PM: Palestinian failure to recognize Jewish links to Israel is a 'tragedy'
It is a “tragedy” that many Palestinians deny any Jewish connection to the Land of Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday at the start of a meeting with visiting Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic.Students Urge Gov't: Recognize Abbas's Role in Munich Massacre
This marks the first ever visit to Israel by a Serbian prime minister.
“Here, in the State of Israel, the Jewish people have achieved their self-determination in a democratic state that guarantees equal rights for all its peoples, all its citizens, regardless of race, religion or sex,” Netanyahu said, as the debate over the Jewish State Bill seemed to animate part of his welcoming comments to Vucic.
“It is indeed a tragedy that so many of our Palestinian neighbors still repudiate the basic facts of history.
They deny the more than 3,000-year-old connection between the people of Israel and the Land of Israel,” he said.
Netanyahu bewailed what he said was the Palestinian denial of Israel’s right to national self-determination, even as they demand that right for themselves.
Israel must formally declare Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas responsible for the 1972 Munich massacre, the Students for Israel movement appealed to the Ministry of Defense Tuesday.Israel's foreign affairs budget among lowest in West
From September 5-6 1972, masked terrorists stormed the apartments where Israeli athletes were staying in the Olympic Village for the 1972 Munich games. The terrorists took the athletes as hostages and demanded the release of 200 Arabs from Israeli prisons.
After several tense hours, the terrorists killed the Israeli athletes. Nonetheless, the Games continued for several hours afterward.
Over the past several years, it has been revealed on multiple occasions that Abbas was closely linked to Munich mastermind Abu Daoud.
Abbas praised Abu Daoud in 2010, saying "he was one of the leading figures of Fatah and spent his life in resistance and sincere work as well as physical sacrifice for his people's just causes."
Later, attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, director of the Shurat Hadin Israel Law Center, has exposed that Abbas in fact provided the financing for the Munich attack.
But the State of Israel must formally recognize Abbas's role in financing the attack, Chairman of the Students for Israel movement Eliyahu Nissim stated Tuesday.
Israel's investment in its foreign affairs apparatus is significantly lower than that of other OECD countries, MK Ronen Hoffman (Yesh Atid), who chairs the Foreign Policy and Public Diplomacy Subcommittee of the Knesset's powerful Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, revealed on Monday.
According to the figures, Holland invests 4 percent of its budget in its foreign affairs deployment; Belgium invests 3.8 percent; Norway 2 percent; Turkey 0.9 percent; Greece 0.4 percent; and Israel, at the bottom of the list, invests a mere 0.38 percent of its national budget in its foreign affairs deployment abroad. On average, OECD countries invest five times more than Israel in their foreign affairs deployments.
The Foreign Ministry's total budget in Israel stands at an amount equal to only 3 percent of the country's defense budget, lower not only in comparison to Western countries but also to Iran (whose foreign affairs expenditure equals 8 percent of its defense budget) and Jordan (5 percent).
The Palestinian Authority maintains some 100 embassies and consulates worldwide, with a budget estimated at approximately 200 million shekels ($50.8 million). Israel, meanwhile, invests less than half that amount in its foreign affairs relations apparatus.
French lawmakers set for Palestine recognition vote
The motion is expected to sail through the lower house, and while it is non-binding, Paris has in the past already made known that it plans to recognize a Palestinian nation “when the time comes,” arguing that a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict logically implies recognition of Palestine.French Ambassador to Israel Reportedly in Affair With Daughter of PLO Terrorist
As such, the vote will likely anger Israel — coming as it does after a similar resolution was approved by British lawmakers on October 13 and Spanish MPs on November 18, and after Sweden’s formal recognition of Palestine as a state on October 30.
The text introduced by the ruling Socialists “invites the French government to use the recognition of the state of Palestine as an instrument to gain a definitive resolution of the conflict.”
Last week, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told MPs the United Nations Security Council was working on a resolution to relaunch and conclude peace talks.
Patrick Maisonnave, the French ambassador to Israel, is reportedly in a relationship with the daughter of a high-level PLO terrorist, Issam Sartawi, who was later assassinated, the French-language JSS News reported Monday.Abbas decides to go it alone
Maisonnave, according to the report, is close to Nadia Sartawi, the former director of International Relations and Protocol of the Palestinian Legislative Council (the Palestinian Assembly), and who was also in charge of economic negotiations for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Sartawi currently works for the ministry.
Her father, Issam, was the right hand man in Europe for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, and played an important role in the attack against Israeli Jews at Munich Airport in 1970, according to Israel’s Ma’ariv newspaper.
On February 10, 1970, three terrorists attacked El Al passengers in a bus at the Munich Airport with guns and grenades, killing one passenger and wounding 11 others, according to the US State Department. The Action Organization for the Liberation of Palestine and the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for the attack.
In his speech, Abbas cited no fewer than five conversations with Kerry since early September — either directly or through delegates — in which he said he had indicated his intention to move forward in the international arena. He said that Kerry repeatedly warned him against doing so.UN Security Council to consider ‘Palestine’ resolution
During their last meeting in Amman on November 13, Abbas said, he placed an ultimatum on the table: If Israel recognized Palestine on the 1967 borders, stopped settlement construction, released the fourth group of pre-Oslo prisoners from jail, and reinstated area A as fully sovereign Palestinian territory (currently, the IDF carries out security missions in Palestinian cities on a daily basis), negotiations could resume. Otherwise, Abbas said, he would immediately turn to the Security Council and join a series of international treaties. The deadline for Israel’s response was set for Saturday, the date of the Arab League gathering.
Palestinians are headed for the Security Council, with or without America’s blessing, Abbas asserted in his speech. The US, like other Western states, is welcome to participate in drafting the UN Security Council appeal, he stressed. “We do not want to exclude anyone, and don’t want anyone outside the fold, especially not the US,” he said.
Palestinian representative Riyad Mansour said the text, being shepherded by France, is expected to lay out a timeframe for negotiations on a final peace deal and possibly a second deadline for Palestinian statehood.Sen. McCain: US Will Not Recognize a Palestinian State (VIDEO)
“The French are moving more and more, trying to bring all the European colleagues together, and I think that eventually they will succeed,” Mansour told AFP.
The French-led European initiative is expected to be discussed in Brussels on Tuesday when US Secretary of State John Kerry holds talks with European ministers during a NATO meeting.
The position of the United States, which has repeatedly vetoed UN resolutions seen as pressuring Israel, will be crucial in deciding if the latest push at the United Nations stands a chance.
US Republican Senator John McCain (AZ) said in an television interview this week that the US would not follow a European wave of symbolic recognition of a Palestinian state, Israel’s NRG News reported on Monday.Israeli Teen Volunteers Preventing the Next Terror Attack?
The Republican majority leader in the Senate warned Euronews that regional “events had overtaken this issue; when we look at ISIS, when we look at Muslim extremism, when we look at those influences, which also influence the Palestinians.”
Noting that the charter and publicly stated aims of Hamas in Gaza were “part of the problem,” McCain went on to assert that the Iranian-backed Palestinian group is “committed to the destruction of Israel, and from time to time we see outbreaks of violence – and thank God for Iron Dome, because otherwise we would seen carnage in Israel.”
Attacks on Route 60 have become so commonplace that new measures to keep children safe on school buses have been enacted in at least one Samaria community, Arutz Sheva has learned Tuesday.Yehuda Glick Left Without Security Detail
The education committee of Ma'ale Levona, in Binyamin, has begun a "Shuttle Guard" program to keep students safe on their way to school outside of their community, as well as strengthen a sense of responsibility, officials stated.
The project, overseen by Maale Levona police officer Yehuda Grossman, will see several students in grades 6-8 on every bus taking the children to school - not only to secure them in the event of a rock-throwing attack, look for suspicious objects, and monitor the driver's behavior, but also to "lead by example" in keeping them calm.
The child-to-teen ratio, if implemented, will be approximately 3:1.
Temple Mount rights activist Yehuda Glick's official security detail ended after he left Shaarei Tzedek hospital in Jerusalem - despite the attempt made on his life in October and the revelation recently of an additional attack planned against him.How Israel Reacted to a Racist Attack on a Jewish-Arab School
Glick's friend and current acting bodyguard, Amir Ohana, spoke about the phenomenon to Arutz Sheva, stating Monday that a group of young men trained in self-defense have volunteered to guard Glick instead. But Ohana also slammed the police's lack of foresight in the decision.
"There is no question whether or not Yehuda is threatened," Ohana said. "Threats against him are on all the Palestinian websites, and proof of that is on Yehuda's body [wounds from the attack - ed.]."
"There is no better proof of this than his gunshot wounds," he added. "Glick is certainly threatened, so we dedicated a group of people to secure him."
On Saturday night, Jerusalem’s Hand-in-Hand school–a bilingual Jewish-Arab institution designed to foster coexistence among Israel’s youth–was torched by vandals in a racist attack. Two first grade classrooms were damaged, and one was completely burned. The arsonists also set fire to piles of Hebrew and Arabic schoolbooks and spray painted phrases like “there is no coexistence with cancer” on the walls. Sadly, such attacks have become more common in Israel as racial and political tensions rise. (The very next day, a Tel Aviv synagogue was vandalized, apparently by leftist partisans.) But while the bigots in Jerusalem staged their attack under the cover of night, in the light of day Israelis from across the spectrum mobilized in solidarity with the school and its students.Settlers get 30 months in prison for arson in Palestinian village
Education Minister Shai Piron, himself an educator and former yeshiva head, condemned the attack as “a violent, criminal and despicable incident.” It was aimed, he said, “at hurting and undermining Israel’s democratic foundations. The fact that it was an arson attack on an educational facility that advocates coexistence severely undermines the fabric of relations between Jews and Arabs. I urge the Israel Police to act immediately and bring to justice these despicable vile criminals.” One Tel Aviv school responded by cancelling their regular curriculum and devoting the day instead to discussing the attack on the coexistence school. Several other Jerusalem schools, both religious and secular, organized visits to Hand-in-Hand. Jerusalem’s HaPoel Katamon professional soccer team even came to play with the school’s first and second graders.
Two Jewish settlers who admitted to setting fire to vehicles in the Palestinian village of Far'ata in the West Bank signed a plea bargain Sunday that will see them serving 30 months in prison.Report: Saudi Arabia mulls oil trade relations with Israel
The prosecution said that in light of the fact that the two men, Yehuda Landsberg and Yehuda Sabir, took responsibility for their actions, the two should receive "the minimum sentence" for their crime.
A third defendant, Binyamin Richter, claimed he was innocent and his trial will continue.
After years during which Israel and Saudi Arabia have been rumored to have low-key commercial ties, the two nations may soon engage in open trade relations.More Young Palestinians Try to Flee from Gaza to Israel
The Kuwaiti news agency KUNA on Tuesday quoted Saudi Petroleum Minister of Ali Al-Naimi as saying that as Riyadh is seeking to increase oil sales, it would be willing to sell oil to any country that wants to buy it, including Israel.
Speaking at a press conference held as part of an OPEC summit held in Vienna on Sunday, the minister said, "We do not hold a grudge against any nation and our leaders promote peace, religious tolerance and co-existence. His Majesty King Abdullah has always been a model for good relations between Saudi Arabia and other states -- and the Jewish state is no exception."
According to the report, Al-Naimi noted that for the most part, the Arab world acknowledges the Jewish state, and nothing is preventing his country from pursuing trade ties with Israel.
At least 12 such cases have occurred during the past two weeks. One youth was identified as Mahmoud Saleh, a young man from the Jabaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, who managed to penetrate the border fence before being intercepted and arrested by IDF soldiers.Brotherhood members in Jordan accused of planning attacks on Israelis
Saleh’s father said that his 18-year-old son was unable to find work in the Gaza Strip and failed to earn any money for a long time. “Mahmoud left because of unemployment,” his mother confirms. One of Mahmoud’s younger brothers also tried to flee to Israel, but was quickly intercepted and released back to his family due to his young age.
“24” Arab news further reported that the number of cases of young Gazans who try to flee to Israel increased following Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip, which took place between July and August 2014. According to officials, more than 130 such cases have occurred since the end of the operation.
Jordanian security forces arrested 20 men on suspicion of forming a military wing and planning to smuggle arms into the West Bank to be used in terror attacks against Israelis, an Arab news channel reported this week.Report: Hezbollah intends maritime siege in next war
The men, all members of the Muslim Brotherhood or Jordan’s engineers’ guild, were arrested after two of the 20 returned from a solidarity visit to the Gaza Strip where they received military training, according to Qatar-based al-Jazeera.
The satellite channel reported Sunday that the men attempted to train others in military operations to be carried out against Israelis in the West Bank.
They also collected money for the purchase of weapons to be smuggled into the West Bank, or bought in the Palestinian territory.
Hezbollah has a stock of advanced sea-to-sea missiles with which it intends to impose a maritime siege on Israel if the two sides enter another war, Lebanese media outlets reported on Monday.Hezbollah Expands Drug and Arms Trafficking Operations
According to the reports, Hezbollah apparently has an arsenal of sophisticated Russian-made Yakhont sea-to-sea missiles, which were recently transferred from Russia to Syria as part of an arms deal between the two countries. Moscow has also allegedly transferred more advanced S-300 anti-aircraft batteries to Syria. It is possible that some of these have been transferred to Hezbollah.
In the case of a war with Israel, the report said, Hezbollah intends to target Israeli and foreign vessels inside Israel's territorial waters.
One senior Hezbollah official said, "The organization has modern long-range missiles and advanced weapons systems that alter strategic balance between Israel and Hezbollah."
In response to a growing list of casualties in Syria and a significant decrease in funding by Iran, the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah has expanded its involvement in illegal businesses including arms and drug trafficking.Revealed: Britain's Secret Role in Halting ISIS Massacre in Lebanon
According to a media investigation by conducted the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan (Arabic link), several senior Hezbollah members are suspected of involvement in financial corruption and drug trafficking operations, some of which are carried out from the southern suburbs of Beirut, where the Shiite terrorist organization has large influence and presence.
Hezbollah also holds substantial influence over Lebanon’s Al-Biqa valley, which is known for its “hashish agriculture.” The Shiite organization provides logistical services to drug traffickers operating in the area and often performs the trade itself, according to the Saudi newspaper.
British forces have quietly constructed a series of strongholds all along the Lebanese border to halt the advance of ISIS further into the Levant. The terrorist had hoped to be able to boast of reaching the Mediterranean but hastily constructed watchtowers have already held them at bay, protecting the local Christian, Druze, Sunni and Shia population.Hezbollah’s Syria Problem
Tango 10, one of 12 watchtowers constructed from shipping containers and wire cages, has already deterred ISIS terrorists from taking the town of Ras Baalbek, home to a Christian community. It was built in just 17 days by a British team of former soldiers and engineers at a cost to the British of £150,000, the Telegraph has reported. More are planned.
Less than two weeks after its construction, the tower was instrumental in protecting the town from a large-scale attack by ISIL and Jabhat Al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda linked organisation. “When the invasion came, a line of vehicles split off and headed for Ras Baalbek,” one of the British team said. “Then they stopped and looked up at the watchtower and all its artillery waiting for them. They turned around.”
The towers punctuate the eastern border of Lebanon all the way from the northernmost area to around half way down the border line. They are carefully placed to create overlapping arcs of sight. “You can’t imagine what it was like when we got out here first,” one former officer told the Telegraph. “There were a few guys behind some tyres filled with rocks with a 50 cal [machine gun].”
This much is clear: Hezbollah remains an immediate threat to Israel, even while it is bogged down in Syria. That much Nasrallah wants us all to know. To be sure, roadside border bombings will continue from time to time, and Hezbollah may even claim responsibility for some of these. But because of its desire to avoid opening a second front with Israel at the present time, the Hezbollah threat to Israel today is in some ways more acute oceans away—in places as far afield as Thailand and Peru—than it is along its northern borders.US strategy on ISIS suffers series of weaknesses, study finds
There’s one looming unknown in the modern geopolitical environment, though, that could rapidly reshape and refocus Hezbollah’s strategy: If Israeli warplanes do at some point strike Iranian nuclear facilities, all bets are off. Hezbollah will surely shoot at least some of those “pinpoint” rockets at Israeli critical infrastructure, even as it continues to pick up the pace of Peru-style operations abroad. As for how committed and effective can Hezbollah be as a fighting force battling at Iran’s behest both Syrian rebels and the Israeli military at the same time? That is an open question, but it’s one that both Hezbollah and Iran are likely trying to answer fairly quickly.
The US strategy against Islamic State “suffers from a series of weaknesses,” a study by the Tel Aviv-based Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center found recently.US official confirms Iran is bombing Islamic State
The center is a part of the Israeli Intelligence and Heritage Commemoration Center, which was founded in the 1980s by leading members of the Israeli intelligence community.
The report described goals in the American strategy as unrealistic.
“It is extremely difficult to destroy an organization with a Salafist-jihadi ideology such as ISIS [Islamic State].
There are limits to what military force can achieve against jihadi organizations in general and ISIS in particular. The local forces in Syria and Iraq that America is counting on are weak, and the coalition is heterogeneous, composed of countries with different interests and internal constraints that are liable to make it difficult for them to provide the United States with effective support,” the document said.
On November 30 Al-Jazeera published the grainy video, which showed what looked to be an F-4 Phantom jet on a bombing run near the town of Sa’adiya near the Iran-Iraq border. The video was later taken down.US military warned of possible Islamic State attacks at home
The clip generated speculation among military pundits as to which air force the plane was from, as only two countries in the region still operate Phantom jets — Turkey and Iran.
Turkey has been reluctant to provide direct military support for the coalition against IS, even though the jihadists, who have conquered large areas of Iraq and Syria, have also been attacking towns in the Syrian-Turkish border region.
That left only Iran as the source of the jet, a speculation heightened by the location of the incident, so close to the Iranian border. The airstrike seemed to be in support of a joint operation by Iraqi military and Kurdish peshmerga forces to retake the towns of Sa’adiya and Jawlala on November 25 near the Iranian border. It was Iraq’s largest offensive against the terrorist group since June.
U.S. officials have warned military personnel that Islamic State forces may be planning attacks against them in the United States, ABC News reported on Monday.Israeli-Canadian says ISIS kidnapping reports untrue: 'I'm totally safe and secure'
A joint intelligence bulletin sent to law enforcement agencies by the FBI and the Homeland Security Department urged members of the U.S. military to erase from their social media accounts anything that would draw attention from "violent extremists," or reveal the identities of service members, the news network said.
ABC said the government indicated late Sunday it had obtained intelligence that Islamic State militants, who have taken over parts of Iraq and Syria with the intention of setting up a fundamentalist caliphate, were targeting the United States within its borders.
"The FBI recently received reporting indicating individuals overseas are spotting and assessing like-minded individuals who are willing and capable of conducting attacks against current and former U.S.-based members of the United States military," the bulletin said, according to a Reuters source.
Rosenberg, 31, apparently posted on her Facebook that she was safe but had not been able to communicate with the outside world for safety reasons.Lebanon detains wife, son of Islamic State ‘caliph’
"Guys, I'm totally safe and secure. I don't have Internet access or any communication devices with me for my safety and security. I can't reply regularly and only happened to have a chance to log in and see these buklshit news stories. Ignore the reports I've been captured. Yalla, Acharai!," read a message on her Facebook.
Idris Nassan, a local official in the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani, said his people in the field reported that she had not been captured and dismissed it as propaganda.
Lebanese forces have detained a wife and son of Islamic State group chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi near the Syrian border, security and military sources said on Tuesday.John Bolton: Iran’s Pursuit of the Islamic Bomb Invites Copycats
“Military intelligence detained one of his wives, who was traveling with their son, near (Lebanese border town) Arsal 10 days ago,” a security source told AFP.
A military source confirmed the arrest and said the woman was a Syrian national, and her son was around 8 years old.
Lebanese daily As-Safir, which first reported the arrest, said it was carried out “in coordination with foreign intelligence agencies.”
Now that the negotiating “deadline” has been extended until June 2015, we should consider the broader global implications of Mr. Obama’s Iran policy. Other aspiring nuclear-weapons states have carefully followed the negotiations, drawing conclusions and making plans accordingly. Very shortly, the wider ripples of the talks will manifest themselves in two ways.State-backed Iranian hackers targeted airlines, energy, defense companies, report says.
First, Iran’s near neighbors, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey, will almost certainly accelerate their nuclear activities, following a clear path to producing weapons. Second, North Korea, left to its own devices (and continuing progress on both weaponization and ballistic-missile development) these past six years, clearly sees a weak negotiating counterpart in Washington, and will try to achieve many of the same advantages Tehran is now harvesting.
The Middle Eastern conventional wisdom has long held that if Iran produced deliverable nuclear weapons, other states would follow inexorably. As then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in 2009, “A nuclear-armed Iran with a deliverable weapons system is going to spark an arms race in the Middle East and the greater region.” Saudi Arabia will move first. Indeed, the Saudis may already have “options” on existing Pakistani warheads, meaning that Riyadh would not need to build its own nuclear program, but could effectively become a nuclear power overnight. Egypt and Turkey would start farther behind, but they have already made initial efforts, such as Cairo’s 2013 nuclear deal with Moscow.
Iranian hackers have infiltrated major airlines, energy companies, and defense firms around the globe over the past two years in a campaign that could eventually cause physical damage, according to US cyber security firm Cylance.Iran Unveils Advanced Military Hardware After Nuke Talks Fail
The report comes as governments scramble to better understand the extent of Iran's cyber capabilities, which researchers say have grown rapidly as Tehran seeks to retaliate for Western cyber attacks on its nuclear program.
"We believe that if the operation is left to continue unabated, it is only a matter of time before the team impacts the world's physical safety," Cylance said in an 87-page report on the hacking campaign released on Tuesday.
The new military hardware was widely publicized by Iranian military leaders following an order by Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei urging the country’s armed forces to step up their combat readiness despite an extension in nuclear talks with the West.Tehran Regime Warns Against ‘Frenzied Behavior’ as Saudi Oil Policies Punish Iranian Economy
The Iranian Navy displayed a crop of new vessels equipped with cruise missiles and other rockets. Also unveiled were new attack helicopters “equipped with Iran’s latest home-grown torpedoes,” according to Iranian military leaders quoted by the country’s state-controlled press.
The show of force is likely meant to send a message to the United States and other Western nations following another failed round of talks over Iran’s contested nuclear weapons program.
Iranians awoke on Monday morning to a 30 percent increase in the price of bread – the most tangible consequence of an economy suspended between the twin pressures of falling oil prices and continuing international sanctions stemming from the Tehran regime’s failure to properly account for its nuclear program.
As a result, Iran’s currency, the rial, has declined dramatically in value. Currency traders reported on Monday that the rial fell by 7.25 percent against the US dollar, after last week’s failure to reach a final deal with international powers over Iran’s nuclear ambitions ended the regime’s hopes for an immediate lifting of sanctions.
In a sign that the regime is concerned by the large numbers of Iranians who spent the weekend trading their rials for foreign currency, Iran’s Economy Minister Ali Tayyebnia rushed to offer assurances of normality.
“There has been no fundamental change in the foreign exchange and the investment markets. We expect to create a stable situation in currency and investment markets,” Tayyebnia said, emphasizing that “people should not exhibit frenzied behavior.”