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Israel Tag

Posted by Miriam Elman on November 22, 2016 1 Comment
For Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorist groups, the most prized possession is the body of an Israeli, alive or dead. Those bodies are used both to inflict mental anguish on the Israeli public, but also to trade for prisoners who themselves have killed or attempted to kill Israelis. It's a sad, ghoulish dance by Israel's enemies. There have been many similar kidnap attempts in Israel proper, as well as Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank"), in which local Palestinian terrorist groups have tried to kidnap, or succeeded in kidnapping, Israelis. Because of Israeli control of the area, unlike in Gaza and Lebanon, the kidnapping doesn't get far, resulting in repatriation or death. Yet, in the prevailing narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the settlements in the West Bank and the Jews who live in them are called the main obstacles to peace. West Bank settlers—some 350,000 Israelis—are typically stereotyped as zealots and racists who are hostile to Arab Palestinians.

Posted by David Gerstman on November 21, 2016 11 Comments
Early on in his first term, President Barack Obama suggested that in order to achieve peace between Israeli and the Palestinians, there needed to be more "daylight" between the United States and Israel. Obama, according to a report on a meeting between the president and American Jewish leaders, said, referring to the Bush administration, "During those eight years, there was no space between us and Israel, and what did we get from that? When there is no daylight, Israel just sits on the sidelines, and that erodes our credibility with the Arab states." During Obama's two terms in office, he made efforts to put daylight between his administration and Israel, and not just in terms of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: in 2010 the administration harangued Netanyahu over a plan to build apartments in Jerusalem, the administration pursued the nuclear deal with Iran over Israeli objections, senior administration officials, on and off the record, have disparaged Netanyahu, and Obama is said to be considering a move in the UN to support Palestinian statehood.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 17, 2016 40 Comments
Keith Ellison, Democratic Congressman from Minnesota, is the favorite to become Chair of the Democratic National Committee. He has the support of big names like Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Harry Reid, among others. Yet for years there have been questions about Ellison's past association with Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, as well as his association with anti-Israel groups. We touched upon Ellison's background in two recent posts: Scott Johnson of Power Line, who is based in Minnesota, has been following the career of Ellison for a decade. Scott talked about some of what he has learned about Ellison in a recent radio interview, Ten Years On The Ellison Case:

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on November 17, 2016 2 Comments
With Israel's President Reuven Rivlin touring India on an 8-day visit, Ariel University is taking this historic opportunity to connect with Indian universities and tap into South Asian country's huge talent pool. Professor Yehuda Danon, President of Ariel University, is accompanying the presidential delegation, along with fifteen other heads of Israeli universities. Along with student and faculty exchange programmes, Ariel University hopes to set up a joint research fund aimed at promoting research projects with India counterparts. Ariel University, located in Samaria hills, is already home to many Indian research scholars, working mainly in industrial and technological fields. During my visit to Israel, earlier this year, I met few of the doctoral students from India and learned about the path-breaking work they were doing in collaboration with their Israeli teammates.

Posted by David Gerstman on November 15, 2016 18 Comments
Miriam Elman had an excellent post on Sunday on the possibility that, once inaugurated as president, Donald Trump would do what none of his predecessors ever did despite their promises and move the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, Israel's capital. The reason that Bill Clinton and George W. Bush never followed the law calling for moving the embassy because the law has a waiver provision, allowing the president not to move the embassy if he deems the move to threaten the national security. The foreign policy smart set says that the president can't do this because it will hurt the United States in the Arab world or because it would show the Palestinians that the United States is on Israel's side or that it would prejudge the terms of any final deal between Israel and the Palestinians.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on November 15, 2016 2 Comments
Israel's President Reuven Rivlin received a ceremonial welcome at the presidential palace in New Delhi, earlier today. Prime Minister Narandra Modi and senior members of his cabinet where present at the occasion as the visiting Israeli Head of State was given a Guard of Honour by the three services of Indian military. Hundreds of Israeli and Indian flags could be seen waving side-by-side along the route taken by the presidential motorcade in New Delhi. The grand ceremony accompanied by a thundering 21-gun salute is a fry cry from the dead-of-the-night  incognito "stop over" by the then Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan on a tarmac in Delhi, 40 years ago. Israel-India bilateral contacts in those days sounded more like Cold War spy thrillers than everyday diplomacy. Diplomatic relations between the two countries have indeed come a long way.

Posted by Miriam Elman on November 13, 2016 5 Comments
President-elect Donald Trump campaigned on a promise that the United States would officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital city of the Jewish state. He also vowed that when he became president he’d relocate the U.S. embassy from its current beachside location in Tel Aviv to the Holy City. U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv Beach Satellite   Now, some are saying that once he’s in the Oval Office, Trump will go back on his word.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 04, 2016 3 Comments
Next time a group of students from Students for Justice in Palestine chant "Long Live the Intifada," remember the case of Dafna Meir. We reported on January 17, 2016, Reports: Palestinian stabs Israeli woman to death at home in front of children:
This has eerie resemblance to the stabbing to death of the Fogel family in 2011, including 6 month old Hadas as she slept in her crib. Reports indicated that a Palestinian man entered a home in a settlement near Hebron, and stabbed to death a mother in front of her three children. One of the children, 15 years old, gave a description of the man to the police, and he was caught on security cameras leaving the the settlement heading towards an Arab village.
That mother was Dafna Meir.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on November 03, 2016 3 Comments
Israel's President Reuven Rivlin will visit India on a six-day tour starting November 15. Israeli President will be accompanied by a “delegation of unprecedented size comprising businessmen and university officials”, Indian newspaper The Hindu reports. President Rivlin will become the second sitting Israeli President to visit the South Asian country since the establishment of diplomatic ties between the two nations almost twenty-five years ago. President Rivlin and his Indian counterpart, President Pranab Mukherjee, will preside over the signing of a number of cooperation agreements ranging from agriculture to national security.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on November 01, 2016 13 Comments
A guest house in Germany’s Black Forest region caused an uproar on social media after it turned down Israeli guests saying, “Our apartments are not for them.” Communicating through an online booking service, guest house instructed Israelis to “cancel the booking.” Four Israeli families were hoping to book apartments at the guest house while planning a trip to Germany next summer. City officials and regional press are trying to downplay the incident as a misunderstanding, but the incident comes in the backdrop of rising antisemitism and antisemitic hate crimes in Germany. Earlier this year, Kempinski-Hotel in Berlin removed Israel from its phonebook. A hotel employee had explained the decision saying, "Majority of over clients are Arabs and they told us to remove Israel."

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 26, 2016 7 Comments
UNESCO continues to implement the holy Islamic Jihad against the Jews and Jewish History demanded by the Palestinian by passing a second resolution earlier today expunging the Jewish and Christian connection to the Temple Mount. The Israeli ambassador threw it in the trash. https://twitter.com/JudahAriGross/status/791234794797621248

Posted by Miriam Elman on October 24, 2016 1 Comment
Last night Israeli media (see here and here) reported the breaking news that four Palestinian men who had been detained since Thursday by their own government for visiting with their Jewish neighbors over the Sukkot holiday last week were finally set free. i24news reports:
The Palestinian Authority on Sunday released four Palestinians it had held in detention since Thursday after they attended a religious festival in a nearby Jewish settlement, Israel Radio reports.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 21, 2016 3 Comments
One of the foundational myths of the anti-Israel movement, including the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, is that Muslim Arabs are the indigenous people of all of what now is Israel and Judea/Samaria (the "West Bank"). From that foundational myth comes such vile absurdities as UNESCO -- at the instigation of the Palestinian Authority -- excising the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount, which predates Islam itself as well as the Arab conquest of the region. That foundational myth also allows BDS activists misleadingly to claim solidarity with truly indigenous people, such as native peoples in North America, and to hijack indigenous movements and repurpose them for the fight to deny Jews a homeland in the homeland of the Jewish people. An article recently in the Middle East Quarterly examined historical first hand accounts of Arab immigration and migration, Were the Arabs Indigenous to Mandatory Palestine?
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