HAARETZ

The heads of four factions that together comprise nearly half the European Parliament have warned that passage of a controversial bill requiring Israeli nongovernmental organizations to report foreign funding sources could hurt Israel’s relations with the European Union.

The so-called “transparency bill” mainly affects human-rights organizations. It was introduced by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, with the support of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In a letter to President Reuven Rivlin, who is scheduled to fly to Europe Sunday and to address the parliament in Strasbourg on Wednesday, the four faction leaders said that the bill encourages attacks against human-rights activists.
Read more…

DEBATING AT ITS FINEST

The EU is a Dictatorship that Britain Should Leave
By Anthony Bright-Paul, AMERICAN THINKER

There can be no ifs and buts about it – the EU is a Dictatorship. How come? How dare I say such a thing? Answer: When the Commission headed by Herr Juncker issues a Regulation it has the force of law for all 28 member States immediately. Let me repeat that one word – immediately.
Read more…

The Council on American Islamic Relations is now charged with fraud and cover up perpetrated against hundreds of victims.

THE CLARION PROJECT

The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) will stand trial on charges of fraud and cover up for alleged crimes perpetrated against hundreds of victims, according to a new ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

The case against CAIR National was originally dismissed by a federal judge but unanimously overturned by the appellate court. Two cases are involved in the suit, which the appellate court consolidated into one, since both cases involve racketeering, a federal RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) crime.
Read more…

Israel’s new fighter jet, known as “Adir” (“Mighty”) in Hebrew, will be unveiled Wednesday at Lockheed Martin plant in Texas • Despite “typical growing pains,” the plane “will be able to perform everything expected of it and more,” officials say.

Yoav Limor, ISRAEL HAYOM

All F-35s acquired by Israel will be fitted with Israeli-made technology | Photo credit: Yissachar Ruas

The Israel Air Force’s fighter jet of the future, the F-35, named “Adir” (“Mighty”) in Hebrew, will be unveiled Wednesday in a festive roll out ceremony to be held at the Lockheed Martin plant in Fort Worth, Texas. The aircraft is expected to arrive in Israel by the end of the year.
Read more…

Foreign Ministry: Peace with the Palestinians will be achieved only through two-way, direct negotiations.

By Herb Keinon, JPOST

The Foreign Ministers of the 28-member EU threw their support Monday behind the convening of an international peace conference at the end of the year, triggering an irritated response from Israel.

“The EU is determined, alongside other international and regional partners, to bring a concrete and substantial contribution to a global set of incentives for the parties to make peace with a view to an international conference planned to be held before the end of the year,” read a statement issued at the end of the meeting held in Luxembourg which – among other issues – discussed the so-called French diplomatic initiative.

The Foreign Ministry, which has come out strongly against the French initiative, issued a statement saying that “peace with the Palestinians will be achieved only through two-way, direct negotiations without preconditions.”
Read more…

T. Belman. Bennett wants Israel to declare her legal rights to the land, take the TSS off the table and no longer participate in negotiations based on it and finally wants to have a dramatic increase on our Hasbara budgets to about $300 million. I totally agree.

By Shai Landesman, ARUTZ SHEVA

Israel needs to stand up for its rights more forcefully in the international arena, according to Education Minister Naftali Bennett, who said that continued talk of a “two-state solution” actually harmed Israel’s standing abroad.

The Jewish Home party leader spoke today (Tuesday) at a conference entitled “Towards A New Law of War”, held in Jerusalem by “Shurat Hadin”, a human rights organization dedicated to taking legal action against terrorist groups and those who fund them, and called for the establishment of an official government body for combating delegitimization.

“We can’t win the battle if we don’t fight it. This is a struggle for our survival and we don’t allocate enough resources to it like we do for planes, tanks and guns,” Bennett said.
Read more…

By Evelyn Gordon, COMMENTARY

The standard narrative about Israel these days goes like this: The current government is the most right-wing ever, the public is increasingly racist and anti-democratic, and the prime minister is either a right-wing zealot or a coward afraid to challenge his right-wing base. But the most remarkable part of this narrative is how durable it has proven despite all evidence to the contrary.

The latest such evidence comes from today’s Jerusalem Post report about a massive drop in construction in the settlements. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, housing starts in the settlements plummeted by 53 percent in the first quarter, compared to an 8.1 percent decline in housing starts nationwide. Needless to say, one would expect settlement construction to soar under Israel’s “most right-wing government ever” and a prime minister captive to his right-wing base. Yet in fact, as I’ve written before, the “right-wing” Benjamin Netanyahu has consistently built less in the settlements than any of his left-wing predecessors–a fact that never seems to disturb proponents of the “far-right extremist” narrative.
Read more…

Turkey and Israel to upgrade diplomatic relations, six years after Mavi Marmara incident.

ARUTZ SHEVA

Turkey and Israel will this weekend announce a deal on normalizing ties, ending a six-year diplomatic crisis sparked by a deadly Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla in which 10 Turkish nationals died, a report said Tuesday.

The Hurriyet daily said the two sides would make the announcement during final talks on June 26 after intensive diplomacy resulted in a compromise agreement on the partial lifting of Israel’s blockade on the Gaza Strip.
Read more…

Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz says Israel is exploring gas supply deals with Egypt and Jordan, as well as Cyprus-Greece-Europe distribution routes • Normalizing ties with Turkey is seen as a linchpin to unlocking Israel’s natural gas wealth.

Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff

An Israeli gas platform is seen in the Mediterranean sea

On the sidelines of a nuclear security summit in Washington in March, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held a private meeting with Israel’s Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz. It was the highest level contact between Israel and Turkey since diplomatic relations broke down in 2010 after Israeli forces intercepted a Turkish ship bound for the Gaza Strip.

The meeting, which lasted nearly 30 minutes and whose details have not been previously disclosed, discussed the war in Syria, Iran’s presence there, terrorism and natural gas. That last item is a key driver of efforts to forge a rapprochement between Israel and Turkey. At stake are reserves of natural gas worth hundreds of billions of dollars under Israeli and Cypriot waters. To exploit them, Israel will likely require Turkey’s cooperation.
Read more…

T. Belman. I attended the Shurat Hadin Conference, on Toward a New Law of War, yesterday and thought this speech was important. I haven’t heard an Israeli politician come out so strongly for the winding up of UNRWA. I also attended the conference today which was excellent. I intend to post the videos of the panels and speeches as they become available.

The United Nations has lost it

By Yair Lapid, TOI

The following is an edited version of a speech delivered by Yair Lapid to the Israel Law Center conference in Jerusalem.

The United Nations has lost it. When it comes to Israel the UN has lost credibility, lost common sense, and more than anything lost its most important asset – its integrity.

At the end of March, I stood in Geneva, with hundreds of protesters, wrapped in Israeli flags. We stood beneath the Broken Chair Monument which stands opposite the United Nations Human Rights Council. Inside, in the elegant hall, there was a debate, another debate, about Israel.

The UN Human Rights Council’s treatment of Israel strayed from the boundaries of legitimate criticism long ago. In the past decade the council has voted for 61 resolutions condemning human rights abuses across the world and 67 resolutions which condemned Israel.
Read more…

To the dismay of the Left, the public won’t go along for another ride with them, no matter how much hysteria they promote.

By Caroline Glick, JPOST

Over the past few days, two incidents occurred which together, tell us the story of the Israeli Left.

Monday night, Channel 10 revealed that the Labor Party has no regard for Israel’s national interests.

Channel 10 disclosed that ahead of the 2015 Knesset elections, Labor – and now Zionist Union – leader MK Yitzhak Herzog engaged in private negotiations with PLO chief and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas. During the course of their meetings, Herzog signed a letter, which he sent to Abbas.
Read more…

DEBKA

Sunni refugees
In the last few days, the Western press has been full of harrowing reports on the death and destruction wrought by the Islamic State in Fallujah, western Iraq. But no media outlet is covering the still ongoing human disaster in which tens of thousands of the city’s Sunni residents are fleeing for their lives, including many elderly people, women and children. Some are escaping the intense fighting or because their homes were destroyed. But many Sunnis are fleeing in dread of their ‘liberators,” the pro-Iranian Iraqi Shiite militias that captured the eastern and central parts of Fallujah.
Read more…

By Sierri Rayne. AMERICAN THINKER

After an onslaught of highly liberal biased polls against Donald Trump during the past week, it was refreshing to see an only modestly biased poll – in relative terms – released on Saturday by Gravis.

In its biased form, the poll shows Trump only 2% behind Hillary Clinton in the head-to-head matchup, far below the ridiculously large Clinton leads of up to 12% that Bloomberg and other leftist media outlets have been oozing of late.
Read more…

Yesh Atid leader accuses international body of becoming a “collaborator of Islamic fundamentalism.” I don’t recall an Israeli leader lambasting UNRWA, and those who finance it, so effectively

JPOST

Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid on Monday accused the United Nations of becoming a “collaborator of Islamic fundamentalism,” saying that the body facilitated aid that reaches “agents of terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah.”

“Instead of being an organization the defends world-wide freedom, democracy, liberal values and peace, some branches of the United Nations have become the exact opposite,” the former finance minister stated at the Israel NGO Shurat HaDin’s annual conference.
Read more…

By Tabitha Korol

“Opening Your Eyes to Other Cultures,” was written by online Editor-in-Chief Dalia Zullig, about Aya Ali, a hyphenated-American senior from Lebanon. In a high school that has students who enjoy their myriad inherited differences as much as they do their mutual accomplishments, Ali asserts that she is not entirely comfortable among her classmates because she wears the hijab (Muslim headscarf). The school’s Beachcomber magazine proudly presents stories and photographs of students of all ethnicities, levels and kinds of achievements, who have found friends and camaraderie from among the substantial school population. And how can we forget two brilliant, famous women from Lebanon – Judge Jeanine Pirro and ACT! for America’s Brigitte Gabriel, who have assimilated, achieved, and are applauded in every setting?
Read more…

By Sol W. Sanders, ACD

The British vote in midweek looks more and more like endorsing withdrawal from the European Union.
But the process looks increasingly messy. The U.S., whose sponsorship of a united Europe has played a huge role in the past six decades, now appears powerless to limit the chaos. Pres. Barack Obama’s intervention to endorse the U.K. remaining in the European Union apparently backfired. Polls showed an immediate growth of the Brexit sentiment among U.K. voters. Obviously, British public opinion resented U.S. interference, especially from an Administration that has made no secret of its antagonism for the historic role between London and Washington and often denigrated its heroes, including Winston Churchill.
Read more…

BY GIANCARLO ELIA VALORI, MODERN DIPLOMACY

During the meeting held on June 7, 2016, the Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu decided to start military cooperation between the two countries. It is a historic decision which breaks the traditional link existing between the Israeli and the US Forces.

A change of strategic perspective by both countries, which significantly modifies the old, traditional postures inherited from the Cold War.
Read more…

Zionist Union leader also accepted ‘right of return’ for Palestinian Arabs into Israel, surrender of Judea and Samaria.

ARUTZ SHEVA

Opposition leader and Zionist Union chief Isaac Herzog agreed to far reaching concessions on the eve of the 2015 election, a report by Channel 10 on Sunday revealed.

Herzog, who prior to the election was seen as a viable candidate for Prime Minister, signed a secret letter of understanding with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, agreeing to a number of long-standing Arab demands.
Read more…

https://www.truthorfiction.com/france-raids-mosques-finds-weapons/

The U.S. Media Kept This Very, Very Quiet

Read more…

WORLD JEWISH DAILY

The American-Jewish far-Left has been saying for several years that support for Israel is waning and there is a growing divide in the community over the issue.

In an article in the Washington Post, however, writer Thane Rosenbaum proves that this is nonsense.

The proof is presented in a review of a book called Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict Over Israel by Dov Waxman.
Read more…