NYT is disgusting as ever. The principals that they enumerate to achieve have no foundation in law or morality and should be totally rejected by Israel. They totally blame Israel for the breakdown and misrepresent the facts to support their view. Ted Belman

NY TIMES Editorial board

The pointless arguing over who brought Israeli-Palestinian peace talks to the brink of collapse is in full swing. The United States is still working to salvage the negotiations, but there is scant sign of serious purpose. It is time for the administration to lay down the principles it believes must undergird a two-state solution, should Israelis and Palestinians ever decide to make peace. Then President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry should move on and devote their attention to other major international challenges like Ukraine.

Among those principles should be: a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with borders based on the 1967 lines; mutually agreed upon land swaps that allow Israel to retain some settlements while compensating the Palestinians with land that is comparable in quantity and quality; and agreement that Jerusalem will be the capital of the two states. Read more…

By Tova Dvorin, INN

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu addressed the current crisis in the coalition for the first time Monday, according to Ma’ariv, although his remarks currently remain in the context of closed conversations between ministers.

“I do not want new elections and do not want the current crisis,” Netanyahu stated, according to the daily. “But I am not going to commit suicide and I am not willing to turn the world upside down to change [Naftali] Bennett’s opinion on the issues.” [..]

Given these numbers, I don’t see Netanyahu calling Bennett’s bluff. There will be no deal with the PA and the coalition will remain intact. Ted Belman

Ynetnews

Moshe Kahlon could win a predicted 10 seats if he set up his own party for the next elections. (Photo: Motti Kimchi)

A recent Yedioth Ahronoth poll finds that in a new general election, Likud could lose up to nine Knesset seats, bringing it down from 31 to 22, while any political parties formed by former Likud minister Moshe Kahlon and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman would both win a substantial 10 seats.

Yisrael Beiteinu ran in the last elections on a joint ticket with Likud, but party leader Lieberman has made comments suggesting that it may run independently in the next elections.

Kahlon left the Likud party in 2013 after a four-year stint as communications minister, and has hinted at an independent comeback in the next elections.
Read more…

BY Prof. Paul Eidelberg

Part I the Kahane Phenomenon 

It has been apparent for a long time: there is no authentic Right in Israel. The Likud, erroneously identified as the Right, is nothing more than the right-wing of the Labor Party. If proof is wanted, recall that Likud leader Ariel Sharon, despite his party’s landslide victory over Labor in the February 2003 election, adopted Labor’s policy of disengagement from Gaza.

Sharon’s retreat from Gaza was only the first stage of a surreptitious plan to establish a Palestinian State.  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was simply following Sharon’s agenda when he officially endorsed a Palestinian state on June 14, 2009 in a speech at Bar-Ilan University. But this agenda was initiated by the Rabin-Peres junta, when it signed the Oslo or Israel-PLO Agreement of September 1993. Lurking in the Oslo Agreement was nothing less than the (perfidious) intention to turn Judea and Samaria over to the Arabs.  Why? To prevent this heartland of Israel from becoming the most populated area of the nation. Religious Zionists would have gravitated to Judea, the venue of Jerusalem.
Read more…

Special to WorldTribune.com

LONDON — The United States is pressuring Israel to attack the Syrian military in the Golan Heights.

Western diplomatic sources said the administration of President Barack Obama has urged Israel to stop a Syrian Army advance toward U.S.-trained rebels in the Golan Heights.

A truck carries an Israeli Merkava tank to the Israeli-Syrian border at the Golan Heights. /EPA

The sources said the rebels, trained and sent from Jordan, reached the divided Heights last month.
Read more…

What bothers me about this, is the American policy of forcing Israel to give up Judea and Samaria though R242 doesn’t require us to do so. The policy is so fixed that we have to negotiate to keep just the settlement blocs. Then Obama rides rough shod over the exception. Similarly, the US government micro-managed the location of the fence to make sure that the least amount of the territories possible, lay to the west of it. Obviously they have us by the balls. Has Israel agreed to anything which gives them this power or are they constantly bullying us. Ted Belman

Dr Haim Shine, ISRAEL HAYOM

Precisely 70 years ago, during the Seder of 1944 in Auschwitz, 10 Jews were seated — including my grandfather, blessed be his memory — quietly singing, almost silently, “Why is this night different from all other nights?” Their grief was boundless, their pain acute. No child was left behind to ask the Four Questions, for all the children had been carried off to the heavens, lost in the plumes of black smoke billowing off the crematoria smokestacks at the concentration camp.

Their night was long, too long. They had no wine, nor matzot, nor Haggadot, just a full helping of bitter herbs — raw, pungent maror that pierced the soul. As the night wore on, they told the story of the exodus from Egypt. Not a soul arrived to inform them that dawn was approaching and the time had come to recite the morning prayers. Actually, no morning prayers, indeed no morning at all, was stretching across the horizon, simply dismal black skies signaling yet another day of work at the camp. The Prophet Elijah had not come to knock on their front doors, the sea had not split in two before them. They hobbled, in an unsteady march, beaten, battered and torn toward another day of forced labor. They were utterly convinced that this was their last Seder on Earth. Barely a glimmer of hope remained, for the final candle had been snuffed out.
Read more…

Standing firm — to blame Israel

By Elliott Abrams

Several well-known members of America’s foreign policy establishment have just published an open letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, titled “Stand Firm, John Kerry.” And firm they are, in blaming Israel for every problem in the peace negotiations.

Criticism of Israel and of the policies of the Netanyahu government is certainly fair, whether from the Left or the Right. But the criticisms adduced here are not. Why not?

The authors’ (Zbigniew Brzezinki, Carla Hills, Lee Hamilton, Thomas Pickering, Frank Carlucci, and Henry Siegman) first point is that the “enlargement” of Israeli settlements is the central problem in getting to peace. They propose stopping all negotiations until settlement “enlargement” ends.
Read more…

Should Sisi be elected as is generally assumed, he will have to decide whether to go along with the cold peace or to take the bold decision to promote cooperation with Israel for the greater benefit of both countries.

By ZVI MAZEL, JPOST

The peace treaty between Israel and Egypt turned 35 last month.

On the one hand it has weathered a succession of crises, on the other it never brought about the hoped for development in the relations between the two countries, let alone between Israel and the Arab world. In fact it led to Egypt being expelled from the Arab League, which transferred its seat from Cairo to Tunis.

The Egyptian establishment did not embrace the peace with open arms: then-foreign minister Ismail Fahmy – coincidentally the father of today’s foreign minister Nabil Fahmy – resigned in protest. And the people of Egypt never warmed to their Israeli neighbors. Relations were carried out at the governmental level. During his long rule, president Hosni Mubarak never tried to overcome the psychological, cultural and religious obstacles blocking the path to closer contacts.
Read more…

It should be said that no deal has been offered to Israel that even Livni would accept. So Bennett is doing nothing to stop peace. When you have to pay something to people to negotiate with you, you have already lost. Negotiate by all means but don’t pay for the right. Bennett is fighting to keep the land or at least 60% of it. Livni is fighting for an ephemeral peace at the cost of giving up the land. I am with Bennett. Ted Belman

Ynet News

Chief Israeli peace negotiator Tzipi Livni slammed Economy Minister Naftali Bennett for his attempt to “prevent us from living here in peace” with the Palestinians, linking the extreme ideology of the Yitzhar residents who trashed an IDF post to that of Bayit Yehudi.

In an exclusive interview with Ynet, the justice minister did not bother trying to hide her contempt of Bennett and his party.

“Bayit Yehudi represents those who are trying to prevent the (peace) process from us. This is the same severe ideological views that gave birth to the Yitzhar rioters who are trying to prevent an accord,” she said.
Read more…

We need to make our universities temples not of dogmatic orthodoxy, but of truly critical thinking.

By AYAAN HIRSI ALI, WSJ

On Tuesday, after protests by students, faculty and outside groups, Brandeis University revoked its invitation to Ayaan Hirsi Ali to receive an honorary degree at its commencement ceremonies in May. The protesters accused Ms. Hirsi Ali, an advocate for the rights of women and girls, of being “Islamophobic.” Here is an abridged version of the remarks she planned to deliver.

One year ago, the city and suburbs of Boston were still in mourning. Families who only weeks earlier had children and siblings to hug were left with only photographs and memories. Still others were hovering over bedsides, watching as young men, women, and children endured painful surgeries and permanent disfiguration. All because two brothers, radicalized by jihadist websites, decided to place homemade bombs in backpacks near the finish line of one of the most prominent events in American sports, the Boston Marathon.
Read more…

DEBKAfile Special Report April 12, 2014,

The Ukrainian government has offered sweeping autonomous powers to restive, pro-Moscow regions of the country, in an attempt to hold its head above water against Moscow, without a source of revenue or a viable army. Acting prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told regional leaders and businessmen Friday, April 11, in the eastern town of Donetsk, where pro-Russian separatists have declared a People’s Republic, that he is ready for parliament to consider a law on referendums. The referendum staged by Crimea last month caused the region to join the Russian Federation and practically precipitated the revival of the Cold War.
Read more…

Haaretz reported on Cheney’s speech to the GOP:

“The bottom line is,” Cheney said, “the United States’ position in [the Middle East] is worse than at any time in my lifetime… It’s reached the point where Israel and Egypt, [the United Arab] Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan are closer to one another – imagine that! – than any of them is to us…”

By Mark Langfan, INN

We may be on the verge of a geo-political earthquake.

It’s a classic case of: “If you can’t be with the one you love, honey, love the one you’re with.”

Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Physics states “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

It often seems that the Third Law applies not only to the world of physical objects, but also to the world of foreign affairs.  Evidence of Newton’s Third Law application can be found in Obama’s “withdrawal” from the Middle East, and his concomitant anointing of the Islamic Republic of Iran as the new Muslim Hegemonic Imanate.
Read more…

Gal-On, Meretz: Israeli coalition heads don’t really seek peace with Palestinians

She has it all wrong. Israel should never seek peace at any price.

Israel controls all of Judea and Samaria. We should never give it up for peace or even real peace. Even if the Arabs were prepared to sign an end of conflict agreement and forgo the so called right of return, we should still refuse.

Either we get to keep 50% of the land or we keep all of it and go for the One Jewish State Solution.

By BARRY SHAW, JPOST

The refusal to accept Jewish rights to an independent state was forcefully demonstrated back in 1947 when the Arab nations violently rejected UN Resolution 181.

When US Secretary of State John Kerry said it was a “mistake” for Israel to demand recognition as the Jewish state it showed how deeply the language of delegitimization has been adopted by even the most ardent of Israel supporters.

Another example of this was New Jersey governor and potential Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie. In front of a crowd of Jewish Republican fund-raisers in Los Vegas, hosted by Sheldon Adelson, a close friend of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Christie said, “I took a helicopter ride from the occupied territories and felt personally how extraordinary that was, to understand the military risk that Israel faces every day.”
Read more…

By Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, FoxNews.com

Secretary of State John Kerry’s non-stop efforts at cementing an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord have failed. “Cement” turns out to be an important ingredient in the failure.

After refusing to accept Kerry’s “framework for peace,” Palestinian President Abbas sent two unmistakable signals. He declared that the P.A. would apply for membership in ten U.N. agencies, enroute to unilaterally declaring a Palestinian state—a move that both the U.S. and Israel have long warned the Palestinians not to do.

No world leader holds Abbas accountable for his part in the breakdown of negotiations — but Netanyahu received thinly veiled warnings from politicians, “pro-peace” churches, NGOs and pundits of dire economic consequences and international isolation.

For good measure the Palestinian President denied that the Jews even constituted a people.

Kerry had pushed both sides to embrace his plan.

Turns out his moves were counteracted – deliberately or otherwise – by a consortium of interests that took the weight of that pressure off  Abbas’ shoulders.
Read more…

Israel Mazav

Here’s a song from your youth. Remember Puff the Magic Dragon (or Puff the Kosher Dragon for those of you who were in NCSY)? If you don’t, or even if you do, let’s go to the videotape.

By Steven Plaut

Steven Plaut has updated the song.

Poof the Clueless Kerry, traveled overseas, And frolicked in the springlike mist in a land called Iz-Ra-Lee,

Little Barack Bama loved that rascal Poof, And gave him Secretary perks and other fancy stuff, oh

Poof the Clueless Kerry, traveled overseas, And frolicked in the springlike mist in a land called Iz-Ra-Lee,

Poof the Clueless Kerry, traveled overseas, And frolicked in the springlike mist in a land called Iz-Ra-Lee.

To Ramallah he traveled in his diplomatic ride Obamie kept a lookout back in Foggy Bottom’s tide, Arab kings and terrorists would bow whene’er he came, Abbas counted chickens every time Poof squeaked his name, oh!

Poof the Clueless Kerry, traveled overseas, And frolicked in the springlike mist in a land called Iz-Ra-Lee, Poof the Clueless Kerry, traveled overseas, And frolicked in the springlike mist in a land called Iz-Ra-Lee.