T. Belman. I am not surprised by this, only thankful. I saw it coming but didn’t know when exactly. When promoting the Jordan Option, I always mentioned that it would mean the end of the PA and UNWRA. I thought that Jordan’s King Abdullah would fall first. I still believe he won’t last a year.
The White House has decided to quietly withdraw from all its ties with the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority and Mahmoud Abbas.
DEBKAfile’s exclusive sources report that the Trump administration has resolved to scrap all ties with the Palestinian leadership in retaliation for its campaign against US President Donald Trump and his Jerusalem policy. Several warnings to Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) of what was in store if he did not desist from castigating the US president fell on death ears.
Last week, two Arab crown princes, Saudi Muhammed bin Salman and UAE Sheikh Muhammed bin Zayed, summoned Abbas to their capitals and urged him strongly to back away from his attacks on President Trump. He got the same advice from the ruler of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim Al Thani, who conferred with Washington on the subject – all to no avail. The Trump administration has therefore set out an eight-point program of sanctions, which is first revealed here:
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- The Israeli-Palestinian peace plan under preparation in Washington will not be submitted to Ramallah – only to Israel and the relevant Arab governments.
- US-Palestinian interaction is to be suspended – not just at the senior levels but in day-to-day interchanges. The administration has notified Palestinian and other Arab parties to stop addressing queries on political and economic matters to the US consulate in Jerusalem, because they will not receive answers.
- The status of the PLO office in Washington will be reevaluated with a view to shutting it down.
- Palestinian officials will no longer be invited to Washington by the US government, including the State Department and Department of Treasury.
- Above all, they will not be welcome at the White House or the National Security Council where US Middle East policy is designed. Senior US officials congratulated the senior Palestinian negotiator Saab Erekat, who also holds the PA’s American portfolio, on his recovery from illness, at the same time warning him that he would no longer be received at the White House.
- The Trump administration will not make any public announcement of the cutoff of financial aid to the Palestinians. Since the funds are mostly earmarked for specific economic projects, each allocation will simply be held back on the pretext of the need for a “reappraisal.”
- The US will halt its contributions to the UN Work and Relief Organization, an estimated one billion dollars per annum.
- The US administration moreover intervened with the governments of Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar with a request that they freeze or slow their economic aid to the Palestinian Authority.
According DEBKAfile’s sources, Palestinian officials in Ramallah were devastated by news of the sudden cutoff of the main sources of the PA’s revenue. Even the Qatar ruler, whom Abbas visited last week as a last resort to save the PA from economic meltdown, refused to release any more funding.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
You sound 100% Jew. Regardless of your metaphysical wanderings, you know where your roots are firmly fixed.
@Edgar G.
If you’re asking about process, well, nothing wakes you up to who you really are like being betrayed and having your face ground in who you are by “friends” and “comrades”, and even randomly by total strangers; and being a 2nd Generation Shoah Survivor/Partisan/Rescuer, it was never far below the surface and privately motivated everything I did, pretty much, anyway, however seemingly unrelated. Who knows? an American Hindu guru said I was the reincarnation of a Jew who did not survive the Shoah. I don’t know. All I know is what I feel. And what I feel is anger, pride, and concern for my fellow Jews. I can only speculate as to the rest.
@ Edgar G.:
It’s political not religious. I remember at one point thinking with some amusement when a Korean Christian handed me back my key chain that had a Jewish hand or a Chai on it, or something, that if she had asked, I would have observed that the yin/yang and i-ching symbols in the Korean flag are for me symbols of spirituality but for them a symbol of their national identity. The Jewish religious symbols, I sometimes carry, to the extent Christians share them, would be, for them, the spiritual symbol, for me the symbol of my national identity.
@ Edgar G.
I thought I made that pretty clear. As a product of everything I experienced and observed over a life-time, I went from universalist to Jewish nationalist in first order of priority, American nationalist, in 2nd to defender of Western Civilization and the values of the Enlightenment in third, though I’m still quasi-Socialist, depending on the context.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
With your antecedents how did you happen to gravitate towards Judaism…If you don’t think me too importunate in asking.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
All that makes me feel very sad.
My own family as I said came from Latvia. My dear father was about 8, when they were smuggled out. They owned a bakery in a little town right on the Western Dvina River, now called the Daugave, and the loggers floating down the river on log rafts used to wake them up at night to buy bread. He remembers running over the cobblestones delivering bread. They punctured his eardrum so that he wouldn’t be taken away for the Russian Army. He remembered that the Yiddishe name for the town was Naira, the other name was Freiedrichstadt, Through this I found out that the Latvian name and it’s present name is Jaunjelgava (I think that’s how it’s spelled) and it’s on the internet. When my family lived there over 3/4 of the population of around 4500 were Yidden so it was a typical shtetl.
The fishing boat they were on ran out of everything 9including the black bread and salt herring they lived on) when they were near Cobh the southern Irish harbour for Cork City. So they went in there. That’s how they happened to be in Ireland.
@ Edgar G.:
My mother’s family came from Lithuania in the 19th century though she thought it was Poland. They didn’t teach her much. The only thing she knew about Judaism was that she couldn’t compete in a spelling bee because it was on the Sabbath and she couldn’t celebrate the holidays other Americans did. Her brother became an Episcopalian. She tried to take me and my sister to a Lefty Unitarian Church service once when I was little but my father, who hated all religions, put his foot down.
Whenever I asked my mother’s older relatives about the old country, they replied, “who knows, the borders kept changing.”
My mother’s father’s father was ordained as a Shochet at Volozhin in its heyday (now in Belarus) and his wife, my great grandmother was from Smargon, now Smarhon. Two branches of my mother’s extended family formed a family organization to bring everybody over to America. Some were here before the Civil War. The Litvaks came there from Germany in the 1400s. They musta really hated it to erase all memories.
Later on 95 percent were murdered by their Christian neighbors with the Germans.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Oh you read that 13th Tribe by Koestler. I found it absorbing, and read it several times; I have it tucked away in storage. I know that there is only about 7% Khazar genetic material in some Jews, but it’s there.
But you know Sebastian, In Dublin, were 2 families who were as oriental looking as if they’d just come over on the boat from China or thereabouts. A well known, long time Dublin family, from Lithuania originally, like many of the rest of the Community. My family was from Latvia, just across the river from Lithuania. With cousins and in-laws etc we were probably the largest family in the Community.
@ Edgar G.:
Actually, at the time and place I was born, New York City in the late 1950’s, medical circumcision was required of all babies, though I suppose one could opt out if one chose. It was just considered more hygenic. According to Jewish law, one is Jewish by birth if one’s mother is Jewish. That’s why Elvis was Jewish, for example. He was the product of an unbroken Litvak maternal line. Medical circumcision doesn’t actually count, anyway. My maternal grandfather, wouldn’t speak to my parents for 2 years after I was born on account of it, I remember my mother telling me, at one point. There is a ceremony where they symbolically take one prick of blood, if you had a medical circumcision as an adult. Haven’t done it. Wasn’t bar mitzvahed, either. Though a couple of times, the Lubavitcher wagon guys offered to give me a quicky ten minute bar mitzvah. Serious. Superstitious nonsense. Antisemites murdered my whole family over there. And they want all of us dead, too. Nothing will ever change that. We are a race. And I am a proud racist!
@ Edgar G.:
That Khazar/Magyar business I found like Wikipedia that said the Magyars broke free of the Khazars and another article that claimed that Hungarians have no Asian DNA — Hungarians are very proud of being Eurasian, and Asians view them as such — but here’s corroboration on the Celts in Hungary. I am well aware of what nonsense the Khazar/Jewish business is. Their leaders briefly converted and then they were destroyed and they assimilated into existing Jewish communities elsewhere. Koestler raised it in the hopes that it would dispel “otherness” among the Goyim (see, we’re one of you) but it had the opposite effect and became a way of saying Jews had no ties to Israel.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Roughly speaking, the Celts ended up in Brittany, Ireland, and in the 6th century some migratrd to Scotland and all the islands in between. The rest had been assimilated all over Europe.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
No I was not mixed up, I was sure that it was you who mentioned the Petchenegs and I posted so. But then you seemed not to now whom I was talking about, either and I reposted a question asking whether it was the Varangian Guard or the Petchenegs you knew nothing about. Ans I suggested that it may have been Michael who mentioned the Prtchenegs, not you, to more or less agree with you.
I don ‘t see anywhere that the Khazars .were proving Hungarians were not Hungarians, and I did not say anything which might suggest this. One thing I did not include was that on more than one occasion a Kazar ruler married a Hungarian princess. The Kazars were getting tribute from those people I mentiond, they didn’t make slaves of them, once they’d defeated them.
Anyway, the Khazar mixture inJewish genes is very little. So in case you’re worried that you are not a Jew, be re-assured, You can always look at your circumcision as a reminder…… assuning that you’re not one of those overfed flabs who can’t see his shoes…….
@ yamit82:
Hi, Yamit
You seem to be focused on current events, more than on TaNaKh, which is understandable (especially since current events and Yamit82 met one another 35 years ago in Sinai). You did mention the US being “Magog”, however, and the Bushes as being “Gog”; so I will pursue this matter as far as I can.
There are two ways to address this matter: One, is to look at the scriptures (all of them in Ezekiel 38-39) and work toward the current situation. This is the tack I usually take. The other is to take the current situation, and see if we can work back to the scripture.
In the latter case, we would start with the Bush dynasty, and see how this relates to Ezekiel 38-39. Let me tell you this: I do see America as possibly having a very prominent role in end-times prophecies; but my references to this are almost entirely in the New Testament; and let me re-iterate what I’ve said in the past: they are NOT connected with the attack by Turkey on Israel.
The US is the most powerful country on earth, and will likely continue as such for the foreseeable future; and I cannot conceive of an attack on Israel — such as the Zechariah 14 event — as coming about without US connivance. In that conflict, however, Jerusalem is entered by the invading armies; and the end of the matter is a world-wide nuclear exchange. The Ezekiel 38-39 event is a smaller event, though, involving only the “outer tier” Islamic enemies of Israel (Turkey being one). The outcome of that event is very different: It is an Israeli rout of its enemies.
You identified the US and the Bushes with the Ezekiel event; and I don’t agree with you. Here’s how the Ezekiel attack is described:
Ezekiel 38:
[3] And say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal:
[4] And I will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws, and I will bring thee forth, and all thine army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed with all sorts of armour, even a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords:
[5] PERSIA, ETHIOPIA, and LIBYA with them; all of them with shield and helmet
For clarification’s sake, the three all-caps countries are
??? ???? ???? (Parosh, Cush and Phut)
Parosh is “Persia”, which is pretty unambiguously connected with modern Iran; Cush mainly indicated the country upriver from Egypt — what the Romans called “Ethiopia”, but which we today call Sudan. “Phut” is not so clear. The best identification I have found is the Cyrenaica part of Libya — the part now controlled by Gen. Haftar and his allies.
Haftar has recently won the support of Russia, a country which has been the prime mover at bringing Turkey and Iran closer together. He has been at odds with Turkey and Sudan in the past; but with Russian connivance, this could change. He certainly is not pro-Israel. Iran has been discussed at length; that leaves Sudan, which leads me to bring up the latest headline:
“Sudan, Turkey to Set Up ‘Strategic Cooperation Council’
Monday, 25 December, 2017 – 08:30”
— Asharq Al-Awsat
https://aawsat.com/english
Concerning Russia and Sudan, we have:
“What is behind Sudan’s ‘rapprochement’ with Russia?
Ahmed H Adamby Ahmed H Adam
2 Dec 2017
— Al Jazeera
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/sudan-rapprochement-russia-171130124410870.html
As with the Turkey-Iran rapprochement, Russia is the “glue” that binds these mutually antagonistic countries together. All put together, this seems to be pointing towards the Ezekiel 38 coalition. All the mix needs is a catalyst, which could come from an Iranian-Israeli conflict.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
The Khazars really get double duty don’t they? First they are useful in proving Jews aren’t really Jews, and now they are being used to prove Hungarians aren’t really Hungarians? Wow! Is that to punish them for closing the border? Say you can’t run your own country! How can peoples who don’t really exist run anything? Needless, to say, we Americans aren’t really Americans and Europeans aren’t really Europeans. But the Palestinians who didn’t exist five minutes ago, whoah, they’ve got an immutable and eternal existence! Academia is the natural home of the left. That’s why tenure has to go and academic self-government has to follow.