by Amir Taheri, GATESTONE • July 30, 2023
At the height of Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s seven-week war with Hamas in the summer of 2014, then President Barack Obama imposed an embargo on a shipment of Hellfire missiles to Israel after the Pentagon approved the transfer.
A senior Obama administration told the The Wall Street Journal at the time that Israel could no longer expect automatic resupply of critical munitions in wartime. The decision to embargo the Hellfire missiles, the official averred, amounted to “the United States saying ‘the buck stops here. Wait a second … It’s not OK anymore.’”
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T. Belman. I do not believe that this government will agree to postpone annexation until 2028 as the article suggests.
By Ariel Kahana, ISRAEL HAYOM 31.7.23
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Sunday that “we will one day be able to have railways connect Saudi Arabia and Israel,” just hours after a New York Times piece suggested that the kingdom was expecting the Jewish state to make significant concessions to the Palestinians as a precondition for normalization.
By Alexander G. Markovsky, AM THINKER
Right before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley told lawmakers that Kiev could fall within 72 hours if a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine takes place. But why, if the US expected Ukraine to collapse, didn’t NATO stop the impending conflict by admitting that NATO had no intention of having Ukraine join the alliance? Then, Moscow’s security concerns emanating from NATO’s eastward expansion would be addressed, and Putin would have had no reason to attack Ukraine.
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by Bassam Tawil, GATESTONE • July 31, 2023
Last week 24 House Republicans introduced the No Taxpayer Funding for Climate Zealots Advancing Radical Schemes Act which if passed will defund our “climate czar” John Kerry’s office. This federal feed-bag is beyond political accountability to the voters or Congress, but at least the taxpayers will not be footing the bill for his emissions-spewing, global gallivanting to promote suicidal climate policies.
A Congressional rebuke would be a fitting end to Kerry’s public career––one marked by thoughtless adherence to leftish Democrat shibboleths, new-world-order received wisdom, and bad policies dangerous to our national security and interests.
It is easy to birth conspiracy theories.
All that is required is chronic government stonewalling of reasonable requests for transparency. Then add in high officials serially lying under oath, along with the blatantly unequal application of the law. Institutionalize arguments from authority of politicians and bureaucrats who refuse to adjudicate arguments empirically.
By Matthew Boose, AM GREATNESS 28.7.23
The basic contours of the Biden family’s corruption scandal have been known for years, but the details have been suppressed. What the public knows, it knows despite the efforts of the media, the Democrats, and the “intelligence community” to bend, twist, and bury the truth. For instance, it is no secret that Biden pressured Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who was investigating his son’s business partners. In fact, Biden bragged about it. But in the conventional narrative, Biden was doing this not out of personal interest, but as part of an institutional effort to root out corruption. This is the kind of obtuse, self-serving nonsense that passes for “journalism” today.
The Biden administration has again condemned Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s visit to the Temple Mount, while Saudi Arabia called the visit a “provocation to all Muslims around the world.”
Back in January, Senator Ted Cruz ripped Biden’s condemnation of an earlier Ben-Gvir visit to the Temple Mount, stating an undeniable and simple truth:
T. Belman. This law, approved by an 11 person panel of the SC, “does not negate Israel’s character as a democratic state.” It was also held to be declarative only, i.e., it didn’t create rights or law. But there is not agreement on this.
Wikipedia. “Jewish and democratic state” is the Israeli legal definition of the nature and character of the State of Israel. . But what does it mean in practice. Which of the two, trumps the other?
Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People, informally known as the Nation-State Bill or the Nationality Bill,[1] is an Israeli Basic Law which specifies the nature of the State of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. The law was passed by the Knesset—with 62 in favour, 55 against, and two abstentions—on 19 July 2018 (7 Av 5778),[2][3] and is largely symbolic and declarative in nature.[4][5][6][7][8][9] However, it was met with sharp criticism internationally, including from several prominent Jewish American organizations,[10][11][12][13][14][15] and has been branded as racist and undemocratic by some critics.[16][17]
T. Belman. NYT reports that Biden Administration checking whether Israel’s opposition parties would work with govt. to achieve normalization deal.
The reason for this is that Biden is demanding that Israel support of the Two-State Solution if it wants normalization to occur. The current Israel government is unwilling to do it and thus the need for a Unity Government.
He is also demanding that the Saudis financially support the PA which they are currently not doing.
In my opinion, he will not succeed in his machinations.
29 July 2023,
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US President Joe Biden hinted on Friday at possible progress in a potential normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, a day after senior White House officials travelled to Jeddah for talks on an agreement that would reportedly include a massive boost in security ties between Riyadh and Washington, and significant Israeli concessions to the Palestinians aimed at keeping prospects for a two-state solution alive.>
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By Melanie Phillips 28.7.23
(JNS) The night before Monday’s Knesset vote on the first of the government’s proposed judicial reforms, a video filmed on the escalators in Jerusalem’s central train station went viral on social media.
It showed a great tide of people holding Israeli flags going down one escalator on their way back from protesting against the reforms in Jerusalem, and a great tide of people holding Israeli flags going up the other escalator on their way back from demonstrating in support of the reforms in Tel Aviv.
By DAVID M. WEINBERG, JPOST 28.7.23
On the day after Tisha Be’Av, it would be nice to write about national unity, shared destiny, moderation, and restraint. But I cannot ignore the kasach – the unbridled confrontation, the inflammatory demagoguery, the violent warmongering – that has become standard and acceptable behavior for some of Israel’s once and supposed leaders.
There are very specific people responsible for this degradation, with Ehud Barak taking first place in the ugly contest for the most hateful, most extreme, most seditious rabble-rouser of all.
By Sara Miller, NoCamels, July 27, 2023
Erel Margalit leads a march across Brooklyn Bridge against the Israeli government’s planned court reform (Nir Arieli)
On Tuesday, July 25, 2023, a day after the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) passed legislation reducing the influence of the judiciary over the decisions of the political echelon, the major newspapers in Israel all sported the same cover: a page of solid black broken only by a small slogan in white at the bottom that read “A black day for Israeli democracy.”
Unidentified flying objects (UFOs) were once the preserve of conspiracy theorists: tinfoil hat-wearers who have, in recent decades, found their natural home in the dark corners of the internet. Despite our natural curiosity, scepticism has been our default response on this issue.
The doubts have persisted despite such esteemed figures as Lord Hill-Norton, once a Chief of the General Staff, and Vice-Admiral Roscoe H Hillenkoetter, the first director of the CIA, supporting theories of their existence.
T. Belman. With the removal of the extreme reasonableness standard, the government can do what it wants. If there is a law standing in its way, they can amend the law. The HC then would have no basis to overrule it. This is not a good thing. So the choice is, do you want an unfettered government or do you want oversight by the Supreme Court, even a left wing one? The latter option is more palatable if you stack the selection committee to ensure that a majority of judges are conservative. But this can change with a change in government.
At least the government can be held accountable by the people whereas the Court cannot.
Israel’s Recent “Unreasonableness Amendment” and its Implications. Law Profs Forum
By: Prof. Amichai Cohen, ISRAEL DEMOCRACY INSTITUTE 22.6.23
The coalition is currently seeking to advance a legislative amendment that will prevent the Supreme Court from annulling (or striking down) decisions of the government, individual ministers, and other elected officials (such as mayors) it finds to be “extremely unreasonable.”
What is the standard of extreme unreasonableness?
In Israel, there is no law defining judicial review powers over decisions made by the executive branch. Thus, the grounds for judicial intervention in administrative affairs are “common law” standards declared in decisions of the courts. These grounds entail the examination of three aspects of decision-making by the executive branch:
By Ben Shapiro, DW | Jul 27, 2023
This week, according to sources ranging from the Biden White House to Moody’s to The New York Times’s Thomas Friedman, Israel entered into a period of severe existential danger. What prompted this crisis? Not a potential Iranian nuclear attack, not the presence of violent terrorist groups embedded in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. According to our foreign policy elite, the breaking point is the Israeli government’s passage of a mild version of judicial reform. That reform curbs the overweening power of the Israeli Supreme Court, which declared in the 1990s that it had the unilateral ability to strike down executive actions by simply declaring them “unreasonable.” Now, the Israeli Supreme Court will still be able to strike down executive actions — but they’ll have to ground their rationale in actual law rather than simple political disagreement.
