Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

Let the Headlines Speak
Oct 16th, 2019
CommentaryFrom the Internet
Categories: Today's Headlines

Explosive Undercover Video: CNN Employee Discusses Network Head’s ‘Personal Vendetta’ Against Trump
The conversations Poarch recorded reveal Zucker pushing the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump as the most significant news story for his network. Poarch explains that the morning calls are daily events in which Zucker directs CNN’s news operations from the company’s New York bureau. “He runs it with an iron fist,” Poarch says. “Every day just hammering Trump in some way, shape or form or Republicans in general, about, yeah, all these other stories may be happening, but we want to divert all our resources to this aspect of Trump or that aspect of Trump or most recently it’s just all about impeachment.”

ICE Chief Says ‘Judicial Overreach’ Is Threatening Public Safety
Speaking from the White House press room podium, acting ICE Director Matt Albence lambasted a judge’s ruling that blocks Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from using database information to issue detainers. A detainer is a request to a local jail to hold an inmate for up to 48 hours longer in order for ICE to take custody. ICE issues detainers based on probable cause to believe that an individual is a removable alien, Albence said. “Probable cause is the same legal standard that other law enforcement agencies must meet in order to make an arrest,” he said on Oct. 10.

Terminally-ill scientist with motor neurone disease ‘transforms into world’s first cyborg’ by replacing body parts with machinery
A dying scientist battling motor neurone disease has become the world’s first full cyborg. Dr Peter Scott-Morgan, 61, was diagnosed with the muscle wasting illness two years ago but instead of accepting his fate he decided to transform himself into a robot and extend his life. He said he wanted to push the boundaries of what science can achieve so decided to extend his life and become fully robotic – and he’s now known as Peter 2.0.

ABC News caught red-handed ‘lying to news customers’
ABC News is coming under heavy fire after airing footage it claimed showed a ferocious attack by Turkish military forces bombing Kurdish civilians in Syria. There’s only one problem: the video was actually from a nighttime weapons demonstration at the Knob Creek Gun Range in West Point, Kentucky. “ABC News regrets the error.” “This is full-fledged illusion creation. This is lying to news customers.”

Interstellar interloper is a comet resembling those in our solar system
The second interstellar object ever spotted passing through the solar system is a comet that appears quite like those formed in our neighborhood of the cosmos, providing fresh evidence that other planetary systems may be very similar to our own.

Trump to impose sanctions over Turkish action in Syria
I will soon be issuing an Executive Order authorizing the imposition of sanctions against current and former officials of the Government of Turkey and any persons contributing to Turkey’s destabilizing actions in northeast Syria. Likewise, the steel tariffs will be increased back up to 50 percent, the level prior to reduction in May. The United States will also immediately stop negotiations, being led by the Department of Commerce, with respect to a $100 billion trade deal with Turkey.

Trump’s Syria Pullout is Great for Israel says Jerusalem’s Top Middle-East Expert
While many in the pro-Israel community have been decrying President Trump’s decision to withdraw US troops in northern Syria to make way for a Turkish invasion, Guy Bechor, one of Israel’s most respected Middle East experts says that ironically, Israel stands to benefit significantly from the move….

Thunder Strikes Al-Aksa Mosque on Temple Mount
On the second evening of Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles), thunder and lightning storms hit Israel on Monday night illuminating Jerusalem’s skyline. One local man snapped a photograph of a lightning bolt that appeared to have hit the Al-Aksa Mosque on the Temple Mount.

California is just in a race to the bottom it seems. Just one disastrous move after another.
now that Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed SB225, a bill to allow illegals to “serve” 9and be paid) on state boards that make policy in California. If your interests conflict with theirs, too bad about yours: This is ridiculous. The only way we’re going to get better is if the president cuts off all federal funding to the state. This and the state board thing is equal to enabling a drug addict by paying for his drugs and giving him a place to live.

Schrodinger’s superconductor naturally stable in two states at once
Quantum computers have the potential to someday far outperform our traditional machines, thanks to their ability to store data on “qubits” that can exist in two states at once. That sounds good in theory, but in practice it’s hard to make materials that can do that and stay stable for long periods of time. Now, researchers from Johns Hopkins University have found a superconducting material that naturally stays in two states at once, which could be an important step towards quantum computers.

Tunisia’s president elect: Normalization with ‘Zionist entity’ is treachery
Kais Saied, who was recently voted in as Tunisia’s next president, expressed opposition to normalizing ties between his country and Israel… “This is my view on the Zionist entity and it will not change. If one day I change my mind, remind me about the things I said now. We are in a situation of war with Zionism, and normalization is treachery,” said Saied in a televised interview on Monday.

Violent clashes erupt as Spanish court jails Catalonia leaders
Protests have erupted in Barcelona after Spain’s Supreme Court sentenced nine Catalan separatist leaders to between nine and 13 years in prison. The separatists were convicted of sedition over their role in an illegal independence referendum in 2017. Another three were found guilty of disobedience and fined, but not jailed. All 12 defendants denied the charges.

Fourteen police dead in Mexico gun ambush
Fourteen police officers have been killed and three injured in a shooting in western Mexico. The police were carrying out a court order in El Aguaje, Michoacán state, when their convoy was ambushed. A powerful criminal group, the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel, is believed to have carried out the attack.

U.S. demands Syria ceasefire, slaps sanctions on Turkey over incursion
President Donald Trump imposed sanctions on Turkey on Monday and demanded the NATO ally stop a military incursion in northeast Syria that is rapidly reshaping the battlefield of the world’s deadliest ongoing war. Trump, who gave what critics say was a de facto green light for Turkey’s assault by ordering U.S. forces away from the conflict area, requested the ceasefire in a call with President Tayyip Erdogan.

Putin visits Saudi Arabia in sign of growing ties
Russian President Vladimir Putin has visited Saudi Arabia in his first trip to the kingdom in over a decade, signing oil agreements and discussing regional security, in particular, Saudi Arabia’s ongoing rivalry with Iran. A mounted guard escorted Putin’s limousine to King Salman’s Al-Yamamah palace in Riyadh after his arrival on Monday, his first visit since 2007.

Erdogan vows no Daesh fighters will escape Syria
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed not to allow any Daesh fighters to escape northern Syria, in an editorial published Tuesday, following fears from Western nations over its offensive in the region. “We will ensure that no ISIS (Islamic State) fighters leave northeastern Syria,” Erdogan wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

State of emergency after unprecedented October snowstorm leaves 250 000 without power in Manitoba, Canada
At least 250 000 were left without power after an unprecedented snowstorm hit Manitoba, Canada. Heavy and wet snow began falling on Thursday, October 10 and continued into Friday, October 11. The capital, Winnipeg, was prompted to declare a state of emergency following the destructive event. As of Sunday, October 13, around 32 000 homes and businesses remain without electricity.

Record weather conditions across USA in the first half of October
A strong early-season snowstorm pounded several parts of the United States in the first half of October. The unusual weather set records, with snowstorm blanketing the Northern Rockies and Northern Plains. Meanwhile, blizzard conditions have hit Dakota, while Denver dropped to a record low of -10 °C (13 °F). Widespread extreme wind events in California also prompted a massive power shut-off in the prevention of wind-induced wildfires.

Communist China just doubled its number of military troops… is an invasion of America the next chapter in global domination?
Americans take it for granted that foreign troops aren’t pillaging their country, vying for military control over U.S. cities, and forcing compliance to a communist government. Neither China nor Russia has attempted such a bold invasion, but their core communist belief systems continue to drive them toward global domination.

Democrats and Militant LGBT Activists Want to Shut Down American Churches
There should be no doubt that Democrats and a militant mob of LGBT activists are hell-bent on shutting down every evangelical church in America and silencing any Christian who dares to stand in the way of their agenda.

Trump sending Pence to Turkey to ‘pursue a ceasefire and negotiated settlement’
US President Donald Trump on Monday urged his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan to “stop the invasion” of Syria, Vice President Mike Pence said.

The Star Of The 39th Gitex Technology Week In Dubai Is A Human Implantable NFC Microchip That Is Capturing Attention Of United Arab Emirates
UAE operator Etisalat has partnered with Swedish company Biohax International to implant microchips in a person’s hand that can be loaded with all kinds of data, including medical history and passwords.

51 Dead, 214 Wounded in Chicago September Gun Violence
You won’t hear these stats in the mainstream media. That’s why we encourage you to bookmark The DC Patriot. We are “Real News in Real Time.”

MONKEY TRIALS: Adam Schiff Is Banning Republicans From Impeachment Depositions And Holding Secret Closed Door Testimony Meetings
Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi…have begun banning Republicans from attending the depositions, are holding testimony meetings in secret, and refuse to put impeachment of the president to a vote. What do all those things add up to? A monkey trial in a banana republic, that’s what, and these sham proceedings are a national disgrace.

Whistleblower: Google Partners with China on ‘AI Manhattan Project’
Former Google senior software developer and whistleblower Zach Vorhies appeared on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with host Rebecca Mansour Friday to discuss Google’s relationship with Communist China and the company’s artificial intelligence project DeepMind, which has been called the “AI Manhattan Project.”

The use of chemical abortions is on the rise
The use of chemical abortion (sometimes referred to as “medical abortion”) is on the rise, and there is an alarming push to make it ubiquitous. A recent column for The New York Times advocates for abortion pills to be “everywhere.” But chemical abortion endangers women and ends the lives of their unborn children.

After Failed Gun Buyback Program, New Zealand Moves to Establish Firearms Registry
Despite the epic failure of its recent semi-automatic rifle ban, New Zealand is attempting to impose even more gun control mandates on its citizenry.

Air Canada Drops ‘Offensive’ ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ Greeting, Goes ‘Gender Fluid’
Air Canada has begun efforts to become more inclusive of its customers by dropping its traditional “ladies and gentlemen” or the French “mesdames et messieurs” when greeting passengers boarding its aircraft.

Democrats are Now a Party of Total Anarchy
Oct 16th, 2019
CommentaryWND - D. Kupelian
Categories: Warning

I grew up just outside Washington, D.C., in Montgomery County, Maryland, one of the most affluent and super-progressive counties in the nation. How progressive? Montgomery County made national news years ago when it became one of the first places in America to enact transgender bathroom ordinances permitting men to frequent women’s public restrooms and vice versa.

Fast-forward to today, when formerly genteel upper-middleclass Montgomery County is again in the news, this time for its grisly rape epidemic – a crime spree literally supported and facilitated by the county's progressive government. In just a two-month period this past summer, eight different illegal aliens were arrested for a string of rapes and sexual assaults in this self-declared sanctuary county.

Here's what journalist Michelle Malkin, also a former resident, reported about today's "MS-13-infested Montgomery County":

"Thanks to treacherous, anti-ICE sanctuary policies that have festered since I moved away more than a decade ago, foreign sexual predators rule the streets with impunity." Regarding the current rape outbreak, she says: "The feds report that at least one suspect was released in defiance of an ICE detainer; two more allegedly gang-raped an 11-year-old girl; and another, accused of raping a 16-year-old girl at knifepoint, has fathered 10 children here (all now anchored here with birthright citizenship)."

Unfortunately, what has befallen my childhood hometown is reflected across the nation, where America's most beautiful cities from San Francisco to Seattle, all run by uber-progressive Democrats, have become crime-and-rat-infested hellholes. Anyone visiting these and many other cities today experiences total shock at what they encounter.

And yet, the scandalous state of America's top cities is just the tip of the iceberg, a small part of a much larger problem of ever-growing lawlessness being visited on America by the Democratic Party.

Full-on assault

The reality of the left's mysterious relationship with chaos and lawlessness is deep and wide-ranging. In truth, a full-on assault on the very laws – moral, legal, economic and scientific – that govern and protect every aspect of our lives is transforming America right before our eyes.

Consider these current trends:

* For almost three years, purveyors of the outrageous "Trump-Russia collusion hoax," arguably the worst political fraud in American history, turned every sacred legal principle of American jurisprudence on its head in attempts to overturn a free and fair presidential election. In the process, they corrupted the world's most respected intelligence and law enforcement agencies and destroyed their reputations for a generation. After a brief time-out, they are now reprising their attempted coup d'etat with the "Trump-Ukraine collusion hoax."

* Democratic presidential candidates, willing to do virtually anything to regain power next year, now insist incarcerated felons including mass-murdering terrorists should be allowed to vote. Sen. Bernie Sanders was asked specifically whether Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev – convicted of planting pressure-cooker bombs filled with nails and ball bearings at the 2013 Boston Marathon, killing three people and wounding and maiming 280 others – should be allowed to vote. Sanders enthusiastically answered "Yes." "I think the right to vote is inherent to our democracy," insisted Sanders. "Yes, even for terrible people, because once you start chipping away ... you’re running down a slippery slope. ... I do believe that even if they are in jail, they’re paying their price to society, but that should not take away their inherent American right to participate in our democracy."

* Democrats' astonishingly suicidal policy positions on illegal immigration – de facto open borders, the virtual elimination of border police including the outright dismantling of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the creation of "sanctuary" cities, counties and even states specifically intended to shield lawbreakers from law enforcement, the refusal to build border barriers no matter how urgent and lifesaving the need (candidate Beto O'Rourke idiotically said on camera he would tear down existing border walls), the invitation to essentially everyone in the world to come to America for free taxpayer-funded healthcare – all this is not merely immoral and insane. It is also literally impossible, and would quickly destroy America were the nation to pursue such policies. The hatred toward America underlying the left's immigration madness is nakedly revealed by the chant of anti-immigration activists: "No borders – No Wall – No USA at all."

* Law enforcement, from federal to local, is under relentless attack from the left. A string of outright "racist-cop" hoaxes – from Trayvon Martin to Ferguson – created the Black Lives Matter movement and today's ever-expanding indictment of all American cops as racist. The resulting "Ferguson Effect" has been a documented rise in violent crime in the nation’s largest cities – especially murders and shootings of black victims – as a result of officers backing off of proactive policing policies like "stop and frisk" after witnessing fellow cops' lives and families completely destroyed through career-ending public vilification, lawsuits and bogus prosecution for just doing their job.

* The left, thanks to billionaire activist George Soros, has been installing "social justice warrior" district attorneys across America, whose purposeful failure to prosecute crimes committed by minorities has caused a documented rise in crime rates. As Tucker Carlson reported on his Fox News program, "[Soros'] latest area of focus is criminal justice. From Texas to Philadelphia [and] the state of Virginia, Soros has reportedly spent millions of dollars backing candidates for district attorney, for prosecutor. Once elected, these candidates … have ended cash bail, treated felonies like misdemeanors, and sometimes ignored some crimes entirely."

* Socialism, the largely unspoken but correct label for Democrats' 2020 policies, is nothing less than grand theft on a societal scale. Schemes like the Green New Deal, a massive socialist transformation of the American economy, as well as reparations over slavery and even for homosexuals (Sen. Elizabeth Warren introduced a bill in June granting reparations for gay couples), so-called Universal Basic Income or UBI, Medicare for All (including all illegal aliens) and other Democrat plans would simultaneously steal Americans' wealth and cripple their productivity, turning this nation into a giant Venezuela.

* Democrats violate the laws of economics continuously, scheming to spend not just more money than America has, but more than the world has. The Green New Deal proposed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which every Democratic presidential candidate has signed on to, could cost as much as $93 trillion – about $600,000 per American household – says a study co-authored by the former director of the Congressional Budget Office.

How much is $93 trillion? Well, consider that back in January 2015, former Democratic Vice President Al Gore proposed spending $90 trillion to eliminate automobiles from all the world's major cities – to save the world from global warming. But as I explained in my November 2015 book "The Snapping of the American Mind": "The problem with Al Gore’s brilliant plan to eliminate the automobile’s fossil-fuel carbon footprint is that the gross world product for 2014 – that’s the combined gross national product of every country on the planet – was $77 trillion. So, Gore wants us to spend more money than the entire world earns annually to ban cars."

* Democrats want to break free not only of the constraints of the Constitution and sound moral and economic principles; they also want to liberate themselves from the laws of scientific reality. They deny the basic core biology of male and female and affirm the most outlandish fake-science, such as the existence of over 100 different genders, each requiring its own special, unpronounceable pronoun. Likewise they obediently insist, without evidence, that the earth will become uninhabitable in 12 years unless America adopts the radical Green New Deal. Sadly, they're also indoctrinating America's school kids, emotionalizing and traumatizing the next generation by scaring millions of children into believing they don't have long to live. All the while claiming to be "the party of science" and reviling all who oppose their lunacy as "anti-science bigots."

* Worse than all the foregoing, virtually every Democratic presidential candidate enthusiastically approves the killing – for any reason, or no reason – of American children right up to the moment of their birth at nine months, and in some cases even after the baby is born. They don't simply approve it. They celebrate abortion – or as they prefer to call it, "women's reproductive freedom" – a ghoulish euphemism for what in reality is pre-born child murder. Yet they insist it is the most enlightened human-rights achievement of our age, and if you disagree, you're immoral and bent on denying women their cherished constitutional rights.

What's really going on?

Clearly the left, including pretty much the entirety of the Democratic Party's national leadership and its presidential candidates, is now in outright rebellion against the laws of life itself – legal, moral, economic, religious and scientific.

Why?

Laws created by man – good laws, anyway – are based on largely self-evident moral law, God's law. Thus we make laws against stealing because it's wrong to steal, and we have laws against murder because murder is wrong, immoral, predatory and against God's law. And so on.

Thus, a nation has borders and fences and enacts laws against crossing over into that country without permission because it's obviously wrong, just as breaking into someone else's home to live there and eat their food – and perhaps rape their women – is obviously wrong. So we lock our doors and we guard our national borders.

These are all things second-graders can understand.

And yet, in seemingly every area of life, today's Democrats are stridently rebelling against the law because, in truth, underlying it all, they are rebelling against God's Law. In fact, on close examination it becomes evident that the left cannot operate or "progress" without breaking all of the Ten Commandments. (I explore this in my column, "How the left revels in violating the Ten Commandments.")

Violating and disregarding the law is not just something the left blindly does, as though it were stumbling into it. Rather, the left's very identity is tied up in ignoring the law – natural law, God's law, constitutional law, biological law, sound economics, and all the hard-won lessons of history. The law represents a higher standard than oneself and thus represents restraint. But the left doesn't acknowledge any higher standard than itself, nor does it tolerate any restraint, borders, limitations or prohibitions on itself – only on you. Lawlessness and rebellion, then, is the core identity of the radical left, which is obsessed with recreating the world in its own divine image and thus, in effect, rewriting the laws of life.

In short, the left is bent on playing God.

For the left to successfully undermine the established order and create a new one, an entirely new set of governing principles – a new version of core reality – has to be concocted and imposed on the rest of society. We're talking about bizarre new organizing principles, such as "identity politics," by which to determine right and wrong, just and unjust, fair and unfair, all meant to replace the self-evident truth, common sense and biblical morality with which earlier generations had to make do.

This is all madness, of course, but it's not idle madness. It's madness with a revolutionary purpose: to overthrow the existing order.

In the case of America, which however imperfect has been the happiest, most successful, prosperous, welcoming, creative, hopeful and free society in world history, the left – which includes all the top-tier 2020 Democratic presidential candidates – is obsessed with toppling it. Yes, toppling it. Toppling the Judeo-Christian culture that has long comprised America's moral and legal foundation. Toppling our nation's brilliant, uniquely wise and enlightened Constitution and the system of government for which it serves as blueprint. Toppling America's economic and military might that, when combined with this nation's uniquely altruistic outlook, have allowed us not only to feed the world, but to literally save country after country (like Japan and Germany after WWII) from their own madness. The Democratic presidential candidates would, like Obama before them, work around the clock to topple all these foundations of genuine American greatness.

Democrats and Militant Lgbt Activists Want to Shut Down American Churches
Oct 16th, 2019
CommentaryTownhall - Todd Starnes
Categories: Warning

There should be no doubt that Democrats and a militant mob of LGBT activists are bent on shutting down every evangelical church in America and silencing any Christian who dares to stand in the way of their agenda.

On Thursday night, Beto O'Rourke announced at a CNN town hall that he would revoke the tax exempt status of any church or Christian college or charity that opposes same sex marriage.

I predicted this kind of hateful intolerance would soon infect our nation in my new book, "Culture Jihad: How to Stop the Left From Killing a Nation."

Let there be no mistake, there is a clear and present danger to the Bill of Rights should any Democrat be elected to the White House.

Don Lemon asked O'Rourke the point-blank question. Click here to watch the video.

"Yes," the Democrat presidential candidate replied to cheers from the intolerant crowd.

"There can be no reward, no benefit, no tax break for anyone or any institution - any organization in America that denies the full human rights and the full civil rights of every single one of us."

O'Rourke vowed to make that a priority of his administration.

"We are going to stop those who are infringing upon the human rights of our fellow Americans," he said.

Kelly Shackelford, president of First Liberty Institute, told ToddStarnes.com they stand ready to defend any church, ministry or other faith-based institution that comes under attack from the Democrats. 

"O’Rourke threatened that he would strip churches of their tax-exempt status for simply following thousands of years of religious teaching doctrine," Shackelford said. "O’Rourke’s threat is a direct affront to the constitutional guarantee of religious liberty.  Should he, or any future president, attempt to violate the Constitution in such a way, First Liberty will once again be first in the fight to defend religious freedom.”

But When It Pleased God... to Reveal His Son in Me - Galatians 1:15,16
Oct 16th, 2019
Morning MeditationF.B. Meyer
Categories: Commentary;Inspirational;Book Study

If you have truly believed in the Son of God, it is certain that He, by the Spirit, has taken up His abode in your heart. But perhaps He is hidden in the deeps of your nature, as the young Joash in the heart of the Temple. He is, therefore, unable to exert that influence on your inner thought and outward life that He should. Is it not befitting that you should ask the Father to reveal His Son in you? He has been revealed to you as the Divine Substitute, but not in you as the source and spring of holiness.

Beneath the body with its physical existence, and the mind with the play of intellect, lies the spirit of man, like the most holy place in the Temple of old. That is the shrine in which the Shechinah of Christ's presence shines, and in which we can hold fellowship with Him face to face. Alas, that so heavy a vail of unbelief, of absorption in the world around us, of inattention, hangs between Him and us! Would that the strong hands which rent the vail in twain when our Saviour died would rend in twain all that deprives us of this inspiring and most helpful vision of the Son, so that we might anticipate the eternal years!

But such revelations are only given that we may better help others. Not for selfish enjoyment, but for ministering help. Hence the apostle says, "that I might preach Him among the Gentiles." Be pleased, O Father, to give us that revelation, that we may speak as those who have seen the great sight, and need no further conference with flesh and blood! Then, like the apostles of old, we shall go forth among men, saying, "We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard."

'Smokescreening' - Israel's False Friends
Oct 16th, 2019
CommentaryMANFRED GERSTENFELD/ALGEMEINER.COM
Categories: The Nation Of Israel

Smokescreening, the false pretense of friendship toward Israel, is a common practice. Practitioners include US Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, former US president Barack Obama, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. 

There is also a mirror phenomenon in which Israeli leaders identify smokescreeners as friends, as when Israeli president Reuven Rivlin called German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier a "true friend of Israel."

Smokescreening is a widespread activity in both politics and society, yet it is mainly looked at as an individual hypocrisy rather than analyzed as a systematic phenomenon. Israel is regularly subjected to smokescreening.

Sanders is a super-smokescreener. He claims he is 100 percent pro-Israel and says Israel has every right in the world to exist in peace and security and not be subjected to terrorist attacks. He also says the US must be more "evenhanded" in how it approaches the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

He implies, but does not state outright, that the US should avert its eyes from genocide-promoting Hamas, the largest Palestinian Islamist movement, and from Palestinian terror attacks supported by financial rewards from the Palestinian Authority.

Sanders has said, "It's not antisemitic to criticize Israel for electing a right-winger like Netanyahu," and has called Netanyahu's government "racist." Yet he does not address the racism in large parts of Palestinian society. Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), is an extreme racist. He has pledged that there will be no Israelis in the prospective Palestinian state, saying, "In a final resolution, we would not see the presence of a single Israeli -- civilian or soldier -- on our lands." Sanders is silent on this.

Sanders has said that the Palestinians deserve to be treated with "dignity and respect." He does not explain how people who are 93 percent antisemitic, according to a 2014 global study conducted by the ADL, merit that dignity and respect. Sanders' smokescreening of Israel warrants a full article of its own.

Another major smokescreener toward Israel is Barack Obama. While president of the US, he visited Israel in March 2013. He said at the Jerusalem Convention Center, "I bring with me the support of the American people, and the friendship that binds us together." He added, "As the president of a country that you can count on as your greatest friend, I am confident that you can help us find the promise in the days that lie ahead."

In that same Jerusalem speech, Obama openly bent the truth. He said, "But while I know you have had differences with the Palestinian Authority, I believe that you do have a true partner in President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad. Over the last few years, they have built institutions and maintained security on the West Bank in ways that few would have imagined a decade ago. So many Palestinians -- including young people -- have rejected violence as a means of achieving their aspirations." A few months later, Abbas would push Fayyad out.

In 2008, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Abbas discussed a peace agreement. Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, who was present at the negotiations, told PA TV that Olmert accepted all the PA's demands. He even offered Abbas a little more than the full area of the West Bank. Erekat said he told Abbas to accept the extremely generous proposal, but Abbas rejected it.

In December 2016, in one of his last acts as president, Obama had the US abstain from voting on a major anti-Israel UN Security Council motion. The proposal demanded an immediate halt to all settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. 

Through the abstention, Obama enabled the measure to pass. Donald Trump had already been elected president and would be installed a few weeks later. Trump had made it clear that he opposed the resolution and notified the White House, to no avail.

American law expert Alan Dershowitz said the former president told him he would always protect Israel, yet he believes Obama hurt the Jewish state with the abstention. He said, "President Obama's decision on the way out to allow the United Nations to condemn Israel for occupying the Western Wall, the holiest place in Judaism, the Jewish Quarter, Hebrew University, the Hadassah Hospital bypass road, was abominable."

In Europe, German politicians are among the foremost smokescreeners in regard to friendship with Israel. In view of the genocide of six million Jews in the grandfather generation, some leading Germans feel they cannot easily express negative opinions about Israel. A fully researched article about smokescreening by Germans, including leading individuals, is needed.

German politicians often appear to feel the need to pretend that their country is an almost unconditional friend of Israel. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a Christian Democrat, has said Israel's security is part of Germany's national ethos.

The reality is far from that. As head of the German government, Merkel leads German policymaking. The German daily Bild pointed out that Berlin regularly sides with Israel's enemies at the UN. In November 2018, of 21 UN General Assembly resolutions against Israel, 16 were supported by Germany; it abstained on four.

Merkel is also a smokescreener as far as the fight against antisemitism is concerned. Despite significant German right- and left-wing antisemitism, she has welcomed far more than a million refugees since 2015 -- many from the Arab world. The percentage of antisemites among these immigrants is much higher than that of the indigenous population.

There are probably more prominent smokescreeners of friendship toward Israel in the other German government party, the socialists (SPD). A current example is Foreign Minster Heiko Maas. He has often said Auschwitz inspired him to go into politics, yet many German votes against Israel in the UN General Assembly have taken place under his authority.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, has attacked Maas' behavior frontally: "Before he invokes Auschwitz again, he should go back and reread history. We expected much more from Foreign Minister Maas. Unfortunately, we find him on the wrong side of the tracks of the existential threats that Israel is facing every day. "

Cooper added, "With all due respect, it is time for the German foreign minister to drop his assertion that it was the lessons of Auschwitz that propelled him into public life. He clearly has not applied any of the lessons to the current situation. Instead of weakening the tyrannical, genocidal regime in Tehran, he is doing everything to strengthen Iran. His instructions to the German UN ambassador are not those of a friend of a Jewish state."

The "mirror" or "reverse" phenomenon also exists. Some Israeli leaders make the huge mistake of calling people who are smokescreeners "friends." President Reuven Rivlin called German socialist president Frank-Walter Steinmeier "a true friend of Israel" during his visit to the Jewish state in 2017. While FM, Steinmeier was responsible for a flood of German condemnations of Israel at the UN.

More recently, Steinmeier "congratulated the Iranian government cordially on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the revolution, also in the name of my fellow country citizens." The daily Tagesspiegel wondered whether one had to remind Steinmeier that "Iran is a sponsor of international terrorism, threatens Israel with destruction, denies the Holocaust, oppresses women, executes homosexuals, and punishes religious conversions with death."

The paper concluded: "The moral compass that should guide the words of a president of the German republic has in this case greatly failed." To put the congratulation of the Iranian government in even more perspective: When Donald Trump was elected US president in November 2016, Steinmeier, then FM, explicitly said he would not congratulate him.

Israeli leaders have found many ways to express gushing praise for people who are far from friendly toward Israel. When Shimon Peres, then Israel's president, visited Norway in 2014, he stated nonsensically, "Norway is the pearl of humanity, built on human values, and seeks to keep people equal and free."

A report, published in 2012 by the Norwegian Center for Studies of the Holocaust and Religious Minorities and paid for by the government, found that 38 percent of Norwegians believe Israel acts toward the Palestinians as the Nazis behaved toward the Jews. The tiny Norwegian Jewish community has suffered from substantial antisemitism in the country supposedly "built on human values."