By Stephen Kruger, AMERICAN THINKER

The government of Israel does not make an effective case for the rights of the Jewish people.

POINT I. Negotiations are for solving conflicting claims.

It is said that the government of Israel is prevented from negotiating with the Arabs who live in Judea, Samaria, and Aza, because they have no government which is authorized to negotiate, and to enter into an agreement, on their behalf.

That is true, but secondary. The essential point is that no negotiation should be conducted, unless both parties have some claim to the disputed property.

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Less than 24 hours after the US-Russian sponsored ceasefire went into force in southwest Syria, it broke down early Monday, July 10, when large-scale Syrian army and Hizballah forces launched a general offensive on Syrian rebel forces in the Al Suweida province. This region was listed with Quneitra and Daraa as one of three demilitarized locations to be covered by the truce.

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that the Syrian’s army’s 5^th Armored Division led the offensive which the Syrian army’s general command designated “Operation Big Dawn,” to mark it as the opening of a new phase in the war in southern Syria.
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By Zvi November

On 28 May 2017 Professor Yeshayahu (Isaiah) Gafni, an expert on Jewish history during the Hasmonaim and Herodian eras over two thousand years ago drew an audience of several hundred to his presentation in Jerusalem.  His lecture dealt with the conflicting attitudes of Jews who lived in distant parts of the Greco-Roman world, especially in Alexandria (the cultural and intellectual capital of the Hellenistic world) as well as in Babylon since the destruction of the first Temple in 586 BC.  At that time, the argument was between Jews who believed that Jewish life and history is linked to a specific locale, namely Eretz Yisrael and those living in the Diaspora who asserted that Judaism is equally valid and viable anywhere it successfully cultivates a firm spiritual base. 
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Palestinians have been encouraged to believe that these actions, whether blowing up a bus or knifing an old man, are part of a sacred historic movement

All over the world, people take the side of the Palestinians without knowing much about them and their collective beliefs and intentions. Palestinians who go abroad looking for praise and propaganda seem pleasant. They don’t find it hard to convince innocent Westerners that they have justice on their side.

But sometimes, even in the Middle East, a window opens and the truth peeks out. At the moment, the struggle over official payments to Palestinian terrorists provides an exceptionally useful vantage point.
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To preserve his irrational sense of honor, the Muslim man must blame others for any wrongdoing. Conforming to this perverse logic, United Nations Human Rights Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, Dubravka Šimonovi?, blames Israel for the violence committed by Palestinian men against their own women. If Israel’s retaliatory attacks were indeed the cause, then Hamas’s greater number of rocket and mortar attacks would cause Israeli men to be far more abusive to Israeli wives – but that is not the case.

It begins in the home. Family life is a microcosm of the surrounding culture. Inside and outside the Islamic home, there is oppression, subordination, envy, animosity, shame, enslavement, and emotional and physical pain for any deviation. Muslim women are among the poorest, most oppressed, and least educated in the world, caged by their cumbrous shrouds in the insufferable desert heat, by their misogynist sharia laws, and by their chauvinist husbands. The 7th-century Bedouin woman’s attempt at privacy and protection has become a symbol of humiliation, servitude, and protection from men who are raised to lack restraint. Thus clad and maltreated, there is no natural interaction between the sexes, such as is found elsewhere. Not only are the women deprived of freedom and individuality, but they are also denied sunlight and Vitamin D, and more likely to develop osteoporosis, experience pelvic fracture during childbirth, and have babies who are disposed to seizures.
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The compulsion to secularize Jewish identity or correlate it with progressivism has produced a generation that is hostile to traditional observance and tolerant of assimilation.

The compulsion to secularize Jewish identity or correlate it with progressivism has produced a generation that is hostile to traditional observance and tolerant of assimilation.

American non-Orthodox Jews today are less religiously and ethnically grounded than their grandparents and more likely to define Jewishness in secular or political terms. They are also more likely to assimilate and intermarry and to view those who do both as positive role models. Not surprisingly, they tend to validate their cultural detachment by denigrating classical standards of Jewish identity and deprecating traditional observance and devotion to Israel.
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“The ethical and moral strength of the State of Israel rests on the delicate and precise balance conceived by our founding fathers,” Zionist Union MK argues • MK Avi Dichter: Bill will not hurt Arab minority, any other interpretation is completely wrong.

The Knesset | Photo credit: Reuters

The controversial nation-state bill drew harsh criticism over the weekend, following an Israel Hayom report detailing several disputed revisions to its language, presented following pressure by the ultra-Orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism parties and the national-religious Habayit Hayehudi party.

The legislative proposal’s new draft defines Israel as a “Jewish state with a democratic regime” rather than a “Jewish and democratic state.” Under the new provisions, the state would be required to preserve the Jewish character of the state and protect sacred Jewish sites according to Jewish tradition. Once enacted, the bill will be one of Israel’s basic laws, which have been recognized by the courts as a de facto constitution.

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U.S. and Russia have shared interests in pushing Iran and its militias, like Hezbollah, out of the area. Working assumption in Israel is that American departure will leave stage completely open for Russia

Children play inside an inflatable castle during Eid al-Fitr celebration in the rebel-held besieged Douma neighbourhood of Damascus, Syria June 26, 2017. REUTERS/Bassam Khabieh TPX IMAGES OF TH BASSAM KHABIEH/REUTERS

The cease-fire in southern Syria that took effect on Sunday noon will not be the first of its kind attempted in the country, but it is unique in that it is the first product of a Russian-American agreement after the blows exchanged between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Last month, a 48-hour cease-fire was undertaken without much success: It was breached when Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces attacked the Daraa area. Before that, local cease-fires were declared mainly between the opposition groups themselves.
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PA chief fumes at Cairo’s apparent support for his rival’s talks with Hamas, which have spoiled Abbas’s efforts to pressure terror group into submission

Nazi Germany demonized the Jews by claiming that they were an inferior race. Tens of millions of contemporary Germans demonize Israel by viewing them as Nazis.

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ARD, the first German Public Broadcasting network, has added new manipulations to the saga of the antisemitism documentary Chosen and Excluded – The Hate for Jews in Europeco-produced by Joachim Schröder and Sophie Hafner. The EU-subsidized German-French public TV station ARTE had commissioned this documentary through WDR, an ARD member.

As far as is known, initially WDR did not raise any objections about the documentary before passing it on to ARTE. The latter, however, rejected the movie claiming that it had professional shortcomings and did not meet contractual terms.
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“The United States, Russia and regional countries reached a ceasefire deal in southwestern Syria,” a US official said on Friday, July 7 after the Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin ended their hotly-anticipated first encounter in Hamburg. He was referring to Iran and its consent to a ceasefire going into effect Sunday, July 9.

DEBKAfile reports that this was a significant breakthrough in one the most volatile fronts of the six-year Syrian war with direct impact on Israeli and Jordanian security. Our sources reveal that Tehran was persuaded to come on board this limited ceasefire in urgent phone conversations ahead of the summit between Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and Iran’s National Security Adviser Adm. Shamkhani.
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Jerusalem and Amman worry Tehran aims to carve out a Shiite-controlled land corridor through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon to the Mediterranean

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) — A separate truce for southern Syria, brokered by the US and Russia, is meant to help allay growing concerns by neighboring Israel and Jordan about Iranian military ambitions in the area, including fears that Tehran plans to set up a disruptive long-term presence there.

Such apprehensions were stoked by recent movements of Shiite Muslim militias — loyal to Iran and fighting alongside Syrian government forces — toward Jordan’s border with Syria, and to another strategic area in the southeast, close to where the two countries meet Iraq.

The advances are part of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s push to regain territory from rebel groups, some backed by the West, in the southern Daraa province, and from Islamic State extremists in the southeast, near the triangle with Iraq.

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Tillerson points to ‘clear, positive chemistry between’ U.S. president and counterpart from Moscow

President Donald Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday in a high-stakes meeting during the G-20 event in Hamburg, Germany.

The two world leaders talked cybersecurity issues and terrorism, according to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who spoke to reporters off camera after the meeting.

Syria appeared to have been the topic that took up the most time, based on Tillerson’s remarks. The United States is fighting ISIS in that Middle Eastern country, but Russia supports Syria’s regime and has military bases there.
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