By LAHAV HARKOV, JPOST

Existence of Jordan is a compromise, deputy minister says, speaking out against conceding land. Deputy Transportation Minister Tzipi Hotovely talks tough.

A long-standing rift within the Likud party on the subject of a two-state solution was readily apparent Wednesday evening, as Deputy Transportation Minister Tzipi Hotovely and Likud activist Eli Hazan debated the subject as part of an event for young party members.

“There’s schizophrenia in our movement, with people pulling us this way and that,” Hotovely said. “Political reporters love to write that we lack vision, and no party can allow itself that luxury.”
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Cameron backs down on urgent Syria strikes

Obama: No decision yet on launching Syria military strike

President Barack Obama made the case on Wednesday for a limited military strike against Syria to deter the future use of chemical weapons, but added he had not made a decision yet on whether to take action.

Obama’s administration has spent the past week discussing how to respond to an attack in the suburbs of Damascus that killed hundreds of people, an attack that the president said could only have been made by the Syrian government.
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By Steven Plaut

1.  The Israeli judicial system has always been fundamentally anti-democratic.  It operates at a dual level, with one set of rules for leftists and the other for everyone else.  It is notoriously weak in protecting fundamental civil liberties and especially freedom of speech.  The courts, including the Supreme Court, are crawling with anti-democratic “judicial activists,” who adhere to the doctrine of judicial tyranny that holds that unelected judges have the right to veto the will of the democratically elected representatives of the people and that judges should be able just to make up laws and rights out of thin air as they go along. 
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REAL CLEAR POLITICS WEDNESDAY

The Debate Over Intervening in Syria – George Packer, The New Yorker

Will Obama Proceed Without Public Support? – Chris Stirewalt, FOX News

Why Obama Will Bomb Syria – Aaron David Miller, Politico

U.S. Must Justify Intervention on Moral Grounds – Ian Hurd, NY Times

The Focus Needs to Be on Our National Security – Sen. Ted Cruz, FOX News

Intervening now is a good start, but our moral and strategic imperatives demand more.

By Elliot Abrams, NRO

As it becomes increasingly obvious that President Obama has decided to attack Syria with cruise missiles and perhaps a bit more, those of us who have been urging a stronger stand on Syria for two years should be very pleased. This is what we’ve asked for, isn’t it?

It isn’t, and I can’t muster more than one or one and a half cheers. Why not?

Two things have been notable about the Syrian civil war. First, real American security interests are at stake in Syria and have been from the start. Iran and the terrorist group Hezbollah, which together have an enormous amount of American blood on their hands, have sent troops to Syria to win a war there. Russia has provided a constant flow of arms to the regime. They all consider their control of Syria important, and they are right: If they lose the control they have through Bashar Assad, their position in the entire Middle East is badly weakened — and ours is strengthened. This is a proxy war, with them on one side, and American allies — Jordan, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE — on the other. It is in the interest of the United States to win this fight, and we should want Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia to lose.
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US Air Force beefs up strength in Qatar. Syrian troops, warplanes, tanks and artillery moved to sheltered sites

DEBKA

Wednesday, Aug. 28, the US, on the one hand, and Syria, on the other, were winding up their last military preparations ahead of an American operation against Syria,. Barring last-minute hold-ups, DEBKAfile’s military sources report the operation is scheduled to start Friday night Aug. 30 (edging into Saturday morning, according to local Mid East time.)

In the past 24 hours, the US Air Force finished a major buildup at the big US Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. B-1B bombers and F-22 Raptor stealth fighter jets were brought over from other US Mid East air facilities on the Omani island of Masirah and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
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Norwegian FM to ‘Post’: World will not bankroll Palestinian state-building forever

It should only be so. That would be the catalyst for change. Israel would then have to cover the cost of maintaining the PA which is currently about $1.1 billion. This is currently covered by the EU and the US.

Thus if the EU and the US are no longer paying the piper, Israel will have more independance to find solutions and lessen the shortfall.

By Ted Belman

About 10 years ago Martin Sherman articulated the humanitarian solution as opposed to the political solution as the best way to solve the conflict. He reasoned that resettling the Palestinians elsewhere where they would enjoy full rights and citizenship would end the conflict.

Since then he has refined his ideas and presents them under the title Rethinking Palestine: The Humanitarian Approach

Please take the time to read it carefully.

Hedegaard: “A man who is living under death threats does not fear Islam’s servile helper.”

Israel’s withdrawal from the West Bank won’t bring peace to the Middle East, no matter what the White House says.
By Moshe Arens, HAARETZ

Israel has no better friend than the United States. Israeli governments and the Israeli public listen eagerly to the advice proffered by Israel’s American friends. Sometimes we tend to agree and take the advice, other times we respectfully disagree. We know that the intentions are always the best. The two countries’ common strategic goals lead one to believe that generally what is good for America is good for Israel, and what is good for Israel should be good for America. But what if an administration in Washington adopts a mistaken policy, one that’s not good for America and is not likely to be good for Israel?
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By Daniel Greenfield, FPM

Egypt-Obama-MorsiWhen the dust settles in Cairo, at least long enough to make out anything through the smoke and flames, it may turn out that the Muslim Brotherhood has suffered its worst blow at the hands of none other than Barack Hussein Obama.

The blow will not have been intentional. Like the killing of Bin Laden, a useful intervention carried out by Navy SEALS who were perhaps less than enthusiastic about Obama’s plan to use the civilian trial of the terrorist leader as a prop for dismantling the military tribunal system, it wasn’t something that he meant to do.

It just happened.
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By TOVAH LAZAROFF, JPOST

Some 19 percent of Jewish Israelis prefer to see a Palestinian state in Jordan rather than in the West Bank, but only 7% really think it could happen, according to a Maagar Mochot poll commissioned by Professors for a Stronger Israel.

“There are alternatives; we are not sitting with a gun to our heads,” said former National Union MK Arye Eldad, as he addressed a daylong conference on Sunday that debated all aspects of the question of two states for two peoples on two banks of the Jordan River.

There are more options than the standard equation of “Either we will have a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria, or we will have a bi-national state,” Eldad said.
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‘We have strategic weapons and we’re capable of responding,’ says official in Damscus; Russia: West has no proof of chemical attack”

By Stuart Winer. TOI

A senior Syrian official on Monday issued a first direct warning that if attacked, his country would retaliate against Israel. Khalaf Muftah, a senior Baath Party official who used to serve as Syria’s assistant information minister, said in a radio interview that Damascus would consider Israel “behind the [Western] aggression and [it] will therefore come under fire.”

“We have strategic weapons and we’re capable of responding,” he said. “Normally the strategic weapons are aimed at Israel.”
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By Steven Plaut

“Of the three “Palestinians” shot dead there, two were convicted murderers who had been released as part of the moronic “deal” by Netanyahu to buy back Gilad Shalit by means of releasing terrorists. Their deaths today providing Israelis with a tiny pinch of closure and justice.”

1. It is time to demand an official investigation of the behavior of the Israeli Border Patrol unit that was in the battle that left three “Palestinians” dead in Qalandiya today near Jerusalem. I demand to know why ONLY three Palestinians were shot!

If you are watching the television news on non-Israeli channels, what you will learn from them is that a group of Israeli soldiers burst into Qalandiya and for no possible reason at all started harassing and attacking innocent “Palestinians” who were simply standing around and minding their business.
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By David Solway, FPM

[Illustration by Frontpage’s cartoonist Amir Avni].

In an August 20, 2013 article forFrontPage Magazine, Howard Rotberg deplores the “growing cultural emphasis on fun” which, in the midst of the current crisis brought on by fiscal irresponsibility and by Islam’s war against the West, distracts us from understanding the various forces that threaten our way of life and from “taking up arms in defense of [our] own liberty.”

Not that the warning hasn’t been sounded before. In his perennially relevant study of an increasingly frivolous intellectual culture,Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman addresses the subject from the standpoint of the electronic media that entertain while detaching viewers from the social, political and economic issues and consequences of “real life.” Fun, so to speak, has become fundamental, superseding both specific and contextual knowledge and leading to what today we call the “low-information voter” or, just as likely, the no-information voter. One recalls Lewis Mumford in The City in History, who referred to a historical episode dating back to the 5^th century A.D. that has always struck me as an exemplum of a culture in terminal decline. The citizens of Augustine’s city of Hippo, Mumford writes, were too busy attending the games in the local Forum to defend themselves against the Vandals at the walls, whose defense they had left to a contingent of hired mercenaries, with the inevitable result that the city was razed and these distracted citizens put to the sword.
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By BARRY RUBIN, JPOST

In 1848, the new Communist movement issued a manifesto. It began with the opening line: “A specter is haunting Europe – the specter of Communism.”

In 1848, the new Communist movement issued a manifesto. It began with the opening line: “A specter is haunting Europe – the specter of Communism.” For our purposes today, this might be reworded as: “A specter is haunting the Middle East–the specter of America.”

For example, about a year ago Dubai’s police chief addressed a major international Gulf Arab security conference. He said that there were about three dozen security threats to the Gulf Arab countries. But this well-respected security expert said the number-one threat was the United States.
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Border Police spokesman says officers were on raid to apprehend terror suspect • Over 1,500 Palestinians pour into street and attack officers with Molotov cocktails and stones • Border Police responds with live rounds, medical sources say three killed.

Israel Hayom Staff and News Agencies

Three Palestinians were killed and at least fifteen injured in clashes that broke out following a “huge IDF raid in Qalandiya” north of Jerusalem on Monday. Elite undercover Border Police units were in Qalandiya to arrest Omar Al-Khatib, a Palestinian freed in the Gilad Schalit prisoner release.

Witnesses said Israeli armored jeeps entered the Qalandiya camp at around 3 a.m. and were met by stone-throwing local residents. Border Police spokesman Shai Hakimi said officers were on a raid to apprehend a “terror suspect” when over 1,500 Palestinians poured into the streets and attacked the officers with firebombs and rocks.
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By Daniel Greenfield, FPM

In a response with clear echoes to the beginnings of the Iraq War, Obama has refused Syria’s offer to open its chemical weapons sites to United Nations inspectors as coming too late to be credible.

For the worst half of a decade, liberals were either urging us to give the UN inspectors more time in Iraq or demanding to know “Where are the WMDs?” once the war had begun.

The common consensus was Syria; a fellow Baathist regime that also served as the pipeline for the majority of suicide bombers aimed at American soldiers. But that answer was met with ridicule and contempt from the questioners.

Liberals had found their killer talking point and they were not about to let it go. Not until now.
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By Michael Ledeen, PJ MEDIA

It’s Middle East Groundhog Day all over again. The discussion of What To Do About Syria is a replay of What To Do About Saddam: it’s all about the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time in the wrong way.

When the intel and military “experts” say, as they have been saying for many months, “there is no good outcome in Syria,” they’re talking about that war, the wrong war.

We invaded Iraq in the name of the War Against Terror, which President George W. Bush defined as a war against terrorist organizations and the states that supported them. That should have made Iran the focus of our strategy, since Tehran was (and still is, now more than ever) the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. Nothing would have so devastated the jihadis as the fall of the Iranian regime, which–then as now–funded, trained, armed and gave sanctuary to terrorist groups from al-Qaeda and Hezbollah to Islamic Jihad and Hamas. Unless we defeated Iran, it would not be possible for Iraq to have decent security, no matter how total the defeat of Saddam and the Baathists, and how well-intentioned the successor government. As you can plainly see.
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