Self-inflicted damage is irreversible as long as Putin remains in charge

By Ian Bremmer, NIKKEI ASIA   June 20, 2022 17:00 JST

Vladimir Putin has exposed Russia as a delusional and dangerous power.   © Sputnik/AP

Russia continues to make gains on the ground in Ukraine, particularly in the Donbas region, where the war’s fighting is now most intense.

President Vladimir Putin can and will inflict more pain, and though his military is not strong enough to overthrow the Zelenskyy government and capture all of Ukraine as he initially hoped, he is confident that Ukraine is not strong enough to oust his troops from the territory it already holds. He also knows that the global food and fuel inflation his war creates will test the limits of Western resolve to continue support for Ukraine at its current levels.

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Sources tell CNN that US not informed about Israel’s efforts against Iran’s nuclear program, including assassination of IRGC Colonel Khodaei

By TOI STAFF       21 June 2022, 10:36 pm

Israel is keeping the US in the dark as it steps up alleged covert operations against Iran’s nuclear program, according to a report Tuesday.

The report from CNN, citing multiple sources, would appear to crack the veneer of close communication and cooperation between Israel and the US regarding efforts against Iran’s nuclear program, and may underline US concerns surrounding Israel’s more aggressive campaign, which has been blamed for a number of high profile killings recently.

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A tyranny rotting from within.

By Struan Stevenson, FPM    JUNE 22/22

There were three pillars on which the Iranian regime was founded, following the 1979 revolution, hi-jacked by the elderly fanatical cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The first pillar was the system of velayat-e-faqih, or guardianship of the Islamic jurist, which laid the foundations for the first fundamentalist Islamic state and was written into the constitution.

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By Ezequiel Doiny, INN   21.6.22

On June 20, 2022 Arutz 7  reported “Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Alternate Prime Minister Yair Lapid have decided to dissolve the current government and hold new elections…The two will submit a bill to this effect for approval by the Knesset next week…Yair Lapid will become prime minister during the transition period as per the coalition agreement and will greet US President Joe Biden as Israel’s premier during his visit to the Jewish State on July 13.”

And Arutz 7 further reported that “US President Joe Biden still plans to visit Israel next month despite the collapse of the Israeli government.

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Bennett will apparently resign soon and not run in the upcoming election as renegade lawmakers who brought down the government in hopes of joining the opposition may be left with nothing

By Yossi Verter, HAARETZ

The way Prime Minister Naftali Bennett announced that he was passing the torch to Yair Lapid sounded a fitting final chord to the tune the government they led has played for 375 days. They are political rivals who were wise enough to create a rare partnership, almost utopian by Israeli political standards. They began nicely and ended even better. We were as dreamers – is this Israel, or Denmark?

By David Israel, JEWISH PRESS

The morning after Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s announcement that he is dispersing the Knesset and handing over the help to his brother-in-arms Yair Lapid, United Torah Judaism MK Uri Maklev told Army radio: “I think Netanyahu will not be able to form a government. I hope it won’t be the case, I don’t want to tempt the devil, it’s not a good thing, but if Gantz is the one who can put it together, he should be able to fit into the foundation outlines. I think he can also fit in with right-wing parties.”

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Last-minute efforts underway to prevent vote tomorrow to dissolve Knesset, hold new elections. Sa’ar continues to refuse to sit with Likud.

Israel National News   21.06.22 16:58

Shaked and Sa’ar  Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90

Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked, who is in Morocco, has held many discussions in the last two days with United Torah Judaism chairman MK Moshe Gafni with the aim of establishing a right-wing government in the current Knesset so that new elections would not need to be held in the Fall.

A senior Likud official expressed pessimism about the success of such a move, in light of Gideon Sa’ar’s refusal to sit with Netanyahu: “At the moment, this is not possible. Sa’ar refuses, ” the senior official said.

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By David Adesnik, FDD

At a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week, senators from across the political spectrum pressed the Biden administration to isolate Syria’s criminal regime and fully enforce the human rights sanctions Congress has mandated. The committee members’ dissatisfaction reinforced bipartisan warnings from senior lawmakers that they firmly oppose U.S. toleration of regional efforts to rehabilitate the Damascus dictatorship.

Wednesday’s hearing represented the first time during President Joe Biden’s tenure that a senior official appeared before the committee to testify about Syria. Ambassador Barbara Leaf, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, won Senate confirmation only last month but worked on the same portfolio for the National Security Council since January 2021.

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Syria became like Germany was to Europe during the Thirty Years’ War – a place where countries intervene and where the locals pay the price.

By SETH J. FRANTZMAN, JPOST

A view shows a damaged house in Umm al-Keif village, near Tal Tamer, in northeastern Syria, June 10, 2022
(photo credit: STRINGER/ REUTERS)

Syria is in the crosshairs of renewed focus. This takes place in the context of Russia’s conflict in Ukraine and Russia-US tensions, as well as Israel-Iran tensions. Part of the new focus is known, but recent reports seem to point to shifting tectonics on Syria and raise questions about what might come next.

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BY FOREIGN DESK NEWS   JUNE 21, 2022

Iranian retirees protest on June 8. rferl.org

In recent months, Iranian citizens ranging from farmers, teachers, pensioners, students, women, and many others have taken to the streets throughout Iran to protest the economic and political conditions under the Islamic Republic. Protesters peacefully took to the streets with signs and banners in the country’s capital, Tehran, and other cities including Isfahan, Ahvaz, Shiraz, and others, chanting for the downfall of current hardline President Ebrahim Raisi outside government buildings. Despite the crackdowns and arrests, protesters continue to amass in large numbers, leading to increased fear from Islamic Republic officials.
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Letter to the Editor

by Daniel Pipes, Wall Street Journal    June 19, 2022

https://www.danielpipes.org/21275/israel-is-the-least-stolen-land

To the Editor:

In “‘Native Land Acknowledgments’ Are the Latest Woke Ritual” (op-ed, June 11), Eugene Kontorovich elegantly ridicules the budding leftist requirement that public statements be prefaced by a ceremonial nod to the peoples who once inhabited roughly our territories, thereby honoring their supposed moral superiority.

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By Soeren Kern, GATESTONE  •  June 21, 2022

• As the war has dragged on, European unity has collapsed and efforts to transform the European Union into a European superstate — a United States of Europe — have been exposed for what they are: delusions of grandeur.
• The EU’s largest member states — France and Germany — have sought to appease Putin at the expense of Ukrainian sovereignty. French President Emmanuel Macron, the strongest backer of European strategic autonomy, insists that Putin should not be “humiliated” and has even called on Ukraine to make territorial concessions to help the Russian dictator save face.

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By David Solway, PJ MEDIA

The Ron is young, successful, formidable, and much admired for his courage and practical intelligence. He would make a great president. The Don is aggressive in his demeanor, tends to polarize people, and would rouse opposition to his candidacy, especially from the Fourth and Fifth Estates. All this is true, though few seem to realize that the Ron, should he receive the Republican nomination, would face a media barrage of hostility and disinformation no less virulent. The fact is, I believe, that the debate between the relative merits and strengths of the Ron and the Don is utterly irrelevant and nothing short of a logomachic distraction. Read more…

Wouldn’t be the first time a   Jew – Volodymyr Zelenskyy—was anti  Jewish !!

The Danger of the Jewish Progressive Hate Group, If Not Now

Despite Ukraine’s record of voting against Israel at the UN, its embassy in Israel launches scathing social media campaign accusing Jerusalem of not helping Ukrainian soldiers due to their nationality.

By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News

The Ukrainian Embassy in Israel launched a scathing social media campaign on Sunday, slamming the Jewish State for not treating wounded Ukrainian soldiers in Israeli hospitals and suggesting that the country was not fulfilling its humanitarian obligations.

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Articles about the collapse of Israel’s government from the WSJ, NYT, JNS and Haaretz are included

[Note by Tom Gross]

Israel’s government collapsed last night, marking the end of the most diverse ruling coalition in Israel’s history, and just a few days after it marked its first anniversary in office.

Naftali Bennett becomes Israel’s shortest-serving prime minister. Personally I think he has done relatively well, as I said in this short TV interview last week. But others would say his government was doomed to fail from the start and fail it did.

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T. Belman.  I hate it when Muslims force non Muslim countries to accommodate the demands of Islam. Muslims should have to accommodate themselves when living in non Muslim countries.

 – Iran Foreign Ministry Says: ‘Muslims Are Satisfied With The Stance Of Indian Officials’

MEMRI, Special Dispatch    6.20.22

Iranian Foreign Minister Amir Abdollahian along with his Indian counterpart Jaishankar

On June 8, 2022, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), at the meeting of its 35-nation board of governors, passed a resolution, condemning Iran for its failure to provide technically credible evidence about the detection of nuclear traces at its three nuclear sites. While Russia and China voted against the resolution, India joined Pakistan and Libya to abstain from voting against Iran.[1] An Indian activist tweeted: “Iran joined Pakistan and Libya to slam India on #ProphetMuhammad issue and India joined Pakistan and Libya to abstain from vote on IAEA resolution slamming Iran. What kind of foreign policy our country is having?”[2]

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The fear is that the internal battles between Mahmoud Abbas’ potential successors could lead to anarchy in the areas under the Palestinian Authority’s control.

By  Prof. Eyal Zisser, IH   19.6.22

Mahmoud Abbad has survived four prime ministers and seven defense ministers throughout his 17 years as president of the Palestinian Authority, and those numbers could rise even more considering the deep crisis in which Israel’s political system is mired.

This is not to say, however, that Abbas or the authority he heads is strong. For years now he has been little more than a figurehead whose power barely projects beyond the Mukata presidential compound in Ramallah.

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T. Belman. Goldman may be right in everything he wrote except for this,

“His obsession with the highly-improbable notion that vote fraud decided the 2020 election is self-destructive. His encouragement of the Jan 6 Capitol Hill protests — to whatever extent it occurred — was ill-considered in the extreme.”

He takes a cheap shot at Putin, “There’s nothing to like about him.” while at the same time acknowledging ” the boss of bosses who rationalized and limited the looting and allowed Russia to get back on its feet.”

By David P. Goldman, PJ MEDIA      JUN 19, 2022

Former President Donald Trump told the “Road to Majority” conference in Nashville on June 17:

Why exactly are we coddling him in his preposterous demands?

By Hugh Fitzgerald, FPM     20.6.22

The Palestinian Authority’s president, Mahmoud Abbas, wants to “pressure” the American government to do his bidding before Biden visits the Middle East on a trip scheduled for this July. A report on the rich fantasy life of Abbas is here:

“Feeding Palestinian delusions,” by Mitchell Bard,

JNS.org, June 8, 2022:

“Palestinian Leadership Plans to Increase Pressure on U.S. ahead of Biden’s Visit.”

This headline in the Daily Alert was illustrative of why Palestinian delusions are mainly responsible for their plight. The article associated with the headline said the Palestinians want to “turn the screws on the White House in order to secure lucrative overtures from the Americans.”

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