RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jns.org/israels-golden-opportunity-to-wean-itself-off-us-military-aid/

“The advantages of independence clearly outweigh the benefits of continuing the status quo,” Misgav Institute fellow Raphael BenLevi tells JNS.

On the one hand, the Ministry of Defense has made unprecedented purchases—more than $10 billion during 14 months of war—but on the other, Washington has leveraged that dependence to induce Israel to make decisions counter to its interests.

U.S. governments have tried to leverage weapons supply before, according to Raphael BenLevi of the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, a Jerusalem-based think tank. However, he tells JNS, “it’s been acute and extreme in the past year.”

Recent events have bolstered the argument of those who say that Israel’s long-term interests are not served by the current aid framework.

Under the U.S. Foreign Military Financing program, Israel receives about $3.3 billion in aid each year, provided as grants. Israel must use those funds to purchase American military equipment and services. Israel also receives $500 million annually for cooperative programs for missile defense.

“We’ve dug ourselves into this dependency. It’s like welfare. People on welfare get used to having a certain amount of external aid. A day comes when they have to rearrange their affairs in order to manage without it,” says BenLevi.

In September, BenLevi published a position paper for Misgav titled “The future of American military aid to Israel,” detailing the reasons for rethinking that assistance. There is an “unhealthy dynamic,” in which the U.S. gives and Israel takes, he argues, leaving Israel “beholden.”

“At the strategic level, the advantages of independence and moving to a more reciprocal relationship with Washington clearly outweigh the benefits of continuing the status quo of dependence and receiving aid, which are mainly on the immediate economic level,” he writes.

https://www.jns.org/netanyahu-to-israeli-public-were-dismantling-the-iranian-axis-piece-by-piece/

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the significance of the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria and spoke of Israel’s progress in the “existential war” forced upon it during a nationally televised press conference on Monday, which ended in a fiery back-and-forth with reporters.

“Yesterday, a new chapter opened, a dramatic chapter, in the history of the Middle East,” the prime minister said. “The Assad regime in Syria, a central link in Iran’s axis of evil, has collapsed after 54 years.”

The billions Iran pumped into Syria to prop up Syrian President Bashar Assad’s tyrannical rule has “gone down the drain,” he noted.

That regime had spread hostility towards Israel, attacked Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and “served as an outpost of Iranian terrorism and as a conduit for weapons from Iran to Hezbollah,” he said.

Netanyahu took credit for the regime’s collapse—a “direct result” of the “heavy blows” Israel inflicted on Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.

Israel has worked since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in the south on Oct. 7, 2023, to systematically “dismantle the axis of evil,” referring to Iran’s reach across the region via its proxies—a “path of terror from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea: from Iran to Iraq, from Iraq to Syria, and from Syria to Lebanon.”

 www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

Many of Israel’s positive achievements are truly “towering”.  Its Iron Dome and David’s Sling defense systems have intercepted more hostile aerial attacks than all other global defense systems combined over the last 50 years. Michael Ordman

This defense technology, known as SDI- Strategi Defense Initiative was initially named “Star Wars” by skeptics and detractors in 1983 when President Ronald Reagan delivered a nationwide address committing to deploy research and development of missile defense systems. The then Democrat Congress was decidedly against the project. Edward Teller Hungarian-American theoretical physicist and chemical engineer was enthusiastic about SDI’s development, but it was Lieut. Gen. Daniel O. Graham, who propelled and championed the technology.

As Newt Gingrich said of General Graham in his eulogy:

  “Your leadership helped President Reagan launch the Strategic Defense Initiative, which has brought us ever closer to ending the threat of nuclear annihilation.”…..“This nation owes Dan Graham a great deal. And one day soon, we will have a system to protect us against some fanatic or deranged leader who wants to blow up part of America to make a point.”

Today fanatic and deranged leaders want to blow up Israel, and the fruits and legacy of Daniel Graham’s efforts thwart hat genocidal plan.

His memory is a blessing.  Rsk

POSITIVE NEWS IN A WAR
 
Billionaire survivor gives message of hope. (TY WIN) 94-year-old Holocaust survivor Sir Frank Lowy gave a powerful and emotional Thanksgiving Day speech to ex-hostages and their friends. The Israeli-Australian multibillionaire drew from his life experiences to give them strength and resilience. (see here previously). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlYNiYrirLk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Lowy
 
The most interceptions in 50 years. According to the CEO of Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, “David’s Sling and Iron Dome systems have intercepted more targets than all the other air defense systems worldwide combined over the past 50 years”. He also reassured everyone, there is no shortage of interceptors.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/hujfzh9fx
 
From MSG to Sheba hospital. (TY WIN) Ishay Ribo performed to thousands at Madison Square Gardens (see here previously). But he is just as at home playing to the wounded and their families in hospitals, or traveling to numerous military bases, and even funerals to use his talent for good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2avqYHVlp0
 
Therapeutic farm for treating trauma. Before Oct 7 2023, Sivan Shefer founded “Dialog with Animals”, just 4 miles from Gaza, training dogs and their handlers to treat people with disabilities. She now runs “Dialog for Life” – one of 15 initiatives of the Restart NGO, designed to help wounded IDF soldiers restart their lives.
https://www.israel21c.org/israelis-from-shattered-communities-turn-to-innovation/
https://restartglobal.org/en/home/   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXYFcjs20m8 (self-explanatory video)
 
Respite in San Diego. (TY Nevet / ADL) The San Diego Jewish Academy (SDJA) has just welcomed 95 students from the Israeli region of Sha’ar Hanegev, which suffered severely from the Oct 7 2023 Hamas onslaught. The Israelis receive respite and the San Diego students build connections to Israel.
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2024/11/18/san-diego-jewish-academy-welcomes-95-students-from-war-torn-shaar-hanegev-in-israel/   https://www.jewishinsandiego.org/shaarhanegev
 
Christians support olive harvest. NGOs Genesis 1-2-3 Foundation and NewPersia.org have brought a group of American Christians to Israel as part of the “Root and Branch” initiative, which brings Christians and Jews together to rebuild livelihoods in Israel. They are currently involved in harvesting olives from century-old trees.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/watch-christians-unite-to-support-israeli-olive-harvest-during-wartime/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZedArbJ2T1g

https://www.jns.org/ben-gvirs-call-to-curtail-volume-of-muslim-call-to-prayer-mimics-saudi-arabias/

While Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has been accused of attempting to ignite a “religious war,” his push to limit the volume of Muslim calls to prayer follows similar efforts in several European countries and even in the cradle of Islam itself.

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s announcement on Nov. 30 that he had instructed Israeli police to enforce noise ordinances on mosques by issuing fines and confiscating loudspeakers was met with outrage from Arab Knesset members, the Palestinian Authority and even Hamas.

The terrorist group urged Palestinians to “reject this criminal decision and take action to prevent the occupation authorities from tampering with our sacred sites and religious practices.

Arab-Israeli MKs Ahmed Tibi of the Hadash-Ta’al list and Mansour Abbas, leader of the Ra’am Party, accused Ben-Gvir of attempting to ignite a “religious war.” 

Early-morning Muslim calls to prayer are a simmering problem in Israel. Ma’ariv reported in February that since the outbreak of the Swords of Iron War, Israeli police have noted that most mosques’ calls to prayer have increased in volume “in a significant manner, which caused serious harm to residents.”

Two imams from the Great Omari Mosque of Lod were arrested on suspicion of increasing the decibel level of its public address system, the report said. They were released with a warning.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/12/05/the-genocide-lie/

It’s official: loathing Israel has become the ultimate luxury belief. You can’t swing a Daunt Books tote bag in polite society without hitting an Israel hater. This week we’ve seen artist Jasleen Kaur use her Turner Prize victory speech to damn Israel’s ‘genocide of the Palestinian people’ as the assembled dignitaries in the hallowed halls of the Tate rattled their jewellery in agreement. We watched as Juliet Stevenson, the luvvie’s luvvie, titillated a gathering of affluent socialists with her mellifluous censure of Israel for its ‘massacre of the Palestinian people’. She was wearing a keffiyeh. Of course she was. The radical middle class rarely leaves the house without first pulling on that sartorial signifier of virtue.

And now, to top it off, the cunning stunts of Led By Donkeys have got hearts racing in posh coffee houses everywhere by accusing Israel of genocide. Yesterday, the beardy bros of this most grating of campaign groups took a break from berating the oiks for voting Brexit to berate Israel for fighting back against the army of anti-Semites that attacked it on 7 October. They rolled out a giant banner in Parliament Square saying: ‘YES IT’S A GENOCIDE.’ If I had their time, money and insatiable urge to make a media spectacle of my moral rectitude, I’d roll out a banner saying: ‘No it isn’t, you twats.’

Nothing better confirms that Israel-bashing has become a status-conferring belief among the upper middle classes than its showy embrace by Led By Donkeys. For this outfit, founded by four craft-beer tossers in Stoke Newington, is the very physical embodiment of the depressive doctrines of the metropolitan elite. They’ve spent years bewailing Brexit and slamming the Tories and deriding the idiot ‘gammon’ who vote for such things. They call themselves a ‘guerilla operation’ but really they’re the activist wing of a bewildered establishment that can’t believe the great unwashed keep defying its moral instructions. And now they’ve added Israelophobia to their charter of correct-think.