By Noga Tarnopolsky, LA TIMES

“King Bibi,” a documentary tracking Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 40 years of public life through the lens of his appearances in the news media, sold out both times it played at the Jerusalem Film Festival, which closed Sunday.

It was an easy sell: Israelis are obsessed by the media and by their long-serving prime minister, who is considered both a wizard of communication and a leader defined by his hatred of the press.

Production notes for the film mention that 20 years before Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, “Netanyahu already understood the political benefits of a toxic relationship with the media, and direct communication with the public.”
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The growth years are set to succumb to a new era of debt and distress, forcing the country to look inward and maybe even dispense with Erdogan

By David  Rosenberg, HAARETZ

One of Israel’s frustrations with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wasn’t just his visceral dislike of the Jewish state but the fact that he was presiding over a country with growing economic and military power and pretensions to regional leadership. Erdogan wasn’t only an enemy but an increasingly powerful one.

Those days are now coming to an end. Erdogan may remain an enemy, at least in terms of inflammatory rhetoric, but Turkey’s economy is rapidly going down the drain and with it will go his ability to influence events in the region.

The Turkish economic miracle that Erdogan was given credit for over the last decade and a half was more an illusion than reality. The economy grew rapidly, at times at a pace that exceeded China’s, but its foundation was faulty.

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NOBODY INTIMIDATES CANDACE OWENS. SHE HOLDS HER GROUND AND GETS THE BETTER OF EVERY EXCCHANGE. SHE IS AMAZING.

The international community must continue to shoulder its political and moral responsibilities towards Palestinian refugees

BY REUTERS

AMMAN – A United Nations agency helping Palestinian refugees is facing a severe financial shortfall. Jordan warns of “catastrophic” impact on the lives of millions of refugees in the region.

Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said after meeting visiting UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) Commissioner-General Pierre Krähenbühl the budget crisis facing the agency could deprive refugees of core education, healthcare and food security service that would only “deepen their humanitarian plight.”

“UNRWA faces a dangerous financial deficit that threatens catastrophic consequences on refugees if it is not covered before its financial allocations run out,” Safadi was quoted as saying in a foreign ministry statement.
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By Patricia McCarthy, AMERICAN THINKER

All written history is revisionist.  With each successive generation, history is rewritten by people with new access to classified information, memoirs of those who were present, and the ever changing political landscape that colors everything we read about history and current events, political and cultural.  Often, the revisions of important events of the past are welcome and truthful, corrections of past misperceptions.  But just as often, revisionist history is slanted toward the politics of the era, the decade, or the current climate.

Since the 1960s and the takeover of higher education by tenured radicals that followed, American history has indeed been revised to favor the progressive left and to indoctrinate Americans with a distorted view, if not outright misrepresentation, of the facts of American history.  The 1960s were characterized by the anti-Americanism of the new left, and these leftists set out to drastically alter how Americans learned the history of their country.  Academia, in short, lied.  Its books lied.Dinesh D’Souza’s new documentary,  Death of a Nation, attempts to correct the record and to inform viewers about the various -isms that are generally conflated by academics and the media, most all of whom are anti-American leftists: Nazism, socialism, communism, Marxism, fascism, and progressivism.  They are all of a piece, and the left admires and endorses them all in one form or another.  All are anti-capitalist, anti-American.  All are characterized by totalitarianism to one degree or another.
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We are closing in on operation in Gaza,’ IDF senior official says – IDF hits more than 140 Gaza targets; three Gazans said killed, including pregnant woman and child – U.S. Mideast envoy Greenblatt: Hamas ‘subjecting people to war conditions’

By Jack Khoury, HAARETZ

A fireball exploding during Israeli air strikes in Gaza City, August 8, 2018 AFP

The Israeli military said Thursday morning that it struck more than 140 targets in Gaza in retaliation to a massive barrage of rockets that was fired at Israel overnight. More than 150 rockets were fired at Israel, the military said, with 25 rockets intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system. The rest landed in open areas.

Government advancing legislation to force organization to fund state-run national infrastructure projects

By ANDREW TOBIN, TOI

JTA — American Jews dropped nickels and dimes into the Jewish National Fund’s blue charity boxes to help Zionists build the Jewish state.

More than a century later, the JNF, known in Hebrew as Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael, is rich. It owns 13 percent of all the land in the country and brings in some $3 billion a year, most of it from land sales.

Israel now wants a big cut of that revenue to help fund state-run national infrastructure projects, and the government is pushing legislation that would force the JNF to pay up. But the JNF is holding out, saying it is doing a fine job developing the country on its own.
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JEWISH NATIONAL FUND

In response to petitions submitted to the Supreme Court, KKL-JNF emphasized the importance of Zionism, alongside the fact that the Jewish state belongs to the Jewish people, and that it is also the state of all its citizens

Photo: KKL-JNF Photo Archive

• KKL-JNF – Trustee for the Jewish People on its land
• The Perpetual Property of the Jewish People
• The Position of KKL-JNF
• KKL-JNF – A Green Global Organization for ALL Residents of Israel
• Your Opinion is Important to us

KKL-JNF – Trustee for the Jewish People on its land

WIKEPEDIA

Leasing policy controversy

A community in the Negev established by the JNF under its Blueprint Negev program

Aminadav Forest

The JNF stipulates that only Jews can buy, mortgage or lease JNF land. Article 23 of the JNF lease states that the lessee must pay compensation to the JNF if this stipulation is violated.[64] On 13 October 2004, Adalah, an organization and legal center for Arab minority rights in Israel, submitted a petition to the Supreme Court entitled Challenging the Prohibition on Arab Citizens of Israel from Living on Jewish National Fund Land.[65] Shortly afterwards, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and the Arab Center for Alternative Planning also filed a petition to the Supreme Court challenging the ILA policy as discriminatory.[66] The JNF responded to the two petitions on 9 December. In its response, the JNF stated:
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The Jewish Nation-State Law is a major event in Israel’s history and in the Zionist vocation. In days to come, this basic law will be broadly recognized and widely heralded. Jewish history is on the

BY JOEL H. GOLOVENSKY, JPOST  AUGUST 3, 2018

Foreign ministers agree to introduce ‘blocking statute’ banning EU companies from abiding by US president’s new penalties

INDEPENDANT UK

The UK has agreed to work with the EU to try to block the impact of Donald Trump‘s new sanctions against Iran.

Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, signed a joint statement with other EU foreign ministers to ensure European companies doing business with Iran will be protected.

The ministers promised to introduce a “blocking statute” to ban European firms from abiding by the US sanctions, which were reimposed by Mr Trump on Monday.

The US president decided to reintroduce the penalties after withdrawing from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal negotiated by his predecessor, Barack Obama.
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BY CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS, JIHAD WATCH,  AUG 7, 2018

Following Saudi Arabia’s arrest of two more women’s rights activists, as part of the government’s crackdown on dissidents, Canada responded by demanding the release of the women and accusing Saudi Arabia of human rights violations. Well-known activists Samar Badawi and Nassima al-Sada were among those arrested. Samar is the sister of Raif Badawi, a humanitarian writer and dissident who was “flogged in public 50 times in January. He has 950 lashes and nearly a decade in prison left to serve – simply for blogging about free speech.”

Canada’s rebuke and demands drew the ire of the Saudis, followed by a swift, wrathful response: the Saudis expelled Canadian ambassador, Dennis Horak,  froze all trade, announced the withdrawal of all Saudi-sponsored students at Canadian universities, colleges and other schools, and suspended all flights by Saudi Arabian Airlines. Yet Canada stood strong in the face of Saudi accusations. Its display of strength is admirable, as women are being thrown in jail in Saudi Arabia for standing up for their rights. Women are also forced to live under the degrading guardianship system, under which they must seek permission from a male, be it husband, father, brother, son, uncle, to make basic decisions in their lives.
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Lobby group warns hate speech could lead to violence against homosexual community

By TOI STAFF

Participants in Jerusalem’s Gay Pride Parade, August 2, 2018. (Hadas Parush/Flash90)

Close to 600 US and Canadian rabbis from across the spectrum of Judaism have signed a letter calling on Orthodox rabbis in Israel to retract a recent letter which described gay people as perverts who are striving to destroy the notion of family.

The document also urged the Israeli government to reverse recent legislation that excluded unmarried men from the right to father a child via surrogacy, and advocated greater separation of religion and state in Israel.
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Trump’s top security adviser on Monday urged Iran to take up an offer of talks with the United States or suffer more pain from economic sanctions

President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel during their bilateral meeting, July 11, 2018.Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday the new U.S. sanctions on Iran were “the most biting sanctions ever imposed.”

“In November they ratchet up to yet another level. Anyone doing business with Iran will NOT be doing business with the United States. I am asking for WORLD PEACE, nothing less!” he tweeted.
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Rival Palestinian Arab groups are the main problem with an Israel-Hamas truce, but far from the only one.

bY Yochanan Visser, INN

As Palestinian terror movements continued incendiary balloon attacks on southern Israel over the weekend, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu convened his security cabinet to discuss a proposal for a five to ten-year-long truce with Hamas in Gaza.

The proposed deal was brokered by Egypt and the United Nations and reportedly includes easing restrictions on imports from Israel, the full opening of the Rafah crossing on the Egypt Gaza border, reconciliation between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority which would result in the PA taking over control of the coastal enclave, and elections to be held in Gaza within six months.
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DEBKA

The Israeli security cabinet meeting Sunday, Aug. 5, resolved not to revise its counter-terror policy for Gaza in response to the UN-Egyptian truce plan. The statement the cabinet issued: “The IDF is prepared for any scenario” – means that an effort will be made for now to avoid triggering a major conflagration by an escalated response to the Hamas’ kite-cum-balloon offensive. The ministers acted on the advice of the IDF chief Lt. Gen. Gady Eisenkot, who proposed continuing the measured policy of restraint, in light of reports coming in from Gaza City that most Hamas leaders were themselves keen on a ceasefire and the opening of the border crossings to Israel and Egypt and for that reason would let their arson campaign peter out.
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