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Seminal Posts by Ted Belman
The UN acts in violation of International Law while claiming to uphold it (13327)
Can the UN impose a solution on Israel? (31093)
Long standing US Policy on Jerusalem is anti-Israel and pro-Arab. (16838)
The "peace process" is not dead (4237)
The Church planted the seeds of the Holocaust (50931)
The conspiracy to shrink Israel (44016)
"The UN Charter is a war document, not a peace document." (28607)
Trump calls Muslim migration “the all-time biggest Trojan Horse”. (60211)
Since when did the Palestinians become entitled to a state? (52961)
The 100 year betrayal of Israel by the West (43021)
Tiny Qatar casts a giant shadow. (9258)
The Historical Jesus  (50281)
International law and the State of Israel (27613)
The truth about UNRWA (25737)
Saudi Arabia and the Peace Process (19307)
Israel Should Declare Three Nos (25028)
The West should make amends to the Jewish people for this historical injustice. (22553)
Two-State Solution or Jordan Option? Your choice. (17500)
Israel is the legal owner of all lands west of the Jordan R. (38398)
In praise of Israpundit and Ted Belman (8771)
The US and the UK cannot be trusted. (11833)
In the International Arena there is no Rule of Law, only the Rule of Power (8730)
Current Posts
March 25, 2013

This Passover, Free Us From A Failed Jewish Leadership  

By Stella Paul, AMERICAN THINKER

This week is Passover, the season of deliverance, and I’m praying for deliverance from America’s failed Jewish leadership. As Jews confront the most dangerous era since World War II, whom are we stuck with for leaders? A clueless bunch of mini-Pharaohs, strutting around proclaiming their moral superiority, blissfully unaware the Jewish people’s mortal enemies are pulling down their pants and laughing at them.

Cataloguing their collective acts of evasion, cowardice, appeasement, and surrender is not for the faint of heart, but, luckily, I’m fortified by matzo balls and ready to rock. At the Passover Seder, Jews recite Dayenu, a prayer listing the many blessings bestowed by the Almighty, each of which would have sufficed (Dayenu) in its own right. Here, alas, is a woeful Dayenu of the failures of the American Jewish establishment. Can anyone tell me why these preening big shots haven’t been forced to resign in shame? Why, in God’s name, are our purported “leaders” still collecting cushy paychecks when their credibility is bankrupt?
Read more…

March 25, 2013 | 8:22 am | 26 Comments »

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March 24, 2013

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Obama undid his Cairo speech  

What lies behind Obama’s Jerusalem sycophancy?

Abdel Bari Atwan, Editor in Chief of Alquds Alarabi Newspaper

Never in my life have I seen a US President beg for the approval of the
Israelis while demeaning himself in the process quite like Barack Obama
has done during his current trip. This is all the more remarkable given
his immense historical significance as the first non-white candidate to
win the American presidency.

People expected this president to be different from his predecessors,
precisely because he belonged to a group of people who have suffered
persecution over the centuries. Obama used to speak about the
humiliating racial segregation his grandparents and other relatives
faced in Chicago when they were banned from sitting with white people on
buses.
Read more…

March 24, 2013 | 10:02 pm | 21 Comments »

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Why is Israel in U.S. cross hairs?  

Exclusive: Joseph Farah prays for continued impasse in ‘2-state solution’ negotiations

by Joseph Farah, WND

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Here’s what John Kerry said last week in anticipation of his first trip to the Middle East as secretary of state: “There is no more urgent foreign policy priority in 2013 than restarting negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. The region and the world can’t afford the current dangerous impasse in the peace process; for if we don’t make progress very soon, then the two-state solution could become impossible to achieve.”

I hope I am not alone in praying for and advocating for the impasse to continue and for the complete failure of any peace process that ends in dividing the land of Israel – again.

What do I mean by “again”?
Read more…

March 24, 2013 | 7:14 pm | 6 Comments »

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Did Israel `Apologize’ to Turkey? Well, No, Not Exactly  

By Barry Rubin

Israel apologizes to Turkey, reads every headline. That simply isn’t true in the sense it is taken to imply. To understand what happened one must examine the long negotiations on this issue.

[..]
It is important to understand that the flotilla issue was not the cause of Israel-Turkish problems, which had begun long before. The real basis was the election of an Islamist government in Turkey. Discussions inside the Israeli government for years had known Prime Minister Mehdi Erdogan’s hatred for Israel but did not want to be seen as responsible for any breakdown of relations.
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March 24, 2013 | 5:35 am | 26 Comments »

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March 23, 2013

Turkey badly needed to end row with Israel.  

Netanyahu’s apology gave Obama a diplomatic breakthrough

Erdogan desparately needed this raprochement. So did Obama. So why did Netanyahu have to eat crow. Erdogan should have been forced by necessity to eat crow to teach him a lesson. Bibi didn’t just pick up the phone at the last minute. Rest assured this apology was scripted and agreed upon before Obama arrived in Israel.

If that wasn’t bad enough, Netanyahu is making concessions to get the Palestinians to start negotiations. TOI writes:

    The focus: New ideas for enabling a resumption of direct negotiations. Netanyahu has reportedly been considering a package of goodwill gestures – including approval of building requests, and a release of prisoners — designed to encourage Abbas to come back to the peace table.

Ted Belman

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report March 23, 2013, 1:51 PM

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu granted the Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan a face-saver for ending their three-year rift out of willingness to crown US President Barack Obama’s three-day visit with an impressive diplomatic breakthrough. He swallowed Israel and its army’s pride and, at the airport, with Obama looking on, picked up the phone to Erdogan and apologized for the killing by Israeli soldiers of nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists in 2010 aboard the Mavi Marmara, which was leading a flotilla bound on busting the Israeli blockade of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
The crowing comment by Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu – “Turkey’s basic demands have been met; we got what we wanted” – was out of place, spiteful and ill-mannered.
Read more…

March 23, 2013 | 10:23 pm | 33 Comments »

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Israel to change route of separation fence near Jerusalem to cut off Palestinians from E-1 area  

[This article was published by Haaretz on Jan 21,2013]

Defense Minister Ehud Barak has decided to close the breach in the barrier between Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumim, which will leave residents of Al-Zaim cut off by a fence to the east and by a wall to the west.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak has decided to close the breach in the separation fence between Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumim, thereby positioning the fence between the Palestinian village of Al-Zaim and the contested E-1 area. This would mean that Ma’aleh Adumim would be located outside the security fence and that Palestinians would be prevented from reaching E-1.

The plan is to be presented to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his approval next week. ( Read more…

March 23, 2013 | 10:26 am | 2 Comments »

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March 22, 2013

The New York Times vs. The Jews  

By Martin Sherman, JPOST

    There is an unavoidable conflict between being a Jewish state and a democratic state.
    – Joseph Levine, “On Questioning the Jewish State,” The New York Times, March 9

    There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.
    — George Orwell

Last week I cautioned that a crucial intellectual battle has been launched to strip the Jews of their political independence and national sovereignty. As promised, in this week’s column I will elaborate on the inanity and iniquity of this Judeophobic initiative.

Pernicious, perverse, paradoxical

The Times – together with several other major mainstream media entities – has chosen to throw its weight decisively behind this patently pernicious, perverse and paradoxical endeavor.
Read more…

March 22, 2013 | 11:57 pm | 27 Comments »

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A travesty and a tragedy  

Ted Belman. It is unclear from this report if Netanyahu expressed regret or apologized. It is Erdogan who should have apologized for allowing the ship, Mavi Marmara, to participate in the first instance. He had to know that the passengers were girding for battle.

Israel also “agreed to complete the agreement on compensation.”

This humiliation comes on the heels of Erdogan’s recent remark that “Zionism was a crime against humanity”.

TOI

In the call, Netanyahu apologized to the Turkish people “for any errors that could have led to loss of life” in the May 2010 Mavi Marmara incident, “and agreed to complete the agreement on compensation,” his office later said in a statement. Erdogan reportedly said he accepted the Israeli apology.

In the first conversation between the leaders since 2009, Netanyahu made it clear that the tragic consequences of the Mavi Marmara flotilla interception — in which nine Turkish citizens were killed by Israeli naval commandos who had come under attack as they sought to commandeer the Gaza-bound vessel — were unintentional.
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March 22, 2013 | 6:43 pm | 23 Comments »

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Can Housing Minister Uri Ariel make a difference  

Uri Ariel, the new housing minister from Habayit Hayehudi, is the high priest of construction in Judea and Samaria • Ariel will try to implement a series of unwritten understandings with Likud and Yesh Atid alike regarding significant construction in the existing settlement blocs and to accommodate natural growth in the communities deep inside the territory.

Nadav Shragai,ISRAEL HAYOM

New Housing Minister Uri Ariel from Habayit Hayehudi has been a constant fixture of the settler movement in Judea and Samaria. | Photo credit: Dudi Vaknin

Uri Ariel, the new housing minister from Habayit Hayehudi, has been a constant fixture of the settlement movement in Judea and Samaria. He has two sayings that have stayed with him for many years. One is taken from the animal world: “We have stopped being part of the insect world and have joined the world of the predators.”
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March 22, 2013 | 6:12 pm | 18 Comments »

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Don’t settle for security only  

This is a Report, RESTORING A SECURITY-FIRST PEACE POLICY, published by Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

It was authored in Nov 2011, by Lt.-Gen. (ret.) Moshe Yaalon, Israel’s current Min of Defence.

I take great issue with this idea.

Whenever Netanyahu assures us that he won’t jeopardize Israel’s security I am bitterly disappointed. Its not that I don’t want to be secure, I do, but for me, that is a given.

What I want to hear from our leaders is that Judea and Samaria belong to the Jews for many reasons, including, Israel has the best if not the only legal title to it, it is ours historically, Hashem gave it to us, we won it in a defensive war and international law recognizes it as ours. Yet all we hear from Netanyahu and previous Prime Ministers is that they won’t jeopardize our security.

What I want to hear from them is our rightful claim to the land. Occasionaly they call the lands “disputed”. Not good enough. They should repeat as a mantra that the lands belong to us.

So long as they are silent on our rights, they give legitimacy to the occupation myth.

I am glad to read that Min Bennett took issue with Obama’s reference to the lands being occupied by saying that “there is no occupation within one’s own land.”

March 22, 2013 | 4:54 pm | 4 Comments »

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Yaalon, no threat to Netanyahu’s policies  

By: Mazal Mualem for Al-Monitor Israel Pulse. Posted on March 13.

Four years after his dream was shattered, Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon is expected to step into the shoes of one of the most dominant and influential defense ministers who ever served Israel — Ehud Barak.

For the former chief of staff, who was forced to make do for the last four years with the “Strategic Affairs” portfolio that had originally been created for his predecessor, Avigdor Liberman — this not only represents the closing of a circle. This is also a personal victory over Barak, his bitter rival. At a number of points in closed meetings, Ya’alon warned others about what he viewed as Barak’s lack of discretion; he saw Barak as a dangerous party, a troublemaker without inhibitions who is not committed to Israel’s national interests and who, during his tenure as chief of staff, brought evil winds into the IDF’s General Staff.
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March 22, 2013 | 4:27 pm | 2 Comments »

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The amazing Israeli innovations Obama saw in Israel  

By Tom Gross. March 17, 2013

Claire Lomas approaches the London Marathon finishing line in her Israeli-developed ReWalk bionic suit 

CONTENTS

1. Israeli technological achievements to be shown to President Obama
2. Tchaikovsky Flashwaltz at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital
3. In the field of energy alternatives – Phinergy: revolutionizing how we drive
4. In the field of the struggle against traffic accidents – Mobileye
5. In the field of medicine – Rewalk
6. In the field of search and rescue – robot snake
7. In the field of medicine – BNA technology by ElMindA
8. In the field of medicine – MiniDesktop
9. Israel develops the next generation operating room Read more…

March 22, 2013 | 10:38 am | 2 Comments »

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The revisiting of the endless peace war  

By Daniel Greenfield.., Sultan Knish..FrontPageMag

“War is peace,” entered our cultural vocabulary some sixty-four years ago. Around the same time that Orwell’s masterpiece was being printed up, an armistice was being negotiated between Israel and the Arab invading armies. That armistice began the long peaceful war or the warring peace.

The entire charade did not properly enter the realm of the Orwellian until the peace process began. The peace process between Israel and the terrorist militias funded by the countries of those invading armies has gone on for longer than most actual wars. It has also taken more lives than most actual wars.

War has an endpoint. Peace does not. A peace in which you are constantly at war can go on forever because while the enthusiasts of war eventually exhaust their patriotism, the enthusiasts of peace never give up on their peacemaking.
Read more…

March 22, 2013 | 10:20 am | 25 Comments »

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Op-ed: Formal peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians would only lead to more hatred  

American insistence inexplicable

Elyakim Haetzni, YNET

These words are addressed to the president of the United States on the eve of his visit and are written by a “settler” who, according to the president’s policy, should be banished from his home. They are written in the classic Jewish form of dialogue known as ichfa mistabra – where one takes the opposite point of view to prove a point.

Dear Mr. President,

They say the Americans are committed to resolving our crisis with the Palestinians. But could it be, ifcha mistabra, that the Americans are the problem and not the solution, because the Arabs’ expectation for American pressure on us only makes their positions more radical? A two-year-old girl is fighting for her life, and her mother and two sisters are injured. They were attacked with stones during riots that erupted in the West Bank ahead of your visit. You too are aware that your demand for a construction freeze in the settlements as a precondition for the resumption of negotiations was what prevented the talks from resuming in the first place. The ruler of Ramallah has to be as fervent as the American pope is.
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March 22, 2013 | 9:23 am | 3 Comments »

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March 21, 2013

The Obama visit and American Jewry  

By Isi Leibler

Israelis will enthusiastically greet U.S. President Barack Obama in the course of his first visit to the Jewish state since being elected president. But they will also be apprehensively listening to his statements and hoping that his meetings will solidify the U.S.-Israeli relationship.

He is arriving at a time when the political influence of American Jewry, the most affluent and powerful Diaspora community in our history, is in decline. This is starkly exemplified by its failure to influence successive administrations to commute the sentence of Jonathan Pollard, whose unprecedented inhumane treatment is now even raising ugly allegations of discriminatory prejudice.

This erosion of Jewish political influence stems from the combined impact of burgeoning global hostility against Israel, the increasing isolationism of the Obama administration, and the emergence from the closet of highly vocal Jewish minority groups campaigning to pressure the Israeli government.
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March 21, 2013 | 6:59 pm | 6 Comments »

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Obama: Settlement freeze not crucial for resumption of talks  

Israel Hayom Staff

Speaking in Ramallah on Thursday after meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, U.S. President Barack Obama called for an “independent, viable and contiguous Palestinian state” to be established alongside Israel.

SO IT IS OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO MAKE THEM VIABLE AND TO CONNECT THEM TO GAZA

“The only way to achieve this goal is through direct talks,” Obama said. “There is no shortcut to a sustainable solution.”

THIS IS GOOD. OBAMA IS STANDING BY NEGOTIATIONS
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March 21, 2013 | 4:05 pm | 32 Comments »

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Abdullah Ocalan declares ceasefire – calls for fighters to leave Turkey  

By MUCAHIT CEYLAN and SUZAN FRASER, TOI

Turkey (AP) — Jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan called Thursday for an immediate cease-fire and for thousands of his fighters to withdraw from Turkish territory, a major step toward ending one of the world’s bloodiest insurgencies.

In a message read by pro-Kurdish legislators in the Kurdish and Turkish languages, Ocalan said: “we have reached the point where the guns must be silenced and where ideas must speak. A new era has started, where it is politics, not guns, which is at the forefront.”

“We have reached the stage where our armed elements need to retreat beyond the border,” Ocalan’s message continued.

Turkey has embarked on talks with Ocalan to end the nearly 30-year conflict that has cost tens of thousands of lives. His group has been fighting for self-rule for Kurds in southeastern Turkey.
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March 21, 2013 | 3:28 pm | 1 Comment »

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