Bennett subject to a very hostile British interviewer
Bennett was very strong.
Bennett was very strong.
A recent survey conducted by The Peace Index finds that while Israeli Jews support hawkish handling of Palestinian attackers, they do not support similar measures taken against Jewish attackers.
A majority of Israeli Jews support the killing of Palestinian terrorists “on the spot,” while 58 percent were against Jewish prayer at the Temple Mount during times of heightened tensions, a survey conducted by The Peace Index in October revealed.
Fifty-three percent of Israeli Jews agreed with the statement, “Any Palestinian who has perpetrated a terror attack against Jews should be killed on the spot, even if he has been apprehended and no longer poses a threat.”
This finding may give credence to fears expressed by Israel’s Arab public, with 78 percent saying they were “apprehensive of being harmed” in the ongoing violence.
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By Ted Belman
Arutz Sheva reports:
So far, Herzog has insisted he will not join the coalition, even though Netanyahu has tried to lure him in.
According to Maariv, the Prime Minister has already offered Herzog seven portfolios – including foreign affairs and justice – and promised to shift coalition policies away from the right if Zionist Union joins.
A spokesman for Herzog has denied both the report and speculation over the Labor leader’s plans.
Netanyahu has reportedly also reached out to Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid, offering his party the ministerial portfolios currently held by Jewish Home.
Arutz Sheva further reports:
Bennett: We will not agree to any ‘gestures’ to Palestinians
Jewish Home chairman says his party will vote against any goodwill moves towards the PA, as Netanyahu is reportedly planning.
DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis November 8, 2015,

After more than a year, Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu meets President Barack Obama at the White House on Monday, Nov. 9, with the deck heavily stacked against him – and not just because of the Islamic State, which is a universal bane, or Obama’s Iran policy – or even the evaporation of the peace process with the Palestinians. This time, Netanyahu is not getting a dressing-down over the disappearance of the two-state solution, because even the US president has decided to shelve it for the remainder of his presidency which ends in January 2017.
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Senior U.S. officials believe that the U.S. must formulate a policy for a situation in which the two-state solution dies, and think about how this will mold ties with Israel..
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (R) speaks to senior adviser John Kirby before he holds a briefing at Amman Civil Airport in Amman, October 24, 2015.Reuters
The briefings by senior American administration officials to the media over the weekend, ahead of the meeting between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, show a very disturbing paradigm shift with regard to the United States’ relationship to the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict. For the first time, the White House and the State Department in Washington have begun to state publicly that the reality in the West Bank is becoming that of one state for two peoples.
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The Palestinian issue is expected to be a major focus of the White House meeting; Obama believes the current situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories is leading to a one-state solution.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu enters a government meeting, November 1, 2015. Emil Salman
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will unveil a series of confidence-building measures toward the Palestinians during his White House meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday, National Security Adviser Joseph Cohen said last week.
Cohen, who made the comment at a meeting with European ambassadors to Israel last Monday, said the measures will relate to both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, according to several diplomats who were present.
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T. Belman. All comments coming out of the Whitehouse are appalling. I have highlighted them.
On the eve of the prime minister’s flight to Washington, sources in the White House warn that there will not be good tidings regarding Israel’s compensation package for the Iran nuclear deal in his meeting with Obama, saying that Federal budget cuts are part of the issue.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not be getting what he wants out of his trip to Washington, according to White House sources who spoke with the New York Times on Friday.
The sources claimed that Israel would not be getting an increased compensation package from the US government. Netanyahu is due to take off for Washington on Sunday in order to meet US President Barack Obama, the first meeting between the two since the signing of the Iran nuclear deal.
One of Netanyahu’s central goals for the trip was to strike an agreement on a new defense deal for Israel for the next decade, including compensation Israel was supposed to receive in light of the Iran deal.
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Netanyahu has convinced himself that the only way for Israel to appear “legitimate” and “rational” to the world is to offer the two-state solution. He couldn’t be more wrong.
Lord Beaverbrook is said to have once asked an elegant socialite if she would spend the night with him for a million dollars, to which she responded, “yes.” He then asked her if she would do so for 10 dollars, and she fumed, “Of course not, what do you think I am?” – to which he returned, “Madame, we have already established what you are. Now we are haggling over the price.”
PM Netanyahu’s non-stop offerings to Abbas of the two-state solution is a bizarre takeoff on this story in reverse. In this reverse-world, with Netanyahu the socialite and Abbas the questioner, Netanyahu offers Abbas payment in the form of a “demilitarized Palestinian State” if Abbas would only agree to accept Israel. But Netanyahu’s groveling offers of a two-state solution not only don’t validate Israel’s bona fides as a legitimate state, they delegitimize Israel’s very existence.
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Israel officials are repeatedly growing concerned over the long-term viability of the current Egyptian regime in light of gains made by Islamists in their insurgency.
Bloomberg News quoted a former Republican lawmaker on Friday as saying that Israeli government figures are beginning to wonder whether Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, can successfully overcome the threats posed to his rule by Islamic State-inspired Salafist gunmen.
Egypt’s tourism industry – a key source of revenue for the cash-strapped Arab giant – is expected to take an even bigger hit in the wake of Saturday’s crash of a Russian airline in the Sinai Peninsula.
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T, Belman. These monies should not be considered as foreign aid but as part of the US defense budget. That’s where it belongs.
Many Americans will be outraged that Israel is requesting a large increase in its annual military aid from the United States. As it stands, Israel is the largest recipient of American aid funding. Why should it currently receive $3+ billion, let alone $5 billion?
First, there is a distinction between economic aid and military aid. Economic aid is given by many countries to many others, for reasons that presumably benefit both sides of the equation. There is no expectation that economic aid will be repaid, unless it is specifically a loan, which may or may not be repaid.
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By Ted Belman
I have just openned a Facebook page called Israpundit.
I am looking for a volunteer to help promote this page on social media. I would hope that such volunteer is familiar with what needs to be done in order to build traffic to the page.
Love to hear any suggestions readers may have.
Cruz Proposes Bill to Label Brotherhood, CAIR as Terror Orgs.
In what may be a seminal moment in the fight against radical Islam, presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has introduced legislation to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. The impressively-detailed bill identifies three Brotherhood entities in the U.S. including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
The Muslim Brotherhood is not currently banned in the U.S. because it is not listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Remarkably, its Palestinian wing—Hamas—is designated, but the group a whole is allowed to operate in the U.S. You can read my thorough rebuttal of the Brotherhood’s purported “non-violence” policy here.
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The right-wing’s rising young female political superstar is unapologetic about Orthodox conversions, Palestinian violence, and J Street’s duplicity
Ayelet Shaked is an anomaly in Israeli politics. She’s a successful female politician in a landscape governed almost entirely by the male graduates of the Israel Defense Forces’ elite units. She’s a secular woman who had ascended the ranks of a religious party. And she’s a computer programmer who found herself, after a brief and meteoric rise, as Israel’s minister of justice.
Shaked has used her position and her telegenic presence to promote a host of controversial measures, from advocating to revoke the citizenship of Israeli Arabs convicted of terrorism to scrutinizing left-wing nonprofit organizations that receive large sums of money from European governments to promote causes like BDS. Each of these measures won her precious moments in the limelight—and plenty of criticism. Yet, oddly for a politician, she seems genuinely unmoved by public opinion. She speaks with the same unguarded passion that catapulted her from a tireless grassroots campaigner for right-wing causes—against the biased liberal media, against Israeli artists boycotting the settlements, against the illegal African immigrants who cross the Israeli border in search of shelter and work—to the pinnacle of Israeli politics.
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When in the course of human events, a great civilization commits suicide, a decent respect to the welfare of ourselves and our posterity requires that we should investigate its causes. And there indeed significant differences among cultures, and what the results may imply for immigration policy?
First, a word about the modern cult of multiculturalism, one of numerous manifestations of leftism. Multiculturalism may be defined as the following set of beliefs: 1) cultures differ from one another, but not in any meaningful way; 2) all cultures are worthy of respect and preservation, except for Western civilization, by far the worst. The contradiction of these two beliefs is no greater than their internal self-contradiction.
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While declaring his movement has ‘unconditional love’ for Israel, Rick Jacobs protests a long list of its domestic, religious and diplomatic blights
The head of America’s Reform movement on Thursday called on members of the US’s largest Jewish denomination to support Israel and combat boycott and divestment movements, while simultaneously criticizing Jerusalem’s West Bank policy and castigating a long list of the current government positions.
Speaking before a gathering of the Union for Reform Judaism in Orlando, Florida, President Rabbi Rick Jacobs said “Israel’s safety and security must remain a primary concern for our movement.” He noted that the Reform movement fielded the largest North American delegation at last month’s World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem, and said that “our unconditional love for the Jewish state was a badge of pride for us.”
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T. Belman. I see no benefit to Israel retaining these lands as part of Jerusalem. Of course these people work in Jerusalem and will have to be allowed in through check points to work. A barrier must be constructed separating the parts we don’t want from the parts we do want.
It was originally thought that these Arabs would opt for citizenship and thus cement our hold on all the annexed parts. But it didn’t work out this way. I doubt if the leaders at the time envisioned our present reality, they would never have annexed.
This will free us up to build anywhere else in remaining lands annexed to Jerusalem and will remove the uncertainly in planning for infrastructure.
Op-ed: It’s time to fix the tragic mistake made in 1967 and remove most of the 28 Palestinian villages from Jerusalem’s municipal area, thereby returning 200,000- 250,000 of the city’s Palestinian residents to the West Bank.
Politicians from most Zionist parties swear nearly every day that “Jerusalem is united. The city joined together will never be divided.”
In their foolishness, ignorance and political fear, they are ignoring – knowingly or unknowingly – the known truth: The vast majority of what are called today “the East Jerusalem neighborhoods” were never part of the city in any historical era, so there is no justification for them being part of Israel’s capital today.
The 28 villages were annexed to Jerusalem in a strange process after the Six-Day War. With the thrust of a loss of judgment, the Palestinians became one-quarter of “greater” Jerusalem’s residents. It was, undoubtedly, one of the most foolish acts in the history of Zionism, and we have been paying a heavy, bloody price for it. Israel’s capital today has more Palestinians than Zionist Jews.
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T. Belman. In all probability the increased aid will be tied to a commitment by Netanyahu to adhere to the two-state solution, the one being pushed by Obama.
Obama’s senior advisers says he will discuss with Netanyahu steps to make progress on peace talks.
President Barack Obama is expected to encourage Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to take steps to prevent Israel and the Palestinians from moving toward a “one-state solution” during their meeting at the White House next Monday, the president’s senior advisers said at a press briefing Thursday night, according to Haaretz.
The president’s senior adviser on the Middle East, Rob Malley, said at the briefing that Obama reached the conclusion that in his time left in office the Israelis and the Palestinians will not be able to reach a peace treaty and it’s doubtful that they will be able to resume direct talks on a permanent agreement.
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What is at hand is less a clash of weapons and more a clash of wit & will; the side that will prevail is the side whose political vision is sharpest and whose national resolve is strongest.
Yom Kippur war
A soldier waves an Israeli flag on the Golan front during the Yom Kippur war.. (photo credit:IDF SPOKESPERSON’S UNIT,JERUSALEM REPORT ARCHIVES)
I find it quite unfortunate, that very few in the general public… understand the situation we are in; for even if we destroy every current enemy militarily, the existential threat through attrition will not diminish. Likewise, the tools necessary for opposing (and hopefully reversing) that threat are different [from] what Israelis are used to… A country that offers no safety to its citizens inside its own borders, a people that have no conviction in holding onto their own ancestral lands, cannot possibly claim to have a certain future.
– Facebook comment, from “Citizen Morgan,” on last week’s column.
This insightful observation by “Citizen Morgan” encapsulates quite succinctly much of what I laid out in last week’s column.
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T. Belman. Shavit argues that when Israel insists on the settlement enterprise it angers Obama and 80% of young American Jews who worship Obama. Furthermore he argues when Israel allows the orthodox to exclude the Reform, Conservative and Reconstruction movements, she is further alienating Jews aligned with them.
In other words, he argues that Israel should not stick to her guns literally or figuratively but rather should adopt policies that liberal Jews can identify with.
Not for a second would I change the settlement enterprise but I am open to discussion about making a little room for the other movements.
Unconsciously and unintentionally, the right has become a serious threat to the future of Diaspora Jewry.
DURHAM, North Carolina — The common assumption is that the Israeli left represents the democratic foundation of our lives, while the Israeli right represents the Jewish foundation. That’s inaccurate. Often the left is not a democratic left; it has a hard time respecting the sovereign decision of the majority and tries to aggressively impose its will on the majority. At the same time, the right isn’t always a Jewish right. Its absolute devotion to the Land of Israel leads it to alienate large parts of the people of Israel and to endanger the State of Israel.
But in recent years the relationship between the Israeli right and the Jewish people has reached a state of crisis. Unconsciously and unintentionally, the right has become a serious threat to the future of Diaspora Jewry.
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By Dave Majumdar, THE NATIONAL INTEREST
The United States has built many great fighters over the years. The P-51 Mustang, the F4U Corsair, F-86 Sabre, F-15 Eagle, F-16 Fighting Falcon and the F-22 are among the best warplanes this country has ever produced. This article is not about those machines.
There have been plenty of times when American ingenuity has fallen flat on its face. This article is about the dregs of U.S. warplane designs—the worst of the worst. But from each of these failures, we can learn something and make sure it never happens again. It’s only a failure of you don’t learn something from it.
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