By Rob MIller, TOI

President Barack Obama and his minions in the White House and the press have had a lot to say about how ‘disrespectful’ it was for Congress to invite Israeli PM Benyamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of congress without informing the White House. And how wrong it was for Netanyahu to accept when he knew the White House hadn’t been informed.

Read this correction, from The New York Time’s own website.

Correction: January 30, 2015
An earlier version of this article misstated when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel accepted Speaker John A. Boehner’s invitation to address Congress. He accepted after the administration had been informed of the invitation, not before.

Omri Ceren first spotted the correction and explained on Twitter:
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By David Bender, ALGEMEINER

A new report from a local pro-Israel NGO, Im Tirtzu (IMTI)charges that pro-Palestinian human rights monitor, B’Tselem, gets funding from a Palestinian foundation in Ramallah, the Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Secretariat, which also backs terrorist groups, including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

IMTI, in a letter seen by the The Algemeiner, called attention to what it contended were “serious questions regarding the relationship between Israeli organizations and Palestinian funds that sponsor terrorism and Boycott Divestment and Sanctions as well as the enormous amount of European money that comes to them to portray Israel as a perpetrator of war crimes and to delegitimize Israel.”

A recent B’Tselem report entitled “Black Flag” alleges that the IDF perpetrated war crimes during the course of last summer’s 51-day Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, which was meant to end intense rocket fire into Israel, and destroy Hamas attack tunnels.
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Demands injunction against U.S.-linked group trying to swing Israeli election

By Aaron Klein, WND

EILAT, Israel – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party hit back Sunday at a U.S.-linked organization staffed with former Obama campaigners now working to defeat Netanyahu in an upcoming general election.

Victory 2015, or V15, attracted U.S. media attention after it hired 270 Strategies, a consulting firm whose senior leadership is comprised mostly of former top staffers for President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign.

During a press conference Sunday, the Likud Party officially accused V15 and other related nonprofits of being supported “through millions of dollars funneled from Europe, the U.S. and the New Israel Fund and international factors interested in bringing down Prime Minister Netanyahu” who think “that all means are appropriate.”
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by David P. Goldman

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 284

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: China’s “New Silk Road” is Beijing’s latest project aimed at creating a belt of railroads, highways, pipelines and broadband communications stretching through China to the West, and a “maritime Silk Road” combining sea routes with port infrastructure from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean. This project comes at a point where the role of the US in the Middle East is declining, and it is likely that China will aspire to adopt a larger role in the region. Israel’s geographical position and technological advances makes it possible for Israel to play a bridgehead role in the project, and the opportunity to shape Chinese thinking and strategy in the region for decades to come.
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The phenomenon of Israel hatred has complex psychological roots. Israel would not be hated if it were not Jewish, even if it acted exactly as it does today.

By Fred Skolnik, INN

An editor of the Cambridge Histories once remarked that when a nonspecialist reads history he can only choose arbitrarily from among conflicting versions of events. This is obviously true. The general reader, unequipped to evaluate or verify what he is reading, will naturally be influenced by the quality of the writing, maybe even by thebiography of the writer or his photo on the dust jacket. It is a little like voting for a political candidate.

All this is true when the subject is neutral. When it isn’t, an additional factor comes into play, and that is the bias of the reader. In what pertains, for example, to the historical enmity between the French and the English, it is natural for a Frenchman to be pro-French and an Englishman to be pro-English. Likewise, it is also natural, in the Arab-Israel conflict, for a Jew to be pro-Israel and an Arab to be pro-Arab or pro-Palestinian. Conversely, it is unnatural for a Jew to be pro-Arab and for an Arab to be pro-Israel.
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Ted Belman. Tobin said that Netanyahu’s decision to speak to Congress, “brought down on his head the scorn of the American political establishment and press”. The Administration, yes, but the political establishment, I din’t think so. But Tobin is closer to the situation than I am. He goes so far as to say that “there’s no way to sugarcoat what has become a disaster for Israel and the prime minister”. Nevertheless, I don’t share his take on this.

By Jonathan S. Tobin, COMMENTARY

It’s been a bad couple of weeks for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His decision to accept House Speaker John Boehner’s invitation to address a joint session has brought down on his head the scorn of the American political establishment and press. But all is not lost for Netanyahu. There may be no good solution to his dilemma with respect to the speech to Congress and little hope that the Obama administration will do the right thing with respect to Iran, he remains the most likely person to emerge from Israel’s March election as the next prime minister. Though some may think that would be an even bigger disaster for his country considering that administration sources are spreading rumors that President Obama will never again meet with Netanyahu, no one should think such an outcome will be the end of the alliance or even such bad news for the prime minister.
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JNF chief Meir Spiegler says breakaway for ‘purely professional’ reasons, stemming from frequent state violations of agreements; split includes land swaps between the sides.

By Yael Darel, YNET

The Jewish National Fund is in the practical stage of parting ways with the State of Israel and the Israel Land Administration, due to what the JNF says are repeated infractions by the state.

Over the past few days, JNF director general Meir Spiegler and the director of the JNF’s Land Conglomerate, Alex Hefetz, have held a series of meetings with senior Housing Ministry officials, including Minister Uri Ariel and his director general, Shlomo Ben Eliyahu, with the objective of setting up teams to coordinate the process and supervise the transfer of information between the parties. According to Spiegler, the process will be completed by July 29 this year.

Calcalist has learned that during the course of the negotiations between the parties, and in an effort to smoothen the process, the JNF, founded in 1901 by the World Zionist Organization, has agreed in principle to give up land it owns and for which plans are already in the ILA pipeline, in return for land in other areas of the country, in the Negev and Galilee in all likelihood.
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By Caroline B. Glick, JWR

Israel’s reported strike January 18 on a joint Iranian-Hezbollah convoy driving on the Syrian Golan Heights was one of the most strategically significant events to have occurred in Israel’s neighborhood in recent months. Its significance lies both in what it accomplished operationally and what it exposed.

From what been published to date about the identities of those killed in the strike, it is clear that in one fell swoop the air force decapitated the Iranian and Hezbollah operational command in Syria.

The head of Hezbollah’s operations in Syria, the head of its liaison with Iran, and Jihad Mughniyeh, the son of Hezbollah’s longtime operational commander Imad Mughniyeh who was killed by Israel in Damascus in 2008, were killed. The younger Mughniyeh reportedly served as commander of Hezbollah forces along the Syrian-Israeli border.
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Outstanding speech by Matti Friedman former AP journalist about Israel given at a BICOM dinner in London on January 26.

His speech is an absolute must-read. It is long but worth every minute you take to read it.

 Live Leak

HIGHLIGHTS

• I gradually began to be aware of certain malfunctions in the coverage of the Israel story – recurring omissions, recurring inflations, decisions made according to considerations that were not journalistic but political,
• we sought to hint or say outright that Israeli soldiers were war criminals, and every detail supporting that portrayal was to be seized upon.
• But an Israeli peace offer and its rejection by the Palestinians didn’t suit OUR story. The bureau chief ordered both reporters to ignore the Olmert offer,
• Neo-Nazi rallies at Palestinian universities or in Palestinian cities are not — I saw images of such rallies suppressed on more than one occasion. Jewish hatred of Arabs is a story. Arab hatred of Jews is not.
• Our policy, for example, was not to mention the assertion in the Hamas founding charter that Jews were responsible for engineering both world wars and the Russian and French revolutions, despite the obvious insight this provides into the thinking of one of the most influential actors in the conflict.
• 100 houses in a West Bank settlement are a story. 100 rockets smuggled into Gaza are not.

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Court holds its not a crime to trash Islam as opposed to trashing Muslims which is a crime.

by Andrew Harrod, FrontPageMagazine
http://www.legal-project.org/4341/french-free-speech-victory

A French appeals court on December 18, 2014, overturned a hate speech conviction involving Christine Tasin’s condemnation of Islam. Tasin’s encouraging victory, won with Legal Project aid, demonstrates that not all threats to free discussion of Islam are violent like the subsequent Paris jihadist Charlie Hebdomassacre.

The retired classics teacher Tasin had appeared on October 15, 2013, in a parking lot before a temporary tent abattoir in use by local Muslims in the French city of Belfort near the Swiss border. During the ritual animal slaughter for the Eid al Adha (“Festival of Sacrifice”) Muslim festival, Tasin before Muslim bystanders had criticized Islam’s halal slaughter as unsanitary and cruel to animals. In an ensuing argument filmed and uploaded to the internet, she received “Islamophobe” accusations.
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The Israeli political discourse has been afflicted by pronouncements that could have easily been drawn from the Orwellian lexicons of 1984.

By Martin Sherman, JPOST

The term “Jewish State” is totally misguided
– Isaac Herzog, April 2014

We, members of the People’s Council, representatives of the Jewish community of Eretz-Israel and of the Zionist movement…. hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel
– Israel’s Declaration of Independence, May 1948

In a caustic opinion piece last week, a well-known columnist wrote, tongue in cheek, of “tectonic” shifts in Kibbutz Sde Boker, which was home to David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first and arguably most iconic prime minister.

The designated cause of this metaphoric earthquake was the dramatic metamorphosis overtaking the remnants of the once proud Israeli Labor movement, causing Ben-Gurion, a towering figure among its erstwhile leaders, to turn in his grave.
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Lauri B. Regan, AMERICAN THINKER

Last week, pro-Palestinian protestors disrupted a New York City Council meeting yelling slogans and brandishing a Palestinian flag. The demonstration was particularly offensive given that it occurred as council members were voting on a resolution commemorating the 70^th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

In an impassioned response, Councilman David Greenfield observed that every Middle East country — except Israel — is not democratic and persecutes people of other faiths, gays, women, and those with opinions inconsistent with those of their governments.  He concluded, “What you saw here today was naked, blind anti-Semitism.”
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No one is against the rule of law, they are just against the rulers of law. It is entirely consistent with the rule of law to change the rules legally and then to follow the new rules. This is what the fight against the Court is all about.

This article seeks to put a positive spin on Begin’s appointment before the detractors can respond, but respond they will.

By Dan Margolis, ISRAEL HAYOM

Benny Begin’s decision to return to public life will benefit not only the Likud party, but also the rule of law in Israel.

When Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon suggested that Begin vie for a place on the Likud’s Knesset list, Begin reminded him that party members had voted him off the list in the 2013 primaries. Ya’alon told him that those who opposed him in 2013 — the supporters of MK Moshe Feiglin, who opposed Ya’alon himself during December’s Likud primaries — have followed Feiglin and have all but left the party.

That was the point from which the negotiations for Begin’s return began, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The successful end saw Begin placed 11th on Likud’s list for the coming elections.
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Kurdish religious minority ‘loves the Jewish people,’ says commander, as he tries to fight the Islamic State
BY JTA AND LAZAR BERMAN, TOI

An official in a militia organized by Iraq’s Kurdish Yazidi minority has issued a public call for Israeli assistance.

Lt. Col. Lukman Ibrahim, speaking to Al-Monitor, said the militia needs weapons and aid, and would like Israeli assistance so it can fight Islamic State, or ISIS. He said the Yazidis support Israel and fight similar enemies.

Israel has yet to respond to the Yazidi request.
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By James R Corsi, WND

NEW YORK – Recordings of top Pentagon officials in 2011 strongly criticizing Hillary Clinton for leading a State Department “march to war” against Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi in 2011 and for working with the Muslim Brotherhood confirm the conclusions of the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi, according to members who spoke to WND.

CCB members said the recordings revealed by the Washington Times provide additional evidence to support the group’s interim report concluding the Obama administration “changed sides” in Libya, rejecting an effort by Gadhafi to abdicate and choosing instead to arm al-Qaida-affiliated militia seeking to forcibly oust the dictator. Read more…

By Ted Belman

The latest poll puts Likud ahead of Labor/Livni. That’s a good thing. It is suggested by JPOST that that rise is due to Bibi’s handling of hostilities to the north. I am not so sure. In any event the poll didn’t reflect the last minute list changes, one of which is that Benny Begin will now be in a realistic spot on Likud’s list.

Leiberman took Bibi to task over his weak response. Once again Bibi’s timid policy of quiet for quiet rules the day.
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Steve Forbes. FORBES

It is fitting and proper–indeed essential for our very security–that Speaker John Boehner has extended an invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu to address Congress on Iran and its efforts to develop nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them anywhere in the world. The invitation has bipartisan support because many members on both sides of the aisle recognize the fundamental threat to world peace that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose. Like Winston Churchill in the 1930s with Nazi Germany, Netanyahu has been sounding the alarm about Iran’s ominous nuclear and terrorist activities.
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By Evelyn Gordon, COMMENTARY

One of the worst things about many “human rights” organizations is the way they actually undermine some very fundamental human rights. A prime example is B’Tselem’s new report on Palestinian civilian deaths during this summer’s war in Gaza. Few people would disagree that the presumption of innocence is an important right, but when it comes to Israel, B’Tselem simply jettisons it. In fact, the group states with shocking explicitness that it considers Israel guilty until proven innocent.
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T. Belman. The same could be said if Israel decides to withdraw from J&S, i.e., that it makes the sacrifices to defeat our enemies and conquer the land, meaningless.

Seeing “American Sniper” made the State of the Union speech pretty unbearable

By Daniel Henninger, WSJ Jan. 21, 2015

Barack Obama was 15 minutes into his State of the Union speech when I arrived home to watch it, having just walked back from seeing “American Sniper.”

Watching a movie about a Navy SEAL who served four tours fighting in Iraq was not the best way to enhance the experience of a Barack Obama speech. As a matter of fact, it was pretty unbearable.
Because Clint Eastwood directed “American Sniper” the movie is about more than the story of Chris Kyle, the highly skilled rifle marksman from Texas. In 2006, Mr. Eastwood presented two movies about the famous World War II battle of Iwo Jima. “Letters from Iwo Jima” told the story from the perspective of Japanese soldiers, and “Flags of Our Fathers” from the Americans’ side.
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Ted Belman. Martin Sherman, Moshe Feiglin and Nisan all agree on keeping all the land and on not giving citizenship a la Glick. This is key.

There are three possibilities with what to do with the Arabs,
1) offer them autonomy
2) pay then to leave (estimated at $100 Billion for the Arabs in J&S and another $100 Billion for the Arabs in Gaza.) Sherman and Feiglin both support this or
3) Offer Jordan the money to take them in.

Or perhaps a combination of all three.

Perhaps a deal could be cut with the Jordan monarchy and the Palestinians to become a constitutional monarchy like Britain. Thus Abdullah remains as king and the Palestinians have full rights.

Israel must be able to proceed unilaterally so that Jordan cannot frustrate her plans. Thus, until we have reached a deal with them or the Palestinians in J&S for autonomy, we should pursue the compensated emigration plan of Sherman and Feiglin.

By Mordechai Nisan, FPM