America policymakers are too often unaware of what Israeli and Arab experts and official say behind closed doors, even to one another.

BY ERIC R. MANDEL/JTA

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman greets Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas before the start of the 29th Arab Summit in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia April 15, 2018. (photo credit: HAMAD I MOHAMMED/REUTERS)

 NEW YORK – By the end of this year, my research and travels in the Middle East will have brought me through Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan and Kurdistan, as well as many visits to Capitol Hill.

What I’ve learned from security, defense and intelligence officials is this: When Israelis and Arabs talk off the record, what they say differs markedly from their public statements. America policymakers are too often unaware of what Israeli and Arab experts and official say behind closed doors, even to one another.

This may not come as much of a surprise, given the global diplomatic crisis that resulted from the 2010 Wikileak of diplomatic cables. But it does mean that the American public, not to mention elected officials, are often ignorant of the full breadth of information needed to understand the most important issues going on in the Middle East.
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https://www.prageru.com/video/the-charlottesville-lie/

By Evelyn Gordon, jns

Jewish tradition holds that the Second Temple was destroyed by baseless hatred. Since we’re currently in the annual three-week mourning period for the destruction of both Temples, which culminates in the holiday of Tisha B’Av, it’s a good time to consider a particularly counterproductive bit of baseless hatred: that between the Orthodox and Conservative movements.

Orthodox Jews tend to view Conservative and Reform Jewry as indistinguishable, lumping them both together as “non-Orthodox.” But in reality, there’s a yawning gap between them. The Conservative movement officially maintains that Jews must follow halachah (traditional Jewish law), including by observing Shabbat, kashrut, the Jewish holidays and so forth. The Reform movement rejects the very idea of binding halachah. Thus on the fundamental issue that has preserved the Jewish people for millennia—the binding nature of halachah—the Conservatives are formally on the Orthodox side of the divide.
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Google can move 2.6 to 10.4 million votes

by Cinnamon Stillwell, MEFORUM

Haaretz reports that editors of the Israel Studies journal—which is affiliated with the Association for Israel Studies—have issued a public apology in response to the manufactured controversy over a special issue titled, “Word Crimes: Reclaiming the Language of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.”

Written and edited by a group of Israel and Jewish studies professors to address the manipulation of academic language in order to demonize Israel and advance BDS, the issue set off academics who were incensed at the departure from anti-Israel orthodoxy. Following its publication, eleven members of the journal’s editorial board resigned in protest.

After mounting a campaign that included an attempt to “shut down” the special issue based, ironically, on the claim that its title “shuts down discourse,” detractors have now succeeded in getting Israel Studies editors to issue a groveling apology and “plans for preventing such recurrences in the future.” In other words, the editors have apologized for publishing a variety of viewpoints and are promising not to do so again. Not to mention the spectacle of a journal devoted to Israel studies caving in to those accusing it of “anti-BDS, pro-Israel bias.”
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by Gerald A. Honigman

Recently, I received notice about a proposed ethnic studies unit for the largest state in America which contains a large anti-Israel component. Two quotes stood out right away. They were by two University of California professors whom I’ve been following for quite some time. The second in order of appearance in the mailing from The Israel Group is by Tammi Rossman-Benjamin of the AMCHA Initiative:

“The Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum is deeply troubling—not only for its shocking omission of any mention of Jewish Americans or anti-Semitism or its blatant anti-Israel bias and praise of BDS, but for its clear attempt to politically indoctrinate students to adopt the view that Israel and its Jewish supporters are part of ‘interlocking systems of oppression and privilege’ that must be fought with ‘direct action’ and ‘resistance.”

Next is the revealing first quote by someone who is especially dear to my heart, as you’ll further see below, As’ad Abu Khalil: “The real aim of BDS is to bring down the State of Israel.”

Ain’t honesty great?!
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Ben Hecht invented the gangster movie. He also prodded Roosevelt into saving thousands of Jews from the Nazis, and marshaled reluctant American Jews into becoming Zionists.

By RICK RICHMAN, MOSAIC

Ben Hecht in 1946. Eileen Darby/The LIFE Images Collection via Getty Images.

OBSERVATION

 “In [1939], I became a Jew and looked on the world with Jewish eyes.”
—Ben Hecht, A Child of the Century

 When Ben Hecht died suddenly in 1964, at the age of seventy, the New York Times carried the news on its front page. The lengthy obituary was spread across four columns on an inside page. Buried near the end was only a brief description of Hecht’s Zionism.

Hecht wrote newspaper columns, novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, essays, and books that, in many ways, defined the times in which he lived. His sketches of life in Chicago and New York were collected in two volumes. His first novel made him a national literary figure. He co-wrote the Broadway sensation, The Front Page, and became Hollywood’s highest-paid screenwriter, composing such classics as Scarface, Wuthering Heights, Twentieth Century, Spellbound, and Notorious. He received six Oscar nominations and won two Oscars. 
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DEBKA

Mahmoud Abbas has directed his Palestinian Authority officials to embark on a massive construction project in all parts of the West Bank, effectively tearing up the A, B and C regions mandated by the 1993 Oslo peace framework accords. Under those accords, A is under full Palestinian security control, B is held jointly, and C is controlled by Israel. Abbas (Abu Mazen) has now ordered the PA administration and security officials to initiate unauthorized building projects in all three sectors without applying for permits from the Israeli Civil Administration.

According to DEBKAfile’s sources, this directive applies in the first stage to the 30,000 housing units that were denied Israeli building permits. As an added incentive for builders, the PA is laying out generous financing from funds donated by European sources.

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Echoes of 1999 Kargil conflict amid recent tensions as India, which has warm relations with Israel, scraps Kashmir autonomy.

By Seth Frantzman, JPOST

Over the weekend, officials in Kashmir warned Hindu pilgrims of impending attacks in the area. This sent thousands of tourists and pilgrims, and even local workers, fleeing the region. Reports said that up to 220,000 workers had left, which appeared like a crisis that came out of the blue. Now the real story appears to be a much more wide ranging decision by India to change the status of Kashmir.

According to CNN, the area was on lockdown with tens of thousands of troops deployed and politicians under “house arrest.” The Indian government on Monday scrapped Article 370 that gave Kashmir a special status. It is actually more complex than that. The government of India wants to also “bifurcate” the state – previously known as Jammu and Kashmir – into two new areas, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, according to the Times of India.
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By Alexander MAISTROVOY

Western elites have mastered the Soviet arsenal of repressions perfectly

The report stating that Tommy Robinson was transferred to a special closed prison Belmarsh in the South of London, which was described as “jihadi training camp”, has brought an ominous deja-vu to me.

…In 1990s, we learned a gloomy story about N. In USSR, N. was a dedicated Zionist and together with other Zionists and religious Jews he was trying to immigrate to Israel. However, unlike many others who were pressured into a cooperation with KGB (in no way we can blame them for that), N. stood steadfastly and uncompromisingly. And as the result KGB sent him not to a solitary cell in which Shcharansky was detained, but to a common one – together with criminals. Day by day he was subject to violence – physical, verbal and sexual. N. survived an unprecedented humiliation and even many years after that in Israel he could not recover completely from the horror he had experienced. “The System” knew how to break a man.
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By Valerie Sobel

Just as sure as the sun rises out of the east, as soon as a white guy shoots up innocents, we’ll hear “White Nationalist” and “Trump” in one breath ad nauseam. Just about now, the “white nationalist and Trump” will morph into “white supremacist and Trump”, and by tomorrow KKK, Charlottesville and David Duke will make a grand entry. The finale will be written as “Trump channeled Hitler in the two days of murderous shooting sprees”.

If they couldn’t destroy him with the Russian hoax, the Stormy storm, the Kavanagh hearings, and every salacious or deceitful commentary daily since the election, this surely serves is another chance to try. What’s more delicious than a story about a white guy with a gun in his hands? By now, they figure they’ve got us conditioned to the narrative: white guy shoots, Trump made him do it.

The real story is far from this predictable dung liberal media is pushing.

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On campus, identity politics has become a dogma that damages independent thinking and the pursuit of truth.

By Anthony Kronman, WSJ

“Diversity” is the most powerful word in higher education today. No other has so much authority. Older words, like “excellence” and “originality,” remain in circulation, but even they have been redefined in terms of diversity.

At Yale, where I have taught for 40 years, a large bureaucracy exists to ensure that the university’s commitment to diversity is rigorously enforced—in student admissions, faculty hiring and curricular design. Yale has an Office of Diversity and Inclusion, a Dean of Diversity and Faculty Development, an Office of Gender and Campus Culture and a dizzying array of similar positions and programs. At present, more than 150 full-time staff and student representatives serve in some pro-diversity role.
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By Tabitha Korol

We saw  the changes coming.  We heard all the historic revisionism about Israel and the boycott/divestment/sanctions of the only democratic state in the Middle East; the anti-Zionist textbooks and programs that took root in colleges and universities across the country; and the assault upon the vulnerable K-12 students.  We learned that schools were discouraging little ones from having a “best friend,” that they would be isolated in front of a computer every day, with the adults’ role changing from teacher to facilitator, to increase learning frustration.  We know that Common Core brought them difficult math and uninspiring literature, the children learning less, knowing less, and with equalized grades, grasping that they are less sure of themselves.  Yes, they’re graduating, but they don’t seem to know enough to hold a decent job or qualify for a higher wage.  They know less about their own country, its founding, its history and mission, and more about Islam, resulting in less pride in their heritage and feeling more discontent.  They’re learning that men, particularly white men, are worthless, that boys can be girls, that they can indulge in sexual activity at a young age and human babies are dispensable.  Has the educational establishment lost its mind and/or purposely ceded control to powers with severely evil intent?
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Sanctions on the Iranian foreign minister indicate that hawks are still calling the shots for “maximum pressure,” despite the influence of Sen. Rand Paul and Tucker Carlson.

by  Jonathan S. Tobin, ISRAEL HAYOM

When the news broke that the United States would extend existing waivers on five different nuclear-related sanctions on Iran, the implications of the move seemed clear. The hawks inside the administration – led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton – seemed to be in retreat. But two days later, when another announcement was made indicating that Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was being subjected to US sanctions for his role as the public spokesman of the rogue theocracy, that assessment no longer seemed to be accurate.

Pompeo and Bolton have been pushing for a policy of “maximum pressure” against Tehran, including the withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal and the unilateral implementation of economic sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy. But while President Donald Trump is a bitter critic of the nuclear pact concluded by President Barack Obama and long intended to dump the deal, he isn’t necessarily in sync with every aspect of his foreign policy’s team’s aggressive approach to Iran.
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By Bret Stephens, NYT

Anyone who has followed the news from college campuses over the past few years knows they are experiencing forms of unrest unseen since the late 1960s.

Now, as then, campuses have become an arena for political combat. Now, as then, race is a central issue. Now, as then, students rail against an unpopular president and an ostensibly rigged system. Now, as then, liberal professors are being bullied, denounced, demoted, threatened, sued and sometimes even assaulted by radical students.

But there are some important differences, too. None of today’s students risk being drafted into an unpopular, distant war. Unlike the campus rebels of the ’60s, today’s student activists don’t want more freedom to act, speak, and think as they please. Usually they want less.

Most strange: Today’s students are not chafing under some bow-tied patriarchal WASP dispensation. Instead, they are the beneficiaries of a system put in place by professors and administrators whose political views are almost uniformly left-wing and whose campus policies indulge nearly every progressive orthodoxy.

So why all the rage?
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