By Dr. Robert P. Barnidge, Jr.

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 976, October 14, 2018

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: While President Donald Trump was right to reiterate the American commitment to a “future of peace and stability in the region, including peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians” when he addressed the UN General Assembly on September 25, this is not enough. He should demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel’s right to exist in peace and security as a Jewish state and insist that the US will not press Israel to negotiate with the Palestinians unless and until that happens.

The great promise of the letters exchanged between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Chairman Yasser Arafat in September 1993 was that Israel and the Palestinians (and the Arab world more generally) seemed on the cusp of peace.

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Lara Alqasem, denied entry to Israel over her support of boycotts against the Jewish state, appeals to Supreme Court after a lower court upholds her expulsion order • “Every country has the right to decide who enters its borders,” PM Netanyahu says.

News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff

Israel’s Supreme Court on Sunday agreed to hear the appeal of an American graduate student who is fighting an expulsion order over her involvement in the boycott movement against Israel.

Lara Alqasem has been held in detention since arriving in the country on Oct. 2 with a valid student visa. She will be allowed to remain in the country pending the Supreme Court appeal, scheduled to take place on Wednesday, her lawyer Leora Bechor said.

Alqasem, 22, turned to the high court after a lower court rejected her appeal to remain in Israel.
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‘It is a day of victory,’ Youssef Jarbou, a Druze leader, tells the Syrian Al-Ikhbariya TV from Quneitra ? The openings promise to restore trade and movement between Syria, Jordan that halted because of the war

Jack Khoury, HAARETZ, The Associated Press

This handout picture released by SANA on October 15, 2018, shows the Israel-Syria border Quneitra crossing in the annexed-Golan Heights on the day of its reopening.AFP

The Quneitra crossing on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights and the Naseeb border crossing with Jordan reopened on Monday, according to reports in Syria, which signals the completion of logistical and security preparations at Syria’s key border crossings.

The vital border crossings reopened for the first time in three years, promising to restore trade and movement between the two countries that had halted because of the war.

Another crossing, between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, also reopened for UN observers who had left the area four years ago because of fighting there.
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By Tyler Stapleton – FDD’s CSIF Policy Brief

Despite Congressional measures to push Hezbollah out of the formal banking sector in Lebanon, Hezbollah has continued to thrive in Lebanon through illicit finance channels and has received funding through its patron Iran. To counteract this, Congress last night unanimously approved the Hizballah International Financing Prevention Amendments Act, which will now go to the president’s desk.

The bill would require the president to impose mandatory sanctions on Hezbollah’s recruitment and fundraising activities. The bill specifies that any person or entity providing support to Hezbollah-controlled organizations shall be subject to sanctions. Such organizations include Bayt al-Mal (a bank, creditor, and investment arm for Hezbollah), Jihad al-Bina (a real estate foundation run by Hezbollah), the Islamic Resistance Support Association (a charity used to raise funds for Hezbollah military activities), the Foreign Relations Department of Hezbollah (an agency coordinating with foreign states to support the terror group), the External Security Organization of Hezbollah (Hezbollah’s external intelligence and planning group for terrorist activities), or any successor of these organizations.

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By Ed Straker, AMERICAN THINKER

The “Alon Harels and the Ofer Aharonys” of Israel

By Dogan Akman 

The event

Alon Harel is a professor of law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJ) who occupies an endowed chair and a member of the Centre of Rationality, specialising in jurisprudence, political theory, constitutional theory, law and economics.

He recently posted the following statement in his Facebook page:

“The Barkan killing was without doubt a cold blooded murder, and in this resembles to the murders committed by Tsahal in the southern border of Israel.”

The angry reactions of readers who took umbrage at this egregious statement did not take long to make their way into his page. Many of them asked the question: “How do you dare compare terrorists to the soldiers of Tsahal? “

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Ted Belman. So many clues were left which pointed the accusatory finger at Saudi Arabia. Perhaps the killing may have been committed in order to greatly duisturb the US/Saudi relaionsup

The dissident’s fate says a lot about Saudi Arabia and the rise of the mobster state

By Solange Reyner, NEWSMAX    |   Sunday, 14 October 2018

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at a rally at the Erie Insurance Arena on October 10, 2018 in Erie, Pennsylvania.  ( Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

Hosting the NIF and donating to it is an anti-Israel act, even more so when it takes place in a synagogue. Read about what one of their grantees plans for this weekend.

By Ron Tossorian, INN

Some American Jewish congregations are hosting memorials for American-born Israeli citizen Ari Fuld, who was killed in a terror attack, others host solidarity events with Jerusalem, and then there is Temple Beth Zion in Brookline, Massachusetts which opened the synagogue doors on Tuesday, October 9th for the New Israel Fund, an organization which openly advocates a boycott of the State of Israel. Did they realize what they are supporting?

A synagogue should not be open to an organization that unashamedly supports a boycott of Israel – The New Israel Fund thorugh its recipient organizations, continues to openly advocate a boycott of Israel, actively opposes the IDF and has funded the defense of families of Hamas terrorists in the Israeli Supreme Court.
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By Adm. James A. Lyons, TOWNHALL

The missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has caused world leaders to focus on not only the role Saudi Arabia may have played in his disappearance but also its role in the Yemeni civil war.  The missing Saudi journalist (a U.S. resident) is apparently the victim of a political assassination of the sort that occurs much too frequently throughout the Middle East and the world, e.g., Iran, Pakistan, Russia, China, et al.  No journalists should be subjected to threats of intimidation or threats on their life, much less murder for expressing political opposition.  Saudi Arabia must be required to make a full accounting for the disappearance of Khashoggi. Should the evidence show that Saudi individuals, perhaps even the Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, were responsible for Khashoggi’s disappearance and possible murder, they must pay a price imposed either by the Saudi government—or the U.S. government.
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DEBKA

It could be any or all these, since no one still knows what befell the prominent Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi after he disappeared inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2.  But the fallout is spreading worldwide, as theories, the wilder the better, flourish around the mystery. Turkey, whose animosity for the Saudi kingdom is a fact of Muslim politics, leads the pack, Turkish intelligence officials claimed this week to have a video clip showing Saudi agents murdering Khashoggi in the consulate building. They also claimed proof that 15 Saudi agents were involved in dismembering the body and flying its parts to Saudi Arabia after removing the remains in a black van with consular number plates. While grabbing global headlines – especially in US media – Turkey has never shown this clip or any other proof to support its claims. They are steadfastly denied as baseless by Riyadh, which has initiated a joint investigation of the disappearance with Turkey.

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By Benny Avni,

Since this week’s surprise announcement that Nikki Haley would depart by year’s end, everyone wants to know who’ll replace America’s United Nations ambassador — who was first dismissed, then hated, then feared, and eventually appreciated, heck, even loved (at least by some).

The answer, obviously, is up to the never-predictable President Trump, so most names bandied about are speculative, with many driven by wishful thinking. So here’s a wish: Christopher Burnham. Never heard of him? You may soon.

Sure, there are other worthy candidates; Washington reporters come up with new ones daily. The much-advertised front-runner, former Deputy National Security Adviser Dina Powell, made clear Thursday she’d rather remain at Goldman Sachs.

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Evidence mounts that Jamal Khashoggi was killed and dismembered in the Saudi Consulate.

By Jonathan Visser, INN

On Tuesday October 2nd a 59-year-old Saudi journalist who lived in self-imposed exile in the United States disappeared after he entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.

The journalist, Jamal Khashoggi – a well-known critic of the House of Saud and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman in particular – was in Istanbul to obtain official papers which would enable him to remarry.

His Turkish fiancée, who was waiting for Khashoggi outside the consulate says that the journalist never left the building, a claim supported by video footage released by the Turkish government.

The Saudi authorities vehemently deny they have anything to do with Khashoggi’s disappearance and initially offered the Turkish police permission to examine the consulate compound and the nearby house of the Saudi consul.
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By Peggy Noonan, WSJ

What did the Kavanaugh controversy tell us about our historical moment? It underscored what we already know, that America is politically and culturally divided and that activists and the two parties don’t just disagree with but dislike and distrust each other. We know also the Supreme Court has come to be seen not only as a constitutional (and inevitably political) body but as a cultural body. It follows cultural currents, moods, assumptions. It has frequently brushed past the concept of democratic modesty to make decisions that would most peacefully be left to the people, at the ballot box, after national debate. So citizens will experience the court as having great power over their lives, and nominations to the court will inevitably draw passion. And this was a fifth conservative seat on a nine-person court.

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Defense minister orders halt in fuel deliveries to Gaza over border violence

By Yaniv Kubovich and Jack Khoury, HAARETZ

Six Palestinians were killed on Friday during protests at the Gaza-Israel border, the Gaza Health Ministry reported. At least 252 were wounded, 154 by live ammunition, including one critically injured and five seriously hurt, the ministry said. Some 15,000 Palestinians were participating in the weekly protest at the border, with the military saying that some were throwing firebombs and explosive devices.

Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said he had instructed that fuel deliveries to Gaza through Israel be halted because of violence at the border. Lieberman said that “Israeli will not tolerate a situation in which fuel tankers are allowed to enter Gaza on the one hand, while terror and violence are used against IDF soldiers and Israeli citizens on the other.”
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If the bill passes, the Culture Ministry would be able to cut funding or even end it entirely for a cultural institution that rejects Israel’s identity as a Jewish and democratic state

By Jonathan Lis, HAARETZ

The Ministerial Committee for Legislation is expected to approve a bill on Sunday that would allow Culture Minister Miri Regev to strip cultural institutions of their government funding if the ministry decides they have violated any of five basic principles.

Currently, only the Finance Ministry has this authority, and it has never used it. But Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon supports giving the Culture and Sports Ministry this power as well.

Even if the Ministerial Committee for Legislation approves the bill, however, it’s not clear that the Knesset will do so as well, primarily because early elections might be called for March 2019. If that happens, the Knesset will probably dissolve in November, leaving a window of only a few weeks for legislation. And that most likely won’t be enough time for the bill to pass all three of the required votes.
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Support for Israel in EU nations has grown from 38% to 43%, while anti-Israel feeling has fallen from 30% to 29%, Foreign Ministry finds • European preoccupation with other issues and rise of social media are playing a big part in change, official says.

By Ariel Kahana, ISRAEL HAYOM

The EU “has come to realize ?that Israel is an asset,” a Foreign Ministry official says |

Surveys conducted by the Foreign Ministry in major ?European countries show a clear rise in support for ?Israel, Israel Hayom learned Thursday.?

The polls found a rising trend of support for Israel in Germany, ?Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom, which for many years were hubs of hostility toward Israel.?

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