No people threatened by an aggressor and fighting for their existence has been vilified for using their full forces to prevail, except Israel.

by Rabbi Benjamin Blech, AISH

The Internet is all a-Twitter about Jordan’s King Abdulla. Almost overnight the King has become an international hero. As one Google headline put it, “The Internet has fallen in love with the warrior King.”

Seems that the world agrees with the way Abdulla responded to the horrific murder of a Jordanian pilot. In a grisly execution videotaped by barbaric ISIS leaders, Lt. Moaz al-Kasasbeh, was placed in a cage, doused with a flammable liquid and set afire to a slow and agonizing death. The King was in America at the time meeting with President Obama when he learned of the gruesome execution. Immediately thereafter he told U.S. lawmakers in a closed door meeting that he would pursue the group responsible until Jordan’s military runs “out of fuel and bullets.”
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By Ted Belman

Under Obama, America has been in retreat all over the world. Under his watch Russia, Iran and ISIS have gained strength and territory. As a result he has come under intense criticism. But there is no consensus as to what the foreign policy should be.

America is tired of being the world’s policeman and tired of promoting her values around the world and confused as to what her values should be in the future. At the same time it doesn’t like the instability that’s its withdrawal has engendered. It doesn’t like the expansionism of Russia nor the expansionism of Iran as it extends its influence over Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen. It also doesn’t like the brutality of ISIS.

What to do?
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JEWISH PRESS

8:07 AM The young Jewish man who was killed by the terrorist has been identified as the synagogue’s guard. There was an event happening at the Great Synagogue in Copenhagenat the time.

7:37 AM According to reports from Copenhagen, police surrounded the suspected terrorist and tried to arrest him. A shootout began, and the police killed him. No police were injured. The police had already been keeping the address where the terrorist was shot “under observation”.

7:20 AM Copenhagen police shoot dead the man believed to be the terrorist.

7:00 AM There are reports of gunfire exchanged between police and the terrorist near Nørrebro Station, 1 person was hit. Read more…

Erick Stakelbeck of The Watchman interviews former Israeli Ambassador Yoram Ettinger and White House correspondent Bill Koenig.

VIDEO

Ettinger and Koenig are two people I know well and keep in touch with. They certainly know what they are talking about.

The interview which runs for 22 minutes, starts slow and then really picks up. Definitely worth the time.

By Mike Konrad, AmericanThinker

When one thinks of mass murder, Hitler comes to mind. If not Hitler, then Tojo, Stalin, or Mao. Credit is given to the 20th-century totalitarians as the worst species of tyranny to have ever arisen. However, the alarming truth is that Islam has killed more than any of these, and may surpass all of them combined in numbers and cruelty.

The enormity of the slaughters of the “religion of peace” are so far beyond comprehension that even honest historians overlook the scale. When one looks beyond our myopic focus, Islam is the greatest killing machine in the history of mankind, bar none.

The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. — Will Durant, as quoted on Daniel Pipes site.
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U.S.-Israel Trade and Commercial Enhancement Act

By James Jeffrey, WaPo

The Obama administration sent to Congress last week its secondreport on national security strategy. These updates are mainly a dry inventory of our aspirations, what’s happening in the world and what the United States can do in response, rather than a true strategy. That was the case for this one as well, but bits of it reveal much about how President Obama views the world. Combined with his recentinterview by Fareed Zakaria on CNN, his State of the Union address last month and his speech last May at West Point, we can glean a good summary of the president’s basic principles for security policy. Unfortunately, that summary is troubling.
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Shirley Lewis. If Israelis knew that Iran is violating the interim agreement, they would all vote right, knowing that voting left is appeasing the appeaser/collaborator Obama – and that it takes a Bibi to tell the world what is really up with iran. If Americans knew that Iran is violating the interim agreement, they would know that any “agreement” Obama sign with Iran would not be worth the paper it is written on and demand that their Congresspeople tell Obama “no more “talks”, we are tightening the sanctions screws”. Obama and the Lefty press, both US and Israeli are covering up this.

By Joel Pollack, BREITBART

In his State of the Union address on Jan. 20, President Barack Obama claimed: “Our diplomacy is at work with respect to Iran, where, for the first time in a decade, we’ve halted the progress of its nuclear program and reduced its stockpile of nuclear material. Between now and this spring, we have a chance to negotiate a comprehensive agreement that prevents a nuclear-armed Iran; secures America and our allies — including Israel; while avoiding yet another Middle East conflict.”

None of that is true. The chances of an agreement have dropped sharply, and even the most optimistic analysts do not expect a deal that “prevents a nuclear-armed Iran,” but only one that puts nuclear “breakout” out of reach for a while. Most important of all, we have not “halted the progress” of Iran’s nuclear program. Earlier this month, the Tehran regime announced that it was building two new reactors, and is thought to be behind a suspected facility planned in Syria as well.
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By NOAM AMIR/MAARIV HASHAVUA , JPOST

This coming Monday, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz will end his four year term and will be replaced by Maj.-Gen. Gadi Eisenkot. Waiting on Eisenkot’s desk are some chilling security assessments including the potential risk that the security situation in the West Bank will deteriorate in the near future.

Over the past weeks, in the context of Gantz’s farewells to the various IDF divisions, the outgoing Chief of Staff spoke again and again about the fragile security reality in the West Bank. Gantz even spoke of the influence of politics on the territory, probably in reference to the upcoming Israeli elections and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ unilateral moves in international bodies.
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After far too many concessions, President Obama must ensure that Tehran disarms

BY MORTIMER B. ZUCKERMAN, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Iran believes time is on its side to build a nuclear bomb and the means to deliver it. Only an optimist blind to the history of Iran’s clandestine ways and the labyrinthine story of the negotiations from 2003 could think otherwise following our grant of a second extension of time.

There was a time during negotiations when Iran froze most of its program and kept up with its commitments. That promise of hope was unfortunately disproved when President Obama led the 5+1 not simply in an extension of time, but inducements to keep talking:

Ok, Tehran you can keep your underground Fordow fuel enrichment plant; you don’t have to dismantle your Arak plutonium facility; you can maintain the right to enrich uranium; and forget what we have been saying for years about getting rid of all your centrifuges, those spinning cylinders that enrich uranium potentially to weapons grade for a nuclear bomb.
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Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought: a US-Israel Initiative”
“Israel Hayom”, February 13, 2015, http://bit.ly/1KSVW9h

In defiance of the anti-Israel BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions), diplomatic pressure, regional and global geo-political instability, continued global economic uncertainties and the overall anti-Israel talk brouhaha, Israel demonstrates a robust walk, as evidenced (and impacted) by an expanding net-immigration and a faster-than-expected economic recoveryfrom the 2014 war on Hamas terrorists in Gaza.

 According to the February 3, 2015, Economist Intelligence Unit,“the July-August war in Gaza appears to have had only a transient effect on the economy…. Private sector job creation has played a more significant role with strong expansion.  Employment in this relatively well-paid category rose by 5.2% year on year…. The fall in the unemployment rate comes despite a rise in the participation rate among the core 25-64 year age group from 75.1% in the third quarter of 2013 to 75.8% in the final quarter of 2014, and a modest increase in the share of full time employed persons…. The unemployment rate averaged 5.9% in 2014, compared with 6.3% in 2013, having fallen to a record low of 5.7% in the final quarter of 2014…. The unemployment rate in Israel compares well with the 7.2% among OECD member states….”

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Ted Belman. Allow me to remind you that Obama and Bibi differed in public on the Arab Spring. Bibi was right.

In this present disagreement, I would have expected our “friend” Obama to say something to the effect to Israel, “Don’t worry I have got your back. I have gotten Iran to commit to not trying to wipe you out.” and “I have arranged for Iran to open diplomatic relations with you.” But no such luck. Not even a pretense of Israel’s interests being protected.

Keep one more thing in mind. A la Mearsheimer and Walt, the US state Department has considered Israel a liability in their attempts to improve relations with the Arabs. They have wanted shuck the Israel albatross ever since it was created.

By Alex Markovsky

In this turbulent era, which Henry Kissinger described as one of “war of all against all,” the United States is proceeding to make a strategic choice existential to the state of Israel.

On November 24, 2013, in Geneva, Switzerland, the United States and the P5+1countries signed an interim agreement with Iran to temporarily freeze parts of the Iranian nuclear program. The Obama administration could hardly contain its euphoria. The president proclaimed that the diplomacy of the U.S. and its allies “opened up a new path toward a world that is more secure.” Secretary of State Kerry was not far behind when he said, “It will make our ally Israel safer”
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Ted Belman. But more important, can Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia come together in joint defense? Remember that ISIS is as much a threat to each of them as it is to all of them.

By Dore Gold, ISRAEL HAYOM

Since the middle of last year, the U.S. outreach to Iran on the nuclear issue has been accompanied by an assumption in parts of the American foreign policy establishment that the two countries were on the verge of establishing a new political partnership covering the Middle East.

Last October, The Wall Street Journal even ran an article headlined: “U.S. Iran Relations Move to Detente.” It suggested that American policy toward Iranian proxies in the Middle East, from Hezbollah to Hamas, might change as well. Dr. Vali Nasr, who advised the State Department on Iran during the Obama administration, commented that “although we see Turkey and the Arab states as our closest allies, our interests and policies are converging with Iran.”
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Ted Belman. I do not believe that Abbas agreed to these terms.
I attended a lecture last night by Khaled Abu Toameh and he said that Abbas won’t agree to a deal even if there are 10 more peace processes. PA incitement prevents it.

Peres — acting with Netanyahu’s support — was set to finalize framework with Abbas when PM changed his mind, sources say; PMO denies account

BY AVI ISSACHAROFF, TOI

In the summer of 2011, then-president Shimon Peres and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas were close to reaching a framework agreement that would have enabled Israel and the PA to restart peace negotiations, Israeli and Palestinian sources told The Times of Israel.

In conversations in various European capitals and in Amman over the course of a year, the two reached far-reaching informal understandings, with the knowledge and support of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

But according to numerous Israeli and Palestinian sources, on July 28 of that year, right before an important meeting between Peres and Abbas in which the president was due to present the PM’s formal authorization of the understandings, Netanyahu backtracked and pulled his support for the initiative.
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Analysis: While Assad and Iran-backed Hezbollah forces are indeed advancing towards the Israeli-Syrian border, their inability to defeat the rebels is preventing them from reaching their next goal – opening a front against Israel from Syria.

By Ron Ben Yishai, YNET

The onslaught being led by Syrian President Bashar Assad together with Hezbollah and Iranian forces south of Damascus, in the direction of Israel’s border, is intended to relieve some of the rebel pressure on his embattled capital city. For years, Assad has tried to uproot rebel strongholds and prevent the different Islamist rebel factions from uniting, especially the Nusra Front, which has planted itself firmly in the city of Daraa near the border between Jordan and the Syrian Golan Heights.

As of now, Assad’s army has failed at every one of its objectives: uprooting rebels from the suburbs of Damascus, cutting rebel supply lines and hitting the rebel strongholds in the Golan Heights hard. The Syrian army has tried – unsuccessfully – to take over the main road connecting Damascus and Daraa as well as the Syrian side of the Golan Heights no less than three times.rf
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By Martin Sherman, JPOST

Iran has exploited… turmoil to pursue positions of power within other countries beyond the control of national authorities, such as in Lebanon and Iraq, and while developing a nuclear program of potentially global consequence… Nuclear talks with Iran began as an international effort, buttressed by six UN resolutions, to deny Iran the capability to develop a military nuclear option. They are now an essentially bilateral negotiation over the scope of that capability… The impact of this approach will be to move from preventing proliferation to managing it
– Henry Kissinger, before the US Senate Committee on Armed Services, January 29, 2015

Israel has no foreign policy, only domestic policy
– Henry Kissinger

These citations from the doyen of American strategic diplomacy – one from a statement delivered last month, the other, a remark made decades ago – capture the essence of the brouhaha that has erupted over the invitation extended to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by Speaker of the US House of Representatives John Boehner to address a joint session of Congress on March 3.
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By de-judaizing the victims, who were targets only because they were Jews, Obama denied the uniqueness of the threat jihadist Islam and its adherents pose to Jews.

By Carolione Glick,  JPOST

Swastika spraypainted on a wall at a Jewish fraternity house near UC Davis. (photo credit:YOUTUBE SCREENSHOT)

This week, apropos of seemingly nothing, in an interview with Mathew Yglesias from the Vox.com website, Obama was asked about terrorism. In his answer the president said the terrorism threat is overrated. And that was far from the most disturbing statement he made.

Moving from the general to the specific, Obama referred to the jihadists who committed last month’s massacres in Paris as “a bunch of violent vicious zealots,” who “randomly shot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris.”

In other words, Ahmedy Coulibaly, the terrorist at Hyper Cacher, the kosher supermarket he targeted, was just some zealot. The Jews he murdered while they were shopping for Shabbat were just “a bunch of folks in a deli,” presumably shot down while ordering their turkey and cheese sandwiches.
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Ted Belman. Be careful when reading reports. The Iran axis wants you to believe that all forces challenging Assad are Jihadists. But that is not true. Apparently the Free Syrian Army is still in the game and want more support from the west. So the question is, is Israel getting in bed with Jihadists or the FSA when supporting forces fighting Syria? Does Israel want to be surrounded by Sunni Islamists or Shiite Islamists lead by Iran. I think Israel’s interests lie with supporting the Sunnis, including ISIS, because they represent a force that can destabilize Iran. The problem is that they can also destabilize Egypt and Saudi Arabia. So its very complicated. Remember the law of unintended consequences.

By ARIEL BEN SOLOMON, JPOST

Syrian rebels whose forces are fighting against a new offensive in the South by the axis of the Syrian Army, Hezbollah, and Iran, is calling on Israel to attack their positions.

An Israeli Druse who is in frequent contact with the Syrian opposition said that the warning came to alert the IDF, before the axis is able to take the Syrian Golan that borders Israel.
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Former Deputy Interior Minister Kirschenbaum claims Yisrael Beytenu, Yesh Atid and Kulanu planned to form a united bloc against Netanyahu.

By Ido Ben Porat and Elad Benari, INN

Former Deputy Interior Minister Faina Kirschenbaum, who was forced to resign from the Knesset due to suspicions of her involvement in the corruption scandal involving senior members of the Yisrael Beytenu party, on Thursday revealed a secret plot that was hatched to unseat Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

The details, revealed in a report on Channel 2 News, were exposed by Kirschenbaum during a private conversation.

“Before this scandal, the polls predicted that we would get between 16 and 18 seats and we agreed on a centrist bloc with [Moshe] Kahlon and Yesh Atid, ” she said, adding, “To this bloc, assuming that Netanyahu would have resigned, we would have added the Likud and formed a large national bloc that could have solved a lot of problems and led a lot of moves.”
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By Ted Belman

Israel has no obligation to deal only with Obama. She has every right to speak to the American people through their representatives in Congress. The latter is called public diplomacy as opposed to private diplomacy. Throughout the Mandate period, Weizmann and Ben Gurion were only prepared for private diplomacy. Not Jabotinsky. He favoured public diplomacy. He wanted to take the issue to the British people and so he did when he could.

Lt Col Howard, an intelligence expert, with whom I communicate, sent me this email he sent to Rob Eshman, Editor of the Jewish Journal:

After filing my posts commenting on articles that appeared in the Jewish Journal with the appropriate office in the US Defense Department, I was informed that a review of the Jewish Journal online at the Pentagon indicated that my posts had not been published in the Jewish Journal. If that is correct then the Jewish Journal misinformed me that my posts would be and had been published. Therefore, in order to reach your readers I plan to distribute my posts to journalists, Jewish leaders, distributors of several widely read blogs and members of the general public.
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