Coalition agreement between Likud and Religious Zionism states it will advance the return of thousands of dunams of West Bank land as well as scores of buildings in Hebron to their pre-1948 Jewish owners

By Hagar Shezaf, HAARETZ

Hebron’s Jewish quarter in 2019. Parties are like commanding generals issuing military legislation that allow asset transfers.Credit: HAZEM BADER / AFP

A clause in the coalition agreement between Likud and Religious Zionism says the government will instruct the head of the army’s Central Command to enable assets currently held by the Civil Administration to be transferred to their pre-1948 Jewish owners. This move is expected to facilitate settlement expansion and allow Israel to gain control over Palestinian-leased buildings.

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by Majid Rafizadeh, GATESTONE  •  January 14, 2023

• The Obama-Biden administration had also kept the US Congress, the American people and US allies in the Middle East in the dark about what it was negotiating with the ruling mullahs of Iran. When Biden was vice president, the Obama administration made multiple secret deals with Iran’s mullahs.
• “[T]he JCPOA was designed as an instrument to break pro-Israel Democrats, who represent what Obama saw as the most powerful of the internal constituencies that might oppose his reordering of the Democratic Party. That is, the real realignment [ostensibly with Iran] isn’t in the Middle East, which America is leaving anyway, but inside Obama’s own party.” — Lee Smith, Tablet, March 10, 2021.

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Hatred of Jews is not only irrational, it is self-destructive, of nations as well as of individuals.

by Paul Johnson, COMMENTARY

The intensification of anti-Semitism in the Arab world over the last years and its reappearance in parts of Europe have occasioned a number of thoughtful reflections on the nature and consequences of this phenomenon, but also some misleading analyses based on doubtful premises. It is widely assumed, for example, that anti-Semitism is a form of racism or ethnic xenophobia. This is a legacy of the post-World War II period, when revelations about the horrifying scope of Hitler’s “final solution” caused widespread revulsion against all manifestations of group hatred. Since then, racism, in whatever guise it appears, has been identified as the evil to be fought.
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By Nisana Darshan-Leitner

On October 12, 2000, at the very start of the Second Intifada, two Israeli reservists were driving to their base near the Ofer Camp when they accidentally made a wrong turn and wound up in the area controlled by the Palestinian Authority.  The soldiers were immediately detained by the Palestinian security services who brought them to the police station in Ramallah. Quickly, the rumor was spread throughout the city that 2 IDF soldiers were being held in the local jail. Hundreds of Arab residents surrounded the police station demanding that the soldiers be turned over to the mob. Instead, the policemen themselves proceeded to brutally beat the 2 Jews to death and then threw the bodies from a second floor window to the crowd, which was chanting for Jewish blood. An infamous photo was snapped of one of the killers waving his bloody hands out the window.
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T. Belman.  This the way to go. Give families the option of after school classes.

JEWISH PRESS

There are four primary arguments in Israeli Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) society as to why they refuse to include the “Liba” or the government’s core curriculum education in their school systems. The core curriculum’s classes include mathematics, computers, science and English, basic subjects that make it easier to join the modern work force.

In no particular order, the first objection is that Haredi society is fundamentally opposed to outsiders, particularly when its government outsiders, deciding and imposing on them what their children will be learning. This opposition has deep historical roots in Jewish society.

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JEWISH PRESS

A survey taken by Direct Polls for Channel 14 and released on Thursday, shows overwhelming public support for most of the judicial reforms proposed by Justice Minister Yariv Levin.

Six Year Term Limits for the Supreme Court President and Deputies
Support: 67%
Against: 22%
Undecided: 11%

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T. Belman.  This is the definitive explanation of what Res 242 does. It is a classic. Thankfully it agrees with my understanding of it and adds to it .  I want to stress two things.

• The resolution is not binding because it isn’t a Chap VII resolution and
• the right to have “recognized boundaries” is not curtailed by the preamble.

It does not comment 0n Israel’s legal rights but it does make “secure boundaries” a prerequisite for peace. That’s good.

By Amb. Meir Rosenne,  JCPA

The United Nations Security Council in session, May 23, 2002

UN Security Council Resolution 242 has been the pivotal point of reference in all Arab-Israeli diplomacy since 1967. Every major Arab-Israeli agreement – from the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli Treaty of Peace through the 1993 Oslo Agreements – refers to Resolution 242. Significantly, Resolution 242 defined, for the first time, international expectations about the extent of any future Israeli withdrawal from the territories the Israel Defense Forces captured in the 1967 Six-Day War. It linked that withdrawal to the achievement of peace between the parties. Finally, it established the basis of Israel’s legal right to defensible borders.

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T. Belman. It is ironic that the anti-Bibi crowd are now appealing to him to restrain Smotrich and Ben Gvir. Not only is this government restoring democracy but it is also ending the era of appeasement whether of the Arabs or of the US and the EU. Let the good times roll.

The left’s hysterical talk about civil war is caused by the fear that their decades-old power grab is being undone. Op-ed.

By Caroline Glick, INN

(JNS) “For years now, Israel has seemed to me like a man sleepwalking toward a cliff. Now we’ve fallen from it.”

So proclaimed author Hillel Halkin in a hysterical requiem for Israel published last week in TheJewish Review of Books.

Halkin’s metaphorical cliff is the right-religious bloc’s electoral victory on Nov. 1, 2022 and the formation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s sixth government two weeks ago. Halkin explained to his concerned readers that it isn’t that Israel stopped being a democracy on Nov. 1. Far worse. On that day, Israel lost its soul.

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The Department of Homeland Security has internalized the Palestinian Arab big lie. It is all utter garbage. Op-ed.

By Melanie Phillips  Jan 12, 2023, 

(JNS) An ostensibly minor incident a few days ago has provided devastating evidence of the brainwashed malevolence within the Biden administration towards not just Israel but the Jewish people.

In a ceremony at the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities in Bethlehem, the Department of Homeland Security’s investigative arm delivered to the Palestinian Authority a 2,700-year-old spoon dating from the Assyrian empire.

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By Jack Phillips, EPOCH TIMES    12.1.23

The Arizona Court of Appeals agreed to expedite consideration of Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s lawsuit alleging that the 2022 election was flawed.

In a brief order, issued on Jan. 9 and made public the next day, the court ordered a reset of “the matter for conference on February 1, 2023,”  and agreed with Lake’s arguments that her challenge should be handled as a “special action petition.” The court date was reportedly scheduled for March.
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The entire documentary on the Roman Siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD. This massive battle is one of the most stunning of all antiquity. On display were impressive siege works and feats of bravery on both the Roman and Jewish sides as they fought mercilessly over every inch of Jerusalem. Fighting would even make its way up the the inner sanctums of the Temple Mount and witness the destruction of the Second Temple.

Israel should implement policy change in a concentrated fashion and plow through the chorus of international criticism.

By  David M. Weinberg, ISRAEL HAYOM   8.1.23

The unjustified wild reaction to Minster of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir’s important 13-minute ascent to the Temple Mount this week tells us one thing: The world holds Israel and especially Israel’s new government in complete contempt. It thinks it can dictate to Israel how it should administer the holiest place (to Jews) in the world, how it should define who is a Jew, where Israelis should and should not live or “settle,” when the Israeli police and army can open fire against terrorists, and more. The world (including much of the Jewish world, which leans powerfully left-progressive) is going to object to almost every policy for which the new Israeli government was elected.

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By Barbara Kay, EPOCH TIMES 10.1.2023

Cancel culture is in its own way democratic. Woke mobs—social media jackals or institutional flacks—don’t care whether their target for immolation is male or female, famous or obscure, a leading intellectual light or a plodding time-server. All their targets have in common is an audience. A classroom, a Twitter account, a pulpit. The pilot light of their righteous wrath never sleeps. Perceived thoughtcrimes are their tinder.

Targets run the gamut from weak to strong. The weak are limited in resources and support systems. Resistance seems futile. When they feel the heat, they confess to non-existent sins, hoping for mercy. Who can blame them?

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By MARTIN SHERMAN 

By its reticence to engage in a decisive offensive against its despotic adversaries, Israel is continually backing away from conflicts that it can win, while risking backing itself into a conflict that it cannot… 

If you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. —Winston S. Churchill, in “The Gathering Storm“.

…the proposition that democracies are generally at peace with each other is [so] strongly supported… [it] has led some scholars to claim that this finding is probably the closest thing that we have to a law in international politics—Profs. Zeev Maoz & Bruce Russett, in International Interactions, Vol. 17, No. 3, 1992,  pp. 245-6.
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T. Belman. Its clear to me that finally we have a government in Israel that will not be intimidated by treats from the US or EU particularly in regard to Area C. Watch for demolitions to increase and for settlement construction to increase. Law and order will be restored regardless of their criticism. The power balance between the Knesset and the Supreme Court will be shifted to where it belongs. The US will not be allowed to open a Palestinian Consulate in Jerusalem. The US will have to take it and lump it.

The US has never been weaker. She has lost Saudi Arabia and is losing NATO and the EU. She won’t dare to amend our relationship because she needs us too much.

Yuli Edelstein and Tom Nides speak about settlements, Iran and bilateral ties.

Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chair Yuli Edelstein and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides meet in Jerusalem on Wednesday. Source: Courtesy of the Knesset.

(January 11, 2023 / JNS) The chair of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee told U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides that settlement expansion would continue, despite Washington’s objections.

Likud MK Yuli Edelstein, the former Knesset speaker who now heads the pivotal committee, held an introductory meeting with Nides on Wednesday.
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By Zachary Stieber, EPOCH TIMES  10.1.23

A nurse holds a syringe that contains a dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine in Seattle, Wash., on June 21, 2022. (David Ryder/Getty Images)

Officials in Washington state recorded jumps in post-vaccination infections, hospitalizations, and deaths in mid-2021, according to newly disclosed internal emails.

Fifteen percent of COVID-19 cases and 25 percent of COVID-19 hospitalizations from July 1 to July 20, 2021, were vaccinated—up from 2 percent between February and June that year, Chris Spitters, the health officer for the Snohomish County Health District, wrote in one of the messages. A fifth of the deaths attributed to COVID-19 were vaccinated.
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The prime minister has unleashed his justice minister to neutralize the High Court, the only effective brake on government excess, and secure him unbridled power

By DAVID HOROVITZ, TOI      Today, 6:40 am  

Incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (right) with incoming Justice Minister Yariv Levin in the Knesset on December 13, 2022. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Yariv Levin has been formulating proposals to curb the powers of the High Court of Justice for 20 years, he told the nation last week. And for most of those 20 years, though Levin was a loyal and respected colleague in their Likud party, those revolutionary plans placed him at odds with Benjamin Netanyahu, a longtime outspoken defender of the independence and authority of the court.

Returning to office on December 29, however, Netanyahu signaled that the path was clear for Levin to introduce his long-conceived judicial revolution by appointing him as justice minister. And just six days later, Levin unleashed his proposed onslaught.

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T. Belman. That’s EU chutzpah.

24 European Parliament members wrote to the EU’s Commission for Crisis Management following Israel’s intention to demolish dozens of houses in the West Bank villages of the Masafer Yatta area that were built with financial aid from the European Union or its member states

By Jonathan Lis, HAARETZ

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An Israeli army soldier stands guard as Israeli machinery demolishes a Palestinian house, in Masafer Yatta near Hebron, in the West Bank, July 25, 2022.Credit: MUSSA ISSA QAWASMA / REUTERS