Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) President Morton A. Klein released the following statement:

The ZOA and others involved in combating anti-Israel “boycott, divestment and sanctions” (BDS) have previously pointed out that top backers of BDS include designated terrorist groups Hamas and the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), the PLO/PA and the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine (CNIF) – an entity established by terrorists Yassir Arafat and Marwan Barghouti at the beginning of the Second Intifada to coordinate PLO and Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel.  (See, e.g., Dan Diker, Unmasking BDS: Radical Roots, Extremist Ends)   Last week, the Congressional testimony of former U.S. Treasury Department terrorism analyst Jonathan Schanzer described alarming, additional Hamas connections to the organizations that fund, coordinate, aid and abet the growing scourge of BDS on American college campuses.   (See Schanzer testimony, Joint Hearing before House Foreign Affairs Committee, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade and the Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa, April 19, 2016).
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T. Belman. Smotrich is right. The IDF is doubling down on their condemnation of the soldier as it would look very bad indeed if the soldier were acquitted. Given the fact that the public is with the soldier and not the IDF, this matter should be decided by a jury of the soldiers peers even if it has to go to a criminal court rather than a military court.

What is at stake here is our values. The IDF claims to be protecting those values. The people are saying you have our values wrong.

There are numerous cases in criminal law where the Jury refused to convict because to do so didn’t seem right to them or didn’t accord with their values.

MK Smotrich demands explanation for reports that IDF hired top private lawyer to prosecute soldier for shooting neutralized terrorist.

By Uzi Baruch, INN

MK Bezalel Smotrich (Jewish Home) sent a letter to IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkott on Tuesday morning, following reports that the IDF put a lawyer from a large firm into the reserves in order to serve as a prosecutor.

Smotrich asked Eizenkott to explain the reasoning for the move, as well as how much the military is paying for the lawyer’s services.
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T. Belman. The reasons offered by those who are pushing for it is basically humanitarian. A left wing do-gooder might argue so but why is it the business of the military. The General says ““We need to do something. We can’t just sit there and do nothing.” Why not?

A security source said “We have an interest in the Gazans living with dignity, both on the human level and because it helps preserve quiet alongside the security deterrence that exists”.

Make no mistake about it. Israel is preparing Israelis to accept just that.

Did the US ever say that about Cuba when the blockade was on? Did the US effect the Marshall Plan before the Nazis were utterly defeated.

We need to tighten the screws until Hamas is deposed or willingly demilitarizes.

Former commander of the IDF Southern Command offered an ambitious idea to alleviate humanitarian situation in Gaza.

JPOST

A former army commander is promoting an ambitious new plan that would boost the number of goods entering the Gaza Strip.

Yom Tov Samia, who served as the IDF’s Southern Command chief from 2001 to 2003, told Radio 101.5 FM on Tuesday that the Israeli authorities should permit the Palestinian Authority to operate a terminal at Ashdod port that would serve as the docking point where ships could unload goods bound for the Gaza Strip.
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T. Belman. Trump wins big in Indiana and Cruz drops out. Supporting settlement construction is a game changer in the search for peace. Essentially Trump is saying that settlement construction puts pressure on the Palestinians to compromise. He will probably also use the withdrawal of financial support for the Palestinians as another means to force them to compromise.

Daily Mail

Donald Trump came down foursquare in favor of new construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank on Monday, telling Dailymail.com that the controversial practice has to ‘keep going’ and ‘keep moving forward.’

There are ‘thousands of missiles being launched into Israel,’ he said Monday. ‘Who would put up with that? Who would stand for it?’
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The sad decline of a once-bold organisation

THE ECONOMIST

WITH Syria and Libya aflame with Iran challenging the Gulf Arabs for mastery of the region and with America questioning its role as ultimate guarantor of stability, this ought to have been a time, one might have thought, for the Arab League to assert itself. Instead, the body appears to drift ever deeper into irrelevance. Its idea of renewal, it seems, is simply to replace its octogenarian secretary-general with a septuagenarian, an uninspiring transfer that is due to happen on July 1st.
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The U.S. and Europe have been the traditional leaders in medtech innovation, but this tiny nation in the Middle East is big on innovation.

Posted in Medical Device Business by Arundhati Parmar

When it comes to medtech markets, the story is always of Brazil, Russia, India, and China, the so-called BRIC nations.

But when it comes to novel healthcare solutions, you can’t ignore the global innovation hub that is Israel. The medtech subsector accounts for a majority of the overall Israeli life sciences industry—53% of all Israel-based life sciences companies active in 2014 were medical device companies, according to Israel Advanced Technology Industries (IATI), a nonprofit trade group representing the company’s high tech and life sciences industries.
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By Ephraim Hererra, ISRAEL HAYOM

Former MK Michael Ben-Ari demands public, nationalist MKs stand up for Meir Ettinger’s fair treatment.

By Benny Tocker, INN

As the campaign for Meir Ettinger’s immediately release grows, former MK Michael Ben-Ari has called on right-wing MKs to join the efforts.

“This is a cruel form of abuse without a trial and without a sentence. The entire public is silently, allowing the Shin Bet and (Defense Minister Moshe) ‘Bogie’ Ya’alon to continue the abuse,” he told Arutz Sheva.

Ben-Ari expressed his confusion over the decision to extend Ettinger’s arrest. “It was easy for them to take Rabbi Kahane’s grandson and to declare he is Public Enemy No. 1 as though he was the head of the Jewish underground. If he’s Public Enemy No. 1, why isn’t there a shred of evidence against him?
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By Victor Davis Hanson, HOOVER.ORG

Seventy-seven years ago, Nazi Germany invaded Poland, triggering a declaration of war by Great Britain and its Empire and France. After Hitler’s serial aggressions in the Rhineland, the Anschluss with Austria, the Munich Agreement, and the carving up of Czechoslovakia, no one believed that a formal war over Poland would lead to anything greater than yet another German border grab. The invasion of Poland would likely be followed by loud but empty threats for Hitler to stop, and a phony war of inaction and grumbling.

But after dismembering Poland, and dividing its spoils with the Soviet Union, Hitler unexpectedly absorbed Denmark and Norway the next spring. Then in May 1940, he successfully invaded Belgium, France, Holland, and Luxembourg. He tried to bomb Britain into submission. The conflict eventually spread to the Mediterranean and became truly a “world war” in 1941 with the surprise Axis attacks on the Soviet Union and the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.
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By Shoshana Bryen, AMERICAN THINKER

Chinese Ambassador Liu Jieyi, who held the April UN Security Council presidency, announced last week that the status of the Golan Heights “remains unchanged.” That is, of course, true — like the old “Saturday Night Live” running gag, “Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.”

He meant it belongs to Syria, and he was responding to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who told a meeting of the Israeli Cabinet on the Golan, “The Golan Heights have been an integral part of the land of Israel since ancient times; the dozens of ancient synagogues in the area around us attest to that. And the Golan is an integral part of the state of Israel in the new era. I told [Secretary of State John Kerry] that I doubt that Syria will ever return to what it was.”
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The sheer number of British politicians using anti-Semitic imagery, therefore, must concern Israel, because it indicates there are many, many constituents out there receptive to such rhetoric.

By Herb Keinon, JPOST

Another day, another revelation of antisemitism inside Britain’s Labor Party.

Not one, but two, party functionaries were suspended Monday for anti-Semitic rants. Also, Labour secretly suspended 50 members in recent months

One, Ilyas Aziz, a Labor councilor in Nottingham, was suspended for 2014 Facebook posts saying, similar to a suspended MP, that Israel should be relocated to the US. He added an illustration implying that Israel drank the blood of Gazans.
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T. Belman. Is he nuts. He scares the s”t out of me. He ignores the Arab hatred as though it was inconsequential to making a deal. But this takes the cake.

Trump also questioned why the U.S. is funding the United Nations but is not demanding the body use its power to broker a deal to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Exactly what we want to avoid. Trump is obviously trying to give left wing Jews what they want.

Republican presidential frontrunner says an Israel-Palestinian would be a “beauty”.

By Ben Ariel, INN

Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump on Sunday said he would love to broker a peace settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians, The Jewish Insider reported.

Trump’s comments came during a campaign rally in Terre Haute, Indiana, where primaries will be held on Tuesday. Trump said that seeing Israel and the Palestinians sign on a peace deal would be a “beauty” in spite of the situation on the ground.
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Last week, Hamas deployed several hundred fighters along the Gaza-Sinai border together with Egypt to prevent ISIS fighters in the region from breaching the coastal enclave.

JPOST STAFF

Israel, Hamas and Egypt have aligned their strategies and formed an unlikely alliance against the Islamic State in Sinai, who are planning increasingly sophisticated and daring attacks in the region, The Washington Post reported on Sunday.

Islamic State’s Egyptian affiliate, referred to as Wilayat Sinai, is well equipped with weaponry and has been plotting more sophisticated attacks since taking responsibility for the October bombing of a Russian charter plane which killed all 224 passengers aboard.
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DEBKA

The chief of staff of the Iranian military, Maj. Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi, arrived in Damascus on April 30 to assume direct command of the Iranian, Syrian and Hizballah forces fighting in Syria, DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources report. His arrival showed Iran has significantly stepped up its military involvement in Syria.
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T. Belman. I was there. It was a great evening. Many lawyers were in attendance. These lawyers give of their time freely in support of the Law Forum’s work. Visit their site and find out all about them. While there, I met Yifa Segal, Director of The International Legal Forum.. She is a powerhouse. She is organizing lawyers all over the world to curtail BDS and support Jews and Israel in their own countries. I will be working with her to get the message out.

By YONAH JEREMY BOB, LAHAV HARKOV, JPOST

Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked on Sunday said she is pushing to have Israeli law apply to the West Bank within one year.

Shaked made the comments while being interviewed on stage at a conference in Jerusalem organized by the Legal Forum for the Land of Israel, in spite of prior vehement opposition to the idea by the Justice Ministry bureaucracy, including former attorney-general Yehuda Weinstein.
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Granting the right under international law for Jews to settle anywhere
in western Palestine – the area between the Jordan River and the
Mediterranean Sea

By Eli E. Hertz, MYTHS AND FACTS

On the 24-25 of April 2010, the European Coalition for Israel conducted a number of educational seminars delivered by Eli Hertz from the United States and Solomon Benzimra (zl) from Canada. It was followed by a ceremony held in San Remo at the same house (Villa Devanche) where the signing of the San Remo declaration took place in 1920.

The event attracted politicians as well as grassroots activists from around Europe, the U.S., and Canada. Member of Knesset and Deputy Speaker Danny Danon also attended and delivered greetings from Jerusalem.
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The time has come to drop the fixation with artificial borders drawn a hundred years ago by imperial powers.

By Moshe Arens, HAARETZ 

The artificial borders delineated by Mark Sykes and Francois Georges-Picot in 1916 haven’t yet died, but like old soldiers they’re just fading away. Iraq is in turmoil, Syria is falling apart and the Islamic State, ensconced in parts of Iraq and Syria, has erased the Iraqi-Syrian border.

Tim Arango, The New York Times’ bureau chief in Baghdad, writes: “it seems fair to ask a question that has bedeviled foreign powers for almost a century: Is Iraq ever going to have a functioning state at peace with itself?”

The same question is undoubtedly being asked about Syria, which was also created in accordance with the Sykes-Picot treaty. The two states are artificial constructs cobbled together by Britain and France – imperial powers once upon a time but by now neither powerful nor imperial.
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Deputy Mayor reveals ‘we lost sovereignty’ in capital; 50,000 Arabs throng in with Hamas filling the vacuum, as govt. shuts its eyes.

By Shimon Cohen, INN

Israeli media has largely ignored covering how Arab assailants just before Passover on April 20 threw firebombs at Jerusalem’s northeast Pisgat Ze’ev neighborhood, causing a massive brush fire that approached the homes of residents.

A number of new buildings were evacuated and firefighters were forced to battle the blaze, eventually managing to control it. But despite the danger to life and property, the incident did not receive commensurate coverage in the media.
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