Why Are Palestinian Refugees Different From All Other Refugees?

BY DAVID HARRIS/ALGEMEINER.COM

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Why indeed?

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News reports suggest that the US administration is considering a historic decision to redefine who is and is not a Palestinian “refugee.” I hope that the reports are true. A change is long overdue, and could actually help the search for peace.

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Tragically, there have been countless refugees in the annals of history.

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In the 20th century alone, tens of millions of refugees, if not more, were compelled to find new homes — victims of world wars, border adjustments, population transfers, political demagoguery, and social pathologies.

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The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne codified the population exchange of Greeks and Turks, totaling more than 1.5 million people.

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Huge numbers of Hindus and Muslims moved because of the partition of the sub-continent into two independent nations — India and Pakistan.

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Refugees by the millions, unable to return to their countries, were created as a result of the 12-year Third Reich.

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The exodus from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam after the victory of communist and rebel forces was massive.

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Refugee flows from Africa’s civil and tribal wars have been constant.

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Yemenis were kicked out of Saudi Arabia by the hundreds of thousands during the first Gulf War, due to Yemen’s support for Iraq.

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Countless Bosnian and Kosovar Muslims fled, or were expelled, due to Serbian aggression.

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And this is all just the tip of the refugee iceberg.

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In fact, I don’t have to look far to understand the unending refugee crises of our times — or the trauma they have created. My mother, father, and wife were all refugees. Yet, instead of wallowing in victimization or becoming consumed by hatred and revenge, they started anew, grateful to their adopted lands for making it possible.

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This past May, the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) counted 19.9 million refugees in its jurisdiction, with the largest populations being from Syria, South Sudan, Somalia, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Over five decades, the UNHCR estimates that it has assisted 50 million refugees “help restart their lives.”

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And yet, of all the world’s refugees, one group — the Palestinians — are treated entirely differently.

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Indeed, the 1951 Refugee Convention explicitly does not apply to Palestinians, who fall within the purview of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

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There is no equivalent UN body for anyone else in the world.

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The definition of a refugee under the UNRWA mandate is also unique. It covers all descendants, without limit, of those deemed refugees in 1948. This helps explain why its caseload has quintupled since 1950.

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Unlike the UNHCR, UNRWA does not seek to resettle Palestinian refugees, but rather provides social services, and, in effect, keeping them in perpetual limbo.

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Despite the crocodile tears shed by Arab countries about the plight of their Palestinian brethren, they have been among the most miserly donors to UNRWA. They assert that it is not their responsibility to care for refugees created by the decisions of others. The top five donors to UNRWA until now have been the US. and European governments.

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By the way, I should hasten to clarify that only those Palestinians seen as victims of the Arab-Israeli conflict are given this special treatment.

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During the first Gulf War in 1991, when Kuwait evicted 400,000 Palestinians for their alleged backing of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, there wasn’t much reaction from the international community. And more recently, while thousands of Palestinians have been dislocated by the Syrian civil war, again there has been silence. Arab violations of Arabs’ human rights are seemingly viewed differently, if they’re noticed at all.

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And in Lebanon, with its large Palestinian population under UNRWA auspices, the government has long imposed strict restrictions on Palestinians’ right to work in numerous fields. Where is the outcry?

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So, we are confronted by something unprecedented.

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Palestinians are not the world’s first refugee population, but their leadership may be the first to resist a workable, long-term solution.

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Think about it. In 1947, the UN offered a two-state plan to address competing national claims. The Jews accepted it; the Arabs rejected it. Or in UN-speak, the “proposed Arab State failed to materialize.” Had it been otherwise, two states could have emerged, and with any luck, learned to co-exist. Apropos, to this day, that two-state concept remains the most feasible outcome.

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Instead, the Arab side went to war. Has there been any war without refugees? Yet, in a case of reverse causality, Israel is blamed for the refugees resulting from hostilities triggered by five Arab countries.

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Meanwhile, the Arab-Israeli conflict produced even more Jewish refugees from the Arab world (and Iran). They, however, resettled elsewhere with little fanfare and no attention whatsoever from the UN.

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Then, by design, the Palestinian refugees, and their descendants ad infinitum, were kept in UNRWA camps to serve as permanent reminders of the impermanence of their situation. Taught to focus their hatred on Israel, and to believe they will one day “return,” they’ve been denied chances for new lives. And they’ve been used to create the single biggest stumbling block to achieving peace: the Palestinian fantasy of ending Jewish sovereignty in Israel.

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Even now, 13 years after Israel totally withdrew from Gaza, astonishingly, over 500,000 Palestinians continue to live in UNRWA camps there. Why? Because Gaza is under Palestinian rule, not Israeli.

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While the Palestinians are among the world’s largest per capita aid recipients, much of that assistance has been siphoned off to line the pockets of Palestinian officials, who then turn around and seek more funds for their allegedly neglected people.

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It’s the same absurd logic that Hamas deploys when it decries energy shortages, while trying to shell the Israeli power plants that provide electricity to Gaza.

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The whole process is abetted by an elaborate, well-funded UN apparatus, encompassing more than just UNRWA, created by a majority of member states to support the Palestinians. By contrast, among others, Kurds, who have a compelling case for statehood, and Cypriots, who have lived on a divided island due to Turkish occupation, have no comparable UN bodies to advance their causes.

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This is not to say that Palestinians have had easy lives. They haven’t. It is to say that their leaders, with the complicity of too many, have pulled off one of the most successful spin jobs in history. Rather than resettle the refugees, they have shamelessly exploited them and their descendants.

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Therein lies the irreducible tragedy — and the heart — of a decades-long conflict.

 

Palestinian Leadership To USA – We Despise You, Now Give Us Our Money

BY BASSAM TAWIL/GATESTONE INSTITUTE

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The question of Palestinian responsiveness is once again on display as Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and his senior officials in Ramallah step up their verbal attacks on the US administration after its decision to cut $200 million in American financial aid to the Palestinians.

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Abbas and the PA leadership are again behaving like spoiled, angry children whose candy has been taken away from them, hurling abuse at the Trump administration. Recall that earlier this year, Abbas called US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman a “son of a dog.”

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For the past 9 months, the Palestinian leaders have been waging a massive and unprecedented campaign of incitement and abuse against Trump and his administration. This campaign began immediately after Trump announced his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2017, and the campaign is continuing to this day as a reply to the US decision to slash $200 million from the American financial aid to the Palestinians.

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Significantly, the PA and its leaders were the ones who initiated the crisis with the US administration. Their dissatisfaction with Trump’s announcement on Jerusalem may be understandable, but they chose to take their protest to an extreme by boycotting the US administration and waging a smear campaign against Trump and his “Jewish advisors and envoys.”

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It is clear that the Palestinian boycott of the US administration did not include receiving funds from the Americans. One the one hand, the Palestinians have been boycotting and badmouthing US administration officials. On the other hand, Abbas and his representatives are now crying that the US administration is slashing $200 million of its financial aid to the Palestinians. If this isn’t cheek in its finest form, what is?

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The Arabic word for cheek, by the way, is wakaha. Were Abbas to behave in the same manner towards an Arab country for cutting financial aid to the Palestinians, he would have been accused by his Arab brothers of displaying wakaha at its best. Abbas, however, would think ten times before he uttered a bad word against any Arab country.

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The Palestinians are basically telling the Americans: We have the right to condemn you every day, to burn your flags and photos of your president, to incite against you, to launch weekly protests against you, to accuse you of being under the “influence of the Jewish and Zionist lobby” and, at the same time, we have the right to continue receiving US taxpayer money.

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Judging from their actions and assertions in the past few months, the Palestinians have turned the US into an enemy. They consider the US to be in “collusion” with the Israeli government and a “full partner in Israeli crimes against the Palestinians.” They say they no longer trust the US to play any role in a peace process with Israel because of the Trump administration’s “blind bias” in favor of Israel and its “hostile” policies towards the Palestinians.

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The Palestinians, of course, are entitled to voice their anger at the US. However, if they are so fed up with the US that they are even boycotting US administration officials, why are they demanding that the Americans continue to supply them with hundreds of millions of dollars each year? Where’s the vaunted Arab dignity, which requires an Arab not to humiliate himself in return for money, especially if it comes from someone you consider an enemy?

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The answer to this question can be found in a statement issued on August 25 by PLO Secretary-General Saeb Erekat in response to the US decision to cut the $200 million in aid to the Palestinians. “The international community is not doing the Palestinians a favor by providing them with financial aid,” Erekat argued. “This is a due duty of the international community, which bears responsibility for the continued Israeli occupation.”

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Erekat’s statement reflects a long-standing Palestinian position according to which the US and the rest of the international community owe the Palestinians money for supporting Israel’s existence. The Palestinian position stems from a belief that the international community, specifically the Americans and Europeans, were responsible for the establishment of Israel in 1948 at the cost of the Palestinians. This position was best echoed by Abbas himself, who has said that Israel is a “colonial project” imposed on the Palestinians by Western powers.

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This attitude means that the Palestinians have never seen the massive financial aid they have received from the West as a gift but rather as something that the world owes them for imposing a “colonial project” on them. The billions of dollars the Palestinians have received in the past few decades have evidently left no positive impression on the Palestinians, who feel that the funds are something they are fully entitled to because of the world’s support for the existence of Israel.

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The Palestinians, in other words, apparently do not feel they have to be grateful to those who have been funding them for decades. If the Europeans were to take a similar decision today and cut funding to the Palestinians, they too would be condemned by Abbas and his officials for being “hostile” towards the Palestinians and “biased” in favor of Israel.

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The ongoing Palestinian rhetorical attacks on the US administration are dangerous because they further radicalize the Palestinian public and turn the Americans into an enemy in the eyes of many Palestinians. In recent months, we have seen increased hostility towards American officials and citizens visiting the West Bank as a direct result of this incitement.

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Last July, the US Consul-General in Jerusalem was forced to cancel a visit to the Palestinian city of Nablus after Palestinians threatened to stage protests against him and his entourage.

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A month earlier, Palestinian protesters expelled a US consular delegation from the city of Bethlehem and threw tomatoes at their vehicles. No one was hurt, but the incident, which was documented on camera, was impolite and degrading for the Americans.

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The Palestinians are now accusing the US of attempting to “blackmail” them by cutting the funds. According to the Palestinians, the US administration wants to force them to accept Trump’s yet-to-be-unveiled plan for peace in the Middle East.

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It is worth noting, however, that the US administration has not yet presented its purported plan to the Palestinians or to any other party. So how can the US administration be trying to pressure or “blackmail” the Palestinians when no peace plan has ever been made public? Can the Palestinians point to one US administration official who asked them to accept the unseen plan or support Trump’s policies? Of course not.

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There is indeed blackmail going on — but in precisely the opposite direction. The Palestinians are trying to blackmail the US by claiming, absurdly, that the recent US decisions jeopardize the two-state solution and prospects for peace in the Middle East.

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These are the very Palestinians, however, who have refused to resume peace talks with Israel for the past four years, since long before Trump was elected as president.

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Common sense would have it that the US has a right to demand something from any party it helps to support — including the Palestinians. But the Palestinians see things differently. In their view, billions of dollars are owed to them as some sort of divine right. And if their behavior calls into question whether they deserve that money — well, those asking questions can just go back where they came from.

 

European Union Continues To Fiscally Back Hate Education Against Israel

BY MICHAEL CALVO / JNS.ORG

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In May 2018, the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy published a report titled “The Money Trail: The Millions Given by EU Institutions to NGOs With Ties to Terror and Boycotts Against Israel, an In-Depth Analysis.”

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Two months later, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Frederica Mogherini, replied to the report. Her main arguments were that allegations of the European Union supporting incitement or terror were unfounded and unacceptable — and that terror and boycotts are two distinct phenomena.

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The Israeli Ministry’s report is clear and substantiated, and Mogherini should read it again.

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What is not mentioned in the report is that the European Union and its member states finance NGOs that harass Israel, Israeli officials, and corporations doing business in Israel and in Europe. The European Union still finances the Palestinian Authority (PA) — and the PA still encourages Palestinians to kill Jews.

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As the Taylor Force Act states, “The Palestinian Authority’s practice of paying salaries to terrorists serving in Israeli prisons, as well as to the families of deceased terrorists, is an incentive to commit acts of terror.”

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It is well known that the Palestinian leaders have incited their people to kill Jews. PA leader Mahmoud Abbas even admitted that the terrorists “did what the Palestinian Authority ordered them to do,” and PA official Mohammed Dahlan confirmed that “Forty percent of the Martyrs in this Intifada belonged to the Palestinian security forces … and that the Palestinian Authority has hidden Hamas members against Israeli counter-actions.”

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Between 1994 and 2012, the European Union provided 5.6 billion euros to assist the PA. During 2014-15, a total of more than 390 million euros has been allocated to the PA through Pegase Direct Financial Support (DFS).

 

The aim of Pegase DFS is to assist the PA to meet its obligations towards its civil servants, pensioners, and vulnerable families; maintain essential public services; improve public finances; and pay teachers’ salaries. Among the civil servants and pensioners who received payments from Pegase DFS during 2014 and 2015, 67% were working in the health and education sectors.

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Palestinian children are taught to kill and hate Israelis in their public schools — so by supporting teachers’ salaries, the European Union financially participated and continues to participate in hate education, disregard for the lives of the Jews and others by promoting jihad, and inciting children to become martyrs.

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Concerning boycotts, the European Union has no qualms about applying double standards to Israel. It boycotts Israel’s “occupation,” but not other — real — occupations across the globe.

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In 2013, the European Union found it appropriate to ban grants, prizes, and financial instruments (such as loans and bank guarantees) to Israeli entities in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), eastern Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. In September 2015, the European Union drafted various rules, arguing that consumers must know that some imported products come from the settlements and not from Israel.

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Under international law, the question of whether the West Bank territory is occupied remains far from settled. However, the European Union finds it legitimate to provide direct financial assistance to Turkish settlements in the occupied territory of Northern Cyprus.

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It funds the occupation of an EU member state (Cyprus) purportedly to “end the isolation of the Turkish Cypriot community.” Concerning the Moroccan occupation of the Western Sahara, European businesses and universities openly operate in these “occupied territories” without being barred from EU funding, while similarly situated Israeli entities are disbarred.

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China is not required to label products coming from Tibet, which it has occupied since 1951. Goods originating from “occupied territories” such as Northern Cyprus, Gibraltar, the Falklands, Western Sahara, Tibet, Kashmir, and the Russian-held regions of Azerbaijan are not specially labeled.

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The European Union does not treat Israel like it treats other countries. It applies double standards by requiring from Israel “a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.” This represents antisemitism, according to the Working Definition of Anti-Semitism of the European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia, and the European Forum on Anti-Semitism.

 

Regional Players Maneuver To New Israeli-Palestinian Landscape

BY JAMES M. DORSEY/ALGEMENIER.COM

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A possible ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip, may be about more than ending the ongoing, escalating violence that threatens to spark yet another Gaza war.

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It could also be an attempt to pave the way for the return of former Palestinian security chief Muhammad Dahlan as successor to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

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United Arab Emirates-backed Egyptian and UN efforts to mediate an agreement between Israel and Hamas, with nemesis Qatar in the background, constitute yet another round in an Israeli-supported effort to politically, economically, and militarily weaken Hamas, and pave the way for the possible return of the Abu Dhabi-based Dahlan.

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Ironically, Israeli discussions with representatives of Qatar, which has long supported Hamas, constitute recognition of the utility of Qatar’s longstanding relations with Islamists and militants — relations that the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Bahrain cited as the reason for their 15-month-old diplomatic and economic boycott of Qatar.

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Israel and Egypt have agreed that Qatar will pay the salaries of tens of thousands of Hamas government employees in Gaza. Abbas has refused to pay those salaries as part of an Israeli-UAE-Saudi-backed effort to undermine Hamas’ control of Gaza, and give the PA a key role in its administration. Moreover, in response to Abbas’ demand, Israel reduced electricity supplies, leaving Gazans with only three to four hours of power a day.

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Abbas’ economic warfare is the latest tightening of the noose in a more than decade-long Israeli-Egyptian effort to strangle Gaza economically. Included in the moves to negotiate a long-term Israeli-Hamas ceasefire are proposals for significant steps to ease the blockade of Gaza. Qatar has also been negotiating the return of two captive Israeli nationals, as well as the remains of two Israeli soldiers killed in the 2014 Gaza war.

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In a statement on Facebook, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Israel’s goal is to “remove the Hamas terror group from power, or force it to change its approach, i.e., recognize Israel’s right to exist and accept the principle of rebuilding in exchange for demilitarization.”

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Lieberman said he wants to achieve this by “creating conditions in which the average resident of Gaza will take steps to replace the Hamas regime with a more pragmatic government” rather than through military force.

 

In another irony, involving Qatar in efforts to prevent Gaza from escalating out of control gives it a foot in the door as the UAE seeks to put a Palestinian leader in place who is more attuned to the Emirati and Saudi willingness to accommodate the Trump administration’s controversial efforts to negotiate an overall Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

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Speaking in a series of interviews, Qatari Ambassador to the Palestinian territories Muhammad Emadi insisted that “it is very difficult to fund the reconstruction of Gaza in an event of yet another destructive war.” He said that he has “discussed a maximum of a five- to 10-year ceasefire with Hamas.”

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Abbas, like Hamas, rejected US mediation following President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital earlier this year.

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The US president startled Israelis and Palestinians by saying that Israel would pay a “higher price” for his recognition of Jerusalem and that Palestinians would “get something very good” in return “because it’s their turn next.” Trump gave no indication of what he meant by this.

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The effort to negotiate a lasting ceasefire is the latest round in a so far failed UAE-Egyptian effort to return Dahlan as part of a reconciliation between Hamas and Abbas’ Fatah movement. Dahlan frequently does UAE Crown Prince Muhammad bin Zayed’s bidding. President George W. Bush reportedly described Dahlan during an internecine Palestinian power struggle in 2007 as “our boy.” Dahlan is also believed to have close ties to Israeli Defense Minister Lieberman.

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Since late March, Hamas has backed weekly mass protests by Gazans demanding the “right of return” to homes in Israel proper that they or their familial predecessors claim to have lost in the creation of the Jewish state in 1948 and the 1967 Middle East war. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said recently that “thanks to these marches and resistance” an end to Israel’s decade-long blockade of Gaza is “around the corner.”

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Abbas may prove to be the loser as Israel and Hamas inch towards a ceasefire arrangement that could ultimately give Dahlan a role in administering the Gaza Strip.

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“Gaza has become a de facto state as it comprises a set area with a central body that governs the population, has an army, and conducts foreign policy,” said Giora Eiland, former head of Israel’s National Security Council. “So, in a way, countries have to be pragmatic and negotiate with Hamas. Israel’s main interest is security — a period of complete calm in Gaza — and it is willing to do what is necessary to achieve this.”

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Eiland continued, “Until recently, Cairo insisted that Abbas reassume control over Gaza, which Hamas would not accept, specifically the call for it to disarm. Now, Egypt understands that this is not realistic and is only demanding that Hamas prevent [the Islamic State’s affiliate] in the Sinai from smuggling in weaponry. The only party that is unhappy with this arrangement is Abbas, who has been left behind. But this is his problem.”

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A Hamas-Israel ceasefire and the possible return of Dahlan are likely to be but the first steps in a UAE-Egyptian-Israeli-backed strategy to engineer the emergence of a Palestinian leadership more amenable to negotiating an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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Whether Trump’s remark that Israel would have to pay a price for his recognition of Jerusalem was a shot from the hip or part of a broader strategy is hard to discern. The White House has since sought to roll back his remarks.

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With the jury still out, Israelis, Palestinians, and their regional allies have been put on alert as they maneuver to ensure their place in whatever emerges from efforts to reengineer the political landscape.

 

The immoral foreign policy of the “Resistance”

by Caroline Glick

 

One of the constant themes of the “Resistance” — most recently restated in the New York Times’ anonymous op-ed Wednesday — is that President Donald Trump is “amoral” because he is interested in cultivating good relations with dictators.

In the words of the anonymous op-ed author: “In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.”

Notably, this is the same line used by the Israeli left and by Israel’s many critics in the West against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s foreign policy.

There are two aspects of this criticism that are worth pointing out.

First, the criticisms are utterly hypocritical.

The same “Resistance” howling about Trump’s desire to forge a détente with Russia based on a shared interest in fighting Islamic terrorists and preventing Iran from becoming the nuclear hegemon of the Middle East once bent over backwards to empower Iran. They gave the ayatollahs a clear path to a nuclear weapon, as well as $150 billion to finance their wars in Syria and Yemen, and their global terror attacks.

The same Never Trump Republicans attacking Trump for his efforts to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula without war happily supported then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Riceas she cut a deal that only empowered Pyonyang.

The Obama administration alumni who now insist that Putin is America’s number-one enemy did everything they could to appease him – in exchange for nothing — for years.

As for Israel, the Israeli Left, and its American and European supporters, they have been attacking Netanyahu relentlessly for fostering close ties with the leaders of Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Rwanda, Kenya, and the Philippines. At the same time, they insist that Israel must cough up its capital city and its heartland to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and its terrorist regime.

Just last week, a delegation of leftist lawmakers and political activists made a pilgrimage to Ramallah, where they met with PLO chief and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. They cooed and purred about his great visionary leadership, and insisted forcefully that Israel and the Trump administration must recognize his greatness.

This would be the same Abbas who spends hundreds of millions of donor-transferred dollars every year to pay the salaries of terrorists. This is the same Abbas that continues to reject Israel’s right to exist, who wrote a dissertation arguing that the Holocaust is a Zionist fabrication;  who has spent the past fifty years waging a political war to delegitimize Israel’s very existence.

Beyond the rank hypocrisy of these critics and their criticism, their “morality” card ignores the key fact that Trump’s policies, like Netanyahu’s policies, are succeeding in making the U.S. and Israel stronger, and making the world safer. In contrast, the “moral” policies of their opponents made the world more threatening and dangerous to the U.S. and to Israel.

Consider the Philippines. For the past week or so, Netanyahu’s domestic opponents, and their ready echo chamber in the U.S. media, have been attacking him for welcoming Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte to Israel. Duterte arrived in Israel – the first Philippine leader to ever do so – on Sunday and spent four days in the country.

To be sure, Duterte has a record of unseemly statements about women and brutal actions in his war on drug dealers. He even praised Hitler.

But at the same time, Duterte has an overriding, permanent shared interest with Israel and the U.S. This shared interest is what caused Duterte to travel 6,000 miles from home, with a huge delegation of military personnel and businessmen in tow, to sit down with Netanyahu this week.

Like Israel and the U.S., Philippines has a permanent interest in defeating global jihadists.

Despite the distance between the Philippines and the Middle East, the tentacles of global jihad have spread to the archipelago nation. First, beginning in the 1990s, Al Qaedatrained Islamic terrorists from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), based on the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines, in its camps in Afghanistan. It funded their insurgency against the Filipino armed forces, (AFP).

Over the years, the leaders of the MILF took steps to cut their ties with Al Qaeda and other global jihadist groups, and instead pushed for autonomy in Mindanao. The peace treaty between the government and the MILF was signed in 2014, and in late July, Duterte signed a basic law, passed by the Philippines Congress, which granted autonomy to the area.

While the MILF seems willing to accept a compromise with the government, many other Islamic terror groups in the Philippines are adamant in their goal of rejecting the legitimacy of a non-Islamic state. A number of these Islamic jihadists traveled to Syria and joined Islamic State in recent years. Together with local groups, returning Filipino ISIS terrorist have established an active presence in Mindanao since 2014.

In May 2017, they took over the city of Marawi in Mindanao and declared a caliphate. It took the AFP until October 2017 to defeat ISIS and restore government control of the city. The U.S. and Australia actively assisted in those efforts.

Despite its territorial defeat in Marawi, ISIS continues to pose the the Philippines’ most acute security threat. Last month, the group carried out two attacks in the southern Philippines in which 12 people were killed and scores were wounded.

In his public remarks in Israel, Duterte repeatedly thanked Israel for its assistance in fighting and defeating ISIS in Marawi. His remarks – like his visit – revealed an Israeli policy of which few were aware.

Netanyahu realized that just because Duterte is controversial does not mean that Israel should turn its back on the Philippines as its territory is taken by ISIS. As he does whenever such a shared interest in fighting Islamic jihadists becomes apparent in a foreign land, Netanyahu reached out to Duterte and offered Israel’s assistance.

Netanyahu’s foreign policy is based on the recognition that the strongest foundation of a cooperative alliance is not shared ideology but shared interests.

Duterte’s remarks in Israel demonstrated that Netanyahu was exactly right.

Speaking to the Filipino migrant community in Israel on Sunday evening, Duterte revealedthat Israel provided “most of the intelligence gadgets that we used to win the Marawi siege.”

Addressing Netanyahu in their meeting on Monday, Duterte said, “Mr. Prime Minister, I can only thank you so much especially the critical help that you have extended my country in time when we needed it most.

“It was a help to preserve the Republic of the Philippines and I thank you for that.”

Duterte, whose visit to Israel was marked by the signing of a host of agreements for governmental cooperation, as well as arms and oil exploration deals, made clear that Israel’s assistance to the Philippines was the basis for a new and strong alliance between the two countries far broader than one battle.

In Duterte’s words: “We share the same passion for peace. We share the same passion for human beings but we also share the same passion of not allowing our country to be destroyed by those who have the corrupt ideology who [do] nothing but to kill and destroy. In this sense, Israel can expect any help that the Philippines can extend to your country.”

Duterte’s statement is many ways is a public expression of the sentiments now held far more broadly by dozens of nations – including the likes of Saudi Arabia – who depend on Israel for assistance in the fight against both Iran and Sunni jihadist groups like ISIS, Al Qaeda, and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Certainly, no one ever heard a similar sentiment spring from the mouth of Abbas or his predecessor Yasser Arafat, or even from Israel’s supposedly like-minded allies in the European Union, which expands its political war against Israel seemingly on a daily basis while emptily professing friendship with the Jewish state.

Last week, Netanyahu set out his basic understanding of international affairs in a speech at Israel’s Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center in Dimona. In it, he made clear that Israel’s national survival is entirely dependent on its power, its ability to accumulate power over time, and its ability to judiciously use its power.

Netanyahu said, “The weak crumble, are slaughtered and are erased from history while the strong, for good or ill, survive. The strong are respected, and alliances are made with the strong, and in the end, peace is made with the strong.”

The same cast of characters who condemned him for welcoming Duterte to Israel also attacked his speech. Jacob Siegel, for instance, writing in Tablet magazine, derided the remark as un-Jewish, and referred to the speech as “Bibi’s Bismark speech.”

But as Duterte’s visit shows — and indeed, as Saudi Crowned Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s cooperative policies towards Israel also show — Israel’s power is what attracts new allies. And through its intrinsic morality, Israel also encourages these nations to diminish their prejudice and hatred – because they think doing so will serve their own nations better.

Moreover, just as Israel helps others to fight common foes, it opposes governments that support those foes. So it was that on Wednesday, when Paraguay’s new government announced that it was revoking its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and returning its embassy to Tel Aviv, Netanyahu’s response was swift and brutal. He did not merely recall Israel’s ambassador to Paraguay for consultations. He announced that Israel would be closing it embassy in Asuncion. Certainly, Israel has no reason to allow Paraguay to open an embassy in Tel Aviv.

The same tactics – reaching out to other leaders on the basis of common interests, using common interests as the basis for relations, and striking out at those who harm his country – are the guiding principle of Trump’s “America First” policies.

Like Israel, the U.S. cannot help its allies if it doesn’t help itself. The U.S. cannot advance its interests if they are subjected to automatic vetoes by allies acting selfishly. It cannot advance its interests if it maintains faith with “moral” policies, like the Iran nuclear deal and similarly failed nuclear agreements with North Korea, at the expense of actual counter-proliferation strategies that may involve smiling and waving while standing next to Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin.

The hypocrisy and substantive failure of the “moral” policies of Trump’s and Netanyahu’s critics show that the assaults against these leaders are not about the proper ends of foreign policy, or even about morality.

They are a power play. And given the disastrous failures of the “Resistance’s” foreign policies, it is clear that the outcome of this power struggle is something to which no one can be indifferent.