Ottawa Hijab Day – Thursday, February 25^th, 2016

“Better Awareness, Greater Understanding, Peaceful World when non-Muslim women will wear a hijab for all or part of the day to be in solidarity with Muslim women. We walk with our sisters.”

Please do this instead: Do NOT wear a headscarf in “solidarity” with the ideology that most silences us, equating our bodies with “honor.” Stand with us instead with moral courage against the ideology of Islamism that demands we cover our hair.

~ Asra Q. Nomani & Hala Arafa ~
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By Caroline Glick, JPOST

Last week marked the 17th anniversary of Jordan’s King Abdullah’s coronation after the death of his father, King Hussein.

Abdullah’s ascension to the monarchy was unanticipated. His uncle Hassan was his father’s long-serving crown prince and was expected to inherit the throne. Hussein made the change in succession from his deathbed.
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The State wants to relocate the herding families that live in temporary illegal structures to the nearby village of Abu Dis, just outside of Jerusalem.

By Tova Lazaroff, JPOST

The High Court of Justice on Monday rejected a petition by 70 Jahalin Beduin families to remain on land that is part of the Ma’aleh Adumim settlement, according to the non-governmental group Regavim.

It issued a statement after a court hearing Monday. According to the court, a ruling was made in the case, but it has not yet been published.
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Former Russian Energy Minister Yuri Shafranik: U.S. Priorities ‘Are Directed Today toward Iran’   -VIDEO

PLUS

Russian Analyst On Pro-Regime Website: The West Wants To Bring About Russia’s ‘Mental Destruction’

On February 5, 2016, the pro-regime Russian website Pravda.ru[1] published an interview with Russian political scientist Elena Ponomareva[2] on the crisis in Syria and on other issues of global politics.

Asked why the West was criticizing Russia’s role and actions in Syria, she said that this was part of its media campaign against Russia. Whenever Russia makes achievements or grows strong, she explained, the West presents it as a “monster” and wages “an informational, ideological, economic, political and psycho-historical war” against it. This, not only in order to fight its leaders but in order to bring about its “mental destruction” and “destroy the legacy of Tolstoy, Pushkin and Dostoevsky so that they never come back.”
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DEBKA

US President Barack Obama has retracted on his pledge of an extra defense package to compensate Israel for the damage caused its security by the nuclear deal concluded with Iran last year. This flat refusal, reported here by DEBKAfile’s Washington sources, confronted Israeli officials when they met last week with heads of the National Security Council at the White House.
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T. Belman. Rubin is old school. I suggest that the US should partner with Russia. Cut a deal. Trump and Cruz both support this. Divide Syria and both defeat ISIS. Cede eastern Ukraine and Crimea to Russia. After all a majority of the citizens are Russian. Consider allowing Russia back into Libya in order to instill order in place of chaos. Libya can’t be allowed to be controlled by ISIS which would enable ISIS to control North Africa. Russian control of Syria would protect Europe from Muslim infiltration.

By Michael Rubin, COMMENTARY

When Governor Mitt Romney described Russia as the greatest geoplitical foe the United States faced, President Obama ridiculed him. “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years,” the president quipped. And yet today hardly an American warship departs Norfolk, Virginia or Mayport, Florida that is not tailed by a Russian submarine or shadowed by a Russian spy ship. Russia continues to prop up puppet states on Georgian territory, occupy Crimea and huge chunks of Eastern Ukraine, and sabre-rattle toward the Baltics. While the Kremlin suggests it has joined the international fight against the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh), the operations it has conducted — carpet bombing of non-ISIS targets and villages — constitute as clear a case of war crimes as anything conducted by any state in the last couple decades. While Hillary Clinton continues to insist the ‘reset’ policy she championed as secretary of state was a success, Russia has not only revitalized its nuclear arsenal and doctrine but it has actively begun to demonize the United States and its leaders as enemies.

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By Barry Shaw

Show your passionate support for Israel by making this brand new pro-Israel book an international best seller!

Win yourself a prize while enjoying a great read. How to do it?

BDS for IDIOTS is a seriously funny humiliation of BDS campaigners. This is a cause we can all get behind. What better way is there to educate people to the lies of BDS than gifting them a copy if this hilarious book.

I am giving away, to three lucky winners, two signed copies of my other books – Israel Reclaiming the Narrative and Fighting Hamas, BDS and Anti-Semitism – for free!

That’s three books for the discounted price of my new motivational book – BDS for IDIOTS.
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[See also: Erdogan calls on US to choose between Turkey or Syrian Kurds]

Ankara’s hostility to Kurdish fighters is hampering the bid to sharpen campaign against Islamic State, U.S. officials say

By DION NISSENBAUM and CAROL E. LEE, WSJ

Smoke rose late last month over Diyarbakir in southeastern Turkey, where Turkish forces have been battling militants with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. PHOTO:ILYAS AKENGIN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Turkey’s growing hostility to one of America’s most effective allies in the fight against Islamic State—Syrian Kurdish fighters—is undermining efforts to step up the campaign against the extremist group, U.S. officials say.

The tensions, and the strains they have put on U.S.-Turkish relations, bubbled to the surface when U.S. Vice President Joe Biden flew to Istanbul late last month to talk with Turkish leaders about the campaign. According to U.S. and Turkish officials involved in the talks, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and his top advisers showed a specially prepared map of the Turkey-Syria border that identified several places where they said Syrian Kurdish militants had smuggled weapons meant to battle Islamic State into Turkey.
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By Howard Richman and Raymond Richman, AMERICAN THINKER

During Saturday’s Republican presidential candidate debate in New Hampshire, Donald Trump was asked:

Mr. Trump, you’ve heard the argument from many of the candidates on this stage that you’re not a true conservative. Tell the voters watching tonight why you are.

He replied:

“Well, I think I am, and to me, I view the word conservative as a derivative of the word “conserve.” We want to conserve our money. We want to conserve our wealth. We want to conserve. We want to be smart. We want to be smart where we go, where we spend, how we spend. We want to conserve our country. We want to save our country. And we have people that have no idea how to do that, and they are not doing it, and it’s a very important word and it’s something I believe in very, very strongly.”

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T. Belman. Bennett wants to embrace Arabs whereas Herzog wants to separate. Israelis, I think, prefer to separate than to embrace.

Bennett calls on Cabinet to add 100,000 Arab workers, claiming financial incentives will quell terror and those with permits don’t attack.

By Ari Yashar, ARUTZ SHEVA

Jewish Home chairperson and Education Minister Naftali Bennett on Sunday made a proposal for “solving” the scourge of terrorism by illegal Arab workers, by calling to more than double the work permits handed to Arab residents of Judea and Samaria.

At the weekly Cabinet meeting on Sunday a discussion was held on increasing the punishment for those who provide housing for Arabs from the region who illegally enter sovereign Israeli territory, and in many cases utilize their illegal entry to launch terror attacks.

Bennett proposed a solution according to The Marker, saying that in addition to increasing the punishment for those who hire Palestinians illegally, the quota on legal work permits allowing entry for Judea and Samaria Arabs should be raised by another 100,000 workers.
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[T. Belman. This plan will have great appeal for Israelis. The Right must respond if they want to lead the next government.]

Opposition chairman attacks government as Labor convention approves his separation plan.

By Hezki Ezra, ARUTZ SHEVA

The Labor party’s convention on Sunday evening officially approved its chairman Yitzhak Herzog’s “separation” peace plan.

Herzog’s plan, which he recently discussed with Secretary of State John Kerry, would form a regional security committee consisting of Egypt, Jordan and Israel together with other Arab states in an effort to eventually establish a Palestinian state.
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DEBKA

The five-year Syrian civil war, faces its most critical moment. Saturday, Feb. 6, a combined force of Syrian army and Hizballah troops and an Iraqi Shiite militia under Iranian officers, were led by Russian air and Spetsnaz (special forces) officers into pressing forward to encircle 35,000 rebels trapped in Aleppo, the country’s largest city. As they tightened the siege, 400,000 Syrian civilians were also trapped and forced to bear heavy Russian air bombardment and savage artillery fire from the ground forces closing in on the city.
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T. Belman. Min Erdan is so wrong to say: “It’s inconceivable that President Obama has any such intention (of imposing a solution) given that he and his administration emphasize that the solution to the conflict requires direct negotiations and compromise between the two sides themselves.” Obama has been trying to impose a solution from day one even though he called for “direct negotiations”. Obama now backs facts on the ground instead of direct negotiations.

Netanyahu’s actions show how much they are determined by international pressure.

Top minister dismisses Army Radio report, which comes hours after similar claims by Channel 2 were denied by the State Department

TOI

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is worried that the Obama administration will use its final weeks in office to back UN Security Council decisions and other measures detrimental to Israel, Army Radio reported on Sunday.

Netanyahu has therefore been trying to persuade his ministerial colleagues to approve a series of measures to boost the West Bank economy and show Israel’s commitment to improving the Palestinians’ lives, but has been stymied by opposition in the security cabinet by ministers including Naftali Bennett, Ayelet Shaked and Ze’ev Elkin, the report said.
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The forces laying siege to the war-torn country’s one-time commercial hub are loyal to Tehran and Hezbollah, not the Assad regime

By Avi Issacharoff, TOI

The torrent of refugees fleeing Aleppo to the Turkish border may herald the pending fall of Syria’s financial capital to Shiite hands – Iran, Hezbollah, plus what is left of President Bashar Assad’s army and the Russians.

Conquering Aleppo would establish the Assad regime’s control over the entire northwestern part of Syria, the Latakia area that came to be known as “Alawistan,” after the Alawite sect from which Assad hails.
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By Bruce Walker, AMERICAN THINKER

Gallup, like virtually every other major polling organization that has looked at the ideological makeup of America, has reported in virtually every poll that conservatives dramatically outnumber liberals in America. Gallup’s reports the data on a state-by-state basis, and in all of the Gallup Poll surveys in the last decade, only a tiny handful of states show more respondents as liberal than conservative.

Nothing, really, has changed. The Gallup Poll survey conducted at the end of 2015 reports that 47 of the 50 states have more conservatives than liberals, and only three states – Vermont, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts – have more respondents calling themselves liberal than conservative. In two of those three states, Rhode Island and Massachusetts, the liberal advantage is tiny.
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By David Singer, CFP

The UN Security Council and the Quartet—Russia, America, the United Nations and the European Union—have ended any expectations they had of successfully negotiating a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation – after failing to categorically reject UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s highly offensive remarks before the Security Council and in the New York Times.

Ban told the Security Council on January 26:

“Palestinian frustration is growing under the weight of a half century of occupation and the paralysis of the peace process.

Some have taken me to task for pointing out this indisputable truth.

Yet, as oppressed peoples have demonstrated throughout the ages, it is human nature to react to occupation, which often serves as a potent incubator of hate and extremism.”

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T. Belman. Absolutely, this pipeline should be resurrected. The oil and gas arriving in Haifa, could travel to Europe and Turkey through the same pipeline Israel, Cyprus, Egypt and Greece are planning for their gas fields in the eastern Mediterranean. This would cement the budding relationship between Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia into a major regional military and economic power.

The war in Syria is currently being won by the Russian/Iran axis. Saudi Arabia must decide to cede Alawite Syria to Russia/Assad/Iran and work toward a Sunni state in the rest combined with the Sunni in Iraq.

The question becomes should that part of Syria adjacent to Israel be ceded to the Russian/Iran axis or to the new Sunni state. Israel does not want the Iranians on their northern border and so must get involved to prevent it from happening.

An out-of-the-box idea for cementing a relationship with the anti-Iran Arab states.

By Mark Langfan, ARUTZ SHEVA

In World War II, British tanks in Egypt heroically battled Rommel’s tanks coming east from Libya.  There have been many movies and TV shows made about these grand battles.

No one seems to have asked a simple question: Where did the British get the raw unrefined oil, and then the refined oil to fuel their tanks and battleships of the Mediterranean Sea?

Answer: The 500,000 Jews of Mandate Palestine saved Palestine from the Nazi-lover Jerusalem Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini by refining the oil that was transited by a pipeline from the Mesopotamian oil fields to Haifa.  Without the 500,000 Jews of 1930-1940 pre-Israel Israel, Great Britain would have been wiped out of the Eastern Mediterranean before the War began.
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After visiting the family of Zidan Seif, the brave Druze policeman who stopped the massacre at the Har Nof synagogue, giving his life for Jewish worshipers, Rabbi Yaakov Kermaier saw an opportunity to bring Jews and Druze together for Jethro’s Shabbat, when the story of Moses’ father-in-law, and the founder of the Druze religion, is told.

By Yifat Erlich, YNET

Rinal Seif (center) with younger brother Kinan and her baby. At left: Shabbat host Tova

Rinal Seif has worn only black for 13 months, during which she mourned the death of her husband the police officer, Master Sergeant Zidan Nahad Seif, who was killed while attempting to stop the terrorist attack at the synagogue in Jerusalem’s Har Nof neighborhood.

“I didn’t go to parties, I didn’t wear makeup. I mourned. I went back to live with my parents and they’re helping me raise our baby daughter,” Rinal says, sitting at the Shabbat table at the Nissim family home, in Jerusalem’s Arnona neighborhood.
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T. Belman. I don’t get it. Of what value are normalized relations with Turkey. We don’t need Turkey for anything. They need us. They want our gas and our tourists and our drones. What do we want from them that we just can’t buy.

By Yossi Melman, JPOST

Last month, the Director of the CIA, John Brennan, held a secret meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and his counterpart, the director of Egyptian Intelligence, Maj.-Gen.Khaled Fawzy. During the meeting, Brennan promised to increase CIA aid to Egypt to bolster its struggle against Islamic State terrorist activity in Sinai.

Brennan’s visit is yet another indicator that the US administration is making an effort to improve relations with Cairo following a few cool years that were the result of President Barack Obama’s opposition to Sisi’s ouster two years ago of president Mohamed Morsi, who, sponsored by the Muslim Brotherhood, was chosen in free and democratic elections.
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