Jonathan S. Tobin, Commentary Magazine...

For Israel’s critics, the “day of rage” staged by some Israeli Bedouin is a perfect opportunity to trot out some of their standard cant about the Jewish state stealing Arab land. That was the conceit of a letter signed by many of the British artists and propagandists who can usually be found protesting Israel’s existence or its right to defend itself as well as by a gathering of members of the European Parliament. Others held demonstrations around the world at which sympathy for the Bedouin and contempt for Israel flowed freely. Even some left-wing Jewish groups, like Rabbis for Human Rights, have chimed in with specious comparisons of the government’s actions to Jewish victims of anti-Semitic oppression in Tsarist Russia. But like many of the sins that Israel is charged with by ideological foes, the real story of what is happening with the Bedouin is nothing like the simplistic morality tale of Zionist perfidy that we are hearing.
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Ted Belman. I don’t see the EU cutting funding to the PA anytime soon. But if they did, it would force Netanyahu to do something. This could be a good thing.

European Union says more countries interested in implementing boycott on products manufactured in settlements. If peace talks fail, EU financial aid to PA might be cut

Elior Levy, YNET

A source with the European Union said on Tuesday that if negotiation between Israelis and Palestinians do not yield an agreement, the EU’s ties with both the Palestinian Authority andIsrael may suffer.

According to the source, if the peace talks fail, the EU might discontinue its annual donations to the Palestinian Authority and expand its ban of Israeli products manufactured in the West Bank.

The issue of marking products manufactured in Israeli settlements has spread across Europe, as 14 EU states, including Britain and France, have noted they would be willing to mark products of Israeli settlements. Until recently, only two countries were in favor of boycotting settlements products. 
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ZOA Questions Why.
AIPAC: Deal Merely A “Difference of Strategy”

By Mort Klein, ZOA

The Daily Caller

The British government tried to cover its tracks. But a new cache of documents Robert Spencer and I have received in our battle to overturn our being banned from Britain reveal that a chief reason why we were banned from the country was because we strongly support Israel. As part of our lawsuit against the Queen of England and the Home Secretary et al, we have received numerous documents between the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Office of Security and Counterterrorism, and the Home Secretary. In one of them, an official in the Foreign & Commonwealth Office whose name was redacted wrote this letter on May 7 to a recipient whose name was also redacted:

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Building and talking

By JPOST EDITORIAL

Palestinians should hunker down and hammer out an agreement instead of transforming every future building plan into a crisis.

By Tova Dvorin, INN

Cyprus should be conceptualized by Israel and the West in a fashion similar to Azerbaijan. The region has entered a turning point with simultaneous security, political, and economic transitions underway.

by George Papadopoulos, INN

The Republic of Cyprus has made headlines this month. In the ever more combustible eastern Mediterranean that should come as no surprise. Unfortunately for Cyprus, and America’s allies, Greece and Israel, the news did not concern the island’s substantial energy potential, burgeoning alliance with Israel, and herculean task it is undergoing to transform itself into the eastern Mediterranean’s energy hub.

In October of this year, Turkey’s ambassador to the European Union, Egemen Bagis, in a fit of pique, noted that, “Turkey will not give up a single inch of land on Cyprus.” The vitriol was not an isolated incident at the ministerial level. Turkey’s Islamist Prime Minister, Tayyip Erdogan enflamed the situation between the two countries when he noted on November 10th that, “there is no country named Cyprus.”
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New York Times’ ‘true agenda of hate’

By Pamela Geller, WND

On the first night of Chanukah, the New York Times indulged in its grotesque penchant for its special brand of subtle, sophisticated Jew-hatred, on the front page – of course.

Not only did the New York Times publish a nipple on the front page (a first) next to a tattooed Jewish star, but the article is all about the cancerous Jews. Front page stuff, don’t you know? All the Jews that are fit to libel in print:

While poor countries struggle to provide even basic cancer care to women, wealthier societies like Israel and the United States are increasingly using sophisticated technologies to identify those at greatest risk in an effort to thwart the disease before it gets started.
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By Dore Gold, National Review

It is easy to reduce any analysis of the Geneva agreement to the number of centrifuges Iran will still have and the levels of enrichment that are permitted. Just last month, Gary Samore, who worked the nonproliferation file during President Obama’s first term, was quoted in the New York Times saying that “ending production of 20-percent-enriched uranium is not sufficient to prevent breakout because Iran can produce nuclear weapons using low-enriched uranium and a large number of centrifuge machines.” Samore’s concern about the leap from low-enriched uranium to weapons-grade is even more justified given that Iran is now deploying fast centrifuges that operate at five times the speed of the centrifuges used by Iran in the past.
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By Tomer Devorah

How a U.S. Radar Station in the Negev Affects a Potential Israel-Iran Clash

On a desert hilltop in the remote southwest of Israel stands a compelling argument against any notion that the Jewish state will launch an attack on Iran without the United States. The discreet complex atop Mt. Keren is a U.S. military installation, and the 100 U.S. service members who staff it are the only foreign troops stationed in Israel [except for these].
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This Friday in SHDEMA with Prof. Eugene Kontorovich 

We strive to Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria.Within the framework of explaining the need for Israeli sovereignty  and deepening awareness of the issue, we invited Prof. Eugene Kontorovich to  lecture in Shdema please G-d this coming  Friday, December 6th at 9:00 am on the topic “Who’s Afraid of the one state solution?”

The lecture will be in English with simultaneous translation to Hebrew.

Prof. Eugene Kontorovich is a professor at Northwestern University Law School and a senior fellow at the Kohelet Policy Forum, specializing in international law and expert on the Israel-Arab conflict.  

 Prof. Eugene Kontorovich exposes the hypocrisy of the EU attitude to Israel. The world has about 200 disputed territories. Many of them are under belligerent “occupation” .Not surprisingly, in no other country the EU imposed similar rules to the rules imposed on Israel ,despite the fact that precisely Israel is not and “occupier”, not even according to international law. But the Europeans set a double standard: one rule for the Jewish state and another rule for the rest of the world .  Read more…

Protesters clash with police over Bedouin resettlement plan
Thousands protest in Negev, Haifa, Tayibe and Jerusalem as part of ‘day of rage’ against Praver Bill to resettle Bedouins in Negev. Protesters hurl stones, block roads; met with tear gas, shock grenades by police. Dozens arrested, 15 officers lightly hurt

Foreign minister comes out against protests against Bedouin resettlement plan, calls for reevaluation of Praver bill. ‘It’s not a social problem, it’s a fight for land’

Attila Somfalvi, YNET

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman harshly criticized the “day of rage” protests being held against the Bedouin resettlement plan across the country. “Nothing has changed since the Tower and Stockade days. We are fighting for the lands of the Jewish people and there are those who intentionally try to rob and seize them,” Lieberman said in a Facebook post.
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By Ted Belman

Arnold Roth, who lost his daughter, Malki, in a terror attack in Jerusalem and who blogs at This ongoing War, had this to say about the prisoner release.

The reason why Israel agreed to free the 104, and in fact has already set loose 52, depends on whom you want to believe.

• Israel says it was to prod the Arab side into resuming the diplomatic negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. [“28-Oct-13: It’s official: 26 more convicted killers to be handed over to PA and Hamas“] And having agreed back in June, its revised position in October (see here) was “promises must be kept“.
• The PA [see “25-Aug-13: Wake up call for those who thought the terrorists are walking free for peace“] says the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails was unrelated to the launching of the peace talks. Abbas has repeated this mantra over and again. Evidently it’s important to him. Read more…

By Caroline Glick, JPOST

Israel, he said, “will not be Czechoslovakia.”

Sharon was sharply rebuked not only by the White House, but by leading American supporters of Israel. They attacked him for daring to make the comparison. In time, with the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, Sharon’s warning was largely forgotten.

The question of whether George W. Bush sought to appease the Arabs and Iran at Israel’s expense is an open one. Strong arguments can be made on both sides of the issue. On the one hand, Bush took the fight to terror supporting regimes.
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‘US freed top Iranian scientist as part of secret talks ahead of Geneva deal’

‘Secret talks with Iran led Obama to shelve strike on Syria’

Israeli officials denounce Obama for giving Iran right to enrich, destroying sanctions
Entire sanctions regime ‘will collapse within months,’ unnamed sources tell Israeli TV; US has shown it has ‘no red lines’ on Tehran
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