Obama’s policy failures on Iran, Syria and the Israeli-Palestinian dispute will have devastating effects.

By Daniel Greenfield, FPM

NGO Monitor Launches new report in advance of high-level meetings

BRUSSELS- At a parliamentary session yesterday, under the auspices of the EU Delegation for Relations with Israel, NGO Monitor launched a new report on EU funding for political advocacy NGOs in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Prof. Gerald Steinberg, President of NGO Monitor, and Jody Sieradzki, head of NGO Monitor’s Europe research, presented the findings, saying, “NGO Monitor’s research documents major failures in EU policy and process. EU initiatives that claim to promote peace, human rights, democracy, and other moral values have become instruments for the immoral objectives of anti-Israeli political warfare.” Read more…

By AFP and Arutz Sheva Staff

Workers at Israel’s Tamar gas field

Charlie White is Jewish. Their winning performance is not yet available. This video is of their winning performance in the US finals.
POETRY IN MOTION. ENJOY.

By Khaled Alashqar, Arab American News | Friday, 01.17.2014,

GAZA CITY —  The border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip used to buzz with activity until a few months back as traders brought in an array of Egyptian goods – from food supplies to raw material – through hundreds of tunnels.

Palestinian in a smuggling tunnel in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip,  Photo by AP

But these underground structures, located 40 km from here, between Rafah in Gaza and Sinai in Egypt, have fallen silent.

Things came to a grinding halt after the Egyptian army came to power in Cairo. Calling them a security threat, it launched a systematic military campaign against the tunnels, destroying them, along with the houses under which they were built on its side of the border.

For people in Gaza, home to 1.7 million people, the closure of the tunnels has choked a lifeline. Thousands of tunnel operators, traders and workers have been hard hit. Read more…

Deputy Defense Minister Danon can now convene Likud central c’tee for votes on key issues PM opposes, including opposing territorial concessions.

FRESNO ZIONISM

By Ted Belman

I attended a lecture tonight by a Lutheran Bishop who is also a Palestinian. He was a participant in an ecumenical group of Christians, Muslims and Jews. He was all for peace and justice.

The first half of his talk was about justice and how it should underpin peace. But when he go to the appropriate solution, he took his mask off and pushed the Palestinian narrative. He was also for ’67 borders and a two state solution and justice for the Palestinians. He said that Res 242 and Res 338 both demanded full withdrawal and a two state solution.
Read more…

Jacques Gauthier is fascinating, illuminating and entertaining. Well worth the hour.

By John T. Bennett, AMERICAN THINKER

PHILADELPHIA (JTA) — In the past few weeks, Secretary of State John Kerry has come under attack from prominent Israelis as well as American friends of the Jewish state for some of the methods he has adopted in his determination to find a solution to the Middle East conflict.

By Ted Belman

I just received this email from Allen Hertz (Allen Z. Hertz was senior adviser in the Privy Council Office serving Canada’s Prime Minister and the federal cabinet. He formerly worked in Canada’s Foreign Affairs Department and earlier taught history and law at universities in New York, Montreal, Toronto and Hong Kong. He studied European history and languages at McGill University (B.A.) and then East European and Ottoman history at Columbia University (M.A., Ph.D.). He also has international law degrees from Cambridge University (LL.B.) and the University of Toronto (LL.M.).).

I have no doubt that his thesis is correct. But that is not to say that Obama will succeed in achieving his “Grand Bargain”. My response is below his email.

Dear Ted,

Mideast “linkage” is that peculiar notion that more distant issues like the Syrian civil war and/or Iran’s race to nuclear weapons might in some meaningful sense be related to the local question of Israel’s relations with the Palestinians.

In regard to such linkage, I have just finished reading Aaron David Miller’s recent Wilson Center essay entitled: “It’s Iran, Stupid:The real, unspoken reason America won’t get involved in Syria.” Miller’s piece turns on an insight offered by President Obama in a Jan. 27, 2014 New Yorker article by David Remnick.

The problem is that Miller’s use of the Remnick material is only partial. There, President Obama refers not to linkage between matters involving Iran and Syria, but explicitly to the connection among the three big Mideast issues, namely those relating to Israel, Syria and Iran.
Read more…

by Isi Leibler
February 17, 2014
http://wordfromjerusalem.com/?p=4982

Under the leadership of the indefatigable Malcolm Hoenlein, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, a unique umbrella organization, is gathering in Jerusalem this week. Its members, leaders of America’s most prominent Jewish organizations, will be briefed directly by the Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and senior government ministers.

Alas, unless the unexpected happens and the Prime Minister reads the riot act to his ministers, these American activists will receive mixed messages and are likely to return to the US more confused than when they arrived. Read more…

Members of congress want to welcome Netanyahu to speak at a joint session of congress. Jewish self-proclaimed leaders want Netanyahu to crown Kerry as the great last hope for peace.

By Lori Lowenthal Marcus, JEWISH PRESS

Secretary of State John Kerry (L) and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at Davos Conference, Jan. 24, 2014. Photo Credit: Kobi Gideon/GPO/Flash90

Within four days last week, pro-Israel congressional leaders Cong. Brad Sherman (D-CA-30) and Cong. Doug Lamborn (R-CO-05), gathered signatures from nearly 100 of their colleagues for a letter urging that a congressional invitation be extended to Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

The bi-partisan congressional letter called upon the leadership of the House of Representatives to invite Netanyahu to speak before a joint session of congress when he visits Washington this spring. The letter cites the importance of inviting the leader of “our closest ally in the Middle East” to speak to congress, particularly given the widespread instability and turmoil in the region. “Given the importance of our relationship with Israel we ask you to invite Prime Minister Netanyahu to address a Joint Session of Congress. Doing so would send a clear message of support for Israel,” the letter states. “The strong support we have received for this initiative shows our close relationship with the State of Israel which is based on deeply shared values, as well as moral, historical and security ties,” said Congressman Doug Lamborn (CO-05) in a release issued on Thursday, Feb. 13. Read more…

Mudar Zahran has been granted asylum by the UK; says source close to Abdullah told him Jordan pushing for J’lem control.

Mudar Zahran Photo: Courtesy

Say “no” to a Palestinian state