A Hamas delegation visited Moscow at a time when relations between Russia and Israel are taking a more tense turn due to Israel’s position in the Russia-Ukraine war.

By Rasha Abou Jalal, Al MONITOR   May 12/22

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov meets with representatives of Palestinian groups and movements, who are in Moscow for intra-Palestinian talks, on Feb. 12, 2019.KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP via Getty Images

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — A Hamas delegation visited Moscow on May 4, where it held talks with Russian officials at the Russian Foreign Ministry’s guesthouse. The talks concluded on May 5.

Hamas’ visit to Moscow came at a time when Russian-Israeli relations are tense due to Israel’s condemning position of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

The Hamas delegation was led by head of the movement’s international relations office Moussa Abu Marzouk, and it included members of the movement’s political bureau, notably Fathi Hammad and Hussam Badran.

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Hamas is urging Arabs of Israel to escalate their attacks against Israelis inside Israel, as part of efforts to confuse the Israeli army in the event of a war with Gaza.

By Rasha Abou Jalal, AL MONITOR     May 11, 2022

An Israeli soldier takes aim during a raid in the town of Rummanah, near the flashpoint town of Jenin in the occupied West Bank on May 8, 2022, reportedly the home of Palestinian Subhi Imad Abu Shukair, suspected of carrying out a fatal ax attack in the central city of Elad two days earlier. – JAAFAR ASHTIYEH/AFP via Getty 

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — As part of efforts to avoid dragging the Gaza Strip into another military confrontation with the Israeli army, Hamas is working to move the confrontation with Israel inside its territories as a better means of confrontation than launching rockets from Gaza into Israel.

On May 5, which marks Israeli Independence Day, two Palestinians killed three Israelis and wounded several others using an ax in an attack inside a park in the town of Elad east of Tel Aviv

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by Roie Yellinek and Assaf Malach, Middle East Quarterly Spring 2022 

While the “Palestine question” has long dominated inter-Arab politics, not only have the Arab states been driven by their own ulterior motives, but they also have shown little concern for the wellbeing of the Palestinians, let alone their demand for a state of their own. This pattern dates back to the mandate years (1920-48) when the self-styled champions of the nascent pan-Arab movement—King Faisal of Iraq, Transjordan’s Emir Abdullah, and Egyptian King Faruq—viewed Palestine as part of their would-be empires. This situation culminated in the 1948 war when the all-Arab assault on Israel was launched in pursuit of the invading states’ imperialist goals—not in support of Palestinian self-determination. In the words of the Arab League’s secretary-general Abdel Rahman Azzam:

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By Victor Davis Hanson, JWR

Americans are now entering uncharted, revolutionary territory. They may witness things over the next five months that once would have seemed unimaginable.

Until the Ukrainian conflict, we had never witnessed a major land war inside Europe directly involving a nuclear power.

In desperation, Russia’s impaired and unhinged leader, Russian President Vladimir Putin, now talks trash about the likelihood of nuclear war.

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We may have lost in the international media arena, but only there and only temporarily. In terms of the diplomatic arena, an Israeli official summarized succinctly: “There’s no crisis.” That’s what’s important.

By  Ariel Kahana, ISRAEL HAYOM  May 12/22

There are battles where the most you can hope for is to mitigate the damage. This was the goal of Israel’s public relations campaign on Wednesday morning.

Immediately after the reports of Al-Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh’s death, the IDF Spokesperson’s Office, the Foreign Ministry, the Government Press Office, the Israel Police, and the Public Diplomacy Directorate in the Prime Minister’s Office, which coordinates between the various bodies, shifted to an emergency footing.  It was obvious that the incident was not good for Israel, and that a quick and clear response was imperative.
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T. Belman. I do not believe this. “Roughly 330,000 Palestinians and 450,000 Israeli settlers live in the 60 percent of the West Bank that makes up Area C”. The Israel High Court has virtually ordered Israel to give building permits to Palestinians also. Israel is hoping the US will OK the 4,400 Jewish homes because their is approval for 1000 Arab homes.  The Arabs have built thousands of illegal homes in Area C.  Why give them permits while this is going on.

Last time such approvals were granted, the majority of the 1,300 were for houses already built; this move comes as Defense Ministry greenlights 4,400 new Jewish settlement homes

By JACOB MAGID, TOI  

A Palestinian boy walks while backdropped by his home village of Susiya in Area C of the West Bank on July 24, 2015. (AP/Nasser Nasser)

The Defense Ministry will advance plans for some 1,000 Palestinian homes in the West Bank, an Israeli official told The Times of Israel on Thursday, as the same office was convening to greenlight projects for some 4,400 Jewish settlement homes.

The projects for both the Palestinians and the Israeli settlers will be located in Area C, where Israel maintains civilian control. Roughly 330,000 Palestinians and 450,000 Israeli settlers live in the 60 percent of the West Bank that makes up Area C, according to figures from the UN and Israeli authorities respectively.

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When Rushdie was published, bookstores were attacked and others refused to sell the book, but the publisher stood firm. Not today. Op-ed.

By Giulio Meotti, INN

Giulio Meotti

When Salman Rushdie published The Satanic Verses in 1989, Viking Penguin, the British and American publisher of the novel, was subjected to daily threats from Islamists. As Daniel Pipes wrote, the London office resembled “a battlefield”, with police on guard, metal detectors and an escort for visitors. At the New York office, trained dogs sniffed mail packages and the offices were called a “sensitive place.”

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by Judith Bergman, GATESTONE  •  May 12, 2022

• “Germany must be prepared that it could be the next country to which Gazprom cuts gas deliveries. Europe, therefore, needs a multitude of alternatives to the Russian energy supply.” — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, The New York Times, April 28, 2022.
• The pre-feasibility studies [of the EastMed pipeline that would transport gas to Europe from Israel and Cyprus through Greece], conducted from 2015-18 and paid for by the European Union, found that the project is “technically feasible, economically viable and commercially competitive.”
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Israel Defense and Security Forum poll finds surprisingly large percentage of Israeli Arabs would not side with Israel during a war.

By Yoni Kempinski, INN 

The Israel Defense and Security Forum (IDSF) has released a survey that examines the attitudes of Israeli Arabs toward Israel in the wake of the riots that occurred in mixed cities last year.

Brig. Gen. (res) Amir Avivi, Founder and CEO of IDSF, tells Israel National News that the results of the survey are surprising and point to Israeli Arab society being very much against a Jewish state in Israel.

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Jewish Republican Morgan Ortagus expected to face antisemitism on the campaign trail in Tennessee, but wasn’t prepared for what she encountered. Now she wonders why so many members of her party are staying silent

By Ben Samuels, HAARETZ

Morgan Ortagus, left, with Ivanka Trump in Washington, in 2019. A Tennessee state senator said only fellow Jews Ivanka and Jared Kushner would mind that Ortagus was disqualified from a ballot.Credit: Patrick Semansky / AP

WASHINGTON – Jewish Republican Morgan Ortagus says she expected to encounter antisemitism while running in a congressional primary in Tennessee. She just didn’t think it would be quite so blatant.

The Donald Trump-endorsed Ortagus, 39, found herself targeted by a fellow Republican who supported efforts to remove her from the ballot over a technicality concerning her length of residence in the southern state.

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T. Belman. The FBI is out of control. It is in bed with the globalists and refusing to do its constitutional job. It should be investigating election fraud but instead is investigating “insurrections”. It should also be investigating the Biden Family etc., etc. It should be arresting Mules and prosecuting Antifa and BLM rioters. AWOL

By Victoria Taft, PC MEDIA    MAY 10, 2022

AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

Michael Flynn has been cleared, pardoned, set free, and given a clean slate, and still the federal government won’t take its jackboot off the neck of the retired general and short-lived Trump National Security Adviser.

A newly discovered document uncovered by Just the News shows that Flynn could have had his reputation back a lot earlier, if Robert Mueller had released an affidavit confirming the story behind the retired general’s 2015 Moscow dinner speech for Russia Today (RT) News.
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“Israel has no sovereignty over the holy sites in Jerusalem,” Ayman Safadi asserts, adding that “the way forward is to respect the status quo” on the volatile holy site.

By  Shahar Klaiman, ISRAEL HAYOM    May 11/22

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi in Amman, Oct. 7, 2021 | File photo: AP/Omar Akour

“Israel has no sovereignty over the holy sites in Jerusalem,” Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said Tuesday evening, in response to Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s comments on the status quo on the Temple Mount.

“Israel has no sovereignty over the Al-Aqsa Mosque. It is a Muslim place of worship, only the Jordanian Waqf has full authority over the management of the compound,” the minister argued, further adding, “This is occupied Palestinian land.”

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By Bassam Tawil, GATESTONE  •  May 11, 2022

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has said that the Jews “have no right to defile with their filthy feet” the Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. “We salute every drop of blood spilled for the sake of Jerusalem. This blood is clean, pure blood, shed for the sake of Allah, Allah willing. Every martyr will be placed in Paradise, and all the wounded will be rewarded by Allah.” Pictured: Abbas speaks on PA television, September 16, 2015. (Image source: MEMRI)

• The terrorists and their families are saying that they actually believe the lies of the Palestinian leaders that the mosque is being attacked, violated and desecrated by Jews. They are saying that this is the reason they are sending Palestinians to murder Jews on the streets of Israeli cities.

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The ideological refusal to recognize the freedom of speech of “kafirs” and “infidels.”

By Uzay Bulut, FPM   May 11/22

Turkey has long been heralded by the international media as a “secular” and “modern” country. But in reality, it is the absolute opposite. Non-Muslim communities – Christians, Jews, Alevis, Yazidis, agnostics, deists, atheists, and all others – are systematically victimized by discriminatory acts, including violations of their human rights, their convictions, their faith, and their freedom of speech.
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Deriding Mass Formation and Dismissing its Influence During a Global Crisis – is a Verification of the Phenomenon

By David Marks

Historians analyzing the Covid-19 pandemic will one day consider what was going on in the minds of those who supported a narrative that only served profits and power. Looking back, they will greatly appreciate the analysis of contemporary experts, particularly Mattias Desmet, a professor in the Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences at Ghent University in Belgium. He is recognized as a leading thinker in his field, and has written over one hundred peer-reviewed academic papers.

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By Jennifer Van Laar, RED STATE | May 10, 2022

While Trump’s campaign repeatedly promised to “release the Kraken” and bring forward evidence of election fraud that would prove that the election was stolen, focusing on electronic voting machines, that evidence didn’t materialize. RedState’s Scott Hounsell pointed out various states and cities – even down to the precincts – that should be investigated, and that information was given to the Trump campaign to no avail.

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PM Bennett Denies Reports Israel Agreed to Waqf Demands on Temple Mount

Aryeh Savir, Tazpit News Agency

Six Hamas-backed Waqf guards were removed from the Temple Mount, and 12 new Waqf positions were manned, “all within the existing standards, without any increase,” the Prime Minister’s Office stated.

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By refusing to allow a conference to be held in their building where Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was a speaker, New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage declared itself a partisan institution

By  Jonathan S. Tobin, TOI

At a time when partisan divisions are at an all-time high, there aren’t many places that are politics-free zones anymore. Many, if not most, of our cultural institutions and media outlets have lined up on one side or the other. That is just as true, if not truer, of the American Jewish world since the vast majority of Jews identify as politically liberal with a large plurality being among the most loyal and determinedly partisan supporters of the Democratic Party.

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T. Belman. The numbers are disturbing. The focus of this poll was what to do to quell the violence. I believe we should look at the cause of the problem.  The number one cause is that the Arab press, Arab curriculum and Imams are given too much latitude. Free speech must be curtailed because it is exercised in the service of propaganda with a seditious intent.

Israel must take greater control of the curriculum taught in Arab schools and should even require a much higher percentage of Jewish teachers to be employed there, perhaps 80% of them should be Jewish.  If that means that 20% of the teachers in non-Arab schools should be Arab, OK. Secondly the Arab narrative must be banned just as Holocaust denial is banned. Incitement by Arab leaders or Imams must be made criminal with big fines and jail terms. And all rioters should beconvicted and all felons should not be allowed into Israel to work.  And talk of a Naqba must be penalized.

Israel is governing like it is a bi-national state.  The Arabs are given too much autonomy  and are allowed to think they are a state within a state. And I haven’t even started on how the PA and Hamas should be curtailed.

Arab Israelis are constantly conflicted by questions of political and national loyalty, and the majority of them have little faith in Israel’s law enforcement agencies, a study by defense-oriented NGO Habithonistim shows.

By  Hanan Greenwood, ISRAEL HAYOM

Police line up as they disperse Arab rioters in Umm El-Fahm | File photo: AP/Bernat Armangue

Arab Israelis are constantly conflicted by questions of political and national loyalty, as the majority of them have little faith in Israel’s law enforcement agencies, a survey by Habithonistim–Protectors of Israel, a movement of Israeli defense officials advocating for Israel’s future security needs, revealed Monday.

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