JPOST

As US led offensives drive back Islamic State in Iraq, concern is growing among US and UN officials that efforts to stabilize liberated areas are lagging, creating conditions that could help the militants endure as an underground network.

One major worry: not enough money is being committed to rebuild the devastated provincial capital of Ramadi and other towns, let alone Islamic State-held Mosul, the ultimate target in Iraq of the US-led campaign.
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BY TOVA LAZAROFF, JPOST

Plans for new homes in Judea and Samaria settlements were advanced at a faster pace in the first three months of 2016 than in the previous year, according to Peace Now.

It based its statement on data it collected from the records of the High Planning Council for Judea and Samaria for both years.
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By Lawrence Summers, WaPo

The writer is a professor at and past president of Harvard University. He was treasury secretary from 1999 to 2001 and an economic adviser to President Obama from 2009 through 2010.

Since the end of World War II, a broad consensus in support of global economic integration as a force for peace and prosperity has been a pillar of the international order. From global trade agreements to the European Union project; from the work of the Bretton Woods institutions to the removal of pervasive capital controls; from the vast expansion in foreign direct investment to major increases in the flow of people across borders, the overall direction has been clear. Driven by domestic economic progress, by technologies such as containerized shipping and the Internet that promote integration, and by legislative changes within countries and international agreements between countries, the world has gotten smaller and more closely connected.
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After months of speculation, Iran says Russia has delivered the first part of a promised defense system that can track and intercept multiple aircraft and missiles simultaneously • Iran also confirms upcoming visit by EU foreign policy chief.

Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff

DEBKA

Turkish president Tayyip Recep Erdogan has raised another large obstacle on the road to Turkish-Israeli reconciliation and normal ties. Saudi King Salman, who is visiting Cairo, confided to his host Egyptian president Abdel-Fatteh El-Sisi that Erdogan had made it clear that he would not finally repair Ankara’s ties with Israel until Sisi came forward to shake his hand, stopped being hostile and turned a new page in their relations.
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Earlier, a Turkish official told Daily Sabah that Israel and Turkey could be two weeks away from ending crisis; the report did not say whether Israel’s demand to shut Hamas HQ in Istanbul has been resolved.

By Barak Ravid, HAARETZ

A spokesperson for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Monday that reconciliation with Israel cannot be reached unless the blockade on Gaza is lifted. Ibrahim Kalin said at a press conference that the Turkish demand needs to be addressed first.

The remarks came after report published on Monday, quoting a senior Turkish official, said that Israel and Turkey could be two weeks away from resolving the crisis and reaching a reconciliation agreement.
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By Daniel Gordis, MOSAIC

In If American Jews and Israel Are Drifting Apart, What’s the Reason?, Elliott Abrams is clearly correct in asserting both that American Jews are moving away from support of Israel and that this tectonic shift is traceable much less to Israel’s policies than to the manner in which American Jews now constitute their worldview and their Jewish identities.

As it happens, I am somewhat more critical than Abrams of the policies (or lack of policies) pursued by the Netanyahu government. Admittedly, there are few if any good moves that Israel can make on the international chessboard these days; but the optics have been significantly worse than they could have been. Still, nothing one might say on this point diminishes the rightness, or the importance, of Abrams’ thesis: the root cause of the growing gulf between the world’s two largest Jewish communities lies in the way that most American Jews now conceive of themselves and their Jewishness.
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The time Hillary Clinton came to the rabbi’s family seder – and stayed for hours

BY URIEL HEILMAN, TOI

NEW YORK (JTA) – How was Helene and Bob Fine’s family seder in 2000 different from every other Passover night?

First lady Hillary Clinton and her daughter Chelsea came. (President Bill Clinton would have joined, too, if not for Yasser Arafat, but we’ll get to that.)

This was no political or community institution event. It was a genuine family seder at the Fines’ home with about 15 people, all family and friends, held on Passover’s first night. Helene made her traditional brisket and tzimmes, there were no photographers present and the Clintons stayed for hours, the Fines recalled in interviews this week with JTA.
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by Clifford Smith, The American Spectator

The United States is facing a humiliation of the first order resulting from almost comically provocative Iranian test launches of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles earlier this month and the lack of any real response from Washington, save for largely symbolic sanctions. For the Obama Administration, a recent interview suggests it sees this humiliation and loss of credibility not as a serious problem, but as a successful application of the “Obama Doctrine.”
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Damascus, emboldened by battlefield victories, pushes a political plan even as allies prepare military offensive to retake Aleppo

By SAM DAGHER, WSJ

BEIRUT—The Syrian regime, emboldened by battlefield victories, is pushing a political solution to end the war that keeps President Bashar al-Assad in power, in defiance of the agenda supported by Russia, his vital ally.

The plan will begin to unfold with Syrian parliamentary elections on Wednesday; the following day, Mr. Assad’s representatives will travel to peace talks in Geneva, where they are expected to push for a resolution to the conflict on Mr. Assad’s terms.

Despite political differences between Damascus and Moscow, the allies in a joint statement on Sunday signaled the imminent escalation of a military push to retake Aleppo, Syria’s largest city.
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By Fehim Ta?tekin, al MONITOR

The United States is trying to devise a plan that will appease Turkey while still allowing Kurds to help expel the Islamic State (IS) from the Menbic-Jarablus front in Syria. Turkey’s resistance to the Kurds’ participation is creating discord with the United States and further exposing Ankara’s hostility toward the people of Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava).
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Gov’t approves plan to improve law enforcement in Arab sector
Plan includes construction of 10 new police stations and renovation of 10 existing ones in Arab or mixed cities, and adding 2,600 new officers to force.

By Moran Azulay, Roi Yanovsky, YNET

Border Police officers at the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem (Photo: AFP)

The Israeli government approved on Sunday a multi-year plan to improve law enforcement in the Arab sector and in Jerusalem.

The plan, which seeks to gradually reduce the high crime rates in the Arab sector, is expected to cost several billions of shekels and be implemented starting this year and until 2020.
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By Ted Belman

The Center for Security Studies, headed by Frank Gaffney Jr and Clare Lopez is the leading think tank on Jihad and its threat to America. They had a major hand in producing A Counterjihad Security Architecture for America . The following panel discussions were held under their auspices.

Clare Lopez and I often exchange emails. She reads the Israpundit Daily Digest regularly. She and Gaffney Jr were recently appointed to the Foreign Policy team of Ted Cruz. I was thrilled to think that Cruz sees the threat to America as coming from Jihad. They recommend destroying the ideology of Jihad.

I asked her why Cruz was so acceptant of Muslim immigration. It seemed so odd. She said they are working on him.

ONCE YEAR LATER
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T. Belman. The UN is at pains to paint Israel as the bad guy. It argues that Israel has no right to demolish the structures because, they were built in accordance with humanitarian law (which in reality doesn’t exist) and were necessitated by Israel’s refusal to issue permits. Both arguments are an attack on Israel’s sovereignty over these lands, i.e., Israel can’t build Jewish homes and can’t demolish illegally constructed Arab structures on these lands. Also the location of these structures proves that they are built with a political motive rather than an humanitarian one, as claimed. Israel should designate an area where the EU can build Arab homes legally. I can assure you that the EU wouldn’t seize the opportunity because building such homes would not serve their political goals.

In reality Israel is the sovereign power in Area C and is simply enforcing the law halfheartedly.

Of these, 14 structures, nine of which were residential, were demolished in Beduin encampments in the area of E1, which is within the boundaries of the Ma’aleh Adumim settlement.

By Tova Lazroff, JPOST

The Civil Administration demolished more Palestinian structures in Area C of the West Bank over three months in 2016 than it did in all of the previous year, the UN Office for the Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs said on Friday.
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The multicultural view rests on the moral kitsch that identifies victimization with justice. Unfortunately, in the real world, victims are not necessarily saints, still less saintly liberals.

By Gadi Taub,  HAARETZ

A stick-swinging Madison riot police officer beats back an angry throng of University of Wisconsin protesters, October 19, 1967 on campus.

So routine has the use of the word “multiculturalism” become, that it is now invoked to described a variety of different things. In some of its popular usages, it is merely a synonym for pluralism. There is of course no problem with this from a liberal democratic point of view. Originally, though, the term referred to something far more drastic, an offshoot of postmodern ideology. Thus, as postmodernism maintains that there is no truth, multiculturalism claims that all cultures are on par. In its own eyes, the multicultural stance is actually a broadening of democracy from human beings to values. It is not enough to acknowledge that all human beings are equal; true equality requires that we respect their cultures equally too.
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Book excerpt: Sebastian Gorka, ‘Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War’

100,000 people gather in Tehran for a massive rally against the Shah, January 1979 / AP

BY Sebastian Gorka, FREE BEACON

Three momentous events mark 1979 as the year in which modern jihad, having evolved over the course of the century, emerged as a global movement: the establishment of a theocratic regime in Iran, the siege of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. While the conditions for an Islamist explosion had existed for a long time, these events were the spark.
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BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 339, April 8, 2016

By Prof. Hillel Frisch, April 8, 2016

Richard Spence, The Telegraph

President Obama vetoed 50 plans put to him by the CIA to engineer the downfall of the  Assad regime in Syria, according to a former operative working on the project.

According to a memoir he is publishing Tuesday, Douglas Laux was part of a team given the task of finding ways to put into effect Obama’s assertion in August 2011 that “the time had come for President Assad to step aside”.

The CIA, under then-leader David Petraeus, ended up running a scheme to arm rebels from the “non-jihadist” Free Syrian Army — but it never reached a scale that outweighed regime support from Iran and the Lebanese militia Hizbollah.
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Congressional Testimony – Hearing before House Foreign Affairs Committee, Subcommittee on Middle East and North Africa, Washington, DC March 22, 2016

By Tony Badran, Research Fellow Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Chair Ros-Lehtinen, Ranking Member Deutch, I’d like to thank you for the opportunity to testify before the Middle East and North Africa Subcommittee.

The Syrian uprising constitutes one of the greatest challenges that Iran and Hezbollah have faced in decades. The collapse of the Assad regime would have, in the words of then-Commander of U.S. Central Command General James Mattis, dealt Iran “the biggest strategic setback in 25 years.” It would have cut Iran’s only land bridge to Lebanon, and deprived Hezbollah of its strategic depth.

Unfortunately, the situation in Syria has resulted in the opposite effect. While many, perhaps most, observers have tended to view Syria as a bloody quagmire that will erode Iranian ambitions, Tehran has deftly exploited the conflict, turning the strategic challenge it faces into an opportunity to expand its influence throughout the region.
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BY RAYMOND IBRAHIM, PJ MEDIA

A lie conceals the truth. And hidden truths never have a chance of being acknowledged, addressed, and ultimately ameliorated.

Because of this simple truism, one of the greatest lies of our age — that violence committed in the name of Islam has nothing to do with Islam — has made an intrinsically weak Islam the scourge of the modern world, with no signs of relief on the horizon.

One of the latest manifestations of this lie took place in Pakistan. On Easter Sunday, a suicide bombing took place near the children’s rides of a public park, where Christians were congregated and celebrating the resurrection of their Lord. At least 74 people — mostly Christian women and children — were killed. Nearly 400 were injured.

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