By Richard Benkin, AMERICAN THINKER

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi has earned a deserved reputation as a no-nonsense opponent of appeasement.  His expansion of the India-Israel relationship and personal affinity with President Donald Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu have strengthened that perception.  The latest evidence that it is more than a perception came this week, when Modi’s government discontinued half-century-old government subsidies provided to Muslim pilgrims going on the Hajj.  The Hajj is an annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca that Muslims must carry out at least once, so long as they are physically and financially able – artificial conditions that the subsidy is intended to create.
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The Palestinians were said that the international community accepted the Jerusalem excuse for ruling out negotiations because there is a consensus in the world on the city two capitals.

By Gill Hoffman, JPOST

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas decided to deliver Sunday’s speech – in which he ruled out a peace process as long as Donald Trump is US president – after parts of Trump’s Middle East peace plan were leaked to him by the Saudis, Channel 2 reported on Tuesday night.

Even before Sunday’s speech, Ben Caspit of The Jerusalem Post’s Hebrew sister paper Maariv reported last week that Abbas was angered by the preliminary reports of Trump’s plan that the Saudis had given him. The report said those leaks were the real reason Abbas did not intend to return to the negotiating table, and not Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
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WHEN A FRENCH AMBASSADOR DESCRIBED ISRAEL AS A ‘SH—Y LITTLE COUNTRY’ – AND POLITE SOCIETY DEFENDED HIM

When a French ambassador described Israel as a ‘sh—y little country’ – and polite society defended him
By Tom Gross, Daily Telegraph (London)

Donald Trump’s reference to Haiti, El Salvador and African nations as “s—hole countries” has rightly been condemned the world over.

Bookstores have put out display tables using the banner “Books from s—hole countries”. The word “s—hole” was projected, using enormous letters, alongside a poop emoji, onto the Trump International Hotel in Washington.
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Deputy Defense Minister Eli Ben-Dahan said that a team of four or five people had been established to identify outposts that could be legalized and to see how difficult the process would be.

By Jeremy Sharon, JPOST

The Defense Ministry is working on a plan to legalize 70 unauthorized outposts in the West Bank, it was revealed on Tuesday night.

Deputy Defense Minister Eli Ben-Dahan discussed the plan in a Bayit Yehudi faction meeting at the Knesset earlier this week, a video of which was leaked to Channel 2 News.

During his briefing to party colleagues, Ben-Dahan said that a ministerial team of four or five people had been established six months ago to identify outposts that could be legalized and to rank them by how difficult such legalization would be.
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The funding goes to a UN agency specially designated for the descendants of Palestinian refugees.

BY Michael Wilner, JPOST JANUARY 16, 2018

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration informed the UN Relief and Works Agency on Tuesday that it was cutting tens of millions of dollars in aid to the organization, amid an escalating diplomatic crisis between Washington and Ramallah, a US official told The Jerusalem Post.

Trump heeded the advice of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense James Mattis and National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster— in addition to that of the Israeli government— and agreed to deliver $60 million in US assistance to the UN body for now, as opposed to cutting all aid outright. But the remaining pledge— $65 million— has been withheld “for future consideration,” according to a letter sent to the agency.
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By Daniel Pipes, ISRAEL HAYOM

Reports indicate that Trump is about to make a pro-Israel State Department outsider America’s top diplomat to the Middle East. 

By: World Israel News Staff

US President Donald Trump is expected to hire David Schenker, a director at the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy, as the State Department’s Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, BuzzFeed News reported.

If confirmed, Schenker, who was an adviser to former Republican Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, will become the first non-career official since the 1990s to lead the State Department’s Middle East bureau.

Although it’s rare for a State Department outsider to receive the nomination, BuzzFeed said, Middle East analysts, including Republicans and Democrats, expressed some relief given the urgent need for a nominee to lead the bureau since the retirement of career diplomat Anne Patterson last January as well as concerns about other potential candidates for the job.
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The statement was made at a news conference in Ramallah late Monday night

BY ADAM RASGON, JPOST

The Palestinian Central Council, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s second highest decision-making body, decided to entrust the PLO Executive Committee with suspending recognition of Israel, according to a declaration issued at the conclusion of a Central Council meeting on Monday.

The PLO recognized Israel in 1993 before signing a number of agreements with Israel, which established the Palestinian Authority.
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Why the Left’s outrage over Trump’s language is bogus.

By Lloyd Billingsley, FPM

During the 2016 election campaign, candidate Trump said he would “bomb the shit out of ISIS,” and few Democrats objected as the victorious president fulfilled his promise. On the other hand, the president’s recent reference to “shit-hole” countries launched a tide of outrage that turns out to be rather selective.

Consider this phrase, for example: “Motherf—er’s never happy.” Could that be Trump on one of his favorite fake news anchors, Robert Mueller, or maybe “Rocket Man” Kim Jong-un?
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T. Belman. Iran will never agree to these new terms. Therefore the US will have no choice but to overthrow the regime or at least destroy their nuclear facilities. My guess is that Trump will find a way to get the bunker buster bombs to Israel so that Israel and Saudia Arabia can wage the war.

Also, the US controls all Syrian land east of the Euphrates which is adjacent to Iran. The US is currently training a large military force there which I believe will ultimately arm the minorities in Iran.

Whitehouse
NATIONAL SECURITY & DEFENSE Issued on: January 12, 2018

The Iranian regime is the world’s leading state sponsor of terror. It enables Hezbollah, Hamas, and many other terrorists to sow chaos and kill innocent people. It has funded, armed, and trained more than 100,000 militants to spread destruction across the Middle East. It props up the murderous regime of Bashar al Assad, and has helped him slaughter his own people. The regime’s destructive missiles threaten neighboring countries and international shipping. Within Iran, the Supreme Leader and his Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps use mass arrests and torture to oppress and silence Iran’s people. Iran’s ruling elite has let their citizens go hungry while enriching themselves by stealing Iran’s national wealth.
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by Jonathan Spyer, The American Interest
January 12, 2018 http://www.meforum.org/7158/wanted-a-counter-iran-strategy

^{Originally published under the title “Wanted: A Counter-Iran Strategy.”}

A common but mistaken reading of the current strategic situation in the Middle East presents the region as approaching the end of a period of instability. The “return of the Arab state” is one of the more arresting refrains that this perspective has produced.

According to this view, the wars in Syria and in Iraq are drawing to a close. The defeat of the Islamic State in these countries represents the eclipse of the political ambitions of Salafi jihadi Islamism for the foreseeable future. Assad is set to restore his repressive but stable rule in Syria. In Iraq, the firm reaction by the government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to the Kurdish bid for independence has ended prospects of the imminent fragmentation of the country. In Lebanon, attempts by Sunni jihadis to export the Syrian war have failed, and all is quiet.
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MEMRI

‘Abdallah Al-Hadlaq (image: Al-Watan, Kuwait)

In his January 10, 2018 column in the Kuwaiti daily Al-Watan, ‘Abdallah Al-Hadlaq supported the criticism voiced by U.S. President Donald Trump about the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) and Trump’s decision to cut its funding. Calling UNRWA a “biased and racist organization” that “perpetuates the problem of the ‘Palestinian’ refugees,” that succumbs to Hamas’s dictates, and that strives to destroy Israel, Al-Hadlaq called to stop all funding and aid to this organization until it crumbles and disappears.
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America should have learned that the Palestinian Authority believes that there are no consequences for its institutionalized corruption and its compensation system for terrorists and their families.

By Eric Mandel, JPOST

If the Senate passes and President Donald Trump signs the Taylor Force Act, ending Palestinian Authority funding unless the PA stops its payments to terrorists and their families, would the PA really collapse, and if so what would be the consequences?

The US House of Representatives and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have already approved the Taylor Force legislation. Now it’s up to the full Senate to vote, awaiting Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to bring it to the floor for a full vote or attach it to other legislation.
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Hindu nationalists incessantly tweet their support and admiration for Israel, an online force that helped push Prime Minister Narendra Modi to a landslide victory in 2014

By Saudamini Jain, HAARETZ

Anshul Saxena, center, at an event he organized on a south Delhi street corner celebrating Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to India, January 2018. Manu Misra

In New Delhi, Anshul Saxena spends three to four hours a day on Israel.

The 26-year-old gathers information from right-wing websites, blogs and Wikipedia, not to mention his contacts at the American Jewish Committee in India and India-Israel friendship forums. He has set up alerts to be notified of any India-Israel news, and tries to tweet about Israel every day.

Back in November, he announced a celebration party when he first heard that Netanyahu would be visiting. Sometimes, the tweets are about Israel in general and the lessons India can learn from it.
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Abbas: ‘Israel killed Oslo Accords. Future negotiations to take place within context of international community’ ? Deputy chief of Fatah: ‘freezing recognition of Israel is an option’

By Jack Khoury, HAARETZ 

Donald Trump’s Mideast peace plan “a slap in the face” during a dramatic meeting in Ramallah on Sunday, adding that “we will slap back.”

Abbas said that “today is the day that the Oslo Accords end. Israel killed them. We are an authority without any authority, and an occupation without any cost. Trump threatens to cut funding to the authority because negotiations have failed. When the hell did negotiations start?!”

He added that “any future negotiations will take place only within the context of the international community, by an international committee created in the framework of an international conference. Allow me to be clear: We will not accept America leadership of a political process involving negotiations.
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by Linda Goudsmit, PUNDICITY

The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

Obama, the humanitarian huckster-in-chief, weakened the United States for eight years presenting his crippling Common Core advocacy as altruistic when in fact it was designed for destruction. His legacy, the Leftist Democrat Party with its “Resistance” movement, is the party of the Humanitarian Hoax attempting to destroy the capitalist infrastructure of American democracy and replace it with socialism.

Common Core is a deliberate information war targeting American children. It is a deceitful campaign to undermine established American Judeo-Christian cultural norms celebrating patriotism, the meritocracy, and American sovereignty. The Leftist/Islamist axis is promoting collectivism in preparation for one-world government. This is how it works.
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Liberating Lebanon

By Evelyn Gordon, COMMENTARY

If I were compiling a foreign policy wish list for 2018, high on the list would be ending the fiction that Lebanon is an independent country rather than an Iranian satrapy governed by Iran’s foreign legion, Hezbollah. The Western foreign policy establishment maintains this fiction out of good intentions; it wants to protect innocent Lebanese from suffering the consequences of Hezbollah’s military provocations against its neighbors. But this policy has enabled Hezbollah to devastate several neighboring countries with impunity, and it’s paving the way to a war that will devastate Lebanon itself.
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Does the First Amendment Really Protect Warrior Religions?

By Andrew Benjamin

GIVING MONEY OR BENEFITS TO SOMEONE FOR IMAGINED DEPRIVATION BASED ON THE COLOR OF THEIR SKIN OR RELIGIOUS BELIEF IS DISCRIMINATION.

THE VERY SAME AS EXCLUDING OTHERS. EXCLUSION IS DISCRIMINATION.

After all, doesn’t the Constitution forbid a “religious test” in scrutinizing immigrants?

Indeed one top news story concerns the attack on Donald Trump by the father of a slain Muslim soldier. At the Democratic Convention, Khizr Khan challenged Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim immigration by asking: “Have you even read the U.S. Constitution?”
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