Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

Jordanian Journalists: Hundreds Of Thousands Of Young Jordanians Support ISIS  

The Authorities Aren’t Dealing With It

By Z. Harel*, MEMRI


The rising number of terror incidents carried out by ISIS-affiliated Jordanian nationals, along with the high numbers of young Jordanians joining Salafi-jihadi organizations that are fighting in Syria and Iraq,[1] have caused great concern in Jordan.

Jordan has recently become a target of many terror attacks. The latest attack took place on December 18, 2016, when a cell of four Jordanian nationals struck a number of targets in the city of Karak; the gunmen fired at a patrol and a security facility in the city, holed up in the 10th-century Karak Crusader castle, and waged an hours-long firefight with Jordanian security forces until they were killed. During the firefight, four security personnel were killed, along with two civilians and a Canadian tourist.[2]A search of the terror cell members’ rented apartment in the town of Al-Qatraneh turned up five explosive belts ready for use, and other explosives. The Islamic State (ISIS) claimed responsibility for the attack.[3] The investigation showed that three of the cell members had served prison time for attempting to join the Islamic State (ISIS).[4]
Read more…

May 3, 2017 | 6:15 pm | 4 Comments »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

Texts Concerning Zionism: “The Iron Wall”  

T. Belman.  Study this carefully. Jabotinsky says it is natural for the Arabs to resist Zionism. As a result Zionism shouldn’t expect to negotiate the establishment of a state. Instead he argues that Zionism be impregnable. So much so that the Arabs believe that they have no choice but to acquiesce. We must present an iron wall to convince them that hope of destroying us is a fool’s errand.

This is the opposite of what Israel has been doing. Instead it is the Arabs who have built an iron wall in their rejection of Israel or compromise.

Once we internalize this we will understand that there is no diplomatic solution and that Israel must act unilaterally.

by Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotisnky (November 4, 1923)

Image result for jabotinsky

It is an excellent rule to begin an article with the most important point,  but this time, I find it necessary to begin with an introduction , and, moreover , with a personal introduction.

I am reputed to be an enemy of the Arabs, who wants to have them ejected from Palestine, and so forth. It is not true.

Emotionally, my attitude to the Arabs is the same as to all other nations – polite indifference. Politically, my attitude is determined by two principles.  First of all, I consider it utterly impossible to eject the Arabs from Palestine. There will always be two nations in Palestine – which is good enough for me, provided the Jews become the majority. And secondly, I belong to the group that once drew up the Helsingfors Programme , the programme of national rights for all nationalities living in the same State.  In drawing up that programme, we had in mind not only the Jews, but all nations everywhere, and its basis is equality of rights.

Read more…

May 3, 2017 | 6:00 pm | 6 Comments »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

Abbas to ask Trump to back Arab peace plan  

T. Belman. This article holds that Abbas and the Arab countries really want true peace with Israel based on the API. The truth is otherwise. If they want peace with Israel, why not compromise your demands just as Israel is being asked to do. The Arabs want to weaken Israel though they need Israel to defend them.

Mahmoud Abbas to meet U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington Wednesday • Abbas expected to argue that Israeli economic gestures are no alternative to talks on two-state solution • U.S. official warns: The president is not super patient.

Associated Press and Israel Hayom Staff


Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the Arab League summit in Jordan, in March | Photo credit: AP

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ relief at being invited to the White House is now clouded by concerns he might have to say no to U.S. President Donald Trump in their first meeting Wednesday.

Palestinians fear Trump will ask Abbas to halt stipends for families of Palestinians killed or jailed in the context of the conflict with Israel, and a senior U.S. official said Tuesday that such a request was raised in preparatory talks with Palestinian officials. Israel considers such payments a reward for terrorists, but stopping them seems untenable to Abbas, especially at a time of broad Palestinian support for a mass hunger strike of prisoners held by Israel.
Read more…

May 3, 2017 | 3:53 pm | 8 Comments »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

Trump-Putin call focuses on Syria, security zones  

Both presidents advanced ideas for security zones to de-escalate the violence in Syria and deemed their cooperation “critical.” But both needed to consult their allies first.

DEBKA

One of the most consequential exchanges on the disposition of Syria’s border lands with Israel and Jordan – and the future of the Syrian conflict at large – took place between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in a phone call on Tuesday, May 2. The call took place when German Chancellor Angela Merkel was visiting Putin at his Black Sea residence in Sochi.

DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources reveal that the two presidents focused strongly on an effort to agree on how de-escalate the Syrian conflict now in its sixth year and bring it to an end. The Russian leader proposed drawing armistice lines between the warring sides under the guarantee of a special Russian military mechanism. The Americans have not released any ideas, but they are believed to be contemplating establishing safety zones barred to the Syrian air force. One of those zones would be marked out in the south on Syria’s borders with Israel and Jordan.
Read more…

May 3, 2017 | 3:03 pm | 1 Comment »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

UNESCO passes anti-Israel resolution  

UN culture organization votes to adopt resolution denying Israeli rights to capital, Jerusalem.

By Gary Willig, INN

The Western Wall

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Steering Committee voted Tuesday afternoon to adopt a resolution denying Israel’s rights to its own capital, Jerusalem.

The vote took place on Israel’s Independence Day. 22 nations voted in favor of the resolution, compared to 10 which voted against it. 23 nations abstained.
Read more…

May 3, 2017 | 2:47 pm | 5 Comments »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

Why does Europe fund an NGO claiming Israel poisons Arab wells?  

It is not a coincidence that the German Foreign Minister, Sigmar Gabriel, met with the NGO Breaking the Silence (Shovrim Shtika, in Hebrew). The German government, in fact, finances it.

By Giullio Meotti, INN

One of the worst diplomatic crises between Israel and Germany is brewing around an Israeli NGO. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to meet German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel on his visit to Israel after the German vice-Chancellor decided to meet the Israeli NGOs B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence.

In the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), one of the most influential in Germany, journalist Majid Sattar wrote: “Representatives of the German government during their visits to Russia, China, but also to Saudi Arabia, always attach great importance to meetings with representatives of civil society”. So according to FAZ, Israel is on the same level as those autocratic and totalitarian regimes whose governments repress their own population. In 2012, during an election campaign, Gabriel himself said of Israel: “This is an apartheid regime”.
Read more…

May 3, 2017 | 2:33 pm | 6 Comments »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

Gorka is a casualty of a Jewish civil war  

By David P. Goldman

Image result for gorka trump

Jews are sadly accustomed to becoming collateral damage in disputes in other peoples’ civil wars. Dr. Sebastian Gorka, a senior White House official, is one of the few gentile victims of a Jewish civil war. Dr. Gorka, long a Fox News commentator on counter-terrorism, will speak at the Jerusalem Post’s annual New York conference in May and at this year’s Zionist Organization of America Gala. But a left-leaning Jewish website, the Forward, has published 39 articles alleging that Gorka has neo-Nazi ties in Hungary, the country of his parents’ birth where he was active in politics during the 2000s.
Read more…

May 3, 2017 | 8:19 am | 1 Comment »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

ANALYSIS: What Trump Should Do With Erdogan After The Turkish Dictator Tested Him  

“It’s time to see Erdogan as no friend of the West.”

By Yochanan Visser, WESTERN JOURNALISM

Did Turkey’s despotic leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan test President Donald Trump last week when he launched massive aerial attacks on Trump’s main allies in the battle against the Islamic State, the Kurdish Peshmerga militia in Iraq and the Syrian Kurdish fighting force YPG?

Some experts say he did, according to the news site Al-Monitor.

True, Erdogan apologized for the attack on the Peshmerga fighters in the Mount Sinjar area in northern Iraq and said that the intended target was the outlawed Kurdish Workers Party that has a presence in northern Iraq.

Nevertheless, his order to launch the attacks on the Kurds shocked the U.S. military.
Read more…

May 2, 2017 | 1:08 pm | 1 Comment »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

‘Nationalist’ Shouldn’t Be a Dirty Word  

Trump will be successful if he puts U.S. interests first—while still helping to maintain global order

President Trump discusses an executive order on trade, March 31, in front of a portrait of President Andrew Jackson, who served 1829-37.

If Donald Trump were a liberal Democrat, some of the media’s descriptions of “chaos” and “disarray” in the White House probably would be replaced with stories about “creative tension” among a “team of rivals.” As it is, the struggle between “nationalists” like Steve Bannon and “globalists” like Gary Cohn is characterized in near-apocalyptic terms. Yet as Mr. Trump told The Wall Street Journal last week, “I’m a nationalist and a globalist.” That is good news: Mr. Trump and the Republican Party should be weaving nationalist and globalist themes together rather than picking them apart.
Read more…

May 2, 2017 | 10:43 am | 29 Comments »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

Ross: At White House Meeting, Trump Must Push Abbas to End Financial Support of Palestinian Terrorists and Their Families  

By Ben Cohen, ALGEMEINER

President Donald Trump boosted the “relevancy” of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas by inviting him to Washington for a White House meeting this week and now needs to lean on the Palestinian leader to take “hard steps” —  including an end of payments to terrorists and their families, a veteran US diplomat said on Monday.

In a conference call organized by The Israel Project, Ambassador Dennis Ross — who has worked on Middle East issues for numerous administrations since the Carter era and is now the William Davidson Distinguished Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy — said Abbas had been in the doldrums before being summoned by Trump.
Read more…

May 2, 2017 | 10:36 am | 7 Comments »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

Ex-Canadian PM Harper: Popularity of My Support for Israel Among Electorate Makes It Difficult for Trudeau to Go in Different Direction  

By Ben Cohen, ALGEMEINER

Former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Sunday that the pro-Israel stand he took while in office has made his successor, Justin Trudeau, cautious about moving in a different direction.

Speaking at a Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) gala dinner in New York — at which he received the media-monitoring group’s Emet (“Truth”) Award — Harper noted that his record during his nearly decade-long stint as prime minister showed that anti-Israel media bias could be overcome and that average Canadians viewed Israel favorably.
Read more…

May 2, 2017 | 10:24 am | 2 Comments »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

Netanyahu’s bold move against Europe  

Israel is finally taking a constructive position in its own defense.

BY CAROLINE B. GLICK, JPOST

Israel Germany

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu adopted a new strategy for managing Israel’s diplomatic relations with the West. Long in the making and increasingly urgent, Israel’s new strategy is very simple. Foreign governments can either treat Israel in accordance with international diplomatic norms of behavior, or they can continue to discriminate against Israel.

If they act in accordance to international diplomatic norms, Israel will respond in like fashion. If they choose instead to discriminate against Israel and treat it in a manner no other democratic state is treated, Israel will abandon diplomatic convention and treat foreign governments as domestic critics.
Read more…

May 2, 2017 | 10:04 am | 7 Comments »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

Moments in History: What Led up to the Declaration of Israel Independence  

What actually happened to form the State of Israel? Balfour, Partition and more.

By Hillel Fendel, INN

Lord Balfour

As Israel’s Independence Day arrives – its 69th edition is celebrated on Tuesday, May 2 – let’s face it: Not everyone knows exactly what happened when. Ask a given millennial how Israel arose, and as likely as not, the answer will be, “Uh, we were in exile for 2,000 years and then the British left and we had a State.”

Somehow something seems to be missing from that explanation…
Read more…

May 2, 2017 | 9:56 am | 2 Comments »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

The Redemption of Israel  

By Daniel Greenfield

How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves,
Close by the street of this fair seaport town,
Silent beside the never-silent waves,
At rest in all this moving up and down!

But ah! what once has been shall be no more!
The groaning earth in travail and in pain
Brings forth its races, but does not restore,
And the dead nations never rise again.

The Jewish Cemetery at Newport – Longfellow
Read more…

May 1, 2017 | 2:40 pm | 27 Comments »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

Podcast: Yossi Klein Halevi on Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s “The Iron Wall”  

TIKVAH

Press play below to listen to the podcast, download it in the iTunes Store, or stream it via Stitcher.

How should Israelis think about the security and defense of the Jewish State when confronted with Palestinian claims to national sovereignty? What effect will Israel’s material prosperity have on the prospects for peace?  What role does honor and dignity, hadar, play in the statecraft of the Middle East?

Orator, statesman, writer, and political leader, Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky is one of the principal figures in the Zionist founding. In this podcast, journalist and author Yossi Klein Halevi joins Tikvah’s Jonathan Silver to discuss a pair of Jabotinsky essays from the 1920s. “The Iron Wall,” and “Ethics of the Iron Wall” develop a security doctrine for the future Jewish State that is grounded in a realistic assessment of the human condition, and a sober analysis of national aspirations.
Read more…

May 1, 2017 | 2:22 pm | Comments »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

Russia Risks a Showdown With Israel over Hezbollah in Syria  

by Jonathan Schanzer, Newsweek

Back in 1967, Moscow shrugged when Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser closed the Straits of Tiran, cutting shipping routes to the Israeli port of Eilat—Israel’s only one in the Red Sea. Egyptian and Syrian troop movements on the Israeli border — coupled with Nasser’s fiery rhetoric threatening mass slaughter — paved the way for war. All the while, Moscow fed the Egyptians and Syrians erroneous information about Israeli troop movements.

The Israelis put an end to all of it with a blitzkrieg that neutralized Russia’s Arab clients in six days, and in the process seized the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai, and much of the Golan Heights.
Read more…

May 1, 2017 | 11:44 am | 1 Comment »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

Erdogan tests Trump with attack on Syrian Kurds  

Al Monitor

Will US rethink plans for Raqqa?

In May 2016, we asked how long the United States and Turkey could keep up appearances of alliance and partnership in Syria, given differences over US backing for the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG).

Following Turkey’s airstrikes April 25 against the YPG in northern Syria and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the Sinjar region of Iraq, reality may be outpacing appearances.
Read more…

May 1, 2017 | 10:55 am | Comments »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest for Free

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