Public Broadcast Law passed overnight includes section that forbids being one-sided or interjecting personal views.

By Gil Ronen, INN

The Knesset passed the Public Broadcast Law before dawn Thursday in the final readings. The law, which replaces the Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA) with a new corporation and would force it to streamline its operations, was passed after the government agreed to delete a clause that calls on IBA immediately begin slashing NIS 10 million ($2.57M) from its budget every month.

Instead of implementing the clause – which would have cost 430 jobs – the government and labor unions will negotiate over how many of the current IBA employees will migrate to the new broadcasting corporation that will replace the IBA. Another key section in the law abolishes the infamous annual Television Tax that Israelis in possession of television sets have had to pay for decades.
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by Vic Rosenthal

Someone burned a baby and his father to death and severely injured two other members of the Dawabshe family a little more than a month ago on July 31, in the Arab village of Duma, southwest of Shechem (Nablus).

Beginning on the morning after the murders, as the investigation was just beginning, Israeli officials and media began claiming that the perpetrators were “Jewish terrorists.” The murder was conflated with the vicious knife murder of a 16-year old girl and the wounding of several others by a crazed ‘religious’ fanatic at the Jerusalem Gay Pride parade the same night. Two examples, it was said, of how we are the same as Arab terrorists. Two examples of our depravity as a culture.
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T. Belman. Evelyn Gordon is a very important right wing journalist. After discussing the reality of the present impasse, she recommends a different strategy. I  don’t agree with everything she suggests but I appreciated that she started the conversation in this long but important essay.

For two decades the Jewish state has sought, fruitlessly, to negotiate an end to the conflict. Needed is a new, viable strategy for coping with reality and winning out.

By Evelyn Gordon, MOSAIC

It’s a longstanding truism of international relations that “everyone knows” the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet today, after more than two decades of negotiations under several different Israeli, Palestinian, and American governments have repeatedly failed to produce the two-state agreement whose terms “everyone knows,” it is past time to put this false idea to rest. In fact, what the talks have shown is that even when there’s agreement on general principles, the remaining gaps are insurmountable—and often there isn’t even agreement on principles. What this means is that, for now and for the foreseeable future, a final peace is not achievable.

To most Israelis, this isn’t news. Repeated polls have confirmed that while a stable majority still favors a two-state solution, an even larger majority doesn’t believe an agreement can or will be signed anytime soon—or that the Palestinians are serious about reaching one.
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T. Belman. I disagree with this official. Had Bibi done what the Democrats wanted the result would have been the same. Although he failed to stop the Iran Deal from being passed later in the month, Bibi did in fact get the Americans to agree with him by a margin of 2:1. Thus the American people will elect more Republicans in the 2016 elections and hopefully he also helped a Republican candidate like Cruz of Trump to become the next President.

Member of pro-Israel lobby tells Israeli media that Netanyahu’s March address transformed Iran deal into partisan issue

TOI Staff

An official from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the leading pro-Israel lobby in the US, on Thursday blasted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for harming the opposition to the Iran nuclear deal by insisting on addressing Congress on the issue in March.
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Ted Belman

According to Culture Minister Miri Regev list of criteria published Wednesday night by Channel 2, cultural institutions who endorse the following will not receive state funding:

– denying the existence of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state;
– inciting racial hatred, violence and terrorism;
– supporting act of terrorism against Israel;
– marking Independence Day as a day of mourning;
– acting against an Israeli symbol;
– boycotting or calling for a boycott of Israel.

“I make a clear distinction between freedom of expression and freedom of funding,” the Culture Minister declared. “Freedom of expression is a supreme value in Israel. But, the state has the right not to finance factors that undermine its Jewish and democratic character.”

T. Belman. The Republicans are still paying the price for having defeated Iraq. The Democrats will now pay the price for strengthening Iran, I hope.

By Jonathan S Tobin, COMMENTARY

This morning, President Obama got what he’s been working toward all year. With Senator Barbara Mikulski’s announcement that she will vote to support the Iran nuclear deal, the administration got its 34^th vote in the Senate, thus assuring that the president will have enough support to sustain a veto of a resolution of disapproval of the pact. Mikulski was just the latest of a number of Senate Democrats to throw in with the president on Iran. The only suspense now is whether Obama will get to 41 and thus have enough for a filibuster and prevent a vote on the deal from even taking place.

Leaving aside the terrible damage the deal does to U.S. security and the stability of the Middle East, the most far-reaching effect of the deal is that from now on Democrats own Iran. From this moment forward, every act of Iranian-sponsored terrorism, every instance of Iranian aggression and adventurism as well as the Islamist regime’s inevitable march to a nuclear weapon can be laid at the feet of a Democratic Party. With a few exceptions, the Democrats fell meekly behind a president determined to prioritize détente with Iran over the alliance with Israel and the need to defend U.S. interests. By smashing the bipartisan consensus that had existed on Iran up until this year, the Democrats have, in effect, become the hostages of the ayatollahs. This is a decision that will haunt them in the years to come.
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In the fight over sanctions and the nuclear deal, how did the supposedly all-powerful pro-Israel lobby lose to the slick operatives of the National Iranian American Council?

By Lee Smith|TABLET

Trita Parsi, the Iranian-born émigré who moved to the United States in 2001 from Sweden, where his parents found refuge before the Islamic Revolution, should be the toast of Washington these days. As I argued in Tablet magazine several years ago, Parsi is an immigrant who in classic American fashion wanted to capitalize on the opportunity to reconcile his new home and his birthplace. And now he’s done it: The founder and president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC ), the tip of the spear of the Iran Lobby, has won a defining battle over the direction of American foreign policy. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action not only lifts sanctions on Iran, a goal Parsi has fought for since 1997, but also paves the way for a broader reconciliation between Washington and Tehran across the Middle East.
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By Joel B Pollak, BREITBART

On Wednesday, Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD)2% became the 34th Democrat in the U.S. Senate to support the Iran deal, handing President Barack Obama a veto-proof majority.

In so doing, Mikulski drove the final nail into the coffin of the pro-Israel lobby, centered around the once-vaunted American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which had vowed in July to fight the deal “with the entirety of our institutional resources.”

AIPAC’s loss proves that the so-called “Israel lobby” was never as strong as antisemitic conspiracy theorists said it was. But AIPAC was weakened even further, and deliberately, by the Obama administration, which cultivated a George Soros-funded left-wing alternative called J Street, which promoted appeasement with Iran and was inspired by John J. Mearsheimer and Steven M. Walt’s controversial 2007 book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.
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T. Belman.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu recently declared he was ready to resume direct talks with the Palestinians.

“I believe there is a chance and I think it is imperative we have not lost sight of that issue,” Kerry said Wednesday in an interview with MSNBC.

What are we to make of this?

There is only one two-state solution envisaged by Kerry and the world, including AIPAC, and that is the one based on ’67 lines plus swaps and the division of Jerusalem. Nothing else is on the table or in the back rooms.  
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Senior Revolutionary Guards general says Iranian forces would continue to ‘bolster’ until Israel ‘overthrown,’ replaced with ‘Palestine.’

By Ari Soffer, INN

One of Iran’s top military commanders has said the Islamic Republic will continue to bolster its military capabilities until Israel is destroyed and a Palestinian Arab state established in its place.

Brigadier General Mohsen Kazzemeini, a senior commander in the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), was speaking to soldiers during a military drill in Tehran Wednesday.

“They (the US and the Zionists) should know that the Islamic Revolution will continue enhancing its preparedness until it overthrows Israel and liberates Palestine,” Kazzemeini said, according to the semi-official Fars News Agency.
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The Lawfare Project sent the following letter to the leadership of a labor union that recently adopted a resolution endorsing the BDS movement and its hateful and discriminatory goals and activities. The letter was co-signed by StandWithUs.

Although we do not want to give this union any more media attention, we thought it important to respond publicly with the counter-message–the truth–and call attention to the hypocrisy of any labor association taking such a position.

We will continue to combat BDS wherever it manifests, and to remind any organization and/or association considering BDS advocacy of the potential legal consequences of such action.
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T. Belman. The Democratic platform presented at the 2012 convention of the Party also heraled the demise.

By Jonathan S Tobin, COMMENTARY

The latest batch of Hillary Clinton emails to be released is being scoured for classified information today. While the Clinton camp is taking solace in the fact that there was no “Top Secret” data in these communications, the large number of emails with classified information is just drawing more attention to the former secretary of state’s allergy to transparency and doing her presidential candidacy no end of harm. But there is more to be learned here than a reaffirmation of what we already knew about the Clintons’ passion for secrecy.

The treasure trove of information about her work at the state department also gives us an inside view of her close relationship with Sidney Blumenthal. We already knew that Blumenthal’s role in Hillary’s life illustrated the conflicts of interest created by the Clinton Family Foundation since he was, at one and the same time, a paid consultant by the so-called charity, seeking business opportunities in Libya while also operating as an adviser to the secretary about topics in which he had a vested interest.
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Israel Can Prevent It

I usually publicize the positive achievements of the Jewish State. This week, however, I want to illustrate that much of Israel’s work also goes into counteracting the negative side of life in the modern world.

Disease prevention is a top priority of Israeli medical research.  Israel’s Avraham Pharmaceuticals has just announced successful interim results in a Phase 2b clinical trial of ladostigil, which prevents patients suffering mild cognitive impairment (MCI) from progressing to the more serious Alzheimer’s disease.  Meanwhile, New Jersey Department of Health has approved the OncoGxSelect diagnostic test for lung cancer developed by Israel’s Rosetta Genomics.  The test can help clinicians prevent the disease spreading by detecting genetic mutations responsible for the tumors.
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Extending aid by a decade, R&D collaboration, F-35 strike fighters among measures eyed for heightened US-Israel security cooperation; ‘Band-Aids on a hemorrhage,’ says one critic

By Rom Kampeas, TOI

WASHINGTON (JTA) – The moment the Iran nuclear deal becomes law, as seems increasingly likely given growing congressional support for the agreement, the focus of the US-Israel conversation will shift to the question of what’s next.

What more will Washington do to mitigate the Iranian threat and reassure Israel and other regional allies?
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Ibraheem Shaer, caught entering Israel from the Strip, tells Shin Bet materials for rebuilding are being diverted to tunnels

By Stuart Winer, TOI August 11/15

A Hamas fighter nabbed last month in a joint Shin Bet and police operation has provided a wealth of information on the terror group’s tunnel-digging in the Gaza Strip, its strategy for a future conflict with Israel, and its methods for obtaining cash from Iran, the Shin Bet said on Tuesday.

The capture of Ibraheem Adel Shehadeh Shaer, 21, a resident of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, was only cleared for publication on Tuesday.

Shaer, a tunnel digger in the group’s armed wing, was arrested at the beginning of July as he tried to pass though the Erez border crossing from Gaza into Israel.

During questioning by security officials, he disclosed a plethora of details about Hamas activities in Rafah, and in particular Hamas’s emergency procedures, as well as its intention to use tunnels dug under the border to attack Israel in a future fight.
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By Ted Belman

A recently released UN Report warns that Gaza could become  ”uninhabitable’ by 2020.

This report alleges the number of homeless at 500,000 which represents 1/3 of the population there. No way. BBC World News asks in July “Why is Gaza reconstruction so slow?” and puts the blame on Israel ‘s restrictions, of course. It is a pure propaganda piece i.e., sob story, as is the UN Report. But it reports that 100,000 were left homeless, not the 500,000 alleged by the UN report, and only 12000 homes were destroyed.

The UN and the PA propaganda machine, aided by the West, blames Israel for the lack of reconstruction when the real culprit is Hamas. No one blames Hamas for causing the problem in the first instance.
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By Kuperwasser, JCPA

By Caroline Glick, JPOST

Ideas are the most powerful human force. And the idea of jihad that the Obama administration will not discuss is perhaps the most powerful idea in the world’s marketplace of ideas today.

A masked Islamic State militant reads the charges of two men tied to a cross.

We have arrived at the point where the consequences of the West’s intellectual disarmament at the hands of political correctness begins to have disastrous consequences in the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

Speaking last month at the memorial service for the five US marines massacred at a recruiting office in Chattanooga, Tennessee, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said, “The meaning of their killing is yet unclear, and what combination of disturbed mind, violent extremism, and hateful ideology was at work, we don’t know.”
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by Gal Luft, http://www.meforum.org/5463/zohr-leviathan
Journal of Energy Security, August 31, 2015

Egypt’s gas pipeline to Israel
The discovery of the Italian energy company ENI of a giant gas field off the coast of Egypt has transformed the East Mediterranean energy play overnight. The newly discovered field called Zohr could hold a potential of 30 trillion cubic feet of gas – the largest discovery in the region, thirty percent larger than the Israeli Leviathan field, which held the title until today.

Zohr’s entry into the scene is a true game changer. It delivers a painful blow to both the Israeli and Cypriot economies, and more specifically to the gas partners, Delek Drilling and Noble Energy, which until now have held the only discoveries in the region: Tamar, Leviathan, Karish, and Tanin in Israel and Aphrodite in Cyprus. The finding will essentially annul the MOUs Israel and Cyprus recently signed with Egypt to supply gas to the domestic Egyptian market.
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T. Belman. Haaretz thinks schools should “emphasize the liberal values that are the cornerstone of any country that seeks to be enlightened and democratic.”. They object to Bennett requiring values such as our Jewish heritage and identity and our love of land to be reinforced.

The state education system needs to emphasize the liberal values that are the cornerstone of any country that seeks to be enlightened and democratic.

HAARETZ EDITORIAL

The school year is set to open today, with an emphasis on “values.” Among the initiatives Naftali Bennett has announced recently, some of them drawn up before he ever dreamed of being education minister, one stands out — a program “to strengthen values in the education system.” But in a polarized society like Israel’s, it’s advisable to ascertain which values he means and the steps he is taking to promote them.

Past experience and Bennett’s own remarks show that the risk of religious-nationalist indoctrination greatly outweighs the probability of a pluralistic policy. Bennett and his colleagues aren’t interested in promoting dialogue with people who represent a variety of different views, or in addressing a complex, multifaceted reality.
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