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ISRAEL

FOR ISRAEL’S BOYS OF SUMMER WAITING TIME

https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2020-03-24/israel-baseball-olympics-p

For Israel’s first Olympic baseball team, it’s wait until next year-  March 2020

Never has Israel won an Olympic medal in a team sport. The chances would have been 50-50 this summer.

Israel had qualified for one of the six spots in the Olympic baseball field. On Monday, Team Israel announced that four-time All-Star Ian Kinsler had obtained Israeli citizenship and signed up for the team.

On Tuesday, the Olympics were postponed, a particularly cruel blow to Israeli baseball officials who have toiled for years to establish the sport in a country that loves basketball and soccer above all. In the 2017 World Baseball Classic, an underdog Israeli team and its “Mensch on the Bench” mascot beat powers Cuba and South Korea in a magical run.

While the WBC is a niche event, the Olympics command a worldwide stage. Because of the size of a baseball team, Israel would have sent its largest delegation ever to the Olympics. And, with Israeli baseball officials planning youth fields outside Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, the Olympics could have spurred the development of the sport in Israel like nothing else.

“Baseball is not popular in Israel,” outfielder Jeremy Wolf said. “This was going to make a huge impact with the kids who would see us on television.

“So, when you get rid of the eyeballs of the Olympics, we’re just going to have to keep momentum going so, in 2021, when it happens, people are still going to be interested.”

How Israel Became the World Vaccine Leader The country made a deal with Pfizer: enough shots for everyone in exchange for data on the results. By Tunku Varadarajan

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-israel-became-the-world-vaccine-leader-11615576463?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

More than 55% of Israelis over 16 have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19 in the 12 weeks since the first jab was administered to a wincing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on national TV. That’s the world’s best immunization rate and roughly four times the U.S. rate.

To find out how the Jewish state has become such an overachiever, I interview its national Covid-19 coordinator, Nachman Ash. Dr. Ash, 60, began his medical career in 1987 as a combat physician in the Israel Defense Forces. Before retiring from the service, he rose to the rank of brigadier general and the position of IDF surgeon general. Seated in his spartan office in Lod, south of Ben Gurion International Airport, he tells me he’s fighting a “24/7 war.” His current job is “the most intensive” he’s ever had, “much harder” than being chief medical officer of the Israeli army, even in wartime.

Dr. Ash is Israel’s second Covid czar. He took up the post on Nov. 12, after his less diplomatic predecessor quit amid clashes with Mr. Netanyahu and tussles with (frequently recalcitrant) ultra-Orthodox Jews, who chafed against lockdowns and other social restrictions.

Like all good officers, he’s proud of his victories but quick to credit others. He ascribes Israel’s vaccination successes to its political leaders, who showed foresight in concluding early deals to stockpile the Covid vaccine. Officials had “direct discussions” with Pfizer, in which they offered the company a scientific quid pro quo. Israel got the shots early, and in the quantities it needed, and in exchange Pfizer received access to the results of the vaccinations, tabulated by a country with a first-rate medical system and a reputation for statistical and scientific integrity. Dr. Ash calls it “a win-win deal” and believes Pfizer would say the same.

Palestinians: Why Terrorists Support Mass Murderers by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16931/palestinians-terrorists-murderers-soleimani

For Hamas and Islamic Jihad, what matters is the money and weapons coming from Iran. They see Soleimani as a hero because of his role in providing the Gaza-based terror groups with cash and weapons in order to continue their jihad (holy war) against Israel and Jews.

Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and all of Iran’s militias throughout the Middle East have a single goal in common: the annihilation of Israel.

“Instead of providing a fish or teaching how to catch a fish, we taught our allies and friends how to make a hook,” Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Aerospace Force Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh said, adding that Hamas and Hezbollah are now in possession of advanced missile technologies.

Soleimani, the man responsible for the killing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and Arabs, is being commemorated as a hero and martyr by these terrorist groups because he was supplying them with cash and weapons. His death has not stopped Iran from continuing its support for Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and other terrorist groups.

This is why the next US administration must maintain pressure on the mullahs in Iran. An easing of the sanctions will embolden the terrorist groups and facilitate their mission of pursuing their jihad against Israel. Iran’s proxies want to see Israel obliterated — and if that means aligning themselves with mass murderers such as Soleimani, so be it.

While many Palestinians hold Iran’s slain military commander Qassem Soleimani responsible for committing massacres against Palestinians and Arabs, especially in war-torn Syria, the Palestinian Islamist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad are continuing to heap praise on him for supporting their anti-Israel terrorist activities.

Soleimani, former commander of Iran’s Quds Force, was killed in a US drone attack in Iraq on January 3, 2020. Many Palestinians and Arabs have denounced Soleimani as the “murderer of hundreds of thousands of women and children” in Syria, Yemen and Iraq.

The Iran-backed Hamas and Islamic Jihad have marked the anniversary of his death by hanging large billboards with Soleimani’s picture in some areas of the Gaza Strip. The two terror groups say they miss Soleimani, whom they describe as the “martyr of Jerusalem.”

The billboards have provoked many Palestinians, including those living in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, who consider Soleimani a terrorist and mass murderer.

Majdi al-Mughrabi, a Palestinian man from the Gaza Strip who reportedly tore down a poster of Soleimani, was arrested by Hamas’s Internal Security Force.

Ruthie Blum:Israeli voters are weary, not stupid

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/israel-elections-voters-are-weary-not-stupid-opinion-661754

Stories of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s intention to fly on Thursday to the United Arab Emirates for a meeting with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (MBZ) spurred the press to highlight the event’s proximity to the March 23 Knesset elections. The predictable swipe went beyond mere innuendo, however.

Barak Ravid of Beltway-area website Axios supposedly reported, yet in reality opined, that Netanyahu meant to use the occasion – that would be the first-ever official trip by an Israeli prime minister to the UAE and Netanyahu’s first since the signing of the Abraham Accords in September – “to rally his base and stress his foreign-policy advantage over his less experienced rivals.”

Aside from attributing a cynical motive to the move (which was delayed at the last minute, due to his wife’s hospitalization with appendicitis and Jordan’s blocking of his flight from entering its airspace), Ravid went on to explain that “Netanyahu is in need of a boost [as] his right-wing bloc is short of the 61 seats needed for a majority in the latest polls.”

Ravid further claimed that for 10 days, Netanyahu basically begged the hesitant Emiratis to receive him on their soil, and even had Mossad chief Yossi Cohen do his bidding. According to Ravid, they weren’t keen on being perceived as having “interfered” in the Israeli election. In other words, the UAE sheikhs wouldn’t want to give Netanyahu’s campaign some kind of unfair edge.

Against Court and Constitution: A Never-Before-Translated Speech by David Ben-Gurion Israel famously has no constitution. It turns out that’s no accident but rather the will of its first prime minister, who explains his thinking here.

https://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/israel-zionism/2021/03/against-court-and-constitution-a-never-before-translated-speech-by-david-ben-gurion

“Idon’t think it’s possible to delegate authority to the court to decide whether the laws are kosher or not.” These incendiary words were not uttered by a contemporary right-wing critic of the power of the Israeli Supreme Court. They were made, rather, by Israel’s founding father, first prime minister, final editor and ultimate author of Israel’s Declaration of Independence, and promoter of liberty and rights for all: David Ben-Gurion. And he spoke them not in off-the-cuff remarks to a journalist but in a prepared speech to the committee charged with drafting a constitution in Israel’s first Knesset.

Delivered on the morning of July 13, 1949, Ben-Gurion’s address to the members of the Knesset’s committee on “Constitution, Law, and Justice” expresses his forthright opposition to “judicial review”—a possibility still rather abstract in the Israel of 1949. Ben-Gurion’s opposition was vociferous and fierce, and he uses the occasion to present a resounding case for the supremacy of the parliamentary process as well as popular authority, and utter rejection of the possibility of investing judges with the power to throw out laws duly passed by the Knesset.

As followers of its politics perhaps know, Israel today is embroiled in a bitter battle over the proper role of judges and the Supreme Court within the political system. Since the 1990s, the Supreme Court has arrogated to itself broad prerogatives to strike down laws. The Israeli right has in response become fiercely critical of the court, and seeks to rein it in both through changing its composition and through passing legislation—such as the controversial nation-state law—that would constrain it. The court has responded with an attempt to expand its remit even further, while many on the left insist that curtailing the prerogatives of the judiciary will undermine democracy itself.

How Israel just proved its true title to the Land of Israel By David Isaac

https://worldisraelnews.com/opinion-how-israel-just-proved-its-true-title-to-the-land-of-israel/

It’s not often that you get to see the mystical connection between the Jews and their land play out in real time.

Witness the response to the oil spill that hit Israel’s shores on Feb. 17, dumped by a cargo ship holding 600,000 barrels of Iranian crude, almost certainly deliberately.

As one would expect, Israel’s government responded, allocating $14 million for cleanup.

What was unexpected was the flow of Israelis to the beaches when the call went out for help.

“Over 11,000 people came within a week,” Maya Jacobs, CEO of Zalul, an environmental group devoted to protecting Israel’s waters, told Israel21c.

Israelis didn’t just bend their backs to the work. They did it with smiles on their faces.

They picked through the sand and pebbles across 100 miles of polluted Mediterranean coastline as if it was their own backyard.

They rescued tar-soaked turtles as if they were saving their own pets.

Pfizer and fake news By Ruthie Blum

(March 9, 2021 / JNS) Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla was scheduled to arrive in Israel on Monday to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials. One ostensible purpose of the visit—slated to coincide with the completion of the delivery to 10 million doses of BioNTech—was to examine the possibility of Pfizer building a vaccine-production plant and R&D center in Israel.
On Thursday, however, Pfizer announced that it was postponing the trip. According to the pharmaceutical giant, Bourla and the members of his team who were part of his entourage are not yet fully vaccinated.
Certain Hebrew news sites pounced on this detail for click-bait effect. Take Ynet, for instance. Rather than opt for the “cobbler’s kids wear no shoes” angle, the online version of the widely popular daily, Yediot Achronot, highlighted misleading key words to suggest that the folks at Pfizer weren’t taking any chances with their health by subjecting themselves to their own concoction—the one that they’ve been pushing on the rest of the world.
The ploy initially worked. The item in question, shared on social media by people who clearly hadn’t read past the headline, began to circulate. Anti-coronavirus-vaxxers couldn’t have been happier or felt more vindicated.
One Facebook user recounted overhearing two women on line at an ATM in Jerusalem talking about the “two Bs, Bourla and Bibi” exploiting the naivete of the Israeli public to “conduct experiments on us.” To add weight to their belief that the vaccine is unsafe at best and a global conspiracy at worst, the interlocutors pointed to Bourla’s “refusal” to be inoculated.
In keeping with the wise saying that “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” these ladies, like fellow skeptics, didn’t bother to widen their horizons beyond rumor. Had they even done a perfunctory Google search, they would have realized that in December, soon after the first shipment of vaccines landed at Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion International Airport, Bourla explained that he and other Pfizer executives were not going to “cut in line” to receive the shots.
At the age of 59 and in good physical condition, he said, he planned to wait his turn based on the criteria determined by the state of his residence.

Saudi Shocker: Temple Mount is Jewish, Muslims Should Pray Toward Mecca By Yakir Benzion

https://unitedwithisrael.org/saudi-campaign-hints-that-temple-mount-is-jewish-muslims-should-pray-toward-mecca/

Saudi Twitter users are playing down the importance of Jerusalem for Muslims, insinuating that the Jews should control the Temple Mount.

Saudi Twitter users have recently been pushing a new line of thought that plays up the importance of Muslims praying towards the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, while downplaying the importance of the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, Israel National News(INN) reported Sunday.

The controversial campaign appears to be designed to push the message emphasizing the importance of the Saudi cities of Mecca and Medina as the holy places of Islam, and to eliminate the importance of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount for Muslims, thereby decreasing any Islamic authority the Palestinians have over the site.

One of the messages reportedly comes from well-known Saudi cartoonist Fahd al-Jabiri, who tweeted that “the direction of the prayers of the Jews is not important to us, what is important to us is only our homeland.”

Another English-language tweet is by a Moroccan user named Ibtissam Zegiga whose profile says he studies Hebrew and wants peace, and calls on “dear brothers and sisters” to join in the movement.

“This recent Saudi twitter movement believes that there is no importance of the temple mount to Muslims, and the waiting for the [Jewish] third temple. A new era, one of peace.”

According to the report, the Saudi campaign is in response to the Palestinian insults online and chants against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia heard at at demonstrations at the Temple Mount after prayers on Fridays. The Saudis have quietly supported the recent Abraham Accords the established peace between four Arab countries and Israel, and that has infuriated the Palestinians.

The reaction of the Saudis is to emphasize that the Al-Aqsa in Jerusalem is simply a mosque like all mosques, but the direction of prayer for all Muslims no matter where they are on the planet is only towards to the city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

J Street’s Selective Memory on Palestinian Antisemitism by Moshe Phillips

https://www.algemeiner.com/2021/03/04/j-streets-selective-memory-on-palestinian-antisemitism/

Dylan Williams of J Street, in a recent op-ed, called on the Biden administration to “rebuild the U.S. relationship with moderate Palestinian leaders.”

Since presumably J Street would not claim that the leaders of the genocidal Hamas terrorist group are “moderate,” then the “moderate Palestinian leaders” Williams and J Street have in mind must be Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas and those around him.

Less than three years ago — on April 30, 2018 — Abbas stood before the opening session of the Palestine National Council (PNC) and delivered a blatantly antisemitic speech.

Abbas stated that Jews have “no historical ties” to the Land of Israel because they are actually descendants of the Turkish Khazar tribe (a bizarre and long-discredited conspiracy theory).

Also, Abbas said that there has never been an antisemitic incident against Jews in Arab countries — “Not even once,” he declared. “Do you think I’m exaggerating? I challenge you [to find] even one incident against Jews in over 1,400 years.”

Then Abbas insinuated that the Holocaust was caused by the Jews’ own “social behavior, [charging] interest, and financial matters.”

Abbas’ previous claims about the Holocaust — described in detail in his 1982 doctoral dissertation and subsequent book — include that only a few hundred thousand, not six million, Jews were killed by the Nazis; and that David Ben-Gurion collaborated with the Nazis to kill Jews, in order to garner world sympathy for creating a Jewish state.

Israel Updating Plans to Attack Iran Nuclear Sites By Rick Moran

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/03/06/israel-updating-plans-to-attack-iran-nuclear-sites-n1430485

It wasn’t until February 17 — almost a month after he was inaugurated — that Joe Biden got around to calling America’s main ally in the Middle East, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. If his goal was to alienate the prime minister, he was fantastically successful.

Israel has dealt with presidents who offered lukewarm support for Israel in the past, so Biden’s disapproval of settlements, the treatment of Palestinians, the moribund peace process, and Netanyahu personally doesn’t really matter. Israel will pursue its own security goals and if the U.S. doesn’t like it, that’s their problem.

You might think it was a sea change in relations with the United States when Biden took office. Donald Trump was an enthusiastic supporter of the Jewish state and had its back at every turn.

But Israel has never put all their stock in the U.S., realizing the fickleness of public opinion and the rising anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party. They will act and plan according to their own interests.

That includes updating their plans to attack Iranian nuclear sites.

Fox News:

The Israeli military is updating plans to strike Iranian nuclear sites and is prepared to act independently, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz told Fox News.

Israel has identified numerous targets inside Iran that would hurt its ability to develop a nuclear bomb.

“If the world stops them before, it’s very much good. But if not, we must stand independently and we must defend ourselves by ourselves,” Gantz said in his first sit-down interview with an American outlet.