David Jablinowitz is revealing, in bits and pieces, sections of his talks with President Obama. Always interesting, these are particularly so as they discuss the possibility of moving the embassy to Jerusalem.

the attitude of giving in to the threat of violence and blaming the victim reigns supreme..

Fox News is (and some Israeli sites are) reporting that the new US State Department under President Donald Trump has decided to put a hold on transferring the money former President Obama had approved to be given to the Palestinians at the last moment as he was leaving office and circumventing the Congress that had refused to approve the transfer. The Trump administration says it will be reviewing the decision and look at the payment and consider making adjustments to it in line with the administrations priorities.

Again, it isn't the money that bothers me, and Trump's review of the money does not excite me.. It is the process. Obama tried to go around the government's back at the last minute when nobody was looking and do something outside of the process, in line with his heart when nobody could any longer say anything. Trump is merely saying that is unacceptable and it needs to go through the proper channels. In the end he might approve of it, or make adjustments and approve of it in some way or another - with less, or more, money being transferred. And that will be fine. It is nothing new that the USA sends money to the Palestinians. Heck, the Israelis send money and goods to the Palestinians on a regular basis. Whatever happens with the money in the end is fine. As long as we know it went through the proper channels.

It is now being reported that in the last hours of Obama's presidency, as he was about to leave office, President Obama "quietly" released $221 million to the Palestinian Authority. Congress was notified just hours before President Trump took his oath of office.

It seems this money had already been slated to be sent to the PA, but GOP members of Congress had been blocking the transfer. In his final hours in office, Obama found a way to sneak the money out behind their backs.
sources: Times of Israel, Business Insider

The money itself does not really bother me so much. Obama, and the USA, gave Israel much more over the years. This is not "so much" money, and the USA has given money to the PA before.

However, the timing bothers me. Just like with the recent refusal to veto the vote against Israel in the United Nations Security Council - Obama did something at the last minute when he no longer had to feel obligated to anybody, the money transfer now is also a last minute act when he no longer had to answer to anybody. these last minute acts show where his heart really is. Obama must have really wanted to give the PA that money, rather than let the government go through its normal processes. He could have left it for the incoming President and Congress to deal with, and they might or might not have released the monies, but it would no longer be Obama's issue. His extraordinary efforts to get the PA this money indicates how important it is to him.

I don't know why Obama needs to host two receptions of Chanukah, but he did..

Obama always had a good sense of humor...

without taking away Obama's part in the strained relationship that seems to exist between Israel and the USA (on a political/diplomatic level) for a variety of reasons, from about 14:30 in the following clip Obama says, a few times, that we are all Jews, when talking about opposing anti-semitism.

I just wan to point out that Obama has been strongly chided online many times in the past for not openly standing with Israel, not having social campaigns supporting Israel in the face of terror, not speaking up [enough], and the like. And now, when he is talking about anti-semitism, and says "we are all Jews", he gets chided for being insincere, and how can he say that considering the Iran deal he brokered, and things like that..

Obama can't win if he doesn't say we are all Jews, and he can't win if he does say "we are all Jews". Je Suis Jews.

and the Maccabeats say Happy Hanukkah from the White House..

According to an article in Bechadrei, quoting an unnamed Haredi MK from UTJ, the Haredim are upset with the president, Ruby Rivlin, for his participation in the hanukkah reception and lighting ceremony at the White House.

They are upset because he participated in an event that included a Reform Rabbi, thus giving them legitimacy.

As I've said before, with the Haredi parties, the attitude is either you are with us or against us. There is no middle ground. The President of Israel is everybody's president, and not just the President of the Orthodox. He is President of the State that is for all the Jewish people, not just the Orthodox. Yet the attitude is he either thinks like us or he is against us. Either he act in the way we want, according to our worldview, or he is against us. They do not recognize the fact that he might have a different opinion, that he himself is not religious (he is traditional), that he is Preisent and has responsibilities. Either you are with us or against us.

This unnamed MK says they knew from the start that Rivlin would be trouble for the Haredim, which is why they initially supported Dalia Itzik and not Rivlin. In the second round they chose Rivlin because the other guy was worse by explicitly giving support to the Reform. And, of course, they take credit for Rivlin's victory, saying he only won because of them, as if that means he owes them, though in truth he won only because of each and every vote he got - not just the votes from one party - i.e. he won only because of the votes from the Likud as much as he only won from the votes of UTJ, and only won from the votes of Habayit Hayehudi  and only won from the votes of Shas.

Personally I think there is something else that happened at the ceremony that should anger them more... let's go to the video..
it looks to me like Rivlin lit the menora backwards.

Now that should embarrass us all.

I am happy the Reform rabbi made the brachot and not Rivlin, considering the ceremony was during the day and not at actual lighting time. Interestingly the rabbi modified the bracha and said "שעשה ניסים לאבותינו ולאימותינו" - He performed miracles for our fathers and our mothers in those days...

Unfortunately they do not show us the Maccabeats performance...

despite their best wishes, the White House admits it is not going to happen, at least not while Obama is still the President...

PM Benjamin Netanyahu announced the appointment of Dr. Ran Baratz to the post of head of public diplomacy at the end of last week.

Since the announcement, we've seen another "Gal Hirsch style" take-down. It makes me wonder what is wrong with the guys leading our government that they can't get a simple appointment taken care of without such embarrassment. Do they not vet their candidates?

What happened? Briefly, it was discovered that Baratz had posted some not so nice comments about some important people to his Facebook account. He called Barak Obama the modern face of anti-semitism. He said Ruby Rivlin is a marginal figure the Islamic states have no interest in kidnapping. He said that John Kerry has the mental age of a 12 year old.

Ok, so he said what he said and there is a debate as to whether or not that makes him unworthy of the post he was being appointed to.

What I find noteworthy about this is a different aspect of this story.

Joe Biden, speaking at the Union for Reform Judaism conference,  criticized the incident saying, "
there should be no tolerance for any member of the Israeli administration to refer to the president of the United States in derogatory terms, period."
Others, spokespeople, also related to the report criticizing the derogatory comments in harsh terms.
source: TOI

What makes this noteworthy is that when Obama was caught speaking into a hot mike calling Netanyahu a liar, no apology was forthcoming, nor did we hear anything about kindergarten rules of being polite. When Obama spoke about Netanyahu calling him a chickenshit and other names, kindergarten rules did not apply, and no apology was forthcoming...

They should perhaps consider another kindergarten rule - what goes around comes around.

Netanyahu ignored Obama's comments. Obama should ignore the comments of someone who was not even a staffer at the time.

The latest revelation from the Iranian nuclear deal is shocking. And even funny in a crazy way.

It turns out that the UN is going to be trusting the Iranians to self-monitor their own reactor, and the White House is comfortable with that.
source: Times of Israel

Does this mean that Iran will have to give itself 24 days advance warning that it will be inspecting a nuclear reactor?
I think Iran can afford to be magnanimous and say that, as an expression of good faith, it will waive the 24 day advance warning clause and will surprise inspect itself to try to catch itself unaware.

In light of this astounding revelation, we are compiling a list of all the other situations and conflicts which will now be resigned to self-monitoring.

ideas so far:
1. The UN is going to allow Israel to self-monitor and self-police its activities vis a vis the Palestinians.
2. The Health Ministry is going to allow both Heinz and Osem to self-monitor themselves to ensure a minimum of 10% tomato content in ketchup they each produce.
3. The UN is going to allow Hamas to self-monitor its interrogation of the Zionist dolphin spy, Flipper.
4. North Korea is going to be allowed to self-monitor its nuclear program
5. The police in Ferguson are now going to be allowed to investigate itself in relation to its behavior vis a vis the local African American community.
6. The City of Tel Aviv is going to allow marathon runners to self-monitor their health and self-determine if they are fit to run the marathon
7. Police force sin cities around the world are now going to allow drug dealers to self-monitor their distribution lines. As well, bars are going to be allowed to self-monitor their sale of alcohol to minors.
8. The organizations protecting intellectual rights and music distribution are going to allow the public to self-monitor itself in relation to illegal music and software downloads.
9. Restaurants and food manufacturers are going to be allowed to self-monitor their kashrut status. Oh wait, this is not new - someone has already been trying to do this.
10. The Haredi community in Jerusalem is going to allow the new Yes Planet movie theater complex to self-monitor its Shabbos activities

what would you add to the list?

the Iran deal was the strongest nonproliferation agreement ever negotiated. And because it’s such a strong deal, every nation in the world that has commented publicly, with the exception of the Israeli government, has expressed support

  -- US President Barak Obama

let's not forget or ignore the fact that Israel is also the only country on the front lines if Obama is wrong, so Israel being the only one to oppose it might not be because Israel is wrong but because everyone else can be daring enough to take the risk, but for Israel that risk is so so much greater..

if the nuclear deal signed between world powers and Iran is rejected by Congress, the United States will be forced to attack Tehran, which will lead to Hezbollah retaliating with rockets on Tel Aviv.

  -- US President Barak Obama

like that was not already a threat anyway... been there, done that..

US President Barak Obama tweeted something strange yesterday, regarding the shooting in Charleston South Carolina:

Here are the stats: Per population, we kill each other with guns at a rate 297x more than Japan, 49x more than France, 33x more than Israel.

— President Obama (@POTUS) June 21, 2015

yes, he somehow found a way to connect Israel to it.. so how can we spin it as anti-semitic? just joking.

Obama's goal and intent seems to be to bring about some form of gun control.

I dont know what Obama is including in these statistics:
 * Is he talking about regular homicides between citizens using guns? If that is the case, I would be surprised that Israel's rate is only 33 times better.  Israel has some, but very little homicide.
 * Is he including terror attacks? that would increase Israel's rate of homicide, but most of the terror is not with guns, so I don't know that it would increase all that much.
 * Is he including the military? I doubt it. It does not make sense to include military in such statistics.
 * Is he including the Palestinians? I do not know how much gun violence they have but perhaps Israel and Palestinians together might make Obama's number closer to reality (or maybe not)

maybe his numbers are correct. Even if they are, and not even better than what Obama mentioned, they show that it is not the getting rid of the guns that will bring homicides down, though it will surely help (and I am not against gun control), but something more in the culture. Perhaps more training of responsible use. I do not know what it is, but in Israel guns are all over the place, so it is not just the presence of guns that means more violence. I have even heard some say that the presence of guns keeps the numbers down...

I had a thought when reading Jeffrey Goldberg's write-up of his interview with President Barak Obama.

In the interview, Obama explained that he loves Israel and he criticizes it so much because he holds it to a higher standard than he does other countries. He will criticize Israel when it does not live up to her standards that she was founded upon, and when she does not live up to the values and teachings of Judaism.

SUddenly the thought struck me. Whenever Israel has tried to pass or discuss a law promoting Judaism at a higher level of standing in the country than it currently has - giving it priority in certain matter, such as nationality, such as in Hebrew law as becoming the foundation for the legal system, or in other manifestations, we get criticized for making, or trying to make, Israel too Jewish and less democratic.

So, on the one hand, if we are too Jewish it is bad, on the other hand, if we do not live up to the high Jewish standards it is bad.

Which is it? do you want us more Jewish or less Jewish?

First President Obama held the traditional Passover Seder in the White House..

and then came the warm wishes to the public..

The White House claims to have been against Netanyahu's trip to speak in front of Congress because of not wanting to interfere with foreign elections. Even after the trip was set and it was clear it was not being changed, Obama said he won't meet with Netanyahu, so as not to influence the Israeli elections..

The issue of not influencing the elections hasn't stopped Oabam and his people from publicly saying all sorts of nasty things about Netanyahu in the past few days. Yesterday John Kerry said Netanyahu has poor judgement on the Iran issue. Now they are saying that Netanyahu is the greatest threat to a possible deal with Iran.

What happened to avoiding influencing the Israeli elections?

Or maybe that was not really the reason....

I admit from the start that I misunderstood the headline when I saw it, before I read the article.

I saw the headline, dress up like Barak Obama, and assumed it was using Obama as a symbol of a modern-day Amalek, or something like that.

Turns out, it isn't.

Rav Efraim Zalminovitz, rav of Mazkeret Batya, called on the masses to dress up for Purim like US President Barak Obama.

Rav Zalminovitz explained that Obama is a person who attempts to bring peace to the world. It would be a tremendous possitive message to have many thousands of students around the country dressed up in costume like the American president, and it would send a positive message to the US and to the world that we are looking for peace, that we love our closest friend, the USA, so much.

Rav Zalminovitz explains that such imagery would be worth so much more than a thousand words. He says this would improve the "hasbara" of Israel and convince the world that we are a people who desire a life of peace and security. Rav Zalminovitz adds that even if it were to require giving away land, parts of Eretz Yisrael that were promised to Avraham our forefather, we would show the world that we have the words of the Ramban that require us to accept the permission of the nations of the world to return to Zion.

Rav Zalminovitz explains that it is worthy to dress up in costumes with positive messages, such as a good gentile who seeks peace
source: Kipa

ok then. I'm not quite sure why he had to talk about giving away land in this message. Also, we already returned to Zion, with the permission of the nations. If they would take away that permission now, after the fact, would we have to leave, according to the Ramban?

get your Barak Obama face masks from amazon :-)

It turns out that the whole fiasco of "Bibi-Gate", of Benjamin Netanyahu circumventing the White House and accepting an invitation to speak before Congress about Iran, has been a setup.

According to a New York times correction, Netanyahu only accepted the invitation to speak before Congress after he made sure the White House knew about the invitation and had no objection.
(h/t: TOI)

In their own words:

Correction: January 30, 2015 An earlier version of this article misstated when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel accepted Speaker John A. Boehner’s invitation to address Congress. He accepted after the administration had been informed of the invitation, not before.

So all this outrage at Netanyahu, about him meddling, about him trying to make Obama look bad, about him harming US-Israel relations... it is all a fraud. Netanyahu was set-up. The crisis is one of th eUS-making, not Netanyahu. The White House let Netanyahu accept the invitation and then screamed bloody murder after he did. I think Netanyahu even should be commended for not selling Obama down the river and exposing all this after Obama threw his hissy fit.