By Martin Sherman, JPOST

We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. – Winston Churchill, in first speech to the House of Commons as prime minister, May 13, 1940

A military defeat of Israel would mean the physical extinction of a large part of its population and the political elimination of the Jewish state… Nor does this reflect a historical trauma…To lose a single war is to lose everything…
– Yigal Allon, then foreign minister, in Foreign Affairs, October 1976

This is not an article for those of weak stomach. It is not for those who wish to be reassured that, in the end, things will be “okay.” It offers no glimmer of optimism, nor any comforting prospect of some happy ending.

Indeed, if the Jews are to preserve their political sovereignty, all it bodes for the foreseeable future is one of Churchillian “blood, toil, tears and sweat.”

A perfect storm brewing Read more…

In joint press conference with Jordan FM, held after meeting with Netanyahu, Jordanian king, Kerry says sides agree to take practical steps to deescalate situation, maintain status quo.

Attila Somfalvi, Itamar Eichner, YNET

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US Secretary of State John Kerry and Jordan’s King Abdullah II met Thursday evening in Amman, Jordan to discuss rising tensions in Jerusalem, and vowed to work to deescalate tensions. Meanwhile the police said entrance to the flashpoint site will be unrestricted Friday.

In a press conference held after the meeting, Kerry and Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh said all sides had agreed to take “practical steps” to deescalate the situation. Kerry also said that the sides had spoken to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who said Egypt was willing to work to help Israel and Palestinians to reach peace.

Earlier Kerry met separately with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Jordan on Thursday and spoke about the possibility to renew relations with Israel. Abdullah accused Israel of “repeated attacks” on holy sites in Jerusalem and said they must stop.

“Abbas and I discuses constructive steps – real steps… people can take to deescalate the situation and create a climate to move forward. Abbas restated his firm commitment to non-violence and made clear he would do anything possible to restore calm,” Kerry said at the press conference. Read more…

[Why not simply make it an offense to wear a mask? Then there is no defense. Unfortunately it is not so simple. All Palestinians could don masks to make it impossible to separate the trouble makers from them.  Ted Belman]

The bill says that if someone wears a mask so that he or she is unidentifiable, it is reasonable to suspect that they seek to disturb the peace.

 JPOST

Proposed legislation could allow masked demonstrators police suspect to be violent to be more easily prosecuted.

The proposal by Bayit Yehudi MKs Yoni Chetboun and Ayelet Shaked and Likud MKs Ze’ev Elkin and Yariv Levin is a response to recent riots by Arab protesters, in which police had a difficult time arresting those who wore masks.

According to current law, police can arrest those taking part in an illegal gathering that they suspect could disturb the peace, but the burden of proof is on arresting officers to provide evidence to prosecute those who are planning violent riots.

Chetboun called this situation a “revolving door, in which suspects are arrested and then freed after 48 hours without being put on trial, which makes the arrest ineffective. Police officers say their hands are tied in dealing with such gatherings.”
Read more…

By Arlene Kushner (originally posted Nov 3/14)

Our presence here in the land goes back more than 3,000 years. We prayed for millennia, while separated from the land, to be able to return.  Once we did return, our people sacrificed in order to build and protect the land.

And now, insanely, the Jew who is passionate about our rights to the land and our attachment to the land is viewed as a “radical right winger,” a troublemaker.

Come again?

The world certainly sees nationalist Jews this way:  If only these Jews would relent already, then Israel could reach an agreement with the Palestinian Arabs and there could be peace. But the fanatic and troublesome right-wingers keep getting in the way. Read more…

Jewish Business News

Toronto’s Ryerson University student union (RSU) passed a motion protecting Jewish students from anti-Semitism on campus.

Last spring, RSU voted to join the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which has since created a hostile environment on campus, especially for Jewish or pro-Israel students.

The motion calls on the Ryerson Student Union to “publicly oppose anti-Semitic actions on campus, to work with Jewish students to fight anti-Semitism and for the RSU to publish an annual report detailing all incidents of racism on campus and the actions taken by RSU.”

Meryle Kates, executive director of the Canadian region of the Israel education group StandWithUs, praised student leaders “for taking this pro-active stance, and mobilizing other students to vote, to restore a more peaceful and inclusive environment on their campus.”

Along with the anti-Semitism motion, another motion revamping RSU’s “No Islamophobia No Anti-Semitism No Racism Campaign” passed unanimously.

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird: Those who incite ‘cannot plead ignorance when terrorist attacks like today’s occur.’

By Ari Soffer, INN (Nov 11/14)

Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird

Canada’s foreign minister condemned Monday’s deadly attacks by Palestinian terrorists in which two Israelis were murdered and several others wounded.

“Canada condemns today’s brazen attacks that have claimed the lives of an Israeli woman and a member of the Israel Defense Forces,” said Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird in a statement Monday.

“These terrorist attacks come after last week’s deplorable violence where vehicles were intentionally driven into innocent bystanders,” he continued, referring to a spate of Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians.
Read more…

By Dror Eydar, ISRAEL HAYOM

Why does Lieberman legislate for Yedioth?

The disgraceful measure called the anti-Israel Hayom bill passed its first legislative hurdle Wednesday, in what was a shameful day for the Knesset. The vote will be remembered for the unholy alliance of MKs, each of whom wanted to fulfill the wishes of a thuggish media tycoon: Yedioth Ahronoth’s publisher and its most senior editor, Arnon (Noni) Mozes. MK Eitan Cabel is one of Mozes’ many underlings, they all serve their master. The violence Yedioth Ahronoth has perpetrated in the Israeli public sphere was manifested on Wednesday, when so many MKs were too scared to vote against this despicable piece of legislation.
Read more…

In rural Uganda, Conservative prayer services with an African lilt

I found this story about this community fascinating.

The Abayudaya community has grown from 300 in 1980 to over 2,000 today. Here, a group poses in front of a sukkah

David P Goldman, MID-EAST FORUM

^{Excerpted from “The Sino-American Comedy of Errors,” Asia Times, November 10, 2014.}

The implosion of America’s geopolitical position has placed risks and opportunities at China’s doorstep, to Beijing’s great surprise.

A year ago, Chinese officials privately reassured visitors that their country would “follow the lead of the dominant superpower” in matters relating to Middle East security, including Iran’s attempts to acquire nuclear weapons. For the past several decades, China has allowed the US to look out for the Persian Gulf while it increased its dependency on Persian Gulf oil. By 2020, China expects to import 70% of its oil, and most of that will come from the Gulf.

The Chinese view has changed radically during the past few months, in part due to the collapse of the Syrian and Iraqi states and the rise of Islamic State. It is hard to find a Chinese specialist who still thinks that the US can stand surely for Persian Gulf security. Opinion is divided between those who think that America is merely incompetent and those who think that America deliberately wants to destabilize the Persian Gulf.
Read more…

Revealed: Lockheed Martin plans for its new subsidiary in Israel to engage in R&D and in sales to other countries.

Exclusive interview with Tom McCorry
Amir Rapaport, ISRAEL DEFENSE NEWS

The new company incorporated and registered in Israel in the fall of 2014 is not just another company: it is the subsidiary of one of the most prominent giant corporations of the USA – Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin Israel’s CEO is Brig. Gen. (res.) Joshua (Shiki) Shani. The company’s IS&GS activities in Israel are headed by Brig. Gen. (res.) Shelly Gutman, formerly the commander of the IAF Hatzerim airbase.

But what are Lockheed Martin’s expectations and plans for their new Israeli subsidiary? Apparently, at Lockheed Martin’s headquarters in the USA they regard their new Israeli project as a strategic investment. From the first-ever interview held with Thomas E. McCorry, the coordinator of Lockheed Martin’s operations in Israel at the corporate HQ in Maryland, USA, it appears that the operations of Lockheed Martin’s local arm will not be confined to Israel alone, but would extend to numerous other markets.
Read more…

Dovid Efune, ALGEMEINER

Respected statesman and former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger told a New York audience on Tuesday that considering the widespread upheaval in the Middle East, it is a mistake for Israel to pursue a comprehensive peace deal with the Palestinians.

After describing the regional turmoil, Kissinger advised against seeking a “permanent settlement” until “the fundamental issues that I described here move to some resolution.”

The renowned diplomat said “the overall solutions will have to be discussed within the context of a solution of the various upheavals and the settling down of these upheavals.”

In the meantime, he counseled, Israel should “make contributions by the understanding it shows for the psychological and historical problems of the people with which it lives in the same territory. But things cannot be accomplished in a final manner in a single negotiation.”
Read more…

Jack Engelhard, INN

Well this much is for sure. The play-acting is no more and Mahmoud Abbas isn’t even pretending to be a “peace partner.” He’s gone rogue.

These days this Fatah warlord openly calls for the murder of any and all Israelis and the Jewish blood that’s been spilled from Jerusalem onward — men, women, 3-month-old babies – places him at the heart and center of the reign of terror now being inflicted upon the Jewish State.

His PA (Palestinian Authority) gangs heed him word for word when he demands Jewish blood “by any means.”
Read more…

Already propped up by rich sponsors, the Hashemite Kingdom has been dealing with the global financial crisis and a war that cut off its preferred trade route.

Danny Rubinstein,YNET

The 20th anniversary of the signing of the peace treaty between Jordan and Israel, October 26, saw the Hashemite Kingdom coping with a severe economic crisis and a no-less-difficult geopolitical challenge, each of which was feeding the other. Given this precarious position, Amman fears a mass migration of Palestinian refugees, which could deal a fatal blow to the regime.

A recent article in the Dayan Center’s Iqtisadi journal, which covers the Middle East economies, Dan Poniachik wrote that annual growth in Jordan, which stood at 7.9% between 2005 and 2008, fell to 2.5% in 2010-2013.

The global crisis of 2008 hit Jordan too. Foreign investment declined substantially, while inflation increased and unemployment grew, especially among the young. But the main cause for this economic downturn is the turmoil in Iraq and Syria. Jordan has in recent years taken in nearly 2 million refugees from these countries – an unbearable burden on the country’s 6.5 million citizens.
Read more…

Jerusalem refuses to cooperate with members of the Schabas Commission, appointed to investigate conduct of Israel, Hamas during Operation Protective Edge.

Itamar Eichner, YNET

Israel denied entry on Wednesday evening to members of a UN commission appointed by the Human Rights Council to investigate possible war crimes committed during Operation Protective Edge.

Members of the committee, often referred to by the name of the lead investigator, Prof. William Schabas, had arrived in Amman before asking permission to enter Israel. Jerusalem refused their request and the decision led to an announcement that Israel would not cooperate with the commission.

The Schabas commission was appointed by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva to investigate alleged war crimes committed by Israel and Hamas during the heated confrontation last summer.
Read more…

JPOST

A divided Knesset approves bill targeting pro-Netanyahu newspaper in preliminary vote; MK Cabel: Paper is PM’s attack dog, trying to kill off other media; Steinitz: Bill violates free speech.

The Knesset approved a controversial bill meant to shut down the Israel Hayom in a preliminary vote Wednesday.

“This shames the Knesset,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu muttered, walking out of the vote, and was caught on the Knesset Channel’s cameras.

The legislation in question, proposed by Labor faction chairman Eitan Cabel and signed by members of every coalition party except Likud, outlaws free newspapers, requiring that the lowest-priced newspaper of the four cannot cost less than 70 percent of the cost of the second-lowest-priced paper, according to the bill.

The bill defines a free daily newspaper as one that is given out without payment six days a week, and applies only to the four newspapers with the highest circulation, whatever they may be at any given time.
Read more…

Yesterday, I posted two articles calling for death to terrorists.  A couple of leftists cancelled their subscription to my Digest.  Nice to see Daniel supporting the notion. Not that I am surprised. Ted Belman

Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog

Yesterday afternoon a young woman stood by the side of a road holding up a sign. It read “Gush Etzion”. Those two words summon up spittle-flecked rants about Zionist settlements from the anti-Israel left.

But for Dalia, it was just home. And then it wasn’t.

Dalia caught a ride to a bus stop on the way home from her job as a children’s occupational therapist. Her next stop was a shift at Yad Sarah, a volunteer organization for the elderly and disabled.

But before that could happen, a Muslim attacker did what songs, cartoons and posters distributed by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas encouraging “Car Jihad” had been telling him to do.

He ran her over with a Mazda van. Read more…

This bill provides a definition for a Foreign Agent which I find too problematic. It requires a commitment being made for foreign funding. Commitments are often understood rather than expressed. And the commitment is defined as to advance the interests of a foreign government or the interests of non-Israeli citizens. I would rather it dispense with the commitment part and apply to any NGO that gets foreign government money, directly or indirectly.

Also I object to the idea that it is enough to advance transparency. Why not make it illegal for any NGO to obtain foreign government money. Ted Belman

The bill would mandate greater transparency on the part of NGOs that are funded by foreign governments, and cancel their tax-free status

By Gil Ronen, INN

MK Ayelet Shaked (Jewish Home) told a Knesset committee Tuesday that in two weeks, she will submit a bill based on the US’s Foreign Agent Registration Law, in an effort to make it more difficult for hostile NGOs to operate inside Israel.

The bill would mandate greater transparency on the part of NGOs that are funded by foreign governments, and cancel the tax-free status they enjoy.

Two previous bills meant to make it harder for hostile leftist NGOs to operate in Israel were blocked by the same NGOs and their supporters.

The bill would create a mechanism that defines as a foreign agent a body that receives funding from a foreign state, in return for a commitment to advance that state’s interests, or the interests of people who are not Israeli citizens.
Read more…

Open Letter from a European Non-Jew to the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini

By Carla Komarin, INN

Endowed with the authority of a Top Diplomat as EU Foreign Affairs Chief, you travelled to the Holy Land. There you called to divide Jerusalem and demanded the partition of Israel.

Your words were: “I think Jerusalem can be and should be the capital of two states.” You also said: “We need a Palestinian state – that is the ultimate goal and this is the position of all the European Union.”

And then — what? What does the EU expect to happen next? After the partition? Do you expect the Palestinians will stop their incitement and all attacks against Jews once they have a state? Read more…

By Sherri Mandell

Funny how none of the articles about the murder of Dahlia Lemkus who was stabbed near Alon Shvut last night speak about Dahlia or her family, how no reporter had the curiosity to find out about her. She was killed in the afternoon so the reporters had all evening to question their contacts in Tekoa.

Instead, they practice a kind of obscurantism, restricting our knowledge of the victim. (Curious that the word obscurantism is derived from a dispute between intellectuals and the German monks who wanted to burn Jewish books, like the Talmud, in the 16th century to obscure Jewish culture and learning.) In the New York Times, the reporter tells you about the terrorist who is from Hebron, how he was in an Israeli jail for five years for a firebombing. The reporter quotes his Facebook page: “I’ll be a thorn in the gullet of the Zionist project to Judaize Jerusalem.” We learn nothing about 26 year old Dahlia, who was just getting started in life after finishing college, studying occupational therapy so that she could have a job where she could help people who were sick or infirm or disabled to live in a fuller way.
Read more…

By Michael Diamond

It has been awhile since I have sent out an email.  And yet I have read so many articles, about so many things. Unfortunately, virtually all the articles suggest that we are in a period of what I define as negative momentum- which is another way of saying we as a world are going in entirely the wrong direction, and if there is no reversal, we are not going to like the results.

Let me attempt a summary of the areas of negative momentum;  there are many, and forgive me if I miss a few.  But there will be enough for you to definitely get the point:

• lets start with the greatest area of concern which carries with it the greatest possible negative impact- the state of negotiations between the US led west, and Iran.  It would appear the US has set a goal which will leave Iran with the ability to create a nuclear weapon.  And it would appear that even to get that, Iran is not prepared to agree.  Simply put, they do not believe that anyone should be telling them what to do, feel entirely free to threaten Israel daily with extermination, and get away with the whole escapade because there is no one on the other side who has the balls to stand up to them.  Certainly not Obama- and this theme will resound often in this email.  At one point the US led sanctions were biting- so Obama let up on the sanctions in return for what….for the agreement to enter into negotiations which are going on to this day while the sanctions remain weak and next to useless.  At this stage, Iran is going to have the ability to get the bomb on Obama’s watch, and we will all live to regret  the day that this incompetent was nominated by the Democrats and elected by the American people.  

  Iran is the largest overt sponsor of terrorism in the world (the largest covert sponsor is elements of Saudi Arabia through their wahhabi doctrine which they finance worldwide under our noses), support Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, and has wreaked havoc in the world for decades.  Think what this world will be like with an Iranian nuclear threat?  Sorry grandchildren- I tried.

Read more…