LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
December 26/2019
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

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Bible Quotations For today
Merry Christmas/Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests
Luke/02/01-20/In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus 2 that the whole world should be enrolled. This was the first enrollment, when Quirinius was governor of Syria. So all went to be enrolled, each to his own town. And Joseph too went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David that is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. While they were there, the time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to her firstborn son. 3 She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. Now there were shepherds in that region living in the fields and keeping the night watch over their flock. The angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were struck with great fear. The angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Messiah and Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying: “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests. “When the angels went away from them to heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go, then, to Bethlehem to see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.”So they went in haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the infant lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known the message that had been told them about this child. All who heard it were amazed by what had been told them by the shepherds. And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart. Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as it had been told to them.”

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News published on December 25-26/2019
His Beatitude Patriarch Al Raei: Lukewarm confusing stances/Elias Bejjani/December 25/2019
Christmas Spirit: Forgiveness, Sacrifice and Reconciling/Elias Bejjani/December 25/2019
The Actual Needed Christmas Spirit/Elias Bejjani/December 25/2019
Christmas And The obligations Of The Righteous/Elias Bejjani/December 25/2019
Pope Urges Return to 'Harmonious Coexistence' in Lebanon
Aoun Slams Hariri, Defends Bassil and Promises Govt. of Experts
Mustaqbal Officials Hit Out at Aoun and Bassil
Saad Hariri: I won't work with a sectarian and racist Gibran Bassil
Report: Diab Met Aides of Nasrallah and Berri Monday Night
Khalil Slams Banks for 'Trapping' Civil Servants Salaries
Lebanese Help Each Other as Economic Crisis Crushes Lives
Lebanon’s leaders in blame game over crisis/Najia Houssari/Arab News/December 25/2019
Open Letter to US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo From Tom Harb & John Hajjar, AMCD co-chairs Addressing Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs David Hale's Visit Beirut/AMCD/December 25/2019
Christmas Thought of the Day/Father James Farfaglia/December 25/2019
The imminent failure of Lebanon's new prime minister/Imad K Harb/Al Jazeera/December 25/2019
Hezbollah-designated prime minister a recipe for increased unrest/Randa Takieddine/Arab News/December 25/2019

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on December 25-26/2019
Pope Francis Ushers in Christmas with Message of 'Unconditional Love'
Pope Urges World to Ensure Security in Mideast, Syria
Syria missile strike kills 5 pro-Iran fighters: monitor
Kochavi: Direct conflict with Iran is improbable. Still, he warned of increased fire power against civilian areas/DebkaFile/December 25/2019
Displaced Syrian Grows Mushrooms to Feed Family
Algeria Starts Funeral of Army Chief Gaid Salah
Iraqi City in Turmoil after Activist's Death
Libya War Leaves Thousands Homeless in Tripoli
Iran Warplane Crashes near Dormant Volcano

Titles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on December 25-26/2019
IDF preparing for confrontation with Iran - Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi
Anna Ahronhem/Jerusalem Post/December 25/2019
UN, UK Treating Persecuted Christians as “Enemies”/Raymond Ibrahim/Gatestone Institute/December 25/2019
Democrats Debate Whether Trump Has Been Impeached/Alan M. Dershowitz/Gatestone Institute/December 24/ 2019
We Want A Nation: Notes On The Middle East's Revolutions/Alberto M. Fernandez/MEMRI/December 25/2019
Democrats Debate Whether Trump Has Been Impeached/Alan M. Dershowitz/Gatestone Institute/December 25/2019
This decade of war in Syria has violated every norm that we believed was sacred/Kareem Shaheen/The National//December 25/2019
To be strong voices for Palestine, Arabs must be strong voices for/Ray Hanania//ArabNews/December 25/2019
Europe’s hard choices in 2020/Zaki Laidi /News/December 25/2019

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News published on December 25-26/2019
His Beatitude Patriarch Al Raei: Lukewarm confusing stances
Elias Bejjani/December 25/2019
Our Patriarch Al Raei as always adopts sharply the stance of the last person that he hears to. Today was not different. His beatitude is with both Hassan Dian and the Revolution. A Lukewarm position?

Christmas Spirit: Forgiveness, Sacrifice and Reconciling
Elias Bejjani/December 25/2019
In case you did not yet reconcile with all those whom you have had problems with, it means you did yet welcome the birth of the Incarnate Lord, who is mere love, sacrifice, forgiveness and humility

The Actual Needed Christmas Spirit
Elias Bejjani/December 25/2019
Inside each of an angel and a demon. With the birth of the Lord Jesus, let us bridle and silence Satan and leave the angel free to lead us to the paths of love and forgiveness

Christmas And The obligations Of The Righteous
Elias Bejjani/December 25/2019
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/81746/elias-bejjani-christmas-and-the-obligations-of-the-righteous-%d8%b0%d9%83%d8%b1%d9%89-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%85%d9%8a%d9%84%d8%a7%d8%af-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%85%d8%ac%d9%8a%d8%af-%d9%88%d9%88%d8%a7%d8%ac%d8%a8/
Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. (Luke 02/11)
Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good will toward men (Luke 02/14)
The holy birth of Jesus Christ bears numerous blessed vital values and principles including love, giving, redemption, modesty and forgiveness.
Christmas is a role model of love because God, our Father Himself is love.
Accordingly and in a bid to cleanse us from our original sin He came down from heaven, was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, and became man.
This is my commandment, that you love one another, even as I have loved you. (John15/12)
There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (John15/13)
Christmas is way of giving …God gave us Himself because He is a caring, generous, forgiving and loving and father.
Christmas embodies all principles of genuine redemption. Jesus Christ redeemed us and for our sake He joyfully was crucified, and tolerated all kinds of torture, humiliation and pain
Christmas is a dignified image of modesty ..Jesus Christ accepted to be born into a manger and to live his life on earth in an extremely simple and humble manner.
Let us continuously remind our selves that when our day comes that could be at any moment, we shall not be able to take any thing that is earthly with us for the Day of judgment except our work and acts, be righteous or evil.
Christmas is a holy act of forgiveness ….God, and because He is a loving and forgiving has Sent His Son Jesus Christ redeem to free us from the bondage of the original sin that Adam and Eve committed.
Christmas requires that we all genuinely pray and pray for those who are hurt, lonely, deserted by their beloved ones, feel betrayed, are enduring pain silently pain, suffer anguish, deprived from happiness, warmth and joy .
Christmas is ought to teach us that it is the duty of every believer to practice his/her faith not only verbally and via routine rituals, but and most importantly through actual deeds of righteousness….
Christmas’ spirit is not only rituals of decorations, festivities, gifts and joyful celebrations…But deeds in all ways and means by helping those who need help in all field and domains.
Christmas’s spirit is a calls to honour and actually abide by all Bible teachings and values.
In this realm we have a Biblical obligation to open our hearts and with love extend our hand to all those who are in need, and we are able to help him remembering always that Almighty God showered on us all sorts of graces and capabilities so we can share them with others.
Christmas is a time to hold to the Ten Commandments, foremost of which is “Honour your father and your mother”.
Christmas is a good time for us to attentively hear and positively respond to our conscience, which is the voice of God within us.
Christmas should revive in our minds and hearts the importance of fighting all kinds temptations so we do not become slaves to earthly wealth, or power of authority.
Christmas for us as patriotic and faithful Lebanese is a time to pray for the safe and dignified return of our Southern people who were forced to take refuge in Israel since the year 2000.
Christmas for each and every loving and caring Lebanese is a holy opportunity for calling loudly on all the Lebanese politicians and clergymen, as well as on the UN for the release of the thousands of Lebanese citizens who are arbitrarily and unjustly imprisoned in Syrian prisons.
Most importantly Christmas is a time for praying and working for the liberation of our dear homeland Lebanon, from the Iranian occupation.
No one should never ever lose sight for a moment or keep a blind eye on the sacrifices of our heroic righteous martyrs who willing sacrificed themselves for our homeland, identity, existence, and dignity. Our prayers goes for them on this Holy Day and for peace in each and evry country, especially in the chaotic and troubled Middle East.
May God Bless you all and shower upon you, your families, friends, and beloved ones all graces of joy, health, love, forgiveness, meekness and hope.

Pope Urges Return to 'Harmonious Coexistence' in Lebanon
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/December 25/2019
Pope Francis on Wednesday urged a resolution to the crisis in Lebanon, saying the country must reaffirm its commitment to "harmonious coexistence."The pontiff said in his Christmas message that he prayed for the "Lebanese people... to rediscover their vocation to be a message of freedom and harmonious coexistence for all."

Aoun Slams Hariri, Defends Bassil and Promises Govt. of Experts
Naharnet/December 25/2019
President Michel Aoun on Wednesday lashed out at caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri over his latest remarks and announced that the new government will be a “government of experts.”Speaking to reporters in Bkirki after a closed-door meeting with Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi on the sidelines of Christmas Day mass, Aoun hoped Lebanon will “manage to overcome its current crisis” and that the Lebanese will have a new government as a “New Year’s gift.”Asked about accusations that Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil – his son-in-law – is the one forming the new government, Aoun said: “Let’s suppose that Jebran Bassil is the one forming the government, doesn’t he have the right to do so? Isn’t he an MP and the head of the biggest bloc? But no, in fact it is not him who is forming it. Those who are supposed to form it are forming it.”Asked whether he did not want Hariri to form the new government, the president said: “Is that why we waited 100 days?”“We waited for Saad Hariri for 100 days without managing to resolve the crisis. He was hesitant. This is not how we form a government,” Aoun added. Told that Hariri has said that the Presidency is acting “as if nothing has happened in the country,” in reference to the economic crisis and the Oct. 17 popular revolt, Aoun answered: “Does he want to envy me for my calm which preserved calm in the country or for my foolishness which made me act in a bad way?”The president’s remarks carried a veiled jab at Hariri for resigning amid the popular protests that have swept the country. Asked about claims in the Western media that the government will be “Hizbullah’s government,” Aoun said: “Incorrect. A lot of parties are unhappy and they have resorted to publishing such news. The government will be the government of all Lebanese, including Hizbullah.”He also said he believes that there will be a “government of experts” and not a so-called techno-political government. In a chat with reporters on Tuesday, Hariri had said that the new government is not "Hizbullah's government" but rather "Jebran Bassil's government," adding that he will not accept to lead a new government containing Bassil. "I cannot work with these people anymore. He wants to run the country on his own and he must show moderation. How can one work with people who have a sectarian and racist rhetoric?" Hariri added.

Mustaqbal Officials Hit Out at Aoun and Bassil
Naharnet/December 25/2019
Al-Mustaqbal Movement official ex-MP Mustafa Alloush on Wednesday lamented that “all the attempts to protect the Presidency from the pettiness of the son-in-law have failed,” in a jab at Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil, who is President Michel Aoun’s son-in-law. “All what we hope for today on Christmas Day is mercy for Lebanon in the face of the maliciousness of the devil and his greed for swallowing everything and depriving the Lebanese of welfare and hope,” Alloush tweeted. Al-Mustaqbal bloc MP Mohammed al-Hajjar for his part decried that “it is sad that President Michel Aoun sees only one person in the country: caretaker Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil.”“He considers that the rules of the Constitution and the Lebanese political life revolve around him,” Hajjar added. “It is strange that the Presidency has said that it waited for caretaker PM Saad Hariri for 100 days (to take a decision on whether or not to lead the new government), seeing as the country was awaiting the Presidency to resolve Jebran’s obstacle and his insistence on a techno-political government,” Hajjar went on to say.Earlier in the day, Aoun had lashed out at Hariri and defended Bassil. “Let’s suppose that Jebran Bassil is the one forming the government, doesn’t he have the right to do so? Isn’t he an MP and the head of the biggest bloc? But no, in fact it is not him who is forming it. Those who are supposed to form it are forming it,” Aoun said.“We waited for Saad Hariri for 100 days without managing to resolve the crisis. He was hesitant. This is not how we form a government,” Aoun added.Told that Hariri has said that the Presidency is acting “as if nothing has happened in the country,” in reference to the economic crisis and the Oct. 17 popular revolt, Aoun answered: “Does he want to envy me for my calm which preserved calm in the country or for my foolishness which made me act in a bad way?”The president’s remarks carried a veiled jab at Hariri for resigning amid the popular protests that have swept the country.

Saad Hariri: I won't work with a sectarian and racist Gibran Bassil
The National/December25/2019
In the most stinging criticism yet, Caretaker Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri has said he would not work again with caretaker foreign minister Gibran Bassil, labelling the Free Patriotic Movement head “sectarian” and “racist.”"How can you work with someone who is always insulting you? How can you work with such people whose speech is sectarian and racist,” Hariri asked a group of reporters on Tuesday. "I will not work again with Gebran Bassil, unless he moderates [his language and policies]."The Future Movement leader and Mr Bassil have worked closely in recent years, however splits over his policies began to emerge shortly after the election in 2018. They deepened in recent months as Mr Hariri reportedly tried to assemble a technocratic government but Mr Bassil refused to back any government that did not include him as a member.The caretaker foreign minister has been the centre of much of the public’s anger in the ongoing two-month protests. He is often criticised for demeaning and racist anti-refugee sentiment as well as being sectarian in his speeches. Mr Hariri also again ruled the Future Movement out of the next administration, saying "I will not be represented, take part in or cover the new government. If required, I will not give it a vote of confidence."PM-designate Hassan Diab was nominated on December 19 to begin trying to form the next administration and ease public anger.

Report: Diab Met Aides of Nasrallah and Berri Monday Night
Naharnet/December 25/2019
Prime Minister-designate Hassan Diab met Monday night with Hussein al-Khalil and caretaker minister Ali Hassan Khalil – the political aides of Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a media report said. “Talks tackled the cabinet’s line-up,” LBCI television reported. “Diab intended to carry a cabinet line-up to the President this Thursday, but he reversed his decision after he realized that the issue needs further political consultations,” LBCI added. “Diab had already entered the phase of choosing candidates, picking Shadi Masaad, Demianos Qattar and the ambassador Qabalan Franjieh to be part of his ministerial team,” the TV network said. It also noted that the nomination of Qabalan Franjieh was the reason that “infuriated” Marada Movement chief Suleiman Franjieh.

Khalil Slams Banks for 'Trapping' Civil Servants Salaries
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/December 25/2019
Lebanon's caretaker finance minister accused has the country's banks of "trapping" civil servants' salaries with withdrawal limits that have fueled public anger in the crisis-stricken country. "What is happening in some Lebanese banks is unacceptable," Ali Hassan Khalil wrote on Twitter. "They are trapping the salaries of (state) employees that are transferred by the finance ministry every month."Rocked by two months of anti-government protests and a political deadlock, Lebanon is also facing its worst economic crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war.A liquidity crunch has pushed Lebanese banks to impose capital controls on dollar accounts, capping withdrawals at around $1,000 a month. Some have imposed even tighter restrictions. Some have also capped weekly withdrawals of the Lebanese pound at one million -- the equivalent of $660 at official rates -- even as the currency has plunged by nearly a third against the dollar on the black market in recent weeks. The tightening controls have prompted public uproar, with many accusing banks of robbing them of their savings. On Tuesday, Khalil said it was a "sacred right" of civil servants to be paid in full and on time. "It is not permissible for this right to be violated," he said, vowing legal action to ensure public servants can access their salaries in full. At banks in the northern city of Tripoli, tensions soared Tuesday as clients struggled to withdraw their salaries, said an AFP correspondent there. A fight broke out in a branch near the city's main protest camp after the bank refused to let a customer withdraw dollars. An anti-government street movement has rocked the small Mediterranean country since October 17. Bowing to popular pressure, the government resigned two weeks into demonstrations. Since then, a potential default on Lebanon's huge public debt has heightened the economic and political crisis. The faltering economy has pushed many companies into bankruptcy, while others have laid off staff and slashed salaries.A recession of more than 0.2 percent is expected for this year, the World Bank says. In its first step towards forming an urgently-needed government, President Michel Aoun last week designated engineering professor Hassan Diab as the country's next prime minister, replacing Saad Hariri who quit in late October in the face of mass protests. Diab, a self-styled technocrat, has vowed to form a cabinet of independent experts within six weeks.

Lebanese Help Each Other as Economic Crisis Crushes Lives
Associated Press/Naharnet/December 25/2019
Panic set in on a WhatsApp group used to organize Lebanese protests when one member said he intended to kill himself because he can't provide for his kids. The desperate call came on the heels of the suicide of a father of two that had stunned the public and raised alarm over how dire Lebanon's economic conditions have become. So Mohammed Choucair, one of dozens of members in the group, sprang into action. The 23-year-old architect student along with friends launched a campaign appealing for donations -- for the man and for others suffering. They posted an ad on social media and, to show transparency, created a spreadsheet to track the money. As Lebanon's protest movement enters its third month, the economic pinch is hurting everyone. Layoffs are increasing, salary cuts are the norm, banks are capping withdrawals and prices are quickly rising. The euphoria that marked the first days of the protests is being replaced with gloom. With the entrenched political class failing to chart a way out, Lebanese are resorting to what they've done in previous wars and crises: they rely on each other, not the state."We got to a situation where people are not able to buy food for their kids or pay their rent," Choucair said.
The despondent friend "said he had no money and what is the revolution doing about it and asked why the politicians are not paying attention," Choucair said. They were able to convince him not to kill himself, though he refused to take any donations. Choucair and his group continued their campaign, giving money, food, clothes and supplies to 58 families so far this month, including one family reduced to using candles because they can't afford electricity. Over recent years as Lebanon's economy worsened, people turned to familiar ways to cope, like mosque and church charities or helping each other, forgiving debts or handing out food. Those means have already been getting stretched thin.
The protests -- and the 24-hour news cycle focused on them -- have brought a surge of help by rallying public attention to the suffering. Campaigns to collect food, winter clothes and helplines for people in economic and emotional distress are popping up everywhere, intensified by the Christmas spirit.
Stores have offered discounts and set up boxes for donations of clothes or money. Ads on TV urged Lebanese to pack bags of donations instead of suitcases for travel. Another urged Lebanese in the diaspora coming home to visit to bring "medicines, clothes and goodies" to give, because "Lebanon needs help."
Some restaurants have offered to deliver free food, and bakeries put out bread for anyone who needs. A yoga studio organized classes to fundraise for the needy. WhatsApp groups and Instagram pages shared addresses of local small businesses for shoppers to use for Christmas gifts. "We are all in this together," said one tagline. A group of web developers created an app, Khayyak or Your Brother, to coordinate between those who want to help and those in need. "Don't lose hope, you are not alone," the advertisement for the app said. The efforts are in part driven by the famed entrepreneurial spirit that helped Lebanese get through numerous previous crises, including a 15-year civil war and several wars with Israel that wrecked the infrastructure and economy. But the protests have also created a unique experience -- "something for everybody," whether they support or oppose the revolt, said Mia Atwi, a clinical psychologist.
"People feel more that they are all suffering the same thing, the rich and the poor ... a common kind of loss," she said.
Atwi is co-founder of Lebanon's Embrace, a mental health organization operating the national suicide prevention helpline. The helpline now receives 100 calls a week, up from up to 10 before reports of suicides or attempted suicides first erupted three weeks ago. Atwi attributed the jump to the spike of media and public attention to the issue of suicide, something she said has saved lives. Calls even come from rural areas, not just Beirut as they did in the past. Still, the government hasn't given her organization a toll-free number, despite paying $25,000 a year for the four-digit helpline.Many campaigns have sprung out of the protest movement. Weekly clothes donations and distributions were set up in the downtown Beirut squares at the epicenter of the demonstrations and near the Central Bank, which protesters accuse of corruption and fueling the economic crisis. "We only have each other" proclaims the campaign's hashtag, a snub of the political class and the state. Rim Majid, a 21-year old student, quit university in Beirut to participate in "everything revolution." After hearing of news of the man's suicide in early December, she set up a griddle at a downtown protest site to make free manousheh, a traditional Lebanese flatbread. Next to the griddle is a donation box with the man's name. Someone donated enough wheat for a week of baking.
"The suffering existed before, but now we are going through a crisis, one that will only get worse," she said.
The help isn't only monetary. During a discussion one evening at a protest tent, a concerned woman asked: "What are the revolutionaries going to do when those who pay mortgages for their homes are unable to?" A young participant suggested the protesters could physically block the bank and the police from evicting people. For Choucair, the charity spirit reflects the principles of the protests -- the rejection of an entire political elite seen as corrupt and of Lebanon's sectarian power-sharing system. Choucair said his group's donation campaign makes sure to transcend sectarian and political divisions and offers an alternative to the patronage that politicians use to cement their power. The campaign has members from Christian, Sunni and Shiite areas. At least three donors came to them instead of established charities because, he said, they wanted to avoid donating along sectarian or political lines.
Choucair had once planned to migrate like many others driven out by Lebanon's economic problems. The protests convinced him he has no other place to be but home, he said. In the last two months, he said, he met people from across different classes and sects he never imagined talking to.
"Our relations are built on humanity and national unity," he said. "Our friendships are built on helping people."

Lebanon’s leaders in blame game over crisis
Najia Houssari/Arab News/December 25/2019
BEIRUT: Tensions between Lebanon’s president and former prime minister have flared after they accused each other of being to blame for the turmoil engulfing the country.
A recession, massive street protests and a political crisis have created financial and security chaos.
Lebanon has had a caretaker government since Oct. 29, when Saad Hariri resigned as prime minister after nearly two weeks of protests. He has clashed with President Michel Aoun about the leadership and composition of a new administration. “The problem with the president is that he is acting as if nothing has happened in the country, and he is trying to act smart by endorsing the demands of the revolution, and my stance is clear, I will not be represented in this government and I will not nominate anyone, nor will I give it a confidence vote,” said Hariri.
“Now they are targeting the political legacy of the Hariri family, and they will try to hold it responsible for all the calamities that have befallen the country, but whoever tries to bury Hariri’s legacy will be as if he would be burying himself. Let us see who really stole from the country. I will not cover anyone, and they should do the same thing.”Aoun responded to Hariri by saying: “Does he envy me for my resilience and calmness in trying to control the situation, or does he want me to act foolishly and badly? We waited for 100 days for him (Hariri) and nothing came out. We waited for someone who kept hesitating. I want, and I do not want, as if someone was playing with a daisy. A government cannot be formed in this manner.”
Dr. Hassan Diab, a university professor and former education minister, has been nominated to replace Hariri and has started consulting with parliamentary blocs to discuss the shape of a future government. But he faces significant hurdles, including a boycott by influential political blocs that refused to nominate him because of the backing he received from the Free Patriotic Movement, Hezbollah, the Amal party and their allies. Bechara Al-Rahi, the Maronite Patriarch, on Sunday urged all political parties to cooperate with Diab and facilitate the formation of a rescue emergency government.
Protesters have demonstrated in Beirut and elsewhere in Lebanon against Diab, saying he should abandon the post because he is a member of the ruling elite. Demonstrators blame the ruling elite for widespread corruption and mismanagement in Lebanon.

Open Letter to US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo From Tom Harb & John Hajjar, AMCD co-chairs Addressing Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs David Hale's Visit Beirut
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/81759/open-letter-to-us-secretary-of-state-mike-pompeo-from-tom-harb-john-hajjar-amcd-co-chairs-addressing-under-secretary-of-state-for-political-affairs-david-hales-visit-beirut/
The Honorable Mike Pompeo Secretary of State Department of State
2201 C St., NW
Washington, DC 20520
Ref: Lebanese protests, Ambassador Hale, PM Hassan Diab
Dear Mr. Secretary,
After two months of protests, the current Lebanese government has lost all legitimacy in the eyes of the people. The Lebanese economy continues its downward spiral under the current leadership and economic hardship helps to fuel the protests.
This instability has created new opportunities for the US to help shape a new government. Unfortunately, though we fully support the message he delivered, the optics of Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs David Hale meeting at the residence of prominent Hezbollah-ally Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil have caused hurt and frustration to those in the streets risking their lives for the sake of a free Lebanon.
We have fresh information that a campaign to intimidate and in some cases to terrorize activists is now underway. The Lebanese authorities must be sternly reminded that they have a duty to protect the protests and warned that they will be held accountable if activists come to harm.
We recommend that US aid only be given to fully-vetted NGOs in Lebanon and not be given through the Lebanese government. It would be better to not give any aid because it is ending up in the hands of our enemies.
Unsurprisingly, the Iran lobby is waging a pressure campaign in Washington against US policy toward Lebanon, which you are so clearly and forcefullly articulating. Iran is working not only against US interests, but against the interests of the Lebanese and all freedom-loving people in the region.
Therefore, we urge you to issue a press release from Washington expressing concern about the incoming Prime Minister, Hassan Diab, as his nomination came from Hezbollah. In his past position as Minister of Education, he worked to implement Iran’s dictates over Lebanese education, a dangerous matter both for Lebanon and the US.
We also urge you to announce that no US aid, neither military nor humanitarian, will be allowed to go to Hezbollah entities, allies, or entities that are benefiting Hezbollah.
We also request that you meet with activists from the Lebanon Protests, who are now being subjected to harsh treatment by Lebanese security agencies acting on behalf of Hezbollah. We are ready and willing to assist you and the administration to reach out to these activists.
Yours Sincerely,
Tom Harb & John Hajjar AMCD co-chairs

Christmas Thought of the Day
Father James Farfaglia/December 25/2019
Christmas Thought of the Day: Long ago, there ruled in Persia a wise and good king who loved his people. He wanted to know how they lived, and he wanted particularly to know about their hardships. Often dressed in the clothes of a worker or a beggar, he visited the homes of the poor. No one whom he visited even thought he might be their ruler.
Once he visited a very poor man who lived in a cellar. He ate the coarse food the poor man ate, and he spoke cheerful, kind words to him. Then he left.
Later when he visited the poor man again, he disclosed his identity saying, "I am your king!" Then the king thought the man would surely ask for some gift or favor, but he did not.
Instead, he said, "You left your palace and your glory to visit me in this dark, dreary place. You ate the course food I ate. You brought gladness to my heart! To others you have given your rich gifts. To me you have given yourself!"
This is the true meaning of Christmas.
Had our greatest need been knowledge, God would have sent us an educator. Had that greatest need been technology, God would have sent us a scientist. So too had our greatest need been for money, God would have sent us an economist. Had our greatest need been for pleasure, God would have sent us an entertainer. But, because our greatest need was for love and the full understanding of true love, he God sent us a Savior who is all love.
Despite the tragedies that man inflicts upon man, the goodness of man prevails because the God-Man Jesus Christ overcame evil. The tomb is empty.
Tragedies exist; evil exists; bad things happen precisely because man rejects God. Our modern times are marked by a general rejection of God thus causing the terrible chaos that we see in the news each day.
The terrible problems that challenge the world this Christmas are not really a God problem, they are our problems. How do we respond?

The imminent failure of Lebanon's new prime minister
Hassan Diab will likely oversee Lebanon's final political, social and economic collapse.
Imad K Harb/Al Jazeera/December 25/2019
On December 19, Lebanese President Michel Aoun named Hassan Diab as the country's next prime minister after a slew of candidates for the position failed to receive enough political support.
Diab had been put forward by Hezbollah and its allies in the Lebanese parliament, among them Speaker Nabih Berri's AMAL Movement and the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) headed by the president's son-in-law and foreign minister, Gebran Bassil.
Immediately after Diab was named, and despite the latter's assurances that he will form a government that addresses the many problems facing the country, protests broke out in the streets decrying the formation of what is considered a Hezbollah government that will aim to abort the ongoing uprising.
The protesters have demanded the end of the sectarian system and the appointment of a politically independent premier who would form a government of unaffiliated experts and technocrats to write a new electoral law and conduct early parliamentary elections. So far, they have failed to realise these demands.
But even according to the power-sharing system in use today, where the prime minister has to be a Sunni Muslim, Diab is not likely to succeed. Having scant support among his Sunni community and former Prime Minister Saad Hariri's Future Bloc in parliament, he lacks the political backing to be a strong prime minister vis-a-vis President Aoun and the Hezbollah-AMAL alliance.
Protesters doubt his ability to address their demands of fighting corruption and it is hard to see how Diab will be able to manage the panoply of political and economic troubles the country faces. Domestic, regional and international circumstances make his political success unlikely.
Domestic troubles
Since the 1975-1990 civil war and following the ignominious withdrawal of Syrian troops in 2005, Lebanon has witnessed divisions, confrontations and frequent stalemate. The last three years, however, have been especially troublesome.
The October 2016 political deal which gave Aoun the presidency in exchange for Hariri getting the premiership became increasingly hard to maintain as the president, supported by Hezbollah, deprived his prime minister of his prerogatives as chief executive.
Ever the opponent of the 1989 Taif Accords, which charted the post-civil war period and strengthened the position of the prime minister, Aoun has, since becoming president, tried to restore the powers of the Maronite president in the executive branch, such as choosing ministers. This came on top of Hariri's troubles running an unwieldy government of national unity.
Today, Diab - an academic who has never run for public office or built a political base of his own - is at the mercy of the same Hezbollah-AMAL-FPM alliance without much discernible support from his own community. He thus starts his tenure limping, as protesters in the street are demanding the appointment of a strong leader who represents a popular base and who is capable of fighting corruption and nepotism.
The immediate impact of Diab's institutional weakness will manifest itself in his expected inability to curb Hezbollah's power and influence in state institutions. Like Hariri and others before him, Diab will also fail to check the party's status as an armed militia with independent decision-making and a state within the state.
With Hezbollah claiming the current street protests were inspired by outsiders, mostly the United States, to weaken "the resistance", it is impossible to imagine that it will assist its choice for prime minister in reasserting the Lebanese state's primacy over all factions in the country.
Equally problematic for Diab will be dealing with the country's teetering economy. Ratings agency Fitch has recently downgraded the country's credit rating and warned that Lebanon is either going to restructure its debt, which amounts to 150 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), or default on it.
This year Lebanon's public debt reached $86bn, while its budget deficit remained at 11 percent. Restructuring or defaulting will be calamitous considering the lack of trust of outside investors, the absence of funds to stimulate the economy, and the limited impact of any action by Lebanon's Central Bank, which has so far instituted some monetary changes to try to halt the decline.
Furthermore, a weak prime minister and government can offer no concrete solution to the rampant corruption that has beset Lebanon for decades and led to the current uprising.
Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index ranks Lebanon 138 out of 180 countries. Corruption permeates state institutions, the bureaucracy, and even the parliament, making Diab's job extremely difficult.
The same goes for necessary efforts to reform state agencies and the judiciary where entrenched interests coincide with political power to protect influential personalities and politicians.
Regional scepticism
While Lebanon's troubles and street demonstrations are caused primarily by domestic dynamics, the country's regional environment exacerbates the situation.
Bereft of a strong position within his Sunni community, Diab lacks the basic characteristic for attracting support from regional powers, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Even Hariri, who inherited his father Rafiq's connections in the Gulf and other parts of the Arab world, had difficulties maintaining good relations with Riyadh after his 2016 deal with Aoun and Hezbollah.
In November 2017, the Saudis even put him under house arrest in Riyadh and forced him to resign before French President Emmanuel Macron intervened.
Regionally, Diab's premiership will be viewed as part of the tug of war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, as the latter scored yet another victory in Lebanon with his appointment. Granted, the kingdom and the Islamic Republic may be testing the possibility of patching things up, but Riyadh still resents Tehran's influence in Beirut through Hezbollah.
The reluctance of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to fund Lebanon at this crucial time is another obstacle for Diab to surmount. Their financial assistance in the form of deposits in the Central Bank, for instance, could restore investors' trust and encourage the bank to increase liquidity in the domestic market.
But for them to do so, Diab needs to dissipate doubt about his relationship with Hezbollah and to show that he can be independent of the party's bidding - a rather unlikely scenario given his institutional weakness.
International reluctance
Looking at the international scene, it is also difficult to see how Diab can muster enough political and economic support for his mission. While many actors value their relationship with Lebanon and understand the country's political dilemmas, they remain convinced that its troubles can only be solved if protesters' demands are addressed directly.
A conference convened in Paris on December 11 failed to reach agreement on financial assistance to the country so long as it does not have a functioning government committed to reform. Without such assistance, all bets are off that things will be better in the foreseeable future.
After Diab forms his government, he is likely to run into some very unpleasant circumstances. While the US may want to go easy on the prime minister-designate, his association with Hezbollah is likely to at the very least dampen any American enthusiasm for his government.
On December 20, US Assistant Secretary of State David Hale paid a visit to Lebanon and met the country's leaders but remained uncommitted to providing blanket support, instead diplomatically stating that the US has no say in the formation of the government.
On the same day, Aoun asked Diab to form a government, Germany's parliament passed a resolution calling for a ban on Hezbollah activities on German soil. This could affect relations between Berlin and any Lebanese government perceived to be cooperating with the party.
Similar bans have been adopted by the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the US and Canada. While France has tiptoed around a decisive break with Hezbollah and Iran, President Macron cannot break with the US, Germany, the UK, and others to offer help to Diab.
Diab's association with Hezbollah and loss of political and financial support from influential international actors will stymie his ability to address the dire economic situation. This will likely increase the party's and Iran's influence on Lebanese politics, thus only exacerbating Diab's and the country's problems.
Diab likely to preside over collapse
Although Diab has asserted that his government will be independent and made up of experts, demonstrators see it as beholden to Hezbollah.
President Aoun and his allies Hezbollah and AMAL know that Diab does not have the support of a specific political bloc and, therefore, has no chance of success in fulfilling the demands of the Lebanese protest movement.
He may only have been chosen because he is no threat to the current president and will not try to limit Hezbollah's influence in state institutions.
Diab will probably soon have the distinct misfortune of presiding over the final political, economic and social collapse of Lebanon. While he will be able to find a majority in parliament that can help him shepherd a limited reform programme - the same majority that helped him get the post - he will not be able to mollify the Lebanese public which sees no hope in the current political system.
Simultaneously, his association with Hezbollah is unlikely to raise the regional and international communities' interest in helping his government undertake the radical economic programme the country needs to correct its path forward.
His tenure, however long it will be, will thus be yet another episode of the type of failed governance which the Lebanese people have been protesting against since October.
Perhaps the time has come for Lebanon's current elites to allow for the change demonstrators are demanding: an overhaul of the political and economic systems that can pave the road for a more modern polity and more equitable society.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.
*Imad K HarbImad K Harb is Director of Research and Analysis at Arab Center Washington DC.

Hezbollah-designated prime minister a recipe for increased unrest
Randa Takieddine/Arab News/December 25/2019
Protests in Lebanon continued after the nomination of Hassan Diab, a Sunni former education minister, to be the country’s new prime minister.
His designation by Lebanese President Michel Aoun was contested by protesters and the Sunni community, many of whom continue to insist their demands for an independent prime minister who was never part of a government be upheld.
Diab, who has worked as the American University of Beirut’s (AUB) vice president for regional external programsand as a professor of electricalengineering, was an education minister in the Nagib Mikati government in 2011, which was formed by Hezbollah and the Aounist party after they organized the downfall of Saad Hariri’s government.
Diab boasted in his 134-page bio about “international and national institutions having recognized my achievements as outstanding contributions to the field of education.” He also wrote in his CV: “I was the only AUB professor administrator in the history of AUB to become (a) minister.” Presumably he was unaware of the existence of late writer and journalist Ghassan Tueini, Bassel Fuleihan, who was assassinated alongside late Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, or Ghassan Salame and Jihad Azour, all of whom were both ministers and AUB professors.
His quick designation by Aoun after Hariri refused to head a technocrat government of national unity was the outcome of a brokered deal between Hezbollah and the president’s son in law, Gebran Bassil. Only six Sunni deputies designated him, all close to Hezbollah and Syrian regime allies. Sunni supporters of Hariri, though, took to the streets and protested violently at the nomination.
With the ongoing protests in various cities across Lebanon and with Aoun, Bassil and Hezbollah frustrated, the forming of a government by Diab is going to be near impossible.
Despite calls from Hariri himself for protestors to stand down, the demonstrations turned ugly, and in some cases violent, with the security services targeted by the mob. Many protesters appeared in front of the heavily guarded residence of the new prime minister — demanding an independent prime minister instead. During the parliamentary consultations with various parties, Diab said he would need six to eight weeks to form a government of 20 independent specialists. Many, though, simply do not trust him to follow through when backed by Aoun and Hezbollah.
Hariri’s party, the Future Movement, has said it will not participate in his government. The Lebanese Forces Party headed by Samir Geagea said the same thing. The socialists, headed by Walid Joumblatt, designated former Lebanese Ambassador to the UN Nawaf Salam instead.
It has created a recipe for future confrontation, with Salam a highly respected independent personality who belongs to a prominent Sunni family of politicians (his late uncle, Saeb, and cousinTammam Salam, both held the office of prime minister). Hezbollah has claimed Nawaf is supported by the US — an assertion many flat out refuse to accept as anything other than a smear.
With the ongoing protests in various cities across Lebanon and with Aoun, Bassil and Hezbollah frustrated, the forming of a government by Diab is going to be near impossible. He will not be able to satisfy the people’s demands, nor those of major foreign powers who pledged in Paris under the chairmanship of France to support Lebanon if and when a credible efficient government is formed.  US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs David Hale visited Beirut last week, to stress the same message. But the question is, how credible can a government tailored by this trio be, having failed since 2011 to supply even basic services? After nearly a decade of failure, Lebanon is on the brink of collapse. It needs international support badly — and Diab’s appointment, failing to unite the country, will not lead to that.
*Randa Takieddine is a Paris-based Lebanese journalist who headed Al-Hayat’s bureau in France for 30 years. She has covered France’s relations with the Middle East through the terms of four presidents.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on December 25-26/2019
Pope Francis Ushers in Christmas with Message of 'Unconditional Love'
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/December 25/2019
Pope Francis ushered in Christmas on Wednesday for the world's 1.3 billion Catholics with a message of unconditional love, saying "God continues to love us all, even the worst of us.""You may have mistaken ideas, you may have made a complete mess of things, but the Lord continues to love you," the pontiff told crowds gathered at the Vatican for his Christmas Eve midnight mass. The Argentinian also emphasized "unconditional" love, in a year that has seen the Pope move to combat silence surrounding pedophilia in the Roman Catholic church, which has been rocked by thousands of reports of sexual abuse by priests around the world and accusations of cover-ups by senior clergy. Earlier this month, he removed a Pontifical secrecy rule, which critics said prevented priests and victims from reporting abuse, and in May passed a landmark measure to oblige those who know about sex abuse to report it to their superiors. Francis will at noon on Wednesday give the traditional Christmas Day mass -- his seventh -- addressed to the world in front of St Peter's Square. Meanwhile, thousands of Palestinians and foreigners converged in the biblical town of Bethlehem, revered by Christians as the birthplace of Jesus, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. A few hundred worshipers gathered in the church on the site of Jesus's birth for midnight mass, attended by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas. Hundreds more gathered outside, watching on screens in the crisp air.
'Special greetings' to Gaza
But fewer Christians from the Gaza Strip were in attendance than in previous years, as Israel had granted permits to just around 300 of the some 900 people who applied, said Wadie Abunassar, an adviser to Church leaders in the Holy Land. At midnight bells rang out throughout the town, Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the most senior Roman Catholic official in the Middle East, led hymns and said prayers. tmas all the world looks to us, to Bethlehem," he said. "Special greetings to our brothers and sisters in Gaza, with whom I celebrated Christmas two days ago," he added. Pizzaballa, who had to cross Israel's separation barrier to get from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, said after his arrival that it was a difficult time but there was reason for hope. "We see in this period the weakness of politics, enormous economic problems, unemployment, problems in families," he said. "On the other side, when I visit families, parishes, communities, I see a lot of commitment... for the future. Christmas is for us to celebrate the hope."Earlier on Christmas Eve, a few thousand people watched in the winter sun as Palestinian scouts paraded in front of a giant Christmas tree. "The church is beautiful and it puts what we know in the Bible (in) place," said Laneda, an American tourist visiting the site. "Everything is just very meaningful."French Catholics endured a sad moment as Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris was unable to hold Christmas Eve Mass for the first time since 1803 -- after a fire ravaged its structure in April. In the Philippines, a majority Catholic country, typhoon Phanfone brought a wet and miserable Christmas Day to millions, many of them stranded at shuttered ports or evacuation centers.

Pope Urges World to Ensure Security in Mideast, Syria
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/December 25/2019
Pope Francis on Wednesday urged the world community to strive for peace and security in war-ravaged Syria and the Middle East in his Christmas message. "May Christ bring his light to the many children suffering from war and conflicts in the Middle East," he said in his Urbi and Orbi (To the City and to the World) message. "May he bring comfort to the beloved Syrian people who still see no end to the hostilities that have rent their country over the last decade," he said. "May he inspire governments and the international community to find solutions to allow the peoples of that region to live together in peace and security, and put an end to their sufferings," he said.

Syria missile strike kills 5 pro-Iran fighters: monitor
News Agencies/December 25/2019
BEIRUT: Five pro-Iranian fighters were killed by unidentified missiles on Wednesday evening in Syria’s eastern province of Deir Ezzor, a war monitor said. “Missiles of unidentified origin targeted the headquarters of the 47th Brigade of pro-Iranian militias in the town of Albu Kamal, in the east of Deir Ezzor province, killing five fighters,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Observatory chief Rami Abdul Rahman said drones may have been responsible for the strikes, which caused “loud blasts.”Iran and militias it supports, along with fighters from Iraq and elsewhere, have backed the regime of President Bashar Assad in Syria’s eight-year war. Israel has vowed to prevent its regional arch-rival Iran from gaining a foothold in the country and has carried out hundreds of strikes against Iranian targets. The vast desert province of Deir Ezzor, which neighbors Iraq, hosts several actors in the Syrian conflict besides pro-regime forces. The Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-dominated armed group backed by the United States, was instrumental in destroying the self-declared “caliphate” of the Daesh group. Five pro-Iranian fighters were killed in similar raids on the outskirts of Albu Kamal on December 8, the Observatory said. In September, 28 pro-Iranian fighters including at least 10 Iraqis were killed in similar strikes. The Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah blamed Israel for that attack, quoting a “security source in Syria.”In June 2018, strikes in far eastern Syria were also attributed to Israel by an American official, on condition of anonymity. The Observatory said they killed 55 pro-regime forces. Syria’s complex, multi-faceted conflict has left more than 370,000 people dead and displaced millions since it began in 2011 with anti-government demonstrations that were brutally repressed.

Kochavi: Direct conflict with Iran is improbable. Still, he warned of increased fire power against civilian areas
DebkaFile/December 25/2019
In a wide-ranging lecture on Wednesday, Dec. 25, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi said: “Although a direct conflict with Iran is unlikely, we are prepared without encouraging it.” Calling Iran Israel’s immediate enemy, the general said, “We must continue our efforts to remove Iranian weaponry from Syria, although we would have preferred not to conduct this effort on our own.”Speaking at an event in Tel Aviv, Kochavi commented that when technology is readily available to extremists and bitter enemies, they don’t need the support of a large military industry or a superpower for jamming GPS systems or cyberwarfare. Missiles are easily adapted to precision guidance and “we [Israel and the IDF] are engaged in a huge effort to prevent our enemies from acquiring this capability, even if at times, we reach the brink of direct conflict.”
Iran continues to manufacture precise missiles that can reach Israel in their hundreds. The IDF chief advised the country to prepare “mentally” for a much greater assault on civilian areas than faced in the past. In a message to the population, Kochavi said: “Israel is a phenomenal success and the armed forces’ primary mission is to assure the country of security and defense,” in their broadest sense, namely, “a high measure of safety, stability and the absence of wars.” He cited “our ultimate goal” as being “to instill in our enemies the feeling of despair and self-doubt in their ability to achieve their aggressive aims.”
The military chief stressed: “Weapons are flowing freely from Iraq and we can’t let this happen unopposed,” he said. “All the hostile fronts ranged against us have become active in recent months – each escalating at least twice to war alert levels. Al Qods and Hizballah forces operate in Syria and Iran has shot its tentacles into the Gaza Strip. In these circumstances secret Israeli ongoing operations aimed at preventing Shiite militia entrenchment in Syria and the threat from precise missiles are of paramount importance and will persist.”
Referring to the years’ long Palestinian terrorist threat from Gaza, Kochavi stressed that every effort will be made to imbue in the targeted Israeli population a sense of security – but, he said, that sense must depend on achieving real security. “Hamas is finally focusing on caring for the enclave’s population and is anxious to avoid escalating tension, said the military chief. “The last rash of rocket attacks were the work of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, whose leader Baha Abu al-Ata is now dead. [He was killed on Nov. 12 in an IDF targeted assassination.] Since Hamas has regained control of the Gaza Strip, backed by Egypt, Israel can afford to lift some of the restrictions imposed [on a territory dedicated to terrorism], while placing the security of Israelis along the border at the top of its scale of priorities. “This is government policy and I support it fully. I believe it can bring calm to the area” Kochavi said.

Displaced Syrian Grows Mushrooms to Feed Family
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/December 25/2019
In a camp for the displaced in northern Syria, Nasrallah scatters mushroom spores into a bag of wet hay, hoping they will sprout and feed his family. "Mushrooms have become the main alternative to meat, as it's so expensive," says the 43-year-old. After the civil war erupted in Syria eight years ago, Nasrallah started growing the fungi in his home province of Hama. "We'd eat some, give some away to friends," explains the father of three, who used to work for the local council in the town of Qalaat al-Madiq. But earlier this year, increased regime bombardment on the Hama region forced his family to flee north towards the Turkish border. They found refuge in a camp in the town of Haarem in the northwestern province of Idlib, but jobs there are scarce. With money tight to support his wife and children, he planted some mushrooms. "We eat some and we sell a little to provide for ourselves," he says. Before planting the fungi, Nasrallah sterilizes hay by stirring it in boiling water over a wood fire. He then layers the wet straw into a bag, sprinkling five to ten grams of mushroom spores between each coating. Sealing the bag with a tight knot, he lugs it into a dark, warm room and leaves it for around 20 days. Once the bag has turned white, he transfers it to a slightly brighter room, opens it up, and mists the top regularly until mushrooms sprout out. "Not many people grow mushrooms, though people -- especially in camps -- are increasingly turning to them," he says.
'Can't afford them'
Mushrooms are commonly viewed as an alternative to meat in dishes, although they are different in nutritional value. They contain far less protein, but more minerals and vitamins. Syrians in other parts of the country have also grown them during the war, most notably in the Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta when it was under a five-year government siege. Around 6.5 million people in Syria are food insecure, or lack access to sufficient nutritious food. Many of them have been displaced from their homes by the conflict, the World Food Program says. Today, Nasrallah buys a kilo of spores from Turkey for the equivalent of $10, hoping they will generate 20 kilos of food. But he spreads out his yield, picking no more than five kilos a week. Each kilo sells for a little under the equivalent of $3, far less than the average $13 per kilo for meat. Inside the brighter cultivation room, his nine-year-old son, Saeed, watches as Nasrallah carves off a huge sprout of creamy oyster mushrooms from a sack. In the street outside, 65-year-old Umm Khaled takes a quick look at the merchandise and picks it up for a few bank notes. Inside her modest mudbrick home, she chops the mushrooms up and cooks them over a camping stove with some onions and ghee. "To be honest, chicken and meat are better, but we can't afford them," says the elderly woman, who cooks for her son and grandchildren. Gathering around the dishes, she and her family rip up flat bread and dip it into the vegetables instead.

Algeria Starts Funeral of Army Chief Gaid Salah
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/December 25/2019
The funeral of Algeria's powerful army chief Ahmed Gaid Salah got underway Wednesday as his remains arrived at the People's Palace, images broadcast by state TV showed. The wooden coffin containing the body of Gaid Salah, who died of a heart attack on Monday aged 79, arrived at 0630 GMT, covered in a national flag and carried by officers. Surrounded by large numbers of motorbike outriders, the funeral procession converged on the palace, which was built in the 18th century for Ottoman governors. Gaid Salah became the country's de facto strongman after longtime president Abdelaziz Bouteflika was forced to step down in the face of huge street protests in April. Interim military chief of staff Said Chengriha was in attendance, while President Abdelmadjid Tebboune arrived a little after the procession.  Tebboune won a December 12 presidential election with 58.1 percent of the vote on a turnout of less than 40 percent, according to official results, in a poll dismissed by protesters as a ploy by Gaid Salah and other establishment figures to consolidate their power. After his win, Tebboune awarded Gaid Salah the National Order of Merit, Algeria's highest honor. After the general's death he announced three days of national mourning. Images broadcast by several TV stations showed a crowd massed at the gates of the palace to pay their final respects to Gaid Salah, who served as army chief for 15 years. The religious affairs ministry asked imams to lead prayers in Gaid Salah's memory on Wednesday. He was due to be buried shortly after 1200 GMT in Martyrs' Square in Al-Alia cemetery, where former presidents and other major Algerian figures are laid to rest.

Iraqi City in Turmoil after Activist's Death
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/December 25/2019
Hundreds of anti-government protesters marched Wednesday in southern Iraq to mourn a dead activist after a night during which the headquarters of two pro-Iran militias were set on fire, an AFP correspondent reported. The demonstrators oppose the political class that has run the oil-rich yet poverty-hit country since a 2003 US-led invasion overthrew dictator Saddam Hussein. They accuse leaders of enriching themselves and of being beholden to neighbor Iran. Thaer al-Tayeb, a prominent activist from the city of Diwaniya, went to Baghdad's Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the unprecedented revolt shaking Iraq, when the rallies started nearly three months ago.  A suspicious explosion hit Tayeb's car on December 15, badly wounding him and fellow activist Ali al-Madani, back in Tayeb's hometown 200 kilometers (125 miles) south of Baghdad. After Tayeb's death in hospital was announced Tuesday, crowds of demonstrators rushed to the two local headquarters of pro-Iran militias and torched them. First they set fire to the building of the powerful Badr organisation, run by the parliamentary head of the pro-Iran paramilitaries, Hadi al-Ameri. Then they torched the headquarters of Assaib Ahl al-Haq, a group whose head Qais al-Khazali is subject to sanctions by the United States, accused of "kidnapping, murder and torture". Protesters also blocked roads with burning car tires in the southern city of Basra. Around 460 protesters have been killed since the start of the demonstrations in early October and 25,000 have been wounded.
Rallies have continued despite a campaign of intimidation that has included targeted killings and abductions of activists, which the United Nations blames on militias. After dwindling in recent weeks following a string of killings, the protest campaign has rediscovered its vigor at a time when political factions are wrangling over a replacement for outgoing premier Adel Abdel Mahdi. He quit in November in the face of the massive protests, and negotiations to fill his post have remained deadlocked since the latest in a series of deadlines expired at midnight on Sunday.

Libya War Leaves Thousands Homeless in Tripoli
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/December 25/2019
Layla Mohammed barely had time to gather her children's belongings before fleeing their southern Tripoli home when shelling targeted the Libyan capital's outskirts earlier this year. For months she moved her family between apartments as soaring rents in the crowded city exhausted her savings, eventually leaving them squatting in an unfinished building alongside dozens of other families. More than 140,000 Libyans like Mohammed have fled their homes since April, when forces loyal to eastern-based strongman Khalifa Haftar launched an assault on Tripoli, seat of the U.N.-recognized government.
In central Tripoli, the grey skeletons of a highrise construction site -- abandoned since 2008 due to a property dispute -- now host more than 170 families. For some, the high rises in Tarik al-Sekka were "a gift from heaven", since the alternative was living in the street. But "we live like animals -- without running water, electricity, or even sewerage," said Mohammed, a mother of seven. Her youngest son is sick with a chronic respiratory illness. "The dust will kill him," Mohammed despaired."All we want is to live in dignity," she said.Neighbour Samira crowds her four children into a single room in a nearby building, preferring the greater warmth it affords over any sense of privacy. She feels safe in the eight square meter room, which thanks to a benefactor has a door and a window. "Even if it's not ideal, at least it's free," she said. Initially, Samira was determined to stay in her southern Tripoli home, even as combat crept closer over the months. But when a rocket fell near her house the terror became too much and she fled, she said.
'Breaks my heart'
The buildings sheltering Samira and Mohammed are just meters from the seat of the Government of National Accord (GNA). But authorities have done little to help. Mayssoun al-Diab is in charge of displacement issues for the GNA's crisis committee but admits "the government has offered them nothing, not even moral support."According to her, the government was unable to find shelter for all the displaced, leaving many at the mercy of avaricious lenders. Her committee requisitioned schools, public buildings and hotels to house the displaced, but faced with an ever-growing influx as the battle dragged on, more and more families found themselves homeless. When school resumed, the situation got worse. After living for months in one Tripoli school, Khairi al-Doukali said his family was "evicted alongside dozens of other families" to allow classes to restart. Eventually, the Doukali family also ended up on the Tarik al-Sekka building site. In the face of government inaction, civic-minded Tripoli residents have responded to heartfelt pleas online and stepped in to help. Every day people give food, clothing and blankets, according to Salem el-Chatti, a member of a neighborhood support group.
"We try to distribute donated items in a fair manner," he said. A man named Abdel-Atti arrives to donate a mattress and blankets. "I pass by these buildings every day," he said. "It breaks my heart that my kids are fed and sleep warm inside while our brothers are experiencing this tragedy."

Iran Warplane Crashes near Dormant Volcano
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/December 25/2019
An Iranian military fighter jet crashed on Wednesday near a dormant volcano in the northwest of the country and its pilot was missing, official media reported. State news agency IRNA said the jet went down at 9:00 am (0530 GMT) near Mount Sabalan, in the Lesser Caucasus range, and was a MiG-29 on a test flight after being overhauled. Amateur video footage published on the social media accounts of various media outlets in Iran appeared to show smoke rising above snow-capped peaks. Fars news agency said the plane had been found but there was no trace of its pilot and that he could have ejected from the aircraft. A search and rescue operation was underway for the pilot, who the army identified as Colonel Mohammadreza Rahmani, one of its most experienced fliers. "Following the crash of a military plane in Ardabil (province), helicopter and rescue groups have been sent to the region," Iran's Red Crescent said in a statement on its website. The official website of the army said search and rescue efforts had been hampered by bad weather, with snow making areas impassable. Iran's third highest peak, Mount Sabalan, features a crater that turns into a lake at certain times of the year.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on December 25-26/2019
IDF preparing for confrontation with Iran - Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi
Anna Ahronhem/Jerusalem Post/December 25/2019
Lt.-Gen. Kochavi acknowledges in public for the first time that Israel has struck Iranian targets in Iraq.
The IDF is preparing for a limited confrontation with the Islamic Republic as Israel continues to act against Iranian entrenchment, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi warned Wednesday morning.
“There is a possibility that we will face a limited confrontation with Iran and we are preparing for it,” Kochavi said at a conference in honor of former IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Amnon Lipkin-Shahak at the IDC Interdisciplinary Center in Herzilya.
“We will continue to act and responsibly,” Israel’s top military officer said, adding that it would have been better had Israel not been the only one engaged in the effort to stop Iran.
The IDF he said, is carrying out operations both publicly and below the radar, to prevent the enemy from obtaining precision missiles, even if those operations bring about a confrontation.
“We will not allow Iran to entrench itself in Syria, or in Iraq,” Kochavi said, publicly acknowledging for the first time that Israel’s Air Force has attacked against Iranian targets in Iraq.
"Iraq is undergoing a civil war, when the Quds Force is operating there on a daily basis, when the country itself has turned into an ungoverned area. Advanced weapons are being smuggled by the Quds Force in Iraq on a monthly basis and we can’t allow that,” he said.
According to Kochavi, there’s been a change in threats, will all fronts active in trying to carry out terror or rocket attacks against Israel.
“It wasn’t always like that,” he said, pointing to years of relative quiet from Lebanon and Syria. But over the last few months there were many instances where there were warnings of immediate threats to Israel that the military had to contend with.
And while over the years, Iran wasn’t regarded as an immediate threat, it’s transformed into “an enemy that we can see and that we deal with,” Kochavi said, adding that Israel’s “ultimate goal is to instill in our enemies the feeling of despair and doubt in their ability to achieve their aggressive aims.”
According to the chief of staff, Iran is more active in the Middle East against Gulf states where they are able to strike “without retaliation, without response, without deterrence. But we do respond.”
Iran continues to produce missiles that can reach our territory, Kochavi said, explaining that the Iranian military industry is much larger than all the military industries of Israel combined allowing for them to produce more precise and long range rockets to threaten the Israeli homefront.
In addition, Quds forces in Syria as well as Hezbollah have spectrum barriers and advanced anti-aircraft missiles which can threaten Israeli jets, which nonetheless continue to have freedom of operation across the Middle East.
According to the chief of staff, while war is a solution to be used after all diplomatic solutions have been exhausted, “in the next war, be it with the north or with Gaza, the intensity of enemy firepower will be great.”
"There can be no war without casualties and I cannot not guarantee a short war,” he said. “We will need national resilience.”
“I’m looking at everyone in the eye, it will be intense. We have to prepare for that. We have to prepare for that militarily, on the homefront, and mentally,” Kochavi warned.
And In the next war the IDF will strike urban areas belonging to the enemy intensely after warning civilians to leave.
“It’s the enemy that chose that,” he said. “We will strike hard, including the infrastructure of the country that allows the terror group to act against Israel. Know that the responsibility belongs to the government of Lebanon, Syria and Hamas.”
Despite the increased number of threats, none of Israel’s enemies want war due to the IDF willingness to act, Kochavi stated, adding that an opportunity has risen in the south with the Gaza Strip to improve the humanitarian conditions of civilians.
"I recognize a unique opportunity in Gaza. There is a strong will not to bring about an escalation of tensions on the part of Hamas and it was Islamic Jihad under the leadership of its now-dead commander Baha Abu al-Ata that were responsible for the vast majority of attacks on Israel in the past year.”
Hamas, he said, wants to improve the welfare of its citizens and Israel is “in the process of assisting the Egyptians within which we will facilitate civilian relief. This is the policy of the Israeli government and I support it.”
But, the opportunity is fragile and it cannot be forgotten that Hamas is still holding the bodies of fallen IDF soldiers Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin.
"We have to return them home, not just the security concerns of the State of Israel," he said.

UN, UK Treating Persecuted Christians as “Enemies”
ريموند إبراهيم: الأمم المتحدة وبريطانيا يعاملان المضطهدين المسيحيين كأعداء
Raymond Ibrahim/Gatestone Institute/December 25/2019
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/81762/raymond-ibrahim-un-uk-treating-persecuted-christians-as-enemies-%d8%b1%d9%8a%d9%85%d9%88%d9%86%d8%af-%d8%a5%d8%a8%d8%b1%d8%a7%d9%87%d9%8a%d9%85-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a3%d9%85%d9%85-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%85/
“You have this absurd situation where the scheme is set up to help Syrian refugees and the people most in need, Christians who have been ‘genocided,’ they can’t even get into the U.N. camps to get the food. If you enter and say I am a Christian or convert, the Muslim U.N. guards will block you [from] getting in… and even threaten you…” — Paul Diamond, British Human Rights Lawyer, CBN News, December 4, 2019.
Lord George Carey is suing the UK Home Office for allegedly being “institutionally biased” against Christian refugees and therefore complicit in what he calls “the steady crucifixion of Middle East Christians.”
When it comes to offering asylum, the UK “appears to discriminate in favour of Muslims” instead of Christians. Statistics seemed to confirm this allegation: “out of 4,850 Syrian refugees accepted for resettlement by the Home Office in 2017, only eleven were Christian….” — Barnabas Fund, November 2, 2017.
A number of other Christian orderlies were also denied visas, including another nun with a PhD in biblical theology from Oxford; another nun denied for not having a personal bank account; and a Catholic priest denied for not being married.
Christian “infidels” need not apply, but radical Muslims are welcomed with open arms.
When three Christian archbishops from Syria were invited in 2016 to attend the consecration of the UK’s first Syriac Orthodox Cathedral (an event attended by Prince Charles), Britain’s Home Office not only denied entry to them, but also mockingly told them there was “no room at the inn.” Pictured: St Thomas, Britain’s first Syriac Orthodox Cathedral. (Image source: John Salmon/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 2.0)
The United Nations Refugee Agency appears to be committed to blocking persecuted Christians from receiving any assistance. According to a recent CBN News report:
Christian Syrian refugees … have been blocked from getting help from the United Nations Refugee Agency, the UNHCR, by Muslim UN officials in Jordan.
One of the refugees, Hasan, a Syrian convert to Christianity, told us in a phone call that Muslim UN camp officials “knew that we were Muslims and became Christians and they dealt with us with persecution and mockery. They didn’t let us into the office. They ignored our request.”
Hasan and his family are now in hiding, afraid that they will be arrested by Jordanian police, or even killed. Converting to Christianity is a serious crime in Jordan.
According to Timothy, a Jordanian Muslim who converted to Christianity, “All of the United Nations officials [apparently in Jordan], most of them, 99 percent, they are Muslims, and they were treating us as enemies.”
Addressing this issue, Paul Diamond, a British human rights lawyer, recently elaborated:
“You have this absurd situation where the scheme is set up to help Syrian refugees and the people most in need, Christians who have been “genocided,” they can’t even get into the U.N. camps to get the food. If you enter and say I am a Christian or convert, the Muslim U.N. guards will block you [from] getting in and laugh at you and mock you and even threaten you…. Sunni Muslim officials have blocked the way. They’ve laughed at them, threatened them, said ‘You shouldn’t have converted. You’re an idiot for converting. You get what you get,’ words to that effect.”
The next obstacle facing those few Christians who make it past UN refugee camps are the immigration centers of Western nations themselves. The discrimination is apparently so obvious in the United Kingdom that Lord George Carey is suing the UK Home Office for allegedly being “institutionally biased” against Christian refugees and therefore complicit in what he calls “the steady crucifixion of Middle East Christians.”
He is hardly the only one making such charges. One independent report said that when it comes to offering asylum, the UK “appears to discriminate in favour of Muslims” instead of Christians. Statistics seemed to confirm this allegation: “out of 4,850 Syrian refugees accepted for resettlement by the Home Office in 2017, only eleven were Christian, representing just 0.2% of all Syrian refugees accepted by the UK.”
Due to such figures, Lord David Alton of Liverpool, a life peer in the House of Lords, wrote to Home Secretary Sajid Javid, who then headed the Home Office:
It is widely accepted that Christians, who constituted around 10 per cent of Syria’s pre-war population, were specifically targeted by jihadi rebels and continue to be at risk…. As last year’s statistics more than amply demonstrate, this [ratio imbalance between Muslim and Christian refugees taken in] is not a statistical blip. It shows a pattern of discrimination that the Government has a legal duty to take concrete steps to address.
Such imbalances appear even stranger on the realization that the Islamic State, which precipitated the refugee crisis, is itself a Sunni organization that only targets non-Sunnis— primarily Christians, Yazidis, and Shia — all minority groups that the U.S. has acknowledged experienced a “genocide.”
Two of the strangest individual cases of anti-Christian bias were reported earlier this year, when the UK denied asylum to persecuted Christians by bizarrely citing the Bible and Islam. Both Christians, a man and a woman, were former Muslims separately seeking asylum from the Islamic Republic of Iran, the ninth-worst persecutor of Christians, particularly former Muslims.
In his rejection letter from the UK’s Home Office, the Iranian man was told that several biblical passages were “inconsistent” with his claim to have converted to Christianity after discovering it was a “peaceful” faith. The letter cited biblical excerpts — including from Exodus, Leviticus, and Matthew — as supposed proof that the Bible is violent; it said Revelation was “filled with imagery of revenge, destruction, death and violence.” The rejection letter then concluded:
“These examples are inconsistent with your claim that you converted to Christianity after discovering it is a ‘peaceful’ religion, as opposed to Islam which contains violence, rage and revenge.”
In the second case, an Iranian female asylum seeker was sarcastically informed in her rejection letter:
“You affirmed in your AIR [Asylum Interview Record] that Jesus is your saviour, but then claimed that He would not be able to save you from the Iranian regime. It is therefore considered that you have no conviction in your faith and your belief in Jesus is half-hearted.”
Discussing her experiences, the rejected woman said:
“When I was in Iran I converted to Christianity and the situation changed and the government were [sic] looking for me and I had to flee from Iran…. in my country if someone converts to Christianity their punishment is death or execution.”
Concerning the asylum process, the woman said that whenever she responded to her Home Office interviewer, “he was either chuckling or maybe just kind of mocking when he was talking to me. For instance he asked me why Jesus didn’t help you from the Iranian regime or Iranian authorities.”
Similarly, when Sister Ban Madleen, a Christian nun who was chased out of Iraq by the Islamic State, wanted to visit her sick sister in the UK, she was denied a visa — twice. A number of other Christian orderlies were also denied visas, including another nun with a PhD in biblical theology from Oxford; another nun denied for not having a personal bank account; and a Catholic priest denied for not being married.
In another case, Britain’s Home Office not only denied entry to three Christian leaders — archbishops celebrated for their heroic efforts to aid persecuted Christians in Syria and Iraq who had been invited to attend the consecration of the UK’s first Syriac Orthodox Cathedral, an event attended by Prince Charles — but also mockingly told them there was “no room at the inn.”
Considering that persecuted Christian minorities — including priests and nuns — are denied visas, one may conclude that Britain’s Home Office is extremely stringent concerning its asylum requirements. However, this notion is quickly dispelled on the realization that the Home Office regularly grants visas and refugee status to extremist Muslims — not to mention that one has yet to hear about Muslim asylum seekers being denied because the Koran is too violent, or because they do not have enough faith in Muhammad.
For instance, despite having no papers on him — and despite telling the Home Office that “he had been trained as an ISIS soldier” — Ahmed Hassan was still granted asylum two years before he launched a terrorist attack on a London train station that left 30 injured in September 2017. The Home Office also allowed a foreign Muslim cleric to enter and lecture in London, even though he advocates decapitating, burning, and/or throwing homosexuals from cliffs. According to another report, “British teenagers are being forced to marry abroad and are raped and impregnated while the Home Office ‘turns a blind eye’ by handing visas to their [mostly Muslim] husbands.”
The case of Asia Bibi — a Christian wife and mother of five who spent the last decade of her life on death row in Pakistan for challenging the authority of Muhammad — best sheds light on the immigration situation in the UK. After she was finally acquitted in November 2018, Muslims rioted throughout Pakistan; in one demonstration, more than 11,000 Muslims demanded her immediate public hanging.
As Pakistanis make for the majority of the UK’s significant Muslim population — Sajid Javid, then head of the Home Office, is himself Pakistani — when they got wind that the UK might offer Bibi asylum, they too rioted. As a result, then Prime Minister Theresa May personally blocked Bibi’s asylum application, “despite UK playing host to [Muslim] hijackers, extremists and rapists,” to quote from one headline. In other words, the Britain was openly allowing “asylum policy to be dictated to by a Pakistan mob,” reported the Guardian, “after it was confirmed it urged the Home Office not to grant Asia Bibi political asylum in the UK…”
At the same time, however, the Home Office allowed a Pakistani cleric who celebrated the slaughter of a politician because he had defended Asia Bibi — a cleric deemed so extreme as to be banned from his native Pakistan — to enter the UK and lecture in mosques.
Discussing how “visas were granted [by the Home Office] in July [2016] to two Pakistani Islamic leaders who have called for the killing of Christians accused of blasphemy,” Dr. Martin Parsons, a human rights activist, expressed his frustration: “It’s unbelievable that these persecuted Christians who come from the cradle of Christianity are being told there is no room at the inn, when the UK is offering a welcome to Islamists who persecute Christians.”
In short, Muslim influence against Christians is not only at work in UN refugee camps, as recent evidence indicates, but in the UK’s immigration policy as well: Christian “infidels” need not apply, but radical Muslims are welcomed with open arms.
*Raymond Ibrahim, author of the new book, Sword and Scimitar, Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
© 2019 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

Democrats Debate Whether Trump Has Been Impeached
Alan M. Dershowitz/Gatestone Institute/December 24/ 2019
Under Laurence Tribe's scenario, the House Democrats get to "obstruct" the Senate and "abuse" their power (to borrow terms from the articles of impeachment).
I believe that the Senate need not wait for articles of impeachment to be transmitted. Senators are empowered by the constitution to begin a trial now — with or without further action by the House. Just as the House has the "sole power of impeachment," so too the Senate has the "sole power to try all impeachments."
Tribe and the Democratic House majority, led by Speaker Pelosi, want to have their constitutional cake and eat it too: they want Trump impeached but not acquitted. Sorry, but the Constitution does not permit that partisan, result-oriented ploy. Either Trump has been impeached and is entitled to a Senate trial; or he has not been impeached and is entitled to a clean slate.
So there are only two constitutionally viable alternatives: either Pelosi must announce that Trump has not been impeached; or the Senate must initiate a trial. Preserving the status quo indefinitely — Trump remaining impeached without having a trial — is unconstitutional and should not be tolerated by the American people.
Pictured: Speaker Nancy Pelosi presides over the House of Representatives vote on the second article of impeachment of President Donald Trump, on December 18.
Speaker Pelosi's unconstitutional decision to delay transmission of the articles of impeachment to the Senate in order to gain partisan advantage raises the following question: has President Trump been impeached, or did the House vote merely represent an authorization or intention to impeach — which becomes an actual impeachment only when the articles are transmitted?
This highly technical constitutional issue is being debated by two of my former Harvard Law School colleagues — Professors Laurence Tribe and Noah Feldman — both liberal Democrats who support President Trump's impeachment.
Tribe believes that Trump has been impeached and that it would be perfectly proper to leave it at that: by declining to transmit the articles of impeachment, the Democrats get a win-win. President Trump remains impeached but he gets no opportunity to be tried and acquitted by the Senate. This cynical, partisan ploy is acceptable to Tribe because it brings about the partisan result he prefers: Trump bears forever the stigma of impeachment without having the opportunity to challenge that stigma by a Senate acquittal. Under the Tribe scenario, the House Democrats get to "obstruct" the Senate and "abuse" their power (to borrow terms from the articles of impeachment).
Feldman disagrees with Tribe, arguing — quite correctly — that impeachment and a removal trial go together. If a president is impeached, he must be tried. Impeachment, in his view, is not merely a vote; it is the first step in a constitutionally mandated two-step process. He goes so far as to say that if the articles of impeachment are not forwarded to the Senate for trial, there has been no valid impeachment.
In my opinion, both of my colleagues are wrong, though Feldman's approach is more consistent with the structure of the Constitution and the intent of its Framers. I believe that the Senate need not wait for articles of impeachment to be transmitted. Senators are empowered by the constitution to begin a trial now— with or without further action by the House.
Just as the House has the "sole power of impeachment," so too the Senate has the "sole power to try all impeachments." The Senate can make its own rules (as long as they are consistent with the constitution) and establish its own timetables.
The only possible rejoinder to this constitutional verity is the argument put forward by Feldman that the House has not yet concluded the process of impeachment, and so the Senate has no jurisdiction to proceed to trial. What follows from that argument is the conclusion — utterly unacceptable to Tribe — that President Trump has not been impeached and if the articles are never transmitted he will not go down in history as the third president to be impeached, because the House never completed the necessary process by sending the articles to the senate.
Tribe and the Democratic House majority, led by Speaker Pelosi, want to have their constitutional cake and eat it too: they want Trump impeached but not acquitted. Sorry, but the Constitution does not permit that partisan, result-oriented ploy. Either Trump has been impeached and is entitled to a Senate trial; or he has not been impeached and is entitled to a clean slate.
My own view is that in the public eye, President Trump has been impeached by a partisan vote and he is now entitled to be acquitted, even if the Senate vote is as partisan as the House vote. The partisans who voted his impeachment along party lines in the House, have no principled argument against a party-line acquittal. The Democrats devised the partisan rules of engagement in the House. They can't suddenly demand a change in those rules because they are a minority in the Senate.
So there are only two constitutionally viable alternatives: either Pelosi must announce that Trump has not been impeached; or the Senate must initiate a trial. Preserving the status quo indefinitely — Trump remaining impeached without having a trial —is unconstitutional and should not be tolerated by the American people.
*Alan M. Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law Emeritus at Harvard Law School and author of the forthcoming book, Guilt by Accusation: The Challenge of Proving Innocence in the Age of #MeToo, Skyhorse publishing, November 2019.
A shorter and somewhat different version of this op-ed appeared in the Wall Street Journal.
© 2019 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

We Want A Nation: Notes On The Middle East's Revolutions
Alberto M. Fernandez/MEMRI/December 25/2019
2019 saw popular demonstrations and violent regime repression against these protests from North Africa to Iraq. In contrast to what usually is covered in the Western media, these protests were not about the United States or President Trump or Israel or Salafi-Jihadist terrorism. It was almost as if some of the principal issues that usually mobilize Western punditry were beside the point. The turmoil upended two tired nostrums favored by the Western Left and Right – that it is always about the misdeeds of the United States and Israel and that the Middle East "street" does not matter.
Significant public turmoil broke out in five Arabic-speaking majority countries: Sudan, Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, and Lebanon. All of these protests shared certain surface similarities: anger at corruption, poor governance, economic deprivation, and political exclusion. While these events were driven by broadly similar frustrations, they each had their very specific local flavor and tangible results have varied widely.
Demonstrations in Sudan, begun in December 2018 in response to dire economic conditions, eventually led to the end of the almost 30-year-old rule of President Omar al-Bashir. Sudan's revolution is the best of the 2019 bunch so far in terms of actual change. Not much changed on the surface in Algeria and Egypt.
The turmoil in Sudan, Algeria and Egypt differed from the other two Arab states. They had a purely domestic, internal orientation. When Sudan's warlord Hemedti or Algeria's generals decided to take action, they did not have to appease or break with a foreign master. To a certain extent, change was easier in places ruled, truly ruled, by local tyrants reacting solely to local realities and power structures. In Iraq and Lebanon, protesters would face a different challenge.
Shaking The Bars Of The Iranian Cage
Those two countries are part of Iran's sphere of control for years. Iran (which implemented an especially brutal repression of its own demonstrators in 2019) has spent decades now investing in coopting the ruling political class, the media, and creating its own military proxies in both countries. This was not done for the sake of good governance but to advance Iran's regional aspirations. The priorities were clear: a Lebanon which cannot pay its debts is also awash in tens of thousands of advanced missiles provided by Iran to Hezbollah for the next round of war against Israel. Iraq’s domestic industry and agriculture is subservient to Iran's need for money laundering and hard currency.
Like Sudan, Iraq is a country that has had many demonstrations in the past few years, and the protests that began in October 2019 overlapped to a degree with those of summer 2018 – anger at corruption, lack of government services, and lack of jobs. Both also shared largely (and mostly peaceful) Iraqi Shia participants and an undercurrent of violence between rival Shia militias. The Tishreen Revolution continues and succeeded on November 29 in getting Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul Mahdi to agree to resign (he remains in power until a successor is chosen). It only took more than 400 dead and 20,000 wounded at the hands of security forces and pro-Iranian militias.
The demonstrations placed certain interesting realities in Iraq in sharp relief. Iranian power in Iraq is omnipresent and pernicious but also under siege. Iranian-controlled militias have reliably been accused of multiple kidnappings, shootings and stabbings attacks against demonstrators and civil society. Yet while the overwhelming bulk of demonstrators were peaceful and joyful, the headquarters of Shia Islamist parties and pro-Iranian militias were sacked in much of Southern Iraq (some of this had also occurred in 2018) as Sadrists fought and slaughtered rival militiamen.
One widely circulated video clip showed notorious militia leader Qais al-Khazali threaten the United States, Israel, and US-funded Al-Hurra television for supposedly organizing the demonstrations. But al-Khazali’s remarks came at the funeral of one of his militia leaders who had been literally torn apart, taken from an ambulance and killed. There is real, unfeigned hatred by many Iraqis for this predatory militia class that has so much innocent blood on its hands.
One Iraqi Shia commentator recently told me that the surprising thing is how little all that Iranian influence has bought among Iraq's population (as opposed to its ruling elite). "There is little cultural closeness, affection or affinity. You are more likely to find an Iranian restaurant in Dubai than you are in Southern Iraq. Farsi speakers among ordinary people are limited to those involved in the pilgrim trade. There are Iranian agents and agreements everywhere but also deep resentment."
Iran's reign in the Iraqi media space ostensibly looks dominant with dozens of media outlets and an aggressive "electronic army" at their service. Not only have demonstrators been killed by snipers, shot in the head with gas grenades, stabbed by militiamen, and disappeared by death squads. They have been subjected to a steady campaign of defamation by the state controlled media and by pro-Iranian outlets and advocates, calling demonstrators "Saddam's gypsies," exaggerating or fabricating instances of mob violence and inferring that the demonstrators are morally corrupt.
And yet the protests remain, buoyed by the resilient and creative spirit of Iraqi youth. These are youth who are both desperate and hopeful, naïve and leaderless, and yet brave and idealistic. They have lasted far longer than many expected. Repression should have been easy. The state is heavily armed and well-funded by oil revenues. Ruthless Iranian proxies are ubiquitous in Iraq. Media outlets seen as sympathetic with the demonstrators have been attacked or silenced while those that defame them do so with impunity.
With the exception of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani – an essential and honorable exception – many national Iraqi leaders, members of a corrupt and privileged political class, mildly praised demonstrators initially and then moved to either demonize or subvert the protests. Deadly provocations against Iraq's protestors continue unabated and yet a new culture of popular, peaceful civic resistance has been born on Iraq's streets that has proven to be far more resilient than many experts expected.
This type of steadfastness has also been on display in Lebanon's demonstrations that broke out on October 17. Like Iraq and Sudan, demonstrations are nothing new in Lebanon and these were ostensibly triggered by the threat of additional taxes on already heavily burdened Lebanese citizens. Lebanese demonstrators transcended religious sect and displayed much of the same youthful enthusiasm and creativity seen elsewhere. Demonstrators brought about the resignation of Prime Minister Hariri's government and vague promises of reform within two weeks and without the body count seen in Iraq.
But the responses from the Lebanese authorities to demonstrators betray similarities with those seen in other countries. An initial patronizing approval gave way to irritation and then anger that the protesters were not satisfied with whatever crumbs and vague promises were offered. Hezbollah made a special effort to squelch unrest among its own Shia demographic with some success while playing the sectarian card against others. Pressure, violence and defamation was brought to bear on remaining protests in an attempt to silence them. The protests continue even as Lebanon tries to form a government keep the same crowd in control while ostensibly trying to pacify the masses and secure enough funding from the CEDRE process to delay economic collapse while making as little change as possible at the top.
Can A Distracted America Be A Subversive Force For Good?
What can we learn about these demonstrations and what do they teach us about Trump Administration foreign policy in the Middle East?
These protests are not unique to the Middle East, we see them from Latin America to Europe to East Asia. But there is no region on the globe as buffeted by the combination of poor governance and lack of freedom. That much maligned Middle East "Freedom Deficit" is very real. Adding climate change and population growth to the mix has only made things worse. It is quite likely that a regional feedback loop of oppression, incompetence, desperation and revolt will be the new normal.
Secondly, with the partial exception of Sudan, the old regimes are for now "winning," holding on and buying time, learning from the turmoil of the Arab Spring and seeking to forge new chains, new technical tools and tactics of repression. The people resist as much as they can against what on paper seem hopeless odds. The protests in Iraq and Lebanon were not directed squarely at Iranian hegemony – the political systems and corrupt elites in both countries were not created by the Iranians. But protests have over time become more about Iran and Hezbollah as Tehran’s hold on political elites becomes publicly more blatant.
Kleptocracy and rampant corruption in both countries was not created by Iran but today directly subsidizes Tehran's hegemony. The system has to subsidize not only local kleptocrats, as was done in places like Sudan and Tunisia in the past, but pay for the upkeep of their Iranian-connected jailers. This is the Iranian Supreme Leader's version of the Brezhnev Doctrine, what they have, they will hold at all costs. But preferably in Lebanese Lira, Iraqi Dinars, and US Dollars.
The stakes are very high. Iran's dominion over Lebanon and Iraq is very valuable. While Lebanon faces economic disaster that could loosen Iran's chokehold on that country, the situation in Iraq could be even more dangerous. This is a largely Iraqi Shia uprising, channeling both Iraqi nationalist sentiment and religious feeling not only independent of, but opposed to, Iran's continued hegemony. This is a potentially a deadly new front in opposition to Iran's leadership aspirations.
Despite the feverish ravings of pro-Iran propagandists, Washington (and Israel and Saudi Arabia) did not create or fund the protest movements in Beirut and Baghdad. But there is much the United States can do to both turn events to our advantage and provide succor to demonstrators who are bravely standing up not for America, but for their own values and causes that are not in conflict with our interests.
Certainly, the maximum pressure campaign against Tehran waged by the Trump Administration has raised the ticket price for maintaining Iran's empire creating new political and economic stress fractures all along that empire's food chain. Perhaps unintentionally, American timing has been impeccable. That pressure should be accelerated and any remaining chokepoints on Tehran activated.
Iran has spent years and money developing an extensive media empire in both Iraq and Lebanon. This has included the many media organizations grouped in the Islamic Radio and Television Union (IRTVU) but also silencing and coopting media outlets in two countries where there was until recently some independent media space. The West needs to accelerate providing remaining independent media in both countries with the tools to survive and communicate their own stories more effectively and to amplify the voices of citizen journalists reporting from the squares of martyrs and liberty in Baghdad and Beirut.
The current American Administration inherited an odd relationship with governments in Lebanon and Iraq. In both places, US embassies try to maintain a productive relationship with rancid governments obviously beholden to Iran in a forlorn effort to influence them. There is a certain logic that some cooperation with the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) can provide the United States with useful access and intelligence, especially against Salafi-Jihadist groups. Iraqi Intelligence was reportedly key to the liquidation of ISIS "caliph" Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
But as Iran and its surrogates aggressively seek to crush dissent and revolt in Iraq and Lebanon, the time is ripe for the United States to aggressively up the ante on elements of the state apparatus that serve Iranian repression. The December 6 designation of four Iraqis under the Global Magnitsky Act should be only the beginning. Rather than militia leaders and corrupt businessmen, it is past time to sanction government officials and politicians in both countries. Given deep American fatigue on the Middle East, can Washington learn to live with Revolution it did not launch and does not control? It must do so and play a subtle political game if it hopes to win.
Embracing a state of ambiguity with elites in Baghdad and Beirut can and should be done. In Sudan for many years, the United States maintained a fruitful relationship with Sudanese Intelligence while at the same time continuing a hostile relationship with the regime. The difference is that behind Sudan’s NISS was eventually al-Bashir. Behind elements of the LAF and ISF are not just local leaders but Iran. Washington needs to clearly see most of the supposed rulers in Baghdad and Beirut not as allies but as adversaries and act accordingly.
The political crisis on the region, seen especially in Lebanon and Iraq, has a complex back-story. The United States cannot solve or manage a convulsive process that must inevitably run its course and that will likely continue given dystopian trends in the region. Iran certainly has no solutions for a desperate people’s aspirations, and neither may many of our regional allies.
What hope there is may lie in places like Tunisia and Sudan and in the Beirut and Baghdad revolutions. There may be popular revolts in other countries that may directly threaten American interests but that is not the case today. Even with our limited attention span and policy dysfunction in Washington, we can be aggressive in trying as much as possible to level the playing field for uprisings that not only champion inchoate aspirations towards human dignity but also increasingly target our greatest regional adversary.
*Alberto M. Fernandez is President of Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN). The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official views of MBN or the U.S. government.

Democrats Debate Whether Trump Has Been Impeached
Alan M. Dershowitz/Gatestone Institute/December 25/2019
Under Laurence Tribe's scenario, the House Democrats get to "obstruct" the Senate and "abuse" their power (to borrow terms from the articles of impeachment).
I believe that the Senate need not wait for articles of impeachment to be transmitted. Senators are empowered by the constitution to begin a trial now — with or without further action by the House. Just as the House has the "sole power of impeachment," so too the Senate has the "sole power to try all impeachments."
Tribe and the Democratic House majority, led by Speaker Pelosi, want to have their constitutional cake and eat it too: they want Trump impeached but not acquitted. Sorry, but the Constitution does not permit that partisan, result-oriented ploy. Either Trump has been impeached and is entitled to a Senate trial; or he has not been impeached and is entitled to a clean slate.
So there are only two constitutionally viable alternatives: either Pelosi must announce that Trump has not been impeached; or the Senate must initiate a trial. Preserving the status quo indefinitely — Trump remaining impeached without having a trial — is unconstitutional and should not be tolerated by the American people.
Pictured: Speaker Nancy Pelosi presides over the House of Representatives vote on the second article of impeachment of President Donald Trump, on December 18.
Speaker Pelosi's unconstitutional decision to delay transmission of the articles of impeachment to the Senate in order to gain partisan advantage raises the following question: has President Trump been impeached, or did the House vote merely represent an authorization or intention to impeach — which becomes an actual impeachment only when the articles are transmitted?
This highly technical constitutional issue is being debated by two of my former Harvard Law School colleagues — Professors Laurence Tribe and Noah Feldman — both liberal Democrats who support President Trump's impeachment.
Tribe believes that Trump has been impeached and that it would be perfectly proper to leave it at that: by declining to transmit the articles of impeachment, the Democrats get a win-win. President Trump remains impeached but he gets no opportunity to be tried and acquitted by the Senate. This cynical, partisan ploy is acceptable to Tribe because it brings about the partisan result he prefers: Trump bears forever the stigma of impeachment without having the opportunity to challenge that stigma by a Senate acquittal. Under the Tribe scenario, the House Democrats get to "obstruct" the Senate and "abuse" their power (to borrow terms from the articles of impeachment).
Feldman disagrees with Tribe, arguing — quite correctly — that impeachment and a removal trial go together. If a president is impeached, he must be tried. Impeachment, in his view, is not merely a vote; it is the first step in a constitutionally mandated two-step process. He goes so far as to say that if the articles of impeachment are not forwarded to the Senate for trial, there has been no valid impeachment.
In my opinion, both of my colleagues are wrong, though Feldman's approach is more consistent with the structure of the Constitution and the intent of its Framers. I believe that the Senate need not wait for articles of impeachment to be transmitted. Senators are empowered by the constitution to begin a trial now— with or without further action by the House.
Just as the House has the "sole power of impeachment," so too the Senate has the "sole power to try all impeachments." The Senate can make its own rules (as long as they are consistent with the constitution) and establish its own timetables.
The only possible rejoinder to this constitutional verity is the argument put forward by Feldman that the House has not yet concluded the process of impeachment, and so the Senate has no jurisdiction to proceed to trial. What follows from that argument is the conclusion — utterly unacceptable to Tribe — that President Trump has not been impeached and if the articles are never transmitted he will not go down in history as the third president to be impeached, because the House never completed the necessary process by sending the articles to the senate.
Tribe and the Democratic House majority, led by Speaker Pelosi, want to have their constitutional cake and eat it too: they want Trump impeached but not acquitted. Sorry, but the Constitution does not permit that partisan, result-oriented ploy. Either Trump has been impeached and is entitled to a Senate trial; or he has not been impeached and is entitled to a clean slate.
My own view is that in the public eye, President Trump has been impeached by a partisan vote and he is now entitled to be acquitted, even if the Senate vote is as partisan as the House vote. The partisans who voted his impeachment along party lines in the House, have no principled argument against a party-line acquittal. The Democrats devised the partisan rules of engagement in the House. They can't suddenly demand a change in those rules because they are a minority in the Senate.
So there are only two constitutionally viable alternatives: either Pelosi must announce that Trump has not been impeached; or the Senate must initiate a trial. Preserving the status quo indefinitely — Trump remaining impeached without having a trial —is unconstitutional and should not be tolerated by the American people.
*Alan M. Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law Emeritus at Harvard Law School and author of the forthcoming book, Guilt by Accusation: The Challenge of Proving Innocence in the Age of #MeToo, Skyhorse publishing, November 2019.
A shorter and somewhat different version of this op-ed appeared in the Wall Street Journal.
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This decade of war in Syria has violated every norm that we believed was sacred
Kareem Shaheen/The National//December 25/2019
The conflict has destroyed all the myths we have cultivated about ourselves – how empathetic we are and how seriously we take our responsibility as an international community to protect civilians
The last few days have been apocalyptic in Syria. Tens of thousands of civilians fleeing en masse to the border before a government advance. The prospect of mass slaughter yet again. A ban on humanitarian aid crossing the border from Turkey to the three million civilians trapped inside a killbox in the north-west, one of the few remaining pockets outside government control, under bombardment from machine guns and fighter jets. The city of Maarat Al Numan destroyed and abandoned. Collective, global silence and inaction.
It is heartbreaking but entirely in character for a decade in which every international norm of conduct and warfare has been systematically destroyed.
Ten years ago, Syrian President Bashar Al Assad was full of confidence, declaring in a Wall Street Journal interview that the uprisings that had swept other Arab countries could not happen in Syria because the government was in tune with its citizens.
This apparent hold over citizens was of course maintained with an iron fist and an extensive and pervasive network of informants, security and intelligence agencies and prisons, a stranglehold on the economy that allowed epic levels of corruption and tight control over every aspect of public life and civil society.
Nevertheless, Mr Al Assad’s Syria was enjoying the fruits of a broader opening with the West and its Arab and Turkish neighbours.
Damascus had succeeded in creating an opportunity to mend ties with the US out of a problem it created – cracking down on terror cells it had allowed across the border into Iraq to fight American troops. With increasing trade ties, diplomatic outreach and efforts to isolate Iran, Syria’s first couple, Bashar and Asmaa Al Assad, holidayed with Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan and attended Bastille Day celebrations with the Sarkozys in France.
Their charisma shone through as they spoke at ease to western reporters about democratic aspirations and dined with the masses in popular Aleppan and Damascene eateries.
It was all a mirage. The decades of Baath party decrepitude, brutality and economic mismanagement had stunted the country. Everyone had a story about a close relative forcibly disappeared in early morning Mukhabarat raids carried out by intelligence agencies. Inequality worsened as agricultural communities fell into ruin and migrated to the cities.
The spark for the war was the detention in 2011 of teenagers who scrawled an anti-Assad slogan on their school wall. Their arrest and the government’s insults in response sparked a cycle of government violence, followed by civilian protest that quickly spread around the country.
It did not have to be this way. Few initially demanded the outright overthrow of the regime, hoping instead to coax Mr Al Assad into instituting reforms.
He met them with renewed brutality, a refusal to engage in serious dialogue that endures to this day and an amnesty that included releasing convicted terrorists in an effort to militarise the opposition and present a choice to the international community – the president or an extremist onslaught.
The rest is bloody, atrocious history. The UN eventually stopped counting the dead, then standing at 400,000, in 2016. The numbers have almost certainly exceeded half a million.
Half the country's population was displaced, most inside Syria, many forced to abandon their homes several times in the course of the nine-year war. The millions who fled abroad profoundly altered their neighbouring countries’ character and politics, and those who braved the seas to European shores, fleeing for the sake of their lives and their children’s, were used as a scaremongering tactic by populist leaders across the globe to propel a resurgence of the far right in European and American politics.
This profound shift ushered in tectonic changes and realignments, both abroad and regionally, as Moscow took up the mantle abandoned by a retreating Washington and intervened in the war to save Mr Al Assad from what at the time seemed inevitable defeat. Turkey, incensed by American reliance on Kurdish militias with aspirations for statehood, essentially abandoned its alliance with Nato in favour of close co-operation with Russia, further undermining the post-Second World War order.
ISIS took advantage of the power vacuum and profound injustices of the war to establish a so-called state spanning parts of Syria and Iraq, a project laced with atrocities of such grave barbarism as systematic enslavement and mass rape of the Yazidi minority, the exile of Christians from their homeland and the murder and execution of thousands of civilians in manifold horrific ways.
All the while, Syria was being systematically destroyed. The regime and its allies undertook scorched-earth tactics of besieging opposition areas; barrel-bombing them and advancing methodically rendered those areas uninhabitable.
Syria needs at least $200 billion in reconstruction costs, possibly double that, aid that is blocked by western countries due to the absence of political reforms.
But perhaps Syria’s enduring legacy lies in how it has systematically dismantled the international rules-based order. Over a decade of warfare and destruction, every international norm that was once thought of as sacrosanct has been violated with a defiance that once defied belief, until it became par for the course. It is a stark contrast to the message the world emerged with from the genocides in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda – a mantra of “never again” uttered in the halls of international tribunals.
Instead, over time, cycles of atrocity followed by outrage and impotence chipped away at the tenets we had decided constituted civilised conduct in warfare and affairs of state. Bit by bit, our humanity was chipped away.
These violations are numerous but they are worth elucidating because they show how far we have fallen. Chemical weapons were repeatedly used against civilians in a largely successful effort to terrorise them into submission, with no meaningful retribution. Starvation sieges were used repeatedly as a weapon of war by Mr Al Assad and his allies in the campaign to reclaim rebel-held territory.Systematic bombing of civilians with inaccurate weapons like barrel bombs, whose use constitutes de facto war crimes, large-scale arbitrary detention and forced disappearance of tens of thousands of civilians, the targeting of hospitals and the use of humanitarian aid and UN assistance as political tools have continued to make life unbearable for civilians.
The next few years are hard to predict in Syria, precisely because the conflict destroyed all the myths we have cultivated about ourselves – how empathetic we are, how seriously we take our responsibility as an international community to protect civilians, our collective belief in justice being served and in a shared destiny.
Syria destroyed all of that in the course of crushing the dreams and rights of an entire people to live in dignity, peace and prosperity.
Even as the wrangling over the ashes continues, the legacy of the last decade will endure. Syria has carved the epitaph of the collective conscience of the international community.
*Kareem Shaheen is a former Middle East correspondent, now in Canada

To be strong voices for Palestine, Arabs must be strong voices for
 Ray Hanania//ArabNews/December 25/2019
Human and civil rights do not have a religion, nationality or an ethnic identity. They are universal rights, meaning you don’t have to be from a national, religious or ethnic group that faces human rights violations to speak out in defense of those rights.
The strongest voices oftentimes are women like Ilhan Omar, the Somali-American congresswoman from Minnesota, or Rashida Tlaib, the Palestinian-American from Michigan. Both Omar and Tlaib are Arab and Muslim, and are natural voices to advocate for the human and civil rights of Palestinians, one of the most oppressed and wrongfully vilified people on the planet.But Omar and Tlaib are not the most fearless in championing Palestinian and Arab rights. That title belongs to one of Omar’s congressional colleagues, Betty McCollum.
McCollum is a former high school teacher and saleswoman who decided to enter politics in 1986 and won a city council election. Her fight for Palestinian freedom and justice doesn’t stem from an ethnic, national or religious affinity with the Palestinians. It comes from a purity of belief that human and civil rights are the right of every individual regardless of race, religion or nationality. That makes McCollum’s voice and advocacy righteous. She has fearlessly pursued legislation that most other Americans might avoid. She refused to back down when Congress brushed aside calls to place restrictions on the $4 billion in annual financial aid that is taken from US taxpayers and given to support Israel. She introduced a law that would prohibit Israel from using that taxpayer money to detain Palestinian children, the Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act or House Resolution 2407.
McCollum asserts she is pro-Israel, but her voice against Israel’s repeated human and civil rights violations against Palestinian civilians has made her a target of AIPAC, the pro-Israel organization that serves as an umbrella for the distribution of millions in pro-Israel campaign contributions against critics of Israel’s human rights violations and to loyal pro-Israel challengers.
She comes from a typically average American upbringing and that’s what gives her voice resonance.
In 1992, McCollum won election to the Minnesota State legislature and served until running for a US congressional seat in 2000, becoming only the second woman to represent Minnesota since Minnesota became a state in 1858 representing the 4th House District.
A Democrat, a Christian and a single mother with two children, McCollum has never shied away from taking on the most controversial and tough challenges.
It is one reason why she can stand up to AIPAC’s efforts to undermine her and push her out of office to silence her voice.
A Democrat, a Christian and a single mother with two children, McCollum has never shied away from taking on the most controversial and tough challenges.
Her biography touts her independence, and maybe that’s what makes her so popular with her state’s citizens and protects her from her foreign critics. McCollum is an American fighting for American issues, and she can champion justice for Palestinians not as a Palestinian issue but as an American issue.
“Throughout her career in public service, Congresswoman McCollum has been a champion for excellence in education, protecting the environment, expanding health care access, fiscal responsibility, and robust international engagement that prioritizes diplomacy, development, along with a strong national defense,” her official biography says.
“Education, health care, and investments in transportation infrastructure are top policy priorities for Minnesota families and the Congresswoman. With over 20 institutions of higher learning located in the Fourth District, keeping higher education affordable, accessible, and high-quality is important. A strong proponent of public education, she supports keeping our schools accountable to parents and local officials. McCollum is a champion for universal health coverage for all Americans and a strong supporter of the Affordable Care Act. Following a decade of work and almost $1 billion of federal investment, she welcomed the opening of the “Green Line” light rail corridor between St. Paul and Minneapolis, along with the restoration of the historic Union Depot as a multi-modal transit hub.”
Nowhere does her official biography mention her support for the Palestinians or criticism of Israel’s government. it is laser-focused on fighting for mainstream issues that mainstream Americans embrace.
McCollum is everything that American voters want in an advocate for American rights and the principles of justice that separate the US from other countries.
That is what makes her support of the Palestinian cause so powerful. McCollum sees the abuse of Palestinians not as a Palestinian, Arab or Muslim issue but rather as a fundamental core issue of human and civil rights in its purest form.
It’s a lesson for Omar and Tlaib that could also make them more effective not just as advocates for Palestinian, Arab, or Muslim issues but for Americans issues and concerns. Omar and Tlaib need to become the voices for justice in America for Americans before they can become effective champions of Palestinian rights.
Any Arab-American who wants to become more effective in fighting for justice must first become voices for American issues and then use that as a foundation to fight for other important, but foreign, causes.
*Ray Hanania is an award-winning former Chicago City Hall political reporter and columnist. He can be reached on his personal website at www.Hanania.com. Twitter: @RayHanania
Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News' point-of-view

Europe’s hard choices in 2020
Zaki Laidi /News/December 25/2019
For the first time since 1957, Europe finds itself in a situation where three major powers — the US, China and Russia — have an interest in weakening it. They may squeeze the EU in very different ways, but they share an essential hostility to the EU’s governance model.
The European model, after all, is based on the principle of shared sovereignty among states in crucial areas such as market standards and trade. That liberal idea is antithetical to the American, Chinese and Russian view of sovereignty, which places the prerogative of states above global rules and norms of behavior. Shared sovereignty is possible only among liberal states; unalloyed sovereignty is the preserve of populists and authoritarians.
But today’s anti-EU hostility also owes something to Europe’s undeniable economic weight in the world. Without the EU, the US under President Donald Trump would likely have succeeded already in forcing Germany and France to surrender to its trade demands. Were it on its own, France would not have been able to reject bilateral negotiations with the US over agricultural issues. The EU, as a “common front,” works as a power multiplier for its constituent parts in all areas where sovereignty is shared.
China’s view of Europe is not so different from Trump’s. While the Chinese have taken advantage of the European single market by acquiring footholds in key EU countries, the last thing they want is for Europeans to share sovereignty in controlling foreign investment, such as through the new screening mechanism launched in April. China has been cultivating financial dependencies in the Balkans, knowing full well that if these countries become EU members, they will be subject to stronger transparency requirements.
China would much prefer the model underpinning the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), its massive effort to build trade and transport infrastructure linking China with Africa and Europe. How China and participating countries finance BRI projects is notoriously opaque. In fact, more than half of all Chinese loans to developing countries are not even listed publicly.
Russia, too, resents European unity. Although some EU member states oppose continued sanctions against Russia, all have respected them. Still, Europe is hardly a monolithic bloc when it comes to Russia. Despite Europe’s energy-independence objectives, Germany is cooperating with Russia in building the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. For a while, Germany also stood in the way of a firmer EU policy regarding China, owing to the German auto industry’s reliance on the Chinese market. But Germany’s position has changed since 2017, with its leaders finally taking stock of the risks posed by Chinese takeovers in sensitive industrial sectors.
The frequent claim that Europe is incapable of playing a global role is thus simply incorrect. Compared to a more isolated developed country such as Japan, Europe is quite strong indeed. While Japan has been at the mercy of US tariffs on imported steel, the EU has retaliated in kind. And while Japan has had little choice but to accept a bilateral trade deal with the US (“in principle”), Europe has stonewalled the Trump administration’s attempts to overhaul the US-EU trade arrangement.
To be sure, the EU is still a long way from achieving strategic and economic autonomy. But that does not mean it is incapable of doing so.
To be sure, the EU is still a long way from achieving strategic and economic autonomy. But that does not mean it is incapable of doing so. Europe has many assets with which to defend multilateralism and international norms. Given its creativity and massive market, it could play a critical role in setting the standards for digitalization and artificial intelligence — both of which are at the heart of today’s global economic battle. It was Europe that took the first step in regulating the platform economy, through the General Data Protection Regulation, which has already set a new world standard.
But Europe still needs to develop its monetary, industrial and military capacity. The EU must expand the international role of the euro so that it can serve as a safe asset and a standard currency for cross-border trade. Internationalizing the euro will require a deep capital market, comparable to that of the US, and there is already a consensus among eurozone member states in favor of heading in this direction.
Establishing the euro as a safe asset — that is, making a Eurobond equivalent to a US Treasury bill — is more controversial. Germany is staunchly opposed to any proposal that implies risk-sharing across the eurozone. But if foreign investors are not confident that the European Central Bank will defend the value of the euro in any eurozone country, they will never see the single currency as a rival to the dollar.
On the second point, Europe needs to create its own industrial “champions.” That will require deepening the internal market, which remains far too fragmented with respect to services. It also may call for a reconsideration of EU competition rules. Following EU antitrust authorities’ decision to block a number of large mergers this year — not least that between Alstom and Siemens — there is a growing debate within Europe about how competition policies can be improved.
Finally, Europe desperately needs to build up its military capacity, to lend credibility to its exercise of commercial and soft power. For example, a new European protection force deployed in the Strait of Hormuz would signal to both the US and Iran that Europe can defend its own interests without having to take sides against its allies. The capacity to project power is a fundamental source of global clout.
Europe does not need a “grand strategy,” which is a pompous term that fails to account for local and global constraints. Rather, it needs the determination and political will to develop new commercial, diplomatic and military strategic assets. In a world of saber-rattling and muscle-flexing, effective modesty is preferable to vacuous ambition.
*Zaki Laidi is professor of international relations at Sciences Po.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2019