Monday, 22 January, 2018 – 13:30
Asharq Al-Awsat

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced on Monday that Moscow has invited Kurdish representatives to attend the Sochi-hosted congress on Syria set for next week.

“Kurdish officials are on the list of Syrian guests to the national dialogue congress,” he said during a press conference.

He also stressed the need to ensure the role of the Kurds in the political settlement to the crisis.
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Vice president pledges US embassy will move to Jerusalem by end of 2019; urges Palestinians to come to negotiating table and vows US won’t issue Iran sanctions waiver again

By TOI STAFF

President Rivlin, Prime Minister Netanyahu, Speaker Edelstein, Leader Herzog, members of the Knesset, justices of the Supreme Court, citizens of Israel it is deeply humbling for me to stand before this vibrant democracy to have the great honor to address this Knesset, the first Vice President of the United States to be afforded that privilege here in Jerusalem, the capital of the State of Israel.

And I bring greetings from a leader who has done more to bring our two great countries closer together than any President in the past 70 years — the 45th President of the United States of America, President Donald Trump.

Thanks to the President’s leadership, the alliance between our two countries has never been stronger, and the friendship between our peoples has never been deeper. And I am here to convey a simple message from the heart of the American people: America stands with Israel.
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Time has come to tell the PLO that the game is up, they lost and are in no position to demand anything from anyone. Accepting defeat could be the best thing for the Arabs of the PA

By Daniel Krygier, MIDA

Throughout history, nations and people knew when they were winning and when they were losing. Despite suffering spectacular failures and chronic defeat, Arab leaders in general, and the PLO leadership in particular, pretend as if they are the victors setting demands.

Can you imagine Hitler during the dying days of his Nazi empire, issuing threats and demands to the Allied victors from his Berlin bunker? Would the defeated Napoleon issue threatening demands to the victorious British Duke of Wellington in Waterloo? Of course not. Even fanatics like Hitler knew when the game was over.
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By Chuck Ross, THE DAILY CALLER

The FBI “failed to preserve” five months worth of text messages exchanged between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, the two FBI employees who made pro-Clinton and anti-Trump comments while working on the Clinton email and the Russia collusion investigations.

The disclosure was made Friday in a letter sent by the Justice Department to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC).

“The Department wants to bring to your attention that the FBI’s technical system for retaining text messages sent and received on FBI mobile devices failed to preserve text messages for Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page,” Stephen Boyd, the assistant attorney general for legislative affairs at the Justice Department, wrote to Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, the chairman of HSGAC. (RELATED: FBI Agents Discussed ‘Insurance Policy’ Against Trump Win)
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DEBKAfile exclusive report:

In an exceptionally stern warning, Vice President Mike Pence put Egyptian and Jordanian leaders on immediate notice to stop fighting President Donald Trump’s Palestinian policy and his decision to relocate the US embassy to Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Pence warned President Abdel-Fatteh El-Sisi and King Abdullah that, if they wanted to keep their good relations with President Trump and benefit from US economic and military assistance, they had better desist from their anti-Trump rhetoric and start playing ball with his approach to resolving the Palestinian-Israeli dispute. This was the main theme of his conversations with the two leaders in Cairo and Amman on Saturday and Sunday, Jan. 20-21.
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This author’s next book needs to be about how Jewish American leaders lie to Jews about the “conflict”.  It’s not “just” academia and the press.

By omission and or commission, deceit and/or outright lies.  Reform, Conservative, ADL, Jewish Federation, AJC.  That is why when our kids go off to college they are easy pickings for J St. etc. He can get the guide book from URJ and USCJ on what kids are supposed to be taught in Hebrew school about Israel, or synagogue adult ed on Israel and see what a pack of lies it all is. S. Lewis

Lying about Jews, which is anti-Semitism, was the road to the Holocaust. Hitler told the German people lies about Jews and produced propaganda – vile speeches and anti-Semitic cartoons – that by the time WWII started there was no German on earth who did not hate Jews. The Muslims have the same anti-Semitic German genes and all the vile hate we saw and see coming from Arab lands and Arabs is because their anti-Semitic genes are working overtime. Also, the Arabs are the natural heir to anti-Semitism Hitlerism.

Now this WWII German propaganda and hate of Jews is targeting the state of Israel, going collectively after 7 million Jews living there. ~ NuritG

By Ben-Dror Yemini (Author)                 

End the “Palestinian” occupation of Israel.

by Mordechai Kedar, ALGEMEINER

Unsurprisingly, Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital aroused massive outrage in the Arab and Islamic world. This was for two main reasons — one religious and one nationalist.

The religious reason is rooted in Islam’s conception of itself as a faith whose mission is to bring both Judaism and Christianity to an end, and inherit all that was once Jewish or Christian: land, places of worship, and people. In Islam’s worldview, Palestine in its entirety belongs to Muslims alone, because both Jews and Christians betrayed Allah when they refused to become followers of the prophet Muhammad. Their punishment is to be expulsion from their lands and the forfeiture of all rights to them.

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Poor but holy

By ECONOMIST

EARLIER this year residents of Jerusalem woke up to find piles of rubbish strewn across roads, markets and other public spaces. Municipal workers striking against job cuts announced by the city had not simply stopped collecting refuse; they dumped lorry-loads of it.

Jerusalem has attracted a lot of attention since President Donald Trump announced in December that America would recognise it as Israel’s capital and move its embassy there. Yet for all the fuss over the holy city’s international status, its management and finances are a mess. Its streets are often filthy (even when city workers are not striking) and its pavements are crumbling—visible indicators that it spends a quarter less per person on services for residents than Israel’s other large cities.
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More than half the refugees in western Europe hold anti-Semitic views, says Diaspora Affairs Ministry report on global anti-Semitism • In many European nations, anti-Semitic incidents hit record high in 2017 • Anti-Semitic attacks in U.K. alone up 78%.

By Shlomo Cesana, ISRAEL HAYOM

The influx of refugees and immigrants from Muslim countries into Europe has caused a spike in anti-Semitic backlash against Israel, a Diaspora Affairs Ministry report on global anti-Semitism stated Sunday.

Diaspora Affairs Minister Naftali Bennett presented the report’s findings at the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday morning. The ministry regularly compiles a report on worldwide anti-Semitism ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which will be marked on Saturday.

The report pointed to Muslim immigrants to Europe as “a major risk factor to the Jewish communities of western Europe,” saying that over half of all immigrants in western Europe hold anti-Semitic views.
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By Richard Baehr, AMERICAN THINKER

During 1940, three of the most significant Zionist leaders in the world – Chaim Weizmann, Vladimir Jabotinsky, and David Ben Gurion , all visited the United States , hoping to gain a measure of American Jewish support or US government support for the creation of a Jewish army to help fight the Nazis. Rick Richman’s new book, Racing Against History, provides an interesting and very carefully researched history of these visits, the leaders’ goals, what they accomplished, and what prevented greater success. Richman’s book is a fascinating look at a moment in time, different seemingly from our own, but with some of the same issues.
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“one of the most despicable figures in human history.”

By Hugh Fitzgerald, PAMELA GELLER  – on January 19, 2018

The Egyptian scholar and historian of medieval Islam, Professor Youssef Ziedan, recently caused a great deal of controversy in Muslim Arab circles, roiling the waters when he put forth, on an Egyptian talk show, his argument as go why the “Al-Aqsa” mosque in Jerusalem is not, and cannot be, the real one. Professor Ziedan pointed out that there were no mosques in Jerusalem during Muhammad’s lifetime, that the Umayyad Caliph, Abd al-Malik bin Marwan, completed the mosque in Jerusalem in 705 CE, 73 years after the death of Muhammad, and began to identify that structure as the “al-Aqsa” mosque mentioned in the Qur’an (17:1) for political reasons. Because his main rival, Abdallah ibn Zubayr, had control over, and derived great prestige among Muslims as a result, the two holiest mosques, in Mecca and Medina, Abd al-Malik wanted at least to possess the “Al-Aqsa” mosque, as the third holiest site in Islam. He simply identified the mosque he had built as that mentioned in the Qur’an as “the farthest mosque.” Professor Ziedan claims that the real Al-Aqsa mosque was on the road between Mecca and Ta’if, information which he found in the historian and early biographer of Muhammad, al-Waqidi. Naturally, Zeidan’s argument continues to stir up indignation — though, interestingly, nothing about it has yet appeared in the mainstream Western press — but no one has successfully rebutted his  conclusions about the al-Aqsa mosque.
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35 brave idealists, many of them promising university students, marched to the aid of surrounded Gush Etzion in January 1948. They were ambushed and fought to the last man.

By Daniel Pinner, INN

Eighty years ago, on the 4th of Sh’vat 5708 (which falls on January 20th this year, but occurred on January 15, 1948), an epic battle was fought in the Hevron Mountains between the Palmach (P’lugot Machatz,  “Striking Force”), the elite fighting unit of the Haganah (the pre-State “official” underground of the Jewish community), and the Jayish al-Jihad al-Muqqadas (Army of the Holy Jihad).

It was a battle which the Arab forces won: all thirty-five Jewish soldiers were killed. It was one of the pivotal events of Israel’s War of Independence, and we still live with its consequences today.

On the 29th of November 1947, the UN had adopted resolution 181, dividing British-mandated Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. The Resolution passed by a majority of 33 votes in favour to 13 against, with 10 abstentions.
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By Eileen Toplansky, AMERICAN THINKER

In Eastern European folklore, “the city of Chelm functions as an imaginary city of fools, similar to that of the Greek Abdera, the English Gotham, and the German Schilda.”  In fact, the “Chelm tales describe outlandish naiveté and futility.”  Ruth von Bermuth argues that “Chelm … functioned for more than three centuries as an ironic model of Jewish society, both utopia and dystopia, an imaginary place onto which changing questions about Jewish identity, community, and history repeatedly have been projected.”

When reading these stories, one is amazed at the characters who seem so unaware of their folly.  The tales showcase how common sense is often absent as so-called wise men cite unusual solutions that never work.  They are stubbornly foolish and show contempt for logical problem-solving.
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Political bias across the US government bears the fingerprints of the deep state. Trump must act.

Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, WASH TIMES

One year into President Trump’s tenure, anti-Trump political bias in the FBI and Department of Justice is now so obvious that objective observers should fear for the future of our constitutional republic from the “deep state.”

Frighteningly, the deep state has been exposed as a real thing, with names and faces. Senior officials in FBI and DOJ are conspiring with the national liberal media and allies in Congress to delegitimize, criminalize and ultimately unseat a legitimately elected president.

Yet there is an even graver threat to the American people and the very existence of the United States.
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By Carlo Muñoz, WSH TIMES

Pentagon war planners are shifting away from the George W. Bush and Obama-era strategies dominated by battling extremist groups such as al Qaeda, the Taliban and Islamic State, and setting their sights on the growing military threat posed by Russia, China and other nation states.

Defense Department and national security officials within the Trump administration outlined this doctrinal shift in its new National Security Strategy (NDS), released Friday. Defense Secretary James Mattis made the case for the administration’s divergence from extremist terror threats to those posed by global powers during a speech Friday in Washington.
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Classified report could bust myth that millions of refugees need UNRWA

By Adam Kredo, FREE BEACON

The State Department is hiding a classified report on Palestinian refugees that insiders say could be a game changer in how the United States approaches the situation and allocates millions in taxpayer funds to a key United Nations agency, according to multiple sources briefed on the situation.

As the United States moves forward with a decision to slash funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the agency responsible for providing education and support to some five million Palestinian refugees, officials on Capitol Hill and elsewhere have been pressuring the State Department to declassify a report that is believed to show the actual number of refugees is far fewer than the U.N. claims.
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The inflated numbers of third generation refugees claimed by Arabs and the UN started with an inflated number in 1948.

By Richard Mather, INN 2012

Most serious students of the history of Palestine would accept that the number of Arab refugees from Israel during and after 1948 claimed by Arab and UN sources—some 600,000 to 750,000—was exaggerated. It is very easy to refute that estimate and many have already done it. – Yehoshua Porath

It is a common misconception that around 650,000 Palestinian refugees were created because of fighting that took place in 1948. But a closer look at both the population data and statements made by UN officials at the time suggest that the true figure is much lower, possibly as low as 270,000.

The conventional figure of 650,000 cannot be true for more than one reason. Firstly, there were fewer than 660,000 Arabs living in the part of Palestine that eventually became Israel; and secondly, UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency), either through incompetence or deliberate manipulation, handed out multiple identity cards to the same persons, some of whom were not refugees at all but permanent residents who took advantage of the aid offered by UNRWA. This is attested by UNRWA officials.
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By Alexander Maistrovoy

Courts have been turned into leverage for destruction of national democracies by the totalitarian system

In late December, the European Commission announced punitive measures against Poland using the so-called “nuclear option”, Article 7 of the Lisbon Treaty. The reason was the decision of Warsaw to limit the power of judges. The EU considered this an infringement on “freedom, democracy and the rule of law”.

In fact, the “nuclear option” of the EU has no relation to freedom, democracy, or the rule of law. Its goal is to establish a totalitarian supranational system in Poland, the leading country of the Visegrad Fronde, in order to supersede democratic national institutions of power.

The judicial system in a democratic state should guard rights of citizens. Together with the executive and legislative powers, it must guarantee “the enjoyment of life and liberty” of free citizens (The Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776), or according to Jeremy Bentham, the founder of British utilitarianism, ensure “the greatest happiness of the greatest number”.
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