By Jessica Curtis, AMERICAN THINKER
What makes America win? Use any measuring stick and you will find the United States leads the way. We are number one in opportunity, quality of life, access to healthcare, academics, and diversity in intellectual and political thought — we even lead the world in dog and cat ownership.
American competitiveness is a topic President Trump made a cornerstone of his campaign in 2016 and still talks about almost daily. How often do we hear him tout that under his leadership: “America is winning again!” It’s a message the President has stuck to, and we see evidence of regularly. There’s perhaps no better example of this than the President’s announcement Sunday that the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had been killed by American Special Forces.
According to unsourced TV report, Avichai Mandelblit expected to rule incumbent PM cannot remain in office if charged with bribery
By TOI STAFF
Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit will be holding talks throughout the coming week with the aim of reaching a decision by the end of November on whether to file charges against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a series of graft probes, Israel’s Channel 12 and Channel 13 both said Friday.
The discussions will be heavily focused on Case 4000, seen as the most severe of the three criminal cases facing Netanyahu, with the prosecution discussing the defense team’s potential objections to a bribery charge, according to an unsourced Channel 13 news report. Read more…
Netanyahu is gunning for a third election. Helping lead the charge is the justice minister, who dumped a pail of sewage on state prosecutors
By Yossi Verter, HAARETZ
The preparations for a third election, aka the “coalition negotiations,” are continuing apace. This week, a senior Likud figure who is close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a friend of his, a central figure in the Israeli left. Tell me, the Likudnik said, how are you going to run in the next election? What will the format be this time? Is there any chance that Kahol Lavan, Meretz and Labor will run together? Or maybe that just the first two will?
What the left-winger replied is of no importance; he had no intelligent responses. What was interesting was the reason for the call in the first place. In light of the close ties between the caller and the outgoing prime minister, the conclusion to be drawn is that the Balfour Street residence and the Likud party are dusting off contingency plans for another election. The option of additional mergers between the two blocs of parties, a scenario that came to partial fruition in September, could surface again, this time more potently.
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Trump is not flying blind in Syria. He is implementing a multifaceted set of policies that are based on the strengths, weaknesses and priorities of the various actors.
by Caroline B. Glick, ISRAEL HAYOM
US President Donald Trump’s many critics insist he has no idea what he is doing in Syria. The assassination of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi over the weekend by US special forces showed this criticism is misplaced. Trump has a very good idea of what he is doing in Syria, not only regarding ISIS, but regarding the diverse competing actors on the ground.
Regarding ISIS, the obvious lesson of the al-Baghdadi raid is that Trump’s critics’ claim that his withdrawal of US forces from Syria’s border with Turkey meant that he was going to allow ISIS to regenerate was utterly baseless. Read more…
By Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger and Fred Zeidman, Co-Chair, CSA
The growing sophistication of domestic oil and natural gas production has enhanced the US national security. It has transformed the leader of the free world from a major importer of crude oil to the world’s top producer of both crude oil (surpassing Saudi Arabia) and natural gas (ahead of Russia), and expected to be the globe’s largest exporter in five years.
The dramatic reduction of US dependency on the importation of oil takes place at a time when the supply of oil from the Persian Gulf is increasingly precarious. It is threatened by Iran’s Ayatollahs, as well as by additional rogue elements in the inherently violent, intolerant, fragmented, unpredictable, shifty, non-democratic and unstable Middle East. An area which is strategically located between Europe, the Mediterranean, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.
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Iranian President Hassan Rouhani / Getty Images
The Trump administration has again approved a series of sanctions waivers on Iran that permit the Islamic Republic to engage in sensitive nuclear work, including at a clandestine military location that has housed the country’s weapons program, according to multiple sources involved in the issue.
The sanctions waivers have already been approved by the State Department, according to multiple U.S. officials and congressional sources who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon. The Trump administration faced backlash earlier this year when it bucked congressional pressure to approve the waivers, a move that led Iran hawks on Capitol Hill to accuse the administration of approving a pathway for Tehran to continue some of its most contested nuclear research.
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BAGHDAD – Iran has stepped in to prevent the ouster of Iraqi Prime Minister Abdel Abdul Mahdi by two of Iraq’s most influential figures amid weeks of anti-government demonstrations, sources close to both men told Reuters.
Populist Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr demanded this week that Abdul Mahdi call an early election to quell the biggest mass protests in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003. The demonstrations are fueled by anger at corruption and widespread economic hardship.
Sadr had urged his main political rival Hadi al-Amiri, whose alliance of Iran-backed militias is the second-biggest political force in parliament, to help push out Abdul Mahdi. Read more…
Desperate to quell the bloody protests spreading through Iraq, Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani flew into Baghdad and seized control of its army and security services. On Wednesday, Oct. 30, a special helicopter carried the Revolutionary Guards Al Qods chief from Baghdad international airport to the capital’s fortified Green Zone. In the prime minister’s office, he found a meeting in progress of military and security chiefs on ways to hold back the resurgent protest that from Oct. 25 had already claimed hundreds of dead and thousands of injured as it raged through Baghdad and the Shiite towns of the south.
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MEMRI
In an article, titled “Globalism Is A Far Stronger Threat To Russia”, Russian journalist Sergey Mardan states that Russia sorely lacks a genuinely conservative force. He asserts that “true” Russian intellectuals and their communities should develop an anti-modern and anti-globalist agenda for introduction in Russia’s cultural, political and social life.
A strengthening of Russia’s conservative position will serve as a prophylactic that will prevent the country from being weakened or threatened by those who “dream of a gender-neutral world.” According to Mardan, if this happens, then Russia can be firm in its identity and resemble “Christian America”, which does not feel endangered by “leftist intellectuals”. “Then the gender-neutral dolls in our stores would not cause us a nervous giggle, but just a dry statement to the effect that our merchants are able to squeeze the last ruble out of everything and everyone, [and] even out of gay activists,” Mardan reasons.
Below is Mardan’s article:
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Jordanian analyst Muhammad Faraj said in an October 3, 2019 interview on Mayadeen TV (Lebanon) that the only way for Jordan to solve its economic, social, and political problems is to turn its back on its historical alliances with the U.S. and Israel and turn to Iran, which he said is the country most seriously confronting schemes to eliminate the Palestinian cause and diminish Jordan’s geopolitical role. He said that Jordan’s role as a “buffer state” is no longer necessary because many Gulf countries are openly normalizing relations with Israel, making it necessary for Jordan to form an alliance with Iran, which he said is a model for independent national development in the Middle East and which he praised for supporting the Islamic resistance and the Palestinians.
Following are excerpts:
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By Tabitha Korol
Even when one American – who has done nothing wrong – is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth, then all Americans are in peril. – Harry Truman
Some years ago, when I visited family in Buenos Aires, I was taken to a country club, one that no doubt had been quite fashionable in its heyday, an era of more than a half-century before. What I saw now were the remnants of elegance, broken tile floors and grounds that were surrendering to the incursion of weeds, signs of a government that was not of, by, or for the people.
I was introduced to Beatriz, one of a group sitting poolside who spoke enough English to complement my conversance in Spanish. Her interests included theater, but she soon came around to expressing her disdain for America because we had the temerity to build the tallest Twin Towers of the World Trade Center to flaunt our wealth and we were therefore deserving of the 9/11 destruction! Read more…
Notes on the J Street conference
By SARAH N. STERN, ENDOWMENT FOR MIDDLE EAST TRUTH
Like many other Jewish organizations, J Street is seduced by lofty slogans like “pro-Israel/pro-peace.” These words are intended to give the impression that all that Israel has to do is immediately withdraw from the territories, and then peace would ultimately break out.
(October 31, 2019 / JNS) Like our colleagues at AIPAC, I have long believed that support for Israel should be a bipartisan issue. Once it becomes a partisan issue, we create enormous enmity for the State of Israel within at least 50 percent of the population, which would ultimately give succor and support to Israel’s enemies. And it certainly does not help the Jewish state survive if an incoming American president regards Israel as “the other party’s issue.”
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By MARTIN SHERMAN
Former Justice Minister, ‘Tommy’ Lapid: “…the legal system in Israel is being undermined by an over-zealous State Prosecutor’s Office, that is losing esteem and credibility with each additional trial…”
They who sow the wind will reap the storm – Hosea 8:7.
[There is a] dangerous symbiosis between elements in the police Major Crimes Unit, the State Prosecutor’s Office and the media.—citation from Justice Minister Amir Ohana’s Press Conference- Oct. 29, 2019
This week was a tumultuous one for Israel’s legal establishment—and rightly so.
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Not only has the peace between Jordan and Israel turned cold, it looks to be on the verge of collapse
By Yochanan Visser, ISRAEL TODAY
Jordan ‘celebrated’ the 25 anniversary of the peace treaty with Israel by recalling its ambassador to the Jewish State.
The move is highly symbolic for the state of affairs in the relations between Israel and Jordan 25 years after the peace agreement was signed by the late King Hussein and the slain Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin in the presence of former US President Bill Clinton.
In Israel, there are those like Ksenia Svetlova of Mitvim, The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies, who agree with Jordanian anti-Israel activists that the deterioration in the relations between the two countries is solely to blame on the Netanyahu government which allegedly misses every opportunity to increase cooperation with the Hashemite Kingdom.
As protests in Lebanon over the dire economic situation and political corruption gain momentum, demonstrators’ irreverence toward senior figures who have long commanded respect shatters social traditions.
by Reuters , Israel Hayom Staff
Demonstrators wave Lebanese national flags during ongoing anti-government protests at a highway in Jal el-Dib | Photo: Reuters /Alkis Konstantinidis
In the protests sweeping Lebanon, nothing is sacred.
Political leaders, who a few weeks ago enjoyed the loyal support of core followers despite worsening economic conditions, are now the target of many of those people’s ire.
That show of irreverence toward senior figures who have long commanded respect has broken taboos, setting these demonstrations apart from previous waves of dissent.
The simple answer to a student’s “question” should have been: There is no ethnic cleansing or exile of Palestinians. Prove it!
An Arab student at Benedictine University last week called on Professor Harold Kasimow, a child survivor of the Holocaust, to condemn the establishment of Israel and the “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians in Israel, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) reported. She then walked out when he did not do so.
Kasimow is the George Drake Professor emeritus of Religious Studies at Grinnell College in Iowa and a visiting scholar at Benedictine. He has been involved in Jewish-Buddhist dialogue since the 1960s.
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I know that I sound like a broken record. OK, none of you are old enough to know what that sounds like. How about a scratched CD, one that plays the same phrase over and over and over: Bibi, Gantz, Lieberman, Lapid: get your acts together. It is a matter of life and death.
I have sometimes sounded smug when I criticize the USA, my former home, for descending into madness. On the one hand you have the spitting and cursing leftist “resistance” to Trump, who find an angle to criticize everything that he does, accuse him of every imaginable crime, boo him at baseball games, and would certainly murder him if they could. On the other side are his partisans, to whom every action he takes, no matter how ill-considered, is portrayed as a stroke of genius. Normal mortals may not be able to see it, but there is a Plan.
That’s just the politics. Culturally, people are obsessed with race and gender in ways that defy reason, there is a strong current to throw away the idea of free speech, and – yes – they are beating up and shooting Jews there, too.
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Supporters of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement assault an anti-government protestor in Beirut, Lebanon, on October 29. (Hassan Ammar/AP)
You cannot protest in the Middle East. That has become clear in Iraq, as more than 200 people have been murdered by snipers and security forces. On Tuesday, Hezbollah and supporters of the Amal Movement Party attacked a peaceful protest in Beirut, scattering soldiers and civilians and destroying their tents.
Iran and its allies are concerned that protests will challenge its attempts to slowly consume Lebanon and Iraq. Any mass mobilization of young people or anyone who wants to dissent must be crushed. In Iraq, it is being crushed with bullets and tear gas canisters purposely fired at people’s heads.
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Amir Ohana doubles down after Tuesday press conference, saying he wants to ‘cleanse’ the system which he says determines politics through the interrogation schedule
By TOI STAFF
Justice Minister Amir Ohana delivers a statement to the press, at the Justice Ministry in Jerusalem, on October 29, 2019. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Justice Minister Amir Ohana said he is considering setting up an investigative committee to examine the conduct of state prosecutors, days after he launched a scathing attack accusing them of persecuting public officials they feel threaten their standing.
In an interview with Israel Hayom, excerpts of which were published Thursday, Ohana said he did not regret Tuesday’s press conference, and could formalize his drive against what he sees as a “prosecution within the prosecution,” which is using the media to attempt to push out Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“My appeal was for an investigation of leaks in the State Attorney’s Office,” Ohana said. “It is very possible that if there is not a serious response to Tuesday’s press conference, I would like to exercise my authority and set up a government investigation committee into the conduct of the prosecutor’s office.”
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The Hizballah “special forces” battling Lebanese protesters are bound to swap their sticks for live ammo as Lebanon plunges into regime breakup amid a crumbling economy. Saad Hariri’s resignation as prime minister on Tuesday, Oct. 29, did not of itself greatly impact the declining political situation in Beirut – not only because he was not a strong leader, but because the sustained protest across the country had already cast Lebanon into three major power groupings in which he had no place:
DEBKAfile outlines those groupings:
