By  David Israel, JEWISH PRESS – January 20, 2023

Russian Ambassador to Israel Anatoly Viktorov at the Russian Consulate in Tel Aviv, March 3, 2022.

On Thursday, I reported that Russia’s Ambassador to Israel Anatoly Viktorov said that “Moscow is pleased with Israel’s decision not to send weapons to Ukraine,” adding that “Moscow hopes that Israel will behave intelligently regarding the Ukrainian crisis.” (Russian Ambassador: Moscow Pleased with Israel’s Refusal to Sell Weapons to Ukraine)
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T. Belman. Not to worry. He means Jordan should be the Palestinian state. otherwise he would have called for the Two-State Solution.

Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister: True normalization and true stability will only come through giving the Palestinians a state.

By Elad Benari, INN    20.1.23

Prince Faisal bin FarhanReuters

Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, said on Thursday that an agreement to create a Palestinian state would be a precondition for his country to establish formal diplomatic ties with Israel.

Speaking to Bloomberg TV from Davos, Switzerland, Prince Faisal said, “We have said consistently that we believe normalization with Israel is something that is very much in the interest of the region.”

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by Robert Silverman, Steven Simon, JERUSALEM STRATEGIC TRIBUNE    January 2023

US President Joe Biden. Photo credit: Reuters

Steve,

Our friendship goes back to graduate school days at Princeton and continued throughout our careers in US government service. We have moved in opposite directions politically—you to center-left and me to center-right—though we probably still agree on a lot. Let’s explore two issues—the general issue of whether or not the US needs to retrench and generally exercise restraint overseas and the specific issue of whether or not the US and Israel are gradually moving away from their special relationship.

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By Diane Bederman

Maybe the ultimate threat to the West comes…from our own lack of understanding of and faith in our own cultural heritage. —Niall Ferguson, Civilization: The West and the Rest

 We must protect our ethic of freedom  from the evil of the Bullies of Woke and the ideology of Islam. 

In the name of tolerance, inclusion and accommodation, we invited Islam into the West, despite the fact that Islam is not in any way shape or form compatible with our Judeo/Christian ethic. In the name of DIE-diversity, inclusion and equity, we allowed Progressives to implement their ideology: Wokeness, Critical Race Theory, and cancel culture that also attacks western values. We have naively invited ideologies that disrupt and disfigure our way of life, into our life.

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Both men want to keep disputes between them private. But sympathy for the anti-Bibi resistance and differences over Iran could change that.

By Jonathan Tobin

(January 18, 2023 / JNS) If you listen to the statements from both the Israeli and American governments, all’s well between Jerusalem and Washington these days. But despite the bromides being uttered by high-ranking officials, the pretense that there are no disputes between them that can’t be dealt with privately is wearing thin.

The pressure from the Israeli left and its many American supporters for the United States to signal its opposition to the new Benjamin Netanyahu-led government is growing. The question is: Will prudence and the desire on the part of President Joe Biden and his foreign-policy team to avoid a messy confrontation with Israel survive the coming weeks and months, as the anti-Bibi resistance intensifies?
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Aryeh Deri’s disqualification as cabinet minister comes after his outrageous decision to stay in politics despite pledging to leave public life.

By  Ariel Kahana, ISRAEL HAYOM

If you lie, you have to pay! This is the crux of what the Supreme Court said in its ruling on Wednesday when they struck down Aryeh Deri’s appointment as a cabinet minister.

When he did lie? When he was convicted for the first time in 1999 for bribery and then for the second time in 2022, when he was found guilty of tax evasion. The third lie was the day after the second conviction, which was the most outrageous of all lies: He said that he had never actually meant to pledge to leave elected office when he did just that before the lower court.

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By Monica Showalter, AM THINKER

Has Barack Obama gone from ex-president to Democrat party crime boss?

It sure looks like it, based on a new report about his treatment of Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Investigative reporter Lee Smith has got a stunning report that ran this week in Tablet, comparable in impact to that report by Molly Ball at Time who wrote about how elites conspired to “fortify democracy” by rigging the election against President Trump in 2020 and afterwards thought it was a smart thing to crow about.
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T. Belman. I think the Court did the right thing. I see nothing wrong with the law baring Dery, or any other convicted person, from serving as a Minister.  The public has no right to overturn laws by voting. And the Knesset should uphold good laws even when it is not convenient to do so. Dery was convicted twice and lied to the Court. Such a person should not be allowed to serve as a minister.

High Court judges who previously found reasons to rule in favor Benjamin Netanyahu based on ideology, tossed ideology out the window. Why?

By YONAH JEREMY BOB, JPOST

Health and Interior Minister Arye Deri at the handover ceremony for the Interior Ministry, January 1, 2023. (photo credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)

It was not surprising that the High Court of Justice’s activist wing nixed Shas leader Arye Deri from remaining a minister within the government following his two convictions.

What was surprising was that moderate conservatives Yitzhak Amit and Yael Wilner and hardcore conservatives Alex Stein and David Mintz ruled against Deri and that even conservative Yosef Elron left the door open to the Election Commission to nix Deri.

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It is the death of the oligarchy, not the democracy, that has brought the likes of Aharon Barak to scream from the rooftops. Op-ed.

By Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, INN

Rabbi Steven PruzanskyCourtesy

Wow! About 80,000 people stood together in the Tel Aviv rain protesting the Netanyahu government and all it stands for and all the people who serve in it and all the policies it wants to promulgate. This is a major news story only in a media that sees itself as part of that crowd and eggs them on through fawning coverage and uncritical support because they share the same hostility towards Israel’s democracy.

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The judicial branch has usurped for itself, without consent of the Knesset or the public, supreme powers that do not exist in any other democracy and did not even exist within Israel for decades. Op-ed.

By Laurence S. Tauber, INN   18.1.23

Based upon the reactions of opponents to the new Israeli government and in particular to its proposals for judicial reform, one would think that Israel is sliding into a dictatorship and the abolition of protections for individual liberties.

Such views are expressed by Yohanan Plesner in a recent article published in the Wall Street Journal, in which he derides the government’s proposals to reform the powers of the judiciary. His essential argument is that Israel’s Supreme Court is “the only check on the otherwise absolute power of any parliamentary coalition,” that the Israeli Supreme Court protects “the country’s Basic Laws…broadly recognized as chapters of a constitution in the making” and that the proposed reforms, and in particular the proposed override clause to permit the government to override a Supreme Court decision by legislative action, are fundamental threats to Israeli democracy.

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MK Danon warns: If we are hesitant in the response to the Supreme Court, it will be a signal to the European Union that it is possible to continue the illegal activity in Area C.

By Yoni Kempinski, INN

In two weeks, the Israeli government will have to submit its response to the Supreme Court regarding the eviction of the illegal Bedouin outpost of Khan al-Ahmar and MK Danny Danon says the state of Israel must put an eviction date on the table.

“I would like to remind that this is an illegal settlement of Bedouins in the area of Mishor Adumim, where they settled in a criminal way with funding from the European Union, and for a long time there has been a decision to evacuate Khan al-Ahmar that has not been implemented. Therefore, I am calling from here on my friends in the Likud and our partners to give a very brief response to the court: A date. Give an answer with a date for the eviction of Khan al-Ahmar. There is no need to talk too much, no need to start with postponements, this has already been done by left-wing governments in the past,” Danon clarified in an interview with Israel National News.

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By Peg Tierney

Rudy Giuliani just appeared on Bannon’s show and said some very important things that I think you need to hear.

People forget that Rudy was a prosecutor who basically invented RICO and took down the New York mob with a racketeering case that he took 3 years to put together. Comey used to work for Rudy!

People forget that Rudy was the FIRST guy who first reviewed Hunter’s laptop and researched its veracity all over the world BEFORE he presented it as evidence to the FBI in 2019. Then, they did nothing, and it was covered up by the swamp, social media & the fake news.

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By CAROLINE GLICK , NEWSWEEK

Speaking to the Saudi English-language newspaper Al Arabiya, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made his case for peace between Israel and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Such a peace, he explained, would be “a quantum leap for overall peace between Israel and the Arab word,” which would change the Middle East “in ways that are unimaginable.”
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T. Belman.. There is no chance this will bring down the government. A way will be found.

Israel’s High Court disqualified Shas chairman Arye Dery from serving as health and interior minister, a move that could jeopardize the coalition’s chance of survival

Haaretz

Bombshell ruling by Israel High Court disqualifies Netanyahu ally Dery from serving as minister

Israel’s High Court announced on Wednesday that it has disqualified Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s key ally, Shas chair Arye Dery, from serving in a ministerial position, following the latter’s criminal conviction last year and subsequent suspended sentence.

Despite his conviction, Dery was appointed Health and Interior Minister by Netanyahu, who formed the current Israeli government in late December.<
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By Daniel Greenfield, 17 Jan 09:17 PM

MSNBC ushered in Thanksgiving to its viewers by claiming that the holiday and the nation were built on genocide.

“We are a country founded on violence. Our birth was violent,” MSNBC star Joy Reid declared.

It was another hateful lie about our country from a 24/7 hate network built on lies.

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The US should not abandon its Kurdish allies or withdraw its forces from the war-torn country.

By  Eric R. Mandel, ISRAEL HAYOM

This week, I was interviewed on Iraqi TV (Rudow) for one of their top stories: The upcoming meeting between Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavu?o?lu and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The evolving resolution of the Syrian civil war, which the two men will likely discuss, is of paramount interest to Iraqi and Syrian Kurds, as well as the greater Middle East.

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T. Belman. I highly recommend this analysis.

The government aims to hobble the High Court’s ability to review legislation. If judges try to strike down the law that institutes the change, there may be a high-stakes showdown

By JEREMY SHARON, TOI       17 January 2023,

The proposals to drastically alter Israel’s legal and judicial landscape unveiled by Justice Minister Yariv Levin on January 5 have swiftly fomented deep societal discord, with government and opposition politicians trading incendiary accusations and the swift establishment of a fervid protest movement.

Proponents say the sweeping changes are a corrective to an overly activist judiciary undermining the will of the people, whereas critics, including numerous jurists and legal scholars, counter that the drastic reform package would hollow out Israel’s democracy, leaving the country with no effective check on legislative power.

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An unprecedented political and parliamentary scandal undermines the credibility of the entire European parliamentary establishment. Op-ed.

By Dr. Salem Alketbi, INN

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Dr. Salem Al KetbiCourtesy

The European Parliament, one of the most influential institutions of the Union, has recently suffered a major blow, the most serious crisis the Parliament has experienced since its creation. The Parliament’s deputy president was accused of corruption and graft.

She was overwhelmingly and quickly dismissed, without waiting for the final results of the investigation, because a large amount of cash was found in her personal possession or in the possession of a person close to her (allegedly her father). Eva Kaili, Vice President of the European Parliament, belongs to the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) in Greece.

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