TRUMP DECIDED ON SYRIA PULLOUT DURING PHONE CALL WITH ERDOGAN: USA President Trump made the shocking decision to withdraw troops from Syria during a phone call with his Turkish counterpart who said Turkey could clear the remaining jihadists from the country. Trump’s move came after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to launch an operation against a Kurdish militia that is fighting against ISIS with American military assistance. Erdogan and Trump spoke on the phone as the American President made his decision. During the conversation Trump told his national security adviser John Bolton to “start the work” to prepare withdrawing troops from Syria. A Turkish daily said that Trump’s order to Bolton came after he asked Erdogan if Turkey would “clean up the remaining Daesh (ISIS) elements if we withdrew from Syria.” Erdogan reportedly told Trump that Turkey had cleared ISIS during its first military operation in northern Syria between 2016 and 2017 and could do so again. Trump replied by telling him to go ahead and do it. (Times of Israel)

    Pray against regional responsibilities being put into the hands of national leaders who are dangerous - or potentially dangerous - to the security of Israel. In this case it is Turkey, which shares outstanding trade agreements with the Jewish state, but whose relationship with Israel is often toxic. Turkey is 99.8% Muslim with Islamic leaders eager for power. Under Erdogan, Turkey's relations with Israel has turned sharply negative.

PALESTINIANS SIGNAL THEY WANT ALL OF JERUSALEM: Australia's decision on Saturday 15 Dec. 2018 to officially recognize the western half of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel prompted a number of outbursts, some of them very, very revealing. The government of PM Benjamin Netanyahu expressed disappointment that, unlike USA President Donald Trump, Australian PM Scott Morrison only acknowledged Israeli sovereignty over half of the Holy City, and did not commit to moving his nation's embassy there. The Palestinian Authority also protested Australia's announcement. Many in Israel assumed that the Palestinians would celebrate Australia recognizing only West Jerusalem as Israel's seat of government as yet another repudiation of the Jews' claim to the entire city as their eternal capital. But then PA negotiator Saeb Erekat explained the outrage, and Israelis were again reminded of just how distant a genuine peace based on historical accuracy remains.

"All of Jerusalem remains a final status issue for negotiations, while East Jerusalem, under international law, is an integral part of the occupied Palestinian territory," insisted Erekat. That came as a surprise to nearly all Israelis, including those to the far left of the political spectrum, who have never considered control of the western half of Jerusalem to be up for negotiation. Did Erekat merely misspeak, or did he reveal that even at the highest levels of the supposedly "moderate" Palestinian government, the long-term goal remains wresting all this land from Israel? At the very least, Erekat's statement should make it clear to the international community that there won't be any kind of peace agreement in the near future, as no Israeli government, regardless of which party is in charge, will ever consider, or be allowed by the public to put West Jerusalem on the table. (Israel Today)

THE GOAL: NO JEWS IN EUROPE AND NO JEWISH STATE IN THE MIDDLE EAST: “Decades after the Holocaust, shocking and mounting levels of anti-Semitism continue to plague the EU”, Michael O’Flaherty, the director of the European agency, said in a statement. “Jewish people have the right to live freely, without hate and without fear for their safety”. Nice words. But that is exactly the point. European Islamists, the lead actors of this new anti-Semitism along with the leftist useful idiots, are trying to stage a “final solution” of what they call the “Jewish-Zionist cancer” in the Middle East (Iran's Rouhani holds the copyright for that term). They really want a jüdenrein world- without Jews in Europe, fleeing from anti-Semitism, and without Jews in the Middle East, with the destruction of Israel. Europe has become the epicenter of the new war against Israel and the Jews. Europe fights the Jewish State in the political arenas, in the corridors of power in Brussels, in various Western European capitals and the UN, inside Israel with the NGOs it funds, the media and the diplomacy.

Europe is a bystander no more. It has become deliberately responsible for the abominable crime of cultural genocide: wiping out the past existence of a people – the Jews – to eliminate their current political legitimacy and its human, religious, cultural and historical rights. That is why Europe voted along with the Islamic regimes at the recent UN resolutions denying the Jewish history of Jerusalem. We are at the point that many Jews prefer to leave Europe to live in Israel. What a step back, the Jews flee again from Europe to seek peace and security in a country that has only enemies around it, those who as a single entity cultivate the will to find the way to destroy Israel and throw its corpse into the sea. (Arutz-7)

UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY VOTES 87-57 TO CONDEMN HAMAS: A majority of UN member states voted in favor of a General Assembly resolution put forward by the USA on Thur. 6 Dec. 2018 condemning the activities of Hamas and other terror groups in Gaza. While 87 voted in favor, 57 voted against, and 33 abstained, the measure was not adopted because, in a procedural vote held before the main vote on the resolution, it was decided to require a two-thirds majority for passage. USA Representative to the UN, Nikki Haley, said that despite more than 500 General Assembly resolutions condemning Israel, not one condemning Hamas has ever been adopted. She described the two-thirds decision, which passed by just a handful of votes, as "unfair." Israeli PM Netanyahu, however, on Fri. 7 Dec. 2018 hailed majority backing in the UN General Assembly for the USA draft resolution condemning Hamas. "This is the first time that a majority of countries have voted against Hamas and I commend each of the 87 countries that took a principled stand. I thank the American administration and USA ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley for the initiative." (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs)