Sunday, November 10, 2019

I Am the Anonymous Whistleblower By Dov Fischer 11-9-19 spectator.org/i-am-the-anonymous-whistleblower  There is plenty of corruption in American politics to blow whistles at. 


I Am the Anonymous Whistleblower
By Dov Fischer  11-9-19
spectator.org/i-am-the-anonymous-whistleblower 

There is plenty of corruption in American politics to blow whistles at. page1image16687872 page1image33030768
The Jewish holidays season recently has ended. It begins with Rosh Hashanah, which Jewish tradition sets as the New Year of all humanity ... runs through the Jewish Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, the anniversary of G-d forgiving the sin of the Golden Calf after Moses alighted Mount Sinai the second time and prayed 40 days for forgiveness (Sh’mot/Exodus 34) ... continues into the week-long celebration of the Sukkot festival (Vayikra/Leviticus 23: 33-43) ... and culminates with the holidays of Sh’mini Atzeret and Simchat Torah when Jews celebrate the spiritual joy of having publicly read and studied the Pentateuch, the Five Books of Moses, during the prior 12 months — and then begin the annual cycle anew with Breishit/Genesis 1 by publicly reading the Torah all over again, starting with “In the Beginning, G-d created the heavens and the earth.”
Because I am a congregational rabbi, I mostly have to go “off the grid” on most other matters every year during a two-month period that begins from two or three weeks before Rosh Hashanah (preparing sermons, coordinating membership drives, overseeing our shul’s High Holidays hotel program, brushing up on blowing the shofar) and that continues two weeks or so after Simchat Torah, as I promptly must catch up frantically on six weeks of backlogged secular matters that necessarily have taken a back seat all that time. 

So, with apologies, this article is longer because there is much to say after a month “off the grid.”

We are encircled by hypocrisy and mendacity. The despicable deceit, the false posturing,
the public lying for personal gain. Is Nancy Pelosi 
really motivated by a desire to protect our nation — or by a never-satiated need for holding on to personal power at whatever cost may be imposed on all of us? Is Congress’s primary role really to conduct non-stop all- consuming investigations of our duly elected government leaders, paralyzing their agencies and executive operations while abandoning all legislative responsibilities to the Obama Judges who predominate in the states of the Ninth Circuit? 

Can there be a more despicable two-faced liar than Adam Schiff — whether in publicly reciting a transcript that he falsifies or even in his cynical exploitation of his Congressional District’s large population of 70,000 Armenian-American voters whom he manipulates by making one annual visit to Glendale every April 24? They complain that he ignores his District all year and spends all his time like some Stalinist KGB prosecutor, conducting secret star-chamber proceedings to destroy people’s lives — and then manipulatively mollifies them by suddenly getting a resolution passed that condemns the Armenian Genocide as he shifts into impeachment high gear. He has been in Congress for twenty years, and suddenly the Democrats only now pass a resolution acknowledging one of the worst inhumanities ever perpetrated — Turkey’s Medz Yeghern, the unspeakably horrific Turkish Holocaust of some 1.5 million Armenians between 1915-1923. Then, having cynically given his constituents their resolution, he goes back to conducting his show trial.

Yes, the Swamp’s Great Evil provides so much material for an Orthodox Rabbi’s sermons — but I prefer to keep my synagogue messages focused on spiritual, Torah-based themes, trying my hardest to avoid commenting from my shul pulpit on the secular garbage outside. 

Yet we Orthodox Jews, the fastest growing community of Jews in America, are deeply conservative. Pro-life. We oppose assisted suicide. We are people of deep faith. We live by the principle of personal responsibility. We recognize only two genders. We despise Communism and the socialist Left. We love President Trump. In the Democrat-predominant New York Tri-State area, more than 90 percent of Orthodox Jews are happy with Trump. Even in radical left Los Angeles — Home of the Homeless, Turf of the Typhus — more than 70 percent of Orthodox Jews vote Trump. We despise what the Democrats have done, particularly these past three decades, to destroy the social unity and moral fiber of our country. More than a year before the Trump Administration recently issued an order to protect the religious freedoms of adoption and foster-care agencies, over one thousand Orthodox rabbisurged such action. We Orthodox Jews hate that we are denied coverage in the media, with our views blacked out by a Corrupt Journalist Corps who have a different agenda to promote. If NBC can cover up for human garbage like Harvey Weinstein, and if ABC can cover up for human garbage like Jeffrey Epstein and Bill Clinton, with CBS accommodating the “competition” by firing an employee as a courtesy to ABC, then we Orthodox Jews do not have much chance having our voices resonate.

Though media keep us hidden and anonymous, we have had plenty to say about corruption.

If Adam Schiff conducts secret star-chamber proceedings with falsified transcript readings of a President’s phone call and with leaked out-of-context quotes to select Corrupt Journalists, do not be surprised that you have not heard my testimony released. 

But I have had plenty to testify about corruption. And when I say that “I” have been the anonymous whistleblower, I know how many tens of millions of additional Americans of all religions, faiths, ethnicities, races, and backgrounds likewise have been blowing the whistle along with me for years in deafening decibels that the Corrupt Journalist Corps will not broadcast.

I am the anonymous whistleblower who blew the whistle on the Bill Clinton corruption. How, long before #MeToo, Bill Clinton was raping Juanita Broaddrick, sexually abusing by exposing himself to Paula Jones, sexually abusing by grabbing at Kathleen Willey, sexually abusing by leveraging his status over Monica Lewinsky. Not to mention Clinton’s endless journeys on the Epstein airplane, the “Lolita Express.” Not to mention the corruption of the Clinton Foundation’s many scandals.

I am the anonymous whistleblower who blew the whistle on the Hillary Clinton corruption. Travelgate. Cattle futures. Whitewater, and the missing records of the Rose Law Firm. The Uranium One transfer of American uranium to Russian interests while Bill scandalously was getting paid huge speaking fees. How she joked and giggled about successfully defending a monster who had raped a child. How she sent the deceitful Susan Rice on four television talk shows in one day to lie to the American people about the real cause of the Benghazi massacre that saw our ambassador murdered, with Rice attributing the catastrophe to a stupid and unwatchable short YouTube video that almost no one ever viewed, even as Hillary secretly was emailing her daughter about the real and true cause of the disaster: an Arab Islamist jihad attack timed to coincide with September 11. How Hillary was using her email account illegally, endangering the foreign policy of the United States by emailing confidential and highly classified documents in channels that exposed them to being hacked and intercepted by our enemies, even as she maintained a private server in her home bathroom. How, when she was called upon to produce those emails, she destroyed 33,000 of them — an outright spoliation felony that would have landed any other American in prison long-term. How she lied to us, as though we all are idiots, telling us that those spoliated emails dealt with things like her yoga classes and buying Chelsea a wedding dress — 33,000 emails for yoga and a dress. We know she cannot contort herself into a lotus position — and we did not let her contort herself into the POTUS position. How she lied when she claimed to have braved bullets in Bosnia in 1996, when she in fact landed in a safe area where   gathered with flowers. How she even lied about being named for someone who in fact was not famously known yet at the time of her birth. And of course how she maneuvered campaign money through a Seattle law firm to subvert Trump with lies — as her campaign paid $5.6 million to Perkins Coie, and Perkins Coie retained Fusion GPS, which then hired Christopher Steele to compile the infamous fake dossier. And how, despite herself trying in every way to ingratiate herself with the Russians, she shamelessly declares one after another opponent — ranging across the spectrum from Donald Trump to Tulsi Gabbard to Jill Stein — as “Russian assets.”

I am the anonymous whistleblower who blew the whistle on Joe Biden and his decades upon decades of public lying and corruption. How he made a passionate speech about his own life story — when it was not his story but plagiarized from British politician Neil Kinnock. How he falsified accounts of traveling into dangerous regions of Afghanistan and risking his life to praise a real war hero, when it all was a big lie. How his son, a bum who had been kicked out of the Navy Reserves for cocaine use, got paid $50,000 a month for sitting on a corrupt Ukrainian energy company’s board, leveraging our votes — though never cast for him — to become rich beyond our wildest dreams. How Joe Biden corruptly leveraged his position as Vice President here in America, unilaterally threatening to withhold a billion dollars that Ukraine needed and was slated to receive, to force Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who was investigating the corrupt company, Burisma, that was paying Hunter Biden $600,000 a year for sitting on his rump. (Interesting, by the way, that the lead candidate of the anti-NRA Democrats, the party that wants to take away guns, named his kid “Hunter.”) How Joe Biden was a leading advocate of racial segregation when that position was popular among his constituents. How he told Iowa voters in 2007 in one of his earlier failed Presidential campaigns that they and their kids are smarter because they are white:

“There’s less than one percent of the population of Iowa that is African American. There is probably less than four of five percent that are minorities. What is in Washington? So look, it goes back to what you start off with, what you’re dealing with. When you have children coming from dysfunctional homes, when you have children coming from homes where there’s no books, where the mother from the time they’re born doesn’t talk to them — as opposed to the mother in Iowa who’s sitting out there and talks to them, the kid starts out with a 300-word larger vocabulary at age three. Half this education gap exists before the kid steps foot in the classroom.”

I am the anonymous whistleblower who blew the whistle on all of Elizabeth Warren’s lies and corruption. How she claimed to be an American Indian to advance her career every step of the way. A Sioux, gezuntheit. How she took the place of a true, honest minority member whose identity we never will know, by lying her way into an Affirmative Action slot by claiming to be a Cherokee Squaw. How she lied by publishing supposed family American Indian food recipes that appear to have been copied from the New York Times. How she lied when she claimed she was fired from a teaching job because she was pregnant. How she
lied by defaming her mother’s memory to score points, apocryphally telling of her mother smacking her in the face. Indeed, the false face of this forked-tongued public liar was never more obvious than when she had herself video’d as being “cool,” just pulling out a beer: “Hold on a sec. I’m gonna get me, um, a beer.” And her husband just so happened to be hanging around at the moment: “Hey ... ya wanna beer?” He: “No, I’ll pass on the beer for now.” How she made hundreds of thousands of dollars by representing big corporations against consumers, victims of asbestos, and even victims of breast-implant failures.

I am the anonymous whistleblower who blew the whistle on the corruption of the Obamas. How Barack obtained a beautiful big house for himself on a nice piece of land through his corrupt relationship with convicted felon Tony Rezko. How Michelle Obama suddenly got a job as Vice President of Community Relations at the University of Chicago Hospital, at a $121,910 salary, after Barack was elected an Illinois state legislator ... then got a salary hike to $$316,962 for the same job after Barack was elected to the U.S. Senate ... and how one of Senator Obama’s first acts in office was to advance an earmark of more than one million dollars to that hospital ... and how that job quietly was eliminated as the Obamas then moved on. How Barack secretly sent 400 million dollars in cash by plane to Iran. How Obama lied that his Obamacare would not force anyone to lose their doctors or health plans. How Obama lied on Fast and Furious ... and on Lois Lerner weaponizing the IRS to persecute political opponents ... and on his role in trying to subvert the Trump Presidency ... and on his “stimulus” going to “shovel-ready jobs” ... and half a billion wasted on Solyndra ... and on the permanent limits of a “new normal” in the economy that never could boom again without a magic wand.

I am the anonymous whistleblower who blew the whistle on the false narrative of Robert O’Rourke, a Scottish-Irish descendant of White Privilege falsely portraying himself as “Beto,” supposedly a Hispanic neo-Zorro to gullible voters in El Paso. How “Beto” actually descends from huge amounts of money and “White privilege.” How this “Kennedyesque” Democrat hit-and-run, fleeing from the scene of a car accident he caused. How he associated with a gang of computer hackers. While others drooled over his selfie-obsessed video-streaming of getting his teeth flossed, his ear hairs trimmed, or his being a very big boy who does not cry when he gets an immunization injection, I blew the whistle on his fake narrative. And now the skateboarder whom Vanity Fair put on its front cover with his prophecy “Man, I’m just born to be in it” — is totally out of it, man. Dude!

I am the anonymous whistleblower who blew the whistle on Kirsten Gillibrand, a phony who got elected to a House seat held by Republicans when news mysteriously leaked only days before the election that the GOP incumbent beat up his wife. How Gillibrand turned 180 degrees overnight from the conservative “blue dog” Democrat façade she used to get elected to that House seat and transmogrified into advocating an extreme-leftist agenda when she was named to the Clinton Senate seat. How she next turned 180 degrees from being a Bill Clinton sycophant and bottom feeder to lead the chorus that Clinton should have resigned. How she took a lead role in the #MeToo movement while knowingly tolerating sexual harassment and abuse of women staffers in her own office by her valued male chauffeur. How she endorsed Jew-haters like Tamika Mallory and Linda Sarsour while reaching out to Jewish donors and voters in New York. How she made a national fool of herself at a gay bar, trying to seem cool and yelling out “Gay Rights!”

I am the anonymous whistleblower who blew the whistle on Kamala Harris and how she slept her way into public life. How she consorted publicly, openly, and shamelessly with the married Willie Brown, rising up the California Democrat ladder to reach statewide office on his back ... and on hers. How she prosecuted and imprisoned others for marijuana possession while smoking weed herself. How she told an interviewer that she smoked marijuana in college while listening to Snoop Dogg and Tupac — how cool! — when in fact they had not yet emerged in those years.

I am the anonymous whistleblower who blew the whistle on the Communist Bernie Sanders, the apostate who laid the foundation in America to legitimize Jew-hatred from the likes of Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, who have brought Hitler Nazi tropes to Washington, D.C., questioning Jewish loyalties, saying that Jewish money controls politicians (“It’s about the Benjamins, baby), asserting that Israelis hypnotize the world, and describing the “calming feeling” of contemplating Arab Islamic roles during the Nazi Holocaust. How he made it legitimate to suggest diverting American aid away from Israel and towards the terrorist Iran-supplied Hamas government of Gaza. How he endorsed the Soviet Union, honeymooned there, praised Communist bread lines as “a good thing,” endorsed communist governments from Cuba to the Sandinistas. How he aligns with Jew haters, endorses and defends them and notably is endorsed by them, setting himself essentially as the very definition of an apostate.

I am the anonymous whistleblower who blew the whistle on the corruption in the Comey FBI. The lies to Congress. How Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were in the conspiracy to subvert the Trump presidency from within the FBI and to prevent him from achieving his agenda if he ever got elected, along with a coterie of sleazes from Comey to McCabe, with cheering on the sidelines from the likes of a John Brennan, whom Obama named to head the CIA even though the man had been an avowed Communist who voted for Gus Hall. And then, in the style of a classic Communist-style “false flag” operation that seeks to achieve a propaganda purpose by diverting attention from a real traitor by pointing an accusation to an innocent patriot, Brennan accused the patriot Donald Trump of “treason” — thus taking the public’s eyes off the real traitors in the room.

There is so much corruption in our politics. So much more and worse than candidate Donald Trump ever imagined when he campaigned on a promise to “drain the swamp.” The corruption is so pervasive and runs so deep that perhaps it cannot be drained. Today’s Democrats fight with whatever they have at their disposal; they cheat, lie, leverage their Corrupt Journalist Corps to advance their propaganda. They hold closed-door hearings and
then selectively leak out of context. They have no fear of being exposed because the Corrupt Journalist Corps are in on the fix. The only exposure that ever comes at all is when they all run against each other for a Presidential nomination, so of necessity attack and expose each other publicly. By contrast, the vast majority of Republicans do not know how to fight. They are limp-wristed wimps, Girlie Men, best epitomized by a Mitt Romney who agrees to allow a CNN Democrat Leftist to conduct a crucial Presidential debate unilaterally, then gets himself interrupted by her repeatedly in the middle of that debate when she joins his opponent, Obama, in a lie ... and then stands like a deer in headlights incapable of or unwilling to defend himself like a man and fight back because “that is not nice.”

I am not the only one. There are many tens of millions of us anonymous whistleblowers. We have been blowing the whistle unnamed for years. The Corrupt Journalist Corps silence our voices, hide our names. Our testimony is suppressed. But we voted in November 2016 for President Trump. And we will reelect him in 2020. They will hear the decibels then.

Thursday, November 7, 2019

Joe Biden’s Ukrainian Criminal Enterprise - by Alex Markovsky, AMERICAN THINKER



Joe Biden’s Ukrainian Criminal Enterprise -
The press coverage of Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine shows that Americans struggle to comprehend Joe Biden’s ambitions and methods of operation. The essence of events in faraway places is rarely fully apparent to Americans. However, for someone who has been doing business in the region for thirty years, the situation cannot be clearer.
The cardinal rule is that if you are doing business in a country of criminals, you have to behave like a criminal. Never-ending redistribution and re-division of assets is a defining characteristic of the Ukrainian business environment. Businessmen are in constant threat from corporate raiders that attack businesses with guns, forged ownership documents or new laws and regulations. To protect themselves from these realities, businesses hire “roof.” In criminal jargon it means protection. Various entities offer protection; organized crime, police, high ranking government officials, etc. The necessity for “roof” is built into business planning.
In 2002 during the tenure of President Viktor Yanukovych, his ecology minister Mykola Zlochevsky registered on Cypress Burisma Holding Limited. Burisma managed to secure lucrative government licenses for gas field exploration and production to become the second-largest private gas company in Ukraine. And, not by an accident. De jure, the licenses for the exploration of natural resources are drafted as bilateral agreements between the government entities and private enterprises but de facto they are unilateral and revocable grants of privileges by a president and high ranking government officials to their cronies and supporters.
As long as President Yanukovych was in power Mr. Zlochevsky’s assets were secured from a hostile takeover. In a way, President Yanukovych was his “roof” and no doubt benefited from the arrangement somehow.
But, nothing is permanent in the Ukrainian wicked world.
In February 2014 Yanukovych was overthrown in a coup and fled the country. Zlochevsky followed him shortly. In a dramatic reversal of fortunes, Burisma overnight changed from one of the strongest to one of the weakest. The recourse of the weakest was to find a new “roof” before newly-elected Petro Poroshenko’s government would be sworn in on June 2014.
It is not known when and who approached Joe Biden and what was offered in exchange for lobbing and political support. But on April 22, 2014, Devon Archer a managing partner of Rosemont Seneca Partners, a $2.4 billion private equity firm co-owned by the stepson of John Kerry Christopher Heinz and Hunter Biden was put on Burisma’s board.
On May 13, 2014, Hunter Biden himself joined the board.
On the same day, Christopher Heinz emailed Matt Summers and David Wade, two of his stepfather’s top aides at the State Department, “I can’t speak why they decided to, but there was no investment by our firm in their company,” wrote Heinz. Whether Christopher Heinz intended to dissociate himself and the firm from the activity or to create plausible deniability, the passage clearly displayed Christopher Heinz’s concern regarding either the legality or the ethic of the undertaking.
For Burisma the impact of having Hunter Biden and Devon Archer on its board could not be overstated. It had acquired an ultimate “roof” — the Vice President of the United States of America. We must not be naïve; Burisma did not hire good-for-nothing drug addict Hunter Biden for his expertizes or business acumen. It did not hire obscured Devon Archer for his administrative genius either — they were simply bagmen. Their hiring sent a subliminal message to Poroshenko, who made no secret of his desire to add Burisma to his basket of assets, that it is protected by the United States government.
Poroshenko got the message, but the temptation was irresistible. As soon as he was sworn in, he directed his prosecutor general Vitaly Yarema to open a corruption investigation into Burisma. Investigations of corruption have been an effective instrument of the reallocation of assets in Ukraine where corruption is the way of life.
In January 2015 Yarema was replaced with Poroshenko’s close associate Viktor Shokin who continued the investigation. It is significant that Viktor Shokin did not investigate Hunter Biden per se. Prosecutor Shokin directed by president Poroshenko was building a case to forfeit the profitable gas licenses awarded to Burisma.
Concerned that the investigation may end up in an indictment, Joe Biden in spring 2016 stepped in to protect his client, Burisma Holding and requested Poroshenko to dismiss Shokin. Poroshenko tried to be clever, “Yes, I told him to stop, but he is such a stubborn prosecutor, he clung to it, nothing can be done with him,” he complained to Biden. Biden didn’t buy it and issued an ultimatum, “You have six hours to solve the problem, or Ukraine would lose a billion dollars in the US aid.” Poroshenko capitulated — Shokin was fired.
At this juncture, Poroshenko decided that it is better to have a percentage of something than a hundred percent of nothing. He made a deal with Zlochevsky and his trusted man Igor Kononenko joined Burisma’s board. The vanquished enemies became allies. A new prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko closed the probe. There was no longer a need for investigation and no need for Joe Biden’s services. Hunter Biden and Devon Archer resigned from Burisma’s board. Zlochevsky returned to the country. The “roof” earned its pay.
Alexander G. Markovsky is a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research, a conservative think hosted at King’s College, New York City, which examines national security, energy, risk-analysis, and other public policy issues. He is the author of Anatomy of a Bolshevik and Liberal Bolshevism: America Did Not Defeat Communism, She Adopted It. Mr. Markovsky is the owner and CEO of Litwin Management Services, LLC. He can be reached at info@litwinms.com

American Thinker....Articles & Blog Posts by Alexander G. Markovsky

 American Thinker....Articles & Blog Posts

 by Alexander G. Markovsky

Saturday, November 2, 2019

The Beltway's 'Whistleblower' Furor Obsesses Over One Name [Eric Ciaramella]



The Beltway's 'Whistleblower' Furor Obsesses Over One Name [Eric Ciaramella] 

RealClearInvestigations October 30, 2019




For a town that leaks like a sieve, Washington has done an astonishingly effective job keeping from the American public the name of the anonymous “whistleblower" who triggered impeachment proceedings against President Trump — even though his identity is an open secret inside the Beltway.

Eric Ciaramella as a class of 2004 Connecticut prep student: He later moved on to Yale and the White House. Now he could be at the center of an impeachment storm.

More than two months after the official filed his complaint, pretty much all that’s known publicly about him is that he is a CIA analyst who at one point was detailed to the White House and is now back working at the CIA.

But the name of a government official fitting that description — Eric Ciaramella — has been raised privately in impeachment depositions, according to officials with direct knowledge of the proceedings, as well as in at least one open hearing held by a House committee not involved in the impeachment inquiry. Fearing their anonymous  witness could be exposed, Democrats this week blocked Republicans from asking more questions about him and intend to redact his name from all deposition transcripts.

RealClearInvestigations is disclosing the name because of the public’s interest in learning details of an effort to remove a sitting president from office. Further, the official's status as a “whistleblower” is complicated by his being a hearsay reporter of accusations against the president, one who has “some indicia of an arguable political bias … in favor of a rival political candidate" -- as the Intelligence Community Inspector General phrased it circumspectly in originally fielding his complaint.

Federal documents reveal that the 33-year-old Ciaramella, a registered Democrat held over from the Obama White House, previously worked with former Vice President Joe Biden and former CIA Director John Brennan, a vocal critic of Trump who helped initiate the Russia “collusion” investigation of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.

Further, Ciaramella (pronounced char-a-MEL-ah) left his National Security Council posting in the White House’s West Wing in mid-2017 amid concerns about negative leaks to the media. He has since returned to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

“He was accused of working against Trump and leaking against Trump,” said a former NSC official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

Also, Ciaramella huddled for “guidance” with the staff of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, including former colleagues also held over from the Obama era whom Schiff’s office had recently recruited from the NSC. Schiff is the lead prosecutor in the impeachment inquiry.

And Ciaramella worked with a Democratic National Committee operative who dug up dirt on the Trump campaign during the 2016 election, inviting her into the White House for meetings, former White House colleagues said. The operative, Alexandra Chalupa, a Ukrainian-American who supported Hillary Clinton, led an effort to link the Republican campaign to the Russian government. “He knows her. He had her in the White House,” said one former co-worker, who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

[Alexandra Chalupa: DNC oppo researcher was invited to the Obama White House by Ciaramella.
Afric Vision NouvelleTV/YouTube]

Documents confirm the DNC opposition researcher attended at least one White House meeting with Ciaramella in November 2015.  She visited the White House with a number of Ukrainian officials lobbying the Obama administration for aid for Ukraine.

With Ciaramella’s name long under wraps, interest in the intelligence analyst is so high that a handful of former colleagues have compiled a roughly 40-page research dossier on him. A classified version of the document is circulating on Capitol Hill, and briefings have been conducted based on it. One briefed Republican has been planning to unmask the whistleblower in a speech on the House floor.

On the Internet, meanwhile, Ciaramella's name for weeks has been bandied about on Twitter feeds and intelligence blogs as the suspected person who blew the whistle on the president. The mainstream media are also aware of his name.


[Fred Fleitz, Trump adviser: “Everyone knows who he is." 

“Everyone knows who he is. CNN knows. The Washington Post knows. The New York Times knows. Congress knows. The White House knows. Even the president knows who he is,” said Fred Fleitz, a former CIA analyst and national security adviser to Trump, who has fielded dozens of calls from the media.

Yet a rare hush has swept across the Potomac. The usually gossipy nation’s capital remains uncharacteristically — and curiously — mum, especially considering the magnitude of this story, only the fourth presidential impeachment inquiry in U.S. history.

Trump supporters blame the conspiracy of silence on a “corrupt” and "biased” media trying to protect the whistleblower from justified scrutiny of his political motives. They also complain Democrats have falsely claimed that exposing his identity would violate whistleblower protections, even though the relevant statute provides limited, not blanket, anonymity – and doesn’t cover press disclosures. His Democrat attorneys, meanwhile, have warned that outing him would put him and his family “at risk of harm," although government security personnel have been assigned to protect him.

“They’re hiding him,” Fleitz asserted. “They’re hiding him because of his political bias."

A CIA officer specializing in Russia and Ukraine, Ciaramella was detailed over to the National Security Council from the agency in the summer of 2015, working under Susan Rice, President Obama’s national security adviser. He also worked closely with the former vice president.


[Susan Rice:Ciaramella worked under Obama's national security adviser.]

Federal records show that Biden’s office invited Ciaramella to an October 2016 state luncheon the vice president hosted for Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. Other invited guests included Brennan, as well as then-FBI Director James Comey and then-National Intelligence Director James Clapper.
Several U.S. officials told RealClearInvestigations that the invitation that was extended to Ciaramella, a relatively low-level GS-13 federal employee, was unusual and signaled he was politically connected inside the Obama White House.
Former White House officials said Ciaramella worked on Ukrainian policy issues for Biden in 2015 and 2016, when the vice president was President Obama's "point man" for Ukraine. A Yale graduate, Ciaramella is said to speak Russian and Ukrainian, as well as Arabic. He had been assigned to the NSC by Brennan.

He was held over into the Trump administration, and headed the Ukraine desk at the NSC, eventually transitioning into the West Wing, until June 2017.

“He was moved over to the front office” to temporarily fill a vacancy, said a former White House official, where he “saw everything, read everything.”

The official added that it soon became clear among NSC staff that Ciaramella opposed the new Republican president’s foreign policies. “My recollection of Eric is that he was very smart and very passionate, particularly about Ukraine and Russia. That was his thing – Ukraine,” he said. “He didn’t exactly hide his passion with respect to what he thought was the right thing to do with Ukraine and Russia, and his views were at odds with the president’s policies.”

“So I wouldn’t be surprised if he was the whistleblower,” the official said.

In May 2017, Ciaramella went “outside his chain of command,” according to a former NSC co-worker, to send an email alerting another agency that Trump happened to hold a meeting with Russian diplomats in the Oval Office the day after firing Comey, who led the Trump-Russia investigation. The email also noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin had phoned the president a week earlier.

Contents of the email appear to have ended up in the media, which reported Trump boasted to the Russian officials about firing Comey, whom he allegedly called “crazy, a real nut job.”
In effect, Ciaramella helped generate the “Putin fired Comey” narrative, according to the research dossier making the rounds in Congress, a copy of which was obtained by RealClearInvestigations.

Ciaramella allegedly argued that “President Putin suggested that President Trump fire Comey,” the report said. “In the days after Comey’s firing, this presidential action was used to further political and media calls for the standup [sic] of the special counsel to investigate ‘Russia collusion.’ “

In the end, Special Counsel Robert Mueller found no conspiracy between Trump and Putin. Ciaramella’s email was cited in a footnote in his report, which mentions only Ciaramella’s name, the date and the recipients “Kelly et al.” Former colleagues said the main recipient was then-Homeland Security Director John Kelly.

Ciaramella left the Trump White House soon after Mueller was appointed. Attempts to reach Ciaramella were unsuccessful, although his father said in a phone interview from Hartford, where he is a bank executive, that he doubted his son was the whistleblower. “He didn’t have that kind of access to that kind of information,” Tony Ciaramella said. “He’s just a guy going to work every day.” The whistleblower's lawyers did not answer emails and phone calls seeking comment. CIA spokesman Luis Rossello declined comment, saying, “Anything on the whistleblower, we are referring to ODNI.” The Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not respond to requests for comment.

In his complaint, the whistleblower charged that the president used “the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.” 

Specifically, he cited a controversial July 25 phone call from the White House residence in which Trump asked Ukraine’s new president to help investigate the origins of the Russia “collusion” investigation the Obama administration initiated against his campaign, citing reports that “a lot of it started with Ukraine," where the former pro-Hillary Clinton regime in Kiev worked with Obama diplomats and Chalupa to try to “sabotage” Trump’s run for president.

Later in the conversation, Trump also requested information about Biden and his son, since “Biden went around bragging that he” had fired the chief Ukrainian prosecutor at the time a Ukrainian oligarch, who gave Biden’s son a lucrative seat on the board of his energy conglomerate, was under investigation for corruption.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Intelligence Committee Chairman Schiff argued the whistleblower's complaint, though admittedly based on second-hand information, amounts to an impeachable offense, and they subsequently launched an impeachment inquiry that has largely been conducted in secret.

The whistleblower filed his “urgent” report against Trump with the intelligence community inspector general on Aug. 12, but it was not publicly released until Sept. 26.
Prior to filing, he had met with Schiff’s Democratic staff for “guidance." At first, the California lawmaker denied the contacts, but later admitted that his office did, in fact, meet with the whistleblower early on.

[Sean Misko: One of Ciaramella’s closest allies at the NSC, now on Schiff's committee staff.]

Center for a New American Security
Earlier this year, Schiff recruited two of Ciaramella’s closest allies at the NSC — both whom were also Obama holdovers -- to join his committee staff. He hired one, Sean Misko, in August — the same month the whistleblower complaint was filed.

During closed-door depositions taken in the impeachment inquiry, Misko has been observed handing notes to the lead counsel for the impeachment inquiry, Daniel Goldman, as he asks questions of Trump administration witnesses, officials with direct knowledge of the proceedings told RealClearInvestigations.

Republicans participating in the restricted inquiry hearings have been asking witnesses about Ciaramella and repeatedly injecting his name into the deposition record, angering Schiff and Democrats, who sources say are planning to scrub the references to Ciaramella from any transcripts of the hearings they may agree to release.

“Their reaction tells you something,” said one official familiar with the inquiry.

For example, sources said Ciaramella’s name was invoked by GOP committee members during the closed-door testimony of former NSC official Fiona Hill on Oct. 14. Ciaramella worked with Hill, another Obama holdover, in the West Wing.

During Tuesday’s deposition of NSC official Alexander Vindman, Democrats shut down a line of inquiry by Republicans because they said it risked revealing the identity of the whistleblower. Republicans wanted to know with whom Vindman spoke within the administration about his concerns regarding Trump’s call to Ukraine. But Schiff instructed the witness not to answer the questions, which reportedly sparked a shouting match between Democrats and Republicans.

Determined to keep the whistleblower's identity secret, Schiff recently announced it may not be necessary for him to testify even in closed session. Republicans argue that by hiding his identity, the public cannot assess his motives for striking out against the president. And they worry his political bias could color inquiry testimony and findings unless it’s exposed.
Rep. Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee, asserted the American people have the right to know the person who is trying to bring down the president for whom 63 million voted.
“It’s tough to determine someone’s credibility if you can’t put them under oath and ask them questions,” he said.
Added Jordan: “The people want to know. I want to get to the truth."


[Rep. Louis Gohmert: Ciaramella was “supposed to be a point person on Ukraine, during the time when Ukraine was its most corrupt, and he didn’t blow any whistles on their corruption.]

In an open House Natural Resources Committee hearing last week, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) seemingly out of left field asked a witness about “Eric Ciaramella of the Obama National Security Council,” in what the Washington press corps took as a bid to out the whistleblower. He later told a Dallas radio station he knew the whistleblower’s name. “A lot of us in Washington know who it is,” Gohmert said, adding he’s a “very staunch Democrat” who was “supposed to be a point person on Ukraine, during the time when Ukraine was its most corrupt, and he didn’t blow any whistles on their corruption."

The Washington Post ran a news story over the weekend critical of Republicans for allegedly trying to “unmask” the whistleblower, for attempting to do the job journalists would normally do. Last week, the paper ran an op-ed by the whistleblower’s attorneys claiming he was no longer relevant to the inquiry and beseeching the public to let their client slip back into obscurity. 

For its part, the New York Times ran a story last month reporting details about the whistleblower’s background, but stopped short of fully identifying him, suggesting it didn’t know his politics or even his name. “Little else is known about him,” the paper claimed.

On Thursday, Democrats plan a House vote on new impeachment-inquiry rules that would give Republicans for the first time the ability to call their own witnesses. Only, their requests must first be approved by the Democrats. So there is a good chance the whistleblower, perhaps the most important witness of all, will remain protected from critical examination.

Friday, November 1, 2019

Al-Baghdadi and Trump’s Syrian chess board Caroline B. Glick Israel Hayom 11-2-19


MIL-ED has posted  "Al-Baghdadi and Trump’s Syrian chess board”by Caroline Glick . Again, she gets correct what most of the US MSM  have missed.


Al-Baghdadi and Trump’s Syrian chess board

Caroline B. Glick  Israel Hayom 11-2-19




Trump is not flying blind in Syria. He is implementing a multifaceted set of policies that are based on the strengths, weaknesses and priorities of the various actors.

US President Donald Trump’s many critics insist he has no idea what he is doing in Syria. The assassination of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi over the weekend by US special forces showed this criticism is misplaced. Trump has a very good idea of what he is doing in Syria, not only regarding ISIS, but regarding the diverse competing actors on the ground.
Regarding ISIS, the obvious lesson of the al-Baghdadi raid is that Trump’s critics’ claim that his withdrawal of US forces from Syria’s border with Turkey meant that he was going to allow ISIS to regenerate was utterly baseless.
The raid did more than that. Al-Baghdadi’s assassination, and Trump’s discussion of the mass murderer’s death, showed that Trump has not merely maintained faith with the fight against ISIS and its allied jihadist groups. He has fundamentally changed the US’s counterterror fighting doctrine, particularly as it relates to psychological warfare against jihadists.
Following the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration initiated a public diplomacy campaign in the Arab-Islamic world. Rather than attack and undermine the jihadist doctrine that insists that it is the religious duty of Muslims to fight with the aim of conquering the non-Muslim world and to establish a global Islamic empire or caliphate, the Bush strategy was to ignore the jihad in the hopes of appeasing its adherents. The basic line of the Bush administration’s public diplomacy campaign was to embrace the mantra that Islam is peace, and assert that the US loves Islam because the US seeks peace.
Along these lines, in 2005, then secretary of state Condoleezza Rice prohibited the State Department, FBI and US intelligence agencies from using “controversial” terms like “radical Islam,” and “jihad” in official documents.
The Obama administration took the Bush administration’s obsequious approach to strategic communications several steps further. President Barack Obama and his advisers went out of their way to express sympathy for the “Islamic world.”
The Obama administration supported the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood against Egypt’s long-serving president and US ally Hosni Mubarak and backed Mubarak’s overthrow with the full knowledge that the only force powerful enough to replace him was the Muslim Brotherhood.
As for the Shiite jihadists, Obama’s refusal to support the pro-democracy protesters in Iran’s attempted Green Revolution in 2009 placed the US firmly on the side of the jihadist, imperialist regime of the ayatollahs and against the Iranian people.
In short, Obama took Bush’s rhetoric of appeasement and turned it into America’s actual policy.
The Bush-Obama sycophancy won the US no goodwill. Al Qaida, which led the insurgency against US forces in Iraq with Iranian and Syrian support was not moved to diminish its aggression and hatred of the US due to the administration’s efforts.
It was during the Obama years that ISIS built its caliphate on a third of the Iraqi-Syrian landmass, opened slave markets and launched a mass campaign of filmed beheadings in the name of Islam.
In his announcement of al-Baghdadi’s death on Sunday, Trump unceremoniously abandoned his predecessors’ strategy of sucking up to jihadists. Unlike Obama, who went to great lengths to talk about the respect US forces who killed Osama bin Laden accorded the terrorist mass-murderer’s body, “in accordance with Islamic practice,” Trump mocked al-Baghdadi, the murdering, raping, slaving “caliph.”
Al-Baghdadi, Trump said, died “like a dog, like a coward.”
Al-Baghdadi died, Trump said, “whimpering and crying.”
Trump posted a picture on his Twitter page of the Delta Force combat dog who brought about al-Baghdadi’s death by chasing him into a tunnel under his compound and provoking him to set off the explosive belt he was wearing, and kill himself and the two children who were with him.
Trump later described the animal who killed Allah’s self-appointed representative on earth as “our ‘K-9,’ as they call it. I call it a dog. A beautiful dog – a talented dog.”
Obama administration officials angrily condemned Trump’s remarks. For instance, former CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell said he was “bothered” by Trump’s “locker room talk,” which he said, “inspire[s] other people” to conduct revenge attacks.
His colleague, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff retired Admiral James Winnefeld said that Trump’s “piling on” describing al-Baghdadi as a “dog” sent a signal to his followers “that could cause them to lash out possibly more harshly in the wake.”
These criticisms are ridiculous. ISIS terrorists have richly proven they require no provocation to commit mass murder. They only need the opportunity.
Moreover, Trump’s constant use of the term “dog” and employment of canine imagery is highly significant. Dogs are considered “unclean” in Islam. In Islamic societies, “dog” is the worst name you can call a person.
It is hard to imagine that al-Baghdadi’s death at the paws of a dog is likely to rally many Muslims to his side. To the contrary, it is likely instead to demoralize his followers. What’s the point of joining a group of losers who believe in a fake prophet who died like a coward while chased by “a beautiful dog – a talented dog?”
Then there is Russia.
Trump’s critics insist that his decision to abandon the US position along the Syrian border with Turkey effectively surrendered total control over Syria to Russia. But that is far from the case. The American presence along the border didn’t harm Russia. It helped Russia. It freed Russian President Vladimir Putin from having to deal with Turkey. Now that the Americans have left the border zone, Turkish President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan is Putin’s problem.
And he is not the main problem that Trump has made for Putin in Syria.
Putin’s biggest problem in Syria is financial. The Russian economy is sunk in a deep recession due to the drop in global oil prices. Putin had planned to finance his Syrian operation with Syrian oil revenues. To this end, in January 2018, he signed an agreement with Syrian President Bashar Assad that effectively transferred the rights to the Syrian oil to Russia.
But Putin hadn’t taken Trump into consideration.
US forces did not withdraw from all of their positions in Syria last month. They maintained their control over al-Tanf airbase which controls the Syrian border with Jordan and Iraq.
More importantly, from Russia’s perspective, the US has not relinquished its military presence adjacent to Syria’s oil facilities in the Deir ez-Zor province on the eastern side of the Euphrates River. Indeed, according to media reports, the US is reinforcing its troop strength in Deir ez-Zor to ensure continued US-Kurdish control over Syria’s oil fields.
To understand how high a priority control over Syria’s oil installations is for Putin, it is worth recalling what happened in February 2018.
On February 7, 2018, a month after Putin and Assad signed their oil agreement, a massive joint force comprising Russian mercenaries, Syrian commandos and Iranian Revolutionary Guards forces crossed the Euphrates River with the aim of seizing the town of Khusham adjacent to the Conoco oil fields. Facing them were forty US Special Forces deployed with Kurdish and Arab SDF forces. The US forces directed a massive air assault against the attacking forces which killed some 500 soldiers and ended the assault. Accounts regarding the number of Russian mercenaries killed start at 80 and rise to several hundred.
The American counterattack caused grievous harm to the Russian force in Syria. Putin has kept the number of Russian military forces in Syria low by outsourcing much of the fighting to Russian military contractors. The aim of the failed operation was to enable those mercenary forces to seize the means to finance their own operations, and get them off the Kremlin payroll.
Since then, Putin has tried to dislodge the US forces from Khusham at least one more time, only to be met with a massive demonstration of force.
The continued US-Kurdish control over Syria’s oil fields and installations requires Putin to continue directly funding his war in Syria. So long as this remains the case, given Russia’s financial constraints, Putin is likely to go to great lengths to restrain his Iranian, Syrian and Hezbollah partners and their aggressive designs against Israel in order to prevent a costly war.
In other words, by preventing Russia from seizing Syria’s oil fields, Trump is forcing Russia to behave in a manner that protects American interests in Syria.
The focus of most of the criticism against Trump’s Syria policies has been his alleged abandonment of the Syrian Kurds to the mercies of their Turkish enemies. But over the past week we learned that this is not the case. As Trump explained, continued US-Kurdish control over Syria’s oil fields provides the Kurdish-controlled SDF with the financial and military wherewithal to support and defend its people and their operations.
Moreover, details of al-Baghdadi’s assassination point to continued close cooperation between US and Kurdish forces. According to accounts of the raid, the Kurds provided the Americans with key intelligence that enabled US forces to pinpoint al-Baghdadi’s location.
As to Turkey, both al-Baghdadi and ISIS spokesman Abu Hassan al-Mujahir, who was killed by US forces on Tuesday, were located in areas of eastern Syria controlled by Turkey. The Americans didn’t try to hide this fact.
The Turkish operation in eastern Syria is reportedly raising Erdogan’s popularity at home. But it far from clear that the benefit he receives from his actions will be long-lasting. Turkey’s Syrian operation is exposing the NATO member’s close ties to ISIS and its allied terror groups. This exposure in and of itself is making the case for downgrading US strategic ties with its erstwhile ally.
Even worse for Turkey, due to Trump’s public embrace of Erdogan, the Democrats are targeting the Turkish autocrat as Enemy Number 1. On Tuesday, with the support of Republican lawmakers who have long recognized Erdogan’s animosity to US interests and allies, the Democratic-led House overwhelmingly passed a comprehensive sanctions resolution against Turkey.
The al-Baghdadi assassination and related events demonstrate that Trump is not flying blind in Syria. He is implementing a multifaceted set of policies that are based on the strengths, weaknesses and priorities of the various actors on the ground in ways that advance US interests at the expense of its foes and to the benefit of its allies.

J STREET NOTES …MIL-ED DELIBERATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS ON THE 2019 J STREET CONFERENCE


J STREET NOTES …MIL-ED DELIBERATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS ON THE 2019 J STREET CONFERENCE

A. Basic Propositions Undelying MIL-ED   discussion/analysis
*  Support for Israel should be a bipartisan issue.
* If Support for Israel  becomes a partisan issue, it  will create enormous enmity for the State of Israel [within at least 50 percent of the population, which would ultimately give succor and support to Israel’s enemies]. And it certainly does not help the Jewish state survive if an incoming American president regards Israel as “the other party’s issue.”
*That is why  it should be alarming to every American  Jew that mainstream leaders of the Democratic Party, such as Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and almost all of the major contenders within the Democratic Party have attended the J Street Conference.
B. Even more  alarming is that many of the speakers in this week’s  J St conference  made outrageously naive and even hostile statements about the State of Israel—demonstrating no empathy for what the Jewish state must contend with—to rapturous applause. These are links to JNS Daily Syndicate  

1. Sanders says aid to Israel should go ‘right now’ to Gaza instead, calls Netanyahu a 'racist' Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) also said the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been “racist.”BY JACKSON RICHMAN
https://www.jns.org/sanders-its-a-fact-not-anti-semitic-to-say-netanyahu-government-has-been-racist/

2. Castro seeks to re-enter 2015 Iran nuclear deal, may place conditions on aid to Israel BY JACKSON RICHMAN
He stressed the essentiality of the two-state solution and  vehemently criticize Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 
https://www.jns.org/castro-to-re-enter-the-2015-iran-nuclear-deal-may-place-conditions-on-aid-to-israel/

3. Klobuchar: ‘I disagreed’ with Trump’s Golan recognition“Let me be very clear in how strongly I believe that that promise that the prime minister made during his political campaign was wrong,” said U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) at the annual J Street Conference.BY JACKSON RICHMANhttps://www.jns.org/klobuchar-i-disagreed-with-trumps-golan-recognition/

4. Buttigieg reiterates linking US assistance to Israel on not annexing West Bank  BY JACKSON RICHMAN
“We need to have the visibility to know whether U.S. funds are being used in a way that’s actually not compatible with U.S. policy, and U.S. policy should not be promoting this kind of settlement construction,” said Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Ind.
https://www.jns.org/buttigieg-reiterates-linking-us-assistance-to-israel-on-not-annexing-west-bank/ 

 C. J Street  Mission Claims/ Backers

 J Street’s mission claims: “J Street organizes and mobilizes pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans who want Israel to be secure, democratic and the national home of the Jewish people. Working in American politics and the Jewish community, we advocatepolicies that advance shared U.S. and Israeli interests, as well as Jewish and democratic values, leading to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

However,  J Streets actual  actions on Capitol Hill show that there is little or no daylight between the positions taken by J Street and those of Israel’s avowed enemies, including  NIAC, the National Iranian American Council, which advocates for policies sympathetic to the Iranian regime; CAIR, the Council of American Islamic Relations, which was an unindicted co-conspirator of the Holy Land Foundation Trial; and ISNA, the Islamic Society of North America, which was established in July of 1981 by American members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Research into J Street’s backers indicates a Washington cadre of paid Saudi agents, sycophants and factotums. Included are Nancy Dutton, widow of Fred Dutton, the longtime Saudi foreign agent. (As recently as August 2008, news reports identified her as the Saudi’s lawyer); Judith Barnett, (who has been registered with the Justice Department for being a foreign agent of Saudi Arabia); and RAY CLOSE, WHO HAS BEEN A CIA STATION CHIEF IN SAUDI ARABIA, AND  "ON THE DAY HE RETIRED FROM THE CIA, RAY CLOSE WALKED ACROSS THE STREET AND JOINED KAMAL ADHAM  (THE HEAD OF SAUDI’S INTELLIGENCE SERVICE), IN A BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP.”[ Lenny Ben David,  chapter in , Saudi Arabia and the Global Terrorist Network].
What’s even more disturbing than who backs them is what they have supported. Just a few highlights: J Street was one of the most vocal supporters, together with NIAC for the Iranian nuclear deal, which has by now proven to have enriched, empowered and emboldened the Islamic regime and its terror proxies, such as Hamas and Hezbollah. It currently opposes any sanctions on Iran.
They claim not to support BDS, yet they support “targeted BDS” (the labeling of any product that has been manufactured over the “Green Line”). This has proven to be disastrous for the Palestinians, whom they claim to care so much for, as in the case of when SodaStream was forced to uproot itself from the territories and left so many previously employed Palestinians without a job.
J Street lobbied vociferously against the Taylor Force Act, which withheld the amount American funding to the Palestinian Authority which they had been giving to their “martyr’s fund” or “prisoner’s pension fund,” money that incentivized terror to murder innocent civilians. It has supported the Goldstein Report that condemned the defensive action Israel was forced to take against Hamas missile attacks in “Operation Cast Lead” and fully supported the U.N. Resolution condemning Israel in 2016 for its occupation of the dispute territories, which the Obama administration shamefully refused to veto.
And therein lies the heart of the problem. Like many Jewish organizations, J Street is seduced by lofty slogans like “pro-Israel/pro-peace.” These words are intended to give the impression that all that Israel has to do is immediately withdraw from the territories, and then peace would ultimately break out.
This ignores the empirical evidence of what happened after the withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May of 2000, giving Hezbollah and their 150,000 missiles easy striking distance to Israel.
It also ignores the internally gut-wrenching Gaza withdrawal of 2005, where the land has been used to launch thousands of rockets and incendiary devices launched from kites and balloons, making life for those on Gaza’s neighboring communities a living hell and destroying thousands of acres of Israel’s agricultural land.
D.  Personal Observations ( submitted by  by ad hoc review committee chaired by John Train):
*It the height of arrogance for  Americans (Jewish and non-Jewish) sitting  within the safety of the United States —to tell the Israelis what to do. They are the ones who ultimately will have to live with the consequences of any withdrawals.
*  Nearly everyone recognizes that Israel lives in a very rough area in the Middle East. And if there is one thing that recent events in Syria have  reinforced for all of us  is that  Israel is fighting for very survival in an  exceptionally tough neighborhood. [And as former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir said, “We have nowhere else to go.”]
 MIL-ED  thanks Sarah N. Stern ( founder and president of the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET), a pro-Israel and pro-American think tank and policy institute in Washington, D.C.) for sharing  her thoughts and observations with us which served as  important component of the  deliberations which resulted in the article, above.