Israeli military and political officials are also subject to campaigns seeking to criminalize counter-terrorism. In 2010, Judge Richard Goldstone acknowledged that an inquiry into the 2008-2009 Gaza conflict that he chaired under the auspices of the United Nations Human Rights Council, was based on invented allegations. After putting his name on a 500-page report that recycled rumors and unverified “testimony,” Goldstone wrote that there was no evidence to support claims of deliberate killing. His reputation and career were destroyed.
Goldstone’s bogus report, like the UK scandal, was the product of the lucrative and well-funded “war crimes” industry, led by dozens of powerful non-governmental organizations (NGOs) claiming to promote human rights. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) are among the main culprits. Founded to campaign for political prisoners, neither had any knowledge of the complexities of counter-terrorism when they reinvented themselves as experts on war crimes and interpreters of the law of armed conflict.
This agenda is the basis for large grants from government officials and private foundations, and also fits the radical anti-Western and anti-democratic ideologies of NGO leaders. The ranks of Amnesty, HRW and the numerous local groups that focus on the Arab-Israel conflict are filled with individuals who fervently believe that the world is divided automatically into colonialists and “victims,” with the democratic West as the former, and everyone else as the latter. NGO “research reports,” often based on rumors or lies, as in the case of the UK soldiers in Iraq, are taken at face value. Since few journalists and government officials understand international humanitarian law, and even fewer are able to verify any of the “war crimes” claims related to anti-terror operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza, and elsewhere, the NGO version of events is generally repeated without challenge.
In order to prevent abuses, the leaders of the “war crimes” industry, and government funds they receive, must be subject to much closer regulation and oversight. Journalists have the professional obligation to independently examine evidence before giving the allegations and reports credence. Similarly, diplomats and members of parliaments would be well advised to examine the accusations closely, and ensure that international legal structures, created for exceptional cases of bringing murderous dictators to justice, are not exploited and trivialized.

At least 10 Jewish community centers across the United States were targeted with bomb threats on Monday, for the fourth time in five weeks.
The threats have been called in to JCCs across the country, according to Paul Goldenberg, the director of Secure Community Network — an affiliate of the Jewish Federations of North America that advises Jewish groups and institutions on security.
News reports indicated that threats were received by JCCs in St. Paul, Minnesota; Houston, Texas; Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Birmingham, Alabama.
The threats were called in on Monday morning. It is not known if they were live calls or recorded.

It is worth noting that the Jewish State was effectively created through the efforts of the countries of the world in San Remo and Geneva years prior to the Holocaust.
Jerusalem, except for fewer than 200 years in the 11th and 12th Centuries, when it was the capital of a short-lived Crusader State, has only been a capital city under Jewish rule. At other times since the Roman conquest it was not even considered by Muslims, or anyone else, a provincial city of consequence.
In the War of 1948-49, Jordan illegally seized Jerusalem, ethnically cleansed its Jewish inhabitants, destroyed all the synagogues and on top of the ancient sacred Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, after taking ancient Jewish headstones to use as the floor of latrines, Jordan built a hotel.
The aggression by Egypt, Syria and Jordan in June 1967 was overturned by Israel. Israel liberated Jerusalem, took control of the Golan Heights, from which Syrians had been shooting down at Israeli farmers, and entered the West Bank, which was under illegal Jordanian occupation.
Anti-Apartheid movements in South Africa wanted equal political and other democratic rights for all -- irrespective of race -- but never advocated the destruction of South Africa.

Prof. Gerald Steinberg, President of NGO Monitor, explained, “The unique and disproportionate funding that a small group of Israeli NGOs get from European governments is used to influence Israeli politics and society. Over the past four years alone, 34 Israeli NGOs have received nearly a quarter of a billion shekels. Our new database brings this essential information directly to journalists, the public and decision makers, increasing transparency in a clear, comprehensive, and user-friendly way.”
The data compiled in the database are sourced entirely from NGOs’ quarterly submissions to the Israeli Registrar of Non-Profits, in accordance with the “Law and Disclosure Requirements for [Groups] Supported by a Foreign Governmental Body” (2011).2 To stay current, the database will be updated on a regular basis.
Prof. Steinberg concluded, “The availability of this detailed online database marks an important step after many years in which large scale European government funding was highly secretive and the limited information that was released was delayed and incomplete. In Israel, the consequences of this funding for political NGOs and the impact on democracy are subject to intense debate. I encourage the Israeli public, as well as European officials, journalists and others to utilize this important tool.”
The NGO funding database can be accessed at: www.ngo-monitor.org/funding-database/

The data shows that some 250 million shekels ($67.5 million) in foreign donations have been funneled to left-wing groups over the past four years.
The new database is based on information available from the Registrar of Associations in Israel. Users can filter their search by fiscal quarters, organizations' names, donors' names, and years or amounts of donations.
It currently includes 35 of the 128 organizations listed with the registrar that are legally required to report on any foreign donations, including B'Tselem, Peace Now, ACRI, Breaking the Silence, the Adalah legal aid group, the Public Committee against Torture, Machsom Watch, Yesh Din, and the Center for the Defense of the Individual.
"We have developed a unique and first-of-its-kind database that allows the public to exercise their right to know more about the phenomenon of foreign funding," NGO Monitor President Professor Gerald Steinberg said.

Eyeless in Gaza is an award-winning documentary that follows journalists who covered the 2014 Gaza conflict, exposing the biased narrative told by international media through authentic footage and interviews with journalists willing to acknowledge the real story behind the stories.
“They’re calling it a massacre.” “Children and civilians comprised the vast majority of the 200 killed.” “Israel is targeting… hospitals.” These quotes come directly from international media reports on the 2014 Gaza War. All of them are incorrect, yet they were used to create the narrative that the world, to a great extent, accepted. A narrative that saw Israel as the aggressor. Interviewing Israeli and Palestinian combatants, administrators and civilians, along with analysts, journalists and aid agency officials on the ground, Eyeless in Gaza sets out to find out how this narrative arose… and arrives at a very troubling conclusion.
HonestReporting has been at the forefront of addressing the distorted media coverage of the Gaza conflict and anti-Israel media bias more generally. So it was a natural fit for our New York office to partner with Eyeless in Gaza’s producer Robert Magid for a series of pre-release screenings in the New York City area.

The Electronic Intifada's "Rah Rah BDS is on a roll" end of the year list was particularly subdued this year. (No, I don't link to hate sites)
Electronic Intifada claims: Activists rose up against Hewlett Packard. Campaigners in dozens of cities across six continents participated in an international week of action against Hewlett-Packard...
Yes, some cities had as much as a half dozen people holding signs. And there was a hashtag. And a petition, too. The net result? See for yourself.

Electronic Intifada claims: Spanish municipalities declared themselves “apartheid-free zones.” More than 50 cities across Spain now declare themselves free of Israeli products in a campaign that began in July 2014...
Oops. The Electronic Intifada left out a crucial bit of BDS fail information. From the October 5, 2016 J Post
In a massive blow to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, a Spanish High Court of the Asturias region, upheld a decision last week, declaring a Langreo City Council agreement to boycott Israel illegal.

The Knesset plenum is expected to approve the V-15 bill in its first reading Monday evening.
Initiated by Likud MK Yoav Kisch, the bill is designed to address foreign-funded groups that attempt to influence the outcome of Israeli elections by treating them as organizations subject to the restrictions of the Campaign Finance Law.
A loophole in the current law gives groups like V-15, which campaigned against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the 2015 election, a free hand.
The bill aims to define for the first time what constitutes an "active body during elections," and to limit such groups under the Campaign Finance Law. The bill would mandate that such groups report to the state comptroller, much like political parties.

If you are going to organise a rally protesting against Donald Trump, you should probably try to make sure it isn’t hijacked by cranks, extremists and anti-Semites. Alas, the speakers at this afternoon’s “Stop Trump” rally in Westminster are a roll call of wrong ‘uns…
While a Respect Party councillor in Birmingham, Yaqoob infamously refused to join applause for George Cross-winning war hero Lance Corporal Matt Croucher. L/Cpl Croucher threw himself on top of a Taliban grenade in Helmand in 2008, saving the lives of his colleagues. As decorated Croucher entered the council chamber, Yaqoob sat with her arms crossed.
Malia Bouattia (NUS President)
Disgraced Bouattia says the government’s anti-terror programme Prevent is fuelled by a “Zionist lobby“, has ranted about the “Zionist-led media” and has described the University of Birmingham as a “Zionist outpost“. She also refused to acknowledge the right of the State of Israel to exist during a Channel 4 News interview last year. Professor Carol Baxter, the NHS’s former head of equality, diversity and human rights, carried out a probe into Bouattia’s comments and found they “could be reasonably capable of being interpreted as anti-Semitic”. Rumours are circulating that she could be ousted from the NUS this week.

Here are some of the comments in question:

• Bouattia ‘accused’ the University of Birmingham of being “a Zionist outpost in British higher education”, citing her concerns about their “large Jewish Society”.
• Bouattia condemned “Zionist-led media outlets”.
• Bouattia (beginning at 1:10 of this video) seemed to characterize Zionism as a form of “white supremacy”.
• Bouattia expressed support for Palestinian terrorism and was critical of those who support ‘merely’ non-violent forms of resistance to occupation.
• Bouattia claimed that the Government’s anti-terror programme was fuelled by “Zionist and neo-con lobbies”.

The journalist’s decision to quote Bouattia expressing her view that “blatant antisemitism should not be tolerated in our universities” without even mentioning the current row over her own use of antisemitic tropes is a classic example of how the Guardian can whitewash antisemitism even when putatively taking such hatred seriously.

Reports of a spate of swastika graffiti and Holocaust denial leaflets discovered on university campuses across the UK over the past week raises serious concerns, and highlights the challenge faced by universities as they seek to protect students from extremism.
At the University of Cambridge, two swastikas were found on a map and flyers supporting the Holocaust denier, David Irving, were seen at the university earlier this month. Leaflets spreading Holocaust denial at University College London led the Jewish Society to release a statement condemning the “trivialising of Jewish history”, while a swastika and a “Rights for Whites” sign were discovered at the University of Exeter.
Increasingly, universities have strong policies to mitigate the risks posed by extremist speakers on campus, but these incidents pose an entirely different threat – one which is far harder to deal with through risk assessment procedures for a number of reasons.
The first of these is that it is extremely difficult to ascertain who is behind racist incidents on campuses due to their open nature. Unlike schools, hospitals and community centres which are usually smaller, enclosed spaces likely to be patrolled by private security, universities often open onto busy streets in major cities and are easily accessible to the public. This in turn has attracted extremist groups, and universities have been grappling with this problem for a number of years.

And this is the crux of Kenny’s polemic – that how Israel treats Palestinians or even non-Jews is driven by racism. As he says:
A place where rights are dependent on race and religion. Where uniformed Israelis young enough to use acne cream stroll absent-mindedly through shopping malls and bus stations, machine guns dangling from their shoulders.
The image is meant to portray Israel as a military society. That young Israelis serve in the IDF is a direct result of the security threats that Israel faces. And while Kenny pays lip service to Palestinian terror, the onus is still on Israel as if the terror merely provides an excuse for Israeli behavior:
Where Palestinian suicide bombings, murderous drive-throughs and random stabbings create a siege mentality, licensing the constant ratcheting up of the existential threat and thus the further militarisation of Israel itself.
As for freedom of movement:
Where traffic snarls last for hours at check-points policing internal borders.
Where even professional Palestinians, academics with PhDs, or top-level business people are required to queue up for monthly permits simply in order to move between cities or attend work.
Checkpoint traffic is certainly not snarled for hours as Israeli journalist Ami Horowitz found out for himself when he went on a “road trip.” In fact, it is usually extremely efficient during times of relative quiet.

On February 15th a report by Jeremy Bowen concerning that day’s meeting between the US president and the Israeli prime minister was broadcast on BBC One’s ‘News at Ten’. Revisiting the ‘blank cheque’ theme he promoted days earlier on BBC 5 live radio, in that report, Bowen told viewers that:
“Before he was elected president Mr Trump seemed ready to give Israel a blank cheque on the Palestinians. Mr Netanyahu authorised thousands more homes for Jews in the occupied territories, in defiance of international law, within days of Mr Trump’s inauguration.”
BBC audiences are used to reading and hearing the BBC narrative on international law which goes along the lines of:
“The settlements are considered illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.”
In this case, Bowen not only did not bother with the qualification “Israel disputes this” but, despite his remit of “providing analysis that might make a complex story more comprehensive or comprehensible for the audience”, failed to inform viewers of the existence of alternative legal opinions on that issue.
Moreover, when challenged on Twitter, Bowen appointed himself legal expert, ruling that alternative views to the narrative he chooses to promote are false.

The BBC’s decision to reuse that insert in the same format raises additional points.
1) The claim in the first paragraph that the two-state solution is the “declared goal” of Palestinian leaders is inaccurate and misleading because it does not clarify to BBC audiences the repeated refusal of Palestinian Authority leaders to recognise Israel as the Jewish state – a necessary condition for fulfilment of the concept of “two states for two peoples”. That claim also of course conceals the fact that Hamas and additional Palestinian factions reject the two-state solution outright.
2) The reference to ‘East Jerusalem’ conceals the fact that – as the BBC itself reported in 2003 – the text of the ‘Roadmap’ compiled by the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and Russia (the Quartet) defines the two-state solution as including:
“…a negotiated resolution on the status of Jerusalem that takes into account the political and religious concerns of both sides, and protects the religious interests of Jews, Christians, and Muslims worldwide…”
As we see, an insert ostensibly intended to help BBC audiences understand the concept of the two-state solution in fact fails to provide the full range of information necessary for that aim to be achieved.

In a sign of growing frustration with their troublesome image, news media outlets staged a demonstration yesterday to protest the way the news media portrays them.
At a press conference outside City Hall, representatives of FOX News, ABC News, NBC and CNN told reporters they were “sick and tired of you guys willfully distorting everything we do.” The journalists lambasted the assembled crowd of reporters, calling into question their integrity as human beings, their worth as journalism professionals and their ability get even the simplest things accurate.
“Nobody knows better than we do that you’re capable of doing some amazing things,” said Chuck Scarborough, a seasoned NBC anchor. “But your sloppy work and your unabashedly biased reporting have left our reputations in tatters.”
“Edward R. Murrow is turning is his grave,” added CBS reporter Scott Pelley. “Geraldo Rivera? Really?” he said, shaking his head in disgust.

The Canadian government must “finally get serious about addressing antisemitism,” the CEO of the country’s branch of a prominent Jewish organization said on Friday.
In a letter to group members, B’nai Brith Canada’s Michael Mostyn wrote, “Over the last few years, several clear instances of antisemitic hate crimes have occurred throughout the country, though appropriate charges were never laid. [We have] been diligent in reporting these hate crimes and demanding that the perpetrators be brought to justice. However, lawmakers have been silent when it comes to prosecuting these promoters of hatred and antisemitism.”
One case noted in the letter was the call for the destruction of the Jewish people issued by an imam at an Islamic center in Montreal.
“When will the Canadian government finally take hate speech against the Jewish community more seriously?” Mostyn asked.

The following are some of Shihab’s views as presented in articles and Islamic rulings posted on Onislam.net:

• The solution to the global violence, extremism and oppression is Islam
• Qaradawi’s book “Jurisprudence of Jihad” should serves as a guidance to Muslims
• Thieves’ hands should be chopped off no matter their social status
• Person who underwent gender reassignment surgery should return to his original gender
• Muslims should avoid gays as homosexuality is evil and succumbing to the temptations of the Satan
• Wife should not reject her husband’s call for having sex

In 2016, imams (religious leaders who lead the prayers) at the mosque recited supplications to Allah in support of the “mujahideen (those of engage in jihad) everywhere”, the total destruction of the enemies of Islam and the purification of Al-Aqsa Mosque from the “filth of the Jews.”

"Destroy the accursed Jews! ... Allah, kill them one by one ... Grant victory to our brothers waging jihad in Palestine ..."
Here's one of those barmy Olde Tyme preachers, spewing some bloodcurdling sentiments.
But this youthful representative of the 7th century-inspired antisemitic species calling for genocide of the Jews is not doing so in some Middle Eastern backwater.
He's doing it in Trudeauland.
His name's Imam Sayed al-Ghitawi and his hangout is the al-Andalous (here's looking at you covetously, Spain!) Islamic Center, Montreal:

An Austrian woman who questioned the Holocaust was found guilty of violating an Austrian law that makes Holocaust denial illegal.
The woman, 53, was given a suspended jail sentence and fined $1,280 by a court in the western Austrian city of Feldkirch on Friday, the Associated Press reported.
She criticized a post on Facebook which showed a German soccer team commemorating the liberation of the Auschwitz Nazi camp, in which she accused the team of “spreading lies,” according to the AP.
During a search of her home a sign was discovered over her toilet reading: “This Hitlerine needs a clean latrine.” It also is illegal in Austria to praise the Nazi era.

A red telephone owned by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler was sold for $243,000 at an auction on Sunday to an unnamed buyer who bid by phone.
According to Alexander Historical Auctions in Chesapeake City, Maryland, where the phone was auctioned, the phone was originally a gift to Hitler from the Wehrmacht, the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany, to be used in vehicles and trains as well as Hitler's field headquarters.
The Seimens W38 red telephone is embossed with the Nazi party eagle and swastika, and has Hitler's name engraved on the back.
The phone was discovered by Soviet soldiers after they stormed Hitler's Berlin bunker in 1945. Soviet officers gave the phone to a British officer, Sir Ralph Rayner, during a visit to Hitler's bunker in Berlin.

Israel is planning to send its largest delegation ever to the Winter Olympics that begin in PyeongChang, South Korea, on Feb. 25, 2018.
Israel wants to expand the number of its participants in four sports: figure skating, speed skating, Alpine skiing and bobsled. In PyeongChang, for the second time in Olympic history, team figure skating will be an event and will include the 10 best teams in the world. If the Israeli skaters receive a sufficiently high adjusted calculated score from the World Championships and other competitions, they will qualify for the team event.
Ironically perhaps, most members of the Israeli delegation do not live in Israel and speaking Hebrew is often a struggle for them. Israeli-based members of the delegation are mainly management personnel who travel to seminars abroad and visit Israeli training camps throughout the United States and Canada, sometimes even without knowing the athletes they are traveling to evaluate.
The Israeli Olympic Committee's Elite Sport Department is aiming for a historic medal in short track speed skating. Vladislav Bykanov, a potential medal contender in the 1,500-meter race, will have to wait until the end of the year to know whether he is heading for PyeongChang. Bykanov, 27, competed at the Sochi games in 2014, but finished in 25th place. However, he has since won a bronze medal at the European Championships and has shown considerable improvement recently.

To understand the strong and rising impact of Israeli startups on the US tech scene, consider this month’s Super Bowl LI.
Intel and FOX Sports unveiled a 360-degree “Be the Player” replay technology giving viewers an unprecedented, immersive player’s-eye view on the football championship.
The groundbreaking technology was developed in Israel by eight-person Replay Technologies in collaboration with Intel, which bought the 3D video technology startup in March 2016 as the cornerstone of its new Intel Sports Group.
The California-based multinational has been supporting and acquiring Israeli companies since 1974.
“Many of Intel’s core products are developed in Israel,” said Joel Fisch, Intel’s director for EMEA Ecosystem Innovation Development, speaking at a press event at the OurCrowd Global Investor Summit in Jerusalem on February 16. Representatives of some 200 multinationals were there to scout out Israeli talent and build on existing relationships.

Eleven Israeli companies ranked in the Top 50 of Fast Company’s 2017 World’s Most Innovative Companies list for “changing the way we shop, eat, play, work, and live in 2017.”
The 10th edition ranking includes companies that “tap both heartstrings and purse strings and use the engine of commerce to make a difference in the world.”
The Top 50 list is broken down into sub-sectors. Alongside Education, Enterprise and Finance categories, there’s also a sector dedicated specifically to Israeli companies.
The top Israeli companies making a difference in the world, according to Fast Company, are: Unbotify, Waze, Argus Cyber Security, EarlySense, Freightos, WeissBeerger, Itamar Medical, Neomatix, Colu and Syqe Medical.
Unbotify is highlighted for its cybersecurity solution which uses behavioral biometrics analysis to detect bots—and counter cybercrime.

US firm Kalytera Therapeutics, Inc. said it has completed the acquisition of Talent Biotechs Ltd, a privately held Israeli company that develops cannabis-based therapies for medical needs, for over $10 million.
Talent is currently studying the use of cannabidiol (CBD) — an antioxidant extracted from the cannabis plant — to prevent and treat Graft versus Host Disease (GvHD), a life-threatening condition that can occur after stem cell or bone marrow transplantation. Kalytera, whose shares are traded on the TSX Venture Exchange in Canada, is a developer of CBD therapeutics. Dr. Raphael Meshchloum, an Israeli researcher and pioneer in the field of cannabis research, is co-chair of Kalytera’s Scientific Advisory Board.
GvHD is a rare disease that can arise following hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HCT), a procedure in which the stem cells of the bone marrow or peripheral blood of a donor are transplanted into a new host after chemotherapy or radiation. While HCT is a lifesaving procedure for many diseases of the blood and bone marrow including leukemia and Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphoma, it poses dangerous side effects, including infection and GvHD. GvHD is a major cause of illness and death following HCT.

It was supposed to be a trip consisting of 12 NFL players. But thanks to some poor judgment from Minister of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy Gilad Erdan, who bragged about the trip, Michael Bennett dropped out, followed by 6 others. Then there were 5.
Not ideal, and some may say a PR disaster. But at least those who have come – Calais Campbell of the Arizona Cardinals, Dan Williams of the Oakland Raiders, Cameron Jordan of the New Orleans Saints, Delanie Walker of the Tennessee Titans, and Philadelphia Eagles player Mychal Kendricks – seem to be having a ball, judging by their social media posts.

Positive step for women's rights as women are allowed to attend male volleyball tournament in #Iran. #Watch4Womenhttps://t.co/L6pL1oowmnpic.twitter.com/pCHEyNCyNf

— Human Rights Watch (@hrw) February 17, 2017

 The apparent decision by Iranian authorities to allow women to attend the Kish Island Open volleyball tournament is a positive, if small, step in the right direction, Human Rights Watch said today. Recent media reports said that female spectators will be allowed to attend the four-day beach volleyball competition, from February 15 through 18, 2017. Women had been barred from attending volleyball tournaments under a 2012 decree, in violation of international rules.

“From now on women can watch beach volleyball matches in Kish if they observe Islamic rules,” said Kasra Ghafouri, acting director of Iran’s Beach Volleyball Organization.

 The Kish Island Open is a premier international men’s tournament organized by the International Volleyball Federation (FIVB) as part of the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour. Women were not allowed to attend the first Kish Island Open, in February 2016, in spite of previous assurances to the FIVB by Iranian officials, prompting renewed calls for reform and a reversal of the discriminatory 2012 ban.

"Iran doesn't respond well to threats," Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told the Munich Security Conference, an annual gathering of top diplomats and defense officials. "We don't respond well to coercion. We don't respond well to sanctions, but we respond very well to mutual respect. We respond very well to arrangements to reach mutually acceptable scenarios."

[T]he reintegration of the refugees into the economic life of the Near East, either by repatriation or resettlement, is essential in preparation for the timewhen international assistance is no longer available, and for the realization ofconditions of peace and stability in the areaUnited Nations General Assembly Resolution 393 (V), December 2, 1950

• Former UNRWA general counsel James G. Lindsay: "neither the donors nor the General Assembly has pressed UNRWA on 'reintegration' in quite some time."

• Lance Bartholomeusz, former head of the International Law Division of UNRWA: "Thispart of the mandate probably ended by 1960 when reference to 'reintegration' wasdropped from General Assembly resolutions relating to UNRWA, reflecting some acknowledgment that this objective had been defeated."

• Peter Hansen, former commissioner-general of UNRWA: "The agency's mandate has repeatedly been refined andshaped by other General Assembly resolutions, which have allowed it to shift itsfocus from reintegration efforts in its early years to human development projects through to this very day."

As stated at the outset, in broad terms, UNRWA's "mandate" means what the Agency may or must do. We have seen that UNRWA's mandate is rarely expressed in terms of what UNRWA may not do. Even though the language used in some resolutions such as "directs", "instructs", "essential", and "necessary"might indicate a compulsory nature, considering the context - in particular that UNRWA is almost entirely voluntarily funded and its actual income has generally fallen far short of budgeted income - most of the Agency's operational mandate can be seen to be permissive, albeit strongly encouraged in parts....For almost sixty years, in response to developments in the region, the General Assembly has mandated the Agency to engage in a rich and evolving variety of activities, for many purposes and for several classes of beneficiaries. The Assembly has provided UNRWA with a flexible mandate designed to facilitate, rather than restrict, the Agency's ability to act as and when the Commissioner-General [of UNRWA], in consultation with the Advisory Commission as appropriate, sees fit. [emphasis added]

• Its mandate gives UNRWA a lot of leeway.

• Even when the language implies a "compulsory" obligation for UNRWA, most of the "operational mandate" is actually "permissive" (read: optional).

• UNRWA's mandate is "rich" and "flexible"

• UNRWA's Commissioner-General and the Advisory Commission are the final arbiter of what UNRWA's mandate actually is.

• providing general education, both elementary and secondary

• teaching vocational skills, and awarding university scholarships

• offering small loans and grants to individual refugees who have skills and want to become self-employed

This report exposes more than 40 Facebook pages operated by school teachers, principals, and other employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which incite to terrorism or antisemitism. The report is divided by region, and includes UNRWA staffers in Lebanon, Jordan, Gaza and Syria. These cases are additional to the 30 cases of incitement revealed at the end of 2015 by UN Watch.The examples of incitement in this report include UNRWA teachers and staffers celebrating the terrorist kidnapping of Israeli teenagers, cheering rockets being fired at Israeli civilian centers, endorsing various forms of violence, erasing Israel from the map, praising Hitler and posting his photo, and posting overtly antisemitic videos, caricatures, and statements.

UNRWA basically shifted its entire operation towards education by the end of the1950s, ending any hopes of repatriation or resettlement. It then rode the anti-colonialism wave at the UN through the 1960s and 1970s (which saw the growth of the UN's immense pro-Palestinian infrastructure) and by the 1980s had become a full service health and welfare provider. But during the 1990s, especially the Oslo years, the concept of promoting Palestinian 'rights' and 'protections' grew, partially in response to Oslo and also as part of the global trend towards casting all claims in terms of legalisms and human rights. This advocacy role makes UNRWA a kind of competitor to the PA or at least a shadow foreign ministry. In short, the organization adapts to changing conditions. Because it is basically run by and for Palestinians (we've called this an example of 'regulatory capture') it reacts to its own needs, those of the Palestinian street which it serves and cultivates, especially through the educational system, and to changes in the rhetorical ecosystem of international organizations. Its promotion of the 'right of return' is a recent adaptation from the last decade or so. And everything it does is against the background of 'financial emergency,' which has been its stock response since the 1950s.

a global advocate for the protection and care of Palestine refugees. In circumstances of humanitarian crisis and armed conflict, the Agency's emergency interventions - as well as its presence - serve as tangible symbols of the international community's concern, helping to create a stable environment. [emphasis added]

the United Nations has no responsibility for security matters in refugee camps, or indeed anywhere else in the occupied territory

Similarly, as Netanyahu explained in 2009 during his speech at Bar-Ilan University, any Palestinian-Arab state needs to be “demilitarized” – meaning that it cannot have an army, control its airspace, forge military pacts with the likes of Hezbollah and Iran, and import weapons, and must be subject to strong measures to prevent weapons smuggling. The PA opposes all of these Israeli security requirements.
Still another irreconcilable issue is that because a Palestinian state deal asks Israel to give up irreversible tangibles (i.e., land) for intangible peace promises, Israel needs partners who keep their promises. But the PA broke its repeated Oslo and other agreements to combat and stop inciting terror, collect illegal weapons, outlaw terrorist groups and preserve and provide Jews access to Jewish holy sites in PA territory.
Finally, the PA’s unrelenting goal is to destroy and replace all of Israel with a Palestinian-Arab state that no Jews can step foot in. This goal is clearly laid out in the PA ruling party Fatah Charter and in PA President Abbas’ speeches condemning the Israeli “occupation” since 1948 – and in the PA maps, stationery, official emblems, stamps, media and atlases showing all of Israel as Palestine. The PA leadership assures its people that any concessions it obtains are “stages” towards their final goal of destroying the Jewish state. Additionally, the PA is politically aligned with Hamas, whose charter calls for Israel’s destruction and the murder of every Jew.
Israel cannot agree to commit suicide – or give the PA a stronger base for advancing the Palestinian-Arab “struggle” for Israel’s total annihilation.

During his meeting with Trump, Netanyahu chose not to bring up Pollard and Pollard’s scandalous parole terms. Instead, Netanyahu sufficed with discussing Pollard’s plight at his meeting with Vice President Mike Pence. According to media reports, the two men agreed that Ambassador Ron Dermer will work with the administration on the issue. What that means was left open to interpretation.
Given the devastating role the Pollard affair has played in US-Israel relations, it is understandable that Netanyahu wouldn’t want to bring up Pollard at his first meeting with Trump. Who wants to bring up unpleasant subjects when you’re trying to build a new relationship with a new US president?
But while understandable, Netanyahu’s decision to minimize his discussions of Pollard’s plight and then delegate the issue to his ambassador was the wrong way to build that relationship.
Every day Pollard is subjected to prejudicial treatment by the US justice system is another day that the US is officially persecuting an American Jew, not because he breached his oath to protect US secrets, but because he did so as a Jew.
And as Menendez’s bigotry toward Friedman made clear, every day that this continues is a day when it is acceptable to slander loyal American Jews simply because they passionately support Israel. Every day that Pollard languishes under effective house arrest is another day when it is acceptable to question the good intentions of America’s greatest ally in the Middle East.
In other words, to rebuild its alliance with the US, Israel needs more than a warm embrace at the White House. It needs to receive Pollard at Ben Gurion Airport.

And for too long, our ambassadors have blamed Israel for the ongoing dispute with the Palestinians rather than acknowledge that the obstacle to peace is the Palestinians’ refusal to accept the idea of a Jewish state coexisting next to a Palestinian state.
J Street has every right to its harsh opinions about Israel. But sitting in the comfort of homes 6,000 miles away may not give them the same perspective as Israelis who face threats of genocide from Hamas to the West, Hezbollah to the North and Iran to the East. J Street does not believe Jews have a legitimate claim to Judea and Samaria or the right to live in all of their homeland. The group is also out of step with Congress and mainstream Jews who support moving the US embassy and recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Prodded by J Street, Friedman has been challenged about his past support for Jews in the community of Beit El. The world may villainize the families there as settlers, but in my view, they have every right to live in the land of Israel.
The Palestinians have been offered the possibility of statehood no fewer than seven times going back to 1937, and missed every opportunity because of their refusal to accept a Jewish state.
While Democrats have united in opposition to Trump’s cabinet nominations, support for Israel has always been bipartisan — because Republicans and Democrats recognize that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, the only reliable US ally in the region and a nation that shares American values and interests. President Obama undermined that bipartisan tradition, which is why staunch Democratic supporters of Israel like Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, Ben Cardin of Maryland and Robert Menendez of New Jersey had the wisdom to vote against the Iran nuclear deal.
Cory supported the deal. He had that right. But he must show consistency. If you’re going to criticize an ambassador-designate, then at least condemn the Iranian regime that has pledged death to America, and its foremost ally, Israel.

Four months ago, when South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley was nominated by the president-elect as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, I wrote that there was reason to hope she would live up to the legacies of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Jeanne Kirkpatrick and John Bolton as "shining beacons in the Midtown Manhattan snake pit."
Though at the time I could not judge whether she was the right person for the job, it appeared that she possessed the kind of moral clarity and tough skin required in an arena filled with people whose key purpose is to cloud the distinction between good and evil. Indeed, it takes a special kind of envoy to maneuver the Orwellian universe in which the international body operates, where Western values are on a lower hierarchical rung than third-world culture, and where a mockery is made of the concept of human rights, the championing and upholding of which the organization was originally established to safeguard.
One indicator that Haley seemed to fit the bill was that she, the daughter of Indian immigrants who went through legal channels to become Americans, signed a law to crack down on illegal immigration. Another was her introduction of legislation to outlaw boycotts, divestment and sanctions "based on race, color, religion, gender, or national origin of the targeted person or entity." Since Israel has been the focus of BDS campaigns everywhere, it was clear what she had in mind. No wonder her appointment caused Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations Riyad Mansour to flinch.
Mansour was right to be worried, just as I now believe my high hopes were well-founded when Haley was confirmed.

Last week, Hamas received an offer that no sane entity would turn down. The offer did not come from Hamas's allies in Iran and the Islamic world. The offer, to turn the impoverished Gaza Strip into "the Singapore of the Middle East," came from Israel.
"The Gazans must understand that Israel, which withdrew from the Gaza Strip to the last millimeter, is not the source of their suffering -- it is the Hamas leadership, which doesn't take their needs into consideration... The moment Hamas gives up its tunnels and rockets, we'll be the first to invest."— Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman.
Hamas does not want a new "Singapore" in the Middle East. Hamas wants Israel to disappear from the face of the earth. The welfare of the Palestinians living under its rule is the last thing on the mind of Hamas. The dispute is not about improving the living conditions of Palestinians, as far as Hamas is concerned. Instead, it is about the very existence of Israel.
Hamas deserves credit for one thing: its honesty concerning its intentions to destroy Israel and kill as many Jews as possible. Hamas does not want 40,000 new jobs for the unemployed poor Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. It would rather see these unemployed Palestinians join its ranks and become soldiers in the jihad to replace Israel with an Islamic empire.

A spokesman for Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi railed against a report in the Israeli media about his country’s part in a clandestine Mideast peace summit in Jordan last year, hosted by King Abdullah II and attended by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-US Secretary of State John Kerry, the Hebrew news site nrg reported on Monday.
According to nrg, Alaa Youssef demanded to clarify that the Haaretz report “included false information.”
Youssef was referring to the Haaretz article which said Egypt was “sparing no effort” to reach a just and comprehensive two-state solution, which involves the establishment of an independent Palestinian state along the June 4, 1967 borders.
Youssef said that, “contrary to the false report,” Egypt’s position has been to “lead the way towards a permanent solution to the Palestinian issue and to safeguard the rights of the Palestinian people by hearing and weighing various opinions from the involved parties and is prepared to examine initiatives aimed at reviving the peace process.”
Youssef, who failed to say what about the Haaretz report was false, added, “Reaching a final solution to this issue will lead to a new reality that guarantees the safety and security of the Palestinian and Israeli peoples, and will provide hope to anyone who wants to achieve economic and social development in the region.”

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Jordan's King Abdullah said in a Cairo meeting on Tuesday that they were committed to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Sisi's office said in a statement.
"The two sides discussed future movements to break the gridlock within the Middle East peace process, especially with US President Donald Trump's administration taking power," the statement said.
"They also discussed mutual coordination to reach a two-state solution and establish a Palestinian state based on the June 4, 1967 borders (sic) with East Jerusalem as a capital which is a national constant that cannot be given up."
Last week, Trump said that he was open to ideas beyond a two-state solution, the longstanding bedrock of Washington and the international community's policy for a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.

Naji Shurrab, a political scientist at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, believes there will now be American, Israeli and Arab attention to the idea of establishing a Palestinian state in Gaza. He does not think Sinai’s inclusion will be discussed immediately because of Egyptian refusal, but that could eventually change if Israel were willing to transfer land from the Negev to Egypt in a regional arrangement. “I think that for the US, Israel and the Arab states establishing a Palestinian state in Gaza is an option that will be on the table in the future,” he said.
“A Palestinian state in the West Bank will be refused strongly by Israel but Israel may receive the support of the new administration to think of a Palestinian state in Gaza,” he said.
Most analysts think that is a non-starter. “Gaza is not a solution, it keeps the problem alive in the West Bank, it’s not a serious thought,” said Ghassan Khatib, vice president of Bir Zeit University in the West Bank. He believes that Netanyahu’s plan is simply to maintain the status quo. “There’s no pressure on him, nothing is bothering him and he can expand the settlements.”
“Talking about a Gaza state is a way of escaping the inevitable outcome which is two states and avoiding that settlement expansion is illegitimate, and goes against international public opinion and international law. It deviates the discussion and attention from the issues that need to be looked at to non-issues,” he said.

With the backdrop of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s impending visit to Australia, and former Australia Prime Minister Kevin Rudd calling to recognize “Palestine,” The Australian has run an editorial which is a welcome change from what I have seen in the Australian media.
Predictably, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s arrival tomorrow has prompted demands for Australian recognition of a Palestinian state. Kevin Rudd is the latest Labor figure to join the clamour, adding to the calls by Bob Hawke, Gareth Evans, Bob Carr and others for the Turnbull government to overturn its firm stand against unilateral recognition without a negotiated peace accord between the Israelis and Palestinians.
—
Recognition would add to the delusions of Palestinian leaders that they can achieve statehood through the back door, using the UN as a conduit. Proponents of recognition overlook the reality that Palestine lacks the most fundamental prerequisites of statehood, including defined borders, which can be achieved only through a negotiated settlement with Israel — not shuffling documents around the UN.
Malcolm Turnbull and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop are right in rejecting demands for Australian recognition. Doing so would reinforce the Palestinians’ past rejections of generous peace terms (in 2000, 2001 and 2008) and their refusal to return to the negotiating table. It would merely add another country to the list of those fostering the Palestinians’ absurd belief that they can achieve statehood without negotiating with the Israelis.

How will it help ANYONE to "recognise" a fake national identity and create yet another failed, brutal Islamic terrorist entity? (Look at what happened in Gaza.)
In the 2000 years that Palestine was ruled by foreign empires, including the 400 years of Ottoman rule, there was never a Palestinian-Arab movement for self-determination. Even when Israel declared an independent Jewish state, opposition to it was seen as a pan-Arab movement, and the 1948-9 war was waged against Israel by the Arab League.
The PLO was first formed in the 1960s, at which time its manifesto explicitly renounced any ambitions to self-determination in Gaza and Judea/Samaria (the "West Bank"), which were then ruled by Egypt and Jordan. The only land they wanted to "liberate" was the land ruled by Jews (inside the 1948-9 Armistice Line).
Since 1967, the PLO manifesto was altered, and they now claim the additional land, which they previously renounced but is now controlled by Jews, as their "ancient homeland" ...
The entire narrative of Palestinian nationhood is a fiction, a tool to destroy Jewish self-determination, rather than an ambition for Palestinian-Arab self-determination.

Listeners then heard Manuel Hassassian again promote the inaccurate notion that the two-state solution was included in the Oslo Accords. They also heard him make the false claims – completely unchallenged by Shaun Ley – that the 1949 Armistice lines are “borders” and that the definition of the two-state solution is that a Palestinian state would be established on all of the land occupied by Jordan and Egypt in 1948.
Hassassian: “For the last 24 years when we embarked on the peace process, everybody agreed that the two-state solution would be the solution that will end the conflict and end the occupation – meaning that the Palestinian will have a state on the borders of 1967 as a result of the Security Council resolutions 234 and 388. There is a international consensus. International community talking all the time about a two-state solution.”
Seeing as UNSC resolution 388 relates to Rhodesia, Hassassian may have intended to say 338. However, neither UN Security Council resolution 234 nor 338 make any reference to a Palestinian state but Ley failed to challenge Hassassian on that too,

US President Donald Trump denounced antisemitism in the United States in an interview on Tuesday after he was asked about a spate of threats to Jewish community centers around the country.
"I will tell you that antisemitism is horrible and it's going to stop and it has to stop," Trump said in an interview with NBC.
Trump later said, while speaking at the African American History Museum in Washington, that "antisemitic threats targeting our Jewish communities and our Jewish community centers are horrible, and are painful."
Shortly before Trump's remarks, Hillary Clinton condemned a recent streak of "troubling" antisemitic incidents, and called for action first and foremost from the president.
"JCC threats, cemetery desecration & online attacks are so troubling & they need to be stopped," she wrote on Twitter. "Everyone must speak out, starting w/ @POTUS."

The White House responded to a reporter’s query about the latest string of bomb threats called in to Jewish community centers by saying “these actions are unacceptable.”
“Hatred and hate-motivated violence of any kind have no place in a country founded on the promise of individual freedom,” reads a statement, attributed to White House press secretary Sean Spicer, that was shared Monday afternoon by NBC News correspondent Peter Alexander. “The President has made it abundantly clear that these actions are unacceptable.”
The statement did not specify that the threats targeted Jewish institutions, although it came in reply to a query about threats to JCCs.
Alexander posted Spicer’s response on Twitter, adding, “@PressSec responds to my request for comment about wave of threats to Jewish community centers.”
Separately, Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, who is Jewish, condemned the threats in a Tweet that pointed to the fact that the targets were Jewish.
“America is a nation built on the principle of religious tolerance,” she said. “We must protect our houses of worship & religious centers.” She ended the tweet with the hashtagged acronym for Jewish community center, “#JCC”.

As an Orthodox Jew and a Rabbi, I am alarmed. What's missing from the conversation is that Jake Turx was serving in the capacity of a journalist. A journalist, by definition, isn't just representing himself. He is representing the public. Turx correctly stated that people in his community are concerned about an uptick in anti-Semitism. While some in the Orthodox Jewish community may not have that concern, his question did represent a concern of many. The President should care that citizens, many of whom supported him, are concerned. Whether Jake Turx understands and is sympathetic to the President's frustrations is irrelevant. A question was asked of the President, and he refused to answer it on the basis that the question inherently was repulsive and insulting.
Without a doubt, Jake Turx and Ami magazine are in uncharted territory. Their response to this difficult situation, and their future standing and access to the White House, should have no bearing on how we as a public interpret events. Looking through Turx's twitter feed, one can see that he is quite conflicted by what happened. If he forgives the President for his reaction during the press conference, that's a right that he has as a citizen.
The issue of anti-Semitism, however, is a relevant issue that any President should address when there's a perceived uptick. If President Trump feels frustrated by the issue to the point where he's insulted when a journalist asks about it, then we as citizens have a right to be concerned. If we aren't concerned, or if we criticize the journalists that bring it up, then that's on us.

More than 170 gravestones were damaged in a Jewish cemetery near St. Louis which has served the community for more than 100 years.
Vandals pushed over headstones on the Jewish graves on Sunday in the suburb of University City, Missouri.
”Numerous plots were damaged and [headstones were] pushed over,” Lt. Fredrick Lemons of the University City Police Department told The Huffington Post.
When asked whether he considered the attack to be a hate crime, Lemons replied that “Right now, everything is under investigation. We’re looking into all possible leads.” He added that police were reviewing video surveillance footage
Police said that it was likely there was more than one perpetrator, Fox2News reported.
Some of the graves, in the oldest section of the Chesed Shel Emeth Society cemetery, date back to the late 1800s. The cemetery holds an estimated 20,000 graves.

US President Donald Trump announced on Monday that Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster has been chosen to serve as his next national security adviser, replacing Michael Flynn, who resigned last week less than a month into the job.
McMaster, 54, is a 1984 West Point graduate who served overseas in both Iraq and Afghanistan over the course of a decorated three-decade military career.
“He is a man of tremendous talent and tremendous experience,” Trump said on Monday of McMaster. “I watched and read a lot over the last two days. He is highly respected by everybody in the military, and we’re very honored to have him.”
On August 26, 2012, McMaster spoke at the dedication of a new Holocaust exhibit at the National Infantry Museum at Fort Benning in Georgia. The transcript of his remarks — in which he talked about the importance of remembering the Holocaust — was unearthed by The Algemeiner on Monday and can be read below:

According to the New York Times, Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon admires radical Italian philosopher Julius Evola. An examination of Bannon's statements shows the opposite
Enter Steven Bannon, whom the media has crowned Trump's "grey cardinal." Mr. Bannon is very relevant to our lives, and any link to Evola should be disturbing; except for the fact that he never alluded to Evola in his prepared remarks. The New York Times headline is deceptive, and every media outlet that followed its lead was fooled. These sensationalist articles contradict the very raw material made public by Buzzfeed, even while referencing it. The Buzzfeed article contains an unedited transcript of a speech Bannon gave via Skype to a Vatican conference in 2014. The conference covered "human dignity" and the consequences of economic order. In that speech, Bannon supported "enlightened capitalism," and condemned two dangerous deviations: "kleptocracy," a political-economic order in which capitalist corporations merge with the higher echelons of the state bureaucracy to get rich at the expense of the impoverished worker, and unrestrained libertarianism, which in his opinion objectifies humanity. The speech itself made no mention of Evola. Repeat. The speech never mentioned Evola.
When did his name come up? In the question and answer stage, when Bannon was asked about his attitude towards Putin's Russia. His oral answer was, and I quote, "When Vladimir Putin, when you really look at some of the underpinnings of some of his beliefs today, a lot of those come from what I call Eurasianism; he’s got an adviser who harkens back to Julius Evola and different writers of the early 20th century who are really the supporters of what’s called the traditionalist movement, which really eventually metastasized into Italian fascism."
In other words, Bannon said that Putin is influenced by an advisor — who is easily identified as Alexander Dugin — who, in turn, is influenced by Evola, among others. That's it, that's the only mention of Evola. But perhaps, you'll say, Bannon supports Putin and Dugin and Evola's ideology? After all, we're told that Trump admires Putin, so Bannon must feel the same way. Well, later in the lecture, Bannon summarizes exactly what he thinks about Putin, his regime, and his goals:

Calling it a perfect solution to longstanding tension over the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, President Trump has proposed a plan to raze the entire site and replace it with the ‘Third Temple Trump Hotel and Mosque.’
Trump unveiled his plans days after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. After considering how to accommodate Jewish access to the site of the First and Second Temples and Muslim access to the Al Aqsa Mosque, Trump said he believed the best solution for all would be a five-star resort that paid homage to each of the major religions.
While Al Aqsa Mosque, one of the holiest sites in Islam, will be demolished, there will be an ‘Al Aqsa Bar and Casino’ within the resort, where Muslims who can recite a passage from the Quran will receive 20 percent off drinks at the bar. Trump will also replace the Western Wall, a section of wall surrounding the historic Temples, with a golden replica.

Israeli soldier Elor Azaria, convicted on manslaughter charges for shooting and killing an incapacitated terrorist in Hebron last March, was sentenced Tuesday to 18 months in prison, minus the nine days the spent in custody over the course of the legal proceedings. He was also demoted from sergeant to private.
Around 100 protesters went to the military court in the IDF's Kirya headquarters in Tel Aviv in a show of support for the soldier.
Military Court Judge Maya Heller read out the ruling, saying: "The standard punishment for manslaughter is 20 years in prison, to teach us about the gravity that the legislature attributes to the crime of manslaughter. But in the State of Israel, punishment is individual. ... The defendant was drafted to the IDF in July 2014 as an infantryman in the Kfir Brigade; he successfully passed a paramedics' course. The defendant has no disciplinary past."
Heller described Azaria's family history and situation, saying he had had a difficult time adjusting to life as a combat soldier, but he had not received any help for his distress from the military. She also mentioned his father's testimony that he had suffered a stroke during the trial and that Azaria's mother had lost weight due to their distress over their son's legal proceedings.

Education Minister Naftali Bennett responded to the sentencing of IDF soldier Elor Azaria on Tuesday, calling for him to be immediately pardoned.
"The security of Israel's citizens necessitates an immediate pardon for Elor Azaria," he said.
Bennett stated that Azaria, who was sentenced to 1.5 years in jail, "was sent to defend the citizens of Israel during the height of a Palestinian knife terror wave and the entire investigative process was contaminated from the start."
The Bayit Yehudi leader said that "even if he made a mistake, Elor must not serve time in jail. We will all pay the price."
Transportation Minister Israel Katz (Likud) also called for Azaria to be pardoned.
"The court has had its say - due process has been carried out. Now the time has come for a pardon. We must bring Elor back home."

Shouts of “pardon him!” erupted from protesters outside a Tel Aviv military court on Tuesday where IDF solider Elor Azaria was sentenced to 18 months in jail for killing Palestinian attacker Abdel Fatah al-Sharif in March 2015, as he lay immobilized in a Hebron street.
“His life is ruined!” said Sigal Cohen, 48, who was protesting in support of Azaria."This boy is a solider, who was doing his job. He is our son, every mother should feel that. We are not going to swallow this. We are going to flip the government.”
Azaria’s defense has vowed to appeal the ruling, and had previously urged the court to delay the beginning of the sentence until an appeal is submitted. Azaria's representation requested 15 days to submit the main claims of an appeal.
Around 100 protesters gathered to support Azaria and once the court announced the sentence, a bit after 1 p.m., they vowed to continue to seek Azaria’s release. “We are here to fight until Azaria is returned home,” one man said.

A couple of hours ago, Israeli military judges sentenced IDF soldier Elor Azaria to 18 months in prison for killing an incapacitated Palestinian terrorist in Hebron last year. The case drew widespread media attention both in Israel and abroad. Sure enough, the Guardian published a report on the verdict, by their Jerusalem correspondent Peter Beaumont, less than 30 minutes after it was announced.
The article wasn’t especially problematic.
However, one element of the Guardian’s coverage of the incident was extremely telling, and speaks to a larger problem relating to British media coverage of the region.

An Islamic State-affiliated group on Monday captured territory in south-western Syria, near the convergence of the Israeli and Jordanian borders, after launching a surprise attack on more moderate rebel fighters near the Golan Heights.
The Khalid Ibn Al Walid Army used dozens of armored personnel carriers and several tanks in a dawn attack against positions held by the Free Syrian Army, rebel sources said, according to Reuters.
“In a surprise attack, Islamic State made an attack on positions held by the Free Syrian Army FSA groups which no one expected to happen so fast,” Colonel Ismail Ayoub, a Syrian opposition army defector, said.
Jordanian army units on the border were ordered to assume a heightened state of readiness, a Jordanian security source said; explosions from the battle could be heard across the border.

Iran’s Supreme Leader called on Palestinians on Tuesday to pursue an uprising against Israel, suggesting the Israeli government was a "cancerous tumor" that should be confronted until Palestinians were completely liberated.
"... by Allah’s permission, we will see that this intifada will begin a very important chapter in the history of fighting and that it will inflict another defeat on that usurping regime," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, according to his website.
The Supreme Leader’s bellicose comments, made during a two-day conference in Tehran focused on its support for the Palestinians, come at a time of increasingly heated rhetoric between Iran, Israel and the United States.
While on a visit to Washington last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Fox News that Israel and the United States had a "grand mission" to confront the threat of a nuclear Iran.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Tuesday continued in his string of threats against Israel, charging that his Lebanese terrorist group will have "no red lines in the next war with Israel."
In an interview with Iran's Channel 1 News, Nasrallah reiterated previous threats regarding Hezbollah's alleged capabilities to strike Israel's nuclear facility in the southern town of Dimona and the Haifa ammonia plant, which is now slated for closure.
"Israel should think a million times before it goes to war with Lebanon," he said. "Hezbollah is ready for any threat."
When asked if his Iranian-backed Shi'ite terrorist organization would recognize the state of Israel in the event of a peace agreement with the Palestinians, Nasrallah indicated that animosity would remain Hezbollah's underlying sentiment toward the Jewish state.
"Even if there is a peace deal with Israel, it won't remove the terror label and the occupation from it [Israel]," he told the Iranian news station.
"Israel is lying when it comes to the two-state solution, and will be deceiving the Palestinians if they agree to it," he added.

The Syrian government invited Iran and Hezbollah to aid it in the Syrian civil war, and when the war is over they, along with all armed groups, “will leave,” Russian Federation Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Oleg Syromolotov told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.
“I understand the fears of Israel relating to Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Guards in Syria, and you of course fear that they will stay in Syria after the war,” he said.
He noted Israel’s concern over what will become of the involvement of Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps in the Syrian conflict.
“For us, Hezbollah is part of the politics of Lebanon, and an important part of the population of Lebanon supports them and they are a part of the parliament,” Syromolotov said. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is also part of the military structure of Iran.
“For that reason, there is no way to put them on the list of international terrorists,” he said.

Two Iranian chess players have been banned from the Iranian National Chess Team, as well as domestic chess tournaments, one for playing a chess match against an Israeli and the other for not wearing a hijab at the Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival, Radio Free Europe reported.
It was not immediately clear whether the dismissed players, siblings 18-year-old Dorsa Derakhshani and 15-year-old Borna Derakhashani, would face legal prosecution back home in Iran.
Iran forbids athletes from competing against Israelis in sporting events; often players will feign illness or injury to avoid matches.

The cybersecurity company engaged by the Israel Defense Forces to help crack the Hamas 'honey trap' plot exposed last month has released a report about the security breach that includes new information. Hamas operatives had used fake social media profiles of alluring young women in order to entice IDF soldiers into downloading malware onto their mobile devices that would allow Hamas to collect information.

According to the report by Kaspersky Lab, released Thursday, the cyber attack is still in its initial stages and apparently ongoing. The report noted that the Hamas operatives behind the cyber plot were focusing mainly on soldiers and officers serving in and around the Gaza Strip, and that over 100 soldiers of various ranks had fallen prey to the attack, which turned the soldiers' personal Android mobile phones into spy machines for Hamas. The report said that the malware soldiers were tricked into downloading gave Hamas access to information about location, conversations, correspondence and also access to the devices' microphones and cameras. The attackers also managed to send out updates to the malware that increased their abilities to manipulate the users' smartphones.

The report said that after a victim was identified on Facebook, a fictitious profile of a young woman would tempt him into downloading a fake app granting the attackers user access. One version of the malware package included an invite to a fake YouTube app, while others offered fake messaging apps. Once the user downloaded one of the apps, the malware code would be installed on the device. One malware pack titled WhatsApp Update has been identified as having the ability to both execute commands on demand and conduct automatic data mining activity. Most of the data mining took place while the soldiers were using a wireless Internet connection.

On Feb. 12, 2017, Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi was invited onto CNN's global affairs program hosted by Fareed Zakaria (Fareed Zakaria GPS) to defend and justify the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. This followed an interview on the same program a week earlier with French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy where he charged the BDS campaign with being "an anti-Semitic campaign" which "takes its roots a long time ago, 60 years ago, in the fringes of dying Nazism." Lévy's words so enraged Khalidi and other proponents of the anti-Israel campaign that Khalidi complained to the host, then appeared himself on the show the following week.
Khalidi, an experienced propagandist, used classic propaganda tactics (name-calling, transfer/association, glittering generalities, logical fallacy, bandwagon, plain folks, and card stacking, as described by the The Institute for Propaganda Analysis) to defend BDS, and to delegitimize Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem, much as he had done several weeks earlier on WBEZ's Worldview.
Fareed Zakaria, with a history of skewing the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, helped Khalidi along, not only providing him with an unfettered platform to disseminate his misinformation, but having photos and drawings televised to illustrate Khalidi's deceptive analogies, and in the case of Jerusalem, disseminating some half truths of his own.
Here are the facts on BDS and Jerusalem, followed by an analysis of the propaganda disseminated on Zakaria's CNN program.

Following my previous post on The Australian editorial against recognition of a Palestinian state comes further positive signs from Australia – from none other than Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who has condemned the UN and BDS.
Malcolm Turnbull has strongly condemned the UN, accusing it of a prejudiced attack against Israel over a Security Council resolution that accused the Israeli ­government of violating inter­national law with its settlement activity.
On the eve of a historic visit by Benjamin Netanyahu, who ­arrives in Sydney today as the first sitting Israeli leader to visit Australia, the Prime Minister also charged those who promoted or supported a boycott campaign with a deplorable attempt to ­­­de-legitimise the Jewish state.
In an exclusive commentary article published in The Australian today, Mr Turnbull denounces the UN for what he claims is bias, citing 20 resolutions ­between 2014 and 2015 that are critical of Israel when only a ­single resolution had been issued on the Syrian war.
While Mr Turnbull has been critical in the past of anti-Israeli resolutions, rarely has he been so forceful in his language. “My government will not support one-sided resolutions criticising Israel of the kind recently adopted by the Security Council and we ­deplore the boycott campaigns designed to delegitimise the Jewish state,” Mr Turnbull writes.

Like many western cultural centers, the Yafa Cultural Center in Nablus recently hosted a folk dance competition for youth. But unlike their western counterparts, children at this competition danced to calls for violence and waltzed to words of war:
“We replaced bracelets with weapons
We attacked the despicable [Zionists]...
Jihad is needed
Pull the trigger.”
The Yafa Cultural Center, which receives funding from the German development agency GIZ, Norway, and the European Union, recently posted to its website photos from the first Yafa Folk Dance Competition. The gold prize winner danced to the song Pull the Trigger. The following is a longer excerpt from the song's lyrics:
“The Zionists coveted [our] homeland,
compounding damage and enmity
But the popular revolution awaits [them]
The orchard called us to the struggle
We replaced bracelets with weapons
We attacked the despicable [Zionists]
We do not want [internal] strife or disputes
While this invading enemy is on the battlefield
This is the day that Jihad is needed
Pull the trigger.
We shall redeem Jerusalem, Nablus and the country.”
This song was previously broadcast on PA TV in 2010.

Who is the enemy? It’s been over 15 years since Sept. 11, 2001, and this fundamental question still rattles around. Prominent answers have included evildoers, violent extremists, terrorists, Muslims, and Islamists.
As an example of how not to answer this question, the Obama administration convened a Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Working Group in 2010 and included participants who turned up such gems as: “Jihad as holy war is a European invention,” the caliphate’s return is “inevitable,” Shariah (Islamic law) is “misunderstood,” and “Islamic terrorism is a contradiction in terms because terrorism is not Islamic by definition.” The result? The group produced propaganda helpful to the (unnamed) enemy.
In contrast, then-candidate Donald Trump gave a robust speech in August 2016 on how he, as president, would “Make America Safe Again.” In it, he pledged that “one of my first acts as president will be to establish a commission on radical Islam.” Note: he said radical Islam, not some euphemism like violent extremism.
The goal of that commission, he said, “will be to identify and explain to the American public the core convictions and beliefs of radical Islam, to identify the warning signs of radicalization, and to expose the networks in our society that support radicalization.” The commission “will include reformist voices in the Muslim community” with the goal to “develop new protocols for local police officers, federal investigators, and immigration screeners.”
On Feb. 2, Reuters reported that, consistent with the August statement, the Trump administration “wants to revamp and rename” the Obama administration’s old CVE effort to focus solely on Islamism. Symbolic of this change, the name Countering Violent Extremism will be changed to “Countering Radical Islamic Extremism” (or a near equivalent).
To make the most of this historic opportunity, the Middle East Forum has crafted a comprehensive plan for a White House Commission on Radical Islam for the administration to use. Here’s a summary of how we see the commission working and having an impact:

In 2011, Dan Senor and Saul Singer wrote in Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, how Israel, a country of 7 million and only 60 years old was able to produced more start-up companies than Japan, China, India, France, South Korea, Canada and the UK.
Jump 6 years and military reporters and defense analysts Yaakov Katz and Amir Bohbot do the same in a fascinating and compelling new book: The Weapon Wizards: How Israel Became a High-Tech Military Superpower (St. Martin’s Press 978-1-250-08833-8). Here, the authors focus on how Israel became a military supplier extraordinaire.
The authors write that in days after Israel gained its independence, they didn’t have enough bullets to fight. They also were limited to whom they could procure military equipment from. Yet a few decades later, they become the world’s 6th largest arms exporter. Israel’s impressive array of state of the art products includes drones, missiles, satellites, cyberdefense systems and much more.
At its core, the authors write that Israel was forced into the situation given that Israel has no natural resources. It was forced to use human capital and ingenuity as its main resource. The primary question the book attempts to answer is how did Israel develop so many cutting-edge products, often years before the US and other countries. They answer that there’s no single characteristic, rather several factors; all of which they detail.
Beyond that, Israel has made numerous long-term strategic decisions that created an environment to be a world’s leader in arms developments. Several factors the authors note is that despite its small size, Israel invests more than any other country in research and development, roughly 4.5% of its GDP.

Co-operation between the Zionists and Nazis made headlines last year, after comments by former London Mayor “Red” Ken Livingstone regarding the Haavara agreement. And now The Forward has published a disgraceful piece about Zionist-Nazi cooperation. Livingstone and The Forward ignore the critical fact that any deals done by the Zionists were aimed at saving Jewish lives.
What is lesser known is cooperation between the Arabs in Palestine and the Nazis. Sure, much has been said about the Grand Mufti’s relations with, and support of, the Nazis. But the cooperation happened on a more micro level.
Newspapers from the time provide more insight into this. For instance, The Sentinel, Thursday, July 11, 1935, reported about the establishment of a Nazi club for Arab youths.

A talk at a Dublin university by Israel’s ambassador was canceled following protests by pro-Palestinian students, with Jerusalem calling on Irish authorities to take action against the demonstrators.
Ambassador Ze’ev Boker was due to take part in a conversation with the Society for International Affairs, also known as SOFIA, in Dublin’s Trinity College Monday night.
About 40 pro-Palestinian students holding flags and placards took over the venue, forcing the cancellation of the event after police and university security were unable to move the protesters.
The event was billed as a short talk by the ambassador followed by a question and answer session, against the backdrop of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent talks with US President Donald Trump, according to the Facebook event page.

A Jewish rights group has called on a UK university to take action against a candidate for student government who tweeted, “I am so proud to be called terrorist [sic].”
The Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) told The Algemeiner that Malaka Shwaikh — who is reportedly running unchallenged for vice president of the University of Exeter’s Students’ Guild, where she currently serves as a trustee — “was clearly breaching the school’s disciplinary code” by posting messages encouraging violence against Jews and Israelis from her now disabled Twitter account.
According to the CAA, Shwaikh’s tweets included: “Zionism ideology is no different than that of Hitler’s”; “The shadow of the Holocaust continues to fall over us from the continuous Israeli occupation of Palestine to the election of Trump”; and, “Hitler did his deed and the Palestinians had to pay for it.”
“[T]he university has obligations under the government’s ‘Prevent’ counter-extremism strategy…naturally, Ms. Shwaikh can be held accountable for any crimes she has committed,” the CAA spokesperson said, noting that the student’s position as an Exeter instructor adds to the concern.

The University of Central Lancashire has cancelled an event which was due to take place as part of "Israel Apartheid Week" activity on its campus.
The session was organised by the university's Friends of Palestine group and was billed as a panel discussion looking at the boycott of Israel.
It was due to feature speakers including anti-Israel activist Ben White and pro-Palestinian academics.
But a spokesperson for the university said “Debunking Misconceptions on Palestine" contravened the definition of antisemitism adopted by the government and was “unlawful”.
In a statement on behalf of the university in Preston, Lancashire, the spokesperson said: “The UK government has formally adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s new definition of what constitutes antisemitism.

An Israel activist at Montreal’s McGill University told The Algemeiner on Monday that he’s “happy the student government finally took a strong stance” and requested that a representative who tweeted “punch a Zionist” step down.
Simon Paransky said, “I hope Igor [Sadikov] heeds the call to resign,” referring to the member of the Students’ Society of McGill University’s (SSMU) who justified his call for violence on the grounds of Israeli “dispossession and colonization of Palestinian land.”
The SSMU’s recommendation that he quit his post over “incitement to violence” came days after the body rejected a motion to impeach him, at which time SSMU had explained that it “stands in support of freedom of expression and the right of representatives to hold a diversity of political beliefs.”
As McGill’s alternative newspaper, Prince Arthur Herald, reported late last week, the about-face seems to have resulted from direct involvement by the university’s principal, Suzanne Fortier.

An NFL star currently on a week-long tour of Israel batted away criticism from a social media user on Saturday who accused the player of “doing PR” for the Jewish state’s “apartheid system.”
“PR? I’m goin on a trip for the spiritual and historical layout of a country I’ve always wanted to go to. I’m learning more,” New Orleans Saints defensive end Cameron Jordan shot back.

Cameron Jordan
@neshoba77 PR? I'm goin on a trip for the spiritual and historical layout of a country I've always wanted to go to. I'm learning more

Cameron — one of five out of an original group of 11 NFL players scheduled to take the Feb. 13-20 trip who did not succumb to pressure from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and cancel his participation — also posted positive reviews of the country, along with photos of fun-filled activities and visits to Christian sites.
The trip was sponsored by Israel’s Tourism Ministry.

The People's Climate March is scheduled for April 29 and we're already seeing the tell-tale signs of infiltration and co-option.
This email is being shuffled around various "social justice" e-lists. Its all about "peace". Sounds innocuous enough, right?
This email originated with "World Beyond War"
The advisory board of World Beyond War includes anti-Israel activists who were involved with the Gaza flotilla, including Mairead Maguire, Medea Benjamin, Ann Wright and Kathy Kelly. Their support and participation in the flotilla, a challenge to the sovereignty of the state of Israel and its right to secure its own borders cheapens their talk of "peace". These are people that reject the existence of a nation state of the Jewish people within ANY borders. Their vision of "peace" is a world without Israel.
This is the genesis of how a well-meaning and singularly focused event gets hijacked by the anti-Israel cru. If the People's Climate March agrees to add "peace" to their agenda, it opens the door to groups like World Beyond War, who will no doubt offer to provide signage and speakers that will invariably alienate the Climate march core.
Stay in your lane, People's Climate March. Don't allow groups with an extremist agenda to hijack your message. We've seen this happen before.

How is it possible that books that advocate violence and extremism meet the "selection criteria" of the Ottawa Public Library, but those that speak out against violence and extremism do not?
The presence of these Islamic books, and these books alone, in Canada's public libraries, without any others to contradict them, gives them legitimacy. They are seen to represent a certain form of Islam that the government of Canada and the City of Ottawa recognize.
This indicates that there is official support for the extremist and terrorist version of Islam, and at the same time no support for a humanist interpretation of Islam.
This surah [4:74] also indicates that if you are a Muslim living in a non-Muslim country, then you are in a state of war against your host country. If you are a Muslim living in a non-Muslim country, then you are living with the enemy.
If we are to reject this danger, it is important that libraries and other institutions have books that reject these Islamist views and confront their hatred, extremism and violence.

BBC reporting on the topic of the perennial electricity shortage in the Gaza Strip has long been noteworthy for its failure to inform audiences of the full background to that crisis.
The latest example of that style of reporting was seen at the beginning of this month in Tim Franks’ radio report from Gaza for the BBC World Service and it was also evident in two BBC News website reports published a couple of weeks earlier.gaza-power-crisis-2
The Times of Israel recently published an interview with the Qatari envoy to the Gaza Strip which once again highlights the fact that BBC audiences are being serially denied the full range of information necessary for understanding of this topic.

Toronto’s Jewish Defence League says it will file a “hate crimes” complaint with Toronto Police alleging there were “troubling” words in sermons at a downtown mosque, including inciting the “killing of Jews.”
“We are going to speak with the police,” said JDL National Co-ordinator Meir Weinstein, who alleged Monday that “these are anti-Semitic hate crimes.”
But first the JDL is to hold an emergency meeting to decide how to proceed after bringing to light several videos taken from within the downtown mosque Masjid Toronto, part of the Muslim Association of Canada.
The videos, featuring a 2016 sermon in Arabic, were initially posted online by the mosque. They were subsequently posted on YouTube by CIJnews co-founder Jonathan Halevi, a linguist who speaks several languages.
According to Halevi, the sermon included the following:
“O Allah! Give them victory over the criminal people, O Allah! Destroy anyone who killed Muslims, O Allah! Destroy anyone who displaced the sons of the Muslims, O Allah! Count their number; slay them one by one and spare not one of them, O Allah! Purify Al-Aqsa Mosque from the filth of the Jews!”
For clarification, the “purify Al-Aqsa Mosque from the filth of the Jews” refers to the famous mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Toronto police are investigating a possible hate crime after anti-Semitic notes were found on the doors of several units at a condo building in the Willowdale neighborhood of the city.
Post-it notes bearing a swastika and reading “No Jews” were found on the front doors of several Jewish residences in the building, reported the CP24 news channel.
Some of the notes contained anti-Semitic slurs and some residents reported that their mezuzahs had been vandalized.
A total of seven residents reported receiving the notes or having the mezuzahs on their doors vandalized.
Speaking with CP24, one resident who came home to find her mezuzah vandalized said she was “shocked.”
“It’s naturally very disturbing,” the resident, Helen Chaiton, said. “I come from the Holocaust – my parents came to Canada in 1948 after the war. So I’m very familiar with anti-Semitism and I know historically what ensues.”

Gauzy, an Israeli developer and manufacturer of liquid crystal glass panels, or smart glass, has developed a new way to communicate location- and time-based messages on car windows in partnership with Daimler AG, the German car maker of Mercedes-Benz vehicles.
The technology was demonstrated at the AutoBahn Expo Day in Stuttgart, Germany, last week, when startups that took part in the StartUp AutoBahn accelerator presented their projects in front of over 1,200 people, including Daimler’s board and other global original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).
The accelerator, run by Daimler, gave 13 startups the opportunity to work with large OEMs for 100 days to develop new automotive technologies which will be incorporated into serial production by companies like Mercedes Benz.
In its collaboration with Daimler, Gauzy created what it says is the “thinnest dark retro-fit liquid crystal film” which can be applied to the existing windows of a car, as opposed to being laminated between two pieces of glass during the manufacturing phase. This film allows images and videos to be projected onto opaque windows in HD quality. Gauzy’s liquid glass technology enables car windows to switch from transparent to opaque on demand.

More than 6,000 investors and entrepreneurs crammed the Israel Convention Center in Jerusalem Thursday for the annual OurCrowd Investors’ Summit, braving Jerusalem’s freezing rain to attend what was billed as the largest gathering of investors in Israeli history. Including investors from 82 countries and corporate representatives from close to 300 companies, as well as 250 venture capital firms, the convention promoted Israeli innovation in fields as diverse as agricultural, automotive, financial, medical and sports technology. The summit, which has grown sixfold since it was first held in 2015, mirrors the growth of venture capital in Israel in general, and of firms like OurCrowd, which manages a portfolio of more than $400 million invested in Israeli startups.
Speaking to the plenary, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat focused on the development of the startup environment in Israel’s capital. “Jerusalem is a city not only of the past, but also of the future,” he said, pointing to the more than 600 startups that are now headquartered in Jerusalem, including the automotive company Mobileye, which is at the forefront of the development of autonomous vehicles and was Israel’s largest IPO in the US, raising $890 million when it went public in 2014, and today enjoying a market capitalization of nearly $10 billion.
Jon Medved, the founder and guiding force behind OurCrowd, explained Israel’s contribution to American economic growth. “Israeli innovation is powering the American economy in a number of ways. Our innovative companies, when they want to go to market they set up shop in America. They start hiring Americans,” he told TheTower.org. Medved cited a recent study that found over 200 Israeli companies now headquartered in Boston alone. “They directly employ 9,000 people, and indirectly through subcontractors another 27,000. They’re generating $18 billion of annual economic activity, which represents 4 percent of the Massachusetts GDP.”

Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) has developed and delivered comprehensive security and protection systems, known as the ‘Integrated Underwater Harbour Defence and Surveillance System’ (IUHDSS). The Indian Navy, tasked with defending the subcontinent’s 4,670 miles long coastline, raised the need for such systems.
Developed by IAI subsidiary, Elta Systems, IUHDSS comprises surveillance, observation, surface, and underwater sensing arrays that can detect, locate, and track various threats – whether from small boats and submersibles, swimmer delivery vehicles (SDV), swimmers or divers.
IUHDSS is a modular system, tailor-made to meet specific customer needs. The system includes an advanced command and control system, a range of coastal surveillance radars, diver-detecting sonars, electro-optical sensors, and automatic threat identification systems. The central command and control system provides automatic integration of all sensors, creating a common situational picture for port defense.
Nissim Hadas, IAI Executive VP & ELTA President, said in a statement, “We are proud to deliver another project to India, our strategic partner. Many of IAI’s systems play a role in India’s maritime and coastal defense. Since becoming operational, this system has proved itself, and we look forward to continuing our long-term strategic cooperation with India for a bright and safe future.”

In a key step toward furnishing Israel and its neighbors with a robust natural gas supply, the Leviathan reservoir partners have secured $1.75 billion in loans for the basin's development.
The partners signed the financing agreement with a consortium of about 20 international and Israeli lenders, led by J.P. Morgan Limited and HSBC Pank Plc, according to a report submitted to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange on Tuesday morning. The funds are expected to support the A1 development stage of the Leviathan project.
Once developed, the 613-billion cubic meter Leviathan gas reservoir – located about 130 km. west of Haifa – is expected to not only boost domestic gas supplies, but also to serve as an export outlet for Israel's immediate neighbors and the wider Mediterranean region.
Houston-based Noble Energy holds a 39.66% share of the Leviathan reservoir, while the Delek Group’s subsidiaries Delek Drilling and Avner Oil each have 22.67% and Ratio Oil Exploration has 15%.

The Vatican and Rome's Jewish community on Monday presented an ambitious exhibition on the menorah which will bring together 130 works featuring the iconic Jewish candelabrum, an ancient symbol of the faith.
The show on the seven-candle Hebrew lamp will run simultaneously from May 15 to July 23 at the Vatican museums and the synagogue complex in a city which once housed one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world.
The artifacts are being loaned by nearly 20 museums around the world, including London's National Gallery and the Louvre in Paris.
Among them will be one of the earliest known depictions of a menorah, an engraved stone found at the site in Israel where a synagogue from the Second Temple period was discovered by archaeologists in 2009.
Christian medieval candlesticks inspired by the menorah, as well as the works of contemporary artists, will also be on display.
But history's most precious menorah, made out of solid gold, will be missing.
The menorah, depicted on the Arch of Titus in Rome, was one of the spoils brought back to the city by the Romans after they sacked the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE.

A pair of 1,800-year-old Hebrew inscriptions carved into a capital found last week in the Druze village of Pekiin may lend support to a tradition linking the Galilean village to an ancient center of Jewish scholarship.
The inscriptions, etched into a limestone block buried beneath a courtyard of a building adjacent to the village’s 19th-century synagogue, were found during restoration work, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced Tuesday.
The antiquities authority was tight-lipped about the find and refused to disclose the text of the inscriptions, saying they were still being studied and wouldn’t be published until they appear in a scholarly journal.
The IAA also wouldn’t say how archaeologists who inspected the inscriptions determined they were 1,800 years old. The IAA did disclose that the inscriptions appeared to be dedications by donors to the synagogue, lending support to the tradition of a Jewish presence during the Roman period.

Israel prides itself on its variety of natural landscapes and unspoiled scenery. And no wonder: the country's biodiversity is impressive. Its landscape is dotted with everything from snowy mountaintops and sunburnt deserts to evergreen forests and pristine beaches.
This visual variety is on show in a new exhibit at the United Nations in New York City. Titled "The Natural Side of Israel," it brings together a beautifully curated selection of nature photographs captured by Israeli photographers. Here's a sampling of what's in the show:

Hanan Ashrawi, member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Tuesday described the 18 months jail sentence a court had earlier issued against an Israeli soldier who shot and killed a wounded and incapacitated Palestinian as a travesty.

“This is a travesty of justice,” said Ashrawi in a press release. “It is apparent that the Israeli judicial system has become compromised with the systemic racism, injustice and the culture of hate that is plaguing the Israeli occupation.”

 A Palestinian court on Tuesday found a 37-year-old Palestinian man guilty of murdering his wife in 2006 in Ramallah district and sentenced him to 15 years of hard labor.
In the years since the killing, the suspect was held in detention while the Palestinian public prosecution carried out investigations, eventually leading to his conviction 10 years later.

A Palestinian appeals court in Ramallah on Monday sentenced a man to a lifetime of hard labor after he was found guilty of killing his two sisters in 2006 in Qalqiliya in the northern occupied West Bank, local sources told Ma'an Tuesday on the condition of anonymity.
The man had confessed to the murders, saying in his defense that his sisters "dishonored the family reputation."

 A Palestinian court sentenced on Wednesday Palestinian lawmaker Mohammed Dahlan to three years in prison after convicting him in absentia of stealing $16 million.
Dahlan left the West Bank for the United Arab Emirate in 2011 following a power struggle with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. 

A senior Hamas official said on Wednesday that the terror group, which rules the Gaza Strip, is rewriting its charter in a way that will remove its anti-Semitic language, but also made plain the group’s ongoing rejection of the Jews’ right to statehood in Israel.

The charter, written in 1988, contains a cocktail of Nazi, communist and Islamist anti-Semitic tropes and conspiracy theories, including that Jews were behind the French and Russian revolutions and the two world wars, that they control the media and the UN, that they infiltrated the Freemasons and that they funded colonialism with their wealth.

“We will have a clear political document, which is supposed to be in the near future, clarifying all those points,” the official, Osama Hamdan, told Al-Jazeera on Wednesday.

“You will find in this document clear words that we [sic] against the Zionists, against the occupation of our lands and we will resist the occupiers, whoever they were. And we are not against anyone regarding to this religion or to his race,” he said.

If Donald Trump fulfils his promise to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the decision would be a long-awaited recognition of Israel’s historic capital by its closest ally. And although the proposed relocation is accompanied by some risks, smart and co-operative diplomacy can mitigate the dangers.
David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s greatest and longest-serving prime minister, offers a guide for our current leaders. Responding to the 1949 resolution of the UN, which internationalised Jerusalem and thereby separated Israel from its capital, he conceded neither to the declaration nor to the gloomy predictions of the consequences of defying it. Instead, Ben-Gurion pronounced the city a vital element of the country’s history and immediately relocated the Knesset from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem: the move was defiant yet the repercussions were hardly catastrophic.
Opponents of the US president’s proposal note that it risks obstructing the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, would cause the deterioration of Israel’s relations with its Arab neighbours and could incite Muslim terror groups worldwide.
All these warnings are overblown. Claims that the embassy move will derail a peace process comatose for nearly a decade ring hollow. The exact opposite might be true: the decision could prompt the Palestinians to re-evaluate their strategy of refusing direct negotiations, which has paralysed the peace process.

We may be living in the age of instant communication but Haley's speech reached the Israeli audience three days after it was delivered – and that, too, appears to have happened only thanks to Hillel Neuer's UN Watch, which published it online in its entirety.
It was only after the video went viral and garnered over three million views that it broke through the iron curtain of ideological censorship and reached the Israelis. To the best of our knowledge, no news source in Israel published it before noon Tuesday, Israel time.
Moreover, Haley's heartwarming praise of Israel was actually spun as negative news. On Thursday, Israelis were told by their media that the UN Ambassador had thrown cold water on the President's remarks, a day earlier, in which he said that the US was open to other options beside the two-state solution.
Her remark about the two-state solution was presented as a backtracking and clarification of Trump's statement. In fact, she had simply repeated that statement, saying that "we support the two-state solution, but we support peace and stability even more".
The New York Times and the AP also spun her remarks in that fashion. It is only in the past 24 hours that media in the world have been waking up to what she really said, and some are even comparing it to former UN Ambassador's fiery rejection of the UN resolution equating Zionism and racism, in 1975.
In the end, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu uploaded a translated version of Haley's rousing words to his Facebook account. As of now, it has received close to 470,000 views. Fake news has been faked out.

Their signatures are a sad testament to their embrace of Security Council Resolution 2334 and to its claim that the Jewish Quarter, the Kotel and the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem and the Machpelah in Hebron are “Occupied Palestinian Territory”.
If they did not understand that is what they were endorsing then they should withdraw their signatures immediately.
Interestingly they also signed up to “supporting the application of international law to Israel and Palestine”
International law indisputably establishes:
1. The right of the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in Jerusalem, Hebron and Judea and Samaria (West Bank) pursuant to the provisions of the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine
2. The preservation of such vested legal rights under article 80 of the United Nations Charter.
The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) – Israel’s “partner for peace” has:
1. declared this established international law to be “deemed null and void” under its Charter
2. claimed in its 1964 Charter: "Article 24. This Organization does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or the Himmah Area. Its activities will be on the national popular level in the liberational, organizational, political and financial fields."
This article remained unamended when UN Security Council Resolution 242 was passed after the Six Day War. Article 24 was removed from the Charter in 1968 but no claim to sovereignty replaced it.

It was the Obama administration, and not Israel, that poured cold water on the idea of a wider regional diplomatic process, following a meeting in Aqaba in early 2016 among Israeli, Egyptian, Jordanian and US leaders, a senior Israeli diplomatic official said Tuesday.
According to a report Sunday in Haaretz, a meeting among Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Egyptian President Fattah Abdel al-Sisi, Jordan’s King Abdullah and former US secretary of state John Kerry took place in late 2015, but did not bear any practical fruit because of Israeli opposition.
But, according to the senior official, it was US opposition that stymied the process, much as the insistence in incorporating Qatar and Turkey into a cease-fire framework to end Operation Protective Edge in 2014 ended that particular process. The cease-fire went into effect, the official said, only after the US was nudged to the side and an agreement was reached between Israel and Egypt.
According to the official, the Americans wanted to “dictate terms” that were unacceptable to Israel, apparently meaning that Kerry wanted the parameters he has since laid out as the way forward in the diplomatic process to form the core of this agreement.

The chances of a formal peace agreement and normalization of relations between Israel and the wider Arab world in the near future are slim, contrary to media reports and the posturing of Israeli opposition politicians, experts say.
Citing unidentified former senior Obama administration officials, the Haaretz newspaper reported Sunday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had met with Egyptian and Jordanian heads of state in a secret meeting last year in Jordan, in order to promote a regional peace agreement. The talks led nowhere, and Haaretz’s report blamed Netanyahu for the negotiations’ failure because he backed out over opposition from within his governing coalition.
Israeli opposition leader Member of Knesset Isaac Herzog (Zionist Union) jumped on the report Monday to blame Netanyahu for failing to reach a peace deal with the Arabs. Yet it is possible that the story is being overhyped by the Israeli political left, since the former Obama administration officials quoted in the report may have been seeking to do no more than present Netanyahu as obstructing peace. The article, meanwhile, did not mention that the gaps between Israel and the Arab world remain too large to bridge for an imminent peace deal.
Notably, word of the Jordan peace summit was kept under wraps until it was leaked to Haaretz this week, revealing the sensitivity of the issue for Jordan and Egypt, which both have peace treaties with neighboring Israel.
“This was a one-sided leak by Obama officials, suggesting there is no reason to believe there was any real prospect of negotiations on serious terms,” Eugene Kontorovich, a professor at Northwestern University School of Law and an expert on international law, told JNS.org.

The Palestinians divided themselves into an autocratic PA in the West Bank, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, and a theocratic terrorist state in Gaza. Without Israel’s support of the PA, Hamas would oust Abbas and take over the PA-controlled territories as well. To expect that these two murderous warring factions, one a corrupt kleptocracy and the other an Islamic terror enclave, could set aside their differences and live in peace with Israel is like believing that pigs can fly.
What’s more, longstanding Palestinian brainwashing of its population against Jews and Israel has resulted in vehement Palestinian opposition to a negotiated “two-state solution.”
A 2016 poll of Palestinian public opinion in the PA-controlled territories and Gaza reveals this stark and consequential reality:

• 57 percent oppose mutual recognition of Palestine and Israel as the homelands of their respective peoples.
• 62 percent oppose a Palestinian state in Gaza, Judea and Samaria unless Israel receives no territory east of the Armistice Line (Green Line).
• More than two-thirds oppose West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
• 67 percent oppose Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem’s Jewish quarter and the Western Wall.
• 67 percent oppose recognition of Israel as the state of the Jewish people, even if it leads to peace.

The US, EU and UN have been unwilling to look at these current realities, but Israelis understand that there’s no rational reason to believe that a Palestinian state would be anything other than a dangerous, antisemitic, religiously intolerant, homophobic, misogynistic country that is home to Islamist terror groups, just a stone’s throw away from Tel Aviv and Haifa.
In his book The Art of the Deal, Donald Trump admonishes the reader not to “reward failure by promoting those responsible for it, because all you get is more failure.” Let’s hope President Trump realizes that offering the Palestinians a “two-state” deal yet again, and expecting a different result, is the height of foolishness. It’s time to move beyond the failed “two-state” construct.

Israel has been the perennial “what about” excuse used by Arab despots seeking to silence their domestic opponents as “Zionist collaborators.”
A universal peace between Israel and these Arab regimes would finally do away with this.
A critical mass of Arabs, Muslims and leftists still struggle with Israel’s historic legitimacy, leading us all to constantly overplay our hand in peace negotiations.
Like a broken record, we are guilty of repetitive sloganeering, lazy thinking, emotional decision-making, and a dogmatic approach to what should be the art of politics.
We have allowed our political, religious, and ideological tribalism to shape our emotional response.
Our unwillingness to hear outside our own echo chambers has severely limited our ability to innovate solutions. It is post-truth.
When new thinking on any issue is instantly labeled treacherous, only inward looking violently inbred and dogmatic ideologies such as jihadism can thrive.
All the more reason why creative thinking on this issue among Arabs, Muslims, and the left generally is so important. Peace is more important than our pride.

Improved relations between Israel and Egypt are also reflected in the Sisi regime’s attitude to the peace treaty with Israel. Sisi, like Mubarak before him, sees peace with Israel as a strategic asset. But, unlike Mubarak, he also seems to have a positive attitude to normalization and sees benefits not only in military ties, but also political and economic ties.
Sisi reinstated the Egyptian ambassador to Israel in early 2016 and in July, Egyptian foreign minister Sameh Shoukry made a much-publicized visit to Israel, the first of its kind in nine years, to push for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Upon returning to Egypt, Shoukry visited a top-ranked Cairo high school and reportedly told students there that he refuses to define Israel’s military actions against Palestinians as terrorism, though his office later issued a clarification.
Egypt has a vested interest in promoting normalization between Israel and other Arab nations so as not to remain the only Arab state cooperating so closely with the Jewish state.
Sisi participated in a secret summit together with Jordan’s King Abdullah, then-US secretary of state John Kerry and Netanyahu during which ideas were presented on how the Gulf States, Jordan and Egypt could help promote a regional peace initiative.
Netanyahu raised the idea of a regional initiative during his press conference last week in Washington with President Donald Trump. Egypt’s participation in such an initiative is crucial to its success.
Sisi’s attempts to emphasize the positive aspects of relations with Israel have been met with skepticism inside Egypt. Large swathes of Egypt’s population from Nasserites and left-wing activists to trade union members and Islamists are hostile to the Jewish state. However, improved relations with the Palestinians achieved via a regional initiative together with Sisi’s positive leadership could bring about a sea change in Egyptian public opinion over time.
The Sisi regime presents a unique opportunity. Israel should welcome the Sisi era.

Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and King Abdullah II of Jordan agreed Tuesday there could be no concessions on establishing a Palestinian state, the presidency said after talks in Cairo.
The meeting between the leaders of the two Arab countries that have signed peace treaties with Israel came after US President Donald Trump’s administration suggested it would not insist on a Palestinian state for a Middle East peace agreement.
“The two sides discussed ways to push the stagnant Middle East peace process, especially in light of US President Donald Trump’s administration coming to power,” a Cairo presidential statement said.
A two-state solution “with a Palestinian state… with East Jerusalem as its capital is a nationalist principle that cannot be conceded.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday praised Australia for being “courageously willing to puncture U.N. hypocrisy” on anti-Israel resolutions.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull marked the first visit to Australia by a serving Israeli leader by writing an opinion piece in Wednesday’s The Australian newspaper that backed Netanyahu’s criticism in 2015 that the United Nations General Assembly had adopted 20 resolutions critical of Israel in the preceding year and only one in response to the Syrian war.
“My government will not support one-sided resolutions criticizing Israel of the kind recently adopted by the U.N. Security Council and we deplore the boycott campaigns designed to delegitimize the Jewish state,” Turnbull wrote, referring to the Dec. 23 resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem as a “flagrant violation” of international law.
The United States abstained from that vote and Australia, while not a member of the security council, was one of the few countries to publicly support Israel’s position.
Netanyahu said he was delighted to read the article at the start of his four-day Australian visit.

Before Prime Minister Netanyahu even begins his visit to Australia, the New York Times is out with an article amplifying the voices of his critics in that country while minimizing his supporters.
I can understand the impulse to preview the trip, though it’s hard to think of a world leader other than President Trump or Pope Francis whose international travels are subject to such extensive scrutiny by the Times.
What’s strange is the way the Times goes out of its way to more or less declare the trip a failure before it even happens. What was “intended to be a warm meeting,” the Times claims, “is generating a bit of pushback. Sixty notable Australians, including political, religious, cultural and business figures, have signed a letter opposing Mr. Netanyahu’s visit because of his government’s policies toward the Palestinians. And small groups of protesters have demonstrated in Melbourne and Canberra against the visit.”
The phrase “sixty notable Australians” made me chuckle. Beyond, say, Rupert Murdoch and Elle Macpherson, neither of whom now live in Australia full time, are there even 60 notable Australians? The Times doesn’t name any of the signatories to the letter, but a click through makes clear that they are mostly a motley assortment of junior professors and longtime Palestinian activists.
Even the Times itself seems to concede, in a kind of backhanded way, that the backlash isn’t particularly newsworthy. “A bit” of pushback, the Times says. “Small” groups of protesters. Why is this even worth a story in the Times?

There is a simple and sinister reason Labor is now attacking Israel. It’s after Muslim votes.
Every federal seat with big Muslim minorities except Reid is now held by Labor, most in western Sydney.
And it shows. Labor’s NSW branch in particular is now leading a push to overturn Labor policy and formally recognise Palestine as a state, despite the refusal of Palestinian leaders to make peace with Israel.
That push is backed by Labor “elders” Bob Hawke, Gareth Evans, Bob Carr and Kevin Rudd, who also needs the support of Arab nations for a good United Nations job.
For Labor to push so hard to reward the Palestinians makes no moral sense — and is dangerous.
What exactly is the nature of this country it wants to recognise?
The Palestinian Authority’s president is Mahmoud Abbas, who 12 years ago was voted into the job for four years. That’s right: there hasn’t been an election since.
That’s in part because a key part of this “nation” — the populous Gaza Strip — is actually run by the Islamist Hamas party. These guys not only hate Abbas but Jews as well. In fact, their official charter calls for jihad to destroy Israel.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised US President Donald Trump for condemning a recent spate of anti-Semitic incidents in the US, saying that “it is very important that President Trump took a strong stand against anti-Semitism.”
Trump’s condemnation of denunciation of anti-Semitism as “horrible,” “painful” and a “sad reminder” of evil on Tuesday came after the US president faced mounting criticism from US Jewish groups for failing to explicitly denounce anti-Semitism.
The US president’s comments came a day after bomb threats were issued against Jewish community centers across the United States for the fourth time in just over a month, and after gravestones were toppled at a Jewish cemetery in St. Louis.
Speaking at an event for the Jewish community Wednesday at the Great Synagogue in Sydney, where he is on a state visit, Netanyahu described anti-Semitism as a growing trend that needs to be combated.
“We have a battle against those who seek to demonize our people and against the resurgent anti-Semitism we see in many parts of the world,” he said, adding that “it is something that we need to fight together.”

General Herbert Raymond (H.R.) McMaster is “the right man in the right place” for both America and the Jewish state, an Israeli military expert told the Hebrew news site nrg on Tuesday about the US president’s appointment of his new national security adviser, who will replace the recently resigned Michael Flynn.
Dr. Eitan Shamir — a senior research associate at the Begin Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University — said that nobody could be “better suited for the job.”
Shamir recounted being contacted some 10 years ago by McMaster, who had read and liked his book, Transforming Command: The Pursuit of Mission Command in the US, UK and Israeli Armies.
“He is a very warm person,” Shamir said. “The first time we met in person, he embraced me. Since then, we have remained in touch, visiting one another in Israel and the US, and exchanging emails.”
This warmth, Shamir added, extends to McMaster’s feelings about the Jewish state. “He was in the country many times; he has many Israeli friends, and I remember an event at which he called Israel an ally which fights with the US, just as Canada, Britain and Australia do,” Shamir said. However, he added he was not sure what the new US national security adviser’s positions were on specific internal Israeli issues.

Pressed to explain his false claim that something terrible had happened in Sweden last week, President Donald Trump traced the canard back to the reporting of Ami Horowitz, a gonzo Jewish-American filmmaker who spoke about Sweden’s problem with Muslim immigrants on Fox News.
On Saturday, during a campaign-style speech in Florida on border security and immigrants, Trump urged listeners to “look at what’s happening last night in Sweden,” leading to widespread puzzlement and mockery from Swedes who said no terrorist attack had taken place there the previous day or even recently.
Karl Bildt, a former prime minister of Sweden, wondered on Twitter what Trump “is smoking," and the Aftonbladet paper ran a daily roundup from Friday featuring nothing more sinister than a small northern avalanche.
Later Saturday afternoon, Trump indicated that he meant for people to look at what the media broadcast and that the only thing that happened Friday is that he caught Horowitz talking about Sweden on Fox News.

Dear Senators Graham, Corker, Cotton, Paul, and Rubio,
I am a US citizen living in Israel. Over the past decades I have had numerous occasions to utilize the services of the US Consulate in Jerusalem. In all those years, I have observed that I have never seen a Jewish Israeli at any of the various service points where consular staff interact with the public.
All such staff are either from the US or local Arab staffers. Not only is this consistently the case at all consular services inside the consulate, but also it can be seen, shockingly, that even the security staff are often Arabs. I can assure you that there is no shortage of qualified Jewish Israelis who could fill such consular positions - and so the question is begged: is the US State Department systematically choosing, over the course of decades, to not hire Jewish Israelis, while singularly preferring all local staffers to be selected from the Arab population?
The second matter is different but definitely potentially connected to my first query. A perusal of consular activities as reflected on the official website shows that all programming efforts are geared towards and in concert with local Arab populations in eastern Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and Gaza.

One of the talking points one hears many times in the realm of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that the Palestinians have rejected peace offer after peace offer. Putting aside the accuracy of the claim, it ignores one of the fundamental rules of the game: we’re allowed to reject up to ten final-status peace initiatives before being disqualified.
It’s all right there in the rulebook. We didn’t lose the right to reject a further nine proposals when the Peel Commission came to its conclusion in the 1930’s. We were perfectly safe, in terms of the number of violations allowed, when we and our allies – really just ambitious neighbors who wanted a piece of this land for themselves – said No to the 1947 UN Partition Plan. We were still in the game. Those are the rules. Are you trying to cheat?
Just because Arafat rejected Barak’s peace proposal, and Abbas rejected Olmert’s, and he continues to avoid negotiations toward a final-status agreement – none of that means we’ve run out of rejections. We’ve got a few more available. It’s not like baseball, where it’s three strikes and you’re out, or basketball, where a player is ejected if he commits too many fouls. We’re still in this game. We have more peace initiatives to reject before anyone can tell us to sit down.
For some reason no one ever talks about the number of times Israel has rejected initiatives. How many do they have left? Are you going to disqualify them from this competition? I don’t hear you saying that because Israel refused to cooperate with the 1948 effort to append Palestine to Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, the country lost its right to engage in further efforts to resolve the conflict.

IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot downplayed the chances for a fresh war with either the Hezbollah or Hamas terror groups in the near future, saying they were both uninterested in a new conflict and, in the Lebanese group’s case, demoralized as well.
Speaking at a closed-door meeting of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Eisenkot said that despite having gained battlefield experience as a result of its military invention in Syria on behalf of the regime of Bashar Assad, Lebanese terror group Hezbollah had been left significantly weakened the fighting in Syria.
“Hezbollah’s [military] operations in Syria have brought about a morale and financial crisis within its ranks,” the Hebrew-language Ynet news site quoted him as saying.
Eisenkot’s comments regarding Hezbollah’s intentions were made following a number of hawkish statements from the Shiite organization’s leader Hassan Nasrallah in the past week, including a threat Monday that the group will not abide by any “red lines” in a future war with Israel.

Syrian media reported that Israeli aircraft targeted Syrian Army positions, including a convoy bearing weapons for the Hezbollah terrorist group, early Wednesday morning.
The strike was said to have occurred at approximately 3:30 a.m., in the Qalamoun Mountains, northeast of Damascus, close to the Lebanese border.
According to Arab media, outposts of the Syrian Army’s 3rd Division were targeted in the strikes.
The Syrian Shaam news service quoted a spokesperson for the nearby city of Yarboud who said the Israeli jets fired six missiles at the various targets.
Some were directed toward military positions, while others targeted weapons caches near Ba’albak, in the eastern Qalamoun range, and set alight a Hezbollah convoy, according to the spokesperson, Abu al-Jude al-Qalamouni.
Anonymous security sources confirmed to the Lebanese al-Mayadeen outlet, which is supportive of Hezbollah, that missiles had been fired into Syria, but said that no damage or injuries were caused.

The IDF has concealed spyware and surveillance equipment near the Lebanese village of Mis El-Jabl, in the area adjacent to the Blue Line defined by the UN as the border demarcation between Israel and Lebanon, according to claims by the Hezbollah terrorist organization.
The organization claims that IDF soldiers crossed the border in the region of the Blue Line at 1:20 A.M. and buried the spyware equipment.
"The Israeli enemy penetrated through the technological barrier surrounding the village of Meiss Ej Jabal, in the Qurum a-Shiqui region near the Blue Line, and planted spy gear in the area," Hezbollah posted on one of its Twitter accounts.
Arab media outlets reported that Israeli Air Force fighters struck Syrian army positions just outside of Damascus early Wednesday morning. Some reports have claimed that the strikes also targeted a bus carrying Hezbollah terrorists.

Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev traveled with the Ironi Nahariya basketball team to its game in southern Turkey Wednesday, ending a showdown between Israeli and Turkish security authorities on Wednesday.
Regev joined the team’s flight on Wednesday afternoon to Gaziantep after Turkish officials refused to allow Ironi Nahariya to be accompanied by armed security forces without the presence of a minister, according to government sources.
Earlier this week, the Shin Bet lifted its opposition to the squad flying to the restive city near the Syrian border after the team agreed to charter a special flight and bring its own security.
Nahariya is set to face off against Gaziantep for the second leg of a Europe Cup match Wednesday night. The Israeli team took the first leg 96-75.

The Islamist Hamas movement unleashed a new round of criticism at Israel today, accusing the Jewish state of amassing over eight million civilians.
Israel and several Islamist militant groups, chief among them Hamas, have been trading fire for years, even after Israel withdrew its settlements from the Gaza Strip in 2005. Hamas routed its more moderate rival Fatah in 2007, gaining control over the coastal area. Israel has since maintained a naval blockade of the area for fear that any materials allowed in would permit Hamas to construct weapons. The movement has fought three wars with Israel since then.
The new charges come amid heightened tensions, with southern Israel the target of rocket and mortar attacks, and the IDF responding with air strikes, tank and artillery fire. Several Palestinians have been killed, including a number of civilians, and civilian life in southern Israel has been disrupted as people are instructed never to remain more than fifteen seconds from a location shielded from rockets.
“The Zionist enemy’s military power comes from its civilians,” said outgoing Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh, using the organization’s term for Israel, whose legitimacy it does not recognize. “The enemy has been amassing them for decades, while the international community does nothing to stop it. But the Islamic Resistance will continue to strike at this vital Zionist resource,” he told reporters.

Five European parliamentarians said Wednesday that Israeli authorities had prevented them from entering the Gaza Strip.
"The refusal of access to Gaza by the Israeli authorities to the European Parliament on arbitrary grounds is unacceptable," Cypriot MEP Neoklis Sylikiotis said in a statement.
Similar delegations of European lawmakers have been barred from entering the Palestinian coastal enclave since 2011, the statement added, though a team led by the head of the European Parliament's budget committee was allowed to visit once.
"What is there to hide from us?" it said, condemning what it called "systematic" entry bans.
Israel explained parliamentarians were not among those allowed to enter the territory.
"Israeli policy allows professional and humanitarian officials to cross between Israel and the Gaza Strip for the development of the Gaza Strip in the field of economy and infrastructure, in addition to foreign diplomats serving in the Palestinian Authority or Israel," the Defense Ministry body responsible for approving entry told AFP.

It is no secret that the Palestinian Authority's (PA) financial crisis is mounting with declining foreign support. This has prompted Mohammad Shtayyeh, a member of Fatah's Central Committee and former minister of public works and housing, to confirm Feb. 13 that donors' funding is decreasing and the PA's financial crisis is ongoing.
Shadi Othman, the communication and information officer at the European Commission in Jerusalem, said Feb. 3 that a new financial support policy for 2017 was adopted by the European Union, and that the EU contribution of 30 million euros ($32 million) that had gone to pay the salaries of PA civil servants in the Gaza Strip will be used to support families in need, provide job opportunities and fund development and infrastructure projects.
On Feb. 7, the PA government replied in a statement that the new EU approach will further increase the budget deficit. It said that last year, Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah launched efforts to prevent the EU decision, but to no avail. According to the statement, this means that the PA’s financial burden will grow and the $39 million monthly budget deficit will increase.
A European diplomat in the Palestinian territories, who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, said,“The new EU approach came to implement the recommendations of the European Monitoring Committee’s report of 2013, which rejected that civil servants who do not punch the clock be paid their paychecks by the EU, in the absence of any valid justification for the European taxpayers explaining why their money is channeled to these civil servants. Thus, the EU did not cut the funding, but rechanneled these funds to another sector, namely the families in need, instead.”

The leader of the militant Islamist movement that runs Gaza faces embarrassment as a former same-sex romantic partner is preparing to publish a memoir of the intimate relationship, sources in Gaza City reported today.
Ismail Haniyeh, who will soon assume political control of Hamas’s international relations, has been trying to prevail upon Fellat Asbang, currently residing in Britain, to reverse his decision to release On My Knees: In The Bedroom With Ismail Haniyeh. Asbang, 50, has engaged bodyguards to prevent intimidation or attempts on his life by agents or supporters of Hamas.
In a telephone interview from a concealed location, the entrepreneur insisted he will go ahead with the April release as planned. “It’s crucial that the world know these things about a public figure,” he argued. “I’ve seen what happens to publishers that run afoul of Islamist intimidation, so I’m self-publishing the book. The people under Hamas rule in Gaza aren’t permitted to criticize Haniyeh or Hamas, so it’s up to Palestinians elsewhere to raise the alarm.”
Asbang declined to elaborate on the duration or extent of his romantic relationship with the Hamas leader, only disclosing that it soured three years ago. “It was beautiful for a long time, but then it wasn’t. Suffice it to say I got tired of him prioritizing politics over our closeness.”

Egyptian President Abdel Fatah Sisi met with Jewish-American leaders in Cairo on Sunday to discuss the Middle East and the political and economic challenges his country faces.
Alaa Youssef, the president’s spokesperson, said he met with Jewish leaders in an attempt to strengthen cooperation, adding that Egyptian-American relations are extensive and of strategic importance. The delegation was from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, an umbrella organization that represents over 50 major U.S. Jewish groups.
“The coming challenges require that we strengthen that relationship,” he said.
At the meeting, Sisi discussed the war on terror, Egypt’s financial challenges, the campaign against corruption and perks for investors. Youssef said that Sisi’s American counterparts expressed their appreciation of the president’s efforts on a number of fronts, namely the war on terror and Egypt’s leadership role in the region.
Sisi was on the receiving end of criticism on Arab social media for the meeting with American Jewish leaders.
“Sisi is the biggest Zionist in the Middle East,” Saleh Almansoori tweeted.

Egyptian journalists writing for the al-Mizri, al-Yom, and al-Aharam newspapers criticized Israel's presence and successes in invention and science as an embarrassment to the entire Arab world, reported MEMRI.
Al-Mizri journalist Matulei Salam wrote in his article, "Countries which appreciate knowledge see inventions as a god and as the epitome of investment. The Egyptian government and populace are not interested in inventions. This is an embarrassment, since Israel is rated second-highest in the world in the area of inventions. Scientific research in Israel is also very advanced and continues to advance, and is considered to be among the best in the world. But we ourselves have a backwards mentality, and our interest in science ends with our philosophical discussions in cafes and clubs.
"Unfortunately, we are a nation which has fallen. Once we were one of the best nations, and now we are one of the worst. In the meantime, Israel is making a place for itself in the sciences we ignore. Those of us who have master's degrees and doctorate degrees are few, and they have to search for work so that they can live while wasting their academic knowledge."

I have just concluded an in-depth investigation into antisemitism inside The Palestine Solidarity Campaign that has spanned months but drew on several years of underlying research. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) claims to be “the biggest organisation in the UK dedicated to securing Palestinian human rights.” The PSC patrons include: Jeremy Corbyn MP, Pat Gaffney, Rev Garth, Ken Loach, Dr Ilan Pappe, Hilary & Steven Rose, Alexi Sayle, Baroness Tonge of Kew, and Betty Hunter. It partners with many of the largest unions in the UK.
The result of this research is an eighty-page report, that focuses on seventeen separate PSC branches across England and Wales, and culminated with an in-depth case study of a mass demonstration in London. The full report can be downloaded at the bottom of this page.
In truth, I stopped the detailed analysis at seventeen branches simply because I was inundated with material. Although not mentioned in the report, I also found ‘qualifying material’ at the PSC branches in Brighton, Faversham, Camden, Haringey, Lambeth, Waltham Forest, Liverpool, Manchester, Milton Keynes, Nottingham, Oxford, Plymouth & Portsmouth. As the researched progressed, finding more of the antisemitism at every branch became an exercise in pointing out the obvious. The question became to how to find a way to measure and quantify it.
When I refer to antisemitism within this study, I avoided *all references to the conflict*. We all know the trick is to deflect accusations of antisemitism with a false cry about criticism of Israeli policy. I set out to avoid this. I was only interested in those pushing conspiracy theory, holocaust denial or classic antisemitic tropes. The argument that antisemitism is about legitimate criticism of Israel simply has no weight against this research. The bar for antisemitism that was used is unnaturally high. As an example, if the worst I found was an activist suggesting Israel should be destroyed, is committing genocide and Zionists are all Nazis, that activist *would not* have made the grade for this research. Let that fact sink in.

The Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) movement is the most prominent effort today to single out and delegitimize the State of Israel. In recent months, BDS has lost some steam both because it ties itself to extreme and often anti-Semitic partners and also because some academic and church groups recognize that such political boycotts are anathema to scholarly discourse and peace-making.
The BDS today is nevertheless driven by the hatreds and obsessions which the post-Edward Said Middle Eastern studies community world promotes. At Columbia University, Brandeis, and many other elite universities, Zionism is considered original sin and students who support Israel as a Jewish state increasingly face ostracism. Whereas once African Americans and Jews found common cause and maintained a de facto alliance in Congress, progressive activists now cite the idea of intersectionality to demand blind loyalty to a collection of movements no matter how illiberal some causes like rejectionist Palestinian nationalism can be.
Because colleges and university classes too often de-emphasize fact in favor of political frameworks when tackling history, too many progressive activists imagine that when they support BDS and agitate against Israel, they are waging an anti-colonialist battle against the forces of imperialism. In effect, they see strength and power as sin, and cannot fathom that they have reversed David and Goliath; that Palestinian nationalists have prostituted themselves to become proxies of Iran, Turkey, and various Arab regimes. Israel, the United States, the CIA are by definition bad, whereas the Palestine Liberation Organization and like-minded or even more radical groups are good.
How ironic it is that so few BDS proponents recognize that they may very well be repeating if not cultivating the seeds planted by CIA Arabists half a century ago. From the Jewish Telegraph Agency on February 20, 1967:

In a recent letter to the New York Times, the current Earl of Balfour, Roderick Balfour, argued that it is Israel's fault that there is "growing anti-Semitism around the world." Balfour, who is a descendent of Arthur Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary who wrote the Balfour Declaration a hundred years ago, wrote the following: "the increasing inability of Israel to address [the condition of Palestinians], coupled with the expansion into Arab territory of the Jewish settlements, are major factors in growing anti-Semitism around the world." He argued further that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "owes it to the millions of Jews around the world" who suffer anti-Semitism, to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict.
This well-intentioned but benighted view is particularly ironic in light of the fact that the Balfour Declaration had, as one of its purposes, to end anti-Semitism around the world by creating a homeland for the Jewish people. But now the scion of Lord Balfour is arguing that it is Israel that is causing anti-Semitism.
Roderick Balfour's views are simply wrong both as a matter of fact and as a matter of morality. Anyone who hates Jews "around the world" because they disagree with the policy of Israel would be ready to hate Jews on the basis of any pretext. Modern day anti-Semites, unlike their forbearers, need to find excuses for their hatred, and anti-Zionism has become the excuse de jure.
To prove the point, let us consider other countries: has there been growing anti-Chinese feelings around the world as the result of China's occupation of Tibet? Is there growing hatred of Americans of Turkish background because of Turkey's unwillingness to end the conflict in Cypress? Do Europeans of Russian background suffer bigotry because of Russia's invasion of Crimea? The answer to all these questions is a resounding no. If Jews are the only group that suffers because of controversial policies by Israel, then the onus lies on the anti-Semites rather than on the nation state of the Jewish people.

The headline reads: "Cleric's Death Stirs Memories of a Seminal Attack." The New York Times article is about the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. The “cleric,” Omar Abdel Rahman, is the "blind sheikh." The use of the word "cleric" instantly calls to mind a man of God, presumably, therefore, a man of Peace.
Wrong!
His lawyer, Lynn F. Stewart, (who had been convicted of passing messages for Rahman from his jail cell and who was released years ago for compassionate reasons), is also presented as a sympathetic figure, as someone who is "speaking from her hospital bed in Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan." Her view of the Sheikh's "fiery rhetoric was a matter of free speech, a belief shared by many in the Arab world."
Worse. Stewart describes the Sheikh as "the latest in a long line of American heroes who were convicted wrongfully" and as yet another victim of American injustice. Stewart says: "We can name a lot of names in American history where people were convicted of not doing anything."
Not doing anything?
Rahman was a follower of Sayyid Qutb and a close associate of Osama Bin Laden as was one of Rahman’s sons. Rahman led an organization (Jam’a al-Islamiya) that was deemed a “terrorist” group by both the Egyptian and American governments. His group murdered 58 foreign tourists in Luxor, Egypt. Rahman issued the fatwa which approved the assassination of President Anwar Sadat—and he issued the fatwa which approved Bin Laden’s 9/11 attacks on America.
In his New York City based sermons, Rahman advised his followers to “rob banks and kill Jews.” One of his followers assassinated Rabbi Meir Kahane.
And yet, Stewart considers him an “American hero.”

If Obama were still in office that 22-year-old punk would be invited from Canada to the White House in celebration of his “punch a Zionist” tweet.
Okay, I exaggerate. So Obama’s invitation would not be for those words directly but rather to honor his version of free speech, as that appears to be the point of contention throughout Montreal and the rest of Canada – whether this particular McGill University student had every right to speak his mind or whether his message was a call to violence and therefore punishable.
People in the middle of all this at McGill – students, faculty, administration – are not quite sure what action to take.
So let me help out by saying – Are you kidding me!
It does not get more declarative and menacing than that, coming in English or French from bilingual Montreal.
Please notice that I am not using that man’s name except to call him Punch Boy. I am providing a link to him and his story. That’s enough. But he needs no help from me to win some fame. Yes he has his detractors. Jewish kids at McGill now say they feel unsafe and Punch Boy has apologized – apparently due to the uproar.

A German court actually ruled that firebombing a place where Jews worship is somehow different from attacking Jews.
Why was the Israeli embassy not attacked, rather than a synagogue whose worshippers were presumably not Israeli? Presumably the worshippers were German. What happened in the German court was pure Nazi-think and the most undisguised antisemitism: that Jews are supposedly not Germans.
Meanwhile, another German Court again rejected an action against your friendly neighborhood "sharia police."
In Germany, it seems, firebombing synagogues is merely "anti-Israeli" even if there are no Israelis there, and "police" who use Islamic sharia law -- without legal authority and within a system of law that persecutes women, Christians, Jews and others -- are acceptable and legal.
The anti-Semitism facing Jews at UK universities led the Baroness Deech to declare British University campuses "no-go zones" for Jews.
Simply defining and identifying anti-Semitism is only the start. It is also necessary to start tackling the anti-Semitic attitudes of Islamic communities across Europe and the attitudes of immigrants coming to our nations.
What needs to be made clear is that you are welcome here as long as you respect Jews, Christians and all others, as well.

A pre-school teacher in Texas has been suspended from the classroom pending an investigation into her encouraging social media followers to “kill some Jews,” The Algemeiner has learned.
Nancy Salem, who teaches at The Children’s Courtyard in Arlington, as The Algemeiner first reported, was among 24 anti-Israel activists at the University of Texas, Arlington (UTA), exposed by covert campus watchdog group Canary Mission for expressing racist and violent thoughts online.
Salem — a member of the UTA chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine and a supporter of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement — used her now-disabled Twitter account to post such remarks as: “How many Jews died in the Holocaust? Not enough…HAHAHAHA.”
Since Canary Mission’s exposure of Salem’s social media behavior, the Children’s Courtyard’s Facebook page has been flooded with comments criticizing the institution and calling on parents to remove their children from the school.

This week Michael Burd and Alan Freedman are delighted to have a very special studio guest in Edwin Black who is leading a campaign to have the United Nations replaced by a new organisation called the Covenant of Democratic Nations.
We also hear from Smadar Pery, an Israeli advocate living in Berlin who has some troubling observations about Jewish life in Germany, and Isi Leibler joins us as usual from Jerusalem.
1 min Edwin Black, on Covenant of Democratic Nations
51 min Smadar Pery, Berlin (Part 1)
1 hr 4 min Smadar Pery, Berlin (Part 2)
1 hr 22 min Editorial: Trump / Netanyahu meeting
1 hr 27 min Isi Leibler, Jerusalem

An initial review of the section headlined “Israel and the OPT” reveals that, like Amnesty’s other publications relating to the conflict, the Annual Report has fundamental flaws:

• Pre-launch message control: Amnesty launched its report on February 21 with a secret press conference for pre-selected journalists and allies. By not holding a fully open press conference for the public, Amnesty was seeking to control and manipulate the flow of information appearing in the media.
• No methodology: No sources for any of the claims or way to verify any of it. No evidence to back up serious allegations of human rights abuses. Under these circumstances, none of the accusations should be repeated.
• No legal methodology: No definitions of legal terms, including torture, unlawful killings, excessive force, unfair military trials, harsh sentences, and minor offences.
• Ignoring inconvenient facts: Amnesty alleges that “Israel’s government … failed to ensure accountability either for the extensive war crimes and other grave violations of international law that Israeli forces committed during recent armed conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon or for unlawful killings, torture and other violations that Israeli soldiers and security officials continued to commit against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza” and “The Israeli army, Ministry of Justice and police also did not investigate, failed to investigate adequately, or closed investigations into cases of alleged unlawful killings of Palestinians by Israeli forces in both Israel and the OPT.” This ignores long-standing procedures for review in the Israeli military and civilian justice system, as well as recent reviews and upgrades including the Turkel Commission, dozens of cases under review by the Military Advocate General regarding the Gaza War, and the myriad of reports released by the IDF and the government regarding those reviews.

In Haaretz’s lengthy interview with B’Tselem Executive Director Hagai El-Ad, he described an organization that operates primarily in the international realm, inviting the United Nations and European governments to pressure Israel. Within Israel, B’Tselem is on the fringes, openly rejecting cooperation with vital democratic institutions, including the courts and the army’s investigatory bodies, that El-Ad accuses of being complicit in “the occupation.”
El-Ad and B’Tselem, after being unable to convince the Israeli public to accept their views, have elected to go outside, by lobbying European governments and the UN to impose their views on the Israeli people (and the Palestinians, for that matter).
In an age of political polarization, the disdain and radicalization of El-Ad’s B’Tselem, aided by distant and unaccountable European officials, have become par for the course. Making demands are much easier than offering anything of value or a constructive way forward.

The Jewish governor of Missouri, Eric Greitens, said he will volunteer to help repair a St. Louis-area Jewish cemetery where at least 170 gravestones were toppled over the weekend.
Meanwhile, two Muslim activists have launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise $20,000 for repairs. The launchgood drive started by Linda Sarsour and Tarek El-Messidi had brought in $17,750 as of Tuesday afternoon.
They said any remaining funds after the cemetery is restored will go to fixes for other vandalized Jewish centers.
“Through this campaign, we hope to send a united message from the Jewish and Muslim communities that there is no place for this type of hate, desecration, and violence in America,” the activists wrote. “We pray that this restores a sense of security and peace to the Jewish-American community who has undoubtedly been shaken by this event.”

In the “Jackhole” segment of Bravo TV‘s “Watch What Happens Live” on Monday night, host Andy Cohen railed against the desecration of more than 100 gravestones at the historic Jewish cemetery, Chesed Shel Emeth Society, in his hometown of St. Louis, Missouri.
“This is extremely personal for me, because my great-grandparents and many other of my relatives are buried there,” Cohen said.
But, he added, “I don’t have to have a personal connection to know that this is not who we are as Americans, and this certainly should not be where we’re heading. We’re not even two months into 2017, and already there have been 69 reported bomb threats to JCCs in 27 states. A synagogue was defaced. Swastikas have been drawn on the subway here in New York City, and now this? This does not feel like a coincidence. We cannot allow acts of hate against anyone to become normal. We have got to do better as a country.”

Lithuania’s government is reconsidering plans to build a convention center atop what used to be a Jewish cemetery in Vilnius, rabbis said after meeting with the country’s ambassador to the United States.
The seven-member delegation of American haredi Orthodox rabbis and activists met Rolandas Kriščiūnas last week to discuss the controversial plan to build the $25 million conference center above the former Snipiskes Cemetery, which the Soviets destroyed decades ago. Many Jewish sages are buried there.
“The reception was certainly different than prior meetings, and we were encouraged to hear that the government is currently reviewing its options,” Rabbi David Niederman, president of the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg and North Brooklyn, who organized the meeting, wrote in a statement sent to reporters Tuesday.
The meeting coincided with reports in the Lithuanian media that the government recently canceled the solicitation for bids for the Congress Hall project due to technical irregularities.

The Israeli MFA is horrified by the vicious action of a group of protestors, which denied the Ambassador of Israel his right to freedom of expression at Trinity College Dublin last night. These protestors chanted genocidal refrains, which call for Israel's destruction, while barring access to the lecture theatre.
They obviously have no interest in helping efforts to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but rather wish to ignite and inflame the situation. It is a pity to see such a small and extreme group denying academic thought, exploration and discussion from an Irish audience but unfortunately these are the bullying, intimidating tactics of the BDS movement.
We are sure that an esteemed university such as Trinity will take the appropriate measures to deal with the instigators of last night's protest.
We expect the Irish authorities to take the necessary measures to ensure the freedom of speech of Israel's ambassador.

Trinity has described the cancellation of an event with the Israeli ambassador after protests as “an unacceptable attack on free speech” with Provost Patrick Prendergast stating that the action of protesters “represents the antithesis of what Trinity stands for”.
In a press statement, the College stated that it “regrets” that the event with Israeli Ambassador His Eminence Ze’ev Boker, organised by the Society for International Affairs (SOFIA) was cancelled after a protest from both students and outside of Trinity, organised by Students for Justice in Palestine (TCD).
Provost Patrick Prendergast also criticised those who protested in the statement, as they were stopping a guest from speaking: “This was most unfortunate and represents the antithesis of what Trinity stands for. Universities should be able to facilitate the exchange of ideas. The protesters have violated that fundamental belief.”
“Trinity will remain a home for debate and we will do everything possible to make sure that efforts to suppress the free exchange of ideas do not succeed. I look forward to welcoming Ambassador Boker back to Trinity to speak again in the near future”, Prendergast continued.
They followed this by stating that the event had been cancelled before Boker arrived “amid security concerns”.

Bristol University is investigating claims of anti-Semitism after an article by one of its lecturers emerged, in which she says Jews should stop “privileging” the Holocaust.
Dr Rebecca Gould, a reader in translation studies and comparative literature at the elite Russell Group university, has been accused of using the “language of Holocaust denial”.
The university said they are “actively looking into this matter”, which first arose when an undergraduate penned an open letter to his lecturer last month, explaining his shock at coming across the article.
Sir Eric Pickles MP, who is the UK’s special envoy on post-Holocaust issues and a former Conservative Party chairman,​claimed it is “one of the worst cases of Holocaust denial" he has seen in recent years, adding that she should "consider her position" at the university.
The article is titled Beyond Anti-Semitism and was published in a 2011 edition of the American radical left-wing magazine Counter Punch while Dr Gould was an assistant professor at the University of Iowa.
She claims that the Holocaust is “available to manipulation by governmental elites, aiming to promote the narrative most likely to underwrite their claims to sovereignty.”

Since Ellison was elected to Congress in 2006, he has held hostile positions toward Israel. For example, on a trip to the Jewish state, Ellison visited Hebron and tweeted a picture of a sign that claimed that Israel was "guilty of apartheid." In addition, Ellison associates himself with anti-Israel organizations that have a history of anti-Semitic activity. This includes the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, which hosted a talk during the Democratic National Convention last year and works with several pro-BDS organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace.
Ellison also continues to affiliate with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), organizations implicated in the largest terror finance trial in the history of the United States that exposed the Holy Land Foundation as a financial fundraiser for Hamas, the genocidal terrorist group ruling Gaza.
Despite Ellison's nefarious history of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel bias, both McMoore and Lindblom believe that endorsing him for DNC Chair will help move the Democratic Party forward:
We know that, in this moment, Democrats need a leader who will be honest about the barriers that exist between young people and the Democratic Party and have the ability and desire to bring us into the conversation. That leader is Keith Ellison. Keith understands that in order to be effective, the Democratic Party must empower young people at every level. He knows that we improve youth engagement by encouraging student activists to seek leadership positions - that includes inspiring young Democrats to run for office, work on campaigns, and take on leadership roles within the Party.
What makes McMoore's endorsement problematic in particular is that he is affiliated with American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Last year, he stood beside the National Chairman of the College Republican National Committee expressing bipartisan support for the U.S.-Israel relationship.

A member of a leading Israel advocacy group told The Algemeiner that a new educational training program will help students counter the upcoming spate of UK campus events aimed at delegitimizing the Jewish state.
Tamir Oren, Stand With Us (SWU) UK’s director of public affairs said that, in the run-up to “Israeli Apartheid Week” (IAW), students across Britain were selected to participate in sessions on different topics, such as Israeli history, international law and geopolitics, to “arm them with knowledge.”
Of this, Oren said:
It has been amazing to witness these students grow and become more confident in advocating for Israel, no matter how strenuous and frightening it may be. IAW used to be a week during which Jewish and pro-Israel were unable to effectively present Israel’s case. However, this time our training, educational materials and support to students across the country is making a difference and turning the tide on justice and truth.
For Oren, the safety of students on campus during this time of year remains paramount.
“IAW creates tensions on campus that enable anti-Israel students to feel they are able to harass and intimidate our students,” he said.

Some 400 Israeli-American students gathered in Los Angeles over the weekend to learn how to fight the presence of BDS on college campuses.
The Israeli-American Council’s annual Mishelanu Conference focused on the participants’ hybrid identity and the development of tools for creating pro-Israel activity on campuses to counter Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions activists.
IAC Mishelanu is a pro-Israel campus program that fosters young leaders and provides a home for Israeli- American students. It was established in 2011 and is now active on some 100 campuses, through its accelerator, fellowship and mentorship programs, which develop leadership and entrepreneurship skills to enrich students’ college experience and professional careers.
IAC CEO Shoham Nicolet said: “Discourse surrounding campuses focuses on the challenges of apathy, the disconnect of the young generation from Israel, and a disconnect from Jewish identity.” He said Mishelanu provides solutions to all those issues.

Crying wolf with false claims of anti-Semitism cheapens the world’s oldest hatred.
Steven Goldstein of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect (AFC) is attempting to cash in on self-promotion with the aid of left-wing and Democrat-aligned news media outlets while pushing a narrative of President Donald Trump as somehow facilitating a rise in anti-Semitism across the country.
Goldstein’s AFC profile reveals him to be a leftist agitator, advancing the cause of “social justice” with a particular focus on “LGBT equality.” Co-opting the term “civil rights” to frame LGBT persons as somehow marginalized by American society, the AFC credits Goldstein as essential to having ushered in “marriage equality” - a leftist euphemism for "same-sex marriage" - in the state of New Jersey.
The AFC’s Twitter banner cynically casts Muslim and Arab children as Anne Frank’s contemporaries, superimposing a photo of one the Holocaust's best known child victims upon an image of crying children and hijab-adorned Muslim women:

Like many other neo-Marxist political agitation groups that operate under the guise of advancing ethnic interests, the AFC enjoys tax-exempt status with the IRS via its 501(c)(3) status.
As the usual suspects coalesce around hunting ghosts of anti-Semitism, they ignore real threats to Jews from its primary sources: Muslims and leftists. Meanwhile, opportunists such as Goldstein cash in via self-promotion with aid and support from politically friendly news media outlets.

CAMERA was alerted to the error thanks to a tweet by former U.S. Ambassador Dan Shapiro, whose wife, Julie Fisher, first picked up on it.
As CAMERA wrote to The Times, in December 2015 President Trump cancelled a plan trip to Israel after Prime Minister Netanyahu opposed the candidate's proposed Muslim ban. On Feb. 21, The Times removed the erroneous reference to a Trump visit to Israel and appended the following:
Correction: February 21, 2017
An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Mr. Trump visited Israel during the presidential campaign.

We contacted Mail Online to point out that:

• The attack was aimed at Eilat, which is over 200 miles / 350km from Tel Aviv. It is difficult, therefore, to work out the reference to “Tel Aviv’s Iron Dome defence system.”
• And even if this isn’t a geographic reference, then it brings up the question of the status of Tel Aviv, which is not Israel’s capital city. Therefore, it should be Jerusalem’s or Israel’s Iron Dome system, not Tel Aviv’s.

Editors have now amended the headline to refer to the somewhat unwieldy but more accurate “government’s Iron Dome.”

UPDATE
Following our complaints, CNN’s headline and text now refer to a “wounded Palestinian assailant” rather than a “wounded Palestinian knife attack suspect.”
UPDATE 2
While The Times of London still refers to a “wounded Palestinian,” it has amended its headline following a complaint from HR. The headline, in an important change of nuance, now says that Azaria “could be free this year” instead of “set to be free this year.”

The gate was reported stolen in November 2014. It was found near Bergen in southwestern Norway last December thanks to an anonymous tip. The identity of the thief remains unknown.
The president of the International Dachau Committee, Jean-Michel Thomas, called for the investigation to continue during the ceremony to mark the restoration of the infamous gate.
He said that the purpose of the theft was to "remove a trace, a symbol of all that is represented by the inscription 'Arbeit Macht Frei' on this gate of Dachau camp that some 210,000 detainees walked through from 1933 to 1945."
The original gate was made by prisoners of the Dachau death camp. It was removed when the camp was liberated in 1945 and replaced by a replica in 1965. The gate which was stolen two years ago was the replica.

In 2008, Jason Guberman began a project to map and collect photographs of synagogues and Jewish shrines and cemeteries throughout the Middle East, creating for posterity a digital museum of the physical remnants of these ancient, and almost entirely defunct, communities. Diarna, the organization he founded, has been able to take advantage of the recent upheavals in the region to expand its reach even as Islamic State and other groups have been destroying what little remains. Emily Feldman writes:
Many places were still off-limits when Diarna started its project, some three years before the Arab Spring uprisings toppled dictators in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia. Many of those autocrats clung to anti-Semitic policies. Libya under Muammar Qaddafi was particularly difficult to access for researchers working for a Jewish nonprofit. Qaddafi was notoriously anti-Semitic—canceling all debts owed to Jews, among other things—and Diarna’s efforts to recruit local researchers failed. . . .
When fighting erupted in Libya, for example, reporters descended on the country, including one familiar with Diarna’s work. She contacted Guberman, offering to help him. Her only condition was anonymity. In May 2011, Guberman sent her a map of the Hara Kabira, the old Jewish quarter in Tripoli, to help her locate the Dar Bishi synagogue, the most beautiful in the city when it opened in 1928. After Qaddafi took power in the late 1960s, the government seized and shuttered all Jewish property in Libya. . . .

Israeli twins and fashion designers Shimon and Ariel Ovadia have been wowing audiences during New York Fashion Week.
The brothers, described a few years back by GQ as Best New Designers in America have a fashion line described as “chill and fresh”and having the “exact charm, edge and creativity of New York". WWD marvels “ how two kids without a college education or any design experience launched themselves from the observant Jewish enclave of Flatbush, Brooklyn, to a Vogue-sponsored fashion show at the Chateau Marmont. And did it without working on the Sabbath.”
From the New York Times, writing about 2017 New York fashion week
The New York Giants wide receiver Victor Cruz, left, and the rapper Fabolous sat front row.
He went on to praise the fellow New Yorkers, less like a football star than a fashion editor: “I love their aesthetic — from the energy that they put into their clothing, to the silhouettes, to the cuts of their T-shirts. It’s just really beautiful.”
On the same front-row bench sat the rapper Fabolous, who appeared not to mind the fashion-mad fan crawling at his feet, trying to get a clear smartphone shot of his Puma x Trapstar sneakers.
“One thing that Ovadia has is the dope streetwear, but there’s a little touch to it that screams New York City, screams high-end,” Fabolous said. “But it’s still comfortable and casual at the same time.”

When you bite into a juicy fruit, you don’t want either insects or pesticides in that delicious mouthful.
Controlling pests with minimal spraying is a difficult balancing act for commercial growers. And surprisingly, they don’t have a reliable mechanism to assure that the right quantity reaches every tree or vine; some may be missed or over-sprayed.
Israeli ag-tech startup FieldIn innovated an end-to-end pest-management software to achieve that balance with input from innovative tractor hardware and a host of agronomic data.
In addition to all major grower organizations in Israel, FieldIn technology is now used by one of Italy’s largest wineries and by prominent nut and wine producers in California. The product is designed for “specialty” crops including almonds, citrus, wine grapes, apples, avocados and pomegranates.
FieldIn took second place in the AgriVest 2016 Best Companies competition held at the international AgriVest expo last September in Rehovot. Last June, FieldIn won the audience favorite award at TechCrunch’s first Meetup and Pitch-off in Tel Aviv.

A Tourism Ministry public relations gimmick to bring Hollywood stars to Israel has bombed, with not a single one of the 26 Oscar nominees awarded free trips to Israel last year actually making the trip. Now, the BDS movement is taking credit for the failure.

The tour packages, worth tens of thousands of dollars apiece, were given to 26 nominees in the highest-profile Oscar categories, including actors Jennifer Lawrence, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Sylvester Stallone and Kate Winslet.

Last February, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement put out an official statement urging recipients not to use the tour packages, charging that by coming to Israel, they would be helping the Israeli government whitewash what BDS terms the crimes of the occupation.

On Wednesday, Yousef Munayyer, an activist with the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights who promotes the cultural boycott of Israel, said his movement’s efforts had proved effective.

“This is a success,” Munayyer told AFP. “I am very glad there’s no evidence that people went. I think it is clear the objective of using the actors to whitewash Israel has failed.”

3-day stay at the Golden Door Resort & Spa in San Marcos, CA ($4,800)
3-night stay at the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria in Sorrento, Italy ($5,000)
3-night stay at the Grand Hotel Tremezzo in Lake Como, Italy ($5,000)

The University of Central Lancashire has canceled an Israel Apartheid Week event that contravened the recently UK-adopted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism.

The session was scheduled to take place next week under the title “Debunking Misconceptions on Palestine.” Anti-Israel activist Ben White and pro-Palestinian academics were due to speak at the event in Preston.

A statement issued by a university representative said: “We believe the proposed talk contravenes the new definition and furthermore breaches university protocols for such events, where we require assurances of a balanced view or a panel of speakers representing all interests.

“In this instance our procedures determined that the proposed event would not be lawful and therefore it will not proceed as planned,” the statement continued.

UJS Campaigns Officer Liron Velleman told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday that while he does not expect to see many other British universities following suit by canceling events scheduled for the annual anti-Israel event, he does expect the subject to handled with more sensitivity.

“Following the move by Jo Johnson MP [the minister for universities and science] to encourage Universities UK to use the IHRA definition of antisemitism, universities will have a heightened awareness of ensuring events during Israel Apartheid Week will not violate values, expectations and laws but also that free speech and robust debate must remain a part of university life,” Velleman said in a written exchange with the Post.

Last week, Johnson sent a letter to the head of Universities UK, an organization representing universities across the country, drawing their attention to the definition of antisemitism

Free speech and academic freedom are fundamental to our higher education system. Many institutions have a legal duty to take reasonably practicable steps to secure freedom of speech for their members, students, employees and visiting speakers. We expect higher education institutions to have clearly set out procedures and policies for events and the hosting of external speakers which allow for open transparent events, challenge and debate and ensure that lawful speech can occur on campuses. Open and robust debate is how students should challenge those with whom they disagree. There is no place for students that use intimidation or violence to attempt to shut down the free and open exchange of ideas.

I am sure you share my concerns about the rising reports of anti-Semitic incidents in this country and will want to make sure that your own institution is a welcoming environment for all students and that the legal position and guidelines are universally understood and acted upon at all times. This will include events such as those that might take place under the banner of "Israel Apartheid' events for instance. Such events need to be property handled by higher education institutions to ensure that our values, expectations and laws are not violated.

In September 2015 the Government ask. Universities UK (UUK) to set up a Harassment Taskforce to consider what more can be done to address harassment on campus, including on the basis of religion and belief. The taskforce published its report: 'Changing the Culture' on 21 October 2016. UUK plan to establish more baseline evidence, and to assess institutions' progress in implementing the recommendations, so that the work of the taskforce makes a real difference. UUK will report their progress to me later this year.

This Government will diligently pursue our commitment to tackle intolerance and bigotry in every form: and continue to work in partnership with public bodies and communities to support institutions in the pursuit of eliminating anti-Semitism and all forms of harassment, discrimination Or racism.

Yours sincerely,

JO JOHNSON MP 

Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.

Manifestations might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic. Antisemitism frequently charges Jews with conspiring to harm humanity, and it is often used to blame Jews for “why things go wrong.” It is expressed in speech, writing, visual forms and action, and employs sinister stereotypes and negative character traits.
Contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere could, taking into account the overall context, include, but are not limited to:

Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.
Making mendacious, dehumanising, demonising, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.
Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, or even for acts committed by non-Jews.
Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust).
Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.
Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.
Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination (e.g. by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour).
Applying double standards by requiring of Israel a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g. claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterise Israel or Israelis.
Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.

Law enforcement authorities and his family believe that his murderous anger was rooted in financial ruin, for they say he apparently saw his life savings of perhaps $500,000 somehow lost here in a matter of weeks. Few mass crimes unfold particularly neatly, however, and it was also evident in the wake of Mr. Abu Kamal's brutal expression of discontent -- a burst of gunfire that left six injured and two dead, including himself -- that not all the chapters in the narrative of his life were clear.

In his rampage, he carried a pair of identical letters, one in English and one in Arabic, tucked into a pouch dangling around his neck, letters that authorities said were a rambling diatribe of venom against the ''Big Three'' of the United States, France and England for centuries-long oppression of Palestinians, against Zionism that he said oppressed Palestinians and against two business partners for swindling him out of money. Investigators would not divulge the partners' names.

Ali Abu Kamal's relatives say they are tired of lying about why the Palestinian opened fire on the observation deck of Empire State Building, killing a tourist and injuring six other people before committing suicide.

Kamal's widow insisted after the shooting spree that the attack was not politically motivated. She said that her husband had become suicidal after losing $300,000 in a business venture.

But in a stunning admission, Kamal's 48-year-old daughter Linda told the Daily News that her dad wanted to punish the U.S. for supporting Israel - and revealed her mom's 1997 account was a cover story crafted by the Palestinian Authority.

"A Palestinian Authority official advised us to say the attack was not for political reasons because that would harm the peace agreement with Israel," she told The News on Friday. "We didn't know that he was martyred for patriotic motivations, so we repeated what we were told to do."

...She said the family became certain that he carried out the attack for political reasons after reading his diary.

"He wrote that after he raised his children and made sure that his family was all right he decided to avenge in the highest building in America to make sure they get his message," said Linda, who works for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees.

She said her mom burned the diary, fearing that it would cause the family trouble.

The history of Palestine is full of ups and downs, marked by the cruel occupation of that region, the rendering of millions of individuals homeless, and the courageous resistance of those heroic people. An intelligent quest in history shows that no people in any era of history have ever been subject to such pain, suffering and cruelty. 

But this is another dirty page in history which will be closed with the permission and assistance of Allah the Exalted, just like other dirty pages in history:  “Falsehood is bound to perish” [The Holy Quran, 17: 81] .

In his Christian Science Monitor op-ed, John Yemma is not content to present his own opinion, he also changes historical facts in an especially shocking manner.
Palestinians are Philistines?
Citing no source at all, Yemma claims that Palestinians are actually Philistines:
Palestinians have ancient ties to the Holy Land as well. The biblical Philistines, among other peoples, were contemporaneous with the biblical Israelites. While it is not certain that today’s Palestinians are their direct descendants…
This is a complete fabrication. In fact, there is nothing “uncertain” about the historical record: Palestinians are most certainly not descended from Philistines.
Claims of this sort are nothing new: they have long been a staple of anti-Israel propaganda, including the roundly debunked notions that Palestinians are actually Canaanites and that Jesus was a Palestinian.
The idea that Palestinians are Philistines is equally, and most certainly, false. Yemma’s claim that there is any uncertainty about this is a clear distortion of facts.
Unlike modern day Jews and Palestinians, the Philistines were an ancient, non-Semitic, sea-faring people, whose form of worship was unconnected to the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
In other words, the Philistine ethnicity, culture and religion are all entirely different from that of modern day Palestinians.

1970--Thames Television--Golda Meir discusses the Palestinian identity, and asks why the Arabs in the West Bank became more Palestinian than the Arabs in the East Bank, after June 5 1967

Indeed, as much as Israel might be leery of what a Palestinian state might look like, the Jordanians are terrified. If the West Bank were to become like Gaza, controlled by Hamas, or like Sinai, effectively a stateless territory, or like parts of Syria and Iraq, under the control of ISIL, or like Lebanon, home to Iranian proxies — the Hashemite Kingdom might not survive.
There are many who make the persuasive argument that the alternative to two states — to separation from the Palestinian majority in the West Bank — is an Israel that is no longer Jewish and democratic. That argument’s power is now weakened by the prospect that a putative Palestine state might not be a benign Jordan or a peaceful Egypt, but a cauldron of expansionist violence.
That explains both the diminishing confidence that a Palestinian state could work, and the increasing calls for a regional solution. Perhaps in the reconfigured Middle East, the West Bank could achieve some confederation with Jordan, and Gaza with Egypt, hitching the new state to older, stable ones. Or if the disintegration of Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen continues, maybe the entire future of the region lies less in existing nation states, and in broad confederations of city-states and local clans. In that environment, the Palestinians might find themselves without a state but with autonomy in an increasingly stateless region.
The creation of a Palestinian state is implausible while existing neighbours are being destroyed, and even the concept of statehood in the region is eroding. That does make a foreseeable peace agreement less likely. And it requires creative thinking as a new Middle East is being born.

On the occasion of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s state visit Down Under, a renowned Australian-Israeli pundit told The Algemeiner that the only thing he sees as possibly threatening “historically outstanding bipartisan” Canberra-Jerusalem ties is the strengthening of problematic elements within the country’s Labour party and far-Left groups.
Otherwise, Isi Leibler — a former World Jewish Congress official who made Aliyah in 1999 and resides in the Israeli capital — gave rave reviews to what he called Netanyahu’s “extremely important and timely trip,” particularly in the context of global events, “which cemented an already tight bond.” This was evident, Leibler explained, in the “warm support” that Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull extended to Netanyahu.
Equally noteworthy, said Leibler, was the “united Zionist front” exhibited by Australia’s Jewish community, all of whose members – “other than those on the far Left and lunatic fringe – were thrilled with Netanyahu’s visit.”
Compared to the rift among American Jews, about which Leibler has written extensively, he said that such a schism among Australian Jews is marginal when it comes to Israel. Indeed, he said, “Australian Jewry is unique, probably because of its high proportion of Holocaust survivors.”

The Israeli leader’s visit is about opportunity. Israel is a technological marvel. It has to be. It is bereft of natural resources, is dominated by desert, and is surrounded by autocrats and populations who pray daily for its destruction. Israel’s advancements in biotech, cyber-security, emergency response, medicine, defence, water all have the capacity to materially improve the lives of Australians. Remarkably, Israel now does more business with China, Japan and India than with its staunchest ally the United States. In recent years, it has turned to Asia and deepened its engagement with Singapore, Vietnam, and even Indonesia. Israel has not been sluggish in diversifying to meet the challenges of a changing Europe and an unpredictable United States.
The engagement between states need not be on a strictly government-to-government and business-to-business basis. There is an abundance of common experience and much we can learn from each other.
There may be no country in the world that places a greater premium on the lives of its soldiers than Israel. We have seen the country trade convicted terrorists of the worst kind for the corpses of its fallen and release 1,027 killers for a single, doomed tank-gunner. The Israeli emphasis on reintegration of returned servicemen and women into society is a model that Australia should follow. Soldiers are given subsidies for education and incentives to purchase homes following their discharge. Combat soldiers are snapped up by start-ups and the high-tech sector who see the appeal and adaptability of fresh minds and eager bodies. There is a reverence of the combat soldier in Israel that does not exist in Australia, to our shame.
The visit of Prime Minister Netanyahu and his retinue of business luminaries will elevate the importance of the Israel-Australia relationship across our two societies, energise our tech and start-up scene, and will deliver tangible benefits for our nation from better securing our troops to better securing our online shopping. Perhaps there will also be an unexpected benefit for the peace process. While the Palestinians invariably use any increase in their diplomatic or political status to promptly harangue Israel in international forums, Israel’s ever-deepening ties with the world will show the Palestinians that Israel will not sit idle while Palestinian leaders refuse to even recognise a Jewish State or negotiate over the terms of their own long-awaited statehood.

Ask an average Israeli schoolchild about the 1917 charge of the Australian Light Brigade during the Battle of Beersheba and you will get a blank stare. Ask Australian school kids of the same age the same question and – at least – there will be traces of recognition, some sign that this is something they have heard of before.
And, indeed, it was an event that was referenced time and time again on Wednesday at all of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s public appearances with his Australian counterpart, Malcolm Turnbull.
It came up when Turnbull first welcomed Netanyahu in a colorful ceremony at his residence overlooking the Sydney Harbor, and it came up during the evening event Netanyahu and Turnbull held with some 2,000 members of the Jewish community at the Central Synagogue in Bondi.
In fact, there it was announced that Turnbull would lead the Australian delegation coming to Israel for the October 31 commemoration of that battle where – as Turnbull put it during the jam-packed day – the “Australian 4th Light Horse Brigade captured the town of Beersheba from the Ottoman Turks in the fading daylight of the 31st of October 1917,” in what proved a pivotal moment in the Palestine Campaign.
Netanyahu called it “the last great successful cavalry charge in history,” one that liberated Beersheba and led to the end of Ottoman control of the area.
For Australians, the battle is remembered not for what it meant for Zionism, but what it meant for Australians as an independent people.

Netanyahu lauded Turnbull "for time and again standing up against the demonization" of Israel in the U.N.
"You refuse to accept this hypocrisy. And standing up for Israel means standing up for simple truths. It doesn't mean that we don't have our imperfections. Which country is perfect? Well, Australia is pretty close, but none of us are perfect. But we seek all the time to improve. We seek all the time to do better. We seek to do better for all our peoples and we also want Israel to be the home of all Jews. I want every Jew in the world, every Jewish man and woman, to feel comfortable in the State of Israel.
"I also think that we have a battle against those who seek to demonize our people and the resurgent anti-Semitism that we see in many parts of the world. It is something that we need to fight together. I think this is important in Europe. It's important in America. It's very important that President Trump took a strong stand against anti-Semitism. And it's important that we all continue to do so in the years ahead.
"So we have performed miracles, but we have performed miracles because we're committed to our destiny. I want all of you to come to Israel. I want you to visit your friends and your families. I want you to walk the streets of the Old City in Jerusalem, hike in the Golan Heights. By the way, the Golan will never go back to Syria. It will always be a part of the State of Israel.
"Spend time with our brave young soldiers. Get to know the land. See this miracle. See the land of Israel. See the people of Israel. The State of Israel lives. The people of Israel thrive. Am Yisrael Chai," he concluded.

They were told to be on their best behaviour. They were told to sing in their most beautiful voices. And most importantly, to smile.
But the excitement was just too much for hundreds of Jewish primary school children to remember the messages from their head teacher when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walked into their assembly hall at Moriah College in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.
Up leapt dozens of children from the neat lines they were sitting in on the floor, while dozens more school choir members jumped down from a tiered stand where they had been patiently waiting, sending Mr Netanyahu’s huge security team into a spin.
As the grim-faced, dark-suited security guards tried unsuccessfully to stop the mini mob, Mr Netanyahu grinned and shook their hands and gave them high-fives. Squeals of excitement rang out as he and his wife Sara made their way to some seats at the side of the hall.

Several hundred pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrated in Sydney on Thursday against the first visit to Australia by an Israeli prime minister, branding Benjamin Netanyahu a “war criminal.”
A police helicopter hovered over the city as speakers slammed Canberra’s strong support of Netanyahu and the Jewish state.
“We are here to oppose Australia’s support for Israel, for a racist apartheid nation,” pro-Palestinian author and Australian lawyer Randa Abdel-Fattah told AFP.
“It’s disgusting to see that some of our Australian leaders have rolled out the red carpet and welcomed a war criminal into Australia,” she said.
“But there are so many Australians who are against this and we are raising our voices loudly and clearly today, to say [Prime Minister] Malcolm Turnbull, and [Foreign Minister] Julie Bishop, ‘not in our name,'” she added.
A large banner was unfurled depicting Netanyahu with a mustache as Hitler and the word “Fascist” written underneath.

The Associated Press' Josh Lederman purported to set the record straight on statements by David Friedman to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during his confirmation hearings for ambassadorship to Israel. Under the rubric of "AP Fact-Check," the author countered fully accurate facts with misleading half-truths. The feature was distributed to and ran on multiple mainstream media outlets.
Below is CAMERA's fact-checking of AP's fact-checker.
1) Lederman takes exception to Mr. Friedman's accurate statements that Palestinians have failed to "end incitement" of violence and about "unwillingness on the part of the Palestinians to renounce terror and accept Israel as a Jewish state."
He counters this by asserting that "Not all the Palestinians are the Same," and presents three arguments, all half truths:
A) "The Palestinian Liberation Organization, the group that formally represents all Palestinians, officially denounced terrorism decades ago, although attacks have continued to be a problem for Israel in the years since."
B) "Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in office since 2005 and in charge of autonomous enclaves in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has spoken out against violence, saying it undermines Palestinian statehood aspirations."
C) "As far as Israel being a Jewish state, Abbas, current head of the PLO, says the Palestinians met their peace requirements by recognizing Israel, and it's not up to them to determine the religious nature of the state of Israel."

US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley met Wednesday with the parents of Hadar Goldin, one of two Israeli soldiers whose body is being held by Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip, as the new envoy continued a push to align Washington’s stance in Turtle Bay more closely with that of Jerusalem.
Leah and Simha Goldin asked Haley to help them return the bodies of Goldin and of Oron Shaul for burial in Israel.
Israeli envoy to the UN Danny Danon thanked Haley, who has taken a stridently pro-Israel line since taking over the post early this month.
“Hadar was killed and kidnapped by despicable terrorists during a UN-sponsored ceasefire and we won’t rest until this organization ensures his and Oron’s return for proper burial in Israel,” he said.

Israeli citizens like myself, who live over the "Green Line" in communities that are boycotted by some Israeli businesses are getting some legal protection.
To explain how we're effectively second class citizens, it has happened to me and many others, that after choosing to purchase something, a store will suddenly announce:
"We don't deliver to ___"
At best they will give the number of someone who charges a lot more than the distance from store to location would normally cost. And then if the appliance or piece of furniture requires some installation or assembly, we have to pay privately and won't get serviced unless we deliver the malfunctioning appliance/furnishings etc. I have also discovered that the standard service renewal offers haven't been sent to me by many companies. That means that after the required/promised service contract, I have to pay privately. I have no other option. After living in Jerusalem over a decade before our move to Shiloh, I found that to be an unpleasant, unexpected and potentially expensive surprise.

Finally, the Knesset has passed a law that requires businesses to at least warn us in advance.

In recent weeks, Hamas sent two delegations to Cairo for meetings with high-ranking Egyptian officials, suggesting a thaw in the frosty relations of the past few years. If reports are correct, Hamas, in exchange for Cairo’s reopening trade through the Rafah crossing, agreed to cease cooperation with Islamic State and other jihadist groups in the Sinai Peninsula that have been making war on Egypt. Hamas also seems to have agreed to allow Cairo to serve as a mediator between it and the Palestinian Authority as well as between it and Israel. Shlomo Brom and Ofir Winter explore the implications:
The emerging understanding between Egypt and Hamas . . . reflects political pragmatism at this specific point in time, but should not be interpreted at this stage as a profound strategic change on either side. Egypt’s softened stance toward Hamas does not moderate the struggle being conducted by the regime against the Muslim Brotherhood, [Hamas’s parent organization]. Similarly, Hamas’s willingness to accept some of Egypt’s security demands does not constitute a retreat from its commitment . . . to conflict with Israel. [A] considerable degree of suspicion, skepticism, and distrust still prevails between the two sides. . . .
From Israel’s perspective, the turnabout in Egypt-Hamas relations constitutes an important test for the flourishing security cooperation between Israel and Egypt, which face shared terrorist challenges in Sinai and the Gaza Strip. In the framework of this coordination, Israel must ensure that the security understandings taking shape between Egypt and Hamas do not leave the latter a “legitimate” opening for weapons smuggling, with Egypt turning a blind eye—intentionally or not—to a military buildup aimed against Israel. . . .

Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham will reintroduce legislation next week that would cut US funding to the Palestinian Authority if it continues to provide monetary support to the families of those who commit acts of terror against Israelis and others.
The bill, known as the Taylor Force Act, was first introduced last year by Graham with former Indiana Republican Sen. Dan Coats and Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt. It was referred to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time, but never came up for a vote.
The legislation is named after former US army officer Taylor Force, who was stabbed to death in March 2016 by a Palestinian assailant while visiting Tel Aviv. Force was a graduate student at Vanderbilt University and was traveling with other students on a program studying global entrepreneurship.
He was 29 years old at the time and had served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ramallah: The satire community of the Levant is in a state of chaos today as a prominent Palestinian blog made very serious accusations against the Daily Freier. The Daily Majnoon is a satirical site out of Ramallah that pokes gentle fun at the big things and little things in life. Famed musician/activist/dick Roger Waters sometimes guest writes for them. Hanin Zoabi also writes a weekly column when she is not out sailing. The Daily Majnoon also serves as a sign of a thriving Palestinian civil society, for just as the Daily Freier feels free to mock Israeli leaders like Netanyahu, the Daily Majnoon also feels free to mock Israeli leaders like Netanyahu. Only in Arabic and stuff. The Daily Majnoon held a press conference in Ramallah this morning where they described this whole Naqba of a controversy.
The Daily Majnoon’s Web Administrator, Yusuf B., who goes by the username “Stillnotover1948“, explained their plight to the assembled journalists. “We are indigenous to this bandwidth, and have operated this website for thousands of years. And as proof I present to you these underwear labels, a set of keys to a file cabinet, and a menu from a hummus restaurant in Umm El Fahm.”
A journalist from the New York Times asked Yusuf if he would accept a deal where the Daily Freier gave up part of its bandwidth to the Daily Majnoon. Yusuf said he would accept such a deal, but would still retain the right of return to direct web traffic from the Daily Freier to the Daily Majnoon.

Right-wing lawmakers secured three conservative and non-activist judges out of four new appointments to Israel’s Supreme Court Wednesday, putting a large dent in what is seen as a liberal-dominated bench.
The Judicial Appointments Committee for the court announced that it had appointed David Mintz, Yael Willner, Yosef Elron and George Kara to the 15-member Supreme Court, out of a shortlist of 27 candidates.
Three of the four were on Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked’s list of preferred candidates, while the three judges on the nine-member judicial appointments panel, who voted as a bloc, failed to advance any of their nominees.
Mintz, who currently serves as a Jerusalem district judge, was thought to have been Shaked’s top pick, hailing from the West Bank Gush Etzion settlement bloc and considered a strong advocate for conservative positions.

For the first time, a Christian Arab Israeli has been accepted into the military’s prestigious pilots course, Israel Hayom has learned.
The young man, whose name cannot be revealed, was among the cadets who began the elite Israeli Air Force (IAF) 179th course three months ago.
The cadet is currently in the initial flight stage of training, after which the IAF makes a round of cuts. Only about 10 percent of the cadets who begin the course complete it and earn their pilot wings in a ceremony held at the Hatzorim Air Force Base.
Only a small cut of Israel’s military recruits are accepted to the hallowed pilots course and those who are must undergo extensive medical testing, as well as drills that test their physical and mental abilities.
Enlistment for Christian Arabs is still in its infancy, but has been gathering steam in the past five years. Despite criticism within Arab society in Israel, several dozen Christians are currently serving in the Israel Defense Forces.

A large majority of Israelis are in favor of granting a pardon to IDF soldier Elor Azaria, according to a Panels Research poll taken for Wednesday’s Maariv, the Hebrew sister newspaper of The Jerusalem Post.
Azaria was convicted by an IDF court of manslaughter for shooting a neutralized Palestinian terrorist. He was sentenced Tuesday to a year and a half in prison.
Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely on Wednesday formally asked President Reuven Rivlin to pardon Azaria, writing that his crime took place at a volatile location during a wave of terrorism and that there was backing for a pardon on the Right and the Left.
“The large public scandal that accompanied the trial expresses the public’s desire to maintain unity in the army and its legitimacy to struggle against terrorism and defend peace and security in Israel,” she wrote.
Sixty-nine percent said they support a pardon for Azaria, 24% said they oppose a pardon, and 7% said they do not know.
Support for a pardon was down from another Panels poll following Azaria’s January 4 conviction, when 75% backed it and 18% opposed it.

A new interceptor developed for the Iron Dome defense system has been successfully tested recently, the Defense Ministry said Wednesday. The routine tests is part of the anti-rocket system's ongoing developments and upgrade, the ministry said.
The tests were held by the Defense Ministry's Homa Directorate, which oversees the development of missile defenses, and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, which develops the interceptor, named Tamir.
The Tamir interceptor includes components developed as part of a joint Israeli-American project.
The joint venture is part of a manufacturing deal signed between Israel and the U.S. in 2014. The U.S. Missile Defense Agency and American defense contractor Raytheon are involved in the development of Iron Dome's components.
Iron Dome, designed to intercept and destroy short-range rockets and artillery shells, is part of Israel's four-tiered air defenses, which also include the David's Sling system, which counters medium-to-long-range rockets and missiles, the Arrow 2 short- and medium-range ballistic missile interceptor, and the Arrow 3 long-range missile interceptor, which is in the last leg of its development.
Homa Director Moshe Patel said, "We've successfully completed a series of complex tests. ... Together with David's Sling, this significantly enhances Israel's air defenses against short- and midrange missiles."

It starts by focusing on Nael Barghouthi, 59, whom it terms "the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner". It says he was sentenced yesterday by an Israeli court to life in prison with an additional 18-year sentence, and quotes the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society as its source.
PPS said in a statement that the court had ruled that Barghouthi, 59, was to serve the remainder of his previous sentence received prior to his short-lived release in 2011 as part of a prisoner swap deal between Israel and the Hamas movement. Israeli forces first detained Barghouthi, who is from the village of Kobar in the central occupied West Bank district of Ramallah, in 1978 when he was 20 years old for alleged membership in an armed resistance group. After being released as part of a prisoner swap exchanging Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit with more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, he was redetained in June 2014 when Israeli authorities claimed that he had broken the terms of his release, and was sentenced to 30 months in prison... However, he remained in Israeli custody after a military court rejected an appeal to release him in January... [Ma'an]
It then offers this piece of unsubstantiated analysis:
Since the Shalit deal, Israel has initiated mass detention campaigns to bring hundreds of former prisoners released in the exchange back into Israeli custody, in violation of the agreement.
Violation? Here's what really happened.

An Israeli Air Force fighter jet shot down a Hamas drone flying from the Gaza Strip toward the Mediterranean Sea on Thursday afternoon, the army said.
The unmanned aerial vehicle never flew into or over Israeli territory, the army noted.
The drone crashed into the water off the coast of Gaza.
“The IDF will not allow any violation of [Israel’s] airspace and will operate with determination against any attempt to do so,” the IDF said in a statement.
Details regarding the size and design of the drone were not immediately released by the military.
Hamas did not immediately confirm that it had launched the unmanned aerial vehicle; however, the terror group has said in the past that it possesses such capabilities.

Israeli authorities ordered an East Jerusalem school shuttered Thursday, saying it was being run by the Hamas terror group.
The order followed a months-long joint probe by the Education Ministry, Jerusalem Police and the Shin Bet security service into the Al-Nukhaba elementary school in the Sur Baher neighborhood, according to an Education Ministry statement.
Authorities said the school was established by Hamas with the aim of teaching “content that undermines the sovereignty of Israel.”
Its aims were consistent with the ideology of the terror organization, which calls for the destruction of Israel, according to the Education Ministry.
“Each case of incitement will be dealt with and will continue to be dealt with, with maximum severity,” Education Minister Naftali Bennett said. “Schools in East Jerusalem that elect to follow the [Israeli] curriculum get the full set of tools to succeed, while those choosing incitement will be closed.”

Palestinian authorities blocked on Wednesday a Palestinian lawmaker critical of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas from traveling abroad.
Najat Abu Bakr, who represents Nablus in the Palestinian Legislative Council, the PA parliament, attempted to travel to Lebanon via Jordan Wednesday morning to receive an award, but PA officials denied her an exit permit.
“I arrived at the border crossing in Jericho around 10 a.m. and presented my passport to a border crossing official, who took it for what seemed like a routine review, but five minutes later he returned it to me and said I am barred from traveling,” Abu Bakr said in a telephone call Thursday morning.
Most Palestinians travel through PA border control in Jericho before continuing to Israeli and Jordanian border control.

Inspired by the old Gaza mall photos, I have featured on this blog various facilities from Gaza, with the aim of providing readers with a glimpse into the real Gaza, which is anything but a concentration camp as some claim.
My point is not that there is no hardship in Gaza, but rather that the situation is a far cry from what is being presented by the palestinians, their supporters and the mainstream media.
Back in September, I posted about a new mall in Gaza – the Capital Mall – being set to open.
Well, it recently did. Here are some disturbing scenes from this new barracks mall.

In response to correspondence from CAMERA, AP editors commendably amended both the article and the photo captions. The headline, which originally referred to the "territory's first indoor mall," now states: "Gazans excited over new indoor mall."Likewise, editors replaced the reference in the first sentence to "the first indoor shopping mall" with accurate wording about "a new Western-style indoor shopping mall."
Finally, editors revised all of the recent photo captions which had referred to the new facility as Gaza's "first indoor shopping mall" to more accurately refer to Gaza's "first-of-its kind shopping mall."
CAMERA's timely action and AP's quick correction of today's wire story underscores the value of the organization's work monitoring and responding to wire stories in the same news cycle as they appear. With this preemptive work, CAMERA's Israel office helps prevent misinformation from appearing in media outlets around the world.
Meanwhile, CAMERA is in communication with The New York Times about its recent reference to the Capital Mall as the Gaza Strip's "first real mall." (The Times' Ethan Bronner, back in 2010 and 2011, covered the opening of the earlier malls.)

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani warned Arab countries on Wednesday not to be enticed by Israeli attempts to find allies in the Arab world.
Speaking at a conference in Tehran focused on Iranian support for the Palestinians, Rouhani said, "The occupying regime, in an attempt to normalize its situation, has for the first time referred to certain Arab countries as its allies against the resistance front, instead of describing them as its enemies."
In apparent reference to repeated statements by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about improving relations with moderate Arab countries in the face of the common threat posed by Iran, Rouhani was quoted by Press TV as saying that Israel "claims that most of the Arab countries are not the enemies of Zionism or opposed to occupation anymore, but that they share the same phobia about resistance.”
Rouhani called on Arab countries to be vigilant in the face of what he referred to as Israeli "plots." The Iranian leader called on the Muslim world to make a clear statement against Israeli efforts to normalize relations with the Arab world, according to Press TV.
"Isn’t it time that neighbors once and for all say ‘No’ to war and fratricide?" Rouhani asked. He lamented Arab countries giving Israel a pass on its treatment of the Palestinians.

Following the death of 'Omar 'Abd Al-Rahman, known as the Blind Sheikh, who was the spiritual father of the Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya organization and was known as one of the founders of the global jihad movement, Mahmoud Sultan, editor-in-chief of the independent Egyptian daily Al-Misriyyoun, wrote in defense of the sheikh. Under the headline "'Omar 'Abd Al-Rahman – The Islamists Oppressed Him Even Before the Americans Did!" Sultan stated that despite the accusations that the sheikh was involved in both the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center and in the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, he had not been convicted in either case. Sultan also clarified that the sheikh had no connection to an essay titled "The Abstaining Sect," which permitted the killing of Muslims in the police and military. This essay, Sultan said, was written in 1981 by two Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya officials who attempted to attribute it to the sheikh. Thus, he concluded, Sheikh 'Omar 'Abd Al-Rahman had been treated unjustly by Gama'a Al-Islamiyya officials even before the Americans treated him this way.

Thousands of mourners gathered in a small Egyptian town on Wednesday for the funeral of the Muslim cleric known as "the blind sheikh" who was convicted of conspiracy in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York.
Omar Abdel-Rahman, who was also convicted of planning a broader "war of urban terrorism" in the United States, died on Saturday in a North Carolina prison aged 78.
Movements across the Islamist spectrum from the Muslim Brotherhood to al Qaeda issued statements mourning him, and several leaders from Egypt's Islamic Group, which views the sheikh as a spiritual leader and renounced violence in 1997, attended.
Carrying signs that read "we will meet in heaven" and chanting "we will defend you with blood and soul, Islam," hundreds of mourners gathered at Al-Gamaliya, his hometown in Egypt's Nile Delta province of Dakahlia, to wait for Abdel-Rahman's body as it made its way back from the U.S. via Cairo.
The Egyptian-born Abdel-Rahman, who lost his eyesight due to childhood diabetes and grew up studying a Braille version of the Koran, remained a spiritual leader for radical Muslims even after more than 20 years in prison.

Al-Jazeera TV host Faisal Al-Qassem held up a photograph of Samir Quntar, who "left the Israeli prison with a potbelly and a Ph.D.," next to a photo of an emaciated Syrian detainee. Bashar Al-Assad should "treat the Syrian prisoners and detainees the same way Israel treats its enemies in its prisons," he said. His comments aired on February 14.