Abbas said the unity government will abide by past agreements, forego violence and recognize Israel.  He did not say Hamas would.  This is significant.  Ted Belman

From my point of view, I agree that what Israelis believe about the demographics is of prime importance. I have yet to read and defense of Pergola or Sofer analysis or attack on AIDRG’S. If someone can supply links for same please do so.

In the same vein, I have been proposing that we commission a feasibility study of Sherman’s compensated emigration plan. If Israelis are convinced of the economic benefits, it would sell better. Ted Belman

By EVELYN GORDON, JPOST

A rational Palestinian policy needs demographic facts; but Israel hasn’t done the requisite research.

In a Bloomberg interview earlier this month, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu observed that due to the stalled peace process, “the idea of taking unilateral steps is gaining ground, from the center-left to the center-right.” Prof. Efraim Inbar has a counter-proposal, succinctly encapsulated in the title of his May 15 column in Israel Hayom: “Let’s do almost nothing.”

Read more…

By Moshe Arens, HAARETZ

Israel is not short of enemies – Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, terrorist gangs in Sinai, assorted terrorist groups near the border on the Golan Heights since the outbreak of the civil war in Syria, and farther afield the atomic ayatollahs in Iran. But far more dangerous, there is an enemy within – the northern branch of the Islamic Movement headed by Raed Salah from the Israeli city of Umm al-Fahm in Wadi Ara.

The northern branch of the Islamic Movement is for years actively engaged in subversive activity aimed at destroying the State of Israel and establishing in its place an Islamic State. This is their openly declared aim and, believe it or not, they are making progress toward achieving that aim. Progress, toward achieving what to many might seem an impossible mission, is being made by gradually mobilizing the Muslim population in Israel in an anti-Israeli crusade. By preaching to them that Israel is their enemy, inciting them to violence against Israel, and fighting tooth and nail against any move toward integration by Israel’s Arab citizens into Israeli society.
Read more…

By Tom Wilson, COMMENTARY

By Thomas Lifson, AMERICAN THINKER

A major scientific poll of Arab Israelis has discovered some facts that put the lie to the narrative pushed by the jihadists and their allies on the worldwide left, including practically all media. Camera reports:

According to a study by Professor Sammy Smooha of the University of Haifa, 63.5% of Israeli Arabs consider Israel to be a good place to live. The study, titled “The Index of Arab-Jewish Relations in Israel,” draws on 700 face-to-face interviews with a national representative sample of Israeli Arabs and 700 phone interviews with Israeli Jews. It has been conducted annually since 2003.

The Tower reports that, not only did nearly two-thirds of Israeli Arabs say Israel is a good place to live in 2013, this is an increase from 2012’s figure of 58.5%.
Read more…

There is an urgent need to overcome profound ignorance in a world fast succumbing to a false Arab narrative that would leave ancestral Jewish land deserted and in the hands of thieves. The time is long past due for Israeli sovereignty in Area C.

Victor Sharpe, INN

“Then said Satan: This besieged one, how shall I overcome him?
“He has courage and ability, he has weapons and imagination.

“So he said: I shall not take his strength, nor muzzle nor bridle him.
“Nor soften nor weaken his hands, only one thing I shall do;

“I shall dull his brain and he will forget that he is in the right.”

So wrote the Israeli poet, Natan Alterman, in his poem, “Gone like a Dream”. He was expressing his deep anxiety over the weakening resolve of Jews in Israel and in the Diaspora to support the reconstituted Jewish state. This inevitably led to the fateful abandonment by so many Israeli politicians and successive governments of the need to include within the reconstituted Jewish state every inch of sovereign ancestral Jewish land from the Mediterranean Sea to the River Jordan.
Read more…

YNET NEWS

Aggressive desalination program has transformed perennially parched land into perhaps the most well-hydrated country in the region.

After experiencing its driest winter on record, Israel is responding as never before – by doing nothing.

While previous droughts have been accompanied by impassioned public service advertisements to conserve, this time around it has been greeted with a shrug – thanks in large part to an aggressive desalination program that has transformed this perennially parched land into perhaps the most well-hydrated country in the region.
Read more…

This book may be the page turner that Ms Tassel says it is, but I felt the same about the Lone Wolf except for the last few hundred pages. I am fascinated by Jabotinsky and lament the fact the Ben Gurion considered him an enemy to be shunted aside. Ted Belman

By Janet Tassel, FPM

Amazingly, the last biography of Vladimir Jabotinsky in English appeared close to twenty years ago: Lone Wolf, a two-volume doorstop by Shmuel Katz (1996), which at almost 2,000 pages, deserves its reputation as “compendious.” Now, in a new biography, Jabotinsky: A Life, Hillel Halkin has done the impossible: He has gracefully condensed the story of this complex tragic figure into a page-turner that is at once concise and a rattling good read.

Jabotinsky, known principally as Zionism’s most polarizing and bellicose crusader, was also a cultured, indeed aristocratic, polymath— multingual, a prolific journalist, lawyer, translator of Poe and Dante, playwright, poet, playwright and author. (His novel Samson the Nazarite (1926) was later made into a Cecil B. DeMille movie with Hedy Lamarr and Victor Mature.) That he may also have been a lover of women seems probable, given his early bohemian life in Rome and elsewhere, and his lifetime of traveling so much without his wife. Not that he embodied le beau ideal; indeed, though a fastidious dresser, he was small and rather “froggy” around the eyes, in Halkin’s words.
Read more…

Ted Belman (originally published in 2010)

The pro-Palestinian propaganda machine has succeeded in stigmatizing the Israeli occupation and the settlements. Time and again we hear about the “brutal occupation” and the “illegal settlements.” We rarely hear the truth in opposition to these lies.

Israel is accused of occupying the West Bank and Gaza. In fact, these territories are described as “the occupied Palestinian territories.” Not only are they not occupied in a legal sense, but also, they are not “Palestinian” lands in a sovereign sense.

The Forth Geneva Convention (FGC) is a treaty among signatory states that are called High Contracting Parties (HCP). It regulates the obligations of one HCP, who occupies the land of another HCP. It defines the terms “Occupying Power” and “Occupied State.” Thus, this convention does not apply to the territories because they were not the land of any HCP. They have never been the land of an HCP. Prior to 1967, Jordan was in occupation of these territories, just as Israel is currently in occupation. Jordanian sovereignty over these lands was never recognized, and ultimately, Jordan relinquished any claims over them. The FGC was never applied when Jordan occupied the land, and it shouldn’t be applied now that Israel does.
Read more…

Israel’s relations with the Diaspora are in flux. And as Israel prospers and matures, its distance from America’s faux “pro-Israel” organizations will continue to increase. That’s a good thing, not bad, and it couldn’t come at a better time. The anti-Zionist Jewish Left is currently making inroads on a wide front in the USA. To wit, the UJA/JCRC has allowed BDS-supporting groups to participate in today’s Celebrate Israel Parade in NYC. In fact, Israel-bashers like the New Israel Fund, Partners for Progressive Israel and B’Tselem are marching down Fifth Avenue even as I write – and, alas, doing so with little or no organized Jewish opposition. Dan Friedman

By Daniel Greenfield, FPM

Like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, the Israel Lobby is a myth. AIPAC, like jolly bearded men sitting in shopping malls, exists. And like the men with fake beards and pillows under their red coats, it goes through the motions. Its activists lobby, its events attract politicians and the one thing that it and its enemies agree on is its vast sphere of political influence that, like Santa, is absolutely everywhere.

If you believe AIPAC, it’s an incredibly effective organization. If you believe its enemies, AIPAC runs America and parts of Canada. It’s not an accusation that AIPAC denies too hard. Mall Santas don’t deny that they have flying reindeer waiting for them on the roof. AIPAC is a fat man in a rented red suit and fake beard trying to pretend that it can do anything. But AIPAC would have better luck making reindeer fly than countering the dominant power of the anti-Israel left and the Saudi lobby in Washington D.C.

And that’s because it doesn’t even try.
Read more…

Press Release

Initiative marks Israel’s long term commitment to invest in Jewish themed programs in the Diaspora

The Israeli government approved the “Joint Initiative of the Government of Israel and World Jewry” at the weekly Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem today.

The Government of Israel-World Jewry Initiative was launched by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs Minister Naftali Bennett with a clear objective – to ensure the security and growth of a vibrant Jewish future while enhancing the connection between the Jewish People and the State of Israel.

The government decision today is the first of two stages:
Read more…

By Daniel Greenfield, FPM

The interesting thing about getting a look inside a terrorist group is seeing how all the awful things you see on television get reduced to a dollars and cents figure.

Toameh revealed that Hamas works with the Islamic Movement (an Israeli organization that promotes Islam among Israel’s Arab citizens) to keep Jews from entering the Temple Mount compound, by retaining a group of young men to harass and throw stones at Jewish visitors. These men, who ostensibly are studying Islamic theology at the site, are paid a monthly salary of NIS 4,000 to NIS 5000 ($1,150-$1,440) for their activities, the Shin Bet said.

$1,440 isn’t bad for part time work considering that average income for Israeli Arabs is $2,185, though Christian Arabs tend to skew the average higher. And Islamic theology students don’t have a lot of career options.
Read more…

“However, in this unfolding American drama, Republicans, blindfolded by implacable hostility toward Obama’s agenda, which they do not fully understand, are preoccupied with tactics trying to capitalize on individual crises and have failed thus far to make intellectual adjustments and develop a coherent operating strategy to stop America’s descent into socialism.”

I disagree with the part that I have highlighted.

The Republicans are not blinded by his agenda so much as they are in agreement with it. Conservatives disagree with it but are not blinded by it. Ted Belman

By: Alexander G. Markovsky

The election of Barack Obama in 2008 manifested the arrival of a new world, economically and politically. The reelection of the president in 2012 confirmed that the threat of socialism has become a dark reality in the United States of America. The Republican Party and the public at large suffer from lack of knowledge and appear to be in denial about the social and political tsunami that is already beginning to engulf them.

The Republicans must be mindful that Marxists do not relinquish power voluntarily, as Lenin proclaimed after the victory of the October revolution: “We are taking power, and we are taking it for a long time.” Although Lenin did not say “forever,” it still took the collapse of socialism in the Soviet Union to force the Bolsheviks’ descendants out of power. In recognition of this historical premise and the “copycat” approach employed thus far by this president, we should not expect Obama to leave the presidency quietly.

If in 2008 Obama sought power to make “fundamental change”, in 2016 he will seek “fundamental change” to keep the power.  
Read more…

BY ARIEL BEN SOLOMON, JPOST

The situation in the country has deteriorated so much that the US suspended training by US special forces after a local militia stole a cache of American-provided weapons.

Netanyahu said he refused them in the past but not this time. The US is determined to force Israel to accept ’67 lines plus swaps and US security proposals. Obviously the US upped the pressure on Netanyahu and won’t accept no for an answer. For the US, the so called peace negotiations are far from over. Ted Belman

TOI reports:

Netanyahu told a group of settler leaders that the activity of the planning council of Israel’s Civil Administration, the body responsible for authorizing construction in the West Bank, had been partially suspended because the United States demanded it, the news site nrg.co.il reported Friday.

Netanyahu, who met Thursday night with mayors from 20 West Bank settlements, said the United States recently demanded that the Civil Administration not only refrain from issuing tenders for construction, but also freeze the activity of its planning committee altogether and not approve new projects that would later require tenders.

At the meeting, which took place at the Prime Minister’s Bureau, Netanyahu reportedly told the mayors he was “the defender of settlements,” adding that the he had resisted earlier Obama administration demands that “not a single brick be laid, not a single house be built.”
Read more…

By Mike Konrad, AMERICAN THINKER

By Caroline Glick, JPOST

The upcoming Peres-is-a-Superhero festival will just be the latest of the narcissistic, tasteless celebrations of this man, always choreographed expertly by Peres and his retinue of media groupies.

by Jonathan Spyer
The Jerusalem Post
May 29, 2014

http://www.meforum.org/3835/a-most-discreet-israeli-intervention-in-syria

Since the outbreak of the civil war in Syria in 2011, Israeli officials have observed events to the north with caution and concern. The concern has derived from the presence of anti-Israel paramilitary and terrorist elements on both sides of the fighting lines in Syria.

The caution, meanwhile, relates to the very deep aversion felt in the Israeli system toward the possibility of Israel’s being sucked in to the morass of the Syrian war. Israel’s Lebanon experience has left a deep institutional memory warning against overly ambitious incursions into the affairs of neighboring states.

Nevertheless, evidence is emerging of an increasing, though still modest Israeli involvement in events beyond the separation of forces line on the Golan Heights.

Read more…

By MARTIN SHERMAN, JPOST

The Israeli leadership would do well to bear in mind that commitment to the principle of democratic governance is not a suicide pact.

WOMAN IN GREEN

Fiamma Nirenstein

In a discussion with Fiamma Nirenstein, the former senior Italian parliamentarian refuses to be discouraged about the chances for Israeli advocacy among Europeans.

Fiamma Nirenstein, author, journalist, senior columnist, former member of Italian parliament and deputy head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Italian parliament, made aliyah to Israel during the past year and today, resides in Jerusalem. In the course of a conversation with Nadia Matar, who heads the Women in Green movement together with Yehudit Katsover, she analyzed the complex European reality and Europe’s relationship with the Jewish People in general and with the State of Israel in particular.

Nirenstein, who, in 2011, chaired the International Council of Jewish Parliamentarians and was named by the Jerusalem Post as one of the 50 most influential Jews in the world, characterizes Europe’s relationship with the Jewish People as “a combination of love and darkness.” She points to Europe as the cradle of Zionism.
Read more…