While the Jewish nation is unique, Israel is far from unique in being a state that combines democracy with a specific national and religious nature.

By Daniel Krygier, World Israel News

While the Jewish nation is unique, Israel is far from unique in being a state that combines democracy with a specific national and religious nature. Liberal critics frequently blast Israel as an “anomaly” among the family of nations. Critics argue that Israel is “archaic” and even “racist” for defining itself as a democratic and Jewish nation-state.

Is Israel an anomaly among the world’s modern democracies? Is it possible to be one or the other — Jewish or democratic — but not both?

In Israel and the Family of Nations, the Jewish Nation-State and Human Rights, legal scholar Amnon Rubinstein explores the fundamental question: Can Israel be both Jewish and truly democratic?
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Sagee Goldenholz, founding member of #JEXIT rocks the house at the RJC convention in Las Vegas! The Democrat Party is no longer the home for American Jews, here’s why!

“Palestine” is a fiction, a concept that refers to an imaginary entity, not real but socially constructed.

By Prof. Phyllis Chesler, INN

I dare to say, at the risk of being shamed and shunned for telling the truth, that “Palestine” is a fiction, a concept that refers to an imaginary entity, not real but socially constructed.

Even as barbarians terrorize civilians everywhere, (if not, the UK and Australia would have granted Pakistani Christian woman Asia Bibi asylum), the world remains divinely diverted, even obsessed by the alleged “occupation” of a country that does not exist.

I am talking about “Palestine” aka the disputed territories. And yes, I dare to surround this word with quote marks because it is a fiction, a concept that refers to an imaginary entity, an entity desired by the world, the more so because it is not real but is, rather, socially constructed.
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By: Egypt Today staff

CAIRO – 11 June 2019: Head of the Parliament’s Defense and National Security Committee Kamal Amer denied granting the Egyptian nationality to foreign investors for $10,000.

Amer added during his phone call to Mubasher channel that $10,000 or the equivalent in Egyptian currency is the fees for applying for the Egyptian citizenship.

In the same context, the Defense and National Security Committee of the House of Representatives approved on Monday, June 10 new amendments to the law of Entry and Residence of Foreigners in Egypt that grant citizenship to foreigners who inject their investments into the country.
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By Victor Rosenthal

A Hamas-related “military unit” called “Sons of al-Zawari” has been responsible for launching countless incendiary and explosive kites and balloons across the border into Israel for more than a year. Recently they even threatened to fill the condoms they use for balloons (apparently they are made of strong latex, so they are less likely to break prematurely) with a payload of some kind of poisonous or carcinogenic material.

Mohammed al-Zawari, in case you are interested, was a Tunisian engineer who developed drones for Hamas; he was assassinated in 2016, probably by the Mossad.
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In one of the few letters he wrote in Hebrew, Trumpeldor tells father of a fallen soldier his son “fell as a hero for the sake of the people of Israel and the land of Israel.”
By  Hanan Greenwood / Israel Hayom

For years, there has been a debate about whether Zionist hero Joseph Trumpeldor actually uttered the famous declaration attributed to him moments before he died of his wounds defending the Jewish settlement at Tel Hai in 1920: “It is good to die for our country.” But a handwritten letter from Trumpeldor to a bereaved father that is now being put up for sale by the King David Auction House proves that even if he never said those words, he believed in the sentiment.
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BY JOE SAUNDERS, CONSERVATIVE TRIBUNE 

These are the kinds of numbers that give Democrats nightmares.

With their hopes for defeating President Donald Trump in 2020 depending largely on turning out the black vote in its usual monolithic numbers, Democrats have been relentless in trying to paint the Trump administration as an unadulterated evil for African-Americans.

But a report released this month by the U.S. Sentencing Commission just made that job many, many times harder.
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Another speaker who addresses the crowd from his bunker in Beirut annually on World Jerusalem Day is Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah.

By Hillel Frisch, JPOST

U.S. President Donald Trump looks at supporters before boarding Air Force One after addressing a Trump 2020 re-election campaign rally in Montoursville, Pennsylvania, U.S. May 20, 2019. (photo credit: REUTERS/CARLOS BARRIA)

At first glance, it seems that the title given to this week’s weekly Friday confrontation in Gaza, “World Jerusalem Day,” is little different from the various banner titles given to the 60 confrontations that preceded it since their inauguration over a year ago.

Yet the banner “World Jerusalem Day,” which Hamas and, of course, Islamic Jihad, endorsed, sends a clear message to the Arab audience – from the kings and presidents of Arab states to the lowliest follower of Arab media.
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By Jim ONeill, CFP

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual.  —George Santayana “The Life of Reason”

Modern lefties refuse to listen to this central message of religion, that we fix the world by fixing ourselves, rather than fixing ourselves by remaking the world in our own broken image.—Daniel Greenfield “A Movement of Conspiracy Theories”

The “progressives” (a misnomer if there ever was one)—I mean regressives—they want to regress society back to a feudal-like lifestyle, if not pre-Christian paganism, are masters of pointing fingers and playing the blame-game.  It is always his, her, or its fault—never theirs.  They avoid personal responsibility like the plague.

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T. Belman. Egypt must look with envy at Trump’s Plan  to get the Gulf States to invest $100 B in Jordan to strengthen their economy and to finance new immigrants. I have long argued that Egypt is under such dire pressure for money that it would be possible to induce them to take in Gazans.

See Memo to Kushner.

The Egyptian parliament is promoting a bill aimed at improving the country’s economic situation. A special committee will examine the candidates and respond to them in accordance with security considerations

By Assaf Gabor, MAKOR RISHON

The Egyptian parliament has announced a bill to the effect that anyone interested in Egyptian citizenship can receive one for a payment of $ 10,000. The aim of the bill, at the initiative of Egyptian MP Kamal Amer, is to assist Egypt in the economic crisis it is in and to promote economic development for the preservation of the country’s resources and the achievement of national security.

During a press conference, which he convened after meeting with the security committee, Amer said that his bill includes a number of conditions to implement the law. One of them is a change in the existing law that distinguishes between foreign citizens today in Egypt divided into several categories. Another necessary change is the expansion of the prime minister’s rights to grant citizenship to any foreigner who buys a state-owned property or alternatively invests money in establishing projects that benefit the state. Another possible investment path is the encouragement of financial investments or the deposit of a sum in foreign currency.
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T. Belman. International law is more complex than Baker would have you believe. Annexing territory is generally illegal but not always. After WWI and WWII the victors redrew boundaries. This is considered to be legal not illegal.

Furthermore UNSC Res 242 provided “Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security,”. By that it means “by aggressive war”. It does not exclude the possibility of acquiring territory if attacked

“You can retain territory without annexing it,” Baker said. “That is what we did in the [Oslo accord] interim agreement, we retained Area C…we haven’t annexed it.”

BY Herb Keinon, JPOST

Before becoming US ambassador to Israel in 2017, David Friedman was a bankruptcy lawyer with the Manhattan firm Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman – and a highly successful one at that. As such, he understands the significance of words, that words matter.

In his interview on Saturday with The New York Times, Friedman was quoted as saying, “Under certain circumstances, I think Israel has the right to retain some, but unlikely all, of the West Bank.”

The salient word here is “retain” – that Israel has the right to “retain” some of the territory. In the words quoted in the Times article, Friedman never uttered the word “annex,” which is significant, because annex has different, more far-reaching implications.
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By Yoram Hazony and Ofir Haivry, WSJ

President Trump is often accused of creating a needless rift with America’s European allies. The secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Jens Stoltenberg, expressed a different view recently when he told a joint session of Congress: “Allies must spend more on defense—this has been the clear message from President Trump, and this message is having a real impact.”

Mr. Stoltenberg’s remarks reflect a growing recognition that strategic and economic realities demand a drastic change in the way the U.S. conducts foreign policy. The unwanted cracks in the Atlantic alliance are primarily a consequence of European leaders, especially in Germany and France, wishing to continue living in a world that no longer exists. The U.S. cannot serve as the enforcer for the Europeans’ beloved “rules-based international order” any more. Even in the 1990s, it was doubtful the U.S. could indefinitely guarantee the security of all nations, paying for George H.W. Bush’s “new world order” principally with American soldiers’ lives and American taxpayers’ dollars.
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In maiden speech, Amir Ohana vows to pursue reform, though his ability to follow through in his interim capacity is doubtful

By TOI STAFF 10 June 2019, 

Likud MK Amir Ohana delivers his first speech as justice minister at a conference of the Israel Bar Association, in Jerusalem, on June 10, 2019. (Noam Revkin Fenton/Flash90)

Newly appointed Justice Minister Amir Ohana on Monday called Israel’s justice system “the least democratic” of the country’s three branches of government, and vowed to seek changes he believed would lead to a more balanced judiciary — though his power to enact such reforms is doubtful.

In a speech at an event of the Israel Bar Association, his first since taking office last week, Ohana said, “Anyone who wants a strong justice system, anyone who wants what is best for the justice system — must be prepared to criticize it, and criticism also means change.”

“Can it truly be claimed that the way judges are appointed allows the necessary pluralism?” he said. “Can we ignore the public’s sense of a growing rift between the terms ‘law’ and ‘justice’?
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Ronzheimer wrote that Zarif answered: “The problem is the aggressive policies of Israel and the USA.”

By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL, JPOST

People stage a mock hanging as they protest outside German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin February 4, 2013, where Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi’s was due to deliver a speech.. (photo credit: THOMAS PETER/REUTERS)

In response to questions today in Tehran from a reporter for the mass circulation German paper Bild, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif reiterated his country’s lethal homophobic law and its opposition to the Jewish state and the US.

Paul Ronzheimer, a reporter for the Bild, wrote on Twitter that he asked Zarif two questions: “1. Where do you stand regarding Israel’s right to exist? 2. How do you deal with the executions of gays?”
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By Evelyn Gordon

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s unexpected failure to form a new government, which indicates that his political end may be nearing, has prompted much speculation about what changes a post-Netanyahu era might bring. But here’s one thing that won’t change—the right’s efforts to reform the legal system. And nothing better explains why than the about-face of Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, previously one of the system’s ardent defenders.

Reform efforts have been widely depicted for months as nothing but a way for Netanyahu to avoid standing trial. Thus many people seem to think they’ll dissipate once Netanyahu goes. As columnist Chemi Shalev wrote in Haaretzon May 28, “Without Netanyahu and his urgent need to avoid indictment, the right-wing crusade against Israel’s Supreme Court in particular and the rule of law in general would falter … without Netanyahu’s personal stake and drive, even a right-wing coalition would find it hard to muster the anti-court majority needed for such a drastic constitutional upheaval.”
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MUST WATCH

By Selva Demiralp, HURRIYET DAILY NEWS

T. Belman. What the author doesn’t even contemplate is what is discussed at private meetings under the cover of Bilderberg. Kushner, Pompeo and Kissinger did not attend to discuss climate change.

The 67th meeting of the Bilderberg Group was held last week in Montreux, Switzerland. Leaders and experts in the fields of industry, finance, academia and media are invited to these meetings, which have the purpose of strengthening the dialogue between Europe and North America.

These meetings, which are closed to the press mainly to enable the participants to give a free voice to their ideas, bring different conspiracy theories with them due to the coming together of high profile participants.

With the confidence of having participated in this year’s meeting, I can clearly say that these meetings are not a platform on which “hidden secrets and plans are shared.” If this were the case, the participants would not be allowed to give information about the content of the meeting as required by the “Chatham House” rule. Nor would I be writing this article.
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