Netanyahu’s remarks come after pressure by ministers. In inner cabinet meeting, Defense Minister Lieberman barred army officers from answering Minister Bennett’s questions.

Barak Ravid, HAARETZ

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that, in wake of the recent attacks, the government will allocate additional aid to fortify the settlements in the West Bank.
“We will make a special effort to strengthen the communities and will propose a special plan for Kiryat Arba at the next cabinet meeting,” Netanyahu said at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting, adding, that he has instructed all government ministries to do their part to help West Bank settlements.

Haaretz has learned that Netanyahu’s remarks on Sunday morning came after some of the ministers pressured Netanyahu during Saturday’s emergency security cabinet meeting. The ministers called for a massive round of construction in the settlements in response to recent terror attacks. Netanyahu promised them that he will examine the issue. Just two weeks ago, the cabinet approved a special allocation of 82 million shekels ($21.3 million) to West Bank settlements, citing security concerns.
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By Nadav Shragai, ISRAEL HAYOM

The US strategy is to use the Kurds to win back ISIS held territory rather than to impose Kurdish rule on local Arabs.

ARA News

HASAKAH – Western analysts say that it is unlikely that the Obama administration will change its policy towards Syrian Kurds, after an internal memo was signed by more than 50 State Department officials criticizing Obama administration’s policy in Syria and towards the Kurdish YPG forces.

The memo said that “Kurdish YPG fighters cannot – and should not – be expected to project power and hold terrain deep into non-Kurdish areas”. Moreover, the memo says the best way to fight ISIS, is to support the moderate Sunni Arab opposition both against ISIS and the Syrian government.
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ARA News

The Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDK-I) warned the Iranian Revolutionary Guards that they will respond to any aggression towards their Peshmerga bases.

Senior Iranian military officials have threatened to target PDKI’s bases and refugee camps in Iraqi Kurdistan, as well as to launch missiles against Israel. PDKI officials have responded to these threats, warning Iran that the Peshmerga Forces will respond to Iranian acts of aggression.

The Iranian Brigadier General Hossein Salami said on Friday that Iran would carry out cross-border operations, if the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq does not ‘adhere to their commitments’ of preventing Iranian Kurdish parties from carrying out cross-border attacks.
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This is not the exception, but the rule. But for Jihad, there wouldn’t be 1.3 billion Muslims in the world.

By Madeline Brooks, AMERICAN THINKER

On July 1, 2016, ISIS took responsibility for invading an ex-pat café in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital, killing at least two and taking twenty hostages.  At the same time, a Hindu priest was hacked to death in his temple. Now the world is paying more attention to this small South Asian country and wondering if Bangladesh is the new hot spot for ISIS, or perhaps al Qaeda.

Whatever the handle used by the Muslim group that committed the latest attacks, there is no doubt that non-Muslim and dissident Muslim Bangladeshi natives have been living with terror at the hands of jihadis.

Jihadis in Bangladesh have been steadily increasing their rapes, murders, land thefts, and public humiliations against all they deem fit to suffer for their cause:  the spread of sharia.  They do this with impunity. Here are some, but by no means all, of the many atrocities committed by them in just the last few months:
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Is it possible that the tide may be changing, that the ideas at the core of Zionism are about to be less marginalized?

By Daniel Gordis, JPOST

With the Brexit vote in the UK still so recent and so fresh, it’s obviously far too early to know how each of many of the variables will play out.

What will happen to currency markets? Is the post-World War II order really dissolving? Will the European Union crumble? On the Israel front, uncertainty prevails as well. Would a divided European continent, presumably often internally at odds, be less monolithically hostile to Israel? Will Europe’s newfound uncertainties dislodge its capitals from their obsessive preoccupation with a conflict that they have no capacity to influence or to settle? One thing, though, is clear, even if Brexit’s detractors refuse to acknowledge it: Brexit is actually a profound validation of the very premise of Zionism.
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T. Belman. When I read about this new policy, I wondered why only deduct the same amount. Why not deduct twice as much, for instance. Secondly this is money that belongs to the PA. We simply collect it on their behalf. We have no right to withhold it. In the past we announced that we were going to apply this money to the outstanding bill for electricity that we supply. After universal condemnations, we relented and gave them most of the money we withheld.

By Evelyn Gordon, COMMENTARY

Note: After this article was published, Israel announced that it would in fact start deducting salaries paid to terrorists from its tax transfers to the Palestinian Authority

The brutal terror attack in which a teenaged Palestinian murdered a 13-year-old Israeli in her own bed early this morning—an Israeli who was also an American citizen—is a perfect example of why a piece of legislation now moving through Congress is essential. The bill won’t end the Palestinian Authority’s abhorrent practice of paying generous salaries to the perpetrators of such murders. But it will at least stop it from doing so on the U.S. taxpayer’s dime.
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T. Belman. Finally the motivation behind the deal is being exposed. What I find surprising is that Syria and the Kurds are not mentioned. What does this deal mean for the future of Syria and the Syrian/Iran axis?

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report June 27, 2016,

The reconciliation agreement announced Monday, June 27 for restoring full normalization between Israel and Turkey after six years of animosity will restart intelligence and security cooperation between the two countries and entail joint military exercises, and investments in energy and defense.

Debkafile’s security experts evaluate the deal as offering a valuable and timely increment for Israeli’s national interests on eight scores:

1. It fits neatly into the current joint Saudi-Egyptian bid for Israel to bolster their emerging alliance with Turkey that is designed for drawing a Sunni line against Iran’s expansionist moves in the Horn of Africa, the Red Sea, the Straits of Aqaba and in uncomfortable proximity to the Mediterranean shores of Israel and Egypt.
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AL MONITOR

ERBIL, Iraq — The leader of a major Iranian Kurdish party has vowed to gradually step up his group’s fight against Iranian security forces, as the group ends almost two decades of a unilateral cease-fire with Iran after a series of recent clashes between the two sides.

The Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan’s (PDKI) armed wing, known as the peshmerga, have clashed with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on at least five occasions over recent weeks, resulting in dozens of casualties on both the IRGC andPDKI sides — although both parties dispute the counts.
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by Hussein Ibish, The Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington

Notwithstanding the range of views within the Gulf Cooperation Council, the Gulf Arab states are largely committed to the ouster of the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the reduction, if not elimination, of Iranian influence in Syria. Saudi Arabia and Qatar, in particular, are convinced that the strategic future of the Middle East, and specifically the role of Iran, will be determined by the outcome of the Syrian conflict. They believe that if Iran and its allies prevail and the current Syrian regime survives unreconstructed it will open the door for further inroads by Tehran into the Arab world and the eventual creation of a Persian mini-empire in the region. They are even concerned that Iranian destabilization efforts will intensify within the GCC states, particularly Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province.
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Turkey’s simultaneous reconciliation agreements with Russia and Israel provide a rare chance to design a new Middle Eastern policy.

By Zvi Bar’el, HAARETZ

The attack at Ataturk Airport in Istanbul this week, apparently by the Islamic State, clearly shows how Turkey has become a secondary front of the war in Syria. It was the seventh mass terror incident this year and probably won’t be the last, because Turkey is one of the countries that have been marked by ISIS as enemies, both militarily and ideologically.

As long as Turkey was helping ISIS personnel move through its territory into Syria, providing medical aided to ISIS wounded and, in the best case, turning a blind eye to oil deals between ISIS and Turkish producers, the country had immunity.
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Ted Belman. The whole purpose of this Report is to legitimate the efforts of the EU and the US to force Israel to release her hold on Area C. Now in the name of the report, they will up the pressure on Israel to allow Arab building there and to freeze Jewish building. Keep in mind that they have no authority to do so.

The report says Palestinians must act against terrorism, while Israel must stop settlement construction.

By Barak Ravid , HAARETZ

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (L) and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini hold a joint press conference in Brussels, June 27, 2016. John Thys, AFP

The foreign ministers of the Quartet on the Middle East – the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations – asserted in a report released on Friday afternoon that the current track taken by the Israelis and Palestinians has distanced the possibility of a two-state solution, creating a situation in which a one-state reality has taken root.
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Israel accuses the Quartet of ‘perpetuating the myth’ that the settlements are an obstacle to peace; PA says the report doesn’t meet the Palestinians’ expectations ‘as a nation living under a foreign colonial military occupation.’

By Barak Ravid and Jack Khoury, HAARETZ

Both Israel and the Palestinian Authority expressed disappointment on Friday with the Mideast Quartet report on the impasse in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

The report released on Friday afternoon calls on the Palestinian Authority to stop incitement, step up efforts to end terrorism and condemn attacks against Israelis. It calls on Israel to end settlement construction and put a stop to the gradual takeover of Area C in the West Bank.

Israel said it rejects the parallels the report had drawn between settlement construction and terrorism. The PA said that the report doesn’t meet the Palestinians’ expectations “as a nation living under a foreign colonial military occupation.”
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HAARETZ

An Israeli was killed and three were wounded Friday after their car crashed as a result of gunfire near Hebron. The victims are all said to be members of the same family who were traveling together when they were attacked.

According to the military, the Palestinian thought to be behind the shooting was from the village of Bani Na’im – the same village as the terrorist who killed a 13-year-old girl early Thursday. A manhunt is underway in Hebron and the army has set up checkpoints in the area.
[..]

Earlier on Friday, a Palestinian woman was shot and killed after she attempted to stab Border Police officers at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. She has been identified as Sara al-Hajuj Atrayera, 27, also from the West Bank village of Bani Na’im.

On Thursday, a Palestinian assailant stabbed and killed 13-year-old Hallel Yaffa Ariel, a U.S. citizen, as she slept inside her home in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba. A civil security guard responding to the attack shot and killed the assailant at the scene.

Also on Thursday, a Palestinian man stabbed two Israelis in the coastal city of Netanya before an armed civilian shot him down.

One of the Obama administration’s top shills for the sellout to Iran has been a lobbyist for Boeing all along. The celebration of the first anniversary of the JCPOA is marked by strategic drivel as cover for business greed and oversize ego.

By David Weinberg, ISRAEL HAYOM

Amb. Tom Pickering, top shill for the sellout to Iran, has been a lobbyist for Boeing all along.

As the July 14 first anniversary of the JCPOA nears, you can be sure that the Obama administration and its think tank and business allies will treat us to a slew of congratulatory stories about the nuclear agreement with Iran, with an eye to making it irreversible as Barack Obama leaves office.

It is, of course, absurd to celebrate an accord that has strengthened the ayatollahs in their quest for regional hegemony. It’s utterly nonsensical – until you begin to understand how much big money is behind the deal.
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FIRST ONE THROUGH

The repeated comments by the Obama administration make clear that the United States abhors the use of terrorism against civilians, but considers the tactic in relation to potential goals of the groups.

Spokesperson for the US Secretary of State, John Kirby

On June 30, 2016, the spokesperson for the US Secretary of State, John Kirby gave his daily press briefing. He opened with a story about the terrorist attack against a young Israeli girl who was killed in her bed. Kirby appropriately described the “brutal act of terrorism,” however, his subsequent remarks went in a strange direction.

Consider which of these statements Kirby made on June 30 about terrorism:

1. 1. “reiterated our steadfast commitment to our partnership with [Israel], in the shared fight against terrorism.”

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It is springtime for Israeli diplomacy as governments around the world seek out closer ties with the Jewish state.

By Caroline B Glick, JPOST

We are living at a time when preconceived notions are crashing down one on top of the other.

We thought that nothing would ever change in the Arab world. But the Arab world hasn’t merely changed, large portions of it have collapsed. And regimes that have so far survived are beating a path to Israel’s door.

We thought that American dominance in the Middle East would last forever. And today the US is withdrawing. Its withdrawal may be short-lived, or it may stay out for the foreseeable future. Whatever the case, Russia is already picking up the pieces.
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By Vic Rosenthal

Everyone says Israel does a poor job of hasbara, but the question is “what is the job?”

Hasbara is information, propaganda, public diplomacy, clarification of policies, telling the truth about Israel or telling lies. It depends on whom you ask.  Folks who don’t like what I write sometimes call me a ‘hasbarist’, which is apparently something like a pederast.

One form of hasbara – defensive hasbara – responds to what Richard Landes likes to call ‘cognitive warfare’. Cognitive warfare is a real thing that nations and ideological activists expend a lot of effort and money on and which can have serious, concrete effects.
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By MARTIN SHERMAN

The real reason for the rupture of relations with Turkey is not because of anything Israel has (or has not) done. It is a result of what Turkey has become.

Israelis have no conscience, no honor, no pride. Those who condemn Hitler day and night have surpassed Hitler in barbarism. – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, (7/19/2014) 

National honor is not just something people talk of on the street…It has strategic significance – Moshe (Bogey) Yaalon, Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister, (8/17/2011). 

The recently announced reconciliation accord—or rather “deal” between Israel and Turkey—is utterly unconscionable—and incomprehensible. From an Israeli point of view, it is devoid of any logic on every imaginable level—national, ethical, security and even commercial—except perhaps in the immediate short-term.
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By Tova Lazaroff, JPOST

Palestinian terrorist stabbed a 13-year old to death in her bedroom on Thursday morning after he infiltrated the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, which is located next to Hebron.

“My daughter was sleeping calmly when he [the terrorist] came into her bedroom,” Hallal’s mother Rina told Army Radio. “She was happy,’ she added.

A Magen David Adom paramedic said that when he arrived at the scene the teenage girl, Hallel Yaffa Ariel, was unconscious and was not breathing. They were able to resuscitate her at the scene, but it was touch-and-go during the whole journey to Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, as they continuously fought to keep her alive.
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