President tells Ynet he is not deterred by opponents, but political assassinations are now a risk due to the current violent discourse in Israeli society, while laying out his vision for peace and effective governance.

By Attila Somfalvi, Moran Azulay, YNET NEWS

A year has passed since Reuven Rivlin entered the president’s residence in Jerusalem, and the difficult public atmosphere which escorted his ascension to the role during Operation Protective Edge has been superseded by an even more tumultuous public atmosphere due to the recent hate crimes.

“We are in the middle of a great fracture,” the president warned in a special interview with Ynet.

When asked whether the violent and racist discourse could lead to another political assassination, he answered, “Everything’s possible. Today there are those who hallucinate that a democratic and Jewish state is only democratic for the Jews.”
Read more…

T. Belman. Rivlin should STFU. Now is not the time to undermine Israel”s advocacy against the deal.

President remains unconcerned over Iran deal, says it could provide an opportunity for change in regime. What worries him? Peace talks.

By Tova Dvorin, INN

President Reuven Rivlin played down the threat the Iranian nuclear deal poses to Israel on Friday morning, telling local media in an interview marking one year to his presidency that while it is “very serious,” it is not a “disaster.”

“We know how to keep ourselves safe, we know that our destiny is here, we have no fear,” Rivlin stated to Walla! News. “We know that we can defend ourselves.”
Read more…

By Vic Rosenthal

Israel’s Cabinet has authorized security officials to use “administrative detention” and “aggressive questioning” against suspected “Jewish terrorists,” following the arson attack at Duma that left an Arab baby dead and other family members in the hospital.

This was done against a background of national mea culpas by everyone from the President and Prime Minister on down, both for this crime and for the stabbing murder of a young girl and injuring of several others at the Jerusalem Gay Pride march.

All of this is happening despite the fact that there are as yet no suspects, Jewish or otherwise, for the Duma arson. It is also true that no connection can be demonstrated between homophobic murderer Yishai Schlissel and any Jewish nationalist movement or ideology. Read more…

by Efraim Inbar, MEF
BESA Center Perspectives

An estimated 20,000 protesters marched in support of Israel in Kolkata, India, during its war with Hamas last August.

Relations between India and Israel are changing and improving. It was recently announced that Indian President Pranab Mukherjee will make a state visit to Israel in October, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi is also expected to visit early next year – the first visit of an Indian prime minister to Israel. In February 2015, Israeli defense minister Moshe Ya’alon visited India, during which the two countries finalized a major defense deal worth more than $1.5 billion. Read more…

It is too late for OPEC to stop the shale revolution. The cartel faces the prospect of surging US output whenever oil prices rise

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, THE TELEGRAPH

If the oil futures market is correct, Saudi Arabia will start running into trouble within two years. It will be in existential crisis by the end of the decade.

The contract price of US crude oil for delivery in December 2020 is currently $62.05, implying a drastic change in the economic landscape for the Middle East and the petro-rentier states.

The Saudis took a huge gamble last November when they stopped supporting prices and opted instead to flood the market and drive out rivals, boosting their own output to 10.6m barrels a day (b/d) into the teeth of the downturn.
Read more…

Justice minister wants to split AG’s authorities into roles of public prosecutor and chief legal counsel to government, but PM says such a move would harm AG’s abilities to fulfill his duties.

By Tova Tzimuki, YNET NEWS

Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked’s initiative to divide the duties of the attorney general to two different roles – head of the public prosecution system and chief legal counsel to the government – was thwarted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday.

Earlier this week, Shaked informed the committee to select the next attorney general that the position could be divided and that each candidate will have to bear in mind they might have to give up a significant part of the authorities the position entails.

Netanyahu, however, signaled to the commission that he opposes dividing the role of the attorney general “because it could harm the attorney general’s ability to fulfill his duties.”
Read more…

By Martin Sherman, JPOST

We can and we do [b]urn children alive, execute murderous, inhuman, incomprehensible terror. And no, we’re no better than them…. – Sima Kadmon, “We’re no better than our enemies,” Ynet

They are no different than ISIS… this is Jewish jihadism, identical in every detail to Islamic jihadism –Ron Ben-Yishai, Ynet

Israelis stab gay people and burn children. There isn’t a shred of slander, the slightest degree of exaggeration, in this dry description – Gideon Levy, Haaretz

The events of last week cast doubt on the ability of Israel to survive the merciless brutality that surrounds it.

Deplorable acts by fringe elements
Read more…

The agreement is only the latest of Obama’s gross misjudgments about the Middle East, going back to his Senate days, when he vehemently opposed the military “surge” that crushed the terrorist insurgency in Iraq, as Senator Hillary Clinton also did.

By Aviel Sheyin-Stevens, INN
The writer holds Jur.D. and CPA degrees, is a registered patent attorney…

On 14 July 2015, Iran signed a nuclear agreement with the five permanent members of the UnitedNations Security Council—China, France, Russia,United Kingdom, United States—plus Germany and the European Union.

Under the agreement, in five years, Iran will have unlimited access to the international conventional arms market. In eight years, Iran will be able to purchase and develop whatever missile systems it desires. In 10 years, limitations on its nuclear program will be removed. The agreement ends the international sanctions regime against Iran and permits Iran to develop advanced centrifuges. When it ends in 10 years, Iran will be positioned to develop nuclear weapons immediately.

The details are debatable, and largely irrelevant, when compared to the two irrefutable aspects: The agreement guarantees that Iran will develop nuclear weapons and the ayatollahs will get $150 billion.
Read more…

MOSAIC

Walk down a side street in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Eshkol and you may came across a group of students chatting loudly in Hebrew as they review their Bible lessons of the day. Hardly an extraordinary sight in Israel—except that these aren’t Israelis. They’re young Japanese on student visas who have assumed hybrid names like Asher Sieto Kimura and Suzana Keiren Mimosa. And they’re Makuyas: members of a Japanese religious group that’s been fervently supportive of Israel since 1948.

The movement’s founder—“Makuya” is Japanese for ohel moed, the biblical tent of meeting or tabernacle—was Ikuro Teshima, a Christian businessman who adopted the name Abraham in the belief that the birth of Israel marked the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. His dream, finally realized in the 1960s, was to send groups of young Japanese to Israel, there to study Hebrew and Jewish thought and to volunteer in hospitals, schools, and senior centers. Since then, over 1,000 Makuyas have attended the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the University of Haifa, the Technion, and other institutions of higher learning. In Japan itself, the Makuya newsletter reaches more than 300,000 subscribers.

CONTINUE

T. Belman. Obama is looking so glum because to lose this group is tantamount to losing the deal. The odds have just gone way up that the 2/3 majority will be achieved.

American Jewish Committee says it concluded overwhelmingly it must oppose Iran nuclear deal.

By Elad Benari, INN

Despite President Barack Obama’s efforts to assure American Jews about the Iran deal, one of the largest and most influential Jewish organizations in the United States announced Wednesday that it opposes the agreement.

American Jewish Committee (AJC) Executive Director David Harris said in a statement that his organization had “engaged in a very intensive, open-minded, and thorough process of external consultations and internal deliberations, involving many lay and staff leaders” but ultimately “concluded overwhelmingly that we must oppose this deal.”
Read more…

By Allen West

If there is one thing absolutely true about the liberal progressive left, it is the fact that they hate the truth, and will doggedly attack anyone using it against them.

We are watching the left do its darndest to defend the indefensible, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — always beware when politicians use the word “comprehensive” — which is the official name of the Iranian nuclear agreement. Funny thing, it says “joint,” but the Iranians are telling the Americans we cannot take part in the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) inspections — and it has been revealed that there are secret side deals between the IAEA and Iran. The Iranian emissary to the IAEA stated that the terms will not be disclosed to any other country — so much for “joint.”

And the left is all in an apoplectic uproar because Senator Ted Cruz called out President Obama on the Iranian deal.
Read more…

Israel Can’t Count on the West to Protect it. Will Israel do the unthinkable to stop the unimaginable?

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online

Israeli Air Force F-16 fighter (Jack Guez/AFP/Getty)

The Obama administration seems peeved that almost everyone in Israel, left and right, has no use for the present Iranian–American deal to thwart Iran’s efforts to get the bomb.

Indeed, at times John Kerry has hinted darkly that Israel’s opposition to the pact might incur American wrath should the deal be tabled — even though Kerry knows that the polls show a clear majority of Americans being against the proposed agreement while remaining quite supportive of the Jewish state. President Obama, from time to time, suggests that his agreement is being sabotaged by nefarious lobbying groups, big-time check writers, and neoconservative supporters of the Iraq war — all shorthand, apparently, for pushy Jewish groups.
Read more…

By Raphael Ahren, TOI

WASHINGTON — It’s important to maintain the threat of a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, a US Senator told Israeli reporters Tuesday, arguing that it is indeed possible to set back Tehran’s nuclear program.

“We can set them back to day zero. There is no doubt that the United States has the capability to do that,” said Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR), a prominent opponent of the nuclear deal the US and five world powers signed with Iran last month.

Opponents of a military strike against Iran often argue that air strikes would only be able to set back the country’s military nuclear program for two to three years.
Read more…

T. Belman. Sooner or later the rockets will rain down on us. What better time to have it happen when the US is beating up on Iran, we will be able to beat up on Hezbollah and wipe out their arsenal.

In meeting with American Jewish leaders, president warns Israel will pay price for failure of nuclear deal with Tehran; ‘American military action against Iran will not end with Tehran declaring war on us. What Iran could do is increase support of terrorism’.

By Itamar Eichner, YNET NEWS

WASHINGTON – US President Barack Obama told Jewish leaders on Tuesday that if the nuclear deal signed between world powers and Iran is rejected by Congress, the United States will be forced to attack Tehran, which will lead to Hezbollah retaliating with rockets on Tel Aviv.

“Israel would bear the brunt of a US military strike,” Obama told 22 American Jewish leaders during a meeting at the White House.

The president asserted that if Congress votes against the agreement, the Islamic Republic will back out of it and he will then face pressure from those who oppose the deal to militarily strike Tehran.
Read more…

By PAUL EIDELBERG, CONSERVATIVE NEWS AND VIEWS

If Barack Obama is animated by any persistent ends (or world view) that shape his political acts (or tactics), it’s a combination of thinly veiled hatred of both Judaism and Americanism. I for one am pleased to see Jews and Americans in the same boat, if only because I‘m proud say I am an American Jew who has devoted his life to studying and writing about the unsurpassed statesmanship of America’s Founding Fathers and the inexhaustible wisdom of the Torah which the Jewish people bestowed on mankind since the Revelation at Mount Sinai.

Obamanization: slavery and propaganda

With the possible exception of slavery, Obamanizaton is the greatest curse that has been inflicted on the American people, and the irony – a double irony – is that a black who is not an American, is the personification of this curse, and would not be were it not for the principles of the American Declaration of Independence which he scorns in utter ignorance of their Judaic origin.
Read more…

IPT News,  August 4, 2015

The Justice Department is “carefully considering” whether to intervene in a federal civil suit in New York which generated a $218 million judgment against the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) for supporting and enabling terrorist attacks during the second Intifada.

Under the U.S. Anti-Terrorism Act, that award can triple to $655 million.

A decision whether to weigh in on the case should come by Monday, a letter sent to U.S. District Judge George B. Daniels on July 27 said. Reuters first reported on the letter last week.
Read more…

I received this email from a military/intelligence American think tank, containing containing counsel on how to defeat the Deal.

Up until now the discussion has been focused on Israel (the bad guy) and the minutia of the deal.

I believe that  most Americans only give lip service to covering Israel….  and, thus  the only appeals that can be  effective are those  that deal with  direct threats to US mainland and/or US economic interests.

I believe that if we focus on that Russia is the big winner and that the US is in direct danger both from Russia and from Iran the public will screen this deal and overwhelmingly reject it.

More specifically, these are that this deal:  

(1) hands  Russia  a free pass to dominating  East-Europe;
(2) improves current Russian ICBM targeting of the US and will allow Iranian ICBMs  to target the US mainland) ;
(3)  vastly expands the current Iranian penetration of South America…allied with drug rings etc. and
(4)  allows Iran a stranglehold over certain critical international waterways– more than 50% of  international  petroleum transportation.

Read more…

By Caroline Glick, JPOST

It was obvious, the fight over President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran would get very ugly, very quickly. And so it has.

It was obvious that it would be ugly because the fight over Obama’s appeasement policy toward Iran has been going on since he took office six-and-a-half years ago. And it has always been ugly.

Every time Obama has sided with the mullahs against domestic opponents he has played the Jew card in one way or another. He has blown more anti-Semitic dog whistles than many in Washington even realized existed.
Read more…

Netanyahu has never been more articulate or persuasive.

WATCH THE SPEECH HERE

BREITBART

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the American Jewish community in a live webcast Wednesday, making the case for why the nuclear accord between the Iranian regime and world powers is a deal that dangers Israel’s existence as a sovereign state.
Read more…

By Jonathan S. Tobin, COMMENTARY

To listen to President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry defend their nuclear deal in recent weeks, you’d think the issue at stake is a narrow one that solely concerned whether or not the agreement retards Tehran’s quest for a bomb. The assumption from the administration and its apologists that the deal does this even minimally is a dubious one. But one of the subtexts of the misleading way they have been conducting their end of this debate is their effort to distract both Congress and the public from the broader goals of the pact. While critics of the deal have highlighted Obama’s refusal to make the sanctions relief dependent on an end to support for terrorism, ballistic missile production or the nature of Iranian government, the answers from the administration have been consistent. They want to restrict the discussion to purely technical nuclear issues that can be obfuscated by deceptive claims or to the false choice between the agreement and war. But, to its credit, one of the president’s chief media cheerleaders did highlight the real goals of the administration in an article published on Friday. The New York Times feature titled “Deeper Aspirations Seen in Nuclear Deal With Iran” ought to be required reading for all members of the House and Senate.

The choice here isn’t one between a flawed nuclear deal and war, but between Iran détente with a tyrannical, anti-Semitic, aggressive Islamist regime and a reboot of the diplomatic process that has been hijacked by appeasers.
Read more…