By RON KAMPEAS/JTA

Groups which are usually loathe to publicly criticize the Israeli gov’t have changed their tune in wake of appeal by John Kerry.

WASHINGTON (JTA) — It’s almost boilerplate: The American Jewish community asks a foreign leader with whom it has cultivated a close relationship to kindly tell firebrands in the leader’s government to pipe down and fall in with an established policy that happens to be embraced by the U.S. government.

Greece? Romania? Hungary? Russia?

Try Israel.

In a rare rebuke of a sitting Israeli minister, three major centrist Jewish groups in recent weeks have criticized Naftali Bennett, the economics chief in Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government, for saying that the two-state solution is a “dead end.” Bennett also called on the government to annex the West Bank.
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International Christian Zionist Center

Why Israel’s government and people should be totally against the formation of a Palestinian state in the land G-d promised to them for eternity – the Land of Israel: 

I.            It will not lead to peace, but to the destruction of what would be left of Israel.

II.            It will not solve Israel’s democratic problem, and so will not preserve the Jewish character of what will be left of Israel.

1. Israel should in no way fear that a demographic dilemma will arise out of keeping all Samaria and Judea, but should vigorously confront any such danger by adopting the following measures:                                                     a)          Make bringing Jews home from all over the world a governmental top priority; an upgraded Ministry of Immigration fielding the best candidates to clarify abroad the need to make aliyah.  Read more…

[AND DON’T FORGET THAT ISRAEL IS RELEASING 107 MURDERERS. TED BELMAN]

Two Ramallah officials say that U.S. Secretary of State will soon announce resumption of negotiations; no comment from Jerusalem.

HAARETZ

Palestinian officials said Thursday that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is closing in on an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians to relaunch peace talks for a period of six to nine months.

Kerry announced this week that he had narrowed the gaps between the sides. He is expected back in the region in the near future.

The Palestinians want Israel to halt construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem before talks resume.

Two Palestinian officials said Kerry’s plan calls for a halt in settlement construction outside of major “blocs” that Israel expects to keep.

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The Magic Touch

By Jonathan S. Tobin, COMMENTARY

There is bad news, good news and better news coming out of Egypt today. First let’s discuss the good news.

The end of the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt is a blow to the cause of radical Islam. The rise of the Brotherhood and the now deposed President Mohamed Morsi was a disaster for Egypt as well as for the West. Had Morsi and his party been left in place to continue their drive to impose their Islamist vision on the world’s most populous Arab country it might have been impossible to depose them, thus locking Egypt into the same nightmare scenario of theocratic tyranny that we have seen unfold in Iran in the last generation.

The even better news is that the Egyptian Army didn’t listen to the Obama administration when it asked them not to launch what is, for all intents and purposes, a military coup that toppled a democratically elected government.
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ByNidra Poller, AMERICAN THINKER

An apparent victory for state-owned France Télévisions network and Jerusalem correspondent Charles Enderlin in the long legal battle they initiated against French citizen Philippe Karsenty may turn out to be the last stage in a cascade of strategic errors… by the broadcaster.  On June 26^th the 11^th Chamber of the Appellate Court convicted citizen Karsenty of slander and ordered him to pay €7000 in damages for publicly declaring that the al Dura news report broadcast from Netzarim Junction in the Gaza Strip on September 30, 2000 was a hoax.  Read more…

[Rejecting the MB is tantamount to rejecting Barack Obama.]

By JE Dyer, Liberty Unyielding

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood

It’s a little early to predict the exact outcome of the Morsi-military smackdown underway in Egypt.  (Update as this goes to press:  theEgyptian military says Morsi has been removed.)  But one thing is certain: Egyptians are mounting a broad-scale rejection of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Qatar too? Read more…

by Daniel Pipes, National Post

The overthrow of Mohamed Morsi in Egypt delights and worries me.

Delight is easy to explain. What appears to have been the largest political demonstration in history uprooted the arrogant Islamists of Egypt who ruled with near-total disregard for anything other than consolidating their own power. Islamism, the drive to apply a medieval Islamic law and the only vibrant radical utopian movement in the world today, experienced an unprecedented repudiation. Egyptians showed an inspiring spirit. 

Abdul Fatah Al-Sisi announcing Morsi’s removal from office.

If it took 18 days to overthrow Husni Mubarak in 2011, just four were needed to overthrow Morsi this past week. The number of deaths commensurately went down from about 850 to 40. Western governments (notably the Obama administration) thinking they had sided with history by helping the Muslim Brotherhood regime found themselves appropriately embarrassed. 
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By JTA

NEW YORK – Each year, when Frank Halper is faced with the state tax bill for his accounting business in Providence, Rhode Island, he has a choice.

He can write a check for the amount owed by his company or, as part of a state tax credit program, he can send a check to a foundation that provides tuition scholarships to students at Providence’s two Jewish day schools. His tax bill will be credited for 90 percent of the contribution.

For the last five years or so, his firm has opted for the latter.

“We’re in favor of supporting these schools,” Halper said. “We feel Jewish education is the future of the Jewish people.”

Tax credit programs are among the growing number of ways that private Jewish day schools and yeshivot across the US are corralling hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer dollars annually. The money is helping to defray operating costs, provide teacher training, assist students with tuition bills and enhance educational offerings.
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Hamas’s rocket arsenal places 70 percent of Israelis within range. 

JPOST

AFTER LARA LOGAN, WHY IS IT THAT THESE WOMEN GO INTO HARMS WAY AND WHY DO THEIR EMPLOYERS SEND THEM THERE.  TED BELMAN

AFP

Close to 100 women have fallen victim to “rampant” sexual attacks inCairo’s Tahrir Square during four days of protests against Egypt’s Islamist President Mohamed Morsi, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday. 

“Mobs sexually assaulted and in some cases raped at least 91 women in Tahrir Square… amid a climate of impunity,” HRW, which is based in New York, said in a statement. 

It cited figures from the Egyptian Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment/Assault, which runs a hotline for victims of sexual assault, showing that there were 46 such attacks against women on Sunday, 17 on Monday and 23 on Tuesday. 

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Op-ed: Israel preparing to release 120 enemies for the right to talk to Mahmoud Abbas
Hagai Segal, YNET

We have yet to finish licking the wounds of the Shalit deal, and a new insane deal is being hatched. Some 120 terrorist blood-spillers are preparing to pack their bags. According to a list leaked to the Almagor Terror Victims Association, the terrorists slated for release in order to resume peace negotiations with the Palestinians were responsible for the murderous acts that shook Israel in the pre-Oslo days. Most of us remember the names of the victims to this day: Rachel Weiss and her children; soldier David Delarosa; Ofra and Tal Moses of Alfei Menashe; Nissim Toledano; Professor Menachem Stern and many more.
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By Barry Rubin, Rubin Reports
A self-interview

Q: How can the United States become the ally of the Muslim Brotherhood, a one-time Nazi collaborator which has never changed its political line since; a movement to impose Sharia states and restore the caliphate; a movement that is genocidal against Jews, and is also anti-Christian, anti-Shia (all Shia, not just the Islamists), wants to kill gays and make women into second-class citizens?

Q: How can the United States—the very same politicians—oppose support for the pro-American Nicaraguan Contras against the pro-Communist Sandinistas but now support with arms the ant-American Syrian rebels—Brotherhood and worse?
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Armored vehicles and soldiers mass at university, other key sites; top government officials claim military taking over; reports that Egypt’s president and top advisers put under house arrest; Egyptians awaiting word from military; conflicting reports over who controls state TV

By REUTERS LAST UPDATED: 07/03/2013 10:03

Al-Ahram reports military will form three-member presidential council to run the country; Morsi defies army, US pressure to bow to protests as clock ticks on army ultimatum for his resignation.

CAIRO – Egypt’s state-run Al-Ahram newspaper said it expected President Mohamed Morsi would either step down or be removed from office on Wednesday when a deadline set by the army for resolving the country’s political crisis expires.

Egypt’s flagship state daily said an army road map for the future would set up a three-member presidential council to be chaired by the head of the Supreme Constitutional Court.

“Al-Ahram learnt that with the end of the 48-hour period set by the armed forces … it is expected in the hours that follow it, one of two things: either Morsi announces his resignation himself, or the declaration of his removal through the road map for the future set out by the armed forces,” it said.
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Today the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) announced the arrest of two Canadian-born citizens, John Stuart Nuttall and Amanda Marie Korody, in a terror plot targeting a public gathering at the British Columbia Legislature in Victoria on Canada Day, July 1.

According to online court records, Nuttall and Korody appeared at the Surrey Provincial Court this morning. The two suspects face charges that include “conspiring to place an explosive in or against a place of public use, a government or public facility, with the intent to cause death or serious bodily injury, for the benefit of, at the direction or in association with a terrorist group,” according to an RCMP press release.
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By Chana Ya’ar, INN

Egyptian sources report that senior officials in the Muslim Brotherhood have been placed under house arrest and the military is securing strategic facilities across the country.

The Islamist group that backed President Mohamed Morsi in last year’s successful bid to win the nation’s first democratic election is also now being scrutinized for corruption in the ranks.

The group’s funding structure and records are being probed, according to a report posted Wednesday by the Egyptian Al-Ahram newspaper.

The report also claimed the Egyptian Army has begun to hermetically seal strategic installations across the country in accordance with a military “road map” plan that mandates implementation by the army if politicians could not resolve the leadership crisis by Wednesday.

The army reportedly had already taken control of all weapons and munitions arsenal sites.
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By Natan Nestel

Sadia Saifuddin, a UC-Berkeley student and a leader in the two most extreme anti-Semitic organizations on US campuses, has been nominatedfor the prestigious position of the student member (for the 2014-15 academic year) of the University of California Board of Regents. California’s Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Speaker of the Assembly are ex-officio Regent Board members. Sherry Lansing is the Chair of the Board. Senator Diane Feinstein’s husband, Richard Blum, is also a regent. The student regent participates in the board that sets policies for the renowned University of California system, which consists of ten campuses throughout the state. Read more…