By JONATHAN S. TOBIN, COMMENTARY

The names of those chosen to be on the Democratic Party platform committeewere announced yesterday, and the headlines were about Bernie Sanders getting his due. Sanders was able to name five of the 15 members of the committee with Hillary Clinton getting six and Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz naming four. The group will have plenty to argue about as they decide just how far to the left they will tilt as Democrats prepare for the general election. But it is also painfully obvious that one of the clear points of disagreement will be about Israel and the Palestinians.

Three of Sanders’ picks are outspoken opponents of Israel. While there are some clear supporters of the Jewish state among the others chosen, there are also others who are deeply critical of Israel. It is not clear that such a group can possibly arrive at a consensus and avoid a painful floor fight about how “even handed” Democrats will claim to be about the Middle East conflict, we do know one thing, any pretense of this being a pro-Israel party is now officially exploded.
Read more…

BRIETBART

Donald Trump blasted Hillary Clinton’s “radical” immigration position on Sunday. Rasmussen polling shows that only 4% of American women support Clinton’s Middle East migration proposal.

Trump tweeted:

A case pits Israel’s faith in democracy against the views of its military brass. But those who believe that Israel must remain a democracy have no choice but to take Mr. Netanyahu’s side

By BRET STEPHENS, WSJ

In 2012 a former New York Times reporter named Patrick Tyler published an invidious book called “Fortress Israel,” the point of which was that the Jewish state is a modern-day Sparta whose “sabra military elite” is addicted to war.

“Six decades after its founding,” Mr. Tyler wrote, Israel “remains in thrall to an original martial impulse, the depth of which has given rise to succeeding generations of leaders who are stunted in their capacity to wield or sustain diplomacy as a rival to military strategy.” Worse, these leaders do this “reflexively and instinctively, in order to perpetuate a system of governance where national policy is dominated by the military.”
Read more…

Bennett starts at 5:00 min.

BEFOREITWSNEWS

We asked several Muslims in Saudi Arabia why they marry their first cousins.  All of them told us it’s to keep the wealth within the family and that the Prophet allows them to do this.  There is one town in Saudi Arabia where there are only two last names listed for all its citizens.

This came from a Lockheed employee who has had three assignments to Saudi Arabia.  Worth the read!

During the pilot transition program with the KV-107 and C-130 with Lockheed, we found that most Saudi pilot trainees had very limited night vision, even on the brightest of moonlit nights. Their training retention rate was minimal, including maintenance personnel.
Read more…

Expanding the coalition seemed like a walk in the park, but the PM’s coalition partners made it rain on his parade.

By Yossi Verter, HAARETZ

One could say that like in that old joke, the heroes of the coalition negotiations, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s present and future partners, may not want to kill him but certainly enjoy driving him crazy en route to the “broad government” he so desires. The coalition hookup between Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu, which on Thursday looked to be a walk in the park, a mere formality, on Monday appeared to be a more challenging hike.

Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon made it clear to Netanyahu that he will not be a rubber stamp or an ATM for realizing the prime minister’s political dreams. That prompted Avigdor Lieberman to call a press conference and declare that the talks had reached a dead end. Since the problem is (only) money, one can assume that the crisis will be resolved and the 66-member coalition will be established speedily in our days.
Read more…

Be sure to watch Crossing The Line 2: The New Face of Anti-Semitism on Campus

Jerusalem U

A scheduled film screening for the Jerusalem U film Beneath The Helmet – a documentary about the personal stories of five Israeli soldiers – was attacked at the University of California, Irvine (UCI).

UCI Chancellor Howard Gillman said the incident “crossed the line of civility” and “We must shelter everyone’s right to speak freely—without fear or intimidation—and allow events to proceed without disruption and potential danger.  The Chancellor also said that UCI is “investigating whether disciplinary or legal actions are appropriate.”
Read more…

T. Belman. I was there. I agree with every word of the introduction and everything Ari Sofer had to say. I was very impressed with his remarks. Arutz Sheva and Israel are lucky to have him. He will do great things.

MEMRI

In a statement on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Sykes-Picot agreement, Masoud Barzani, president of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, called on the international community to acknowledge that the Sykes-Picot agreement has failed. Barzani said that this agreement, which disregarded the makeup of the region and the will of its peoples, was a great injustice perpetrated against these peoples, especially against the Kurds. For the Kurds of Iraq, he said, it resulted in 100 years of discrimination and atrocities perpetrated against them by the various Iraqi regimes. Barzani stressed that, despite this, for 100 years these Kurds did their best to protect the integrity of the Iraqi state. But today, the countries of the region and the world at large must not allow the tragedy to continue, but must allow the peoples of Iraq to determine their political future. Barzani called for a serious dialogue between Baghdad and Erbil to reach a new solution. “If partnership cannot be achieved, let us be brothers and good neighbors,” he said.
Read more…

T. Belman. I attended a number of events hosted by CUFI when I lived in Toronto and even met Rev Hagee. I have heard the message delivered in this video a number of times expressed in different words. It always warms my heart.

Some Jews turn their backs on them because some organs associated with CUFI are messianic. While true, these organs are insignificant compared to CUFI itself. I embrace CUFI and am happy to have such a strong loving ally when we are so friendless or at any time. Because of them, the American people have a very favourable opinion of Israel.

T. Belman. I have said much the same thing but less elegantly. When others have said that Azaria’s actions weren’t in accord with our values, I said time to change our values.

By Vic Rosenthal, ABU YEHUDA

News item:

[Ya’alon] said Thursday that he has been “surprised” of late at a “loss of moral compass on basic questions” in Israeli society. “We need to steer the country in accordance with one’s conscience and not whichever way the wind is blowing…”

Questions of moral compass and conscience are the essence of the cultural struggle that is going on in Israel today, but few seem to understand what these questions actually are.
Read more…

By Daniel Greenfield, SULTAN KNISH

In the Washington Post, Petraeus complained about the “inflammatory political discourse that has become far too common both at home and abroad against Muslims and Islam”. The former general warned that restricting Muslim immigration would “undermine our ability to defeat Islamist extremists by alienating and undermining the allies whose help we most need to win this fight: namely, Muslims.”

At Rutgers, Obama claimed that restricting Muslim immigration “would alienate the very communities at home and abroad who are our most important partners in the fight against violent extremism.”

If we alienate Muslims, who is going to help us fight Muslim terrorism?
Read more…

The road to the Iran nuclear deal was paved with lies

by David Gerstman, LEGAL INSURRECTION

In his testimony last week before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, concerning the grand Iran deal deception described in a recent New York Times article that was carried out by Obama and Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, Michael Doran, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, laid out five areas where the White House deceived the American people.
Read more…

JPOST CONFERENCE

Gideon Sa’ar
He underlined the need to create a sequence of construction between Ma’aleh Adumim and Jerusalem and said, “I call on both candidates to declare that they will not place obstacles in our way in building in our capital.”

“The battle for Jerusalem will be determined using the facts on the ground,” said Sa’ar. “There is a de facto freeze on building for Jews, while Arabs build illegally.”

I AM GLAD HE RAISED THIS ISSUE BUT UNHAPPY THAT HE ASKED FOR US APPROVAL.
Read more…

Yoram will be in the US in September, 2016, available for speaking engagements(http://bit.ly/1W5CrSr).

Video #12: The number of 1948 Arab refugees fabricated
Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought: a US-Israel Initiative”
YouTube 6-minute-video seminar on US-Israel and the Mideast

# 12: http://bit.ly/1svQbMp ; the entire video-seminar: http://bit.ly/1ze66dS  

1. “Kill the Jews wherever you find them. It would please God, history and religion,” incited the top Palestinian Arab leader, Haj Amin al-Husseini, in a March 1, 1944 Arabic broadcast on the Nazi Berlin Radio.  “Drive the Jews into the sea… and never accept the Jewish State,” instigated the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, as reported by the New York Times on August 2, 1948.

Read more…

T. Belman. Jager is right to describe how the Obama administration spun the conflict but I think that they knew it wasn’t central. Its just another of their lies.

By Ron Jager

For the majority of the past eight years, President Obama and State Department “experts” have been treating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the central generator of political upheaval ravaging the Middle East without realizing just how marginal the conflict with the Palestinian Arabs has become or understanding that as far as the Sunni Arab nations of the Middle East are concerned, a Palestinian State would be just another failed Arab nation in perpetual conflict with its own people and with her neighbors.
Read more…

A Moral Imperative and Strategic Necessity

INSS Insight No. 823, May 22, 2016
By Amos Yadlin

SUMMARY
The Middle East is being reshaped by an extended process that began over five years ago, and its end-point is currently impossible to predict. Still, it can be assumed that the parties involved with the conflicts in the region in general, and in Syria in particular, seek resolutions through an attempt to reshape the power relations between them and the state structures in the area. Against this background, Israel has a fundamental interest in ensuring that Iran and Hezbollah will not be the forces that are strengthened within the framework of a new order in the Middle East.

Gone are the days in which Israel could impartially observe the developments in Syria from the sidelines. If Israel wants to help shape the nature of the surrounding region in the years to come and improve its standing in the region, it must not hesitate, as doing so could mean missing this opportunity to undermine its most bitter enemies.
Read more…

By Ted Belman

Israel also charged that direct negotiations with the Palestinians were the only way forward.

On Channel 2 Saturday, the French prime minister said that while there may be some agreements and some disagreements on certain issues, “Netanyahu must show some faith [in France and its initiative].”

WHY?
Read more…