by Leah Rosenberg, ISRAEL UNWIRED February 8, 2023

Another archaeological discovery from the City of David in Jerusalem. It is remarkable how much history has been uncovered!

“A unique bead made from pure gold and dated to at least 1,600 years ago was uncovered at the sifting project at the Archaeological Experience in the Emek Tzurim National Park. The bead was found in dirt removed from a grandiose Roman structure discovered in the Pilgrimage Road Excavation. It was created using a unique technique that required delicate workmanship to affix tens of tiny balls together in the shape of a ring in order to create one small bead.

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By S. Ali, MEMRI

Introduction

Iraqi and Chinese officials sign the 2019 Agreement (source: Kurdistan24.net, September 24, 2019)

In September 2019, Iraq signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with China to develop economic and trade ties between the two countries. The “Oil for Reconstruction” memorandum proposed several massive projects included building the Grand Port of Al Faw in Basra, creating a shorter transportation corridor between the Middle East and Europe, and bypassing the Suez Canal through the expansion of a national rail network.

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Forced to clean up the Jew-Hate in their textbooks or face financial ruin.

by Hugh Fitzgerald, FPM 28.7.23

Arab donors to UNRWA have cut their donations by 90% — from $200 million in 2018 to a mere $20 million in 2022, and show no signs of reversing course. Meanwhile, the Bidenites have been put on notice by a letter from fifty Congressmen, demanding that the State Department must force the PA to end its “Pay-For-Slay” program, likely through cutting its aid to UNRWA. So far, the Biden administration has provided UNRWA with $618 million. It is obvious that sums given to UNRWA allow the agency to spend more on health and education for the Palestinians, thereby relieving the PA of much of those costs. This violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the Taylor Force Act of 2018, which prohibits Washington from giving aid to the PA as long as it continues its “Pay-For-Slay” program.
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By Stefano Kotsonis and Meghna Chakrabarti 15.7.22

T. Belman. The Democracy Institute is a left leaning NGO. Just look at the title and sub-title to see the bias.

The article itself is worth reading.

Canceling this judicial tool would lift yet another barrier to unlimited power and open the door for rampant corruption.

By: Prof. Yuval Shany, DEMOCRACY INSTITUTE.   6.7.23

Administrative law is meant to protect the country’s residents against arbitrary government actions and to require the executive branch to function as the public’s trustee. In Israel, the principles of administrative law have been laid down in rulings of the Supreme Court, just as the rules of English administrative law, which inspired them, were relied on by English courts of law. They include rules that require every action by the government to be legal and within the bounds of the authority granted it by law; that the decision to take an action be made in a valid procedure in which the decision-makers satisfied the procedural obligations set down by the law, did not act with a conflict of interest, and relied on an appropriate factual basis; and that the decision itself be based on reasonable and proportionate exercise of government discretion.

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T. Belman. This protest by Mazuz, illustrates how important the Judicial Overhaul is. The Court views itself as Israel’s savior and democracy’s savior. No Knesset gave it this right or role. He said:

“It is definitely anti-democracy because the court has a defined job in the framework of the separation of powers, and that is to review the legality of government actions.”

He doesn’t say to review the “reasonableness” of government decisions. Furthermore, the High Court in all democracies with a constitution clearly has the role of determining whether the law is ultra vires the constitution. But that is not what we have in Israel, where the Court has substituted itself for the constitution. In doing so it imposes its values on the Knesset. No Knesset gave it the right to do so and it is clearly undemocratic.

He argues that the government is “corrupt” and explains:

“It is a corrupt law because the public should understand, in fact every citizen, that every person and state body is obligated to behave reasonably.”

That’s an over-statement. Everybody must abide by the law.

Menachem Mazuz, who also served as AG, slams coalition’s controversial legislation, part of judicial overhaul package, as ‘corrupt’; agrees Israel on ‘brink of dictatorship’

By TOI STAFF 

A protester stands in front of a police water cannon being used to disperse demonstrators blocking the Begin highway in Jerusalem during a protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul, on July 24, 2023, as the Knesset passed the ‘reasonableness’ law. (AP/Ariel Schalit)

The High Court of Justice should strike down the “anti-democratic” and “corrupt” “reasonableness” law the hardline coalition passed on Monday, former attorney general and retired Supreme Court justice Menachem Mazuz said Thursday.

In an interview with Channel 12 news, Mazuz said the law was “clearly anti-democratic and also corrupt” as it undermines the court’s role as a check and balance on the Knesset and government.

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by J.B. Shurk, GATESTONE

• The founder of the World Economic Forum (WEF), Klaus Schwab, routinely applauds China’s surveillance State for its capacity to “nudge” citizens toward compliance. While China apologists turn a blind eye to the one-party communist State’s continuing genocides against Christians, Tibetans, Uyghurs, Falun Gong practitioners, and other minorities, they champion the machinery of China’s technocratic totalitarianism as a model for the rest of the world. It is deeply unsettling to see a destroyer of civilizations held up as the future for global civilization.

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BY ROBERT SPENCER, JIHAD WATCH

This kind of article is artfully constructed. It is designed to make people ashamed to be concerned about jihad, Sharia, and Islamization in Britain, and to stigmatize all such concerns as a form of bigotry. The actual aggressive, violent, expansionist and supremacist teachings of the Qur’an and Sunnah are not mentioned, or their existence even acknowledged. Peter Oborne tries to give the impression that the only reason why anyone would be concerned about Islam is because he or she is a far-right racist bigot.

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GATEWAY

On Tuesday night Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. joined Sean Hannity on FOX News for a town hall event.

During the hour-long show, Kennedy continued to gain the approval of the FOX News audience. The crowd repeatedly broke out in applause in support of his positions and ideas for America’s future.

At one point the topic of COVID policy and treatment alternatives came up.

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Netanyahu immediately updated Washington about the invitation, emphasizing that it is not a message to Biden.

By LAHAV HARKOV, JPOST      JULY 26, 2023 20:46

When Netanyahu told members of the US House Armed Services Committee about the trip, he also said that “the security and intelligence cooperation between the US and Israel are at their greatest height of all times and emphasized that the US will always be a vital, irreplaceable ally of Israel,” his spokesman said at the time.

Multiple senior Israeli officials have argued that Netanyahu’s visit to Beijing should not be regarded by Washington as problematic because US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen recently visited despite US-China tensions.

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World Israel News  By Lauren Marcus  27.7.23

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara filed a petition with the Supreme Court on Tuesday, requesting that they strike down a law which prevents her from declaring that the prime minister is unfit for office and ordering his immediate removal.

In March, the Knesset passed a new quasi-constitutional Basic Law stating that a sitting prime minister could only be forced to step down by a majority vote of 75% of MKs or cabinet members. The law also specifies that the leave of absence could only be ordered due to physical or mental health concerns.

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by Pete Hoekstra, GATESTONE   •  July 27, 2023

• Despite COVID having killed more than 1.13 million Americans as of mid-June 2023, and with a cost to the U.S. economy estimated to be $14 trillion — yes trillion — by the end of 2023, where is the united outrage among American citizens over the role of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the pandemic?
• In these [Chinese] camps, Uyghurs face indoctrination, sterilization, and forced labor…. The situation is so horrific that both the Trump Administration and the Biden Administration have labeled it a genocide.
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When a president proves he’s a toothless paper tiger.

by Joseph Klein, FPM 

The Communist Chinese regime will do whatever President Xi Jinping believes is necessary to surpass the United States, which President Xi considers to be in decline. President Joe Biden is proving to be President Xi’s perfect patsy to help him achieve his grand ambitions.

President Biden remains under the dangerous delusion that China is merely a vigorous competitor, not the U.S.’s chief adversary that is determined to replace America as the world’s number one military, economic, and technological superpower. President Biden is on a fool’s mission to explore whether there are areas of mutual interest where the Chinese regime might be willing to genuinely cooperate with the United States. There are none. Nevertheless, in desperation he has sent so far three of his administration’s cabinet-level officials to China to restore fruitless dialogue with their high-level Chinese counterparts.

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By Raymond Ibrahim, AM THINKER 26.7.23

Despite their many outward differences, Islamic authoritarianism and leftist liberalism are, in fact, very similar, especially in that they brook no dissent.

Here, I’d like to offer a more focused look into their similar modes of operation, especially in the context of belief vs. compliance.

For starters, few Muslims — including some of the most “radical” — really care what anyone else, including Muslims, believes or disbelieves about Islam.  This may seem counterintuitive; after all, isn’t Islam draconian and in your face concerning its beliefs, subjugating and even killing those who reject it and its dogmas?

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By Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought: a US-Israel Initiative” 26.7.23

The British “Cambridge Middle East and North Africa Forum” reported that “On January 11, 2023, Iran’s naval commander announced that before the end of 2023, Iran would station warships in the Panama Canal [which facilitates 5% of the global maritime trade].”
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U.S. organizations throwing in with the opposition to judicial reform aren’t defending democracy. Rather, they are treating the majority of Israeli Jews with contempt.

By JONATHAN S. TOBIN, JNS   26.7.23

For American Jewish liberals and the legacy organizations they dominate, the impulse to take sides in a debate that is polarizing Israeli politics was irresistible. So, it was unsurprising, if disappointing, to see with what eagerness they weighed in on this week’s Knesset vote on the first part of the judicial reform package put forward by the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

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by Avi Abelow March 20, 2023

Currently, the history books tell us that former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin is a hero of peace. It is true that he approved and signed the Oslo peace process with the arch-terrorist Yassar Arafat and his PLO terror group, even though Israeli law forbid all talks with that terror organization.

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T. Belman. This meeting took place in April. We heard nothing about it. Meanwhile tens of thousands of people have been killed. Why wait til the end of the year? Why didn’t Col Macgregor hear of it? Makes no sense.

by Con Coughlin, GATESTONE  •  July 26, 2023 at 5:00 am

• One of the main reasons Nato is proving to be so reluctant to provide Ukraine with a clear timeframe for membership is the stiff opposition the proposal has received from the Biden administration.
• In public, US President Joe Biden is keen to give the impression that he is fully committed to backing Ukraine’s battle for survival. But it is a different story behind-the-scenes, where Biden and his senior officials are more interested in ending the war in good time for next year’s US presidential election contest.
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