Defense minister lays out his conditions for backing the extension of Israeli sovereignty over West Bank lands, acknowledges move could be met with violence

By Alexander Fulbright, TOI 23/6/20 , 7:46 pm

Defense Minister Benny Gantz at a weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, on June 7, 2020. (Marc Israel Sellem/Pool)

Defense Minister Benny Gantz on Tuesday signaled he could back unilateral annexation of West Bank lands, citing persistent refusals by the Palestinians to reach a deal with Israel, while reiterating his demand that the move not endanger Israel’s existing peace agreements.

“We won’t continue to wait for the Palestinians. If they say no forever to everything, then we’ll be forced to move forward without them,” Gantz said in a briefing to military reporters.

However, he didn’t specify a date for when he would support a unilateral move or whether he would back starting the annexation process next week, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly pledged to do.

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By ROBERT KRAYCHIK, BREITBART  

P Photo/Patrick Semansky

“Jews are scared to death of Black Lives Matter,” said Mort Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), offering his remarks on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Sunday with host Joel Pollak.

“Black Lives Matter is not only anti-Israel and antisemitic,” said Klein, noting the Marxist ideology of the Black Lives Matter campaign. “They’re anti-American. They want to defund all the police, get rid of the entire U.S. military armamentarium, they want to have reparations to Iraq, Somalia, and Libya. They want to end capitalism. They publicly say they’re trained Marxists. They’ve never condemned the riots, looting, or the killing and destruction in the last few weeks.”

LISTEN:

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Applying Israeli civilian law to West Bank settlements wouldn’t preclude peace or violate Palestinian rights.

By Eugene Kontorovich, WSJ June 23, 2020

Israeli soldiers stand guard near Hebron, June 14. Photo: hazem bader/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Israel is expected to announce as early as next week that it is normalizing the legal status of Jewish settlements in the West Bank by fully applying Israeli civilian law. The U.S. is expected to recognize Israeli sovereignty in these areas, marking the culmination of a series of pro-Israel Trump administration policies, as well as the first step in its vision for a negotiated process that could lead to a Palestinian state.

There are many misunderstandings about the planned move—starting with what to call it. It is widely described as an Israeli “annexation” of West Bank territory, also known as Judea and Samaria. But annexation has a precise meaning in international law: the forcible incorporation by one state of the territory of another state. The land to which Israel seeks to apply its laws isn’t legally the territory of any other state, nor has it been since Israel’s independence in 1948. Neither the U.S. nor the European Union recognizes the existence of a Palestinian state, and Israel’s sovereign claim to the territory is superior to any other country’s. Putting this move in the same category as Russia’s seizure of Crimea is entirely misleading.
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The false accusation is designed to portray any fulfillment of the Zionist dream as racist, and make Israel an outcast in the world.

By Prof. Talia Einhorn, ISRAEL HAYOM

This week, we witnessed a partial solar eclipse in the skies of Israel. But the claim that an Israeli declaration of sovereignty in the Jordan Valley and settlements in Judea and Samaria will make Israel into an “apartheid state” is a total eclipse.

The term “apartheid” was always unique to the policies of racial separation in South Africa, where a white minority gave itself an excess of rights and controlled most of the population, from whom basic rights were withheld based on their skin color. In recent years, the term has been expanded to be used in accusing Israel of treating the Palestinians as if the discrimination were based on race, rather than the result of the Palestinians’ violent and ongoing struggle against the Zionist movement.

Since the application of sovereignty under discussion addresses areas of the Land of Israel in which there is only very sparse Arab presence, the claim is incomprehensible, since most of the Arab residents of Judea and Samaria are clustered in Areas A and B, which are already under Palestinian Authority law, not Israeli law. If Israel is not currently an apartheid state, applying Israeli law to places of Jewish settlement will not change that.

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Beijing saw a threat in New Delhi’s steady improvement of borderland infrastructure and renewed Indian claims on disputed territory.

By Ajai Shukla, NYT

Members of India’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party protesting against China in Mumbai on Friday.Divyakant Solanki/EPA, via Shutterstock

NEW DELHI — Tensions between Indian and Chinese troops have simmered since early May in the remote, high Karakoram mountains that separate India’s northern Ladakh region from the alkaline desert of Aksai Chin, which is claimed by India but controlled by China and abuts its Xinjiang province.

It is a forbidding landscape of cold deserts, snow-capped peaks, sparse vegetation and freezing temperature about 14,000 feet above sea level. On Monday evening, in a brutal hand-to-hand battle, Chinese soldiers killed at least 20 Indian soldiers with wooden staves and nail-studded clubs, in the severest escalation of the dispute on the Sino-Indian frontier in decades.

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By Avi Bell, KOHELET POLICY FORUM

Palestinians and Israelis will both gain from what is wrongly being labeled West Bank “annexation.” Soon after July 1, Israel is expected to apply its civilian law to roughly half of “Area C” of Judea and Samaria (i.e., the West Bank), which it governs under a power-sharing agreement made with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) 25 years ago. Area C is where almost half-a-million Israelis reside alongside a much smaller number of Palestinians. Naysayers from Israel and abroad have labeled the move an “illegal annexation” that would be responded to with regional violence. The more mundane reality is that applying Israeli law to the disputed area will have two main salutary effects that will benefit all the residents of the area, Israeli and Palestinian alike.

First, after 53 years, military administration of the affected areas will end. Military rule is far from ideal, and residents’ needs will be better met under ordinary civilian governance provided by officials who have to answer for their actions at the ballot box.

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By Lloyd Marcus, AMERICAN THINKER

Folks, I realize many of you are going through the same range of emotions as I am as I watch leftists’ full-blown war on our country. One part of me wants to produce a YouTube video in which I scream at all the idiots pandering to the scumbag hate groups Antifa and Black Lives Matters. The other part of me says Lloyd, you must remain calm and simply deliver facts.

In the Bible, Daniel was thrown into the lion’s den for refusing to kneel in worship to a government leader. Daniel said that he only kneels to the true God. Here in the United States of America, Antifa is demanding that white America literally kneel in worship to Black Lives Matter, an evil false god. Shockingly, Democrat congressional members, mayors, and governors; major corporations, churches, and indoctrinated white youths are kneeling.

Etched on my brain is the image of the sea of yellow school buses I saw as a child with my dad at the 1963 March on Washington where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.

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Netanyahu has said he wants to apply Israeli law to the full 30% of the West Bank allotted by the Trump plan.

By Tova Lazaroff and Gil Hoffman, JPOST   JUNE 23, 2020

U.S. President Donald Trump pauses as he addresses his first re-election campaign rally in several months in the midst of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, at the BOK Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, U.S., June 20, 2020.  (photo credit: LEAH MILLIS/REUTERS)

US President Donald Trump is poised to make a final decision on Tuesday as to whether and how Israel should apply sovereignty to parts of the West Bank.

US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman headed to Washington, DC for a meeting with special adviser to the president Jared Kushner, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and special representative for international negotiations Avi Berkowitz to discuss how to move forward with the Israeli plan to apply sovereignty to parts of the West Bank as early as July 1.

Trump is expected to join the meeting, as well and make a determination.

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Israeli lobby group, led by IDF commanders, pens open letter to Trump thanking him for his support of Israel, and backing sovereignty plan.

Arutz Sheva Staff

A group of Israeli generals penned a letter to President Donald Trump thanking him for his support of Israel, and endorsing his administration’s willingness to recognize Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s bid to apply Israeli sovereignty over parts of Judea and Samaria.

The open letter was signed by 18 Israeli generals, and was drafted by the Habithonistim – Protectors of Israel organization. US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman presented the letter to President Trump. The letter was also published in The Hill newspaper in Washington DC Tuesday.

Dear Mr. President;

We write to you in the name of more than a thousand senior military officers and combat soldiers from the Israel Defense Force reserves who have joined together in recent months to form a new social movement called “Habithonistim – Protectors of Israel”.

We want to thank you for your deep commitment to the State of Israel and the Jewish people.

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T. Belman. Like I said, everything is agreed to.

Moderate Arab states reportedly coordinating their responses to Netanyahu’s sovereignty plan with Israel.

By David Rosenberg, INN, 23/06/20

Moderate Arab states are coordinating their responses to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s upcoming sovereignty plan with Israel, according to a report by Israel Hayom.

Senior Arab diplomats from several US-aligned Sunni states, along with security and intelligence officials from Egypt and Jordan, said that their respective governments have been in contact with Israel in recent weeks to work out their responses to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s plan to apply Israeli sovereignty to parts of Judea and Samaria.

Publicly, America’s Arab allies have urged Israel not to carry out the sovereignty plan, warning it could have serious repercussions for the region.

Privately, however, officials from Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf states say their respective governments tacitly accept Israel’s sovereignty plan.
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Yamina chairman blasts government’s conduct during coronavirus pandemic: A kind of bipolar syndrome.

Arutz Sheva Staff

Former Defense Minister Naftali Bennett on Monday criticized the conduct of the government in the fight against the coronavirus.

“The government does not carry out the basic move of establishing an emergency epidemic plan, and that is why it is constantly moving between extremes – between go out and celebrate and closing down Israel. A kind of bipolar syndrome,” Bennett said in an interview with the Knesset Channel.

“This is not the way. There should be no festivities when there is a decline [in the number of cases] and no need to go into mourning when there is a rise [in the number of cases]. A set of tests has to be established. I published a plan on how to deal with the second wave. We must reach 100,000 tests before winter, and at the present there should be about 40,000 tests a day,” Bennett added.

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By David Israel, JEWISH PRESS

Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz at the Knesset, May 17, 2020.

Mati Tuchfeld on Monday morning reported in Israel Hayom  that PM Benjamin Netanyahu was stunned to discover during the coalition talks with Blue&White just how strongly his former IDF chiefs of staff—Benny Gantz and Gabi Ashkenazi—objected to his plan to apply sovereignty in the Jewish settlements of Judea and Samaria, with American approval.Tuchfeld reveals that the two leaders were simply lying when they agreed with Netanyahu’s promise of sovereignty, and Gantz went ahead and lied to President Trump himself during their meeting in Washington. Behind closed doors, apparently, Blue&White is determined to do everything in its power to sabotage the move.Mind you, they are not the only one’s affiliated with the Netanyahu government who don’t want sovereignty based on Trump’s “deal of the century.” The settlers’ leadership is also opposed to it, because it would entail an Israeli commitment to Washington to stay out of a good chunk of Area C, to make room for a contiguous Palestinian State.

Nevertheless, according to Tuchfeld: “Netanyahu is determined. Applying sovereignty has become his life’s mission. He has long since become prime minister with the longest tenure, and is now fighting for what will he will leave behind. The main achievement to be named after him. Already during the formulation of the coalition agreement, Netanyahu succeeded in forcing Gantz to accept the clause stating that, unlike all the other decisions and laws, he would have no veto over the sovereignty.”
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The Trump decision to withdraw from Syria caught almost everyone by surprise in December 2018.

By Seth Frantzman, JPOST

White House national Security Advisor John Bolton listens as U.S. President Donald Trump holds a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, U.S., August 16, 2018  (photo credit: KEVIN LAMARQUE/REUTERS)

Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer told John Bolton that the sudden decision by US President Donald Trump in December 2018 to withdraw from Syria was the “worst day he had experienced thus far in the Trump administration.” Threatened and enticed by Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan into leaving Syria, the Trump administration ignored concerns by allies in the Middle East and Europe, according to the former National Security Advisor’s account.

The account of how Trump decided to leave Syria – detailed in the new Bolton book The Room Where it Happened – confirms accounts in December 2018 that portrayed the US president going against his own advisers, US senators and allies abroad to please an aggressive and threatening Turkey. At the time, in December 2018, former US ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro wrote that “the president’s precipitous decision to withdraw US troops from Syria provided many Israelis with a rude awakening.” A US withdrawal from Syria would embolden Iran and also give Turkey a victory just as Turkey was increasing rhetoric against Israel and hosting Hamas members.

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T. Belman. I received a YNET aricle today, Soros conspiracy theories surge as protests sweep U.S., from a leftist. I decided to do some googling to determine the truth about Soros. It seems that there is a campaign now to lable all attacks on Soros as based on conspiacy theories. I next noticed a Reuters article, Fact check: False claims about George Soros, which didn’t pass the smell test as the source of most of their “facts” was Soros’ own Open Society Foundation.

Then I came upon a report by the trusted NGO Monitor, Open Society Foundations (OSF), which clearly identified the anti-Israel NGO’s that his OSF supported.

Finally I came upon the article below, published in 2017, Connoisseur of Chaos, by Stefan Kanfer, a City Journal contributing editor, sub-titled The dystopian vision of George Soros, billionaire funder of the Left.  This article emphasizes his background rather than his current activities but is worth reading.  There is a lot missing including his funding of J-Street and his alliance with Obama.  His destabelizing efforts have resulted him him being banned from 6 nations. (VIDEO OCT 2019)

In 2010, Soros pledged $100 million to Human Rights Watch claiming at the time that this was the best investment he could make as it would extend his influence world wide or something to that effect. Once again NGO Monitor did a report on HRW which went into detail how HRW has libeled and defamed Israel.

It is fair to say that Soros is a Globalists and is anti-nationalism. As such he is against Israel and the US . And that is no conspiracy theory.

I INVITE YOU TO ADD IMPORTANT LINKS IN THE COMMENTS.

By Steve Kanfer, CITY JOURNAL

When the dust was cleared and the debris swept away, he stood revealed as Hillary Clinton’s most generous billionaire donor. Yet his name rarely surfaced during the presidential campaign—and that’s generally the way he likes it. Dark Money, Jane Mayer’s book about covert political funding, refers to the Koch brothers more than 300 times in its excoriation of the “radical right” but mentions progressive icon George Soros just six times; three are footnotes.
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By Ron Dermer, WASH POST June 20, 2020 (Ron Dermer is Israel’s ambassador to the United States.)

Israeli security forces stand guard near the West Bank city of Hebron on June 14. (Hazem Bader/AFP/Getty Images)

By Joe Hoft, GATEWAY PUNDIT

On March 17, 2020, we were the first to identify that the WHO and the WHO’s Director General Tedros were pushing fraudulent numbers regarding the expected mortality of the coronavirus. The WHO grossly over-stated the mortality rate of the virus.

We then followed up with multiple posts on the subject. Next we reported on June 7, 2020, a study showed that when looking at the mortality rates for all causes this flu season, things aren’t much worse than a bad flu.

Then we reviewed the data in the US and found that this data supported our observation that the original coronavirus numbers were grossly overstated.
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Whether sovereignty over some or all the settlements is declared or not, the Netanyahu-Gantz unity government should be building like crazy in all the critical zones.

By David M. Weinberg, ISRAEL HAYOM

I do not know whether Binyamin Netanyahu truly intends to apply Israeli law to settlements and key security zones in Judea and Samaria; he seems to be apportioning blame to everybody but himself for the delays in moving forward, which is not a good sign. Nor do I know whether Benny Gantz will partner with him on this.

 Nor am I sure whether the historic sovereignty initiative remains a real-time, feasible proposition – given President Trump’s domestic troubles, escalating global opposition to the “annexation,” and the hysterical (mistaken!) campaign run by some settlement leaders against the American peace plan.

But I am certain about one thing: Whether sovereignty over some or all the settlements is declared or not, the Netanyahu-Gantz unity government should be building like crazy in all the critical zones.

The government is talking and debating, decreeing and asserting, proclaiming and declaring, deflecting and accusing – instead of acting, instead of building, instead of creating hard facts on the ground. It should be increasing the Israeli population in areas that are key to both Israel’s security needs and historical claims in Judea and Samaria.

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