Putin doubted Israel could take military action against Iran; Kushner blocked Netanyahu calls to Trump on Iran.

By Lahav Harkov, JPOST

US President Donald Trump expressed willingness to support Israeli strikes on Iran, according to his former National Security Adviser John Bolton.

In Bolton’s book The Room Where it Happened, expected to be released this week, he describes a 2017 meeting in which Trump made the comments.  Bolton, who was not yet a member of the Trump administration, was brought in to meet with the president in 2017, and Israel was one of the topics that came up.”I warned Trump against wasting political capital in an elusive search to solve the Arab-Israeli dispute and strongly supported moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, thereby recognizing it as Israel’s capital,” Bolton wrote.

“On Iran, I urged that he press ahead to withdraw from the nuclear agreement and explained why the use of force against Iran’s nuclear program might be the only lasting solution.”   Though Bolton did not mention Israel using force, Trump responded by saying that he would support Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doing so. “You tell Bibi [Netanyahu] that if he uses force, I will back him. I told him that, but you tell him again,” Trump told Bolton.

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The common argument among opponents of the plan is that the annexation/disengagement/sovereignty act would damage the peace treaty with Jordan and could lead to a third Palestinian intifada.

By Ori Wertman, JPOST

Knesset meeting to pass bills to create coalition government (photo credit: ADINA WALLMAN)

The State of Israel stands at a historic crossroads. This July, the Knesset is expected to decide on the course of applying sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and the West Bank settlement blocs, thus determining the boundaries of the Jewish state. However, while the imminent step is gaining consensus among the Israeli public, which most of it supports, there are voices among the political system and former senior officials in the defense echelon against an Israeli unilateral move.

The common argument among opponents of the plan is that the annexation/disengagement/sovereignty act would damage the peace treaty with Jordan and could lead to a third Palestinian intifada. Historically, the situation in which Israel faces important decisions is no stranger to it. Since the establishment of Israel, the Israeli leadership needed to decide about the fate of the Jewish state. This was the case before previous major events in the history of Israel, such as the declaration of statehood in 1948, the Six Day War in 1967 and the Oslo Accords in 1993-1995. In each of these cases, voices were heard claiming that the move posed a serious security threat and should therefore be avoided.

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by Sharon Fried and Udi Schayat

There are many similarities between the United States Judicial System and Israel’s, as described in an article written by Charles Krauthammer in 2017. “The United States court system has been stacked for decades with judges who allow for laws to be broken.” Obama created an organization called “Organizing For Action” (OFA) to disrupt everything that Trump’s administration is trying to do. It goes against our laws, our Constitution and the processes established over 200 years ago. As of 2017, Obama’s OFA had a nationwide network of some 250 offices and 32,525 volunteers. The numbers are growing.

Israel has a similar problem of biased judicial decisions and coup attempts. It seems there is an obvious connection between the behavior and goals of the liberal Left wing in both of our countries. There is good reason for Americans and Israelis to join together to explore this issue on a deeper level, get to the source of the problem and correct it in order to repair our judicial systems and protect our democracies.

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We must confront the reality that so much that is taken for granted in American society could actually disappear.

By Douglas Albatef, INN

It has become deeply dubious, even suspicious, to try to look at Western civilization through a half full glass. Nevertheless, it must be asserted with full throated enthusiasm, that liberal Western society has been mankind’s greatest achievement in the attempt to provide dignity of life to as many as possible.

Part of the West’s achievement has been an openness to remediation, improvement, atonement and change.

The idea of defending to the death your right to say things I disagree with has become the anachronistic redoubt of dead white males.

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T. Belman.  I think the green light has already been given.

White House to hold high-level meetings on whether to give Israeli government “green light” to apply sovereignty over Judea and Samaria.

Arutz Sheva Staff

The White House is expected to hold high-level meetings this week to discuss whether to give the Israeli government a “green light” to apply sovereignty over Judea and Samaria, Barak Ravid of Channel 13 News reported on Saturday, citing American and Israeli sources.

The meetings are expected to take place Monday or Tuesday and include senior White House adviser Jared Kushner, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien and US ambassador to Israel David Friedman, who is expected to travel to Washington to attend.

White House envoy Avi Berkowitz had been expected to travel to Israel but stayed in Washington to attend the meetings, according to Ravid’s report.

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JUNE 19/20

A hardening of resistance on its fringes suggest China may have met the limits of its extra-territorial projections

ASIA TIMES

After years of China’s soft- and hard-power projection beyond its borders, it feels as if tensions are snapping on the country’s perimeters.

In the Himalayan foothills, where Chinese sensitivities are often tested by pro-Tibetan sentiment, Indian troops have been battling People’s Liberation Army troops stationed in disputed territory. In the South China Sea, where Beijing has been making territorial claims by creating artificial islands and seizing natural ones, the Philippines has reunited with the US to counter further Chinese expansion. And even further south, Australia’s substantial trade links with the world’s second-largest economy are at risk in what’s looking like another front in a new Cold War.

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PM Netanyahu’s hesitation about applying Israeli law to Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley is clearly a product of the immense pressure he is under from every direction to shelve President Trump’s Middle East peace plan.

By Caroline B. Glick, ISRAEL HAYOM

Over the past week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has changed his mind countless times regarding how and when he will implement Israel’s sovereignty plan in Judea and Samaria in consonance with President Donald Trump’s vision for peace. Netanyahu’s vacillations are clearly a product of the immense pressure being exerted on him to cancel the plan to apply Israeli law to the Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria and to the Jordan Valley and turn his back on President Trump’s Middle East peace plan.

This is a shame. It is also absurd. When we consider the source of much of the pressure – and the reasons it is being exerted – it becomes glaringly clear that the critics and opponents must be ignored. Their actions are not being taken out of conviction so much as hostility or distress. Israel must cast aside their hectoring and pressure and implement the sovereignty plan with all due haste.
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A recent analysis by the Ministry of Intelligence Services suggests that international criticism of the initiative will wane after a short period of time and could even force the Palestinians back to the negotiating table.

By Ariel Kahana, ISRAEL HAYOM

The community of Efrat in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc with the city of Bethlehem in the background | Photo: Reuters/Ronen Zvulun

A recent analysis by the Ministry of Intelligence Services determined that now is the best time to implement the sovereignty initiative in parts of Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley. Additionally, ministry researchers don’t expect an outbreak of violence and said relations with Arab countries will return to normal in short order.

The position paper presented to Intelligence Services Minister Eli Cohen (Likud) and obtained by Israel Hayom, presented the advantages of the initiative.

“[The initiative] improves the starting conditions of future negotiations with the Palestinians for Israel and crystallizes the cost of Palestinian rejection of peace talks, and therefore could spur [the Palestinians] back to the negotiation table in an effort to halt additional phases,” the paper said.

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By Dr. Craig Luther,  FRONT PAGE MAGAZINE

BLACK LIVES MATTER has taken America by storm. Simply put, it is a radical Leftist outfit that seeks to replace capitalism with socialism, abolish the police (and let criminals out of jail), and looks to socialist Venezuela as a model. Historically, BLM’s antecedents reach back to the Black Panthers of the 1960s; in recent years it has drawn inspiration from the radical Occupy Wall Street movement.

The BLM movement was given added impetus by the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The Left mobilized upon Brown’s tragic death in 2014, BLM and other radical groups promoting the false narrative of “Hands up! Don’t shoot!”–supposedly the young man’s final words before he was, we were told, brutally gunned down by a racist white cop. Destructive and deadly riots ensued.

Of course, “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” was One. Big. Lie. Every black witness who testified before the grand jury stated that Michael Brown had attempted to force his way into the officer’s police cruiser, assaulted the officer, and tried to grab his weapon. Looked at objectively, Mr Brown was a thug who, sadly, paid with his life for the terrible choices he made; even the Obama justice department could not come to a different conclusion.

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By Eric Mandel, THE HILL — 06/15/20

While America has been distracted by the COVID-19 pandemic and recent unrest over racial divisions, emerging alliances are reshaping the Islamic world throughout the Middle East that could affect U.S. interests for years to come. Too many view the Muslim world only through the lens of Sunni v. Shiite, or Israeli v. Palestinian, and the developing alignments require the United States to continually analyze the region and look for opportunities to advance our interests, as our adversaries look for American weakness to advance theirs.

According to Middle East expert Jonathan Spyer, one new alliance of “three significant Muslim countries — Turkey, Pakistan and Malaysia — is a reflection of a shift in power in the Islamic world away from its traditional Arab center.” This is a triad that may be off the U.S. radar and whose potential importance is not appreciated in Washington.
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The case of Louis Shenker, expelled from UMass Amherst for wrongthink.

By Ziva Dahl, AMERICAN SPECTATOR
Goodell Hall at UMass Amherst, 2006 (Lion Hirth/Wikimedia Commons)

Students at American universities have long experienced public shaming and cyberbullying by their peers. Now their own faculty and administrators are attacking them.

Campus professors, administrators, and graduate student instructors publicly smeared UMass Amherst student Louis Shenker as a dangerous racist and falsely charged him with hate crimes to get him expelled from school, claiming that his “views are not the kind we want to cultivate at the University.”

Louis Shenker wouldn’t win a popularity contest on any progressive campus. He is Jewish, a conservative, an outspoken Zionist, and a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump. Shenker vigorously advocates for his political opinions.

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June 8/20