Destroying ISIS in order to return the territory to Bashar al-Assad is tantamount to giving Syria to Iran. In Syria, the U.S. is directing the lion’s share of its energy toward defeating the Islamic State (ISIS) rather than containing Iran.

Reflecting that reality, the caliphate’s days on the physical battlefield are numbered, with U.S.-backed forces assaulting their de facto capital in Raqqa.

As a result, the other major powers and patrons involved in the Syrian cauldron are redeploying their forces as they vie for political, economic, or military influence over its future. The situation brings into focus the other fronts opening up that have far more to do with Iran than with ISIS. Ready or not, the race is on in the south and east, and how those upcoming battles play out will likely shape the balance of power in the region.

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The taciturn secretary of state has apparently reached a breaking point.

Josh Marshall, the editor and publisher of Talking Points Memo, has written frequently about the political phenomenon he has termed wraithing: the tendency of every adviser, aide, and ally within Donald Trump’s orbit to eventually be stripped of dignity by their allegiance to the president, ultimately left a ghostlike shadow of their former selves.

It is a sort of metaphysical corollary of the concept of enabling, which Vanity Fair special correspondent Sarah Ellison documents today. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the once powerful ExxonMobil chief executive who stepped down to join the Trump administration, finds himself somewhere in between the two camps, neither wraith nor enabler, soldiering on mostly silently as he struggles to do his job in the shadow of Trump’s 36-year-old son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who has taken over many of the foreign-policy duties that would ordinarily be Tillerson’s. It was Kushner, not Tillerson, who flew to Israel last week to begin negotiating peace in the Middle East; Kushner, who has served as liaison for Mexico and Canada, and who was recently invited to visit China after coordinating President Xi Jinping’s trip to Mar-a-Lago in April.

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Officials who have talked with Netanyahu about the issue in recent days say he is aware of the gravity of the decisions and the strain they have caused with American Jewry.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is telling leaders of US Jewry angered by Sunday’s government vote on the Western Wall prayer space and on the conversion issue that he faced a choice of either supporting the moves or losing his government, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

That was also the message he relayed on Thursday to a high-level delegation from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, whose members flew in for the day to discuss their concerns with Netanyahu and what they are hearing from their constituents.
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President Donald Trump’s commission on election integrity has asked all 50 states to provide voter rolls going back to 2006, and personal information including names, birth dates and partial Social Security numbers of all registered voters.

The request by Kris Korbach, Kansas’ secretary of state and the vice chairman of the commission, is already facing a backlash by states that say the request is unnecessary and unwarranted.
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8/9/16

For years rumors of plots and counterplots have eddied around the controversial figure of Mohammed Dahlan, the charismatic Palestinian politician whom PA President Mahmoud Abbas regards as his greatest enemy, and who might very well eventually succeed him.

If anything the situation has grown worse in the past few weeks.  For example, Dahlan’s name is being associated with the recent attempted coup in Turkey against the regime of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – an assumption, incidentally, that runs counter to the theory that the coup was actually orchestrated by Erdogan himself, as a devious method to justify purging his political opponents and acquiring the autocratic powers he seeks for the presidency.

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True, the plan leaves Hamas in control of security and doesn’t demilitarize it, but in Mohammed Dahlan Israel would have a partner in Gaza who supports reconciliation

PA President Mahmoud Abbas, left, with then-Fatah leader Mohammed Dahlan, during better times in 2006, in Ramallah. Kevin Frayer/AP

While Israel counts the meager hours of electricity allocated each day to Gaza’s 2 million people, a complex arrangement is being cooked up between the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Gaza and Jerusalem. The purpose is to make Mohammed Dahlan, a political rival of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, government chief in Gaza, lift most of the closure imposed on the Strip by Egypt and Israel, build a new power station in Egyptian Rafah funded by the UAE, and later build a port.
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In rare English-language appearance, defense minister pins Gazan humanitarian crisis on Hamas-PA row, denies Israeli responsibility

What will the future of the European Union be?  Bruce Thornton projects a solution to their future that lies in the EU showing greater respect for the diversity of cultures of its member states.  He states,

“The challenge facing Europe today is not just reforming its economies or crafting saner immigration policies. It is whether the EU leadership can allow a greater recognition of and respect for the member nations’ distinct identities and sovereignty….”

In short, there needs to be a better balance between the EU continental/globalist aspirations and the national identities and aspirations of the member states.

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Among Israelis and Palestin­ians, there’s little optimism about renewed American efforts to negotiate a comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. In Ramallah and Jerusalem, officials, journalists, and policy analysts have watched as industrious U.S. activity in the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations came to naught—and they expect the same outcome for the Trump administration.

There is a lot more optimism in the Trump White House, and of course it starts at the top. The president said this in a February press conference with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu:

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Be sure to listen to Mark Levin beginning at 18 minutes and especially at 23 minutes

French Jews blast government failure to investigate Jewish woman murdered by her Muslim neighbor. ‘Why this denial of anti-Semitism?’

The umbrella group of French Jewish communities escalated its criticism of authorities’ handling of the slaying of a Jewish woman by her Muslim neighbor, calling it a cover-up.

CRIF made the accusation in a short and poignant statement Wednesday containing four loaded questions concerning the April 4 killing of Sarah Halimi in Paris.

“The murder of Sarah Halimi was 85 days ago already and the investigation is not advancing. Why this silence? Why this omerta?” read the statement, which contained the Italian-language mafia term for a cover-up among accomplices. “What is being hidden? Why this denial of anti-Semitism?”

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Individuals of Muslim background stand out among perpetrators of anti-Semitic violence in Western Europe, according to a new report by the University of Oslo Center for Research on Extremism. The next highest offending group was found to be left wing extremists.

This report speaks of Western Europe, but this phenomenon likely goes far beyond this area. On November 23, 1937, Saudi Arabia’s King Ibn Saud summed up the history of the Jew-hatred of “Muslim extremists” when he told British Colonel H.R.P. Dickson:

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Until 2010, only 10% to 15% of such structures were taken down and over the last seven years only about 30 or 35% have been demolished.

Sixty percent of illegal Palestinian structures in Area C of the West Bank have not been destroyed since 2010, the head of the area’s enforcement division Marco Ben-Shabat told a Knesset committee on Tuesday.

Until 2010, only 10% to 15% of such structures were taken down and over the last seven years only about 30 or 35% have been demolished, which means that about 60% are still standing, Ben-Shabat told the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee during a hearing on the matter.
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