INSERBIA

BELGRADE – The Syrian Kurds could deal a major blow to Daesh: the People’s Protection Units (YPG) allegedly plan to push the terrorist group out of key cities in northern Syria and seal a 60-mile stretch of the border with Turkey, which the militants have used to smuggle fighters, weapons and supplies to the battlefield, Reuters reported.

The Kurds, who already control the Syrian border with Turkey to the east of the Euphrates, plan to seize the towns of Jarablus, Manbij and Azaz, an unnamed source told the news agency.

Turkish authorities will likely take the news of the YPG’s plans poorly. On the one hand, Ankara has failed to secure the porous border area despite repeated promises to address the issue, thus contributing to Daesh’s resilience and longevity. On the other hand, the Turkish leadership views the YPG as a terrorist organization.
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By Jonathan Tobin, COMMENTARY

This week President Barack Obama reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to Israel’s security with the sort of ringing rhetoric that might have soothed the concerns of even his most strident critics. It was possible to point out a gap between the reality of American actions on the Palestinians and Iran and the president’s words. But,as I noted yesterday, there’s no denying that the administration has continued the security alliance with the Jewish state even if President Obama’s main goal in the relationship continues to be the establishment of more daylight between the positions of the two nations. But even as some pundits were touting the president’s appearance at an Israeli embassy event as a sign of a rapprochement between Washington and Jerusalem, we must now figure into the equation the news that the U.S. has been operating an extensive electronic spy operation against the Israelis for 18 years.
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T. Belman. I changed the title from “Merkel: Refugees Must Leave Germany Once War Is Over” as I saw nothing in the article which substantiated the title.

Despite appearing increasingly isolated, Merkel has resisted pressure from some conservatives to cap the influx of refugees, or to close Germany’s borders.

bY Andreas Rinke, HAARETZ

REUTERS – German Chancellor Angela Merkel tried on Saturday to placate the increasingly vocal critics of her open-door policy for refugees by insisting that most refugees from Syria and Iraq would go home once the conflicts there had ended. 

Despite appearing increasingly isolated, Merkel has resisted pressure from some conservatives to cap the influx of refugees, or to close Germany’s borders. 

Support for her conservative bloc has slipped as concerns mount about how Germany will integrate the 1.1 million migrants who arrived last year, while crime and security are also in the spotlight after a wave of assaults on women in Cologne at New Year by men of north African and Arab appearance. 
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As the Kremlin showcases its military capabilities in Syria, Kim Sengupta says Nato leaders are having to reassess

By Kim Semgupta, INDEPENDANT

Their army’s equipment and strategy was “outmoded”; their air force’s bombs and missiles were “more dumb than smart”; their navy was “more rust than ready”. For decades, this was Western military leaders’ view, steeped in condescension, of their Russian counterparts. What they have seen in Syria and Ukraine has come as a shock.

Russian military jets have, at times, been carrying out more sorties in a day in Syria than the US-led coalition has done in a month. The Russian navy has launched ballistic missiles from the Caspian Sea 900 miles way, and kept supply lines going to Syria. The air defences installed by the Russians in Syria and eastern Ukraine would make it extremely hazardous for the West to carry out strikes against the Assad regime or Ukrainian separatists.
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One hundred and twenty years after declaring it Judaism’s ‘Enemy No. 1,’ ultra-Orthodoxy has effectively surrendered to the Zionist idea.

By Amotz Asa-el, JPOST

With organs installed by Synagogues, German inserted into prayer books, Jewish scholars disowning the messiah, and Jewish schools teaching history, philosophy and math, a flabbergasted Rabbi Moshe Sofer (1762-1839) ruled: “All that is novel is forbidden from the Torah.”

Two centuries on, ultra-Orthodoxy’s resistance of religious change remains as fierce as it was when its revered founder consecrated the slogan that still remains its emblem, rallying cry and mission statement. However, in the war that his successors initiated generations later – the war on Zionism – ultra-Orthodoxy is in the throes of a grand retreat.
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By Barry Shaw, ARUTZ SHEVA

BDS campaigns are not built on any solid foundation. They are built on a hypothesis, hypothesis being a proposed explanation based on limited evidence, or no evidence at all. It is used by BDS as their starting point and its lack of intellectual depth and honesty is draped in a mantle of emotional claims and sloganeering. No need to elaborate or produce facts or statistics. Emotional sloganeering is more effective in rousing support.

Something hypothetic is based on an imagined situation rather than fact. Everything in the BDS toolbox is based on hypothetical arguments devoid of facts. You know the list. Israel is an apartheid state when it isn’t. Israel is conducting an intense blockage on Gaza when it isn’t. Israel is conducting ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians when the condition and the population numbers of Palestinians have improved. Israel is a racist state when it is the most multifaceted nation in the Middle East and Africa.
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By Martin Sherman, ALGEMEINER

In my understanding, the concept “Post Zionism” is–at the ideological level–a demand for democratization of the state – i. e. a call for a liberal democratic state in the Western mode. — Prof. Uri Ram (from The Anti Zionist Congress” Israel Radio April 27, 2008.)

This quote from one of the leaders of the post-Zionist school in Israeli academia clearly reflects the moral hypocrisy, the intellectual shallowness and pompous -– and grossly misplaced — self-righteousness that characterize the adherents of this sadly self-contradictory philosophy.

After all, it takes little  analytical skill to identify the glaring flaw in the logic of post-Zionist positions which — allegedly, in the name of enlightened liberal values — calls for the conversion of Israel from a “Jewish state” to  a “state-of-all-its-citizens.”  It requires no extraordinary intellect to grasp the fact that should such a change indeed take place, the resulting realities would, in fact, be the exact antithesis of the values invoked for making it.  All that is needed for that is a smidgeon of common sense and iota of intellectual integrity.
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Moralistic self-recrimination plays into the hands of Israel’s worse detractors, and the bitter fruits of Israeli self-flagellation are beginning to ripen.

By Martin Sherman, JPOST

There is no[t] any difference between ISIS and this Jewish group that was lately arrested. They are exactly com[ing] with the same agenda, with the same beliefs. The only difference is that they are Jewish, and they are Arab/Muslims. – Carmi Gillon, former head of the Shin Bet, Jerusalem Press Club, January 17, 2016

Enslaving the families of the kuffar [infidels] and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the Shari’a… that if anyone were to deny or mock, he would be denying or mocking the verses of the Koran and the narrations of the Prophet. – from ISIS’s English magazine Dabiq, in “ISIS soldiers told to rape women ‘to make them Muslim’” – CNN, October 8, 2015
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Media Bias

By Gary Bauer, President of American Values

There is a reason Fox News has been so successful. After decades of domination by left-wing networks, Fox burst onto the scene offering viewers something very different — fair and balanced coverage of the news and current events.

Yet I must confess that, in spite of everything Fox News has done for the conservative movement, I was deeply disappointed by some of last night’s questioning. For example, let’s examine the way the moderators approached two of the most important issues in this campaign: Terrorism and immigration.

These issues top the list of voter concerns and intersected in the wake of the Paris and San Bernardino terrorist attacks. After the attacks, the candidates reacted in varying ways — from bans on all Muslim immigration to restrictions on immigration from countries where there is significant support for militant Islam. Other candidates aggressively objected to such proposals.
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The story behind Isaac Herzog’s painful steps away from pushing for an immediate two-state solution.

By Gil Hoffman, JPOST

On Sunday Feb 7th a team that has not won the big game since 1999 will attempt to recover from a long list of failures in key competitions and unite in success behind its embattled leader.

That statement could of course apply to the Denver Broncos, who will be led by their veteran quarterback, Peyton Manning, at Super Bowl 50 in Santa Clara, California.

But it also fits closer to home.

The leader of the Labor Party, which has not won an election since 1999, Isaac Herzog, will convene his party’s activists for a long-awaited convention that evening, hours before kickoff in the US. The convention will obviously not be the biggest news of the day in the world, and it probably won’t attract too much attention in Israel, either.
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By Dr. Robert R. Owens, Canada Free Press

Who voted for an immigration policy whose purpose is to change the racial, ethnic and cultural make-up of the United States? That is exactly what the Kennedy Immigration Bill of 1965 was designed to do and just what it has done.

Who voted for open borders and constant calls for amnesty for anyone who can drag themselves across the border? Has anyone else noticed that the estimate of how many illegals are in the United States has been stuck at 11 million for at least the last 11 years?
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[Yoram will be in the US during May, 2016, available for speaking engagements (http://bit.ly/1W5CrSr).  ]

Global confidence in Israel’s economy
Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought: a US-Israel Initiative”
Straight from the Jerusalem Boardroom # 210, January 29, 2016
http://bit.ly/1WQu51d

1.  In 2015, Israel’s high tech raised $4.43 BN, 30% over 2014. According to KPMG-Israel, Israel’s 2015 4th quarter economic performance ran contrary to – and was more positive than – the rest of the world. The value of exits through mergers and acquisitions and IPOs climbed to over $9 BN in 2015. The number of investment rounds of over $20 MN grew by 2/3 in 2015.  During the first three weeks of January 2016, twenty Israeli high tech startups raised almost $500 MN, mostly from institutional and private investors from the US, as well as from Asia, Europe and Israel (Economist Intelligence Unit, January 27, 2016). Read more…

Wikepedia: “Ezra Isaac Levant (born February 19, 1972) is a Canadian media personality, conservative political activist, lawyer, writer and broadcaster. He is the founder and former publisher of the Western Standard, a former columnist for Sun Media and former host of a daily program on the Sun News Network from the channel’s inception in 2011 until its demise in 2015. In February 2015, he founded The Rebel Media website and YouTube channel and is its main contributor.”

Ezra Levant has had a fascinating career as a staunch Canadian conservative. I urge you to read the Wikipedia account of the highlights which include publishing the Mohammed cartoons in his Western Standard, when nobody else would and tangling big time with George Soros and political correctness. He created The Rebel last year as the leading conservative voice in Canada and it is attracting a huge audience and is meeting with great success.

In this video he predicts that Trump will be the next President and gives six reasons why.

by David P. Goldman, Asia Times
http://www.meforum.org/5814/iran-no-prosperity

As a matter of arithmetic, Iran is flat broke at the prevailing price of hydrocarbons. Under the P5+1 nuclear deal, Iran will recoup somewhere between $55 and $150 billion of frozen assets, depending on whether one believes the Secretary of the US Treasury or one’s own eyes. The windfall is barely enough to tide Iran over for the next two years.

P5+1 nuclear diplomacy with Iran went forward on the premise that Iran would trade its strategic ambitions in the region for economic prosperity. The trouble is that prosperity is not a realistic outcome for Iran, which has nothing to gain by abandoning its strategic adventures.
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In late January at the United Nations, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon referred to Jewish towns and cities in Judea and Samaria as “provocative acts.”

By HANK SHEINKOPF, GEORGE BIRNBAUM, RONN TOROSSIAN, JPOST

It wasn’t too long ago when Israel had a reliable friend at the United Nations. The United States, a permanent member of the Security Council, helped keep enemies at bay and veto hateful resolutions against the Jewish State. But that might not be the case today, and Israel’s battles have become somewhat more solitary than they once were.

Beginning last November the European Commission—the EU’s executive arm—decided that products from the territories obtained as a result of the 1967 Six-Day War can no longer be sold in the 28-country EU as having come from Israel. They must be labeled as being from an occupied area.
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Decline in public’s trust in the prime minister and the Likud continues as survey shows the ruling party dropping from 30 seats to 23, while Yesh Atid jumps to 20 seats.

By Moran Azulay, YNET

A poll ordered by Moshe Kahlon’s Kulanu party shows that MK Yair Lapid’s party Yesh Atid is garnering more and more support, while the Likud party is losing its power.

According to the poll, conducted three weeks ago, if elections were held today, the ruling Likud party would get 23 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, a major drop from the 30 it current holds. Meanwhile, Lapid’s party would get 20 seats, a significant hike to the 11 it currently has.
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T. Belman. This support should be tied to the percentage of municipal taxes the city collects.

Badir explains that city, with 22,000 residents, only received municipality property taxes from around 50% of them; today, that number is at 83%.

By Ariel Ben Solomon, JPOST

The Mayor of the Israeli Arab city of Kfar Kassem told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday that his city is developing rapidly and could become a model for other Arab cities to follow.

In an interview in the office of Adel Badir, who has served two years since his first election, he explained with maps and an able Jewish spokesman, how he is transforming the city in a way that perhaps no other Arab locality has until now.

Three years ago, Badir explained that the city, with 22,000 residents, only received municipality property taxes (arnona) from around 50 percent of them. Today, that number is at 83%, which he says is reaching the level of Jewish municipalities and something rare for Arab ones.
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Since Israel is going to be attacked no matter what it does, we might as well do things that advance our interests.

By Caroline Glick, JPOST

Our government is playing games with itself. And losing.

On Wednesday Chaim Levinson reported in Haaretz that for the first time in nearly two years, last week the Civil Administration of Judea and Samaria approved new building plans for a small number of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.

Levinson also reported that last month Jerusalem’s municipal planning and building commission gave final approval to plans to build nearly 900 housing units in the southern neighborhood of Gilo. Initial approval was granted back in 2012.
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