T. Belman. This is a surprise coming from The Guardian. Cohen himself is a much respected leftwing intellectual who is not Jewish.

By Nick Cohen, THE GUARDIAN

It took me 40 years to become a Jew. When I was a child, I wasn’t a Jew and not only because I never went to a synagogue. My father’s family had abandoned their religion so he wasn’t Jewish. More to the point, my mother and my grandmother weren’t Jewish either, so according to orthodox Judaism’s principles of matrilineal descent, it was impossible for me to be a Jew.

All I had was the “Cohen” name. I once asked my parents why they had not changed it. After saying, quite rightly, that you should never seek to appease racists, they confessed to thinking that antisemitism was over by the 1960s. After Hitler, humanity would surely see where the world’s most insane hatred led and resolve to put it to one side.
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Op-ed: The Turkish president’s successful efforts to Islamize his country are responsible for the rise in terrorism, an obvious result; he has only himself to blame.

By Ben-Dror Yemini, YNET

Up until the last decade, Turkey was the very model of a secular country, despite its absolute majority of Muslim citizens.

Since the revolution of Mustafa Atatürk, the father of Turkish secularism, it has been forbidden for women to wear headscarves, at least in the civil service. In 1997, that law was actually expanded, and a provision was added forbidding wearing a veil at universities. The High Court approved an administrative decision to prevent the promotion of an educator because she insisted on wearing a veil.
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There’s a Jewish candidate who chose not to be seen here. And an ostensible Israel-lover with whom many would much rather not be seen. A surreal day dawns for the pro-Israel lobby

By David Horowitz, TOI

WASHINGTON, DC — For months, the US political pundits’ mantra has been that Donald J. Trump could not win the Republican nomination. Now that nobody would dare say that with confidence, the new certainty is that he cannot win the presidency.

But of course he can. As things look to him now, Trump’s worst-case scenario is to find himself one devastating Clinton political skeleton away from the White House.
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An American president who rejected the notion of a “global war on terror” has now launched one.

By Tamara Cofman Wittes, The ATLANTIC

[T. Belman. This a great team. I have highlighted people I respect and in some cases, know.]

NEWSMAX

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz unveiled his national security team, which includes former Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams, former Missouri Sen. Jim Talent and former U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy.

“These are trusted friends who will form a core of our broader national security team,” the Texas senator said. “After two terms of a failed Obama-Clinton foreign policy, our allies are confused and frightened, and our enemies are looking for opportunities.
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DEBKA

Co-opting Israel to East Africa’s struggle against encroaching Islamist terror topped the agenda of Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta’s talks with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem in the third week of February, DEBKAfile’s exclusive sources disclose.

Their two countries are already bound by close military and intelligence ties. Kenyatta proposed expanding this partnership into a broad new alliance, comprising Israel and six East African states, for launching a combined campaign to rid their countries of the jihadist Islamic State, Al Qaeda and their affiliates, such as Somalia’s Al Shabaab.
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It was Erdogan who ended the peace talks with the Kurds, declared war on the PKK, and joined the coalition against ISIS. Now he finds himself in an all-out war across three fronts.

By Yossi Melman, JPOST

Israeli diplomatic and intelligence channels are attempting to verify if the attack in Istanbul intentionally targeted Israeli tourists, although it is more likely that the Israelis were caught up as bystanders along with other tourists. Turkey receives 35 million tourists a year from many countries, mainly tourists from nearby countries.
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By Dr. Haim Shine, ISRAEL HAYOM

Many Israelis were shocked to learn of the efforts made by left-wing group Breaking the Silence to gather classified military information, as reported by Channel 2 last week based on hidden-camera footage filmed by activists of the right-wing organization Ad Kan. The attempts by Breaking the Silence to collect intelligence about operational activities by the Israel Defense Forces are extremely serious.

The Israeli penal code has stringent provisions relating to intelligence breaches. At this stage, things appear to be highly problematic, and I have no doubt that law enforcement authorities will launch an extensive investigation to determine the significance of the material the group has gathered over the years.
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BY MICHAEL A. REYNOLDS, NEWSWEEK EUROPE

When Turkey downed a Russian jet last November, it did so in the hopes of containing Russian efforts in Syria. Instead, it may have triggered a process that is putting Vladimir Putin in the driver’s seat in redrawing the borders of the Middle East, including Turkey’s.

After the incident, Putin vowed that Turkey’s leaders would come to rue their action and promised to retaliate with more than boycotts of Turkish tomatoes and other economic measures. “We know what we need to do,” Putin intoned ominously.
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By Michael Lobovikov, ISRAEL HAYOM

Last week, President Reuven Rivlin met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. It’s hard to ignore the fact that this was the second state visit between top government officials in Israel and Russia in the space of six months: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Putin in September 2015.

During Rivlin’s visit, it was said that Netanyahu would return to Russia soon. And according to the limited information about the talks between Rivlin and Putin — which entailed considerable involvement by security officials on both sides — it was very clear that they addressed plenty of important issues, far beyond ceremonies and public relations.
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T. Belman. Not only are younger voter’s more religious and more Zionist than their elders but they are also more supportive of the governments moves to induce Arabs to leave.

Yisrael Beitanu also is pushing a bill calling for the death penalty for terrorists who murder.

Proposal to drop voting age from 18 to 17 gain support across political spectrum. But who would likely benefit from such a change?

By David Rosenberg, INN

Former Minister of Religion Ya’akov Margi (Shas) has brought a proposal to the Ministerial Committee for Legislation which would lower the voting age in Israel from 18 to 17.

The Committee, which meets every Sunday, will decide today whether or not to offer the bill full coalition backing.

The proposal has already won support from a number of MKs across the political spectrum, both in the opposition and coalition.
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QUORA

By Matthew Gagnon, Political operative with a decade of experience in nationally significant races

Beware all “experts” who tell you something will happen.  That a candidate will win and another candidate will lose.  The certainty expressed in these types of statements, which you see on the answers to this question — particularly that Trump has no chance against Hillary Clinton — are nothing more than bluster, and an arrogant attempt to dismissively declare that something is certain, and of course, as a truthsayer, it is you above all people who just knows this to be the case.
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High-school and higher education, enlistment in the IDF, and employment are all trending upwards among Israel’s ultra-Orthodox, more and more of whom realize being part of the larger Israeli society doesn’t have to clash with their religious beliefs.

Associated Press

A quiet revolution is arising inside the insular world of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community – chipping away at the ghetto walls its leaders have erected to protect against what they see as the dangers of secularism. More and more, young ultra-Orthodox insist they can continue to lead pious lives while also embracing technology, the modern workplace and their fellow Israelis.
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by Steve Kramer

I recently attended an excellent lecture by Dr. Mordechai Kedar on the history of Jerusalem, presented by “The Jewish Narrative” Thursday English Lecture series in Herzliya. (for information: weba@netvision.net.il)..

In many ways this lecture was similar to another I had attended several years ago by Emeritus Professor Moshe Sharon of Hebrew University. Both Middle East scholars recounted the years in which Mohammed proselytized his new religion in the Hejaz – the area of Mecca and Medina – now in Saudi Arabia.

Mordechai Kedar, born in 1952 in Tel Aviv, is an Israeli scholar of Arabic literature and a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University, where he earned his PhD. Kedar is an academic expert on Arab affairs and served for twenty-five years in IDF Military Intelligence. He has been described as “one of the few Arabic-speaking Israeli pundits seen on Arabic satellite channels defending Israel.”
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[T. Belman. This gives you an idea of what Netanyahu was up against in 2009.]

By Ted Belman [July 8, 2009]

The headlines are coming fast and furious.

Did U.S. okay Israel construction of 2,500 settlement homes?

Israel had won agreement from the United States for the continued construction of 2,500 housing units in settlements in the West Bank, despite U.S. calls for a freeze, according to the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv.

‘We’ll evacuate 23 outposts very soon’

Defense Minister Ehud Barak  Middle East envoy George Mitchell for the second time in a week on Monday , and promised that Israel would evacuate 23 illegal outposts in the West Bank in a matter of weeks or months, as opposed to years, Army Radio reported.
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By James Lewis, AMERICAN THINKER

For Americans who favor Donald Trump, their choice can be summarized in two words: Trump Fights. We haven’t seen a fighting Republican since Newt Gingrich and the Contract with America. But we’ve seen plenty of abject surrenders covered by abject lies. The GOP establishment has enough cozy compromises running that they are shocked to see a fighting Republican.

Actress Stacey Dash understands the Trump style because she grew up with it. Her blog post is cited by Breitbart, and it’s worth reading. According to Stacey Dash “Donald Trump is not violent, he’s street.”
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Bezalel Smotrich offers alternative peace plan to the two-state solution, calls for annexation of Judea and Samaria.

Arutz Sheva Mar 6/16

According to Smotrich’s plan, Israel would annex all of Judea and Samaria, including areas A, B, and C.

As for the demographic problem posed by adding those areas to the State of Israel, Smotrich proposes to give Arab residents three options. First, every Arab in the area would offered $100,000 to emigrate to the country of their choice.

For those who wish to remain, they would have the choice of either accepting permanent residency status, as was offered to Jerusalem’s Arab population when eastern portions of the city were annexed in 1967, or living under an autonomy arrangement. Under the latter, local Arabs would continue to manage their own affairs, while the land would be under Israeli sovereignty.
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By Robbie Sabel, JCPA 2013

• Israel’s record of compliance with international law is remarkably strong. In a long series of decisions, the Israeli High Court has ordered the Israeli government, army, and security services to change policies that, in the court’s view, were in violation of customary international law. The court has even intervened in actual combat situations.

• Perhaps because Israel’s detractors are aware of this reality, they have undertaken a process of manipulating international law in a way that invents rules that are applied only to Israel and not to other states or in other situations.

• Israel’s detractors invented a new international legal concept called “illegal occupation.” In an armed conflict, international law clearly permits military occupation. The UN Security Council has never declared Israeli occupation to be illegal. U.S. occupation of Iraq after the Second Gulf War was universally considered a legal act.

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The Left lost in Israel, but still rules over American Jews.

By Daniel Greenfield, FPM

The Israeli left as a democratic political movement is dead. That piece of bad news was delivered by a recent survey which shows that only 8% of Israeli Jews identify with the left, 55% with the center and 37% with the right.

In the last election, the establishment Labor Party had to dress up as a wolf in Zionist centrist clothing by renaming itself the Zionist Camp (it still lost). The left had to create two other fake centrist parties to stop Netanyahu, but just ended up having to roll them into his center-right coalition.
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T. Belman.  Both Bush and Obama gave the Kurds the short end, never supporting their desire for independence.  Russia seized the opportunity to support the Kurds thereby aquiring a valuable ally and foothold.

DEBKA

Just four days after drawing down the bulk of Russian forces in Syria, President Vladimir Putin was quietly redrawing the Syrian map on federal lines, and planting Russian influence in its first semi-autonomous region.

DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources report that the Russian leader’s hand was behind the establishment of the Syrian Kurdish federal region on March 17, at a meeting of Kurdish Democratic Union Party leaders in the Syrian town of Rmeilan.
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