Ted Belman. Abbas reiterates: It’s the full tax money or nothingI think Abbas is threatening riots as a result of having no money coming in.

By David Singer, CFP

Israel’s decision to withhold US$138 million dollars in tax revenues collected for the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) – equalling the estimated annual payments made to Palestinian Arabs (or their families) carrying out random and indiscriminate attacks against Israeli civilians—marks a watershed in Israel-PLO relations.

Israel’s action will see the PLO being finally jettisoned as a possible negotiating partner on President Trump’s long-delayed peace plan—deferred yet again until after the Israeli elections in April.
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By Adi Rubinstein and Efrat Forsher, CJN 

Zehut leader Moshe Feiglin believes that his party will be the dark horse, or the “surprise,” of the upcoming April 9 elections in Israel.

In an interview with Israel Hayom, Feiglin, who in the past ran for leadership of the Likud Party, said, “We are not just talking about the electoral threshold. Looking at the momentum we have created, we can be much more than that.”

Feiglin is dismissive of recent polls that do not bode well for Zehut.
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The following is a letter from Morton Klein, President of the National Zionist Organization of America to Nancy Pelosi:

Dear Madam Speaker, 

We are writing to you to express our profound, even frightened concern and, indeed, our pained astonishment that you have decided to appoint newly-elected legislator, Representative Ihlan Omar, to the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

We cannot believe that Representative Omar has been appointed to the Committee on the strength on any particular expertise or competence she holds in foreign affairs.

We do know, however, that Representative Omar has a horrific and frightening record of viciously anti-Israel actions that amount to antisemitism as defined by the State Department definition of antisemitism as determined in its May 2016 document, ‘Defining antisemitism.’
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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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