Justice Minister hails deal to pass Regulation Law, but concedes Amona residents will pay a price.

By Ruet Hadar, ARUTZ SHEVA

Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked (Jewish Home) responded on Monday to the deal worked out between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Education Minister Naftali Bennett (Jewish Home) on Sunday to pass the RegulationLlaw and resolve issue of Amona.

“We think that the Regulation Law is an extraordinary historic achievement, even without the Amona clause,” Shaked told Army Radio on Monday. “The residents of Amona are paying a very heavy price, but this price isn’t being paid for nothing; we’re getting in return normalization for the entire [Jewish] settlement [enterprise] in Judea and Samaria.”
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Amona residents blast Jewish Home over deal to relocate community, abandon demands to retroactively apply Regulation Law.

Why can’t it be retroactive to protect Amona?

By David Rosenberg, ARUTZ SHEVA

Amona residents and their supporters expressed dismay Monday morning at the deal worked out between Jewish Home chairman Naftali Bennett and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu which would pass the Regulation Law – but without a critical clause necessary to save Amona.

The tentative agreement, worked out Sunday evening, would ensure the passage of the Regulation Law, normalizing Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and protecting them from land ownership disputes.
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It is Israel, not Kerry, who must decide what’s in her best interests.

By David Rosenberg, ARUTZ SHEVA

Secretary of State John Kerry made a foray into internal Israeli politics on Sunday night, slamming the Israeli cabinet and singling out Education Minister Naftali Bennett (Jewish Home) by name, saying that Bennett’s recent statements on the future of Judea and Samaria were “profoundly disturbing”.

Kerry spoke Sunday evening at the annual Saban Forum, hosted by the left-leaning Brookings Institute, one of whose overseas branches is in Qatar.
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Italy’s Renzi vows to resign after crushing referendum defeat

By Crispian Balmer and Gavin Jones, REUTERS

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi vowed to resign after suffering a crushing defeat on Sunday in a referendum on constitutional reform, tipping the euro zone’s third-largest economy into political turmoil.

His decision to quit after just two and a half years in office deals a blow to the European Union, already reeling from multiple crises and struggling to overcome anti-establishment forces that have battered the Western world this year.

The euro fell to 20-month lows against the dollar, with markets worried that instability in the euro zone’s third largest economy could reignite a dormant financial crisis and deal a hammer blow to Italy’s fragile banking sector.
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T. Belman. I agree with the author that America can’t compete. This is the one thing in Trump’s platform that I felt that he couldn’t deliver on.  The author suggests he can, but gives no hint on how he can do it.

By Alex Markovsky

About a month ago 370 economists published an open letter in The Wall Street Journal denouncing Trump’s economic policies including his approach to free trade. To enhance the credibility of their arguments, some of them had been touting their Nobel laureate status.

Given the Nobel Committee’s political pedigree, if Karl Marx were alive today, he would be a Nobel laureate in economics many times over. And, as to add some extra flourish, he was recently awarded the Nobel Prize posthumously for his book Das Kapital. Thus, if history is any guide, the status speaks more about the Nobel Committee’s agenda than the quality of the laureates’ ideas.
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By Lynne Lechter, AMERICAN THINKER

Founded in 1985, the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) has grown from a visionary handful to over 40,000 dedicated members.  While predominantly Jewish, the RJC also has many illustrative Christian members.  Headquartered in D.C., with regional offices in N.Y., Pennsylvania, Illinois, Florida, and California, the RJC is a grassroots and lobbying organization with two core missions: providing a bridge and unparalleled access between the Jewish community and Republican political leaders and unequivocally, unabashedly supporting Conservative Israeli governments.

Throughout the presidential campaign, it was bruited about that the RJC had “dumped Trump.”  It was also asserted that Jews would vote against Trump in record numbers.  Both predictions proved false.
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THE TELEGRAPH

Austrian presidential candidate Norbert Hofer 

Austria will provide a new gauge of the populist wave sweeping Western democracies on Sunday, as the divided country holds an election that could deliver the first freely elected far-right head of state in Europe since World War Two.

The knife-edge presidential run-off is all the more dramatic for being a re-run of an election held six months ago – before Britain chose to leave the European Union and Americans elected Donald Trump as president – offering an indication of whether popular anger at the political establishment has grown.
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Iran’s president urges Obama urged to veto bill that would extend penalties for 10 years, as Tehran simmers over Senate passage of measure

BY AP AND TIMES OF ISRAEL STAFF

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani demanded Sunday that US President Barack Obama not sign an extension of US sanctions, saying the bill is a violation of a landmark nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.

On Thursday, the US Senate voted to extend the Iran Sanctions Act by 10 years.

Speaking in an open session of Iran’s parliament Sunday, Rouhani said Obama is “obliged” to let the sanctions expire.
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GATEWAY PUNDIT

To hell with Free Speech, to hell with the American People and to hell with Trump. 

Charles Johnson at GotNews.com reports that Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made an agreement with Obama and Democratic Senator Harry Reid to give control of the FCC to the Democrats.

Multiple DC sources have confirmed to GotNews that an effort to give Democrats control of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for months into Trump’s presidency is actually being led by Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell himself.

McConnell has reached an agreement with President Barack Obama and Democratic Senator Harry Reid to trade away control of the FCC for in exchange for confirmation of his own staffer, Neil Chatterjee, to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)….
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T. Belman, The GOP and the Trump administration is more pro-Israel than AIPAC, ADL, J Street and Con Bd of Presidents has ever been. Unless they move to the right of the Admin, which is highly unlikely, they can only harm.

BY RICHARD BAEHR, ISRAEL HAYOM

On January 20, the Republican Party will control the White House, both houses of Congress, at least 33 governors’ offices, and over two-thirds of state legislative bodies, including 25 states where the governor is a Republican and the GOP is the majority party in both branches of the state legislature. The Democrats will have similar control in four states. The other states will have mixed party governance. One would need to go back to the 1920s to find a time of similar dominance by the Republican Party. In but eight years, the Democrats have lost a dozen Senate seats, 66 House seats, near 1,000 state legislative seats, 13 governors’ offices, and the presidency.
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In the 4th Dec 16 edition of Israel’s good news, the highlights include:

• Israeli micro robots can help avoid brain surgery.
• Israeli startups won the top 3 prizes at an international medical trade fair.
• Israeli NGOs helped wheelchair users hike across the Negev desert.
• Israel’s new Ambassador has arrived in Turkey.
• Israeli recycled paper is the eco-friendliest in the world.
• An Israeli automobile 3D vision system can see even in thick fog.
• Top businesswomen led Israel Day at the NY Stock Exchange.
• Nov & Dec highlights include two Ethiopian-Jewish festivals.

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I HAVE ALWAYS BELIEVED THAT THIS “BIRTH CERTIFICATE” WAS A CRIMINAL FORGERY.

By Prof. Paul Eidelberg (written in 2006)

Some ten years ago, the left-wing Israel Democracy Institute reported that 62% of Israeli Jews would like to see the government actively encourage Arabs to leave Israel. Professor Arian Asher of the IDI said that this statistic indicates a “general lack of tolerance of Israeli Jews toward Israeli Arabs.” He concluded that “Israeli democracy has not developed a strong sense of egalitarianism and community.”

The IDI findings were deplored even by Avigdor Lieberman’s reputedly right-wing Israel Beiteinu party, a party which advocated revoking the citizenship of Israeli Arabs who do not pledge allegiance to the state. No party actively advocated their immigration.
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T. Belman. I see no need for or good from groups like AIPAC or ADL or J Steet having access. Their policies are to the left of Trump so they will be holding him back rather than urging him forward.

“Jewish power is like a muscle. If you exercise it right you build it up, if you abuse it, you destroy it.”

By Danielle Ziri, JPOST

Through out the last year and a half of a heated presidential campaign in the United States, American Jewish organizations, like much of the general US population, have been divided when it came to their views of the candidates, and particularly of president-elect Donald Trump.

Most recently Jewish organizations clashed over the appointment of former executive chair of Breitbart News, Steve Bannon, as Trump’s chief strategist.
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Brookings Institution survey also asserts growing American support for punitive measures against Israel over settlements, and a plurality backing pressure by Obama on Israel at UN

TOI STAFF

Most Democrats consider Israel to be a burden to the United States, according to the published findings of a poll released by the Brookings Institution on Friday.

The survey found a clear majority of Americans (76%) said Israel was “a strategic asset” to the US, its authors said. At the same time, they said, “a majority of Democrats, 55%, say that Israel is also a burden”; among Republicans, 24% consider Israel a burden. Fifty-two percent of Independents do not consider Israel a burden and 41% think it is.
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And he thinks Netanyahu is a coward. Meet Knesset Member Bezalel Smotrich, who envisions a Greater Israel where the Palestinian Authority doesn’t exist and who believes Reform Jews and LGBT people are living a lie.

By Ravit Hecht, HAARETZ

Bezalel Smotrich, a first-time Knesset member from the Bayit Hayehudi party, already has earned himself a reputation as one of the most brilliant and influential members of the house. He is proud to be the Knesset’s right-wing bellwether, and is perceived as radical even within the national-religious milieu from which he emerged – the settlement movement. In the brief year and a half since he was sworn in, Smotrich has succeeded in guiding the direction of his party (through his leadership of the struggle to prevent the dismantling of the Amona outpost in the West Bank, and to pass the so-called formalization bill), and even that of the government.
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The only thing likely to prevent Obama from harming Israel at the Security Council at this point is a clear message to the UN from the incoming Trump administration.

By Caroline Glick, JPOST

Israel’s coalition crises over the settlements regulation bill is not a normal power struggle between overweening politicians. It is not popularity contest between Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon and his Kulanu Party and Education Minister Naftali Bennett and his Bayit Yehudi Party.

It is also not about contenders for the helm challenging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political primacy.

The settlement regulation bill proposes to extend the authority of the Military Government in Judea and Samaria to seize privately owned land. That authority is now limited to seizure for military purposes. The bill would allow the Military Government to seize land for the purpose of private construction as well.
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Anonymous

There are 3,141 counties in the United States.
Trump won 3,084 of them.
Clinton won 57.

There are 62 counties in New York State.
Trump won 46 of them.
Clinton won 16.
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By Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): Since its founding in 1993, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has presented itself publicly as a benign Muslim American “civil rights organization.”  From that time to this, however, the United States government has known that CAIR actually is an entity founded by the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian franchise: Hamas, a group officially designated since 1994 as a terrorist organization.

Evidence of CAIR’s true character as a U.S.-based instrument for political warfare and fundraising for Hamas – and the federal government’s certain knowledge of the truth – did not come to light until the largest terrorism financing trial in the nation’s history: the 2007-2008 Holy Land Foundation prosecution.  In the course of that trial, FBI Agent Laura Burns testified about, and helped explain, the transcripts of wiretap surveillance conducted in the course of two planning sessions leading up to the organizational meeting of CAIR held in Philadelphia in October 1993 and during the meeting itself.  Specifically, she presented proof that CAIR’s mission was to assist “Sister Samah,” its founders’ hardly opaque code-name for Hamas, as the prospect of its terror designation loomed.
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