by Richard Kemp, GATESTONE INSTITUTE  •

This week, we witnessed a symbol of perhaps the greatest step forward in world peace for decades. The first-ever direct passenger flight from Israel to the United Arab Emirates flew down the length of Saudi Arabia’s airspace. Pictured: The flags of the United Arab Emirates, Israel and the United States fly at Abu Dhabi airport on August 31, 2020. (Photo by Karim Sahib/AFP via Getty Images)

• Some months ago, in talks with leaders in Saudi Arabia as part of a delegation from former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Friends of Israel Initiative, together with their Executive Director and former Spanish National Security Adviser Rafael Bardaji, I heard first-hand how open the Saudis were to the prospect of embracing Israel in the future.

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“China is run by a self-selecting committee of bureaucrats cherrypicked from the top 1/10th of 1% of university entrance exam scores.”

By David P. Goldman, PJ MEDIA

An old Cold War joke reports an international poll that asks the same question in every country: “Excuse me, what’s your opinion of the meat shortage?”

The Poles say, “What’s meat?” The Chinese say, “What’s opinion?”The Americans say, “What’s shortage?”The Israelis say, “What’s excuse me?”

No Chinese has ever run a community school board, a Little League association, or a volunteer fire brigade. For the past 2,500 years, and probably the past 5,000, orders in China have flowed downward from the top, through a vertical hierarchy. Everyone in the U.S. has an opinion about politics–we have to choose our leaders and spend a lot of time thinkingi about it. Our opinion matters. Political opinions don’t have an practical value in China, so the practical Chinese don’t bother having them.
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By John Hannah, REAL CLEAR DEFENSE

Watching Israel’s national carrier, El Al, make its maiden trip to the United Arab Emirates on Monday, including an overflight of Saudi Arabia, was itself history-making. The passenger list—a group of top American and Israeli officials, led by President Trump’s senior aide and son-in-law, Jared Kushner—only added to the moment’s significance. But it’s the work that these officials do with their Emirati counterparts in the coming weeks and months that has the potential to fundamentally alter the Middle East’s strategic landscape, especially for countering the Iranian threat.

Make no mistake: The normalization deal is a major blow to Iran’s already-battered regional standing. Sure, it’s not the first breakthrough that Israel’s had with an Arab country.  The peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan have been on the books for decades.

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By The Associated Press

Anna Moneymaker / Pool / Getty ImagesPresident Donald Trump participates in a signing ceremony and meeting with the President of Serbia Aleksandar Vucic, left, and the Prime Minister of Kosovo Avdullah Hoti, right, in the Oval Office of the White House on Sep. 4, 2020, in Washington, D.C. (Anna Moneymaker / Pool / Getty Images)

President Donald Trump announced Friday that Serbia and Kosovo have normalized economic ties as part of U.S.-brokered talks that include Belgrade moving its Israeli embassy to Jerusalem.

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India and China’s confrontation is not the only impediment their nationalistic leaders are imposing on themselves

ASIA TIMES

India and China are confronting each other across a disputed Himalayan border, with more violence reported this week. But the hardline nationalism in both nations that brought them to blows also appears to be hampering their relations with much of the rest of the world.

In India, that’s manifest in the struggle to find its place as a regional power between the west and China, a pursuit that’s looking likely to undermine its ties with both. Meanwhile, China’s travails are encapsulated in the battle over technology giant Huawei.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi remains popular despite an economy that’s going backwards and a national failure to come to grips with the coronavirus pandemic. He can add diplomatic folly to that list.

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By Andrea Widburg, AM THINKER

Democrats, through Antifa and Black Lives Matter, have engaged in urban warfare for months now. They caused five hundred million dollars of damage in Minneapolis, turned six blocks of Seattle into warlord territory, repeatedly looted Chicago’s businesses, reduced some sectors of Portland into a scene out of a third world civil war, and tried to wipe out Kenosha’s business sector. Yet Trump has held his fire, refraining from sending in massed federal troops. Believe it or not, this is a wise decision.

From the day Trump became the Republican nominee in 2016, the left framed him as a Hitlerian fascist. It didn’t matter that Hitler was a socialist, and Trump a conservative. They ignored that fascism, like all forms of socialism, is based upon complete government control (“Everything within the state; nothing outside the state; nothing against the state,” as Mussolini explained), while Trump has relentlessly worked to shrink the government and limit its power.
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By J.B. Shurk, AM THINKER

Now that a top Democrat data analytics firm has finally confirmed that Democrats plan to claim victory weeks after the presidential election once enough of their “votes” show up in the mail to be counted, I don’t think any rational observer could view this as anything but a promise to destroy the legitimacy of the 2020 election.  The Democrats’ mission to fracture America permanently should be codenamed “Operation Chaos,” because it is chaos that they are preparing to unleash.

It was not a few thousand dollars worth of Russian Facebook posts and online internet trolls that nearly destroyed the Union after the 2016 election.  It was the way the Obama White House and an intelligence-law enforcement cabal run by the Democratic Party maliciously and intentionally magnified Russia’s limited hijinks into the greatest political hoax in American history.  
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New York Times quotes officials saying Netanyahu lied about his opposition to the deal, which also includes ultra-advanced radar-jamming planes that could give the UAE a step up

By TOI STAFF

In this December 12, 2016, file photo, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reaches to one of the first two next-generation F-35 fighter jets after it landed during an unveiling ceremony upon arrival in Nevatim Air Force Base near Beersheba, Southern Israel. (AP/Ariel Schalit, File)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has privately removed any opposition to the sale of American F-35 fighter jets to the United Arab Emirates, despite repeated assurances that he is against the deal, according to a New York Times report published late Thursday.

The report, which cites unnamed sources involved in the talks, claims that along with the ultra-advanced jets and Reaper drones, the deal also includes radar-blocking EA-18G Growler jets, which could erode the effectiveness of Israel’s air defense capabilities and put the UAE at a considerable military advantage.
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Figures using data from Johns Hopkins University show Israel averaged 199.3 new cases a day per 1 million residents in the week ending September 2; death toll climbs to 985

By TOI STAFF  Today, 12:09 am

Medical workers at the Barzilay Hospital, in Ashkelon handle a coronavirus test sample on March 29, 2020 (Flash90)<
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Israel now has the highest rate of daily new coronavirus infections per capita in the world, according to figures aired by Israeli television on Thursday.

The figures reported by Channels 12 and 13 cited data from Johns Hopkins University, showing Israel averaged 199.3 new cases a day per 1 million residents in the week ending on September 2.

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What Leila Khaled’s Talk in San Francisco Says About Higher Education

By Jonathan Marks, COMMENTARY

Leila Khaled owes her international fame to two things: she used to hijack planes, and female hijackers remain an object of fascination. You can find her face on T-shirts, in part because some advocates of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel love her.

As I’ve written before, that’s strange because, as Khaled has indicated any number of times, she is in favor of violence against Israel, whereas BDS sells itself as a nonviolent movement. It’s almost as if BDS isn’t dedicated to nonviolence, except as an adjunct to violence.
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by Eve Barlow, TABLET

I don’t think of Delaware as a center of anti-Semitic hate. But on the night of Aug. 26, the University of Delaware’s Chabad house was burned to the ground, causing an estimated $75,000 worth of damage. According to the state fire marshal, the fire was intentionally set. While the university’s president acknowledged that the site was “an active part of UD’s religious, faith, and spiritual diversity” the fire marshal’s office found no indication that this was a hate crime. Gov. John Carney called the crime “upsetting.”

Only three years earlier, in 2017, Gov. Carney was showing his solidarity and support while visiting the Siegel Jewish Community Center and its Albert Einstein Academy primary school in Wilmington after the JCC received five bomb threats in the space of two months. In February of this year, the same JCC reported that it’s still receiving bomb threats. Delaware’s Jewish community is pushing for an expansion of the state’s hate crime laws.
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The MEMRI Daily: September 3, 2020

• Saudi Columnist’s Call For Separation Of State And Religion Sparks Public Debate

• Dubai’s Deputy Chief Of Police Dhahi Khalfan Tamim: Iran And Turkey, Not Israel, Threaten Gulf States; Iran Must Choose Between Economic Death, Collapse Of Mullah Regime, And Peace With Israel; PA President Mahmoud Abbas Should Resign

• Iranian Supreme Leaders Ayatollah Ali Khamenei: UAE Government Committed An ‘Unfortunate Act Of Betrayal’ In Deal With Israel

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By Prof. Hillel Frisch,BESA

Front page of Khaleej Times of Dubai hailing UAE-Israel peace agreement, image via Twitter feed of Yiftah Curiel

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,729, September 3, 2020

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: To the surprise of Iranian and Palestinian leaders, the Arab public did not protest the Israel-UAE peace agreement—but they continue to protest Iranian meddling in Iraqi and Lebanese affairs. The lack of protest against the Israel-UAE breakthrough is a sign of political maturity as Arab and Muslim populations clamor for reform at home rather than destructive ideological visions.

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By Debra Heine, AM GREATNESS

The Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security confirmed this week that the DOJ is investigating the organizers and funders behind the violent riots that have engulfed the country since May.

“We are investigating coordinated, criminal activity—not First Amendment activity—and violence related to riots, destruction of federal property and violence against law enforcement officers,” said DOJ spokesperson Kerri Kupec on Tuesday.

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Compiled by Robert Sklaroff

{These musings are not provided in any particular sequence.}

Problems at Colleges/Universities are legion, manifest by students, teachers and administrators; they are routinely interlaced with anti-America/anti-Jewish motivations, and they often threaten those who try to protest via the “Cancel Culture” mechanism (as amply documented by the Legal Insurrection Foundation led by @ Columbia Law School William A. Jacobson, Esq.
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