The synthesis of Zionism and socialism has disintegrated, making way for a winning symbiosis of religion and strong ethno-nationalism.

By Shlomo Sand, HAARETZ

How Israel went from atheist Zionism to a Jewish state
It’s sad to read the recent complaints of Israeli intellectuals about the collapse of the only Jewish democracy in the Middle East. The secular melancholy is likely to arouse identification among readers – but not to enlighten them, alas.

It sometimes seems that words are nothing more than props in the hands of talented circus acrobats. For example, there is a profound connection between the terms secularism and atheism, but they are by no means congruent or identical. Among Israeli intellectuals, and not by chance, the differences between the two are far more vague than in other areas of the national discourse.
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By Elizabeth Harrington, NEW BEACON

The Trump administration is seeking major cuts to federal spending upon taking office, with plans to eliminate agencies and programs to reduce the budget by over $10 trillion. The National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities would be eliminated, according to a new report on the administration’s spending priorities published by the Hill. Both arts agencies have budgets of roughly $147 million.

The NEA awards millions of dollars worth of grants for art projects each year, which have included plays about assassinating Christopher Columbus, food stamps, and gun-control activist lesbians, climate change poetry, and “Doggie Hamlet.” Aside from the art agencies, the Hill reported the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, home of PBS and NPR, would be privatized, and the Commerce and Energy departments would “see major reductions in funding.”
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Netanyahu asks Minister Bennett to postpone a vote on annexing Ma’ale Adumim, says Trump’s advisers asked him not to surprise the incoming U.S. administration with unilateral steps, Haaretz learns.

By Barak Ravid and Jonathan Lis,  HAARETZ, Jan 21, 2017 8:28 PM

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to torpedo a bill to annex the West Bank settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim, slated to come up for a vote Sunday in a ministerial panel. Haaretz has learned that Netanyahu spoke by phone Friday with Education Minister Naftali Bennett (Habayit Hayehudi) and asked him to postpone discussion of the bill in light of messages conveyed by advisers of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Netanyahu told Bennett that Trump’s advisers said no unilateral steps should be taken by Israel before the Netanyahu-Trump meeting, scheduled to take place in the first week of February, but rather to coordinate and cooperate.

“I’m getting messages from Trump not to jump in head first,” Netanyahu told Bennett.
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An expert weighs in on the “plagiarism” allegations.

By Matthew Vadum, FPM

The plagiarism allegations CNN leveled against conservative commentator Monica Crowley were part of a “political hit job,” according to a publishing law attorney with expertise in plagiarism cases.

Crowley, a popular TV pundit and Washington Times editor who holds a Ph.D. in international relations, previously worked for former President Richard Nixon years after he resigned his office.

Trump’s transition team stood by Crowley when the controversy erupted, stating, “Any attempt to discredit Monica is nothing more than a politically motivated attack that seeks to distract from the real issues facing this country.”
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The Clinton policy to create Muslin Kosovo and Muslim Bosnia in the nineties “is widely seen today as the key which in recent years unlocked continental Europe to the influx of millions of Muslim migrants and refugees from the Middle East and Africa.”

DEBKA

Just six days before Donald Trump’s inauguration as US President, a Serbian train took up position on the Kosovo border. It was painted ostentatiously with the slogan “Kosovo is Serbian” in several languages along with national Serbian and Orthodox Christian emblems.

The train has been stationary since Friday, Jan. 14. Kosovan security authorities are blocking its advance along the new 213km long rail link from Belgrade to Mitrovica, a town in Muslim Kosovo which has a large Serbian population.
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As Trump vows to radically change America’s approach to the Middle East, Theresa May’s Britain and Malcolm Turnbull’s Australia defy international consensus on the peace process, irking Ramallah

BY RAPHAEL AHREN, TOI

It’s springtime for Israel’s relations with the Anglosphere. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu loves to talk about burgeoning ties with the Arab world, but in the months and years ahead, a newly formed pro-Israel triumvirate of English-speaking countries looks set to form the backbone of international support for the Jewish state.

The first and most important indication of this trend is, of course, the change in the White House. Arriving on Friday, the Donald Trump administration has made plain its intention to shut out the public daylight that Barack Obama introduced between Washington and Jerusalem, vowing all but total support for Netanyahu’s policies.
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By Mathew Continetti, THE NEW BEACON

Donald Trump’s inaugural address was a stirring call for national unity and a declaration of war against the establishment in Washington, D.C. The speech was vintage Trump: politically incorrect, critical of both parties, amped up, biting, strongly delivered, and wildly ambitious. Anyone who believed Trump would change his beliefs or style when he assumed the office of the presidency was proven wrong. He’s not going to change. And he’s not going to let up.

Trump espoused his worldview in remarkably few words. He is a vituperative critic of the post-Cold War international system. Where the architects of that system see it as a bulwark of stability and global prosperity, Trump sees it as diminishing the United States in favor of foreign countries and an international class of wealthy political and financial elites. Washington has been serving its own interests, he said, and not the people’s. That ends now. His America will turn inward, focusing on domestic stability, education, infrastructure, and jobs. The one exception will be the fight against Islamic terrorism, where Trump is prepared to join with autocracies in pursuit of common goals.
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By Andrew Rice, The New Yorker

Jared Kushner at a press conference shortly after Donald Trump won the New York presidential primary. Photo: Mark Peterson/Redux

Until very recently, and to all outward appearances, Jared Kushner was just another socially striving young businessman with inoffensively Bloombergian political values. But over the past year, something seems to have changed — in his beliefs, in his manner, in his relationship to his peers among New York City’s elite. On a frigid day in December, Kushner visited the Times Square headquarters of Morgan Stanley to address a private meeting that the Partnership for New York City, which represents the interests of the business community, convened to discuss the outcome of the presidential election. More than 400 executives, many of them CEOs of major corporations, crowded into the bank’s wood-paneled dining hall to hear first from Charles Schumer, soon to be the Democratic leader in the Senate, and then from Kushner, representing his father-in-law, Donald Trump, soon to be the most powerful man in the world.

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Why Integration Makes Secession More Appealing

By Edoardo Campanella, FOREIGN AFFAIRS

[EDOARDO CAMPANELLA is an economist in the financial industry and a shortlisted author for the 2015 Bracken Bower Prize, awarded by the Financial Times and McKinsey.]

On top of the many economic and political challenges Europe will face in 2017 is secessionism. At present, there are about 100 [1] active autonomist groups across Europe—although with varying degrees of popular support and commitment—and Catalonia and Scotland are once again at the epicenter. In a New Year’s speech [2], Catalonian President Carles Puigdemont promised to hold in September a “legal and binding” referendum on the territory’s secession from Spain. Meanwhile, Nicola Sturgeon [3], Scotland’s first minister, has made clear that a hard Brexit, involving an outright withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union and the single market, would trigger a second referendum on Scottish independence. Although a number of legal and political obstacles are likely to frustrate Barcelona’s and Edinburgh’s irredentist plans, secessionism will remain a major threat to European integrity in the years to come. And here is the Catch-22: The more Europe integrates, the more the nations within it disintegrate.
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The duty of the Israeli government today is to come up with new ideas.

By Gideon Saar, JPOST

Will today be remembered as a dramatic turning point in US policy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when Donald Trump enters the White House? So much depends on the meeting between the new president and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that is scheduled to take place next month.

Many Israelis have high hopes for the Trump era. But the main question is whether the Israeli government is ready to dissociate from the “two states” paradigm, and reject the dangerous idea of establishing a Palestinian state in the heart of Israel? Theoretically, the conditions are ripe for such a move.
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It’s not easy when boycotts can cost people their jobs.

By Mordechai Kedar, INN

The supposed goal of the BDS Movement is to force Israel to leave the “Palestinian territories” and to establish a Palestinian state, but the basic real motivation behind the movement’s activities is hatred of Israel and of Jews, and the openly expressed desire to rid the Middle East of Israel.

For years the movement seemed relegated to the sidelines and had little influence . However during the last two years, mainly after Operation Protective Edge in Gaza and the negative publicity it engendered, the movement increased its activities, its donations grew significantly and so did the number of its volunteers. The organization’s success on North American, Canadian and European academic campuses was especially pronounced, due to the large number of Muslims and Arabs enrolled on campus and the current fashion of putting everything in the context of human rights (as long as we are not talking about Jews, that is), in addition to traditional anti-Semitism and the presenting of Israel as an illegitimate state, scofflaw and a danger to world peace.
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T. Belman. This article ignores the fact that in many if not most jurisdictions in the West, where a person, in good faith builds on someone else’s land, the owners, once determined, would be forced to receive generous compensation for that part of their lands, affected. That is what the Regulation Law seeks to accomplish. And remember that applies only to privately owned Palestinian lands. Israel also has the right to build on public land.

By: Prof. Amichai Cohen, IDI

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict might be facing a legal escalation. Recent events surrounding the evacuation of the Israeli settlement of Amona have ignited a long-simmering debate within Israeli society regarding the construction of a small portion of settlements on privately-owned Palestinian land in Judea and Samaria.

The Settlement Regulation Bill, which has caused a firestorm of controversy in Israel, is aimed at addressing this issue. It stipulates that no demolition orders will be carried out for a period of one year, during which time efforts shall be made to ascertain the ownership of disputed plots of land. At the end of the period, land found to be privately owned will be expropriated from its owners in exchange for an appropriate financial compensation. Due to strong opposition by legal experts, the version of the bill currently under consideration will not apply to Amona and a small number of similar cases, regarding which a Supreme Court ruling to evacuate already exists.
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New poll finds that 75% of Israelis support sovereignty in Judea and Samaria in some form, while only 7% support a Palestinian state.

By Shimon Cohen, INN

A new poll finds that the vast majority of the Israeli population would like to see Israeli sovereignty being applied over Judea and Samaria. Only seven percent of the public is interested in establishing a Palestinian state in these areas.

The poll, released on Thursday, was conducted between January 10 and 15 among a representative sample of the adult Jewish public in Israel, by the Maagor Mohot Research Institute directed by Prof. Yitzhak Katz. The poll surveyed a random probability sample of 514 responders online, with a 4.5% margin of error.
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By MARTIN SHERMAN

Are “Commanders for Israel” aware of the deadly defects in their ill-conceived program, but persist in promoting it anyway; or they are unaware of them, and are promoting it out of sheer ignorance?

[After Gamal Abdel Nasser’s death] the ability of the Arabs to coordinate their political and military activities has diminished. Even previously this ability was not great–now it is even less.

There is no need to call up our forces, even when threats are made and enemy forces are deployed along the [post-1967] cease-fire lines. Before the Six Day War, every Egyptian troop movement into Sinai compelled Israel to call up reserves on a significant scale. Now, there is no need for such a call-up as long as Israel’s lines of defense are emplaced along the Suez Canal…Israel’s military strength is sufficient to prevent the opposing side from attaining any military objective and political realities prevailing between the superpowers is not conducive to a renewal of fighting as it was in 1969-1970…Accordingly, Israel has freedom of action to deal effectively in preventing another round of fighting, should Egypt wish to open fire again. – Yitzhak Rabin, “The slow road to peace”, Ma’ariv, July 13, 1973.

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At pre-inaugural event in Washington, President-elect Donald Trump tells Israel Hayom he will move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, “and I’m not a person who breaks promises” • Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat launches campaign thanking Trump for his support.

ISRAEL HAYOM

President-elect Donald Trump landed in Washington, D.C. this week for the events leading up to his inauguration on Friday as the 45th president of the United States.

Trump’s close associate, Chairman of the 58th Presidential Inauguration Committee Thomas J. Barrack Jr., put on an event Tuesday evening to present Trump’s ideas to the 147 foreign ambassadors, consuls, and diplomats currently serving in Washington. The event was held at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium, where the North Atlantic Treaty was signed in 1949. The choice was symbolic — Trump wanted to send a message, particularly to U.S. allies, that he isn’t as terrible as he is portrayed.
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Netanyahu may delay vote to avoid conflict with U.S.; Israeli governments since Rabin have sought to build in E1 to secure Ma’aleh Adumim’s contiguity with Israel proper.

By Jonathan Lis, HAARETZ

But the bill’s sponsor, MK Yoav Kish (Likud) said he would be willing to exclude the controversial bloc from the draft law in the event its inclusion created a crisis within the governing coalition.

“It absolutely could happen that as part of a compromise we would put the bill through without E1. It’s something to think about … I don’t want someone to say he isn’t willing to join the process as a result of [Israeli] sovereignty being imposed also on E1,” Kish said.
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This speech was written by Jared Kushner and his orthodox friends (except for Trump’s irritating ad-libs). The speech caught the attention of 3.3 million CUFI evangelicals who turned out in record numbers and voted for Trump.

T. Belman. This analysis is way off base for a number of reasons. Can anyone point to a legal document which gives the Arab countries a say in the matter? As for the Palestinians, the Oslo Accords give them right to have Jerusalem as a final status issue. But so long as they are in violation of its terms they have no standing to demand this. Israel can at anytime cancel the Accords and do what she pleases.

I would remind you that Res 242 is silent on Jerusalem.

Satloff is showing way too much deference to the Arabs. That’s what the US has always done. She did the same thing in Res 242 by requiring Israel to withdraw from territories rather than to consider the ceasefire lines the new borders. Thereafter at the behest of the Arabs, she forced Israel into the Oslo Accords and required Israel to invite the return of Arafat. And on and on.

Washington Institute’s Robert Satloff writes policy memo on how to relocate the embassy without setting off an international crisis

BY ERIC CORTELLESSA, TOI

WASHINGTON — If President-elect Donald Trump follows through on his campaign pledge to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, he should do it quickly and adeptly, according to a report by a prominent Middle East scholar.

The paper to be released Tuesday by Robert Satloff, who heads the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, examines ways that Trump can fulfill his pledge without prompting violent unrest or a diplomatic crisis in the region.

For Trump, the question is how to deliver something the last three successive United States presidents went to great lengths to avoid. Satloff has laid out what he believes to be the answer in his new policy memo that presents a series of recommendations on how to execute the relocation.
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DEBKA

First Sgt. Erez Levy, 34, an officer in the operations branch of the Israel Police, was crushed to death Wednesday morning, Jan. 18, in a car-ramming attack at the Bedouin village of Umm-al-Hiran in the southern Negev region. He was laid to rest that afternoon at the military cemetery in the city of Yavneh. He left behind a wife and two children, along with his parents and siblings.

Levy’s murderer, a 47-year-old villager, who was a member of the southern branch of Israel’s radical Islamic Movement, was shot and killed.
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