Ted Belman. This is a big sob story that distorts the facts and the law. These shacks shouldn’t have been built in the first place. The EU illegally built these shacks for the most part in a clandestine manner so Israel couldn’t stop them. The High Court of Israel approved the demolition orders. It is the EU that is acting illegally, not Israel.

A routine meeting between the Foreign Ministry’s director and the EU envoys last week turned into a sharp protest by the European states against Israel’s plan to demolish a Bedouin village.

By Barak Ravid, HAARETZ

The European Union is demanding that Israel stop demolishing Palestinian homes in Area C of the West Bank, and particularly in the Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar near Ma’aleh Adumim, since this would entail forced transfer of the residents and be a violation of the Geneva Convention.

According to Israeli and European diplomats, the sharp message in the name of all EU members was delivered last week by EU Ambassador to Israel Lars Faaborg-Andersen to new Foreign Ministry director-general Yuval Rotem.
Read more…

Ted Belman. This is a big sob story that distorts the facts and the law. These shacks shouldn’t have been built in the first place. The EU illegally built these shacks for the most part in a clandestine manner so Israel couldn’t stop them. The High Court of Israel approved the demolition orders. It is the EU that is acting illegally, not Israel.

A routine meeting between the Foreign Ministry’s director and the EU envoys last week turned into a sharp protest by the European states against Israel’s plan to demolish a Bedouin village.

By Barak Ravid, HAARETZ

The European Union is demanding that Israel stop demolishing Palestinian homes in Area C of the West Bank, and particularly in the Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar near Ma’aleh Adumim, since this would entail forced transfer of the residents and be a violation of the Geneva Convention.

According to Israeli and European diplomats, the sharp message in the name of all EU members was delivered last week by EU Ambassador to Israel Lars Faaborg-Andersen to new Foreign Ministry director-general Yuval Rotem.
Read more…

Potential rival issues no direct challenge to Netanyahu, says he wants to strengthen party

TOI

Former Likud minister Gideon Sa’ar, widely seen as a major potential challenger to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from within the ranks of the party, announced his political comeback at the party’s headquarters in the northern city of Acre on Monday.

Sa’ar resigned from the Knesset in October 2014, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family, and his comeback has been the topic of speculation ever since.
Read more…

Student union at Ryerson University in Toronto votes to adopt a broad definition of anti-Semitism, including double standards against Israel

JTA/INN

The student union at Ryerson University in Toronto has voted to adopt a broad definition of anti-Semitism.

The definition adopted last week includes the denial of the Jewish right to self-determination, the application of double standards to the State of Israel, the comparison of contemporary Israeli policies to that of the Nazis, and the use of symbols or imagery associated with classic anti-Semitic tropes, according to Bnai Brith Canada.

The definition is in line with the one used by the governments of Canada and Ontario.
Read more…

Khaleej Times

After a brief diplomatic honeymoon mostly sustained by propaganda and wishful thinking, relations between Iran and Turkey appear to have hit a new low with Tehran and Ankara trading accusations and threats. Tehran claims that Ankara harbours neo-Ottoman imperial ambitions with dreams of dominating Iraq and Syria. For its part, Ankara accuses Tehran of harping on sectarian themes to create a mini-empire in the Levant with access to the Mediterranean.

It is too early to say how this new tension might unfold.

But one thing is certain: in opting for confrontation both sides are acting against a tradition of good neighbourliness that dates back to the early 20th century.
Read more…

Diplomatic sources say expert U.S. National Security Council official Yael Lempert is pushing the pro-PA line.

By Hillel Fendel, INN

“Although Trump’s approach is generally favorable towards Israel, the fact that his administration continues to rely on Obama officials is not to Israel’s benefit – and the most blatant example of this is Yael Lempert.” So says a diplomatic official who took part in the talks with special Trump envoy Jason Greenblatt.

Haggai Huberman reports that Lempert, very knowledgeable and experienced in Israel-PA relations and equally supportive of the PA position, has made herself available to fill in the gaps of the inexperienced Trump team – and the consequences have not been to Israel’s favor.
Read more…

New round of arms race begins as Israel forces Hezbollah and, to some extent, Hamas and Gaza groups to try to beat its latest advance.

By Amos Harel, HAARETZ

The operational deployment of David’s Sling on Sunday fills the gap in Israel’s missile defense system. The David’s Sling Weapon System (also known as Magic Wand) was designed to intercept medium-range missiles, as a complement to the Arrow system, which handles long-range missiles, and Iron Dome, which deals with short-range rockets. It also marks the completion of a missile interception system whose development began back in the early 1990s.
Read more…

I am currently reading The Crisis of 1933 by Francisco Gil-White. He begins with an historical review of Jewish politics in the Nineteenth Century. I found this particular chapter of great interest.

Weizmann vs. Herzl/Jabotinsky

“Chaim Weizmann was a member of the community of young Russian Jews who had been locked out of universities in Russia because of czarist numeri clausi and had gone to Germany to study,” where the assimilationist movement among ‘educated’ Jews was strongest. Weizmann had joined the Zionist movement but, influenced by the Russian socialists — ‘modernizing’ Marxists with a fiercely anti-religious ideology drenched in antisemitism — allied with other Zionists of equal temperament, broke with Herzl, and split the Zionist Organization, creating the so-called Democratic Faction. “Herzl,” though not himself a religious Jew, “was worried about the potential large-scale defection of Orthodox Russian Jewry from the Zionist cause in the face of the Democratic Faction’s anti-religious agenda, [so he] hurriedly organized a meeting of supportive Russian Zionists, both Orthodox and nonreligous, in Vilna in February, in 1902. A religious Zionist party, Mizrachi, was formed at the meeting as a counterweight to the Democratic Faction within the Zionist Organization.” Soon this party gained the allegiance of many Zionists groups all over Russia, something that Weizmann didn’t like at all, and which led him to declare: “The rabbinical party is organizing itself in Jesuit fashion, and I think of their machinations with disgust. Everything is vulgar and foul.”[50]
Read more…

T. Belman. Just as I suspected. What was reported gave us a lot of room to build just with infilling. On the other hand Bibi said that construction would be restricted. These are polar opposites. So Yesha is saying what counts is what Bibi allows on the ground.

We read today that Bibi is also planning on making gestures to the Palestinians. Whatever happened to Bibi’s demand for reciprocity?

I think that there will be an election this year and a serious attempt to oust him.

By JNi.Media

The talks between Israel and the Trump Administration regarding “restraining” settlement construction as a means to encourage Palestinian Authority participation in future peace negotiations have been suspended, Israel Radio reported Sunday morning.

According to the report, no understandings or summaries were reached in the most recent, four-day round of talks between Netanyahu’s and Trump’s representatives in Washington DC. As a result, the Prime Minister has decided to adopt a new policy which unilaterally accepts the President’s position but is not part of an official, bilateral agreement with the White House.
Read more…

Forget this year’s cheers for VP Pence and last year’s for candidate Trump. In a confrontation, AIPAC will back Israel’s elected government against allcomers.

By Jonathan S. Tobin, HAAREETZ

When Vice President Mike Pence addressed the annual gathering of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington last week there was no need to caution those in attendance to refrain from booing or other discourtesies. That was not the case during the past eight years, when tension between the Obama administration and the government of Israel was the main topic of conversation at AIPAC gatherings. But though the Trump administration has had a bumpy ride in almost every other respect, its representative got a rapturous welcome from the 18,000 pro-Israel activists in attendance.

But a question that still remains unanswered after the conference is what AIPAC will do if, contrary to their hopes, President Trump winds up at loggerheads with the Netanyahu government. If Trump is serious about pursuing a peace agreement with the Palestinians, and curbing the growth of West Bank settlements, a confrontation with Prime Minister Netanyahu may be hard to avoid. If so, some on the left are wondering whether AIPAC will still back the Israeli government against their new favorite in Washington, especially if the dispute is caused by Netanyahu’s hard line settlement movement allies.
Read more…

Forget this year’s cheers for VP Pence and last year’s for candidate Trump. In a confrontation, AIPAC will back Israel’s elected government against allcomers.

By Jonathan S. Tobin, HAAREETZ

When Vice President Mike Pence addressed the annual gathering of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington last week there was no need to caution those in attendance to refrain from booing or other discourtesies. That was not the case during the past eight years, when tension between the Obama administration and the government of Israel was the main topic of conversation at AIPAC gatherings. But though the Trump administration has had a bumpy ride in almost every other respect, its representative got a rapturous welcome from the 18,000 pro-Israel activists in attendance.

But a question that still remains unanswered after the conference is what AIPAC will do if, contrary to their hopes, President Trump winds up at loggerheads with the Netanyahu government. If Trump is serious about pursuing a peace agreement with the Palestinians, and curbing the growth of West Bank settlements, a confrontation with Prime Minister Netanyahu may be hard to avoid. If so, some on the left are wondering whether AIPAC will still back the Israeli government against their new favorite in Washington, especially if the dispute is caused by Netanyahu’s hard line settlement movement allies.
Read more…

At the meeting the security cabinet decided to curb settlement construction, Netanyahu told the ministers: We must not mislead the Americans, they are tracking every house in the settlements, including in East Jerusalem.

By Barak Ravid, HAARETZ

The Trump administration is asking Israel to carry out a series of goodwill gestures toward the Palestinians, both in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the security cabinet last Thursday, when he announced plans to curb construction in the settlements.

These measures should have an immediate effect on the Palestinians’ economic situation, ministers and senior officials who attended the meeting told Haaretz.

During Thursday’s meeting, Netanyahu said several times that U.S. President Donald Trump is determined to advance the Israeli-Palestinian issue and for the two parties to reach an agreement, the sources said.
Read more…

DEBKA

US armored Humvees driving this week from Iraqi Kurdistan to Syria
Except for one missing factor, the United States is in advanced preparations for the operation to oust the Islamic State from Raqqa, its Syrian stronghold, as Mission Mosul winds down in Iraq. Tuesday, March 28, a large convoy of trucks, with the KRG numbers plates of the semiautonomous Kurdish government of Iraq, crossed into Syria at the Semalka border post. Some were heavily laden with arms and ammunition; others hauled armored personnel carriers.
Read more…

American support for Kurdish forces in Syria is a major flashpoint between the NATO allies

By Yaroslav Trofimov

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan greeted supporters in Ankara on Wednesday.

ISTANBUL—Turkey expected a honeymoon with President Donald Trump. Instead, it increasingly looks like Ankara and Washington are heading for a squabble, if not a divorce.

For now, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has bitten his tongue and avoided attacking the Trump administration with the kind of inflammatory statements that he routinely hurls at European and regional leaders. The White House, too, has kept largely mum about Turkish affairs. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is holding meetings in Turkey on Thursday, aiming to maintain a bond that U.S. officials continue describing as vital.
Read more…

By David Prentice, AMERICAN THINKER

This nation has faced many a crisis, but not since the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, ginned up by the Hearst media empire, have we had crisis of the current magnitude powered by fake news.

Within living memory, in 1968, the Democratic Party had its convention in Chicago, Hubert Humphrey was their nominee, and there were riots in the streets.  Groups “demonstrated” against the Vietnam war, against the war’s escalation, and against the party itself for the ways of choosing its nominee.
Read more…

T. Belman. Although Netanyahu has said that he has agreed to a significant reduction, the guidelines announced don’t suggest as much. In fact the permitted construction will be sufficient to triple the Jewish Population in the settlements.  By stressing where we can build rather than where we can’t build, Cabinet approval was assured.  I wonder if  there are more restrictions that are being demanded or agreed upon that we haven’t been informed of.

Essentially we have agreed not to enlarge the settlement footprint. This suggests to me that there will be an attempt to keep them intact in a deal. Most people are unaware that the settlements comprise only 1% of the land mass of Judea and Samaria. Even if footprint doubled in size it would not prevent a deal. The restrictions will not bring Abbas to the table so what was their purpose.  The serve only to demonstrate that their is no daylight between the US and Israel.

By Shlomo Cesana and AP, ISRAEL HAYOM

Almost two months after the illegal outpost of Amona was demolished, the Diplomatic-Security Cabinet has unanimously approved the construction of a new community for its former residents, even as Israel announced it would scale back overall construction.
Read more…

With a new U.S. president, new ideas are emerging on how to resolve the Israel-Palestine debacle. One of the most promising comes from the Jordanian Opposition Council who favor a new Palestinian state — in Jordan. 

By Ted Belman

The GOP unanimously approved a pro-Israel platform at their convention in July 2016 which stipulated:

“The U.S. seeks to assist in the establishment of comprehensive and lasting peace in the Middle East, to be negotiated among those living in the region,”

David Friedman and Jason Greenblatt, representing Donald Trump, participated in the drafting and were in complete agreement with the final text.

Gone was any reference to the Palestinian people or to a two-state solution. In addition, the platform included the words “We reject the false notion that Israel is an occupier.” If not an “occupier,” then presumably Israel is a sovereign.
Read more…

The agendas of David Brock’s organization, Shareblue.

FPM

A key participant in the political war by which the Left is currently fighting to delegitimize and ultimately destroy the Trump presidency is a relatively new organization called Shareblue, which grew out of Blue Nation Review (BNR), a pro-Democrat entity that once described Hillary Clinton as “one of the most ethical political leaders in America.” In 2015 David Brock, a former-conservative-turned-leftist, purchased BNR and rebranded it as Shareblue. From the outset, his objective has been to develop Shareblue into a progressive media outlet that speaks directly to grass roots Americans, who are, in Brock’s estimation, “avidly and unabashedly pro-Hillary.”
Read more…