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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? (52962)
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 (25029)
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. (38400)
In praise of Israpundit and Ted Belman (8771)
The US and the UK cannot be trusted. (11834)
In the International Arena there is no Rule of Law, only the Rule of Power (8730)
Current Posts
March 5, 2013

An Orthodox Star Is Born  

NY POST

When Ofir Ben Sheetrit sang on Israel’s The Voice, her high school suspended her, but the country went wild

By Liel Leibovitz

Last month, when the new season of the Israeli reality show The Voice—the local version of NBC’s hit singing competition—debuted, no one expected extraordinary drama. Marching up to the studio’s stage, the eager contestants looked like the usual grab-bag of talent show aspirants: the frustrated actor, the high-school ingénue, the bartender who crooned to overcome her personal hardships, and so on.

Then it was Ofir Ben Sheetrit’s turn. Read more…

March 5, 2013 | 9:41 am | 9 Comments »

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Canada condemns Israel Apartheid Week  

[WHAT DOES OBAMA HAVE TO SAY ABOUT IT]

Statement — Minister Kenney issues statement regarding ‘Israel Apartheid Week’ 

“Everyone in this country has the right to freely and publicly express their views. That being said, I share the concerns of other Canadians about the reckless and overheated rhetoric associated with anti-Israel activities on many Canadian university campuses, and the toxic manner in which these activities are often carried out.

“There is no better example than the so-called ‘Israel Apartheid Week’ (IAW). Its organizers and participants have a regrettable history of promoting and holding events in ways that disregard the security and rights of Jewish faculty and students, censor other points of view, and limit academic discourse. Read more…

March 5, 2013 | 6:32 am | 12 Comments »

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Time for a palace revolt  

By Ted Belman

Today I wrote the following letter to a dozen Likud/Beiteinu MK’s:

    It is clear that PM Netanyahu intends to unilaterally abandon parts of J & S. and to uproot settlers living therein.
    It is one thing to do so as part of an end of conflict agreement, it is another thing to do so with or without an interim agreement.

    Even without Ehud Barak saying so at the AIPAC Conference, the evidence is overwhelming.

    Four years ago he excluded Eldad’s party from the government and this time around he wanted to exclude Bennett’s party because they were against such a deal.
    Read more…

March 5, 2013 | 5:57 am | 43 Comments »

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March 4, 2013

Coalition deal predicted by weekend  

What guidelines are being demanded or agreed to regarding the peace process, gratuitous concessions to the Palestinians and freezes. Nobody seems to be talking about this or about Iran for that matter. Ted Belman

TOI

With less than two weeks left to form a government, Netanyahu appears to have no choice but to team up with Jewish Home and Yesh Atid, and Likud sources said Monday they expected an agreement by week’s end.

Yesh Atid will ask for the ministries of Foreign Affairs, Education and Social Affairs. In addition, Lapid will seek to have his party chair the Knesset’s finance and constitution committees, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Monday. For his part, Bennett will seek the Industry, Housing and Religious Affairs ministries, and possibly one additional portfolio, the report said.
Read more…

March 4, 2013 | 2:48 pm | 7 Comments »

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Kerry talks economics, finds Morsi preoccupied with Islamizing Egypt  

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report March 4, 2013,

When visiting US Secretary of State John Kerry sat one-on-one with Egyptian President Morsi in Cairo, Sunday, March 3, he talked at length about Egypt’s calamitous economic straits, relations with Israel, democratization and essential reforms. He had hoped to find the Egyptian president amenable to getting to grips with his country’s fast approaching bankruptcy. In the event, Morsi nodded politely but, DEBKAfile’s Middle East sources report, he was far more preoccupied with pushing forward the three-point plan he and the Muslim Brotherhood’s supreme leader Mohammed Badie have begun implementing:

1. The Muslim Brotherhood will not settle for a parliamentary majority in the coming general election – most likely in April or June; it is aiming for 100 percent of the seats.
Read more…

March 4, 2013 | 1:53 pm | 13 Comments »

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Rabbi Kahane and his writings  

By Ted Belman

I recently met David Fein, an American, in the home of an activist friend of mine in Jerusalem. He is in the process of making aliya.

He wrote to inform me that he compiled and edited a seven volume set of books of the writings of Rabbi Meir Kahane z”l which he titled Beyond Words.. Here’s what Amazon has to say about Kahane and his writings:

Rabbi Meir Kahane (1932-1990) was the most controversial Jew of his generation. Born in New York, he was the son of a rabbi and was descended from a long line of rabbis. He studied at the Mirrer Yeshiva in Brooklyn and was ordained in 1956. He also earned a law degree from New York Law School and received a Master’s degree in International Relations from New York University. Rabbi Kahane founded the legendary Jewish Defense League in 1968 to combat the growing rise of anti-Semitism. He led a campaign of disobedience, sometimes violent, which ultimately led to the emigration of millions of oppressed Jews from the Soviet Union. He spent two decades touring American college campuses, exhorting Jewish students to be proud of their Jewishness, to learn about Judaism, and to immigrate to Israel. A passionate Zionist, he and his family immigrated to Israel in 1971. Entering the political arena, he ran for the Knesset unsuccessfully three consecutive times before his Kach Movement was finally elected in 1984. Its platform called for an emphasis on Judaism in the Israeli educational system and a Jewish outlook in its internal and foreign policy, including the removal of Israel’s hostile Arab population. Kach was banned from running in the 1988 election, at which time polls showed it to be the third most popular party in Israel. Rabbi Kahane was arrested over 130 times for Jewish causes. A prolific author, Meir Kahane wrote 22 books in English and Hebrew. His widely-read column appeared in the Jewish Press from 1961 to 1990.
Read more…

March 4, 2013 | 9:16 am | 21 Comments »

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A Native and a Zionist  

By Ryan Bellerose, THE METROPOLITAN on January 24, 2013

I am a Métis from Northern Alberta. My father, Mervin Bellerose, co-authored the Métis Settlements Act of 1989, which was passed by the Alberta legislature in 1990 and cemented our land rights. I founded Canadians For Accountability, a native rights advocacy group, and I am an organizer and participant in the Idle No More movement in Calgary. And I am a Zionist.

Let me tell you why.

I grew up on a Métis colony in what many would say are rough conditions: we had no electricity, running water or telephone. When it rained, the dirt roads that linked us to the highways flooded and we were stranded. I lived in a bunkhouse with my two stepbrothers, while my father and stepmother lived in a small cabin nearby. We raised a garden, hunted and fished, picked berries and made the odd trip to town to buy supplies. My father worked construction and lived in camps for long stretches and I would often stay at relatives’ to escape my stepmother’s abuse. Still, I considered my childhood normal.
Read more…

March 4, 2013 | 8:52 am | 3 Comments »

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Obama plans to extract timetable for Israeli pullout from West Bank  

Special to WorldTribune.com

JERUSALEM — U.S. President Barack Obama has demanded a timetable for an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank.

Israeli sources said Obama, scheduled to arrive in Israel on March 20, wants a detailed Israeli withdrawal plan from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the president’s visit. The sources said the Israeli plan would be considered in what could be an imminent U.S. initiative to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank in 2014.

“Obama has made it clear to Netanyahu that his visit is not about photo-ops, but the business of Iran and a Palestinian state,” a source said. “The implication is that if Israel won’t give him something he can work with, then he’ll act on his own.”
Read more…

March 4, 2013 | 5:55 am | 60 Comments »

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March 3, 2013

Israel Apartheid Week: A Tale of Two Brothers  

The SC of Canada just held that:

    – a prohibition on language that is “likely to expose” those groups to hatred is legal. For the most part, the Court upheld the province’s hate-speech legislation, maintaining that it “appropriately balances the fundamental values underlying freedom of expression with competing Charter rights and other values essential to a free and democratic society, in this case a commitment to equality and respect for group identity and the inherent dignity owed to all human beings.”

Does this mean that Jews will be accorded “equality and respect for group identity and the inherent dignity owed to all human beings”. If so Israel Apartheid Week should be shut down and held to be illegal. Don’t hold your breath. Ted Belman

By David Solway, FPM

Driving past the University of Toronto recently, I noticed a lone protestor on the perimeter of the campus carrying a sign objecting to Israel Apartheid Week. I was reminded that the University of Toronto was the first academic institution to host and promote the scandal of this event. Beginning in 2004 under the interim presidency of Frank Iacobucci, who does not seem to have realized the ignominy he had countenanced, the contagion spread to many other academic cesspools across Canada, the U.S. and Europe. The University of Toronto, however, is the revered patriarch of the movement. Iacobucci was succeeded in November 2005 by the current president, David Naylor, under whose administration this academic canard has persisted into the present moment—the festival of anti-Semitic hatred and anti-Zionist calumny will unfurl the Palestinian flag and welcome a contingent of bigoted speakers on March 4.
Read more…

March 3, 2013 | 7:50 pm | 23 Comments »

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Canadian Supreme Court Kills Last Hope for Free Speech  

By Bruce Bawer, FPM

That sound you hear is Voltaire rolling over in his grave.

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Once upon a time, it was commonly understood that this sentiment is the very foundation of a free society. Compromise free speech, water it down, and you destroy freedom itself.

In Toronto there lives a man named Bill Whatcott. During the last two decades or so, he has spent much of his time traveling around Canada, waving protest signs at gay-pride parades and Planned Parenthood clinics, agitating for the criminalization of homosexual acts and abortion, and distributing fliers packed with incendiary language about gays and graphic images of aborted fetuses. In 2010 the Saskatchewan Human Rights Tribunal fined him $17,500 for distributing “hateful” materials; an appeals court overturned the ruling, whereupon the province’s Human Rights Commission appealed the case to the Canadian Supreme Court. Now the Court has ruled, and it’s an icy day for freedom in the Great White North.
Read more…

March 3, 2013 | 7:41 pm | 5 Comments »

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Very Good News Israel  

 By Michael Ordman
In the 3rd March 2013 edition of Israel’s good news, the highlights include:
·        Turkey’s ex-Finance Minister received stem cell treatment in Tel Aviv.
·        An Israeli organization is working under cover to bring aid to Syrian refugees.
·        The new Miss Israel is an Ethiopian immigrant.
·        Israel’s Waze won the MWC Barcelona prize for the best mobile application in the world.
·        Israel has launched the project to send another Israeli astronaut into outer space.
·        A new section of the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway will include an eco-bridge for wildlife to cross.
·        Iranian-born Israeli superstar Rita will perform Iranian songs at the United Nations. Read more…
March 3, 2013 | 7:24 pm | 14 Comments »

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Netanyahu has a problem  

By Ted Belman

Of coarse PM Netanyahu has problems. He heads a right wing party while he himself has moved to the centre-left.

Four years ago, he did his best to control his party and its policies. He strong armed Feiglin out of the list and made sure to include centrists like himself, namely Meridor and Begin, in positions of influence. But that wasn’t enough support for himself. He invited Labour into the government and appointed Ehud Barak as Defence Minister. Thus Barak got to decide what gets built and what gets demolished east of the green line..

He also appointed Yehuda Weinstein as Attorney General, despite the fact, or maybe because of it, that Weinstein was centre-left. Thus Weinstein could thwart the rightist legislation emanating from Likud. In the cases where he couldn’t do it, Netanyahu himself, prevented the legislation from going ahead.
Read more…

March 3, 2013 | 7:05 pm | 22 Comments »

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University of Toronto graduate students endorse BDS, call on administration to divest  

This follows on the heels of a similar motion which was soundly defeated at Oxford.This is all the more strange considering how pro-Israel the Canadian Government is and anti-Israel the British government is. Ted Belman

The Jewish Tribune explains:

    A pro-Israel student has confirmed a report by Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) that the University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union (UTGSU) has passed a motion to endorse boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel.
    Read more…
March 3, 2013 | 2:16 pm | 13 Comments »

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March 2, 2013

The Sequester and the Arab Spring  

Like the sequester molesters, “Arab Spring” devotees have their own fantasy vocabulary.

By Andrew C McCarthy, NRO

    The Arab Spring, instead, is the tyranny of Islamic supremacism cruelly masqueraded as the forward march of “freedom.”

‘Sequester” may be your word for the week, but it’s not mine. I’ve been diverted from the Beltway theater by an enterprise equally fraudulent, the “Arab Spring.” No, the plot line does not feature an Armageddon of budget slashing after which, somehow, Leviathan manages to land on his drunken feet and binge up an even higher tab this year than last. The Arab Spring, instead, is the tyranny of Islamic supremacism cruelly masqueraded as the forward march of “freedom.”

On Tuesday, the dead-tree version of Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy, my book on the subject, finally hit the bookstores after previously being available only as an e-book. Despite the digital age, people still love their paperbacks, so I’ve had the good fortune to spend this week talking about it.
Read more…

March 2, 2013 | 11:19 pm | 5 Comments »

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Bibi is the enemy of the settlement enterprise  

But for negotiations we would never know what is driving Bibi. The problem is not that Likud members did not support Likud in the elections but that Bibi is not responsive to the will of his MK’s or the people who support them. Had Bibi remained loyal to this constituency, they would have voted for him. I don’t see how Bibi can do this with Bennett in the government. Ted Belman

By JPOST.COM STAFF

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s emissaries at Friday’s coalition talks between Likud-Beytenu and Bayit Yehudi told the party that a moratorium would be placed on settlement construction immediately upon the formation of the new government, Channel 2 reported.

The move was posed as “payback” for the practice among residents of West Bank settlements of joining Likud en masse in order to back hawks in party primaries with no intention of voting for the party in general elections. Likud officials have complained of the practice for years.

Only a third of the settlers who joined the Likud for primaries actually voted for the party in January’s general election, according to Channel 2.
Read more…

March 2, 2013 | 11:01 am | 32 Comments »

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Settlement Construction Freeze Until Obama Goes Home  

I totally reject the idea that Israel walk on eggs while Obama is here. It should be the other way around. We have major policy differences with Obama. These differences should not be hidden while he is here. When we hide them we are showing weakness and lack of resolve. Screw him. Instead, Bibi should be making speeches in his presence confirming that Jerusalem will remain united under Israel sovereignty. We should also be pursuing our sovereign right to build in Jerusalem in his face while he is here. Only that way will he get the message that we mean it. Especially when he is here to do us harm. Ted Belman

By: Yori Yanover, jewish press

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the suspension of all new construction procedures in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria until after U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to Israel, on the eve of Passover, Makor Rishon reports.

According to a directive that was passed from the PM’s office to the appropriate echelons at the defense and housing ministries, in the next few weeks no new construction bids are to be issued in those three areas. Also, plans whose planning phase has been completed will not move on to the deposit phase while all additional bureaucratic steps concerning their public offering are to be delayed as well.
Read more…

March 2, 2013 | 10:23 am | 9 Comments »

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Likud to Lapid: Your Bennett Pact Will Spoil Settlement Uprooting  

THERE IS NO MORE ROOM FOR DOUBT. BIBI REALLY WANTS A TWO STATE SOLUTION. WHERE’S LIKUD ON THIS.

A similar statement was attributed to Bibi himself during his chat with Yair Lapid.
By: Yori Yanover, JEWISH PRESS

At last, the Likud-Beitenu coalition negotiations team has pulled the biggest rabbit out of its hat, exposing in the process that on the two-state solution there’s no daylight between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and super-leftist Meretz Chairwoman Zehava Gal-On.

As Yesh Atid negotiators have told the daily Makor Rishon, the Likud-Beitenu team threatened them on Thursday that their political pact with Habayit Hayehudi will end up thwarting the possibility of dismantling Judea and Samaria settlement as part of a future agreement on a Palestinian state.
Read more…

March 2, 2013 | 10:08 am | 1 Comment »

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GOP is/was Erratic in its Confirmation Strategy  

By Diana West, Townhall

One last question about newly confirmed Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel.

Why?

Why for nearly two months (a Washington eternity) did this nominee above all others galvanize GOP Senate opposition?

I ask the question in genuine wonderment. After all, there was John Kerry with that giant bull’s-eye on his record for giving outrageous aid and comfort to America’s enemies by, among other things, entering into negotiations with the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong in 1971. How does a U.S. citizen tapped to lead the State Department not have to answer to U.S. senators for such treasonous behavior while a young but already noted public figure?
Read more…

March 2, 2013 | 10:01 am | 3 Comments »

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Frank Sinatra and the Jews  

By coincidence, a week ago I watched Cast a Giant Shawdow for the umpteenth time and particularly noted all the great stars that acted in the movie including Kirk Douglas, John Wayne, Angie Dickenson and Frank Sinatra. Then this email came along. Ted Belman

Frank Sinatra and the Jews

Francis Albert Sinatra (1915-1998) may have been one of America’s most famous Italian Catholics, but he kept the Jewish people and the State of Israel close to his heart, manifesting lifelong commitments to fighting anti-Semitism and to activism on behalf of Israel.

Sinatra stepped forward in the early 1940’s, when big names were needed to rouse America into saving Europe’s remaining Jews, and he sang at an “Action for Palestine” rally (1947).

He sat on the board of trustees of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and he donated over $1 million to Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, which honored him by dedicating the Frank Sinatra International Student Center. (The Center made heartbreaking headlines when terrorists bombed it in 2002, killing nine people.)
Read more…

March 2, 2013 | 9:11 am | 5 Comments »

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NEWT GINGRICH: WHAT IS TO BE DONE?  

By John Hinderaker, POWERLINE

Newt Gingrich met yesterday with some Republican Congressional staffers and gave them the memo below, which I obtained from a Congressional aide. It lays out Newt’s assessment of where the Democratic and Republican parties stand today. Much of it will seem familiar to readers of this site, but Newt sets forth the facts–many of them grim–with his customary panache. This is obviously a big topic, and I have just a few comments on Newt’s memo which I will save until the end. Here it is:

THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT MEMO. READ IT.
Read more…

March 2, 2013 | 8:32 am | 15 Comments »

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