While it remains far from clear that such an arrangement is even feasible, Israel is giving Egyptian mediation efforts a chance.

By Yaakov Lappin, JNS

The prospect of a long-term truce between Israel and Hamas brings with it both risks and opportunities. While it remains far from clear that such an arrangement is even feasible, Israel is giving Egyptian mediation efforts a chance.

At present, the Israel-Hamas truce is based on the minimal formula of “quiet for quiet.” Many obstacles stand in the way of efforts to broaden this arrangement.

As time passes, this minimalist formula, in place since the end of “Operation Protective Edge” in 2014, faces a growing risk of collapsing into a new war.

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By Amil Imani, AMERICAN THINKER

Is “Moderate Islam” an illusion? Moderate Islam is a wedge that will jam open the door to Jihad, and “evil will triumph when good Muslims do nothing.” The great majority of Muslims are not adherents of the radical line. Yet, because Islamists wage their war under the name of Islam, they receive immense direct and indirect support from rank-and-file ordinary Muslims. It is this support of moderate Muslims that keeps the Jihadists alive.

Perhaps it is wishful thinking on the part of non-Muslims to believe that one can be a moderate Muslim who does not participate in any shape or form the crimes of the jihadist. Good-hearted Americans, rightfully weary of wars, are voicing their opposition for the use of force in combating Islamic ideology.
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JORDANIANS ANNOUNCE A PUBLIC DISOBEDIENCE THE KING , government minister FORCED OUT OF THREE JORDANIAN TOWNS in less than 24 hours

Senior administration official complains, ‘If Obama had transferred the US embassy to Jerusalem, the American Jewish community would have been united in applauding him!’

By Eric Cortellessa, TOI

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is reportedly frustrated with the American Jewish community for not embracing the US president more warmly after he moved the US embassy to Jerusalem.

A new report released Sunday by the Jewish People Policy Institute, a branch of the Jewish Agency, quoted a White House official who alleged the president’s predecessor, Barack Obama, would be beloved for doing the things Trump has done.

“We can take justified criticism, but if Obama had transferred the US embassy to Jerusalem, the American Jewish community would have been united in applauding him!” the official said.
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By Dr. Jonathan Spyer, JISS

Israel has fully joined the battle in Syria—but it’s not clear it can achieve any of its goals there.

It has recently become clear that Israel is engaged in a secret war against Iran in Syria. The war is conducted mainly by means of air power, presumably combined with the intelligence work necessary to provide the country’s airmen with the relevant targets; there is also evidence that targeted killings are among Israel’s tactics in Syria. The objective of this campaign, as plainly stated by senior officials such as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, is the complete withdrawal of Iranian forces and their proxies from Syria.
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T. Belman. The Arabs are almost a majority in Jerusalem. Israel must find a way to prevent them from becoming a majority. That’s why there is talk about excluding three Arab communities that are part of Jerusalem but outside the fence and talk about expanding Jerusalem even further to strengthen the Jewish majority.

By Nadav Shragai, ISRAEL HAYOM

“A great drama is taking place in East Jerusalem,” says Dr. David Koren, Advisor to the Mayor of Jerusalem for Arab and East Jerusalem affairs, just before he finishes one of the less routine posts in the public service and retires. Koren says that the saga of 400,000 Arabs in East Jerusalem is reaching a peak right now. He calls it “a historic watershed. Nationalism there is in full retreat. It is giving way to two main contradictory alternative allegiances that are gaining strength in East Jerusalem and competing with each other: Israelization on the one hand and Islamization on the other. The fateful choice between these two identities is now becoming clear,” he says.

Koren, 41, a former head of the Middle East branch in the National Security Council in the Prime Minister’s Office, bases his assessments on thousands of hours of talks with the residents and their leadership – parents’ committees, educators, and local committees – and on the mileage he accumulated in eight years in his job at the side of Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat.

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Anti-assimilation group challenges decision to grant full custody of Israeli Jewish girl to her Arab grandmother, despite mother’s protests.

By David Rosenberg, INN

An anti-assimilation group in Israel says it has challenged a decision issued by a state Islamic court in Israel which awarded full custody of a Jewish girl to her Arab grandmother, despite the objections of the girl’s mother.

According to the Yad L’Achim organization – which works to counter efforts to missionize Jews in Israel and to combat assimilation – a state Sharia court which serves Israel’s Muslim minority population awarded custody of a two-year-old Israeli girl, named Yasmin, to her Arab grandmother.
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By Prof. Paul Eidelberg

Americans spend an enormous amount of money for the education of their youth. Hardly anyone draws a connection between the lack of moral content of this education, as articulated in the social sciences and the humanities, and America’s decline as a world power.  Let me illustrate this phenomenon by means of the character of former President Barack Obama.

Mr. Obama has been called an “Empty Suit.” This may be construed to mean that Obama is a deceptively “Invisible Man” in a visible suit. What made him invisible apparently from the outset of his political career is that he had no clear cut or substantive national identity.  Consistent therewith, he called himself a “cosmopolitan,” which literally means a man without a country!
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Al-Jazeera reports that the administration has decided to immediately close all bank accounts linked to the PA and PLO across the US.

By Elad Benari, INN

The United States is intensifying its pressure on the Palestinian Authority (PA). The Al-Jazeeranetwork reported on Sunday evening that the US administration has decided to immediately close all bank accounts linked to the PA or the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in banks across the United States.

The US is not confirming the report at the moment, but the State Department hinted last week after the closure of the PLO’s mission in Washington that there would be further steps against the Palestinian Arabs.
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T. Belman. No surprise here. That’s why the PA has frozen their refugee status from day one. The PA argues they have a right to return to Israel, where they came from. This is a complete lie.

By Evelyn Gordon, COMMENTARY

It’s eminently fitting the woman the Palestinian Authority chose to formally launch its statehood bid is a proud mother of five murderers, of whom one is now dead while the other four are serving life sentences in Israel. After all, a woman who teaches her sons to kill Israelis even at the expense of their own welfare is the perfect emblem of a Palestinian state dedicated to destroying Israel even at the expense of its people’s welfare. And if that accusation seems far-fetched, just consider the shocking interview the PLO’s ambassador to Lebanon, Abdullah Abdullah, gave the Lebanese Daily Star last week:

The ambassador unequivocally says that Palestinian refugees would not become citizens of the sought for U.N.-recognized Palestinian state…

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Official in Ramallah lists steps the Trump administration has taken against the Palestinians and asks, “What more needs to happen for the office of the rais [president] to realize that Trump doesn’t just make promises or threats – he carries them out?”

By Daniel Siryoti, ISRAEL HAYOM

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas addresses the Palestine Liberation Organization Central Council in Ramallah  Photo: EPA

A series of recent U.S. steps against the Palestinian Authority have infuriated the Palestinian leadership, but the outrage directed at the U.S. administration has been amplified by growing criticism directed at Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who has made “every possible mistake” since President Donald Trump entered the White House, according to a senior Palestinian official who spoke to Israel Hayom.

The official said that Abbas – fearing additional American sanctions on the PA – has instructed the Palestinians to “stop attacking [U.S. President Donald] Trump and the administration in Washington and to moderate statements against the U.S.”
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T. Belman. Gordon says “equality” should be left out from the Nation-state law, as it has, because to include it would elevate democracy over Jewish. She said that the currrent law seeks parity between both.

I am not satisfied with Parity because that would leave it to the Court to decide between the two.  They could always favour democracy.

By Evelyn Gordon

Ever since Israel’s nation-state law was enacted in July, one constant refrain has sounded: The law should have included a provision guaranteeing equality to all Israelis. It’s not only the law’s opponents who say this; so do many of its supporters, liberals and conservatives alike. But they are wrong.

Adding a provision about equality to the nation-state law sounds innocuous because civic and political equality is already implicitly guaranteed through the 1992 Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty. Basic Laws are Israel’s closest approximation to constitutional legislation, and the 1992 law, which protects the “dignity of any person as such,” has been consistently interpreted by the courts as enshrining equality on the grounds that discrimination violates a person’s dignity. So what harm could it do to offer an explicit guarantee in the Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People?
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DEBKA

A Palestinian bid to harness their case against President Donald Trump to the US Democrats’ midterm election campaign was spurned, DEBKAfile reports exclusively. “Operation Democratic Party” was launched at secret sessions led by Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) at his Ramallah headquarters with military precision. These sessions took place during recent weeks, before Trump landed his final blow on Friday, Sept. 14, by shutting down the last US $10 million allocation, this one dedicated to an Israeli-Palestinian friendship program. He left in place only the part for promoting relations between Israeli Arabs and Israel Jews.
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