By Jonathan Schanzer and Varsha Koduvayur, NY POST

There’s a new hitch in President Trump’s plan to form a united front among Gulf states and Israel against Iran.

Kuwait’s ambassador to the United Nations this month lambasted Israel, charging the Jewish state with “deploying a vast and well-developed arsenal of weaponry against an unarmed people.” A Kuwaiti cleric, just weeks later, denied the Holocaust and the existence of gas chambers, claiming the scale was impossible: “How many ovens would you need to burn 6 million human beings?”

Of course, this is a notable exception to the pattern of Gulf Arab states lately increasing their outreach to Israel. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman tacitly acknowledged Israel’s right to exist in April. The UAE and Bahrain sent national teams to compete in the first leg of a major cycling race this spring in Israel. In June, an Israeli delegation visited Bahrain, and in May, Bahrain’s foreign minister tweeted about Israel’s right to defend itself.
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By Adam Dalgliesh

In previous columns, here, here, here and here, I have outlined what I think are the main reasons for Israel’s security and to some extent demographic crisis. In one of these columns, I also outlined what I hope a practical, long-term political action plan to remedy them.

The plan aims first of all to deal with what I see as the primary cause of these woes, which is the domination of Israel’s government by self-appointed, unelected, semi-secret and unaccountable committees, not appointed by or subject to the authority of elected officials. But there is also a second reason for Israel’s security and demographic woes, which is Israel’s terrible image abroad. I promised to show how my “multi-pronged” political action plan can be used to address this disaster as well. This column is my attempt to fulfill that promise.

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Some 154 organizations from 16 countries sign letter urging EU lawmakers to exclude Israeli defense contractors from $117 billion research and innovation program in 2021-2027 • Move could cost Israel billions of dollars in grants, officials say.

By Ariel Kahana, ISRAEL HAYOM

Anti-Israel activists in Europe have renewed their efforts to exclude Israel from the European Union’s next research and development initiative, Israeli officials said.

Israel is part of the current R&D initiative, Horizon 2020.

The next program, dubbed FP9, will run from 2021 to 2027 and lays the foundation for Horizon Europe, an ambitious €100 billion ($117 billion) research and innovation program meant to succeed Horizon 2020, the eighth framework program.
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Prime Minister demands that bill defining Israel as a Jewish State pass final reading before end of Knesset’s summer session.

By Zvi Lev, INN
Prime Minister ordered coalition party heads to fast-track a bill defining Israel as a Jewish State in order to enable it to pass its final reading before the end of the Knesset’s summer session.

Tourism Minister Yariv Levin, who has been tasked by Netanyahu to ensure the bill’s passage, said that he will find a formula acceptable to all the various governing parties and to have the final draft ready to be voted on by the Knesset by next week.

“The Nationality law is one of the most important laws ever dealt with by the Knesset. It expresses the deepest foundations of Zionism and the foundations upon which the State of Israel was built,” said Levin.

The Knesset had approved the bill’s first reading back in 2017 despite opposition from the Kulanu faction, which demanded that an amendment instructing courts to rule according to Jewish civil law in issues which Israeli law does not address be removed from the final version.
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By Adam Dalgliesh

An Israeli-supervised port to supply Gaza is obviously a really nutty, self-destructive idea. Perhaps it will never happen if the Knesset (on mainly financial grounds) refuses to appropriate money for it. But the UN and EU may well implement the plan, with or without Israeli participation. The Israel government is crazy even to give these hostile powers the idea.

The best possible Israeli policy that is possible under present international conditions: A complete Israeli embargo on all goods originating in Israel from reaching Gaza, and a complete embargo on all Gazan products destined for Israel or transiting Israeli territory.
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By David Gerstman, THE TOWER

Charles Krauthammer, the Washington Post the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist who died last week at 68, was remembered for his kindness and generosity, as well as for the sophisticated analyses he brought to the political issues of the day.

For me, Krauthammer was influential in the development of my political views. His columns were also frequently a relief, as he was one of the most articulate and skilled defenders of Israel in the news media.

Krauthammer was one of the few columnists at a major U.S. newspaper who was not just pro-Israel, but an unabashed Zionist.

It would be impossible to cover the full range of Krauthammer’s work, who wrote 1,600 columns and numerous longer articles over a 34-year career. I would like to focus on just his defenses of Israel through the lens of history, and specifically Jewish history.
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IRAN WATER PROTESTS Enter 4th Day As Economy Implodes – THOUSANDS Take to the Street (VIDEO)

100,000 Rally for FREE IRAN at Annual Paris Conference – with Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani (VIDEO) #FreeIran2018

Can Iran stop the downward spiral of its currency?

DEBKA

Israel’s armed forces are distributing tents, food, water and medicines to the tens of thousands of Syrian refugees reaching its Golan border in flight from the incredibly brutal Russian and Syrian air strikes on southern Syria. The figures are staggering – 342 air strikes on Thursday night, June 28, against rebel-held towns near the Israeli and Jordanian borders – of which 299 were conducted by the Russian air force and 43 by Syrian pilots. Nawa, a town opposite the Israeli Golan border took the heaviest bombardment.

Israel’s military correspondents, playing ball with the IDF, are withholding these horrific figures from the public, and so people don’t understand how 60,000 refugees fleeing from Nawa are suddenly fetching up on Israel’s northern border and joining the 20,000 already encamped there. While the IDF’s humanitarian conduct is laudable, the reason for the disaster is not. This new human catastrophe could have been prevented had the IDF acted in time to preempt the threat to Israel’s borders, and countered the onslaught on Daraa mounted by Assad’s army and allies with Russian air support 10 days ago.

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STRATFOR

T. Belman. Although the first sentance in Res 242 says that land cannot be acquired by force, I always considered that was a deliberate mistatement of the law which permits land to be acquired in a war of self defense. This article disagrees with my understanding. What is your understanding?

By Amy Contrada, AMERICAN THINKER

The transgender war on cultural norms is not just about restrooms and pronouns.  It’s about denying biological fact and quotidian reality.  It’s about an epidemic of irrationality, a cultural contagion, a mass delusion claiming more victims every day.  It’s about silencing free thinkers who refuse to bow to the radical “gender” ideology.

Absurd theories that deny scientific fact have been adopted by the mainstream press, the entertainment industry, the medical establishment, public schools, universities, corporate management, and government agencies.  People who fear social isolation and charges of bigotry are following along.
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Howard Laitin (credentials below) writes

David Suissa, JEWISH JOURNAL,

1. Regarding  JJ [June 22-28, 2018] coverage of Altalena.

Some years ago several of my associates went into this area in detail. I read the materials at their request to serve them as a thorough reviewer  to sharpen up their presentations.    Working from imperfect memory, I  believe that Dr. Noam Weissman’s  presentation is most correct . I would also suggest that you might want to contact  Ted Belman  of ISRAPUNDIT for  significant articles since his archives are very comprehensive. The basic subject of the study was an analytical speculation as to the effect of the destruction of the war materials and the disruption of the IDF defense of Jerusalem. The conclusion was, if I remember correctly, that the IDF would have stood a good chance of preventing the Jordanian Legion from occupying East Jerusalem had the incident  not happened  and if the materials and forces that were neutralized by Ben-Gurion’s actions had been appropriately deployed. Further, most of the materials that I read focused on Ben-Gurion’s immediate political motivations.
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JNS.org –

An in-depth analysis of more than 100 petitions filed in Israel’s Supreme Court against illegal construction in Judea and Samaria revealed preferential treatment given to leftist groups, according to a report by Arutz Sheva.

The newly released “Measure for Measure 2018: An Index of Judicial Parity,” published by the Regavim organization, studied petitions brought by leftist, pro-Palestinian groups against Jewish settlements as well as petitions brought by nationalist Zionist organizations against illegal Arab builders, based on data from reports in 2010 and 2015. Regavim is a pro-Israel NGO  monitoring and pursuing legal action in Israeli courts against illegal Palestinian construction in Israel.

Almost all of the petitions were based on identical points of law.
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DEBKA

BY Ben Marquis, CONSERVATIVE TRIBUNE

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy shocked the political world and sent Democrats into an anguished tailspin when it was announced Wednesday that he would be retiring after serving 30 years on the bench of the highest court in the land.

Kennedy, a generally conservative Republican who’d been nominated to the court by former President Ronald Reagan, had nevertheless become known as a swing-vote due to his tendency to side with the liberal justices on certain social issues, such as abortion and LGBT rights.

“It’s the most consequential change to the Supreme Court’s membership in many decades,” Dan Epps, an associate professor of law at Washington University School of Law who once clerked for Kennedy, told the Washington Examiner. “Now, he was a conservative Republican for sure, but there were a bunch of issues where he wasn’t rock solid.”
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