During the recent protests in Baghdad, the difference between Erbil and Baghdad was clear.

BY SETH J. FRANTZMAN, JPOST

Iraq Protests 311. (photo credit: Associated Press)

By MARTIN SHERMAN

The feasibility of Trump’s “Deal of the Century” will be dramatically impacted by the nature of the regime east of the Jordan River and its prospective stability

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact – Sherlock Holmes, “The Boscombe Valley Mystery”. 

Israel must, in the most blunt and clear way possible, illustrate to Washington that the prosperity of Jordan is a first rate Israeli security and strategic interest – Former Head of Mossad, Ephraim Halevy, at “Between Jerusalem and Amman: 25 Years since the Signing of the Peace Agreement between Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan”, the Institute for National Security Studies, Sept. 25, 2019.”
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A third round? Maybe !!

By Malcolm Dash

Two inconclusive elections and perhaps a third? So what divides the two blocs vying for dominance? Is it the issues of security, capitalistic economics, health, welfare, education? No, not really, only cosmetic differences separate the thinking on the “Left” and “Right” with regard to these issues and the overall governance of Israel.

Since the eighties, both camps have been committed to Western style majority rule, capitalism and equality. If this is so, then how should we understand the schism between the two groups?

Let’s take a closer look at the composition of the two blocs. The “Right” represent a conservative, traditional Jewish approach and the “Lefts” path is towards the “current” Western Liberal progressive political orientation with the emphasis on individual rather than on collective rights.
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Gantz to Netanyahu: “I don’t want to see you behind bars. I hope you are innocent, but we need a prime minister.” Blue and White offers Netanyahu power sharing deal if he leaves post for the next two years.

by  Yehuda Shlezinger, Ariel Kahana, ISRAEL HAYOM

Published on  2019-10-03 08:54 —  Last modified: 2019-10-03 15:26

Blue and White co-leaders Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid appear on election night together | Photo: AFP / Gil Cohen-Magen

Blue and White came out on Thursday with a major statement aimed at breaking the political impasse.

The center-left alliance said it would no longer insist on having its leaders share a rotating premiership, and instead would focus on a power-sharing deal with Likud, as long as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would not continue serving as prime minister.

Blue and White leader Benny Gantz call on Netanyahu on Thursday to accept the new reality and give up power temporarily. “I don’t want to see you behind bars. I hope you are innocent, but we need a prime minister,” he said.
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T. Belman. Nobody is reporting that the protestors number in the hundreds of thousands. Probably the death total is much higher than reported also. Finally, most articles don’t even mention the anti-Iran sentiment which is huge.

Though 65% of Iraqis are Shiites and all of Iran are Shiites, their affinity stops there. Of greater importance is that Iraqis are Arabs while Iranians aren’t. Iraq has no desire to become an extension of Iran and the Iraqis resent the Shiite militias that Iran backs. Plus, while the sanctions are severely hurting Iran, they are also hurting Iraq.

Baghdad imposes curfew as protests spread across south of country. Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, known for his critical stance toward Iran, calls for investigation into police violence against protesters.

by  Neta Bar, Daniel Siryoti, ISRAEL HAYOM

Anti-government protesters wave flags during a demonstration in Baghdad | Photo: AP/Hadi Mizban

Iraqi security forces fired live bullets and used tear gas against a few hundred protesters gathered in central Baghdad on Thursday, hours after a curfew was announced in the Iraqi capital on the heels of two days of deadly violence that gripped the country amid protests against government corruption and Iran’s meddling in the country’s internal affairs.

Before dawn, explosions were heard inside Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, home to government offices and foreign embassies. The US-led coalition said an investigation is underway, adding that no coalition forces or assets were hit.

The curfew was announced early Thursday following a meeting of Iraq’s top leaders to discuss anti-government protests that have engulfed the country.
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You can replace Afghanistan with Iraq, Kurdistan or Syria in the title and ask: Can they survive America’s exit, and does it serve America’s interests to hand them over to enemies of the West?

BY ERIC R MANDEL, JPOST

U.S. and Turkish soldiers conduct the first-ever combined joint patrol outside Manbij, Syria, November 1, 2018. Picture taken November 1, 2018. Courtesy Arnada Jones/U.S. . (photo credit: ARMY/HANDOUT VIA REUTERS)

Americans are in no mood for new entanglements in the Middle East. The politically expedient choice for the US Congress and the president is to follow the nation’s mood – by not only avoiding any new potential areas of conflict arising with the aggressions of Iran and its proxies, but maybe by also abandoning allies who have worked side-by-side with American soldiers in Iraq and Syria against ISIS, leaving Afghanistan to the mercy of the Taliban, and forgetting their savage misogyny and its place as a safe haven where al Qaeda brewed its attacks on 9/11.

The Wall Street Journal’s Saturday Essay by Yaroslav Trofimov was titled, “Can the New Afghanistan Survive America’s Exit? An exhausted America, no longer determined to bring democracy to the Muslim world, just wants to leave.”
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Dan Bongino – Obama, Mueller and the Biggest Scam in American History

by Farrell Bloch

Why are many Jews receptive to anti-Israel perspectives, some to the point of rejecting the very existence of the modern state of Israel? A common answer is that although such people may be of Jewish ancestry, they have minimal Jewish identity and perhaps want to reject their Jewishness or at least to fit in better in the wider society. But these rationalizations don’t apply to Israelis or strongly identified Diaspora Jews.

To begin, Jews are as susceptible as anyone else to the successful promulgation of the Palestinian narrative taught in university Middle East Studies departments heavily funded by Arab donors. This narrative elides much history including (1) the allocation of 78 percent of the British Mandate to the Kingdom of Jordan so that roughly 10 percent, not half, was allocated to Israel; (2) substantial 20^th century immigration of Arabs to Palestine from Egypt, Syria, and elsewhere, contradicting the presumption of a large and longstanding Palestinian Arab population; (3) lack of a campaign between 1948 and 1967 for a Palestinian state to replace Egypt’s occupation of Gaza and Jordan’s occupation of the West Bank, suggesting dissolution of Israel rather than establishment of their own state as the primary Palestinian objective; (4) Palestinian Authority celebration of and generous reward to Arabs who murder Jews, even infants asleep in cribs; (5) expulsion of more Jews from Arab countries than Palestinians who fled Israel in 1948-49 (which Palestinian flight was a consequence of five Arab armies invading the fledgling Jewish state); and (6) that about half of Israel’s Jews are neither immigrants from Europe nor those immigrants’ descendants.
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The Dan Bongino Show 9/30/2019.

Since the time of David Ben-Gurion, everything has changed. The next prime minister will have to take serious steps to prevent the rift between the religious and the secular in Israel from widening.

by  Itamar Fleishman, ISRAEL HAYOM

The fog of political uncertainty created by the recent election has yet to disperse, and it’s not at all clear if the current impasse in negotiations will result in yet another election. Still, one thing arises from the chaos we find ourselves in: it’s time to hold a national conversation about the status quo on issues of religion and state and reach a consensus agreement on changes to it.

That conversation is vital, even urgent – and not only for reasons of preserving unity. No one dismisses the importance of unity, but it would be naïve to think that any side will change its mind and give up its worldview on what kind of country this should be. The religious and the ultra-Orthodox won’t become advocates for civil marriage, and the secular won’t demonstrate in favor of the rabbinical establishment maintaining a monopoly on kashrut certification. The divisions will remain, but trying to solve them by coercion and passing laws is the worst approach. The only way to contain the dispute is by refreshing the existing “arrangements,” by consensus.

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By Michael Dorstewitz, NEWSMAX

U.S. President Donald Trump gives pauses to answer a reporters’ question about a whistleblower as he leaves the Oval Office after hosting the ceremonial swearing in of Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia at the White House September 30, 2019, in Washington, D.C. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Last week’s announcement by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi authorizing an impeachment inquiry — the latest in a series of Democratic attempts to reverse the results of the 2016 presidential election — is replete with dishonesty and outright fraud.The attacks on President Trump began even before his Inauguration, when electors were asked to reject the will of the people of their states and to instead cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton.

Vanity Fair reported as far back as December 2016: “Democrats are paving the way to impeach Donald Trump.”

NewsBusters released a video montage depicting media figures discussing the possibility impeaching Trump as early as November 2016.
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Arriving at Justice Ministry, PM’s attorneys say they have new evidence, and there are ‘solid grounds’ for reconsidering the allegations in trio of criminal probes

By TOI STAFFToday, 10:34 am

• 
  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s lawyer Ram Caspi arrives at the Justice Ministry headquarters in Jerusalem on October 2, 2019, for the start of Netanyahu’s pre-indictment hearing. (Menahem Kahana/AFP)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s lawyer Ram Caspi (2nd-L) outside the Justice Ministry headquarters on October 2, 2019, ahead of Netanyahu’s pre-indictment hearing. (Noam Rivkin Fenton/Flash90)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pre-indictment hearing began Wednesday with his lawyers expressing confidence they could refute the corruption allegations, including bribery, leveled against him in a series of criminal cases.

Netanyahu did not accompany his lawyers as they arrived for the hearing at Justice Ministry headquarters in Jerusalem. Instead, he was scheduled to meet with his political allies as talks on forming a government following last month’s elections have been floundering.
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by Seth Frantzman, The Jerusalem Post, September 29, 2019

These hearings are Netanyahu’s last opportunity to head off a final indictment decision which could heavily impact his political fortunes and the ongoing attempts to form a new coalition.

BY YONAH JEREMY BOB, JPOST

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s long-awaited series of pre-indictment hearings before Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit are set to start on Wednesday.

These hearings are Netanyahu’s last opportunity to head off a final indictment decision which could heavily impact his political fortunes and the ongoing attempts to form a new coalition.

On Sunday, Mandelblit’s office issued an update that the pre-indictment hearings would be expanded from two days to four days, including Thursday, as well as Sunday and Monday of next week.
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JEWISH PRESS

MK Benny Gantz’s Blue & White party announced on Tuesday evening that they were canceling the planned negotiations with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud party that had been scheduled for Wednesday. In addition, they were canceling the planned one-on-one meeting between Gantz and Netanyahu. The spokesperson for Blue & White stated that if there was a need, there would be a meeting later in the week, or next week.

The Likud party’s initial response was to blame MK Yair Lapid for the breakdown, claiming that Lapid is against any rotation agreement between Netanyahu and Gantz. Lapid is the head of Yesh Atid, a party now within Blue & White.
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by Joe Hoft, GATEWAY PUNDIT

Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden made millions from activities in the Ukraine while the elder Biden was Vice President.  Below is a primer regarding the corrupt Biden’s actions in the corrupt Ukraine.

The following is an articulate and devastating summary of Obama’s Vice President Biden and Secretary of State Kerry’s corrupt actions in the Ukraine –

In summary –

• In early 2014 John Kerry visited the Ukraine and offered $1 billion in ‘aid’ shortly after protesters took over the government causing the President to flee to Russia and shortly after Russia invaded the Ukraine.
• Also, in early 2014 Kerry’s top campaign fundraiser Devon Archer visited Biden in the White House.  Then Biden visited the campaign and Archer and Biden’s son Hunter are named to the Board of Burisma Holdings, the Ukraine’s largest gas producer.

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Amid unofficial truce with Hamas, Palestinian officials say Israel has granted merchant permits to Gazans working in menial jobs such as construction, agriculture

By AGENCIES and TOI STAFF