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Israel Tag

Posted by Miriam Elman on October 14, 2016 7 Comments
The United Nation’s cultural body—UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization)—passed a resolution in Paris yesterday that challenges both Jewish and Christian ties to Jerusalem’s holy sites. The resolution was passed as Item 25 (titled “Occupied Palestine”) of the provisional agenda for UNESCO Executive Board’s 200th session. The document (full text here) was advanced by the Palestinians along with Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, and Sudan. Twenty-four countries voted in favor of the resolution; 26 abstained; and only 6 voted against according to media reports. Those that voted against include: U.S., Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Lithuania and Estonia.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 09, 2016 3 Comments
An Arab terrorist who lived in the eastern portion of Jerusalem and who was scheduled to report to prison for other offenses went on a shooting spree on Sunday, October 9, 2016, in the "Ammunition Hill" section of Jerusalem. The killer was shot dead by police, but not before he killed two Israelis, Levana Malichi (age 60) and Yosef Kirma (age 29, a policeman). The Jerusalem Post reports:
Sunday’s shooting began at approximately 10:30 a.m., when the terrorist, who was driving a white vehicle, opened fire on a male and female civilian near the Ammunition Hill light rail stop, across the street from Police Headquarters. “The terrorist opened fire on two people, and one woman in her 60s was wounded critically, and a man was moderately-to-seriously wounded,” said Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 06, 2016 4 Comments
October 6, 1973, was Yom Kippur (in the Hebrew calendar). As most Israeli Jews were attending services or otherwise observing the most holy day in Judaism, there was a surprise attack by Egyptian and Syrian armed forces. As I related in an earlier post:
There are certain events when you just remember exactly where you were when you heard the news. I was on stage for a third-grade practice of a school play when a teacher walked into the room (the gym, which also was the school theater and lunch room) and told everyone that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been killed. We were sent home early. I was at my desk using AOL to access the internet (!) when early reports came in of a “small plane” hitting the World Trade Center. And you know the rest.

Posted by Miriam Elman on October 05, 2016 0 Comments
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) is a non-Jewish organization that provides cover to the anti-Israel boycott movement (BDS) by legitimizing and mainstreaming its assault on Jewish identity. As we’ve noted in prior posts (see here and here), JVP activists operate in multiple arenas to exploit Jewish culture and traditions, putting them into service for a vehemently anti-Israel and anti-Zionist propaganda campaign. Various Jewish celebrations and commemorative life-cycle events are constantly being manipulated for Israel-bashing and pro-boycott messaging. Last April, this identity theft of Jewish heritage was particularly visible during Passover, when JVP promoted BDS in a newly released Haggadah and staged ‘liberation seders’, appropriating the holiday’s rituals and texts for an anti-Israel narrative. Now, JVP is usurping the Jewish High Holidays.

Posted by Miriam Elman on October 04, 2016 3 Comments
Last month, Syracuse University (SU) made headlines when a faculty member in the Religious Studies Department dis-invited an award-winning Israeli NYU Professor and filmmaker from a campus event out of fear of offending the political sensibilities of her BDS-supporting colleagues (see our prior posts covering the story). At the time, pro-BDS faculty signed a petition (subsequently posted onto Facebook) denying that any pressure to disinvite the filmmaker had existed and expressing their commitment to free speech and academic freedom. But now many of these same professors, keen on moving the campus in a BDS direction, are making demands that call into question this articulated devotion to a campus community open to free expression.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on September 29, 2016 1 Comment
Prominent and ordinary Indians took to social media expressing their grief following the death of Israeli statesman and Nobel laureate at the age of 93:
“It was during his service as the minister of foreign affairs in the 1990’s that Peres also began his special relationship with India. He was the first minister of foreign affairs to visit India following the establishment of diplomatic relations,” wrote Ambassador Daniel Carmon, Israel's envoy to India, in an article published yesterday in India newspaper Hindustan Times. “He visited India several times in various capacities, visits to be remembered and cherished by all those who met him here.”

Posted by Mary Chastain on September 28, 2016 2 Comments
Companies in Israel's natural gas field has signed a $10 billion agreement with Jordan to supply the country with gas, thus pushing Israel into a natural gas powerhouse. The Wall Street Journal reported:
Noble Energy Inc. of Houston and its partners in the Leviathan gas field will supply Amman-based National Electric Power Co. with 1.6 trillion cubic feet of gas over 15 years, the company said. Leviathan is the largest natural-gas reserve in Israeli waters. The country’s officials hope development of the field can spur regional exports and deepen economic and diplomatic ties with some traditionally hostile neighbors such as Jordan, which has few energy sources of its own.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 22, 2016 7 Comments
Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at the U.N. today. As usual, it was an excellent speech. The headline is that Netanyahu offered to have Palestinian President speak at the Israeli Knesset (parliament) and for Netanhahu to speak at the parliament in Ramallah. https://twitter.com/IsraeliPM/status/779005562390515712 Put aside intentions, there will be some hurdles to overcome if Netanyahu is to speak to the Palestinian parliament. It hasn't met since 2007.

Posted by Miriam Elman on September 20, 2016 3 Comments
Yesterday the University of California at Berkeley rescinded its suspension of a course, Ethnic Studies 198: Palestine: A Colonial Settler Analysis—a vehemently anti-Israel, one-credit, once-a-week, student-led course. The entire purpose of the course appears to be political advocacy and organizing, in violation of university policy for an academic class. California Regents Policy 2301 provides:
“The Regents…are responsible to ensure that public confidence in the University is justified. And they are responsible to see that the University remain aloof from politics and never function as an instrument for the advance of partisan interest. Misuse of the classroom by, for example, allowing it to be used for political indoctrination…constitutes misuse of the University as an institution”.
The course was so obviously political advocacy that the course poster [see Featured Image and below] used the completely discredited BDS propaganda map which was so false and misleading that MNSBC apologized for once using it during a news segment.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 18, 2016 3 Comments
Sadly, as we have demonstrated so many times, some Palestinians children have been used in terror attacks, including as suicide bombers. It is a culture cultivated by people like Bassem Tamimi and others in Palestinian media who deliberately send children to confront Israeli soldiers or Border Police in the hope of a viral photo or video. The incitement also is from the official and social media of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, which lionize "martyrs" including minors who engage and are killed in the course of attacking.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 15, 2016 3 Comments
Recently, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated an obvious truth. The demand that Jews leave Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") as part of a two-state solution is nothing less than a demand for ethnic cleansing that cannot be a basis for peace, Netanyahu: Ethnic Cleansing of Jews For Peace is Absurd: That video, and the truth underlying it, caused a fury because it took on a core (but false) international view that Jewish presence beyond the 1949 armistice line (pre-1967) is illegitimate at best, illegal at worst.

Posted by David Gerstman on September 15, 2016 0 Comments
The stroke suffered Tuesday by former Israeli president Shimon Peres offers an opportunity to look at his legacy to the State of Israel. Tuesday, was September 13, 23 years to the day that he stood on the White House lawn with Yitzchak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, overseen by President Bill Clinton, to sign the Oslo Accords, the peace treaty between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. Anyone who is familiar Peres, Israel's ninth president (who retired from that post in 2014) and two-time prime minister, since then would think of him chiefly as the architect of peace with the Palestinians. Peres took his vision of peace and became an international celebrity in the process, even as the peace he pushed for never quite materialized. But to remember Peres simply for his never quite realized dream of peace with the Palestinians, is to overlook the essential role he  played in shaping Israel's military in the 1950's.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on September 09, 2016 8 Comments
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu released a new video Friday. In his latest YouTube chat, Netanyahu challenges the idea that ethnic cleansing of Jews in Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") will lead to peace. According to Israel National News:
"The Palestinian Authority leadership’s demand that a Palestinian state be free of Jews is ethnic cleansing, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on Friday, and the concept of ethnic cleansing for peace is absurd. Netanyahu’s comments came in a video he released in Hebrew and English and which was also released in a version with Arabic subtitles."
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