Coalition chairman MK Yariv Levin, who believes justice system is skewed with a leftist worldview, wants ministers to have more say on who sits on High Court and to introduce U.S.-style confirmation hearings • Levin: Current system is undemocratic.

By Shlomo Cesana, ISRAEL HAYOM

Coalition chairman and Likud faction leader MK Yariv Levin is again working on legislation that would overhaul the justice system and reduce the power the courts have over the Knesset, his main legislative platform.

Levin, who sits on the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, believes he can garner enough votes in the coalition and in the committee to pass the reforms. He believes that with former Likud ministers Dan Meridor, Benny Begin and Michael Eitan no longer in the Knesset, his reforms would face much less internal opposition, as the three were generally considered stalwarts of the courts.
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A Unifying Theory

By Ted Belman, first published in April 3, ’03

Palestine for Iraq

We’ve been had. After Bush’s 2002 June speech, we rejoiced. We were home free. No such luck.

Bush has made a Faustian bargain. He has sold America’s soul, Israel, to the devil, Saudi Arabia. What is that bargain? I’ll give you Palestine, you give me Iraq.

Lately we have been reading that the US has been planning a regime change in Iraq for over a year now. To accomplish this they felt they needed the Arabs on board. To achieve this end, the following otherwise incomprehensible actions were taken by the US administration.

Israel was restrained from defending itself after the spate of suicide bombings last spring. Arafat was protected at all costs.
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Op-ed: Saudi peace initiative nothing more than a diplomatic whim

By Guy Bechor, YNET

Representatives of the Arab League are amending the “Saudi initiative” and turning it into a “peace” treaty with Israel. Certain elements in the Jewish state rushed to praise the idea, even going as far as claiming that the new initiative is important to Israel. Really?

The Arab League does not exist in reality. The new initiative was actually introduced by the Egyptian Foreign Ministry in order to increase Cairo’s influence in the Arab world. There is nothing pan-Arab about it.
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By Ted Belman

I attended an all day conference in Tel Aviv today entitled The Arab Peace Initiative (API) – Current Status backed by the S Daniel Abraham Center for Strategic Studies and highlighting the Israel Peace Initiative (IPI). As you can imagine there were a lot of lefties there.

The IPI supports “the establishment of a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gazaon the basis of the ’67 lines and territorial swaps on a 1:1 basis in limited scope.” The state will be “demilitarized with strict security measures on its borders.” And of course, Jerusalem to be divided and refugees to return only to Palestinian state with symbolic and agreed exceptions”

There is little difference between their plan and that of the API.

The predominant message at the conference was that the API is a great opportunity for Israel and shouldn’t be missed. Most speakers lamented the fact that it has been ignored by the Israeli government. They were despondent that their views were out in, guess what, left field.
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Israel Hayom Staff

After an effort to legally define Israel’s Jewish character in legislation sparked much controversy, Likud has now come up with yet another controversial proposition: Anchor the legal status of Judea and Samaria in a basic law –– the Israeli precursor to a constitution, Army Radio reported Monday.

A new draft bill of the law, to be presented by Coalition Chairman Yariv Levin (Likud) this week, states that “the Land of Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people, and the birthplace of the State of Israel.” This clause could potentially impact future court decisions relating to the Israeli presence in Judea and Samaria.

Under the proposal, the official status of Arabic as a national language would also be downgraded.
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JEWISH PRESS

A senior IDF officer said that since the IDF is unable to stop the terrorist attacks on Route 60, between the Gush Etzion Junction and Kiryat Arba (Hebron), and specifically the section that passes by the Arab villages of El Arub and Beit Ummar, the army will instead be building a bypass road and a bridge, The Jewish Press was told by reliable sources.

Etzion Brigade commander Col. Yaniv Elalouf said in a closed meeting with local residents of Efrat that the bypass road would move Israeli traffic around 200-300 meters away from El Arub and 400 meters away away from Beit Umar. The road would also be raised on a bridge in that section, and come out near Carmei Tzur. Read more…

Fascinating

The bride with 25,000 guests: Holding a sash, newlywed, 19, waits for relative to perform a ‘Mitzvah dance’ as she marries into Ultra Orthodox Jewish family

Thousands attended the wedding of the grandson of the leader of the Hasidic dynasty Belz Rebbe yesterday

18-year-old Shalom Rokeach will be the future leader of the Jewish sect – one of the largest in the world

He married 19-year-old bride Hannah Batya Penet in the traditional ceremony which lasted several hours until dawn

Weddings are always a big occasion, but with a guest-list of more than 25,000, this traditional Jewish ceremony dwarfs even the most lavish of nuptials.

Jewish well-wishers from around the world attended the Ultra Orthodox Jewish wedding to witness the marriage of the grandson of the leader of the Hasidic dynasty Belz Rebbe yesterday.

Steeped in tradition, these amazing images show the ceremony of 18-year-old Shalom Rokeach and his 19-year-old bride Hannah Batya Penet in Jerusalem, Israel.

By Alexander Yakobson 

The Israel Democracy Institute’s ‘Israeli Democracy Index 2012’ – an annual comprehensive survey of the mood of Israeli society, widely considered one of the most authoritative in the field – provides some fascinating data about attitudes among Arab-Israelis regarding Israeli democracy and the state itself. The findings (not significantly different to previous years) certainly reflect a critical attitude towards the Israeli reality and government policies. But they also reflect something else: a huge gap between the responses of Arab-Israelis and the typical discourse of the Arab elite in the country; between opinion at the base and rhetoric amongst the political leadership of this community. Read more…

By Gil Hoffman, JPOST

A select group of Russian parliament members will soon be urging their colleagues to say “da” to Israel after a delegation of Israelis took steps to initiate the formation of a pro-Israel caucus in the Duma in meetings last week in Moscow.

The delegation from the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus (KCAC) and the World Jewish Congress met with influential Christian leaders from across Russia. Talks focused on garnering support for the State of Israel and forming a Russian Israel Allies Caucus in the Duma, which is the Russian parliament’s lower house.

KCAC co-chairman MKs David Rotem (Likud Beytenu) and Yoel Razbozov (Yesh Atid), KCAC director Josh Reinstein and former MK Shai Hermesh, who is WJC-Israel’s chairman, worked with the organizers of the caucus, who will soon select its members. A formal request for the caucus’s formation will be issued this week.
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YNET:

Israeli government officials dismissed the report. “This story is detached from reality. A fairytale. There was no agreement or understanding achieved between Putin and Netanyahu. That’s another piece of fantasizing,” one of the officials told Ynet.

“It’s likely there would be a great deal of foot-dragging by the Russians, who would use it as a bargaining chip without following through with the deal. Only time will tell,” he said.

By Elad Benari, INN

Russia has cancelled the deal to sell S-300 missiles to Syria, a senior Russian official tells the British Sunday Times.

The official explained the cancellation was a result of Russia’s concern that the missiles could fall into the wrong hands and be used to attack civilian aircraft at the Ben Gurion airport.

“We are very much concerned about this; the large Russian community in Israel is a major factor in our attitude to Israel, and we will not let this happen,” the official told The Sunday Times.

He said that an agreement to cancel the deal with Syria was reached during the recent meeting in Russia between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and President Vladimir Putin. In return for cancelling the deal, the official added, Russia expects Israel to refrain from further air strikes in Syria.
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By Michael Ledeen, PJ MEDIA

He’s actually getting worse. This president will not admit that we are in a war, as President George W. Bush defined it, with various terrorist organizations and with countries that support them. In his overlong, rambling speech to the National Defense University on terrorism and national security, the president never even mentioned Iran, which happens to be our main enemy and the world’s leading sponsor of international terrorism. Not one word.

You may well ask how it is possible for the president to talk about his counterterrorism “strategy” without addressing the main source of terrorism. You would be right to ask, and you should also ask how it is possible that, so far as I can see, not one of the pundits, experts and commentators noticed the omission. They were so busy with the future of Gitmo and where captured terrorists should be tried, and how many drones can fit on the head of a jihadi, that they missed the biggest thing.
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DEBKA

After spending 48 hours in Jerusalem and Ramallah, trying to talk Israeli and Palestinian leaders into reviving the long-stalled Middle East peace process, US Secretary of State John Kerry’s exit line Friday, May 24, was: “We’re getting toward a time now when hard decisions need to be made.”

That was all he had to say about Israel’s comments on US proposals on the subject as unworkable and the Palestinian view that American ideas were still unformed and conditions for reviving talks non-existent.

In any case, the Syrian crisis hurtling forward heedless of its disastrous potential for its neighbors is fully exercising their leaders’ attention at this time and confronting them with much more urgent “hard decisions.”
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