Displaying posts categorized under

ISRAEL

Europe’s “Good Terrorists”: Because They Might Destroy Israel? by Khaled Abu Toameh

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri would like the Europeans to understand that they need not worry about terrorism by the Islamist movement because the attacks will be directed only against Israel.

The European Court of Justice (EJC) is sending the message to Hamas that Europeans see no problem with Hamas’s desire to destroy Israel and continue to launch terrorist attacks against Jews. This message also undermines those Palestinians who still believe in a peace with Israel.

The EJC recommendation to remove Hamas from the EU’s terrorism blacklist comes at a time when countries such as Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and even Saudi Arabia, as well as the Palestinian Authority, are doing their utmost to weaken Hamas.

Appeasing terrorists is a dangerous game: it has already backfired on its foolhardy players and will continue to do so. This is exactly how Muslims conquered Iran, Turkey, North Africa and much of Europe, including Hungary, Greece, Poland, Romania, and the Balkans — countries that still recall a real “occupation,” an Islamist one, and abundantly want none of it.

The EU and the ECJ need to be stopped before they do any more harm to Palestinians, Christians and Jews — or to Europe.

Once again, the Europeans seem to be in Alice’s Wonderland when they consider Palestinian affairs in particular and the Middle East in general. The renewed attempt by the European Union to remove the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas from its terrorism list is a case in point.

Recently, an advisor to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) recommended that Hamas be removed from the EU’s terrorism blacklist. In 2014, the EU’s second-highest court ruled that Hamas should be taken off the list on “technical” grounds. It argued that Hamas’s listing was not based on evidence, but on “factual imputations derived from the press and the internet.”

However, the European Council then appealed this judgement, arguing that Hamas should remain on the terrorism blacklist, citing a 2001 decision by the UK and the US that designated both Hamas and the Tamil Tigers as terrorist groups. But the recent opinion by the ECJ advisor dismisses this argument. “The council cannot rely on facts and evidence found in press articles and information from the internet,” Advocate General Eleanor Sharpton said. She explained that the council could not rely on terrorist listings by countries (the UK and US) outside the EU.

This latest highly dangerous European attempt to strike Hamas from the terrorism blacklist will, as the EU knows perfectly well, only serve further to embolden the Islamist movement to replace Israel with an Islamic empire.

Israel Defends Planned West Bank Construction The statement comes after the U.S. strongly criticized Israel’s approval of the new housing in Shilo By Rory Jones

TEL AVIV—Israel on Wednesday defended plans to build 98 new housing units in the occupied West Bank, after the U.S. issued an unusually harsh rebuke of the proposed construction.

Israel’s government intends to use the new units to rehouse Jewish Israelis from a West Bank settlement the country’s high court has deemed illegal and ordered evacuated, Israel’s foreign ministry said in a statement. The new housing will be built within the existing settlement of Shilo in the northern West Bank and won’t constitute a new settlement, it said.

“Israel remains committed to a solution of two states for two peoples, in which a demilitarized Palestinian state recognizes the Jewish state of Israel,” the statement added.

The announcement of the new units comes amid increasing U.S. frustration with Israel’s expanding settlement enterprise and after the White House agreed to a major military aid package for its Middle East ally.

The Obama administration last month said it would provide Israel with $3.8 billion a year in military aid over a decade, a 23% increase over current levels.

The State Department on Wednesday said it was “deeply troubling” that Israel had decided to jeopardize its security by continuing to build settlements and making a two-state solution for peace between Israelis and Palestinians a dim prospect.

Israel’s high court in 2014 ordered that Amona, an illegal settlement outpost that is home to some 40 families, should be evacuated as it was built on Palestinian land.

The Israeli government has been discussing how to rehouse those settlers, finalizing a plan to move them to Shilo, according to Wednesday’s statement from the foreign ministry.

The new units were first highlighted by monitoring group Peace Now on Saturday, a day after President Barack Obama flew to Jerusalem to attend the funeral of Shimon Peres , the towering Israeli statesman who helped craft the vision of a two-state solution. CONTINUE AT SITE

Palestinian Murderers and their Western Enablers by Guy Millière

The Palestinian Authority not only celebrates murderers: it produces new ones every day — and does so knowlingly and voluntarily. For this it uses textbooks, television and radio programs, and articles in newspapers, all paid for with money from Western governments.

The Palestinian Authority also financially rewards the murderers’ families and the murderers themselves. These financial rewards are also paid for with money from Western governments.

How can Western politicians explain that they condemn the murders and still fund the incitement to kill? How come they keep giving money that rewards murdering Jews “by all available means”?

How can they define as “moderate” an organization such as the Palestinian Authority that admits sending terrorists to kill Israelis and that teaches children, on its Facebook page, how to stab Jews to death? And how can they consider it urgent to give such an organization its own State?

Israeli Jews know they can only rely on themselves. They know that others, such as France, are holding knives that are sharpened.

The sport of murdering Jews does not stop. On June 30, at dawn, in Kiryat Arba, a young Arab broke through a window, and stabbed a 13-year-old American-Israeli girl, Hallel Yaffa Ariel, to death.

The young Arab who stabbed Hallel Yaffa Ariel was shot dead just after the assault. His mother said she was proud of her son. The Palestinian Authority (PA) said he was a hero and a “martyr.”

This year alone, 24 Israeli Jews were murdered, many gruesomely. Every time one of the murderers was shot, his family declared how proud they were, and the Palestinian Authority celebrated him. New murderers are preparing new attacks.

What sort of society is it where parents say they how proud they are that their children are murderers? And what sort of leadership is it that celebrates killers?

Further, what sort of Western journalists and “human rights” groups are those that fail to voice their outrage at the murder of a sleeping 13-year-old girl?

These journalists and human rights groups voice their outrage at people killed in European soccer stadiums, musical theaters and editorial rooms, but never, it seems, for Israeli Jews killed over so many years.

Why also is it that they never speak of the moral depravity of the Palestinian Authority?

MY SAY: PSALM 91 FOR THE JEWISH NEW YEAR 5777

There is so much parlous news in the world : Israel is threatened by genocide and Jihad and unrelenting enemies and the Jewish people, even those of us who dwell in the most benign democracies, now confront mounting anti-Semitism and libel and slander in the media and the academies.

We have survived and the words of King David have been and remain an inspiration.

Psalm 91- 5 and 6

5 Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day;
6 Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.

Amen!

Shana Tova and sincere wishes for a Happy New Year…and as we always abbreviated in the Bronx “A happy and a healthy!!!” rsk

RICHARD BAEHR: OBAMA’S PARTING GIFT TO ISRAEL

U.S. President Barack Obama, former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State John ‎Kerry all flew off to Israel and attended the funeral of Shimon Peres, the ‎last remaining ‎political figure from modern Israel’s founding generation. ‎Former Secretary ‏of State Hillary Clinton‎, ‎the current Democratic Party nominee for president‎, had at one point been listed to attend‎, ‎but did not make the trip‎.‎

The United States is fewer than six weeks away from the conclusion of what is now ‎a ‎tight presidential contest. The race conceivably could soon lean more toward ‎Clinton ‎after the widely watched first debate last Monday night (84 million viewers) ‎between Clinton ‎and Republican nominee Donald Trump, which most pundits ‎suggested she won, a ‎conclusion supported by results from the first polls released after the debate.

However, it has ‎been an unusual and surprising election contest, and there are no ‎guarantees that the ‎broader voting public saw things the same way their ‎media superiors expected it to see them. ‎

The high-level attendance at the funeral by Obama and Bill Clinton will ‎certainly be a plus for Hillary Clinton’s prospects to win a large share of ‎the Jewish vote in ‎closely contested states such as Florida and Pennsylvania. Obama ‎won ‎about seven of every 10 Jewish votes in 2012, down from about eight in 10 in 2008. ‎Bill ‎Clinton scored even higher than this in his two runs for the White House, in 1992 ‎and ‎‎1996, so Hillary Clinton can only benefit from association with presidents with far ‎more ‎popular support than she has demonstrated so far. Both Obama and Bill Clinton issued ‎statements full ‎of praise for Peres’ long career and also his commitment both to ‎keep Israel strong but ‎also to seek peace.‎

Obama’s tribute may be a harbinger of something more to come, ‎presumably in the nine ‎weeks he has left in the White House after the Nov. 8 vote has been ‎cast. ‎The president has just concluded an agreement with ‎Israel for a 10-year military aid bill. ‎The most contentious part of that agreement ‎was Israel’s acceptance that if Congress ‎votes for more assistance in the first ‎two years of the agreement than the agreed $3.8 billion ‎annual amount, it ‎would have to return the excess to the United States. There are ‎constitutional separation-of-‎powers issues that arise from the agreement, and already Trump has said ‎he does not consider himself bound by the limits, a view also ‎taken by a large ‎number of members in Congress.

In any case, with this settled, Obama ‎may feel free ‎to try his hand at some legacy-building on the Israeli-Palestinian track, an ‎area in ‎which his record of failure follows a long pattern of presidents who thought ‎they ‎had the magic elixir to achieve the two-state solution.‎

Shimon Peres: Great Achievements, But an Appeaser, Not a Peacemaker By P. David Hornik *****

Shimon Peres was laid to rest on Friday in Jerusalem. In a long career dating to the 1950s, he served as Israel’s prime minister, defense minister, foreign minister, finance minister, and president, among other posts.

Peres, who died on Wednesday at 93, was born in Wiszniew, Poland in 1923, and in 1934 immigrated with his family to join the pre-state Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine.

Peres’s funeral was attended by dignitaries from all over the world, including President Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Britain’s Prince Charles, French president Francois Hollande, and many others. President Obama ordered U.S. flags to be flown at half-mast on Thursday.

The only other foreign leaders given that honor in the U.S. have been Nelson Mandela, Pope John Paul II, King Hussein of Jordan, Yitzhak Rabin, and Anwar Sadat.

Peres was a major Israeli figure with key achievements to his name. But in world leaders’ eulogies for Peres, those achievements went unmentioned.

For example, his achievements included:

— In the 1950s, forging a crucial arms deal with France, and persuading France to help Israel establish its alleged nuclear-weapons facility in the Negev desert.

— Helping to found Israel’s military industries.

— As defense minister in 1976, pushing for the Israeli commando raid in Entebbe, Uganda that freed scores of hostages after an airline hijacking.

But words like “weapons,” “military,” or “security” were entirely absent from the eulogies.

In their stead, we heard words like “peace,” “dream,” and “imagine.”

For example, here’s UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon:

Even in the most difficult hours, Mr. Peres remained an optimist about the prospects for reconciliation and peace.

Bill Clinton alluded to a John Lennon song:

Shimon could imagine all the people living in the world in peace. In his honor I ask that we remember his luminous smile and imagine.

Hillary Clinton:

When [Peres] spoke, it could be like listening to a psalm, and I loved sitting and listening to him, whether it was about Israel, the nation he loved and did so much to defend, or about peace or just about life itself.

President Obama:

Shimon never saw his dream of peace fulfilled. The region is going through a chaotic time. Threats are ever-present. And yet he did not stop dreaming and working.

Peres’s status as the dreamer and man of peace, of course, developed later in his career, in connection with his role in what was called the “Oslo process” between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.

White House crosses out ‘Israel’ on its press release following the Peres funeral By Thomas Lifson

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/10/white_house_crosses_out_israel_on_its_press_release_following_the_peres_funeral.html

It was a moment rich with symbolism when, following the funeral of Israel’s Shimon Peres, the White House Press Office issued a correction to its press release, scratching out the State of Israel:

Faced with then embarrassment of carrying out the mullahs’ goal of erasing Israel from the map, at least verbally, the rationalization would warm the cockles of any bureaucrat’s heart. Via McClatchy:

U.S. policy has long refrained from recognizing any nation’s sovereignty over Jerusalem. Both Israelis and Palestinians claim Jerusalem as their capital, with Israel declaring in 1980 the city was its undivided capital. A 2015 Supreme Court decision reaffirmed U.S. practice that forbids Americans born in Jerusalem to list Israel as their country of birth on passports.

This is entirely off the point. U.S. policy on issuing post-funeral press releases is whatever Obama wants it to be. It does not “recognize a nation’s sovereignty” to issue a press release. What happened is that only after it was released did someone notice and squawk about it. A hurried discussion ensued, and they crossed out Israel because they wanted whoever squawked to be happy.

And that’s the point. This is inconsequential in real-world terms but perfectly symbolic of the Obama administration’s real intentions toward Israel.

I can just picture Donald Trump regaling an audience, asking them:

“Do you know what the Obama administration did after Shimon Peres’s funeral?”

(pause)

“They actually crossed out… (louder) CROSSED OUT… Israel on the press release they gave out.

(pause for crowd reaction)

“Crossed out Israel.

“And they called it their longstanding policy.

“Well let me tell you…I’ll tell you President Trump will never cross out Israel. Never.”

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL : MICHAEL ORDMAN

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

The gene that protects against ALS. Researchers from Ben-Gurion University have discovered the gene MIF that stops the protein superoxide dismutase (SOD1) from misfolding and then killing motor neurons, leading to ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) or Lou Gehrig’s disease.
https://aabgu.org/gene-modulation-for-als-treatment/

Lupus treatment works in lower doses. (TY Atid-EDI) I reported previously (Mar 2014) about hCDR1 from Israeli biotech XTL for treating Lupus (Systemic Lupus Erythematosus – SLE). Trials have found many cases where low dosages of hCDR1 are more effective than high ones. XTL have filed new US and European patents.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/xtl-biopharmaceuticals-announces-new-patent-filing-in-us-for-lupus-drug-hcdr1-589846971.html http://lupusnewstoday.com/2016/09/08/xtl-biopharmaceuticals-granted-european-union-patent-for-lupus-drug-hcdr1

Successful trials of Tennis Elbow treatment. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Collplant has reported positive results of trials of its Vergenix STR treatment for inflammation of the elbow tendon – commonly referred to as tennis elbow. Most of the 40 patients reported less pain and disability – far better than those just on steroids.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/collplant-reports-positive-final-extended-clinical-trial-results-with-vergenixstr-for-treatment-of-tendinopathy-590460101.html http://www.collplant.com/

Keeping a watch on Huntington’s disease. Israel’s Teva is to work with Intel Corp. to develop a wearable device combined with a machine learning platform to try and improve treatment for Huntington’s disease. A smartwatch and smartphone will continuously measure the severity of the motoric symptoms.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/teva-intel-join-forces-to-monitor-huntington-disease/

Predicting heart attacks and strokes. (TY Atid-EDI) I reported previously on Israel’s Zebra Medical Vision which can identify patients at early risk of osteoporosis, cardiac disease, liver disease etc. Zebra has just announced its development of two new software algorithms that predict cardiovascular events.
http://www.auntminnie.com/index.aspx?sec=ser&sub=def&pag=dis&ItemID=114881
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSJYnetYBpU https://www.zebra-med.com/

A liquid biopsy for cancer. (TY Karen) An interview on ILTV Daily with Dr Alan Schwebel, President and CEO of Israel’s BioView, which I reported on previously (see here). Dr Schwebel describes Bioview’s scanning system for early detection of cancer cells and identification of the most appropriate treatment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lzo9mhJlOw

App connects cancer sufferers. Mobile app “Belong” was developed by Israeli entrepreneurs who had lost family members to cancer. The app (iOS or Android) allows patients to share vital information whilst reducing feelings of loneliness and anxiety. It also provides tips, questions for doctors, and info on medical procedures.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/belong-aims-to-help-patients-navigate-cancers-twists-and-turns/

Europe’s New Media Darlings: Terrorists by Giulio Meotti

It is such a shame and an irony that terrorists who have killed and ordered the killing of unarmed and innocent Jews, are now being celebrated as Europe’s apostles of peace.

Can you imagine Italian or French mayors and members of Parliament naming a street after Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, who murdered at least 84 people in Nice on July 14? Or honoring the brothers Salah and Brahim Abdesalem for their attack at the Bataclan Theater in Paris on November 13, 2015, in which 89 people were murdered?

What would have happened if the city council of Jerusalem had conferred the honorary citizenship on Italy’s Mafia leader, Totò Riina, calling him a “political prisoner”? What would have happened if the city council of Tel Aviv had named a street after Giovanni Brusca, the Mafia butcher who kidnapped and tortured the 11-year-old son of another mafioso who had betrayed him, and then dissolved the boy’s body in acid? The Italian government would have vehemently protested. With Palestinian terrorists, however, there is another standard, as if in the eyes of many of Italy’s city councils, terror against Israeli Jews is actually justified.

In the pro-Palestinian credentials of the mayor of Naples, Luigi de Magistris, the only item missing was giving honorary citizenship to a Palestinian terrorist. Bilal Kayed is anything but a “man of peace.” He is a dangerous Palestinian terrorist who spent 14 years in Israeli prisons for two shooting attacks, and for planning and attempting the (unsuccessful) kidnapping of a soldier. Kayed is now a new honorary citizen of Naples.

“[It is] a decision that harms the image of Naples”, protested the newly elected president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, Noemi Di Segni. Meanwhile, Naples city council has refused to grant honorary citizenship to the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem.

It is not the first time that Mayor De Magistris embraces anti-Israel militancy. The city of Naples provided a municipal room to show a documentary called, “Israel, The Cancer,” which shamefully compares Israeli soldiers to Nazis. Israel’s Ambassador to Italy, Naor Gilon, protested against the screening and noted that “the film’s title, ‘Israel, The Cancer’, is reminiscent of dark eras in the Italian and European history, in which Jews were defined as a disease.”

De Magistris also received reciprocal “Palestinian citizenship” from the hands of the Palestinian Authority (PA), and the mayor of Naples returned the favor by granting honorary citizenship to PA President Mahmoud Abbas. De Magistris also gave his support to the “Freedom Flotilla,” a convoy of ships that tried to bring weapons to the Hamas regime in Gaza. Eleonora De Majo, a candidate on De Magistris’ political list, also called the Israelis “pigs.”

Obama at Peres Funeral: Zionism ‘Best Protected’ When Palestinians Have ‘State of Their Own’ By Bridget Johnson

President Obama pressed for a Mideast peace plan today in his address at the Jerusalem funeral of former Israeli President Shimon Peres, saying that because of his “understanding of Israel’s meaning, he believed that the Zionist idea would be best protected when Palestinians, too, had a state of their own.”

The White House guidance for Obama’s visit listed the president’s stops in “Tel Aviv, Israel,” but did not say “Israel” after “Jerusalem.”

Wearing a black yarmulke, Obama joined Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former President Clinton at the Mount Herzl cemetery.

“For a younger generation, Shimon was probably remembered more for a peace process that never reached its endpoint. They would listen to critics on the left who might argue that Shimon did not fully acknowledge the failings of his nation, or perhaps more numerous critics on the right who argued that he refused to see the true wickedness of the world, and called him naive,” Obama said.

“…He understood, in this war-torn region, where too often Arab youth are taught to hate Israel from an early age — he understood just how hard peace would be. I’m sure he was alternatively angry and bemused to hear the same critics, who called him hopelessly naive, depend on the defense architecture that he himself had helped to build,” he added.

Obama stressed that “out of the hardships of the diaspora, he found room in his heart for others who suffered.”

“He came to hate prejudice with the passion of one who knows how it feels to be its target. Even in the face of terrorist attacks, even after repeated disappointments at the negotiation table, he insisted that as human beings, Palestinians must be seen as equal in dignity to Jews, and must therefore be equal in self-determination,” the president continued.

“…Of course, we gather here in the knowledge that Shimon never saw his dream of peace fulfilled. The region is going through a chaotic time. Threats are ever present. And yet, he did not stop dreaming, and he did not stop working… because our founders planted not just flags in the eternal soil, but also planted the seeds of democracy, we have the ability to always pursue a better world. We have the capacity to do what is right.”