T. Belman. Christians were excommunicated from the synagogue around 92 AD, not because they believed Jesus was the messiah, but because they rejected the Law. The Reform Movement today also rejects the Law. When founded almost 150 years ago it also rejected the notion of Jewish peoplehood and Zionism. It saw itself as a religion only.

Any Jew born to a Jewish mother is a Jew – period!

By Joseph Rabin, JPOST

I would like to preface the following discussion of Reform Jewry with the following point: Any Jew born to a Jewish mother is a Jew – period!

As the battle over the acceptance of the Reform movement in Israel intensifies, the discussion must take a theological turn in search of the truth. The primary question is: Can we consider the Reform movement a Jewish sect, within the framework of the “70 faces to the Torah”? Or should we categorize the Reform movement as a distinct religion, separate from Judaism?

I want to stress I am not questioning the “Jewishness” of any Jew who might belong to the Reform movement. However, I would like to cast doubt on the legitimacy of that movement’s theology.

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Now that the race to April 9 has begun, Likud and Bayit Yehudi politicians will jockey for who a better record when it comes to Judea and Samaria.

BY TOVAH LAZAROFF, JPOST

After 12 years of a non-functioning parliament Abbas suddenly ordered the Palestinian Constitutional Court to meet yesterday to dissolve the parliament. Why now?

By Itamar Marcus and Maurice Hirsch, PMW

After 12 years, during which the Palestinian Parliament (Legislative Council, PLC) has not met, Mahmoud Abbas suddenly announced yesterday, that the Palestinian Constitutional Court had dissolved the PA parliament:

Abbas: “The [PA] Parliament (Legislative Council), which has not been active for 12 years… The topic reached the constitutional court, and it issued a decision to dissolve the parliament and call for elections for the parliament within six months.”

Why would Abbas suddenly do something that he has not done for 12 years?
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By Eldad Shavit, Udi Dekel

INSS Insight No. 1120, December 24, 2018

For the United States, which still has interests in the Middle East, a hasty withdrawal of forces from Syria weakens its influence on processes in the region and limits its room to maneuver in the face of existing challenges. The US administration leaves its allies with question marks regarding US ability to back their policies, and at the same time, heightens Iran’s motivation to strengthen its grip and influence in the area. Israel remains alone in its campaign against Iranian entrenchment in Syria, and at most will receive political backing from the United States in the context of this struggle.

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Al MONITOR

In announcing the withdrawal of the roughly 2,000 American troops in Syria, the Trump administration has, in one dramatic act, sought to recast the US-Turkey relationship, which has been in freefall over US partnership with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the fight against the Islamic State.

The SDF is mostly composed of forces from the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the gendarmerie of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), which Turkey considers a terrorist group linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The United States also considers the PKK a terrorist organization.
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Why the Women’s March co-head hates Jews while adoring Farrakhan, Sharpton, and Sarsour.

By Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischer, INN

My introduction to Tamika Mallory, the other half of the Jew-hating duo who most prominently co-head the “Women’s March,” came when she rabidly attacked the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for supposedly being racist against “Black and Brown people.”  That lie projected this Jew-hater of the Left overnight among the nation’s foremost bigots.

Ironically, within the American Jewish community a fierce debate has been raging over the ADL’s abandonment of its historic mission, dating back to the 1915 Leo Frank lynching, to counter all forms of bigotry, with a particular focus on anti-Semitism. In recent years, since ADL hired an Obama White House insider to run the organization, the group has become associated increasingly with the Democrat Left and has focused inordinately on attacking President Trump and his Administration.
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T. Belman. Langfan is a little too flippant for my taste but at least he is thinking out of the box.

Trump is cleverly seeing to it that Russia needs Israel to keep Iran at bay – or lose Syria to the Iranian octopus. He is also sending other messages to the Middle East Arab countries.

By Mark Langfan, INN

While many pundits have gone hysterical over President Trump’s Syrian pullout, President Trump really had no choice but to employ his own “Samson Option,” one in which he knocked over everyone’s toys and theories.

Firstly, President Trump isn’t “gifting” Putin a “Christmas present,” but rather is hanging a deadly Syrian Albatross on Putin’s neck.  Without American forces east of the Euphrates and American dollars helping Syrian reconstruction, Putin faces an Iranian victory in Syria, and a Russian loss.  In fact, Russian rapprochement with Israel is a direct result of American withdrawal.  Now, Russia has only Israel to help keep Iran’s gobbling up of Syria in check.  If Putin looks to Turkey to check Iran, the unacceptably high payment will be Turkish ownership of Northern Syria.

Putin is now hopelessly up a Syrian creek without a paddle.
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T. Belman. What bothers me the most about the Trump statements is that no mention was made of protecting the Kurds or pushing back Iran.  What does this mean?

It was obvious to observers that Trump traded Turkey for the Kurds. It was more important for the US to be on good terms with Turkey than it was to create. an independent Kurdistan. I am hoping that the People’s Protection Units (YPG) will not be massacred and that the Kurds will accept a place at the negotiating table for drawing up a new constitution for all of Syria. Such constitution should give them some kind of autonomy as part of Syria. Erdogan has often said that he rejects an independent Kurdish state. Hopefully he will accept an autonomous Kurdish region as part of Syria.

That leaves the push back against Iran. I do not believe that Trump has abandoned that goal.

Just hours after Netanyahu dubbed Erdogan ‘anti-Semitic dictator, President Trump says Turkish leader the right man for the job in Syria.

By David Rosenberg, INN

Turkey will fill the void left in Syria by America’s impending departure, President Donald Trump announced Monday morning, praising Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after a discussion with Erdogan on the future fight against ISIS in the war-torn country.
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Caroline Glick tweeted,

Mattis:
1. Opposed moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem.
2. Opposed cancelling the Iran nuclear deal.
3. Insisted on arming and training the Hezbollah-controlled Lebanese military.
4. Opposed using US forces in Syria vs. Iran and partners.
5. Said Tel Aviv is Israel’s capital.

Dec 20

T. Belman.  To suggest that what we see in history is a turn to authoritariansim is wrong. What I see is a return to nationalism and a shunning of globalism. People have a hunger for national identity and independence and oppose the destruction of their identity and culture which the left strives for.

The arc of history has bent toward authoritarianism.

By Ben Judah, The Atlantic  DEC 18, 2018

The arc of history was not supposed to look like this, I thought, as I followed Matteo Salvini, the most powerful man in Italy, through the Mahane Yehuda market in Jerusalem. Another day, another world leader was in Israel to meet Benjamin Netanyahu, known to most here simply as “Bibi.” And just like Donald Trump, Narendra Modi, Rodrigo Duterte, and Jair Bolsonaro before him, Italy’s populist interior minister was not coming to scold the Israeli prime minister. Here was another strongman both happy to be in Jerusalem and ready to work with Bibi.

That night, as Salvini relaxed on his market walkabout and shared a beer with his Israeli handlers, he smiled for the cameras in order to show how safe he felt in the hands of such an expert counterterror force. “I love the people,” he said, telling me how much he was looking forward to working with Bibi. I felt a crushing weight on my shoulders: the feeling of having been wrong.
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T. Belman. It would appear that Trump did not announce his troop withdrawal before getting Turkey’s agreement not to cross the Euphrates and a commitment from Russia that it would continue to work with Israel. Also, The US and Iraq are in advanced negotiations for the deployment to the Iraqi-Syria border of the Iraqi Special Operations Forces (ISOF).It will stand in the path of Iranian and Iraqi Shiite militias crossings into Syria. Iraq has consented to the US building a military base in Iraq near to syria that would protect these forces.

Works for me.

DEBKA  Dec 22, 2018 @ 12:10

Following the backlash from President Trump’s decision to withdraw US troops from NE Syria, senior administration officials Friday night, Dec. 21 offered Mid East leaders clarifications for allaying their concerns. DEBKAfile’s sources reveal those messages’ high points:

1. 1. US troops will leave eastern and northern Syria, but America is not deserting this part of the country, said the officials, without revealing the nature of its continuing presence.
   2. The Trump administration has not abandoned the Kurds or “stabbed them in the back” as widely reported, “and the Kurds know this,” it was authoritatively said. And, indeed, despite their loud cries of dismay, not a single Syrian Kurdish militiaman has deserted the lines they hold against ISIS in eastern Syria.

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By Dogan Akman

British Prime Minister Theresa May personally blocked asylum for alleged blasphemer Asia Bibi. Convicted of blasphemy, she was subsequently acquitted by the Supreme Court of Pakistan, after having been incarcerated for eight years. Upon her release, she went into hiding from the angry mobs that are looking for her.

The Prime Minister did that, despite the objections of her Home Secretary Sajid Javid, for fear of arousing the anger of the Muslims at home and abroad.

This is the same Primer Minister who just this month, signed the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GC), commonly referred to as U.N’s global refugee plan, pursuant to which the signatory countries will take in refugees and migrants, who are expected to originate mostly from the Middle East and the sub-Saharan Africa.
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By Michael Derfler

According to transgender activists, people may choose to identify with a gender that does not match their biology. This idea has practical consequences like which locker-room a person should use and who can compete in women’s athletic events and beauty pageants. Some would go so far as to create laws to compel others to use “transgender pronouns.” This issue is consistently in the headlines. Why is it important?

The Talmud (Shabbat 67b) mentions a practice in which a man would call his wife by his name and she would call him by her name. In a sense they exchanged genders. The Talmud includes this practice in the “ways of the Amorite,” which are forbidden. What is the underlying philosophy, or worldview that this practice expresses and does it fit a worldview that is popular today?

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By Evelyn Gordon

For the second time in two months, a major study has shown that anti-Semitism in Europe is surging, and the far-right isn’t primarily to blame. Yet American Jewish leaders remain fixated on the idea that right-wing anti-Semitism is the principal threat to Jewish life.

Last month’s study by the Joint Distribution Committee surveyed 893 Jewish leaders and professionals from throughout Europe. Inter alia, it found that Jews felt safer in right-wing Eastern Europe than the liberal West by a 20-point margin.

The new study, by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, surveyed almost 16,500 Jews in the 12 E.U. states where most European Jews live. Overall, 89 percent of respondents said anti-Semitism had worsened in their country in the last five years, 85 percent considered anti-Semitism a “very” or “fairly” big problem, and 38 percent have considered emigrating because of it. Additionally, 28 percent always or frequently avoid “wearing, carrying or displaying” anything identifiably Jewish, and 43 percent sometimes do.
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by Tabitha Korol

“A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within. ” — Ariel Durant, Russian-born American researcher and writer, co-author of The Story of Civilization, Pulitzer Prize winner for general non-fiction. (1898-1981)

While the United Nations agreed to flood Western nations with thousands of strong, able-bodied young men to overwhelm our security forces, our healthcare system, and our finances to feed, clothe and house them, there is yet another way to reduce our ability to deal with the invasion.  The system began some time ago, and although we cannot be certain that this was their end game, it is certainly another method of realizing the left’s aspiration of globalism.   It is time to gather the many components.

The Women’s movement began with the right to vote in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, evolving into every facet of their lives in the ‘60s,– sexuality, family, and work.  The National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA), established in 1977, focused on social transformation,  rethinking gender, bio-politics of humanity, post-capitalism, revolutions and utopian projects, environmental justice, climate change, and more.  Often repackaged, we see these concepts increasingly governing our schools today, disturbing trends for today’s students.

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T. Belman. Upon hearing of Trump’s withdrawal, I tried my best to leave open the possibility that he was doing a good thing. This article expresses what I always thought and now think.  I am now hoping that he will be dissuaded from following through.

By Rovvy Lepor, AMERICAN THINKER

President Trump, without consultation with Republican leaders in Congress, announced his planned immediate withdrawal from Syria.  If President Trump follows through on his planned withdrawal, it will translate into one of the biggest national security blunders in recent history, will embolden our most dangerous enemies, and will endanger the security of the United States and our allies.  A withdrawal from Syria is a betrayal to the forces of good and a great gift to the forces of evil, and it must not happen.

President Trump issued a surprise announcement on December 19 that the U.S. would immediately begin pulling out all 2,000 U.S. troops stationed in Syria.  President Trump stated that since the U.S. has defeated ISIS in Syria and he does not wish to leave troops in harm’s way, it is time to immediately withdraw for their benefit and safety.  However, if one is a student of history and is attuned to current events, it is abundantly clear that a U.S. withdrawal from Syria will almost certainly require a later return of a much larger U.S. military presence and a major war in the Middle East.  This war will almost certainly claim many lives in the Middle East, including a high number of U.S. troops. Read more…