Netanyahu must act immediately to pass legislation to curb the court’s authority and restore the powers of the public’s elected representatives.

By Caroline Glick, JPOST

Israel’s democracy is in critical condition.

Sunday, the High Court of Justice ruled that the government’s natural gas policy is unlawful. The policy, which was negotiated with foreign energy companies, was to be the basis for developing the massive offshore Leviathan gas field. It was supposed to anchor future gas prices, ensure gas revenues for the government and energy security for the country in the coming decades. On the basis of this policy outline, the government negotiated deals to supply natural gas to Egypt, Turkey and Jordan.
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By Yossi Melman, JPOST

Ten months after the Syrian army withdrew without a fight, allowing Islamic State (ISIS) to conquer the ancient city of Palmyra, Bashar Assad’s forces returned to the city, regaining control of it, while killing and wounding hundreds of ISIS operatives. The Syrian army did not act alone. It was aided by massive strikes by the Russian Air Force – which allegedly withdrew from Syria, but in all actuality continues to act with full force. Assad’s forces also had the help of Iranian consultants, Hezbollah fighters and Afghani Shi’ite militiamen.

Palmyra was etched into the world’s consciousness because of the destruction of its temples and beautiful artifacts, which date back some two thousand years, by the barbarians of ISIS. However, beyond the achievement of returning the city and its artifacts to the control of civilization – fixing the damage will take years – there is also both strategic and moral importance to the recapturing of Palmyra.
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DEBKA

Egyptian President Abdel Fatteh El-Sisi has sent a secret missive to President Barack Obama asking for urgent US military intervention in support of Egypt’s war on the Islamist State in Sinai, before the jihadis pose a real threat to Cairo. DEBKAfile’s exclusive intelligence and counterterrorism sources report that El-Sisi has come to the conclusion that Egyptian army lacks the ability to eradicate the terrorist peril without direct US military support.
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By Col. (ret.) Dr. Jacques Neriah, JERUSALEM BRIEFS

• The Turkish leadership saw the uprising in Syria and Egypt as an opportunity to intervene and change the regimes opposed to Turkey’s policies in the Middle East and replace them with Islamic regimes close to Turkey’s ideological stand. In both countries, the Islamic opposition was headed by the Muslim Brotherhood, natural allies of Turkish President Erdogan.
• In Syria, Turkish Military Intelligence (MIT) was instructed to assist rebel factions opposed to the Assad regime almost from the very first days of the civil war. Turkey chose to shelter, train, arm, and finance rebel groups, and allow almost total free movement of jihadists inside Turkey en route to their units in Syria.

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By Ron Jager, AMERICAN THINKER

Islam cannot conceive of itself as a minority in a secular State. Violent Islamists, an active and determined minority of Muslims, refuse integration. In Europe, they not only intend to keep their Islamic identity, but to Islamize the non-practicing and convert by force the natives of the host country that they inhabit.  As the Belgian people, and the whole of the Western Europe, wake up to the growing threat of radical Islam, it is clear that the European Union’s comfort-zone has come to an end. The people of Europe are asking themselves, how and why they have so willingly allowed themselves to be blinded to the point of not seeing the proliferation and threat of radical Islam throughout the streets and towns of Europe.
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By Jonathan F Keiler, AMERICAN THINKER

By Sierra Rayne, AMERICAN THINKER

A suite of new polls suggest Ted Cruz may be gaining rapidly on Donald Trump in several key upcoming primary contests.

In Wisconsin, an Emerson poll conducted March 20-22 has Cruz leading Trump by 1%, 36% to 35%. A separate poll taken March 19-20 by the Washington Free Beacon shows Cruz with a 5% lead over Trump, 36% to 31%. Both are significant improvements for Cruz compared to previous polling data from late February, which showed him trailing Trump by 11%.

In California, a Los Angeles Times poll from March 16-23 puts Cruz now in a statistical tie (35% vs. 36%) with Trump, up from trailing Trump by between 5% to 16% in early/mid-March.
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REUTERS

Reacting to Sunday’s brutal suicide bombing that killed scores of civilians in Pakistan, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump tweeted that he alone could stop “radical Islamic attacks.”

Trump on Sunday doubled down on his criticism of NATO, a cornerstone of US foreign policy for decades, and called for the alliance’s overhaul days before world leaders convene in Washington.

President Barack Obama will host the Nuclear Security Summit on Thursday and Friday with 56 delegations in attendance. While preventing nuclear terrorism will headline the discussions, Trump’s views could be a topic as well, particularly behind the scenes.
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Prime Minister says following Supreme Court ruling that Israel is viewed as a country with which it is difficult to do business.

By Hezki Ezra, INN

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday evening spoke out against the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down his landmark natural gas policy, when it ruled that if the Knesset does not fix certain issues in the outline in one year’s time, it would be formally dismissed.

“The Supreme Court’s decision seriously threatens the development of the gas reserves of the State of Israel. Israel is seen as a country with excessive judicial intervention with which it is difficult to do business,” warned Netanyahu.
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By Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman/JNS.org

At the recent American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference, each of the remaining United States presidential candidates—except for Democratic contender Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who did not appear—essentially laid claim to being the most pro-Israel candidate.

Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state and first lady, told the crowd that she has the “steady hands” Israel needs and that Israel’s security “is non-negotiable.” Republican candidate Governor John Kasich of Ohio called his support for Israel “firm, and unwavering for more than 35 years of my professional life.” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said he would “stand unapologetically with the nation of Israel” and would “not be neutral” on the issue, a swipe at his GOP opponent businessman Donald Trump, who has in the past said he would be a “neutral” peace broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But at the AIPAC conference, Trump instead promoted himself as a “lifelong supporter and true friend of Israel,” repeatedly urging the audience to “believe me.” Read more…

The post-American Middle East being born in Syria is an irretrievably changed land of sectarianism and new foreign hegemony

By Eyal Zisser, TABLET

In mid-March 2016 the world marked five years since the outbreak of the civil war in Syria. The number of those killed in the fighting approached half a million. About 10 million Syrians, amounting to about half the population of the state, had lost their homes, and about 8 million had become refugees, fleeing abroad to neighboring Arab states, Turkey, and Europe. About three-quarters of Syria’s social and economic infrastructures—including the health, education, transportation, electricity, and water systems, oil and gas fields, and grain storage facilities—had been ruined or destroyed during the war.
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By Dr. Anna Geifman, March 27, 2016,
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 335, March 27, 2016

Russia’s intervention in Syria cannot be fully explained by strategic or economic factors. Russian political culture, which has been permeated since the fifteenth century by a messianic vision of apocalyptic redemption, has long been a significant guiding factor in the decision-making of Russia’s leaders.

On September 30, 2015, Vladimir Putin ordered Russian warplanes into Syria to begin regular aerial bombardments of targets that Moscow defined as sources of “jihadi terror.” The intervention followed an official invitation from the embattled regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who had asked his Russian ally for help against the “jihadists.” The Kremlin’s official statements described jihadists as forces that threatened stability within and beyond Syria’s borders. Hence, many observers initially assumed that Putin’s main ambition was to destroy the Islamic State, Al-Nusra, and other terrorist organizations.
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Analysis of public discourse online reveals overwhelming majority defend the soldier who was filmed shooting a wounded terrorist.
An analysis of the public discourse online regarding the IDF soldier who last Thursday was filmed shooting a wounded terrorist in Hevron has found an overwhelming majority of Israelis back the soldier.

By Ari Yashar, INN

A full 82% of the sentiments posted online from last Thursday up until Sunday morning at 11 a.m. were in support of the soldier, according to the company Buzzilla that specializes in analyzing social networks. The results were published by Channel 2 on Sunday.

The soldier is currently being tried in a military court on charges of murder, after an activist of the radical leftist NGO B’Tselem filmed him shooting the terrorist mere minutes after the latter stabbed and wounded a soldier. The soldier has argued he shot the terrorist over concerns he was about to detonate a bomb belt that was thought to be hidden under his unseasonable coat.
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Education minister slams politicians who were quick to condemn the soldier who shot dead a neutralized terrorist, while the prime minister retorts: ‘Don’t preach me about morality.’

By Moran Azulay, YNET

The political controversy over the IDF soldier who shot dead a neutralized soldier continued on Sunday as Education Minister Naftali Bennett clashed with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other ministers during a cabinet meeting.

At the beginning of the weekly meeting, Netanyahu addressed the issue for the third time, after at first harshly condemning the incident and then offering a softer statement two days later.
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JNi.Media

An online petition calling on the IDF brass to award a medal—instead of handcuffs—to an IDF medic who shot an Arab terrorist who was lying on the ground in Hebron last Thursday, has garnered more than 35,000 signatures in three days. “This soldier should not have been arrested with expediency, he should have been praised, because with his quick and decisive action he may have prevented a catastrophe.”

Noting that the event took place on Purim, the petition says “the terrorist did not arrive with shalach manos to hand out to the soldiers. He arrived with his terrorist friend, armed with knives, to murder soldiers. The terrorist was dressed in an overcoat on a very warm day and could have easily been hiding on his person an explosive charge which, had it blown up, would have made the mothers of dozens of IDF soldiers cry today instead of rejoice in the Purim holiday.”
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Syrian television quoted a military source saying the army and its militia allies took “complete control over the city of Palmyra.”

JPOST

(Photo: Forces loyal to Syria’s President Bashar Assad drive under a road sign that shows the direction to the historic city of Palmyra in this picture provided by SANA on March 24, 2016. Credit: Reuters)

Syrian government forces recaptured Palmyra on Sunday, state media and a monitoring group said, inflicting a significant defeat on the Islamic State group which had controlled the desert city since May last year.
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By Daniel Roth, JPOST

Head of the Institute for National Security Studies [INSS] said Saturday that Israel Defense Forces were capable of destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities with a preemptive strike if presented with no other alternative, according to Channel 10.

Speaking at a cultural event in Beersheba, Amos Yadlin said during a speech that the “Israel Air Force can meet the challenge of exterminating Iran’s nuclear reactors if necessary.”

Yadlin said if Israel were confronted with an “intersection where you have to choose between two alternatives: one is whether Iran will have a bomb and we do nothing… and the second is whether to conduct a preemptive action to prevent Iran from attaining a nuclear weapon,” then Israel would be capable of destroying the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities.
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T. Belman. I commented on the question of morality after the first Gaza war in 2008 in Don’t Muddy the Waters.

By Shalom Pollack

As we celebrate Purim, the holiday of redemption from a holocaust and revenge against our enemies, terrorists attacked a soldier in Hevron. Thankfully, the soldier was only slightly wounded before his buddies took out the two assailants.

Quite appropriately, the annual Purim costume parade began just where our enemies were felled.

Flash. One of the attackers was down when a soldier finished him off.

The self appointed judges of what it moral, humane and authentically Jewish are raising the usual howl. That soldier and others who were in the area are in deep trouble today.
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By Hana Levi Julian, JEWISH PRESS

Angry IDF veterans and other Israelis protest jailing of soldier who shot and killed terrorist to ensure he was neutralized in Hebron.

Demonstrators waving posters, honking horns and yelling slogans gathered in Be’er Sheva Saturday night to protest against the arrest and jailing of an IDF soldier who shot and killed a terrorist who was apparently “neutralized” in Hebron last week.

The protesters stood across from Prison No. 4 on Saturday night, where the soldier is incarcerated, according to Israeli radio.
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