White House: Biden vowed to boost defense ties, stressed need for peace with Palestinians, region; PMO: They discussed building on normalization deals, Iran nuclear threat, COVID

By JACOB MAGID, TOI 7 February 2021,

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to US President Joe Biden on February 17, 2021. (Prime Minister’s Office)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke on the phone with US President Joe Biden Tuesday for the first time since the president took office four weeks ago.

Netanyahu was the first Middle Eastern leader to receive a call from Biden, but the 12th world leader overall. The long weeks of silence since Biden took office had led many to wonder whether the White House was snubbing its longtime ally, given Netanyahu’s frosty relationship with former Democratic president Barack Obama and his overwhelmingly warm ties with the more recent Donald Trump.

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Russian-speaking Israelis are skeptical of anything promoted by the government, and exposed to an industry of anti-western propaganda from Russia. Even worse, some Yisrael Beytenu party activists have crossed the line and are politicizing the vaccine.

By  Ariel Bulshtein, IH     02-17-2021 

An breakdown of the data about COVID vaccinations by population sector leads us to a supposedly astonishing conclusion: Relatively few Russian-speaking Israelis have gotten vaccinated. This is especially strange given that this sector is known for being highly educated, and could therefore be expected to appreciate the scientific achievement that led to the vaccine and use it to protect themselves.
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jns

Officials in the Biden administration announced a shift in U.S. Middle East foreign policy on Tuesday towards a more critical stance on Saudi Arabia while opening the door for direct diplomacy with Iran.

In a briefing with reporters at the White House, spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that U.S. President Joe Biden would conduct diplomacy directly through Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz rather than his powerful son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

“We’ve made clear from the beginning that we are going to recalibrate our relationship with Saudi Arabia,” said Psaki.

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T. Belman.  Notwithstanding the anti-Israel position of the quartet, including Russia, I am collaborating with a Russian émigré to Israel, to co-author an article about Russian Israeli relations.  The purpose of the article is to suggest it is possible for Putin to carry on Trump’s peace plan and the Abrahamic Accords now that Biden wants to abandon at least the peace plan.  In this scenario, Russia could also use its veto in the Security Council when America refrains from doing so , a la Obama.  This would strengthen Russia influence in the ME and undermine Biden’s leverage on Israel.

The Israeli-Palestinian peace process has been frozen since April 2014

By TOVAH LAZAROFF, JPOST FEBRUARY 17, 2021

A Palestinian demonstrator returns a tear gas canister fired by Israeli troops during a protest against Israeli settlements, In Beit Dajan in the West Bank February 12, 2021.  (photo credit: MOHAMAD TOROKMAN/REUTERS)

The Middle East Quartet has pushed for renewed involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the absence of any active peace initiatives to resume negotiations between the parties.

On Monday, envoys from the UN, the EU, the US and Russia held its first virtual conversation since US President Joe Biden entered the White House last month.

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By Geller Report Staff – on February 17, 2021

To make matters worse is that 600-plus Jewish groups are on record supporting this anti-Semitic hate group.

Marc Lamont Hill Says That Black Lives Matter ‘Explicitly’ Looking To ‘Dismantle’ Israel and ‘Embrace’ BDS Movement

By Daily Wire, February 16, 2021

On February 6, the Democratic Socialists of America hosted an online panel discussion titled “DSA, BDS, and Palestine Solidarity.” One of the panelists was Marc Lamont Hill, a professor of media studies and urban education at Temple University and outspoken Black Lives Matter activist, who admitted that one of the explicit goals of the Black Lives Matter movement was to “embrace BDS” and “dismantle” the Jewish State of Israel.

“This generation of activists say ‘No, let’s defund. No, no, let’s abolish. Let’s imagine new possibilities,’ and one of the new possibilities that they’ve imagined, um, is a world where, that is anti-imperialist,” stated Hill.

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By Matthew Ehret, STRATEGIC CULTURE
February 15, 2021

Conspiracies for good and for evil do exist now, as they have from time immemorial, Matthew Ehret writes. The only question is which intention do you want to devote your life towards?

If you are starting to feel like forces controlling the governments of the west are out to get you, then it is likely that you are either a paranoid nut job, or a stubborn realist.

Either way, it means that you have some major problems on your hands.

If you don’t happen to find yourself among the tinfoil hat-wearing strata of conspiracy theorists waiting in a bunker for aliens to either strike down or save society from the shape shifting lizard people, but are rather contemplating how, in the 1960s, a shadow government took control of society over the dead bodies of many assassinated patriots, then certain conclusions tend to arise.
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By Dennis Prager

Let us begin with this fact: The left always suppresses speech. Since Vladimir Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917, there has been no example of the left in control and not crushing dissent.

That is one of the important differences between liberal and left: Liberalism and liberals believe in free speech. (The present leftist threat to freedom in America, the greatest threat to freedom in American history, is made possible because liberals think they have more to fear from conservatives than from the left. Liberals do not understand that the left regards liberals as their useful idiots.)

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BY EPOCH TIMES STAFF  February 16, 2021

Former President Donald Trump issued a statement on Mitch McConnell on Tuesday.

Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America

The Republican Party can never again be respected or strong with political “leaders” like Sen. Mitch McConnell at its helm. McConnell’s dedication to business as usual, status quo policies, together with his lack of political insight, wisdom, skill, and personality, has rapidly driven him from Majority Leader to Minority Leader, and it will only get worse. The Democrats and Chuck Schumer play McConnell like a fiddle—they’ve never had it so good—and they want to keep it that way! We know our America First agenda is a winner, not McConnell’s Beltway First agenda or Biden’s America Last.

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T. Belman.  I have outed Steele as a flaming antisemite before.  I hesitated before posting this article but decided that its best for my followers to be informed just how vile, antisemites, in general and Steele in particular, can be.  Let me know if I err in so doing.

Robert Steele: On the Zionist Parasite — America First Demands An End to Israel First (Treason) UPDATE on Zionist Funding & Control of Black Lives Matters, Pieczenik Video (7:13)  2020/07/04

A very erudite and principled individual, albeit poorly informed on the matter of the Zionist parasite in the USA, led me to believe that President Donald Trump will never accept help from Cynthia McKinney (or me) because of our deep-seated views on the matter of Zionism as a parasite that has hollowed out the American economy, captured both the federal and state governments (and now with George Soros is focusing on county governments), and diminished our society by destroying belief in faith, family, and freedom.  Below is my response to this most valued colleague.
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UN Watch Briefing February 16, 2021

A view of the U.N. Human Rights Council special session on “The deteriorating human-rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem,” May 2018.

By Eliana Rudee, JNS February 15, 2021

Geneva-based independent human-rights group UN Watch published a detailed report in advance of the 46th session of the U.N. Human Rights Council, which is scheduled to open this month on Feb. 22 in Geneva and run until March 23. The study debunks more than 20 different major accusations leveled by numerous different countries—accusing Israel of violating Palestinians’ religious freedom, damaging their health and practicing racism.

In its first-ever report that thoroughly fact-checked and responded to the UNHRC’s anti-Israel claims, UN Watch released its 58-page “Agenda Item 7: Country Claims & UN Watch Responses” examining 23 accusations made by various countries under Agenda Item 7 against Israel in the period covering the six UNHRC sessions held in 2019 and 2020.
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With ‘Mandalorian’ star dropped by Lucasfilm, conservative commentator’s Daily Wire to produce her next work; she lauds message of hope in face of ‘totalitarian mob’

By TOI STAFF and AFP         13 February 2021, 

Gina Carano poses at the Disney + launch event promoting ‘The Mandalorian’ at the London West Hollywood hotel in West Hollywood, Calif., Oct. 19. 2019 (Mark Von Holden/Invision/AP)<
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Shortly after she was kicked off hit Star Wars TV series “The Mandalorian” for her controversial social media posts, actress Gina Carano made a deal Friday to produce a film with conservative website The Daily Wire.

The website, run by Jewish conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, agreed to fund the film, which Carano will produce and star in.

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MEMRI

• Former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi: We Arabs Wanted To Throw Israel Into The Sea But Failed; Now I Support A Just, Comprehensive, Lasting Peace With Israel
• Iraqi Politician And Militia Leader Muqtada Al-Sadr: We Will Not Allow Normalization With Israel, ‘Even If We Have To Die For It;’ Biden Administration Must Remove American Occupation From Iraq

Biden Is Tested By Attack at Erbil That Injured a GI

By BENNY AVNI, Special to the Sun | February 16, 2021

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By Christina Wong, BRIETBART

The Pentagon, in the three weeks that Joe Biden has been president, has turned the department’s attention from outside threats towards potential threats from inside the military.

Former President Donald Trump’s first military priorities were to rebuild the military, defeat the Islamic State, and focus on the threat from China. For this, he chose retired Marine Gen. Jim Mattis as his first defense secretary. Trump’s first military-related executive orders were to rebuild the armed forces and to establish new vetting measures to keep “radical Islamic terrorists” out of the U.S. — which critics panned as a “Muslim ban.”

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By Andrew G. Benjamin, CFP February 15, 2021

The only mobs the impeachers failed to impeach were the nine Democrat mobs that incited the Washington DC riots.

Nine Democrat mobs incited the riots by shutting down the president’s and The People’s voice in the media, at Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Google, You Tube. They incited by blocking out the facts behind the corrupt self-dealing Joe Biden Crime Family. They incited by deplatforming the Trump Administration’s massive achievements as well as the president’s accounts; they incited by fake-reporting Trump having saved the lives of tens, possibly hundreds of millions. These nine mobs have the only voice heard—inciting.

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https://rumble.com/embed/vb94lf/?pub=9yho0

https://rumble.com/embed/vb94lf/?pub=9yho0

by Marilyn Stern
Middle East Forum Webinar  February 14, 2021

Nave Dromi, director of the Middle East Forum’s office in Israel, spoke to participants in a December 24 Middle East Forum webinar (video) about the achievements of the Israel Victory Project (IVP). Introduced by Middle East Forum President Daniel Pipes in 2017, IVP advances a new paradigm for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict centered on defeating the Palestinians and convincing them to abandon their rejection of the Jewish state.

Dromi focused on IVP activities in Israel, where IVP partners with former high-ranking Israel Defense Forces (IDF) commanders and other opinion leaders across the political spectrum to promote the Israel Victory (IV) paradigm and “bring [it] to the front of the Israeli discourse” through articles, media interviews, and events. Reflecting the success of these efforts, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Gen. Aviv Kochavi has abandoned the tepid vocabulary used by his predecessors to describe the IDF’s mission, which is now explicitly geared to “the need to defeat Israel’s enemies.”

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