By David Israel, JEWISH PRESS

The fire kites terror from the Gaza Strip continued on Wednesday in Kissufim and Be’ery, with firefighters and farmers fighting the raging flames together. Meanwhile, over the past few two weeks, a group of Israeli civilians has been mobilized to employ drones to stop the burning kites that cross the border and land in Israeli agricultural lands in the Gaza vicinity. They have already succeeded in downing hundreds of enemy kites and helium balloons and their work at the border significantly reduced the number of fires. Now the IDF must decide whether to allocate the necessary resources for its continued operations.
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T. Belman. It is no surprise that INSS, a left of center think tank would advocate Israel helping Jordan or Gaza for that matter.

By Oded Eran, INSS Insight No. 1065

The protest of thousands of Jordanian demonstrators is the peak of a political crisis in the kingdom that has been developing since January 2018. The protest is directed against the government’s intention to enforce more meticulous collecting of taxes, to raise the tax rates and the prices of different goods. The resignation of Prime Minister Hani al-Mulki may calm the situation in the short term, but it will not mitigate the fundamental problem with which the king and any prime minister appointed will be forced to contend: How Jordan will extricate itself from the vicious cycle of accumulating debt and a diminishing ability to repay it. Israel has a great interest in preserving the stability of Jordan and its ruling regime. Despite Jordan’s public conduct in the international arena regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is irritating as far as Israel is concerned, it is important to remember Jordan’s direct and indirect contribution to Israeli security, which in recent years has served as a buffer zone between Israel and ISIS. Israel can and should assist Jordan’s economy and budget, by cooperation in industry, commerce, water, agriculture, electricity, and tourism.
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Moscow’s shifting goals during three-year involvement

WASHINGTON, June 7, 2018 – We are pleased to offer a preview of the featured essay from the new Summer 2018 edition of Middle East Policy: “Russia’s Syria War: A Strategic Trap?” The essay is written by Dr. Emil Aslan Souleimanov, associate professor of political science at Charles University, and Dr. Valery Dzutsati. The full essay can be accessed here.

In the three years since Russia’s intervention in the Syrian civil war on behalf of Bashar al-Assad, momentum has turned clearly in Assad’s favor. Yet despite these gains, Drs. Souleimanov and Dzutsati question where Moscow goes from here. Russia’s global reputation has suffered significantly, and leaving Syria with low-intensity civil warfare still simmering could erode Russia’s global standing further. At the same time, Russia has been dragged into unintended conflicts due to its presence in Syria, and these entanglements risk limiting further Russia’s ability to maneuver politically.
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Don’t let up the pressure.

By Clifford D. May, The Washington Times

It’s a simple question to ask: Do we have a vital national interest in preventing our self-declared enemies from acquiring deliverable nuclear weapons?

It’s not been a simple question to answer: President Obama struck a deal that conceded a nuclear weapons capability to Iran’s rulers in exchange for their promise to reach that goal more slowly.

Mr. Obama’s policy toward North Korea, known as “strategic patience,” rested on a similar premise: that Pyongyang would not develop the means to annihilate American cities so long as he was in the White House.

Such policies are defensible – if you subscribe to the theory that despots inevitably moderate over time, and that such moderation can be accelerated by showing them respect and addressing their grievances. I am unaware of evidence or experience in support of that theory.
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By Stuart Kaufman, CHARLESTON MERCURY

Judaism declares that the age of overt miracles ended with the prophet Malachi, the last of the prophets of Israel. Before that time, miracles were easy to discern. There could be no other assumption that whatever wonder that was being witnessed was a miracle wrought by G-d: the burning bush, the parting of the Red Sea, the walls of Jericho — miracles.

We Jews don’t believe that miracles have ceased to occur, but that after Malachi’s time they are harder to recognize. It is up to us to see a marvelous event and recognize that it is more than some piece of “luck,” or some random occurrence. We have the responsibility of recognizing miracles — G-d’s work — when they happen.

According to dictionary.com, a miracle is “an effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause.”

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After a quarter–century, all the Palestinians have managed to establish is a corrupt kleptocracy under Fatah and a tyrannical theocracy under Hamas.

By Martin Sherman

Merit is no qualification for freedom…. Freedom is enjoyed when you are so well armed, or so turbulent, or inhabit a country so thorny that the expense of your neighbour’s occupying you is greater than the profit. –From  a letter by T.E. Lawrence (a.k.a.”Lawrence of Arabia”) published July 22, 1920, in The Times of London setting out a case for the political independence for the Arabs in the Middle East.  

Despite being written almost a century ago Lawrence’s diagnosis is still extremely pertinent in assessing the validity of the frequently aired view that “the Palestinians deserve a state of their own.”

Indeed, such views have been explicitly expounded by US Administrations for well over a decade from George W. Bush   to Barack Obama ,who both incorporated the idea into their “visions” for the Middle East.

Cannot condition national sovereignty on regime type
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By Mort Klein, ZOA

I, Morton Klein, a child of holocaust survivors and a deeply committed Zionist, was asked repeatedly, from August 2017 to December 2017, to visit Qatar and meet with the Emir and other leaders to discuss their changing their policies toward Israel, the United States and terrorism.

I repeatedly refused because of Qatar’s atrocious reputation as funders of Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Al Jazeera, a vicious antisemitic Israel-bashing media outlet.  The main fear I had was that the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA)’s good name and reputation might be used to whitewash Qatar’s ugly actions.

My reputational fear was allayed after other top Jewish leaders visited Qatar between September 2017 and December 2017.  Those leaders included Malcolm Hoenlein, executive director of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and top officials from the American Jewish Congress, Orthodox Union, and the Religious Zionists of America.  
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Opposition from Jewish groups to a Supreme Court decision defending the rights of a believer is a discouraging retreat from principle.

By Jonathan S Tobin, JNS

The Supreme Court of the United States. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

There was a time when defending religious freedom was at the top of the Jewish agenda. Jews understood that as a religious minority, our rights could only be defended when those of other religious faiths are also respected.

Though anti-Semitism is on the rise elsewhere, American Jews don’t worry anymore about their government seeking to restrict their rights to practice their religion. Nor should they. Arguments about reasonable accommodation for Jewish religious observances are no longer a matter of much dispute. The widespread acceptance of Jews, including those who are proud to practice their faith in public, in every aspect of American society is an accomplished fact.
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BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 858,  June 6, 2018

By James M. Dorsey,

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Protests that forced Jordan’s prime minister to resign and laid bare the country’s systemic economic and political crisis shed new light on the root causes of popular protests in the Middle East that swept the region in 2011 and have since continuously erupted across a swath of land stretching from Morocco to Egypt.

Large numbers of middle-class Jordanian demonstrators who saw their livelihoods threatened by price and tax hikes recently took to the streets. The ensuing replacement of Prime Minister Hani al-Mulki by his education minister, Omar al-Razzaz, a reformer and former World Banker, did little to quell the unrest.

Protesters are demanding a full repeal of the proposed tax hikes, which raise employees’ income tax by 5% and corporate levies by 20-40% percent in line with the terms of a three-year $723 million dollar loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that Jordan secured in 2016.

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“Finally, we broke our silence, this is the way to freedom,” tweeted female protester.”

BY SETH J. FRANTZMAN, JPOSTS

Mass protests in the Kingdom of Jordan have shattered years of consensus and underlying tensions over the weekend. For four days thousands of Jordanians have protested in Amman against an income draft law but also against rising prices and economic problems.

Anger over the economy has been percolating for years but these protests shed light on rising social concerns as the public is being encouraged to blame the Prime Minister Hani Mulki. On Tuesday Mulki resigned and the King tapped Harvard-educated economist and Education Minister Omar al-Razzaz to replace the embattled Prime Minister.
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Team approached U.S. banks for cash conversion after signing of nuclear deal

By Guy Taylor, WASH TIMES

President Obama wanted the Iran nuclear accord so badly that he offered to give Iran access to American banks, an investigation found. (Associated Press) 

The Obama administration — despite repeatedly assuring Congress that Iran would remain barred from the U.S. financial system — secretly mobilized to give Tehran access to American banks to convert the windfall of cash it received from sanctions relief under the 2015 nuclear deal into dollars, an investigative report by the Senate has revealed.

A copy of the report, obtained by The Washington Times, outlines how Obama-era State and Treasury Departmentofficials discreetly issued a special license for the conversion to a major Omani bank and unsuccessfully pressured two U.S. banks to partake in the transaction, all while misleading lawmakers about the activities.
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Elitist confab set to meet in Turin, Italy

By Paul Joseph Watson | Infowars.com

The annual elitist confab is set to meet this week in Turin, an appropriate venue given that Italy has just elected an anti-mass migration, eurosceptic coalition government.

According to the group’s official website, the number one topic of conversation at this year’s secretive meeting will be “populism in Europe”.

Having failed to install a former IMF technocrat after coalition talks between the 5 Star Movement and Lega parties temporarily broke down, globalists will undoubtedly be expressing alarm at the potential for Italy to be an example to the rest of Europe.

The country’s new populist government has vowed to deport 500,000 migrants, re-assert localism over globalisation & monopoly capitalism,
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By Omar Akour, WAPO

Protesters gather for a demonstration outside the Prime Minister’s office in Amman, early Tuesday, June 5, 2018. Jordan’s King Abdullah II on Monday accepted the resignation of his embattled prime minister and reportedly tapped a leading reformer as a successor, hoping to quell the largest anti-government protests in recent years, which are also seen as a potential challenge to his two-decade-old rule. (Raad al-Adayleh/Associated Press)

AMMAN, Jordan — Jordan’s King Abdullah II on Tuesday appointed a new prime minister, the royal palace said, naming a leading reformer as head of government in hopes of quelling the largest anti-government protests in recent years.

Cabinet member Omar Razzaz, a Harvard-educated former senior World Bank official, replaced Hani Mulki, who quit Monday amid widening protests against his government’s austerity program, including a planned tax increase. Razzaz served as education minister in the outgoing Mulki government.

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By James M. Dorsey, EURASIA REVIEW

A look at a decade of failed social, economic and political reform in Jordan goes a far way to explain recent mass anti-government protests demanding the resignation of the government.

The protests, prompting concerns about the survival of the Hashemite dynasty, also bear witness to the fallout of the region’s epic power struggles and the pitfalls of government failures to respond to long-standing discontent that has been simmering across the region just below the surface.

Pent-up anger and frustration with governments that have failed to deliver public goods and services were at the core of popular Arab revolts in 2011 that initially toppled the leaders of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.
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By Alex Alexiev, AMERICAN THINKER

At the time Italy joined the European Monetary Union (EMU) in 1999 on its way to full-fledged membership in the eurozone in January 2002, economists debated whether this never-tried-before experiment will succeed or not. One of the most compelling debates at the time was between two giants of monetary thought, Robert Mundell and Milton Friedman. Mundell, who is occasionally referred to as the ‘father of the euro’, for having laid out the theoretical foundations of a common currency, was optimistic, Friedman, the opposite.
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by Efraim Karsh
Jerusalem Post 
June 03, 2018

https://www.meforum.org/articles/2018/it-s-not-gaza-s-economy,-stupid

[Originally published under the headline “It Is Not The Economy, Stupid”]

No cliché has dominated the discourse on the Gaza situation more than the perception of Palestinian violence as a corollary of the Strip’s dire economic condition. No sooner had Hamas and Israel been locked in yet another armed confrontation over the past weeks than the media, foreign policy experts and politicians throughout the world urged the immediate rehabilitation of Gaza as panacea to its endemic propensity for violence. Even senior members of the Israel Defense Forces opined that a “nonmilitary process” of humanitarian aid could produce a major change in the Gaza situation.

While there is no denying the argument’s widespread appeal, there is also no way around the fact that it is not only completely unfounded but the inverse of the truth. For it is not Gaza’s economic malaise that has precipitated Palestinian violence; rather, it is the endemic violence that has caused the Strip’s humanitarian crisis.

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By Mordechai Ben-Menachem,

Conclusion of the “Cold War” did not result an ending of history, as Francis Fukuyama predicted, but rather in a multipolar world and a massive civilization clash as Samuel Huntington so pithily predicted would occur.  The previous bipolar world “spread” into a seemingly “infinite” civilizational divide – the surge of Islamist terrorism, as demonstrated by the attacks of 11 September, as well as the various ethnic clashes South and Southeast Asia, clear examples.  This effects inter-country relations, at every level, and in almost every country-to-country interaction.  Violence is on a constantly rising level in every area of the world; and with an increasingly sectarian trend.  While one example of this is the intensifying difficult situation of Christians in Muslim countries (see here).  
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BREITBART

AFP — Italy’s new hardline interior minister Matteo Salvini will be in Sicily Sunday to push the anti-immigration platform that propelled him to power at one of the country’s main landing points for refugees.

The head of the far-right League is on the road seeking to rally support for his party’s candidates in municipal elections later this month, as part of a broader effort to boost the traditionally secessionist party’s profile in the country’s poorer south.

But immigration is Salvini’s primary bugbear and the newly minted deputy prime minister in Italy’s populist coalition government has added a stop in migration hotspot Pozzallo.

The port town in Sicily’s south is on the front line: one of the main places where military and humanitarian boats bring refugees fleeing war, persecution and famine across North Africa and the Middle East.
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BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 854, June 4, 2018

By Maj Gen (ret) Gershon Hacohen, BESA

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: As long as the historic debate about the two-state solution remains unresolved, the future of Gaza in general, and of Hamas’s continued rule of the Strip in particular, will remain open.

The criticism attending the swift and inconclusive ending of the last round of fighting in Gaza is hardly new. In a way, it recalls the disappointment with a boxing match that failed to produce a clear knockout. Yet for all the disappointment with the IDF’s failure to deal Hamas a crushing blow, one must ask whether such a result would have been in Israel’s best interest at the moment. Unlike in the boxing ring, the answer to this question must be judged in a wider strategic context.

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