By Michael Totten, MEFORUM

Former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri (left) meeting with Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, on November 7 in the UAE.

Saad Hariri resigned his post as Lebanon’s prime minister, citing an assassination plot brewing against him, presumably from his former government coalition partner Hezbollah. “Wherever Iran settles,” he said in a televised speech, “it sows discord, devastation and destruction, proven by its interference in the internal affairs of Arab countries.” Iran’s hands in the Middle East, he then said, “will be cut off.” He delivered that speech and resignation not from Beirut but from Saudi Arabia.

In a sinister statement worthy of Syrian tyrant Bashar al-Assad himself, Lebanese President Michel Aoun, a long-time tool of Damascus, says he won’t accept Hariri’s resignation unless he returns to Beirut and hands it over in person.
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“Rabbi Breitowitz received his Rabbinical Ordination from the Ner Israel Rabbinical College in 1976; B.S. with honors from Johns Hopkins University; J.D (magna cum laude) from Harvard Law School in 1979; and a Doctorate in Talmudic Law from Ner Israel in 1992. He has lectured extensively throughout the US and Israel on medical, business, and family ethics. He has published numerous articles on bankruptcy, commercial law, medical ethics, family law, and halakha. In addition to being the Rabbi of the Woodside Synagogue in SIlver Spring MD, Rabbi Breitowitz is a Professor of Law at the University of Maryland.”

A plan to separate the east Jerusalem neighborhoods located beyond the security barrier has gained steam and moved from the legislative phase to the planning phase.

BY UDI SHAHAM, JPOST

A view of Kafr Akab, one of the neighborhoods behind the security barrier that would be affected by Elkin’s plan. (Udi Shaham). (photo credit:UDI SHAHAM)

A plan to separate the east Jerusalem neighborhoods located beyond the security barrier has gained steam and moved from the legislative phase to the planning phase, Jerusalem Affairs Minister Ze’ev Elkin told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.

After advancing the amendment to Basic Law: Jerusalem the Capital of Israel, which made it harder to transfer parts of Jerusalem to the Palestinian Authority on the one hand, and opened the door to changes of municipal borders on the other, Elkin said he started initiating the steps needed to implement the plan.
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Ex-Cia Director Woolsey Explains Why Iran Needs To Be Taken Down A Notch

BY Yonah Jeremy Bob, JPost

The US should destroy virtually all of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps infrastructure as well as Iran’s nuclear facilities to reduce its terrorist and nuclear threats, former CIA director James Woolsey told The Jerusalem Post in an interview.

“The next time the IRGC looks cross-eyed at us… we should turn loose six to 12 MOAB [GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast] bombs on their facilities,” said Woolsey, who was CIA director from 1993 to 1995 during the Clinton administration. He spoke to the Post in the famous Rotunda Room of the Pierre Hotel in Midtown Manhattan.

MOAB bombs, with 18,000 pounds of TNT, are the second-largest conventional weapon in the US arsenal, and the largest ever used, after one was dropped on a suspected Islamic State target in Afghanistan in April.
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dailymail.co.uk

• King Salman of Saudi Arabia is planning to step down next week and name his son Prince Mohammed bin Salman as his successor, a source told DailyMail.com
• They added: ‘King Salman will play the role of the queen of England. He will only keep the title “Custodian of the Holy Shrines”
• Prince Mohammed bin Salman, 32, ordered the arrests of more than 40 princes and government ministers in a corruption probe in early November
• The Saudi royals were photographed sleeping on bare mattresses on the floor of the luxury Ritz Carlton hotel
• Once crowned king, the prince will shift his focus to Iran, a long standing rival oil empire to Saudi Arabia in the Middle East, the source said

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Eisenkot tell Arab press Jerusalem and Riyadh in complete agreement on Islamic Republic, which he calls ‘the biggest threat to the region’

By DOV LIEBER, TOI

In an unprecedented interview to a Saudi news outlet, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot said Thursday that the Jewish state is prepared to share intelligence with the Gulf kingdom in their joint efforts to curb Iranian influence in the region.

Israel and Saudi Arabia do not have official diplomatic relations.

Speaking with the London-based, Saudi-owned news site Elaph, Eisenkot, in his first-ever interview with Arabic media, laid out what he thinks are Iran’s ambitions in the Middle East, and made clear that Israel isn’t interested in a war now with the Iranian-backed Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, despite Iranian attempts to bring about an escalation.
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Using precedent set in recent High Court decision, Avichai Mandelblit views residents of Horesha as protected population deserving of public benefits

By JACOB MAGID, TOI

Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit approved the expropriation of private Palestinian land for the building of an access road to an illegal West Bank outpost, in an unprecedented legal opinion on Wednesday.

Established without government approval in 1995, the Haresha outpost, in the Binyamin region near the settlement of Talmon, had been ordered to cease construction in 2005 following a High Court of Justice petition by the Peace Now settlement watchdog.

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But following a legal decision last month made by now-retired Supreme Court justice Salim Joubran, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked asked that the state’s opinion on Haresha be updated.
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By Nosratollah Tajik, EURASIA

As things increasingly heat up in the Middle East in post-ISIL era, it appears the anti-Iran and anti-Shia alliance of convenience between the Saudis and Israelis appears to have placed Lebanon in the cross hairs of yet another looming proxy or Israeli-Hezbollah war. And the war in Yemen will also continue to escalate – perhaps now with increasingly overt Israeli political support.

Barak Ravid, senior diplomatic correspondent for Israeli Channel 10 News published a leaked diplomatic cable and also twitted yesterday which had been sent to all Israeli ambassadors throughout the world concerning the chaotic events that unfolded over the weekend in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, which began with Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s unexpected resignation after he was summoned to Riyadh by his Saudi-backers, and led to the Saudis announcing that Lebanon had “declared war” against the kingdom.
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By Andrew Bostom, PJ MEDIA

Modern doyen of Islamic studies, Bernard Lewis, wrote his most unapologetic analysis of Islam’s quintessential totalitarianism in 1954, entitled, “Communism and Islam”. Redolent with insight, and published as the totalitarian Communist menace ravaged the globe, Lewis encapsulated these twin totalitarianisms by repeating a witty aphorism from that era describing the creed of atheistic Communism in Islamic parlance:

There is no God, and Karl Marx is his prophet

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By Rachel Ehrenfeld, AC DEMOCRACY

Shortly after taking office in November 2015, Canada’s Prime MinisterJustin Trudeau on CBC’s “1 on 1” argued the importance of working with “the Muslim community to demonstrate that Islam is not incompatible with free and open Western societies.” Thus, reiterating the oxymoron that was introduced by the Muslim Brotherhood and has since been used by their many affiliated Muslim organizations to dupe the West.

So when on October 18, 2017, the province of Quebec passed a new law banning the wearing of niqab or burqa “when riding public transit or receiving government services” for security reasons– Trudeau made it known he wasn’t happy with the new provincial law, law. “As a federal government, we are going to take our responsibility seriously and look carefully at what the implications are” even though the federal government, cannot challenge the new law, implying others could.
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T. BELMAN: I DON’T BELIEVE IT

PA official says Abbas was told by Saudi King there will be no normalization of ties with Israel before Israel-PA peace deal is reached.

By Elad Benari, INN

Saudi Arabia told Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas that it will not normalize relations with Israel before a peace agreement is reached between Israel and the PA, the PA official in charge of foreign affairs, Riyad Malki, said on Tuesday.

Malki, who was quoted by the PA’s Wafa news agency, said Saudi King Salman bin Abdul Aziz made that clear to Abbas during their meeting in Riyadh last week.

Malki told the president of the Swedish parliament and his delegation, who he met at his office in Ramallah, that Saudi Arabia fully supports Palestinian efforts to reach a settlement based on international resolutions.
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DEBKAfile: A major Israeli concession made it possible for Moscow to walk off with a big gain for its allies in the Nov.8 Trump-Putin memorandum for Syria, DEBKAfile reports.

The strong pledges made by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gady Eisenkott – that Iran and Hizballah would not be permitted to establish a permanent military presence in Syria and come close to the Israeli border – have melted away in secret bargaining sessions. Israel was finally forced to agree to their presence as close as 20km from its northern Golan border with Syria, backing away sharply from its original demand of a 50km buffer zone.
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By Evelyn  Gordan

The International Committee of the Red Cross, self-appointed guardian of the laws of war, has embarked on an exciting new online project: destroying the very laws it ostensibly seeks to protect. Of course, the ICRC would put it differently; it would say it’s teaching the laws of war. The problem is that the “laws” it teaches aren’t the actual laws of war, as codified in international treaties, but a made-up version that effectively denies countries any right of self-defense against enemies that fight from positions inside civilian populations. And it is thereby teaching anyone unwilling to concede the right of self-defense that the laws of war should simply be ignored.
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By Yoram Hazony, WSJ

American conservatism is having something of an identity crisis. Most conservatives supported Donald Trump last November. But many prominent conservative intellectuals—journalists, academics and think-tank personalities—have entrenched themselves in bitter opposition. Some have left the Republican Party, while others are waging guerrilla warfare against a Republican administration. Longtime friendships have been ended and resignations tendered. Talk of establishing a new political party alternates with declarations that Mr. Trump will be denied the GOP nomination in 2020.

Those in the “Never Trump” camp say the cause of the split is the president—that he’s mentally unstable, morally unspeakable, a leftist populist, a rightist authoritarian, a danger to the republic. One prominent Republican told me he is praying for Mr. Trump to have a brain aneurysm so the nightmare can end.
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