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Israel’s clueless chief of police  

T. Belman. My daughter invited one of her girlfriends over for Shabbat together with her family. They are all religious. The conversation moved to judicial reform and she subjected me to a rant. Her views echoed those of Barak’s. The right is despicable and the left is principled. The right is destroying democracy and the left is protecting democracy. She even said we should look for a consensus. I didn’t have a chance to say “Been there. Done that”.

After Israel’s main highway was blocked for hours by protestors, the now-ousted police chief had no answers for law-abiding citizens.

Fires on Ayalon FreewayKaplan pr

Tel Aviv police chief Amichai Eshed is clueless – he said his alternative to the passive police behavior during the four hour blocking of Israel’s main highway, including fires set in the middle of the intercity road, by the Kaplan dictators was breaking bones rather than ARRESTING them.

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July 9, 2023 | 12:31 pm | 3 Comments »

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Smotrich to boycott cabinet meeting with A-G  

T. Belman. The AG’s position is untenable. She claims,

“The law enforcement system is obliged to exercise its powers in a professional and independent manner. This independence is a central guarantee of the preservation of human rights,”

It is up to the Cabinet, not the IDF,  to decide to go to war. Similarly, it should be up to the Cabinet to decide whether law enforcement should be more aggressive or not. After all, the government was elected not the police. Whether to go to war or to fight terror or illegal protests are policy decisions. It should not be the police to decide how tough to be or whether to allow Jews to pray on the Temple Mount.

The AG has refused to answer questions “on the grounds that several ministers have a personal interest in how law enforcement responds to the ongoing protests.” We all have such a “personal interest”. The left wants both the High Court and the police to be the decision makers, not the government.

ISRAEL NATIONAL NEWS

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced that he would boycott the cabinet meeting with Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, calling it a “waste of time.”

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July 9, 2023 | 12:11 pm | Comments »

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Special Sovereignty: International Precedents to Less-Than-A-Palestinian State  

T. Belman. As I reported elsewhere, Mudar and I have agreed between us, that Israel should be sovereign over all land to west of Jordan River. The Jordan Option envisages autonomous Palestinian areas west of the Jordan R. in some kind of confederation with Jordan. My suggestion was a long term lease of such areas to Jordan. Another suggestion was something akin to Indian Reservations in Canada and the US.

This paper expands the options.

Either full Annexation or “Occupation”? International Examples Establish the Precedent of Special Sovereignty

By Or YissacharBrig. Gen. (Res.) Yossi KuperwasserLt. Col. (Res.) Maurice Hirsch, IDSF

Breaking the False Dichotomy: Precedents set by the western democratic world for autonomy and special geopolitical arrangements

Notwithstanding the fervent discourse concerning the future of Israel’s control of the territories of Judea and Samaria (“West Bank”), a more nuanced assessment reveals that much of the passionate dispute is in regards to the specific details rather than the substantive position.

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July 9, 2023 | 9:05 am | 9 Comments »

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Ben Gvir and other Cabinet ministers oppose support for Palestinian Authority  

T. Belman. Ben Gvir is right to fiercely oppose any aid to the PA. Bibi and Gallant are absurd to say “it will aid Israeli security interests.” The financial stability of the PA is not our concern. Destroying terrorism is. Supporting the PA is a cop-out. It is done to avoid a conflagration. A conflagration, like in Jenin, is needed.

Palestinians threaten family of man who killed Tel Aviv terrorist

‘The Palestinian Authority is encouraging terror and receiving a prize from Israel. This is not how a fully right-wing government looks,’ Cabinet ministers say.

 

PM Netanyahu at a government meetingYonatan Sindel/Flash90

Senior government officials have harshly criticized the intention to pass “relief measures” for the benefit of the Palestinian Authority.

“This is not what a fully right-wing government looks like,” the Cabinet ministers said. “The Palestinian Authority encourages terror and is receiving a prize from Israel.”

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July 9, 2023 | 8:11 am | Comments »

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Israel and The New Regional Architecture  

T. Belman. This is a brilliant discussion of the shifting alliances in the ME and Israel’s challenges..

By BRIG. GENERAL (RES.) YOSSI KUPERWASSER, IDSF

The changing order in the Middle East poses significant challenges as well as opportunities to further major diplomatic and security interests
Main recommendations
  • It must be impressed upon the United States that it is in its own interest – whether directly or internationally vis a vis China and Russia – to adopt a more resolute and hardline policy in the Middle East, particularly with toward Iran and its proxies. Any “understandings” between the US and Iran regarding the latter’s nuclear program are dangerous as they intensify the problematic elements of the emerging architecture in the region.
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July 9, 2023 | 3:55 am | Comments »

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Justice officials to attend cabinet, face down pressure to quash protests  

In unusual move, all top Justice Ministry officials to attend meeting amid concerns of government pressure on police, legal system to suppress anti-overhaul rallies on its behalf

By TOI STAFF      Today, at 10:33 am  

 

Israeli border police officers work to disperse demonstrators against the judicial overhaul at Ben Gurion Airport, July 3, 2023 (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

The entire top echelon of the Justice Ministry will reportedly attend Sunday’s cabinet discussions on law enforcement at protests, as senior coalition figures increasingly urge police and the legal system to deal more forcefully with demonstrators against the judicial overhaul.

According to a Channel 13 news report on Friday, the expected attendance of the top legal officials at the meeting was due to concerns that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hardline government will pressure the law enforcement system to suppress the protests on its behalf.

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July 9, 2023 | 2:55 am | 3 Comments »

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A Slaughter of Jews in Ukraine  

Who perpetrated the Lviv pogrom of July 1941?

BY JOHN-PAUL HIMKA, TABLET      JULY 06, 2023


The day after the proclamation of Ukrainian nationalist leader Yaroslav Stetsko’s state of Ukraine, on July 1, 1941, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) pasted posters around Lviv with Mykola Mikhnovsky’s slogan, “Ukraine for Ukrainians,” printed in white letters against a red background. On the same day in Lviv and in many other localities of Galicia and Volhynia, another poster appeared, authored by Ivan Klymiv sometime earlier; it instructed Ukrainians: “People! Know! Moscow, Poland, the Hungarians, the Jews are your enemies! Destroy them!” These posters issued a clear signal as to what non-Ukrainians in Lviv could expect. And under the conditions of Nazi occupation, the only non-Ukrainians who could be targeted with impunity were Jews.

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July 8, 2023 | 12:08 pm | 8 Comments »

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After the French Riots  

“Laxity and submission.”

So the latest round of rioting in France seems at last to have burned itself out. In the end, it didn’t expand into a Muslim revolution; it didn’t succeed in overthrowing the French Republic; it didn’t lead to the first transformation of a Western republic into a sharia state. But this doesn’t mean that France won’t eventually be brought down in such a way, and sooner rather than later. All it will take is one more minor police action that triggers the nation’s Muslims into a tsunami of fierce and extraordinary violence – a tsunami that, unlike this time, doesn’t end until it makes the Reign of Terror look like a scene from Gigi.
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July 7, 2023 | 4:17 pm | 1 Comment »

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Should US Troops Stay in Syria?  

By Lawrence A. Franklin, GATESTONE  •  July 5, 2023


US soldiers take position as they patrol in al-Qahtaniyah in Syria’s northeastern Hasakah province, on June 14, 2023. (Photo by Delil Souleiman/AFP via Getty Images)

  • The primary agenda of the Russian-Iranian meeting was reportedly “to discuss expelling the United States from Syria, which may indicate Russia’s intent to facilitate Iranian-backed attacks on US forces.”
  • Above all, the US presence is important as a blocking force to deny Iran an uninterrupted land bridge to Lebanon and the eastern Mediterranean, and to check the Iranian regime’s long-term expansionist dream of “exporting the revolution.”
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July 7, 2023 | 3:28 pm | Comments »

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Ehud Barak: Israel Is Hours Away From Becoming a De Facto Dictatorship  

T. Belman. Our former PM, Ehud Barak, who offered Arafat a Palestinian state on 73% of the West Bank, now has issued a call to arms, virtually  “to stop the destruction of freedom, equality and the rule of law.” “It is the right and duty of every citizen to act without violence to stop the destruction of freedom, equality and the rule of law.” He is destroying democracy on the alter of protecting democracy. The government, on the other hand is exercising their democratic right to correct the imbalance that currently exists in the Judicial System.

The fact that Barak doesn’t recognize this right is itself undemocratic.

When the bill limiting the use of the reasonableness standard is submitted to the Knesset for the first of three votes next week, Israel will face the most severe crisis in its history

By Ehud Barak, HAARETZ

The moment of truth is upon us. This is the most severe crisis in the history of the state. On Monday, the bill limiting the use of the reasonableness standard will be submitted to the Knesset for the first of three votes in the legislature. When the voting ends, Israel will be three hours away from a de facto dictatorship.

Tel Aviv District police chief Ami Eshed’s resignation speech Wednesday evening triggered a volcanic eruption. He spoke of political dismissals. Itamar Ben-Gvir demands blood and broken skulls. And the protest soared. The biggest skeptics and some of the opponents now understand: This protest will not be stopped. This protest will prevail.

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July 7, 2023 | 2:17 pm | 3 Comments »

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Turning America’s Melting Pot Into A Boiling Pot  

T. Belman. The goal of the globalists is to upend sovereignty. George Soros who declared, “Sovereignty is an anachronistic concept.” Soros, who considers himself “a citizen of the world,” says, “the principle of sovereignty stands in the way of outside intervention in the internal affairs of nation-states.”

In my article Can the UN impose a solution on Israel?, I wrote:

While the Charter pays lip service to national sovereignty by pledging to maintain “the sovereign equality of all its Members,” for no one would have joined otherwise, it is all about limiting such sovereignty.”

By Rachel Ehrenfeld The Daily Wire*

President Biden, known for embellishing his political and personal records, has never bragged about his cooking skills. He should have. It took “Chef” Biden just two and half years to transform America’s melting pot into a boiling pot.

The reformation of U.S. immigration laws is long overdue. Instead of proposing legislative changes to Congress, however, the president is ruling by fiat, issuing executive orders contradicting and violating the Constitution and the criminal code. Citing “compassion” as its pretext, the administration uses so-called “temporary humanitarian programs” to allow millions of economic migrants — many with unverifiable backgrounds from virtually every country on the face of the earth — to enter the United States. Any criticism is met with denial and slander of “racism” and “fascism.”

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July 7, 2023 | 1:20 pm | 1 Comment »

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Is a Palestinian state consistent with US interests?  

T. Belman. Amb. Ettinger says “*The proposed Palestinian state, on the one hand, and US values and national security, on the other hand, constitutes a classic oxymoron.” And so does the US kissing up to Iran not make sense. Obviously something else is going on here that Ettinger does not even allude to.

So the real question is, why is the US doing this? I suggest when you identify the goal of the US, their embrace of Palestine and Iran won’t be such an oxymoron.

Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought: a US-Israel Initiative” July 5, 2023

According to the late Prof. John Galbraith, the enemy of conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of facts, which may expose conventional wisdom as useless or dangerous.  Prof. Galbraith also suggests that conventional wisdom does not accommodate itself to the real world, but to a certain view of the world.
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July 7, 2023 | 12:53 pm | 1 Comment »

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Syria will be an arena for the Moscow-Tehran alliance  

T. Belman. I agree with Spyer, except when he refers to Russia’s “floundering invasion of Ukraine” and “ill-conceived invasion of Ukraine” and “faltering war effort”. The truth is just the opposite.

The latest events confirm the emergent strategic alliance between Russia and Iran.

AN IRANIAN woman passes in front of a sign that says ‘Made in Russia’ at the International Oil, Gas, and Petrochemical Exhibition in Tehran last month. (photo credit: MAJID ASGARIPOUR/WANA/REUTERS)

The failed mutiny launched by Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group last week has returned Russia to the global headlines. As of now, however, despite the former caterer’s efforts, it appears that the regime of President Vladimir Putin remains securely in power.<

As such, it is an opportune moment to take a close look at some of Russia’s less-remarked-upon activities, far from the road to Moscow, Rostov-on-Don and the Ukrainian front. The first leader who Putin chose to call, once it was clear that he had survived the Wagner mutiny, was President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran. Not by chance.

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July 7, 2023 | 12:33 pm | 1 Comment »

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