RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://unitedwithisrael.org/un-votes-149-6-to-denuclearize-israel-who-are-israels-5-friends/

Only five countries voted with Israel against a resolution this week calling on Jerusalem to give up its supposed nuclear arsenal.

The United Nations took yet another swipe at the Jewish state on Wednesday when it voted 149-6 that Israel should accede to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and dispose of its nuclear weapons cache – assuming that it has one.

The resolution called on Israel to sign the NPT immediately and “not to develop, produce, test or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons, to renounce their possession and to place all its unsafeguarded nuclear facilities under full-scope IAEA safeguards.”

While foreign estimates have put Israel’s stockpile at 80-400 nuclear warheads, Jerusalem has remained ambiguous on the issue, neither denying nor confirming claims that it has nuclear weapons. Throughout the years, however, Israel has maintained that it would never be the first in the region to introduce weapons of mass destruction.

Indeed, it is Iran that should be the main concern of the international community.

Earlier this year, David Albright, a former UN nuclear inspector, said Iran already possesses enough enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon. Albright, who worked for the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in the 1990s, said Iran’s so-called breakout time is zero.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19214/israel-democracy-support

Israeli governments come and go based on the results of elections; Israel has had five of them in the last four years. But one’s support for Israel should not vary with whether one agrees or disagrees with the outcome of a particular election, any more than one’s support for the United States depends on whether Democrats or Republican are in control at a given time. One can be a patriotic American who stands and salutes the star-spangled banner even when one disagrees with policies of the government. One can work hard to change such policies. Sometimes they change. Sometimes they do not. That is democracy at work.

One can also be a fervent Zionist, which simply means that one strongly believes in the concept of a secure and democratic nation-state for the Jewish people. That is all Zionism means. It does not entail support for particular Israeli policies….

As then-President Bill Clinton once complained: “Israel is a democracy, damn it!” His point was that he could simply call the leader of a non-democratic ally and tell him what do. He could not do that to Israel, where the citizens decide what their government should do.

Democracy does not assure good outcomes. It only assures a fair process.

Those who understandably disagree with the outcome of the recent Israeli election should recognize that it is the product of factors that generally affect democratic elections: changing demography, economic considerations, external threats and numerous other variables.

So please, as Israel approaches its 75th birthday, look at the big picture: no country has contributed more to the world in its first three quarters of a century than has Israel; no country faced with dangers comparable to those faced by Israel has had a better record of human rights, compliance with the rule of law and concern for enemy civilians than Israel.

Governments and policies change. Support for the only democracy in the Middle East should remain constant.

Israel’s prime minister-designate is brilliant, hardworking and dedicated to the survival of the nation-state of the Jewish people. One may not like all the ministers in his likely new government. Neither do other longtime supporters of Israel. Some have questioned whether they can continue to support Israel in the face of certain policies proposed by some potential ministers. It is important to continue to support Israel even if one disagrees with some policies of a particular government.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-724393

The cat’s out of the bag. Israel’s outgoing caretaker prime minister, Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid – like most members of his crumbled coalition – is no more of a so-called “centrist” than he is a healer of societal rifts.

On the contrary, his self-described “change” government, which was squarely defeated on November 1 by the Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu-headed opposition, has embarked on a campaign to foment civil war. The effort will fail as badly as his bid to remain at the helm and Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s attempt to replace him at it.

There’s a reason that their crew lost the election to the nationalist camp. Yet, instead of waking up to it, Lapid, Gantz and the rest of the “anybody but Bibi” politicians and pundits have been doubling down on the very behavior responsible for their poor showing at the ballot box.

Having flopped at vilifying Netanyahu, they went after Otzma Yehudit Party leader MK Itamar Ben-Gvir, now slated to become the national security minister. Their latest target is Noam party chair Avi Maoz, whose dim view of LGBTQ parades and gay marriage provides sufficient cause to delegitimize him. That his upcoming role will include having a say in the content of extracurricular school programs makes him fair game in their eyes for no-holds-barred demonization.

Never mind that his stated plan is for parents to be informed of and fully involved in vetting material, much of which is funded by foreign NGOs with a dubious political agenda, brought into their children’s classrooms. Several municipalities have already announced, at Lapid’s urging, that they won’t cooperate with the “racist homophobe.”

When Netanyahu condemned this conduct as sedition, Lapid had a typical reaction. First, he got huffy; then, he proved Bibi right.

https://www.jns.org/lapids-call-to-disobey-next-government-puts-civil-society-at-risk-legal-analysts-say/ 

Even before taking power, Benjamin Netanyahu has found himself on the defensive over his prospective coalition’s “fringe elements.” During an NBC interview on Sunday, Netanyahu felt obliged to declare, “I’m going to safeguard Israeli democracy.”

However, legal analysts told JNS the danger to democracy may come from another corner, namely the actions of outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid, who called on local authorities to flout the incoming government’s directives.

In a Dec. 1 open letter, Lapid urged Israeli municipalities not to cooperate with an educational department to be headed by far-right Knesset member Avi Maoz. Maoz is the sole representative in Israel’s parliament of the Noam Party, which focuses on social issues, on which it takes a traditional (its detractors would say archaic) religious stance. It’s criticized mainly for opposing LGBTQ rights.

The opposition coalition set to establish the next government has “abandoned the education of our children and handed them over to the most extreme and darkest elements in Israeli society,” Lapid wrote to the municipalities, labeling Noam “racist, homophobic and dangerous.

“I urge you not to cooperate with the unit for external programs and partnerships in the Ministry of Education as long as it is under the control of Maoz. The heavy responsibility for the educational content that our children will learn in the schools now passes to you,” he wrote.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/363862

Abba Eban, Israel’s first permanent representative to the UN, once called the UN, “the world center for anti-Semitism.” Attacks against Israel were so strident during his tenure [1949-1959], he said that “If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions.” [1] Gilad Erdan, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, added “Why must the UN constantly serve as a house of lies?” [2]

On November 30, 2022, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution to commemorate the Nakba (the so-called Palestinian Catastrophe), aka the establishment of the Jewish State, at “a high-level event at the General Assembly Hall” on May 15, 2023.

During the debate about the resolution, the Permanent UN Observer for the State of Palestine declared the resolution as having righted a wrong against the Arabs: “Today the Assembly will finally acknowledge the historical injustice that befell the Palestinian people, adopting a resolution that decides to commemorate in the Assembly Hall the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Nakba.” [3]

Ambassador Erdan responded that the “sole purpose” of this and other resolutions aimed at Israel “is to blame everything in the Middle East solely on Israel while absolving the Palestinian Arabs of their responsibility for their situation.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/no-hady-amr-is-not-our-friend/

Mere hours after the announcement on Tuesday that the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for Israeli and Palestinian affairs had been promoted to a position that was tailor-made just for him, the American Jewish Committee jumped in to welcome the move.

“Congratulations to our friend @HadyAmr on being appointed Special Representative for Palestinian Affairs,” tweeted the self-described “staunchly non-partisan” organization. “AJC looks forward to our continued work with you to advance American engagement in the region and the cause of peace across the Middle East.”

The timing wasn’t the only thing disturbing about Amr’s “elevation” to a concocted new job—from whose title the word “Israel” is conspicuously absent—or about the AJC’s fawning response to it. But it was certainly symbolic, as it fell on Nov. 29.

On this date in 1947, the U.N. General Assembly passed Resolution 181, which called for the partition of British-ruled Mandatory Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab one. It was the precursor to the declaration of the birth of the State of Israel less than six months later, on May 14, 1948.
Referred to in Hebrew as Kaf Tet B’November, it is celebrated annually by Israelis and—like Yom Ha’atzmaut (Independence Day)—mourned by the Arabs who rejected the original partition plan and who continue to refuse coexistence with the “Zionist entity.” In a horrifying historical twist, the UNGA has joined the “Palestinians” who mark the nakba (catastrophe) of Israel’s birth by stressing and acting on their intention to eliminate it.

The international body even voted on Wednesday in favor of holding an official commemorative Nakba Day event to honor all those decrying the Jewish state’s upcoming 75th anniversary. The world couldn’t have found a more fitting way to champion the sharp rise in antisemitism that so many countries and NGOs claim to be attempting to combat.