TOI

A settler leader says the number of settlers in the West Bank grew at nearly twice the rate of Israel’s overall population last year.

Yaakov Katz says the settler population reached over 435,000 people last year, up 3.4 percent from the previous year. In comparison, Israel’s overall population grew 1.8 percent.

Katz says he expects even more construction now that President Donald Trump is in office. Trump’s Mideast team is dominated by settler allies, and Katz says there is a friendly atmosphere after eight contentious years with the Obama White House.
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https://davejanda.com/audio/GeneralTomMcInerney021818.mp3

Federal abuses on Obama’s watch represent a growing blight on his legacy

BY MONICA CROWLEY,

In all of the discussions about the political weaponization of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI, alleged corruption at the highest echelons of those agencies and serial abuse of the secret FISA process surrounding the 2016 election, one name has been conspicuously absent: President Barack Obama.

High-ranking officials and other major players in those agencies — which Obama oversaw — are increasingly embroiled in the growing scandal: James Comey, Loretta Lynch, Andrew McCabe, Andrew Weissmann, Sally Yates, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Bruce Ohr.

Given the tight control Obama exercised over every part of his administration and agenda, the idea that any of these appointees and loyalists freelanced their activities without at least his tacit approval or that of his White House strains credulity.

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The seeds of the idea of Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria that were planted years ago by a few people of steadfast faith have begun to sprout, and this week, their branches reached all the way to the prime minister. There is still a long way to go, but we have begun the journey.

By Sara HaEtzni Cohen, Makor Rishon, February 18, 2018

It all starts here. Always remember this. All of the initiatives, ideas and innovations begin here, in this country. They win international recognition afterwards. It is the same with sovereignty. There has been some movement over time, but apparently, this week it moved another few centimeters. The phrase “the application of sovereignty” is no longer considered jarring. Everyone is talking about sovereignty, and even if they do not agree – they are talking about it and considering it. Suddenly, the topic of sovereignty has become a realistic possibility, a subject for debate, and for quite some time has ceased to be considered delusional, but is perceived as a serious alternative.
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Israel is not the problem, the Arabs themselves do not want a state.

By Prof. Paul Eidelberg, INN

When the Palestine Liberation Organization, the PLO, was formed in 1964 – three years before Israel repossessed Judea, Samaria, and Gaza – it was not the goal of the PLO’s sponsor, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, to establish a Palestinian state in Eretz Israel.

Not only was there no such thing as a Palestinian – unless that term described both Jews and Arabs living under British authority during the period of the mandate – but Nasser had pan-Arab ambitions which entailed the liquidation of the “Zionist” state and its incorporation into Egypt.

If further proof is wanted that a Palestinian state was never really on the agenda of the PLO, only recall how Yasser Arafat rejected Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s offer of 95% of Judea and Samaria, including eastern Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. Barak even agreed to an initial return of 100,000 Arab refugees!
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T. Belman. Ahrens recommends removing the wall where it divides the city. Israel’s choice is to either to exclude the residents of these areas within Jerusalem, to stop the population from burgeoning or to permanently exclude them from Israel and Jerusalem residency. Of course the residents would still be allowed to work at their jobs in Jerusalem just as other Palestinians in JUdea and Samaria work in Jerusalem. Many of them will try to find housing inside what is left of Jerusalem thereby pushing housing costs even higher.

But I don’t see how the existence of the dividing wall causes an outflow of Jewish residents from Jerusalem.

I think that this issue must be viewed from the point of view of whether we are headed to a two state solution in which case, I say keep the wall or a one state solution, in which case the wall is irrelevant. But if you believe in maintaining the status quo, this issue must be dealt with.

Concerns about demographics shouldn’t lead to a division of Jerusalem, but rather to measures that would stem the outflow of Jewish residents from the city

By Moshe Ahrens, HAARETZ
In one of the impetuous acts he was known for, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon approved the building of a wall — the separation barrier — within the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem, Israel’s capital, separating the Shoafat refugee camp and the Kafr Aqab neighborhood from the rest of Jerusalem. Like the infamous Berlin Wall, it divided one part of the city from the other.

The result causes great inconvenience to the local people, who must go through checkpoints to enter Jerusalem’s other areas. This includes not only those who work in Jerusalem’s other areas but also children attending schools away from where their families reside.
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BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 744, February 16, 2018

By Manfred Gerstenfeld, BESA

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Photos of the burning of a homemade Israeli flag by Muslim demonstrators in Berlin in December 2017 drew international attention due to their association with images of Nazi book burnings in 1933. Senior German politicians have exposed widespread anti-Semitism among the country’s Muslims, a situation borne out by various studies. While measures have been announced against Muslim anti-Semitism, the most important action has not been proposed: to screen all those wanting to immigrate for anti-Semitic and anti-Israel attitudes and bar those found to hold such beliefs.

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By Prof. Paul Eidelberg

We first want to know in depth the world-historical significance of the Vatican’s recognition of the terrorist and artificial state of Palestine, whose autocrats genuflect to Mecca.

In a previous article concerning the Vatican, we indicated that the Catholic Church desperately wants to gain control of Jerusalem. This would disembowel Judaism and the State of Israel, of which the Vatican harbours the greatest fear.

We pointed out that the Church betrayed this fear immediately after the May 1948 rebirth of Israel, when, in an English radio program, the Vatican denigrated the new Jewish state by maliciously and absurdly describing Zionism as a “new Nazism,” and as “a grave menace to Christianity.”
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By Monica Crowley, THE HILL

In all of the discussions about the political weaponization of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI, alleged corruption at the highest echelons of those agencies and serial abuse of the secret FISA process surrounding the 2016 election, one name has been conspicuously absent: President Barack Obama.

High-ranking officials and other major players in those agencies — which Obama oversaw — are increasingly embroiled in the growing scandal: James Comey, Loretta Lynch, Andrew McCabe, Andrew Weissmann, Sally Yates, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Bruce Ohr.

Given the tight control Obama exercised over every part of his administration and agenda, the idea that any of these appointees and loyalists freelanced their activities without at least his tacit approval or that of his White House strains credulity.

Read more…

By Sangar Ali, KURDISTAN 24

New wide-ranging survey of US capital shows many area Jews are observant, though few affiliate with religious institutions

By Ben Sales, TOI

TA — Jews in and around the nation’s capital do plenty of Jewish things. Many of them just don’t do those things as members of Jewish institutions.

That’s one of the main takeaways from a wide-ranging survey of Washington, DC-area Jews published this week by the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington. Much of the metro DC Jewish community travels to Israel and follows the news there. Its members may take part in services and observe key Jewish cultural rituals more than the national average. And its young people attend Jewish cultural events.
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While conventional military options targeting Iran are unlikely, Israel nevertheless has options.

BY CHARLES BYBELEZER/THE MEDIA LINE/JPOST

The conflagration this past weekend between Israeli and Iranian forces is being billed as a new stage in the longstanding, albeit to date largely covert, war between the two adversaries. For the first time, Iranian troops perpetrated a direct attack on Israel, initially by sending a drone across the border from Syria and then by firing the anti-aircraft missile that downed an IDF jet which had reentered Israeli airspace after conducting a retaliatory mission.
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IAF targets included a Hamas terror tunnel and military facilities.

BY Anna Ahronheim, Eytan Halon, Tamar Ben-Ozer,  JPOST FEBRUARY 17, 2018 21:24

A home in the Sha’ar HaNegev Regional Council was directly hit by a rocket launched from the Gaza Strip Saturday evening following an attack on the border in which four soldiers were wounded.

A bomb was detonated against their jeep as they patrolled the border fence on Saturday.
In response, the air force and army attacked numerous terrorist targets.
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National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster warns Iran is developing proxy armies in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq.

By Elad Benari, INN

U.S. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said on Saturday that now is the time for more forceful action to halt Iran’s development of proxy armies in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq, Reuters reported.

McMaster, speaking at the Munich Security Conference, accused Iran of escalating a campaign to increase its influence in the Middle East by building and arming “Hezbollah-style” proxy armies in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere as it has done in Lebanon.

The goal was to weaken Arab governments and turn the proxy forces against those states if they pursued policies that ran counter to Tehran’s interests, he said.
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soundoffwithjohnwspring@outlook.com

From John Spring, February 17, 2018

During the 1930s, publicists for Albert Einstein had promoted him as “The Smartest Man in the World.” So due to so much publicity, the letter that he wrote and had sent to President Franklin D. Roosevelt about the urgent need for the Manhattan Project was read at once and afterwards it had begun with the highest priority in America’s history for the R&D required for producing and deploying an atom bomb that could be dropped from a B-29 bomber by the end of World War II.

By contrast, after the Cuban Missile Crisis had ended, I received a letter that was written and signed by President John F. Kennedy, which had confirmed my remarkable accomplishment for providing an analytic intelligence report that enabled him to save the lives of 170 million human lives in America. But due to Russian GRU Military Intelligence Officer Oleg Penkovsky being blamed by the Soviet KGB for my accomplishment, arrested, severely tortured and executed, he became known as “The Greatest Spy in the World.” Later, President Kennedy was assassinated.
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FP published a draft government report calling for the screening of Sunni Muslims. How do such reports come to be?

BY SHELBIE BOSTEDT, FOREIGN POLICY

In a draft report put together in late January, the Department of Homeland Security called for the continuous vetting of Sunni Muslim immigrants to the United States.

That report, obtained by FP contributor George Joseph, looks at 27 terrorist attacks in the United States since 9/11, and states that there would be “great value for the United States government to continue in dedicating resources to continuously evaluate persons of interest,” and suggests that these immigrants to the United States be tracked on a long-term basis.

This week on the E.R., George joins us, along with a former DHS official, to discuss how this report reflects the Trump administration’s larger immigration policies, and its implications for the future.

GO TO THIS LINK TO LISTEN TO THE PODCAST.
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A brave new book describes how Pakistan unraveled — and provides a blueprint for understanding declining pluralism across the Middle East.

By Kim Ghattas, FOREIGN POLICY, OCTOBER 20, 2017,

Women walk through Kabul in 1972. (Via Amnesty International UK)

When national security advisor H.R. McMaster wanted to convince U.S. President Donald Trump that Afghanistan was not hopeless, he whipped out a 1972 black-and-white picture of women in miniskirts on the streets of Kabul.

The point of this exercise was presumably to show that the country once embraced Western ideals and could do so again with America’s assistance. McMaster’s trick worked: Trump ultimately reversed his earlier skepticism about the war effort and decided to raise troop levels. But it also showed the continued limits of America’s understanding of the countries it has sought to remake in its image. The snapshot depicts Kabul’s urban elite — an elite that was unrepresentative, even back then, of the wider Afghan population. Not everyone was walking around in a skirt before the Taliban imposed the burqa.

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Trump admin divided on crushing Hezbollah, bringing into political process

By Adam Kredo, FREE BEACON

Supporters of the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah attend a rally / Getty Images

A top Trump administration official this week said the United States see a role for the Iranian-backed terror organization Hezbollah in political discussions about the future of Lebanon, a decision that is raising concerns about internal divisions inside the Trump administration, according to recent statements and sources close to the administration who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in remarks during a trip through the Middle East this week, said the United States recognizes Hezbollah is part of the political process in Lebanon as global leaders gather to discuss the Middle Eastern country’s future.
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