Dear Family & Friends,

I think that Steve Bannon was the secret to Donald Trump reaching his audience that brought the election home. Read how below….not an anti-Semite!

Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu is advancing a solution to keep Amona in one piece for her 40 families by implementing the Absentee Law used by Cyprus to all of Judea & Samaria. That’s all I know about it tonight but, it does inspire hope for a better Amona future as well as the rest of Judea & Samaria.

Plus adding 50,000 apartments to the Jerusalem ‘envelope’ in the blocs flanking our Capital City like: Givat HaMatos, Gilo & Ramat Shlomo, Gush Etzion in the South, Beit El/Ofra in the North & Ma’aleh Adumim into the East – especially the E1 corridor between Jerusalem & Ma’aleh Adumim. As David Weinberg says below: “United Jerusalem is the DNA that holds the key to the future of Israel.”

International opinion will howl at whatever we do in our own Jewish State, So why not build it the best & biggest to bring home our new immigrants & returning residents?! It’s preferable to lead with the solutions we want & need that to ask the new Trump Administration for permission. Our Sovereignty is ours to grow & not America to give!

With those 3 personal notes I bid you Leila Tov! From West of Jerusalem a bit.

All the very best, Gail/Geula/Savta/Savta Raba x 2/Mom

1.Netanyahu pushes absentee law to apply Cyprus solution to Judea & Samaria

2.Build, baby, build By David M. WEINBERG

3.Steve Bannon Plots “An Entirely New Political Movement” 4.Changes are Required in PA text books used in US funded UNRWA schools. 5.The rabbi who knew the real reason for Arik Sharon’s “Disengagement”

6.EU Orders British Press NOT to Report when Terrorists are Muslims

11.The days of the Dybbuk in the White House by Steve Apfel

1.Netanyahu pushes absentee law to apply Cyprus solution to Judea & Samaria. By Uzi Baruch, 20/11/16 11:17 QUICK WATCH | 0:36

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Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has decided to create a special committee for the purpose of legalizing Amona by using the Cyprus solution.

The committee will be headed by Dr. Ro’i Sheindorf and Achaz Ben-Ari.

Netanyahu told the ministers on Sunday morning that he would meet with Joe Willer, who is a world-renowned expert on the Cyprus solution.

Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beytenu) was also present at the meeting, as were Ayelet Shaked (Jewish Home) and Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit.

Netanyahu also told his ministers that he is continuing to work towards finding a solution for Amona, by using the Absentee Property Law.

“The solution offered by the Absentee Property Law is being pushed forward as a solution to the Amona issue & the tribunal Netanyahu is advancing will help solve these types of issues in the future,” a political source told Arutz Sheva.

2.Build, baby, build By David M. WEINBERG

JPost.com 11/17/2016 21:19 This is the time to reach understandings with the new US administration to buttress Israel’s hold on Jerusalem.

BUILD MORE of these. The author argues for more construction in Jerusalem.(photo credit:Reuters)

Israel needs to calibrate her expectations and demands of the incoming Trump administration to focus on concrete and achievable goals. It should do so by insisting on this country’s core interests – interests that have terribly damaged by the Obama administration.
It must do so without making demands of Washington that can’t be met, and that would throw into crisis Israel’s relations with the rest of the world. She must do so without blowing out of the water the prospects for a condominium arrangement with reasonable Palestinians in the (alas) distant future.

This can be done.
Most centrally, this means reaching understandings with Washington on reinforcement of Israeli control in the greater Jerusalem envelope area through significant renewal of home construction.
This includes all Jerusalem neighborhoods (beginning with Givat Hamatos, Gilo and Ramat Shlomo) and the blocs strategically flanking Jerusalem, specifically Gush Etzion in the south, Beit El/Ofra in the north, and Ma’aleh Adumim in the east – and especially in the E-1 corridor between Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumim.
Israel should be building 50,000 apartments in this strategic sector over the next decade, to shore up its religious, historical, and national security stake in the very center of the Land of Israel.
As David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Rabin well understood, and Benjamin Netanyahu does, too, “Greater Jerusalem” is the key to the Jewish people’s claim on its historic homeland. United Jerusalem is the DNA that holds the key to the future of Israel.
Strategically, “Jerusalem” is a zone of settlement that runs from Tel Aviv to the Jordan Valley. From Jaffa to Jericho.
I’m not saying that Israel should give up its stake in Amona, or Kedumim, Shvut Rachel, Elon Moreh, Shiloh, Hebron, Otniel, Talmon, the Ariel bloc, or anywhere else in the biblical heartland. I’m not saying that Israel should freeze (actually, continue to freeze) settlement in these places. Not at all.
It’s just that, at best, Israel might be able to cautiously continue to settle these places, when tactically possible, without international agreement. The Jewish people’s legitimate right to live in these places, and the political wisdom of such, will remain a matter of dispute with the international community and the Palestinians for a long time to come.
It is unrealistic to expect the Trump administration to openly endorse unfettered settlement across Judea & Samaria or to recognize Israeli sovereignty in the territories. Netanyahu isn’t going to get from Trump a formal rejection of the two-state construct. Nor should such policy be Israel’s goal.
I also don’t think that Israel should prioritize an “ask” that the US Embassy move to Jerusalem – even though Trump promised to do that and such a move would be an important diplomatic signal.
What is rational, reasonable and of precedence, is this: an explicit return to the “Bush letter” understandings of 2004 for effective and permanent Israeli control of the so-called settlement “blocs,” an upgrade on these understandings to include E-1, and an end to Obama’s obsession with blocking the growth of Jewish Jerusalem.
Moving the US in this direction is necessary and urgent. This would be a razor-sharp diplomatic signal that the old “international parameters” for an Israeli-Palestinian accord are passé. That the 1949/1967 lines are obsolete. That maximalist Palestinian demands aren’t sacrosanct. That Israelis are not interlopers in Judea.

That effective Israeli control of greater Jerusalem is a fact of life forever.
This can be achieved by green-lighting a long-overdue massive wave of construction in greater Jerusalem.
Indeed, President-elect Trump may be forced into such critical signaling even before taking office, if President Obama tries to “re-sanctify” the stale “international parameters” for a two-state solution, through a unilateral policy speech or a UN Security Council vote.
In that case, I hope that Trump will speak out and make it clear that he rejects the attempt to dictate the contours of an Israeli-Palestinian future, and that the contours which Obama might enunciate – the so-called “international consensus parameters” that “everybody knows” are the endgame – are neither fair to Israel nor practical.
At that time, it will be necessary for Trump to show understanding of the following realities: First, that the only Palestinian government that Israelis can live with in Judea, Samaria and Gaza is one that truly poses no threat to Israel’s security. This means that it must be truly demilitarized (unlike the situation today), that it cannot form hostile foreign alliances (such as Hamas’s alliance with Iran), and that it must accept permanent Israeli control of all external borders – to prevent the emergence of another radical Islamic bastion on Israel’s eastern flank.
This is less than the phantasm of “full Palestinian statehood” that has been bandied about.
The Palestinian government that Israelis can accommodate in Judea, Samaria and Gaza must be also a reasonable neighbor and willing to compromise. This means that it will not control or be able to divide and destroy Jerusalem, and it must share its airspace, natural resources, and historical and religious sites with Israel – including the Temple Mount.
Of course, the only Palestinian government that Israelis can brook over the long term in the West Bank and Gaza has to agree to a permanent end to the conflict and all claims on Israel – meaning that it renounces the so-called “right of return”, inculcates reconciliation and not antisemitism on its airwaves and in its schools, recognizes Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, and ceases to criminalize Israeli leaders in international forums.

3.Steve Bannon Plots “An Entirely New Political Movement” by Michael Wolff, Hollywood Reporter

“I’m not a white nationalist, I’m a nationalist. I’m an economic nationalist,” Bannon tells THR media columnist Michael Wolff as the controversial Breitbart News chief turned White House advisor unleashes on Hillary Clinton, Fox News and his critics.

In late summer when I went up to see Steve Bannon, then recently named CEO of the Donald Trump presidential campaign, in his office at Trump Tower in New York, he outlined a preposterous-sounding scenario. Trump, he said, would do surprisingly well among women, Hispanics and African-Americans, in addition to working men, and hence take Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan — and therefore the election. On Nov. 15, when I went back to Trump Tower, Bannon, promoted by the president-elect to chief strategist for the incoming administration, and by the media as the official symbol of all things hateful and virulent about the coming Trump presidency, said, as matter-of-factly as when he first sketched it out for me, “I told you so.”
The liberal firewall against Trump was, most of all, the belief that the Republican contender was too disorganized, outlandish, outré and lacking in nuance to run a proper political campaign. That view was only confirmed when Bannon, editor of the outlandish and outré Breitbart News Network, took over the campaign in August. Now Bannon is arguably the most powerful person on the new White House team, embodying more than anyone the liberals’ awful existential pain and fury: How did someone so wrong — not just wrong, but inappropriate, unfit and “loathsome,” according to The New York Times — get it so spot-on right?

In these dark days for Democrats, Bannon has become the blackest hole.

“Darkness is good,” says Bannon, who amid the suits surrounding him at Trump Tower, looks like a graduate student in his T-shirt, open button-down and tatty blue blazer — albeit a 62-year-old graduate student. “Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That’s power. It only helps us when they” — I believe by “they” he means liberals and the media, already promoting calls for his ouster — “get it wrong. When they’re blind to who we are and what we’re doing.”

On that precise point, The New York Times, in a widely circulated article, will describe this day at Trump Tower as a scene of “disarray” for the transition team. In fact, it’s all hands on: Mike Pence, the vice president-elect and transition chief, plus

Reince Priebus, the new chief of staff, shuttling between full conference rooms; Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and by many accounts his closest advisor, conferring in the halls; Sen. Jeff Sessions in and out of meetings on the transition team floor; Rudy Giuliani upstairs with Trump (overheard: “Is the boss meeting-meeting with Rudy or just shooting the shit?”), and Bannon with a long line of men and women outside his corner office. If this is disarray, it’s a peculiarly focused and organized kind.

It’s the Bannon theme, the myopia of the media — that it tells only the story that confirms its own view, that in the end it was incapable of seeing an alternative outcome and of making a true risk assessment of the political variables — reaffirming the Hillary Clinton camp’s own political myopia. This defines the parallel realities in which liberals, in their view of themselves, represent a morally superior character and Bannon — immortalized on Twitter as a white nationalist, racist, anti-Semite thug — the ultimate depravity of Trumpism.

The focus on Bannon, if not necessarily the description, is right. He’s the man with the idea. If Trumpism is to represent something intellectually and historically coherent, it’s Bannon’s job to make it so. In this, he could not be a less reassuring or more confusing figure for liberals — fiercely intelligent and yet reflexively drawn to the inverse of every liberal assumption and shibboleth. A working class kid, he enlists in the Navy after high school, gets a degree from Virginia Tech, then Georgetown, then Harvard Business School. Then it’s Goldman Sachs, then he’s a dealmaker and entrepreneur in Hollywood — where, in an unlikely and very lucky deal match-up, he gets a lucrative piece of Seinfeld royalties, ensuring his own small fortune — then into the otherworld of the vast right-wing conspiracy and conservative media. (He partners with David Bossie, a congressional investigator of President Clinton, who later spearheaded the Citizens United lawsuit that effectively removed the cap on campaign spending, and who now, as the deputy campaign manager, is in the office next to Bannon’s.) And then to the Breitbart News Network, which with digital acumen and a mind-meld with the anger and the passion of the new alt-right (a liberal designation Bannon derides) he pushes to the inner circle of conservative media from Breitbart’s base on the Westside of liberal Los Angeles.

What he seems to have carried from a boyhood in a blue-collar, union and Democratic family in Norfolk, Va., and through his tour of the American establishment, is an unreconstructed sense of class awareness, or bitterness — or betrayal. The Democratic Party betrayed its working-man roots, just as Hillary Clinton betrayed the longtime Clinton connection — Bill Clinton’s connection — to the working man. “The Clinton strength,” he says, “was to play to people without a college education. High school people. That’s how you win elections.” And, likewise, the Republican Party would come to betray its working-man constituency forged under Reagan. In sum, the working man was betrayed by the establishment, or what he dismisses as the “donor class.”

To say that he sees this donor class — which in his telling is also “ascendant America,” e.g. the elites, as well as “the metrosexual bubble” that encompasses cosmopolitan sensibilities to be found as far and wide as Shanghai, London’s Chelsea, Hollywood and the Upper West Side — as a world apart, is an understatement. In his view, there’s hardly a connection between this world and its opposite — fly-over America, left-behind America, downwardly mobile America — hardly a common language. This is partly why he regards the liberal characterization of himself as socially vile, as the politically incorrect devil incarnate, as laughable — and why he is stoutly unapologetic. They — liberals and media — don’t understand what he is saying, or why, or to whom.

Breitbart, with its casual provocations — lists of its varied incitements (among them: the conservative writer David Horowitz referred to conservative pundit Bill Kristol as a “renegade Jew,” and the site delighting in headlines the likes of “Trannies 49Xs Higher HIV Rate” and “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy”) were in hot exchange after the election among appalled Democrats — is as opaque to the liberal-donor-globalist class as Lena Dunham might be to the out-of-work workingman class. And this, in the Bannon view, is all part of the profound misunderstanding that led liberals to believe that Donald Trump’s mouth would doom him, instead of elect him.

Bannon, arguably, is one of the people most at the battle line of the great American divide — and one of the people to have most clearly seen it.

He absolutely — mockingly — rejects the idea that this is a racial line. “I’m not a white nationalist, I’m a nationalist. I’m an economic nationalist,” he tells me. “The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to not get raked over. If we deliver” — by “we” he means the Trump White House — “we’ll get 60 percent of the white vote, and 40 percent of the black and Hispanic vote and we’ll govern for 50 years. That’s what the Democrats missed. They were talking to these people with companies with a $9 billion market cap employing nine people. It’s not reality. They lost sight of what the world is about.”

In a nascent administration that seems, at best, random in its beliefs, Bannon can seem to be not just a focused voice, but almost a messianic one:

“Like [Andrew] Jackson’s populism, we’re going to build an entirely new political movement,” he says. “It’s everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy. I’m the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the world, it’s the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Ship yards, iron works, get them all jacked up. We’re just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks. It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution — conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement.”

Bannon represents, he not unreasonably believes, the fall of the establishment. The self-satisfied, in-bred & homogenous views of the establishment are both what he is against & what has provided the opening for the Trump revolution. “The media bubble is the ultimate symbol of what’s wrong with this country,” he continues. “It’s just a circle of people talking to themselves who have no idea what’s going on. If The New York Time didn’t exist, CNN & MSNBC would be a test pattern. The Huffington Post & everything else is predicated on The New York Times. It’s a closed circle of information from which Hillary Clinton got all her information & her confidence. That was our opening.”

At that moment, as we talk, there’s a knock on the door of Bannon’s office, a temporary, impersonal, middle-level executive space with a hodgepodge of chairs for constant impromptu meetings. Sen. Ted Cruz, once the Republican firebrand, now quite a small and unassuming figure, has been waiting patiently for a chat and Bannon excuses himself for a short while. It is clear when we return to our conversation that it is not just the liberal establishment that Bannon feels he has triumphed over, but the conservative one too — not least of all Fox News & its owners, the Murdochs. “They got it more wrong than anybody,” he says. “Rupert is a globalist and never understood Trump. To him, Trump is a radical. Now they’ll go centrist and build the network around Megyn Kelly.” Bannon recounts, with no small irony, that when Breitbart attacked Kelly after her challenges to Trump in the initial Republican debate, Fox News chief Roger Ailes — whom Bannon describes as an important mentor, and who Kelly’s accusations of sexual harassment would help topple in July — called to defend her. Bannon says he warned Ailes that Kelly would be out to get him too.

It is less than obvious how Bannon, now the official strategic brains of the Trump operation, syncs with his boss, famously not too strategic. When Bannon took over the campaign from Paul Manafort, there were many in the Trump circle who had resigned themselves to the inevitability of the candidate listening to no one. But here too was a Bannon insight: When the campaign seemed most in free fall or disarray, it was perhaps most on target. While Clinton was largely absent from the campaign trail and concentrating on courting her donors, Trump — even after the leak of the grab-them-by-the-pussy audio — was speaking to ever-growing crowds of 35,000 or 40,000.

“He gets it; he gets it intuitively,” says Bannon, perhaps still surprised he has found such an ideal vessel. “You have probably the greatest orator since William Jennings Bryan, coupled with an economic populist message and two political parties that are so owned by the donors that they don’t speak to their audience. But he speaks in a non-political vernacular, he communicates with these people in a very visceral way. Nobody in the Democratic Party listened to his speeches, so they had no idea he was delivering such a compelling and powerful economic message. He shows up 3.5 hours late in Michigan at 1 in the morning and has 35,000 people waiting in the cold. When they got [Clinton] off the donor circuit she went to Temple University and they drew 300 or 400 kids.”

Indeed, during the worst days of the campaign, even down to the last day when most in Trumpland thought only a miracle would save them, “I knew that she couldn’t close. They out-spent us 10 to one, had 10 times more people and had all the media with them, but I kept saying it doesn’t matter, they got it all wrong, we’ve got this locked.”

Bannon now becomes part of a two-headed White House political structure, with Reince Priebus — in and out of Bannon’s office as we talk — as chief of staff, in charge of making the trains run on time, reporting to the president, and Bannon as chief strategist, in charge of vision, goals, narrative and plan of attack, reporting to the president too. Add to this the ambitions and whims of the president himself, and the novel circumstance of one who has never held elective office, the agenda of his highly influential family and the end-runs of a party significant parts of which were opposed to him, and you have quite a complex court that Bannon will have to finesse to realize his reign of the working man and a trillion dollars in new spending.

“I am,” he says, with relish, “Thomas Cromwell in the court of the Tudors.”

4.Changes are Required in PA text books used in US funded UNRWA schools.

President Trump & the concept of Peace Education face a challenge, but they must meet it. By David Bedein, 20/11/16 00:21

David Bedein is the director of the Israel Resource News Agency & The Center for Near East Policy Research Ltd. His website is www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com This article was co-authored by Dr. Arnon Groiss, Research Director at the Center for Near East Policy Research

As President-elect Donald Trump launches his transition team, he will undoubtedly take a good look at US Middle East Policy. The new President will have to cope with the fact that the US government pays for one third of the 1.2 billion dollar budget for UNRWA, an agency which administers the refugee status of five million Palestinian Arabs…refugees for perpetuity.

Even worse, the US Funded UNRWA school system has adopted the Palestinian Authority war education curriculum, which indoctrinates their students to take up arms for the “right of return” to villages which their grandparents left in 1948.

Since the motto of UNRWA is: “PEACE STARTS HERE”, the new Trump administration may now wish to finally introduce a peace curriculum into UNRWA schools. Here is how President Trump can accomplish that goal. Stop De-legitimization of the State of Israel & of the Jewish Presence in the Country Every map that shows today’s political boundaries in the region should mark Israel’s pre-1967 territory by the name “Israel”. Such a territory must not be left un-named and certainly should not be named “Palestine”, as that constitutes a distortion of the present situation on the ground.

· Israel should be presented as an ordinary sovereign state in every text mentioning the region’s states currently.

· Every reference to a region, settlement or site within Israel’s pre-1967 armistice lines must not describe such a region, settlement or site as exclusively Palestinian.

· Every discussion within the books of the holy places in the country should refer to the Jewish holy places alongside the Muslim and Christian ones. Any reference to a place which happens to be sacred to Jews (such as the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem) should state that fact.

· Any discussion of subjects related to population and demography issues in the country should include the number of Jews living there (6.3 million in 2016). Any map that shows cities in the country should include the important Jewish cities as well (such as Tel Aviv, Eilat, Ashdod, etc.).

· The books should not use circumlocutions such as “the lands of 48”, “the Interior” or “the Green Line” instead of the phrase “Israeli territory”.

· Historical documents should not be falsified (the British Mandate stamp, for example, that has been reproduced in one of the schoolbooks).

Cease Demonization of Israel and Jews

· Schoolbooks should not include pieces which virulently demonize Israel/Jews, or de-humanize them, or any description that goes beyond the presentation of Israel and/or the Jews as an ordinary adversary with its own rights, interests and positions.

· It is much desired to add to the books the still non-existent material that deals with Israel and the Jews objectively (for example, pieces that talk about the Israeli government structure, economy, science and technology, the Hebrew culture, Jewish history, etc.), which might balance the enormous anti-Israeli critical material in the books.

· It is important to stress in the books that, in spite of the conflict, the Jewish/Israeli individual is also a human being, apart from being an adversary, and should be treated accordingly.

Advocacy of Peace Instead of War, Jihad and Martyrdom

· The books should emphasize that peace with the State of Israel is a strategic choice and that negotiations are the only way to achieving a solution to the conflict.

· The books should refrain from any presentation of an armed or violent struggle as a means for solving the conflict.

· The traditional Islamic ideals of Jihad and martyrdom should be mentioned in historical contexts only and not as part of a future endeavor within the conflict.

· The territorial struggle against Israel should be restricted to the areas of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip alone and not include Israel’s pre-1967 territories

· Any discussion of what is termed “Nakbah” should stress the fact that the Nakbah was a direct result of a war initiated by the Palestinian side itself and not of a Jewish aggression, contrary to what is said today in the books.

· Within this context, Palestinian children should be taught to recognize their own party’s shared responsibility for past events and not restrict that to the adversary alone. An example: the so-called “Separation Wall” which was built for defending the Israeli population against suicide bombing attacks by Palestinians.

· The so-called “Right of Return” should be presented as a demand representing the Palestinian party’s position regarding the solution of what is termed “the Refugee Problem”, while the solution itself will be achieved in the framework of the negotiations between the 2 parties & on the basis of mutual agreement only.

5.The rabbi who knew the real reason for Arik Sharon’s “Disengagement”

Reflections on the passing of Rabbi Shaar-Yashuv HaKohen zt”l: The Rabbi who heard the real reason Arik Sharon retreated from Gaza & expelled the Jewish communities from Katif & Northern Shomron. By David Bedein, 06/09/16 20:36

David Bedein is the director of the Israel Resource News Agency & The Center for Near East Policy Research Ltd. His website is www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com

The death of the Chief Rabbi Emeritus of Haifa, Rabbi Shaar-Yashuv Cohen, brings to mind the most stirring episodes in the history of the modern State of Israel. Rav Shaar-Yashuv Cohen, wounded in the battle for the Old City in Jerusalem, was the last Jewish civilian who left the Old City as it fell, carried on a stretcher into captivity…And Rav Shaar-Yashuv Cohen, who served as the deputy Mayor of Jerusalem in 1967, was given the honor of being the first civilian allowed to enter the Old City in Jerusalem at its liberation during the 6 Day war.

Yet there is yet another mission to Jerusalem which was little known.

In August, 2005, Rabbi Shaar-Yashuv Cohen traveled to Jerusalem to attempt a last minute plea for then Prime Minister Ariiel (Arik) Sharon to reconsider his plan to retreat from Gush Katif, which involved Israel’s obliteration of the 21 Jewish communities there, including 325 thriving Jewish farms and 86 synagogues and Jewish study centers. Rav Shaar-Yashuv Cohen told me at the time that the rapport between Arik Sharon and himself had lasted since his days of captivity in the 1948 war and that Rav Shaar-Yashuv was the only Rabbi who was ready to speak with him at the time.

Sharon gave a clear answer to Cohen: “This is what the US is demanding I do & I must do it.”

It did not matter that half of the 9,000 Jews who live in Gush Katif had nowhere to go, and that their relocation plans were still up in the air.

It did not matter that the Israeli government cannot offer more than two containers to each family to help them remove their possessions.

It did not seem to matter that the experts in Israel’s security establishment are warning that the result of Israel’s hasty retreat will be the creation of a new Islamic terror base.

Rav Shaar-Yashuv Cohen heard Sharon making it clear that he was under pressure from the US government and that is that, and that the myth of an autonomous Israeli policy in this regard had nothing to do with reality.

Indeed, one of the common assumptions was that the Sharon government’s plan to expel Jews from Gaza and northern Samaria, and unilaterally hand the area over to an independent Palestinian entity, had been an entirely autonomous Israeli decision.

But the US government was behind it all along.

In meetings with concerned American citizens, Danny Ayalon, Israeli ambassador to the US at the time, clearly stated that Sharon’s Retreat Plan was part of an overall Israeli-American agreement.

In late June, 2005, Ayalon met with representatives of the Orthodox Union, one of the largest contingents of American Orthodox Jews, and told them clearly that

“Prime Minister Sharon is left with no choice. He is doing exactly what the US expects him to do.”

In an interview with the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, published on June 22nd, 2005, Ayalon reversed earlier Israeli government statements, saying that Israel does not expect the Palestinian Authority (PA) to dismantle terrorist infrastructure until after the planned expulsion. He mentioned that ending terrorism and anti-Israel incitement had been conditions Israel had demanded from the PA before carrying out the plan; however, Ayalon indicated that the agreement with the US was more important than an agreement with the PA.

The Israeli ambassador said, “Disengagement has to be viewed in the context of Israel-United States relations…. This pullout did not follow an agreement with the Palestinians, but it followed something which is much more important, an agreement with the United States. Disengagement is something that creates a common agenda between us and the United States.”

In the final interview given by Benyamin Netanyahu before his resignation from the Sharon government, he indicated that the current policy pursued by the government of Israel should be perceived as a threat to the security interests of the US and of all Western countries, since it created a terror base in Gaza, and since the Palestinian Authority incorporated the Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist organizations instead of dismantling them.

Yet, the directive of the US State Department remained unaltered: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon must dismantle and withdraw any and all Israeli presence from every Jewish community in the Katif district of Gaza by mid-August.

When Israel did go ahead with the retreat of the IDF and the expulsion of the Jewish communities from Katif and the Northern Shomron, Rav Shaar-Yashuv Cohen told me that he wanted to tell the world that this policy was implemented as a the result of a clear dictate to Arik Sharon issued by the government of the US. This was not meant as rationalization for Sharon’s policy.

Few people want to hear the warnings of Rav Shaar-Yashuv Cohen that Israeli policy is often dictated from Washington.

The rabbi who knew the real reason for Arik Sharon’s “Disengagement”

November 18, 2016

6.Trump Takes Charge & happy days are here again for Republicans by Matthew Continetti, Free Beacon

The liberal hysteria over Donald Trump’s election as president extends to coverage of his transition. “Firings and Discord Put Trump Transition Team in a State of Disarray,” says the New York Times. “Intraparty fratricide looms over the GOP,” says a columnist for the Washington Post. “The GOP Civil War Is Just Beginning,” says a writer for Slate.

They couldn’t be more wrong! While hardly anyone—including the campaign of President-elect Trump—expected this outcome to the 2016 election, the Republicans I’ve spoken to over the last week are unified, enthusiastic, and eager to pursue Trump’s agenda. Giddiness is the attitude toward the prospect of GOP control of the White House, the Congress, and the courts. Republicans are ecstatic as they look at House Democrats in turmoil, 13 red-state Senate Democrats up for reelection in 2018, a state and local Democratic Party in ruins, and liberal elites urging the party to double-down on the identity politics that have brought them to this ominous point.
Stories of a botched presidential transition one week after Election Day are easily dismissed. Anyone who has been paying attention can see that Trump’s focus for the past year has been winning the campaign. He fobbed the transition make-work on Chris Christie, and only after he won did he begin thinking about assembling a government. By that point Christie was an obstacle to success.

The New Jersey governor may have helped Trump earlier in the year, but he did not rally to the president-elect after the infamous Access Hollywood tape of “locker room talk” was released on October 7. Then, on the Friday before Election Day, two of Christie’s top aides were found guilty in the George Washington Bridge scandal. Trump axed Christie just as he did Paul Manafort when his former campaign manager’s business dealings came under scrutiny last August. According to the Wall Street Journal, it was chief strategist and senior counselor Steve Bannon who told Christie he had been replaced by the vice-president elect.

The review of Christie’s work began once Mike Pence was in charge. Christie had filled the transition team with lobbyists and members of the Republican establishment such as former House Intelligence Committee chair Mike Rogers. This mix of insiders and retreads was an odd fit for Trump, whose closing argument during the campaign was a ferocious attack against the rigged system that benefits elites of both parties.

Rogers had also been criticized for authoring a report on the Benghazi terrorist attack that conservatives said was too sympathetic to Hillary Clinton. One of Rogers’s former staffers joined Beacon Global Strategies, a consulting firm run by Obama and Clinton allies. In a lament over Rogers’s departure from the transition, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius wrote, “A sign of Rogers’s wide range of friends and contacts was a dinner party he gave Monday night at his Virginia home for some producers and cast members of the television drama ‘Homeland.’” Does that sound like a good fit for the Trump administration to you?

The pace of the transition picked up by the end of the week. Late Wednesday came news that Trump officials will be required to terminate lobbying registrations and pledge not to lobby the government for five years after leaving the administration. The number of high-profile visitors to Trump Tower increased—from Ted Cruz and Nikki Haley to Bill De Blasio, Floyd Mayweather, and Shinzo Abe. Transition spokesmen began to brief the press. There was still catching up to do, but one thing the campaign proved is that Donald Trump, who entered the race a political neophyte and ended it as president elect, is a quick study.

That will help him when he is inaugurated on January 20. Having campaigned on the “Better Way” agenda championed by Paul Ryan, House Republicans are preparing a major legislative push in the coming year. Their priorities are the same as Trump’s: Border control, tax cuts, replacing ObamaCare. The model is the governorships of Mitch Daniels and Scott Walker, who left the opposition bewildered and enraged by quickly pushing through major reforms. The short-term pain both governors experienced gave way once their policies were implemented and voters enjoyed the results. Expect a flurry of activity from the House when the new Congress opens on January 3, and from the executive branch when Trump is inaugurated and his top cabinet appointments confirmed.

You’ll notice I didn’t mention the Senate. It’s one of two things that might halt the GOP agenda and Donald Trump’s momentum. The election may have overturned our understanding of campaigns and politics, but it did not repeal the rules and procedures of the Senate designed to slow the pace of legislation. While some bills can be considered under budget reconciliation rules, not all of them can. Tax reform and ObamaCare repeal, for example, could slide through the Senate on 51 votes. That’s not the case for border security and the ObamaCare replacement.

A Senate bottleneck would allow Democrats to pounce and tensions within the GOP caucus to emerge. It will be up to Mitch McConnell and President Trump to cajole or intimidate the red-state Democratic senators into voting for cloture on some controversial bills. Not an easy task, especially if the health care bill includes some form of premium-support for Medicare. The upside is that incoming Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer is far more willing to make deals than Harry Reid. McConnell will play the inside game while Trump uses the bully pulpit.

The other thing that might slow the Republicans is the Republican president. He is willing to delegate and supports Ryan’s “Better Way,” but he also has something of a mind of his own. An example of this came during his 60 Minutes interview where he told an audience of 20 million that an ObamaCare replacement will cover patients with preexisting conditions, allow children to remain on their parents’ insurance until age 26, and have no delay between the end of ObamaCare and the beginning of TrumpCare. Republicans in Congress agree that ObamaCare repeal wouldn’t go into effect before the replacement becomes law. The questions are when the replacement becomes law and what it will contain.

A distracted or peevish Trump could pit one segment of the party against another or otherwise halt the legislative calendar. The thinking on Capitol Hill is that this won’t be a problem and that coalitions will form on an issue-by-issue basis: conservatives and red state Democrats on border security, Republicans and some Democrats on tax reform, Democrats and some Republicans on infrastructure.

Republicans and conservatives haven’t been this excited and ambitious since the Republican Revolution of 1994, when they had to deal with a Democratic president. Come Inauguration Day, Trump will be in charge. We don’t know how long the good times will last. But we do know they will be unlike anything we’ve experienced before.

Trump Takes Charge & happy days are here again for Republicans

IsraPundit by Ted Belman November 18, 2016

by Adnan Oktar Friday, November 18, 2016

RELATED STORIES

§ Palestinians warn Obama over Temple Mount visit

§ Jerusalem looks to quiet noisy mosques

§ Christian Attacked by Muslims on Temple Mount

Topics: Jerusalem

The following is an article submitted by Turkish Muslim intellectual Adnan Oktar. It does not necessarily reflect the views of Israel Today, but is an important insight into how many Muslims view the question of the Temple Mount.

UNESCO’s decision that “Al-Aqsa Mosque had no affiliation to Judaism” met with a strong reaction from the Jewish world last month. There are, of course, some important points that need to be evaluated and clarified in this decision. The fact that the resolution was backed by twenty-four countries, which have a troubled history with Israel, clearly hinted at the presence of political motives at work. This view is reinforced when we consider the twenty-six countries that abstained from voting.

The truth is, this resolution is of an unsolicited nature from the beginning. Why?

First of all, the significance of an important religious site such as the Temple Mount for the three Divine religions should not be determined through an international vote, as in the case of this UNESCO resolution. Moreover, it is an undeniable fact from religious and historical perspectives that the Temple Mount is sacred for the three Abrahamic religions. In the Torah, the Temple Mount is described as a sacred location, the Christians deem the site sacred because it is where the Jesus, Messiah was taken up to the Sight of God. And the Al-Aqsa Mosque is one of the holiest sites for Muslims, as the Prophet Mohammed’s Mi’raj (ascension) took place here. It was also the first qibla (the direction Muslims face while praying).

Moreover, in stark contrast to certain Muslim countries’ approach to the matter, the Temple Mount’s relationship to and holiness for the Jews is clearly explained in the Qur’an through many verses:

“We settled the tribe of Israel in a noble place and gave them good things as provision” (10/93), stating that He chose these lands for the Jews.

As revealed in another verse, the Prophet Moses (pbuh) called upon his people to enter and dwell in the Holy Land: “My people! Enter the Holy Land, which God has ordained for you. Do not turn back in your tracks and so become transformed into losers.”(5/21)

The following verse also reveals the holiness of the site for Jews: *”Remember when We said, ‘Go into this town and eat from it wherever you like, freely. Enter the gate prostrating and say, “Relieve us of our burdens!” Your mistakes will be forgiven. We will grant increase to all good-doers.’” (2/58)

These verses make it abundantly clear that the Muslim countries are making a mistake in their attempts to cover up Jewish link to the site. In pursuit of largely political goals, they seem to be ignoring the clear commandments of the Qur’an.

Muslims all around the world, rather than trying to prevent a Jewish presence in this holy area, should rejoice in the fact that the Temple Mount is sacred for all three of the Abrahamic religions. As it has for centuries in the past, it can and must be once again, a place where the members of three religions, all those who love Almighty Lord, can worship and thank God in peace.

It should also be kept in mind that such politically motivated decisions have a potential to incite further division and hostility in an already volatile environment. Therefore it would certainly be a serious mistake to pass such resolutions that defy not only religious facts but also historical truths and common sense.

UNESCO, on the other hand, should set aside the agenda of certain deep powers, ignore their political interests and base its decisions regarding religious topics on the commandments of the Holy Books.

Despite all these seemingly mistaken resolutions, righteous and sincere Jews, Christians and Muslims know that there is no preventing the beautiful destiny created by God. Therefore, they are comfortably waiting for the beautiful promise to come true. They know that King Moshiach will open the Ark of the Covenant at the Temple Mount in the presence of Muslims, Christians and Jews. When this happens, there will be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the site is holy and sacred to all three Abrahamic religions, who are joined in their shared love for God. King Moshiach will surely bring ultimate peace to the whole world and the world will clearly understand that what God wants from us is not enmity, but love and peace.

8.Home of Jewish professor vandalized, threatened

Jewish professor at Oberlin College finds his property damaged with a threatening note saying ‘Gas Jew Die’ on his door. By Gary Willig, 20/11/16 21:25

A Jewish professor at Oberlin College became the victim of an anti-Semitic hate crime just days after another Oberlin professor was dismissed for posting anti-Semitic messages on social media, News 5 Cleveland reported.

The professor and his wife were awakened by noises outside of their home at about 3:30 a.m. Thursday morning. They found that the decorative objects in front of their house were destroyed and that a note with the words “GAS JEW DIE” was stuck to their front door.

The professor told police that he and his wife did not have any issues with his students or neighbors and that they had no enemies.

9.Mysterious City From The Days Of King David

Watch: Has evidence of the Kingdom of David been discovered? Cheshvan 20, 5777, 11/21/2016 Features: Curator of the Bible Lands Museum takes us on journey through time to discover mysterious city from the days of King David. By Eliran Aharon, 20/11/16 22:25

Yehuda Kaplan, the curator of the Bible Lands Museum, explained to Arutz Sheva the significance of an ancient city which was unearthed in the Elah Valley near Beit Shemesh.

The city is over 3,000 years old, and is one of the oldest known urban centers to use sophisticated Judean architecture. It is surrounded by a massive wall which has two imposing gates.

The excavations, which were conducted from 2007-2013, were led by Prof. Yosef Garfinkel, Yigal Yadin Chair of Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, together with Sa’ar Ganor from the Israel Antiquities Authority, and Prof. Michael Hasel of the Southern Adventist University of Tennessee.

The gates reminded the archaeologists of the description of the Biblical city of Sha’arayim, which means ‘Two Gates’ in Hebrew and is associated with the battle between David and Goliath.

The city required advanced planning to construct. In addition, the lack of evidence of Philistine settlement in the city, such as pig bones – which Jews are forbidden from eating – and traditional Philistine pottery, leads the archaeologists to believe that the city may be early evidence of a powerful Israelite kingdom from as early as the 10th BCE.

The Bible Land Museum is currently hosting an exhibition on the excavations in the Elah Valley titled “In the Valley of David and Goliath.”

Trump’s likely Defense Secretary pick raises eyebrows in Israel

General Mattis: 10.Trump’s likely pick for Pentagon chief, warns ‘Israeli settlements’ are turning country into an ‘Apartheid’ state.

By David Rosenberg, 20/11/16 18:55 (Pertinent section begins around 42:00)

Donald Trump confirmed on Sunday that retired Marine General James Mattis is a leading candidate for Secretary of Defense, a day after the two met at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

The former Central Command (CENTCOM) commander was a strong critic of President Obama and his efforts to reach a rapprochement with the Iranian regime, saying that the President was “pretty much absent” in terms of crafting the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

But while Mattis has in the past attacked the deal, since its signing by the Obama administration he’s called the agreement a fait accompli that must be accepted.

“We are going to have to recognize that we have an imperfect arms control agreement,” he said. “What we achieved was a nuclear pause, not a nuclear halt. We’re going to have to plan for the worst.”

Those comments, made this April during an event at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, were a far cry from claims by candidate Trump that he would renege the nuclear deal or renegotiate for a better one.

Backers of the Jewish state, who fear an Iranian nuclear weapon could pose an existential threat to Israel, were not comforted by Trump’s likely pick for Pentagon chief, a man with a history of troubling statements vis-à-vis Israel.

Speaking at a gathering of the Aspen Institute in 2013, Mattis gave his emphatic backing for Secretary of State John Kerry’s “valiant” efforts to reach a 2-state solution, saying that the foundation of a Palestinian state was of paramount importance for not only Israel but the United States.

“So we’ve got to work on this with a sense of urgency,” Mattis said. “And I paid a military-security price every day as a commander of CENTCOM, because the Americans are seen as biased in support of Israel, and that moderates all the moderate Arabs who want to be with us, because they can’t come out publicly in support of people who don’t show respect for the Arab Palestinians.”

In addition, Mattis slammed Israeli control of Judea and Samaria as “unsustainable”, warning that Jewish “settlements” were liable to turn Israel into an “Apartheid” state.

“The current situation is unsustainable. It’s got to be directly addressed. We don’t want to turn this over to our children.

“We have got to find a way to make the 2-state solution that Democrat and Republican administrations have supported – we have go to get there. Chances for it, as the King of Jordan has pointed out, are starting to ebb because the settlements and where they’re at are going to make it impossible to maintain the two-state option.

“For example, if I’m Jerusalem, and I put 500 Jewish settlers out here somewhere to the east and there’s 10,000 Arab settlers in here, if we draw the border to include them either it ceases to be a Jewish state or you say that the Arabs don’t get to vote – Apartheid. And that didn’t work too well the last time I saw that practiced in a country.” [Gail sez: Wrong premise! Jews have been the majority in Jerusalem since 1840. Arabs get to vote for the City candidates & Jordanian State candidate of their own.

While the Trump transition team has yet to issue a formal statement on the choice of Defense Secretary, Trump tweeted on Sunday regarding his meeting with Mattis Saturday afternoon, praising him as a “true General’s General”.

Trump’s likely Defense Secretary pick raises eyebrows in Israel

11.Residents of Judea & Samaria feel most secure of all Israelis

CBS finds residents of Judea and Samaria feel the most secure of all Israelis. Residents of Jerusalem feel the least secure. Arutz Sheva Staff, 20/11/16

Alley at night: IStock

The Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) released, Sunday, the results of a comprehensive survey on the personal security of Israeli citizens.

81% of citizens over the age of 20 said that they either feel very safe or completely safe when asked ‘Do you feel safe walking alone in your area at night?’

The survey showed a large difference between the responses of men and women. 90% of men responded that they felt safe walking alone at night, compared to only 72% of women said that they felt safe doing the same,

The lowest level of confidence while walking at night for men was found in the 65 and older age range (87%), while the lowest rate of confidence for women was found in the 25-34 age range (70%)

Feelings of safety also varied by geographic area. Citizens in the north and in Judea and Samaria felt the safest walking alone at night (85-88%), while citizens in the Jerusalem District felt the least safe (73%).

Jerusalem residents felt the least secure walking alone after dark of all the major cities, with only 71% of Jerusalem residents responding that they felt secure walking alone at night. In other cities, such as Tel Aviv, Haifa, Rishon Letzion, Ashdod, Petach Tikva, Netanya, and Beersheva, between 78-80% of residents felt that they felt safe walking alone at night.

12.The days of the Dybbuk in the White House by Steve Apfel 20/11/16 To leave office with a legacy Obama supped with a devil in thin disguise. A President who puts so many freak events into play has to be under a mischievous spell.

Steve Apfel is a prolific author of novels and non-fiction, essayist and commentator on ‘enemies of Zion’ which happens also to be the title of his latest book. His books are The Paymaster, 1998; Hadrian’s Echo: The whys and wherefores of Israel’s critics, 2012; War by other means: Israel and its detractors, Contributor. Israel Affairs, 2012; Enemies of Zion, (for publication in 2015); Balaam’s curse ( a novel in progress.). Webpage: http://sbpra.com/SteveApfel

In Jewish folklore a dead malcontent may return to possess the living. The troubled soul is known as a “dybbuk’, and it runs amok making mischief. Writers and people of stage and screen invoked the fiend to aggravate family wrangles to the point of madness. Yet for all its wicked antics the dybbuk wants nothing more sinister than to settle a score. It may upturn some lives in the ghetto, but not the balance of world power.

And No Dybbuk, Until Now, Toyed With The President Of America.

Love or hate Obama’s nuclear deal, who can doubt that he turned the old order on its head. Iran, hitherto America’s number one foe, was going to be, in the world’s number one hotspot, America’s number one ally. A detente, in other words, was brewing between the world’s powerhouse and the world’s sour pickle jar.

Maybe skeptics and supporters both got it wrong. The move to bring war-mongering mullahs in from the cold may be neither brash nor bold. Prophetic could be the word – not in the narrow sense of foretelling what the future holds, but prophecy that paves the way for upheavals of biblical magnitude. The making of Iran into a regional power (Obama’s motive according to, (a) Michael Doran of the Hudson Institute and (b) Obama himself, according to what he told The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg) could be the harbinger of the biblical ‘end of times.’ [1]

This devilish diplomacy had nothing to do with Don Corleone’s, ‘keep your friends close but your enemies even closer.’ The departing President did not keep Middle East allies close; he left them bewildered and hurt. When it came to telling the Mullahs to stop calling America the Big Satan he faded; when they called for a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv he listened. Add in Obama’s signature aversion to the military option, and recalling the ephemeral red line he drew with Assad of Syria, Tehran was left to understand that anything goes: nothing, but nothing would provoke Washington to retaliate.

Granted, a pet project at any cost is a very human failing…And so is to bend over backwards to get the thing signed off. Consider how team Obama coaxed and coddled the Mullahs in Lausanne. The team had to bait the hook not with palatable Swiss cheese, but by taking Iran’s world-wide web of terror and proxy wars off the table.

In short, to leave office with a legacy Obama supped with a devil in thin disguise.

A cauldron of support and opposition; Iran’s consummate cunning, emboldened by stooges and opportunists come to beg for a deal – any deal. The mullahs grasped how deeply their opposite number was invested in the project. As badly as they needed a deal, a President consumed by vanity wants would cut a deal no matter what. Factor in a Europe with no stomach and a Russia and China with no scruples, and you have a bunch of criminals hanging around for a certain payoff. Left to stew, the P5+1 powers, so called, would bow to Tehran’s demands: all sanctions lifted with no real controls in place to make it behave differently as regards, (a) nuclear development and (b) global terrorism.

Tehran’s red lines, unlike Washington’s, are real.

President-elect Donald Trump, the consummate deal-maker, called it “the worst deal ever negotiated.” From the tell-tale moves of Washington, Trump must be right. Obama’s administration went to unheard of lengths to protect the signature legacy: bribing Iran, drumming up business for it, blocking Congress from imposing non-nuclear sanctions, and turning a blind eye to Iran’s deal-breaking.

The White House acknowledged violations by bizarrely praising the Mullahs for not attempting to hide them! “In other words,’ points out Lee Smith of the Weekly Standard, “the administration is not just protecting the nuclear agreement, but also rationalizing Iran’s violation of it.” [2]

From the White House that tried and tested remedy for helping bitter medicine go down: mobilize supporters, demean resistors, meaning that troublesome Israel lobby. On this divide AIPAC suffered a disempowering defeat. Iran meanwhile, empowered with billions of dollars, has notched up the saber-rattling. Cyber attacks on America were followed by taking American seamen hostage, later ransoming them off to Obama for $1.7 billion in European untraceable notes. [3]

Now Tehran twiddles its thumbs after hanging “Open for business” on the door. Obama’s Secretary of State, John Kerry went around promoting business on Iran’s behalf. “I wish,” Kerry told bankers in London in October 2016, “that some of the larger banks were ready to make loans and engage in opening accounts. They’re allowed to, but they’re remaining somewhat risk averse.”

Former White House foreign policy advisor Elliot Abrams was astounded. “It isn’t enough” he wrote, “to remove sanctions that prevent banks from lending to Iran; Kerry has become a cheerleader, urging banks to make more loans whatever the risks. This in fact is not giving Iran the benefit of the bargain it struck. It is going much further. It is going so far that Kerry is now giving banks bad advice – advice that is directly contradicted by U.S. Treasury officials.” [4]

Whatever happens next the genie is out. The lank shadow of Iran spreads over the Middle East.
So detente with the devil, far from being a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, turned into a once-in-a-lifetime threat. Whatever happens next the genie is out. The lank shadow of Iran spreads over the Middle East. The genie, warn long-in-the-tooth nuclear dealmakers, can never be put back. Old Secretaries of State Shultz (architect of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty with the Soviets) and Kissinger (architect of the Strategic Arms Limitation Agreement with the Soviets) are certain that Obama has put Iran on steroids. [5]

No question – Iran is back in business.

Whither Israel? Well before the deal the White House was giving its ally the cold treatment. Analysts with Obama’s ear warned that Israel was going out of favour. Bemoaning the albatross around the President’s neck, Harvard foreign policy buff Stephen Walz wrote: “The sad fact is that the United States has no appealing Middle East partners left today… The special relationship with Israel fuels anti-Americanism and makes Washington look both hypocritical and ineffectual in the eyes of much of the world.” [6] The words would have been music to a White House at the time coercing Israel to make painful concessions while enticing Palestinians to make fanciful demands.

If the genie is out the bottle what made Obama let it out? What mischief-maker was afoot in the corridors of power? Freak alignments in the wake of the nuclear deal point to some fiend on a depraved mission. American bombers support Iranian troops to keep a chemical weapon-dropping Syrian madman in power. Saudi Arabia and Israel have embraced to see off a common threat; a White House emissary tells Argentina not to prosecute Iranian murderers of eighty Jews in Buenos Aries; Obama gives tacit blessing to the sale of a Russian missile system to Iran, making it more difficult for Israel to bomb nuclear sites.

A President who puts such freak events into play has to be under a mischievous spell.

It brings to mind the tale of the sorcerer’s apprentice. Left in the workshop to his own devices the apprentice enchants a broom and a pail to do chores for him. In no time the shop is in chaos and the apprentice is clueless how to stop the magic. He splits the broom in half, hoping that will do the trick, but both pieces turn into more brooms while the pail slops water at twice the rate. The old sorcerer beholds the unholy mess on his return. “Powerful spirits,” he warns, “must be left to a master wizard.”

Here is an apt lesson for the White House and the unholy mess it produced. A spectacle of natural allies falling out of bed and habitual enemies climbing into bed, point to a clumsy dabbler in foreign policy. Don’t get into bed with Islamists: surely that would be the lesson to take from the nuclear deal, which may be more a ticking bomb than a moment for the world to relish.

Like Marlowe’s creature Mephistopheles and Hitler before it, Iran would never strike a bad deal – that is to say a deal bad for Iran. Obama’s pact was another Neville Chamberlain road to hell paved with good intentions. Pure and simple, it was a pact with the devil. But here is a wager infinitely more reckless than Dr Faustus made with his devil. The medic gambled his own soul. Team Obama, bartering with Iran behind closed doors, gambled with the lives of hundreds of millions.

And as the President departs from office nursing his pet legacy it’s worth remembering: the devil never deals itself the bad card. It signs pacts with blood, and that’s another thing worth remembering. More, the devil likes to break its word before giving the signatures time to dry, and that’s something else to keep in mind.

Let no one accuse Tehran of non disclosure. It revealed its hand. But in the thrall of a dybbuk Obama wouldn’t heed bad omens. This probably explains why pacts with madmen and the paper they’re written on are equivalent in value. Feted honor beckons like a pot of gold. The fate of Marlow’s Dr Faustus was eternal damnation. But the gambling medic was not the President of America. Faustus sealed his own fate, not the fate of mankind, which is what a pact with Iran could seal.

Trumpeting his unruly ally Obama may have ushered in the era of Gog and Magog.

The author is indebted to sponsors for supporting this work. Johannesburg City Councilor, Joshua Apfel; Stan Civin, Lightbulbs Unlimited, Boca, Fl. The views expressed are entirely the author’s.

-FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE-

Media contact: Simon Apfel, Head of Press
Phone: +276241358; Press@theshabbosproject.com

12.RESHAPING THE JEWISH WORLD: THE SHABBAT PROJECT NOV. 11 & 12, 2016

Third annual Shabbat Project breaks the 1,000-city barrier, shatters records in 94 countries world

Johannesburg, SA. November 13, 2016 — This past Shabbat, the Jewish world took a well-deserved collective deep breath.

The 2016 Shabbat Project – now in its 3^rd year – outdid its predecessors on all fronts, reaching 1,150 cities across the world & attracting record numbers of participants in many of those cities.

An estimated one million people took part in celebrations on and around the Shabbat of 11/12 November – not just in unique Shabbat programmes, but in city-wide pre-Shabbat “Challah Bakes” & post-Shabbat “Havdalah Concerts”.

“The response to this year’s Shabbat Project has been stronger than ever,” says South African Chief Rabbi Dr. Warren Goldstein, the founder and director of The Shabbat Project. “It has been so inspiring to see how the Shabbat Project connects with millions of Jews from every kind of background, and how people around the world have worked in partnership to make this a sublime moment of Jewish unity, all centered around Shabbat.”

An untold number observed Shabbat in full for the first time in their lives. Just as importantly, people of diverse backgrounds and persuasions were brought together in ways not yet seen before.

“We’ve witnessed an outpouring of emotion across the Jewish world, as Jews from all walks of life have embraced the Shabbat Project, putting aside their differences and gathering together in a spirit of love and unity,” says Goldstein. “There is a real thirst worldwide for true Jewish unity and for a genuine connection to Judaism. And people really resonate with the way Shabbat carves out a sacred space of tranquility and togetherness amidst the frenzy of modern life.”

Stories big and small are already beginning to emerge from across the globe – 8,000 at a Challah Bake in Buenos Aires; 15 families in the tiny Jewish enclave in Cancun, Mexico, keeping Shabbat for the first-time; 850 Sydneysiders “seaing” in Shabbat at a musical Kabbalat Shabbat service on Bondi Beach; a Shabbaton on board a cruise ship in the Atlantic; a lone Jew in Karachi, Pakistan, keeping Shabbat with the rest of the Jewish world; and more than a thousand Israelis eating a Friday night dinner together in a shipping container in Tel Aviv – just one of over 30 headline events taking place across the city.

Tel Aviv was among more than 160 towns and cities in Israel taking part in the Shabbat Project. Major cities such as Netanya, Eilat, Modiin, Jerusalem and even Haifa were enthusiastic participants. In many locations, it seemed almost every second building was hosting a “Kiddush Binyani”, with residents gathering together for a Shabbat meal in the lobby. The idea was born in Ra’anana last year, which this year cemented its place as one of the Israeli hubs of the Shabbat Project, with its marquees events a Kabbalat Shabbat service and a musical havdalah ceremony each for 2,000 people.

In the US, there were a total of 543 participating cities. Celebrations in San Diego and Baltimore once again pulled tens of thousands of participants. In Miami, 40,000 of the iconic red plastic Solo cups (a staple of university keg parties) were branded with The Shabbat Project logo, igniting a social movement on campuses across the state of Florida. And In New York, a collection of extraordinary “Challah Bakes” included a Marine Park melting pot of Russian, Ultra-orthodox and Unaffiliated Jews presenting their ethnic or cultural traditions to each other, and a group of diverse Jewish students (Syrians, Bucharians, Persians and Americans) at the Fashion Institute of Technology baking challahs and preparing other foods for solitary Jewish seniors (and then enjoying a Shabbat evening dinner together the following evening).

France was also one of the big global stories, with 19 participating cities, including Paris, Strasbourg, Grenoble and Nice. For first-time participants, Metz, the Shabbat Project coincided with the anniversary of the liberation of the city’s Grand Synagogue in 1944, with various Shabbat celebrations held to commemorate the event. Singers Shlomi Shabbat and Yishai Lapidot brought the curtain down on the event in Paris at a Havdalah Concert in front of 3,000 people.

To co-ordinate the global initiative on such a large scale, the head office in Johannesburg worked with around 6,000 partners worldwide – up from 5,000 partners in 2015.

That the Shabbat Project was able to move beyond the million mark and spread to new cities can be attributed in no small part to a Facebook campaign which reached a collective 10 million people. The campaign video alone clocked up 1.5 million views.

The theme of this year’s Shabbat Project, “Shabbat can do that”, in particular, struck a nerve.

Goldstein explains: “In 2014 and 2015, and now again in 2016, through the transformative power of Shabbat, we’ve seen individuals and communities do great things. Things that before were not thought possible. We’ve seen walls torn down, families rejuvenated, deep feelings awakened, deep friendships formed. This is what Shabbat can do.”

Goldstein, who recently debuted at 21 on the Jerusalem Post’s list of the “50 Most Influential Jews” and was dubbed the “Good Shabbos Rabbi”, is driven by a conviction that the two major challenges besetting the Jewish world – assimilation and apathy on the one hand and divisiveness and discord on the other – can be reversed through innovative thinking and “big ideas”.

“Big ideas can change the world and the Jewish world today needs them more than ever. The Shabbat Project is one such big idea: a call to Jews all around the globe to think boldly about our future, to connect across the walls we’ve put up. The Shabbat Project is the story of Jews returning to their roots, reconnecting with their heritage, returning to their bonds of natural closeness and friendship—all through the Shabbat experience.”