Month: August 2019

by Hugh Fitzgerald, JIHAD WATCH

An editor at the New York Times has recently apologized for having written several anti-Semitic and racist tweets. Tom Wright-Piersanti is a senior staff editor at the Times. In the years 2008-2010, Wright-Piersanti wrote several offensive tweets, which were uncovered  by the website Breitbart.

On New Years’ Day 2010, Wright-Piersanti tweeted, “I was going to say ‘Crappy Jew Year,’ but one of my resolutions is to be less anti-Semitic. So… HAPPY Jew Year. You Jews.”

The previous month, during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, Wright-Piersanti shared a picture of a car with a lit menorah on its roof and wrote, “Who called the Jew-police?”

“I have deleted tweets from a decade ago that are offensive,” Wright-Piersanti tweeted  after the Breitbart article was published. “I am deeply sorry.”

US secretary of state says he has “every confidence” that President Trump, “who moved our embassy and who made clear Israel’s rights in the Golan Heights will do all that is necessary to ensure that our great partner, Israel, will be protected.”

ISRAEL HAYOM

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo | Photo: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated on Thursday that Israel can rely on diplomatic, legal and military assistance from Washington in the event of a war with Iran, however long.

In an interview with syndicated radio host Hugh Hewitt, Pompeo pledged that Israel can rely on the United States for aid if the growing tensions with the Islamic republic escalate into a full-fledged war.

Pompeo stressed that the Trump administration has been “incredibly supportive each time Israel has been forced to take actions to defend itself.”

By Amil Imani, AMERICAN THINKER

By Monica Showalter, AMERICAN THINKER

For Israel to deny entry to advocates of its own dissolution should be as uncontroversial as denying entry to neo-Nazis. And it’s deeply worrying that even Israel’s genuine friends in America evidently think otherwise.

By Evelyn Gordon, JNS.org

When Israel barred two US Congresswomen from entering the country earlier this month, I initially thought it was a stupid decision. But after hearing the reactions from both American politicians and American Jews, I’ve started to think it may have been necessary.

This isn’t to deny the substantial damage it has caused. Pro-Israel Democrats felt betrayed, and even some pro-Israel Republicans were outraged. Most of the organized Jewish community was horrified. And the BDS movement received media exposure it could never have gained on its own.

But nobody would have felt outraged or betrayed had Israel barred, say, white-supremacist politicians. Thus the underlying message of these reactions was that unlike white supremacism, advocating Israel’s destruction is a legitimate opinion, entitled to the same respectful treatment as the view that Israel should continue to exist. Yet no country can or should treat its own erasure as a legitimate option.

By Moshe Phillips, National Director of Herut North America’s U.S. division; Herut is an international movement for Zionist pride and education and is dedicated to the ideals of pre-World War Two Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky.

Netflix’s The Spy is a six-episode series about real-life Israeli Mossad hero Eli Cohen. The Spy stars Sacha Baron Cohen, most famous for his 2006 adult oriented comedy movie Borat, as the legendary Mossad agent. Will Netflix make a joke out of Eli Cohen? We will know when The Spy debuts on September 6.

When Eli Cohen was publicly executed by the government of Syria on May 18, 1965, it was clear to Israelis and Syrians that he had succeeded in becoming a friend of the president of Syria, and had penetrated the innermost Syrian government circles. What was not yet known, however, was that he had gathered the intelligence that would later save the state of Israel from being destroyed.

More than any other one man, Eli Cohen, an Egyptian-born Jew, earned the Mossad its reputation as one of the best intelligence services in the world, and paved the way for Israel to win on the Golan front in the Six-Day War in June 1967.

by Seth Frantzman, The Daily Beast, August 23, 2019

U.S.-backed Kurdish militiamen celebrate their capture of Raqqa from ISIS in October 2017.

Eastern Syria sits at the crossroads of critical policy decisions in Washington. The region is at the center of an escalating crisis in U.S.-Turkey relations, while maintaining America’s presence there blocks Iranian and Russian gains in Syria. It also is key to keeping ISIS defeated. Washington should see eastern Syria as one of the most important strategic pieces of “real estate” to emerge out of the last half-decade of conflict in the Middle East.

The area of northeast Syria where the U.S. today plays a critical role, roughly the size of West Virginia, is now a kind of Gordian Knot. While American adversaries, such as Russia or Iran, have a clear goal in Syria, keeping the Bashar al-Assad regime in power and entrenching their influence, the U.S. policy goal is less clear.

The Palestinians’ claim that they are the rightful inheritors of the land represents one of the most successful, if fiendish, propaganda achievements ever to have been pulled off – to have persuaded millions of people that this ludicrous falsehood is an unchallengeable truth.

By Melanie Phillips, jns

New sanctions hit Lebanese bank subsidizing terror group

Adam Kredo, FREE BEACON – AUGUST 30, 2019 

Hezbollah fighters / Getty Images

The Trump administration on Thursday issued a new batch of sanctions on the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah in the latest salvo aimed at disrupting the Iranian-backed organization’s illicit funding and weapons networks, according to information provided by the State and Treasury Departments.

As Iran continues to ratchet up regional support for terror groups that have attacked American and allied forces, the Trump administration is moving to disrupt these terror groups by hitting them in their pocketbooks. The latest sanctions target Lebanon’s Jammal Trust Bank SAL, which the Trump administration has identified as providing “illicit financial and banking activities” for Hezbollah.

By Joan Swirsky, CFP

“Thou shalt not kill.” Exodus 20:13

”…I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live:”Deuteronomy 30:19

Remember good ole boy Johnny Edwards—actually North Carolina Democrat Senator John Edwards (1998-2012), VP candidate in 2004, and presidential candidate in 2008? Edwards is hard to forget because he burst upon the national stage as the golden-tongued lawyer who was famous for defending the rights of the unborn.

by Tabitha Korol

President Trump has been unarguably the most pro-Jewish, pro-Israel President we’ve ever had, surpassing George Washington, John Adams, Abraham Lincoln and Harry Truman.  His stand against Iran (vociferous enemy of Israel), finally moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, cutting funds to the PA and closing the PLO office in Washington, his donations to Jewish causes, and developing housing for Russian-Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn are just some of the points, but many non-Orthodox American Jews are calling him antisemitic.  It is primarily the Democrat Jews who appear antisemitic when they continue to support their party whose members explicitly express their hatred of Israel and Jews worldwide.  It may be that their desire to distance themselves from their heritage in eastern Europe and Israel has rendered them irrational, and psychological projection has them denying their own impulses as they attribute them to others – specifically to President Trump.      

T. Belman. It pains me to hear this event was put off and the reasons why.  Let them protest.  It will only draw more attention to the problem.

By Hana Levi Julian, JP

A new illegal Arab village being built on July 7, 2019 in a former IDF firing zone located in Area C in Judea, called ‘Al Daraj.’

A threatened demonstration by a coalition of British groups from the international Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel was all it took to intimidate a London NGO into postponing a lecture by the Israeli Regavim NGO that was to focus on European funding for illegal Palestinian Authority activity.

The event was put off ” so that proper security measures can be put into place,” according to the UKLFI Charitable Trust, which organized the event. The decision came after a consortium of BDS activists and anti-Israel groups threatened to hold a day-long a mass demonstration at the event, sparking fears of a “security threat.”