By Adam Kredo, FREE BEACON 

VIENNA—The White House is targeting Jewish groups in its latest push to blunt congressional criticism of an Iran deal that observers expect to be sealed in the coming days, according to a recording of a strategy conference call obtained by the Washington Free Beacon and experts familiar with the call.

The White House’s liaison to the Jewish community on Monday advised dozens of progressive groups to push a poll commissioned and distributed by the liberal fringe group J Street, which has been defending a deal with Iran.
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By Vic Rosenthal

My post about Michael Oren and American Jews last week brought many comments and emails. Some liked it, but the ones that didn’t either didn’t like my tone (“bitter, negative, polarized”) or felt that I was being unfair to those who did continue to support Israel.

I’m sorry about the tone, but I can’t pretend I don’t feel strongly about this. While I’m not happy that otherwise nice Scandinavians don’t support us, it hurts much more when unfair criticism comes from our own people. And I should note that there are some American Jews that really do care about Israel, who work hard to counteract anti-Israel propaganda and to inform and influence policymakers about issues that are critical for us. But they are a minority.
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Paradoxically, indeed perversely, the policies of Israel’s peace laureates have not only made peace increasingly remote, but Israel increasingly untenable.

By Martin Sherman, JPOST

Poor Menachem [Begin]… I got back… the Sinai and the Alma oil fields, and what has Menachem got? A piece of paper. – Anwar Sadat, on the peace agreement with Israel, 1980

In the name of Allah…believe me, there is a lot to be done.The jihad will continue… together, shoulder to shoulder, until victory… till Jerusalem, to Jerusalem, to Jerusalem. – Yasser Arafat, on Oslo Agreements, 1994

In the last four decades, three Israeli prime ministers have won the Nobel Peace prize: Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres (who, at the time, was foreign minister). Paradoxically, indeed perversely, the geo-political situation that the policy for which the prestigious prize was awarded has not only made peace increasingly remote, but is making Israel’s existence increasingly untenable.
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Manigut Yehudit has just issued a 32 report on the cost.

According to it:

The Oslo Process has cost Israel to date at least 933 Billion NIS.

FOR A FREE COPY OF THE REPORT GO HERE – wait for the article to appear

It won’t help the West to live in denial. There is a state out there that has to be destroyed just as Nazi Germany had to be destroyed.

By Mordechai Kedar, INN

The organization called Daesh appeared on the Middle Eastern stage in the middle of 2014, although it was founded 14 years earlier as the Iraqi arm of Al Qaeda. The world paid the organization scant attention until it suddenly began to take over wide areas of northwestern Iraq and eastern Syria with record speed. At first, international attention focused mainly on the videos in which the organization’s soldiers were seen butchering foreign journalists.and even now, the world considers this group of Jihadists a terrorist organization, despite the fact that in June 2014, that organization declared itself a state, “Islamic State” and began calling its leader a Caliph.
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T. Belman. Consistent, yes, but two surprises; 1) Bush’s endorsement of a Palestinian state and Obama’s endorsement of the ’67 lines plus swaps. Supporters of Israel keeping J&S or most of it should not loose sight of the fact that America has been very consistent in denying us that right and even in ratcheting up the pressure to relinquish it. We tend to minimize how difficult it is to stand up to the pressure. We must give Netanyahu a little more slack. The ME is changing. Demographics are changing. The EU and the US are changing but we must remain steadfast.

By Zalman Shoval, ISRAEL HAYOM

“Regardless of what the United States does, Israel’s diplomatic isolation will increase unless there is a general settlement. Western Europe is more interested in its own economic stability than in the security of Israel. Black Africa has already broken with Jerusalem, and Japan and most of Asia will break diplomatic relations with Israel if the present trend continues. Without a fundamental change, Israel then will wind up in an international diplomatic ghetto, with the United States as its only friend. Even in the United States, Israel’s position will not be secure unless she changes her policy . … This may be Israel’s last chance to make a peace that won’t be imposed upon her.”

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Likud, Yisrael Beytenu agree to back each other’s candidates for prestigious panel, effectively gain control of committee’s work • Likud expresses hope that move will pave Yisrael Beytenu’s way to coalition, but latter says decision was made on merit.

Mati Tuchfeld and Israel Hayom Staff

T. Belman. Israel is preparing to defeat them underground rather than destroy them above ground with the inevitable collateral damage. To do this Israel has developed technology for mapping tunnels and Robots that can enter the tunnels and search for explosives and booby traps. The goal is to enter the tunnels and move through them to the command centers.

BY MITCH GINSBURG, TOI

Israel faced a changed enemy in the summer of 2014.

Five years after its last major conflict in Gaza and two years since an aerial campaign that caught Hamas unawares, Israel squared off in July against a Hamas that still used civilians as cover, still sought to fire sporadic rockets, and still believed that as long as it kept up the fight, despite the destruction on its territory, it could declare victory.

But the enemy Israel faced in Operation Protective Edge was different from the one that fled underground during 2008-2009’s Operation Cast Lead.
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T. Belman. I smell capitulation to the left or to the EU. Hamas is not interested in the economic well being of its inhabitants. Attacking Israel is not about improving economic conditions. So in what way does easing the economic plight of Gazans deter being attacked in the future. It doesn’t make sense. What’s going on here. What are our leaders preparing us for?

The only reason Hamas may want a hudna is to rebuild their military strength.
No improvement in their economic life should be enabled unless and until they agree to disarm and allow inspections.

How can our leaders complain about a bad deal with Iran when they are contemplating one with Hamas.

Move will strengthen Gaza’s economy and help achieve long-term quiet, senior defense officials say.

By Amos Harel, HAARETZ

Senior Israel Defense Forces officers have recommended to Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon that the opening of border crossings between Israel and the Gaza Strip be expanded.

One recommendation would allow thousands of Palestinians to travel abroad by entering Israel via the Erez crossing and leaving the country to Jordan via the Allenby Bridge. Another would permit merchandise into Gaza through the Karni crossing and expand use of the Kerem Shalom crossing. In addition, permits would be issued for Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to work in Israeli communities near the border.
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By Yaakov Lappin, JPOST

The IDF has drawn up a new combat doctrine to deal with Hamas, based on the destruction of its military wing, a senior military source said Tuesday, speaking one year after Operation Protective Edge.

The new doctrine is the fruit of internal investigations into last summer’s fighting. The probes centered on issues such as training, intelligence, underground combat capabilities, urban warfare, and the overall use of firepower. The IDF concluded that a central objective would be to shorten the length of any future engagement with Hamas.

The new concept, created together with the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), calls for eliminating the Izzadin Kassam Brigades military wing if war erupts again in the South.
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Morality aside, anti-Arab rhetoric is counterproductive at a time when the Arab public is moving away from its radical leaders

By Evelyn Gordon

The presence of an Arab Knesset member aboard last week’s flotilla to Gaza made media headlines. But much less attention was paid to the fact that Basel Ghattas’s decision was controversial even within his own Balad party – the most extreme of the three parties comprising the Joint Arab List.

Indeed, a “key activist in Balad” told Haaretz last month that he opposed Ghattas’s decision on several grounds. First, the flotilla had enough high-profile international activists, so Ghattas’s presence contributed nothing. Second, it would merely provide an excuse for right-wing incitement against Israeli Arabs. And third, “Arab society in Israel has quite a few challenges that require the presence of the MKs in Israel and not on the flotilla.”
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T. Belman. Even if an Iran deal is concluded and it delays an Iranian bomb 10 years, it will put $150 Billion into Iran’s coffers within one year, If only 10% of this sum is used to support Iran’s terrorist proxies, the ME will be drastically affected to say nothing about the existential threat it will pose for Israel.

By Eliezer Sherman, ALGEMEINER

One of the ramifications of finalizing the nuclear deal with Iran would be a shifting of the balance of Middle East power in Tehran’s favor, wrote longtime State Department negotiator Dennis Ross in Politico on Monday.

If negotiators emerge from their chambers in Vienna with a finalized deal — and right now the deadline has been postponed for the second time to July 10 — and sanctions are phased out according to Iranian compliance, then within six to 12 months Iran could receive up to $150 billion in frozen assets, wrote Ross.
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BY DAVID P. GOLDMAN (SPENGLER), ASIA TIMES

“If ISIS doesn’t liberate Palestine, who will?,” asks Iran Press TV columnist andHezbollah  supporter Franklin Lamb in the lead item in today’s Eurasia Review.

ISIS is offering oppressed and desperate populations in this region both hope and fantasy for escaping their deepening misery. The dream is to escape abject poverty and indignity by any means necessary, and joining ISIS or other like-minded cash-flush groups, which seem to appear out of thin air these days, is the most promising way to do it… ISIS representatives in the camps are pledging to destroy the Zionist occupation and boast about opening up Palestine to Full Return within two years.
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by Frank Gaffney, Jr. and Fred Fleitz, JPOST

The Iran nuclear talks have missed the June 30 deadline imposed by US President Barack Obama for a final agreement, but the US negotiators are hoping a deal can be struck by July 7. This is an important date because under the Corker-Cardin bill (the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015), if an agreement is sent to Congress by July 9, the House and Senate will have only 30 days to review it. If submitted after July 9, however, legislators will have 60 days.

We believe the Obama administration has made unacceptable concessions to Iran in the nuclear talks and, as a result, that any agreement produced by these talks will be a very bad deal.
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by Jonathan Schanzer

As some see it, what’s happening now in the Mideast provides the best excuse the Israelis have had in a long time to just sit back and let their worst enemies rub each other out. Senior Israeli officials now view Hamas, the terror group that lobbed thousands of rockets at Israel last summer, as a potential bulwark against supporters of the Islamic State (Daesh in Arabic) in the Gaza Strip. This was the gist of a June 19 opinion piece by Efraim Halevi, former director of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, in the popular daily Yediot Ahronot. Reports suggest that Israel is now even mulling a truce with Hamas, with one intended consequence being that the group would devote its energies to defeating Daesh.

True, it is likely that both of Israel’s foes could be badly bloodied. And that’s probably a positive. This was the Western calculus during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88). As Henry Kissinger reportedly quipped, “It’s a pity they both can’t lose.” But when the guns fell silent, neither country was defeated. And both emerged committed and able to destabilize the Middle East and threaten American interests.
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Haredi startup to win million-dollar prize at ‘world’s premier haredi business conference,’ smashing stereotypes and helping entrepreneurs.

By Ari Soffer, INN

By David Gross, INN

[..] Yet I was disappointed that the panacea that some people prescribed was to take aim at the legislative moves to bring more transparency and corporate governance to NGOs that function here in Israel. Let us take one of the bills that is making its way through the Knesset under the sponsorship of MK Bezalel Smotrich: All NGOs that receive funding from foreign governments will be considered by the law as lobbyists and as such will have to adjust their activities accordingly.

Now, this might dismay those who work for Btselem, Breaking the Silence and other similar groups, whose reliance on foreign governments is well-documented. Whether serving as advisors to the Goldstone or Schabas-Davis Reports, making baseless and unverified accusations against the IDF and other activities that only seek to besmirch the reputation of Israel, especially abroad, one wonders why anyone would think that it would be reasonable for such groups to retain charitable status.
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T. Belman. What is not mentioned in this article is whether selling the boycotted goods to alternate markets has been taken into account. Plus the $40 Billion is a worst case scenario. I think it is scare-mongering.

TOI

Israel’s economy could lose up to NIS 40 billion ($10.5 billion) per year and thousands of people could lose their jobs if the country is subject to a full international boycott, according to a Finance Ministry report unveiled last week after a two-year battle.

The six-page report, completed in mid-2013, warns damage from an international boycott could range from approximately half a billion shekels ($130 million) per year and up to 500 people losing their jobs, to NIS 40 billion and 36,500 firings, depending on the scope of the boycott and its rate of adoption around the world.
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Intelligence officer: Islamic State in league with Hamas to create Gaza smuggling route

Why an ISIS Gaza might help end terrorism.

By Daniel Greenfield, FPM

Long after the PLO had outlived its role as an even halfway plausible peace partner; Israel was forced to keep the terrorist group on life support as a bulwark against Hamas.

PLO leaders posture about having the UN declare a state, but not only would that state instantly be more bankrupt than ten Greek economies piled on top of each other, but its collection of terrorists who are great at running drugs and shaking down West Bank storekeepers for protection money would last all of 5 seconds in a grudge match with Hamas.
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By Herb Keinon, JPOST

With Greece’s future crowded in great uncertainty, Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias spoke in Jerusalem on Monday of developing an axis of security and stability among Israel, Greece, and Cyprus inside what he called a regional “triangle of destabilization.”

Speaking alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before their meeting, Kotzias said that, “We are living inside a triangle of destabilization,” which he said begins “at the top” with Ukraine, and extends on one side to Libya, and on the other through Iraq and Syria.

“We have to create inside this triangle a security and stability framework, and the relations between Israel, Cyprus and Greece are very important,” he said. “I call it the stabilization line in this area.”
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