RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Right-from-Wrong-Electing-to-defend-Israel-from-Iran-591197

The last-ditch efforts of Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu to form a coalition, culminating Wednesday night in the dispersal of the newly instated 21st Knesset, overshadowed crucial events that help to explain why the ruling Likud Party has been and should remain at the helm.

A committee headed by Netanyahu – who has been serving as defense minister since Avigdor Liberman resigned the post in November and spurred the election that he just caused to go down the drain – announced its decision to award the 2019 Israel Defense Prize to the Mossad agents who bravely broke into a warehouse in Tehran and retrieved thousands of documents related to Iran’s nuclear program.
The massive amount of material, proving beyond a doubt that Iran has been working to build nuclear weapons, was presented by Netanyahu to the Israeli public a year ago in April. In a televised appearance, Netanyahu walked back and forth between shelves full of folders and a wall covered in compact discs, to illustrate the extent of the find – the contents of which are thought to have contributed to US President Donald Trump’s final decision to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), otherwise known as the “Iran nuclear deal.”
As in the past, the Israeli prime minister was ridiculed in this case for his tendency to use “props” to make his point. Guffaws can still be heard from the peanut gallery of Bibi-detractors over the primitive graphic of a bomb, with a red line drawn just below its detonator, which he held up during an address to the UN General Assembly in 2012.
Mockery may be the only method that Netanyahu’s rivals can come up with to distract and detract from the actual message that he has been conveying throughout his career. But the joke is on them.
Whatever the voting public feels about his penchant for melodramatic devices, it knows he’s right about the threats that Israel faces, and trusts him more than anyone else to stave off, if not eradicate, them.
No amount of Bibi-bating, however, was able to counteract the general sense in Israel that the Mossad guys who seized such a consequential trove from deep in enemy territory, and whisked it back to Israel without a snag, were heroic. Not since Operation Thunderbolt – the 1976 Entebbe raid during which Netanyahu’s brother, Yonatan, was killed rescuing hostages in Uganda – has the country experienced such a surge of national pride.
The Mossad maneuver was a reminder that the Jewish state still possesses the will, and often unparalleled ability, to pull off something so brazenly jaw-dropping.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14312/netanyahu-european-nationalists

The nationalist leaders of central and eastern Europe are a mixed picture when it comes to Israel. They strongly support Jewish nationalism, Zionism, and the nation state of the Jewish people. But their attitude toward Jews and the Holocaust is often highly questionable.

The prime minister of Israel must put the interests of his country before ideological purity or attitude toward Jews in general. In a world in which so few nations support Israel and in which so many vote routinely to condemn it at the United Nations, Israel must not easily give up support from right-wing nationalists.

So let us condemn European nationalists when their actions warrant condemnation, but let us welcome their support for Israel at a time when such support is becoming more and more essential.

Critics of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu argue that he should never speak to European nationalists because European nationalism often goes hand in hand with anti-Semitism.

Ironically (or perhaps hypocritically) many of these same critics urged Israeli prime ministers to speak to Yasser Arafat and other terrorist leaders who have advocated and practiced the murder of Jews. What is the difference? In both cases elected leaders have to hold their collective noses to speak to other leaders of whose ideologies and actions they strongly disapprove. But when you are the leader of a country, pragmatic realpolitik must often prevail over pure ideology.

Recall the grimace on the face of Yitzhak Rabin when President Clinton urged him to shake the hand of Yasser Arafat, a man who was personally responsible for ordering the murder of Israeli children, women and men. When I subsequently discussed this with Rabin, he said that his hand was shielded by the velvet glove of diplomacy. The left praised Rabin, as well they should have. But many of the same people now condemn Netanyahu for extending the same velvet glove of diplomacy to extreme European nationalists.

http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=27724

In Israel’s recent elections:

12 Israeli Arabs elected to Israel’s Parliament
50% of Israeli Arabs chose to vote
At least 112,000 Israeli Arabs (27%) voted for Zionist parties in exclusively Arab cities and towns:
35,783 Israeli-Arabs voted for Meretz
33,453 Israeli-Arabs voted for Blue and White
9,404 Israeli-Arabs voted for Likud
8,268 Israeli-Arabs voted for Shas
6,516 Israeli-Arabs voted for Yisrael Beiteinu

https://pjmedia.com/trending/shocker-israel-heading-back-to-the-polls-as-knesset-votes-to-dissolve-itself/

Seven weeks ago a right-wing and religious coalition headed by Benjamin Netanyahu handily won the Israeli elections, gaining 65 seats of the 120-seat Knesset—and just missing 69 seats as another right-wing party fell a tiny bit short of the four-seat minimum.

On Wednesday night the new Knesset—sworn in a month ago—voted 74-45 to dissolve itself, and Israel is heading back to the polls on September 17. Seven weeks ago, no one at all saw it coming.

Basically one man—former defense minister Avigdor Liberman—is behind it.

Liberman—a mercurial politician who has also been foreign minister and deputy prime minister among other posts—is a longtime Russian immigrant who gets most of his votes from the Russian-Israeli community. This time around his party, Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Our Home), won five mandates. Without Israel Our Home, Netanyahu’s would-be coalition had 60 seats—one short of a Knesset majority.

Liberman, in the end, refused to bring his five-seat party into the new coalition, and the house came crashing down.

Why did Liberman do it?

The Russian-Israeli community is unique in Israel in tending heavily both to hawkishness and secularism. Generally and statistically, religiosity correlates with right-wing hawkishness, secularism with left-wing dovishness (though secular right-wingers are not unusual; the right generally has the upper hand).

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14298/palestinians-vs-trump-peace-plan

In the past few days, the Gaza-based groups have issued several statements hinting that they would use all means, including terrorism, to foil the US peace plan.

What is perhaps most worrying for the Arab leaders are the threats coming from Iran’s puppets — Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah. It now remains to be seen whether the Arab heads of state will be deterred by these threats or ignore them at the risk of becoming the Palestinians’ terror targets.

Clearly, the very Palestinians who are boycotting a conference — whose aim is to help them move beyond their leadership-imposed economic devastation — will wind up the big losers in this spiteful scenario of hate. This time, however, it also seems that the Palestinians will not only deprive themselves of billions of dollars, but will also damage — perhaps irrevocably — their relations with influential Arab countries. By all accounts, the Palestinians appear to be heading toward another “nakba” (catastrophe).

The Palestinians seem to be moving on two fronts to thwart US President Donald Trump’s plan for peace in the Middle East, also known as the “Deal of the Century.”

The Palestinian Authority and its political allies in the West Bank have launched a diplomatic and media campaign to rally worldwide support for their rejection of Trump’s upcoming plan. Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian extremist groups, for their part, are already hinting that they will resort to violence in an effort to thwart the “Deal of the Century.”

Last week, Hamas called on Bahrain not to allow the “Zionist enemy to defile its lands” by attending the economic conference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXy4NXbuE-k

https://pjmedia.com/trending/palestinian-authority-tv-series-features-uncle-teaching-nephew-how-to-shoot-at-the-jews/

Official Palestinian Authority TV is running an ahistorical and blatantly anti-Semitic series that features an adult man teaching a child how to shoot “the Jews,” and characterizes the Jewish people as “cowards,” rapists, “impure schemers,” and “the enemy.”

This evil propaganda is being broadcast during the month of Ramadan, which is considered the holiest month of the year for Muslims.

The series, called “Children of the Village Chief, portrays Arab life in a “West Bank” village around the time of the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 until the 1980s, according to Palestinian Media Watch.

The first episode starts with the so-called Palestinian nakba—the “catastrophe” of the establishment of modern-day Israel—and the series takes the audience up to the 1980s.

In one episode, a cherubic young boy asks his uncle to teach him how to use a rifle so he can shoot at “the Jews” if they come to his village. Happy to oblige, Uncle Ibrahim instructs his nephew to only aim at “the enemy,” who the boy then again identifies as “the Jews.”

In another episode, a woman wonders how the Arab forces were defeated by the Jews since “the Jews are cowards.” The man replies that “the British are a snake in the grass … they gave [the Jews] everything.” (Britain did not arm Jewish forces during Israel’s War of Independence.) CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Breaking-the-Silence-smears-Israel-in-The-Guardian-again-590654?

With the emergence of the hard Left in the UK in recent years, many British Jews are worried about the rise of antisemitism. 

At the same time as claiming to be anti-racist, papers like The Guardian and The Independent have normalized the language of delegitimization. The constant stream of anti-Israel articles, unparalleled in intensity and level of scrutiny, have done much to create an atmosphere in which any justification of Israel’s right to self-defense is regarded as beyond the pale.
 
The Guardian displays a Pavlovian loathing for Israel. Anything, even something as simple as holding an international music contest, becomes an opportunity to censure Israel while exempting the Palestinians from even a modicum of criticism. 
This is the newspaper selected by Yehuda Shaul, co-founder of the Israeli anti-occupation group Breaking the Silence (BTS), as the most appropriate place to publish an op-ed criticizing the presence of Israeli civilians and the IDF in Hebron, calling it “legal discrimination.”
 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startupnationcentral/2019/05/27/530-multinationals-from-35-countries-innovating-in-israel/#c8bbdd33f5d1

Israel is emerging as a leading innovation destination for a growing number of multinational corporations looking to the country’s 6,000 plus startups for new ideas, quick prototyping ability, and infectious entrepreneurial culture, a new report shows.

The PwC report, commissioned by tech NGO Start-Up Nation Central, maps for the first time the activities of some 539 multinational companies (MNCs) representing 35 countries, who are currently active in Israel. It tracks the evolution of their innovation activity, showing that companies tend to increase and diversify their innovation activity with time in market, for example, going from tech-led R&D centers to operating startup accelerators and engaging in joint ventures. Download the full report here.

An unexpected benefit: many of the MNC’s themselves say they’re starting to take on some of the characteristics of the startups they’re working with, including regular pivots to new technology focus areas, faster execution of projects, and a higher tolerance for failure. “The Israeli way of approaching risk and failure, and the importance of giving startups independence and space to innovate – these core characteristics of the Israeli ecosystem allow MNCs to step outside of their comfort zone, re-think their approach to innovation and effectively tap into Israeli innovation,” the report states.

It is no longer just technology companies expanding innovation footprint but MNCs from a wider blend of industries. Deutsche Telekom, for example, regularly host management teams in Israel to absorb startup thinking. Pfizer, Genpact, Flex and Johnson Controls all have senior executives located in Israel who manage their companies’ global scope of technology scouting, product development, or open collaboration activities. Siemens’ Dynamo and Innogy’s Innovation Hub are unique innovation vehicles, not replicated anywhere in those groups’ global innovation portfolios.