Last-minute decision for Tzipi Livni not to run in a ‘rotation’ agreement breaks campaign promises before polls even open, MKs fire.

By Tova Dvorin, INN

The announcement Monday that Tzipi Livni would not serve in a “rotation” agreement with Labor-Hatnua leader Yitzhak Herzog has drawn significant ire from MKs Monday night, who pointed out the poor timing of the announcement –the night before elections.

“The historic announcement of Livni and Herzog marks new lows in terms of broken promises,” MK Yariv Levin (Likud) stated Monday night. “If, until today, we had grown accustomed to the Left breaking its promises after elections, now these promises are being broken even before the polls open.”
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By Arlene Kushner

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By SCOTT ATRAN and DOUGLAS M. STONE, NYT

ERBIL, Iraq — THE Islamic State continues to control a huge section of Syria. But in Iraq, its advance has stalled. While Shiite militias and their Iranian allies fight the Islamic State ferociously, the Kurds have held a 640-mile front against the Islamic State’s advance. Their steadfastness should prompt America to rethink its alliances and interests in the region and to deepen its relationship with the Kurds — who are sometimes described as the world’s largest stateless nation.

Last week, the Sunni town of Tikrit (Saddam Hussein’s hometown) fell to largely Shiite forces from Iraq, backed by Iran. An offensive to retake Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city and the heart of Arab Sunni nationalism, is now within reach. The Kurds plan to enter eastern Mosul, where many Kurds lived before the Islamic State seizedthe city in June, but they say that moderate Arab Sunnis must lead the effort to retake the rest of the city — not Baghdad’s predominantly Shiite forces or the Iranian-backed Shiite militias. The Kurds point out that it was grievances against Shiite rule that helped drive Sunni support for the Islamic State in the first place.

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By Abraham Miller, JEWISH PRESS

BIBI’S PENCHANT FOR PICKING LEFT WINGERS LIKE OREN, LIVNI, BARAK, AND WEINSTEIN IS TO BLAME.

REUTERS

Israel must try to repair relations with the United States no matter who wins Tuesday’s election, said Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to Washington and a potential foreign minister if his party joins the next government.

“We have to do a major reach-out. There’s some work to be done,” Oren said, citing strained ties after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s March 3 speech to Congress assailing a potential nuclear deal with Iran sought by President Barack Obama.

The US-born Oren, 59, was appointed ambassador by Netanyahu in 2009 and served until 2013. He is running for parliament as a candidate of the centrist Kulanu party that could be a kingmaker in building a governing coalition after the poll.

In an interview with Reuters, Oren, a historian, said Israel needed to restore bipartisan Congressional support in the face of Democrats’ anger over Netanyahu’s acceptance of the Republican invitation to address Congress.

One way to try to achieve that, he said, would be to declare that Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank would be limited only to areas which Israel intends to keep in any future land-for-peace deal with the Palestinians.
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Professor says that right bloc more viable, but Netanyahu may need to reach out to Labor anyway to save his spot as Likud head.

By Gedalyah Reback, INN

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu might be fighting for his political life, as the Likud campaign ramps up late in the game to fight off the Zionist Camp’s polls advantage. If Likud does not lead the next coalition, or at the very least make it into a national unity government, questions will center around the viability of Netanyahu as the party’s leader in an era in which personalities dominate election campaigns.
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By Ariel ben Solomon, JPOST

The Joint (Arab) List could soon be in a dilemma: Should it recommend Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog to form the next government, if the alternative is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu? Would Herzog offer the Joint List enough goodies and promises so that it joins a leftwing coalition or at least cooperates with it? For the most part, the Joint List and its candidates have been clear that there is no chance they would join any government, since the conditions are not right.
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By Ron Jager, INN

The time is not ripe for change, no matter what the pollsters declare or what the press reports. And center-left parties and their leaders are simply unable to withstand political pressure when push comes to shove and simply back down.

Most critics of Prime Minister Netanyahu have been promoting an election strategy that recommends voting for center left political parties under the assumption that there are no longer any realdifferences in terms of security and defense issues between center left and the Likud. These home grown critics, many of them former Army Generals or former Security/Defense officials, in some instances funded by American Jewish liberals have claimed that even center left parties can make the right decisions when Israel’s security needs are challenged.
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by ANDREW C. MCCARTHY, NRO

Having the U.N. Security Council bless a deal wouldn’t make it binding under our Constitution.

So, as we warned earlier this week, the international-law game it is. It is no secret that Barack Obama does not have much use for the United States Constitution. It is a governing plan for a free, self-determining people.

Hence, it is littered with roadblocks against schemes to rule the people against their will. When it comes to our imperious president’s scheme to enable our enemy, Iran, to become a nuclear-weapons power — a scheme that falls somewhere between delusional and despicable, depending on your sense of Obama’s good faith — the salient barrier is that only Congress can make real law. Most lawmakers think it would be a catastrophe to forge a clear path to the world’s most destructive weapons for the world’s worst regime — a regime that brays “Death to America” as its motto; that has killed thousands of Americans since 1979; that remains the world’s leading state sponsor of jihadist terrorism; that pledges to wipe our ally Israel off the map; and that just three weeks ago, in the midst of negotiations with Obama, conducted a drill in which its armed forces fired ballistic missiles at a replica U.S. aircraft carrier.
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T. Belman.  I was there. The spirit was contagious. Lots of singing and dancing. More that half the crowd were under 18. Girls outnumbered the boys. Very exciting.

I have been thinking just how important this election is.  It reminded me how crucial the election was prior to the Oslo Accords.  The left passed the Oslo Accords by one vote. And it proved to be a monumental disaster for Israel.  We are still suffering the consequences from it. And now we are once again faced with a disaster. If the left wins the election, they will abandon Judea and Samaria and the Jews living there. The stakes are very high.

By Jewish Press

10:15 PM The massive pro-right rally is now over. Read more…

Contents
Israel’s Narrative
The Truth about the 2014 Gaza War
Humanitarian Law
The Legal War
The Diplomatic Arena
Hamas’ Strategy Revealed
Hamas’ Weapons and Targets
Hamas’ Tunnel Network
Gazan Casualties
Timeline of the War

DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis March 14, 2015, 11:11 AM

While the opinion polls tab Yitzhak Herzog, co-leader of the opposition Zionist Camp party (former Labor) a highly credible contender for ousting Binyamin Netanyahu, the same credibility does not characterize the four pledges he made to the voter ahead of the March 17 election – however sincere his intentions.

In his first 100 days as prime minister, Herzog vowed if he is elected to lead the campaign to bring down the prohibitive cost of housing; mend Israel’s relations with the United States, i.e. the Obama administration; revive peace talks with the Palestinians; and create a “regional platform” for Israel’s foreign relations.

The last three goals would, he promised, be subject to considerations of Israel’s nation security.
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DOES PRES. OBAMA’S APPOINTMENT OF ROBERT MALLEY PRES. OBAMA’S REAL BELIEFS?

From  the unclassified public record Robert Malley’s  very strong antipathy toward Israel is well documented. Also, from the unclassified public record is very clear that Susan Rice is very well aware of his active  involvements in behalf of Hamas and of Yasser Arafat. The questions that Ed Lasky raised in 2008 are even more relevant today, given  Malley’s White House promotion and  his being placed in charge of Israeli-Palestinian affairs (and other major areas of responsibility):

a. Why would Barack Obama have on his foreign policy staff a man who has been widely criticized for a revisionist history of the Middle East peace process sharply at odds with all other accounts of the proceedings? Read more…

By Caroline Glick, JPOST

The next 22 months until President Barack Obama leaves office promise to be the most challenging period in the history of US-Israel relations.

Now unfettered by electoral concerns, over the past week Obama exposed his ill-intentions toward Israel in two different ways.

First, the Justice Department leaked its intention to indict Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez on corruption charges. Menendez is the ranking Democratic member, and the former chairman, of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He is also the most outspoken Democratic critic of Obama’s policy of appeasing the Iranian regime.

As former US federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy wrote this week at PJMedia, “It is perfectly reasonable to believe that Menendez may be guilty of corruption offenses and that his political opposition on Iran is factoring into the administration’s decision to charge him. Put it another way, if Menendez were running interference for Obama on the Iran deal, rather than trying to scupper it, I believe he would not be charged.”
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(Reuters) – MAJOR WORLD POWERS HAVE BEGUN TALKS ABOUT A UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION TO LIFT U.N. SANCTIONS ON IRAN IF A NUCLEAR AGREEMENT IS STRUCK WITH TEHRAN, a step that could make it harder for the U.S. Congress to undo a deal, Western officials said.

The talks between Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — the five permanent members of the Security Council — plus Germany and Iran, are taking place ahead of difficult negotiations that resume next week over constricting Iran’s nuclear ability.

Some eight U.N. resolutions – four of them imposing sanctions – ban Iran from uranium enrichment and other sensitive atomic work and bar it from buying and selling atomic technology and anything linked to ballistic missiles. There is also a U.N. arms embargo.
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DEBKA

Five days before Israel’s snap election, people who have seen Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu close up say he looks weary and, behind his controlled façade, shocked to discover that his Likud party faces the real possibility of being thrown out of office on March 17. At a meeting of the party faithful, Wednesday, March 11, he warned – not once but again and again – that if they don’t get a move on fast, Israel could be stuck with “Bougie and Tzipi” [Yitzhak Herzog and Tzipi Livni co-leaders of the opposition Zionist Camp] as prime ministers.

The former Labor party keeps on overtaking Likud in opinion polls – not by much but consistently. When the figures hit 24-25 Knesset seats to his party’s 21, Netanyahu finally bestirred himself to go stumping across the country.
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By Danny Danon, JPOST

When entering the voting booth on March 17 Israelis must not be confused.

I have been engaged in Israeli politics since my days as a student activist at Ramat Gan’s storied Blich High School almost 30 years ago. Those who support me, and even my most critical detractors, all agree that my political activism is based on a passionate belief in an ideological path that I have hewed closely to throughout my years in public service. While I can understand why voters often search for the political party that closely matches their ideology, I know that in this election there is only one choice for those who want a proud, right-wing Israeli government.

During my travels all over the country throughout this election campaign, I have encountered too many voters who believe they are voting in a strategic manner. With the purest of intentions, they believe that by strengthening satellite or sectorial parties they will have a say in forming the ideological makeup of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s next government.
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By Martin Sherman, JPOST

The bitterest irony is the spectacle of scores of ex-senior security officials who spent their adult life defending Israel, now promoting a political initiative that will make it indefensible.

One does not have to be a military expert to easily identify the critical defects of the armistice lines that existed until June 4, 1967. A considerable part of these lines is without any topographical security value; and, of no less importance, the lines fail to provide Israel with the essential minimum of strategic depth – Deputy PM Yigal Allon, former commander of Palmah strike force, 1976.

…historians a thousand years hence will still be baffled by the mystery of our affairs. They will never understand how it was that a victorious nation, with everything in hand, suffered themselves to be brought low, and to cast away all that they had gained by measureless sacrifice and absolute victory… Now the victors are the vanquished… that is the terrible transformation that has taken place bit by bit. – Winston Churchill, in the House of Commons, March 1938.
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