Backing Israel’s position against pending war crimes probe, 7 countries say Palestine is not a state that can transfer jurisdiction to the ICC. Not a single one argues the opposite

By RAPHAEL AHREN, ISRAEL HAYOM

Demonstrators carry banners and Palestinian flags outside the International Criminal Court, ICC, urging the court to prosecute Israel’s army for war crimes in The Hague, Netherlands, November 29, 2019. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

The notion that “Palestine” is a full-fledged state that can grant jurisdiction to the International Criminal Court was dealt a serious blow over the past week, as seven countries and many scholars of international law argued that the issue was not as simple as the Palestinians and their supporters would like to make it seem.

Even some countries that have formally recognized the “State of Palestine” along the pre-1967 lines argued that Palestine cannot necessarily be considered to have validly granted the ICC jurisdiction to probe war crimes allegedly committed on its territory. Read more…

BY MATT MARGOLIS, PJMEDIA

President Barack Obama speaks during the awards dinner for Syracuse University’s Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting at Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium, in Washington, Monday, March 28, 2016. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Ever since President Trump commuted the sentence of disgraced former governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich, I’ve been asking myself why he would do such a thing. I have a theory about what might have contributed to the decision, and if I’m right, Barack Obama should be concerned.

When Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, it was then-Governor Blagojevich’s responsibility to appoint someone to fill the seat. But, Blagojevich didn’t just want to give it away, he wanted something for it. “A Senate seat is a f—ing valuable thing. You don’t just give it away for nothing,” Blagojevich said at the time.

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By Abe Katsman

Those whose hatred of political opponents exceeds their hatred for the country’s enemies should be kept far from the Presidency.  A party which treats foreign policy only as a means to claw back power at any cost cannot be trusted with America’s own national security interests; how reliable can it be when it comes to Israel’s?

This is getting dangerous.

Embassy attacks in Baghdad.  Targeted killings of top Iranian militia generals.  Threats of war, and counter-threats.  Widespread riots destabilizing both Iraq and Iran.  Implications of President Trump’s “Deal of the Century” peace plan, and the backlash against it.

Oh, the events themselves aren’t unusually dangerous; but the reactions by the Democrats’ top presidential candidates and party leadership are.  The Democrats’ evident political priorities and leftward shift should scare American voters concerned with Mideast policy, particularly regarding the welfare of Israel and its U.S. relationship.  So far, those voters have yet to show sufficient levels of alarm.
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“I will do everything to prevent a third Lebanon war, a 14th Protective Edge, to go to the source, to go to the same people who pay $1b. a year to Hezbollah”

By TZVI JOFFRE, JPOST

Defense Minister Naftali Bennett during a recent visit to the Syrian border

As Israel granted a record number of travel permits to Gaza merchants after weeks of explosive balloons, rockets and a sniper attack, Defense Minister Naftali Bennett said he was trying his best to avoid a conflict with Hamas or Hezbollah to focus on Iran in Syria.

On Tuesday, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories announced that it would increase the number of travel permits for Gaza merchants by 2,000, bringing the total number to 7,000 permits. COGAT also decided to expand Gaza’s fishing zone from 10 to 15 nautical miles.

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Former Justice Minister: The Likud doesn’t want a Justice Minister and a Defense Minister from religious Zionism.

Arutz Sheva Staff, 

Ayelet Shaked-Kobi Richter/TPS

Former Justice Minister MK Ayelet Shaked (Yamina) spoke about Prime Minister Binyamin’s Netanyahu’s behavior toward her party, commented on her relations with Naftali Bennett and discussed her opinion on Rabbi Rafi Peretz’s statements against the LGBT community.

In an interview with the Israel Hayom newspaper, Shaked said, “In the first round of elections, had it not been for Netanyahu, we would have had a strong and stable right-wing government today. On Friday, five days before the April elections, I called one of the people closest to Netanyahu and told him: ‘He is running a ‘gevalt’ (scare tactics -ed.) campaign, one of the parties in the bloc will collapse for sure, and he will have no government.’”
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By Vic Rosenthal

I belong to a Masorti (Conservative) congregation in Israel. Although most Israelis don’t believe this, the movement is theologically much closer to Modern Orthodoxy than to Reform Judaism. There is a commitment to halacha, albeit somewhat more lenient than in Orthodoxy (but not so much as Orthodox Jews tend to think). The biggest difference is the equal role granted to women and men in every respect, including participation in ritual.

Our rabbi leans a little leftward, at least compared to me, but he is capable of distinguishing politics from religion, and I like him.

Having said that, I am absolutely appalled by the anti-Israel politics rampant in the Conservative seminaries in the US, where most of our rabbis, American and Israeli, are educated.
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News from the Middle East Forum

PHILADELPHIA – February 14, 2020 – The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) just unveiled a new work-plan inspired by the Middle East Forum’s Israel Victory Project.

The five-year “Momentum” plan is designed to increase the IDF’s capabilities sevenfold. Defense Minister Naftali Bennett explains that it “puts the principle of victory back at the top of the list of priorities.”

The IDF’s paradigm-shift is the culmination of over three years’ work in Israel. MEF has inspired a non-partisan national movement through intensive contacts with senior policy-makers; the Knesset Israel Victory Caucus; hosting conferences; hundreds of media engagements; public campaigns; and grassroots outreach.
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Turkish troops shell Syrian army positions while Russian air force bombs Turkish positions in Idlib, Syria.

By Yochanan Visser, INN

Recep Tayyip ErdoganA week after Israel National News reported that Turkey was on a crash course with Russia over Syria the parties are now at war technically speaking.

This happened after talks between a Turkish delegation and the Kremlin in Moscow about the worsening crisis in northeast Syria and the imminent threat of a new Turkish invasion in Syria over the Idlib Province, which is home to a range of Sunni Islamist groups supported by Turkey, broke-down.

The Turkey-backed Islamist militias in Idlib are on the verge of defeat after the Iranian-Russian-backed pro-Assad coalition rapidly advanced in the last rebel stronghold and even surrounded Turkish observation posts which were set up to monitor a 2018 de-escalation agreement between Russia and Turkey that failed miserably.
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By Bruce Ticker

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania — Someone finally did it – publicly blaming the Jewish people for the crucifixion of Jesus and, even more disgracefully, applying this libel to explain Israel’s so-called occupation of the Palestinian territories.

Henry M. Bradford’s words were printed on Jan. 27 in The Chronicle Herald, the daily newspaper serving Halifax in Canada’s Nova Scotia. His letter to the editor responded to a commentary about anti-Semitism by freelance journalist Ralph Surette.

“Ralph Surette is right to point out the absurdity of Western anti-Semitism in his Jan. 13 column,” Bradford wrote. “Presumably, it has its roots in Christian resentment of the crucifixion of their messiah by his fellow Jews. But that was 2,000 years ago!

“The most contentious remnant of this event is the occupation of Palestinian lands by the state of Israel,” he continued.
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Ted Belman

“Despite Lebanon’s immense economic struggles, Hezbollah is persisting with its efforts to procure and arm itself with precision weapons with which to hit the Israeli home front, and it continues to prepare south of the Litani River to attack communities and roads in our territory,” says Maj. Gen. Amir Baram.

ISRAEL HAYOM

GOC Northern Command, Maj. Gen. Amir Baram, at Tel-Hai Academic College on Wednesday | Photo: Eyal Margolin / JINI

Head of the IDF’s Northern Command, Maj. Gen. Amir Baram, said on Thursday that the Lebanon-based Hezbollah terrorist organization continues to violate United Nations resolutions through its actions along the border with Israel in a manner that puts the lives of Lebanese civilians in danger.

“Around two weeks ago, the president of Lebanon told the French press that Hezbollah is not involved in the decision-making process of the new Lebanese government and that he personally guarantees that Hezbollah will honor UN Resolution 1701,” Baram said at a conference hosted by the Tel-Hai Academic College in northern Israel. Read more…

by Michael Rubin, Wash Examiner

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is threatening to fight the Syrian army directly if Syrian President Bashar Assad does not stop his assault on Idlib, the last major zone controlled by the Syrian opposition. While Erdogan imagined himself a master tactician, he is now learning that it was Russian President Vladimir Putin who played him. Erdogan discarded decades of alliance with the United States for a brief fling, only to discover Putin’s professions of love were for more limited aims.

This is not the first time Erdogan has found himself outplayed. But, after deliberately trashing Turkey’s relationship with the U.S., it is time Washington plays hardball. Those who say that Erdogan notwithstanding, Turkey is too important for the U.S. to turn its back against are likely underestimating the corrosive impact of 17 years of Erdoganism, the incitement and indoctrination broadcast over the airwaves or taught in Turkey’s schools, and demographic change.
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By Michael Derfler

“To be for the Israeli people and to be for peace in the Middle East does not mean that we have to support right-wing, racist governments that currently exist in Israel.” – Bernie Sanders

This quote fills me with disgust. I would respond with an essay, but I don’t have time for more than a few relevant quotes from rabbinic sources (separated by a thousand separations from the candidate’s vile words).

“…judge the whole person favorably.” – Pirkei Avot 1:6

“Every part of you is fair, my darling, There is no blemish in you.” Song of Songs 4:7. Rashi explained Song of Songs as a parable: it is the conversation between God and Israel. In this verse, according to Rashi, God is saying that He sees no blemish in Israel.
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The “Palestinian people” is a propaganda fiction. It’s time to stop playing along.

By Robert Spencer, FPM

President Trump’s “Deal of the Century” was a brilliant illustration of his mastery of the art of the deal. This extravagantly generous proposal, and the Palestinians’ contemptuous rejection of it, severely damages the international Left’s claim that the Israelis are the obstacles to peace, and exposes the Palestinian leadership for the genocidal warmongers they are. Now it is time to take one more crucial step: end the recognition of the “Palestinian people” altogether. There is no such nation, race, ethnicity, nationality, or culture, and never was. Returning to reality on this matter will pave the way to the adoption of sane policies for the region.

“The Palestinian people” was born in 1963, when the foes of Israel hit upon a new strategy that would turn the tide of international public opinion against Israel and give new impetus to the jihad against it. Before that, as The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process shows, amid all the drama surrounding Jewish settlement in Palestine, the rise of Zionism, and the establishment of the Jewish state, the Palestinians are nowhere to be seen. Palestine was the name of a region, like Staten Island or Dubuque, not the name of a people. Read more…

The Arrow missile system has already succeeded in pushing Iran to shift its military tactics.

By Yonah Jeremy Bob, JPOST FEBRUARY 19, 2020 11:10

Defense minister Moshe Arens wth Israeli Air Force personnel at the Paris Air Show in 1999 with the Israel Aircraft Industry Arrow missile. (photo credit: YA’ACOV SA’AR/GPO)

In the face of a potential Iranian nuclear weapon, “only the Arrow missile-defense system guarantees Israeli survival,” Dov Raviv, former head of the Arrow project at Israel Aircraft Industries, said Tuesday.

“We cannot dismiss a leader of a country who says it will destroy Israel… Iran has said this explicitly,” he said at a conference of the Association for Israeli Military History on the occasion of the publication of a new book by another stalwart of Israel missile defense, Uzi Rubin.

While Israel has many military and diplomatic tools to try to stop Iran’s drive to obtain a nuclear weapon, if it does not succeed, missile defense will be its last line of defense, Raviv said.
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Comparative findings revealing disproportionate rates of extreme antisemitism, and antisemitic violence, or violent threats, among Western European Muslims.

By Dr. Andrew G. Bostom, INN

The Dutch CIDI (Centrum Informatie En Documentatie Israel) annual report for 2019 just released Monday 2/17/20, recorded 182antisemitic incidents, its highest number ever registered since 1982, when monitoring began. This figure represented a 35% increase from 2018.

Even the CIDI’s full 99 page Dutch language report, however, provided only limited anecdotal information about a select sample of the perpetrators, rendering a quantitative determination of major (and/or relative) group responsibility impossible to assess. This glaring lacuna was “enlarged” by the report’s absence of background discussion of previously published comparative findings revealing disproportionate rates of extreme antisemitism, and antisemitic violence, or violent threats, among Western European Muslims, including confirmatory data on antisemitic attitudes within the Netherlands itself. Read more…

Qatar has been spending billions of dollars at American universities.  Its goal cannot be good.  American Jewish leaders are silent.

By Att’y Stephen M. Flatow, INN

Just when you thought the controversy over American Jewish leaders’ relationship with Qatar was old news, a shocking new revelation forces us to direct our attention to that ugly episode once again.

The new scandal has to do with major American universities accepting large donations from the government of Qatar and not reporting them. That’s bad enough. But for friends of Israel, there is a disturbing new twist because it turns out there is a direct connection between Qatari money and pro-Palestinian groups on our college campuses.

Yes, the very same Palestinian campus groups that are always being denounced by American Zionist leaders—including some of the leaders who visited and praised Qatar two years ago. Sadly, it seems that while some American Zionists were boosting Qatar’s PR image, Qatar was promoting the Palestinian propaganda groups that are preying on our college students. Read more…

Mainstream Democrats must confront ANTI-ZIONISM & ANTI-SEMITISM

By Michael L. Wise, PhD   mlwise@gmail.com

More than 120 Democratic Congress members, headlined by Rep. Ilhan Omar and Sen. Warren and Klobuchar, sent letters welcoming the Islamist Hamas supporting anti-Israel Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) gala to Washington. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren support Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions of Israel (BDS) and Mayor Pete Buttigieg called Netanyahu a provocateur. Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib tweeted a vicious, antisemitic blood libel falsely accusing Israel of kidnapping and executing an Arab boy and throwing him into a well. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) characterized the Jewish people as “white supremacist Jews” and falsely claimed that Israel denies Palestinians access to clean water – an anti-Semitic “Jews poison the water” medieval-style blood libel. Rep. Hank Johnson called Jews living in Israel “termites.”  Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has praised Israel-bashing Jew-haters Linda Sarsour, Tamika Mallory, and Carmen Perez, all of whom admire the racist anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan.

Virtually every 2020 Democrat candidate appeared at the Al Sharpton’s National Action Network despite his history of anti-Semitic activities.
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The MP claimed that the US is preparing a large area of the al-Anbar desert for Palestinian families.

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF   FEBRUARY 19, 2020 13:22

Iraqi people burn a U.S. flag and a picture of U.S. President Donald Trump in a protest after an airstrike at the headquarters of Kataib Hezbollah militia group in Qaim, in Kirkuk, Iraq, December 30, 2019

An Iraqi member of parliament has stated that the US is planning on transferring Palestinians to western Iraq as part of the “Deal of the Century” Middle East peace plan, according to the Iranian Fars news agency.

“The US is plotting to keep out Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Forces) from the Western provinces of Iraq, specially al-Anbar province, in a move to provide a proper ground for sheltering the Palestinians inside Iraq,” Mohammad al-Baldawi, the representative of the al-Fatah coalition in the Iraqi parliament, said to the al-Ma’aloumeh news site on Tuesday.
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