by Daniel Pipes, Washington Times
April 6, 2015

James Jeffrey, Barack Obama’s former ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to Iraq, has this to say about the administration’s current record in the Middle East: “We’re in a goddamn free fall.”

Count the mistakes: Helping overthrow Muammar Qaddafi in Libya, leading to anarchy and civil war. Pressuring Husni Mubarak of Egypt to resign, then backing the Muslim Brotherhood, leading now-president Sisi to turn toward Moscow. Alienating Washington’s most stalwart ally in the region, the Government of Israel. Dismissing ISIS as “junior varsity” just before it seized major cities. Hailing Yemen as a counterterrorism success just before its government was overthrown. Alarming the Saudi authorities to the point that they put together a military alliance against Iran. Coddling Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, encouraging his dictatorial tendencies. Leaving Iraq and Afghanistan prematurely, dooming the vast American investment in those two countries.
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By Vic Rosenthal

Yesterday was Jerusalem Day. One of the events was a march through the city to the Western Wall, including the Muslim quarter of the Old City. Most of the participants are teenagers from nationalist-religious schools. There have been complaints from Arab residents that some of the marchers shout anti-Arab slogans, and that they have to close their shops and stay inside; and of course some of the Arabs throw stones and other objects at the marchers. There are also (how could there not be) left-wing Israelis demonstrating against the march.
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Daily Beast: Iran interference in Iraq behind ISIS takeover of Ramadi — “Sectarian politics kept govt from defending it”

By Omri Ceren, TIP

The day is going to be driven by the fall of Ramadi in Iraq to ISIS. As always there are political and policy angles.

On the political side, the White House is already battling accusations that it withdrew from Iraq precipitously, leaving a vacuum to be filled either by Iran or ISIS. Relatedly, the State Department may be asked to explain how U.S. allies in the region can trust Washington’s security assurances when the U.S. military left under those conditions. The Defense Department is on the hook for assessing as late as Wednesday that ISIS was on the defensive. Those may show up in afternoon press conferences.
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By Tom Gross, The Weekly Standard

If anyone needs further evidence of why the news agencies often can’t be trusted to report accurately on Israel and the Palestinians, and why major news outlets such as the New York Times and the BBC should stop repeating agency copy without verifying it, here is an important example from this weekend.

According to Italian and Spanish news outlets and according to the Vatican’s own website, Pope Francis told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that hecould be an angel of peace. “May you be an angel of peace,” he urged Abbas, effectively saying that if Abbas would take the decision to accept one of the peace offers that various Israeli prime ministers have made to him, or at least make a serious counter-offer, he could be an angel of peace. The pope did not say that Abbas – infamous for ordering the Munich Olympic massacre, among many other atrocities – was “an angel of peace.”

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by Jonathan Spyer
The Jerusalem Post, May 14, 2015

http://www.meforum.org/5244/tremor-iranian-kurdistan

Iran has witnessed the largest Kurdish anti-regime demonstrations in years.

The events this week in the Mahabad area of Iran’s Western Azerbaijan province cast light on the difficult situation faced by one of the region’s least-noticed minorities – the Kurds of Iran.

The apparent attempt by an intelligence officer in Mahabad to rape an Iranian-Kurdish hotel worker, 25-year-old Farinaz Khosrawani, and the latter’s subsequent suicide by jumping from a fourth-floor window, led to furious protests by Kurds in both Mahabad and beyond. The hotel was burned by protesters; authorities responded heavy-handedly, using rubber bullets and tear gas.
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by Alexander H. Joffe and Asaf Romirowsky, The American Interest

http://www.meforum.org/5245/abbas-refugees-syria

PA President Mahmoud Abbas won’t allow imperiled Palestinian refugees in Syria to take refuge in the West Bank, saying “it’s better they die in Syria than give up their right of return” to Israel.

Faced with the suffering of their own people, the Palestinians’ leadership recently decided not to help. Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas rejected a deal with Israel brokered by the United Nations that would allow Palestinian refugees living in Syria to resettle in the West Bank and Gaza. Abbas stated unequivocally that “we rejected that and said it’s better they die in Syria than give up their right of return.” The Palestine Liberation Organization has also ruled out any military action to help the 18,000 or more refugees who are trapped in the Yarmouk camp near Damascus.
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The left has to do some soul-searching and reflect why it describes anti-Semitism as political expression, but criticism of Muslims as hate speech. Liberal Jews have to do the same about Obama.

By Mathew M.Hausman, INN

The 2016 presidential cycle is beginning to gear up, with Hillary Clinton assuming the mantle of presumptive Democratic nominee and Republican hopefuls preparing to compete with each other during the primary season. And Jewish Democrats are already lining up to shill for Clinton and attack the Republicans.

If the litmus test for Jewish voter loyalty is Israel, however, Democrats long ago abdicated any authority to determine “who’s good for the Jews” by their continuing support for Barack Obama – despite his relationships with Israel-bashers, his appeasement of Islamist regimes, his disrespectful treatment of Binyamin Netanyahu, and his pursuit of a deal with Iran that rewards aggression, enables its nuclear ambitions and threatens the existence of the Jewish State.
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By Louis René Beres, THE HILL

The Vatican has just concluded a treaty to recognize “Palestine” as an independent state. Nonetheless, under governing international law, primarily the 1934 Convention on the Rights and Duties of States (aka the Montevideo Convention),  “Palestine” will still remain outside the community of separately sovereign states. This exclusion will be proper, moreover, despite the United Nations’ earlier action on November 29, 2012. On that day, a General Assembly resolution had merely upgraded the Palestinian Authority (PA) to the substantially limited status of a “Nonmember Observer State.”

There is more. Jurisprudential limitations of the Vatican treaty on “Palestine” are evident “beyond a reasonable doubt.” The authoritative criteria of statehood are long-standing, fixed, explicit, and readily identifiable. More precisely, under plainly recognizable legal rules, a state must possess the following very specific qualifications:  (1) a permanent population; (2) a defined territory; (3) a government; and (4) the capacity to enter into relations with other states.
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Why Do Liberals ‘Blame the Victim’ When It Comes to Islam?

T. Belman. 10% of Iranians are Kurdish and live adjacent to Iraqi Kurdistan. Another 40% of Iranians are not Farsi and live in northern Iran. If Iran is destabelized, these groups with their adjacent neighbours will mount a serious challenge to the sovereignty of Iran in the areas in which they live. Rather than help them, Obama is “paving the way to the bomb, for Iran.

By Alessandria Masi, International Business Times

Protests against the Iranian regime in Iranian Kurdistan turn violent as demonstrators clash with security forces, May 10, 2015. It is one of the biggest uprisings against the Iranian regime in years.

Buildings are burning, protesters are bloodied, law enforcement vehicles are destroyed, hundreds of young men and women have been arrested and there is no end in sight. Iranian Kurdistan has been under what Iranian opposition called an “undeclared martial law” for the last week, and the Iranian regime has done all it can to keep it out of the media.
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T. Belman. We keep hearing how American forces must train the Iraqi Army even after all these years. Yet the ISIS ragtag group of volunteers and local Sunni need no training. Hmmm. Obviously ISIS is supported by the Gulf states and many other Sunni countries. The only people resisting them are the Americans and the Iranians, both in a half-hearted manner. America isn’t committed to really stopping them for fear of alienating the Sunni countries and Iran does not want to invade for fear of the Sunnis taking the fight into Iran. Anyways that’s the way I see it. Israel is also sitting on the fence not knowing if she would rather have ISIS on her borders or Iran’s proxies. Better to let them kill each other.

DEBKA

Ramadi, the provincial capital of western Iraqi Anbar, fell to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant Friday, May 15 after its inhabitants were put to mass flight. The town, 110 km west of Baghdad, controls the traffic on the Euphrates River. Small pockets of Iraqi troops are still stranded there after taking hundreds of casualties.

The jihadists are in mid-momentum of a fresh multi-pronged offensive, which they launched shortly after they lost Tikrit last month to the biggest counter-offensive they had faced since seizing large tracts of land in Iraq nearly a year ago.
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JP UPDATES

The last elections brought many surprises, so it should be anticipated that even more surprises are in store. MK Betsalel Smotrich (Bayit Yehudi/Tkuma) presented a new bill to cancel the disengagement law that led to Israel’s withdrawal from Gush Katif, Gaza, in 2005. The bill was submitted to the Knesset Secretariat but wasn’t discussed even in a preliminary reading.

It would cancel the laws pertaining to the disengagement which prohibit the entry and stay in the areas evacuated under the program, and the elimination of the rights of those who lived in them. The sections dealing with compensation and rehabilitation of deportees will be left standing
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By Fern Sidman

From 2003 through the early months of 2015, I wrote more than 200,000 words about anti-Semitism/anti-Zionism,” says Prof.. Phyllis Chesler in the introduction of her recently released book, “Living History: On the Front Lines for Israel and the Jews 2003-2015” (Gefen Publishers).

This admission should come as no surprise to anyone even tangentially familiar with the voluminous amount of essays and articles that Dr. Chesler has written on the subject over the last 13 years, donning an impressive variety of hats. As an astute political analyst, researcher and investigative journalist, she has honed these skills in her quest to offer her reader a meticulous examination of a panoply of hot button geo-political issues pertaining to Israel and the Jewish people.
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[This is an excellent review of the situation.]

ICC Prosecutor Continues Examining Palestine Situation and Warns Israel

By Joseph A. Klein, CFP

International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda told reporters at United Nations headquarters in New York, following her May 12th briefing to the UN Security Council on the ICC’s Libya-related activities, that her previously announced “preliminary examination” concerning the situation in Palestine is still open. She has not set any deadline for completing her examination.

Ms. Bensouda is continuing to look into whether crimes subject to the ICC’s jurisdiction were possibly committed in the Palestinian territories since June 2014. She is considering information, if any, submitted to her office by both sides to the conflict and from other sources. Ms. Bensouda decided to undertake the preliminary examination, which she described as “a quiet process,” on her own initiative once the so-called Palestinian state acceded to the ICC’s governing Rome Statute. Israel is not a party to the Rome Statute and has not consented to its jurisdiction.
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In a clear vote of no-confidence in US President Barack Obama’s leadership, Saudi King Salman led several Arab leaders in blowing off Obama’s Camp David summit this week.

By Caroline S Glick, JPOST

The Saudis are casting about for partners.

In a clear vote of no-confidence in US President Barack Obama’s leadership, Saudi King Salman led several Arab leaders in blowing off Obama’s Camp David summit this week. The summit was meant to compensate the Sunni Arabs for Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.

Salman’s decision is further proof that US-Saudi relations have jumped the tracks. For 70 years the Saudis subcontracted their national security to the US military. Deals were closed with a wink and a nod. That’s all over now.
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By David M Weinberg, ISRAEL HAYOM

BY HAVIV RETTIG GUR, TOI

[..]
Weakening the High Court
No reform has elicited more scathing criticism and fear than the right’s plans to weaken Israel’s Supreme Court.

There are two key issues surrounding the court that Shaked is likely to target for reform — the de facto veto power Supreme Court justices currently wield over the appointment of judges, and the Knesset’s inability to overturn Supreme Court decisions.

The first issue most distresses the right, who accuse the court of effectively representing only a narrow elitist clique within Israeli society.
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For two-staters the prevailing conditions—no matter what they are—are always favorable for implementing the land-for-peace doctrine and establishing a Palestinian state.

By Martin Sherman, JPOST

There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. – Søren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher (1813-1855)

Not since the time of Dr. Goebbels has there ever been a case in which continual repetition of a lie has borne such great fruits… Of all the Palestinian lies there is no lie greater or more crushing than that which calls for the establishment of a separate Palestinian state in the West Bank… – Amnon Rubinstein, former education minister, far-left Meretz party, “Palestinian Lies,” Haaretz, July 30, 1976

I am sure you have noticed how it is with “twostaters” – a.k.a. adherents of the dogma of political appeasement and territorial concessions as an effective measure for assuaging despots. Read more…

By Ted Belman

Israel is, and has been for decades, subject to a campaign of defamation and deligitamation which greatly harms her. Furthermore, she is subject to a boycott, divestment and sanctions movement that has the potential to cause her great economic damage.

Surely, there ought to be a law that protects Israel from such campaigns .

Defamation is defined as:

Any intentional false communication, either written or spoken, that harms a person’s reputation; decreases the respect, regard, or confidence in which a person is held; or induces disparaging, hostile, or disagreeable opinions or feelings against a person.

Defamation may be a criminal or civil charge. It encompasses both written statements, known as libel, and spoken statements, called slander. Read more…