U.N. working to add IDF to list of entities responsible for inhumane acts against children

By Adam Kredo, NEW BEACON,   March 2, 2017 5:31 pm

The White House and Congress are considering slashing U.S. funding to the United Nations in light of its most recent effort to declare the Jewish state’s fighting forces a chief violator of children’s rights, according to multiple conversations with U.S. officials.

The U.N. is working to add the Israeli Defense Forces, or IDF, to a list of entities such as terror groups that are responsible for inhumane acts against children.

The move would be just the latest anti-Israel salvo by the U.N., which caused controversy late last year when, with the backing of the Obama administration, it moved to condemn Israel for building homes for Jewish people in Jerusalem.
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By Ted Belman

On Tuesday of this week I went to Tel Aviv to attend a political convention intended to give birth to a New political party called Zehut (Identity). Moshe Feiglin as expected was elected Chairman.

It was a raucous event, attended by close to 2000 fans and diehards. I crossed paths with Shmuel Sackett, Feiglin’s lieutenant, who organized the event. I have known him for years and occasionally correspond with him. I also met up with Yishai Fleisher who is competing for a seat in the party.

I then attended a VIP dinner and was lucky to sit opposite Moshe Feiglin himself. We chatted.

In Aug 2016 I posted The Feiglin Solution. I urge you to read it again.

A few weeks later I posted Feiglin’s Zehut Party is expecting over 12 seats in next election. Read it again to get a sense of what Zehut is about.

Finding a political solution is challenging while the Trump administration is weighing its approach to the war

By Yaroslav Trofimov, WSJ March 2, 2017

GENEVA—Peace talks between Syria’s regime and opposition face a formidable obstacle: Until President Donald Trump’s administration decides how to approach the six-year war, it makes little sense for anyone to compromise.

“It’s very difficult to reach any political solution if there is not a positive, active and serious role of the U.S.A.,” said Nasr Alhariri, head of the opposition delegation to the current round of talks now under way in Geneva.

After all, President Bashar al-Assad’s regime holds out hope that Mr. Trump’s eagerness to mend fences with Russia will lead Washington to further curtail support for the rebels.
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by John Rossomando, IPT News
March 1, 2017

Some supposedly very smart, well-informed people are making ignorant and misleading claims in the debate over designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group.

The Trump administration is considering designating the nearly 90-year-old Brotherhood, which seeks a global Islamic state governed by religious law known as shariah.
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BY SARIT ZEHAVI, JPOST MARCH 1, 2017

In 2013, the US designated the al-Nusra Front a terrorist organization, since it was a branch of al-Qaida in Syria.

Just like in the Sykes-Picot Agreement during World War I, when the British and French divided the Middle East between them, various factors involved in the fighting in Syria – Middle East countries and opposition organizations, great powers and terrorist organizations – are doing the same thing today; they all want a share of the spoils. There is just one problem: the fighting is far from over in Syria, following the collapse of the third cease-fire.

The rebel groups The Free Syrian Army (FSA) is in fact an umbrella organization of different groups of rebels across Syria, each group with a different agenda. After the signing of the most recent cease-fire, led by Russia and Turkey, Moscow claimed the agreement did not include the Salafi factions affiliated with al-Qaida, while the FSA disagreed. While this disagreement may seem purely tactical, it is in fact very important to clarify, as it is a major key to understanding why the fighting in Syria continues despite the cease-fires.
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Tunnels beneath destroyed ‘Jonah’s tomb’ reveal ‘treasure-house of world’s 1st great empire’

By Jay Baggett, WND

Inscription on the Lachish Reliefs. Left hand side inscription states: “Sennacherib, the mighty king, king of the country of Assyria, sitting on the throne of judgment, before the city of Lachish. I give permission for its slaughter.”

Archaeologists in Iraq are decrying the latest destruction of the nation’s historic heritage by the Islamic State while celebrating an amazing discovery of biblical significance made possible only by the terror group’s looting.

The slow recovery of Mosul by Iraqi forces, backed by an international coalition, has allowed archaeologists to examine ISIS’ damage to artifacts at the site of ancient Nineveh. In 2014, shortly after taking control of Mosul, ISIS militants rigged the Nabi Younus shrine – the traditional burial site of the prophet Jonah – with explosives and blew it up.
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Israel’s force in bilateral relations will greatly increase if compared to the current confrontation with the EU behemoth with its more than 500 million inhabitants.

BY MANFRED GERSTENFELD, JPOST

After Brexit referendum, the breakup of the European Union through a collapse or voluntary disbandment can no longer be considered a fully absurd scenario. To create a framework of thought it is worthwhile to start analyzing what that could mean for Israel, even though Israel will not play any role in the process if it develops.

Particularly in the new century, the EU has taken increasingly hostile and occasionally antisemitic positions toward Israel on several issues. This led the Simon Wiesenthal Center to put the EU in third place in its 2015 list of worldwide promoters of antisemitic and/or anti-Israel incidents. It gave as reason: “The European Union has chosen to label products from the Golan Heights and disputed territories on the West Bank alone, ignoring the products of other occupied and disputed territories in the world such as Western Sahara, Kashmir, Tibet and products from areas controlled by terrorist Hamas and Hezbollah. This use of double standards against Israel typifies modern anti-Israelism and has been at the core of antisemitism for many centuries.”
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DEBKAfile Exclusive Report   March 1, 2017,

Secret contacts currently underway ahead of the Arab League summit later this month may bring about a sea change in the Arab world’s relationship with Syrian President Bashar Assad, DEBKAfile’s sources report.

On Saturday, Feb. 25, Egypt’s parliamentary committee for Arab affairs called for the return of Syria to the Arab League. This step symbolized an initiative launched by a number of leaders to invite Syrian President Bashar Assad to the March 29 Arab Summit in Amman – five years after Syria was expelled from the 22-member Arab League over the savage civil war then at its height.
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T. Belman. Not a word about the peace process. That’s a good thing.

By Patricia McCarthy, AMERICAN THINKER

Tuesday’s address to a joint session of Congress was without a doubt the best speech President Donald Trump has ever given, perhaps the best speech to a joint session of Congress since the great Ronald Reagan. But who could watch it and not be embarrassed by our infantile, bitter Left?

It was uplifting, optimistic, full of unifying words, and obvious to everyone. The pathetic exception was the Democrats in Congress. And those were the ones who did not boycott the event.

Like spoiled children, who had not gotten their way, they refused to applaud at the most obvious good-for-the-country lines. In fact, they were like a clique of mean girls in middle school who have decided to target one of their own.
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Comptroller’s long-awaited findings about 2014 operation confirm army was unprepared for Hamas’s tunnels, prime minister failed to keep security cabinet in the loop

BY JUDAH ARI GROSS, TOI

Israel’s state comptroller took military and political leaders to task for their failure to prepare adequately for the threat of attack tunnels ahead of the 2014 war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, in a pair of long-awaited, highly critical reports published on Tuesday.
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By Daniel Greenfield, FPM

Anti-Israel hate group J Street tried to get someone, anyone, from the current administration to come to its Israel-bashing fest. While in the past the Soros-funded hate group had been able to count on a star roster of Obama people, this time they’ve been turned down by everyone at the White House.

Even the janitor.

Instead the star of the hatefest will be Bernie Sanders, who backed Jesse Jackson despite his anti-Semitic slurs, and who lied and claimed that Israel had killed 10,000 people.

Joining the senile Socialist will be fresh blood like Nancy Pelosi and Jan Schakowsky. Also assorted representatives of the PLO terror state.

J Street won’t be getting anyone from the Israeli government either. It appears. But they can always invite back some JVP BDS bigots to discuss how they plan to destroy the Jewish State.

By Prof. Hillel Frisch, BESA

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Many believe that US financial and military support for Israel harms the interests of the US, especially in the Middle East and North Africa. One way to test this assumption is to explore whether US support for Israel has a negative effect on exports of the US to the countries of the region. It doesn’t. US exports to the region have grown. Fluctuations within that overall growth trend are easily explained by oil prices, the chief source of income of many of the consumer states – not by Israel’s “offenses” against Hezbollah and Hamas.
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By Brian Thomas, JIHAD WATCH

There are two fundamental ways to view Islam in the West, and it is now clear those who hold to the “Islam is a religion of peace” view, which has held sway over the affairs of the West for so long, are fighting a desperate rear-guard action to remain in charge following Trump’s rise to power.

As we watch the public pronouncements and the actions of the new administration, we have to carefully determine which path administration officials are on.
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T. Belman. I have some trouble with this article.

While I was coming to the conclusion that Trump wanted to walk back “radical Islamic terrorism” stuff, this article confirmed my suspicions.

ISIS may not be “Islamic”, jihad, both stealth and violent, is. With Wahhabism and the Muslim Brotherhood pushing this, we must push back.

This article also ignores what is happening in Europe. A conquest of Europe is taking place according to Islamic doctrine. Europe will be transformed and not for the better.

As for American immigration policies, I am more concerned about the Islamization of America than about the odd terrorist that comes in.

America should ban the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR and should institute policies that push assimilation. She must abandon the multicultural policy.

By J.E. Dyer, LIBERTY UNYIELDING

Since 9/11, there has been an orthodoxy split in Western politics. On one side are people who say that we should not call the global security problem “radical Islam,” partly because that tars millions of non-terrorist Muslims and their religion with the brush of radicalism. On the other are people who say that we must call it “radical Islam,” partly because the motives for terrorism by Muslims trace to the commands of Islam, and if we don’t make that clear, terrorists can just keep hiding among their co-religionists.
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T. Belman. Israel can no longer try to be bipartisan. Israel must do what it must do and let the cards fall where they may. American Jews no longer control the Democratic Party. AIPAC is useless. It couldn’t prevent the takeover of the party. Did it even try? American Jews must rethink what it means to be pro-Israel. This will align them more with Israel and less with the Democratic Party.

The Democrats are in a dangerous place for themselves, for the US and for the American Jewish community.

By Caroline Glick, JPOST

Was former Secretary of labor and assistant attorney-general Tom Perez’s victory over Congressman Keith Ellison over the weekend in the race to serve as the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee a victory of centrist Democrats over radical leftists in the party? That is how the mainstream media is portraying Perez’s victory.

Along these lines, Prof. Allen Dershowitz, a lifelong Democrat who promised to quit the party if Ellison was elected due to his documented history of antisemitism and hostility toward Israel, hailed Perez’s election. Speaking to Fox News, Dershowitz said that Perez’s election over Ellison “is a victory in the war against bigotry, antisemitism, the anti-Israel push of the hard Left within the Democratic Party.”
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By Dr Reuven Berko, ISRAEL HAYOM

At the Munich Security Conference this month, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman declared his commitment to the two-state solution and reiterated his vision for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict based on a regional arrangement with land and population swaps. Lieberman has studied history, and it appears the foremost intellectual and historical lessons he has learned stem from the experiences of European nations.

Indeed, after World War Two, millions of people in Europe were forced to emigrate from their isolated ethnic, religious, or national regions, and join their geographically distant brethren; and in the wake of the murderous atrocities, sovereignty over numerous enclaves changed hands. In Arab countries as well, “coexistence” between ethnic groups and minorities was characterized by destruction, murder and migration, as the world stood idly by.
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By CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL, NYT

President Trump presents a problem to those who look at politics in terms of systematic ideologies. He is either disinclined or unable to lay out his agenda in that way. So perhaps it was inevitable that Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, who does have a gift for thinking systematically, would be so often invoked by Mr. Trump’s opponents. They need him not just as a hate object but as a heuristic, too. There may never be a “Trumpism,” and unless one emerges, the closest we may come to understanding this administration is as an expression of “Bannonism.”
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