T. Belman. So what if Jeb Bush has Jewish friends, his families ties to the Saudis and their record on Israel are not encouraging. The Bush letter of ’04 doesn’t cut it for me. Christie, because of his ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, should be dismissed out of hand. Romney, of course has a good relationship with Netanyahu, if only we knew what Netanyahu will settle for. The key issue here is what policy is pro-Israel these days. How about a paradigm shift from the 2SS.

Gov Pence when asked about what he thought US policy should be vis a vis Israel and he said what his policy would be, namely to back Israel in what ever policy she thought best. Works for me.

By Ditriy Shapiro, TOI

WASHINGTON (Washington Jewish Week) — The key consideration for Jewish Republicans in what appears to be a burgeoning race for the party’s presidential nod is electability, top party donors said.

Whereas in the past, a donor’s closeness to a particular candidate or his embrace of a favored policy may have been key, Jewish Republicans said, the main goals now are defeating Hillary Rodham Clinton, seen as the likely Democratic nominee, and reversing course on Obama’s Israel policy.

Gary Erlbaum, a real estate executive who in 2012 backed former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, said the growing consensus among potential donors was that sticklers for ideological correctness were not attractive.
Read more…

Alan Koven: But of course there is nothing you can do…right? That is unless it happens to one of your kids and grand kids. More and more colleges are giving in to BDS. These kids are feeling the pressure and Jewish groups like open Hillel, JStreet and B’tselem are backing them. They are Jewish kids disenfranchised from Israel and Judaism. It’s only a matter of time before Canada and America become overrun and we may have no place to run.

Ted Belman. The trouble with this scenario is that Iran should be the one to want the negotiations, not the US or be more fearful of their end than the US. The US or Israel could always bomb them.

Is Mossad showing their leftist slant again.

Israeli intelligence officials have apparently come around to the same view shared by both the Obama administration as well as American spy agencies.

JPOST

Israel’s political leadership is in disagreement with top members of its intelligence services over the benefit of more Congressional sanctions on Iran as negotiations over its disputed nuclear program continue, Bloomberg News is reporting on Thursday.

The rift is so severe that it compelled the Mossad to contradict Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and directly warn US Congressional officials that more sanctions against the Islamic Republic at this juncture could effectively spell the end of negotiations, according to Bloomberg. Read more…

By Richard Baehr, ISRAEL HAYOM
[..]
The president reportedly let forth a charming piece of slander directed at Menendez and others who are with him ?in backing new sanctions:

?”According to one of the senators and another person who was ?present, the president urged lawmakers to stop pursuing ?sanctions, saying such a move would undermine his authority ?and could derail the talks. Mr. Obama also said that such a ?provocative action could lead international observers to blame ?the Americans, rather than the Iranians, if the talks collapsed ?before the June 30 deadline.?

“The president said he understood the pressures that senators ?face from donors and others, but he urged the lawmakers to ?take the long view rather than make a move for short-term ?political gain, according to the senator. Mr. Menendez, who ?was seated at a table in front of the podium, stood up and said ?he took ‘personal offense.’?
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By NYT

BUENOS AIRES — Intercepted conversations between representatives of the Iranian and Argentine governments point to a long pattern of secret negotiations to reach a deal in which Argentina would receive oil in exchange for shielding Iranian officials from charges that they orchestrated the bombing of a Jewish community center in 1994.

The transcripts were made public by an Argentine judge on Tuesday night, as part of a 289-page criminal complaint written by Alberto Nisman, the special prosecutor investigating the attack. Mr. Nisman was found dead in his luxury apartment on Sunday, the night before he was to present his findings to Congress. Read more…

By Gene Schwimmer, AMERICAN THINKER

Rarely is a speech widely praised before it is even delivered.  But such was the case for the speech Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal delivered to the Henry Jackson Society, a London-based think-tank, on January 18.  In that speech, Jindal spoke forthrightly about the rising menace of “Islamic extremism.”

And the critics, as the saying goes, went wild.  Larry Kudlow’s article, “Jindal’s Brilliant Take on Radical Islam,” exemplifies the reaction of conservative pundits to Jindal’s speech.  In his article, Kudlow specifically praises this quote (emphasis mine):

Muslim leaders must make clear that anyone who commits acts of terror in the name of Islam is in fact not practicing Islam at all.  If they refuse to say this, then they are condoning these acts of barbarism.  There is no middle ground.

Read more…

By Cliff Kincaid, NEWS WITH VIEWS
January 22, 2015

The disease known as political correctness has infected Fox News. First, anchor Bret Baier withdrew from a Catholic conference under pressure from his management and the homosexual lobby. Now, Fox News has bowed to pressure from the Muslim Brotherhood lobby, issuing an embarrassing “correction” that was not warranted for having reported factually on the existence of Muslim-dominated “no-go zones” in Europe.

These zones, which are better understood as Muslim-dominated enclaves or ghettos, were the scene of much-publicized violent riots in France in 2005.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) decided to target Fox News after several programs featured commentators who noted the existence of no-go Muslim-dominated areas where Islamic terror cells take root and find recruits.

Read more…

Amid Threats, Jewish Blogger Returns To Brandeis.  Did Daniel Mael’s right-wing, pro-Israel politics play a role in backlash against him?

‘We have a fundamental difference with the Palestinians about their path to statehood, a thoroughly unapologetic John Baird tells The Times of Israel

BY RAPHAEL AHREN, TOI,  January 21, 2015,

Canada’s Foreign Minister John Baird meets with Israeli Minister of Defense Moshe Ya’alon at the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv on January 19, 2015.

John Baird has no intention of apologizing. The Palestinians would like the Canadian foreign minister to say he’s sorry for his government’s unabashedly pro-Israel stance. They shouldn’t hold their breath.

In fact, Baird is waiting for an apology from Ramallah — not for having his car pelted with eggs and shoes Sunday during his visit there, but for a top Palestinian official’s comparison between Israel and terrorists of the Islamic State.

“People may disagree with our position with respect to Israel, but so be it,” Baird said Tuesday in Tel Aviv, as he wrapped up a three-day visit to the region. “It’s always wise to speak with moral clarity,” he submitted, adding that despite Ottawa’s unflinching friendship with the Jewish state, “we have a pretty good relationship with most of the Arab countries in the region.”
Read more…

By DEB RIECHMANN

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senators in both parties squared off with the Obama administration Wednesday about whether the threat of new sanctions would scuttle nuclear talks with Iran as House Speaker John Boehner, without consulting the White House, invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress.

Running together, Netanyahu’s and Bennett’s parties would be the largest Knesset faction by far

By Stuart Winer, TOI

A joint campaign list of the ruling Likud party and Jewish Home would win 40 seats in the coming elections, far ahead of the rival Labor-Hatnua joint Zionist Camp list, a Knesset Channel published Tuesday found.

Running independently, Likud, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, polled at 23 seats while the national-religious Jewish Home party, led by Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, came in with 16 slots in the survey. The poll found that the two would gain an extra seat by uniting to pull further ahead of the Zionist Camp, which polled at 24 seats.
Read more…

By Susan Warner, Olive Tree Ministries, FPM

It is not a secret that Jesus was Jewish.  Reliable scholarly sources validate this incontestable fact.

His genealogies are posted in the books of Matthew and Luke. These alone are sufficient to corroborate the authenticity of Jesus’s Jewish lineage.

Archeology and historical geography confirm that the regions of Judea and Samaria are the ancient stomping grounds of Jewish heroes. The Romans plowed under the city of Jerusalem, which Hadrian renamedAelia Capitolina in 135 CE. He subsequently renamed the entire region Syria Palestina. For the following 1,800 years until the end of the Turkish Ottoman Empire in 1918, the land was overrun by marauding armies, Islamic hoards or Christian crusaders of various flavors. There is nothing new here.
Read more…

By Eugene Kontorovich, WaPo 

The ICC’s Prosecutor announced today the opening of a “preliminary examination” into “the Situation in Palestine.” This means she will consider, on jurisdictional, evidentiary and policy grounds whether to open an investigation into crimes that may have been committed during this summer’s Gaza conflict. Opening such an investigation is a fairly standard step after receiving a declaration of acceptance of jurisdiction under Article 12(3) of the Rome Statute, and would not normally warrant much notice (other preliminary investigations also involve alleged crimes by the U.S. in Afghanistan and the U.K. in Iraq, though precious few Americans or British are aware of this).

But this decision of the prosecutor is quite different, and extremely significant. The decision to open the inquiry involved the prosecutor determining that the Palestinian Authority is in fact a “state,” a necessary precondition to jurisdiction under the Rome Statute, the Court’s constitutive treaty. Read more…

DEBKAfile Special Report
January 20, 2015, 6:55 PM (IDT)

Israel Tuesday, Jan. 20, used Western and Arab media outlets for “clarification” to Tehran of the purpose of its air strike over the Golan Sunday, asserting that Revolutionary Guards Gen. Mohammad “Ali Allah Dadi and his staff of five were not known to be traveling in the Hizballah convoy and were not the target.

“We thought we were hitting an enemy field unit that was on its way to carry out an attack on us at the frontier fence,’ a senior security official in Tel Aviv informed the media. “We went on the alert, we spotted the vehicle, identified it as an enemy vehicle and took the shot,” he said, adding: “We saw this as a limited tactical operation.”

This semi-apology, say DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources, was intended to tell Tehran that had Israeli intelligence identified the group of high-ranking Iranian officers in the Golan convoy, the air strike would have been called off. There was no reason why an intelligence mistake should cause a broad or even a limited military showdown between Iran and Israel, was the implied message.
Read more…

Terrorist, 22, stabbed passengers on #40 bus on Begin Road. At least four are seriously wounded. Suspect shot in leg, caught.

By Gil Ronen, Ari Yashar

A terrorist stabbing attack took place Wednesday morning on a bus in centralTel Aviv, on Begin Road, near Beit Maariv. The terrorist in an Arab man, reportedly from Judea and Samaria.

A video uploaded to Facebook by Jerusalem Councillor Arieh King shows the terrorist after his arrest.

Ten to 15 people were reported wounded in the stabbing. Four, perhaps six of them, are suffering from serious wounds. The wounded were taken to Ichilov and Tel Hashomer hospitals. The number of the wounded being reported has been changing since the attack took place, apparently due to initial confusion.
Read more…

Israeli military confirms reports of Gazan terror group rebuilding tunnel infrastructure, approves expansion of specialized subterranean engineering unit.

By Yoav Zitun, YNET

its underground activities beneath Gaza, more than a month afterPalestinian sources told Ynet that the terror group was rehabilitating its tunnel infrastructure.

“The other side has not neglected this capability,” warned a senior engineering officer on earlier in the day. On Monday, Israeli intelligence officials confirmed the developments to the British newspaper The Times.

Al-Qassem Brigades showing off new tunnels (Photo: Reuters)

Meanwhile, the IDF decided to expand its special engineering unit (Yahlom) by hundreds of combat and support troops. The senior officer said the threat posed by the tunnels was ongoing. “I believe that Hamas learned from the (past) campaign and it will only improve this capability ahead of the next round.”  Read more…

By James Corsi, WND

“The shocking part, maybe even a violation of international law that the Obama administration has been terrified to have fully revealed, is that Stevens as part of his duties as a State Department employee was assisting in the shipment of arms first into Libya for the al-Qaida-affiliated militia, with the weapons shipped subsequently out of Libya into Syria for use by the al-Qaida-affiliated rebels fighting Assad,”

NEW YORK – The Obama White House and the State Department under the management of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “changed sides in the war on terror” in 2011 by implementing a policy of facilitating the delivery of weapons to the al-Qaida-dominated rebel militias in Libya attempting to oust Moammar Gadhafi from power, the Citizens Commission on Benghazi concluded in its interim report.

In WND interviews, several members of the commission have disclosed their finding that the mission of Christopher Stevens, prior to the fall of Gadhafi and during Stevens’ time as U.S. ambassador, was the management of a secret gun-running program operated out of the Benghazi compound.
Read more…

The problem and solution reside with the people of the Islamic religion themselves.

By Larry Kudlow, NRO

‘Let’s be honest here. Islam has a problem.”

Those are key sentences in an incredibly hard-hitting speech that Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal will give in London on Monday. It is the toughest speech I have read on the whole issue of Islamic radicalism and its destructive, murdering, barbarous ways which are upsetting the entire world.

Early in the speech Jindal says he’s not going to be politically correct. And he uses the term “radical Islamists” without hesitation, placing much of the blame for the Paris murders and all radical Islamist terrorism on a refusal of Muslim leaders to denounce these acts.

Jindal says, “Muslim leaders must make clear that anyone who commits acts of terror in the name of Islam is in fact not practicing Islam at all. If they refuse to say this, then they are condoning these acts of barbarism. There is no middle ground.”
Read more…

Ted Belman. This is a very important article.

By SERAP MERVE DOGAN, MAXIME GAUIN, JPOST

As everybody knows, the once-flourishing Turkish-Israeli alliance has encountered serious problems during the past few years. To attempt to solve the issue, misunderstandings on both sides should be avoided. Turkey – which saved tens of thousands Jews during the Second World War – was never at war with Israel, unlike the Arab world. Ankara recognized Israel as early as 1949 and signed its first bilateral agreement with the Jewish state in 1958. In spite of all the Arab pressures, the diplomatic relations were never severed, either after the Six Day War or after the Yom Kippur war.

Zionism has historically attracted quite diverse supporters in Turkey, such as the ideologue of Kemalism, Tekin Alp (who was Jewish), president Celâl Bayar (1950-1960) and Turgut Özal, prime minister (1983-1989), president of Turkey (1989-1993) and even today, a reference for the AKP – the nationalist politician Alparslan Türke? (admirer of the IDF and of Israeli hi-tech), or even the ideologue of the secular far Right, Nihal Ats?z, who moved after 1945 to a staunch admiration for Jews and Israel. On the other side, David Ben-Gurion had the best of relations with the Ottoman authorities until 1914 and saw Atatürk as an example.
Read more…