By S.Fred Singer, AMERICAN THINKER

Europe is leading the way on a path to oblivion: economically, culturally, and demographically.

My background is basically European—and more specifically, Western European. I have lived and worked in many of those countries, and I know most of the major cities intimately—from Stockholm in the north, Newcastle, London, Paris, The Hague, Munich, Vienna, to Rome and Erice, Sicily in the south. I have also spent several months in Moscow and in Jerusalem as a guest of academic institutions.

Economic Suicide
The economic suicide story is based on a faulty understanding of the climate issue by most Western politicians and on their extreme policy response about fossil fuels, based on emotion rather than logic and science. The major European economies have reacted irrationally to contrived, unjustified fear of imagined global-warming disasters.
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By Ted Belman

Sky News Arabia reported:
35 Islamic State fighters said killed in Jordanian airstrikes

Israel Radio reports:
25 IS-linked jihadists said killed in Sinai

In both cases we are not told who gave this info, nor are we told who counted them nor how they determined casualties were Islamic Jihadists nor whether there was any verification.

But when it comes to Israel, we know the media accepts what Hamas tells them and Hamas tells them they were civilians.

Yoram Ettinger

Conventional wisdom suggests that US-Israel ties constitute a one-way-street: The US gives and Israel receives. However, in recent years the one-way-street has been transformed into a two-way-street, mutually-beneficial, win-win set of ties:
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Today Israel’s closest ally is Egypt; under Obama, the US is a force to be worked around, not worked with.

By Caroline Glick, JPOST

On Wednesday, Hamas leader in Gaza Mahmoud Zahar called on Hamas terrorists in Lebanon and Syria to attack Israel “to help us liberate Palestine.”

At the same time, Zahar denied that Hamas has been involved in the terrorist insurgency in Egypt. As he put it, “Our guns are always trained on the enemy,” that is, Israel.

The Egyptian regime was not impressed by Zahar’s protestations.

Last Saturday, an Egyptian court upheld an October 2014 decision by the Egyptian government to outlaw Hamas’s terrorist shock forces Izzadin Kassam, and designate it a terrorist organization.

Both the government’s initial designation and the court’s decision were in some sense, watershed events. They represent the first time an Arab regime ever defined any Palestinian terrorist organization as a terrorist group.
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Over the past few decades a considerable number of former generals and heads of intelligence services have been chewed up and unceremoniously spat out by the Israeli political system.

By Martin Sherman, JPOST

[Isaeli] security experts didn’t anticipate one major event in the Middle East in the past 50 years.

– Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, Saban Forum, December 2014

Allow me to begin this week’s column with three somewhat lengthy excerpts from an essay, “Israel: The Case for Defensible Borders,” published in the influential journal Foreign Affairs.

‘One does not have to be a military expert…’

The selected excerpts relate to three topics:

(a) The indefensible pre-1967 lines

“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. The gravest problem is on the eastern boundary, where the entire width of the coastal plain varies between 10 and 15 miles, where the main centers of Israel’s population, including Tel Aviv and its suburbs, are situated, and where the situation of Jerusalem is especially perilous…”

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SEE ALSO: EU Funding Illegal Bedouin Villages…

T. Belman. By doing so the PA and the EU are violating the Oslo Accords.

By HERB KEINON, TOVAH LAZAROFF, JPOST

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.

This report is just one of a number the group – a right-wing organization which describes itself as a “research-backed, legal advocacy organization focused on land ownership issues” – has released in recent months.
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UN Watch, NGO Monitor say UN probe of Israel’s ‘war crimes’ against Hamas must be canned, in light of anti-Israel chief’s resignation.

By Hillel Fendel, INN

NGO Monitor, an independent research institution that tracks NGOs involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict, says the UN should suspend its investigation against Israel, and investigate its own corruption and immorality.

At the same time, Geneva-based human rights group UN Watch calls on UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to investigate the extent of the anti-Israel bias in the inquiry and scrutinize the flawed process by which a known anti-Israel personage was chosen to head it.
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By Evelyn Gordon

That depends on how you define democracy – which is why the ‘Jewish vs. democratic’ debate has become so fraught

In response to my column last month on the false choice between Israel’s Jewish and democratic characters, a reader asked a logical question: You yourself argued that Israel has no raison d’etre if it isn’t a Jewish state; being just another Western democracy isn’t enough. So why do you think “Jewish” and “democratic” deserve equal weight, instead of prioritizing Israel’s Jewish character?

Answering that requires defining “democracy,” because in recent years, two almost antithetical concepts have been sloppily – or perhaps maliciously – subsumed under this term. One of these concepts is frequently at odds with Israel’s Jewish character. But the other is as vital to the Jewish state’s continued existence as the body is to the soul.
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by Michael Freund, JPOST
Jerusalem Post

If several alarming media reports are true, US President Barack Obama is moving perilously closer to a nuclear deal with Iran that will endanger Israel and all of Western civilization.

Far away from the glare of the cameras, it appears that the commander-in-chief and his colleagues are swiftly caving in to the ayatollahs, hoping to buy some short-term quiet by allowing Iran to remain a threshold nuclear state.

In a chilling exclusive filed on Tuesday, the Associated Press revealed that Washington and Tehran “are discussing a compromise that would let Iran keep much of its uranium-enriching technology but reduce its potential to make nuclear weapons.”
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By Adam Kredo, The FREE BEACON

A top Iranian military leader claims that U.S. officials have been “begging us” to sign a nuclear deal during closed door negotiations with Tehran over its contested nuclear program, according to recent comments made to the Iranian state-controlled media.

Mohammad Reza Naghdi, the commander of the Basij, a paramilitary group operating under the wing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC), recently claimed that the “Americans are begging us for a deal on the negotiation table,” according to comments published in Persian and independently translated for the Washington Free Beacon.

Naghdi added that American officials routinely “plea” with Iran in talks and that the United States is negotiating from a position of weakness, according to his comments, which follow earlier reports claiming that Iran’s leading negotiator “frequently shouts” at U.S. officials.
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By Moshe Dann, JPOST

On Dec 18, 2009, Aluf Benn and Amos Harel, writing in Haaretz, offered one of the most important insights into Israeli policy regarding the Iranian nuclear threat.

“When Netanyahu was finance minister in Ariel Sharon’s cabinet, he urged Sharon to focus on the struggle against Iran. When Netanyahu resigned over the disengagement plan, and Sharon left Likud and established Kadima, Netanyahu told Sharon that if he acted against Iran before the election, Netanyahu would support him. Sharon did not act.” (Neither did Netanyahu – MD).

“The uranium conversion plant in Isfahan has an important function in the chain of Iran’s nuclear program. It first went into operation in 2004… [and] since 2004, hundreds of kilograms… were sent to the enrichment plant in Natanz [stored in] underground tunnels.”
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[With all the accusations hurled at us, it is good to see a “righteous Gentile” who appreciates the uniqueness of Israel in the family of nations. I don’t know another nation on earth which since its founding, than seventy years ago, had to sacrifice 23,000 soldiers.]

By Giulio Meotti, INN, Aug/14

I don’t know another nation on earth without recognized borders. I don’t know another nation on earth whose population lives under a perpetual emotional strain. I don’t know another nation on earth threatened to be wiped off the map.
I don’t know another nation on earth so threatened by boycotts all over the world. I don’t know another nation on earth where winners tend to lose wars.
I don’t know another nation on earth which provides its own enemy with water, electricity, food, weapons, and medical treatment.
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By Michael Weiss and Michael Pregent, THE DAILY BEAST .  2-1-15

Washington needs to quit pretending it can work with Iran to defeat the Islamic State. Tehran’s real objective is to defeat Washington.

It was August 2007, and General David Petraeus, the top commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, was angry.  In his weekly report to then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Petraeus wrote:

“I am considering telling the President that I believe Iran is, in fact, waging war on the U.S. in Iraq, with all of the U.S. public and governmental responses that could come from that revelation. … I do believe that Iran has gone beyond merely striving for influence in Iraq and could be creating proxies to actively fight us, thinking that they can keep us distracted while they try to build WMD and set up [the Mahdi Army] to act like Lebanese Hezbollah in Iraq.”

There was no question there and then on the ground in Iraq that Iran was a very dangerous enemy. There should not be any question about that now, either. And the failure of the Obama administration to come to grips with that reality is making the task of defeating the so-called Islamic State more difficult—indeed, more likely to be impossible—every day.
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by Ben Barrack on February 4, 2015

SHOEBAT.COM

Recently revealed conversations between the Pentagon and the Gadhafi regime in 2011 show that then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was serving the Muslim Brotherhood by pushing a false narrative to justify the removal of Muammar Gadhafi, as Shoebat.com has reported. With the help of corroborating evidence, we’re closer to proving that Republican Senator John McCain was likely just as invested in facilitating the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya as Hillary was. Before getting to the evidence that implicates McCain, let’s work backward from the Benghazi attacks.

Any discussion about what happened in Benghazi on the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks usually includes the topic of weapons shipments to Syrian rebels via Turkey. According to a book written by a former Navy SEAL and Green Beret, the man who would eventually become CIA Director oversaw that operation from the White House:
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By Ben Caspit. AL MONITOR

A war is being waged in the Sinai Peninsula between the regime of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and the Islamic State (IS) entity, formerly known as Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis. It is an all-out, no-holds-barred war. Sisi knows that if he does not succeed in overcoming the deadly, recalcitrant terrorist elements in Sinai, it will be the beginning of the end of his regime. The Egyptians asked for and received authorization from Israel to operate heavy weapons and introduce arms into Sinai ordinarily prohibited there according to their peace treaty. Meanwhile the terrorists, on their part, are not taking it easy. They have been slaying scores of Egyptian soldiers and civilians in harsh attacks. Sisi decided to wipe the Egyptian city of Rafah off the map to create a completely sealed buffer zone between Gaza and Sinai. On Jan. 31, the Egyptian courts declared the military wing of Hamas a terrorist organization. It appears that the situation will only continue to intensify in the weeks and months to come.
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Government gave Naomi Chazan and other radicals power to affect decision-making, appointments to key positions.

By Gil Ronen, INN

By Joseph Klein, FPM

The Obama administration has a soft spot in its heart for the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood.

Just last month, the U.S. State Department went out of its way to insult the president of Egypt, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, whom the Obama administration should be treating as a valuable ally in the fight against global jihadism, by hosting a delegation of leaders who have been aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood. The State Department’s guests at the meeting, whose visit was arranged and paid for by Georgetown University, included former Freedom and Justice Party members (the Muslim Brotherhood’s political party). One of the State Department officials who met with the delegation was the deputy assistant secretary for democracy, human rights, and labor.
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New York Times report says lead investigator in prosecutor Alberto Nisman’s death found draft of arrest warrant for President Kirchner and Foreign Minister Timerman at his apartment, pointing to heightened tension between the two parties before Nisman’s death.

Ynet

The lead investigator into prosecutor Alberto Nisman’s death said Tuesday that Nisman had drafted a warrant for the arrest of Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner which accused her of trying to protect Iranian officials, hiding their responsibility in the 1994 AMIA bombing, a New York Times report claimed Tuesday.

Nisman had been investigating the source of the deadly 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires and had claimed that President Kirchner had a role in covering up Iran’s role in the attack.

The document, which was 26 pages long, was found in the garbage at Nisman’s apartment in the luxury Puerto Madero neighborhood in Buenos Aires. It also included a request for the arrest of Foreign Minister Hector Timerman.
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Let Hezbollah and Islamic State destroy one another /
Guy Bechor

Op-ed: In light of the fast changing situation on the borders, Israel should have a channel of dialogue with Hezbollah in order to convey calming messages – including quiet non-aggression agreements.

Analysis: Former Mossad chief says military conflict between Israel and Iran on Syrian soil will start off with favorable conditions for Israel. But Israel will also have to take Russia’s stance into account and will require serious security and diplomatic American backing.

Efraim Halevy, YNET

There is a striking resemblance between the way Israel’s leaders and its enemies’ leaders on the northern front express themselves, both in terms of the nature of the conflict and in some of the techniques used by the sides as they go along.

Both Israel and Hezbollah engaged last month in attempts to shape the “rules of the game” along the line separating between Israel and Syria in the Golan Heights, as well in narrative changes which both sides needed.
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By Steven Scheer

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli companies are increasingly turning to Asia to capture a boom in demand for their technology, as the government urges them to diversify export markets in response to Europe’s rising anti-semitism and potential trade sanctions.

Citing attacks on Jews in Europe – including one in a kosher market in Paris last month – and amid fears that the European Union could take trade steps against Israel over its policy of settlement building on Palestinian land, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet last month: “We definitely want to reduce our dependence on certain markets in western Europe.”

At the same time, the pro-Palestinian boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement has started to make strides in some European countries, prompting several firms in Holland and Denmark to end dealings with some Israeli companies and raising the prospect of more trade problems in the region.
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