T. Belman. When Obama insisted on a 10 month freeze 8 years ago it was even before Abbas agreed to talks. Trump is doing the same thing. At a minimum we should get a quid pro quo for the freeze before it goes into effect. Getting Abbas to join the peace talks is no such thing. He should be demonstrating that he wants an agreement by entering talks without preconditions. Before any process starts Trump should be demanding an end to incitement, terror and internationalization all of which the PA is obligated to do according to Oslo. On the other hand we are not obligated to “slowdown” construction and Trump shouldn’t be asking us to do so. He is robbing us of a lever. Instead Trump should agree to our construction and say to Abbas, “you better make a deal before its too late. The longer you procrastinate the more Israel will build”. On this, Trump is a big disappointment.

Netanyahu Says Construction in Jerusalem Settlements Off the Table in Talks With White House
Israeli delegation is in Washington to negotiate settlement construction ‘slowdown’ with Trump team.

By Barak Ravid, HAARETZ   Mar 21, 2017 8:16 PM

Israeli talks with the Trump administration over limiting settlement construction will not touch on the Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Israeli reporters during his visit to Beijing on Tuesday.

Talks between Israeli and American negotiators began in the White House on Monday in an effort to reach understandings concerning the settlements. The talks continued on Tuesday, though no breakthroughs have been reported.

“I am not discussing the issue of construction in Jerusalem. It does not even enter the equation,” said Netanyahu. “I am ready to discuss [limiting construction in the settlements] and I am looking for an agreed upon formula for construction in Judea and Samaria. There are differences of opinion with the Americans. That is why I met with the American envoy Jason Greenblatt twice and I sent a delegation to Washington in order to reach an understanding. This is an ongoing process.”
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By Jim Geraghty, NATIONAL REVIEW

FBI director James Comey, testifying before Congress yesterday:

The FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election and that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts. As with any counterintelligence investigation, this will also include an assessment of whether any crimes were committed.

He later added,

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Supposed Russian connections are a smokescreen to censor alternative media

By Alex Thomas, D.C. CLOTHESLINE,

By Daniel Greenfield

Obama is a coward.

Trump will call someone a name while Obama will anonymously source a smear through three levels of staffers, political allies and reporters. Trump called CNN “Fake News” on camera. Obama sourced Operation Rushbo, targeting Rush Limbaugh, through a variety of White House people and left-wing allies. Trump will boot reporters he doesn’t like. Obama authorized secretly hacking the emails of a FOX News reporter. Trump had an openly hostile conversation with the Prime Minister of Australia. When Obama wanted to call Netanyahu “chickens__t”, he did it by having one of his people anonymously plant it with a reliable media sycophant, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, before later having a spokesman disavow it. Poultry ordure doesn’t smell any worse than that.
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By Prof. Efraim Inbar
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 430, March 21, 2017

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Since the 1970s, every American president has attempted to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Senior American diplomats and envoys have spent a great deal of time on this Sisyphean endeavor. For all his iconoclasm, President Trump has this goal in mind as well – but his eagerness might prove self-defeating.

During the election campaign and after his inauguration, President Donald Trump said several times that he wants to close a deal between Israel and the Palestinians. The longer the list of failed attempts, the more alluring this challenge apparently becomes. The prospects for enduring acclaim in the event of success seem particularly enticing for narcissistic politicians.
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DEBKAfile Special Report

The IDF Tuesday confirmed that an Israeli miniature Skylark drone had crashed over a technical fault Sunday, March 19, in the same Quneitra area of the Golan as the attack which killed a Syrian soldier. Hizballah claimed earlier that the drone was shot down by the Syrian army and published photos of drone fragments with Hebrew writing.

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that the publicity given by the pro-Iranian Lebanese Hizballah to the incident – beating Israel to the draw – seriously pricked Moscow’s efforts, with Damascus’ compliance, to cool the crisis that was developing after Israeli planes struck a Hizballah target near the northern Syrian town of Palmyra last Friday, March 17.
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by Rachel Frommer, ALGEMEINER

A black Christian Zionist leader told The Algemeiner on Friday that, “despite the anti-Israel movement’s best efforts, the vast majority of the African American community support the Jewish state.”

Dumisani Washington — senior pastor for California’s Congregation of Zion, founder of the Institute of Black Solidarity with Israel and diversity outreach coordinator with Christians United for Israel — was responding to endeavors such as Black History Month in February, during which anti-Israel Palestinian activism was highlighted at college campuses throughout the country.
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By Tabitha Korol

It’s presented as a fashion magazine that appeals to more than a million girls, so we expect age-appropriate style and panache; new trends in accessories, makeup and hairstyles; advice about manners and dating, and some information on colleges.  But this publication has strayed considerably from what a caring parent would want one’s teen to read.

Teen Vogue is an appalling anti-American propaganda rag, complete with disrespectful, insulting articles about the President of the United States, as well as one that puts the onus of failing peace talks on Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  It serves as a Muslim Brotherhood façade in the way that it presents a heavily biased account of the Palestinian Arab war against the Jewish State of Israel, America’s staunchest ally and the only country in the Middle East that shares our values.  Teen Vogue Emma Sarran Webster’s un-researched revised history, taken from selected leftist news sources, is an insult to their readers’ intelligence and a betrayal of democracy. It is such writing that helps twist the minds of our youth, inciting them to participate in the charade marches that support un-American issues, such as the one led by anti-Semitic, faux-feminist Linda Sarsour, who is against police, mosque surveillance, and American ideals.
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Every once in a while, the Jordanian people are given a chance to express how they really feel about Israel. It’s ugly.

By Caroline B Glick, JPOST

Jordan is the country to Israel’s east with which Israel has had a formal peace for 23 years.

And its people hate Israel, and Jews, even more than the Iranians do.

Every once in a while, the Jordanian people are given a chance to express how they really feel about Israel. It’s ugly.
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By Shoshana Bryen, AMERICAN THINKER

The so-called “two-state solution,” to subdivide the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea between independent Israel and independent Palestine, fails the tests of logic and history. And it ignores the Kingdom of Jordan – whose participation is required for any stable, long-term arrangement.

There are presently three “states,” or at least three governments, west of the Jordan: Israel, the Palestinian Authority (PA), and Gaza. Pro-Israel “two-staters” think Gaza and the West Bank territory should become one state with Israel as the other, assuming-for-no-reason that it is Hamas that will disappear. Hamas vociferously disagrees. Assuming-for-no-reason that a single PA-governed state does emerge in both places, Israel would be left divided north from south by a corridor across the country so Palestinians could access both parts of their state. Arab armies tried multiple times to sever Israel’s waist in pursuit of conquest — this would have Israel do it for them.
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State Department slams Human Rights Council for ‘longstanding bias’ against Jewish state that ‘threatens its credibility’

TOI

The US on Monday issued a strongly worded statement accusing a United Nations body of longstanding bias against Israel.

Amid threats from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to withdraw entirely from the United Nations Human Rights Council, the State Department announced it would boycott the council’s entire Monday discussion about alleged human rights abuses committed by Israel and vote against any resolutions that came from it.

“The United States strongly and unequivocally opposes the existence of the UN Human Rights Council’s Agenda Item Seven: ‘Human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories,’” acting spokesperson Mark Toner said in a statement.
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DEBKA

The Israeli drone that targeted the Syrian militiaman Yasser Sayad outside the Golan town of Quneitra Sunday, March 19, reinforced the message first carried by the Israeli Arrow 2 which shot down a Syrian SA-5 anti-air missile Friday. The Israeli ambassador was called twice to the Russian foreign ministry.

Both hits were precise: Sayad was on his way to join the Hizballah forces who are trampling Syrian rebel villages on the Hermon slopes to clear their path to the Golan; and the Syrian SA-5 was intercepted microseconds before hitting the Israeli jets attacking a consignment of Hizballah weapons outside the Syria T4 base near Palmyra, where a Russian contingent is also housed.
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A former Russian Jewish refugee who lives in San Diego, received an invitation from his synagogue to attend an event geared toward helping the Muslim refugees.

He replied:

Dear Jewish Federation, Anti Defamation League,

Unfortunately I will not be able to attend this evening’s “Immigrants and Refugees, a Jewish call to action” community event that you are organizing. In lieu of attending. However, I would like to share some thoughts I have on the subject. I hope that you take those thoughts into consideration both in tonight’s program as well as any further community outreach programs.

As a former refugee myself I believe I have some valuable insights to add to this discussion. I presume that the current call to action and tonight’s discussion were spurred by the recent temporary ban placed by President Trump on entrants from the following 7 countries: Yemen, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia and Lybia. There have been some very emotional claims made about this ban both in the media as well as Jewish community so I think it would be useful to analyze the facts.
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CONSERVATIVE TRIBUNE

Many of us will likely always remember where we were and what we were doing when we realized then-candidate Donald Trump had beaten Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, but one Trump staffer, in particular, has the memory etched in forever.

Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s campaign manager and current White House counselor, was the one who answered the 2:30 a.m. concession phone call from the Clinton campaign.

At the National Review Institute’s recent Ideas Summit in Washington, Conway reminisced about the special moment and how it played out, according to the U.K. Daily Mail.
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Samaria Regional Council head says Trump Administration may condemn ‘settlements’, but will be much friendlier to Israel.

By Shimon Cohen, INN

Jason Greenblatt, US President Donald Trump’s Special Representative for International Negotiations, was not content with his meetings with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu or Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas, but also met with several leaders of the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria. Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan, one of the regional heads who met with Greenblatt, spoke with Arutz Sheva about his meeting with the US representative.

While Dagan is careful not to reveal specific details of the conversation, he said that the conversation was conducted in a pleasant atmosphere, and that the US envoy “was attentive and asked questions. He is a serious individual and a lover of Israel.”
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Common wisdom is that if the threat is real, Netanyahu’s motive is not his aversion to the public broadcaster, but a looming indictment on graft charges ? But this still doesn’t explain his timing.

By Yossi Verter, HAARETZ

Any attempt to explain, clarify, place in a logical framework or make order in what is happening in Israeli politics over the past few days is doomed. It’s not political analysis that is needed here, it’s a psychologist. And not a child psychologist working in a quarter-time position in public service, but an entire department in a closed institution. The cuckoo’s nest is here.

Two years and two days ago, Israel held unnecessary elections because the prime minister wanted to prevent damage to the newspaper that is his private mouthpiece, Israel Hayom. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted this after the fact. Now he is threatening elections if the broadcasting corporation, which he hates, does not close down.
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“… a dangerous hub of Hezbollah activity.”

by Yochanan Visser, WESTERN JOURNALISM

Russia’s Foreign Ministry summoned Israel’s ambassador in the country after Friday’s unprecedented missile clash that involved Israel’s most advanced missile interception system — the Arrow 3 — which reportedly downed as many as three Russian made S-200 surface-to-air missiles after Israeli warplanes attacked a Hezbollah-bound weapon convoy in the area of Palmyra.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov discussed with Ambassador Gary Koren “recent developments in Syria,” a statement by the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

The rare Russian move indicated two things.
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