By Yaakov Lapin, JPOST

The Defense Ministry and Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency completed on Monday the last phase of trials for the David’s Sling air defense system, and the Israel Air Force is expected to take possession of the system in the first quarter of 2016.

The trials occurred in recent days in southern Israel, and were led by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, which is developing David’s Sling, together with the US defense company Raytheon.

David’s Sling can intercept short-range to medium-range rockets and ballistic missiles, including guided projectiles, cruise missiles, aircraft, and drones. Its range of coverage means it can destroy incoming threats over enemy territory, away from Israeli skies.
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By: Rosa Burç, teleSUR

Kurdish Women fighters pose for a picture with a displaced Yazidi woman (R) who lives near the base in Sinjar.

The solution to the humanitarian tragedy that climaxed in Shengal and continues in refugee camps lies in the recognition of political status for the Kurds.

Last year, in the night of August 3, the Islamic State group carried out its attacks against the Yazidis (in Kurdish Êzîdî) in Shengal. Within just a few hours, thousands were killed or captured. The rest of the population of the almost completely Yazidi-inhabited region found immediate refuge on Mount Shengal.
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T. Belman. Remember at the end of WWII, America occupied West Berlin and USSR occupied East Berlin and so it remained for many decades.  Now that both sides have acknowledged each other’s sphere of influence in Syria, I submit those sphere’s will remain permanent. Syria will be divided by the Euphrates River. Land to the west will be Alawite Syria and land to the east will be Sunni Syria at least in the north.

Now that Turkey has been booted out of both Syria and Iraq, America is free to do what it wants with Sunni Syria and Sunni Iraq and the Kurds without regard to Turkey. So far the US has been unwilling to grant the Kurds more than autonomy. On the other hand, Kurds are also a factor west of the Euphrates which has been ceded to Russia. Time will tell what Russia will do for them.

Meanwhile Turkey is waging war against the Turkish Kurds and just killed 110 of them.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis December 21, 2015,

The US-Russian plan, approved by the UN Security Council as the lever for activating a political process towards ending the five-year Syrian war, can only go so far towards its objectives. The process is not capable of halting the fighting or removing Bashar Assad from power; just the reverse: progress in the talks is heavily dependent on the state of play on the battlefields of the north while the Syrian dictator’s ouster is a fading issue.
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T. Belman. In law school we learn that better that 99 guilty people go free than one innocent person be convicted. This principle argues for a very high standard being demanded for conviction. Because of the unreliability of forced or otherwise induced confessions, they are not permitted as evidence in Court. Another reason is that we befoul ourselves by condoning such practices.

The government blessed actions of the Shin Bet, are such a violation of morality and decency (whatever happenned to maintaining the dignity of man as required by our basic law) that better that the murderers at Duma go free than to besmirch ourselves with such atrocities.

This is an Google translation on a FB comment in Hebrew.

You can’t stay silent!!

Our children’s blood cries out from the depths of dungeons back c:

The debate revealed: one of the men arrested for homeland security tried to commit suicide.
The debate turned out to be one of the detainees who answers tried to cut his wrists and kill yourself. In addition to his pleas were exposed to judge along days of arrest: ” make me a rainbow out of their hands and put me upside down by burning my hands. Every day it’s going up a level. Let me poison. I can’t take it anymore ”
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T. Belman. Except for the last paragraph Arens is right on. He writes, “if and when a Palestinian state is established in the area, the presence of a Jewish minority should not present a hindrance.” So he is accepting the armistice lines as borders. He should have argued for moving the borders so that the Jews in J&S would remain in the expanded Israel. Why should Palestine, if created, get to keep land whose population is 90% Jewish? It makes no sense.

This kind of ethnic-cleansing policy would be hard for a representative of the United States to support, so Samantha Power prefers not to be explicit on the subject.

By Moshe Arens, HAARETZ

Just when one might have thought America was finally focusing on the bloodbath in Syria, Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, used the platform offered by the Haaretz conference in New York to talk again about Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria.

“Continued settlement growth raises questions about Israel’s long-term objectives,” she pronounced. Power, like many others, seems bugged by the “1967 lines,” which as all Israelis should know are nothing more than the 1949 armistice lines concluded with Jordan. These lines delineated the areas occupied by the British-led-and-equipped Arab Legion that attacked Israel on May 15, 1948.
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T. Belman. The only solution to the conflict is partition. Russia will want to push ISIS back some more before negotiating borders for Alawite Syria. Assuming she will be successful,ISIS will be more amenable to negotiating. Russia, who lately has been supporting the Kurds in Syria and has called for their inclusion in talks, will create an alliance between Alawite Syria and Kurdish Syria to reduce the territory available to ISIS. ISIS will probably remain intractable so the only path to peace is for the US and Russia to come to an agreement on such borders. Then the focus will shift to defeating ISIS in Sunni Syria and replacing it will a more moderate Sunni leadership. There is a long road ahead.

The U.S. gives up toppling Assad to win Russia’s support at the U.N.

WSJ

The U.N. Security Council unanimously endorsed a political roadmap for Syria on Friday, and in the world of fantasy diplomacy that the Obama Administration inhabits this apparently counts as a victory. Syria is to have a comprehensive cease-fire, a negotiated political transition, “inclusive and non-sectarian” governance, free and fair elections and a new constitution—all within 18 months. As for how these goals will be achieved, those are “modalities” to be worked out.
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For thousands of years, the Bal Ej practiced Judaism in secret – now they are reemerging, and they want to come home to Israel.

By Ari Soffer, ARUTZ SHEVA

By Lahav Harkov, JPOST

Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid and a group of reservists came out on Sunday against Breaking the Silence, saying that the NGO defames IDF soldiers abroad.

In a press conference in Tel Aviv, Lapid announced that, as part of his fight against Breaking the Silence, he plans to propose a bill that would not allow groups that promote a boycott of Israel to fund local organizations.

According to Lapid, “Criticism is constructive for our society, but there is a significant difference between criticism and defaming IDF officers and soldiers abroad. That is not criticism; that is undermining the foundations of the state. Organizations like Breaking the Silence have crossed the red line between criticism and subversion.”
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Shekel rises beats most major peers vs dollar, euro in 2015
Traders losing faith in central bank’s ability to curb gains

By Sharon Wrobel, BLOOMBERG

Israel is running out of ways to free itself from the burden of a world-beating currency.

The shekel is one of just three major peers to avoid being crushed by the dollar’s advance this year and is the second-best performer against the euro with a jump of 11 percent. Traders see little chance of the gains evaporating, with options signaling about 70 percent odds the currency will revisit its 2015 highs by next December.
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T. Belman. The Shin Bet did not violate the law. The Israeli establishment has authorized these extreme measures. There will be the argument made, that Israeli citizens and Arab terrorists should be treated the same. I believe otherwise. The Israeli citizen should be prosecuted as a criminal entitled to his rights whereas an Arab terrorist should be prosecuted as an enemy combatant.

The torture described by Jewish suspects in the Duma arson-murder case is strikingly similar to descriptions by Palestinian torture victims.

By Chaim Levinson, HAARETZ

A faint whiff of capitulation wafts from the highly unusual statement issued by the Shin Bet security service in response to allegations that it had tortured the minors suspected of involvement in the fire-bombing of the Dewabsheh family home in Duma last July.

The arson is only mentioned in the third paragraph of the statement, as one of a slew of violent incidents allegedly perpetrated by the “radical and anti-Zionist ideological group that resorted to violence to change the system of government by means of attacks that would further its aims.”
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T. Belman. This is huge. Obama has finally decided that ISIS must be defeated rather than Assad. All the talk about what comes later or having elections even is bullshit. Their is no alternative to dividing Syria into ethnicities. The Alawites will get Damascus through to the Mediterranean, the Kurds and other minorities will get the area they now control in the north and the rest goes to the Sunnis. Whether ISIS will control this or whether the Sunni states, Jordan, S. Arabia, Egypt and others, will control it remains to be seen. This territory will be amalgamated with the Sunni territory in Iraq, making a very large Sunni state. The Sunnis will want this state as a bulwark to Iranian expansionism. Let the games begin.

After years of calling for regime change, the Americans seem to have finally accepted that President Bashar Assad is still ‘our man in Damascus.’

By Anshel Pfeffer, HAARETZ

Barack Obama’s remarks on Syria during his annual news conference Friday were by then little more than damage limitation. “I think that Assad is going to have to leave in order for the country to stop the bloodletting,” Obama said, but that was just his opinion. He then added that any solution in Syria will have to ensure that the “equities” of Russia and Iran are “respected.” At the top of the list of equities in Syria is of course President Bashar Assad. Not that Obama’s equivocation should be surprising. The scene was already set earlier this week — the week in which Obama’s U.S. fell in line with Putin’s Russia.
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T. Belman. The question is not so much why Erdogan now wants or needs rapprochement with Israel but why Israel wants or needs rapprochement with Turkey. The deal that is actually being cut (Israel is actually easing the blockade of Gaza) suggests that Israel is the one who wants the deal more. I don’t see anything that Erdogan is giving because I think stopping ICC prosecutions is not much of a concession. So why is Israel doing this on these terms?

Israel has been negotiating a joint marketing strategy with Egypt, Greece and Cyprus to market their gas collectively in Europe. Is this potential Turkey deal being made on behalf of that consortium or in addition to it? Does Israel need this Turkey gas deal (not that I know of) or does Israel stand to gain something else from Turkey? Time will tell.

By Ruthie Blum, ISRAEL HAYOM

Israel’s Channel 10 broke a story Thursday night that is the kind of scoop journalists celebrate. Unfortunately, however, this one is very bad news.

According to sources in the Prime Minister’s Office, Israel and Turkey are on the verge of restoring full diplomatic relations. Translated into plain English, this means that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is about to make a deal with the devil.
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Demographics Expert Yoram Ettinger presents nine-point optimistic analysis.

By Hillel Fende, ARUTZ SHEVA

Diplomacy and demographics expert Yoram Ettinger finds that contrary to popular perception and politically-motivated scare tactics, there is actually no “Arab demographic time bomb.” Rather, he notes that there is a robust 66% Jewish majority in the entirety of the Land of Israel, including Judea and Samaria – and that it is growing.
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$487 m. earmarked for missile defense and $40 m. for new tunnel detection program; ‘Nobody in Obama administration looking for a fight with Israel in 2016,’ analyst says

By Eric Cortellessa, TOI

WASHINGTON — Congress on Friday passed an omnibus spending measure that appropriates $487 million for US-Israel missile defense programs and $40 million for a new US-Israel tunnel detection program, earning accolades from the pro-Israel American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

This year’s package, however, allocates $132 million less to Israeli missile defense than last year’s, as the US provided $619 million in 2015 toward the Iron Dome program, the Arrow 3 long-range interceptor program and David’s Sling mid-range rocket interceptors.
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By Karin McQuillan, AMERICAN THINIKER

Egyptian TV has been infamous for decades for their Arab-Nazi programming.

Every Egyptian leader from Nasser through Sadat to Mubarak has enshrined Nazi Jew-hatred in mainstream Egyptian culture out of both conviction and political calculation. Nasser, trained by Nazis as a youth, spread the genocidal conspiracy theories of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion… On the Ramadan following 9/11, Mubarak presided over a thirty-week-long TV series dramatizing Elders and its genocidal message.
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Madonna has a $20M pad there, Barbra Streisand has taken 100 rooms and Gerard Butler has been bailed out by pals in the new trendy getaway that has been called the “sexiest city in the world.”

T. Belman. The issues discussed in this article highlight just how complex the problem is. The pronouncements coming from the mouths of the contestants for the Republican presidential nomination, are merely superficial soundbites rather than considered policy.

The question of what to do with Islamic State or for that matter, what to do with Mass Muslim migration, is part of a larger question, how to survive Islam.

By Reuel Marc Gerecht, The Weekly Standard

Should the United States militarily defeat jihadist outfits in the Middle East? After 9/11 the answer seemed easy, but after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Barack Obama is not alone in arguing that large-scale offensive campaigns against radical Muslim movements aren’t worth the cost. Even if the president’s go-slow approach is actually more likely to provoke more terrorism, is it the sensible policy for America? And can Western governments actually defeat the Muslim radicals who live in the West and are a nightmare for domestic intelligence services to find, let alone stop? These questions are as much about Europe as the Middle East.
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