More than 100 Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to US Secretary Mike Pompeo, expressing “strong disagreement” with the State Department’s new policy and urged him to “reverse this policy decision immediately.”

by  Israel Kasnett, ISRAEL HAYOM , 

A girl holds an Israeli flag on a hilltop in Maaleh Adumim, near Jerusalem | Photo: Reuters

By Victor Rosenthal

My home town of Fresno, California has a tiny Jewish community. The metropolitan area of about a million people, in almost the geographical center of the state, has only about 1000 Jewish families. There are three congregations: a Reform temple with several hundred members, a much smaller Conservative shul, and a Chabad house.

I haven’t been to the US since moving back to Israel more than five years ago. But I keep in touch. So recently I noticed an announcement on the Facebook page of the Reform congregation for a talk by a Rabbi John Rosove on the subject “The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, an American Zionist Perspective.” I thought that was interesting, since I, too, am a Zionist and (you can tell by my accent) will always be an American.
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International Criminal Court Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s final decision could have a massive impact on Israel legally, diplomatically and in terms of the country’s image

By YONAH JEREMY BOB, JPOSTDECEMBER 5, 2019

The entrance of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is seen in The Hague(photo credit: REUTERS)

Five years after launching a preliminary review, International Criminal Court Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said Thursday that she is concerned about potential Israeli moves to annex the Jordan Valley.

Bensouda made the comment in a key section of her annual report reviewing a range of conflict areas around the world which she is probing.

Her final decision could have a massive impact on Israel legally, diplomatically and in terms of the country’s image.
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Tuesday’s vote was a sign the status quo at the UN is beginning to change.

By HERB KEINON,  JPOST

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres addresses the opening of the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly (photo credit: REUTERS/LUCAS JACKSON)

On September 22, 2016, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood before the UN General Assembly and said that he had a message that would shock the audience: “Israel has a bright future at the UN.”

“So when it comes to Israel at the UN, you’d probably think nothing will ever change, right?” he told the delegates. “Well, think again. You see, everything will change and a lot sooner than you think. The change will happen in this hall, because back home, your governments are rapidly changing their attitudes towards Israel. And sooner or later that’s going to change the way you vote on Israel at the UN.”
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There’s a straight line connecting leftists’ rejection of the settlements’ legality with rightists’ rejection of the indictments against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

By Evelyn Gordon, jns

One of the modern era’s most dangerous problems is the conflation of politics with law. Political questions are increasingly treated as legal ones, which inevitably results in the law becoming politicized. Last week provided two salient examples.

One was the response to the U.S. State Department’s announcement that Israeli settlements don’t violate international law. What was striking was that many opponents didn’t actually challenge the department’s (correct) legal conclusions. Instead, they objected on policy grounds.

Democratic presidential candidate and former vice president Joe Biden, for instance, complained, “This decision harms the cause of diplomacy, takes us further away from the hope of a two-state solution, and will only further inflame tensions in the region.” Another leading Democratic candidate, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, termed the announcement “a significant step backward in our efforts to achieve a two-state solution.”
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By CONRAD BLACK, Special to the Sun | December 4, 2019

As the Democrats toil to make their impeachment effort look like something other than a partisan smear job and legal scam, President Trump is at the NATO leaders’ meeting in London, observing the 70th anniversary of that organization, and is able to take some pleasure in the success of his foreign policy.

The President’s enemies, who have swarmed in the press every day since he declared his candidacy for the Republican nomination — first in derisive hilarity, then in a rising state of alarm, and finally in seething hatred — claim that he has alienated allies, swaggered absurdly, and generally brought the United States into disrepute while accomplishing nothing useful and giving comfort to the nation’s rivals and opponents.

There will be some frictions at the NATO meetings, but the president can reflect on the fact that when he assumed office, only three NATO countries of 27 apart from the United States were meeting the agreed target of devoting 2 % of GDP to defense: the United Kingdom, Poland, and mighty Estonia. Today that number is eight, and commitments are in place to take it up to 18 out of 30 within four years, a total increase in alliance defense spending of $400 billion.
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An Open Letter to administrators at McGill, York, and U Toronto: Students should not and cannot be allowed to take over a campus and hijack the robust exchange of ideas.

By Dr. Richard L. Cravatts, INN

As you are certainly aware, in recent weeks a series of troubling incidents has occurred on your respective campuses. While the events in question were distinct, they all shared a common impulse by a groups on your campuses who believe that they, and they alone, are able to set standards for free speech—in these particular cases, involving the debate about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and how Jewish students and other Israel supporters are treated as part of the university community.

As you well know, the notion that a vocal minority of self-important ideologues can determine what views may or may not be expressed on a particular campus is not only antithetical to the purpose of a university, but is vaguely fascistic by purposely or carelessly relinquishing power to a few to decide what can be said and what speech is allowed and what must be suppressed; it is what former Yale University president Bartlett Giamatti characterized as the “tyranny of group self-righteousness.”
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DEBKA

The Trump-Netanyahu conversation on Sunday night, Dec. 1, finalized the arrangements for military coordination against Iran that were set up during recent US generals’ talks in visits to Israel, DEBKAfile reports.

The exchange between the US President and Israeli Prime Minister, covering “the threat from Iran” and “other critical bilateral and region issues,” took place ahead of the NATO summit in London this week and against the background of fresh threats from Tehran against the US and Israel.
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Clarion Project

By Mario Alexis Portella, AMERICAN THINKER

Last week’s stabbings by Usman Khan, a devout Muslim who murdered two people and injured three others on London Bridge, by far overshadowed the arrest of Zachary Clark, 40, of Brooklyn, New York, the day before Americans celebrated Thanksgiving.  Clark, who faces up to forty years in prison, was charged with one count of attempting to provide material support to ISIS, and one count of distributing information relating to explosives, destructive devices, and weapons of mass destruction.

The arrest, as U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman for the Southern District of New York stated, was made possible through surveillance by the Joint Terrorist Task Force.  The force included cops (mainly Muslims themselves) going undercover in Muslim areas to become more familiar with them and gain background info for future investigations or leads on possible attacks. While there is nothing wrong with such practices in defense of innocent lives, Islamic advocacy groups such as the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR), with headquarters in Washington, D.C., have publicly opposed such programs, ranting that they are religiously and racially motivated to discriminate against Muslims.  And there is a reason for this: CAIR is linked to Islamic terrorist groups.
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Prime minister urges more pressure on Tehran, admonishes Europeans for giving regime an out with INSTEX mechanism; Jordan Valley annexation and defense pact also on table in Lisbon

By RAPHAEL AHREN,TOI

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center left, and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, center right, address journalists on the sidelines of an international conference on the Middle East in Warsaw, Poland, on February 14, 2019. (AP/Czarek Sokolowski)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for increased pressure on Iran and lambasted Europe for being soft on Tehran, as he headed to Portugal on Wednesday for a meeting with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on the Islamic Republic and controversial West Bank annexation plans.

Speaking on the tarmac before leaving for Lisbon, Netanyahu praised the US administration for putting “tremendous pressures and sanctions on Iran,” which he said was leading to instability that could cripple the ayatollah regime.
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Military reported to have purposely doubled and even tripled the actual number of recruited soldiers to meet required quotas; army claims discrepancy was a ‘mistake’
By MICHAEL BACHNER, TOI

Illustrative. Soldiers belonging to the IDF’s ultra-Orthodox Netzah Yehuda unit. (Yaakov Naumi/Flash90)

The Israel Defense Forces admitted Wednesday that it had published inflated numbers of ultra-Orthodox enlistment for years, after a report in Hebrew-language media claimed officers had purposely lied to cover up slumping recruitment tallies.

According to the Kan public broadcaster, officials in the army department responsible for tracking enlistment numbers in the Haredi community have been lying about how many of them join up, doubling and even tripling the tally, to make is seem like the military was meeting the quotas set by the law.

The faulty numbers were sent to the IDF chief of staff the defense minister, and any other relevant government bodies, and published in official reports.
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Arutz Sheva Staff,

The White House approached several Arab states to encourage them to reach non-belligerence agreements with Israel, Barak Ravid of Israel’s Channel 13 News reported on Tuesday, citing Israeli, Arab and US sources.

One of the Trump administration’s main goals in the Middle East has been to promote the normalization of ties between Israel and the Gulf states. Non-belligerence agreements are an interim step between the secret relations Israel has with those countries now and full diplomatic relations.

The Israeli, Arab and US sources said that President Donald Trump’s deputy national security adviser, Victoria Coates, met last week with the ambassadors of the UAE, Bahrain, Oman and Morocco in Washington. All four countries have secret contacts and cooperation with Israel but no diplomatic relations.
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Party leader says hard to decide whether fresh elections or narrow coalition is worse, understands why his lawmakers ‘rebelling’ against Blue and White’s conduct

By TOI STAFF

Yisrael Beytenu MKs Oded Forer and Hamad Amar at the Knesset on July 18, 2016. (Hadas Parush/Flash90)

Two of Yisrael Beytenu’s eight lawmakers were reportedly pushing party leader Avigdor Liberman on Tuesday to join to a narrow right-wing government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in the event coalition talks fail to yield a unity government.

According to a Channel 12 news report, MKs Oded Forer and Hamad Amar implored Liberman to considering joining a right-wing government should all other options fail. Such a scenario would see Yisrael Beytenu partner in a coalition with the ultra-Orthodox parties, which Liberman has promised not to do since Israel’s first round of inconclusive elections in April.

By Diego Cupola, AL MONITOR

Ahead of this week’s NATO summit in London, fresh developments in the eastern Mediterranean Sea will likely add to a long list of tensions between Turkey and allied nations as the bloc celebrates its 70th anniversary.

On Nov. 27, Ankara signed an agreement with Libya’s internationally recognized government denoting new maritime boundaries between the two nations. The area spanning from southwest Turkey to northeast Libya cuts across a zone currently claimed by Greece and Cyprus, where plans for a future gas pipeline are in the works to link eastern Mediterranean gas fields with European markets.

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