T. Belman. Liberman just opened the door to join the right bloc.  Its up to Shas and UTJ to accept. He also didn’t commit to Blue and White to join a minority government that depended on the support of the joint list. So he is up for grabs.  He also has come out about being against a fourth election.  He obviously didn’t repeat that he won’t sit with Bibi as PM.  Bibi may have other alternatives but Liberman isn’t asking a lot. Its in Bibi’s interest to get the religious parties to accept this limitation on their power. It would also strengthen the Right Bloc for future electioNs with Liberman on board.

“Yisrael Beytenu’s threshold conditions for joining the next coalition” include civil marriages and conversions by municipal rabbis.

Arutz Sheva Staff, 08/03/20 

Yisrael Beytenu Chair MK Avigdor Liberman wrote a new message on his Facebook account this morning titled: “Yisrael Beytenu’s threshold conditions for joining the next coalition.”

In his post, Liberman laid out five issues the implementation of which he said was the condition for his party to join the next coalition.

Liberman’s first condition is “A minimum income of 70% of the minimum wage in the economy for all pensioners living from income support and old age pension.”
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T. Belman. That’s not what was promised to Israel. Israel just had to complete the mapping with the US and then Trump would approve. It appears the deal has changed. Before it was an inducement for Israel to freeze development for 4 years. Now it no longer serves that purpose.  Instead its a penalty to be imposed on the PA for not coming to the negotiating table.

Now Trump gave no one a chance to prevent US recognition of the Golan as part of Israel or Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.  In this case, there is no obligation for Trump to give them another chance.  They certainly haven’t earned such a chance. So why is it important that  Trump give them another chance.  Who cares what people will say. This is not a borderline case. We have had 25 years of their intransigence and murder.

“Nobody can say we didn’t give the Palestinians a chance to go back to the table. If they want to talk, we are ready.”

By Aaron Reich, JPOST

Despite a refusal by the Palestinians to be involved in any negotiations and a lack of government in Israel, US President Donald Trump’s administration will push forward with the “Deal of the Century” peace plan, including giving White House approval to Israeli annexation, senior presidential adviser Jared Kushner told US senators in a closed-room meeting last Wednesday, Channel 13’s diplomatic correspondent reported through Axios.

The news comes just following Israel’s third election within a year, which has seen the country still divided as no clear winner has emerged from the political deadlock.

Despite this, it seems the Trump administration feels both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his chief political rival, Blue and White leader Benny Gantz, will both support the annexation.
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T. Belman. Both Israel and the US did not ratify the Rome Statute in order not to be signator to it. Nevertheless both are now the target of investigations while the real perpatrators are left alone.

By BENNY AVNI, NY SUN | March 6, 2020

An international prosecutor, Fatou Bensuda, was advised Thursday by a panel at Hague that she should go ahead and investigate alleged war crimes committed by Americans in Afghanistan. It’s a shocking development.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the International Criminal Court panel’s ruling “a truly breathtaking action by an unaccountable political institution masquerading as a legal body.” It is, but what to do?

In a little noticed address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee last week, Senator Ted Cruz urged an American push at the United Nations Security Council to ban ICC investigations against Israelis, Americans, or citizens of any other non-member of the Hague-based court.
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Given the ongoing payments to the Islamic terrorist group controlling the Gaza Strip seeking to maintain the calm on the southern border, one has to wonder what may happen when Hezbollah seeks a similar deal to for a lull on the northern front.

by Udi Levi, ISRAEL HAYOM

The issue of Qatari financing of the Gaza Strip and Hamas rule has returned to the news after it was revealed that the head of the Mossad and the chief of the IDF Southern Command had visited Qatar. Qatar has been sending exorbitant funds to the Gaza Strip for eight years, since 2012. According to various estimates, the total amount sent Hamas in Gaza amounts to $1 billion.

There is no dispute that without the Qatari financial aid, which serves as a lever of influence over Hamas leadership in Gaza, Israel might have faced either a humanitarian disaster in Gaza or been forced into massive military conflict with Hamas. Ever since the Palestinian Authority’s refusal (beginning March 2019) to make payments to the various apparatuses of life in Gaza, Hamas leadership and the Palestinian population in Gaza effectively have had no way to maintain even a basic lifestyle. Given that no real diplomatic agreement between Israel and Hamas is possible, Israel’s decisionmakers have attempted to reach arrangements between it and the terrorist entity ruling Gaza to ensure some quiet. Read more…

By Seth J. Frantzman, DEFENSE NEWS February 18

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, left, shakes hands with his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on July 5, 2017. Modi arrived in Israel for what he called a “groundbreaking” first-ever visit by an Indian premier, with growing ties between the two countries including billion of dollars in defense deals. (Thomas Coex/AFP via Getty Images)

JERUSALEM — Israel and India are deepening defense industry ties as Israeli companies seek long-term partnerships through India’s efforts to encourage products to be locally produced under joint ventures.

Earlier this month, Israel Aerospace Industries and India’s Bharat Electronics Limited signed a memorandum of understanding to establish a new center for technical and maintenance support for India’s air defense systems. In addition, IAI on Feb. 5 signed a strategic collaboration memorandum with Indian firms Hindustan Aeronautics Limited and Dynamatic Technologies Limited to work on UAVs that will be made in India.
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T. Belman. Hauser and Hendel are former Likud MKs

Benny Gantz expected to encounter opposition from MKs Hauser and Hendel to move for minority gov’t with outside support from Joint List.

Arutz Sheva Staff, 08/03/20

Hauser and Hendel,  Noam Revkin Fenton/Flash90

According to a report on Kan Reshet Bet, senior officials in Blue and White acknowledge in internal talks that the party will have difficulty obtaining the majority needed to form a minority government that relies on the support of the Joint List.

The difficulty Blue and White Chair Benny Gantz is expected to encounter lies in opposition to the move from MKs Yoaz Hendel and Zvika Hauser of his party.

The two, reports Kan, are expected to face heavy pressure over the next few days to support the process.
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T. Belman.  I have come to the same conclusion. Yamina will always lose out to Likud. So why not amalgamate with Likud and hold primaries.  That way the people who have decidedly Zionist views will do better in the primaries. Thus they will have more influence in the expanded Likud than Yamina hopes to have in a right wing coalition.

MK Ayelet Shaked says left-wing majority includes MKs who want to erase Israel’s Jewish identity, calls on leftist parties to join right.

By Yoni Kempinski, INN

MK Ayelet Shaked (Yamina) on Saturday evening spoke to Arutz Sheva about the center-left’s attempt to pass a law banning Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu from being tasked with forming a government.

“This legislation is anti-democracy,” she said. “It is unthinkable that the people of Israel went to elections when they knew that the law allowed a prime minister to continue serving even with indictments, and suddenly a new law should be passed. I believe that this won’t happen, no lawyer will think that this can be passed to apply to the current Knesset.”

Shaked also noted that any government which doesn’t include the right-wing parties must include the Joint Arab List. “They have a majority of 62 MKs together with MKs who don’t believe in Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. There are some among them who explicitly support terrorism, such as MK Heba Yazbak. There are some among them who think that Israel needs to erase its Jewish identity. The hatred that three Chiefs of Staff have has made them go insane, if they want to form a government with the Joint Arab List.” Read more…

New study shows sea level rise has been slow and a constant, pre-dating industrialization. By Thomas Lifson AMERICAN THINKER

By Timothy Birdnow, AMERICAN THINKER

Tide and time wait for no man, or so they say. But that isn’t really true if you are a rich progressive, or one of those who finagle a fine living off the stupidity of naive guilt-riddled Westerners.

Take the rising tide. For years the climate alarmists have been claiming that low-lying atolls like those in the Maldives would disappear, swallowed by the sea in a manner reminiscent of Atlantis. Global warming is causing sea level rise, they claim,  and places like the Seychelles or Kiribati or the Maldives were doomed, doomed, doomed!

Reasonable people pointed out that the sea levels have been rising for ten thousand years and there has been no major increase in the rate of sea level rise (which is 0.118 ± 0.016  inches per year), but this entreaty fell on deaf ears.
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By Robert Curry, AMERICAN THINKER

There is a constant stream of books and articles telling us, often strenuously and at great length, that the American Founders got the ideas they used for the Founding from the British philosopher John Locke.  The Founders would be puzzled by this ongoing effort.  They knew different.

Locke’s Two Treatises of Government appeared in 1690.  The articles by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay that became The Federalist began appearing in American newspapers in 1787.  Quite a lot had happened during that intervening century.  The greatest development of all during that time was the onset of the American Enlightenment, that explosion of human genius that gave America and the world the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and The Federalist.  The Founders carried out a revolution in thinking about the meaning and possibilities of human life unlike anything the world had ever known before — and by 1776, they were only getting started.  Thomas Jefferson later called The Federalist “the best commentary on the principles of government, which ever was written.”  He was right about that.  The distance in thought between Locke’s Two Treatises and The Federalist is simply enormous.

Even the Declaration boldly declares its distance from Locke’s thinking, though we are told unceasingly that it is a Lockean document.  Those who say the Declaration is Lockean tell us that if we have a question about the Declaration, all we need to do is consult Locke’s political philosophy.  Okay, then, here’s a question about the Declaration: why “unalienable”?  It is, after all, a somewhat odd word.  It is familiar to us only because it is there in that sentence we all know:
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The Most-Watched Election Town Hall In Cable News History

T. Belman.  Will the left plus the Joint list actually come together to pass the proposed legislation to prevent Netanyahu from forming a government?  Will the Court uphold the legislation?

This is why Likud is petitioning for a recount.  They want to buy time.

In the past I strongly recommended that Netanyahu be ousted as I couldn’t see how he could get a block of 61 seats.  I argued that with Bibi gone there would be a number of potential partners for Likud and so there are including Liberman.

Lieberman knows he has to do something to break the deadlock, or he will be blamed for compelling a fourth round of national voting. But what does he actually stand for?

by Rabbi Dov Fischer, ISRAEL HAYOM

It seems increasingly clear, for those who read between the lines of Avigdor Lieberman’s words, that he and his Yisrael Beytenu party will leave the religious wars for another day if only he can oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now. He wants him out more than anything else in the world, and he may yet get his putsch.

Through three consecutive elections now, Lieberman has held the balance of power in his hands.  The Likud-Religious bloc has emerged serially with 60 seats, 55, and now 58.  In each case the center-left alliance Blue-and-White has emerged with allies on the Left with approximately 40 seats. The Arab coalition of four anti-Zionist parties under the rubric of their “Joint List” keeps emerging with more seats: the first time 4, the second time 13, and this time 15. Meanwhile, Lieberman keeps getting 5-8 seats.

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What would a peace agreement in Syria look like? How can the involved parties come up with a deal that would satisfy them all?

by Jason Shvili, ISRAEL HAYOM

In the last few weeks, the war in Syria has transformed into a full-blown international military conflict with Syria now effectively at war with Turkey, despite a ceasefire that was announced on Thursday.

Syrian and Turkish forces have exchanged fire with each other, leading to casualties on both sides. Meanwhile, the Russians continue to give military support to Syrian President Bashar Assad, using its air force to bomb the last rebel stronghold of Idlib.

At the same time, Turkey’s air force and ground troops support the rebels in trying to withstand Assad’s military offensive in Idlib.

Also of great importance is Iran’s ongoing efforts to entrench itself inside Syrian territory and Israel’s efforts to prevent this entrenchment from happening. In the midst of all this is a reignited refugee crisis as civilians try to escape the carnage in Idlib and Turkey opens the floodgates for these refugees, allowing them to attempt to reach Europe.
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The Blue and White leader may be set to finally pry the Likud head from the prime minister’s chair — and lose the premiership in the process

By HAVIV RETTIG GUR, TOI

Blue and White party leader MK Benny Gantz at an election rally in Ramat Gan on February 25, 2020. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)

The Yisrael Beytenu party announced on Thursday that it would support a law barring Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from forming the next government because he is under indictment, in a move that may well have shifted the Knesset math decisively in favor of the legislation.

“At the faction meeting that just ended, it was decided to move forward with the promotion of two laws,” the secular, right-wing party said in a statement. “The first law will limit the tenure of a prime minister to two terms. The second law will prevent an MK facing indictment from forming a government.”

It was a bombshell. A great deal divides the anti-Netanyahu coalition — on nearly every issue, Blue and White is closer to Likud than to the Arab-majority parties of the Joint List. But all are temporarily united by the specific and narrow conviction that Netanyahu’s time in power should come to a close. Read more…

By Jared Peterson, AMERICAN THINKER

As Americans remain riveted to the corona virus and the nauseating vicissitudes of the Democrats’ battle to choose a presidential nominee — a choice now apparently winnowed down to the Marxist or the moron — this writer’s thoughts once again are drawn to events in Europe. The critical situation now unfolding day by day on the Greek-Turkish border may at first seem of minor concern to America, but in fact it’s a critical part of the overall struggle by patriots on both sides of the Atlantic to preserve Western Civilization.

The same forces working here to dissolve American civilization through mass migration and deliberately inculcated cultural self-loathing are busy in Europe pursuing the same goal by identical means. And the same traditional, patriotic segment of the population, guilty of the crime of loving their civilization and wanting to preserve it, resists cultural dissolution in both Europe and America. The commonality of the struggle is striking.

European patriots, however, face worse odds. Their governments are more ruthless in condemning patriotism and love of country (who knew those feelings made one a Nazi?), and Europeans’ history of submission to authority, and consequent ingrained passivity, make them less inclined to risk social condemnation to save themselves.
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by Bradley Martin, WASH EXAMINER

Iranian Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi once boasted about an unnamed “lobby group” operating in Washington D.C. that is devoted to the “[Islamic] revolution and the supreme leader,” according to the Washington Free Beacon. This organization, widely believed to be the National Iranian American Council, just carried out an unprecedented lobbying blitz targeting U.S. lawmakers.

The National Iranian American Council (NIAC), a nonprofit civic action group which spreads regime propaganda in the United States, continues to manipulate American foreign policy through aggressive lobbying and pressure campaigns.

Mark Hemingway of RealClearInvestigations recently wrote a scathing report on how the Washington D.C-based group has worked in public and behind the scenes to shape the American response to conflict with Iran. The veteran journalist revealed how, during the most serious anti-regime protests in Iran since the Islamic Revolution, NIAC endorsed a letter from 17 members of Congress to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin calling on the White House to halt Iranian sanctions. Hemingway also cited the “No War with Iran Strategy Call,” a public teleconference convened to drum up opposition to military deterrence against Iran just a day after it launched ballistic missiles at U.S. armed forces stationed in Iraq. Hosted by NIAC and a coalition of left-wing anti-war groups, the call included remarks from Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Read more…

By Victor Rosenthal

Nothing seems to me more obviously true than the statement that a strong, thriving Jewish state is essential to the survival of the Jewish people.

But apparently many self-identifying American Jews either don’t agree, or even if they do, there are other issues that they see as more important than the continued presence of the Jews in history. And some would even welcome our disappearance as a people.

A recent poll showed that most American Jewish voters “prioritized domestic policy issues over Israel when asked which issues are most important to them in selecting a candidate.” In practical terms, that means that they are prepared to vote for candidates who have expressed policy positions hostile to the Jewish state, because the alternative (Trump) is unacceptable to them. This even includes the execrable Bernie Sanders, who not only has taken the most extreme anti-Israel stance of any of the major candidates, but who has surrounded himself with a phalanx of misozionist* and arguably antisemitic surrogates and advisers.
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Israel’s High Court created the problem that drove tens of thousands of voters into Benjamin Netanyahu’s arms. The result could be a government willing to enact legal reforms that the court bitterly opposes.

By Evelyn Gordon

Though Israel’s final March 2 election results still aren’t in, one thing is clear: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did significantly better than he did in September, and his bloc is close to having enough seats to form a new government. That’s a far cry from saying he’ll actually be able to form one. But if he does, the legal system will be hoist with its own petard—namely, repeated court rulings that, in defiance of the actual law, barred lame-duck governments from doing almost anything of importance.

To understand why, it’s first necessary to understand how Netanyahu’s bloc gained three to four seats since September, all of which went to his own Likud party. Granted, many Israelis either don’t believe the indictments against him or don’t consider them serious enough to justify ousting someone they consider an excellent prime minister, but all those people also voted for him in September.
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