Ask yourself: in the struggle to raise awareness about the jihad threat, what’s working?

By David Suissa, Jewish Journal

A reflex is defined as “An action that is performed without conscious thought as a response to a stimulus.”

I thought about that word the other day when over 100 prominent American Jews released a letter urging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take “concrete steps” to entice the Palestinians back to the peace table.

The letter, organized by the Israel Policy Forum (IPF), said such leadership “would challenge Palestinian leaders to take similarly constructive steps, including, most importantly, a prompt return to the negotiating table.”
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Algemeiner

A new poll released by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center showed that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians (90.3%) believe that Hamas and Fatah should pursue national reconciliation even if this leads to the United States and Israel imposing sanctions on the Palestinian Arabs.

As for the party more responsible for the persisting division and the failure to reach reconciliation, 28.6% of respondents put the responsibility on Hamas while 19.8% put it on Fatah, while 22.3% blame both sides. A higher percentage of people in the Gaza Strip blamed Hamas for the continued division than did in the West Bank  (32.8% as opposed to 26.2% respectively) while a higher percentage of those in the West Bank blame Fatah for the continuation of the division more than Hamas (20.4% as opposed to 18.6%). Read more…

Algemeiner

Among officials in Israel a possible reconciliation with Turkey has begun to seem increasingly unlikely as the latter country continues to take unilateral measures to isolate the Jewish state.

According to Israel’s Maariv daily, Two weeks after Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu made efforts to normalize relations with Turkey, that country nonetheless vetoed the participation of Israel in the NATO ‘Mediterranean Dialogue’ Conference.

The veto and additional Turkish hostility towards Israel preventing implementation of the reconciliation is a source of great pessimism for Israel, according to Maariv.

An Israeli delegation was supposed to visit Ankara this week to discuss the issue of compensation, an issue Turkey has drawn as a deal-breaker for rapprochement.

“The Israeli delegation was due to leave on Thursday for talks but we received a message from the Turks they want to delay that to the 22nd and of course we complied,” a senior Israeli official involved in the issue told Canada’s the National Post. “We will be discussing all the issues raised in the phone conversation (between Prime Ministers Erdogan and Netanyahu), normalization of relations, and the exchange of ambassadors. We are talking about a process of improving relations with Turkey.”

By Barry Rubin, PJ MEDIA

Secretary of State John Kerry has every what-should-be-discredited cliché about the Middle East firmly ensconced in his head. Of course, he is not alone. I just briefed a European diplomat who came up with the exact formulation I’m going to deal with in a moment. What is disconcerting—though long familiar—is that Western policymakers hold so many ideas that are totally out of touch with reality.

They do not allow these assumptions to be questioned. On the contrary, it is astonishing to find how often individuals in elite positions have never heard counter-arguments to these beliefs. It is easy to prove that many of these ideas simply don’t make sense, but it is nearly impossible to get elite intellectuals, officials, and politicians to open their minds to these explanations.
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By Daniel Greenfield, FPM

While the public perception of Jewish Republicans is largely colored by a small  number of figures, many of them liberal Republicans, the Jewish grassroots is trending more conservative.

While the article is from the Forward, a far left paper slightly to the right of The Daily Worker, it does capture the fact that the same tensions exist among Jewish Republicans between RINO bigwigs and a more conservative base.

The civil war now engulfing the Republican Party is laying bare a split among Jewish GOP supporters, as well.

Some of the party’s biggest Jewish donors are taking the lead in pushing for a more moderate conservative party following the Republicans’ defeat in last year’s presidential election. At the same time, grassroots Jewish supporters, many of them Orthodox, are finding a new home among socially conservative Republicans who populate the Tea Party movement and the Conservative Political Action Conference. Read more…

By Victor Sharpe, CFP

I remember an article some few years ago in the Wall Street Journal titled, The Ugly Premise of Settlement Opponents, in which James Woolsey, former director of Central Intelligence under President Clinton, pointed out that the charter of the Fatah party – which is that of the Palestinian Authority’s putative president, Mahmoud Abbas – foresees a “Palestine free of Jews.” He referred to the Fatah demand that:

Israel must give up all of Jerusalem before it would begin negotiations on a two-state solution.

Mr. Woolsey also referred to President Obama’s embrace of the Palestinian Arab’s judenrein policy in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) as well as in the eastern half of Jerusalem. The judenrein policy employed by the German Nazis was designed to ethnically cleanse areas of Jews throughout Europe, which the Wehrmacht had invaded and occupied. The chilling words, “Juden raus,” Jews out! barked in German by Hitler’s brutish soldiers, attended all such terrifying aktions.
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‘US-Israel relations are a classic example of a two-way street’

ISRAEL HAYOM

Former senior diplomat and U.S.-Israel relations expert Yoram Ettinger explains how the U.S. benefits from its close relationship with Israel •

Watch this video interview.

Yoram Ettinger, former congressional affairs minister to Israel’s Embassy in Washington and former Israeli consul-general to the southwestern U.S.

By Ted Belman

Sec’y Kerry is here trying to induce both parties to restart negotiations. He is trying to get Israel to provide incentive to Abbas to return.

Israel, so far, has not offered any, nor should she.

If getting a state of their own through negotiations is not reason enough for them to return then there is no hope for a peace agreement.

If the Palestinians want a state they should negotiate and pay the price needed to get one.

But they are unwilling to pay anything to get one. They wanted it given on a platter.

YNET

‘Unless these soldiers are punished and Gaza blockade is lifted, we won’t accept compensation,’ says Turk who was injured in 2010 IDF raid on Gaza-bound flotilla

Israel’s apology to Turkey over the 2010 killing of nine Turks aboard a Gaza-bound aid ship did not go far enough and Israeli soldiers will be pursued in court, Turkish nationals who were injured in the incident said on Monday.

In a rapprochement brokered by US President Barack Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized to his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan on March 22 for the killings, pledged compensation to the bereaved or hurt and agreed to ease a six-year blockade on Gaza. Erdogan said these gestures met his conditions for normalizing relations with its erstwhile ally.
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By Ted Belman

INSS recently published a paper Jewish Enclaves in a Palestinian State. The authors thought it appropriate to investigate this option, because,

A massive evacuation of settlements located outside the large settlement blocs, home to about 100,000 residents, will be necessary if future Israeli governments seek (or are required to) implement the principle implied by two states for two peoples.

It is defeatist to acknowledge that we might be required to evacuate this number. Don’t we have a say in the matter; better still, a veto. But worse to suggest that “the principle implied by two states for two peoples” is that each state must be free of Jews or Arabs, respectively. Certainly, no one is suggesting that Israel be free of Arabs. In fact no such principle is implied but the PA is demanding it never the less.
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Israeli Chess Championships 2013

The Israeli Chess Championships 2013 for men and women are taking place on 6th-14th April at the Palm Beach Hotel in Acre, Israel.[..]

Out of the 32 registered players for the men’s event, no less than 16 are Grandmasters.

Omri Ceren writes

Israel is a global center of chess mastery. Beersheba is the city with
the most chess grandmasters per capita in the world (!!!)

Half of Israel’s mastery of chess is coming from the fact that it’s a
Jewish game. Roughly half of the world’s champions/strongest players
have been Jewish. The Polgar sisters – one of whom wrote the blog post I
sent along, another of whom is by far the most powerful female chess
player of all time, etc – are Jews.

The other half is coming from the fact that chess is a Russian game. My
hunch would be that most of Israel’s GM’s on Russian.