On Yom Jerushalayim, PM Netanayahu swore that He will never divide Jerusalem. Then yesterday he said he was a great defender of the settlements but that he is constrained by “international considerations”. So essentially while he is trying to convince us of his bona fides, He is bowing to international pressure. In doing so he is also violating Israeli law.
The Jerusalem Law forbids the transfer of sovereignty in Jerusalem into foreign hands, but this is what is happening in practice
BY WOMEN IN GREEN
Politicians declare, over and over again, that Jerusalem will remain united forever and ever, but it seems that, in reality, the city is divided. Certain neighborhoods are closed to security forces and municipal enforcement bodies and there are signs forbidding Jews to enter. Jerusalem Council member Aryeh King describes the dismal and suppressed reality.
For years, Aryeh King, head of the Israel Land Fund and current member of the Jerusalem Council, states that along with the politicians’ declarations and oaths of commitment for the unity of Jerusalem, our eternal and everlasting capital, the government of Israel itself is dividing the capital in practice.
Read more…
Caracal Battalion is 70% female and offers Israeli woman chance to serve as full on combat soldiers, charged with patrolling the Israeli-Egyptian border – see stunning images from their final training mission before they are official inducted into battalion.
I will not be able to post anything until Friday afternoon. Sorry.
Were the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan the right response to 9/11 but badly executed? If not, what should the response have been? I don’t think the war against Afghanistan could have been won even with unbridled rules of engagement or using more troops. The weeds always come back.Ted Belman
by Daniel Pipes
Cross-posted from National Review Online, The Corner
Barack Obama’s announcement today that the number of U.S. troops will be reduced to 9,800 by year’s end and to zero two years later virtually declares that this war, which will have lasted slightly over 15 years and nearly all of four presidential administrations, will end in total American failure.
That’s because the Taliban and other Islamist forces have already made a substantial comeback; because the coalition-sponsored Afghan leaders have proven themselves corrupt and inept; and because Americans and other Westerner populations remain unconvinced that this war is worth their lives and treasury. As I have often predicted, about both Afghanistan and Iraq, it’s only a matter of a few more years before the impact of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars devoted to their liberation will disappear with little more than a trace.
Council on Foreign Relations
At West Point today, President Barack Obama laid out his vision for U.S. foreign policy, calling for the need to avoid both unnecessary military entanglements and isolationism. CFR President Richard N. Haass said the speech lacked a clear strategic rationale. “It seemed to be a speech that didn’t so much lay out a clear path of what he favored so much as what he opposed. It was against isolation; it was against indiscriminate intervention; it rejected too much use of force but also rejected too little. It was an attempt to essentially carve out a form of involvement in the world that avoided any and every excess, but with one or two exceptions, it didn’t provide any specifics.”
For Foreign Affairs, Senior Fellow Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution argues that “Obama’s overall foreign policy doesn’t add up to much, in large part because he is explaining it so tepidly.” O’Hanlon suggests two broad themes for the president: “First, he should champion the United States’ successes in the war on terror more confidently. He does not need to be George W. Bush, but a little dose of Ronald Reagan might help.” On Asia-Pacific policy: “Instead of just reiterating that the so-called pivot or rebalance is alive and well, how about giving a clearer sense of what the United States is going to do in the region now that it is supposedly back?”
O’Hanlon concludes, “The West Point speech was not one of Obama’s best efforts and will not by itself solve the problem. But it was a start.”
A terrorist struck at the Jewish Museum in Brussels on Sunday. The police are trying to find the killer, but meanwhile, two days later, crowds of people came to the Jewish Museum in solidarity…in Rome.
Riccardo Pacifici, the president of the Rome Jewish community,spoke in a way the Belgians and other European Jews should have:
“It’s time to show these rogues, these murderers, that we are not afraid, they do not intimidate us. We will march together and take them to jail,” according to Italy’s Il Messagero newspaper on Monday.
by Michael Ordman
I’ve been absent from the blog scene for around seven weeks due to illness – exactly the same amount of time as between the Jewish festival of Passover and the upcoming festival of Shavuot (Pentecost). During those seven weeks I just about managed to keep track of the recent accomplishments of the Jewish State. And Israel’s advances with medical treatments during the past seven weeks have been simply amazing.
The patient’s own fat cells were the original source tissue, which means almost zero chance of rejection by the body’s immune system. In the laboratories of Israel’s Technion, scientists have engineered muscle tissue containing major blood vessels for repairing damaged abdomens. A successful transplant was performed in clinical trials, suggesting that full abdominal surgery in humans using laboratory-generated tissue will soon be possible.
Housing Ministry pushing the breakup, in the hope of stoking competition.
HAARETZ – ONE YEAR AGO
12 8 26 1After 52 years, the Jewish National Fund is eager to dump its partner in managing the sale of Israeli land, the Israel Lands Administration.
The JNF board voted unanimously Thursday in favor of preparing a plan to quickly regain management of the land, as had been the situation until 1961, instead of sharing the responsibility with the Israel Lands Administration.
This divorce between the JNF and ILA was proposed by Housing and Construction Minister Uri Ariel and his ministry’s director general, Shlomo Ben-Eliyahu.
Read more…
Arab watchers around the Middle East are waiting agog for US President Barack Obama’s address at the US Military Academy at West Point Wednesday, May 28, as forecasts abound that he will unveil a major policy U-turn on the Syrian conflict. DEBKAfile’s military sources report that the new policy is in fact in motion ahead of the presidential disclosure. It is a program to expand US involvement in the war against the Assad regime and al Qaeda elements by providing moderate rebels with military training and a regular supply of sophisticated weapons, instead of the widely-spaced dribs and drabs hitherto. It may even include anti-air systems which Washington has withheld so far.
The Arab world sees Obama as moving to counteract Russian, Iranian and Hizballah intervention in the Syrian conflict. It is seen in some quarters as also payback for Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
At all events, a Saudi source commented in Riyadh: “For the first time in years, president Obama is ready to take direct action against Iran’s strategic interests in the Middle East.”
Read more…
By Ted Belman
Although Howard Rotberg and I grew up in small town Ontario, Canada, 16 miles apart, and both went to Law School, we never met. I became aware of him in 2008 as a result of his outrageous treatment as herein described. Howard just sent me this press release:
Howard Rotberg’s prescient 2003 novel, The Second Catastrophe: A Novel about a Book and its Author, about Israel during the Second Intifada and a Professor’s obsession with the possibility of Iran getting nuclear weapons and effecting a second Holocaust, was recently awarded a “finalist” pick in the 2014 Eric Hoffer Book Awards. For many years, it had been banned by Canada’s monopoly book retailer.* Rotberg’s latest book is Tolerism: The Ideology Revealed.( http://www.amazon.com/TOLERism-Ideology-Revealed-Howard-Rotberg/dp/1927618010/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1401222555&sr=1-2&keywords=tolerism )
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Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman were right when they blamed the noxious anti-Israel incitement rampant in Europe for Saturday’s murderous shooting attack at the Jewish Museum in Brussels and the assault and battery of two Jewish brothers outside their synagogue in a Paris suburb later that day.
Anti-Israel incitement is ubiquitous in Europe and is appearing in ever-widening circles of the Western world as a whole.
Until this week, the Catholic Church stayed out of the campaign to dehumanize Jews and malign the Jewish state.
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By Annika Hernroth-Rothstein, COMMENTARY
The Jews are a base, whoring people, that is, no people of God, and their boast of lineage, circumcision, and law must be accounted as filth. The Jews are full of the devil’s feces…which they wallow in like swine, their synagogue is an incorrigible whore and an evil slut.
—Martin Luther, “On the Jews and Their Lies,” 1543
I know what you are.
He smiled at me, the boy in the brown cargo pants, so sweetly that I was sure I had misheard him. But no. He knew what I was, even before I did, and he wanted me to know. The year was 1994, I was in middle school in a small Swedish town, and my country was experiencing yet another surge in neo-Nazi activity. Maybe it was the economic crisis, maybe it was the weather. Or maybe it was the same forces that had conspired four decades ago to bring my mother to the front of her middle-school class so that her profile could be drawn next to the neighbor boy’s—a lesson for her peers in how to tell a Jew from an Aryan.
“The Swedes are a practical people,” my mother said of the incident. “It didn’t feel like they were hateful. They just…wanted to know what we look like, you know, what features set us apart.”
Why, though? Why did they want to know?
By Ted Belman
Haaretz reported that Netanyahu wants to outlaw the northern branch of the Islamic Movement then published this editorial:
Don’t ban the Islamic Movement
arguing Anti-incitement is rarely invoked against Jewish racists, but the long arm of the law seems to reach Arabs more easily.
America has no business dictating terms on issues of vital national security to Israel, US Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), a possible candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, said in the Knesset Monday.
He placed the blame on the Palestinians for the recent failure of peace talks, saying “the principal impediment to peace is that, to date, the Palestinians have refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and have refused to renounce terror.
“Unless and until the Palestinians can agree on those very basic starting blocks, no lasting peace solution is likely,” he stated.
Read more…
Israel Hayom has been targeted by a new Knesset bill which would attempt to force the paper, which is currently distributed free of charge, to charge money, thus making it less popular and influential.
The Jewish Home party co-signed the bill that limits the nationalist paper, reportedly to put pressure on Netanyahu.
“Israel Hayom is not a newspaper. It is Pravda,” declared Bennett. “It’s the mouthpiece of one person, the Prime Minister. At every junction point, every point of friction between the national interest and the interest of the Prime Minister, they chose the side of the Prime Minister. I very much hope that Makor Rishon will be allowed to continue to hold an independent nationalist position.”
Bennett’s comments echo similar one made by Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman several months ago.
SHAME ON THEM
by Dror Eydar, Israel Hayom newspaper,
1. “What’s wrong with asking for fair play?” Rina Matzliah, host of Channel 2’s free “Meet the Press” program asked innocently last Saturday. What she meant was that when one newspaper is free and another isn’t, it’s not fair.
First of all, we’ll tackle the main point: Who said that people should be required to pay for print journalism, while radio, television, and Internet are provided for free? Second, if it’s “fair play,” then fair play all the way: Why is Rina Matzliah the only one who hosts “Meet the Press”? Isn’t it possible to pair her with a host who has conservative, right-wing views? “Fair play,” right? Why do most of the hosts of Army Radio’s current events shows take leftist stances? And Israel Radio? Why isn’t Matzliah discussing the issue? As for payment, if after all the years that people have been watching it for free Channel 2 were to ask viewers to pay, possibly special charges for each program, how many would be willing to pay to watch Matzliah’s show?
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By Naomi Ragen
In the book of Genesis, G-d tells Abraham: “And through you will all the nations of the earth be blessed.”
I’ve often wondered about that blessing we Jews are supposed to bring the world, and how it will come about. If it were up to me, right now, I don’t think I’d be very eager to fulfill such a role. After six months of having the world heap the vilest slander on my people and my country; after going through Holocaust Memorial Day, and now the Memorial Day for Israel’s fallen soldiers, I don’t think, if it was up to me, that heaping blessings on the world, particularly my Semitic neighbors, would be high on my list of “must do’s.”
However, since I know the Jewish people’s particular fate isn’t something you get to vote on, I recognize that I, and my fellow Jews will have very little say about this blessing thing either. And so, willy-nilly, we are going to bring blessing to the world. And I’ve finally figured out how.
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MKs Shaked and Ilatov will try to get majority for bill that is based on US Foreign Agent Registration Law.
Nationalist MKs Ayelet Shaked (Jewish Home) and Robert Ilatov (Likud-Beytenu) are about to present a new bill that is based on the US’s Foreign Agent Registration Law, in an effort to make it more difficult for hostile NGOs to operate inside Israel.
According to Maariv-NRG, the bill would mandate greater transparency on the part of NGOs that are funded by foreign governments, and cancel the tax-free status they enjoy.
Two previous bills meant to make it harder for hostile leftist NGOs to operate in Israel were blocked by the same NGOs and their supporters.
Read more…
