Shekel rises beats most major peers vs dollar, euro in 2015
Traders losing faith in central bank’s ability to curb gains

By Sharon Wrobel, BLOOMBERG

Israel is running out of ways to free itself from the burden of a world-beating currency.

The shekel is one of just three major peers to avoid being crushed by the dollar’s advance this year and is the second-best performer against the euro with a jump of 11 percent. Traders see little chance of the gains evaporating, with options signaling about 70 percent odds the currency will revisit its 2015 highs by next December.
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T. Belman. The Shin Bet did not violate the law. The Israeli establishment has authorized these extreme measures. There will be the argument made, that Israeli citizens and Arab terrorists should be treated the same. I believe otherwise. The Israeli citizen should be prosecuted as a criminal entitled to his rights whereas an Arab terrorist should be prosecuted as an enemy combatant.

The torture described by Jewish suspects in the Duma arson-murder case is strikingly similar to descriptions by Palestinian torture victims.

By Chaim Levinson, HAARETZ

A faint whiff of capitulation wafts from the highly unusual statement issued by the Shin Bet security service in response to allegations that it had tortured the minors suspected of involvement in the fire-bombing of the Dewabsheh family home in Duma last July.

The arson is only mentioned in the third paragraph of the statement, as one of a slew of violent incidents allegedly perpetrated by the “radical and anti-Zionist ideological group that resorted to violence to change the system of government by means of attacks that would further its aims.”
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T. Belman. This is huge. Obama has finally decided that ISIS must be defeated rather than Assad. All the talk about what comes later or having elections even is bullshit. Their is no alternative to dividing Syria into ethnicities. The Alawites will get Damascus through to the Mediterranean, the Kurds and other minorities will get the area they now control in the north and the rest goes to the Sunnis. Whether ISIS will control this or whether the Sunni states, Jordan, S. Arabia, Egypt and others, will control it remains to be seen. This territory will be amalgamated with the Sunni territory in Iraq, making a very large Sunni state. The Sunnis will want this state as a bulwark to Iranian expansionism. Let the games begin.

After years of calling for regime change, the Americans seem to have finally accepted that President Bashar Assad is still ‘our man in Damascus.’

By Anshel Pfeffer, HAARETZ

Barack Obama’s remarks on Syria during his annual news conference Friday were by then little more than damage limitation. “I think that Assad is going to have to leave in order for the country to stop the bloodletting,” Obama said, but that was just his opinion. He then added that any solution in Syria will have to ensure that the “equities” of Russia and Iran are “respected.” At the top of the list of equities in Syria is of course President Bashar Assad. Not that Obama’s equivocation should be surprising. The scene was already set earlier this week — the week in which Obama’s U.S. fell in line with Putin’s Russia.
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T. Belman. The question is not so much why Erdogan now wants or needs rapprochement with Israel but why Israel wants or needs rapprochement with Turkey. The deal that is actually being cut (Israel is actually easing the blockade of Gaza) suggests that Israel is the one who wants the deal more. I don’t see anything that Erdogan is giving because I think stopping ICC prosecutions is not much of a concession. So why is Israel doing this on these terms?

Israel has been negotiating a joint marketing strategy with Egypt, Greece and Cyprus to market their gas collectively in Europe. Is this potential Turkey deal being made on behalf of that consortium or in addition to it? Does Israel need this Turkey gas deal (not that I know of) or does Israel stand to gain something else from Turkey? Time will tell.

By Ruthie Blum, ISRAEL HAYOM

Israel’s Channel 10 broke a story Thursday night that is the kind of scoop journalists celebrate. Unfortunately, however, this one is very bad news.

According to sources in the Prime Minister’s Office, Israel and Turkey are on the verge of restoring full diplomatic relations. Translated into plain English, this means that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is about to make a deal with the devil.
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Demographics Expert Yoram Ettinger presents nine-point optimistic analysis.

By Hillel Fende, ARUTZ SHEVA

Diplomacy and demographics expert Yoram Ettinger finds that contrary to popular perception and politically-motivated scare tactics, there is actually no “Arab demographic time bomb.” Rather, he notes that there is a robust 66% Jewish majority in the entirety of the Land of Israel, including Judea and Samaria – and that it is growing.
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$487 m. earmarked for missile defense and $40 m. for new tunnel detection program; ‘Nobody in Obama administration looking for a fight with Israel in 2016,’ analyst says

By Eric Cortellessa, TOI

WASHINGTON — Congress on Friday passed an omnibus spending measure that appropriates $487 million for US-Israel missile defense programs and $40 million for a new US-Israel tunnel detection program, earning accolades from the pro-Israel American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

This year’s package, however, allocates $132 million less to Israeli missile defense than last year’s, as the US provided $619 million in 2015 toward the Iron Dome program, the Arrow 3 long-range interceptor program and David’s Sling mid-range rocket interceptors.
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By Karin McQuillan, AMERICAN THINIKER

Egyptian TV has been infamous for decades for their Arab-Nazi programming.

Every Egyptian leader from Nasser through Sadat to Mubarak has enshrined Nazi Jew-hatred in mainstream Egyptian culture out of both conviction and political calculation. Nasser, trained by Nazis as a youth, spread the genocidal conspiracy theories of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion… On the Ramadan following 9/11, Mubarak presided over a thirty-week-long TV series dramatizing Elders and its genocidal message.
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Madonna has a $20M pad there, Barbra Streisand has taken 100 rooms and Gerard Butler has been bailed out by pals in the new trendy getaway that has been called the “sexiest city in the world.”

T. Belman. The issues discussed in this article highlight just how complex the problem is. The pronouncements coming from the mouths of the contestants for the Republican presidential nomination, are merely superficial soundbites rather than considered policy.

The question of what to do with Islamic State or for that matter, what to do with Mass Muslim migration, is part of a larger question, how to survive Islam.

By Reuel Marc Gerecht, The Weekly Standard

Should the United States militarily defeat jihadist outfits in the Middle East? After 9/11 the answer seemed easy, but after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Barack Obama is not alone in arguing that large-scale offensive campaigns against radical Muslim movements aren’t worth the cost. Even if the president’s go-slow approach is actually more likely to provoke more terrorism, is it the sensible policy for America? And can Western governments actually defeat the Muslim radicals who live in the West and are a nightmare for domestic intelligence services to find, let alone stop? These questions are as much about Europe as the Middle East.
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By Rick Noack, WaPo,  December 16

On Monday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called multiculturalism, or “Multikulti” in German, a sham. Had she suddenly realized that opening the borders to refugees was a mistake, as many have suggested?

In the same speech, Merkel defended her decision to allow about 1 million refugees into the country this year by saying that it was a humanitarian necessity. She reminded Germans of other watershed moments in their history, such as the period just after World War II in 1952, when former chancellor Konrad Adenauer said Germany should “choose freedom.” In terms of dealing with the current refugee influx, Merkel repeated a statement she had made in the fall: “We can do it.”

The relatively bold statement from an extremely cautious politician has become one of the biggest moments of her chancellorship so far. But her future could be determined by her rejection of the way multiculturalism has worked in the past and the success, or failure, of her alternative approach toward assimilation. She favors assimilation projects that are state-led, demanding and supportive of refugees, with the aim of making them feel part of German society. And she wants Germany’s Christian origins and values to remain the country’s “lead culture.”
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Opposition leader: Deal “must not give Erdogan a foothold in Gaza”; Yisrael Beytenu head says “damage has already been done.”

JPOST

Opposition leader Isaac Herzog on Friday criticized as tardy an emerging deal that could lead toward normalized diplomatic ties between Israel and Turkey.

On Wednesday, incoming Mossad head Yossi Cohen, and Joseph Ciechanover, who has served as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s special envoy to Turkey for the past five years, met with Turkish Foreign Ministry director-general Feridun Sinirlioglu to draw up the terms of the agreement that would put an end to the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident that led to a tailspin in diplomatic ties between the two countries, the sources said.

“If we had reached an agreement with Turkey two years ago, Israel would have benefited more,” said the Zionist Union leader at an event hosted by Limmud FSU.
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“Bernard- Henri Lévy is precisely the kind of target that Israeli public diplomacy efforts should be focused on – far more so than any incumbent politician, especially outside the USA.”

By Martin Sherman. JPOST

You fight against jihad, yes. But do you have to add to the fight against jihad the fight with the whole Palestinians people? I don’t think so… There are a lot of moderates among the Palestinian people – there are still… some people who really want a state and to build a life in this state… It has been a big mistake not to give that a chance… and will be an increasing mistake not to give it in the future… When you have a just war to wage which is a war against Islamism, jihadism, it is not a reason to wage an unjust war at the same time. It is absurd.
– Bernard-Henri Lévy, December 2015

Last week, Israeli Educational Television aired an interview with the internationally renowned French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy by the well-known Kobi Meidan, on the much-acclaimed program Hotzei Yisrael (Across Israel – available on YouTube).

It turned out to be an unremarkable media event, with little to elevate it above the staple stereotype slogans we have become accustomed to in the mainstream discourse on Islam and Israel in recent decades.
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For the first time in a decade, Americans are beginning to think seriously about foreign policy; But are they too late?

By Caroline Glick, JPOST

At some point between 2006 and 2008, the American people decided to turn their backs on the world. Between the seeming futility of the war in Iraq and the financial collapse of 2008, Americans decided they’d had enough.

In Barack Obama, they found a leader who could channel their frustration. Obama’s foreign policy, based on denying the existence of radical Islam and projecting the responsibility for Islamic aggression on the US and its allies, suited their mood just fine. If America is responsible, then America can walk away. Once it is gone, so the thinking has gone, the Muslims will forget their anger and leave America alone.
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“The stipulation requiring that foreign assistance funds provided to Israel only to be used in the geographic areas which were subject to the Government of Israel’s administration prior to June 5,1967, has been the policy of every Administration since 1967.” . The State Department.

By Dan Illouz, TOI

The European Union’s call to label Israeli products coming from Judea and Samaria has received well deserved media attention and widespread criticism.

The hypocrisy of the move is well known. After all, Europe labels products coming from Western Sahara, a territory Europe itself considers occupied by Morocco since 1975 and with numerous Moroccan settlements, as “Made in Morocco”. The labelling of products coming from parts of the Jewish State might therefore hide a much deeper contempt for the Jewish people, and is reminiscent of the times in which Jews were themselves labelled with yellow stars on the European continent.
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After finally meeting suspects, lawyers tell of cruel torture, demand investigation end; ‘minor hit in sensitive organs till numb to kicks.’

By Hezki Ezra, ARUTZ SHEVA

In the last day several of the Jews arrested on vague suspicions of involvement in the lethal Duma arson were allowed to finally meet their lawyers, who were shocked at the brutal investigation the Israeli Security Agency (ISA) is submitting them to.

The lawyers revealed in a press conference on Thursday night in Jerusalem that the investigation has included severe torture, of a nature that has not been conducted in Israel before.

Attorney Adi Keidar termed it “a sad day for the justice and law enforcement system. Those investigated in the Shabak (ISA) investigation room have no rights. There is no judge or justice and everything is permissible, even against the body of the detainee.”
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T. Belman. WH must reject Islamists and embrace reformers

For the past seven years, the Obama White House has opened its doors to the entire spectrum of radical Islamist groups, but a new coalition of non-Islamist Muslims has not been invited to make its case.

By Steven Emerson

Hassan Shibly, director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Florida, has accused the FBI of killing two men in cold blood in separate incidents.

But Obama administration officials still find him to be a suitable representative of the American Muslim community at Monday’s White House meeting on combating religious discrimination, the Investigative Project on Terrorism has learned.

Since 2008, FBI policy has barred outreach communication with CAIR officials due to documents seized by law enforcement that place the council and its founders at the heart of a Hamas support network. Eyewitness interviews recently obtained by the IPT further detail CAIR’s ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

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By Moshe Feiglin, JEWISH LEADERSHIP

I opposed administrative detention – of both Jews and Arabs – when I was in the Knesset. I also opposed forced feeding. I believe that the continued occupation of Judea and Samaria causes Israel to consistently violate human rights, which in turn brings about the deterioration of the standard of liberty in the entire country. Israel must declare sovereignty in Judea and Samaria, thus ending the occupation in the same manner it did in the Golan Heights. All options must be opened for the Arab residents of Judea and Samaria, while safeguarding their human rights.

I have already written that it really does not interest me if those who threw the firebombs into the (Arab) home in Duma were Jews or Arabs. Whoever did it must be punished. But as of this point, it is not at all clear that the Jewish youths in administrative detention were connected whatsoever to the case.
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