Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman says U.S. will be ‘watching very closely’ what happens on Palestinian issue once new Israeli government formed.
U.S. Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman on Monday warned Jewish leaders that if the new Israeli government does not demonstrate its commitment to the two-state solution, the U.S. will have a difficult time continuing to assist its efforts to halt international initiatives on the Palestinian issue at the United Nations.
Sherman told a conference of the Reform Movement that the U.S. has always supported Israel and given its diplomatic backing in the international arena, even when it meant standing alone against the rest of the world.
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Passover is one of the three pilgrimage festivals of Judaism. In ancient times, during the seven days of the holiday, Jews came to the Holy Temple to make sacrifices. Today, there is no Holy Temple, but Israelis and Jews from the Diaspora fill the city with thousands of visitors to enjoy the holiday atmosphere.
Steve Kramer, ISRAEL SEEN
In the 26 Apr 2015 edition of Israel’s good news, the highlights include:
T. Belman. This is a very complex situation. In last summer’s war Israel rejected the Obama plan to have Qatari work toward a ceasefire with Israel. Now it appears that Israel is doing just that. This article suggests that negotiations are intend to avoid a war this summer. Does any one think that should Israel attack Iran, that Hamas will maintain the ceasefire. Why would Iran, who uses Hamas as a proxy, allow this to happen? Just when Hamas is gaining in popularity in J&S, why would Israel strengthen them. Why would Israel talk about a port in Gaza. How would she stop contraband from entering. Which brings up another question. Israel tells us that Hamas is quickly replenishing its arsenal. Given the destruction of most of the tunnels, and Israel’s control of the border and the sea blockade, how is this happening? It would appear that Israel’s chooses to normalize with Hamas, even if only for 5 or 10 years, rather than to wiping them out in the next war.
Analysis: For several weeks now, official representatives of the Israeli government and defense establishment have been holding a real dialogue with the Islamic terrorist group in a bid to reach a long-term calm on the Gaza border.
The rocket fired at the Gaza vicinity area at the end of Independence Day placed the spotlight back on a somewhat forgotten front. But this spotlight reveals a different reality: No escalation, no tension – but rather the opposite. The Israeli airstrike in response to the rocket fire was mainly aimed at hitting the headlines.
It turns out that for several weeks now, official representatives of the Israeli government, members of the defense establishment, have been holding a real dialogue with Hamas – partly direct, partly indirect – in a bid to reach a long-term calm between the sides.
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By Ted Belman
David Horwitz the founder of Front Page Mag and the Freedom Center, just wrote on article and led a panel discussion on Jew Hatred on Campus.
Most of us are familiar with the defamation of Israel on campus and the intimidation of Jews students silencing of pro-Israel speakers on Campus. But we are less familiar with what’s behind it.
Horowitz explains that:
It’s because our campuses are the political base of the left, faculty and students, and therefore they are supporters of the jihadist terror. The campuses are probably as important as a domestic supporter of Islamic terror as the mosques. There are two organizations on campus that are spearheading this epidemic of anti-Semitism, which is focused on attacks on Israel. You’re all familiar with it, but Ami Horowitz shows you what people think on campuses.
The Middle East is on the brink of its fourth war (after Syria, Iraq and Yemen). DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources report that Egypt is massing large-scale ground and air forces in the Western Desert along the Libyan border, in preparation for a military campaign to capture eastern Libya – Cyrenaica – from the Islamist State of Syria and Iraq – ISIS – occupation.
The substantial naval and marine forces assembling at Egypt’s Mediterranean ports indicate the possible launching of the offensive by dropping Egyptian marines on the Libyan coast around Derna (pop: 100,000), which ISIS has made its provincial capital. They may be accompanied by simultaneous landings of paratroops from the air.
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T. Belman. Unfortunately, AIPAC is a Jewish organization and most Jews are Democrats. Furthermore most Jews support Obama rather than Israel or Netanyahu. They hate the settlements and support the ’67 lines plus swaps and the two-state solution. I totally reject this deal as it paves the way to the bomb as Netanyahu phrased it. Why is AIPAC settling for such a bill? Republicans should stop tinkering with the bill and reject it outright.
By Eli Lake & Josh Rogin, BLOOMBERG VIEW
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has been quietly pressing Republicans to oppose a series of pro-Israel amendments that lawmakers will try to add to the Iran legislation coming up for debate on the Senate floor next week.
At issue is the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, a bipartisan bill authored by the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Corker. Earlier this month, the bill was voted out of Corker’s committee unanimously, with strong support from Democrats and a promise from President Barack Obama not to veto the bill if it reached his desk without amendments that he said could imperil the Iran nuclear negotiations.
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T. Belman. The youths seem to becoming westernized. In another 10 years perhaps contemplating Glick’s plan will be more manageable. Even so do we want another 1.8 million Arab citizens? I wonder how the numbers are among the battlefront states of Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Egypt.
Latest annual Arab youth survey has found that common attitudes of the past decade are changing drastically.
A new survey of Arab youth promises to be the clearest insight yet into public attitudes in the Middle East today. The Seventh Annual ASDA’A Burson-Marsteller Arab Youth Survey found that young Arabs are opening up to new ideas and are changing their attitudes towards the West.
The pollsters questioned 3,500 Arabs between the ages of 18 and 24. The respondents came from 16 different countries and were split evenly between men and women.
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How can there be peace and reconciliation without acknowledging fundamental historical and legal facts?
By Salomon Benzimra, P. Eng., INN
Ninety five years ago, prime ministers, ambassadors and other dignitaries from Europe and America gathered in the Italian Riviera. Journalists from around the world reported on the upcoming San Remo Peace Conference and the great expectations the internationalcommunity placed on this event, just a year after the Paris Peace Conference had settled the political map of Europe at the end of World War One.
On Sunday, April 25, 1920, after hectic deliberation, the Supreme Council of the Allied Powers (Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan and the U.S. acting as an observer) adopted the San Remo Resolution — a 500 word document which defined the future political landscape of the Middle East out of the defunct Ottoman Empire.
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Editor’s Note…
One of the internet’s best independent analysts, Thomas Wictor, who specializes in Open Source Battle damage assessment, believes this may be the case: The Israelis and\or their Saudi allies have managed to come up with a roughly comparable substitute to the American MOAB Bunker Buster and have managed to convert a Boeing 707 tanker to a weaponized platform to carry such bombs. The beta test was carried out on the Iranian missile base in Yemen during the recent Saudi operation Decisive storm against the Iranian proxies (Houthis) and their IRGC handlers. If he is correct, the Israeli-Sunni coalition now has a feasible military option against the Iranian nuclear facilities.
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France’s Prime Minister Manuel Valls has announced an action plan that will make the battle against hatred into “a great national cause,” a plan that will include awareness programs and enhanced punishment for online hate speech, with stiffer prison sentences for hatred-based crimes. The superficially admirable plan springs from honest outrage on Valls’ part — but outrage that has undergone a disquieting sea change since it was first expressed.
After the Charlie Hebdo and kosher-supermarket massacres in January, you may recall, Valls delivered a passionate, widely circulated speech on anti-Semitism in France, declaring the problem of Jewish flight so serious the French Republic must be judged a failure if Jews left en masse. Then, Valls pulled no punches regarding the source of the crisis: “We are at war with terrorism, jihadism and Islamist radicalism.”
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Today, the United States… has reached a historic understanding with Iran… I am convinced that… it will make our country, our allies, and our world safer. This has been a long time coming.
– Barack Obama, April 2, 2015
… here is the paper which bears his [Adolf Hitler’s] name upon it as well as mine… We regard the agreement signed last night… as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again… I believe it is peace for our time.
– Neville Chamberlain, September 30, 1938
As more and more details emerge, one thing is chillingly clear. Only the dogmatic, the delusional or the disingenuous could deny the deadly dangers that pursuit of Barack Obama’s Iran initiative will almost certainly usher in.
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The goal that informed all previous governments in the past – that Israel’s top goal should be to sign peace deals with our neighbors – is irrelevant
In testimony last week before the House committee in charge of State Department funding, US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power acknowledged that the Obama administration intends to abandon the US’s 50 year policy of supporting Israel at the United Nations.
After going through the tired motions of pledging support for Israel, “when it matters,” Power refused to rule out the possibility that the US would support anti-Israel resolutions in the UN Security Council to limit Israeli sovereignty and control to the lands within the 1949 armistice lines – lines that are indefensible.
Such a move will be taken, she indicated, in order to midwife the establishment of a terrorist-supporting Palestinian state whose supposedly moderate leadership does not recognize Israel’s right to exist, calls daily for its destruction, and uses the UN to delegitimize the Jewish state.
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Because its ragtag army stood its ground, despite the worst of odds, Israel is today accused of the crime of surviving and is portrayed as a menacing ogre for having dared to come into the world rather than surrender.
‘It is with great joy that I hereby close the Mandatory Police record book,” wrote an anonymous duty officer at Tel Aviv’s central precinct precisely as David Ben-Gurion recited the renascent Jewish state’s Declaration of Independence.
Just below that spontaneous hand-inscribed historic annotation, appears the first criminal entry ever in sovereign Israel’s annals. It documents the capture of a thief. He stole a book, perchance pointing to preferences peculiar to the People of the Book.
Several hours later, the first ship docked in the new state. It began its journey furtively five days earlier in Marseilles when Israel was still under British rule. Its 300 young passengers were outfitted with fake IDs, forged at the Hagana “laboratory” in France.
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Many have urged the government to change its approach to Turkey’s killing of 1.5 million Armenians, but geopolitical considerations prevail
BY RAPHAEL AHREN, TOI, April 24, 2015,
Members of the Armenian community march with flags and torches on April 23, 2015, in Jerusalem’s Old City, on the eve of the 100th anniversary of the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire in 1915. (photo credit: AFP/Gali Tibbon)
Addressing the United Nations in New York on International Holocaust Remembrance Day earlier this year, President Reuven Rivlin dedicated a large chunk of his speech to the fate of the Armenian people, who were killed by the hundreds of thousands between 1915 and 1923.
Rivlin spoke of “one hundred years of hesitation and denial” and stressed that at the time, no one in the Land of Israel denied the massacre that had taken place. “The residents of Jerusalem, my parents and the members of my family, saw the Armenian refugees arriving by the thousands — starving, piteous survivors of calamity. In Jerusalem they found shelter and their descendants continue to live there to this day,” he said.
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Our differences are a matter of substance, not atmospherics
After several months of insults (chickensh*!t) and threats about re-evaluating U.S. policy, the Obama administration appears to have awakened to the fact that its feud with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has gone too far. As the New York Times reports today, the White House is making a conscious effort to play down its anger at the Israeli government, primarily by making nice with American Jewish groups. But what is sounding very much like another edition of the Jewish charm offensive that characterized administration statements about Israel during the year preceding President Obama’s reelection is not going to fix what has been broken by President Obama and his foreign-policy team. The problem is an American government that is intent on creating distance between itself and Israel, not misunderstandings rooted in a personality clash between Obama and Netanyahu. Its only purpose is to disarm Jewish groups and to persuade them to stay quiet during the impending debate about the Iran nuclear deal while still threatening Israel with diplomatic isolation over the Middle East peace process.
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Muslim students came two hours early, in sufficient numbers, to make sure they occupied all the seats.
ABOVE AND BEYOND
The only FOUR (4) Airplanes Israel had when the War of Independence (May 1948) began were smuggled in from Czech Republic. They were German Messerschmitt BF-109’s. They were assembled overnight in Tel Aviv and were never flight tested.This is a short video about their pilots. Watch it. You will not be disappointed. http://vimeo.com/54400569
