“Failure to rescind the opinion would allow future US administrations to use it as a basis to support anti-Israeli resolutions at the UN.”

BY TOVAH LAZAROFF, JPOST

The United States must rescind its famous 41-year old legal opinion that West Bank settlements are “inconsistent with international law,” the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) said as it embarked on a renewed campaign this week to pressure the Trump administration on the matter.

“Termination of this opinion is long overdue,” said Jeff Daube, the ZOA’s Israel Director, adding that it has been used to “fuel Israel bashing,” particularly at the United Nations.
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“It opened up a whole world of unexpressed thoughts and feelings,” said Kim Hye-kyung.

BY Tim Alper/JTA

The mother of two lives in study-mad South Korea, a nation where parents fork over a combined $17 billion on private tutoring every year. Children start early – 83 percent of 5-year-olds receive private education — and the pace keeps intensifying until, at age 18, students take the dreaded eight-hour suneung university entrance exam. Flunk the suneung and your job prospects could nosedive. Pass with flying colors and you may land a coveted spot at a top-ranked university.

“I hated the idea of sending my children to private academies, where teachers cram information into young heads with no thought for nurturing creativity,” Kim Hye-kyung said. “When my kids were younger, I read them books or took them out instead of sending them to academies. But as they grew older, I started worrying that their school results would suffer as a result of my decisions.”
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UNWRA does not solve the refugee problem. It inflates it. One needs to ask why.

By Barry Shaw, INN

Through UNRWA, the Palestinian Arabs have received 25 times more aid per capita than did the whole of Europe to rebuild their shattered countries after World War II. And yet, many decades later, Palestinians still use the victimhood card of poverty and statelessness, even though massive funding flows through the hands of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.
UNWRA is the only UN refugee agency dedicated to a single group of people. They do not solve the refugee problem. They inflate it. One needs to ask why.

Palestinians do not absorb their refugees. Instead, with cooperation from UNWRA, they increase their refugee numbers with each generation.

Compare this to Israel that absorbed more refugees from Arab and Muslim countries than the number of Arabs fleeing the Arab-inflicted wars against the Jewish State.
On top of this, Israel absorbed millions of immigrants from around the world, all absorbed as citizens.
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By Amy Contrada, AMERICAN THINKER

In the past year, I witnessed two frightening assaults on free speech by a kangaroo “justice” system.  This wasn’t in some banana republic, North Korea, or China; it was in Canada.  These were gut-wrenching experiences for me.

These stories from Canada are potent warnings to the U.S.

The Saudi teen remains in real and terrible danger because she has renounced Islam. She has shut down her Twitter account due to death threats.  

By Prof. Phyllis Chesler, INN

Rahaf Mohammed Alqunun, a Saudi teenager, has just tried to save her own life—and in so doing, has risked death for shaming her family and her country.

Rahaf fled her family vacation in Kuwait, took a plane to Bangkok, barricaded herself in her hotel room at the airport and began posting about her plight on social media.  She demanded political asylum.

Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. In this case, the ammunition is digital and governmental.

Via her smartphone, Rahaf claimed that she had renounced Islam and that her family would surely kill her if she was returned to them. Rahaf obtained 90,000 followers on Twitter. The media began to cover her plight.
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To Michael Doran, the administration’s many statements and actions concerning the Middle East reflect a “coherent vision.” If true—which is doubtful—it’s the wrong vision.

By Elliot Abrams, MOSAIC

[..]
In my view, the United States will build a security system with its own military or it won’t have one at all. As with our Asian allies facing China, as with our European allies and NATO facing Russia, our alliances in the Middle East will not work if we confine ourselves to providing some weapons and some intelligence but no more.

This does not suggest that it would be wise to send hundreds of thousands of Americans to fight again in the Middle East; it would not. But a policy that cannot even abide the sustained presence of 2,000 soldiers on the ground in Syria will likely fail.

Doran’s essay expresses greater optimism on this score, but his previous writings suggest he might well agree that the neoconservative assessment is sounder and that its “muscular” approach is likelier to succeed; his problem is that, in today’s circumstances, he thinks that approach is off the table.
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By Evelyn Gordon, COMMENTARY

Israel’s election campaign has only just begun, but one key issue is already notable by its absence: peace with the Palestinians. To many Americans—especially American Jews, who overwhelmingly consider this the most important issue facing Israel—the fact that almost none of the candidates are talking about the peace process may seem surprising. But several recent incidents help explain why it’s a very low priority for most Israeli voters.

Not so long ago, of course, the peace process was Israel’s top voting issue, almost its only one. But in a poll published last month, self-identified centrists and rightists both ranked the peace process dead last among six suggested issues of concern. Even self-identified leftists ranked it only third, below corruption and closing socioeconomic gaps.
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By Howard Laitin

Iran is reportedly undergoing a major water crisis, to the point where it may lose all its natural water sources within 40 years.

According to the Israeli publication Globes, the crisis has been caused by global warming and other factors, and has made the country fourth in the world in terms of declining water resources. This has led to widespread public discontent, the resignation of members of parliament, and a growing sentiment of protest in the streets.

A recent NASA report stated that all natural water sources in Iran may be gone within 40 years, while the ruling regime has completely failed to find new resources or build an infrastructure to compensate for the loss.
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IDF no-holds-barred response to Al Quds commander Soleimani’s tunnels, build up in Syria, and aid to Hamas has dealt a strong blow to Iran.

By Yochanan Visser, INN

Outgoing IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot this weekend revealed more details about Israel’s war against Iran and indicated Israeli security forces might try to assassinate Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

In interviews with Israeli broadcasters and The New York Times, Eisenkot revealed that Israel had carried out thousands of strikes against the Iranian axis in Syria and claimed the IDF had won the war against Soleimani’s Quds Force and its proxies in Syria, Lebanon and Gaza.
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By Victor Rosenthal

During the acrimonious debate over the Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People, opponents claimed it was defective because it didn’t mention “democracy” or “equality,” concepts that are found implicitly or explicitly in Israel’s Declaration of Independence, proclaimed by David Ben-Gurion on May 14, 1948. Here is the relevant passage from that Declaration:

THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

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BY REUTERS SATURDAY JAN 12, 2019

ABU DHABI (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Saturday he was optimistic that a “good outcome” could be reached between Turkey and Syrian Kurdish groups, after speaking to the Turkish foreign minister.

“We recognize the Turkish people’s right to defend their country from terrorists, but we also know that those … who are not terrorists and fighting alongside us for all this time deserve to be protected,” Pompeo told reporters.

“There are many details to be worked out but I am optimistic we can achieve a good outcome,” he said.
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By Emil Avdaliani

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,061, January 11, 2019

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:  As competition grows more intense between the US and China, Moscow must assess which side will do more to help it solve its problems across the former Soviet space. Moscow’s choice will affect Russia’s identification as European, Asian, or Eurasian.

Winter in Siberia, photo via Pixabay

The current crisis between Russia and the West is the product of many fundamental geopolitical differences both within and without the former Soviet space. All trends in bilateral relations suggest that the essential differences between the camps will remain stalled well into the future.

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T. Belman. Much as I hate to admit it, the US should try to keep Turkey in its camp if only to keep it from moving to the Russian camp. But I don’t see that the US has to abandon the Kurds in order to do so.

A second reason I like the Trump policy is that he is forcing the Arabs to embrace Israel in self defense and to do so out of the closet.

 By Michael Doran, MOSAIC   1-7-19

America needs to back up its allies (Israel, Saudi Arabia, and potentially Turkey), and isolate its adversaries (Iran, Russia, China, Islamic State). Everything else is secondary.

President Trump’s surprise December 19 announcement of an immediate withdrawal of American forces from Syria hit some Israelis like a sucker punch. “With this withdrawal, the United States abandons Syria and leaves Israel alone,” said Yaakov Amidror, a former national-security adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. While conceding that “the effect of the U.S. decision is primarily psychological and diplomatic,” Amidror continued: “In those arenas, this is a very significant decision.” Subsequent reports to the effect that the drawdown of forces will be slower than originally announced and coordinated with America’s allies have softened the blow, but the shock still remains.
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Eisenkot: Tehran-backed forces leaving due to IDF ops; Soleimani erred in ‘choosing a playground where he is relatively weak’ and Israel has ‘complete’ military, intel superiority

By TOI STAFF

The outgoing IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot on Friday said that Israel has carried out “thousands” of airstrikes against Iranian military targets in Syria in recent years.

In an interview to the New York Times ahead of his retirement next week, Eisenkot for the first time confirmed the scale of Israel’s ongoing military campaign to thwart Iranian entrenchment in Syria.

“We struck thousands of targets without claiming responsibility or asking for credit,” he said.
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In questioning the nation-state law, even the ‘conservative’ justices are causing grave damage to the soul of the nation that returned to Zion with so much suffering

By Israel Harel, HAARETZ

Supreme Court President Esther Hayut has announced that a panel of 11 justices will soon debate the petitions against the legality of the nation-state law. The holding of this debate in itself means the justices are assuming that they have the authority to rule whether the historic stipulations in this Basic Law – that “the Land of Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish people” and therefore “the State of Israel is the national home of the Jewish people” – are right.

The same goes for enshrining in a Basic Law the essence of the return to Zion in our time: “The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.”
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By Shahira Amin, AL MONITOR January 10, 2019

Jan. 6, the US television network CBS aired an interview with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi despite Egypt’s attempts to prevent the interview from being broadcast. The “60 Minutes” interview drew mixed reactions in Egypt, both angering Sisi’s supporters and earning praise from opposition activists on social media. Egypt’s secular activists, however, were displeased that the show only gave voice to Muslim Brotherhood figures, implying that Egypt’s opposition consisted solely of members of the country’s outlawed Islamist group.

“The 60 Minutes interview narrowly framed the problem in Egypt as a battle between el-Sisi & [the Muslim Brotherhood] & having the opposition only represented by them,” tweeted Nancy Okail, executive director of the Washington-based Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy.
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By Benjamin Weinthal,FOX NEWS

The Islamic Republic of Iran unleashed yet another crackdown on the country’s struggling Christian minority before and after Christmas, prompting international calls for help – and for much tougher action against the repressive regime.

The Iranian group Alliance for Rights of All Minorities reported on December 30 that “nine Christians were arrested in Karaj, Iran on alleged charges of affiliation with Christian Zionists and recruitment of Muslims to home churches. The arrests are also based on fears that this group intends to harm Iran and insult Iran.”

Just weeks earlier, Iran’s regime had carried out a crackdown on practicing Christians that resulted in the incarceration of more than 100 people, according to Open Doors UK, a Christian human rights group, and other Christian media outlets. The mass arrests were meant to intimidate Christians into not spreading their faith during the Christmas period.
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