Wednesday, April 29, 2020

What's Your Criteria For Voting For A President? Choices Between Biden and Trump

Nadene Goldfoot                                                     
 One Hundred Twenty Years ago, Jews in Europe were at a crisis; to be a Jew or not after their history of 3,000 some years since the days of Moses, and kings of Saul, David and Solomon, with their own country of Israel and then Judah.  The destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans and all the strife they had to endure since that time left some very strong-minded people; but now were they going to endure more pain through their choice;   by going to Palestine which was under the Ottoman Empire of Turks or would they choose the Christian America with streets paved with gold.  My grandparents chose the USA, but others chose Palestine and became the Jewish Palestinians until May 14, 1948 when Israel was born again and accepted by the League of Nations and the new United Nations and became the Israelis. I've made aliyah and have dual citizenship as of 1980, teaching English there for 4 years.   
                                                                  
Joe Biden
President Donald Trump
Those that chose America are making up their minds today with voting for a president that is again upon us, and this time the choice is between Democrat Joe Biden and the present Republican President Donald Trump.  Here are some facts one should be aware of if one of your criteria is the welfare of Israel who will be 72 on May 14th.  Do today's Jews care about it?  We don't make that much of a difference as it is, since we are only 2% of the American population.  However, our decision may sway others, and when it comes down to it, every vote counts; at least we hope it does.  

The Democrats held the presidential office since January 20, 2009 with Barack Hussein Obama II, USA's 44th president.  He made decisions that were not of the benefit for Israel, mostly concerning Jerusalem.  Joe Biden was his vice President.  Hillary Clinton was his Secretary of State.  He selected them because they were congenial to his ideas.  

Until 1948, Jews were a majority of the population of Israel's main city, the city of David, as it was called.  The year of the census was 1863, and the British Consulate there stated in his report that Jews were the majority .  This was before the Brits arrived, or when Lord Balfour wrote his letter stating that England would help the Jews to have a Jewish state.  It was before such men as Theodor Herzl.  It was even before the 1st Aliyah from Russia of Jews in 1880 leaving their cold land of many pogroms against Jews.  It was a time when the Ottoman Empire and it's Turks ruled the land.  Jews had been told by the Romans in 70 CE that they had to leave and were not to return, but there were Jews who had never left in the first place.  There has always been Jews living in Eretz Yisrael through the many conquerors.  
                                                    

This brings us to Resolution UNSC 2334 which rules that even the Western Wall is in "occupied Palestinian territories." United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 was adopted on 23 December 2016. It concerns the Israeli settlements in "Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem". The resolution passed in a 14–0 vote by members of the U.N. Security Council (UNSC).

"The draft was originally presented by Egypt on the basis of a document prepared by British legal and diplomatic figures working together with the Palestinians, with Britain regarded as the key player in formulating the resolution and pressing for a vote.It was adopted."  Britain managed to screw Israel in giving up 80% of land deemed to be the Jewish Homeland for King Abdullah when he came to them.  The land became Jordan. Britain had the 30 year mandate and they benefitted themselves and made sure they backed people with oil on their property.  Israel had no oil on their teeny piece.  


"Four members with United Nations Security Council veto power, China, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom, voted for the resolution, but the United States abstained".  This abstention was like voting for the
 resolution.  The effect was the
same.   Israeli newspaper Haaretz stated it "may have serious ramifications for Israel in general and specifically for the settlement enterprise" in the medium-to-long term.
The resolution states that Israel's settlement activity constitutes a "flagrant violation" of international law and has "no legal validity". It demands that Israel stop such activity and fulfill its obligations as an occupying power under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

High pressures were exerted to avoid the vote. On 22 December, United States President-elect Donald Trump called on Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to withdraw the proposal, and Egypt withdrew the nomination after what its ambassador called an "intense pressure". Then on 23 December, the draft was taken up and proposed again by Malaysia, New Zealand, Senegal and Venezuela. Israel unsuccessfully pressured New Zealand to withdraw its support, with Netanyahu telling Foreign Minister Murray McCully that support for the proposal would be considered by Israel as a "declaration of war". Britain encouraged New Zealand to keep pushing for a vote. Following a telephone conversation between Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin, the Russian ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin requested that the vote be postponed until after Christmas. His proposal failed to gain any support.
                                                    
 This was the wall around King Herod's palace, and is the remnant left standing in Jerusalem on the Temple Mount where Jews go to pray, for they cannot use any other spot there.  The Temple Mount is under the auspices of the state of Jordan's religious people.  King Solomon's 1st Temple used to be on the Temple Mount but was destroyed by the Babylonians under their king Nebuchadnezzar in 597 BCE, and then was rebuilt again in 538 BCE by the freed Jews from Persia under the rule of Kings Cyrus and his son King Darius.  Unfortunately, for religious and political reasons, the Palestinians refuse to accept the fact that we have over a 3,000 year history in the land, and that Jerusalem was a Jewish capital of ancient Israel.

Did the USA's government accept our Jewish history?  William Henry Seward, Secretary of State of the USA from 1861 to 1869 and earlier served as governor of New York and was a US Senator 
during the American Civil War in the 1860s under President Lincoln and he surely did.  He visited the holy land and of course visited Jerusalem.  He found and stated that that there was a Jewish majority living in Jerusalem, and remained so until 1948 when Israel was declared a state and accepted by the United Nations (UN).  What happened with that declaration was that our  waiting for the return to our Israel  actually happened after praying 3 times a  day  since 70 CE and promising not to forget Jerusalem or else lose the use of the right hand . Patience finally paid off.  But, the British held the mandate over Palestine for 30 years, and in 1948 they pulled out which was the end of their term, leaving the Jews without any way to defend themselves.  Their own British General Glubb then led the Jordanian Arab Legion to expel all Jews from Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter.  It was a divided city between the Jews and Muslims and others with real divisions to keep them apart .  "Lieutenant-General Sir John Bagot Glubb, KCB, CMG, DSO, OBE, MC, KStJ, KPM, known as Glubb Pasha, was a British soldier, scholar and author, who led and trained Transjordan's Arab Legion between 1939 and 1956 as its commanding general. During the First World War, he served in France. The Brits were definitely showing favoritism towards the Arabs and were helping them to enter the land while they were keeping Jews out, and this at the time of the Nazi strength against the Jews; with Jews suffering and needing to get to a safe location, like their own endowed country, the promised Jewish Homeland, promised through Lord Balfour's letter in which they would help the Jews to have their Jewish Homeland.  

Writer Mark Twain wrote "The Innocents Abroad" about an excursion he took to the Holy Land, Egypt, The Crimea, Greece, etc from Brooklyn on February 1, 1867.  It was a savory accounting of all he saw which he describes as only he could do it.  On page 203 he said that Palestine is only from 40 to 60 miles wide.  The State of Missouri could be split into 3 Palestines, and there would then be enough material left for part of another- possibly a whole one." 

Like Ireland, who have a Catholic population and a Protestant population and who have fought against each other, the same happened with the Jews and the Muslims.  The Muslim Palestinians and their Muslim neighbors such as Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, etc, make decisions according to their religious needs as well as political ones.  In the USA, religion and politics are to stay apart.  Americans are not really used to think along such a vein.  
                                                       
IDF at the Wall in 67-a first for them
The Six Day War in 1967 turned the Muslims around and really shook them up.  After fighting against the fledgling state of Israel in 1948, 1956, and 1967, they felt the furor of losing these battles 3 times in a row, and this was a loss to all the Muslim states who had ganged up on teeny Israel who had to fight alone.  So they met in Africa's Khartoum city, and decided on the 3 nos, that they would never recognize Israel and would never make peace with her.   1967's War's result was allowing Jews into Jerusalem for the 1st time since May 1948, and the Jews were so happy with joy!  The Jews had been kept out of their beloved Jerusalem for 19 years!   They made a bee-line for their own Jewish Quarter and said prayers at the Western Wall (kotel)  

In 2016, Barack Obama had been the US president for the past 7 years already.  He didn't veto the UNSC 2334.  This, I remind you, rules that Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem's Old City which includes the Western Wall and the Temple Mount  and states that they are "illegally occupied by Israel because they are now deemed Palestinian territories.  He had this chance to vote against this lying rule and didn't do it.  This very day was his last day in office, for Donald Trump won the position after Obama's 2 terms of 8 years, and he left this very bitter taste in my mouth of using such a day to go against Israel.  It was as if he waited until the last day to stick it to Israel, and he had no love for Netanyahu for Netanyahu could out talk Obama, and did so on live TV one time in explaining Israel's situation.  I don't believe he had much love for Israel's history, either, since half of his family either had been Muslims or still were.  It was on his father's side of which he had had very little contact-probably until he became President.  His father was an African who had met his mother while at a university as a student.  

By voting the way he did, he was giving UNSC 2334 his approval, and that the Palestinian Arabs demanded nothing less than all of Jerusalem's Old City to have an ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Jews who were living in Judea and Samaria which others call THE WEST BANK. 

Their Palestinian Arab ruler, Abbas, demanded that ALL JEWS were to be expelled from any part of their future Palestinian State.  Israel doesn't have such thoughts.  Arabs live where they want in Israel and make up 20% of the population, which has actually grown beyond that by this  year of 2020; more like 24%.  This is the only Jewish state in the world while there are at least 48 Muslim majority states already in the world.  The % is important to keep and let it remain what it was created to be; a haven for Jews after 3,000 years of persecution.  Our history explains in the bible, THE OLD TESTAMENT, how we were to live in this land of Canaan, and now I can see why.  Being Jews can live according to our Mosaic Law, creativity abounds from there with the findings of such being shared with the world, things in the world of medical help for the world as one example.  Wonderful things have been coming out of Israel in its short period of 72 years.  Jews of the world make up only 0.02 % of the population, yet we have contributed so many  good things, and all the while under the stigma of being such low life!  You can see that this fact indeed makes me angry.  We're always the scape goat!  

On July 29, 2013  Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said that no Israeli settlers or border forces could stay in a future Palestinian state and that Palestinians deem illegal all Jewish settlement building within the land occupied in the 1967 Middle East War.   This was his vision he laid down even before peace talks had started up again in Washington after a 3 year lapse.  

December 27, 2016:  Netanyahu accused Obama of initiating UNSC 2334 and demanding that it be passed.  
Obama with his Vice President, Joe Biden


Vice President Joe Biden was accused of convincing Ukraine to vote in favor of the UN Resolution 2334.  This resolution  condemned Israel for building housing settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, places of the Jewish origins which are found in the Bible.  Biden had been in Ukraine for political reasons and his son was also found to be there for his occupation; two Bidens that had influence over Ukraine.  

Biden persuaded the Ukrainian diplomats to vote YES on the measure .  They would have at least abstained if he hadn't used his pressure.  This was reported by Israel's Environmental Protection Minister, Ze'ev Elkin who let the Jerusalem Post Newspaper know about it.  

It was also cited by a member of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's office.  He had told the news reporter that Biden had indeed called but wasn't able to confirm whether or not their discussion was about the Friday UN vote.  PM Netanyahu of Israel also put some pressure on the US to veto this hateful measure, but as we know, Obama abstained with the result in the U.N. Security Council approving the resolution with 14 votes to 0.  CNN reported about it on the following Monday.  

Netanyahu's statement about the voting was that Israel had no doubt that the Obama Administration initiated the measure, stood behind it, coordinated it on the wording and had demanded that it be passed.  Mossad is usually right on in its findings.  I have no doubt that they did a lot of research on this.  

2016 was a year of the worst antisemitic and anti-Israel incidents.  The Simon Wiesenthal Center made up a list of the worst 10 for that year.  

  Obama's last day in office spent giving a vote that was of negative consequences against Israel.It reversed decades-long US policy of  vetoing such diplomatic moves against the Jewish State.  
                                                   
      US ambassador Susan Rice made a similar negative vote before in 2011.  She said, "This draft resolution risks hardening the position of both sides and could encourage the parties to stay out of negotiations.  In this same year, Obama told the UN General Assembly that peace would not come through statements and resolutions at the UN.  The resolution identifies Jerusalem's holiest sites, including the Temple Mount and the Western Wall as OCCUPIED PALESTINIAN TERRITORY.  

It also urges UN members to tell the difference apart in their important dealings between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967.  It is effectively endorsing BDS.  The resolution 2334 is destructive and irresponsible and seeks to isolate and delegitimize Israel.  This time the USA was guilty of actions that were completely unacceptable and reckless.  These are not my words, but those of US Congressman Alcee L. Hastings, a Democrat from Florida, and are the thoughts of more than one Democrat and Republican.  I'm glad to see that not all Democrats went along with Obama's tirade against Israel.  

Such a year as 2016!!  It was a year rife with global Islamist terrorism and horrific human rights  violations.  For instance, the UN General Assembly passed 20 resolutions against Israel and only 4 against all the other countries combined.  It's like they had a fatwah against Israel.
                                                         
Rachel is in the middle with one child,
Benjamin, but Joseph was her 1st.  Her sister Leah is on the left.
Rachel is from Jewish history.  
UNESCO, which is an Arab-backed group, introduced a resolution that erased any historic link between the Jewish people and Judaism's holiest sites; the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.  If that wasn't enough, they rebranded RACHEL'S TOMB and the TOMB OF THE PATRIARCHS as exclusively Muslim sites.  The resolution also "deeply regrets" Israel's refusal to remove these sites from its national heritage list.  Can you imagine the chutzpa of the Palestinians?  

Rachel was the 2nd wife of Jacob and his deepest love.  She was one of the 4 matriarchs of the Jewish people.  She was the mother of Joseph and Benjamin and died near Bethlehem.  In Jewish stories, one will see her weeping for her children who were driven into captivity.  So now the Muslims are taking a Jewish heroine as one of theirs, and erasing her Jewish history. All this is happening for the purpose of trying to drive the Jews into the sea so they can have all the land.  

"In response, the government of Israel retaliated with a series of diplomatic actions against some members of the Security Council and accused the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama of having secretly orchestrated the passage of the resolution. Palestine's representatives stated this was an opportunity to end the occupation and establish a Palestinian state to live side by side with the state of Israel on the 1967 line." If this means going back to the 1967 line before the Six Day War, it would be ignoring all that happened as the result of a war started by the Arabs, as all these wars have been.  Israel has had to fight in Defense, 
always; not as a means of gaining land.  This is where Obama and Netanyahu got into it on live TV. 

On April 20, 2020, the J Street organization, a Jewish group who created themselves to counter AIPAC, another Jewish group, announced that it endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden's 2020 presidential bid.  I ask, and the newspaper also asks, how Jews can do this  after Biden convinced Ukraine to vote for this terrible UNSC 2334?  Do voters ever check out people running and ask themselves, is he or she going to be good for the Jews?  Do they ever check their past records?  
                                                    

As I saw it, Hillary Clinton was a copy-cat of Obama.  We had  2 choices then in the 2017 campaign; Hillary or Trump.  Obama was in for 8 years, and I saw where he was going.  I was livid on that last day of his office with his vote.  It had covered so much and did so much harm.  That wasn't their first go-to-it scuffle during those 8 long years, either.  It was the frosting on the cake, though, and had really curdled my feelings toward Obama.  Trump has done well by Israel by going for the Embassy to be located in Jerusalem instead of Tel Aviv.  It's meaning was deeper than locating an office.  It made a statement to all about how Trump felt about Israel.  


After 3,000 years of patiently waiting for our own country again and at a time when the necessity of it couldn't be more apparent, we have it, Israel founded on May 14, 1948.  Are the Jews of today in the USA going to just sit back and yawn when one hears the name of Israel?  Or do they have the courage our ancestors had to care for Israel and when they can, stand up for it?  


All this evidence, and J Street votes for Biden.  I ask again what Arutz Sheva asks of the American Jews, "How is it possible that Jews who care about the Western Wall support Biden?  I ask, "How is it possible that Jews who care about Israel support Biden?  How can they forget about the existence of Israel? " 


Resource:
Update:  https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/10/is_a_vote_for_joe_biden_in_the_interest_of-american_jews.htm
  ArutzSheva Newspaper, http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/279155
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_2334
Professor Kontorovich, international lawyer, advocate of Israel's rights.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bagot_Glubb
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/views-on-israel-of-u-s-presidential-candidates-2020-joe-biden

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