By Andrew C. McCarthy, NATIONAL REVIEW

Not only the Clintons are implicated in a uranium deal with the Russians that compromised national-security interests.

Let’s put the Uranium One scandal in perspective: The cool half-million bucks the Putin regime funneled to Bill Clinton was five times the amount it spent on those Facebook ads — the ones the media-Democrat complex ludicrously suggests swung the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump.

The Facebook-ad buy, which started in June 2015 — before Donald Trump entered the race — was more left-wing agitprop (ads pushing hysteria on racism, immigration, guns, etc.) than electioneering. The Clintons’ own long-time political strategist Mark Penn estimates that just $6,500 went to actual electioneering. (You read that right: 65 hundred dollars.)
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By Conrad Black, NY SUN

It is delicious to see, even more suddenly and completely than anyone had anticipated, the breakdown of the steamroller media smear of Donald Trump. A trinitarian deus ex machina descended.

The Washington Post, struggling desperately in its discomfort, a few days ahead of the information being forcibly extracted by congressional subpoenas, acknowledged that the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee had paid for the assembly of the Steele dossier.

This rotten fish of lies and gossip was universally regarded at first as rubbish so scurrilous no one would publish it for months until Buzzfeed, the bottom of the web barrel, took it up, which emboldened the flounder skimming the bottom, CNN, to present it as a major triumph of journalistic enterprise and to popularize it.
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‘We are defeating ISIS, but leaving Iran, Russia and their friends in stronger position’.

BY YONAH JEREMY BOB, JPOST

WASHINGTON – Israel should be allowed to buy bunker-buster bombs – with certain restrictions – to deter Iran, former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden told The Jerusalem Post.

“I’ve talked about that thought…I can imagine circumstances where the US might want to take steps to convince Iran of its seriousness,” he said in a recent interview in his Washington office, in which he did not reject the idea out of hand when questioned. “Allowing Israel to purchase them [bunker-busters] in gradations, training on them, but keeping them here” in the US.

In a worst-case scenario – to prevent Iran bringing out a nuclear weapon – giving Israel bunker-buster bombs could allow it to take out underground aspects of the program and perhaps deter Iran from trying to break out with such a weapon.
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By Evelyn Gordon

The Anti-Defamation League released a truly shocking poll of Israeli opinion last week. You wouldn’t guess that from reading the newspaper headlines, which were all about decades-old divisions in Israeli society. But here’s the shocking part: Over a fifth of respondents accused Diaspora Jews of contributing to those social divisions.

While some Israeli minorities might plausibly say this (ultra-Orthodox Jews upset by American Jewish pressure for religious pluralism, radical leftists upset by American Jewish support for Israel), it’s hard to see those minorities alone adding up to 21 percent of respondents. But why would any mainstream Israelis, who have traditionally been appreciative of Diaspora Jews’ political and financial support for Israel, now feel that overseas Jewry has become a negative factor, a force contributing to social divisions?
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The Justice Ministry “won’t allow left-wing organizations to set facts on the ground by dragging the court into the political sphere,” Ayelet Shaked says • “Government wants to hit the gas, the judiciary keeps hitting the brakes,” housing minister says.

ISRAEL HAYOM

The High Court of Justice won’t decide the future of the Judea and Samaria settlement enterprise,” Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said Tuesday, adding her officer “will not allow left-wing organizations to set facts on the ground by dragging the court into the political sphere.”

Speaking at a Kohelet Policy Forum in Jerusalem, Shaked said that “the Left can’t win the election so they [left-wing groups] file hundreds of nuisance petitions with the court every year, effectively waging lawfare against the Israeli government. We won’t be a party to it.”
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Ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia, two of Iran’s staunchest enemies, would start small, The Times reports

HAARETZ

Saudi Arabia and Israel are negotiating the establishment of economic ties, The Times reported on Saturday. 

The British daily quoted Arab and American sources as saying that the first steps toward ties between two of Iran’s staunchest enemies would start small, including allowing Israeli businesses to operate in the Gulf and letting Israel’s El Al airline fly over Saudi airspace.

But it also cited sources close to Saudi Arabia as saying that improved relations between the two countries are nothing more than wishful thinking on the part of the White House in the wake of President Trump’s promise to reach the “ultimate” peace deal in the Middle East.
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‘The illusion of peace has now evaporated,’ said Moshe Ya’alon, but so has ‘the illusion of a Greater Land of Israel’

By Chaim Levinson, HAARETZ

Former Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon expressed support on Thursday for continued Palestinian autonomy in parts of the West Bank, but not independence, and said the territory could hold one or two million additional Jewish settlers.

After speaking at a religious girls’ school in Beit Shemesh on Thursday, Ya’alon was asked his views about Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and about evacuation of Jewish settlements more generally.
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Mueller is the wrong sleuth when his ex-agency is so tangled up with Russia.

By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. Wall Street Journal

By Conrad Black, NY SUN

The pattern of the Trump administration is evolving, despite many perturbations, toward a more conventional relationship with the press and the country. I was taken gently to task last week by my colleague Jonah Goldberg for applying “Never Trumper” as an umbrella for all those who would rather endure horrible personal fates than suffer the president to complete his term — rather than, as it apparently means, just Republicans of that view. I was merely being fashionably inclusive, but I repent my heresy and will henceforth refer to vehemently anti-Trump Democrats as the Resistance (though I consider the demarcation otiose).

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Billions of Dollars to Left-wing Groups Through Justice Department ‘Slush Fund’ Scheme 

JUDICIAL WATCH, June 06, 2017

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice for records relating to an Obama administration policy of settling agency lawsuits against corporate defendants by requiring that the corporations make “donations” to left-wing interest groups La Raza, the Urban League and the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.  The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:17-cv-01064)).

Judicial Watch filed the suit after the Justice Department failed to respond to its April 7, 2017, FOIA request seeking:
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Amended agreements with African leaders allow state to circumvent High Court ruling that restricted state policy on holding, deporting illegal migrants • Unlike in original agreements, migrants can now be deported to Africa from Israel forcibly.

By Akiva Bigman, ISRAEL HAYOM

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has signed a series of diplomatic agreements that will allow the state to circumvent a recent High Court of Justice ruling and allow for the continued deportation of illegal infiltrators, Israel Hayom has learned.

Netanyahu took advantage of his recent trip to New York, where he delivered an address to the U.N. General Assembly, to meet African leaders. During their meetings, Netanyahu amended Israel’s agreements with the leaders so as to allow illegal infiltrators to be deported from the country, forcibly if necessary. This would allow the state to continue its deportation procedures and constitutes an important tier in the government’s efforts to find a solution to the issue of migrants residing in the country illegally.
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Israel is concerned about Iran being emboldened by another victory in Iraq at the same time that a Hamas delegation is in Tehran.

BY SETH J. FRANTZMAN, JPOST

On Sunday, Iraq Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi began a historic visit to Saudi Arabia, where he is meeting the king of Saudi Arabia and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

It came at the same time that Iraq is strengthening its control over disputed areas seized from the Kurdistan Regional Government over the last week. The intentional weakening of the Kurdistan region comes less than a month after it held an independence referendum and has wide implications for the region. This affects Israel as well because of Jerusalem’s opposition to Iranian hegemony.
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