By Lee Kaplan, Shoebat

Hatem Bazian is a senior lecturer in Near East Studies at UC Berkeley. A Palestinian Arab, Bazian is also a supporter of Hamas and one of the terrorist group’s apparatchiks in the United States. Bazian was the founder of the Students for Justice in Palestine which has chapters on over 80 campuses in the United States and that operates as a Hamas support network in the United States. Bazian also co-founded American Muslims for Palestine which also links to Hamas and functions as a propaganda and fundraising mechanism to Hamas in Washington and is active with the Muslim Students Association on over 150 campuses in the United States and Canada. As an organizer, Bazian is tough to equal and he has used the California college educational system and its taxpayer-funded deep pockets to help facilitate massive propaganda events and fundraising not only for the Palestinian terrorist group, but for pro-jihadist groups across American campuses and Europe as well.
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T. Belman. The American media, or most of them, are outraged, not at Muslims for attempting a mass slaughter at the event, but at Pemela Geller for holding the event.

Pamela Geller tested the First Amendment and America failed.

By Jack Engelhard, INN

Winning Cartoon

Have you hugged a Jihadist today? Everybody else has. Have you trashed Pamela Geller this morning? Welcome to the club.

Pamela Geller made a mistake. She tested the First Amendment and the First Amendment lost.

This fighter for Israel, this battler against Radical Islam can seem to find no friends after what she did.
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DEBKAfile Special Report May 4, 2015,

For the first time in the nearly five-year Syrian war, opposition forces, such as the Army of Conquest and the Free Syrian Army, are receiving substantial quantities of heavy weapons from  the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, DEBKAfile’s military sources report. The balance of strength in the Syrian war has accordingly shifted in favor of rebel forces which are are winning victories against Bashar Assad’s army. In the last two weeks, the rebels have captured Jisr al-Shughour, in the northern Idlib province, able to move into new positions directly opposite Assad’s Alawite stronghold of Latakia and the Homs plain. Rebels have also gained ground in southern Syria in the Quneitra region opposite the Israeli Golan.

Our intelligence sources report that the opposition is now armed as never before with such heavy weapons as T-55, T-62, and T-72 tanks, BMP infantry fighting vehicles, rocket launchers, mortars, and vehicle-mounted heavy antiaircraft machine guns (12.7, 14.5, and 23 mm). They now command at least four types of antitank weapons, including RPG-7s, RPG-22s, M79s, and an extra-large supply of thousands of TOW missiles. All the hardware has come with night-vision attachments.
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T. Belman.  I think it important for Israel to inculcate Zionist values and Jewish identity in her youth.This doesn’t prevent them from having tolerance of the other. They should also be taught that instilling a Jewish identity and patriotic values is not inconsistent with democracy. That Zionism is not racism but the Jewish liberation movement. They should also be taught that Judea and Samaria, by international law, belong to the Jews.

By Akiva Elder,(radical leftist),  Al Monitor

The most prominent message of the last election and of the government to be formed in its wake is that a “good Israeli” is a straight, conservative, right-wing Jew who hates Arabs. All the rest are delusional leftists at best and at worst, despicable traitors. The easiest target audience to absorb these messages, whether explicit or implicit, is students. At the same time, Israel’s children are the greatest reservoir of potential voters for the government. Now, the system charged with shaping their moral and political worldview is about to be handed over to the chairman of HaBayit HaYehudi, Naftali Bennett, the most talented salesman for a monolithic brand of Orthodox Zionism, and also the most dangerous.

And if there are no last-minute changes, control of Israeli culture will be handed over to Knesset member Ayelet Shaked, Bennett’s colleague in this radicalized incarnation of the National Religious Party leadership. It seems as if the decision today of Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman to transfer his Yisrael Beitenu Party from the government table to the opposition benches has left the foreign minister portfolio vacant. But a more general assessment would indicate that HaBayit HaYehudi would benefit greatly from taking over the education and culture ministries than getting the Foreign Ministry.

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By Maysaa Shaja AlDeen, Al Monitor

As soon as Saudi Arabia declared the end of Operation Decisive Storm on April 21, all parties to the Saudi war, the Houthis and former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, jointly declared victory on the same day, in a war where no one achieved gains, and joint losses were the name of the game.

On March 26, Saudi Arabia announced that Operation Decisive Storm aimed to restore the legitimate government in Yemen, put an end to the expansion of Houthis to the south and undermine the power of both Saleh and the Houthis. However, the government was not restored, and the Houthis and Saleh are still expanding and fighting battles in the provinces of Marib, Taiz, Aden and Dali.
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Ramallah-based fund paid for Breaking the Silence report against the IDF in Operation Protective Edge, says Im Tirtzu.

By Arutz Sheva staff

By Ari Sofer, INN

Jewish Home fighting for Justice Ministry, betting on PM’s desperation one day before government-forming deadline

BY HAVIV RETTIG GUR AND TIMES OF ISRAEL STAFF

With just a day and a half left before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must tell President Reuven Rivlin whether he’s succeeded in forming a coalition, negotiations with the last would-be coalition partner have turned ugly.

Netanyahu has made the Jewish Home party an offer he believes it will be hard for party leader Naftali Bennett to decline: the ministries of education and Diaspora for Bennett, agriculture for Uri Ariel and culture and sports for Ayelet Shaked – three ministers from an eight-seat party – and the posts of deputy defense minister and the chairmanship of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee.

However, Bennett seems primed to play hardball and leverage his position as the final piece Netanyahu needs to form a government, demanding the Justice Ministry for Shaked apparently in lieu of the Culture and Sports Ministry.
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T. Belman.  I was there too and can tell you that Arlene did a great job of highlighting what was said.
 

By Arlene Kushner

This is the subject of a conference currently being held by Shurat Hadin, the Israeli Law Center, founded and run by the amazing Nitsana Darshan-Leitner.

Current laws of warfare are outdated, she explained in her introductory remarks.  The Geneva Conventions never envisioned the asymmetrical warfare that is waged today.  We must redefine the laws of warfare, so that democratic states can adequately fight back. Today, terror groups attack civilians, and when democracies fight back, their defense is referred to as a war crime.  Terrorists should not be able to apply to international courts as if they were victims when they are the perpetrators.

The IDF must be able to fulfill its mission of protecting the people of Israel and we we must protect our soldiers, as well.
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Yisrael Beytenu chief and outgoing foreign minister slams new government of ‘opportunists’, says choosing ‘principles over portfolios’.

Moran Azulay, YNET

Avigdor Lieberman will lead his Yisrael Beytenu party into opposition and will not join the new government, the outgoing foreign minister announced Monday, effectively ending a years-long partnership with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud.

“I am happy we chose principles and not portfolios”, Lieberman said at a faction meeting in Jerusalem. “What’s being built is not a national camp, but a government that smacks of opportunism”.

The Yisrael Beytenu leader also said he was resigning from his position as foreign minister.
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DEBKA

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have gone out of their way in the last fortnight to shower friendly gestures on Israel, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and even Ambassador to Washington, Ron Dermer. Refuting the dire predictions by Netanyahu’s critics of a disastrous breach, Obama and Biden, by word and gesture, are putting behind them the rancor long marring relations between Washington in Jerusalem.

The White House launched its new charm campaign for Israel on April 13 by meetings with three groups of American Jewish leaders. Obama addressed the first with an emotional affirmation of his support for Israel and its security. Vice President Biden, National Security adviser Susan Rice and Biden’s national security adviser Colin Kahl then talked to another group of Jewish leaders, while Obama spoke to Jewish “community leaders”, a group of individuals who though unaffiliated are influential and generous donors to the Democratic Party.
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T. Belman. This article was dated Feb 6/15. In yesterday’s article, Ari Biggs, Regavim’s director of international relations, said:

“But Regavim takes issue not only with Europe, but also with Israel’s bureaucracy and legal system which allows the situation to continue unabated.

“Europe has decided to go it alone, and Israel has decided to allow it,”

So which is it? Take note that Bibi made his announcement just prior to the recent elections.

European Union official defends unlicensed construction in Area C, says Palestinians have a right to build there

BY JUSTIN JALIL AND JTA February 6, 2015

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon to move forward with a plan to demolish some 400 Palestinian structures built in the West Bank with European funding, Israeli media reported Friday.

The prime minister’s order came shortly after a Thursday exposé in the Daily Mail claimed that the EU sank tens of millions of euros into homes which were not granted building permits by the Israeli government.
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By Uri Savir, Al Monitor

The Palestinian leadership follows with disdain and frustration the establishment of the new Israeli government: “With the outgoing government we thought it could not get any worse, but it seems that we were wrong,” a senior official in the entourage of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told Al-Monitor. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did say that the advantage of the extremist nature of the Israeli government to-be is that now the Palestinian statehood issue would be put to the test, without international demands for incremental progress. “It’s a make-it-or-break-it time,” he said.

The Palestinian leadership, according to this source, is planning at the very outset of the new government to put a policy strategy in place to try to convince the international community to deal with the Palestinian issue again, despite the focus on the Iran negotiations.
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T. Belman.  I totally support this demand plus there should be a commitment to lift the freeze.

By Sha’i ben-Tekoa, AMERICAN THINKER

On April 27, the media quoted Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman — the foreign policy wizard who engineered the fiasco of the North Korean nuclear deal under Pres. Clinton and who is now working her diplomatic legerdemain on Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran — threatened Israel. She said that if Prime Minister Netanyahu’s new coalition government does not pledge allegiance to the Two-State Solution (TSS), the U.S. will “find it difficult” to back Israel in the U.N. Security Council as U.S. administrations have in the past scores of times by casting a veto.

With the U.N’s roster of member-states almost one-third officially Muslim, if not for the United States the Council would long ago have crippled Israel with sanctions like those passed against Apartheid South Africa that helped bring that racist system down. In 1975, the General Assembly judged Zionism in UNGA Resolution 3379 to be “a form of racism” too. That resolution was repealed in 1991 but not the fifty-three other General Assembly resolutions passed over the years that explicitly liken Israel to Apartheid South Africa.
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“A better deal is necessary. A better deal is possible. A better deal must and can be achieved. But if not, no deal is better than this bad deal,” PM Benjamin Netanyahu says • U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry accuses Iran deal critics of “hysteria.”

By Shlomo Cesana, Daniel Siryoti, Dan Lavie and Israel Hayom Staff

In a video message marking the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s 30th anniversary on Saturday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “Preventing Iran from being able to build nuclear weapons is the foremost challenge of our generation. Unfortunately, the Lausanne framework fails to meet this challenge and if it will be realized, it will make the world a much more dangerous place.”
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By Vic Rosenthal

By Ted Belman

I am reading Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation by Yossi Klein Halevi and highly recommend it for its insights. Much of it deals with the loss of kibbutzim power and ideology and the growth of right wing ideology.

One major event that I want to comment on has to do with the passing of Oslo ll, the Interim Agreement, in 1995. The agreement had to do with the withdrawal by Israel from cities in Judea and Samaria.

This agreement was passed by a vote of 61 to 59. To squeak out this victory Rabin had to bribe a right wing MK to switch sides and had to rely on the Arab vote. Thus it didn’t come close to being approved by a majority of Jews. Rabin told him, “I will make peace with whatever majority is available”.

A representative of the settlers, Rabbi Yoel Ben Nun, who had Rabin’s ear, met with him to discuss the agreement. The Rabbi asked, “If this is what you are giving away now, what will you have left to offer in a final-status agreement?”
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