[I HAVE HIGHLIGHTED THE KEY SENTENCES.]

[..]
I come before you at a pivotal time in both the history of our nation and our world. Nearly everywhere we look, people and nations are deeply unsettled. Old ideas and international norms which were well-understood and governed behaviors in the past may no longer be effective in our time. We face considerable threats in this evolving new environment. China has emerged as an economic power in global trade, and our interactions have been both friendly and adversarial. While Russia seeks respect and relevance on the global stage, its recent activities have disregarded American interests. Radical Islam is not a new ideology, but it is hateful, deadly, and an illegitimate expression of the Islamic faith. Adversaries like Iran and North Korea pose grave threats to the world because of their refusal to conform to international norms.

As we confront these realities, how should America respond?
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BY JEREMY SHARON, JPOST

Majority in favor of continued settlement construction, believe Trump will have favorable attitude toward Israel.

Half of Jewish Israelis believe that unilaterally annexing Judea and Samaria would cause problems for the State of Israel, although a significant majority is nevertheless in favor of continued settlement construction by the state.

The polling date issued in the Israel Democracy Institute’s Monthly Peace Index comes against the background of UN Security Council Resolution 2334 condemning settlement activity, along with subsequent declarations by senior government ministers and MKs that Israel should begin steps to annex major settlement blocs and eventually all of Area C of the West Bank

According to the poll, which was conducted between January 2 and 3, some 62% of Jewish Israelis believe that Israel should not cease construction of settlements and homes in the West Bank following the UN resolution, compared to just 29% who said it should.
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T. Belman. Haaretz is trying to make a mountain out of this molehill. But the story is interesting for background to the media wars in Israel.

Recent revelations on secret talks with media baron Arnon Mozes show the last election was the peak of a personal battle between two powerful men. Netanyahu prevailed, but the police investigation could reset the whole game.

By Aluf Benn, HAARETZ

The revelations by my colleague Gidi Weitz regarding details of the conversations between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yedioth Ahronoth publisher Arnon Mozes require the rewriting of Israel’s political history. That way we can make it clear what the election campaign two years ago was all about.

It wasn’t about the Iranian threat or the replacing of elites. It was about dividing the spoils between two members of the power elite who view control of the country as a protection racket and Israeli citizens as pawns.
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By Rabbi Aryeh Spero, AMERICAN THINKER

The never-ending push by numerous Jews to universalize all aspects and rituals of Judaism is shortchanging and endangering the Jewish people. Hermann Cohen was an influential German Jewish philosopher who felt there was no distinction between being Jewish and a citizen of the world because the purpose of the Jew was to sacrifice his “parochial” Jewish interests in causes for humanity that, for him, were greater than immediate Jewish needs. He called it Universalism. He was against Zionism or having a Jewish state.

Rosa Luxemburg, a famous Jewish communist of the early years, similarly remarked that she could “not be bothered or side-tracked by mere Jewish rights when what was at stake were the great universal rights of the workers and proletariat”. She, too, felt that Judaism existed to serve the interests of humanity.
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By: Barbara Opall-Rome, DEFENSE NEWS January 10, 2017

TEL AVIV – More specifics about congressional restrictions on US military aid for Israel have emerged with the State Department release of the memorandum of understanding (MOU) governing the bilateral pact signed nearly four months ago.

Details of the $38 billion deal, which covers fiscal years 2019 to 2028, provide context to a fact sheet released by the White House when the agreement was inked on Sept. 14, 2016.

As previously announced, it commits to providing Israel with $3.3 billion each year in grant Foreign Military Financing (FMF) aid, along with $500 million per year for missile defense.
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DID TRUMP BLINK? IT LOOKS LIKE IT.

Channel 2 quotes Israeli diplomats on possible compromise, but CNN says incoming administration telling allies embassy will move

TOI

The US Consulate in Jerusalem’s Talpiot neighborhood (Raphael Ahren/Times of Israel)

Possible compromise over moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem could see Donald Trump’s ambassador working from an existing US consulate in the capital while the embassy itself remains in Tel Aviv, Israeli television reported on Tuesday.

Quoting unnamed Israeli Foreign Ministry officials, Channel 2 news said intended ambassador David Friedman, who has said he looks forward to working from the US embassy in Jerusalem, might instead merely work from the city with a small staff, while the Tel Aviv embassy remains intact and most of its operations and staff stay there.
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By Alexander G.. Markovsky

Preamble:

Having adversarial relations with the “land of the Russ,” which stretches throughout Europe and Asia for nine time zones, which from Peter the Great to Vladimir Putin has played a pivotal role in the balance of power in Europe and Asia, and which currently fosters a new political reality in the Middle East, cannot possibly serve in the best interests of the United States.

While testifying in court, I was asked by my lawyer, “Mr. Markovsky, if you knew that your friends were dishonest, would you do business with them?”. Of course I would,” I said. “Doing business internationally, one has to cozy up to all sorts of sleazy characters, and some of them would make the Sopranos look like Mother Teresa.” In business, just as in politics, there are no friends, only interests.
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ZOA

Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) President Morton A. Klein released the following statement. 

ZOA very much appreciates and praises the U.S. Senate’s desire to condemn the horrendous anti-Israel United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334.  Pending Senate Resolution 6 is well-meaning, and contains many praiseworthy provisions condemning UNSC Resolution 2334 and potential additional anti-Israel actions in Paris, at the UN and elsewhere.  

Unfortunately, however, pending S. Res. 6 also contains offensive, gratuitous counterproductive language promoting the dangerous so-called “two-state solution.” The “two-state” language should be deleted prior to a vote.  
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T. Belman. I warned that this would happen after Amona II is demolished. This coupled with the resolution of Congress that Netanyahu and AIPAC fought for, to counter 2334, will convince anyone that Netanyahu is committed to achieving a TSS not much different from from what the international community wants. He must go.

Prime minister voted in favor of bill in first reading, but sources say he intends to keep it in limbo due to implications on Israel’s diplomatic standing.

By Chaim Levinson, HAARETZ

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is working to bury the proposed law to legalize the construction of settlements on private Palestinian land in the West Bank. The bill has already passed its first reading the Knesset, but Netanyahu has no intention of allowing it to advance any further. For now, the bill will be frozen and Netanyahu does not intend to set a date for a vote, sources close to the prime minister told Haaretz.

Netanyahu opposed the law from the beginning because of the implications on Israel’s diplomatic standing in the world, but voted in favor of the law after Education Minister Naftali Bennett succeeded in having the Ministerial Committee on Legislation back the bill, with the support of the Likud ministers on the committee.
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What a wonderful and moving defense of Israel by my fellow Dutchman Geert Wilders, married to a Jewish wife and leader of the biggest political party in the Netherlands, the PVV. Jan Willem van der Hoeven Director ICZC

Muslim migration carries a heavy price.

By Daniel Greenfield, FPM

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.

Canada’s capital is a small sleepy city of less than a million. Its average annual murder rate is only 10. That’s a weekend in Chicago. But last year something strange happened to Ottawa’s murder rate.

It shot up to 24 homicides.

The last two murders were of Somali Muslim sisters Asma and Nasiba. Their murderer was their brother, Musab A-Noor. Despite the obvious history of Muslim honor killings of women, often carried out by brothers against their sisters, Musab was found “unfit” to stand trial. A director at the Somali Centre for Family Services insisted that Somali settlers in the city need more mental health funding.
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The heretical views of Trump’s ambassador to Israel recommend him for the job.

By Bret Stephens, WSJ

Diplomats from some 70 countries will assemble in Paris on Sunday for another Mideast conference, intended to preserve the two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians. The timing is not accidental: With five days to go in the Obama administration, there are whispers that the conference may lead to another U.N. Security Council resolution, this time setting out parameters for an eventual Palestinian state.

The question is: For what?

Climate change aside, the cause of Palestinian statehood is the central obsession of contemporary global politics. It’s also its least examined assumption.
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President Obama has gone rogue and only one man can protect American democracy in the next few days: the President-elect.

By Anne Bayefsky, HUMAN RIGHTS vOICES

On January 15, 2017, with only five days left after 2,917 days in office, President Barack Obama is planning once again to feed Israel to the international wolves. The move is intended to tie the hands of President Donald Trump and is a direct repudiation of the will of the American electorate who rejected Obama’s calamitous foreign policy and a repeat performance by his secretary of state.

On Sunday, France is scheduled to hold an international conference to unleash an international mob on Israel. The meeting is taking place with Obama’s direct connivance. Seventy-states have been lined up to impose their preferences on the Middle East’s only democracy. Israelis are still dying in Israeli streets after seventy years of unending Arab terror – and the folks sitting in Paris munching on croissants know best how to protect Israeli national security.
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By Zalman Shoval, ISRAEL HAYOM

On Dec. 31, The New York Times’ Michael D. Shear wrote: “Only two days after the election, President [Barack] Obama sat by President-elect Donald J. Trump’s side in the Oval Office and declared that the No. 1 priority in his last days in the White House would be ensuring a smooth transition of power. What Mr. Obama did not say was that he also intended to set up as many policy and ideological roadblocks as possible before Mr. Trump takes his oath of office on Jan. 20.”

The New York Times may have endorsed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton during the race, and it has attacked the Republican president-elect at every opportunity, but Shear proves it still abides by journalistic ethics.
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BIBI MUST REJECT THIS IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS.

A draft summary statement of Sunday’s gathering, obtained by Haaretz, says the participating countries will not recognize unilateral changes to 1967 borders, including Jerusalem.

By Barak Ravid, HAARETZ

The dozens of countries attending the Middle East peace conference in Paris on Sunday are expected to call on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to publicly renew their commitment to the two-state solution, and to renounce officials in their respective governments who oppose it. The clause is contained in an updated draft of the conference’s summary statement, a copy of which was obtained by Haaretz.
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TIP

The 2015 nuclear deal obligated Iran to keep no more than 130 metric tonnes of heavy water, a material used in the production of weapons-grade plutonium.

But the Iranians have continued to produce heavy water, and they exceeded the cap in February and November [a][b]. The violations functionally blackmailing the Obama administration: either someone would purchase the excess heavy water, allowing Iran to literally profit from violating the deal, or the Iranians would go into formal noncompliance, endangering the deal.

After the Iranians violated the deal in February the Obama administration purchased the excess heavy water for $8.6 million [c]. After they violated the deal in November State Department spokesperson Toner refused to call the overproduction a violation — “I’m not going to use the V word necessarily in this case” — and the Iranians eventually found someone else to purchase the excess [d].
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JPOST

[MY TAKE IS THAT MANY RAN AWAY AND MANY STAYED.]

The military trainer that shot and purportedly killed the terrorist who rammed his truck into a group of people killing four in Jerusalem’s Armon Hanatziv neighborhood on Sunday claimed that IDF soldiers on the scene were hesitant to shoot due in part to the conviction of IDF soldier Elor Azaria on manslaughter charges.
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T. Belman. I generally agree with this moderate approach. But Oppenheimer missed a key complaint with Netanyahu’s conduct, namely he failed to assert our legal right to the land or even that the settlements were legal. He could have done this every time he said he was ready to meet or he was for the TSS. He would then have staked our claim to the land while are the same time offering to compromise on our rights to achieve peace. By not doing so he left Israel defenseless against the claim that the lands are occupied Palestinian land. By not doing so he left a vacuum for the UN to fill which they did in Res 2334. In that sense he is very much responsible.

Netanyahu was all defense with no offense.

By Rabbi Lenny Oppenheimer, JP

To the Editor:
I read Shmuel Sackett’s “The UN Vote: It’s not Obama’s fault,” with a great deal of distress. In this article, Sackett claimed that there is only “one person responsible for this terrible UN vote. His name is Benjamin Netanyahu”. He then lists Netanyahu’s alleged shortcomings: having publicly supporting a two state solution, being unwilling to completely annex Judea and Samaria, having imposed a freeze on any settlement activity for some time and not allowing new settlements, and arresting Jews for praying on the Temple Mount. Not only that, Netanyahu has publicly stated that “he is ready to sit any time and any place with PLO President Abbas to continue the peace process, and that he envisions “a region where two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, live side by side in peace with secure and recognized borders”. He finishes, as usual, by saying that only Moshe Feiglin and his employer, the Zehut party, can save Israel.
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Important as it is, energy does not alone constitute the only field of joint interest. What matters perhaps more is the strategic nature of collaboration between Greece, Israel and also Cyprus.

By GEORGE N. TZOGOPOULOS, JPOST

In the difficult economic times Greece is endeavoring to shape its foreign policy with relatively low budgets.

Although cuts in the defense sector have a negative impact, a careful and smart strategy in parallel with some favorable circumstances can counterbalance losses and possibly yield more positive results. It is here where the Greek-Israeli partnership deserves particular attention.
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It can’t be dead because it never lived.

By Daniel Greenfield, FPM

“Is the two-state solution dead?”

The two-state solution, a perverse euphemism for carving an Islamic terror state out of the land of Israel and the living flesh of her people, is in trouble. The solution, which has solved nothing except the shortage of graves in Israel and Muslim terrorists in the Middle East, is the object of grave concern by the professionally concerned from Foggy Bottom to Fifth Avenue.
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