By: Nathan Lewin, JEWISH PRESS

I was seven years old in 1943 and becoming comfortable in the United States, where my parents and I had arrived as refugees from Poland, via Japan, in 1941.

Almost from the moment we hit the blessed shores of America, my father, Rabbi Dr. Isaac Lewin, z”l, worked day and night with the Va’ad Le-Hatzala to rescue the Jews trapped in Poland and the rest of Europe. They included my grandfather, Rabbi Aaron Lewin, z”l,the revered rabbi of Rzeszow who had twice been elected to the Polish parliament, and who had – unknown to my father – already been murdered by Ukrainians in Lvov in June 1941. Read more…

BIG NEWS NETWORK

ISTANBUL, TURKEY – French President Francois Hollande’s hosting this month of the leading members of the Syrian Kurdish group, Democratic Union Party (PYD), is regarded as further evidence Turkey is becoming increasingly isolated and outmaneuvered by its Kurdish rivals.

Fresh from defeating Islamic State forces in the Syrian Kurdish city of Kobani, leading members from PYD and its military wing were invited by Hollande to the Elysee Palace.

Despite the fact that Ankara considers the PYD a terrorist organization, Paris made little effort to keep the meeting discreet, issuing photos of the French president talking with the Kurdish leaders, some of whom were dressed in military fatigues.
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By Daniel Greenfield, FPM

Obama says that we are not fighting a war on Islam. What he leaves out is that under his administration the United States is fighting in a civil war that is taking place within Islam.

It’s not a conflict between the proverbial moderate Muslim and the raging fanatic. That was an outdated Bush era notion. Instead Obama has brought us into a fight between Muslim governments and Muslim terrorists, not on the side of the governments we were allied with, but on the side of the terrorists.

It’s why Egypt is shopping for French planes and Russian nukes. Yemen’s government was run out of town by Obama’s new Iranian friends in a proxy war with Saudi Arabia. And the Saudis are dumping oil.

Iran and Qatar are the regional powers Obama is closest to. What these two countries have in common, is that despite their mutual hostility, they are both international state sponsors of Islamic terrorism. Read more…

DEBKA

DEBKAfile’s exclusive military and intelligence sources have discovered a large-scale Iranian airlift is in progress for bringing thousands of Shiite fighters to the Syrian Mediterranean port of Latakia to reinforce the Syrian army forces falling back from the key city of Aleppo. Some of the flights are taking off from Baghdad airport. The Syrian rebels in heavy fighting Thursday and Friday, Feb. 19-20 repulsed a Hizballah-backed Syrian army offensive to recapture the town and took scores of Hizballah fighters prisoner.

The incoming reinforcements are being transferred directly to the Aleppo battle-front in an effort to stabilize it and reverse the Syrian army’s retreat.
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By Gary L. Bauer,  AMERICAN VALUES

New polling confirms, once again, that American voters stand with Israel and want a tough stand against Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Here are the key findings:

• 59% of likely voters support Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address before Congress. Only 23% of voters oppose it.
• 76% believe that the purpose of negotiations with Iran should be to prevent the mullahs from ever developing nuclear weapons. Only 10% believe the negotiations should permit Iran to join “the ranks of nations with nuclear weapons.”
• 79% believe that any deal with Iran should require congressional approval. Just 11% believe the president’s approval alone is sufficient.
• 67% of voters believe that Iran would use nuclear weapons itself or give them to terrorists to attack Israel and the United States if it had them.

Now let me remind you of these facts: Read more…

By Lahav Harcov, JPOST

Bayit Yehudi Chairman Naftali Bennett has a canned answer for when he’s asked which ministry he wants: It depends on how many seats his party gets.
When pushed further, he says that all three senior ministries – defense, finance and foreign – are important, and he has a “clear vision” for what he could do in all of them.

Despite his politically expedient responses, the current economy minister couldn’t hide the fire in his eyes when he talked about defense issues Thursday, in his Tel Aviv office. His passion for and emphasis on security matters was apparent, backing up what sources in his inner circle have been saying for months: Naftali Bennett wants to be the next defense minister.

Bennett called for “a deep change” in the defense establishment’s approach, starting with making sure that battles take place mostly in enemy territory and military operations are short, as opposed to last summer’s 50-day Operation Protective Edge.
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Muslim mayor of Rotterdam says Europe has no place for extremists who are not willing to live within the bounds of its norms.

LOVE US OR LEAVE US

By Elad Benari, INN

The Muslim mayor of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, said this week that Europe has no place for extremists who are not willing to live within the bounds of its norms.

Speaking to CNN’s Michael Holmes on Wednesday, the mayor, Moroccan-born Ahmed Aboutaleb suggested that those Muslims who don’t embrace values should leave Europe.

“You are not forced to be with us, it’s a choice,” he said. “Work with us together to construct a ‘we society.'”

“But if you want to stand out of the ‘we community,’ you threaten us, you go to Yemen to learn how to use a Kalashnikov and to come back to threaten the society, well you are not part of my ‘we society,’ you better leave,” added Aboutaleb. Read more…

By Martin Sherman, JPOST

Fifty-one percent of the respondents polled in the survey indicated that Binyamin Netanyahu was the candidate most suited to be prime minister. 28% stated that Isaac “Buji” Herzog is most suited… – Channel 2 poll, February 16

Israel’s democracy is under assault… The greatest danger to Israeli democracy emanates from those masquerading as its champions. – From “Distorting democracy,” The Jerusalem Post, July 28, 2011

Over the last few weeks, Israeli democracy has been under brutal and sustained attack in a desperate effort to subvert the will of the people.

Coup attempt by media not military

What we are witnessing is, in effect, little less than an attempt at a bloodless coup d’état – conducted, not by the military, but by the messianic, indeed manic, mainstream media, buttressed by affiliated like-minded civil society elites, in a frenzied effort to impose their minority worldview on the nation. Read more…

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.

Read more…