By Dave Boyer – The Washington Times – Friday, February 15, 2019

President Trump declared a national emergency on the southern border Friday, saying he’ll defy Congress to divert about $6.5 billion in unspent federal funds to build more border walls that lawmakers have refused to authorize.

“We’re going to confront the national security crisis at our southern border,” the president said. “We’re talking about an invasion of our country.”

He called the declaration “a great thing to do.”

In a Rose Garden event, the president signed a spending bill to keep the government open, a measure that provides nearly $1.4 billion for border barriers.
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By Hana Levi Julian, JEWISH PRESS

The Bayit Yehudi party and National Union signed a merger agreement on Thursday night.

The two parties agreed to run together in a joint list in the upcoming Knesset April 9 elections.

Under the agreement, former IDF Chief Rabbi Rafi Peretz will head the joint list. Both parties will receive an equal number of mandates.
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During his 10 years in office, former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper took a pro-Israel stance that has remained the country’s policy to this day • In an interview with Israel Hayom, Harper talks about anti-Israel bias and the investigations into Prime Minister Netanyahu.

By Erez Linn, ISRAEL HAYOM

Former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper

It’s incredibly hard to anger someone from Canada. Try as you might, it will take some time before a Canadian begins to lose their temper or raise their voice – unless of course the topic of discussion is ice hockey. Canada takes pride in being a country where, unlike the American behemoth to its south, everything goes smoothly – and culturalism takes precedence over aggression, to the point where things can get extremely boring.

In the international arena, too, Canada has for years taken care to do the “correct” thing to ensure it is accepted by everyone. That is why Canada has historically taken a central role in peacekeeping forces and has always tried to differentiate itself from U.S. policies in the world.
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Now that she has attacked Elliot Abrams, I wonder where Representative Ilhan Omar stands on the issue of FGM given that she is a Somali-American and the practice is pandemic among Somalis. No one has asked her about it publicly. I am asking her here.

Prof. Phyllis Chesler, INN

Many Westerners seem to believe that oppressed Muslim, Hindu, or Sikh women are by definition, frightened, submissive, peaceful, and quiet.

Is this true of face-masked or hijab-wearing women who purposely stand right next to other women at prayer and who blow them and their young children right up?

How quiet were the young women in hijab who refused to allow Nonie Darwish to speak at Wellesley by repeatedly coughing loudly, then getting up, one by one, to leave their row and the room, only to return to continue their demonstration?
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PM touts public relations with Arab leaders at Warsaw conference.

By Yoni Kempinski, INN

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu considers the international conference which took place in Warsaw this week to be a success and a sign of the diplomatic progress Israel has made in the Middle East.

“I can reveal that something happened here. Of the five Arab foreign ministers who spoke, four spoke out against Iran and spoke of Israel’s right to defend itself. They talked about the fact that once the main issue was the Palestinian issue, but today they said that the Iranian issue should be at the top. When I spoke yesterday, they did not leave, they sat. They did not just sit. They did not just nod. here are many contacts, but here there was something public with a group picture,” Netanyahu said.
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Laws against boycotting the Jewish state are patterned after those that protect gays and lesbians.

By Eugene Kontorovich, WSJ

The ACLU’s latest target is the Combatting BDS Act, which passed the Senate last week 77-23. The bill is quite modest compared with the anti-BDS measures enacted in 26 states in recent years, which the ACLU is also challenging. Those laws prohibit state contracts with, and investment in, companies that boycott Israel-connected firms. The federal Combating BDS Act would simply declare that the state laws don’t violate U.S. foreign policy.

Despite the bipartisan support the bill enjoyed in the Senate and overwhelming approval of the underlying state legislation, it faces a difficult road in the House, where radical Democrats are united against it. Read more…

Speaking at U.S.-orchestrated Mideast convention in Warsaw, the senior Trump aide says plan will be presented after Israeli election in April ? Bahraini FM says diplomatic relations with Israel will happen ‘eventually’

By Noa Landau, HAARETZ

WARSAW – Jared Kushner, senior aide to U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday both Israel and the Palestinians will have to compromise in the administration’s peace plan, which will be presented after the upcoming Israeli election in April.

Kushner was speaking at a closed session at a U.S.-orchestrated convention on the Middle East in Poland.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he won’t judge the plan before he sees it, and hopes the Palestinians will do the same.
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Tehran’s behavior gives the lie to the idea that it matches conciliation with conciliation. It matches conciliation with contempt.

By Bret Stephens, NYT

An Iranian woman carrying a picture of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, during a ceremony to mark the 40th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Tehran.Masoud Shahrestani/Tasnim News Agency, via Reuters

A powerful statement that needs to be seriously considered by all Americans has been issued by Rabbi Aryeh Spero, spokesman for the National Conference on Jewish Affairs

“It is becoming more obvious by the day–even by the tweet-hour–that newly elected Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is anti-Semitic and is peddling her anti-Israel and anti-Jewishness through the well-known and effective drip-by-drip method.

It is a strategy, as we have seen from Islamists in Europe, where an anti-Israel or anti-Jewish statement is made and then partially retracted after an uproar. It is repeated multiple times, followed by multiple half-hearted retractions with the goal and effect being the slow but inevitable seepage of anti-Jewish caricatures into the country’s political discourse and into the minds of its people.
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The drift between the U.S. and European countries over the nuclear deal may not be resolved, but a photo-op for Netanyahu alongside Arab leaders could bolster diplomatic ties

Zvi Bar’el HAARETZ  

T. Belman.  The Saudis are doing everything in their power to ensure that Bibi doesn’t get reelected.  They have vasilated between supporting Trump’s peace deal or rejecting it.  But while they presently reject it, their support is not crucial. Either is the support of King Abdullah or Abbas.

It will happen anyway regardless if they are against it or not.

Veteran diplomat, in unprecedented interview, says Riyadh wants to ‘get our point across directly’ to Israelis: Solve the Palestinian issue and then ‘we can go far’

By TOI STAFF 13 February 2019, 

Forget Ilhan Omar; pay attention to her Jewish support system

By Yisroel Medad

TED BELMAN. WE ALL KNOW HE IS RIGHT AND SO WAS KAHANE.

Otzma Yehudit candidate calls for all Jews even left wing ones, to make aliyah. He also calls most Arabs “enemies of Israel.”

BY JERUSALEM POST STAFF

European and American funding of cover up organisations should be banned, their offices in the USA and EU closed – and those identified as Hamas and PFLP members deported.

By David Singer, INN

Ted Belman. I wrote to Trump suggesting that Israel would be willing to make a gift to Making America Great Again in the sum of the $5.8 billion to pay for this phase of the wall. I suggested that Israel could borrow the money thereby increasing her very low Debt to GDP ratio from 64% to 68%. This higher ratio would still compare very favourably with America’s 105%, UK’s 87.7% and France’s 97%

Of coarse if America wanted to thank Israel for the gift she could always assist in providing inducements to the Palestinians to emigrate.

By Ben Marquis, CONSERVATIVE TRIBUNE

As Democrats have avoided providing funding for walls or barriers as part of President Donald Trump’s priority effort to secure the southern border, some Republicans who support the construction of a border wall have sought out alternative means to obtain the necessary funding.

Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz actually devised a rather ingenious plan last year that would utilize the forfeited and seized assets of Mexican drug cartel leaders to help pay for improved border security measures, especially barriers, fencing and walls, where necessary.
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