In what must be considered a major policy declaration by the United States Government on the Palestine question and one which is bound to arouse bitter controversy, Henry Byroade, Assistant Secretary of State for Middle East Affairs, told the Dayton World Affairs Council this week-end that Israel inferentially has the major burden of blame for the Arab-Israel tension. Secretary Byroade’s speech was made available in Washington before its delivery here with the comment that it was an important policy document.

Sec. Byroade declared: “To the Israelis I say that you should come to truly look upon yourselves as a Middle Eastern state–and see your own future in that context rather than as a headquarters or nucleus so to speak of world-wide groupings of peoples of particular religious faith who must have special rights within and obligations to the Israeli State.”

He further advised Israel that “you should drop the attitude of the conqueror and the conviction that force and a policy of retaliatory killings is the only policy that your neighbors will understand. You should make your deeds correspond to your frequent utterance of the desire for peace.”

At the FIFA council meeting in Zurich this week, the world football's governing body is expected to come to a decision regarding a Palestinian bid to expel Israeli football clubs based in the West Bank. Chairman of the Palestinian Football Association (PFA) Jibril Rajoub has led this anti-Israel campaign for months.
However, this Palestinian Media Watch report indicates that Jibril Rajoub is the last person who should be talking about violations of FIFA’s statutes. The Rajoub File has been sent to the following FIFA officials:
President Gianni Infantino
Secretary General Fatma Samoura
Tokyo Sexwale, Chairman of the FIFA Monitoring Committee Israel-Palestine
Cornel Borbély, Chairman of the FIFA Independent Ethics Committee
The 20-page report exposes Rajoub’s incitement and glorification of terror over the past five years. The report argues that Rajoub's current bid at FIFA is motivated by his overt anti-Israel and anti-peace ideology. Statements by Rajoub to mainstream Palestinian media include Antisemitic references to Jews as "Satans" and "Zionist sons of bitches."
Rajoub’s terror promotion during the terror wave that took place in Israel from 2015-2016 is highlighted in the PMW report. In an interview on Palestinian Authority TV, Rajoub described these terror attacks as “individual acts of bravery,” adding, “I am proud of them. I congratulate everyone who carried them out.”

Julia Child impersonator Meryl Streep defamed football fans and the martial arts community in the midst of her anti-Israel speech to the 2017 Golden Globes, a Washington Free Beacon analysis reveals.
The star of The River Wild said she and the rich actors surrounding her “belong to the most vilified segments of society right now” as she accepted the Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award.
“What is Hollywood, anyway?” Streep asked. “It’s just a bunch of people from other places.” The Hillary supporter went on to name the birthplaces of prominent actors, including Amy Adams, born in Venice, Italy; Ruth Negga, born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Dev Patel, who was born in Kenya; and Ryan Gosling who, “like all the nicest people,” was born in Canada.
When Streep mentioned Natalie Portman, however, she simply said the star of Black Swan and the Star Wars prequel trilogy was born in “Jerusalem,” omitting the country in which Jerusalem is located: the Jewish State of Israel.
Severing Jerusalem from Israel is a tactic of anti-Zionists who advocate for a Palestinian State with East Jerusalem as its capital. The Obama administration stripped “Israel” from the dateline Jerusalem in an official communication from the funeral of former Israeli president Shimon Peres last fall.

A group of Bahraini youths posted a video showing the “cleansing” of a site in Manama where a menorah-lighting ceremony had been held, sanctioned by the king of the small Muslim monarchy.
A video from the ceremony, in which kaffiyeh-wearing sheikhs can be seen dancing with Orthodox Jews to Hasidic music, went viral on Facebook. The menorah-lighting was held on the first night of Hanukkah and was attended by Jews, businesspeople and other Bahrainis.
The video of the clean-up operation, filmed late last month and posted this week by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), shows the youths sweeping and scrubbing the floor where the ceremony was held, while wearing what look like lab coats bearing dates considered landmarks in Bahraini-Palestinian ties and support for the Palestinian cause.
While they are cleaning, unseen speakers vow to “redeem Palestine” and “wipe this stain on the shining history of our lands,” while adding that “we, the youth of Bahrain, will not forget our cause, and we will keep marching on this path until Palestine is regained — in its entirety.”

The FBI has reopened the investigation into the July 1973 assassination of Israeli diplomat Col. Joe Alon, The New York Times reported Sunday.
Alon, who was the assistant to the military attache at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, was fatally shot in just outside his home in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
In an article Sunday, The Times' Adam Goldman said the decision to relaunch the investigation was made based on information originating with Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, the terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal, who is imprisoned in France.
Ramirez wrote Goldman that he had knowledge of "the unusual manner in which 'Operation Alon' came to be" but noted that "contact with the volunteers who executed the operation in Washington was lost long ago."
"There was one catch: Mr. Ramirez wanted money in exchange for information. I declined to pay him and moved on to other stories. The FBI had other plans," Goldman wrote.

The July 18, 1994 bombing of Israeli Mutual Association, known by its Spanish acronym AMIA, was the deadliest terror attack in Argentina’s history. It left 85 dead and injured hundreds in Buenos Aires, but its perpetrators, and their true motives, have never been fully revealed. The following are excerpts from Argentinian journalist Daniel Santoro’s book-length exposé, Nisman Must Die.
Asked who the AMIA assassins were, Cristina reiterated that Nisman’s charges were part of a U.S. right-wing and Israeli conspiracy opposed to Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran. She volunteered that should the Iran pact be found constitutional, she—and eventually Scioli—will ask Iran to ratify it in its parliament so Judge Canicoba Corral could interview the five accused Iranians and carry out other matters agreed in the pact.
When she was asked about the marketing firm Ipsos’ poll in January 2015, that 70 percent of Argentines believed Nisman had been assassinated and 82 percent saw merit in his charges of her covering up, she responded: “I don’t believe in polls. Nobody knows who’s being polled and where they publish the results. … Sincerely, I’ve heard that some Iranian commandos did it, I’ve heard that it was angry criminals, but I’ve never heard anybody say to me or can believe that I really had absolutely anything to do with this.”
Cristina had already won the fight against the dead prosecutor, meaning that she beat the dead man in the media battle to destroy the image of her public and private life. The debate over the constitutionality of the Iran pact was, therefore, in political terms, the last “fight” between Nisman and Cristina. Until now, it has not reached its final round.

In his disquisition on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Dec. 28, Secretary of State John Kerry referred to the “dire” humanitarian situation in Gaza. On this point, he was accurate, noting that “Gaza is home to one of the world’s densest concentrations of people enduring extreme hardships with few opportunities.”
Kerry added that “1.3 million people out of Gaza’s population of 1.8 million are in need of daily assistance. … Most have electricity less than half the time and only 5 percent of the water is safe to drink.”
He rightly blamed Hamas, which, instead of building economic infrastructure and taking care of its people, “continue to re-arm and divert reconstruction materials to build tunnels, threatening more attacks on Israeli civilians that no government can tolerate.”
What Kerry failed to mention — though he made a passing reference to the “closing of crossings” that have choked off supplies from Gaza — is that for the past decade, Israel has consistently and judiciously provided for Gaza’s needs, through an import-export nexus at their border, known as Kerem Shalom.
Since 2006, when Israel imposed an air, land and sea blockade on Gaza — a response to Hamas launching rockets into southern Israel — Kerem Shalom, nestled on the border between Israel, Gaza and Egypt, became a lifeline for the 1.8 million living in the strip. Much of the time, Israel is solely responsible for the flow of goods going in and out of Gaza. This is not either country’s wish, of course; but Israel took measures to protect itself, and ever since, has had to face the unique predicament of providing for her enemy.
Over the past decade, Israel and Egypt tried sharing responsibility for this effort, but Egypt has proven a temperamental partner and often closes its Rafah border crossing with Gaza, shutting down trade completely.

The Israeli military said early Tuesday morning that a Palestinian man had been shot, later dying of his wounds, while trying to stab IDF soldiers who were conducting an arrest raid in the West Bank overnight.
Troops from the elite Duvdevan unit were on an operation in the Palestinian village of Far’a, northeast of Nablus, to arrest wanted suspects, the military said.
The Palestinian, identified in the Palestinian media as 32-year-old Muhammad a-Salahi, rushed the soldiers with a knife in hand and did not heed calls to stop, according to the IDF.
The troops “began an arrest process, and when the suspect kept advancing toward them, he was shot and was later pronounced dead,” the IDF said in a statement Tuesday.
A-Salahi had served time in Israeli jail, according to Israeli news site Walla.

Not only does the Palestinian Authority not condemn terror attacks, but inside Fatah there are those who praise them, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday.
Netanyahu's comments came at a briefing he held at the IDF's Judea and Samaria headquarters in the West Bank's Bet El. The PA did not condemn the attack in Jerusalem that killed four soldiers, and injured 15.
The security forces displayed for Netanyahu some of the more than 450 weapons that were rounded up in Judea and Samaria over the last year. In addition, some 40 weapons workshops were discovered and dismantled.
“In 2015, almost no workshops were discovered,” he said. “In 2016, 43 of these were found – equipment was impounded, arrests of those responsible were made, the workshops were closed. There are great efforts on our behalf to prevent the manufacturing and distribution of weaponry.”

A Judea and Samaria-based Hamas smuggling ring was exposed in December in a joint operation carried out by the Shin Bet security agency, Israel Police and military, the Shin Bet revealed Monday.
The suspects allegedly smuggled multipurpose equipment, including hundreds of cameras, toy airplanes and electrical cables, from Judea and Samaria into the Gaza Strip via the Kerem Shalom border crossing. Some of the equipment was earmarked for use by Hamas.
Gaza resident Nader Masalmeh and West Bank resident Nofal Abu Sraya, the key players in the ring, were arrested in December and were indicted Monday at the Beersheba Magistrates' Court.
According to the Shin Bet, on several occasions in 2016, Sraya smuggled banned equipment into Gaza, delivering it to Masalmeh and an associate, who owns a security camera business.
The equipment was smuggled inside televisions, refrigerators and washing machines.

All Muslims Rejoiced at the Recent "Divine" Fires Inflicted upon the Jews
Egyptian cleric Sheikh Ali Qassem recently said that the Jews, the "brethren of apes and pigs," were "the most base, contemptible, and despicable nation upon the Earth," adding that the "Jewish germ" was a cancer gnawing away at the body of the Islamic nation.
He praised the recent fires that raged through Israel, saying that the Muslims were united in their loathing of the Jews and in their rejoicing at the harm inflicted by "divine winds and heavenly destructive fires."
The lecture was posted on the "Path to Allah" YouTube channel on December 5.

It is not beyond the realm of the impossible that an overweight, out-of-shape, 82-year-old would have a heart attack and die in the hospital. But, sometimes the conspiracies which surround such occurrences provide significant insight into the society in which such events occur.
According to political activists Mitra Yekta and Goli Ebrahimi, Rafsanjani’s son Mehdi Hashemi addressed the crowd gathered in front of the hospital where Rafsanjani died. He kept screaming “They killed my father” and then explained, “My father had a meeting with a group of IRGC commanders and drank a cup of tea or something that gave him instant heart attack.” He asked for an autopsy but Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei vetoed the request. Supposedly, the funeral for Rafsanjani will be in Mashhad instead of the capital Tehran in order avoid any chance for protests in the Iranian capital.
Even if Rafsanjani died of natural causes, the episode is important because it exposes the deep cleavages in Iranian society.
First, there is little trust between the clergy and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps which retains its power under President Hassan Rouhani’s regime and, indeed, has only grown more powerful because the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action has enriched it disproportionately in comparison to the rest of Iranian society.

The news that the US and five other world powers have approved a Russian shipment of 116 metric tons of natural uranium to Iran is “only likely to spark a greater backlash” by the new Congress and President-elect Donald Trump against the July 2015 nuclear agreement, a top official with an anti-deal advocacy group told The Algemeiner on Monday.
“No part of the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] obligates the P5+1 to gift the Iranian regime tons of natural uranium, which can be further enriched to build bombs,” United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) Executive Director Matan Shamir said. “This is one more reckless unilateral concession that the Obama administration should forgo, particularly amid reports that Iran has been close to exhausting its domestic deposits.”
According to The Associated Press, the shipment is meant to “compensate” Iran for 44 metric tons of heavy water it has exported to Russia since the implementation of the nuclear deal began.
David Albright, head of the Washington, DC-based Institute for Science and International Security think tank, was quoted by AP as saying the material could be used to make 10 simple nuclear bombs — “depending on the efficiency of the enrichment process and the design of the nuclear weapon.”
The fate of the nuclear deal after Trump takes office on Jan. 20 remains unclear.

Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani died of a heart attack yesterday at the age of 82. No sooner was his death announced then the whitewash of his record bordering on hagiography started pouring in. The New York Times Tehran bureau chief, for example, tweeted, “The death of Rafsanjani… is a major blow to moderates and reformists in Iran.” Reuters described him likewise. National Public Radio labeled him “a leading voice for reform.” The U.S. State Department remembered him as a “prominent figure.”
The whitewashing of Rafsanjani’s record is akin to praising Pol Pot for improved statistics on eyesight in Cambodia, Fidel Castro for free health care, or Jim Jones for raising the prominence of the Kool-Aid brand. At the American Enterprise Institute and elsewhere, I detailed Rafsanjani’s record. COMMENTARY alum Sohrab Ahmari did likewise at the Wall Street Journal. In short, Rafsanjani signed off on attacks like the 1994 bombing of the Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires and assassinations of Iranian dissidents worldwide. He not only helped birth Iran’s covert nuclear weapons program but, on December 14, 2001, speculated that it could be for offense rather than defense since, unlike Israel, Iran’s had strategic depth to absorb a retaliatory strike. While he was willing to talk to Americans and Europeans, this had less to do with a desire for rapprochement than a recognition that dialogue could relieve economic pressure on the Islamic Republic and win it what it needed for the fulfillment of its indigenous military programs.
Was Rafsanjani a moderate or even reformer? Too often, diplomats and journalists analyze Iranian politics along a single spectrum ranging from hardline to reform. In reality, it is useful to think about the Islamic Republic’s politicians as falling between two axes: one with regard to social attitudes and tolerance and the other with regard to a belief in state-centered economies versus economic liberalism. Rafsanjani sought to reduce the centralized command structure of Iran’s economy, so he might have leaned more toward economic pragmatism. Even during his presidency, though, he was unsuccessful in implementing significant economic reform. When it came to social reform, however, Rafsanjani’s more moderate rhetoric did not translate into any desire or real effort to blunt the edge or fervor of the Islamic Revolution.

It is not beyond the realm of the impossible that an overweight, out-of-shape, 82-year-old would have a heart attack and die in the hospital. But, sometimes the conspiracies which surround such occurrences provide significant insight into the society in which such events occur.
According to political activists Mitra Yekta and Goli Ebrahimi, Rafsanjani’s son Mehdi Hashemi addressed the crowd gathered in front of the hospital where Rafsanjani died. He kept screaming “They killed my father” and then explained, “My father had a meeting with a group of IRGC commanders and drank a cup of tea or something that gave him instant heart attack.” He asked for an autopsy but Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei vetoed the request. Supposedly, the funeral for Rafsanjani will be in Mashhad instead of the capital Tehran in order avoid any chance for protests in the Iranian capital.
Even if Rafsanjani died of natural causes, the episode is important because it exposes the deep cleavages in Iranian society.
First, there is little trust between the clergy and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps which retains its power under President Hassan Rouhani’s regime and, indeed, has only grown more powerful because the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action has enriched it disproportionately in comparison to the rest of Iranian society.

With this in mind, it is clear that the ultimate victor is Iran. There, Qassem Soleimani plots the IRGC’s ongoing campaign to expand its sphere of influence. With Russian backing at the UN, the Iranians are virtually bulletproof in Syria, and Aleppo has proven that fears about the scale and scope of war crimes committed in the conflict were completely justified.
While the Iranian regime has proven that it can silence its own population online, the Syrian opposition, particularly those involved in the documentation of the recent battle over Aleppo, can never be silenced. The power of social media has given not only a voice to the voiceless, but a lens through which those of us in the privileged world can see the brutally dark reality of the Syrian civil war. As the West contemplates its next steps, it must look carefully through this lens, because it will mean the life or death of millions of innocent people.
At the same time, there is a strong force, based in Moscow, Tehran, and Damascus, that seeks to distort the realities of the Syrian conflict. As recently as December 15, amid the stalled evacuation crisis, RT claimed that the fearful Aleppo civilians posting their last messages on social media were nowhere near Aleppo. The story even went on to question the existence of seven-year-old Bana al-Abed, who recently arrived safely in Turkey. Her stories of watching Harry Potter movies and wanting to read books became relatable narratives to Western audiences that, for the most part, had turned a blind eye to the Syrian conflict.
Whether or not the war crimes committed by Iran and its proxies in Syria will be brought to the ICC in the near future should not matter, because we can no longer sit idly by while crimes against humanity are committed and documented on the very same social media platforms we use in our everyday lives. At the end of the day, we must remember, “For evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing.”

It is said that when a dog bites a man, that isn’t news, but when a man bites a dog … well, that’s a story.
Last weekend’s decisive vote by the Modern Language Association’s governing Delegate Assembly rejecting a resolution calling for an academic boycott of Israel is just such a moment. In fact, given the MLA’s history of promoting anti-Israel measures, it was like anti-Israel forces losing a vote in Gaza City.
The MLA boasts 25,000 members — academics in literature and language. At its annual meeting two years ago in Chicago, the pro-boycott side, working in tandem with MLA leadership, used tactics right out of former Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s machine playbook to narrowly win Delegate Assembly approval of an anti-Israel resolution. Boycott opponents were blocked from making their case to members either in person or even by distributing informational materials to them.
But when the resolution then went to the full MLA membership for ratification, it failed to garner the necessary votes.

A Jewish academic used Nazi imagery to attack fellow scholars who were successful in preventing a BDS motion from passing at a conference over the weekend, according to a recording of the proceedings reported on by conservative blog Legal Insurrection.
During the Modern Language Association (MLA) Delegate Assembly vote Saturday on a resolution calling for an academic boycott against Israel, Nassau Community College professor Barry Fruchter announced, “I’m sick to death of hearing the divisive politics of those members of my ethnic group…It’s the same thing that people like you did back in the days of the Judenraten [Jewish administrative councils imposed by Nazis in ghettos] in World War II, where you stood up for yourselves against your fellows. It’s the same thing as those of you did in the 1950s, who made apologies for the McCarthyists. And it’s the same thing you always do and we’re calling you short on it.”
Fruchter then blamed the “hounding and policing of self-appointed Zionist and Orthodox monitors” for his decision to quit his position as the coordinator of Nassau’s Jewish Studies program. “I couldn’t take it then and I can’t take it now,” he said.

The head of a new program aimed at combating ignorance about — and hostility towards — Jews and Israel on the part of students from different ethnic and religious backgrounds described for The Algemeiner on Monday how he sees the initiative taking hold.
Rabbi Yehuda Sarna, the Skirball Executive Director of the NYU Bronfman Center, said that the Interfaith Entrepreneur Fellowship, which was launched in September at four City University of New York (CUNY) colleges — Queens, Hunter, Baruch and John Jay — seeks to enhance collaboration and cultivate personal relationships between Jewish students and non-Jewish peers who have tended to view the religion and the state of the Jews in a negative light.
“Jews have a lot in common with other minorities, where feeling discriminated against is concerned,” Sarna said. “But out of ignorance or stereotyping, these other groups can make the profound mistake of assuming that Zionism and Jews who support Zionism are the same as white supremacists or people who support apartheid.”
Sarna explained the impetus behind his “interfaith” initiative — funded by a UJA Federation of New York grant — as one he felt necessary, due to the growing feeling of isolation among Jewish students. When he realized it was becoming “more and more difficult to find co-sponsors for any campus events held by Jewish groups, not only those pertaining to Israel,” he said he decided it was a serious issue that must be rectified. It was then that Sarna established the fellowship, during the course of which participants undergo “intensive training” to formulate a plan of action for “challenging and fixing a problem in their current landscape.”

Consider what has happened over the last two months: the student organization of the University of Manchester voted to boycott Israel, the University of London invited a speaker to talk about the “Nazi Israel” and at University College London a rally prevented a meeting of Jewish students. It is not the Germany of 1933, but the England of 2016.
“Some of the leading universities in Britain are becoming ‘no-go areas’ for Jewish student”, denounced Baroness Ruth Deech, former rector of St Anne’s College, Oxford, in her report. Her comments came after a series of high-profile incidents at the best universities where Jewish students claim to have suffered hatred, verbal abuse and have been physically attacked. Deech gave the names of English universities that a Jewish student should avoid: “Surely the School of Oriental Studies, Manchester, Southampton, Exeter and so on”.
“Some of the leading universities in Britain are becoming ‘no-go areas’ for Jewish student”, denounced Baroness Ruth Deech.
Alex Chalmers, a history student at Oxford University and president of the Labour Student Union that exists there since 1919, resigned in a dramatic gesture of protest against what he denounced as a flood of anti-Semitism at his university. At Southampton University, one of the most prestigious public universities, an international conference was going to question not the policy of Israel, but its “right to exist.” (It was cancelled.) The Queen Mary Students’ Union has been twinned with the University of Gaza, a Hamas base in the war against the Jewish State.
Former MP George Galloway refused to debate a student at Oxford, Eylon Aslan Levy, when he discovered that he had an Israeli passport. This is the climate that culminated in the election of Malia Bouattia as President of the National Student Union, the first woman and first Muslim to hold the office, who said that the boycott against Israel is not enough, it distracts from the true Palestinian Arab resistance against Israel.

An Israeli advocacy group has filed a lawsuit against social media giant Twitter for allowing Islamic State propaganda to flourish on its platform.
The Shurat Hadin Israeli Law Center filed the suit with the Federal Court for the Southern District of New York, arguing that Islamic State uses Twitter to recruit operatives, disseminate jihadi propaganda and promote terrorist attacks, such as the Brussels airport bombing in March 2016 and the November 2015 Paris attacks, which together claimed nearly 200 lives and left hundreds of people wounded.
"This is the first lawsuit that details how Twitter has played a key role in making Islamic State the most formidable terrorist organization in the world today, and how Islamic State uniquely used Twitter in the context of two of the most serious attacks to take place in Europe recently," Shurat Hadin Chairwoman attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner explained Monday.
Compared to other social media platforms, she noted, "Twitter is unique in that it has adamantly refused to block terrorists from using its services, citing 'freedom of tweeting,' even if this directly spell mass murder."

Fairfax journalist, Pattrick Smellie, claimed that Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had declared war on NZ in a piece entitled “How Israel could wage ‘war’ on New Zealand”. Smellie’s false claim had previously been debunked by Fran O’Sullivan in the NZ Herald. Smellie’s article has since been partially edited in line with the facts. Evidently an unnamed diplomat reportedly told Israeli media that Netanyahu had told New Zealand Foreign Minister, Murray McCully, that
However, the Fairfax/Stuff story still reads as though Israel declared war on New Zealand for sponsoring and voting for the anti-Israel resolution at the United Nations. The misleading title remained unchanged.
Furthermore, the article posits an extreme and completely fabricated scenario of a possible cyber attack by Israel on New Zealand’s critical infrastructure. This claim is reckless and irresponsible and has no basis in fact. If it was intended to be satirical, it seems a lot of people missed the joke.
For at least 24 hours the uncorrected version was read by people via Facebook. This prompted an outpouring of antisemitic comments, which has made the Jewish community feel especially vulnerable. Once more, anti-Israel libels promote antisemitism.
Two Facebook pages, in particular, had the most vile comments from users: the official stuff.co.nz page and the Wake-Up-NZ page.

The stained-glass windows of a Philadelphia synagogue were shattered by rocks for the second time in two months.
Rocks the size of a baseball were thrown through three windows at Temple Menorah Keneseth Chai, a nearly century-old Conservative synagogue in the city’s historic Tacony neighborhood, shortly before 7:30 p.m. Friday, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
On Dec. 2, a rock was thrown through one of the same windows in the second-floor sanctuary just before the start of Friday night Shabbat services, according to the report.
No one was injured in either attack.
The building is clearly marked as a synagogue.

On a quiet Thursday evening, Café Foksal in central Warsaw suddenly filled up with about 50 people wearing kippahs.
The event was unusual for a city with very few observant Jews and an insignificant number of Israeli tourists. What made it exceptional is that almost none of the yarmulke wearers were Jewish.
It was the latest twist in a media storm that has brewed around Café Foksal since a bartender was accused of anti-Semitic behavior toward two patrons, who were ejected allegedly for discussing Israel.
The New Year’s Day incident, which surfaced originally in an unsigned post on the Gburrek blog, was amplified in the mainstream media and on social networks. Amid counter allegations that the complainants provoked the bartender with anti-Christian rhetoric, the affair highlighted the polarization between liberals and conservatives that is dividing Polish society. It was also the latest public rejection by a critical mass of people of any form of hate speech, anti-Semitic or otherwise.
Led by Ryszard Schnepf, a former ambassador of Poland to the United States, the kippah wearers – journalists, activists and others — came to Café Foksal aiming to defuse the tensions stoked by the media’s publication of the allegations, which the bartender claims are false.

Anyone who has flown in or out of Tel Aviv can surely attest to the congestion felt at Israel’s Ben-Gurion International Airport. A recent Israel Airports Authority report shows an increase of 1.6 million passengers passing through the transportation hub on international flights in 2016 as compared to 2015 figures.
According to the Israel Airports Authority, 17,387,971 passengers passed through Ben-Gurion Airport on international flights last year.
Five airlines created nearly 50% of all traffic at Ben-Gurion Airport: El Al (5.5 million passengers); Turkish Airlines (932,000 passengers); EasyJet (719,000 passengers); Aeroflot (704,000 passengers); Arkia (650,000), and Israir (548,000 passengers).
“The market share that has really grown this year is connecting flights at Ben-Gurion Airport. The is a profound change in the activity at Ben-Gurion Airport that has become attractive for airlines that are matching their networks to the flight schedule at Ben-Gurion Airport. Companies like Turkish [Airlines], Pegasus and Aeroflot lead today’s market of connecting flights from Ben-Gurion Airport to Europe and naturally, the countries that have led the growth of 1.6 million passengers this year were Ukraine, Turkey, the Netherlands, and Cyprus,” said Ben-Gurion Airport Director Shmuel Zakai.
The Israel Airports Authority also said that 36% of passengers check in from home and 9% of passengers check in at the airport’s interactive kiosks.

Israeli high-tech companies raised an all-time annual high of $4.8 billion in 2016, 11 percent above the $4.3 billion raised in 2015, a new report by IVC Research Center and attorneys Zag-S&W shows.
The average financing round, which has been constantly rising over the past five years, reached $7.2 million in 2016, 19% above the $5.1 million five-year average.
In the fourth quarter of 2016, there was an 8% decline in investments compared with the same period a year earlier, along with a drop in the number of transactions. In Q4 2016 high-tech companies raised $1.02 billion in 151 transactions, compared with the $1.11 billion garnered in 202 deals in the last quarter of 2015. The average financing round stood at $6.7 million in Q4 2016, similar to the past two-year quarterly average of $6.6 million.
While capital-raising reached new heights in 2016, there were fewer financing rounds compared to 2015. There were 659 financing deals that closed in 2016, marginally above the five-year average of 657 deals but 7% below 2015’s record 706 deals.

Coldplay, one of the world’s leading rock bands, will reportedly come to the holy land in November 2017 to play two joint “peace concerts” for Israelis and Palestinians.
The unprecedented joint concerts have been scheduled for November 3 and November 4, at an outdoor location north of the Dead Sea, and tickets will be sold both in Israel and in the Palestinian territories, Israel’s Channel 2 reported on Monday night.
The goal of the concerts is to promote human rights and to bring people together, the report said.
Ex-Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters played a concert at the Israeli Jewish-Muslim peace village Neve Shalom in 2006, and Leonard Cohen tried in vain to arrange a concert in the Palestinian areas when he played in Israel in 2009, but the Coldplay plan to perform for a joint Israeli-Palestinian audience is unprecedented for an act of its stature and drawing-power.

A delegation of French doctors arrived in Israel to learn about emergency protocols for hospitals in situations of mass casualties and terrorist attacks, French media reported.
The doctors and the accompanying press team visited the ninth floor underground at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, where there is a sheltered emergency room. The Israeli medical staff explained to their French counterparts that all 800 patients in the hospital, along with the medical equipment, can be relocated to the underground sheltered floors in less than an hour.
The hospital's underground space, which opened in 2011, spans 56,000 square meters (about 600,000 square feet) on four floors. The underground hospital is designed to withstand nuclear, chemical and biological warfare, as well as long-range missile attacks. All four floors are connected to water and electricity lines and have oxygen and ventilation systems operated by external fuel tanks, which allow the hospital to operate even if there are power and water outages.
"We test the hospital's [emergency] preparedness at least twice per year," Sourasky Emergency Medicine Director Dr. Pinchas Halpern told the visiting doctors and reporters. "Only a quick, carefully coordinated response allows as many lives as possible to be saved."
France, forced recently to deal with a series of large-scale terrorist attacks, has expressed more interest in learning how Israel deals with mass-casualty attacks.

'I studied in an Israeli-funded school where the teachers taught us how to become terrorists.'
Mohammad was also influenced by this. His cousin committed a terror act and was considered by his peers to be a shahid, a martyr. Mohammad felt that he too wanted to be a martyr. At the age of 16 he took part in demonstrations against Israel, throwing stones at Border Policemen.
At 14 Mohammad left his house and went to live with his paternal grandfather, eventually working in construction. Then he met a Jewish person who put on Tefillin every day. One day the Jew came up to him and said he was happy to see that Mohammad respected him and did not disturb his prayers. Mohammad replied that because his mother was Jewish, he respects Jews. The man then told him that if his mother is Jewish, he himself is Jewish.
Mohammad dismissed this as a fabrication but after doing internet research, he discovered that he was registered as a Jew in the Interior Ministry. The Yad Le'Achim organization which helps Jews who wish to escape from Arab villages helped him to contact his Jewish grandmother. Two months ago he met her after a 15-year hiatus. "I hugged her and she began crying. She told me how my father had cut her off from seeing me and how he changed telephones so that she couldn't maintain contact."
Meanwhile Mohammad has changed his name to an Israeli name and is trying to join the IDF. "I wish to join the Border Police. After I fought them and threw stones at them as a kid, I want to be on the other side and protect my people. This job is made for me. I'm not scared. I know Arabic and am familiar with all the alleyways in the Old City."
Mohammad's Muslim family view him as a renegade and have even physically assaulted him. Yet this does not deter him. "They say I'm a dog and a collaborator with Jews, but I escaped from there to enlist and live as a Jew."

US consulate in Jerusalem

Close U.S. allies in the Middle East have warned that moving the embassy might look easy but would be deeply reckless, like painting a big bull’s eye not just on a building, but on the United States and its friends.

A top government minister in Jordan, Israel’s pro-Western neighbor, said the embassy move would have “catastrophic consequences,” inflaming religious passions and rallying extremists.

The Palestinians have called the move “a red line” that would dash hopes for a two-state solution to the long-running conflict.

Palestinian leaders are now pleading with Trump not to do it. They have also asked mosques around the world to offer prayers this Friday against the move.

“The call for prayer is to say we don’t accept this,” said Mohammad Shtayyeh, a senior Palestinian official and former peace negotiator, signaling how quickly the issue had moved from the diplomatic realm to the sectarian street. The Palestinians also want churches to ring their bells in protest of the proposed move.

Shtayyeh said that if Trump moved the embassy to Jerusalem, the Palestine Liberation Organization would consider revoking its recognition of the State of Israel.

If such a threat is carried out, it would mark the collapse of the 1993 Oslo peace accords.

...[S]ome U.S. diplomats, including former Middle East peace negotiators, say the move would do little to advance U.S. interests in the region.

“It was and is a symbol of American policy, which has always been that the status of Jerusalem should be resolved through negotiations, and any effort to move it unilaterally would be disruptive and dangerous for everyone,” said Philip Wilcox, the U.S. consul general in Jerusalem from 1988 to 1991.

“It’s playing with fire,” Wilcox warned. “It would quite likely incite acts of Palestinian violence and terrorism, not only there but everywhere. It would alienate other Muslim states and make our role in trying to preserve some stability and peace more difficult. It would alienate the international community. And all it would accomplish is the goodwill of the Israeli right wing.”

For more than a year, Israel has been engaged in efforts to curb an intense wave of attacks by Palestinian youth acting on their own. This “Haba” (“eruption” in Arabic), as some Palestinians call it, has been gradually contained by the Israeli military and intelligence agencies. The scope of incidents has been dramatically reduced, leading to a sharp decline in the number of casualties on both sides. At its peak in October 2015, the Haba produced no less than sixty serious attacks a month, whereas by spring 2016 the number of severe incidents was down to four or five a month, close to the standard pace of terrorism in previous years.

Israeli security officials have invested much effort in studying the sudden rise in the number of violent incidents. The main features of the Haba were fairly easy to discern. First, most perpetrators have been quite young, between the ages of 17 and 22. Almost all of them have been unaffiliated with any Palestinian political faction. They embarked upon spontaneous individual initiatives, typically without sharing their plans of attack with friends or relatives. Often, they fit the definition of “from zero to hero” terrorists: They came mostly from the margins of their social groups; few if any were recognized as political activists or leaders among their peers. Social media, primarily Facebook, served as their platform rather than any of the many politically sponsored media outlets.
In most cases they were motivated by personal circumstances, striving to avenge and imitate previous attackers, and in some cases seeking to gain recognition as martyrs. Although many were driven to act by the widespread allegations that Israel was seeking to change the status quo at the al-Aqsa mosque, very few were devout Muslims. Patriotic sentiment trumped religion as the strongest driving force, coupled as always with feelings of indignation and humiliation at the presence of Israeli troops.

When the Haba was at its most active, a surprisingly high proportion of attackers were women—up to one fifth. Investigations showed that almost all of these women—including a 72-year-old grandmother from Hebron—were seeking to escape family hardships, such as pregnancies out of wedlock, arranged marriages, violence within the family, and so forth. Quite often it seemed that these women were seeking death or arrest in order to break away from their environment. In more than one instance, a young woman would wave a kitchen knife or scissors far from the Israeli soldiers, not posing any real threat, knowing that she would be immediately taken into custody.

In closed-door debates, proponents of a new and less muscular approach emphasized that most of the attackers came from the fringes of West Bank society: young people struggling with social marginalization, who had experienced repeated setbacks in their private lives or faced insurmountable personal or financial hardship. The collective profile of the assailants identified most as frustrated individuals who felt that their lives had reached a dead end, to the point that many sought salvation through martyrdom. Many of those captured during assaults told interrogators that they believed that death for the sake of jihad would reward them with the recognition they failed to obtain in life. It eventually dawned on Israeli analysts that many of the attackers who had maintained their own Facebook pages tended to replace their old pictures with new self-portraits just weeks, and sometimes only days, before setting out on an attack, so that mourning ceremonies could display photos of the “martyrs” that were appropriately current and flattering. In numerous cases, would-be assailants also wrote about their wish to sacrifice their lives in the form of short poems, Quranic verses, or tributes to other shahidis (martyrs).

There are six main components of Israel’s counter-Haba strategy that have emerged over time. The first and arguably most important has been to reduce tension over the Temple Mount. Since its beginning, the Haba revolved around the sensitive situation at al-Aqsa mosque and it surrounding area. The Palestinian narrative, promoted by the PA as well as other factions, has claimed that the Israeli government wished to gain a Jewish foothold in this holy place and ultimately impose some form of divided control there. Allegedly, the Israeli government was moving toward establishing a new regime that would allow those Jews who wished to do so to pray on the Temple Mount.

Many Palestinians were sincerely concerned about the future of al-Aqsa. Both Islamist leaders and PA politicians urged Palestinians to defend al-Aqsa and struggle to retain exclusive Muslim control over the Temple Mount—what Muslims call Haram al-Sharaf. This has led to frequent skirmishes in the al-Aqsa courtyards as well as the stoning of Jews praying at the Wailing Wall below. The almost weekly outbreak of violence led Israeli authorities to outlaw the Islamic Movement within Israel that used to maintain shifts of “guards,” both men and women, in the mosque. These “Murabitoon” and “Murabitat” were also declared illegal and their presence in the Mosque discontinued.

This action quickly led to a sharp decline in the number and severity of clashes with the Israeli police.

The second component of Israeli policy in dealing with the Haba concerned social media. As Facebook—and to a lesser degree Twitter, YouTube, and other social media platforms—became the favorite means of communication for would-be assailants and those inciting violence, Israeli intelligence diverted significant additional resources to monitoring the web, rapidly screening the flood of information to identify potential threats. The innovative software employed underwent continuous upgrades and adaptations, including methods to crack encrypted messages, commonly used by Hamas and Hezbollah operatives. A few months after the Haba began, no less than a third of Shabak manpower was already assigned to technological departments, this in addition to the massive capabilities of the famed 8200 division of IDF military intelligence.

The combined cyber effort allowed Israeli analysts to identify persons inclined to attack, and thus initiate preventative measures. At the same time, Israeli officials set “traps” in the different social media forums to lure potential attackers. Cyber offensives brought down sites engaged in inciting violence. Aided by the Shabak’s network of informants in every Palestinian locality, Israeli efforts thwarted roughly 400 intended assaults—almost half of all planned attacks, including some 20 plots to kidnap Israeli soldiers and civilians.
The third component has been selective retaliation. In response to the Haba, Israeli security agencies limited retaliatory measures to the immediate environment of the attackers. Family members of attackers, and sometimes their extended clans, were denied work permits in Israel, which are a major source of income throughout the West Bank. Some were also denied trade licenses and permits to enter Israel. Villages that produced several attacks were isolated, and temporarily put under lockdown with military checkpoints on all roads leading to them. When repeated stabbing attacks occurred, for example, at the Jalameh crossing point into Israel near Jenin, Israeli officials blocked all traffic, affecting trade of every sort. The security services also demolished the houses of attackers on occasion, imposing such a significant economic price on the families, clans, villages, and neighborhoods that local leaders felt obliged to deter the youth from perpetrating further attacks.

Officers from the six Israeli territorial brigades in the West Bank also kept in constant communication with Palestinian notables, mukhtars (local leaders), and schoolmasters. Private pirate radio stations pouring oil on the flames were raided and shut down. Prayer leaders preaching violence were arrested and sentenced. In many places, Israeli officials sought to identify and then capture the organizers of riots and those who offered money to teenagers willing to demonstrate. Gradually, these efforts helped create a powerful if quiet lobby among the Palestinian population against the expansion of the Haba into something more pervasively violent. Towns and villages not drawn into the cycle of violence received various economic incentives, so carrots as well as sticks played a role in this highly targeted approach.

On Sunday, a Palestinian terrorist drove his truck into a group of Israeli soldiers participating in an education study tour in Jerusalem, murdering 4 and wounding at least 15.
Attack is sanctioned by Islam
The official PA daily referred to it as “a car ramming operation” and wrote that the killer “died as a Shahid” (i.e., a Martyr who died for Allah). By calling the terrorist murderer a Shahid, the PA is telling its people that murdering the Israeli youths was sanctioned by Islam and seen as positive Islamic behavior.
PA TV went out of its way to focus on the religious value of the terror attack by using the term “Shahid” 7 times, mostly as a replacement for the terrorist’s name: “The Shahid executed the attack,” “The Shahid’s home,” “The Shahid’s sister,” “The Shahid’s parents home.” In contrast, the terrorist’s name was only mentioned twice, both times informing that he became a Shahid. [Official PA TV, Jan. 8, 2017]
PA will pay terrorist’s wife 2900 shekels ($760) monthly
According to its fundamental policy of supporting all Palestinian terror, the PA will reward the terrorist’s wife with a lifetime monthly allowance. According to PA law, the family of a Shahid receives a base payment of 1400 shekels per month. A wife of the Shahid receives an additional 400 shekels, for each child she receives 200 shekels, and for being a resident of Jerusalem an additional 300 shekels. In total the wife of this murderer will receive 2900 shekels ($760) per month for the rest of her life. In addition, within the next few months, she will receive a one-time grant of 6000 shekels ($1580).
Mahmoud Abbas’ silence
Mahmoud Abbas did not condemn the terror attack. Abbas’ silence is a strong message to Palestinians because it contrasts his fervent and vocal condemnations of the other recent car ramming terror attacks in Berlin and Nice.

Abba Eban’s enduring insight that the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity needs amending: the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to boost Israeli unity, either. On Sunday, as The New York Times delighted in a polarized Israel sacrificing the army and national unity “on the altar of ultranationalist ideology,” a sadistic Palestinian truck driver – along with his Palestinian cheerleaders – unified us in sorrow. Amid intense reactions to the Azaria verdict punishing the shooting of a disarmed terrorist, this hit-and-run terrorist emphasized the murderous context in which Israeli kids must make split-second life-anddeath decisions.
As Israelis texted back and forth to see who escaped terrorism’s luckless lottery – which one Haaretz columnist that morning justified as “resistance to the occupation” – as the Palestinian wheel of misfortune crushed two dozen families, “citizens” weren’t “waging war” against “the citizens’ army.” We were one; we are one.
We are one with the families of the four young idealists massacred. We are one with the 17 wounded and their families, too. We join Left and Right in repudiating Hamas for lionizing this murderer. We join Left and Right in denouncing the Gazans who celebrated this despicable act. We unite in condemning the international enablers whose excusing of Palestinian incitement puts their fingerprints all over the deadly driver’s steering wheel.
We unite in lamenting that terrorism targeting us doesn’t merit headlines elsewhere. And we all share the same prayer, whatever our chosen political prescription for ending this conflict: that these will be the last victims – even as we wonder with dread, “who’s next”? Some media commentary nevertheless was harsh: one commentator sneered that two young women who clutched each other’s hands as they ran away from the runaway truck “thought they were at Disneyland. ” Wow. Consider the crazy pressures Israeli kids endure. If soldiers overreact as Sgt. Elor Azaria did, they’re arrested. If they react normally by scattering, as some officer cadets did in Sunday’s attack, they’re mocked. Honor the heroes who ran toward the truck and killed the terrorist, but don’t punish the others.

Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu is doubling down with his accusation that the Obama administration orchestrated the whole thing, as well as rejecting the idea the resolution is just reformulating what previous US administrations had been saying.
Methinks Obama is going to end up with some (more) egg on his face by the end of this. But he’ll just make an omelette out of it, and tell everyone to get stuffed.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson on Tuesday told Parliament the United Kingdom played a key role in advancing an anti-settlement resolution passed by the United Nations Security Council last month.
London’s top diplomat also maintained that he backs US Secretary of State John Kerry who, during a keynote speech on the Middle East, criticized Jewish settlements in the West Bank as a major obstacle to peace.
“I remind the House that the UK was closely involved in its drafting, although of course it was an Egyptian-generated resolution,” Johnson said on Tuesday, according to a transcript of the proceedings. “We supported it only because it contained new language pointing out the infamy of terrorism that Israel suffers every day, not least on Sunday, when there was an attack in Jerusalem.”

Top congressional Democrats, including both the Senate and House minority leaders, have registered their objections to the Obama administration’s failure to veto an anti-Israel United Nations Security Council resolution at the end of December.
Hours before the Security Council voted on resolution 2334, which denounces Israeli presence in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem, newly elected Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D – N.Y.) stated that he was “strongly opposed to the UN putting pressure on Israel through one-sided resolutions.”
“An abstention is not good enough,” Schumer added. “The Administration must veto this resolution.”
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D – Calif.) called the resolution “troubling” in a statement released after the December 23 vote, adding: “The two-state solution has been the bedrock of peace efforts between Israelis and Palestinians for decades. The resolution passed by the UN Security Council today does not bring us closer to this goal.”

In a final interview to Israeli media on Tuesday, US President Barack Obama cast doubt on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s support for the two-state solution, while warning that “unfettered support” by the US for West Bank settlements would lead to a “worsening situation” between Israeli and Palestinians.
The president gave the farewell tete-a-tete to Channel 2’s Ilana Dayan on the “Uvda” show, which aired 10 days before the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump.
Trump has promised to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem, a step not taken by a US president despite several campaign promises over the years. Trump’s future ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, is an unequivocal supporter of West Bank settlements.
Obama charged that Netanyahu’s actions indicate that he doesn’t support a two-state solution with the Palestinians, pointing to the acceleration of settlement construction in recent years “that was not compelled by Israel’s security.”

The launch of this diplomatic attempt to gut Israel will start on January 15, in Paris, at a "peace conference" -- which should immediately be postponed a week.
"Led astray from their primary mission, these organizations [such as the United Nations] have become tools of corruption or terrorism, reinforcing global Islamic power... Their latest resolutions do not only confirm the victory of jihadism and illiteracy: they also express the success of the years of effort made by this post-war Europe that continues to destroy, defame and delegitimize the Jewish State in the name of Islamic justice."— Bat Ye'or, prizewinning historian.
With a UN now run as if it is the universal caliphate, assisted mostly by dictators and despots, it is hard to see much good ever coming from it. No one has yet been made accountable for the $100 billion "oil for food" scandal, and peacekeepers still dole out food to children in exchange for sex.
"The beginning of this long journey dates back to 1967, in France... Europe rushed to adopt the French position in 1973 and, along with the OIC, planned political measures designed to destroy the Jewish State by denying its sovereign rights and its cantonment on an indefensible territory. Resolution 2334 is now the icing on the cake of this policy, which forms the basis for a Euro-Islamic policy..."— Bat Ye'or.
All freedom loving nations would be wise to abandon the UN, or, second-best, defund it. Sadly, that is the only language the UN seems to understand. Countries imagining that in Donald Trump they have another pushover, watch out. You will be in for quite a shock.

Seventy countries flocking to Paris on January 15 seem set to challenge Security Council Resolution 2334 before the ink has hardly dried.
America’s House of Representatives voting 342:80 has already declared that it:
“opposes United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 and will work to strengthen the United States-Israel relationship, and calls for United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 to be repealed or fundamentally altered so that –
(A) it is no longer one-sided and anti-Israel; and
(B) it allows all final status issues toward a two-state solution to be resolved through direct bilateral negotiations between the parties.”
Now the Paris Conference seems set to blindside the Security Council’s vision expressed in the preamble to Resolution 2334:
“a region where two democratic States, Israel and Palestine, live side by side in peace within secure and recognized borders”
Four indicators point to this Security Council “two democratic states solution” being deliberately abandoned at the Paris Conference:

Shortly before he is to be sworn in as US president, a majority of Israelis expect Donald Trump’s attitude toward Israel to be “friendly,” while most Jewish citizens think Barack Obama’s during his tenure was not, according to a poll published on Tuesday.
The monthly Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University Peace Index found that 69 percent of Jewish Israelis believe the attitude toward Israel of the incoming president will be “very friendly” or “moderately friendly,” with that number rising to 74% among the Arab public.
Fifty-seven percent of Jewish Israelis said Obama has been “moderately unfriendly” or “not friendly at all,” with only 11% or Arab Israelis sharing that belief. Conversely, 22% of the Jewish public said the outgoing president had been friendly while 64% or Arab Israelis said the same.
While largely positive, compared with last month’s poll the new finding show a slight dip in belief by Israelis in Trump’s support of Israel.
In the December survey, over 80% of Jewish Israelis agreed with a recent statement by Israeli Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer that “Israel has no doubt that President-elect Trump is a true friend of Israel…. We look forward to working… with all of the members of the Trump administration… and making the US-Israel alliance stronger than ever.” Among Arab Israelis, “a very similar rate thinks US-Israeli relations will flourish during Trump’s tenure, though that expectation is not necessarily to this public’s liking,” the December poll said.
The January poll also assessed public opinion of how the December UN Security Council vote branding Israeli settlements illegal may affect Israeli and US government policy towards West Bank construction.
Asked, “In the wake of the Security Council’s resolution, in your opinion, should or should not Israel cease construction in the territories?” some 62% of the Jewish public replied that building should continue and 71% of Jewish respondents said that under the Trump administration Israel will be able to keep building in the settlements. In the Arab public that rate was even higher, at 81%.

The IDF will always remain in the West Bank no matter what, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated on Tuesday, the Hebrew news site nrg reported.
Joined by Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman and IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, Netanyahu toured the IDF’s West Bank headquarters in Beit El on Tuesday — two days after four Israeli soldiers were killed in a truck-ramming attack in Jerusalem. In remarks made to the press at the end of the visit, the prime minister said, “I was very impressed with the tough work being done on the ground to thwart Palestinian terrorism in Judea and Samaria — intelligence, arrests, raids and operations. This is being carried out with great ingenuity and effort.”
“In 2016, 43 weapons-production sites workshops were found [in the West Bank] — with closures, confiscations of equipment and arrests of those in charge,” Netanyahu went on to say. “There was also a dramatic rise in the seizure of weapons, but we still have a great challenge ahead of us.”
“We are aware of the fact that the Palestinian Authority, unfortunately, not only failed to condemn the recent terror attack in Jerusalem, but some in Fatah praised it,” the prime minister noted.

The next American ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, might work from an office in Jerusalem while the US embassy will remain in Tel Aviv, Channel 2 reported on Tuesday, citing senior Israeli Foreign Ministry officials.
In this scenario, the report said, Friedman would be based at the US Consulate General building in the Israeli capital’s East Talpiot neighborhood with a small staff, while the seafront embassy in Tel Aviv would stay open, with most operations being run from there.
Friedman, the report noted, already owns three apartments in Jerusalem’s Talbieh neighborhood.
Outgoing American envoy to Israel Dan Shapiro has lived at a US government-owned residence in Herzliya, just north of Tel Aviv.
President-elect Donald Trump, according to the report, would view Friedman working out of Jerusalem as a fulfillment of his campaign promise to move the embassy.

The incoming Trump administration plans to move ahead with its plans to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem regardless of criticism from Arab nations, CNN reported Monday.
According to the report, US President-elect Donald Trump's team has informed regional allies of the plans.
CNN cited unnamed Israeli officials as speculating that the move could be announced as early as May 24, on the Israeli holiday "Jerusalem Day" that marks the reunification of the capital in the 1967 Six Day War.
The report emerged after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas sent a letter to Trump urging him not to relocate his country’s embassy in Israel when he assumes office.

House Republicans are passing around a letter expressing support for “swift action” by the incoming Trump administration to relocate America’s embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, according to a copy obtained by The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.
The letter, which has not yet obtained any signatures, is addressed to the president-elect’s transition team in Trump Tower, indicating the caucus’s intent to send it before Donald Trump’s inauguration next week.
“Moving the embassy will strengthen the unique alliance between Israel and the United States and send a clear message to the world that we support Israel in recognizing Jerusalem as its eternal capital,” the letter reads.
“This action is all the more urgent in light of the anti-Israel Resolution 2334, adopted by the United Nations Security Council on December 23, 2016,” it continues. “The resolution invites renewed diplomatic hostility and economic warfare against Israel, and we must act urgently to mitigate its consequences and to reaffirm our steadfast commitment to Israel.”

President-elect Donald Trump named his Jewish son-in-law Jared Kushner as a senior adviser in the upcoming administration.
The Trump team confirmed the appointment Monday, and in a press release said Kusher would work closely with Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Chief Strategist Stephen Bannon “to execute President-elect Trump’s agenda,” as “an effective leadership team.”
“Jared has been a tremendous asset and trusted adviser throughout the campaign and transition and I am proud to have him in a key leadership role in my administration,” Trump said, calling him “instrumental in formulating and executing the strategy” behind his election victory.
“He has been incredibly successful, in both business and now politics. He will be an invaluable member of my team as I set and execute an ambitious agenda, putting the American people first,” he added.
Kushner, who will forego a salary while serving in the administration, intends to focus on Middle East affairs and trade deals.

Has there ever been an American President who has appointed so many Orthodox Jews to high positions as President Elect Donald Trump? Before the elections, people kept trying to tell me that Trump is antisemitic, because some antisemites supported him. Of course, the same people weren't bothered by the fact that all sorts of people who wanted to replace Israel with Palestine, Gd forbid, supported Hillary Clinton.
Besides appointing David Friedman to be the American Ambassador to Israel, now it has been revealed that Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law will be the Senior Adviser to the President, NBC News reported.
Lots of past presidents have appointed numerous Jews to high positions, but those Jews were the more "J Street" type, Leftists, more assimilated.
It will be interesting to see how things will change starting in the next couple of weeks. Hang on. Hold onto your hat.

Pope Francis will grant Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas an audience at the Vatican on Saturday, the Holy See confirmed on Tuesday, according to AFP.
It will be the third time that the Pope has met Abbas following an encounter during the pontiff's 2014 trip to the Holy Land and the Abba’s 2015 visit to the Vatican to attend a canonization ceremony for two Palestinian nuns, noted AFP.
In 2013, the Vatican recognized “Palestine” as a state. Last year, an accord between the Holy See and the PA, which is expected to lead to the establishment of a Palestinian embassy in the Vatican at some point this year, took effect.
During his 2015 meeting with Abbas, the Pope referred to Abbas as "an angel of peace", causing outrage on social media.
The Vatican later explained that the reference was mistranslated, and in fact was meant as encouragement for Abbas to pursue peace with Israel.
Saturday's meeting between Pope Francis and Abbas will come against a background of deep concern among Palestinian Arabs over U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's declared intention of moving the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Negotiations started when Jason posted a status on Facebook, berating Secretary of State John Kerry’s speech on Mideast peace. Shlomo, a liberal whose closest experience with a Palestinian was his friend at Columbia University who wore a keffiyeh “in solidarity” responded saying that his attitude was racist and would lead to apartheid. And off they went.
There were moments throughout the exchange where it was feared that negotiations might be derailed; first, after someone that neither senior negotiator had spoken to since high school posted a picture of Michael Jackson eating popcorn, leading to a stream of memes from bystanders, and then again when an aunt chimed in to call someone Hitler.
Several days, hundreds of likes, and over 300 comments later, the two feel confident that a solution has been found. “It’s amazing the impact that two Jews from Long Island with liberal arts degrees who once went on birthright and spent Passover in five-star hotels in Florida can have on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
They produced a signed statement that they have agreed to continue to disagree.

An image of the Israeli flag was projected on Paris City Hall to show solidarity with the victims of a terrorist attack in Jerusalem.
Mayor Anne Hidalgo announced the initiative Tuesday following expressions of solidarity in Berlin, where the Israeli flag was projected on the Brandenburg Gate, and Rotterdam, which flew the Israeli flag at half mast on its City Hall.
In the attack Sunday, a Palestinian terrorist plowed his truck through a crowd of Israeli soldiers in Jerusalem, killing four and wounding at least 15 others. Similar attacks occurred in July in Nice, France, and last month in Berlin.
“Tonight at 7.30 p.m., the Hotel de Ville of Paris will be illuminated with the colors of Israel in a tribute to the victims of the attack in Jerusalem,” Hidalgo wrote Tuesday on Twitter.

The Israeli flag was flown from Rotterdam city hall in the Netherlands on Monday evening in a show of solidarity with the Jewish state after a terror attack in Jerusalem killed four IDF soldiers on Sunday.
Initially the gesture was reportedly ordered by Rotterdam Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb, a Muslim from Morocco who moved to the Netherlands with his family when he was a teenager, the Hebrew-language Ynet website said Tuesday.
But in fact, the act was taken by acting mayor Joost Eerdmans, leader of the right-leaning and pro-Israel Livable Rotterdam party.
Founded in 2001, Livable Rotterdam is affiliated with the movement started by the late politician Pim Fortuyn, who was murdered in 2002 by a far-left activist.

Government agencies demolished 11 illegal buildings on the outskirts of Qalansawe, an Arab town in the Triangle in central Israel on Tuesday morning.
In protest, the mayor resigned and Israel’s Arab leadership announced a one-day protest strike on Wednesday, with schools, local authorities and businesses to stay closed.
The Finance Ministry’s National Unit for enforcing planning and construction laws, accompanied by hundreds of police and security personnel, knocked down the buildings, which had been built without planning permission and zoning authorization.
The mayor of the city, Abed el Basat Salame, resigned over the destruction and the residents were outraged at the demolitions.The High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel declared a strike in the Arab sector Wednesday in response to the building demolitions.

The IDF arrested Talal Dweikat, a former Tulkarem and Jenin governor, who also served as a general in the Palestinian Authority intelligence services, early Wednesday morning for allegedly partaking in weapons trade.
“The occupation forces arrested Dweikat after raiding his house and searching his belongings in Askar,” Wafa, the official PA news site, reported.
A Shin Bet spokesman said that Dweikat was arrested “for his involvement in advanced weapons trade,” without elaborating on details.
In addition to Dweikat, the IDF arrested two others in Nablus and raided Dweikat’s brother’s home, Sarhan Dweikat, who also has the rank of general.
Dweikat, who was elected to the Fatah Revolutionary Council in December, formerly served as a head of the PA intelligence services in Nablus in the early 2000s and was appointed as Tulkarem governor in 2006, where he oversaw the rehabilitation of the PA security forces in the aftermath of the second intifada.
In 2012, Dweikat was appointed Jenin governor, serving until 2014 when he accepted a position as an advisor in the PA presidency.

As a result of Israel's crackdown on illegal weapons factories in Judea and Samaria and Bedouin caches of stolen weapons, prices for illegal weapons have risen significantly, often doubling or tripling.
Most of the terrorists who used firearms used homemade weapons, which were bought cheaply and easily from Arab dealers. Weapons factories and caches are often built under homes, and use the "lift-the-tile" trapdoor method for entry.
Examples of terror attacks in which terrorists used homemade firearms include the shooting in Tel Aviv's Sarona market in June 2016, and the drive-by shooting which murdered Eitam and Naama Henkin in October 2015.
The vast majority of illegal weapons are used for criminal activity and not terror activity.

Factions of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad met in Beirut on Tuesday to discuss the possibility of holding the first meeting of the Palestinian National Council (PNC) in seven years.
The PNC, which is tantamount to the PLO’s parliament, is responsible for electing the PLO’s two most authoritative bodies, the Executive Committee and the Central Council, and setting a strategy for the PLO.
Tuesday’s meeting, which took place at the Palestinian embassy in the Lebanese capital, was the first of multiple meetings which will take place over the next two days.
Mustafa Barghouti, a PLO Executive Committee member, told the Palestinian website Watan News Network that the meeting “was positive and constructive,” and “discussions focused on one point, the ways to hold a meeting of the PNC that includes everyone.”

The relentless suicide bombing campaign of Hamas during the Second Intifada (2000-2005), which killed hundreds of Israeli civilians, enjoyed a degree of mainstream Muslim legitimacy thanks to Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the highest Sharia authority for the Muslim Brotherhood and one of the Arab world’s most well-known scholars.
Qaradawi famously permitted suicide attacks solely against Israelis, while publicly denouncing the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
But in November, the Egyptian cleric publicly declared suicide attacks, even against Israelis, were no longer allowed. Explaining the reversal, he said the Palestinians had obtained “other capabilities” to defend themselves — a reference to Hamas’s rocket arsenals, used against Israel to devastating effect in recent rounds of conflict.
However, Hamas, founded in late 1980s as a direct splinter group from the Muslim Brotherhood organization based in Egypt, seems to have shrugged off Qaradawi’s ruling and its spokesmen have explicitly dismissed it.

US President Barack Obama used his farewell address Tuesday night to defend his legacy and try to unite a divided country. In recounting his eight years in Washington, he cited the Iran nuclear deal as a central achievement of his administration, but omitted any mention of his efforts to reach Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Forgoing the tradition of delivering his final presidential address to the nation from the Oval Office, Obama spoke in Chicago, his adopted hometown where he met his wife and launched his political career.
With only ten days left till he leaves office and passes the baton of power to President-elect Donald Trump, Obama sought to corral his supporters and fellow Americans to remain optimistic about their ability to protect America’s democratic underpinnings.
The president repeatedly referred to what he considered his signature accomplishments of the previous eight years to press a message that the American people was capable of creating a better future for itself, even in challenging circumstances.

Iranian lawmakers approved plans on Monday to expand military spending to five percent of the budget, including developing the country's long-range missile program which U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to halt.
The vote is a boost to Iran's military establishment – the regular army, the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and defense ministry - which was allocated almost 2 percent of the 2015-16 budget.
But it could put the Islamic Republic on a collision course with the incoming Trump administration, and fuel criticism from other Western states which say Tehran's recent ballistic missile tests are inconsistent with a U.N. resolution on Iran.
The resolution, adopted last year as part of the deal to curb Iran's nuclear activities, calls on Iran to refrain from work on ballistic missiles designed to deliver nuclear weapons. Tehran says it has not carried out any work on missiles specifically designed to carry such payloads.
Tasnim news agency said 173 lawmakers voted in favor of an article in Iran's five-year development plan that "requires government to increase Iran's defense capabilities as a regional power and preserve the country's national security and interests by allocating at least five percent of annual budget" to military affairs.
Only 10 lawmakers voted against the plan, which includes developing long range missiles, armed drones and cyber-war capabilities.

Guido thought the Al-Jazeera sting exposing Israeli ‘diplomat’ Shai Masot and Rob Halfon aide Maria Strizzolo discussing their dislike of Alan Duncan was a fun tale. Was it a “plot” to “take down” a Tory minister? No. Maria Strizzolo was a very junior aide. The truth is MPs and journalists have far tastier conversations with friends at London embassies all the time…
Part two of the sting caught Masot telling Labour Friends of Israel chair Joan Ryan that he could fund trips for MPs to Israel. If you believe Al-Jazeera this is proof of a million pound Israeli conspiracy to buy off British MPs. Again they’ve over-egged it. Pretty much every MP has taken a freebie trip to another country at some point.
Today brings part three: the Israeli embassy helped Jewish students campaign against Malia Bouattia’s election as NUS president. Seriously? Bouattia had been embroiled in some pretty nasty anti-Semitism allegations, is it a surprise or even a bad thing that the Israelis aren’t her biggest fan? Noteworthy that the Qatari-funded Al-Jazeera is siding with an alleged anti-Semite while peddling a bunch of far-fetched anti-Israel conspiracies in a series titled “The Lobby” (that old trope). Guido looks forward to Al-Jazeera’s exposé of Qatari money funding much more sinister activities in the UK…

The French branch of the organization Israel Is Forever on Tuesday announced it had decided to take strong action “on behalf of many French Jews and Israeli Francophones,” to show their dissatisfaction with the upcoming international conference on the Middle East to be held in Paris January 15, whose only goal is to harm Israel.
According to IIF France, its members proposed on Tuesday evening to project the image of the Western Wall with the text “Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the State of Israel” on many facades of the UNESCO building in Paris, as well as on the building fronts of the “disinformation” news agency AFP, and on the Arc de Triomphe.
IIF France argued that France’s voted at Unesco and the UN, along with its initiative for an international conference Sunday, January 15, can only promote terrorism against Israel. They suggested that last Sunday’s terrorist truck ramming attack in Jerusalem was further proof for the notion that the more the PA Arabs sense that the international community is anti-Israel, the more inclined they are to resort to terrorism.
They also issued “An open letter to the President of the French Republic,” which “draws attention to France’s harmful role vis-à-vis the island of stability and democracy in the Middle East.” The letter condemned a policy that undermines prospects for peace and expresses its solidarity with the State and people of Israel.

A wave of telephone bomb threats to 16 Jewish community centers in nine US states may have originated from the same number and been placed by at least one individual and an automated calling system, security officials said on Tuesday.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into the calls, which led to evacuations at some of the community centers on Monday, but resulted in no attacks or injuries. Police who searched the centers found no bombs.
The FBI has not named any suspects or described a likely motive for the bomb threats, and it was not clear why the centers in the US Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and South regions were targeted.
Some of the phone calls were made using an automated "robocall" system, while others were placed live by at least one individual, said Paul Goldenberg, national director of the Secure Community Network, a nonprofit group that advises Jewish groups on security.

Western Sahara, according to The New York Times, is “disputed territory.”
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. The status of the large swath of land between Morocco and Mauritania is indeed disputed. Morocco claims Western Sahara as its sovereign territory; the international community does not agree. There is also an ongoing dispute between Morocco and the Polisario Front, a rebel group that has declared a state of its own on the territory. And the Polisario Front has its own dispute with the international community, which does not recognize its state.
Beyond Western Sahara, the Times over the past year hasn’t hesitated to tell readers about “disputed territory” in Kashmir, claimed by India and Pakistan; the Scarborough Shoal, contested by China and the Philippines; the Spratly Islands, torn between a number of southeast Asian countries; the Yirga Triangle between Eritrea and Ethiopia; Nagorno-Karabakh, contested by Azerbaijan and Armenian separatists; Bartica, claimed by Venezuela and Guyana; and even territories in Syria and Iraq.
But in its coverage of one particular dispute, the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, there is a striking difference in the newspaper’s language: News editors have recently acknowledged what amounts to a new policy of avoiding the term “disputed territory,” even when describing the land most obviously in dispute—the ground on which Israeli settlements in the West Bank are built. In fact, editors go so far as to insist that this land rightfully belongs to the Palestinians.
This discriminatory double standard and blatant partisanship should raise red flags and engender real doubts about a post-election promise by the Times’s publisher and executive editor to “rededicate” the newspaper to honestly reflecting all political perspectives.

Nazi war criminal Alois Brunner, who was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 130,000 Jews, died in 2001 at the age of 89, locked up in a squalid Damascus basement, a French magazine reported Wednesday.
Its investigation — described as “highly credible” by veteran Nazi-hunter Serge Klarsfeld — aims at resolving the fate of one of the most notorious figures of the Holocaust.
Three ex-members of the Syrian secret service interviewed by the magazine XXI said Adolf Eichmann’s former assistant spent his last years in miserable conditions underneath an apartment block in the Syrian capital.
The Austrian-born SS commander was in charge of the Drancy camp north of Paris from which Jews in occupied France were sent to the gas chambers.
He remained to the end an unrepentant Nazi and anti-Semite, the sources told XXI.
One of his guards said Brunner, who went by the name of Abu Hussein, “suffered and cried a lot in his final years, everyone heard him.”

A decades-long, multi-party legal fight over what may or may not be uninhabited West Bank land has become an international incident.
Khirbet Susiya is an unlikely cause-célèbre. Deep in the South Hebron Hills, this shantytown comprises a few dozen tents, animal pens, and German-donated solar panels. Israel insists it was built illegally and wants to demolish it while offering to rehouse the residents nearby. The Palestinian Authority encourages further construction without permits and in defiance of Israeli court orders. The European Union funds this construction, and together with the U.S. and UN publicly warns Israel to back off. Meanwhile, non-governmental organizations on both Left and Right continue to petition the Israeli Supreme Court and wage an international public relations battle over the fate of the windswept hamlet.
How did Israel, the Palestinians, the international community, and an assortment of NGOs reach this unsightly stalemate over an obscure Judean hill?
What follows is based on two expeditions to the area—one visit to the Nawajeh clan in Susiya with left-wing activists, and another to the nearby Jewish settlement of Susya with right-wing activists. It is based on conversations with military officials, diplomats, and political advocates, as well as reams of old maps and contemporary court papers. It is an attempt to make sense of Susiya, and to separate rhetoric from reality. Without declaring winners and losers, this is an attempt to evaluate the facts—while leaving readers to draw their own judgments.

After President Obama greased the wheels for the U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s settlements policy, President-elect Trump tweeted that “things will be different after January 20th.” I didn’t vote for Trump, but for the sake of restoring some sanity to America’s Middle East policies, I fervently hope he fulfills that promise.
To make a real difference, our next president needs to understand how the United Nations’ hostility to the Jewish state is rooted in perverse institutions that have been abetted by previous U.S. administrations. The most glaring example of this is the inaptly named United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). With its $1.3 billion budget (30 percent of which comes from U.S. taxpayers), this agency actually perpetuates the refugee problem it was created to solve, while promoting Palestinian rejectionism and Jew hatred. Trump will soon have the means to drain the UNRWA swamp. If he does so, he would increase the chances of peace between Palestinians and Israelis.
The United Nations created UNRWA with the noblest of intentions. By the time an armistice agreement ended the first Arab-Israeli war in 1949, roughly 700, 000 Palestinians had fled (or were driven) from the territories governed by the new state of Israel. The prevailing view at the time was that refugee problems produced by war were best solved through resettlement in the countries to which the refugees had fled. In the aftermath of World War II, 7 million ethnic Germans in Central and Eastern Europe were the victims of brutal ethnic cleansing campaigns approved by the victorious allied powers. On the Indian subcontinent another 3 million people were uprooted in the violent creation of India and Pakistan. These destitute refugees had to make do in their new host countries with virtually no outside aid. Yet, within a decade, there was no longer a refugee problem in Europe or Asia to trouble the international community.

United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which is funded by the Canadian government the tune of $25 million annually, continues to use textbooks in its schools that demonize and delegitimize Israel, and continue to foment Palestinian hatred towards Israel, according to a new report published in Israel.
UNRWA’s funding, which was cut by the previous Conservative government over its alleged links to Hamas – designated in Canada as a terrorist organization – was resumed by the Liberal government last November. At that time, Marie-Claude Bibeau, Minister of International Development and La Francophonie, announced that the funding will be used to “to support education, health and social services for millions of vulnerable Palestinian refugees, as well as urgent humanitarian assistance.”
Bibeau also attempted to placate UNRWA critics who expressed grave concerns that some of the money may be used to promote incitement to terrorism or be diverted to Hamas by saying that it “there will be enhanced due diligence applied to UNRWA funding. Today’s funding is accompanied by a very robust oversight and reporting framework, which includes regular site visits and strong anti-terrorism provisions.”
According to a brand new investigation from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, UNRWA continues to use textbooks in its schools which incite hatred and violence towards Israel. The books describe Zionism as a foreign “colonial movement” and deny the historical and religious connections between Jews and Israel.
Following the new revelation that UNRWA continues to use hate-filled schoolbooks, Danny Danon, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, slammed the organization. “This is just the latest example of anti-Israel incitement under the auspices of the United Nations,” Danon tweeted. “This is not how you make peace in the Middle East. This is how you raise another generation full of hatred and ready to use violence.”

Fighting Islamophobia is trendy. But it also often becomes a means of enabling and expressing hatred toward others. Especially Jews. It doesn’t take much digging into campaigns against Islamophobia to find the anti-Semitism lurking underneath the bright lights and polished logos.
The Ford Foundation, which in its time had played a key role in the anti-Semitic Durban hatefest, hosted a forum titled, “Confronting Islamophobia in America Today.” Participants included Linda Sarsour, who had promoted the anti-Semitic Muslim practice of throwing rocks at Jews and appeared at a rally for a pro-Hezbollah organization, along with Imam Talib Abdur-Rashid, who had defended Ahmadinejad's call for destroying Israel and described such a proposed atrocity as a sentiment born of "legitimate anger."
Why was the Ford Foundation privileging the persecution fantasies of Islamist bigots who believe that plotting the genocide of millions of Jews is somehow rooted in “legitimate anger”?
The loudest voices inveighing against Islamophobia often justify Islamic terrorism, explicitly or implicitly, even while they whine that being associated with Islamic terrorism is a form of Islamophobia. Indeed the campaign against Islamophobia has, among its agendas, the legitimization of Islamic terrorism.
If Islamic terrorism, and its underlying supremacist hatred of Jews, can’t be discussed, then it also can’t be condemned. And, in a perverse twist, Islamic terrorists then become the victims of Islamophobia.

German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Directorate General for Public Security, classified in its 2016 annual report more than 43,000 Muslims residing in Germany as extremists.
The report, which was published on Friday, stated that 11,000 of these Muslims have “terrorist tendencies.”
Compared to the report published in 2014, the number has not changed much and the scene is somewhat the same, yet the extremism among this category of hardliners has significantly increased.
The report published in 2014 estimated the extremist scene by saying that “the Islamist following in Germanyis 43,890 (2013: 43,190); this was due to the increase in the number of members of the Salafist movement in Germany in particular.”
There is a sharp increase in the number of preservative extremists, whose numbers have been radically increasing for several years due to the emergence of ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
The Directorate classified around 8,650 persons by describing then as part of the conservative extremist party in the country.
Among those extremists in Germany, 11,000 are seen to have terrorist tendencies, according to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and other security agencies.

In difficult economic times Greece is endeavoring to shape its foreign policy with relatively low budgets.
Although cuts in the defense sector have a negative impact, a careful and smart strategy in parallel with some favorable circumstances can counterbalance losses and possibly yield more positive results. It is here where the Greek-Israeli partnership deserves particular attention.
Greece may have lost some of its financial capacity in recent years but has gained a critical ally in the Eastern Mediterranean: Israel. 2016 outlined the excellent level of bilateral and multilateral cooperation and prospects are similarly promising for 2017.
At first glance, energy has the lion’s share following hydrocarbon discoveries in the Levant Basin. The recent Jerusalem trilateral summit with the participation of prime ministers Alexis Tsipras and Benjamin Netanyahu as well as Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades confirmed their determination to examine the possibility of the construction of a gas pipeline linking the three countries. In spite of its technical difficulties and cost, the so-called “EastMed” is supported by the European Commission as a “project of common interest” in diversifying gas imports and will be co-financed by Europe. Further to this, the underwater cable connection of the Israeli, Cypriot and later Greek electricity grids is top on the agenda. The objective is to establish a common electric grid in the future and ensure energy security.

Mmusi Maimane, the charismatic leader of South Africa’s opposition, is currently on a low-profile, private visit to Israel, just two days after South African President Jacob Zuma called on his countrymen not to visit Israel.
Maimane is being accompanied by Michael Bagraim, a Jewish member of parliament from Maimane’s Democratic Alliance (DA) Party. He is expected to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior officials, including opposition head Isaac Herzog and Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat.
The visit was not organized by the Foreign Ministry, though it did facilitate setting up meetings.
One diplomatic official said that Maimane’s visit is part of efforts by both Israel and pro-Israel supporters in South Africa to develop positive relations with key figures in the country, whose current leader has taken stridently anti-Israel positions.
Maimane has been described by diplomatic officials as having an “open mind” on Israel.

Actress Natalie Portman was in fact born in Israel, her agent tells the Washington Free Beacon.
Chris Andrews, Portman’s representative at the Creative Artists Agency (CAA), gave the Washington Free Beacon an emphatic “YES” when asked whether Portman was born in Israel in a stinging rebuke to Julia Child impersonator Meryl Streep’s anti-Israel speech at the Golden Globes.
Streep, who has portrayed a witch and is also represented by CAA, employed an anti-Zionist tactic in her Sunday night speech by deliberately avoiding saying that Jerusalem, the city where Portman was born, is located in the Jewish State of Israel.
The Washington Free Beacon reported that Streep attended a farewell party for President Barack Obama, who has previously used similar tactics to the ones exercised by Streep, on the night before the award show.

The oldest and largest society of US historians rejected two anti-Israel petitions last week, the blog History News Network reported.
At its 131st annual gathering, held in Denver on Jan. 5-8, the American Historical Association (AHA) voted not to take action called for in resolutions filed by Historians Against the War (HAW) — self-described as a group of “historically minded activists, scholars, students and teachers [who] stand opposed to wars of aggression, military occupations of foreign lands and imperial efforts by the United States and other powerful nations to dominate the internal life of other countries.”
Without mentioning Israel or the slant against it in the resolutions — claiming that it violates the academic freedom of Palestinians — the AHA explained that it “upholds the rights of students, faculty and other historians to speak freely and to engage in nonviolent political action expressing diverse perspectives on historical or contemporary issues.”
The AHA first rejected moves by its members to condemn the Jewish state in January 2015, refusing to bend the rules and consider an anti-Israel resolution filed after the deadline. It did so again in 2016, denying a motion claiming that Israel actively blocks education opportunities for Palestinians.

That resolution passed 101-93. The delicious result is that the MLA, which the pro-boycott forces hoped would be the first major academic organization to support BDS, may end up on record against it. Just as the 2014 anti-Israel resolution failed when it went to a vote open to all members, though, so, too, might this one. The rules of the MLA specify that a mere majority in such a vote is insufficient for passage—the majority must represent at least ten percent of the membership. That has proven to be a high hurdle in the past.
Whatever may happen to the anti-boycott resolution, the flat failure of the pro-boycott resolution is a big deal, and, not surprisingly, BDS supporters are perturbed—they were almost too stunned to boo when the Delegate Assembly went against them. They are now recovering enough to act. The anti-boycott forces are “like Trump” and very, very white. Soon, the complaints about the influence of Zionist money will start to appear.
For now, however, I congratulate MLA Members for Scholar’s Rights, who have led the fight to prevent a hostile BDS takeover of their association, on a well-deserved victory.

Gov. Rick Snyder signed a bill on Monday aimed at combating efforts to restrict trade with Israel, making Michigan the 15th state to enact such legislation, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported Tuesday.
While Israel is not specifically mentioned in the legislation, the law states that Michigan’s Department of Management and Budget and all state agencies “may not enter into a contract with a person to acquire or dispose of supplies, services, or information technology unless the contract includes a representation that the person is not currently engaged in, and an agreement that the person will not engage in, the boycott of a person based in or doing business with a strategic partner.”
“This bill sends a strong statement that the State of Michigan stands with Israel, which has long been an important trading partner of Michigan,” said David Kurzmann, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council/AJC. “This is a significant step against prejudice. It will solidify that relationship and prevent companies which boycott Israel based on national origin from doing business with the state of Michigan.”
The law follows the passage of similar measures in Pennsylvania, Illinois, South Carolina, Tennessee, Arizona, Georgia, Colorado, Florida, Alabama, California, New Jersey and Ohio. New York governor Andrew Cuomo approved a similar measure by executive order.

Coldplay has denied an Israeli TV report that it plans to come to Israel in November 2017 for two special “peace concerts” for Israelis and Palestinians.
A representative of the band told Rolling Stone magazine on Tuesday the information was false.
Israel’s Channel 2 reported Monday night that unprecedented joint concerts were scheduled for November 3 and November 4, at an outdoor location north of the Dead Sea, and tickets would be sold both in Israel and in the Palestinian territories.
The TV report gave no specifics of the intended venue, saying only that it is an “agricultural area.” The area immediately to the north of the Dead Sea is in the West Bank, under Israeli control.
Provided final security and other logistical arrangements are completed, tickets will go on sale shortly, the TV report had said.
Coldplay frontman Chris Martin came to Israel two months ago, directly from Mumbai, where the band headlined the Global Citizen Festival.

David Miller is a scholar who seems to find solace in blaming everything he thinks is evil on the West and Israel. He seems to think Zionists are some kind of dodgy group of people sitting in the background funding evil conspiracies.
Shiraz Muhar put a number of questions to Miller several years ago asking why it is that his powerbase website seemed to feature a whole range of utterly benign Jewish organisations such as the Board of Deputies but not many others.
According to Miller he’s been suspended and reinstated to the Labour Party. In comments made at an annual IHRC conference he goes on about how the “Zionists” are funding Islamophobia. Can we even begin to take apart the number of antisemitic tropes contained within that concept? He says;
“this is the word that will get my suspension from the Labour Party, [now] lifted, re-imposed. The Zionist movement is also part of…part of the Zionist movement is also part of this, the Zionist funders which are funding some of the Islamophobic networks, not all of the Zionist movement the liberal left part of the Zionist movement let’s not get into that argument, but there are elements of the Zionist movement that are involved in that as well funding networks so it’s not true to say it’s just the state…”
This is the kind of thinking that merits a round of applause at an IHRC event.

In the minds of most editors, journalists and contributors at The Independent, the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is a straight-forward story of the weak against the powerful, the privleged against the unprivileged, the oppressed and their oppressors.
The fundamental ‘progressive’ principle to which they seem wedded as professional purveyors of news and opinion – to comfort the afflicted and afflict the powerful – is channeled to reveal Israeli culpability, examine the body politic’s darkest inclinations and expose the atavism of heart of modern Zionism. Palestinians, within this ideological framing, are to be championed, comforted, pitied and humanised – but certainly never critically examined nor taken seriously as moral agents who control their own destiny.
In assigning an op-ed to a young British Jew named Emily Hilton (As a young Jew, the news coming out of Israel makes me feel hopeless about ending the occupation, Jan. 10), Indy editors were certain that, regardless of the particulars, the words would abide by the secular catechisms of this moral tale.

Hilton, a board member of Yachad UK and a New Israel Fund UK Fellow, like so many of her political fellow travelers in the US and UK, believes the root cause of most of what plagues the region can be explained by Israel’s 50 year occupation of the West Bank – a theory of political causality so absolute that it necessarily usurps all other particulars, and negates the role of individual actors.

A Lithuanian game show in which a contestant performed a Nazi salute and shouted “Jew” to describe a Jewish composer was taken off the air.
Actress Asta Baukute, a former lawmaker, made the gesture on the “Guess the Melody” episode that aired Friday, Delfi reported. In the charades-style game, contestants act out songs and other music trivia without explicitly naming them.
Standing up in a leather coat and dancing excitedly, Baukute put both the index and middle finger of her left hand to her upper lip — ostensibly to indicate Hitler’s mustache — and raised her right hand in a Nazi salute high in the air. She yelled “Jew” three times in Lithuanian.
She was signaling that she recognized the melody being played belonged to Lithuanian composer Simonas Donskovas, who is Jewish. The show was not aired live, but was recorded several days earlier, according to Delfi.

More than 50 years after the end of the Holocaust, there were still righteous gentiles willing to risk everything they had to help the Jewish people, if not to save their lives, but to at least help them obtain justice.
On the night of January 8, 1997, Union Bank of Switzerland night guard Cristoph Meili discovered that the bank in Zurich was destroying Holocaust-era documents.
“I noticed that carts full with old books and portfolios were being taken to the area where documents are usually destroyed,” he said in his testimony to the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee months later.
With his Christian conscience, at the end of his shift the 20-year-old Meili decided to take some of the documents home to see if the documents were indeed related to the Third Reich or to Jewish clients whose heirs’ whereabouts were unknown.
When Meili returned to the work the next day, all the documents had been destroyed. A week later, after revealing to the Swiss-Jewish population what he had found, the police became involved and the case was made public.
“I also wanted the oppressed Jewish population – the Holocaust victims – to not again be left behind in their search for documentation at the Swiss banks and get justice,” he told the committee.

Stamford Hill’s neighbourhood watch group Shomrim helped make one arrest every three days during 2016, with 19 being for “anti-Semitic crimes,” according to figures released in an annual report.
Among the alleged crimes were burglary, assault, drink driving, indecent exposure and illegal possession of a firearm, while other suspects were alleged to have perpetrated racially-aggravated abuse and harassment of Orthodox Jews.
“Our work resulted in 19 suspects being arrested by police for anti-Semitic crimes, many of whom were charged and have court dates pending,” said the group.
“It also saw eight anti-Semites successfully prosecuted and convicted for anti-Semitic crimes, which is considered a very high number of convictions for anti-Semitism, given that in 2015 there were only 12 known convictions nationwide.”
Work by volunteers from the largely Charedi population drew praise and endorsements from senior police figures, who said their assistance was “relentless and tireless”.

As you’ve probably heard, neo-Nazi website editor Andrew Anglin has called for a march against the Jewish population of Whitefish, Montana, on Jan. 16, MLK Day. In the face of significant public outcry and his own inability to file for basic permits, Anglin is now hedging on whether the march will even take place this month. Meanwhile, others are lining up in solidarity with the Jews of Whitefish.
Last week, the governing officials of the nearby city of Great Falls, Michigan, authored a remarkable resolution in support of their neighbors in Whitefish. Citing George Washington’s famous letter to the Jews of Newport—in which the American founder promised to give “bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance”—and Pastor Martin Niemöller’s famous anti-Nazi poem recounting how “they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out,” the city officials vowed to stand with embattled Jews.
“Recent events in our sister city of Whitefish, Montana, remind us that the plagues of anti-Semitism, ethnic and racial hate, and intolerance remain a stain on an otherwise decent society,” the resolution opened. “We join our Montana Congressional Delegation, elected state leaders, the Whitefish City Council, our Jewish neighbors, representatives of the broader faith community, and all citizens, in denouncing hate, bigotry, and intolerance, which today masquerade under euphemisms such as ‘white nationalism’ and the ‘alt-right’; and … we express our solidarity with our brothers and sisters in the ongoing struggle to free this world of the ideas and conduct that serve to undermine a free and virtuous society.”
“To those who would promote these false ideas long since rejected by civilized peoples,” it concluded, “we say, ‘le’olam lo’—‘Never again!'”

Israel’s Syqe Medical’s $20 million funding deal from Philip Morris International in January last year was the second-largest cannabis deal in 2016, a report by New York-based data firm CB Insights shows.
Global funding in cannabis ventures saw a nine percent drop in 2016 to $220 million from $225 million in 2015, according to the report, with the number of deals also declining to 96 in 2016 from 106 in the same period a year earlier.
The largest deals in 2016 were Washington-based Privateer Holdings, which raised $40 million in convertible notes, Israel-based Syqe Medical‘s $20 million corporate minority round from Philip Morris International, and California-based MedMen‘s $15 million round from Cap-Meridian Ventures, the report said.
Tel Aviv-based Syqe Medical developed a medical cannabis inhaler designed to enhance dosing precision. Privateer Holdings is a private equity firm that invests in medical cannabis companies and has itself raised $144 million since 2013 from investors including Founders Fund and Casa Verde Capital, Snoop Dogg’s cannabis-focused fund. MedMen provides both investment and management services in areas such as cannabis cultivation, extraction, and retail operations, the report said.

Autotalks, an Israeli semiconductor company that makes vehicle-to-vehicle communication systems for use in autonomous driving cars, and Taiwan’s RoyalTek, a maker of global positioning systems (GPS) and satellite navigation technology, have joined forces to improve road safety.
The two companies said they will develop a new vehicle-to-pedestrian product in which cars equipped with Autotalks’ V2X semiconductor chips will be able to “talk” to pedestrians who use RoyalTek’s OMEN device. Designed as a phone case, the OMEN is equipped with chips that will send pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists alerts on their phones when cars get dangerously close and there is a risk of a crash.
The joint product is currently at the prototype stage.
The algorithms that define what constitutes a risk or dangerous situation still need to be worked out, along with what form the alert will take — at the moment it is a visual alert on the phone but a vibration or ring could be added to increase its impact, Autotalks said. The product will also be hacker proof, allowing regular consumer cellphones to be used without compromising their privacy or security.
The companies made their announcement last week at the consumer electronics tradeshow CES 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

A Roman amphitheater discovered during an excavation by the University of Haifa at Hippos, a site overlooking the Sea of Galilee, may support the hypothesis that the facility was used for religious ceremonies instead of entertainment.
Hippos, which is situated on a prominent hill some two kilometers east of the Sea of Galilee within Sussita National Park, is operated by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority.
According to the University of Haifa’s Dr. Michael Eisenberg, who heads the Hippos Excavations Project, the digs outside the city over the past few years “are falling into place like in a detective story.”
“First, we found a mask of Pan, then the monumental gate leading to what we began to assume was a large public compound, a sanctuary,” he said this week at an annual research conference at the school’s Zinman Institute of Archeology. “And now, this year, we find a public bathhouse and theater in the same location – both facilities that in the Roman period could be associated with the god of medicine Asclepius, or with gods of nature, such as Dionysus and Pan.”

Israel has been listed by Harper’s Bazaar as one of the 17 best places to escape to in 2017.
At number 8 to be exact.
Start your trip in the bustling-metropolis-meets-beach-town of Tel Aviv, but then make sure to explore all that this country has to offer. It would be an unfortunate mistake to fearfully paint this country’s complicated politics as war-torn. Don’t be fooled; its vibrant culture, phenomenal food scene, historic landmarks, beaches and endlessly impressive hotels are too much of a draw to ignore. Be sure to tour the shuks (markets) and the historic sites in Jerusalem–a trip to Israel is definitely not complete without a visit to the Kotel, the Wailing Wall. (When you visit, cover up as you would any temple–it’s a place of prayer). While in town, be sure to enjoy the food; the delicious and dynamic scene at Mahane Yehuda is not to be missed.
Then, choose your own adventure: head north to experience jeep rides and hikes in the mountains of the Golan, explore Tel Aviv and Jaffa’s vibrant food, arts and cultural scene, head to the world-renowned Dead Sea spas in the desert or to Eilat for its hippie, beach vibes. Don’t get overwhelmed by the various experiences this country has to offer–you may want to spend 1-2 weeks here to soak it all in, but its size rivals that of New Jersey. If you’re looking to be strategic in planning out the right amount of time in each city, consult an expert like Travel Composer (Israel’s premiere luxury trip planner) who can also advise on attaching a visit to Jordan (and if you do, Petra is a must) and/or Egypt, which should also be on your bucket list.

Experience has proven that the Iranian regime does not seek to make peace with its Arab neighbors, but its main concern is the restoration of the glories of a defunct empire, where they converted Arab Shiite youth to firewood and cannon fodder for their sectarian treacherous, war. This  danger of this system to usurp all political, religious and military areas  exceeds the Israeli danger itself, and we have to be ready for military confrontation with them to end their ambitions, and reduce the risk of [Iran's] sectarian project which is growing by supporting terrorist organizations and militias in the region.

...Although modern analysts say that that these Protocols [of the Elders of Zion] are incorrect and fraudulent despite their spread on a large scale between 1902 and 1920, but it can not be denied that what Iran seeks to reach today is much more dangerous than The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Protocols only wanted to dominate and exterminate the Christians,  while the protocols of Iran seek the malicious destruction of Arab societies and the demonization of Muslims, and the elimination of the ties that bind members of the Arab communities, Sunni and Shi'a Muslims and Christians.

If you read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion , you will find myriad parallels between them and the velayat - e faqih projects and actions and interventions of Iran in the Arab region and the world .

On November 20, 2016, Ayman 'Odeh, chair of the Joint List, an alliance of Arab-dominated parties in the Israeli Knesset, participated in a conference held by the Palestinian Masarat Center for Research and Public Policies. The conference, held simultaneously in Al-Bireh and Gaza under the heading "Reality and Horizons in the Struggle of the 1948 Palestinians [i.e., Israeli Arabs]," was attended by dozens of politicians, academics and social activists. 'Odeh, who attended the conference in Al-Bireh, addressed the political path of the Israeli Arabs and said that, when a conflict arises between their Palestinian and Arab identity and Israeli citizenship, their Palestinian and Arab identity takes precedence, and that is why they avoid taking jobs at various government ministries.

He added that Israeli Arabs have a duty to support the Palestinian struggle and have a national interest in seeing an end to the occupation, the establishment of a Palestinian state and the return of the refugees.

'Odeh called "to form a joint cultural framework [for Israeli and non-Israeli Palestinians] to strengthen national identity, with the PLO's consent." Noting that the PLO cannot represent the Palestinians inside Israel, and that the latter cannot be members of the PLO or its National Council, he added that "there is need for functional separation that will take into consideration the unique [position] of the Palestinians inside [Israel]," and that "the implementation of this idea requires discussion and study."

'Odeh made similar remarks at the opening ceremony of Fatah's Seventh General Conference on November 30, 2016 in Ramallah. He addressed Fatah as "Fatah of the great sacrifices" and "Fatah of the martyrs and prisoners," and, speaking on behalf of his party, called on the Palestinian factions to put aside their differences in order to concentrate on the main struggle, against the occupation. He explained that the Israeli Arabs have a role in helping the occupied Palestinians and in swaying public opinion in Israel, and ended his speech with a quote from Arafat and with a call for the next Fatah conference to be held in Jerusalem: "As the great [Arafat] said, 'people think that [the Palestinian state] is far, but we see that it is near.' Fatah's next conference will be held in East Jerusalem, capital of the Palestinian state, and we shall be there with you."'Odeh's speech was received with applause and cries of the slogan, coined by Arafat, "thousands of martyrs are marching on Jerusalem."

The planned Paris conference was born out of good will, but it comes at a very bad ‎moment. On the one hand, Resolution 2334, recently adopted by the U.N. ‎Security Council, has endorsed the Palestinian narrative that the core of the ‎problem comes down to a geographical issue: the settlements in the West Bank ‎and the 1967 borders. Yet this interpretation does not hold water. Every time Israel ‎has swapped land for peace, it has only earned more terrorism. The most striking ‎and visible case is the Gaza Strip: Since Israel carried out its unilateral ‎withdrawal in 2005, Hamas has ruled in that territory with total impunity and the ‎attacks on Israel have only continued. Thousands of rockets and missiles have ‎been launched from Gaza against civilian populations in Israel.‎
It is easy to believe that the conflict can be reduced to an issue of territories. But that's ‎false. The reality is different.
The real problem is that the Palestinians don't want ‎to give an inch of what the Israelis want, namely, that they recognize Israel as ‎the state of the Jewish people. It is as basic as that; nothing more, nothing less. ‎To demand that Israel renounce any claim to the Western Wall and other places ‎at the heart of Judaism is not just historical nonsense, it is the wrong move. The ‎Palestinians demand east Jerusalem today; tomorrow they will want the entire ‎city, and later, the entire country. In fact, that's what their propaganda teaches. ‎Their school textbooks, all paid for with EU taxpayers' money, are full of hatred, ‎incitement to violence, and clear denial of Israel and the Jewish people.‎
Peace cannot come out of incitement to hatred and violence. It would be good if ‎the participants in Paris would demand that Palestinian leaders end their ‎campaigns and indoctrination against Israel and assume once and for all that ‎Israel was created as the homeland of the Jewish people and that it will ‎continue to be so. The sooner they accept that, the better, so they can reach an ‎agreement with Jerusalem on the drawing of borders.‎
In the same spirit, this international conference would do well to demand that ‎the Palestinian state have transparent institutions, free from corruption, and ‎defend tolerance and peaceful coexistence with neighboring Israel. No ‎liberal democracy should be satisfied if what it establishes and recognizes is a ‎nest of corruption, nepotism, discrimination, and violence.‎

For our ambassadors, terrorism does not exist in "Palestine". They just whisper Quixotically about "the need for security" for Israel.
The obvious conclusion is that they are just trying to hide their own detestation of Israel behind the Arab one.
The problem is not Jewish "settlers" in "Palestine". Before 1967, there were no settlements, then what was the Palestine Liberation Organization "liberating" when it was created in Cairo in 1964? The answer, as the PLO was the first to admit, was "Palestine" -- meaning the entire state of Israel, regarded by many Arabs as just one big settlement. Just look any Palestinian map.
The problem is that these ambassadors are not as dangerous to Israel as they are to Europe and the free world, as they keep on succumbing to the demands of Islam.

First of all, the Israeli settlements are not illegal. They are lawful several times over under international law which the UK Foreign Office persistently and wilfully misrepresents. Second, this profession of the government’s “strong support for a Jewish homeland in Israel” is simply nauseating in view of the fact that resolution 2334 falsely declares that Judaism’s holiest places in Jerusalem, to which the Jews alone have the overwhelming legal, historical and moral claim as the only people for whom Jerusalem was ever their national capital, belong to the Palestinians.
The UN resolution of which Boris Johnson is so proud says in effect that it is illegal for Jews to pray at the Western Wall. It is therefore not just a strike against Israel but a strike against Judaism itself.
Not satisfied with this hypocrisy, Boris Johnson added for good measure that Britain had supported UN resolution 2334 “only because it contained new language pointing out the infamy of terrorism that Israel suffers every day, not least on Sunday, when there was an attack in Jerusalem.”
But resolution 2334, of which Boris Johnson boasts, contributed to the atmosphere of incitement in which last Sunday’s murderous truck-ramming attack, which claimed the lives of four young Israelis and wounded many more, took place. The Palestinians – who thanked Britain and the other supporters of 2334 in a cartoon which threatened more violence against Israel – have ramped up their incitement to murder as a direct consequence of the UN having now endorsed in 2334 their exterminatory lies. Israeli officials have also observed that there has been a sharp rise in the number of violent attacks in the disputed territories, primarily rock-throwing incidents, since 2334 was passed.
No more funny guy, Boris. Perfidious Albion redux, indeed.

Despite 23 years on repeated failure, Martin Indyk remains convinced that he knows exactly how to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Without a trace of embarrassment, he unveiled his latest plan in the New York Times last week, a “Jerusalem first” approach that calls for the Old City to be run by “a special regime that maintained the religious status quo and ensured that the three religious authorities continued to administer their respective holy sites.” But with characteristic disdain for reality, he ignored the elephant in the room: The status quo he seeks to preserve, especially on the Temple Mount, is actually unacceptable to both sides–and should be unacceptable to anyone who cares about the fundamental right of freedom of religion.
Unlike many veteran peace processers, Indyk doesn’t pretend that Jews have no connection to the Mount. He admits that it contains “the ruins of Judaism’s holiest of holies.” He simply seems to think it’s perfectly reasonable to expect Jews to forgo any contact, even the most tenuous, with their holiest site in perpetuity. Not, of course, that he puts it that bluntly. But when you consider what’s happening on the Mount even today, when Islamic authorities don’t yet have absolute control, it’s hard to imagine his “solution” producing any other outcome. And it’s equally hard to see why anyone should consider the current situation acceptable.
Just last week, for instance, Palestinian guards employed by the Islamic Waqf (religious trust) that runs the Mount’s day-to-day affairs tried to eject an Israeli archeologist from the site merely for daring to use the term “Temple Mount” in a lecture to American students. They demanded that he use the Mount’s Islamic name instead, and when he refused, they demanded that Israeli policemen on the site eject him. Other tour guides subsequently told the Times of Israel that this isn’t an uncommon occurrence.

The joint counter-espionage IDF Military Intelligence and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) operation against Hamas that was cleared for publication on Wednesday has revealed that the Gazan terror organization is now equipped with a cyber unit, which possesses considerable abilities. This Hamas cyber unit has been aided by foreign experts in the field.
Hamas's efforts to gain access to IDF soldiers' cellphones through seductive come-ons on social media, which went on for many months, bare witness to the great danger to information security and national security posed by the Internet, smart phones, social networks and all forms of digital communication.
This is not a new phenomenon. However, we are surprised anew each time that we see how exposed we are and how easy it is to gain access to our secrets. Once upon a time the IDF's Field Security unit launched a campaign entitled, "The enemy is listening," in order to increase awareness among soldiers not to run their mouths on communications networks, on phones (landlines) or in random street conversations.
The unit's name has since been changed to Information Security and the technology has become more advanced: All manner of computers have been added, as well as smart phones, which serve not only as communications devices, but also as cameras, recording devices and more. But the essence has not changed - loose lips can be a life or death matter.
Hamas's efforts to penetrate IDF soldiers' and officers' phones was initiated in order to obtain information on IDF units, on training exercises, on operational plans and on weaponry. They show how far the world of espionage has come and what changes it has undergone. Espionage requires fewer and fewer agents, who are very difficult to recruit, in order to obtain intelligence. Instead, the intelligence can be produced through Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter and more.

The United States ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, dodged questions Wednesday morning on her abstention vote last month on a Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements.
CBS host Charlie Rose asked Power what the consequences would be of the Obama administration’s decision to let the resolution pass, which broke with decades of U.S. policy to defend the Jewish state at the U.N. The resolution condemned Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
“I would hope the consequence is that all the parties on the ground who have not been engaged in talks on a two-state solution for some time get motivated to come back to the table,” Power said. “I mean, that was a resolution that enshrined in it opposition not only to settlements but also to violence and incitement of the kind that helps give rise to the kind of attack we saw earlier this week against Israelis.”
Power did not address why the U.S. broke with past policy and allowed the resolution to proceed through the Security Council.

The anti-settlement resolution approved by the UN Security Council last month was “not helpful” and “undermines” the chances of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks being renewed, Rex Tillerson — President-elect Donald Trump’s secretary of state nominee — said at a Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday.
“Israel is, has always been and remains our most important ally in the region,” the former Exxon Mobil CEO said.
Tillerson took aim at outgoing Secretary of State John Kerry, calling his recent speech in which he assailed Israeli settlement construction “quite troubling.”
The 64-year-old Texan also vowed to make fighting the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement a State Department priority.
“Those countries [that support BDS] need to understand that it does shape our view of them,” Tillerson said.
Regarding a potential two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Tillerson said that was “the dream that everyone is in pursuit of.”
“Whether it could ever be a reality remains to be seen,” he went on to say. “I don’t think anyone would take a position that they don’t hope for peace in that area.”

The US should establish a regional coalition to fight terrorism that would include, for the first time, Israel alongside moderate Arab states, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman told The Jerusalem Post.
In an exclusive interview this week, Liberman, who became defense minister in May, spoke about the outcome of the Elor Azaria trial, the investigation against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and ways Israel can work with US President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration. The full interview will appear in the “Frontlines” section of Friday’s Post.
According to Liberman, this coalition would be similar to the one the US established ahead of the First Gulf War in 1991, but would this time include Israel. He is also confident that Arab states that do not have formal ties with Israel would join and serve alongside the Jewish state.
“The moderate Arab world understands that the real threat against it is not Jews, Zionism or Israel, but rather the radicals in the Muslim world,” he said. “I think they would come to a coalition with us, under pressure from the United States.”
According to Liberman, this coalition would help not only in fighting terrorism but also in building trust between Israel and the Palestinians.

A large delegation of House Republicans is preparing to pressure US President-elect Donald Trump to follow through on a campaign pledge to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
In a letter to be sent to the incoming president, which is currently being circulated to garner more signatures from Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill, Trump is encouraged to “take swift action to relocate our embassy to Jerusalem as soon as you take office,” according to a copy of the text.
The letter, which was initiated by Florida Rep. Ron DeSantis (R), has thus far amassed more than 100 signatories in the House GOP caucus to endorse the missive and implore Trump to formally recognize the holy city as Israel’s sovereign capital.
“Moving the embassy will strengthen the unique alliance between Israel and the United States and send a clear message to the world that we support Israel in recognizing Jerusalem as its eternal capital,” the text said.

The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) announced that it would begin its official investigation by the into the ties between UNRWA and terrorist organizations and incitement in official Palestinian Authority textbooks after President-elect Donald Trump takes office on January 20.
The GAO is the supreme audit institution of the US government and provides auditing, evaluation, and investigative services for Congress.
The investigation was requested by Senator James Risch (R-Idaho), the Chairman of the Senate Near East Subcommittee, following briefings on UNRWA's indiscretions to Congress by the Center for Near East Policy Research over the past few years.
Sen. Risch requested that the GAO carry out the investigation of UNRWA in June, 2016. The GAO replied on July 21 that it had received the request from Sen, Risch, and that it would act upon it.
“This is a matter with which I am deeply concerned and I have asked GAO to investigate,” Risch told The Daily Signal news site last Jul.. “I anticipate that the investigation will take some time, however, so I will reserve my comments until after I receive and am able to assess GAO’s findings on the matter.”

An assembly of pro-Israel leaders will head to Capitol Hill Wednesday to urge support for measures that call to repeal a recent United Nations resolution and to move the United States embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
Over 260 members of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), the country's largest pro-Israel lobby, will be pressing for those measures, as well as the confirmation of David Friedman as U.S. ambassador to Israel, in a broad rejection of recent actions by the Obama administration. That includes a United Nations resolution critical of Israel, which passed in December with an abstention from the administration.
"Our leaders across the county have been appalled by the Obama administration's parting shots at Israel. They've been contacting us nonstop, asking that we speak out as effectively as possible," David Brog, the group's founding executive director, said in a statement. "We decided that this was one of those times when we needed to give these leaders an opportunity to come to DC and personally ask their senators to do everything in their power to counteract these anti-Israel moves."
Ahead of the Hill visit, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle reaffirmed their support for the Jewish state and bucked the U.N. resolution, which describes the West Bank and east Jerusalem as occupied Palestinian territory and says that Israeli construction in those areas is a "flagrant violation under international law."

President-elect Donald Trump has promised to get tough with the UN, a corrupt, bloated bureaucracy that for seven decades has existed to provide cushy jobs for international deadbeats, and to promote the interests of tyrannical regimes and anti-American pygmy states. Recognizing the UN’s failures and corruption, some commentators are calling for targeted reductions of the estimated $8-10 billion a year we spend on the UN and its 15 affiliated organizations, thus prodding Turtle Bay to reform. But the better argument is to withdraw completely. Changing the shade of lipstick on this multinational pig is not going to keep it from acting like a pig.
Indeed, “reforming” the UN is a mantra politicians periodically repeat in order to avoid doing what’s necessary to make significant changes. Remember the old UN Human Rights Commission? It was completely ineffective because it regularly seated some of the world’s worst human rights violators, including China, Zimbabwe, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Algeria, Syria, Libya, Uganda and Vietnam. At the same time, as stalwart UN critic Ann Bayefsky wrote in 2002, “Commission members seek to avoid directly criticizing states with human rights problems, frequently by focusing on Israel, a state that, according to analysis of summary records, has for over 30 years occupied 15 percent of commission time and has been the subject of a third of country-specific resolutions.” To add insult to the injury, that same year the Commission passed a resolution giving the Palestinian Arabs the de facto “legitimate right” to use terrorism against Israel.
The serial ignoring of Sudan’s responsibility for the human rights disaster unfolding in Darfur, and the election of Sudan to the Commission finally put an end to the UNHRC, which was replaced in 2006 with the “reformed” UN Human Rights Council. After ten years it’s obvious that the change was cosmetic, as the Council has repeated the same sins of its predecessor. It continues to seat members from nations like current members China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela, all notorious for violating human rights. And it continues its chronic demonization of Israel, which it has condemned five times more than any other country. Nor is this vicious bigotry confined to the Council: last March, the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) condemned only one nation, Israel, for violating women’s rights.
So much for “reform.”

President Obama’s love of golf has drawn a fair amount of scrutiny and criticism over the course of his presidency. As he wraps up Oval Office duties, focusing on a post-White House life, Dear Leader may find himself excluded from an exclusive golf course.
Turns out, the mostly-Jewish run Woodmont Country Club in Maryland is not sure they want to accept President Obama into their membership due to his contentious relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.
“In light of the votes at the UN and the Kerry speech and everything else, there’s this major uproar with having him part of the club, and a significant portion of the club has opposed offering him membership,” a source told the New York Post:
But members of the mostly Jewish club are at each other’s throats over whether to accept the golf-loving president, with many saying he deserves to be snubbed for not blocking an anti-Israel vote at the United Nations, according to the sources.
Obama’s UN decision was followed by a speech by Secretary of State John Kerry that was seen by many in the Jewish community as hostile to Israel.
“In light of the votes at the UN and the Kerry speech and everything else, there’s this major uproar with having him part of the club, and a significant portion of the club has opposed offering him membership,” a source told The Post.

Greek company Energean Oil & Gas plans to build its own production system in the eastern Mediterranean at a cost of up to $1.5 billion to tap two Israeli offshore gas fields, the group’s chief executive said on Wednesday.
Greece’s only oil producer is also looking to bring a financial partner into the project to develop the Tanin and Karish fields which are situated in deep waters around 100 kilometres (62 miles) off Israel’s coast and have combined gas reserves estimated at 2.4 trillion cubic feet.
Energean bought Karish and Tanin last August for $148 million from U.S.-Israeli partners Delek Group and Noble Energy, who are developing two much larger fields nearby and were required by Israel to sell off other discoveries in an effort to open up the sector to competition.
Rather than piggyback off that group’s infrastructure, an idea previously floated by some experts, Energean plans to lease its own floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel and build a separate pipeline to Israel.
“We are going to be a totally independent system,” CEO Mathios Rigas told Reuters, adding that a combination of local and international banks will help finance the $1.3-$1.5 billion needed.

Israel hopes to market its natural gas to Turkey, and via Turkey to the EU, but this aim may hang on the outcome of the potentially historic Cypriot peace negotiations currently underway in Geneva. Since an undersea gas pipeline from Israel’s Leviathan natural gas field to Turkey requires crossing Cyprus’s economic exclusion zone, failure to reach an agreement could force Israel to return to an older plan of marketing its natural gas via Egypt. However, in the new energy and geopolitical realities of the region that emerged in 2016, Israel’s selection of Egypt as its major export option could result in the Russia’s rise as a central player in Eastern Mediterranean energy.
The divided island of Cyprus has a “once in a generation” opportunity to resolve the conflict and unite the island. Greek Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades and his Turkish counterpart Mustafa Akinci have worked assiduously toward an enduring solution, narrowing the gap between the two sides on the most vexing issues blocking reunification. The current talks between the parties in Geneva will turn into an international conference on January 12 to include the three guarantor powers – Turkey, Greece, and the United Kingdom – for the first time since 1960.
However, while Greek and Turkish Cypriot positions are closer than ever before, there has emerged a widening gap between their guarantors in Athens and Ankara. The attempt to arrive at a settlement at this singularly exceptional moment could falter on Greece and Turkey’s failure to agree on the issue of guarantees.
The greatest beneficiary of a failure in Geneva would be Russia and its efforts to further expand its widening strategic footprint in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Saying that he is “heartened” by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to rebuild relations with Africa, Sierra Leone’s visiting President Ernest Bai Koroma said on Wednesday he hopes to “rekindle” his country’s long-standing “fraternal relationship” with Israel.
Koroma’s comments came before a meeting with Netanyahu on the second day of his visit here, the first-ever visit to Israel by a Sierra Leonean president.
Koroma said he hopes to “reposition” the Sierra Leone-Israel relationship to what it was around the time of his country’s independence in 1961. He noted that both before and immediately after independence, Israel provided support for his country that resulted in the construction of numerous public buildings in the capital of Freetown.
Sierra Leone joined the bulk of other African countries in breaking off formal diplomatic ties with Israel following the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

A US court this week ordered the governments of Iran and Syria to pay nearly $200 million to the family of an Israeli infant killed by a Hamas terrorist in a 2014 vehicular attack in Jerusalem.
The US District Court in Washington, DC ruled Tuesday that Tehran and Damascus were liable to provide compensation for damages amounting to $178,500,000 due to their financial backing of the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas.
The Israeli NGO Shurat HaDin represented the family of dual Israeli-American citizen Chaya Zissel Braun, the three-month-old baby who was killed when Palestinian terrorist Abdel Rahman Shaludi rammed his vehicle into a crowd of people at the Ammunition Hill light-rail station in the capital. Israeli officials identified the perpetrator as a convicted terrorist who had previously served a prison sentence and had ties to Hamas.
Due to the infant's dual nationality, her parents and grandparents filed the case with the US court. The case was won on default judgement as at least one defendant failed to appear before the court.
“The criminal regimes in Tehran and Damascus are the biggest state sponsors of terrorism in the world," said Shurat HaDin lawyer Nitsana Darshan-Leitner. "This judgement sends a clear message that there is a very heavy price to be paid for financing terrorism and spilling innocent blood in the streets of Jerusalem."
The US State Department condemned the October 2014 attack "in the strongest possible terms."

Hamas praised the Jerusalem truck terror attack as “heroic.” The Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated group features a charter that reminds us of the popular motivation of the Palestinian struggle. It declares, “For our struggle against the Jews is extremely wide-ranging and grave, so much so that it will need all the loyal efforts we can wield, to be followed by further steps and reinforced by successive battalions from the multifarious Arab and Islamic world, until the enemies are defeated and Allah’s victory prevails.”
Palestinian jihad in Jerusalem also enjoys PLO and Palestinian Authority financial and rhetorical support. Brigadier General Yossi Kuperwasser’s January 2017 Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs report “Incentivizing Terrorism: Palestinian Authority Allocations to Terrorists and their Families” confirms that official Palestinian Authority legislation guarantees more than $310 million dollars in annual allocations to terrorists and their families. PA and PLO leadership have long incited Palestinians to murder Israelis. PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas both claim Israel is destroying the al-Aqsa Mosque. This libel was also one of the central sources of incitement to terror in Jabal Mukaber, according to Issacharoff.
Both the Netanyahu government and the Labor Party-led Knesset opposition equally reject the double standards some in the West apply to terrorism against Israel. Israeli opposition leader Isaac Herzog has noted the magnitude of the jihadi challenge. Following the 2015 ISIS attacks in Paris, Herzog said: “We need to be very precise. All the nations that seek peace and liberties, the democratic nations, are facing an enormous challenge from fundamentalist, extremist, Muslim terrorism – which is ISIS and all its precursors, al-Qaida and so forth. Terrorism is terrorism. There’s no two ways about it.”
Herzog’s warning reflects Netanyahu’s assessment of the similarities between ISIS and other jihadi truck terror in Berlin, Nice and Jerusalem.
Islamic jihadists in Europe and Jerusalem have heeded Herzog and Netanyahu’s latest warning in both rhetoric and action. That’s why the West must condemn and battle Islamic terror unconditionally, equally, and without reservation wherever it strikes.

The widow of the terrorist who committed Sunday’s truck-ramming attack at the Haas Promenade in Jerusalem, killing four Israeli soldiers and wounding another 15, will receive a lifetime monthly stipend as a reward for her husband’s “martyrdom for Allah,” a prominent research organization reported on Wednesday.
According to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), Fadi al-Qanbar’s widow, a resident of the Jabel Mukaber neighborhood in east Jerusalem, will receive a total of NIS 2,900 (approximately $760) each month, in accordance with Palestinian Authority law.
PMW broke down the sum, based on the statute, as follows:
All families of “martyrs” receive a base monthly payment of NIS 1,400 ($365). Widows of “martyrs” receive an additional NIS 400 ($104). NIS 200 ($52) is paid for each of their children; al-Qanbar has four. And Jerusalem residents, such as al-Qanbar, receive an extra NIS 300 ($78).
In addition, within the next few months, al-Qanbar’s widow will receive a one-time grant of NIS 6,000 ($1,580).
In October, US Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Dan Coats (R-IN) and Roy Blunt (R-MO) introduced the Taylor Force Act — named after the American military veteran who was stabbed to death in Tel Aviv in March by a Palestinian terrorist — which would cut off funding to the PA if it continues its policy of dispensing monetary rewards for terrorism.

Jerusalem prosecutors said Thursday that they had formally reached a plea bargain with a Border Police officer who in 2014 allegedly shot dead a teenage Palestinian protester in the West Bank, and was subsequently charged with wrongful death.
The family of the Palestinian teen, 17-year-old Nadeem Siam Nawara, has vowed not to accept the agreement, rejecting the defense’s arguments that the officer, Ben Deri, had not realized he was using live ammunition instead of rubber bullets when he was ordered to disperse a crowd of protesters during Nakba Day demonstrations in the West Bank village of Beitunia, near Ramallah, in May 2014.
A police investigation into the shooting found that Deri, who was 21 at the time of the incident, confirmed that he had used a live round rather than nonlethal munitions.
Nawara was killed along with fellow protester Muhammad Abu Taher, 22. A video released following the incident appeared to show that Nawara was shot while he was some distance from the demonstration and apparently posed no threat to Deri’s Border Police unit.
Nawara’s family had previously vowed to use every means possible to see justice served, including an appeal to the International Criminal Court.

Qatar has been trying to broker a prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Hamas that would see the Gaza Strip-based terrorist group return two captive Israeli citizens and the remains of two Israeli soldiers, the Nazareth-based Kul al-Arab newspaper reported Wednesday.
According to the report, negotiations have been brokered by Mohammed al-Emadi, Qatar's envoy to the Gaza Strip and head of the Qatari National Committee for the Reconstruction of Gaza.
The report has not been corroborated by any Israeli source, and Hamas has denied any indirect negotiations are taking place.
Senior Hamas official Salah Bardawil was quoted by Kul al-Arab as saying, "I'm not aware of any Qatari involvement, but there are talks between the parties on this issue."
IDF 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 Hisham al-Sayed, both suffering from mental health issues, crossed into Gaza willingly in 2014 and 2015 and were captured by Hamas.

Police said Thursday they had recommended indicting Sheikh Raed Salah, the head of an outlawed Islamist group, on suspicion of incitement to terrorism and violence, as well as supporting an illegal organization.
In a statement, police said an investigation into Salah was completed last week and that the case had been passed to Haifa District prosecutors for review.
Salah is currently serving a nine-month sentence for a previous conviction of incitement and is due to be released from prison next month. Investigators began questioning the sheikh about the recent allegations in December. They apparently concern evidence from before he began serving out his prison sentence.
The investigation into Salah, head of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement, by police’s Lahav 433 major crimes unit was launched with the approval of the State Attorney’s Office, police spokeswoman Luba Samri said in a statement.

The Palestinian Authority will open an embassy in the Vatican on Friday, capping a significant boosting of ties between Ramallah and the Holy See, the PA’s official news outlet Wafa reported on Thursday.
The inauguration will be attended by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and comes a little over a year and half after the Vatican officially recognized the state of Palestine in a move that was then highly criticized by Israel’s Foreign Ministry.
Issa Kassissieh, Ramallah’s ambassador to the Holy See, called the opening of the embassy a “big achievement for the Palestinian people, considering the pope and the Apostolic Nuncio have adopted the moral legal and political position to recognize the State of Palestine on the 1967 borders.”
He added that the opening of the embassy was a result of “the long journey of sacrifices for our people, which led to the overall agreement signed between the state of Palestine and the Vatican.”

Residents of Gaza were outraged at criticism of Hamas’ cross-border tunnels, used mainly for smuggling, by the Palestinian Authority’s official TV channel.
The criticism emerged during a debate on the electricity crisis in Gaza, as the number of hours Gazans are provided with electric power decreased to three per day as opposed to eight.
Earlier this week, several demonstrations took place in Gaza over the increasingly difficult conditions, against the backdrop of a cold spell that struck the Strip.
Hamas has traded blows over the crisis with the Palestinian Authority, which they kicked out of Gaza in 2007. Hamas claims that the PA failed to pay the bills to their Israeli service provider and demanded that the tax on electricity in Gaza be increased, while the PA accuses Hamas of wanting free electricity, and while ordinary citizens bear the brunt of the crisis, Hamas’ tunnel network remains unaffected by the shortage.
The PA’s official TV channel organized a panel discussion on the matter, which was dedicated to placing the blame on Hamas. Supporters of the terror group were outraged, especially by a caption that read, “Gaza in total darkness… and the tunnels are lit.”

Leaders of Hamas’ armed military wing announced this week that its engineers had produced a new type of rocket with a maximum range of about 500 meters capable of reaching the Gaza Strip’s Hamas and United Nations-run schools.
One Hamas commander, Mahmoud Al-Tahabri, emphasized that in the past Hamas had tried to extend the range of its rockets to reach all Israeli cities, but that ultimately this was a failed strategy. He continued, “the rockets that we launch into Israel ultimately have little practical damage, other than the occasional bullseye. But every time a school blows up in Gaza, the entire world turns against Israel. Usually we have to bait the Israelis by launching rockets from either near or actually at the schools, and just pray for a stray Jewish missile. But now we’ve streamlined the process by firing the rockets directly at the schools. We expect that this will contribute heavily to winning the media battle in future conflicts with Israel.”
Reactions from Israeli officials have been mixed. Most have simply accepted the fact that these school attacks will be attributed to Israel despite the fact that Hamas admitted to these rockets on multiple international media platforms. Others on the ultra right-wing were quoted as saying “at least the Arabs are killing each other and not us.”

Hamas and the Egyptian government have agreed on a series of measures to alleviate the blockade on the Gaza Strip, a senior official in the movement told Breitbart Jerusalem.
According to the source, the outcome of the negotiations, led by Hamas’ deputy head of diplomacy Mousa Abu Marzouk (pictured) and Egyptian officials, was Egypt’s agreement this week to allow vehicles and goods into the Strip via the Rafah crossing. He said that the purpose of these measures is to benefit the Egyptian economy, and to bolster Hamas’ status and security along the Gaza-Egypt border.
“We cannot deny that Egypt’s gestures have been coordinated with Israel, but the bottom line is that Egyptian goods have entered the Strip, which benefits the Egyptian economy,” he said. “We, on our part, continue to enforce the peace along the border and prevent pro-Islamic State jihadists from using the territory as a launching pad for attacks against Egypt.”
He added that Abu Marzouk and Cairo agreed on setting up a joint command to fend of local Salafi extremism, and that he briefed the Egyptian intelligence on all the information Hamas had gathered from interrogating the jihadists it detained, which could serve Egypt in its ongoing effort to clamp down on Welayat Sinai, the local IS affiliate.
Meanwhile, a Palestinian Authority official, speaking to Breitbart Jerusalem, accused Egypt of bolstering Hamas at the expense of the PA.

Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Republic Guard Corps’ elite Qods Force, is responsible for the deaths of more Americans than any other terrorist except for the late Osama bin Laden. Soleimani has also worked tirelessly to supply Hezbollah, prop up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s murderous regime, and support terrorist groups operating against Israel. Simply put, he should be at the top of the list to capture or eliminate under a Trump administration.
That said, U.S. diplomats could learn a great deal from Soleimani about how the Islamic Republic really works. The basis of Obama administration outreach to Iran under both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her successor, John Kerry, was that factionalism in Iran mattered. They believed that President Hassan Rouhani and his predecessors, Mohammad Khatami and the late Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, were truly reformers, moderates, or pragmatists with whom true rapprochement might be negotiated.
But speaking against the backdrop of Rafsanjani’s funeral, Soleimani described the true Rafsanjani: He “possessed the same disposition from the beginning to the end” Soleimani said, but varied his tactics. “Otherwise, he [Rafsanjani] was against the Arrogance [the United States] and Zionism,” he added.
In other words, Iran’s master terrorist and chief military tactician acknowledged that what many in the West see as hope for reform is actually an elaborate game of good cop-bad cop which Iranians use to avoid accountability for terrorism and to relieve financial pressure.

A Syrian man recovering in an Israeli hospital said that while the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is his enemy, the Syrian people “want peace with Israel,” The Jerusalem Post reported Wednesday.
Fadi, 45, arrived last week at Ziv Medical Center in Safed, which has treated some 800 wounded Syrians since February 2013. A former member of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which fights against the Assad regime, Fadi sustained a shrapnel wound during a car bombing last year while distributing food to villagers. At the time, he came to seek treatment at Ziv and had a metal apparatus placed on his leg.
He has since returned to receive further treatment in the Israeli hospital, which he called “excellent. The most perfect care. I hope the leg will be fully treated and healed. If God wills it, I’ll be able to run.”
Fadi, his wife, and their four children were forced to leave their home village after it was devastated during the Syrian conflict, which has claimed more than 450,000 lives since 2011. “There has been complete destruction caused by the regime through artillery, planes, barrel bombs from helicopters and tanks,” he said.
He left the FSA three years ago “because people deviated from the goal to achieve justice for all people,” but said that he remained active in his local village council until the car bombing.
Fadi argued that Assad must be removed from power so that Syrians can have peace and “live in coexistence as one people without wars and to create a popular basis of friendship and brotherliness and to renounce violence.”

1948: • The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel‖ is issued. It equates Eretz-Israel (in Hebrew the Land of Israel) to the territory of British Mandate Palestine, in contrast to the provisions of 1947 United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 on the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine into two Independent Arab and Jewish States with a special international regime for the City of Jerusalem.

This past November, the student newspaper at McGill University in Montreal responded to accusations that it had been providing a platform for anti-Semitism. While denying the specific charge, the editors emphatically reasserted their core position—namely, that the student paper “maintains an editorial line of not publishing pieces which promote a Zionist worldview, or any other ideology which we consider oppressive.”
This blunt statement is a reminder that hatred of the Jewish state is rapidly becoming the default position on many college campuses. Meanwhile, Israel’s friends, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, are left to ask what, if anything, can be done to stem the rising tide of anti-Israel venom.
In more than five years of involvement in advocacy for Israel, both as a college student and in a professional capacity, I’ve spoken at hundreds of events, worked with dozens of organizations, designed campus programs and social-media campaigns, and advised members of Congress, donors, and even Israeli government officials on how best to advance the cause of the Jewish state. As a member of the “millennial” generation, I have also been privy to the frustrations and complaints of my activist, pro-Israel peers whose own enchantment with the Jewish state is a driving force in their lives and who believe that too much institutional support is going to forms of advocacy that have outlived their usefulness.
Partially in response to these frustrations, I conducted a year-long study of how pro-Israel groups engage millennials. What works? What doesn’t? How to improve? In addressing those questions, I compared the available survey data about the attitudes of young Americans toward the Jewish state with what pro-Israel groups are currently doing to reach them, and conducted hundreds of interviews with students, professors, essayists, and professional activists.
The conclusion I eventually arrived at, presented below in severely boiled-down form, is that some kinds of Israel advocacy are at best of limited effectiveness and at worst can do more harm than good. Yet I also found some approaches that promise significantly greater success.

Diverging from the signals the president-elect has been sending out, James ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis opts to ‘stick with US policy’
President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Pentagon said Thursday that the United States should continue treating Tel Aviv as Israel’s capitol, breaking with Republican members of Congress and indications the incoming president could fulfill his campaign pledge to move the US embassy to Jerusalem.
Asked during his confirmation hearing with the Senate Armed Services Committee if he supported the embassy’s relocation, retired Marine Corps general James “Mad Dog” Mattis said, “Right now I stick with the current US policy.”
Facing an hours-long session of questions from senators, he emphasized that “the capital of Israel is Tel Aviv” because, he said, “that’s where all the government people are.”
The last three successive presidents have maintained that the future status of Jerusalem should be settled in final negotiations between the parties, as both Israelis and Palestinians claim the city as their rightful capital.
But Trump has indicated since his surprising victory in November he will no longer honor that tradition. In December, he nominated his longtime friend and attorney David Friedman, a vocal supporter and donor to West Bank settlements, to be the next US ambassador to Israel
In a statement announcing the selection, Friedman said he expected to carry out his duties in “Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem.”

Corked is a word that defines something special turning rotten. A wine that is flawed due to a damaged or broken cork. In this case, it is perhaps fitting that Oren Ben Dor chose UCC, or University College Cork, as the new site for the failed academic hate-fest from two years ago. The hate fest, the venom, the anti-Israel activism posing as academic thought, the deception, the rush to be top of the ‘Israel hating’ pile. This is what happens when academia is not preserved properly. When unwanted and unsavoury elements are allowed to infest and spoil the natural academic process. The proposed conference is effectively ‘corked’.
What do you do when on the one hand you want to adhere to the strongest principles of free speech, but on the other believe that academia is being used for something illegitimate.
For two years, the organisers of the disgraceful Southampton conference have had the ability to rent the local hall, pull these activists together, and conduct this vile call for the destruction of Israel in private. This is not good enough for them.
Almost all the academics involved are activists. People who are apparently on a mission to bring about the end of the democratic state of Israel. These people, in the vast majority, see Israel as an Apartheid, Nazi-like state. The conference is seen by these people, as part of their activism.
Therefore, it is not the ‘in gathering’ of like-minded people that is important. It is not about the discussion, but rather how the output can best be utilised to further delegitimise Israel and strengthen their personal cause. They need this to be in a university because they must have the academic stamp of approval.

This is the man who spent six months undercover for a sting that aimed to expose “attempts by the Israeli government to influence British democracy” – but his true identity remains hidden four days after the story broke.
The reporter, posing as a pro-Israel Labour activist by the adopted name Robin Harrow, first made contact with Shai Masot, then assistant to deputy ambassador Eitan Na’eh, last summer.
He subsequently spent considerable amount of time with him, even accompanying him to a Jewish Labour Movement meeting between Ambassador Mark Regev and a group of young Israeli Labor leaders, and social gatherings such as the one where he made his much-reported remarks about ‘taking down’ Alan Duncan.
To create his persona, ‘Harrow’ set up a fake Twitter account promoting pro-Israel messages and also a blog on the Times of Israel, with a bio describing himself as German-born and having taken part in Israel exchange programmes in school. He also professed his fascination with the strength of Israeli society “to live under such circumstances and continue to grant civil rights to all citizens”.
In one in which he lauds the treatment of LGBT people compared to other parts of the Middle East, he wrote that those calling themselves anti-Zionist are “effectively saying that Israel should not exist”. He added: “If the Labour Party loses its path, leaves the progressive camp and sanctions terrorist groups like Hamas, we lose more than legitimacy and electability in the minds of the electorate. The Labour Party will lose its soul and open the door to a new wave of anti-Semitism.”

Guido can unmask the undercover operative who carried out Al-Jazeera’s sting targeting Israelis in London. Multiple sources confirm that the man above is ‘Robin Harrow’, the name used by a Qatari-funded undercover journalist who infiltrated the Israeli Embassy. ‘Harrow’ claimed he was German, sources say he convinced young Jewish activists he was a supporter of Israel by telling them he was guilty about the Holocaust and his country’s history. A charming cover story.
‘Harrow’ told Jewish community members he was a recent graduate of the University of Berlin, and suddenly announced he was “returning to Germany” before the story broke and deleted his Twitter account. A bogus pro-Israel opinion piece he wrote for The Times of Israel as part of his cover has disappeared:
All that hard work creating his cover story and this is all he could catch the pesky Zionists doing?

An employee at Israel’s embassy in Britain resigned a few days after he was caught on film conspiring to discredit British politicians.
Shai Masot was filmed by an undercover reporter for al-Jazeera conspiring to “take down” certain MPs — notably Foreign Office minister Alan Duncan — who were perceived as unfriendly to Israel. The footage was published Sunday in British media.
The Foreign Ministry said Thursday that his resignation was offered two days ago in response to the exposé.
Israeli Ambassador Mark Regev apologized for Masot’s actions and made it clear that the remarks made in the video about UK lawmakers were “unacceptable.”
“The Embassy of Israel rejects the remarks concerning Minister Duncan, which are completely unacceptable; the comments were made by a junior embassy employee who is not an Israeli diplomat, and who will be ending his term of employment with the embassy shortly,” spokesman Yiftah Curiel wrote in a statement posted to his Twitter account Sunday.

Introduction
In 2015, the United Nations adopted the 2020 Agenda for Sustainable Development as a vision for transforming global development over the next 15 years "to be building a more peaceful, prosperous, sustainable, and inclusive future." The agenda asserts that young women and men "are critical agents of change, and are central to achieving sustainable development."
The report under review, the sixth in a series of reports on Arab development issued by the United Nations Development Programme, was released on November 29, 2016 at the American University in Beirut.
The "Arab Spring" And Its Aftermath
In presenting the report, a UNDP official highlighted the fact that its publication comes five years after the events of 2011, referred to rather optimistically at the time as "The Arab Spring." The contribution of the youth in the promising events of 2011 was considered by some as "a glimmer hope for a new renaissance," whereas others considered it "a seditious influence dragging the region into chaos and jeopardizing its future." The report offers a comprehensive and detailed analysis of the challenges youth face in terms of human development process and seeks to bring these young people "back into the centre – politically, economically and socially...
While we would have wished otherwise, in reviewing the report we find that the critics of the "Arab Spring" were more realistic in their assessment of the events of 2011 than those who were inclined to see bright stars in the sky. If anything, Arab youth today remain mired in poverty; they are politically marginalized and voiceless, economically disenfranchised, and socially prone to radicalization and violence. Theirs is a fragile and often volatile existence.

A local merchant knows whom to blame each time he encounters adversity: the nefarious forces bent on undermining Islam and Arabs.
Samwan Elss, 41, has faced multiple instances today of his will being thwarted and his expectations unmet, forcing him to conclude that only a sinister cabal of global dimensions has the power to affect his life in such consistent and detailed ways. Elss, a father of six, weighed the cumulative evidence and determined that all his negative experiences to date can be traced to the activities of this cabal, which must have important plans riding on his failures if they are so bent on producing them.
“I thought I was just a clothing and trinkets seller in a touristy part of this city,” he remarked. “But it turns out that my life is much more significant on a global scale than I had assumed, because there is no way my shortcomings and lack of good luck can explain the extent to which I have suffered disappointment after disappointment. The only way to make sense of it all is to attribute my frustrations, flaws, and misfortunes to a greater power with a vested interest in keeping me down. The Jews are the obvious culprit, but they hide their direct involvement well.”
Among the failures, explained Elss, is his being born into a lower-middle-class family and not, as he would have liked, into the economic elite. “Clearly I cannot be blamed for the setup of this situation, and therefore someone else must be guilty,” he reasoned. “If I were able to choose, would I have deprived myself of the luxuries and freedoms enjoyed by those who have the means to indulge themselves in all the pleasures of the world? Of course not. These sinister forces are determined to push me down and keep me there.”

On Sunday, Ali Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former President of Iran and a major figure in its Islamic Revolution of 1979, died at the age of 82. In the British media, most obituaries have characterised him as a moderating force in Iranian politics –the Telegraph characterises him as a “pragmatic conservative,” the Financial Times details his support of reformists in Iran, and the Guardian, whilst acknowledging that he was often ruthless, says that overall he can be characterised as a “pragmatic liberal”.
There is much that is missing or played down in these obituaries to maintain this image – his links to global terror and corruption being noticeable examples. But, one gaping hole in all the above obituaries is the failure to mention Rafsanjani’s record on Jews and Israel, one of hatred and murder.
Rafsanjani talked openly of the destruction of Israel. “Israel is a fake, temporary state. It’s a foreign object in the body of a nation, and it will be erased soon,” he said in 2015. In December 2000, he told residents of Israel to expect a “reverse exodus,” when they are forced to leave when the “tumour” of Israel is removed from the map. For decades he attended the Qods Day rally, Iran’s annual day for anti-Zionist rhetoric, and calls for the end of the Jewish State.
But Rafsanjani was not only guilty of hateful rhetoric about Israel. He has Israeli and Jewish blood on his hands. During his Presidency (1989 – 1997), Hezbollah, the Iranian backed terrorist group, bombed the Israeli embassy in Argentina in 1992, as well as the AMIA Jewish centre in Buenos Aires in 1994, killing 85 people. As The Tower recently noted, Argentine investigators believe the AMIA bombing was approved at a meeting attended by Rafsanjani. (The prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who formally accused Iran of involvement in the attack, and Argentina for covering this fact up, was mysteriously found dead in 2015.)

Bernard-Henri Lévy, France’s leading public intellectual, returns to the United States in January to promote his new book, The Genius of Judaism, perhaps the fullest expression yet of his commitment to the Jewish faith, Jewish culture, and the continued flourishing of the State of Israel. Newly-returned from the Iraqi city of Mosul, where he accompanied Kurdish peshmerga fighters combating ISIS, Lévy spoke by phone with Ben Cohen, senior editor of The Tower.
In your new book, The Genius of Judaism, you demonstrate the depth of your Jewish identity. How has that identity guided you in your writing and advocacy on behalf of those nations and communities, particularly in the Middle East, suffering from war, religious persecution and ethnic cleansing?
My relationship to Judaism is the most important thread of my life as a committed intellectual. When I report about the most forgotten wars, as I did a few years ago in Africa and elsewhere, when I commit myself, as I do these very days with the battle for Mosul, when I commit myself, as I did 25 years ago, with the people of Sarajevo besieged by the Serbs – when I do all of that, I am faithful to this obligation, this duty, of going to the other and embracing his otherness, which is at the heart of the Jewish identity as I conceive it in my book.

French author and philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy was “deeply shocked” by the passage of an anti-Israel resolution at the UN Security Council Resolution last month, he explained in a commentary published Thursday in The Algemeiner.
The United Nations, where Israel has been vilified for years, is “one of the last places on earth” one would expect a “balanced or courageous stance” concerning Israel, he wrote. Given the failure of the international community to stop the killing of civilians in Syria, “how could they dare to portray little Israel as the great barrier to peace? How could they imagine that by doing so they might recover in the applause of those in attendance a share of their lost honor? And what is one to make of the splintered and anemic international community trying to repair itself on the back of the Jewish state? All of this was as pathetic as it was ghoulish.”
Levy also tore into the “poor wording” of the resolution’s text, which criticized Israeli construction in eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank. While the resolution also condemned “acts of terror,” it assigned no responsibility for them. Levy pointed out that the resolution also fails to address “Palestinian obstinacy,” the “double-speak” of the Palestinian Authority, or Palestinian leaders’ incitement of terror. “Nothing,” Levy observed, “was equal in perfidy to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”
The resolution was offered before the Security Council because global leaders felt that they were acting to save the two-state solution. But Levy countered that such an agreement is still far from impossible. The scale of withdrawal from areas in the West Bank where Israelis are now living “is not radically different” from Israel’s past actions in the Sinai Peninsula or the Gaza Strip. Such evacuations would be “admittedly painful,” Levy conceded, so he offered an additional “option that I am amazed is so seldom raised —namely, that Jews should be invited to stay and live in the new Palestine, just as 1.5 million Palestinians now live in Israel as full citizens.”

Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from The Genius of Judaism (Random House), published January 10, 2017.
The fact remains that anti-Semitism exists.
Some had thought it dead, obsolete, cast aside.
Wrong.
It is back.
Making new connections.
It has even begun to strike and to kill—to growing indifference—in French cities.
And, moreover, because observers of the phenomenon often seem blind to its new reality and, believing that they are confronting it, grapple only with its shadows, I see no option but to begin by describing the new guise of the oldest form of hate.
For, in the beginning, are words.
Anti-Semitism is a very special form of madness, one of the features of which has always been, at every step in its history, choosing the right words to make its madness look reasonable.
At bottom, it is a language of pure rage, of brute violence without logic, which knows that it is never more convincing, never so strong or blessed with such a bright future, as when it succeeds in dressing up its resentment in legitimate-looking clothes.
And the anti-Semite is someone who, at the end of the day, has always managed to make it appear as if the hate that he feels for some is no more than the effect or reflection of the love he claims to feel for others.

Israel has always been appreciative of New Delhi's security imperatives. New Delhi, however has yet to be fully appreciative of Israel's security imperatives.
New Delhi has yet to be morally conscientious enough openly to back Israel in multilateral fora such as the United Nations. One hopes Prime Minister Modi would show the statesmanlike leadership at which he is so expert and which makes him so admired.
Israel stands and fights for openness, diversity, truth and its existence, just as India does. India must back Israel. New Delhi also needs Jerusalem in combating Islamist terrorism, one of the greatest threats to its unity and territorial integrity.
The operational code of anti-India Islamist forces' behaviour is similar to that of Israel's Palestinian counterparts: spread the culture of hatred and violence against the free world. Israel knows better than anyone it how best to protect it against such elements.

Could it happen again? Two years ago, four people were murdered in a terror-driven hostage standoff at a kosher supermarket in Paris. For the roughly 250 people who gathered in front of the Hyper Cacher supermarket Monday evening, the answer seemed to be a resounding “yes.”
While many Parisians agree the French government has done a good job ramping up security amid the terror outbreak of the last few years, they do not rule out future instances of violence.
“Nobody is fully protected from another attack because the targets are no longer only members of the Jewish community,” said Lassana Bathily, a young Malian Muslim employee of the supermarket who saved about a dozen people during the hours-long standoff in January 2015.
“The Islamic radicals have twisted Islam, my religion and that of my fathers, to justify killing whomever they want,” he told The Times of Israel, speaking from the middle of the crowd. “So, yes, I am afraid sometimes, and we must all be careful.”
Bathily succeeded in hiding the distraught customers in the storeroom downstairs when terrorist Amedy Coulibaly started shooting. Bathily then managed to escape the store and give police valuable information. Considered part of the “family” of store employees, he was named a hero after the survivors were rescued and the terrorist killed. Eventually he was given a French passport.

Youssouf Fofana, who is serving a life sentence in France for the brutal murder of a Parisian Jew, received another 10 years in jail for earlier extortions, including of a Jewish lawyer.
Joseph Cohen-Sabban, a criminal attorney, accused Fofana, a 36-year-old career criminal who in 2006 murdered and tortured Ilan Halimi with more than a dozen accomplices because Halimi was Jewish, said Fofana threatened him and tried to extort him in 2004, Le Parisien weekly reported Tuesday.
That day, the 16th Correctional Tribunal of Paris added 10 years for several extortion attempts to the sentence of Fofana, who was convicted of murdering Halimi in 2009, Le Figaro reported.
Cohen-Sabban said Fofana obtained his home address from Cohen-Sabban’s son, who was a high school student at the time, Cohen-Sabban told Le Parisien. Fofana or his accomplices broke into Cohen-Sabban’s home three times in 2004. A female accomplice of Fofana called Cohen-Sabban’s ex-wife to obtain further details under false pretenses, alerting the lawyer to the scheme, he said.

Is terrorism softening European attitudes toward Israel?
When a Palestinian terrorist used a car to ram and kill an Israeli soldier in eastern Jerusalem in 2014, the European Union urged “restraint” and, without condemning the attack, called it merely “further painful evidence of the need to undertake serious efforts towards a sustainable peace agreement.”
The statement by EU foreign relations chief Federica Mogherini was “a typical EU reaction, which blames the victim for getting attacked,” Oded Eran, a former ambassador of Israel to the European Union and a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies, said at the time.
Two years later, however, European officials had a much different reaction to a similar attack in eastern Jerusalem, which killed four Israeli soldiers on Sunday.
“The European Union condemns the murder of these four young Israelis, as well as any praise or incitement for terrorist acts,” Brussels said in a statement, which unlike the 2014 communique omitted any reference to the fact that the attack happened in an area of Jerusalem that it considers occupied.
Unusually, following Sunday’s attack the Israeli flag was projected on the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and Paris City Hall, signs of solidarity with the Jewish state permitted by local authorities. Rotterdam City Hall flew the Israeli flag at half-mast.

Israel on Wednesday announced new charges against the Gaza head of a major US-based NGO accused of diverting millions of dollars in aid to Hamas.
Mohammed al-Halabi, the Gaza director of Christian humanitarian charity World Vision, is alleged to have funnelled aid money to the Islamist terrorist movement that runs the Gaza Strip.He is due in court again in the city of Beersheva on Thursday.
On Wednesday an updated charge sheet was published with two additional charges, including "aiding and abetting the enemy in a time of war" and "passing information to the enemy. A foreign ministry spokesman declined to comment on the additional charges.
Halabi is expected to plead not guilty on Thursday after negotiations over a plea bargain collapsed, a source close to the case said. His legal team said Wednesday they still have not had access to much of the evidence against their client.
On January 4 a United Nations worker from Gaza was sentenced to seven months in jail for aiding Hamas "without intention."

A Palestinian UN worker sentenced by Israel to seven months for aiding Hamas was released Thursday and returned to Gaza, calling his prosecution “unjust” and hoping to resume his job.
Waheed Borsh, 39, arrived at his home in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip and was greeted by dozens of well-wishers handing out sweets and singing songs.
Israeli forces detained Borsh, an engineer, on July 16, causing a major stir in the aid community.
He was sentenced last week to seven months in prison in a plea deal, but released on the basis of time served and for good behavior.
Israel initially claimed Borsh had been recruited by Hamas, the Islamist terrorist group that runs the Gaza Strip, but it later dropped that allegation. He was convicted for “rendering services to an illegal organization without intention,” his lawyer said.
The United Nations Development Program (UNDP), where Borsh worked, said the deal showed there had been no wrongdoing by the organization.
Speaking to AFP, Borsh said he was hopeful of returning to his job.

A planned referendum on whether to endorse the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement at a university in Ontario, Canada has been cancelled.
King’s University College, a Catholic affiliate of Western University in London, Ontario, will not hold the referendum after the Affiliate Appeals Board, the appeals board for affiliate colleges on campus, ruled against it.
The referendum was cancelled after Jewish students successfully argued that it violated the mandate of the college’s student council.
The Jewish students noted that the BDS campaign against Israel causes a hostile atmosphere on campus toward students identified with Israel.

In a show of solidarity with Jewish students, the Oxford University Student Union (OUSU) published this week an announcement acknowledging the problem of anti-Semitism at the University, and challenging national student leader Malia Bouattia to resign if she won’t apologize to Jewish students for past anti-Semitic statements.
“We would particularly like to acknowledge concerns raised specifically over the National Union of Students [NUS] and the Oxford University Labour Club [OULC],” the OUSU posted on its website.
NUS President Malia Bouattia has, in the past, expressed support for terror, calling Palestinian terrorism against Israelis “Palestinian resistance,” and blaming “mainstream Zionist-led media outlets” for painting the “resistance” as terrorism.
She also had claimed that the BDS movement doesn’t go far enough in its war against Israel.
“To consider that Palestine will be free only by means of fundraising, non-violent protest, and the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement is problematic," she said.
In light of her previous statements, the OUSU called on Bouattia to apologize to Jewish students - or resign.

A Knesset committee on Wednesday approved a controversial bill that would deny visas and residency permits to people who support the boycott of Israel.
The bill, put forward by MK Bezalel Smotrich (Habayit Hayehudi) and MK Roey Folkman (Kulanu), passed the Knesset's Internal Affairs and Environment Committee, ahead of being presented to the Knesset plenum for its second and third readings.
"We must remember that not everyone has the right to enter Israel, and there is no reason for us to allow those who want to harm the state to enter. The law grants the interior minister the authority and the discretion," Smotrich said.
Committee head MK David Amsalem (Likud) asked, "Why should I let someone who sullies the state and harms it into my home? We are not afraid of criticism, but we have national respect. A person who has already received temporary residency [status] and is under consideration for permanent residency comes and hurts us, as a guest; why would we keep them?"
Among those who opposed the bill was committee member MK Yael German (Yesh Atid), who said it would do more to harm Israel than to help it.

An op-ed was published at the Guardian on Jan. 10th by Nur Arafeh titled “Moving the US embassy to Jerusalem would destroy Palestine’s hope for justice”.
Arafeh is the Palestine Policy Fellow of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network. NGO Monitor’s profile of Al-Shabaka demonstrates that the group promotes the “the right of return,” the “Nakba,” and BDS, and regularly features writers who accuse Israel of “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing”.
Though there are multiple distortions, errors and misrepresentations of fact throughout her Guardian op-ed, one falsehood in particular stands out as especially egregious:
Since 1967, Israel has been transforming Jerusalem from a multi-religious and multicultural city into a “reunified” Jewish city under its exclusive control. It has accelerated Jerusalem’s “Judaisation” through policies that specifically aim to minimise the number of Palestinians.
However, if Israel is enacting ‘Judaisation” policies intended to “minimise the number of Palestinians” in Jerusalem, they’ve done an awfully bad job, as is evident by population statistics. Whereas in 2007 there were 208,000 Palestinians in east Jerusalem, today there are roughly 293,000. So, over the course of merely seven years, the Palestinian population of east Jerusalem has increased by over 40%.

Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Iranian president from 1989 to 1997, and mentor to current President Hassan Rouhani, died of a heart attack on Sunday at 82.
In multiple BBC reports on his death, Rafsanjani was characterised as one of the most “influential figures since the 1979 revolution” and a “pragmatic conservative” who became “a key supporter of reformists”.
However, in our review of BBC’s coverage of the former president’s death, there was one glaring omission: his key role in Iran’s use of global terror as a tool of foreign policy.

Twice in the last six months, articles in Haaretz's English edition about increasingly rigid restrictions for Gaza cancer patients seeking to cross into Israel for treatment in Israeli or West Bank hospitals omitted the Israeli response: that Hamas is exploiting very ill cancer patients to smuggle money and information to terrorist operatives.
In both instances, back in July and also the week, the Hebrew version of the same article included this key information about Hamas coercion of cancer patients. The omission of the Shin Bet's information concerning Hamas' exploitation of cancer patients insthe latest instance of the well-document phenomenon of "Haaretz, Lost in Translation," in which Haaretz's English edition downplays, whitewashes, or completely omits Palestinian violence or other wrongdoing.
In both cases, after CAMERA's Israel office contacted editors of Haaretz's English edition, they commendably added the essential information about Hamas taking advantage of cancer patients. But the question remains: how did this omission of the very same point happen not once, but twice?

Regarding complaints about the devious half truth that "no Israeli citizens" were living in the West Bank and that Jerusalem had a population "that was then entirely Palestinian" in 1967, the NPR ombudsman's office responded that the "information is accurate and provides helpful context to listeners in a story which notes that there are now hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens residing in the West Bank."
Contrary to the ombudsman's assertion, such partial information overtly misleads the audience. It is not simply a different "viewpoint" or irrelevant history that the authors claim they have no room for, but essential information whose absence creates a false implication. By isolating their point of reference and concealing the fact that Israeli citizens were forcefully kept out of the territory for 19 years, the authors imply that Israel holds no rightful claim to it. As for the "helpful context" the ombudsman insists this provides, it is only helpful to those partisans who already have made up their mind before peace negotiations that the disputed territory rightfully belongs to the Palestinians.
By mechanically reciting that "NPR's journalists are committed to accuracy above all else and they are guided by NPR's rigorous code of ethics," the ombudsman is fooling no one.

The editor of a neo-Nazi website wrote Wednesday that a planned anti-Jewish march through a Montana town was postponed due to lack of a permit from the authorities.
“We’ve decided that due to the permit refusal by the city of Whitefish, we will need to postpone the planned march,” wrote Andrew Anglin on the Daily Stormer white supremacist site.
Anglin claimed that “two hundred skinhead Alt-Right Nazis” from the United Kingdom, Sweden, France and Greece would be attending, along with a machine gun-toting Hamas member who would speak “about the international threat of the Jews.”
Originally scheduled for January 15, the march was postponed to coincide with the public holiday of Martin Luther King Jr Day on January 16. Now Anglin claims it will be rescheduled, “probably for some time in February, and the march will be bigger and have more guns and special guests than we originally planned.”

BrighTap, an Israeli-made smart water meter sensor that monitors water quality and consumption, recently took first place in the 2016 Startup Open competition, run by the Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN).
BrighTap, a product made by BwareIT, is an Internet-of-things (IOT) meter that can be attached to any standard water tap, pipe or hose and helps users enjoy cleaner water while reducing their water bills. The tap meter provides water quality information, and tells the user how much water is consumed – powering itself by the water that runs through it. The product’s display shows real-time data and also stores it for tracking through a monitoring system.
The company topped more than 1,000 startups from 101 countries. Through the Startup Open competition, the Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN) recognizes the top promising young firms that have yet to raise any outside capital from angel investors, venture capital firms or other formal sources of seed funding.

China’s Kuang-Chi Group, which said in May it was earmarking $300 million for investments in Israeli and other global technologies, said it is stepping up activities and looking to open an office in Tel Aviv that will serve as its International Innovation Headquarters.
The multi-billion dollar conglomerate is also mulling investments in larger, revenue-generating Israeli tech companies as opposed to startups.
The group has already invested $50 million from its first Global Community of Innovation (GCI) Fund, and is now setting up a second fund for the remaining $250 million to be invested in smart city/smart home technologies, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, virtual and artificial reality, robotics and medical devices. Kuang-Chi is targeting companies that seek collaboration with local Chinese firms for entry into their domestic markets.
The first fund “was very successful, it has all been invested,” said Dr. Liu Ruopeng, chairman of Kuang-Chi, in an interview in Tel Aviv this week. “We are almost there for raising the $250 million” for the follow-on fund he said.

Google and Israeli website builder Wix.com are teaming up with Atidim, a nonprofit organization, to bring the internet to small and medium-sized businesses in the north and south of Israel that are far from the country’s financial center.
The organizations on Tuesday launched the Digital Starter project, which aims, with the support of the Israeli government and the help of some 250 trained volunteers, to help 10,000 businesses in 44 locations in the country’s north and south set up websites, digitalize their activities, increase their online visibility and use social media platforms.
A survey conducted by Google and Geocartography Knowledge Group in Israel shows that 8 percent of businesses set up in the periphery close every year, and those that survive grow at a rate that is 9% lower than companies that operate in the heart of the country. The 200,000 small businesses in the periphery are 40% less likely to use digital tools for growth than those in the center of the country.
Having a digital presence is a very important factor in helping small and medium-sized businesses grow, the survey showed. Firms with an online presence have a growth rate 24% higher than similar companies that don’t have a presence on the internet. Almost all of the businesses in the periphery are aware of digital tools but see them as too complex to use, the survey showed.

After a three-year examination process, Russia has approved the importation of Israeli dairy products, the Hebrew news site nrg reported on Wednesday.
The main consumers of these products, the report said, are expected to be Russian Jews who observe kashrut laws.
Israeli dairy companies, according to the report, currently export goods to around three dozen countries in Asia, Europe and North America.
Israeli Agriculture Ministry data shows that 3,180 tons of dairy products are shipped from the Jewish state to Asia annually. Europe is the destination of 2,292 tons and 1,456 tons are sent to the US and Canada.
Dr. Shlomo Grazi — the ministry’s chief veterinary doctor for import and export — said the exports to Russia would benefit the Israeli economy and bolster the country’s reputation in the dairy world.
Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel pointed to the news as a further sign of warming ties between Israel and Russia.
Furthermore, he said, “we will continue to expand the Israeli agricultural export circles to other countries.”

The Middle East peace process cannot wait, for two main reasons.

First and foremost, the situation is urgent. Many crises throughout the region, from Syria to Libya, from Yemen to Iraq, have generated new threats to its stability. Some say that because of these crises, priorities need to be established, and in the name of these supposed priorities, resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be put off until later.

This is not what I believe: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be considered separately from its regional environment. Thinking that the Middle East could restore its stability without settling its oldest conflict is unrealistic. This conflict, if not dealt with, will continue to fuel frustration and will ultimately only worsen the vicious cycle of radicalization and violence. It will continue to give budding terrorists excuses for enlisting. The heinous attack in Jerusalem last Sunday is an additional warning sign. 

 I have a very strong conviction, and it is one I share with most of our partners and with most Israelis and Palestinians. This conviction is that only a two-state solution will, in time, bring stability to the region and enable Israel to live in security. 

 This does not mean imposing peace. France has never claimed to outline a solution for anyone. We are extremely aware that the conflict will not be settled until parties have decided to set out down the courageous and demanding path of reconciliation. 

Palestinians are seeing their future state shrinking, as settlement expansion continues at an unprecedented speed. 

Calls for immediate steps to prevent all acts of violence against civilians,
including acts of terror, as well as all acts of provocation and destruction, calls for
accountability in this regard, and calls for compliance with obligations under
international law for the strengthening of ongoing efforts to combat terrorism,
including through existing security coordination, and to clearly condemn all acts of
terrorism; 

For all of these war crimes, acts of State terrorism and systematic human rights violations being committed against the Palestinian people, Israel, the occupying Power, must be held accountable and the perpetrators brought to justice.