T. Belman. In one of my recent postings I suggested that the EU was no more democratic than Russia or perhaps the former USSR. They are both run by bureaucracies.

By Alex Maistrovoy

After the Brexit and recent attacks against migrants in Britain I can’t get rid of deja vu feeling. As if I’ve already watched this movie quarter century ago. I know its end and it’s not a happy one.

In summer of 1989, the Lithuanian Sejm decided to withdraw from the Soviet Union and establish Lithuanian laws in the country. It was the beginning of the end for USSR – a giant corrupt monster, which for 70 years bullied the world and its people under the pretense of communist ideology.

Intimidation and sanctions could not prevent the collapse. Fabricated artificial entity, thoroughly impregnated with falsehood and lies, fell apart like a house of cards.
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Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban says Donald Trump is a better option for Europe and Hungary than Hillary Clinton.

By Ben Ariel, INN

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Saturday became the first European leader to endorse Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, calling him a “better option” for the bloc than his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

“I am not a Donald Trump campaigner. I never thought it would occur to me that of the available options, he would be the better one for Europe and for Hungary”, Orban said in an annual speech at a summer school in Baile Tusnad in Romania, according to the AFP news agency.
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Who is  Trump counting on in the elections-and why

By Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischer, Arutz Sheva

Donald Trump’s acceptance speech at the Republican Convention was among the longest ever.  Perhaps his goal was to speak directly to people who never hear him directly, but only read what his opponents in the media write about him the next day.

The three main commercial networks — CBS, NBC, andABC — would give only one hour of coverage to the Convention each night.

After a twenty-minute speech, they then tear it apart for half an hour.  However, by speaking long, Trump dominated that hour of commercial network coverage to speak directly to ABC, NBC, and CBS viewers who rarely watch cable news of any sort, and he left the networks with virtually no time to dissect his speech because, once the balloons dropped and the visual fireworks erupted, they had to race back to their regular programming to compensate for all their lost commercial time.  Thus, listeners were left with his message, virtually unscathed.
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By Evelyn Gordon, COMMENTARY

Wednesday’s announcement that Guinea is resuming ties with Israel almost half a century after severing them is a nontrivial piece of good news. Granted, Guinea is a poor and relatively unimportant African country. But it’s 85 percent Muslim, and few Muslim-majority countries have yet been willing to forge open relations with Israel; consequently, its decision could encourage others to follow suit. Guinea was also the first country in Africa to sever relations with Israel following the 1967 Six-Day War. For both those reasons, its renewal of ties underscores the degree to which a new Israeli strategy aimed at improving relations with the non-Western world has begun bearing fruit.
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DEBKA

For seven hours the authorities of the leading European power were paralyzed over how to handle the massacre of nine Germans at he Olympia shopping mall of Munich by an 18-year old Iranian German Friday night, July 22 without uttering the words “Islamic” or “jihadist” – or even “terror.” The gunman, who killed himself far from the crime scene, gained German citizenship after arriving from Iran two years ago. He too has not been named. At stake was Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-arms policy for Middle East refugees. And so a city of 1,5 million was sent into panic by muddled, stammering statements, which for hours refrained from defining the mall attack, locked the entries against the media and refused to specify the number of casualties..
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By DONNA RACHEL EDMUNDS, BREITBART

A French National Front (FN) Assemblée Nationale member has made it clear that she believes Europe is at war with Islamists, warning that the time is coming for people to choose a side. Her comments come just days after 84 people were killed in Nice while celebrating Bastille Day.
Speaking shortly after the Nice attack, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, niece to Marine Le Pen and one of the FN’s two National Assembly members, told her supporters: “Either we kill Islamism or it will kill us again and again. You are with us and against Islamism, or you are against us and for Islamism… Those who choose the status quo become complicit with our enemies.”
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T. Belman. I know few more. Mudar Zahran, Nonie Darwash, Irshad Manji, Salem Mansour.

By Steve Postal, AMERICAN THINKER

Israel is entering a period of détente with several Muslim nations. On July 7, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu disclosed that he had a phone conversation with the leader of a Muslim African nation with which Israel currently does not have ties, and that the two promised to meet in person in the future. Dore Gold, Israeli Director of the Foreign Ministry, stated that there is a “strategic convergence” between the interests of Israel and the Sunni states, and that Israel has some form of contact with “almost every Arab state.” Turkey and Israel signed a reconciliation deal in late June.
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By Ted Belman

Daniel Pipes recently quit the GOP because it nominated Trump. Many of my colleagues in the right wing blogosphere agreed saying he speaks for most Jews. Then Pipes posted a column on the blowback he received.

I replied that he and most Jews are wrong.  I was quite surprised how hard nosed some of them were in rejecting Trump expecting Trump to kiss their asses or at least their ring.

I replied:

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BY HERB KEINON, JPOST

Israel is trying to prevent an internal EU document blaming Palestinian terrorism on the “occupation” from coming up for discussion in EU institutions in Brussels, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

The paper, drafted late last year by all the EU countries with consulates in Jerusalem and embassies in Ramallah, stated that the wave of knifing attacks, car ramming and shootings since October is – as the EUobserver reported this week – “due, in large part, to Israel’s occupation.”
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By Yoram Ettinger, ISRAEL HAYOM

The July 11, 2016 Palestinian Authority report claiming that Jews are a minority west of the Jordan River is a classic case of “lies, damned lies and statistics.” The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics often manipulates statistics to misrepresent reality and mislead observers in a way that is deliberate and systematic, despite a powerful Jewish demographic tailwind and a rapid Westernization of Muslim demography west of the Jordan River, and throughout the Muslim world outside the sub-Saharan region.

Deliberate Palestinian misuse of statistics has resulted in unwarranted demographic pessimism and fatalism both in Israel and among Israel’s supporters. The key aim of this demographic manipulation has been to convince Israeli policymakers to hand over Judea and Samaria under the false assumption that it would be the only way to ensure an Israeli majority in Israel.
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Chad severed ties with Israel in 1972 after coming under intense pressure from its Arab neighbors, Libya and Sudan.

By Herb Keinon, JPOST

Israel’s inroads into Africa continues, as Chad – which has suddenly found itself on the front lines in the battle against Islamic extremists – is expected to be the next majority-Muslim African state to re-establish ties with Jerusalem, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

Guinea and Israel announced the re-establishment of ties on Wednesday, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – who visited four east African countries earlier this month – said that another African country would soon follow suit.
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Read David Weinberg’s “False Flag Operation”

By Caroline Glick, JPOST

“Turkey has a large armed force, professional armed forces and… I am certain they will continue as a committed and strong NATO ally.”- General Jens Stoltenberg insisted that the purge of thousands in the Turkish military – including a third of the serving generals – did not weaken the military.

Stoltenberg told Reuters, “Turkey has a large armed force, professional armed forces and… I am certain they will continue as a committed and strong NATO ally.”

It would be interesting to know whether the 1,500 US soldiers who have been locked down at Incirlik Air Base along with several hundred soldiers from other NATO countries since the failed coup Friday night would agree with him.
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Plato ranks democracy 4th out of 5 political regimes regarding the stability and the prosperity that they offer, with only tyranny being worse than democracy. An important essay on one of the West’s sacred cows.

By Mark Arsak, INN

Born in ancient Greek city-states, democracy has always been far from being a perfect regime. Plato ranks democracy 4th out of 5 political regimes regarding the stability and the prosperity that they offer, with only tyranny being worse than democracy.

However, the Platonian world is not all black and white, and at times he does praise the democracy in his native Athens. If democracies functioned well for instance in Athens thousands of years ago, in America when she was established and in Switzerland, it is because, despite all the very real differences between any two randoms individuals put aside entire societies, the ones mentioned above were as homogenous as one can picture them to be. Plato notably believed that a democracy would not work unless its citizens are prepared for it. Democracy therefore goes hand in hand with a firm and fruitful education, and non-negotiable freedom of press and expression.
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By Vic Rosenthal

Everyone knows that party platforms are just for atmosphere. They bind nobody to anything, and are quickly forgotten after the election. But I must say that the Republican platform plank on Israel – regardless of what one thinks of the candidate – is remarkable, including the very fundamental statement that “[w]e reject the false notion that Israel is an occupier…” as well as recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel (and not, as in the Democratic platform “a matter for final status negotiations.”)

And then there is what is not there. What has especially been noted is the absence of any mention of the so-called “two-state solution” (TSS), a consistent part of US policy since 1993.
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By Martin Sherman

The changes in the Republican platform are a welcome development, but they create new challenges for Israel & much depends on how it meets them 

Rejecting decades-old policy, the Republican Party approved on July 12 a [2016] platform that does not include a call for a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.—Forward, July 10, 2016

We believe the establishment of a Palestinian state on the West Bank would be destabilizing and harmful to the peace process. – 1980 Republican platform that brought Ronald Reagan to the White House.
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T. Belman. the NYT suggests that Obama stopped connecting with Erdogan when Erdogan became more autocratic. I don’t believe it. It never bothered Obama when Morsi did likewise.

By MARK LANDLER, NYT, JULY 20, 2016

President Obama and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, then the prime minister of Turkey, in Washington in 2013.

WASHINGTON — It’s hard to remember today that to President Obama, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey once embodied a new kind of Muslim leader. Mr. Obama regarded him as “a man of principle, and also a man of action,” Tom Donilon, the president’s former national security adviser, said in 2011.

But when Mr. Erdogan began tilting in the direction of authoritarianism, ascending from prime minister to president and setting out to transform Turkey from a parliamentary democracy into a one-man system built around him, their once-intense relationship deteriorated. His frequent phone calls with Mr. Obama ended, and Mr. Erdogan has observed that they rarely speak anymore.
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By Prof. Paul Eidelberg

A candid review of Islam and democracy reveals basic and insurmountable contradictions between Israel and any Islamic regime:

(1) Whereas, freedom, including freedom of speech, is one of the two cardinal principles of democracy, Islam is strictly authoritarian, which is why Islamic media are state-controlled.

(2) Unlike democracy, whose other cardinal principle is equality, Islam is strictly hierarchical. Top-down leadership is a fundamental principle of Islamic theology. Authority runs down from Allah to Muhammad and from Muhammad to the imam, the ruler of the regime.
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T. Belman. I fail to see the benefit of doing so. All goods still have to be inspected. Why not direct sea traffic to a special port in Ashkelon as is presently being done. What does building this offshore seaport accomplish? What will be different?

Katz says Israel must do what it can “to prevent a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”. Wrong. That’s the responsibility of Hamas. By easing the situation for Gazans we are absolving Hamas of responsibility. The Gazans should suffer as a result of the policies of Hamas.

Secondly, Israel tried to get the PA a role in Gaza during the negotiations for the cease fire in 2014. She didn’t succeed. Now she is still insisting on this. What’s that all about? I don’t like it at all. Katz is not alone in this. I am sure Bibi is backing the idea.

By Barbara Opall-Rome, Defense News

TEL AVIV — An Israeli minister who holds portfolios for intelligence and transportation said at a conference Tuesday that some in the government are becoming more receptive to allowing a seaport to be built off the shores of Gaza.

Yisrael Katz of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party said the offshore seaport — an envisioned 3-square-mile artificial island connected to Gaza by a 5 kilometer bridge — should be brought up soon for Cabinet discussion.
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