Security agency reports a steady rise in West Bank terrorism, even as Hamas’s key overseas terror chief plans for the long term

By AVI ISSACHAROF, TOI

Palestinian supporters of the Hamas movement attend a rally prior to the student council elections at Birzeit University, on the outskirts of the city of Ramallah, Tuesday, May 6, 2014.

The Palestinian terrorism of 2015 looks very different from the kind that Israel suffered during the first years of the Second Intifada. The weapons are improvised, there are no “wanted men” whom Israel is seeking for orchestrating the attacks; indeed, there is often no organizational support. But the effort to perpetrate terror attacks against Israeli targets is intensifying.

According to the Shin Bet’s own statistics, Israeli security forces have prevented 17 suicide attacks so far this year — that’s 17 in just seven months. This figure does not include attacks prevented by the Palestinian Authority, which has dismantled several cells that planned such attacks.
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T. Belman. The Obama administration has been pushing for the removal of the blockade for years. I wouldn’t be surprises that they are behind this. Unfortunately this article makes no mention of Israel’s demands in exchange. A 7 year ceasefire is of little value if Hamas doesn’t agree to demilitarize and to allow Israel inspections. Such a deal would be no different from the Iran Deal.

This article is also silent on the joint Israel/Egypt fight against Hamas.

By Elhanan Miller, TOI

A leading Arab daily reported on Thursday that Israel has agreed to “entirely” remove its blockade on the Gaza Strip and establish a naval passageway between the Hamas-controlled territory and Cyprus, in return for a long-term ceasefire lasting seven to 10 years.

Quoting “trusted Palestinian sources,” the London-based al-Hayat said that the agreement was reached through indirect negotiations conducted by outgoing Quartet representative to the Middle East Tony Blair, a former British prime minister. According to the report, Israel has rejected a Qatari offer to fund a new Israeli airport in return for the reopening of an international airport in Gaza.
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By Caroline Glick, JPOST

The US has striven to achieve peaceable relations between the states of the Middle East for nearly 70 years. Yet today, US government is disparaging the burgeoning strategic ties between the Sunni Arab states and Israel.

In a briefing to a delegation of visiting Israeli diplomatic correspondents in Washington last week, a senior Obama administration official sneered that the only noticeable shift in Israel-Arab relations in recent years is that the current Egyptian government has been coordinating security issues “more closely” with Jerusalem than the previous one did.

“But we have yet to see that change materialize in the Gulf.”
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T. Belman. Israel sounds very weak in their confrontation with the EU. We should not be contacting them before we demolish. They should contact us before they build. The EU is entitled to their opinion re humanitarian law but they are not entitled to act on it. They have no right to intercede.

IDF West Bank chief Yoav Mordechai: There is a war over Area C • EU says it’s offering humanitarian aid

By Tova Lazaroff, JPOST

The Foreign Ministry has warned European governments against flouting Israeli law by funding illegal Palestinian building in Area C of the West Bank and has already razed such structures.

“We bring this issue up in almost every conversation we have with the Europeans,” said Aviv Shir-On, Deputy Director General for European Affairs in the Foreign Ministry.
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By Ehud Yaari, AMERICAN INTEREST

The mullahs seem dead serious about wanting to destroy Israel, but exactly how they plan to go about it remains studiously cryptic.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has been committed for the past 36 years to a doctrine aimed at wiping Israel off the map. Statements to this effect still pour out of Tehran almost daily. President Hassan Rouhani has somewhat softened his predecessor’s language, but does not refrain from expressing his loyalty to this objective. All rival factions within the regime, and many outside too, agree that the destruction of the Jewish State constitutes an important tenet of their devotion to Islam, reflecting a deep ideological conviction in the indispensability of annihilating the “Zionist entity.”
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United with Israel

Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan charges that Obama knowingly made a bad deal with Iran, which is now threatening the region and, possibly, global stability. 

A former Saudi ambassador to the US charged that the nuclear deal with Iran is deemed to fail and is even more dangerous than that signed with North Korea in 2003, which was a complete blunder.
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Report: Schumer Not Lobbying Senators against Iran Deal

He is “not lobbying his colleagues to vote with him against the agreement when the Senate takes up a “resolution of disapproval” in September, several undecided senators told Politico.

He explains this by saying everyone must decide for themselves.

To me this is nonsense.

Clifford May wrote an Open letter to Senator Schumer in which he wrote,
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T. Belman. Ettinger is right to point out liberal hypocrisy. Having said that I am not about to support authentic Judaism. Nor do I support violence to achieve it. I do not think that people should be detained because of their beliefs. Nor do I think that a political party that advocates for authentic Judaism should be banned from the Knesset. Freedom of speech, yes. Incitement to violence, no.

The following article was Meir Ettinger’s most recent blog post. It was written just before he was arrested and it was posted on August 4th on Hakol Hayehudi in Hebrew, once he was already in jail. Some of Meir’s blog posts have been cited in the media as part of the evidence against him. Here we present one of Meir’s posts and allow the readers to judge for themselves whether it is grounds for administrative detention.

Did Moti Yogev burn the house in Duma?

By MEIR ETTINGER, HaKol HaYehudi, AUGUST 11, 2015

This past week we’ve witnessed an all out attack by the media on Jewish terror. Representatives of the state of all stripes and sizes have condemned these recent attacks. Yet beyond condemning the attacks, they have really been assaulting Jewish values as a whole while hiding behind the guise of condemning violence or murder.

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With a recalcitrant state conversion program and a growing class of ‘religionless’ FSU immigrants, a group of respected national Zionist rabbis are promoting conversion ‘as it should be’

BY AMANDA BORSCHEL-DAN, TOI

Convert ‘Katya’ and her daughter sit before the independent Giyur Ka’halacha conversion court, led by Rabbi Nahum Rabinovitch (center) on Monday, August 10, 2015. (courtesy)

Katya was 18 before she learned she wasn’t considered Jewish in Israel. Born in Minsk in 1985, she was raised in the Jewish community and remembers when her house was a secret base for learning Hebrew, something strictly forbidden during Belarus’s Soviet period.
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T. Belman. It is extremely important to create a path for the children of those Jews who are not halachic Jews who came to israel under the law of return, to be recognized as Jews. Similarly any Jew converted by Reform rabbis in America who makes aliya, should similarly be recognized as Jews. For sure their children should. A solution must be found. This new conversion law is the first step.

Op-ed: A group of great Torah scholars is creating a remedy for the 130,000 boys and girls, young men and women who have felt Jewish all their lives, and for all those who insist on seeing Israel as a Jewish state and not just as a religious state.

Elazar Stern, YNET NEWS

The Chief Rabbinate – or its political patrons, to be more precise – has used Judaism to advance narrow sectorial goals and has turned it from Judaism which brings people closer together to Judaism which divides and drives people away.

A chief rabbinate is not a halachic institution. Throughout the generations, conversions were performed by both sages of the House of Shammai and sages of the House of Hillel. Both were accepted by the people of Israel.

Conversion Revolt
Leading rabbis set up alternative conversion system / Kobi Nachshoni
Senior Religious Zionism rabbis team up to establish network of courts which will work to convert non-Jewish immigrants from former Soviet Union, hoping public pressure will lead State to change its policy and recognize these conversions.
Full story

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By Padraig O’Malley, BOSTON GLOBE

One year has passed since the Gaza war between Hamas and Israel came to an end. An uneasy peace prevails. The 2014 war, however, changed the calculus of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In retrospect, it was the final nail in the coffin of a two-state solution.

During the war, the Israeli public called for the demilitarization of Hamas — for the IDF to destroy Hamas’s military brigades and force it to decommission its arms. That didn’t happen. If the IDF had tried, it would have been met with pitiless person-to-person combat and house-to-house searches, making the actual 2014 conflict look like children playing a toy war.
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According to Ibrahim Shahade Sha’ar – accused of terrorist activity – told interrogators that Iran has been transferring money, supplying military equipment and training members of Hamas.

By Yossi Melman, JPOST

The most interesting revelation in the Shin Bet security agency’s Tuesday statement about an arrested and interrogated Hamas operative deals with the ties between the Islamist movement and Iran.

According to the statement, Ibrahim Shahade Sha’ar – accused of terrorist activity – told interrogators that Iran has been transferring money, supplying military equipment and training members of Hamas.

This was already known, but Sha’ar revealed that among the equipment provided was electronic gear to distort frequencies, aimed at destructing communication between drones and their operators, causing them to crash.
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Malki dubbed it the “worst form of terrorism” and said that the PA is working towards convincing the US to add settler groups to the list of terror organizations.

By KHALED ABU TOAMEH, JPOST

The PA is planning to present a new resolution to the UN Security Council calling for ending Israeli “occupation” and providing international protection for the Palestinians, PA Foreign Minister Riad Malki announced on Tuesday.

“The actions of the Israeli government show that it has no intention to end occupation,” said Malki

“Nor is it prepared to end settlement activities or put an end to the terror of settlers. On the contrary, the Israeli government is helping, inciting and protecting settlers who commit crimes.”
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Commemorating the 75th Memorial of Ze’ev Jabotinsky: Ronn Torossian

http://www.algemeiner.com/2015/08/09/commemorating-the-75th-memorial-of-zeev-jabotinsky/

Below is a speech I delivered at the Fifth Avenue Synagogue in New York City to commemorate the 75th annual memorial for Ze’ev Jabotinsky on August 4, 2015.

* * *

Close your eyes – and picture Ze’ev Jabotinsky urging the Jews in Europe to leave in the days before the Holocaust.

Picture the days before the State of Israel, when the Irgun forced the British to leave the land.

Picture the one-armed hero Joseph Trumpeldor, who fought at Tel Hai in 1920 – dying with the words on his lips “Never mind, it is good to die for our country.”

Picture the boys of Betar who formed Plugat Hakotel and protected Jews who visited the Western Wall when Jews needed protection going there.
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Washington asks a judge presiding over terror victims’ compensation case to reduce money paid to Israelis injured during Second Intifada.

By Tova Devorin, INN

The Obama administration has asked a judge Monday to “carefully consider” the size of the bond demanded from the Palestinian Authority (PA) for its role orchestrating years of terror attacks against Israelis and Jews – directly interfering in a US court case.

In February, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) – the terror groupbehind the PA – was found liable to pay $218.5 million to victims of terror, a figure that was set to be tripled to $655.5 million according to the anti-terrorism laws under which the case was brought.
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By Evelyn Gordon,

Last summer’s war in Gaza ended with most Palestinians gleefully proclaiming a smashing victory and most Israelis disgruntled at how little the war achieved. Just shy of one year later, however, a truer picture has emerged: Hamas, at least, is under no illusions about who won and who lost. In fact, according to two separate reports last week, the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas’s full name) recently admitted that it can’t afford another bout of “resistance” like that anytime soon.

The London-based Arabic daily Al-Hayat quoted sources in Gaza as saying another war is inconceivable unless Hamas acquires anti-aircraft missiles. And while the sources neglected to say so, that isn’t likely to happen anytime soon thanks to Egypt’s crackdown on arms smuggling from Sinai into Gaza.
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EU leaders still unwilling to secure borders

By Vigeta Uniyal,   LEGAL INSURRECTION

The migrant crisis in Europe has now reached historic proportions. Unwilling to secure EU’s borders and coastline, the European leaders have surrounded their foreign policy to human traffickers and people smugglers. Among all the EU member states, Greece has been worst hit by the influx of migrants on its shores. According to United Nation’s figures, the number of refugees entering into Greece has gone up a whopping 750 percent compared to last year.
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Over 700 students from all over Europe participated in the debating competition where the Israeli team was declared the ESL champions.

By HAYAH GOLDLIST-EICHLER, JPOST

Stav Singer and Iddan Golumb, a pair of debaters from Tel Aviv University, brought home a gold trophy from the European Universities Debating Championship that took place in Vienna over the past week.

More than 700 students from all over Europe participated in the debating competition, vying for prizes in two language categories – English as a first language (EFL) and English as a second language (ESL). Singer and Golomb were declared champions in the latter category.
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