Month: February 2016

By Ruth King

Israel’s supporters in America from the top to the lower community organizers and from left to right agree on one subject, namely that Israel needs better hasbara.

Hasbara refers to public relations efforts to disseminate positive information to portray Israel and its policies in a glowing light.

Unfortunately most “hasbara” has the opposite effect. Even Israel’s staunchest protagonists fall into the trap of thinking that listing Israel’s numerous concessions to its enemies will soften or convince hardened anti-Semites.

[I agree with some but not all of these points.[

Trump’s new approach to foreign policy could leave Israel twisting in the wind.

By Alexander Griffing, HAARETZ

Donald Trump declares he “will be very good to Israel.” He declares his “closeness to Judaism”. But it didn’t take long on the campaign trail for his ignorance about Israel and the region, and a superabundance of Jewish caricatures, to slip out.

Here are six reasons why Trump’s foreign policy bombast would be bad for Israel – and the Middle East as a whole.

The Middle East is a blank space on the map for him

DEBKA

Former IDF rigs to probe for Gaza tunnels which Hamas published as an Israeli failure

Israel’s leaders are clinging to lame locutions – “good judgment and responsibility” – to avoid military action for dealing with crisis situations fast coming to a head on three extremely dangerous fronts: armed Palestinian terrorists are now tying up traffic on a major Israeli highway to the Israeli capital; southern Syria is sliding into the control of Hizballah after this Iranian proxy was permitted to amass 100,000 missiles in S. Lebanon; and, this week, Israelis living near the Gaza Strip heard Palestinians building terror tunnels under their homes.

By Dror Eydar, ISRAEL HAYOM

They don’t stop. Even though the entire right-wing conservative camp unequivocally condemned the controversial “foreign agents” Im Tirtzu post last week (which depicted intellectuals and actors as subversive figures), the onslaught against the Right has continued. It is also worth noting that the Left does not lift a finger when its allies engage in much more provocative conduct.

Im Tirtzu CEO Matan Peleg demonstrated leadership by suspending himself, paving the way for some serious introspection by his organization. The movement must now go beyond that and appoint a council of former activists to advise it on a regular basis. Now that the Right has clearly distanced itself from that post, we must look at the big picture. Im Tirtzu, unlike groups on the other side of the spectrum, has never slandered Israel on the world stage, never joined hands with members of the BDS movement, never tried to boycott artists or performers at certain venues, and never silenced anyone.

In historic decision, cabinet votes to build new plaza for mixed gender prayer at Western Wall, adjacent to gender-separated Orthodox plaza • PM Benjamin Netanyahu praises plan as “creative solution” • Ultra-Orthodox officials call plan “lesser of evils.”

Shlomo Cesana, Nitzi Yakov, Yehuda Shlezinger, Yori Yalon, Israel Hayom Staff and Associated Press

A rendering of the new egalitarian prayer space to be established at the Western Wall

The cabinet voted Sunday to allow non-Orthodox Jewish prayer at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, a move advocates said marked a historic show of government support for liberal streams of Judaism.

The issue is of particular importance to the Jewish community in the United States, where the more liberal Reform and Conservative streams of Judaism are dominant.

“I know this is a sensitive topic, but I think it is an appropriate solution, a creative solution,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the start of Sunday’s weekly cabinet meeting, where members voted on the plan.

By Ted Belman

The JTA reported ” It (CIJA) was satisfied that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s omission of Jews in a statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day was not deliberate.”

The  Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) based its case on the fact that, on the same day, the government tweeted “On this #HolocaustMemorialDay, we honor its victims & vow to fight intolerance and anti-Semitism.”

ISSUING SUCH A TWEET IN NO WAY SUGGESTS THAT THE OMISSION OF JEWS FROM THE HOLOCAUST WAS NOT DELIBERATE. IN FACT IT REINFORCES THE CONCLUSION THAT IT WAS DELIBERATE.

I wrote to CIJA the following: