T. Belman. For at least a decade, I have advocated that the US should fund an alternative to CAIR to represent moderate Muslims. This new organization should replace CAIR as the spokesperson and go to group for American Moslems. They alone should be invited to Whitehouse functions and so on. As it is the US government has elevated CAIR as the sole voice of Muslems and is thus contributing to the problem.

by Johanna Markind, PJ Media

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an unindicted co-conspirator in America’s largest terrorism financing case, which is officially banned from FBI cooperation, claims to be a mainstream organization advocating for the civil rights of American Muslims. Shortly after Usaama Rahim was shot by law enforcement in Boston on June 2, CAIR leapt into action.
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T. Belman. I agree. You don’t make a deal with the devil. In this case to make a deal with Hamas is to acknowledge that they forced us to deal with them.

JPOST

Avigdor Liberman, Yisrael Beytenu chairman, said on Wednesday that the Israeli government would be “capitulating to terrorism” if reports that it is negotiating a five-year truce with Hamas are accurate.

In an interview with Army Radio, the former foreign minister called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to come to any understandings with the Hamas regime in Gaza.

“If, indeed, the government of Israel is going for a deal with Hamas, and Hamas continues to arm itself and rehabilitate its terrorist infrastructure, that is tantamount to capitulating to terrorism, and I hope that these are just media reports and not a reflection of reallity,” Liberman said.

U.S. President Barack Obama intentionally violated “no daylight” and “no surprises” principles of U.S.-Israel ties, former Israeli Ambassador to U.S. Michael Oren says • Oren: Obama changed U.S. policy on Iran and the Palestinians without telling Israel.

By Shlomo Cesana and Israel Hayom Staff

U.S. President Barack Obama has deliberately damaged U.S.-Israel relations, former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published on Tuesday.

In the op-ed, titled “How Obama abandoned Israel,” Oren, now a Kulanu MK, accused Obama of violating the “two core principles of Israel’s alliance with America,” which, according to Oren, are “no daylight” and “no surprises.”

Referring to disputes between Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Oren, whose four-year stint in Washington ended in 2013, wrote, “Neither leader monopolized mistakes, [but] only one leader [Obama] made them deliberately.”

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By Daniel Greenfield, FPM

When Al Jazeera America was announced, the Qatari propaganda network was riding high. Once known as a dump for Al Qaeda videos, the Arab Spring had allowed the House of Thani to project its power across the region, toppling governments and replacing them with its Muslim Brotherhood allies.

Qatar had been notorious for its ties to Al Qaeda, but those connections had done little for the oil-rich oligarchy. The Muslim Brotherhood however handed Egypt over to Qatar. And Al Jazeera’s propaganda had been widely credited with supplying the images and messaging that made it happen.

Qatar’s key Arab Spring asset however had been in the White House. Mubarak would not have fallen if he had retained the support of the President of the United States. Nor would Gaddafi have been toppled or Assad have come under so much pressure without US military intervention or the expectation of it.
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T. Belman. This is a very important article because it highlights some very important distinctions between Jerusalem, all of it, and J&S. Unfortunately these distinctions have been forgotten by advocates for Israel.

by First.One.Through

The Palestinian Arabs and Israelis last managed to negotiate an agreement in September 1995. That agreement, Oslo II, was intended to be an interim agreement after which a permanent resolution was to be reached in five years. However, five years later in September 2000, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat walked away from the Israeli peace proposal and launched multi-year riots which claimed thousands of lives.

The terms of Oslo II still live on, decades later.

Goals of Oslo II
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Highest level of anti-Semitic incidents ‘ever recorded’

BY: Adam Kredo, NEW BEACON

Anti-Semitic incidents in Canada skyrocketed over the last year and have now hit the highest levels “ever recorded” by human rights groups tracking the number of anti-Jewish episodes, according to a new study.

Canadians across the country reported experiencing more anti-Semitism than in the past four years, with anti-Semitic incidents having risen a total of 28 percent from 2013 to 2014, according to the global Jewish advocacy group B’nai B’rith International (BBI).

This made 2014 the “worst year” for anti-Semitism since advocacy groups began tracking incidents in 1982.
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Ayelet Shaked bolsters ministry’s international department in preparation for counter-BDS lawsuits worldwide, report says

BY STUART WINER, TOI

Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked is reportedly going on the offensive against international initiatives to boycott Israel and is preparing to file lawsuits against activists who call for blacklisting the Jewish state.

The tactic came after a review by the international department of the Justice Ministry found that although boycott activists have appealed to many courts in Western countries for sanctions against Israel, they have never succeed in a obtaining a ruling in their favor, the Hebrew-language NRG news site reported on Wednesday.
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In new book, former envoy Michael Oren claims antagonism towards Benjamin Netanyahu akin to historic hatred of Jews.

By Chemi Shalev, HAARETZ

Israel’s former ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, claims that Jewish journalists are largely responsible for American media’s anti-Israel coverage and the “double standard” it applies in its coverage of the Jewish state. Oren also writes that the antagonism towards Netanyahu shown by Jewish journalists such as Thomas Friedman and Leon Wieseltier resembles historic hatred of Jews.

Oren’s new book, “Ally” is due to be released early next week but is already garnering headlines for its harsh condemnation of President Obama and his policies towards Israel. But Obama isn’t Oren’s only target: he is also critical of American Jewish liberals and their “religion” of Tikkun Olam, and turns devastating when it comes to American journalists who are also Jews.
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Extended opening of Rafah border crossing allows Islamist group to smuggle in some 4,000 tons of cement a day to rebuild tunnels.

By Yossi Yehoshua, YNET

Bayit Yehudi MK Smotrich submits amendment seeking to increase government monitoring of NGOs that receive funding from foreign governments.

Moran Azulay, YNET

Bayit Yehudi MK Bezalel Smotrich submitted his own amendment proposal to the NGOs law to the Knesset’s secretary general on Tuesday, which seeks to increase government monitoring of NGOs that receive funding from foreign governments.

Smotrich’s proposal requires NGOs to specify the name of the country from which they receive funding on any document they submit to the government, and requires representatives of NGOs to wear a badge identifying them as such in meetings with government officials.

The proposal stipulates that if the NGOs Registrar “has a reasonable basis to assume an NGO representative is acting against the law, it is authorized of its own initiative, or at the request of the attorney general, to impose a NIS 29,000 fine.”
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Comments by the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. had some lawmakers questioning the Obama administration’s commitment to Israel.

By Teresa Welsh, US News

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations on Tuesday refused to categorically say if the U.S. would veto a potential Security Council resolution calling for the establishment of a Palestinian state, prompting concern from congressional lawmakers over the Obama administration’s continuing commitment to Israel.

Asked directly during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing whether the U.S. would exercise its veto power to turn back such a resolution, Samantha Power was noncommital.

The lack of a firm answer prompted concern from several members of the committee from both sides of the aisle amid a rocky relationship between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The two leaders have publicly disagreed regarding how to approach a peace process and over ongoing nuclear negotiations with Iran, which Netanyahu vehemently opposes.
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June 15, 2015

Dear Mr. Kent, Chairman of the Board and CEO, The Coca-Cola Company:

I am an Israeli attorney and principal of Shurat HaDin-Israel Law Center, a civilrights organization that represents American victims of terror in civil litigation in the United States courts.1 My colleague, Robert J. Tolchin, is American counsel to our organization. In addition, we have both been involved in efforts to counter racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-Israel campaigns designed to delegitimize Israel, including the second Gaza Flotilla.

Our organization is opposed to the BDS (“Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions”) movement, which is inherently racist, anti-Semitic, biased and prejudicial and has an extremist agenda that unfairly singles out Israel and Jews. The BDS movement’s goal is solely the destruction of the State of Israel and its Jewish community. It masquerades as a human rights movement, but it is singularly fixated on Israel and Jews and ignores egregious human rights abuses that do not feed its anti-Israel agenda. Thus, it ignores Hamas terrorists who shoot rockets into Israeli civilian population centers with the expressed intention of killing civilians; it ignores ISIS thugs in Syria and Iraq who routinely violate every imaginable human right as they kidnap and rape children, behead prisoners of war, burn prisoners of war alive in steel cages, and destroy archaeological treasures; they ignore the Syrian regime, with the aid of Iran and its proxy Hezbollah, dropping barrel bombs on civilian population centers; and they ignore Iran’s efforts to obtain a nuclear bomb, which is particularly alarming given its stated goal of genocide against the Jewish population of Israel. For the BDS movement to claim that it is in favor of human rights while ignoring all this is rank hypocrisy.
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New reality for an old phenomenon: How Obama and Israel changed the stakes of Jewish power

By Lee Smith, The Tablet

Last week an issue that has simmered for some time in private conversations burst out into the open—in a very unpleasant way. At the Jerusalem Post conference in New York on June 7, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew offered a stirring defense of the White House’s proposed nuclear deal with Iran—and was nearly booed off the stage mid-speech. It wasn’t civil or nice of the audience to do this, as many pundits have already noted .

Then again, many would say it’s not very nice of the Obama Administration to keep trying to sell the currently configured Iran deal to the pro-Israel community as if it’s good for Israeli security, which is what Lew was attempting to do at the conference. Some tried to slough it off as a predictable occurrence in an aberrantly unfriendly venue. “Well, of course U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew was heckled at a Jerusalem Post conference,” Tweeted the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg. “Have you read The Jerusalem Post lately?”
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T. Belman. The author says Islamists have “highjacked” Islam. To be clear what has happenned is that armed jihad as demanded by Islam has been rejuvenated. One hundred years ago it was dormant although at other times in history, as now, it was dominant.

by Tarek Fatah, The Toronto Sun

In the last week of May, the Qatar-based Arabic news network Al-Jazeera polled its Arabic-language audience on the question: “Do you support the victories of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in your region?”

The results were shocking. Of the 56,881 Arabic-speaking respondents, a whopping 81% voted yes. The results of this online survey may not be scientific. But they do provide anecdotal evidence of what many see as a rise in the support of Islamism in the Arab Middle East, among Muslims in the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent, and in the diaspora in Britain and France.
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By Peter Jeser, TOI

First, for the sake of transparency, I was honored to be a delegate from the ZIONIST SPRING, which won seven seats.

I believe that the results of the WZC election send a very bad message, not because my slate did not win more seats, but because ARZA (which represents American Reform Jewry) won more than 1/3 of the seats (56 out of 145). While I agree with some of the ARZA platform, it is the election of so many members from the Reform movement (from which J Street gets much of its support) that sends the wrong message.

The message that should be sent is one of unified and full support for the State of Israel. J Street does not send that message. The Reform movement does not send that message.
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by First.One.Through

In June 2015, Hillary Clinton claimed to have been a strong ally for Israel. Without getting into the history of her tenure as Secretary of State, (when she could claim she was following the orders of US President Barack Obama), here is a simple question for Hillary on her presedential run: will she reintroduce the pro-Israel Democratic platform that was present in 2008, but abolished under Obama in 2012?

Hillary Clinton speaks at her first campaign rally in New York City
June 13th, 2015. Photograph: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Specifically, will she reintroduce the pre-Obama Democratic platform that called for:

• The isolation of Hamas until it renounced terrorism. As declared in the 2008 Democratic platform: “The United States and its Quartet partners should continue to isolate Hamas until it renounces terrorism, recognizes Israel’s right to exist, and abides by past agreements.”
• The settlement of the descendants of Palestinian refugees in a new Palestinian State, not Israel. “The creation of a Palestinian state through final status negotiations, together with an international compensation mechanism, should resolve the issue of Palestinian refugees by allowing them to settle there, rather than in Israel.”

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Anti-Semitic propaganda taught to young Germans in 1930s continued to shape their beliefs decades later, study finds • “The striking thing is that it doesn’t go away afterward,” says author • Propaganda worked best when it confirmed existing prejudices.

Associated Press and Israel Hayom Staff

Boys march with Nazi flags in 1936

Anti-Semitic propaganda taught to German children schooled during the Nazi period had a lifelong effect, leaving them far more likely than Germans born earlier or later to harbor negative views of Jews, according to a study published Monday.

The findings indicate that attempts to influence public attitudes are most effective when they target young people, particularly if the message confirms existing beliefs, the authors said.
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By Vic Rosenthal, Abu Yehuda

Near Israel/Gaza border, July 18, 2014

Israel’s government seems to finally be waking up to the fact that it can’t allow our name to be blackened without challenge. In response to the anticipated release of the latest collection of blood libels from the UN ‘Human Rights’ Commission, the so-called Schabas report on the recent war in Gaza, the government has released a preemptive rebuttal, detailing the war crimes committed by Hamas and Israel’s response, including the remarkable effort exerted to reduce civilian casualties in urban warfare.
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Joint Arab List MK Hanin Zoabi received approval to attend Columbia University panel, but failed to mention the name: “Israel, Racism and Apartheid” • “MK Zoabi has never filed a detailed itinerary, nor will she do so in the future,” her office says.

Gideon Allon and Israel Hayom Staff

Joint Arab List MK Hanin Zoabi obtained the Knesset’s approval to attend a recent anti-Israel conference in the United States by failing to provide the Knesset’s legal counsel with the full details of her trip.

According to a report by the Walla news website Monday, Zoabi asked the Knesset’s Ethics Committee secretariat for approval for an eight-day trip to the U.S., funded by the Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee and the Palestinian American Community Center.
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