by Jonathan Spyer, PJ MEDIA

On a recent reporting trip to Iraq and northern Syria, two things were made apparent to me — one of them relatively encouraging, the other far less so. The encouraging news is that ISIS is currently in a state of retreat. Not headlong rout, but contraction.

The bad news? Our single-minded focus on ISIS as if it were the main or sole source of regional dysfunction is the result of faulty analysis, which in turn is producing flawed policy.
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By Evelyn Gordon, COMMENTARY

NGO Monitor has just published an important study of the funding of Israel’s premier left-wing “nongovernmental” organizations. The first fact that arises from the study is no surprise to anyone who has been following the issue: Far from being “nongovernmental,” these groups are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the European Union and its member states. But the second fact did surprise me: The New Israel Fund, which has become the bête noire of pro-Israel activists both in Israel and abroad in recent years, is actually a comparatively minor donor to these groups. If it closed up shop tomorrow, its grantees would still manage just fine.
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T. Belman This speaker is speaking for the conservatives, those who want to preserve what we have built up over centuries. But there is another group, the progressives or leftists, who believe we have no right to insist on our way of life and culture and that we are obligated to make our societies more hospitable to alien cultures. That we have to make room for these people and their culture. I stand with the conservatives.

Not only do we have the right and duty to maintain our culture but we have no obligation to invite the “refugees” in, whether they be migrants or refugees, when they represent a threat to our values and culture. All cultures are not equal.

By Martin Sherman, ALGEMEINER

“It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.” — R. Inge, dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, 1915

“Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.” – Karl Popper, On the Paradox of Tolerance, in The Open Society and Its Enemies, 1945 …

Many Western Europeans, from the man on the street to the cop on the corner, from the politician in Parliament to the immigration official at the border, have long considered it their obligation… to tolerate intolerance. – from “Tolerating Intolerance: The Challenge of Fundamentalist Islam in Western Europe,” Partisan Review, 2002.

As the massive influx of Muslim immigrants engulf the European Union and press against the gates of North America today, bringing with them much of what they were attempting to flee, the appalling truth is becoming increasingly clear.
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TOI

The Israeli government will announce the allocation of 370 acres of West Bank agricultural land near the Palestinian city of Jericho as state lands.

The area, part of which has been worked in recent years by Israeli farmers, is situated north of the West Bank settlement of Almog, in the Jordan Valley, according to an Army Radio report on Tuesday. Additional details about the move were to be published Wednesday morning.
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T. Belman. Herzog’s plan will appeal to many Israelis. With all the terror attacks, the idea of separation is very appealing. But his plan requires Israel to stop building beyond the settlement blocs and allows the Arabs to do as they wish. I say, once we are building a wall around the settlement blocs and excluding parts of Jerusalem, we should move that wall much further east. We need the land and have to have more land around the airport. We have to include as much of Area C as possible. We should also keep the Jordan Valley permanently.  Perhaps we should close down Qalquilya and Tulkaren which lie on our border and send the Arabs living there to outlying Jewish settlements and bring the settlers in to these areas. But at least Herzog wants the IDF to remain in place.

Two-state solution is impossible to realize under current conditions, opposition leader says, offers plan which includes completion of West Bank wall: ‘I wish to separate from as many Palestinians as possible, as quickly as possible.’

By Barak Ravid, HAARETZ

Opposition leader MK Isaac Herzog (Zionist Union) said the two-state solution was impossible to realize under current conditions on Tuesday, and presented a new diplomatic plan in which several Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem will be severed from the rest of the city and the separation barrier in the West Bank completed in a manner that includes all the settlement blocs.
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By Mehmak Celic, DAILY SABAH

A recent survey conducted by the Objective Research Center (ORC) has revealed that 78.9 percent of Turkey’s Kurdish population is against a ‘self-governance’ system for the Kurds, proposed by the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and PKK terrorist organization.

The research was conducted by surveying 3,197 people between Dec. 27 and Jan. 6 in 23 provinces, which are mostly Kurdish populated.
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In attack on Netanyahu’s policy, Jewish Home leader warns reliance on IDF is not a strategy and calls for more creative thinking

By Sue Surkes, TOI

A deadlock” in creative thinking on security threatens Israel far more than the diplomatic impasse with the Palestinians, Education Minister Naftali Bennett warned Tuesday, in a thinly veiled attack on political and defense leaders from coalition partner Likud.

“The main threat to Israel’s security comes not from the north or south, not from the rockets of Hamas and Hezbollah, and not even from Iran,” he told a conference of the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. “Nor is diplomatic deadlock our main threat, but a deadlock in our thinking.”
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T. Belman. The EU is insisting that all future agreements must “unequivocally and explicitly indicate their inapplicability to the territories occupied by Israel in 1967”. Thus if Israel then ignores this EU distinction in applying the agreement, Israel would be in violation of the agreement. I am sure there will be other clauses in the agreement that set out what is to happen if Israel is in breach.

Israel must go on the offense and tear down all EU illegal Arab construction, especially if financed by the EU. It is not enough for us to whine about this legislation. We must enusre that EU suffers consequences for doing so.

EU softens statement, but lays line between Israel and settlements Jerusalem successfully lobbies for slightly less hostile resolution – which still strongly criticizes West Bank activity – but blasts ‘double standard’

BY RAPHAEL AHREN, TOI January 18, 2016,

The European Union reiterated Monday that it would continue to differentiate between Israel proper and the settlements, yet stopped short of explicitly calling for a “distinction.”

Affirming an earlier decision to require certain products made in settlements be labeled as such, foreign ministers from the bloc’s 28 member states declared that the EU remains “committed to ensure continued, full and effective implementation of existing EU legislation and bilateral arrangements applicable to settlements products.”
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Coalition of Pro-Israel Advocates (COPIA)

Dear Friends,

The survival of Israel depends on we, as American Jews, recognizing and actively combating the insidious growth of anti-Israel organizations within our own Jewish Community. One such anti-Israel organization has been successful in embedding its supporters and sympathizers within our mainstream Jewish community organizations, and it is influencing their actions. We refer to J Street, and unless we as a Community learn the truth about this organization and resist it, a day is not far off when it will control our institutions and US government policy toward Israel. Some contend it already has close friends on the boards of our mainstream Jewish organizations and finds a close ally in the current US administration.
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See also Ken Timmerman’s WELCOME TO THE BANANA REPUBLIC: With a wave of his wand, Obama defies the law.

By  Morton Klein, president of the Zionist  Organization of America 

The Obama administration’s unlawful lifting of critical banking, shipping, oil, steel, and other sanctions on Iran this past weekend – despite the radical terrorist Islamic regime of Iran’s string of violations and continuing genocidal ambitions since the Iran deal’s inception – is the biggest nightmarish policy mistake since Chamberlain’s Munich deal with Adolph Hitler. This travesty severely endangers the U.S., Israel, and world. The administration’s ending of sanctions was compounded by the administration’s announcement this weekend that the U.S. will also pay Iran an additional $1.7 billion settlement (including $1.3B  interest) – thereby further enriching the terrorist Islamic Republic and enhancing its ability to foment Islamic terror.
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By Carol Brown, AMERICAN THINKER

A U.S. District Court has ordered the NYPD to purge extensive documentation that outlines the rise of Islamic terror in the West and threats to the United States. The report, Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat, focused on providing law enforcement and policy-makers with vital intelligence on domestic terror operations. A key component of the document outlined how jihadists get into the country and carry out terror attacks. Many experts have described the report as “critical” to our national security. The court order is a huge victory for the ACLU (who spearheaded the effort two-and-one-half years ago) and Islamic supremacists.

The Free Beacon reports on key areas reached in the settlement, including the following mandates:
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By Lauri B. Regan, AMERICAN THINKER

President Obama began releasing illegal aliens with criminal records from the early days of his presidency and well before the sequester that he used as an excuse for doing so. Despite Obama’s misrepresentation to the American people that these criminals were not dangerous, tens of thousands of illegal immigrants, many with violent criminal records, have been released from jailincluding illegals “charged with kidnapping, sexual assault, drug trafficking and homicide.”  A House Judiciary Committee report revealed that between 2009-2011, the Obama administration released criminal illegal aliens who were later charged with 19 murders, three attempted murders and 142 sex crimes. Kathryn Steinle’s murder last summer by an illegal alien with seven prior felony convictions was inevitable.
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Ivestigative Project on Terrorism News,  January 13, 2016

In an interview Tuesday night, Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz refused to address questions about the wisdom of her Democratic colleagues inviting two officials from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to the State of the Union address.

As we reported Monday, Democrats Alcee Hastings of Florida and California’s Zoe Lofgren invited CAIR officials to the speech in response to a call from Wasserman-Schultz and Rep. Keith Ellison. It was a symbolic response to what they see as overheated rhetoric toward Muslim Americans in the ongoing presidential campaigns.
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Ted Belman. The Native Americans identify with the Jews not the Arabs. They too were subject to a genocide which reduced their numbers from 65 million to 10 million and they were left with a sliver of their homeland. Notwithstanding that, they reject violence as a tactic.

By Rachel Avraham, Nov 7, 2013, http://unitedwithisrael.org/native-american-tribal-support-for-the-state-of-israel/

The Palestinians and their supporters have attempted to present their struggle as parallel to that of the Native Americans. This push was led by George Bisharat, an anti-Israel activist whose ancestors only immigrated to the holy land in the 1920’s, yet who nevertheless insists that he is an indigenous person who was forcefully uprooted, just like the Native Americans were. In reality, the Jews are Israel’s indigenous people, but that has not stopped pro-Palestinian organizations such as Adalah and the Students for Justice in Palestine from playing on the Native American struggle to serve their own interests. However, numerous Native Americans have rejected any comparison between their struggle and that of the Palestinians, preferring to identify with Israel instead.
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Obama cannot take action against Russia without discrediting his entire Middle East policy, and so destroying his own legacy.

By Caroline Glick, JPOST

Israeli airforce commanders are reportedly deeply worried about Russia’s military presence in Syria.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin deployed his forces to Syria last year, he claimed that the deployment would be brief. Russian forces were placed in Syria, Putin said, to protect Assad and would leave once he was able to defend himself.

Last week, when the terms of the deployment agreement concluded between Russia and Syria were made public, we discovered that those early claims were false. Under the terms of the deal, Russia can maintain permanent bases in Syria.
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Op-ed: If and when hostile activities begin from Lebanese territory, they should lead to a war between Israel and Lebanon. If we only try to defeat Hezbollah and leave Lebanon ‘out of the game,’ the results will be a lot grimmer than in the previous war.

By Giora Eiland, YNET

Samir Kuntar’s assassination, the rocket fire from Lebanon the next day and Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah’s threatening speech have raised the fear of a new conflict on the northern front.

Beyond an analysis of the likelihood of such a conflict, it’s important to address our policy vis-à-vis Lebanon, vis-à-vis Syria, and indirectly vis-à-vis Turkey and Russia as well, which are in the midst of a conflict over the situation in Syria.

We can cautiously say that Kuntar’s assassination will not serve as a trigger for a conflict in the north. The man was not important enough for Hezbollah, and in general, Hezbollah has no interest in launching another front due to the organization’s growing entanglement in Syria.
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Eisenkot tells security conference Hezbollah, backed by Tehran, remains ‘central threat’; says West Bank violence will continue for years

BY JUDAH ARI GROSS AND ILAN BEN ZION, TOI

IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot said Monday that Iran will likely keep to the nuclear deal reached with world powers in coming years, but intensify its proxy war with Israel through the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah and other armed groups.

Eisenkot also said the landmark agreement could prevent Israel with opportunities in the future and warned that terror in the West Bank was be unlikely to abate anytime soon.
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T. Belman. Be careful here. What actually happenned was that the lawsuit between the NYPD and the Muslim groups was settled by agreement and then submitted to the Court to legalize or enforce the agreement. The NYPD should never have agreed to this term and the Courts should have refused to permit the destruction of the research.

What are the “core values and principles,” supposedly reaffirmed by this settlement? Needless to say the ACLU was involved.

Muslim community sued police over surveillance programs

By Adam Kredo, NEW BEACON

The New York Police Department has been directed by a U.S. court to remove from its online records an investigation pertaining to the rise of Islamic extremists in the West and the threats these individuals pose to American safety, according to legal documents.

As part of a settlement agreement reached earlier this month with Muslim community advocates in U.S. District Court, the NYPD will purge from its website an extensive report that experts say has been critical to the department’s understanding of radical Islam and its efforts to police the threat.
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