Weakened Iran

"Iran does not possess the capability to deploy ground forces against Israel, given the vast geographical distance. Moreover, Iran's air capabilities are limited. Iran had counted on its network of proxies to provide a protective umbrella against Western strikes. However, this strategy lies in tatters: Hamas is reeling, Hizbullah is on the back foot, and the various militias in Iraq and Yemen are little more than an irritant for Israel. Thus, Iran finds itself unexpectedly exposed."

- Ariel Kahana
Source: Israel HaYom

Crown Heights Riots 1991: Short Documentary

 

Fascinating 23-minute documentary on the Crown Heights Riots of 1991
-Wall Street Journal

Kamala Harris Playing Hamas' Card

Why Hamas Is Refusing a Hostage Deal - Amit Segal

In the spring, President Biden turned a cold shoulder to Israel as support for destroying Hamas morphed into a call to end the war and a warning against entering Rafah. Strategic weapons shipments were delayed in American ports. The International Court of Justice is seeking arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister and defense minister, effectively equating them with Hamas leaders.
    

No wonder Hamas refused any deal offered, however generous. If the U.S. president seeks to end the war and the world will soon force the Israel Defense Forces to stop, why give up Israeli hostages?
    

When Vice President Kamala Harris became the de facto Democratic nominee, she gave Hamas an important gift. After meeting with Mr. Netanyahu, she said the next day, "We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the [Palestinians'] suffering. And I will not be silent." Ms. Harris is apparently unaware that food prices in Gaza are significantly lower than in Israel. In any other war in the past century, has one side regularly supplied food and goods to the enemy's civilians - and still been attacked by the White House?
    

By adopting the anti-Israel narrative, Ms. Harris is giving Hamas's leader, Yahya Sinwar, every reason in the world to refuse a hostage deal. Why give Israel the hostages without ending the war if there is a possibility the 47th president will force Israel to end it anyway?
    

Campus protesters "are showing exactly what the human emotion should be as a response to Gaza," she said recently. She claims that a war between a pro-Iranian murder organization and a democratic state "is not a binary issue."
    

The U.S. administration is taking a similar stance on the Lebanese front. The Iranian proxy Hizbullah has been firing at Israel for months. There is no "siege" and no "occupation," yet the Biden administration is mediating between Hizbullah and Israel like a real-estate broker, instead of sending Iran an unequivocal, threatening message to halt the rocket fire.
The writer is chief political commentator on Israel's Channel 12 News.
(Wall Street Journal)
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Kamala’s MidEast Self

Because details matter, this fair and intelligent podcast considers the question of what Kamala Harris’ MidEast policy might be and tries to parse out just how close to The Squad her positions might be:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tikvah-podcast/id921756215 

Quote Of The Month

Note that this pro-Hamasnik, cannot even spell Palestine

Quote of the month: "[T]he first antisemitic mass movement in American history has arisen. There have been antisemitic movements in America before. But never have they been this large, politically influential, violent and explicitly opposed to the fundamental principles of their own society."

Source:

Israel 365 News

The State of World Jewry

 The State of World Jewry

Jerry Seinfeld was heckled on his way out of this lecture at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan. Bari Weiss delivered this stunning speech laying out the threats and opportunities for the world’s besieged Jews. Though this is not a “soundbite,” it’s totally worth your time.  

Garbage “Solution:” The Two State Obsession

The Two-State Solution: Nothing More than Wishful Thinking - Amb. Alan Baker (Jerusalem Post)

• The hopeless, corrupt, failed, and incompetent Palestinian Authority is no more capable of administering Gaza than it has been capable of administering the West Bank areas.
• One wonders how and why serious international leaders continue to spout the absurd "two states" cliche as if it were a sort of magical panacea that, if repeated often enough, will somehow magically move out of the sphere of wishful thinking. It is inconceivable to imagine that a viable, peace-loving Palestinian political entity could materialize out of the present Middle East realities.

The writer, Director of the Institute for Diplomatic Affairs at the Jerusalem Center, served as Legal Adviser and Deputy Director-General of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and participated in the negotiation and drafting of the Oslo Accords with the Palestinians.

Palestinian Authority to Pay Hamas for Massacre

 

PA to Give Hamas Terrorists' Families $3 Million - Itamar Marcus 

The Palestinian Authority will pay at least 11,100,000 shekels ($2,789,430) this month to the families of the 1,500 dead Hamas terrorists who invaded Israel as a reward for participating in the Oct. 7 murders and atrocities against Israeli civilians.
   
In addition, the 50 captured Hamas terrorist murderers will receive monthly salaries in prison. 
(Palestinian Media Watch)
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Message of Unity from Jerusalem's Yemenite Village

Unity from Yerushalayim from Ateret Cohanim on Vimeo.

Palestinians Are Not Indigenous to Palestine!

Jews Are Not "Stealing" Judea 

- Rabbi Yaakov Menken

Less than a century after the Holocaust, antisemitism is sweeping across America to a degree unimaginable a few decades ago. Though just 2% of the U.S. population, Jews are the most targeted religious group in America. An identifiably Jewish person is several times more likely than a member of any other minority to be a victim of a hate crime. Diversity advocates, engaging in willful blindness, have pronounced Jews, whom the Nazis massacred for being non-white, to be beneficiaries of "white privilege."
    

Today, society's supreme concern is respect for human rights. But this noble cause has been derailed by antipathy towards Jews. As the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks observed, "most antisemites do not think of themselves as antisemites." In other words, antisemites will define antisemitism in ways that exonerate their own bigotry.
    

The story of the Promised Land is part of common parlance. Everyone knows what it is, where it is, and to whom it was promised - and how central it is to the faith of Moses and the Jewish people. Yet millions of Americans, including many who claim to value both religious tolerance and human rights, have adopted a fictional narrative built upon a European colonialist term for that Jewish homeland: Palestine.
    

In this alternate reality, descendants of Arab marauders are "indigenous Palestinians," whose homeland, by miraculous coincidence, happens to trace the borders of modern Israel. The Jews, in other ways words, are "stealing" Judea. By the way, the word "Palestinians" referred to Jews for over 2,000 years. In the 1930s, the "Palestinian" soccer uniform featured the Star of David. Today, "Palestinian" is used to exclude those same Jews and to call them "colonialists" for returning home.
    

The writer is managing director of the Coalition for Jewish Values. 

(Newsweek)

Double Standard Exposed

Iran's Nukes Are a Thorn for Saudi-Israeli Peace 

- Richard Goldberg

Saudi CrownPrince Mohammed bin Salman has reportedly made a joint U.S.-Saudi nuclear-enrichment program a top condition for a peace deal with Israel. This is untenable. The U.S. can't discount the potential for a future Saudi leader to use an industrial-scale enrichment infrastructure to produce fissile material as part of a nuclear weapons program. Once Saudi Arabia builds an enrichment program, Turkey and Egypt will want one too. A race to enrich throughout one of the world's most dangerous and unstable regions is a national-security recipe for disaster.
    

But when America tells a Saudi official that the U.S. can't support enrichment on Saudi soil, an obvious question comes back quickly: You're saying you can support an enrichment program in Iran, which is trying to kill Americans every day, but you can't support an enrichment program in Saudi Arabia, a close strategic partner? After all, the 2015 nuclear deal and subsequent negotiations have all but normalized illicit Iranian nuclear activity.
    

The results of a policy that legitimizes enrichment on Iranian soil are on full display. Iran has raced over the past two years to produce enough near-weapons-grade enriched uranium to produce several nuclear bombs in a matter of weeks.
The writer, a former National Security Council official, is a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. 

(Wall Street Journal)

The Palestinian Monster

Palestinian Refugees Were Used as a Political Prop 

- Prof. Fred Baumann

In "Palestinians Deserve a Passport" (op-ed, July 20), Abdullah Ektileh justly focuses on the abominable treatment Palestinians have been given by Arab governments. Where, in the great population exchanges of the 1940s, Muslims were absorbed into Pakistan, Hindus into India, SilesianGermans into West Germany and Jews from Arab lands into Israel, the Palestinians were an exception.
    

Rejected by their fellow Arabs, who largely kept them cooped up in camps and fed a diet of hatred and revenge from birth, Palestinians were meant to be a tool for a war of total destruction against the Jewish state. Eventually, the plan backfired and, after the (barely) failed attempt of radicalized Palestinians to overthrow the Jordanian monarchy, they became too dangerous to absorb. To this day, they suffer from their exclusion by their fellow Arabs, while directing their passionate hatred toward Israel.
    

The Oslo agreement intended for them to become citizens of a Palestinian state, one offered by Israel in 2000, 2001 and 2008. During what was supposed to be a transition period, Oslo granted them autonomy under the Palestinian Authority. But the PA has flatly refused all those offers of statehood and promoted terrorism, even making payments to Palestinians who kill Jews. By their policies, the Arab states created a monster that terrifies them and also has made the two-state solution, one perfectly sensible in theory, a practical impossibility.
    

The Palestinian leadership's last card has been posing as victims. While that has succeeded in whipping up a worldwide wave of Jew-hate, it has done nothing to help the Palestinians themselves.
The writer is Professor of Political Science at Kenyon College. 

(Wall Street Journal)

The Fruit of The Abraham Accords: “Abrahamic Family House”

A mosque, a church and a synagogue open side-by-side

- Jonathan H. Ferziger

The white-stoned mosque, church and synagogue anchoring the Abrahamic Family House, a monumental interfaith compound that was unveiled last week in the United Arab Emirates, will serve as a busy forum for promoting religious cooperation in the Middle East, its founders said.

The individual structures that make up the new complex, which was designed by the acclaimed Ghanian-British architect, Sir David Adjaye, are linked by a central exhibition space, public garden and conference center that will open to visitors on March 1. The project was inaugurated last Thursday in a twilight ceremony in the capital city of Abu Dhabi led by members of the UAE’s royal court and leaders of the three faiths.

[The Circuit] 

Get Back To Where You Once Belonged: Reclaiming The Temple Mount

 

To Win, Israel Must Govern the Temple Mount 

- Alex Selsky

It is because of the symbolism of the Temple Mount that Palestinian rejectionists believe Israel is weak and temporary.

The Palestinians are convinced that the Temple Mount is as important to us as it is to them, and meanwhile we continue to fight about it amongst ourselves.

We do not understand the enormous damage caused by this debate, nor the central importance of going up to the Mount in order to strengthen our national identity and our connection to the Land of Israel and Jerusalem. Until we do, we will not have achieved victory in our War of Independence, which is unfortunately not yet over.

We must stop fighting religiously and politically over the Temple Mount. The halachic prohibition on going up to the site must take into consideration its national importance beyond its religious importance.

Our enemies must know that the Mount is important to us. The whole world must know that it is important to us—to all of us. Right and left, ultra-Orthodox, religious, traditional and secular. It should be as important to us as the Western Wall and Masada.

After visiting the Temple Mount and seeing how vast it is, it is clear that there is no problem of space. It is mostly empty and unused. There should no logistical problem with allowing worship for Jews and others on the Temple Mount, without disturbing Muslims and without harming their status and their holy places.

[W]e have yet to properly assert our sovereignty on Zion itself, the symbolic center of Zionism. This means that our full independence has yet to be won…

Until we have reversed this, we will not have fully won our War of Independence.

[Jewish News Syndicate] 

Iran Beginning To “Crack”

 

Iran's Hard-Liners Are Starting to Crack - Reuel Marc Gerecht & Ray Takeyh

This time is different. The Iranian people have been protesting in the streets for more than a month. Now even Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's allies are distancing themselves from the government, putting unprecedented stress on the regime. For four decades, regime loyalists have united in times of crisis. It's telling that today many influential conservatives display little compunction about criticizing Mr. Khamenei and his henchmen.

The security services have been hesitant to use lethal force. That conservatives are now critiquing Mr. Khamenei shows that the regime is losing its core strength. They seem to realize that Tehran can't kill its way to success. These men either don't have the stomach to murder thousands of women, or they believe - rightly - that doing so would only lead to mass confrontation with hundreds of thousands of angry men.

The demonstrators aren't interested in compromise. Conservatives now face a choice between joining the protest or being left behind. The Islamic Republic's rulers, like the shahs before them, know that their regime ultimately rests on the awe of unchallengeable power. That neither teenage girls throughout Iran nor foundational figures of the theocracy see this majesty any longer suggests that Mr. Khamenei's time is running out.

Mr. Gerecht, a former Iranian-targets officer in the CIA, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mr. Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. 

(Wall Street Journal)

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“Hocus-Pocus Political History”

Phantom Fantasia in the Middle East -Thane Rosenbaum

Decades of impeccable PR and global gullibility have enabled many to bizarrely believe there once was an Arab nation called Palestine, with the people in it known as Palestinians. Yet there never has been an Arab nation-state called Palestine. At the time of Israel's founding, in 1948, the word Palestinian did not describe a distinct Arab people. In fact, the word, created by the ancient Romans, referred to Jews. Jews have been living continuously in what is today Israel since the time of the Jewish patriarchs of the Old Testament.
    

Palestine is more an idea than an actual place, the magical thinking of a country that never existed. Hocus-pocus political history. Palestinian inclusion within the vortex of intersectional grievances is laughable given how Sharia-observant Palestinians, especially in Gaza, feel about women, gays, the transgender, cultural and academic freedom, religious diversity, free speech, and the rule of law. Palestinian rejection of five separate offers of statehood since 1947 is never mentioned.
    

Nothing was stolen from the Palestinians. They are stateless because they never had a state - not because they were denied one, or had one taken away. Indeed, it's not at all clear whether they actually want one. For a people with no national currency, political history, sustained leadership, defined borders, or even a gross national product aside from terrorism, Palestinians have nonetheless created the illusion of a homeland lost to Jewish land-grabbers. 

But hate does not a nation make.
The writer is a law professor and Distinguished University Professor at Touro College. 

(White Rose)

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Misunderstanding The MidEast

Daniel Pipes, PhD

Why is Muslim society lagging? - Daniel Pipes, PhD 

A barrage of statistics makes clear that contemporary Muslims have fallen behind other peoples, whether the topic be health, corruption, longevity, literacy, human rights, personal security, income, or power. But why? 

[T]he global Left and Islamists blame Western imperialism. For them, today's tribulations follow inevitably on the two centuries after 1760 when nearly all Muslims fell under the control of 16 majority-Christian states.  

But this accusation ignores two key facts. First, Muslims lagged behind much of the rest of the world in those indices long before 1760 – which helps explain why they came under Western control in the first place. Second, Western control ended about seven decades ago, affording plenty of time to blossom and succeed, as so many non-Muslim peoples have; compare Singapore/Malaysia, India/Pakistan, Israel/Palestinians, or North/South Cyprus.

[The Washington Times] 

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Ben & Jerry’s Gets Creamed!

 

Ben & Jerry’s factory in Be’er Tuvia in southern Israel

Ben and Jerry's Forced to End Israel Boycott - Hannah Boland

Consumer giant Unilever has blocked Ben & Jerry's from boycotting Israel by selling the ice cream brand's operations in the country to its local manufacturer, Avi Zinger, who has been making and selling the ice cream under license for the past 34 years. Unilever slapped down efforts by Ben & Jerry's to take a political stance, saying it "rejects completely and repudiates unequivocally any form of discrimination or intolerance."

Last summer, Ben & Jerry's said that it would not be renewing its license agreement with its franchise partner. However, owner Unilever said it had overruled its subsidiary and sold the ice cream maker's local operations, following consultation with the Israeli government. 

(Telegraph-UK)

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TikTok Features Arab Burning Mezuzah Scroll

Arab setting fire to mezuzah scroll

Double Standards: Video of Palestinian Who Destroyed a Mezuzah Went Viral - Foreign Minister Yair Lapid

A video that went viral on TikTok shows a young Palestinian who destroyed a mezuzah - which contains Hebrew verses from the Torah and is affixed to the doorpost of Jewish homes. When you watch this video, think about what would happen if there was a similar video of a young Israeli who did exactly the same thing to a Koran or to a picture of the Prophet Muhammad. 

(Twitter)

Footage of Palestinian Burning Mezuzah Sparks Social Media Firestorm - Hanan Greenwood

A Palestinian sparked a social media firestorm on March 21 when he posted footage of himself setting a mezuzah parchment on fire on TikTok. The man is shown tearing the mezuzah off the doorframe, removing the parchment inside and setting it on fire - all with a big smile on his face. 

(Israel Hayom)

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Biden Tries to Crush Abraham Accords

 

Blinkin [center] is doing his best to neutralize The Abraham Accords in order for Biden [left] to realign the US toward Iran

The Negev two-state summit

The so-called two-state solution has a hundred-year history of uninterrupted failure. In 1920, the League of Nations gave Britain the mandate for Palestine, which they were legally required to administer as the future homeland of the Jewish people. In 1922, the British carved out the majority of the land set aside for the Jews and established the Arab state of Transjordan—now known as the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

Britain’s initial two-state solution was supposed to end the Arab conflict with Israel. But of course, it didn’t. The Arabs pocketed Transjordan and expanded their war, as they have with every subsequent attempt to implement the two-state solution.

Many Israelis and friends of Israel assumed the so-called two-state solution had finally been exhausted in 2000, when PLO chief and Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat rejected the Palestinian state that Israel offered him at the Camp David Summit and launched a terror war against the Jewish state. Israel won Arafat’s terror war by the skin of its teeth in 2004. 

Like the establishment of Transjordan and the failed Oslo peace process before it, Israel’s surrender of Gaza and establishment of what became Hamastan in Gaza did not placate the Arabs of the land of Israel—or even in Gaza. They pocketed the concession and used the territory they had received to escalate their war against Israel. Since the failed Gaza withdrawal, we have seen dozens more plans, peace conferences and envoys all committed to advancing the two-state solution.

There was a sense that the long nightmare with the failed policy paradigm had finally and permanently died during Donald Trump’s presidency and Benjamin Netanyahu’s premiership. But now that Trump has been replaced with Biden and Netanyahu with the Bennett-Lapid-Gantz-Abbas government, last week it came roaring back.

Blinken’s visit to Israel last week was a challenging moment for him. Like his Biden administration colleagues, Blinken is committed to implementing the Obama administration’s plan to realign the United States away from Israel and the Sunni Arab states and towards Iran. 

To block criticism of the nuclear deal the United States is now [colluding] with the Iranians, Blinken’s challenge last week was to neutralize the Israeli-Arab anti-Iran strategic alliance. And he used the two-state solution to achieve this goal.

Before Blinken arrived at the Negev Summit on Monday night, he held another summit in Ramallah with PLO chief and P.A. chairman Mahmoud Abbas. When he arrived in Sde Boker, Blinken used his meeting in Ramallah to make the Palestinians the main subject of conversation. 

Blinken’s two-state solution offensive enabled him to ignore whatever protests Lapid and the Arab foreign ministers expressed at the Negev Summit. It also allowed him to change the subject. In their final statements at the end of the summit on Tuesday, the Arab foreign ministers ignored Iran and joined Blinken in voicing their support for the two-state solution.

[The Jerusalem Post]

The Negev Summit: Groundbreaking & Underreported

Foreign ministers of Bahrain, UAE, Morocco and Egypt arrive for Negev Summit

The foreign ministers of Bahrain, the UAE, Morocco, and Egypt landed on Sunday evening in Israel ahead of a landmark regional summit in the southern Negev Desert, where they were joined by their Israeli counterpart, Yair Lapid.

The UAE’s Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Bahrain’s Abdullatif bin Rashid Al-Zayani, Morocco’s Nasser Bourita, and Egypt’s Sameh Shoukry all landed at the Nevatim Air Base in southern Israel.

Shoukry, whose country was the first country to sign a peace agreement with Israel in 1979, joins the three Arab countries that signed the US-brokered normalization agreements known as the Abraham Accords in 2020.

From the airbase, the senior diplomats headed to the Isrotel Kedma Hotel in Sde Boker, where Lapid — who is hosting the two-day event — greeted them.

An official close to Lapid told journalists that the Israeli top diplomat and the Arab dignitaries were discussing “advancing a regional security architecture.”

The official added that the meetings so far have been “very warm, including embraces and friendly conversation.”

The focus of the summit, according to officials, will be on regional threats, challenges, and opportunities. Among the issues expected to be at the center of the meetings are the Iran nuclear talks in Vienna, and the Russia-Ukraine war.

The summit is also seen as a display of diplomatic unity intended for Tehran.

[The Times of Israel]