T. Belman. I am a big supporter of Kushner and so is Ivanka and the president.  His accomplishments at the White House are many and significant. This article says otherwise.

Trump’s son-in-law has no business running the coronavirus response.

By Michelle Goldberg, NYT

Jared Kushner in March. He made his debut at the White House coronavirus briefing on Thursday. Pool photo by Evan Vucci

Reporting on the White House’s herky-jerky coronavirus response, Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman has a quotation from Jared Kushner that should make all Americans, and particularly all New Yorkers, dizzy with terror.According to Sherman, when New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, said that the state would need 30,000 ventilators at the apex of the coronavirus outbreak, Kushner decided that Cuomo was being alarmist. “I have all this data about I.C.U. capacity,” Kushner reportedly said. “I’m doing my own projections, and I’ve gotten a lot smarter about this. New York doesn’t need all the ventilators.” (Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top expert on infectious diseases, has said he trusts Cuomo’s estimate.)
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By Gidi Weitz, HAARETZ

[…]

Now, Netanyahu’s Likud and Benny Gantz’s Kahol Lavan are battling over those same sensitive posts. Netanyahu wants to keep the Public Security Ministry, which will apparently go to Miri Regev. In addition, Likud will apparently chair the Knesset Constitution Committee. Kahol Lavan will get the Justice Ministry if it in fact joins the government, so the next minister will certainly be less hostile to the law enforcement system than Amir Ohana.

Even before the decision to indict him was made, Netanyahu had adopted a strategy of smearing the legal system to destroy public trust in it and wear it down. Appointing Ohana was a key move in this campaign, and Netanyahu will undoubtedly be sorry to lose him.

Nevertheless, ceding the Justice Ministry seems like a trivial concession compared to the enormous gains, from Netanyahu’s standpoint, of dismantling the opposition and freezing planned legislation against him.
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Appeals court overturned convictions in 2002 kidnapping and killing

By Saeed Shah, WSJ

Omar Saeed Sheikh in 2002. Photo: aamir qureshi/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

ISLAMABAD—Pakistani authorities issued an emergency order to prevent the release of prisoners who had their convictions for kidnapping and killing Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl overturned by an appeals court earlier this week.

The order is intended to keep British national Omar Saeed Sheikh, convicted of the 2002 murder that same year, and three Pakistanis convicted as accomplices, in jail for three months while prosecutors seek a suspension of the appeals court ruling until it is reviewed by the Supreme Court.

The move late Thursday night comes after a court in the southern city of Karachi overturned the convictions earlier that day.
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Unlike the pampered West’s confusion in the face of COVID-19, Israel wasted no time. This is because it permanently lives in a state of potential emergency.

By Melanie Phillips, ISRAEL HAYOM

Among the world’s democracies fighting the coronavirus, Israel has so far been by far the most successful.

With a population of about 8.6 million, it had recorded at time of writing 33 deaths from COVID-19. The Deep Knowledge Group, a consortium of technology and analytics organizations, has ranked it in the fight against the virus as the safest country in the world.

While Israel’s death toll is continuing to edge up, the country has contained the epidemic better than Britain, America or the stricken nations of Western Europe.

Britain, with a population of some 67 million, had recorded at time of writing more than 2,300 deaths from the virus. In the United States, with a population of 327 million, more than 5,000 had died. Read more…

In the game of world domination, as the world descends into chaos and breakdown, the Chinese leadership looks on. Officials of this Communist regime look smilingly at the meltdown of the West. 

By Barry Shaw, INN

The China virus is a relay race to help the Communist regime achieve world domination.

The race began in China by a combination of social and governmental mores that have infected the world with health, social and economic despair.

This is a deadly Chinese relay race in which tens of thousands are dying, and the starting point was, once again, China, a country that apparently learned nothing from the SARS outbreak.

From the disgustingly unhygienic live animal markets of Wuhan to the brutal, dishonest and uncooperative Communist regime, the plague burst off its starting blocks and was unleashed onto the world. Read more…

By Brian C. Joondeph, AMERICAN THINKER

The nasty Chinese coronavirus is taking a massive toll, not only in America, but also around the world. While not as deadly as past flu epidemics, the final numbers are not yet known. Most of those who catch the virus have mild symptoms, but a small percentage are not so lucky.

Those with severe disease may find themselves in an intensive-care unit, connected to a ventilator for several weeks, with no guarantee of returning home. Mitigation methods are in effect, expanding our vocabularies with now familiar terms of social distancing, quarantines, and stay-at-home orders. While mitigation reduces the spread, preventing hospitals from being overwhelmed with sick patients, the virus may persist longer in the community as a result, lengthening the duration of restrictions.

But this comes at an economic cost, the elephant in the room that few want to talk about. Do we rip the band-aid off quickly, causing more short-term pain, or remove it slowly, causing only discomfort, but for a much longer time? There is no right answer here. Sweden is trying its own “no lockdown” approach, radically different from its neighbors. Time will tell if Sweden’s plan worked. Perhaps every country, just like every state, needs a different approach, based on their unique circumstances.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaqpI11ELW0&t=359s

WOMEN IN GREEN

The Minister of Diaspora Affairs, Tzipi Hotovely, conducted yesterday a meeting via “Zoom” with a group of representatives of the
Sovereignty Youth Movement, in which she addressed the matter of the coalition negotiations, and the Likud demand of freedom to vote their
conscience on the issue of Sovereignty.

The minister emphasized the significance of Sovereignty and the commitment to realize that vision during the political window that exists before the US elections.  egarding the American president’s “Deal of the Century” and the paragraphs addressing the establishment of a Palestinian state, Minister Hotovely asserts that Israel is  ot obligated to the plan as it is merely nothing more than an American proposal.
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T. Belman. Apparantly, Israel is not demolishing illegal Pa;lestinian contruction in the thousands but is content with a handful. That is not to say that a pause now is not appropriate.

Since the outbreak of the coronavirus crisis, the Civil Administration has continued to remove illegal construction in Area C that belongs to both settlers and Palestinians

By Tovah Lazroff, JPOST

Palestinian boys inspect a house that was demolished by Israeli forces in al-Khader village near Bethlehem, in the West Bank December 16, 2019. (photo credit: MUSSA QAWASMA/REUTERS)

Israel has agreed to suspend the demolition of inhabited illegal homes in Area C of the West Bank due to the coronavirus outbreak, Israeli officials told The Jerusalem Post Thursday.

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Civil Administration has continued to remove illegal construction in Area C that belongs to settlers or Palestinians. More Palestinian structures have been taken down than Jewish ones.

Israel has been under pressure to halt such demolitions, especially when the best way to contain the spread of the coronavirus is for people to remain in home isolation.

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Netanyahu wants Edelstein as foreign minister

By Gil Hoffman, JPOST APRIL 2, 2020 22:30

President Rivlin meets with Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz about forming an emergency unity government due to coronavirus

A coalition agreement between the Likud and Blue and White parties will be finalized no later than Friday afternoon, sources from both parties said Thursday evening.

A deal must be reached by Friday to enable parties in the coalition to bring the agreement to their institutions on Sunday and allow a vote in the Knesset to approve the government on Monday. The Knesset does not meet during Passover, which begins on Wednesday evening and lasts for a week. Blue and White leader Benny Gantz’s mandate to form a government, and the leverage that comes with it, ends during the holiday.

Progress was made between the two parties as they made compromises on disputed portfolios.
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Yamina hinted they would consider supporting Yesh Atid legislation preventing MK accused of criminal charges from running for office.

By Hezki Baruch, INN

Yamina party

Yamina party members continued to attack Netanyahu for preferring Blue and White over the religious Zionist party and failing to offer them any tangible cabinet ministries.

“We are not part of Netanyahu and Gantz’s game of empty chairs. Over the past week, Netanyahu has been conducting negotiations alone, without his [primary backers] for the past year. If Netanyahu sells out everything that matters, we have no intention of becoming a fig leaf in the left-wing government that sells the Justice Department, does away with [proposed] sovereignty [over Judea and Samaria], repeals the Kaminitz Law and more.”

Sources in Yamina hinted they would consider supporting Yesh Atid legislation preventing a Knesset member accused of criminal charges from running for office and promised to promote their values ??from within the coalition or from the outside looking in. They said these included: a Greater Israel, judicial reform, Jewish identity of the State of Israel, free market, and the war on corruption. Read more…

By Yuri Tuvim,

Almost a half century ago the mighty Soviet Union collapsed. Its legacy includes many things, from Sputnik to training Palestinian terrorists.

I strongly believe that by examining the Soviet failure we can learn something of vital importance for us.

There were many reasons for the demise of the Soviet empire, but one cause is often overlooked. As soon as the revolutionaries moved from the battle fields of the civil war into their offices, the seeds of the future collapse were planted. Bureaucracy was formed and started to grow. Stalin understood the potential of the bureaucratic machinery and used it effectively. He was godfather to the Soviet bureaucracy, and his bureaucrats worked efficiently because they were ruthlessly controlled to the point of extermination.

After Stalin’s death bureaucracy flourished. In a few years it acquired enough power to remove Khrushchev, who tried to reform the country by reshuffling and restructuring state and party machinery. Brezhnev never challenged the bureaucracy and allowed it to grow unchecked. The major achievement of the Soviet system was total alienation of the individual from the decision-making process, and from any participation in the life of country. Read more…

By Con Coughlin, GATESTONE INSTITUTE  •  April 2, 2020 at 5:00 am

• The Iranian regime’s failure to grasp the significance of the outbreak in its own country has led 16 other countries in the region to claim that their own outbreaks originated in Iran. These include Iraq, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates.
• The European aid package, which is said to be worth $548,000, is the first transaction conducted under a trade mechanism known as the Instrument In Support Of Trade Exchanges, or Instex, which has been set up by the Europeans to enable them to barter humanitarian goods and food with Tehran after the US withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal.
• Tehran would be well-advised, though, not to regard the aid delivery as raising the prospect of the sanctions being eased. The new trading arrangements set up by Europe have been designed not to breach the Trump administration’s policy of applying “maximum pressure” against Iran, so that Instex can only be used for the delivery of humanitarian aid and food.
• This means that, while the aid delivery might help to fight the coronavirus pandemic, it will do little to alleviate the pressure on Iran’s incompetent, and increasingly unpopular, leadership.

Continue Reading Article

Facing growing anger from his right flank, PM appears to retreat from agreement, but compromises have been reached on all key issues — except West Bank annexation

By Haviv Rettig Gur, TOI  Today, 12:31 am

Composite photo shows Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, and Blue and White party chief Benny Gantz, right. (Flash90)

On Tuesday, Likud and Blue and White officials believed their unity government deal was all but sealed.

Netanyahu and Gantz each needed the other: Gantz had no centrist alliance to return to, Netanyahu lacked the votes to oust Gantz as Knesset speaker, a position from which Gantz could make Netanyahu’s next government essentially unable to govern.

On Wednesday, that notion seemed to unravel.

It took a few days for Netanyahu’s right-wing camp to realize the extent of his promises to Gantz, including not only an unprecedentedly generous 15 ministers (for perhaps 19 MKs — Gantz’s Blue and White, two Labor MKs and two from the new Derech Eretz splinter group), but also control over the defense and justice ministries, granting Gantz a de facto veto over the right’s most important policy aspirations.

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A reasonable observer would expect a minimum level of professionalism from New York City Health Commissioner, and concern, not indifference, from the mayor. By the time they took the pandemic seriously, corona virus was running wild in the city.

By Ron Jager, INN

A reasonable observer would expect a minimum level of professionalism form New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Oxiris Barbot. One wouldn’t expect that someone charged with protecting New York City’s public health would instead endanger the well-being of New Yorkers by ignoring the severe health ramifications and the very real danger of the Corona virus.

However, while most of the Democratic leadership of New York City was busy criticizing President Trump for deciding to impose travel restrictions on those entering the United States and dismissing the incoming threat of the coronavirus in February, this Health Commissioner was quoted stating the following on numerous TV interviews; “The risk to New Yorkers from coronavirus is low and … our preparedness as a city is very high.”

Read more…

By Dr. Tsilla Hershco, BESA

Coronavirus in Italy image via Pixabay

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The coronavirus pandemic has exposed many of the EU’s inherent weaknesses, from its total unpreparedness for the crisis, to the open borders that expedited the spread of the disease, to the lack of solidarity reflected in member states’ refusal to help Italy in the initial critical phase of the pandemic. The union cooperates well in non-crisis situations, but its complacency, lumbering bureaucracy, and sluggish decision-making processes hamper its ability to respond to urgent developments.

The coronavirus epidemic has exposed the EU’s gravest flaws. It failed to make plans for state cooperation to combat an epidemic, should one arise. The Union’s open border policy in accordance with the Schengen Agreement, which it considers its cardinal achievement, has turned out to be a major hindrance to the effort to contain the virus. The Union refused to suspend the Schengen Agreement even as the virus rapidly picked up momentum and minimized the dangers of the pandemic to the general public, missteps with grave human costs. Read more…

By Guy Benson, TOWNHALL