By Amir Toumaj, Saeed Ghasseminejad, FDD Policy Brief

The Islamic Republic’s decades-long mismanagement of water resources has led to a shortage of fresh water, a problem compounded by drought and rising temperatures due to climate change. The shortage is acutely felt across Iran and has fueled recent protests against the government.

While Iran has managed to curb the rapid population growth of the 1980s – a success which may not last as Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has set his eyes on increasing the population to 150 million – the Iranian government’s policies have systematically led to overuse of water. Contributing factors include corruption, lack of vision, unimpeded dam construction by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, inadequate water-distribution infrastructure, inefficient agriculture, inter-basin water transfer projects, and water quality degradation.
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But senior cabinet colleague says Economy Minister Eli Cohen doesn’t know what he’s talking about; Cohen also claims 11 died in recent Israeli strikes in Syria when F-16 downed

By TOI STAFF

In a stunning claim that would suggest far-reaching worldwide reliance on Israel’s intelligence agencies, Economy Minister Eli Cohen (Kulanu) on Sunday said that Israel warned 30 countries worldwide about specific terror plots in the course of 2017. Read more…

Israeli Air Force investigation reveals F-16 pilot and navigator failed to follow a precise action sequence due to stress.

BY ANNA AHRONHEIM, JPOST

The downing of the F-16i jet on February 10 by a Syrian antiaircraft missile was due to an operational mistake on the part of the pilots, the IDF announced Sunday.

“Between the tension of completing the mission while facing enemy missiles, there was an operational mistake on the part of the team whose actions did not match the order of priorities required by the threat it was facing,” a senior Israel Air Force officer said, explaining that the pilots did not take the proper evasive measures.

“The moment that there is a missile threat, they had to leave their targets in the mission and react properly to the threat.”
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A three-way deal has seemingly been reached in the complex web of Syrian politics.

By Sami Moubayed, THE ARAB WEEKLY

Counterweight. A convoy of pro-Syrian government fighters arrive in Syria’s northern region of Afrin, on February 20.(AFP)

T. Belman. Better that Iran not there at all. Even if Iran doesn’t attack directly, it can bring in whatever it wants and give it to proxies who wouyold intern use it against Israel

DEBKA

“If Iran attacks Israel, Russia will stand alongside the US to defend Israel,” said Russian ambassador to Israel Alexander Shein at the Munich security conference last week –  in a mixed message from Moscow. This assurance is part of the effort Moscow has been making for some time to allay Israel’s concerns and stop the Netanyahu government from agitating against the peril posed by an Iranian military presence in Syria.  The Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu carried this message when he paid an unprecedented visit to Jerusalem last October.
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The goal of court reform is elimination of the Green Line, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said.

By Tovah Lazaroff, JPOST

Vehicles drive on Highway 443 past the West Bank Jewish settlement of Beit Horon. (photo credit: AMMAR AWAD / REUTERS)

In the newest push toward de facto annexation of the West Bank, the Ministerial Committee for Legislation approved a bill on Sunday that would expand the jurisdiction of Israeli courts over Area C of that region.

If passed, the bill would minimize the role of the High Court of Justice with regard to cases involving property rights, building and construction, freedom of information and restraining orders.

Lawsuits against actions taken by Israeli authorities in Area C on these topics would be handled in the same way as cases within sovereign Israel.
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New law would end use of Israeli courts against Judea and Samaria residents, take away High Court’s power to rule on property disputes.

By Zvi Lev, INN

A bill forcing property lawsuits in Judea and Samaria to be adjudicated by the Jerusalem District Court, rather than by the High Court of Justice, was approved by the ministerial committee for legislation on Sunday.

The bill, which is sponsored by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked (Jewish Home), would if passed cause a dramatic change in property litigation. Currently, all property disputes in Judea and Samaria are brought to the High Court of Justice, whose left-leaning bent often leads rulings skewed against the residents.
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[NOTHING GOOD WILL COME OF THIS]

By Eldad Shavit, INSS Insight No. 1027, February 25, 2018

The United States is determined to continue to provide assistance to Lebanon’s armed forces, believing that this military assistance helps maintain state stability. Yet while in his recent visit to Beirut Secretary of State Tillerson stressed repeatedly the administration’s opposition to Hezbollah, it did not appear that the United States has confronted the reality of Hezbollah’s partnership in the Lebanese government, or the identical interests of Hezbollah and official Lebanese government positions. Israel’s official view of US aid to the Lebanese military runs sharply counter to the approach of the US administration.

Therefore, the Israeli discourse with the US administration in this context should have two main goals: one, to ensure that the aid does not significantly increase the threat against Israel, based on the working assumption that Hezbollah will be able to appropriate the weapons; and two, to strengthen the administration’s use of this aid to motivate the authorities in Lebanon to impose limitations on Hezbollah. Moreover, advance coordination with the US administration regarding the realm of military operations and the time Israel will have to complete them is critical, if and when a military clash erupts between Israel and Hezbollah.
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T. Belman.  Like most of you, I want Israel to succeed in expelling the infiltrators from Eritrea and Sudan. I never gave it a moment’s thought, at least not until my daughter raked me over the coals for being so heartless. She got involved in the cause of helping them stay in part because her two daughters used to play with two Eritrean girls, Murit 12 and Yerus 5 every day for years.  Murit’s mother carried her on her back 8 years ago from Eritrea to get here and Yerus was born here.

Whenever I visited her apartment in South Tel Aviv these two girls were there. Often they would stay for supper or I would take the four girls out for ice cream. My daughter tells me that they are not in danger of being expelled. That treatment is reserved for males without dependants in Israel.

We like to think that they are economic migrants and no doubt some are. Recently I read that they ran away from Eritrea because they wanted to avoid the draft. I thought that’s no reason for granting asylum but in this case perhaps it is.  Being drafted commits you to a lifetime of forced service for men and women.

Read what Irwin Cotler has to say and let me know what you think.

By Irwin Cotler, TOI

Israel is home to nearly 40,000 African asylum seekers and migrants – of whom some 72 percent are Eritrean and 20 percent Sudanese – some of whom began to arrive as early as 2005. At the time, asylum seekers from these two countries – both of which are dictatorships that brutally repress their populations and violate their human rights – began to arrive in Canada.
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Netanyahu, the Palestinians or just plain old logistics?

By Herb Keinon, JPOST

The State Department’s announcement Friday that it will essentially move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in phases, with the first stage to begin as early as May to coincide with Israel’s 70th Independence Day, is a significant shortening of the timeline.

Two days after US President Donald Trump made his historic announcement in the White House on December 6 to recognize Jerusalem and move the embassy, his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, seemed to be trying to calm down Palestinian fury and the anger in much of the Muslim world by saying that the embassy move would take years.
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Netiv Ha’avot and Israeli sovereignty

By SHLOMO NE’EMAN, JPOST

The time has come for us to understand that the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people, that the Land of Israel belongs to the State of Israel.

Anyone – or almost anyone – who’s heard about the Netiv Ha’avot case is certain that the problem is a localized one that affects only residents of one particular neighborhood, or at the most, residents of Gush Etzion. This being the case, allow me to introduce you to Gush Etzion, and to the rest of Yehuda and Shomron (Judea and Samaria): It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.
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By Alex Markovsky, AMERICAN THINKER

Where do we drive the line between Liberalism and Socialism?

Liberalism is an idealistic political philosophy born after the defeat of Napoleon, a philosophy of freedom, which epitomized individual liberty, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and free elections.

Socialism, on the other hand, is a political philosophy and economic system that promotes egalitarianism — a theory of economic equality. Modern socialism originated in the nineteen century as a working-class economic and political movement that opposed private property and criticized the effects of industrialization on society. It is usually defined as “common ownership of the means of production.”
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T. Belman. This is an anti Israel site but the article sheds some insights to what’s at play in Syria.

The Kurds aren’t playing Damascus like a fiddle just yet, but they’re coming dangerously close.

By Andrew Korybko, GLOBAL RESEARCH

[..]

Spheres Of Influence

That, with all due respect to Damascus, is a risky supposition to make (to help the Kurds)  because it overlooks the nuances of the Russian-Turkish Strategic Partnership and Ankara’s legitimate claims about fighting Kurdish terrorists, which everyone should be reminded were passively approved by Moscow withdrawing its military forces from Afrin and de-facto greenlighting the “Operation Olive Branch”. Turkey does not intend to “annex” any part of Syria like some misleading infowar voices claim but it admittedly wants to establish a sphere of influence within the country by replacing the PYD-YPG with pro-Turkish Kurds and Arabas afterwards. They’re not the only one gaming to set up their own ‘fiefdom’ in the country, though, since the Kurdish “federalists” themselves already allowed 2000 US troops to deploy to 10 bases in the agriculturally and energy-rich northeastern one-third of Syria.
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By Jeff Crouere, CFP

On Friday, President Trump addressed the largest crowd of conservative activists in the history of CPAC. It was another memorable Trump speech, listing his many accomplishments and encouraging the crowd to support Republican candidates in the mid-term elections. For 80 minutes, the President discussed an array of issues such as tax cuts, judicial appointments, immigration and the strong economy.
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By Prof. Paul Eidelberg

Let’s begin with a brief definition of moral relativism and show how it affected Supreme Court rulings in the United States as well as in Israel.

Moral relativism is a university-bred doctrine which has dominated the social sciences and the humanities for many decades. Its clearest definition appears in the work of the seventeenth-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes.  In his famousLeviathan, Hobbes writes:

Whatever is the object of any man’s appetite or desire, that is it which he for his part calleth good; and the object of his hate or aversion, evil … For these words of good [and] evil … are ever used with relation to the person that useth them: there being nothing simply and absolutely so, where there is no commonwealth.

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By David Solway, AMERICAN THINKER

Over half a century after the “Red Scare,” playwright and memoirist Lillian Hellman, whose name is often coupled with her adversary Senator Joe McCarthy, seems to have emerged relatively unscathed in the court of elite progressivist opinion despite the exposure of her manifold fabrications and deceptions.  The liar, it appears, is the incarnation of a higher truth.  Such is the power of the press and the cultural salience of left-wing attitudes in America.

Hellman, a passionate supporter of the Soviet Union even when Stalin’s crimes had been widely publicized, was subpoenaed before the House Un-American Activities Committee by McCarthy and was subsequently lionized by the media, the commentariat, and the entertainment industry from the 1950s to the present for refusing to name names.  She was elevated to the plinth of truth and courage while McCarthy was effectively consigned to the Eighth Circle of the Inferno as an evil counselor and a sower of discord.

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