By Guy Lieberman, YNET NEWS

The Tikvah Fund offices in Jerusalem. ‘I think the NIF is less dangerous to Israeli society and solidarity,’ says right-wing poet Eliaz Cohen (Photo: Amit Shabi)

Huge donations, aiding organizations with a distinct agenda, an attempt to change the public discourse in Israel with foreign money: The Tikvah Fund, which promotes a US Republican worldview through research institutions, seminars and media outlets with a clear right-wing ideology, is being accused by Religious Zionism circles of turning a cold shoulder to the disadvantaged, underrepresenting women and deepening the rift among the Jewish people.

Millions of dollars in funding to organizations and NGOs, an aggressive attempt to insert and spread a foreign worldview and values into Israel, extending tentacles into politics, education and practically every possible field—all these charges and others have been hurled in recent years against the New Israel Fund (NIF).

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DEBKA

In the first military clash between US and Russian forces in Syria, more than 200 Russian “mercenaries” are reported killed, scores more injured. US military sources first  reported that 100 Russian “advisers” were killed and dozens injured in a US attack on Syrian and allied pro-Iranian forces on Feb. 8. By  Tuesday, Feb. 13, those figures had doubled. Moscow has not confirmed the incident or the casualties, which would be five times more than Russian official losses since it entered the war in 2015. President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, declined to comment, saying the Kremlin only tracks data on the country’s armed forces. According to one Russian officer, the death toll continues to rise after scores of Russian wounded were flown to hospitals in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
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T, Belman.  J Street has replaced AIPAC and now controls the Democratic Party

102 of House’s 193 Democrats lobby Trump to continue funding for UNRWA, after US withholds more than half of $125 million support package.

JTA

Some 102 Democratic congressmen sent a letter to President Donald Trump calling on him to continue funding for U.N.’s Palestinian aid agency.

The State Department last month announced that it had put a hold on $65 million of the $125 million annual allocation to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, which distributes its assistance in the Gaza Strip, Judea and Samaria, as well as to refugee camps in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Days later, the State Department announced that a $45 million payment pledged for the UNRWA food aid program would also be held up.

According to UNRWA, the United States provided more than $350 million in aid to the organization in 2017.
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Millions deported worldwide, but only the Jewish state remains the focus of Israel-obsessed media – and Israel’s own leftists.

By Robert HArris, INN

On an average day, the Jewish State played host to one of the largest foreign press corps in the world. This seemed to me to reflect not mere international interest, not mere international curiosity, not mere international preoccupation; but an outright international obsession.

–Yehuda Avner, former director, Prime Minister’s Foreign Press Bureau

Israel is at long last beginning the process of deporting 38,000 African men who came to Israel seeking jobs. None of these men had visas and illegally crossed the southern border prior to the construction of the fence built there by Israel.

The issue of Israel seeking to deport young African men is now being used as a club by the elites in their never-ending battle to destroy Israel and the Jewish people. Worldwide media coverage creates lies about an “intolerant” and “racist” Israel, while refusing to report the same story when other countries deport illegal immigrants.
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T. Belman. Netanyahu starts negotiations from what he expects to get and not from what Israel wants. In other words he starts from our minimalist position rather than our maximalist position. He does this to convince the world that Israel wants peace. G-d forbid he should say Israel demands land, our land.

“I think the application of sovereignty over Judea and Samaria is of supreme value, even more so than [Israeli] interests in relations with the US,” Jerusalem Affairs Minister Ze’ev Elkin said.

BY Tova Lazaroff, JPOST

Israel should ignore United States opposition and push forward on legislation to annex West Bank settlements, right-wing politicians said on Tuesday.

“Application of sovereignty [in Area C  of the West Bank] is an existential issue for the state of Israel,” Jerusalem Affairs Minister Ze’ev Elkin (Likud) said.

It is in Israel’s interest to maintain strong ties with the US, Elkin said as he spoke at the 15th annual Jerusalem conference sponsored by the B’sheva newspapers group.

“But we have other interests,” he said.
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Minister Ayelet Shaked addressed the proposed nation-state law, contending that Israel as a Jewish state must administer equal civil but not national rights

By Revital Hovel, HAARETZ

Justice Minister Shaked in the Knesset last month, calling for death penalty for terrorists.Olivier Fitoussi

Economist Intelligence Unit

– Israeli start-up companies, which form the core of Israel’s world-renowned high-technology industry, had a record year in 2017. Start-ups raised a combined US$5.2bn during the year, 9% more than in 2016 and a record, according to a survey by the Tel Aviv-based IVC Research Centre. Fundraising by Israeli start-ups has been rising steadily since 2012, when it was just US$1.8bn. Other indicators of the sector’s health also suggest a strong year. Israel appeared to grow through a period of weakening in the global venture-capital and start-up sector in late 2016 and early 2017 and continued its expansion for the remainder of the year.
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Are the strained relations between Qatar, Iran and Turkey on one side and the Saudis, Bahrain, the Emirates and Egypt on the other leading to head-on war?

By Mordechai Kedar, INN

Since the advent of the French Revolution, Western culture has aspired to separate church and state, believing that religion deals with the status of man– the individual and the community – and God, while politics deals with administering the lives of the public, those who believe in various religions as well as atheists who believe in none.  One result of religion’s removal from the political sphere was that a Jew (Leon Bloom in France, Benjamin Disraeli in Britain) could become prime minister if he was considered worthy of the role.

The Middle East, however, is a totally different reality. Religion in the Middle East is an inseparable part of politics, and is often the main actor in political situations. That is how we have a political party called Hez b’ allah –  (God’s party),  war is called Jihad (a war commanded by the Koran) and a country can be called an Islamic Republic (Iran).  Most of the Constitutions of Middle Eastern countries state clearly that Islam is the basis of their systems of law. The rule in the Middle East is that “Religion and state are twins” – Din wa-Dawla Tawaman – born at the same time and living together in harmony.
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T. Belman. More info to follow. We already knew that Israel wanted to annex the settlements. It follows she would talk to the US about it. Once you are talking about annexing the settlements why not talk about annexing the who kit and kaboodle. MAybe that is being discussed also.

Netanyahu tells lawmakers that ‘for some time now’ he’s been holding talks with U.S. on importance of West Bank to Israel

By Chaim Levinson, HAARETZ

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that for some time now he has been holding talks with the U.S. administration about the possibility of expanding Israeli sovereignty to Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Netanyahu on Sunday blocked the advance of a bill to apply Israeli sovereignty to the settlements. The forum of coalition party heads, which convened to decide whether to support the bill, unanimously agreed to postpone the debate because of the security situation in the north.

According to Netanyahu, Israel had to avoid steps liable to embarrass the United States so as to reach understandings with the international community. The premier has used these arguments several times over the past few months in order to postpone various bills relating to annexing territories.

By leveraging its remarkable achievements in the fields most relevant to future conflicts, Israel can transition from dependence on the U.S. to partnership.

By Eran Lerner, JISS

he roots of Israel’s bond with the U.S. run deep—preceding the establishment of the state. Immediately after the end of World War II, when British government policy in Palestine, led by Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, was outright hostile to the Zionist project, David Ben-Gurion nevertheless made a bold prophecy to the crusty British statesman. Like it or not, he said to Bevin, a confrontation was coming between the Western allies and the Russians—and the Jews, like them or not, would be on the side of Britain and the West.

And so it came to pass: in the post-Holocaust era, things could not have been otherwise. Although the coming cold war was still but a vague shape on the horizon, the Zionist national project was bound almost by definition to be counted among the defenders of democracy led by the United States. The “special relationship” between Israel and America, which in its present form far exceeds Ben-Gurion’s fondest dreams, is the direct product of that fundamental fact.

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T. Belman. Until such time as the US abandons the pursuit of the two state solution, the conflict will not be resolved. When the US decides to no longer support a fake people and instead enforses the original Mandate for Palestine which supports the Balfour Declaration and the San Remo resolution, the solution will become easily recognized and implemented. As in the aftermath of the WWII, population transfer was undertaken, because it facilitated, the peace that followed.

So too here, when the US opts for the transfer of the Arabs living in Judea & Samaria and Gaza, primarily to Jordan and Egypt, the conflict will be quickly and cheaply resolved.

Essentially this conflict has been maintained by the US, who, heretofore, has insisted on promoting and subsidizing the PLO and the PA and their cause. As soon as the US shuks the albatross, peace will be obtained.

By Peter Skurkiss, AMERICAN THINKER

Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with Pope Francis in Rome this past week. The topic of the meeting wasn’t the persecution of Christians in the Middle East, nor Erdogan’s human rights abuses in Turkey. It was Erdogan’s and the Vatican’s shared objection to the United State moving its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

It is hard to see how Pope Francis and Erdogan have any standing in the matter. Israel is a sovereign nation; it gets to choose its capital like every other country. And what foreign entity gets to say where the U.S. embassy should be? This is especially aggravating given the fact that having the American embassy in Jerusalem is U.S. law according to the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995.
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Russia, uniquely, is in a position to push the Iranian vector off its current trajectory and prevent an all-out war.

BY Herb Keinon, JPOST

The scorecard for those actively involved in the events over the skies of Israel and Syria on Saturday looks something like this: Israel lost an F-16 fighter jet and an aura of complete invincibility over Syria skies.

Iran lost a drone, the drone’s command and control center, and some of its military assets in Syria, the details of which are sure to emerge in the coming days.

Syria lost a number of air defense batteries, including vital air defense facilities around Damascus.
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Trump’s Debt Reduction Plan Will Increase It by $5.3 Trillion

By Kimberly Amadeo, THE BALANCE

 Donald Trump’s plan to reduce the debt will instead add $5.3 trillion. Getty Images

Donald Trump promised to reduce the nation’s $19.5 trillion debt by growing the economy and reducing waste in federal spending. Instead, his policies will increase the debt by $5.3 trillion. Here are his plans to reduce the debt, and how they will impact the U.S. economy.

“Grow the economy to increase tax revenues.”

Trump initially promised to grow the economy by 6 percent annually. Since then, he revised his growth estimate to 3.5 percent to 4 percent.
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BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 736, February 11, 2018

By Dr Gabriel Glickman

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:  Scholars disagree as to whether there exists a liberalizing global political order that has been preserved through American hegemony since World War II (often referred to as the “liberal world order”). Still, it is generally agreed upon that the US has been the dominant power in global affairs since at least the fall of the Soviet Union. With the release of the Trump administration’s National Defense Strategy, the US Department of Defense is weighing in on this debate. Specifically, it has announced that American security policy is shifting from counterterrorism in the Middle East to strategizing against rising world powers like China. The reason for this pivot, according to the Pentagon, is the need to protect the current world order from states that seek to revise it.
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By Martin Sherman, NEWSMAX

By Taha Sakr,  Egypt Independent  February 11, 2018

Egypt’s Armed Forces killed 16 militants and destroyed 66 militant hideouts on Sunday morning as part of a large-scale operation dubbed “Comprehensive Operation Sinai 2018” that began on Friday, an official statement by the army’s official spokesperson read.

Sunday’s statement said that forces of the Third and Second Field armies with the support of special forces and the Thunderbolt commando force swept North and Central Sinai and killed the militants there.

The destruction of the hideouts was carried out with the support of Egypt’s Air Force.

A storage facility containing Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) and two four-wheel vehicles used by militants were also destroyed.
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T. Belman. We must disabuse Trump of the notion that a “peace deal” is better for Israel than annexation of J&S plus the Jordan Valley without giving a path to citizenship for the Arabs. As difficult as this course of action may be, it is far better than trying to share the lands with the Arabs.

Ultimately what is not good for Israel, i.e., a “peace deal”, is not good for the U.S. A stonger Israel gives rise to a stronger U.S. and a more stable ME.

“Israel has to be careful with settlements,” he says, adding that Israelis and Palestinians would be “foolish” not to make a peace deal.

By Boaz Bismuth, ISRAEL HAYOM

U.S. President Donald Trump speaking to Israel Hayom Editor-in-Chief Boaz Bismuth at the White House

“I expect to be here a long time,” U.S. President Donald Trump said to me when I asked him whether the ayatollah regime would still be in place in Iran when he leaves office. “We will see.”

When it comes to the leader of the free world, a remark like this can be taken as a semi-threat. One thing is clear: The U.S. no longer views Iran as a “stabilizing” power, or even remotely as one of the good guys in the region, the way Trump’s predecessor, President Barack Obama, often did.
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After exchanges of fire on northern border, PM tells ministers Israel will ‘continue to strike back at any attempt to harm us’

By TOI STAFF

IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot (L) attends a briefing with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman (R) in response to the escalation of tensions along the northern border on February 10, 2018. (Ariel Harmoni/Defense Ministry)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said airstrikes targeting key Iranian military facilities in Syria over the weekend inflicted heavy damage on the Iranian and Syrian militaries, and vowed that Israel would act decisively to counter any further provocations.

“Yesterday we dealt a serious blow to the armies of Iran and Syria,” Netanyahu told ministers at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting. “We made it unequivocally clear to everyone that our rules of engagement have not changed in any way.”
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By Monica Showalter, AMERICAN THINKER