T. Belman. A law not only creates a crime but also limits Israel’s reaction. Anyone breaching a border fence should be killed. Why not have collective punishment? In all democracies the police carry baton when confronting rioters. I don’t think Israel uses batons. Cracking heads would subdue rioters. The governments policy is containment rather than deterrence.

By Lahav Harkov, JPOST

Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan called Monday for the public to be calm, speaking at a Knesset Interior Committee meeting on the security situation in Jerusalem, in which he described his efforts to quell the current wave of violence.

“There is no security in Jerusalem,” Interior Committee chairman David Amsalem (Likud) said. “This isn’t a time for bar mitzva speeches. We need action, not talk.”

Erdan explained that “neither side is going to disappear, and we can only live here with coexistence.”
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By Yaakov Lappin, JPOST

A group of Gazan rioters approached the security fence from the center of the Strip and breached the border with Israel on Monday.

They were then surrounded by IDF units, which fired tear gas and pushed them back into Gaza, an army spokeswoman said. The rioters breached the border repeatedly, before being moved back by the IDF each time into Gaza.

The IDF’s Southern Command is attempting to contain Palestinian riots near the Gaza border fence without the use of live fire, after recent border clashes between Palestinian mobs and the army left nine Gazans dead from gunshot wounds.
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The story behind last night’s 60 Minutes interview.

By Arnold Steinberg, THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

“If you think that running your economy into the ground and having to send troops in, in order to prop up your ally, is leadership, then we’ve got a different definition of leadership.”
— Barack Obama, interview with Steve Kroft, 60 Minutes, October 11, 2015

Vladimir Putin is only nine years older than Barack Obama, yet they somehow are of a different generation. How could this be?

For starters, when Obama enrolled in an elite private high school, Putin already was starting KGB training. Putin was born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). When I visited that city in 1979, Putin — it turns out — was monitoring foreigners there. That same year, Obama had just started coasting through Occidental College. In the 1980s, while Obama was a community organizer in Chicago, Putin was in Dresden working with the Stasi, the dreaded East German secret police. Thanks to Ronald Reagan, the Soviet “evil empire” was disintegrating, while a clueless Obama was in law school, then instantly to be a precocious and dubious “constitutional law scholar.” This closet-socialist was soon complaining on Chicago radio that the U.S. Constitution did not require income redistribution. At the same time, outed Communist Putin was transitioning from KGB thug to political hack.
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By PAMELA GELLER

Elizabeth Smart, whose 2002 kidnapping terrified Americans, told jurors how a Salt Lake City police detective tried to see behind her veil but backed down when the man accused of kidnapping her said her face was hidden for religious reasons. With all the coverage of the Elizabeth Smart case, I bet you never heard this critical piece of information. And Canadian voters would be well advised to considered this in the upcoming election.

• Niqab ban at citizenship ceremonies unlawful, as Ottawa loses appeal
• Quebec tables new religious neutrality bill banning face coverings

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper has said that his party will examine a wider ban on the niqab for federal public servants, in line with proposed Quebec legislation the federal Conservatives have publicly supported in the past.
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Britain’s Independent headlines stabbing attack with ‘Israeli police kill boy,’ while Reuters chief makes wild claims.

By Ari Sofer, INN

The BBC recently drew considerable ire for its coverage of deadly Palestinian terrorist attacks against Israel, bizarrely opting to portray the attacks as victims in its headlines, though the corporation backtracked over the most egregious instance following an official complaint by the Israeli Government Press Office.

But it appears the BBC is far from alone in this regard. Apart from a similar stunt by Al Jazeera – who recently issued an apology for their biased coverage – British news editors appear grimly determined to portray Palestinians as victims in spite of the evidence.
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By Eli E. Hertz, Myths and Facts

Arabs deny the bond between Jews and Jerusalem; they sabotage and destroy archaeological evidence, even at the holiest place in Judaism – the Temple Mount.

Arabs continually denied the legitimacy of the Jewish people’s connection to Jerusalem. Arafat and other Arab leaders insisted that there never were Jewish temples on the Temple Mount. They also claimed the Western Wall was really an Islamic holy site to which Muslims have historical rights. Putting rhetoric into action, Islamic clerics who manage the Temple Mount have demonstrated flagrant disrespect and contempt for the archaeological evidence of a Jewish presence.
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By Prof Avi Bell, ISRAEL HAYOM

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has asked Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein to launch a criminal investigation into the actions of Joint Arab List MK Hanin Zoabi for incitement. The request comes on the heels of Zoabi’s interview with a Hamas-affiliated newspaper in which she implored Muslims to give terrorists “popular support.”

Zoabi has been skating on thin legal ice for a while. Her statements often imply that she believes terrorists are fighting for their country and the end justifies the means, and that their victims — Jews — are Zionist occupiers who have no right to life.

Should the attorney general grant Netanyahu’s request, it would not be the first time Zoabi faces an incitement investigation. In January, Weinstein decided to press criminal charges against her over a remark she made in June 2014, saying that the abductors and murderers of Israeli teens Gil-ad Shaer, Eyal Yifrach and Naftali Frenkel were “not terrorists.”
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T. Belman. The policy statement that Matas is criticizing was originally passed around 1980 and reflected a UN resolution. It was confirmed by the Harper Government a couple of years ago. Notwithstanding many requests to amend it, the government has not done so.

(Remarks delivered to the Lanny Remis Forum, Shaarey Zedek Synagogue, Winnipeg, 8 October, 2015)

by David Matas

The Government of Canada has a policy statement on Israel posted on the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade website under the heading “Canadian Policy on Key Issues in the Israeli?Palestinian Conflict”.  I have fourteen different concerns about that policy statement which I want to present to you today.

1)  The description of the conflict should be recharacterized.   What the policy refers to as the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” forms part of a larger conflict.
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By Ted Belman

I had lunch with Mike Wise today. He originated the One State Plan about 13 years ago. Essentially he bolstered the idea of annexing all of Judea and Samaria and offering a path to citizenship for qualified Arabs. He went so far as to list what qualifications they needed to succeed. Aside from not being a member of a terrorist organization they had to read and speak Hebrew and many more hurdles. Mike also considered requiring them to fly an Israel flag over their house for seven years.

I participated in defining the requirements at that time.
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By Yoram Ettinger, ISRAEL HAYOM

Top Israeli opposition figures — Isaac Herzog, Tzipi Livni and Yair Lapid — recently echoed the erroneous assumption, shared by the White House and State Department, that Arabs will eventually become a majority in the combined area of Judea and Samaria and pre-1967 Israel. Driven by demographic pessimism and fatalism — which has eroded Israel’s negotiation position — they urge a retreat from geography (the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria) so as to secure demography.

They rely on Israel’s demographic establishment, which regurgitates the numbers of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics without examination, ignores the dramatic transformation of Jewish and Arab demography, understates Jewish fertility, overstates Arab fertility, disregards the flawed practices of the PCBS, overlooks the burgeoning Arab net-emigration and Jewish net-immigration and discards the feasibility of significant waves of aliyah (Jewish immigration), which have occurred — in defiance of the demographic establishment — every two decades since the 1930s.
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By Ted Belman

The Iran nuclear deal will trigger a major war in the Middle East and it is already triggering the Third Intifada. 21 Israeli Jews have been killed in terror attacks in the last year, the most important period of negotiations between Iran and the Western powers.

In all, 14 Palestinian stabbing attacks against Israeli civilians have occurred in the past week alone, and on Sunday morning police thwarted a suspected car bombing attempt as a Palestinian woman detonated a vehicle after she was stopped on an approach road to the capital. A policeman was lightly injured in the incident while the female bomber was severely injured.
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The bombing of a pro-Kurdish rally in Ankara highlights the ‘dangerous cocktail’ brewing in Turkey which killed 98 Kurds

US Shifts to Helping Kurds in Syria 

LONDON (CBS) — U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter says the America’s failed program to train Syrian rebels will be replaced with a more ‘strategic approach.’ The overhaul will focus on training Kurdish forces who have a proven track record fighting on the front lines.

While U.S. gives Russia the cold shoulder in Syria, Kremlin’s ties with Israel grow warm.

By Anshel Pfeffer, HAARETZ Oct 09, 2015

The Pentagon announced on Wednesday that it was refusing to hold “de-confliction” talks with the Russian Defense Ministry to coordinate the two nations’ air-operations over Syria and would make do with just “technical details.” At the same time, de-confliction talks, of the kind the Americans rejected, between the Israel Defense Forces and their Russian counterparts, led by the deputy chiefs of staff of both militaries, were already wrapping up in Tel Aviv’s HaKirya headquarters.

Israel’s willingness to hold these talks reflects of course the recognition that after many years of operating nearly freely in Syrian airspace, things have changed with the arrival of a modern and well-equipped air force. But it also reflects the Russians’ desire not to have any confrontation with Israel in the region.
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Rael Jean Isaac, Mid East Outpost  

Are the years when the United States was a supremely comfortable place for American Jews coming to an end? Thanks to Obama’s polices, the answer may be yes, although most American Jews are not only blind to the dangers but actively promoting those very policies.

Challenged by what Secretary of State Kerry calls Germany’s “example to the world” in opening its borders to 800,000 (overwhelmingly Moslem) migrants this year, the Obama administration now proposes to boost the number of refugees it accepts to 100,000 annually, including 10,000 Syrians.

In practice this means a huge increase in Muslim immigrants, much larger than even that number suggests. Breitbart reports that in 2013 there were 280,276 immigrants from Moslem-majority countries. Of these just under 40,000 were refugees. The rest were divided almost equally into those given permanent resident status and those coming as temporary (in theory) migrants, including students and foreign workers. With Obama more than doubling the number of those admitted as refugees, there is little doubt there will be a substantial rise in the other categories—don’t forget, family unification is a major source of legal immigrants.
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Some 400 Palestinians riot near Gaza border fence; IDF troops open fire killing at least 7, wounding 60 (including 10 seriously), stirring fears of further conflict with Gaza.

By Elior Levy, Yoav Zitun, YNET

IDF troops killed seven Palestinians on Friday afternoon, after firing live rounds at violent riots near the northern border of the Gaza Strip.

Israeli troops reportedly fired at the Palestinians after they approached the no-go buffer zone enforced on the Gaza side of the northern border fence. Sixty others were wounded in the incident.

Ahmed Al Harbawi (19) from Nuseirat refugee camp and Houssam Dola (20), and Ziad Sharf were named as three of the deceased Palestinians according to medical sources inside Gaza.
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The legislation would sentence convicted rock throwers to at least four years in jail.

By Yonah Jeremy Bob, JPOST

A Palestinian protester throws stones during clashes with Border Police in east Jerusalem

Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked will introduce a bill on Sunday before the Ministerial Committee on Legislation to stiffen penalties on rock-throwers, including minors, and to fine parents of certain rock-throwing minors The measure is designed to “strike at the soft underbelly of terror,” she announced on Saturday night.  Read more…

T. Belman. I think that the attacks on Bibi are justified only in part.  It is easy for me to be critical of him especially when I don’t know the threats that Israel is under and the potential consequences. I have some basic disagreements with his policies but at the same time I cut him some slack.

New survey find 35% of Israelis ‘dissatisfied,’ 38% ‘very dissatisfied’ with Bibi’s leadership in face of recent terror.

By Matt Wanderman, INN

A new survey has found that Israelis are strongly disappointed with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership during the ongoing wave of terror attacks.

Almost three quarters of respondents said that they are either “dissatisfied” (35 percent) or “very dissatisfied” (38 percent) with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s handing of the security situation. Read more…

Jewish Home chairman says that if Herzog wants to join the coalition, he will have to accept the coalition’s guidelines. Bennett also says there is no freeze.

By Orli Harari, INN

Education Minister and Jewish Home chairman Naftali Bennett said on Saturday night that if opposition chairman MK Yitzhak Herzog plans on joining the coalition, he will have to accept the coalition’s guidelines which say that there will be no Palestinian state.

Speaking to Channel 2 News, Bennett said, “If Herzog wants to join the government on the basis of the absence of a Palestinian state – that’s great; if he wants to change the government’s guidelines, we will not be there.”

“The government’s guidelines are not talking about a Palestinian state, so what the Prime Minister says [regarding a Palestinian state] is his own stance – this is not the position of the Israeli government,” he stressed.
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By Salomon Benzimra, AMERICAN THINKER

By Guy Bechor, YNET

Why is a wave of tens of thousands of migrants and refugees arriving in Europe on a daily basis? Why is there suddenly a huge jump in this wave, which the continent is facing astounded, confused and lost? The civil wars in the Middle East didn’t start today, but are about to enter their sixth year. So why now?The amazing answer is the nuclear deal with Iran. The millions of refugees in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan had some vague hope that Syrian President Bashar Assad would fall one day, that the Islamic State would disappear one day, that one day all this might end. As soon as they saw that the nuclear deal had been signed, and that Iran would receive $150 billion and an end to the sanctions, they realized that what is happening in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon is not going to end in our lifetime. Read more…