I fully support this move. Remember Aramaic was the spoken language in Judea 2000 years ago. The Arameans predate the Muslims in the area by 700 years. This sends a very strong message to the Muslims. Ted Belman

“It is a historic decision … proof that Israel protects its citizens and identity of its minorities, unlike all the Arab nations around us,” Aramean-Christian community leader says • Interior minister instructs Population Authority to act accordingly.

By Yori Yalon, ISRAEL HAYOM

Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar on Tuesday approved having “Aramean” as a nationality on Israeli identification cards, a move warmly received by Israel’s Christian-Aramean community.

In a letter written to Population Authority chairman Amnon Ben-Ami, Sa’ar said that after receiving an appeal on the matter, he heard the recommendations of three experts from three different academic institutions, who said the Supreme Court had found that “the Aramean nationality clearly exists, and has the conditions required to prove its existence, including historical heritage, religion, culture, origin and common language.”
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Winning the war against Islamic State would only be the beginning.

By Mordechai Kedar, INN

The really significant battle is not in Iraq or Syria, where what is happening is just the introduction that follows the preface acted out in Afghanistan 13 years ago. The real war, far-ranging and dangerous, will develop once “Islamic State” is eliminated and the vengeance resulting from that success begins to be exacted in America, Europe, Australia and every place where man-made laws are in force. Its goal will be to impose the law of Allah as it is spelled out in Islamic sources.

In recent weeks, the media are filled with reports on the international preparations for a war against the “Islamic State” and an International Conference was even convened in Paris in an attempt to enlist the cooperation of as many nations as possible in waging it.
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by Caroline Glick
September 16, 2014

By Giulio Meotti, INN

“The fate of the Jews of France is like the canary in the coal mine: it announces a much larger conflagration”.

This is what a great French intellectual told me this week.He is the historian of the Sorbonne University, Georges Bensoussan, the director of the Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris and of its Revue d’Histoire.

In the first eight months of 2014, France is leading the list of the world’s countries whose Jewish population is emigrating to Israel, with 5,000 Jews who chose to abandon the République to live in the Jewish State.

“It is a real novelty, a real turning point in the history of the aliyah of Jews from France since 1945”, says Bensoussan. “It is one per cent of the entire Jewish population of France. The French aliyah will be two and half times larger than the aliyah from the United States for a community ten times smaller”.
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By Ted Belman

Tablet just published an article under the title State Department Spokesperson: Gaza Strikes Are War Crimes and asks, “But are U.S. drone attacks on Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia any different??

My take away is that the various “human rights” organizations are constantly criticizing Israel, and to a lesser extent the US, for alleged war crimes. It’s like they are picking on the good guys and ignoring the real war crimes by islamists or Assad. And the fact that Assad has killed over 200,000 makes no difference in their targets,

By Ted Belman

In the dying years of the Bush Jr presidency, the US instituted a dramatically different policy the foreign policy aimed at the containment of Iran.

In 1907, Seymor Hersh reported in depth on it in Redirections published by The New Yorker, calling it a “strategic shift”.

In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The “redirection,” as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. [..]

One contradictory aspect of the new strategy is that, in Iraq, most of the insurgent violence directed at the American military has come from Sunni forces, and not from Shiites. But, from the Administration’s perspective, the most profound—and unintended—strategic consequence of the Iraq war is the empowerment of Iran.

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By AHMAD SAMIH KHALIDI, NYT

LONDON — LAST week, President Obama virtually declared war on the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. But it is hard to reconcile the seemingly urgent need to confront the threat posed by this organization with the chosen means of doing so.

By opting to support the “moderate” Syrian opposition and running the risk of an open confrontation with President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, the West appears to be primarily appeasing Arab Persian Gulf allies that have turned the overthrow of Mr. Assad into a policy fetish that runs against any rational calculation of how to defeat Islamist terrorism. Read more…

Philanthropist Kenneth Abramowitz says UN has been taken over by dictatorships and should be closed.

By Gil Ronen

Philanthropist Kenneth S. Abramowitz has issued a call to “save western civilization from itself” by shutting down the United Nations, among other measures.

As part of a general effort to fight the false narratives and terminology propagated by the left wing, Abramowitz says that the UN should no longer be portrayed as an important advance for world peace. In fact, he states, it has been taken over by dictatorships and should be closed.

Abramowitz says that the rational citizens of the West must cease using the enemy’s terms – like “Second Intifada” for the terror war unleashed against Israel in the wake of the Oslo Accords, or “occupation” and “West Bank” for the Jewish liberation of the Biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria.
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https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=881491725194515

This is the clearest statement that I have read or heard confirming that ISIS is Islamic.

And further that Islam is the problem and must be identified as the enemy.

By Jeff Dunitz, THE LID

At the end of Sunday’s Tom Harkin Iowa Steak Fry, Bill Clinton was recorded bashing Bibi Netanyahu, agreeing that the prime minister was “not the man” to make peace with Palestinians. At the very end of the 3 Hour 15 minute C-Span coverage, the former President had an impromptu conversation with pro-Palestinian activists.

If we don’t force him to have peace, we won’t have peace … Netanyahu is not the guy,” the activist told the ex-president. I agree with that,” Bubba clearly replied, apparently unaware his remarks were being recorded. Then he bragged about getting Ehud Barack to give Arafat everything he wanted including Jerusalem.

Bill Clinton’s anti-Bibi comments were in line with his wife’s actions as Secretary of State who presided over the foreign policy of the most anti-Israel administration in history. Actually with the possible exception of the time from her first campaign New York’s Senate seat in 2000 to her resignation from the Senate to become Secretary of State in January 2009, except for the time she needed New York’s Jewish voting bloc, Hillary Clinton has never been pro-Israel. It seems that after years of getting rich from Arab money…husband Bill agrees.

by Pilar Rahola 

Why don’t we see demonstrations against Islamic dictatorships in London, Paris , Barcelona?

Or demonstrations against the Burmese dictatorship?

Why aren’t there demonstrations against the enslavement of millions of women who live without any legal protection?

Why aren’t there demonstrations against the use of children as human bombs where there is conflict with Islam?

Why has there been no leadership in support of the victims of Islamic dictatorship in Sudan ?

Why is there never any outrage against the acts of terrorism committed against Israel ?

Why is there no outcry by the European left against Islamic fanaticism?
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Arutz Sheva

In what may establish a groundbreaking legal precedence, the United States Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear the case of American biologist Alan Bauer, who filed suit in 2011 in the Federal court in Manhattan seeking to impound 14 vessels which were outfitted to be used in the 2010 Mavi Marmara Flotilla – which set off from Turkey in order to break the Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip – on the grounds that the funding for the ships was raised illegally in the United States.

Dr. Bauer, who was seriously wounded with his son in a 2002 Palestinian suicide bombing attack in Jerusalem, explained that “when the US Chief Prosecutor refused to pursue the matter on his own, I decided to invoke my right as an American citizen to seize the flotilla.”
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By David Goldman, PJ MEDIA

I had to read the penultimate paragraph of Ross Douthat’s New York Times piece on “friendless Middle East Christians” before the enormity of it sunk in. Douthat wrote:

If Cruz felt that he couldn’t address an audience of persecuted Arab Christians without including a florid, “no greater ally” preamble about Israel, he could have withdrawn from the event. The fact that he preferred to do it this way says a lot–none of it good–about his priorities and instincts.

In so many words: Jew-hatred among Middle Eastern Christians is so rampant that it should be ignored in the interests of saving this oppressed minority. Never mind that it is impossible to conceive of any strategic configuration on the Middle East that might help Middle Eastern Christians without including Israel; never mind that Israel’s supporters in the United States are among the first to urge America to act on their behalf; and, above all, never mind that Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Christians can practice their religion in security and safety, and that Israel is the only country in the Middle East with a growing Christian population.

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ISRAEL HAYOM

Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon has ordered IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz to deal with the soldiers who urged insubordination in the Intelligence Corps’ Unit 8200 “as if they were common criminals,” Channel 10 reported Monday.

Speaking at the Fourth International Cybersecurity Conference at Tel Aviv University, Ya’alon said, “Using military service, be it by regular troops or the reserves, for political purposes in unacceptable. It is a felony.”

He deemed the letter published Friday by a group of 43 soldiers as “politically motivated disobedience. I will not allow the military to be used this way,” he said.

Meanwhile, 10 times as many soldiers and commanders from the IDF Intelligence Corps’ Unit 8200 have signed a letter denouncing the claims made by the soldiers, who stated they would refuse to continue serving in their current roles.
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By Ted Belman

I have long been an advocate of unilateral action reasoning that the agreements we get from Palestinians aren’t worth the paper they are written on and the cost of getting such worthless agreements is much too high.

Amos Yadlin Amos is the director of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv. He formerly served as chief of military intelligence for the Israel Defense Forces. He makes The Case for Unilateral Withdrawal

He proposes that:

A generous offer should be made to Palestinians, the outlines of which are by now quite familiar, having been repeatedly put on the table by successive Israeli prime ministers. If, once again, the offer is rejected out of hand or meets with impossible and non-negotiable demands like the wholesale return of Palestinian refugees and their descendants, or sovereignty over the Temple Mount, Israel on its own should continue to pursue a two-state reality.

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By Lee Kaplan, INN

In dealing with US supporters of Israel, it is a fact that unless one talks about the mythical peace of a “two-state-solution” for the Israel-Arab conflict, even pro-Israel Jews will attack, or “shoot the messenger “.

After having the last twelve years doing analysis and writing about the Middle East and US foreign policy vis-à-vis Israel as well as anti-Semitism, I have looked into the future  and it’s not bright. We can sing Bashanah Habaah (“Things will improve next year” – a popular Israeli song, ed.) but events are not going to get any better unless Israel changes its way of dealing with the Arabs, the Iranians and the United States.

In 2006, I wrote about all the hoopla going on about the Iranians getting the bomb and talk of Israel and the US attacking Iran to stop this. I said it would never happen and I was right.

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Reid says the failure to condemn Hamas as one would condemn the Islamic State is “stunning hypocrisy.”

By Ben Ariel, INN

In a recent speech, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) condemned Hamas and noted that it was no better than the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) group.

Reid’s speech to the Senate was made last Thursday but excerpts were published Sunday by JNS.

According to the report, Reid affirmed U.S. support for Israel, calling the failure to condemn Hamas as one would condemn the Islamic State group “stunning hypocrisy.”

“Hamas and IS are both vicious, corrupt, hateful, evil groups. And both are extreme. Yet, for some reason, Hamas’ brutality doesn’t elicit the same horror from the international community as ISIS. How can that be?” Reid wondered as he addressed the Senate.

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What follows is a damning letter to the Editor of Jewish Journal for printing false accusations against Israel. It was written by an expert on such matters whom I know. Ted Belman

I don’t want to play one-man truth squad for the Jewish Journal. HOWEVER, RESPONSIBLE EDITORSHIP WOULD REQUIRE YOU TO REVIEW THE FACTS BEFORE PLACING UNSUBSTANTIATED ACCUSATIONS AGAINST THE IDF BEFORE YOU READERS. If the past is an example, then 90% or more of the accusations will prove to be false. By that time the rotten taint that you helped spread will be accepted as fact by your readers.

Responding to the article: “The first is the horrific July 16 killing of four Palestinian boys, all cousins, playing on the beach in Gaza, right beneath a hotel where dozens of journalists were staying…..” Previously, the Israelis shelled that beach because Hamas was firing from close to the hotel using it as a shield. When figures were seen on the beach near where the original firing had taken place, it is legitimate to assume that they are the firing crew preparing for a 2nd mission. No one asked why any parent would allow his child to play in an area that had previously been used to launch rockets from.
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