Our Strategic Balagan  

By Vic Rosenthal

Balagan: chaos, total disorder, huge mess. Borrowed from Russian.

The incendiary and explosive balloons continue to be sent across our southern border, and the Hamas special “night unit” continues to burn tires and throw explosives over the fence, as well as to cross over into Israel, attack soldiers, and try to get at civilians. We continue to “respond” by bombing or shelling empty installations.

We are careful not to kill them, because we are told that if we kill them, their honor will require that they kill us in return; this will lead to an escalation. They want that, we are told, because there is humanitarian crisis in Gaza, primarily because their rivals in the Palestinian Authority have been cutting salary payments to PA officials in Gaza who either work for Hamas or don’t do anything. If there is an escalation, the crisis will get worse and the UN or other outside forces will step in and give them money, which they will spend on weapons or tunnels anyway.
Read more…

March 8, 2019 | 6:46 am | 1 Comment »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

New Crop of Pols Wants In On Bashing Israel  

Anti-Zionism manifests itself in many forms — and it isn’t any better than its older cousin, anti-Semitism.

By Benny Avni, NY SUN

Britain’s opposition leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has elevated it to an art form, describing terror groups like Hamas and Hezbollah as “friends” and causing Labour members to bolt. In France, persistent attacks on Jews and deadly rioting by self-declared anti-Zionists forced President Emmanuel Macron to ­denounce their cause as a “reinvented form of anti-Semitism.”

Now a new crop of American politicians want in, too. Oh, sure, our anti-Zionists claim to champion the right to criticize Israel. Or its policies. Or Likud. Or the occupation, apartheid, racism, whatever. It’s just an accident that the new anti-Zionists are obsessed with the world’s one Jewish state.

On Monday, New York Rep. ­Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (who’s become Corbyn’s BFF) took to Twitter to defend the right of her colleague Ilhan Omar to hate — oops, “criticize” — Israel. So did Rep. Rashida Tlaib and, soon after, three leading Democratic presidential contenders.
Read more…

March 8, 2019 | 6:24 am | 2 Comments »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

Democrats Unhinged  

Defiant Ilhan Omar: ‘As long as I breathe I will continue to make people uncomfortable in the best way possible’ (Video)

Muslim Advocates: Any Statement Denouncing Anti-Semitism Endangers the Life of Ilhan Omar

Pelosi Caves to Unhinged Party Radicals — Will Allow Anti-Semitic Rep. Ilhan Omar to Edit Dem’s Anti-Semitism Resolution

Pelosi Says House Dems Launching Investigations Into Trump Without Evidence of a Crime is Their “Constitutional Responsibility” (VIDEO)

March 7, 2019 | 8:54 pm | Comments »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

INTO THE FRAY: “Palestine” – Time to say “No!”  

By Dr. Martin Sherman, IISS

The two-state paradigm’s deadly detriments are now so glaringly apparent that it is becoming increasingly difficult to reconcile calls for Palestinian statehood with genuine concern for the well-being of the Jewish nation-state.

Ladies and gentlemen, when the Palestinians say “two states” they do not mean what we mean—Maj-Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin , October 2018.

With the impending public announcement of the enigmatic “deal of the century”, pledged by the Trump administration, rumors are swirling throughout the Middle East—and beyond—as to what in fact, its real nature might be. This, together with the dramatic rise in the electoral prospects of the newly formed “Blue & White” alliance between Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid, has once again raised the ominous specter of the return of the two-state principle.
Read more…

March 7, 2019 | 8:29 pm | 2 Comments »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

Gantz’s Party Releases Platform: Deepen Separation From Palestinians, Strengthen Settlement Blocs  

By Chaim Levinson, HAARETZ
The Kahlon Lavan party's leadership

Kahol Lavan, the new party headed by Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid, released its party platform on Wednesday in advance of the April 9 Knesset election.

If it forms the next government, the platform commits the party to pursuing a regional conference with Arab countries to “deepen the processes of separation from the Palestinians, while uncompromisingly protecting the security interests of the country and the Israeli army’s freedom of action everywhere.”

The platform states that there will be no additional “disengagement,” a reference to the unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and from several West Bank settlements in 2005, and that “every historic diplomatic decision” will be brought to the people in a referendum, or for approval by a supermajority of the Knesset.
Read more…

March 7, 2019 | 11:58 am | Comments »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

Poll: American sympathy for Israel over PA lowest in decade  

21% of Americans sympathize with PA over Israel, according to new Gallup poll.

By Tal Polon, INN

Sympathy among Americans for Israel in the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” is at its lowest in a decade, according to a Gallup poll released Wednesday.

The results, based on Gallup’s annual World Affairs survey conducted every February, indicated that 59% of Americans sympathize with Israel over the Palestinian Authority (PA), down from 64% in 2018 and the lowest percentage favoring Israel since 2009. On the other hand, 21% sympathize with the PA, the same as a year ago and the highest since 2001 by one point.

According to the poll, Republican sympathy for Israel over the PA fell from an all-time high of 87% last year to 76% today, while Democratic sympathy fell less sharply from 49% last year to 43% today. However, the poll showed Democratic sympathy to be at its lowest since 2005.
Read more…

March 7, 2019 | 11:01 am | 8 Comments »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

Blue-White party’s platform is way off-mark on the Middle East  

DEBKA

The merged lists of Benny Gatz, Yair Lapid and Moshe Ya’alon released their political platform on Wednesday, March 6. It purports to set out the guidelines for the government which Gatz and Lapid aspire to head after they topple Binyamin Netanyahu in the April 9 election. However, a party headed by three former chiefs of staff, of whom one was also a defense minister, is surprisingly uninformed about current events in the region, especially as regards Israel’s situation.

ItemAbove all, Israel is short of a leadership capable of initiating policy for taking advantage of opportunities to change the reality in the region and around our borders. Notwithstanding the IDF’s successful campaign against the strengthening of Hizballah, which is the strongest force in Lebanon today, and Iran’s established presence in Syria, a threatening reality is taking shape over our northern borders. Israeli operations have no effect on the way Putin, Erdogan and Rouhani decide on a settlement for Syria.

Read more…

March 7, 2019 | 9:40 am | Comments »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

Time for the US to recognize Israeli Sovereignty in the Golan Heights  

Any Israeli withdrawal to the shores of the Kinneret guarantees a structural instability which, sooner or later, will require American military intervention

By Zvi Hauser, TABLET

Recently, Israel’s control of the Golan Heights turned 50. In that period of time, the Golan has become a model of prosperity and coexistence. Yet Iran’s victorious foray into Syria has changed the reality in the region. Iran is now making every effort to build local terror proxies that will destabilize Syria’s borders with Israel. Changing the strategic and security equation in the Golan places Israel and the United States in a situation where they are required to react to the change by positing a new equation: Recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the portion of the Golan Heights that Israel recognized as its sovereign territory since 1981.

Iran’s presence in Syria is a done deal. Whether at the hands of Iranian soldiers or proxies, the security equation we had known these last few decades on the border between the Israeli and the Syrian sections of the Golan has changed: The border between Israel and Iran, between the West and radical Islam, now passes through the Golan Heights. Iranian militias, looking a lot like Hezbollah, are digging into bases on the border with the Golan, the Shia population in the area grows larger, and rocket supplies threaten the Israeli residents of the Golan Heights and the eastern Galilee.
Read more…

March 7, 2019 | 9:11 am | Comments »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

Things we know that aren’t so  

By Cifford May, ISRAEL HAYOM

It’s been observed – and variously attributed to Mark Twain, Will Rogers and Ronald Reagan, among others – that what gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know but what we know that isn’t so.

For example, we know that modernity, like gravity, exerts a pull that nations and their rulers, sooner or later, find irresistible. As then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said to Russian President Vladimir Putin after the latter invaded Ukraine five years ago: “You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th-century fashion.” Putin’s nonverbal reply: And why not?

Also widely believed: that the arc of history bends toward justice – or at least in some meaningful direction. Such historical determinism is supported by no evidence whatsoever as far as I’m aware.
Read more…

March 6, 2019 | 6:30 pm | 1 Comment »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

Replace the Wakf  

T. Belman. Mudar Zahran is on record as saying that the Jordanian Wakf should be replaced by a Wakf appointed by Israel from among her Arab citizens.  It won’t be long now. And Jews will have the right to pray there.

Replace the Jordanian Waqf with an Imam chosen by Israeli Arabs.

By Ezequiel Doiny, INN

In 1967, after Israel won the Six Day War and reunited Jerusalem, Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan announced to the Jordanian-appointed Wakf that they would be allowed to continue to administer the Al Aqsa compound.

Nadav Shragai reported in the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs “…Dayan decided to leave the mount and its management in the hands of the Muslim Wakf, while at the same time insisting that Jews would be able to visit it (but not pray at it!) without restriction. Dayan thought, and years later even committed the thought to writing, that since for Muslims the mount is a ‘Muslim prayer mosque’ while for Jews it is no more than “a historical site of commemoration of the past…one should not hinder the Arabs from behaving there as they now do.” The Israeli defense minister believed that Islam must be allowed to express its religious sovereignty – as opposed to national sovereignty – over the Temple Mount; that the Arab-Israeli conflict must be kept on the territorial-national level; and that the potential for a conflict between the Jewish religion and the Muslim religion must be removed. In granting Jews the right to visit the mount, Dayan sought to placate the Jewish demands for worship and sovereignty there. In giving religious sovereignty over the mount to the Muslims, he believed he was defusing the site as a center of Palestinian nationalism…”
Read more…

March 6, 2019 | 4:32 pm | Comments »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

NO HOLDS BARRED: How Christians went from enemies to best friends  

On a miraculous transformation.

BY SHMULEY BOTEACH

 Many good people work to strengthen the Jewish people and the State of Israel, but few did more than my friend Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, who died tragically and suddenly on February 6 at the age of 67, just two days after attending my son’s bar mitzvah in Jerusalem. Besides his many personal virtues, what made Yechiel stand out from the crowd was his commitment to work with Christians to raise tens of millions of dollars for Ethiopian Jews and countless others ignored by the Jewish establishment.

Yechiel founded the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ) in 1983 and devoted his life to building bridges of understanding and cooperation between Christians and Jews. Zev Chafets wrote a biography that was suitably titled The Bridge Builder: The Life and Continuing Legacy of Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein.

Read more…

March 6, 2019 | 12:32 pm | 6 Comments »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

How Socialism Fails in Theory  

By Auguste Meyrat, AMERICAN THINKER

Even though Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal was a complete failure of a bill, not even making it to a vote in the House, liberals still hail it as a success.  True, it did not become law, but it had noble goals and could have succeeded if it weren’t for America’s self-interested economic system and selfish, unimaginative politicians.

And this is how socialism wins in the end.

Democratic socialists, like Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, claim to believe in what socialism promises — equality, social benefits, a compassionate state — and not in what it actually does, like impoverish and enslave the nations that adopt it.  If anyone asks them how they plan to pay for these public goods, they never answer, but they claim the moral high ground, stating that they at least care about the poor and the environment and have started an important national conversation.
Read more…

March 5, 2019 | 2:47 pm | 7 Comments »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

Peer-reviewed study reveals majority of scientists are skeptical of ‘global warming crisis’  

By Thomas Lifson, AMERICAN THINKER

Without the claimed “scientific consensus” on global warming or climate change, the Green New Deal becomes just another progressive con game, but with the highest stakes ever.

Writing in Forbes, James Taylor shows that the supposed 97% “scientific consensus” on global warming is false:

Don’t look now, but maybe a scientific consensus exists concerning global warming after all. Only 36 percent of geoscientists and engineers believe that humans are creating a global warming crisis, according to a survey reported in the peer-reviewed Organization Studies. By contrast, a strong majority of the 1,077 respondents believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem.
Read more…

March 5, 2019 | 1:35 pm | 61 Comments »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

A nationalist streak runs through Putin’s love for Jews and Israel  

Experts say pragmatism and an understanding of Russia’s multi-ethnic indigenous culture drive the Kremlin’s close ties with both rabbis and Jerusalem

By CHARLES DUNST, TOI

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, centre, listen to Head of the Russian Federation of Jewish Communities and the museum's director Alexander Boroda, right, during their visit at the Jewish Museum and Center for Tolerance in Moscow, Russia, Monday, Jan. 29, 2018. (Alexei Nikolsky, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo/AP)
Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, centre, listen to Head of the Russian Federation of Jewish Communities and the museum’s director Alexander Boroda, right, during their visit at the Jewish Museum and Center for Tolerance in Moscow, Russia, Monday, Jan. 29, 2018. (Alexei Nikolsky, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo/AP)

JTA — While American politicians and pundits fumed at President Donald Trump’s performance at his much-anticipated meeting this week with Russian President Vladimir Putin, lost in the clamor was one small but crucial moment: Israel emerged from Helsinki a winner.

Trump said that he and Putin had reached a “really good conclusion” for Israel in regard to the situation in Syria. The Russian leader said he paid “special attention” to the Jewish state during the negotiations.
Read more…

March 5, 2019 | 8:55 am | 1 Comment »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

Waqf Guards Barred From Temple Mount by Israel Call for Mass Protest  

The guards, employed by the Temple Mount’s Islamic custodian, call on Muslims to participate in Friday’s prayers at the entrance to the complex

Nir Hasson, HAARETZ

Protest prayers outside an entrance to the Temple Mount in 2017.

Olivier Fitoussi

Security guards employed by the Waqf, the Islamic custodian of the Temple Mount, called on Muslims in Jerusalem to refrain from entering the complex and pray with them at the entrance this coming Friday.

The guards were issued restraining orders by the Israel Police for opening Bab al-Rahma, a building in the Golden Gate on the eastern side of the Temple Mount that was closed by police in 2003.

The call to join the guards in prayer at the gates could draw hundreds and cause renewed violence and discontent in Jerusalem during Friday prayers, said Waqf officials.
Read more…

March 5, 2019 | 8:44 am | Comments »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

Capitalism vs. Socialism  

Decades after capitalism seemed to have triumphed over socialism, politicians are once again arguing about the merits and drawbacks of these opposing economic systems. Why are we still having this debate? Andy Puzder, former CEO of the parent company of Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr., explains the misconceptions that keep the debate alive.

Prager U video

March 5, 2019 | 8:09 am | Comments »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free
« Previous PageNext Page »