Palestinian Authority officials handed over requests to 15 United Nations bodies on Wednesday, signaling a snub of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and the end of his Peace Talks stage show.

It ain’t so.

As usual, Mahmoud Abbas and his henchmen are playing with words. The PA dramatically announced Tuesday night that its top committee voted unanimously to ask to join 15 United Nations agencies, violating a promise Abbas made to Kerry eight months ago that the PA would not take such unilateral steps during the talks that officially have another four weeks to go.

The official excuse is that since Israel did not come through last with the release of the final batch of terrorists, including card-carrying Israeli citizen-murderers whom the government never promised to free, the PA can do as it pleases.

After Abbas ostensibly pressed “delete” on Kerry’s program, the Secretary of State triumphantly announced, “Let me make it absolutely clear. None of the agencies that President Abbas signed tonight involve the UN. None of them. And President Abbas has given his word to me that he will keep his agreement and that he intends to negotiate through the end of the month of April.”

Either Kerry is again showing he is ignorant, or Abbas is again proving he is a liar, right?

Almost wrong. Kerry showed he is only partly ignorant, and Abbas showed he not a liar but just a con man.

Remember how the Obama administration and the media establishment always mouth off about the Palestinian Authority’s “negotiations” that are NewSpeak for an ultimatum?

Now add “United Nations Agencies” to the list to the New Arab Dictionary of Twisted English.

Following is the list of the 15 U.N. “agencies” that have received the official Palestinian Authority requests to join:

1. The Four Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 and the First Additional Protocol
2. The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations
3. The Vienna Convention on Consular Relations
4. The Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in armed conflict
5. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
6. The Hague Convention (IV) respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land and its annex: Regulations Concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land
7. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
8. The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties
9. The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
10. The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
11. The United Nations Convention against Corruption
12. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
13. The International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid
14. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
15. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

Kerry is right. They are not U.N. agencies. He is wrong because indeed they are connected with the United Nations in one form or another.

They are “treaties” and “conventions” but not agencies, a term reserved for such enlightened institutions as the International Monetary Fund and the World Health Organization.

This is the official list of U.N. agencies:

1. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
2. International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)
3. International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)
4. International Labor Organization (ILO)
5. International Maritime Organization (IMO)
6. International Monetary Fund (IMF)
7. International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
8. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
9. United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)
10. Universal Postal Union (UPU)
11. World Bank Group
11.1 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD)
11.2 International Finance Corporation (IFC)
11.3 International Development Association (IDA)
12. World Health Organization (WHO)
13. World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
14. World Meteorological Organization (WMO)
15. World Tourism Organization (UNWTO)
16. Former specialized agencies
17. Related Organizations
17.1 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization Preparatory Commission
17.2 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
17.3 Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
17.4 World Trade Organization (WTO)

The Palestinian Authority has not asked to join any of them. It once again is huffing and puffing but not ready to blow the house down. Be patient, because that time will come. If President Barack Obama has his way, it will happen around January 21, 2017, the day after Hillary Clinton, or by some miracle a Republican nominee, will step into the White House.

No one should scoff too much at the PA requests to join the 15 U.N. treaties and conventions because they certainly would give Abbas an entry pass to official agencies. That is the next step, either next month, if Kerry finally gets tired of his games, or next year, or as long as he can write more charters for this black comedy.

For the time, being everything is on hold for a week because that is when the Arab League, which is calling the shots for Abbas, meets to decide the next maneuver.

That gives Obama time to parachute to Earth from outer space, where he dealt the Pollard card to bribe Israel into another immoral release of murders.

Abbas can be satisfied if Israel does not get Pollard. The whole point of this play is not to win anything but just to make sure the other side loses something, and Israeli officials reportedly said Wednesday that Abbas vetoed  being part of the Free Pollard movement, unintentionally doing Obama a giant favor.

So what will the Arabs have lost? They will have lost more time, because as every day passes, his deceit and corruption eat away at the Palestinian Authority’s rotten foundations, which will collapse like a Ponzi scheme.

Six Arab lawyers, including one woman, have been arrested in recent weeks for receiving money from Hamas and Islamic terrorist cells in return for handing over money and information to jailed terrorists in Israel and outside the country.

The Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) lifted a gag order on the arrests Wednesday.

The suspects include two brothers who set up and managed legal offices in the Arab neighborhood of Issawi in Jerusalem in the name of “Al Quds.” They collected their “wages” from other lawyers living in various areas of the capital.

The suspects received $150-$200 for every visit to a terrorist in jail, where they handed over information.

The suspects, like all Arabs in Jerusalem, receive the same social and welfare benefits from the State of Israel that every other citizen receives, regardless of race, religion or nationalist.

The difference is that they are traitors who work for terrorist groups that have dug deeper into the heart of Jerusalem, where the Palestinian Authority wants to establish its capital in a future state.

If they are convicted and jailed, Israel can consider releasing them next year in exchange for continuing peace talks with the Palestinian Authority.

For a second time this week, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry abruptly cancelled a scheduled meeting with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

Reporters were told late Tuesday evening that Kerry’s meeting today (Wednesday) with Abbas was cancelled, with few details added. “We are no longer traveling tomorrow,” a senior State Department official said simply.

Abbas breached the conditions of his agreement with Israel – and the United States – by signing a PA application for membership in 15 United Nations agencies and organizations. “The demands (for membership) will be sent immediately,” Abbas announced at a briefing. “This is not a move against America or any other party. It is our right and we agreed to suspend it for nine months.”

The deadline for completion of the framework agreement talks was set for April 29. But Abbas has not actively participated in direct talks for months, according to reports quoting government minister Tzipi Livni (Hatnua). Nor has the PA made any “good will gestures” towards Israel comparable to those forced upon the Jewish States by U.S. President Barack Obama.

Meanwhile, the PA’s unilateral move is one that turns the clock back more than a year, dialing back efforts by John Kerry to keep the entity from attempting to unilaterally gain recognition in the U.N. as an independent sovereign nation. It also is a return to its attempt to evade the agreement it signed in the internationally-recognized Oslo Accords in 1993.

Two days earlier the PA chairman was have met with Kerry in Ramallah following talks between Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the Secretary of State. But the meeting in Jerusalem ran longer than expected and John Kerry had to race for his flight to make a two-day meeting in Brussels.

The Israeli-PA negotiations over a “framework agreement” have been limping along for months now, with Israel making what appears to be all of the concessions. As a ‘good will gesture’ to bring Abbas to the table and keep him there, Israel agreed to free 104 PA terrorist prisoners in four separate tranches linked to the PA leader’s active participation in the talks. Three of the four have already been made, with some 78 terrorists freed.

The fourth and final group of terrorists scheduled to be released last week, however, included 20 Israeli Arab citizens – and at that point both government ministers and the entire Israeli population balked.

President Barack Obama is taking it on the chin for the suggestion that the United States free Jonathan Pollard in exchange for Israel’s releasing terrorists and agreeing to a partial building freeze on building Jewish homes in Judea and Samaria – all of this in order to keep Israel and Palestinian Authority on the diplomatic war path for another year.

Obama has repeatedly rejected any idea that Pollard be freed from his life punishment for passing on to Israel classified information during his work for the Pentagon.

Maybe the president is smoking something strange. He talked his way into office, and now he is doing a great job in proving he is not much of anything besides a  great orator and a brilliant comedian.

But his handling of “Pollard for terrorists and peace talks” is no joke.

It would be interesting which presidential advisers came up with the horrendous notion of freeing Pollard so Israel can free terrorists so John Kerry can talk  and talk.

Obama is ultimately responsible, as the buck stopped at his desk when he backed the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, backed the Muslim Brotherhood regime, backed the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood regime, backed military action against Syria and backed no military action in Syria.

It is a small wonder that an Associated Press poll released last week showed that only 59 percent, and not 89 percent, of Americans disapprove of the way he is running the country.

Even The New York Times would have a hard time coming up with an excuse for the immorality of deciding that Pollard can go free because the President of the United States thinks that the security of Americans is dependent on another year of tortured conversations between American mediators and negotiators for the Palestinian Authority and Israel.

Dozens of American officials and former officials have said Pollard was dealt a fixed deck and an unfair trial.

Although anyone who knows how much or how little damage Pollard has done to the United States isn’t talking, perceptions are more important than the truth when it comes good ol’ American patriotism.

The Pollard episode, for whatever harm it may have done to the United States, did more harm to the American ego.

The revelation that Pollard worked as a double agent made him a traitor in the eyes of millions of Americans, and U.S. media still report he was convicted for “spying,” which is not true.

Obama showed some cold feet Tuesday, and White House press secretary Jay Carney said “no decision” has been made.

Criticism of freeing Pollard is coming from all quarters, including defense and intelligence officials, politicians and even a former Middle East negotiator.

“I think what he did is exceeded only by Edward Snowden,” Retired Adm. Thomas Brooks told Foreign Policy.

The Christian Science Monitor reported, “Pollard peddled secrets that included details of US spy satellites, analyses of foreign missile systems, and the extent of NSA surveillance of foreign governments.

“He reportedly offered material to South Africa, Argentina, and Taiwan, and was in touch with officials in Pakistan. Then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger testified in court that the US national security community suspects that much of what Pollard stole ended up with the Soviet Union, through the USSR’s own network of spies and moles.”

Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator for Republican and Democratic administrations, wrote in TIME Magazine, “Releasing Pollard… reflects the weakness and desperation of an administration that is presiding over a peace process not yet ready for prime time.

“What does the administration get for releasing Pollard — something none of its predecessors agreed to do? A final deal on Middle East peace? How about just an agreed framework to guide the negotiations? How about agreement on just one ball-busting-tough issue like borders or Jerusalem?

A study that translated 150 new Palestinian Authority textbooks used by a U.N. educational body exposes the lies in a former U.S. State Dept. funded study that the PA school system is not a source of incitement against Israel.

The Near East Policy Research Center study reveals that the textbooks say Jews have no rights to Israel, including to Jewish holy sites, and are not considered legitimate residents of the country. The name “Israel” appears less than a handful of times on the textbooks’ maps and is usually replaced with Palestine, and areas inside pre-1967 Israel are described exclusively as Palestinian.

The Near East Policy Research Center sent a letter to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which runs 250 schools in Gaza and 100 in the West Bank, asking it to correct the deficiencies in the textbooks.

The findings are a confirmation of previous reports, including those by Palestinian Media Watch, that despite Obama administration claims that the Palestinian Authority has curbed incitement, its school system increasingly spews out hate and teaches children that Israel should not exist.

Barely one year ago, a different study concluded that anti-Israel incitement was far less than reported by critics.

And guess who funded the in-depth study.

None other than the anti-Israeli zombies running around the U.S. State Dept., which has spent billions of dollars the past 40 years to create a fiction that the “Occupation” is the cause and source of anti-Israel incitement.

A State Dept. official, speaking anonymously because of the sensitivity” of the issue but described by JTA as “an official who works closely with mainstream Jewish organizations,” proudly stated last year  that the conclusion “obviously cuts down one of the pegs and a linchpin in the argument that the Israel government makes, that the Palestinian Authority is teaching hatred to their kids.”

The study was called “Victims of our own Narratives?” and praised both Israel and the Palestinian Authority for publishing textbooks virtually free of “dehumanizing and demonizing characterizations of the other.”

The State Dept. shelled out your money for the survey by a group called the Council of Religious Institutions in the Holy Land, a multifaith body that aims “to prevent religion from being used as a source of conflict, and to promote mutual respect,” according to its website. It claims to be comprised of the Israeli Chief Rabbinate, the Palestinian Islamic Waqf, and the heads of Christian churches in Israel and the West Bank.

However, a closer look at the group discloses who really is running it – the dean of a church in the anti-Israeli Church of Norway and an Arab whom the website says “grew up in the holy – yet divided – city of Jerusalem.”

That explains the survey’s conclusions, far from the truth.

One of the Israeli members of the study, Arnon Groiss, said he has reservations about the methodology and could not attach his name to the final report, which he said he has not seen, JTA reported last year..

The State Dept.-funded study was a sleight of hand to produce misleading conclusions. The research compared Israeli and Palestinian Authority textbooks describing each other in a positive or critical light.

Yale University psychiatry professor Bruce Wexler, who led the survey team, made “comparisons between promotion of education for peace on the one side and education that calls for the annihilation of the other side,” said Yossi Kuperwasser, the director of Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs. “It’s like comparing apples and giraffes.”

A statement from the Ministry of Strategic Affairs picks out passages in Palestinian textbooks it says the study ignores; many of them implicitly negate Israel by referring or depicting the entire territory as “Palestine.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is scheduled to return to Israel Wednesday and meet Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah to conclude another black chapter of Israel’s winding itself around President Barack Obama’s little finger.

Everything is apparently is place for the proposed deal of “Pollard in exchange for terrorists and another year of talks,” in reality a stretched version of Palestinian Authority ultimatums.

Palestinian Authority officials are to meet tonight in Ramallah in preparation for Kerry’s visit. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has called for a special Cabinet session Wednesday to approve the deal, if Ramallah does not throw a monkey wrench into the ring.

The American and Israeli governments have been spoon-feeding the Israeli public the past 24 hours with the idea of Obama’s granting Jonathan Pollard freedom from his life sentence in jail, even though he is eligible for pardon in November 2015.

That might be the reason Obama is playing the “Pollard card” now because next year, time would have expired to the point that offering Pollard would be useless for solving the next crisis, which can be expected if Kerry then comes up with a creative device to divide Jerusalem while calling it something else.

Morally, the idea of freeing Pollard for terrorists, and for extending the talks that have brought Israel nothing except a pat on the head from the Obama administration, is reprehensible. For good measure, there will be an “unofficial” building freeze in Judea and Samaria, which means no one really knows what it means.

It also defies logic from the side of the American government, which now has to explain to its citizens that the position that Pollard “committed a serious crime and must pay for it” suddenly subservient to need to continue the mediation of Obama’s point men who keep Israel and the Palestinian Authority from abandoning Kerry and Obama.

Yair Shamir, a Cabinet minister from the Yisrael Beitenu party, told Israeli radio Monday that the proposed deal is “bribery and emotional blackmail.” He said will oppose the deal if it comes to a vote.

Likud Minister Yuval Steinitz, loyal to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, said that the deal defies logic but that Israel has a moral commitment to do whatever has to be done to free Pollard.

Labor Knesset Member Nachman Shai expressed the most accurate estimate of reality. “The Palestinians feel that Israel is in a severe crisis and they can demand more and more,” he said.

Israeli governments, especially those of Rabin-Peres, Sharon, Olmert and now Netanyahu – have consistently turned themselves on their heads to perform stunts that are incomprehensible.

Each one is more unbelievable than the prior act, which is a cause for worry, because what’s next?

Prime Minister Netanyahu suggested to US secretary of state John Kerry that the framework he was drawing up for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority include Palestinian Arab recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Kerry intended to include this Israeli proposal, but since has backed away from it in view of Arab opposition, first of all from Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah and Palestinian Authority. Just last week, the Arab League voted its support for Abbas’ position.

One of the justifications for this opposition that apologists for the PA/PLO present is that by Israel being a Jewish state, the civil rights of Arab citizens of Israel would be adversely affected.

However, all states belonging to the Arab League define themselves as Arab states. All Arab League member states but Lebanon define themselves constitutionally as Islamic states in one way or another. This does not stop them from opposing Israel being defined as a Jewish national state.

The arguments against Israel as a Jewish state could logically be applied to Arab and Islamic states, and with more justification, since we have the benefit of hindsight to know just how non-Arabs and non-Muslims have been treated in Arab states.

The explanation for the Arab position lies, I believe, in the traditional Arab-Muslim view of Jews as an inferior dhimmi people, a millet [see below] devoid of national rights, and only entitled to live if they pay a yearly head tax on dhimmis called the jizya. The dhimma system applied to all non-Muslims who were subjects of the Islamic state, with individual exceptions. Within this system, the Jews were at the bottom of the barrel, at least in the Fertile Crescent countries, including the Levant, where the Jews’ status was inferior to that of their fellow dhimmis, the Christians.

Whereas the Quran and medieval Arab historiography, such as the the writings of Ibn Khaldun, recognize the Jews as a nation or people, the entrenched Islamic view of Jews as an evil, inferior contemptible millet is now dominant. Moreover, in fact, in practice, that was the actual status of Jews in the Arab-Muslim countries for centuries. Even today in the 21st century Muslims believe that Jews do not deserve the dignity of having a national state of their own, the Quran and the old Arab historians notwithstanding.

This contemptuous view of Jews is clearly stated by the PLO in its charter. Article 20, already denies that the Jews are a people, claiming that they are merely a “religious” group. Jewish tradition holds that the Jews are both a people and a religious group. Here is the relevant text of Art. 20:

“The claim of historical or religious ties between Jews and Palestine does not tally with historical realities nor with the constituents of statehood in their true sense. Judaism in its character as a religion is not a nationality with an independent existence. Likewise the Jews are not one people with an independent identity. They are rather citizens of the states to which they belong.”

Note the contempt for Jews which oozes from this text. The history of Israelite/Jewish kingdoms in the country, as well as of the Roman province of Judea, is denied. The setting of much of the Hebrew Bible lies in the Land Of Israel which the PLO denies in a way reminiscent of Holocaust denial. Further, Jews do not have “the constituents of statehood in their true sense.” Just by the way, the Nazis and other German Judeophobes claimed that the Jews were not capable of being a “state-forming nation.” [see Francis R Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press 1985)].

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.