The International Criminal Court has never before considered opening an investigation against Israel. Since its establishment in 2002, the ICC has dealt only with cases involving hundreds or thousands of victims.

The Mavi Marmara, aboard which Israel’s deadly raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla resulted in the deaths of 9 Turkish activists May 22, 2010 Photo by AP

Pipes asks the wrong question. Netanyahu has proven himself to be a leftist. But more telling is the fact that he prefers to make a deal than hold the line. e.g. WYE, Golan, Bar Ilan speech. And he certainly isn’t prepared to make a dramatic move on the right like approving the Levy Report, or extending Israel law to J&S or annexing it. If he was looking for a legacy he doesn’t have to turn left. He likes to keep his head down in the fox hole. He doesn’t want to make a wave or start a fire. He plays it safe. Ted Belman

by Daniel Pipes
The Washington Times

With Syria and Egypt aflame, why is U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry returning to the Middle East for his sixth visit since February to focus on more Israeli-Palestinian shuttle diplomacy?
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By David Goldman, MEFORUM,

The vicious crosswind ripping through Egyptian politics comes from the great Sunni-Shi’ite civil war now enveloping the Muslim world from the Hindu Kush to the Mediterranean.

It took just two days for the interim government installed last week by Egypt’s military to announce that Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States would provide emergency financing for the bankrupt Egyptian state. Egypt may not yet have a prime minister, but it does not really need a prime minister. It has a finance minister, though, and it badly needs a finance minister, especially one with a Rolodex in Riyadh.

As the World Bulletin website reported July 6: Read more…

By J.E. Dyer

Mohammed Morsi’s call for holy war in Syria spooked the Egyptian military, and it alarmed the Saudis too.  I suspect it even played a role in the decision of Qatar’s new emir to depose his father (long a supporter of Morsi and promoter of Islamist influence in the Arab Spring nations) at the end of June.  The new Sheikh Tamim has moved quickly to shift some of his father’s key policies, and we are likely to see more solidarity between Qatar and Saudi Arabia in the coming weeks – but with the Saudis now edging into the lead.

As Qatar’s profile changes, there will be a significant shift in the dynamics of Islamism, one of whose best-organized factions (Qaradawi and his International Union of Muslim Scholars) has had a reliable source of funding and tacit national support from the oil-rich emirate.  There will be blowback within Qatar, of course; the new emir will have to tack and trim to discourage the kind of protests and terror attacks that now routinely menace neighboring countries like Iraq, Bahrain, and Jordan.  As Turkey’s Islamist minister to the EU, Egemen Bagis, warns us, Islamism is here to stay.  (Bagis is the Turkish minister who threatened Angela Merkel in June with an “inauspicious end” and “severe retaliation,” if a resumption of Turkey’s EU negotiations were blocked because of the Erdogan government’s recent response to protesters.) Read more…

At last, The Secret of President Barack Obama’s Middle East Policy Revealed, No Kidding

By Barry Rubin

Note: I beg you to read this article and I’ve never said that before. I think in the wake of the Egyptian coup, everything has come clearly together on U.S. Middle East policy. This is the most important article I’ve written in 2.5 years, since predicting the first Egyptian revolution in October 2009. Here is the story.

A statement by two National Security Council senior staff members has revealed the inner thinking of President Barack Obama. It is of incredible importance and I plead with you to read it. If you do you will comprehend fully what’s going on with U.S. foreign policy.
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News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff

At least 42 people were killed in Cairo on Monday, according to medical sources, when Islamist protesters angered by the military overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi were allegedly fired on at the Cairo military barracks where he is being held.

More than 300 were wounded in a sharp escalation of Egypt’s political crisis, and Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood urged Egyptians to rise up against the army, which they accuse of a military coup to remove the elected leader.

In an official statement published by Al-Ahram Arabic news website, the army said an “armed terrorist group” attempted to break into the Republican Guard headquarters in the early hours of Monday and “attacked security forces.”
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http://www.brasschecktv.com/videos/money-madness-1/how-america-lost-its-way-.html

Stranger than fiction, 100% documented

In the first part of this series was saw how America’s leading bankers and industrialists – Rockefeller, Walker, Dupont, Harrriman, Ford, Mellon, Bush etc. – funded and supported the Nazis in German, the Bolsheviks in Russia and the terrorists who established the House of Saud (Saudi Arabia.)

Nearly 100 years later, the State Department and Justice Department continue to protect their creations.
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Abbas is our only hope. Bibi is more and more looking like he is ready to cave, if not to all the demands, but to most of them. His failure to act leaves Israel as sitting ducks. We must abandon the TSS and annex Area C. Ted Belman

By Dalit Halevi & Elad Benari, INN

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, who is often touted by the West as a “moderate peace partner”, has once again indicated that he is willing to resume negotiations with Israel – but not give up on even one of his never-ending preconditions.

In an interview with the pan-Arab Al-Hayat newspaper which was published on Saturday, Abbas expressed hope that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who has been pushing the sides to return to the negotiating table, will make another visit to the region soon.

The negotiations, he stressed, will be a starting point, and “while we may not get everything, we will fight to realize our national aspirations, especially the issue of Al-Quds (the Arab name for Jerusalem), which is an issue on which we will not give up, because if it is not the capital of the State of Palestine, there will be no solution.”
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The apology was a disaster from the word go. It fell on its face and no good came of it. Yaacov Amidror, Netanyahu’s National Security Advisor, who apparently recommended it and publicaly praised it subsequently resigned to be effective in August.. I wonder if Netanyahu was upset with the advice he was given. Ted Belman

More Israeli-Arabs than Jews think Erdogan driven by anti-Semitism.

By HERB KEINON, JPOST

A much higher percentage of Israeli Arabs (23 percent) than Jews (5%) believe anti-Semitism and hatred of Jews is the main factor animating Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s relationship with Israel, according to a poll released Sunday.

The poll, sponsored by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, found that both Israeli Arabs and Jews believe that preserving Turkey’s standing in the Arab world was the most important factor behind Erdogan’s position toward Israel.
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Israel’s right to define itself as Jewish state is as important as its right to defend itself militarily

Hagai Segal, ynet

Our Declaration of Independence includes 650 words. The word “Jewish,” in its different forms, appears 20 times, while the word “democracy” doesn’t even appear once.

The people who drafted the declaration and signed it had the highest regard for democratic values, but first and foremost they wanted to stress its Jewish side. Perhaps they said to themselves that there are many democracies in the world, but only one Jewish country. It’s important to protect it.

These days it’s even more important. From the outside and from within attempts are being made to undermine the Jewish character of the Jewish state. The dark forces rely on the fatigue of the Zionist material in order to internationalize Israel and declare it a state of all its citizens. They are taking advantage of the fact that over the years the fashion here has changed, and democracy has been emphasized at the expense of Judaism.
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Neturei Karta not the only Jews in US mounting a ‘keep away from-Israel’ campaign

Yishai Fleisher, YNET

On a beautiful Sunday morning in May, I was driving south on the West Side Highway in New York City, heading towards the Israel Day Parade. As my car made its way along the mighty Hudson River, I marveled on how awesome this city is. I saw myriads of joggers, happy barbecues taking place on well-tended Riverside park lawns, and of course, the imposing, surreal, gigantic skyscrapers that adorn this world-capital metropolis.

I travel often to New York to promote a stronger connection between North American Jews and Israel, and to encourage aliyah, and every time I go I am struck by the thought: How is the aliyah idea going to compete? This place just has too much of a magnetic pull and Jews have everything here – financial success, the best of world culture, freedom to worship, and all in relative safety, in the shadow of this great city.
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NGO Monitor issues report saying EU’s grantees are centrally involved in 2001 Durban Forum’s strategy of ‘political warfare and demonization of Israel’

Ynetnews

In a new report presented to members of the European Parliament, NGO Monitor details the damaging impact of “highly secretive EU funding for radical political advocacy NGOs.” 

According to NGO Monitor, EU funds are going to organizations involved in anti-Israel boycotts and violent demonstrations, which “undermine the EU’s efforts to secure peace in the Middle East.” 
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Emet m’Tsion

Since taking office in January 2009, or even before then, Barack Hussein Obama has been working with a number of US intelligence honchos, James Jones, Clapper, Donilon, and others to promote the rise to power of Muslim Brotherhood governments in Sunni Arab countries as well as encouraging governments run by the MB’s Shiite counterparts, as in Iran and its ally, Syria [dominated by Alawites, an offshoot sect of Shiism, considered heretics by Sunnis but as Muslims by Shiites, at least as long as convenient], and by Sunni counterparts of the MB as in Turkey. Obama’s first trip abroad after taking office as president was to Ankara, where Erdogan –a veteran Judeophobe– had successfully subdued his possible political opposition in the army and the judiciary, installing his own men, and had adopted an aggressive pro-Islamist foreign policy with overtones of nostalgia for the Sunni Ottoman Empire. Obama’s second trip abroad, in June 2009, was to Egypt where he was going to make the Arab and Muslim worlds love America, while he forged an alliance of sorts with the Muslim Brotherhood. Read more…

Haaretz reports that Kerry is returning to Israel on Friday. Apparantly Netanyahu has made some concessions which include releasing prisoners over a six month period, construction freeze on settlements outside the blocs and most worrisome,

As for basing the talks on the 1967 lines, a senior Israeli official said that if talks are renewed, Kerry will announce that they will be based on the 1967 lines with exchanges of territory. This would allow both the Palestinians and Israelis to present their public objections to the issue, while accepting it in principle.

Is this an agreement to disagree? If so that would be meaningless. But to allow Kerry to say it is not meaningless and will have huge significance.

Apparently Abbas is also being asked to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and is balking..

By Caroline Glick

Actually Israelis have lost patience with the E.U. What matters is our perception , not theirs, our security, not theirs and our neck not theirs. They worry that the lack of progress with the peace process may result in the downfall of the PA. So? Let the PA or the Palestinians worry about that, not us. If security chaos results its our neck on the line.  Not theirs. So back off.  Ted Belman

By: Akiva Eldar for Al-Monitor Israel Pulse Posted on July 4. 

Why are we even talking about the ’67 lines.  They have no legitimacy whatsoever. Either its the Partition lines which are antiquated or its wherever we agree.  R242 said we are entitled to retain some territory when setting secure borders. The Palestinians have no legitimate claim to Judea and Samaria whereas the Jews do by virtue of the Palestine Mandate. Why is Netanyahu not making this abundantly clear? We must keep the highlands overlooking the coastal plain. Ted Belman

By Dore Gold, ISRAEL HAYOM

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) has been doing his utmost over the last several months to persuade U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on the merits of his demand that Israel accept the 1967 lines as the basis for a future border before any negotiations can be resumed. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has responded firmly that he refuses to accept any preconditions for sitting at the table with Palestinian negotiators.

Read more…

THE PROBLEM OF JEWISH SELF-DEFENSE

An HIR series

Historical and Investigative Research – 06 May 2006
by Francisco Gil-White