By Ted Belman, 10/07/05

Everyone is familiar will Hillel’s quote, loosely translated, “If I am not for myself, who am I? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?”

I have always understood this to mean that an individual must make the case for his particular before making the case for the other. Particularism before universalism. Neither should be to the exclusion of the other, but the former, according to Hillel, comes first. One might add that it is only natural to fight for yourself before fighting for others. The twentieth century witnessed within the Jewish community a flight from the Jewish particular in favour of the universal. As the Jews came out of the ghetto, they shed religion for secularism. They became Communists in Russia, socialists in Europe and liberal Democrats in America.
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By Hugh Fitzgerald, JIHAD WATCH

“Palestinian” leader Mahmoud Abbas’ advisor on religion, one Mahmoud Al-Habbash, has declared that a move of the American embassy to Jerusalem by the Trump administration would constitute “a declaration of war on all Muslims,” and then threatened:“This will not pass in silence.” He was not alone. A half-dozen other “Palestinian” leaders chimed in with similar threats, claiming that if “America recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of the Jews,” then America will have declared “a new war against the Palestinians and also against the Arabs and the Muslims.”
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Trump Advisers Tell French Officials: We Strenuously Object to Paris Peace Conference

Kerry calls PM from Paris, vows no further UN action US secretary promises to soften text of final communique at peace summit, says there will be no followup moves

Kicking off summit, Paris says now not time to halt peace effort

UK signals closeness to Trump with snub to French Middle East summit

JEWISH PRESS

The heads of Moetzet Yesha – The Council of Judea and Samaria, received an invitation to President Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony in Washington D.C., according to a report in Makor Rishon. The invitation was passed on to them via the Chamber of Commerce of Orthodox Jews (US), who are connected to Trump’s special advisor Jason D. Greenblatt.

The settlement council will most likely be represented at the inauguration by Mayor of Efrat, Oded Revivi, who also heads the foreign desk for Moetzet Yesha, and Beni Kashriel, the Mayor of Maale Adumim.

In addition, several other people connected to Jewish life in Judea and Samaria have been invited, but according to the report, they prefer not to publicize their invitations.
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this morning (Sunday, 15 January 2017), at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting, made the following remarks:

“The conference convening in Paris today is a useless conference. It is being coordinated between the French and the Palestinians. Its goal is to try and force terms on Israel that conflict with our national needs. Of course it pushes peace further away because it hardens the Palestinian positions and it also pushes them away from direct negotiations without preconditions.

I must say that this conference is among the last twitches of yesterday’s world. Tomorrow’s world will be different – and it is very near.”

The Left is losing the culture war within the Jewish community.

By Daniel Greenfield, FPM

Seen from above, the 2016 electoral map of New York City is blue with dots of red. Trump’s home district is blue, but across the water a red wedge slices into Brooklyn. Around that red wedge are districts where Hillary won 90 percent of the vote and Trump was lucky to get 5 percent. Inside it, he beat her in district after district.

The voters who handed him that victory are the Chassidic Jews of Williamsburg who dress in fur hats and black caftans. Their districts, crammed in by hipsters and minorities, are a world away from the progressive activist temples whose clergy went into mourning at Hillary’s loss.
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Obama and his followers in the US and around the world refuse to see the connection between the policies borne of that ideology and their destructive consequences.

BY CAROLINE B. GLICK, JPOST

Pres Obama promised that his would be the most transparent administration in US history.

And the truth is, it was. At least in relation to his policies toward the Muslim world, Obama told us precisely what he intended to do and then he did it.

A mere week remains of Obama’s tenure in office.

But Obama remains intent on carrying on as if he will never leave power. He has pledged to continue to implement his goals for the next week and then to serve as the most outspoken ex-president in US history.
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U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s advisers told senior French officials during New York meeting that they object to the very holding of the conference, especially so close before Trump’s inauguration.

By Barak Ravid, HAARETZ

PARIS – Senior French officials met a few weeks ago in New York with President-elect Donald Trump’s advisers and presented the program for the international peace conference to be held Sunday in Paris, Haaretz has learned. Trump’s team was said to have objected strenuously to the very holding of the conference, especially at this time, five days before Trump’s inauguration.

The Paris conference is not expected to produce practical decisions, but rather to serve as declarative event of the international community’s intentions toward the Middle East peace process. According to French diplomats, the conference is being held at this time, a few days before the inauguration, to convey a message to the president-elect about the importance the international community ascribes to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the extent of international consensus.
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BY YOSSI MELMAN, JPOST

While Assad has vowed revenge for the alleged Israeli attacks, his patron, Russia, has thus far remained silent.

If Russia, Assad’s biggest supporter, was against Israeli attacks and warned against them, it would have limited Israel’s freedom of action.

This leads us to believe that there is probably a quiet understanding between Jerusalem and Moscow. Beyond “de-conflicting,” or preventing the two militaries from shooting at each other, the full nature of the agreement remains unknown.
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DEBKA

The torrent of alleged misdemeanors pouring out day after day against Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, across the front pages and prime-time news broadcasts of Israel’s mainstream media, this week developed a new angle: Predictions from the same quarters of a summer election.

If the heavily biased media were counting on the police to produce hard evidence to support their charges, they were premature. No evidence of criminal conduct has yet come to light, despite leaked innuendo to favored reporters. Police investigators continue to dig hard, spurred on by the insatiable media appetite for sensational “revelations.”

Known for his penchant for the good things of life, Netanyahu’s fondness for Cuban cigars, paid for by good, very rich, friends, is no crime; nor is imbibing expensive champagne in their company – even if both are provided as gifts in lavish quantities.
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By Jerry Gordon

h/t Imre Herzog. Here’s a stunner. M. Jean Patrick Grumberg of the French blog Dreuz made a useful discovery and somehow the Israel and world media didn’t cover. The PA brought suit in France against French companies building the light rail system in Jerusalem. The PA lost in a decision that ruled that Israel is the legal occupant of Judea and Samaria.

So, why isn’t the Israeli and world media hopping all over this? Perhaps because they are intimidated by the threat of Islamic violence as their god Allah granted possession of any conquered lands in perpetuity. Which will never be held up in a Western court that doesn’t recognize sharia law ruling based on fiction rather than fact. But then the pack of Israel’s enemies gathering in Paris for tomorrow’s hatefest doesn’t care about the facts and law. That would include that self -promoting ‘stalwart defender of Israel’, Secretary of State Kerry. Read this important French court case findings in this Dreuz blog post by the estimable M. Grumberg.

Grumberg, a French lawyer by training wrote:

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Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought: a US-Israel Initiative”
Straight from the Jerusalem Boardroom #217, January 13, 2017

Israel’s economic performance has defied conventional “wisdom,” political-correctness and steep geo-strategic, diplomatic and economic odds, transforming seemingly-insurmountable hurdles into boundless opportunities.

1. A January 11, 2017 European vote-of-confidence, in Israel’s economy, took place in the London Stock Exchange, when Israel sold to British, German and French financial institutions 2.25BN Euros in 10 and 20 year government bonds, while demand surged to 9.8BN Euros. It was Israel’s biggest Euro offering ever.

2. In 2016, Israel’s hightech sector raised an all-time high $4.8BN, compared to $4.3BN in 2015, $3.4BN in 2014, $2.4BN in 2013 and $1.9BN in 2012. 2017 has already ushered-in the $75MN invested, in Israel’s Kaminario, by the Honk Kong Waterwood Group, Silicon Valley Bank, Globespan Capital, Sequoia and Lazarus. Israel’s Health Watch raised $20MN from China’s Shijiazhuang Yiling Pharmaceuticals. Israel’s Corephotonics raised $15MN from the South Korean Samsung Ventures, Taiwan’s Foxconn and Taiwan’s MediaTek.
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By Martin Sherman

As the coming Paris conference looms closer, avid two-state proponents should understand what the prescription they advocate really means: Israel through the binoculars of a Palestinian “intelligence officer” 

If a Palestinian state is established, it will be armed to the teeth. Within it there will be bases of the most  extreme terrorist forces, equipped with anti-tank and anti-aircraft shoulder-launched rockets, which will endanger not only random passers-by, but every airplane and helicopter taking off in the  skies of Israel and every vehicle traveling along the major traffic routes in the coastal plain…[T]he frontiers  of the Palestinian state will constitute an excellent staging point for mobile forces to mount attacks on  infrastructure installations vital for Israel’s existence, to impede the freedom of action of the Israeli  air-force in the skies over Israel, and to cause bloodshed among the population…in areas adjacent to the  frontier-line… – Shimon Peres, “Tomorrow is Now”, (Keter publishers),  pp. 232, 255. 
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From Arlene Kushner, LEGAL GROUNDS

In response to the horrendous UN Security Council resolution 2334, which outrageously claims that Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem is illegal, the Legal Grounds Campaign has produced a powerful video. It was filmed, with my Legal Grounds co-chair Jeff Daube, at the 3,000 year old cemetery on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, which embodies the historical connection of the Jewish People to the Land.
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The greatest beneficiary of a failure in Geneva would be Russia and its efforts to further expand its widening strategic footprint in the Eastern Mediterranean.

BY MICHAEL TANCHUM, JPOST

Israel hopes to market its natural gas to Turkey, and via Turkey to the EU, but this aim may hang on the outcome of the potentially historic Cypriot peace negotiations currently underway in Geneva. Since an undersea gas pipeline from Israel’s Leviathan natural gas field to Turkey requires crossing Cyprus’s economic exclusion zone, failure to reach an agreement could force Israel to return to an older plan of marketing its natural gas via Egypt. However, in the new energy and geopolitical realities of the region that emerged in 2016, Israel’s selection of Egypt as its major export option could result in the Russia’s rise as a central player in Eastern Mediterranean energy.
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Every year, hundreds of young Jewish American women choose to leave the Orthodox homes they grew up in and make aliyah in order to defend the State of Israel. ‘It’s a great mitzvah and an honor to serve in the IDF as a religious soldier,’ one explains; ‘I wanted to be part of the huge power defending Israel,’ says another.

By Itamar Eichner, YNET

Hannah Defore. ‘There is nothing like walking around the city wearing a skirt with the rifle hanging on my shoulder’

Israeli rabbis, with the help of some retired generals, have been busy recently opposing the enlistment of women to combat roles, and perhaps even women’s enlistment in general. But while they discuss modesty issues inside tanks, hundreds of young religious women are quietly leaving the Orthodox homes they grew up in and immigrating to Israel in order to serve in the IDF.It began in 2009 with the enlistment of 62 young women from religious homes abroad, and reached its peak in 2016 with 322 observant female soldiers who made aliyah in order to enlist, and there are many more on the way. According to figures compiled by the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, 1,732 religious girls have immigrated to Israel and joined the army since 2009, and the number of women recruits is recording a sharp rise every year.
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T. Belman. I am also an advocate of Israel being more flexible on conversions. To demand that applicants must want to become orthodox is an unreasonable standard and works against the interests of the Jewish people. Just as Israel has a right of return without proving one is a halachic Jew, so must Israel lower the requirements for conversion so that more people will convert. What matters is that he or she wanted to join the Jewish people and that their children would be Jewish. If the orthodox won’t accept them as Jews, that’s their business. But it is no reason for other Jews not to accept them.

But Israel should not allow liberal Jews to affect how it sees the conflict or the solution to it.

AJC discusses issues of religious pluralism at Knesset committee meeting.

BY TAMARA ZIEVE, JPOST

Decreasing support for Israel among US Jews is a “national security threat” for the Jewish state, the American Jewish Committee’s Dov Zakheim told a meeting Wednesday on religious pluralism at the Knesset Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs Committee.

Zakheim, the chairman of the AJC’s Jewish Religious Equality Coalition, is a former senior US defense official. Noting that he still advises the Pentagon, he said, “my concern is driven by my background in national security.”
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by Barney Breen-Portnoy, ALGEMEINER

The anti-settlement resolution approved by the UN Security Council last month was “not helpful” and “undermines” the chances of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks being renewed, Rex Tillerson — President-elect Donald Trump’s secretary of state nominee — said at a Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday.

“Israel is, has always been and remains our most important ally in the region,” the former Exxon Mobil CEO said.

Tillerson took aim at outgoing Secretary of State John Kerry, calling his recent speech in which he assailed Israeli settlement construction “quite troubling.”

The 64-year-old Texan also vowed to make fighting the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement a State Department priority.
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