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Israel Tag

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Yesterday the University of California at Berkeley rescinded its suspension of a course, Ethnic Studies 198: Palestine: A Colonial Settler Analysis—a vehemently anti-Israel, one-credit, once-a-week, student-led course.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."

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on September 08, 2016 3 Comments
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was a KGB spy in the 1980s, recently surfaced Soviet documents reveal. Abbas, who was a long-time aide to Yasser Arafat -- the notoriuos Godfather of Arab terrorism -- was appropriately code-named the “mole” (krotov) by his Russian handlers. Abbas was most likely recruited by the Soviet spy agency back in the early 80s when he was a Ph.D. student at a Moscow university where he was polishing his credentials as an antisemitic conspiracy theorist, needed to rise through the ranks of Arafat’s Palestinian terrorist group PLO. Abbas, leader of PLO's main faction 'Fatah', took office in 2005 and appointed himself as the 'President for Life' of the Palestinian Authority -- refusing to call for any further elections -- very much in keeping with the democratic best-practices of fellow Arab despots.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 04, 2016 2 Comments
The list of Palestinian suicide bombings targeting civilians is long and bloody, and dates back at least to 1989. Documenting the pathology of Palestinian terror attacks, including suicide attacks, and telling the stories of the victims, has become a priority for me. I have previously covered, among others, the suicide bombings at Sbarro Pizzeria in Jerusalem, and Dolphinarium Disco and Mike's Place bar in Tel Aviv, and Bus 37 in Haifa. On September 4, 1997, three suicide bombers targeted the Ben Yehuda Street pedestrian mall in Jerusalem in a coordinated attack just five weeks after another marketplace suicide bombing. The NY Times reported at the time:
Three suicide bombers evidently acting in concert set off bombs on a popular shopping promenade in Jerusalem today, killing four passers-by and themselves and dealing a brutal new blow to the reeling Israeli-Palestinian peace. The three explosions followed in quick succession at about 3:10 P.M. on Ben Yehuda Street, a shady pedestrian thoroughfare in West Jerusalem lined with boutiques and outdoor cafes, and packed with Israelis and foreign tourists.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 28, 2016 9 Comments
We have written numerous times about the suicide bombing of the Sbarro Pizzeria in Jerusalem in 2001, which killed 15 people, including two Americans and several children. Most recently Miriam Elman documented the bombing and the mastermind, Ahlam Tamimi, Never forget: Sbarro Pizzeria Massacre, Jerusalem, Aug. 9, 2001. Ahlam not only masterminded the bombing, she announced it on Palestinian television as a student news show host. [caption id="attachment_182024" align="alignnone" width="600"][Ahlam Tamimi announcing Sbarro Pizzeria bombing 2001, via Hot House film] [Ahlam Tamimi announcing Sbarro Pizzeria bombing 2001, via Hot House film][/caption]Ahlam is from the Tamimi Clan of Nabi Saleh, whose best known member is Bassem Tamimi, controversial for his use of children for try to provoke confrontations with the Israeli police for the purpose of obtaining viral video and images. The Tamimi Clan is treated as heroes by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, and by anti-Zionist leftists (including some Jews).  Ahlam, who was released from prison as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange and now resides in Jordan, remains a "much-loved" figure in Nabi Saleh.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 27, 2016 19 Comments
Marc Lamont Hill is a professor at Morehouse College, frequent cable news commentator, and host of his own shows on BET and VH1. Lamont Hill has voiced support for "revolutionary struggle" against Israel, which he recorded on a video for a Dream Defenders trip to express solidarity with Palestinians against Israel: Lamont Hill also is a supporter of the anti-Israel Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement, specifically the academic boycott of Israel. This spring Lamont Hill announced that he was voting in favor of a resolution at the American Anthropological Association to boycott Israeli academia under the expansive guidelines of the BDS movement. The boycott failed to pass by a very slim margin.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on August 26, 2016 1 Comment
A few days ago, we covered how in early August 2016 the Student Council at Leipzig University in Germany passed a resolution taking a strong stand against calls to boycott Israel, declaring them to be anti-Semitic, READ: German university student council resolution declaring BDS anti-Semitic:
The Student Council condemns anti-Semitic boycott campaigns such as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions [BDS] and stands against the execution, participation in, and promotion of such campaigns and events at the University of Leipzig. Therefore, the Student Council will not support BDS Campaign or settings (events, exhibitions, demonstrations etc.) in which BDS Movement is involved. We consider international cooperation vital for the Academics. As a Student Council we stand against anti-Semitic measures such as disinviting of Israeli academicians from conferences in the context of the boycott campaign, and [council will] publicise whenever it happens — thereby contributing to the clarification of the matter and preventing such an occurrence.
The student council has produced a chronicle of its rejection of BDS (pdf.) which includes a citation to my translation of the resolution:

Posted by Miriam Elman on August 26, 2016 3 Comments
Early Tuesday morning, roughly 60 ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jews tried to make an unauthorized visit to Joseph’s Tomb, located inside the Palestinian city of Nablus near the biblical city of Shechem. According to multiple media reports (see here and here), the group had to be extricated by Israeli troops after their convoy came under attack by Palestinian rioters in the vicinity. [caption id="attachment_170045" align="alignnone" width="600"]Joseph's Tomb | 2011 | credit: YouTube screenshot Joseph's Tomb | 2011 | credit: YouTube screenshot[/caption]

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 25, 2016 2 Comments
In January 2016, we addressed the rising tide of aggressive and sometimes violent conduct by anti-Israel protesters who disrupt appearances by Israeli and pro-Israel speakers, Anti-Israel protest at Kings College turns violent:
For several years we have been documenting the increasingly aggressive tactics of anti-Israel protesters on campus. Recently, an Israeli professor’s guest lecture was disrupted at the University of Minnesota Law School, and the Palestine Solidarity Committee at UT-Austin (led by law student Mohammed Nabulsi) disrupted an Israeli Studies event....
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