By Maj-Gen Gershon Hacohen, ISRAEL HAYOM

The enemy that has been setting our fields ablaze with incendiary kites has created a clear challenge for Israeli policymakers. The cumulative damage inflicted by the kites has turned the Gaza-Israel border area into barren land and has challenged the notion that the Israeli government can provide security for its citizens.

The kibbutzim in the area are right in demanding that the government put an end to this. Yes, the Israel Defense Forces’ rules of engagement are decided by the chief of general staff, and should not be formulated by a public debate. That said, in pleading with the government, the kibbutzim are true to their historical pioneering role.

This further underscores the fact that the struggle we are facing is a struggle over sovereignty, especially in that area. Nothing is stronger than civilians who refuse to give up and stay on their land.

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Until the 2015 general elections, more than half of the Kurdish electorate supported the Adalet and Kalkinma Partisi (AKP) led by President Tayyip Erdogan.

By Ofra Bengio, JPOST

The Turkish general and presidential elections scheduled for June 24 are among the most critical ones in the country’s history, since they are likely to decide the direction that Turkey heads – toward an unbridled authoritarian rule, or one that will regain some of its democratic traits. One of the big question marks in these elections is the stance of the Kurdish electorate, which represents about 20% of the total population.

Until the 2015 general elections, more than half of the Kurdish electorate supported the Adalet and Kalkinma Partisi (AKP) led by President Tayyip Erdogan. On one hand, the AKP’s Islamic stance appealed to the more conservative part of Kurdish society in southeastern Turkey. On the other hand, the covert and half-hearted peace process that the AKP initiated in 2009 and 2013-2015 with the Partiye Karkeren Kurdistan (PKK) – the insurgent group that has been fighting Turkey since 1984 – appealed to the more left-oriented Kurds.
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by Sam Westrop, NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE

In April, a federal court ruled that President Trump’s Twitter account serves as a public forum, meaning that his account may not block other Twitter users. Writing in the New York Times, law professor Noah Feldman declared: “This is the first time, to my knowledge, that the First Amendment has ever been applied to a private platform.”

In Silicon Valley, however, the thinking is currently very different. Social-media companies favor censorship, especially as a means to deal with the topical issues of “hate speech” and “fake news.” Facebook, for example, recently published its “community standards” policy on censoring “hate speech” in the wake of many months of bad press and public inquiries. The tech giant promises its users protection from attacks on race, ethnicity, disability, gender, and so on. Facebook even inadvertently released a proposed new feature that asked users whether each social-media post they encountered qualified as “hate speech.”
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Institute for Contemporary Affairs

Founded jointly with the Wechsler Family Foundation, Vol. 18, No. 18

By Alan Baker, JCPA

Israeli wheat and hay fields set ablaze along the Gaza border fence
(AFP Photo / Jack Guez)

• After the UN General Assembly on June 14, 2018, voted to condemn Israel for its handling of the Gaza border fence violence, it is all the more curious to observe the deliberate disregard of the serious and flagrant international humanitarian, environmental, and ecological crimes committed by Hamas and the Palestinians.
• Since the Palestinian Authority is utilizing the events in Gaza to conduct its own political and legal campaign against Israel in international bodies, this renders the Palestinian leadership an accessory to Hamas in the commission of these crimes.

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By Alex Alexdiev, AT

[…]
But, more importantly, Mitchell (Trump’s bona fide expert on Eastern Europe) underscored, preserving the West cannot happen without a strong and free Europe, which is a vital interest of the United States. And here he did not diplomatically avoid naming names and identifying problems. It is Russia and China who “want to break the West,” he said and EU allies (read Western Europe) who are showing insufficient willingness to “defend their own continent.” He further singled out specific European policies that the U.S. consider counterproductive — the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and the Iran agreement.

The first one is clearly directed against the interests of Eastern Europe and will benefit Russia’s monopolistic gas hegemony and make NATO’s eastern flank more vulnerable. Though Mitchell did not say it, Germany is the clear culprit here, as the above well-documented CEPA study proves. The Iran agreement, which is still supported by the EU even after the U.S. pulled out of it, allowed the expansion of Teheran’s influence to the borders of Israel, the largest such expansion since antiquity, Mitchell noted, and represents a clear danger for the West in Washington’s view.
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TV report says Ambassador David Friedman berated lawmakers for being ‘ungrateful’ in asking for more after relocation of embassy to Jerusalem

By Stuart Winer, TOI,  17 June 2018,

US Ambassador David Friedman reportedly told Israeli lawmakers they were “ungrateful” for demanding that Washington follow up on its recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel with an official US acknowledgement of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

Among those who recently called for American recognition of Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, which it captured five decades ago from Syria, were Transportation and Intelligence Minister Israel Katz, Likud party MK Yoav Kisch, and Yair Lapid, who leads the opposition Yesh Atid party.

According to a Hebrew-language report from the Kan public broadcaster on Sunday, Friedman met recently with some MKs and admonished them over the public call for a change in US policy vis-a-vis the Golan Heights.
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By Dogan Akman

I can no longer understand my people. I keep wondering whether for all these decades, I have been self-deceiving myself, mythologising my people, living under a cruel illusion as to who and what we are or whether the world has passed me by?

In the diaspora, and particularly in the United States and to a lesser extent in Canada, we now have Jews who fraternise with Jew-haters; Jewish organisations that constantly spew anti-Israeli toxic discourse, and dump on Jewish organisations that support Israel; Jewish professors who subscribe to the BDS movement; at least one Jewish organisation in Canada that deliberately disseminates disparaging versions of the history of Israel or provides one-sided views advocated by anti-Israeli folks.
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By Dogan Akman

I am not a wise politician or statesman but I do know a few things about countries such as France  and those of the EU which consistently seek to bring  Israel’s  good name into international  ill-repute so as to promote her condemnation by the United Nations.

They do so, in part, by  financing Israeli ONGs, headed or  staffed by Israeli would-be politicians  who have been consistently rejected by the Israeli electorate and  by foreign organisations hostile to Israel’s current foreign and domestic policies.

The EU’s recent decision to fund legal proceedings against IDF soldiers is yet another  who have been consistently dastardly illustration.
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By Zvika Klein, JEWISH PRESS

Screenshot from IfNotNow Rallies around the US

How do you teach a six-year-old Jewish child in the US about the “occupation?” The leaders of a far-left Jewish organization called IfNotNow have been dealing with this issue over the past few years, as part of their effort to get Jewish American community to stop supporting Israel and usher “the end of the occupation in Palestine.”

This summer, students at the vast Camp Ramah system, which is affiliated with the Conservative movement in the United States and Canada, are expected to receive inciting education against Israel from instructors at the camps, in defiance of the organization’s leadership.
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By Zvi Bar-el, HAARETZ

The demonstrations in Amman have calmed down, but now King Abdullah must prevent ill-meaning Iranian forces from approaching Jordan via Syria

King Abdullah, left, and his son Crown Prince Hussein bin Abdullah performing an off-season pilgrimage to Mecca, June 10, 2018. Yousef Allan / Jordanian Royal Palace / AFP

A short video published online by the Fayez family of Jordan reveals the fragile web of relationships King Abdullah must balance to keep his throne. It shows young members of the family blocking the main road from the town of Madaba to Amman.

The filming was done at night, and it’s hard to identify the participants, but the family left no room for doubt. “If Fares Fayez isn’t released from jail, we’ll block the highway to the airport, and that won’t be the last step,” the family threatened on social media.
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In Turkey, Adolf Hitler has become a hero and a best-seller, with his manic memoirs being sold in an 1,800-store chain of supermarkets

By Robert Fulford, NATIONAL POST

In Germany, of all places, anti-Semitism has recently made a fresh and ominous appearance. It became clear when mobs in Berlin reacted to U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital by waving Palestinian flags while burning Israel’s flag beneath the Brandenburg Gate.

This is one of many countries where a revived anti-Semitism is apparent — Canada and the U.S. are others, where anti-Jewish vandalism is increasing. The German government considers it so disturbing that a commission has been created to deal specifically with prejudice against Jews. Polling in recent years indicates that old stereotypes still live on in the German imagination. For instance, about 10 per cent of the population apparently believes that Jews are now too powerful in Germany.
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France and Sweden have pushed behind the scenes in recent weeks for Secretary General António Guterres to produce a written report on Israeli construction beyond the Green Line • Ambassador Danny Danon decries United Nations’ anti-Israel “obsession.”

By Ariel Kahana and Israel Hayom Staff

In yet another anti-Israel measure in the United Nations, Secretary General António Guterres is expected to release, for the first time next week, a written report against Israeli settlements beyond the Green Line. The report is an extension of Resolution 2334 and was produced due to pressure on Guterres applied by Sweden and France.

Resolution 2334 determined that Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria, east Jerusalem and the Golan Heights were illegal. The resolution was passed during the Obama administration when, counter to longstanding policy, the U.S. abstained rather than vetoing it when it was proposed.
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NGO Monitor: EU gives $290,000 to a program headed by three leftist groups seeking to eradicate the “culture of impunity” among ?Israeli security forces • Groups deny that initiative seeks to prosecute Israeli soldiers • Move may compromise Israel in The Hague.<

By Ariel Kahana, ISRAEL HAYOM

Leftist groups claim the Israeli judiciary is incapable of properly investigating illegal actions against Palestinians

The collaboration between the European Union and left-wing groups seeking to undermine Israel and the IDF now includes the funding of legal proceedings against IDF soldiers, a watchdog group revealed last week

NGO Monitor, which promotes greater transparency among foreign-funded Israeli nongovernmental organization, claims that the program, to which the EU has allocated €250,000 ($290,000), was set up at the request of three left-wing groups and is slated to be in place at least until 2021.
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Personally, I can’t wait to see the ads of “Punchy’s” tantrum in the upcoming midterm races! They ought to be worth millions of votes!

By Joan Swirsky, CFP

I remember as a young teenager going by myself to see “On the Waterfront” at the Whalley Theater in New Haven. I was so mesmerized by the performance of Marlon Brando (30-years old at the time) that it took a dozen more viewings—really, that’s how many times I saw the film, maybe more—before I realized that the greatest actors of the day—Eva Marie Saint, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger—were also featured in the movie.

In the years since that spellbinding experience, I saw dozens more movies, many with tremendously talented stars and amazing performances. But Brando remained a towering icon to me, unchallenged by any of his many idolaters and competitors.

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By Peter Skurkiss, AMERICAN THINKER

A question worth asking is, what is a liberal democracy? That’s because a recurring topic in the media is that liberal democracy is being threatened. If you think the culprits are countries like China, Russia, and Iran, you’d be wrong. Most of this negative commentary on this subject is directed to the rise of populism in Europe, especially in the eastern part. America is not left out of the mix, either, as President Trump is often painted as the head ogre in this tale that is said to be the path to authoritarianism.

If this sounds ominous, it’s because such is the intent of those propagating this message. But before taking it seriously, let’s first examine what is meant by the term “liberal” democracy, at least in the eyes of those who say it’s under attack.
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