By Lauri Regan, AMERICAN THINKER

Watching the recent fallout from Rep. Ilhan Omar’s latest anti-Semitic tweet, in which she claims that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee buys congressmen’s support of Israel, several thoughts struck me.  The first was that despite the existence of internationally and nationally recognized definitions of anti-Semitism, pundits and journalists either remain willfully ignorant when confronted with this millennia-old hatred or intentionally whitewash it for personal, ideological, and political reasons.  Both explanations are dangerous.

Reading headlines and watching news accounts regarding Omar’s tweets, I was disgusted at phrases such as “some call these anti-Semitic,” “these may border on anti-Semitism,” “considered to be anti-Semitic by some,” “possibly anti-Semitic,” and similar permutations that leave open the question of whether her tweet was actually anti-Semitic.  MSNBC posted one of the most vile tweets on the topic:
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T. Belman. Sen Graham is right to rail against a full troop withdrawal from Syria. But I think that he is wrong to suggest that 200 personel would be enough to leave there. It appears that Trump is behind the full troop withdrawal idea. He couldn’t be more wrong. He should not squander US control of east Syria. It costs so little to maintain.

By Christine Wong, BREITBART

ABOARD A MILITARY AIRCRAFT — Acting Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan had a rocky meeting with U.S. senators at a security conference in Munich, Germany, over the administration’s plans on Syria, that could affect his chances to become President Trump’s permanent defense secretary.

At one point during the meeting, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who was leading a delegation of U.S. senators and lawmakers to the security conference, told him, “That’s the dumbest f-cking idea I’ve ever heard,” according to several who were in the room.

Another senator allegedly told him, “You just lost the Senate.”
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T. Belman. Isn’t this interesting. Arbess who recently wrote the WSJ article and Algemeiner article in support of my Jordan Option, got involved with the peace process a few months after Trump’s election and he happens to be a close friend of Jared Kushner.  That’s two years ago.

‘Arbess doesn’t represent Trump, Kushner, or anyone else in upcoming administration,’ adviser Greenblatt says after N.Y. businessman told Palestinian leader that Trump was serious about moving embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

By Barak Ravid, HAARETZ

JAN 13,2017

Heather Nauert’s withdrawal has opened doors to a new cast of diplomatic aspirants seeking to fill Nikki Haley’s shoes.

By ROBBIE GRAMER and COLUM LYNCH, FOREIGN POLICY

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with his U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley, at a United Nations Security Council meeting in New York on Sept. 26, 2018. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images) 

T. Belman. There was not sufficient justification for banning Kahane and Kach. The Arab MK and parties do much worse and they are left alone.  Similarly the Hilltop Youth are treated harshly and unfairly. They both take inspiration from historical heroes like the Maccabees and the freedom fighters from the late forties.

After WWII the Irgun and Lehi waged war on the British and were successful in getting them to leave. They did so even though the Haganah under Ben Gurion waged war against them at first.

Thanks to Netanyahu, Otzma Yehudit, whose name means “Jewish Power,” has a real shot.

By Lahave  Harkov, JPOST

Otzma Yehudit now seems likely to get into the Knesset, thanks to the unrelenting efforts of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Thanks to Netanyahu, Otzma Yehudit, whose name means “Jewish Power,” has a real shot. This is a party whose leaders are proud disciples of Rabbi Meir Kahane, whose party was banned from running for the Knesset in 1988 on grounds of racist incitement. Kahane advocated for the expulsion of most Arabs from Israel, and for those who remained to be second-class citizens under a theocracy. He was also involved in planning violent attacks on Palestinians.
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T. Belman.  Push for 50,000 Olim from France and Belgium  is great initiative.  Why not seek 50,000 olim from the UK also?

Attorney Yomtov Kalfon, French Oleh who served as a lone soldier and immigrant activist, joins New Right party.  New Right announced the launch of campaign to get 50,000 oleh from France and Belgium.

ARUTZ SHEVA

Ministers Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked, leaders of the New Right party, announced Tuesday at a festive press conference that a national program was being launched to bring 50,000 French and Belgian Jews to Israel.

At the same time, the two announced the addition of a French-born candidate to the New Right’s Knesset list, attorney Yomtov Kalfon, chairman of the Alenu Movement for the Advancement and Integration of Immigrants in Politics, a former delegate to the World Zionist Congress and an Israel advocacy activist in French who immigrated to Israel to serve in the IDF.

Kalfon, 32, was born in the suburb of Sarcelles in the outskirts of Paris and immigrated to Israel at the age of 18 alone to enlist in the IDF as a lone soldier, where he served in the Netzach Yehuda battalion.
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By Elliot Abrams, ISRAEL HAYOM

PM also phones prominent national religious rabbis in continued effort to push Jewish Home to unite with extremist Otzma Yehudit and Yachad parties

By JACOB MAGID

Left, Bezalel Smotrich after winning the election for chairman of the National Union, at the Crown Plaza hotel in Jerusalem, January 14, 2019. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90). Right, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits a drill of the Armored Corps in Shizafon Base, in southern Israel on January 23, 2019. (Flash90)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the father of the Jewish Home party’s Bezalel Smotrich on Monday, urging him to convince his son to merge with a pair of far-right factions that otherwise will likely not pass the electoral threshold in April’s national ballot.

Smotrich — who is number two on the Jewish Home list after folding his National Union party into it last week — confirmed the phone call, which was first reported by Channel 13.
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A flexible model for a reconstructed Middle East, giving proper place to Kurds and Druze.

By KURDNAS President Sherkoh Abbas and Dr Robert Sklaroff

Bipartisan, harsh and sustained, criticism of any American military withdrawal from Syria has prompted President Trump to insert a proviso: Iran mustn’t be emboldened.

But Jonathan Spyer has revealed Iran’s four-prong strategy to achieve long-term control over Syria, even as Seth Frantzman has emphasized that an end to the Syrian War places the region at a historic crossroad;  both have advised America must assume control over the tectonic shifts that are enveloping the region.

Meanwhile, as U.S. influence wanes, the Islamic State has re-morphed into a terrorist organization and Iran is attempting to dominate shell-governments in Lebanon and Iraq; in Arab parlance, the Iranians increasingly claim their “strong horse” is trouncing fleeing Americans.
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By Dr. Alex Joffe and Dr. Asaf Romirowsky

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,091, February 19, 2018

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: While the Trump presidency has forced clarity in the US on many domestic and foreign policy issues, the status of Israel in American politics and culture reveals different visions of America itself. One, for lack of a better term, is traditionally American. The other is decidedly “progressive.” But according to both, Israel is mythical and outsized.

On a superficial level, the American divide regarding Israel’s status in US politics is about the role of Jews as a minority. According to one view, Jews are increasingly viewed as white, wealthy, and thus inherently racist, with indefensible connections to an Israel that is a colonial outpost of the imperial West. It is, as Michelle Alexander put it in The New York Times, “one of the great moral challenges of our time.”

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By Dr. Eric R. Mandel, JPOST

After returning home from a week-long seminar in the Gulf and reading The New York Times, I might have thought I had just returned from meetings with the world’s greatest human rights abusers. There is no doubt that the Gulf states are authoritarian regimes – where the daughter of the leader of Dubai mysteriously disappeared, the Saudi crown prince ordered the killing of a journalist, and American arms shipments were transferred to Salafists in Yemin to fight the Iranian-supported Houthis.

However, if this is the only way you look at it, you may miss a window of opportunity to truly effect change in the Middle East and the behavior of the Gulf nations. The Gulf nations are trying very hard to show their value to America, and this creates some leverage to advance American interests at this time.
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Israel, the Jew of the Nations (which was causing a revolution in religion, ethics, and morality millennia before most other peoples made their historical debuts), still has to fight for its right to take its place among newcomers on the world scene.

By Gerald A. Honigman, INN

As I prepare to try to once again fill in some important gaps which too many Jewish students–let alone others–have in education prior to or during their years of anti-Israel higher indoctrination and vilification on many, if not most, campuses, Hanukkah 5779/2018 is just over and Christians are preparing for the Christmas holiday of December 25th.

This endeavor will serve as a follow-up to my last analysis with this goal in mind. That earlier one dealt with, among other things, what perhaps the greatest Muslim scholar of all time, Ibn Khaldun, had to say about both the historical Jew and the Jew of the Nations–Israel–some six centuries ago…  If I say so myself, like this current essay, the former is also just what the doctor ordered when confronting groups like SJP/Students for Justice in Palestine (which just had its annual hate Israel fest conference at UCLA as I write this), J Street U, and duplicitous “Progressive” professors who specialize in using one set of lenses to scrutinize Israel and Zionism, and an entirely different set with regard to the rest of the neighborhood.
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DEBKA

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T. Belman. I am so pleased to have a guy like Arbess promoting the Jordan Option. He is saying nothing that hasn’t been said by me over the last two years. My guess is we could both say more, but decline to do so.

By Daniel Arbess, ALGEMIENER

Jordan’s King Abdullah (left) with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2014. Photo: Kobi Gideon/GPO.

Last week’s Mideast security conference in Poland might have looked like a bust for the Trump administration, which hoped to consolidate European support for a harder line on Iran, and Arab support for Trump’s as-yet undisclosed “Deal of the Century” for Israeli-Palestinian peace. Neither of those things happened, but, in the process, plenty of stage-setting was accomplished.

Many European leaders stayed home, and Saudi Arabia, whose king recently stripped reformist Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) of his responsibility for the “Palestinian file,” accused Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu of misleading the Israeli people into believing that relations with Israel’s Arab neighbors would continue to improve without a resolution of the “Palestinian issue.” Other Arab leaders jumped on the bandwagon, restating their old trope that the “Palestinian issue” — not their own exploitative authoritarian and, is some cases, Islamist terror-promoting regimes — is the root cause of instability in the region.
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By E. Jeffrey Ludwig, AMERICAN THINKER

[..]

Actually, Balz’s animus, and that of the arrayed MSM anti-Trump contingent, is due to Trump’s incessant campaign against the agenda of the globalists both here and abroad.  President Trump’s insistence on the integrity of the American nation-state is profoundly at odds with the globalist mindset, which has taken over the minds/worldviews of many of those in positions of political power as well as the MSM and many of the technology gurus of Silicon Valley.  His outspoken desire to improve our border security as well as to defend against Islamic terrorism is causing the apostles of globalism to react in rage against both the man and his policies. I not only see a “derangement syndrome” but a paranoia and extraordinary flight from reality.
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