See also: Netanyahu backs ‘general idea’ behind Arab Peace Initiative

Ted Belman

With every passing week PM Netanyahu makes his position clear namely that he is prepared to accept roughly the deal being proposed subject to israel’s security needs.

In a comprehensive press briefing with diplomatic reporters, Netanyahu said that the real question is not where the borders will be, but, rather, “what will be on the other side of that border.”

“The first problem is what will be the nature of the regime on the other side,”

“Who will be in charge of the security in areas where Israel leaves?” Netanyahu said that when he is assured by various international interlocutors that Israel’s security needs will be taken care of, he asks, “by whom?” “Who will deal with the tunnels?”

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The hostile West (and many Israelis) may write off Hotovely as just another religious zealot who wants to annex the West Bank.

By Melanie Phillips, JPOST

Israel’s new deputy foreign minister, Tzipi Hotovely, has caused a sensation, not least in her own ministry. She has told the truth.

She said Israel must not hesitate to assert that the entire Land of Israel, including the West Bank, belongs to the Jewish people.

That right, she said, came from the Hebrew Bible. She referred to Maimonides, who asserted that Genesis began with the creation of the world in order to provide a riposte to foreign nations accusing the Jews of stealing the Land of Israel.
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It is becoming increasingly difficult to reconcile calls for a Palestinian state with concern for the well-being of the Jewish nation-state.

By Martin Sherman, JPOST

One of the false presumptions of our time is that people on the political Left are motivated by good intentions even when they do bad things, while people on the political Right are motivated by bad intentions even when they do good things. – British commentator Douglas Murray, May 7, 2015

The ultimate test of this agreement will be a test of blood…If it becomes clear that they [the Palestinians] cannot overcome terror, this will be a temporary accord and… we will have no choice but to abrogate it. And if there is no choice, the IDF will return to the places which it is about to leave in the upcoming months. – Then-deputy foreign minister Yossi Beilin on the Oslo Accords, Ma’ariv, November 26, 1993
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By Vic Rosenthal, Abu Yehuda

Recently we’ve been hearing — both from Hezbollah and Israel — about the massive installations the terrorist group has been building just across the Lebanese border with Israel, and what will happen when war breaks out.

Omri Ceren of The Israel Project explains:

They’ve taken their arsenal – 100,000+ rockets including Burkan rockets with half-ton warheads, ballistic missiles including Scud-Ds that can hit all of Israel, supersonic advanced anti-ship cruise missiles, anti-aircraft assets, drones and mini drones, tunnels, etc. – and embedded it across hundreds of villages and probably thousands of homes. …

The Israelis can’t afford a war of attrition with Hezbollah. The Iran-backed terror group has the ability to saturation bomb Israeli civilians with 1,500 projectiles a day, every day, for over two months. They will try to bring down Tel Aviv’s skyscrapers with ballistic missiles. They will try to fly suicide drones into Israel’s nuclear reactor. They will try to detonate Israel’s off-shore energy infrastructure. They will try to destroy Israeli military and civilian runways. And – mainly but not exclusively through their tunnels – they will try to overrun Israeli towns and drag away women and children as hostages. Israeli casualties would range in the thousands to tens of thousands.

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T. Belman. Eiland’s thesis is that we should declare in advance that if we are attacked from Lebanese soil, Israel will declare war on Lebanon. This, Israel is already doing. He argues that such a prospect is a strong deterrence. Secondly he argues that once the war starts we should attack Lebanon’s army and infrastructure in addition to Hezbollah. He argues, the harder we hit them, the faster will be the demand for a ceasefire. This will be in Israel’s interest to induce.

He doesn’t mention the arsenal of Hezbollah. Israel should invade Lebanon en mass and proceed to destroy all their missiles in southern Lebanon. This could be done within a couple of weeks, just the time needed to reach a ceasefire. The destruction of this arsenal should be one of Israel’s demands for a ceasefire. In order to destroy the arsenal quickly with fewer casualties on both sides is to hit them hard enough to cause them to flee the south.

One other thing that he doesn’t mention. It is very difficult to fight a terrorist group only rather than a country. An all out war would have different rules applied than an asymmetrical war against a terrorist group.

Such a policy would have grave implications for Hezbollah and Assad, not to mention Iran.

Similarly I believe the same policy should be followed in Gaza. We should declare war on Gaza not just the terrorists there. After all, the Gazans voted for Hamas and should be held responsible. We should hit them hard forcing them to flee regardless of attempts by Hamas to stop them. We should also declare in advance that we will not allow Gaza to be rebuilt. Any homeless Gazans must be resettled elsewhere. There has to be a cost. While this barrage is happening we should invade only for the purpose of destroying the tunnels.

Israel must declare in advance against who it will wage its next war in the north: Not just Hezbollah, but mainly the Lebanese state, its institutions, infrastructures and army.

By Giora Eiland, YNET

This week 15 years ago, the IDF pulled out of Lebanon unilaterally. The decision was a correct and brave move by then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak. But the policy adopted after the pullout was wrong, and its ramifications in the future are dangerous.
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Syria’s situation is bleak, no matter which way the tide of war turns. And it won’t stop there.

By Mordechai Kedar, INN

The situation in Syria is deteriorating. To the east, the city of Tadmur has fallen into the hands of Islamic State, giving that organization control over nearly half the country, including the areas bordering on Iraq and Jordan. Assad’s regime has lost the border crossings to Iraq, while the military airfields in the desert -Tadmur and T4 – have fallen to ISIS. Hundreds who lived in the city and helped the regime have been slaughtered by Jihadist knives and their bodies flung onto the streets. The world is concerned that Tadmur’s antiquities, priceless relics of ancient cultures, will suffer the same fate at the hands of ISIS as did the ancient artifacts of Iraq.
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By Lee Duigon, NewsWithViews

Liberals, libertarians, and secular conservatives, take note.

Kill the culture, and the culture will kill you right back.

Yes, I know. Liberals think they’re going to re-engineer it into a better culture, because they’re so smart and the rest of humanity desperately needs their guidance. Libertarians think it’s none of their business, what happens to the culture, as long as they themselves are left alone. And secular conservatives think the condition of the culture is irrelevant, as long as taxes are kept down.

The result is insane, culture-destroying public policy and a steady outflow of cultural toxins from Hollywood, the universities, the schools, the courts, and left-wing politicians who can’t be content with just enacting crazy policies. But the result can be easily seen. We’ve got pictures.

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Graham Promises ‘Violent Pushback’ to Protect Israel from UN
Republican presidential candidate says he will hold back funds to the UN if it tries to impose a peace agreement on Israel.

Ranking US senator calls the Palestinian move a “bastardizing of the role of the ICC.”

By Herb Keinon, JPOST

Likely Republican Presidential candidate Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) warned in Jerusalem Wednesday of “violent” bipartisan congressional backlash if the UN tries to “take over” the peace process or the International Criminal Court indicts IDF soldiers for war crimes.

Graham, chairman of the Senate subcommittee that oversees the US funding of international organizations, said at a press conference that if the UN Security Council adopted a position to “define the terms of the peace process,” he would “lead an effort to suspend their funding.”
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By Ted Belman

It takes a lot of work on my part to maintain that reputation and I need all the help I can get. I have been doing it for over 12 years.

My time is spent searching for articles in the Israeli and U.S. press and blogs and posting the best of the bunch. I select articles which are both informative and well argued.

In addition I attend numerous speeches and conferences in Israel every month and network with the leading right wing NGO’s. This work enables me to comment authoritatively on the articles I post.

My goal is to educate readers as to the facts, to advocate for the land of Israel and the people of Israel and to discredit our detractors.

Please support my efforts by making a donation. Do your part. Partner with me.
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By Dennis Prager, National Review

Consider these facts about the creation of Israel and Pakistan.

Whenever I have received a call from a listener to my radio show challenging Israel’s legitimacy, I have asked these people if they ever called a radio show to challenge any other country’s legitimacy. In particular, I ask, have they ever questioned the legitimacy of Pakistan?

The answer, of course, is always “no.” In fact, no caller ever understood why I even mentioned Pakistan.

There are two reasons for this.

First, of all the 200-plus countries in the world, only Israel’s legitimacy is challenged. So mentioning any other country seems strange to a caller. Second, almost no one outside of India and Pakistan knows anything about the founding of Pakistan.
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T. Belman. The name of the game is deterrence not punishment. Thus if stone throwers are not deterred by this legislation, then the police or IDF should be authorized to fire rubber bullets at all stone throwers. If that doesn’t work they should be permitted to fire normal bullets at their legs. Nor should agitators be permitted to come within 10 yards of police during their protests. Our tolerance gives them a license. There should be zero tolerance to violent protests.

Current legislation requires proof of intent to harm, which is difficult to prove under the circumstances; Shaked proposes a new type of offense with tiered punishment that addresses new reality.

By Moran Azulay, YNET

Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked is promoting legislation aimed at giving harsher punishment to stone-throwers, without having to provide proof the accused intended to harm anyone.

Shaked’s first piece of legislation since entering the Justice Ministry will be brought to vote on Sunday at the Ministerial Committee for Legislation.
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Netanyahu is destroying Jewish Jerusalem, with Herzog’s help
Only one-third of ‘united’ Jerusalem’s 860,000 residents are Zionist Jews; there isn’t another capital in the world in which the majority of residents don’t identify with their state’s national identity.

By Haim Ramon, YNET

Instead of settling for the annexation of the 6 square kilometers of Jordanian Jerusalem (including the Old City, the Holy Basin, the Mount of Olives and Mount Scopus), the government annexed to Jewish Jerusalem some 60 square kilometers of areas and territories which were part of Judea in the south and Samaria in the north.

Last week, we celebrated Jerusalem Day. But paradoxically, two-thirds of the city’s residents are non-Zionists, and in a decade or two, the Zionist Jerusalemites’ part in its population will be insignificant.

The root of evil sprouted in 1967, when the Israeli government made one of the most stupid decisions an Israeli government ever made. It adopted a proposal made by two overenthusiastic senior officers to annex 28 villages, refugee camps and neighborhoods populated with Palestinians to the capital. None of the annexed areas ever belonged to Jerusalem.
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DEBKA

Israel resorted Tuesday night, May 26, to its old routine response to rocket fire from the Gaza Strip by the aerial bombardment of four “terrorist” targets. Once again, Hamas hurriedly removed its personnel from the targeted facilities in time to escape casualties. For Israel it was an opportunity missed. The first Palestinian long-range Grad rocket attack since last summer’s Israeli operation in Gaza, was an chance to go for really potent terrorist infrastructure, such as the new tunnels the Palestinians are again running under the border and Israeli communities, in which they are investing precious cement.

Instead, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’olon, chose to play the incident down Official sources attributed the attack to “infighting among Palestinian groups” and claimed that only one rocket had been fired, landing at Gan Yavne and causing no casualties or damage.
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By Michael Ordman

It’s clear from recent anti-Israel resolutions that the United Nations doesn’t care what happens in the Middle East.  In contrast, Israel continues unfazed to perform the good deeds that a caring world really should be cheering.

Another two wounded Syrians were brought in for emergency care last week at the Baruch Padeh Medical Center in Poriya near Tiberias in Northern Israel.  One of the injured, a 17-year-old, was treated for shrapnel wounds.  Israeli doctors have cared for thousands of Syrianswounded in the endless civil war across the border.  Meanwhile, Israeli surgeons in the South of the country saved the life of Yara – a 4-year-old girl from Gaza – after doctors serving the Hamas government amputated Yara’s leg but allowed necrosis to set in.  Israeli doctors took care of the injury and fitted a prosthetic leg that meant she could walk again.
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By David J.. Martin, JPOST

One of the important tasks which the new government and the new Knesset will face, is the urgent need to cure some of the ills of the Supreme Court. These ills – if not stopped – threaten the democratic underpinnings of the state. In this note, we shall relate to one of these ills: judicial nullification of the laws of the Knesset.
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Organization’s Letter to FIFA Chief Documents Jabril Rajoub’s Support & Incitement to Violence Against Israelis

Tel Aviv (May 26, 2015) – In the latest development in an international controversy between Israelis and the Palestinians over the latter’s call for Israel to be expelled from a world football association, an Israeli legal rights organization in Tel Aviv is alleging that the president of the Palestinian league is deeply involved in supporting terrorist attacks on Jewish civilians and calling for a nuclear strike against the Jewish State.

Shurat HaDin-Israel Law Center, which represents terror victims and combats efforts to delegitimize the Jewish State, has written to the President of the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), Joseph Blatter, demanding that he expel Jabril Rajoub, the President of the Palestinian Football Association, for advocating the killing of Israeli civilians and the use of nuclear weapons against the State of Israel.
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By Ted Belman

Yesterday I posted Et tu Rivlin?  , President Rivlin to Accept New Israel Fund Honor

Evidently today INN posted this correction. Rivlin Honorers: We Don’t Get Funds from NIF

But this Honorer does get money from the NIF.

Mike Wise. There was some family reunification and until the early 90’s there was huge fertility.
that has all collapsed in the past 20 years. (not only in israel but throughout the arab world!)
look at the data since 1995!!
(also note that there are not 1.8 million moslems in green line israel)

Year Druze Christians Muslims Jews Total rate of growth
1949 14.5 34 111.5 1,013.90 1,173.90

1960 23.3 49.6 166.3 1,911.30 2,150.40

1970 35.9 75.5 328.6 2,582 3,022.10

1980 50.7 89.9 498.3 3,282.70 3,921.70

1990 82.6 114.7 677.7 3,946.70 4,821.70

2000 103.8 135.1 970 4,955.40 6,369.30

2010 127.5 153.4 1,320.50 5,802.40 7,695.10

2011 129.8 155.1 1,354.30 5,907.50 7,836.60 1.0255964
2012 131.5 158.4 1,387.50 5,999.60 7,984.50 1.0245145
2013 133.4 160.9 1,420.30 6,104.50 8,134.50 1.0236396
2014 https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Society_&_Culture/newpop.html

dropping quickly
further note that the current numbers include 275,000 jerusalem arabs that were not part of israel prior to 1967…
the Arab growth rate is collapsing.

T. Belman. David Suissa, the author of this article is the President of Jewish Journal and politically he stands to the right of its editor Rob Eshman. This article has been forwarded to VP Biden and Valerie Jarret and will not go unnoticed. Whether it will make a difference is another story.

It has a tidbit of information that to my mind warrants investigation. He wrote, “Since 1967, the Israeli Arab population has grown from 400,000 to nearly 1.8 million.” I find this shocking. As I understand it, this came about in part because Israel permitted many Arabs to come into Israel as part of a family reunification program. The people and policies that made this increase possible must be exposed.

David Suissa JEWISH JOURNAL OF  LOS ANGELES  5-26-15

[This is inaccurate as Danny Ayalon has been retired for a couple of years and is no longer an official of the Israel consulate. I had thought that Ayalon was a right winger.  Guess not.]

JCC WATCH

The UJA-Federation’s top brass has been twisting the arms of Israel’s diplomatic corps to provide cover for supporting the New Israel Fund marching in the Israel Day Parade, according to emails obtained by JCCWatch.

The strategy to use the Foreign Ministry as their beard came to an uncomfortable public end last week, when the Spokesman for the Israeli Consulate in New York had to make a statement to deny what UJA-Federation CEO Eric Goldstein had toldTalkline Communications radio host Zev Brenner on March 30. In an appearance on the show, Goldstein said, twice actually, that “the government of Israel, the Consul General’s office, very much, emphatically, want us to allow these groups to continue to march.”
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T. Belman. This official is wrong as anyone who followed the negotiations under Kerry knows, Bibi on many occasions attempted to get such an understanding, but there were no takers.

More ominous though is the reality that if Bibi wants agreement on where Israel can build, he will only get it if he abandons our right to build beyond that and probably agrees to letting the EU sponsored Arabs to build in Area C.

What this amounts to is an agreement on borders.

Netanyahu proposes talks on borders of settlement blocs

During his meeting with EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, Netanyahu voices willingness for the first time since taking office to discuss size of settlement blocs and their borders with Palestinians.
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