The Palestinian Authority paid over $137 million to living terrorists – either in Israeli prison or released – over the course of 2018 • The longer the prison sentence, the higher the salary; in other words, the worse the crime, the better it pays.

Efrat Forsher and Israel Hayom Staff

For the Palestinians, terrorism is one sure way to make a living – and it seems that the worse the crime, the better the pay.

According to a report released by the Palestinian Authority Treasury on Wednesday, the PA paid upwards of NIS 502 million ($137 million) to living terrorists – either in Israeli prison or released – in 2018.

By the bureau’s Trump standard, he looked like an agent of Iran.

By Lee Smith, WSJ

Counterintelligence agents would have examined the target’s personal and professional networks. The FBI investigated at least four Trump campaign figures for supposed ties to Russia. Only one, Mike Flynn, worked in the administration, and for less than a month. The Obama administration had a few senior officials with personal ties to Iran.

Obama confidant Valerie Jarrett was born in the Iranian city of Shiraz and reportedly led back-channel talks with the Iranians in 2012. Secretary of State John Kerry’s daughter quashed right-wing rumors that her Iranian-American husband’s best man was the son of Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. But under the FBI’s Trump procedures, that denial might have made her suspect. A month after Trump adviser Carter Page publicly asked then-Director James Comey for an interview to clear his name, the FBI obtained a warrant to wiretap him.
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Erdogan increasingly turns to Putin as the U.S. prepares to withdraw troops from northern Syria

By David Gauthier-Villars, WSJ

The discussions in Moscow between Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan are a diplomatic minefield because Russia and Turkey stand on opposite sides of the nearly eight-year war in Syria, with Moscow backing the Assad regime, and Ankara supporting rebel groups.

Mr. Erdogan has touted the idea of creating a safe zone on the Syrian side of the 510-mile border, saying Turkish troops stood ready to seize the area by launching an offensive against Kurdish fighters, on whom the U.S. leaned on in the campaign against Islamic State. The Turkish president describes the Kurdish fighters as a terrorist group.
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Ted Belman. It would appear to me that in the wake of the announced withdrawal, Trump has given Israel the right to fight Iran in both Syria and Iraq. Possibly also Iran. Iraq is a divided country. There are those who welcome Iranian influence and militias, there are many including Shiites who want no interference from Iran. Even US soldiers are stationed in Iraq along the Syrian border. The US is clearly helping the iraqis who want Iran out.

What Trump is doing is reducing the US presence in the ME, Syria and Iraq, and increasing the presence of Israel. Sunni countries must now look to Israel to defend their interests rather than to the US. This is a good thing.

Notwithstanding the continuous story of Israeli airstrikes on Iranian-affiliated targets across Syria, another interesting claim emerged in Iraqi media last week.

By Ceng Sagnic, JPOST

Iraq emerges as a potential target for Israel as it steps up efforts to eliminate the Iranian land bridge to the Levant. 

Recent Israeli airstrikes prove that air defense systems supplied to Syria by Russia are not enough to repulse Israeli aggression against Iranian targets in this country, but this may not be the end of the story. Israel may soon change the course of action to strike Iranian targets beyond Syria’s borders and launch aerial campaigns in Iraq where the airspace is defenseless and the political vacuum is too deep for the government to claim territorial sovereignty.
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T, Belman. If you want to conquer a country and change its culture to yours, look to Islam.

By Edwin Mora, BREITBART

Boko Haram jihadis have set ablaze a total of 1,125 churches and other religious structures belonging to just one Christian denomination in Nigeria since the terrorist group launched an uprising for Islamist rule in the African country in 2009, Rev. Joel Billi, the leader of the victimized group known as the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria, reportedly revealed this week.

Also known as the Ekklesiyar Yan’uwa A Nigeria (EYN) in the Hausa language, the Christian group primarily resides in northeastern Nigeria, home to Boko Haram’s birthplace and primary stronghold.

According to the Daily Post, Billi is urging Nigeria’s federal government to help EYN rebuild the church branches razed by Boko Haram terrorists since 2009.

By John Hayward, BREITBART

President Trump spoke out Tuesday against the media assault on the Covington Catholic High School students, leaping into a Culture War melee after many establishment conservatives either backed away from the fight or actively supported the false narrative pushed by left-wing media.

Trump will be criticized for wading into the issue and “making it worse,” but this is one of the reasons he won the 2016 election. He gets involved in culture battles when bloodless GOP protocol is to step back and let the Left have another easy win, or even help them to win their favor.
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ANALYSIS: It is not the elections, but the facts on the ground that have Israel revealing its war on Iran.

By Yochanan Visser, INN

Pundits and politicians in Israel tried to explain why Israel now openly talks about its military activities against Iran in Syria after the Israeli air force (IAF) again carried out a large operation against Iran-related targets in Syria.

Politicians on the left of the political spectrum in Israel think the announcements about Israeli strikes against the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps were connected to domestic politics and the upcoming elections in Israel.
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By Alan Dershowitz, THE HILL

The front page of the New York Times Sunday Review featured one of the most biased, poorly informed, and historically inaccurate columns about the conflict between Israel and Palestine ever published by a mainstream newspaper. Written by Michelle Alexander, it is entitled, “Time to break the silence on Palestine,” as if the Palestinian issue has not been the most overhyped cause on campuses, at the United Nations, and in the media.

There is no silence to break. What must be broken is the double standard of those who elevate the Palestinian claims over those of the Kurds, the Syrians, the Iranians, the Chechens, the Tibetans, the Ukrainians, and many other more deserving groups who truly suffer from the silence of the academia, the media, and the international community. The United Nations devotes more of its time, money, and votes to the Palestinian issue than to the claims of all of these other oppressed groups combined.
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Head of Iran’s Quds Force wants to divert attention from his failures in Syria, Gaza news outlets report • IDF tanks, jets attack Hamas targets after Palestinian sniper shoots IDF officer • Netanyahu cancels Qatari donation of $15 million to Gaza.

By Nikki Guttman, Lilach Shoval, Daniel Siryoti, News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff

An explosion is seen during Israeli air strikes in Gaza, overnight Tuesday 

Israeli tanks shelled Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, killing one Hamas terrorist after an IDF officer was shot and wounded by a Palestinian sniper near the border. Armed Palestinian factions in Gaza later convened “to discuss a proper response to the crimes of the Zionist occupier.”
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By Karin McQuillan, AMERICAN THINKER

Democrats live in a morality play in which Republicans are the Bad people led by the evil wizard, President Trump.  Liberals are mesmerized by this fantasy of America divided into good versus evil, with themselves starring as the heroes.  They can’t seem to get enough of it.  They love the plotline, that minorities are threatened with being ‘erased’ by microaggressions, that the globe is being destroyed by poisonous CO2, that American democracy is threatened by the would-be dictator and Russian collaborator, President Trump, and his hordes of drooling idiots and Nazi wannabes.

Democrats on the ramparts are fighting for all that is kind and fair.  They want to end masculinity, to make women and nonbinary people safe.  They want to end capitalism, because, as Pelosi said this January, you cannot have democracy if you have rich people.  They want open borders, because whiteness is racist.  They want to add two hundred million new Americans, and fast, because that is only kind.
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Threats come after Israeli air force strikes on storehouses and radar systems at Damascus airport, which reportedly killed 21, including 12 Iranians

By TOI STAFF and JUDAH ARI GROSS

Syria’s envoy to the United Nations warned Tuesday that if the world body did not halt Israeli strikes on his country, Syria would retaliate with an attack on Ben Gurion International Airport outside Tel Aviv.

Speaking at the UN Security Council after a series of IAF airstrikes on Sunday and Monday — most of them launched after an Iranian missile fired from Syria was intercepted over the Israeli Golan Heights on Sunday afternoon — Bashar Jaafari said Israel was only able to act freely in Syria because it had the backing of the US, UK and France in the Security Council. Read more…

By Osama Al Sharif, AL MONITOR

Jordan’s King Abdullah’s one-day visit to Baghdad on Jan. 14 was hailed as “historic” by Iraqi President Barham Saleh. It was the first trip to Iraq by the Jordanian monarch in more than a decade, and it came less than a month after the kingdom’s prime minister, Omar Razzaz, paid a visit on Dec. 28 to the Iraqi capital to sign a number of economic agreements.

A royal court statement said the king noted the strong ties between the two countries, affirming that Jordan stands by Iraq as it seeks to safeguard its security and stability, and works to fulfill the aspirations of the Iraqi people toward further prosperity and progress. It added that the two leaders “stressed the importance of bilateral agreements in the economic, trade, investment, energy, transport and construction sectors.”

During his visit, King Abdullah held talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, who was quoted as saying that the king’s visit signals the start of a new phase in Iraq, stressing that Jordan “has historically had a special place in the heart of Iraqis.” Read more…

Sunday’s escalation in Damascus shows what happens when the two global powers’ inaction create a vacuum in the Middle East

By Anshel Pfeffer, HAARETZ

The escalation in the conflict between Israel and Iran in the skies over Syria in the past 24 hours has brought their secret war of the last two years well and truly into the open.

On Sunday, Israel carried out a rare daylight series of airstrikes in the Damascus area, followed by an Iranian attempt to fire a mid-range missile toward northern Israel. Overnight Monday, at 1 A.M., Israel not only launched a second, much wider series of attacks against Iranian targets in Syria, but for the first time announced in real time that they were taking place. Read more…

Israeli planes attack 10 targets – some Iranian – in Syria, responding to a missile launched from Syria. Israel says the missile was Iranian-made and fired by Iranian forces

By Yaniv Kubovich, HAARETZ 

Jan 21/19

Israel strikes Iranian targets in Syria: The Israel Air Force struck targets in Syria on Sunday overnight, including sites belonging to Iran’s Quds Force, the Israeli military said Monday. The attack comes as a response to a ground-to-ground missile that was fired a day earlier at Israel from Syria, and was intercepted. The Israeli military said on Monday that the missile was manufactured by Iran and launched by Iranian forces in Syria.

Targets include Syrian air defenses, Iranian sites: Israel said that the strike targeted some 10 sites in Syria, including arms warehouses at Damascus International Airport and other locations, and Iranian intelligence site and an Iranian training camp. Witnesses in Damascus said loud explosions rang out in the night sky. 

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Emerging evidence suggests that the BDS movement has extensive ties to Palestinian terrorist organizations, using the “social justice” movement as a veritable human shield for anti-Israel ideology and activism.

By Jean Savage, jns

Palestinian solidarity protesters march towards the British parliament on June, 5 2018. Credit: Alisdare Hickson via Flickr.

(January 18, 2019 / JNS) Over the past decade, the BDS movement has emerged as one of the principle challenges towards the legitimacy of the State of Israel. A modern distortion of the South African anti-apartheid campaign, the movement seeks to put economic pressure on Israel and to isolate it politically. While Israel continues to thrive on both fronts—with a booming economy and expanding relations throughout the developing world—the ongoing threat of boycotts remains a constant challenge, especially for pro-Israel advocates in the Diaspora.

At the same time, emerging evidence suggests that the BDS movement has extensive ties to Palestinian terrorist organizations. By using the “social justice” movement as a veritable human shield for anti-Israel ideology and activism, terror groups are now succeeding in a type of reputational and commercial warfare against Israel.
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When the s-300 missile system was deployed it was portrayed as a game changer. But Reuters had reported in 2015 and again in October 2018 that Israel had trained against the S-300 system in Greece.

BY SETH J. FRANTZMAN, JPOST

Russian and Syrian media emphasized that Syrian air defense “repelled” the attack by Israel on Sunday. According to a spokesman for Russia’s national defense management center, the Syrians used the Pantsir and Buk air defense systems. Israel struck at a Pantsir defense system in retaliation on Monday. But why wasn’t the S-300, which Russia supplied to Syria in September, used by Damascus?

The continuing quiet among the S-300 gunners is a perplexing mystery that underpins the shadowy and deadly conflict unfolding in Syria’s skies. In late September, Russia announced it would give the Syrian regime the S-300 system in the wake of Syrian air defense mistakenly shooting down a Russian Il-20. The Syrians had used an S-200 to hit the Russian plane, mistaking it for an Israeli warplane during an Israeli raid in Latakia.
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By Victor Sharpe

On Friday, June 12th, 1987, President Reagan visited West Berlin.

Standing upon a platform, overlooking the wall which the Soviets had built to keep East Germans from escaping to freedom in the West, President Reagan chose to utter words that electrified the world. Addressing Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, he said: Mr. President, “Tear down this Wall.”

Here was a wall which, since 1951, had kept hapless souls from escaping Soviet occupied East Germany. But today there is an urgent need to build up a wall on America’s southern border – not to keep people in but to keep trespassers, drug traffickers, dangerous terrorists and violent gang members from illegally infiltrating into the United States of America.
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by Dr. Eric R. Mandel, JPOST

Does the administration also realize that Turkey under Erdogan is no different from the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology that Sisi overthrew?

American Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s major address in Cairo, “A force for good: America’s reinvigorated role in the Middle East,” laid out a new American vision in sharp contrast to President Barack Obama’s speech 10 years ago.

Pompeo described Obama’s vision as distancing America away from its traditional allies, Israel and the Sunni Gulf States, his goal being a path to a new relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran that culminated with the JCPOA (Iran Nuclear Deal). Notably absent from Pompeo’s speech was any mention of Turkey as an American ally.
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