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Author: David Gerstman

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David Gerstman

David Gerstman blogged as Soccer Dad from 2003 to 2010. Formerly a computer programmer, he is now a blogger for The Israel Project's The Tower blog.

Jake Tapper of CNN is one of the few mainstream media stars who is willing to occasionally question his industry's assumption and practice journalism as opposed to simply accepting predetermined narratives. On Thursday he continued this tradition by ripping Wednesday's United Nations General Assembly vote rejecting President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel, noting with a good deal of understatement that the critics of the United States had "questionable records or their own."

In a statement Friday, President Donald Trump said that "based on the factual record I have put forward, I am announcing today that we cannot and will not make this certification," of the nuclear deal with Iran. In accordance with the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (or Corker-Cardin Bill), Congress now has 60 days to fix terms of the deal - the sunset clauses that allow Iran to ramp up its nuclear program after the accord expires, its ballistic missile program - that Trump is demanding are addressed. If Congress does not act, Trump said "the agreement will be terminated." Trump's remarks were not limited to the nuclear deal but are part of an overall refocus of American strategy towards Iran, which were laid out elsewhere on the White House website.

Though Israel is a small country, when disaster strikes it is among the first countries and most involved in rescue and recovery efforts. (I blogged about this nearly four years ago. The IDF published an updated article on Israel's aid in emergency situations last month.) While Israeli volunteers often go to places Nepal, Haiti, or the Philippines, Israel was again at the forefront of international rescue and recovery efforts in Houston.

There are few things less ambiguous than a call to kill another person. Except, apparently, at The Washington Post. On July 21, imams Ammar Shahin of the Islamic Center of Davis (ICD) and Mahmoud Harmoush of Islamic Center of Riverside gave speeches calling for the destruction of the Jews in the context of the recent violence centered around the Temple Mount. Both imams called on Allah "to liberate Al Aqsa from the Jews."

President Donald Trump appeared to rebuke Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at least three times in their joint statement on Wednesday. First, at the beginning of his remarks, Trump recalled the Oslo Accords:
Almost 24 years ago, it was on these grounds that President Abbas stood with a courageous peacemaker, then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Here at the White House, President Abbas signed a Declaration of Principles -- very important -- which laid the foundation for peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.

New United Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley wowed the audience at AIPAC this evening, saying "The days of Israel-bashing are over," in a conversation with former Defense Department official Dan Senor. Haley told Senor that while she had heard that there was anti-Israel bias at the UN "you can’t comprehend how ridiculous it is.”

Last week the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), a group comprised entirely of Arab countries, issued a report accusing Israel of practicing apartheid against the Palestinians. Having a U.N. group make such an accusation was considered a major propaganda win for the anti-Israel movement. As discussed below, the report was authored by people with longstanding anti-Israel records. The report was so disgraceful in content and so obviously political in motive that by Friday the Secretary General of the UN had first disassociated himself from the report and then asked that it removed from the ESCWA's website. Also on Friday, Rima Khalaf, the Jordanian head of ESCWA resigned. Nikki Haley, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., is credited by many as working to negate this anti-Israel move. This may be a sign of a new U.S. assertiveness at the U.N.

Last week Gen. (ret.) Michael Herzog (brother of Israel's opposition leader Isaac Herzog) wrote a remarkable article (.pdf) in The American Interest. Herzog, who has been involved in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations since 1993 didn't write his article to place blame (though he does) for the failure of the 2013-2014 talks overseen by then-Secretary of State John Kerry but "it is my sincere hope that this analysis will inform a meaningful policy debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." But if you Google Herzog's name for the past week, precisely one news organization covered the article: The Times of Israel. Some blogs such as The Tower and Yaacov Lozowick have written about it too. One would think that an insider's view of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians would draw a lot of attention, but it didn't. Presumably that is because Herzog didn't blame Bibi first.

Barak Ravid, the diplomatic correspondent for the Israeli daily Haaretz, has a reputation of getting great scoops, especially of the sort that makes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu look bad. In a story with a sensational headline that has lit up anti-Netanyahu social media, Ravid reported, Exclusive Kerry Offered Netanyahu Regional Peace Plan in Secret 2016 Summit With al-Sissi, King Abdullah. The sub-headline read, "Kerry's outline included Arab recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. Netanyahu claimed he couldn't get his coalition to back it."

Hamas, the terrorist group dedicated to Israel's destruction, in the Gaza Strip has a new leader, and it shouldn't be surprising that he's a convicted murderer. Convicted of the murder of other Palestinians who had been accused of helping Israel, Yehya Sinwar was imprisoned in 1989 and served 22 years until he was released six years ago as part of the deal to release Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Sinwar is on the U.S. "Specially Designated [Terrorist] Nationals" List.

In a call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday, January 15, 2017, Secretary of State John Kerry assured the prime minister that there would be no further United Nations Security Council action taken against Israel in the wake the Paris peace conference. That conference brought 70+ nations together to discuss terms of peace between Israel and the Palestinians, without either party being present. United Nations Security Council resolution 2334, passed in late December 2016, when the United States abstained and failed to protect Israel from a resolution that stated that the Israeli presence in all lands captured in 1967, including parts of Jerusalem, constituted a flagrant violation of international law. The immediate effects of the resolution was to encourage boycotts of Israel and increase Palestinian violence, mostly rock throwing, against Israel.

In a New Year's announcement, North Korean dictator Kim Jung Un stated that his nation was on the verge of launching its first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) - a missile capable of both carrying a nuclear warhead and reaching the United States. This threat could President-elect Donald Trump's first major foreign policy challenge, coming as it does after nuclear bomb tests of varying success by the North Koreans.

Probably the one columnist I have critiqued more than any other in my blogging career is Thomas Friedman of The New York Times. Friedman, one-time NY Times Jerusalem bureau chief, is considered The Times' go-to expert on the Middle East, globalization and environmental issues. However, when reading Friedman's columns, it's easy to see that rather than being an expert on any of these topics, he holds certain beliefs and uses all of his observations to support his deeply held beliefs. He often conveys his convictions using superficial metaphors that sound clever, but are meaningless or misleading.

President Barack Obama's legacy at the UN will be marked by the year 2016. The year was bookmarked by the passage of UN Security Council resolution 2231 in January, giving U.N. authority to the Iran Nuclear Deal, and resolution 2334 last week, purporting to declare illegal the presence of Jews in areas in which form a key part of Jewish history. In the case of the Iran deal, the United States led the Security Council and voted for the resolution enshrining the nuclear deal into what passes for international law. In the case of the more recent resolution, the United States abstained, according to some incoherent reasons spouted by US Ambassador Samantha Power, but it looks like, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu charges, that Obama orchestrated it. (Yesterday, Netanyahu spokesman David Keyes charged that Israel had "ironclad information" that Obama was indeed behind the maneuver.)

Early on in his first term, President Barack Obama suggested that in order to achieve peace between Israeli and the Palestinians, there needed to be more "daylight" between the United States and Israel. Obama, according to a report on a meeting between the president and American Jewish leaders, said, referring to the Bush administration, "During those eight years, there was no space between us and Israel, and what did we get from that? When there is no daylight, Israel just sits on the sidelines, and that erodes our credibility with the Arab states." During Obama's two terms in office, he made efforts to put daylight between his administration and Israel, and not just in terms of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: in 2010 the administration harangued Netanyahu over a plan to build apartments in Jerusalem, the administration pursued the nuclear deal with Iran over Israeli objections, senior administration officials, on and off the record, have disparaged Netanyahu, and Obama is said to be considering a move in the UN to support Palestinian statehood.

Miriam Elman had an excellent post on Sunday on the possibility that, once inaugurated as president, Donald Trump would do what none of his predecessors ever did despite their promises and move the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, Israel's capital. The reason that Bill Clinton and George W. Bush never followed the law calling for moving the embassy because the law has a waiver provision, allowing the president not to move the embassy if he deems the move to threaten the national security. The foreign policy smart set says that the president can't do this because it will hurt the United States in the Arab world or because it would show the Palestinians that the United States is on Israel's side or that it would prejudge the terms of any final deal between Israel and the Palestinians.

The stroke suffered Tuesday by former Israeli president Shimon Peres offers an opportunity to look at his legacy to the State of Israel. Tuesday, was September 13, 23 years to the day that he stood on the White House lawn with Yitzchak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, overseen by President Bill Clinton, to sign the Oslo Accords, the peace treaty between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. Anyone who is familiar Peres, Israel's ninth president (who retired from that post in 2014) and two-time prime minister, since then would think of him chiefly as the architect of peace with the Palestinians. Peres took his vision of peace and became an international celebrity in the process, even as the peace he pushed for never quite materialized. But to remember Peres simply for his never quite realized dream of peace with the Palestinians, is to overlook the essential role he  played in shaping Israel's military in the 1950's.