by Nathaniel Sugarman, American Thinker
http://www.legal-project.org/4119/eu-challenges-the-un-and-oic-on-press-freedom

The European Parliament (EP) in Strasbourg passed two resolutions Thursday, each detailing a set of recommendations to protect the rights of journalists to speak and print freely.

“The EU, as a community of values, should aspire to lead in ensuring the free word, whether blogged or spoken, and information, whether researched or photographed, are protected. Journalists and a free, pluralist media, are essential for democracies and checks on power. Freedom of speech and freedom after speech are at the core of open and free societies,” said Marietje Schaake (ALDE, NL), rapporteur for press and media freedom in the world. The EP is the directly elected parliament of the European Union. Read more…

By Gerald Steinberg, CJN

The greatest threat to Israel is not from Iran and its allies. Although these challenges are escalating, we have enough capabilities and experience to deter or defeat them.

Instead, the main danger is from westerners who exploit the language of democracy and human rights to wage a dirty political war aimed at wiping Israel off the map. This war is conducted in the United Nations, the media, universities, anti-Israel churches and, recently, in social media such as Wikipedia, Facebook, and Twitter.

The vicious nature of this assault and the banal thinking of its leading generals were exposed recently in a Facebook forum known as the “Vulture Club,” described as a “close-knit, but informal brotherhood” active in war zones that comes to life “when the blood is flowing.” Chatting among themselves, journalists from leading media platforms, such as the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse, repeated clichés on the manipulative power of the (Israeli and Jewish) “lobby.”
Read more…

TOI

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia’s foreign minister said Tuesday that Iran is willing to halt its 20-percent enrichment of uranium, which has been a key concession sought in international negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.

That is the highest level of enrichment acknowledged by Iran and one that experts say could be turned into warhead grade in a matter of months.

In an interview with the Kuwaiti news agency KUNA that was released by the Foreign Ministry on Tuesday, Sergey Lavrov said that “for the first time in many years” there are encouraging signs in international efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear dispute.

He said Iran has confirmed that it is ready to halt production of uranium enriched to 20 percent. He did not give details, but said the sextet of international negotiators should make “substantial reciprocal steps.”
Read more…

In response to Bennett’s recent remarks on the two state solution, Netanyahu said: “I will seek a demilitarized Palestinian state”

Dan Margalit’s writes about The high price of words

While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has taken a position that has minimized the damage caused by statements against the two-state solution uttered by several government ministers and deputy ministers, the problem is becoming worse, both in the domestic and international arenas.

Netanyahu’s position is clear. First, there must be negotiations. If an understanding is reached with the Palestinians, Netanyahu will then conduct a democratic battle to get his coalition members and the Israeli public to support the two-state solution, which rightist ministers in Likud-Beytenu and Habayit Hayehudi currently oppose.
Read more…

Philippe Assouline’s Blog

Native Activist Fed Up with Anti-Israel BS Exploiting his Cause.

Ryan Bellerose has penned another epic piece of moral clarity. Not one to mince words, Bellerose, a Metis activist from Western Canada, has written a devastating op-ed in the Toronto Sun (and syndicated in 4 other Sun papers) taking the Palestinian propaganda machine to task for dishonestly using the native rights cause.

Money quote:

though Palestinian propagandists love to characterize Zionism (that is, Jewish nationalism) and the re-establishment of Israel in 1948 as colonial enterprises, it is the Jews who are aboriginal to the Holy Land. Alone among other nations, Jews’ language, history, culture and folklore were born and forged in the Holy Land. There is no statute of limitations on being indigenous. Accordingly, to claim the Jews are colonizers in the Holy Land delegitimizes all indigenous peoples because such attempts trivialize the unbreakable, maternal ties to the land that make us, like the Jews, indigenous.

Read more…

Russian reprisal expected

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report June 18, 2013,

NATO and a number of European governments, most significantly the UK, have started airlifting heavy weapons to the Syrian rebels poised in Aleppo to fend off a major Syrian army offensive, according to debkafile’s exclusive military sources. They disclose that the first shipments were landed Monday night, June 17, and early Tuesday in Turkey and Jordan. They contained anti-air and tank missiles as well as recoilless 120 mm cannons mounted on jeeps. From there, they were transferred to rebel forces in southern Syria and Aleppo in the northwest.

Our sources report that the first weapons reached rebel-held positions in Aleppo early Tuesday. More than 2,000 Hizballah troops are standing by to enter the decisive contest between Assad’s army and the opposition for control of Syria’s second most important city.

The hardware for the rebels is coming in from three sources:
Read more…

The Economist has released a Germany special report, which presents timely insights ahead of President Obama’s visit to Germany this week. 

As President Barack Obama prepares for his visit, German officials are turning up the heat on the U.S. over its Internet surveillance. However, the interrogation will go both directions, as President Obama has questions of his own for Angela Merkel and one of Europe’s most powerful countries.

The Economist’s in-depth Germany Special Report offers insights on the state of affairs in Germany that will be centerpiece discussions between these two world leaders: Read more…

Essentially, they want to be a state within a state. They want control over their education and culture. They do not want to integrate. They want the right to maintain a distinct identity and to have a veto over things that affect them.

They say that such rights are based on international law. Wrong, there is no such law. They are 20% of the population today. If we annex Judea and Samaria the Arabs will then be 33% of the population. This would strengthen their demands for this kind of bi-nationalism.

Finally I am against giving citizenship to Arabs in J&S were we to annex it. Others in the annexation camp favour citizenship. They rely on our 2/3 majority. They are foolish. I see all kinds of unrest and challenges as we have seen in Turkey and the Arab world. Why should Israel be immune to such things even if we had a 2/3 majority.. Ted Belman

Balad pushes bill to make Arabs autonomous minority

By ARIEL BEN SOLOMON, JPOST

MK Jamal Zahalka, tells ‘Post’ proposed legislation is for Israel to recognize Arab citizens as national minority, fulfill obligations.

The Israeli-Arab Balad party is pushing a bill that would enshrine the country’s Arabs as an official minority with autonomous national rights in fields such as culture and education. They seek to have the bill included in Israel’s Basic Laws, which serve as a quasi-constitution.
Read more…

By Barry Rubin, RUBIN REPORTS

Here is what I wrote in October 2010. The leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Muhammad al-Badi, had just given a sermon calling for the overthrow of Egypt’s government, which happened four months later, and a jihad against the United States, a country he considered weak, foolish, and retreating from the Middle East. I declared that this was:

“One of those obscure Middle East events of the utmost significance that is ignored by the Western mass media, especially because they happen in Arabic, not English; by Western governments, because they don’t fit their policies; and by experts, because they don’t mesh with their preconceptions.”

Two and a half years ago, who would ever have thought that the United States would enter an alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood? There were hints in President Barack Obama’s Cairo speech, yet now it is clear that this is the new basis for regional security sought by the Obama Administration.
Read more…

IMRA

PSR poll of Palestinians:55%:40% support eventual confederation with Jordan, 61% Reconciliation with Hamas requires ending security coordination with Israel

PSR poll 48 – June 2013

While a majority supports the appointment of Rami Al Hamdallah as Prime
Minister, 40% believe the Palestinian Authority has become a burden on the
Palestinian people and only 30% believe that it is an accomplishment. And
while Ismail Haniyeh wins against Abbas in presidential elections in the
Gaza Strip, half of the public believes that the Palestinian have a failed
leadership

13-15 June 2013

These are the results of the latest poll conducted by the Palestinian Center
for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip
between 13-15 June 2013. The period before the poll witnessed the
resignation of the government of Salam Fayyad and the appointment of a new
government headed by Rami Al Hamdallah, President of Al Najah University.
The period also witnessed the re-election of Khalid Mishaal as head of
Hamas’s political bureau for a new term and the postponement of the
formation of a reconciliation government. This press release covers public
evaluation of the general West Bank and Gaza conditions, elections,
reconciliation, public evaluation of the performance of the government of
Ismail Haniyeh, public satisfaction with the performance of President Mahmud
Abbas, the internal balance of power between Fateh and Hamas, and the views
of the public on the most vital Palestinian goals and the main problems
Palestinians confront today. Total size of the sample is 1270 adults
interviewed face to face in 127 randomly selected locations. Margin of error
is 3%.
Read more…

Huffington Post
By Avi Benlolo, President and CEO, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, Canada

The government of Canada took an historic step yesterday by signing the Ottawa Protocol to Combat Anti-Semitism. By doing so, it recognized anti-Semitism as a pernicious evil and a global threat against the Jewish people, the State of Israel and free, democratic countries everywhere. As Prime Minister Stephen Harper has noted, “Those who would hate and destroy the Jewish people would ultimately hate and destroy the rest of us as well.”

The protocol is a declaration that hatred of this nature will not be tolerated in this country. It sets out an action plan for supporting initiatives that combat anti-Semitism and provides a framework for other nations to follow.

It also sets out a vibrant definition of anti-Semitism which, for the first time in history, links anti-Semitism to the denial of the right Jewish people have to their ancestral home land — the State of Israel. This, in fact, is what sets post-World War Two anti-Semitism apart from its historic roots. Today’s anti-Semitism is all about denial: denial of the legitimacy of Zionism as a Jewish movement to reclaim the land of Israel; denial of a Jewish history in connection to the holy land and, in particular, the centrality of Jerusalem to the Jewish people; denial of the Holocaust (while at the same time accusing Jews of Nazism); and denial of Jews to live free of anti-Semitism, hate and intolerance.
Read more…

Comment by Jack Golbert. This job calls for napalm but my guess is that they will follow a swarm of women and children, like they did in Lebanon when they overran the lines of the Army of Southern Lebanon. The Moroccans used the same tactic successfully against the Spaniards when they overran the Western Sahara. Will the IDF open fire on women and children? Or will they give up the Golan? Of course, if it works in the Golan, it will be used again in the Galilee and again in the Triangle, etc.It’s a problem because dead women and children make devastating propaganda.

AARON KLEIN

TEL AVIV – Thousands of Syrians are currently training in Iran to serve as a force ready to storm Israel’s northern Golan Heights, according to informed Middle Eastern security officials.

The officials said between 3,000 and 5,000 Syrian men were being trained in the event Syrian President Bashar al-Assad decides to open a front against the Golan Heights, which borders Syria.
Read more…

See also: Turkey unions strike over crackdown
About 800,000 workers abstain from work on Monday, following police action against protesters in Istanbul park. Al Jazeera

By Tzvi Ben-Gedalyahu, Jewish Press

Published: June 16th, 2013

Turkish police went to war against protesters Saturday night, using rubber bullets and tear gas to clear thousands from Taksim Square and on pedestrians trying to cross a foot bridge, where drivers also suffered the effects of the gas. Read more…

By Rina Tzvi, INN

The U.S. House of Representatives passed an amendment to the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act on Friday, which would make it U.S. policy to take “all necessary steps” to ensure Israel is able to “remove existential threats.”

The amendment, initiated by Representative Peter Roskam, a Republican from Illinois, states that, “It is the policy of the United States to take all necessary steps to ensure that Israel possesses and maintains an independent capability to remove existential threats to its security and defend its vital national interests.”
Read more…

By Ted Belman, AMERICAN THINKER

Israel National News had a  breaking news item this week under the title “Kerry Expects Israeli Concessions to PA down the Line.” We were  told,

The US has requested the EU give them sole responsibility for brokering peace with the PA, and Secretary John Kerry will soon present a two-stage negotiation program.

According to Kerry’s proposal, negotiations with the PA without preconditions, pertaining to PA statehood and Israeli security guarantees. Following an agreement on these points in principle, The PA will receive hefty financial reinforcement as a reward, in addition to a bonus Israeli construction freeze.

That’s diplomacy for you. Abbas drops preconditions and Israel agrees to a settlement freeze as a bonus. Thus Israel will satisfy one of his previous preconditions.
Read more…

By Peter Welner, Contentions

On April 23, 2007, then-Senator and future presidential candidate Barack Obama gave a speech in which he said this:

Until we change our approach in Iraq, it will be increasingly difficult to refocus our efforts on the challenges in the wider region – on the conflict in the Middle East, where Hamas and Hezbollah feel emboldened and Israel’s prospects for a secure peace seem uncertain; on Iran, which has been strengthened by the war in Iraq; and on Afghanistan, where more American forces are needed to battle al Qaeda, track down Osama bin Laden, and stop that country from backsliding toward instability… Now it’s our moment to lead – our generation’s time to tell another great American story. So someday we can tell our children that this was the time when we helped forge peace in the Middle East.

It hasn’t quite turned out that way, has it? Read more…