Sunday, February 17, 2019
Fwd: Pollard's treatment: A Betrayal That Must End
From: <imra@imra.org.il>
Date: Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 3:47 PM
Subject: Pollard's treatment: A Betrayal That Must End
To: <imra@imra.org.il>
A Betrayal That Must End
Hamodia Editorial
Tuesday, February 12, 2019 at 6:17 pm
https://hamodia.com/2019/02/12/betrayal-must-end/
Betrayal is a very harsh term to use in any context. How much more so when
it is used to describe the treatment of a government towards its own
bona-fide agent.
Yet, betrayal describes precisely the way the government of Israel has
treated Jonathan Pollard for the past 33 years.
It is time for that betrayal to end.
As readers of these pages are no doubt aware, Pollard was a civilian
American naval intelligence analyst who, in the mid-1980s, passed classified
information to Israel. The information wasn't about America; it was
information about Israel's sworn enemies that America was supposed to — but
didn't want to — share with Israel.
Motivated by a genuine concern for the safety of the Jews in Eretz Yisrael,
Pollard gave over crucial material relating to grave threats against
Israel — information that helped save Jewish lives. Subsequently
declassified documents show that while Pollard's activities may have ruffled
some Arab feathers in the Middle East, there was no material impact on U.S.
national security.
(Though he acted out of a well-placed concern for the safety of his
brethren, on numerous occasions Pollard has expressed his sincere regret for
breaking the law and not finding a legal way to help Israel.)
In 1985, his actions were discovered by the U.S. government. The Israeli
government first used him to hold off the FBI while it evacuated all the
rest of the team to Israel.
Yet when he followed his instructions to seek refuge in the Israeli embassy
in Washington, he and his former wife were at first received and then
summarily thrown out — into the waiting arms of the FBI.
The Israeli government then proceeded to hand over all the documents that
they received from Pollard — with his fingerprints still on them. At the
request of both the U.S. and Israeli governments, he entered into a plea
agreement, which spared both governments a long, difficult, expensive and
potentially embarrassing trial.
The median sentence for the crime he committed — passing classified
information to an ally — was 2 to 4 years.
Pollard honored his side of the agreement, but in an astonishing travesty of
justice, the U.S. government proceeded to break its promise not to seek a
life sentence. Based on a last-minute affidavit by then-Defense Secretary
Caspar Weinberger, the Judge sentenced him to life in prison. According to
Professor Lawrence J. Korb, who served as Assistant Secretary of Defense at
the time, Weinberger was motivated by "an almost visceral dislike of Israel
and the special place it occupies in our foreign policy."
There are ample indications that the reason Pollard was treated so
differently than the others who gave classified information to an ally was
not because of what he did, but because of who he was — an American Jew —
and because the country he was helping was Israel.
Yet from the very beginning of this terrible saga, the Israeli government
not only abandoned Pollard, but actually betrayed him.
His first lawyer, Richard Hibey, was a Lebanese-American hired by the
Israeli government.
After the sentencing hearing, Hibey had 10 days to file a document to
protect Jonathan's right to appeal his life sentence. He did not file the
document. As a result, Pollard was never able to appeal his life sentence.
Ever since it found and paid for the lawyer who secured a life sentence for
Pollard, the government of Israel never again gave even a minimal sum
towards Pollard's legal bills or personal expenses.
For more than a decade, Israel even denied that he was a bona-fide agent,
claiming that his actions were the result of an "unauthorized rogue
operation."
Only under pressure of lawsuits in the Israeli High Court did Israel finally
grant him citizenship in 1995, and in May of 1998 — more than 12 years after
he was first arrested — the Israeli government finally acknowledged that
Jonathan Pollard was in fact an Israeli agent. While, on paper, they took
responsibility for him, in reality, successive Israeli governments failed
miserably in their obligation to bring him home.
Again and again, Pollard has been used as a pawn in the "peace process."
Former President Clinton actually promised to release Pollard (at the
suggestion of the Palestinians) as a way to get the Israeli government to
free hundreds of terrorists. After the deal was struck, America once again
broke its promise. The terrorists were released; Pollard remained in prison.
In November of 2015, after serving 30 years in prison, Pollard was released
on parole and permitted to join his wife, Mrs. Esther Pollard, who has
dedicated her life with enormous mesirus nefesh on his behalf. But he is
still far from free, as he languishes under illogical, oppressive parole
restrictions. While the very concept that after 33 years Pollard still has
any secret information in his head is in itself absurd, the details of the
restrictions illustrate that the intent is to harass, rather than to protect
any secrets.
At all times he is required to wear a GPS monitoring system which tracks his
location. He is permitted to speak with anyone and walk the streets near his
Manhattan residence — during the daytime. A trip to nearby Brooklyn — or a
different part of Manhattan — is off-limits as, for some unexplainable
reason, that would be a national security risk.
As soon as the clock strikes 7:00 p.m., he must stay inside his apartment
until morning. He is permitted to freely receive guests in his apartment at
night. It is only being on the street at night that is considered a threat
to America's security interests…
The restrictions also include the unfettered monitoring and inspection of
his computers, as well as those of any employer who chooses to hire him,
which has prevented him from being able to gain employment.
Some advocates on his behalf have been brushed off with the assertion that
by November 2020 — five years after his release from prison— the
restrictions will be lifted.
It is true that, as the government stated in a footnote to one of their
legal briefs in this case, "There is a statutory presumption that five years
after a parolee's release, the Commission shall terminate supervision over
such parolee unless the Parole Commission makes a showing that there is a
likelihood that the parolee will engage in conduct violating any criminal
law."
However, history has shown that when it comes to Jonathan Pollard,
presumptions simply don't apply. The "visceral dislike" towards Israel and
American Jews that caused him to receive a life sentence in the first place
has not disappeared. The same government officials who have insisted on
these irrational, oppressive restrictions will be the ones making the
decision whether or not to lift them in 2020, and they have the legal
(though not the moral) ability to keep them in place until 2030.
In the meantime, Pollard sits and waits for the Israeli government to
fulfill its obligations. Last March, Prime Minister Netanyahu reportedly met
with President Trump and proposed a bureaucratic solution to the problem via
the U.S. Department of Justice, known as "Treaty Transfer," whereby Pollard
would be granted permission to return to Israel, to live there and finish
his parole there. The president and virtually all of his cabinet are said to
have agreed.
However, the Department of Justice is still populated by Obama holdovers.
They dragged out the process for months, and then turned down the
application for Treaty Transfer on the basis of spurious and false
assertions.
As an essential part of his reelection campaign, Netanyahu is touting his
close, personal relationship with President Trump. Massive billboards
featuring an image of the two have sprung up on highways in Israel.
Relative to some of his predecessors, who made it clear that they had no
interest in Pollard ever obtaining his freedom, Netanyahu has done the bare
minimum on Pollard's behalf. But after so many years of betrayal, the least
that Jonathan deserves is a concerted, comprehensive effort by Netanyahu and
all members of his government to bring Pollard back to Israel.
President Trump has proven to be a devoted friend of Israel and an
individual who is prepared to make courageous decisions. All it should take
is a message from Israel that this is of the highest priority, and the facts
of the case will already speak for themselves.
It is perhaps unrealistic to ask a politician to act on moral grounds,
especially in the heat of an election campaign. However, the fact that there
is broad public support for the Pollard cause among the Israeli public
should suffice to convince Mr. Netanyahu that Jonathan Pollard deserves more
than lip service and empty promises. It is time for concrete actions and
real-time hishtadlus.
________________________________________
IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis
Since 1992 providing news and analysis on the Middle East with a focus on Arab-Israeli relations
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Friday, February 15, 2019
Fwd: Mike Huckabee Newsletter Feb 15, 2019 Today's Commentary --- Andrew McCabe uses book and TV to defend the indefensible -- National Emergency Declaration -- Omar outrages again -- "Red Letter Day" --- Voter ID Laws Under Assault -- President Trump makes his move -- Weekend TV Note -- A Rancher responds to AOC -- Evening Edition --
The message you have just received was delivered by Mike Huckabee and includes advertising powered by PowerInbox. These ads help bring this newsletter to you free of charge.
Today's Commentary --- Andrew McCabe uses book and TV to defend the indefensible -- National Emergency Declaration -- Omar outrages again -- "Red Letter Day" --- Voter ID Laws Under Assault -- President Trump makes his move -- Weekend TV Note -- A Rancher responds to AOC -- Evening Edition --
--------------------------
READ THIS NEWSLETTER ON MY WEBSITE.
Robin,
It's interesting that someone who was fired from the FBI for lying-by-omission to investigators is now so forthcoming about the same overall issue; namely, the actions taken by him and his friends to get rid of Donald Trump, as a candidate and later as President. Former deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe is now singing like a canary about what he and his colleagues were doing behind the scenes to accomplish just that. Oh, but he's not apologizing for overstepping his bounds and working to achieve Trump's ouster in what might be –- and which has been, by me –- described as a "bloodless coup." Just the opposite: he sounds just as self-aggrandizing as former FBI Director James Comey. They were all working to save America from someone who might have been in league with Russia or who was otherwise "unfit" for the Presidency.
McCabe's sudden verboseness has mostly to do with the release of his book, called (are you ready for this?) "THE THREAT: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump." Good grief, where to start? Someday, after all this shakes out, Trump is going to have to write a book called "THE REAL THREAT: How My Republican Colleagues and I Protected America from the FBI." What is it about these top bureaucrats? We've known since July of 2016 that James Comey thought of himself as not just an FBI official but also as prosecutor, judge, and jury, and now we see his friends had the same inflated sense of self-importance.
Mike Huckabee
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National Emergency Declaration
By Mike Huckabee
It looks as if President Trump will sign the compromise bill to keep the government open, even though it doesn't contain anywhere near the amount of money for border security that he requested – but he has also decided to take other executive actions, including declaring a national emergency, to build the barriers he believes we need.
This will no doubt be met with outrage and lawsuits from Democrats claiming he has no power to go around them with executive orders and national emergencies. For the record:
Number of national emergencies declared by President Obama: 13, including many dealing with issues involving other nations such as Ukraine and Yemen.
Number of executive orders imposed by Obama: 276. (Bill Clinton signed 361 and George W. Bush 291.)
I believe that in court, that's called "precedent." As in "I'm Precedent, and you're not, Nancy."
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/14/us/politics/trump-national-emergency-border.html
Omar outrages again
By Mike Huckabee
I haven't been writing about every outrageous, offensive and anti-Semitic remark by new Minnesota Democratic Congress member Ilhan Omar because…well, there are only so many hours in the day. But this is one I can't let pass without pointing it out to you.
Watch as she disgraces a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee by implying that our special envoy for Venezuela, Elliot Abrams, thought a 1981 massacre of civilians in El Salvador was a "fabulous achievement," and asked if he would support genocide and crimes against humanity in Latin American nations if it served US interests. Abrams, who is Jewish, was so understandably offended, he refused to answer what he said weren't even "real questions."
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"Red Letter Day"
By Mike Huckabee
Wednesday, America had a literal "red letter day" (the letters being written in red ink) as the national debt topped $22 trillion.
As always, politicians are pointing the finger at each other, and as always, three fingers are pointing back at them. Some are trying to blame President Trump and the GOP tax cut for federal revenues dropping 0.4% last year to $3.33 trillion (the budget for this year spends $4.2 trillion.) But a Treasury official said that's a short-term drop because of front-loaded benefits such as immediate expensing of capital expenditures to encourage investment in U.S. businesses. They expect the boom in economic activity that it's spurring to boost tax revenues over time. Indeed, Washington already took in a record $1,665,484,000,000 in individual income taxes in 2018.
I hope so, and I do believe revenues will rise in the long run. The problem, though, is one that has remained the same for years, through both Democratic and Republican leaders. It's the idea that the government can keep on indefinitely spending more money than it takes in. If $3.33 trillion in revenue isn't enough, then does anyone want to bet that if revenues go up to, say, $5 trillion, spending won't go up to $6 trillion?
You'd think they would have figured out by now that the problem isn't inadequate revenue, it's too much spending. This has been the case since time began, as explained so well by Mr. Micawber in Charles Dickens' 1850 novel, "Oliver Twist":
"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."
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Voter ID Laws Under Assault
By Mike Huckabee
The left's argument against voter ID laws has always seemed like their argument that Trump won via Russian collusion or because his supporters are all racist Nazis – like a feeble attempt to avoid confronting the reality that a majority of American voters reject failed leftist policies. For some people, it's easier and more comforting to blame your own failings on there being something fundamentally wrong with everyone else than to consider that the fault might lie in yourself.
So when Republicans propose simple measures to insure that elections are legitimate, such as asking voters to show ID (one of many types that are free and easily available), the cry always goes up that they are trying to suppress the minority vote. This is predicated on the offensively racist premise that minorities are somehow unable to attain an ID. And it flies in the face of polls showing that large majorities of minority voters also favor voter ID laws.
President Trump makes his move
By Mike Huckabee
As I already mentioned, President Trump reportedly plans to sign the compromise budget bill to keep the government from shutting down again, but he's not happy with the paltry funding for border security and intends to build the wall and fund other measures by declaring a national emergency and shifting military funds that he controls to border security.
Before he signs it, I hope he will read it carefully and have his best legal staffers do so as well. Word is that the bill has been loaded with poison pills designed to block him from taking independent action to do what Congress refuses to do. If so, then he should refuse to sign it and force them back to the drawing board, even if there is another partial shutdown. There's also the concern that Democrats will use this as precedent for future Presidents to impose their agendas by declaring gun control or other hot button leftist issues to be a national emergency. But that's a red herring: do you really think they wouldn't try to do that anyway, no matter what Trump does? And if he really thinks something is a national emergency, then he shouldn't ignore it just because someone might try to abuse that power in the future.
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Weekend TV Note
By Mike Huckabee
Weekend TV Note On a "Huckabee" Family Member: If you enjoy the essays by "Huckabee" writer Laura Ainsworth, look for her this weekend on your TVs and computer screens. She's not only a fine writer, she's also a fantastic retro-jazz recording artist. She was recently honored by the Artists Music Guild Heritage Awards with an unprecedented triple win for Video, Album ("New Vintage") and Female Vocalist of the Year at a ceremony hosted by Thelma Houston.
A TV special made from that evening recently aired nationally on Dish Network. This weekend, it will be broadcast on WATC-TV in Atlanta at 10 a.m. EST on Saturday and again at 8 p.m. EST on Sunday. You can also watch it streaming live online at WATV's website. Here's more info on the AMG Awards show:
http://watc.tv/the-amg-heritage-awards-coming-to-watc/
And more about Laura's music. Congratulation, Laura!
----------------------------
A Rancher responds to AOC
By Mike Huckabee
Speaking of the "Green New Deal," one of its many flaws is that it reflects the arrogant elitism of the Ivy League political class, those people who, as the Wizard of Oz put it, have no more brains than anyone else but they have diplomas (remember when Obama said he thought he was a better speechwriter than his speechwriters, knew more about any policy than his policy directors, etc.? Or when Hillary Clinton locked doctors and insurance actuaries out of her meetings to create her doomed Hillarycare plan?) These folks come out of the academic hothouses thinking they are brilliant enough to restructure our entire society and couldn't possibly learn anything from talking to a lowly farmer, rancher, factory worker or coal miner. If they did, they would risk finding out just how much they don't know.
For instance, here's a great story about what a rancher would had said to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez if she'd bothered to get down off her high horse and talk to him before releasing her grand plan to eliminate the existential threat of gassy cows.
He explains how farmers and ranchers are already using genetics, breeding and changes in feed to reduce livestock methane emissions; and how surplus scrap vegetation is turned into livestock feed, making cattle into recyclers of garbage. Read it not only to find out what you can learn when you lower yourself to talk to someone who actually knows something about the subject, but to find out exactly why this rancher says, "Seriously, cows are like superheroes."
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Evening Edition - February 14
By Mike Huckabee
A wrap-up of all the news you might have missed yesterday!
Did you miss reading a newsletter recently? Go to our archive here.
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Fwd: Daniel Greenfield's article: What's Bad for the Media is Good for America
From: Sultan Knish <noreply+feedproxy@google.com>
Date: Fri, Feb 15, 2019, 8:06 AM
Subject: Daniel Greenfield's article: What's Bad for the Media is Good for America
To: <faigerayzel@gmail.com>
Daniel Greenfield's article: What's Bad for the Media is Good for America |  |
| What's Bad for the Media is Good for America Posted: 14 Feb 2019 06:49 PM PST The winter freeze might have shut down entire cities, but it couldn't slow down job growth as the economy roared through the cold and shattered projections with 304,000 non-farm jobs in January. There were job gains everywhere from transportation (27,000) to health care (42,000) to hospitality (74,000). Under Trump, construction gained 338,000 jobs in 12 months while manufacturing picked up 261,000 jobs in that same period. There was good news for many industries, but bad news for one. The media is freezing colder than the polar vortex with thousands of lost jobs in January and February. Gannett, the giant behind USA Today and many local lefty papers such as the Arizona Republic, the Detroit Free Press and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, fired 400 employees. McClatchy, another newspaper giant, which publishes the Miami Herald, the Kansas City Star and the Charlotte Observer, among many others, announced voluntary buyouts for 10% of its employees after having fired 3.5% of its staff or 140 employees back in August. Tronc, another publishing giant, has already been making major cuts at newspapers like the New York Daily News and the Los Angeles Times. Reuters expects to cut 3,200 jobs or 12% of its global workforce, closing 55 offices by 2020. BuzzFeed fired 15% of its staff or 220 employees, wiping out its national security desk, most of its national news desk, LGBT team and entertainment team. Verizon, which through a series of bad business decisions had inherited the Huffington Post, cut 7% or 800 jobs in its media division. HuffPo dumped its health and opinion section, along with various reporters. Vice Media is laying off 10% or 250 employees from its global staff. Mic's staff was mostly let go back in November. And the bloodletting isn't over. It's just beginning. Why is the media failing while the rest of the economy is thriving? It used to be said that what's good for General Motors is good for America. But what's good for the media is bad for America. And what's bad for the media appears to be remarkably good for America. In 2009, as the economy was tanking, journalism school applications increased sharply. As the economy began to recover, J-School enrollment began to fall. Call it the Vulture Effect. Carrion eaters are attracted to death. When the death rate drops, they have to either learn to kill things or face extinction. Consider the media's destructive behavior of the last few years a classic example of CNN carrion eaters trying to trick the predators into fighting each other and making more carrion for them to feast on. By 2016, the Bureau of Labor Statistics was projecting a 10% decline in employment for reporters and correspondents. After this winter, the BLS may need to sharply revise its estimates upward. Major media organizations are dumping 10% of their staff as a routine response to business model reverses. The media does best when things are bad. It's the same reason why Democrats have their strongest footholds in cities with massive poverty, gun violence and infant mortality. Or why starving children dig through the trash in Communist countries while the red billboards overhead tout Socialism. Lefties claim that they want to make things better, but they only gain power by making things worse. The media is terrible at trying to make good news happen. Its shrill insistence that the economy had recovered 5 minutes after Obama took the oath of office on a reflection in the mirror convinced no one. After 5 years, it had become a running joke with the flavor of late Soviet propaganda about wheat harvest percentages. But it can be quite effective at spreading bad news and convincing people it's true. Just look at how the media has managed to convince people that the global warming sky is falling, that Facebook trolls are a national security threat and that President Trump gets all his orders from Moscow. If the media is going to make any money and gain any power, it's got to go negative. But negativity is a tougher sell when times are good for most people. Except for the brooding vultures of the media. A winter of Trumpian economic growth has been very bad for those birds. The January media layoffs actually involve two different tracks of the industry. There's the dead tree media track of the newspaper giants who have been steadily bleeding jobs ever since their customers realized that they didn't need to pay twelve bucks a week and get ink smears on their hands just to read the local rewritten versions of the same lefty talking points from New York and Washington D.C. And then there are the digital media operations fueled by venture capital cash that were going to be the Great New Hope of the mainstream media with slick snarky stories, their own in-house ad shops and lots of millennials writing about social justice outrages trending on social media for other millennials. That's the new media catastrophe. And the one that has occasioned the real wailing and tooth-gnashing. "The BuzzFeed Layoffs as Democratic Emergency," Farhad Manjoo shrieked in the New York Times. Farhad meant the other kind of "democratic", but his headline was unintentionally correct. The media is a massive force multiplier for the Democrats. If it didn't exist, national politics would look very different. Imagine an America in which Democrats eavesdropping on Republicans, supporting cop killers, ISIS, Iran and infanticide weren't met with immediate walls of media spin, lies, fake explainers and even more fake fact checks. Then imagine an America with a border wall, voter ID and a real War on Terror. That's a "Democratic emergency". No question about it. If the media falls, it will be the greatest moment for democracy since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The collapse of the Soviet Union revealed that the Evil Empire was really a bunch of boring bureaucrats who, through the magic of ideology and mass murder had acquired the ability to terrorize millions of people. The unraveling of the media will reveal that the echo chamber that told us what to do and think, that cost hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars, that stole generations of progress and prosperity from a great nation, was really a bunch of otherwise unemployable Marxist grad students. The media has blamed Google and Facebook for not giving it enough traffic. It's redoubled its efforts to demand that the dot com giants give them even more money (Google and Facebook have already pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into the media), more privilege for their traffic and more power to censor conservative media under the guise of 'fact checkers' fighting a 'fake news' emergency. Hatred has also been hurled at Gannett, McClatchy, Tribune, BuzzFeed, Bustle and Vice management which are pursuing merger and consolidation plans that will cost even more media jobs. They point to the profitability of some of these companies as proof that the layoffs are really capitalist greed. Sure. The digital media empires with their fake news, explainers and snarky social justice commentary were built by convincing investors that they could be as profitable as actual tech companies. BuzzFeed and the rest of the gang could have just shrugged and announced that failing to meet expectations would be the new reality. And that if their investors don't like it, they can go and invest in tech startups. Then in a year or two, it wouldn't be a few hundred jobs being cut, but a few thousand. Digital media is full of millennial socialists with an Ocasio-Cortez level grasp of economics who spend six figures on a useless degree in journalism from Columbia and are convinced that destroying Facebook will save them. Even though Facebook is the only reason that clickbait parasites like BuzzFeed even exist. Finally, many in the media blame President Trump. In an ocean of economic prosperity, the media has become a desert island full of cannibalistic savages, devouring each other, while praying to Mueller. But that's not because of anything Trump did to the media. It's about what he isn't doing. Obama's divisive policies created social, cultural and economic insecurity across the spectrum. Trump's politics have brought prosperity and economic security. And the media has refocused on stirring up insecurity among Democrats and Never Trumpers because they are its only remaining demographics. The good times are here. And the media's only customer base consists of people who don't believe it. A growing media indicates a loss of confidence by Americans. It shows that the divisive leftist tactics of the media are paying huge dividends in fear, uncertainty and doubt among ordinary people. A shrinking media however indicates that we are once again becoming an optimistic and confident nation. The media's loss of jobs is a very good thing. It's a statement of confidence by Americans in America. Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine at the above link. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading.        |
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