Report: Trump’s peace plan to be presented ‘soon’  

Detailing approaches to sensitive and incendiary topics without pushing for any single approach, the new US peace plan for the Israel-Palestinian conflict aims to give the two sides freedom to pick and choose from its proposals, according to a New York Times report.

By Orly Azoulay, YNET NEWS

PM Netanyahu (L) and US President Trump (Photo: Haim Katz/GPO)

PM Netanyahu (L) and US President Trump (Photo: Haim Katz/GPO)

US President Donald Trump is expected to present his peace plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict soon, The New York Times reported Monday, citing three Trump administration officials.

The White House, according to the Times, is still polishing the plan, seeking to find a formula that will ensure the American intiative is not dead on arrival. The Trump administration hopes that when the peace plan is finally put on the table, the pressure on the Palestinians to enter negotiations with Israel will increase.

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March 13, 2018 | 5:05 pm | 2 Comments »

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Amid deportation debate, Israel lauds Belgian report that Sudan is safe  

Evidence Sudanese migrants deported back to Sudan tortured found to be unreliable, contradictory, according to Belgium immigration ombudsman • Report proves “infiltrators from Sudan can return to their country without worrying,” says Israeli NGO.

By Akiva Bigman, ISRAEL HAYOM

A report issued in Belgium last month appears to cast doubt on the claim that Sudanese refugees who were deported back to Sudan faced torture and abuse, Israeli officials recently learned.

The report comes amid a heated dispute in Israel, where African migrants are facing imminent deportation. Many in Israel argue that deporting the illegal migrants from Israel back to Africa would place their lives in danger, while the state argues that migrants will be completely safe.

Most asylum seekers in Israel come from either Sudan or Eritrea. Earlier this year 20,000 male African migrants were instructed to leave the country by April.
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March 13, 2018 | 4:55 pm | Comments »

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Trump’s Marriage of Populism and Conservatism  

By Tiberiu Dianu, AMERICAN THINKER

On Saturday evening, March 10, 2018, President Trump held a rally at a Pittsburgh airport (in Moon Township, Pennsylvania) in an effort to help Republican Rick Saccone win a western Pennsylvania congressional district in today’s special election.  The president won the district by 20 points during the 2016 election.  The speech was vintage Trump 2016, displaying, in the midst of an enthusiastic crowd of supporters, both the president’s achievements since he has taken office on January 20, 2017 and his electoral promises that he has yet to deliver on in the years to come.

There were, however, some new – some would say unconventional – elements of the president’s populism prefiguring a departure from the traditional conservatism, as we know it, of the Reagan-Bush era.
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March 13, 2018 | 4:44 pm | Comments »

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Palestinian PM escapes assassination attempt in Gaza  

Explosion hits Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah’s convoy during a rare visit to Gaza to dedicate a long-awaited sewage plant • Fatah accuses Hamas of being behind the “cowardly attack,” further escalating tensions between the rival factions.

News Agencies


Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah arrives at a waste treatment plant in Gaza Tuesday | Photo: Reuters

An explosion struck the convoy of the Palestinian prime minister Tuesday as he was making a rare visit to Gaza, in what his Fatah party called an assassination attempt it blamed on Gaza terrorists.

The explosion went off shortly after the convoy entered Gaza through the Erez border crossing between Israel and Gaza.

Gaza’s Hamas-run interior ministry said the explosion hit as the prime minister’s convoy passed near the northern town of Beit Hanoun. No one was injured, and security services have launched an investigation, ministry spokesman Eyad Al-Bozom said.
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March 13, 2018 | 4:20 pm | 3 Comments »

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Trump ousts Tillerson, taps CIA Director Pompeo for State Dept.  

McMaster is next.

By Dave Boyer, The Washington Times

In this Dec. 20, 2017, file photo, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson listens as President Donald Trump speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington. Tillerson huddles Tuesday, Jan. 16, 2018, with nations that fought on America's side in the Korean War, looking to tighten the economic noose around North Korea over its nuclear weapons even as hopes rise for diplomacy. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Trump ousted Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson Tuesday and is replacing him with CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

“Mike Pompeo, Director of the CIA, will become our new Secretary of State. He will do a fantastic job!” the president tweeted. “Thank you to Rex Tillerson for his service!”

He announced that deputy CIA Director Gina Haspel will become the new director, and the first woman so chosen. Both Mr. Pompeo and Ms. Haspel will require Senate confirmation.
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March 13, 2018 | 4:13 pm | Comments »

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Trump the Deal-maker and the Middle East  

By Amir Taheri, ASHARQ AL AWSAT

Casting himself as the best friend Israel could hope for, President Donald Trump is promising, some may say threatening, to unveil his grand plan for a peace “deal” to end the so-called “Middle East problem”.

Trump has always fancied himself as a deal-maker; he has even written a book on the subject. It is, therefore, no surprise that he might want to put his skill to use on an issue which has defied numerous deal-makers for six decades.

What are the chances of him succeeding?

The short answer is: nil!
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March 13, 2018 | 2:03 pm | 3 Comments »

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Shaked to PM: Dissolving the government ‘a historic mistake’  

Justice Minister calls on PM not to topple right-wing government over what she calls an ‘imaginary crisis.’

By Nitsan Keidar, INN

Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked talked this morning about the coalition crisis and called on the prime minister not to topple the right-wing government.

“This is an imaginary crisis,” she wrote on Twitter. “Prime Minister, to topple a right-wing government over nothing would be a historic mistake similar in size to the fall of the Shamir government in 1992.”

Shaked was interviewed this morning on the haredi radio station Kol Barama and added, “It’s really frustrating. To dismantle the government is a mistake that later everyone will regret, I hope that the prime minister or the defense minister will come to their senses. It’s in the hands of both of them.”
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March 13, 2018 | 11:54 am | Comments »

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AIPAC leadership losing the plot  

By Isi Leibler, JPOST

The American Jewish leadership’s downward spiral has accelerated. This can be traced back to its cowardly silence when then-President Barack Obama began treating Israel as a rogue state and applied moral equivalence to Israelis defending themselves and Palestinian terrorists.

The leaders of the Reform and Conservative movements and the Anti-Defamation League have effectively become adjuncts of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. Many have become so obsessed with hatred of President Donald Trump that their bitterness supersedes their support for Israel.
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March 13, 2018 | 9:53 am | 1 Comment »

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US warns Syria against ‘unwise’ gas attacks, hints at response  

Following alleged chlorine attack on Syria’s beseiged eastern Ghouta region, U.S. Defense Secretary Mattis says Russia either “incompetent or in cahoots with Assad” • U.S. president has “full political maneuver room” to respond as he sees fit, he says.

Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff

U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis warned Syria on Sunday it would be “very unwise” for government forces to use weaponized gas, as he cited unconfirmed reports of chlorine attacks in eastern Ghouta and slammed Russian support for Damascus.

Mattis stopped short of threatening to retaliate against Syrian forces if a chlorine attack were confirmed. But he noted America’s April 6, 2017 cruise missile strike on a Syrian air base over a sarin gas attack and said President Donald Trump had “full political maneuver room” to take whatever decision he believed was appropriate.

“It would be very unwise for them to use weaponized gas. And I think President Trump made that very clear early in his administration,” Mattis said, speaking with a small group of reporters before landing in Oman.
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March 12, 2018 | 6:25 pm | Comments »

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Israeli Leader Moshe Feiglin: Time for Israel to Annex West Bank, Gaza Strip  

by Aaron Klein, BREITBART

Israeli politician Moshe Feiglin poses for a portrait in an office Sunday Jan. 29, 2012, in the coastal town of Caesarea. Feiglin, a hardline Jewish settler who supports cash incentives to empty the West Bank and Gaza of Palestinians is running against Israel's prime minister in Tuesday's ruling Likud party's primary, a race he has little chance of winning but one in which he could deliver an embarrassing blow to the country's leader. (AP Photo/Dan Balilty)

It is time for Israel to formally abandon the so-called two-state solution as well as the concept of a Palestinian state and instead push for the complete Israeli annexation of the West Bank and retaking of the Gaza Strip, Israeli politician Moshe Feiglin contended.

Feiglin is chairman of Israel’s Zehut Party and a former Likud Knesset Member.

In a wide-ranging interview, broadcast Sunday on this reporter’s weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio,” Feiglin outlined a three point plan for Israel to “annex the total territory between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river.”

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March 12, 2018 | 5:50 pm | 6 Comments »

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Trump Administration Backs PLO in Terror Lawsuit, Angering Zionist Organization of America  

The Supreme Court will say by March 29 whether it will consider the appeal by the litigants in the case, known as Sokolow v. Palestine Liberation Organization

 In this file photo taken on March 8, 2018 US President Donald Trump speaks before signing Section 232 proclamations on steel and aluminum imports in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC
In this file photo taken on March 8, 2018 U.S. President Trump speaks before signing Section 232 proclamations on steel and aluminum imports in the Roosevelt Room of the White HouseAFP PHOTO / MANDEL NGAN

The Trump administration sided with the Palestine Liberation Organization in a terrorism lawsuit the Supreme Court may soon consider, drawing an angry rebuke from conservatives, including one of its most steadfast Jewish community defenders, the Zionist Organization of America.

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March 12, 2018 | 5:38 pm | 1 Comment »

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Abbas to Meet Jordan’s King Abdullah on Trump’s Middle East Peace Plan  

‘The Palestinian leadership is firm in its decision to sever relations with the administration since Trump’s declaration’ of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, member of top Palestinian body says</p>

Jordan's King Adbullah II welcomes Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Amman, December 2017.

Jordan’s King Adbullah II welcomes Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Amman, December 2017.Khalil Mazraawi/AP

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will meet with Jordan’s King Abdullah II in Amman on Monday to discuss U.S. President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace plan.

Aside from Abbas, attending the meeting on the Palestinian side will be longtime peace negotiator Saeb Erekat and Palestinian intelligence chief Majid Faraj.

The king called the meeting between the two leaders following a recent phone conversation with Abbas. Abdullah wants to discuss Trump’s peace plan, which sources close to Abbas say is expected to be unveiled by the White House soon, as well as its implications.

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March 12, 2018 | 5:30 pm | 1 Comment »

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The Game Plan of C-Span  

By Tabitha Korol

C-Span has a dedicated propagandist program that reaches millions of viewers.  It works on the basis of having the viewing audience call in, vilifying Israel or world Jewry, for all the world to hear, while the host broadcasters remain silent and blameless.  The accusations go unopposed, the lies unchallenged, the slander uncensored, and the audience has digested a full dose of uninterrupted, unexpurgated hate speech against Israel, with defamation of the US for our friendship with the sole middle-eastern democracy that shares our values.  So Islam and the left, the enemies of Jews and Christians worldwide, have their own kind of Lord Haw-Haw, the Fascist mouthpiece of World War II, protected from all censure.  The callers should be screened out and the hosts should be ethical and better informed to disallow the vilification and falsehoods.

Here are just a few of about one hundred damaging comments by callers in 2017, to which the journalists were either silent, ineffective or in agreement.

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March 12, 2018 | 5:21 pm | 2 Comments »

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Israel’s right of self-defense  

By Vic Rosenthal, ABU YEHUDA

When I was in elementary school, I was disciplined for hitting another pupil after he hit me. That I remember the details of the incident clearly 60-odd years later is an indication of how strongly I perceived the injustice of it. I believed my action was justified as necessary self-defense to stop an unprovoked attack. The school principal disagreed.

One of the most strongly felt principles in Western morality and jurisprudence is the right of self-defense. It is permissible in most places to kill an attacker when a person feels that his own life or that of a family member is threatened. A person is not required to allow himself to be harmed or killed, even if the action he is forced to take to protect himself would be otherwise immoral or illegal.
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March 12, 2018 | 3:12 pm | 2 Comments »

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Forget Russia, what about Qatar?  

Is Mueller colluding with the Muslim Brotherhood’s 9/11 backers?

Daniel Greenfield, FPM

There hasn’t been a sudden explosion of paranoia and fear about Russia like this since Sputnik.

In the ‘12 election debates, Obama had breezily dismissed Romney’s suggestion that Russia was the leading geopolitical threat. “You said Russia. Not al Qaeda. You said Russia,” he sneered. “And the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”

Obama was nearly right.

Russia is a serious geopolitical threat, but despite Putin’s imperial ambitions and the malicious actions of a regime run by former KGB operatives, it falls far behind the threat posed by the People’s Republic of China. The Cold War is over and Russia lost. That may be of small comfort to Ukraine or Georgia, and the other former subject nations of the Soviet Union that it threatens, but it’s no real threat to us.
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March 12, 2018 | 8:01 am | Comments »

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Why Hezbollah is anxious about Saudi Arabia’s comeback in Lebanon  

Riyadh seems convinced that opposing Iran and its proxy militias must be an international effort. March 11, 2018

Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri (R) meets with Saudi envoy Nizar al-Aloula at the governmental palace in Beirut, on February 26. (AFP)

Right signals. Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri (R) meets with Saudi envoy Nizar al-Aloula at the governmental palace in Beirut, on February 26. (AFP)

Very little solid information has filtered out about Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s talks in Riyadh. However, the selfie Hariri posted showing him with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz and the Saudi ambassador to Washington is quite telling about the atmosphere of the talks and sends the right signals to Lebanon about the nature of Saudi-Lebanese relations with the Hariri family at the helm.

It is possible that Riyadh wishes to edge closer to Lebanon, as it had previously done with Iraq. In Iraq, Saudi Arabia chose to “revive” its presence even though many had said it was a wasted effort.
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March 12, 2018 | 8:00 am | Comments »

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Britain, Saudi Arabia make joint pledge to help Lebanon dismantle Hezbollah  

With Saudi crown prince in London, countries vow to help Lebanese government consolidate control over south Lebanon and weaken Iran’s regional influence • Amid protests, Britain also approves $6.9 billion sale of 48 Typhoon fighter jets to Saudi Arabia.

By Erez Linn, Daniel Siryoti and Israel Hayom Staff

 

British Prime Minister Theresa May and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, at the end of the latter’s state visit to London on Friday, mutually vowed to “disarm Hezbollah and confront its destabilizing role” and weaken Iran’s regional influence.

According to the Saudi Press Agency, both countries agreed to help the Lebanese government consolidate its control over southern Lebanon and said Iran must “abide by the principles of good neighborliness and noninterference in the internal affairs of countries.”

Upon his arrival in the United Kingdom last Wednesday, the Saudi crown prince was greeted by Queen Elizabeth II.
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March 11, 2018 | 3:26 pm | 1 Comment »

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Islam is Not a Religion, it is a Fraud  

By Amil Imani, CAPITAL HILL OUTSIDER

Islam not a religion

From the primitive land of the Arabian Peninsula of over 14 centuries ago rose Muhammad, an illiterate hired hand of a rich widow Khadija, claiming he was the bearer of a perfect life prescription from God—the Quran. He claimed humanity could do no better than to follow its precepts as well as to emulate Muhammad’s own life example for a guarantee of bliss and salvation. In exchange for this, people had to embrace Islam—surrender—by surrendering their liberty to Muhammad.

Islam is the most successful fraud in the history of humanity and has been a great success. Millions of mullahs and imams keep the fraud going and over a billion and a half of the faithful pay for it. They pay in funds, labor and even life, for the IOUs issued to them by the Islamic organizations that glide through life without breaking a sweat for earning their daily bread. Islam is a fraud and Muslims are the victims.


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March 11, 2018 | 11:59 am | 4 Comments »

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Will the US and Israel attack Syria together?  

Kuwait daily claims Israel, US, planning joint offensive on Syria.

By Ruet Hadar, INN

The Kuwaiti daily Al-Jarida on Saturday reported that the US and Israel are working on a plan to attack Syrian targets in the near future.

According to the report, Jerusalem and Washington are disappointed in the way Russia has handled the Syrian war, and are planning to operate in the region in order to prevent Iran from gaining a stronger foothold in Syria.
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March 11, 2018 | 10:46 am | Comments »

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