Mark Leven  knocked another one out of the park on today’s (Mon, 3/23) broadcast. He interviewed Stanley Kurtz regarding Obama’s long, pre-presidential history of Israel-hatred and pro-Palestinian activism & positioning.

The Stanley Kurtz interview begins at 57:44 — not to be missed.

There’s a good deal more of interest in that show as well.

–dweller

The Mark Levin Show – Play Now

I started listening to this 2 hour show, expecting to listen for only a few minutes, and was so fascinated that I couldn’t stop listening until after Kurtz talked about Obama. Now I understand why his show is one of the most popular in America.

By Daniel Greenfield, FPM

Netanyahu’s conservative Likud Party got its best numbers not in Jerusalem, where it only won a quarter of the vote, or Sderot, the city under siege where it still got less than half, or Maaleh Adumim, a city of some 40,000 known as a “settlement” because it is located in ’67 Israel where it also took less than half.

Its best numbers appear to have come from Arab-al-Naim, a Bedouin settlement, where it scored three-quarters of the vote.

The residents were uninterested in any of the accusations of racism being aimed at Netanyahu by the media. Instead they were interested in housing. As one resident put it, “I used to sleep in a cave with my goats. Now I ask my daughter what wallpaper she wants in her room.”
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By Ayaan Hirsi Ali, HUFFINGTON POST

[..]
Yet what [Obama] failed to point out is that, around the world, segregation is making a comeback — including in the streets of Tunis, where the proponents of today’s segregation spilled blood last week.

Fifty years ago there were a host of legal impediments to equality between black and white Americans — just as there were in countries such as South Africa and Rhodesia. Today, a different group is the victim of comparable legal discrimination that imposes segregation on them and denies them equal civil and political rights. What is more, their number is vastly larger than the number that was affected 50 years ago by segregation and apartheid. And that number is growing, because, unlike in the 1960s Alabama, the prevalence of discriminatory legislation outside the liberal West is actually increasing.

The system of law I am talking about is sharia law, the body of legislation derived from the Qur’an, the Hadith, and the rest of Islamic jurisprudence. And the discriminated group I have in mind is women, though I could also reference Jews, Christians and gays.
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By Richard Baehr, ISRAEL HAYOM

One analyst is now using the language of Captain Ahab and the great white whale, from Herman Melville’s 1851 novel “Moby Dick,” to describe U.S. President Barack Obama’s obsessive pursuit of a nuclear agreement with Iran.

An alternate analysis might be Obama as Captain Queeg from the movie “The Caine Mutiny,” as he is currently displaying the same kind of paranoia seen in that erratic, vengeful captain. In Obama’s case, he appears to be motivated by a need to punish anyone who might interfere with his plans for securing a nuclear deal with Iran, whatever its terms, before he leaves office. Today, the list of enemies interfering with Obama’s plans includes U.S. Republicans, Israel and its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
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T. Belman. Caspit intimates that Bennett’s reforms undermine democracy. I think the opposite. He suggests that Kahlon and Rivlin will fight such reforms. He also prefers to bend to the will of the international community like Oren does. I think that being sovereign is more important than kissing up.

By Ben Caspit, al Monitor

The current estimate is that in just a few weeks, once he finishes putting his right-wing, ultra-Orthodox coalition together, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will call Zionist Camp leader Isaac Herzog, inviting him to join the coalition. He’ll offer a similar invitation to Yesh Atid head Yair Lapid, too. Netanyahu won’t be doing this out of love or admiration for Herzog or Lapid. He will have no choice.

Netanyahu’s fourth government, which he will be hard at work patching together over the next few weeks, will be the first in which he has no diplomatic “fig leaf” to mollify the international community in general and the Barack Obama administration in particular. His problem is that the chances of either Herzog or Lapid responding positively to his call tend toward zero. They’ll let him simmer in his own juices, become an outcast in the international community, plead like a pauper for every Security Council veto, and try to withstand the tsunami of ostracism and boycotts expected to rain down on him from Europe, all with the express approval of the United States.
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By Michael Goodwin, NY POST, March 22, 2015

First he comes for the banks and health care, uses the IRS to go after critics, politicizes the Justice Department, spies on journalists, tries to curb religious freedom, slashes the military, throws open the borders, doubles the debt and nationalizes the Internet.

He lies to the public, ignores the Constitution, inflames race relations and urges Latinos to punish Republican “enemies.” He abandons our ­allies, appeases tyrants, coddles ­adversaries and uses the Crusades as an excuse for inaction as Islamist terrorists slaughter their way across the Mideast.

Now he’s coming for Israel.
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By Hezi Sternlicht, ISRAEL HAYOM

The moment has come to discuss facts and to talk about the nature of Israeli reality for what it is, instead of in the service of cheap, loud, and defective propaganda.

Through the 2015 election campaign, Yedioth Ahronoth and its various media tentacles attempted to brainwash the public. At any given moment, we were exposed to millions of hungry children, to a southern Israel plagued by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies, to the periphery suffering from battered-wife syndrome in its support of the Likud, to crumbling businesses, and to the economy being on the brink of collapse.

Every fleeting report by any research institute, including sometimes reports sponsored by foreign government with clear political agendas, received prominent coverage. Baseless theories, conjectures and arguments were presented as facts in dramatic headlines illustrating how terrible the situation here was, especially when it came to the economy.
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BUT HERZOG TURNED HIM DOWN
In new government, Erdan designated for education, Katz – Housing, Akunis – communications

DEBKAfile Special Report March 23, 2015, 12:02 PM (IDT)

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu only waited for the March 17 election results before sending his close adviser Nathan Eshel to Zionist Union leader Yitzhak Herzog with an invitation to join him in a new unity government headed by the two largest parties of which they are leaders. Herzog turned him down and preferred to remain leader of the oppositon.

The invitation was proffered notwithstanding Netanyahu’s campaign vow not to share power with the left-leading Zionist Union, and showed him to be pragmatic enough to duck and weave when he finds it opportune.

He displayed the same equivocation on the Palestinian state issue.

While running for election, he declared that a Palestinian state would not rise on his watch. But then, when Washington turned on the heat, he explained that his fundamental support for two states had not changes but the circumstances had. In other words, the prime minister left the door ajar.
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Right out of the starting gate, Oren wants to cave to Obama’s demands. Unfortunately Kulanu hasn’t endorsed Bibi yet. With a peace position like this, he may as well be with Herzog.

By Gil Ronen, INN

MK-elect Michael Oren (Kulanu) reacted Sunday to statements by US President Barack Obama about an alleged erosion of Israel’s democratic nature, saying that they indicate “a strategic blow to Israel’s standing in the world.”

[..]

“The new government of Israel must, without delay, operate actively to rehabilitate the relationship with the US, to strengthen the military, intelligence and diplomatic cooperation, for the sake of the continued strategic friendship that is so vital for Israel.”

By Ted Belman

David Horowitz of the Times of Israel in his article “Ashamed of Netanyahu”, writes about Bibi’s Arab remark that everybody is beating Netanyahu up about,

“I’m ashamed of my prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for the depths to which he stooped in maximizing his election victory. I’ve watched those 20 seconds of incendiary rhetoric he posted on election day over and over again: “The rule of the political right is in danger. The Arab voters are moving in vast numbers to the polling stations. The left-wing NGOs are busing them in…”

I am not ashamed. I see nothing inappropriate about this remark. Its like Republicans urging their fellows Republicans to get out the vote because the Democrats are going to great lengths to do so. What difference dose it make if in our case, its the Arabs that threaten our rule rather than the democrats.
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THIS IS AN ABSOLUTE MUST READ ARTICLE

Ever the seasoned campaigner, Netanyahu correctly grasped that the more desperate his electoral situation looked, the easier it would be for him to open the tribal floodgates – and be rewarded with a fourth term.

By Yossi Verter, HAARETZ

Ten days before the election, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received the results of an internal Likud poll indicating that 58 percent of the respondents thought he would be the person to whom President Reuven Rivlin would give the task of forming the next government. That represented an 8 percent decrease from the results of a previous poll.

Any reasonable person would have taken this as a warning sign, cause for alarm. Netanyahu wasn’t pleased. “Not good, not good,” he said. “We have to knock it down more, to below 50 percent.”

That marginal anecdote encapsulates in its way the story of Likud’s election campaign. It shows that the person who will soon become prime minister for the fourth time understands the mentality of his voters better than anyone else. A sophisticated, experienced campaigner, he’s in a league of his own.
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Former Finance Minister begs Netanyahu not to choose Deri for Interior Minister, cites Shas chairman’s jail stint for corruption., I AGREE.

Why not consider consider negotiating with Lapid rather than Shas and UTJ?

By Benny Moshe, INN

Yesh Atid chairman and former Finance Minister Yair Lapid called on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu not to appoint Shas chairman Aryeh Deri as a senior minister on Saturday, claiming Deri’s previous jail term for corruption charges makes him incapable of being placed in charge of a government portfolio.

“Mr. Prime Minister, you won the big election,” Lapid wrote on FacebookSaturday. “If that’s what the majority chose, this is what was meant to be now, and all of us – the Opposition and the coalition – must go back to working for the State of Israel.”
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By Charles Krauthammer, JWR, March 20, 2015

Of all the idiocies uttered in reaction to Benjamin Netanyahu’s stunning election victory, none is more ubiquitous than the idea that peace prospects are now dead because Netanyahu has declared that there will be no Palestinian state while he is Israel’s prime minister.

I have news for the lowing herds: There would be no peace and no Palestinian state if Isaac Herzog were prime minister either. Or Ehud Barak or Ehud Olmert for that matter. The latter two were (non-Likud) prime ministers who offered the Palestinians their own state — with its capital in Jerusalem and every Israeli settlement in the new Palestine uprooted — only to be rudely rejected.
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Obama failed to shift French President France from his objections to the nuclear accord

One of the many ways Bibi’s speech turned the tide.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis March 21, 2015, 6:15 PM (IDT)

President Barack Obama failed to shift French President France Hollande from his objections to the nuclear accord taking shape between the US and Iran in the call he put through to the Elysée Friday night, March 30. US Secretary of State John Kerry fared no better Saturday, when he met British, French and German Foreign ministers in London for a briefing on the talks’ progress intended to line the Europeans up with the American position. He then found, according toDEBKAfile’s sources, that France was not alone; Germany too balked at parts of the deal in the making.
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By Ben Shapiro, BREITBART

On Thursday, the press announced that the Obama administration would fully consider abandoning Israel in international bodies like the United Nations.

According to reports, President Obama finally called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to congratulate him – but the “congratulations” was actually a lecture directed at forcing Netanyahu to surrender to the terrorist Palestinian regime.

For some odd reason, many in the media and Congress reacted with surprise to Obama’s supposedly sudden turn on Israel. The media, in an attempt to defend Obama’s radicalism, pretend that Netanyahu’s comments in the late stages of his campaign prompted Obama’s anti-Israel action.
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T. Belman. The urgent business, Glick is referring to, is to break the stranglehold the leftist elite have on the Courts, the bureaucracy and the media. She wants to open up the media to all voices, to strengthen the power of the Knesset to legislate and to prevent the Court from legislating. She also wants to restrict the ability of foreign money to undermine our democracy. She wants to change the way Judges, the AG and other civil servants are appointed to make them reflect the will of the people.

By Caroline Glick, JPOST

On Tuesday the people of Israel spoke. They gave a clear mandate to the nationalist camp, led by the Likud and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, to lead the country.

Now that the people have spoken, our leaders must consider the steps they must take, immediately upon entering office, that will enable them to advance their agenda and so meet the public’s expectations.
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By David Archibald, AMERICAN THINKER

First of all, be aware that strange things happen in the U.S. military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us about.  Take the example of the M1 Abrams tank.  The U.S. Army has an inventory of 6,300-odd of these tanks, including 4,000 in storage in desert.  It doesn’t need any more, but Congress keeps voting to keep the production line going, churning out unwanted tanks.  Ironically, that means that funds aren’t available to upgrade the gas turbine engines of its existing tanks to make them more efficient.  The M1 Abrams gets half the fuel mileage of the German Leopard II tank of similar capability.

But this is a tale about the F-35.  It has been said that the story of the F-35 begins in 1942 in the Battle of Guadalcanal.  The U.S. Marines, doing the ground fighting, were upset that the other services weren’t providing enough air cover.  The pounding they got from the lack of air cover is part of their institutional memory.  So when the U.S. Defense Department decided to build a 5^th-generation stealth fighter to replace the F-16, the U.S. Marines insisted that this include a short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) variant.  The trade-offs necessary to effect this fatally compromised the whole project so that none of the variants do their job adequately.  Specifically, the requirement to have a lift fan 1.27 meters in diameter on the centerline of the aircraft behind the pilot resulted in two bomb bays instead of just one on the centerline.  This made the aircraft wider, draggy, slower, and less maneuverable.  In short, the F-35 can’t turn, can’t climb, can’t run.
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Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought: a US-Israel Initiative”
“Israel Hayom,” March 20, 2015,

Israel’s March 17, 2015 general election shed light on the increasingly local – rather than national/regional – order of priorities of the 1.7 million Israeli Arabs; the intensifying Israelization/localization of their self-determination; the widening cultural/ideological gap between Israeli Arabs and the Arabs of Judea, Samaria and Gaza; the deep fragmentation within Israeli Arabs (despite the current Joint Arab Slate); their growing appreciation of Israel’s civil liberties and expanded trust in Israel’s political system; and the gap between the worldview of a growing number of Israeli Arabs on the one hand and most Arab Knesset Members on the other hand.

According to a February, 17, 2015 public opinion survey, conducted by Tel Aviv University’s researcher Arik Rudnitzky, a project manager at the Konrad Adenauer Program for Jewish-Arab Cooperation, the top priorities of Israeli Arabs are employment, education, healthcare, neighborhood crime and women’s rights (43%), ahead of enhancing the status of the Arab community in Israel (28.1%) and the Israel-Palestinian conflict/negotiation (19%).

Read more…

By Guy Taylor – The Washington Times – Thursday, March 19, 2015

Bipartisan resistance to the Obama administration’s push for a nuclear deal with Iran surged on Capitol Hill on Thursday, even as details emerged about a potential agreement that would allow Tehran to retain up to 6,000 uranium enrichment centrifuges while getting immediate relief from international economic sanctions.

Administration witnesses got an earful from representatives of both parties over the administration’s handling of nuclear negotiations involving the U.S., Iran and other world powers that could be reaching a climax in Geneva this week. Many lawmakers say the White House is flagrantly icing Congress out of the deal.

A bipartisan letter signed by 360 House members warned President Obama on Thursday that Iran can’t get “permanent sanctions relief” unless Congress approves it.