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Chanukah Extra: Israel Philharmonic, Maoz Tzur

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As we say goodbye to Chanukah, here is the Israel Philharmonic (with Yedidya Wexler singing) playing the grandest version of Maoz Tzur you are likely to hear.







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How Obama Cracked Jewish Solidarity (Michael Lumish)

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Fifty years from now Barack Obama will be known to most Americans as, quite simply, the first African-American president of the United States. Aside from this he will have precious little to distinguish himself other than in the notable electoral deterioration of the Democratic Party under his tenure.

While future historians may join Alan Dershowitz in considering him among the worst foreign policy presidents in U.S. history, he will probably hold a very special place in the hearts of Jewish people throughout the world. This is true because he will likely be known as the American president who, whatever his honest intentions, did more than any to divide the Jewish people from one another and from the Jewish state.

The genius in this bit of Jewish slicing-and-dicing is in its multifaceted aspect.

Obama did not merely rub poison into the cleavage between progressive-left Jews and the rest of us. Nor did he merely drive a wedge between American Jews and Israeli Jews. He even managed, much to my astonishment, to divide pro-Democratic Party Jews among themselves and between themselves and, increasingly, the party as a whole.

Now that is quite an accomplishment.

Let's briefly go through it.


Dividing American Jews from One Another

Barack Obama can hardly be blamed for creating Jewish divisions over Israel, as Edward Alexander and Paul Bogdanor would readily agree. Nonetheless, it must be understood that while Obama may appreciate certain Jews as individuals he has never been friendly or sympathetic to the Jewish people as a whole... or so we can reasonably deduce from his posture toward the Jewish state.

On the contrary, along with figures like Mahmoud Abbas, Louis Farrakhan, George Galloway, Rashid Khalidi, Jeremy Corbyn, and Keith Ellison, Obama regards Israel as a rogue state imposing itself upon the "indigenous" Palestinian-Arab population. The Jewish people who live there are considered by their very presence, an impediment to peace.

Among the various ways that Obama's influence, therefore, served to crack Jewish solidarity, the first was in hammering the wedge between progressive-left Jewish Democrats, who generally show greater sympathy toward his views on Israel, and the rest of us who do not.

By insisting that Jews in Israel should be allowed to live in some places, like Tel Aviv, but not in others, like Hebron, the Obama administration animated a confrontation within American Jewry. Those loyal to the Democratic Party, like Peter Beinart and Alan Dershowitz, agreed that the Jewish presence in Judea represents an appropriation of land that rightly belongs to Arabs and is, therefore, an obstacle toward resolving the conflict. Beinart and Dershowitz may not agree on much, but they definitely agree on that. Others, like Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), believe (along with me) that Jewish people have every right to build housing on the lands of our ancestry. Furthermore, in a recent piece for the Jerusalem Post Isi Liebler acknowledged Klein as the ONLY American Jewish leader of national consequence to be consistently critical of Obama's transparent flaws and who, he says, "has been more than vindicated" in his views.

I couldn't agree more.

Given the existential nature of the long Arab aggression against the Jews in the Middle East, Obama's hostility toward Jews who live in the wrong place set Jew upon Jew in a manner that grew increasingly acrimonious throughout the period of his tenure. By supporting J-Street while devaluing AIPAC, Obama agitated this split. He also put his sincerest American-Jewish friends on the defensive before those of us who believe in Jewish property rights in Judea and Samaria. Obama thereby forced his Jewish devotees into the position of justifying an unjustly racist stance toward the Jews of Israel.


Dividing American Jews from Israeli Jews

If Obama encouraged political divisions within the American Jewish community he also encouraged political divisions between American Jews and Israeli Jews. Because Israeli Jews understood how Obama's policies encouraged Palestinian-Arab violence and intransigence on the so-called "peace process," the vast majority of Israeli Jews quickly learned to distrust the man. Jewish Democrats who wished to maintain their progressive bona fides were thereby leaned into ideological tensions with friends and relatives in Israel.

In order to maintain good-standing with their fellow Democrats, Jews who care about Israel were put into an exceedingly uncomfortable position. They could support Obama or they could support Jewish rights to property on ancestral Jewish land, but they could not do both. And, again, Obama did not create this dilemma, he simply forced the issue. Obama used the two-state solution as a reason for opposing Jews like our friends Joseph and Melody Hartuv who live in Hebron and thereby allegedly stand as an obstacle to peace. He was not even the first president of the United States to do so, but he was certainly the most insistent.

Hebron, of course, is the site of the Cave of the Patriarchs. This is a place that, with a little encouragement from Obama, the United Nations decided belongs to Arabs. Through the unjust, if not racist, insistence that the "settlers" represent an obstacle to peace by their mere presence, Obama encouraged his American Jewish supporters to join him in condemning their fellow Jews. He managed this while still maintaining a pro-Israel face to his Jewish followers. Furthermore, by playing along with the erasure of Jewish history on the ancestral lands of the Jewish people, Obama also encouraged the dilution of American-Jewish support for that country and those people.


Dividing American Jews within the Democratic Party

I have considerable sympathy for Jewish Democrats.

Many in their own party hold them in contempt for defending Israel, while much of the rest of the American Jewish population casts a gimlet eye upon their never-ending pro-Obama apologetics and sycophancy. These are Jews who, from political and ideological standpoints, are getting smacked around by all sides and finding it increasingly difficult to walk the "progressive Zionist" tightrope. Divisions thereby emerged between the true Obama devotees and those going wobbly watching Obama's year-in-and-year-out hostility toward Israel. 

In this way, within the Democratic Party, there are good Jews and bad Jews.

Good Jewish Democrats support Barack Obama while bad Jewish Democrats question the wisdom of breathing life into the corpse of Oslo. Good Jewish Democrats believe that if only Netanyahu had pushed Yosef and Melody out of their home in Hebron then peace could be achieved through the offices of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. Bad Jewish Democrats tend to doubt this. They understand that Palestinian-Arabs have no desire to create a state for themselves in peace with Israel. Indeed, why should Palestinian-Arabs hope for a conclusion of hostilities via a negotiated two-state settlement when Obama and the UN want to give them a state on Jewish land in a manner that maintains those hostilities?

Whatever happens going forward, however, the Jewish people and the Jewish State of Israel are, and will continue to be, one.


Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.









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01/01 Links: A Palestinian Defeat Is Good for All; Israel is Jewish

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From Ian:

Daniel Pipes: A Palestinian Defeat Is Good for All
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was photographed on December 21, carrying a copy of Nothing Less than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History, by John David Lewis. In that book, Lewis looks at six case studies and argues that in them all, “The tide of war turned when one side tasted defeat and its will to continue, rather than stiffening, collapsed.”
That Netanyahu should in any way be thinking along these lines is particularly encouraging at this moment of flux — when Sunni Arab states focus as never before on a non-Israeli threat (namely the Iranian one), Obama leaves Israel in the lurch at the United Nations Security Council and insurgent politics disrupt across the West. In other words, the timing’s exactly right to apply Lewis’ argument to the Palestinians. Actually, Israel successfully pursued a strategy of forcing the taste of defeat on its enemies through its first 45 years, so this would be a return to old ways.
That strategy starts by recognizing that, since the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the Palestinians and Israelis have pursued static and opposite goals. The Palestinians adopted a policy of rejectionism with the intent to eliminate every vestige of Jewish presence in what is now the territory of Israel. Differences among Palestinians tend to be tactical: Talk to the Israelis to win concessions or stick to total rejectionism? The Palestinian Authority represents the first approach and Hamas the second.
On the Israeli side, nearly everyone agrees on the need to win acceptance by Palestinians (and other Arabs and Muslims); differences are again tactical. Show Palestinians what they can gain from Zionism or break the Palestinians’ will? The Labor and Likud parties argue this out.
These two pursuits — rejectionism and acceptance — have remained basically unchanged for a century. Varying ideologies, objectives, tactics, strategies and actors mean that details have varied, even as the fundamentals remained remarkably in place.
Report: East Jerusalem Christmas Tree Decorated With Photos of Palestinian ‘Martyrs’ Killed While Attempting to Murder Jews Attracts Enthusiastic Visitors, Including Greek Orthodox Archbishop
A Christmas tree in east Jerusalem decorated with photos of Arab “martyrs” killed while committing terrorist attacks against Jews has been attracting prominent Arab Muslims and Christians, Israel’s Channel 2 reported on Sunday.
According to the report, one such member of the Christian community was Theodosios, the Archbishop of Sebastia from the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, who told passersby about the importance of the Palestinian people’s struggle for their land and holy sites.
The tree, declared Theodosios – known more commonly in the West as Atallah Hanna — constitutes a “Christmas message” from “the heart of Palestine” — that “we are one nation defending one issue…standing firm and remaining in the holy land.”
Other people who stopped by to gaze at the tree — which resembles a similar evergreen erected last year on the campus of nearby Al-Quds University – were even more outspoken in their praise for terrorists, according to Channel 2. Some went as far as to laud those who died during the “Al-Quds Intifada,” a reference to the surge in Palestinian terrorism, which began in September 2015 and has been characterized by stabbings, car-rammings and other acts of violence against Israelis.
In a video obtained by Channel 2, Israeli Border Police are seen arriving at the tree late at night and removing pictures of the “martyrs” hanging from its branches.
Israel Is Not the Occupier
This past summer, the section of the Republican Party’s platform on Israel included a key statement made in anticipation of President Obama’s betrayal of our great ally: “We reject the false notion that Israel is an occupier.”
The United Nations Security Council’s passage of Resolution 2334, an outrageous act of hostility personally engineered by President Barack Obama against the state of Israel, has rightly evoked great anger across all parts of the American political spectrum.
Given the anticipated effects of Resolution 2334, this policy statement is critical as it represents the central tenet of what will now unquestionably be the policy of the Trump administration and the pro-Israel community.
“Occupier” is nothing more than a polite way of calling Israel a thief, suggesting that Jewish invaders colonized territory belonging to the Arabs — territory that therefore must be restored to its rightful, victimized owners. The term is intentionally misused against Israel in order to shape negative misperceptions of its history and legitimacy, while perpetuating a sense of Palestinian-Arab victimhood. To suggest that the Jews are occupiers in a region that has been known as Judea for over 3,000-plus years is no less ridiculous than to suggest that Arabs are occupiers in Arabia.
“Occupier” is a legal term whose definition does not apply to Israel under the law. Israel’s legal title and rights to all of its present territory stem directly from an act of international law made in the post-World War I San Remo Agreement, which was then further recognized and incorporated in subsequent binding acts — from the Covenant of the League of Nations all the way through Article 80 of the United Nations’ charter. None of the national and political rights recognized as inherit to the Jewish people have ever been revoked, nullified or superseded by a subsequent act of international law.



Abbas: 2017 will be the year of Palestinian statehood
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday told Fatah party officials that 2017 would be “the year of the independent Palestinian state.”
At a torch-lighting ceremony marking the 52nd anniversary of Fatah’s founding, Abbas hailed the recent UN anti-settlement resolution as a diplomatic victory.
“The settlements are illegal, and in recent days, we were given an unprecedented decision regarding this issue,” he told members of his party at the ceremony, held at the grave of former PLO leader Yasser Arafat in Ramallah, Channel 10 news reported.
The PA president said the Palestinians would not tolerate Israeli efforts to fool the international community, Israel Radio reported, and said that the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was building “colonies” in the West Bank and was seeking to perpetuate Israeli rule there, and racist discrimination against the Palestinians.
Nonetheless, the Palestinians were ready to work with the incoming Donald Trump presidency to achieve peace via a two-state solution based on the relevant UN decisions and the Arab Peace Initiative, the radio report said. “We want to emphasize our willingness to work with the newly-elected American administration… to achieve peace… based on a two-state solution,” he said. (h/t Jewess)
Ben-Dror Yemini: Blocking peace
Both Kerry's speech this week and the UN Security Council resolution last week enabled Palestinian intransigence. But Netanyahu's response to the resolution causes just as much damage—by undermining Israel's relations with important countries and doing BDS's work for them.
The Palestinians have been presented with three proposals to establish a Palestinian state on 95 percent—more or less—of the land Israel currently controls. They said 'no' three times.
To understand the Palestinian logic, one must listen to the comments made, for example, by Abbas Zaki, one of the PLO's senior officials, about five years ago: "When we say that the settlement should be based upon (the 1967) borders, President (Abbas) understands, we understand, and everybody knows that the greater goal cannot be accomplished in one go ... If Israel withdraws from Jerusalem, evacuates the 650,000 settlers, and dismantles the wall – what will become of Israel? It will come to an end ... Netanyahu, Lieberman, and Obama ... All those scumbags ... If one says that one wants to wipe Israel out... C'mon, it's too difficult. It's not (acceptable) policy to say so. Don't say these things to the world. Keep it to yourself."
Zaki didn't keep this strategy to himself. He presented it in an interview with Al-Jazeera. It may not be the position of the entire leadership at the Palestinian Authority, but he's obviously representing a lot more than we think.
Netanyahu said to warn of more anti-Israel UN activity
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly expressed fears Sunday that the United Nations Security Council could take fresh action against Israel during a meeting on January 17, three days before US President Barack Obama is slated to leave office.
Netanyahu told his weekly cabinet meeting that Israel is “in the midst of an event that has still not ended,” according to a report by Israel’s Channel 10 news.
White House Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said last week that the US would veto any further UN action against Israel, after Washington abstained last month and allowed a resolution critical of West Bank settlement building to pass, drawing fury in Jerusalem at the US and the Security Council’s other 14 nations.
The Security Council meeting is scheduled to take place just two days after a planned peace conference in Paris on January 15, which Israel says may be used to advance further measures against it after the UN Security Council resolution and US Secretary of State John Kerry’s speech last week in which he condemned Israel’s “pernicious policy of settlement construction that is making peace impossible” and laid out his six principles for peace talks.
Although it was not specified what kind of additional action Netanyahu believes will be taken against Israel at the Security Council, Channel 10 reported last week that the prime minister thinks the Middle East Quartet — the US, UN, Russia and EU — will coordinate positions at the Paris summit, and then return to the Security Council in the very last days of Obama’s presidency to cement these new parameters on Mideast peacemaking.
Defund the United Nations
We pay more than anyone else to keep the U.N. in business, about 22 percent of the U.N.’s regular budget. As Brett Schaefer of the Heritage Foundation notes, “the U.S. is assessed more than 176 other U.N. member states combined.”
Because nothing involving the U.N. is clean or straightforward, it’s hard to even know how much the U.S. pays in total into the U.N. system. But it’s probably around $8 billion a year. We should withhold some significant portion of it, and demand an end to the U.N.’s institutional hostility to Israel and the implementation of reforms to increase the organization’s accountability. There are individual U.N. agencies that do good work, and we can continue to support those.
Realistically, though, the U.N. will always be a disappointment. The fact is that the closest thing to what FDR envisioned in the U.N. is NATO, a like-minded group of nations that has been a force for peace, order, and freedom. This is why President-elect Donald Trump should embrace NATO and turn his critical eye to the U.N., where there is the genuine opportunity to, if nothing else, save the U.S. some money and rattle the cages of people taking advantage of our beneficence.
Charles de Gaulle dismissively called the U.N. “the thing.” The thing will always stumble on, but maybe Donald Trump can teach it a lesson or two about how we truly value our ally and its nemesis, Israel.
PMW: Message from PMW director Itamar Marcus
Dear friend,
The recent UN resolution condemning Israel is a gross misrepresentation of reality. PMW's findings prove that Palestinian Authority hate and terror promotion are the fundamental impediments to peace. PMW has exposed unremitting evidence of a PA leadership that has actively created a hate-filled Palestinian society, by its routine naming of schools and sporting events after murderers, salary payments to terrorist prisoners, instilling Antisemitism among its children, and the outlawing of peace-promoting activities.
As I am writing this, Israeli PM Netanyahu has just posted on his Facebook page PMW's recent release (see right), writing in Hebrew:
"Does anyone need further proof that the UN's shameful decision only distances peace?"
Significantly, as more of the world is being exposed to PMW's material, greater clarity as to the true nature of the Palestinian Authority is being achieved internationally. This shift is culminating in revisions in international policy.
I am asking that you help today at this historic juncture, to enable PMW to expand the international impact we had in 2016 on governments, media, NGOs, and campuses to an even greater extent in 2017.
IsraellyCool: An Open Letter To An Israel Hater
Sometimes thoughts come in groups. That’s what happened to me after I heard about United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334. I wanted to say something to Senegal, and I did. I wanted to say something to New Zealand, and I did.
That leaves three countries that have a hand in this fiasco (and another 10 who deserve our anger and disdain). One is the Ukraine, where just a few days ago, they threw a pig’s head and red paint at the grave site of a much-loved Jewish rabbi who had the misfortune to have lived and died in the Ukraine. Another is Venezuela, whose loyalty as a major oil producer is clearly not going to be centered on little Israel. Venezuela, according to Wikipedia, has a ton of its own problems but still has time to focus on little Israel. Never mind that “Venezuela was the most murderous place on Earth in 2015” and “in Venezuela, a person is murdered every 21 minutes.”
What the UNSC resolution did was suggest that the deaths of 450,000 people in Syria is less important than Israel daring to build apartments for its citizens on land it captured from a country that attacked us. Yes, Jordan attacked Israel in 1967 and lost.
Jordan held the land from 1948 – 1967 and made zero effort to create a Palestinian entity…and not one UN resolution condemned them as “occupiers.” During that time, unlike the almost fifty years that have followed, one religion was denied access to its holiest place – Judaism. Yes, that’s right. Jews were not allowed to go up to the Temple Mount or even visit the Western Wall, and not one nation protested, not one UN resolution accused Jordan of intolerance.
Obama and the UN’s end-of-year sale
New Zealand’s obsession with Israel verges on the bizarre. If Israel were surrounded by sea, were not a mere nine miles wide, and our nearest neighbors were Australian, we too would live in peace and security.
(Kiwis anxious to right their own record regarding the Maoris should note that actually Jews are indigenous to Israel.) Perhaps, like Obama and Kerry, New Zealand was desperate to leave a legacy before its two-year term on the UN Security Council ends on December 31 – not that Obama need worry about being forgotten; the mark he made on the Middle East is inescapable.
There are battle scars everywhere.
While many Israelis are now looking forward to Trump taking over from Obama, I believe it is up to Israel to determine its own policy and redlines. That’s an integral part of sovereignty. The government must make it absolutely clear that cities like Ariel and Ma’aleh Adumim, the communities in Gush Etzion, the Jordan Valley and the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem, let alone holy sites, will remain in Israeli hands. The Dead Sea resorts that Kerry raised in his speech are not his to give away.
We shouldn’t be relying on Trump or any other foreign leader to determine our own future.
My educated guess is that the Security Council resolution is more likely to mark the beginning of the end of the UN than the downfall of Israel.
But then you know where I got my education.
Dump UNRWA, Vote on 2008 Peace Agreement?
A referendum is within the realm of the reality. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) was founded in 1949 and was meant to be temporary. In 1951, the agency reported, “There must be a firm goal of terminating relief operations. Sustained relief operations inevitably contain the germ of human deterioration.” UNRWA’s directors were right, but Arab states, however, hijacked the group to use it as a political hammer against the Jewish state. With time, UNRWA began to view international support as an entitlement. Today, its annual budget is $1.4 billion. If the Trump administration pushed for UNRWA’s dissolution more than six decades after its mandate was supposed to expire and channeled the U.S. contribution instead to host the referendum among those currently living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Palestine could be independent in a year. Jerusalem need not be an obstacle: Jerusalemites might choose to vote as Israelis or Palestinians but not both. If East Jerusalem Arabs seek to vote as Palestinians, they can forfeit their Israeli citizenship and join the Palestinian state.
Israelis will accept a two-state solution. Kerry may be optimistic when he says Palestinians would as well. What happens if Palestinians vote no? Simply put, the international community can move on. Palestinians have historically received more assistance per capita than any other people and, even in Gaza, they have a higher standard of living than many Turks, Brazilians, fellow Arabs, and Africans.
Money dumped on the West Bank and Gaza could be better spent on Yemenis, Syrians, Rohingya Muslims, Turkey’s Kurds, displaced Ukrainians, or others. If Palestinians recognize that they cannot endlessly live off of international donations, they might instead learn that the path to progress is through government and personal accountability, not handouts. Diplomats might understand that throwing money at problems more often prolongs than resolves them. So if the Palestinians vote no, it is time to declare the Oslo era—and the Palestinian Authority upon which it was built—over, give Israel an open hand to secure its borders as it sees fit, and write the Palestinians off until they reconsider.
Canada's Conservatives blast Liberals' silence on Israel
Canada’s opposition Conservatives issued a scathing criticism of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government over its silence in the wake of the anti-Israel resolution passed by the UN Security Council.
Peter Kent, the Conservative Critic for Foreign Affairs and Member of Parliament for the largely Jewish riding of Thornhill, Ontario, issued a statement on Thursday in which he said his party “strongly rejects” the wording of the resolution.
“Conservatives will always recognize Israel’s right to exist, its right to defend itself, by itself, and the historic fact and right of a Jewish presence in Jerusalem. We strongly reject the wording of this United Nations resolution which appears to suggest that the Western Wall and East Jerusalem should become part of a Palestinian state. We are also disappointed in the actions of the outgoing Obama administration, which abandoned historic United States precedent by refusing to veto this one-sided and prejudiced resolution,” said Kent.
“Now, more than ever, Israel needs its friends and allies. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Israel had no greater friend than Canada. Unfortunately, that is no longer the case. And the reasons for this are purely political,” he stated.
PreOccupiedTerritory: Titus Cites UNSCR 2334 In Demanding Besieged Jerusalem Surrender (satire)
The Roman general commanding the forces surrounding the Jewish capital sent messengers today to the leaders of the besieged stronghold urging them to comply with Security Council Resolution 2334, which declared that a Jewish sovereign presence beyond the 1949 lines is illegal.
Titus Flavius, who took over the siege when his father Vespasian received word he had been appointed Emperor of Rome, cited the relevant decision of the United Nations, noting the fact that in deeming Jewish settlement or construction beyond the armistice lines illegal under international law, the Council automatically rendered the entire Jewish stronghold currently under siege an illegal entity that must be dismantled. That could happen, warned Titus, by peaceful means if the defenders of the city simply gave up the fight and agreed to be subjugated and sent elsewhere, or it could happen by force if necessary, and the Roman Legions laying the siege were prepared to subdue Jerusalem by those means.
“Be advised that in accordance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, adopted December 23, 2016, this Jewish settlement of Jerusalem constitutes a violation of international law, in its consisting of Jewish settlement beyond the retroactively recognized boundaries that obtained prior to June, 1967,” read the general’s message, conveyed by courier.“Any attempt to thwart our action, sanctioned under the same international law, will be met with uncompromising force. Surrender, Jews, or face the wrath of the international community.”
Bennett vows to pursue Ma’ale Adumim annexation this month
Jewish Home party leader Naftali Bennett on Sunday said he plans to introduce legislation this month that would extend Israeli sovereignty to the Jerusalem-area settlement of Ma’ale Adumim.
In a tweet, Bennett said his Orthodox-nationalist party would present to the Knesset what he described as a coalition-backed plan to lawmakers later this month — presumably after the January 20 inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump.
Bennett has long proposed that Israel annex large parts of the West Bank, arguing that the creation of a Palestinian state in that area poses a threat to Israel’s existence.
On Thursday, he asserted the arrival of a Trump administration would see a shift in Israel’s West Bank policies, including the annexation of Ma’ale Adumim, a city with some 40,000 residents.
But on Saturday, Regional Cooperation Minister Tzachi Hanegbi, a close ally of Netanyahu, rejected suggestions that Israel may unilaterally annex parts of the West Bank, saying such a course of action would be “a disaster” for the country.
Zionist Union chairman Isaac Herzog, speaking at a cultural event in Haifa Saturday, said those supporting annexation were “brainwashing the public with lies, such as claiming that we can annex Area C and the world will allow it.” After the results of a survey commissioned by Israel Radio showed that around one-third of Israelis would like to see the disputed territory annexed to Israel, Herzog on Friday called on Bennett to support a referendum.
Zionist Union calls for referendum on whether to annex West Bank
Opposition lawmakers on Friday called on the government to hold a referendum on the fate of the West Bank, after the results of a survey commissioned by Israel Radio showed that around one-third of Israelis would like to see the disputed territory annexed to Israel.
Zionist Union chairman Isaac Herzog called on Education Minister Naftali Bennett, the head of the pro-settler Jewish Home party, to support a public poll that would decide the fate of settlements in the West Bank.
“Bennett, if you are so sure (the public favors annexation), let’s do a referendum now and decide whether we are heading to one or two states, without your mockery and arrogance,” Herzog was quoted by the Israel National News website as saying.
Echoing Herzog’s call to Bennett, Zionist Union MK Eitan Broshi noted that the Israel Radio survey — a curiously worded poll that gave respondents only three options regarding the fate of the territories — found that “60 percent of Israelis supported the establishment of a Palestinian state in some borders or others, and in maintaining the State of Israel Jewish and democratic.”
Turkey hunts for attacker who killed 39 in nightclub shooting
Turkish security forces were in the midst of a massive manhunt Sunday for an assailant in a Santa Claus hat who unleashed a salvo of bullets in a crowded Istanbul nightclub during New Year’s celebrations just after midnight, killing at least 39 people.
Foreigners were among the fatalities, including an 18-year-old Israeli woman and a Belgian national, according to the two countries’ respective foreign ministries. Close to 70 others were injured in what authorities described as a terror attack.
Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said the attacker has not been identified and is still at large. “Our security forces have started the necessary operations. God willing he will be caught in a short period of time,” he said.
Turkey’s prime minister denied news reports claiming the terrorist wore a Santa Claus outfit.
Prime Minister Binali Yildirim told reporters Sunday: “There is no truth to this. He is an armed terrorist as we know it.”
Israeli teenager, 19, killed in Istanbul nightclub attack
An Israeli teenager was killed in the shooting attack at an Istanbul club during New Year festivities.
The victim, who earlier was reported missing, was identified Sunday morning as 19-year-old Lian Zaher Nasser from the Arab Israeli city of Tira.
Thirty-nine people, including many foreigners, were killed Sunday when a gunman went on a rampage at the exclusive Reina nightclub in Istanbul where revelers were celebrating the New Year.
Dr. Ayia Ihsan Abd al-Hay, another Israeli who was with Nasser in the club, said the gunman “shouted Allahu Akbar” as he opened fire. She told Channel 2 there was “complete chaos” in the club, and that she was lucky to escape with her life.
Nasser’s father Zaher told the Walla news website that he urged his daughter not to travel to Turkey, citing the uptick in terror attacks in the country.
“She insisted on going because her friends were,” he said. Before losing contact with Lian, Nasser said his daughter to “managed to send us a few photos from there and she told us how cold she was.”
Attacker yelled ‘Allahu akbar’ as he fired, says Israeli survivor of Turkey terror
An Israeli woman who survived the New Year’s terror attack in an Istanbul nightclub said Sunday that the gunman shouted “Allahu akbar” as he opened fire and “cruelly” cut down dozens of people. Turkish police were still hunting for the attacker on Sunday evening as the death toll reached 39 with 40 more wounded. Arab-Israeli 19-year-old Lian Zaher Nasser, from the city of Tira, was among those killed.
Dr. Ayia Ihsan Abd al-Hay, a dentist, was one of a small group of Israelis who were in the club with Nasser. She told Israel’s Channel 2 News in Istanbul on Sunday that Nasser worked for her as a dental technician and that she was devastated by her death.
She said the gunman “shouted Allahu Akbar” as he opened fire, that she couldn’t identify his accent, and that his actions were “so cruel.”
Abd al-Hay said the group had not been scared to come to Turkey for a New Year’s vacation, despite the potential for terror attacks. “We weren’t afraid,” she said.
It was “the biggest blow that we lost our best friend… I’m so devastated,” she said. “She worked with me. I don’t know what to do now.”
Husband of Israeli woman killed in Berlin attack regains consciousness
The husband of an Israeli woman killed earlier this month in a terror attack in Berlin has regained consciousness to some degree from a medically induced coma, relatives said Saturday.
Family members said Rami Elyakim, 60, was breathing independently at a Berlin hospital.
“This morning they began lowering the sedatives, the respirator has been removed, and he is somewhat awake and communicating a bit, so there is improvement,” his sister Sigal Tzabari-Elyakim said.
Elyakim, 60, has not yet been told that his wife Dalia was killed in the December 19 truck-ramming attack.
Dalia was buried in the couple’s hometown of Herzliya last week. She was one of 12 people killed when an alleged Islamic State jihadist plowed into the Berlin market on December 19.
Palestinian Jihadist: Ban Christmas Celebrations in Islamic States
Abu Omar Almaqdesi, a senior Gaza-based Islamic State jihadist, said the soldiers and supporters of the Caliphate must not permit the celebration of Christmas in Islamic countries. He went on to describe the festivities as depraved, lewd and based on the “blasphemous idea” that Allah had an equal in Jesus.
“Isa (Jesus), may he rest in peace, is a prophet like all the others,” Almeqdesi told Breitbart Jerusalem “and in Islam we don’t discriminate between prophets for they are all the messengers of Allah, but the claim that Jesus is a deity represents a heresy that ought to be stamped out in Islamic states.”
“Those Christians who pay the jizya – the poll tax – and refrain from practicing these blasphemous celebrations should be given the security they deserve. But if somewhere there are Christians who insist on celebrating Christmas with the support of the heretic authorities, one must unleash upon them all one’s might and deploy all the available means.”
Asked what he means by that, Almeqdesi said that “all methods are admissible when it comes to preventing blasphemy against Allah and his commandments. Yes, including killing and blowing up. But, like I said, we believe that at first you should act politely and explain that living in Islamic countries is conditioned on accepting the Sharia and refrain from openly practicing rituals other than Islam.”
Jordan army chief: ISIS in Golan have anti-aircraft missiles
Jordanian Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mahmoud Freihat warned in an interivew with BBC on Saturday that ISIS fighters have anti-aircraft missiles.
In the interview, which was given in Arabic, Freihat referred specifically to the Syria-Jordan-Israel border, near the Golan Heights area.
"This faction is a constant and close threat to Jordan. Some of the areas its fighters are in are a kilometer away from the border," he said."They have tanks, armored vehicles, anti-aircraft missiles and machineguns that can hit the military posts on the frontline."
In truth, the ISIS was reported to have seized Russian anti-aircraft missiles a few weeks ago, when they recaptured th Syrian town of Palmyra, and they are not the first terrorist group to have anti-aircraft abilities.
'ISIS seeking to launch mass-casualty chemical attacks in Europe'
Islamic State militants have aspirations to launch mass-casualty chemical attacks on targets in Britain and elsewhere in Europe, the British security minister said in a newspaper interview published on Sunday.
Ben Wallace also said British authorities feared that as the militant group was driven out of strongholds in the Middle East such as the Iraqi city of Mosul, Britons fighting for the group would return home and pose a growing domestic threat.
"The ambition of IS or Daesh is definitely mass-casualty attacks," Wallace told the Sunday Times newspaper.
"They have no moral objection to using chemical weapons against populations and if they could, they would in this country. The casualty figures that could be involved would be everybody's worst fear."
New Report: Some of 2016's Worst Antisemitic Activity Took Place on British, Canadian Campuses
Some of the past year’s worst antisemitic activities took place at British and Canadian universities, according to a new report, released by a prominent international Jewish human-rights organization.
According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s “2016 Top 10 Worst Global Antisemitic/Anti-Israel Incidents,” among the most distressing events of the past 12 months were the failure of UK school administrations to protect Jewish students, and attempts by activists at Toronto’s Ryerson University to derail a Holocaust education motion.
Citing a recent interview by British parliamentarian Baroness Ruth Deech — who, as The Algemeiner reported, decried that many institutions of higher learning have becoming “no-go zones” for Jewish students — the SWC wrote, “Antisemitism is so rife on campuses that some Jewish people are feeling threatened or unsafe.”
Israel Advocacy Group Gives ‘Worst BDS Fail of 2016’ Award to Denver U’s Chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine for Using Website Developed in Jewish State
Anti-Israel campus activists earned the dubious distinction of having made this year’s greatest blunder where their efforts against the Jewish state were concerned — by advertising their endeavor on a site created by an Israeli company.
Denver University’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) was “honored” by advocacy organization StandWithUs for exhibiting the greatest blooper in its own anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign.
In a video called “5 Worst BDS Fails of 2016,” StandWithUs mocked SJP for using Wix, and Israeli invention, to call for boycotts of Israeli-made products.
“First call of action for Denver SJP — boycott your own site,” the narrator of the video says.
This isn’t the first time anti-Israel activists have been called out for boycotting the Jewish state while utilizing technology developed by the startup nation — with Wix at the center of the BDS botch-ups on a number of occasions.
NPR Covers Up the Ethnic Cleansing of Jews
In its article, “7 Things To Know About Israeli Settlements,” National Public Radio manages to demonstrate just how little its writers know about settlements, Israel and how to practice journalism.
Our critique of this article is not about settlements, but about basic journalistic standards.
Ethnic Cleansing in the West Bank
Reporters Greg Myre and Larry Kaplow begin by claiming:
When Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Six-Day War, no Israeli citizens lived in the territory.
This stunning lack of context ignores that Jews had indeed lived in Hebron, Bethlehem and many other towns in the land historically called “Judea and Samaria,” until 19 years earlier – when Jordanian forces (with the help of local Palestinians) expelled or killed all of the indigenous Jews, and then re-named the entire area “The West Bank.”
The only reason the population of the West Bank was entirely Palestinian by 1967 was because they expelled the indigenous Jews in 1948.
BBC News claim of ‘illiberal directions’ does not hold water
An article by an outside contributor which appeared on the BBC News website on December 22nd discusses “2016 and the liberal story“.
“2016 has been a momentous year. The UK’s Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump confounded expectations while the wars in Syria and Yemen caused more bloodshed. BBC Radio 4’s Today programme asked top historians for their assessment of the year.”
In that article by historian Yuval Noah Harari, readers find the following:
“However, since the global financial crisis of 2008, people all over the world have become increasingly disillusioned with the liberal story.
It is no longer so clear that the Chinese Communist Party is on the wrong side of history, and authoritarian rulers such as Putin, Erdogan and Netanyahu are taking their countries in distinctly illiberal directions.

The Oxford dictionary defines ‘authoritarian‘ as: “favouring or enforcing strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom” and ‘illiberal‘ as: “opposed to liberal principles; restricting freedom of thought or behavior”.
Disputed or occupied? How location dictates BBC terminology
With BBC audiences having read and heard terminology such as “occupied Palestinian territory”, “occupied Palestinian land” and “illegal Israeli settlements” scores of times over the last week or so in BBC coverage of UNSC resolution 2334, it is interesting to take a look at the language used in an article published on December 25th on the BBC News website’s ‘Africa’ page.
Although its subject matter concerns a decades-old conflict involving an invasion, disputed territory, thousands of people living in refugee camps and more than twenty years of failed negotiations, nowhere in that article – titled “Western Sahara: Kitesurfing in the Dakhla danger zone” – did the BBC tell readers in its own words that the area is “occupied” or describe the presence of Moroccan citizens as “illegal” and at no point did the BBC endorse the narrative of one side of that dispute over the claims of the other side.
In fact, readers were specifically told that the location of the story is in “disputed territory”.
IsraellyCool: Newsweek’s Nina Burleigh Tweets Out Antisemitic Article
Just over 3 months after I exposed the antisemitism of Newsweek Middle East Senior Deputy Editor Leila Hatoum comes yet another troubling example of a Newsweek reporter disseminating an antisemitic article.
The person in question this time is Nina Burleigh, the National Politics Correspondent for Newsweek, who tweeted this yesterday.
It is a link to this article on Mondoweiss, which, while not as explicit in its antisemitism as, say, something written by David Duke, is nevertheless antisemitic. Unless you subscribe to the view that spreading the notion of a powerful Jewish lobby, while questioning the need for a Jewish state, is fine and dandy.
Trump-cheering YouTube stars ‘stand with Israel’
Popular YouTube personalities and avid Donald Trump fans Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, better known as Diamond and Silk, have a message for US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry: “We stand with Israel!”
The two former Democrats, who rose to prominence as devoted — and flamboyant — Trump backers throughout the campaign, posted a new clip Thursday in which they lambasted the White House for its recent conflict with Israel over West Bank policy and for failing to veto the UN resolution criticizing settlements.
“I know that something went down with Israel because I saw Kerry on TV talking about them,” Hardaway announces, with Richardson murmuring and humming in agreement throughout her short speech.“Now I’m not quite sure as to what went down, but I do know that Kerry must be slipping in all of that Heinz ketchup, cuz he trippin’!”
Hardaway then grows more flustered: “Let me tell you something: Israel is our ally, so that means we have to have their backs! I don’t care if their back is small, and our backs our big, we still got to have their backs — period.”
Aerosmith Guitarist Wishes Israelis ‘Happy Hanukkah’ With Rendition of Hava Nagila Ahead of Performance in Israel
The lead guitarist for Aerosmith wished Israelis a “Happy Hanukkah” with a rendition of a well-known Jewish song in a Facebook video posted ahead of his band’s upcoming concert in Israel.
Joe Perry played “Hava Nagila” on his guitar for a clip by Creative Community for Peace, an entertainment industry advocacy organization, and reminded his Israeli fans that Aerosmith will be performing at Tel Aviv’s Hayarkon Park in May.
Though musicians and celebrities continue to promote BDS — most notably Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters — and bully fellow performers to isolate the Jewish state, others continue to strike back by performing in major Israeli cities.
Israel is Jewish
At a time when Australian Christians have been celebrating Christmas and the New Year and Australian Jews marking the Festival of Light, Hanukkah, it is perhaps timely — particularly when Israel faces, relentless terrorist attacks and rocket attacks, boycott, divestment and sanctions threats and the ongoing threat of unilateral statehood declarations by the Palestinian Authority — to address Israel and the Zionist vision from an Australian perspective.
Imagine, if you will, that after the arrival of the first fleet and European settlement in Australia the Aborigines, the indigenous people of Australia, after the failure of their struggle to maintain their lands and freedoms were rounded up and expelled from Australia.
Such an event may well seem implausible and even ridiculous but a campaign of this sort could be seen as being simply and extension of the infamous “Black Line” in Tasmania in 1830 when an attempt was allegedly made to round up and eradicate the Aboriginal population of Tasmania. Bear with me and further imagine that the expelled Aboriginal population were then dispersed around our region and eventually around the world forming a substantial Aboriginal diaspora.
Given the love that Aborigines have for this land and the centrality of the land in their religion, culture and sense of identity it is surely not hard to imagine that the Aborigines in the diaspora would maintain their love of their native land, would maintain their religion, their languages and cultures and would pray for the day that they could return to the land that they loved.
Imagine that in the fullness of time these diaspora Aborigines did somehow succeed in returning to their native land — the land that they had continued to hold close to their hearts, their hopes and longings — and, through a near miraculous effort, managed to re-establish an independent Aboriginal homeland on part of the land that was once theirs.




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To get hospitalized in Gaza, you need either connections or money

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There is no shortage of NGOs and media articles that claim, falsely, that Israel limits medicine and critical medical equipment to Gaza.

But there are very few reports of the corruption that actually occurs within Gaza for patients.

According to a new investigative article, there are two ways to get a routine operation at a government hospital in Gaza: either you must be politically or socially connected, or you must pay a bribe to the doctor. Otherwise you may wait a year or more for basic surgery.

The bribes are euphemistically called "gratuities."

Doctors are prioritizing procedures for their friends and relatives over others, and patients are even witnessing their own scheduled operations being bumped by well-connected patients.






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Record breaking "desecrations of Al Aqsa" in 2016

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According to Arab media, this year some 17,602 Jews visited the Temple Mount in 2016, the highest number since 1967.

This means that more Jews visited their holiest spot in 2016 than since the destruction of the second Temple.

Somehow, the Muslim observers at Judaism's holiest spot know that the visitors who "desecrated the Al Aqsa Mosque" included 14,103 "settlers," 2,259 Jewish students, 815 police and 425 plain-clothed police. I don't know how they determine which people are "settlers" and which ones are Jews who live within the Green Line.

Oh, that's right. All Israelis are settlers.

th Muslim officials say that October was the busiest month with 3,020 Jews because of the Jewish holidays.

For context, far more than 17,000 Muslims visit the Temple Mount every Friday.





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Dozens of Hamas members "martyred" in 2016. Israel only killed 2 of them.

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Hamas put out its annual statistics of its "martyrs."

It shows Hamas was far more efficient at killing its own people than Israel was last year.

According to the Al Qassam website  and Hamas newspaper Felesteen, 29 Hamas members were "martyred" in 2016. This included 21 people killed in tunnel collapses, 2 in training accidents, 2 killed in work accidents, one killed while trying to dismantle a bomb, one died of previous wounds, one killed by Israel in Hebron after he murdered Rabbi Miki Mark, and one who was presumably assassinated by the Mossad in Tunisia.

Islamic Jihad also released a list of its nine "martyrs" for the year. None were killed by Israel in 2016, although one died from wounds from an Israeli attack in 2006. The rest were killed in work accidents, tunnel accidents, or even heart attacks.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)




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Fatah honors terrorist Dalal Mughrabi at "52nd anniversary" celebrations

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On January 1, Fatah celebrated 52 years since its first terror attack in 1965. (It never marks the anniversary of its actual beginnings in the 1950s.)

According to the leaked minutes of meetings between John Kerry and Susan Rice and Palestinian leaders, the Americans "praised 'Abbas's courage, positions, leadership, and adherence to the culture of peace and to peace as a strategic option."

These photos show what kind of a "culture of peace" Mahmoud Abbas has built in the territories he controls.

The celebrations included boys in military uniforms:

Lots of masked Fatah members, imitating if not being actual terrorists:



Armed terrorists as well:



And large posters of Fatahs' heroes: Arafat, Abbas, and terrorist Dalal Mughrabi:


Mughrabi's poster was clearly meant to boost Abbas' popularity as a man who supports terror while he tells gullible Westerners the opposite:








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Bahrain Women's Union criticizes dancing Jews

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The fallout from the videos of Jews dancing in Bahrain continues.

The Bahrain Women's Union, also known as the Bahrain Society Renaissance Girls, issued a statement against "normalization with the Zionist entity" that was prompted by the videos.

The group "considers this reception and hosting [of Jews] is an integral part of the deception and deceit and conspiracy process exercised by racist enemy Zionist usurper in order to impose the recognition of their settlements and the gradual normalization.

"This reception and celebration of the Zionist delegation was a serious episode of penetration and normalization with the Zionist entity, and it also represents a provocation against the national feelings of the Bahraini people who refuse to compromise on the fundamentals of the Arab nation. It also represents a flagrant threat to the Palestinian presence.

"We express our condemnation of this visit."

The statement also condemned  "provocative dancing and performing Zionist songs and anthems of to build a Jewish temple on the ruins of the mosque Al-Aqsa," adding that the Jews were also somehow threatening a public square in Manama.

But they have nothing against Jews. Only "Zionists."




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01/02 Links Pt1: Kerry on Israel: An Alternate Universe; Friedman’s Unhinged Attack on Netanyahu

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From Ian:

Omri Ceren: Kerry on Israel: An Alternate Universe
For months one of the worst-kept secrets in foreign-policy circles was that Secretary of State John Kerry would give a speech about his vision for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement, just as soon as the 2016 elections were safely over. Gossip revolved around which staffers were getting pulled in to write, which wonks were being brought in to vet, how far it would go, and so on. A few weeks ago, Kerry even nudge-winked about just how much of an open secret his plans had become, telling an audience in London that he’d be moved to speak on the issue some time “in the next weeks, months, or over the year.”
What few people expected is how totally irrelevant Kerry’s performance would end up. The secretary’s remarks, which extended for over an hour, have already generated the expected heap of praise and criticism. But the praise feels like writers rationalizing how they wasted a day on what will ultimately become a footnote in American diplomatic history, and some of the criticism is crankiness over the same thing.
Kerry’s speech was already going to be drowned out by the global din around United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, which passed in recent days after the U.S. abstained, and which among other things lumped Judaism’s holiest sites in East Jerusalem together with the West Bank and declared all of them occupied Palestinian territory. It has been criticized first as a diplomatic gambit that detonated the peace process and, second, as an abandonment of Israel contrary to decades of U.S. diplomacy aimed at blocking international assaults on the Jewish state.
The resolution presented another rhetorical problem for Kerry: To even get to the parameters, he was going to have to get past those two criticisms. He needed to paint a world in which the UNSCR built on the peace process rather than detonated it, and boosted Israel rather than abandoning it.
Algemeiner Editor-in-Chief: ‘Obama Has Given Incredible Boost to March of Antisemitism’ by Abstaining From Vote on Anti-Israel UN Resolution
US President Barack Obama “has given an incredible boost to the march of antisemitism,” the editor-in-chief of The Algemeiner said in an interview on Friday.
Discussing the latest moves by the lame-duck administration in Washington to put pressure on Jerusalem — abstaining in the UN Security Council vote on anti-settlements Resolution 2334, and Secretary of State John Kerry’s subsequent harsh address, warning that Israel cannot remain both a democracy and a Jewish state — Dovid Efune told Rush Limbaugh Show guest host Buck Sexton that such behavior encourages and invigorates the deligitimization and demonization of Israel, both defined as antisemitic by the US State Department.
It is for this reason, said Efune, that Kerry caused such a stir.
“His speech was essentially a glorified attempt to justify the vote at the UN last Friday, which the US — in an unprecedented move — abstained from, angering the Israelis, betraying the Israelis. And I can tell you from where I stand: The mainstream Jewish community in this country is seething, outraged, furious across the board with this stab in the back and, as some have even defined it, a stab in the front,” Efune said.
Listen to the full interview below (Efune’s remarks begin at 37:30):


How UN Security Council Resolution 2334 Relates to Palestinian Terrorism
On December 23, 2016, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2334, with 14 countries voting in favor. The United States abstained allowing the resolution to pass. Resolution 2334 deals mostly with the Israeli settlements in Judea, Samaria and east Jerusalem, over which there is broad international consensus. The issue of terrorism is included in the resolution but its weight is slight (as opposed to extensive dealing with the settlements, which are represented as the main obstacle to peace). Moreover, for the most part the terminology used in dealing with terrorism is general and vague. The resolution does not explicitly refer to Palestinian terrorism, the Palestinian terrorist organizations (especially Hamas) and popular terrorism and violence(the so-called "popular resistance").
1. By not explicitly mentioning Palestinian terrorism and the Palestinian terrorist organizations,the resolution can be expected to lead the Palestinians to interpret the operative paragraphs dealing with terrorism and violence as relating to Israel and not Palestinian terrorism(Paragraphs 6 and 7; see Appendix A). That was manifested at the recent 7th Fatah Movement conference when Mahmoud Abbas rejected terrorism "regardless of motive and source," including the terrorism of a country [i.e., Israel] and the settlers. He claimed that "we [Palestinians] adhere to culture and tolerance."



Thomas Friedman’s Unhinged Attack on Trump and Netanyahu
Probably the one columnist I have critiqued more than any other in my blogging career is Thomas Friedman of The New York Times.
Friedman, one-time NY Times Jerusalem bureau chief, is considered The Times’ go-to expert on the Middle East, globalization and environmental issues.
However, when reading Friedman’s columns, it’s easy to see that rather than being an expert on any of these topics, he holds certain beliefs and uses all of his observations to support his deeply held beliefs. He often conveys his convictions using superficial metaphors that sound clever, but are meaningless or misleading.
Given his long history of animosity towards Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his admiration for President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, it’s no surprise that he sided with the administration in its decision to allow anti-Israel United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 to pass and Kerry’s subsequent speech.
What may not have been predictable is how incredibly unhinged Friedman was in his column Wednesday covering what Charles Krauthammer called Obama’s “most shameful” legacy last week.
Friedman begins his column, Bibi Netanyahu Makes Trump His Chump:
For those of you confused over the latest fight between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu of Israel, let me make it simple: Barack Obama and John Kerry admire and want to preserve Israel as a Jewish and democratic state in the Land of Israel. I have covered this issue my entire adult life and have never met two U.S. leaders more committed to Israel as a Jewish democracy.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper: Why 2334 leads our top 10 list
You want to guarantee a peaceful two-state solution? Convene a Security Council meeting on how to dislodge Hamas from Gaza, and you’ll have one.
They might want to consider the price of continuing one-sided bullying of Israel by the United Nations. They should reflect on the fact that the US has refused to pay $400 million in dues to UNESCO, because its acceptance of “Palestine” as a member state violated a US statute signed into law by Democrat president Bill Clinton. If the UN, under new leadership, continues its nonstop demonizing of the Jewish state, we hope that the new Trump administration will seriously consider endorsing Sen.
Lindsey Graham’s threatened bill to downsize the US’s oversized annual financial contribution.
As for Obama and Kerry, their last-minute UN gambit seeks to add a fourth “achievement” to their Middle East legacy. Here are the other three:
1. Failure to destroy Islamic State, early and outright.

2. The Iran nuclear deal, which has succeeded only in further empowering the Mullahocracy.
3. Syrian redline debacle.
The Jewish people are a people of memory.
We approach our collective future with eyes wide open. No matter what the pressure, no Israeli government, left, right or center, will ever accept that our people’s sacred sites are built on stolen land; nor will it ever validate the lies denying the Jewish people’s 3,500- year link to the Holy Land – those very lies that now pass for historical fact at the United Nations.
And rest assured that Israel will never walk the gangplank for the convenience of a hypocritical world.
ADL: UN vote and Kerry speech will impede prospects for peace
Whatever the motivation of the Obama administration, the events of this past week mark a dramatic low point in US-Israeli relations. The Kerry speech has commanded attention in the past 48 hours, but the disastrous decision to abstain on United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2443 is more likely to be recorded as a milestone that doomed the peace process. It is a moment that could trigger any number of highly destructive consequences for Israel and the two-state solution that the administration claims to champion.
To start with, the abstention represents an incredibly negative bookend that closes the foreign policy section of the Obama Library. Indeed, the Obama administration’s Israel policy seemed uneven at best and unfair at worst. There were many moments that fed the skepticism of the pro-Israel, pro-peace community. These include the initial decision to skip Israel in a series of speeches across the region in 2009; the ill-advised decision to force the Israeli government to freeze settlement construction before supporting peace talks that same year; the push in 2015 for the Iran nuclear deal despite the protests of Israelis across the political spectrum and the blithe dismissal of the genocidal rhetoric of the Islamic Republic; and the complete failure to deal with surging non-state actors like Hezbollah because of their alignment with Iran.
It should be noted that the administration has stood by Israel in other respects. The president might point to prior UNSC vetoes and the landmark $38 billion arms deal concluded earlier this year. Yet, the personal rancor between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemed to drive the dynamic of the bilateral relationship for nearly eight years. The patronizing tone of Secretary John Kerry’s speech seemed familiar to many Israelis, who had grown weary of hectoring from the Obama administration.
Whatever the motivation, the failure to veto UNSC 2443 was a disaster which will have a number of highly destructive consequences for Israel and the peace process. I can see several constituencies that will be impacted by this decision, all in ways that will hamper, not help, the peace process.
On Israel, A Resolution To Repudiate
Once Mr. Obama advanced the thesis in his Cairo speech of June 4, 2009, that all settlements are illegal and an obstacle to peace, ignoring the Bush letter of April 14, 2004, that recognized Israeli control of the major Jerusalem settlements as the likely outcome, Obama made it impossible for any Palestinian leader to demand less, and much more difficult for any Israeli leader to rely on U.S. representations.
The irony for those who support a two-state solution, including Mr. Netanyahu, is that this resolution has caused many Israelis to favor more settlement construction. Every important Israeli leader denounced the U.S. abstention, because they know that the Palestinian Authority prefers costless victories at the U.N. to condemning terror and accepting a Jewish State.
Whatever the U.S. may say about its intentions, as Ms. Powers acknowledged, any U.N. action will be exploited against Israel. Even the resolution's condemnation of terrorism, and its call to end incitement, will be used against Israel and ignored by those whose actions the U.S. pretends will be altered. In allowing the resolution's adoption, the U.S. joined those very states that Ms. Powers has repeatedly condemned for lacking moral conscience, even for Arabs let alone Jews.
The abstention, in short, was a shameful act openly touted as punishment for Israel's failure to abide by a U.S. policy that set back the prospects of peace. The Trump administration must repudiate Resolution 2334 in order to preserve the possibility of a two-state solution, by recognizing that Israel's settlements are not an obstacle to peace if peace were genuinely pursued.
Bolton to Trump: Cut aid to UN settlement resolution supporters
Former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton has reportedly called on the incoming Trump administration to retaliate against countries who supported a recent UN Security Council resolution against Israeli settlement.
Washington-based news site The Hill quoted Bolton as telling New York radio station AM 970 that Malaysia and Venezuela in particular should have their US aid cut.
However, Bolton advised that the US and Israel give the 14 countries that voted in favor of the resolution one last chance to correct themselves.
"I think what Israel, together with the incoming Trump administration, should do is say, ‘Look, we’re going to give everybody a chance to do this over again, repeal this resolution and pass something that’s acceptable. And if not, we’re going to take steps to show our unhappiness," he was quoted as saying.
How the UNSCR 2334 scuttles hope for a Palestinian state
Widely condemned by Israelis from all sides, UNSC Resolution 2334 was seen as a stab in the back. It was not; it was a stab in the chest. And, given the hostility of the Obama administration and members of the Security Council, it was predictable and unavoidable. Ironically, however, the resolution may have created the basis for legitimizing Israeli annexation and sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.
The resolution changed the rules of the game: it abrogates the Oslo and interim agreements that divided Judea and Samaria into Areas A and B, under the Palestinian Authority, and Area C, in which Jewish communities (“settlements”) were built under Israel control. The issue of settlements was left for final status agreements, along with the issues of return of Palestinian “refugees” to Israel, and the status of Jerusalem. By seeking to impose an Arab Palestinian state without negotiations, as a fait accompli, and declaring settlements to be illegal, the UNSC Resolution 2334 has wiped out all prior agreements.
The question is who should be the responsible authority in the disputed areas? If that goes back to 1967, it can’t be the Palestinian Authority, since it did not exist then. Moreover, the new UNSC Resolution seems to contradict 242 and 338, which recognized Israel’s legitimate claims.
Jordan cannot be considered the authority, since it renounced all claims to Judea and Samaria, which it had acquired by force in 1948, and was never recognized as the legitimate sovereign in those areas. The only legitimate claimant of sovereignty in what was called Palestine by the international community according to the League of Nations and the British Mandate is the State of Israel, the “Jewish national home.”
The recent UNSC Resolution has made the issue even more complicated, by declaring that all Israeli settlements and buildings beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines (“the Green Line”) are “illegal according to international law,” which the International Criminal Court could declare a war crime. But, what is “the law”?
Bennett: We will annex Ma’aleh Adumim first and then all of Area C
Bayit Yehudi chairman and Education Minister Naftali Bennett declared in Ma'aleh Adumim on Monday that his party was advancing a law to annex Ma'aleh Adumim as part of a strategy to annex all of Area C in the West Bank.
Bennett was speaking alongside Ma'aleh Adumim Mayor Benny Kashriel, and said that he expected all members of the government to support the law.
“Citizens of Israel have paid in no end of victims, and no end of denunciations for this messianic policy of a Palestinian state,” said Bennett.
“We have to stop marching towards the unjust path of a Palestinian state and to impose Israeli law on Ma'aleh Adumim, the Jordan Valley, Ofra, Ariel, and all of Area C as soon as possible. This is how we win.”
The Bayit Yehudi leader said that there was a small window of opportunity open to begin annexing Area C, in reference to what is expected to be the favorable policy of President-elect Donal Trump toward Israel.
Cotton: Anti-Israel UN Resolution Passed with 'Explicit United States Coordination'
On this weekend’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) said the anti-Israel U.N. resolution that the Obama administration declined to veto could only be voted on and passed with “explicit United States coordination.”
Cotton said, “Anyone with an ounce of common sense knows how the real world works and the United Nations Security Council works. Senegal and Malaysia, some of the countries that sponsored the resolution, don’t call the shots there. If Barack Obama and John Kerry and Samantha Power hadn’t been speaking for months about the prospect of this resolution and had not been creating a climate inside the security council to let it come forward without firmly saying we will veto any one-sided anti-Israel resolution, no country would have brought that resolution forward. It only could have been brought forward and passed with explicit United States coordination with other members of the security council.”
Netanyahu, Putin speak for second time in a week
Russia was one of the 14 countries that supported the anti-settlement resolution at the UN 10 days ago, but after the vote, issued a statement criticizing the way it was brought to the Security Council for a surprise vote just a day after Egypt pulled its own proposal on the matter.
“Our experience shows convincingly that a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is only possible through direct talks between Palestinians and Israelis without any preconditions,” that statement said. “It is with this aim in view that Russia has been working and will continue working as a member of the Middle East Quartet of international intermediaries to facilitate such negotiations. We would also like to reaffirm our readiness to host a meeting of the leaders of Israel and Palestine in Moscow.”
Russia’s Deputy Ambassador to Israel Alexander Dubrovin told Army Radio last week that Moscow had wanted the vote delayed, but was rebuffed on this matter by the other countries on the Security Council.
He also said that Moscow was not happy that the resolution focused primarily on the settlements.
Moscow also criticized US Secretary of State John Kerry’s speech on Wednesday, with NRG quoting a statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry as questioning the timing of Kerry’s harsh indictment of the settlement enterprise, saying that “narrow partisan interests” were involved.
The statement questioned why Kerry was making pronouncements about the Mideast diplomat process now, rather than in 2014 when the Washington-led negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority hit a standstill.
JPost Editorial: Support down under
At a time when Israel is recovering from the shock of UN Security Council Resolution 2334, comments made by Australia’s government are encouraging. In a statement released on Thursday, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop voiced her disagreement with the resolution.
Australia is not currently a member of the Security Council and therefore is not eligible to vote, noted Bishop. However, “in voting at the UN, the coalition government has consistently not supported one-sided resolutions targeting Israel.”
One day later, at a Hanukka menorah-lighting ceremony at Sydney’s Central Synagogue, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said that “Australia stands with Israel. We support Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East,” the Australian Jewish News reported.
Canberra’s support for Israel should not be taken for granted. Pro-Palestinian activists have lamented the fact that consecutive Australian governments have been out of step with public opinion. While a large proportion of Australians tend to be critical of Israel and its policies, Labor and in particular Liberal governments have been very supportive.
Consecutive public opinion polls have shown that Australians are divided over their support for Israel. A Roy Morgan Research poll from November 2011 found that Australians were just as sympathetic with Israelis as they were with Palestinians. Only 17% said they supported Jewish settlements while 63% opposed it.
And more than half of Australians supported the Palestinian push for recognition as a full member state of the UN.
Former Australian PM: Cut off aid to Palestinians
Former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott called on his country to cut millions of dollars of annual aid to the Palestinian Authority, accusing Ramallah of funneling the money to “terrorists and their families.” He also called on Canberra to join any move by the incoming Trump administration in the US to relocate the embassy to Jerusalem.
In an article penned by Abbott and published in The Spectator Australia weekly on Monday, the former PM said Canberra should offer “unswerving support for Israel as the region’s only liberal, pluralist democracy,” and “join any move by the Trump administration to move its embassy to Jerusalem.”
During the 2016 election, Trump pledged to end a longstanding White House policy to perpetually defer a 1995 Congressional decision to recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and move the embassy there.
Abbott’s comments come days after Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull panned the United Nations Security Council resolution that criticized Israeli settlement building as one-sided and biased against Israel.
Tony Abbot (fmr. Australian PM) : Jerusalem diary
‘To know how the world goes without America, look at Aleppo’. That’s the kind of insight (from the head of one of Israel’s security agencies) you get at the Australia-Israel-UK Leadership Dialogue. The brain-child of Melbourne businessman and jazz musician Albert Dadon, the Dialogue has been going since 2009 and in its present format since 2011. It was four days of discussions, just before Christmas, between MPs, officials and analysts of the three countries. The Australian delegation included Opposition leader Bill Shorten, Trade Minister Steve Ciobo and ten other federal and state parliamentarians.
Originally intended as another forum to familiarise Australia’s leaders with Israel, the Dialogue has become an opportunity for leaders from like-minded countries to consider issues in common, as well as to analyse in-depth the security problems of Israel and the wider Middle East. Along with the ‘two state solution’ to the Palestinian question, the challenge of Iran and Syria, the Sunni-Shia divide, the interplay of religious and economic grievances, and the consequences of United States’ and Russian policy in the region, there were vigorous discussions of Brexit, border protection, housing affordability, fiscal and monetary policy and the science of climate change – which turns out to be far less settled than most people think.
We often forget the role that Australians have played in this part of the world long before our FA18s and our military trainers joined today’s fight against the death cult in Syria and northern Iraq. In the Great War, the Australian Light Horse formed the spearhead of General Allenby’s British army that liberated Beersheba, Jerusalem and Damascus from the Ottoman Turks. In World War Two, Australia’s Seventh Division was the bulk of the British force that freed Syria and Lebanon from the Vichy French. And long before we were taught to think of ourselves as a multicultural country, Jews had been Australia’s chief justice, army commander and head of state (as that’s what our governor-general is). Indeed, we’re the only country with this distinction other than Israel itself.
Australian FM: We won't relocate embassy to Jerusalem
Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said that Australia "does not have any plans to move the Australian embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem," The Sydney Morning Herald reported on Monday.
Bishop's comments came in response to a call from former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott to move the embassy to Israel's declared capital as US President-elect Donald Trump has vowed he will do once in office.
In the column, Abbott wrote that "Australia should cut our $40 million a year aid to the Palestinian Authority while it keeps paying pensions to terrorists and their families," adding that Australia should demonstrate its "support for Israel" by mirroring Trump's plan to "move its embassy to Jerusalem."
Bishop rejected both of Abbott's suggestions, defending Australian aid to the Palestinian Authority, which she said is stipulated on a "zero tolerance policy" for fraud and corruption.
Head of the Palestinian delegation in Australia, Izzat Abdulhadi, warned of possible sanctions from Muslim countries if Australia were to take Abbott's suggested measures. Abdulhadi said that relocating the embassy would "severely damage the prospects for a two-state solution to the conflict - the solution that is supported by Palestine, Australia, and the international community."
A new possible disaster for Angela Merkel
No Islamic country will take in Palestinians (nor the refugees in the Middle East or North Africa), nor will any deed them unused land. They want Islam to eradicate Israel's very existence and make no secret of this. Instead of assisting "refugees," they opt for the West's submission to hijra, or spreading Islam through migration, they rely on the moral narcissism of Europe, led by Angela Merkel.
Merkel's New Year's Eve speech is insight into what we can expect in the future. Merkel's nation is both under attack and in the midst of a revolution that seeks to undo the submission to Islam her administration has facilitated. For security in Cologne, politicians had police hire Muslim security guards on New Year's Eve 2015, but on New Year's 2016, they "protected" Germany by barring a peaceful march by those who disagree with Merkel. By following the pattern of absurdity, we may predict what comes next.
In 2015, Merkel took front and center to become the "greatest woman" and leader in Europe when she said, "We will take them all!"– regardless of the cost to her own nation or the nations of Europe. She nullified the "refugee agreement" and brought a torrent of Islamists from the Middle East and North Africa whose own ideology is to conquer Europe. She was hailed throughout the world by the political elite and mainstream media. She is now running for re-election.
What can she do as an encore?
She can offer a two-state solution.
Merkel, and the EU in general, can "demonstrate their compassion" to the Islamic world by ceding lands that are already, de facto, under Islamic control, and come out to show Israel and the world, by example, how to obtain "peace" with Islam.
PreOccupiedTerritory: Following J-Street Lead, Enemies Of Israel Now Calling Selves ‘Pro-Israel’ (satire)
Arab and Muslim countries long committed to the destruction of the world’s only Jewish State have taken a page out of left-leaning advocacy organization J-Street and have begun to refer to themselves as, “pro-Israel, pro-peace.”
Iran, Syria, Malaysia, Pakistan, and several other states that have no diplomatic relations with Israel and have never sought rapprochement with Israel have noted recently that explicit threats to destroy Israel play less well in powerful Western circles than the J-Street-pioneered strategy of painting oneself as in favor of Israel but redefining the Israel in question to mean the country that would exist after the current one ceases to function as a recognizably Jewish entity or a haven for Jews from persecution.
Public relations consultants working with a number of Middle Eastern, North African, and South Asian Muslim states gathered in the US capital this week to compare notes on the ongoing efforts of those governments to rebrand themselves as pro-Israel in the mold of J-Street. The professionals discussed multiple options for presenting their clients’ stated desire to exterminate the Jewish State – and many or all of its Jewish inhabitants – as pro-Israel, just as J-Street’s goals point to the undermining of the Jewish character of Israel and its ability to establish and maintain security for its citizens, while the organization calls itself pro-Israel.
“We’re following the trail blazed by Jeremy Ben-Ami and his group, with an assist from the New Israel Fund,” explained Roger Gasleiter of JCPOA Associates, a Washington-area firm. “Better late than never, so for the next couple of weeks while Obama is still in office and his door is open to liberal groups à la J-Street, maybe we can get this new strategy and image going, and burnish our clients’ credentials with the American pro-peace camp, but without our clients’ having to actually change their pursuit of Israel’s destruction in any meaningful way.”
IsraelCool: Is There An Illegal Occupation Of Judea And Samaria (West Bank) By Israel?
However the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs stops short of actually declaring that settlements are legal. Some people say that’s a mistake.
If you want something hostile, you can read Wikipedia’s entry which, using a whole lot of words basically boils down to “everyone says settlements are illegal” without providing anything much in the way of actual evidence to back that up.
For the other side Eugene Kontorovich’s excellent lecture, explained here, gives reams of evidence to back up his legal opinion. If you have any good faith desire to understand this issue it’s pretty much essential you watch his lecture or read the summary.
To sum up, you can believe arguments one way or another, but you can’t yet say the matter of settlements is settled. It’s not even clear that Jews living in Judea and Samaria are settlers. As I’ve shown over and over with the indigenous nature of Judaism and Jews in these lands, trying to equate our Jewish return to these lands with a colonial invasion is dishonest and ahistorical.
Eugene Kontorovich speaking a Maxwell School of Syracuse University, Mar 2016.


Ex-CIA director: I was sure if we didn’t strike Syria’s nuclear reactor, Israel would
Gen. Michael Hayden provides an inside look into the attack that stopped Assad's nuclear ambitions in their tracks. From that fateful moment when Meir Dagan entered his office with photos of the reactor, through the clash between the Mossad director and the CIA’s analysts, who feared an all-out-war with Syria, to the secret meeting at Bush’s residence in which Hayden announced: ‘Mr. President, the Syrians are building a nuclear reactor, and it is part of a weapons program.’
"It was one of the most candid conversations I’ve ever had with him," says Gen. Michael Hayden as he recounts that fateful meeting with Mossad director Meir Dagan on the seventh floor of the United States Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
It was in April 2007, at the office of General Hayden, the director of the CIA at the time. When Hayden with his broad smile talks about a “candid conversation,” he means one between two people who have known each other for many years and had great respect for one another. But at least in that conversation, there was total disagreement between them.
That charged conversation at Langley revolved around one question: “How can this thing, which undoubtedly endangers the peace in the region, be destroyed without starting an all-out war in the Middle East?”
“This thing” was the Syrian nuclear reactor that was secretly being built at the time in Deir ez-Zor, not far from the Euphrates River.
Israeli ambassador on new UN secretary-general: 'Just be fair'
Former Portuguese prime minister Antonio Guterres took over from Ban Ki-moon on Sunday as the UN’s new secretary-general, and Israel has one request: Just be fair.
“I met with him and was impressed with his wide knowledge of the UN and the international arena,” Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon told The Jerusalem Post. “I hope we can turn a new page with him.”
Danon acknowledged that Guterres has a difficult job when it comes to Israel and the Middle East.
“I told him that the UN system creates so much negative energy against Israel, we just want him to be objective – not for Israel, but objective – and able to withstand the tremendous pressure against Israel that exists inside the UN.”
Trump ‘aggressively’ pursuing Netanyahu to attend inauguration — report
US president-elect’s White House transition team has been “aggressively” pursuing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to attend the inauguration ceremony in Washington, DC later this month, the New York Post reported on Sunday.
“There’s a plan for Trump to meet with Netanyahu,” a source close to the transition team said, according to the paper.
“They’re talking all the time. And Netanyahu is talking about possibly going to the inauguration,” the source was quoted as saying.
The report said Trump staffers, led by son-in-law Jared Kushner, were “aggressively courting” the Israeli prime minister in an effort to persuade him to attend the January 20 ceremony.
Netanyahu’s tense relationship with outgoing US President Barack Obama was exacerbated in recent weeks, after the White House publicly clashed with Israel over its West Bank policy and later declined to veto a UN Security Council resolution condemning settlements.
Trump has assured Israel that things will be different after he takes office, and last week lamented that the Jewish state was “being treated very, very unfairly” by the international community.
Think Tank: Hezbollah Remains Israel’s Greatest Threat
Hezbollah remains the most serious conventional threat Israel is facing, more than Hamas or Iran, a report released Monday by the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) determined.
According to the report, submitted to President Rivlin by INSS head Maj. Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin, Hezbollah has rockets that can reach any range, precision-guided missiles, attack and suicide drones, the best Russian-made air defense systems and ground units that are training to conquer Israeli towns and cities.
The INSS recommended to improve Israeli intelligence gathering in an effort to continue reducing the transfer of advanced arms to the terror organization and consequently reduce the chances of an escalation.
However, the potential for the eruption of a conflict with Hamas is higher than with Hezbollah or Iran.
Hamas, the INSS determined, may have been deterred after the 2014 Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, but it is continuing to build up its strength.
Furthermore, even if both sides are not interested in escalation, a conflict can break out over violent incidents or due to the deep social and economic frustration in the strip that will manifest itself in violence against Israel.




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Who wants to be a Palestinian? (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

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 By Petra Marquardt-Bigman


When the Israeli journalist Noga Tarnopolsky posted a tweetannouncing the heartbreaking news that a young Israeli woman was among the victims of the New Year’s eve terror attack in Istanbul, Haaretz World News Editor Asaf Ronel insistedthat the victim should be described as “Palestinian.”




Tarnopolsky responded by pointing out that not all of Israel’s Arab citizens identify as Palestinians; indeed, a relevant recent poll she postedshowed that only 12% chose “Palestinian” as their preferred identity, while 24% chose Arab, 25% Israeli, and 29% preferred to be identified by religion, i.e. Muslim, Christian or Druze. Tarnopolsky also notedcorrectly that irrespective of the victim’s preferred identity, Israeli authorities would provide the family with the same assistance that every Israeli family receives in these terrible circumstances.

However, in the course of the exchange it quickly turned out that Ronel couldn’t care less about how Israel’s Arab citizens prefer to be identified. He insistedthat designating the victim as Palestinian was “more accurate since it’s factual.” Preposterously, he even insisted that if the victim’s family preferred to identify as Israeli Arabs, “they are Palestinians w Israeli citizenship that define themselves as Israeli-Arabs.”

So we know now that it’s progressive and politically correct to ignore the wishes of Israeli Arabs who don’t want to be described as Palestinian.

I’m not sure if this should perhaps have implications for Article 1 of the Palestinian Constitution, which declares: “Palestine is part of the large Arab World, and the Palestinian people are part of the Arab Nation.” After all, this clearly implies that being Palestinian is a subcategory of being Arab, similar to being Bavarian is a subcategory of being German. Does Ronel approve of this or would he prefer the Palestinians to forget about feeling “part of the large Arab World” and “part of the Arab Nation”? And what about the Palestinian Declaration of Independence, that proclaims: “The State of Palestine shall be an Arab State and shall be an integral part of the Arab nation”?

In this context it’s interesting to consider the poll posted by Tarnopolsky in some more detail. It is taken from the 2016 Israeli Democracy Index, published two weeks ago by the highly respected Israel Democracy Institute (IDI). The relevant poll is on page 78 of the report, and IDI notes [emphasis added]:

“Arab respondents were given the following options to choose from as their primary identity: Israeli, Palestinian, Arab, and religious (Muslim/Christian/Druze). As the figure below indicates, the strongest identity among Arab respondents is religious, followed by Israeli and Arab. Palestinian identity was selected as primary by the smallest share of respondents, bolstering the argument that the Arab population is undergoing a process of Israelization and, at least seemingly, countering the widespread claim that a major process of Palestinization has taken place, or is taking place, in Arab Israeli society.”


IDI explains further:

“A breakdown of the Arab sample by religion yielded interesting results. The responses of Muslim interviewees when asked about their primary identity can be summarized as follows: religious identity, as chosen by the largest share, followed by Arab and Israeli identity, with Palestinian identity trailing far behind. […] We learned further that among Christian Arabs, Arab identity takes precedence, followed after a sizeable gap by Israeli and religious identities. Here too, Palestinian identity is at the bottom of the list. Among the Druze, religious identity is dominant, followed by Israeli identity, while Arab identity is weak and Palestinian identity is negligible.”

But it’s perhaps only fitting that the Haaretz World News Editor would insist that imposing the preference of a tiny minority on everyone is somehow “more accurate since it’s factual.”  






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Manfred Gerstenfeld's excellent book on antisemitism free to download

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Over the summer Mrs. Elder and I had the opportunity to meet and interview Manfred Gerstenfeld, perhaps the leading expert on antisemitism today.

His book The War of A Million Cuts is an incredible and frightening read. Of course I read articles all day about antisemitism but to see everything described thematically and in context is an almost overwhelming experience.

Gerstenfeld first shows how antisemitism and anti-Israelism is intertwined. He categorizes different types of antisemitism and gives copious examples of each. Finally, Gerstenfeld puts together a plan to combat the "world's oldest hatred."

The book is now available for download for free from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. i

Get it. It is very worth your time.





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01/02 Links Pt2: Assad's Palestinian mercenaries; European diplomats meet with Hamas, express 'positive position'

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From Ian:

Black Lives Matter offshoot embraces anti-Semitism, engages with terrorists
Over the Christmas weekend, Chicago surpassed the 750-murder mark for 2016. But as blacks lay dying on the streets of Chicago’s South and West Sides, a Black Lives Matter offshoot is more interested in traveling overseas to learn “resistance” from terrorists.
The Dream Defenders bills itself as “an uprising of communities in struggle, shifting culture through transformational organizing.” But an investigation conducted by the Haym Salomon Center reveals the group’s embrace of anti-Semitism and collaboration with a State Department-designated terror group.
In August, Black Lives Matter singled out Israel for condemnation, declaring it an “apartheid” state engaged in “genocide.” These accusations angered Jewish leaders, many of whom had steadfastly supported the BLM cause. Nonetheless, despite what can only be described as a total lack of relevance to its own agenda, BLM did not back down.
Just like BLM, Dream Defenders proclaims solidarity with Palestinians. DD claims that the black community in America, together with Palestinians in the “occupied” territories of Israel, are all victims of state-sanctioned violence. As such, the two causes are related and should learn “resistance” from each other. After leaders from BLM and DD made their first trip to Palestinian territories in January 2015, BLM’s anti-Israel advocacy remained steady, mostly lashing out at the Jewish state at rallies and protests. DD stepped up their disdain for Israel, engaging in what the U.S. government defines as anti-Semitism.
Dream Defenders’ website dedicates an entire page to Palestinian solidarity. While accusing Israel of existing on “stolen land,” there is no mention of Palestinian terrorism, including the targeting of civilians. (h/t Jewess)
Assad's Palestinian mercenaries
Over the past century, various Palestinian leaders have fostered alliances that were either unsuccessful or not particularly useful to them.
Take the alliance formed by the grand mufti of Jerusalem during the British mandate period, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, who during World War II supported Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. Al-Husseini hoped the Germans would win the war and Hitler would become fuhrer of the Middle East. After the Nazis lost the war, however, the West did not forgive al-Husseini, which severely damaged the Palestinian cause for over two decades.
Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat erred in 1990 when he supported Iraq in its invasion of Kuwait. Palestinian public support for the invasion led to a great deal of suffering for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians then living in Kuwait and the Persian Gulf, who paid the price for Arafat's support of the tyrannical Saddam Hussein.
Today, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is maintaining ambiguity regarding the Syrian war, taking pains to avoid denouncing or supporting the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. It appears Abbas has learned from history. However, tens of thousands of Palestinians are apparently fighting on behalf of the Syrian dictator, even sacrificing their lives for him. These Palestinians, who went to live in Syria in recent decades, are helping slaughter the Syrian people fighting for their freedom. The guest has turned murderer.
Among the Palestinians, the most fervent Assad supporters belong to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine's General Command, led by Ahmed Jibril. The organization is headquartered in Damascus and consists of thousands of fighters; Jibril's loyalty to the Assad regime has never wavered. His fighters are taking part in the war effort, even against their own people, their own flesh and blood. In one example, when Assad's army laid siege to the Yarmouk refugee camp, it was Jibril's fighters who provided the regime with intelligence information and ground support. (h/t Elder of Lobby)
The wisdom of the Kiwi foreign minister
New Zealand was one of the four countries which sponsored the biased and unhelpful Resolution 2334 at the UN Security Council last week. The main proponent of the Kiwi initiative was Murray McCully, the Foreign Minister.
Thanks to the excellent online publication Shalom.Kiwi we can be privy to Mr McCully’s insights into the geopolitics of the Middle East, offered at a meeting on 18 May 2016 in an address to the Auckland Jewish Community.
When asked about the role of Palestinian terror in the current stalemate, McCully declined to distinguish between Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians and the Israeli response to such attacks. When pushed, he refused to call the current wave of stabbings, shootings, car-rammings and suicide bombings “terrorism”, snapping: “You can call it what you like ….. you choose your words, I’ll choose mine.”
In relation to the terrorist group Hamas, McCully conceded that it had “stopped short of formally accepting the Quartet Principles” – an observation that ‘provoked astonished laughter from a shocked audience’.
‘The Quartet Principles include recognising Israel, abiding by diplomatic agreements and renouncing violence. As one audience member responded, this was rather a generous comment to make about an organisation whose statements, charter and purposes are the annihilation of Israel, not in order to make a Palestinian state, but because of a religious objection to Jewish sovereignty in any part of that land’.



European diplomats meet with Hamas, express 'positive position'
When the EU court ruled that Hamas was not a terror organization, European countries hurried to explain this was just a 'bureaucratic matter'.
Via al-Monitor:
In an exclusive interview with Al-Monitor, Hamas' foreign relations chief Osama Hamdan revealed that several weeks ago in Qatar, the movement's leadership met a delegation of high-ranking European diplomats. He expressed optimism about a European decision to strike Hamas from its list of terrorist organizations.
(...)
Hamdan: Hamas is keen to maintain balanced and open relations at the regional and international levels. It has succeeded over the past three decades since its founding in 1987 to establish channels of communication with several Arab, Islamic and Western states. It now has a wide network of political and diplomatic relations, but the United States has exerted pressure on many countries, influencing them not to cooperate with Hamas’ efforts to build relations.
Hamas today has a good communications system, including many countries other than Arab and Islamic countries. It has relations with the Russian Federation, Brazil in Latin America, Nigeria and South Africa on the African continent and China, Malaysia and Indonesia in Asia. On the European continent, Hamas has strong ties with Switzerland and Norway. It also has good ties with three other European countries that prefer not to be open about this relationship to avoid any embarrassment with Washington.
IsraellyCool: What Israeli Media Coverage Of Israeli Killed In Turkey Terror Attack Should Teach You
Another day, another Islamic terrorist attack, this time in Istanbul, with a terrorist – believed to have been dressed in a Santa Claus costume – opening fire at a crowded nightclub, killing at least 39 people and wounding close to 70.
May their memories be a blessing.
One of the victims was a young Israeli woman. Here are some examples of how the Israeli media reported it:
Jerusalem Post: "One Israeli found dead, one hurt after Istanbul club attack that killed 39"
Ynet: "Israeli woman killed in Istanbul night club attack"
Times of Israel: "Israeli teenager, 19, killed in Istanbul nightclub attack"
Israel National News (Arutz 7): "Body of Israeli woman recovered after Istanbul terror attack"
I mention this because the Israeli victim – Lian Nassar, 19 – was an Israeli Arab. You only discover that when reading the reports.
You see, Jew, Arab or Christian, we value our citizens. This is just further proof that claims of apartheid are plain ridiculous.
Gunman Behind Deadly Istanbul Nightclub Attack on New Year’s Eve Still at Large
Authorities in Turkey searched Sunday for a gunman who opened fire at a packed Istanbul nightclub during New Year's celebrations, killing at least 39 people, most of them foreigners, and injuring 69.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned “the terror attack in Istanbul’s Ortakoy neighborhood in the first hours of 2017” and offered condolences for those who died, including “foreign guests.”
Nearly two-thirds of those killed — 24 victims — were from other countries, Turkey’s state-run news agency reported. Many were from the Middle East, including Jordan, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, although countries from India to Belgium reported their citizens among the casualties, the Associated Press reported.
At least one of the injured is a Delware business owner, WCAU-TV and The Associated Press reported.
ISIS claims responsibility for Istanbul club attack
Islamic State claimed responsibility for a gun attack on an Istanbul nightclub which killed 39 people on Sunday, the group said in a statement on Monday.
"In continuation of the blessed operations that Islamic State is conducting against the protector of the cross, Turkey, a heroic soldier of the caliphate struck one of the most famous nightclubs where the Christians celebrate their apostate holiday," the statement said.
During the attack, a gunman opened fire on New Year's revelers at a packed nightclub on the shores of Istanbul's Bosphorus waterway, then fled the scene. Many foreigners were among the fatalities, including Israeli national Lian Nasser, 18 from the town of Tira. Another Israeli, a 22-year-old woman also from Tira, was wounded.
Year after Tel Aviv New Year's attack, victim return to celebrate 32nd birthday
Exactly one year ago to the day on Friday, a terrorist opened fire in ‘Simta’ bar in Tel Aviv’s popular Dizengoff Streets as crowds gathered to celebrate 2016’s New Year’s Day.
One year later, Ariel Nusbecher—who was at the bar celebrating his birthday—returned to celebrate his 32nd birthday on Friday at the same place on 122 Dizengoff Street to demonstrate his defiance against the cruelties of terror.
At around 2:40pm on January, 1 2016 Nashat Milhem, an Arab-Israeli terrorist living in Ar'ara arrived at the vibrant scene before opening fire on random civilians, killing Alon Bakal, 26 who was the manager of the Simta bar, and Shimon Ruimi, 30, from Ofakim.
Both victims were close friends of Ariel’s, who himself was shot in the stomach and moderately wounded in the hit. Seven others were injured in the attack while Amin Shaaban, a taxi driver was found murdered on Weizman Street in north Tel Aviv as Milhem fled the scene.
Unphased however, and resolute in his refusal to enable terror to dictate his daily life, Ariel managed to overcome the harrowing images indelibly etched into his memory and return to the once-macaber spot and transform it yet again into a scene of joy and celebration as he embraced his 33rd year in the world.
Moreover, Ariel and his friends lit together the Hunukkah candles, marking its penultimate night.
Cabinet rules Hamas terrorists' bodies will not be returned
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday convened the Diplomatic-Security Cabinet to discuss measures by which Israel can pressure Hamas to return the bodies of two Israeli soldiers and two citizens being held captive by the terrorist group.
Staff Sgt. Oron Shaul and Lt. Hadar Goldin were killed in the Gaza Strip in separate battles during Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014.
Ethiopian Israeli Avera Mengistu and Bedouin Israeli Hisham al-Sayed, both suffering from mental health issues, crossed into Gaza willingly in 2014 and 2015 and were captured by Hamas.
While the cabinet released no details as to the measures it would take, it ruled that the bodies of Hamas terrorists will no longer be returned to their families for burial. Instead, the bodies will be buried in a special cemetery for enemy combatants.
Under the new policy, the bodies could be exhumed and handed back for burial if Hamas proves willing to strike deals.
Hamas blasts 'barbaric' Israel
Hamas on Sunday evening blasted the Israeli government over its decision not to return the bodies of Hamas terrorists who were killed while carrying out terrorist attacks, as part of a new plan of action on bringing back the Israeli soldiers and civilians held captive by Hamas in Gaza.
The terrorist group said in a statement that the decision, as agreed upon by the Security Cabinet, is “vindictive and barbaric”.
“These decisions will not give positive results," it warned.
Hamas, whose charter openly calls for Israel’s destruction, continues to hold the bodies of IDF soldiers Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul, whom it captured during the 2014 Operation Protective Edge.
In addition, it is believed to be holding Avraham (Avera) Mengistu, an Ethiopian Jew who was suffering from mental health problems when he wandered unarmed across the border to Gaza. He has not been heard from since.
Hamas has repeatedly said that Israel would have to “pay the price” to secure the release of Mengistu, Goldin, Shaul and a Bedouin who went missing in Gaza as well.
On Saturday, the terrorist group taunted Israel by publishing two video clips featuring Shaul on the occasion of his birthday.
Arab-Israeli MK Ghattas suspended from Knesset
MK Bassel Ghattas (Joint List) will be suspended for six months from all Knesset activities except for voting in the plenum, the Knesset Ethics Committee determined Monday.
Ghattas is currently under house arrest after he was caught on camera smuggling cell phones, SIM cards and documents to prisoners convicted of terrorism.
The Joint List MK will retain the right to vote, which cannot be revoked as long as he remains a lawmaker. Ghattas will also continue to draw a salary, because an MK's pay can only be docked by a unanimous vote.
MK Youssef Jabareen (Joint List) was the one MK who voted against Ghattas' punishment, saying that the committee should wait for the end of the investigation.
Tunisia blames Israel for Hamas scientist's death
Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi on Sunday said that his government suspects Israel of being behind the assassination of Hamas engineer Mohamed Zaouari, Haaretz reported.
Zaouari, an aviation scientist, was shot to death outside his home in Sfax, Tunisia, on December 15. Hamas said two days after his death that he was a member of the organization's military wing and one of the leaders of its drone program. The group at the time also blamed Israel for his death.
The investigation into the attack is continuing, Essebsi said, according to Haaretz. He rejected criticism that the Tunisian government was not doing enough to advance the investigation, adding that the government would not hesitate to turn to the international community once it had collected sufficient evidence.
Essebsi's statement was the highest-level indication that Israel was suspected of involvement in Zaouari’s death. Tunisia’s Interior Minister had previously said Zaouari’s murder had been planned abroad by foreigners, though he admitted that “we do not yet have any tangible proof” and did not name any specific country.
The death of Zaouari came as Hamas continues to rebuild its infiltration tunnel network into Israel, after the IDF destroyed the network during Operation Protective Edge in 2014.
Hamas leader floats idea of West Bank-Gaza Strip federation
A senior Hamas official said on Friday that a federation between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip could be a feasible solution to the ongoing division between Hamas and Fatah.
“A federation between the West Bank and Gaza Strip may be better than the ongoing division,” Mousa Abu Marzouk, the vice president of the Hamas Politburo, told Al-Ghad, a London-based Arabic satellite channel.
A federation is defined as a political entity made up of partially self-governing regions.
The division between Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, and Fatah, which dominates the West Bank, has lasted for more than nine years.
Arab and international parties have undertaken numerous efforts to end the division, overseeing agreements between the two parties, which ultimately have gone unimplemented.
21 Hamas members killed in tunnel collapses this year
Hamas said on Sunday that 21 of its members were killed in tunnel collapses in Gaza during 2016, Kol Yisrael radio reported.
According to the terror group, seven of the 21 were killed in a tunnel in eastern Gaza City which collapsed six months ago during work to repair the damage caused to the tunnel by Israel during Operation Protective Edge in 2014.
Hamas has been busily reconstructing its terror tunnel network breaching into Israeli territory and which was targeted by Israel during the 2014 counterterror operation.
During that time, there have been several incidents in which tunnels collapsed and terrorists were killed. One such incident occurred in October, when a member of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas's armed terror wing, was killed after an underground tunnel collapsed on him.
Last month, two Hamas terrorists were killed when a terror tunnel collapsed in the Shuja'iyya neighborhood of Gaza.
North Korea says close to test intercontinental ballistic missile
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said on Sunday that his isolated, nuclear-capable country is close to test-launching an intercontinental ballistic missile.
North Korea tested ballistic missiles at an unprecedented rate during 2016, although some experts have said it is years away from developing an ICBM fitted with a nuclear warhead capable of reaching the United States.
"Research and development of cutting-edge arms equipment is actively progressing and ICBM rocket test-launch preparation is in its last stage," a defiant Kim said during a televised New Year's Day speech.
The country has been under U.N. sanctions since 2006 over its nuclear and ballistic missile tests. The sanctions were tightened after Pyongyang conducted its fifth and largest nuclear test on Sept. 9.
A successful ICBM test launch would mark a significant step forward for the secretive country's weapons capability.
Intercontinental ballistic missile have a minimum range of about 5,500 kilometers (3,418 miles), but some are designed to travel 10,000 kilometers (6,214 miles) or further. California is some 9,000 kilometers (5,592 miles) from North Korea.
Report: Hezbollah Rejects Moscow-Ankara-Brokered Syria Ceasefire Deal Over Turkish Demand for Withdrawal of All Foreign Fighters
Sources in Lebanon told the London-based pan-Arab daily Al-Arab that Hezbollah has rejected the Russia-Turkey-mediated ceasefire agreement for the Syrian civil war, the Hebrew news site nrg reported on Sunday.
According to these sources, the Iranian-backed, Lebanon-based terrorist organization that has been fighting on behalf of President Bashar Assad is furious about Ankara’s clause in the agreement requiring all foreign forces to withdraw from Syria, before a diplomatic solution is reached or even discussed.
To make matters worse, the report said, the sources also claimed that Moscow informed Tehran about this clause — something that angered Hezbollah, which has been fighting alongside both.
A Hezbollah official publicly declared: “We are not in Syria by Turkish decree, and we will not leave it by Turkish decree.”
A Lebanese commentator told Al-Arab that a withdrawal of Hezbollah forces from Syria would have dangerous consequences, because — he claimed — it will make it difficult for Iran to prove that it is still a strong player in the region.
ISIS Clarifies: ‘We Had Nothing to Do with Mariah Carey’s New Year’s Eve Performance’ (satire)
Calling it a disaster for which the West has only itself to blame, ISIS issued a statement Sunday morning stating that it bore no responsibility for singer Mariah Carey’s disastrous performance on ABC’s New Year’s Eve event at Times Square.
“In the wake of the infidel Mariah Carey’s nakba [catastrophe] last night, we have heard people speculate that we may have hacked into the speaker system to embarrass the American Crusaders, or secretly drugged Mrs. Carey, or some shit like that,” ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi told The Mideast Beast. “We want to make it 100-percent clear that we had absolutely nothing to do with that embarrassment. As far as we can tell, the West brought this disaster on itself.”
At a performance minutes before midnight on New Year’s Eve, Carey was left pacing the stage in frustration after the audio malfunctioned. While some experts expected ISIS to claim credit for the event, which humiliated not just Carey but America as a whole, ISIS leaders insisted they wanted no association whatsoever with the embarrassment.
“Al Qaeda can take credit for this one if they want,” al-Baghdadi noted.
American Rock Trio Known for LGBT Activism Performs in Israel, Blasts BDS as Ignorant, Antisemitic
A member of an all-female alternative rock band from New York City bashed the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement after her group performed its first concert in the Jewish state.
BETTY cellist and vocalist Amy Ziff told the organization Creative Community for Peace (CCFP), “People that wish to impose cultural boycotts on Israel are either misinformed about the country, or antisemites disguising themselves under a mask of anti-Zionism.” She said that the band– well-known for its off-Broadway show “BETTY Rules” and for producing the theme song to the hit Showtime series “The L Word” — uses its music “to strive for a better world through political and social activism.” Artists, she said, have “the responsibility to help society in a myriad of ways.” One of the ways that BETTY does this is by advocating on behalf of the LBGT community.
After longing to perform in Israel, Ziff said, the band held two concerts there in late November and early December — and plans to return for another performance next October.
Ziff said she was excited about “making a connection with people… in Israel,” with whom she hopes her group’s music resonated.
Though many artists are harassed into canceling Israel tours by BDS activists — most notable among them Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters — several reject the pressure and proudly perform in the Jewish state.
Prominent American Pollster Brings Hard-Hitting Workshop to Foreign Students in Israel
A renowned American pollster and political adviser recently came to Israel to give high school students a workshop intensive on defending the Jewish state on the front lines of public opinion.
“Part of the struggle for those who advocate for Israel is that we need to respond to simple questions and accusations with really complicated answers, because the truth itself is so complicated,” public opinion guru Dr. Frank Luntz recently told a group of Jewish American, Australian and Colombian students at the Alexander Muss High School in Israel (AMHSI). “To get to the truth, it is important to understand every narrative and point of view of events that happen in Israel. Without a full understanding, you can’t argue anything.”
At AMHSI’s Hod HaSharon campus in central Israel, Luntz — who has worked on many American and international political campaigns on packaging complex policy matters for a general audience — opened his workshop by presenting the students with a rapid-fire series of hard-hitting and politically charged questions.
“I found myself fumbling for an answer to Dr. Luntz’s questions,” said Maor Ziv-Kreger, an 11th-grade student from Boston and an academic fellow at AMHSI. “With my mind racing for a reasonable response, I knew deep down inside that I have learned so much over the past three months studying at Muss. I have done well on tests from our Israel studies curriculum, but these questions were different than what we typically saw on exams.”
At the World Council of Churches, a stunning theology of terror
Most reasonable people will agree it's right for a highly influential religious group to call on the Almighty to come down on the side of the victims. It would be incomprehensible if the Reverend Mr Tveit had taken the opposing view and called for compassion for the murdering savages of ISIS.
But wait. We want to point out how differently the same Mr Tveit expressed himself in relation to a different collection of savages who. unlike the perpetrators of the Istanbul barbarism two days ago, have been caught and in most cases tried and convicted on terrorism charges.
In relation to those savages, Mr Tveit very publicly urged the Christian faithful who seek leadership from his office to pray and to help them in practical ways and not to give any thought to the things those prisoners had done to be locked up.
The scene outside Istanbul's Reina night-club [Image Source]
That nauseating appeal for sympathy for actual and thwarted murderers got our attention in April 2014 when the WCC called for solidarity by its faithful with what it disingenuously terms
"some 5000 Palestinian men, women and children, languishing in Israeli jails".
For their benefit, believer-members ought
"to pray for, visit, and tend to the needs of all prisoners, no matter the reason for their detention. For Israel and Palestine, prisoners have taken on even greater significance than in the past."
10 Notable Campus Stories From 2016
Jewish and pro-Israel students around the world have been facing a deluge of hostile activity in the form of Palestinian human-rights advocacy. This year, through the establishment of The Algemeiner’s Campus Bureau, we have have reported on this phenomenon. As 2017 kicks off, here is a list of what we consider the most significant examples from the past year.
1. “Cesspool” of Antisemitic, Anti-Israel Racism Uncovered at University of Tennessee, Knoxville
The Algemeiner revealed information obtained by covert watchdog group Canary Mission about an online “echo chamber of hate speech” conducted by 34 students associated with the University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Muslim Student Association. On social media, members of these groups referred to Hitler as a “boss,” posted images glorifying terrorism against Israelis and Jews and harassed Jewish students. The Campus Bureau’s extensive reporting on this topic garnered the attention of the international press.
5. Oberlin Said Goodbye to Antisemitic Professor Who Accused Jews of Carrying Out 9/11 Attacks
After dragging its feet for months, Oberlin College finally announced its decision to fire professor Joy Karega for years-worth of blatantly antisemitic social media posts, which included conspiracy theories taken from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Oberlin officials first promised in March to investigate Karega, but it was only in August — two days after The Algemeiner reported on alumni outrage over her continued employment — that the school announced she was being placed on leave, pending the results of the final investigation. The inquiry was completed in November, with Karega’s termination.
“Jewish Voice for Peace” Hijacks Chanukah for Anti-Israel Messaging
Despite its name, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) isn’t Jewish or for peace. It’s a radical group that provides cover to the anti-Israel movement, particularly on campuses, by legitimizing and mainstreaming its assault on Jewish identity.
As we’ve noted in prior posts, JVP usurps various Jewish celebrations, religious holidays, and commemorative life-cycle events by incorporating within them virulently anti-Israel themes and reinforcing that this Israel-bashing is consistent with Jewish values.
Last year, as we highlighted in our posts, this identity theft of Jewish heritage was particularly visible during Passover and the High Holidays.
Now, JVP is hijacking Chanukah (also spelled “Hanukkah”) too.
On Wednesday December 21st JVP organized a series of “actions” in 25 cities across the country to coincide with the holiday of Chanukah, which ends today.
Many of the events were organized with in partnership with the virulently anti-Israel American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
The New Axis of Evil (or Comedy): CAIR, JVP and the Huffington Post
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has finally found a Jewish group that it likes.
At its annual banquet on December 17, CAIR gave its new “Defender of Liberty” award to Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).
The Huffington Post ran the original story about this award, continuing its long tradition of running apologias for radical Islamist and Muslim Brotherhood front groups all over the United States — as well as promoting virulent antisemitic conspiracy theories.
In 2012, the Huffington Post UK even hired Mehdi Hasan, a radical Islamist who has also proposed a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which would lead to the slaughter of the new Jewish minority. He also was once caught on video calling non-Muslims “animals:” Hasan called on Muslims to keep “the moral high ground,” adding, “Once we lose the moral high ground we are no different from the rest, of the non-Muslims, from the rest of those human beings who live their lives as animals, bending any rule to fulfill any desire.” And he nefariously blamed Israeli influence for the war in Iraq. David Duke would be proud of the Huffington Post.
IBT Sources Hate Site to Accuse Israel of Using Palestinian Child as a Human Shield
The International Business Times falsely accuses the IDF of using a Palestinian child as a human shield.
"Israel Palestine Conflict: Tel Aviv Troops Allegedly Using West Bank Children As Human Shields"
In the bizarre headline, the IBT can apparently tell, despite the soldiers’ covered faces, that they are “Tel Aviv Troops.” More likely, this is yet another case where the media refuse to acknowledge that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, preferring to portray Tel Aviv as synonymous with Israel.
The IBT claims that those balaclava-clad Tel Avivians are “allegedly using West Bank children as human shields.” Who alleged this?
According to the IBT’s Mary Pascaline, it is an Israeli human rights organization that made the human shield claim. But the B’tselem post she links to makes no reference to the term “human shield.” The post does however, provide a video and a seven year old Palestinian boy’s account of an incident that occurred at a demonstration, where Palestinians throw rocks at Israeli troops who try to disperse them.
BBC diplomatic correspondent disappears Hamas and the PA
As has been the case in previous BBC reporting both on that UNSC resolution and on the topic in general, that choice of terminology obviously leads BBC audiences to mistakenly believe that Israel is constructing new communities rather than – as is actually the case – building homes in existing neighbourhoods, towns and villages.
Listeners to that news bulletin later heard from the BBC’s diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams who managed to make both the Palestinian Authority and the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip disappear from the story.
“Eight years ago Barak Obama began his presidency with a flurry of diplomacy aimed at breaking the Arab-Israeli deadlock. It didn’t work and pretty soon a succession of Arab revolutions and wars gave the president more pressing things to think about. But now at the eleventh hour: another flurry. First a highly unusual abstention on a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the occupied territories and now a speech the president’s tireless Secretary of State has apparently been wanting to give for some time. It contained warnings to both sides but asked one fundamental question of Israel: did it want two separate states living side by side or one – in which Israel continues to govern the lives of millions of Palestinians.”
Swedish ‘laserman’ killer of Jewish woman to stand trial in Germany
Sweden has sent one of its most notorious killers to Germany to stand trial for allegedly murdering a Jewish woman in 1992, a chief prosecutor said on Monday.
“He agreed to be sent to Germany,” Krister Petersson, chief prosecutor at the international public prosecution office in Stockholm, told AFP.
Dubbed “Laserman” in Swedish media, 63-year-old John Ausonius went on a six-month shooting spree with a laser sight in 1991-1992, injuring 10 immigrants and killing one in Sweden.
He was sent to Germany about a week ago from Sweden, where he was serving life behind bars for the gun attacks.
A Swedish citizen, Ausonius is the number one suspect in the investigation into the murder of 68-year-old Blanka Zmigrod in Frankfurt on February 23, 1992. He denies the charges.
Virginia Tech, Strauss seek Israeli firms for food R&D
Virginia Tech University and Israeli food maker Strauss Group have set up an R&D and marketing initiative to help Israeli agriculture and food tech startups, both early stage and more established firms, expand their activities in the US market.
Israeli companies have been invited to make presentations to a joint team of R&D experts from Virginia Tech and Strauss on January 22 at the Strauss headquarters in the central Israeli town of Petah Tikva for entry into the program. Later this year, selected companies will travel to Virginia to further their business development.
The new agro/food tech program will provide these startups with funding opportunities and business development meetings with experts in Virginia, opportunities to team up with other groups, technology validation, consumer testing and the necessary permits and regulations, the two companies said in a statement.
Startups specializing in food tech and agriculture are encouraged to apply. Possible focuses include sugar, salt and fat reduction technologies, breeding techniques, improved nutrition methods and digital solutions, food safety, aquaculture, soil sciences and food and product process quality monitoring.
Israeli App Helps Farmers Reduce Pesticide Use by 40 Percent
About 1,000 farmers in Israel, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Kenya and Thailand are reporting up to 40 percent reduced use of pesticides and improved fieldworker efficiency due to a crowdsourcing platform called AgriTask.
It’s like a smart one-stop shop for agricultural technologies and best-practices data.
Developed by Israeli startup ScanTask in 2008, AgriTask translates data into simple work protocols for farmers of vegetables, field crops, fruit and ornamental trees, grapes, and greenhouse flowers, and helps them comply with safety and export regulations.
Exporters, buyers, food conglomerates, and agriculture financing and insurance companies can reap business intelligence and decision support from ground data, aerial images, and forecast data shared by users across the cloud-based AgriTask platform.
All this happens on a simultaneously trilingual platform — English and any two other languages — allowing field workers and managers to use ScanTask in their preferred language.
“AgriTask has changed the way I monitor and manage our regional integrated pest management project,” said Avi Goldstein from the regional growers’ association in Israel’s Binyamina region, which encompasses more than 100 growers cultivating dozens of different crops.
The 2016 Fabulous 50 Blog Award Winners #Fab50
Best Middle East Blogger
Elder of Ziyon: News and commentary straight from the heart of Israel.
Gatestone Institute: A tireless defender of Western civilization.
Israelly Cool: A panoply of news involving Israel, the Middle East, and the West.
MEMRI: An awesome and under-leveraged source of translated news stories that provide real insight into the sickness infecting much of the Middle East.
The Tower: An invaluable view of politics, diplomacy, war and peace centered around Israel.



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"Progressives" romanticizing Hamas terror rockets at film festivals

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Filmmaker Martin Ginestié made a film in 2015 called "In Defense of the Rocket." And that is literally what it is  - a film that defends and romanticizes Palestinian terror rocket fire towards Israeli civilians.

It was just released to the world on Vimeo:


In Defense of the Rocket - dir. Martin Ginestié (2015) from Martin Ginestie on Vimeo.

The film is offensive on two levels.

One is that it pretends that Israel bombs Gaza for no reason, and that rockets are a natural reaction to the failure of the peace process that Israel's random attacks have killed. It doesn't show any rockets themselves until after it shows bombed-out Gaza buildings. The viewer would have no idea that Hamas rockets are aimed towards civilians and that thousands of them, shot after Israel withdrew from Gaza, preceded any military action.

The second reason it is offensive is that it is simply a poor film. It literally looks like it was made in Microsoft Movie and Martin Ginestié couldn't even sync up the photos with the music in several instances.

The poorly made piece of pro-Palestinian terror propaganda "In Defense of the Rocket" was shown at these film festivals:

- International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) - Netherlands - 2015
- 9180 Shortfest - India - 2015
- True / False - USA - 2016
- Internationale Kurzfilmwoche Regensburg - Germany - 2016
- Athens International Film + Video Festival - USA - 2016
- cellu l'art - Germany - 2016
- Leiden International Short Film Experience - Netherlands - 2016
- Hot Docs - Canada - 2016
- Festival Internacional De Cine De Huesca - Spain - 2016
- Sarajevo Film Festival - Bosnia Herzegovina - 2016
- off-courts Trouville - France - 2016
- Fantoche International Animation Film Festival Baden - Switzerland - 2016
- Milan Film Festival - Italy - 2016
- Camden International Film Festival - USA - 2016
- Riga International Film Festival 2ANNAS - Latvia 2016
- The Living Art - Italy - 2016
- Sapporo International Short Film Festival - Japan - 2016
- DEPO2015 - Czech Republic - 2016
- DocsDF - Mexico - 2016
- Croydon IFF - UK - 2016
- Jogja-NETPAC - Indonesia - 2016
- Istanbul International Short Film Festival - Turkey - 2106 [sic]

It is proudly promoted by the British Film Council.

Ginestié spoke to Electronic Intifada (which naturally supports the terrorism romanticized in the film) :
“At festivals, I’ve definitely got people being offended by the title,” Ginestie said. “But that was the purpose.”

“The moment of inspiration for the film was the bombing of Gaza in 2014, because I was just trying to find something positive from that event,” Ginestie added. “It was very hard to find anything positive.”

“The ambition of the film was to provoke Western liberals – at the time there was a lot of sympathy for Palestinians but very little sympathy for armed resistance,” Ginestie added. “That was kind of a red line. I wanted to provoke people, not to support armed resistance – it’s not for us to decide how Palestinians resist colonization– but to get people to reframe the Western debate about the use of violence.

“I wanted to make a film that retraced the past 20 years of Palestinian politics and give some kind of historical logic for what the Palestinian resistance was doing,” Ginestie said.
Anyone who frames Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, Israeli citizens being bombarded by rockets and Israel finally fighting back after years of inaction as "colonization" is an imbecile.

And anyone who says that Palestinians have the right to murder Jews in the name of "resisting colonization" if they choose but Israelis don't have the right to defend themselves is a hypocrite.

Yet a score of film festivals think that a poorly made piece of pro-terror propaganda is worth showing - because supporting terror against Jews is now considered "provocative""art."

The final frame of the film, showing an animation of a wonderful "resistance rocket" soaring in the sky above what the viewer would believe was a devastated Gaza, is actually taken from a photo of a Jordanian refugee camp in 1949 near the Dead Sea.

Today that camp is still there, under Palestinian Authority rule. No documentary filmmakers are asking why Palestinians keep their own people in "refugee camps" in territory that has been under their control for over two decades.

There is no market for such films.


(h/t SpotlightingSA)




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HRW flirts with antisemitism

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Human Rights Watch released another anti-Israel report, saying that Israeli officials who call to "shoot to kill" attackers are "proliferating" and implying that they are influencing police and soldiers to break their own rules of engagement.

Even the examples they give are misleading. Here's one:
In October 2015, a radio interviewer asked Israeli Police Minister Gilad Erdan if he agreed with a statement by a lawmaker from an opposition party that “if a terrorist has a knife or screwdriver in his hand, you should shoot to kill him without thinking twice.”
Erdan said yes: “Definitely. The question of course depends on the circumstances. There are clear instructions to the Israeli police. As soon as a police officer feels danger to himself or any other citizen, he needs to shoot according to the regulations. It’s clear. We don’t want to endanger any citizen or police officer. And also, every attacker who sets out to inflict harm should know that he will likely not survive the attack.”
 Erdan is not saying to shoot to kill automatically. He's saying to go according to regulations, but the terrorist should be forewarned that he will very possibly be killed. His words were meant to dissuade terrorist, not to give instructions to violate rules of engagement.

Similarly, some Israeli officials will talk tough for the media when innocent people are being attacked, but there is no indication that the rules of engagement have changed at all since the wave of knife attacks last year.

HRW is making up an issue where there is none.

The latter part of the HRW report gets into much more sinister territory:

Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, who holds the state-funded, statutory position of Israel’s Chief Sephardic Rabbi, said in a March 12, 2016 sermon, partly in response to Eisenkot’s admonition to limit the use of lethal force, that the Bible authorizes a shoot-to-kill policy: “‘Whoever comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.’ … let them afterward take you to the High Court of Justice or bring some military chief of staff who will say something else … As soon as an attacker knows that if he comes with a knife, he won’t return alive, it will deter them. That’s why it’s a religious commandment to kill him.”
The Sephardic Chief Rabbi does not command police or soldiers, but he heads the Supreme Rabbinical Tribunal and is tasked with advising on the interpretation of religious law. He is chosen by a committee composed of public officials and more junior state-appointed rabbis and is the state-appointed authority on religious law for the roughly half of Jewish Israelis of Arab or Eastern descent. Netanyahu did not publicly repudiate Yosef’s statement.

In July, [army Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Gadi] Eisenkot reaffirmed his support for the incoming Chief Military Rabbi, Eyal Karim, after records came to light showing that, in 2003, Karim told religious followers that “suicide attackers who have been injured, should be killed.” Eisenkot distanced himself from that statement and others considered contrary to the military’s policy but confirmed that he would still give Karim the army’s top religious post.  In August, female lawmakers from the left-wing Meretz party petitioned Israel’s Supreme Court to block the appointment, citing Karim’s statements against integrating women in the army and negative comments he made about the LGBT community and non-Jewish soldiers. The petition was withdrawn after Karim articulated more moderate positions consistent with IDF policy on the above-mentioned issues. He did not address or repudiate his statements about killing “attackers who have been injured”. On December 2, 2016, he was sworn in as the Chief Military Rabbi.

According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, about half of Jewish Israelis define themselves as religious or traditional, not including ultra-Orthodox Jews, who usually do not serve in the army. Conscription for non-ultra-Orthodox Jewish men is universal. Most soldiers are in their teens or early 20s, and after a few months of basic training, they can be sent to serve in the occupied West Bank.
That last paragraph implies that half of Israelis would listen to rabbis and violate official orders on how to deal with terrorists.

HRW is trying to paint Israelis as bloodthirsty religious fanatics who would disregard the law - and risk court martial - because of a statement a rabbi made.

This is pretty close to full-blown antisemitism. And it is a lie - far less than half of IDF soldiers and police are religious Jews and the vast majority of those religious Jews them would follow orders. And nearly every rabbi in Israel would instruct them to do exactly that.

HRW is falsely slandering Judaism and religious Jews by making its readers believe that Jewish soldiers will violate orders to kill Arabs for little reason. The organization doesn't bother to research the topic; it takes some Haaretz quotes as all the proof it needs to create a fantasy that fits in with antisemitic conspiracy theories, and not at all with reality.

Since the very beginning of the mini-intifada in October 2015, after the murder of the Henkins,  HRW has not once condemned the wave of knife and car ramming attacks against Israelis by Palestinians. It has not once said a word against the incitement to stab Jews on Palestinian media. It has not once said anything about the Palestinian Authority's and Fatah's openly treating the worst terrorist murderers as heroes. HRW never said a word against the explicit and open incitement to kill Jews coming in weekly sermons.

If you get your human rights news from HRW, you simply wouldn't know these facts. All you would think is that Israelis are trigger happy religious fanatics who would murder Palestinians for sport and are in no real danger from attack. HRW believes that Israeli leaders are inciting to murder Palestinian Arabs, and it doesn't deign to mention that they are whitewashing the real incitement - incitement that directly leads to murder.

As the expression goes, if HRW didn't have double standards, it would have no standards at all.



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Arabs continue to glorify child killer Samir Kuntar with new documentary

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Al Madayeen, a pan-Arab satellite channel based out of Lebanon, will broadcast a three-part documentary about the "hero" Samir Kuntar starting January 8.

Here is the trailer, with dramatic music, for the film, "Thus lived Kuntar....who never died."



Here's the summary of the monster who is such a hero to the Arab world:
In the cover of darkness on April 22, 1979, Kuntar, then 16, led a Palestinian Liberation Front attack that brutally murdered a family in the northern town of Nahariya and an Israeli police officer. From southern Lebanon, Kuntar and his accomplices snuck into Israel via the sea, and then broke into a family's apartment. There, they kidnapped a young father, Danny Haran, and his 4-year-old daughter Einat.
Kuntar took the father and his young daughter to the nearby beach. There, he shot the father, and had the daughter, Einat, watch as he drowned her father underwater to ensure he was completely dead. Then, he smashed the young girl's head against a nearby rock with the butt of his gun.
As Kuntar was kidnapping the father and daughter, the mother, Smadar, grabbed their 2-year old baby, Yael, and hid from the men who breached her home. As Samadar tried to keep her baby quiet to keep them from being found, her daughter suffocated in her arms.
The documentary's first part concentrates on Kuntar's "famous operation in Nahariya." The second concentrates on his years in Israeli prison, and the final part is about his activities for Hezbollah between his release and his way overdue assassination.

As usual, the outrage isn't merely that Arabs are lionizing the most disgusting and depraved people are heroes. The outrage is that there is no pushback, no complaints, no disgust in Arab media that they consider such a person a hero to begin with.

When you cannot find a single person among 350 million citizens of Arab countries to publicly object to such pro-terror propaganda, you have a much bigger problem than just a documentary making a monster into a hero.



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01/03 Links Pt1: Hamas's Fatah and the No-State Solution; The PLO’s zero-sum game

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From Ian:

Caroline Glick: The PLO’s zero-sum game
This is important for Israel to understand because the clock is ticking. Obama’s onslaught has made clear that the Democratic Party no longer supports Israel. Like the PLO, Obama and his advisers view the PLO’s conflict with Israel as a zero-sum game and they have cast their lots with the terrorists against the Jewish state.
It is to be expected that under the leadership of former president Obama and Ellison the Democrats will expand the openness of their hostility to Israel.
Under these circumstance, Israel has but two years – until the mid-term congressional elections when the Democrats may be empowered in Congress – to decide what it wants to do with Judea and Samaria.
Last week the government signaled that its first step will be to apply Israeli law to Ma’ale Adumim. A bill to this effect is expected to be brought before the government shortly after Obama leaves office.
While a good first move, our leaders must recognize that it needs to be quickly followed up by additional administrative changes. The goal of those additional steps is to dismantle the military government which administers Area C – 60% of Judea and Samaria – by 2019 and transfer full administrative responsibility for the area, which includes Israel’s border with Jordan and all the Israeli communities of Judea and Samaria, to the government.
The time has come for the government to move ahead boldly. In their post-Obama, post-2334 state, the Israeli Left and its American Jewish supporters are in no position to stop the government from doing what needs to be done. But, if the government fails to act now, when the Democrats return in two or four years, the opportunity now upon us may be lost forever as the PLO comes back to win its zerosum game against Israel.
Khaled Abu Toameh: Hamas's Fatah and the No-State Solution
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared that 2017 will be the "year of international recognition of the State of Palestine."
The melee in Gaza exposes as the lie that it is Abbas's repeated claim of a unified Fatah able to lead the Palestinians towards statehood. Incredibly, Abbas seeks global recognition of a Palestinian state at a time when the flames in his own backyard are set to engulf him and his questionable regime.
More bad news from the poll: if presidential elections were to be held today, Ismail Haniyeh, leader of the terrorist group Hamas, would beat Abbas by 49% to 45%.
Palestinians are now openly talking about two different Fatah factions. After Abbas's decision to strip the legislators of their parliamentary immunity, six Fatah PLC members participated in a Hamas-sponsored meeting of the PLC in the Gaza Strip. This was the first time since 2007 that such a move had been made.
Fatah leaders in the Gaza Strip, unlike their colleagues in the West Bank, are de facto recognizing the Hamas rule over the Gaza Strip. This is wonderful news for Hamas, whose leader, Ismail Haniyeh is likely to defeat Abbas in a presidential election.
The Fatah gunmen who marched in the Gaza Strip courtesy of Hamas are not supporters of Abbas. Instead, they represent the "other face" of Fatah -- the one that does not believe in any peace process with Israel and shares Hamas's ambition of destroying Israel.
JCPA: What does the December 23, 2016 UN Security Council Resolution contribute to the peace process?
The UN Security Council resolution tries to establish whether the settlements are legal or not. Its major reference point is the 1949 4th Geneva Convention, adopted in the aftermath of the Second World War when the Axis powers, particularly the German army, were seizing territories, throwing out the populations that lived there, and bringing in German citizens to live in those areas. But is Israel forcibly throwing the Arab population out of the West Bank? No.
Where the principles of the 4th Geneva Convention are very much relevant and where are they not being applied is in Syria where the army of President Assad and its Iranian and Russian allies are engaged in mass expulsions of the Sunni Arab population. They are also bringing in Shiite population to settle in Syria from Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, altering the demographic balance inside Syria. So the UN is ignoring the real violators of the 4th Geneva Convention who are changing the demographic makeup of the Syrian state to serve the interests of expansionist Iran.




PMW: PA cartoon: Israel murders Santa Claus
Exploiting the Christmas spirit, the official Palestinian Authority daily used Santa Claus to promote the PA's libel that Israel "executes" innocent Palestinians, under the pretext that they tried to carry out terror attacks.
The cartoon above shows an Israeli soldier standing above a bleeding Santa Claus who was just shot at a security checkpoint. The soldier says: "He tried to carry out a stabbing operation."
A mosque and church are seen among the buildings in the background. [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Dec. 28, 2016]
Another cartoon in the official PA daily showed Santa Claus being accosted by two Israeli soldiers with Stars of David on their helmets. Santa is held at gunpoint while the second soldier is holding a knife, presumably about to plant it next to Santa to fabricate a stabbing attack by Santa in order to create a pretext to murder him. [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Dec. 26, 2016]
Palestinian Media Watch has documented that PA and Fatah leaders have reiterated this libel numerous times, even about terror attacks that were documented by security cameras.
After many Palestinian terrorists were killed while carrying out stabbing attacks during the terror wave in 2015-2016, the PA started to claim that Israel planted the knives next to the "innocent" Palestinian "victims."
PMW: Fatah: “To be a real Palestinian you must be a self-sacrificing fighter”

Abbas’ Fatah wished “the real Palestinians” a “good year” in a post on Facebook, parading some of the movement’s role models, among them several “Martyrs,” all of whom were either murderers or heads of murderous terror organizations.
The largest picture among the role models on Fatah’s image above is terrorist murderer Dalal Mughrabi who led the killing of 37 Israelis in a bus hijacking in 1978. Additional pictures (left to right) are PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, terrorist Omar Al-Qassem, Yasser Arafat, Islamic Jihad founder Fathi Shaqaqi, Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin, and Secretary-General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) Abu Ali Mustafa.
Fatah described what it means to be “a real Palestinian,” and predicted that “a people whose leaders are Martyrs” - as the leaders singled out in the photos, except Abbas - “will undoubtedly triumph with Allah’s help”:
Text on image: “Fatah embraces its people and praises the Martyrs.
To be a real Palestinian, you must be a self-sacrificing fighter (Fida’i), know much and reveal little, search for the security in the heart of the danger, get used to having no time to cry over endings but rather to always have new beginnings.
Long life to you and long live the anniversary of the Launch [of Fatah] (Intilaqa), and may it be a good year.
A people whose leaders are Martyrs will undoubtedly triumph with Allah’s help...”
[Official Fatah Facebook page, Dec. 27, 2016]
MK Glick vs UNRWA
MK Yehuda Glick(Likud) reports that UNRWA textbooks demonize and delegitimize Israel repeatedly, fomenting Palestinians hatred of Israel instead of working to give refugees a future and hope.


Qanta Ahmed: Donald Trump’s Eisenhower moment on Islamism
As President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet takes shape, critics charge that his administration would be the most anti-Muslim and anti-Iranian. Meanwhile, in Europe, Islamist terrorism continues to escalate: the assassination of Russia’s ambassador by a Turkish man who pledged allegiance to jihad in Arabic during the killing in Ankara, Turkey; a deadly attack at a Berlin Christmas market and the shootings targeting a Muslim prayer center in Zurich.
This is Islamism at work — the indiscriminate targeting of civilians to paralyze secular liberal democracies. As an observant Muslim woman who repudiates Islamism, I believe the Trump administration, rather than being anti-Muslim, will come to be seen as defender of Muslims, and Trump, the Dwight D. Eisenhower of our era.
Many Americans fear the escalation of Muslim xenophobia under a Trump administration, warning of a new McCarthyism against those who practice Islam. Yet in the Middle East, many Muslims see Trump as a sign of U.S. engagement in a Muslim world jaded by an Obama administration remarkable for its disengagement. For Muslims who are sustaining huge losses at the hands Islamist terrorists, Trump’s aggressive anti-radical Islam stance is long overdue.
The Obama administration’s philosophy was dubbed by critics as “willful blindness.” Recall an America unmoved by Iran’s aborted Velvet revolution in 2009, America’s impotent bystander status during the Arab Spring, America’s hasty engagement (and embarrassed disengagement) with Mohammed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. These examples reveal a profound inability by the United States to distinguish Islam from Islamism.
Eugene Kontorovich: Five ways the Trump administration can negate the anti-Israel U.N. Security Council resolution
The U.S. decision to allow a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements to pass was met with bipartisan condemnation, including from leading players in efforts to achieve a two-state solution, such as Democrats Dennis Ross and George Mitchell.
Of course, the goal of the Obama administration was to box in President-elect Donald Trump’s foreign policy. The most direct way to reject the Security Council Resolution 2334 is to reject the opinions it expresses and act against its recommendations. Trump will likely seek to reverse the measure, not only because of substantial policy disagreements, but to reject the notion that a president can bind his successors more tightly through U.N. action than through statutes or executive orders.
Trump cannot directly reverse the resolution, but he and Congress can take action to negate its ideas, and to create a different reality from the one Resolution 2334 seeks to promote. Here are some ideas — most of which require no legislative action.
1) The U.S. must clearly declare that Israeli settlements do not violate international law. The Security Council resolution says that Jewish settlements in east Jerusalem are illegal and that the Israeli government must prevent them. But the council is neither a legislature nor a court. It cannot create international law. But while Resolution 2334 is not binding, it does contribute to the formation of international legal opinion, which is why the United States must clearly articulate a contrary (and correct) view.
2) The United States should move the embassy not merely to Jerusalem, but to the location of the current Consular Section in the Arnona neighborhood. This is a few hundred meters over the imaginary line across which the United Nations says Jews may not go. Moving the embassy there would be the most tangible rejection of the resolution’s “1967 lines” policy. It would also fulfill the Republican Party platform of moving the embassy to “indivisible” Jerusalem, and be in accordance with the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act, which calls for moving the embassy to a “unified” Jerusalem, i.e., including those parts which were reunified in 1967.
3) The United States must clarify that all its treaties or laws applicable to Israel apply fully to all areas under Israel’s civil jurisdiction. Congress already took this approach in the United States-Israel Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, as well as several recent anti-boycott laws. It must now be generalized, through legislation, presidential proclamations, and new codicils to existing treaties with Israel. For example, Trump could immediately rescind Treasury regulations that require Israel goods from the West Bank to be labeled “Made in West Bank,” and instead direct that they be labeled “Made in Israel,” in line with their underlying customs treatment.
4) Congress should rapidly reintroduce and pass several anti-boycott bills from the outgoing session. In addition, to respond to Resolution 2334’s encouragement of E.U. boycotts aimed at the settlements — but which would inherently spill over to all of Israel — a small amendment must be made to the the anti-boycott provisions of the Export Administration Act, explicitly stating that it applies to boycotts of territories under Israeli jurisdiction.
5) At the United Nations, defunding is one option — but vetoing Security Council resolutions not clearly necessary to the U.S. national interest is another. Strictly applied, this practice would grind the council to a halt, as most of its resolutions merely wag fingers at ongoing conflicts.
NGO Monitor: From Distinction to Boycotts: NGO Language in UN Security Council Resolution 2334
On December 23 2016, UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2334 with a vote of 14 for, 0 against, and 1 abstention (United States). Among other important issues, this resolution adopts the language used by multiple European-funded NGOs promoting anti-Israel campaigns, in the form of incremental strategies leading to full boycotts (BDS). Resolution 2334 repeats their calls on countries (and the EU) “to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967.”
The evolution of this strategy from the NGO campaigns through the EU and now the UNSC was marked by a series of milestones:
May 2012: 22 prominent “humanitarian” NGOs published “Trading Away Peace: How Europe Helps Sustain Illegal Israeli Settlements.” This report advocates a strategy to advance BDS incrementally, first through the “distinction” between settlements across the 1949 armistice lines, and pre-1967 Israel.
What is Obama's End Game on Israel?
The White House clearly colluded in the resolution’s language and the timing (right before the Christmas holiday weekend, the most ideal news-dump timeslot of the year in U.S. media markets). Although previous administrations occasionally abstained on Security Council votes against Israel, these were nearly all in response to specific actions, such as its annexation of the Golan Heights and 1981 air attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor. This resolution happened because Obama wanted it as part of a larger purpose.
The only conceivable ends toward which orchestration of this resolution would constitute the most rational means is the reinvigoration of the worldwide anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, at the very moment when international preoccupation with jihadist terror and pushback regarding its rampant anti-Semitism were beginning to limit its growth.
With Israelis and Palestinians largely out of the headlines since the collapse of Syria, the rise of ISIS, and Islamist terror assault on Europe, Obama single-handedly brought about what The New York Times casually called the “return of the Palestinian cause to the world stage.” And what university administrator is now going to crack down on student groups calling for a Judenrein Jerusalem when President Obama himself has done just that?
After spending most of his political life disavowing his far-leftist ideological and political roots, has Obama revealed himself to be the radical Third Worldist progressive his critics always suspected he was? Perhaps, but his willingness to shatter this carefully constructed public façade while still in office — and likely weaken the Democratic Party in the process — purely to take action against a nation of only 8 million people on the other side of the globe suggests there is something even more malevolent at work here.
Secretary Kerry’s Suspension of Disbelief
The term “suspension of disbelief” refers to the intentional subordination of critical thinking, documented fact and common sense to one’s zeal and wishful-thinking; one sacrifices realism at the altar of oversimplification and short-term gratification and convenience. US Secretary of State John Kerry’s Dec. 28 speech is guilty of just that, being totally inconsistent with Middle East reality, but consistent with the secretary’s 31-year foreign policy track record.
While serving as a senator, Kerry was a frequent-flyer to Damascus, where he allowed his own idyllic vision of the globe and his hosts’ duplicitous rhetoric to cloud reality. He has contended that Hafez and Bashar al-Assad – two of the world’s most ferocious, cold-blooded dictators — were constructive leaders, having referred to Bashar, who terrorizes his own people and facilitated the infiltration into Iraq of Islamic terrorists whose aim was to murder Americans, as a generous reformer and a man of his word. In March 2011, Kerry stated: “My judgment is that Syria will move, Syria will change as it embraces a legitimate relationship with the US and the West.” Indeed, Syria has changed, but contrary to Kerry’s optimistic assessment, the change was the murder of 400,000 and the creation of 10 million refugees.
In his 1997 book, The New War (available on Amazon for $0.01), Kerry demonstrated his inclination to dismiss the writing on the wall when it was in conflict with his wishful thinking: “Terrorist organizations with specific political agendas may be encouraged and emboldened by Yasser Arafat’s transformation from outlaw to statesman.”
In 2012, Kerry contended that the Arab Street was transitioning toward democracy, calling it “the most important geo-strategic shift since the fall of the Berlin Wall.” He referred to the Arab Tsunami as an Arab Spring and described the regime changes in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen as youth-driven, Facebook revolutions. Kerry also supported regime-change in Libya, which has transformed that country into a leading global platform of Islamic terrorism.
Yisrael Medad: John Kerry’s True Intentions for Jerusalem
Secretary of State John Kerry’s recent speech on Israel contained a potentially dangerous element that has alluded the attention of many, including the speech’s detractors.
Kerry’s vision of peace seems fairly straightforward. Jerusalem will be “the internationally recognized capital of the two states,” and “freedom of access to the holy sites consistent with the established status quo” will be assured.
Kerry said that this phrasing repeated previous declarations about the city’s future. But by adding the words “internationally recognized,” Kerry has tried to seriously damage Israel.
American Jewish Congress president Jack Rosen was right when he said that Security Council Resolution 2334 “systematically removes Israel’s sovereignty over east Jerusalem, which contains both Judaism’s and Christianity’s holy sites”.
But Kerry was intimating something else, and it is in this section:
Jerusalem is the most sensitive issue for both sides, and the solution will have to meet the needs not only of the parties, but of all three monotheistic faiths…the holy sites that are sacred to billions of people around the world must be protected and remain accessible and the established status quo maintained.
By saying that the solution for Jerusalem “needs not only of the parties, but of all three monotheistic faiths,” Kerry set the stage for the resurrection of the infamous “Special International Regime.” This idea was first outlined in United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181, Part 1; it would place Jerusalem “under a special international regime [that] shall be administered by the United Nations.”
So what would happen if Kerry’s vision came to pass?
First they passed UN Resolution 2334 – then they danced
The problem is simpler than you think. Kerry, Obama and the nations are in a uproar because the Jewish people can no longer be routed into cattle cars for shipment to Auschwitz -- but have the daring to have their own country. The Jews have a home. That's what irks them...and that's the entire business in a nutshell.
The worst part of it, for me, was that they were having fun. This, Resolution 2334, was not simply an act to deprive Israel of its sovereignty. It was a party.
A good time was had by all, all 15 members of the Security Council who raised arms to forever be known as dirty rotten scoundrels.
I include Samantha Power. Right. She didn’t vote. She abstained. Same thing. Was she among the revelers? I don’t know.
But if your eyes were quick, you saw what happened immediately after the deed was done. The delegates jumped to their feet doing a jig.
The frivolity could not be missed. There was applause. There was handshaking. There was backslapping – hi-fives all around. Whoopee – we did it, they cheered.
A good day for the world.
Why Israeli settlements are not a violation of international law
There is simply no legitimate comparison between Israeli citizens’ vote, through their wallet and their feet, and the millions of Germans and others who were actively required by their own government to move from their country into newly occupied zones elsewhere.
This position is shared by various international law scholars such as Professor Eugene Rostow (former Under Secretary of State, former dean of Yale Law School, and author of Security Council Resolution 242) who wrote:
[T]he Convention prohibits many of the inhumane practices of the Nazis and the Soviet Union during and before the Second World War – the mass transfer of people into and out of occupied territories for purposes of extermination, slave labor or colonization, for example….The Jewish settlers in the West Bank are most emphatically volunteers. They have not been “deported” or “transferred” to the area by the Government of Israel, and their movement involves none of the atrocious purposes or harmful effects on the existing population it is the goal of the Geneva Convention to prevent.” American Journal of International Law, Vol. 84, 1990, p. 719.
And Professor Julius Stone, one of the 20th century’s leading international law experts, who wrote:
Irony would…be pushed to the absurdity of claiming that Article 49(6), designed to prevent repetition of Nazi-type genocidal policies of rendering Nazi metropolitan territories judenrein, has now come to mean that…the West Bank…must be made judenrein and must be so maintained, if necessary by the use of force by the government of Israel against its own inhabitants. Common sense as well as correct historical and functional context excludes so tyrannical a reading of Article 49(6).” “Israel and Palestine, Assault on the Law of Nations” discourse 2, pg. 179-181.
But, let us play devil’s advocate, and assume the Israeli government’s allowance of its citizens to live and build within its borders is a violation of article 49. Then, are the settlements illegal under international law?
The answer is still no, here is why:
Any question of legal validity under international law should be resolved by the fact the Palestinian-Authority, under Yasser Arafat, signed the Oslo Accords with Israel. This was an internationally recognized agreement to divide jurisdiction of the territory between Israel and the newly created Palestinian Authority. Under this agreement, Israelis have full jurisdiction to live and build on the designated 60% of the territory. Therefore, any building in this territory is completely legitimate under international law through the Oslo Agreement.
So there you have it, in all the possible stages of the legal argument:
Israel can’t be an occupier because it likely has superior title to the territory in the first place. Even if it had no title to the territory, the Fourth Geneva Convention can’t apply here. And even if it could apply here, Israel would be a legal occupier rather than an illegal one, since Israel hasn’t violated the provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention (making the settlements legal rather than illegal). Lastly, even if Israel’s settlements were a violation of article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the Oslo Accords have given both Israel and the Palestinian Authority the right to live and build in their allotted jurisdictions.
History Repeats Itself, From Begin to Netanyahu
Clearly the nations of the world don’t respect Israeli democracy or leadership, and Netanyahu was right to summon the American ambassador for an explanation. Similarly, in 1981, Prime Minister Begin summoned the US ambassador to his home, and read him the following statement:
Now you once again declare that you are punishing Israel. What kind of expression is this – “punishing Israel”? Are we a vassal state of yours? Are we a banana republic? Are we youths of fourteen who, if they don’t behave properly, are slapped across the fingers? Let me tell you who this government is composed of. It is composed of people whose lives were spent in resistance, in fighting and in suffering. You will not frighten us with “punishments.” He who threatens us will find us deaf to his threats. We are only prepared to listen to rational arguments. You have no right to “punish” Israel – and I protest at the very use of this term.
You want to make Israel a hostage of the memorandum of understanding. I regard your announcement suspending the consultations on the memorandum as the abrogation (by you) of the memorandum. No “sword of Damocles” is going to hang over our head. So we duly take note of the fact that you have abrogated the memorandum of understanding. The people of Israel has lived 3,700 years without a memorandum of understanding with America – and it will continue to live for another 3,700.

Prime Minister Begin said it best, and its worth repeating when he told the United States Israel was no “vassal state” or a “banana republic.”
Netanyahu’s words today echo Begin’s then – history repeats itself.
A “Judenrein” Jerusalem? New Zealand’s shame
The Judenrein policy of the 30’s and 40’s was the precursor to genocide. Today the intention of the parties with whom Israel is supposed to negotiate is once again genocide. One need only read the Hamas charter and watch the habitual incitement to murder on government run Palestinian TV.
And yet the international community, co-lead by New Zealand on this occasion, chides Israel and declares her an illegal occupier in her ancestral homeland.
In 2015 a survey of world antisemitism was published. The most antisemitic nation in Asia was Malaysia and Senegal the worst in sub-Saharan Africa. The very poor human rights record of Venezuela is well known. These are nations with whom New Zealand chose to stand in demanding the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Jewish heartland.
This is a time of great shame for New Zealand. To have promoted and facilitated the new Judenrein is a disgrace.
On behalf of those New Zealand citizens still in possession of their moral faculties I apologize to the people of Israel.
*My use of Judenrein is simply to highlight the similarities between the events of the 30’s and 40’s and the intentions of Fatah and Hamas: the removal of Jews from a region and the murder of Jews.


Bennett on Fox News: 'UN ridiculous body fighting free world'
Naftali Bennett defended the calls to cut UN support in the wake of the anti-Israel Security Council resolution, stating that the UN is a "ridiculous body fighting the free world rather than fighting terrorism." Bennett said that the UN's "warped" view of reality caused it to focus obsessively on Israel rather than on other countries like Iran and Venezuela which are "huge abusers of human rights."
Bennett responded to claims that Israel is violating international law by building settlements and is working to prevent a two-state solution by stating that "There is already a Palestinian state in Gaza and it turned into a terror state firing rockets on Tel Aviv. There is no room for another terror state in the heart of Israel. Israel is not violating international law by building in its own territory. It was granted to us by the League of Nations in 1920 and the Bible also gives Israel full rights over the entire land of Israel."


Look At The New Members Of The UN Human Rights Council. What A Joke.
Would Congress and president Trump have the stomach to finally leave the United Nations? Here's just one more reason to leave that cesspool: as Hillel Neuer of UN Watch noted bitterly, look at the list of the some of the new members of the UN Human Rights Council:
Yup. Bangladesh, Burundi, China, Cuba, Iraq, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela now sit on the council that is supposed to be “an inter-governmental body within the United Nations system responsible for strengthening the promotion and protection of human rights around the globe and for addressing situations of human rights violations and make recommendations on them.”
As the UN states of the UNHRC, “The membership shall be based on equitable geographical distribution, and seats shall be distributed as follows among regional groups: Group of African States (13), Group of Asia-Pacific States (13), Group of Eastern European States (6), Group of Latin American and Caribbean States (8), Group of Western European and other States (7).
Founded in 2006, by 2015, Israel had been condemned in 62 resolutions by the UNHRC, more than the rest of the world combined. That shouldn’t have been surprising, since the council voted on June 30, 2006 to make a review of alleged human rights abuses by Israel a permanent feature of every council session. Israel has never been a member of the UNHRC.
Pro-settler group: UN offices in Jerusalem were built illegally
The pro-settler Regavim movement has petitioned the Jerusalem Municipality to investigate alleged construction violations at U.N. office buildings, Israel Hayom learned Tuesday.
According to the organization's complaint, the violations were found at the U.N. offices in the Armon Hanatziv neighborhood and at an UNRWA office near Ammunition Hill. Sources from Regavim said illegal additional construction spanning thousands of square feet was built without permits. Information obtained by the group, including aerial photographs taken by drones, even shows an illegally built gas station.
Regavim attorneys Avi Segal and Yael Cinnamon requested that the Jerusalem Municipality take legal action against the unapproved buildings and to "return the situation to its previous state." Letters were also sent to inform Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage Minister Zeev Elkin and Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat of the matter.
‘Illegal Settlements’ as Blood Libel: What Comes Next?
What comes next? 2017 marks the centenary of Great Britain’s Balfour Declaration, which looked with favor on and committed His Majesty’s government to the re-establishment of the Jewish national home. Based on this commitment, the League of Nations granted London a portion of the pre-World War I Ottoman Empire as the Palestine Mandate.
Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, a “moderate” in the madhouse scheme of things, plans a campaign this year at the United Nations to overturn the Balfour Declaration. That is, to criminals the existence of Israel itself.
The Security Council now has a foot on board, having certified Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria (Jordan’s “West Bank”) and eastern Jerusalem (which was “ethnically cleansed” of Jews in 1948) as “flagrant violations” of international law. And in October, the United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) erased three millennia of Jewish history by declaring the Jews’ Temple Mount to be a Muslim-only shrine.
But as with the blood libel, the whole world is wrong and Israel is correct. Winston Churchill acknowledged that “the Jews are in Palestine as of a right; not on sufferance.” One year after Israel’s stunning triumph in 1967, Eric Hoffer wrote: “Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious, it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world. … The Jews are alone in this world. If Israel survives it will be solely because of Jewish efforts. And Jewish resources.”
The same is true of the new blood libel. As usual, we’re on our own.
Islamic guards try to boot guide for saying ‘Temple Mount’ on Temple Mount
The American students were gathered around Barkay just to the northeast of the Al-Aqsa mosque as he was explaining some of the history of the contested holy site, inevitably using the words “Temple Mount” now and again, when he was abruptly interrupted by a man in a black zip-up jacket.
The man was one of two Waqf guards who had been hovering near to the group. A patch on his arm was emblazoned with the gold Dome of the Rock and the words “Guard of Alaqsa Mosque.” A burst of Arabic punctuated with English got his message across: Don’t use the term Temple Mount, the guard barked at Barkay.
The two Waqf guards stayed a couple of meters behind the cluster of students. Barkay, who was seated on a low wall, continued to speak, addressing the history of the site during the Byzantine period, the centuries preceding the Islamic conquest of the region.
In passing, he once again referred to the site as the Temple Mount; its Arabic name is Haram al-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary. Incensed, the guards interrupted once more, ordered 72-year-old Barkay to stand, and marched him over to a cluster of Israel Police officers who were standing beneath a clutch of pines.
The Waqf guards protested Barkay’s use of Temple Mount, the term routinely used by Jews and Christians to refer to the area — a platform built by Herod in the first century BCE to house a refurbished Jewish Temple. The Waqf guards made clear they wanted the police to eject Barkay from the site.
Huckabee: UN resolution an act of hate
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee slammed UN Security Council Resolution 2334 as an act of hate and contempt against the State of Israel and criticized Secretary of State John Kerry's speech against construction in Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria during a visit to the Knesset Tuesday.
The Knesset visit was arranged by MK Miki Zohar (Likud).
"I'm going to recommend a policy for Israel. It is the role of a sovereign state to decide for itself," Huckabee said in the Knesset. "John Kerry's speech was without precedent in history. He argues that Israel can be Jewish or democratic, but not both. How did he come to that [conclusion]? He took the faith and the religion out of the equation of what Israel is."
"Be happy about your history. Be proud. [Your] history tells you where you came from and where you are going. The UN Resolution was an act of hatred and contempt. Very rarely are Syria, North Korea, Russia, etc. condemned. Israel is condemned far more. There are more condemnations in the UN when Israel builds houses than when Iran builds a nuclear reactor," Huckabee said.
In Palestinian eyes, all Israel is one settlement
The recent United Nations Security Council resolution declaring all Israeli building activity over the 1949 armistice line to be illegal has given Israelis a bitter feeling of betrayal by the US administration. This resolution denying Israeli/Jewish claims to land taken in 1967 includes the Jewish Quarter of the Old City as well as the Western Wall which stands at the foot of the mount where the two Jewish temples once stood.
From the language of Resolution 2334, one might conclude that the Palestinians think like those who voted and regard everything on the other side of the armistice line (“the 1967 borders”) as being “kosher” Israel. But do the Palestinian really believe that? In March 2002, my son and I were both wounded in a suicide bombing on King George Street in west Jerusalem. The location of the bombing is well within 1948 Israeli borders and well over a mile from the no-man’s land that once separated Israel and Jordan outside of the Old City. Yet, weeks after operations and hospitalizations, I had the opportunity to read headlines from the day after the bombing. The Al-Aksa Brigades, a division of Fatah, the main group running the Palestinian Authority, took responsibility for the bombing. Interestingly, it described the suicide bombing, by a PA policeman, as having taken place in “occupied Jerusalem.”
Now this language raises a problem. Either the organizers of the attack, including a senior PA intelligence officer, were not the greatest students in their geography classes or they really see all of Israel – and not just the “territories” – as Palestinian land in need of redemption from Israeli hands. History would suggest the latter.
US Congress plans targeted legislation against Iran and the UN
As the House of Representatives plans to vote on a resolution this week that will condemn the UN for its targeting of Israel, its leadership has already planned additional measures sure to please the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and its allies in Washington.
Over the course of the next hundred days, Republicans hope to punish the UN for its passage of a resolution condemning Israel over its settlement enterprise and Iran over its destabilizing actions in neighboring Middle East nations.
Members of the House and Senate are considering legislation that would cut funding to the UN after its vote. But it is "too early" to draft such legislation, said one senior congressional aide familiar with the deliberations, because leadership is not yet clear on the direction that incoming President Donald Trump will choose to go on the matter.
"Folks seem to want to see how President Trump defines our relationship with the UN before we talk about funding," the aide told The Jerusalem Post.
'Bloodshed will follow if Trump moves US embassy to Jerusalem'
The Palestinians will start a new violent uprising if Donald Trump's incoming White House administration relocates the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a senior Fatah official indicated this week in an interview translated by MEMRI.
"I believe that any American act of stupidity will ignite the Palestinian territories," Fatah Central Committee member Sultan Abu al-Einein told Egypt's Alghad TV on Sunday.
Al-Einein, an aide to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, also pointed to Israeli "arrogance" and settlement activity along with the potential US maneuver as provoking Palestinian violence.
"We must prepare for a confrontation with the new US administration, which has clearly and audaciously declared that Israel and its settlements are legitimate and legal," he asserted.
The Palestinian official charged that Washington and Jerusalem "will bear responsibility for the return of the bloodshed in the Palestinian territories."
The Trump team has said that the US president-elect considers moving the embassy a "very big priority."
Throughout his campaign for the presidency, Trump repeatedly said he would move the US Embassy if elected – a political promise past US presidents have frequently made, yet has never been held.
PreOccupiedTerritory: Pharaoh Adviser Insists Opposition To Hebrew Viceroy Merely Anti-Zionist (satire)
An Egyptian official who has argued against the king’s appointment of a Hebrew former slave to a position second only to the Crown denies that his opposition stems from anti-Hebrew prejudice, contending that he is merely against Zionism.
Araphat, Minister of Agricultural Labor, lobbied other advisers to Pharaoh today to rescind or scale back the appointment of Tzaphenath Pa’aneah, formerly known as Joseph, to the post of viceroy. Araphat and several allies at court have objected to the decision, contending that other, more worthy candidates for the position could be found among native Egyptians. Responding to accusations of xenophobia and anti-Hebrew sentiment, the minister claimed that he has nothing personally against Tzaphenath Pa’aneah as a Hebrew – he simply opposes normalization with the Hebrew Entity occupying Canaan, and the elevation of the Hebrew will only serve to cement that occupation by lending a Hebrew legitimacy in the royal court.
“Anyone who accuses me of anti-Hebrew sentiments is trying to stifle criticism of Zionist crimes,” asserted Araphat. “I have Egypt’s best interests at heart, and one of those is not granting legitimacy to a murderous colonialist regime.” He declined to elaborate how Egypt’s own policies in Canaan, Kush, and elsewhere differ from the Zionist ones he opposes, and charged that anyone asking him to do so was attempting to distract from the crimes of the Zionists by diverting attention to other, less important issues.
“Who is this guy, anyway, with no administrative experience beyond Potiphar’s estate and the prison?” added a blogger who goes by the moniker Tikkunolam. “It’s suspicious is what it is. We opponents of the appointment smell something fishy here, and it’s not about the ethnicity of anybody. Just that it’s typical of a Heb- I mean a Zionist – to insinuate himself into a position of power where he can manipulate the system for his own gain, subjugate the masses, control the economy, and put his own people in control. I’m sure we as Egyptians would rather starve than owe our survival to such a race. I’m not being racist!”



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Civilized savages and the lessons they teach (Forest Rain)

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Tel Aviv, British Mandate Palestine:

Heart pounding, a 12 year old girl Jewish girl runs down the street. Her legs pumping as fast as they can go. She looks behind her. Fear gripping her stomach, she sees that the gang of Arab men is gaining on her, their knives flashing in the sunlight.

If they catch her they will kill her.

To them it is a game. Sport. She knows that what’s at stake is her life.

She hears laughter from above. Looking up, she sees British soldiers on the rooftops.

For a fleeting moment, she thinks they will help her. They could stop the men. They could save her!

To her horror, she realizes that the British soldiers are laughing at HER. They were taking wagers, betting on the chances of the Jewish girl escaping death.

Hope fades as quickly as it had been ignited.

She runs till she feels her heart is about to burst, her little legs collapse beneath her. Then, suddenly, a door opens. A hand stretches out and grabs her, pulling her inside.

An Arab woman was bending over her, gesturing for the Jewish girl to be quiet. Urgently she pulled the girl to the back of her house.

What did this woman want from her? It took the girl a moment to understand that the woman was ushering her out the back door of the house. The Arab woman was providing an escape route, offering the girl life.

I am alive today because that Arab woman saved my grandmother’s life.

The 12 year old girl grew up to be my grandmother. My Jewish Palestinian grandmother had an Israeli daughter. The Arab woman was also a Palestinian. At the time the term referred to Jews and Arabs who lived in the land of Zion. The land was renamed by the foreign occupying power to diminish its legacy as the home of the Jewish people but at the same time the Jews of Europe were being told to “go home to Palestine.” Everyone knew that Palestine was Zion, the land of Israel, home of the Jewish people.

The Arab woman who saved my grandmother was a hero. She, not the British soldiers, rescued my grandmother from the lynch mob of Arab men. She saw the danger, understood how terrible the consequences would be and acted morally – at her own personal risk. The soldiers also saw the danger, they also understood the consequences. Their reaction was to laugh.

Oh, so civilized…

Fast forward to 2016, the UN Security Council. The representatives of the world vote, declaring biblical Israel, Judea and Samaria, the Golan and Jewish Jerusalem occupied Palestinian land. Jewish presence is, they declare, illegal. Israeli towns, holy sites including the Western Wall and the Temple Mount in the heart of Jerusalem are “illegal settlements.” Suddenly, everything that tied Jews to Zion for thousands of years, the places that served as inspiration for the world, have nothing to do with Jews and Israelis have no right to be there.

One after another the representatives of the world vote to wipe Israel’s legacy off the books of history, knowing what this will mean for Israel’s present and future.

Israel’s eyes lifted to the American representative. America has a history of standing for right when the rest of the world is wrong. America, the land whose founders declared it the New Zion wouldn’t let the rest of the world declare that Zion never existed… would she?

The wars against Israel, fought and lost could not disconnect the Jews from Zion.

The terror tactics meant to push Jews off the land only made the Jewish people cling harder to their only homeland.

Now, in the comfort of a room half way around the world, the nations of the world declared victory for those who wish to remove Israel from Zion.

And they laughed. The crowd of spectators applauding, gleefully. History doesn’t matter, scientific proof doesn’t matter, international law doesn’t matter. “Getting the Jews” is fun. Sport. A reason to cheer.

How civilized.

And then there are the Egyptians. At first, they were convinced that submitting the UN resolution was a good idea. Realizing the damage it would do to Israel, they pulled the resolution.

Then the Americans found a different way to make sure the resolution was submitted and passed. The Egyptians were privy to the American betrayal of Israel and wanted to no part in it.

Even though Israel decided to hold back the details of the American plot, the Egyptians rushed to release the information, signaling to Israel: “We want peace, not your destruction. We want to help, not create damage.”

Watching these events unfold I am left to wonder, who is civilized and who is the savage?

We may have advanced but the world hasn’t changed. Sometimes the most “civilized” people or nations are the most vicious and to this day, many consider “getting the Jew” good sport.

The Jewish people must never be beholden to the mercy of the “civilized.” There is no one we can count on for security – but ourselves.


It is actions that count, not words. Content of character is all that matters – moral clarity, not titles or declarations of friendship. Sometimes true friends are found in unexpected places. Sometimes they are the ones that pull us out of the jaws of death. Or at least they try.



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Report: Thousands of Turkey's Jews seeking to move to Portugal

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A report in Turkish news outlet Todays' Zaman, quoted in Arabic media, says that thousands of Turkish Jews, fearful of their future in that country, are applying to become citizens of Portugal.

Portugal passed a law in 2015 allowing descendants of Jews expelled from that country in 1497 to become citizens, and many of Turkey's Sephardic community qualify. (Turkey's Jewish community is predominantly  made up of descendants of Jews who fled from Spain and Portugal.) About 150 became citizens soon after the law was changed.

The Portuguese Embassy in Ankara has a description on how Turkish Jews can apply for citizenship:

I. Who can request the Portuguese nationality?According to the recent amendment to the Regulation of Portuguese Nationality (Decree-law n.º 30 - A/2015), published in the Official Journal on February 27th 2015, the Portuguese Government may grant Portuguese nationality by naturalization to the descendants of Sephardic Portuguese Jews through the attestation of their links to Sephardic communities of Portuguese origin, namely, surnames, family speaking language and direct or indirect descent.
Each candidate may also meet the following criteria:

  • being of majority age or emancipated, under Portuguese law (18 years old);
  • having not been convicted, with a sentence transited in rem judicatum (closed case), for a crime liable to a prison sentence of three years or more, in accordance with Portuguese law.  
 The report says that dozens of British Jews are also applying to take advantage of the law.

The Portuguese city of Porto has become a hub for Jews who are moving to Portugal, as JTA reported last year. Tablet also had an interesting article on the phenomenon.

Spain passed a similar law previously to welcome back Jews from families who were expelled in 1492.



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01/03 Links Pt2: Hikers find Second Temple period engravings of menorah in Judean Shephelah cistern; Catholic bishop turned PLO gun runner, dies

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From Ian:

NGO Monitor: Gaming the Hebron Soldier Trial: Human Rights Watch Tries to Score Cheap Points
Today, January 2, 2017, Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a press statement promoting the false claim that senior Israeli security officials support a policy of illegal killings of Palestinian terror suspects. This campaign is another example of HRW’s long-established biased, disproportionate obsession with Israel and systematic prejudice, stated Jerusalem-based research institute NGO Monitor.
As NGO Monitor research has shown, HRW has a consistent history of hiring supporters of a one-state framework that advocate for BDS (boycotts, divestment, sanctions) for key positions relating to Israel, including their hiring of an anti-Israel activist as “Israel and Palestine Country Director.”
Publications such as today’s media statement reveal a pattern that patronizingly minimizes Palestinian crimes, while artificially inflating alleged “violations” committed by Israeli government and security personnel in response to such crimes.
According to Prof. Gerald Steinberg, President of NGO Monitor: “The fact that an IDF soldier is currently on trial for allegedly shooting a Palestinian terrorist who had already been neutralized gives the lie to this latest HRW campaign. Indeed, the trial of Elor Azaria has not been stopped despite public criticism and claims that the trial undermines IDF morale.
As reflected in this latest publication, HRW continues to demonize Israelis and to single out Israel for attack by cherry picking a few outdated and emotional statements made by Israelis in the turmoil of Palestinian murder and incitement. In contrast to the distorted headline, buried in the middle of the text is the fact that senior officials including the Defense Minister, the IDF Chief of Staff, and Prime Minister Netanyahu all condemned illegal uses of force.
Hilarion Capucci, Catholic bishop turned PLO gun runner, dies
Hilarion Capucci, the Catholic bishop once imprisoned by Israel for his support of the Palestinian Liberation Army, died Sunday at the age of 94, the Times of Israel reports.
Capucci was born in Aleppo, Syria in 1922. Ordained at the age of 25, he was made a bishop less than 20 years later, in 1965. He didn’t made international headlines until 1974, when he was arrested by Israeli forces for smuggling weapons into the West Bank. The weapons were intended for the Palestinian Liberation Army.
Although Capucci was sentenced to 12 years in prison, the Vatican ultimately arranged his release after just four years. Before than, in 1975 and 1976, Capucci’s release was demanded by terrorists in two separate hostage crises. He later played a roll in another hostage crisis, the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, attempting to obtain the bodies of American soldiers who died during a botched rescue mission.
Capucci remained an activist for Palestinians causes all his life. In 2010, he was a passenger on the MV Mavi Marmara, the flotilla that attempted to break the Gaza blockade, resulting in the death of 10 by Israeli forces and a major diplomatic crisis between Israel and Turkey.

Dershowitz: I'll leave Democratic Party if Ellison becomes DNC chair
Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz said Friday he'll leave the Democratic Party if Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) is appointed the next chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
“I’m going to tell you right here on this show, and this is news – if they appoint Keith Ellison to be chairman of the Democratic Party, I will resign my membership to the Democratic Party after 50 years of being a loyal Democrat,” Dershowitz told the Fox Business Network.
Dershowitz criticized Secretary of State John Kerry for his tough position on Israel and predicted that the appointment of Ellison will make others leave the Democratic Party.
"If they now appoint Keith Ellison, who worked with [Nation of Islam leader Louis] Farrakhan, to be chairman of the DNC, you’re going to see a lot of people leave,” he said.
Ellison has been vocal about his support for Israel after CNN reported recently on comments he made several years ago defending the Nation of Islam leader.




Pakistani man indicted for spying on German-Israeli group for Iran
German prosecutors have indicted a Pakistani man accused of spying on a group that promotes German-Israeli relations for an Iranian intelligence agency.
Federal prosecutors said Monday that the 31-year-old, identified only as Syed Mustufa H. due to German privacy rules, was in contact with the unnamed spy agency since 2011.
In a statement, prosecutors said the man began spying on the former head of the German-Israeli Society, and handed over information to Iran in October.
He is alleged to have received money in return for passing on information obtained about the society
The ex-head of the Society, former lawmaker Reinhold Robbe, told the Bild newspaper in 2016 that he wasn’t surprised by the alleged espionage and vowed he “will not be intimidated.”
The suspect faces up to five years imprisonment if convicted of espionage.
Israel's New Delhi Envoy: Jewish State Appreciates Shift in India's Voting Pattern at UN Institutions
Israel appreciates the “changes” in India’s recent voting pattern at UN institutions, the Jewish state’s New Delhi envoy told The Hindu in an interview published this past weekend.
“In the last couple of years, we have seen a shift in various votes (by India) which reflects the present improvement in relations,” Israeli Ambassador to India Daniel Carmon said. “I would not over exaggerate this as a trend, each side has their declared positions and it is not a zero-sum game. India says they are committed to the Palestinian cause, to the Arab cause, and they have good relations with Israel that they intend to pursue. We appreciate this stand, and at the UN, we can see it too.”
As reported by The Algemeiner, Israel and India currently enjoy a burgeoning relationship, particularly in the defense field.
India, The Hindu noted, abstained from a vote on an anti-Israel UN Human Rights Council resolution in the summer of 2015. This past June, India voted in favor of putting Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon in charge of the UN Legal Committee. And in October, India abstained from a vote on a UNESCO resolution that ignored the Jewish people’s ties with Jerusalem holy sites.
An Indian government official told The Hindu that India had a “very balanced” approach to Israel-Palestinian conflict-related votes in international forums.
Renaud’s amazing song to slain Jews
January 9, 2017 marks the two-year anniversary of the anti-Semitic attack at the Hyper Cacher supermarket in Paris during which four hostages were killed by a terrorist: Yoav Hattab (age 21), Yohan Cohen (age 22), Philippe Braham (age 45), and Francois-Michel Saada (age 64). It occurred two days after the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo. On April 8, 2016, a little over a year after the attack, French artist Renaud released an album in which he sang “Hyper Cacher”, a tribute to the victims of the attack.
The power of the song “Hyper Cacher”
The song is powerful not only because of what it commemorates and who wrote it, but also because of what it says.
Unlike much of the reporting on the terrorist attacks, Renaud did not mention the name of the attacker nor his cause. He only referred to him as “Un individu cagoulé suintant la haine de tous les pores” (A hooded individual oozing hate from all his pores). In doing so, Renaud gave no publicity to the terrorist.
Renaud wrote that the attacker targeted those who wore a kipa (“Sur tout ce qui portait kipa”). This contrasts with denunciations of terrorism that are written generically as if no particular group was targeted. Renaud made it clear that Jews were targeted and that the attack was anti-Semitic.
Renaud described the horror of terrorism, “Certains pleuraient les bras en l’air, d’autres se cachaient où ils pouvaient, le sang glacé, c’était la guerre” (some cried with their arms in the air, others were hiding where they could, their blood curdled, it was war).
Most remarkably, Renaud referred to the fact that the families of the four victims chose to bury them in Jerusalem which he called “la terre de leurs pères” (the land of their fathers), and he recognized that Jerusalem is part of Israel when he added “au soleil d’Israël” (under the sun of Israel).
Thousands attend funeral of Israeli girl slain in Istanbul shooting
Thousands of people attended the funeral of an Israeli teenager Tuesday morning who was killed in a shooting attack at an Istanbul club during New Year’s festivities.
Lian Zaher Nasser, 19 was buried in her hometown of Tira in central Israel as mourners lamented the teen’s life having been cut short in the terror attack that claimed 39 people, most of them foreigners.
Among the mourners were MKs from a delegation of the Joint (Arab) List headed by Ayman Odeh and representatives of the Palestinian Authority sent by PA President Mahmoud Abbas, according to Israel Radio.
The Islamic State terror group on Monday claimed the shooting rampage at the exclusive Reina nightclub in Istanbul, where Nasser was celebrating the New Year along with three friends from Tira, one of whom was injured in the attack.
On Monday, the Tira City Hall declared Tuesday a day of mourning and asked residents of the city to attend the funeral, while the Joint List party also called for as many people as possible to show up.
As mourners carried Nasser’s coffin from her home to Tira’s cemetery, her mother cried out, “Why did you take my daughter?” the Hebrew-language daily Haaretz reported.
Mother of Israeli Arab woman killed in Istanbul attack: She is a martyr
Nasser's mother, Lucy, called her daughter a "martyr," asking the mourners at the funeral, "Did you come to share in our sorrow, or to share in our happiness that Layan fell as a saint? Layan, wake for a moment so that I can give you a final hug and to tell you again that I love you. Make your voice heard, my sweet, if only for a few seconds. I miss you."
The funeral procession set out at 11:30 a.m. from the family home toward the cemetery. Family members said that they had not yet come to terms with the tragedy. "Layan was the flower of the family, our happiness," one family member said, adding that "her mother is spiritually crushed, and cannot fathom that [Layan] is no longer here."
Speaking at the funeral, Tibi called the Istanbul attack a loathsome act of terror and he referred to Islamic State as a fascistic cancer. "ISIS is not Islam and most of the victims of its crimes are Muslims."
Tibi added that "the entire Arab public is shocked and feels great sadness and anger."
Report: Palestinian Arabs sell land near Tulkarem to Israelis
The Hamas-affiliated Palestine newspaper reported on Monday, citing sources in Tulkarem, that 100 dunams of land in the area were recently sold in transactions carried out through Israeli lawyers.
The land in question is located in the village of Deir Al-Rosson, located north of Tulkarem.
The mayor of Deir Al-Rosson, Abdel Karim Ghanem, told the Palestine newspaper that there is information indicating that lands in the area are being sold to Israeli citizens. Ghanem called on the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its government to investigate this matter.
Under Palestinian Arab law, selling of land to Jews is illegal and punishable by death. However, such sentences must be approved by the PA chairman, and current chairman Mahmoud Abbas has preferred to authorize life sentences for such offenses, possibly wary of an international backlash.
EXCLUSIVE - Source: Hamas Leader Haniyeh Delays Return to Gaza Over Islamic State Threat
Ismail Haniyeh (pictured), former Prime Minister of the Hamas government, is “in no hurry” to return to the Gaza Strip for fear that the Islamic State’s Sinai offshoot will try to assassinate him, a senior Hamas operative told Breitbart Jerusalem.
According to the Hamas official, Haniyeh’s return to Gaza has been postponed for the second time in the last several weeks as tensions between Hamas and IS in the coastal enclave reached a boiling point following a major Hamas crackdown on IS-affiliated jihadists.
The source told Breitbart Jerusalem that Hamas received a concrete threat from Sinai-based Islamic State jihadists, who said they would assassinate Haniyeh should Hamas not accede to their demand to release their operatives and supporters arrested in recent months.
Haniyeh, who has been residing in Qatar for the last few months while preparing to succeed Khaled Meshaal at the helm of the Islamist movement, was supposed to return to Gaza in late November, but his arrival was pushed back for fear of assassination.
Palestinian group said to film West Bank settlement with drone
A Palestinian organization flew a drone in recent days over fields belonging to a West Bank settlement, gathering unauthorized footage in sensitive locations according to a right-wing, pro-settlement group which tracked the incident.
The footage of the area around Havat Ma’on in the southern Hebron Hills gathered by the drone was made available to Israeli media by the Regavim organization, which said that the “documentation of settlements and locations of a sensitive nature in the West Bank crosses a dangerous red line.
The drone is said to have taken off in a Palestinian village near the settlement, flying over the people who were involved in operating the device, then over agricultural fields near Havat Ma’on before crashing in a wooded area.
The Palestinian group accused of flying the drone was identified by Channel 2 as the Ramallah-based Union of Agricultural Work Committees, which works with Palestinian farmers and agricultural professionals on a host of programs and activities in the West Bank. The group receives some funding from the European Union, Regavim alleged.
Regavim, which says it fights the “silent conquest of Israel’s national lands,” called on the Israeli Foreign Ministry to file a protest with the European Union over the incident.
Egypt destroys 12 Gaza smuggling tunnels
Egypt discovered and destroyed 12 smuggling tunnels linking the Gaza Strip to the Sinai Peninsula, the Egyptian army said Monday.
Egyptian army spokesman Tamer al-Rifae said that the tunnels, in the north of the Sinai, had been destroyed, though he did not specify when the demolitions were carried out.
Earlier Monday, Hamas published a report in which it said that it had lost 21 members of its armed forces while digging tunnels under the Gaza Strip in 2016, some of them to Egypt and some into Israel.
Last month, four men, aged 22 to 45, were killed when the Egyptian army flooded a tunnel with seawater. The men were found dead 9 days after the tunnel they had been working in was flooded by the Egyptian army, according to a statement by local authorities in the Gazan city of Rafah near Egypt’s border.
Gazans use such tunnels to smuggle goods and weapons into the Palestinian enclave that has been under Israeli and Egyptian blockade for a decade, following Hamas’s violent takeover of the Gaza Strip and its use of the area as a launchpad for attacks on Israel.
It is also a conduit for Islamic terrorists who are operating in the Sinai, against Egyptian forces.
UN Security Council Won’t Endorse The New Cease-Fire In Syria
On Saturday, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) endorsed a resolution encouraging a new cease-fire agreement in Syria brokered by Turkey and Russia. The international body refused to pass a resolution explicitly endorsing a ceasefire, however.
The language of Saturday's UNSC resolution is as tepid as it is unenforceable. “Language referring to an endorsement was removed from the text before the final vote because Western powers wanted to clarify the role of the United Nations in the agreement,” reports The New York Times. “It was unclear how the vote at the United Nations would affect the cease-fire, as the Council has previously passed resolutions calling for the unhindered delivery of humanitarian aid. Two other cease-fires brokered by the United States and Russia in 2016, one in February and one in September, fell apart in a matter of weeks.”
Calling for a “rapid, safe and unhindered” pathways for humanitarian aid drop-offs, the resolution fails to outline how vital resources to the most vulnerable Syrians can be successfully delivered if the ceasefire agreement breaks down.
Fortunately, the ceasefire agreement, finalized roughly two days ago, is largely holding. As patron saint to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, Russia has agreed to ensure that the regime complies with the ceasefire in exchange for Turkey’s guarantee to do the same with rebel forces.
Kuwaiti MP Waleed Tabtabaie: Israel Runs the World
Kuwaiti MP Waleed Tabtabaie recently said that the problem of the Syrian revolution was "the Zionist entity, which runs the world" and "does not want the Al-Assad regime to fall."
Tabtabaie further said that "Israel – or rather, the Zionist entity – is one of the causes of the crisis of the Syrian people.
It protects the Bashar regime, and is coordinated with the U.S., Russia, and Iran, in order to destroy [Syria]."
The interview aired on the Kuwaiti Al-Majlis TV channel on December 24


Prominent Scholars Slam Modern Language Association for Entertaining ‘Shameful’ BDS Resolution, Politicizing Academia
Two American scholars called an anti-Israel motion being brought before the upcoming conference of the Modern Language Association (MLA) a “shameful maneuver” that highlights the worrisome politicization of academia.
Referring to a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) resolution that is being put to a vote at this week’s MLA 2017 Convention, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Jubilee Professor Cary Nelson — one of many academics opposing the bill — told The Algemeiner that it reveals “deep and increasing corruption” in the humanities and social sciences.
“The [hard] sciences and professional schools remain strong supporters of Israel,” he said. “Faculty members in those fields collaborate with their Israeli counterparts and are not about to boycott them. But some departments are becoming anti-Israel propaganda machines.”
Echoing Nelson’s sentiments, Kenneth Waltzer, executive director of the Academic Engagement Network — a group of anti-BDS professors — told The Algemeiner that the MLA campaign is “designed to take hold of institutions of scholarly reputation to increase the megaphone effect in the broad-scale delegitimization war on Israel.”
Both Nelson and Waltzer said that what is most dangerous about the phenomenon is that a prominent academic body is providing a veil of credibility to lies about Israel.
Top Belgian rabbi on BDS: When our home is attacked, we must defend it
Jews around the world must unite to “fight the lies of the BDS movement with Israel’s truths,” a top Belgian rabbi said on Monday at a conference of international rabbis at the Ramada Hotel in Jerusalem.
Brussels Chief Rabbi Avraham Gigi was speaking to dozens of rabbis as a member of a panel addressing the issues of antisemitism and BDS as part of a threeday conference organized by the World Zionist Organization to mark the 50th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem.
Gigi said there are many people who believe the BDS movement does not merit any response, but made clear that he fiercely objects to this approach.
Accusing the movement of disseminating numerous lies about Israel, he said silence would only give strength to those lies.
“This fight is very important and we need to repeat again and again and explain that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East,” he said. “Not all non-Jews are against us or antisemitic, we just need to explain our side.”
Gigi called on every rabbi and Jewish leader around the world to join the fight.
SUCCESS: Daily Mail Corrects Tel Aviv Capital Offense
Following correspondence with editors, we are pleased to say that amendments have been made to all of the above.
Tel Aviv has been replaced with “Jerusalem” in the first two instances while “Israel” is used in the latter two.
CNN: Istanbul Terror Victim “Palestinian Citizen of Israel”
UPDATE
Thanks to our many readers who took action and complained to CNN, the story has been updated. Leanne Nasser is now accurately and appropriately described as a “citizen of Israel” in the sub-header and photo caption.
The story text, however, still refers to Nasser as a “Palestinian from the town of Tira.” We will continue to request that CNN also changes this.
Hitler's manifesto 'Mein Kampf' becomes bestseller in Germany
A new edition of Adolf Hitler's antisemitic manifesto Mein Kampf has once again become a bestseller in German bookstores, the BBC reported Tuesday.
Over 85,000 copies have been sold since its re-release last year, with publisher Andreas Wirsching telling the the British broadcaster that "the figures have overwhelmed us."
The new copies, set for a sixth print run, include critical notes by scholars. The book also features a plain white cover due to German laws banning Nazi-era symbols such as the swastika.
Meanwhile, Jewish groups in Germany have denounced the inflammatory book, which sold 4,000 copies during its first print run at the beginning of 2016.
Mein Kampf [My Struggle in German] was first published in 1925, eight years before Hitler rose to power. At the time, the infamous text became wildly successful, selling 12 million copies in Germany before the end of World War II, according to Reuters.
A record 2 million people visited Auschwitz Museum in 2016
More than 2 million people from all over the world visited the Auschwitz Museum in 2016.
The 2,053,000 visitors is a record number in the history of the museum, which this year will mark the 70th anniversary of its creation, the museum said in a statement on its website.
The top 10 countries visitors came from were Poland, with 424,000; the United Kingdom, with 271,000; the United States, with 215,000; Italy, with 146,000; Spain, with 115,000; Israel, with 97,000; Germany, with 92,000; France, with 82,000; the Czech Republic, with 60,000; and Sweden, with 41,000.
The numbers include 61,000 organized tour groups, and individually conducted tours by museum guides for 310,736 people, according to the museum. In addition, some 150 movie crews produced documentaries at the museum and memorial last year.
65% drop in anti-Semitic incidents in France
There is a significant drop in anti-Semitic incidents in France over the last year, according to claims made by leaders of major Jewish organizations in France.
The organizations say that despite the fact that 2015 saw a rise in anti-Semitic incidents, the past year shows a 65% decrease in the number of anti-Semitic incidents perpetrated.
Previously anti-Semitism, both in the form of hate language as well as violent attacks, had been on the rise in France in recent years.
The organizations based their conclusions on widespread surveys conducted over the period of the 2016 calendar year. According to official government data presented by the newspaper 'Le Figaro', if in the course of 2015 there were 808 anti-Semitic acts and threats, in 2016 their number had decreased to 294.
Francis Kalifat, the president of the Council of Jewish organizations, the Conseil Representatif des Institutions Juives de France (CRIF), was bouyed by the news but said that the numbers are not yet final and should be taken with caution. He also added that this was not necessarily significant news since "curses and anti-Semitic threats have become so commonplace that people do not file complaints anymore about them."
Israeli smart clothing startup HealthWatch raises $20 million
Israeli startup HealthWatch Technologies, which develops cardiac monitoring garments, announced Monday a $20 million investment by Chinese company Yiling, which specializes in Chinese medicine and is now in the process of branching out into conventional medicine.
According to the financial daily Globes, the investment puts HealthWatch's value at $65 million.
HealthWatch describes itself as "a pioneer in harnessing textile technology to produce fashionable, smart-digital garments with interwoven sensors unobtrusively measuring vital signs of hospital-grade quality."
According to the agreement, $15 million of the investment will give Yiling a 23% stake in HealthWatch. The additional $5 million are licensing fees, allowing Yiling to market HealthWatch's product in China. The financial daily Calcalist reported that Yiling also plans to invest several million dollars in setting up a subsidiary in China to market the product.
Kfar Saba-based HealthWatch was founded in 2012 by CEO Yoram Romem and CFO Amos Shattner.
"The product is designed to provide peace of mind for people at risk, but we're all at some risk all the time, of course. We're all somewhere on the risk continuum," Romen said Monday.
Sweet Photos From Meagan Good and DeVon Franklin's Spiritual New Year's Trip to Israel
The couple welcomed 2017 in the Holy Land and shared photos from their once in a lieftime adventures.
The Franklins pose for a photo after "soaking and floating" in the Dead Sea to wash away the old and bring in the new.
2/12
When they arrived in Tel Aviv, Good shared this shot to show her fans where they were visiting for the holiday.
3/12
While visiting the Jordan River, Franklin wrote that there was no minister on duty as they expected so he answered a call from God to step in. "I wasn't anticipating that God had me in mind to be the minister on duty. LOL! At first, I said "no way" then I said 'whatever God's will is, I will do' so we rented a robe, I threw on my shorts and did as I had been trained to do (been a long time since I did a baptism). I baptized 3 beautiful souls in the Jordan River! And the peace that fell on all of us was amazing!"

Israeli firm creates autonomous aircraft that goes where no helicopter dares
After 15 years of development, an Israeli tech firm are optimistic of finally get their one-and-a-half tonne people-carrying drone off the ground and into the market.
The Cormorant aircraft, billed as a flying car capable of transporting 500kg of weight and traveling at 115 mph, completed its first automated solo flight in November, taking off, flying and landing by itself.
Developers Urban Aeronautics believe the vehicle, which uses internal rotors to fly rather than helicopter propellers, will be sold to militaries to work in hostile environments from 2020 and cost $14 million.
"Just imagine a dirty bomb in a city and a chemical substance or something else and this vehicle can come in robotically, remotely piloted, come in to the street and decontaminate an area," Urban Aeronautics founder and CEO Rafi Yoeli told Reuters.
Hikers find Second Temple period engravings of menorah in Judean Shephelah cistern
Hikers had a close encounter with history last weekend, while exploring a water cistern in a Judean Shephelah cave, they came across the engraving of an ancient seven-branched menorah from the Second Temple period on its bedrock walls.
Three members of the Israel Caving Club – Mickey Barkal, Sefi Givoni and Ido Meroz – said they decided to explore caves in the lowland region of South-Central Israel after hearing about their beauty off the beaten path.
“We heard there are interesting caves in the region,” said Meroz on Tuesday. “We began to peer into them, and that’s how we came to this cave, which is extremely impressive with rock-carved niches and engravings on the wall.”
They serendipitously saw the engraving just before deciding to leave for the day, he said.
“When we realized this is an ancient depiction of a menorah, we became very excited,” Meroz added. “Its appearance was quite distinct. We left the cave and reported the discovery to the Israel Antiquities Authority.”



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2017 Hasby Award nominations (continuously updated)

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It is that time of year again where I ask you for nominations for the annual Hasby Awards,  the best examples of pro-Israel advocacy for the year.

Below you will find the categories of awards for this year. You can add your own nominees or you can second the ones that are listed in the comments. This is not the vote!  I have pre-populated nominees from those who had been seconded last year and some others, but you are encouraged to nominate additional ones. There is no need to second nominees that have already been seconded. 

No nominations or seconds from Twitter or email, they must be placed in the comments. Please include links!

Please don't second more than one in one category.

Self-nominations are allowed.

Additional category suggestions are welcome, but unlikely. It is already a crowded field.

As in previous years, no one gets awarded twice for the same category so I list the previous winners.

Some winners are decided by me and others will be based on surveys.. The awards will be given out sometime in 2017, maybe even in a real-life ceremony like last year's. (But it might have to be in the New York area this time. If you have a good venue and want to host, please let me know!)

BEST PRO-ISRAEL TWEETER (Previous winners: Avi Mayer, No Camels, Margie in Tel Aviv, Arsen Ostrovsky)


Hen Mazzig (seconded)
Israellycool (seconded)
Eugene Kontorovich (seconded)
Andreas Fagerbakke (seconded)


BEST YOUNG DEFENDER OF ISRAEL (under 25) (Previous winners: Muhammad Zoabi, Leora Noor Eisenberg,Alexandra Markus (Lex))

Chloe Valdary (seconded)
Hananya Naftali (seconded)
Elliott Hamilton
Rudy Rochman
Aedan O'Connor (seconded)



BEST PRO-ISRAEL COMMENTATOR EXCLUSIVE TO MIDDLE EAST/ISRAEL (Previous winners: Barry Rubin, Sarah Honig, Caroline Glick, Evelyn Gordon)
Martin Kramer (seconded)
Khaled Abu Toameh  (seconded)
Fred Maroun 
Noor Dahri (seconded)
Varda Meyers-Epstein (seconded)


BEST SATIRE/HUMOR (Previous winners: PreOccupied Territory, This Is Palestine)
 Mideast Beast (seconded)
Daily Freier (seconded)

Dry Bones Blog (seconded)

BEST ENGLISH-LANGUAGE PRO-ISRAEL ONLINE MEDIA OUTLET (Previous winners: Times of Israel, The Tower, Mosaic)

Algemeiner (seconded)
Tablet  (seconded)

BEST WATCHDOG: MEDIA AND NGOs (Previous winners: Honest Reporting, CAMERA, BBC Watch, Palestinian Media Watch, MEMRI)

BEST PRO-ISRAEL BLOG (PRESENT COMPANY EXCLUDED) (Previous winners: Daphne Anson, Missing Peace, Israellycool, This Ongoing War, Abu Yehuda)
Jews Down Under (seconded)
IsraelSeen (seconded)
Israel Thrives  (seconded)

BEST SOCIAL MEDIA ADVOCATE FOR ISRAEL (NON-BLOG) (previous winner: Varda Meyers Epstein)

The Muqata (seconded)
Miriam Goodman 
Mottle Wolfe 
Ben Shapiro (seconded)

Muslims of Israel (seconded)
Alexandra Markus

BEST ARTICLE 

 "Instead of Apologizing” (Mosaic translation of 1911 Jabotinsky article) (seconded)
Israel Conducted No Ethnic Cleansing in 1948(Benny Morris) (seconded)
Palestinians: Western Media's Ignorance and Bias (
Khaled Abu Toameh)
Yes, Many Journalists Choose Sides in a Conflict—and Often for the Worst Reasons (Zenobia Ravji)

Where Does All That Aid for Palestinians Go? (Tzipi Hotovely) (seconded)

"Prophecy in Israel: Expression of the Collective Hebrew Soul and Unity of Creation" by: Yehuda HaKohen (seconded)
My grandmother, the Palestinian (Forest Rain)
Dear Anti-Israel Activist (Nevet Basker) (seconded)
At the U.N., Only Israel Is an ‘Occupying Power’(EUGENE KONTOROVICH and PENNY GRUNSEID) (seconded)

 


BEST BOOK


BEST PRO-ISRAEL ACTIVIST ORGANIZATION (Previous winner: My Truth)
Regavim (seconded)
Northwest Friends of Israel (seconded)fshapi
StandWithUs (seconded)
Canary Mission (seconded)
Im Tirtzu (seconded)



BEST SPEECH
Jeremy Gimpel, Yom Haatzmaut, Canada (seconded)
International Law Issues in the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict, Eugene Kontorovich (seconded)


BEST PRO-ISRAEL CELEBRITY  (The David Draiman Award) (Previous winner: Mayim Bialik)

Roseanne Barr (seconded)
Ashton Kutcher
Jon Voight (seconded)
Jenna Jameson




BEST "OWN GOAL" (Anti-Zionists acting so stupid they disgust even disinterested parties or backfire spectacularly) (Previous winners: Max Blumenthal/David Sheen, Rototom Sunsplash Music Festival)

Israeli flag burned outside DNC
Senator Dianne Feinstein supporting abstention of UNSCR 2334(seconded)
Barack Obama crafting UNSCR 2334 (seconded)
US collusion with PA revealed by Egypt
Bernie Sanders (seconded)





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