National Unity Party leader Benny Gantz seeks to topple the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israeli War Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz’s National Unity Party submitted a bill on Thursday to dissolve the Knesset in an attempt to topple the government led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The proposal to dissolve Israel’s parliament was submitted by National Unity lawmaker Knesset member Pnina Tamano-Shata.
“October 7 is a disaster that obliges us to return and receive the trust of the nation; to establish a broad and stable unity government that can lead us with confidence in the face of major challenges in terms of security, the economy, and especially, in Israeli society,” said Tamano-Shata.
The next Israeli national vote must be held by Oct. 27, 2026, and it is unclear whether Gantz has the support of any lawmakers from Netanyahu’s 64-member coalition in the 120-MK legislature.
Netanyahu’s Likud Party slammed Gantz’s move, saying in a statement that “in the midst of a war, Israel needs unity and not division.
“Dissolving the unity government would be a reward for [Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya] Sinwar, a capitulation to international pressure and a fatal blow to the efforts to free our hostages,” added the statement.
Earlier this month, Gantz threatened to leave Netanyahu’s coalition if the premier does not declare a plan for the day after Hamas in Gaza.
“I look you in the eyes tonight and tell you: The choice is in your hands. After talking to you again and again, the moment of truth has come,” said Gantz at the time.
He set a deadline of June 8 for Netanyahu to approve a plan of action for accomplishing what he said were six key strategic goals of the war.
He listed these as bringing home the hostages; destroying Hamas, demilitarizing the Gaza Strip and establishing Israeli security control there; creating an “international civilian governance mechanism for Gaza” including Palestinians but not P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas or Hamas; returning the residents to the north and rehabilitating the western Negev; advancing normalization with Saudi Arabia; and establishing a new framework for Israelis’ military service.
In April, Gantz said that Israel should go to the polls in September, marking the first time that the center-left politician called for early elections since joining the wartime government in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre.
Melanie hits the cover off the ball as usual.
America’s double game on Iran
The Biden administration’s strategy endangers not just Israel but America and the free world.
By Melanie Phillips Op-ed.
Melanie Phillips, a British journalist, broadcaster and author, writes a weekly column for JNS. Currently a columnist for The Times of London, her personal and political memoir, Guardian Angel, has been published by Bombardier, which also published her first novel, The Legacy, in 2018. To access her work, go to: melaniephillips.substack.com.
(JNS) While attention is focused on Rafah and the world’s energies are directed at punishing Israel for daring to defend itself against extermination, an enemy of humanity is about to get the nuclear bomb. And the Biden administration, despite its furious denials, is helping it to do so.
A leaked report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has stated that Iran’s stockpile of 60% highly enriched uranium has risen since February by 20.6 kg to 142.1 kg and is at its highest level to date.
U.S. officials say that this material could be converted into weapons-grade enriched uranium in a matter of days. It would then be enough to fuel three nuclear weapons.
Alarmed by this development, the U.K., France and Germany have prepared a resolution of censure against Iran for next week’s IAEA board meeting, which will review Tehran’s compliance with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Yet according to a report in The Wall Street Journal, the Biden administration has pressured these countries to back off from censuring Iran. It has also urged a number of other countries to abstain in any censure vote, saying that is what Washington will d
This is a remarkable development. It’s astonishing that the U.S. plans to abstain from censuring Iran (although at time of writing there are rumors that America is now wobbling). A nuclear Iran won’t just pose an existential threat to Israel. It will spark a nuclear arms race throughout the Middle East and will take Iran’s four-decade war against America and the West to a different level altogether.
Until now, there have been no public cracks in the common front between the U.S., Britain and Europe over how to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat. In 2015, former President Barack Obama brokered a disastrous deal with Iran. Spun by Obama’s “echo chamber” as a way of preventing Tehran from getting nuclear weapons, it actually legitimized an Iranian nuclear bomb after merely a few years’ delay while funding Iran’s murderous activities through sanctions relief.
Britain and France in particular were absolutely gung-ho for that deal. But now the U.K., France and Germany have broken ranks with America.
European diplomats say that, although Iranian violations of the NPT are “unprecedented” in number, the Biden administration appears unwilling either to pursue a serious diplomatic effort with Tehran or take punitive actions against its nuclear transgressions.
U.S. officials have dismissed these claims. They insist that the U.S. is increasing pressure on Iran through sanctions and international isolation, and they claim not to have lobbied or diplomatically pressured any countries to vote against or abstain from a resolution on Iran.
Far from putting pressure on Tehran, however, the Biden administration has been systematically appeasing it.
For the last 18 months, as the Foundation for Defense of Democracies has noted, Washington has refused to support a fresh IAEA censure of Iran. Instead, the U.S. has unfrozen Iranian assets and helped Tehran evade sanctions through waivers that have funneled billions into its coffers. Iranian oil exports have consequently surged to 1.82 million barrels a day, the highest total since the Trump administration reinstated sanctions in 2018.
In the war that’s been raging in the Middle East since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led Palestinian Arab pogrom in southern Israel, the U.S. has been limp-wristed in its response to attacks upon its assets by Iranian proxies, carefully avoiding killing any Iranians themselves.
In April, Israel was directly attacked by hundreds of Iranian rockets, missiles and drones—an onslaught described as a “game-changer.” Although the U.S. came to Israel’s defense, the Americans not only urged it to restrain its response but also declared publicly that the U.S. would not itself take part in any offensive actions against Iran.
Far worse, the Biden administration has constantly undermined Israel’s attempt to defend itself in the multi-front war being waged against it by Iranian proxies. The U.S. has actually helped Hamas in Gaza by forcing Israel into paralyzing hostage negotiations; insisting on supplying Gaza with humanitarian aid, most of which was stolen by Hamas to strengthen and enrich itself; and forbidding the Israelis to launch a preemptive attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon to neutralize the vast missile batteries there, which have been unleashing attacks upon northern Israel ever since Oct. 7.
In other words, although the U.S. initially rushed to Israel’s defense, this was part of the Biden administration’s strategy of double-talk—appearing to support the Jewish state by providing it with sufficient defenses to avoid annihilation, while ensuring that it can’t win against Hamas or Hezbollah.
That only makes sense if you realize that America’s aim is to keep the Iranian regime in play. And that doesn’t make sense at all.
The murderous Iranian regime is a threat to the entire world. It has waged a terrorist war against America and the West since it came to power in 1979. It is intent upon the destruction of Israel.
The Mossad has reportedly said that Iran has recruited crime organizations in Europe to strike Israeli and Jewish targets, including an incident last weekend when two grenades were thrown at the Israeli embassy in Belgium and in January when a grenade was thrown at the Israeli embassy in Sweden but failed to explode.
Iran is supplying Russia with arms and is in bed with communist China. It takes Western hostages and murders its internal opponents.
Now an Iranian Jew, 20-year-old Arvin Nathaniel Ghahremani, faces imminent execution for the crime of killing a man in self-defense after Ghahremani was attacked with a knife.
So why in heaven’s name would the U.S. want to prop up this evil Iranian regime?
In a seminal article in Tablet in 2021, Michael Doran and Tony Badran asserted that this was a continuation of the Obama doctrine of “realignment” aimed at establishing a new regional order in the Middle East. America’s allies, Obama had said, needed to learn “to share the neighborhood” with Iran. Their hostility was preventing Washington from exploiting the “more pragmatic dimensions” of the Iranian regime.
This got the situation precisely back to front. The “hostility” of America’s allies was due to their understanding that the Iranian regime isn’t pragmatic at all, but driven by totally uncompromising and murderous religious fanaticism.
According to the realignment doctrine, however, America would help its allies protect themselves against Iranian or Iran-backed attacks but would force them to respect Iran’s positions of power in places such as Syria, Iraq and Yemen. “Thus, in practical terms,” wrote Doran and Badran, “America will use its influence to elevate the interests of Iran over those of U.S. allies in key areas of the Middle East.”
That’s precisely the game the Biden administration—aka, Obama’s third term—is playing in Israel’s desperate fight for its life. While helping prevent Israel’s total annihilation, the U.S. is hanging the Jewish state out to dry.
America’s empowerment of Iran enabled the Oct. 7 pogrom because Hamas is funded, trained and strategized by the Iranian regime. The war waged against Israel ever since is a continuation of Iran’s war of annihilation against the Jewish state.
On the sidelines of the funeral of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed in a helicopter crash earlier this month, a meeting of the “resistance front” was held in Tehran. This was attended by Iranian military commanders and representatives of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Hezbollah and the Houthis of Yemen. Their topic was the need to “continue jihad and struggle until a complete victory is achieved in the Gaza Strip with the participation of all the resistance groups in the region.”
The head of this murderous snake is Iran. Yet America refuses to lop it off. As a result, the Biden administration now poses a danger not just to Israel but to America itself and the free world.
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Dov also hits the cover off the ball.
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A Disgusting, Filthy Corruption
of American Justice
This “case” is part of a sustained multi-state
Democrat strategy to conduct lawfare
in a desperate effort to exhaust Trump.
By DOV Fischer
We have witnessed one of the most shameful, disgusting, filthy episodes in American history. If I had submitted the outline of the Trump trial to a publishing house, they would have rejected the book and said “Even readers of fiction novels will never believe your premises, Rabbi. Your effort at fiction-writing unfortunately descends right with that O.J. Simpson manuscript about ‘how he would have killed Nicole if he had done it.’ Actually, it is more bogus than the O.J. travesty. Sorry, Rabbi. Try submitting on another subject that is more believable, like Androids on the 37th parallel.”
As my readers know, I practiced law at three of America’s most prominent law firms, clerked for one of America’s most prominent federal appeals court judges, and was chief articles editor of UCLA Law Review. I also was a law professor for 16 years. By now, I know the law inside out. And I am a refugee from New York City, Brooklyn born and bred, Columbia University brainwashed and reeducated. I know that town and its players.
As so many others have noted, inter alia:
1. Even if President Trump had committed business fraud, it would have been a misdemeanor, and the limitations statute had run. The reasons for statutes of limitation are: (i) after a period of time, memories fade; (ii) after enough time, evidence innocently gets misplaced and lost; and (iii) at some point, every person is entitled to repose, peace of mind. You can’t have anyone, even if a tortfeasor, who commits a wrongful deed at his or her age 25 and then gets served with papers for that malfeasance at age 85. There comes a point in time where, if the government has not acted, time is up. That is a flipside derivative of the premise that justice delayed is justice denied. It works both ways. So any misdemeanor alleged against Trump for the “hush money” paperwork was irrelevant.
2. To salvage the reality that the paperwork was time-expired, the New York George Soros District Attorney tried absurdly to link the “hush money” payment to a federal crime that is not time-limited.
3. At no point did the D.A. tell anyone exactly what the federal crime was. He did not specify it in the indictment or at trial. This is itself filthy. It is straight out of the days of the NKVD (later the KGB) in the Soviet Union: “Arrest the guy meantime; we’ll figure out the crime soon.”
4. The Soros D.A. ran for office in an anti-Trump county on a promise to get Trump. This is evil.
5. The jury pool was taken from that county. Consider: If you remember the Rodney King incident and trial back in 1991–1992 Los Angeles, there was a state case brought in Simi Valley, California, against the police involved. The jury found the cops not guilty. Simi Valley had an unusually high percentage of residents who were in law enforcement or otherwise related to police. Many L.A.-area police officers moved there after retiring. The jury, composed from such a pool, found for the defendants. Street riots famously ensued, so the government went after the same cops again by bringing slightly different charges in federal court — and in Los Angeles, not the Simi Valley suburb. (They could not bring identical charges because of the rule forbidding “double jeopardy.”) Now with a federal jury composed from a completely different jury pool, the government got its guilty verdict. In other words, the jury system is better than most other systems for obtaining justice, but that requires a fair and competent jury, and a fair judge who allows a fair trial. But even a fair trial can result in an insane result that defies justice if the jury is composed of idiots or biased people. Thus, O.J. Simpson, who murdered his wife, was found not guilty by a jury of his peers. It took a subsequent trial, on different charges in a different court, for the family of Ron Goldman to get the verdict that held O.J. liable for the murder. I have done jury duty a few times, and I remember the people with me in the assembly room, as we awaited being called for possible service. I will never forget: I was sitting with my laptop, working on a legal brief I had to complete that day, when a sudden loud, screaming ruckus erupted. I stopped my work and went to see what was going on. There was a big-screen TV in the assembly room, and the news station was covering a live police chase, with cops following some guy who had hijacked a soda truck, and he was racing away, fleeing on a Los Angeles freeway. And — I am not exaggerating — each and every person in that assembly room except for me was cheering on the crook, rooting for him, yelling ideas at the TV for how he could get away. That is a jury system.
6. To convict President Trump of a crime not named, but commonly assumed to be tied to whether he sought to support his presidential election campaign by secretly mischaracterizing a “hush money” payment to a hooker-stripper, the hooker was put on the stand. She then described her supposed tryst with Trump in vivid detail. None of that had any relevance to the charges in the case. He was not being accused of hiring a hooker. But the testimony was allowed in to prejudice the jury. The jury was being asked to believe this hooker who, by any definition of English, makes her money by having no shame and violating all morality in exchange for money. She already knew from experience that, if she claims she dallied with Trump, she immediately can garner $130,000 in cash regardless of the veracity or mendacity of her claim.
She therefore knew from experience that, if she suddenly is accorded a spotlight that will bring her to worldwide notoriety, she can ensure herself untold hundreds of thousands more if she describes in lurid detail on her world stage a seedy encounter with Trump. She will sell her story to magazines, to someone who writes a book that she “co-authors,” and to a movie producer who will pay her a fortune for the opportunity to put out a film that has a scene where an actor in boxer shorts and a condom lies on a bed with a naked prostitute. Think of all the money that will make at the box office! And worldwide rights. And streaming. And residuals. She knows her world. She knows her customers. The jury is asked to believe that her description of a tryst with Trump is Pure Truth, with no motivation for her to lie. And, again, her entire testimony has no pertinence to the case. But she hates him and wants to hurt him, and he called her a “dogface,” and she owes Trump $620,000 from a prior court judgment that she has made clear she will not pay (although, if she does make big money off her trial testimony, ironically Trump finally will be able to collect his half million by attachment. A fitting O. Henry twist, if ever.)
7. Ultimately, to convict Trump, the jury was asked to believe the “Greatest Liar of All Time.” If you remember Tommy Flanagan, the Jon Lovitz character from the old days of Saturday Night Live when the show was funny, he played an inveterate pathological liar. But that was for laughs. Michael Cohen actually exists. He lied to Congress. He went to prison for fraud. When he wasn’t lying, he was stealing and embezzling from the Trump business. They gave him $50,000 to remit to a contractor, Red Finch, and he gave them only $20,000, pocketing the rest. That scheme was like the premise of the movie “Fargo,” where Jerry Lundegaard arranges for his wife to be kidnaped with a ransom demand, tries to get his skinflint father-in-law to cough up the demanded ransom and, without the kidnapers knowing, falsely tells the father-in-law an inflated ransom demand — more than he arranged for the kidnapers to ask for. His plan is to get the elevated ransom money from the skinflint, to pay the kidnapers the amount they asked for, and to pocket the excess for himself. (Of course the plan goes awry because this plot was the brainchild of the wonderful Coen brothers.)
Alas, here in the Manhattan Kangaroo Courtroom, it is Michael Cohen, not Ethan and Joel Coen, and he is caught Red-Finch-handed right on the witness stand. He’s a liar, a crook, an embezzler. The jury is expected to believe that this pathological liar curiously is telling the truth when he claims that Trump plotted to hide the “hush money” payment as a concealed campaign contribution. Cohen admits, by the way, not only that he embezzled from Trump but also that he hates Trump personally, and he hopes that, by gaining notoriety and name recognition, he can run for and be elected to Congress. (Oh, for the good old days of more honorable and trustworthy congressional candidates like George Santos!) How could a jury believe him? Perhaps, by believing that Cohen always lies, the fools in the jury room convinced themselves that every time Cohen admitted on the stand that he committed perjury, embezzled, and stole from Trump — he was lying?
8. Next, the “judge.” He clearly hates Trump. His daughter makes millions by promoting her anti-Trump merchandise. He threatens to throw a pro-Trump witness in jail because he doesn’t like the way the witness is looking at him. (Have you ever been jailed for smirking? Rolling your eyes?) He threatens to throw Trump in jail for communicating his feelings about the farce transpiring. He listens to the hooker’s lurid descriptions, as does the jury, and then he says essentially, “Oops! I guess they should not have heard that. My bad.” He does not allow key Trump defense witnesses to testify fully in their areas of expertise, such as an actual federal elections officer who can testify for the jury expertly as to why Trump’s expenditure did not impinge on federal election law. This “judge” routinely sustains prosecution objections while denying defense objections. Everything about the case and the way he oversaw it smelled of mendacity and corruption.
This “case” was — and is — part of a sustained multi-state Democrat strategy to conduct lawfare — i.e., warfare through the legal system — in a desperate effort to exhaust Trump, exhaust his energy, exhaust his finances, and to keep him off the campaign trail. It is the entire power of the United States of America leveled to destroy one specific man. So they get a Trump-hating lifelong leftist judge to hit him with a crushing $355,000,000 penalty for supposedly defrauding real estate lenders who testify that they actually made money on the loans and gladly would lend to Trump again. The Democrats bring another case over documents he allegedly mishandled and brought to his home even though Biden also illegally brought secure and confidential government documents from Washington to be stored in his home garage in Delaware and in an office in Pennsylvania. They get a wild D.A. in Georgia, a piece of work who hires her married boyfriend, a character with whom she consorts intimately and with whom she flies to hot spots around the world, to bring a case in an anti-Trump county in Georgia against Trump, and she leverages that opportunity to hire that same unqualified boyfriend to prosecute the case, which empowers him to bill the taxpayers for $654,000. He even billed for 24 hours of work in one day. And of course the absurd Jan. 6 case.
Will the Trump conviction hurt his election chances for Nov. 5? For most voters, probably not. There was so much fraud and corruption in this “case” that most quasi-informed Americans viewed it as a made-for-TV miniseries, nothing more. But we know that our electorate also includes its fair share of idiots, those who get their news and information from TikTok and Instagram (at least those who can read). How will the idiots react on Nov. 5? Many will not vote anyway, as they always do not. Many others would vote against Trump anyway, like the morons who voted in 2020 based on whom Cardi B endorsed. And many will be more inclined to vote for Trump than before. Some, like those “sworn and true” I saw when I was on jury duty, will react as they did when they cheered on the truck hijacker: they like criminals. And many others will react viscerally, having themselves encountered corruption and unfairness in the criminal court system. As an attorney, I have met my share of that crowd during time I did some pro bono work. One called the Department of Corrections the “Department of Corruptions.” They spoke of police lying on witness stands, of corrupt judges, of prejudiced juries. Maybe they were right (a few were), and maybe they were wrong (most were), but they all will believe to their dying days that the American justice system is inherently corrupt. And now Trump is their martyr.
By forcing Trump mostly to remain in New York City during the trial, the anti-Trump “judge” may indeed have swayed the election, but not as he planned. I have been writing for years that Trump needs to hold a few MAGA rallies in the inner cities, where blacks and Hispanics live. American blacks and Hispanics are ready to cross over to the Trump side, maybe even to the whole GOP, but they need some signs of outreach. Just a few highly publicized Trump rallies in their ‘hoods. Until now, he had not been doing so. But the compromised “judge” forced Trump’s handlers to schedule him for a grand appearance in the heart of black Harlem and thereafter for a mega MAGA rally in the heart of Hispanic Bronx. Americans were startled to see the love. There was that veteran Puerto Rican New York politician, with a thick and heavy Spanish accent, who made a ringing endorsement for Trump. And there were the MAGA masses in the crowd. So, by restricting Trump to New York City, the “judge” inadvertently motivated Trump’s people to organize the best public appearances he ever has made in black and Hispanic neighborhoods. Hopefully, his amazing receptions there will prompt him to do a few more of those.
Finally, the transparent corruption of this trial will bring him and all Republicans more money than they could have anticipated. People will empty their pockets because they understand that November 2024 is not only between Trump and Biden, but America itself is now on trial. If we are to descend into Banana Republic lawfare, where disfavored statesmen are sent to Siberia as the Soviet Union judges routinely would rule, then a great many more people besides Donald Trump are in deep trouble. If that happens, we all are in peril because once it starts, it will not end until all the leaders of the other side meet their day, too.
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We once could hear a pin drop. Do we have anything to say that would make a pin drop?
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I love this! Our country doesn’t get the credit it deserves (memories are short).
Here's a refresher on how some of our former patriots handled negative comments about our country.
JFK'S Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, was in France in the early 60's when DeGaulle decided to pull out of NATO. DeGaulle said he wanted all US military out of France as soon as possible.
Rusk responded, "Does that include those who are buried here?"
DeGaulle did not respond.
You could have heard a pin drop
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There was a conference in France where a number of international engineers were taking part, including French and American. During a break, one of the French engineers came back into the room saying, "Have you heard the latest dumb stunt Bush has done? He has sent an aircraft carrier to Indonesia to help the tsunami victims. What does he intend to do, bomb them?"
A Boeing engineer stood up and replied quietly: "Our carriers have three hospitals on board that can treat several hundred people; they are nuclear powered and can supply emergency electrical power to
shore facilities; they have three cafeterias with the capacity to
feed 3,000 people three meals a day, they can produce several thousand gallons of fresh water from sea water each day, and they carry half a dozen helicopters for use in transporting victims and injured to and from their flight deck.
We have eleven such ships; how many does France have?"
You could have heard a pin drop.
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A U.S. Navy Admiral was attending a naval conference that included Admirals from the U.S., English, Canadian, Australian and French Navies.
At a cocktail reception, he found himself standing with a large
group of officers that included personnel from most of those countries.
Everyone was chatting away in English as they sipped their drinks, but a French admiral suddenly complained that, whereas Europeans learn many languages, Americans learn only English. He then asked, "Why is it that we always have to speak English in these conferences rather than speaking French?"
Without hesitating, the American Admiral replied, "Maybe it's because the Brit's, Canadians, Aussie's and Americans arranged it so you wouldn't have to speak German."
You could have heard a pin drop.
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AND THIS STORY FITS RIGHT IN WITH THE ABOVE...
Robert Whiting, an elderly gentleman of 83, arrived in Paris by plane. At French Customs, he took a few minutes to locate his passport in his carry on bag.
"You have been to France before, monsieur?" the customs officer asked sarcastically.
Mr. Whiting admitted that he had been to France previously.
"Then you should know enough to have your passport ready."
The American said, "The last time I was here, I didn't have to show it."
"Impossible. Americans always have to show their passports on arrival in France !"
The American senior gave the Frenchman a long hard look. Then he
quietly explained, ''Well, when I came ashore at Omaha Beach on D-Day in 1944 to help liberate this country, I couldn't find a single Frenchmen to show a passport to"
You could have heard a pin drop.
And finally:
https://lists.theepochtimes.com/archive/jsjOLFk7gm/TIKrzSfJs/6LVWLIPFbt6
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