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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13029/hamas-rejection

When Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad talk about “paying a political price,” they are referring to demands that the Palestinian terrorist groups lay down their weapons, halt terrorist attacks on Israel, and abandon their dream of eliminating Israel. These are terms, of course, to which no Palestinian terrorist group could ever afford to agree.
Accepting such conditions would make them look bad in the eyes of their supporters, who would then accuse them of betraying the Arabs and Muslims by failing to fulfill their promise of destroying Israel. As far as these groups are concerned, keeping their weapons is tremendously more important than improving the living conditions of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
To be clear: when the Palestinian terrorist groups talk about “resistance,” they are referring to terror attacks on Israel. These include suicide bombings, launching rockets towards Israel, and hurling explosive devices and firebombs at Israeli soldiers and civilians. These groups do not believe in any form of peaceful and non-violent protests. For them, there is only one realistic option to achieve their goal of destroying Israel: the armed struggle.
Why are the Palestinian terrorist groups conducting indirect talks with Israel to reach a new truce agreement in the Gaza Strip under the auspices of Egypt and the UN? The answer is simple. They want a truce, or period of calm, so that they can continue preparing for the next war against Israel without having to worry about Israeli military operations.

What does Hamas, the Palestinian terror group that rules the Gaza Strip, mean when it says that it “won’t pay any political price” in return for a truce agreement with Israel? Answer: No to recognizing Israel, no to abandoning the dream of eliminating Israel, and no to disarming.

In recent weeks, several Hamas leaders and spokesmen have repeatedly been quoted as saying that their group will not make any political concessions as part of a truce deal with Israel. The statements came as Egypt and the United Nations continue their effort to reach a truce that would end the ongoing violence along the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel.

“We want a decision to end the blockade on the Gaza Strip,” Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said in a recent speech marking the 30th anniversary of the establishment of his group. “Any understandings that are reached to end the blockade will not be in return for a political price.”

Haniyeh’s remarks were echoed by several Hamas leaders and officials belonging to Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ,) the second largest terrorist group in the Gaza Strip.

In an interview with the Gaza-based Al-Istiklal newspaper, senior PIJ official Nafez Azzam claimed that the Egyptians and the UN were recently close to achieving a truce deal that does not require the Palestinian terrorist groups to “pay a political price.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/09/a_tribute_to_the_israeli_defense_forces.html

The Israel Defense Forces are so much more than the picture of raw power perceived in news stories and war-centered history books. The IDF functions on a daily basis employing stealth and deception in the battle against Israel’s unremitting enemies.

Pre-1967, the state and military were perceived as underdogs fighting the good fight against all odds. The devastating effectiveness and efficiency with which the IDF knocked out and embarrassed Arab armies changed the perception of the IDF and the Jewish people into a conquering military machine. The success was so decisive that it altered the mindset of the Jewish people from ragtag refugees and the world’s piñata into a “don’t mess with me” poster child. Jews are now tough and invincible.

Centuries-long persecutions of the Jewish people, the Enlightenment culminating in the Holocaust, paved the way for implementing the revolutionary thinking called Zionism. A homeland by legal authority, defended by a Jewish army, morphed into a political ideology, then a state. Yet there is room for those who also believe in diplomacy, democracy, and prayer.

Security and safety are the central missions, but the IDF is also the vehicle to assimilate and acculturate refugees, immigrants, and native residents of other races and faiths. The IDF accepts people from disparate cultures arriving from the far corners of the world…white, black, brown, religious and secular, Jew, Bedouin, Arab, Christian, or Druze, educated and illiterate, survivors and sabras. They meet in IDF tents, on IDF training grounds. Their lives literally depend on one another.

It’s the IDF that is responsible for the Jewish condition today that among the world’s 65M refugees, there is not one Jew for the first time in 2,000 years. Yoav Limor and Ziv Koren offer the best examination of the IDF in their new book, Snapshot: The IDF as Never Seen Before. “Either [the IDF] is fighting, or else it is preparing for war.” In between battles, “the purpose of this state is to carry out quiet activity to eliminate the enemy’s capabilities and prevent an all-out war.” Special units travel the world and inside the country to fulfill this mission against unremitting enemies.

https://breakingdefense.com/2018/09/aid-to-israel-isnt-foreign-

Israel faces increasingly tight restrictions on its Foreign Military Financing from the U.S., as Breaking D readers know. In the past, when the US provided Israeli with grants under the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program, Israel could convert 25 percent of the aid from dollars into shekels to buy Israeli products and support local R&D. The new 10-year FMF agreement signed in 2017 decrees that that will gradually drop to zero. In this commentary, former minister for congressional affairs at Israel’s Embassy here, Yoram Ettinger, argues that America gets a great deal in return for the aid and assistance it provides Israel. Read on! The Editor.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, US-Israel relations have outgrown their one-way-street mode (the US gave and Israel received with much appreciation), evolving into a mutually-beneficial, two-way street mode, providing the US a well-deserved high-return on its annual $3.8 billion investment in Israel, conventionally defined as “foreign aid.” However, Israel, unlike all other recipients of foreign aid, is neither foreign, nor does it receive aid.

Yoram Ettinger

The US-Israel strategic compatibility is underlined by their national security orientation, allocating 3.6 percent and 4.7 percent of their budgets, respectively, to defense, much more than any European country: Britain 2.1 percent, France 1.8 percent, Germany 1.1 percent and Italy 1.1 percent, etc.

The scope of US-Israel strategic cooperation has surged since the 1991 demise of the USSR, which transformed the bi-polar globe into a multi-polar arena of conflicts, replete with highly unpredictable, less controllable and more dangerous local and regional threats. Israel’s experience and capabilities in facing such threats has provided the US a unique reinforcement in the face of three critical challenges, which impact the national and homeland security of the US: the megalomaniacal vision of Iran’s Ayatollahs; the clear and present threat of Islamic terrorism; and the need to bolster the pro-US Arab regimes, which are lethally threatened by the Shi’ite Ayatollahs and Sunni terrorist regimes.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tensions-mount-at-israel-gaza-border-as-talks-stall-1537548967

Hamas, the Islamic militant group that rules Gaza, is stepping up protests at its border with Israel to signal frustration with stalled talks with its neighbor, prompting new deadly clashes with Israeli forces.

In recent days, the Palestinian group has organized more frequent protests, including one involving 10,000 people on Friday in which one person was killed and 41 injured, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. Two Palestinians were killed on Tuesday during a protest against Israel and Egypt’s longstanding economic blockade on Gaza. A demonstrator was killed Wednesday in a separate demonstration.

Israel’s military defends its response to the protests, saying it is necessary to defend its borders from explosive devices, flaming kites, rocks thrown at Israeli forces and attempts to breach the border security fence.

Abdelateef Al Kano, a Hamas spokesman, said Israel is “burning time” and that the uptick in protests is aimed at demonstrating frustration in the Gaza Strip, as prospects dim for a long-term calm with Israel and an easing the blockade.

Talks this summer between Israel and Hamas—with Egypt as an intermediary—aimed at calming tensions that have bubbled up after relative calm since the end of the 2014 war between them haven’t yielded results. The two sides remain at an impasse over a prisoner exchange and other issues.

The Palestinian Authority, which leads Palestinians in the West Bank and is the international community’s only recognized negotiating partner, has refused to engage in a peace process led by the Trump administration, which they say is biased toward Israel and has taken unduly harsh measures against them.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/next-year-in-jerusalem/

Hardly anybody in America cares about the annual Eurovision Song Contest, and that’s just as it should be, given that on the whole, it’s almost as horrible a viewing experience these days as the Oscars or Emmys. But in Europe, Eurovision is as big as ever – almost as big a draw as the Super Bowl in the U.S., if you can imagine a Super Bowl that no straight man would ever be caught dead watching, but that is a magnet for gays, teenage girls, gays, a scattering of the senile and feebleminded who happened to have left their TVs tuned to the wrong channel, and gays.

First held in 1956, Eurovision is broadcast every year from the homeland of the winner of the previous year’s contest. This year, the winner was an Israeli chanteuse named Netta, whose song was not appreciably better or worse than most of its competitors – which is to say that, for anyone with the slightest hint of musical taste, it was sheer dreck. But that’s not what matters. On a continent with precious few cultural institutions to hold it together, or to provide a pretense of unity, Eurovision is, to coin a phrase, a bridge-builder.

For many, alas, Israel, this time around, has proven to be a bridge too far.

Israel has won Eurovision exactly three times before. The first time was in 1978; in 1979, accordingly, the competition was held in Jerusalem. Yes, Jerusalem, the city that European authorities today refuse to acknowledge as a part of Israel. Remarkably, Israel won Eurovision again in 1979, but wasn’t able to serve as host in 1980 because the date conflicted with a national holiday. Israel had to wait until 1998 for its third victory. Its representative that year was an M-to-F transgender artist named Dana International, who sang a tune called “Diva.” In 1999, thanks to him/her, the contest again took place in Jerusalem.

https://www.algemeiner.com/2018/09/16/terror-balloons-from-hamas-

A children’s playground was cordoned off in Kiryat Gat on Friday morning, when police were alerted to a bunch of “terror balloons” launched from Gaza that landed in a residential play area before the start of the school day.

Sappers and security forces successfully removed the balloons, which were fitted with combustible thread that had failed to light. Incendiary balloons have become a common terror tool in Gaza, with cheaply made balloon and kite arson devices having ignited more than 8,000 acres of Israeli land since March.

It was the second incident on Friday alone, with another set of balloons connected to an explosive device being found in the Eshkol Regional Council near Gaza.

Also on Friday, Israel Defense Forces neutralized an explosive device planted next to the security fence border with Gaza, the second such device to have been discovered in the last two days. On Thursday, terrorists attempted to attack a group of IDF soldiers on the Gaza border with a pipe bomb. Troops responded with live fire against three Gazans seen creeping along the security fence.

No injuries or damage were reported in any of the incidents.