Mr. James Carver Member of the European Parliament EU Committee on Foreign Affairs writes to the EU

Dear Sir / Madam,

Re: Illegal and Environmentally Damaging Activities by the EU in the West Bank

I am writing you following some very disturbing findings that have come to our attention. According to a well-documented investigation by the NGO Regavim, the European Union is actively involved in illegal building that is taking place in the Adumim area in the West Bank. According to the findings of the investigation, the EU has financed and been actively involved in the establishment of more than 400 illegal structures within the Adumim area, between 2012 and 2014.

Among them, Regavim has identified 181 residential structures and 232 service structures (located separately from the residential structures). All the structures bear the name and flag of the EU and EU official agents have been photographed participating in overseeing the construction, so the active involvement of the EU can hardly be denied. Official EU documents quoted in the report also corroborate the same. The English version of the report documenting the findings of the investigation is attached hereto.
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i24NEWS

New government adopts more friendly policy toward Israel

Established a few months ago, the conservative-progressive minority government in Norway has been working towards repairing ties with Israel and enhancing collaboration in a number of fields. The previous left-wing administration had a longstanding record of anti-Israel sentiment and had called for a boycott of Israeli products.

For the first time in over a decade, the Norwegian prime minister is set to make a visit to Israel. The new policy put in place by Erna Solberg, Norway’s Prime Minister and Conservative Party Leader, will see improved diplomatic relations between the two countries, Norwegian and Israeli officials said. After the passing of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Solberg was one of the first world leaders to send their condolences.
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By Lahav Harkov, JPOST

Bayit Yehudi had a bad week. Its poll numbers have been in free-fall since the debacle that took place over two weeks ago, when party leader Naftali Bennett appointed soccer legend Eli Ohana to the party’s list and Ohana dropped out three days later amid vocal disgruntlement from party MKs and members. They hit a nadir on Saturday night, when Channel 1’s poll gave them only 11 seats, a steep drop from a high of 18 – coincidentally from the same pollster, Teleseker – since the election was announced in December.

The 11-seat showing was somewhat of an outlier, as the party averaged 13 seats in last week’s polls, but it enough to drive everyone on the Bayit Yehudi campaign, from MKs to advisers to activists, crazy.
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Pundits are telling the Zionist Camp to take the battle to the prime minister more, but they’re ignoring both history and the modern reality.

By Roger Alpher, HAARETZ

It’s very easy to oust Benjamin Netanyahu from the Prime Minister’s Office. All you need to do is vote for a party that aspires to replace him, or that has announced it will refuse to sit in a government with him. That’s it. That’s all. Very simple. And yet it won’t happen.

Our disappointed pundits have explanations. They believe that if Zionist Camp leaders Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni would only wage a more aggressive campaign against Netanyahu, the public would be convinced of the necessity of getting rid of him. They identify weak spots and advise Netanyahu’s rivals to focus on them. To give it to him.
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T. Belman. When the overthrow was announced, I wondered why the US didn’t stop it. Apparently the Sunnis are now their enemies and the Shiites their friends.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis

The strings of the pro-Iranian Houthi rebels’ coup which toppled the Yemeni government in Sanaa were pulled from Tehran and Washington. US intelligence and shared US-Iranian support helped the Houthis reach their goal, which is confined for now to parts of central Yemen and all of the North.

Friday, Feb. 6, the rebels dissolved parliament and seized power in the country of 24 million. They propose to rule by a revolutionary council. President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi and his cabinet who were forced to resign last month are under house arrest.

DEBKAfile’s Saudi intelligence sources reveal that the dominant figure of the uprising was none other than Ali Abdullah Saleh, president of Yemen from 1990 until he was ousted in 2012.
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By HERB KEINON, SAM SOKOL, JPOST

Despite continuing and mounting opposition to his plans to address the US Congress on March 3, including from American Jewish organizational leaders, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “determined to go” and make the case against an Iranian nuclear deal, a senior government official said Sunday.

The official’s comments came amid speculation that Netanyahu might, at the last minute, find a reason to put off the trip to Washington until after the March 17 elections and avoid exacerbating tensions with the Obama administration.
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Read the week-end Hebrew oped that has gone viral in Israel.

By Kalman Liebeskind, INN

I have never voted Likud, but over the past two weeks, I have been gradually becoming aware of the fact that, for the first time ever, that is what is going to happen. Something deep inside me is telling me that this is the proper thing to do for anyone who is not willing to allow the Israeli mainstream media to succeed in stealing an election by dishonorable means. The ballot that says “Machal” ( the Likud acronym) on it, at this point in time, is the proper protest ballot, a small but important contribution that an ordinary citizen can offer to strengthen Israel’s democracy.

If one of the ways to judge if a state is democratic is by whether its press is worthy of the name, the last few weeks have shown that we have nothing in common with a democratic state. That is because what has been done here by a long roster of journalists and media sources, who cannot abide the thought that Binyamin Netanyahu might win the elections again, is a travesty against democracy. Hysteria, frenzy, there is no other way to define what is happening on screen, on the radio waves, on the Facebook and Twitter pages of just about every leading mainstream Israeli journalist.
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T. Belman. Whenever I read that the EU or the US did something favourable to Israel, I always wonder what promise was extracted from Israel in payment.

By Herb Keinon, JPOST

A Palestinian flag flutters in front of the Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Homa. (photo credit:REUTERS)

The Mid East Quartet principals met in Munich for the first time in a year on Sunday and came out against unilateral Palestinian efforts to get the international community to impose a solution on Israel.

Without mentioning the recent Palestinian efforts specifically, including the failed effort at the end of December to pass a UN Security Council resolution that would have called for a full Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 lines within three years, a statement issued at the end of the meeting said that sustainable peace requires negotiations.
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Naftali Bennett responds harshly to Yaakov Peri’s claim that Ayelet Shaked is too inexperienced for Minister of Internal Security.

By Hezki Ezra, INN

Jewish Home Chairman Naftali Bennett attacked former Science Minister Yaakov Peri (Yesh Atid) Sunday over his comments about Jewish Home MK Ayelet Shaked.

In an interview Sunday morning, Peri addressed the claim that Jewish Home was demanding the internal security portfolio for Shaked.

“The lady is inexperienced. These are things that require more judgment,” Peri said.

In addition to serving in the 19th Knesset as a minister for Yesh Atid, Peri is also a former Shin Bet chief.

Bennett responded angrily to Peri’s criticism, writing on Facebook, “Peri, you’ve convinced me. I will do everything to ensure Ayelet Shaked will be the next Minister of Internal Security.”
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Right-wing organization says EU trying to establish “facts on the ground;” EU says it is providing “humanitarian assistance.”

By HERB KEINON, TOVAH LAZAROFF, JPOST

The blue EU logo seen on new modular structures in an illegal Beduin encampment in the Judean hills outside the Ma’alen Adumim settlement. . (photo credit:TOVAH LAZAROFF)

The EU is building hundreds of illegal structures in the West Bank, which the government has not removed in order to avoid a diplomatic tangle with the Europeans, according to a report released Friday by the NGO, Regavim. The structures are being built near Ma’aleh Adumim and its E1 area.
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By Chaim Weizmann, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, January 1942

ALMOST half the Jews in the world find themselves today under the Nazi heel. It is impossible to determine the rate at which their physical destruction is proceeding. Nor is it possible to visualize the condition in which the Jewish masses of Poland, Rumania, occupied Russia and even Hungary will be found when the pall of darkness is finally lifted from Nazi-occupied Europe. Tragic as is the position of the Polish peasant, he is rooted in his native soil — at least where he has not been dragged away from it and made to slave in an armament factory.

The Jew in his Ghetto, on the other hand, finds himself despoiled of everything. Deprived of his meagre possessions, driven from his home, torn from his family, he has become the most abject of all the abject victims of the terror. In the reconstruction of a new and — let us hope — a better world, the reintegration of the Jew will thus present a peculiarly difficult problem, and one which is likely to tax both the energies and the good will of the countries of Eastern and Central Europe.
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By David M Weinberg, ISRAEL HAYOM

John Baird, the Canadian foreign minister who announced his retirement from politics this week, was more than a very good friend to the State of Israel.

Baird is proof positive that it is possible to engage in moral diplomacy in a cynical world. He demonstrated that it is possible to be solidly pro-Israel and simultaneously gain a respected role on the international stage and maintain excellent ties with the Arab world.

No country has been as trailblazing in its support of Israel in recent years as Canada. Baird and his boss, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, have spoken out and acted to defend Israel, without apologies or hesitations. They have never felt the need to be politically correct and to “balance” their statements with (im)moral ambiguities about the Arab-Israeli conflict.
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by Raymond Ibrahim, FrontPage Magazine
February 6, 2015

http://www.meforum.org/5015/obama-were-no-better-than-islamic-state

^{Originally published under the title, “Obama: Christianity No Different Than the Islamic State.”}

As the world reacts with shock and horror at the increasingly savage deeds of the Islamic State (IS)—most recently the immolation of a captive—U.S. President Obama’s response has been one of nonjudgmental relativism.

Speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 5, Obama counseled Americans to get off their “high horse” and remember that Christians have been equally guilty of such atrocities:

Unless we get on our high horse and think this [beheadings, sex-slavery, crucifixion, roasting humans] is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.

There is so much to be said here. First, the obvious: the wide gulf between violence and hate “justified in the name of Christ” and violence and hate “justified in the name of Muhammad” is that Christ never justified it, while Muhammad continuously did.
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By Eli Lake, BLOOMBERG

Way back in the George W. Bush administration, his progressive critics used to call themselves members of the “reality based community.” The phrase was first popularized by Ron Suskind in a lengthy criticism of Bush’s so-called war on terror. Bush and his team were blinded by the moral certainties of ideology, whereas their critics understood the world as it is.

Reading through President Barack Obama’s new 2015 National Security Strategy, I think it’s time to resurrect the phrase, because this document bears very little relation to reality, at least in the Middle East.
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T. Belman.  It is troubling that it needed an expose by Regavim before Netanyahu ordered demolition.  It must be election season.  First of all the construction has been reported many times and in fits and starts Israel has been demolishing some of it. Secondly, once the housing is erected, the High Court won’t let Israel destroy it. We will have to see just how many of these structures Netanyahu will actually destroy.

European Union official defends unlicensed construction in Area C, says Palestinians have a right to build there

BY JUSTIN JALIL AND JTA, TOI

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon to move forward with a plan to demolish some 400 Palestinian structures built in the West Bank with European funding, Israeli media reported Friday.

The prime minister’s order came shortly after a Thursday exposé in the Daily Mail claimed that the EU sank tens of millions of euros into homes which were not granted building permits by the Israeli government.
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By Mort Klein and Elizabeth Berney

Harold Goldmeier’s article on the World Zionist Congress elections, “Making the WZO Relevant Again,”) falsely claims that the Zionist Organization of America filed election complaints to disqualify slates that “even merely favor” a Palestinian state or take positions that are “not to ZOA’s liking.”

Although the ZOA is opposed to a terrorist Palestinian Arab state, it never sought to disqualify any slate for supporting a Palestinian Arab state.

The ZOA only filed to disqualify one slate — the so-called “Hatikvah slate” — because its constituent members promote discriminatory boycotts, divestment and sanctions, which is a violation of the World Zionist Organization’s fundamental anti-discrimination membership requirements.
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By Patrick J. Buchanan

Seeing clips of that 22-minute video of the immolation of the Jordanian pilot, one wonders: Who would be drawn to the cause of these barbarians who perpetrated such an atrocity?

While the video might firm up the faith of fanatics, would it not evoke rage and revulsion across the Islamic world? After all, this was a Sunni Muslim, in a cage, being burned alive.

As of now, this cruel killing seems to have backfired. Jordan is uniting behind King Abdullah’s determination to exact “earth-shattering” retribution.
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NEWSMAX

President Barack Obama stirred outrage with his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast Thursday, comparing the atrocities committed by ISIS to those of Christians “in the name of Christ.”

“Unless we get on our high horse and think that this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ,” Obama said. “In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”

“So it is not unique to one group or one religion,” Obama said. “There is a tendency in us, a simple tendency that can pervert and distort our faith.”
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By Editorial Board, WaPo,  February 5