by Marilyn Stern, Middle East Forum Webinar

Alejandro Macarrón, a Spanish demographer, spoke to participants in a July 27 Middle East Forum Webinar (video) regarding the future ramifications of the West’s declining fertility rates.

Throughout the West, fertility rates (the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime) have dropped well below 2.1, the level needed to avoid net population decline. According to Macarrón, there are three main consequences of having more deaths than births among the native population.

First, “the demographic weight of the West in the world” has been declining. The percentage of the global population comprised by the U.S. and Canada has shrunk from 6.8% to 4.7% since 1950. Europe has declined from close to 22% of the global population to less than 10% today.

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National Cyber Directorate personnel spend every waking hour warding off the wide array of cyberattacks launched at Israel on all levels by terrorist groups, hackers, and malicious state actors. NCD chief Yigal Unna: Cyber threats to Israel only expected to grow.

By  Yoav Limor, ISRAEL HAYOM

National Cyber Directorate Head Yigal Unna | Photo: Oded Karni

Walking into the Tel Aviv office of Israel National Cyber Directorate Head Yigal Unna, you immediately notice a very specific memento – a weighted plaque with a golden plate that he was awarded by his counterparts in the United Arab Emirates. Unna was part of the historic delegation that traveled to Abu Dhabi last month after the landmark peace deal between Israel and the UAE was announced, and the plaque sheds light on the deep cyber and technological ties between the two countries.

“The potential vis-à-vis the UAE is endless,” he told Israel Hayom. “We have the knowledge, tools, and capabilities that can offer the issues they’re dealing with the best solutions in the world. In terms of cybersecurity, Israel is one of the most protected countries in the world. We want them to be as protected as we are.”

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A new Center for American Greatness survey finds President Trump leading Joe Biden in battleground Nevada.

By Chris Buskirk, AMER GREATNESS

Joe Biden has a problem. Actually, he has a few problems. Recent polling shows that Donald Trump is running much stronger with Hispanics and black voters than he did in 2016. Those are demographic groups that Biden needs to win big if he has any hope of winning the election. If Trump’s strength with these voters continues, it will doom Biden and lead to a second Trump term.

In Florida, an NBC/Marist poll conducted earlier this month showed President Trump with 50 percent of the Hispanic vote to Biden’s 46 percent. In 2016, Clinton won 62 percent of Hispanics compared to 35 percent for Trump. Trump is also outperforming 2016 with black Floridians. The same poll shows him with 11 percent support compared to 8 percent in the last election. If those numbers hold, Florida is simply unwinnable for Biden.

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[Black Appraisals of Black Lives Matter – Part I]

Black Lives Matter: “We Are Trained Marxists” – Part I

Black Lives Matter: “We Will Burn Down This System” – Part II

A Brief History of Antifa: Part I

A Brief History of Antifa: Part II

by Soeren Kern  •  September 30, 2020

• “BLM are basically, in my opinion, profiteers. They are profiting on trying to give a narrative, a false narrative, that is: ‘white racist cops are destroying the black community.’ No BLM presence walking through Chicago protesting black-on-black crime. You know why? Because it is not profitable. There is no money to be made.” — Leo Terrell, civil rights attorney and lifelong Democrat.
• “Black Lives Matter does not support the critical civil rights issue of this day… educational freedom. How many young black kids are relegated to failing public schools in failing neighborhoods? Where does BLM stand on that issue? They stand with the progressive socialist left and the teachers unions. Ask yourself, has BLM ever condemned the action of Barack Obama in April 2009 to cancel the DC school voucher program?” — Allen West, former U.S. Congressman for Florida and retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel.
• Read more…

By Prof. Hillel Frisch, BESA  September 30, 2020

IDF Caterpillar D9 bulldozer demolishing home of terrorist, image via Wikimedia Commons

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The skewed reporting of housing demolitions in the West Bank is yet another tool with which the EU engages in blatant discrimination against Israel. But does it help the Palestinians? Readily available information on such demolitions suggests that the EU’s bias hurts them more than it benefits them.

Entering the phrase “housing demolitions” in the EU’s official site yields a shocking result: 18 of the first documents to appear concern Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes in the West Bank. In other words, 80% of the EU’s reports on this worldwide phenomenon involve a population and an area less that one-tenth of 1% of the world’s population or landmass.

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T. Belman. “By any interpretation, if our right to extend sovereignty immediately is suspended so should our obligation to freeze construction for 4 years and enter negotiations. But no one has mentioned this. In fact, Israel thinks it is still bound by the freeze even though the right to immediately extend sovereignty has been suspended.”

But not to worry, the plan and suspension will be overtaken by events long before the year is up.

By Ted Belman

Speaking with Efi Triger on Galei Tzahal Wednesday morning, Ambassador David Friedman said the sovereignty plan has been suspended for at least one year – possibly longer – but emphasized that it has not been taken off the table.

“The words that we chose was to suspend the declaration of sovereignty,”

“It means temporarily. It could take a year or two or more before we are back to that issue.”

“It just means that for the time being, it’s on pause. For this year, it’s not going to move forward, but later on, we’ll see – it’s not off the table.”

“It was decided now with the Israeli government to use all available means to expand Israel’s diplomatic profile in the region. That means normalization with Gulf states and efforts to move more embassies to Jerusalem.”

I read the plan when it was released and came up with this understanding
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Arab media outlets report that US expected to announce in October date for deal brokered by Trump administration between Israel and Lebanon.

By Arutz Sheva Staff

Israel and Lebanon are set to sign a border agreement delineating the maritime frontier between the two countries, Arab media outlets have reported.

The deal is expected to be announced sometime during October, the reports claim.

The Trump administration worked to broker the agreement, and Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Schenker is expected to travel to Lebanon in the near future to finalize the date for the signing of the deal.
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By Ted Belman

I watched the whole thing live and felt Biden won for the following reasons,

– Biden spoke directly to the cameras and came across as sincere and believable
– Biden had the benefit of being able to attack Trumps actions or lack thereof for the last 3.5 years. That put Trump on the defensive.
– Trump spent too much time defending himself rather than making the case for himself.
– Instead should have said each time “There he goes again with his fake news” before extolling all the good he has done.
– Trump’s folksy manner at rallies doesn’t work in a debate.
– Trump should have had set speeches ready for expected questions. He relied on extemporaneous comments. He was not effective.
– Trump’s tactic of hounding Biden didn’t serve him well.
– It was very difficult to defend his pandemic performance. There were too many issues to address.
– Trump should have had a prepared speech for the pandemic in which he listed all the stuff he did do
– Trump should not have tried to defend himself.
– Trump should have had a set speech to use for the charge that he was a racist. He could have listed all his great accomplishments.
– Trump spent too much time bringing up Biden’s lack of accomplishments over the years. He should have spent his time listing his own accomplishments.

I blame his handlers for their choice of tactics.

Dr. James M. Dorsey, BESA

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: There are two ways Beijing could signal its interest in moving ahead with a proposed $400 billion economic and military cooperation agreement with Iran: by pushing for Iranian membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and renewing interest in a China-Pakistan-Iran-Turkey energy pipeline. China has not moved on either one.

While converting Iran’s SCO observer status into membership would primarily signal Chinese interest in substantially increasing its engagement with the Islamic Republic, moving ahead with the China-Pakistan-Iran- Turkey energy pipeline could be a geopolitical game changer.

China’s refusal to signal interest in putting flesh on the skeleton of its partnership with Iran following the leaking of a purported wide-ranging agreement between the two countries suggests that the People’s Republic neither wants to increase tension with Washington by blatantly violating harsh US sanctions against the Islamic Republic nor upset its balancing of relations with Iran’s regional rival, Saudi Arabia. Read more…

‘Progress’ and the pitfalls of obedience.

By John Waters, FPM   Mon Sep 28, 2020

Possibly the most bewildering of the mysteries emanating from continuing global lockdown authoritarianism is the recurring thought concerning the way once workaday politicians and boy-next-door police officers have overnight transformed into tyrants. We have observed the syndrome relayed on an almost daily basis in the past month from Australia, where the premier of Victoria, Daniel Andrews has, from the womb of his patent stupidity, given birth to a despotism as repulsive as his hitherto unexceptionable features have become.

Having incarcerated his previously sovereign citizens in their homes and issued prohibitions on protest and dissent, he stands daily before the press to obfuscate about public health. Nor has he found a shortage of able lieutenants in the police force of Victoria, members of which happily arrest pregnant women for objecting to this tyranny on Facebook, or drag citizens from their cars for refusing to bend to their commands, or place face masks as though they were thorny crowns on arrested citizens once subdued. All this in the name of the ‘common good’.
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BY Tyler O’Neil, PJ MEDIA

This week, President Donald Trump appointed J. Christian Adams to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. A former Department of Justice (DOJ) civil rights election lawyer, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, and a PJ Media columnist, Adams champions the original meaning of the Civil Rights Amendments (the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution). In an exclusive interview with PJ Media after his appointment, Adams explained why his commitment to protecting the civil rights of all Americans — including whites — not only honors Americans’ Civil War sacrifices but undermines the Left’s dangerous redefinition of civil rights, a Marxist vision that is fueling the violent riots in Portland, Seattle, and Chicago.

“The Left will use civil rights as a racial identity tool for collective power. They think that empowering certain groups of people through the law is a way for them to get and assert power. I view it as an individual thing, not a collective thing. I view it as to whether a person is discriminated against by their government, for example. That’s a real victim, that’s a real harm,”

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T.  Belman. Dr Mandel is wrong to lump Trump in with Biden in his first paragraph.  Never once did Trump or his team refer to democracy  or rule of law as a goal. They accept the Muslim world as it is and simply want to make deals based on shared interests.  Nor is Trump wanting to withdraw from the Middle East because he thinks  “the conflicts are insolvable”. Nor is he abandoning US interests there. He is committed to containing Russia and Iran and therefore China. What he is doing is building up a western alliance lead by Israel to protect US interests there.

He is right to make the point that “artificially constructed multi-religious and multi-ethnic states” are a prescription for instability. But he fails to apply this reasoning to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.  It is for this reason that I have been working to reconstitute Jordan as the Palestinian state and Israel, west of the Jordan R, as the Jewish state. My plan also involves the emigration of Palestinians from Israel to Jordan.

As I have suggested in the past, due to his efforts, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq will become part of this alliance.

by Dr. Eric R. Mandel, MEPIN

Whether 2021 brings Joe Biden to the Oval Office or returns President Donald Trump, well-meaning foreign policy advisers will again bring to the table a counterproductive understanding of the Middle East that will continue to undermine our ability to advance our interests.

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T. Belman.  During the month of October, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq will warm to the US and Israel. So will Jordan.

A warning from US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has spurred Popular Mobilization Units factions to take actions against outlawed militias that are attacking foreign missions and troops.

By Ali Mamouri, AL MONITOR

 Members of the Popular Mobilization Units disinfect a street in the western Washash district of Baghdad, as part of measures against the coronavirus pandemic, Iraq, April 6, 2020. Photo by AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP via Getty Images.

The US warning to the Iraqi government to take action against the militias in the country has shaken up the political scene.

There have been a series of statements and a flurry of diplomatic exchanges in response to the message from US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Iraqi President Barham Salih that all attacks on foreign missions and troops must stop, or else the United States would consider closing its embassy and targeting all militias involved in attacks against the United States.

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www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

In the 23rd Sep 20 edition of Israel’s good news, the highlights include:

• An Israeli innovation kills coronavirus with ionized water.
• A Druze Arab heads an elite IDF unit
• Israel has provided more aid to the majority Muslim state of Chad.
• An Israeli bio-degradable, oven-ready food packaging.
• Huge recent investments in Israeli technology.
• The first Israeli to complete the Tour de France.
• History is made as Israel signs peace agreements with 2 Arab states.

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