By Rob Gordon, National Post

The Fort Edward blockhouse in Windsor, Nova Scotia is one of the the oldest wooden fortifications still standing in North America. It played a major role in the Explusion of the Acadians in 1755, helped defend Nova Scotia in the War of 1812 and, in a truly odd twist of history, assisted in the creation of the State of Israel.

Fort Edward sits atop a wind-swept hill over looking the former mill town of Windsor. The town has bragging rights as the birthplace of ice hockey and hometown to some of the world’s largest pumpkins.

But there is another less known boast; in the summer of 1917, Windsor was home to some of Israel’s founding fathers and the place where the forerunner of the Israeli Defence Force was forged. Read more…

by Isi Leibler

Although election fever currently dominates the national agenda, we should also recognize that today the state is at a turning point in its evolving relationship with the haredim – undoubtedly the most significant long-term challenge to Israeli society.

In 2012, the haredim accounted for one-sixth of the Jewish population. Currently they comprise 25 percent of school first-graders, the fastest-growing sector by far.

While frequently characterized as aliens, there is much in the haredi lifestyle to emulate. They shun hedonism and live modestly, focus on family values and they have an exemplary commitment to charity within their own ranks and maintain their high spiritual levels despite the materialism surrounding them.
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See also UN chief: State of Palestine will join ICC on April 1

The devastating prospects of Palestine joining the International Criminal Court has less to do with the chances of prosecution of soldiers, and more to do with the impact it will have on Israel’s precarious international image.

By Daniella Peled, HAARETZ

“We will not allow Israeli soldiers and officers to be dragged to [the International Criminal Court in] The Hague,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet this week. While it suits his scare-mongering to play on the Jewish state’s emotional link with its army, the chances of any of the nation’s children ever ending up in front of an international court are vanishingly small.

This doesn’t detract from the fact that Palestine joining the ICC is a devastating prospect. Its significance, however, has little to do with the likelihood of any actual prosecution.

Confusion, disinformation and – in the case of senior Israeli politicians – all-out hysteria has surrounded the Palestinian decision to sign the Rome Statute, the 2002 document that created the ICC. International humanitarian law, codified in the Geneva Conventions, has established extremely complex rules for the conduct of war and the Rome Statute enshrines the concept of “command responsibility” – that leaders can be held responsible if they fail to prevent their subordinates from committing crimes. Activists and pundits like to bandy about accusations of war crimes, but the ICC makes legal, not moral, judgements. Read more…

PM says he is open to two state solution, but ‘Palestinians have emptied it of any relevance.’

By Jonathan Lis, HAARETZ

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that if he is reelected on March 17, he will not evacuate any settlements during his term.

“I don’t see such a move as being practical at this point. Since I’m in charge it won’t happen,” he said in an interview with Channel 2.

Insisting that he was open to Palestinian statehood, as he first claimed in his 2009 Bar-Ilan speech, Netanyahu said, “The Palestinians have emptied it of any relevance. Instead of negotiating they are going to the International [Criminal] Court in The Hague, charging IDF soldiers with war crimes.”
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T. Belman: The more Israel accepts responsibility for Gaza, the more it will have to be part of the solution. Its seems we just can’t turn our backs on them like Egypt. This stresses just how much a failure disengagement was. Getting rid of 1.5 million Gazans from our considerations has not worked. The only thing that is permanent is the expulsions and the rockets.

Analysis: As the Egyptians are physically disengaging from Gaza, Israel is becoming increasingly involved in the Strip and is close to returning to the pre-disengagement days.

By Alex Fishman, YNET

Operation Protective Edge sent Israel back to Gaza – big time. In the coming days, when the army summarizes the operation’s lessons, it won’t be able to ignore this outstanding strategic achievement that the IDF and political echelon served the state’s citizens with as a gift for 2015.

The Egyptians are moving away from Gaza, while Israel is reconnecting to the Strip in an embrace which will lead us very soon back to the pre-disengagement days.

On the eve of the operation, Israel planned to weaken Hamas, but it now finds itself reinforcing the Islamist organization economically and humanitarianly. And it is not only reinforcing Hamas, it is also rattled by every sniper or every rocket someone discharges there.
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By Niv Elas, JPOST

Economy Minister Naftali Bennett is tired of hearing people complaining about the state of the economy.

“In recent times there is a trend of saying how bad everything is in Israel, and I want to say that it’s good in Israel,” he said at the Foreign Trade Conference in Tel Aviv.

“We have a strong economy, we have an economy that is growing very nicely, our exports to Europe are growing – they grew nearly 10 percent in the last year – our hi-tech is at a record in terms of Israeli companies’ IPOs and the number of new investments in Israeli companies,” he continued.

Half of Israel’s exports were hi-tech, a statistic he said was unmatched in the world.
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Should Israel Bury the Idea of a “Negotiated Peace Deal” with the Arabs?
Can Peace really be negotiated with the local Arabs aka or so-called Palestinians sic?

By Batya Medad, Shiloh Musings

Israeli policy has been based on such a premise for a dangerously long time. I’m not just talking about the past few years. Many Israeli leaders have been dreaming of this since even before the beginning of the State of Israel. Labor Zionists have considered Peace to be something attainable if only we’d…

Never have mainstream Israeli leaders dared accept the unpleasant fact that there is absolutely nothing we can do to make the Arabs accept a viable Jewish state here. They, meaning we though not me and my ilk personally, have tried everything possible to show how nice, friendly and tolerant we can be. Whatever other country would accept enemy wounded into our hospitals as proof of “apology” for shooting back after being attacked?  Yep, it does sound pretty dumb.
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The odds of life existing on another planet grow ever longer. Intelligent design, anyone?

By ERIC METAXAS, WSJ

Ted Belman. In my up-coming lecture titled The Trouble With The Peace Process, I wrote as a sub-title, “How the US and the EU are to blame for its failure.” This article cites one example only that places the blame on them. I have many more.

By Jonathan S. Tobin, COMMENTARY

On yesterday’s New York Times op-ed page, former veteran State Department Middle East hand Dennis Ross made a strong case for the world to stop “giving the Palestinians a pass” for actions intended to derail the peace process. In doing so Ross is taking up the cudgels for the position of the Obama administration against that of its European allies on the question of tolerating a Palestinian diplomatic offensive at the United Nations and the International Criminal Court. Both he and the administration are correct that the Palestinian Authority is sabotaging peace by abandoning negotiations and seeking instead to use international pressure to brand Israel as a pariah. But what Ross leaves out of his argument is as interesting as what he says. The proof that his position is correct lies in the history of his own failures and that of the administrations he served as they wrongly appeased the Palestinians and instead pressured Israel.
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By David M. Weinberg, Israel Hayom,

One year ago, I forecast — accurately — that in 2014 U.S. President Barack Obama would continue to fudge the nuclear issue with Iran. I also foresaw that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would agree to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s formula for a Palestinian state based on the 1967 lines, but that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas would cut and run from the negotiations at the last moment. Easy predictions. But I was wrong in expecting to see the hero of the social protest movement Professor Manuel Trajtenberg join Moshe Kahlon’s new political party. Instead, he recently joined the ranks of Labor. I was also wrong in hoping and praying to see Natan Sharansky named the president of Israel, instead of Reuven Rivlin.

Looking into my crystal ball for the year ahead, this is what I see: The March Knesset elections: The vote will yield five main blocs of more or less equal size — Likud, Labor, Habayit Hayehudi, the ultra-Orthodox parties, and some kind of Kahlon-Yair Lapid-Avigdor Lieberman league — making for convoluted and unstable coalition politics. The only way to overcome this and craft a workable government will be to establish a Likud-Labor national unity government. As usual, Netanyahu will tack to the Right for the duration of the election season and then revert back toward the center after the vote.
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T. Belman. Bolton rightfully argues that the US should reject out of hand any resolution that circumvents its policy of requiring direct negotiations to achieve an agreement. Although the Obama Administration keeps repeating the mantra of direct negotiations, it still violated the principle of a negotiated solutions by embracing in advance of such negotiations, borders which are based on ’67 lines plus swaps. To do so limits the scope of negotiations.

An influx of new Security Council members means a likely ‘yes’ vote—and a veto dilemma for Obama.

By JOHN BOLTON, Wall Street Journal
Jan. 2, 2015

Long-standing Palestinian efforts to use the United Nations to achieve internationally recognized statehood status nearly succeeded early Wednesday. Just after midnight, the Security Council narrowly rejected a Jordanian draft resolution fixing a one-year deadline for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, requiring Israeli withdrawal to pre-1967 lines, and declaring Jerusalem the capital of “Palestine.”

Because the U.N. Charter requires nine affirmative votes from among the Security Council’s 15 members (assuming no vetoes) to pass a resolution, Jordan’s proposal failed—by one vote. There were eight in favor, two against, and five abstentions. Nonetheless, a pro-Palestinian, U.N. Charter-compliant majority may soon exist.

And absent more-effective U.S. diplomacy, the Obama administration could soon face making a choice that it would dearly like to avoid: whether to veto a biased, anti-Israel resolution. The Palestinian Authority has already significantly upped the ante by moving, later on Wednesday, to join the treaty creating the International Criminal Court.
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Israel Electric Corporation CEO warns security chiefs of possible disturbances as NIS 1.7 billion debt leads to decision to stop electricity to the Palestinian Authority.

By Billie Frenkel, YNET

The Israel Electric Corporation CEO Eli Glickman warned Israel’s security chiefs in a letter sent Sunday that the company would have to limit electricity to territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority and the Jerusalem District Energy Company (JEDCO) – which buys electricity from Israel and sells it to various cities in the West Bank – because of a debt totalling NIS 1,700,843,315.

The letter was addressed to National Security Advisor Yossi Cohen, Shin Bet Chief Yoram Cohen, Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories Maj.-Gen. Yoav Mordechai, Head of the Operations Directorate of the IDF Maj.-Gen. Yoav Har-Even, and Police Commissioner Maj.-Gen. Yohanan Danino.
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According to Sharansky, “the overwhelming majority” of Jewish émigrés from France, possibly up to 70 percent, choose to go to Israel.

By SAM SOKOL, HERB KEINON, JPOST

Some 50,000 French Jews asked the Jewish Agency for information about immigrating to Israel in 2014, and the Jewish Agency is holding two information seminars a day in France, whereas a year ago it held only one a month, Natan Sharansky told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

Interviewed in his Jerusalem office, the Jewish Agency chairman said that while it is difficult for many “Israelis to accept any compliment for themselves” and while they may find it hard to believe, “this is the first year that there are more immigrants from the free world.”

While critics counter that there is no reason to be proud of the recent increases in immigration, which in the cases of the largest sources of immigrants – France and Ukraine – stem from a combination of anti-Semitism and economic factors, Sharansky said that French Jews have a choice of where to move, and they have overwhelmingly chosen to come here.
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By Steve Shamrak

1. While the Government restricts the building of Jewish homes, the Arabs have built a mosque 200 meters from Menachem Begin’s kever.

2. There are over 3,000 illegal Arab apartments in Jerusalem . No action is taken against them.

3. While there are 18 Police Stations in Jerusalem , there isn’t one Police Station in the Arab populated quarter, a den of violence.

4. In November, there were 571 assaults against Jews in Jerusalem . This is more than the total assaults against Jews in the rest of the world combined.

The government of Israel is still trying to get the acceptance of the rest of the world. They don’t realize that is about as likely as European Jews getting the acceptance of the Nazis!

Where did the Leaders of the Fake People Come from?
YASSER ARAFAT Born 24 August 1929 – Cairo, Egypt.
SAEB EREKAT Born April 28, 1955 – Jordan, still Jordanian citizen.
SARI NUSSEIBEH Born in 1949 – Damascus, Syria.
MAHMOUD AL-ZAHAR Born in 1945 – Cairo, Egypt.
FAISAL ABDEL QADER AL-HUSSEINI – Born in 1948 – Bagdad , Iraq.
Note: The family of Muhammad Abbas moved to Tzfat from Damascus, Syria!

Ted Belman. This is not the first fundamental breach committed by the PA. In every case Israel chose not to abrogate the deal. The Accords are not just a contract, they are like a constitution in which powers are assigned to different levels of government. In Canada the provinces are given certain powers to legislate and the federal government other powers. The same for the US. Oslo defines the powers for the PA and for Israel. These powers vary depending on whether we are talking about A, B or C. Israel wants to maintain this division of powers. Having said that she also allows the PA to violate Israel’s powers over Area C. Israel, as they say, should fish or cut bait which means she should either enforce it or abrogate it.

By Alan Baker, JCPA

1. The peace negotiation process as set out in the Oslo Accords was intended to lead to peace between Israel and the Palestinian People and mutual recognition of each other’s “mutual legitimate and political rights” (Preamble, Oslo I and Oslo II).

2. In this context Israel was prepared to compromise on the historic and legal rights of the Jewish People in the area, through agreement for peaceful relations. To this end the parties agreed in the Oslo Accords not to initiate or take any steps that will change the status of the territories pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations (Oslo II, Article 31(7)).

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The video and transcript to the panel discussion “The War on Israel and the Middle East,” which took place at the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s 20th Anniversary Restoration Weekend. The event was held Nov. 13th-16th at the Breakers Resort in Palm Beach, Florida are posted at FPM

Daniel Pipes, Daniel Greenfield and Caroline Glick took part in this panel. You can either watch the video or read the transcript.

DON’T MISS IT.

Daniel Pipes:I’d like to make three geostrategic points in my few minutes, and I apologize in advance for having to leave, but the plane schedule is as it is.  The first point is that — and this has been said before, I’d like to reiterate it — that Iran is a far greater threat than ISIS, and we are making an extraordinary mistake in joining with the Iranians against ISIS.  Need one point out that ISIS has perhaps $5 million a day in oil revenue and 15,000 troops and, granted, a dynamism, but that Iran is a powerful state of 75 million people, an oil revenue in the hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars, and an army of hundreds of thousands and, of course, a terror network and is building up their weapons?  I would predict to you, ladies and gentleman, that ISIS, which appeared so suddenly, will disappear suddenly as well because it has so many enemies, it is so overextended, it is trying to do so much at the same time that it is going to collapse before very long and it is going to disappear as a state whereas Iran is going to be a longer lasting entity.

CONTINUE

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The long years of propaganda on the vision of “two states for two peoples” blocked the most basic desire that exists in most Israeli citizens – not to give up the territory captured in the blood in a defensive war. The solution: the annexation of the whole country, without fear of the Arab minority who sits where

Tzipi Hotoveli
[Google translation]

Numbers on Levi Eshkol after the Six-Day War said “dowry beautiful but I do not like the Bride”. This sentence is the essence of the Israeli fear annexing Judea and Samaria: Dealing with the Arab problem. Left built a security fence and agreed to establish a Palestinian state would endanger Israel, and the right was waiting for a miracle – voluntary migration may occur, or you might decide to adopt Jordanians of Palestinian brethren. Both sides are looking for a magic solution would sweep the Arab equation. Over the years, got a huge settlement enterprise, but the political right political passivity socket. When Beilin ran Geneva, right running hills and squares – and as more and adapting his prophecies against vision Beilin, the greater the erosion of most Israeli leaders in the opposite direction. Lieberman, Netanyahu, torch and Yachimovitch, and even Bennett is willing to annex only the Area C, they all speak the language of Oslo.
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By by Raymond Ibrahim

Speaking before Al-Azhar and the Awqaf Ministry on New Year’s Day, 2015, and in connection to Prophet Muhammad’s upcoming birthday, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a vocal supporter for a renewed vision of Islam, made what must be his most forceful and impassioned plea to date on the subject.

Among other things, Sisi said that the “corpus of [Islamic] texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the years” are  “antagonizing the entire world”; that it is not “possible that 1.6 billion people [reference to the world’s Muslims] should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants—that is 7 billion—so that they themselves may live”; and that Egypt (or the Islamic world in its entirety) “is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost—and it is being lost by our own hands.”
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T. Belman. TOI has chosen to side with Della Pergola instead of Yoram Ettinger, whom they call an extremist. Who can blame them because so does COGAT which is run by Yaalon and Netanyahu. I, for one am sticking with Ettinger.

Palestinian demographic survey highly inflated
By Ben Cohen, The Algemeiner, December 30, 2014

The latest demographic survey of the Palestinian population by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics overestimates the number of Palestinians resident between the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan by around 1.2 million, a leading Israeli expert on demography has told The Algemeiner.

Ambassador Yoram Ettinger, a former Israeli diplomat who now works as lecturer and consultant and is well-known in policy circles for his research on Palestinian and Israeli demography, said that the Palestinian statistics, released yesterday, “are inflated by more than 1 million in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and by almost 400,000 in Gaza.” CONTINUE

The end of the monopoly of Israel’s “demographers of doom”

By Kobi Michael, senior researcher, INSS

“Strategic Assessment,” Institute for National Security Studies, , December 31, 2014

Excerpts from “The Weight of the Demographic Factor in Israel’s Strategic Considerations on the Palestinian Issue”

“The demographic issue has become a source of profound controversy in Israel. Many see the demographic processes as a threat to the future of Israel as a state that is both Jewish and democratic, thereby necessitating rapid disengagement from the Palestinians, whether by means of a negotiated settlement or unilateral steps. Others dispute the need for panic, pointing instead to data indicating much more moderate trends: the Jewish majority will continue and even grow, both in the State of Israel proper and in the whole of the western land of Israel, certainly if the Gaza Strip is excluded….

“…In 2013 the Institute for Zionist Strategies published an updated, comprehensive study…. The most significant differences [from the “demographers of doom”] indicate that the number of Palestinians in the PA is lower by 0.7-1.3 million than the number presented by the more alarmist approach and the data of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. Moreover, the data shows a Jewish majority in all of [the area west of the Jordan River] today and a more significant majority in the coming two decades, especially if the Gaza Strip is excluded from the equation. CONTINUE

BY ELHANAN MILLER, TOI

The number of Jews and Arabs between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea has always been of interest to pundits and politicians on both sides of Israel’s political divide.

But as rampant Middle East violence and a fragmented Palestinian body politic make the prospect of normalization with the Palestinians seem more distant than ever to most Israelis, the “demographic issue” — as it is often called — has taken center stage, shifting the political debate in Israel from the likelihood of regional peace to the threat to Israel’s democratic character. Read more…