by Seth Frantzman, THE HILL

Israel’s new “Momentum” plan integrates all elements of its armed forces in innovative ways.

Iran is shipping sophisticated surface-to-air missiles, drones and other missiles to its allies across the Middle East. A seized shipment, revealed by U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) on Feb. 19, included drone and cruise missile components reportedly linked to an attack on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq oil facility last September. To confront the threat, Israel rolled out a new multi-year plan to transform its armed forces’ ability to both fight a multi-front war and to confront Iran.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is trying to do something unique in history by preparing the army for a potential future war that does not look like any before. Often armies end up planning to face enemies of the past, with disastrous results. This was the case with tactics of the U.S. Civil War, or the French army’s static defenses in World War II. Recent conflicts have revealed how technology is transforming the battlefield. This is illustrated in the counter-insurgency campaigns of the kind the U.S. has faced in the Global War on Terror, and inter-state conflicts such as tensions between Iran and other countries in the Middle East.
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Russia deploys warships to Syria’s coast as Turkey says it ‘opens the gates’ for refugees who want to cross into Europe.

AL JAZEERA

MORE ON BATTLE FOR IDLIB

• Turkish casualties as Syria rebels fight to hold on to key towntoday
• Turkey vows to drive Syrian forces back from Idlibyesterday
• Russia-backed Syrian forces kill more than 20 civilians in Idlibyesterday
• Syria’s Idlib sees ghost towns as hundreds of thousands flee2 days ago

At least 33 Turkish soldiers were killed in an air strike by Syrian government forces in northwestern Idlib province as Turkey vowed “to respond in kind” with attacks on “all” their positions.

The rapid escalation of the conflict on Friday also threatened another refugee crisis as media reports cited Turkish officials as saying they “opened the gates” for Syrian refugees to transit unimpeded to Europe.

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Israel’s technological innovation has turned it into a prominent driver of the fourth industrial revolution, known as Industry 4.0, which is digitizing global production and supply chains.

By Eytan Halon, JPOST

A robot engineered by Kuka adjusts a windscreen in a fully automated process on a model of the A-class production line of German car manufacturer Mercedes Benz at the Daimler factory in Rastatt, Germany, February 4, 2019. Picture taken on February 4, 2019.(photo credit: REUTERS)

The State of Israel didn’t exist during the first and second industrial revolutions, and was just a nascent entity as the third revolution ushered in a new age of information.

Given Israel’s modest size, it was never destined to become a global manufacturing power. Yet its technological innovation has turned it into a prominent driver of the fourth industrial revolution, known as Industry 4.0, which is digitizing global production and supply chains.

ital investments in Industry 4.0 technologies last year, surpassed only by the United States and China. Since 2014, annual investments in the sector have soared from $112 million to $650m., according to data published this week by Tel Aviv-based nonprofit Start-Up Nation Central. Approximately 260 Israeli start-ups are currently active in the field.
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By: Seth J. Frantzman, DEFENSE NEWS   February 18

Israeli soldiers from the Golani Brigade take part in a military training exercise near the border with Syria on Jan. 19, 2015. (Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images)

JERUSALEM — Israel has announced a new multiyear plan to restructure its armed forces to face existing and potential future adversaries for decades.

The plan, called “Tnufa” in Hebrew and “Momentum” in English, has been a priority for Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi, the Israel Defense Forces’ chief of the General Staff, over the last year. The plan envisions fighting a multi-front war and harnessing the latest technologies to bring the most effective firepower from the largest number of different units to the forefront of the battlefield.

Momentum also seeks to shorten the time of a conflict while achieving more success on the battlefield and lessening the impact of war on civilians. Forces will be streamlined with the goal of a “swift and massive use of force against enemy systems,” the IDF said during a briefing about the plan.

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‘We’ll have 61 seats without Netanyahu, Dery or Litzman,’ kingmaker in previous elections says of chance to build a coalition after the March 2 vote

HAARETZ

Lieberman speaks at the Maariv Business Conference 2030, Herzliya, February 26, 2020.Tomer Appelbaum

Yisrael Beiteinu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman, who emerged as kingmaker in Israel’s two previous elections this year, said on Wednesday that he is ruling out the possibility of forming a unity government with Benny Gantz’s Kahol Lavan and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud after the March 2 ballot.

Speaking at the Ma’ariv Business Conference 2030 in Herzliya, Lieberman said: “Gantz and Netanyahu together reached 65 seats [in the last election], and I told them to form a government, but they preferred to argue over who would be first and who would be second,” Lieberman said.

“There is no more unity government. It’s clear that nothing can be built with those two, so we’re preparing ourselves,” the former defense chief added. “We’re ready for the day after the election. We will have 61 Knesset seats without Netanyahu, Dery and Litzman,” referring to the heads of the two ultra-Orthodox parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism.

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BY ANDREW HARROD

“Islam is dead,” the “mosques are empty,” and “no one follows Islam inside of Iran,” an unidentified Iranian church leader stated in the 2019 film Sheep Among Wolves Volume II. The film marks a widely observed trend in recent decades of Iranians abandoning the cruel theocratic faith of Iran’s 1979-established Islamic Republic for Christianity.

“God is moving powerfully inside of Iran,” the church leader stated as the documentary examined how “Muslim-background Iranians are leading a quiet but mass exodus out of Islam.” Christian evangelists, who reach Iranians via means such as television broadcasting, have for several years reported on Iranians leaving Islam for Christianity. Other media reports have noted that Iranians “are leaving the mosques in droves” as atheists.
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By Victor Rosenthal

As Purim approaches, Bernie Sanders, the Jewish front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, said:

[Moving the US Embassy back to Tel Aviv is] something we would take into consideration …

I am very proud of being Jewish. I actually lived in Israel for some months, but what I happen to believe is that right now, sadly, tragically, in Israel, through Bibi Netanyahu, you have a reactionary racist who is now running that country …

Our foreign policy in the Mideast should be about absolutely protecting the independence and security of Israel, but you cannot ignore the suffering of the Palestinian people.

If there was any doubt before, we know now where Bernie stands. Jerusalem is always a litmus test. The American Congress demanded that the US government recognize reality about Jerusalem all the way back in 1995. That was a quarter of a century ago. Until Trump cut the Gordian Knot, three presidents withheld that recognition. The waivers supposedly related to “national security,” but everyone knew that it was a nod to the Arabs and others who opposed any Jewish sovereignty, not just our control of Jerusalem. Proof of that was the ridiculous opinion of the State Department that Israel was not sovereign in any part of Jerusalem, even the Western part that it has held since 1948 and in which its Knesset is located. And the fact is that there have been no adverse consequences for “national security.”
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T. Belman. Ganz differs from Bibi in that he wants to show zero tolerance to balloons and rockets and no cash for quiet. Right. As for the Trump plan, he differs from the Right in that he accepts a Palestinian state which Yamina rejects totally, but accepts sovereignty over settlements and the Jordan Valley. He left out working with the international community but he included working with Abbas should aAbbas come to the table.

By Christina Wong, BREITBART

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

President Trump’s firing of John Rood, the top policy official at the Pentagon, is a sign the agency is not immune from an effort to purge from influential positions across the administration “snakes” who do not support the president, according to four current and former officials.
Rood had been on the chopping block for months, but his firing just last week amid a spate of other personnel changes shows that the president is finally ready to clean house at a department that has tried to distance itself from politics, they said.

“All of them are getting tossed,” a senior administration official told Breitbart News. “You’re either on the team or you’re out, everywhere.”

Political appointees like Rood serve the administration and at the president’s prerogative. However, it was well-known at the Pentagon and beyond that Rood was not a supporter of the president.
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With the electoral crisis growing and no real winner showing in the polls leading to next week’s vote, all signs point to a real possibility that Israel will need yet one more national election to nail down a government.

By Prof. Dov Fischer, ISRAEL HAYOM

With Israel’s third national election in a year, it may be dispiriting to consider that it actually will take yet a fourth election to finally nail down a national government. However, if it does come to that – and it very well may – the good news is that the fourth try should be the charm.

Months of Israeli electoral surveys by the country’s wide range of pollsters all point to one constant: no one is blinking and no one is backing down, from electoral stalemate to electoral stalemate. Thus, Blue and White endlessly jostles back and forth with Likud for bragging rights as the larger party, with each scoring 32-36 seats.

Avigdor Lieberman repeatedly scores 6-9 seats for his Yisrael Beytenu party that appeals primarily to older immigrants from the former Soviet Union, who are right wing politically and secular theologically. And the Joint Arab List now scores 12-14 seats. Read more…

The one-sided pro-“Palestine” madness on American campuses is a virus which shows no sign of quitting anytime soon. But now we have some professors who are fighting back publicly. Newman, in her late seventies, and a survivor, has filed a lawsuit.

By Prof. Phyllis Chesler, INN

Newman is a long-time professor of French and Cultural Studies and Chair of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, who has just sued Point Park University claiming “employment discrimination based on her Jewish and Israeli ancestry and alleging that there has been a concerted effort led by anti-Zionist faculty and students to create a hostile work environment.”

She is also a savvy Holocaust survivor who has certainly learned her lessons. What’s more, she lives and works in Pittsburgh, where white nationalist, Robert Gregory Bowers, unleashed a Jew-hating massacre at the “Tree of Life” synagogue on a Sabbath in October of 2018.

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Not even the victory of a Socialist backed by a coalition of Israel haters will persuade liberal Jews to abandon their party, let alone vote for a president they hate.

By Jonathan S Tobin, jns

(February 24, 2020 / JNS) This is a scary moment for centrist and pro-Israel Democrats. Sen. Bernie Sanders’s overwhelming victory in the Nevada caucuses, coupled with the disastrous debut of Michael Bloomberg in last week’s Las Vegas debate, has forced the party’s establishment to confront reality.

It’s true that the Democratic race is still in the early stages. But the momentum Sanders has established and the inability of moderate Democrats to settle on a single alternative set up a dynamic that makes the septuagenarian Socialist not merely the current frontrunner, but the most likely

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A major clash between Sanders and AIPAC won’t just hurt the organization’s bipartisan bona fides in the short run. It could also come to define AIPAC for an entire generation of young American voters

By Amir Tibon, HAARETZ

Bernie Sanders speaks during a campaign rally at the University of Houston in Houston, Texas, U.S., February 23, 2020. REUTERS/Mike Segar

WASHINGTON – Bernie Sanders’ announcement that he won’t attend this year’s AIPAC conference in Washington did not come as a surprise to anyone: In his three decades as an elected official in Washington, Sanders had never attended the gathering, and there was no reason to think this year would be his first time, especially in light of his recent statements regarding U.S. military aid to Israel.

But what did surprise the powerful pro-Israel lobby was Sanders’ decision to make a political statement out of not attending its policy conference. This year’s event, which is expected to attract as many as 18,000 people, will take place this weekend – just 48 hours before Super Tuesday, the most important day on the Democratic presidential primary calendar. Currently, it’s not clear if any of the party’s presidential contenders will choose to waste precious campaigning time ahead of that day at a conference in Washington. Read more…

About 2,500 Americans staff base near Riyadh, launching F-15s and manning Patriot missile batteries, despite history of Islamist opposition

By Jared Malsin, WSJ
Feb. 26, 2020 5:30 am ET

PRINCE SULTAN AIR BASE, Saudi Arabia—Nearly 17 years after U.S. troops largely pulled up stakes from the kingdom, the U.S. is now back in force.

A jet of the F-15E Strike Eagle Squadron, which is flying missions against Islamic State over Iraq and Syria. The squadron has moved to the base from the neighboring U.A.E.

Here in a base of tents in the desert about 60 miles southeast of Riyadh, some 2,500 U.S. military personnel are launching F-15 fighter jets in soaring arcs overhead and manning Patriot missile batteries in shifts. Or they play chess and video games to pass the hours, with an NFL-themed video game splashed on a flat-screen TV inside a recreation tent.

The return of the U.S. troops—after maintaining a much smaller footprint for nearly two decades—reflects the alarm of Saudi and American leaders at the current threat posed by another regional power: Iran.

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Apparent gesture to settlers 6 days before elections would connect Ma’ale Adumim to East Jerusalem, bisecting a future Palestinian state

By Jacob Magid, TOI

View of the settlement of Ma’ale Adumin, in the West Bank overlooking the E1 area on January 4, 2017. (Yaniv Nadav/Flash90)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Tuesday that he had ordered the promotion of a plan for some 3,500 homes in a contentious West Bank area that has long been frozen due to objections from governments around the world supportive of a two-state solution.

The project in the so-called E1 area between East Jerusalem and the Ma’ale Adumim city-settlement would bisect the western West Bank, substantially curbing the possibility for development in the center of a future Palestinian state if one were to be created.

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By Prof. Hillel Frisch, BESA February 25, 2020

Helium balloons bearing flammable materials launched from Bureij, Gaza Strip, drifting to Israel, July 2018, photo via Wikipedia

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Hamas is probably getting the lion’s share of the 268 million shekels provided by Qatar to Gaza, according to a senior Hamas official. Israel allows the transfer of this “protection” money—but instead of giving Israel “protection”, the devastating trickle of missiles from the pre-2014 period is back augmented by daily batches of incendiary balloons. Only another massive round of fighting will bring quiet to Israel’s southern front.

As Israelis in the Gaza border communities—caught between missile launches and flights of incendiary balloons—ponder the meaning of the “hasdara”, or arrangement, brokered by Egypt between Israel and Hamas, the Blue and White and Likud parties are busy launching rhetorical salvos at one another. Hamas and its allies, meanwhile, are sure they landed a great deal. Read more…