The rise in anti-Semitic acts isn’t because of Trump and it isn’t Republican either.

By Barry Shaw

Remember the hysteria at the start of March over a wave of bomb threats to Jewish Community Centers and the desecration of graves in Jewish cemeteries?

A plague of swastikas scrawling on Jewish buildings has been going on in America since November 2016. The blame was always dumped on Trump.

The wild rhetoric put the blame on white supremacists, neo Nazis, alt-right racists, anyone coming to the surface in the wake of Trump’s rise to power. This level of Jew hatred could not be put at the feet of liberal progressives, of course, who are wedded to diversity, love and peace.
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Ted Belman. The Arabs want a negotiated compromise where none is required, They broke the law just as they do throughout Area C. Tova Lazaroff reports “While between 450 and 560 Palestinian structures were demolished each year from 2012-2015, the number jumped to 876 in 2016, and in January this year alone there were 121 demolitions. More than 1,200 people were displaced last year.”.

BY UDI SHAHAM, JPOST

The Knesset is set to vote Wednesday in second and third readings on a bill that would ease the way to impose large fines and home demolitions on constructions violations and illegal building.

MK Abdullah Abu Marouf (Joint List) told The Jerusalem Post that this bill was imposed on the Arab population in Israel, without trying to find a middle ground. Since the beginning of the legislative process, the bill sparked anger in the Arab sector, with members saying it is designed to target them.
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Outraged headlines erupted when students launched a campaign to challenge the great western philosophers. We went to the source of dissent – London’s School of Oriental and African Studies – to investigate

THE GUARDIAN

“They Kant be serious!”, spluttered the Daily Mail headline in its most McEnroe-ish tone. “PC students demand white philosophers including Plato and Descartes be dropped from university syllabus”. “Great thinkers too male and pale, students declare”, trumpeted the Times. The Telegraph, too, was outraged: “They are said to be the founding fathers of western philosophy, whose ideas underpin civilised society. But students at a prestigious London university are demanding that figures such as Plato, Descartes and Immanuel Kant should be largely dropped from the curriculum because they are white.”

Whiteness is not a useful category when talking of philosophy. When people speak, they speak ideas, not identity.

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By Eli E. Hertz, MYTHS AND FACTS

In March 2002, the Arab League met in Beirut and adopted a two-state solution proposal, based on normalization of relations with Israel in exchange for a complete Israeli withdrawal to pre-Six-Day War borders and the return of the 1948 refugees. This proposal was a non-starter, designed more as a positive image builder for Arabs and especially for the Saudis, who made up 15 of the 19 September 11 hijackers, than a genuine contribution to peace in the Middle East.

On April 30, 2013, Qatar’s foreign minister suggested the revival of the Arab Peace Initiative, introduced in 2002, and for the first time eased its demand that Israel return to its pre-1967 borders. Instead, the minister accepted the possibility of tweaking those borders with a comparable and mutually agreed “minor swap of the land.”
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By Daniel John Sobieski, AMERICAN THINKER

Call it the tale of two National Security Advisers, Michael Flynn and Susan Rice. As much as Flynn has taken fire as being an architect of unspecified “collusion” with the Russians, Susan Rice has been like the iceberg that sank the Titanic — barely visible above water but dangerous enough to threaten the Trump administration’s ship of state.

As reported by Circa News, Rice, while serving as Obama’s National Security Adviser, requested the unmasking of the names of Team Trump officials mentioned in the so-called “incidental” surveillance  of the Trump transition team:
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By Daniel John Sobieski, AMERICAN THINKER

Call it the tale of two National Security Advisers, Michael Flynn and Susan Rice. As much as Flynn has taken fire as being an architect of unspecified “collusion” with the Russians, Susan Rice has been like the iceberg that sank the Titanic — barely visible above water but dangerous enough to threaten the Trump administration’s ship of state.

As reported by Circa News, Rice, while serving as Obama’s National Security Adviser, requested the unmasking of the names of Team Trump officials mentioned in the so-called “incidental” surveillance  of the Trump transition team:
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Ministers from 4 nations pledge commitment to project that would reduce European reliance on Russian energy

AFP NEWSROOM

Italy, Israel, Greece and Cyprus pledged Monday to move ahead with the world’s longest undersea gas pipeline from the eastern Mediterranean to southern Europe, with support from the European Union.

If carried out as planned, the long-discussed $6.2 billion (NIS 22.5 billion) pipeline will take gas from Israel and Cyprus’s recently discovered offshore gas reserves to Europe, potentially reducing European dependence on Russian energy at a time of ongoing tensions.

In a joint news conference in Tel Aviv, energy ministers from the four nations and the EU’s Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy Miguel Arias Canete pledged their commitment to the project.
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“If I will have to choose between losing more lives of Israelis, whether they are civilians or soldiers, or losing you, I will sadly, sorrowfully, rather lose you.”

BY CAROLINE B. GLICK, JPOST

The divide between Israelis and American Jews seems to be growing. Indications of the widening gap came last week with reports of a confrontation between an American Jewish activist and four members of Knesset, from across the political spectrum, at a synagogue near Boston.

As reported at The Algemeiner, at the end of a forum at Brookline’s Congregation Kehillath Israel, an audience member named Shifrah told the four Israeli lawmakers, “You are losing me and you are losing many, many people in the Jewish community… I cannot look the other way when three Israeli teenagers are brutally murdered and the response is to kill 2,300 Palestinians [in Operation Protective Edge in 2014]. I want to know what you are doing to make peace with the Palestinians. I want to know what the government is doing to make peace.”
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Ted Belman. This is a big sob story that distorts the facts and the law. These shacks shouldn’t have been built in the first place. The EU illegally built these shacks for the most part in a clandestine manner so Israel couldn’t stop them. The High Court of Israel approved the demolition orders. It is the EU that is acting illegally, not Israel.

A routine meeting between the Foreign Ministry’s director and the EU envoys last week turned into a sharp protest by the European states against Israel’s plan to demolish a Bedouin village.

By Barak Ravid, HAARETZ

The European Union is demanding that Israel stop demolishing Palestinian homes in Area C of the West Bank, and particularly in the Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar near Ma’aleh Adumim, since this would entail forced transfer of the residents and be a violation of the Geneva Convention.

According to Israeli and European diplomats, the sharp message in the name of all EU members was delivered last week by EU Ambassador to Israel Lars Faaborg-Andersen to new Foreign Ministry director-general Yuval Rotem.
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Ted Belman. This is a big sob story that distorts the facts and the law. These shacks shouldn’t have been built in the first place. The EU illegally built these shacks for the most part in a clandestine manner so Israel couldn’t stop them. The High Court of Israel approved the demolition orders. It is the EU that is acting illegally, not Israel.

A routine meeting between the Foreign Ministry’s director and the EU envoys last week turned into a sharp protest by the European states against Israel’s plan to demolish a Bedouin village.

By Barak Ravid, HAARETZ

The European Union is demanding that Israel stop demolishing Palestinian homes in Area C of the West Bank, and particularly in the Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar near Ma’aleh Adumim, since this would entail forced transfer of the residents and be a violation of the Geneva Convention.

According to Israeli and European diplomats, the sharp message in the name of all EU members was delivered last week by EU Ambassador to Israel Lars Faaborg-Andersen to new Foreign Ministry director-general Yuval Rotem.
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Potential rival issues no direct challenge to Netanyahu, says he wants to strengthen party

TOI

Former Likud minister Gideon Sa’ar, widely seen as a major potential challenger to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from within the ranks of the party, announced his political comeback at the party’s headquarters in the northern city of Acre on Monday.

Sa’ar resigned from the Knesset in October 2014, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family, and his comeback has been the topic of speculation ever since.
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Student union at Ryerson University in Toronto votes to adopt a broad definition of anti-Semitism, including double standards against Israel

JTA/INN

The student union at Ryerson University in Toronto has voted to adopt a broad definition of anti-Semitism.

The definition adopted last week includes the denial of the Jewish right to self-determination, the application of double standards to the State of Israel, the comparison of contemporary Israeli policies to that of the Nazis, and the use of symbols or imagery associated with classic anti-Semitic tropes, according to Bnai Brith Canada.

The definition is in line with the one used by the governments of Canada and Ontario.
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Khaleej Times

After a brief diplomatic honeymoon mostly sustained by propaganda and wishful thinking, relations between Iran and Turkey appear to have hit a new low with Tehran and Ankara trading accusations and threats. Tehran claims that Ankara harbours neo-Ottoman imperial ambitions with dreams of dominating Iraq and Syria. For its part, Ankara accuses Tehran of harping on sectarian themes to create a mini-empire in the Levant with access to the Mediterranean.

It is too early to say how this new tension might unfold.

But one thing is certain: in opting for confrontation both sides are acting against a tradition of good neighbourliness that dates back to the early 20th century.
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Diplomatic sources say expert U.S. National Security Council official Yael Lempert is pushing the pro-PA line.

By Hillel Fendel, INN

“Although Trump’s approach is generally favorable towards Israel, the fact that his administration continues to rely on Obama officials is not to Israel’s benefit – and the most blatant example of this is Yael Lempert.” So says a diplomatic official who took part in the talks with special Trump envoy Jason Greenblatt.

Haggai Huberman reports that Lempert, very knowledgeable and experienced in Israel-PA relations and equally supportive of the PA position, has made herself available to fill in the gaps of the inexperienced Trump team – and the consequences have not been to Israel’s favor.
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New round of arms race begins as Israel forces Hezbollah and, to some extent, Hamas and Gaza groups to try to beat its latest advance.

By Amos Harel, HAARETZ

The operational deployment of David’s Sling on Sunday fills the gap in Israel’s missile defense system. The David’s Sling Weapon System (also known as Magic Wand) was designed to intercept medium-range missiles, as a complement to the Arrow system, which handles long-range missiles, and Iron Dome, which deals with short-range rockets. It also marks the completion of a missile interception system whose development began back in the early 1990s.
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I am currently reading The Crisis of 1933 by Francisco Gil-White. He begins with an historical review of Jewish politics in the Nineteenth Century. I found this particular chapter of great interest.

Weizmann vs. Herzl/Jabotinsky

“Chaim Weizmann was a member of the community of young Russian Jews who had been locked out of universities in Russia because of czarist numeri clausi and had gone to Germany to study,” where the assimilationist movement among ‘educated’ Jews was strongest. Weizmann had joined the Zionist movement but, influenced by the Russian socialists — ‘modernizing’ Marxists with a fiercely anti-religious ideology drenched in antisemitism — allied with other Zionists of equal temperament, broke with Herzl, and split the Zionist Organization, creating the so-called Democratic Faction. “Herzl,” though not himself a religious Jew, “was worried about the potential large-scale defection of Orthodox Russian Jewry from the Zionist cause in the face of the Democratic Faction’s anti-religious agenda, [so he] hurriedly organized a meeting of supportive Russian Zionists, both Orthodox and nonreligous, in Vilna in February, in 1902. A religious Zionist party, Mizrachi, was formed at the meeting as a counterweight to the Democratic Faction within the Zionist Organization.” Soon this party gained the allegiance of many Zionists groups all over Russia, something that Weizmann didn’t like at all, and which led him to declare: “The rabbinical party is organizing itself in Jesuit fashion, and I think of their machinations with disgust. Everything is vulgar and foul.”[50]
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T. Belman. Just as I suspected. What was reported gave us a lot of room to build just with infilling. On the other hand Bibi said that construction would be restricted. These are polar opposites. So Yesha is saying what counts is what Bibi allows on the ground.

We read today that Bibi is also planning on making gestures to the Palestinians. Whatever happened to Bibi’s demand for reciprocity?

I think that there will be an election this year and a serious attempt to oust him.

By JNi.Media

The talks between Israel and the Trump Administration regarding “restraining” settlement construction as a means to encourage Palestinian Authority participation in future peace negotiations have been suspended, Israel Radio reported Sunday morning.

According to the report, no understandings or summaries were reached in the most recent, four-day round of talks between Netanyahu’s and Trump’s representatives in Washington DC. As a result, the Prime Minister has decided to adopt a new policy which unilaterally accepts the President’s position but is not part of an official, bilateral agreement with the White House.
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Forget this year’s cheers for VP Pence and last year’s for candidate Trump. In a confrontation, AIPAC will back Israel’s elected government against allcomers.

By Jonathan S. Tobin, HAAREETZ

When Vice President Mike Pence addressed the annual gathering of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington last week there was no need to caution those in attendance to refrain from booing or other discourtesies. That was not the case during the past eight years, when tension between the Obama administration and the government of Israel was the main topic of conversation at AIPAC gatherings. But though the Trump administration has had a bumpy ride in almost every other respect, its representative got a rapturous welcome from the 18,000 pro-Israel activists in attendance.

But a question that still remains unanswered after the conference is what AIPAC will do if, contrary to their hopes, President Trump winds up at loggerheads with the Netanyahu government. If Trump is serious about pursuing a peace agreement with the Palestinians, and curbing the growth of West Bank settlements, a confrontation with Prime Minister Netanyahu may be hard to avoid. If so, some on the left are wondering whether AIPAC will still back the Israeli government against their new favorite in Washington, especially if the dispute is caused by Netanyahu’s hard line settlement movement allies.
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Forget this year’s cheers for VP Pence and last year’s for candidate Trump. In a confrontation, AIPAC will back Israel’s elected government against allcomers.

By Jonathan S. Tobin, HAAREETZ

When Vice President Mike Pence addressed the annual gathering of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington last week there was no need to caution those in attendance to refrain from booing or other discourtesies. That was not the case during the past eight years, when tension between the Obama administration and the government of Israel was the main topic of conversation at AIPAC gatherings. But though the Trump administration has had a bumpy ride in almost every other respect, its representative got a rapturous welcome from the 18,000 pro-Israel activists in attendance.

But a question that still remains unanswered after the conference is what AIPAC will do if, contrary to their hopes, President Trump winds up at loggerheads with the Netanyahu government. If Trump is serious about pursuing a peace agreement with the Palestinians, and curbing the growth of West Bank settlements, a confrontation with Prime Minister Netanyahu may be hard to avoid. If so, some on the left are wondering whether AIPAC will still back the Israeli government against their new favorite in Washington, especially if the dispute is caused by Netanyahu’s hard line settlement movement allies.
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