Qatar pledged $1B so that they could greatly influence proceedings and protect Hamas. Whether they actually advance the money is another storey. It is noteworthy that no one attributes the destruction to Hamas’ policy of “resistance”. They are not blamed for anything. UN Chief Says ‘Occupation’ is to Blame for Gaza War.

“We must not lose sight of the root causes of the recent hostilities: A restrictive occupation that has lasted almost half a century, the continued denial of Palestinian rights and the lack of tangible progress in peace negotiations,” “I call on all parties to come together to chart a clear course toward a just and final peace. “Going back to the status quo is not an option; this is the moment for transformational change.”

Since only part of the money is for reconstruction, I believe that the balance is for projects in Judea and samaria that would promote the “peace process”. It may be that the reconstruction has been linked to achieving results in the peace process. The noose is tightening around Israel’s neck. Ted Belman

Only half of funds would be ‘dedicated’ to reconstruction; Egypt’s Sissi urges Israel: Now is the time to end the conflict. UN chief to visit Gaza on Tuesday.

By Jack Khoury and News Agencies, HAARETZ

A donor conference in Cairo to raise money to aid the Gaza Strip after this year’s war between Hamas and Israel ended with pledges of $5.4 billion, Norway’s foreign minister said Sunday.
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By Ofir Haivry, COMMENTARY

The old Middle-Eastern order has collapsed. Like a glacier that has been undermined gradually by hidden trickles from within and then subjected to a final spring thaw, it has come crashing down. The ongoing Arab uprisings that began in late 2010 have unseated or threaten to unseat every Muslim government in the region. Swirling conflicts have replaced former arrangements, and, from afar, these conflicts look like a shapeless free-for-all. But beneath the chaos, patterns are forming among regional players who are working to come out on top once things settle down.

The new Middle East is being built on the rubble of the old dispensation, but it is vastly different from it. For generations, there was an “Arab World” stretching from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. Regardless of its internal rivalries and rifts, it shared a consensus about the identity of the region as Arab (and mostly Sunni Muslim) and tended toward autocratic and dynastic government. Non-Arab countries in the region, such as Turkey, Iran, and Israel, were deemed alien to this identity and for the most part were sidelined politically.
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Jerusalem and Hamas want the coastal enclave rehabiliated quickly as political interests converge, but Cairo and the PA are more wary

BY AVI ISSACHAROFF, TOI

[…] The question is what will happen in practice. The residents of the Gaza Strip, well versed in disappointment, are already sounding more cautious and realistic. A month and a half has passed since the war, and until now, nothing has changed. It’s certainly possible that in the coming days, the coastal enclave will be awash with building materials, and the reconstruction will kick into high gear. But in reality, housing construction has not yet begun, and winter is coming.

A friend in Gaza told me Saturday that houses destroyed in 2004 and 2005 by the IDF during the large campaigns in the Rafah area, on the border with Egypt, have not yet been rebuilt. In those campaigns, hundreds of homes were partly or completely demolished, and nearly 10 years later the homes have not been fixed.
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Analysis: Israel now admits that the almost-airtight blockade of Gaza has done more harm than good; on eve of Cairo truce talks, Israel shifts its focus to easing the lives of Palestinians in return for greater oversight over Hamas. This is how Israel hopes to restore calm to its south.

By Ron Ben Yishai, YNET

The current tensions between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama only conceal the deeper disagreement between Israel and the US and other Western allies, which has only grown in severity in wake of Operation Protective Edge.

Israel is committed to a two-state solution, our friends in Washington and the EU maintain; for them it is inconceivable that every couple of years Israel wreaks havoc in Gaza and they foot the bill for its rehabilitation.

Their conclusion: Peace talks with Palestinian President Abbas must be reignited, a move which will make it easier for them to recruit the Arab world to the fight against the Islamic State. Israel holds the opposite to be true, and therein lies a dramatic shift in policy.

Destruction caused to a commercial building in Rafah (Photo: Reuters)

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The war against IS continues on several fronts. Iraq is pleading for US boots on the ground, fearing Anbar will far within days; in Syria, the Kurds are holding on in Kobani amid warnings of a looming massacre, while Twitter’s CEO says IS are issuing death threats over deleted accounts.

Roi Kais, YNET

Iraq, Syria and Lebanon the Middle East war against the Islamic State is being waged on several fronts. Iraqi officials have filed an urgent request for assistance from US ground troops in the western Anbar Province, for fear it would fall “within days” to IS. According to the BBC, IS fighters have attacked the provincial capital of Ramadi, and seized control of several military bases in the area.

Meawhile, Syrian Kurds are holding on in the border town of Kobani, by fighting a war of containment, and in Beirut officials are concerned that the terrorist organization will carve itself an access route to the sea. In the international arena, Dick Costolo, the CEO of social media giant Twitter, has also found himself on the terror group’s list of enemies.

Anbar is the largest province in Iraq, and covers most of the western area of the country. The province connects Syria to Baghdad, making it of great strategic importance to IS. Among other things, it includes the Haditha Dam, Iraq’s second largest dam, the Mosul Dam. An American source told the AFP news agency that the situation in Anbar “fragile”.

A destroyed home in Anbar Province after an IS attack (Photo: AP)

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by Raymond Ibrahim, PJ Media

The value of actor Ben Affleck’s recent outbursts in defense of Islam on HBO’s Real Time is that here, in one 10-minute segment, we have all the leftist/liberal bromides used whenever Islam is criticized.

In what follows, Affleck’s main arguments are presented and then discredited.

Relativism and the Islamic Heterogeneity Myth

Ben Affleck, in his worst performance since Gigli

At the start, when author Sam Harris began making some critical remarks concerning Islam, a visibly agitated Affleck interrupted him by somewhat sarcastically asking, “Are you the person who understands the officially codified doctrine of Islam? You’re the interpreter of that?”

Affleck was essentially arguing that really no one is qualified to say what is or is not Islamic, since all Muslims are free to interpret Islam anyway they want. This notion has less to do with how Islam is practiced and more to do with Western relativism, specifically the postmodern belief that there are no “truths,” that everything is open to individual expression. Thus even if an Islamic sheikh from Al Azhar University were to tell Affleck that the criticism leveled against Islam were true, the actor would no doubt reply, “Fine, that’s your opinion, but I know that most other Muslims disagree.”
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Tycoons, politicians and much of the media work together to make sure they are on TheMarker’s list for next year as well.

By Eytan Avriel, Avi Bar-Eli, Asher Schechter, Yossi Verter, Moti Bassok and Shuki Sadeh, HAARETZ

Who are the most influential people in the Israeli economy? One shared interest among those on TheMarker Magazine’s “100 Most Influential” list, compiled for the 14th year in a row, leaps out: They want to preserve the status quo. That is the source of their power and status.

If for the year 5774 we presented the list in the form of cliques – the Big Money clique, the Big Union clique, the defense establishment clique – for 5775 TheMarker has returned to its traditional format, of a list.

That doesn’t mean the cliques disappeared. Israel remains controlled by a handful of special-interest groups, and the list of the 100 “most influential” people is like a map of these groups that control us, our pockets and our future.
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By Manfred Gerstenfeld, INN

For parts I and II, click here.

Part Three

When one asks Segre where this all leads, he replies, “According to an ancient Jewish saying, since the Temple was destroyed, prophecy is reserved for babes and fools. I am not a babe and do not want to look a fool. I cannot make prophecies. All I can do is indicate trends, which may or may not be realized.”

He identified three major trends. The first is geographical. Israel is the only modern state halfway between Washington and Peking. This has many implications and creates multiple opportunities.

“Until a new satellite was launched recently, a TV satellite farm in Herzliya supplied TV stations all over the world with recordings from central Asian stations,” he says. “Now, following the political changes in Eastern Europe, a sort of new silk road has opened up for Israel to India and China.”
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By Louis Rene Beres, JPOST

In Washington, foreign policy has sometimes been constructed upon madness, but more commonly, upon mediocre visions, hackneyed phrases, childish metaphors, and flagrantly empty witticisms.

Recently, US President Barack Obama, speaking at the UN General Assembly, and addressing refractory issues of Middle East peace between Israel and the Palestinians, repeated his ritual call for a “Two-State Solution.” This tired presidential plea is plainly bound to fail. There is also overwhelming irony to this clichéd plea. Mr. Obama remains correct in affirming determination to fight barbarous jihadi foes called Islamic State (IS), yet his corollary call for “Palestine” could create another jihadist state. The president should finally understand that it makes no sense to fight against jihadi enemies in one chaotic theater of regional conflict, while simultaneously seeking to install similar adversaries in another.
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We may never know what exactly happened Sunday night at Parchin, but we certainly know that it will take hundreds more mysterious explosions to prevent Iran from getting the bomb.

By Caroline Glick, JPOST

[..] One of the main reasons that Israel’s purported strikes in Iran have been so lethargic is because the US opposes them. As we have seen in recent years, the Obama administration has been a sieve of information to the media about Israel’s alleged covert strikes in Iran. To successfully neutralize Iran’s nuclear facilities through acts of sabotage, Israel needs to hide its effort from the US as well as Iran.
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Analysis: Turkey, Iran and the now-stricken Syrian regime were all happy to see IS gaining in strength, while Saudi Arabia can be considered its spiritual mother.

Dr. Yaron Friedman, YNET

The United Arab Emirates on Sunday said it wanted clarification of US Vice President Joe Biden’s recent comments that US allies in the anti-Islamic State coalition support terrorism, with UAE Foreign Minister Anwar Gargash branding Biden’s statements as “far from the truth.” Biden has already apologized for his comments.

The fight against the radical Islamist group is treading water. The Americans have declared that a war against a few thousand hot-headed bearded men with trucks, jeeps and Kalashnikovs will last a lot longer than the war they waged a decade or so ago against an entire standing army in Iraq, in the Gulf War against Saddam Hussein. The slow pace of the war is most certainly related to the US economic crisis and Washington’s fear of yet another entanglement in Iraq.

IS militants parading in Mosul, Iraq (Photo: AP) (?????: AP)

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By Clifford May, Israel Hayom

In theory, we Americans are great proponents of diversity. In practice, how many of us stop to seriously consider the meaning of the word? If peoples really are diverse — if we differ not just about clothes and cuisine but over ideas, values, interests, morality, and human rights — that implies there is no “international community,” certainly not one that embraces “international norms.” For years, we’ve told ourselves the world is a “global village.” Turns out it may be more like the “several remote nations” to which Gulliver traveled.

Multiculturalists of the Left are most likely to misconstrue diversity. But there also are those on the Right who believe all human hearts yearn for freedom. By now, I think, it’s become apparent: Freedom may not be everyone’s cup of tea.
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EU set to reassess ties if Israel doesn’t move on peace

Fed up with settlement expansion, officials in Brussels are working on punitive measures to be implemented as soon as the political leadership wants to do so

By Raphael Ahren, TOI

The European Union is inconspicuously but determinedly threatening to reevaluate bilateral ties with Israel if the Netanyahu government fails to make progress toward a two-state solution and continues its current policy of allowing construction beyond the pre-1967 lines.

The EU’s new policy has gone largely unnoticed due to this summer’s Operation Protective Edge, but EU officials are already busy at work on a set of sanctions against Israel that Brussels could enact whenever the union’s political echelon gives a green light. Indeed, some in the EU are currently considering implementing a mechanism that would immediately penalize Israel for every step deemed unhelpful to the peace process (such as settlement expansion), a senior European diplomat told The Times of Israel.
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By Jonathan S. Tobin, COMMENTARY

In a viral video that just about everyone has seen by now, movie star Ben Affleck butted heads with Bill Maher about radical Islam on the latter’s HBO show. The subject was about those calling attention to the not inconsiderable support that radical Islamists like the terrorists of ISIS get from mainstream Muslims around the world. But what’s interesting about this controversy is not so much the specifics of the conversation but the way it resonated with the public. The uproar seems to show that more than 13 years after 9/11, Americans are now willing to start talking about what’s motivating terrorists.

The crux of the argument was about whether, as Affleck passionately argued, it is racist to say that ISIS’s ideology is backed by a vast number of Muslims. The actor believes this is just prejudice. He believes that instead of calling out the Muslim world for the actions of the terrorists, we should be merely condemning the individuals involved. Like many others on the left who have promoted the myth that America responded to 9/11 with a backlash against Muslims, Affleck seems to imply that the bigger threat to the country comes from the demonization of the faith of 1.5 billion people.
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BY: Alana Goodman and Adam Kredo, FREE BEACON

The U.S.-Israel alliance “is crumbling” due to waning support for Israel among Democrats and “total disrespect” for the Obama administration among segments of the Israeli government, according to President Barack Obama’s former Middle East envoy Martin Indyk, who alternately bashed Israel and the White House during a frank off-the-record talk at a Washington, D.C., synagogue during the Yom Kippur holiday.

Indyk, who left his role as U.S. special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in July, lashed out at the Jewish state for showing “disrespect” to the Obama administration and warned that the historically strong U.S.-Israel “relationship is in trouble,” according to an audio recording of the event obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
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Interior minster instructed to draft outline of law ‘which will enable the continued arrest of new infiltrators’, keep Holot center operational.

YNET

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered ministers on Tuesday to draft new legislation to tackle illegal immigrants after the High Court overturned a law allowing their extended detention without trial.

The order came at a meeting with the ministers of justice, the interior and public security a day after a heated parliamentary debate which saw hardline MPs attacking the court ruling.

“At the end of the meeting, the prime minister requested that a new bill be prepared that would express the government of Israel’s determination to continue to act against infiltrators,” a statement from Netanyahu’s office said.
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By Manfred Gerstenfeld, INN

This is the second of three parts of an interview which was published in Manfred Gerstenfeld’s book, Israel’s New Future, in 1994.  The book was republished in 2013 by RVP press under thenew title, Israel’s New Future- Revisited). For Part 1 click here.

Part Two

As far as European nationalism goes, Segre says that Jews have been both its promoters and its victims. For those familiar with the history of modern Italy, it is striking that between 1835 and 1870 the Jews were a considerable factor in theItalian Risorgimento – the fight for Italian unity – despite their small numbers.

People who demonstrate, through no fault of their own, the failure of the ideas of others are unlikely to be loved by those whose ideological balloons they have deflated. Segre says that Israel continues the Jew’s traditional role as test case for the failure of European ideas.

Israel is effectively dealing with many problems Europe has difficulty facing, let alone solving. So, for instance, Israel is confronting the challenge of integrating immigrants with reasonable success. Proportionately, it has absorbed more Third World immigrants into a Western-style society than any other country. Europe has a lot of good and bad experience in dealing with immigrants, Segre notes, but it lacks an adequate approach to the integration of non-Europeans.
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There is a lesson here for Israel. The west will not support her.

See also U.S. slams Turkey for ‘dragging its feet’ over Islamic State in Kobane

Unnamed senior Obama Administration official tells NYT: ‘This isn’t how a NATO ally acts while hell is unfolding a stone’s through from their border.’

JPOST

The fate of the Kurdish enclave in Kobani appears to be sealed. The greater part of the formerly Kurdish-ruled area has already fallen to the forces of Islamic State. Some 9,000 Islamic State fighters are positioned close to the last remaining redoubt – Kobani city itself. The black flag of the Sunni Islamists is already flying in three neighborhoods of the city.

On Monday, the Kurdish authorities ordered the evacuation of all remaining civilians from the city. Journalists are not being permitted to enter. The forces of the YPG (People’s Protection Units) were preparing to fight the jihadis for every street of the city.

However, not all civilians have been able to leave. If the city falls, a slaughter is likely.
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by Isi Leibler

The exceptionally vicious U.S. condemnation of Israel with regard to housing construction in the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem is not merely misguided, but also reflects irrational bias. Incidentally, this behavior also has many ominous parallels to the inhumane incarceration of Jonathan Pollard, despite pleas for his commutation from all sectors of American society.

The harsh outburst relates to a 2,600-unit housing project planned as an extension of an exclusively Jewish neighborhood adjacent to the suburb of Talpiot and Kibbutz Ramat Rahel both within the Green Line. It incorporates primarily barren land on which Ethiopian and Russian immigrants had been housed temporarily in mobile homes. Highly significant – but a fact that is ignored – is that nearly half of the construction was designated to provide housing for Arabs. Construction permits were approved two years ago but it was the far left-wing group, Peace Now that saw fit to highlight the issue in a press release on the eve of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama in a calculated effort to embarrass the prime minister and provoke tensions.
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