The White House shares the Israeli government’s illegal settlement ideology and backs its attempts to normalize relations with the Arab world while maintaining control over our country. That’s why Palestine won’t participate in Trump’s anti-Peace Plan

By Nabil Sha’ath, HAARETZ

President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House, Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2019, in Washington.Evan Vucci,AP

The policies taken by the Trump Administration have undermined peace and security in our region. By fully siding with the Israeli government, they have tried to normalize the Israeli occupation and the systematic denial of the Palestinian right to self-determination.

The Warsaw Conference is part of this context. While the obvious target of the conference is Iran, the Trump Team aims to use this conference as an event to push for their vision for Israel and Palestine, one that, based on the steps they have taken, is certainly not about peace making.
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Bezalel Smotrich says Jewish Home, Otzma Yehudit, Yachad and his own party can’t afford to be divided; accuses Bennett of leaving religious Zionist camp

By Stuart Winer, TOI 

Head of the National Union party MK Bezalel Smotrich, speaks during an event of the Movement for the Quality of Government, in Modi’in, February 4, 2019. (Hadas Parush/Flash90)

National Union party head Bezalel Smotrich on Tuesday said that four religious right-wing parties are close to agreeing on a united slate for the upcoming elections.

His comments flew in the face of remarks from National Union and Jewish Home officials who over the weekend said unity talks between their parties had stalled.

“The news is that we will go together,” Smotrich declared at the annual Besheva right-wing media group conference in Jerusalem. “The news is that we are making every effort.”
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BOLD MOVES

“Israel is a home for all Jews, but we respect those who choose to live in the Diaspora,” Shaked says.

BY LAHAV HARKOV, JPOST

The New Right wants a “wider” range of conversion options than those that exist today, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said at an English-language event in Tel Aviv on Tuesday.

However, Shaked said that the process would still be in line with Orthodox Judaism.

“We want to encourage more and more people to convert to Judaism, and the best way to do that is through the army,” she said, praising the efforts of religious-Zionist Rabbi Haim Druckman on this front.

Former Jerusalem Post columnist and New Right candidate Caroline Glick, who joined Shaked onstage, said that seeking a freer conversion process was one of the reasons Shaked and Education Minister Naftali Bennett broke off from Bayit Yehudi.
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By Majid Mohammadi, AMERICAN THINKER

In 1982, when Iranian universities and colleges opened their doors to students after the so-called Cultural Revolution, a new group of students was admitted based on affirmative action.  They were coming from very low-income families and from families who had a “martyr” during the 1979 Revolution.  Almost all of them failed in STEM courses in the first semester.  In a class of 40, all of them got zero scores in Physics 101.

To cope with these students, faculty members lowered the level of the courses.  As the academic level plunged, more and more of these students occupied university and college seats.  Some years later, the family members of killed soldiers, the veterans of the Iran-Iraq War, and Basij members were added to the list of groups who could benefit from the affirmative action policy.  These groups became the counter-movement to any anti-authoritarian and anti-totalitarian movements in the universities and elsewhere.
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The Continent’s grand unity project is failing, and its global influence is fading.

By Walter Russell Mead, WSJ

Last week offered fresh evidence that the most consequential historical shift of the last 100 years continues: the decline of Europe as a force in world affairs. As Deutsche Bank warned of a German recession, the European Commission cut the 2019 eurozone growth forecast from an already anemic 1.9% to 1.3%. Economic output in the eurozone was lower in 2017 than it was in 2009; over that same period, gross domestic product grew 139% in China, 96% in India, and 34% in the U.S., according to the World Bank.
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By J.E. Dyer, LIBERTY UNYIELDING

This isn’t a time for joking. It is now clear that it isn’t a time for mild “dialogue” either.  In America, Ilhan Omar has the right to express antisemitic views, using, if she chooses, the same antisemitic themes as Nazi propagandists.  Her constituents in Minnesota have the right to elect her to Congress.  But that doesn’t mean any of them has a right to any committee assignments for Omar in the House of Representatives, much less choice ones like the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Howard Portnoy noted earlier today that Omar offered an apology for implying that Jews exercise undue influence in Congress by buying it with payoffs from AIPAC.  He assumed – with good reason – that her apology was insincere.  I would point out that the “apology” was basically for being caught using an anti-Semitic trope, but since it also included a double-down on the meaning of the trope, the “apology” outed its own self as a fake.
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Yes, Ori Ansbacher’s mother asked the audience to “add light in the world, an act of kindness” to preserve her daughter’s soul.

By Giulio Meotti, INN

A condemnation of the assassination of Ori Ansbacher by a Palestinian Arab terrorist in Jerusalem is still not in from:

-The European Union, always quick to condemn the construction of new Israeli houses in Judea and Samaria;

-The UN, always meeting in an emergency session when Israel kills a terrorist;

-The Western newspapers, always ready to make room for the terrorists who died on the Gaza border and the pin-up of the Intifada, Ahed Tamimi;
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By Trey Yingst, FOX NEWS

JERUSALEM – The Trump administration’s Middle East peace plan is finished and President Trump has been briefed on its contents, two senior administration officials told Fox News on Sunday.

The final draft of the administration’s “Deal of the Century” is 175 to 200 pages long — and fewer than five people have access to the complete document, sources told Fox News.

The plan is done… [the president] is happy with the parameters of the deal,” a senior administration official said.

Video

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By Chris Robbins, ISRAEL HAYOM

State tells court it will retroactively legalize structures in Alei Zahav, invoking new legal mechanism for the first time

The state informed the Jerusalem District Court that it will retroactively legalize structures built in part on private Palestinian land in the West Bank settlement of Alei Zahav.

In doing so, the state will for the first time invoke a legal mechanism the attorney general approved in December, senior sources say. Alei Zahav is a secular settlement located close to Route 5, which links Ariel and the Greater Tel Aviv area. Read more…

Iranians are still suffering 40 years after the last one.

By Eli Lake, BLOOMBERG

He just told people what they wanted to hear.

Four decades ago, in the months leading up to the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the exiled Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini made many promises. He spoke about respecting the rights of minorities, democracy and equality for women.

A movement that can detect a racist dog-whistle from miles away is strangely deaf when it comes to some of the barking on its own side of the fence.

By Bret Stephens, NYT

An estimated 42 million more say they want to enter the country.

By Penny Starr, BREITBART

Those statistics were in a report from Jim Clifton, the chairman and CEO at Gallup:

Forty-two million seekers of citizenship or asylum are watching to determine exactly when and how is the best time to make the move. This suggests that open borders could potentially attract 42 million Latin Americans. A full 5 million who are planning to move in the next 12 months say they are moving to the U.S.

The poll came as Democrats began using their new political clout to try to widen the catch-and-release loopholes in President Donald Trump’s border defenses.
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Yisrael Beytenu leader reportedly claims PM may strike plea deal before elections, quit politics in exchange for not being indicted pending a hearing

By MICHAEL BACHNER, TOI

Former defense minister Avigdor Liberman has reportedly claimed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will likely fail to form a government even if his Likud party wins the elections, due to coalition partners’ refusal to serve under a premier who may by then be formally accused of criminal offenses.

The Yisrael Beytenu party leader said a possible scenario would see Netanyahu reaching a plea deal in which he would quit politics before the April 9 vote, in exchange for not being charged in the three corruption cases against him, the Ynet website reported Sunday.
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