Prime Minister Netanyahu said, that Israel, at this point, must receive something clear in return, if it is going to release any more terrorists to the Palestinian Authority. Netanyahu stated that in a few days either the situation will be resolved or it will blow up.

If an agreement is reached it will be brought before the cabinet for a vote. Netanyahu does not want the peace talks to end after Israel releases the last batch of terrorists.

The statements were made at a meeting of Likud ministers.

At the start of the meeting, Netanyahu made the following statement on other important subjects:

“Over the weekend we experienced an incident on the Golan Heights. The IDF foiled an attempt to infiltrate the border and hit those who approached the fence. We will continue to respond to any attempt to attack us and to the best of our ability, as initiated policy, we will foil these attacks before they occur. This is the essence of our ongoing policy; it works and is achieving results.

Over the weekend the UN Human Rights Council condemned Israel five times, this at a time when the slaughter in Syria is continuing, innocent people are being hung in the Middle East and human rights are being eroded. In many countries free media are being shut down and the UN Human Rights Council decides to condemn Israel for closing off a balcony. This is absurd. This march of hypocrisy is continuing and we will continue to condemn it and expose it.

Over the weekend we received an A+ credit rating, a sign that the Israeli economy is in good shape. I assume that this is also connected, not only to the fact that the unemployment rate is among the lowest that we have seen in many years, but also to the fact that relative to other Western economies, and in the world in general, the Israeli economy is in good condition, and we will work so that it will be even better.”

Israeli Ministers and Knesset members are coming out against the free market of ideas, and the free market as well, by proposing a bill that would potentially kill the popular and free Israeli daily print paper, Yisrael Hayom.

The paper is given out free in Israel, and has become the primary competitor to Arnon “Nuni” Moses’s Yediot Achronot, which leans more to the political left, though not as far left as Ha’aretz, which only has a minuscule market share in Israel.

Among those MKs proposing the bill that would try to shut down the paper are MKs Eitan Cabel (Labor), Robert Ilatov (Yisrael Beytenu), Ayelet Shaked (Bayit Yehudi), Elazar Stern (Hatnua), Ariel Attias (Shas) and Yoel Razbozov (Yesh Atid).

Naftali Bennett (Bayit Yehudi) said today on a Galei Tzahal interview, that Yisrael Hayom is “Pravda“, and serves the interest of one person [the Prime Minister].

It is not clear to us what is stopping Bennett from convincing one of his own supporters to print a daily paper that would be pro-Bennett, or even improving his relationship with the religious-Zionist paper Arutz-7, so they’d give him better coverage in their free weekend paper.

Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid chairman), whose party supports the bill, used to write a column for Yisrael Hayom’s main competitor, Yediot.

Yisrael Hayom is owned by Sheldon Adelson, and typically takes a position that is pro whatever position PM Netanyahu recently put forward, though not always a right-wing position. It also publishes articles from those on the left side of the political spectrum. There is no denying that it is agenda driven, but name one newspaper that isn’t.

As an aside, Sheldon Adelson, may soon be purchasing the religious-Zionist paper Makor Rishon, after Makor Rishon over-extended itself financially with its purchase of Ma’ariv.

Some in the Likud say that Moses and Yediot are the driving force behind this bill.

The “Yisrael Hayom” law, as it is being called because it specifically only targets Yisrael Hayom, would require that the top four daily print papers charge fees relative to what the other daily print papers are charging – or more accurately no less than 70% of whatever the second lowest priced paper is charging.

To us, it looks like a blatant attempt to suppress the voices of political opponents and suppress freedom of speech and press in Israel.

Yediot has the same opportunity to build a different business model, take a different political line that is more palatable to most Israelis, or even accept that it won’t be number one in the market anymore.

The free Arutz-7 Shabbat print paper and the fee-based Makor Rishon have coexisted quite nicely for over a decade serving the Religious-Zionist market, each one with their own business model and message – proving that it can be done.

It appears that this is really an attempt to block the basic right for anyone to put down their soap box in the city square and freely express their opinion – if certain people are worried that that opinion is becoming too popular.

Eitan Cabel (Labor), one of the proponents of the bill, played a central role in shutting down the very popular right-wing religious Arutz-7 radio station.

Naftalki Bennett and Bayit Yehudi should really consider who its allies are in this fight and what it could mean for them next.

It appears that in Israel, those on the political left can’t stand that those on the political right have a voice that is heard, and those on the right are too short-sighted to see that suppressing both the free market and the free market of ideas is dangerous for all of us, and that is the real problem.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu followed President Barack Obama by two weeks with an appearance on entertainment talk shows.

Everyone knows that Obama took on Zack Galifianakis and bested him as a put-down artist. Netanyahu appeared on Israel’s “Matzav HaOoma” (State of the Nation) show earlier this week and sustained one jab after another by the show’s four hosts.

The Prime Minister got in a few punches, but most of the offense was full of one-liners that the hosts threw at Netanyahu, giving him little room to maneuver but leaving him laughing a lot.

However, both Obama and Netanyahu got serious on the separate shows and showed what really is on their minds. Obama chose to plug his ObamaCare program, while Netanyahu made it clear he has different priorities, namely Iran.

The Israeli show hosts badgered him that he brings up Iran to escape talking about the housing crisis and the stalemate with the Palestinian Authority, but Netanyahu responded, “I will not let Iran surprise us.”

Obama was brilliant in his appearance, or as Tom Lehrer said when former actor Ronald Reagan was elected governor of California, “We finally have a politician who can do a song and dance.”

When Galifianakis asked the president “how it feels to be the last black president,” Obama responded, “How does it feel to know this is the last time you ever will talk to a president?”

Asked if it would not be a great idea if a president could run for a third term, Obama jabbed that winning a third time would be like making a third hangover movie, which “didn’t work out so well, did it?” Galifianakis’  first two Hangover movies were a success but the third was panned by critics.

Most of the laughs on the Israeli show came at Netanyahu’s expense. The hosts tackled him repeatedly on Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon ‘s criticism of  U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Obama. One of the comedians asked, “Isn’t it dangerous leaving him [Ya’alon] with all those weapons?”

Netanyahu finally broke and said that when it comes to diets, some people should “do more and speak less.”

Netanyahu’s best put down was concerned the housing shortage, He slammed the host by saying that instead of his and his friend living in separate apartments, they should move into together and create another empty residence for somebody else.

Netanyahu was asked rhetorically if it is so smart to demand that the Palestinian Authority recognize Israel as Jewish state because if it does, it would help Iran to aim its weapons on Israel.

One of the hosts told Netanyahu that if Menachem Begin took only two years to sign an agreement with Egypt and Rabin took three years to make a deal with Jordan, why, after nine years as Prime Minister over two terms, Netanyahu can’t make peace with the United States.

The video of Netanyahu begins at 2:40 on the screen and is in Hebrew, with Hebrew sub-titles. The clip of Obama, precluded by an ABC show summarizing  his capabilities as a comedian, begins at 00:30.

Obama clearly is a better comedian than Netanyahu. Pardon the old and trite cliché, but it fits: “You should be on stage. There is one leaving in 20 minutes.”

Statements made in public by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and forgotten by the entire media world reveal that Israel promised to free 104 terrorists in four batches on return for the resumption of peace talks “in accordance with the circumstances of their progress.”

Those are the Prime Minister’s words in an “open letter to the citizens of Israel” he wrote last year. Foreign media also reported at the time that “an Israeli official said no prisoners would be released before direct talks begin, and the process would then be dependent on the Palestinians proving they are ‘really serious and not playing games.’”

The problems with these direct quotes are that they do not fit the agenda of the Obama administration, the Palestinian Authority, the United Nations and the media establishment, which has forgotten or never learned that Journalism 101 teaches that one should check the facts.

Instead, every news outlet, including those in Israel, is accepting as fact Mahmoud Abbas’ telling the Arab League in Kuwait  Tuesday, “The Israeli government is trying to dodge an agreement it had with the US administration to release pre-Oslo Palestinian prisoners.”

He added, “The Israeli government took every chance to foil the American efforts. This proves what we say about the lack of seriousness and preparedness of the Israeli government to withdraw and create peace.”

It is not an interpretation and it is not editorializing to state that this is a lie.

Netanyahu said more than once that the release of the 104 terrorists was spread over a period weight months ending at the end of this week in order to test Abbas’ intentions.

The same media reporting Abbas’ statements know as well as you and I that the talks have been a dismal failure, so much so that  U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is flying to Jordan on Wednesday to meet with Abbas and will be on the phone to jawbone Netanyahu to save his own behind and come up with some kind of formula to add another chapter to one of the most shaggiest dog stories ever created.

The facts, without any editorializing, show that it is Abbas and not Netanyahu who has not fulfilled his obligations, unless one accepts the Arab world attitude that the entire point of “negotiations” was to convince Israel not to negotiate and simply say “yes” to every Arab demand.

Those principal demands, without any interpretation, are:

• Turning over to the Palestinian Authority all of Judea and Samaria and all parts of Jerusalem that abandoned by Jordan in the Six-Day War in 1967;
• Expelling more approximately 700,000 Jews – 10 percent of the Israeli population – form those areas;
• Removing all soldiers from Judea and Samaria, including the Jordan Valley;
• Establishing eastern Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian Authority state; and
• Accepting the immigration of millions of Arabs whose claim to Israel as homeland depends on the United Nations’ unique definition of Arabs as the only refugees in the world whose refugee status passes from generation to generation.

Abbas has left no room for compromise or negotiation on any of the points. He and his “negotiators” have complained since the resumption of talks in July that “no progress” has been made.  Not par for the course for Abbas, truer words were never spoken.

On the other hand, he has refused to accept Netanyahu’s one demand that he recognize Israel as a Jewish state. He has “no” to allowing Jews to live in a Palestinian Authority state, a direct violation of U.N. laws. He has said “no” to giving up on the phony refugee issue. he has said “no” to allowing IDF troops in the Jordan Valley.

Israel is likely to sign soon on the dotted line and pay millions of dollars to families of terrorists who were “victims” of Israeli soldiers who preferred to kill rather than be killed in the Mavi Mamara clash on the high seas four years ago, Turkey’s deputy prime minster said Tuesday.

A compensation agreement may be signed after local Turkish elections March 30, according to Bülent Arınç and reported by Turkey’s Hurriyet News, but local election results in favor of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s could go to his inflated head and encourage him to up the ante.

The exact amount of money has not been announced, but Turkey previously floated the sum of one million dollars for each family so Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu can believe President Barack Obama will work with Turkey on behalf of Israel in the event of an attack Iran, in which case using Turkish air space could be crucial.

Obama’s ability to manipulate Turkish-Israeli ties also gives him diplomatic patsies in a region where the United States has lost all respect and whose influence can only be measured in dollars.

After a deep freeze in relations, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu suddenly announced a year ago that Israel indeed was so sorry it had to use force to kill nine Turkish civilian terrorists, one of them with dual American citizenship, who kidnapped at least three Navy commandos and knifed and shot others.

The commandos, in accordance with international law as later affirmed by the United Nations, boarded the Mavi Mamara to prevent it from continuing to Hamas-controlled Gaza, where an embargo is in place to prevent terrorists and arms from reaching shore.

Netanyahu’s apology came almost momentarily after Obama, during his first and probably last visit to Israel as president, convinced Netanyahu to make a 30-minute telephone call to Erdoğan to express his sorrow.

The reconciliation has been stuck because of lack of agreement on how much Israeli taxpayers’’ money will be used to buy off Turkey.

Welcome to Chelm.

Once there is an agreement after the elections, which are occupying the Turkish government’s attention at the moment, Israel and Turkey will resume diplomatic ties and restore their ambassadors, Annc said.

The compensation deal needs approval by the Turkish parliament.

Annc cited President Obama’s involvement, saying, “The lion’s share in the success belongs to Mr. Obama. President Obama used his influence on Israel and appealed for a compromise.”

JERUSALEM – After decades in exile, Zionist leader Zeev Jabotinsky’s ceremonial saber was returned to his heirs, the State of Israel. After being confiscated by the British in 1920, the sword was presented yesterday (Mar. 24) by Police Commissioner Insp.-Gen. Yochanan Danino to Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu.

The top police brass convened at the Begin Center for a special event marking Begin’s 100^th birthday, and the pinnacle of the event was when Chief Danino presented Netanyahu with this unique saber.

Jabotinsky, a Revisionist Zionist leader, author, orator, soldier, and founder of the Jewish Self-Defense Organization in Odessa, co-founded with Joseph Trumpeldor the Jewish Legion of the British army in World War, in which Jabotinsky served as an officer in the 38^th Royal Fusiliers. The sword had previously belonged to a senior Ottoman officer and apparently came into Jabotinsky’s possession during his service as an officer during World War I.

The saber’s unique story took another interesting turn a few months ago when the police’s History and Education Division discovered that Jabotinsky’s saber had been confiscated while he was arrested by the British as he was defending Jews during the riots at Nebbe Musah. The Division’s researchers learned that the saber had come into the possession of Martin Higgins, a British historian who specialized in the mandatory police and whose father had been a police officer himself. Following Israel’s request, Higgins turned over the sword to the police.

“That which was stolen by the British Mandate 94 years ago, today I the Police Commissioner, in the name of Israel’s Police, entrusted with fortifying the uphold of the law, return to you, Prime Minister of Israel, at this institution dedicated to Menachem Begin, who did much to implement Jabotinsky’s vision of a Jewish democratic state”, said Chief Danino.

“We have returned Jabotinsky’s saber, which represents the Jewish Nation’s victory and its independence,” Danino continued. “By this reinstatement we are executing historical justice.”

PM Netanyahu thanked Danino for the gift and said it was of personal and national significance to him. Netanyahu further praised the police for their excellent work in ensuring the safety of the citizens of Israel.

It’s time to just say it. The obsession of Barack Obama and John Kerry with forcing along a discredited and unproductive “peace process” involving the Palestinian Arabs and Israel is weird – even creepy.

Notice I didn’t say “peace process between the Palestinian Arabs and Israel.” There’s nothing “between” about it. At this point, the Obama-Kerry show seems to involve the Palestinian Arabs and Israel only tangentially. All the action is in Washington, D.C., and it’s all one-sided.

When we left our drama last week, Mahmoud Abbas had just delivered “three ‘no’s’” to the White House on this freighted topic: no recognition of Israel as a Jewish state; no relinquishment of a so-called “right of return”; and no commitment to honoring a pact with Israel as an “end of conflict” between the two.

There’s nothing for Israel in this deal, in other words. Abbas won’t sign up to anything that would make Israeli commitments or concessions worthwhile. He’s very explicit about that. His ruling cabal in the West Bank in fact organized rent-a-crowds for a show of public support for his position, in advance of his visit to Washington – and was primed to run a victory lap celebrating his intransigence immediately afterward. Abbas couldn’t be more categorical about his refusal to engage with John Kerry’s negotiating framework; not if he spelled it out in six-foot neon letters.

As Jonathan Tobin points out, however, Israel has agreed to Kerry’s proposed framework for talks going forward, although with reservations. It’s Abbas who won’t come to the table. He won’t agree to even talk about finding common ground.

Seems like we’ve been here before, of course. But there are reasons for the current impasse, beyond the Palestinian Arabs’ longstanding pattern of refusals. The Quartet-brokered, Oslo-based peace process is a dead letter, and I think everyone outside Washington and Brussels can sense that. Oslo was born out of a moment that has passed: a moment of unchallenged American supremacy and the illusion of unforced global stasis. That moment is gone. The rise of a more territorial, geographically oriented Islamism, coupled with the Arab Spring, and now Putin’s invasion of Crimea, have demonstrated that too much of our current reality has changed.

It would be foolish of Abbas to make commitments at this point; foolish of Arabs throughout the region, and Islamists of all stripes. Too many opportunities are now possible. The last thing anyone wants to do is make commitments that will leave him out of position to profit from the coming instability.

Multinational observers or peacekeeping forces may be highly exploitable, as they have been in southern Lebanon, but their utility depends on an excruciatingly slow, indirect approach to undermining Israel. They could be a serious inconvenience for a quicker-acting approach, if such multinational forces took up a position – through some agreement along the lines of the Kerry proposal – in the Jordan Valley.

Abbas has excellent strategic reasons to reject the idea of a U.S.-brokered multinational force in the Jordan Valley. So do his various patrons. Now isn’t the time to commit to deals. Not with the status quo about to bust wide open.

The Obama administration hasn’t realized it’s 2014, largely because its members haven’t even realized it’s no longer 1968. That’s another story, but it’s central to the failing dynamic of the Middle East peace process. The context in which the Oslo framework was the best or only option is simply gone.

Under these emerging conditions, Israel’s continued cooperation has a twofold purpose, I believe: first, to show good faith in general – a willingness to negotiate to settle the Palestinian problem – and second, to maintain her good relations with the United States.

A Palestinian Authority survey has found that terrorist Marwan Barghouti, serving five successive life terms in prison but hoping to be freed by Israel, would easily win the election for the successor Mahmoud Abbas if the vote were held today.

“If presidential elections were between Marwan Barghouti and Haniyeh, the former would receive 60% and the latter would receive 34% of the participants’ vote,” according to the results in the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research poll.

If presidential elections were between Abbas, Barghouti and Haniyeh, Barghouti would receive the largest percentage (36%) followed by Abbas (30%), and Haniyeh (29%).

The results are similar to a poll in December but more significant now because Barghouti is one of the terrorists who has been added Abbas’ list of terrorists he wants Israel to release in order for U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s peace talks to continue.

If the Netanyahu government were to free Barghouti, and there is some support from the more leftist Cabinet minister to release him, Israel would in effect have named the successor to Abbas, who succeeded arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat.

Since Arafat won the Nobel Peace Prize, it can be assumed that the same fate would await Barghouti in recognition of his love for killing Jews and then switching strategies to take over Israel through Zionist governments’ willingness to commit hari-kari.

Barghouti started out his career as a terrorist at the age of 15, joining Arafat’s Fatah terrorist party and showing his promise as a model for young people by co-founding the Fatah Youth Movement. By the age of 18, Barghouti already had been arrested, and he quickly learned how terror pays off in Israeli prisons.

He studied and received his high school diploma while in jail, where the prison system is so sure that educating terrorists will change their lives for the better.

In Barghouti’s case, it changed the lives of dozens of Israeli. More accurately, it ended the lives of dozens of Israelis, with the tacit help of the Israeli government.

Israel deported Barghouti to Jordan for his leadership in the beginning of the Intifada in 1987 but returned under the terms of the Oslo Accords, the agreement that the Palestinian Authority has torn up clause by clause.

Israeli governments have had a weird penchant for pardoning terrorists, perhaps because the powers-to-be want to make sure that the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) and IDF have plenty of work to do. Lebanon, Egypt and Syria apparently are too boring.

Seeing that Arabs could get what they wanted by  bleeding Israel dry in the diplomatic process backed by the United States and the European Union, Barghouti championed “land for peace,” so long as the Palestinian Authority could get land without having to agree to peace. The proof came in 2000 when he backed “new forms of military struggle” after the Camp David Accords.

He led the Tanzim terrorist group while proclaiming his opposition to violence against Israeli civilians – soldiers were fair game – and showed how much he could be believed by his involvement in suicide bombings. Barghouti was convicted for three attacks that killed five people in Tel Aviv, Judea and Samaria.

While in jail, Israel has given Barghouti all the mobile phones and tools he needs to use his jail cell to organize and incite Arabs throughout Israel and keep up his popularity. He even announced he would run from his prison cell to succeed Arafat after he died in 2004, but withdrew from the race in favor of Abbas.

He staked out his claim for the next Nobel Peace Prize by initiating and helping to formulate the National Conciliation Document of the Prisoners that called on Hamas, the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Islamic Jihad and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine to form a coalition government and negotiate with Israel.