Syrian television quoted a military source saying the army and its militia allies took “complete control over the city of Palmyra.”

JPOST

(Photo: Forces loyal to Syria’s President Bashar Assad drive under a road sign that shows the direction to the historic city of Palmyra in this picture provided by SANA on March 24, 2016. Credit: Reuters)

Syrian government forces recaptured Palmyra on Sunday, state media and a monitoring group said, inflicting a significant defeat on the Islamic State group which had controlled the desert city since May last year.
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By Daniel Roth, JPOST

Head of the Institute for National Security Studies [INSS] said Saturday that Israel Defense Forces were capable of destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities with a preemptive strike if presented with no other alternative, according to Channel 10.

Speaking at a cultural event in Beersheba, Amos Yadlin said during a speech that the “Israel Air Force can meet the challenge of exterminating Iran’s nuclear reactors if necessary.”

Yadlin said if Israel were confronted with an “intersection where you have to choose between two alternatives: one is whether Iran will have a bomb and we do nothing… and the second is whether to conduct a preemptive action to prevent Iran from attaining a nuclear weapon,” then Israel would be capable of destroying the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities.
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T. Belman. I commented on the question of morality after the first Gaza war in 2008 in Don’t Muddy the Waters.

By Shalom Pollack

As we celebrate Purim, the holiday of redemption from a holocaust and revenge against our enemies, terrorists attacked a soldier in Hevron. Thankfully, the soldier was only slightly wounded before his buddies took out the two assailants.

Quite appropriately, the annual Purim costume parade began just where our enemies were felled.

Flash. One of the attackers was down when a soldier finished him off.

The self appointed judges of what it moral, humane and authentically Jewish are raising the usual howl. That soldier and others who were in the area are in deep trouble today.
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By Hana Levi Julian, JEWISH PRESS

Angry IDF veterans and other Israelis protest jailing of soldier who shot and killed terrorist to ensure he was neutralized in Hebron.

Demonstrators waving posters, honking horns and yelling slogans gathered in Be’er Sheva Saturday night to protest against the arrest and jailing of an IDF soldier who shot and killed a terrorist who was apparently “neutralized” in Hebron last week.

The protesters stood across from Prison No. 4 on Saturday night, where the soldier is incarcerated, according to Israeli radio.
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T. Belman. Thus both Russia and the US want Syria not to be divided into separate countries. Perhaps a federation though. This may result in Iran losing its influence when Assad goes. My guess is that Russia is agreeing to the ultimate departure of Assad in part because it wants to please Saudi Arabia.

TASS

MOSCOW, March 25. Moscow is explaining in its contacts with Kurds that Syria is an indivisible country that should not be broken into parts, Russia’s presidential envoy on the Middle East and North Africa, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov told reporters on Friday.

“Our task is to help Kurds, to find common ground, common approaches. National Syrian interests should prevail over all others,” Bogdanov said. “They should proceed from the fact that Syria should not be broken apart as it will be bad for Syrians themselves,” he added.

The diplomat noted that Russia maintains good relations and contacts with Kurds. “We maintain good contacts with Kurds. We keep in touch not only with Democratic Union Party and several other parties and organizations,” he said.

DEBKA

Cracks in the united US-Russian front over the Syrian ruler’s fate surfaced – even before the ink was dry on the joint announcement issued in Moscow Friday, March 25, by US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, setting August as the deadline for a political solution of the five-year Syrian conflict.

Shortly after Kerry’s departure for Brussels, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told reporters, “Washington now accepts Moscow’s argument that Assad’s future shouldn’t be open for negotiation right now.” However, taking exception to the phrase “right now,” State Department spokesman John Kirby immediately snapped back, “Any suggestion that we have changed in any way our view of Assad’s future is false.”
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By Malcolm Dash, Director of Operations, Israel Institute for Strategic Studies

“In war there is no second prize for the runner- up”

“In war there is no second prize for the runner- up” “Wars can be prevented just as surely as they can be provoked, and when we fail to prevent them we must share in the guilt for the dead” General Omar N. Bradley

The war of terror, the stabbings, car ramming, shootings that are taking place in the streets of Israel have been going on for nearly six months with no letup in sight. Make no mistake, this is a war, a pernicious war. Although Israelis are resilient and are bearing up to the almost daily onslaught, they are unable to live normal lives. They carry with them the constant concern and fear for the safety of their children, wives, elderly and sons and daughters in the security forces. Ultimately this war of attrition must weaken national resolve and the will to resist and gradually wear away the Israeli public’s resilience, resulting in despondency which will eventually undermine the sovereignty of the Jewish state.
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By Leslie Susser, JPOST

The three countries share obvious economic interests in what they call the “energy triangle” in the Eastern Mediterranean, where both Israel and Cyprus have discovered huge natural gas deposits.

One of the more ambitious joint projects is to build an undersea gas pipeline from Israel to Cyprus to Crete to mainland Greece to facilitate gas exports to Europe; in parallel there are plans for a 2000 megawatt undersea electricity cable, the “EuroAsia Interconnector,” which would follow much the same route, linking the Israeli electricity grid to those of Cyprus, Greece and mainland Europe, thereby providing Israel’s currently isolated power system with strategic backup.
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By Dr. Maxim A. Suchkov, Al MONITOR

Russian President Vladimir Putin presented medals on March 17 to armed forces personnel who distinguished themselves in Syria, congratulating the gathering of 700 military men and women and members of the defense industry for contributing to what the Kremlin is hailing as a victorious campaign in Syria.

“The struggle against international terrorism is a fair and righteous cause. This is a struggle against enemies of civilization, against those who effect barbarity and violence,” he said at the Kremlin ceremony, according to his prepared remarks later made available. “Our country has demonstrated its unquestionable leadership, willpower and responsibility.”
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The same might be said of Cruz

By Evelyn Gordon

I usually leave American politics to Americans, on the theory that they know more about it. But as an Israeli, I feel uniquely qualified to comment on one of the two main concerns raised about presidential candidate Ted Cruz, because I’ve spent the last seven years living under a leader who shares the same flaw: an astonishing talent for making absolutely everyone who works with him loathe him. This flaw has undoubtedly made Benjamin Netanyahu a less effective prime minister than he could have been. Yet on balance, he has been quite successful.
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Islam is to terror as rainfall is to flooding.

By Martin Sherman, JPOST

One out of six people all over the world is a Muslim… [T]rying to say anything in general about this huge community – 1.5 billion people – will be wrong… The vast majority of these populations are not involved… with violence and terror all over the world…. I don’t think there is anything essential that connects between this huge and historically important religion and all the terrorism that’s going on – Sami Abu Shehadeh, secretary- general of Arab faction Balad, Tel Aviv-Jaffa, in a debate with me on “The rise of anti-Muslim sentiment in the West,” i24 News, December 16, 2014.

This week’s column, including the introductory quotation, is largely similar to the one I wrote in January 2015 (“It’s Islam, stupid!”), two days after the carnage in the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, perpetrated in the name of Islam – and a day before the Islam-inspired slaughter among the shelves of kosher supermarket Hyper Cacher in the French capital.
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Will Democratic senators and members of the House follow their consciences and defend American national security interests, or will they march in step with Obama?

By Eric R Mandel, JPOST

The contentious debate over the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action has not ended, but simply moved into its next predictable phase: dealing with Iranian violations of the JCPOA and UNSC Resolution 2231.

Back in the summer of 2015, Democratic Senators wrestled over the difficult choice of trusting the president on Iran or risking the wrath of the administration and the Democratic leadership by opposing the deal because it would weaken American national security interests. In the end, most begrudgingly choose political allegiance over principle, but publicly promised disappointed constituents that they would meticulously monitor for Iranian violations, and be quick to respond with “snapback” sanctions if Iran reneged on the deal.
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US officials tell The Jerusalem Post there is a general gap in interest between Obama and Kerry on whether to proceed with any process at all related to Israeli-Palestinian peace.

By JPOST

Pres Obama has acknowledged that peace between Israel and the Palestinians is an accomplishment that has eluded his presidency, and will remain elusive until he leaves office.

“This is not something I was able to get done,” Obama said on Wednesday during a visit to Argentina. “I am not that hopeful that it’s going to happen in the next nine months. It’s been 60 years; it’s not going to happen in the next nine months.”
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Our government needs to pointedly and consistently explain to the leaders of Europe that their assault on Israel will not convince the jihadists to spare them.

By Caroline B Glick, JPOST

What do radical Israeli groups have in common with their European funders? Last Thursday, Channel 2 broadcast candid camera footage of Breaking the Silence members gathering classified information on IDF operations. The footage was taken by Ad Kan activists.

Breaking the Silence claims to be an organization dedicated to collecting testimonies from IDF soldiers documenting ill-treatment of Palestinians. Posing as soldiers with information to share, Ad Kan activists were interrogated by Breaking the Silence investigators.
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by Michael Rubin, Newsweek

The situation in Turkey is bad and getting worse. It’s not just the deterioration in security amidst a wave of terrorism. Public debt might be stable, but private debt is out-of-control, the tourism sector is in free-fall, and the decline in the currency has impacted every citizen’s buying power. There is a broad sense, election results notwithstanding, that President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an is out-of-control. He is imprisoning opponents, seizing newspapers left and right, and building palaces at the rate of a mad sultan or aspiring caliph. In recent weeks, he has once again threatened to dissolve the constitutional court. Corruption is rife. His son Bilal reportedly fled Italy on a forged Saudi diplomatic passport as the Italian police closed in on him in an alleged money laundering scandal. His outbursts are raising eyebrows both in Turkey and abroad. Even members of his ruling party whisper about his increasing paranoia which, according to some Turkish officials, has gotten so bad that he seeks to install anti-aircraft missiles at his palace to prevent airborne men-in-black from targeting him in a snatch-and-grab operation.
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T. Belman. It would have been better if the actual emails were shown so that we could decide if they really say what this article says they say.

By Jay Syrmopoulos, The Free Thought Project, INTELLIHUB

Washington, D.C. –  In spite of French-led U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973 creating a no-fly zone over Libya with the express intent of protecting civilians, one of the over 3,000 new Hillary Clinton emails released by the State Department on New Year’s Eve, contain damning evidence of Western nations using NATO as a tool to topple Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi.

The NATO overthrow was not for the protection of the people, but instead it was to thwart Gaddafi’s attempt to create a gold-backed African currency to compete with the Western central banking monopoly.
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T. Belman. It has always been thus. The PLO always protected Israel from the worst inclinations of the West. So when Obama says he sees no solution this year, he is paving the way to turning the matter over to the UNSC to impose a solution.

Time is running out.

By Daniel Greenfield, FPM

Obama’s campaign against Israel has run into one major obstacle… Muslim terrorists.

Every Obama attempt to force Israel to make concessions to the Islamic terrorists who run the Palestinian Authority has been rejected by the terrorists. No matter how much Obama got Israel to offer, it was never enough.
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Obama administration spent three years in talks with Iran that resulted in payment of $1.7 billion in taxpayer funds to Iran, with more payouts likely in future, reports Washington Free Beacon • Many view payment as “ransom” for release of U.S. hostages.

Israel Hayom Staff

The Obama administration spent three years engaged in secret talks with Iran that resulted in the payment of $1.7 billion in taxpayer funds to Iran, with more future payouts likely, according to a U.S. State Department letter obtained exclusively by the Washington Free Beacon.

The payment was revealed due to an inquiry launched by Kansas Republican Congressman Mike Pompeo in January. The Washington Free Beacon report said many viewed the payment as “ransom” for Iran’s release of several American hostages.
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UN Human Rights Council to vote on Palestinian initiative calling on international companies to avoid direct or indirect transactions with businesses linked to the West Bank.

By Barak Ravid and Jack Khoury, HAARETZ

Israel and the United States are making intense diplomatic efforts to block a resolution slated to be voted on Thursday by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva that would obligate the organization to draw up a list of all Israeli and international firms operating directly or indirectly in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights, senior Israeli and Palestinian officials said.

The resolution was a Palestinian initiative being advanced with the help of Egypt, Pakistan and other Arab and Muslim countries.
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T. Belman. Trumps success mirrors their failure. Trump resonates with the voters. They alienated the voters. Trump and Cruz are right on Muslims and they are wrong.

THE HILL

Members of the GOP foreign policy establishment are open to supporting Ted Cruz or even Hillary Clinton for president if that’s what it takes to prevent Donald Trump from becoming commander in chief.

In interviews with The Hill, prominent Republicans who signed a scathing open letter denouncing Trump said they aren’t wavering from their opposition to him.

“What’s happening is you have a lot of people who are desperate to get anybody in there other than Trump. … People are going to go for Cruz, because at the end of the day they think he’s considerably less bad than Trump,” said Eliot A. Cohen, a former Jeb Bush adviser who also served in the George W. Bush administration.
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