T. Belman. I will be attending this convention on Tuesday as I have followed Feiglin for some time now and know a number of his key American people.

‘Zehut’ Party founder grants Arutz Sheva interview ahead of opening conference: ‘Message burning in my bones: State must fulfill mission’.

By Yoni Kempinski, INN

Moshe Feiglin, former Knesset member, founder and candidate to head the Zehut (“Identity”) party, imparts his political, economic, and social philosophy in an exclusive and extended interview with Arutz Sheva.

Feiglin is not hesitant to say he is preparing for elections and says the government is in its final stretch: “An average government in Israel serves two-and-a-half years, so we are in the final stretch of an average term and this conference brings Zehut into the political dialogue. We will vote in our convention using the primary system. Following the conference we will create tools such as a political slogan and campaign slogans. This conference is going to be unique, full of passion and culture, joy and hope.”
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T. Belman.  I am in touch with a number of experts who say that Flynn didn’t lie to Pence. It is obvious that Trump wanted him out rather than in. He could have stood by him. But there is more to it than that. Why didn’t Trump replace him with a similarly minded guy. On the contrary he chose the opposite who espoused that Islam is a religion of peace. Did Trump want to abandon his line about “radical Islamist terrorism”? We will have to see if Trump continues using that phrase.

The fact that McMaster in his first public remarks after his appointment, stood in opposition to his boss. Its like he was giving a message. McMaster also immediately selected McCain to head an important committee on National Security. Perhaps Trump threw Flynn under the bus in a deal made with McCain to buy McCain’s silence on Russia and Islam.  We will see.

By Michael Ledeen, FORBES

Why should I challenge the powerful words of Bryan Wright or the extensive reporting of Adam Kredo?  The political assassination of General Mike Flynn was carried out by a cabal of CIA officials and Obama loyalists, in tandem with allies in the media.  It’s an ugly spectacle, damaging to our national interests, and perhaps unique in our history, as Senator Cruz has said.

Flynn’s phone calls with Russian officials, which took place before he officially entered the White House, do not appear to violate any law. Yet the release of classified information about them certainly is a crime.  As Wright says, “The spies who are plotting against President Trump are breaking U.S. laws. They’re violating their oaths. And they’re committing treason to remedy (perceived) treason.”
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BY BEN LYNFIELD, JPOST

An amendment to the Planning and Building Law that will increase enforcement and penalties for illegal construction is being ardently opposed by Arab MKs and dovish rights groups on the grounds that it ignores alleged government failures to provide Arabs with the means to build legally.

“We are concerned this will punish people who have no choice and will lead to the criminalizing of people who did not build with the intention of committing a crime or an offense,” said Raghad Jaraisy, head of the Arab minority project at the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.
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So much for the moderate Muslim

By Dr Stephen M Kirby, JIHAD WATCH

In December 2015, a small group of Muslims met in Washington, DC to discuss the reform of Islam. With media fanfare, they named themselves the Muslim Reform Movement (MRM), issued a Declaration for Muslim Reform, and became the new face of “Muslim reformers.”

There was just one fundamental problem: the MRM never had support from the larger Muslim community.
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By Michael Anton, AMERICAN AFFAIRS

Note: Michael Anton is Deputy Assistant to the President for Strategic Communications, National Security Council. This article was prepared before the author accepted his current position. The views here reflect only those of the author. They do not represent the views of the Trump administration, the National Security Advisor, or the U.S. government.

In a year of upset political apple carts, none were rattled harder, or lost more fruit, than traditional notions of American foreign policy. Donald Trump shocked a lot of people over a lot of issues. But no anti-Trump Republican economists orchestrated elaborate letters, with hundreds of signatories, to swear they would never serve in a Trump administration. No dissident Republican trade negotiators ostentatiously switched parties and vowed to support Trump’s opponent. Nor did Republican immigration experts flood the cable networks to renounce and denounce their party’s nominee.

Yet all of the above—and more—happened with respect to foreign policy. The specific reasons why Republican foreign policy operatives chose to denounce Trump’s plans may never be clear. We shall instead explore what we think they had in mind.
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By PETER BAKER, NYT

WASHINGTON — As commander of an armored cavalry troop, H. R. McMaster fought in the largest tank battle of the Persian Gulf war, earning a Silver Star in the process. Afterward, the young captain reflected on how different his experience had been from the accounts he had read about Vietnam.

So when he arrived at the University of North Carolina for graduate studies in fall 1992, questions swirled through his head: How had Vietnam become an American war? Why did American troops die without a clear idea of their mission? “I began to seek answers to those questions,” he later wrote.
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T. Belman. The fact that McMaster should say these things within days after his appointment tells us a lot. And you can assume that the resignation of Flynn was part of the deal. Normally, if Flynn had to go for some error you would expect that a “look-alike” would be appointed in his place. This time the opposite.

The question is, what did Trump get in return?

NSA pick McMaster told the National Defense University that “the Islamic State is not Islamic.”

By Robert Spencer, FPM

President Trump has confirmed that retired Lt. General H.R. McMaster is his new choice to be his National Security Adviser. There have been indications that the Republican establishment has been trying to co-opt Trump and keep him from effecting the sweeping reform that he has promised, and this appointment could indicate that at least for the moment, these forces have gained the upper hand.

A source that has asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals has informed me that he was present in August 2014 when McMaster was the featured speaker for the President’s Lecture Series at National Defense University in Washington, D.C. McMaster addressed an assembly of all the students in the colleges of the university, including the National War College, the College of International Security Affairs (CISA), the Dwight D. Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy (formerly the Industrial College of the Armed Forces), and the others.
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Trump is correct in realizing that there are two distinct types of Muslim immigrants, and the government now has proof of that in writing.

By Dr. Mordechai Kedar, INN

This article is being written in Cincinnati, Ohio, where the the hottest topic in the news, as it is in the media all across the USA, is President Trump’s executive order of three weeks ago, banning immigration to the USA from seven Islamic countries which he claims are terror-ridden. The countries on the list are Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. This order is in line with the promise Trump made to his voters during the election campaign, a promise made in answer to the growing fears Americans have regarding Muslim immigration.

The source of the fears is a combination of four factors:

1. The extreme violence characterizing those countries, their spawning of terrorist organizations and the large number of refugees attempting to leave them for other countries.
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A unique, funny and disarming man gets to the parts of America that Obama seems not to have noticed, even those populated by African-Americans.

By Prof. Phyllis Chesler, INN

Many serious people have researched and written about anti-Semitism—but only a handful have attained a large, popular audience. This is understandable since the subject is sobering, even frightening. Often, our most distinguished experts find themselves preaching to the converted or only to other scholars who specialize in this area. How can we wake civilians up if they glaze over at our footnotes, taste despair, not triumph, in our documentation, and fail to understand our complex analyses?

And then there are the gatekeepers who refuse to review such work—and if they do, make it a point to find just the right kind of critic, (often someone Jewish), who will mock and minimize the idea that contemporary anti-Semitism exists, or that it endangers Jews or the Jewish state. They tend to deem such work “hysterical,” “Cassandra-like,” lacking in nuance, utterly misguided.

Enter Tuvia Tenenbom.
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T. Belman. Talk about fake news. Add man-made climate change to the list. All antisemitism derives from fake news. The distorted opinions on Trump are part of this story. So is the Palestinian narrative.

The infamous Joseph Goebbels said “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

And thus all lies are supported by limiting free speech and advocating political correctness.

You will recall the Torah words “na’aseh v’nishma“ – “We will do and we will hear/understand.” I just read an article which mandates advocates to win people over on an emotional level because once you have their heart they are oblivious to truth.

In other words, fake news captures the heart. What comes later has little effect.

by DEROY MURDOCK, NATIONAL REVIEW  October 16, 2014 4:30 PM

So why did his administration sit on the evidence of Saddam Hussein’s WMDs? New media accounts — including coverage by NRO’s Patrick Brennan — confirm what I repeatedly have written since the depths of Operation Iraqi Freedom: The late dictator Saddam Hussein did have weapons of mass death, and the United States of America was correct to invade Iraq, find these toxins, and destroy them.

Also vital: padlocking this Baathist general store for militant-Islamic terrorism. As I explained on July 17, 2006: While the liberal press gently sleeps, evidence continues to mount that Hussein had WMDs, though perhaps not in quantities that would bulge warehouses.
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Two new projects seek to stop the dramatic drop in water levels at the world’s lowest point.

By Zafrir Rinat, HAARETZ | Feb. 24, 2017

It has been hard to find reasons for optimism about the Dead Sea in recent years. Its water level has continued to fall at a rate of over a meter per year, while thousands of sinkholes are appearing in the dried-out areas around its shores – systematically destroying the tourism and transportation infrastructure in the region.

Until recently, plans to artificially stream water into the Dead Sea looked like a distant dream. But all those involved in trying to save the sea are convinced such a project is feasible, although they admit concerns about possible environmental dangers.

Next week, a special issue on the matter will be published by the Israeli journal Ecology & Environment. The journal will provide an up-to-date and extensive picture of the reality at one of the world’s most important natural wonders.
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Column: How conservatism is changing in the Trump era

By Matthew Continetti, NEW BEACON

Decades of intellectual and political activity preceded the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. William F. Buckley Jr. founded National Review in 1955. A little less than a decade later, National Review publisher William Rusher helped orchestrate Barry Goldwater’s presidential nomination. The following year, 1965, Buckley ran for mayor of New York City and Irving Kristol, then still a member of the anti-Communist left, founded The Public Interest. The year after that, Reagan was elected governor of California. The 1970s saw the proliferation of single-issue interest groups that comprised the New Right. The first Conservative Political Action Conference was held in 1973. In 1977, a year after losing the Republican nomination to incumbent Gerald Ford, Reagan addressed the conference. “The new Republican Party I am speaking about,” he said, “is going to have room for the man and the woman in the factories, for the farmer, for the cop on the beat, and the millions of Americans who may never have thought of joining our party before, but whose interests coincide with those represented by principled Republicanism.” When President Reagan took office in 1981, he could count on 25 years of accumulated conservative thought, argument, rhetoric, policy proposals, and political experience. The movement came first. The voters followed.
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T. Belman. This is beyond belief.

 By Ed Straker, AMERICAN THINKER

President Trump’s new National Security Advisor doesn’t believe it is “helpful” to say the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism.”

President Trump’s newly appointed national security adviser has told his staff that Muslims who commit terrorist acts are perverting their religion, rejecting a key ideological view of other senior Trump advisers and signaling a potentially more moderate approach to the Islamic world.

The adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, told the staff of the National Security Council on Thursday, in his first “all hands” staff meeting, that the label “radical Islamic terrorism” was not helpful because terrorists are “un-Islamic,” according to people who were in the meeting.
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TIME.COM

Bret Stephens delivered the Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture this week at the University of California, Los Angeles. Read the full text of his remarks below:

I’m profoundly honored to have this opportunity to celebrate the legacy of Danny Pearl, my colleague at The Wall Street Journal.

My topic this evening is intellectual integrity in the age of Donald Trump. I suspect this is a theme that would have resonated with Danny.

When you work at The Wall Street Journal, the coins of the realm are truth and trust — the latter flowing exclusively from the former. When you read a story in the Journal, you do so with the assurance that immense reportorial and editorial effort has been expended to ensure that what you read is factual.
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T. Belman. Not mentioned here is the effect of his changes to the trade policy.. Will keeping jobs at home, thereby increasing labour costs, retard the economy.

By LAWRENCE KUDLOW, Special to the NY Sun | February 25, 2017

Virtually the whole world is beating up on the Trump administration for daring to predict that low marginal tax rates, regulatory rollbacks, and the repeal of Obamacare will generate in the years ahead economic growth of between 3% and 3.5%.

In a CNBC interview last week, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin held the line on this forecast. He also argued the need for dynamic budget scoring to capture the effects of faster growth. Good for him.

What’s so interesting about all the economic-growth naysaying today is that President Obama’s first budget forecast roughly eight years ago was much rosier than Mr. Trump’s. There was nary a peep of criticism from the mainstream press outlets and the consensus of economists.
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Economist Intelligence Unit

— Surging investment aswell as stronger external demand and continued robust consumption have ensured that the Israeli economy has continued to outperform government expectations and most other developed economies.

Fourth quarter 2016 annualised real GDP growth of 6.2% according to the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) has left annual growth at 4% for the year as a whole, its strongest performance since 2013. However, some elements of Israel’s growth are unlikely to be sustainable at the levels seen in 2016 in the longer term, and the strength of the economy also poses its own challenges.

The new data have led the CBS to revise its figure for overall growth in 2016 to 4% from an earlier estimate of 3.6%, which itself was considerably higher than government growth projections earlier in the year of below 3%. These relatively gloomy forecasts followed on from the sluggish performance of 2015 when the economy grew by 2.5% in real terms. The main factor behind the surge in growth in the fourth quarter was the continued high
level of consumer expenditure, which has characterised much of the year, but which also drew in imports at a rapid pace, putting a brake on the overall rate of GDP growth. However, although private consumption growth rates peaked earlier in the year-private consumption was 7.4% higher in the first half of the year compared with the second half of 2015 but rose less sharply, by 4.9%, between the first half and the second half of
2016-investment and exports of goods and services have stayed high.
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ADL’s Greenblatt takes on the president’s policies; ZOA’s Klein defends them.

BY GARY ROSENBLATT, JEWISH WEEK

That is, it has changed who’s in and who’s out in terms of White House preference, from the ADL (Anti-Defamation League), a legacy institution now more in the role of outsider given its feisty readiness to openly criticize the president’s policies, to the ZOA (Zionist Organization of America), which in recent weeks has moved from the communal wilderness on Israel issues to best reflect the emerging views of the new administration on the Mideast.

In fact, ZOA is to the Trump White House what J Street was to the Obama White House: the go-to Jewish organization on Israel.
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by Vic Rosenthal, Abu Yehuda

On Tuesday, a military court pronounced sentence on Sgt. Elor Azaria, called in Israel’s media “the soldier who shot in Hevron.”

Azaria was convicted of manslaughter after he put a bullet into the head of an Arab terrorist who had been wounded after he stabbed and injured an IDF soldier in March of last year. The incident was filmed by a Palestinian working for the left-wing NGO B’tselem. The video was shown on Israeli television and a massive media/political circus ensued. Even before the IDF investigation was finished, the army Chief of Staff and the Defense Minister made public statements accusing Azaria of misconduct in the harshest terms.
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Paul Schnee letter to L.A. Jewish Journal

Dear Sirs,

David Suissa’s article should really have been entitled, “Is Trump Worse Than Obama?” but that would have forced him to list all of Obama’s lies from, “If you like your doctor; you can keep your doctor” to his “bullshit”, as Mr. Suissa puts it, during the 2012 election campaign about his intention to dismantle Iran’s nuclear capabilities. In between and extending far beyond those two bookends was the moving curtain of lies which characterized the grievous, suppurating and poisonous national wound of Barack Obama’s presidency.

When listening to President Obama one always had to keep the lines from George Orwell’s novel, 1984, firmly in mind, “The essential act of the party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty…” otherwise one would be unable to penetrate the membrane of deceit with which his entire administration was shrouded. A good example of this was when Susan Rice appeared on five, count them, Sunday morning news programs to tell us that it was a thirteen minute trailer about a movie making fun of Mohammed that caused the attack on our facility in Benghazi where our ambassador and three other brave Americans were deliberately killed. On the Richter Scale of Lies & Bullshit this performance registered at 100 and is never likely to be surpassed by any of President Trump’s hyperbolic spasms.
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Yoram will be in the US in March, May and August, 2017, available for speaking engagements.

By Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought: US-Israel Initiative”
Straight from the Jerusalem Boardroom #218,

1. Notwithstanding Israel’s unique challenges of the chaotically unpredictable state of the Middle East, the Islamic and Arab onslaught, the scarcity of natural resources (other than brain power), the UN enmity, the European appeasement of rogue regimes, systematic criticism by the “elite” media and the attempt to boycott, divest and sanction, the independent, non-partisan quarterly, The American Interest, stated on January 24: “This is there is a new name on our list of The Eight Greats, Israel….

“Israel is a rising power with a growing impact on world affairs…. Large off-shore discoveries of natural gas and oil are turning Israel into an energy exporter [e.g., a $3.5bn-$4bn dollar initiative was just concluded to expand Israel’s natural gas fields]…. Turkey’s ties with Israel strengthened…. Israel’s newfound clout comes from the rise of industrial sectors and technologies that good Israeli schools, smart Israeli policies and talented Israeli thinkers and entrepreneurs have built…. The rise of domestic cybersecurity and infotech economy…. Private investors all over the world look to invest in Israel’s tech startups…. It’s not just America; India, China and Russia want a piece of Israeli tech wizardry…. In the Middle East, Israel has been transformed from a pariah state to a kingmaker…. Never has Egypt-Israel security cooperation been as close as it is today…. The rise of Iran has made Israel critical to the survival of the Sunni Arabs, including the Gulf States…. Israel begins 2017 as the keystone of a regional anti-Iran alliance, a most-favored-nation in the White House and a country that enjoys good relations with all of the world’s major powers bar Iran….
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