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Author: Vijeta Uniyal

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Vijeta Uniyal

Vijeta Uniyal is a writer based in Germany. He is Senior Distinguished Fellow of the Gatestone Institute and founder of the "Indians For Israel".

Israel's elite Air Force instructors are training Indian Special forces, Israeli media reports confirm. Israel Defense Forces' Airborne Rescue and Evacuation Unit 669 is carrying out joint drills with Garud Commando Force, the Special Forces unit of the Indian Air Force. According to Israeli newspaper Jerusalem Post, 16 Indian commandos are currently stationed at Nevatim and Palmahim air bases. These personnel are part of a 45-man delegation and a C-130J Super Hercules transport plane that are in Israel to take part in Blue Flag 2017, Israel's largest aerial drill ever, the newspaper added.

"It's just obvious you can't have free immigration and a welfare state," Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman warned decade ago. Germany, on the brink of Angela Merkel's fourth term as country's Chancellor, is discovering the painful truth behind these words.

One of the leading business schools in India, Bangalore-based Indian Institute of Management (IIM), has set up an 'Israel Center' on its campus with the aim to “bridge academic collaboration” between India and Israel. The center will carry out academic research, and promote faculty and student exchange programs between the two countries. "The Israel Centre at IIM Bangalore will lead to upgrading of academic collaboration between India and Israel, and will make our countries and economies stronger," said Israel's envoy to India Ambassador Daniel Carmon, at the inauguration ceremony on Sunday.

With the New York truck attacker having been identified as an Uzbek national, at least four of the recent high-profile Islamist terror attacks have been carried out by either an Uzbek national or an ethnic Uzbek. This list includes the Stockholm truck attack that killed four and the Saint Petersburg bombing that killed 13. Muslims from former Soviet republics in Central Asia, or the '5 stans,' are one of the largest group serving in the ranks of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq -- perhaps second only to recruits coming from Europe.

More than a month after the parliamentary election, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel is struggling to form a coalition government. Merkel's conservative CDU party, which won 33 percent of the vote, will need half of the seats in the German parliament to build a ruling coalition. With her previous coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), deciding to sit in the opposition after posting its worst result ever at 20 percent, Merkel is hoping to rope in the libertarian Free Democrats and ecological Green Party to reach the 50 percent mark.

It’s that time of the year here again in Germany. As winter sets in, the first Christmas decorations have started appearing on the shop fronts. Before you know it, the Christmas markets will be coming up in every town and city across the country. For Merkel's Germany, however, it is also the time of the year when radical Muslim terrorists target the Christmas markets and innocent shoppers.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced his plans to visiting India in January. The announcement comes less than four months after India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi's historic visit to Israel -- the first ever such visit by a sitting Indian head of the government. The visit will take place at a time when the bilateral relations between both countries are at an all-time high. The last Israeli Prime Minister to visit India was Ariel Sharon almost 14 years ago.

It is getting lonely for Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel on the European stage as another EU member country elects an anti-establishment government. Less than a week after the stunning electoral performance by  Austria’s right-wing Freedom Party, the Czech Republic has elected the anti-EU candidate Andrej Babis and his party in yesterday’s general election. Often described by the media as ‘Czech Donald Trump,’ 63-year-old Babis, the country’s second-richest man, won 30 percent of the vote, securing him the Prime-ministership in the next coalition government. Despite an ongoing criminal investigation over his business dealings and the lingering allegations of his collaborating with the Czechoslovak communist-era secret police, many Czech voters preferred voting for Babis than other pro-EU career politicians.

France's parliament on Wednesday passed a new anti-terrorism law that gives law enforcement sweeping powers to search homes, carry out surveillance, and set up borders checks. The new law replaces the state of national emergency that came into effect after the 2015 Paris attacks, which killed 130 people. The state of emergency was extended six times and due to expire next month. Despite the unprecedented powers given to the police and the security forces, France has been hit by a series of attacks leaving 241 people dead since the imposition of the emergency.

Last week, Austria's National Union of Students (ÖH), the country’s leading student body, passed a sternly worded resolution condemning the anti-Israel boycott campaign -- or the "Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions” Movement -- trying to get a foothold in the country. The student body raised concerns about the "growing presence of the antisemitic BDS campaign" on Austrian college campuses and vowed to combat the antisemitic agitators trying to infiltrate student politics.

Just two weeks after the right-wing AfD Party’s surge in the German election, Austria’s Freedom Party (FPÖ) is set to join the country’s next coalition government. The Freedom Party, Europe’s oldest surviving right-wing party, which ran on an anti-Islamization and anti-mass migration platform received 26 percent of the votes, party’s strongest performance in twenty years.

Not just former US President Obama, Chancellor Merkel of Germany, too, regards the nuclear deal with Iran as her greatest diplomatic accomplishment. The prominent German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung summed up the central role played by the Merkel government, writing, "Among all the parties working to bring about a negotiated deal, Germans enjoyed [Iranian regime's] special trust." Corporate Germany loved the deal too. The Bavaria Chamber of Commerce, the leading trade body in the country, told its clients ahead of the deal that the "German media landscape across the board agrees that lucrative deals worth billions are waiting to be made in Iran. As soon as the sanction are lifted, the run on the markets begins."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel promoted the architect of her open borders policy to her new chief foreign policy adviser. Merkel’s hand-picked Jan Hecker, widely regarded as the man enforcing Germany’s ill-advised refugee policy, has no foreign policy experience. Mainstream media that nitpicked President Trump on every single appointment, is apparently giving a pass to their favorite world leader on this one.

The North African country of Tunisia is turning into a "springboard" for illegal immigrants trying to get to Europe, according to the German newspaper Die Welt. The Muslim-majority country, destabilized in the wake of the "Arab Spring", was becoming a serious security threat to Europe since the Tunisian government was encouraging its Islamized or otherwise troublesome young men to emigrate to Europe.

In a strongly worded resolution passed by the Green Party in the southern German state of Bavaria, the state unit of the party has rejected the anti-Israel boycott campaign, or the BDS Movement as antisemitic. The resolution titled "No to Antisemitism, no to BDS" (embedded and translated below) declared the Bavarian Green Party's intention to actively challenge the BDS activism in the state.

With 10 days until the Austria's election, the right-wing Freedom Party (FPÖ) is surging in polls. According to the pollsters, the party could win up to 25 per cent of the vote in October 15 parliamentary election. Such a strong showing at the ballot box could propel the party to the position of kingmaker as a junior coalition party in the next conservative government.

A series of strikes and protests have disrupted the economic life in Catalonia, Spain's wealthiest and most industrialized region. The protests come after Spanish police cracked down on Sunday's independence referendum held in Catalonia region, which Madrid declared as illegal. Catalan authorities say around 900 people were injured after police raided polling stations, carrying away ballot boxes, beating up voters and shooting rubber bullets. The EU and the European media, usually vocal about any perceived human rights violation in the farthest corner of the world, was uncharacteristically quiet over Spain's crack down of the Catalonia vote in its own backyard. "It is telling that these shocking images didn't even make the lead item on the BBC news and voters were described as protesters," wrote the Daily Mail columnist Katie Hopkins.

An initiative sponsored by the Embassy of Israel in India seeks to connect Jerusalem's startup ecosystem with India's technology scene. Contrary to the popular perception, Jerusalem is fast catching up with Tel Aviv as a leading technology center in the world. In 2015, TIME magazine named Jerusalem as one of the world’s fastest growing hi-tech hubs. The annual startup competition "Start JLM", supported by Indian government and local private sector players, is being held in the country for the first time. This year's winner, Bangalore-based Mimyk startup will be taking part in an technology boost camp in Jerusalem. Four other finalists will be getting access to startup incubators.