On Saudi Arabia, Trump Brings No Change  

T. Belman. A few months after Saudi Arabia pledged to stop funding Islamic extremism, a July 5/17 report in the UK found Saudi Arabia largest funder of extremism in UK,. Six months later FT reports Saudi Arabia struggles to check extremism in schools.

By MICHAEL BRENDAN DOUGHERTY NATIONAL REVIEW

On the Korean Peninsula, he does, changing America’s posture toward the totalitarian regime, to the dismay of our allies.

Sometimes you think about the cosmic roulette wheel. Or at least I do. Who could have predicted in 2013 that the next Republican president would almost certainly be unable to make a state visit to the United Kingdom but would meet with Kim Jong-un and refer to him as a man who “loves his people”? What were the odds?

Donald Trump promised change, and you can’t deny that change has come. At home, corporate taxes were slashed. Obamacare’s mandates have been altered beyond recognition. He quickly put Neil Gorsuch in a Supreme Court seat Obama had reserved for Merrick Garland. And of course, as we’ve seen this week, Trump is willing to change the patterns of enforcement at America’s border.

Abroad, he’s using authority long ceded by Congress to implement a series of trade measures against friend and rival alike. Canadian softwood lumber, steel — coming are levies on Chinese tech too.
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June 26, 2018 | 10:38 am | Comments »

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It’s the Beginning of the End of the Bilderberg Era  

Strategic Culture Foundation

An activist protests near the meeting place for the conference of the Bilderberg Group meeting in Sitges, Spain, Thursday, June 3, 2010. The Bilderberg Group is an unofficial conference of around 130 invitation-only guests who are insiders in politics, banking, business, military and the media. The group’s meetings are held in secret and are closed to the public. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

The beginning of the end of the Bilderberg/Soros vision is in sight. The Old Order will cling on, even to the last of its fingernails. The Bilderberg vision is the notion of multi-cultural, international cosmopolitanism that surpasses old-time nationalism; heralding the end of frontiers; and leading toward a US-led, ‘technocratic’, global economic and political governance. Its roots lie with figures such as James Burnham, an anti-Stalin, former Trotskyite, who, writing as early as 1941, advocated for the levers of financial and economic power being placedin the hands of a management class: an élite – which alone would be capable of running the contemporary state – thanks to this élite’s market and financial technical nous. It was, bluntly, a call for an expert, technocratic oligarchy.
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June 26, 2018 | 10:10 am | Comments »

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Trump peace plan delayed as Jordan balks at replacing PLO  

T. Belman. Trump will ditch both the PLO and the King because they are not pliable to his plan. He will brook no opposition.

The outcome of the Jordanian king’s visit to the White House this week is crucial to the advancement of Trump’s plan.

By David Singer, INN

President Trump’s long-awaited plan on ending the Arab-Israeli conflict will be further delayed following a flurry of diplomatic activity over the past week.

Critical to the success of Trump’s plan will involve replacing the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) as Israel’s negotiating partner, as it has been over the last 25 years. The PLO, administravely known as the Palestinian Authority (PA) has cut its own throat by making it very clear it will have nothing to do with anything Trump proposes.

Trump’s Senior Advisor Jared Kushner and Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt met in New York City on 15 June with United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley and United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres.  The White House reported that they had a productive discussion about the efforts of the United States to promote peace in the Middle East and to meet humanitarian needs in Gaza.
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June 25, 2018 | 1:08 pm | 2 Comments »

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Kushner: US plan will be made public with or without Abbas  

T. Belman. Increasingly it looks like all the leaks about the “plan” are near the target. It is not remotely the Jordan Option I was working toward.  As I recall it was rumoured that we get to keep about half of Area “C”.  Abu Dis as capital has been mentioned many times. It seems that the Gulf States are on board with it. But will Israel agree? Will Abbas agree.? More important, will the Palestinian people agree?

Obviously it is better than anything Israel has been offered before. In my plan we got to keep all the land and all the Arabs save for those we induce to emigrate.  In this plan we get to keep most of the land and 800,000 less Arabs. We can then focus our efforts on getting as many of the rest to emigrate.

This interview was planned and had a purpose. I suspect that they are getting ready to releae the plan.

Itis clear that Saudi Arabia wants to be the custodian of Al Aksa Mosque but maybe not of the rest of the Temple Mount as I have poposed.

US envoy’s message to Palestinians: ‘Don’t allow your grandfather’s conflict to determine your children’s future’.

By Herb Keinon, JPOST

Jared Kushner speaking at the opening of the United States embassy in Jerusalem, May 14, 2018

Jared Kushner speaking at the opening of the United States embassy in Jerusalem, May 14, 2018. (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)

Washington is willing to engage with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas if he returns to negotiations, but if he is not willing, the United States will likely air its long-awaited blueprint for peace publicly, Jared Kushner said in a rare interview published Sunday in a Palestinian newspaper.

Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, made his comments to Al-Quds at the end of a five-country regional tour with Mideast negotiator Jason Greenblatt to promote the US plan. The PA has boycotted the duo and rejected the plan even before it has been released.
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June 25, 2018 | 12:43 pm | 1 Comment »

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The first steps for an Israeli victory in its long war of survival  

By Adam Dalgliesh

In my previous posts  I have attempted to identify the nexus between Israel’s failure to take decisive steps against the terrorist aggressors constantly attacking it, its failure to respond to the constant false accusations against it by foreign governments, and by the foreign and part of Israel’s domestic media, and the domination of the Israeli government by an unelected, self-appointed coalition of judges, lawyers and bureaucrats who are not accountable to Israel’s elected politicians, or much the less,  the Israeli people. Whew! Even to construct a sentence that would identify all of these interconnected problems is almost impossible. All the harder will it be to untangle these problems and tackle them one by one in real life! I have put off my promise to our readers to present a long-term plan to remove these obstacles to peace, security, international legitimacy and permanence for Israel in order to first identify and explain the complex tangle of problems that need to be solved. But while there is much, much more that needs to be done to document these problems and lay them out in detail, I don’t think I can put off any longer outlining my proposed plan of attack on them.
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June 25, 2018 | 8:55 am | 5 Comments »

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Palestinian Capital in Abu Dis or Ramallah?  

T. Belman. Please note that Abu Dis with its population of 12,000, lies immediately to the east of Jerusalem including the eastern part, and to the south of Maale Adumin. It is 1.5 kilometers from the Al Aksa Mosque. Ramallah is 15 kilometers to the north and has a population of 57,000 Arabs. Both are outside of Jerusalem. Hebron on the other hand, lies 19 miles to the south of Jerusalem and has an Arab population of 216,000. Nablas with its Arab population of 126,000, lies 35 kilometers to the north of Ramallah.

The Save Jewish Jerusalem movement, calls for revoking the residency status of around 200,000 of the 313,000 residents of the Arab neighborhoods in the eastern part of the city, turning them over to the Palestinian Authority.

In other words, they propose dividing Greater Jerusalem (126.4 sq. km.) and transferring half of it (64 sq. km.) to the Palestinian Authority.

To this could be added Bethlehem with its population of over 100,000, of which only 12% are Christians, and Jericho with its population of 30,000 and distance to Amman of 45 kilometers.  Those Arabs represent about 1/3 of the Arab population in J&S and Jerusalem.

It may well be that Kushner’s touted peace plan would incorporate all these municipalities, containing over 750,000 Arabs, into a block of land that would be annexed to Jordan in some fashion and together they would constitute the Palestinian state. Although these areas would be limited to their present boundries, there is ample land east of the Jordan R for growth..

By Yoni Ben Menachem, JCPA, JAN 10/18

  • Mahmoud Abbas entirely rejects the option of Abu Dis or Ramallah serving as the Palestinian capital in an Israeli-Palestinian settlement, even though this possibility was discussed extensively in the past, and the Palestinian Authority began construction on the Palestinian parliamentary building in Abu Dis.
  •  The PA has done much to weaken its status in east Jerusalem, and when Abbas is replaced as PA chairman the names, Abu Dis and Ramallah, may again become relevant to an Israeli-Palestinian settlement.

On January 6, 2018, the Jerusalem committee of the Arab League, headed by Secretary-General Ahmed Abu Gheit, met in Amman to discuss President Trump’s declaration on Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
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June 25, 2018 | 12:05 am | 72 Comments »

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Russia in Syria: Caught Between Iran and Israel  

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 874, June 24, 2018

By Emil Avdaliani, BESA

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Intermittent Israeli strikes against Iranian positions in Syria have alarmed Russia, which is trying to solidify its military gains there. Active Israeli interference could bring down the highly unstable security architecture the Russians are working on in Syria. Moscow must balance between its war ally, Iran, and Israel, an important regional player – two states with radically different geopolitical imperatives.

Over the past several months, one of the Kremlin’s major concerns has been the extent to which Israel will continue to carry out preventive strikes on Syrian soil.

On February 10, an armed Iranian drone was shot down over Israeli airspace prompting a swift and devastating Israeli response. Two months later, on April 9, Israeli jets struck again, bombing the T4 base and killing 14 personnel – including at least seven IRGC troops. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called this a “very dangerous development.”

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June 24, 2018 | 4:32 pm | Comments »

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Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’ for the Middle East Might Live or Die in Cairo  

Disagreeing with the Saudis, Egypt insists that East Jerusalem be the Palestinian capital, making it clear that any economic plan for Gaza is no substitute for a diplomatic plan accepted by the Palestinians

Zvi Bar’el, HAARETZ

Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi meets with Trump envoy Jason Greenblatt and adviser Jared Kushner at the presidential palace in Cairo, June 21, 2018,

Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi meets with Trump envoy Jason Greenblatt and adviser Jared Kushner at the presidential palace in Cairo, June 21, 2018,STRINGER/AFP

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, has no doubt about the goal of the American “deal of the century.” “Its purpose is to bring down the Palestinian leadership and replace Mahmoud Abbas,” he told a newspaper over the weekend. Erekat is also certain that the Americans plan to bypass the UN refugee agency, the UNRWA, so that money earmarked for refugees goes directly to the countries hosting them. In this way, they would pull the rug out from under the refugee problem, one of the toughest issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

As a senior PA official told Haaretz, “the Palestinian Authority’s fear is what Palestinian officials call the Israeli, American, Saudi and Egyptian conspiracy, whose goal is to divide Gaza from the West Bank and provide an economic solution for Gaza while strengthening Hamas, thus avoiding diplomatic negotiations over the future of Palestine.”

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June 24, 2018 | 9:44 am | 20 Comments »

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German Islamic center raises money for Hezbollah  

Roughly 950 Hezbollah operatives raise funds in Germany for Hezbollah and recruit new members, according to German intelligence reports from 2017.

By Benjamin Weinthal, JPOST 

The Al-Mustafa Community Center in the northern German city-state of Bremen is a major hub for raising funds for Hezbollah in Lebanon, according to a German intelligence report reviewed by The Jerusalem Post.

The Bremen intelligence agency’s newly released report in June stated, “The Al-Mustafa-Community Center supports Hezbollah in Lebanon, especially by collecting donations.”

The United States, Canada, the Arab League, the Netherlands and Israel classify Hezbollah a terrorist organization. Germany and the European Union merely designate Hezbollah’s so-called military wing a terrorist entity.
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June 24, 2018 | 9:07 am | Comments »

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Macron Supports Sanctions against EU States that Turn Away Migrants  

Asharq Al-Awsat


French President Emmanuel Macron. (Reuters)

French President Emmanuel Macron announced on Saturday that he advocates imposing financial sanctions against European Union countries that turn away migrants.

He made his divisive remarks a day before the EU is set to hold an emergency meeting in Brussels to discuss disputes over migration with the aim to prepare the ground for a formal EU summit at the end of next week.

“You cannot have countries that massively benefit from the solidarity of the European Union and that massively voice their national selfishness when it comes to migrant issues,” he added, in a clear hint to Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, which oppose the EU relocation scheme for asylum seekers.
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June 24, 2018 | 8:29 am | Comments »

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Failed Israeli-Russian deal opens SW Syria to Syrian bombardment, Iranian/Hizballah presence  

DEBKA

Jun 22, 2018 @ 19:25 Daraa, Israel-Russia, Israel-US, Quneitra, Syrian army

Syria’s moves in the southwest this week followed Russia’s failure to persuade Israel to stand aside and allow Assad’s army to take charge of the Quneitra and Daraa regions on the Israeli and Jordanian borders. Moscow hoped that the Syrian rebel forces defending the two areas would lay down their arms and go over to Bashar Assad’s army. DEBKAfile’s military sources report that the Netanyahu government spurned Russia’s plan – not least for lack of trust, suspecting that the Syrians would cheat and let Hizballah reach its border. Last month, an attempt was made to trick Israel, after its consent to a previous Russian plan to hand the Beit Jinn enclave on Mt Hermon to Syria, by providing Hizballah troops with Syrian Army 4th Division uniforms.
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June 24, 2018 | 8:15 am | Comments »

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Decoding Trump  

Scott Adams and Dave Rubin: Trump’s Persuasion and Presidency (Full Interview)  Published on Nov 24, 2017  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWA5pOmSDgQ      1hour, 2 minutes

By Howard Laitin

Donald Trump and the stability of the loyalty of his followers has been perplexing to the left who claim that Trump lies and exaggerates about everything.

The left points to the Access Hollywood tapes and to Stormy Daniels and appeals to evangelicals  [and to other moral thinking people] to abandon Donald Trump on moral grounds.

Some analytical observers believe that Trumps  “stable support” is because Donald’Trump supporters take everything  that Donald Trump says figuratively ,while Donald Trump’s detractors take everything that Donald says absolutely literally. Donald Trump  supporters  state that Donald Trump should be evaluated not on what he says but on what they believe are his very substantial accomplishments.
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June 24, 2018 | 6:09 am | Comments »

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Liberal Jews are destroying their own religion  

By Jonathan Neumann, NYPOST

When two of the Jewish community’s most celebrated writers, Michael Chabon and his wife Ayelet Waldman, write an open letter stating that: “Any Jew, anywhere, who does not act to oppose President Donald Trump and his administration acts in favor of anti-Semitism; any Jew who does not condemn the president, directly and by name, for his racism, white supremacism, intolerance and Jew hatred, condones all of those things,” you don’t have to look far to see why.

American Judaism is broken because the Jewish left broke it.

A tiresome fixation on “tikkun olam,” which literally means “repair of the world,” has allowed Judaism to fall into disrepair.

The phrase “tikkun olam” was quietly lifted out of context from a Jewish prayer before the Second World War to mean social justice. It was popularized in the 1970s and 1980s by radicals like Michael Lerner, who founded the extreme left-wing magazine, Tikkun.

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June 24, 2018 | 5:57 am | Comments »

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Macron attacks Italy’s new anti-hijrah government, warns Euroscepticism is spreading “like leprosy”  

EMMANUEL Macron said populism is spreading across the continent “like leprosy” sparking fury from Italy’s new anti-establishment government as cracks within the EU deepen.

BY ,

French President Emmanuel Macron has launched an astonishing attack on the populist, nationalist, and traditionally conservative political parties rising in Europe, angering Italy’s new government.

Little globalist Emmanuel Macron is likening the rise of leaders who are determined to defend their own nations to the spread of leprosy. Macron has become a puppet for globalists, bent on the continuation of the hijrah, despite his people’s overwhelming backing of deporting jihadi suspects and “banning radical Islam.”

Despite Macron jumping on the bandwagon to usurp democratic institutions, and his fierce attack on “nationalist,” “populist” Italy:

An Italian poll has shown the right-populist La Lega led by firebrand Interior Minister Matteo Salvini ahead of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) for the first time.

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June 23, 2018 | 7:30 pm | 2 Comments »

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Top Palestinian negotiator accuses Kushner, Greenblatt of seeking to topple PA  

T. Belman. I think Erekat is on to something.

As American peace team holds talks in Israel and is boycotted by Abbas, his aide Saeb Erekat claims US wants to separate West Bank from Gaza, ‘terminate’ UNRWA

By TOI STAFF

PLO Secretary General Saeb Erekat in his Ramallah office, November 23, 2015. (AFP/Abbas Momani)

PLO Secretary General Saeb Erekat in his Ramallah office, November 23, 2015. (AFP/Abbas Momani)

Top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat on Saturday accused the US peace team of working to topple the Palestinian Authority, as the American envoys wrapped up a visit to the region aimed to push the Trump administration’s peace plan and enlist humanitarian aid for the Gaza Strip.

US President Donald Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, along with Jason Greenblatt, met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Friday following meetings earlier in the week with the leaders of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Egypt. They are expected to meet again with Netanyahu Saturday evening before returning to the US.
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June 23, 2018 | 6:49 pm | 2 Comments »

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How Qatar’s Jewish strategy backfired  

A look at how foreign countries lobby in Washington, reaching out to groups and individuals who they think can open doors.

By Seth Frantzman, JPOST

Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad

Six months ago, in January 2018, the world looked hopeful for Qatar. The small Gulf state had been blockaded by its neighbor Saudi Arabia, and Riyadh’s allies the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt broke relations. Qatar, which hosts a large US base, invested millions in a public relations effort in the US to counter its enemies. In the last days of January the US secretaries of state and defense sat with the Qatari leadership for a US-Qatar Strategic Dialogue confab. Doha seemed on the road to victory.
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June 23, 2018 | 1:45 pm | Comments »

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The Humanitarian Hoax of Illegal Immigrant Family Separation at the US Border – hoax 28  

By Linda Goudsmit, PUNDICITY

The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

Children are the future of every nation and culture on earth which makes them the most valuable natural resource in the world. Water, air, land, coal, natural gas, phosphorus, oil, minerals, iron, soil, forests and timber are all subjects of worldwide conservation efforts. What about the children??

Wars are fought over natural resources in competition for power and dominance. So it is with the children. The leftist exploitation of illegal immigrant children is a political dirty trick being played for the hearts and minds of the compassionate American electorate. This is how it works.
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June 23, 2018 | 5:30 am | 2 Comments »

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PLO: We foiled Trump’s Mideast peace plan  

T. Belman. Utter hubris. The PA and PLO have sidelined themselves and they don’t even know it.

Senior PLO leader boasts that Palestinian Authority effectively blocked President Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’.

By Dalit Halevi, INN

PLO leader Azzam al-Ahmed (center)

Azzam al-Ahmad, a senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organization and a Palestinian Authority legislator claimed recently that the PA had successfully blocked a long-awaited Middle East peace deal floated by President Donald Trump’s administration.

The peace plan, dubbed by Trump the “Deal of the century”, was never publicly released, though envoys Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt discussed the key issues in the deal with both Israeli and Palestinian Authority officials during a series of visits to the region since Trump took office in January 2017.
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June 22, 2018 | 4:20 pm | 16 Comments »

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ANALYSIS: Iran’s endgame in Syria has begun  

Only change in Iran’s bid to form land bridge from Iran to Israeli border is switch to Syrian uniforms by Hezbollah terrorists.

By Yochanan Visser, INN

Members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards

Iran’s attempts to build a permanent military infrastructure in Syria continue, while Israel extended its operations against the Iranian axis in Syria all the way to the Iraqi border this week.

At the same time, the Iranian-backed pro-Assad coalition finally launched the long anticipated offensive against rebel groups along the Jordanian and Israeli border, despite Israeli and American warnings that this could lead to a confrontation with the two staunch allies.

On Monday, the Israeli air force carried out a devastating attack on the Iraqi Kata’ib Hezbollah militia which has set up a base across the Iraqi border in Syria.
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June 22, 2018 | 2:02 pm | 5 Comments »

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