Displaying posts categorized under

ISRAEL

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Abbas’s Lies and Palestinian Child Victims by Bassam Tawil

By on June 30th, 2017

Hamas and human rights groups hold Abbas personally responsible for the deaths of the children and the possible deaths of other patients in need of urgent medical treatment not available in Gaza Strip hospitals. One human rights group went so far as to call for the International Criminal Court in The Hague to launch an investigation against Abbas.

In a move of mind-bending irony, we are witnessing a Palestinian president waging war not only against Hamas, but also against the two million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip — while Israel continues to provide the Palestinians living under Hamas with humanitarian aid.

That is the standard operating procedure of the man who lied straight to the face of President Donald Trump, by claiming that he had stopped incitement against Israel and was promoting a “culture of peace” among his people. Will the last sick Palestinian child please stand up?

Palestinian children are the latest victims of the power struggle between the two rival Palestinian factions, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas has declared war on the Gaza Strip as part of his effort to prompt Palestinians living there to revolt against the ruling Hamas administration. It appears that Abbas and Hamas are determined to fight to the last ill Palestinian child.

Abbas is hoping that a series of punitive measures he has taken, which include reducing electricity and medical supplies and cutting off salaries to many Palestinians, will lead to the collapse of Hamas, paving the way for the return of his PA to the Gaza Strip. Abbas has had a grudge against Hamas ever since the Islamist movement expelled his PA and loyalists from the Gaza Strip ten years ago.

Abbas’s war on the Hamas may seem justified. Nonetheless, it smacks of hypocrisy and is accompanied by a smear campaign against Israel.

Instead of accepting responsibility for their punitive actions against Hamas and the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, Abbas and his PA are falsely trying to put the blame on Israel. They are telling their people and the rest of the world that Israel bears the full and sole responsibility for the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. This, of course, is a wide-eyed lie as well as another blood libel against Israel.

The attempt to put the blame on Israel should be seen in the context of Abbas’s ongoing incitement against Israel. Moreover, Abbas is trying to drag Israel into his continuing conflict with Hamas, which is a purely internal Palestinian affair. Israel had nothing to do with Hamas’s violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2007. Two years earlier, Israel had totally withdrawn from the Gaza Strip, leaving Abbas’s PA fully in control of the area. Within two years, Hamas had overthrown the PA and seized control of the Gaza Strip, including Abbas’s house.

Abbas’s loyalists in Gaza hardly resisted Hamas. Most of them simply surrendered to Hamas or fled to Israel and Egypt. It was thanks to Israel that many of Abbas’s senior officials were able to run from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank. Were it not for Israel, they would have been dragged to the streets of the Gaza Strip and publicly lynched. Many PA operatives were thrown from the top floors of buildings.

What, then, is spurring this switch? Why has Abbas suddenly decided to take a series of drastic measures against Hamas and his people in the Gaza Strip, ten years after the Islamist expulsion?

According to his aides, Abbas is fuming over Hamas’s recent decision to establish an “administrative body” to run the affairs of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Abbas seems to view the move as driving a nail into the coffin of any PA-Hamas reconciliation.

He is also apparently deeply worried that his political rival, Mohamed Dahlan, and Hamas are close to forming an alliance against him. In recent days there have been reports that Hamas may allow Dahlan to return to the Gaza Strip to head a new Palestinian government that would be funded and backed by some Gulf countries and Egypt, all of which are disillusioned with Abbas.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL Comments turned off

HAPPY BIRTHDAY “MITCH” FLINT- ONE OF ISRAEL’S ANGELS IN THE SKY IN 1948 FROM NURIT GREENGER

By on June 29th, 2017

Mitchel [Mitch] Flint is 94 year old. He is a frail 94 but strong and with all faculties. Mitch is a living legend. He is a member of a group of volunteer pilots, of foreign nationalities who were recruited by Israel to help her fight her Independence War when the nascent Jewish state found herself attacked by 5 Arab nations in 1948. Without these pilots Israel could have lost the war!

When I once asked Mitch why he took the risk he said, “Someone had to do it!”

Well, yesterday, at the Four Seasons Hotel, in Beverly Hills California, we, a small group of family and close friends, celebrated Mitch’s 94th birthday and we all look forward to celebrating his 95th birthday, in Israel, when Israel celebrates her 70th birthday, in 2018.

A book “Angels In The Sky”, about these brave pilots 140 in number, is about to be published and a film by the same name is being produced.
Angels in the Sky: The Birth of Israel Air Force (2017)

Product Details

Angels in the Sky: How a Band of Volunteer Airmen Saved the New State of Israel
Oct 3, 2017
by Robert Gandt

Continue reading →
ISRAEL Comments turned off

Enough already: Move the embassy to Jerusalem By Bruce Portnoy

By on June 29th, 2017

On June 5, 2017, the United States Senate approved Resolution 176, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem, and reminded us that “there has been a continuous Jewish presence in Jerusalem for 3 millennia.” This legislative initiative was preceded by the Jerusalem Embassy Act (Public Law 104-45), on November 8, 1995, which indicated that “Jerusalem should remain the undivided capital of Israel” and that the American Embassy, currently in Tel Aviv, at the will of the president of the United States, may be relocated to Jerusalem.

President Trump has followed the path of his predecessor presidents: he has chosen not to honor the intent of the Jerusalem Embassy Act, nor his campaign promise to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, for fear of alienating already hostile Middle Eastern nations and populations, so as to float his personal peace plan.

Lest we forget, only fifty years ago, war was forced upon our loyal Middle Eastern ally, Israel, by her neighboring nations (Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq). Their clearly stated aim was to drive Israel’s young and old, helpless and able-bodied, Christian, Muslim and Jew, into the sea, and then to take for themselves all that the people of Israel had labored to build in their relatively tiny state.

At the time, every nation of means turned her back on the mixed multitude of Israelis being threatened. The United Nations security force was asked to withdraw from the Sinai and did so without protest. The United States, fearing the Soviet response, hid under the covers.

Without the help of her friends, the odds of Israel’s survival was minimal at best. Yet when push came to shove and with everything to lose, Jews and other people of conscience came from abroad to take a stand with their threatened brethren. Together, they helped thwart a massacre. Within hours, Israel’s pre-emptive air strike neutralized Egypt’s jets, while her ground forces overcame the might of more numerous opposition armies, in just six days, before a cease-and-desist action was organized.

Jerusalem became a unified city, reaffirmed as Israel’s eternal capital. All faiths were subsequently guaranteed perpetual, unobstructed, and protected access to their holy sites.

Yet, every six months, since November 5, 1995, a presidential waiver to delay the move of the American Embassy to Jerusalem was utilized, sidestepping the original intent of Public Law 104-45, on the grounds of unidentified national security issues.

Meanwhile, the United States has not become a more respected nation abroad, except with Israel. The Middle East is clearly less stable. The Palestinians have repeatedly capitalized on America’s failure to act responsibly towards her friend, Israel, by expanding their self-serving demands. Furthermore, they have not chosen to put aside their perpetual hatred of Israel and Jews so as to concentrate on building the infrastructure necessary to support a separate state for their children.

Unrealistically, American presidents stubbornly adhere to a vague dream of peace that the Palestinian leadership does not apparently share, and a succession of American presidents has seen fit to diplomatically punish an ally, Israel, by denying her the same diplomatic status any other nation’s capital currently enjoys: hosting the embassy of the United States.

With the current administration’s willingness to employ cruise missiles as necessary, I am not so sure that the feared Palestinian repercussions will become a reality should the American Embassy be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Meanwhile, Israel stands alone in the Middle East, as a proud nation with shared American values, and without fear for being so. This status alone should be rewarded with the embassy move.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Israel Leans Closer to Ultra-Orthodox Jews, Upsets U.S. Groups Prime Minister Netanyahu suspends plan to let Reform and Conservative movements of Judaism help administer the Western Wall shrine By Rory Jones see note please

By on June 29th, 2017

I am not orthodox and I totally support Netanyahu on this issue. Given culture trends if the sacred Wall is “secularized” they would host pagan picnics and chants. And the ultra liberal Union of Reform Judaism doesn’t like it? Too bad. Their support for Israel stops at the so called West Bank, and their US national policies are a disgrace…..rsk

JERUSALEM—Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has shifted closer to his ultraorthodox coalition partners on a controversial religious issue, sparking fresh tension with more liberal American Jewish groups that accuse the leader of putting his political survival before their interests.

Mr. Netanyahu earlier this week suspended a previously agreed plan to allow Reform and Conservative movements of Judaism to help administer the religion’s Western Wall shrine. Members of his government also proposed a bill in parliament that would allow only Israel’s ultraorthodox-dominated Jewish authority, known as the Chief Rabbinate, to administer and determine who can convert to the religion.

The moves have rekindled longstanding strains between Israel’s rabbinate and the Reform and Conservative movements in the U.S. that take a more progressive approach to interpreting Judaism’s laws and want equal standing in administering the faith and its holy shrines. Some American Jewish groups are now threatening to cut donations and investment to Israel that could amount to billions of dollars.

“If you cause Jews in the diaspora, particularly Jews of the United States to feel alienated…it has a strategic impact that should be of great concern to all the leaders of Israel,” said Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism in North America, in a broadcast Wednesday on Israel’s Army Radio.

His group, which represents roughly 2 million American Jews, ​ canceled a planned Thursday meeting with Mr. Netanyahu in protest over the Israeli government’s position on the religious conversion bill and the Western Wall.

The shrine is one of Judaism’s holiest sites and the last of the four walls that abutted the Temple Mount compound in Jerusalem’s Old City, where an ancient Jewish temple once stood. The Temple Mount, known as Haram al Sharif to Muslims, is now the location of the Al Aqsa mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL Comments turned off

Syrian Fire On Golan Heights Draws Sharp Israeli Response Direct hits registered against Syrian military targets. Ari Lieberman

By on June 28th, 2017

For over 40 years, the Golan Heights has been one of Israel’s quietest regions. Israel liberated the Golan Heights during the 1967 Six-Day War and successfully repulsed a Syrian attempt to retake the Golan six years later. Since that time, Israel has transformed the Golan into an oasis of sorts, drawing tens of thousands of tourists yearly.

Those fortunate enough to visit the region marvel over its natural beauty and tranquility. But the outbreak of violence and civil war in Syria has resulted in periodic spillover with errant shells, fired by pro and anti-regime forces, landing in open spaces across the border. In some circumstances, the fire is purposeful though this only occurs on rare occasions and those foolish enough to engage the Israel Defense Forces usually pay for their misdeeds with their lives.

In November 2016, an ISIS cell which opened fire on Israeli troops patrolling the Golan Heights border was liquidated in short order by accurate tank and aircraft fire. At least four ISIS terrorist were reportedly killed. ISIS got the message (it has been reported that they even apologized) and since that occurrence, there have been no repeat incidents initiated by the terror group.

Since the start of Syria’s civil war, fire directed from the Syrian side of the border has claimed one fatality, a 15-year-old Israeli Arab youth who was travelling with his father near the border. The incident occurred in June 2014. His father, a civilian contractor who was working in the area, was injured. Immediate counter fire quickly dispatched those responsible.

Israel has informed the Syrian government through indirect channels that it will not tolerate violations of its territorial sovereignty whether purposeful or not, and would respond forcefully to any violation, however slight. This robust Israeli doctrine was put into practice on June 24 and June 25.

In the first occurrence, several shells landed on the Israeli side of the border after fighting broke out between Assad loyalists and Sunni insurgents. Hikers near the vicinity were evacuated as a safety precaution. Israel’s response was immediate and devastating. Two Syrian tanks and a heavy machine gun outpost were obliterated. The IDF released aerial surveillance of the strike and accurate hits were clearly visible. Syria acknowledged the death of two of its soldiers during the attack.

Less than 24 hours later, several Syrian projectiles landed on the Israeli side of the border drawing once again, a furious Israeli military response. Two Syrian artillery pieces and an ammunition truck were destroyed in the second Israeli strike.

In response to Israel’s defensive measures, the Assad regime issued a banal threat incorporating the usual hysterical rhetoric stating that Israel would be held responsible for any repercussions that may ensue. The Syrian army announced that Israel would face “serious consequences if it repeats similar aggressive actions under any pretext.”

But it is difficult to take Assad’s threats seriously. His army is a mere shell of its former self. Attrition, defections, draft-dodging and desertions have taken their collective toll on Syrian troop strength. It is believed that the Syrian army consists of roughly half of its pre-war strength of 300,000. Without the presence of Russia and Iranian-backed proxies like Hezbollah, the Assad regime would have collapsed long ago. Given his mounting problems, the last thing the embattled regime needs now is a war with one of the world’s strongest militaries.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Balfour Declaration Was More than the Promise of One Nation By affirming the right of any Jew to call Palestine home, it also changed the international status of the Jewish people.Martin Kramer ****

By on June 28th, 2017

In 1930, the British Colonial Office published a “white paper” that Zionists saw as a retreat from the Balfour Declaration. David Lloyd George, whose government had issued the declaration in 1917, was long out of office and now in the twilight of his political career. In an indignant speech, he insisted that his own country had no authority to downgrade the declaration, because it constituted a commitment made by all of the Allies in the Great War:

In wartime we were anxious to secure the good will of the Jewish community throughout the world for the Allied cause. The Balfour Declaration was a gesture not merely on our part but on the part of the Allies to secure that valuable support. It was prepared after much consideration, not merely of its policy, but of its actual wording, by the representatives of all the Allied and associated countries including America, and of our dominion premiers.

There was some exaggeration here; not all of the Allies shared the same understanding of the policy or saw the “actual wording.” But Lloyd George pointed to the forgotten truth that I sought to resurrect through my essay. In 1917, there was not yet a League of Nations or a United Nations. But, in the consensus of the Allies, there was the nucleus of a modern international order. The Balfour Declaration had the weight of this consensus behind it, beforeBalfour signed it. This international buy-in is also why the Balfour Declaration entered the mandate for Palestine, entrusted to Britain by the League of Nations. Those who now cast the Balfour Declaration as an egregious case of imperial self-dealing simply don’t know its history (or prefer not to know it).

Nicholas Rostowdoes know it, and we should be grateful for the efforts he has made to inform wider audiences about the legal foundations of Israel. “It is not just that ignorance of the past can lead to unnecessary policy error,” he writes. “As we know all too well from UN resolutions and opinions of the International Court of Justice, such oblivion, willed or not, can and in this case emphatically does lead to gross injustice.”

Of course, some of this ignorance and oblivion is indeed deliberate. Consider the way in which Britain “forgot” its own understanding of the Balfour Declaration. In 1922, an earlier British “white paper” interpreted the declaration in light of postwar conditions. Its key determination was that the Jewish people “should know that it is in Palestine as of right and not on the sufferance.” The mandate then interpreted the declaration to mean that the country’s nationality law should be “framed so as to facilitate the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who take up their permanent residence in Palestine.”

The Balfour Declaration may or may not have implied a Jewish state, but by affirming the right of any Jew to call Palestine home, it changed the status of the Jewish people. There was one small spot on the globe in which Jews had a natural right to take up abode, by virtue of their “historic connection.” (The Balfour Declaration thus anticipated Israel’s own “Law of Return” of 1950, guaranteeing that “every Jew has the right to come to this country as an oleh.”)

In issuing yet another “white paper” in 1939, the British took theopposite position. That document stipulated that after a five-year period of reduced immigration, “no further Jewish immigration will be permitted unless the Arabs of Palestine are prepared to acquiesce in it.” The Jewish right had disappeared; Jews would henceforth be in Palestine on (Arab) sufferance.

The British justification? Between 1922 and 1939, the British had admitted 300,000 Jews to Palestine, and Jews now formed a third of the population. Wasn’t that enough?

At that time, there were 9.7 million Jews in Europe. Six years later, six million of them were dead, and even then the British were determined to keep the remnant out of Palestine. They reasoned that if the Jewish proportion was held to a third of the population, the Jews would never be able to found a state. And so the British “forgot” their own determination of 1922, that the Jewish people was in Palestine “as of right.”

In the end, a third of Palestine’s population, comprising 600,000 determined Jews, was enough to found Israel even in the teeth of pan-Arab opposition and British hostility. The act of reminding, with which Rostow credits me, should be commended to Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been invited to London by Theresa May, the British prime minister, to “mark” the Balfour centennial. Netanyahu should be sure to link the history of 1917 to that of 1939. The former is a noble chapter; the latter, a shameful one.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Our World: The PLO’s IDF lobbyists Caroline Glick

By on June 27th, 2017

Should the United States pay Palestinian terrorists? For the overwhelming majority of Americans and Israelis this is a rhetorical question.

The position of the American people was made clear – yet again – last week when US President Donald Trump’s senior envoys Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt met with Palestinian Authority chairman and PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas and repeated Trump’s demand that the PA cut off the payments.
Not only did Abbas reject their demand, he reportedly accused the presidential envoys of working as Israeli agents.

Abbas’s treatment of Kushner and Greenblatt was in line with his refusal to even meet with US Ambassador David Friedman, reportedly because he doesn’t like Friedman’s views.

The most amazing aspect of Abbas’s contemptuous treatment of the Trump administration is that he abuses Trump and his senior advisers while demanding that Trump continue funding him in excess of half a billion dollars a year, and do so in contravention of the will of the Republican-controlled Congress.

Abbas’s meeting last week took place as the Taylor Force Act makes its way through Congress.

Named for Taylor Force, the West Point graduate and US army veteran who was murdered in March 2016 in Tel Aviv by a Palestinian terrorist, the Taylor Force Act will end US funding of the PA until it ends its payments to terrorists and their families – including the family of Force’s murderer Bashar Masalha.

The Taylor Force Act enjoys bipartisan majority support in both the House and the Senate. It is also supported by the Israeli government.

Given the stakes, what could possibly have possessed Abbas to believe he can get away with mistreating Trump and his envoys? Who does he think will save him from Congress and the White House? Enter Commanders for Israel’s Security (CIS), stage left.

CIS is a consortium of 260 left-wing retired security brass. It formed just before the 2015 elections. CIS refuses to reveal its funding sources. Several of its most visible members worked with the Obama administration through the George Soros-funded Center for a New American Security.

Since its inception, CIS has effectively served as a PLO lobby. It supports Israeli land giveaways and insists that Israel can do without a defensible eastern border.

Last Wednesday CIS released a common-sense defying statement opposing the Taylor Force Act.

The generals mind-numbingly insisted the US must continue paying the terrorism-financing PA because Israel needs the help of the terrorism-incentivizing PA to fight the terrorists the PA incentivizes. If the US cuts off funding to the PA because it incentivizes terrorism, then the PA will refuse to cooperate with Israel in fighting the terrorism it incentivizes.

If you fail to follow this logic, well, you don’t have what it takes to be an Israeli general.

Continue reading →
BOOKS, ISRAEL Comments turned off

What happens when famous novelists ‘confront the Occupation’ in the West Bank By Matti Friedman ****

By on June 27th, 2017

“What it’s really about is the writers. Most of the essays aren’t journalism but a kind of selfie in which the author poses in front of the symbolic moral issue of the time: Here I am at an Israeli checkpoint! Here I am with a shepherd! That’s why the very first page of the book finds Chabon and Waldman talking not about the occupation, but about Chabon and Waldman. After a while I felt trapped in a wordy kind of Kardashian Instagram feed, without the self-awareness.”

Matti Friedman is a journalist in Jerusalem and the author, most recently, of “Pumpkinflowers.”

Last year, the American novelists Michael Chabon, Ayelet Waldman and Dave Eggers led a group of writers to “bear witness” to the crisis in Iraq, confronting the fate of that country during and since the American occupation — the hundreds of thousands of dead, the vanished minorities, the chaos spreading across the region. The resulting anthology adds up to a piercing, introspective look at what it means to be American in the 21st century.

I’m kidding! Reporting on Iraq is bothersome, and so is introspection. Instead, they came to “bear witness” to the crisis in the West Bank and Gaza, where thousands of reporters, nongovernmental organization staffers, activists and diplomats hover around a conflict with a death toll last year that was about a third of the homicide number in Baltimore. It’s the kind of Mideast conflagration where writers can sally forth in an air-conditioned bus, safely observe the natives for a few hours and make it back to a nice hotel for drinks.

The resulting anthology, “Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation,” includes essays by American and international authors such as Eggers, Mario Vargas Llosa, Colum McCann and Colm Toibin — an impressive list — with a few locals thrown in. The visitors were shown around by anti-occupation activists and wrote up their experiences. Edited by Chabon and Waldman, the 26 essays here constitute a chorus of condemnation of Israel.

Chabon, for example, interviews a Palestinian American businessman about life in the West Bank — the byzantine permit system, the 1,001 humiliations of undemocratic rule. Another essay looks at a village of impoverished shepherds, Susiya, in the shadow of an Israeli settlement. Geraldine Brooks describes a stabbing in Jerusalem. We meet children detained by troops, people made to wait at checkpoints and others scarred in different ways by the military occupation that began here after the 1967 war.

I’ve seen the West Bank from many angles over more than two decades in Israel, as a soldier at checkpoints and as a reporter passing through them with Palestinians, and I know the injustices of the situation are real and worth attention from knowledgeable observers. What we get here, though, is a peculiar product. The visiting writers aren’t experts — most seem to have been here for only a few days, and some appear quite lost.

Chabon and Waldman tell us on the very first page of a visit to Israel in 1992, which they remember vividly as a time of optimism, when the “Oslo accords were fresh and untested.” But their memory must be playing tricks, because the Oslo accords happened in the fall of 1993. Chabon and Waldman, who live in Berkeley, Calif., are accomplished writers, but the reader needs a few words about what they’re up to here. Do they have special expertise to offer? Israel is probably the biggest international news story over the past 50 years, so is there a reason they decided the world needs to know more about it and not, say, Kandahar, Guantanamo, Congo or Baltimore?

Continue reading →
ISRAEL Comments turned off

Palestinian rejectionism means no deal by Richard Baehr

By on June 27th, 2017

There is a long history of Israeli-Palestinian peace processing. Some things have ‎been largely the same in every cycle. Israel has at different times offered a little ‎more or a little less land for a Palestinian state. There have been minor shifts in ‎the Israeli offers made on Jerusalem, so as to accommodate a Palestinian desire for ‎a capital there. Israel has shown some flexibility in addressing the refugee issue ‎through family reunification in Israel in a limited number of cases, with the great ‎number having a new state as their home if they want it. At times American and ‎third party involvement in the negotiations was significant, and at other times, ‎largely absent.‎

The Palestinians have for the most part made the same demands year after year. ‎The borders are to reflect the 1949 armistice lines. The Palestinian capital will be ‎in east Jerusalem. The refugees from the 1948 and 1967 wars and their ‎descendants shall have a right of return to Israel or to a new Palestinian state. ‎Jews now living within the new borders of a Palestinian state must leave or accept ‎the law of the new state. All Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails are to be ‎released. This is a formula guaranteed to produce a stalemate and a breakup in ‎talks.‎

Israel has demanded recognition that it is a Jewish state, and the Palestinians ‎have never accepted this formulation. After all, if a new Palestinian state were ‎created, but Israel was required to absorb millions of refugees, it would become far less of a Jewish state. The Palestinians, much ‎like Iran, do not accept the permanence of Israel. The creation of Israel has always ‎been considered a nakba, a disaster. While Iran has threatened missiles and ‎nuclear weapons to reach its desired outcome, the Palestinians seemed to rely on ‎demographic shifts and terrorism to eventually break down Israel’s will to resist. ‎The now much higher Israeli Jewish fertility rate (more than three children per woman of child bearing ‎age, about the same as for Israeli Arabs and West Bank Arabs), along with the ‎Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, have significantly extended the horizons for when ‎this supposed demographic advantage for the Palestinians in places where both ‎people reside would be realized.

A new round of peace processing is underway, this time the Donald Trump version, ‎spearheaded by Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt and Senior Adviser to the President Jared Kushner. The early signs are that ‎things have not changed among the two parties. Things may have changed, ‎however, on the American side. The Trump administration has been fighting the ‎lawfare, and propaganda efforts Palestinians and their allies routinely push at the ‎United Nations and other international organizations. Nikki Haley, the new ‎American ambassador to the United Nations, has been the most vocal challenging ‎the obsession at the U.N. with condemning Israel and its behavior. The administration in its meetings with Palestinian officials in Washington and ‎Ramallah have demanded an end to incitement against Israel and a ‎cutoff of Palestinian Authority payments to families of terrorists, many of whom have or had American blood on their hands. These ‎payments are a significant dollar amount when compared to total American aid to ‎the Palestinian Authority but are very popular among Palestinians, who see the ‎jailed Palestinians or those killed in terror attacks as noble resistance fighters and ‎heroe. A threat of an aid cutoff would likely result in a sham multistep process ‎to provide an appearance that the program has ended, when it will in fact continue ‎to fund the families. Already there are hints about the PA contributing to a social ‎welfare organization that, among other tasks, continues the payments to the same ‎families on the same schedule. ‎

Continue reading →
ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Unveiling clock showing 8,411 days left for Israel, Iranians rage against Jewish state Parliament speaker calls Israel ‘mother of terrorism’ as Islamic Republic parades missiles, rallies in support of Palestinians and against raft of enemies

By on June 26th, 2017

Marchers says destroying Israel is Muslim world’s top priority, but also denounce US, UK, Saudis.

TEHRAN — Iran held major anti-Israel rallies across the country Friday, with protesters chanting “Death to Israel” and declaring that destroying the Jewish state is “the Muslim world’s top priority.”

Iranians participating in Quds Day rallies also called for unity among pro-Palestinian groups against the “child-murdering” Israeli government, according to Iran’s Tasnim News Agency.

Marchers in Tehran headed from various points of the city to the Friday prayer ceremony at Tehran University. Similar demonstrations were held in other cities and towns in Iran.

Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard used the demonstration in the capital’s Valiasr Square to showcase three surface-to-surface ballistic missiles, including the Zolfaghar — the type that Iran used this week to target the Islamic State group in Syria. The Guard said it fired six such missiles on Sunday at IS targets in the city of Deir el-Zour, more than 600 kilometers (370 miles) away. The Guard said the airstrike was in retaliation for an IS attack earlier in June on Iran’s parliament and a shrine in Tehran that killed 18 people and wounded more than 50.

Another missile on display at the Tehran rally was the Ghadr, with a range of 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) that can reach both Israel and US bases in the region.

Iran’s ballistic missile program has been the subject of persistent concern in Washington and the target of repeated US sanctions.

Iran claimed its missile strike on Sunday killed 360 Islamic State fighters. Israeli sources, by contrast, said the strike was a “flop,” that most of the six or seven missiles missed their targets, and that three of them fell to earth in Iraq and didn’t even reach Syria.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, in remarks carried by the official IRNA news agency, said Israel supports “terrorists in the region.”

Parliament speaker Ali Larijani, in a speech to Tehran demonstrators, called Israel the “mother of terrorism” and said that in the “20th century, there was no event more ominous than establishing the Zionist regime.”

The rally also inaugurated a huge digital countdown display at Tehran Palestine Square, showing that Israel will allegedly cease to exist in 8,411 days.

In 2015, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei predicted that after 25 years — by 2040 — there will no longer be a State of Israel.

“Death to the House of Saud and Daesh,” demonstrators chanted, using another name for the Islamic State. “Death to America”, “Death to Israel”, “Death to the UK.”

This year’s commemoration comes amid an intensifying battle for influence in the region between Shiite Iran and its Sunni arch rival Saudi Arabia who have had no diplomatic relations since January last year.

State media put the number of participants at over 1 million.

Continue reading →