Focus On Jerusalem Newsroom

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June 30….(USA Today) Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced Thursday that the military will no longer discriminate against transgender troops, knocking down one of the last barriers to service based on gender identity or sexual orientation. The move, nearly a year in the making, came despite last-minute concerns were raised by top brass about how to deal with the medical, housing and uniform issues for troops who are transitioning to the other sex. “This is the right thing to do for our people and for the force,” Carter said. “We’re talking about talented Americans who are serving with distinction or who want the opportunity to serve. We can’t allow barriers unrelated to a person’s qualifications prevent us from recruiting and retaining those who can best accomplish the mission." The Pentagon, Carter said, needs "access to 100%" of our population to develop the military force the nation needs.

Earlier this year, the Pentagon removed the last barriers to women serving in frontline combat roles provided they meet physical standards. And five years ago, the military repealed its Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy, which required gay and lesbian troops to hide their sexual orientation or face discharge.

Last July, Carter announced that a study group had been chartered to examine the issues raised by lifting the ban. He also ordered that decisions on discharging troops with gender dysphoria had to be raised to senior Pentagon officials, essentially ending the practice of ending the careers of transgender troops from service for medical reasons.

June 24….(FOJ) One thing is certain about the United Kingdom vote to leave the European Union that prompted Prime Minister David Cameron’s resignation, jolted global stock markets and delivered a political blow to President Obama and Hillary Clinton. It’s a stumbling block for the “one-world government” and “one-world currency” that the Bible says will eventually be imposed across all nations during the end times. That’s according to Franklin Graham, the famed evangelical leader who runs Samaritan’s Purse and Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. “Last night the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union,” he wrote on Facebook on Friday. “With the breakdown of immigration laws and economies, millions of Europeans feel that their politicians have failed them.

Graham continued: “We don’t know what the ‪‎EU Referendum vote means long-term, but I know that this is at least a temporary setback for the politicians in this country and around the world who want a one-world government and a one-world currency. The Bible speaks that one day this will take place. Join me in praying for all of those impacted and that Europe’s leaders, as well as our leaders in the United States, will look to Almighty God for wisdom and discernment in these trying and complex times in which we live.”

The 52 percent to 48 percent margin was a political defeat for Obama, who urged Britons just a few weeks ago to stay in the EU. “The United States wants a strong United Kingdom as a partner. And the United Kingdom is at its best when it’s helping to lead a strong Europe,” he said at the time.

The New York Times called it a “stunning turn of events,” and stock markets worldwide plunged several percentage points in the wake of the announcement. The vote highlighted “the power of anti-elite, populist and nationalist sentiment at a time of economic and cultural dislocation,” the report said. Supporting Graham’s observation, the Times said, “European leaders acknowledged that the British vote would further limit their ability to move forward with economic and political integration, a process that had all but stalled anyway.” The report warned the vote is a “disaster” for the European Union, “raising questions about the direction, cohesion and future of a bloc built on liberal values.”

CNBC reported former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan, long an advocate for globalism, warned the vote casts a shadow over the World Order agenda. “This is the worst period, I recall since I’ve been in public service,”

June 14….(AP) Wars in Iraq, Syria and Yemen have killed hundreds of thousands of people. Enforced disappearances, torture and extremist attacks infringe on human rights worldwide. Tyrannical, autocratic leaders and their allies from Belarus to Burundi repel dissent with an iron fist. But while human rights abuses are legion in these troubled times, only one country has its record inspected at every single session of the United Nations Human Rights Council: Israel, over its policies in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Israel, which trumpets its bona fides as a democracy in a difficult neighborhood full of enemies, is crying foul. And it is not entirely alone: Other critics, notably the United States, also decry what they see as an entrenched bias in United Nations institutions and an obsession with the Palestinian issue at the expense of other crises around the globe. As the council convenes Monday in Geneva for its second, weeks-long session this year, "Item 7" considers the human rights implications of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory. The standing item at the 10-year-old council has come to exemplify the spotlight on Israel in a number of UN bodies. "I don't know whether it's fair or unfair, but it's obvious that the majority of members want to continue to focus on the situation of Israel and Palestine," council president Choi Kyong-lim told The Associated Press.

Of 233 country-specific HRC resolutions in the last decade, more than a quarter 65, focus on Israel. About half of those are "condemnatory." Israel easily tops the second-place country in the infamous rankings: Syria, where since 2011 at least 250,000 have been killed, over 10 million displaced, and swaths of cities destroyed, was the subject of 19 resolutions. "The UN continues to single out Israel, the one liberal democracy in the Middle East," said David Keyes, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's spokesman. "Imagine that. A country with free speech, free elections and minority rights is condemned more than mass murdering dictatorships like North Korea, Iran and Syria. That speaks for itself."

The Palestinians, who have been gaining a greater presence in U.N. institutions in recent years, have allies like the Organization for Islamic Cooperation, which has often led the push for resolutions critical of Israel. An OIC official did not respond to calls and e-mails seeking comment, saying only that its ambassador to the council had recently left.

June 8….(FOJ) Two terrorists, dressed in white button-down shirts, ties and black pants, both from Yatta village in southern Mount Hebron, entered a restaurant near the Sarona Market in Tel Aviv on Wednesday and ordered food, then took out Karl Gustav sub-machine guns and started shooting at people seated inside the restaurant. The two attackers were described to Fox News as Palestinian cousins from Yata in the Hebron area of the West Bank who were known to Israeli authorities. The two attackers were both dressed as Orthodox Jews, a law enforcement source told Fox News.

As a result, in one of the most harrowing shooting attacks in the current wave of Palestinian terror, at least 3 Israelis were murdered and 4 fighting for their lives in the Ichilov Hospital operating rooms. Two more are slightly and moderately wounded.
One of the terrorists was killed and the other wounded and transferred to a hospital.
Tel Aviv District Police chief Chico Edry said that there is currently no information regarding more terrorists, and called for the residents of Tel Aviv to return to normal. This call, other than the attempt to reassure, is of no great value, because just as Commander Edry had no prior information on the shooting attack, he has no information on what is going to happen in the next hours and days.

Commander Edry also exposes the fact that Israeli security forces did not detect the news running through the social networks since Wednesday morning, claiming that an armed terrorist squad has reached Tel Aviv with the intent to carry out a terror attack.
The fact is that these terrorist were declared missing by the PA a day ago. One would assume that the word of their disappearance did not reach the ears of the GSS and the Military Intelligence who are usually coordinated with their counterparts in Ramallah.
There is no doubt that this attack was well planned for a long time.

The terrorists were armed with two Karl Gustav sub-machine guns, cartridges and knives. It appears they had excellent preliminary intelligence: The Sarona Market has countless entrances and exits and in fact it is impossible to check those entering or leaving the compound. The proximity to the Defense Ministry and to the IDF Headquarters, the two most secure Israeli facilities, located in the Kirya in Tel Aviv, makes the compound a target of terrorist attacks. With these attacks the Palestinians wish to demonstrate that they can reach these facilities and the surrounding area.
Undoubtedly, there was someone who armed the terrorists, instructed them how to load the weapons, manipulate jams and change cartridges, and how to choose the seating at the restaurant from which they observed the victims prior to the attack.

The fact that the terrorists split and then opened fire on two fronts slightly apart, indicates that someone trained them on a method that will produce the maximum number of Israeli casualties. Their intention was to escape after the attack in two different directions, while sowing panic among the general public in the area.

Senior Hamas terrorist and the deputy leader of the group, Ismail Haniyeh, also praised the murderous attack at the Sarona Market. Haniyeh called the terrorists "heroes" on his Twitter account. Hamas later wrote on Twitter that the terrorist attack was a “heroic operation” and added, “this is the first surprise in store for the Zionist enemy during Ramadan.”

June 3….(Peter Pry) I was honored to be invited to appear as a guest on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” last Friday. On the show I was asked about Obama’s “apology tour” visit to Japan. I was asked if he should have visited Hiroshima- the site of the first US nuclear attack that led to Japan's surrender during World War II. I was asked, “Was it appropriate?” I responded to host Bill Maher on the show that I’m not a fan of apologies, or in this case the appearance of an apology, especially if you’re apologizing for responding to something terrible the other guy did. Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. They started the war, we merely ended it. They committed terrible atrocities against our soldiers and American POW’s throughout the war.

My father David Root served in the South Pacific. He fought at Okinawa, the bloodiest battle of World War II. He saw firsthand the atrocities of the Japanese. Our nuclear bombs didn’t just take lives. They saved many American (and ironically, Japanese) lives. Experts estimated the invasion of Japan would have cost at least 1,000,000 lives. Those atomic bombs actually saved far more lives than they cost. One of them might have been my father.

So my answer to Bill Maher was that I’m not a fan of even the appearance of apologizing for those atomic bombs, unless of course Japan’s prime minister is willing to come to Hawaii to apologize to the American victims of Pearl Harbor. I pointed out that is a negotiation that President Donald Trump could win. But I found the response from Bill Maher’s liberal viewers interesting. I received many death threats, and people wishing me "a long slow painful death." Some lectured me on all the apologies we owe to Japanese survivors, American Indians, and of course, African-American slaves.

Obama and his socialist cabal should apologize to every middle class American for the harm they've done to the US economy; upward mobility; middle class jobs (there are none) and the American Dream (it’s dead). They've created an unimaginable DISASTER. They’ve destroyed the greatest nation, the greatest economy, the greatest economic system (capitalism) and greatest middle class in world history.

Obama should also apologize for adding well over $10 trillion to the national debt (by the time he leaves office), which could lead to a severe debt crisis and the eventual collapse of the US economy, but at a minimum will certainly cripple the quality of life of our children and grandchildren.

Obama should also apologize for the lies and fraud of ObamaCare. He lied when he said “If you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance.” Really? I lost mine. So did millions of other Americans. We are owed an apology. But the architects of ObamaCare are owed a prison sentence for fraud, because apologies alone are not enough.

Obama should also apologize for the disastrous effects of ObamaCare, which has doubled and tripled premiums, co-pays, deductibles and prescription costs, killed quality high wage middle class jobs, as well as made it almost impossible to start or run a successful small business.

Obama should apologize for the vicious IRS attacks – for trying to persecute people for their political and religious beliefs. Or didn't you know the IRS was ordered to go after conservative, Tea Party, Christian and pro-Israel groups? I was one of the victims. Where’s my apology?

Obama should apologize for demanding Congress allocate almost $18,000 for every illegal alien child or teen that enters America. That's $3000 more than a American-born senior citizen gets for Social Security, even though they paid into the system. Every American-born senior citizen is owed an apology.

Obama should apologize for being the first president in history to preside over 7 straight years of GDP under 3 percent. And we are virtually assured of an eighth straight year. Neither Herbert Hoover nor FDR produced results that terrible, even in the depths of the Great Depression.

Obama should apologize for demoralizing every business owner in America by saying “You didn’t build that.” And Hillary should apologize for saying “Businesses don’t create jobs, government does.” As soon as Obama, Hillary, their socialist cabal and every guilt-ridden white liberal apologizes for all that. Then and only then should we worry about things done 70 and 100 and 200 years ago.

But Obama, Hillary, and their liberal friends should apologize for what they just did to the great American middle class. And they should apologize to every small businessman and woman in America. Every business I personally own, and every friend I have that owns a small business, is in trouble, struggling to overcome the burdens of business under Obama, dramatically increased taxes, regulations, energy costs (because of the fraud of “green energy”), health care costs, legal bills and IRS attacks. The liberal policies of this administration have damaged and demoralized every small business owner and job creator in this country.

Obama, Hillary, Bernie and their socialist cabal are trying to ruin a great thing called America. I’ve had a great life, until recently. They want to make it less great. They won’t rest until America isn’t exceptional and we all live a crappy life of equality (i.e. misery). So yes, liberals are right. It is time for an apology. Obama owes an apology to the American people.

June 1….(Newsmax) The latest slap in the face to patriotic Americans who still "cling to their guns and bibles" from the divider-in-chief is President Obama's apology for the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima, that ended World War II, just before Memorial Day weekend. Liberal pundits insist Obama's speech at Hiroshima on May 27, 2016, was no apology, despite such guilty apologetics as these: "Yet in the image of a mushroom cloud that rose into these skies, we are most starkly reminded of humanity's core contradiction. How easily we learn to justify violence in the name of a higher cause." "Hiroshima teaches this truth. The scientific revolution that led to the splitting of the atom requires a moral revolution as well." "The memory of August 6, 1945 must never fade. It fuels our moral imagination. It allows us to change." "Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not as the dawn of atomic warfare but as the start of our own moral awakening."

Sounds like an apology, like spittle on the memory of the great generation who won World War II, who Obama implies were morally inferior to himself. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the best of bad moral choices. The atomic bombings made unnecessary an invasion of Japan and saved hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides.
Obama has never understood the crucial importance of nuclear weapons to US national security. Nuclear arms as the most destructive weapons are also the most powerful politically and psychologically, shaping the mental geography of international relations, casting a shadow of influence over war and peace and even the daily lives of nations.

Nuclear dominance makes possible conventional military aggression without resorting to nuclear arms, and makes possible victory without war, through nuclear blackmail and intimidation. Accordingly, the rapid modernization by Russia and China of new generations of advanced nuclear weapons and missiles that have no counterpart in the West is alarming.

The US nuclear deterrent is decades old, decreasingly credible, and there are no near-term prospects of correcting the growing strategic imbalance between East and West in modernity and technological advancement of nuclear weapons: The US B-21 next-generation strategic bomber, designed to replace the venerable B-2 whose stealthiness is fast disappearing against new Russian and Chinese radar technologies, will not see Initial Operating Capability (IOC) until, at the earliest, 2020.

US ballistic missile submarines, the survivable backbone of the US nuclear deterrent, during the Cold War used to number 41, have been reduced to 14 aged Ohios, and will be further reduced to 12 Ohio Replacement Program submarines scheduled for IOC in 2031.

US Minuteman ICBMs, now decades old and long past their original service life, may be replaced by a new ICBM after 2030, although the Obama Administration and Secretary of Defense Ash Carter oppose any new ICBM program. Thus, a gaping window of vulnerability yawns open in the technological nuclear balance that has no prospects of being closed for many years.

What might Russia, China, North Korea, or Iran do with this opportunity? In the worst case, merely about 50 ICBMs like Russia's SS-18 could make a disarming surprise attack, delivering 500 highly accurate warheads against the US nuclear deterrent's 450 Minuteman silos, three strategic bomber bases, two ports where half the ballistic missile submarine fleet (seven boats) is normally anchored, and key command and control centers. Would the seven Ohios at sea survive the scores of Russian attack submarines hunting them? Would any surviving Ohios be able to receive an Emergency Action Message through a Russian Super-EMP attack? If any Ohios survive and can execute a ragged, uncoordinated retaliatory strike against some Russian missile silos (many empty) and bomber bases (all vacated), what would then be the fate of US cities?

Today, even North Korea, with its 6 KN-08 ICBMs, could potentially destroy the 3 US strategic bomber bases, 2 Ohio submarine ports, and make an EMP attack that could cripple the US nuclear deterrent and civil society. The waning credibility of the US nuclear deterrent explains why Russia, China, and North Korea are increasingly aggressive.
The credibility of the US nuclear deterrent is further diminished by President Obama's very public contempt and abhorrence for the idea of using nuclear weapons to defend Western Civilization, even during World War II at Hiroshima. If President Obama and his fellow travelers would not authorize Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when the moral and strategic necessity of ending World War II and saving hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives on both sides was clear, then they are sending an unambiguous signal to potential adversaries that the US will not use nuclear weapons under any circumstances. Obama's naive quest for "a world without nuclear weapons" by disarming the US could make America the victim of future Hiroshimas and Nagasakis.