By MARTIN SHERMAN

Legal proceedings are being carried out with scant regard for the law. In some cases, the law is blatantly disregarded; in others, factual evidence is ignored; in yet others, infractions are invented to fabricate charges. All cases have been approved by the courts.

Confidence in Israel’s justice system, once so high, has slumped, and the time has come for the system to stop blaming everyone but itself. – Prof. Yuval Elbashan, in  Justice – The public’s loss of trust, Dec 30, 2021.

Read more…

THE ATLANTIC 

RIYADH – Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman discussed the future of the Kingdom and its economy, as well as foreign policy stances involving Iran, Israel and the US.

In an published by The Atlantic on Thursday, the Crown Prince affirmed that no one have the right to interfere in the Kingdom’s internal affairs, pointing out that the Kingdom is a G20 country growing fast.

The Atlantic

I’ve been coming back here since 2019. Every time it’s a little more different, more modern, more advanced, 2030 gets closer, and it gets a little bit more like Dubai, even a little bit more like America. Do you think Saudi Arabia will become less Saudi and more like the rest of the world?
Read more…

By Valerie Sobel

Concentration camps. Death is looming. Separation of lovers. Naked bodies in queue for showers of gas poison. Only way out of the despair on this march to imminent death in the crematorium is to surrender to the thoughts of a loved one.

…not exactly the imagery I concocted in my head when I listened for the last 30+ years to the prolific love hymn by Leonard Cohen. But, boy oh boy, was I wrong…!

Read more…

by Linda Goudsmit, PUNDICITY

I have read multiple western analysts discuss the Russia/Ukraine situation. For me, the Russia/Ukraine debacle is all political theater designed to deflect public attention away from Biden’s demented incompetence and the pandemic, and refocus public attention on the fearsome specter of war. I will explain.

The Russia/Ukraine events are staged political theater with lethal consequences – just like Jan 6th and the Covid pandemic were constructions of the managerial state with devastating lethal consequences. Death is very persuasive. Cinema verité is required to achieve globalism’s objectives.

Read more…

T. Belman. Why isn’t Russia stalling this deal until the Ukraine is settled? Why would Russia want to have Iran oil replace Russian oil. Doesn’t make sense. Plus the availability of Iranian oil would reduce the price of oil and Russia’s revenue as a result.

Eurasia’s Henry Rome said “Russia may intend to use Iran as a route to bypass Western sanctions. A written guarantee allowing Russia to do so is probably well beyond the realm of what Washington can offer in the midst of a full-scale war in Ukraine.” That suggests that Russia is negotiating a sweet-heart deal for Iran in exchange of Iran cooperating with Russia to avoid sanctions.

Recently, I read that the purpose of the new deal is to slow Iran’s march to the bomb. Whatever happened to the claim that the deal is to prevent Iran from getting the bomb.

Moscow makes last-minute demands as Tehran promises to boost oil production and market shuns Russian crude.

BY STEPHANIE LIECHTENSTEIN, POLITICO    Mar 5/22

VIENNA — Moscow is throwing up last-minute demands that could scupper an international nuclear deal with Iran — and the timing is unlikely to be coincidental as the Kremlin frets about the growing threat to its critical oil revenue after its invasion of Ukraine.

Hopes had been high that international negotiators from the permanent five members of the U.N. Security Council, Germany and the EU would be able to secure a deal with Tehran on Saturday to put strict limits on Iran’s atomic work in exchange for sanctions relief for the Islamic Republic.

Read more…

T. Belman. No one would accuse Gravitas of being pro-Putin. This report is extremely well researched.

Paralysed by Ukraine, the Russian president will need his security services to keep him in power

 By Mark Galeotti, THE TIMES

Vladimir Putin, once a wily political operator, is painting himself into a corner. His initial calculation seems to have been that Kyiv would fall in two days and the whole operation would be over in a fortnight.

Given that Putin does not believe that Ukraine is a real country, perhaps it is not surprising that he assumed it would fall apart at the first push. The Ukrainians had different ideas and the Russians are defaulting to their more habitual way of war, assembling huge task forces and relying on massed bombardments to prepare the ground for their advance.

Read more…

Jews will always forgive, always err on the side of helping their fellow man, often to their own detriment. But Ukraine?

By Valerie Sobel , INN

Valerie SobelCourtesy

Israelis who want to rally for Ukraine? Why is this remarkable when there are rallies in other parts of the world?

Because the antisemitic murderous savagery of Ukrainians was only second to Nazi Germans. (Some will take me to task on this generous statement and rightfully so.)

Most of the Israeli rally enthusiasts are emigres from Ukraine, who lost ancestors in horrendous Ukrainian atrocities against the Jews. An estimated 2M people lie in unmarked graves throughout Ukraine, murdereed at the hands of Germans and their enthusiastic collaborators, Ukrainians. One of the most tragic pogroms in Ukraine against the Jews happened in 1946, after the tragedy of the Holocaust was over, at the hands of Ukraine national hero, Stepan Bandera and his loyalists.

Read more…

by Victor Rosenthal       March 6, 2022

The Jewish Press reports:

Hundreds of members of the Reform and Conservative movements from Israel and the United States arrived on Friday morning at the Kotel plaza for the Rosh Chodesh Adar B prayer. They were met with enormous resistance from mostly Haredi Jews, including an estimated ten thousand seminary women who followed the instructions of two leaders of the Haredi Lithuanian public, Rabbis Chaim Kanievsky and Gershon Edelstein, to protest the Reform and Conservative presence. Large police forces separated the two parties of obviously God-loving Jews.

There are life-and-death issues that Israel and its leaders are contending with today, and this isn’t one of them. But in the long term, the unity or lack thereof of the Jewish people will have effects on them no less serious than the threat of the Iranian bomb or the invasion of Ukraine.

Read more…

BY Eric R. Mandel, MEPIN    — 03/05/22

More proof that our lead Iranian nuclear negotiator, Robert Malley, has given away the store and undermined American national security interests.

Shocking video: This is the lead Russian negotiator for the Iran nuclear talks, Mikhail Ulyanov.

He’s bragging about how Russia, Iran, and China teamed up to deliver huge wins for Iran’s nuclear program in Vienna negotiations. pic.twitter.com/oiTOgfh99i

— POLARIS (@polarisnatsec) March 6, 2022

By Daniel Greenfield, FPM    Mar 4/22

Russia, with a birth rate of 1.5 children per woman, has invaded Ukraine, where the birth rate is 1.2 children per woman, to determine which nation with below replacement birth rates will go extinct the fastest. In the long run the only winners of the war to determine whether Ukraine will belong to the 1.2 or 1.5 people will be the Chechen and other Muslim soldiers doing the fighting.

The Chechens have a birth rate of 2.5. Their religion and mosques are more likely to inherit the territories they are fighting over than either the Russian or Ukrainian Orthodox churches.

Read more…

by Howard Rotberg, NER

The presidency is not merely an administrative office…It is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt

“For Russia, there is not and there may not be another political option but democracy. However, Russian democracy is… not at all the realization of standards imposed on us from outside.”
– Vladimir Putin

For many years now, war has been an alien concept in the West, especially for the Woke Left. When it came to Afghanistan, President Biden knew his base would not object if he just pulled out the troops, leaving American allies to their fate, and gifting billions of dollars of military equipment to the Taliban. Perhaps war was seen as something America was unsuccessful in and should avoid at all costs.

Read more…

The Biden administration is poised to surrender to Iran. Israel is on its own against a genocidal regime

By Melanie Phillips    Mar 6/22

The invasion of Ukraine has sounded a red alert for Israel, and also presented it with an acute problem.

Israel enjoys warm relations with Ukraine, identifying with it as a small state under attack simply because it exists.

Yet it’s essential that Israel does nothing to provoke Russia. For Israel has flown hundreds of sorties against Iranian assets in Syria. Russia backs Iran in Syria. Russia has however looked the other way while Israel bombs Iranian targets.
Read more…

By Ian Schwartz, REAL CLEAR POLITICS   On Date March 5, 2022

Ret Col. Douglas Macgregor said a neutral Ukraine would be good for us and good for Ukraine as it would create a buffer both sides want in an interview on Fox Business with host Stuart Varney. Macgregor called Zelensky a “puppet” and said he is “dragging this out” and using civilians as a shield by sending armed forces into populated areas.

“Surprisingly little damage, frankly. Much less damage than we inflicted on Iraq when we went into it in ’91 and again in 2003,” Macgregor said of Russia’s shelling of Ukrainian cities. “Mr. Zelensky, I think, is postponing the inevitable in the hopes that we are going to rescue him, and we are not coming. President Biden has made that very clear.”

Read more…

By Editorial Team, BLITZ    Mar 5/22

Hezbollah has warned the moderate (i.e., anti-Iran) Arab states about the lessons the war in Ukraine should have taught them, writes Hugh Fitzgerald

Hezbollah has warned the moderate (i.e., anti-Iran) Arab states about the lessons the war in Ukraine should have taught them. A report on Hezbollah’s most peculiar interpretation of the war and Western sanctions is here: “Russian Invasion of Ukraine Is Warning to Arab States With Ties to ‘Zionist Regime,’ Senior Hezbollah Leader Declares,” by Ben Cohen, Algemeiner, February 28, 2022:
Read more…

By JASON BRESLOW, NPR   Mar 1/22

Omar Haj Kadour/AFP via Getty Images

As Russian forces began their invasion of Ukraine last week, artists in the Syrian city of Binnish painted a mural to show solidarity with Ukraine. It was painted on what’s left of a home destroyed by Russian aircraft during Syria’s civil war.

Within hours of the Russian invasion of Ukraine last week, a new mural could be seen on the side of a bombed-out home in the Syrian city of Binnish. It showed a map of Ukraine, painted in the yellow and blue of the nation’s flag, under attack by a large brown Russian bear. Piles of rubble littered the ground around the building, remnants of the Russian air campaign in Syria’s civil war.

Read more…

By Duncan Randall, FPRI   Mar 3/22

In recent months, the phone lines between Ankara and Tel Aviv have been unusually busy. In November, following the release of an Israeli couple that had been detained while vacationing in Istanbul, Israeli President Isaac Herzog rang his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdo?an, thanking the leader for his role in resolving the crisis. Shortly after, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett followed suit in what was the first official conversation between Turkish and Israeli heads of government since 2013.

On January 20, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavu?o?lu phoned his Israeli counterpart, Yair Lapid, wishing him well following his recovery from COVID-19. This call was similarly unprecedented as the two sides’ foreign ministers had not spoken in well over a decade. Days later, Erdo?an called Herzog for the second time since he took office in July of 2021, offering his condolences over the death of his counterpart’s mother. When news broke that Erdo?an had contracted COVID-19, it was no surprise to see Herzog among the first to call and check in on the leader.

Read more…

Ankara faces increasing pressure to choose between Moscow and Kyiv.

BY DIMITAR BECHEV, POLITICO    March 2, 2022 4:00 am

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdo?an | Vladimir Smirnov/AFP Pool via Getty Images

Though it has only been less than one week, the war in Ukraine has already changed the face of Europe — for the worse.

Outside of the immediate conflict, one of the countries most affected is Turkey, which has profited from strong ties to both Moscow and Kyiv for a long time. Ankara’s delicate balancing act between its two partners is becoming much more difficult to sustain as the fighting intensifies and the West ratchets up pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin. As a part of NATO and a regional heavyweight, Turkey is under great pressure to finally pick a side.
Read more…

By Jalel Harchaoui, WAR ON THE ROCKS   Jan 7/22

Russia has been doing well in Libya — and it likes the fact that few seem to notice it. When describing the relationship between eastern Libyan-based commander Khalifa Haftar and the Kremlin, press articles have been littered with phrases such as “the Russian-backed Libyan general,” “Moscow’s man,” and other verbiage that gives the impression of a straightforward dynamic whereby the Russian state bets and relies on Haftar and therefore focuses on supporting, not undermining, him. Yet a more granular timeline of events reveals a different reality.

Since 2014, the United Arab Emirates has been a steadfast, generous, and consequential foreign benefactor for the strongman of Benghazi. In contrast, Russia’s attitude toward him has been complex and ambivalent. The old concept of proxy warfare, whereby a foreign actor chooses indigenous agents as the conduit of its weapons, training and funding, is of little pertinence in the case of Russia’s Libya policy. To increase little by little its sway over Libya’s centers of decision-making, Moscow has followed a less intuitive, more innovative methodology. And it has done so successfully thus far.

Read more…