By: Jeffrey S. Wiesenfeld , NY JEWISH LIFE

The contentious political climate in which we find ourselves today places a majority of Jews in some combination of liberal / leftist / Democratic spheres. Combined, they represent nearly three quarters of American Jews. The enthusiastic participation of so many of these leftist Jews in causes of very questionable interest to the future of Jews in America is something I find gravely disturbing.

Surely I have mercy (rachmunis) for innocent Syrian refugees, the victims of mass chaos in the Middle East resulting from the gross foreign policy mismanagement of the Obama years. The former President’s false “red lines” have resulted in the mass migration to the West of a population apart from western values, history, and institutions. Through proper vetting, individual refugees merit the historical promise of America, but not the fomentation of the type of ethnic imbalance we’ve seen in most European nations. Do liberal Jews ask why it is in the Jewish interest to invite large numbers of people to the U.S. who intrinsically despise them, and Israel?
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By Zvi November

One important facet of WWII was the comprehensive belief in racial ranking.  Nazi ideology held that Germans were the master race and the Japanese firmly believed in the superiority of the yellow race.

Today, the ongoing campaign to annihilate Israel is founded on blind, irrational and vicious hate based on outrages lies and libels that are accepted as facts by most of the Arab/Islamic world.  Arabs and Muslims rarely hear a positive word about Jews, Zionists or Israelis.  Hundreds of millions of people in the 57 Muslim majority countries have been brainwashed with a worldview and underlying Islamic theology that hold Jews in contempt.  Muslims who accept the unalterable tenants of their religion hate Jews and hope to destroy the Jewish state which in their bigoted view is illegitimate.
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With 187 of 193 voting Democrats signing, the letter to Trump released Friday is a pointed reminder of how divided the parties remain on how to define pro-Israel.

BY RON KAMPEAS/JTA /JPOST

The overwhelming majority of Democrats in the US House of Representatives urged President Donald Trump to reaffirm the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as U.S. policy.

With 187 of 193 voting Democrats signing, the letter to Trump released Friday is a pointed reminder of how divided the parties remain on how to define pro-Israel. It comes on the eve of an American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference that the lobby had hoped would be a signal of bipartisan support for Israel. [ISN’T IT FOR ISRAELIS TO DECIDE]
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Israel hopes, with the help of Russia and the United States, that enough pressure can be placed on Iranian-backed militias to the point where they can be removed.

JPOST

United States, Russia and Israel have reportedly reached a consensus on the need to restrict and eventually expel pro-Iranian forces from gaining influence in Syria, the Kuwati daily newspaper Al-Rai reported Saturday.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to the Arab outlet, has reached an understanding with Washington and Moscow that pro-Iranian forces, including Lebanese terror organization Hezbollah, constitute an “existential threat” to the Jewish state.

This threat, therefore, necessitates Israeli action in Syria, including conducting airstrikes and other assaults to keep weapons and advancing militias as far as possible from Israel’s northern border.
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T. Belman.  Evidently Kushner had some effect but not enough to get Britain to recognize our sovereignty over the Golan, the US hasn’t either. But in Britains statement notice they still call Judea and Samaria occupied Palestinian Territory.

London supports 2 of the votes, but slams bias and ‘selective focus’ on Israel, puts council ‘on notice’ that it had better change

BY TIMES OF ISRAEL STAFF

The United Nations Human Rights Council adopted five resolutions critical of Israel on Friday, despite opposition from the US and an unprecedented critique from the UK.

Britain supported two of the five resolutions, but threatened to vote against any future such motions against the Jewish state because of the “bias” by the UN body.

“We are putting the Human Rights Council on notice,” Britain warned in a statement. “If things do not change, in the future we will adopt a policy of voting against all resolutions concerning Israel’s conduct in the Occupied Syrian and Palestinian Territories.”
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By Ariel Ben Solomon/JNS.org

What steps can the West take to defeat Islamic State? The U.S. and Israel should work to push the Syrian Kurds away from the Iran-Shi’a axis and Russia, and toward an alliance with the Americans and the Israelis, leading experts on Syria and the Kurds told JNS.org.

“The U.S. and Israel could win Rojava as a loyal Western satellite if they are willing to guarantee its sovereignty and sign a defense agreement,” said Joshua Landis, a Syria expert and director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, referring to the area consisting of several self-governing regions in northern Syria. Rojava is also commonly known as Western Kurdistan or Syrian Kurdistan.
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By Ted Belman

While shopping this morning for Shabbat, I started a conversation with a young man who advised that he made aliya from France. He had visited my home town of Toronto many times and loved it. So why did he make aliya when many Jews in France opt for moving to Canada.

This was worthy of a conversation so we went for coffee.

Turns out that he has a PhD in the study of relations between Algerians and Frenchmen. He is also secular, gay, happily married and the father of two. One more thing. He is a strong Zionist who eschews nationalism. Go figure.
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Amid reports denied by Netanyahu that Trump wants a freeze at isolated settlements, Israel says it intends to adopt a policy that takes US stance ‘into consideration’

BY ERIC CORTELLESSA, TOI

View of the Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumin, in the West Bank on January 4, 2017. (Yaniv Nadav/Flash90)

WASHINGTON — After four days of high-level discussions between the Trump administration and an Israeli delegation, which concluded Thursday, no agreement has been forged regarding Israel’s ongoing settlement construction, an issue that concerns US President Donald Trump, the Trump administration indicated Thursday evening.

“The United States delegation reiterated President Trump’s concerns regarding settlement activity in the context of moving towards a peace agreement,” according to a joint readout of the talks. “The Israeli delegation made clear that Israel’s intent going forward is to adopt a policy regarding settlement activity that takes those concerns into consideration.”
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The Iran deal Trump needs to make with the Russians is clear.

BY CAROLINE B. GLICK, JPOST

What can be done about Iran? In Israel, a dispute is reportedly raging between the IDF and the Mossad about the greatest threat facing Israel. IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eisenkot thinks that Hezbollah is the greatest threat facing Israel. Mossad Director Yossi Cohen thinks Iran’s nuclear program is the greatest danger facing the Jewish state.

While the media highlight the two men’s disagreement, the underlying truth about their concerns has been ignored.

Hezbollah and Iran’s nuclear program are two aspects of the same threat: the regime in Tehran.
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Will Assad start a war against Israel in order to try to unify all those fighting him against a common enemy?

By Mordechai Kedar, INN

Academic research has explored in depth the factors leading to the wars that broke out between nations in previous centuries, both in order to understand why wars take place and to develop ways of predicting nascent wars by “connecting the dots” between the signs signalling an approaching conflagration. Since the signals are clearly directly connected to the relations between the countries involved in a war, the literature points out the connection between internal problems affecting a state and the desire of its leaders to initiate a war with other countries. The literature also lists war-delaying factors, foremost of which is the high price of military and civilian fatalities and the damage to the country’s infrastructure.
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It is difficult to know what is more disturbing-whether some ministers actually believe in the policy proposals they promote – or whether they don’t—but promote them anyway

By MARTIN SHERMAN 

What I see clearly…is incredible negligence and lack of systematic, long-term planning effort on behalf of Israel’s top political brass…we are facing a deep crisis of political leadership, and a deep disbelief in our power to shape reality.  -From insightful Op-Ed, “Defeatism at Its Worst” by former Netanyahu staffer,  Anya Zhuravel-Segal July 14, 2014

It doesn’t matter what Trump thinks but what Bibi does.  – Richie036 , Talkbacker To Caroline Glick’s, “Trump Embraces The PLO Fantasy” March 13, 2017  Read more…

By David Rosenberg, INN

The US Senate voted Thursday to confirm President Trump’s pick for US Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman.

The tally for the final vote was 52 in favor of confirmation and 46 against in a largely party-line vote. Just two Democrats, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Bob Menendez of New Jersey, crossed party lines to vote in favor of confirmation.
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BY TOVAH LAZAROFF, JPOST

The ground that was broken on 2,630 new settler homes last year, is the second highest amount of new Jewish construction that has occurred in the West Bank since the year 2,000.

The number of housing starts in West Bank settlements rose by 40% from 2015 to 2016, according to data released by the Central Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday.
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T. Belman. My take away is that most of the countries in the EU are dead set against allowing settlement construction believing that the settlements kill the two state solution. This is their goal and it is etched in stone. So Jared wasn’t able to dislodge the UK even though there was great reason for it to join Trump in his approach. It may have been that this realization caused Trump to rethink.

But Trump’s son-in-law succeeded in coaxing the U.K., America’s closest ally, into thwarting the Obama administration.

By Colum Lynch, FOREIGN POLICY

Jarred Kushner, President Donald Trump’s principal Middle East advisor, embarked on his maiden diplomatic mission even before his father-in-law was inaugurated. His task: get Britain to help scuttle a U.N. Security Council resolution denouncing Israeli settlements.

His outreach was part of a broader effort by the president-elect’s transition team — which included public denunciations of the settlements resolution by Trump, and back-channel lobbying of U.N. diplomats by his not-yet-then-and-now-former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, to derail the resolution vote. It ultimately failed, as the council’s 15 members, including Britain, dismissed the Trump team’s appeals and voted 14-0, with a U.S. abstention, in favor.
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Some promising developments, but Obama’s shadow remains.

By Joseph Klein, FPM

Barack Obama subordinated America’s national interests to his notion of global citizenship under the umbrella of strengthened multilateral organizations and international norms. He also believed that American power needed to be contained.

President Trump’s stated approach to virtually all issues relating to foreign policy is to put American national security and economic interests first. It explains his budget priorities, which would add billions of dollars for defense and border security, while cutting back on programs at the State Department undergirding so-called “soft diplomacy.” President Trump also views such global issues as trade, immigration, climate change and participation in multilateral institutions through the prism of “America first.” Thus, his budget blueprint would reduce U.S. funding contributions to the United Nations and multilateral development banks, while ceasing payments altogether to the United Nations’ climate change programs. It projects more reliance on America’s “hard power.”
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A week after the Jordanian terrorist who murdered 7 Israeli schoolgirls was released from prison, JerusalemOnline received an Arabic language affidavit that proves that his actions were premeditated to the contrary of what was previously claimed and that he was motivated to commit the murders by anti-Jewish incitement.

By Rachel Avraham, JERUSALEM ONLINE

About a week after JOL reported that Jordan released terrorist Ahmed Daqamseh from prison, who killed 7 Israeli school girls in a terror attack in Naharayim in 1997, dreadful new details about the incident that have not been revealed until now have reached JerusalemOnline. These details indicate that the terror attack was more gruesome than both Jordanian judicial records and Israeli sources claim that it was.
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T. Belman. I am sure many Israelis are not prepared to stand up to Europe on the question of Ma’aleh Adumin or E-1.  Nor are they willing to incur the wrath of the Trump team should Israel not come to an understanding with the US.  All of which means we are not masters in our own house.  I think we have to lean on Trump hard to get a livable deal on construction and on annexation of settlement blocks. That deal should consider Gush Etzion and Maaleh Adumin as settlement blocs. What the EU says doesn’t matter. We should drive a hard bargain even if that means we don’t come to a deal. In the meantime we should build in Jerusalem full speed and elsewhere at a slower speed until we have an agreement. A lack of an agreement means we we can build. Trump will want to get on with the peace process so he will be anxious to get going.

“It would have a strong detrimental impact on our relations,” Mark Gallagher, the Charge D’Affaires for the EU embassy in Israel, cautioned on Tuesday.

BY TOVAH LAZAROFF, JPOST MARCH 22, 2017

The European Union on Tuesday warned Israel that annexing the West Bank settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim would damage the Jewish state’s diplomatic ties with the union.

“It would be seen very negatively by the EU. It would have a strong detrimental impact on our relations,” said Mark Gallagher, who is the Charge D’Affaires for the EU embassy in Israel. Gallagher made the remark at the conference “The Arab Peace Initiative at 15-years,” which was held at the Hebrew University.
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America’s loss of innocence is a result of the public’s growing realization of the deep state, media bias and university brainwashing. Will things change?

By Joe David, INN

The America I knew growing up is rapidly disappearing. Law and order is being replaced by mob rule. A madness has claimed the country, introduced in recent years by hate groups who are dedicated to using violent protests to cause political instability. In a frenzy of madness, often triggered by just an innuendo, these groups want to crush all opposition to their agenda. For astute observers of our culture, this doesn’t come as a surprise. Our great universities, which were once citadels of reason, a safe place for open discourse, have abandoned both – and they have become instead centers for cultivating insurrection, with minimal tolerance for truth and clear thinking.
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By Conrad Black, NATIONAL REVIEW

Though it is hard to believe some days, the political atmosphere in Washington is slowly settling down. The Democrats drone tiresomely on, battering the piñata that there is no evidence that President Obama tapped candidate Trump’s telephones, and the Republicans, as if trying to extract a shark’s teeth, require the endlessly repeated admission that the allegation of collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign was horse feathers. The corresponding entrenched defense positions are that the Republicans have reason to believe that there was official surveillance of some kind of the Trump campaign, and the Democrats will claim there was coincidental and circumstantial evidence of some sort of connection between Russia and sometime members of the Trump entourage.
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