Zandberg committee conclusions, which critics say treat the territories like Israel proper, are already being implemented on the ground

By Jacob Magid, TOI

An expert says the findings reflect both nationalistic and practical feelings.

By Udi Shaham, JPOST
hen it comes to the future of Jerusalem, 97% of the Palestinians living in the city say that they strongly object to the idea that Jerusalem should maintain its current municipal boundaries and be fully annexed to and controlled by Israel, according to a comprehensive survey conducted by the Leonard Davis Institute of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

However, the survey also indicates that 97% of the responders said that they also strongly object the idea that Jerusalem should be divided along the June 1967 armistice boundaries, without allowing the residents of the city access between its parts.

The survey – obtained by The Jerusalem Post earlier this week ahead of Jerusalem Day – was conducted by Prof. Dan Miodownik, the director of the university’s Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations; Noam Brenner, a PhD candidate in the political science department; and the Israel-Palestine: Creative Regional Initiatives organization. It was funded by the European Union as part of a project titled “Building a Vision for the Future of Jerusalem.”
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DEBKA

Exclusive: Tehran will challenge the US by restarting nuclear fuel enrichment and ramp up its military confrontation with Israel. The Iranian leadership reached these decisions on Thursday, May 10, after Israeli warplanes smashed its military assets in the Damascus area that morning, DEBKAfile’s exclusive intelligence sources report. These steps follow the strategic plans Tehran had drawn up for the eventuality of the US quitting the 2015 nuclear pact. In the coming weeks, therefore, Tehran will choose its moment to abandon the nuclear deal and restart high level uranium enrichment, in the face of President Donald Trump’s warning that this action would meet with “very severe consequences.” In light of Iran’s strategy, the US, after quitting the nuclear deal, Thursday asked the nuclear watchdog IAEA to continue inspections of the Iranian nuclear program. Washington intends to keep independent monitors accessing Iran’s nuclear activities for as long as they are permitted.
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Iran tried to force Israel to accept its presence in Syria, and the effort failed. It ended up losing more than 50 military targets, and Israel’s message to Tehran—to exit Syria immediately—received a powerful boost.&

By YAAKOV LAPPIN, JNS
In striking more than 50 Iranian military targets within 90 minutes early on Thursday morning, the Israel Defense Force displayed just a sample of its advanced, intelligence-fueled precision firepower, dealing a crushing blow to Iran’s assets in Syria.

This exchange of fire represents a new, stepped-up phase in the escalating Israeli-Iranian standoff in Syria.

Much of Iran’s military infrastructure in Syria was destroyed in this wave of strikes, likely leaving the Quds Force—the overseas elite Iranian unit trying to consolidate its presence in Syria—reeling.

The Quds Force has been busy in Iran, building missile and rocket bases, drone bases, importing Shi’ite militia forces and trafficking heavy weapons into the region. It had begun launching direct attacks on Israel in contrast to Iran’s older pattern of aggression, which was based on activating proxy attacks.
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T. Belman I have always argued that there is no way that the US would cancel the Iran Deal without a Plan B ready to go. We now see how aggressive that plan is.

I also took the position that Iran would not attack Israel because it would mean the end of their regime. Cotton confirms it.

By Ben Marquis, WESTERN JOURNAL

Following President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement on Tuesday, fears were raised that Iran could launch an attack on Israel via the Islamic Republic’s positions in Syria in an act of retaliation.

But such a move would be a major “miscalculation” in the eyes of Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, according to the Washington Examiner. Cotton, an Army combat veteran, has frequently taken a hard stance against the oppressive terrorist-supporting regime in Tehran.

Cotton also suggested that a strike on Israel by Iran could very well result in even more destructive retaliatory strikes launched against the regime — not just from Israel, but from the U.S. military as well.
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No Israeli injuries reported in attack; sirens blare in Golan Heights; Syrian army post comes under fire in Quneitra as tensions skyrocket on Israel-Syria border

By Judah Ari Gross, TOI

Some 20 rockets were fired at Israeli military bases by Iranian forces in southern Syria just after midnight on Thursday, with some of the incoming missiles being intercepted by the Iron Dome defense system, the army said, amid sky high tensions on the northern border.

There were no reports of Israeli casualties in the attack. An army spokesperson said damage was caused to Israeli military bases, but that it was “limited.”

The Israeli army said the missile barrage was carried out by members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Forces. This appeared to be the first time that Israel attributed an attack directly to Iran, which generally operates through proxies. The late night rocket barrage was also the largest attack, in terms of the number of rockets fired, in the seven years of the Syrian civil war.
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T. Belman. My sentiments exactly. This is what I call leading from the front.

By: Yigal Carmon and A. Savyon,MEMRI

U.S. President Donald Trump’s May 8, 2018 speech turned the tables on Iran, on the European parties to the JCPOA and on the supporters of the deal around the world. Trump reiterated the basic truths about the Iranian regime, which the Obama administration had swept aside in its eagerness to attain the deal.

Announcing his withdrawal from the JCPOA, Trump clarified that he refused to go along with the Obama administration’s and the Europeans’ deceptive presentation of Iran and of the nuclear deal.

Significance And Implications:

Trump’s speech announcing his withdrawal from the JCPOA significantly alters the strategic power balance in the Middle East and the world. The Trump administration has completely reversed Obama’s U.S. policy vis-à-vis Iran, resuming the strategic political-military alliance with America’s traditional allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia, against Iran, which Obama supported, and against the Shi’ite resistance axis.
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Largely for reasons of political correctness, policy-makers and leaders take pains to avoid the issue, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry writes.

by Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, Hamilton Spectator

When France got rid of military service, it introduced instead a mandatory one-day seminar on “defence readiness” for all 18-year-olds. The day I had mine, there was a morning of presentations delivered by a meek reserve officer, who used a photo of the 9/11 attacks to help explain that France had a military, in part, to defend against terrorism.

That was the moment when one attendee, with the recognizable accent of the French “banlieues” — the immigrant-heavy suburbs — made his assertion: “It wasn’t terrorists who did 9/11. It was the Israelis, with missiles. I saw it on video.” The officer let it go.

That moment encapsulated a broader reality that French elites have been aware of for a while — the virulent anti-Semitism that holds sway in much of the country’s immigrant communities. Largely for reasons of political correctness, policy-makers and leaders take pains to avoid the issue.
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No Iranian-Hizballah shots fired so far.

DEBKA

President Donald Trump’s statement pulling the US out of the Iran nuclear pact on Tuesday, fitted into a sequence of planned events and restored the US to Middle East center stage:

1. Two of the European signatories of the nuclear deal, France and Britain, while strongly objecting to Trump’s decision to quit the accord, are quietly playing along with him by sending air and ground units to Syria.

2. As Trump spoke, Syrian media reported an Israeli air raid at el-Kiswa south of Damascus, claimed to have hit a missile cache and launchers belonging to Iran or Hizballah that were ready to attack Israel. The credibility of this claim is questionable given that, thus far, neither has fired a single shot at Israel. The IDF has added the phrase “prior action,” to its dictionary, used when Golan residents were told to open their bomb shelters after sightings of “irregular Iranian movements” in Syria, indicating preparations to fire missiles at Israel. “Prior action” updates “preemptive action” and indicates that more action is coming.
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Here is an unusual video of actual intelligence collected on the Muslim Brotherhood work to Islamize France and the entire free world. The journalist exposes the streets of Paris, infiltrates Muslim Brotherhood leader’s home and a Sharia Institution in France. Fluent in Arabic, he goes undercover assisted by experienced intelligence agents.

VIDEO

By Bret Stephens, New York Times

President Trump said pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal sends a message that “the United States no longer makes empty threats.”

Of all the arguments for the Trump administration to honor the nuclear deal with Iran, none was more risible than the claim that we gave our word as a country to keep it.

The Obama administration refused to submit the deal to Congress as a treaty, knowing it would never get two-thirds of the Senate to go along. Just 21 percent of Americans approved of the deal at the time it went through, against 49 percent who did not, according to a Pew poll. The agreement “passed” on the strength of a 42-vote Democratic filibuster, against bipartisan, majority opposition.
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Removes – For ‘Harmful Or Dangerous Content’ –

MEMRI TV

Translated Clip Exposing Statements By Anti-Semitic Gaza Religious Scholar At ‘Return March’: ‘The Sword Of Jihad… Is Brandished’ Against The Jews; ‘I Call Upon Every Muslim: Do Not… Let Those Jews Spread Corruption… You Must Carry Out Glorious Deeds Against Them’

A MEMRI TV clip posted on April 24, 2018 on the MEMRI TV YouTube channel translated and exposed anti-Semitic statements by Gaza religious scholar Khaled Hany Morshid. The MEMRI TV clip shows Morshid at the Gaza “Return March” stating in a religious lecture that “one of the greatest duties… and best forms of worship… is to fight those Jews.” He goes on to state that in order to stop the Jews, the “sword of jihad for the sake of Allah is brandished and they are made an example of,” and adds: “I call upon every Muslim: Do not stand idly by and let those Jews spread corruption… You must carry out glorious deeds against them.”

YouTube: “Video Removed: Inappropriate Content”
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By Ted Belman

The way I see it,

Iran will not start a war against Israel, through proxies or otherwise, because it will end in the demise of the Mullah regime.

Not only will Israel destroy all Iran’s nuclear bomb producing sites and the IRGC, she will also destroy Iran’s lifelines. Hillel Frisch writes:

That Iran is as vulnerable as Israel despite these differences can be attributed to three existential vulnerabilities. The first is that Iran exports 90% of its oil and gas from one port (essentially an island), Kharg, 160 km. southeast from the tip of the Iraq-Iran border, on the Persian/Arab Gulf.

The revenues Iran derives from that oil and gas amount to at least 40% of government expenditures and around half of Iran’s foreign reserves.

Meanwhile, the port of Bandar Abbas (“bandar” is “port” in Farsi) on Iran’s southern tip is responsible for 90% of its container trade. The goods brought in by container represent only 15% to 20% of total trade, but they are the goods that make the difference between the 21st and 19th centuries as far as most Iranians are concerned.

All this in the first week, and then the US/Israel will activate an insurrection through out the country which is already planned.

THE NEW ARAB

Nine pro-Assad fighters were killed after suspected Israeli strikes hit a weapons depot in a district of Damascus on Tuesday, a war monitor said.

The facility in Kissweh “presumably” belongs to Hizballah and Iran, said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Despite reports of explosions in the area and state TV broadcasting images of fires in the suburb, Syrian state media agency SANA said the army intercepted two missiles.
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This was a great speech, It echoed two other great speeches, namely, “tear down this wall” speech and the “evil empire” speech. He started out by saying how horrible Iran is with nothing withheld, how horrible the Iran Deal is and then went on to say how ruthless the sanctions are going to be.

Trump will go down in history as one of America’s great presidents.

My fellow Americans, today I want to update the world on our efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. The Iranian regime is the leading state sponsor of terror. It exports dangerous missiles, fuels conflicts across the Middle East, and supports terrorist proxies and militias such as Hezbollah, Hamas, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda.

Over the years, Iran and its proxies have bombed American embassies and military installations, murdered hundreds of American servicemembers, and kidnapped, imprisoned, and tortured American citizens. The Iranian regime has funded its long reign of chaos and terror by plundering the wealth of its own people. No action taken by the regime has been more dangerous than its pursuit of nuclear weapons and the means of delivering them.
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JCPA

By Alan Baker, Institute for Contemporary Affairs

Founded jointly with the Wechsler Family Foundation

No. 612     August 2017

• The Palestinian “Balfour Apology Campaign” to demand the annulment of the Balfour Declaration is part of a consistent policy of denying the rights of the Jews to their national homeland as a people indigenous to the area.
• Yet the Jewish People for more than two millennia has consistently maintained the strongest claim to be the aboriginal people in its ancestral homeland, and their existence and roots are widely documented, acknowledged, and recognized.
• Christianity grew out of Judaism, and the early Christian existence and settlement in the Holy Land were part and parcel of the Jewish existence and settlement there.
• Arab and Palestinian leaders are attempting to establish a mythical, new narrative according to which the “Palestinian People” have existed as a distinct people indigenous to the area for thousands of years, predating the Jewish People.
• Saeb Erekat, the Secretary-General of the PLO, claimed in 2014 that he is a direct descendant of the Canaanite tribes who lived in Israel some 9,000 years ago. Yet according to Erekat’s own Facebook entry, the Erekat clan is from the northwestern Arabian Peninsula and settled in the Palestine area around 1860.

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By Dr Ephraim Kam, ISRAEL HAYOM

These are difficult days for Iran. Israel has carried out a number of strikes against targets linked to Iranian forces and their satellites in Syria. Iran promised to respond, but for now, its only move has been to send a drone armed with a small bomb toward Israel, which was intercepted. Although an Israeli fighter jet was shot down during the response to the drone, that is small comfort to the Iranians. They have learned that Israel is prepared to address threats such as drones sent into its airspace.
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ZEROHEDGE

As of Friday, three separate Judges have rendered harsh setbacks to the Mueller investigation – demanding, if you can believe it, facts and evidence to back up the Special Counsel’s claims – in unredacted format as one Judge demands, or risk having the cases tossed out altogether.

The first major setback happened in February, when the federal judge assigned to the criminal case against Trump’s former National Security Advisor, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordered Mueller’s team to turn over any “exculpatory evidence” to Flynn’s defense.

Instead, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan issued the order “sua sponte,” or at his discretion, invoking the “Brady Rule” – which requires prosecutors to turn over previously unfiled evidence that might have a material impact on a defendant’s case. Two days before Sullivan issued the order, Mueller filed a motion for a protective order regarding the use of evidence in the case, including “sensitive materials,” which would be provided to Flynn’s lawyers by the office of the Special Counsel.
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Liberals tried to criminalize contacts with Russia. Note their hypocritical silence about the former secretary of state’s ‘strategizing’ with Iran.

By Jonathan S Tobin, NATIONAL REVIEW

Liberals tried to criminalize contacts with Russia. What’s the excuse for their hypocritical silence about the former secretary of state’s “strategizing” with Iran?

If there is one word that has widened the gap between Democrats and Republicans in the past 16 months, it is “collusion.” Many on the left believe that the Donald Trump campaign colluded with Russia to steal the presidency from Hillary Clinton. Proof of any such plotting has yet to be produced and may never surface (perhaps because it didn’t happen). We can hope the probe being led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller will ultimately get to the bottom of the affair. The suspicion that Trump’s apparent soft spot for the Vladimir Putin regime is somehow linked to what we do know about Russia’s attempts to interfere in the election has cast a shadow over his presidency in the eyes of his opponents.
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