I recently posted an article by Mordechai Kedar about the work of Tsafrir Ronen titled the Killing Tsafrir Ronen again.

My friend Jerry Gordon who used to blog with me on Israpundit and now blogs at the New English Review, wrote a touching piece in memory of Tszfrir Ronen. I might add that Tszfrir was also a friend of mine.  I worked with him on creating his television channel and on the One State Plan that he developed with another friend Michael Wise. In 2008 I published Hadrian’s Curse: The Secret All The Arabs Know (Part I) by him.

Analysis: Did the IAF strike in Syria in response to public declaration by Iranian Revolutionary Guard on transfer of advanced missiles to Hezbollah?

Ron Ben-Yishai, YNET

The strikes in Syria on Sunday afternoon, which have been attributed to the Israeli Air Force, were likely intended to prevent the transfer of advanced weaponry from Iran to Hezbollah. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard continues to play with fire by equipping Hezbollah with arms that have the capability to cause widespread losses and destruction in Israel.

The appraisal is based on the fact that the targets were in two distant areas – one near the international airport in Damascus and the other in Dimas, west of the capital, mere miles from the border with Lebanon.
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Ted Belman: The reason that the US is so adamant in opposition to the settlements is that they are an obstacle to the ’67 lines plus swaps formula which is the only formula that the the US can envision. Perhaps they are right. But from Israel’s point of view, no deal is better than a bad deal. Unfortunately Netanyahu’s “pillars of peace” makes no territorial claim and is content with a long term security presence.

Netanyahu  enumerated three “pillars of peace”: one, genuine mutual recognition; two, an end to all Palestinian claims, including the right of return; and three, a long-term Israeli security presence.

By Herb Keinon, JPOST

VIDEO

The two-state solution is the only path to peace, US Secretary of State John Kerry said Sunday in Washington, less than 24 hours after Economy Minister Naftali Bennett dismissed that as unrealistic.

Kerry, who spoke at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Forum immediately after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s taped message, said the two-state solution is the only path to peace “for the simple reason that there is no one-state alternative that is viable or can preserve Israel’s status as a Jewish state and as a democracy.”

At the conference, Bennett – possibly a major player in the next government – defended his plan for Israel to annex 60 percent of the West Bank and grant the Palestinians in the other 40% enhanced autonomy, economic opportunities and infrastructure, adding that the idea of a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was an illusion.
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By Joel Pollack, BREITBART

Members of Israel’s secular elite–including renowned authors and former diplomats–have signed a letter that encourages European parliaments to recognize a Palestinian state. The letter, which was reportedly sent to the Belgian parliament on Sunday, comes after deadly Palestinian terror attacks, incitement by Palestinian leaders, and the collapse of the Palestinian unity government. It is self-deluded–and treasonous in effect, if not intent.

There is no other way to describe a gesture that is so callously indifferent to the lives of innocent fellow citizens, even if some of the signatories are among those who have sacrificed the most for Israel’s security in the past.
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Knesset committee is told that Arab illegal construction is 16 times that of Jews, per person.

By Gil Ronen

The Subcommittee for Judea and Samaria of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee hosted on Sunday the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), Major General Yoav Mordechai, for a discussion of illegal construction in Judea and Samaria.

According to information presented to the committee, about 550 illegal structures were built by Arabs in Areas C in the course of 2014, as opposed to 150 illegal structures built by Jews. Bearing in mind that the Arab population in Areas C is smaller than the Jewish one – about 90,000 Arabs compared with about 400,000 Jews – the rate of illegal construction in the Arab sector is 16 times that in the Jewish sector.
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T. Belman: The left worships democracy and constantly holds the right to account if it deviates from it. In the past I have questioned democracy as the be all and the end all. It is common knowledge that democracy will be the end of democracy. By that I mean democracy results in give-aways to the detriment of the state. This article analyses how democracy gave way to entitlements, political correctness, multriculturalism and Islam. Well worth thinking about.

By Enza Ferreri, AMERICAN THINKER

I’m not sure how conservative Americans will view the recently-published book Democracy as a Neocon Trick by Alexander Boot.

It’s an unusual work: whereas critics of America are generally on the political Left while those on the Right defend it, this is a criticism of the U.S. from a non-Leftist viewpoint, indeed from a traditional, conservative, Christian, pre-Enlightenment viewpoint.

I don’t agree with everything the author says about America, but he’s such a brilliant philosopher in so many respects that whatever he writes is worth exploring.

Born in Soviet Russia, Alexander Boot emigrated to the USA in 1973 and then to Britain in 1988.
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Plunging oil prices have far-reaching implications for the global economy, the Middle East and the Jewish state.

Oil, once a strategic ace, strategic prince and political joker, is on the skids Hardly half a year since piercing the $100/barrel ceiling and peaking at $103, crude prices this week cracked the $65 floor, as some analysts predicted a $30 barrel sometime next year.

Such dives happen routinely in financial markets, but this one is different – because oil prices vector economic, industrial and geopolitical pushes and pulls more tellingly than any commodity, currency, bond or share.
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“Dad would be proud”

One for all and all for one’ can get pretty absurd,” the late Jerusalem Post staffer and columnist Sam Orbaum wrote about his identical triplet daughters 14 years ago. Orbaum, who passed away in 2002 at the age of 46, went on in the column, entitled “The threeness of it all,” to describe life as a father of identical triplets. Not only did he sometimes mix them up, Orbaum wrote in his well-known wry, comic style, but he was also constantly impressed by their tight bond – when for example they stood up for one another in fights in the school sandbox.
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THIS INTERVIEW IS FASCINATING. BENNETT IS OUTSTANDING.

Full transcript.

Lt Col Howard: Ambassador Ron Prosor’s address to the United Nations a couple of days ago eruditely reiterates the Jewish case and forthrightly exposes the cynicism and double standards of the international community in relation to Israel.

I urge you to read / listen to it, distribute it and retain it for future reference.

Mr. President,

I stand before the world as a proud representative of the State of Israel and the Jewish people. I stand tall before you knowing that truth and morality are on my side. And yet, I stand here knowing that today in this Assembly, truth will be turned on its head and morality cast aside.

The fact of the matter is that when members of the international community speak about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a fog descends to cloud all logic and moral clarity. The result isn’t realpolitik, its surrealpolitik.

The world’s unrelenting focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an injustice to tens of millions of victims of tyranny and terrorism in the Middle East. As we speak, Yazidis, Bahai, Kurds, Christians and Muslims are being executed and expelled by radical extremists at a rate of 1,000 people per month.

How many resolutions did you pass last week to address this crisis? And how many special sessions did you call for? The answer is zero. What does this say about international concern for human life? Not much, but it speaks volumes about the hypocrisy of the international community.
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DEBKAfile Exclusive Report December 6, 2014, 10:22 AM (IDT)

The six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) rulers meet in the Qatari capital of Doha next week amid high suspense across the Arab world. Its agenda is topped by moves to finally unravel the 2010 Arab Spring policy championed by US President Barack Obama, moves that also bear the imprint of extensive cooperation maintained on the quiet between Israel and key Arab rulers.

JPOST

Israeli officials in Jerusalem on Saturday praised US President Barack Obama’s nominee to succeed outgoing Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel.

Obama on Friday named Ashton Carter, a longtime Pentagon aide, to the top post just days after Hagel announced he would be stepping down.

The president said Carter “brings a unique blend of strategic perspective and technical know-how” to the job.

At a small ceremony, Carter told Obama that if he is confirmed by the US Senate, “I pledge to you my most candid strategic advice.”
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71% of respondents encourage bi-national state if two states not possible; more Americans tacitly back Palestinian statehood bid at UN

BY ILAN BEN ZION AND RICKY BEN-DAVID, TOI

A growing number of Americans back the idea of a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and over two-thirds of those surveyed in a recent poll published Friday by the Brookings Institution said they would call for a single democratic state should a two-state solution prove unviable.

According to the findings of the survey, the percentage of those polled who want Washington to advocate a single bi-national state with equal citizenship for Jews and Arabs has risen from 24 percent to 34%. The poll was conducted online in November 2014 by Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland. The authors did not specify over what time period that 10 point hike took place.
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See also: An unflattering portrait of Hillary Clinton by the NYT

TIMES OF ISRAEL

Former US secretary of state and likely 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said Friday that the US must intensify and deepen cooperation with its Middle East partners, particularly Israel.

Dismissing the negative press coverage surrounding tensions between the Netanyahu government and the Obama administration, Clinton said that cooperation between Israel and the US over the past six years has been “quite extraordinary.”

“The funding on Iron dome, the funding of other military needs and equipment, the continuing strategic consultation that we’ve been consistently engaged in, no one can argue with the commitment of this administration to Israel’s security,” Clinton declared at the annual Saban Forum in Washington Friday evening.
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As Jewish institutions fight over American evangelicals’ deep pockets, an in-depth look at a controversial yet fruitful relationship

BY AMANDA BORSCHEL-DAN, TOI

WELL WORTH THE READ

Shirley Lewis wrote to me to correct this. “Nope.  Not center left. It is hard left”. She makes her case below.

The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles has consistently presented a left of center viewpoint and consistently bars right wing opinion from its pages.

Its publisher/editor Rob Eshman recently wrote Proposed nation-state law crosses American Jewish red lines.

His long time protagonist and collaborator friend of mine, Lt Col Howard wrote the following to him.

ESHMAN: “I know Benjamin Netanyahu knows all this. He is a very smart man. He certainly doesn’t need me to draw him any pictures.”… On this 1 point, I agree with you 100%.

Rob, in Israel , previously the left such as Livini, supported such a bill. Much of the current opposition to the bill’s talking points are political hype and not factual since the final provisions of the bill are still subject to a lot of change and negotiation.

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By CAROLINE B. GLICK , The Jerusalem Post

These elections are necessary. The up to NIS 1.2 billion that taxpayers will have to pay to finance the vote scheduled for March 17 is money well spent. And if the current polls are even close to what the election results will be three months from now, then the public understands that they are necessary and intends to elect a government that will serve it better than the one that just dissolved.

To be sure, Netanyahu is the one who decided to call elections. But the person responsible for making it impossible for the existing government to function is Lapid. Over the past few months Lapid has had the political equivalent of a nervous breakdown.
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By Martin Sherman, JPOST

Popularity should be no scale for the election of politicians. If it would depend on popularity, Donald Duck and The Muppets would take seats in [the legislature] – Orson Welles

Elections are won… chiefly because most people vote against somebody rather than for somebody – Franklin Pierce Adams

This Wednesday, the inevitable happened. The improbable coalition, cobbled together out of irreconcilably disparate components, finally disintegrated.

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

The disintegration of the coalition was virtually inevitable from the moment it was formed. From the get-go, it was the product of the puerile petulance of its principal participants and the perverse partnerships that this produced.
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By Jeremy Sharon, JPOST

[..]
And one of the primary goals of Lapid and his Yesh Atid party was to roll back entitlements secured by the haredi parties for their sector, get haredi men into the army and the workforce, and secure a raft of measures that would loosen the grip of the Orthodox religious establishment over the life-cycle choices of the general public.

It was because of the desire to implement this agenda that Lapid was so adamant in his refusal to sit with the haredi parties in government, and their absence from it was considered a considerable opportunity to force through reforms on these issues.
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T. Belman: Is this poll not irrelevant. Netanyahu’s party is slated to get about 25 seats in next Knesset. That will make Likud the biggest party. With support of Bennett, he will get the first opportunity to form the government.

By Gil Hoffman, JPOST

Prime Minister Nanyahu’s chances of coasting to an easy victory in the March 17 election took a surprising hit on Thursday when a Panels Research poll taken for The Jerusalem Post and its Hebrew sister newspaper, Ma’ariv Sof Hashavua, found that a hefty majority of Israelis want him to lose.

The poll, taken on Wednesday among 500 respondents representing a statistical sample of the adult population, indicated that the election could end up being close and assumptions that Netanyahu cannot be defeated may be incorrect.
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