The emerging deal could leave the U.S. again on the sidelines during a dramatic shift in the Middle East’s geopolitics

By Summer Said, Benoit Fauconand Michael Amon, WSJ

Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow earlier this month.PHOTO: VLADIMIR GERDO/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

DUBAI—Saudi Arabia and Syria are nearing an agreement to restore diplomatic ties after negotiations mediated by Russia, according to Saudi and Syrian officials familiar with the discussions, as the geopolitics of the Middle East shift.

Talks were continuing after rounds of discussions in Moscow and Riyadh in recent weeks, the officials said. If a deal is reached, it would mark an important step to reintegrating Syria and its leader Bashar al-Assad into the broader region after a brutal civil war.

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Estimate by Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman is shorter than previous assessments by some officials

By Laurence Normanand Michael R. Gordon,WSJ

Gen. Mark Milley’s statement was coupled with a warning that the U.S. won’t allow Iran to have a “fielded nuclear weapon.”PHOTO: DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES

Iran would need only several months to build a nuclear weapon if Tehran opted to produce a bomb, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress on Thursday.

Gen. Milley’s assessment provides a significantly shorter estimate for how quickly Tehran could become a nuclear power than other public estimates by Western officials and adds to mounting concern about the advances in Iran’s nuclear program.

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The current maelstrom is about far more than judicial reform

By Melanie Phillips  24.3.23

The political crisis in Israel over the government’s judicial reforms has deepened.

An increasing number of institutions and prominent individuals have called for the changes to be halted. All are deeply alarmed by the enormous demonstrations that they perceive as posing an increasing threat to Israel’s security and the social resilience on which that security depends.

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By Daniel Greenfield, 23 Mar 12:04 PM

Between May and June 2020, heroic PPD police officers, outnumbered, outmatched and with no support from local officials, battled the violent hateful BLM mobs rampaging through West Philly.

The racist mobs looted small businesses in the mostly black area, destroying lives and livelihoods, while assaulting police officers and anyone who tried to get in their way. Buildings were set on fire and mobs shrieking “Black Lives Matter” and other racist slogans hurled rocks, bricks and Molotov cocktails at officers who were risking their lives to stop the violence.

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_{The U.S. must return to reality as the basis of its foreign policy.}

By Caroline Glick

(JNS) On the eve of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq 20 years ago this month, the anticipated war was accompanied by a sense of idealistic triumphalism. It was fueled by a still-righteous rage following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and empowered by the U.S.’s recent early victories over the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The overriding sense of U.S. troops as they gathered in force across the border in the Kuwaiti desert was that they were the great liberators who would free the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein just as their grandfathers liberated Paris from the Nazis.

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

In 2022, the number of Israel’s Jewish births was 137,566 – 71% higher than 1995 (80,400), compared to 43,417 Arab births – 19% higher than 1995 (36,500). In 2022, Jewish births were 76% of total births, compared to 69% in 1995. The surge of Jewish births has taken place due to the unprecedented rise of births (since 1995) in the secular sector, notwithstanding a rising level of education, income and wedding age and expanded urbanization. Since 1995, Israel’s ultra-orthodox sector has experienced a mild decrease of fertility.
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T. Belman. I am astounded how difficult it is th the US to win an election fraud case.

By Brooke Mallory, OAN

Arizona’s highest court has declined to hear Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s appeal of her election loss to Katie Hobbs.

The Arizona court kept the issue afloat by referencing one of Lake’s arguments back to a county judge for consideration.

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By MARTIN SHERMAN

If the so-called “champions of democracy” succeed in obstructing the judicial reforms, democratic rule will be replaced by mob rule—and Israel will be teetering on the brink of an Orwellian dystopia   

The starkest indicators [of erosion of democracy] which presumably underlie the country’s downgrading in international democracy ratings, involve elite decisions about rejecting election results – James N. Druckman,  Professor of Political Science, Northwestern University, Misperceptions, Competition, and Support for Democracy, p. 24, Dec 2022.

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Prime Minister delivers address to the nation on the judicial reforms, says the reforms will not be shelved as he seeks a compromise.

“A proper democratic regime must deal with these two issues – with the rule of the majority and the protection of the rights of the individual”

Israel National News

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered an address to the nation this evening (Thursday) on the government’s planned judicial reforms. The address follows Netanyahu’s meeting with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who called for the judicial reform bills to be frozen until the next Knesset session.

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Abdullah II will ask Iran for military support and Iranian drones to attack Israel. And US Secretary of State Tony Blinken warns against the use of Iranian drones in the Middle East pic.twitter.com/xjC5dVSJnW

— Abedalelah Almaala (@AbedAlmaala) March 22, 2023

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Democrats, who once prided themselves on being “the smartest people in the room,” have bought into lies, from the idea that Jews enjoy “white privilege” to the notion that Israel is a “apartheid state” that “colonizes” defenseless terrorists.

By  Karen Lehrman Bloch, IH

In a shock to no one, Democrats now favor the Palestinians over Israel. In a recent Gallup poll, 49% of Democrats now say they sympathize more with the Arabs living in Judea and Samaria, compared with just 38% who side with Israelis–an 11-point drop since just last year.

This moment in history has just gotten a lot more dangerous.

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Final readings of Likud-sponsored bill, seen as tailored to save PM from potential legal trouble, approved after long night of heated debate; Lapid blasts ‘obscene, corrupt law’

By TOI STAFF and CARRIE KELLER-LYNN 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (center) speaks with Education Minister Yoav Kisch in the Knesset, March 22, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

The Knesset passed into law a bill that would protect Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from a court order to recuse himself, in an early Thursday morning final vote of 61 Knesset members in favor and 47 against.

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The dizzying repetition of that Big Lie for so many decades causes people who should know better to speak of a “Two-State Solution.” Op-ed.

By Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischer, INN

Of course Minister Bezalel Smotrich is correct. Of course there is no Arab “Palestinian” people and never was an Arab “Palestine.” It all is a fraud. It’s just a fact. Repeat the truth: There never was an Arab political entity of “Palestine” and never a “Palestinian Arab nation.” The dizzying repetition of that Big Lie for so many decades causes people who should know better to speak of a “Two-State Solution.” But that very notion is illogical, absurd, nonsensical.

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By Ted Belman

My daughter Aliza, who is religious and a leftist, rarely if ever speaks to me about what is going on in Israel and the world but this debate brought her out of seclusion. She was a member of Israel’s diplomatic Corps and served for three years under Chaim Halevy who was Israel’s Ambassador to the EU 20 years ago.

She sent me a CNN VIDEO in which Amanpour interviewed Halevy. Much to my surprise, Amanpour did a good job and Halevy shocked me.   He said ” cannot accept Netanyahu continuing to lead the country.”   He also said that Israel will cease to be a democracy.

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Florida governor repeats criticism of Trump in Fox Nation interview as he attempts delicate balancing act

By Martin Pengelly, GUARDIAN   22.3.23

Donald Trump may be in legal trouble over his alleged weakness for vice, but his predicament is increasingly placing Ron DeSantis – his chief rival for the Republican presidential nomination – in a political vise.

The Florida governor must join Republican attacks on Alvin Bragg, the Democratic Manhattan district attorney whose indictment of Trump over a hush money payment to a porn star is reportedly imminent, while trying not to lose ground in a primary he has not formally entered.

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America’s self-inflicted trouble in Ukraine aggravates our dangerous trouble at home.

By Douglas Macgregor, AM CONSERVATIVE   Mar 14, 2023

The crisis of American national power has begun. America’s economy is tipping over, and Western financial markets are quietly panicking. Imperiled by rising interest rates, mortgage-backed securities and U.S. Treasuries are losing their value. The market’s proverbial “vibes”—feelings, emotions, beliefs, and psychological penchants—suggest a dark turn is underway inside the American economy.

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By Malcolm Dash

Israel is fighting for its independence from the tyranny of affluent and powerful elites. Independence from the legal establishment’s absolutism, independence from the propaganda of the mainstream media propaganda, freedom from the progressive ideology of academia, and from the social engineering carried out by the IDF.

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By Arlene Kushner 20.3.23

As always, when there is a terror attack, I begin with that. And how deplorable it is, that I must do so again: And that once again, it is an attack on Route 60 in Huwara.

David Stern, 41, and his wife Rachel, 37, of Itamar in Samaria, were attacked on Sunday afternoon not far from where the Yaniv brothers were killed just three weeks ago. Both dual US-Israeli citizens, they were on their way to Jerusalem for a Torah lecture. While reports varied, apparently their children were not in the car with them.

David is a former US marine and a martial arts expert who teaches self-defense, including to First Responders. You see him here with Rachel and their four children.

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