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

T. Belman.  Israel warns Lebanon that in the next war with Hezbollah, Israel will destroy Lebanon.  There is no reason that Gaza is not treated the same way in next war with Hamas. Hamas is the government of Gaza because the Gazans support them politically. Israel must stop dealing with Hamas as separate from Gaza just as they will no longer deal with Hezbollah as separate from Lebanon.

Liberman calls for a much harsher response next time in Gaza and for the death penalty for terrorists

JPOST

Modern terrorism is the greatest threat facing the global community in the 21st century and it must be defeated as the Nazis were during World War II, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said Tuesday.

“We must destroy terror as we destroyed the Nazis,” he said during the annual conference at the Institute for National Security Studies.

The classical terrorism of the 1970s and 1980s with its small ideological groups has given way to a global network, Liberman said.

Terrorist groups have acquired and rule territory, creating the equivalent of terrorist states. Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza are examples of this phenomenon, Liberman said.

The Lebanese Shi’ite group Hezbollah is stronger then ISIS and Al-Qaida, he said. Read more…

Turkey has repeatedly warned it will not tolerate Kurdish self-rule on its Syrian frontier. Washington has also opposed Kurdish autonomy, for fear it would divide the Syrian opposition and because of the Yip’s links with the PKK

World Bulletin / News Desk

Kurds are celebrating after flushing ISIL militants out of the town of Kobani, but victory is not yet certain in their campaign to cement hard-won autonomy in northern Syria.

Hundreds of U.S.-led coalition air strikes have devastated the town, which is adrift in an ISIL-controlled sea. Objections to autonomy from neighbouring Turkey and the United States could also make it hard for them to sustain their gains.
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Defense minister says Palestinian Authority preferred to try and sue Israel before the ICC than take responsibility in coastal enclave.

By Tovah Lazaroff, JPOST

The PA could have returned to Gaza after Operation Protective Edge last summer, but they refused and preferred instead to try and sue Israel before the International Criminal Court, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said on Monday.

“We tried to enable the Palestinian Authority to enter the Gaza Strip and they did not want to,” he said in a prerecorded video that was played at the annual conference of the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.

“They ran away,” he added.

“They are good at blaming us in the UN Security Council and in the ICC, but when they need to take responsibly they are gone,” Ya’alon said.
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Ted Belman. In this video CNN interviews Naftali Bennett on why Netanyshu is going to speak to Congress. In the interview she makes the point that a J-Street poll concluded that 84% of American Jews supported the deal being talked about.  Bennett couldn’t comment on it but Benjamin Korn and Moshe Phillips sure did in this article.

It’s all in the wording of the question. How to lie with statistics.

By Benjamin Korn and Moshe Phillips, INN

Viewers of CNN this week were informed by anchor Erin Burnett of what she called “a historically momentous event”: 84% of American Jews support President Obama’s position on a nuclear deal with Iran, Burnett declared.

But the claim is a fraud.

Burnett was interviewing Israeli cabinet minister Naftali Bennett, who argued that the weak terms President Obama is proposing to Iran will leave Teheran with the capability to develop nuclear weapons in a short time. So Burnett swooped in with what she undoubtedly thought would be a “gotcha” moment.
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[READ MY ARTICLE
IMMEDIATELY BELOW TO UNDERSTAND WHY HER BOOK WAS CONTROVERSIAL. IT WENT AGAINST THE GRAIN.]

Joan Peters, a pro-Palestinian researcher, drastically changed her political views while writing her opus “From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine” • I seek to shed light on facts that were hidden from me, she writes.

By Nadav Shragai, ISRAEL HAYOM

A pioneer. Joan Peters

Imagine, if you will, the following scenario: An Obama administration official quits his job and devotes seven years of his life to writing a well-researched book that pulls the rug out from underneath his former boss regarding the Iranian issue. Then imagine that the book offers a sympathetic view of Israel that is factually based and that reveals information that was not previously known. U.S. President Barack Obama can only express anger, bewilderment, and frustration in response. This leaves the Democrats with a dilemma. Do they remain true to the facts or loyal to their president?
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By Ted Belman

1948 Declaration of Independence
In the lead up to the declaration, the State Department put enormous pressure on Ben-Gurion to postpone the declaration and warned him that the Arabs would attack and that Israel would be destroyed in three months and that the United States would not come to his aid.

In fact the State Department threatened to stoke anti-Semitism by publishing documents that would “do great harm to the Jews” as retribution for the establishment of an independent State of Israel, according to newly unearthed diplomatic cables.

The state Department argued “There are 30 million Arabs on the one side and about 600,000 Jews on the other side. .. Why don’t you face up to reality?”

Truman ignored them and recognized Israel as soon as it was declared.
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The president is not on the right side of the battle in his attempts to punish Israel, partner with Iran, and trim America’s role.

By Quin Hillyer, NRO

At the risk of being melodramatic, it must nonetheless be said: We are in a war for civilization itself, and Barack Obama is not on the right side.

We are in a battle for civilization because the Islamic State, which is darkness and evil personified, has declared war against us — and we in the West and the modernized Orient (Japan, India, Taiwan, and the like) are, despite our flaws, the very repository of civilization. They are backwards; we are enlightened. They are warped; we are well-intentioned. They are inhuman; we are humane. They are soul-less; we are desirous, however imperfectly, of a grace beyond our ken.

The Islamic State, meanwhile, is aided in its anti-civilizational enterprise even by some of its nominal enemies. The Iran of the ayatollahs is a cancer on humanity, while Hamas and Hezbollah are its murderous allies, serving a “prophet” they make into a thug. Al-Qaeda and its affiliates still poison vast swaths of the Middle East and Africa. The Muslim Brotherhood bizarrely enjoys something approaching respectability in left-wing circles, although in reality it’s a vicious virus working toward death. North Korea is, of course, a black hole; Russia is led by a black-hearted villain. And in other places in the world, Marxists still peddle their poison.
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BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 288

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

Obama does not want Netanyahu in Washington because he considers Israel’s prime minister a serious spoiler of his most important foreign policy initiative – an agreement with Iran. He’d like to oust him from Jerusalem as well, and has made efforts to unseat Israel’s prime minister. He takes seriously Netanyahu’s statement that Israel is not bound by America’s unilateral agreements. In Obama’s view, Netanyahu may still utilize the military option, and thereby destroy his only foreign policy “success.” Indeed, among the candidates for prime minister in the upcoming elections, only Netanyahu is passionate about Iran, and only Netanyahu would consider ordering the IDF to attack Iranian nuclear installations in defiance of the US.
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By Ted Belman

Let’s face it, neither France nor Denmark or any other European country can protect the Jews. Sooner or later many more Jews will be murdered.

It’s not enough to beg Jews to stay and promise to protect them.
It’s not enough to post soldiers or police at all their institutions.
It’s not enough to increase police patrols in Jewish neighborhoods.
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Amidst Obama retreat from Mideast, three regional leaders are forming a quiet but fiercely determined alliance against Iran & ISIS. Israeli PM Netanyahu, Jordan’s King Abdullah II & Egyptian President el-Sisi face high stakes. Will they succeed?

Joel Rosenberg

Something curious is happening in the Middle East.

Amidst President Obama’s repeated moves to withdraw American military power and influence from the Middle East and “pivot” to Asia, three regional leaders in the epicenter are forming a quiet, unexpected but fiercely determined alliance.

Why? To protect their people against two existential threats, one posed by the Shia Radical Islamists of Iran, the other posed by the Sunni Radical Islamists of ISIS.

Who are they?

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu;
• Jordan’s King Abdullah II; and
• Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

Read more…