Biden regime sanctions Israeli goat farm

by Daniel Greenfield, Frontpage Magazine

The Facebook page for Manne Farm features a goat wearing sunglasses. The goat (and possibly the sunglasses) along with the rest of the farm have now been sanctioned.

Anyone feeding the goat (or any of the sheep) faces legal and criminal consequences from D.C.

The State Department has sanctioned the Israeli farm under the “transnational criminal organizations designation” while describing its activities as the “raising of sheep and goats”.

This probably makes Manne Farm the first transnational criminal organization that raises sheep and goats.

In addition to raising them (and putting sunglasses on goats), the farm sells big juicy burgers, which look pretty good, and if that wasn’t enough, it also rents out a guesthouse for families looking to spend a weekend at a farm.

The farm hosted a prayer event for the high holidays and held craft workshops for kids for Chanukah. Now praying there might be a crime.

But while the Biden administration sanctions Jewish shepherds, it offered exemptions to sanctions on Hamas that knowingly allowed the terrorist group to benefit from aid to Gaza.

The Biden administration is actively collaborating with the Taliban, and State Department diplomats met with Taliban officials in Qatar to discuss a more formal alliance. Over $2 billion in aid has been sent to Afghanistan.

USAID administrator Samantha Power, who has stonewalled efforts to stop sending aid to terrorists, just announced another $100 million for the ‘Palestinians’ aiding the various Islamic terrorist organizations that manage their affairs and try to kill us.

But the State Department has gotten around to sanctioning a Jewish goat farm.

What does Joe Biden have against sheep and goats? According to the State Department, it’s acting in response to a Biden executive order targeting Jews in Israel, for having been “established on pastureland belonging to the Palestinian community”.

Not only is there no such thing as a ‘Palestinian’, but the goat farm is in the Judean Hills where Jews have lived since the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the patriarchs, who were practicing the same ancient profession of shepherds long before Biden or Islam.

The ‘Judean’ part of the name should have served as a tipoff to Biden about whose pastureland it is.

The farm is in the vicinity of the Ma’on community which is mentioned in Joshua 15:55 as being among the “inheritance of the tribe of the children of Judah”. Not the children of the Jihad.

If Biden had actually been “raised in the black church” (or any church) or “raised in the synagogue” as he also claimed, he would know that the Bible ruled on this before the UN.

But now Islamic terrorists calling themselves ‘Palestinians’ (after the Philistine European colonists whom King David battled despite actually being Muslim invaders who have no actual relationship to the Philistines) claim the land and Biden is sanctioning the sheep and goats.

Any sheep and goats the administration can find.

Along with Manne Farm, the Biden administration has sanctioned HaMahoch Farm which also stands accused of the “raising of sheep and goats” (based on pictures it does seem to have goats, sheep, and four cute kids), and Meitarim Farm guilty again of “raising of sheep and goats” where trees were planted in the memory of the victims of the Islamic atrocities of Oct 7.

The Biden administration, which has provided exemptions allowing taxpayer-funded “aid groups” to do business with the Taliban and even Al Qaeda, has imposed sanctions banning Americans from buying burgers at Manne Farm or putting a penny in the tip jar at Neriya’s Farm.

Anyone who then buys a burger from a restaurant that bought the sheep could also in theory be sanctioned. Meanwhile, Biden has provided billions in sanctions relief to Iran.

Why is the Biden administration sanctioning shepherds? These particular shepherds have been targeted by some very powerful special interests that include Biden’s donors.

There are entire anti-Israel organizations, some funded by our State Department, which make it a practice to harass Jewish farmers and shepherds in order to drive them off their land.

One of the most prominent anti-Israel figures targeting farmers is Arik Ascherman, a radical activist with the International Solidarity Movement, members of whom were caught aiding terrorists, including Hamas.

In a video posted by journalists at HaKol Hayehudi, Ascherman appears to state that “even if I sit down at night with someone from ISM who supports Hezbollah or Hamas, I will argue with them, but I still appreciate that they are here.”

“I was going to meet the head of a Hamas council,” Arik Ascherman admitted, expressing some unease when “I realized I am sitting with someone who does not recognize my right to exist. Should I therefore leave and let Israel trample on the human rights of the village?”

Under United States law, collaborating with terrorists justifies sanctions, herding sheep doesn’t.

But Ascherman’s current front group, Torat Tzedek, receives donations through the New Israel Fund which has been funded by George Soros, the Tides Foundation and other groups with financial ties to the Biden regime.

The basis for the State Department’s sanctions comes from extremists like Ascherman and larger anti-Israel groups pursuing Jewish shepherds.

The S. Daniel Abraham network of the Slim-Fast billionaire and major Biden donor has warned that anyone buying cheese from the Jewish goat farms could be in trouble.

Joel Braunold, who formerly headed the Alliance for Middle East Peace (ALLMEP), and now heads the S. Daniel Abraham network, warned that “anyone dealing with a sanctioned individual should very seriously consult their legal teams to see if they have exposure to sanctions.”

ALLMEP is an anti-Israel alliance whose members include an Ascherman front group and has helped funnel a fortune in American taxpayer money to promote leftist anti-Israel groups.

According to NGO Monitor, Huda Abu Arqoub, ALLMEP’s Regional Director, claimed that Hamas is “not a terrorist government.” In an op-ed written this year, Arquob argued that “the ‘Day After’ the Gaza War Will Have to Include Hamas.”

And yet it’s the Jewish shepherds, not the billionaire Hamas lobby that is being sanctioned. But the Israeli shepherds are no match for the powerful pro-terrorist insiders arrayed against them.

Earlier this year, the AP (whose personnel have been tied to Hamas) ran an article attacking the Meitarim sheep farm.

The 1,300-word article, which made no mention of Hamas or Islamic terrorism, subsequently appeared in newspapers around the country. A media hit piece on the farm popped up in the New Yorker which warned of a Jewish Zionist “sheepherding strategy.”

Since the days of the patriarchs, and Moses, there has been a Jewish “sheepherding strategy.”

The D.C. campaign against Jewish shepherds following in the footsteps of the Patriarchs is bearing fruit. Shepherds and farmers targeted by the Biden administration and the pro-terrorist left have had their bank accounts shut down in Israel in compliance with the D.C. sanctions.

But they’re not giving up.

“The executive order is a result of requests to Biden by the anarchist, anti-Zionist left, which hates the Jewish people,” Yinon Levi of Meitarim Farm said.

“Biden, who is unable to deal with the Houthis [the Iran-backed Yemeni Islamic terrorist group] who murder American soldiers, doesn’t scare us. We will continue to settle the Land of Israel without fear.”

Biden’s inept pro-terrorist sanctions not only went after farmers, but the wrong ones, including a random 27-year-old man whose name was wrongly transmitted by anti-Israel groups to the State Department and who isn’t even a farmer, a shepherd, or even lives in the area.

And when Biden wasn’t sanctioning Israeli shepherds, he also went after Reut Ben Haim, a mother of 8, who worked with survivors of sexual assault and after the Hamas attacks of Oct 7 helped lead protests against the Biden ‘aid’ trucks that help Hamas control Gaza.

“From the moment I founded Tzav 9, it was solely to bring our hostages home. We wanted to stop aid to Hamas and prevent harm to our soldiers. Our actions included all parts of the nation – hostage families, bereaved families, right-wing and left-wing alike – all participating in the most legitimate actions with zero violence. Now, we face sanctions, personally targeting me.”

But despite being listed alongside Al Qaeda terrorists as a “transnational criminal”, she’s not giving up either even though her bank accounts have been shut down by Biden’s orders.

Reut has a 6-month-old baby and a husband fighting on the front lines against terrorists in Gaza.

“I was going wrote a message about the sanctions and how difficult and crazy they are… but what my heart wanted to say is how amazing the support has been from so many people who are offering to help, not only those who agree with me, but those who disagree with me,” she posted along with a picture of a fruit platter that had been sent over.

The struggle between the shepherds and housewives, and Biden’s billionaires and the international pro-terrorist networks arrayed against them, is a David vs. Goliath battle.

But it’s an hour’s drive from the Valley of Elah in the Judean foothills, where a Jewish shepherd boy first faced down the Philistine giant, navigating around the current ‘Palestinian’ terrorist occupiers of Hebron, to the Judean Hills where today’s shepherd boys contend with local Islamic occupiers, terrorists and the global Goliath from D.C. to Doha coming after them.

After the sanctions were announced, they went on to their evening prayers and their preparations to bring in the Sabbath. 3,000 years ago, a Jewish shepherd told a Philistine giant, “You come at me with sword, spear, and javelin, and I come to you in the Name of the Lord of Hosts, the God of the armies of Israel.”

The armies of Israel are in the field as are its sheep.

While Goliath vents his fury on the Jewish shepherds, they bring in the sheep.

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