The plan is one of the closest-guarded secrets in Washington these days.

BY Yaakov Katz, JPOST

Sometime in the coming weeks, the US will present the much-anticipated peace plan it has been working on since President Donald Trump entered the Oval Office 18 months ago.

What the plan exactly contains remains a mystery, but based on rumblings in Washington and Jerusalem, it has the potential to shake up the region. Here is why:

First, the plan is one of the closest-guarded secrets in Washington these days, with the White House going to great pains to ensure that nothing leaks out.

Until now, the written version, for example, could not be sent by email and could only be viewed from within the White House or the adjacent Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where Trump’s Mideast envoy Jason Greenblatt and his team have their offices.
Read more…

By Alex Griswald, FREE BEACON

The American Civil Liberty Union has done a lot of good in this country, imho. I know they’re a favorite target of many conservatives, including my bosses, and I myself would never donate to them (their abortion advocacy being a deal-breaker). But the organization has a long history of standing up for and protecting the constitutional liberties of even unpopular or politically toxic Americans. Or at least it used to.

Last year, for example, the ACLU defended the rights of white supremacist protestors after their application to demonstrate in Charlottesville, Virginia was denied. We all know what happened next. The protest was approved, counter-protesters also showed up, the groups clashed, and an innocent woman was murdered by one of the Nazis.

The ACLU position was correct. As a matter of constitutional law and legal precedent, the government cannot ban speakers based on the content of their message, even if that message includes endorsements of violence. The ACLU is not culpable for the complete ineptitude of local law enforcement to foresee the possibility of violence and separate the two sides. But nonetheless, the ACLU was attacked by liberal allies and former employees who asked they “rethink free speech.”
Read more…

Jordan’s King Abdullah II sets off for the United States, will discuss Israel-PA peace with Trump.

By Elad Benari, INN

Jordan’s King Abdullah II set off for the United States on Thursday for talks with President Donald Trump on Middle East issues, including the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the palace said, according to AFP.

Accompanied by his wife Rania, the monarch is also scheduled to meet with senior officials from the Trump administration and members of Congress, the palace said in a statement.

His meeting with Trump is expected to take place at the White House on Monday.
Read more…

 By Ardie Geldman, COMMENTARY    

Excluding drive-time traffic, a car ride from the southern end of Jerusalem to the West Bank community of Efrat takes about 15 minutes. One travels along Israel’s Route 60 on the segment known as the “Tunnels Road” because its construction necessitated the first two tunnels in Israel to be cut through mountainside. The road was opened in 1996 to let commuters bypass the Arab towns of Bethlehem and Beit Jala, but mostly to avoid the Deheisha refugee camp. Cars driving on this road displaying yellow Israeli license plates had often been the targets of rocks and occasionally Molotov cocktails and gunfire.

Efrat’s first homeowners moved into the suburban hilltop community in April 1983. Starting with 50 families, some 250 souls, Efrat has since developed into a full-fledged, independent municipality whose current populace is about 12,000. Its master plan, approved by an Israeli Labor government during the mid-1970s, foresees a total population of 30,000. Efrat boasts a number of highly rated schools, a large and active community center, a well-used multilingual public library, sports fields and playgrounds, shopping centers, a soon-to-be completed shopping mall with underground parking, a plethora of medical clinics, and numerous synagogues (to date all Orthodox)—in short, pretty much every type of institution or facility that makes a town a town.
Read more…

By Adam Dalgliesh

In my last column, I pointed out that Israel’s extreme unpopularity in the world is one of the reasons why Israel is reluctant to take the decisive military and other measures that are necessary to resolve its security and demographic problems, which are closely linked with each other.

The Israeli government fears international sanctions, not only diplomatic, but perhaps even military, will be imposed on Israel if it were to undertake these decisive steps. Are the government’s fears realistic and reasonable? I believe that while they may be exaggerated and are in any case only one of the reasons why Israel’s ruling, unelected elites refuse to act decisively against the nation’s enemies (the other being their own bizarre sympathy for these enemies), this fear that any decisive action to end the aggression will lead to international retaliation against Israel does have a rational basis.
Read more…

by Dr. Eric R. Mandel, MEPIN

America should be very concerned about the outcome that may emerge later this summer as a result of the recent Iraqi election.
Satellite view of Israel and the Middle East. (photo credit: COURTESY NASA/PUBLIC DOMAIN)

By Conrad Black, NY SUN

[…]

But I think the victory of Trump and his gradual success in the principal areas he has focused on — economic growth, deregulation, tax reduction and reform, regularization of immigration, nuclear non-proliferation, equitable burden-sharing in the Western alliance, reduction of the trade deficit and oil imports, and withdrawal from ecological measures based on fear of global warming — are strong evidence of the strength of enlightened democracy in the United States.

I will concede that the rescue process under this administration is inelegantly conducted at times, but rarely in recent American history has substance been so overwhelmingly more important than style. I believe that Jonah Goldberg and others who might be expected to approve most of the policy initiatives and results of the Trump presidency are unduly preoccupied with mere appearances, optics, and atmospherics.
Read more…

DEBKA

By playing down the Hamas assaults from the Gaza Strip, Israel’s leaders hope to gloss over the IDF’s mounting involvement in two if not three battlefronts. The IDF has therefore long been restrained from hitting back hard for Hamas’ flaming kites and balloons. On Tuesday night, June 19, the Israeli Air Force strafed 25 Hamas structures, sparking a 30-rocket barrage against the Israeli communities around the Gaza Strip.

Following the same policy with regard to the Syrian front, Israel also held back from confirming the US disclosure that its warplanes early Monday, June 18, stopped the passage of Iraqi Shiite Kata’ib Hezbollah militia brigades into eastern Syria. DEBKAfile’s military sources name the chief of this militia as Qais al-Khazali, who serves under Iran’s Al Qods chief Gen. Qassem Soleimani, and is connected with the Lebanese Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah through the Iranian-Hizballah war room outside Damascus. This interaction came to light seven months ago, when Khazali was sighted touring the Lebanese-Israeli border in company of Nasrallah’s officers. His tour was planned to check the future positions of his Iraqi militiamen when they reached Lebanon from Iraq via Syria. At the time, the IDF, although registering the Iraqi militia chief’s presence on the border, decided not to target him then.

Read more…

T. Belman. Many of us share these roots. I know I do.

Jews are unshackling themselves in “the Golden Medina” from Old World practices, illiteracy, and pogroms. Matilda Rabinowitz is enthralled and her ambition now is dedicated to fighting for the soul of America.

By Dr. Harold Goldmeier, INN

IMMIGRANT GIRL, RADICAL WOMAN: A Memoir from the Early Twentieth Century is a fascinating, educational and engaging personal story written like a great novel rather than a typical memoir. The book is based on the diary of the main character, Matilda Rabinowitz. I highly recommend it.

The focus is on an immigrant Jewish girl arriving in America in the thick of the turbulent times ushering in the 20th-century. Anarchists, communists, and socialists are battling capitalists. The working class battles robber barons. A young woman, Matilda, begins as a foot soldier in a passel of Jews grasping “the nuances of Socialist theory, aligning themselves with the younger, radical members.”
Read more…

By David Israel, JEWISH PRESS

Hundreds of police and soldiers were mobilized this week for the evacuation and demolition of five illegal structures in the Bedouin settlement of Susya in the southern Hebron hills, in Area c, which, according to the Oslo Accords, is under complete Israeli control. But on Monday night, according to Ynet, the prime minister’s office was instructed to postpone the evacuation to an undetermined date. The reason, Ynet speculates, is the coming visit of Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt, President Trump’s envoys to the peace negotiations.

Susya, in Judea, made up of shacks and lean-tos / Courtesy Regavim
The fight against the demolition of Arab homes in Susya is one of the symbols of the PA struggle against Israel’s authority over Judea and Samaria, and the Netanyahu government has been under heavy international pressure, especially in recent weeks, to prevent the demolition, which is expected to receive extensive international coverage.
Read more…

Christians from the Armstrong International Cultural Foundation in Oklahoma have a history in helping dig up history in the Jewish state, including, most recently, the seals of Hezekiah and Isaiah.

By Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman, JEWISH WEBSITE

By Saagar Enjeti | White House Correspondent, THE DAILY CALLER

The Obama administration prosecuted approximately half a million adults for illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border between Fiscal year 2010 and Fiscal year 2016, Department of Homeland Security data provided to the Daily Caller reveals.

The prosecutions include both illegal immigrant violators of Title 8 of the U.S. Code 1325 and 1326 used to penalize first time and multiple offenders respectively. The DHS data further shows that the Obama administration referred on average 1 out of 5 adults apprehended at the border for criminal prosecution.
Read more…

By John Nolte, BREITBART

The fire hose of fake news from the establishment media this week on the issue of illegal immigrant families separated at the border is designed to mislead the American people — and to distract from Trump’s recent successes.

Here are the facts — 13 truths the media do not want you to know about President Trump’s legal, humane, and moral handling of adults and children who enter our country illegally.

1. Trump Is Only Enforcing the Law
   

The establishment media’s manufactured narrative about the necessary and moral separation of illegal alien parents from their children is designed with the specific purpose of spreading the fake news that, only as a means to be cruel,  President Trump is somehow making all of this up as he goes along.
Read more…

This article by Anne Bayefsky originally appeared on Fox News.

President Trump has rightly decided to terminate U.S. membership on what UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo today called the “misnamed” UN “Human Rights” Council. The move comes after the administration gave the Council 17 months to get serious about reform and to stop spreading antisemitism under the false flag of promoting human rights.

Many believed it was 17 months that the UN didn’t deserve. U.S. membership on the Council legitimized an especially treacherous adversary to liberal democracies: the faux human rights victim. But in response, UN actors squandered the more than generous opportunities for change provided during hundreds of meetings and are left with no one to blame but themselves.

The Human Rights Council was the UN’s cure for the Human Rights Commission – presided over by Muammar Qaddafi’s Libya shortly before somebody noticed it lacked credibility.
Read more…

By By Yaron SteinbucH, NEW YORK POST

The US withdrew Tuesday from the UN Human Rights Council, calling it an organization “that is not worthy of its name.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley announced the move at the State Department.

“We take this step because our commitment does not allow us to remain a part of a hypocritical and self-serving organization that makes a mockery of human rights,” Haley said.

Haley said a year ago she made clear the US would stay in the council only if “essential reforms were achieved” — and that hasn’t happened.
Read more…

In their first meeting since 2014, PM Netanyahu and King Abdullah discuss regional developments, peace process, bilateral relations • Tensions rose between the two countries after Israeli guard in Amman killed two Jordanians during stabbing attack.

By Ariel Kahana, Daniel Siryoti, AP and Israel Hayom Staff

By Maj-Gen Gershon Hacohen, ISRAEL HAYOM

The enemy that has been setting our fields ablaze with incendiary kites has created a clear challenge for Israeli policymakers. The cumulative damage inflicted by the kites has turned the Gaza-Israel border area into barren land and has challenged the notion that the Israeli government can provide security for its citizens.

The kibbutzim in the area are right in demanding that the government put an end to this. Yes, the Israel Defense Forces’ rules of engagement are decided by the chief of general staff, and should not be formulated by a public debate. That said, in pleading with the government, the kibbutzim are true to their historical pioneering role.

This further underscores the fact that the struggle we are facing is a struggle over sovereignty, especially in that area. Nothing is stronger than civilians who refuse to give up and stay on their land.

Read more…

Until the 2015 general elections, more than half of the Kurdish electorate supported the Adalet and Kalkinma Partisi (AKP) led by President Tayyip Erdogan.

By Ofra Bengio, JPOST

The Turkish general and presidential elections scheduled for June 24 are among the most critical ones in the country’s history, since they are likely to decide the direction that Turkey heads – toward an unbridled authoritarian rule, or one that will regain some of its democratic traits. One of the big question marks in these elections is the stance of the Kurdish electorate, which represents about 20% of the total population.

Until the 2015 general elections, more than half of the Kurdish electorate supported the Adalet and Kalkinma Partisi (AKP) led by President Tayyip Erdogan. On one hand, the AKP’s Islamic stance appealed to the more conservative part of Kurdish society in southeastern Turkey. On the other hand, the covert and half-hearted peace process that the AKP initiated in 2009 and 2013-2015 with the Partiye Karkeren Kurdistan (PKK) – the insurgent group that has been fighting Turkey since 1984 – appealed to the more left-oriented Kurds.
Read more…