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United Arab Emirates officially normalizes relations with Israel — 61 Comments

  1. I suspect that by the end of the day CNN et el will be telling us that the ball had actually been kicked off by President Obama and the deal would have been ever so much better if President Trump had not foolishly scotched the Iran nuclear treaty.

  2. One of Alan Lichtman’s 13 “Keys to The White House” is ‘Does the incumbent have any major foreign policy achievements?’.

    His previous answer – unbiased according to the self-professed democrat – was no. Will he change that key to yes?

    According to his system it matters because it would now mean that President Trump would hold 7 of the 13 keys. And therefore win.

  3. When you put aside all the bull, there is one profound lesson to be learned from the Trump era: The political/cultural/economic establishment that has been running this country for decades have been colossally wrong about a great many things.

    Will any of the people who blasted Trump for moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem admit their mistake?

    Mike

  4. The Democratic Party (and their MSCM lackeys) will, at best, ignore this.

    At worst they will castigate Trump for “twisting arms”, betraying the Palestinians and making the volatile Middle East even less stable(!)….since the Democratic Party—-no matter what it says about “supporting Israel” (and no matter what American Jews would love to believe)—plays by “Palestinian rules” and has been doing so for years now:
    https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16335/palestinians-jews-christians

  5. Sod the Palestinians. Travelers’ reports of the trip from Damascus to Jerusalem from back in the days when Moses Montefiore wasn’t a even glint in his great-great-grandfather’s eye were unfailingly disparaging of the banditry cum fellaheen inhabiting the landscape along the route. Which would go a long way toward explaining affinity of Democrats for them :P.

    Be interesting to see how the UAE / Israel thing pans out. The business of UAE is basically money laundering + being all things to all people. Like Israel, surrounded by larger states who don’t always wish them well. Then there’s always Iran for added excitement.

    Singapore is another place with a very similar business model. Underneath the shiny clean facade, it’s basically a money laundering / arms trading / hide your assets from your country’s government hub for SE Asia. Immediate neighbors are not particularly friendly. Guess who Singapore hired to train its armed forces after the split with Malaysia? Israel. Lee Kuan Yew was no fool.

    Some pretty good synergies if it all pans out.

  6. This all sounds great and I want it to be true, but I can’t help but remember the big smiles and flashbulbs popping, when Clinton, Rabin and Arafat signed the Oslo Accord in 1993. In 1994 the Nobel Peace Prizes were handed out.

    However, nothing came of it. Arafat was still Arafat. The Palestiniants were still the Palestinians. The only result I recall was some number of Israelis became more cynical about the peace process.

  7. Just had another thought. Don’t live in the neighborhood and don’t have a dog in the fight so tend to be a bit slow on the uptake.

    House of Saud cannot last forever. When that balloon goes up, it will happen fast and everything will be in play.

    Wise heads and smart money must be hedging bets and skating towards where they think the puck is going to be.

  8. Zaphod: So you are saying the UAE is betting or diversifying against the House of Saud?

    Could be.

  9. @Huxley:

    The Palestinians and the Jews have to live with each other. Neither enjoys the experience :P.

    The Gulf Sheikdoms are not immediate neighbors.

    The thing with Arabs is that they make excellent hosts and terrible neighbors. This *partly* explains why you find so many Western statesmen becoming so enamored with the Palestinians. When an Arab sets out to be hospitable and charming, he *is*. He might not mean it. It might be socially mandated behavior and utterly insincere, but there’s no denying the charm. When you leave and continue on your journey he puts away his charm and goes back to feuding with his neighbors.

    Nobody ever accused an Israeli of being the epitome of urbanity.

    Putting aside the Malaise Anglaise kinky stuff, is easy to see why foreigners picked the Palestinian side.

    Anyway don’t see Arafat analogy as being relevant here.

  10. Tuvea,

    I would NOT trust Dr. Lichtman’s judgement. The man is biased and painfully so. He predicted in 2016 Trump would win… yet he was repeating himself constantly that Trump was going to be impeached. He did so, not for weeks or months – for years. Every time I watched him saying so seemed like he was begging, BEGGING for the Dems to impeach him.

    Remember, he is professor at either a George Washington or American University. He’s deep in The Swamp. He doesn’t want to miss the cocktail parties.

    I would rather trust the fact that Trump did the one thing many Presidents promised would do but never did: he recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and moved its Embassy from Tel Aviv. Plus, he recalibrated NAFTA into a new commerce treaty for the North American countries. He has done much more than that.

    And, there’s the Primary Model. Google it.

  11. Zaphod: True. This is a different deal, a different time, a different set of partners than Oslo.

    I just know the Middle East is a devilishly tricky situation and I prefer not to get my hopes up.

  12. @Huxley:

    They might as well.

    Only risk I can think of in dealing with Israel is a grass-roots fellaheen reaction against it of the kind which did for the Shah. But unlikely given most of the UAE population is too fat and wealthy to care.

    Also the expat / foreign worker population far outnumbers the local citizenry in these places. Apart from military and souk merchants, pretty much all the locals are in well-paid sinecures. Given that mean Arab IQ is 80-ish, they simply don’t have enough smart fraction out at the right tail of distribution to run those shiny modern cashed up societies.

    Biggest domestic problem the UAE Sheiks likely have is maintaining sufficient cadre of fighting fit native soldiers — but this will all be clan based so perhaps loyalty is less of a problem. Will still be a smarts deficiency issue — no way they have the ability to do maintenance on the hardware with blinkenlights that goes beep.

    All in all not a bad move to make friends with the very smart ugly stepchild of the neighbourhood.

  13. Of course, there was the trade agreement with China. But, you know. “Don’t trust China. China’s asshoe!”

  14. @huxley:

    Oslo…

    Not having the Scandicucks involved is a good start. Frankly I doubt there is much real US involvement either — although Trump will claim it was all his idea (and so would I if I were up for re-election).

    Agreements work best when they are local and driven by pure self-interest. No high-falutin’ BS.

  15. @theduchessofkitty

    Please don’t talk about China. I live there and I post here to try to forget the fact 😛

    PS: There are rumblings that the Three Gorges Dam is going to fail if the unusually heavy rains continue this year.

    That would constitute Interesting Times for the several hundred million Chinese living downstream.

    Fortunately we can rest assured knowing that only the finest Chinese quality assurance was employed during its construction.

  16. Agreements work best when they are local and driven by pure self-interest. No high-falutin’ BS.

    Zaphod: Agreed.

    Who’s Sandicucks? Sandy Berger?

  17. @Huxley:

    Scandicucks. Those of us out on the Really Deplorably Reactionary Right have a problem with *some aspects* of people of Scandinavian Ancestry.

    Why? Because they come from harsh environments and have evolved cooperative and highly socially cohesive trusting societies in order to survive in these environments. The problem is that they assume that everyone else is like them. When freeloaders, grifters, etc. come along, they go through Scandinavians like a hot knife through butter.

    Look at Twin Cities today. Look at Malmo in Sweden.

    Group Adaptions that worked very well in a mono-racial ancestral environment may disadvantage you later when the Diversity shows up on the doorstep.

    Scandinavians (no matter where) have a tendency to lecture from the moral high ground and are utterly out of their depth in dealing with Ancient Middle Eastern Feuds and Grudge Matches for example.

  18. A Sandy Berger would cry out in pain as he stuffed the papers in his underwear and socks.

    A Scandy Berger would remain back home in Lake Wobegone stuffing Powerdemilk Biscuits in his face and neither crying out nor even talking very much. And slowly if at all.

    Can you spot the difference?

  19. Look at Twin Cities today. Look at Malmo in Sweden.

    The Mayor of Minneapolis is Jewish. His predecessor was Wonderbread. Of the 12 members of the Sh!tty council, three are black, one is Chicano, one is Italian, one is Jewish, The remainder are more-or-less non-ethnic (two with German names, the rest with English names).

    What actually hits you about them is as follows: (1) Only two of the twelve have any children that they admit to; NB the current mayor is childless as was his predecessor. (2) Almost none of them have a history in commercial or industrial employment; most of them seem to have had staff positions at skeevy NGOs; a couple were teachers, one was a town planner, I think another a political staff aide.

  20. I think it’s worth pointing out that cohesive, high-trust Scandinavian societies with small populations did not historically extend their trust to Arabs, Africans, etc. That only happened after Marxists used neo-colonialist ideology to capture Scandinavian educational and political systems. In Minnesota, DFL Progressives played the same role.

    It could be crudely, but fairly, said that Marxists have succeeded in manipulating not just Scandinavian universalist cultural values, but also their genetic predisposition.

    I don’t object to Zaphod’s comment, but I do think it’s incomplete. Of course, there’s only so much history that can be told within the confines of a brief blog comment.

    P.S. All my ancestors came from Norway — not that there’s anything wrong with that.

  21. Regarding the infidel, which especially includes Israel, Islam has direct from Allah… a categorical imperative; eternal hostility toward all non-Muslims.

    Any treaty is by definition temporary. This ruler will pass and those who oppose “live and let live” hold the theological high ground. Their re-ascendency is just a matter of time.

  22. @Art Deco

    I don’t think that anyone reading this blog would accuse me of effusive philo-semitism toward those playing progressive politics in the West and not firmly ensconced in fox holes on the Bar Lev Line potting at Egyptians 😛

    My point is what kind of sane people would *permit* such a ragtag mishmash of ‘Diversity’ to show up where they sure as hell don’t belong and are not wanted and give them a haircut the likes of which Delilah could only dream of?

    Answer: Scandicucks 😛

  23. @Cornflour:

    No offense intended of course. I’ll admit to a tendency to oversimplification.

    But I think there is a point to be made about the introduction of foreign groups into established societies. Each will have evolved their own unique group survival strategy and this has all sorts of implications for social harmony. Times Ten if one is a high trust altruistic group and the other a low-trust family/clan based group.

    Just because the Late Unpleasantness made this a very much taboo topic doesn’t mean it isn’t true and doesn’t mean that it doesn’t apply to (say) Somalis and Hmong in your neck of the woods.

  24. @Geoffrey Brittain:

    Yes. But you have to be in it to win it. From the Israeli perspective, might as well get involved since one way or the other it’s not going to go away.

  25. Zaphod:

    Don’t disagree with what you’ve said in your comment at 9:11 PM.

    My point is that these high-trust societies, whether in Scandinavia or Minnesota, were not always as vulnerable or foolish as they now appear. Their cultural values and genetic predisposition have been captured by Marxist ideologues. To call the outcome cultural suicide may not be an exaggeration. We’ll have to wait and see, but the demographic prospects look terrible. For example, there are only about five million Norwegians, and many of them seem oblivious to their precarious situation.

    As for the Somalis and Hmong in Minnesota, I’m not at all optimistic about the future of either population. Same goes for anyone who has the misfortune of being their neighbors. There have, of course, been many exceptions — especially among young Hmong women.

  26. Did the killing of Soleimani change the balance in the ME?
    After the rather timid response to his death by Iran, the ME hasn’t been the focus of news. Did covid replace the news cycle, or did his death neuter Iran’s stranglehold on ME hegemony?
    President Trumps hardline response to Iran should go down as a huge foreign policy achievement. Recognizing Jerusalem, playing hardball with Palestinian intransigence, a summer offensive by Israel against Hezbollah all are contributing to stability in the ME. Of course, stability is a relative term– when speaking of the ME.

  27. Be interesting to see how the UAE / Israel thing pans out. The business of UAE is basically money laundering + being all things to all people. Like Israel, surrounded by larger states who don’t always wish them well. Then there’s always Iran for added excitement. Singapore is another place with a very similar business model.

    [eyeroll]

    In regard to Singapore, value-added is distributed as follows:

    Services: 70%
    Manufacturing: 18%
    Other industry: 6%

    The ratio of commercial service exports to nominal GDP has been running between 0.50 and 0.55 in recent years. In regard to commercial service exports, about 13% are attributable to travel and tourism and 17% are attributable to insurance and financial services. Merchandise exports generally exceed service exports by > 2.5 fold, but much of that will be re-exports as the country is a trade entrepot.

    In re the United Arab Emirates, value-added is apportioned as follows:

    Other industry: 37% (largely extractive industry)
    Manufacturing: 9%
    Services: 52%

    The ratio of fuel exports to nominal GDP varies quite a bit but is generally about 0.26. The ratio of unclassified exports (as opposed to merchandise exports) to nominal GDP has been running at 0.16 in recent years. The aggregated assets of commercial banks in the country has been in recent years running at 2x nominal gdp, high for the US but not high for a European country. The market capitalization of publicly traded companies has been running at 60% of nominal gdp.

  28. Answer: Scandicucks

    Since there aren’t any Scandinavians on the Minneapolis City Council, your thesis is stupid. Your blather about the economies of Singapore and the UAE is just another of your ass-pulls.

  29. Looking at a map, a question; Does the UAE have good airfields with rapid refueling facilities?

  30. Art Deco:

    You’re really super good at looking stuff up online.

    How many years have you spent in business *in* Asia talking to Investment Bankers, CFOs, Lawyers about how the sausage *really* gets made down at ground floor or in the basement?

    You could look up statistics which would tell you all kinds of cool stuff about how Hong Kong is an exporter of stuff. Hell, it has a bunch of container ports after all and they are very busy.

    Oh? Never heard of Transfer Pricing?

    Whatever, dood… I suppose you think Khun Sa (remember him?) banked his stash in a bank of the Irrawaddy?

    Oh yes… Back to the UAE… Have you been to Dubai? It’s a giant whorehouse. You won’t find too many echoes of the Empty Quarter Aesthetic there.

    BTW, guess where the Bombay Underworld bank? Hint: It’s not Bombay.

    Chill out and go read your tables in the back of the Economist 🙂

  31. @Richard Aubrey:

    Gold-plated infrastructure all the way.

    In happier times, fly somewhere interesting with Emirates and have a look see during stopover.

  32. theduchessofkitty,

    Kewl! I had never read about the ‘Primary Model’.
    That makes me feel much better.

    Many thanks!!

  33. The UAE is very different from other countries in the Middle East in its openness and the way it’s using it’s oil money to do productive commercial activities as well as grandiose displays. (Launching a Mars mission may be a bit of both.)
    But then, at the moment, I’m a bit biased.

    https://www.deseret.com/faith/2020/4/6/21209771/dubai-temple-general-conference-lds-mormon-united-arab-emirates

    The messages from the embassy’s official Twitter account noted the historic nature of the planned temple, which will be the church’s first in the Middle East. It also recognized that the temple will serve thousands of people throughout the region.
    “The UAE welcomes this very important milestone,” one of the embassy’s tweets said. “This new house of worship will join the diverse gathering of other religions in the UAE, where we welcome multi-national congregations and have built houses of worship throughout our country.”

    “This includes,” an additional tweet said, “the recently announced Abrahamic Family House, which will include a church, mosque and synagogue in Abu Dhabi to create mutual understanding among people of all faiths and belief systems,” the tweet said.

    President Nelson announced the temple on Sunday afternoon at the end of the church’s two-day international general conference broadcast to millions around the world.

    “The plan for a temple in Dubai comes in response to their gracious invitation, which we gratefully acknowledge,” he said.

    In its official tweet Monday afternoon, the church thanked the UAE for its commitment to being “an open place for all faiths.”

    More than 1,600 Latter-day Saints live in the United Arab Emirates.

    “The United Arab Emirates has been an example of tolerance and religious inclusion since the country was founded in 1971,” a church news release said.

    The country is scheduled to host the international Expo 2020 Dubai beginning in October [now postponed to 2021]. The new temple will be built on the expo’s legacy site, which will be called District 2020, according to the release. The site will include both a meetinghouse and a temple. Church members in Dubai will meet for weekly worship services in that meetinghouse.

    The Dubai temple also is expected to serve thousands more throughout the Persian Gulf States. The church has two stakes and a number of districts in the region, which includes the Middle East, northern Africa, eastern Europe and western Asia, according to the release.

    The United Arab Emirates sits on the Persian Gulf and borders Saudi Arabia and Oman.

    Abu Dhabi is the largest of the seven emirates that comprises the United Arab Emirates. One of the church’s stakes in the Middle East is the Abu Dhabi Stake. A stake is a unit of church organization that oversees a group of congregations. The stake includes a Tagalog-speaking ward for members from the Philippines. The church does not proselyte in the UAE.

    Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles dedicated the Abu Dhabi Stake Center in 2013. It is the church’s first self-standing meetinghouse in the Middle East.

    It’s nice to know there is one Muslim country that is welcoming Jews and Christians instead of killing them.

  34. Who cares about this agreement in the Middle East?

    In a couple weeks, mail-in voting will ensure Trump gets absolutely decimated in the election. In the best case scenario, will be wearing masks at all times outside of our homes for the rest of our natural lives. In the worst case scenario, we will never be able to take off our masks, even inside our homes, and never be able to leave those homes (as long as we can afford to live in them, that is).

  35. Well, I don’t know much about the UAE, but I imagine I can be glad that this deal has occurred. I thought the UAE was some sort of federation; is a peace with Israel binding on all 7 emirates? (I wonder other things, too, but none of which are particularly important and I guess I can just look them up sometime.)

    Zaphod, you live in the Middle Kingdom?!? Holy smokes. I hope you didn’t just out yourself. I always wondered where you retired after the Galactic Presidency stint. 🙂

    Edit: Hmm… that business about the coronavirus in the last paragraph – is it envisioned that Israel provides the R&D and manufacturing, while UAE is the moneybags for the undertaking? Competing with Russia’s supposed vaccine? And the 120-odd other candidate formulations? Curious.

  36. My Swedish sister-in-law is from Malmö. She is a US Person and a good citizen too now but she will never, ever be American. Example: last summer, after my father died, I was tending to my mother and had taken the same ferry as my sister-in-law. She was driving my mother’s car and was all wigged out over the fact that my mother had left a paring knife in the drivers door pocket. She was concerned that she had a knife in the car getting on the ferry. A knife. A 3-inch paring knife.

  37. Looking more and more likely that this whole business, which has been in the works (on again, off again) for a while now has given Netanyahu a means to climb down from the controversial tree of annexation (or “partial” annexation) of the West Bank, which was bruited over the past several months by diverse elements on the Right side of the Israeli political spectrum as an opportunity “not to be missed”.

    I was never sure that this was the time for this such an audacious gambit, exactly (though one could claim, citing a particularly auspicious—to some at least—alignment of the political constellatons, “if not now, when?”). Daniel Pipes weighed in against, and got clobbered by many of the Faithful. To be sure, the whole issue is fraught with problems—on the other hand, what isn’t?—and criticism from those who firmly adhere, with all the conviction of the self-righteously deluded, to the belief, or rather superstition, that the two-state solution is not only possible but sacrosanct and must be protected at all costs from such unilateral “adventures”.

    The UAE made it clear that there would be no deal unless Bibi ceased and desisted. And so this “victory” of negotiation and “good will” served as a real-politic perfuming of a pig the disposal of which was papered over by the “epic achievement”. And so smiles and back slapping all around (together with the almost audible sighs of relief of a bullet dodged….).

    Perhaps…keeping in mind that the above “analysis” might well be entirely fanciful.

  38. Chases Eagles:
    Read something elsewhere by a guy who’s a Swede but spent so much time in the States that he has a bit of US in his native language and likes big American cars. So people take him for US until they find out, and then various conversations about the US happen.
    He said Swedes think Americans live among danger.
    I thought about that and. maybe he’s right relatively.
    We had a condo for a week south of Naples two or three times. Great place. Between the buildings is a beautifully manicured lawn with an ornamental pool the size of somebody’s living room Has a sign….Caution: Possibility of alligators or snakes. Swede looks at it, forty feet from the sliding door out to the pool and…..WTF? What about, you know, a bit further away from top end residences? Couple of years ago a kid was taken by a gator at a Disney property. DISNEY!? Those guys think of everything twice. Didn’t have a sign and apparently there was an uncontrolled waterway toward the rear of the thing. Big settlement. Point is…lots of signs but Americans don’t go twitching around, looking over their shoulders. Sweden doesn’t have alligators.
    My wife and I have hiked in the Blue Ridge, the Smokies, and the Adirondacks. Each time, it was spring and we were assured the bears were still asleep. Still, caution signs were present. Trash containers would thwart a professional safecracker. And two of the condos were out of town which is probably why there was a sign in the kitchen not to take trash out before dawn or after dark. Uhhh, what’s wandering around just outside my door in the dark? But nobody seems concerned…..
    Or you could fly from Stockholm where the humidity is 85% and meet friends at the Phoenix airport. They’ll probably tell you to watch your hydration, as the local humidity is maybe eleven percent and you can get dangerously dehydrated just by breathing while sitting in the shade. Even the air is trying to kill you.
    Or you see a string of twenty utility trucks. That’s on account of the hurricane in South Carolina. Long way, South Carolina. No, they’re going to Kentucky to cover for the Kentucky guys who are going to North Carolina to cover for the North Carolina guys who are going to South Carolina. THEY HAVE A PLAN FOR THIS BECAUSE IT HAPPENS SO MUCH!? Yeah. Same as earthquakes and tornadoes. We don’t have those in Sweden either.
    You know those big buildings in the center of the little towns? Those things out front? Right. The war memorials…… How many veterans are there in the US????
    Some clown with a machine gun gets on a French train Some Americans take him down. Emergency stop at Arras. Deliver the gunman all wrapped up nice and neat. One American shot seriously but another American did first aid and fixed him up. One of the Americans is a National Guard soldier who is also a college student returning from a gap year in Astan. It’s an American thing; even our part timers can kick your butt. Took the weapon, cleared the train. Show up for the medals in Polos and Dockers. Robin Givhan of the Wa Po style section says Polos and Dockers are what young guys wear when they know they’re supposed to get dressed up but don’t know what the fuss is. Perfectly appropriate.

    So, maybe that guy is right about how Americans are viewed. None of that stuff happens in Sweden. And other tourists might well have…issues where the locals don’t.

  39. How many years have you spent in business *in* Asia talking to Investment Bankers, CFOs, Lawyers about how the sausage *really* gets made down at ground floor or in the basement?

    The value-added from money-laundering is going to be a fraction of the value-added from financial services generally. Value-added from financial services varies from one affluent economy to the next. In the United States, it’s about 8% of domestic product, in Britain about 20%. Neither Singapore nor the UAE have a demonstrably hypertrophied financial services sector, so money laundering could not contribute more than a low-single-digit share of gross domestic product. That remains so no matter how much time you spend in bar-rooms talking smack with dudes who say they work for banks.

    It’s a particularly dopey thing to say about the UAE, one of the world’s most thoroughgoing petrostates.

  40. BiteME/Obama and the media will all claim the UAE / Israel deal’s groundwork was established by them.
    That Trump basically dotted the i’s.
    Or, alternately, they will claim the deal is some sort of worthless political stunt.

    IMHO, this deal was helped by the Arab’s fear of Iran and to a lesser extent, of Turkey,
    The Persians believe Arabs are akin to dogs and the Turks are not to fond of Arabs either. Recall the Ottoman Empire – the Turks were not too kind to their Arab subjects.

    Obama never could have pulled this off; his hatred of Israel and the demands he would have made of Israel, would have made this a non-starter for Israel.
    Biden is simply too stupid to have pulled this off.

    The perennial hate-Trumpers, and their pals in the media, will perform their usual gymnastics to trash this major event.

    If Trump could walk on water, he would be criticized for his inability to swim.

  41. Happened to read “The Fall of The Ottomans” by Rogan. Some history leading up to WW I. To hear him tell it, the Turks had no choice. Couldn’t stay neutral as in WW II.
    One entry caught my eye. Turkish cops in various villages out in Arab territory, or what we now call the Middle East even if, as in Syria, Arab influence isn’t obvious Other colonial powers had locals for cops with officers from the Home country.
    They might police one area with recruits from another ethnic group, but the grunts weren’t from Home. Apparently the Turks didn’t see that as feasible but they could get Turks to go be traffic cops or the local equivalent five hundred miles from home. Didn’t trust the locals. Didn’t like them. Didn’t think the locals could oppress their homies the way the Turks wanted them oppressed?

  42. When my wife and I were in Israel early this year, while in Jaffa/Tel Aviv we stayed in a lovely hotel that in an earlier time was the local police station of the Ottoman Turks.

  43. Oh my, I skimmed the comment section of the NYT article on the subject. The consensus there is essentially, “ Arab Israeli peace deal, Palestinians hardest hit,” that this is just a meaningless “Campaign stunt” and “Trump is 9/11.” My god.

  44. “Israel-UAE Deal Falls Short of Regional Peace Without Palestinians”

    The above is the title of an article in Barron’s (the financial newspaper).

    The media (the demokrat version of Stalin’s Pravda and Izvestia, or Hitler’s Der Sturmer) would be wetting themselves if a demokrat had accomplished this.

    In 1945 Germany surrendered (before Japan did).
    If Trump were president at the time the media would say, “Total peace still an elusive objective,” or “A More Difficult Task Awaits the President,” of other such BS.

    Must say, when the US media is all in lock step as a propaganda organ (“organ” was commonly used by the USSR to describe their govt. agencies; there must be some psychological, hidden meaning behind this) of the demokrats, there really is no “freedom of the press” anymore.
    It’s merely the communication arm of the demokrat party and should be open to being sued for slander.

  45. Obama was too busy tearing down civilizations, normalizing social justice, and forcing catastrophic anthropogenic immigration reform (e.g. trail of tears). Trump deserves, not a Nobel Peace Prize, but rather recognition of normalizing peace through reconciliation of mutual interests and, perhaps, understanding.

  46. The good guys (and gals) are winning. Yay! Huge win for Trump and I have a feeling there’s win after win ready to be rolled out.
    Ya gotta think that this close to the election the UAE could have waited Trump out. So the take away is A) they figure Trump has a lock on the election or B) they’re not looking forward to a Biden win.

  47. In general, this is good news, as Netanyahu is beginning to choose the side of Light and get rid of the Cabal warmongers and super nationalists around him. He may still fall and pull a Roberts however.

    However, nothing came of it. Arafat was still Arafat. The Palestiniants were still the Palestinians. The only result I recall was some number of Israelis became more cynical about the peace process.

    The Palestinians are sorta like Antifa/BLM, they are cannon fodder. The people actually at war with Israel the nation state, are the ones that declared war against them. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc etc. UAE are the bank rollers, so to speak.

    By convincing the enemy’s logistics and back supporting line countries, half the war is already over. Arafat? He does not control the war, he is just the leader of a bunch of cannon fodder. No deal with the PLA was ever going to amount to anything, because the Islamic/Satanic forces funding the war, like Soros, is ALL THE WAY in the back somewhere.

  48. The dynamics of the ME has changed dramatically over the past three years and it’s because of the boldness of the Trump foreign policy agenda, IMO.
    He’ll never get credit for this because the MSM hates him and can never acknowledge his successes, and the establishment conservative anti-Trumpers won’t give him credit because they prefer continuous military presence everywhere.

  49. A few other responses to the deal:

    Is there a more thoroughgoing sh!thead than Ben Rhodes? The Arabs on the West Bank, in Gaza, and on the UNRWA doles are on the margins because they chose to be, again and again over a period of 50 years. This man was the deputy national security advisor.

  50. Fart Deco:

    I think you should change your handle since you brought up flatulence in a comment to Zaphod. How sophisticated, been an education, so to speak.

    Of course you cited a stat to buttress your “point” about the city council in Minneapolis but who elected these city council critters? Would they be people of predominantly Scandinavian ancestry? Doh? Think Fart, think hard, there is a point you may have missed.

  51. om:

    Your point is well taken about who voted for the city council in Minneapolis, but come on now – “Fart”?

    But it’s not majority Scandinavians. Lots of people of German descent, too. Here’s the breakdown:

    White people currently account for 3/5 of the city’s population, mostly of German and Scandinavian descent. 23% of the population is German Americans (82,800), while the Scandinavian American population is primarily Swedish (8.5%) and Norwegian (10.9%). Danish Americans also have a large share of the population at 1.3% and put together, the three groups account for 1 out of five people in Minneapolis, while Germans and Scandinavians account for over 43% — the majority of the non-Hispanic white population in the city.

    While these groups make up a large share of the population, other common European ancestry groups include Irish (11.3%), English (7%), Polish (3.9%) and French (3.5%).

  52. Um Om, couldn’t you at least have added a trigger warning?….
    https://thepostmillennial.com/hbo-adds-trigger-warning-to-classic-film-blazing-saddles

    (They say it’s for the “racism” but don’t kid yourself: it’s really for the bean scene.)

    And before we know it, PETA is going to come out swinging because of the horse-punching scene (we’ve all heard of “cow punching”) as “sheer barbarity”—though I must say the horse took it pretty well…

    As they say, get your copy now before the movie is totally incinerated.

  53. Would they be people of predominantly Scandinavian ancestry? Doh?

    No. The most recent estimate from the Census Bureau is that of the 413,000 residents of the Minneapolis municipality, about 80,000 report Scandinavian ancestry (Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Danish, Icelandic, or ‘Scandinavian’). About 90,000 report German ancestry.

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