The riots against Murray and Yiannopoulis alerted non-Jewish Americans to the intellectual and moral decay of their campuses.

BY CAROLINE B. GLICK, JPOST

An acrid stench of repression is spreading through America.

Last Thursday, conservative political scientist Charles Murray from the American Enterprise Institute was attacked by a leftist mob at Middlebury College.

Murry was invited to Middlebury by the college’s AEI club. He was to discuss his new book, Coming Apart, which discusses the plight of white working class Americans. Middlebury’s liberal political science professor Allison Stanger was set to ask him questions about his work.
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By Avi Shlaim*

in Louise Fawcett ed.,  International Relations of the Middle East, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005, 241-61.

Overview

By MARTIN SHERMAN

The perception of Liberman as an abrasive hardliner is due more to his blunt statements regarding the loyalty of Israeli-Arabs, rather than to any territorial intransigence regarding the Palestinian question

Anyone who wants to apply Israeli sovereignty to Judea and Samaria needs to understand that such a step will bring immediate repercussions from the new US government…We received a direct – not indirect – message: ‘Apply sovereignty and you will be cutting ties with the new government.’ – Defense Minister, Avigdor (Yvette) Liberman, March 5, 2017 

“We do not want to turn our friends into enemies…[John] Kerry …is a true friend of Israel and he is leading the process correctly.” -Foreign Minister, Avigdor (Yvette) Liberman, February 7, 2015 Read more…

By David Bedein, TOI June 13, 2013

Most recently, US Secretary of State Kerry passionately called for the renewal of talks with the PLO. Former President Clinton, who hosted the PLO – Israel ceremonies on the White House lawn twenty years ago, is en route to Jerusalem for high profile lectures where he will call also call for for renewal of negotiations. And Shimon Peres, Israel’s president, who served as Israel’s foreign minister at the outset of negotiations with the PLO two decades ago, is about to convene thousands of dignitaries at a conference at the President’s mansion that will call to jump start negotiations with the PLO.

Veteran observers of middle east politics may ask: what is there to negotiate about?

Indeed, there an item on the table that is hardly a minor detail: The Palestinian Liberation Organization DID NOT RATIFY the Oslo Accord after Arafat and Abbas signed the accord on the White House lawn.
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By Ariel Bolstein, ISRAEL HAYOM

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting with Russian President Vladmir Putin in Moscow Thursday takes place at an interesting time.

Russia, which has exhausted its military moves in Syria, is searching for a future strategy that will allow it to integrate into the world of U.S. President Donald Trump. Russia has paid a high price for its confrontation with the West. True, as a result of the United States’ geopolitical retreat under former U.S. President Barack Obama, Russian influence has grown on a few fronts, primarily in the Middle East, but this achievement is not worth much without American recognition of Russia’s new-old status as a world power. The changing of the guard in Washington provided Moscow with a unique opportunity to turn the page on its relationship with the West, but the significance of such a change would also mean concessions on its part.
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By David M Weinberg, ISRAEL HAYOM

by Steven A. Cook March 6, 2017 ( originally published in SALON)

In Washington, whenever the idea of Kurdish independence from Iraq comes up, all kinds of experts, former diplomats and officials declare, “Never going to happen.” Without fail, the assertion is always backed up with an elegant and well-informed statement of the serious challenges facing Iraqi Kurds, leading to the conclusion that a declaration of independence is “not rational.”

Yet there remains the possibility that Iraqi Kurds may decide to make, perhaps in the near future, a decision that would be entirely rational. This gap is linked to the difference between what analysts think Kurds should do — based on these observers’ calculations of Kurdish politics and interests — and the way Kurds and their leaders actually look at the world. It is a problem that can leave American officials surprised by “unexpected” events and behind the curve on developing appropriate policies.
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BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 422, March 9, 2017
By Ariel Ben Solomon, March 9, 2017

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Arab MKs, left-wing NGOs, and local Bedouin leadership have decided to resist state attempts to regulate the hundreds of illegal Bedouin settlements in the Negev. This will be difficult to counter, as radical Arab nationalists and the Islamic Movement are infiltrating and co-opting the Bedouin conflict as a tool against the state. Israel should continue to enforce the law and negotiate with Bedouin families while remaining realistic about the endeavor’s long-term goals. Failure to do so will consign the Negev to lawlessness.
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By J. E. Dyer, LIBERTY UNYIELDING

Breaking news this evening (8 March) is that U.S. Marines have been deployed into Syria to provide artillery support for the battle against ISIS in Raqqa, the city in eastern Syria that has served as the guerrilla-terrorists’ capital and stronghold for more than four years.

Few details have been released as yet about this force deployment.  It is clearly part of a major push to ramp up the fight against ISIS in Syria – a push of unprecedented scope and combat momentum.  Heretofore, U.S. troops have operated in Syria in small numbers, and without concentration of force.  In the last few days, 100 Army Rangers have inserted into Syria, and the Marine deployment ratchets the level and nature of U.S. involvement up significantly. Read more…

DEBKA

EXCLUSIVE:  DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources disclose that elements of the 75^th Ranger Regiment have arrived in Syria for the Trump administration’s first direct military operation in Syria: the long-delayed offensive to capture Raqqa from the Islamic State. The plan was put before the US, Russian and Turkish chiefs of staff who were getting together for the first time on Tuesday, March 7, in the Turkish town of Antalya, as revealed earlier on this site.

Rangers Regiment troops, which will spearhead the Raqqa attack, flew in from Fort Lewis air base, Washington, to the US air facility in Rmeilan, near the Syrian Kurdish town of Hasaka, equipped with light Striker tanks. More tanks and heavy equipment reached the Syrian base overland from Iraqi Kurdistan.
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By Jerry Gordon and Mike Bates, NER

Dr. Walid Phares was the Middle East and Foreign Affairs consultant to the Trump Campaign and national security and foreign policy expert at FoxNews.  Among his extensive published noteworthy works are the acclaimed best selling 2006 book, Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies against America and the 2014 The Lost Spring: US Policy: in the Middle East and Catastrophes to Avoid.  He is currently under consideration by the Trump Administration for a possible post at the US State Department. We were afforded an opportunity to interview him on a wide range of Middle East issues facing the Trump Administration on Northwest Florida’s Talk Radio 1330amWEBY.  The program aired February 20, 2017.
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PM reportedly instructs Housing and Construction Minister to freeze units announced in wake of Trump inauguration.

Arutz Sheva

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu ordered Housing and Construction Minister Yoav Galant to freeze thousands of housing units which Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman had recently approved for construction in Judea and Samaria, it was reported Wednesday.

Netanyahu and Liberman had issued two announcements that a total of 5,500 housing units would be constructed in Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria shortly after US President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January. 2,000 of the units were to be available to be marketed immediately.

The Defense Ministry said in a statement at the time of the second announcement that “The decision comes as part of the resumption of normal life in Judea and Samaria and in order to provide a real answer to living and housing needs in the region.”
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An otherwise promising future is hindered by the unsolved Palestinian problem

By Daniel Pipes, Washington Times

Jordan’s King Abdullah II visited President Donald Trump on Feb. 3.

“We’re in dire straits.” So spoke Jordan’s King Abdullah a half-year ago. A just-completed week of intensive travels and discussions throughout Jordan finds no one disagreeing with that assessment. Jordan may no longer be hyper-vulnerable and under siege, as it was in decades past; but it does face possibly unprecedented problems.
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Majority also believe Netanyahu should resign if indicted in corruption probes

TOI Staff

A majority of Jewish Israelis are opposed to plans proposed by right-wing politicians to annex large parts of the West Bank, according to a poll released Tuesday.

In the wake of the election of US President Donald Trump, lawmakers from the Jewish Home party and the Likud have put across plans for Israel to extend its sovereignty over some of the large settlement blocs and called for Israel to step up settlement construction.
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By Zvi November

“Makor Rishon” is a politically incorrect Hebrew language newspaper because it is pro-Jews and enthusiastically pro-Israel. Its lead front page report on March 3, 2017 concerns the fact that tens of thousands of Gaza Arabs are treated in Israel every year. And according to the civil administration in Judea and Samaria, 97,000 Arab residents of these “territories” received treatment in Israel in 2015. Soft-hearted Israel, for purely humanitarian reasons, accepts these cases when “Palestinian”/Arab medical facilities are unable to treat them. Only patients who pose a security risk are refused entry. These emergencies are not covered by Israeli insurance schemes and the Palestinian Authority only reimburses Israeli hospitals with a tiny fraction of the monies owed to them. The additional pressure placed on Israeli hospitals means that Israelis (Jews and Arabs who are covered by insurance) have to wait longer for treatment by over-worked, stressed-out medical teams. This situation is never mentioned by Arab spokesmen who prefer to rant about Israeli “racism” and “apartheid”.

By Martin Sherman, IISS

Extending Israeli sovereignty over Judea-Samaria (and eventually over the Gaza Strip) is indeed a necessary condition for ensuring the ability of Israel to endure as the nation state of the Jewish people. It is, however, not a sufficient condition to ensure that worthy objective.  In fact, without additional complementary measures, such an initiative on its own is very likely to imperil Jewish sovereignty over the Land of Israel…in its entirety on both sides of the pre 1967 Green Line.

Twin Imperative

Accordingly, in order to ensure its long term survivability as the Jewish nation-state, Israel has to deal effectively with two imperatives: The Geographic Imperative and the DemographicImperative.

The first of these imperative calls for Israeli control (i.e. sovereignty) over all the territory east of the coastal plain up to the Jordan River—to prevent intolerable risks to its physical survival; the second imperative calls for significant reduction of the Arab presence in the territory under Jewish sovereignty to forestall the emergence of an intolerable demographic threat to its dominant Jewish character. Read more…

War, up close and personal

By Jonathan Spyer, MEF

EASTERN MOSUL, IRAQ “So I’m a sniper, right, and I see four IS guys approaching. I’m on a roof. I take down two of them. Then the rifle jams. And they’re coming forward. So I make it down the stairs, and I throw a grenade as theyre in the courtyard of the house. One of them’s killed outright. The other’s badly wounded. So he’s lying there, in a bad way, can hardly move, so I disarm him, he has a rifle and also a pistol. He’s calling to his friend, it seems. In Russian. He was a Russian. But the friend isn’t answering because he’s dead. So he looks over at me and he can see I’m making the pistol ready. I don’t speak Russian and I guess he realized the friend wasn’t answering. So he looks at me and he says to me in Arabic ‘Don’t you fear God?’ So I tell him ‘no’ and put two bullets in his brain.”
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DEBKA

EXCLUSIVE:  For the first time ever, the top soldiers of the United States, Russia and Turkey are holding a secret meeting in the Turkish town of Antalya for an urgent two-day effort to avert a clash between their three armies, which stand ominously face to face in northern Syria.

Gen. Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the US Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, Commander-in-Chief of the Russian armed forces, and Gen. Hulusi Akar, Chief of Staff of the Turkish army sat down together on Tuesday, March 7.
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By Dennis Prager, TOWNHALL

Last week, the Jerusalem Post and other news agencies reported that in a Paris suburb, two Jewish brothers wearing kippot (Jewish skullcaps) were attacked while driving their car by Middle Easterners driving another car.According to a case report: “While the vehicle was in motion, the driver and a passenger shouted anti-Semitic slogans at the brothers that included ‘Dirty Jews, You’re going to die!’ … The vehicle forced the brothers to stop their car, and they were surrounded by several men … The men came out of a hookah cafe on to the side street … The alleged attackers surrounded the brothers, then kicked and punched them repeatedly while threatening that they would be murdered if they moved. One of the alleged attackers then sawed off the finger of one of the brothers.”
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The Israeli Defense Minister raises fears over applying sovereignty to Judea and Samaria.

By Caroline B. Glick, JPOST

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman is in over his head.

Few had high hopes for Liberman when he was appointed to his post, but most observers on the political Right were willing to swallow the pill of having a man with an understanding of military and strategic affairs that began and ended with applause lines because his appointment solved two pressing political problems.

Liberman’s appointment to serve as defense minister brought his Yisrael Beitenu party into the government, which increased the size of the coalition from its razor-thin 61-seat majority to a more healthy 66 seats. Moreover, by appointing him, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was able to remove Moshe Ya’alon from the Defense Ministry. Ya’alon had become unacceptable to Likud voters due to his rush to convict IDF Sgt. Elor Azaria as guilty of criminal wrongdoing last March when Azaria killed a downed terrorist who had stabbed a fellow soldier in Hebron.
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