By Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen, BESA

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,291,

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Beyond its unquestionable vitality for Israel’s security, the Jordan Valley in its full geographical scope can accommodate millions of Israelis and national infrastructure that cannot be compressed into the coastal plain. If PM Netanyahu’s declaration of sovereignty is not immediately borne out by a surge of building and focused governmental support, it will sputter and die.

PM Netanyahu’s promise to apply sovereignty to the Jordan Valley is worthy of praise. The reasons for doing so were already evident to PM Levi Eshkol in the immediate wake of the 1967 the Six-Day War, and were fully fleshed out in the Allon Plan. As the plan stated: “The eastern border of the state of Israel must be the Jordan River and a line that crosses the Dead Sea in the middle…. We must add to the country—as an inseparable part of its sovereignty—a strip approximately 10-15 kilometers wide, along the Jordan Valley.”

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Self-mutilation as a Jewish cultural strategy and the sad history of the Yevsektsiya

By Dara Horn, TABLET

The teenage boys who played competitive athletics in the gymnasium in Jerusalem 2,100 years ago had their circumcisions reversed, because otherwise they wouldn’t have been allowed to play. In the Hellenistic empire that conquered Judea, sports were sacred, the entry point to being a person who mattered, the ultimate height of cool—and sports, of course, were always played in the nude. As one can imagine, ancient genital surgery of this nature was excruciating and potentially fatal. But the boys did not want to miss out.

I learned this fun fact in seventh grade, from a Hebrew-school teacher who was instructing me and my pubescent classmates about the Hanukkah story—about how Hellenistic tyranny gained a foothold in ancient Judea with the help of Jews who went along for the ride. This teacher seemed overly jazzed to talk about penises with a bunch of adolescents, and I suspected he’d made the whole thing up. At home I pulled a dusty old book off my parents’ shelf, Volume 1 of Heinrich Graetz’s History of the Jews. There I discovered that it was true, and also far worse.
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Speaking to Efi Triger on Army Radio’s Good Morning Israel program, Netanyahu went farther than he did just 11 days ago, when he visited Hebron.

BY GIL HOFFMAN, TOVAH LAZAROFF, JPOST

A BULLDOZER at work in Kiryat Arba, near Hebron. (photo credit: REUTERS)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said for the first time on Monday morning that if re-elected on Tuesday, he would annex Kiryat Arba and the Jewish areas of Hebron.

Speaking to Efi Triger on Army Radio’s “Good Morning Israel” program, Netanyahu went farther than he did just 11 days ago when he visited Hebron and delivered a historic speech just outside of the Tomb of the Patriarchs.

Expectations had been high that he would use the platform to declare his intention to apply Israeli sovereignty to the mostly Palestinian city, or at the very least to the 4% of the city of that includes the Tomb  of the Patriarchs and the section where the Jewish community lives.
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ARUTZ SHEVA

Central Election Committee bars left-wing NGO ‘Zazim’ from busing in Arab voters to polling stations on election day.

The Central Elections Committee issued an injunction Sunday night against the left-wing NGO Zazim’s initiative to bus 15,000 Arab voters to voting booths on election day, ruling that the initiative is in violation of the election laws.

The injunction came following a petition submitted by the Likud arguing that Zazim, which is heavily funded by the US-based New Israel Fund, is violating the election the laws.

In 2017, the Knesset passed the “V15” law aimed at preventing foreign funded non-party political organizations from interfering in the elections. The law was passed following the efforts of V15, a US-funded group, which actively worked to defeat Prime Minister Netanyahu in the 2015 national elections.
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By Evelyn Gordan

Hundreds of Palestinian refugees demonstrated outside the Canadian Embassy in Beirut on Sept. 5 to request asylum in Canada or the European Union, the second such protest in the last month. The most surprising aspect of these demonstrations is that they have been so long in coming. Only now, after more than 70 years, are Palestinians publicly protesting the fact that they alone, of all the world’s refugees, are denied the most basic of refugee rights—the right to seek resettlement in a safe third country.

All other refugees worldwide are handled by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which resettles tens of thousands of refugees in third countries every year. But Palestinian refugees aren’t allowed to apply to UNHCR; they are handled by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, an agency created exclusively for them. And UNRWA hasn’t resettled a single refugee in its 70 years of existence.
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Hanan Melcer cites ‘tight schedule’ two days before ballot in refusing PM’s call to discuss claims of voter fraud in Arab towns, panned by opponents as Likud campaign stunt

By TOI STAFFToday, 3:27 pm  0

Justice Hanan Melcer, chairman of the Central Elections Committee. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

The elections chief has turned down Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s request for an “emergency” meeting to discuss the premier’s claims of rampant voter fraud in the Arab community.

Supreme Court Justice Hanan Melcer, who chairs the Central Elections Committee and has overall responsibility for ensuring the fairness and accuracy of the vote, explained that he would not be meeting with Netanyahu or any other party leader before the election.

In a Sunday statement refusing the meeting, the committee cited its “tight schedule” just two days before the September 17 vote, “and the fact that the committee is not an investigative body and does not have any concrete authority to instruct the police.”
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https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-washington-may-be-ready-for-talks-post-bolton-but-iran-is-still-hesitant-1.7835223

Changing alliances make negotiations with Iran pressing for the Trump administration, and Israel is becoming less and less of a consideration

Zvi Bar’el, HAARETZ

Iranian President Hassan Rohani and U.S. President Donald Trump. Vahid Salemi / AP, Leah Millis / Reuters

The much-tweeted dismissal of John Bolton has inspired a wave of optimism worldwide among Iran watchers: It even brought oil prices down by 21 cents a barrel. Negotiations between the U.S. and Iran haven’t begun yet, but some are already laying bets that the removal of the main obstacle blocking contact between Washington and Tehran is a promising start.

America will make concessions and ease the sanctions, which would mean Iranian oil coming back to the market, these gamblers assess. Remarks by Iranian President Hassan Rohani’s adviser Abbas Araghchi, who said that the U.S. had been demonstrating some flexibility over the oil issue after the G-7 summit, probably comfort their view.
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Defense Ministry submits opinion to undo Jordanian law forbidding purchase of land in Judea and Samaria by Jews as private individuals.

Arutz Sheva Staff,

Judea and Samaria

Legal advisers in the Ministry of Defense and the IDF compiled an opinion that Jews should be allowed to buy land as individuals in Judea and Samaria, Haaretz reported Sunday.

According to the report, the precedent-setting opinions are now on the desk of Deputy Attorney General Erez Kaminitz, who is expected to approve them with the backing of Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit.

The opinion also recommends easing the requirement for a permit for any land deal in Judea and Samaria, a requirement that also constitutes a heavy barrier to land acquisition by Jews.
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After US President Donald Trump spoke to Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said there was “no evidence” the large attack came from Yemen.

BY SETH J. FRANTZMAN, JPOST

US President Donald Trump and Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (R) attend the Arab Islamic American Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia May 21, 2017.. (photo credit: REUTERS/JONATHAN ERNST)

Less than twenty-four hours after a major attack by at least ten drones or cruise missiles on key Saudi oil facilities, the rhetoric in the Middle East is heating up and the region appears on the brink of conflict. After US President Donald Trump spoke to Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said there was “no evidence” the large attack came from Yemen.

This now means that Saudi Arabia, which is investigating how the attack happened, is positioned to defend itself, but must choose wisely how. Saudi Arabia’s oil production and exports have been disrupted. The facility at Abqaiq, which was struck, is one of the world’s largest processing facilities. According to Reuters the attacks have impacted 5 million barrels per day.
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“Tehran is behind nearly 100 attacks on Saudi Arabia while Rouhani and Zarif pretend to engage in diplomacy.”

BY REUTERS,  SEPTEMBER 15, 2019 01:27

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Saturday accused Iran of leading attacks on Saudi oil plants that have cut the kingdom’s output roughly in half, as he ruled out Yemeni involvement and denounced Tehran for engaging in false diplomacy.

Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi group claimed credit for the attacks on two plants at the heart of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry, including the world’s biggest petroleum processing facility.

Pompeo, however, said on Twitter that there was no evidence the attacks came from Yemen.
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By Dogan Akman

A fundamental principle of law

One of the fundamental principles governing the administration of criminal law in the English common law tradition, adopted by the ICC, is not to interfere with the manner in which prosecutors exercise their discretion in handling the cases that reach their desk.

Among others, this quasi-sacred principle applies to the manner in which prosecutors exercise their discretion a) to determine in any given case whether or not to lay any charges; b) if charges are to be laid, to select the charges and the persons to be charged; and c) to decide the way in which the prosecution will be carried out.
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By Richard M. Reinsch II, NATIONAL REVIEW

His hands are tied by Parliament, but perhaps not completely.

A  coalition of Labour, Liberal Democratic, and Conservative rebels voted last week to force U.K. prime minister Boris Johnson to extend the deadline for the British exit from the European Union from October 31 to Jan. 31, 2020. As an alternative, the bill stipulates that the prime minister must accept whatever other exit date the European Union’s representatives propose and the House of Commons accepts. Johnson responded by removing from the Conservative party the 21 Tory rebels who voted for the so-called Benn-Burt bill, including luminaries such as Kenneth Clarke, the longest-serving member of Parliament, and Nicholas Soames, grandson of Winston Churchill. Jo Johnson, the prime minister’s brother, preemptively resigned, and now Amber Rudd has resigned as a member of Johnson’s cabinet.

Johnson also called for a general election under the norm that defeat of a key measure of the government triggers a call for new political leadership. He was refused by Parliament, which under the 2011 Fixed-term Parliaments Act must provide a two-thirds assent to such a plea. The prime minister has lost his majority and sits atop a nearly impotent government. Johnson has vowed that he will not follow Parliament’s order to delay Brexit, opining that he would rather be “dead in a ditch” than agree to an extension with the EU. What are his options, though?
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Given the major departures of pro-Israel figures like the now former national security adviser and the upcoming resignation of US special envoy Jason Greenblatt, questions remain as to the direction of the Trump administration.

by Jackson Richman, ISRAEL HAYOM  JNS , Israel Hayom Staff

In this new Glazov Gang episode, Jamie speaks with Clare M. Lopez, the Vice President for Research & Analysis at the Center for Security Policy.

Clare discusses: Post-9/11 – Helping Saudis Slip Away, unveiling  the highly disturbing facts about an eerie evacuation.  

Don’t miss it!

And make sure to watch our 2-Part-Series with Clare below:
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