In the 31st July 16 edition of Israel’s good news, the highlights include:

• Europe and the US have approved innovative Israeli compact MRI scanners.
• The IDF’s new Chief Medical Officer is a Druze Arab.
• Israeli students used an Israeli satellite to take a selfie from space.
• Israeli drip irrigation is revolutionizing mushroom farming.
• An Israeli security surveillance system will protect Uruguay.
• The first Israeli woman to win a European championship athletics medal.
• Mosaics depicting Biblical scenes were found at a 1600-year-old Galilee Synagogue.

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Bodies like AIPAC must begin demonstrating to their Democratic members that the Democratic Party is facing a determined campaign from internal elements hostile or indifferent to Israel.

By Isi Liebler, JPOST

The American presidential elections have created an unprecedented climate of political chaos.

Both candidates are reviled by the bulk of the electorate, many of whom intimate that they intend to abstain from voting. The polls originally predicted that Hillary Clinton would win by a landslide, but the odds have now dramatically narrowed and in this explosive environment, Donald Trump may well be elected.
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The West should further weaken Islamic State, but not destroy it. A weak but functioning IS can undermine the appeal of the caliphate among radical Muslims; keep bad actors focused on one another rather than on Western targets; and hamper Iran.

Prof. Efraim Inbar, INN

US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter recently gathered defense ministers from allied nations to plan what officials hope will be the decisive stage in the campaign to eradicate the Islamic State (IS) organization. This is a strategic mistake.

IS, a radical Islamist group, has killed thousands of people since it declared an Islamic caliphate in June 2014, with the Syrian city of Raqqa as its de facto capital. It captured tremendous international attention by swiftly conquering large swaths of land and by releasing gruesome pictures of beheadings and other means of execution.
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Obama administration insists there was no quid pro quo, but critics charge payment amounted to ransom

If it was so innocent, then why all the secrecy?

By JAY SOLOMON and CAROL E. LEE, WSJ

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration secretly organized an airlift of $400 million worth of cash to Iran that coincided with the January release of four Americans detained in Tehran, according to U.S. and European officials and congressional staff briefed on the operation afterward.

Wooden pallets stacked with euros, Swiss francs and other currencies were flown into Iran on an unmarked cargo plane, according to these officials. The U.S. procured the money from the central banks of the Netherlands and Switzerland, they said.

The money represented the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement the Obama administration reached with Iran to resolve a decades-old dispute over a failed arms deal signed just before the 1979 fall of Iran’s last monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
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[Andrew McCarthy covered this story and added a great deal to it at National Review.]

By James  Barrett, DAILY WIRE

Fresh off of throwing the Democratic National Convention into turmoil after proving that party officials had conspired to sabotage Bernie Sanders’ campaign, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange announced that he has some even more damaging material in his trove of hacked emails — this time involving Hillary Clinton pushing to arm jihadists in Syria, including ISIS.

As Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft notes, in her testimony in January 2013 during the congressional Benghazi hearings, Clinton denied under oath having any knowledge of the weapons trade program with Syrian rebels that took place a year before the Benghazi attack. Now Assange says that in the collection of hacked emails his group has procured, 17,000 are “about Libya alone,” and among them is proof that Clinton “pushed” for weapons to be sent to “jihadists within Syria, including ISIS.”
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By Yoram Ettinger, ISRAEL HAYOM

Israel’s apparent desire to conclude, as soon as possible, a generous, 10-year defense aid package with the United States — to enhance short and medium-term economic and national security certainty — could result in severe short- and long-term injuries to Israel’s ties with the U.S. and Israel’s national security.

Should Israel accept President Barack Obama’s terms for the deal, as reported by the media, then the new 10-year defense package could be dramatically different from the previous one, concluded in 2007.
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By Efraim Inbar, BESA

Executive Summary
The United States is retreating from the Middle East. The adverse implications of this policy shift are manifold, including: the acceleration of Tehran’s drive to regional hegemony, the palpable risk of regional nuclear proliferation following the JCPOA, the spread of jihadist Islam, and Russia’s growing penetration of the region. Manifest US weakness is also bound to have ripple effects far beyond the Middle East, as global players question the value of partnership with an irresolute Washington.
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DEBKA
aUG 2/16 10:00 aM

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s revived bid to bring opposition leader, Labor’s Yitzhak Herzog, into his coalition government as foreign minister is not acknowledged by either side – the latest exchange of messages took place Sunday night, Aug 1. But its undercurrents are sending squalls to the surface of apparently unrelated issues.

Such issues include the government’s move to postpone public broadcasting reform; the row over how the Hamas terror tunnels were handled in the run-up to the Gaza war; vague media suggestions that Netanyahu may be under investigation for financial irregularities; and the boos aimed at Herzog before he gained his party’s approval for postponing Labor’s leadership contest for a year.
DEBKAfile’s political sources analyze the motives behind these outbursts of contention:
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By Mathew Boyle, BREITBART

Mainstream media figures from the New York Times to the Huffington Post to CNN are apoplectic Monday as their latest attack on Donald J. Trump, the Republican nominee for president, has crumbled yet again under the slightest bit of scrutiny.

Specifically, the newest line of attack to fall apart is the criticism of Trump over Khizr Khan, the Muslim Gold Star father who spoke at the Democratic National Convention last week.
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I have a PERSONAL message for the Muslim father whose son was killed in Iraq

By Allen West

Everyone’s talking about the speech delivered by Mr. Khizr Khan, accompanied by his wife Ghazala at the DNC that focused on the loss of his son, U.S. Army Captain Humayan Khan.

It appears things have devolved into such a level of immaturity relating to the speech that I believe there’s a need for a clear analysis of Mr. Khan’s address, and what he should have presented.
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By Ruthie Blum, ALGEMEINER

Egypt-Israel ties have been strengthening in the three years since the military coup that ousted former President Mohamed Morsi, a Cairo-based political analyst wrote on Friday.

In an op-ed published by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Arabic-English website Fikra Forum, Mohamed Soliman said that this flourishing relationship – which sprouted in the immediate aftermath of the toppling of the Muslim Brotherhood-led government – has been a two-way street.

“Shortly after the July 3 [2013] military intervention, Israel began unequivocally backing the new regime,” he wrote, continuing,
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T. Belman. I have taken the position that Bibi really wants to cut a deal very close to the API. This article suggests he has no intention of doing so. You decide, but please note the author of this article, the EU and the Obama Administration all believe that there is only one deal on offer. Thus they want assurances that Bibi is willing to accept it. The game is rigged, nothing to discuss, take it or we will ram it down your throat..

As Israel and various Arab states cosy up, anti-normalization looks like ancient history. Can the Palestinians really be sidelined so easily and comprehensively?

By Daniel Levy, HAARETZ

Appearing before a meeting of the Knesset State Control Committee on the Foreign Ministry and Israel’s public diplomacy last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that Israel’s international standing is on an upward trajectory. For understandable reasons the Prime Minister may have been somewhat embellishing his track record, but his claims should not be too quickly dismissed or belittled.
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By Michael N. Mattia, AMERICAN THINKER

Now that Hillary Rodham Clinton is the Democrats’ candidate for President of the United States, prepare for the most fraudulent, corrupt and dishonest if not outright criminal election process in the history of this country. That has to be the takeaway from all the recent revelations regarding the Clintons and the DNC coronation of Clinton. Significantly aiding this criminality are Obama and the Democratic Party itself.

Obama has co-opted every federal agency tasked with providing honest oversight of the election process. From the Federal Election Commission to the FBI and ultimately the Justice Department itself, the Clintons and the Democrats know that there will be no negative consequences to any and all law breaking that they undertake to steal the election. Voter intimidation by gangs of Clinton thugs will be given the response that the situation will be “investigated.” In modern day Government usage “investigation” is simply a euphemism for “we intend to do nothing.”
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By Bruce Walker, AMERICAN THINKER

Donald Trump has the right idea about Vladimir Putin and Russia.  Trump is a realist and a nationalist.

The Russian Republic is not the Soviet Union.  During the Cold War, the Kremlin described America as the “Main Enemy,” and Soviet agents as well as communist sympathizers in America colluded against our nation as part of an ideological jihad against us.

Today that Soviet Empire has lost its satellites in the Warsaw Pact nations as well as the old Marxist states of Yugoslavia and Albania, a loss to the old Soviet Empire of about 125 million people.  The disintegration of the Soviet Union itself into twelve nations means that the Russian Republic has 117 million fewer people than the old Soviet Union.  The Russian Republic has only 37% of the population of the old communist empire, which stretched from the Elbe River to Sakhalin.  Read more…

T. Belman. Khan attacked Trump in the DNC and Trump hit back. The MSM were all over Trump and even Trumps’s friends thought he went too far. Apparently not.

By Clarice Feldman, AMERICAN THINKER

Khizr Khan is the father of a U.S. soldier who died in Iraq who spoke poignantly of the loss of his son and then used that platform to attack Donald Trump. On Sunday he tweeted further disparaging remarks about Melania.

Google shows this for his law practice: Read more…

Herzog rejects Netanyahu’s latest unity government overture

Leading coalition partner lashes out at Netanyahu as relations deteriorate over policy, efforts to expand government

TOI STAFF

The right-wing Jewish Home party warned Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday that it would no longer be his “punching bag,” as the government appeared to wobble over ongoing clashes between the key coalition partner and the prime minister’s ruling Likud.

“Netanyahu is again shooting inside the armored personnel carrier,” said a statement from Jewish Home.

“Just as he opened fire inside the APC when he voted for the disengagement [from Gaza] and the demolition of Gush Katif [the Jewish settlement bloc in Gaza], just as he fired inside the APC when he released the highest number of terrorists in the country’s history, when he presented Hebron to Yasser Arafat… when he froze [settlement] construction, when he surrendered to Hamas, when he declared the establishment of the state of Palestine at Bar-Ilan [University], and when he counted the number of kippot of religious journalists in the media.”
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Bookworm Room

As you all know, Trump was my last choice during the Republican primaries but by default he’s my first choice against Hillary. I’m not the only one who has had to work my way to making peace with the situation as it is, rather than as I wanted it to be.

Wayne Gruden has written an argument for concerned Christians explaining why Trump, despite being a deeply flawed candidate, is still to be preferred over Hillary. He even addresses the concern so many people have that Trump, once he’s elected, will suddenly cast off the Clark Kent glasses and announce that he’s really “Super Liberal.
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