by Michael Ordman, JPOST

Most Americans are aware (hopefully) that Israel is the only free democracy in the Middle East. But the Jewish State’s links with the USA – the world’s largest free democracy – go much deeper than just a sharing of American values. Here are some examples from recent news.

America’s largest corporations have major development centers in Israel. Microsoft has even run out of free space at one of its Israeli sites and has taken out a 10-year lease on a huge new building in Haifa. On the other hand, the social media giant Facebook has only just discovered Israel and freed up at least 100 million dollars to turn Israel’s Onavo into Facebook’s one and only R&D center outside of the USA.
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By Shoshana Bryen, AMERICAN THINKER

Not saying that it will happen — not even that it might. But if you don’t watch the confluence of events in Syria, you’ll miss the possibility that it could.

Now that Washington is finished with last summer’s Elizabeth O’Bagy kerfuffle over the percentage of the Syrian opposition comprising jihadist militias, it is time to admit that the war is not what the romantics wanted it to be — doctors and teachers who rose up against the tyrant and won. To be sure, there were doctors and teachers, and to be sure, Assad is a tyrant, but war is conducted by fighters — and in Syria, the fighters are well-armed, well-trained, and forcing the hand of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). Reports of local FSA commanders and local Syrian government commanders making ceasefire deals in the field could be false. But they could also be harbingers of changing fates.
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Goldhagen: The Devil That Never Dies: Antisemitism

By Benjamin Weinthal, JPOST

Anti-Semitism has transformed itself over the past two decades into a global scourge, as a resurgent movement of lethal Jew-hatred has led to murders in Europe and elsewhere. According to Daniel J. Goldhagen’s important and timely book The Devil That Never Dies, global anti-Semitism is alive and kicking – and gaining in strength.

Goldhagen cites the March 2012 murders that Mohammed Merah perpetrated in France. These anti-Semitic killings resulted in the deaths of four French Jews, including three young children in Toulouse. Merah linked his Jew-hatred to Israel, saying, “I kill Jews in France as these are the same Jews who kill innocents in Palestine.”
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[Why isn’t J-Street on the list]

By Elad Benari, ARUTZ SHEVA

Each of the groups on the list, according to ADL’s research, is “fixated with delegitimizing Israel” and has demonstrated the ability to reach new segments of the American public with a hostile and misleading narrative about Israel, the organization said in a statement.

The top 10 anti-Israel Groups, as identified by ADL, are:

ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism)
American Muslims for Palestine
CODEPINK
Friends of Sabeel-North America
If Americans Knew/Council for the National Interest
Jewish Voice for Peace
Muslim Public Affairs Council
Neturei Karta
Students for Justice in Palestine
U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation

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Comments come after Israeli jets reportedly strike another Syrian weapons convoy headed to Lebanese terror group.

By Ari Soffer, ARUTZ SHEVA

Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon has reiterated Israel’s determination to prevent the transfer of advanced weaponry to terrorists during the Syrian civil war.

Speaking at the parliamentary foreign and defense committee, Ya’alon said Israel was closely monitoring the situation in Syria, including the Assad regime’s moves to dismantle its chemical arms.

“So far the regime is upholding its commitment,” he said, in remarks relayed by his office.
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Toronto Transit Commission rejects four ads that portray Israel as an “occupier”, says they are “inaccurate and misleading”.

By Elad Benari, ARUTZ SHEVA

The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) has rejected four anti-Israel advertisements that portray Israel as an “occupier” of Palestinian land, Shalom Toronto reports.

The ads, which were proposed by the Montreal-based Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), are similar to the “Disappearing Palestine” ads that have been running on Vancouver’s transit system.

The ads claim that Palestinian “loss of land” has been “unfair” and “illegal under international law.” They would have run on the TTC’s buses, subways and bus shelters, according to Shalom Toronto.
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[Not only is Women in Green putting facts on the ground, they are putting ideas in the head.]

The ”Women in Green” movement and the Forum for Sovereignty are pleased to announce the publication of “SOVEREIGNTY” – a new journal, which is publishing its premiere issue for Shabbat Hayei Sarah.

As the newspapers report on negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and the outrageous  linkage between the Iranian nuclear project and the future of Judea and Samaria – the Women in Green movement is launching the journal “Sovereignty”.

One hundred thousand copies of the “Sovereignty” journal will be distributed throughout Israel; it will be translated to English and will be distributed among shapers of public opinion and statesmen in Israel and abroad. With the publication of this journal we aspire to take another step toward conceptual and practical implementation of the Zionist alternative to the failed two-state vision that the Left has been presenting for decades.
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Kuwaiti newspaper quotes Israeli security official as saying that the IAF targeted a missile shipment along Syrian-Lebanese border • IDF declines to comment • Report follows Lebanese reports suggesting Israeli activity in its airspace.

Israel Hayom

In a briefing to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Ya’alon warns that Iran is still pushing forward toward nuclear weapons •Ya’alon says so far Syria is adhering to its commitments to dismantle chemical weapons.

Defense Minister Moshe (Bogie) Ya’alon gave a briefing to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Wednesday, emphasizing Iran as Israel’s top security priority.

“Looking at the all the challenges before us, there is no doubt Iran is the single greatest challenge,” Ya’alon said.

“Given the diplomatic channel that has opened following elections there, both the prime minister and I have expressed publicly our concern that some people will be seduced by the regime’s charm offensive and relent. This is a regime that for the last 20 years we have witnessed how well it knows how to lie, cheat and mislead the West.
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Ariel is good friends with Mike Wise who is also my good friend. Mike has been advocating this policy for at least 7 years. At that time I worked with him and Tsafrir Ronen z”l when they developed these ideas about citizenship and representative government. Mike is the guy behind the demographic studies that Yoram Ettinger has been peddling. Ted Belman

Israel Hayom Staff

Housing Minister Uri Ariel is urging Israel to annex Judea and Samaria, saying that there is no need to worry about the Arab demographic threat.

In a special interview to be published this weekend in the magazine Ribonut (Sovereignty), Ariel says: “The alternative is one state from west of the Jordan River and without any add-ons. At first it will be Area C, which is the majority of the territory and which contains several tens of thousands of Arabs, give or take, and go on to declare full sovereignty.”
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Contact: Lenny Ben-David, NGO Monitor
054-216-8155 – lenny.bendavid@ngo-monitor.org

Jerusalem – In a groundbreaking publication, German Funding for Political Advocacy NGOs Active in the Arab-Israeli Conflict, NGO Monitor reports on German government funding provided to numerous non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Israel and the Palestinian Authority that engage in delegitimization campaigns targeting Israel. The funding for these political advocacy NGOs is channeled through German political foundations (Stiftungen), church aid organizations, and NGOs.

“The German Government and people are important supporters of Israeli universities, Holocaust programs, and research institutes, which is very positive,” said Prof. Gerald Steinberg, President of NGO Monitor.

“However, this does not justify the damage done by NGOs that receive funds from Germany and are among the leaders of the boycott and demonization projects attacking Israel,” Steinberg continued. “There were also recipients that practice blatant antisemitism. The heads of these frameworks and German government officials should have known about and prevented such moral abuses by their NGO partners.”
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IsraelDefense 22/10/2013

President Peres reviewed the IAF’s most innovative technologies as part of
the visit and also toured an expo of UAVs. President Peres discussed the IAF’s hidden capabilities, and said that “not all of the strength of the IDF and the IAF is visible to the naked eye, and those who doubt us and seek to harm us should take this into account. I am proud of the soldiers and the
commanders of the corps, and of the IDF in its entirety. The IAF is the best
air force in the world, and it possesses systems unique to it alone. The IAF
is equipped with the best in technological innovation, and most importantly,
it possesses a dedicated and qualitative human capital. It is never
satisfied with what exists, and always looks towards the future and its
challenges – a corps with a burdensome responsibility which displays
tactical and strategic results every day.”
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How a Terror Attack Against Our Marines — 30 Years Ago This Week — Reverberated Down the Decades

By WARREN KOZAK, NY SUN

When suicide bombers strike, the shadowy men who dispatch their charges then step back to gauge the response. Thirty years ago Wednesday, after one of the costliest acts of terror ever committed against America, Washington sent out the worst possible message to terrorists around the world. They were watching and listening.

Early on Sunday morning, October 23, 1983, when our Marines were still asleep in their cots at the Beirut International Airport, a truck driven by an Iranian, Ismail Ascari, and filled with explosives crashed into their barracks. The blast was so huge that witnesses said the four-story building actually lifted into the air before it came crashing down.
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By DANIEL TAUBER, JPOST

THE FIRST hero of Revisionist Zionism is not Ze’ev Jabotinsky, but the founder of the modern Zionist movement itself – Theodore Herzl. Ze’ev Jabotsinsky

The Zionist narrative most often told is typically one which does not critically judge leaders like Chaim Weizmann or David Ben-Gurion. Instead, their concessionist policies – which included denials that Jewish statehood or a Jewish majority in Palestine were goals of Zionism and acquiescence to limits on Jewish immigration even in the late 1930s – is glossed over or presented as having been the only practical option available to Zionism leading up to the creation of the State of Israel.

Ze’ev Jabotinsky and his Revisionist Zionist movement, Menachem Begin, the Irgun, Lehi, the policies they advocated and pursued, which saved lives and were necessary to creation of the State of Israel, are treated, even today, as interesting and too often as regrettable asides, if they are mentioned at all.
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[Read also: Abbas: Israel will be responsible for any failure of talks]

Resuscitates “revolving door” for terrorists

DEBKAfile Special Report October 22, 2013,

Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas has decided to derail talks with Israel directly after the release of the second batch of jailed Palestinians next week. US Secretary of State John Kerry will try to head off the crisis in the talks he brokered earlier this year, by cajoling Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu when they meet in Rome Wednesday, Oct. 23, to make Abbas an offer he can’t refuse, of sovereign Israel land.

DEBKAfile’s sources reveal that Kerry is thinking of a large chunk of Dead Sea coastal area and water, equal to about a third of the territory owned by Israel in this region.

On May 28, in an exclusive report, DEBKAfile first disclosed Kerry’s plan to save this Israeli concession for the final peace accord. He is now thinking of hauling it forward as bait to dissuade Abbas from walking out of the peace process.
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by Daniel Pipes
The Washington Times
October 21, 2013

http://www.danielpipes.org/13531/muslim-russia

The stabbing murder on Oct. 10 of an ethnic Russian, Yegor Shcherbakov, 25, apparently by a Muslim from Azerbaijan, led to anti-migrant disturbances in Moscow, vandalism and assaults, the arrest of 1,200, and brought a major tension in Russian life to the fore.

Not only do ethnic Muslims account for 21-23 million of Russia’s total population of 144 million, or 15 percent, but their proportion is fast growing. Alcoholism-plagued ethnic Russians are said to have European birth rates and African death rates, with the former just 1.4 per woman and the latter 60 years for men. In Moscow, ethnic Christian women have 1.1 child.
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[Read also: The Istanbul Process Continues]

By Deborah Weiss, FPM

In its quest to criminalize speech that’s critical of all Islam-related topics, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC)* endorsed the formation of a new Advisory Media Committee to address “Islamophobia.”

This past September, the OIC held “The First International Conference on Islamophobia: Law & Media.”  The conference endorsed numerous recommendations which arose from prior workshops on Islamophobia from media, legal and political perspectives.  A main conclusion was the consensus to institutionalize the conference and create an Advisory Media Committee to meet under the newly established OIC Media Forum based in Istanbul Turkey.
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By Dalit Halevi & Elad Benari, ARUTZ SHEVA

Turkey is preventing Hamas from strengthening its ties with Egypt’s new regime, an Egyptian newspaper has reported.

According to the Al-Ahram daily, which cited senior officials in the Palestinian Authority, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan prevented Hamas’s Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh from launching an initiative aimed at reconciling with Egypt and improving Hamas’s relations with it.

According to the report, Erdogan advised the leaders of Hamas not to make any concessions to Egypt at this stage, given the fact that the region is still unstable, and that it is possible to change the current regime in Egypt using the pressure exerted by Turkey, Qatar and the International Organization of the Muslim Brotherhood.
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By Michael Curtis, AMERICAN THINKER

It is a welcome sign of changing times in the Middle East that a mission of 65 industry associations and representatives from 17 member states of the European Union is visiting Israel for two days in late October on a “mission for growth.” The mission is led by Antonio Tajani, the Italian politician who was a cofounder of the Forza Italia party in 1994 and was the former spokesman for the government of Silvio Berlusconi, and who is now European Commission vice-president responsible for Industry and Entrepreneurship. The aim of the mission is to strengthen business relations between the EU and Israel and to explore opportunities for cooperation between European and Israeli SMEs (small and medium sized enterprises).
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