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The State Department has turned the page on Turkey for it no longer views Ankara as a reliable US partner. Many argue that Washington will abandon Syria’s Kurds in order to assuage Turkish anger. I doubt this. Washington expects more anti-US actions from Erdogan. Many in DC believe that Turkey’s rising Islamism, hardening dictatorship, and worsening anti-Israel rhetoric will only increase in the future. They do not hold out hope that Washington can reverse this trend.The US is increasingly falling back on support for Israel and Saudi Arabia. Trump has clearly set his course and reversed Obama’s effort to...

The Palestinian president on Wednesday again blasted Donald Trump in a fiery and emotional speech, saying the U.S. leader’s decision to recognize contested Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was “sinful” and “ill-fated.” Mahmoud Abbas, who has openly cursed Trump over his policies, told a conference in Egypt that the United States has disqualified itself from continuing as a broker in the long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process, a role America has had for decades. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday he was certain the U.S. Embassy in Israel would be moved to Jerusalem sometime this year, much sooner than Trump administration...

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, blames "Americans and Zionists" for the recent protests. The Shiite Muslim hard-liner says money supporting the citizens came from "one of the filthy-rich governments of the Persian Gulf." (Associated Press/File) Iran’s rulers have inflicted death by torture and gunfire on citizen protesters in a crackdown since the Dec. 28 street uprising erupted, the main opposition group said Tuesday. The Europe-based National Council of Resistance of Iran says the Islamic republic’s ubiquitous security apparatus has arrested more than 8,000 citizens and killed at least 50, all while the West has remained mostly silent. The...

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas threatened war if US President Donald Trump does not allocate Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian State. In a Cairo speech, Abbas said, "Jerusalem is the key to peace if it is our capital, and if it is not - it is the key to war. Trump will need to chose." According to Abbas, Trump provoked millions of Muslims by choosing to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. "There is no such thing as a Palestinian who will give up even one millimeter of Jerusalem," he claimed. Last week, Abbas told the Palestine Liberation...

Caroline Glick, the conservative American-Israeli columnist renowned for her powerful criticisms of the Middle East peace process, has joined Breitbart News. Glick, the long-serving senior contributing editor and chief columnist for the Jerusalem Post, is one of the world’s most widely-read commentators on Israel and international affairs. She also writes about American politics from a staunchly pro-Israel perspective. She is the author of several books — including, most recently, The Israeli Solution: A One State Plan for Peace in the Middle East (2014), which calls for Israel to annex the West Bank.Glick, a graduate of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and...

Under pressure, Abbas assumes scorched-earth policy of ripping Trump, calling Israel colonial project. Given the turbulent political climate, one wonders whether Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has any regrets and, if so, if he would gladly roll back time a decade. In 2008, the PA boss was firmly entrenched in Ramallah despite a year earlier having been unceremoniously—that is, violently—ejected by Hamas from Gaza in an internecine war. Nevertheless, the world was seemingly at Abbas' doorstep, his Muqata compound the address where kings, heads of state and a never-ending parade of diplomats flocked to with a view to solving the...

RAMALLAH — Palestinian leaders voted on Monday to call for the suspension of recognition of Israel, as they met in response to US President Donald Trump’s acknowledgement of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The vote ordered the Palestine Liberation Organisation to suspend its recognition of the Jewish state until Israel “recognizes the state of Palestine,” cancels its annexation of East Jerusalem, and stops settlement activity, a statement said. It was unclear if the vote by the Palestinian Central Council, a high-ranking arm of the PLO, was binding. A previous vote by the council in 2015 to suspend security coordination with Israel...

The progressive billionaire speculator George Soros has said he will ‘fight back’ against the “dominant ideology” of nationalism, whilst admitting that favoured globalist project the European Union is “on the verge of a breakdown”. Wistfully writing that Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF) once ‘epitomised the optimism about the spread of Western-style democracy’ after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Financial Times described the scrutiny the global progressive body is experiencing amidst a wave of patriotism and populism and the ‘wilting’ attraction of the leftist agenda. Soros, alluding to the collapse of the USSR, told the left-liberal newspaper: “It’s déjà...

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend” is a proverb that has long, and apparently mistakenly, been attributed to Bedouins. It’s unfair to them, as it contains the false-dichotomy fallacy. Sometimes the saying is correct, as when the Allies decided in World War II to side with Josef Stalin against Adolf Hitler. Other times, both options are equally bad. This is, however, the way many people insist on reacting to George Soros and Russian President Vladimir Putin, the two men currently going toe-to-toe for control of much of the globe’s hearts and minds. You either side with one or...

BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel is considering joining French President Emmanuel Macron at the World Economic Forum in Davos next week in what could turn into an epic clash of competing world views with U.S. President Donald Trump. Merkel, who has been struggling to put together a government since a German election in September, had been expected to skip the annual gathering of leaders, CEOs, bankers and celebrities in the Swiss Alps for a third straight year. But after clinching a preliminary coalition agreement with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) on Friday, German officials said Merkel could travel...

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union’s trade tsar has no idea what Donald Trump will tell his audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos next week, but she is clear what the EU’s message to the U.S. president will be. America is shooting itself in the foot by withdrawing from global leadership on trade, Cecilia Malmstrom, the 49-year-old Swede who has served as Europe’s trade commissioner for the past three years, told Reuters. Under Malmstrom’s direction, the EU has juggled a dizzying array of trade talks over the past year. In July it clinched a preliminary deal with Japan....

Iran’s missile program has been the target of criticism by the US and the European Union for quite some time. When Yemeni Houthi rebels launched a missile toward Saudi Arabia on November 5, 2017, Iran was accused of having supplied it to them, a charge Iranian officials categorically denied. But on Friday, January 12, a United Nations panel concluded that the Islamic Republic had violated a UN arms embargo by directly or indirectly providing missiles and drones to the Shi'ite rebels in Yemen. In the 79-page report, the panel accuses Iran of violating UN Security Council Resolution 2216, passed in...

A United Nations panel in a new report has concluded that Iran violated a UN arms embargo by directly or indirectly providing missiles and drones to Shi'ite rebels in Yemen, backing up accusations made repeatedly by the United States. (excerpt "The panel said it came to the conclusion that Iran had manufactured the weapons the Yemeni rebels fired at Saudi Arabia, which leads an Arab coalition fighting on the side of the government against the rebels in Yemen's civil war. The panel said it found that design features of the missile debris were "consistent with those of the Iranian-designed and...

WASHINGTON, DC – President Donald Trump’s decision to keep the United States in the Iran nuclear deal on Friday was coupled with a warning to his European allies: “Fix the deal’s disastrous flaws, or the United States will withdraw.” “Despite my strong inclination, I have not yet withdrawn the United States from the Iran nuclear deal. Instead, I have outlined two possible paths forward: either fix the deal’s disastrous flaws, or the United States will withdraw,” Trump said in a statement. He added: I am waiving the application of certain nuclear sanctions, but only in order to secure our European...

The Israel Defense Forces on Sunday said it had destroyed a border-crossing Hamas attack tunnel, the third in recent months, that penetrated hundreds of meters into both Israeli and Egyptian territory from the Gaza Strip, in an airstrike on Saturday night. “We completed the destruction of a third terror tunnel,” spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told reporters early Sunday morning, denying claims made by Hamas that it was a smuggling tunnel. The tunnel, which was constructed differently from most tunnels in Gaza, began in the city of Rafah and crossed into Israel under the Kerem Shalom Crossing, through which hundreds...

A source involved with the film's international rollout says the Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks drama was presented to the Lebanese censorship board, which nixed it, citing a "boycott Israel" list. Lebanon has banned Steven Spielberg's newspaper drama The Post just days before the film is set to premiere in Beirut. A source involved with The Post's international rollout says the movie, which stars Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks, was presented to the Lebanese censorship board, which nixed it, citing a "boycott Israel" list that includes Spielberg due to his Oscar-winning Holocaust film Schindler's List (the 1993 film shot some...

Having survived the recent cabinet reshuffle the international development secretary, Penny Mordaunt, is confronted with the biggest headache of her short ministerial career: the fallout of the US intention to cut funding to UNRWA, which constitutes one of the most serious challenges to UK policies in the Middle East. Donald Trump’s threat to cut financial assistance to the UN agency specifically responsible for Palestinian refugees will be a disaster not only for the refugees but also for Israel and neighbouring countries. It does not advance US interests either. Provoked by the Palestinian rejection of Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as...

The Caliber 3 training facility takes down pics of the famous comedian snapped during a family visit Comedian Jerry Seinfeld is taking heat from fans after photos of him at a West Bank “anti-terrorism” course were posted online earlier this week. The Caliber 3 training facility, located near the settlement of Efrat south of Bethlehem, posted the photos of Seinfeld on its Facebook page with the message, “Finally we are allowed to tell you! Jerry Seinfeld and his family were in Caliber 3. During their visit to Israel last week, they came to us for a special and exciting activity...

Four former senior US officials claimed Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu offered the Obama administration a two-state solution in which Israel annexed the settlement blocs in Judea and Samaria in exchange for land in northern Sinai, next to Gaza, Haaretz reported. According to the officials, Netanyahu told then-US President Barack Obama and then-Secretary of State John Kerry that he was sure Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi would agree to to the plan. However, when the US looked into the idea, they received a negative response. Netanyahu's office has denied this report, claiming it "is not accurate." In November 2017, Social...

Scott Adams argues in Win Bigly that President Trump has "weapons grade" persuasion skills. In the tumble over Fire and Fury, those skills are on display, as Trump deploys political jiu-jitsu to suck up the "media energy" and turn the tables on his detractors, columns linked realclearpolitics James S. Robbins, writing at usatoday.com, says Trump has turned the tables on the "overwrought speculation about the president's mental fitness": Klavan says Fire and Fury seems like "a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing": The nation's journalists cover this obvious nonsense because otherwise, they'd have to enter what to them is...