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Posted by David Gerstman on December 09, 2014 16 Comments
Last week Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu started the process of dissolving his government coalition to bring about new elections in March of next year. One needn't be a particularly close observer of politics to know that President Barack Obama doesn't much like Netanyahu. Will Obama try to interfere with the Israeli election? Akiva Eldar, a left-wing columnist for Ha'aretz, argues in Al-Monitor that, yes, Obama should make it clear that he prefers any candidate to the incumbent.
Some of President Barack Obama’s advisers came to the conclusion that the time had come to remind the Israelis who is the boss. They encouraged the president to set a detailed outline for a permanent agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. They recommend that the process involve a fixed timetable for the establishment of a Palestinian state on the basis of the 1967 lines and the Arab Peace Initiative. According to the plan, a diet of “carrots” would be provided to the party that adopts the outline, and “sticks” would be the fate of the recalcitrant side. When the Israeli voter goes to the polling booth, he or she would know whether they vote for the carrot or the stick. The Palestinian leadership and public will also clearly envisage the end of the occupation, with the advantages that follow the end of it, vis-a-vis perpetuation of the conflict and the drawbacks involved. ...

Posted by David Gerstman on December 07, 2014 5 Comments
Last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired his finance minister (Yair Lapid of Yesh Atid) and justice minister (Tzippi Livni of Hatnua), both coalition partners, effectively bringing down the current government and forcing new elections now scheduled for March 17. The latest polls suggest that Netanyahu would be able to form the next coaltion.
According to a Channel 10 poll, Likud would win 22 seats, Jewish Home 17, Labor 13, Yisrael Beytenu 12, Moshe Kahlon’s as-yet-unnamed party 12, Yesh Atid nine, the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism eight, Shas seven, Meretz seven, Hatnua four and the Arab parties nine. A survey by Channel 2 showed Likud with 22, Jewish Home 17, Labor 13, Kahlon and Yisrael Beytenu with 10 apiece, Yesh Atid with nine, Shas with nine, United Torah Judaism with eight, Meretz with seven, Hatnua with four, and the Arab parties with 11. Both polls would have made pleasant reading for Likud leader Netanyahu, showing a strengthening of the right, and numerous potential coalition options for him.
However, a lot can happen in four months. For example two years ago, Likud created a joint list with Yisrael Beiteinu (Avigdor Liberman's party) and then the combined list lost ten seats in popularity polls in the final month of the campaign.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 07, 2014 5 Comments
Iran recently boasted how it had transferred via Syria game-changing missiles to the terrorist Hezbollah, which controls much of Lebanon and is fighting alongside the Assad regime in Syria. Israel has warned about such missile transfers, and reportedly (without Israel admitting it publicly) bombed convoys and facilities in Syria to stop such transfers. It appears from news reports that Israel has acted again. Reuters has confirmed the bombing:
Israel has carried out an air strike targeting a consignment of missiles in Syria bound for Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon, an Israeli official said on Saturday.... "There was an air strike. The target was not a chemical weapons facility. It was missiles intended for Hezbollah," the official told Reuters.
As with all such breaking events, photos and videos on Twitter are not yet verified as authentic.

Posted by David Gerstman on December 01, 2014 3 Comments

Matti Friedman again explains how NGO's and the media prepare the ground for anti-Israel propaganda...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 30, 2014 4 Comments
"Nakba" is the phrase Arabs use to refer to the creation of Arab refugees from the British Mandate of Palestine created during the civil war and then Arab armies invasion after Arabs rejected the U.N. General Assembly 1947 Partition Plan. Had the Arabs accepted that plan, there would have been an Arab state created in 1947.  Since Jordan was created from most of the original Mandate, the Partition Plan would have given Arabs the supermajority of the land.  Instead, the Arabs declared holy war on the Jews, and lost the civil war and 1948 War. In the course of that loss, hundreds of thousands of Arabs fled, then were kept in refugee camps by other Arabs, and have been kept as non-citizens in those Arab countries pending the destruction of Israel. The there was another "Nakba" resulting from the Arab rejection of Israel. The story of 850,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries has been told here many times, but rarely is discussed in the public debate over the Middle East. The silence on the Jewish Nakba is changing. Ben-Dror Yemini, writing in Ynet, What about the Jewish Nakba? (h/t Israel Matzav) writes:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 28, 2014 14 Comments
We are dealing with some really sick minds when it comes to the proponents of the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement propaganda machine. The latest is from a group with over 91,000 Facebook fans, called "I Acknowledge Apartheid Exists." That phrase is an integral part of the BDS movement, which falsely seeks to portray Israel as the equivalent of apartheid South Africa. That claim of Apartheid status was the founding propaganda principle of the BDS movement, which was started at the anti-Semitic 2001 Durban conference. The group has posted a photoshop of Nazi concentration camp inmates holding anti-Israel signs, on its Facebook page. It's unclear if the group created it, or is just promoting it. https://www.facebook.com/IAcknowledgeApartheidExists/photos/a.116419295219428.1073741828.116415985219759/321047701423252/?type=1 The image is being spread by others as well, such as the Central NY Committee for Justice in Palestine: [Note 11-28-2014 10:15 p.m. - sometime tonight CNYCJP removed the image after complaints were posted in its comments in response to Legal Insurrection's coverage, and after the image was CNYCJP's Facebook page for about two days the cache version of the post is here]

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 26, 2014 7 Comments
We previously posted video of anti-Israel protesters getting in the face (literally) of pro-Israel students at Cornell who were holding counter-protest signs, Cornell Pro-Israel students taunted: “F**k You Zionist scums”. The incident depicted in the prior video actually was the second incident of the day, I have learned. Prior to that confrontation, Ilan Kaplan, a Cornell student on leave but who is still active in the Cornell Jewish community, alleges he was accosted as he held a sign, had his sign torn out of his hands, had water thrown on him, and was threatened. Here is my interview with Kaplan: Language Warning

Posted by David Gerstman on November 25, 2014 2 Comments
It's interesting to see headlines that the P5+1 talks in Vienna about Iran's nuclear program were called a failure. On one very important level they were a success. No there was no agreement on a long term deal to roll back Iran's nuclear program. But there was an agreement to extend the Joint Plan of Action allowing Iran to keep its nuclear infrastructure in place and receive up to seven more months of sanctions relief. In other words for Iran, the negotiations were a tremendous success. Here's the Wall Street Journal (Google link):

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 18, 2014 79 Comments
Two East Jerusalem Arabs attacked a synagogue in Jerusalem during morning prayers, using meat clevers, knives and a pistol to kill the Rabbi and three worshipers. The NY Times reports that all four were Rabbis. (added) The Washington Post reports:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Palestinian leaders of inciting violence and promised to “respond harshly.” In the Palestinian-controlled Gaza Strip, calls over loudspeakers praised the attackers. In East Jerusalem, crowds hurled stones at Israeli police fanning out around the neighborhood where the attackers lived. The Associated Press, citing Israeli police, said those killed included one Briton and three Americans — among them Rabbi Moshe Twersky, who taught at an English-speaking religious school in Jerusalem and was a member of one of the most respected families in Orthodox scholarship.... Twersky’s grandfather, Joseph Soloveitchik, was a renowned Boston rabbi, and his father, Rabbi Yitzhak (Isadore) Twersky, was longtime director of The Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard. Twersky’s brother, Mayer Twersky, one of the heads of Yeshiva University in New York, the flagship American school for Jewish Orthodox studies.
Here is raw video of the police shooting the perpetrators, and of the victims of the attack:

Posted by David Gerstman on November 11, 2014 4 Comments
Two Israelis were killed yesterday in separate terror attacks by knife wielding assailants. Yesterday morning, a 20 year old soldier, Almog Shiloni, was stabbed in Tel Aviv. The Times of Israel reports:
Almog Shiloni, 20, of Modiin, died of multiple wounds to his stomach and chest, an official from the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer Hospital said. “After resuscitation efforts that began in the field and continued for hours in the hospital, the stabbing victim who arrived at the hospital earlier today was declared dead,” a spokesperson announced. When Shiloni was first brought into the hospital following the attack he had no pulse, although doctors were able to restart his heart.
His girlfriend, who was talking to him on the phone at the time, rushed to the scene when she heard a commotion and Almog didn't answer. When she arrived at the scene she saw "Almog lying in a pool of blood as emergency teams tried to resuscitate him." In the afternoon a 26 year old woman, Dalia Lemkus,  was stabbed to death and two others were wounded in a knife attack in Gush Etzion (the Etzion Bloc) by a terrorist who was shot and wounded by a security guard.
The stabber was shot by a guard on duty at the site, police said. Initial reports indicated he was killed, but later reports dispelled that claim. Magen David Adom said he was in serious condition. A 26-year-old man suffered light-moderate injuries, and a man in his 50s was lightly hurt in the incident. Their names were not released. Channel 2 reported that the older man was driving by the scene when he saw the attack in progress, then stopped his car and wrestled with the attacker before suffering an injury to his face.
Sherri Mandel, whose teenage son Kobi, was killed in 2001 during the so-called "Aqsa intifada," wrote a tribute to Lemkus, What the didn't tell you about Dalia, at The Times of Israel:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on November 10, 2014 16 Comments
William A. Jacobson has covered this trial extensively. See:

She was found guilty immigration fraud by way of of unlawful procurement of naturalization this afternoon.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 04, 2014 5 Comments
Yesterday was oral argument at the Supreme Court in a lawsuit over whether Congress had the power to designate Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel on passports. The case is Zivotofsky v. Kerry, and the issue is a fight between Congress and the Executive Branch, Via Scotus Blog:
Issue: Whether a federal statute that directs the Secretary of State, on request, to record the birthplace of an American citizen born in Jerusalem as born in "Israel" on a Consular Report of Birth Abroad and on a United States passport is unconstitutional on the ground that the statute "impermissibly infringes on the President's exercise of the recognition power reposing exclusively in him."
Prof. Eugene Kontorovich points out that legally the issue is not the same as the political issue of recognition of Israeli sovereignty over all of Jerusalem. Most observers of the oral argument believe it it will be a 5-4 split, most likely in favor of the Executive Branch. But oral arguments are not necessarily accurate predictors of ultimate outcome, so who knows. Regardless of the legal technicalities, the media and public perception is that this is a political issue regarding Jerusalem, particularly in light of hostile and threatening statements made by the Obama administration over Israeli exercise of sovereignty over "East Jerusalem" (the part of Jerusalem illegally occupied by Jordan from 1949-1967). Via Mirabelle from Israelly Cool:
Some of Obama’s biggest recent grievances in that relationship [between Obama and Netanyahu] seem to have been over Jews living in various neighborhoods in Jerusalem. In the past few weeks, Obama or his spokespeople have expressed their displeasure with Jews moving into homes they legally purchased in Silwan, planned construction of mixed Jewish and Arab housing in Givat Hamatos, or Monday’s announcement of homes in Har Homa and Ramat Shlomo. Rather than go on a lengthy rant about my complete and utter disappointment at my own President, I though we’d just take a trip in the Wayback Machine, to 2008 . . .
In 2008, Obama pledged that Israel could keep its undivided Capital of Jerusalem, if it likes it. That was then. This is now:

Posted by David Gerstman on October 31, 2014 6 Comments
Elder of Ziyon picked up on a recent bit of hypocrisy when Egypt began destroying hundreds of homes along the Sinai's border with Gaza. In So where are the Rachel Corries for Egypt?  Elder writes:
800 homes demolished in the next few days? Israel has never demolished so many in so little time. Yet over the years there have been numerous NGOs and reports about Israel's home demolitions - and no one cares about Egypt's. There are no groups popping up where young idealistic moronic college students volunteer to act as human shields to protect these homes. Indeed, no one cares about Egypt's demolishing homes for security purposes.
Rachel Corrie was a college student who didn't heed the IDF's warning to get out of the way during the demolition of a house in Gaza that housed a smuggling tunnel; Corrie was killed during the demolition. Elder is right in saying that there has been precious little protest of Egypt's actions. (Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch has been exception. In the case of Egypt, as with Israel, he sides with Hamas.) But what's frustrating is not just in the vastly different reactions to demolitions carried out by Israel as opposed to those carried out by Egypt, but also the contrast in how the world treats Israeli construction plans. This week the topic of Israel building in its capital, Jerusalem, has gotten the world worked up. From the New York Times (emphasis mine):
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Monday that Israel would fast-track planning for 1,060 new apartments in populous Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, a move that appears calibrated to appeal to the maximum number of Israelis while causing the minimum damage to Israel internationally, according to Israeli analysts. But as is often the case, Mr. Netanyahu’s decision prompted swift international condemnation at a time when Israel’s relations with Washington are already strained and risked further igniting Palestinian anger and tensions in Jerusalem. It was also unlikely to satisfy the right-wing political rivals it was intended to appease, the analysts said.
Though there was "Palestinian anger" there's no immediate consequence to this action. No one lost property. No one was displaced.

Posted by New Neo on October 30, 2014 20 Comments
The senior official in the Obama administration who referred to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as "chickshit" probably has much more courageous things than Operation Isotope on his resume. Operation Isotope was a raid involving the rescue of hijacked Sabena Flight 571, and Netanyahu was a participant, along with another Israeli Prime Minister-to-be, Ehud Barak:
On 9 May 1972 at 4:00 p.m. the rescue operation began: a team of 16 Sayeret Matkal commandos, led by Ehud Barak and including Benjamin Netanyahu, both future Israeli Prime Ministers, approached the airplane. The commandos were disguised as airplane technicians in white overalls, and were able to convince the terrorists that the aircraft needed repair. The commandos stormed the aircraft and took control of the plane in ten minutes, killing both male hijackers and capturing the two women. All the passengers were rescued. Three of the passengers were wounded, one of whom eventually died from her wounds. Netanyahu was wounded during the rescue, presumably by friendly fire. The two female surviving terrorists were eventually sentenced to life imprisonment, but were freed as part of a prisoner exchange after the 1982 Lebanon War.
[caption id="attachment_104421" align="alignnone" width="550"]Benjamin Netanyahu is congratulated by former Israeli President Zalman Shazar during a ceremony honoring the elite commandos who rescued the hostages from the Sabena Flight 571. [Benjamin Netanyahu is congratulated by former Israeli President
Zalman Shazar during a ceremony honoring the elite commandos who
rescued the hostages from the Sabena Flight 571. (via Maggie's Notebook)][/caption] To paraphrase Winston Churchill: some chicken, some shit.

Posted by David Gerstman on October 29, 2014 11 Comments
Yesterday Prof Jacobson rightly assessed Jeffrey Goldberg's The Crisis in U.S.-Israel Relations Is Officially Here as describing a crisis "in Obama-Israel relations." Although the White House has offered a disavowal of the profane insult made by one of Goldberg's sources, the full substance of his remarks needs to be rebutted. The offending official explained his boorish insult of Netanyahu :
“The good thing about Netanyahu is that he’s scared to launch wars,” the official said, expanding the definition of what a chickenshit Israeli prime minister looks like. “The bad thing about him is that he won’t do anything to reach an accommodation with the Palestinians or with the Sunni Arab states. The only thing he’s interested in is protecting himself from political defeat. He’s not [Yitzhak] Rabin, he’s not [Ariel] Sharon, he’s certainly no [Menachem] Begin. He’s got no guts.”
This is utterly false. Bret Stephens pointed out (Google link, emphasis mine):
The real problem for the administration is that the Israelis—along with all the other disappointed allies—are learning how little it pays to be on Barack Obama’s good side. Since coming to office in 2009, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed, against his own inclination and over the objections of his political base, to (1) recognize a Palestinian state; (2) enforce an unprecedented 10-month settlement freeze; (3) release scores of Palestinian prisoners held on murder charges; (4) embark on an ill-starred effort to reach a final peace deal with the Palestinians; (5) refrain from taking overt military steps against Iran; and (6) agree to every possible cease-fire during the summer’s war with Hamas. In exchange, Mr. Kerry publicly blamed Israel for the failure of the peace effort, the White House held up the delivery of munitions at the height of the Gaza war, and Mr. Obama is hellbent on striking whatever deal the Iranians can plausibly offer him.
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