Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Peter Beinart says Ramallah is "inside the State of Israel".

Peter Beinart is so upset over David Friedman that he feels that he must counter Friedman's rhetoric with his own peculiar brand of "facts."

Friedman writes, quite accurately, that Palestinians in the West Bank "have freedom of speech, the right to free enterprise, the right to worship freely, the right to elect their leaders.”

Beinart's response:

Palestinians in the West Bank live inside the state of Israel. The Israeli army—and the army of no other country—can enter any square inch of the West Bank any time it chooses and arrest anyone it wants, including officials of the Palestinian Authority. Thus, the real “leaders” of West Bank Palestinians are the leaders of Israel. But West Bank Palestinians cannot elect them because they cannot vote in Israeli elections. As non-citizens, West Bank Palestinians live under military law. This dramatically restricts their freedom of speech, worship and their right to pursue free enterprise. Under Military Order 101, for instance, West Bank Palestinians need Israeli military permission to hold a political gathering of more than ten people, even if it is occurring in a private home.

So, according to Beinart, Palestinians live "inside the state of Israel." Not under occupation, not in any autonomous areas, but "inside the state of Israel." I guess if you are going to claim that Israel is an apartheid state, you have to start making up lies to support that claim.

Let's look at this awful Military Order 101. When was it written?

In August 1967.

Before, of course, the Palestinian Authority had control of Area A and partial control of Area B. Where some 97% of Palestinians live. And where Military Order 101 - and the other thousand of them - do not apply.

Beinart is claiming, absurdly, that this parade by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades two years ago in Qalandia was approved by some Israeli military officer.

And so was this speech by the PA prime minister last week.

And so is the weekly Palestinian Authority cabinet meeting.

And so is the lighting of the Bethlehem Christmas tree, which includes anti-Israel rhetoric every year.

And so was the Fatah Conference last month with hundreds of attendees.

And every ceremony where they name a new school or square after a terrorist.

And so is every other of the hundreds of gatherings that take place every month in the PA-controlled areas.

Beinart believes that Israel controls and approves every one of those gatherings, many of which are explicitly anti-Israel. Because they all take place "inside the State of Israel," in Beinart's absurd view.

Beinart's attempt to refute Friedman relies on absolute falsehoods.

But what can you expect?

Maybe Beinart will next claim that Argentina is part of the State of Israel as well. After all, the brutal, apartheid Israeli regime had kidnapped, arrested, tried and executed someone from that country in 1960.

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Sneakers put out to dry. Wet and full of sand, they looked tired.

My heart almost burst to see them.

They tell a story people who live elsewhere wouldn’t recognize but most Israelis would. Those who don’t have this story in their own home know the story well. Across political affiliations and religious denominations, it is a story we all honor.

A dirty pair of sneakers; this is what Zionism looks like.

A silent testament to effort, the desire to achieve and most of all, the desire to serve.

At night, down at the beach, in the cold, in the wind. Running, stretching, building strength. Pounding the pavement, through the sand, the water and back again.

Straining under extra weight, purposely added to make the run more difficult.

The biting wind is something to ignore. The temporary discomfort something to laugh at, knowing that future challenges will be harder.

No one told him to go. He goes on his own. There are no requests for assistance, no: “Can you drive me?” Just a quick “bye” and then he is gone, off to join others like him.

Together they strive, pushing themselves to new heights, knowing the tests they long to pass will stretch them physically and mentally beyond their current limits. And should they pass, the next challenges will be even harder.

They must be stronger, faster, better… that is the only way to gain admittance to an elite IDF unit. For this group, no regular unit will do. They strive to be the best so they can join the best.

Their peers will also serve but few will undertake the challenges this group chose to take on. Few are able, capable of doing so.

They are not competing for their own glory. There is nothing glorious in being wet, tired, hurt, dirty, exhausted… They are competing for the honor of serving their people, shoulder to shoulder with others as dedicated, as passionate as they are.

Their Zionism is our future.

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12/20 Links Pt1: Netanyahu: Civilized world must come together to fight terror; David Friedman’s Jewish antagonists

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: David Friedman’s Jewish antagonists

David Friedman, US President- elect Donald Trump’s choice to serve as the next US ambassador to Israel, has his work cut out for him.
Right after Trump announced his appointment, the nameless bureaucrats at the State Department mounted a rebellion. Speaking to The Jerusalem Post, the permanent members of the State Department’s Israel policy shop let it be known that Friedman is not to their liking.
“These are the people,” the Post’s Washington reporter Michael Wilner wrote, “behind the carefully worded reactions to breaking news developments in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.”
They operate on the basis of their shared catechism. Euphemistically stated, that writ of faith is that the US’s “influence... is only as strong as the legitimacy they maintain... as a fair and balanced arbiter.”
In plain English that means that the permanent bureaucracy believes the US must be hostile to Israel.
And now its members are worried. They “now fear that [their] influence may diminish under... Trump, after his announcement on Thursday night that... Friedman would be Washington’s ambassador to Israel.”

PLO will revoke Israel recognition if US moves embassy, top official warns

If the incoming Trump administration moves the US embassy to Jerusalem, the PLO will revoke its recognition of Israel, the prospect of a two-state solution will be over, and any hope of Israeli-Palestinian peace in the future will vanish, the top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat warned on Monday.
Speaking on a conference call organized by the Wilson Center policy forum in Washington, DC regarding expectations from the Trump administration, Erekat reeled off a list of what he said would be the consequences of President-elect Donald Trump honoring his campaign pledge and relocating the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Erekat said he would immediately resign as the chief Palestinian negotiator, and that “the PLO will revoke its recognition of Israel” as well as all previously signed agreements with Israel.
Furthermore, said Erekat, all American embassies in the Arab world would be forced to close — not necessarily because Arab leaderships would want to close them, but because the infuriated public in the Arab world would not “allow” for the embassies to continue to operate.

Son of terror victim goes to police after Nazareth honors father’s killer

The son of a terror victim asked the police on Sunday to open a criminal investigation into the mayor of Nazareth, following a recent event in the city backed by the municipality that celebrated his father’s murderer.
On December 10, Nazareth, the largest Arab-majority city in Israel, held its “Nazareth reads” event, which saw hundreds of children sit and read in a line that stretched from the plaza of the Spring Square within Nazareth’s old city to the Church of the Annunciation, according to Palestinian Media Watch, which first reported the event in English.
The event honored Palestinian terrorist Baha Alyan, one of two men who attacked a bus in Jerusalem’s Armon Hanatziv neighborhood on October 13, 2015, shooting and stabbing passengers. Police who arrived at the scene shot and killed Alyan. The other attacker, Bilal Abu Ghanem, was shot and injured and taken into police custody.
Among the three killed as a result of the attack was peace activist and educator Richard Lakin.
His son, Micah Avni, wrote to Israel Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh on Sunday, asking for a criminal probe to be opened into Nazareth Mayor Ali Salam, “in light the offenses of sedition, incitement to terrorism, unlawful assembly, a breach of trust and illegal use of public funds, and in light of the serious blow to the feelings of the public and respect of the state.”

From the Arab Bank Bahrain website:

For the first time in the Bahrain, Arab Bank - the largest Arab banking network, introduces a value-added service specially designed to meet the needs and expectations of Palestinian Expats, residing and working in the Bahrain. The “Bankee Maee” service offers you a host of benefits to help you conduct all your banking transactions in the Bahrain and Palestine easily and with utmost levels of convenience and comfort. Through the “Bankee Maee” service you will enjoy the following benefits.

SAVINGS BACK HOME THROUGH ARAB BANK DUAL ACCOUNT

- Account opened in each of Bahrain and Palestine from Bahrain
- Account opened in Palestine without the need to be physically present there
- Earn high interest rates on your account in Palestine whether in Jordanian Dinar or NIS

An Arab bank in the Gulf paying interest in New Israeli Shekels?

The times, they are a-changin'.

(h/t Mike)

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Apparently, Algeria has has problems exporting dates to Europe.

At the turn of the century Algeria exported some 10,000 tons of dates to Europe, mostly France. But now they are complaining that Jewish importers in Marseilles are rejecting their date shipments, saying that they do not adhere to international standards, and according to this article they then blackmail them into reducing the prices since it is too expensive to send the dates back to Algeria.

I have no idea whether it is true, but they are blaming the Jews.

I found this relevant article in a website for fresh food exporters:

Algerian date exporters have started to conquer the Asian date market by exporting many varieties of the fruit. The President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Biskra, Abdelmadjid Khobzi, said that Algeria’s first time participating in the International agri-food trade show in Jakarta (Indonesia) last November “allowed the Indonesian, Malaysian and Indian consumers to discover different varieties of Algerian dates”.
The Indonesian government have apparently agreed to give the investors 3 hectares of land on which to build a date processing factory with “very encouraging” fiscal advantages. Mr Khobzi says that “this project will allow us to access other Asian markets” and he denounces “foreign lobbies” that are blocking Algerian date exports to Europe.

It's always the Jews.

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EoZ on Nothing Left radio

I was interviewed by the Nothing Left radio show from Melbourne, Australia a couple of weeks ago, and the show with my segment just aired.

Host Michael Burd and I discussed the Keith Ellison issue and how the ADL and J-Street reacted, American Jewish reaction to the Trump election, issues around Trump's pick of "Mad-Dog" Mattis, moving the American embassy to Jerusalem and how concerned Israel should be about UN resolutions against it.

My segment is the first one up - about twenty minutes long - in this part two of the episode.

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Saeb Erekat threatens "chaos, lawlessness and extremism"

Saeb Erekat continues to do what he does best - threaten the world with terror if people don't toe the Palestinian line.

On Friday:

A senior Palestinian official warned on Friday that implementation of Donald Trump’s pledge to relocate the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem would destroy any prospects for peace with Israel, even as a spokesman for the U.S. President-elect said he remained committed to the move.
Erekat said he would like to look Trump and Friedman in the eye and tell them “if you were to take these steps of moving the embassy and annexing settlements in the West Bank, you are sending this region to more chaos, lawlessness and extremism."

Nobody took Erekat's Friday warnings seriously. so, like a child trying to get attention, he upped the ante on Monday:

If the incoming Trump administration moves the US embassy to Jerusalem, the PLO will revoke its recognition of Israel, the prospect of a two-state solution will be over, and any hope of Israeli-Palestinian peace in the future will vanish, the top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat warned on Monday.

Speaking on a conference call organized by the Wilson Center policy forum in Washington, DC regarding expectations from the Trump administration, Erekat reeled off a list of what he said would be the consequences of President-elect Donald Trump honoring his campaign pledge and relocating the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Erekat said he would immediately resign as the chief Palestinian negotiator, and that “the PLO will revoke its recognition of Israel” as well as all previously signed agreements with Israel.

Furthermore, said Erekat, all American embassies in the Arab world would be forced to close — not necessarily because Arab leaderships would want to close them, but because the infuriated public in the Arab world would not “allow” for the embassies to continue to operate.

Erekat noted that he held meetings last week in Washington with State Department officials, but failed to secure meetings he had sought with incoming Trump administration officials. “I don’t know any of them,” he said of Trump’s personnel.

I can't wait for the embassy to move - because exactly none of these things will happen. Erekat won't resign, Arabs won't close US embassies, the PLO won't tear up its agreements, and there will be no additional terrorism in the region.

Let's take the threats one by one.

As I've mentioned, I've been looking in Arab media to see if there is any groundswell of anger over the idea of the embassy moving. There is virtually none outside an odd cleric or two in the Palestinian territories themselves. Arabs have real problems to worry about, and this is not on their top hundred issues.

The PLO won't tear up any agreements with Israel, because it stands far more to lose than to gain. After all, it now runs a fairly independent territory in Areas A and B and despots don't give up their power so quickly to make a point.

But notice how Erekat threatens Israel for US actions.

Will Erekat resign? Sure he will - and then he will unresign again, like he's done many times before. From the Matthew Kalman blog, documenting 20 years of Erekat's "resignations:"

Erekat is a joke, and the Arab world knows it.

The incoming Trump administration knows this as well. And this is what terrifies him to make these baseless threats, hoping against hope that the time honored Arab tradition of gaining political leverage by threatening violence still has a little bit of power over stupid Westerners who still believe that these people want peace.

By the way, NATO defines terrorism as "the unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence against individuals or property in an attempt to coerce or intimidate governments or societies to achieve political, religious or ideological objectives."

The United States Department of Defense defines terrorism as "the unlawful use of violence or threat of violence to instill fear and coerce governments or societies."

Saeb Erekat and Mahmoud Abbas, with their threats of terrorism, chaos and riots in order to achieve political aims, are terrorists.

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12/19 Links Pt2: Russian ambassador to Turkey killed by policeman; The REAL history of the BDS movement

From Ian:

Russian ambassador to Turkey shot and killed by policeman

A police officer crying “Aleppo” and “revenge” shot and killed Russia’s ambassador to Turkey Andrey Karlov during the opening of an art exhibition in Ankara Monday.
The foreign ministry in Moscow confirmed that Karlov died of his wounds in the attack, which came amid roiling tensions over the fate of Syria.
Turkish police shot and killed the gunman, a local policeman, according to Ankara’s mayor.
Karlov was several minutes into a speech at the embassy-sponsored exhibition in the capital, Ankara, when a man wearing a suit and tie shouted “Allahu Akbar” and fired at least eight shots, according to an AP photographer in the audience.
The attacker also smashed some of the photos hung for the exhibition. There was panic as people ran for cover. NTV said three other people were wounded in the attack.
Yelling in Turkish, the gunman shouted “Don’t forget Aleppo! Don’t forget Syria!”
He then yelled: “Stand back! Stand back! Only death will take me out of here. Anyone who has a role in this oppression will die one by one.”

Judaism's holiness to Muslims is a propaganda myth

The media has been abuzz with reports that President-elect Donald Trump intends to honor his pre-election promise to act on the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act –– whose implementation has been deferred by six-monthly waivers invoked by successive presidents, most recently last week by President Obama –– and move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Why has the Act, passed by massive majorities in the Senate (93-5) and House (374-37), remained a dead letter for 21 years?
Fear of enraging the Arab street and the Muslim world, most of which has neither reconciled itself to Israel’s existence nor even the peoplehood of the Jews and thus the Jewish immemorial association and claim to the city, is the short answer.
This clamor and fixation on Jerusalem, quite recent in Muslim history, has led many to conclude that Jerusalem is holy to Islam; therefore any U.S move ahead of a peace settlement is premature.
As it happens, however, its a propaganda lie that Jerusalem is holy to Islam or central to Palestinian Arab life. Though possessing Muslim shrines, including the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa mosques, the city itself holds no great significance for Islam, as history shows.

IsraellyCool: Know Your History: The Meaning Of UN Resoluton 242 (NY Times July 23, 1970)

UN Resolution 242 is oft cited as the basis for requiring Israel’s complete withdrawal from territories seized during the Six Day War. For instance, just a few weeks ago, Elder of Moron Jimmy Carter wrote in the NY Times:
Back in 1978, during my administration, Israel’s prime minister, Menachem Begin, and Egypt’s president, Anwar Sadat, signed the Camp David Accords. That agreement was based on the United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, which was passed in the aftermath of the 1967 war. The key words of that resolution were “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East in which every state in the area can live in security,” and the “withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.”
The agreement was ratified overwhelmingly by the Parliaments of Egypt and Israel. And those two foundational concepts have been the basis for the policy of the United States government and the international community ever since.
This was why, in 2009, at the beginning of his first administration, Mr. Obama reaffirmed the crucial elements of the Camp David agreement and Resolution 242 by calling for a complete freeze on the building of settlements, constructed illegally by Israel on Palestinian territory. Later, in 2011, the president made clear that “the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines,” and added, “negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine.”
But it does nothing of the sort. The chief author of the resolution Lord Caradon has said:
We didn’t say there should be a withdrawal to the ’67 line; we did not put the ‘the’ in, we did not say all the territories, deliberately.. We all knew – that the boundaries of ’67 were not drawn as permanent frontiers, they were a cease-fire line of a couple of decades earlier… We did not say that the ’67 boundaries must be forever; it would be insanity

One thing about Palestinian leaders and fans - there is nothing that they won't try to co-opt for their cause.

The latest example was the terror attack in Jordan that killed 10 on Sunday, including a Canadian tourist.

Fatah leader Raafat Alian pretended to condemn it - and then tried to make it all about Palestinians.

He said that "the Palestinian people are exposed to the same terrorism on a daily basis from the Israeli government, which kills our people and desecrates our holy places and burns our trees and confiscates our land and exercises the most heinous crimes against the unarmed Palestinian people, who are asking for freedom and self-determination."

He went on to say that "the Israeli occupation is terrorism planted in the Middle East and the fight against terrorism begins first by fighting the Israeli occupation to stop its violations against the Palestinian people and the full withdrawal from the Palestinian territories."

Gee, he sounds like he cares about Jordanian victims of terror so much, doesn't he?

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Max Blumenthal’s recipe for fake news (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

By Petra Marquardt-Bigman

A few days ago, Max Blumenthal posted a tweet that illustrates how he routinely produces his fake news about Israel. Retweeting Nadav Pollak’s praise for medics in the Israeli army reserve who declared their willingness to offer medical assistance to wounded Syrian civilians facing “indiscriminate slaughter,” Blumenthal added the comment “Israel bombed Damascus exactly ten days ago.”

All too obviously, Blumenthal would like his followers to believe that while Israeli hypocrites claim they want to help Syrian civilians, the Israeli army just “bombed Damascus.”

What happened in reality is that the Syrian regime accused Israel of striking an airbase near Damascus; the target of the strike was reportedly a Hezbollah weapons depot. Unsurprisingly, a Syrian military source denounced the strike against the Mazzeh airbase as part of “desperate attempts by the Israeli enemy to support terrorist groups [i.e. groups fighting against Assad] and raise their low morale.” Some Syrian sources also claimed “that Hezbollah sites near the Syrian capital were also targeted Tuesday night by airstrikes that killed and injured a number of fighters in the Shiite militia.”

Since Blumenthal seems to root for an Assad victory in Syria, it’s understandable that he would be upset about any kind of damage inflicted on the blood-drenched tyrant and his ruthless backers.

But few would think that targeting a Hezbollah weapons depot at an airbase and perhaps even injuring some Hezbollah fighters can be accurately described as “Israel bombed Damascus.”

Yet, this is exactly how Blumenthal has been operating for years. It’s worthwhile recalling that in a scathing review of Blumenthal’s screed “Goliath” that was published three years ago, Eric Alterman – a leftist who finds much to criticize about Israel – described Blumenthal as “a profoundly unreliable narrator,” noting that his “accounts are mostly technically accurate, but often deliberately deceptive.” Predictably, Blumenthal rejected Alterman’s criticism, claiming that if much of his book was “technically accurate,” Alterman panned the book just to shield Israel from the devastating truth. Alterman patiently responded, attempting (in vain) to explain some very basic concepts to Blumenthal:

“Blumenthal … does not understand why I would concede that his book is ‘mostly technically accurate’ but remain so critical. He is, apparently, unfamiliar with the concept of ‘context.’ It might be technically accurate, for instance, to say that an individual who fatally shoots a crazed killer while said killer is mowing down schoolchildren with an assault-weapon is a ‘murderer.’ But it would also be profoundly misleading, given the context. And this is the problem with Blumenthal’s facts. He tells us only the facts he wishes us to know and withholds crucial ones that undermine his relentlessly anti-Israel narrative.”

Three years have passed since then, and as I showed in a recent post, Blumenthal has in the meantime alienated some of his erstwhile fans by applying the methods he used to demonize Israel to his “reporting” about Syria. Needless to say, Blumenthal and other leading anti-Israel activists still resent being called out for their glaring failure to condemn Assad and his allies for the carnage in Syria, and they continue to pose as the innocent victims of some kind of “organized smearing/lying campaign” that is of course supported, if not orchestrated, by evil Zionists.

It also goes without saying that while anti-Israel activists like Blumenthal, Abunimah and Khalek find it hard to hide their hopes for an eventual victory of butcher Assad and his allies, they have only contempt for Israeli efforts to alleviate the suffering in Syria. So Rania Khalek was only too happy to retweet Max Blumenthal’s collaborator Dan Cohen, who wants Israelis to protest the IDF and “Israel’s direct involvement in the war on Syria” – by which he presumably means incidents like the supposed “bombing” of Damascus; Cohen also is impatient to see the Golan Heights handed over to Assad and his henchmen.

But while anti-Israel activists sneer, an Israeli grassroots campaign has raised more than $100,000 in just two days for emergency supplies to help families that have lost everything in the merciless war Assad is waging to stay in power.

To be fair to Assad and his armchair apologists on Twitter and in the blogosphere: they’d all be much happier if he did what he’s doing to his fellow Syrians to Israelis. When Assad recently declared in an interview that he considers Israel as Syria’s worst enemy, Max Blumenthal and his ilk were surely pleased: no matter how many Syrians Assad and his brutal backers kill, at least Assad shares their obsessive hatred for the world’s only Jewish state. And whatever fake news can do to fuel this hatred, Max Blumenthal &Co will no doubt do their part.

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12/19 Links Pt1: Palestinians: Welcome to the World of Western-Funded Terrorism; Aleppo: Reflection of world politics

From Ian:

Palestinians: Welcome to the World of Western-Funded Terrorism

Palestinians and their families are being financially rewarded by the West for taking part in terror attacks against Jews. It does not take a brain surgeon to figure out that this promotes terrorism.
Palestinian terrorists released from prison have far higher chances of getting a job with the Palestinian Authority (PA) government than people who went to university, because by carrying out an attack against Jews they become heroes, entitled to a superior job and salary.
The more time you spend in an Israeli prison, the more prestigious the job you will receive. Graduating from an Israeli prison is better than graduating from an Ivy League university.
These people have not been imprisoned for running a red light. Most of them are behind bars because they have masterminded suicide bombings and other terror attacks that have killed and maimed hundreds of innocent civilians during the past few decades.
So, when you hear that it is the PLO, not the PA, that pays the terrorists' salaries, you might want to mention that this statement is a sleight of hand designed to dupe unsuspecting and well-intentioned American and European donors.
It is time to tell Abbas and his associates, in terms that they understand, that the West will no longer fund terrorists. This message, above all others, will discourage terrorism -- and perhaps even encourage peace.

Aleppo: Reflection of world politics

Aleppo's fate is clear proof that the international community does not exist, and apparently never did, certainly not as far as the civilian population is concerned when it is stuck between the proverbial hammer and nail, targeted by a dictatorial regime and its powerful allies. Aleppo is being decimated; its residents are being killed by the hundreds and thousands, homes are being lost; but aside from several limp condemnations or expressions of grief from leaders in Europe and the United States, the world is silent.
For Israel, the lessons to be learned from Aleppo are clear: First, anyone who pins his hopes and stakes his future on help from the international community is bound to be disappointed. The world supports the strong and the victorious. Therefore it would behoove Israel to strengthen itself in earnest, as a necessary -- albeit not exclusive -- guarantee of its ongoing existence and growth in our region.
Second, the war in Syria will not go on forever. Its conclusion, possibly in victory for the regime and its allies, could come sooner than was expected in Israel. Assad returned to Aleppo and could also return to the Golan Heights, which he lost to the rebels two years ago. The window of opportunity that opened to Israel several years ago, to act freely in Syria against weapons shipments to Hezbollah, could also close.
Third, for the time being Assad is under the influence of Moscow, Iran and Hezbollah. Russia, supposedly, has claim to seniority. But in contrast to the Russians, who maintain presence in the air and sea, and who view Syria as another piece in an international game, the Iranians and Hezbollah have boots on the ground in the form of thousands of conscripts and volunteers, in Shiite militias formed by Iran to fight in Syria.
Fourth, winning the battle for Syria will free up forces, resources and energy for Iran and Hezbollah to move on to the next target. Neither wants a conflict with Israel, or to pay the necessary price of such a conflict, but their brazenness will undoubtedly reach new heights if and when the war in Syria ends.
Finally, terrorism and radical Islam will not vanish, but rather intensify with the events in Syria serving as a recruitment tool and motivation for more terrorist attacks. Israel is hundreds of kilometers away from Aleppo, but it could also pay the price of the tragedy transpiring there. It needs to account for all these eventualities and prepare on all fronts.

Elliott Abrams: The Next Ambassador to Israel

President-Elect Trump’s choice of David M. Friedman as his ambassador to Israel has occasioned both appropriate news coverage, and a barrage of nasty, ignorant, politically biased comments.
Most of those comments (including the poison-pen editorial in The New York Times) have informed readers that Mr. Friedman is unfit for this post because he is a “bankruptcy lawyer” lacking diplomatic experience. I was previously unaware that being a “bankruptcy lawyer” was equivalent to a crime of moral turpitude, but that is in any event an odd description of Mr. Friedman. In fact he is one of the top lawyers in that field in the United States, year after year being so listed in articles about the very best American lawyers. The New York Times tells us that he has since 1994 been a partner at a firm called Kasowitz, Benson, Torres, & Friedman, but does not bother to tell readers that he is in fact the Friedman of Kasowitz, Benson, Torres, & Friedman–a firm whose name was changed when he joined it, and which he has helped build to about 350 lawyers in seven cities. He is also a self-made man, the son of an Orthodox rabbi who came to the practice of law without the benefit of wealth or fancy connections.
To the Times all that is irrelevant; presumably they would prefer a fellow at a white-shoe Wall Street firm whose father or grandfather had been a diplomat, who belonged to the right clubs, and who rather than soil himself with the actual practice of law opens doors and makes connections. But I doubt most Americans take that view, and Mr. Trump did not. I’ve met Mr. Friedman once; we connected because I have a son who works in the Kasowitz firm. What do you learn from one meeting? Only that you’re dealing with one smart cookie, and that his involvement with Israeli affairs for decades has given him a far better insight than the average diplomat.
Of course that Mr. Friedman is a “bankruptcy lawyer” is not his only, nor his primary, disqualification in the eyes of the Left. You may be sure that if he were a lawyer handling traffic violations but belonged to J Street, they would all be applauding. Their real problem is that Mr. Friedman’s views are anathema to them. He thinks J Street is actually an anti-Israel rather than a pro-peace organization, that settlements are not an obstacle to peace, and other terrible things. He even thinks the U.S. embassy should be moved to Jerusalem. That these views are apparently shared by the President-Elect and will be American policy is of course what really troubles the Times and others, and they label all these “extremist views” and call Mr. Friedman “dangerous.”

Algerian news site: "Trump consolidates Satanic alliance with sons of Zion"

Algerian news site Akhbar el-Youm has this headline (Google translation):

The article relied on another Time magazine piece by Karl Vick decrying Trump's appointment of David Friedman, but it implies that Vick wrote the "satanic alliance" phrase, which he didn't. He just said, "Trump’s choice fits Netanyahu’s like a lock fits a key. Who knows what’s in the box they open?"- a clear allusion to the Pandora's box of Greek mythology, where the box released all the evils in the world when opened.

Which isn't that far off from calling Trump and Netanyahu a "satanic alliance,"come to think of it.

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