By David Friedman, NY POST

President Donald J. Trump was joined by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House to unveil details of his administration’s Middle East Peace Plan last January.Office of the White House/Shealah Craighead

The Obama administration’s approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the Middle East as a whole, is best remembered as “often wrong, never in doubt”: from the disastrous Iran deal, to squeezing Israel without obtaining meaningful peace concessions from the Palestinians, to allowing the UN jackals to demonize and single out the Jewish state.

Now, two of the architects of the last administration’s Mideast policy have publicly offered their advice on how to frustrate President Trump’s bold and creative Vision for Peace and Prosperity, a major step forward in the pursuit of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Philip Gordon and Robert Malley, champions of the Iran deal and apologists for Palestinian intransigence, published an article last week in Foreign Policy magazine headlined: “Biden Must Speak Out Against Israeli Annexation Plans Before It’s Too Late.”
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Analysis: The target of an alleged Israeli attack near Aleppo on Monday was an industrial complex where long-range precise missiles are produced, some intended for Hezbollah and its future war with Israel

By Ron Ben Yishai, YNET

Even after the assassination of the commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, Qasem Suleimani, and having been hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic, Iran has continued its entrenchment efforts in Syria, hoping to turn it into a base of operations against Israel and especially Israeli civilians.

Though there was some reduction in activity in March when April came around efforts resumed in full force with the transfer of precise ballistic missiles, construction of logistical bases on the Syrian border with Iraq to serve pro-Iranian militias based in the Golan Heights region, support for Hezbollah’s operations on the Syrian-Israeli border and improving Syrian air defenses to hamper Israel’s ability to conduct Airforce raids.

Iran has also continued its nuclear program but that is not directly related to its activity in Syria.
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by Karen Lugo, GATESTONE INSTITUTE

• Once freedoms were surrendered, [Chief Justice William] Rehnquist warned, they would be even easier to take away when a future crisis or greater good came calling.
• The very orders that citizens across this land were protesting have been delivered wrapped in lack of transparency: forbidding only some assemblies; preferring big box stores; shutting down churches and gun stores but not liquor or cannabis stores; motor-boating prohibited but sailing is not; vacation rentals banned but not lodges; among many more disparities.
• It is vital that “We the people” keep on overseeing this process to ensure that the attempted power grabs — for instance by those who would use this crisis to “restructure things to fit our vision” — continue to be judged as intolerable acts.

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By Daniel Greenfield,

Silicon Valley was both the epicenter of one of the country’s first Wuhan Virus outbreaks, hosting the 2nd case in California and the 7th in the country, and of the technological tools of the lockdown, from contact tracing and drone tracking, to the virtualization of everything from education to socialization.

The tech industry represents the apex of both globalization and repression. On its massive campuses, foreign workers likely played a role in spreading the virus even as their industry became the public face of fighting the virus by unleashing a new wave of censorship and surveillance against Americans.

Before long, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg could be seen warning that the social media giant would delete any protests against the lockdown, YouTube’s Susan Wojcicki declaring that any videos that contradicted WHO would be deleted, and Microsoft’s Bill Gates speculating about immunity passports.

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In most parliamentary democracies, the judiciary is subordinate to the legislature (of which the executive is part), though they are generally somewhat independent.

By Alan Dershowitz, JPOST

Israel Border Police stop as the siren rings out across Israel to mark Yom Hazikaron, April 28, 2020
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)

The book of Ruth begins with a cautionary description: “In the days when judges ruled, there was famine in the land.” Though the Bible suggests no causal relationship between the judiciary ruling the people and bad things happening to them, history suggests that governance by unelected Platonic guardians is anathema to democracy.

Judges have an important role to play in a democracy— indeed under the American system of separation of powers, the unelected judiciary is a co- equal branch along with the elected legislative and executive branches. Despite (or perhaps because of) this high status, American judges have generally been cautious about exercising their power. They act only when there is an actual case and controversy and the litigant has “standing”— that is, a personal stake in the outcome. They use these tools of judicial restraint to assure that they don’t usurp the proper roles of the elected branches. Nonetheless, they are sometimes criticized for finding— some say inventing — constitutional bases for recognizing new rights, such as abortion or gay marriage. Read more…

This has not been a good year for Iran in Syria.

By Seth Frantzman, JPOST

Syrian President Bashar al Assad visits Syrian army troops in war-torn northwestern Idlib province, Syria, October 22, 2019

It has become an almost nightly occurrence. Syrian social media watchers await the explosions from airstrikes that are likely to occur. From villages near Deir Ezzor and Al Bukamal, to five hundred kilometers north to the Aleppo countryside and then four hundred kilometers south to Damascus, those watching Syria’s skies have become used to aerial bombardment.

The night of May 4 was no different. Syria’s SANA state media reported its air defenses confronting an Israeli attack near Aleppo before midnight. Those details were picked up by pro-Hezbollah and pro-Iranian media networks. Then, an hour later, more reports emerged from the Euphrates river valley of explosions along the road that runs from Deir Ezzor to Al Bukamal on the Iraqi border. Rumors circulated of Iranian-backed militias being targeted. Later reports would indicate that Iranians were killed in the strikes.
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Israel Institute for Biological Research completes groundbreaking study proving new antibody is effective against coronavirus.

Arutz Sheva Staff

In the past two days, the Israel Institute for Biological Research (IIBR), has completed a groundbreaking scientific development, determining an antibody that neutralizes the coronavirus (SARS-COV-2), the Defense Ministry announced Tuesday evening.

This scientific breakthrough has three key parameters:

1. The antibody is monoclonal, new and refined, and contains an exceptionally low proportion of harmful proteins
2. The institute has demonstrated the ability of the antibody to neutralize the coronavirus
3. The antibody was specifically tested on the aggressive coronavirus
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Annexation of the Jordan Valley is a long-standing Israeli objective, going back to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

By Professor Efraim Inbar, President of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to annex the Jordan Valley is not just a far-right wish, but the fulfillment of long-standing Israeli security objectives.

Further, despite alarms by Netanyahu’s critics in the United States and elsewhere about the plan, there is widespread agreement among Israelis about the strategic importance of the valley. ?That is why Blue and White leader Benny Gantz could sign off on the deal to form an emergency government. The consensus extends to Labor and even members of the opposition to the new national unity government. The extension of Israeli law to the Jordan Valley is in accordance with former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s strategic tenets (the Allon Plan). Notably, more Israelis view the Jordan Valley as an indispensable defensible border than the Golan Heights.

Defensible borders are particularly necessary considering that the threats to Israel’s population centers and its strategic installations have increased in the 21st century. Iran hopes to establish a “Shiite Crescent” from the Gulf, via Iraq, Lebanon and Syria to the Mediterranean. Iran’s objective is to turn Syria, Lebanon and Iraq into launching pads for missile and terror attacks against Israel. Iran also plans to destabilize the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and create a land bridge to the Palestinian Authority (close to Israel’s heartland) in order to enhance Teheran’s ability to harm Israel.
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By David Solway, AMERICAN THINKER

I would re-name the malaise from which we suffer CHINA-19. The acronym might stand for something like China’s Highly Infectious National Arsenal — readers can supply their own candidates — though the 19 is only a very specific temporal designator. The problem of China dates from the time of Nixon’s reopening of diplomatic relations in 1972 to the present moment. One recalls the Bushes’ preoccupation with Iraq when the menace was always Jimmy Carter’s Iran. Similarly, the media and Democratic obsession with Russia Russia Russia! was not only wrong and meretricious but completely beside the point; the political and economic threat was always China.

Proposed solutions to the problem of our continued vulnerability to viral epidemics abound, the most significant of which is radical decoupling from China. There has already been considerable friction over trade, cyber espionage and technology — the controversy over Huawei and 5G being an example of the latter. The COVID pandemic has brought matters to a head.
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The rulings of this past year have only strengthened the “Anyone but Bibi” camp, which now can’t present valid legal grounds for its petitions against the prime minister.

by Jacob Bardugo, ISRAEL HAYOM

Toward the end of the arguments before the 11 High Court justices, the attorney for the petitioners started to make an election speech based on inflammatory claims about a collapse of rule of law, law enforcement being trampled, and various other lofty arguments. The petitioner warned the judges about what might happen if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were to form the next government and serve as its leader. According to the attorney, the events of the past few months would be peanuts compared to what would follow. “The fortress will come down!” she warned.

Chief Justice Esther Hayut stopped the flood of words, calling “populism.”

“The Supreme Court is not a fortress,” Hayut said.

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By Evelyn Gordon

That Israel will soon have a government is good news; almost any government would be better than the political dysfunction that has produced three elections in the past year. But aside from its existence, there’s little to like about this “unity” government.

The biggest problem isn’t that many important issues will perforce go unaddressed, though that’s inevitable given the compromises required when neither bloc can govern on its own. Nor is it the risk that the government will be dysfunctional even on “consensual” issues like rescuing the economy from the coronavirus crisis, though this risk is real, since both sides’ leaders will have veto power over every government decision.

Rather, it’s the cavalier way that Israel’s Basic Laws are being amended to serve the particular needs of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his new partner, Blue and White chairman Benny Gantz.
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T. Belman. The title refers to “antisemitism” appropriately,  whereas the sub-title refers to “anti-semitism”. I suggest the editor consciously did so because that’s the term or the spelling commonly used today.  But he is wrong.  Obviously an anti-semite hates semites as opposed to only Jews. “Antisemitism” is a unique word pertaining only to treatment of Jews and should be the only spelling used.

When I grew up in the fifties and sixties, in the shadow of the holocaust, no one ever wrote “anti-semitism”.  Antisemitism was the only word in use.  So, I ask, how and why did this incorrect spelling come into vogue.

The first editor of the Oxford English Dictionary thought the term “anti-Semite” would be short lived and thus did not include it in the original edition of the massive lexicon.

By MARCY OSTER/JTA

Oxford, All Souls College (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)

The first editor of the Oxford English Dictionary thought the term “antisemite” would be short lived and thus did not include it in the original edition of the massive lexicon.

A 1900 letter by the editor, James Murray, explaining why he omitted the term was discovered recently in the archives of the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem and placed online. The OED was first published in several installments between 1884 and 1928.

Murray, a British lexicographer, was writing to scholar and anti-Zionist Claude Montefiore, great-nephew of Moses Montefiore, one of the most important early supporters of the modern Zionist movement. The letter appears to be in response to a query from Montefiore.

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T. Belman. The PA keeps up the mantra that we are talking about “Palestinian occupied lands”. In truth the lands are not occupied nor Palestinian. The Coalition agreement was wrong to postpone annexation until July 1st. It just gives the PA and EU time to organize and wage war against the move. Annexation should be the first order of business.

I hope they do cancel Oslo.  Saves us the trouble of doing so.

PA chairman threatens to cancel all agreements with Israel if it declares an intention to annex territories in Judea and Samaria.

By Dalit Halevi , INN

Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas on Monday threatened to cancel all agreements signed with Israel if it annexes any part of Judea and Samaria.

Speaking to an online summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), Abbas said, “We have informed Israel and all international parties that if Israel, the occupying state, takes the step of annexing the Palestinian land, then we will renounce all the commitments, agreements and understandings with it and the American administration.”

Clarifying his remarks, Abbas added, “That is, only if the Israeli government announces its intention to annex some or all of the occupied Palestinian land, then we will renounce all agreements signed between us and them and the US administration.”
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GREAT IDEA.  GOING ON OFFENSE RATHER THAN JUST DEFENSE

“The opposite of anti-Semitism is Philo-Semitism, the appreciation, respect, and affection for Jewish values and the Jewish community.”

By Ron Kampeas, JTA

Elan Carr, the State Department’s anti-Semitism monitor, wants to get people in other countries to love their Jews more as a means of countering anti-Semitism.

In a press call Monday to mark Jewish American Heritage Month, Carr outlined steps the United States was taking worldwide to advocate for defending Jews as violent anti-Semitism spikes, including security measures, prosecuting hate crimes and condemning anti-Semitic speech.

“In addition to all of those important defense measures, we are determined also to work with our allies in developing and driving Philo-Semitic narratives for their country, in the hope that we can reach the day when every society dedicates itself, as the United States has, to embrace and to treasure its Jewish community,” he said.

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by Jonathan Spyer, MEFORUM

Anti-government protesters scuffle with Lebanese army soldiers near the Central Bank in Beirut on May 1. (AP)

One of the immediate effects of Covid-19 on the Middle East has been to clear the streets of the mass demonstrations which had filled the public squares of a number of regional capitals in the preceding months. The virus has no political preferences, and its generalized assault has led to cooperation in some arenas between bitter rivals.

In certain Middle East countries, however, the virus has provided a boon for authoritarian regimes. Specifically, Iran, Iraq and Lebanon had all witnessed widespread protests against economic mis-management and corruption in the first months of 2020. In Iran, brute force dispersed the demonstrations. In Iraq and Lebanon, the virus brought them to an abrupt end.

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A close examination of today’s HIAS’ work leads to the conclusion that HIAS knowingly promotes policies that endanger Jews, as well as aligns with those linked to Islamist terrorism.  Jewish community should begin discussing how to show HIAS the door, just as it would for any other organization that enabled dangerously racist communities.

The Conference of Presidents has an ostensible aim of promoting the interests of the Jewish people. HIAS, which has played a leading role in threatening these interests, not only has no place in such an umbrella organization, but no room for it in the Jewish community at all.

by Matthew Mainen, JNS | May 1, 2020

HIAS, formerly known as the Hebrew International Aid Society until 2014, is in the news following a firestorm over the prospects of Dianne Lob, formerly the chair of its board of directors, becoming the chair-elect of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

The increased attention on HIAS provides an opportune time to scrutinize its work in resettling refugees. Unfortunately, a close examination leads to the conclusion that HIAS knowingly promotes policies that endanger Jews, as well as aligns with those linked to Islamist terrorism.
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By Lloyd Marcus,  AMERICAN THINKER

America! “I want you to get up right now and go to the window…open it and stick your head out and yell, “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not gonna take this anymore!” That is from the 1976 movie, Network.  It is the appropriate response to totalitarian governors, hellbent on keeping their constituents in lock-down bondage to further their anti-Trump agenda.

Folks, I am sick of seeing Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx promise that if we are good, they will feed us teaspoons of our constitutional freedoms at their discretion. I am sick of TV commercials designed to frighten and shame us into obeying tyrannical governors. I am sick of TV images of exhausted health workers to sell the lie that hospitals are overwhelmed with coronavirus patients. I am sick of well-meaning people ending conversations with “Stay safe” as if a unique monster is lurking outside. I am sick of pundits saying we need to reopen America safely and responsibly as if going back to normal life is unthinkable and dangerous. Dr. Ben Carson announced that 98% of people who get coronavirus recover.

Despite all our social distancing, research shows far more people were infected than officially confirmed. This means coronavirus is no way near as lethal as we were told. Health experts say herd immunity is the best way to fight the virus. And yet, stating this scientific truth will get you branded a dangerous nutcase by the media. God designed us to deal with viruses. As usual, arrogant men (typically leftist) believe they know better than God. Meanwhile, doctors are ordered to lie about the numbers by labeling practically all deaths coronavirus. This will keep federal funding coming and Americans panicked.
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By Dr. James M. Dorsey, BESA

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: It is early days, but first indications are that the global coronavirus pandemic is entrenching long-drawn Middle Eastern geopolitical, political, ethnic, and sectarian battle lines rather than serving as a vehicle to build bridges and boost confidence. Gulf states are taking contradictory approaches to the problem of ensuring that entrenched conflicts do not spiral out of control as they battle the pandemic and struggle to cope with the economic fallout.

The coronavirus crisis is changing the political landscape of the Middle East as non-governmental organizations and militants in countries like Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon fill gaps where governments have failed to cater to populations’ social and health needs.

The empowerment of NGOs and militant groups, particularly in cases where they act without coordinating with a government, raises potential security issues as militants capitalize on their ability to show up states’ lack of capability at a time of crisis.

The expanded role of militants takes on added significance as states like Saudi Arabia and the UAE use the pandemic to entrench many of the Middle East’s fault lines, if not widen them to their advantage.

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