If Netanyahu’s speech is a success, Obama’s foreign policy will be indefensible.

By Caroline Glick, JPOST

Officially, the election on March 17 is among Israelis. Depending on how we vote, either Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will remain in office and form the next government led by his Likud party, or Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni will form a government.

But unofficially, a far greater electoral drama is unfolding. The choice is not between Netanyahu and Herzog/Livni. It is between Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama.

As the White House sees it, if Herzog/Livni form the next government, then Jerusalem will dance to Obama’s tune. If Netanyahu is reelected, then the entire edifice of Obama’s Middle East policy may topple and fall.
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By Yoel Meltzer, YNET

For anyone familiar with Tom Friedman’s worldview, his recent article, “Say It Like It Is” was rather eye-opening. On the prestigious pages of the New York Times, Friedman voiced criticism of the Obama administration for its unwillingness to state the obvious connection between the increasing acts of terror throughout the world and Islam.

In reference to some rather astonishing quotes on the subject by White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, Friedman had this to say: “President Obama knows better. I am all for restraint on the issue, and would never hold every Muslim accountable for the acts of a few. But it is not good for us or the Muslim world to pretend that this spreading jihadist violence isn’t coming out of their faith community.”
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T. Belman. If the PA were to fold, there would be no more peace process. This the west cannot accept. Yet Psaki has nothing to say to the PA about dropping their attempt to join the ICC. The way I see it the West is in a weak position. The PA is falling apart, Hamas won’t cooperate, the region is boiling over, the deal that they are trying to ram down Israel’s throat is untenable and the west has very little leverage to apply.

Obama is doing everything in his power to avoid the Iran debate. He argues things like protocol, lack of respect and keep it non partisan and so on. Anything but debate the deal.

Hang tough, Israel.

Psaki says without foreign funds to prop it up, PA may disband in weeks and cause a ‘dire situation,’ noting that Congress won’t help.

Arutz Sheva

The United States voiced fears Thursday that the Palestinian Authority (PA) may be about to collapse due to a lack of funding, as years of massive debt have piled up, Israel withholds taxes in response to unilateral PA breaches, and donor aid stalls.

Washington has been in urgent talks with regional leaders as well as other stakeholders in the frozen Middle East peace process in a bid to try to release more funds, reports AFP.
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T. Belman.  This pressure must be resisted at all costs. Its time for Israel to have its own Khartoum resolution and say “no” to a fully sovereign state, “no” to ’67 borders and “no” to dividing Jerusalem. That should be the only basis upon which we enter negotiations. If the EU apply sanctions , Israel should prohibit all European deals for our innovations and instead look to India, China, Singapore, Japan and South Korea who are clamouring at the door, for venture capital.

The honeymoon period for any new Israeli government will be short, and neither the EU nor the US will have much patience for promises, diplomats say.

By Herb Keinon, JPOST

The honeymoon period for any new Israeli government will be short, and neither the EU nor the US will have much patience for promises of developing new policies toward the Palestinians, according to Western diplomatic officials.

Israel will need an initiative to convince both the EU and US of its seriousness in working toward a two-state solution, the officials said.

This sentiment was also articulated earlier this week by former US peace negotiator Martin Indyk, who said at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv that after the election the prime minister, “whoever it is, needs to come to Washington immediately and recruit the American president to a serious, substantive, viable initiative – an Israeli initiative, which the Americans can get behind.”
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Doug Ross @ Journal

Kudos to Graeme Wood of The Atlantic, whose tour de force backgrounder on the burgeoning Caliphate in the Middle East (“What ISIS Really Wants“) is the kind of journalism that vintage media should engage in, but never does.

The entire article is an absolute must-read, but a digest version — summarizing the key graphs — is excerpted below. It’s a very short-form version of Graeme’s work, which you simply must read when you have the time to fully absorb it. The gravity of his findings cannot be overstated.

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The left controls such centers because it invested decades of effort in doing so. The right doesn’t even try

By Evelyn Gordon

One of the more perceptive responses to the recent uproar over the composition of the Israel Prize juries came from columnist Ariana Melamed. Responding to the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s complaint that these juries have become a “private playground of the radical Left,”Melamed retorted, “while it’s true that a huge number of leftists have won the prize, that [is] only because the right has failed to establish an alternative to an elite that began turning to the left way back when Begin was giving speeches in city squares.”

Though her explanation of this failure is ludicrous (she essentially argues that great artists and intellectuals almost by definition vote left), the failure itself is undeniable. Because an intellectual or cultural elite isn’t just a random collection of individuals who produce intellectual or cultural output; it’s a power center. And while Israel’s center-right produces both intellectuals and artists, not only has it failed to mobilize these resources to pose any real challenge to the left’s cultural dominance, but for the most part, it hasn’t even tried. Instead, it makes do with whining about the leftist elites’ lock on intellectual and cultural power centers, from universities to the legal establishment to the media to the Israel Prizes. Read more…

The prime minister knows his rival-partner may one day be his successor. That’s why he keeps him close but belittles him at every turn.

By Yonit Levi and Udi Segal, HAARETZ

During the summer conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, Naftali Bennett went on a verbal offensive, harshly censuring Benjamin Netanyahu. First came criticisms by anonymous “cabinet ministers” of Israel’s restrained approach. Then the far-right-wing leader of the Habayit Hayehudi party blasted the prime minister and the army’s top brass during a cabinet meeting, calling their approach rigid, uncreative and not daring enough. Another minister said at the time that Bennett had fashioned himself as Israel’s new “Mr. Security”; the chief of staff, defense minister and prime minister all rolled into one.

Bennett’s bluster recalls the language and tone of another young, charismatic, fluent-English-speaking individual from some 20 years ago. That man claimed to understand Israeli politics better than any other politician and the Middle East better than any left-wing leader (including those who built the state, unified Jerusalem and shaped modern-day Israel). He also asserted that he knew America better than Americans themselves. That man is Netanyahu. And he still believes all these things today.
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Invitation to the Feb 24 event

How to facilitate the reform of UNRWA

Location:  10125 Baywood Court, Los Angeles, CA 90077

6:00 PM

RSVP  sakesq@aol.com

[Read also Obama defends Islam at all cost]

This essay was read by Mike Gallagher on his radio talk show a few days ago. It was effective. He had so many e-mail requests about where to find it that he posted it on his Face Book fan page. Mike said that a listener had sent it to him, so he could not vouch for all of the listings included in the essay.

President Obama: This is why you didn’t go to France.

It was you who told an Islamic dinner – “I am one of you.”

It was you who on ABC News referenced – “My Muslim faith.”

It was you who gave $100 million in U.S. taxpayer funds to re-build foreign mosques.

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Bennett: The Likud Cannot Be Counted On When it Counts
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“We voted for Likud once before, and they gave away Hevron,” Bennett said, referring to the 1998 Wye River Agreement which gave the Palestinian Authority control over most of that city.

“We voted for Likud again and we got the disengagement,” as Ariel Sharon did not call new elections before throwing 10,000 Jews out of Gaza and northern Samaria.

“We voted for Likud yet again, and we got a speech at Bar-Ilan University,” in which Netanyahu said that he was committed to establishing a Palestinian state

Dr. Hagai Ben-Artzi warns: by rejecting Netanyahu’s willingness to cooperate, Jewish Home is hurting Religious Zionism.

By Benny Tokar, INN

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s brother-in-law, Dr. Hagai Ben-Artzi, believes that the decline in the polls of the Jewish Home party is not accidental, he told Arutz Sheva Wednesday.

“I would give advice to the Jewish Home; in recent weeks they broadcast bluntly they do not believe the prime minister,” he noted. “Netanyahu says continuously and consistently that he will include Jewish Home in the coalition; he has learned his mistakes [from previous elections]. And for this reason, I do not like so much what they have been stating publicly recently, that they do not believe he will include them in the government.”

“This line is a problem, and it’s better for them to publish a different line: that we do believe the prime minister, but it would be great if we can have more influence,” he added. Read more…

A 17-year-old has rallied hundreds of young Muslims in Oslo to protect Jews as they pray in synagogue this Saturday.

By Hana Levi Julian, JEWISH PRESS

A 17-year-old Muslim teen has rallied hundreds of young Muslims in Oslo who say they plan to protect Jews as they pray on Sabbath in synagogue this Saturday. The group says they’ll form a “peace ring” around the Jewish house of worship in the Norwegian capital.

Hajrad Arshad told state broadcaster NRK she initially called for 30 volunteers. Instead, at least 630 have risen to the challenge. She and her six co-organizers are part of a Facebook discussion forum called URETT AVSLØRES, “Injustice Revealed.”
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JEWISH PRESS

Israel’s High Court has ruled that Israeli Arab candidate Balad MK Hanin Zoabi can run for re-election — despite her numerous statements, and actions, in support of terrorists from the Palestinian Authority.

In addition, the Court ruled Israel’s electoral authority must also allow Yachad candidate Baruch Marzel to run in the country’s national election on March 17 as well.

A panel of nine judges voted 8-1 in favor of reinstating both, with Deputy Supreme Court President Elyakim Rubenstein as the sole dissenting justice. The decision on the matter was moved up due to the proximity of the election. Read more…

By Michael Curtis, AMERICAN THINKER

In recent days, the dark ideology of Islamic terrorism has been implemented, among other places, by massacres in a kosher deli in Paris, in Belgium towns, outside a synagogue in Copenhagen, and in Libya where dozens of Christian Copts have been murdered.  It must be countered.

Destiny makes Saudi Arabia crucial in the war against terrorism. Despite the fact that is responsible for funding and supporting the development of jihad and Islamist terrorism, it must now change its strategy and transform itself into the key leader in the war against what has become the Islamist menace to all civilization, including its own.

Saudi Arabia is a Janus-head personified, politically and religiously, by an agreement made in 1744 when the leader of the Saud family made a pact with the founder of Wahhabism, the extreme form of Sunni Islam. In exchange for their support of the Saud family, that family would protect followers of Wahhabism and adhere to its doctrine. The country still rests on that pact, an alliance between the royal family and the ulema, the religious elite of scholars. The wheels of change grind slowly in Saudi Arabia, a country led by a ruling family, the aging sons of the King Abdulaziz, the founder of the regime in 1932. Read more…

A Green and Pleasant Land

Long-awaited winter rains, plus my recent trip to the Arava in southern Israel are the inspiration for this week’s blog.  The Arava region in Israel’s Negev “desert” now produces 60% of Israel’s exports of food crops, right alongside massive fields of solar panels.  It is a microcosm of Israel’s advanced agricultural technologies that combine with its cleantech innovations to help generate a green and sustainable planet.

My journey south centered around Kibbutz Ketura, just 50km north of Eilat, which hosts theArava Institute for Environmental Studies.  It also contains a 5MegaWatt solar field, with self-cleaning robots, built by Arava Power, which is now constructing a 40MW field just across the road.  It has a factory growing special algae that makes Ketura the world’s leading source of the natural anti-oxidant astaxanthin.

(Algae growing frames – Kibbutz Ketura.  Photo by M.Ordman) Read more…

Martin Indyk also slams PM for plans to speak to Congress: US won’t suddenly say ‘Oh, we’re negotiating a bad deal, silly us’

BY RAPHAEL AHREN, TOI

The United States should offer Israel a “nuclear guarantee” before signing an agreement with Iran about its rogue nuclear program, a former top American foreign policy official suggested Tuesday.

Martin Indyk, a former American envoy to Israel and mediator in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, said such a deal would serve to assuage Jerusalem’s fear about Tehran violating the deal and subsequently dashing toward a bomb.

“The United States can afford to have Iran as a near-threshold nuclear power. And Israel is saying it can’t. And that’s related to the very different security circumstances of the US and Israel,” Indyk said during a panel discussion at the Institute for National Security Studies’ annual conference in Tel Aviv. “Instead of having an argument about that, the United States should enter immediately into discussions with Israel about a nuclear guarantee for Israel.”
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T. Belman.  If the Iranians would make such a deal which really destroys them for violating it, then there is no reason for wanting to be a thresh hold state.  Why make such a deal in the first place. Better to avoid the war by insisting that they give up their centrifuges. Besides, Israel has learnt not to rely on US guarantees.

Speaking in Tel Aviv, Dennis Ross says the White House and Congress could work together to agree in advance what the price of violations will be.
By Herb Keinon, JPOST

Congressional legislation mandating US military action against Iran in case it breaches commitments under the accord being negotiated may be one way of bridging gaps between the US and Israel over the Iranian nuclear issue, Dennis Ross said on Tuesday.

Former Middle East envoy Ross, who from 2009-2011 was a key White House official dealing with Iran, told the annual conference of the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv that the US must be clear in any agreement what the consequences would be for Iranian violations. Read more…

T. Belman. Yishai’s party will be demanding a very pro settlement policy. So will Bennett’s party. Netanyahu has assured voters that Bayit Yehudi will definitely be in his next government in order to attract Bayit Yehudi’s voters to Likud. Bennett argues that a strong Bayit will prevent the government from giving away more land. Bennett has also argues that Bibi may prefer a coalition with the Zionist Camp so that he doesn’t have to contend with pressure from Bennett and YIshai.

What will happen is that Yishai and Bennett and Liberman and Kahlon may agree on certain red lines as the price of joining the coalition, just as Bennett and Lapid agreed that they stand and fall together in joining the last government. If so they will have more seats than Likud. That means that together they will have more influence.

INN

In response to the IDF Civil Administration’s demolition on Tuesday morning of the Geulat Tzion community near Shiloh in Samaria, as well as several other homes in the area, Eli Yishai’s Yachad – Ha’am Itanu party pledged that once accepted into a coalition it will demand a paradigm shift in the way the government views Judea and Samaria.
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OUTSTANDING