A briefing by David Schenker, MEFORUM
September 12, 2017

^{Summary account by Marilyn Stern, Communications Coordinator for the Middle East Forum.}

The Arab world’s fifth poorest country, Jordan has only a quarter of its adult population gainfully employed. Its accumulated debt represents nearly 100% of GDP and the Jordanian economy has been seriously afflicted by the arrival of 1.4 million Syrian refugees over the past few years. This, however, has not generated an overt backlash against the refugees by the indigenous population, partly because the 2015-16 terror attacks in the kingdom were perpetrated by homegrown extremists rather than by incoming refugees.

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August meeting with US officials grew heated when H.R. McMaster rejected Israel’s Hezbollah concerns, denied it was a terror group.

By Tzvi Lev, INN

A new bombshell report alleges that a meeting between high-level Israeli officials and their American counterparts last month deteriorated when National Security Adviser H.R McMaster brushed off Israel’s concerns about Hezbollah, at one point backing up an aide who denied that Hezbollah is a terror organization.

According to the report on Channel 10 and PJ Media, McMaster yelled at Israeli officials, and denied that the Iran-backed militia is a terrorist group.

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Yishai is moderating

CONFERENCE: The Jordan Option – The Ultimate Alternate Solution

Dear liberals: Conservatives are not your enemy. The Left is.

By Dennis Prager, FPM

What is the difference between a leftist and a liberal?

Answering this question is vital to understanding the crisis facing America and the West today. Yet few seem able to do it. I offer the following as a guide.

Here’s the first thing to know: The two have almost nothing in common.

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Start watching at 5:30

The original agreement negotiated by Prime Minister Netanyahu and former US president Barack Obama provides Israel with $38 billion through 2028.

By Michael Wilner, JPOST

WASHINGTON – The Trump administration will support Congress’s effort to provide Israel with more aid than was guaranteed in a formal defense package negotiated by former US president Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last year, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

That agreement – a memorandum of understanding meant to govern US defense assistance to Israel through the coming decade – provides Israel with $38 billion through 2028. During the 2016 negotiations, Israel’s leadership signed a side letter promising to return any aid appropriated by Congress exceeding the $3.1 billion set aside for this fiscal year. But Congress ignored that provision, cutting Israel an additional $75 million in aid in its latest appropriations bill.

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U.S. President Donald Trump expected to set broad strategic objectives and leave commanders, diplomats and officials to implement policy • Proposal presented to Trump aims to step up pressure on Tehran to curb its missile program, stop support of terror.

Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff

U.S. President Donald Trump is weighing a strategy that could allow for a more aggressive U.S. response to Iran’s forces, its Shiite Muslim proxies in Iraq and Syria, and its support for militant groups, according to six current and former U.S. officials.

The proposal was prepared by U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, national security adviser H.R. McMaster and other top officials, and presented to Trump at a National Security Council meeting on Friday, the sources said.

It could be agreed and made public before the end of September, two of the sources said. All of the sources are familiar with the draft and requested anonymity because Trump has yet to act on it.

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Following alleged Israeli airstrike, Moscow said to tell Assad regime and Hezbollah to hold back and ‘concentrate on the bigger picture’

By Alexander Fulbright, TOI

Russia has reportedly reassured Israel that it will not allow Iran and its Hezbollah proxy to threaten the Jewish state from Syria, where Moscow is fighting alongside Tehran and the Lebanese terror group on behalf of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Israel has of late repeatedly warned of Iran’s ambitions to establish a military foothold in Syria that would threaten Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Russian President Vladimir Putin last month in order to stress the threat posed by Iran’s presence on Israel’s northern border.

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By Trevor Thomas, AMERICAN THINKER

The Never-Trumpers of every stripe still don’t get it. Ten months after his historic defeat of Hillary Clinton, those opposed to Donald Trump — whether from the political right, left, or middle — have yet to grasp why so many Americans — especially evangelical Americans — have embraced, or at least tolerate, the politics of the Man from Manhattan. As my wife (and chief editor) pointed out when I began this piece, “It’s really a no-brainer. There was no other option.” But nevertheless, to those dulled by their disdain for Mr. Trump, let me explain again our continued support for him.

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Review of ‘City on a Hilltop’ By Sara Yael Hirschhorn

By Evelyn Gordon

Sara Yael Hirschhorn’s City on a Hilltop starts with two eminently reasonable premises. First: If you want to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, you must understand Israeli settlers, since they’re one of the players. Second: If you want to understand the settlers, you must move beyond the popular caricature of them as ultra-nationalist, ultra-religious fanatics, since most are neither.

Hirschhorn’s book is an attempt to do exactly that, which is all the more admirable given her own political views: She characterizes any Jewish presence beyond the 1949 armistice lines—including the large Jewish neighborhoods of east Jerusalem, whose tens of thousands of residents she also labels “settlers” (in a footnote)—as an illegitimate colonialist occupation. Yet despite the obvious sincerity of her effort, her inability to rise above her own biases ends up undermining the final product.

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By Cliff Kincaid, CFP

President Trump has made a deal with Democrats over the debt ceiling and disaster aid. And he’s apparently promised to make a deal to legalize the illegal aliens covered by DACA. On global policy, he has kept Obama’s Iran nuclear deal while depending on the communist-front United Nations to do something about the Communist North Korean nuclear weapons program. Trump is now reportedly asking the U.N. for permission to inspect ships going to North Korea.

The Communist Party spin-off known as the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism is claiming that Trump is “triangulating” and isolating the “hard right” of the Republican Party by forging an alliance with Congressional Democrats.

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By Aaron Klein, BREITBART

NEW YORK — On the sixteenth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, Islamic terrorist attacks, President Donald Trump did not once mention the terms “radical Islam” or “Islamic terrorism” during a commemoration ceremony at the Pentagon.

Those phrases were also not mentioned in speeches today by other Trump administration senior officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, Defense Secretary James Mattis, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Instead of naming the enemy, Trump seemingly went out of his way to use other descriptors in his speech, including “terrorists who attacked us,” “barbaric forces of evil and destruction,” “horrible, horrible enemies,” “enemies of all civilized people,” and “enemies like we’ve never seen before.”

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By Morton A. Klein, ZOA

I am a child of Holocaust survivors, born in a displaced persons camp in Germany, and lost most of my aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents to the evil horror of the Nazis. I’ve spent decades fighting against anti-Semites and Israel-haters of every stripe, from Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan to Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke to Palestinian Arab terrorist leaders Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas and Ismail Haniyeh. I’ve won battles against Israel bashers who were nominated to or held U.S. government posts, including Joe Zogby, Salaam Al Marayati, Strobe Talbott and Charles Freeman. I know a Jew hater, a Nazi or an Israel hater when I see one.

I also know when someone is a friend of Israel and the Jewish people.

Which brings me to the sad and alarming problem that those of us who care about the Jewish people’s survival must combat today.

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