headlined its story, “Afghans outraged as 9/11 families lay claim to frozen billions”. There’s no real ambiguity as to which side Reuters, the media and Joe Biden are on.

In October 2001, Biden proposed that, “this would be a good time to send, no strings attached, a check for $200 million to Iran,” He’s managed to send much more money than that to the Islamic terror state since, but now he’s preparing to send a $7 billion check to the Taliban.

All he had to do to get that money was lie and cheat 9/11 families.

AUTHOR

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

White House worried that Iran could obtain sufficient fissile material for a nuclear bomb in weeks

Imagine where we would be if Biden’s handlers had spent the last fifteen months trying to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, instead of bending over backwards to appease the mullahs.

Corrected (Official) White House worried Iran could develop nuclear weapon in weeks

Reuters, April 26, 2022:

The White House is worried Iran could develop a nuclear weapon in weeks, press secretary Jen Psaki said on Tuesday, after Secretary of State Antony Blinken noted earlier in the day the country has accelerated its nuclear program.

“Yes it definitely worries us,” Psaki said.

The White House clarified on Wednesday that although Psaki responded to a question about nuclear weapons, she was referring to the breakout time, which is the time it would take to obtain sufficient fissile material for one nuclear bomb, and was not referring to the production of an actual nuclear weapon.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Blinken: U.S. Not Imposing Sanctions Despite Continued Russian Buildup On Ukrainian Border

Despite urging from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Sec. of State Antony Blinken has pushed back against calls to impose sanctions on Russia as they continue to buildup a military presence along the Ukrainian border.

“When it comes to sanctions, the purpose of those sanctions is to deter Russian aggression. If they are triggered, now you lose the deterrent effect,” Blinken explained to CNN’s Dana Bash Sunday. Blinken maintained that everything the U.S. is doing now, including working with Europe in a “united way” is designed to “deter and dissuade” Russia from taking aggressive action while the West pursues diplomacy.

WATCH: 

Republican Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst appeared later in the broadcast refuting Blinken’s stance on sanctions, stating, “When it comes to pushing back against Russia, we need to show strength and not be in a position of doctrine of appeasement, which seems to be how President Biden has worked his administration.”

“So, we do need to go ahead and impose sanctions on Russia now.” Ernst continued. “We need to show them that we mean business and we will be there for Ukraine should they invade. Once an invasion happens, lives are lost. You can’t go back from that. So those sanctions need to be put in place now,” she concluded.

Russia has amassed an estimated 100,000 troops along the eastern border of Ukraine following that country’s pursuit of membership in NATO, something Russian President Vladimir Putin has called “unacceptable.” Putin has also voiced concern over the placement of U.S. missile sites close to Russia’s borders.

“We are doing a lot right now,” Blinken maintained. “Besides the United States taking the lead in bringing countries throughout Europe and even beyond together, in putting together massive consequences for Russia if it takes renewed aggressive action, in Ukraine, as I mentioned, we’re providing and last year alone provided more military assistance to Ukraine than at any year in the past. We have been going against those inside Ukraine trying to destabilize the government. So we’re taking concrete action,” he concluded.

COLUMN BY

GRETCHEN CLAYSON

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden Waives Iran Sanctions as Iran Retracts Nuke Compromises

The more concessions you make to terrorists, the harder they push. That’s been the defining dynamic of the Iran negotiations, the PLO negotiations, and all the negotiations with Islamic terrorists.

The Biden administration is living up to that dynamic.

The Biden administration quietly waived sanctions on Iran to allow the hardline regime to sell electricity to Iraq, according to a non-public notification obtained by the Washington Free Beacon that was provided to Congress just as nuclear talks between the United States and Tehran resumed this week.

The timing of the waiver notification—which was signed Nov. 19 but not transmitted to Congress until Nov. 29, the day nuclear negotiations resumed—has prompted accusations the Biden administration is offering concessions to Tehran to generate goodwill as talks aimed at securing a revamped version of the 2015 nuclear deal restart following a months-long standoff.

Iran is repaying the concessions in exactly the way you would expect a terror regime to do.

A US official said Saturday that Iran had backed away from all its previous compromises on reviving the 2015 nuclear deal and that the US would not allow Iran to “slow walk” the international negotiations while at the same time ramping up its atomic activities.

The warning came a day after Washington hit out at Iran, saying talks with world powers on a return to the 2015 nuclear accord had stalled because Tehran “does not seem to be serious.”

“We can’t accept a situation in which Iran accelerates its nuclear program and slow walks its nuclear diplomacy,” said a senior US administration official — echoing a recent warning by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Speaking to reporters after returning from the Austrian capital, the official said Washington was not yet planning to walk away from the indirect talks that it resumed with Tehran last week in Vienna, but hoped Iran would return “with a serious attitude.”

The Biden administration will not be trifled with. It won’t walk away from the talks or stop offering concessions, but it will warn Iran that it’s time to shape up and get serious about these negotiations… or it’ll offer up some more concessions.

COLUMN BY

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

With U.S. Foreign Policy In a Shambles, Secretary of State Blinken Finds Something to Celebrate

My latest in PJ Media:

Those who helped us out during our long military misadventure in Afghanistan only to be left behind in Kabul know that Joe Biden’s handlers are not the most reliable people in the world, but there is one thing they can always be counted on to be, and that is tone deaf. And so on Sunday morning, Secretary of State Antony Blinken looked out on what he had wrought. He saw China emboldened, Afghanistan lost, and Iran more aggressive than ever, and he took to Twitter to give us the perfect response to all the fires he and his colleagues have started or made rage hotter than ever. He tweeted: “Humbled to reach one million Twitter followers as Secretary of State — and especially so because it means that I can share the outstanding work of our @StateDept team with so many at home and around the world. It’s a privilege. Thank you.”

The “outstanding work” of our State Department? You have to admire the man’s chutzpah. To head the State Department during Joe Biden’s dumpster fire regency for Kamala Harris, with the Taliban enjoying billions of dollars’ worth of American military equipment, and China sending increasingly threatening signals about invading Taiwan, and the Islamic Republic of Iran growing more belligerent by the day, and to claim in the face of all that and more that the department is doing “outstanding work,” takes an oddly audacious dishonesty, or a resolute determination to deny the evidence of one’s senses, or both.

Even the fact that Blinken thinks that gaining one million Twitter followers is some kind of affirmation is ridiculous in itself and raises inevitable questions about the man’s priorities. Most of his Twitter feed gives the impression that he is simply a glorified goodwill ambassador; in another tweet on Sunday, Blinken wrote: “Such a pleasure chatting with Senegalese fashion industry icons Xalil and Milcos, who are both @StateIVLP alumni. They are doing dynamic work in Dakar and exemplify the important role artisans and entrepreneurs can play in growing their economies and increasing prosperity.” I’m sure Xalil and Milcos do wonderful work, but this is the Secretary of State of the United States; you’d think he would be embarrassed to be reduced to tweeting about something as world-historical as Senegalese fashion icons. But one of the many things that are beyond the capabilities of Biden’s handlers is embarrassment.

When Blinken does tweet about more pressing matters, he only underscores his own impotence. On November 19, he tweeted, “I condemn the Houthis’ detention of our staff and breach of the compound used by our Embassy in Sana’a prior to our 2015 suspension of operations. The Houthis must immediately release our staff unharmed and vacate the compound immediately.” This was over a week after the Houthis stormed the U.S. Embassy in Sana’a and even longer after they took hostages from among its staff. Why did it take Blinken so long to respond? What did he do beyond take to Twitter to issue this empty condemnation?

There is more. Read the rest here.

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EDITORS NOTE:  This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden’s handlers send $144,000,000 in ‘aid’ to Taliban’s Afghanistan

Democrats fund terrorism the way that Republicans cut taxes. And so the Biden administration is determined to keep sending money to Afghanistan even after the Taliban takeover.

While Americans can’t afford to buy a house, put gas in their cars, or food on their plates, Biden’s sending $144 million to Afghanistan.

The United States announced Thursday it is providing nearly $144 million in new humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan, where millions of people could face acute hunger this winter unless aid arrives soon.

National Security Council spokesperson Emily Horne said in a statement the U.S. assistance will be directed through independent organizations that provide support directly to more than 18.4 million vulnerable Afghans, including Afghan refugees in neighboring countries.

Sending it through “independent organizations” provides plausible deniability when those organizations and their staffers…

1. Pay protection money to the Taliban and possibly even ISIS-K

2. Pay Taliban taxes

3. Hire Taliban personnel and contract with companies either directly controlled by the Taliban or that pay money to the Taliban

These are the primary mechanisms for directing aid money to the Taliban.

She noted that the additional funding brings the total U.S. humanitarian aid in Afghanistan and for Afghan refugees in the region to nearly $474 million in 2021, the largest amount of assistance from any nation.

Not actually something to brag about considering the only thing it’s done is armed and financed Islamic terrorists.

But Blinken insists that this time it’ll be different.

“To be clear, this humanitarian assistance will benefit the people of Afghanistan and not the Taliban, whom we will continue to hold accountable for the commitments they have made,” he asserted.

Asserted is the correct term. It’s a baseless assertion that is obviously and transparently false.

The official press release states that, “This assistance is provided directly to independent humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), International Organization for Migration (IOM), the World Health Organization (WHO), and other international and non-governmental organizations following extensive vetting and monitoring.”

As I warned in my article, “10% of Biden’s Afghanistan Aid Will Go To Taliban,” UN groups had signed up with the Taliban a long time ago.

The Taliban had set up its Commission for the Arrangement and Control of Companies and Organisations at least over a decade ago. Much like the old Afghan government, it made few distinctions between for-profit companies and non-profit charities, and taxed them both.

The Taliban at one point provided a list of non-profits that had registered with their Commission for the Arrangement and Control of Companies and Organisations. The group “included UN agencies, national and international NGOs and human rights organisations” including those that  “rely on funding from a wide range of sources, including both the UN and the US government”.

That was back in 2013 when the Taliban had far less power and were less intimidating.

Did Blinken’s vetting compare the list of “independent organizations” USAID will be funding with the list of those on the Taliban’s Commission? The information certainly exists, but you can bet that the State Department won’t release it or act on it.

COLUMN BY

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.