By Ross Barkan, OBSERVER

Excoriating Republicans who embrace “trickle-down economics” and hailing a handful of Democratic presidents, one her husband and another who ended her presidential dream seven years ago, Hillary Clinton delivered a campaign kickoff speech today that demonstrated she will wholeheartedly embrace, rather than avoid, President Obama’s two terms in office.

Ms. Clinton promised to rewrite the tax code for lower-income Americans, crack down on Wall Street and back an amendment to overturn the Citizens United Supreme Court decision–and embark on an era of unapologetic progressive governance in the spirit of Franklin Roosevelt.
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Israel needs to stop arguing the Palestinians’ case and start arguing its own

By Evelyn Gordon, JPOST

Responding to last week’s column about the importance of stressing Israel’s achievements rather than its failures, a reader wrote that while she agreed with me, this alone wouldn’t suffice to fix Israel’s broken public diplomacy. And of course, she’s right, because that column addressed only one of two major flaws in Israel’s public diplomacy. The other is no less important: Quite simply, Israel needs to stop arguing the Palestinians’ case and start arguing its own.

I can’t think of another conflict in history where one side devoted so much time and energy to selling the world the other side’s narrative rather than its own. And then, after two decades of actively supporting the two most important Palestinians claims against it, Israel actually wonders why the world views it as the villain.

Claim number one is that the West Bank and Gaza are “occupied Palestinian territory.” This is a crucial issue, because if Israel is just a thief occupying stolen Palestinian land, then it has no right to retain any of this land or set any conditions on its return, and deserves opprobrium for even daring to pose such demands. In contrast, if Israel has a valid claim to these lands, then it’s being laudably generous in offering the Palestinians a state there and has every right to impose conditions on this generosity, like retaining certain areas or demanding specific security arrangements.
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By Martin Sherman, JPOST

The US president holds Israel to a standard of immaculate altruism, while holding the Palestinians to no standards at all.

Here’s where… you’ve failed us thus far, Mr. President. You got the settlement freeze six years ago, you got the prisoner releases in 2013, but what did you wrest from Abbas? Did he stop the incitement against Israel? Did he moderate his positions on the “right of return”? You fault Netanyahu for his bleak worldview, but did you castigate Abbas for entering a governing partnership which gives Hamas veto power over his ministers…No. You said you’d keep right on dealing with him. – David Horovitz, “No, Mr. President, you don’t fully understand our fears,” The Times of Israel, June 3
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T. Belman. Just imagine a rioter in the US confronting the police this way. He would be forced to the ground in two seconds. In Israel, there should be zero tolerance to this kind of aggressiveness. The young IDF soldiers have to deal with these riots every week. Their lives are at risk. These soldiers did right in aggressively subduing him..

Soldiers Caught on Film Hitting Arab Provocateur

Soldiers allege that the Arab tried to snatch a rifle and hit them, but the Arab media footage, as usual, is damaging regardless of the truth.

By:Tzvi Ben-Gedalyahu, JEWISH PRESS

Above is the video as filmed and edited by Arab media.

The Palestinian Authority is gloating over footage of soldiers apparently beating an aggressive provocateur, but soldiers said that the video does not show a prior scene of the man trying to snatch on their rifles.

The IDF said it the apparent behavior of the soldiers, seen kicking him while he was pinned to the ground, does not “match expectations” of the military.
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The alliance is only temporary

By Yoram Ettinger

President Obama with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef. The Saudi regime sides with Israel’s stance on Iran and considers the Jewish state considers its most effective ally in the face of a potential self-destructive U.S. agreement with the ayatollahs.

The recent increase in strategic coordination between Israel and Saudi Arabia brings to the forefront Israel’s role in bolstering the national security of the House of Saud. This coordination has become particularly critical for Riyadh, due to the erosion of the U.S.’s posture of deterrence as lethal Iranian threats to Saudi Arabia worsen.
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By SARAH HONIG, JPOST

Golda Meir rarely passed up an opportunity to warn about the allure of “lies wrapped up in sweet words.” She knew that shallowness offers smug refuge from the intractable and that syrupy slogans are a convenient copout for the intellectually indolent.

US President Barack Obama probably knows the same which is perhaps why he laid the blarney on so thick in his recent interview with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, who himself couldn’t have been more cloying.

It’s undeniably in Obama’s interest to sweet-talk American Jews – whom he must perceive mostly as sycophant dilettantes – into trusting that some of his best friends are Jews.
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Lone soldier recently released from his combat battalion in the IDF shares the meaning of his Israel experience during his challenging time as a volunteer.

By Joshua Greenberg, YNET

Hiking back to our base after a Battalion Drill in the Judean Desert. (Photo: Joshua Greenberg)

July afternoons in the Negev desert are not comfortable to say the least. They’re even less comfortable if you’re a Givati infantry cadet who doesn’t remember the last time he’s showered or changed his uniform, which by now smells like a mixture of sweat and gunpowder. It’s very hot, and the afternoon of the 27th of July 2014 was no different, or so I thought.
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Friends of Israel Initiative, UN HR Watch

The report of the UN’s controversial Schabas-Davis commission of inquiry on Gaza is to be released imminently, and will be debated on Monday, June 29th, before the Human Rights Council.

UN Watch has obtained a copy of a key submission made to the probe: the preliminary findings of the High Level International Military Group that visited Israel in May 2015 for a fact-finding mission on the 2014 Gaza conflict, whose main points we publish below:

• The mission was led by General Klaus Naumann, former Chief of Staff of the Bundeswehr and Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, the most senior officer in the Alliance, along with 10 other former chiefs of staff, generals, senior officers, political leaders and officials from the United States, the United Kingdom, Holland, Spain, Italy, Australia and Colombia.
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By Dan Calabrese, CFP

If President Obama, in pursuit of a trade agenda that has his own party in rebellion, thought he could pull reluctant Democrats to his side with a “sweetener” to retrain workers who might be displaced as a result of the deal – um, no. Today a test vote on that provision produced an absolute fiasco for Obama and his allies on the issue:

In a 126-302 vote, the House killed the so-called Trade Adjustment Assistance bill—a program that retrains workers displaced by trade. The bill was originally put on the table as a sweetener to help entice recalcitrant Democrats to back the president’s overall agenda.

But the president’s own party is so opposed to that agenda, they voted down the sweetener.

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By David Singer, CFP

Recently, a group of 52 Harvard students – of all backgrounds and faiths – visited Israel for 10 days during the Harvard Israel Trek 2015 (Do visit this link and read the comments)

Sometimes the impact of such a trip cannot be expressed in prose – but can only be captured in poetry.

What follows is a poem – posted on the Harvard trek blog by Oliver Marjot – a British PhD candidate studying Medieval Latin at Harvard – that reflects his transformative experience.

Oliver expected that the Trek would confirm his reasonable European certainty of Israel’s arrogant oppression. That’s not quite the way things turned out.
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By John Podhoretz, NY POST

When it’s released June 23, the new book by bestselling historian Michael Oren is going to be the talk of Washington and Jerusalem — not to mention everywhere people take an interest in the relations between the United States and Israel, which is to say, in many if not most places on the planet.

It’s called “Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide,” and I’m not sure that in the annals of diplomatic history there’s ever been anything quite like this astonishing account of Oren’s four years (2009-2013) as Israel’s ambassador in Washington.
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By Gemunder Center Senior Advisor Lt. Gen. Deptula, WaPo

Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter’s recent remarks on the efficacy of Iraq’s army reflect the fact that, despite years of training by thousands of U.S. and coalition forces, the army has not been able to halt Islamic State aggression. What makes anyone think that a few more months of similar training will yield success?

We must not, however, confuse Iraq’s objectives with critical U.S. national security interests. While the two may overlap, they are not the same. Each demands its own strategic, military and policy approach. From the U.S. perspective, the most important goal is not the maintenance of the Iraqi government but the destruction of the Islamic State.
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Ex-unit head complains of discrimination against non-Arabs and women, instructions to take a sharp slant against ‘Hitler-like’ Israel.

By Ari Yashar, INN

Al Jazeera head offices in Doha, Qatar

The former head of Al Jazeera America‘s documentary unit announced a lawsuit against her former employer on Thursday, charging the American branch of the Qatar-based news network with a vitriolic bias against Israel, as well as discrimination against non-Arabs and women.

Shannon High-Bassalik, who formerly worked with CNN, NBC and MSNBC, sued the company for discrimination after being fired in February only half way through her three-year contract, reports The Guardian.

She charged the company with showing a blatant pro-Arab bias both in terms of employment and news coverage, with the most intense bias coming out against Israel.
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Not everyone hates Ayelet Shaked’s appointment / Daniel Friedmann
Op-ed: While there are still some parts of the public and the Knesset that worship the Supreme Court, criticism of its rulings and justices is now permissible.

The attorney general knows, or is supposed to know, that many leading jurists in Israel and in the world support the justice minister’s ‘simplistic and unfounded’ approach on governance.

By Ben-Dror Yemini, YNET

It seems that every ministerial decision made these days places the governance question in front of our eyes. Can the education minister impose a decision to remove a play from the culture basket? Is the culture minister entitled to stop funding to a certain cultural show characterized by a de-legitimization of the State of Israel? Is a minister authorized to prevent the state from aiding an association which is taking part in the demonization campaign? Can the Knesset speaker impose sanctions on an MK following an investigative report?

In the past week, a new issue emerged every day, and the dispute is only increasing. Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked claimed upon taking office that “the governance has been transferred from the people’s hands over to the legal system.” At the beginning of the week, even before the new issues emerged at an average of one a day, Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein claimed that Shaked’s approach was “simplistic and unfounded.” Is that so?
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Patrick Goodenough, CNS

The former chief of the  US Defense Intelligence Agency delivered a stinging critique of the Obama administration’s Mideast policies on Wednesday, slamming its refusal to define the enemy as Islamic extremism, arguing that its approach towards Iran amounts to “wishful thinking,” and saying the U.S. has lost the trust of its allies in the region.

In oral and written testimony on Capitol Hill, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn said he believes Iran has every intention of building a nuclear weapon, and warned that the ripple effects of that outcome would shift the global balance of power.

The hearing of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa focused on Iran’s ballistic missile PROGRAM – an issue left off the agenda in the nuclear talks – but Flynn cast his net wider.
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By Melanie Phillips, JPOST

In Washington recently, I met Donald Rumsfeld, America’s former defense secretary. Rumsfeld became almost as famous for his musings about “known unknowns” as he was controversial over his role in the Iraq war.

He is also widely respected for his intellect and his incisive, take-no-prisoners approach to foreign and defense issues. So I wanted to know what he made of a world which has now become infinitely more complex, chaotic and dangerous.

Although measured and diplomatic, he sounded a clear warning. A dangerous world was becoming even more threatening because of a profound failure by the West to grasp the nature of that danger.
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By Ariella Haviv, The Jewish Voice NY

As hundreds of pro-Israel supporters gathered for the 4th annual Jerusalem Post conference at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Manhattan on Sunday, June 7th, it appeared that the frustration felt by committed American Jews towards the Obama administration’s Iran policy reached a boiling point.

Subsequent to the opening address of Ambassador Ronald S. Lauder, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew took the podium in what promised to be an address touting the administration’s line on the upcoming Iran nuclear deal. The former Obama chief of staff was roundly booed on repeated occasions when he attempted to defend the Iran nuclear negotiations and the Obama’s administration’s claims of being committed to Israel’s security.
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A study shows that the High Court has a strong record in enforcing rules against construction in Judea and Samaria – by Jews, but not Arabs.

By Moshe Cohen, INN

A study by the Regavim Research and Legal Advocacy Organization released at the Ariel University Conference Thursday shows that the High Court has a strong record in enforcing rules against illegal building in Judea and Samaria – by Jews.

But, the study reveals, for illegal building by Palestinian Authority Arabs, the court was much more willing to turn the other cheek.

The report, presented at a conference at the university Thursday, studied 54 cases of illegal building brought before the court between 2005 and 2013 – 29 filed by Arab and leftist groups such as Peace Now against construction in Judea and Samaria, and 25 filed by right-wing groups, such as Regavim, against illegal construction work in Arab villages in Area C.
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By Richard Baehr, ISRAEL HAYOM

This past weekend, more than 50 leaders of Jewish organizations and pro-Israel groups from several countries met to plan a more systematic response to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. Many journalists found the most interesting aspect of the meeting the fact that Sheldon Adelson, a supporter of Republicans, and Haim Saban, a supporter of Democrats, were joined at the hip in this new effort.

A goal of $50 million was reported to have been set to support efforts on campuses to fight the BDS campaigns — generally led by Students for Justice in Palestine and the Muslim Students Association.
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EU officials may require Israel to label products from its settlements

Sara Toth Stub, WSJ

JERUSALEM— Yaakov Berg said he first feared for the future of his winery a couple of years ago when a South African importer requested that he label his wine “Made in Occupied Palestine.” He refused, and lost the customer.

Last year, his sales to Europe and South Africa declined 50%, hurt by unofficial boycotts of goods made in Israeli settlements in the contested West Bank, Golan Heights and Jordan Valley.

So, to save his Psagot Boutique Winery, located in the West Bank north of Jerusalem, Mr. Berg is trying to reach global buyers by setting up an online store with a warehouse in the U.S. By selling online, he can bypass importers who are embracing the boycott calls and appeal to Evangelical Christians, who he says are eager to support Israel.
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