By Lynne Kessler Lechter, HADASSAH MAGAZINE

The United Kingdom’s recent decision to leave the European Union was predicated on its citizens’ choice between self-government and the continuation of anonymous rule by bureaucrats in Brussels. The British polls, pundits and politicos didn’t accurately predict the outcome of the vote. Donald Trump did, and he did because sovereignty—the authority of a person, group or state to govern itself—has always been the consistent subtext of his messaging.

We Americans are blessed with a Constitution and jurisprudence (based in large measure on laws set forth in the Torah) that honor individual life, dignity and self-determination. In this system, government’s main purpose is to protect us from internal and external harm. In exchange, we abdicate vigilantism and agree to abide by the government’s laws. Power flows to and from the citizens and the state.
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By Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen, BESA, September 30, 2016

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 368

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Contrary to the accepted wisdom regarding the effectiveness of barriers, there is no substitute for troops on the ground and for civilian settlements that anchor a dominant presence. Israel needs a flexible, dynamic form of security in full friction with the resident populations. An Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank would therefore be ill-advised, and a Palestinian state would in any case inherently undermine Israel’s security. The best hope for both parties is coexistence within the same geographical space.
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The West maintains that Israel occupies Palestinian territory in the “West Bank.” This is untrue. There has never been any “Palestinian territory.”

By Melanie Phillips, JPOST

After the death of Shimon Peres, BBC radio’s flagship current affairs show Today interviewed Israel’s ambassador to the UK, Mark Regev.

The presenter persistently suggested to him that Peres’s record as a peacemaker ran contrary to Israel’s subsequent record of failure to make peace with the Palestinians, and that the absence of a two-state solution was all the fault of Benjamin Netanyahu.
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So Obama let Syria burn. He let Iran and Hezbollah transform the country into their colony. And he let Putin transform the Mediterranean into a Russian lake.

By Caroline B Glick, JPOST

A new Syria is emerging and with it, a new Middle East and world are presenting themselves. Our new world is not a peaceful or stable one. It is a harsh place.

The new Syria is being born in the rubble of Aleppo.

The eastern side of the city, which has been under the control of US-supported rebel groups since 2012, is being bombed into the Stone Age by Russian and Syrian aircraft.
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By David Wainer, BLOOMBERG

It was well past midnight late in August as a convoy of Israeli armored vehicles raced through the winding streets of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank. Arriving at a city center mansion, soldiers broke the front gate and detained a middle-aged Palestinian couple in night clothes. In the basement, they seized weapon-making machinery, arms and ammunition.

Roman Goffman, the Israeli commander who oversaw the operation, called it one of the more serious recent weapons finds. But in many ways it was a typical night in the West Bank, and helps explain why a year after Palestinian youths began a campaign of stabbing Israelis, widespread predictions that the latest wave of violence would evolve into a third Palestinian uprising have not materialized.
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By MARTIN SHERMAN 

Paradoxically, it was not Peres’s successes – but his failures – that catapulted him to international stardom; it was not his impressive accomplishments that made him a global celebrity but the disastrous fiascoes in pursuit of his wildly unrealistic illusions  

Ambition drove many men to become false; to have one thought locked in the breast, another ready on the tongue.

-Gaius Sallustius Crispus, Roman historian and politician, (86 BCE – c. 35 BCE)

It is our experience that political leaders do not always mean the opposite of what they say.

-Abba Eban, Israeli diplomat and politician (1919-2002) 
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Poll – Now Leads Hillary with Millennial Voters

Hillary Up by 6 Pts. Sampled 44% Democrats, 33% Republicans (Actual Result Trump +2.5%)

technopeasant • 3 minutes ago
PPD tracking poll:

Clinton: 41. 5 (+1.0)
Trump: 41.1 (-1.8)
Johnson: 9.9% (+0.3)
Stein: 2.7% (+0.6)
Und: 4.8% (-0.1)

HC+0.4

technopeasant • 12 minutes ago
Rasmussen weekly national poll:
Clinton: 42% (+3)
Trump: 41% (-3)
Johnson: 7% (-1)
Stein: 2% (0)
Other: 3% (0)
Und: 5%

9/26–9/28 (1500 likely voters) Brackets last week

A Reuters and a PPP poll released Wednesday both showed Clinton four points ahead nationally.

Despite ninth president’s efforts to promote peace in the Middle East, no Arab leader will pay tribute in person • Egypt, Jordan to send their ambassadors • PA President Abbas will not attend funeral • Arab media paints unflattering portrait of Peres.

Daniel Siryoti and Israel Hayom Staff

In a surprising move, no Arab leader will arrive in Israel to attend the funeral of former President Shimon Peres, who died on Wednesday.

Dozens of world leaders are expected to attend the funeral, and began arriving in Israel on Thursday morning.

The decision by Arab officials to avoid the service puzzled many in the Foreign Ministry, given the ninth president’s significant contribution to promoting peace in the Middle East.
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By bringing fighter jets and, allegedly, nuclear weapons to the Jewish state, Shimon Peres gave the tiny country the tools to survive

BY JUDAH ARI GROSS, TOI

Before Shimon Peres became the man of peace extolled by world leaders for his dedication to coexistence, he was a man of defense and security, setting up some of Israel’s most important military victories and strategic assets.

To many, Peres is synonymous with the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords, for which he was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, and his eponymous Center for Peace, which promotes dialogue and opportunities for both Israelis and Palestinians. Yet few people in Israel have contributed more to the country’s military capabilities.
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The tale of Paris’s consent to build a plutonium reactor for the Jewish state 60 years ago illustrates the indefatigable young Shimon Peres’s capacity for achieving the seemingly impossible

By Mitch Ginsburg, TOI

Shimon Peres and David Ben-Gurion visit Israel’s nuclear reactor in Dimona (Defense Ministry Archives)

In late September 1957, Israel was set to sign an agreement with France. The French Atomic Energy Commission, after four years of negotiations, had agreed to provide Israel with a plutonium reactor. All that was needed in order to cement the deal was the signature of the French foreign minister and his prime minister.

What happened during the next 24 hours, as documented in Michael Bar-Zohar’s Hebrew biography of Shimon Peres, “Phoenix,” seems to epitomize the political suavity and steely tenacity of Israel’s ninth president.
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By Hemih Idiz, Al Monitor

Flying back from New York, where he addressed the UN General Assembly’s annual meeting, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters on his plane that Turkey would participate in a US-led operation against the Islamic State (IS) stronghold of Raqqa, provided Syrian Kurdish fighters from the People’s Protection Units (YPG) are not involved in it.

THE HILL

Congress voted Wednesday to override President Obama for the first time in his eight-year tenure, as the House followed the Senate in rejecting a veto of legislation allowing families of terrorist victims to sue governments suspected of sponsoring terrorism.

The House easily cleared the two-thirds threshold to push back against the veto. The final tally was 348-77, with 18 Republicans and 59 Democrats voting not to override the veto.

The Senate voted 97-1 in favor of the override earlier in the day, with only Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) voting to sustain the president’s veto. Read more…

by Efraim Karsh, Middle East Quarterly , Fall 2016

Twenty-three years after its euphoric launch on the White House lawn, the Oslo “peace process” between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) stands out as one of the worst calamities to have afflicted the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

For Israel, it has been the starkest strategic blunder in its history, establishing an ineradicable terror entity on its doorstep, deepening its internal cleavages, destabilizing its political system, and weakening its international standing. For the West Bank and Gaza Palestinians, it has brought subjugation to the corrupt and repressive PLO and Hamas regimes, which reversed the hesitant advent of civil society in these territories, shattered their socioeconomic wellbeing, and made the prospects of peace and reconciliation with Israel ever more remote. This in turn means that, even if the territories were to be internationally recognized as a fully-fledged Palestinian state (with or without a formal peace treaty with Israel), this will be a failed entity in the worst tradition of Arab dictatorships at permanent war with both Israel and its own subjects.
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By Michael Lumish, ISRAEL THRIVES

The great unspoken tension within the progressive-left, today, is the ongoing ideological conflict between the dominant multicultural ideal and the declining ideal of universal human rights.

Given the racialized nature of World War II it is not the least bit surprising that American liberalism shifted from a primary concern with leveling the economic playing-field, under FDR, to what we might call “racial liberalism” as it emerged and evolved in the post-war era with the rise of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement.
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Undecideds Go to Trump Over Hillary 34% to 5%

By Jim Hoft, THE GATEWAY PUNDIT Sep 28th, 2016 12:11 pm

Donald Trump leads Hillary Clinton by four points following the presidential debate on Monday.
Undecideds swung to Trump over Hillary 34% to 5%.

by ANDREW C. MCCARTHY , NATIONAL REVIEW

Hillary couldn’t be proven guilty without proving the president guilty as well. ‘How is this not classified?” So exclaimed Hillary Clinton’s close aide and confidante, Huma Abedin. The FBI had just shown her an old e-mail exchange, over Clinton’s private account, between the then-secretary of state and a second person, whose name Abedin did not recognize.

The FBI then did what the FBI is never supposed to do: The agents informed their interviewee (Abedin) of the identity of the second person. It was the president of the United States, Barack Obama, using a pseudonym to conduct communications over a non-secure e-mail system — something anyone with a high-level security clearance, such as Huma Abedin, would instantly realize was a major breach. Abedin was sufficiently stunned that, for just a moment, the bottomless capacity of Clinton insiders to keep cool in a scandal was overcome. “How is this not classified?”
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BY TYLER O’NEIL, PJ MEDIA

Notorious liberal filmmaker Michael Moore seemed to explode with rage on Twitter last night. Not only did he think Republican nominee Donald Trump won the first presidential debate, he warned Clinton backers that unless they did something earth-shattering, Trump will take the White House.

“Pro-Hillary gloaters doing end-zone dance again when still on 50-yd line,” Moore tweeted after the debate on Monday evening. “U MUST get it in your head TRUMP IS GONNA WIN and act accordingly!”

In his typical overblown manner, Moore warned that “if u just turn off the TV right now and do nothing, you’ve just elected Donald Trump.” Exasperatedly, he added, “Do something! Plan what you’re going to do tomorrow.”two words: “It’s over.”
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