By Steven Plaut

The Radical Academic Left in Israel Demands that Academic Freedom be suppressed in order to Defend Academic Freedom

It sounds like a Purim gag, and if only it were.

The Israeli tenured Radical Left with some fellow travelers has petitioned Bar Ilan University to suppress freedom of speech in order to defend freedom of speech.  Really.  No joke.

Let me explain.

A couple of weeks back, Bar Ilan University in Israel hosted an event honoring Edwin Black for his important new book, “ FINANCING THE FLAMES IN THE MIDDLE EAST: HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS ABUSES IN ISRAEL.”   The book, which is gaining enormous attention,  exposes the biased pro-terror and anti-Israel political activities of various NGO’s pretending to be “human rights groups.”   Black is a NY Times best selling author; The event in question was advertised here:
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I KID YOU NOT.

The Hassidic Belz community, one of the largest Hassidic courts in the country, is threatening to leave Israel if the proposed military draft law is passed by the Knesset, Maariv reports.

THEY SHOULD GO.

THEY CAN STUDY IN NEW YORK AS WELL AS IN ISRAEL.

IF THEY ARE NOT CONTRIBUTING TO OUR SOCIETY BY JOINING THE ARMY (OR DOING NATIONAL SERVICE) AND PAYING TAXES, WHO NEEDS THEM.

It has become necessary to rethink the role of foreign-funded NGOs in the Israeli legal system.

By Anne Hertzberg, JPOST

When I first introduced the concept of “lawfare” against Israel in 2008, focusing on attempts by NGOs (non-governmental organizations) to have Israeli officials arrested abroad for alleged war crimes, people would frequently ask why I did not include the myriad of litigation brought by NGOs in Israeli courts. My typical response was that it was legitimate for NGOs to challenge government policy in domestic courts, and this did not constitute anti-Israel lawfare.

However, I am rethinking this position.

NGO Monitor has discovered massive funding provided by the UK, the EU and Norway to the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), which in turn is funneled to local NGOs in order to flood Israeli courts with hundreds of lawsuits.
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“Let me make it clear to those who have been spreading rumors suggesting I’m considering leaving the party — I’m not going anywhere,” PM says • Rumors of political departure spread by “political rivals who wish to see me move out of the way,” he says.

Mati Tuchfeld, ISRAEL HAYOM

“Let me make it clear to all my rivals in the Likud, who have been spreading rumors suggesting I’m considering leaving the party — I’m not going anywhere,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said over the weekend.

Netanyahu stressed that the individuals spreading rumors suggesting he plans to break from the Likud and join forces with Yisrael Beytenu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman to form a new party were “political rivals who wish to see me move out of the way.”

The prime minister also relayed a message to Likud MKs who have said that the Likud has “no room” for anyone pursuing a peace deal with the Palestinians, saying that “any further expressions of this kind will meet a harsh response.”

Netanyahu met with several political advisers working with Likud ministers and deputy ministers on Friday, ahead of the Likud caucus, which has been scheduled for April. The prime minister seeks to see several issues included on the convention’s agenda, as well as torpedo several proposals Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon seeks to present to Likud members.
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Netanyahu: We won’t freeze settlement construction

Shlomo Cesana, Mati Tuchfeld and Yoni Hirsch, ISRAEL HAYOM

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who departed Israel on Sunday for a six-day visit to the United States, told several ministers with whom he met over the past few days that the issue of freezing settlement construction in Judea and Samaria will not be discussed during the trip.

The comment followed several reports in the American media, suggesting that Washington plans to demand a construction freeze in the areas outside the main settlement blocs in Judea and Samaria, to facilitate its parallel demand of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to extend the peace talks by one year. The original nine-month window allotted for the current negotiations ends in April.

“I am now leaving on an important trip to the U.S. where I will meet with President Barack Obama,” Netanyahu said on Sunday before taking off from Ben-Gurion International Airport. “We will discuss the Iranian issue and the diplomatic process [with the Palestinians]. I will stand steadfast on the State of Israel’s vital interests, especially the security of Israel’s citizens. In recent years, the State of Israel has been under various pressures. We have rejected them in the face of the unprecedented storm and unrest in the region and are maintaining stability and security. This is what has been and what will be.”
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Ted Belman

The President for the next four years will be elected by those present. The incumbent Mort Klein is being challenged by Steve Goldberg.

I find it disappointing that only those members present can vote and the thousands of members who can’t make it or live too far away are just out of luck. Surely this is something that must be corrected in the future.

But it is not too late to hold a debate between Klein and Goldberg on who is best suited for the role. It could be held for two hours on Sunday morning rather than fill the time up with unimportant speeches and matters. Questions from the ZOA members would be welcomed and answered by the candidates.

Right now only 30 minutes is allocated to speeches from both candidates immediately before the vote. It isn’t near enough.

Such a debate would serve the ZOA well. Perhaps the members should clamor for it.

CNN Political Unit

Shaun Walker in Kiev, Harriet Salem in Sevastopol and Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian,

Russia and the west are on a collision course over Crimea after Moscow was accused of orchestrating a “military invasion and occupation” of the peninsula, as groups of apparently pro-Russian armed men seized control of two airports. Russian troop movements were reported across the territory.

One Ukrainian official claimed late on Friday that 2,000 Russian troops had arrived in Crimea during the course of the day, in 13 Russian aircraft.

Ukraine‘s acting president, Oleksandr Turchynov, addressed the nation and accused Russia of carrying out a similar strategy to 2008, when it in effect annexed two Georgian territories, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. “They are trying to provoke a military conflict and are creating a scenario identical to the Abkhaz one, when having provoked a conflict, they annexed territory,” he said.
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By Caroline Glick, JPOST

In its annual survey of American Jewry published last October, the American Jewish Committee found that 75 percent of American Jews agree with the statement, “The goal of the Arabs is not a peaceful two-state agreement with Israel, but rather the destruction of Israel.”

And yet, American Jews supported the establishment of a Palestinian state 50% to 47%.

Next week over 10,000 predominantly Jewish American supporters of Israel will gather in Washington at AIPAC’s annual policy conference. Given their high commitment to Israel, probably most of those gathered belong to the 47% of American Jews who opposed Palestinian statehood.

Yet at the conference they will embrace the two-state formula. And on March 4 they will go up to Capitol Hill and tell their representatives that they support it.
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By Joshua Davidovich, TOI

The White House on Thursday pushed back against a report that US President Barack Obama would pressure Israeli and Palestinian leaders in upcoming weeks to make progress on peace talks, saying meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas would be used only to “take stock” of the negotiations.

“The prime minister’s visit, as well as President Abbas’s visit on March 17, will be important opportunities for the president to take stock of where we are and to work through the details with them,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Thursday.

Netanyahu is slated to meet Obama on Monday, and on Thursday the White House announced that Abbas would visit the White House on March 17.
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[WITH THIS LEFT WING POLL IN HIS POCKET, NETANYAHU MORE LIKELY TO SAY YES TO THE FRAMEWORK]

More than 50% define themselves as right wing and don’t trust the Palestinians, yet would vote for a new Netanyahu-led centrist party

Raphael Ahren, TOI

Three quarters of Hebrew-speaking Israelis would support a peace agreement with the Palestinians based on the Arab Peace Initiative, and more than half would vote for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he were to leave the Likud and create a new party, according to a new poll published Thursday.

The survey, commissioned by the non-profit Israeli Peace Initiative, was conducted earlier this month among a representative sample of 500 Hebrew-speaking Israelis. The poll’s sponsors said it indicated that a large majority of the country’s Jews hold hawkish views regarding the peace process but would be willing to accept a deal if they understood what Israel stands to gain from an accord normalizing diplomatic and trade relations with the entire Arab world.
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Advance Praise

“A brilliant, compendious and exceptionally well-written piece of work, Iran’s Final Solution for Israel is Andrew Bostom’s most recent and probing analysis of Islamic Jew-hatred, as practiced by the so-called Islamic Republic of Iran. Bostom scrupulously examines the evidence for the pervasive duplicity underlying and facilitating Iran’s nuclear program, along with American and Western delusional naivety in complying with Iranian diplomacy. He is very clear on “the chronic plight of Iranian Jewry” and “Iran’s relentless effort to obtain nuclear weapons for the stated purpose of destroying Israel.” Bostom’s exegesis and warning should be heeded if we wish to avert a future few of us would like to contemplate.”

—David Solway, author of Hear, O Israel!

“Working from history, Islamic sacred and juridical writings, and the statements and actions of the current Iranian regime, Andrew Bostom lays out a compelling case that the current Iranian “moderation” so widely touted in the mainstream media — and upon which Barack Obama is betting nothing less than the future of the free world — is a not-so-thinly-disguised exercise in divinely-sanctioned Islamic deception designed to co-opt and victimize a complacent and willfully ignorant West. If our Senators and Representatives absorbed and acted upon the lessons of this monograph, we would not be in the fix we’re in.”

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Phillips nails it.

Notwithstanding accumulated achievement over the past two decades, there are growing signs that a changing of the guard in America’s oldest Zionist organization is called for.

Founded in 1897, the Zionist Organization of America is the oldest pro-Israel organization in the United States…. ZOA is dedicated to educating the public, elected officials, media and college/high school students about the truth of the ongoing and relentless Arab war against Israel.

– ZOA website: Elections for the position of ZOA president will be held on March 9. It is difficult to overstate the potential impact the result may have.

Indeed, these elections could well prove to be a watershed event in pro-Israel advocacy in America, with far reaching implications for right-wing activism within the US – and for the interfacing with like-minded organizations within Israel. But whatever the result it seems highly probable that what was in the past, will not be in the future – at least not for long.

Why these elections are important
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