By David Bedein

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 556, August 9, 2017

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The desire of Prime Minister Netanyahu to dismantle UNRWA, while understandable in light of the agency’s egregious history of collusion with Hamas, is not a practical proposition. Israel can, however, demand that funding to UNRWA be conditioned on the agency’s reform in multiple areas.

Virtually every media outlet took UNRWA’s condemnation of the Hamas tunnels found under an UNRWA school at its word. Yet none of them reminded the world that both the UNRWA school teachers’ union and the UNRWA workers’ union of Gaza have been under the tight control of Hamas since 1999, without a word of disapproval from the agency. Nor does UNRWA appear to object to the use of its facilities by Hamas to teach violence and war. This summer, for example, Hamas will conduct its annual summer military training camp to train upwards of 50,000 UNRWA students, aged 9-15, in the use of live weaponry.

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T. Belman. The case against McMaster has been well documented. He takes orders from Soros rather than Trump. So why is Trump standing by him? It is so incomprehensible that it gives credence to the theories that say that the Deep State has threatened to kill him or some of his family members if he doesn’t comply. I consider the firing of McMaster to be the litmus test of Trump’s independence.

By Charlie Spiering, BREITBART

President Donald Trump again signaled support for his embattled National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster during a press conference with reporters in Bedminster, New Jersey, Thursday.
When asked by reporters if he had confidence in General McMaster, Trump replied, “Yes, I do.”

“He’s our friend. He’s my friend and he’s a very talented man. I like him and I respect him,” Trump said as McMaster sat silently in the seat on the president’s right.

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Jordan’s foreign minister blames the “occupation” for the Temple Mount terror, and threatens even more dangerous crises.

By Eli Hertz, INN

As recently as the mid-20th century, when Arabs last controlled parts of Jerusalem, they exhibited no respect for the Holy City.

In 1948, when Jordan took control of the eastern part of Jerusalem, including the Old City, it divided the city for the first time in its 3,000-year history. Under the 1949 armistice agreement with Israel, Jordan pledged to allow free access to all holy places but failed to honor that commitment.

From 1948 until the Six-Day War in 1967, the part of Jerusalem controlled by the Jordanians again became an isolated and underdeveloped provincial town, and its religious sites the target of religious intolerance.

The Old City was rendered void of Jews. Jewish sites such as the Mount of Olives were desecrated. Jordan destroyed more than 50 synagogues, and erased evidence of a Jewish presence. In addition, all Jews were forced out of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City adjacent to the Western Wall, an area where Jews had lived for generations.

For 19 years, Jews and Christians residing in Israel (and even Israeli Muslims) were barred from their holy places, despite Jordan’s pledge to allow free access. Jews, for example, were unable to pray at the Western Wall;

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By Simon Kent, BREITBART

CANBERRA, Australia — A new poll on the attitudes of New Zealanders to Israel shows four times as many Kiwis support Israel as are opposed to the Jewish State.
Fifty-five per cent of almost 1,000 Kiwis polled expressed their support for Israel, compared to only 13 per cent against, in a survey commissioned by the Israel Institute of New Zealand (IINZ).

Co-director of the Israel Institute, Dr David Cumin, says these results show Israel holds strong public backing in New Zealand, in defiance of its portrayal in the media and its denigration during political discourse.

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By Shoshana Bryen, AMERICAN THINKER

he United States persists in treating Lebanon as if it were a country.  Congress provides U.S. military assistance to the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and trains the LAF’s officers.  And now we’re fighting alongside the LAF, apparently to oust ISIS from encampments inside Lebanon, where they have moved across the border from Syria.

“I can confirm the presence of U.S. Special Forces in Lebanon,” a Pentagon spokesman said last week.  “Our special forces are providing training and support to the Lebanese Armed Forces. That not only concentrates on operational type missions, but also tactical and strategic type missions. We also have a presence with Lebanese Special Forces in all aspects of training and special operations.”

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Special poll among 450 Likud and Rightist voters points to Jewish Home Chairman Naftali Bennett with Gideon Sa’ar behind

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/233672

Responding to the question of who is most loyal to the Land of Israel 48 percent answered Naftali Bennett, 11 percent Avigdor Liberman, 7 percent Moshe Ya’alon, and 9 percent Gideon Sa’ar.

Who most reflects the values of the right? Naftali Bennett won 45 percent against Gideon Sa’ar, who won nine percent. 15 percent said Avigdor Liberman, Moshe Ya’alon got only four percent, while eight percent said Yisrael Katz reflects the values of the right.

The survey examined the respondents’ position on the question of which of the following personalities will most strongly stand against Arab terrorism: 33 percent believe in Naftali Bennett, five percent Gideon Sa’ar, 27 percent Avigdor Liberman, seven percent Moshe Ya’alon, and nine percent Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan (Likud).

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The 37-mile barrier, with underground and underwater sections, “will be built with or without another fight with Hamas,” says GOC Southern Command Maj. Gen. Eyal Zamir • Hamas mistaken if it thinks it can hide behind the civilian population, Zamir warns.

By Lilach Shoval and Israel Hayom Staff

By Pinhas Inbari, JCPA

• Palestinian leaders claim that the Palestinians are descended from the Canaanite people who lived in the Land of Canaan before the Israelite tribes settled in it.
• What is the source of the name “Palestine?” It is not Arab; it is derived from the name “Palestina,” by which the Roman Emperor Hadrian chose to call the land after the defeat of the Bar Kokhba Revolt in 135 CE. His aim was to erase “Judea.”
• According to Palestinian historian Muhammad Y. Muslih, during the entire 400 year period of Ottoman rule (1517-1918), before the British set up the 30-year-long Palestine Mandate, “There was no political unit known as Palestine.” In Arabic, the area was known as al-Ard al-Muqadassa(the holy land), or Surya al-Janubiyya (southern Syria), but not Palestine.

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By CONRAD BLACK, The SUN

The battle lines have been so sharply drawn, in what is now a bloodless civil war for direction of U.S. public policy, that the two sides cannot really communicate with each other. There is a commendable candor in Kellyanne Conway’s statement: “They hate us and we hate them.”

I don’t hate the Never Trumpers. I know many of their principal and most articulate spokesmen who have defected from the conservative Republican ranks, and in many cases I have known them for a great many years. I could never entertain allowing a matter of political differences to interfere in a valued friendship. And while I am hopeful that Donald Trump (also a friend) will be a successful president, and am glad that he has the opportunity to govern, I am not so impassioned on the subject that it blinds me to the virtues of some of his detractors or to the president’s shortcomings.

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Taped Feb 2017