Majorityrights News > Category: Political analysis

‘Refugees’ by way of Israel with money enough from there for a one way ticket to Europe.

New Observer, “Africans Deported from Israel “Appear” in Rome”, 9 Jan 2018:

African invaders who were earlier “voluntarily deported” from Israel to Rwanda with a $3,500 payment each have been found and interviewed in Rome, according to the United Nations High Commission on Refugees.

According to a statement issued by UNHCR spokesperson William Spindler at a press conference today at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, at least 80 of the Africans deported from Israel were interviewed by UN representatives “between November 2015 and December 2017 in reception centres and informal settlements in the Rome area.”

The UNHCR statement called on the Jewish ethnostate not to proceed with its plans to deport nearly 40,000 Africans, as announced in November last year.

The UNHCR said that it was making the appeal to Israel after “some 80 cases were identified in which people relocated by Israel” had taken “onward journeys to Europe via Libya.”

“All 80 cases involved Eritrean refugees or asylum seekers who were “interviewed by UNHCR staff in Rome,” the statement said, adding that the Africans then travelled “hundreds of kilometers” through South Sudan, Sudan and Libya “after being relocated by Israel.”

From Libya, they had crossed the Mediterranean to invade Europe,

“The interviews–all with adult males, some with family members still in Israel–took place between November 2015 and December 2017 in reception centers and informal settlements in the Rome area. All had entered Israel via the Sinai,” the UNHCR statement continued, peppering each sentence with patently bogus claims that the invaders have been “tortured and mistreated” at every step—a standard tactic by those seeking to justify the Third World invasion of Europe.

“Most said they had been transferred from Israel to a country in Africa and provided with a lump sum of US$3,500 dollars. However, the situation on arrival was different to what most had expected and with little further support provided beyond accommodation on the first night,” the UNHCR statement continued, providing some insight into how the Jewish state is getting rid of its African spongers.

“In light of this, UNHCR is seriously concerned over Israel’s plans announced on January 1st to forcibly relocate Eritreans and Sudanese to countries in Africa or have them face indefinite detention,” UNHCR statement said.

“Official statements that the plans may eventually target families and those with pending asylum claims, or that asylum seekers might be taken to the airport in handcuffs, are particularly alarming.

“At a time when UNHCR and partners in the international community are engaged in emergency evacuations from Libya, forced relocation to countries that do not offer effective protection and the onward movement of these people to Libya and Europe is particularly worrisome.

“There are some 27,000 Eritreans and 7,700 Sudanese in Israel. Since Israel took over refugee status determination from UNHCR in 2009, only ten Eritreans and one Sudanese have been recognized as refugees.

“Another 200 Sudanese, all from Darfur, were granted humanitarian status in Israel and there was an announcement that another 300 will follow. Israel has not received any Eritreans or Sudanese since May 2016.”

Remarkably, the UNHCR said that it was prepared nonetheless to help the Jewish state get rid of its Africans:

“UNHCR stands ready to work with Israel to find alternative solutions for the protection needs of asylum seekers, in line with international standards. This includes resettlement out of Israel, as has happened previously”, the statement ended.

According to Wolff book: Trump was shocked by presidential victory. He had run with anticipation of a loss to Hillary based on her “fake” media support which he could parlay into a “real” media empire by contrast; Bannon warned presidential victory would spotlight Trump’s Russian money laundering; Melania cried in stress over “botched plan gone right” which actually landed the presidency for Donald.

NewsWeek, “Trump Was Horrified When He Won the White House and Melania Cried, Book Claims”, 3 Jan 2018:

No one on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign team thought Trump would actually become president—and they didn’t really want him to either, according to excerpts from Michael Wolff’s book published Wednesday in New York magazine.

Now-President Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, Donald Trump Jr., campaign manager Kellyanne Conway and first lady Melania Trump were all reportedly left dumbfounded and afraid on the night of the election in 2016, the book claims. Shortly after 8 on election night, it became clear that Trump had a real shot of becoming president. Wolff wrote that Don Jr. said his father “looked as if he had seen a ghost. Melania was in tears—and not of joy.” Steve Bannon, who helped run the Trump campaign and helped Trump’s team through the transition, said he saw Trump morph from “a disbelieving Trump and then into a horrified Trump.”

A week before the election, Trump was sure he would lose the presidency. But still, according to Wolff’s book, he told Ailes that it was “bigger than I ever dreamed of. I don’t think about losing, because it isn’t losing. We’ve totally won.”

Then he actually won.

Wolff’s claims match various reporting on Trump’s election: He certainly wanted the fame that goes along with running a successful campaign, but critics theorized that he wasn’t quite as happy claiming the job of president. In February, The New York Times reported that Trump misses his access to “fans and supporters — an important source of feedback and validation.” The Associated Press wrote that Trump didn’t even want to live in the White House.

But Wolff’s new book claims Trump and his campaign never planned to win and never wanted to accept the job that comes along with a victory. So once he did take office, the West Wing was in disarray, with Bannon, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner all operating in a free-form environment. Bannon, especially, saw his role as creating the “soul” of the White House, according to Wolff. And Trump’s own behavior was credited as not befitting the White House.

“Nothing contributed to the chaos and dysfunction of the White House as much as Trump’s own behavior,” Wolff wrote. “The big deal of being president was just not apparent to him. Most victorious candidates, arriving in the White House from ordinary political life, could not help but be reminded of their transformed circumstances by their sudden elevation to a mansion with palacelike servants and security, a plane at constant readiness, and downstairs a retinue of courtiers and advisers. But this wasn’t that different from Trump’s former life in Trump Tower, which was actually more commodious and to his taste than the White House.”

Wolff’s book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House is to be published by Henry Holt & Co. on January 9.

The Hill, “Bannon warned Russia probe would focus on money laundering: report”, 3 January 2018:

Former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon warned that the special counsel investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia would focus on money laundering, according to a book to be published next week.

The revelation is included in “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” a new book by Michael Wolff. The Guardian, which has viewed a copy, published several stories on Wednesday about the book, which includes interviews with Bannon and President Trump.

Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was charged with money laundering in an October indictment brought by special counsel Robert Mueller, as was his associate Richard Gates.

In Wolff’s book, Bannon identifies Weissmann, an attorney on Mueller’s team, as a “money-laundering guy.”

“You realize where this is going,” Bannon said in the book. “This is all about money laundering. Mueller chose Weissmann first and he is a money-laundering guy. Their path to fucking Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr and Jared Kushner. … It’s as plain as a hair on your face.”

“They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV,” Bannon said, referring to the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.

The former White House chief strategist also spoke about the 2016 meeting between Trump Jr. and a group of Russians, describing it as “treasonous.”

And Bannon in “Fire and Fury” mentioned connections between Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and loans taken out from the German Deutsche Bank that have come under scrutiny in relation to the investigation.

In December, federal prosecutors subpoenaed Deutsche Bank for records tied to Kushner’s family’s real estate business, Kushner Companies.

“It goes through Deutsche Bank and all the Kushner shit,” Bannon said of the probe. “The Kushner shit is greasy. They’re going to go right through that. They’re going to roll those two guys up and say play me or trade me.”

Business Insider, “I know why Steve Bannon let Michael Wolff into the White House”, 4 Jan 2018:

- Michael Wolff’s new book, “The Fire and the Fury,” is rocking the Trump White House, and it hasn’t even been released yet.

- It has the president turning on former adviser Steve Bannon. This is in part because Bannon helped Wolff gain incredible access to the White House.

- Why? Add this to the long list of ego-driven media mistakes made by the administration - a costly one at that.

- What Bannon didn’t count on was that Wolff isn’t a soldier in his army.

I feel like I write this all the time, but the White House is in chaos.

The Trump administration is being thrown by the forthcoming publication of Michael Wolff’s book “The Fire and The Fury: Inside the Trump White House.”

The excerpts, until now jealously guarded at select media outlets like New York Magazine and NBC for weeks, tell of a shockingly incompetent president and the in-over-their-heads aides who openly disrespect him. It is chaos, and someone let Wolff take a front seat and watch it all.

That person, by all accounts, was former White House adviser Stever Bannon. While Trump may have known that the biographer of his idol, Rupert Murdoch, was on site, it was Bannon who ensured Wolff had access.

Why? Consider it one part self-aggrandizement, another part a desire for acceptance, and wholly and completely a continuation of Bannon’s desperate search for ideological allies.

READ MORE...

Correction: I spoke too soon about Timothy Snyder being an anti-nationalist, and I did that in light of his estimation that Britain and France were not really nations while they were empires, that their “nationhoods” were creations of post hoc political convenience. Nevertheless, to say that he is against nationalism would not be correct, since in fact he sees the weak state and the destruction of the state as that which abets genocide.

Snyder’s characterology of how Putin’s and Trump’s positions have emerged in fairly conjoint construction is uncanny…

As such he does make of himself a useful idiot in that he exposes one side of the YKW equation - the specific origin and characters of their right wing cohorts, Putin and Trump.

Youtube, “A Republic, If You Can Keep It: Masha Gessen Talks Autocracy with Timothy Snyder”, 12 July 2017:
       
As his fellow Trump/Putin critic, (((Masha Gessen))) would suggest, we would miss the truth of these characters, more like mafia dons than statesmen, if we were to maintain a policy of sheer fact checking. Because essentially, they don’t care. They both have a cynical world view and it is about power - logical consistency is for the naive. By contrast to that, one must have the courage and confidence to tell the true story -

Youtube, “Chatham House Primer: Modern Authoritarianism”, 30 Oct 2017:

This guy, (Ivan) Ilyin, I think was a very interesting philosopher; he is kind of the grandfather of the current Russian “fascism.”  Current Russian “fascists” like Alexander Dugin are a little jealous of him and say that he just serves a technical function in the Kremlin and he’s not that interesting. I think he’s interesting. One of his ideas is that for Russia to have a leader, that person has to be free of history, which is a high demand.

He (Ilyin) was a right-wing Hegelian ...his whole idea was that god created the world and that was a mistake. It’s an interesting view, those of you who know anything about Orthodox theology know that there are references… god created the world, it was a mistake, the factuality of the world is itself sinful, history is itself sinful, contingency, to use the technical term, contingency is sinful, all these facts and passions we have, they’re inherently sinful.

So, in order for Russia to be rescued it has to be rescued by someone who is somehow clean of history.

It has to be a redeemer who comes from beyond history.

What I find so interesting is that this actually happened in a way.

The place that is not history is fiction.

When Mr. Putin came to power, Surkov and the others in the Kremlin literally had a kind of game and then a public opinion poll where they tried to figure out which Russian fictional character would be most attractive to Russians. They came up with this character (Max Otto von) Stierlitz, who was a double agent and a person in a novel, and in a film, in the 70’s, who was a Russian spy who spoke German. That’s why they chose Mr. Putin. So, he literally .. this true people! This is the world we live in. So he literally came from fiction.

Then you connect Mr. Putin to Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump is Not a successful real estate developer! That never happened. Mr. Trump bankrupted six companies. He owed billions of dollars to, I think, seventy banks. Until, low and behold, some nice Russians came and said, ‘hey, why don’t you just put your name on some buildings and we’ll give you money for that, and we will build the buildings - which then became his business plan. Which is a great (((business plan))) if you can get it.

Rob Goldstone relaxing, chatting with Trump

The Miss Universe pageant. How did he run (((the Miss Universe pageant)))? The Russians gave him twenty million dollars and he showed up. Which is a great business plan if you can do it.

So, a fictional Russian character comes to power and then creates a fictional American character called Mr. Trump. This happened!

Once the Russians had bailed him out, he then appeared on American television, on celebrity apprentice, playing a successful real estate developer - which he never was.

But as a character, he was great, he could say, “you’re fired!” in a really convincing way.

So, one fictional character then creates another fictional character. And that fictional character also comes to power. ..with the help of all kinds of fictional devices, mostly delivered through the internet.  So there really is an interesting problem of (((genre))) going on in our life.

A backlog of articles detailing the connection between Chabad-Lubavitch, Putin, the Russian Federation and Trump.

Politico, “The Happy-Go-Lucky Jewish Group That Connects Trump and Putin”, 9 April 2017:

Where Trump’s real estate world meets a top religious ally of the Kremlin.

Chabad of Port Washington, a Jewish community center on Long Island’s Manhasset Bay, sits in a squat brick edifice across from a Shell gas station and a strip mall. The center is an unexceptional building on an unexceptional street, save for one thing: Some of the shortest routes between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin run straight through it.

Two decades ago, as the Russian president set about consolidating power on one side of the world, he embarked on a project to supplant his country’s existing Jewish civil society and replace it with a parallel structure loyal to him. On the other side of the world, the brash Manhattan developer was working to get a piece of the massive flows of capital that were fleeing the former Soviet Union in search of stable assets in the West, especially real estate, and seeking partners in New York with ties to the region.

Their respective ambitions led the two men—along with Trump’s future son-in-law, Jared Kushner—to build a set of close, overlapping relationships in a small world that intersects on Chabad, an international Hasidic movement most people have never heard of.

Starting in 1999, Putin enlisted two of his closest confidants, the oligarchs Lev Leviev and Roman Abramovich, who would go on to become Chabad’s biggest patrons worldwide, to create the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia under the leadership of Chabad rabbi Berel Lazar, who would come to be known as “Putin’s rabbi.”

A few years later, Trump would seek out Russian projects and capital by joining forces with a partnership called Bayrock-Sapir, led by Soviet emigres Tevfik Arif, Felix Sater and Tamir Sapir—who maintain close ties to Chabad. The company’s ventures would lead to multiple lawsuits alleging fraud and a criminal investigation of a condo project in Manhattan.

Meanwhile, the links between Trump and Chabad kept piling up. In 2007, Trump hosted the wedding of Sapir’s daughter and Leviev’s right-hand man at Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach resort. A few months after the ceremony, Leviev met Trump to discuss potential deals in Moscow and then hosted a bris for the new couple’s first son at the holiest site in Chabad Judaism. Trump attended the bris along with Kushner, who would go on to buy a $300 million building from Leviev and marry Ivanka Trump, who would form a close relationship with Abramovich’s wife, Dasha Zhukova. Zhukova would host the power couple in Russia in 2014 and reportedly attend Trump’s inauguration as their guest.

With the help of this trans-Atlantic diaspora and some globetrotting real estate moguls, Trump Tower and Moscow’s Red Square can feel at times like part of the same tight-knit neighborhood. Now, with Trump in the Oval Office having proclaimed his desire to reorient the global order around improved U.S. relations with Putin’s government—and as the FBI probes the possibility of improper coordination between Trump associates and the Kremlin—that small world has suddenly taken on outsize importance.

Trump’s kind of Jews

Founded in Lithuania in 1775, the Chabad-Lubavitch movement today has adherents numbering in the five, or perhaps six, figures. What the movement lacks in numbers it makes up for in enthusiasm, as it is known for practicing a particularly joyous form of Judaism.

Mort Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, recalled having this trait impressed upon him during one family wedding at which the two tables occupied by his first cousins, Chabad rabbis, put the rest of the celebrants to shame. “They were dancing up a storm, these guys. I thought they were black. Instead they’re just black-hat,” Klein said, referring to their traditional Hasidic garb.

Despite its small size, Chabad has grown to become the most sprawling Jewish institution in the world, with a presence in over 1,000 far-flung cities, including locales like Kathmandu and Hanoi with few full-time Jewish residents. The movement is known for these outposts, called Chabad houses, which function as community centers and are open to all Jews. “Take any forsaken city in the world, you have a McDonald’s and a Chabad house,” explained Ronn Torossian, a Jewish public relations executive in New York.

Chabad adherents differ from other Hasidic Jews on numerous small points of custom, including the tendency of Chabad men to wear fedoras instead of fur hats. Many adherents believe that the movement’s last living leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who died in 1994, is the messiah, and some believe he is still alive. Chabad followers are also, according to Klein, “remarkable” fundraisers.

As the closest thing the Jewish world has to evangelism—much of its work is dedicated to making Jews around the world more involved in Judaism—Chabad serves many more Jews who are not full-on adherents.

According to Schmuley Boteach, a prominent rabbi in New Jersey and a longtime friend of Democratic Sen. Cory Booker, Chabad offers Jews a third way of relating to their religious identity. “You have three choices as a Jew,” he explained. “You can assimilate and not be very affiliated. You can be religious and Orthodox, or there’s sort of a third possibility that Chabad offers for people who don’t want to go the full Orthodox route but do want to stay on the traditional spectrum.”

This third way may explain the affinity Trump has found with a number of Chabad enthusiasts—Jews who shun liberal reform Judaism in favor of traditionalism but are not strictly devout.

“It’s not a surprise that Trump-minded people are involved with Chabad,” said Torossian. “Chabad is a place that tough, strong Jews feel comfortable. Chabad is a nonjudgmental place where people that are not traditional and not by-the-book feel comfortable.”

He summarized the Chabad attitude, which is less strict than the Orthodox one, as, “If you can’t keep all of the commandments, keep as many as you can.”

Torossian, who coincidentally said he is Sater’s friend and PR rep, also explained that this balance is particularly appealing to Jews from the former Soviet Union, who appreciate its combination of traditional trappings with a lenient attitude toward observance. “All Russian Jews go to Chabad,” he said. “Russian Jews are not comfortable in a reform synagogue.”

Putin’s kind of Jews

The Russian state’s embrace of Chabad happened, like many things in Putin’s Russia, as the result of a factional power struggle.

In 1999, soon after he became prime minister, Putin enlisted Abramovich and Leviev to create the Federation of Russian Jewish Communities. Its purpose was to undermine the existing umbrella for Russia’s Jewish civil society, the Russian Jewish Congress, led by oligarch Vladimir Gusinsky, a potential threat to Putin and President Boris Yeltsin. A year later, Gusinsky was arrested by Putin’s government and forced into exile.

At the time, Russia already had a chief rabbi as recognized by the Russian Jewish Congress, Adolf Shayevich. But Abramovich and Leviev installed Chabad rabbi Lazar at the head of their rival organization. The Kremlin removed Shayevich from its religious affairs council, and ever since it has instead recognized Lazar as Russia’s chief rabbi, leaving the country with two rival claimants to the title.

The Putin-Chabad alliance has reaped benefits for both sides. Under Putin, anti-Semitism has been officially discouraged, a break from centuries of discrimination and pogroms, and the government has come to embrace a state-sanctioned version of Jewish identity as a welcome part of the nation.

As Putin has consolidated his control of Russia, Lazar has come to be known derisively as “Putin’s rabbi.” He has escorted the Russian leader to Jerusalem’s Western Wall and attended the opening ceremony of the Sochi Olympics, Putin’s pet project, on the Jewish Sabbath. Putin returned that favor by arranging for Lazar to enter the stadium without submitting to security checks that would have broken the rules for observing Shabbat.

In 2013, a $50 million Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center opened in Moscow under the auspices of Chabad and with funding from Abramovich. Putin donated a month of his salary to the project, while the Federal Security Service, the successor to the KGB, pitched in by offering relevant documents from its archives.

In 2014, Lazar was the only Jewish leader present at Putin’s triumphal announcement of the annexation of Crimea.

But the rabbi has paid a price for his loyalty to Putin. Since the annexation, his continued support for the Russian autocrat has caused a rift with Chabad leaders in Ukraine. And for years, the Russian government has defied an American court order to turn over a trove of Chabad texts called the “Schneerson Library” to the Chabad Lubavitch headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Shortly after the opening of the tolerance museum, Putin ordered the collection transferred there instead. The move made Lazar the custodian of a prized collection that his Brooklyn comrades believe is rightfully theirs.

If Lazar has any qualms about his role in all the intra-Chabad drama, he hasn’t let on publicly. “Challenging the government is not the Jewish way,” the rabbi said in 2015.

Trump, Bayrock, Sapir

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, as Trump looked for business and investors in the former Soviet Union during the first years of this century, he struck up an enduring relationship with a firm called Bayrock-Sapir.

Bayrock was co-led by Felix Sater, a convicted mob associate.

Sater and another Bayrock employee, Daniel Ridloff, who like Sater later went on to work directly for the Trump Organization, belong to the Port Washington Chabad house. Sater told POLITICO Magazine that in addition to serving on the board of the Port Washington Chabad house, he sits on the boards of numerous Chabad entities in the U.S. and abroad, though none in Russia.

The extent of Sater’s ties to Trump is a matter of some dispute. Working out of Trump Tower, Sater partnered with the celebrity developer on numerous Trump-branded developments and scouted deals for him in the former Soviet Union. In 2006, Sater escorted Trump’s children Ivanka and Don Jr. around Moscow to scour the city for potential projects, and he worked especially closely with Ivanka on the development of Trump SoHo, a hotel and condominium building in Manhattan whose construction was announced on “The Apprentice” in 2006.

In 2007, Sater’s stock fraud conviction became public. The revelation did not deter Trump, who brought him on as “a senior advisor to the Trump Organization” in 2010. In 2011, a number of purchasers of Trump SoHo units sued Trump and his partners for fraud and the New York attorney general’s office opened a criminal inquiry into the building’s marketing. But the purchasers settled and agreed not to cooperate with the criminal investigation, which was subsequently scuttled, according to the New York Times. Two former executives are suing Bayrock alleging tax evasion, money laundering, racketeering, bribery, extortion and fraud.

Under oath, Sater has described a close relationship with the Trumps, while Trump has testified under oath that he barely knew Sater and would not be able to pick his face out in a crowd. Several people who worked closely with Sater during this period and who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, citing fear of retaliation from both men, scoffed at Trump’s testimony, describing frequent meetings and near-constant phone calls between the two. One person recalled numerous occasions on which Trump and Sater dined together, including at the now-defunct Kiss & Fly in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District.

“Trump called Felix like every other day to his office. So the fact that he’s saying he doesn’t know him, that’s a lot of crap,” said a former Sater colleague. “They were definitely in contact always. They spoke on the phone all the time.”

In 2014, the Port Washington Chabad house named Sater its “man of the year.” At the ceremony honoring Sater, the chabad’s founder, Shalom Paltiel, recounted how Sater would spill his guts to him about his adventures working as a government cooperator on sensitive matters of national security.

“I only recently told Felix I really didn’t believe most of it. I thought perhaps he watched too many James Bond movies, read one too many Tom Clancy novels,” said Paltiel at the ceremony. “Anyone who knows Felix knows he can tell a good story. I simply did not put too much credence to them.”

But Paltiel went on to recount receiving special clearance years later to accompany Sater to a ceremony at the federal building in Manhattan. There, said Paltiel, officials from every American intelligence agency applauded Sater’s secret work and divulged “stuff that was more fantastic, and more unbelievable, than anything he had been telling me.” A video of the event honoring Sater has been removed from the Port Washington Chabad house’s website but is still available on YouTube.

When I contacted Paltiel for this article, he hung up the phone as soon as I introduced myself. I wanted to ask him about some of the connections I’d come across in the course of my reporting. In addition to his relationship with Sater, Paltiel is also close to “Putin’s rabbi” Lazar, calling Lazar “my dear friend and mentor” in a short note about running into him at Schneerson’s gravesite in Queens.

According to Boteach, this is unsurprising, because Chabad is the sort of community where everybody knows everybody else. “In the world of Chabad, we all went to Yeshiva together, we were all ordained together,” Boteach explained. “I knew Berel Lazar from yeshiva.”

The Port Washington Chabad house has another Bayrock tie. Among its top 13 benefactors, its “Chai Circle,” as listed on its website, is Sater’s partner, Bayrock founder Tevfik Arif.

Arif, a former Soviet bureaucrat turned wealthy real estate developer, owns a mansion in Port Washington, an upscale suburb, but he makes a curious patron for the town’s Chabad. A Kazakh-born citizen of Turkey with a Muslim name, Arif is not Jewish, according to people who have worked with him. In 2010, he was arrested in a raid on a yacht in Turkey that once belonged to the founder of the modern Turkish state, Mustafa Kamal Ataturk, and charged with running an international underage prostitution ring. Arif was later cleared of the charges.

Before the scandal on Ataturk’s yacht, Arif partnered closely with Trump, Ivanka Trump and Sater in the development of Trump SoHo along with the Sapir family, a New York real estate dynasty and the other half of Bayrock-Sapir.

Its patriarch, the late billionaire Tamir Sapir, was born in the Soviet state of Georgia and arrived in 1976 in New York, where he opened an electronics store in the Flatiron district that, according to the New York Times, catered largely to KGB agents.

Trump has called Sapir “a great friend.” In December 2007, he hosted the wedding of Sapir’s daughter, Zina, at Mar-a-Lago. The event featured performances by Lionel Ritchie and the Pussycat Dolls. The groom, Rotem Rosen, was the CEO of the American branch of Africa Israel, the Putin oligarch Leviev’s holding company.

Five months later, in early June 2008, Zina Sapir and Rosen held a bris for their newborn son. Invitations to the bris described Rosen as Leviev’s “right-hand man.” By then, Leviev had become the single largest funder of Chabad worldwide, and he personally arranged for the bris to take place at Schneerson’s grave, Chabad’s most holy site.

Trump attended the bris. A month earlier, in May 2008, he and Leviev had met to discuss possible real estate projects in Moscow, according to a contemporaneous Russian news report. An undated photograph on a Pinterest account called LLD Diamond USA, the name of a firm registered to Leviev, shows Trump and Leviev shaking hands and smiling. (The photograph was first pointed out by Pacific Standard.)

That same year, Sapir, an active Chabad donor in his own right, joined Leviev in Berlin to tour Chabad institutions in the city.

Jared, Ivanka, Roman, Dasha

Also present at the Sapir-Rosen bris was Kushner, who along with his now-wife Ivanka Trump has forged his own set of ties to Putin’s Chabad allies. Kushner’s family, which is Modern Orthodox, has long been highly engaged in philanthropy across the Jewish world, including to Chabad entities, and during his undergraduate years at Harvard, Kushner was active in the university’s Chabad house. Three days before the presidential election, the couple visited Schneerson’s grave and prayed for Trump. In January, the couple purchased a home in Washington’s Kalorama neighborhood and settled on the city’s nearby Chabad synagogue, known as TheSHUL of the Nation’s Capital, as their house of worship.

In May 2015, a month before Trump officially entered the Republican presidential primary, Kushner bought a majority stake in the old New York Times building on West 43rd Street from Leviev for $295 million.

Kushner and Ivanka Trump are also close with Abramovich’s wife, Dasha Zhukova. Abramovich, an industrialist worth more than $7 billion and the owner of the British soccer club Chelsea FC, is the former governor of the Russian province of Chukotka, where he is still revered as a hero. He owes his fortune to his triumphant emergence from Russia’s post-Soviet “aluminum wars,” in which more than 100 people are estimated to have died in fighting over control of aluminum refineries. Abramovich admitted in 2008 that he amassed his assets by paying billions of dollars in bribes. In 2011, his former business partner, the late Boris Berezovsky—an oligarch who had fallen out with Putin and gone on to live in exile at the Trump International on Central Park West—accused him of threats, blackmail and intimidation in a lawsuit in the United Kingdom, which Abramovich won.

Abramovich was reportedly the first person to recommend to Yeltsin that he choose Putin as his successor. In their 2004 biography of Abramovich, the British journalists Chris Hutchins and Dominic Midgely write, “When Putin needed a shadowy force to act against his enemies behind the scenes, it was Abramovich whom he could rely on to prove a willing co-conspirator.” The biographers compare the two men’s relationship to that between a father and a son and report that Abramovich personally interviewed candidates for Putin’s first cabinet. He has reportedly gifted Putin a $30 million yacht, though Putin denies it.

Abramovich’s vast business holdings and his personal life overlap with Trump’s world in multiple ways.

According to a 2012 report from researchers at Cornell University, Evraz, a firm partly owned by Abramovich, has contracts to provide 40 percent of the steel for the Keystone XL pipeline, a project whose completion was approved by Trump in March after years of delay. And in 2006, Abramovich purchased a large stake in the Russian oil giant Rosneft, a company now being scrutinized for its possible role in alleged collusion between Trump and Russia. Both Trump and the Kremlin have dismissed as “fake news” a dossier that alleges that a recent sale of Rosneft shares was part of a scheme to ease U.S. sanctions on Russia.

Meanwhile, his wife, Zhukova, has long traveled in the same social circles as Kushner and Ivanka Trump: She is a friend and business partner of Rupert Murdoch’s ex-wife Wendi Deng, one of Ivanka’s closest friends, and a friend of Karlie Kloss, the longtime girlfriend of Kushner’s brother, Josh.

Over the years, Zhukova has grown close to Jared and Ivanka themselves. In February 2014, a month before Putin illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine, Ivanka Trump posted a photo to Instagram of herself with Zhukova, Wendi Deng, a bottle of wine, and the caption, “Thank you [Zhukova] for an unforgettable four days in Russia!” Deng was recently rumored to be dating Putin, though she denied it. Other photos from the trip show Kushner was also present in Russia at the time.

Last summer, Kushner and Ivanka Trump shared a box at the U.S. Open with Zhukova and Deng. In January, Zhukova reportedly attended Trump’s inauguration as Ivanka Trump’s guest.

On March 14, The Daily Mail spotted Josh Kushner dining with Zhukova in New York. According to the outlet, Josh Kushner “hid his face as he exited the eatery with Dasha.”

A week later, at the same time Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump were vacationing in Aspen with her two brothers and their families, Abramovich’s plane flew from Moscow to Denver, according to a flight tracking service. Abramovich owns two properties in the Aspen area.

A spokesman for Abramovich declined to comment on the record about the Colorado overlap. The White House referred queries about the couples to a personal spokeswoman for Ivanka Trump. The spokeswoman, Risa Heller, initially indicated she would provide answers to questions about the Colorado overlap and recent contacts between the couples, but did not do so.

President Trump has reportedly sought security clearances for Kushner and Ivanka, who have taken on growing roles in his White House. For anyone else, a close personal relationship with the family of a top Putin confidant would present significant hurdles to obtaining security clearances, former high-ranking intelligence officials said, but political pressure to grant clearances to the president’s children would be likely to override any security concerns.

“Yes, such connections to Russia should matter for a clearance,” said Steve Hall, a former CIA Moscow station chief. “Question is, will they?”

“I don’t think the Trump family camp will have any trouble with security clearances, as long as there’s no polygraph involved,” said Milt Bearden, former chief of the CIA’s Eastern European division. “It’s absolutely crazy, but not going to be an issue.”

***

With Washington abuzz about the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of Trump world’s relationship with Putin’s Kremlin, their overlapping networks remain the object of much scrutiny and fascination.

In March, the New York Times reported that Lazar had met last summer with the Trump administration’s special representative for international negotiations Jason Greenblatt, then a lawyer for the Trump Organization. The men characterized the meeting as a normal part of Greenblatt’s campaign outreach to Jewish leaders and said it included general discussion of Russian society and anti-Semitism. The meeting was brokered by New York PR rep Joshua Nass, and Lazar has said he did not discuss that meeting with the Russian government.

In late January, Sater met with Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, to discuss a proposed Ukraine peace deal that would end U.S. sanctions on Russia, which Cohen then delivered to Trump’s then-national security adviser Michael Flynn at the White House, according to the Times. Cohen has given varying accounts of the episode.

According to one Jewish Republican who said he sees Cohen “all the time” there, Cohen himself is a regular presence at the Midtown Chabad on Fifth Avenue, a dozen blocks south of Trump Tower and a half-dozen blocks south of his current office at 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

Cohen disputed this, saying, “I’ve never been to a Chabad and I’ve never been to one in New York City either.” Cohen then said he last stepped foot in a Chabad over 15 years ago to attend a bris. He said the last Chabad-related event he attended was on March 16 at a hotel in Newark when he spoke at a dinner honoring Trump’s secretary of veterans affairs, David Shulkin. The dinner was hosted by the Rabbinical College of America, a Chabad organization.

To those unfamiliar with Russian politics, Trump’s world and Hasidic Judaism, all these Chabad links can appear confounding. Others simply greet them with a shrug.

“The interconnectedness of the Jewish world through Chabad is not surprising insofar as it’s one of the main Jewish players,” said Boteach. “I would assume that the world of New York real estate isn’t that huge either.”

Zionist Report, “COMMENTARY: Trump and Putin – Agents of Chabad-Lubavitch”, 28 Mar 2017:

Americans have given up on America a long time ago, and pretty soon they will get a real taste of their atrocious mistake. When countries don’t have what it takes to assume their responsibility, the result, without a doubt, is their own destruction.

“Trump and Putin: Agents of Chabad-Lubavitch”

The following is a section I wrote on November 7, 2016; it was part of an update titled Why the globalists will announce Trump as the winner of the election. I’m reposting it on this page because it contains information that is vital to your understanding of what’s really going in the world right now. So here goes…

READ MORE...

The New Observer, “Netanyahu: Race-mixing to Destroy Liberal Jews”, 3 Dec 2017:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly predicted that racial mixing between liberal Jews and non-Jews will wipe out Reform Judaism in America by 2070—and that as a result, the Jewish ethnostate must prepare itself for survival without being supported by the US.

The comments, first reported by the Hebrew-language Makor Rishon daily newspaper in Israel, have highlighted two important facts: firstly, that Netanyahu is acutely aware of the threat to racial identity posed by racial mixing of any sort; and secondly, that the liberal Jews in America are behind the support that country provides to Israel.

In the original report, Netanyahu said that Reform Judaism—which, according to Pew Center estimates, represented 35 percent of American Jews—“would disappear within two generations due to assimilation.”

The publication of the report in Makor Rishon caused an uproar amongst Jews in America, and Netanyahu’s office issued an oblique denial in a tersely-worded statement which said that the report was “inaccurate and do not reflect the Prime Minister’s views.” It was significant that the statement did not specifically deny using those words, a tactic often employed by politicians as a way of publicly backtracking from comments.

Makor Rishon’s diplomatic correspondent, Ariel Kahana, however, confirmed that Netanyahu repeated the assessment several times in private talks, and that Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, has been heard making similar projections.

According to Kahana’s reports, Netanyahu spoke of the scenario of the demise of Reform Judaism as a threat to Israel, saying the Jewish state needs to prepare for a day when it would no longer enjoy the base of support provided today by the Jewish community in the United States.

As the Jewish Telegraphic Agency pointed out, Netanyahu has been criticized by leaders of Reform Judaism “in the United States and beyond” over his government’s refusal to implement a compromise that enlarges the space devoted to allowing Jewesses to pray at the Western Wall, as well as its support for a bill that would give the Orthodox Chief Rabbinate formal control over conversions—which would further cement Israel’s ban on marriages between Jews and non-Jews.

The JTA makes no reference to the real reason for the split between “left” and “right” wing Jews, namely on how best to present Israel to the outside world.

The JTA also ignored the other elephant in the room—the fact that the Jewish lobby in America and European countries still all support Israel and its racial policies—while vehemently attacking any white people who dare to say that they seek to emulate Israel’s plans to protect itself from being overrun by racial aliens.

Netanyahu’s assessment that liberal Jews in America will disappear due to racial mixing is based on reportedly high intermarriage rates with non-Jews amongst that community.

This is however unlikely to affect the power of the Jewish lobby, because the Conservative and Orthodox branches of American Jewry—together the majority of Jews in the US—still maintain their Jews-only marriage policies, and will not disappear.

In fact, it is precisely the Orthodox Jews who wield such strong influence over the Donald Trump administration, which is proof in itself that the disappearance of Reform Jews will not dramatically affect the power of the Jewish lobby in America.

As the Israeli Haaretz newspaper reported in April 2017, the “New Jewish Elite of the Trump Age” are the “ultra-Orthodox and pro-Israel Hawks.”

Haaretz reported that “among many moves aimed at reversing his predecessor’s policies, President Trump recently decided not to make public the White House visitors logs.

“Had they been open, the lists would reveal the profound change 100 days of a Trump administration had brought about to the Jewish community’s power structure.

“The atmosphere has changed, at least for us. There’s a sense of familiarity and greater receptivity and that makes a better atmosphere,” said Abba Cohen, vice president for federal affairs at Agudath Israel of America, a group representing the ultra-Orthodox stream.”

The real threat to Jewish power in America will only come when—and if—America tips majority nonwhite, because the Jewish Lobby’s power is directly linked to the presence of a majority white electorate—as controlling the electoral choices of a majority nonwhite population will prove much harder to do.

I’ve published this full article by The New Observer in order to allow the article to build up to this last - crucial - paragraph:

“The real threat to Jewish power in America will only come when—and if—America tips majority nonwhite, because the Jewish Lobby’s power is directly linked to the presence of a majority white electorate—as controlling the electoral choices of a majority nonwhite population will prove much harder to do.”

It makes a point, inadvertently in all likelihood, and it is a chief point that Kumiko has become vigilant about - that non-Whites who are aware of the JQ, its power and destruction to ethno-nationalism, are being compelled where they are observant, to oppose White advocacy in general (just as the Jews would have it via controlled reaction to cultural Marxism) because it (right-wing reaction) has become engrafted with Jewry and their agenda. The Alt-Right is no relief from this fact; quite the opposite, it is the ultimate in crypsis as it basically has a quid pro quo relation with Jewry’s right wing position upon its full ascendancy (approximately following the 2008 American housing bust).

And so, while David Duke, KM, TRS, Mark Collett et al. will continue to make excuses for (((Trump’s administration))); some Alt Right tents will bolster their JQ cred by apologetics for Nazi Germany; but generally they will wield the anti-social stigma that Jewry will encourage among Whites; while other tents among their big tent will be in their circuit ready to express their “compassionate side” by running apologetics with and for Lauren Southern, John K. Press, Mike Enoch and Faith Goldy…. in their broader sphere will be Stephan Molyneux, Breitbart, Fox etc.

That is to say, the Alt Right and its perspective against “the left” has been and remains a Jewish trick at the most fundamental, epistemic level of (against) praxis; a trick which non-White and White ethnonationalists alike cannot afford to ignore. For it is the anti-social right, bereft of social accountability in propensity for naturalistic fallacy and unhinged idealism that has precipitated wars catastrophic for everybody except for the ultimate benefit of YKW.

Though widely disavowed, Mike Cernovich is still exercising a surprising amount of power both behind the scenes and rather flamboyantly at other times - Why? Apparently because he’s being backed by higher echelons of the YKW to do their right-wing, paleocon bidding against “the left.”

The latest permutation of his being a conduit of this right wing Jewish power was to (hypocritically) expose liberal/“left” Jew, and MSNBC employee, Sam Seder, for a joke Seder made in bad judgment about fellow tribesman Roman Polanski’s rape of a 13 year old girl. Though Cernovich has actually made worse “jokes” of the same kind, MSNBC buckled to the pressure and fired Seder, apparently hearing, and cowered before, the footsteps of their right wing Jewish overlords echoed via Cernovich.

Specifically, Cernovich is looking to give paleocon backing to Judge Roy Moore, while Seder has been a high profile critic.

MediaITE, “After MSNBC Cuts Ties Over Polanski Tweet, Sam Seder Says Network is ‘Afraid’ of Mike Cernovich”, 5 Dec 2017:

Earlier this week, TheWrap’s Jon Levine — a Mediaite alum — reported that MSNBC was cutting ties with contributor Sam Seder over an eight-year-old tweet about Roman Polanski.

The tweet resurfaced after right-wing Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich convinced the alt-right and MAGA crowd to amplify the tweet in a smear campaign against Seder, making it appear he was a rape apologist (something that is more than a little ironic considering Cernovich’s own history.)

Following the news that MSNBC was not keeping Seder due to a willful misreading of an out-of-context tweet by a known provocateur, Media Twitter pilloried the network for its decision, with some claiming it was “deeply embarrassing” that MSNBC fell for “Cernovich’s smear campaign hook, line and sinker.” As for Seder, he believes that MSNBC has shown it fears Cernovich and the far-right media community.

Speaking to the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple, Seder provided a timeline for how the whole thing went down between him and MSNBC. He then noted that MSNBC didn’t really discuss the tweet with him in detail but instead just decided to move on from their relationship.

According to Seder, he and MSNBC management never had a serious discussion about the tweet, what it meant and whether it posed a problem for MSNBC social-media standards. “If there was any conversation about the tweet,” says Seder, “it had nothing to do with substance. It was, ‘This is blowing up.’” And from what Seder can tell, his position with the network didn’t much concern the company’s top managers. “I only spoke to the PR guy and they only fired me after there was an imminent story,” says Seder. An MSNBC spokesman responds that the company requested Seder’s written defense of his tweet, and then considered that defense in reaching its decision on the contract renewal.

Seder’s conclusion: “I think they’re afraid of those people.”

Meanwhile, Wemple noted that an MSNBC source said that while they were given pause over “alt right figures whipping up attention” regarding their decision, it was still a fact that “Seder made a rape joke.” The WaPo writer added that the joke was actually “an edgy condemnation of rape” and that if it were really that problematic, why didn’t MSNBC bring it up earlier?

Seder goes so far as to articulate parameters of the right wing attack but not so far as to note the Jewish right wing influence (i.e., who is afraid to go against fellow tribesmen?).

Sam Seder‏Verified account @SamSeder

First draft of the Alabama Roy Moore supporting robo call: Hi I am a Yankee and a Jew who controls the media, I will pay you 30 whole pieces of silver to vote against Roy Moore. Steve Bannon and the Mercers had nothing to do with this call. Have a good day!

And neither does (((Mike Cernovich and the Alt/Right/Lite)))

Did you know that upon his “Deploraball” that Mike Cernovich funded the shields used at “Unite The Right” Charlottesville? It’s a cohencidence.

Cernovich shields

Related Story:

Cernovich seeds FireMcMaster hashtag propagated by 600 most active Russian Twitter operative handles.

Washington Post, Opinion, 3 Dec 2017:

Dec. 1, 2017, will be remembered as the day when the vast majority of Americans fully grasped the consequences of the 2016 elections. They installed a man in the White House “likely to be under investigation for criminality for a very, very long time to come.” And they gave power to a Republican Party whose only purpose is to comfort the already extremely comfortable.

The quotation above, from Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric against Hillary Clinton, is now a better fit than ever for his own circumstances. The day after Michael Flynn’s guilty plea on Friday, Trump compounded his legal jeopardy with a tweet suggesting that (contrary to what he had said before) he knew Flynn, his onetime national security adviser, had lied to the FBI.

Trump’s lawyers will keep trying to explain his tweet away, but his overall vulnerability on obstructing justice has increased exponentially.

But it’s almost as important that Friday was also the day Senate Republican leaders brought forth a tax bill heralding the death of anything resembling a populist form of conservatism within the Republican Party. Plutocracy will now be the GOP’s calling card. Facing one of the most scandalous special-interest tax bills in a long history of such measures, even supposedly moderate members of the party caved in before the power of big money when the votes were counted early Saturday morning.

[...]

The leaders of “the world’s greatest deliberative body,” as the Senate pretentiously calls itself, no longer feel any obligation even to provide legible copies of complex legislation. The chicken scratches scribbled on the margins of their tax giveaway signed away any legitimacy these politicians can claim for their political project.

And deficits? Ah, deficits. They matter not a whit when there is money to pass out to corporations, rich heirs, private jet owners and the beer lobby represented by the son of one of our fine senators. But deficits will matter again soon, when Republicans will insist that they have no choice but to slash programs for the elderly, the sick and the poor.

One salutary outcome of this episode is that Trump showed how nonsensical were the widely repeated assertions that he was outside the Republican mainstream. We now know he is just a flamboyantly clownish and unconscionably mean version of an old-fashioned corporate conservative.

There is not an authentically populist bone in this billionaire’s body. He regularly demonstrates his utter contempt for working people by treating them as rubes.

He seems to think that racist gestures and malicious comments about immigrants and Muslims will distract working-class voters from how far he is tilting government away from their interests and toward those of his family and his rich friends.

Trump and his party will learn how many of the Americans they are taking for granted are much smarter than this and know when someone is selling them out — because, sadly, it’s something they are familiar with.

This is why the coincidence of the tax bill’s passage and Flynn’s decision to cooperate with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is so dangerous to Trump: The president’s populist mask is slipping at the very moment when he most needs to rally the troops. Flynn, who cherished the phrase “lock her up,” came face to face with the slammer himself and decided that loyalty to this most unfaithful of leaders was not worth the price. About this, at least, Flynn is right.

But don’t count on Republican politicians abandoning Trump quickly now that their tax victory is in sight. They and the president have a lot more in common than either side wants to admit. The primary loyalty they share is not to God or country or republican virtue. It is to the private accumulation of money, and this is a bond not easily broken.

For complete story, see Washington Post.
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President Donald Trump sits alongside Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and senior adviser Jared Kushner during a meeting at the White House in Washington on Sept. 26, 2017. AP Photo, Evan Vucci

Bloomberg, “Kushner Is Leaving Tillerson in the Dark on Middle East Talks, Sources Say”, 2 Dec 2017:

- Rex Tillerson worries secret plan could plunge region into chaos.

-White House rejects accusation State Department isn’t informed.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is increasingly alarmed by what he sees as secret talks between Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, and Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman—fearful that the discussions could backfire and tip the region into chaos, according to three people familiar with Tillerson’s concerns.

The central goal of the Kushner-Prince Mohammed negotiations, as described by two people with knowledge of the talks, is for an historic agreement featuring the creation of a Palestinian state or territory backed financially by a number of countries including Saudi Arabia, which could put tens of billions of dollars toward the effort.

A lasting Middle East peace treaty has been a U.S. goal for decades, and at the start of his administration Trump assigned the 36-year-old Kushner to head up the effort to make it happen.

Tillerson believes Kushner hasn’t done enough to share details of the talks with the State Department, according to the people, leaving senior U.S. diplomats in the dark on the full extent of the highly sensitive negotiations.

“The problem is, the senior presidential adviser does not consult with the State Department—and it’s unclear the level of consultation that goes on with the NSC,” one of the people familiar with Tillerson’s concerns said, referring to the National Security Council. “And that’s a problem for both the NSC and the State Department and it’s not something we can easily solve.”

The concerns predate reports this week that Trump may move to oust Tillerson by the end of the year—reports the president rejected but which Tillerson’s team believes are being stoked by Kushner allies, one person said. An administration official said Kushner had nothing to do with those reports.

[...]

It isn’t clear how far along the discussions are between Kushner and Prince Mohammed, three people said. And some in the U.S. government are skeptical the effort will succeed, in part because of the historic intractability of Israelis and Palestinians and because any peace deal would ultimately require the support of many competing leaders in the region.

The State Department officials’ skepticism about the Middle East discussions also reveals ongoing frustration at the president’s decision to go around them and the U.S. diplomatic corps he frequently disparages. Instead, Trump placed delicate peace negotiations in the hands of Kushner, who has no experience in diplomacy and little background in the complexities of one of the world’s most volatile regions.

Yet Trump, who has long spoken of Mideast peace as the ultimate trophy for a career dealmaker, has shown unwavering faith in his son-in-law’s ability to deliver.“If you can’t produce peace in the Middle East, nobody can,” the president told Kushner onstage at a black-tie event celebrating his inauguration in January. “All my life I’ve been hearing that’s the toughest deal to make, but I have a feeling Jared is going to do a great job.”

“The greatest dangers in the Middle East today are Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Salman”

Independent, 17 Nov 2017:

The sort of Neo-con and right-wing think tankers, who in 2003 were saying that a war with Iraq would be a doddle, are back in business in Washington, pushing for war with Iran – and are stronger than ever.

Shortly before the earthquake in Baghdad, I was making the above point about Iraq stabilising to a European diplomat. He said this might be true, but that real danger to peace “comes from a combination of three people: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Trump’s son-in-law and Middle East envoy Jared Kushner, and Bibi Netanyahu in Israel.”

Probably, the Saudis and the Americans exaggerate the willingness of Netanyahu and Israel to go to war. Netanyahu has always been strong on bellicose rhetoric, but cautious about real military conflict (except in Gaza, which was more massacre than war).

Israel’s military strength tends to be exaggerated and its army has not won a war outright since 1973. Previous engagements with Hezbollah have gone badly. Israeli generals know that the threat of military action can be more effective than its use in maximising Israeli political influence, but that actually going to war means losing control of the situation. They will know the saying of the 19th century German chief of staff, Helmuth Von Moltke, that “no plan survives contact with the enemy”.

But even if the Israelis do not intend to fight Hezbollah or Iran, this does not mean that they would not like somebody else to do so for them. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi told me in an interview earlier this month that his greatest fear was a US-Iranian confrontation fought out in Iraq. This could happen directly or through proxies, but in either case would end the present fragile peace.

On the optimistic side, US policy in Iraq and Syria is largely run by the Pentagon and not the White House, and has not changed much since President Obama’s days. It has been successful in its aim of destroying Isis and the self-declared caliphate.

The wars in Iraq and Syria already have their winners and losers: President Bashar al-Assad stays in power in Damascus, as does a Shia-dominated government in Baghdad. An Iranian-backed substantially Shia axis in four countries – Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon – stretches from the Afghan border to the Mediterranean. This is the outcome of the wars since 2011, which is not going to be reversed except by a US land invasion – as happened in Iraq in 2003.

The great danger in the Middle East today is that Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman and Jared Kushner appear to have a skewed and unrealistic understanding of the world around them. Inspector Clouseau seems to have a greater influence on Saudi policy than Machiavelli, going by the antics surrounding the forced resignation of Saad Hariri as Prime Minister of Lebanon. This sort of thing is not going to frighten the Iranians or Hezbollah.

The signs are that Iran has decided to go a long way to avoid confrontation with the US. In Iraq, it is reported that it will support the re-election of Abadi as prime minister which is also what the US wants. Iran knows that it has come out on the winning side in Iraq and Syria and does not need to flaunt its success. It may also believe that the Crown Prince is using anti-Iranian nationalist rhetoric to secure his own power and does not intend to do much about it.

Nobody has much to gain from another war in the Middle East, but wars are usually started by those who miscalculate their own strengths and interests. Both the US and Saudi Arabia have become “wild cards” in the regional pack. The sort of Neo-con and right-wing think tankers, who in 2003 were saying that a war with Iraq would be a doddle, are back in business in Washington, pushing for war with Iran – and are stronger than ever.

The wars in the Middle East should be ending, but they could just be entering a new phase. Leaders in the US and Saudi Arabia may not want a new war, but they might just blunder into one.

Politico, “Kushner took unannounced trip to Saudi Arabia”, 29 Oct 2017:

President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner returned home Saturday from an unannounced visit to Saudi Arabia — his third trip to the country this year.

Kushner left Washington, D.C., via commercial airline on Wednesday for the trip, which was not announced to the public, a White House official told POLITICO. He traveled separately from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who led a delegation to Riyadh last week to focus on combating terrorist financing.

Kushner was accompanied in the region by deputy national security adviser Dina Powell and Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt. Greenblatt continued from Saudi Arabia to Amman, Jordan; Cairo; the West Bank city of Ramallah; and Jerusalem, where he was on Sunday.

Haaretz, “Israel, Egypt Pushed U.S. to Bomb Iran Before Nuclear Deal, John Kerry Says”, 29 Nov 2017:

Speaking at a Washington forum, the former secretary of state said that Prime Minister Netanyahu was ‘genuinely agitating toward action’ against Iran.

Former Secretary of State John Kerry said both Israel and Egypt pushed the United States to “bomb Iran” before the 2015 nuclear deal was struck.

Kerry defended the deal during a forum in Washington, where he said that a number of kings and foreign presidents told the U.S. that bombing was the only language Iran would understand.

Kerry said that in his opinion it was “a trap” because the same countries would have publicly criticized the U.S. if it did carry out a bombing of Iran as they were secretly supporting.

Kerry said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was “genuinely agitating toward action.”

Kerry said he didn’t know whether Iran would resume pursuing a nuclear weapon in 10 to 15 years after restrictions in the deal sunset, but he said it was the best deal the U.S. could get.

In October, lawmakers in the United States approved four different pieces of legislation targeting Iran and its proxy terror group in Lebanon, Hezbollah,  after U.S. President Donald Trump refused to re-certify the nuclear deal, leaving its fate to Congress.

At the time, Netanyahu congratulated Trump for what he called his “courageous decision” not to recertify the nuclear deal with Iran.

“He boldly confronted Iran’s terrorist regime,” Netanyahu said. “If the Iran deal is left unchanged, one thing is absolutely certain. In a few years’ time, the world’s foremost terrorist regime will have an arsenal of nuclear weapons. And that’s a tremendous danger for our collective future.”

Netanyahu said Trump has created an “opportunity to fix this bad deal, to roll back Iran’s aggression and to confront its criminal support of terrorism.”

“That’s why Israel embraces this opportunity,” Netanyahu said.

Earlier this month, the United Nations agency monitoring Iran’s compliance with a landmark nuclear treaty issued a report Monday stating that the country is keeping its end of the deal that U.S. President Donald Trump claims Tehran has violated repeatedly.

The International Atomic Energy Agency report stopped short of declaring outright that Iran is honoring its obligations, in keeping with its official role as an impartial monitor of the restrictions the treaty placed on Tehran’s nuclear programs.

But in reporting no violations, the quarterly review’s takeaway was that Iran was honoring its commitments to crimp uranium enrichment and other activities that can serve both civilian and military nuclear programs.

Foreign Policy, “Kushner, Mohammed bin Salman, and Benjamin Netanyahu Are Up to Something”, 7 Nov 2017:

It looks a lot like a plan to squeeze Iran.

There seems to be a general consensus in Washington that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s ongoing purge of princes and businessmen — including the wealthiest of them all, the business mogul and Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal — is motivated by his determination to consolidate his power, well before his father, King Salman, passes from the scene. He is in this regard a latter-day Adonijah, who had himself crowned king while his father King David was alive. And, like Adonijah, Mohammed bin Salman has made some very powerful enemies in the process. Unlike that Biblical figure, however, he has his father’s support and has taken care to arrest anyone who might threaten his drive to preeminence.

Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, was in Riyadh again only recently. It was his third trip to Saudi Arabia since Trump took office. He again met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, with whom he appears to have established a close personal relationship. It should therefore come as no surprise that Trump, who shares the young crown prince’s antipathy toward Iran, has commented favorably on the recent developments in Riyadh.