Let’s tell the truth: the Palestine Liberation Organizaion established in June 2, 1964, three years before the “occupation”, was meant to free the “Palestine” that existed then, meaning Tel Aviv, Haifa, Nahariya and Be’er Sheva and not Hevron, Shechem and Ramallah that were under Jordanian “occupation” at the time. The organization has not changed its charter as of today, nor has it changed its goal and its suggested Final Solution for the Jewish People all over the world. This was the credo of its founder, he who established the great Palestinian Nation Lie, none other than Haj Amin El-Husseini, who took an active part in the extermination of half a million Hungarian Jews in 1944. Mahmoud Abbas, Jibril Rajoub and their fellow-murderers share Husseini’s dreams and are trying to achieve his goals without being obvious about it, so as not to wake us up. We are asleep and they are leading us towards extermination, along international corridors, by way of the courtroom – and through FIFA. According to the Palestine Liberation Organization, all these interantional bodies are gas molecules that will strangle Israel, causing its certain death as soon as they reach the required concentration. All they have to do is open the anesthesia pipeline of “security coordination” to keep us from seeing the fatal gas they are gathering all around us.
This is not about soccer. This is about our existence in Israel, from Tel Aviv to Ariel, from Haifa to Kiryat Arba, from Be’er Sheva to Maaleh Adumim. The Palestine – all of Palestine – Liberation Organization does not want us here and it is time to tell the truth: those Accords we signed with them in 1993 were a strategic error and a fatal step for the Jewish State that followed Arafat as though he was the pied piper of Hamelin and they were a buinch of naive children – fated to be left in a cave with no way out.
It is time to send the Palestine Liberation Organization to hell in a handbasket before it becomes another Hamas state, which is can do by holding elections as in January 2006, or through a violent takeover which is what happened in Gaza in 2007. Is anyone able to promise that this won’t happen in Judea and Samaria? Since no one in the world can assure us that this most realistic scenario will not take place, we must take that vital step, and every passing day makes it harder to do that most necessary thing. If not now, when? When should we do it? Should we wait until Hamas takes over and establishes a terror state in Judea and Samaria? As they are busy doing in Gaza? Our thanks to Jibril Rajouib, the convicted terrorist who showed us the truth, as if we really needed to be told.
The intellectual elites are returning to the exact same spot these days. Organizations of students and lecturers, as well as the Orange CEO, are milestones in this disgraceful path. Arguments can be made against Israel. Some of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statements and Israel’s policy are worthy of profound criticism. But Israel is a democracy. There is a fundamental debate taking place here. The anti-Israel campaign is not contributing to the reconciliation between Jews and Arabs. It is increasing the hostility and the hatred.
The Orange CEO wouldn’t have expressed support for the boycott if it wasn’t for the atmosphere created by the propaganda of lies. It is an atmosphere and disease which is not only threatening Britain, but the entire free world. Another prestigious academic institution, the London School of Economics (LSE), decided to twin its union with the Islamic University of Gaza of all universities, although some of the university’s leaders have made it clear that the annihilation of Jews is a command for immediate implementation. The evil spirit of BDS is not only threatening Israel. It is wreaking havoc in the United States and Britain. It is threatening the free world. It is encouraging Palestinian terror and Palestinian rejectionism. The Orange CEO’s declaration is another milestone in the disgraceful parade. Churchill realized it at the time, and was concerned that this disgrace would only bring the war closer. Eight-two years have passed, and the free world is refusing to realize that Churchill was right.
Israel Seen – News Digest of Commentary about Israel
The Israel bashers are again cycling through their tired repertoire of long-discredited lies, aided by notorious anti-israel activist/University of Exeter professor, Ilan [“The struggle is about ideology, NOT about facts”]Pappé.
Yet again, the lie claiming that Israelis perpetrated a massacre of Arab residents of Tantura in 1948 is dredged up. Never mind that the originator of the lie was sued for libel. Never mind that he retracted his claims. Never mind that his sources denied his lies. It is a good enough lie for the famously dishonest Israel-bashing website Electronic Intifada and its frequent contributor Jonathan Cook to promote, resorting to a conspiracy theory of a cover-up by Israel and a vast network of its supporters , including CAMERA.
Let us re-examine the facts: Theodore (Teddy) Katz, a kibbutznik and supporter of the left-wing Meretz party, submitted a Master’s thesis in 1998 to the University of Haifa, alleging a previously unknown massacre by Israel’s army had taken place in the Arab fishing village of Tantura during the1948 war. Purportedly based on testimonies he had gathered from 60 Tantura residents, Katz claimed that over 200 Arab villagers had been lined up and slaughtered by the IDF’s 33rd battalion after surrendering on May 22-23, 1948.
In an apparent attempt to join the ranks of the post-Zionist “new historians” who professed to re-examine Israel’s history and dispel what they claim are “Zionist myths” of heroism and bravery, Katz contacted journalists and television crews to try to publicize his story across the country. On Jan. 21, 2000, the Israeli daily Ma’ariv carried a five-page story by journalist Amir Gilat promulgating Katz’s claims.
Having discovered they were publicly accused of war crimes in the pages of Israel’s largest newspaper, veterans of the 33rd battalion of the Alexandroni Brigade were outraged. They maintained that the battle for Tantura was a strategic one, an attempt to stop the maritime smuggling of arms and food and to prevent the Haifa-Tel Aviv road from being cut off; and that throughout the fight for survival in a bloody war launched by the Arabs, they had maintained the strictest ethical standards. While the battle for Tantura was difficult – 14 members of the IDF battalion and about 40 Arabs were killed in street fighting – the veterans insisted Katz had lied about a massacre.
Indeed, they noted that by 10 a.m. on the morning of the alleged massacre, 99 percent of the villagers had already been transferred out of Tantura —the women to the nearby village of Faradis, and the fighters to the Zichron Ya’akov police station. In April 2000, attorney Giora Erdinast, a Peace Now activist and son-in-law of one of the battalion members, agreed to represent the veterans and filed a libel suit in Tel Aviv court against Teddy Katz. Katz reportedly received approximately $8,000 from former Palestinian Authority minister Faisal Husseini to pay for his defense.
Israel Seen – News Digest of Commentary about Israel
Problems between the Bedouins in the Negev desert area in the south of Israel and the government over redevelopment plans have received a lot of media attention, including at Legal Insurrection:
As with every problem in Israel, there are dozens of Israeli and international “human rights” groups seeking to exploit the issue for a greater purpose unrelated to actually helping the Bedouin. So the media narrative is spun as the bad Jews trying to steal land. The Israeli side of the story rarely is told in the media. In part that reflects media bias, in part that Israel is not very good at getting its story out.
So during our trip to the south of the country, we met with and toured the area with a local official from the Israeli government ministry which is handling Bedouin redevelopment issues. The official spoke Arabic fluently and was intimately familiar with the Bedouin tribes and culture.
On June 12, 2014, a terror cell affiliated with Hamas kidnapped Naftali Fraenkel (16), Gilad Shaer (16), and Eyal Yifrah (19) in the West Bank.
After an intensive hunt and crackdown on Hamas throughout the West Bank, they were found dead. The murderers months later were located and killed by Israeli forces.
Contrary to popular mythology, the kidnapping did not cause Israel to attack Gaza weeks later. Rather, the cause of the Gaza conflict was when Hamas started firing rockets from Gaza at Israel without stop.
While driving on the way back from Hebron, I saw a sign (Featured Image), designating a forest in the memory of the three teens. It is at the Gush Etzion junction in an area of settlements near where the teens were abducted. The visit to Hebron was quite interesting. Hebron had the oldest continuous Jewish community in the world — dating back several hundred years — until Arab riots in 1929 killed 67 Hebron Jews and ethnically cleansed Jews from the city.
Yet when Jews reestablished a presence in 1967, it was called an illegal settlement by many in the international community. For an informed discussion of the actual legal status of “settlements” see Eugene Kontorovich’s post and paper, Business with occupied territories, Orange telecom, and the French approach to international law.
Under the circumstances, it is, perhaps, understandable, if lamentable, that an African-American man who belonged to a Christian church with a radical left-wing pastor and who had a long history of making anti-Israel comments would consider himself almost a Jew or America’s most Jewish president ever just because he was a liberal.
But if even liberals are somewhat nonplussed by Obama’s profession of Jewish identity, they probably share his view that an Israel that is not always perfectly in accord with their political views cannot be as authentically Jewish as a black man who supports government health care legislation or views Palestinians as largely blameless for the war they’ve waging on Zionism for the past century.
As he noted in his speech last month at a Washington, D.C. synagogue, Obama has to a large extent bought into the myth that Israel used to a liberal country, but is now descending into nationalist barbarism from which both Americans and Jews should disassociate themselves. If those sentiments were widely applauded by liberal Jews, it is not just because they don’t understand that their views about the distinctions between Israel’s Labor Zionist governments of the country’s first decades and its current coalition are largely unfounded. It is because many of them also judge Israel’s actions through the lens of an American political prism that has little to do with the realities of the Middle East or that of a country that is faced with the task of navigating between faith and national identity while under siege. Indeed, perhaps it is possible to judge President Obama’s clueless approach to the peace process and even Iran a bit less harshly if we remember that many of his liberal Jewish supporters are just as naïve as he is about these subjects.
It is of course entirely possible to hold liberal political views while also understanding that détente with Iran is a foolish gambit that will make the Middle East far more dangerous. It is also possible to agree with the president on domestic issues while still being sensible enough to understand that pressuring Israel to make concessions to a Palestinian Authority that is both unwilling and incapable of making peace is a fool’s errand that actually lessen the chances of ending the conflict rather than achieving that goal. But for Obama and his inner circle, these bits of common sense go unacknowledged in no small measure because of their false conception of Judaism as a theological vessel for modern liberal politics. Under the circumstances, it would appear that the last thing Israel needs is a Jewish president, or at least one whose identity is defined by adherence to the catechism of American liberalism.
If anybody had any doubts about what is in store for Israel over the next 19 months, U.S. President Barack Obama has now made it clear: a long, painful political shellacking for what he sees as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s amoral behavior. In order to rescue the lofty values of tikkun olam (healing the world) and Zionism from the Neanderthal conservatives who threaten to ruin Israel, Obama is going to harangue and muscle Israel into a course correction — back to the “true” moral values of Judaism and Zionism on which he is such an expert. He is on a crusade (or should I say, jihad) to save Israel from itself, no less.
That is the upshot of Rabbi Obama’s smug sermonizing over the past two weeks: in an Atlantic interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, at Adas Israel synagogue in Washington, and in an interview on Israeli television with Ilana Dayan, Obama is nostalgic for the good ol’ days when WASP Israelis (white, Ashkenazi, secular and socialist, pioneers) ruled these parts and dreamed all day long of conceding the land they worked to the Palestinians and of bringing peace to the Middle East. And since Obama so agonizes for wayward Israel, and since he is such an authority on “real” Judaism and “authentic” Zionism, he feels morally compelled to shove his point down the throats of Israeli Likud and Habayit Hayehudi voters. It’s all for their own good. After all, he knows what is truly best for Israel.
Coming on the heels of a sit-down with Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic and an address to the Adas Israel congregation in Washington, it was not the least bit original. On the contrary, it was basically a repeat of everything Obama has been saying to assure Jewish donors that he has Israel’s best interests at heart.
This is among many reasons that Dayan need not be patting herself on the back for scoring the coveted one-on-one at the White House. Indeed, she was merely serving as a pawn in Obama’s transparent maneuver to capitulate to Iran, and to keep Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s warnings about Iran from being taken seriously.
Still, a tough investigative journalist like Dayan could have made better use of the microphone. But for this, she would have had to avoid slipping into idolatry mode and keep herself from fawning like a high-school girl in the presence of a movie star whose poster hangs over her bed. Since I don’t have that particular problem in relation to America’s “leader-from-behind,” I prepared an alternative list of questions I would have liked to hear Obama answer.
In an unprecedented first, White House and State Department officials were given a briefing by members of the radical leftist Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence, which infamously gathers allegedly false testimony from anonymous IDF soldiers to accuse the army of improper conduct.
The White House and the State Department both confirmed to Haaretz on Friday that the briefings took place this week, and centered on the NGO’s report released last month which accuses the IDF of breaches and infractions in last summer’s counter-terror Operation Protective Edge in Gaza.
The meeting took place in Washington, with members of the National Security Council (NSC) being briefed in a non-governmental building instead of in the White House before State Department officials likewise were briefed by the radical NGO. Matthew Duss, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, organized the briefing, and said the US officials showed great interest in the report, posing “many questions about the vetting process of the witnesses, the testimonies and the fact-checking.”
Indicating the Foundation for Middle East Peace’s leanings, according to its website the group’s Program Director Mitchell Plitnick previously was Director of the US Office of the extremist NGO B’Tselem, and before that was Director of Education and Policy for Jewish Voice for Peace.
Thousands of young people are now employed on campuses around the world, well financed and well organized, in an unprecedented effort that challenges the very legitimacy of Israel on every possible academic and economic front.
They call their movement: BDS – Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.
Over the next few days, Mr. Sheldon Adelson and Mr. Haim Saban have called an emergency meeting of organizations concerned about BDS to answer two questions.
– From where does the finance and organizational support for BDS emanate?
– How can BDS be stopped?
The answers may be easier to ascertain than one would expect. Most recently, official representatives of the Palestinian Authority, the PA, engaged in an international effort that almost booted Israel out of FIFA, the most prestigious international sporting association, a step which could have denied any Israel sports team from competing in any sports competition, anywhere in the world.
The direct involvement of the PA in this massive BDS activity revealed what had been known for years, which is that the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah organized the BDS “movement” in 2005. The BDS web site speaks for itself. http://www.bdsmovement.net/, It is no more than a front for the PA. BDS has indeed fostered an image that makes it seem as if it is a spontaneous grass roots movement.
While the BDS movement is using its brawn – in the form of boycott power – to urge companies to stop doing business with Israel in protest of its policies vis-vis the Palestinians, the Jewish state is responding with its brain – or rather, it has attracted the brain power of nearly two dozen Nobel laureates, who will arrive in Israel in August for five days of discussions, panels, and research. And despite the growing strength of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement on college campuses, the Nobel winners, all of whom have prestigious positions at universities around the world – as well as hundreds of students, professors, and other guests – have accepted invitations to two events surrounding the Nobel laureates, Foreign Ministry officials said.
The World Science Conference Israel (WSCI) was originally set for August of last year, but with Israel otherwise engaged in Operation Protective Edge, sponsors – including Hebrew University, the Science Ministry and the Foreign Ministry – postponed the event. Now set for August 15-20, the event will see more than 20 Nobel laureates discuss their contributions to science and give Israeli students the opportunity to meet some of the top minds in physics, chemistry, medicine, and economics.
The BDS movement took its marketing idea directly from the most infamously successful marketing campaign ever: Hitler’s Master Race concept. What was Herr Goebbels’ marketing strategy? “Tell a lie big enough and often enough, and people will begin to believe it.” That, along with P.T. Barnum’s “There’s a sucker born every minute,” is the complete foundation of the BDS movement.
BDS successfully uses four tactics while meshing all seamlessly and insidiously:
1. Obfuscating its ultimate goal
The world at large, and specifically most BDS supporters, believe that BDS seeks a two-state solution where a new country of Palestine will sit peacefully next to Israel. This is false. BDS’ written and stated goal is a “single state” of Palestine that includes present day Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. Furthermore, by virtue of BDS’ several demands, Israel would no longer be a Jewish state, but rather would become – as BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti has publicly stated – “…a Palestinian state next to a Palestinian state.”
2. Leveling unadulterated lies against and about Israel
In a propaganda video (produced by Students for Justice in Palestine) to convince students to vote to divest from Israel, a female student from Loyola University Chicago states: “As an Ethiopian, I do not want the university that I attend to support a government that mistreats African immigrants seeking asylum and sterilizes 50% of the Ethiopian women upon entrance to Israel.”
Although this student most likely believes that her statement is true, her massive ignorance does not mitigate the irreparable harm that she causes. Even though this type of exaggerated lie is no different than BDS’ garden variety lies, there is no legal deterrent to stop them. A person or organization cannot be sued for committing slander or libel against a people, race, religion, or country, no matter how blatantly offensive it is.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government is less than a month old, but it’s already apparent that it is different from its predecessors. And if it continues on its current diplomatic trajectory, it may do something that its six predecessors failed to accomplish. Netanyahu’s new government may improve Israel’s position internationally.
The stakes are high. Over the years, Israel has largely concentrated its efforts on developing the tools to contend with its military challenges. But as we have seen over the past decade and a half, Israel’s capacity to fight and defeat its enemies is not limited principally by the IDF’s war-fighting capabilities.
Israel’s ability to defend itself and its citizens is constrained first and foremost by its shrinking capacity to defend itself diplomatically. Its enemies in the diplomatic arena have met with great success in their use of diplomatic condemnation and intimidation to force Israel to limit its military operations to the point where it is incapable of defeating its enemies outright.
The flagship of the diplomatic war against Israel is the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Participants in the movement propagate and disseminate the libelous claim that Israel’s use of force in self-defense is inherently immoral and illegal. Over the years BDS activists’ assaults on Israel’s right to exist have become ever more shrill and radical. So, too, whereas just a few years ago their operations tended to be concentrated around military confrontations, today they are everyday occurrences. And their demands become greater and more openly anti-Semitic from week to week and day to day.
Consider the events of the past seven days alone.
Last summer a café in a suburb of the Belgian city of Liege exposed the current face of anti-Semitism in one compact store-front display. The window was festooned with the Palestinian flag, decorated with Fatah keffiahs and featured an Israeli flag crossed-out with a big red “X.” But if just-landed Martians failed to get the message, there was written bilingual elucidation as well. The French version, for the benefit of the natives, boldly announced: “Entry is permitted to dogs but not to Zionists under any circumstances!”
Nonetheless, politically correct constraints in French clearly don’t cramp Turkish styles. Lest any perplexed Turk encounter difficulties in determining who’s a Zionist, the Turkish sign spelled things out explicitly – without synthetic attempts at European niceties. It let the proverbial cat out of the bag for dog-lovers and haters- of-Zion alike: “Entry is permitted to dogs but not to Jews under any circumstances!”
The bit about Zionists was exclusively for European consumption. Ever since the end of WWII, undisguised anti-Jewish harangues have lost their erstwhile luster in much of the continent. Anti-Israel and anti-Zionist discourse, however, provides socially acceptable alternatives. Nowadays, in fact, these substitutes have become the obligatory fad for the fashion-conscious.
Careless about prevalent conventions, though, the Turkish café-owners clearly illustrated that the terminology can be used interchangeably. If anything, anti-Zionist and anti-Jew are synonyms, despite expedient denials by disingenuous Europeans and Arab propagandists.
The BDS campaign against the Orange mobile phone network in Israel (hereafter Partner Communications, the official name of the Israeli firm; Orange is the France-based company) is another example of NGO political warfare targeting the Jewish state. The attacks on Partner Communications began in earnest at the beginning of May, when a coalition of French NGOs, along with the Palestinian NGO Al Haq, published “Orange’s Dangerous Liaisons in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” a 51-page report. This publication was accompanied by intensive lobbying of the French government, the French company Orange, and the Palestinian Authority.
The NGOs “were pleased that on 26 May 2015, they were finally able to meet with Orange. They noted the fact that Orange recognises that having business relations with Partner poses risks to the company’s reputation. The representative of Orange recalled that an amendment was made in March 2015 to the brand-licensing agreement that would allow it to terminate the agreement in ten years. The civil society groups did not feel that this response was satisfactory. Nonetheless, the authors of the report asked Orange to publicly and explicitly state its decision to disengage and to denounce the human rights violations that Partner is involved in in Israeli settlements in the OPT.” In other words, the statements made by the France-based company are a wholesale adoption of the NGOs’ BDS agenda (which is illegal in France). They also enlisted the Palestinian Authority in the campaign: “Following the publication of the report, Saeb Erekat, lead negotiator of the Palestinian Authority (PA), wrote to France’s foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, to denounce the link between Orange and Partner.”
NGOs including Who Profits, Al Haq, Catholic Committee Against Hunger and for Development-Terre Solidaire (CCFD), FIDH, and Association France Palestine Solidarité (AFPS) have been involved in the campaign against Orange and Partner Communications:
So how much does Orange, or its CEO, or France Telecom or the government of France love Israel? The truth: it hardly matters. International relations, like international business dealings, have little to do with love, and much more to do with self-interest and good sense.
So now allow us to share a note about some dealings we have had recently with Orange, ourselves. Starting on December 22, 2014, and then again several times in the weeks after that, we sent a letter to Orange senior management in Paris, and to its corporate public relations people in France and the UK. It concerned a disturbing matter we discovered at the Arab world’s most important school for training graduate journalists. On the website of Jordan Media Institute, there is a page entitled “Partners and Donors” [here]. One of the supporting organizations listed there is Orange. There is a link to Jordan Telecom Group (JTG) website along with the well-known Orange logo which connotes an affiliation with France Telecom Group, the owner of the Orange logo.
Out of a concern that you may not already be aware of what I am about to describe, I am writing to alert you to a scandalous and personally very painful situation that I discovered at the Jordan Media Institute via its websites, and the steps being taken to ameliorate the damage it has caused…
[I]n August 2001, my fifteen-year-old daughter Malki was murdered here in Jerusalem. She was one of fifteen people whose lives were stolen in an especially vicious Hamas attack which targeted children, much as the Pakistani Taliban did in that sad country last week. The woman who engineered my daughter’s death is directly relevant to Jordan Media Institute, and therefore to the organizations identified as JMI’s “Partners and Donors”.
I know from examining public documents and non-controversial records that the chief engineer of that Hamas attack, and the massacre that resulted, is known. She did more than merely confess to the planning and execution of the attack on Jerusalem’s Sbarro pizzeria. She actually claimed credit for it. She expressed pride in her ‘achievement’. She urged others to do the same as she did, She justified the murderous focus on children and Orthodox Jews. She is widely seen on YouTube beaming with pleasure when told by her interviewer how many children she killed. It was a larger number than she had known until that moment. She is an unrepentant murdering terrorist who has become a celebrity throughout the Arabic-speaking world for this reason. She is at the very center of an ongoing terrorist industry controlled by Hamas. She is an icon of hatred.
I discovered to my horror some ten days ago that this woman was very publicly honoured as the “Success Model” of the journalists at Jordan Media Institute in early December.
Israel has “hard evidence” that Iran conducted weaponization work as part of their nuclear research, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon told The Washington Post’s Lally Weymouth in a wide-ranging interview published on Tuesday.
Ya’alon made this revelation while discussing Iran’s refusal to allow inspections of military sites as part of any nuclear deal. He also explained the dangers of offering Iran sanctions relief. It is not just Parchin. They say very clearly, “We’re not going to allow inspections of military facilities.” Parchin is a military facility, and we have hard evidence that it was used for weaponization after 2003.
We understand that the Security Council sanctions are going to be relieved at the very beginning of the implementation of the deal. And that the E.U. bilateral sanctions will be relieved in parallel to the Security Council sanctions. The only part that they’re not sure about is the U.S. sanctions, which is under the Congress. That’s what they want — to have sanctions relief in order to rehabilitate the economy and to spend more money on rogue activities. While we witnessed the negotiations about the number of centrifuges in the deal, the Iranians took over Yemen by proxy — by the Houthis — and they tried to open a new front of terror against us in the Golan Heights.
The Druze community in Israel has reached out to the US this week, begging Washington to protect Druze across the border in Syria. US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro met with Druze community leaders Thursday, according to Channel 2, during which community leaders begged Shapiro to get the US more involved in the fighting between rebel forces and the regime army of President Bashar Al-Assad.
The most threatened area for the Druze is now Jabal al-Arab, a mountainous region in southern Syria where five Druze were killed in clashes with Islamic State (ISIS) several days ago. Druze leaders argue that their friends across the border have no means of self-protection after Assad’s army moved into the area.
In addition, Israel’s Druze community is seeking military aid on a larger scale from Washington, requesting air strikes to prevent terrorists from approaching Druze population centers. Druze leaders have reportedly made similar requests to Israeli security sources.
A member of the armed wing of the Palestinian terror group Hamas died Friday when a tunnel collapsed in the Gaza Strip near the Israeli border, Hamas and medical sources said. The sources did not say why the tunnel, located in eastern Shejaiya in northern Gaza, collapsed. A statement from izz ad-Dine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of de facto Gaza rulers Hamas, said a member was killed in the collapse of “a resistance tunnel.”
Hamas has created a network of underground tunnels that enable the movement of arms and fighters throughout the coastal Palestinian enclave. Some extend into Israel, and were used to carry out attacks during the July-August 2014 war with the Jewish state.
The Fatah movement plans to re-establish official relations with the Syrian regime after 32 years, Fatah official Abbas Zaki said Thursday, according to the Ma’an news agency.
Zaki, a Fatah central committee member, told the news agency that a recent visit by a Fatah delegation to Syria was “successful,” adding that Fatah offices will be opened in Syria soon. He further said the visit to Syria was part of improving bilateral relations between the movement and the regime.
Actor and producer LeVar Burton, of Roots and Star Trek: The Next Generation fame, is in Israel as one of the speakers at the “Shaping the Future” conference.
It would be fair to say he’s a fan of Israel.
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Mordechai Kedar: It’s not about Soccer, Stupid. It’s about Israel’s Survival
Let’s tell the truth: the Palestine Liberation Organizaion established in June 2, 1964, three years before the “occupation”, was meant to free the “Palestine” that existed then, meaning Tel Aviv, Haifa, Nahariya and Be’er Sheva and not Hevron, Shechem and Ramallah that were under Jordanian “occupation” at the time. The organization has not changed its charter as of today, nor has it changed its goal and its suggested Final Solution for the Jewish People all over the world. This was the credo of its founder, he who established the great Palestinian Nation Lie, none other than Haj Amin El-Husseini, who took an active part in the extermination of half a million Hungarian Jews in 1944.
Mahmoud Abbas, Jibril Rajoub and their fellow-murderers share Husseini’s dreams and are trying to achieve his goals without being obvious about it, so as not to wake us up. We are asleep and they are leading us towards extermination, along international corridors, by way of the courtroom – and through FIFA. According to the Palestine Liberation Organization, all these interantional bodies are gas molecules that will strangle Israel, causing its certain death as soon as they reach the required concentration. All they have to do is open the anesthesia pipeline of “security coordination” to keep us from seeing the fatal gas they are gathering all around us.
This is not about soccer. This is about our existence in Israel, from Tel Aviv to Ariel, from Haifa to Kiryat Arba, from Be’er Sheva to Maaleh Adumim. The Palestine – all of Palestine – Liberation Organization does not want us here and it is time to tell the truth: those Accords we signed with them in 1993 were a strategic error and a fatal step for the Jewish State that followed Arafat as though he was the pied piper of Hamelin and they were a buinch of naive children – fated to be left in a cave with no way out.
It is time to send the Palestine Liberation Organization to hell in a handbasket before it becomes another Hamas state, which is can do by holding elections as in January 2006, or through a violent takeover which is what happened in Gaza in 2007. Is anyone able to promise that this won’t happen in Judea and Samaria? Since no one in the world can assure us that this most realistic scenario will not take place, we must take that vital step, and every passing day makes it harder to do that most necessary thing. If not now, when? When should we do it? Should we wait until Hamas takes over and establishes a terror state in Judea and Samaria? As they are busy doing in Gaza?
Our thanks to Jibril Rajouib, the convicted terrorist who showed us the truth, as if we really needed to be told.
Ben-Dror Yemini: When will the free world realize Churchill was right?
The intellectual elites are returning to the exact same spot these days. Organizations of students and lecturers, as well as the Orange CEO, are milestones in this disgraceful path. Arguments can be made against Israel. Some of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statements and Israel’s policy are worthy of profound criticism. But Israel is a democracy. There is a fundamental debate taking place here. The anti-Israel campaign is not contributing to the reconciliation between Jews and Arabs. It is increasing the hostility and the hatred.
The Orange CEO wouldn’t have expressed support for the boycott if it wasn’t for the atmosphere created by the propaganda of lies. It is an atmosphere and disease which is not only threatening Britain, but the entire free world. Another prestigious academic institution, the London School of Economics (LSE), decided to twin its union with the Islamic University of Gaza of all universities, although some of the university’s leaders have made it clear that the annihilation of Jews is a command for immediate implementation.
The evil spirit of BDS is not only threatening Israel. It is wreaking havoc in the United States and Britain. It is threatening the free world. It is encouraging Palestinian terror and Palestinian rejectionism. The Orange CEO’s declaration is another milestone in the disgraceful parade.
Churchill realized it at the time, and was concerned that this disgrace would only bring the war closer. Eight-two years have passed, and the free world is refusing to realize that Churchill was right.
Israel Seen – News Digest of Commentary about Israel
The Israel bashers are again cycling through their tired repertoire of long-discredited lies, aided by notorious anti-israel activist/University of Exeter professor, Ilan [“The struggle is about ideology, NOT about facts”]Pappé.
Yet again, the lie claiming that Israelis perpetrated a massacre of Arab residents of Tantura in 1948 is dredged up. Never mind that the originator of the lie was sued for libel. Never mind that he retracted his claims. Never mind that his sources denied his lies. It is a good enough lie for the famously dishonest Israel-bashing website Electronic Intifada and its frequent contributor Jonathan Cook to promote, resorting to a conspiracy theory of a cover-up by Israel and a vast network of its supporters , including CAMERA.
Let us re-examine the facts:
Theodore (Teddy) Katz, a kibbutznik and supporter of the left-wing Meretz party, submitted a Master’s thesis in 1998 to the University of Haifa, alleging a previously unknown massacre by Israel’s army had taken place in the Arab fishing village of Tantura during the1948 war. Purportedly based on testimonies he had gathered from 60 Tantura residents, Katz claimed that over 200 Arab villagers had been lined up and slaughtered by the IDF’s 33rd battalion after surrendering on May 22-23, 1948.
In an apparent attempt to join the ranks of the post-Zionist “new historians” who professed to re-examine Israel’s history and dispel what they claim are “Zionist myths” of heroism and bravery, Katz contacted journalists and television crews to try to publicize his story across the country. On Jan. 21, 2000, the Israeli daily Ma’ariv carried a five-page story by journalist Amir Gilat promulgating Katz’s claims.
Having discovered they were publicly accused of war crimes in the pages of Israel’s largest newspaper, veterans of the 33rd battalion of the Alexandroni Brigade were outraged. They maintained that the battle for Tantura was a strategic one, an attempt to stop the maritime smuggling of arms and food and to prevent the Haifa-Tel Aviv road from being cut off; and that throughout the fight for survival in a bloody war launched by the Arabs, they had maintained the strictest ethical standards. While the battle for Tantura was difficult – 14 members of the IDF battalion and about 40 Arabs were killed in street fighting – the veterans insisted Katz had lied about a massacre.
Indeed, they noted that by 10 a.m. on the morning of the alleged massacre, 99 percent of the villagers had already been transferred out of Tantura —the women to the nearby village of Faradis, and the fighters to the Zichron Ya’akov police station. In April 2000, attorney Giora Erdinast, a Peace Now activist and son-in-law of one of the battalion members, agreed to represent the veterans and filed a libel suit in Tel Aviv court against Teddy Katz. Katz reportedly received approximately $8,000 from former Palestinian Authority minister Faisal Husseini to pay for his defense.
Israel Seen – News Digest of Commentary about Israel
Legal Insurrection: Negev Bedouin problems – real and imagined
Problems between the Bedouins in the Negev desert area in the south of Israel and the government over redevelopment plans have received a lot of media attention, including at Legal Insurrection:
As with every problem in Israel, there are dozens of Israeli and international “human rights” groups seeking to exploit the issue for a greater purpose unrelated to actually helping the Bedouin. So the media narrative is spun as the bad Jews trying to steal land.
The Israeli side of the story rarely is told in the media. In part that reflects media bias, in part that Israel is not very good at getting its story out.
So during our trip to the south of the country, we met with and toured the area with a local official from the Israeli government ministry which is handling Bedouin redevelopment issues. The official spoke Arabic fluently and was intimately familiar with the Bedouin tribes and culture.
Legal Insurrection: Last Days in The Jerusalem Suburbs
On June 12, 2014, a terror cell affiliated with Hamas kidnapped Naftali Fraenkel (16), Gilad Shaer (16), and Eyal Yifrah (19) in the West Bank.
After an intensive hunt and crackdown on Hamas throughout the West Bank, they were found dead. The murderers months later were located and killed by Israeli forces.
Contrary to popular mythology, the kidnapping did not cause Israel to attack Gaza weeks later. Rather, the cause of the Gaza conflict was when Hamas started firing rockets from Gaza at Israel without stop.
While driving on the way back from Hebron, I saw a sign (Featured Image), designating a forest in the memory of the three teens. It is at the Gush Etzion junction in an area of settlements near where the teens were abducted.
The visit to Hebron was quite interesting.
Hebron had the oldest continuous Jewish community in the world — dating back several hundred years — until Arab riots in 1929 killed 67 Hebron Jews and ethnically cleansed Jews from the city.
Yet when Jews reestablished a presence in 1967, it was called an illegal settlement by many in the international community. For an informed discussion of the actual legal status of “settlements” see Eugene Kontorovich’s post and paper, Business with occupied territories, Orange telecom, and the French approach to international law.
Liberalism and Obama’s Jewish Pretensions
Under the circumstances, it is, perhaps, understandable, if lamentable, that an African-American man who belonged to a Christian church with a radical left-wing pastor and who had a long history of making anti-Israel comments would consider himself almost a Jew or America’s most Jewish president ever just because he was a liberal.
But if even liberals are somewhat nonplussed by Obama’s profession of Jewish identity, they probably share his view that an Israel that is not always perfectly in accord with their political views cannot be as authentically Jewish as a black man who supports government health care legislation or views Palestinians as largely blameless for the war they’ve waging on Zionism for the past century.
As he noted in his speech last month at a Washington, D.C. synagogue, Obama has to a large extent bought into the myth that Israel used to a liberal country, but is now descending into nationalist barbarism from which both Americans and Jews should disassociate themselves. If those sentiments were widely applauded by liberal Jews, it is not just because they don’t understand that their views about the distinctions between Israel’s Labor Zionist governments of the country’s first decades and its current coalition are largely unfounded. It is because many of them also judge Israel’s actions through the lens of an American political prism that has little to do with the realities of the Middle East or that of a country that is faced with the task of navigating between faith and national identity while under siege. Indeed, perhaps it is possible to judge President Obama’s clueless approach to the peace process and even Iran a bit less harshly if we remember that many of his liberal Jewish supporters are just as naïve as he is about these subjects.
It is of course entirely possible to hold liberal political views while also understanding that détente with Iran is a foolish gambit that will make the Middle East far more dangerous. It is also possible to agree with the president on domestic issues while still being sensible enough to understand that pressuring Israel to make concessions to a Palestinian Authority that is both unwilling and incapable of making peace is a fool’s errand that actually lessen the chances of ending the conflict rather than achieving that goal. But for Obama and his inner circle, these bits of common sense go unacknowledged in no small measure because of their false conception of Judaism as a theological vessel for modern liberal politics. Under the circumstances, it would appear that the last thing Israel needs is a Jewish president, or at least one whose identity is defined by adherence to the catechism of American liberalism.
Rabbi Obama’s tough love
If anybody had any doubts about what is in store for Israel over the next 19 months, U.S. President Barack Obama has now made it clear: a long, painful political shellacking for what he sees as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s amoral behavior.
In order to rescue the lofty values of tikkun olam (healing the world) and Zionism from the Neanderthal conservatives who threaten to ruin Israel, Obama is going to harangue and muscle Israel into a course correction — back to the “true” moral values of Judaism and Zionism on which he is such an expert. He is on a crusade (or should I say, jihad) to save Israel from itself, no less.
That is the upshot of Rabbi Obama’s smug sermonizing over the past two weeks: in an Atlantic interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, at Adas Israel synagogue in Washington, and in an interview on Israeli television with Ilana Dayan, Obama is nostalgic for the good ol’ days when WASP Israelis (white, Ashkenazi, secular and socialist, pioneers) ruled these parts and dreamed all day long of conceding the land they worked to the Palestinians and of bringing peace to the Middle East.
And since Obama so agonizes for wayward Israel, and since he is such an authority on “real” Judaism and “authentic” Zionism, he feels morally compelled to shove his point down the throats of Israeli Likud and Habayit Hayehudi voters. It’s all for their own good. After all, he knows what is truly best for Israel.
What I would have asked Obama
Coming on the heels of a sit-down with Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic and an address to the Adas Israel congregation in Washington, it was not the least bit original. On the contrary, it was basically a repeat of everything Obama has been saying to assure Jewish donors that he has Israel’s best interests at heart.
This is among many reasons that Dayan need not be patting herself on the back for scoring the coveted one-on-one at the White House. Indeed, she was merely serving as a pawn in Obama’s transparent maneuver to capitulate to Iran, and to keep Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s warnings about Iran from being taken seriously.
Still, a tough investigative journalist like Dayan could have made better use of the microphone. But for this, she would have had to avoid slipping into idolatry mode and keep herself from fawning like a high-school girl in the presence of a movie star whose poster hangs over her bed.
Since I don’t have that particular problem in relation to America’s “leader-from-behind,” I prepared an alternative list of questions I would have liked to hear Obama answer.
Top US Officials Briefed by Radical Anti-Israel NGO
In an unprecedented first, White House and State Department officials were given a briefing by members of the radical leftist Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence, which infamously gathers allegedly false testimony from anonymous IDF soldiers to accuse the army of improper conduct.
The White House and the State Department both confirmed to Haaretz on Friday that the briefings took place this week, and centered on the NGO’s report released last month which accuses the IDF of breaches and infractions in last summer’s counter-terror Operation Protective Edge in Gaza.
The meeting took place in Washington, with members of the National Security Council (NSC) being briefed in a non-governmental building instead of in the White House before State Department officials likewise were briefed by the radical NGO.
Matthew Duss, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, organized the briefing, and said the US officials showed great interest in the report, posing “many questions about the vetting process of the witnesses, the testimonies and the fact-checking.”
Indicating the Foundation for Middle East Peace’s leanings, according to its website the group’s Program Director Mitchell Plitnick previously was Director of the US Office of the extremist NGO B’Tselem, and before that was Director of Education and Policy for Jewish Voice for Peace.
Who is Really Behind BDS? We Can Cut Off BDS at the Spigot
Thousands of young people are now employed on campuses around the world, well financed and well organized, in an unprecedented effort that challenges the very legitimacy of Israel on every possible academic and economic front.
They call their movement: BDS – Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.
Over the next few days, Mr. Sheldon Adelson and Mr. Haim Saban have called an emergency meeting of organizations concerned about BDS to answer two questions.
– From where does the finance and organizational support for BDS emanate?
– How can BDS be stopped?
The answers may be easier to ascertain than one would expect. Most recently, official representatives of the Palestinian Authority, the PA, engaged in an international effort that almost booted Israel out of FIFA, the most prestigious international sporting association, a step which could have denied any Israel sports team from competing in any sports competition, anywhere in the world.
The direct involvement of the PA in this massive BDS activity revealed what had been known for years, which is that the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah organized the BDS “movement” in 2005. The BDS web site speaks for itself. http://www.bdsmovement.net/, It is no more than a front for the PA.
BDS has indeed fostered an image that makes it seem as if it is a spontaneous grass roots movement.
Nobel winners to flock to Israel, ignoring campus boycott push
While the BDS movement is using its brawn – in the form of boycott power – to urge companies to stop doing business with Israel in protest of its policies vis-vis the Palestinians, the Jewish state is responding with its brain – or rather, it has attracted the brain power of nearly two dozen Nobel laureates, who will arrive in Israel in August for five days of discussions, panels, and research.
And despite the growing strength of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement on college campuses, the Nobel winners, all of whom have prestigious positions at universities around the world – as well as hundreds of students, professors, and other guests – have accepted invitations to two events surrounding the Nobel laureates, Foreign Ministry officials said.
The World Science Conference Israel (WSCI) was originally set for August of last year, but with Israel otherwise engaged in Operation Protective Edge, sponsors – including Hebrew University, the Science Ministry and the Foreign Ministry – postponed the event. Now set for August 15-20, the event will see more than 20 Nobel laureates discuss their contributions to science and give Israeli students the opportunity to meet some of the top minds in physics, chemistry, medicine, and economics.
The Insidious Marketing of the BDS Campaign
The BDS movement took its marketing idea directly from the most infamously successful marketing campaign ever: Hitler’s Master Race concept. What was Herr Goebbels’ marketing strategy? “Tell a lie big enough and often enough, and people will begin to believe it.” That, along with P.T. Barnum’s “There’s a sucker born every minute,” is the complete foundation of the BDS movement.
BDS successfully uses four tactics while meshing all seamlessly and insidiously:
1. Obfuscating its ultimate goal
The world at large, and specifically most BDS supporters, believe that BDS seeks a two-state solution where a new country of Palestine will sit peacefully next to Israel. This is false. BDS’ written and stated goal is a “single state” of Palestine that includes present day Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. Furthermore, by virtue of BDS’ several demands, Israel would no longer be a Jewish state, but rather would become – as BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti has publicly stated – “…a Palestinian state next to a Palestinian state.”
2. Leveling unadulterated lies against and about Israel
In a propaganda video (produced by Students for Justice in Palestine) to convince students to vote to divest from Israel, a female student from Loyola University Chicago states: “As an Ethiopian, I do not want the university that I attend to support a government that mistreats African immigrants seeking asylum and sterilizes 50% of the Ethiopian women upon entrance to Israel.”
Although this student most likely believes that her statement is true, her massive ignorance does not mitigate the irreparable harm that she causes. Even though this type of exaggerated lie is no different than BDS’ garden variety lies, there is no legal deterrent to stop them. A person or organization cannot be sued for committing slander or libel against a people, race, religion, or country, no matter how blatantly offensive it is.
Caroline Glick: The new government’s war on BDS
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government is less than a month old, but it’s already apparent that it is different from its predecessors. And if it continues on its current diplomatic trajectory, it may do something that its six predecessors failed to accomplish. Netanyahu’s new government may improve Israel’s position internationally.
The stakes are high. Over the years, Israel has largely concentrated its efforts on developing the tools to contend with its military challenges. But as we have seen over the past decade and a half, Israel’s capacity to fight and defeat its enemies is not limited principally by the IDF’s war-fighting capabilities.
Israel’s ability to defend itself and its citizens is constrained first and foremost by its shrinking capacity to defend itself diplomatically. Its enemies in the diplomatic arena have met with great success in their use of diplomatic condemnation and intimidation to force Israel to limit its military operations to the point where it is incapable of defeating its enemies outright.
The flagship of the diplomatic war against Israel is the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
Participants in the movement propagate and disseminate the libelous claim that Israel’s use of force in self-defense is inherently immoral and illegal. Over the years BDS activists’ assaults on Israel’s right to exist have become ever more shrill and radical. So, too, whereas just a few years ago their operations tended to be concentrated around military confrontations, today they are everyday occurrences. And their demands become greater and more openly anti-Semitic from week to week and day to day.
Consider the events of the past seven days alone.
Sarah Honig: The great equalizer of all Jews
Last summer a café in a suburb of the Belgian city of Liege exposed the current face of anti-Semitism in one compact store-front display.
The window was festooned with the Palestinian flag, decorated with Fatah keffiahs and featured an Israeli flag crossed-out with a big red “X.” But if just-landed Martians failed to get the message, there was written bilingual elucidation as well.
The French version, for the benefit of the natives, boldly announced: “Entry is permitted to dogs but not to Zionists under any circumstances!”
Nonetheless, politically correct constraints in French clearly don’t cramp Turkish styles. Lest any perplexed Turk encounter difficulties in determining who’s a Zionist, the Turkish sign spelled things out explicitly – without synthetic attempts at European niceties. It let the proverbial cat out of the bag for dog-lovers and haters- of-Zion alike: “Entry is permitted to dogs but not to Jews under any circumstances!”
The bit about Zionists was exclusively for European consumption. Ever since the end of WWII, undisguised anti-Jewish harangues have lost their erstwhile luster in much of the continent. Anti-Israel and anti-Zionist discourse, however, provides socially acceptable alternatives. Nowadays, in fact, these substitutes have become the obligatory fad for the fashion-conscious.
Careless about prevalent conventions, though, the Turkish café-owners clearly illustrated that the terminology can be used interchangeably. If anything, anti-Zionist and anti-Jew are synonyms, despite expedient denials by disingenuous Europeans and Arab propagandists.
NGO Monitor: European-Funded NGOs Behind the Orange BDS Campaign
The BDS campaign against the Orange mobile phone network in Israel (hereafter Partner Communications, the official name of the Israeli firm; Orange is the France-based company) is another example of NGO political warfare targeting the Jewish state.
The attacks on Partner Communications began in earnest at the beginning of May, when a coalition of French NGOs, along with the Palestinian NGO Al Haq, published “Orange’s Dangerous Liaisons in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” a 51-page report. This publication was accompanied by intensive lobbying of the French government, the French company Orange, and the Palestinian Authority.
The NGOs “were pleased that on 26 May 2015, they were finally able to meet with Orange. They noted the fact that Orange recognises that having business relations with Partner poses risks to the company’s reputation. The representative of Orange recalled that an amendment was made in March 2015 to the brand-licensing agreement that would allow it to terminate the agreement in ten years. The civil society groups did not feel that this response was satisfactory. Nonetheless, the authors of the report asked Orange to publicly and explicitly state its decision to disengage and to denounce the human rights violations that Partner is involved in in Israeli settlements in the OPT.” In other words, the statements made by the France-based company are a wholesale adoption of the NGOs’ BDS agenda (which is illegal in France).
They also enlisted the Palestinian Authority in the campaign: “Following the publication of the report, Saeb Erekat, lead negotiator of the Palestinian Authority (PA), wrote to France’s foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, to denounce the link between Orange and Partner.”
NGOs including Who Profits, Al Haq, Catholic Committee Against Hunger and for Development-Terre Solidaire (CCFD), FIDH, and Association France Palestine Solidarité (AFPS) have been involved in the campaign against Orange and Partner Communications:
Beyond the politics, the business and the misunderstandings at Orange, a question of terror
So how much does Orange, or its CEO, or France Telecom or the government of France love Israel? The truth: it hardly matters. International relations, like international business dealings, have little to do with love, and much more to do with self-interest and good sense.
So now allow us to share a note about some dealings we have had recently with Orange, ourselves.
Starting on December 22, 2014, and then again several times in the weeks after that, we sent a letter to Orange senior management in Paris, and to its corporate public relations people in France and the UK. It concerned a disturbing matter we discovered at the Arab world’s most important school for training graduate journalists.
On the website of Jordan Media Institute, there is a page entitled “Partners and Donors” [here]. One of the supporting organizations listed there is Orange. There is a link to Jordan Telecom Group (JTG) website along with the well-known Orange logo which connotes an affiliation with France Telecom Group, the owner of the Orange logo.
Out of a concern that you may not already be aware of what I am about to describe, I am writing to alert you to a scandalous and personally very painful situation that I discovered at the Jordan Media Institute via its websites, and the steps being taken to ameliorate the damage it has caused…
[I]n August 2001, my fifteen-year-old daughter Malki was murdered here in Jerusalem. She was one of fifteen people whose lives were stolen in an especially vicious Hamas attack which targeted children, much as the Pakistani Taliban did in that sad country last week.
The woman who engineered my daughter’s death is directly relevant to Jordan Media Institute, and therefore to the organizations identified as JMI’s “Partners and Donors”.
I know from examining public documents and non-controversial records that the chief engineer of that Hamas attack, and the massacre that resulted, is known. She did more than merely confess to the planning and execution of the attack on Jerusalem’s Sbarro pizzeria. She actually claimed credit for it. She expressed pride in her ‘achievement’. She urged others to do the same as she did, She justified the murderous focus on children and Orthodox Jews. She is widely seen on YouTube beaming with pleasure when told by her interviewer how many children she killed. It was a larger number than she had known until that moment.
She is an unrepentant murdering terrorist who has become a celebrity throughout the Arabic-speaking world for this reason. She is at the very center of an ongoing terrorist industry controlled by Hamas. She is an icon of hatred.
I discovered to my horror some ten days ago that this woman was very publicly honoured as the “Success Model” of the journalists at Jordan Media Institute in early December.
Israeli DM Ya’alon: We Have “Hard Evidence” Of Iran’s Nuclear Weaponization Work
Israel has “hard evidence” that Iran conducted weaponization work as part of their nuclear research, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon told The Washington Post’s Lally Weymouth in a wide-ranging interview published on Tuesday.
Ya’alon made this revelation while discussing Iran’s refusal to allow inspections of military sites as part of any nuclear deal. He also explained the dangers of offering Iran sanctions relief.
It is not just Parchin. They say very clearly, “We’re not going to allow inspections of military facilities.” Parchin is a military facility, and we have hard evidence that it was used for weaponization after 2003.
We understand that the Security Council sanctions are going to be relieved at the very beginning of the implementation of the deal. And that the E.U. bilateral sanctions will be relieved in parallel to the Security Council sanctions. The only part that they’re not sure about is the U.S. sanctions, which is under the Congress. That’s what they want — to have sanctions relief in order to rehabilitate the economy and to spend more money on rogue activities.
While we witnessed the negotiations about the number of centrifuges in the deal, the Iranians took over Yemen by proxy — by the Houthis — and they tried to open a new front of terror against us in the Golan Heights.
Druze Demand Syrian Airstrikes from Israel, US
The Druze community in Israel has reached out to the US this week, begging Washington to protect Druze across the border in Syria.
US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro met with Druze community leaders Thursday, according to Channel 2, during which community leaders begged Shapiro to get the US more involved in the fighting between rebel forces and the regime army of President Bashar Al-Assad.
The most threatened area for the Druze is now Jabal al-Arab, a mountainous region in southern Syria where five Druze were killed in clashes with Islamic State (ISIS) several days ago. Druze leaders argue that their friends across the border have no means of self-protection after Assad’s army moved into the area.
In addition, Israel’s Druze community is seeking military aid on a larger scale from Washington, requesting air strikes to prevent terrorists from approaching Druze population centers.
Druze leaders have reportedly made similar requests to Israeli security sources.
Hamas member killed in tunnel collapse near Israeli border
A member of the armed wing of the Palestinian terror group Hamas died Friday when a tunnel collapsed in the Gaza Strip near the Israeli border, Hamas and medical sources said.
The sources did not say why the tunnel, located in eastern Shejaiya in northern Gaza, collapsed.
A statement from izz ad-Dine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of de facto Gaza rulers Hamas, said a member was killed in the collapse of “a resistance tunnel.”
Hamas has created a network of underground tunnels that enable the movement of arms and fighters throughout the coastal Palestinian enclave. Some extend into Israel, and were used to carry out attacks during the July-August 2014 war with the Jewish state.
Fatah to Renew Ties with Syria After 32 Years
The Fatah movement plans to re-establish official relations with the Syrian regime after 32 years, Fatah official Abbas Zaki said Thursday, according to the Ma’an news agency.
Zaki, a Fatah central committee member, told the news agency that a recent visit by a Fatah delegation to Syria was “successful,” adding that Fatah offices will be opened in Syria soon.
He further said the visit to Syria was part of improving bilateral relations between the movement and the regime.
Actor and producer LeVar Burton, of Roots and Star Trek: The Next Generation fame, is in Israel as one of the speakers at the “Shaping the Future” conference.
It would be fair to say he’s a fan of Israel.
Israel Seen – News Digest of Commentary about Israel
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