T. Belman. If only Roger Cohen and the NYT would back aggressive moves by Israel similar to what they are recommending here.

By Roger Cohen, NYT

MILAN — The Paris slaughter claimed by the Islamic State constitutes, as President François Hollande of France declared, an “act of war.” As such, it demands of all NATO states a collective response under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. This says that, “An armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.”

Alliance leaders are already debating what that response should be. Hollande has spoken to President Obama. Other NATO countries, including Germany and Canada, have expressed solidarity. Indignation and outrage, while justified, are not enough.
Read more…

Owner of a Bnei Brak wine shop replaces European goods with wines from the West Bank; Moshavim Movement warns that labeling could extend to all of Israel.

Elisha Ben Kimon, Billie Frenkel, YNET

Yoav Schwartz, 46, owner of a wine shop in Bnei Brak, decided to respond to the EU’s decision to label products from the West Bank and the Golan Heights by taking European wines off his shelves and replacing them with those made in the West Bank.

“Since the issue hit the headlines, I immediately decided to just remove European wines from my store’s shelves,” Schwartz told Ynet.

“I removed wines from Spain, Italy and France. It hurts me financially but I’m willing to take it,” he added. “My bottles range between NIS 200 and 500, so it’s not a simple thing.” Meanwhile, the wines are in storage and are not for sale. “Even if people come and ask for European wines, I’m not selling them right now.”
Read more…

Analysis: The Paris attack is directly tied to events in Syria and Iraq; this was not an intelligence failure but rather the failure of the West to see itself as in a total war vs. radical Islam.

By Ron Ben-Yishai, YNET

It is time that we came to the realization: we are in the midst of World War III. A war that will differ from the others but will take place all over the globe, on land, air and sea. This is a war between jihadist Islam and Western civilization; a war between radical Islam and all those who refuse to surrender to its values and political demands.

This war will, of course, have to be fought on the ground – with American, British and French divisions and tanks that will fight in Syria and Iraq, but also with security measures taken at border crossings and by special forces and intelligence agencies in Belgium, France and Germany as well as in the Philippines, China and Russia. This war will be conducted on the Mediterranean Sea as well as in the air with combat aircraft bombarding concentrations of ISIS and al-Qaeda fighters across Asia and Africa and security measures taken at airports and passenger aircraft worldwide. This is what the third world war will look like, which Israel has been a part of for a while now.
Read more…

By Jonathan Ben Moshe,

The government has a policy of leniency toward sections of Israeli society that are hostile to the State of Israel. That leniency extends to Arab murderers and their supporters as well as to the so-called peace movement that serves as a cheering section to Arab hostile declarations and activities.

The reality is that the Israeli government is a fig leaf to an Un-Elected High Court Dictatorship that constantly imposes its leftist ideology and anti-Jewish bias on the Elected Government. That translates to a Non-functioning democracy where the public has to suffer the consequences of Government decisions being short-circuited by the High Court!
Read more…

By Ted Belman

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a man both ends of the Israeli political spectrum love to hate, but for different reasons. The Israeli left hates him because they can’t unseat him and because he is, in their minds an obstacle to peace. They don’t believe that he wants the two state solution. The Israeli right hates him because he makes all kinds of rightwing promises but fails to deliver. They believe him when he says he wants a two-state solution which they reject. But the fact of the matter is that Netanyahu’s views on the peace process are supported by mainstream Israelis.

Americans see him as a right-winger, which doesn’t endear him to the left including Jewish Americans. They see him as an obstacle to peace, a proponent of the hated settlements and the occupation and an opponent of their beloved President.
Read more…

DEBKA

The unending Palestinian campaign of murder against Israelis Friday, Nov.13, shattered another Israeli family of seven. Gunmen shot dead a father, 40, and his 18-year old son, injuring his wife and another son of 13 and traumatizing their three small daughters aged 11, 9, and five. They were attacked on Highway 60 on the road running between Othniel and the Palestinian village of Dura in the Mt. Hebron district.

Not all the information about the attack has been released. It appears, however, that the killers reached the scene in a vehicle and laid ambush to the victims. After their first round of gunfire brought the targeted vehicle to a halt, the terrorists approached it and shot the two injured men again at close range, before racing from the scene. The remaining four family members were injured.
Read more…

Eagles of Death Metal, the US band performing at theater when the attacks began, played in Tel Aviv’s Barby club in July

TIMES OF ISRAEL STAFF

French magazine Le Point said early Saturday that the Bataclan theater, targeted in Friday nights Paris terror attacks, has for years been the target of anti-Zionist groups as its Jewish owners often put on pro-Israel events. [THE OWNERS SOLD IT TWO MONTHS AGO.]

The publication quoted a member of the extremist group Army of Islam, who told French security services in 2011 that, “We had planned an attack against the Bataclan because its owners are Jews.”

The Eagles of Death Metal, the band performing at the theater when the attacks began, played in Tel Aviv’s Barby club in July.

Dozens of people were killed in the eastern Paris venue on Friday night.
Read more…

High powered weapons, suicide bombers and grenades.

By Pamela Geller, BREITBART

That all-too-familiar battle cry kicked off six Islamic acts of war on the people of France. Muslims set off on a murderous rampage in Paris Friday night, killing at least 166, including at least 100 concertgoers at a music hall featuring an American rock band. The death toll spread across six sites in the city.

Devout Muslims were celebrating the attacks on social media.

One of the apprehended jihadists reportedly stated, “I am from the Islamic State.” Hundreds of thousands of these savages have invaded the continent.
Read more…

By Ted Belman

I grew up in a delineated world. You were a Jew, Catholic or Protestant. Never heard of Muslims. You were white or black. Brown not so much. You knew your place and stayed there. Intermarriage of any sort was virtually forbidden especially racial intermarriage.

My youngest son grew up in a different world. Though he went to parochial school and was shomer Shabbat, when he got to college he entered a different world.  The Toronto population at the time was 50% third world. He entered the world of inclusion. Then he went to NYU and then Harvard. He, like most students, gravitated to inclusive societies. His friends were the colour of the rainbow, with mixed sexual orientation. Judaism, what’s that and who cares.
Read more…

Frustration and angst in a roundtable discussion with a lobbying mission of US Jews bent on marriage reform in Israel

BY AMANDA BORSCHEL-DAN, TOI

The guest experts at a discussion at the American Jewish Committee’s office on November 12, 2015 called ‘Legal Dimensions of Religious Pluralism in Israel.’ From left to right: Rabbi Seth Farber, founder of ITIM; former Israeli ambassador Alan Baker; and Dr. Shuki Friedman, the director of the Center for Religion, Nation & State.

‘Look, we’re paying your bills, I know you hate hearing it, but we’re paying your bills!” said American Dov S. Zakheim, chairman of the Jewish Religious Equality Coalition (JREC), at a particularly fraught point during a discussion about Israeli-Diaspora relations at the Jerusalem offices of the American Jewish Committee Thursday.
Read more…

By Martin Sherman, JPOST

There can be little dispute over the strategic imperative for a political ‘Iron-Dome’ to intercept incoming barrages of demonization & delegitimization launched daily at Israel

Austria… undertook after the Second World War a sophisticated campaign to minimize the then-prevalent impression in the Allied world that the Austrians, having welcomed Hitler in 1938… Through cultural attractions – the Vienna Opera, Vienna Boys Choir, Lippizaner horses – Austria was eminently successful in changing that overall impression [which] made the world believe that Hitler was a German and Beethoven an Austrian – Walter R. Roberts, member of the US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, “Public Diplomacy: Rethinking an Old Concept at Department of State Senior Seminar,” Washington, 1997
Read more…

The time has come to stand up to Europe. If we refuse to do so, a day will soon come when labels will lead to their inevitable end point: a full European economic boycott of the Jewish state.

By Caroline Glick, JPOST

Maybe the EU did us a favor on Wednesday.

At least now we know what we’re up against.

With the publication of its new guidelines to member states encouraging them to label Jewish products produced beyond the 1949 armistice lines, the Europeans finally convinced us that they hate us. They don’t care about peace. They don’t care about the Palestinians. They just want to harm Israel.
Read more…

Regavim reveals hundreds of illegal mosques nationwide ignored or legalized, even as synagogue is slated for destruction.

By Arutz Sheva Staff

T. Belman. I support a death penalty for any terrorist who kills someone be it Jew or Arab. I also support the killing of anyone who attempts to kill a Jew whether before, during or after the attempt. The penalty for such an attempt should be death on the spot. This is war.

Rabbis Dov Lior and Yitzchak Ginsburgh lead a petition calling on the government to ‘take a firm hand against Israel’s cruel enemies.’

By Kobi Nachshoni, YNET

Dozens of rabbis published a manifesto this week, demanding the death sentence for terrorists who have hurt Jews.

In the petition, organized by the Derech Chaim movement, they called on the government to take a firm hand against Israel’s enemies, explaining that the rule “Haba lehorgecha hashkem lehorgo” (when someone tries to kill you, rise up and kill him first) is valid in retrospect too.

“Our holy Torah teaches us that punishing the murderer is the justice and right morals,” the rabbis wrote. They quoted the Bible verse “Whoever sheds human blood, by a human being will his own blood be shed” (Genesis 9:6), and Maimonides remark in Hilchot Sanhedrin: “The court must not have mercy on the killer, saying that a person has already been killed and there is no point in killing the other.”
Read more…

T. Belman. I believe him. The EU and the US are pressuring Netanyahu to cede some of the land and Netanyahu evidently made an offer. I think that is why Netanyahu never seriously stopped the EU from financing illegal construction in parts of area C nor has he demolished the illegal structures even when he had demolition permits.

By Tova Lazaroff, JPOST

During the 2013-23014 negotiations Israeli officials were willing to hand portions of Area C of the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority and freeze settlement building, Martin Indyk said on Thursday in Tel Aviv.

He served as the US special envoy to the nine months of Israeli-Palestinian talks that ended in failure in April 2014.

“In the last night of the negotiations that I was involved in, the Israeli negotiators came with an offer of tens of thousand of dunams of C Area, that they were prepared to give over to the Palestinian Authority’s control to build what they would want to on them without the permit regime and so on,” Indyk said on Thursday.
Read more…

The two expressions were coined by those who think that the real Islam is the moderate one and that the radicals hijacked it.

By Dr. Mordechai Kedar, INN

Beginning more or less with 9/11, the expression “radical Islam” became the accepted way for the media, politicians and public to define the religious and ideological foundations of Islam-based violence when referring to what the world calls “terror.” This expression was meant to be contrasted with “moderate Islam” which presents Muslims as ordinary people who wish to live in peace with all of mankind – Christians, Jews, Buddhists, unbelievers and the rest of us. The world created the image of two Islams, one radical and impossible to live with, and one moderate and “just like us.”

This differentiation between “radical” and “moderate” Islam is what gave rise to the claim that Islam had been “hijacked” by the radicals, implying that the real and original Islam is the moderate, not the false, radical one.
Read more…

According to Yachad UK-funded survey, nearly a quarter would support sanctions on Israel if it would pressure government to make concessions to Palestinians

BY JENNI FRAZER, TOI November 12, 2015,

In London, a face-off between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian demonstrators, May 2013. (photo credit: courtesy of British Israel Coalition)NEWSROOM

LONDON — While a majority of British Jews say they are committed to Israel, nearly three-quarters of them believe Israel’s negative approach to peace is harmful and almost 24 percent would be prepared “to support some sanctions against Israel” if they thought it would encourage the Israeli government to act, a new survey has found.
Read more…

By Prof Avi Bell, TOI

At long last, the European Commission has published its long-threatened Interpretive Notice on labeling Israeli “settlement” products. Until its publication on November 11, Israeli sources had feared the anticipated Notice would impose trade sanctions and illegally discriminate against the Jewish state, but the Europeans jealously guarded the Notice’s secrecy.

The Notice is now out, and Israel’s worst fears have been realized. It does impose a form of trade sanction against the Jewish state—one that violates international law and discriminates against the Jewish state. It is also badly reasoned and badly drafted, and drips with condescension and contempt for Israel.
Read more…

DEBKA

After the downing of the Russian airliner over Sinai on Oct. 31, Moscow moved into position to lead the offensive against the Islamic State in Syria. The Russian air force transferred a large number of assault helicopters out of its enclave in Latakia province over to two Syrian air bases east of Homs on the front lines against ISIS, DEBKAfile’s military sources report.

From the T4 (Tiyas) and Shayrat Airbases, the Russian command will lead the battle against the Islamic State over Homs, a city of one million inhabitants and the hub of central-eastern Syria. As the Russians move over from air strikes to the offensive against ISIS, they know their combat helicopters are now exposed to being shot down.
Read more…