We applaud President Trump for recognizing the ancient truth that Jerusalem is the heart of Zion, the capital of Israel.
Like the Balfour Declaration 100 years ago, the statement made tonight does not grant the Jewish people right to what was always ours–it reaffirms the international understanding of the historic bond between the Nation of Israel and Jerusalem and the natural right of the Jewish people for self determination in our ancestral homeland.
This statement sets the standard for all other nations on earth. It is time to stand up for Jerusalem, for historical truth and for a peaceful future.
The bond between the Nation of Israel and Jerusalem is unbreakable and cannot be changed by any external force.
This is the oldest love story ever documented. All others are fleeting.
From Israel Forever Foundation https://israelforever.org/
Israel threatened several times that it would destroy any Iranian base in Syria.
Today Israel carried out its threat when Israeli war planes destroyed an Iranian base near Damascus. This base was attacked before it was equipped and manned as a public warning over the seriousness of Israeli intentions. At night, while I was at Ginosar on the banks of the Sea of Galilee, we heard the unusual sounds of Israeli planes flying over the Golan Heights in the dark. They were obviously the planes on this mission.
The Palestinian Authority, which supposedly is now the single official government in both the West Bank and Gaza, has tried to allow employees who were forced to stop work in 2007 when Hamas took over the various government institutions to return to their former jobs. The employees remained on the PA payroll for the past ten years, paid literally to do nothing, with western aid dollars. Hamas, however, has maintained its own security forces - and it physically prevented the PA employees from going back to their old jobs. During this supposed reconciliation, the official PA news agency has tried to avoid criticizing Hamas. But that criticism has resumed:
The government of National Consensus Wednesday expressed regret that [forces] affiliated to Hamas prevented minister of local government Hussein Al-Araj and public employees from resuming work in their former posts in Gaza’s ministries. PA spokesperson Yousef al-Mahmoud said the government of National Consensus is deeply saddened by this serious step, which contradicts with all conventions and treaties, the last of which was reached last October, which threatens the success of reconciliation efforts.
Abbas and other PA officials have said that they want Hamas to be disarmed, but Hamas deputy leader Khalil al-Hayya responded "The weapon of resistance is a red line that can not be discussed. This weapon will move to the West Bank to fight the occupation. It is our right to resist the occupation until it ends."
Hamas also said that it will give up control on "everything that is above ground" (besides the Al Qassam Brigades), indicating that Hamas continues to treat building tunnels into Israel as a high priority.
For a very long time there had been a feeling of bitterness throughout the forces on account of the many acts of the natives and the manner in which they were protected against the troops. Claims for damage, alleged to have been done by our men were always supported and the men had to pay up.
This began as far back as Sinai where regiments were made to pay for damage alleged to have been done to the date palms there. Later in Palestine our troops suffered very much from the thieving propensities of the Arab.
Here again if any damage were done to crops or stock of a native the claim was upheld, but no redress was ever obtained against a native for theft. At Rafa some natives attacked two of our men severely wounding one and killing the other and also stealing his horse. Subsequently the dead on the Rafa battle-field were dug up and stripped. This happened again after the action at Ayun Kara which took place close by Surafend and there is not the slightest doubt that these villagers were responsible.
All troops round Surafend had been suffering from the depredations of the Arabs and could get no redress. Many times our men suffered by being fired upon by the native inhabitants and it must be remembered also that the murder of this New Zealander was not the first that had been committed by the Arabs in this district. An Australian had been shot here only a short time before.
The regiment considered what to do about the Arabs who were stealing from them, killing some and robbing graves.
In the end, they burned the village to the ground and 30 Arabs were killed or injured. The book refers to this as a "disturbance."
[A]t the inquiry it was found impossible to get any evidence as to who took part in the disturbance. But such evidence as was obtained showed that parties from units outside the Division took part in the disturbance which was probably organised in the murdered man's unit. The evidence showed clearly that many small parties came over from Ramleh, Ludd and G.H.Q. at Bir Salim.
It appears that the murdered man's comrades feeling aggrieved that the murderer was not immediately brought to book went to the village and demanded his surrender. They were met by an insolent answer from the head man of the village so they determined to find him and the searching of the houses led to a collision with the natives which resulted in a riot.
There is only slight embarrassment in the book about this incident.
As a result of this disturbance the Commander-in-Chief did not forward names of officers or men of Anzac Units which were camped at Surafend at the time and who had been recommended by the Divisional Commander for inclusion in the Peace Despatch; but subsequently he relented out of consideration for the good work of the Division and forwarded most of the names in a supplementary despatch.
This is the sort of historical event that no one wants to remember. It shows that the Arabs were murderers and thieves, and that the New Zealand army took matters into their own hands to destroy the entire Arab community in retaliation.
The former wouldn't be reported today because it sounds like anti-Arab racism. The latter makes it sound like enlightened armies engaged in routine gross violations of human rights.
And who wants to talk about that unless the army is Jewish?
A woman named Jenny Listman wrote a blog post accusing recently deceased Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel of touching her inappropriately at a public event 28 years ago, when she was 19.
Today when the subject of sexual harassment of women is “trending,” it created a furor, raising multiple issues: was her accusation true, and if so was it appropriate for her to make it public after Wiesel’s death when he could not respond? Was it ethical for her to air an accusation for which there could be no evidence except her own word? If true, did the allegation diminish Wiesel’s moral authority? The Jewish Daily Forward published a story about Listman’s accusation. Almost immediately it was met with a firestorm of criticism and withdrawn, with an apology that it did not meet their “journalistic standards.” (My immediate reaction: the folks that published the cartoons of Eli Valley for years have standards?) But they made the legitimate point that they could not verify her story. My own feeling is that her account rings true. And after consideration, I think she was not wrong in making it public. 28 years after the incident, the only evidence that exists is Listman’s testimony. There is no way to corroborate or falsify her account today. But there is also no moral requirement that Listman must have other evidence besides her memories before she tells her story. Her experience, if she is telling the truth, is something that she knows firsthand. Her position is different from that of a journalist, who is obliged to verify the accounts of external sources. So the Forward’s withdrawal of the article does not imply that she should not have published it herself – and certainly does not imply, as some social media commentators have said, that she lied or was otherwise culpable. Many have also said that she had no right to make the accusation after Wiesel was dead and not able to defend himself. But suppose he were alive and denied it. How would his denial change anything? It would still be “she said, he said.” It is considered dishonorable to bring a charge after its target is dead, but in this case it has no practical significance. Who knows, maybe he would have admitted it and apologized. The reason the case has created so much controversy, of course, is that it was Elie Wiesel and not a random construction worker that allegedly placed his hand on her right buttock and squeezed. It was Nobel laureate Wiesel, the LA Times’ “most important Jew in America,” a man who had survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald and, by his books and other activities arguably did more to bring the Holocaust into public consciousness than any other individual. He made it personal: six million is a number, but Elie Wiesel was a boy whose family was murdered almost in front of his eyes. Some say that by accusing Wiesel of behavior that is morally reprehensible, Listman has cast doubt on everything that he has said and done. His legacy will forever be that of a sexual harasser rather than a moral exemplar. I doubt this. Wiesel was a human being, like Washington, Jefferson, JFK and others who have been criticized on moral grounds. He was also a celebrity, with all the distortion of one’s own importance that comes with that. Wiesel was a man of a different time (even if by 1989 he should have known better). None of this excuses his alleged behavior, but that behavior is irrelevant to power of his testimony and his accomplishments. Listman’s supporters argue that abuse of women is so common as to be invisible, they have had enough, and the way to stop it is to expose it, even if – especially if – the perpetrator is powerful or a celebrity. This strikes me as not unreasonable, as long as key distinctions – like the ones between verbal and physical harassment, and between butt pats and rape or murder are not blurred. Not everything is “violence,” and some harassment is worse than others. I think she would agree with me on this. Personally, I wasn’t a big fan of Wiesel. What he suffered and what he witnessed were real, and especially in his memoir, Night, he raised awareness of the true monstrousness of the Holocaust, the degree of evil inherent in its perpetrators. Later, he opposed the trend in some eastern European countries of whitewashing their own cooperation with the Nazis. He supported oppressed peoples, but he had no illusions about which side was right in the conflicts surrounding Israel, and spoke out in her favor. He did humanity a great service, and he justly received the Nobel Prize and countless other honors. But being a celebrity can have deleterious effects on a person, as has been demonstrated countless times by famous musicians, actors, writers and politicians. All the adulation, the admirers surrounding him and telling him over and over how great he is, make the celebrity think that possibly he really is above the rest, and that what is forbidden to ordinary people is permitted to him. Elie Wiesel was a celebrity, and he loved it. He loved being invited to the White House, being knighted by the Queen, and visiting Buchenwald with Barack Obama and Angela Merkel. He loved it too much, and in his excessive self-regard, he allowed himself to be used. Honoring Wiesel was a way of washing the blood off of the hands of the international community that had either killed Jews or closed its eyes during the Holocaust. And it was a way for those like Barack Obama and European leaders to distract attention from their present-day anti-Jewish policies. Wiesel kept the Holocaust in everyone’s consciousness, which was a good thing and a bad thing. It was good because, at least for a time, it made Jew-hatred unpopular. It was bad because it provided a safe way for those who opposed the Jewish people’s right of self-determination to nevertheless feel good about themselves; and in a phrase that has recently caught on, to virtue-signal. Left-wing Americans who support organizations like J Street that are in practice anti-Israel, or even those that favor BDS, a program that explicitly calls for the end of the Jewish state, can get teary-eyed contemplating the dead Jews of 70 years ago, while favoring Palestinians over the living ones of today. I found the social media response particularly interesting. The emotional content of posts by Listman’s supporters, most of them women who had experienced some form of harassment themselves, was strong. But the negative ones (by both men and women) were even more vehement. On Facebook, she was called a liar, a fraud, a “crackpot” and a “mental case,” accused of cynically seeking publicity for herself by attacking a great man, and worse. Some of the strongest reactions against Ms Listman come from Jews whose primary connection with the Jewish people seems to be the Holocaust. They are neither observant Jews nor politically active Zionists (discussing this phenomenon, Arthur Hertzberg once said that their knowledge of Judaism is in inverse proportion to their degree of Holocaust-obsession). Their Jewishness seems to be expressed primarily by studying about and commemorating the Holocaust, through literature, movies and various memorials and events. Their prophet was Elie Wiesel, and criticism of him cuts to the heart of their belief systems. At the end of the day, I think that this controversy is unimportant. Elie Wiesel the celebrity may have acted badly, as celebrities do when their celebrity goes to their head, which I think is what happened. His accomplishments aren’t diminished by his mistakes, which were less significant. I also believe that Jenny Listman did the right thing by making her story, which I believe, public. The continual barrage of harassment which women face day in and day out is real, and the announcement that they are “mad as hell and not going to take it anymore” is legitimate and should be honored – even by the famous or powerful.
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, Born 21 October 1949 in Tel Aviv, Israel (formerly Mandate of Palestine) EHUD BARAK, Born 12 February 1942 in Mishmar HaSharon, British Mandate of Palestine ARIEL SHARON, Born 26 February 1928 in Kfar Malal, British Mandate of Palestine EHUD OLMERT, Born 30 September 1945 in Binyamina-Giv’at Ada, British Mandate of Palestine ITZHAK RABIN, Born 1 March 1922 in Jerusalem, British Mandate of Palestine ITZHAK NAVON, Israeli President in 1977-1982. Born 9 April 1921 in Jerusalem, British Mandate of Palestine EZER WEIZMAN, Israeli President in 1993-2000. Born 15 June 1924 in Tel Aviv, British Mandate of Palestine
ARAB “PALESTINIAN” LEADERS:
YASSER ARAFAT, Born 24 August 1929 in Cairo, Egypt SAEB EREKAT, Born April 28, 1955, in Jordan. He has Jordanian citizenship FAISAL ABDEL QADER AL-HUSSEINI, Born in 1948 in Bagdad, Iraq SARI NUSSEIBEH, Born in 1949 in Damascus, Syria MAHMOUD AL-ZAHAR, Born in 1945, in Cairo, Egypt
So, Israeli leaders, who were born in Palestine, are called “Settlers” or ”Occupiers”, while Palestinian Arab leaders who were born in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Tunisia are called “Native Palestinians”!
Israeli Settlements and International Law Attempts to present Jewish settlement in West Bank territory (ancient Judea and Samaria) as illegal and "colonial" in nature ignores the complexity of this issue, the history of the land, and the unique legal circumstances of this case. Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs
This report takes on the issue of "Occupation" and Israeli sovereignty over Yehudah and Shomron (the West Bank head on, addressing the issues of International Law.
Below is the text of the actual Levy Report in Hebrew, followed by a link to an English translation of the actual legal arguments of the Levy Report (from Elder of Ziyon) and after that a translation of the conclusions and recommendations of the Report in English.
Since the Levy Report was released, there has been a lot of heat but little light about its legal reasonings, which were in Hebrew. The only part that was released in English were its conclusions and recommendations.
Here, for the first time, is an English translation of its legal arguments. Those who try to downplay the report must find reasons why these arguments are invalid, rather than the proof by assertion that they usually resort to.
International lawyers Howard Grief and Jacques Gauthier, along with former Israeli Ambassador to the UN Dore Gold review the history of the international legal precedents that demonstrate the legitimacy of the State of Israel in full accordance with International Law
San Remo's Mandate: Israel's 'Magna Carta' The 1920 San Remo resolution answered a fundamental issue that still plagues the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks today: whether Israel has a right to the land.
See here for further clarification on the importance of San Remo and "The Mandate For Palestine"
Diplomatic and Legal Aspects of the Settlement Issue Settlements are not illegal, and have neither the size, population, nor placement to deserve the attention they receive By Jeffrey Helmreich Jerusalem Center For Public Affairs, January 19, 2003
Inappropriate Use of the Fourth Geneva Convention Did Israel really use "deportation" and "forced transfer" of its own population into "occupied territories"? By Eli. E. Hertz Myths and Facts, February 3, 2010
World Leaders Ignore International Law Rewriting history by using loaded language such as 'Occupied Territories,' the Settlements as an 'Obstacle to Peace' and 'Not Legitimate' Eli. E. Hertz Myths and Facts, September 21, 2009
Haaretz published an article by Eyal Sagui Bizawe with the title "Were Egypt's Jews really expelled?" The article itself made it clear that many Egyptian Jews in fact were expelled from Egypt; the author is arguing that it would not be accurate to say that all Egyptian Jews were expelled. (Haaretz has since changed the headline dramatically, to "Jews Were Expelled From Egypt. But Can We Talk About 'The Expulsion of The Jews?'"
Later, Haaretz published a rebuttal by Israel Bonan that pretty much destroys Bizawe's thesis. Bizawe himself admits he is not a historian.
But, as UN Watch notes, the original article title questioning whether Egypt's Jews were expelled in its headline was "liked" by the Amnesty UN account.
Now, Amnesty is no fan of Egypt. It regularly tweets and writes reports that are anti-Egypt.
And the Egyptian Jews who were forced to leave Egypt (there are only a handful of old women left out of 80,000 in 1948) were not generally Zionists.
So why would Amnesty "like" an article that calls into question the Jewish narrative of what happened to the now disappeared Jewish community of Egypt?
Amnesty never, ever questions the narrative of persecuted groups or minorities. It always goes after the big, evil governments. Its entire goal is to protect the rights of the persecuted, not the persecutors.
Except for this one, singular, time. When the persecuted minority are Jews.
Amnesty's tweet reveals its true nature of antisemitism. The idea that Jews are lying about their history of being persecuted by Arabs is too delicious for the famed NGO to let go. The community that was destroyed is populated by criminal liars, and the ethnic cleansers are the innocent victims of Jewish slander.
Amnesty UN has since "unliked" the tweet. But that is because of fear of embarrassment, not because of any moral problems with the tweet. The baseline thinking of the Amnesty tweeter, which is utterly consistent with everything else we've seen from that organization, is a dislike for Jews, usually demonstrated by its focus on Israel beyond nearly every country with serious human right abuses.
Twitter is great because it reveals the subconscious thinking of the tweeter. In this case, it showed in no uncertain terms that Amnesty considers Jews to be, by default, liars whose persecutions have been exaggerated or invented.
In it, travel writer Soo Kim lists her reasons why Israel should be the destination of choice for those wanting to holiday on the Mediterranean.
A holiday on the Med usually means Spain, France, Italy, Greece, or – if you’ve grown tired of the above – Croatia, Morocco or Montenegro. But head east – all the way east – and there’s an option that doesn’t often come to mind: Israel. Here we highlight 10 reasons to swap ordinary for underrated.
Her reasons include some of the usual you hear (such as our beaches, nightlife, food and history), but also some other less cited reasons (such as the fact we have more museums per capita than anywhere else in the world).
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has crossed the Rubicon and voiced "unprecedented" readiness to reach a peace deal with Israel, sources close to the efforts to renew talks between Israel and the Palestinians have told The Jerusalem Post. Abbas, according to the sources, made this clear to President Donald Trump during their meeting at the
White House last week.
The president plans to use his trip to Israel later this month to receive assurances from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he, too, is committed to a peace agreement.Since his meeting with Trump last week, Abbas has changed his rhetoric, issuing a number of statements meant to reflect flexibility on previous demands. He has, for example, said that he would renew the talks under Trump's auspices without preconditions.
In the past, he had said he would not negotiate with Netanyahu without a freeze to settlement construction. FULL REPORT
Liberalism, youth and cultural embrace of both failure and debate are all part of the Tel Aviv’s creative DNA. We are reminded that tech entrepreneurs see the world differently, finding problems that others fail to notice. And we explore the exciting scene developing amongst their neighbours in young and liberal Ramallah – despite the many hurdles standing in their way. FUTURE CITIES | SERIES 2 - HOLY LAND:
The second season of WIRED’s Future Cities series takes us inside one of the world’s biggest startup nations. With the most tech startups and venture capital per capita in the world, Israel has long been hailed as The Startup Nation. WIRED’s four-part series will look beyond Tel Aviv’s vibrant, liberal tech epicentre to the wider Holy Land region – the Palestinian territories, where a parallel Startup Nation story is emerging in East Jerusalem, Ramallah and the West Bank, as well as in the Israeli cybersecurity hub of Beersheba. And we will learn how the fertile innovation ecosystem of Silicon Wadi has evolved as a result of its unique political, geographical and cultural situation and explore the future challenges – and solutions – these nations are facing.
