T. Belman. You will remember that a month ago Greenblatt spent 5 days talking with Abbas, Abdullah, Israel and others. It is clear that intense pressure was applied to Abbas and that he agreed to make concessions. His warm welcome at the White House was due to his willingness to make concessions. This is why Trump has shown optimism at the prospects. No doubt pressure was also applied by Arab rulers who say that they want to follow the lead of the PA. It is because of this progress that a ME conference is being set up.

I just noticed that this headline is misleading. The article gives the following quotes: “Trump is very optimistic that he can renew the peace process,” one of the politicians told The Jerusalem Post after speaking to Lauder. “Lauder understands from Trump that he believes Abbas can be convinced by him and Arab leaders to come back to the table and make concessions.” That’s a lot different than saying Abbas made concessions. But it is hard to imagine that Trump would be so confidant if he was speculating. Even so Trump thinks he has enough to renew the peace process not solve the conflict.

Behind the scenes at the conference, WJC president Ron Lauder briefed ministers Naftali Bennett, Ayelet Shaked and Ofir Akunis.

BY GIL HOFFMAN, JPOST MAY 7, 2017 23:

President Donald Trump has succeeded in persuading Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas to make the kind of concessions that will enable the diplomatic process to move forward, World Jewish Congress President Ron Lauder told Israeli politicians at The Jerusalem Post Annual Conference in New York.

Lauder is the Jewish leader closest to Trump: their families have been friends for decades; he has free access to the president; and he has advised him on how to advance diplomatic initiatives in the Middle East. He also has built up ties with Arab leaders for decades and was Netanyahu’s unofficial envoy to Syria in the latter’s first term as prime minister.
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By Bruce Bawer, PJ MEDIA

How could Marine Le Pen have lost in a landslide?

Why, after the Brits chose Brexit, and Americans chose Trump, did the Dutch fail Wilders, and the French fail Le Pen?

How could a country that has been hit by several major terrorist attacks in recent years, and that has undergone a more profound social transformation owing to Islamic immigration, vote for business as usual?

Wilders, buoyed by the Brexit and Trump victories, said that 2017 would be a “Year of the Populist.” So far, alas, it’s not turning out that way.

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Trump’s grave mistakes with Abbas.

By Bruce Thornton, FPM

Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, and leader of the terrorist PLO and its largest faction, Fatah, came to D.C. for a state visit with President Trump. And so the elaborate, stylized diplomatic farce of legitimizing terrorists dressed up as statesmen continues into its seventh decade. Maybe it’s time to bring down the curtain on this show and move on to a strategy that might actually work.

[..]

Trump’s mixed signals and seeming ignorance of the conflict’s historical and religious roots do not bode well for the chances that the president will follow through on finally discarding the long, fruitless attempt to make the illusion of “two states living side-by-side in peace” into a reality.
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By ????? ????????, Russian American News and Views

In today’s rapidly changing world, the idea of an article often becomes obsolete before you start writing it. Sometimes it’s very pleasing, if the problem disappears. But this article, to my deep regret, will not lose its relevance any time soon.

Why? Because I want to devote it to a very serious problem: the dividing of families on the basis of political views. This is a pain that many feel.

When we read about the civil war in Russia and found out that the communist son would betray his father who did not approve of the Bolsheviks, somewhere inside me there was always a doubt: how could it be – to hand over one’s own father to the KGB? To betray a husband or a wife? This is just crazy. It’s impossible to believe, but I knew it happened. I didn’t feel all that pain and intensity — it was hypothetical. It didn’t happen to me personally.
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By RICHARD C. PADDOCK, NYT

JAKARTA, Indonesia — The popular governor was the clear front-runner.

Thousands of Muslims protested against Jakarta’s Christian governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, in March in Indonesia.Despite his religion, a Christian in Muslim-majority Indonesia, Gov. Basuki Tjahaja Purnama of Jakarta held a commanding lead in the polls.
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Pro-Israel Palestinian Arab confronts anti-Israel Jews
Mar 27, 2017 – ‘I am Palestinian, but I stand with Israel,’ says Sandra Solomon at pro-Israeldemonstration outside of AIPAC conference.

The PA won’t pay for the Hamas-run Strip’s electricity any longer. Should Israel finance the power supply for a terrorist regime committed to its destruction?

BY AVI ISSACHAROFF, TOI

A. lives in the northern Gaza Strip. I have known him for years — seventeen years, to be exact. I have visited his home in the Gaza Strip several times, met his children and his relatives, and I hardly ever go to the Gaza Strip without seeing him.

He has never expressed radical political views. On the contrary, he has always stayed in good spirits, always tried to hold on to his livelihood without getting into things that are none of his business. But in our last conversation, this week, he sounded like something inside him has snapped.
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The inclusion of Quneitra, which borders the Golan, is of particular interest to Israel.

By Seth Franzman, JPOST

On Thursday, Iran, Russia and Turkey signed a memorandum on the creation of “de-escalation” zones in Syria. The agreement represents a new phase in the six-year-old Syrian civil war. If the agreement and the cease-fires it envisions hold up, it represents a de facto partition of the country into various zones of influence and a recognition that neither side, the regime or the rebels, can win this conflict at the present time.

The text of the agreement says it is to allow for an improvement of the humanitarian situation and to “create favorable conditions to advance a political settlement of the conflict.” In the zones mapped out under the agreement, the use of weapons, including “aerial assets, shall be ceased.”
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DEBKA

The widely reported Kremlin plan to set up four safe or “de-escalation” zones, that were supposed to have gone into effect in Syria Friday night, May 5, turns out to be nothing but a propaganda ploy. The spin factor leaps to the eye from the small print of the plan that was released by Gen. Sergey Rudskoy, head of Russian General Staffs Operations Division, Friday night. He outlined four steps that may never take off.
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The White House is poised to greenlight an Obama administration plan to seize the last bastion of the Islamic State in Syria.

BY DAN DE LUCE, PAUL MCLEARY, FOREIGN POLICY

The Trump administration is ready to press ahead with a U.S.-backed military offensive to evict the Islamic State from its last remaining urban stronghold in the Syrian city of Raqqa over strong objections from Turkey.

President Donald Trump is expected to inform his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, of the U.S. plans when he visits the White House later this month.

The long-delayed operation, based on an Obama administration-drafted plan that gives a leading role to Kurdish forces in the operation, will likely move forward in earnest after Erdogan’s visit, defense officials told Foreign Policy.
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Ivanka Trump to review climate change as US mulls Paris pullout

“Though Trump’s inclination has been to leave the agreement, he’s allowed his daughter, White House adviser Ivanka Trump, to set up an extensive review process,”

By Klaus Rohrich, CFP

Don’t you hate being called a ‘denier?” Me neither. In fact, I view this appellation as an affirmation of my own independent scepticism, a divergent path from that taken by the herd. In today’s” legacy media” every weather phenomenon is seen as an indication of climate change, or global warming, as it was once called until facts rendered that term inoperative.
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By Pamela Geller – on May 5, 2017

There is conspiracy theory and there is conspiracy fact. This is fact. The scrubbing, censoring and whitewashing the widespread violence by Muslim migrants is policy. And it’s not just the Netherlands. It’s EU-wide.

I am surprised that the police would bribe the enemedia. The press has already submitted to Islamic law and rarely runs news stories that might cast Islam or its adherents in a negative light.

When thousands of girls were sexually attacked by Muslim migrants on New Year’s Eve, the CCTV cameras were erased, police reports were destroyed or wiped from the crime record, and the media ignored the biggest story of 2016. What media outlet in the US was the first outlet to report the NYE mass sex attacks? The Geller Report.
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By Lucian Wintrich, GATEWAY PUNDIT

Former diplomat Richard Grenell, an early supporter of now-President Donald J. Trump, was cast aside by Rex Tillerson for a major NATO post; instead, the position was awarded to one of the leading voices in the #NeverTrump movement, Kay Bailey Hutchison. Highly qualified, Richard Grenell, was the former spokesperson for the US ambassador to the United Nations.

Richard Grenell was also the longest serving US spokesman at the United Nations. He is a FOX News Foreign Policy contributor. Richard is pro-life and pro-Second Amendment. Grenell joined the Trump campaign trail early helping, before many others, shape policy issues. Based on his background, resume, and involvement with the campaign, Grenell was reportedly offered the NATO post in January of this year.
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Why did Jews move to the right in Canada but not in the US?

By MICHAEL MEDVED, COMMENTARY

For forty years, Republican operatives have been consistently frustrated in their energetic and well-funded efforts to win the support of Jewish voters for their presidential candidates. Looking toward the first battle of the post-Obama era in 2016, battered conservative activists might take encouragement and inspiration from the surprising success of their Jewish counterparts north of the border.
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BREAKING: MACRON BUSTED! Lied About Tax Evasion? – 4Chan /pol/ Posts Images from Macron’s Off-Shore Bank Account!

By Shoula Romano Horing, AMERICAN THINKER

As a great supporter of President Trump, I was saddened to see the leader of the free world welcome to the White House the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, who has been a tyrant, Holocaust denier and the cofounder of modern Islamic terrorism. What is the most disturbing is the fact, that this meeting has elevated the untrustworthy Abbas’s prestige and credibility and made him relevant at the time when he is a weakened political figure who is unpopular among his own people and the moderate Sunni states who see the Palestinian issue as an obstacle to getting closer to Israel and America in a united front against Iran.
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By Mort Klein and Daniel Mandel, ZOA

Last Tuesday, coinciding with Israel’s 69th Independence Day, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) passed a resolution entitled ‘Occupied Palestine.’ The resolution denies Israel any sovereign claim to its own capital city, Jerusalem, and falsely describes Israel as the city’s “occupying power” and speaks of the “cultural heritage of Palestine and the distinctive character of East Jerusalem.”

Clearly, the intention of the UNESCO resolution is to achieve internationally the direct repudiation of Israel’s Jewish history and sovereignty in favor of Arab claims.
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By Valarie Greenfield, AMERICAN THINKER

I am not a rabbi, but I know that throughout Jewish history, many holidays begin with “They tried to kill us, but we survived.  Let’s eat.”  As history continues to repeat itself, “they” still want to kill us, and by allowing undocumented immigrants from any country into the U.S., we are inviting danger for dinner.

Recently, almost 2,000 American rabbis wrote a letter to President Trump and congressional officials to “ensure that our refugee program be maintained and strengthened, not halted, paused or restricted.”  Although Jews are known for tikkun olam, repairing the world, this request does not use our Jewish noodle – only our bleeding heart.  If President Trump and Congress admit unidentified immigrants, they will be derelict in their most important duty: to keep America safe.
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