Western academia, once again, puts money uber alles.

By Giulio Meotti, INN

François, the professor of literature protagonist of the latest sensational novel by Michel Houellebecq, “Submission”, is forced to convert to Islam to continue his academic career at the Sorbonne, whose rector, Robert Rediger, is a fervent Muslim.

In fact, the Sorbonne, not just in the novel, is subsidized by Saudi Arabia. A case when fiction predates reality.

A few days ago, the president of the Sorbonne, Philippe Boutry, signed an agreement with the attorney general of the state of Qatar. Within the next three years, the Islamic monarchy will finance the studies of hundreds of Syrian immigrants at the Parisian academic jewel. The Sorbonne has accepted 600,000 euros per year for three years.
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By Dov Lipman, TOI

Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer team took the field at the famed Stamford Bridge Stadium in London to play Chelsea. I was excited to see an Israeli team playing in the Champions League for the first time in many years but was even more intrigued to see an Israeli team on the field in London with a few thousand Maccabi fans waving Israel flags sitting in the same stadium with England’s famed soccer fanatics.

I was not in any way prepared for what transpired seconds before the match began. The camera feed was not especially geared for Israeli consumption but was, rather, the primary feed provided by the football association. It zoomed in on Maccabi’s star player Eran Zahavi who placed his left hand on top of his head, his right hand over his eyes, and very clearly recited the “Shema” prayer.
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T. Belman. Toward the latter half of this article the author describes Israel’s limited options in dealing with the Palestinians. If we are looking for a major war to change the facts on the ground, it isn’t going to happen. Israel would never we as ruthless as ISIS or Assad thereby causing millions of Palestinians to leave the territory. So at the end of the war, the Palestinians would still be there as the Gazans are still in Gaza. It is very important to Israel to maintain the status quo, which is the policy of this government. This dictates that we must defend the PA and the Oslo Accords so that so long as it applies, the Palestinians have virtual autonomy. Without it there would be major pressure on Israel to give them citizenship. That is why Bibi keeps saying that he doesn’t want a binational state. It is also the reason he is always embracing the peace process. Doing so is a necessary part of the Oslo Accords.

What is not discussed in this analysis is the possibility of Bennett’s Plan being implemented. Nobody, not even Bennett is discussing it any more.

One more thing, in case you still think that Israel is a free agent. Think again. Israel challenged the new entente between the US and Iran and came out the looser for doing so. Now that the US is redefining its relationship with Russia in the ME, Israel will also not be able to challenge it. Many years ago when Israel was building the security fence, they did so in conformity with the micro management by the US. Even for that we weren’t independent. That fact was a forerunner to the attempt to impose ’67 borders with swaps on us.

Abbas spokesman: If new Israeli gov’t won’t recognize 2-state solution, no chance for peace process Jerusalem yawns at PA threat to tear up Oslo Accords

By Udi Segal, JPOST, (Channel 2’s chief diplomatic analyst.)

[..]
These ill winds are accompanied by the smell of danger in the air, and its origins can be traced back to the extremist religious elements that threaten to undermine the Western norms to which we adhere. It is a lethal cloud that hovers over the entire Middle East. For a number of reasons, some of them circumstantial, it has yet to be fully felt in the Palestinian territories.
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By Elliott Abrams, NATIONAL REVIEW

There is a complaint against Obama foreign policy that goes “all our allies have been alienated, and are scared by the lack of American leadership and our indifference to their security, and all Obama does is cozy up to our enemies.” Jeb Bush has asked audiences, “Name a country where we have a better relationship now than we did seven years ago,” and audiences answer back “Iran!”

In pursing this policy of cooperating with our enemies rather than our friends, Obama is now going to include the horrific issue of Syria. A central pillar of American foreign policy for over 50 years has been to keep the Russians out of the Middle East. Now we appear to be welcoming their return as a military power there.
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By Andrew C. McCarthy, nationalreview

‘Why on earth would Republicans do that?” That is a question I’ve been asked at least a dozen times since illustrating that the GOP has played a cynical game in connection with President Obama’s Iran deal.

“Follow the money” is a common answer to questions about political motivation. It may not explain everything in this case, but it is certainly relevant.

This spring, Republican leadership colluded with the White House and congressional Democrats to enact a law — the Corker-Cardin Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act — that guaranteed Obama would be authorized to lift sanctions against Iran (the main objective of the terrorist regime in Tehran). The rigged law authorized Obama to lift sanctions as long as Republicans could not pass a resolution of disapproval. As Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker John Boehner, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, and other GOP leaders well knew, there was no way they would ever be able to enact a disapproval resolution over Obama’s veto. But the process choreographed by Corker-Cardin meant they would be able to complain about the deal and vote to disapprove it — thereby creating the impression that they were staunchly against the lifting of sanctions that they had already authorized.
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By Martin Sherman, JPOST

The Security Council [d]emands… that Iran shall suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development, to be verified by the IAEA – Security Council Resolution 1696, July 31, 2006

Iran will become a nuclear power. The only mystery over how that will happen is whether Obama was inept or whether he deliberately sought to make the theocracy some sort of strategic power – Prof. Victor Davis Hanson, Senior Fellow Hoover Institute, Stanford University, September 15

Those who support the deal should be ashamed of… the undemocratic tactics and bigoted arguments employed to avoid a real debate and a majority vote. – Prof. Alan Dershowitz, The Jerusalem Post, September 11.
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On Tuesday, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius hailed Obama’s “enormous victory” on the Iran nuclear deal. To be sure, Obama’s victory was not against Iran. It was against Netanyahu.

By Caroline Glick

This week US President Barack Obama informed Jewish leaders that he plans to meet with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on November 9.

Yawn.

After 42 Democratic senators spent September 11 blocking their Senate colleagues from voting on Obama’s nuclear deal with the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, the time has come to stop trying to influence the Obama administration’s policy toward Iran specifically and toward the Middle East in general. It’s a sucker’s game.
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Earlier Thursday, Prosor sent a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon reiterating Israel’s commitment to maintain the status quo on the Temple Mount as well as safeguard Jerusalem’s holy sites.

By Ron Prosor, JPOST

Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor, reacted Friday morning to the UN Security Council’s statement concerning the escalating tensions on in Jerusalem saying that “When the Palestinians set the Temple Mount ablaze, Mahmoud Abbas fuels the fire, and the Security Council fans the flames, it is a recipe for a regional explosion.”

The United Nations Security Council had called for “restraint, refraining from provocative actions and rhetoric and upholding the historic status quo” on the Temple Mount on Thursday evening.
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By Seth M. Siegel The Tablet September 17, 2015

Israel came to Iran’s rescue decades ago—and might again be the Islamic republic’s best hope for avoiding catastrophe

If Iran is in the news because of its nuclear program, the greatest threat to the country’s well-being isn’t economic sanctions or the Sunni-Shiite schism. Rather, the greatest threat to Iran may be that the country is running out of water. The problem is so severe that social unrest, economic dislocation, even out migration can all be imagined. One government advisor recently predicted that as many as fifty million Iranians—seventy percent of Iran’s population—may be forced to leave because of a lack of water.
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T. Belman. What chance is there for Israel to advance its relations with Saudi Arabia in order to jointly oppose Iran when the Saudis continue to blame us for our defense of our rights on the Temple Mount and demand that we sign the Non Proliferation Treaty. In addition though Israel is meeting with them, there is no suggestion that they will amend the Arab Peace Initiative in our favour.

Salman condemns ongoing violent confrontations between Israeli police and Palestinian protesters at the holy site

BY AFP AND TIMES OF ISRAEL STAFF September 17, 2015,

Palestinian women argue with Israeli policemen during a protest against Jewish groups visiting the Temple Mount which houses the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem on September 16, 2015.

Saudi King Salman has appealed to UN chief Ban Ki-moon and members of the Security Council for “urgent measures” after clashes at the Temple Mount and al-Aqsa Mosque, state media reported late Wednesday.
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By Daniel Greenfield

In his sales pitch for the nuclear deal with Iran that even he admitted gives the terrorist regime a near zero breakout time to the bomb, Obama pulled out every conceivable stop. He even accused opponents of trying to get the country into a war with Iran just as they had “brought the country” into the Iraq War.

But Obama was responsible for the rise of ISIS and his deal with Iran sets the stage for the next Iraq War. His original Iraq treason led to his Iran treason today.

To understand why that is, it’s important to realize how we got here. Read more…

In an interview with Arab media, Abbas states that he is planning to shock the system by dropping a ‘bombshell’ at the end of his UN speech, Israeli officials warn of grave consequences if he ‘breaks the rules.’

Elior Levy, YNET

Two weeks before his speech at the UN General Assembly on September 29, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has stated that he will, “Drop a ‘bombshell’ at the end of my speech at the General Assembly, and I refuse to reveal what that
bombshell is.”

The Palestinian president’s remarks were made during an interview with Arab media which is set to air next week.

Abbas stated that his speech will focus on the Oslo accords, and the alleged Israeli violations of the agreement, like the destruction of Palestinian structures in areas A and B.
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Ted Belman. All candidates were at pains to demonstrate their love of Israel. It was too much for Ann Coulter who tweeted “How many f—ing Jews do these people think there are in the United States?”. Most wanted to rip up the Iran deal. But no one even mentioned the Bush letter of ’04 which Obama trashed. No one mentioned the Obama’s parameters of the ’67 lines plus swaps and a divided Jerusalem. We must make certain that in the next debate these are central issues including the commitment to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem.

By Cynthia Blank, INN

Presidential candidates from the US Republican Party participated on Wednesday night in their second televised debate ahead of November 2016 elections.

Candidates were splintered on how to deal with the Iranian nuclear agreement, with some promising to cancel it immediately if elected and others calling to monitor Iran’s behavior before taking action.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz pledged to “rip to shreds this catastrophic Iranian nuclear deal” on his first day in office, along with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former H-P CEO Carly Fiorina.
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Here and abroad, the Obama administration damages whatever it touches.

By Victor Davis Hanson — NATIONAL REVIEW

The next president and Congress will inherit what President Obama left behind. Whether Democrat or Republican, the president will have no choice other than to try to undo much of what Obama has wrought. But can he or she?

THE MIDDLE EAST
The policy of “leading from behind” and the crudity of “We came, we saw, he [Qaddafi] died” have left a human tragedy in Libya. Backing the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was an inexplicable choice, and it almost ruined the country. The United States did not need to hound and jail an innocent video maker in order to concoct a myth to cover up the culpable lax security in Benghazi. Yemen was strangely declared a model of our anti-terrorism efforts — just weeks before it ignited into another Somalia or Congo. ISIS was airily written off as a jayvee bunch as it spread beyond Syria and Iraq. There is little need to do a detailed comparison of Iraq now and Iraq in February 2009 (when it was soon to be the administration’s “greatest achievement,” a “stable” and “self-reliant” nation); the mess in between is attributable to Obama’s use of the aftermath of the Iraq War for pre-election positioning.
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Start watching at 15:50. O’Reilly gets it mostly right, Col Peters thinks O’Reilly was too easy on Obama and I agree. What is significant about this program is that it is run by a liberal and it has the biggest national audience of all news shows In America.

Creeping Shariah

via Federal Data: U.S. Annually Admits Quarter Of A Million Muslim Migrants – Breitbart

A Breitbart News review of State Department and Homeland Security data reveals that the United States already admits more than a quarter of a million Muslim migrants each year. President Obama intends to add another 10,000 Syrian migrants on top of that.

In 2013 alone, 117,423 migrants from Muslim-majority countries were permanently resettled within the United States— having been given lawful permanent resident status. Additionally in 2013, the United States voluntarily admitted an extra 122,921 temporary migrants from Muslim countries as foreign students and foreign workers as well as 39,932 refugees and asylees from Muslim countries.
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By Udi Segal, JPOST

In a white tent set up not far from the border with Jordan – very similar to the tent that hosted the ceremony for the signing of the peace treaty with Jordan 21 years ago in Ein Evrona, the small Arava town just a few kilometers north of Eilat – a number of army officers, environmental experts, and intelligence officials gathered for a meeting that included a surprise stop by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, and Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz.

Twenty-one years after the signing of the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty, the border between the two countries has proven to be the quietest, albeit the least maintained from a financial standpoint, of any of Israel’s frontiers. Nonetheless, the prime minister was given the latest intelligence data that surveyed possible future threats.
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[Russia positioning tanks at Syria airfield also]

By Jonathan Keiler, AMERICAN THINKER

Michael Oren’s memoir blasts Barack Obama but pulls its punches elsewhere.

BY ELLIOTT ABRAMS, COMMENTARY

It was a political and historical anomaly for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to dispatch the historian Michael Oren to Washington D.C. to represent him and his country in 2009. Oren was not a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party; he had no political involvement inside Israel; he had no foreign-policy or diplomatic experience; and he was not an intimate of the prime minister’s. In all these ways he differed from his predecessors. When Netanyahu first served as prime minister of Israel from 1996 to 1999, his ambassadors were Eliyahu Ben-Elissar and Zalman Shoval—both old hands of his Likud party and familiar diplomatic and political figures. Ben-Elissar had been chief of staff to Menachem Begin and then Israel’s ambassador to Egypt, and had chaired the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of the Knesset. Shoval had been the country’s U.S. ambassador from 1990 to 1993. Later, Ariel Sharon sent his personal diplomatic adviser Daniel Ayalon to Washington; Sharon’s successor, Ehud Olmert, selected Sallai Meridor, a former chairman of the Jewish Agency and head of the World Zionist Organization. Today Netanyahu’s man in Washington is one of his closest advisers, Ron Dermer, who spent the first Obama term in an office 20 feet from Netanyahu’s.
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Despite being surrounded by conflict, nothing will stop Israelis from feeling good about themselves and their country • 73% of us think Israel is a good place to live, most Israelis have traveled abroad or bought a car or a home in the past year.

By Aharon Lapidot, ISRAEL HAYOM

Of all Israeli institutions, the Israelis public has the most faith in the IDF

While the world around us faces crisis after crisis, it is safe to say that Israelis are feeling rather content with themselves, their country and their general standing, judging by a special holiday poll conducted by New Wave Research this week.

According to the poll, 73% of respondents characterized the state of Israel as “a good place to live.” A similar number of respondents (70%) defined themselves as “proud to be Israeli” with an average score 8.2 out of 10 for Israeli pride.

Unsurprisingly, the Israeli body that received the highest rating of public trust was the Israel Defense Force, with an average score of 8.1. Coming in at a distant second place, the Supreme Court received a score of 6.5 — a passing grade considering the onslaught of attacks the court has endured in recent years.

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