David Horovitz, TOI

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu errs in his support of a Palestinian state, and that misguided support is badly weakening his position within the Likud, Netanyahu’s own deputy foreign minister and Likud colleague Ze’ev Elkin told The Times of Israel.

In an interview at his office in the Foreign Ministry, where he serves as the deputy to acting foreign minister Netanyahu, Elkin said Netanyahu “is going against the flow of his own party. He’s paying a political price day after day, hour after hour, for his belief in a Palestinian state… It’s very hard for him in his party.”
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Kerry tells US Jewish leaders he fears for Israel’s future if no peace deal. At White House meet, secretary highlights Israel’s growing diplomatic isolation, demographic challenges;

By REBECCA SHIMONI STOIL, TOI August 9, 2013,

Secretary of State John Kerry and an elite US diplomatic team met with a small group of American Jewish leaders at the White House Thursday night to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks that resumed last month.

An optimistic-sounding Kerry asked the Jewish leaders for their help in supporting the newly restarted talks, The Times of Israel learned, saying that he feared for Israel’s future if a peace deal is not reached.

Kerry told the fewer than two-dozen representatives of Jewish organizations that he really believes that both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas realize that there is a strategic imperative to act now. He noted that Israel faces the threat of diplomatic isolation and a demographic clock.
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Detente can go beyond letting then build a bomb. There are many issues that may be subsumed in detente including the future of Syia and Iran’s hegemonic ambitions. Will Obama throw Israel under the bus? Will Obama throw Saudi Arabia under the bus. Stayed tuned. Ted Belman

Barring the IDF, Netanyahu’s last resort against possible Obama détente with Iran is US Congress

DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis August 7, 2013,

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at his first news conference Tuesday, Aug. 6, said his government would not discuss his country’s nuclear program with the world powers under pressure. No sooner had he spoken than Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu shot back: The only thing that worked in the past was pressure, so the answer now is increased pressure.

It is an open secret that what Rouhani is after is the lifting of US and European sanctions which are crippling Iran’s economy. He is not altogether unrealistic: Only last February, the Six World Powers made Tehran an offer to gradually ease sanctions if Iran stopped enriching uranium – even temporarily.
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By Ted Belman

The US was quick to react to yesterday’s announcement that the Civil Administration had approved the construction of 878 units outside the settlement blocs east of the green line.

State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki said when talking to reporters:

“The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement activity and opposes any efforts to legitimize settlement outposts.”

“The secretary has made clear that he believes both of the negotiating teams are at the table in good faith and are committed to working together to make progress.”

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Four years ago Obama made his infamous Cairo speech
McCain and Graham sent packing

By YOUSSEF IBRAHIM, Special to the NY Sun

America’s intricate alliance with Egypt, woven over four decades, is standing on the verge of collapse over the failure of the Obama administration to comprehend the revolution that ousted the Muslim Brotherhood from power in Cairo.

In a cascade of mutual recriminations over the past three days, President Mansour and his prime minister, Hazem Biblawi, described two senior American senators, sent as emissaries of President Barak Obama, as “delusional” and “liars.”

The two senators arrived with demands to release all Muslim Brotherhood leaders being held under arrest and to integrate the party into the new revolutionary government. Otherwise, they warned, the Obama administration will cutoff all financial and military aid to Egypt.
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We also read that Iran is letting Iranian Kurds join the fight in Syria. Assad is trying to woo the Kurds into an alliance also. Ted Belman

By Fulya Ozerkan, LEBANON DAILY STAR

ANKARA: After embarking on a peace process with Kurdish rebels in Turkey, Ankara is now softening its position on the increasingly autonomous Kurdish minority in war-torn neighboring Syria, analysts say. The Turkish government has long kept a wary eye on Kurdish ambitions in Syria, fearing the creation of a Kurdish state there could serve as a magnet for Turkey’s own Kurdish population.

Ankara’s unease only increased after Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces last year withdrew from majority Kurdish areas in the north of the embattled country and entrusted the security there to Kurdish militia.
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News Agencies, Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff

Iran’s new president Hasan Rouhani is “charming, he is cunning, and he will smile all the way to the bomb,” Minister for International, Intelligence and Strategic Affairs Yuval Steinitz said in an interview with The Washington Post, published on Thursday. Israel believes the United States and others in the West are being misled by the moderate cleric’s recent election to the presidency. Steinitz told the Post that rather than negotiating with Tehran, the U.S. and the international community should tighten the economic sanctions against Iran’s already stagnating economy.

The Israeli intelligence minister told The Washington Post that Tehran should hear from the U.S. and the international community that it has only two choices: voluntarily shutter its uranium enrichment program or “see it destroyed with brute force,” which he envisioned as “a few hours of airstrikes, no more.”
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by Raymond Stock, Fox News

http://www.meforum.org/3573/us-egypt-aid

On Friday, the chief of Egypt’s military, General Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, has urged all Egyptians to come out on the street to give him a “public mandate to face up to terror” in confronting the Muslim Brotherhood and its Salafi allies.

A military source told Cairo’s ahramonline that these demonstrations will be “as big almost” as the fifteen-to-thirty million thought to have marched against President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood on June 30.
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by Amir Rapaport, BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 210

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The army’s new multi-year plan shows that the IDF is reorganizing its priorities for the coming decade. Military priorities include theattainment of intelligence superiority, development of knockout fire delivery capability, active defense systems, cyber warfare, and border protection systems, while the ground forces are to be downgraded in importance and priority.

The recent announcement regarding future cuts in the defense budget, as well as the launching of the new multi-year plan for the IDF (“Te’uza”), prompt the question: where is the Israeli military heading?

The IDF formulated several principles of warfare in recent years: keeping the campaign as short as possible, allowing minimum damage to the home front (assuming that the home front will have a hard time facing a prolonged missile attack), and achieving a clear and definite image of victory. The Israeli military is not interested in another confrontation whose outcome is less than unequivocal, like the 2006 Lebanon war.
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“SYRIA” IS DISINTEGRATING, AS OBAMA JILTS OPPOSITION, CHRISTIANS FLEE, KURDS EMERGE–WESTERN PROMISES “A JOKE”, ISRAEL ONLY RELIABLE FORCE

CIJR ISRANET DAILY BRIEFING

Syria’s War Splits Nation into 3 Distinct Regions: Zeina Karam, Real Clear World, Aug. 5, 2013— More than two years into Syria’s civil war, the once highly-centralized authoritarian state has effectively split into three distinct parts, each boasting its own flags, security agencies and judicial system.

Syrian Christian Towns Emptied by Sectarian Violence: Ruth Sherlock, The Telegraph, Aug. 2, 2013 —Tens of thousands Syriac Christians – members of the oldest Christian community in the world – have fled their ancestral provinces of Deir al-Zour and Hasakah in northeastern Syria, residents have said. “It breaks my heart to think how our long history is being uprooted,” said Ishow Goriye, the head of a Syriac Christian political Hasakah. Read more…

Senior Israeli official doubts US move to thwart nuclear Iran.

JPOST.COM

Israel is capable of carrying out a unilateral military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities without operational support from the United States, a senior Israeli official said to Israel Radio on Tuesday morning.

Although, such a strike would render less effective than one conducted by America, the unidentified official said.

The diplomatic official doubted US intentions to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons at all costs.

American conduct regarding Syria, contrary to declarations by President Barack Obama, shows Israel that it cannot rely on US assurances, the Israeli source said.
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[See also: Report: Obama Agrees to Meet Muslim Brotherhood Officials at White House]

Fantasizing that enemies are friends is a dangerous pastime

By Frank J. Gaffney Jr. -The Washington Times

Diana West’s splendid new book, “American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character,” is an expose of a practice that she persuasively argues has cost us dearly in the past and endangers our future. Former federal prosecutor-turned-pundit Andrew C. McCarthy calls it “willful blindness,” and we indulge in it at our extreme peril.

Ms. West painstakingly documents how America’s government, media, academia, political and policy elites actively helped obscure the true nature of the Soviet Union. She persuasively argues that such blinding began literally from the moment in November 1933 when Franklin Roosevelt normalized relations with the USSR in exchange for the Kremlin’s fraudulent promise to forgo subversion against this country.
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[A congressional select committee could offer immunity to the CIA’s dispersed, intimidated survivors.]

By JED BABBIN, AMERICAN SPECTATOR

You can always tell the depth of an event’s illegality by the measures people take to cover it up. By that measure, the conduct of President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and David Petraeus leading up to the terrorist attack that killed four Americans on 9/11 2012 must be must be so sufficiently wrongful that, if revealed, they could lead to the president’s impeachment.

How else can we gauge what is apparently the most energetic coverup in modern history? We know, from several sources, that the survivors of the attack — not on the consulate, but on the CIA annex — number a few dozen or more. We also know from those sources that almost all of their names have been concealed from Congress in the course of the coverup.
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A two-thirds Knesset and referendum majority should be required on an issue of such long-term importance as withdrawing from Judea and Samaria.

By Moshe Arens, HAARETZ

The ability of Israeli governments to govern has been proven time and again through thick and thin during the past 65 years. Israeli governments have handled wars, signed peace agreements, put an end to rampant inflation, absorbed millions of immigrants. Other democracies, including the United States, can only envy the ability of Israeli governments to get things done. Those who sought to imitate the U.S. presidential system need only look at the problems that Barack Obama faces in dealing with Congress. Putin’s Russian presidential system is something we really don’t want.
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By: Lori Lowenthal Marcus, JP

There’s a new plan to greatly increase Birthright availability Question: What’s Blue and White even though it’s on fire?  Answer:  The participants of most Birthright programs.

Approximately 350,000 Jews from across the globe have gone on the 10-day all expenses paid Birthright trip to Israel since the program started in 2000. For some reason, the people who crafted the Birthright-Taglit program 13 years ago pretty much got it right.  Research shows that young Jews who go on Birthright trips are:

46 percent more likely to feel very much connected to Israel than their counterparts who applied but did not go, and the Taglit effect was greatest among participants from relatively weaker Jewish backgrounds.
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TIMES OF ISRAEL

Most Israeli Jews would oppose a peace agreement with the Palestinians if it included a West Bank pullout with land swaps to let Israel retain major settlement population centers, according to a new poll that appears to contradict the conclusions of other recent surveys.

The poll, released Tuesday by the Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University, found that 63 percent of Jews in Israel oppose a withdrawal to the 1967 lines with land swaps as part of any peace arrangement with the Palestinian Authority, even if it meant Israel would hold onto the Etzion Bloc, directly south of Jerusalem; Ma’aleh Adumim, east of the capital; and Ariel in the central West Bank about 34 kilometers (21 miles) east of Tel Aviv.

Fifty-eight percent of Jewish respondents were opposed to the dismantling of any settlements. The poll was conducted among 602 respondents in late July, after the announcement of new peace talks with the Palestinians, and has a statistical error of 4.5%. Read more…

Efrat Forsher, ISRAEL HAYOM

The first half of 2013 was characterized by an average 2.12 percent population increase in Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley, according to population registry data obtained by Israel Hayom. The information suggests that the growth rate is highest in the Har Hebron Regional Council, at 4.8%.

On Sunday, the cabinet expanded its list of cities and communities eligible for government subsidies, which included a record number of Judea and Samaria settlements. The decision came just days after the resumption of long-frozen peace talks and drew quick Palestinian condemnation. The government hopes to encourage more people to move to the communities on the “national priorities” list.
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