Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit says that provisions of the law could create “severe discrimination” that favors the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria • He warns it could be abused by settlers who knowingly build on private Palestinian land.

By Yair Altman, Gideon Allon and Efrat Forsher

Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit reiterated his opposition on Wednesday to the Judea and Samaria Settlement Regulation Law, which allows the government to retroactively approve homes on private property.

“There is no way around the fact that this law is unconstitutional and must be struck down,” Mendelblit told the High Court of Justice. “It does not pass constitutional muster,” he added.

Mendelblit said that the law was designed to protect those that may have built their homes without the proper permits or ownership rights so long as they did so in good faith, but he stressed that in practice it could be used to help those who knowingly seek to violate the law in cases where the homes were built on contested plots that may be privately owned by Palestinians.
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Bashi’s anti-Israel venom in a children’s book caused the shut down of the upper East Side Mommas FB group she belonged to.

By Prof. Phyllis Chesler, INN

Golbarg Bashi is in the news for her children’s book “P is for Palestine,” which has been described as an anti-Semitic and anti-Jewish screed addressed to children.

Believe it or not, Bashi and I go way back.

In August of 2013, a publicist was arranging interviews for me to discuss the issues raised in my just released book, “An American Bride in Kabul.”  CSPAN had tendered a special offer just for me.

“They want to give you a full hour, one on one, with an interviewer. You should grab this.”
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“Hezbollah must be armed to fight against Lebanon’s enemy, which is Israel. Naturally, they should have the best weapons to protect Lebanon’s security,” Revolutionary Guards chief Mohammad Ali Jafari says • Ballistic missile program also “nonnegotiable.”

Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff

By Karen DeYoung and Liz Sly, WaPo

Members of the pro-Syrian government forces ride a tank in the Syrian border town of Albu Kamal, on Monday. Syria’s army and loyalist militiamen on Sunday ousted the Islamic State from its last urban stronghold in the country. (AFP/Getty Images)

As ISIL filled the vacuum left by the abdication of American power by the Obama administration, so now Iran will occupy the space left by ISIL

By Vivian Bercovici, NATIONAL POST

It has been a particularly busy few weeks here in the Middle East, even by the chaotic standards of the region.

As the world welcomed the demise of ISIL’s reign of terror in the Mideast, it largely missed a more spectacular development: the entrenchment of Iranian power and control, from Tehran to the Mediterranean Sea, controlling large swaths of Syria and all of Lebanon, and strategic outposts in Yemen and Libya. As ISIL filled the vacuum left by the abdication of American power by the Obama administration, so now Iran will occupy the space left by ISIL.
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Israel Hayom poll: 73% of Israeli Arabs feel a sense of belonging, 82% have no desire to live under Palestinian rule • 73% say Israeli-Palestinian conflict was about land, 19% cite religion • Separate poll shows more alienation among east Jerusalem Arabs.

By Baruch Ron, ISRAEL HAYOM

Some 73% of Israeli Arabs feel a sense of belonging and 60% are proud to be Israelis, according to a new poll commissioned by Israel Hayom and conducted by the New Wave Research Institute that was released Tuesday. The poll questioned 426 Arab Israelis aged 18 and up, and did not include the Druze community.

Nearly two-thirds of the respondents (65%) defined themselves as not religious, while 35% said they were religious. Some 46% identified as Israeli Arabs and 42% identified as Palestinian Arabs, while only 3% identified as Israelis. Read more…

By Pam Key, BREITBART

Tuesday on his nationally syndicated radio show, conservative talker Rush Limbaugh said White House National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, who reportedly criticized the intellectual depth of President Donald Trump, was a part of the so-called “swamp.”

He claimed McMaster wanted to get rid of pure “Trumpists,” like former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon.

LIMBAUGH: The left is on this big thing — have you seen the story, Mr. Snerdley? H. R. McMaster supposedly at a dinner party this past summer — it’s BuzzFeed and some other places. Four or five different sources that McMaster was openly telling people what an idiot Trump is, that he has a kindergarten type IQ, that he’s childlike and doesn’t have the intellectual depth to keep up or to understand things.

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As embattled patriarch seeks overseas support for multi-million-dollar deals that are sparking Israeli and Palestinian controversy, here are the sales and the buyers

By SUE SURKES, TOI

Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilos III arrives at the Church of the Nativity in the West Bank City of Bethlehem, built atop the site where Christians believe Jesus was born, on Christmas Eve according to the Eastern Orthodox calendar, on January 6, 2017. (Wisam Hashlamoun/Flash90)

Grappling with tens of millions of dollars of debt, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem has managed to balance its books by selling and leasing plots to a number of overseas companies all headed by Jewish investors, senior figures in the Greek Orthodox Church have told The Times of Israel.
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By Anne Barnard, NYT Nov. 21, 2017

President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, left, and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia met in Sochi, Russia, on Monday.Pool photo by Mikhail Klimentyev

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Thanking Russia for the military intervention he credited for “saving Syria,” President Bashar al-Assad met with President Vladimir V. Putin in Russia amid preparations for new talks aimed at ending the civil war.

Mr. Assad’s visit on Monday to the Russian resort town of Sochi was made public on Tuesday, a day before a summit meeting there for the leaders of Iran, Turkey and Russia, who have taken an increasingly prominent role in diplomacy with Syria while the United States has put Mr. Assad’s fate on the back burner.
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Actions are more important than words

By Evan Sayet

My Leftist friends (as well as many ardent #NeverTrumpers) constantly ask me if I’m not bothered by Donald Trump’s lack of decorum. They ask if I don’t think his tweets are “beneath the dignity of the office.”Here’s my answer:

We Right-thinking people have tried dignity. There could not have been a man of more quiet dignity than George W. Bush as he suffered the outrageous lies and politically motivated hatreds that undermined his presidency.

We tried statesmanship. Could there be another human being on this earth who so desperately prized “collegiality” as John McCain?
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By Gil Troy

These latest sexual harassment scandals once again spotlight society’s distorted gender power dynamics which breed sexual assault.

‘How can we continuing singing his tunes when we know Shlomo Carlebach sexually harassed women,” my twelfth-grader wondered during Rosh Hashana (before the latest sexual harassment scandals broke). His question triggered intense holiday-table debates that elicited wise words from one feminist friend. “I consider Reb Shlomo a tsinor, a conduit,” she said, “of things greater than himself. Listening to his melodies,” she explained, “you hear echoes of thousands of years of Jewish liturgy.
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By Prof. Paul Eidelberg

It was on April 30, 1863, in the midst of the American Civil War, that Dr. Stephen H. Tyng, pastor of one of the most influential churches in the city of New York, delivered a sermon entitled “Christian Loyalty.” He based this sermon on a passage from Psalms, which he said is “expressive of the loyalty and love of the Hebrew people for their institutions and nationality.” And so he began his sermon with these words of Psalm 137:

“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea, we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. ‘If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.’

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By Melanie Phillips

If you want a break from the spectacle of Britain tearing itself apart over leaving the European Union, you can upset yourself instead watching the spectacle of the western world tearing apart the very notion of what it is to be a human being.

The knee-jerk bullying, victim-group sectarianism and repudiation of reason itself over transgenderism defy belief. The Times (£) reports that a lesbian Labour party women’s officer was allegedly subjected to months of harassment as a “Terf” — a derogatory term for “trans exclusionary radical feminist” – because she took issue with aspects of transgenderism.

Intimidation by transgender activists, in the laughable cause of promoting greater tolerance and inclusivity, has suddenly become the new norm. Examples – such as the Christian maths teacher who was suspended for addressing as a girl a female pupil who identifies as a boy – are coming thick and fast.
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“Allah has given this land to the Jewish people. Allah has given us the State of Israel,” said Rabbi Fleischer of Hebron.

BY KELLY HARTOG, JPOST

AKLAND – MK Zionist Union member Yossi Yonah was booed and interrupted by Limmud FSU attendees during a hotly contested debate with Rabbi Yishai Fleisher, a spokesman for the Hebron community, on the possibility of a two-state solution.

In a room of 200-plus people from the former Soviet Union, many of whom suffered under the Soviet regime, Yonah quickly discovered they had little room to even entertain the concept of a state for the Palestinians.

The debate in Oakland on Saturday began quietly enough, with both Yonah and Fleisher being given five minutes to state their case.
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https://omny.fm/shows/cats-interviews/11-19-17-steve-bannon

The PLO’s campaign to get recognized as a state breached both of its agreements with Israel and the terms under which the US recognized it and permitted it to operate missions on US soil.

BY CAROLINE B. GLICK, JPOST

Is the PLO’s long vacation from accountability coming to an end? How about the State Department’s? In 1987 the US State Department placed the PLO on its list of foreign terrorist organizations. The PLO was removed from the list in 1994, following the initiation of its peace process with Israel in 1993.

As part of the Clinton administration’s efforts to conclude a long-term peace deal between the PLO and Israel, in 1994 then president Bill Clinton signed an executive order waiving enforcement of laws that barred the PLO and its front groups from operating in the US. His move enabled the PLO to open a mission in Washington.
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