By Ilan Berman, INTERNATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS

In September 2015, Russia formally waded into the civil war in Syria. Over the course of two weeks, the Kremlin commenced a major military intervention into the brutal four-and-a-half-year-old conflict, deploying thousands of troops, breaking ground on a new air base in Latakia, and dispatching an array of heavy war materiel (including tanks and fighter aircraft) to the Syrian theater. As of this writing, the Russian military contingent in Syria is estimated to number 4,000 soldiers.(1) But it could grow bigger still, because Russian president Vladimir Putin has pledged to send as many as 150,000 additional troops to the country.(2) In the meantime, Russia’s military has already launched hundreds of airstrikes aimed at assorted anti-regime forces. The message is unmistakable: Russia is in Syria to stay.
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Eli E. Hertz, Myths and Facts| 9 March 2016

Resolution 242 was adopted after the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel was attacked by, and captured territory from, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.

However, the resolution never mentions Jerusalem, nor does U.N. Resolution 242 call for a full withdrawal from territory captured but merely a withdrawal to “secure and recognized boundaries” that are to be negotiated by the parties concerned. Palestinian Arabs were not a party to the resolution.

Arthur Goldberg, the former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. (in 1967) who helped draft the resolution, testified in regard to the omission of Jerusalem from Resolution 242:
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New plan seeks U.N. resolution to punish Jewish state

By Mark Lander, NYT

WASHINGTON — President Obama, resigned to his failure to broker a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, is looking past his time in office and weighing a plan that would preserve at least the principle of a two-state solution for his successor to pursue.

The White House is debating whether the president should lay down the outlines of an agreement, several officials said, perhaps through a resolution at the United Nations Security Council or in a presidential speech. The objective would not be to revive direct negotiations — almost nobody believes that is likely now — but to enshrine the proposals Secretary of State John Kerry made during his last failed effort at peacemaking in 2014.
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T. Belman. I don’t care how they do it but they must do it.

A charged committee meeting discusses ‘ticking bomb’ of 350,000 FSU immigrants who can’t convert to Judaism through state religious authority

Born in Moldova, David immigrated to Israel with his family as a child in 1997, where they qualified for citizenship under the Law of Return. But not as Jews.

“There, we were Jews,” David said Tuesday at the Knesset, referring to the country of his birth. In many ways, his family spans Eastern European Jewish geography: He was born in Moldova, his parents in Romania, and his grandparents, two of whom were Jewish, in Russia.

The Law of Return offers Israeli citizenship to people with at least one Jewish grandparent. But Jewish law has a different criterion for who is a Jew: a Jewish mother or a recognized conversion.
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Republicans are now among the Jewish state’s most important friends. This was not always so.

By TEVI TROY, COMMENTARY

The movement to isolate Israel may be in full swing on college campuses across the country, and Israel may be the subject of ever-louder international denunciations, but when it comes to a Republican Party riven by squabbles, the Jewish state has become a unifying glue.

Support for Israel is all but unanimous among the party’s politicians in Washington, and in the presidential race, candidates vie to outdo one another when it comes to expressing their commitment to it; even the isolationist presidential candidate Rand Paul had gone to great pains to attempt to establish his pro-Israel bona fides.
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Supreme Court rejects appeal by Jewish landowners against Bedouin tribe that built illegally on land, without giving explanation.

By Reut Hadar, INN

The Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal by the organization Regavim dealing with the Negev village Bir Hadaj, hundreds of whose residents entered the nearby plot that was privately owned by Jews and built dozens of illegal buildings.

In 1995, after the government decided to create the Ramat Hovev industrial area, members of the ‘Azazme tribe from Ramat Hovev moved to Ramat Negev council fields, and created illegal structures next to Kibbutz Revivim.
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The White House is exploring the possibility of supporting a new resolution before the president’s term ends, according to the Wall Street Journal, whose report follows a Haaretz article on Israeli concerns for such a move.

By Barak Ravid, HAARETZ 

The White House is exploring the possibility of supporting a UN Security Council resolution that would set the principles for a permanent Israeli-Palestinian agreement. The resolution would be brought to a vote before the end of U.S. President Barack Obama’s term in office, the Wall Street Journal has reported.

According to the report, published Monday, the White House is also examining other options, such as a speech by Obama on the American vision for a two-state solution, but that would be a mostly declarative move.
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63% of Israeli Jews identify with right-wing/religious parties, only 16% identify with Left; just 30% believe ‘settlements’ harm Israel.

By David Rosenberg, INN

Israeli Jews tend to identify with right-wing and religious parties, according to polling data released on Tuesday by the Pew Research Center.

Nearly half (48%) of all Israeli Jews said they felt closest to one of the three rightwing parties in the Knesset: the Likud (28%), Jewish Home (11%), and Yisrael Beytenu (9%).

Another 15% of Israeli Jews identified with haredi parties, including 12% who chose Shas, and 3% who identified with the United Torah Judaism party.
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OU CENTER, Keren HaYesod #22, Jerusalem

Tuesday  Mar 29 . Doors open 7:00 PM/ lecture at  7:30

BUY TICKETS IN ADVANCE
ON INTERNET or by CALLING 44 122 444 3377

Ted Belman is the Editor/Publisher of Israpundit and has been for 13 years.

Ted will start by highlighting the influences on Obama during his formative years and Rev Wright years.

He will explore Obama’s embrace of Islamists, both Sunni and Shia, at home and abroad, and his capitulation to the Mullahs and to Putin..

The havoc Obama caused in Libya, Egypt, Syria, Turkey and Iran will all be covered.

Of particular interest will be his failed attempts to force Israel to give the Arabs what they want and the reasons for his failure.

Finally Ted will speculate on the damage Obama could still do before the end of his presidency.
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T. Belman. This survey was done a year ago. I am sure that the proportion is much higher now. Just imagine what it would be if the question referred to Arabs in J&S.

Survey by Washington-based think tank, criticized for vague wording of question on expulsion, also shows decline in proportion of Israeli Jews and Arabs who believe peace between Israel and a future Palestinian state is possible.

By Ofer Aderet, HAARETZ

About half of Israel’s Jews support the transfer of Arabs to other countries, according to a survey by the American Pew Research Center published Tuesday. The poll was conducted among Jewish and non-Jewish Israelis from the end of 2014 until the middle of 2015, before the latest wave of terror.

One of the questions in the survey, based on face-to-face interviews of 5,601 individuals, asked to what degree they agreed with the following statement: “Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel.” The result, among the Jewish respondents: Twenty-one percent “strongly agree” and 27 percent “mostly agree.” If those two groups are combined, about half of Israeli Jews questioned – 48 percent – support transfer of Arab citizens. On the other hand, a similar proportion – 46 percent – say they oppose such a move, with 29 percent saying that they “don’t really agree” and 17 percent responding that they “don’t agree at all” to the expulsion of Arabs.
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T. Belman. This deal to continue freeze in J&S in exchange for approval for building in the blocs, has been kicking around for years. Obviously the US has a freeze in both places so why do they need to make such a deal. Plus it was just last week that there was a report that the US was demanding that we don’t build in eastern Jerusalem for Jews but we do build there for Arabs. There doesn’t appear to be a follow up on that. But Biden is here now to deliver a few messages. I think a majority of Israelis would back such a deal. It doesn’t mean that we would have to withdraw from the other settlements but it does mean that we have to hold the land on trust for the Arabs. ie end of Oslo.

Also Liberman said he would join the coalition without preconditions if Bibi would build 2000 units in Maaleh Adumin. Bibi has not responded publicly to that. Liberman and Lapid and possigbly Kahlon are working together to unseat Netanyahu in the next elections.

By Marissa Newman, TOI

Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid on Monday boasted he could make a deal “tomorrow” with the US to approve Israeli construction in the main settlement blocs, in exchange for a freeze on building in isolated West Bank settlements.
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T. Belman. When Obama came into office I wrote Obama Plans to Impose a Solution on Israel. Here it comes. But just passing a resolution in the UNSC doesn’t make it so on the ground. The UN has no jurisdiction to do that. I also wrote Can the UN legally impose a solution on Israel. If the UN passes a Chapter VII resolution declaring our rejection of such resolution as “a threat to peace” then it can order sanctions and military force. They have already primed the pump by6 continually calling the Arab/Israel conflict a threat to peace.

By David Rosenberg, INN

With about 10 months left in office, President Barack Obama is considering unprecedented moves to implement a two-state solution, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Senior US officials revealed that the President is looking to initiate a final negotiated settlement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority using United Nations Security Council resolutions, a step that would obligate not only Israel and the Palestinian Authority, but effectively determine the direction of US policy for the president’s successor as well.
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The largest Evangelical communities remain solidly supportive of Israel, and their size dwarfs that of the rising forces of replacement theology and its concomitant hatred of Israel.

By Caroline Glick, JPOST

Monday, the Bethlehem Bible College, an Evangelical Christian college in Jesus’s hometown, opened its fourth biennial Christ at the Checkpoint conference. The conference, which is directed specifically toward US Evangelicals, will run through the week.

Today, Evangelical communities in the US number anywhere between 60 and 150 million people, depending on who is counting. They form the backbone of American support for the Jewish state. It is the support of the Evangelical community, rather than the Jewish community in the US that ensures that come hell or high water, no matter how Israel is demonized in the media and in academia, the majority of Americans continue to support Israel.
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Relatively few people outside the Azerbaijani or Jewish communities know about the remarkable role that the Jewish community has played in Azerbaijan.

By Arye Gut, JPOST

No country in Eurasia has loser or warmer ties with Israel than Azerbaijan. The relationship between the two countries is particularly surprising because Azerbaijan is a majority- Muslim country and because Baku has not yet established a formal diplomatic mission in Israel.

But the reasons for this close relationship lie in the longstanding friendship between Azerbaijanis and Jews living in Azerbaijan. Unlike many cultures, Azerbaijanis have never viewed Jews as foreign or alien. Israelis with roots in Azerbaijan are doing a great deal to foster the emerging economic and even geopolitical cooperation between Azerbaijan and Israel.
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DEBKA

Headline of last issue of Turkey’s Zaman before government takeover

Turkey and Saudi Arabia have taken separate steps to break free from Washington’s dictates on the Syrian issue and show their resistance to Russia’s highhanded intervention in Syria. They are moving on separate tracks to signal their defiance and frustration with the exclusive pact between Presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin which ostracizes Riyadh and Ankara on the Syrian question.

Turkey in particular, saddled with three million Syrian refugees (Jordan hosts another 1.4 million), resents Washington’s deaf ear to its demand for no-fly zones in northern and southern Syria as shelters against Russian and Syrian air raids.
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By Andrew Pessin, ALGEMEINER

ICC Fall 2015 report. Photo: ICC website.

A report released last month analyzing American campus trends concerning Israel, contains several surprising and important results.

Perhaps the most important point in the “Fall 2015 Campus Trends Report,” produced by Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC), is that there are signs of growing internal fractures within the anti-Israel camp.

In a section called “Divisions in the Anti-Israel Movement,” for example, the report observes that “a growing minority of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) activists identified divestment as a distraction,” and “disputed the effectiveness of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.” Indeed, not a single university has heeded the BDS call and actually divested, even where its student government passed a BDS resolution, and a growing number of states and even the federal government have, in recent months, been passing anti-BDS legislation.
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Bulletin    March 6, 2016

PMW YouTube Palwatch account “terminated”

YouTube terminated PMW’s Palwatch account for exposing PA hate speech

Dear PMW subscribers,

Following Palestinian Media Watch‘s release of a video on Thursday in which a Palestinian girl read a poem on official PA TV calling for “war that will smash the oppressor and destroy the Zionist’s soul,” YouTube “terminated” PMW’s Palwatch account for violating their “terms of service,” which includes hate speech. The terminated account contains nearly all of PMW’s videos.
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T. Belman. Poll: 93% of Palestinians hold anti-Jewish beliefs . It also finds that 74% of Arabs in the ME and North Africa are antisemitic.

By Jerry Gordon, NER

On Monday, February 22, 2016, Dr. Charles Jacobs of Americans for Peace and Tolerance stood at a lectern in the rotunda of the Rhode Island State house in Providence explaining to Governor Gina Raimundo why “unconditional welcome” of Syrian Refugees was dangerous:  anti-Semitism. Jacobs assisted by former US Rep.  Pete Hoekstra couldn’t complete his remarks given the outcries from 100 protesters.   The jns.org news service reported the evidence behind Jacobs’ rationale, Citing anti-Semitism; Jewish leader urges Rhode Island to reject Syrian refugees:

We are proud that America is a country of immigrants. We welcome people who come here to join us and bolster our way of life. We do see and we do sympathize with people fleeing war and violence. But an influx of Syrian refugees may pose a significant danger to Rhode Islanders, and especially to the Jewish and certain other communities, specifically gays and women, that exist in Rhode Island.

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Yoram will be in the US during May, 2016, available for speaking engagements (http://bit.ly/1W5CrSr).

Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought: a US-Israel initiative”
March 6, 2016,  http://bit.ly/1SrCdFu

Donald Trump’s fortunes rise as the fortunes of the US seem dimmer, as the image of the US political establishment is deflating, and as the self-confidence of the US working and middle classes is eroding.

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