‘This is the most important constitutional step in the last 25 years,’ Habayit Hayehudi says

By Jonathan Lis, HAARETZ

Party chairman of Habayit Hayehudi Naftali Bennett and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Israel Prize ceremony, April 2018. Olivier Fitoussi

The Habayit Hayehudi party issued an ultimatum to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday morning. Habayit Hayehudi threatened that if a vote is not held within 10 days on the bill limiting the power of the High Court of Justice to rule legislation unconstitutional, the party’s Knesset members will not participate in any Knesset votes supporting the government coalition.

The party is demanding that the Ministerial Committee on legislation convene to vote on the proposed law – and give it official government support – by Sunday, May 6. The present version of the amendment backed by Habayit Hayehudi would require only a vote of 61 MKs to override a High Court ruling, but other proposed versions of the law would require a supermajority of MKs to overrule the court.
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Jihad by culture.

By Abigail R. Esman

Forget the beheading videos, the ISIS propaganda on social media, even the terrorist attacks themselves. Europe, says counterterrorism expert Afshin Ellian, is Islamizing itself, and in the process, the Western values on which its democracies are built are increasingly put at risk.

Take, for instance, Belgium’s ISLAM Party, which now hopes to participate in the country’s October local elections in 28 regions. (Its name serves as an acronym for “Integrité, Solidarité, Liberté, Authenticité, Moralité.)
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North Korea will have to ‘earn’ lifting of sanctions, senior Trump administration official says

By Michael R. Gordon, Jonathan Cheng and Michael C. Bender, WSJ

The pace of Pyongyang’s nuclear dismantlement and the timetable for sanctions relief stand to be the major issues of a summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Photo: Ahn Young-joon/Associated Press

President Donald Trump will urge North Korea to act quickly to dismantle its nuclear arsenal when he meets North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and isn’t willing to grant Pyongyang substantial sanctions relief in return for a freeze of its nuclear and missile tests, administration officials said.

Those two closely related questions—the pace of Pyongyang’s nuclear dismantlement and the timetable for sanctions relief—stand to be the major issues of the summit.

“When the president says that he will not make the mistakes of the past, that means the U.S. will not be making substantial concessions, such as lifting sanctions, until North Korea has substantially dismantled its nuclear programs,” a senior Trump administration official said on Sunday.
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“It’s taken 70 years but we’re starting to see signs of normalization,” said former Labor MK and venture capitalist Erel Margalit.

BY Max Schindler, JPOST

As Israel marked Independence Day, the country was benefiting from ever-growing business ties with the Arab world, according to one Israeli executive who has helped paved the way for the budding rapprochement.

“It’s taken 70 years but we’re starting to see signs of normalization,” said former Labor MK and venture capitalist Erel Margalit, who travels often throughout the Middle East to meet with emirs, monarchs and Arab business leaders. “We saw it in the beginning of the ‘90s with Oslo, it [normalization] crashed and now it’s reemerging.”

Both Israel and Sunni Arab states are seeing a convergence of threats, mainly stemming from the shared menace both face from Shi’ite Iran and its proxies. Yet geopolitical interests may not fully explain burgeoning ties with the Arab world.
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T. Belman. Bennett is right to push for simple majority. It is not realistic to think that a 70 seat majority is attainable.

Education Minister Naftali Bennett blasts Supreme Court for judicial activism, says court now dominates executive branch.

By David Rosenberg, INN

Education Minister Naftali Bennett (Jewish Home) slammed the Supreme Court over its judicial activism, accusing it of assuming the role of the executive branch.

In an interview Sunday evening with Channel 2, Bennett justified his recent efforts to push legislation to empower the Knesset to override Supreme Court decisions with a simple majority – a bill opposed by Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit.
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T. Belman. Hacohen failed to mention that we can’t give up the high ground overlooking the coastal plain.

By Gershon Hacohen, ALGEMEINER

Last year, upon the publication of Micah Goodman’s book Catch-67, I explained the basic reasons for my disagreement with his analysis and recommendations. That seemed at the time to be the end of the matter. A year later, when Goodman chose to set forth his views in two almost identical articles — one in the Haaretz supplement (February 16, 2018), the other in Makor Rishon (April 5, 2018) — I felt compelled to warn of the danger that his recommendations entail.

Opposed to what some Israelis see as a desirable status quo in the West Bank, Goodman recommends a string of pragmatic small steps that would “enable Palestinian autonomy to expand without Israel’s security contracting.” He explains that “this does not entail major ideological concessions such as evacuating settlements.”

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Time is on Israel’s side. A review of the balance of power between Israel and its foes; of the domestic features molding Israel’s national power; and of Israel’s standing in the international community, validates the assessment that Israel has the dominant hand for the foreseeable future.

By Prof Ephraim Inbar, President of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies.

Introduction

At 70, Israel stands strong, yet debates about its health persist. The radical Israeli Left seems most concerned about the country’s future, arguing that there is great urgency in solving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict; otherwise, Israel is doomed. The Left contends that Israel’s democratic character, its international legitimacy, and its ability to withstand protracted conflict all are threatened by the ongoing stalemate.

Indeed, Israel has faced existential threats from its neighbors since its establishment. And as a small state its existence is precarious. Moreover, Jews with a historical consciousness remember that a Jewish state was twice destroyed by powerful empires. So nothing can be taken for granted.

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Authorities Arbitrarily Withdraw Nationality From More Than 2,700; Hundreds of Thousands at Risk

HRW February 1, 2010

Jordanian citizens of Palestinian origin in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan … have the full rights of citizenship and all its obligations, the same as any other citizen irrespective of his origin.  -King Hussein, Amman, July 31, 1988

We are Jordanians if the government needs us, but Palestinians if we want something from the government.  -Dr. Walid, Amman, January 29, 2009

More than half of the 6.3 million population of Jordan is of Palestinian origin-that is, from areas west of the River Jordan, including the West Bank, today’s Israel, and Gaza. With the exception of persons from Gaza, the vast majority of those persons of Palestinian origin have Jordanian citizenship. However, since 1988, and especially over the past few years, the Jordanian government has been arbitrarily and without notice withdrawing Jordanian nationality from its citizens of Palestinian origin, making them stateless. For many of them this means they are again stateless Palestinians as they were before 1950.
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By Sohrab Ahmari, COMMENTARY

When the Anti-Defamation League tapped Jonathan Greenblatt to serve as its CEO in 2015, there were concerns that the Obama White House alumnus would turn the venerable civil-rights group into an arm of the Democratic Party. Alas, those concerns have proved well-founded. Witness Greenblatt’s letter this week opposing Mike Pompeo, President Trump’s choice for America’s next secretary of state, for the flimsiest of reasons.

Running to more than 5,000 words, the letter accuses the CIA director of fanning bigotry with irresponsible statements about radical Islam. Greenblatt goes so far as to suggest that Pompeo’s attitudes are redolent of classic anti-Semitism. That’s a serious charge. It is also utterly baseless. If Pompeo is “Islamophobic,” then so is the ADL. As it turns out, the secretary of state-designate and the ADL have remarkably similar views on the nature of the Islamist threat.Let’s compare Pompeo’s allegedly culpable statements with the ADL’s long record of public advocacy on radical Islam, the homegrown Islamist threat, and Islamist ideologues and networks operating in the U.S. homeland.
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FIFTY-ONE MEMBERS OF CONGRESS HAVE SIGNED A FORUM-ORIGINATED LETTER TO PRESIDENT TRUMP.

MEFORUM

PHILADELPHIA – April 20, 2018 – Fifty-one members of Congress have signed a Forum-originated letter to President Trump.

The letter, sent by Rep. Doug Lamborn (Republican of Colorado) asks to declassify a State Department report on how many individuals currently considered “Palestine refugees” by the United Nations fit the U.S. government definition of refugee.

The United States has provided over $1 billion to these “refugees” via the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) over the past four years.

The Forum has long sought the end of U.S. recognition of fake Palestinian refugees who did not live in 1946-48 in what is today Israel.
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By Yoel Guzansky, INSS Insight No. 1045, April 22, 2018

In contrast to the bottom-up Arab revolutions that took place over the past decade, the revolutionary processes currently underway in Saudi Arabia that aim to change the economic and social fabric in this conservative kingdom are driven top-down by Crown Prince and acting ruler Mohammad bin Salman from his palace in Riyadh. Bin Salman has a great deal of work to do, and it is to be hoped that his plans for changing the nature of the Saudi society and economy are more successful than several of his regional actions, led by the boycott of Qatar and the war in Yemen.
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With Trump expected to announce if he is nixing the deal by May 12, Tehran is contending with a sluggish economy, the worst drought in 50 years and growing public discontent – making Russia ties ever more important

By Zvi Bar’el, HAARETZ

Iranian President Hassan Rohani is holding a hot potato: the Iranian rial. Last week, in a desperate move, his government banned money changers from selling dollars and euros.

At Iran’s international airport, passengers traveling to “nearby” countries can buy just 500 euros ($615), while those going to “distant” countries can buy 1,000 euros. Iranians may not hold more than $10,000 or 10,000 euros, and the official exchange rate was set at 42,000 rials to the dollar – about 20,000 rials less than the black-market rate.

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DEBKA

Tehran is drumming up an oral war of attrition against Israel as a ruse to deter the IDF from striking the military hardware and personnel flowing into Syria.

Iran is pouring out violent threats in a rising crescendo against the Jewish state for two goals: One is to keep Israel off-balance and frozen in a high defense posture on its northern borders; and two, to con Israel into fearing that any IDF action would tip over into an all-out conflict. This stratagem allows Tehran to keep up a continuous stream of hardware and personnel into Syria and Lebanon free of hindrance by Israel’s air force and missiles, and so anchor its military presence in both of Israel’s northern neighbors.

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The Government Accountability Office study of PA textbooks may be filed as classified by the State Dep’t. Why?

By David Bedein, INN

A journalist and constituent of Sen. James Risch (R-IDAHO), recently asked the GAO (Government Accountability Office) as to the status of the GAO investigation of the Palestinian Authority school books now used by UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which are rife with indoctrination to war. Senator Risch had requested this GAO study after this Idaho constituent introduced the Senator to the findings of the Center for Near East Policy Research, which purchases, translates and ev?aluates all school books that Palestinian Arab children learn in UNRWA schools.

Chuck Young, managing director of public affairs of the GAO provided the following answer to Dr. Harper’s request:

“I checked with our team doing the work on Palestinian textbooks that you inquired about. The work is scheduled to be completed and go to the requester, Sen. Risch, the last week in April, though the date could always slide a bit. During the course of the work, the State Department indicated the report will need to be classified and cannot be released publicly. GAO must follow such classification decisions so we do not expect to issue a public report at this point. It would be available only to those with the necessary secret security clearance and a need to know, such as Members of Congress”
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T. Belman. Keep in mind that King Abdullah controls the press in Jordan. This article could not have been published without his permission. Like I say, his days are numbered.

By Deborah Danan, BREITBART

TEL AVIV – President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are “much worse” than Hitler, a columnist writing for a Jordanian daily opined, and added for good measure that some of the crimes attributed to Hitler probably didn’t take place. 

The unhinged column, published earlier this year in Al Ghad newspaper, was entitled “How Are Trump and Netanyahu Any Different from Hitler?” It’s author Jihad Al-Mansi declared that “the behavior of Trump and Netanyahu is much worse than anything done by Hitler,” according to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
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By Jonny Smith, RIGHT WIND NEWS

5 pages of documents that former FBI Director James Comey wrote in meetings with President Donald Trump in the final months of his tenure at the FBI were released to the public. These documents were critical to the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel to take over the ongoing Russia investigation at the DOJ and the FBI. The quagmire that is the Mueller investigation may finally be coming to an abrupt end.

The FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Russian collusion and the Trump campaign began in July of 2016. But it seems the memos contain none of the nefarious elements the liberal mainstream media and the progressive Democratic base probably lusted for throughout this investigation, which has yet to produce strong evidence that there was collusion between the Trump team and the Kremlin.
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By Frank Lea, RIGHT WING NEWS

Donald Trump just signed an ace pitcher and he’s about to take the mound to throw a no-hitter in the game against Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the investigation. The new star taking over is former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani to join Trump’s legal team and work towards closing up Mueller’s investigation with the Russian collusion conspiracy. They hope to close the investigation in the next week or so.

It’s reported that Giuliani has a good relationship with Mueller, so they might be able to figure out a working conclusion on the investigation. Giuliani might face some backlash if he doesn’t get the job done in the proposed “week or two.” Some politicians might pose a threat to his progress, but it’s hopeful to be resolved sooner than later. If the investigation isn’t solved soon, then it will simply go on for ages and nothing will be accomplished by Mueller. He will have spent the last year or so wasting time with nothing-burgers that come with no toppings. Anyone who interferes with the President of the United States of America, in ways that prohibit accomplishments, is not doing a good job.
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