By Vic Rosenthal, ABU YEHUDA

I’m only going to write this post once, so pay attention.

I use the word “Palestinian” a lot. It refers to those Arabs who call themselves that. It does not refer to Jews, who do not live in Palestine, because Palestine ceased to exist with the end of the British Mandate, and despite the wishes of the Arabs, there is no such place today.

Every so often somebody criticizes me for using the word, and thus granting the Palestinians an identity. So I decided to explain what I mean by it.

It does not imply that the Palestinians are a people that have existed for millennia, as idiots like Saeb Erekat like to say. The truth is that the Palestinians are Arabs with multiple origins who at some time came to live in the land that we call Eretz Yisrael. Maybe some of them say they can trace their origins back to the Arab conquest in the 7^th century, but I doubt it. Most of them are descended from migrants that came in the latter part of the 19^th and beginning of the 20^th century.
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By ABDULLAH AL-SHIHRI, ASSOCIATED PRESS

Three Gulf Arab states pledged $2.5 billion in aid to Jordan on Monday in an effort to stabilize the U.S.-allied kingdom as it faces its worst protests in years over government austerity plans that include tax increases.

The money from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will go toward a deposit in Jordan’s Central Bank, cover World Bank guarantees for the kingdom, offer budget support and finance other development projects.

The hope is the five-year aid package, which mirrors a similar aid package offered by Gulf states in 2011, will help Jordan come up with a new, more-palatable austerity plan to satisfy international lenders and its public.
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By George N. Tzogopoulos, BESA

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 861, June 10, 2018

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Cyprus, Greece, and Israel are steadily building a democratic geopolitical bloc in the Eastern Mediterranean. They are exploring ways to collaborate in fields ranging from energy to communication technology and defense. Greek-American and American-Jewish communities are exploiting the momentum to further boost the developing “triangle” and encourage US support. However, despite progress among the governments and the generally positive climate, warning signs of anti-Semitism in Greece underline the need for grassroots action to combine political achievements with wide public support.

The fourth Cyprus-Greece-Israel tripartite summit, which took place in Nicosia on May 8, 2018, made plain the determination of the three countries to deepen their cooperation. Nicos Anastasiades, Alexis Tsipras, and Benjamin Netanyahu discussed new fields of interest, including public security, cinema co-production, maritime pollution, telecommunications, and the reduction of data roaming costs. They agreed that the fifth trilateral summit will take place within the year in Beersheba, a place described by Netanyahu as “cyber city.” At that event, the parties plan to advance their dialogue on communication technologies.

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By Ray DiLorenzo, STAND UP AMERICA

It has been told that when Winston Churchill heard that the United States had been attacked at Pearl Harbor, he said, “Britain is saved.” In actuality, Churchill wrote of that day in his own account of World War II, “Being saturated and satiated with emotion and sensation, I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.”

Who can match or put a price on the blood and treasure this nation has given to spread freedom and prosperity around the world?
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DEBKA

Israel launched an unscheduled military exercise on the Golan Sunday, June 10. Thousands of army reservists were ordered to report for immediate duty with full gear and come directly from their homes and work places. That the sudden IDF announcement did not set a timeline for the exercise’s ending indicated that it was prompted by the Syrian military announcement on the same morning of a major army offensive impending this week in the Quneitra region opposite Israel’s Golan border. The announcement also referred to a twin offensive against the Daraa province on the Jordanian border. The units taking part were named as the Syrian army’s 4th armored division for Quneitra and the “Tiger Force,” backed by 4th division elements, for the Daraa operation.

Israel’s Golan exercise was announced in order to deter the Syrian offensive.
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By Dogan Akman

During the 2015 general federal election that brought Justin Trudeau to power, he ran an ad in the Canadian Jewish News which in part reads:

The Liberal Party of Canada believes that…..we must oppose Boycott, Divest and Sanction campaigns in our communities and continue to speak out forcefully against them.

He also declared on the hustings; I am opposed to the BDS movement. I think it’s an example of the new form of anti-Semitism in the world…an example of the three “D’s”: demonisation of Israel, deligitimisation of Israel, and a double standard applied toward Israel…The BDS movement has no place on Canadian campuses. And he repeatedly said enough is enough.
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By Martin Sherman

The privation in Gaza is not the cause of the enmity towards the Jewish state. Quite the opposite! It is the enmity towards the Jewish state that is the cause of the privation in Gaza.

No cliché has dominated the discourse on the Gaza situation more than the perception of Palestinian violence as a corollary of the Strip’s dire economic condition – Prof. Efraim Karsh, It’s Not Gaza’s Economy, Stupid, June 3, 2018.

Many experts claim that an easing of economic conditions in Gaza…is the way to achieve political stability in a Gaza Strip ruled by Hamas. This is a fallacious argument. Prof. Hillel Frisch, Economic Benefits Will Not Bring Stability to Gaza , June 6, 2018.

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By David Harsanyi, NATIONAL REVIEW

The president is actually strengthening the constitutional checks and balances undermined by the previous administration.

If your contention is that President Donald Trump has the propensity to sound like a bully and an authoritarian, I’m with you. If you’re arguing that Trump’s rhetoric is sometimes coarse and unpresidential, I can’t disagree. I’m often turned off by the aesthetic and tonal quality of his presidency. And, yes, Trump has an unhealthy tendency to push theories that exaggerate and embellish small truths to galvanize his fans for political gain. Those are all legitimate political concerns.

Yet the ubiquitous claim that Trump acts in a way that uniquely undermines the rule of law is, to this point, simply untrue.
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By Zvi Bar-el, HAARETZ

[..]
The crisis that forced the government to toughen its economic plan isn’t disconnected form Jordan’s foreign policy. Jordan had to ask for a $723 million loan from the International Monetary Fund after Saudi Arabia announced that it wouldn’t renew its age package.

In 2015, Jordan received Saudi aid to the tune of $473 million. This was reduced in 2017 to $165 million. This year Jordan was to receive $250 million, but it never arrived.

The reason is the two countries’ strong disagreement over relations with Qatar. The Saudis demanded that Jordan join the boycott of Qatar imposed last year by several Gulf states. Jordan initially agreed to reduce ties with Qatar, though not all of them. Ultimately it restored full relations.
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By David Katoub, AL-MONITOR, June 8, 2018

[..]

But amid the support and admiration expressed over social media and in private talks, there has also been concern over the effects of the protests on the Jordanian state.

Kayed Miari, the founder of the Nablus-based Witness Center for Citizen’s Rights and Social Development, told Al-Monitor that while the young Jordanians made important gains in such a short time, not everyone is celebrating. “While many are overwhelmed with what they have seen by following the protests on television, many are also genuinely worried about how these protests will end and how they will affect the stability of Jordan.”

A major concern for Palestinians following the protests in Jordan has been the relationship between the protests and the “ultimate deal” Washington is planning to declare as an answer to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
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FOREIGN CODE

The increasing economic and political ties between Qatar and countries of Central Asia are raising a number of questions. After all, Qatar is a country of just 260,000 citizens but 2.6 million residents in total. As such, it is easy to wonder why this country in the Middle East is suddenly interested in building bilateral ties in Central Asia. What are leaders in Qatar looking for from their counterparts in Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan?
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Time to get tough with anti-Israel thuggery.

By Edwin Black, FPM

Disruptions of pro-Israel events by anti-Israel groups continue to intensify into physical aggression and violence across campuses and even into the community. As a result, Jewish and pro-Israel groups have started to explore the criminal aspects of such incidents.

The invasion, disruption, and nose-to-nose intimidation of a May 17, 2018 Students Supporting Israel [SSI] event at the University of California, Los Angeles was one several red lines recently crossed for pro-Israel groups and many in the human rights community. The small UCLA gathering, dubbed “Indigenous Peoples Unite,” brought Kurdish, Armenian, and Israeli individuals to discuss their common bonds.
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IMRA

https://aawsat.com/english/home/article/1294181/us-provide-israel-modern-weapons-face-possible-war-iran

Security sources in Tel Aviv revealed the approval of US President Donald Trump of a broad plan to strengthen the capabilities of the Israeli army, to meet the “threat of a possible war with Iran.”

The plan includes increasing the number of US military units in Israel and expanding them regularly, and strengthening Israel’s defense capability to surpass Iranian ballistic missiles, the sources said.

In addition, Trump canceled a decision by former President Barack Obama to block refueling planes from Israel. He even decided to reverse this decision by supplying the Israeli Air Force with a large number of Boeing KC 46 refueling aircraft, which would enable the Israeli army to operate longer and more flexibly, against targets far from Israel.
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By David Weinberg,  ISRAEL HAYOM

By Dogan Akman

According to Yami Roth writing in the April 16 issue of Maariv, republished in the Jerusalem Post of April 17, the EU proposed to Hamas to stop its armed struggle against Israel, for at least, five years, in exchange for the EU’s promise to rebuild Gaza.

More specifically, the EU would establish  a body or institution in Gaza  that will operate in Gaza and assume comprehensive  authorities and critically just as importantly, run all the humanitarian affairs in concert with the financial aid provided by the EU which will presumably  integrated by the financial resources provided by other countries.

According to Roth, the plan would remove the P.A. out of picture during its execution and indeed the plan is meant it to provide a possible scenario in the event Abbas makes good on his threat to withdraw all support to the Gaza strip under Hamas.
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By Jordan Schachtel, CONSERVATIVE REVIEW

As the Mueller probe drags along into year two of its supposed investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, a disturbing pattern has emerged. The special counsel has become obsessed with the state of Israel. The former FBI director is deeply suspicious, to the point of total paranoia, that there is a grand conspiracy involving the Trump campaign and transition officials as potential agents for the Israelis.

George Papadopoulos, the Israeli spy?

On Monday, the Daily Caller reported that Mueller had allegedly coerced Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos to plead guilty to lesser charges, after threatening that he would be prosecuted as an Israeli spy.
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