Note: The following piece is from a symposium published in Commentary Magazine‘s November issue. Contributors were asked to respond to the following question: “What will be the condition of the Jewish community fifty years from now?”

By Evelyn Gordon, COMMENTARY

Today’s Jewish world has two main centers: America and Israel. But by 2065, if current trends hold, it will have only one—Israel.

One reason is simple demographics. Today, the two communities are of similar size. Israel, according to its Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), has 6.3 million Jews. America, according to the Jewish Virtual Library, has between 5.4 to 6.8 million, depending on whether you count only “core Jews” or the “enlarged” population, which includes “persons of Jewish parentage” and “non-Jewish household members.”

But America’s core Jewish population has barely grown over the past half-century. True, in 1960, the “enlarged” population was only 5.4 to 5.5 million. But since intermarriage was much less common then, this population—identical to today’s core Jewish figure—primarily comprised core Jews. Its subsequent increase has thus come mainly from counting non-Jews as Jews.
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The far-right National Front party made huge gains in French regional elections and could be a sign of a more pro-Israel Europe.

By Michelle Michal Grossman, JPOST

France went to the polls on Sunday in regional elections and the far-right National Front party, formerly known for its anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant stances but now known for its support of Israel and opposition to radical Islam, came out as a winner across the country.

The regional election outcomes are taken seriously since they are thought to be a bellweather for what will come when France votes in the 2017 national elections.

Though some have pinned the party’s success on its occurrence so soon after the November 13 terror attacks in Paris, one Israeli expert told The Jerusalem Post on Monday that France has been moving to the right for years and is part of an overall trend in Europe of far-right parties becoming the mainstream.
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By CAROLINE B. GLICK, JPOST

In America of December 2015, natural conclusions are considered irresponsible, at best.

How much lower will America sink before it regains its senses? Wednesday, two Muslims walked into a Christmas party at a community service center in San Bernardino, California where one worked. They were wearing body armor and video cameras and carrying automatic rifles, pipe bombs and pistols. They opened fire, killed 14, and wounded 17.

The murderers, Syed Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik were killed by police.

Speaking to the Daily News, Farook’s father said his son, “was very religious. He would go to work, come back, go to pray, come back. He’s Muslim.”

Farook’s neighbor told the paper that over the past two years, Farook exchanged his Western dress for Islamic gowns and grew a beard.
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By Jerry Gordon, NER

By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz , BREAKING ISRAEL NEWS

 In the long history of Jews in Russia, the government has rarely been an ally, and often been the source of persecution. Current Russian president Vladimir Putin, however, is a powerful exception, with Jews playing a significant role in his personal history and his inner circle.  With the Russian army a major player in the potentially explosive multi-national puzzle unfolding in Syria, this personal element could become an important, perhaps decisive, factor in how the conflict unfolds.

At the International Assembly of Chabad Representatives in 2007, Russia’s Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Berel Lazar, often referred to as “Putin’s Rabbi”, told a remarkable story about the Russian leader, which he heard from Putin himself.

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Recently the European Union decided to mark and boycott products that are made in Israeli settlements. Those products provide jobs for both Israeli and Palestinians in Judea and Samaria, and give the basis for a well established coexistence.

The Zionist Foundation For Israel and My Israel have published a list of these boycotted products.

They urge you to purchase these items to support these businesses in Judea ,Samaria and the Golan Heights.

TWO PEOPLE CARRYING M16’S WHILE HAVING COFFEE. THEY MAKE US SAFE.

EVERYWHERE YOU GO YOU SEE ISRAELIS PACKING.

T. Belman. I am not so sure. I don’t think that Putin wants all of Syria. Perhaps the same for Iran. I think they will be satisfied to keep Alawite Syria under Assad. In Iraq, Iran too is satisfied with Shiite Iraq.

There is no way Putin can come out a winner in the situation he has created for himself.

By Mark Langfan, INN

When Putin first teamed up with Iran and Assad, the two greatest state sponsors of terror in the world, to commit unabashed genocide against the Sunnis of Syria, there was breathless talk that “Putin Checkmated Obama.” It was as if Putin was playing against Obama. Then, after Turkey shot down Putin’s Mig and the Saudis openly declared that they would continue arming their Syrian proxies, the Syrian ground war got even uglier. For all Putin’s bluster, the very ugly reality of Syria has begun to set in.

Putin has never been fighting Obama; he’s been fighting and will have to come to fight hundreds of millions of Sunni Muslims who are coming to see Putin and Russia as the ultimate evil. What’s worse, whether Putin loses, or Putin “wins,” Putin will ultimately lose, lose big, and lose everything.
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DEBKA

A new secret pact has taken shape in the Middle East. Last week, the offices of Russian Vladimir Putin and Egyptian President Abdel-Fatteh El-Sisi secretly formulated a tripartite accord for strengthening the ties between Moscow, Cairo and the Assad regime in Damascus, DEBKAfile’s exclusive military sources reveal. The pact had its first visible manifestation in the unannounced landings last Wednesday, Dec. 2, of the first Egyptair passenger flights at Damascus international airport and Aleppo in northern Syria.

The Egyptian national airline thus became the first of any Arab airline to renew flights to the war-torn Syrian capital since 2012. (see photo)
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By Gregg Roman and Gary C. Gambill, THE HILL

For months, Western policymakers have agonized over what to do with the masses of Sunni Muslim migrants flooding Europe by the boatload, particularly Syrians.  Largely missing from this discussion is the question of why this flood is happening.

For starters, it doesn’t have much to do directly with the civil war in Syria or the rise of ISIS.  The vast majority of the 886,662 migrants who illegally entered Europe this year embarked from Turkey, a little over half of them Syrians who took shelter in the country over the past four years.  “EU officials have said … Ankara was very effective in previous years in preventing the outflow of refugees from the country,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Read more…

After two Egyptian companies are ordered to compensate Israel for gas deal collapse in 2012, Cairo says it will appeal, freezes talks on gas imports from Israel • Freeze may hit preliminary deal, signed Nov. 25, to pump gas from Leviathan field to Egypt.

Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff

The Israel-Egypt gas line has been targeted by terrorists multiple times

Egypt said on Sunday it will appeal an order by international arbitrators to pay $1.76 billion in compensation to the Israel Electric Corporation for halting gas supplies three years ago, and that it is freezing gas import talks until the dispute is resolved.

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Though ‘imperfect,’ Jewish Home party leader says plan to appropriate Gush Etzion is the ‘reasonable, sane’ approach

BY URIEL HEILMAN, TPI

NEW YORK (JTA) – Naftali Bennett, the leader of Israel’s Jewish Home party, has had a few headaches recently.

When Bennett came to New York this week for a whirlwind trip filled with TV interviews, meetings with American Jews and visits to Jewish schools (Bennett is both Israel’s minister of education and minister of Diaspora affairs), it  seemed like a breath of fresh air.
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They want your country, your religion and your life.

By Naomi Ragen,INN

For years, Israel has been demonized, held responsible for every terrorist atrocity from blowing up Holocaust survivors at a Passover Seder to the mutilation and murder of her Olympic athletes. It was all Israel’s fault, because she had mistreated the poor Palestinians.

The French welcomed thousands of Muslims to France. They made them citizens, gave them access to everything the Western world has to offer.

The French sided openly with the Palestinians, and had a hands-off policy towards Muslims, making their neighborhoods no-go zones for the police.

Their reward? Mass killings in supermarkets, magazine offices, restaurants, a sports arena, and a concert hall by Muslims. But why? After all, the French were so “nice?”
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It’s Not Enough To Kill Its Leaders, Its Ideology Must Be Killed

By Deborah Danan, Breitbart

TEL AVIV – A renowned Saudi journalist said that extremist Islam is like Nazism and the only way to eliminate it is to combat its ideology, MEMRI reported. According to the journalist, imams, media personalities, and educators are more dangerous than terror leaders like Osama bin Laden.

Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, an esteemed journalist from Saudi Arabia who was editor of the London-based daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat and former director of Al-Arabiya TV, wrote an article on November 22 for Al-Arabiya entitled, “Terrorism is not about leaders or their motives, but about ideology and those who spread it.”

In the article, Al-Rashed claims that terrorism will never be eliminated by the targeted killing of its leaders, because new ones will always take their place. Nor will it be eliminated by withdrawing from crisis territories, like the American withdrawal from Iraq. Instead, the world should adopt the same methods used following World War II, when the spread of Nazi ideology was prohibited. Al-Rashed notes that extremist Islam is akin to Nazism in that it is based on a fascist hatred of the other.
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By Christian Whiton, FOX NEWS

In the wake of the worst terrorist attack in America since 9/11, President Obama could have used his Oval Office address on Sunday night to announce different policies than the ones that have obviously failed to keep America safe from radical Islam. (Speech transcript)

He could have explained why a long-feared arrival of low-tech, soft-target terrorism had occurred, and what he would do to rectify the problem—beginning with apologizing for giving a U.S. visa to a jihadist from Pakistan and agreeing to stop his plan to bring more Syrian refugees here.

He could have announced a plan to undermine the ideology of our enemies—radical Islam—which impelled Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik to wage war in San Bernardino last week.
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By Ted Belman

On Dec 3/15, the Foreign Ministry announced it was going to publish a legal document verifying that settlements were legal and that Israel was not an occupier pursuant to the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Shortly thereafter Lorejnzo Kamel, a Middle East historian at Bologna University and a research fellow (2013-16) at Harvard’s CMES published the immediately following blockquoted article, in which he undermined Israel’s claim to Judea and Samaria (West Bank) by arguing that Jews were only promised a “homeland” “in Palestine” rather that a state in all of Palestine or all of Palestine as a state..

My friend Salomon Benzimra, the author of The Jewish Peoples Rights to the Land of Israel, wrote a very strong rebuttal of Kamel’s argument. It appears below just under Kamel’s argument.

No doubt that this dispute will loom large in the wake of the FM publishing its report.
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T. Belman. Israel is getting awfully nervous.

DEBKA

On Wednesday, Dec. 2, Russia started transferring dozens of advanced T-90 tanks to Syria, DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources report. They were moved immediately to two Syrian army fronts fighting rebel forces at the two most important cities, Aleppo and Damascus, and are expected to be sent to beef up the combined Syria, Iranian, Hizballah army poised to recover Palmyra from the Islamic State.

The shipment to the capital was delivered into the hands of the 4th armored division, Syria’s republican guard commanded by Gen. Ali Maher Assad, the younger brother of President Bashar Assad.
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Prime minister says there can be no solution so long as ‘other side’ doesn’t want peace; blames PA incitement for violence

By Raoul Wootliff, TOI

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday blamed the Palestinian Authority for the stalemate in peace talks and seemed to hit back at comments made by US secretary of State John Kerry, who warned that a lack of progress on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could lead to the end of the Jewish state.

“Israel will not be a binational state,” Netanyahu said emphatically at the opening of the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. “But in order for there to be peace, the other side must decide that they also want peace, and unfortunately that is not what we are seeing.”
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By Carol Greenwald, AMERICAN THINKER

On December 2, a letter signed by one thousand rabbis was delivered to  Congress calling on “our elected officials to uphold the great legacy of a country that welcomes refugees.” The leadership of virtually all of the Jewish defense organizations, from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL)  to the American Jewish Committee (AJC), have echoed these demands to admit thousands of Syrian refugees.

These Jewish leaders have  betrayed the Jews of America. They prefer burnishing their liberal credentials and parroting  the views of a Democratic president to their duty to sound the alarm about the harm to American Jews from bringing to the US Syrian Muslims, who have been raised in a culture of virulent anti-Semitism. Seeing the destruction of Jewish life in Europe with the influx of Muslim immigrants from Arab countries, it would not take much imagination for these so-called Jewish leaders to see what mass immigration of Arab Muslims will  mean for the safety of Americans and for American Jews in particular.
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