From: Chrisifiles@aol.com [mailto:Chrisifiles@aol.com]
Sent: Sunday, April 20, 2014 10:15 AM
Subject: Alarm over Reported Deal with Vatican for David's Tomb Official tells Arutz...
Foreign Minister Lashes Out at Ashton, EU
Avigdor Liberman derides EU over condemnation of Israel, claims that Syria, Ukraine, other world problems deserve greater focus.
By Tova Dvorin
First Publish: 4/20/2014, 12:03 PM
Avigdor Liberman
Flash 90
Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beytenu) derided EU Foreign Affairs Chief Catherine Ashton Sunday, after she condemned Israel for the failure of peace talks with the Palestinian Authority (PA).
"When the whole world is engaged in trying to solve the crisis in Ukraine - where, as in Syria, innocent people continue to be slaughtered every day - when Iraq is attacked with bombs and when many more conflicts and confrontations are affecting lives around the world, Catherine Ashton finds Israel the real danger to world peace," Liberman fired, sarcastically, in a Facebook post.
"Luckily, [someone] in the European Union knows how to diagnose the world's critical problems and deal with them quickly and decisively," he added.
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Angry Response After EU Exclusively Criticises Israel
Israeli official says it is 'not surprising' that Ashton ignored PA violations of talks.
By Ari Soffer
First Publish: 4/19/2014, 8:18 PM
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton
AFP/File
Israel has responded angrily to a statement by the EU's leading foreign diplomat in which she exclusively blamed Israel for the collapse of peace talks with the Palestinian Authority.
On Firday, EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton called on Israel to halt construction projects in Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria in order to revive the negotiations.
More@ http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/179742
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Alarm over Reported Deal with Vatican for David's Tomb
Official tells Arutz Sheva Israel has no intention of transferring control to the Catholic church, but new reports say otherwise.
By Hezki Ezra, Gil Ronen
First Publish: 4/20/2014, 3:08 PM
Rabbi Sevilia guides visitors to Tomb.
Hezki Ezra
Is there a secret deal between the Vatican and Israel to transfer control over King David's Tomb to the Catholic church? An investigative report in Makor Rishon cites La Stampa Vatican Insider journalist Andrea Tornielli as saying that the deal has been nearly completed, and that Deputy Foreign Minister Ze'ev Elkin is in charge of the negotiations with the Vatican, but Israel denies any such deal.
The agreement allegedly contains two elements. The first is Israel's forgoing the levying of property tax and other taxes for all "churches, holy sites, prayer houses and cemeteries." The second is the transfer of the "Last Supper room" on the floor above David's tomb to the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land (Custodia Terræ Sanctæ).
Temple Mount Closed to Jews, Tourists
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MK Regev: Close Temple Mount to Muslims Too
Sunday, April 20, 2014
Liberman Blasts Arab MKs, 'Price Tag' Jews
Sunday, April 20, 2014
14:39
Kansas Shooting Suspect Threatened Ukraine Jews
Sunday, April 20, 2014
14:16
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PA Minister in Trouble for Denouncing Terror Murder
The Palestinian Authority's Minister of Religious Trusts, Mahmoud al-Habash, cancelled a planned visit to Tulkarm Sunday for the dedication of a new mosque, after many dozens of residents demonstrated against him. The protesters were angry at him for an interview in which he denounced the terror attack in which an Israeli police officer was murdered and said that there is no difference between Palestinian blood and Jewish blood.
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Fatah Official Accuses Al Qaeda of 'Helping Zionists'
PA, Al Qaeda trade barbs, after global jihad terror organization calls Abbas a 'sell-out.' Palestinian Authority (PA) officials and Al Qaeda are at odds Sunday, according to Ma'ariv, after Al Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawhiri accused [PA ruling party] Fatah of being a "traitor" to Palestinian Arabs.
Unnamed Fatah officials responded by claiming that Al Qaeda is "helping the Zionist agenda" and blasted Al-Zawhiri for "ripping into the Palestinian people while Abbas faces threats and pressure from the US and Israel."
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News Brief
Naftali Bennett and Binyamin Netanyahu
Flash 90
Bennett: Israel Does Not Negotiate at Gunpoint
Finance Minister Naftali Bennett mockingly responded this morning (Sunday) to Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's threatening to disband the PA and declare it a "government under occupation.'
Bennett said that, "Abbas encourages terror against Israel and then 'threatens' us that he will quit his job… With those kinds of threats who needs well-wishes. Is he wants to go- we will not stop him. Israel does not negotiate with a gun pointed at its forehead."
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'Yedioth Ahronoth' reporting that the Palestinians will dismantle the PA if and when peace negotiations with Israel break down completely.
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Abbas Threatens to Disband the PA
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Why is the Coptic Church Punishing Pilgrims to Israel?
Ashraf Ramelah
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News Brief
Ukraine: Nazi Stench Has Yet to Dissipate
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk expressed fury and befuddlement at the handing out of anti-Semitic flyers in the city of Donetsk, home to roughly 17 thousand Jews.
In an interview with NBC the PM said, "I clearly condemn this act and call upon the local army and security forces to find those responsible for the act."
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I didn't believe this when I heard about it a day or so ago..
Ukraine rabbi calls anti-Semitic leaflet a political hoax
Chief rabbi of Donetsk says while anti-Semitic leaflet was initially shocking, he now believes it was fake.
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Neo-Nazism Raging in Ukraine?
Amidst reports that pamphlets calling for Jews to 'register' are a hoax, Ukrainian PM vows to 'bring perpetrators to justice.'
By Uzi Baruch
First Publish: 4/20/2014, 7:03 AM / Last Update: 4/20/2014, 7:09 AM
Pro-Russia militiamen in Donetsk, Ukraine
Reuters
Ukraine's prime minister voiced outrage at reports that masked men in east Ukraine's main city handed out leaflets demanding Jews register or be expelled, NBC News reported Saturday.
Members of the Jewish community in the pro-Russian protest hub of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine said Friday that they were left shaken by the distribution of tracts demanding the registration of Jews.
More@ http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/179751
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Turkey vulnerable to rising Russian power in the Black Sea
By MICHA'EL TANCHUM
04/19/2014 22:25
PRO-RUSSIAN GUNMEN walk past the mayor's office in Donetsk, Ukraine, on Wednesday. Photo: REUTERS
With the annexation of Crimea, Turkey faces a stronger and bolder Russian naval power in the Black Sea. A resurgent Russia may be tempted to exploit its temporary naval dominance to alter current Black Sea energy exploitation and transportation arrangements more in its favor and to the detriment of Turkey and its partners in the Caucasus. The politically motivated stoppage of Turkey's National Warship Project's production schedule has created a window of vulnerability in Turkey's Black Sea naval defenses in the face of rapidly rising Russian naval power.
Background:
The $3 billion "National Warship" Project, known by its Turkish abbreviation MILGEM, seeks to upgrade the Turkish fleet by replacing and augmenting its older foreign-made warships with eight domestically produced Ada-class anti-submarine warfare corvettes and subsequently four intermediate-class TF 100 frigates. After gaining experience from the building of the slightly larger but more lethal TF 100 anti-air warfare frigates, Turkey then intends to build a series of TF 2000 frigates. Double the size of the TF 100, the TF 2000 anti-air warfare frigate will significantly advance the Turkish fleet's transformation into a blue-water navy.
Aside from being an intermediate phase for the development of the TF 2000, the TF 100 frigates are of present vital importance as replacements for the German-made Meko 200 frigates that form an essential component of Turkey's force projection in the Black Sea. The TF 100 frigates will be the first Turkish vessels to carry the American-manufactured RIM-162 Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile (ESSM) system capable of countering the current generation of supersonic anti-ship missiles.
Prior to Russia's annexation of Crimea, the head of Turkey's Undersecretariat of Defense Industries Murat Bayar publicly acknowledged the need to replace the Meko 200 frigates with the ESSM-equipped TF 100s by 2020.
However, in September 2013, upon the commissioning of the TCG Büyükada, the second of MILGEM's eight Ada-class corvettes, the Turkish government abruptly canceled RMK Marine's contract to build the remaining six corvettes. A subsidiary the Turkish conglomerate Koç Holding A.Ş., the cancellation of RMK Marine's contract appears to be part of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's political vendetta against the Koç family for providing assistance to anti-Erdogan protesters from a Koç-owned Istanbul hotel during the summer 2013 Gezi Park demonstrations.
The next two corvettes will be produced by Turkey's national shipyard while the government evaluates bids for the building of the four remaining corvettes. Despite Undersecretary Bayar's optimistic forecasts that the government's cancellations will delay the production schedule for the Ada-class corvettes by only one year, the cascade effect of the production stoppage in setting back the building of the TF 100 frigates, as well as the subsequent TF 2000s, has created a four- to eight-year window of vulnerability for Turkey in the Black Sea vis-à-vis a resurgent Russia.
Turkey's strategic vulnerability was not anticipated because of the view in Turkish policy circles that Turkey enjoys a relative parity with Russia in the Black Sea. However, the approximate parity exists only when Russia's Black Sea Fleet is matched against all the major assets of the Turkish navy. Prior to the Crimean conflict, Russia's Black Sea fleet consisted of 24 major surface combatants and one diesel submarine while Turkey's major naval assets consist of approximately 24 surface combatants and 14 submarines. The parity is illusory as it is unlikely that Turkey would be able to deploy all or most of its naval assets in a Black Sea conflict.
Turkey's ability to deter Russian assertiveness in what Moscow regards as its greater Black Sea sphere of influence, including the eastern Mediterranean and the Caucasus, was already questionable. As Russia's Black Sea Fleet disposed of Georgia's miniscule navy during the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, Ankara passively watched the Russian military destroy Turkey's infrastructure investments in Georgia. Turkey's supposed naval parity did not afford Ankara any significant policy options.
Indeed, Ankara revealed its reluctance to provoke Moscow into challenging the Montreux Convention, the 1936 treaty granting Ankara exclusive control over the Bosphorous Straits and the Dardanelles and restricting the transit of heavy warships through this strategic Black Sea-Eastern Mediterranean access corridor.
Implications:
With the annexation of Crimea, Turkey faces a stronger and bolder Russian naval power in the Black Sea.
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There'll be no Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement – so now what?
By PAUL GROSS
04/20/2014 06:35
US Secretary of State Kerry (R), US envoy Martin Indyk (C) with PA chief negotiator Saeb Erekat (L), March 3, 2014. Photo: REUTERS
The Right was right all along. Israel's "peace rejectionists" had their own, varied reasons for opposing a land-for-peace deal with the Palestinians since the first official left-wing embrace more than 20 years ago. Hardline security hawks allied with territorial maximalists from both the secular Revisionist movement (manifested in today's Likud party) and the religious messianists who dominate the settlement movement.
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Op-Ed: 'Occupied territories' is a flawed and biased term
Alan Baker
JTA, April 08, 2014
JERUSALEM (JTA) — When New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie apologized to Republican donor Sheldon Adelson for using the term "occupied territories" to refer to the West Bank, critics pounced. Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show" ridiculed the apology, insisting that the phrase is "widely accepted" and accurate.
While the term is indeed widely used to describe Israel's relationship to the West Bank areas of Judea and Samaria, that doesn't make it accurate. Indeed, the use of the term "occupied territories" in this context is flawed legally, historically and factually.
The phrase does not accurately reflect the status of the areas that it purports to describe. Yet it has regrettably become lingua franca in contemporary international and U.N. parlance, including for senior members of the U.S. administration and European leaders.
The expressions "occupied territory" and &ldq uo;occupied Palestinian territory" are political terms frequently used in nonbinding political resolutions, principally in the U.N. General Assembly, representing nothing more than the political viewpoint of the majority of states voting in favor of such resolutions.
These political pronouncements have never constituted, nor should they constitute, an authority for any determination that the territories are Palestinian or that they are occupied. Such determinations would appear to be based on incorrect and partisan readings of the factual situation and of the relevant international legal documentation....
Click here for the complete article, or copy and paste this link into your web browser:
http://www.unitycoalitionforisrael.org/uci_2014/?p=8105
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No Holds Barred: How Jewish values enrich the Earth
SHMULEY BOTEACH
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Misreading Russia
Rachel Ehrenfeld, Kenneth D.M. Jensen
acdemocracy.org, April 16, 2014
Andrei Zubov, a well-respected Russian historian at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, was recently fired because of an op/ed that aptly compared Putin's annexation of Crimea to Hitler's annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland in 1938-39.
In response, one of Putin's intellectual henchmen, Andranik Migranyan, justified Zubov's firing and thus embraced the parallel between Hitler and Putin. Migranyan said: "We should distinguish between Hitler before 1939 and Hitler after 1939, and separate chaff from grain. The fact is that while Hitler was gathering German lands; if he … were known only for uniting, without a single drop of blood, Germany with Austria, Sudetenland with Germany, Memel [the German name for Klaipeda] with Germany, in effect achieving wha t Bismarck could not; and if Hitler stopped at that, he would be remembered in his country's history as a politician of the highest order."
If, according to Migranyan, there was a "good Hitler", the one who returned German lands to the Homeland, there is also a "good Putin," for uniting "all Russians" with Mother Russia.
"Revisionism," as in adjusting the borders of states to suit the ambitions of some at the expense of others, has been the historical norm. The hopeful events of 1989-91 lasted only short while, until Russia detached South Ossetia and Abkhazia from independent Georgia in 2008. We should have expected Russian attempts to revise borders, especially with Putin at the helm. We didn't.
After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the West, including the U.S., decided to pretend "revisionism" had disappeared from in international politics. We embraced the V elvet Revolutions in East Europe, and the fall of Communism in Russia, as a return of oppressed and aggressive states to something we foolishly believed was international "normalcy." There were also talks about "peace" and "peace dividends" as if such things had occurred in the history of international relations....
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http://www.unitycoalitionforisrael.org/uci_2014/?p=8103
The Peace Process is Dead. Let it lay in Peace
Jonathan Spyer
PJ Media, April 08, 2014
The April 29th deadline has not yet been reached, but it may be said with confidence that the initiative by Secretary of State John Kerry to revive the 'peace process' between Israelis and Palestinians has already reached its final destination: failure.
The failure of this initiative was obvious from the beginning. To everyone except, apparently, Kerry himself. This reality lent an element of low farce to the entire proceedings.
By now, it should really be obvious to any serious observer that there is no chance that the Israeli-Palestinian negotiating process will produce a comprehensive peace between the two sides.
There are two core reasons for this. One of them is of long-standing, the other is a development of the last decade.
The first reason is because the Fatah movement, headed by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, is simply not interested in exchanging its historic goal of reversing the verdict of 19 48 for the establishment of a small Palestinian state in the West Bank....
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http://www.unitycoalitionforisrael.org/uci_2014/?p=8104
Why Smear Israel and Whitewash Iran?
Jonathan S. Tobin
Commentary , April 13, 2014
The decision of the Obama administration to take a firm stand on Iran's decision to send one of the participants in the 1979 seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran to serve as its ambassador to the United Nations may have surprised the Islamist regime. A year of diplomacy aimed at appeasing the Iranians and allowing them to keep their nuclear infrastructure must have convinced Tehran that there was almost nothing it could do to get a rise out of Washington. By denying the terrorist turned diplomat a visa, the president indicated that he understood there are limits to how far he can go toward accommodating the ayatollahs in an effort to get out of having to keep his campaign pledges on the nuclear issue. The dismay among some of the foreign-policy establishment about the latent hostility toward Iran that was illustrated by the anger over the appointment was palpable.
But those determined to push the dubious theory that the election of Hassan Rouhani in Ir an's faux presidential election last year indicates a shift to moderation are undaunted. The New York Times has been a notable advocate for this position on both its editorial and news pages, but it surpassed itself today with the publication of a remarkable piece by two scholars alleging that not only is the Islamist regime changing but that Iran and Israel are like two ships passing in the night as the Jewish state becomes an extremist theocracy. That its thesis is an absurd libel of Israel and a whitewash of Iran is so obvious it is barely worth the effort to refute it. In short, Israel is a pluralist democracy where the rule of law prevails despite the ongoing war being waged against its existence by most of the Arab and Muslim world. Iran is a theocratic tyranny where free expression and freedom of religion are forbidden and women, gays, and minorities are brutally oppressed. Iran is also the world's leading state sponsor of terror and its foreign policy is aimed at propping up one of the world's worst tyrants in Syria's Bashar Assad as well as Hezbollah and other terrorists seeking to destabilize the Middle East....
Click here for the complete article, or copy and paste this link into your web browser:
http://www.unitycoalitionforisrael.org/uci_2014/?p=8106
Why Washington Needs to Open Its Eyes to Iran's Intentions
Mark Dubowitz
The Telegraph, April 12, 2014
...American officials are now brimming with optimism about the possibility of a final nuclear deal before the summer, based on a complicated technical compromise that will likely permit Iran to retain essential elements of its military-nuclear infrastructure.
Confident that a deal is nigh, Washington has gone from "disclose and dismantle" - insisting that Iran come clean on its military-nuclear activities, coupled with demands to dismantle its military-nuclear infrastructure - to "defer and deter."
This new approach involves punting on some of the tougher issues, such as demands for full disclosure on past nuclear weaponisation activities, and relying heavily on weapons inspectors to stop the regime from achieving its decades-long ambition to build a nuclear bomb.
Meanwhile, however, America's nuclear negotiating partners are splintering. The French, who would undoubtedly like a deal, are quite familiar with Iranian nuclear mendacity . They are much less confident that a technical algorithm can solve what is essentially a strategic problem. They rightly believe that if Iran refuses to come clean on its past nuclear weaponisation activities, there can be no confidence in any Iranian commitments in the future.
The Russians, smarting over US sanctions on scores of Putin's cronies over Ukraine, are reportedly negotiating a massive sanctions busting-deal with Tehran involving the transfer of Iranian oil to Moscow (akin to sending coal to Newcastle) in exchange for Russian military equipment. The Chinese and Germans, for their part, want to look past the current nuclear standoff and get back to their Iranian business ventures....
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http://www.unitycoalitionforisrael.org/uci_2014/?p=8107
UK: Probe of Islamic Takeover Plot Widens
Soeren Kern
Gatestone Institute, April 17, 2014
British authorities say they have widened their investigation into an alleged plot by Muslim fundamentalists to Islamize public schools in England and Wales.
The expanded probe now encompasses at least 25 schools in Birmingham, up from four initially. Investigators are also looking into new allegations that Muslim extremists have infiltrated schools in other British cities, including Bradford and Manchester.
The plot—dubbed Operation Trojan Horse—consists of a strategy to wrest control of schools by ousting non-Muslim head teachers and staff at secular state schools and replacing them with individuals who will run the schools according to strict Islamic principles.
A copy of a strategy document outlining the plot was sent to the Birmingham City Council in November 2013, but its existence did not become known to the public until March 2014, when it was leaked to the London-based newspaper, the Sunday Times....
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UK: Public schools illegally segregate, discriminate against non-Muslim students, "restricted to comply with strict Islamic teaching"
It's like that old nursery rhyme — London bridges falling down, falling down, falling down. It is breathtaking for those of us who do not turn away (or pretend it will all somehow go away magically) to watch the systematic attacks and attendant surrender by Western governments to supremacists and savages.
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The Middle East War on Christians
Ron Prosor
The Wall Street Journal, April 16, 2014
...The "justice system" in other Islamic nations is not particularly just for Arab citizens, but it is uniquely oppressive for Christians. Radical Islamists in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa are using an ancient law called the "dhimmi pact" to extort local Christians. The community is faced with a grim choice: pay a tax and submit to a list of religious restrictions or "face the sword."
In the Islamic Republic of Iran, expressions of political dissent are regarded as acts of blasphemy. Last summer, three Iranian Christians caught selling Bibles were found guilty of "crimes against state security" and sentenced to 10 years in prison. They were relatively lucky. The regime has executed dozens of people for the so-called crimes of "waging war against God" and "spreading corruption on Earth."
The scene unfolding in the Middle East is ominously familiar. At the end of World War II, almost one million Jews lived in Arab lands. The creation of Israel i n 1948 precipitated an invasion of five Arab armies. When they were unable to annihilate the newborn state militarily, Arab leaders launched a campaign of terror and expulsion that decimated their ancient Jewish communities. They succeeded in purging 800,000 Jews from their lands.
Today, Israel, which I represent at the United Nations, is the only country in the Middle East with a growing Christian population. Its Christian community has increased from 34,000 in 1948 to 140,000 today, in large measure because of the freedoms Christians are afforded....
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