T. Belman. Not a word about the peace process. That’s a good thing.

By Patricia McCarthy, AMERICAN THINKER

Tuesday’s address to a joint session of Congress was without a doubt the best speech President Donald Trump has ever given, perhaps the best speech to a joint session of Congress since the great Ronald Reagan. But who could watch it and not be embarrassed by our infantile, bitter Left?

It was uplifting, optimistic, full of unifying words, and obvious to everyone. The pathetic exception was the Democrats in Congress. And those were the ones who did not boycott the event.

Like spoiled children, who had not gotten their way, they refused to applaud at the most obvious good-for-the-country lines. In fact, they were like a clique of mean girls in middle school who have decided to target one of their own.
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Comptroller’s long-awaited findings about 2014 operation confirm army was unprepared for Hamas’s tunnels, prime minister failed to keep security cabinet in the loop

BY JUDAH ARI GROSS, TOI

Israel’s state comptroller took military and political leaders to task for their failure to prepare adequately for the threat of attack tunnels ahead of the 2014 war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, in a pair of long-awaited, highly critical reports published on Tuesday.
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By Daniel Greenfield, FPM

Anti-Israel hate group J Street tried to get someone, anyone, from the current administration to come to its Israel-bashing fest. While in the past the Soros-funded hate group had been able to count on a star roster of Obama people, this time they’ve been turned down by everyone at the White House.

Even the janitor.

Instead the star of the hatefest will be Bernie Sanders, who backed Jesse Jackson despite his anti-Semitic slurs, and who lied and claimed that Israel had killed 10,000 people.

Joining the senile Socialist will be fresh blood like Nancy Pelosi and Jan Schakowsky. Also assorted representatives of the PLO terror state.

J Street won’t be getting anyone from the Israeli government either. It appears. But they can always invite back some JVP BDS bigots to discuss how they plan to destroy the Jewish State.

By Prof. Hillel Frisch, BESA

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Many believe that US financial and military support for Israel harms the interests of the US, especially in the Middle East and North Africa. One way to test this assumption is to explore whether US support for Israel has a negative effect on exports of the US to the countries of the region. It doesn’t. US exports to the region have grown. Fluctuations within that overall growth trend are easily explained by oil prices, the chief source of income of many of the consumer states – not by Israel’s “offenses” against Hezbollah and Hamas.
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By Brian Thomas, JIHAD WATCH

There are two fundamental ways to view Islam in the West, and it is now clear those who hold to the “Islam is a religion of peace” view, which has held sway over the affairs of the West for so long, are fighting a desperate rear-guard action to remain in charge following Trump’s rise to power.

As we watch the public pronouncements and the actions of the new administration, we have to carefully determine which path administration officials are on.
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T. Belman. I have some trouble with this article.

While I was coming to the conclusion that Trump wanted to walk back “radical Islamic terrorism” stuff, this article confirmed my suspicions.

ISIS may not be “Islamic”, jihad, both stealth and violent, is. With Wahhabism and the Muslim Brotherhood pushing this, we must push back.

This article also ignores what is happening in Europe. A conquest of Europe is taking place according to Islamic doctrine. Europe will be transformed and not for the better.

As for American immigration policies, I am more concerned about the Islamization of America than about the odd terrorist that comes in.

America should ban the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR and should institute policies that push assimilation. She must abandon the multicultural policy.

By J.E. Dyer, LIBERTY UNYIELDING

Since 9/11, there has been an orthodoxy split in Western politics. On one side are people who say that we should not call the global security problem “radical Islam,” partly because that tars millions of non-terrorist Muslims and their religion with the brush of radicalism. On the other are people who say that we must call it “radical Islam,” partly because the motives for terrorism by Muslims trace to the commands of Islam, and if we don’t make that clear, terrorists can just keep hiding among their co-religionists.
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T. Belman. Israel can no longer try to be bipartisan. Israel must do what it must do and let the cards fall where they may. American Jews no longer control the Democratic Party. AIPAC is useless. It couldn’t prevent the takeover of the party. Did it even try? American Jews must rethink what it means to be pro-Israel. This will align them more with Israel and less with the Democratic Party.

The Democrats are in a dangerous place for themselves, for the US and for the American Jewish community.

By Caroline Glick, JPOST

Was former Secretary of labor and assistant attorney-general Tom Perez’s victory over Congressman Keith Ellison over the weekend in the race to serve as the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee a victory of centrist Democrats over radical leftists in the party? That is how the mainstream media is portraying Perez’s victory.

Along these lines, Prof. Allen Dershowitz, a lifelong Democrat who promised to quit the party if Ellison was elected due to his documented history of antisemitism and hostility toward Israel, hailed Perez’s election. Speaking to Fox News, Dershowitz said that Perez’s election over Ellison “is a victory in the war against bigotry, antisemitism, the anti-Israel push of the hard Left within the Democratic Party.”
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By Dr Reuven Berko, ISRAEL HAYOM

At the Munich Security Conference this month, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman declared his commitment to the two-state solution and reiterated his vision for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict based on a regional arrangement with land and population swaps. Lieberman has studied history, and it appears the foremost intellectual and historical lessons he has learned stem from the experiences of European nations.

Indeed, after World War Two, millions of people in Europe were forced to emigrate from their isolated ethnic, religious, or national regions, and join their geographically distant brethren; and in the wake of the murderous atrocities, sovereignty over numerous enclaves changed hands. In Arab countries as well, “coexistence” between ethnic groups and minorities was characterized by destruction, murder and migration, as the world stood idly by.
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By CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL, NYT

President Trump presents a problem to those who look at politics in terms of systematic ideologies. He is either disinclined or unable to lay out his agenda in that way. So perhaps it was inevitable that Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, who does have a gift for thinking systematically, would be so often invoked by Mr. Trump’s opponents. They need him not just as a hate object but as a heuristic, too. There may never be a “Trumpism,” and unless one emerges, the closest we may come to understanding this administration is as an expression of “Bannonism.”
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T. Belman. I will be attending this convention on Tuesday as I have followed Feiglin for some time now and know a number of his key American people.

‘Zehut’ Party founder grants Arutz Sheva interview ahead of opening conference: ‘Message burning in my bones: State must fulfill mission’.

By Yoni Kempinski, INN

Moshe Feiglin, former Knesset member, founder and candidate to head the Zehut (“Identity”) party, imparts his political, economic, and social philosophy in an exclusive and extended interview with Arutz Sheva.

Feiglin is not hesitant to say he is preparing for elections and says the government is in its final stretch: “An average government in Israel serves two-and-a-half years, so we are in the final stretch of an average term and this conference brings Zehut into the political dialogue. We will vote in our convention using the primary system. Following the conference we will create tools such as a political slogan and campaign slogans. This conference is going to be unique, full of passion and culture, joy and hope.”
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T. Belman.  I am in touch with a number of experts who say that Flynn didn’t lie to Pence. It is obvious that Trump wanted him out rather than in. He could have stood by him. But there is more to it than that. Why didn’t Trump replace him with a similarly minded guy. On the contrary he chose the opposite who espoused that Islam is a religion of peace. Did Trump want to abandon his line about “radical Islamist terrorism”? We will have to see if Trump continues using that phrase.

The fact that McMaster in his first public remarks after his appointment, stood in opposition to his boss. Its like he was giving a message. McMaster also immediately selected McCain to head an important committee on National Security. Perhaps Trump threw Flynn under the bus in a deal made with McCain to buy McCain’s silence on Russia and Islam.  We will see.

By Michael Ledeen, FORBES

Why should I challenge the powerful words of Bryan Wright or the extensive reporting of Adam Kredo?  The political assassination of General Mike Flynn was carried out by a cabal of CIA officials and Obama loyalists, in tandem with allies in the media.  It’s an ugly spectacle, damaging to our national interests, and perhaps unique in our history, as Senator Cruz has said.

Flynn’s phone calls with Russian officials, which took place before he officially entered the White House, do not appear to violate any law. Yet the release of classified information about them certainly is a crime.  As Wright says, “The spies who are plotting against President Trump are breaking U.S. laws. They’re violating their oaths. And they’re committing treason to remedy (perceived) treason.”
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BY BEN LYNFIELD, JPOST

An amendment to the Planning and Building Law that will increase enforcement and penalties for illegal construction is being ardently opposed by Arab MKs and dovish rights groups on the grounds that it ignores alleged government failures to provide Arabs with the means to build legally.

“We are concerned this will punish people who have no choice and will lead to the criminalizing of people who did not build with the intention of committing a crime or an offense,” said Raghad Jaraisy, head of the Arab minority project at the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.
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So much for the moderate Muslim

By Dr Stephen M Kirby, JIHAD WATCH

In December 2015, a small group of Muslims met in Washington, DC to discuss the reform of Islam. With media fanfare, they named themselves the Muslim Reform Movement (MRM), issued a Declaration for Muslim Reform, and became the new face of “Muslim reformers.”

There was just one fundamental problem: the MRM never had support from the larger Muslim community.
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By Michael Anton, AMERICAN AFFAIRS

Note: Michael Anton is Deputy Assistant to the President for Strategic Communications, National Security Council. This article was prepared before the author accepted his current position. The views here reflect only those of the author. They do not represent the views of the Trump administration, the National Security Advisor, or the U.S. government.

In a year of upset political apple carts, none were rattled harder, or lost more fruit, than traditional notions of American foreign policy. Donald Trump shocked a lot of people over a lot of issues. But no anti-Trump Republican economists orchestrated elaborate letters, with hundreds of signatories, to swear they would never serve in a Trump administration. No dissident Republican trade negotiators ostentatiously switched parties and vowed to support Trump’s opponent. Nor did Republican immigration experts flood the cable networks to renounce and denounce their party’s nominee.

Yet all of the above—and more—happened with respect to foreign policy. The specific reasons why Republican foreign policy operatives chose to denounce Trump’s plans may never be clear. We shall instead explore what we think they had in mind.
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By PETER BAKER, NYT

WASHINGTON — As commander of an armored cavalry troop, H. R. McMaster fought in the largest tank battle of the Persian Gulf war, earning a Silver Star in the process. Afterward, the young captain reflected on how different his experience had been from the accounts he had read about Vietnam.

So when he arrived at the University of North Carolina for graduate studies in fall 1992, questions swirled through his head: How had Vietnam become an American war? Why did American troops die without a clear idea of their mission? “I began to seek answers to those questions,” he later wrote.
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T. Belman. The fact that McMaster should say these things within days after his appointment tells us a lot. And you can assume that the resignation of Flynn was part of the deal. Normally, if Flynn had to go for some error you would expect that a “look-alike” would be appointed in his place. This time the opposite.

The question is, what did Trump get in return?

NSA pick McMaster told the National Defense University that “the Islamic State is not Islamic.”

By Robert Spencer, FPM

President Trump has confirmed that retired Lt. General H.R. McMaster is his new choice to be his National Security Adviser. There have been indications that the Republican establishment has been trying to co-opt Trump and keep him from effecting the sweeping reform that he has promised, and this appointment could indicate that at least for the moment, these forces have gained the upper hand.

A source that has asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals has informed me that he was present in August 2014 when McMaster was the featured speaker for the President’s Lecture Series at National Defense University in Washington, D.C. McMaster addressed an assembly of all the students in the colleges of the university, including the National War College, the College of International Security Affairs (CISA), the Dwight D. Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy (formerly the Industrial College of the Armed Forces), and the others.
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Trump is correct in realizing that there are two distinct types of Muslim immigrants, and the government now has proof of that in writing.

By Dr. Mordechai Kedar, INN

This article is being written in Cincinnati, Ohio, where the the hottest topic in the news, as it is in the media all across the USA, is President Trump’s executive order of three weeks ago, banning immigration to the USA from seven Islamic countries which he claims are terror-ridden. The countries on the list are Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. This order is in line with the promise Trump made to his voters during the election campaign, a promise made in answer to the growing fears Americans have regarding Muslim immigration.

The source of the fears is a combination of four factors:

1. The extreme violence characterizing those countries, their spawning of terrorist organizations and the large number of refugees attempting to leave them for other countries.
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