Labor, Arab Joint List plummet as coalition factions expand majority to 69 seats. Netanyahu set to become longest-serving PM in history.

By David Rosenberg, INN

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud government would be easily reelected if new elections were held today, a new poll shows, giving Netanyahu his fifth term as premier.

Netanyahu, who was first elected in Israel’s first direct elections in May 1996, was again elected in 2009, 2013, and 2015, giving him three consecutive terms as Prime Minister – four in total. Netanyahu currently holds the record for the longest consecutive term in office, with 8 years and 307 days.

If he remains in office through the end of the current Knesset’s term – set to end in November 2019 – he will break the record as the longest-serving PM in Israel’s history, a title currently held by David Ben-Gurion, with 13 years and 127 days.
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The first round of notices, which gives asylum seekers from Eritrea and Sudan 60 days to leave, will be issued to men without children – about 20,000 people

By Ilan Lior, HAARETZ

The Population, Immigration and Border Authority will begin issuing deportation notices on Sunday to asylum seekers from Eritrea and Sudan who are not held in the Holot detention facility.

In the first stage the notices will be issued to men without children who come to renew their residence visa. Citizens of Eritrea and Sudan are required to renew their visas every two months at the authority’s office in Bnei Brak. They will receive their last two-month visa, along with a letter stating that during this period they are expected to leave the country, otherwise they will be forbidden to work and can expect to be incarcerated indefinitely. Authority personnel will suggest that they leave for either Rwanda or their native countries.

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T. Belman. In a similar fashion the Obama administration tried to influence the ousting of Netanyahu in Israel’s last election and the one before that also.

In total, 114 third parties poured $6 million into influencing the election outcome and many of those third parties were funded by the U.S.-based Tides Foundation

NATIONAL POST

Foreign money funnelled towards Canadian political advocacy groups affected the outcome of the 2015 federal election, according to a document filed last week with Elections Canada and obtained in part by the Calgary Herald.

The 36-page report entitled: Elections Canada Complaint Regarding Foreign Influence in the 2015 Canadian Election, alleges third parties worked with each other, which may have bypassed election spending limits — all of which appears to be in contravention of the Canada Elections Act.

The Canada Elections Act states that “a third party shall not circumvent, or attempt to circumvent, a limit set out . . . in any manner, including by splitting itself into two or more third parties for the purpose of circumventing the limit or acting in collusion with another third party so that their combined election advertising expenses exceed the limit.”
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How one courageous proactive journalist took on the IRS over this issue – and won.

By Phyllis Chesler

After a “long, lonely and expensive seven year struggle,” one that she alone, on behalf of Z STREET bore, Lori Lowenthal Marcus, the founder of Z STREET has just won a significant legal victory which grants her organization tax-exempt status and definitively exposes Obama’s IRS as obsessively anti-Israel.

There was a repeated effort during the Obama administration to bar organizations that support Judea and Samaria from being eligible for tax-exempt status.
Ironically, Marcus founded Z STREET in 2009 in order to “educate Americans about the Middle East and Israel’s defense against terror.”
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Arabic daily says high-level team visiting from Moscow came to Jerusalem to discourage action against Iran and Hezbollah

TOI

A satellite image showing the results of an alleged Israeli airstrike on a reported Iranian base being set up outside Damascus, from December 4, 2017. (ImageSat International ISI)

A delegation of senior Russian security officials visiting Israel this weekreportedly sought to dissuade Jerusalem from striking Iranian and Hezbollah weapons facilitates in Syria and Lebanon.

According to the London-based Arabic daily Asharq Al-Awsat, the purpose of Wednesday’s visit headed by Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev was Moscow’s desire to discourage Israeli intervention across the border, Channel 10 news reported.

The Russian delegation, which also included deputy ministers. army generals and intelligence officers, was met by Israel’s National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat as well as heads of Israel’s National Security Council and top military, defense and intelligence officials.

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By Christina Wong, BREITBART

The House Intelligence Committee released its classified memo detailing alleged abuse by senior FBI and Justice Department officials on Friday, after the president approved its release.

Among the memo’s findings are:

• The anti-Trump dossier funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee formed an “essential” part of the initial and all three renewal surveillance applications against Trump campaign adviser Carter Page;

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The EU announced its own plan at the emergency meeting on Gaza, presenting a $53 million fund to ‘preserve the Palestinian character’ of E. Jerusalem and a future Palestinian state

By Noa Landau, HAARETZ

Representatives of Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the United States participated in an emergency conference in Brussels on Wednesday of countries and organizations that provide financial support for Palestinians.

Israel presented humanitarian assistance plans at the gathering for the rehabilitation of the Gaza Strip with a focus on desalination, electricity and natural gas infrastructure projects in addition to upgrading of the industrial zone at the Erez border crossing with Israel. The total cost of the projects is estimated at a billion dollars, which Israel asked the international community to fund.The plan was first reported by Haaretz.

Regional Cooperation Minister Tzachi Hanegbi, who represented Israel at the conference, presented the plans but noted that carrying them out would require that the PA take responsibility for civilian life in Gaza, which has been under the control of Hamas since the Islamist movement forcefully ousted the PA there in 2007.

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High-ranking Israeli officials have sounded alarm bells about Iran’s growing presence in the north.

By Charles Belezer, LINE, JPOST

Israel appears to be adjusting its tune — and strengthening its tone — when it comes to Lebanon. For years, the government’s mantra has been, “Hezbollah is Lebanon and Lebanon is Hezbollah,” a refrain that, in various iterations, similarly dominated the military establishment’s doctrine. Given the terror group is a wholly owned Iranian subsidiary, the missive, when uttered, implicitly blamed Tehran for the effective takeover by its Shiite proxy of Israel’s northern neighbor.

Of late, however, the blame is being shifted squarely onto the shoulders Hezbollah’s patron, with a series of high-ranking Israeli officials having warned this week that the Islamic Republic’s growing control over Lebanon, coupled with its attempts to establish a permanent military presence in Syria, is raising the prospect of war. Jerusalem has not only conveyed this message both to Washington and Moscow, in particular, but also has transmitted the warning directly to the Lebanese opposition and thus, as a corollary, to their political representatives.
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Israeli investigative journalist Ronen Bergman, author of the book Rise and Kill First, reveals the story of how the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, recruited a former Nazi to help it defeat Egyptian President Abdel Gamal Nasser along with his team of Nazi scientists who were trying to destroy Israel.

BY Ryan Mauro, CLARION PROJECT

This knife was one of the many weapons found in the Fuqra compound in Colorado (Photo: video screenshot)

Newly-released FBI documents obtained by Clarion Project confirm Clarion’s reports that Jamaat ul-Fuqra is training members in isolated communes across America and Canada.

The group’s “Islamberg” headquarters in upstate New York is its most well-known “Islamic village.”
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Offensive Holocaust comparisons have gone too far.

By Howard Rotberg, FPM

Canada continues its submission to Islamism.   My local paper, the Hamilton Spectator, ran an op-ed on January 26th from a local Muslim doctor under the headline, “Islamophobia is alive and well.”  Dr. Raza Khan, writing about the tragic shooting a year ago by a lone individual in a Quebec City mosque killing 6 and injuring more, advocates that Canada should designate January 29th as a “National Day of Remembrance and Action on Islamophobia.” The doctor recites a few anti-Muslim actions by some fringe groups, and Quebec’s law that those wearing burkas or niqabs would not be eligible from offering or receiving public services, its legislature feeling that faces should be disclosed.  From this he hectors us that “Racism is surging in Quebec” and that “the ugly face of hatred (is) here in Canada.”
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By Deborah Danan, BREITBART

TEL AVIV – Amid worsening relations with the Palestinians, the Trump administration is now considering rejecting the UN’s definition of Palestinian “refugees” and cutting off all financial aid to the agency that caters to them, an Israeli TV report said Tuesday.

According to a Hadashot News TV report, the State Department is mulling an end to all of its $360-million annual aid to United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) after it already froze a payment to the organization of more than $100 million in January. The report said the move was a “new ultimatum” to pressure the Palestinian Authority into returning to the negotiating table with Israel.
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PA President Mahmoud Abbas’ recent tirade against U.S. President Donald Trump prompted by American offer to set future Palestinian capital in Abu Dis • White House official criticizes Palestinian leadership for seeking “to prejudice people against an unfinished plan.”

By Shlomo Cesana and Erez Linn, ISRAEL HAYOM

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ recent tirade against U.S. President Donald Trump was prompted by a stipulation in Washington’s peace plan that seeks to reduce the role the PA plays in Jerusalem, Israel Hayom learned Wednesday.

Relations between Washington and Ramallah have sunk to a new low following Trump’s Dec. 6 recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. On Jan. 14, in a fiery, two-hour speech before supporters in Ramallah, Abbas railed against Trump, castigating him for his treatment of the Palestinians and warning that the Palestinian leadership will have no problem rejecting an unacceptable peace plan.
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By Erez Tadmor, ISRAEL HAYOM

On Tuesday, the organization Physicians for Human Rights announced that 63 doctors, psychologists and social workers had undergone training at their offices on how to fill out paperwork in a way that might prevent the planned deportation of illegal migrants.

Israel has given illegal African migrants until the end of March to accept a $3,500 stipend and voluntarily depart or face imprisonment. This policy has sparked a country-wide debate on the issue that includes a left-wing campaign comparing the deportation to the Holocaust.

But if we look behind Physicians for Human Rights’ laundered words, we will find an organized effort to teach professionals how to take advantage of their licenses and status to mislead the state and undermine the policies of the elected government.
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DEBKA

Contrary to Moscow’s promises, the Russian military is not pulling out of Syria, but adding four more air bases (one shared with Iran) and 6,000 more troops.

On Dec. 11, 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin, followed by Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, announced that the Russian military was to withdraw from Syria to home bases. DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources report that the reverse happened. A small number of units were indeed sent home, but they were sooner replaced, and instead of two bases – the air facility at Hmeimim and the naval installation at Tartus – four more Syrian air bases are being reconstructed and adapted for the use of the Russian air force.
The attached map illustrates their locations:

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