Pushed hard by UK newspaper, actress robustly defends role promoting soft drink firm, says she knew all about settlement factory before signing on

Scarlett Johansson with Sodastream’s Daniel Birnbaum (photo credit: Mike Coppola/Getty Images for SodaStream/via JTA)

There are many reasons for the high prices in Israel, and the prime minister should have dealt with all of them a long time ago.
By Nehemia Shtrasler, HAARETZ

Our prime minister has an interesting trait. When he encounters a tough question with no good answer, he assumes a serious expression, looks his interlocutor in the eye and replies: “I’ll have to get into that personally,” and then we all miss a beat. He’ll get into it personally? Wow, that’s real news. Now everything will work out.

That’s exactly what Benjamin Netanyahu did on Saturday night when asked about his abject failure in lowering the price of living. He spoke as though he’s from Mars, as though he hasn’t been serving as prime minister for the past five years, during which the subject of the cost of living ? for food and housing ? reached the top of the civic agenda.

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By Giullio Meotti, INN

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu likes the idea of modelling Jewish-Arab co-existence in Judea and Samaria on Baarle-Nassau and Baarle-Hertog, two municipalities that divide the town of Baarle on the border between Netherlands and Belgium.

That is a typical European utopia. The border is marked with little crosses on the pavement and metal studs in the road, while many homes are cut by the border. Tourists who pass through restaurants, hotels and shops are not even aware of the different nationalities.

In Baarle, women are able to choose the nationality of their child depending on the location of the room in which they give birth.
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By Janet Tassel, AMERICAN THINKER

A film is coming your way called The J Street Challenge. If you don’t see it coming your way, say something to your pastor, rabbi, or librarian to insist that it be shown.

A production of Americans for Peace and Tolerance, with APT’s Charles Jacobs as  special consultant; produced, directed and written by Avi Goldwasser and Ilya Feoktistov, The J Street Challenge lines up a phalanx of illustrious academics and activists to expose the deception, the lies, and the anti-Israel animus behind J Street. But the film is not a snooze-parade of talking heads; ideas — important ideas — are supplemented with illustrations, maps, videos, and images both heartwarming and heartbreaking.
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[See also Poll: Public supports draft, electoral reform, and referendum bills ]

Analysis: It’s no longer absolutely clear that in next elections ultra-Orthodox parties will tilt balance in favor of right-wing government.

YNET NEWS

The British prime minister will likely never forget this session. And it’s not that he hasn’t seen such things before. The Parliament of the United Kingdom is not exactly a pharmacy. But there, there is at least some sophistication, some finesse, some irony. Not just a “balagan,” as David Cameron called it in a heavy British accent. Cameron’s eyes said it all. And if anyone still requires an explanation for that look, he said: God, I’ve arrived at a madhouse.

In the Knesset’s favor, if there even is such a thing, it should be noted that Cameron’s visit took place on the most emotionally charged day in the winter session, if not in the entire term. The day in which the Equal Share of the Burden Law passed its second and third readings in the morning, and the Referendum Law passed its second and third readings in the evening.
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DEBKA

Ahead of the controversial Crimean referendum taking place Sunday, March 16, the Ukraine interim government claimed Saturday that its forces had repelled a Russian military operation to invade Strikove in the Kherson province adjoining the peninsula. This province is strategically valuable because it is the source of Crimea’s water and electric power, which Kiev could cut off. But only in theory, because then Moscow would equally cut off gas to Kiev.

The Kiev claim of a military engagement with the Russians is roughly as credible as its account of 80,000 Russian troops massed on the borders of Crimea and poised to invade additional parts of eastern Ukraine Monday, the day after the referendum. The interim parliament was accordingly summoned into emergency session Monday at 10:00 a.m. Kiev time.
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[This is a very long and informative article]

By Arthur Herman, COMMENTARY

They will feast on the abundance of the seas, and on the treasures of the sands

—Deuteronomy 33:19

Tamar sits 56 miles off the coast of Israel, an offshore gas platform rising up from the Mediterranean like a white steel beacon whose roots reach down 1,000 feet to the seabed. Named for the natural-gas field beneath the sea floor, Tamar is the symbol of a bright future for Israel if Israel is ready for it: as the newest energy producer and exporter in the Middle East, and potentially the most important.
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Obama’s recent interview clearly shows Netanyahu’s continued concessions have earned him only condemnation, not commendation; and produced pressures, not praise.

Some 86 percent of Israelis say they are satisfied with their lives • Ultra-Orthodox rank highest, with secular Jews well behind • Married people more satisfied than singles • Israeli Jews overwhelmingly want families of at least two children.

Zeev Klein, ISRAEL HAYOM

Israeli Jews overwhelmingly want families of at least two children [Illustrative] | Photo credit: GettyImages

Israelis complain about the difficulties they face and about the high cost of living, but an overwhelming majority are content with their lives, according to a Central Bureau of Statistics report released on Wednesday.

Some 86 percent of Israelis are satisfied with their lives, including 33% who say they are “very satisfied,” the bureau found in its survey for 2012-2013.
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By Ted Belman

After the barrage of 60 rockets yesterday Netanyahu ardered the IDF to “act in any necessary way in order to restore calm to the south.” The Israel army is not called Israel Defence Force for nothing.

Yaalon added;

“When there is no quiet in the south, we will not allow Gaza to have quiet either.”

That’s not good enough. I would like to see some punishment meted out. Such provocations should be punished. They should not be allowed to quickly give us temporary quiet so that they avoid serious punishment.

Having said that the IDF should recognize that the barrage was not intended to hurt but to show force. Most rockets landed in open fields. The barrage, we were told, was in retaliation for the capture of the arms shipment. If that is their best shot we can live with that.

By Ted Belman

The referendum Law has now been passed as a Basic Law. According to JPOST,

Basic Laws are considered by the Supreme Court to be superior to other laws, and legislation contradicting Basic Laws have been canceled by the court.

The referendum law, which passed in the previous Knesset and is now a Basic Law, requires a referendum on any treaty that entails giving up land to which Israeli law applies, including the Golan Heights and east Jerusalem but not the West Bank.

However, if more than 80 MKs support the treaty, it can be ratified without a referendum, and if fewer than 61 MKs back the treaty, it will be rejected without the nation voting on it.

Thus both a majority of the Knesset and a majority of Israelis must approve the give away of any sovereign land.
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By Alan Dershowitz, NEWSMAX

[When President Barack Obama warned of “international fallout” if Israel fails to embrace the latest U.S. Middle East peace proposal, Newsmax asked noted author and Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz to comment on the growing talk of a European boycott against Israel.]

Why are so many of the grandchildren of Nazis and Nazi collaborators who brought us the Holocaust once again declaring war on the Jews?

Why have we seen such an increase in anti-Semitism and irrationally virulent anti-Zionism in western Europe?
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By ALEXANDER G. MARKOVSKY, FSM

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently compared actions by Russian President Vladimir Putin in Ukraine to those of Adolf Hitler in 1938 in Czechoslovakia. Although this is hyperbole bordering on veritable absurdity, there are similarities that may explain the roots of the current conflict. In both instances the seeds of despair were planted about twenty years earlier by reckless politicians who drew maps of new countries with flagrant disregard to people’s culture, religion and language. In Germany they were driven by revenge and in the Crimea by expediency.

Germany’s 1938 invasion of Czechoslovakia was ingrained in the 1919 punitive Treaties of Versailles. Under the Treaties forced on Germany by victorious France, Britain and the USA, the Sudetenland was handed to the earlier created country of Czechoslovakia to make sure Germany would not start another war. As a result three million Germans found themselves under the suppression of Czech rule. Shortly after Hitler came to power, someone asked at a dignitary’s dinner in London, “Where was Hitler born?” “At Versailles,” replied Lady Astor.
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Amid largest Palestinian attack since 2012, FM says government must ensure security even at the cost of terminating peace talks

Gazans bombard southern Israel in massive attack

Egypt destroys 1,370 Gaza smuggling tunnels

EU warns of security fallout from Gaza crisis

by Prof. Joshua Teitelbaum, BESA Center Perspectives, Paper No. 240

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Tension over Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood has damaged relations between Doha and its Gulf neighbors. The days of the GCC, long dominated by Saudi Arabia, may be numbered.

After several years of ups and downs, relations between the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) reached a new nadir on March 5, when, in a fit of pique, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE announced they were withdrawing their ambassadors from Qatar.

Founded in 1981 as a response to the Iranian revolution and the Iran-Iraq war, the GCC has always been dominated by Saudi Arabia. While Riyadh has seen eye-to-eye with Manama and Abu Dhabi on most issues, Doha has chafed under the Saudi yoke ever since Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani overthrew his father in a palace coup in 1995.
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By Daniel Greenfield

Ibn Saud told FDR;

What Ibn Saud told him was that the Arab world would never accept a Jewish state of any size in the Holy Land. Saud also “objected violently” to proposals to create a temporary haven in Libya for Jews fleeing the Nazis.

This isn’t really new, but some of the most interesting material comes from Rafael Medoff’s demonstration of how the material was buried and misreported by historians sympathetic to liberal presidents.

When FDR endorsed quotas for Jews in the US and even North Africa, liberal historians claimed that he was being “practical” or actually trying to help Jews. And then there’s the story of the efforts to bury and lie about FDR’s exchange with Stalin about the Jews.

The first inkling that FDR’s private attitude toward Jews was less than amiable came during the mid-1950s debate over the publication of the transcripts of Roosevelt’s February 1945 conference with Josef Stalin and Winston Churchill at Yalta. In 1953, Republican senators began pressing for publication of the full transcripts of the conference.
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By Ted Belman

I received an email today informing me that Huffington Post posted an article by Rabbi Michael Lerner entitled Why the Kerry Middle East Peace Framework Will Fail. Guess why.

And it will fail, because Kerry’s plan will be “realistic” rather than visionary, and de facto that means speaking more to the power of Israel and its domestic lobby (not only AIPAC, but the tens if millions of Christian Zionists) than to the aspirations of the Palestinian people.

The central issue for the Palestinians, beyond borders adhering closely to the pre-1967 borders with some land swaps to make it possible for some West Bank settlement to be included inside Israel while giving Palestine land equivalent in values, historic and military significance, and a capitol for their state that includes all of East Jerusalem, is this: there must be the appearance of justice for the 800,000 plus Palestinian refugees, many forced out of their homes by the Israeli army or by Jewish terrorist groups, and for their several million descendants, many of whom still live in some of the worst conditions on the planet in Gaza or in refugee camps in Arab lands.
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Time for Plan B for Mideast conflict
Op-ed: Palestinians will never accept any peace plan, no matter how reasonable it seems to Israelis and Americans.

By Lawrence J. Epstein, YNET NEWS

Jonathan S. Tobin COMMENTARY

In today’s Mosaic Magazine, author Hillel Halkin provides yet another entry in the growing list of proposed “solutions” to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Put forward as a response to Yoav Sorek’s Mosaic essay in which that writer essentially called upon Israel to annul the Oslo peace process and establish what might be termed a one-state proposal.

Unlike most such ideas put forward by Israel’s enemies which amount to nothing more than replacing the one Jewish state with one more Arab one, Sorek’s idea —which was endorsed here by Tom Wilson — is rooted in extending Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank but within a context in which it is understood that the country will remain a Jewish state.
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Isi Leibler. The two articles linked below were recently published in the Australian, the only national daily newspaper, and are of primary interest to Australians. However, I believe they warrant wider circulation. The article by John Lyons is an example of the bitter battles we face from journalists who are either biased and intent on demonizing Israel or naively take at face value the fantasies presented to them by Arabs or delusional Israeli extremists.

The other by Greg Sheridan, the foreign affairs editor of the Australian, puts forward a case for Israel – in a manner which many of our own spokesmen could well emulate.

My response to the article by John Lyons was understandably not published by the Australian. However I had a very relaxed exchange of views with the editor and stress that the exclusion was not based on hostility or rejection of the views I sought to present. Despite their biased and bigoted representative in Israel, I could only hope that we had a few more newspapers throughout the world presenting Israel and the Middle East in as balanced a manner as the Australian.

Evil and Deeply Untrue – by Greg Sheridan

Distant ‘Experts’ Choose to Ignore Israeli Realities – by John Lyons

By Isi Leibler

Over the past few years, I have followed John Lyons’ Australian articles on Israel with increasing frustration. With the exception of a few “fig leaves”, his reporting has been distorted, biased, and clearly designed to demonize Israel. His most recent outburst in the Weekend Australian (08/3/14), one of the most biased diatribes against Israel that I can recollect the Australian ever having published, displays a total absence of journalistic integrity.
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Last night I attended an interview of this ambassador by David Horowitz. Everything the ambassador said regarding EU policy rankled. Horowitz challenged him on most things he said. Some in the audience shouted their disapproval and disagreement but Horowitz shut them down immediately.After the interview Itamar Marcus and Gerald Steinberg each had 10 minutes to present their case for EU complicity in financing a lot of anti-Israel stuff. Horowitz went further and said the animosity coming out of the EU cannot be explained by the “occupation” or settlement construction. It flows from something deeper. Everyone knew what he meant.

The ambassador told us he had a hand in drafting the Roadmap. I approached him after the event and told him that the inclusion of the Saudi Plan in the Roadmap is the cause of all the trouble, that it has no basis in law and that once in, all diplomats forgot about R242. I said because of it, everyone is demanding a settlement based on ’67 lines. He took issue saying that the Saudi Plan doesn’t mention ’67 lines and I said of course it does, it demands 100% withdrawal, to which he had no response. Ted Belman

By LARS FAABORG-ANDERSE, JPOST
(Author is E.U. Amb to Israel)

Why let the facts get in the way when you have already reached you conclusion in advance?

In his article “Why does the EU continue to fund antipeace NGOs” (The Jerusalem Post, February 11, 2014) Prof. Gerald Steinberg presents a distorted picture of funding of human rights projects by the European Union.

The data he offers readers are a cocktail of tendentious research, intentional inaccuracies and downright EU-bashing propaganda.
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