Joel C. Rosenberg's Blog A new strategic challenge is emerging: Liberals are turning against Israel.

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A new strategic challenge is emerging: Liberals are turning against Israel. (My column for the Jerusalem Post) by joelcrosenberg LIBERALS ARE TURNING AGAINST THE JEWISH STATE By Joel C. Rosenberg, The Jerusalem Post, January 19, 2017 The inauguration of Donald Trump will mark the first time Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ever had a Republican to work with in the White House. Bill Clinton was President in Bibi’s first term (1996 to 1999) and repeatedly pressured Israel to make dangerous concessions to Yasser Arafat. When Bibi resisted, Clinton deployed his top political advisors -- James Carville, Bob Shrum and Stan Greenberg – to run Ehud Barak’s campaign to oust Netanyahu from office. When Bibi returned to office in March 2009, Barack Obama had just been inaugurated. The Illinois Democrat proceeded to skip Israel on his first visit to the region. He suggested creating “daylight” between America and Israel would help make peace. He aggressively pressured Israel to divide Jerusalem and to retreat to the indefensible pre-1967 lines. And when Netanyahu balked, Obama made Hillary Clinton his “designated yeller.” Obama deserves credit for supporting Iron Dome and a $38 billion. ten-year military aid deal with Israel. But this hardly absolves him from cutting a naïve nuclear deal with Iran, abandoning his own red line in Syria, withdrawing all U.S. forces from Iraq, and repeatedly underestimating the ISIS threat, all of which put Israeli security at risk. In his final days in office, Obama doubled down on this disastrous legacy, refusing to veto back Israel at the U.N. and supporting a pointless “peace conference” in Paris that excluded Israelis and Palestinians. For Netanyahu, Friday can’t come soon enough. Dismissing recent moves by Obama and the French as the “final palpitations of yesterday's world,” Netanyahu told reporters, “Tomorrow will look a lot different, and tomorrow is very close.” The Israeli public overwhelmingly agrees. Fully 83% of Israelis say they expect Trump to be “pro-Israel,” according to a December poll. This may prove true, but a new strategic challenge is emerging: a growing number of Democrats are turning against the Jewish State. “There is now a 41-point gap between the shares of Republicans (74%) and Democrats (33%) who say they sympathize more with Israel,” finds a new Pew Research survey. “This is the largest party gap in views on this question in surveys dating to 1978.” Liberal support for Israel, in particular, is cratering. In 2001, 48% of self-described liberal Democrats said they sympathized with Israel. But the latest Pew poll found that number has plummeted to just 26% today. Such poll numbers help explain why Hillary’s advisors urged her to avoid openly discussing support for Israel during the primaries. They help explain why Bernie Sanders refused to speak to the AIPAC Policy Conference and even accused Israel of killing “10,000 innocent civilians” in the last Gaza war. MK Michael Oren, the former Israeli Ambassador to Washington, called this a “blood libel.”  The real number of civilian deaths in Gaza was fewer than 1,500. Sanders apologized, but still came close to winning the Democratic nomination. Plummeting liberal support for Israel also helps explains how Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison is a serious contender to be the next chairman of the Democratic National Committee despite widespread criticism of his hostility towards Israel. “Keith Ellison’s record is one of overwhelming anti-Israel and anti-Semitic activities,” argues Mort Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America. Haim Saban, a billionaire donor to the Democrats, says Ellison is “clearly an anti-Semite and anti-Israel individual.” A new survey of American voters further highlights Israel’s emerging challenges among liberal voters, as well as among Independents and Millennials. Last week, I asked John McLaughlin, the respected American pollster, to test competing arguments in the recent dust-up over the U.N. vote. The results were sobering. We asked 1,000 likely American voters, Which of the following statements is closest to your personal views about U.S. policy towards Israel? A) I believe that President Obama was right to abstain on the recent U.N. Security Council vote that condemned Israel. Israel is morally wrong to build settlements in the West Bank for Israeli citizens. Israel is also wrong to build homes for Jewish citizens in East Jerusalem since that should be the capital of a Palestinian state. I hope that the U.S. and the U.N. will get tougher with Israel over the next four years if the Israeli government won’t agree to a Palestinian state and refuses to retreat to the pre-1967 boundaries. B) I believe President Obama was wrong for throwing Israel under the bus at the U.N. Security Council. Israel is America’s most reliable ally in the Mideast. President Obama betrayed our ally by refusing to veto that anti-Israel resolution. As their eternal capital, the Israelis have the right to build in any section of Jerusalem. If Palestinian leaders want Israel to stop building settlements in the West Bank, they should agree to direct talks with Israel, recognize Israel as a Jewish State, and negotiate a final peace treaty once and for all. Israel needs defensible borders, and it is wrong for the U.N. to dictate what those are. I want the Palestinians to have freedom, dignity and security, but I also hope that the U.S. will be more supportive of Israel over the next four years and will defend Israel against unfair political attacks by the U.N. and others. While a plurality of Americans (37%) say Obama was wrong to betray Israel, a large number of Americans (29%) say Obama was right. Perhaps even more troubling: 25% say they can’t decide between the two arguments, and nearly one-in-ten say they don’t care about the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Of self-described liberals, 53% believe Obama was right to go after Israel. Among those describing themselves as “very liberal,” 56% want Washington to get tougher on Israel. Moreover, nearly one-in-four Independents (23%) agree with Obama’s attack on Israel. So do 33% of Catholics, and 41% of Millennials (age 18-29).  True, the Trump-Pence administration is expected to be pro-Israel. But growing numbers of liberals, Independents and young people are breaking against Israel. This is a serious strategic challenge and one Israeli leaders and American friends of the Jewish state urgently must analyze and address. The author is a former aide to several American and Israeli leaders. He is also the author of a dozen political thrillers about the Middle East. His latest, WITHOUT WARNING – about a wave of ISIS terror attacks inside the American homeland – will be released in March. —————- [This column is based on my personal beliefs and opinions. I share them in my personal capacity as a dual US-Israeli citizen and an author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of The Joshua Fund, which is a non-profit organization and takes no political or legislative positions.] You can now pre-order my next novel — Without Warning — in hardcover, ebook and audio formats. It will release on March 14, 2017. Click here for details. Order The First Hostage today — my latest political thriller about genocidal ISIS leaders plotting a terrorist attacks against Israel, Jordan and the United States — available in paperback, hardcover, e-book and audio formats. Order THE THIRD TARGET today , the first in this trilogy — now out in paperback. ———————-—- Would you like to make a secure, tax deductible investment in The Joshua Fund (www.joshuafund.net)? This is the non-profit organization Lynn and I founded in 2006 to educate and mobilize Christians to bless Israel and her neighbors in the name of Jesus, to care for the poor and needy in Israel (both Jews and Arabs) with food and other humanitarian relief, care for Holocaust survivors, and strengthen the Church in the epicenter. The Joshua Fund is a member in good standing of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. Please click here to learn more. Thanks so much! Click here to read the 2016 Joshua Fund Donor Report — and watch the short videos, as well Subscribe (free) to the RSS feed (click here) and receive every new posting on this blog directly via email. Follow on Twitter — @joelcrosenberg joelcrosenberg | January 19, 2017 at 4:51 am | Categories: Epicenter | URL: http://wp.me/piWZ7-6CF

Roseanne Barr 'Shaken' by Anti-Semitic Bigotry of Fellow Liberals - Israel Today

Roseanne Barr 'Shaken' by Anti-Semitic Bigotry of Fellow Liberals

Sunday, April 03, 2016 |  Israel Today Staff

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American actress and comedienne Roseanne Barr was in Israel last week to deliver a keynote address to a Jerusalem conference dealing with the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) phenomenon.

Barr said that she had become a pro-Israel advocate after being “shaken” by what she called the naked bigotry of so many liberals who claim to only be criticizing Israel, but who are in fact anti-Semitic.

“Everything I’d ever believed about the left was severely shaken, and the scales began to fall from my eyes in many ways,” said Barr. “It was shocking to realize that what I considered criticism of Israel many, many times gave way to the garden variety anti-Semitism that I’d heard all of my life.”

Barr said she was privy to a lot of such talk because for a long time fellow Hollywood elite were unaware of her own Jewish background.

She eventually came to the realization that “many of those I considered comrades were naked bigots who had absolutely no interest in peace between Israel and Palestinians Arabs at all as I did.”

And the same is true of the “social activist” movement known as BDS.

“BDS [members] do not want peace, nor do they want peace negotiations,” insisted Barr.

Like the classic anti-Semites of old, the actress accused BDS activists of seeking to “isolate and disenfranchise Jews until it will all be Jew-free.”

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How Liberals Hinder Israel's Christian Population - Jonathan Elkhoury ISRAEL TODAY

How Liberals Hinder Israel's Christian Population

Monday, March 14, 2016 |  Jonathan Elkhoury  ISRAEL TODAY

Israeli Christians want to integrate with Jewish society and serve the State of Israel, but are being hindered by the liberal Left.

The full article appears in the March 2016 issue of Israel Today Magazine.
CLICK HERE to read it all

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Apple's Wailing Wall is in Palestine. (Oh Really???)

Apple's Wailing Wall is in Palestine

Tuesday, December 10, 2013 |  David Lazarus, ISRAEL TODAY

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Apple is often first in breaking new ground with the latest hi-tech gadgets. Now the company has introduced yet another brand new notion: Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall (known as the Kotel) is in "Palestine."

The company that brought us the innovative iPhone now offers the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while the rest of the world, led by the Americans, still try to broker a shaky final status.

Don‚Äôt believe it? Just come visit the Kotel in Jerusalem. Pull out your iPhone 5, and take a few pictures of the Wall. Before you can say "Siri," wonder of wonders, a description of the most famous site in all of Judaism will automatically pop up on your high-definition screen showing you the location of the Wailing Wall: The West Bank, East Jerusalem.

That’s right folks, with just one swipe of your screen, the almighty Apple has divided the city of Jerusalem, putting the holiest place in the world for all Jewish people in the Palestinian Territories.

For those iPhone fans who think that this is just another infamous Apple Maps' bug, be informed. In earlier versions of their trendy device, Apple's weather app gave separate forecasts for West and East Jerusalem, even though Israel unified the city 46 years ago after the Six-Day War! Only after extensive and ongoing pressure by Israel’s ambassador to the US did the digital giant change the app’s map status to identify Jerusalem as one city.

“It is a shame that a commercial enterprise feels that it needs to be more pro-Palestinian than the Palestinians themselves,” said Deputy Foreign Minister Zeev Elkin. “But what matters is the reality on the ground, not in the virtual world.”

Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitz, the overseer of the Wailing Wall, had this to say in response: “We don’t need anyone’s endorsement or stamp of approval. The Wailing Wall is a part of who we are.”

If the company is getting involved in politics to help sell their "Apples" to young left-wing liberals, beware. A long time ago in a garden, a young, innocent couple took that appealing apple, only to be deceived, when all hell broke loose.

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