DEBKA

The Obama administration is preparing to settle scores with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu,  for his campaign against US-led nuclear diplomacy with Iran, by holding him to blame for the impasse in Israel-Palestinian negotiations. This will ignore the uniform assessments by US and Israeli intelligence analysts that it is the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas who is holding out against all Secretary of State John Kerry’s Herculean efforts for a peace accord with Israel, sayDEBKAfile’s Washington and Jerusalem sources.

Abbas (Abu Mazen) is sure that he can get more from the international community by diplomatic manipulation and effective propaganda. He believes he holds enough cards and leverage to manage without having to reach terms for deals with the US or Israel. Read more…

By Caroline Glick

Like his supporters, US Secretary of State John Kerry has apparently been asleep for the past 20 years.

Kerry has proffered us security arrangements, which he claims will protect Israel from aggression for the long haul. They will do this, he argues, despite the fact that his plan denies the Jewish state physically defensible borders in the framework of a peace deal with the PLO.

There are several serious problems with Kerry’s arrangements. But in the context of Kerry’s repeated claims that his commitment to Israel’s security is unqualified, their most glaring flaws are rooted in their disregard for all the lessons we have learned over the past two decades.

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Too many “well-meaning” individuals and group have swallowed the fallacious Palestinian Narrative of Victimhood in the Middle East and fail to recognize that the Christians living there are the real victims. But in one MidEast country Christians thrive

Christians living there are the real victims. But in one MidEast country Christians thrive

By MIchael Curtis. American Thinker

Russian Orthodox church thriving in Jerusalem

Now is the winter of Christian discontent in Arab Middle Eastern countries. In all those countries, Christians have been suffering a sad fate: killings; torture; rape; abduction; forced conversion to Islam; seizure of homes and property; and bombings of churches, Christian institutions, and schools, and Christian businesses.

All too many well-meaning individuals and group have swallowed the fallacious Palestinian Narrative of Victimhood in the contemporary Middle East and fail to recognize that the Christians living there are the real victims.

It was fitting that Pope Francis, on December 26, 2013, urged people to speak out about the discrimination and violence that Christians were suffering; “injustice must be denounced and eliminated.”
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By Daniel Greenfield, FPM

The end of free speech will not necessarily come when there are soldiers in the streets, secret police in the alleyways and a mustachioed man screaming at you on a television set that can’t be turned off no matter how hard you turn the knob or click the buttons.

Some of these things existed in totalitarian countries, but they were there to sweep up the hardened dissenters who refused to be silenced. The vast majority of citizens did not have bugged phones or men in trench-coats following them around.

That was what their friends and neighbors were for.

The first line of offense by a totalitarian society against freedom of speech is crowdsourced to the people in the streets. No secret police force is large enough to spy on everyone all the time.
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Jack Straw unleashes anti-Semitic diatribe at forum held in House of Commons, according to former MK Einat Wilf

Swiss Member of Parliament Oskar Freysinger has had Enough of Islam

by Tim Brown, Freedom Outpost

“Europe is an idea,” Freysinger said, “a cultural landscape, an intellectual space shaped by history. Europe is the cradle of the modern constitutional democracy, the treasure-house of opinion and expression….or at least it used to be that, until recently.”

TOI

Israel is set to announce a three-year plan aimed at attracting more French Jews to settle in the Jewish state.

The first move will consist of recognizing French diplomas for medical professionals and tax consultants, an official from Israel’s Ministry of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs told the Maariv daily this week. The government has decided in principle to increase funding for facilitating the arrival of new immigrants from France, said the official, who was not named.
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The End of Erdogan’s Cave of Wonders: An I-Told-You-So

By David Goldman, PJ NEDIA

Turkey is coming apart. The Islamist coalition that crushed the secular military and political establishment–between Tayip Erdogan’s ruling AK Party and the Islamist movement around Fethullah Gulen–has cracked. The Gulenists, who predominate in the security forces, have arrested the sons of top government ministers for helping Iran to launder money and circumvent sanctions, and ten members of Erdogan’s cabinet have resigned. Turkey’s currency is in free fall, and that’s just the beginning of the country’s troubles: about two-fifths of corporate debt is in foreign currencies, so the cost of servicing it jumps whenever the Turkish lira declines. Turkish stocks have crashed (and were down another 5% in dollar terms in early trading Friday). So much for Turkey’s miracle economy.

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The more they threaten , the more Israel must stand up to them.  Israel should not allow themselves to be intimidated. And Bibi should not do a quiet deal whereby he agrees to not let the announced plans go forward. Ted Belman

European governments will respond “harshly” if Israel makes announcement following 3rd Palestinian prisoner release, EU diplomat tells Channel 10.

YNET, a leftist newspaper, published this article which attacks Netanyahu’s reluctance to cave in to demands. Instead a rightwing news outlet could have written up the story to attack this senior official for his remarks and to pose the question of why such an official remains in his job. I posted this article to illustrate the pressure Netanyahu is under from inside capitulators. Ted Belman

Source privy to closed-door talks slams prime minister’s political conduct: ‘Today Israel is in a more poor and sensitive condition than it was in 1948. Netanyahu’s conduct is leading to sanctions, boycotting,” undisclosed official said

Attila Somfalvi , YNET

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not really willing to move forward with the negotiations. He should have released the Palestinian prisoners at once and not release prisoners in exchange for Gilad Shalit. He caused great damage for Mahmoud Abbas with his conduct. He only wants to preserve his status in his party and everyone knows what it looks like.”

These harsh statements were made by a senior Israeli official who slammed the prime minister’s recent political conduct in an exclusive talk with Ynet. 
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By Lahav Harkov, JPOST

IMRA

Survey by the Smith Institute for “Globes” published on 26 December 2013
(sample size and actual survey date not indicated in write up]

If elections held today (expressed in Knesset seats)
Current Knesset seats in [brackets].
Please note: There are 120 seats in the Knesset. Parties must receive a
minimum of 2% of the valid votes cast in the elections to be included in the
Knesset – this comes to 2.4 seats. After elections are held the coalition
forming a government must receive 61 votes in a vote of confidence in the
Knesset.

36 [31] Likud Beiteinu (Likud & Yisrael Beiteinu)
19 [15] Labor
13 [12] Bayit Yehudi
11 [11] Shas
10 [19] Lapid “Yesh Atid” Party
09 [06] Meretz
08 [07] Yahadut Hatorah
03 [06] Livni party “Hatnua” Party
11 [11] Arab parties
00 [02] Kadima

Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis)

by Jonathan Schanzer and Mark Dubowitz, Foreign Policy

Turkey’s Islamist government is being rocked by the most sweeping corruption scandal of its tenure. Roughly two dozen figures, including well-connected business tycoons and the sons of top government ministers, have been charged with a wide range of financial crimes. The charges ballooned into a full-blown crisis on Dec. 25 when three ministers implicated in the scandal resigned, with one making a dramatic call for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to step down as well. An exhausted-looking Erdogan subsequently appeared on television in the evening to announce a Cabinet reshuffle that replaced a total of 10 ministers.

The drama surrounding two personalities are particularly eye-popping: Police reportedly discovered shoeboxes containing $4.5 million in the home of Suleyman Aslan, the CEO of state-owned Halkbank, and also arrested Reza Zarrab, an Iranian businessman who primarily deals in the gold trade, and who allegedly oversaw deals worth almost $10 billion last year alone.
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Sam Bierstock, MD, writes In Praise of Christians and Christmas

I’m an American Jew—100% full blooded with all four grandparents 100% Jewish as far back as you want to go.

I live in a Christian country—I know it, I recognize it, and I love it.
Please, please—have your Christmas parades, your house decorations, and your nativity scenes. I love New York City at Christmas and festive shopping store windows. I celebrate your joy and the spirit of your holiday season with you. I rejoice for you as you celebrate the birth of your savior.

And THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart, for allowing me to celebrate my own religion and heritage. For allowing my children to grow up in a tolerant society that respects those of us who are in a minority. For allowing us to display our menorahs. For your good wishes in advertisements and station sponsored comments on various television and radio messages at the time of our holidays, and for allowing my children and grandchildren to explain to their friends the wonderful warmth and meaning behind Chanukah, Passover, and our high holidays.
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Bibi Frees Killers, Gives Construction, Cancels Construction, La Di Da

The ultimate goal of the prime minister’s current policy melange, as always, is political survival.

By: Yori Yanover, JP

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on a train to the southern town of Sderot, to inaugurate a new, rocket proof train station. As this picture exhibits, Netanyahu’s political foundation relies on right-wingers (like Minister of Transportation Yisrael Katz sitting next to him) and the Orthodox, without being one himself. He must devise maneuvers to keep the right at his side, while supporting the secularist Ashkenazi elite where he really belongs. Photo Credit: Kobi Gideon /GPO/FLASH90 Read more…

The forces of “tolerance” are intolerant of anything less than full-blown celebratory approval.

Last week, following the public apology of an English comedian and the arrest of a fellow British subject both for making somewhat feeble Mandela gags, I noted that supposedly free societies were increasingly perilous places for those who make an infelicitous remark. So let’s pick up where we left off:

Here are two jokes one can no longer tell on American television. But you can still find them in the archives, out on the edge of town, in Sub-Basement Level 12 of the ever-expanding Smithsonian Mausoleum of the Unsayable. First, Bob Hope, touring the world in the year or so after the passage of the 1975 Consenting Adult Sex Bill:

“I’ve just flown in from California, where they’ve made homosexuality legal. I thought I’d get out before they make it compulsory.”
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Opposition MK says bill would force Arab parties out of Knesset

BY STUART WINER, TOI

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman have reportedly agreed to increase the electoral threshold for winning seats in the Knesset to 3.25 percent of the vote, a move that critics have labeled anti-Arab.

After months of discussion, Netanyahu and Liberman finally reached agreement on upping the vote threshold for parliament from 2% to 3.25%, which will force out smaller parties who do not gain a higher enough percentage of the vote, the Haaretz daily reported on Thursday.

Under the new rules, the country’s Arab parties, which regularly only slip by the 2% threshold by a nose, would need to either coalesce or risk losing representation in the Knesset.
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By David Lev, INN

A new proposal by MK Miri Regev could have a major impact on the structure of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s coalition, a report in Maariv Thursday said. The law is likely to cause several of Netanyahu’s coalition partners, especially Yesh Atid and Hatn’ua, to feel uncomfortable.

The law would ban activity by non-profit organizations that “act against the interests of the Jewish and Zionist nature” of the State of Israel. Those interests would be decided by the Knesset, but it’s likely that organizations that call for annexing lands liberated in the 1967 Six Day War – an idea known as the “one-state solution” – would be included in that definition. Such a state, many argue, would dilute the Jewish majority of Israel, and thus it would be considered an “anti-Zionist law.”
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