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While US recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights bolsters the national security of the Jewish State, it also yields major strategic benefits for the US.

Thus, President Trump’s endorsement of Israeli sovereignty over the strategically commanding Golan Heights – which may be reinforced by a Congressional resolution – highlights the synergy between the national security of the US and Israel. It underlines the mutually-beneficial, two-way-street strategic coordination and cooperation between the US and Israel.

This endorsement enhances the posture of deterrence of Israel – a systematic, unwavering, effective beachhead of the US in the Middle East – and therefore extends the strategic hand of the US, without the need to deploy additional US forces to the region.

In fact, Israel’s upgraded strategic profile has been a most effective US force-multiplier in the Middle East.

https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/03/opinion/strivers-sulkers-and-the-state-of-israel/

Nothing succeeds like success, and the State of Israel’s success in a range of fields has created more goodwill for the Jewish people than at any time in history, and also more enmity. The world’s strivers see Israel as an example, and the world’s sulkers view Israel as a humiliating reminder of their misery.

Joseph Dana argued in a March 25 opinion article on this site that “political Zionism raises the risk of anti-Semitism.” That is true only to the extent that success breeds envy. Success also elicits admiration, though, and Israel is admired by ambitious and upwardly mobile people around the world. On balance, political Zionism has brought about far more philo-Semitism than anti-Semitism.

Half a million tourists visited Israel in December 2018, twice the number of the previous December. South Korean high-school students are adopting traditional Jewish learning techniques. Books about Jewish success are best-sellers in China. Chinese students are applying to Israeli universities; 200 now attend the University of Haifa compared with just 20 in 2013, and nearly 200 are enrolled at the Technion, Israel’s elite science university.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273300/trumps-recognition-israeli-sovereignty-over-golan-ari-lieberman State Department lifers at Foggy Bottom must have been convulsing with horror this past Monday when Donald Trump announced that the United States would formally recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. There had been strong indications in recent months that US policy was shifting in favor of recognition.

In November 2018, the US opposed a yearly ritualistic United Nations General Assembly pro forma resolution condemning Israeli control over the Golan Heights. In previous years, the US abstained. Then in early March, the State Department’s annual report on global human rights issues referred to the Golan Heights as “Israeli controlled” rather than “Israeli occupied,” a subtle but significant distinction not lost on Israel’s enemies, chiefly Iran, Syria and Hezbollah and to a lesser extent, Hamas and the so-called Palestinian Authority.

On Monday President Trump made history again by shattering the unsustainable status quo and extending formal recognition to Israel’s claim over the territory. The Golan plateau, an area of approximately 400 square miles that overlooks all of Galilee, was liberated by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War. In 1981, Israel passed the Golan Heights Law, a legal step tantamount to annexation. Predictably, the move was not recognized internationally, and was even condemned by stalwart allies wishing to preserve the status quo and avoid offending the Muslim world.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13931/palestinians-hamas-fatah-repression

Hamas is now accusing the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Fatah of exploiting the economic crisis in the Gaza Strip to call on Palestinians to overthrow the Hamas regime. Fatah, for its part, is accusing the “dark forces” of Hamas of acting on orders from outside parties to establish a separate Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip.

The US administration says it will publish its long-awaited plan for peace in the Middle East, known as the “Deal of the Century,” after the general elections in Israel on April 9. Perhaps it would be a good idea if the US administration came up with a plan to make peace between Palestinians and Palestinians before attempting to make peace between the Palestinians and Israel.

What is clear, meanwhile, is that the Fatah and Hamas leaders are more interested in warring with each other than improving the living conditions of their people. The two groups have already rejected the upcoming “Deal of the Century”: for now, that is the only deal they seem ready to make.

Hamas and Fatah, the two major Palestinian parties ruling the Gaza Strip and West Bank respectively, have been at war with each other for the past 12 years. They disagree on many things, but when it comes to repressing and violating the human rights of their people, Hamas and Fatah have proven that they are comrades-in-arms.

In the past week, Fatah has been launching scathing attacks on Hamas for using excessive force to suppress Palestinians protesting economic hardship in the Gaza Strip. Fatah says that hundreds of Palestinians, including political activists and journalists, have been arrested or severely beaten by Hamas security forces.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273203/palestinian-jihad-attack-claims-life-father-12-and-ari-lieberman

Sunday began as any other for Sgt. Gal Keidan but the 19-year-old soldier didn’t have a chance. He had no reason to suspect that the Palestinian approaching him as he waited at the Ariel junction in the Samaria District (northern West Bank) was going to produce a large knife and begin stabbing. Normal people don’t go on stabbing sprees. But Omar Abu Laila, the Palestinian stabber, was anything but normal. He was a product of a depraved culture steeped in gore, religious zealotry and vitriolic Jew-hatred.

From the day he was born, Omar Abu Laila was exposed to base hate where the Jew was compared to monkeys and pigs; where the Jew was reduced to a cowardly land grabber and usurper; where the Jew was deemed to be the consummate infidel. Abu Laila was exposed to this hate in the mosque, at school, on social media and through official Palestinian media outlets.

Faced with this incessant, Goebbels-like propaganda, that Abu Laila would turn out to be a blood-thirsty, Jew-hating murderer was a forgone conclusion. And the responsibility rests squarely with Mahmoud Abbas, aka Abu Mazen, and his so-called Palestinian Authority for encouraging and stoking this type of aberrant behavior.

Not satiated with the murder of Gal Kaidan, Abu Laila continued his blood lust. He grabbed Kaidan’s automatic assault rifle and began shooting at cars nearing the junction hitting 47-year-old Rabbi Achiad Ettinger, a resident of the community of Eli and father of twelve children.

https://saraacarter.com/hamas-targeted-tel-aviv-but-israelis-murdered-by-palestinian

In the six short days I’ve been back in Israel following a month-long absence, there have been several attempts – one successful – to murder Israeli Jews by Arab Palestinian terrorists.

Israelis live their lives pretty much the way most Americans live theirs. One distinction, however, is that all Israelis’ telephones do more than just connect them to friends and family. They are, in fact, a source of immediate information about the terror attacks. These attacks disrupt everyone’s consciousness on a regular basis.

My friend with whom I’m traveling is a terror attack survivor; she has myriad sources from which she receives updates on a continuous basis. I also have many news sources from which I receive near-immediate news.

So, no surprise, we learned immediately that Sunday’s attack at the Ariel Junction was successful. At least one Israeli had been murdered, along with several wounded.

A 19 year-old soldier, Gal Keidan, was guarding the entrance to the community of Ariel. Ariel is a Jewish community, but its university has hundreds of Arab students as well.

At about 9:45 a.m. a 20 year-old Arab Palestinian, later identified as Omar Abu Lila who is from a nearby village, approached Keidan and stabbed him. As soon as Keidan was wounded, the terrorist wrestled away the soldier’s M-16 rifle and shot Keidan at point blank range, killing him.

The terrorist then used the stolen rifle to fire at three vehicles passing by.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13910/hamas-war-crimes-against-israel-palestinians

Suddenly, everyone was talking only about the rocket attacks on Tel Aviv, and Hamas seemed to have gotten away with its beating and shooting at peaceful protesters. It is also worth noting that many of the Palestinians who were brutally beaten by Hamas were children. In the view of many Palestinians, what Hamas is doing in the Gaza Strip is tantamount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Recently, in a grotesque allegation, UN human rights “experts” claimed that Israel may have committed war crimes by shooting at Palestinian demonstrators who tried to breach the Gaza-Israel border fence and infiltrate into Israel. The demonstrators who were shot were mostly Hamas and Islamic Jihad members, as both organizations have openly admitted. In other words, Israel is being accused of war crimes for defending its border against terrorists attempting to infiltrate it in order to murder or kidnap Israelis.

Perhaps a small step, such as viewing easily available material, would set the record straight. These UN human rights “experts” might, for a change, glance at the videos and photos coming out of the Gaza Strip to see who is really responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity: Hamas. Its members are opening fire at peaceful protesters, who are taking their lives in their hands to end the harsh economic conditions created by their rulers’ catastrophic policies in the Gaza Strip. It is the leaders of Hamas, and only Hamas, who are committing war crimes in and around Gaza. They are committing war crimes against Jews and they are committing war crimes against their own people.

Hamas has again proved that it really is a terrorist group that oppresses its people and prevents them from expressing their opinions. It has also shown that when it is in trouble, it will do its utmost to divert attention from the problems it is facing at home.

As far as Hamas is concerned, one of the best ways to divert attention from the growing frustration with its rule is by attacking Israel and Jews. Then, Israel is forced to respond to defend itself. That will allow Hamas to tell its people that there is no room for internal fighting and disputes “because we are under attack by the Jews.” No Palestinian would dare to criticize Hamas while Israel is supposedly “attacking” Hamas. Anyone who did so would be accused of being a “traitor” and “collaborator” with the “Zionist enemy.”

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/23603

Those who have watched what passes for the Middle East peace process between Israel and the Palestinian Authority have long recognized that there can be no peace until there is a complete renunciation of violence and terror as substitutes for negotiations.

Now, thanks to President Donald Trump’s special Middle East envoy, Jason D. Greenblatt, an equally valid corollary has been acknowledged: There will be no peace until the PA ceases its practice of financially rewarding terrorists and their families.

“We must acknowledge that peace can only be achieved by those who reject violence and terror,” Mr. Greenblatt told Adam Kredo in an interview for the Washington Beacon. “It is unacceptable for the PA to pay these terrorists and their families a reward for criminal acts. It is unacceptable for the PA to divert its funds and fail to pay the hard-working civil servants who teach in PA schools, patrol the streets in uniform, and provide medical care to the sick. The PA would rather pay terrorists than ordinary Palestinians and their families. What a shame.”

Withholding Funds

Last month, as punishment for the PA’s policy of continuing to pay stipends to Palestinian-Arab prisoners and to families of those terrorists who have been wounded or killed, the Israeli Security Cabinet announced it would suspend approximately five percent of the monthly funds the Jewish state transfers to the PA from specific taxes Israel collects from Palestinian Arabs.