The media’s favorite “anonymous but official” sources are spreading the word that the Obama administration may be willing to release Jonathan Pollard if Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu frees a few hundred terrorists, possibly including those with Israeli citizenship.

It is far from a done deal, but where there is smoke, there is fire, the same smoke that was blowing last week when the same story made the rounds, as reported here.

This time it is more serious because  U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry must come up with the goods this week in order to keep his peace talks fantasy from disappearing into thin air.

President Barack Obama has consistently said that Pollard committed a “serious crime” and will not be pardoned, but it is no secret that one of his positions often take a back seat to one of his dearest principles, which is to control other leaders, especially Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas.

Israeli officials confirmed that the Obama administration has been willing to discuss the subject of freeing Pollard but added they have little hope that anything will come out of it. The officials certainly do not want to create great expectations, but they also may be telling the truth.

If the deal goes through, Pollard might even be freed in time for Passover, and the pundits already are playing up the concept of the release symbolizing the holiday celebrating the Jews freedom from slavery in Egypt. The comparison is strictly abstract, but it brings out all the emotions that Obama can use to play on the heartstrings of Israelis as well as many American Jews.

There is much more support in Israel for freeing Pollard than there is in the United States, where American patriots consider Pollard a spy, although he was not convicted for spying.

However, many former and current American officials have admitted that Pollard underwent an unfair trial and was unfairly punished. He was handed down a life sentence for passing on to Israel, an ally, classified information. The offense usually is punished with 2-4 years in jail.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki, who is travelling with  U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, said Monday, “Jonathan Pollard was convicted of espionage and is serving his sentence. I do not have any update for you on his status.”

Besides getting her facts wrong – Pollard was not convicted of espionage – she simply spews out whatever Kerry wants her to say, so her statement can be ignored.

If Kerry succeeds in forging an agreement between Netanyahu and Abbas to continue talks, at the price of Israel’s freeing hundreds of terrorists  in return for Pollard, a dual America-Israeli citizen, Pollard would feel like a prisoner of confused emotions as much he is a physical prisoner while in jail

He has dismissed previous attempts to win his release in exchange for Israel’s freeing terrorists, stating he would prefer to stay in jail than knowing he weakened Israel’s security and contributed to the spilling  of more blood. More than 120 Israelis have been murdered by terrorists who have been freed, many of them having signed a pledge never to return to terror.

Hamas has reminded everyone that peace talks or no peace talks, “the masses of the Palestinian peoples are still steadfast on every inch of the Palestinian land rejecting all compromises and concessions on their land.”

It’s official website stated, “The Israeli occupation’s escalating plans to impose a fait accompli in Palestine through settlement and Judaization would not succeed in changing the truth that Palestine belongs to the Palestinians.”

In case anyone in the Obama administration still thinks Hamas is referring to Judea and Samaria, the terrorist organization clarified, “On this day in 1976, the masses of the Palestinian people in Al-Muthalath, the Galilee and the Negev revolted against the Zionist occupation…

“38 years have passed since the uprising started, and the occupation has been persisting since then in Judaizing the land, seizing it and displacing its people.”

Hamas reiterated that ”all forms of resistance, especially the armed resistance, are the best method to restore the land.”The Obama administration strategy has been to topple one domino at a time,” and it figures that Hamas will fall into line or be left out in the cold if Mahmoud Abbas actually comes to an agreement with Israel on the establishment of the Palestinian Authority as a new country.

That will never happen. Period.

And if Kerry believes it will, the man really does need medical help.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry pushed the emergency ejection button on his Paris talks with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov over the crisis in Ukraine and flew into Israel to try and force a last-minute agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority for the release of more Arab terrorists.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has stated no more concessions will be taken unless it is “clear” what Israel will receive in return, but it is anyone’s guess what Israel could gain except for Brownie points in the White House and another dinner with Kerry, for what it’s worth.

And motorists are being smacked with the occasional closing of the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway between 5:30 p.m. and 7:30 pm. Israeli time and during Tuesday morning’s rush hour, 8-10 a.m., so Kerry can have all the of the road it himself.

The Palestinian Authority newspaper Al-Quds quoted Kerry as saying he told PA officials he will free the terrorists with his own hands if he has to.

Most Israelis, from Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon to even the dovish media with the exception of Haaretz, would not mind if Kerry would take a walk, a very long walk and even better off a short pier.

The Palestinian Authority also is not so thrilled with him. Its officials have created a cold air mass before his arrival, saying that they really are not interested in extending the talks that Kerry initiated last July, but that can be discounted as playing hard to get.

Kerry will meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu Monday evening and then travel to Ramallah for a discussion with Mahmoud Abbas.

“Secretary Kerry decided it would be productive to return to the region,” State Dept. spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.
Translation: Kerry is roaring into town with ammunition on both shoulders and will tell both sides that they will bear the wrath of Obama himself if they don’t agree to help the president make a fool out of himself.

No one really knows who is on first anymore. Kerry and his media groupies have created the fiction that Israel agreed last July to free several Arab terrorists who are card-carrying Israeli citizens.

Netanyahu was quoted this past December 31 saying he never agreed to free them as part of the fourth and final batch of terrorists, but the truth really doesn’t matter anymore. Freeing them has been accepted as a fact by Kerry, the Palestinian Authority, and the media, so the truth really does not matter anymore.

Israel reportedly has offered to free more than the last group of 26 terrorists, which is not likely to happen unless he card-carrying Israelis will remain in jail. The Palestinian Authority supposedly has demanded that Israel free several hundred terrorists, and all of this, of course, for the grand prize of a few more months of charades masked as negotiations” over when to end the follies.

Kerry said Monday afternoon, “I think it’d be inappropriate to get into any kind of judgments about what may or may not occur or happen because it’s really a question between the Palestinians and the Israelis, and what Prime Minister Netanyahu is prepared to do. So he has – he is working diligently, I know. I just literally talked to him 15 minutes ago. And he’s working at it.”

Kerry and Netanyahu spoke Sunday night and again Monday morning, and they obviously were not just chewing the fat.

Not by coincidence, Opposition leader Yitzchak Herzog is meeting in Amman Monday with Jordanian King Abdullah, the first official Israeli visit since Israeli soldiers killed a Jordanian judge at the Allenby Bridge crossing when he allegedly attacked a soldier and tried to grab his weapon.

Kerry is banking on the usual gambit of threatening Abba and Netanyahu that whoever says “no” will be blamed for the collapse of his stage show. At some point, and that point is not far down the road and may already have been reached, the Palestinian Authority will say, “Blame us all you want. We have the United Nations in our pockets.”

Netanyahu so far has been too chicken to be blamed because the only thing he has in his picket is the Book of Psalms, but he hasn’t used it very much.

The Arab League summit meeting at Kuwait on Wednesday maintained the ancient Muslim tradition of saying “no” when it comes to Israel and stated a thunderous denial of the idea of recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.

“We express our total rejection of the call to consider Israel as a Jewish state,” it said on one of the few if not only issues that united the League’s members.

Officials told the Bethlehem-based Ma’an News Agency that Arab envoys are thinking about withdrawing the Saudi 2002 “Peace Initiative” that promised “normalization” of ties with Israel, without any explicit statement of diplomatic recognition, in exchange for the creation of a Palestinian Authority country based on the 1949 Temporary Armistice borders and for Israel’s accepting the immigration of millions of foreign Arabs whose only connection with Israel is that they are considered “refugees.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry continues to march into the Peace Talks Cemetery and flew from Rome to Amman Wednesday for an emergency meeting with Mahmoud Abbas.

The Obama administration has constantly put public pressure on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to surrender to Arab demands while keeping the pressure on Abbas under wraps.

Pundits are trumpeting the scheduled release of the last of 104 terrorists, always are referred to as “prisoners,” as the stumbling block to the diplomatic stalemate, but during the last eight months of a dialogue with the deaf, Palestinian Authority officials have made it increasingly clear they feel confident enough to end the so–called peace talks and return to the United Nations to win recognition based on its own terms.

The best Kerry can hope for is an extension of the talks he has orchestrated, but he might do one better by blaming Netanyahu and Abbas and giving the Peace Process another indecent burial.

The White House has denied an Israeli radio report broadcast Wednesday saying the U.S. proposed swapping convicted Israeli agent Jonathan Pollard for 26 Palestinian Authority terrorist prisoners to keep the Israel-PA talks alive.

Pollard is entering his 29th year in a U.S. prison, held on a single charge of passing classified information to a friendly ally (Israel) after his arrest in 1985. The crime normally carries a maximum jail term of two to four years.

Israel was set to release the 26 PA terrorists this week in a final tranche of four groups to complete an agreement made as a “good will gesture” on condition the PA would participate in “serious” talks. Since July 2013, 78 PA terrorists have been freed. A number of roadblocks at entrances to Arab cities and towns along major arteries in Judea and Samaria, where terrorists are known to take refuge, have also been opened and new roads paved with funding and assistance from the U.S. government.

But there has no been significant participation in negotiations by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas since November 2013, according to Jerusalem officials. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has notified the U.S. that many senior ministers in his coalition government are opposed to releasing the final group of terrorists, not having seen any real progress in the talks and no movement in any of the PA’s positions.

“There are no plans to release Jonathan Pollard at the moment,” State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki announced at a briefing. “Jonathan Pollard was convicted of espionage against the United States – a very serious crime. He was sentenced to life and is currently serving his sentence,” she said. The spokesperson sidestepped the issue of whether or not a deal offering a prisoner swap had been offered.

The PA leader announced at an Arab League summit yesterday that he intends to move ahead with unilateral attempts to gain membership for the PA as an independent sovereign nation in international organizations, ignoring his own commitment. Both Abbas and the Arab League are insisting on preconditions by Israel to continue “negotiations” that require the Jewish State to pull back to the 1949 Armistice Line, withdrawing from all “occupied territories” won in 1967. They also demand Israel accept the “right of return” by Arab refugees who fled Israel in 1948 and 1967 and their millions of descendants, and refuse to recognize Israel as a Jewish State.

Statements made in public by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and forgotten by the entire media world reveal that Israel promised to free 104 terrorists in four batches on return for the resumption of peace talks “in accordance with the circumstances of their progress.”

Those are the Prime Minister’s words in an “open letter to the citizens of Israel” he wrote last year. Foreign media also reported at the time that “an Israeli official said no prisoners would be released before direct talks begin, and the process would then be dependent on the Palestinians proving they are ‘really serious and not playing games.’”

The problems with these direct quotes are that they do not fit the agenda of the Obama administration, the Palestinian Authority, the United Nations and the media establishment, which has forgotten or never learned that Journalism 101 teaches that one should check the facts.

Instead, every news outlet, including those in Israel, is accepting as fact Mahmoud Abbas’ telling the Arab League in Kuwait  Tuesday, “The Israeli government is trying to dodge an agreement it had with the US administration to release pre-Oslo Palestinian prisoners.”

He added, “The Israeli government took every chance to foil the American efforts. This proves what we say about the lack of seriousness and preparedness of the Israeli government to withdraw and create peace.”

It is not an interpretation and it is not editorializing to state that this is a lie.

Netanyahu said more than once that the release of the 104 terrorists was spread over a period weight months ending at the end of this week in order to test Abbas’ intentions.

The same media reporting Abbas’ statements know as well as you and I that the talks have been a dismal failure, so much so that  U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is flying to Jordan on Wednesday to meet with Abbas and will be on the phone to jawbone Netanyahu to save his own behind and come up with some kind of formula to add another chapter to one of the most shaggiest dog stories ever created.

The facts, without any editorializing, show that it is Abbas and not Netanyahu who has not fulfilled his obligations, unless one accepts the Arab world attitude that the entire point of “negotiations” was to convince Israel not to negotiate and simply say “yes” to every Arab demand.

Those principal demands, without any interpretation, are:

• Turning over to the Palestinian Authority all of Judea and Samaria and all parts of Jerusalem that abandoned by Jordan in the Six-Day War in 1967;
• Expelling more approximately 700,000 Jews – 10 percent of the Israeli population – form those areas;
• Removing all soldiers from Judea and Samaria, including the Jordan Valley;
• Establishing eastern Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian Authority state; and
• Accepting the immigration of millions of Arabs whose claim to Israel as homeland depends on the United Nations’ unique definition of Arabs as the only refugees in the world whose refugee status passes from generation to generation.

Abbas has left no room for compromise or negotiation on any of the points. He and his “negotiators” have complained since the resumption of talks in July that “no progress” has been made.  Not par for the course for Abbas, truer words were never spoken.

On the other hand, he has refused to accept Netanyahu’s one demand that he recognize Israel as a Jewish state. He has “no” to allowing Jews to live in a Palestinian Authority state, a direct violation of U.N. laws. He has said “no” to giving up on the phony refugee issue. he has said “no” to allowing IDF troops in the Jordan Valley.

A Palestinian Authority survey has found that terrorist Marwan Barghouti, serving five successive life terms in prison but hoping to be freed by Israel, would easily win the election for the successor Mahmoud Abbas if the vote were held today.

“If presidential elections were between Marwan Barghouti and Haniyeh, the former would receive 60% and the latter would receive 34% of the participants’ vote,” according to the results in the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research poll.

If presidential elections were between Abbas, Barghouti and Haniyeh, Barghouti would receive the largest percentage (36%) followed by Abbas (30%), and Haniyeh (29%).

The results are similar to a poll in December but more significant now because Barghouti is one of the terrorists who has been added Abbas’ list of terrorists he wants Israel to release in order for U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s peace talks to continue.

If the Netanyahu government were to free Barghouti, and there is some support from the more leftist Cabinet minister to release him, Israel would in effect have named the successor to Abbas, who succeeded arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat.

Since Arafat won the Nobel Peace Prize, it can be assumed that the same fate would await Barghouti in recognition of his love for killing Jews and then switching strategies to take over Israel through Zionist governments’ willingness to commit hari-kari.

Barghouti started out his career as a terrorist at the age of 15, joining Arafat’s Fatah terrorist party and showing his promise as a model for young people by co-founding the Fatah Youth Movement. By the age of 18, Barghouti already had been arrested, and he quickly learned how terror pays off in Israeli prisons.

He studied and received his high school diploma while in jail, where the prison system is so sure that educating terrorists will change their lives for the better.

In Barghouti’s case, it changed the lives of dozens of Israeli. More accurately, it ended the lives of dozens of Israelis, with the tacit help of the Israeli government.

Israel deported Barghouti to Jordan for his leadership in the beginning of the Intifada in 1987 but returned under the terms of the Oslo Accords, the agreement that the Palestinian Authority has torn up clause by clause.

Israeli governments have had a weird penchant for pardoning terrorists, perhaps because the powers-to-be want to make sure that the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) and IDF have plenty of work to do. Lebanon, Egypt and Syria apparently are too boring.

Seeing that Arabs could get what they wanted by  bleeding Israel dry in the diplomatic process backed by the United States and the European Union, Barghouti championed “land for peace,” so long as the Palestinian Authority could get land without having to agree to peace. The proof came in 2000 when he backed “new forms of military struggle” after the Camp David Accords.

He led the Tanzim terrorist group while proclaiming his opposition to violence against Israeli civilians – soldiers were fair game – and showed how much he could be believed by his involvement in suicide bombings. Barghouti was convicted for three attacks that killed five people in Tel Aviv, Judea and Samaria.

While in jail, Israel has given Barghouti all the mobile phones and tools he needs to use his jail cell to organize and incite Arabs throughout Israel and keep up his popularity. He even announced he would run from his prison cell to succeed Arafat after he died in 2004, but withdrew from the race in favor of Abbas.

He staked out his claim for the next Nobel Peace Prize by initiating and helping to formulate the National Conciliation Document of the Prisoners that called on Hamas, the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Islamic Jihad and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine to form a coalition government and negotiate with Israel.

Originally published at the Gatestone Institute.

The Palestinians feel that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is not listening to what they have to say about his efforts to achieve peace in the middle East.

That Is why they have decided to express their views through a new song that is dedicated to Kerry personally.

A video of the song, by Qassem Najjar, was posted on YouTube and other social media outlets on the eve of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s visit to Washington for talks with President Barack Obama on the peace process with Israel.

A promotional image for Qassem Najjar’s song about John Kerry.

While heaping praise on Abbas, the singer mocks Kerry and accuses him of presenting a “Zionist plan” with the intention of eliminating the Palestinian cause.

Najjar decided to publish his new song after he and other Palestinians were left with the impression that Kerry is not accurately hearing their position regarding his ideas for a “framework agreement” with Israel.

The words of the song, which is entitled, “The Palestinian People’s Message to Kerry,” express the negative attitude that many Palestinians and Arabs have toward his ideas.

But Najjar is also hoping that his song will send a warning to the Palestinian Authority leadership. “My message to the Palestinian Authority leadership is that as long as you are committed to the Palestinian rights, we are with you,” the singer said. “But if you make any concession, the people and I will take to the street to chant against you and demand that you go away.”

The Palestinian Authority has endorsed the anti-Kerry song by allowing many of its news websites to publish it. A senior Palestinian Authority official in Ramallah explained that the new song is “100% accurate and honestly sums up the whole Palestinian position toward peace.”

Najjar is hoping that the song’s message will reach Kerry and Obama before they meet with Abbas in Washington. He wants Washington to understand that even if Abbas is forced — under U.S. pressure and threats — to make concessions, the Palestinians will not “relinquish their rights.”

The song also reflects growing Palestinian suspicion toward Kerry’s motives and accuses him of seeking to deceive the Palestinians through his ideas. Addressing Kerry, the singer warns the top US diplomat, “Go tell Obama and America that my land is not a piece of cake for you to share.”

Referring to the explosive issue of Palestinian refugees, Najjar sends the following message to Kerry, “We will not compromise the right of return; my homeland flag will be high. Listen John Kerry.”

Noting that the Arabs will not allow Kerry’s plan to pass, the singer goes on to warn Kerry, “in the name of the martyrs, prisoners, homeland and revolution, Jerusalem is our free capital and will always be.”

After repeating Palestinian accusations against Israel over settlements and the “Judaization” of Jerusalem, Najjar cautions Kerry that he must “stop playing games because all your games have been exposed by President Abbas.”

Echoing previous statements by some of Abbas’s advisors, the singer denounces Kerry’s proposed agreement as a “Zionist scheme designed to liquidate the Palestinian cause.”

He also denounces as “racist” the demand for recognizing Israel as a Jewish state. This too is the official position of the Palestinian Authority and Abbas is once again expected to voice his opposition to this demand during his meeting with Obama. Another theme of the song that also reflects the official stance of the Palestinian Authority is the refusal to accept any Israeli presence in the West Bank after the signing of a peace agreement. In the words of the singer, “We do not accept Jews within our borders.”