Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, JCPA

During the election campaign, Donald Trump affirmed that immediately upon entering the White House he would “renegotiate the “disastrous” and “horrible” nuclear agreement with Iran. (Vice President-elect Mike Pence called for “ripping up the Iran deal” during the election campaign.) Since the elections Mr. Trump has not addressed the issue, and many believe he may change his stance – to paraphrase Israeli leaders, “What you see in power is different from what you see in campaigns.”

The president-elect actually has three options:
Read more…

THE DISCUSSION STARTS AT 27 MINUTES

I URGE YOU TO TAKE ISSUE WITH THE MANY THINGS HE SAYS THAT RANKLE,

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

A Muslim-Jewish organization could be a wonderful idea – if it had the right goals and the right partners – namely, Zionist Jews and Reformist Muslims dedicated to ending BDS; ending rampant harassment and attacks on Jewish students by organized radical Islamist groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP); ending fear-mongering exaggerated “Islamophobia” claims; ending radical Islamist terrorism against Israel, Jews, Christians, fellow Muslims and the West; and promoting Arab and Muslim recognition of and peaceful co-existence with the Jewish State.

Unfortunately, the new “Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council” (MJAC), established by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and by the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), six days after the election of President-elect Donald Trump, has the wrong goals and the wrong – or no – real partners, and could legitimize and mainstream radical Islamists. Read more…

While the labelling guidelines prompted a rift between Israel and the EU, their economic effect is minimal.

By Nigel Wilson, AL JAZEERA

A year after the European Union issued labelling guidelines for products imported from illegal Israeli settlements based in the occupied territories, the economic effect on settlements businesses appear to be minimal, according to analysts.

“What’s actually happened, and I think part of it is due to ferocious Israeli pushback, is that there’s very little follow up on the guidelines,” said Hugh Lovatt, Israel/Palestine project coordinator at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Read more…

T. Belman. Dershowitz mounts a vigourous defense to Sklaroff’s allegations and scores lots of points. I want to focus only on his position that “Israel remain a bipartisan issue”.  Is he suggesting that Israel should change its policy to be more in line with the policies of the Democratic Party (DP) which supports the TSS with the armistice line as the border?  Is he suggesting that Israel shouldn’t get the best deal possible from Trump for fear of alienating the DP? Is he suggesting that the DP would punish Israel for doing so if and when it gets back into power?

Israel has not left the DP so much as the Party has left, in fact abandoned, Israel. Just what does keeping it a bipartisan issue mean in practice?

By Alan Dershowitz, INN

In his ad hominem attack on me – he calls me a dybbuk – Robert Sklaroff tells me to stop “declar[ing] that [I] support Israel.” His reason for attacking me is that I want support for Israel to remain a bi-partisan issue in American politics.

A simple fact-check of Sklaroff’s defamatory statements would demonstrate that virtually every one of his accusations is a malicious lie, as I will now show.

He claims that I place my loyalty to “progressives” above “fealty to Israel and world Jewry.”  He says that because he ignorantly ignores what I have been writing for years.  If he had simply opened my most recent book, Electile Dysfunction, he would see that I have taken the exact opposite position.  I rail against the so-called “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party, who I call the repressives: [These quote progressives] “are often not the progressive “good guys” whom I looked up to in my youth; they are repressive bullies and bigots who disguise their anti-Jewish, anti-Israel, anti-Christian, and anti-American bigotry as a quest for social justice.
Read more…

By Moshe Ya’alon, former Min of Defense in Israel, INSS

[…]

Furthermore, the vacuum in the Middle East, which steadily diminished US deterrence and influence in the region, was filled by Iran, Turkey, the Islamic State, and Russia.

Iran
Iran is the country that gains the most from the nuclear agreement (the JCPOA) signed by Tehran and the world powers in the summer of 2015.

a. Iran retains its ability to manufacture uranium-enriched fissile material and a nuclear bomb within less than a decade and a half, without breaching the agreement. The significance of this is that it retains its military nuclear option.
Read more…

DEBKA

Islamic State forces pushed their assault forward to retake the central Syrian town of Palmyra Monday, Dec. 12. By evening, they had entered the big Russian-Syrian T-4 air base outside the town, carrying off substantial quantities of Russian armaments. Reporting this, DEBKAfile’s military sources add that the booty they snatched included different types of ground-to-ground missiles as well as anti-tank and anti-air rockets.
Read more…

The end of American exceptionalism is bad news for Europe

T. Belman. And I thought that Trump’s victory heralded the return to American exceptionalism which is defined as  “In its classic forms, American exceptionalism refers to the special character of the United States as a uniquely free nation based on democratic ideals and personal liberty.” The Left denigrates Trump’s victory calling Trump a “populist demogogue”.  Trump will reverse American Europeanization and that’s a good thing., but not for Europe according to this article.

By Dimitar Bechev, POLITICO, Nov 29/16

Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election has left a trail of political debris in its wake. At the top of the long list of casualties is the cherished myth of American exceptionalism. At first glance, perhaps this could be a good thing. We Europeans have always wanted the opportunity to make America behave more like us. But now the joke’s on us.
Read more…

Hillel is a tragedy and a disgrace. But it’s the tragedy and disgrace of the American Jewish establishment which has nearly run out of time to make a final choice between Judaism, the Jewish people and the left.

By Daniel Greenfield

While Jewish students are terrorized on campus, Hillel CEO Eric Fingerhut took on another mission.

“The Hillel family will watch out for our Muslim brothers and sisters on campus,” the failed Democratic pol declared. And he added, “As we hope they will watch out for us.”

There is as much hope of campus hate groups like the Muslim Students’ Association, which has a long history of terrorizing Jews on campus, doing that as there was for Fingerhut in his 2004 Ohio Senate bid which he lost with one of the worst showings by a Democratic Senate candidate in the state. But after taking Ohio Democrats down with him, Fingerhut moved on to tanking Hillel.

Read more…

By: Abed AlMaala

Three days before fires broke out in Israel, we, in the Jordanian Opposition Coalition (JOC), received intelligence information that Jordan’s king’s intelligence desk, in cooperation with Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian National Authority, were plotting “An unprecedented mother of all Intifadas”.

The information was confirmed by the JOC’s Office of the National Director of Intelligence.   While we usually and regularly pass such critical information to several friendly governments, our Secretary General, Mudar Zahran, felt the need to make the issue public quickly, so he posted the same information above on his social media accounts where he has tens of thousands of followers.  Shortly after, the fires began, and the information about who could be behind it and what happened began pouring on our intelligence unit.
Read more…

KEVEN RODEN

THE TIME I SPENT A WEEK WITH REX TILLERSON

This is a post from Emily Roden, about her brief few days with Rex Tillerson, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State…

Nine years ago, I showed up to the Denton County Courthouse for jury duty and got myself picked for the job. A young girl had accused her mom’s boyfriend of sexual assault and the case was being brought to trial. If you’ve ever served on a jury trial before, you understand the almost immediate, yet very temporary bond that ties 12 strangers together who are randomly chosen from each of their private lives in order to fulfill a very solemn public purpose.
Read more…

President-elect’s campaign manager Kellyanne Conway says Trump has every intention of living up to his promise to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel’s capital • “It’s something that our friends in Israel would appreciate,” she says.

By Yoni Hersch and Shlomo Cesana, ISRAEL HAYOM

Moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem “is a very big priority for President-elect Donald Trump,” his campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, told conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt in an interview Monday.

The Prime Minister’s Office did not respond to the statement. However, a government official said that Israel is generally prepared to discuss any potential matter with the new American administration.
Read more…

Prime minister heads to Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan for two days ‘to strengthen diplomatic, security, and economic ties’

BY RAPHAEL AHREN AND STUART WINER, TOI

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara depart for Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan on December 13, 2016 (Haim Zach / GPO)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took off Tuesday morning for Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, pointing to his trip to the two Muslim countries as an indication that rather than being politically isolated, Israel is courted by countries around the world.

During his two-day visit, aimed at fostering security, economic, and diplomatic ties, Netanyahu will become the first sitting Israeli prime minister to visit the region in almost 25 years of diplomatic relations between Jerusalem and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. Visits by Israeli leaders to non-Arab Muslim-majority countries are rare.
Read more…

With their policies rejected by voters, the purpose of the Left isn’t to govern. It is to render their societies ungovernable.

By Caroline B Glick, JPOST

The push among the American Left to discredit the results of last month’s presidential election entered a new phase last Friday with the White House’s announcement that outgoing US President Barack Obama has ordered US intelligence agencies to review evidence of Russian hacking in last month’s elections on behalf of President-elect Donald Trump.

The investigation itself is unlikely to lead to any conclusive results. The FBI, which is responsible for carrying out this sort of investigation, saw no evidence that Russian hacking was aimed specifically at assisting Trump’s campaign against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
Read more…

T. Belman. I agree, the CIA can’t be trusted.  Didn’t it falsify a few intelligence reports on Iran? I invite my readers to add to the list of misleading reports. The MSM and the Democratic Party have been saying for some time now that the Russians are doing the hacking and that Putin wants Trump to win. Lt. Col Howard wrote that in fact Putin strongly favoured  Hillary to win. Why not. Look what he has accomplished during the Obama/Clinton administration. Why take a chance on Trump when he could have enjoyed 8 more years of “Obama”?

Secondly, these officials are hypocrites to complain about foreign influence in US elections, when the US through the CIA is constantly trying to influence foreign elections. Also, don’t forget how much Obama tried to prevent Netanyahu from getting elected in the last elections in Israel. As far a Russian hacking and spying, all nations do it on friends and foes alike.

Russia is a shadow of its former self i.e., USSR. It has less than half the population of the US and its economy is no bigger than Italy’s. The only gains it has made since the fall of the USSR, have been made in the last 8 years due to Hillary’s reset and Obama’s passivity. Many in the establishment think of Russia in Cold War terms and believe the US must be for ever vigilant.  I reject this thinking and believe that what is needed now is a partnership with Russia just as Trump does. And I totally reject the criticism of Tillerson based on his friendship with Putin. Tillerson didn’t sell EXXON out in his deals with Putin and he won’t sell the US out.

By JENNIFER STEINHAUER, NYT

WASHINGTON — The top two Republicans in Congress said on Monday that they supported investigations into possible Russian cyberattacks to influence the American election, setting up a potential confrontation with President-elect Donald J. Trump in his first days in office.

“Any foreign breach of our cybersecurity measures is disturbing, and I strongly condemn any such efforts,” said Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, adding, “The Russians are not our friends.”

Read more…

By Lawrence Solomon, NATIONAL POST

Donald Trump has been widely accused of courting anti-Semites and of being a threat to Israel, especially by American Jews. These accusers, and these Jews, have it wrong. Trump — at a personal, professional and policy level — will go down in history as the most pro-Jewish, pro-Israel president ever.
Read more…

By Dr Reuven Berko. JPOST

On Sunday, a massive explosion rocked the Cairo neighborhood of Abbasyia. The 12-kilogram (26-pound) bomb, which was detonated remotely, had been placed near the women’s entrance to the city’s main Coptic Christian Church, St. Mark’s Cathedral, meaning that most of the victims were women and children, who were attending church as they did every Sunday.

The bombing, which was part of a series of terrorist attacks by the Muslim Brotherhood against Copts in Egypt, killed at least 25 people and wounded about 50. Attacks on Copts have recently escalated because the Muslim Brotherhood claims they supported President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi in taking power and ousting President Mohammed Morsi (of the Brotherhood-affiliated Freedom and Justice Party) in a military putsch.
Read more…

By Daniel Greenfield

The Islamic Society of North America was named by the Justice Department as an unindicted co-conspirator in funding Hamas. It was linked to two Hamas funding fronts, the Holy Land Foundation and KindHearts. ISNA’s checks were made payable to the “Palestinian Mujahadeen” or “Holy Warriors” which was a name used by Hamas.

ISNA’s co-founder Sami Al-Arian was the local head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Mousa Abu Marzook, a top Hamas official listed by the Treasury Department as a Specially Designated Terrorist, received tens of thousands of dollars from ISNA.

This should have come as no surprise as both ISNA and Hamas are arms of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Read more…

T. Belman. the author doesn’t grant Palin her full due.  She crafted the blueprint for Trump’s success. For instance she campaigned for working class Americans, she lead the fight against corruption, she went after the labour voter, she wanted to go after Michigan until McCain stopped her, she lead the Tea Party movement, she argued for revamping the tax code, she used the phrase “drain the swamp”, she attracted evangelicals and feminists, she never failed to mention our vets. She was close to the founder of Brietbart and to Steve Bannon. And on and on. Trump just had to follow here blueprint and build on it.

If he doesn’t recognize her value in paving the way, he is an ingrate.  He should appoint her Secretary of Veteran’s Affairs.

By Ben Voth, AMERICAN THINKER

.

2016 may turn out to be the year of the woman after all. The woman of the year is Sarah Palin who eight years ago was crucified by assorted media and elites in order to usher in the new transformation of America promised by Senator Obama. Obama upset the heir apparent Hillary Clinton in a bruising Democratic primary fight where establishment party politics succumbed to the youthful populism of Barack Obama. His old guard rival John McCain appeared an easy mark until the rogue upstart from Alaska electrified the Republican National Convention in the summer of 2008. Palin’s feminist populism recharged the Republican connection with populism, even in the political headwinds of an economy heading south with each passing week.
Read more…