Good morning



How many think the US abstention was all about domestic politics?

Count me in.  By the way, are you sure about what you wrote here? 

"...the US abstained from voting. And it was Russia and China which used the opportunity to veto the resolution..." 

If the resolution PASSED with the USA abstaining, how could Russia and China have vetoed it?

If the resolution PASSED with the USA abstaining, how could Russia and China have vetoed it?

Thank you for the correction. Russia and China vetoed what the US wanted to do, not the UN resolution.

No nation has been more careful with civilian casualties than Israel.

Best not ask the West Bank and Gazan Palestinians about that. You might get more than just an earful.

I don't think that any Americans have the right to consider themselves so high and mighty and criticize the IDF when it comes to civilian collateral damage if they can remember the numbers of civilians killed in the bombings of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden and Tokyo WHERE THE ENEMY SOLDIERS DID NOT HIDE THEMSELVES AMONG THE CIVILIANS AND USE THEM AS HUMAN SHIELDS.

I'm still trying to figure out how anybody can think someone who isn't competent enough to run the country he was elected to lead has the right to tell Israel how to run theirs.

When it became obvious to Israel that they were killing thousands and thousands of children they should have stopped halted the offensive and come up with another plan.  This war is not going to make Israel safer. It is 75 years since the founding of Israel and probably no more than five of them have been in complete peace.

Time to do something else.

Israel and the United States,and other, let's call it,  peace seeking countries in the region have been kicking the Palestinian problem down the road for decades.

Who thinks what's going on now is working for Israel ?

When it became obvious to Israel that they were killing thousands and thousands of children they should have stopped halted the offensive and come up with another plan. 

Says who?

No leader of any country has the right to tell the leader of another country how to run their country.

Of course, JR, stop the offensive, let Hamas replenish and improve its weapons with the assistance of Iran, and next time they'll invade Tel Aviv, cause, as you know Hamas is SWORN to kill the Jews, they are commanded to do so in the words of the Koran, and told by their Imams that the Day of Judgment will not come until the Muslims kill the Jews, and how long does Hamas keep a "cease fire" until they are ready to break it again and again as they did on Oct 7.  Do Hamas militants care if they're killed doing it?  Of course not, because if they are they will be deemed martyrs and will spend eternity in the Garden of Allah deflowering their 72 virgins.   And the families of Palestinians who kill Jews will be rewarded with the money donated to the Palestinians by all the righteous citizens of the world through the taxes they pay to their bleeding heart governments.  At least America has the balls to have stopped funding UNRWA. 

They have Hamas cornered. They dont need to kill an unlimited number of kids .

Netanyahu wants this war to last forever. Its a pity you cant see that. 

You believe the numbers Hamas officials provide?  Have you read this?  LINK -> thenewstalkers

You know, sort of the story told by Hamas about the Israeli bomb that killed 500 innocent civilians, except that it has been proven that it was an Islamic Jihad rocket that misfired.  Sorry, but I don't believe a fucking word Hamas has told the world to win the hearts of the bleeding hearts of the world.  Why don't you tell your POTUS to tell Hamas to surrender in order to stop the bloodshed and cause enough aid to enter and start the rebuilding, instead of being Rashida Tlaib's Charie McCarthy. 

As the Republican House majority dwindles by attrition, the right wing of the party has made perfect the enemy of good.

A New York Appellate Court has reduced the Trump bond to a somewhat reasonable amount and has allowed Donald Trump 10 days to post bond.

It is hilarious that the bond was cut by nearly 75%.  

New York’s Fraud Judgment Against Trump Is So Bad, Even His Biggest Critics Aren’t Defending It

It’s pretty clear at this point that Democrats’ main election strategy against Donald Trump has nothing to do with Joe Biden running a savvy political campaign. Instead, they’re attempting to defeat Trump with a series of obviously politically coordinated lawsuits and criminal charges, hoping this will both drain Trump’s resources and any resulting convictions would tarnish him in the eyes of voters. Suffice it to say, this strategy is not working out well for them — Biden hasn’t   led in the polls in six months.

And while there’s a lot to be said about the dubious nature of the charges being brought against him, the point has been driven home by the recent decision by a New York appeals court to reduce Trump’s bond in his civil fraud trial from $454 million to $175 million. Or rather, the issue is what no one is saying about this case: It’s such complete bunk that no one among the legion of Trump’s critics in and out of the corporate media is even trying to defend this case on the merits.

thefederalist

It is hilarious that the bond was cut by nearly 75%. 

It would indicate that they will probably toss out the conviction as well.

Thank you for the enlightening article, which everyone should read.

No, because the judgement was not reduced, only the bond...

But then there will be an appeal. It isn't over just because the appellate reduced the "bond".

The judgement/conviction is under appeal and being considered as we speak.

How much do you want to bet it gets overturned?

With a reduction of the bond by nearly 75% you honestly think an appeals court will let the verdict stand?  

Don't worry, they get it.

"A dding a final shameful chapter to a foreign-policy record that already runneth over with them, Barack Obama on Friday abandoned America’s commitment to Israel’s security, and to the vindication of democracy over sharia-supremacist aggression. In an act of cowardly venom, the president had the United States abstain from — and thereby effectively enact — a United Nations Security Council  resolution that condemns Israeli settlement activity .

At least, that’s what the resolution ostensibly does. The reality is much more than that. The resolution undertakes to render our ally indefensible.

It was a black day in modern American diplomatic history, a flurry of sinister wheeling and dealing while the nation — exhausted by the election, anticipating a weekend of Christmas and Hanukkah celebration — was looking the other way.

To his great credit, Donald Trump was not. The president-elect asserted himself on Israel’s behalf, backing up his campaign promise that “America First” meant restoration of America’s reputation as a dependable friend and an enemy not to be trifled with. Under the pressure he generated, Egypt backed down, withdrawing its sponsorship of the resolution.

But such is the disdain in which Israel is openly held after eight Obama years of empowering Islamists that four other countries — Malaysia, Venezuela, Senegal, and, of all places, New Zealand — revived the resolution, knowing they had the State Department’s backing. With the U.S. abstention, it was easily approved.

It is a disgraceful legacy of Barack Obama that his obsession over settlements and antipathy toward Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu — traits he shares with his old radical comrade,  Rashid Khalidi  — have made the already dim prospects for peace far more remote. At the root of the settlements controversy is the fiction that the territory at issue is “occupied Palestinian” land. In point of stubborn fact, no matter how tirelessly the vaunted “international community” evokes the scurrilous image of  occupation , the territory is righteously  disputed .

It is Islamist-leftist dogma that Israel’s millennia of attachment to its homeland count for nothing, and that the Jewish state owes its existence to a fit of remorse over Nazi barbarism — one of the reasons Holocaust denial is an Islamist pastime. Still, even under this skewed version of history, the occupation crowd has no case.

Israel’s foes claim that the settlements are illegitimate because Israel’s only lawful boundaries are the 1948  armistice lines.  This is the so-called Green Line that was in effect right before Arab nations (including their Palestinian component, mainly in Jordan) commenced the invasion that began the 1967 Six-Day War.

I italicize “armistice lines” to highlight that the demarcations, even back in 1967,  were not national boundaries . They were disputed even before the Arab war of aggression. The armistice lines merely reflect the position of Israeli and Arab forces when the cease-fire went into effect. They were not accepted as final boundaries by the affected countries. As we shall see, they could not be accepted as final boundaries by Israel.

Nevertheless, Israel did not set out to conquer the disputed territory. The Jewish state took it fair and square when they won the defensive war against enemies that sought Israel’s destruction. Thus the unending pattern that the United States and Western European powers cravenly refuse to address: Islamic factions and nations are free to reserve the right to eradicate Israel, but Israel must pretend the aggression never happened and the continuing threat does not exist.

Regardless of how many resolutions the rabidly anti-Semitic U.N. rolls out, territorial sovereignty, like other  disputed  issues, will not be settled unless the parties directly affected by it, Israel and the Palestinians, arrive at an understanding. Obama, however, has schemed to impose an outcome unilaterally by rendering as illegitimate Israel’s side of the argument — which, to the contrary, is as justifiable legally as it is essential for Israel’s security.

That, alas, is Obama’s real legacy: There are no good-faith disputes with him; you either agree with him or you are an outlaw.

The resolution adopted on Friday does so much more than merely condemn “settlement activities.” It says such activities must cease in “occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.” For good measure, it adds that the construction of settlements on territory that Palestinians covet — and that Israel righteously controls — has “no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law.”

By giving the Palestinians everything and then some, the resolution removes any Palestinian incentive to negotiate for lasting peace.

See? The true purpose of the resolution is not to stop settlement construction. It is to dictate a final disposition. It puts the imprimatur of the Security Council — which, for transnational progressives, is our ultimate global ruler — on a decree that says: The disputed territory is actually  Palestinian territory , and that this Palestinian territory  includes East Jerusalem  (i.e., the most sacred portion of the city Israel regards as its eternal capital — again, for millennia of valid historic reasons). For good measure, this patently political decree masquerades as objective legal analysis, pronouncing that its thumb on the scale is somehow dictated by international law.

Outrageous as this legal razzle-dazzle is, it is secondary to the resolution’s assault on Israeli security.

First, by giving the Palestinians everything and then some, the resolution removes any Palestinian incentive to negotiate for lasting peace. Indeed, by requiring no Palestinian concessions, it tells the Islamists and leftists who run Palestinian affairs that their jihadist campaign will continue to be rewarded and that the Security Council accepts — and effectively abets — their objective of eradicating the Jewish state (whether by terrorism, “democracy” activism, or both).

Second, it would make that eradication more probable. The 1948 armistice lines cannot be viable national borders for Israel because, as Obama, the Security Council, and Israel’s hostile neighbors well know, they are not defensible. Put aside that Israel is no larger than New Jersey and surrounded by existential threats. In the area just north of Tel Aviv, the center of the country is just nine miles wide (running east to west from the Green Line to the Mediterranean coastal town of Netanya).

#related#As IDF Major General Yaakov Amidror explained in a 2005 study on  the security requirements for lasting peace , the 1967 boundaries do not provide “defensive depth,” a longstanding principle of military doctrine holding that there must be an area sufficient for a defensive force to redeploy after being attacked, and for reserves to enter or counterattack — the territorial space between the battlefront and the strategic interior that any army must have in order to function. The boundaries the Security Council seeks to impose would be inadequate even if Palestinian leadership — including the Muslim Brotherhood’s terrorist branch, Hamas — were not committed to Israel’s destruction.

Obama knows all of this. He also knows that the campaign to destroy Israel is politically waged with U.N. resolutions every bit as much as Hamas wages it with rockets. It is therefore essential that our nation, as a reliable ally, uses our veto power to protect Israel’s security. That is why Obama would not have dared abstain from the vote on such a resolution before Election Day.

The only glimmer of hope on this dark day is President-elect Trump’s willingness to use what limited leverage he had in Israel’s defense. Perhaps more important was his vow, after the resolution was adopted, that things will be different come January 20 “ as to the U.N. ”

It seems the incoming president has identified the real problem."

UN's Israel Settlements Resolution: Barack Obama’s Betrayal of Israel | National Review