By MARTIN SHERMAN 

Paradoxically, it was not Peres’s successes – but his failures – that catapulted him to international stardom; it was not his impressive accomplishments that made him a global celebrity but the disastrous fiascoes in pursuit of his wildly unrealistic illusions  

Ambition drove many men to become false; to have one thought locked in the breast, another ready on the tongue.

-Gaius Sallustius Crispus, Roman historian and politician, (86 BCE – c. 35 BCE)

It is our experience that political leaders do not always mean the opposite of what they say.

-Abba Eban, Israeli diplomat and politician (1919-2002) 
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Poll – Now Leads Hillary with Millennial Voters

Hillary Up by 6 Pts. Sampled 44% Democrats, 33% Republicans (Actual Result Trump +2.5%)

technopeasant • 3 minutes ago
PPD tracking poll:

Clinton: 41. 5 (+1.0)
Trump: 41.1 (-1.8)
Johnson: 9.9% (+0.3)
Stein: 2.7% (+0.6)
Und: 4.8% (-0.1)

HC+0.4

technopeasant • 12 minutes ago
Rasmussen weekly national poll:
Clinton: 42% (+3)
Trump: 41% (-3)
Johnson: 7% (-1)
Stein: 2% (0)
Other: 3% (0)
Und: 5%

9/26–9/28 (1500 likely voters) Brackets last week

A Reuters and a PPP poll released Wednesday both showed Clinton four points ahead nationally.

Despite ninth president’s efforts to promote peace in the Middle East, no Arab leader will pay tribute in person • Egypt, Jordan to send their ambassadors • PA President Abbas will not attend funeral • Arab media paints unflattering portrait of Peres.

Daniel Siryoti and Israel Hayom Staff

In a surprising move, no Arab leader will arrive in Israel to attend the funeral of former President Shimon Peres, who died on Wednesday.

Dozens of world leaders are expected to attend the funeral, and began arriving in Israel on Thursday morning.

The decision by Arab officials to avoid the service puzzled many in the Foreign Ministry, given the ninth president’s significant contribution to promoting peace in the Middle East.
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By bringing fighter jets and, allegedly, nuclear weapons to the Jewish state, Shimon Peres gave the tiny country the tools to survive

BY JUDAH ARI GROSS, TOI

Before Shimon Peres became the man of peace extolled by world leaders for his dedication to coexistence, he was a man of defense and security, setting up some of Israel’s most important military victories and strategic assets.

To many, Peres is synonymous with the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords, for which he was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, and his eponymous Center for Peace, which promotes dialogue and opportunities for both Israelis and Palestinians. Yet few people in Israel have contributed more to the country’s military capabilities.
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The tale of Paris’s consent to build a plutonium reactor for the Jewish state 60 years ago illustrates the indefatigable young Shimon Peres’s capacity for achieving the seemingly impossible

By Mitch Ginsburg, TOI

Shimon Peres and David Ben-Gurion visit Israel’s nuclear reactor in Dimona (Defense Ministry Archives)

In late September 1957, Israel was set to sign an agreement with France. The French Atomic Energy Commission, after four years of negotiations, had agreed to provide Israel with a plutonium reactor. All that was needed in order to cement the deal was the signature of the French foreign minister and his prime minister.

What happened during the next 24 hours, as documented in Michael Bar-Zohar’s Hebrew biography of Shimon Peres, “Phoenix,” seems to epitomize the political suavity and steely tenacity of Israel’s ninth president.
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By Hemih Idiz, Al Monitor

Flying back from New York, where he addressed the UN General Assembly’s annual meeting, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters on his plane that Turkey would participate in a US-led operation against the Islamic State (IS) stronghold of Raqqa, provided Syrian Kurdish fighters from the People’s Protection Units (YPG) are not involved in it.

THE HILL

Congress voted Wednesday to override President Obama for the first time in his eight-year tenure, as the House followed the Senate in rejecting a veto of legislation allowing families of terrorist victims to sue governments suspected of sponsoring terrorism.

The House easily cleared the two-thirds threshold to push back against the veto. The final tally was 348-77, with 18 Republicans and 59 Democrats voting not to override the veto.

The Senate voted 97-1 in favor of the override earlier in the day, with only Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) voting to sustain the president’s veto. Read more…

by Efraim Karsh, Middle East Quarterly , Fall 2016

Twenty-three years after its euphoric launch on the White House lawn, the Oslo “peace process” between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) stands out as one of the worst calamities to have afflicted the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

For Israel, it has been the starkest strategic blunder in its history, establishing an ineradicable terror entity on its doorstep, deepening its internal cleavages, destabilizing its political system, and weakening its international standing. For the West Bank and Gaza Palestinians, it has brought subjugation to the corrupt and repressive PLO and Hamas regimes, which reversed the hesitant advent of civil society in these territories, shattered their socioeconomic wellbeing, and made the prospects of peace and reconciliation with Israel ever more remote. This in turn means that, even if the territories were to be internationally recognized as a fully-fledged Palestinian state (with or without a formal peace treaty with Israel), this will be a failed entity in the worst tradition of Arab dictatorships at permanent war with both Israel and its own subjects.
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By Michael Lumish, ISRAEL THRIVES

The great unspoken tension within the progressive-left, today, is the ongoing ideological conflict between the dominant multicultural ideal and the declining ideal of universal human rights.

Given the racialized nature of World War II it is not the least bit surprising that American liberalism shifted from a primary concern with leveling the economic playing-field, under FDR, to what we might call “racial liberalism” as it emerged and evolved in the post-war era with the rise of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement.
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Undecideds Go to Trump Over Hillary 34% to 5%

By Jim Hoft, THE GATEWAY PUNDIT Sep 28th, 2016 12:11 pm

Donald Trump leads Hillary Clinton by four points following the presidential debate on Monday.
Undecideds swung to Trump over Hillary 34% to 5%.

by ANDREW C. MCCARTHY , NATIONAL REVIEW

Hillary couldn’t be proven guilty without proving the president guilty as well. ‘How is this not classified?” So exclaimed Hillary Clinton’s close aide and confidante, Huma Abedin. The FBI had just shown her an old e-mail exchange, over Clinton’s private account, between the then-secretary of state and a second person, whose name Abedin did not recognize.

The FBI then did what the FBI is never supposed to do: The agents informed their interviewee (Abedin) of the identity of the second person. It was the president of the United States, Barack Obama, using a pseudonym to conduct communications over a non-secure e-mail system — something anyone with a high-level security clearance, such as Huma Abedin, would instantly realize was a major breach. Abedin was sufficiently stunned that, for just a moment, the bottomless capacity of Clinton insiders to keep cool in a scandal was overcome. “How is this not classified?”
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BY TYLER O’NEIL, PJ MEDIA

Notorious liberal filmmaker Michael Moore seemed to explode with rage on Twitter last night. Not only did he think Republican nominee Donald Trump won the first presidential debate, he warned Clinton backers that unless they did something earth-shattering, Trump will take the White House.

“Pro-Hillary gloaters doing end-zone dance again when still on 50-yd line,” Moore tweeted after the debate on Monday evening. “U MUST get it in your head TRUMP IS GONNA WIN and act accordingly!”

In his typical overblown manner, Moore warned that “if u just turn off the TV right now and do nothing, you’ve just elected Donald Trump.” Exasperatedly, he added, “Do something! Plan what you’re going to do tomorrow.”two words: “It’s over.”
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By Debra Heine, PJ MEDIA

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) said Tuesday that Donald Trump had the upper hand over Hillary Clinton in last night’s debate and that it was his strongest debate performance so far. He also said the media’s focus on the birther issue is “amusing” because American voters don’t “give a flying flip about” it.

The Texas senator joined conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt Tuesday morning to discuss the debate and his recent, long-awaited endorsement of Trump for president.
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Its worse than a Trojan horse, its a time bomb.

By Ted Belman (April 02/03)

The rush to publish, or more accurately, to impose the Road Map is obscene and an act of desperation by the US.

Powell argued that by vanquishing Iraq, a dedicated enemy of Israel, Israel would feel more secure to make peace.

My G-d, the dust isn’t even settled yet. What kind of Iraq will come into being? Will it be controlled by America? If so, what ever happened to creating a democracy? Will it be a hotbed of terrorism with various factions fighting for power and to throw out the US? If America gets out, who will be in charge? Will the UN have a role? Will Egypt or Saudi Arabia be more or less stable? Will the threat of terrorism and support therefore, from Syria and Iran, be ended? Will Turkey and the Kurds be fighting? Will Iran be trying to curry favour with the Iraqi Shi’ites? Will Syria be looking to extend its influence in Iraq?
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By ELLI WOHLGELERNTER, JPOST

THEN-DEFENSE MINISTRY director-general Shimon Peres (seated second right) attends a meeting of the IDF General Staff with prime minister David Ben-Gurion in 1961. Peres is sitting between then-finance minster Levi Eshkol and then-agriculture minister Moshe Dayan. (photo credit:GPO)

Shimon Peres, former President, former prime minister, former defense minister, former foreign minister, former minister of eight other ministries, the last surviving member of Israel’s founding fathers, and winner of the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize died Wednesday after suffering a stroke two weeks ago. He was 93.
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By Herb Keinon, JPOST

Prime Minister Netanyahu and his wife expressed their condolences early Wednesday morning at the passing of Israel’s ninth president and internationally cherished diplomat emeritus Shimon Peres.

Few are the people in Israel’s history who have done as much for the state and the Jewish people as Shimon Peres, Netanyahu said in a statement released just before a special cabinet meeting he is convening to honor the former president.

“Like all the citizens of Israel, the whole Jewish people, and many in the world, I bow my head in memory of our beloved Shimon Peres,” he said in a statement.
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Tracing the growing confluence between the world’s largest and most influential public forum, the social network giant, Facebook, and the world’s most menacing purveyor of global terror – militant Jihadist Islam.

By Martin Sherman, INN

For most Americans, Israelis, and other Westerners, Facebook is a benign and useful forum, in which to catch up with old friends, make new ones, connect with relatives, and engage in virtual exchanges of information. There is however a much darker side to the picture. An increasing number of Islamist terrorists, well- versed in modern technology and its usage for jihad-related tasks, are exploiting the world-wide reach of social networking for their own nefarious purposes – despite the fact that, paradoxically, their principal mission is to recreate, on a global scale, anachronist and oppressive realities from centuries ago.

It is precisely to exposing this disturbing development that the hard-hitting and disconcerting book “Banned: How Facebook Enables Militant Islamic Jihad” is devoted.
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By Niall Stanage, THE HILL

Donald Trump aides and supporters on Tuesday defended his debate performance, arguing the GOP presidential nominee made a damaging case against Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the first half-hour while beating expectations.

Trump backers generally stopped short of claiming an outright victory, however, and Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill gave his first one-on-one debate performance dim reviews.
Read more…

technopeasant • 5 minutes ago
From Hedgehog Report (John):

Online polls on who won the debate:

Trump by 2% by Fortune
Trump by 9% at Slate
Trump by 10% by The Hill
Trump by 11% by AOL
Trump by 14% by local NJ media
Trump by 21% by Time
Trump by 25% by Breitbart

These polls may be a reflection of the enthusism gap.