By Evelyn Gordon

It’s hard to imagine a former justice in any other democracy trying to orchestrate a mass judicial resignation

Note: After Mosaic published my essay “Disorder in the Court” in early December, the magazine invited two people to respond to it, Haviv Rettig Gur and Jeremy Rabkin. The piece below is my response to their responses.

Many thanks to Haviv Rettig Gur and Jeremy Rabkin for their thoughtful responses to my essay, “Disorder in the Court.” Both make valuable points. If I begin with and focus the major part of my comments on Gur, it is because he rightly highlights a major contributor to the problem of judicial activism: namely, the Knesset.
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By David Goldman, PJ MEDIA

President Trump kicked over a hornet’s nest by imposing a 90-day ban on immigration from selected Muslim countries in keeping with his campaign pledges. Andrew McCarthy, the federal prosecutor who convicted the blind sheikh and his accomplices of the first World Trade Center bombing, explains why the ban is legal–despite a federal judge’s restraining order against implementation of the order. I’ll leave it to the legal experts to explain why this is yet another outrageous abuse of power by the judiciary.

The legal issues will be sorted out soon enough. It’s the right policy, despite liberal whining and some conservative complaints.

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T. Belman. Haaretz is unrelenting in its attempts to smear Netanyahu and Trump. It keeps talking about Netanyahu’s guilt even before he is indicted let alone convicted. This Opinion piece on Trump is rife with accusations and conclusions but devoid of any facts which substantiate them. It pushes the narrative that Trump has a “nefarious purpose”, “American democracy is imperiled”, “long-held white-nationalist ideology”, “bigoted”, “dictatorship”, and “the extremism of Trump and his personal Goebbels, Steve Bannon”. It goes on and on.

The author is particularly vexed with Trump’s recent temporary ban on some Muslims saying “That measure also gave explicit preference to Christians, a religious test for admission that has never existed in American history.” The reason Christians are preferred is that Obama denied Christian refugees while green-lighting Muslim refugees. That aside, this is not a religious test, it is an ideology test. At its root is to ban all pro-sharia Islamists. From my perspective,all antisemites should be banned. We know from polls taken that 75% of Muslims from these countries are antisemetic. It rankles that the liberal Jews, Haaretz included, are chomping at the bit to support their entry.

Furthermore, All Trumps’ initiative are in line with his campaign promises that got him elected. Which returns us to the claim that Trump and his supporters are deplorables. The left and the democrats believe that they are right thinking and cannot accept the rule of the majority.

All cultures and all religions are not equal.

The only safe position for the opposition is to assume that every Trump gambit, no matter how seemingly spontaneous, fits a larger, nefarious purpose.

By Samuel G. Freedman. HAARETZ

During Donald Trump’s improbable and inflammatory rise to the presidency, a truism emerged to explain the polar reactions to him: The media takes Trump literally but not seriously, and his supporters take him seriously but not literally.

What this bon mot meant was that journalists made far too much of Trump’s promises to build a wall, ban Muslims, erect trade barriers, destroy Obamacare and so forth, while Trump’s electoral fan base never believed in all details but did see the candidate as a serious figure rather than the demagogic, incoherent clown of liberals’ scorn.
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With Netanyahu’s backing, controversial legislation that would recognize 4,000 West Bank housing units set to become law

BY TIMES OF ISRAEL STAFF

The Knesset this week is set to pass into law a controversial bill that would legalize some 4,000 housing units in the West Bank built on privately-owned Palestinian land.

The so-called Regulation Bill was put on ice in December until US President Donald Trump entered the White House on January 20.

On Saturday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed coalition chairman David Bitan (Likud) to bring the proposed legislation to its second and third readings in the plenum this week, according to Hebrew reports.
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BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 403

By Dr Max Singer

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The US is usually thought to be biased in favor of Israel, even after its recent acceptance of UNSC Resolution 2334. But for many years, the US has been a big part of the reason why the diplomatic world accepts a false narrative of the Arab-Israeli conflict that harms Israel and makes it harder to achieve peace. Washington should move to a truth-telling strategy to dismantle the structure of false views that slander Israel and stand in the way of peace.
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By Philip Rucker and David Filipov, WaPo

By MAX FISHER, NYT

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is delaying its plans to issue two executive orders that would reduce funding to the United Nations and begin a process to review and potentially cancel certain multilateral treaties, according to current and former officials briefed on the matter.

Both draft orders were submitted to the National Security Council for approval, but the council’s advisers were granted less than an hour and a half to review them, though this process normally takes weeks. Federal agencies were granted similarly brief windows for review.

Federal officials that were asked to review the documents balked at their contents, warning they required legal vetting.

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By Jeff Dunitz, THE LID

President Trump on Friday signed sweeping new orders tightening refugee and visa policies including suspending almost all refugee admissions for four months and indefinitely barring entry for some Syrians. Trump said the new measure was intended “to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the United States of America.” The executive order also suspends visa entry into the U.S. from seven terror-prone countries: Syria, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Sudan and Yemen.
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A look at 11 influential members of the tribe who will be working alongside the new president.

BY JOSEFIN DOLSTEN/JTA

American Jews are watching the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidency with both fear and hope.

Many have expressed worries about some of his supporters’ ties to the so-called “alt-right” movement, whose followers traffic variously in white nationalism, anti-immigration sentiment, anti-Semitism and a disdain for “political correctness.” Those fears intensified when Trump named as his chief strategist Stephen Bannon, the former chairman of Breitbart News, a site Bannon once referred to as a “platform” of the alt-right. Trump’s strongly conservative Cabinet picks also back policies on health care, the environment, abortion and civil rights often diametrically opposed to the views of most Jewish voters.
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Instead of the fixation on an independent Palestinian state, the new administration should look east to the Hashemite Kingdom as a stabilizing influence on Palestinian politics.

By Hillel Frish and  Yitzhak Sokoloff, JPOST

IN HIS first meeting with President Donald Trump, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to stake out common ground on the issues that have most troubled American-Israeli relations during the last eight years, namely Iran, and Israel’s settlement policy in Judea and Samaria. Particularly in light of the recent Security Council Resolution 2334 labelling Israel’s settlement activity illegal, he will need to seek American support for renewed Israeli building in Jerusalem and the blocs, and a renewal of the guarantees of the “Bush letter.”
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President looks to scale back U.S. involvement in activities outside the national interest

Edmund Kozak, Polizette

President Trump is reportedly preparing an executive order that will significantly reduce U.S. involvement in the United Nations.

The draft order, “Auditing and Reducing U.S. Funding of International Organizations,” would terminate funding completely for any international organization that meets one or more of several criteria.

The criteria include those that recognize the Palestinian Authority or PLO, fund abortion, or work to circumvent sanctions against Iran or North Korea. The order also calls for “at least a 40 percent overall decrease” in funding to international groups overall.

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By JENNIFER STEINHAUER, NYT

President Trump greeted Speaker Paul D. Ryan as he and Vice President Mike Pence attended a retreat for congressional Republicans in Philadelphia on Thursday. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times

PHILADELPHIA — From the time Donald J. Trump became their candidate until he took the oath of office, congressional Republicans treated his policy pronouncements — largely out of step with Republican dogma — as essentially a distraction. He would talk. They would drive the policies.

But now, the question of whether congressional Republicans would change President Trump or Mr. Trump would change them has an early answer. Mr. Trump cheerfully addressed the group here at their policy retreat on Thursday, and they responded with applause to many proposals they have long opposed.
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By Ben Shapiro, THE DAILY WIRE

Thursday, media outlets across the international spectrum ran with the story that top level State Department officials had quit rather than serve under President Trump. “In the latest display of disquiet among civil servants in Washington over the arrival of the new commander-in-chief, the four top senior officials at the equivalent of America’s foreign ministry, announced that they were standing down,” reported The Independent (UK). “People are quitting the State Department because of Trump,” Business Insider headlined.

Only one problem: these guys didn’t quit. They were fired. 
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Kifah Ziboun and Nazir Majli  Asharq Al Awsat  27 January 2017

Ramallah, Tel Aviv – The Palestinian Authority strongly rejected on Thursday a set of conditions presented by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the resumption of peace talks, including the recognition of Israel as a Jewish State and the continuous security control over areas located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.

The Palestinian Authority described the conditions as “insignificant and unworthy of a response”.

In this regard, Palestinian Foreign Affairs Minister Riyad Malki said: “These are onerous conditions; [Netanyahu] will not find a single Palestinian, who will be ready to deal with them.”
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British Prime Minister Theresa May used her speech in Philadelphia to needle the new Trump administration on a number of issues ranging from globalism to climate change, Islam, and even to defending the European Union.

By Raheem Kassam, BRIETBART

Mrs. May began her speech at the Republican Retreat in Philadelphia with a brief history of Anglo-American relations, invoking the spirit of the Founding Fathers of the U.S. as well as expressing gratitude towards America’s involvement in the World Wars of the 20th century.

But her speech was also littered with politically correct terms, as well as left and centre-left talking points regarding international institutions, Islam, and radical Islamic terrorism, the latter of which she called “Islamist extremism”.
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Why do liberals embrace illiberal players in the Arab-Israeli conflict?

By Noah Beck, INN

Support for Israel among Democrats has plummeted in recent years, a new Pew poll shows, with about as many – 31 percent – saying they sympathize more with the Palestinians than with Israel, which garnered 33 percent support.

By contrast, 74 percent of Republicans surveyed sympathize more with the Jewish state. That is the widest partisan gap since 1978.

A similar poll last year found a deep divide within the party, with conservative and moderate Democrats favoring Israel over the Palestinians by 53-19 percent.
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Netanyahu’s mantra this week has been that he doesn’t wish to surprise Trump with a big Israeli initiative.

BY CAROLINE B. GLICK, JPOST

Over the past week, we were given new evidence of what many assumed for years. Former president Barack Obama and his administration weren’t interested in bringing peace to the Middle East. They were interested in harming Israel.

Last Friday, Makor Rishon published an interview with former Foreign Ministry director general Dore Gold. Gold told the paper that Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice once said, “Even if Israel and the Palestinians reach an accord, it’s possible that the US will oppose it.”

Rice said the US would oppose any deal that it felt didn’t do justice to the Palestinians.
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DEBKA

Syria stands on the threshold of dramatic changes that will directly impact on the strategic and military situation along the Syrian borders with Israel and Jordan, DEBKAfile reports exclusively. They derive from a deal struck this week by US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to establish US, Russian and Turkish security zones in Syria. This scheme will transfer military control of the country to those three powers. Each of them will be responsible for a zone whose borders will be defined and agreed upon by Washington, Moscow and Ankara.

As part of this arrangement, all forces from the Iranian military, the pro-Iranian Shiite militias and Hizballah will be required to leave Syria.
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By MARTIN SHERMAN

Will the Israeli leadership remain captive to old molds of thought—thus proving a constraint rather than a catalyst, impeding rather than inducing, the opportunities the Trump administration may  afford?

There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.
Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat.
And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.

– William Shakespeare, in Julius Caesar, Act IV, Scene 3.

If I am not for myself, who is for me?…And if not now, when?

– Hillel the Elder, Ethics of the Fathers, Ch. 1:14.
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