By Herb Keinon, JPOST

Canada is the second-largest country in the world, has the 11th-largest economy, is No. 37 in population and – since 2008 – has contributed over $350 million to the Palestinian Authority.

None of that, however, kept PLO chief negotiator Saeb Erekat from penning an op-ed last Friday in The Globe and Mail calling on Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird – who arrived in Israel that day for a five-day visit to the region – to apologize to the Palestinians.

And what was Baird’s sin? His spokesman said Erekat himself owed an apology for “offensive and ridiculous” comments equating Israel with Islamic State.

Earlier this month, Erekat said there was “no difference between the terrorism practiced by the group [Islamic State] led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Israel’s terrorism.” Ending settlement activities, he insisted, “is a prerequisite for eliminating terrorism.”
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WaPo: Palin says she’s ‘seriously interested’ in 2016 campaign. The is the lead story on DRUDGE.

By Sarah Palin on her FB page.

Kudos to Speaker Boehner for inviting Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to address Congress. Like most Americans, I’m scratching my head wondering how President Obama can take time from imperative administrative duties AND his golf schedule to sit down for a peculiar interview with a neon-lipped YouTube blogger whose claim to fame is publicly eating Fruit Loops while submerged in a bathtub of milk, but he can’t find even a minute to meet with one of America’s closest and most important allies. We knew Barack Obama was green, but not this green. The White House goes out of its way to snub and smear the Israeli Prime Minister, while at the same time smiling and shaking hands with Iran. They never cease to amaze and defy good sense.

To add insult to injury, liberal organizations (see here:STOP BIBI: J STREET GIVES NETANYAHU THE SARAH PALIN TREATMENT ) that claim to be pro-Israel are actually trying to stop our friend and partner in peace from speaking before our Congress.
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[The comments in red come from a senior military officer]

WH Officials: Netanyahu ‘Spat in Our Face’ Over Boehner Invitation 

THEY ARE NAMELESS AND BY REMAINING NAMELESS THEY ARE COWARDS

NY Times accuses Netanyahu of ‘playing politics on Iran’

Paper calls PM’s imminent speech to Congress ‘a breach of sense,’ wonders how he believes disrespecting Obama will help Israel.

ACTUALLY THE NEW YORK TIMES ACCUSATION IS DEVASTATING FOR PRESIDENT OBAMA AND SEC. KERRY. IT SAYS THAT THESE 2 INDIVIDUALS ARE SO PETTY THAT THEY WILL SACRIFICE THE NATIONAL INTERESTS OF THE UNITED STATES AND OF ISRAEL BECAUSE OF THEIR PERSONAL EGOS.
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NY Times accuses Netanyahu of ‘playing politics on Iran’
Paper calls PM’s imminent speech to Congress ‘a breach of sense,’ wonders how he believes disrespecting Obama will help Israel

PM ruining US ties for election speech, Lapid and Livni say
In separate interviews, Netanyahu’s former allies accuse him of hurting Israel’s security to gain favor with right-wing voters

By Joel Himelfarb, NEWSMAX

White House officials angrily denounced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for responding favorably to House Speaker John Boehner’s invitation to speak before Congress in March, telling the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that the prime minister had “spat” in President Barack Obama’s face.

“There are things you simply don’t do. He spat in our face publicly and that’s no way to behave. Netanyahu ought to remember that President Obama has a year and a half left to his presidency, and that there will be a price,” an unnamed senior U.S. official said.

U.S. officials said that the “chickens***” epithet that an anonymous administration official used to describe the Israeli leader several months ago was mild compared to the language used in the White House when officials learned of Netanyahu’s planned speech to Congress.
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T. Belman. A corollary to this thesis is that Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia are not motivated by the Islamic doctrine that they must keep all Islamic lands for Islam. That is a product of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, his protege Arafat and the PLO. They objected to Zionism from the start. These countries, not so much. The Arab invasion in 1948 was intended as a land grab now that Britain was gone. Today, these countries more than ever, need a strong Israel to protect them and to be on the front lines. Iran and Turkey use the Palestinian cause as a rallying cry for their own hegemony.

Another corollary is that they wouldn’t lend a hand or shed a tear if Israel were to get the “Palestinians” to leave and annex all of J&S and Gaza. In fact they would welcome it because a strong and expanded Israel is in their interest.

Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger

The myth of Palestinian centrality has dominated Western policy in the Middle East, while contrasting the reality of the Middle East.

In 2015, following in the footsteps of Presidents Mubarak and Sadat, Egyptian President Al-Sisi does not subordinate Egypt’s national security ties with Israel to Egypt’s ties with the Palestinians.

President Al-Sisi – just like his two predecessors – considers the transnational Muslim Brotherhood and Palestinian terrorism mutual threats to Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other Arab Gulf States, which have never regarded the Palestinian issue as a top priority, and have denied the Palestinian Authority their financial generosity. Notwithstanding Palestinian opposition, strategic cooperation between Israel and Egypt, as well as between Israel and Jordan and other moderate Arab regimes, has surged to an unprecedented level.
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By Anonymous

Even when Muslims are a minority population they can and do transform whole cultures and societies. And not for the better.

Why? Because their holy book is a totalitarian ideology founded on submission and world domination. And toward that end, Islam is on the march. Meanwhile, the West remains mired in cowardice and complicity. Nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in Europe, which is on the fast track to join the Caliphate.

Not to be outdone by Europe’s madness, the United States is traveling down the same bloody path, importing large numbers of Muslims from Islamic countries thanks to the Islamophile sitting in the Oval Office and a nation full of dhimmis.

Estimates on the number of Muslims living in the US vary, ranging from 3 million to 7 million. Whatever the precise number, it’s already outdated as it rises with each passing nanosecond.
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The Last Lion Remembered

By Victor Davis Hanson, NRO

Winston Churchill never once flinched in the face of the Third Reich.

Fifty years ago this Saturday, former British prime minister Winston Churchill died at age 90.

Churchill is remembered for his multiple nonstop careers as a statesman, cabinet minister, politician, journalist, Nobel laureate historian, and combat veteran. He began his career serving the British military as a Victorian-era mounted lancer and ended it as custodian of Britain’s nuclear deterrent.

But he is most renowned for an astounding five-year-tenure as Britain’s wartime prime minister from May 10, 1940, to June 26, 1945, when he was voted out of office not long after the surrender of Nazi Germany.

Churchill took over the day Hitler invaded Western Europe. Within six weeks, an isolated Great Britain was left alone facing the Third Reich. What is now the European Union was then either under Nazi occupation, allied with Germany, or ostensibly neutral while favoring Hitler.
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Europeans feel their skin crawl in the presence of the sort of Jews who represent the future of the Jewish people

By David P. Goldman (Spengler), PJ MEDIA

Why do Europeans feel such revulsion toward Jews? At a certain level, to be sure, European leaders deeply regret the new persecution of Europe’s Jews. Many share the sentiment of European Commission Vice-Chairman Frans Timmermans, who warned yesterday that an exodus of Europe’s Jews would call into question the premises of European society. Last September, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel told a rally in Berlin that it was the duty of every German to fight anti-Semitism. Nonetheless even the best-intentioned Europeans feel their skin crawl in the presence of the sort of Jews who represent the future of the Jewish people: those who follow Jewish tradition, raise Jewish families, and embrace the cause of Zionism. Europeans adore secular Israelis who wallow in existential doubts, for example, the novelist Zeruya Shalev, a bestseller in Germany and the winner of any number of European literary awards. I’ve never read Shalev, but then again, I don’t like fiction. Jews like Naftali Bennett, Israel’s economy minister and leader of the Jewish Home party, give them the creeps.
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T. Belman. I thought “Je suis Charlie” meant we were defending free speech. Yet the response in France and elsewhere is to penalize free speech.

By Deborah Weiss, FPM

[After discussing the Hedbo killings, the largest march in France ever and the no show of Obama, the author continues.]

But don’t worry; the US is on top of things: it will be holding its previously cancelled (or “indefinitely postponed”) summit on “Countering Violent Extremism” (CVE). The agenda makes no mention of Islamic terrorism or Islamic extremism, even with questionable qualifiers. If the summit’s definition of “extremism” bears any resemblance to the application of the term used by the Homeland Security Advisory Committee, then no doubt the roundtable targets will be the Tea Party, neo-Nazis, and other “right-wing extremists.”

Don’t be surprised if the administration reaches out to CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood front-groups to stamp out this scourge. After all, as Eric Holder has repeatedly stated…. urrr…stuttered, “[W]e are at war with those who would commit terrorist attacks and who could corrupt the Islamic faith in a way that they do, to try to justify their terrorist actions. So, that is who we are at war with.”
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A study in the dangers, and absurdities, of censorship

By J. Hoberman, TABLET

While Charlie Hebdo returned to Parisian newsstands with a defiant image of a contrite Mohammad emblazoned on its cover, Timbuktu, a much-praised, Oscar-nominated movie by the internationally known Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako was unceremoniously yanked out of a theater in the Paris suburb, Villiers-sur-Marne.

The district, which has a large North African population, is the birthplace of Hayat Boumeddiene, the fugitive companion of the perpetrator of the Hyper Cacher massacre Amedy Coulibaly. The town’s mayor Jacques-Alain Bénisti (a member of the Sarkozy’s Union for a Popular Movement) first called the movie, which he had not seen, “an apology for terrorism” and then had it removed Friday from the Cinema City Casino because he feared that young people might take the jihadists for a model.
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Ted Belman. This means that Yishai could join Likud giving it an extra 2 or 3 seats. Netanyahu could go with them or Bayit Yehudi. Probably Bennett prefers that Yishai and Netanyahu get together so his party can remain independent.. On the other hand Yishai could also join with Bennett. Maybe Ben Ari can join Bennet who will agree to red lines. Its getting interesting.

Rabbi Lior gets negative message from Yishai, whose sources fear ‘extremist’ stigma in apparent desire to compromise for coalition spot.

By Yishai Karov, Ari Yashar

Despite repeated calls to run on a joint list so as to ensure both ideological religious nationalist parties can pass the recently raised threshold, Yachad – Ha’am Itanu chair Eli Yishai has apparently refused to run with Dr. Michael Ben-Ari’s Otzma Yehudit.
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The Jews are entitled to settle in the disputed territories: entitled legally, historically and morally.

By Melanie Phillips, JPOST

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has announced a “preliminary examination” into “the situation in Palestine.” This has understandably provoked a furious response by the Israeli government.

The ICC prosecutor chose to accept the UN General Assembly’s bogus and politically motivated designation of Palestine as a non-member “state.” And Israel’s reputation is besmirched by the opening of an inquiry into it by an ICC which was set up to prosecute war criminals.

It is intolerable that the ICC has first of all accepted that “Palestine” is a state, and second that it may put Israelis in the dock while they are the victims of true war criminals, the Palestinians.
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T. Belman. The Administration is acting like we betrayed a friend. On the contrary, the administration has proved in a number of ways that they are not our friend. Israel owes them nothing.

JPOST

No indication of Netanyahu’s visit or even the invitation by US house speaker John Boehner was mentioned in a recent meeting with the Israeli ambassador, a US source says.

Following Wednesday’s announcement that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been invited to speak to Congress about Iran without first consulting President Barack Obama’s administration, US sources warned Thursday that the breach of protocol could have lasting effects for the Israeli premier, according to The Washington Post.

“Neither [Speaker of the House of Representatives John] Boehner nor Netanyahu gave the administration any notice of his planned visit, and some US officials were warning that the breach of traditional diplomatic protocol could have lasting consequences for the Israeli leader,” The Washington Post reported.
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NATIONAL SECURITY AND CONSERVATIVE LEADERS CONGRATULATE GOV. JINDAL FOR HIS LEADERSHIP IN COUNTERING THE GLOBAL JIHAD MOVEMENT AND SHARIAH

(Washington, DC): Dozens of national security professionals and conservative thought leaders have signed a letter to Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana congratulating him on his recent remarks to the Henry Jackson Society in London, during which he forthrightly identified the threat posed by the Islamic jihadist movement and the shariah doctrine it seeks to impose globally, and the fundamental incompatibility of that doctrine with American Constitutional freedoms.

The letter, organized by the Center for Security Policy, states in part:

“We want to congratulate you for your recent remarks at the Henry Jackson Society in London in which you exhibited exemplary clarity of thought, commitment to truth and dedication to our Constitution and the freedoms it guarantees.  The fact that you are being severely, and reprehensibly, attacked for doing so in connection with the central threat of our time – the Islamic supremacist doctrine of shariah and the global jihad being conducted to impose it on all of us – is an indictment of your critics, not of you.  To the contrary, such criticisms should be regarded as a badge of honor.

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US Secretary of State John Kerry had stated that an Israeli intelligence official said a tougher sanctions bill at this time would be “like throwing a grenade into the process.”

By Herb Keinon, JPOST

In an extremely unusual step, the Mossad issued a statement on Thursday denying the intelligence agency was lobbying US lawmakers against stiffer Iran sanctions and saying that such legislation may lead to a collapse of talks with the Islamic Republic.

The statement came as the climax to a bizarre series of events that ended with Mossad head Tamir Pardo contradicting a public statement made by US Secretary of State John Kerry.

The incident started when Speaker of the House John Boehner invited Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a special joint session of Congress to speak about the Iranian threat and apparently back tougher sanctions, something many in the Republican-led Congress are supporting.
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Israel is Getting it Together

In this week’s blog, I will illustrate how the Hebrew word “beyachad” (together) typifies the Israeli approach to innovating a better world.

Israel and the US continue to move closer together economically. The Israel-US Binational Industrial Research and Development (BIRD) Foundation recently approved $8.3 million in new funding for 11 projects where US and Israeli companies are working together.  Next, the new Israeli branch of US technology innovator Bell Labs is promoting itself as a new avenue for Israeli PhD graduates to pursue research careers in Israel.  Then, American Internet and media giant AOL announced that it is investing $5million in a joint US-Israeli video research project at the Technion-Cornell Institute.  AOL already has an Israeli R&D center.  And finally, US camera-maker Kodak is looking to acquire Israeli tech startups to help rebuild the company as a leader in digital printing.

Many countries realize that they need to get together with Israel if they are to tackle water scarcity and wastewater problems.  The University of Chicago has sought out Israel’s Ben-Gurion University to help develop radical new approaches that may one day rejuvenate the world’s water-starved regions.  Scotland’s BDS idiots must be “drowning their sorrows” following the successful UK pilot project of the recycling technology from Israel’s Applied CleanTech for wastewater – at Scottish Water!
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After 20 years of enduring vilification for reporting Hamas-PA armed collusion, documentation emerges.

By David Bedein, INN

This week, the respected Jerusalem Center forPublic Affairs, the JCPA, issued a policy paper which documented how the PSF, the Palestinian Security Forces, which reports to the PalestinianAuthority, has been consistently arming the Hamas and other terror groups for the past 15 years, despite public statements of the Israeli military establishment, which has consistently reported for all of these years that the PA was fighting Hamas and other terror groups

The report can be perused at: http://jcpa.org/article/hamas-arafat-intifada/

Except that our agency broke this story, almost 20 years ago, and we paid quite a price for it, with the credibility and integrity of our office called into question.

Here is the background: With the genesis of the Oslo process, the question of how the nascent Palestinian Authority would deal with Palestinian entities which did not approve the Oslo accord became a focus for the press.
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T Belman. I agree with Waldman in essence but disagree when he says in the US “the only allowable public position for a politician to take is that we support whatever the Israeli government wants to do.” Whether that is true is debatable but in practice the US Administration doesn’t back the government of Israel’s position whether coming from the left or right, but instead bully’s Israel into doing what it wants.

By Paul Waldman, WaPo

When House Speaker John Boehner invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress without bothering to let the White House know, as is normal practice when dealing with foreign leaders, he no doubt thought he was getting a little sauce for the gander.You want to find ways to get Republicans mad, President Obama? Okay, how about if I invite the leader of one of our closest allies here to basically lobby against your position on Iran? How do you like that?

Boehner was right on that score: President Obama doesn’t like it very much. Neither did Nancy Pelosi, who blasted Boehner’s move this morning as “inappropriate,” adding: “It’s out of the ordinary that the Speaker would decide that he would be inviting people to a joint session without any bipartisan consultation.”
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T. Belman. This is scary as hell. Clinton has no accomplishments on her resume and many blackmarks. Just like Obama. What is with the American public. Clinton is no friend of the Jews or Israel.

By Jeremy Diamond, CNN

Washington (CNN)Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton isn’t just the prospective Democratic frontrunner — she’s favored over every top potential Republican candidate, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll released Thursday.

Clinton beats out five potential Republican candidates in head-to-head matchups by double-digits, according to the survey of 843 registered votes, conducted after reports emerged that Mitt Romney was phoning donors, supporters and former staffers and considering a third presidential run.

Mitt Romney may be rushing the field and fraying former Gov. Jeb Bush’s prospects of locking up the establishment money, but the former GOP presidential nominee loses to Clinton by a wider margin than Bush in the poll’s hypothetical matchups. Romney falls 15 points behind Clinton while Bush also loses, but by 13 percentage points.
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Ted Belman. I was thinking the same thing. At a minimum, all bus drivers should carry guns.

MK Feiglin Blog

“If two armed and trained citizens had been on the bus yesterday in Tel Aviv, the terror attack would have ended in a completely different way –  or it wouldn’t have happened at all,” said MK Moshe Feiglin after Wednesday’s terror attack in which 10 were wounded, three seriously. “But Israel’s policy is to reduce the number of citizens licensed to bear arms as much as possible. The main excuse is the murders that have been perpetrated by owners of licensed guns. But the truth is just the opposite. In 2013, 13 murders were perpetrated with licensed firearms. 12 of those murders were carried out by security guards or police. Their weapons belonged to the organization for which they worked or to the State! They weren’t privately owned at all,” Feiglin said.

“How many tractors running people over, knife-wielding terrorists or other murderers and robbers have been neutralized by responsible citizens bearing licensed firearms?” Feiglin asked.  “So if weapons-bearing citizens help to secure the public domain, shouldn’t the State encourage responsible citizens to practice shooting and carry weapons? Why does it do just the opposite?
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