IsraPundit


Islam’s civil war moves to Egypt  

The vicious crosswind ripping through Egyptian politics comes from the great Sunni-Shi’ite civil war now enveloping the Muslim world from the Hindu Kush to the Mediterranean.
It took just two days for the interim government installed last week by Egypt’s military to announce that Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States would provide emergency financing for the bankrupt Egyptian state. Egypt may not yet have a prime minister, but it does not really need a prime minister. It has a finance minister, though, and it badly needs a finance minister, especially one with a Rolodex in Riyadh.
As the World Bulletin website reported July 6: (Read more…)

The defeat of Morsi is affecting Syria  

By J.E. Dyer
Mohammed Morsi’s call for holy war in Syria spooked the Egyptian military, and it alarmed the Saudis too.  I suspect it even played a role in the decision of Qatar’s new emir to depose his father (long a supporter of Morsi and promoter of Islamist influence in the Arab Spring nations) at the end of June.  The new Sheikh Tamim has moved quickly to shift some of his father’s key policies, and we are likely to see more solidarity between Qatar and Saudi Arabia in the coming weeks – but with the Saudis now edging into the lead.
As Qatar’s profile changes, there will be a significant shift in the dynamics of Islamism, one of whose best-organized factions (Qaradawi and his International Union of Muslim Scholars) has had a reliable source of funding and tacit national support from the oil-rich emirate.  There will be blowback within Qatar, of course; the new emir will have to tack and trim to discourage the kind of protests and terror attacks that now routinely menace neighboring countries like Iraq, Bahrain, and Jordan.  As Turkey’s Islamist minister to the EU, Egemen Bagis, warns us, Islamism is here to stay.  (Bagis is the Turkish minister who threatened Angela Merkel in June with an “inauspicious end” and “severe retaliation,” if a resumption of Turkey’s EU negotiations were blocked because of the Erdogan government’s recent response to protesters.) (Read more…)

Barack Obama’s Middle East Policy  

By Barry Rubin
Note: I beg you to read this article and I’ve never said that before. I think in the wake of the Egyptian coup, everything has come clearly together on U.S. Middle East policy. This is the most important article I’ve written in 2.5 years, since predicting the first Egyptian revolution in October 2009. Here is the story.
A statement by two National Security Council senior staff members has revealed the inner thinking of President Barack Obama. It is of incredible importance and I plead with you to read it. If you do you will comprehend fully what’s going on with U.S. foreign policy.
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Brotherhood vows uprising as Morsi supporters gunned down  

News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff
At least 42 people were killed in Cairo on Monday, according to medical sources, when Islamist protesters angered by the military overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi were allegedly fired on at the Cairo military barracks where he is being held.
More than 300 were wounded in a sharp escalation of Egypt’s political crisis, and Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood urged Egyptians to rise up against the army, which they accuse of a military coup to remove the elected leader.
In an official statement published by Al-Ahram Arabic news website, the army said an “armed terrorist group” attempted to break into the Republican Guard headquarters in the early hours of Monday and “attacked security forces.”
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America’s Nazi Secret  

Stranger than fiction, 100% documented
In the first part of this series was saw how America’s leading bankers and industrialists – Rockefeller, Walker, Dupont, Harrriman, Ford, Mellon, Bush etc. – funded and supported the Nazis in German, the Bolsheviks in Russia and the terrorists who established the House of Saud (Saudi Arabia.)
Nearly 100 years later, the State Department and Justice Department continue to protect their creations.
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A tectonic shift is taking place in the global energy market  

By Daniel Fink, Israel-based energy and commodities analyst.
THE TOWER
While Israel enjoys its recent finds of offshore natural gas, we keep hearing rumors of vast reserves of oil waiting to be tapped. Is that just wishful thinking? Or might the Land of Milk and Honey become the world’s next oil power?
Despite all appearances, the annual OPEC meeting that took place this past May in Vienna was more tense than any of the participants were willing to admit. The headlines coming out of the meeting emphasized consensus and stability, with the cartel agreeing to leave global oil production unchanged. With oil at around $100 per barrel, no one wants to rock the boat. But, as one attendee put it, the facade of calm obscured a matter of “grave concern” for OPEC.
The real story of the OPEC meeting was a tectonic shift taking place in the global energy market. Such shifts have been predicted before, supposedly driven by electric cars, an emerging renaissance of nuclear energy, or one of the alternative fuels du jour. But in the post-Fukushima world, the global appetite for nuclear energy is on the decline; and the demand curve for electric vehicles hasn’t risen as expected.
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Abbas: We’re Not Making Any Concessions or removing pre-conditions  

Abbas is our only hope. Bibi is more and more looking like he is ready to cave, if not to all the demands, but to most of them. His failure to act leaves Israel as sitting ducks. We must abandon the TSS and annex Area C. Ted Belman
Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, who is often touted by the West as a “moderate peace partner”, has once again indicated that he is willing to resume negotiations with Israel – but not give up on even one of his never-ending preconditions.
In an interview with the pan-Arab Al-Hayat newspaper which was published on Saturday, Abbas expressed hope that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who has been pushing the sides to return to the negotiating table, will make another visit to the region soon.
The negotiations, he stressed, will be a starting point, and “while we may not get everything, we will fight to realize our national aspirations, especially the issue of Al-Quds (the Arab name for Jerusalem), which is an issue on which we will not give up, because if it is not the capital of the State of Palestine, there will be no solution.”
(Read more…)

‘Most Israelis don’t believe Netanyahu’s apology to Turkey was justified’  

The apology was a disaster from the word go. It fell on its face and no good came of it. Yaacov Amidror, Netanyahu’s National Security Advisor, who apparently recommended it and publicaly praised it subsequently resigned to be effective in August.. I wonder if Netanyahu was upset with the advice he was given. Ted Belman
By HERB KEINON, JPOST
A much higher percentage of Israeli Arabs (23 percent) than Jews (5%) believe anti-Semitism and hatred of Jews is the main factor animating Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s relationship with Israel, according to a poll released Sunday.
The poll, sponsored by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, found that both Israeli Arabs and Jews believe that preserving Turkey’s standing in the Arab world was the most important factor behind Erdogan’s position toward Israel.
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Jewish before democratic  

Hagai Segal, ynet
Our Declaration of Independence includes 650 words. The word “Jewish,” in its different forms, appears 20 times, while the word “democracy” doesn’t even appear once.
The people who drafted the declaration and signed it had the highest regard for democratic values, but first and foremost they wanted to stress its Jewish side. Perhaps they said to themselves that there are many democracies in the world, but only one Jewish country. It’s important to protect it.
These days it’s even more important. From the outside and from within attempts are being made to undermine the Jewish character of the Jewish state. The dark forces rely on the fatigue of the Zionist material in order to internationalize Israel and declare it a state of all its citizens. They are taking advantage of the fact that over the years the fashion here has changed, and democracy has been emphasized at the expense of Judaism.
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Some Jews distanced from Israel  

Yishai Fleisher, YNET
On a beautiful Sunday morning in May, I was driving south on the West Side Highway in New York City, heading towards the Israel Day Parade. As my car made its way along the mighty Hudson River, I marveled on how awesome this city is. I saw myriads of joggers, happy barbecues taking place on well-tended Riverside park lawns, and of course, the imposing, surreal, gigantic skyscrapers that adorn this world-capital metropolis.
I travel often to New York to promote a stronger connection between North American Jews and Israel, and to encourage aliyah, and every time I go I am struck by the thought: How is the aliyah idea going to compete? This place just has too much of a magnetic pull and Jews have everything here – financial success, the best of world culture, freedom to worship, and all in relative safety, in the shadow of this great city.
(Read more…)


Ted Belman
Jerusalem, Israel