Eugene Kontorovich is a rising star in Jewish/Israeli advocacy and is making aliyah with his wife and 4 children. He is very active in the Lawfare Project. This is a great interview. Ted Belman

by gerald steinberg, Jweekly

At university campuses, particularly in California, anti-Israel divestment debates in student government have become a spring ritual.

From San Diego to Berkeley and Davis, student senators introduce resolutions backing divestment, debate is scheduled immediately, propaganda is spread, supporters pack the halls, pro-Israel speakers are harassed (or worse), and student senators with almost no knowledge cast deciding votes. Whether the resolution (which has no practical impact) is adopted or defeated, Israel’s demonization is propagated.

While presented under the façade of local student initiatives, this process is a central part of a much wider and well-financed campaign of political warfare against Israel. The delegitimization of Israel began with its founding, and has not stopped. In the early decades (before the pretext of occupation after the 1967 war), the Arab League boycott office, located in Damascus, persuaded many firms, including Pepsi and American Express, not to do business with Israel. And travelers with Israeli visas in their passports were barred from Arab countries.
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Atlas Shrugs 

Look who’s new in the White House!

Arif Alikhan – Assistant Secretary for Policy Development for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Mohammed Elibiary – Homeland Security Adviser

Rashad Hussain – Special Envoy to the (OIC) Organization of the Islamic Conference

Salam al-Marayati – Obama Adviser – Founder Muslim Public Affairs Council and its current executive director

Imam Mohamed Magid – Obama’s Sharia Czar – Islamic Society of North America

Eboo Patel – Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships

This is flat out scary!!!!

Dr Richard Landes of the Second Draft created a blog, The Al Durah Project, which has the facts and the story in detail. Don’t miss it.

Israeli government publishes report on controversial video allegedly portraying death of Palestinian boy during intifada, claims boy alive at end of video, thus absolving Israel of responsibility for his death; ‘With my own eyes I saw that we were shot at from nearby Israeli post,’ boy’s father says in interview with Ynet

Attila Somfalvi, YNET 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received a government report Saturday, presenting the findings of a special governmental inquiry committee into the death of Muhammad al-Dura during the al-Aqsa Intifada. The report focuses on the controversial September 2000 France 2 broadcast – in which the boy is seen hiding behind his father while the two were under IDF gunfire – and conclude that al-Dura was still alive at the end of the video.  

Video of al-Dura moving hand 

By Salomon Benzimra

“There are some ideas so stupid that only an intellectual could believe them” (George Orwell) 

Columbia University Professor Joseph Massad is blind to reality.  His virulent anti-Zionist streak leads him to the most laughable constructs:  In “The last of the Semites,” Massad wants us to believe that the Zionist effort to remove the Jews from Europe in the 1930s and 1940s (to save them from imminent extermination) is undistinguishable from Nazi anti-Semitism! 
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By Wallid Shoebat, PJ MEDIA

“Our killer question is ‘How do you propose to defeat Islamism?’ Those who make all Islam their enemy not only succumb to a simplistic and essentialist illusion but they lack any mechanism to defeat it.”

This is what historian and Middle East analyst Daniel Pipes asks in his recent Washington Times article.

To support his argument, Pipes makes an unsubstantiatedclaim that a majority of Muslims are moderate and that Islamism is only, supported by 10-15 percent of Muslims…

So how and why did he come up with such numbers? Pipes uses different studies and surveys about which he himselfconfesses: “These ambiguous and contradictory percentages lead to no clear, specific count of Islamists.” Why then use such statistics? It is only to serve the major argument he made in my first paragraph. Read more…

For an in-depth look at Qatar, read these:

Qatar’s takeover of Europe by Giulio Miotte
Tiny Qatar casts a giant shadow By Ted Belman
Qatar is more active than you know

By Yaakov Ahimeir, ISRAEL HAYOM

Just recently, the Qatari prime minister stood in Washington, D.C. and declared that the Arab world is ready for land swaps between the Palestinians and Israel when a peace deal is reached. Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani made the declaration while flanked by foreign ministers from Arab countries.

His words have been praised to high heaven by opinion makers. He has become the darling of MKs from Israel’s opposition parties, who view this declaration as an unprecedented historical step.
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www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

The times of London published a report that Israel prefers Assad survive Syria conflict;

The scenario that Syrian President Bashar Assad would survive his country’s bloody conflict, yet would hold a lesser role, would be preferred by Israel in contrast to a takeover by rebel factions with Islamic extremist inklings, The Times of London cited an Israeli official as saying Friday.

“Better the devil we know than the demons we can only imagine if Syria falls into chaos and the extremists from across the Arab world gain a foothold there,” one senior Israeli intelligence officer was quoted as saying.

Yet Amos Yadlin thinks otherwise.
Amos Yadlin: Assad’s fall is good for Israel

Syrian President Bashar Assad’s fall is an Israeli interest, former Military Intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin told Israel Radio on Sunday.

“He is much more dangerous to Israel than any regime that would follow him, because he allows Iran to smuggle missiles and weapons into Lebanon,” Yadlin said.

By Caroline Glick

Nakoula Basseley Nakoula has been sitting in a US federal prison in Texas since his photographed midnight arrest by half a dozen deputy sheriffs at his home in California for violating the terms of his parole. As many reporters have noted, the parole violation in question would not generally lead to anything more than a court hearing.

But in Nakoula’s case, it led to a year in a federal penitentiary. Because he wasn’t really arrested for violating the terms of his parole.
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TOI

“There’s nothing more shortsighted in Western capitals in our time than the softening of support we’ve seen for Israel around the globe,” he said, calling the country “the one stable, democratic ally in this part of the world.”

Speaking during a visit to New York City, Harper also touched on Syria as he urged “extraordinary caution” on the idea of arming the opposition.

“We should not fool ourselves about what’s happening in Syria,” he said, saying there is “brutality and extremism on both sides.”

“To start talking about arming unnamed people whose objectives we don’t understand, I think, is extremely risky,” Harper said.