By Victor Sharpe—

Milk and honey” refers to the nectar of the fruit, and a land “flowing with milk and honey” is an expression used for a particularly fertile land that could produce abundant produce and fruit. The saying is used several times in the Bible, each time conveying the richness of the Promised Land – The Land of Israel.

A land flowing with milk and honey is now a blessed reality in the reborn modern State of Israel, miraculously restored and reconstituted by its own indigenous Jewish folk after 2,000 years of exile. It is now once again a sovereign Jewish nation in its ancestral and Biblical homeland. The precious land, neglected and wasted for so long, and which had endured successive alien occupations down the centuries, has been lovingly redeemed by the pioneering Jewish pioneers whose Zionist endeavor and undertaking banished the malarial swamps, turned the desert green and restored the hills and valleys of Israel into their verdant beauty.

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by Judith Bergman, GATESTONE INSTITUTE

• “There is currently no specially allocated government funding for victims of terror. While they can claim money…. survivors of the Manchester terror attack say that they are forced to wait years for funds to come through…” — Gabriella Swerling, The Telegraph, March 18, 2020.
• It is paradoxical, to say the least, that in the era of “victimhood culture” — in which a multitude of identity groups compete for the prize of most victimized — where even subjectively perceived slights are registered by UK police as “non-criminal incidents” — victims of terror, who have suffered severe physical and psychological life-disrupting injury as the result of actual manifested hatred, have to fight for their rights.

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Being “fluent in Judaism” is “an imperative for the future of the Jewish people, especially outside the State of Israel,” said Friedman, who is an Orthodox Jew.

By Marcy Oster, JTA MAY 29, 2020 05:36

US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman looks on as he speaks during a briefing at The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs in Jerusalem February 9, 2020.
(photo credit: AMIR COHEN/REUTERS)

US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman told a virtual conference that Jewish illiteracy is the greatest threat to Diaspora Jewry.

“The Jewish state, while not without issues, is growing: both religious and secular institutions are thriving, basic Jewish education is available to all and there is little risk of assimilation. The same cannot be said for the Diaspora,” Friedman told Haaretz’s “Judaism, Israel and Diaspora conference,” which took place on Wednesday.

Being “fluent in Judaism” is “an imperative for the future of the Jewish people, especially outside the State of Israel,” said Friedman, who is an Orthodox Jew.

“Regardless of how we believe or worship or observe our Judaism, what makes that practice uniquely Jewish and likely to continue and grow is our ability to place ourselves on an unbroken chain beginning in ancient times, that remains not just relevant – but even more critical today than ever before, as we struggle to find meaning in a complicated world,” the ambassador added.

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by Seth Frantzman, The Spectator,  May 20, 2020

A Government of National Accord (GNA) military spokesman shows off a newly seized airbase southwest of Tripoli on May 18, 2020. (AFP)

Libya has been in the midst of civil war for almost a decade. However, in the last year, the conflict has escalated and become a regional proxy war. This matters because Libya is a gateway for migrants coming to Europe and because whoever wins in Libya will emerge a powerful figure in the Middle East. Eastern Libya is run by Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army (LNA). He is principally backed by the UAE, Egypt and Russia; and he appears to receive support from France, Saudi Arabia and Greece. The government in Tripoli is backed by Turkey and Qatar. Haftar seemed poised to take Tripoli in recent months but his allies in Abu Dhabi, Cairo and Moscow have suffered setbacks. They have not been able to get Haftar over the line.

Libya is the Middle East’s most important proxy conflict today. Just read the differing pro-government media accounts from voices across the region, like those in the UAE and in Turkey that illustrate just how important Libya has become. Turkey calls Haftar a ‘warlord’ while The National in the UAE accuses Tripoli of arming ‘militias’ while playing up accounts of the Muslim Brotherhood controlling the Libyian capital.

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T. Belman. There is no way that Israel would agree to abandon any part of J&S.

MIDDLE EAST MONITOR  May 27, 2020 at 3:04 pm

Palestinians stage a protest against the ‘Deal of the Century’, planned by US President Donald Trump to solve the conflict between Palestine and Israel, in Ramallah, West Bank on 2 July 2018 [Issam Rimawi/Anadolu Agency]

The Trump administration has been rebuked for making “excessive demand” on Israel over the final boundary in its eastern border. The White House has outraged Israeli officials by pushing for a joint US-Israeli mapping team to delineate the boundaries of the areas to be placed under Israeli sovereignty and designated as the final borders of the State of Israel

The proposal angered hardcore Zionists who are staunchly opposed to the idea of a Palestinian state just as equally as they are opposed to placing any restrictions on Israel’s complete takeover of Palestine.

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THE AMAZING POLLY

Despite the opening of his trail, and despite failures in prior elections, the popularity of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu keeps soaring.

By Ben Caspit, AL MONITOR

[…]

These projections have all come crashing down in recent months. In the third March elections, Netanyahu netted four additional seats for his Likud, even after indictment on serious criminal charges and although most Israelis still blamed him for the ongoing political stalemate. There has been more bad news for Netanyahu since the elections. May 24 marked the first day of his trial, and the first of an incumbent Israeli premier, bringing to life the bizarre scenario of a prime minister conducting the affairs of state in the morning and going to court in the afternoon to conduct his defense.

Here, too, expectations and logic regarding his popularity fell by the wayside. A poll conducted shortly after his trial opened, boosted the Likud from its current 36 seats to 41. Blue and White, which had split in two after Lapid and Ya’alon refused to join Gantz in a Netanyahu-led government, plunged to 12 seats in the poll — from the 33 it received in the March 2 elections — and was overtaken in the poll results by the Lapid-Ya’alon party with 14 seats. In the poll’s most amazing finding, 42% of respondents said they believed law enforcement authorities, part of a “deep state” system, were hounding an innocent, gifted, brilliant leader. Had the poll been confined to Jewish respondents, the results would have been even more astounding, likely indicating that a majority — albeit slim — of Jewish Israelis believes the State of Israel is framing a prime minister suspected of severe crimes.

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By Victor Sharpe, INN

Sometimes it becomes necessary to look back at the not so recent history of a nation’s leader when evaluating successes and failures. The very fact that one of the first decisions that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu made during his initial term as Israel’s prime minister. which began on June 18th, 1996, was to surrender the first capital of the Jewish faith to the fraudulent Arabs who call themselves Palestinians.

The wonderful Ruth King once justifiably lamented in her blog, Ruthfullyours, about Netanyahu’s capitulation at the Wye Plantation to then Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, (aka Madeline Halfbright) who pressured him into betraying the ancestral and Biblical Jewish holy city of Hebron.

It was Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin who had earlier given away Jericho after the fateful signing of the Oslo Accords, which of course became the Oslo War. Jericho was the first city in the Promised Land that Joshua liberated some 3,500 years earlier after the ancient Jewish tribes had crossed the River Jordan.

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By Andrea Widburg, AMERICAN THINKER

Conservatives know that the tech giants, whether social media platforms or search engines, have consistently sought to silence conservative viewpoints. Trump’s more extreme tweets of late were probably intended to goad Twitter into censoring him, and Twitter took the bait on his tweets about mail-in ballots and voter fraud. Once Twitter engaged in overt political censorship, it gave Trump the opening he needed to expose the tech titans to expensive lawsuits and FCC oversight.

It’s no secret that Big Tech, which is located almost exclusively in the uber-leftist Bay Area, leans left. From top management down to the recently hired college graduate, these institutions seek to push a leftist agenda using their power over the flow of almost all information in America. Twitter bans and shadow-bans conservatives, YouTube restricts and demonetizes conservative sites, and Google uses algorithms that force viewpoint discrimination on its searches. Vox has openly admitted that the tech titans plan to use their vast power over information traffic to elect Joe Biden
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Part of the ‘Israel Experience,’ the Jewish Agency’s subsidiary company for education, the program brings doctors from Eastern Europe and integrates them into all institutions requiring their skills.

JERUSALEM POST STAFF

Medical interns from Eastern Europe celebrate the awarding of their medical certification at Rambam Hospital in Haifa. (photo credit: PIOTR FLITR FOR RAMBAM)

In the midst of the ongoing coronvirus pandemic, 110 doctors from various Eastern European countries, who are entitled to immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return,  have signed up for a medical program associated with the the Jewish Agency aimed at integrating them into Israel’s health care system, according to a press release from the Agency on Thursday.

Part of the ‘Israel Experience,’ the Jewish Agency’s subsidiary company for education, the program brings doctors from Eastern Europe and integrates them into all institutions requiring their skills, including the IDF and hospitals around the country.

Since its inception, over 700 doctors have graduated from the program, which also allows them to practice medicine in Israel provided they pass the appropriate licensing exams. According to the press release, the program mantains an average success rate of 98%.

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by Gary C. Gambill, MEFORUM

Phyllis Chesler, a Shillman-Ginsburg Fellow at the Middle East Forum, emerita professor of psychology and women’s studies, and the author of eighteen books, spoke to participants in a May 18 Middle East Forum webinar (video) about the barbaric practice of honor killing and how to combat it.

Honor killing is the “cold blooded murder of girls and women by their families of origin.” In a “shame and honor tribal culture, … a girl’s virginity and reproductive capacity, her fertility, are owned by her family, literally. Not by the girl herself. She represents their honor,” Chesler explained. “If a girl is seen as damaged goods, her family will then be responsible … no one will marry their other children or deal with them economically. They’ll be shunned.” The only way the family can “cleanse themselves of this shame [is] with blood – her blood.”

The list of offenses that can trigger an honor killing is long, including engaging in sex outside of marriage, refusing an arranged marriage, marrying outside of one’s religious sect or cast, having infidel friends, and becoming too Westernized. Since the aim is to recapture family honor, not punishment, it matters little whether the accusations are true. In rare cases where honor killers are prosecuted, according to Chesler, “they claim that they’re only acting in self-defense, that communal norms drove them to it.”
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The Palestinians “need to acknowledge that we control security in all areas” of the West Bank, Netanyahu said.

By Tovah Lazaroff and Leon Sverdlov, JPOST

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presents Israel’s new government to Knesset, May 17, 2020

Israel’s government won’t vote on the issue of Palestinian statehood or on the entirety of the US Donald Trump’s peace plan, Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu told the Hebrew daily Makor Rishon in an interview published Friday.

He clarified for the paper, that he planned to solely bring the topic of sovereignty to the cabinet and the Knesset for a vote, as dictated under the terms of his coalition agreement with the Blue and White party led by Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz.

The paper asked Netanyahu, who has plans to bring the issue of sovereignty to a vote as early as July, “would the government decision on sovereignty include the topic of Palestinian statehood?”

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Netanyahu rejects criticism from the right that he folded on the issue of a Palestinian state.

By Elad Benari, INN

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told the Israel Hayom newspaper in an interview published on Thursday that a move to apply Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley would be historical, dismissing criticism from the oppositional right that he folded on the issue of a Palestinian state.

“For the first time since the establishment of the state, I’ve managed to secure American recognition [of our sovereignty rights], first on the Golan Heights and in Jerusalem, and then through an agreement that will facilitate American recognition in the areas of our homeland inside Judea and Samaria. These are [US President Donald] Trump’s decisions, and the person who broached these matters with him was me. No one else,” said Netanyahu.

Asked about the argument from the oppositional right that a Palestinian state is hidden in Trump’s package, Netanyahu replied, “Within this package is a historic opportunity for changing the tide of history, which was pointing one way. The whole time. All the diplomatic plans proposed to us in the past asked us to concede swathes of the Land of Israel, return to the 1967 borders and divide Jerusalem. To take in [Palestinian] refugees. This is a reversal. We aren’t the ones being forced to make concessions, rather the Palestinians are. Regardless of negotiations.”
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By BENNY AVNI, Special to the Sun | May 27, 2020

As Attorney General Barr and General Michael Flynn battle in court to rescind the general’s guilty plea, a deeper look deserves to be taken at the phone conversations that underlay the controversy. The calls were, in part, meant to protect the incoming administration from an effort to cripple the Mideast policy on which Mr. Trump campaigned for office.

The effort to cripple Mr. Trump’s Mideast policy centered, in large part, on the UN Security Council’s Resolution 2334. There is a good account of this by Lee Smith, writing in Tablet Magazine. The resolution was designed to undercut Israel’s claims to Jerusalem. The general, in his guilty plea, claimed that he misled FBI agents when he told them that “on or about December 22 (2016), Flynn did not ask the Russian Ambassador to delay the vote on or defeat a pending United Nations Security Council resolution.”

Yet Mr. Flynn was absolutely right to undermine the resolution. Security Council resolution 2334 was widely seen as Mr. Obama’s parting shot against Benjamin Netanyahu. Mr. Obama was still fuming over the fact that Mr. Netanyahu had publicly denounced Mr. Obama’s articles of appeasement with Iran. Mr. Netanyahu saw the Iran deal as a threat to Israel. He marked the point memorably in his third speech to a joint meeting of Congress.

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By Noga Tarnopolsky and Nabih Bulos, Los Angeles Times

JERUSALEM — With fears of a second wave of coronavirus infections looming, some Arab Gulf nations have turned for help to an ostensible enemy and a country they don’t officially recognize: Israel.Call it COVID-19 diplomacy, according to Yoel Har-Even, head of the international division at Tel Aviv’s Sheba Medical Center, one of Israel’s top medical institutions. The hospital has received inquiries about services and treatments from private individuals and businessmen from countries where “you have to have official permission to reach out” to Israel.Har-Even said those nations include Bahrain and Indonesia — which do not have diplomatic ties with Israel — and a few majority-Muslim countries that do recognize Israel, such as Jordan, Egypt and Azerbaijan. He also did not dispute numerous Israeli media reports that have put the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait on the list as well.

“COVID-19 has served us well,” he said in an interview. “I wouldn’t say that attitudes have changed in the past 70 days, but we’ve definitely received more and more approaches from different places.”

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