11/27 Links Pt1: UN declares 2014 the year of demonizing Israel, Is the Iran deal really a deal at all?

From Ian:

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UN to name 2014 as 'International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People'

The United Nations decided on Tuesday to declare 2014 as the "International "Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People".
The UN adopted the draft resolution - in a 110-7 vote, with 56 member states abstaining - among five others that were blasted by Israel for promoting within the body antagonistic biases against the country.

PLO official: PA will join ICC if peace talks fail

If Israel continues to "impede peace talks," the Palestinian Authority will join more UN organizations, including the International Criminal Court, PLO official Nabil Shaath told Palestinian news agency Ma'an on Tuesday.
“There are 35 conventions that do not need approval to join, on top of them is the Rome Statuette,” Shaath said, referring to the 1998 treaty which established the ICC.

3 terror suspects killed by police, Shin Bet near Hebron

Three Palestinians suspected of planning to carry out terror attacks against Israeli civilians were killed Tuesday during a joint Shin Bet and Israel Police operation in the West Bank town of Yatta, south of Hebron, the army said. The operation marked a sharp departure from the disorganized, home-grown terror of recent weeks.
Two of the suspects, whom the army said were members of a “Salafist jihadi” group, were shot dead in their car after they refused to surrender themselves to security forces. They were carrying “explosive devices and 2 handguns,” the army said in a statement. A third man was killed in a gun battle “following a hot pursuit,” IDF spokesman Peter Lerner said.

Gazan captured inside Israel with grenade

A Palestinian man from Gaza was caught by security forces Tuesday morning inside Israeli territory with a fragmentation grenade in his possession, the IDF said.
The man crossed the border fence between Israel and Gaza, but was apprehended after a short manhunt near the Israeli kibbutz of Kfar Aza. He was taken for questioning. The infiltration marks the latest in a series of successful and attempted attacks from Gaza in recent months.

5 Israeli Arab teens charged with firebombing IDF base

Five teenagers from the Arab neighborhood of Issawiya in East Jerusalem were brought before the Jerusalem District Court on Wednesday and charged with throwing Molotov cocktails at an IDF base in the capital.
According to the indictment, the youths, all aged 14 or 15, were behind several attacks over the past few months on the Ofrit base and on vehicles leaving it to travel along a road that passes around the Hebrew University campus on Mount Scopus.

Arab IDF Soldier Gets Medal for Killing Terrorist

In October, an Arab terrorist drove a tractor into an IDF base near Ramallah trying to run over soldiers. Private G. and munitions officer Lt. Shachar Vaknin killed the terrorist.
Private G., a Christian Arab, prefers to not have his name mentioned, so he won’t have problems in the Arab village in northern Israel where he lives.

Douglas Murray: William Hague’s appeasement of Iran’s mullahs is a historic and terrible mistake

The mullahs did not come to Geneva because they wished to give up their capability. And they did not come to the table because after 34 years of revolutionary Islamic governance they have seen the error of their ways. They came because international sanctions were beginning to hurt. Those sanctions – which took years to put in place – have now fallen apart thanks to a few days of incompetent negotiating on the part of the P5+1 plus some simple common sense from Tehran. People tend to say at this stage that the Iranians are ‘master negotiators’. They aren’t especially. They are simply fortunate to be playing against Catherine Ashton and a generation of other weak and short-sighted American and British politicians.

Britain to Israel: Don't undermine Iran nuclear deal

As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly announces Israel is not bound to nuclear deal signed between world powers and Iran in Geneva, the West now cautions Netanyahu of carrying out an operation that would challenge the deal he dubbed "a historic mistake".
Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Monday that Israel should avoid taking any action that would undermine the interim nuclear agreement reached between Iran and world powers. (h/t MtTB)

Barry Rubin: How U.S Policy Is Betraying Not Only Israel, but also Sunni Arabs

But that's not all; consider what the U.S. has done to Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. It is probable that Iran is going to give Syria a victory in the civil war. The fact is that Iran, Hizballah, and the Syrian government are on one side, and Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey have been on the other side. But now, in essence, the U.S. has objectively sided with Iran, and that is one of the reasons that the Saudis are angry. Here is what the Saudi ambassador to England, Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf bin Abdulaziz, said:
"Appeasement hasn't worked in the past, and I don't think it will work in the 21st century," he was quoted as saying. "That is why the frustration really is toward the main players within the United Nations Security Council, that's their responsibility. And they will share also the blame, whatever deal comes out, they are responsible for it."

Elliott Abrams: Is the Iran deal really a deal at all?

There are many arguments today about the substance of the agreement between Iran and the P5+1. But there is a prior question: Is there really an agreement at all?
Looking at the text of the "agreement," the most striking thing is the conditional or aspirational language.
The Obama administration should clarify whether that is or is not the case, because the entire "agreement" can be hung up over that negotiation over implementation. The "agreement" does not appear to be binding on any party, which is convenient for the Obama administration in one way: No one can argue that it is a form of treaty that must be approved by the Senate.

Iran: Construction will continue at Arak nuclear site

The uncompleted heavy-water research reactor emerged as one of several crucial issues in negotiations in Geneva last week, when Iran agreed with six world powers to curb Tehran's nuclear program for six months in return for limited sanctions relief.
Iran said it would not make "any further advances of its activities" on the Arak reactor, according to text of the agreement.
"The capacity at the Arak site is not going to increase. It means no new nuclear fuel will be produced and no new installations will be installed, but construction will continue there," Zarif told parliament in translated comments broadcast on Iran's Press TV.

Iran nuclear deal 'loophole' may allow off-site reactor work

Sunday's agreement to curb Iran's nuclear program contains an apparent gap that could allow Tehran to build components off-site to install later in a nuclear reactor where it has promised to halt work, experts said.
They said any impact of the omission is likely to be small if Iran follows other undertakings in the interim accord, which is designed to restrain Tehran's nuclear program for six months in return for limited sanctions relief.

Iran rejects US’s ‘one-sided’ version of nuclear deal

Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday firmly criticized the White House for publishing what it said was a false version of the interim nuclear agreement reached early Sunday between Iran and the six world powers.
“What has been released by the website of the White House as a fact sheet is a one-sided interpretation of the agreed text in Geneva and some of the explanations and words in the sheet contradict the text of the Joint Plan of Action, and this fact sheet has unfortunately been translated and released in the name of the Geneva agreement by certain media, which is not true,” said a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman in Tehran, according to the semi-official Fars news agency.

MEMRI: The Geneva Agreement: The Path To Historic Changes In The Middle East, Led By The U.S. Administration

Moreover, Iran will use its nuclear hegemony status, the legitimacy of its regime, and the hand that President Obama has extended to it in order to advance its status on the strategic and international level – but will not do this in cooperation with the U.S. This is because ideologically, Iran strives to change the global world order that is led by the U.S., and is seeking a status equal to or greater than that of today's superpowers.
Furthermore, this historic move by Obama will lead to regional instability. It will not assuage the existing tensions and conflicts; it will only inflame them, and this exacerbation will take the form of violent actions both in the region and outside it.

After Iran Nuclear Deal, White House Tries to Assuage Jewish Groups

The White House officials, according to Hoenlein, in some cases “indicated that these are issues they will address in the coming months and the next stage, and this is only an interim agreement, and we only learned yesterday that in fact [the agreement] doesn’t go into effect right now, it only goes into effect once the joint commission [to monitor the agreement’s implementation] is established, once the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) is able to verify that Iran is living up to its commitment.”
Hoenlein said that after the conference calls, Jewish leaders “understand [the deal] better, and that was the purpose.” Yet there is “every reason to be skeptical when you’re dealing with the Iranians,” he said.

Charles Krauthammer: Worst since Munich

Charles Krauthammer says he believes President Barack Obama’s deal with Iran is “the worst deal since Munich.”
“This is a sham from beginning to end. It’s the worst deal since Munich,” Krauthammer said on Fox News “Special Report” on Monday. “It’s really hard to watch the president and the secretary of state and not think how they cannot be embarrassed by this deal.”

Rouhani says Geneva nuclear deal increased Israel's isolation

“Many were trying to isolate Iran, but who is isolated today? Our enemies are in fact isolated,” the Iranian president said, according to Iran's PressTV.
While he did not mention Israel specifically, he used a language commonly used by Arab nations to describe it, speaking of "an illegitimate, occupier regime."

Senior Iranian MP: Israel’s ‘Unconcealed Rage’ Over Nuclear Deal Shows Success of Geneva Agreement

Speaking to reporters, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, chairman of the parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, said Israeli officials “were unable to conceal their rage” over the deal.
FARS said “the anger of the Zionists (about the newly signed nuclear deal) shows the extent of the success of the Geneva agreement.”

Saudis angry after Obama turns both cheeks

The Sunni world is going crazy and the Shiite world is pinching itself in disbelief. Washington has in fact begun a retreat from the Middle East, but it could still change the balance of power in the region during the withdrawal. Obama, as was predicted at the start of his first term, is truly a magician. In accordance with his outlook, Obama has succeeded in turning the bad in our region into good, and the good into bad. Since Israel was first on the good side, that means it is actually now on the bad side.

Riyadh Makes Cautious Statement on Iran Deal as Saudi Newspaper Cartoons Ridicule Talks

The Saudi Arabian government broke its silence on the six-month deal to lift sanctions on the Iran regime reached at the weekend, with a terse statement after a cabinet meeting on Tuesday in Riyadh. Meanwhile, the country’s newspapers ridiculed the agreement in very critical political cartoons.

Egypt's Latest Fatwas from Salafis and Brotherhood

The study similarly revealed that some of these fatwas decreed that women who swim in the sea are committing "adultery" -- even if they wear a hijab: "The reason behind this particular fatwa, from their point of view, is that the sea is masculine [as with many other languages, Arabic nouns are gender specific, and "sea" is masculine], and when the water touches the woman's private parts she becomes an 'adulteress' and should be punished."
Moreover, "Some of these fatwas also forbade women from eating certain vegetables or even touching cucumbers or bananas," due to their phallic imagery, which may tempt women to deviate.

Pro-Morsi Egyptians to Picket Thanksgiving Day Parade in NYC

A group of Egyptians sympathetic to former President Mohmamed Morsi are gearing up to stage a demonstration along the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade route in New York City, according to organizers.
Several hundred activists are expected to show up to the march, which is being called “Rabaa on Thanksgiving in Manhattan.”

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Syria is the first casualty of the Iranian nuclear deal

Michael Weiss of Now Lebanon has a very sobering analysis:

Much has been written about the technical points of the P5+1 interim agreement that authorized international sanctions relief in exchange for a slowdown (but not cessation or cancellation) of Iran’s nuclear program. Much attention has also been paid to the anatomy of the deal, with an intense focus on secret Oman-based negotiations the Obama administration held with the Iranians as early as eight months ago. However, the details about breakout capacity, inspections regimes, and the dollar amount of actual sanctions relief have distracted from the invisible rider on this accord, which is Western acquiescence to Iran’s gradual takeover of Syria.

As analysts Mike Doran and James Glassman have written, the six-month nuclear deal may now be used to retroactively explain President Obama’s seeming incoherence in responding to nearly three years of a grave humanitarian catastrophe. ....“Rather than merely being feckless,” Doran and Glassman write, “the administration may actually have a long-term plan, and this initial nuclear deal is only a tactic in a broader strategy. The overall aim is a strategic partnership with Iran because the administration sees that country as the only island of stability in a sea of chaos and violence.”

This is the direst assessment that can be made of the White House’s intentions at Geneva, and conclusions that derive therefrom are quite cynical. Yet there’s some evidence to support Doran and Glassman’s thesis.

For one thing, although the administration still clings to vaguely democratic talking points about supporting the Syrian opposition and demanding Assad’s removal from power, it has not prevented Iran’s inheritance of the regime’s security detail, the breathtaking extent of which has never once been publicly articulated or condemned by Obama....

Since September of this year, there’s also been another not-so-hidden administration motive for ceding greater control of Syria to Iran: the US-Russia chemical weapons disarmament plan, which resulted in the first UN Security Council resolution passed on the Syria carnage while also re-legitimizing Assad as a necessary Western partner in overseeing the destruction of the regime’s stockpiles of nerve agents. The deadline set for full disarmament is well into next year, at which point Assad will almost certainly still be in power. To remove the stockpiles, either the regime or a third party will need to provide them with safe conduct out of the war-ravaged country on roads that are either in rebel hands or are constantly being interdicted by rebels. The chances of American forces being deployed to Damascus and Aleppo for this undertaking are slim to none. Nor is anyone stupid enough to believe that Jabhat al-Nusra or the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham will refrain from attacking dangerous convoys of toxins because of a piece of paper inked in New York. So built right into the chemical accord was a necessary, if unwritten, guarantee that the regime retain or regain control of major highway systems throughout the country. This clearly is not a job for the inept and depleted Syrian Army to carry out on its own. But, as the CIA and the White House surely know, it doesn’t do anything on its own anymore.

....Indeed, both Assad and Hezbollah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah welcomed the P5+1 nuclear deal, which they would not have done if they thought that it spelled a reduction of Iran’s footprint in Syria rather than an enlargement. On November 24, The New York Times also cited White House aides who said that Obama was amenable to the possibility of turning the deal into the “opening act in a more ambitious engagement with Iran that might give it a role in Syria, Afghanistan, and other trouble spots,” though the aides stipulated that this would “depend on factors that are out of America’s control, like moderates gaining on the ground in Iran.”

There are no moderates in the IRGC or Hezbollah, which already have an expansive role in Syria. Nor will “hardliners” in Iran, such as IRGC-Quds Force commander Qassem Suleimani, ever consent to abandoning Assad or the nation they consider just another province of Iran. The aides’ stipulation reads like a tacked-on rationalization for a fait accompli.

The much-delayed Geneva II conference on Syria, now scheduled for January 22, thus promises to be quite an interesting affair. So far, there are no firm commitments of attendance by any parties to the conflict, and the actual rebels on the ground – as opposed to their irrelevant spokespersons abroad – have said that whatever happens, they will not abide by a ceasefire during the talks. Meanwhile, Iran’s participation, we are now informed by the very administration that once ruled it out, will be contingent upon its acceptance of the 2012 Geneva Protocol, which would create a “transitional government” for Syria and which Washington putatively thinks will be headed by someone other than Bashar al-Assad. Iran has said no to the Protocol. I wonder what else it thinks it can get away with between now and January 22.

The mullahs’ nuclear program, we often forget, was always intended as a safeguard for their most valued foreign policy objective: the expansion of Khomeinism across the Middle East through the use of paramilitary proxies, terrorism, advanced weaponry, and sophisticated intelligence and counterintelligence operations. The idea behind this objective was to systematically weaken and undermine what had been, since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, a Pax Americana stitched together by a tenuous but surprisingly stable consortium of US allies, namely Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the other Gulf Arab Sunni-majority states. Without possessing so much as a single warhead, Iran has managed to achieve much of what it set out to do, as well as to negotiate itself a license to do even more in exchange for putting a few more weeks “on the clock” for its ability to build a warhead. This is nothing short of extraordinary. It’s also a great tragedy for Syria.

Read the whole thing.

I don't know if the Obama administration set out from the beginning with a plan to help strengthen Iran's role in the Middle East - after all, they did increase sanctions - but it is plausible that around the time of the secret negotiations earlier this year, such a thought began to gel.

Whether it was planned or not, Syria is even further screwed by this Iranian nuclear agreement, and Iran's geopolitical position  - which could have been fatally injured by a defeat of Assad in Syria - has now been strengthened immeasurably.

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"Jewish rabbis leading the jihad in Syria"

The accusations and counter-accusations Arabs hurl, accusing their opponents of being helped by Israel, gets old after a while. So sometimes they have to raise the stakes.

A nutty (and antisemitic) Iraqi pro-Shiite news site "Voice of Iraq"  has a new diatribe against  Sunni leaders. Excerpts:

Jewish rabbis are leading the jihad in Syria at the time of Arab decadence and cowardice, as Arabs have abandoned all titles of honor and dignity of the Arab and Islamic nation...they are handing their keys over free of charge to international Zionism. ... Events in Syria prove the Gulf Arab rush to compete for the satisfaction of their masters in the Israeli Knesset.

We hear from Netanyahu a call for a unification of the Arabs against Syria, Hezbollah and Iran to ignite a war that will burn the region and the world. Israel wants to sow discord and havoc in the region to fragment and weaken the Arabs. This is happening in Syria now with killing of sabotage and attacks.

There have been shuttle visits conducted by many of the political and military leaderships of the Gulf to Tel Aviv, especially after the heroic victories of the Syrian army against the armies of witches and sorcerers of mercenaries and after the breakthrough in the crisis with Syrian and Iranian détente with the United States.

Not only this, there is information that says a lot of the leaders of the so-called Syrian opposition and even Islamic ones go to Israel go kiss her to get all kinds of material and logistical support. Of course, all this support is conditional and under the control of the Mossad, who was recruited rabbis of the Israeli Knesset to issue fatwas to the chieftains of war and terrorism in the region and the world.

It is not strange to see and watch leaders of the Syrian rebels racing to gain a certificate of good conduct from Israel, but what is new is catching chieftains who claim to be advocates of the Islamic religion, but they are shown to be fornicators, not advocates. There are a lot of questions raised about the rush of these rebels and sheikhs towards Israel especially in recent times that made ​​them a laughing stock among nations time.

Did not Saudi Arabia undertake with Al-Qaradawi and sheikhs not to allow what they call the Mujahideen in Syria to attack Israel? Did they not and cheer their mercenaries during the Israeli shelling of some military sites in Syria? Did not terrorist groups send their wounded to Israel and declare from inside the Israeli hospital that they do not hold any hostility to Israel? Didn't the ousted Egyptian President Mursi and the Brotherhood describe Peres as their great friend?

I shouldn't reveal that the Shiites are also under control of the rabbis, and we make them write stuff like this to keep them fighting each other. Oops.

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Anti-Israel activists implicitly blame Israel for Gaza power problems

Here is a press release from the latest anti-Israel publicity stunt:

Join Gaza's Ark on November 30th as hundreds of Palestinian children sail mini-Arks from the port of Gaza out to sea. The event begins at 12:30PM Gaza Time, on Saturday November 30th, in the Port of Gaza, near Gaza's Ark. Representatives of different Palestinian civil society organizations will address the effects of the blockade on children in Gaza.

"You can help brighten a dark path. Lead the way and sail with the children of Gaza towards freedom." says Heba Hayek of Gaza, a member of Gaza's Ark committee.

This project is bringing attention to the devastating conditions for children living inside the Gaza Strip, as fuel to run their society and other essentials have been denied to them. The shortage has caused sewage pumps to stop working, spilling raw sewage onto the streets. Kids have to wade through contaminated muck on their way to school, and an outbreak of disease is just waiting to happen. Children can't study at night, because there is no electricity, and many of them are reading by candlelight.

Renowned linguist and political commentator Noam Chomsky adds:
'It was incredibly moving, and inspiring, to learn about the Mini Arks that are to sail from Gaza on November 30. The courage and heroism of the people of Gaza, enduring shocking crimes and torture, is one of the wonders of the age. I hope that the arks that the children are sending forth will at least reach the conscience of the world, and help bring these horrors to an end."

These Palestinian children are filled with hope and a desire to let the world know they have the right to freedom of movement. And we at Gaza's Ark are determined to help them.

This is really a fundraiser for the main event: "Gaza Ark," a real boat that will try to leave Gaza in March and fight "against the Israeli blockade."

Yet their press release tries to pull the heartstrings because of Gaza's power problems, which have nothing to do with Israel and everything to do with Egypt and internal Hamas-Fatah politics.

Sometimes, they are smart enough not lie explicitly. They know that decades of anti-Israel propaganda plus their own downplaying of any Arab responsibility for Palestinian Arab suffering will inevitably cause the ignorant people who read their literature to blame Israel anyway.

Which is, of course, their goal.

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Another photo of the Dome of the Rock in disrepair in the 1890s

Recently, Chatham University put online over a hundred lantern slides, hand colored, of scenes in the Middle East. Some have been shown on the Israel Daily Picture site.

Here is a photo of the Dome of the Rock from the 1890s:

As I've shown before, it is practically abandoned and overgrown with weeds. The fountain in the foreground is dry and damaged.

I once made a video showing a few of these photos of weeds across the area that is supposedly so sacred and used for pilgrimage:



But last year I found something even more damning - incontrovertible proof that Muslims only care about their "holy places" in Jerusalem when Jews are in control.

This photo and video shows how the same Dome of the Rock looked in the 1950s, under Jordanian rule. And it looks pretty much the same as it did in the 1890s. If anything, the Dome is in worse shape.

(h/t Irene)

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11/26 Links Pt2: Sir Tom Jones speaks out against BDS, Boston Mayor Declares ‘Thanksgivukkah’

From Ian:

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Stand With Us: Fmr Israel Amb to the US, Michael Oren addresses the StandWithUs-IDC Ambassadors Club


Khaled Abu Toameh: PLO "Resignations" and the Peace Process

The message that Erekat and the PLO officials are sending to the world is: "Hold us back from resigning or else there will be no peace process."
The "resignations" and threats to quit are also intended to send a message to the Palestinian public, which long ago lost confidence in the PLO negotiators' performance, that Erekat and his colleagues are playing tough with Israel.
PLO officials are apparently convinced that they can "fool all of the people all of the time." The next time the Americans and Europeans hear threats to resign from PLO officials, they need to react the same way as Palestinians do -- with a wide smile.
They also need to be reminded that Abbas and his predecessor, Arafat, also threatened to quit at least 20 times since the beginning of the peace process.

Almagor: Abbas in Knesset 'Dances on Blood of Terror Victims'

The parents also emphasize their dedication to protesting the move, insisting that if Mahmoud Abbas comes to the Knesset, "we will be there in the name of morality and justice."
"We will block him ourselves, with our bodies," the statement affirmed. "On the day he gets to Jerusalem, heaven forbid, we will be there to [physically] block the Knesset, just as we did with many other [demonstrators] when Arafat wanted to go to Jerusalem."
"If Mahmoud Abbas is received by the Knesset, it will be like dancing on the blood of the terror victims who were murdered by his people," the letter concludes.

PMW:Fatah publicizes threats to kidnap, kill and bomb Israelis

"We are preparing to kidnap Zionist soldiers," is part of a promise made by the terror organization Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades - the military wing of Fatah, and published in a video on Fatah's official "Main Page" on Facebook.
In the video, a masked terrorist sitting among dozens of rockets states that the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades is preparing to kidnap Israeli soldiers in order to "empty out the Zionist prisons." This is a warning that Fatah terrorists plan to follow the precedent set by Hamas, who kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and held him hostage for five years until Israel released over 1,000 terrorists including many murderers, to enable Shalit's release:
"We are preparing to kidnap Zionist soldiers to settle accounts with the Zionist enemy properly, in order to empty out the Zionist prisons." (h/t Ilya Fainshtein)

PA TV: US created the "War of Terror myth" to increase its interference in other nations' affairs VIDEO

Harvard Publication Prints Anti-Semitic Article

The Harvard Ichthus, a Christian journal, published an essay by a Jewish convert to Christianity called “Why Us?” which argues that the Jews have deserved their suffering of the past 2,000 years because of their role in the death of Jesus Christ.
“We, the Jews, collectively rejected God and hung Him up on the cross to die, and thus we deserved the punishments that were heaped on our heads over the last 2000 years,” the anonymous contributor wrote.

US College Sponsored Speakers: Israelis Kidnap, Torture Arab Children

There was an event at Haverford College on Sunday, Nov. 24, called “The Soldier and the Refusenik.” The two speakers who presented are traveling throughout the U.S. on a fundraising tour for their organization, Anarchists Against the Wall. That organization attacks not only the “Occupation,” but Israel’s very existence.
During Sunday’s program, students were told by Israel-critical Israelis such “facts” as:
- Israel uses the “West Bank” and Gaza as its own private lab where it experiments on Palestinian Arabs and then sells the weapons it perfects to the “worst dictators in the world, including the United States”

Sir Tom Jones speaks out against anti-Israel protesters

Now that the singer has performed his concerts, he has decided to speak out against the campaign which has seen musicians including Roger Waters, of Pink Floyd, Annie Lennox and Elvis Costello refuse to visit.
“I was in Israel two weeks ago, where a lot of singers won’t go,” says the entertainer, whose hits include It’s Not Unusual, Delilah and The Green, Green Grass of Home. “I don’t agree with that. I think entertainers should enter­tain. They should go wherever – there shouldn’t be any restrictions. I did two shows in Tel Aviv, and it was fantastic.”
Speaking at the annual dinner of Norwood, a charity supporting vulnerable children, families and people with learning disabilities, Sir Tom tells The Jewish News: “I wanted to go, because the Israeli people asked me. They would like me to sing, and I don’t see any problem in doing that. I don’t see why anyone would mix up the two things – entertainment and politics.”

Deep Purple returning to Israel

Two years after its last successful visit, veteran British rock band Deep Purple is returning to Israel this winter for one concert at Tel Aviv's Nokia Arena on February 22.
The band will arrive in Israel as part of its "The Best of Deep Purple" concert tour, which will include performances of its greatest hits as well as songs from its new album, "Now What?!" (h/t Yoel)

At last: an accurate and impartial BBC report on Syrian patients in Israel

On November 3rd the Israeli media gave extensive coverage to the story of a baby boy born to a Syrian mother in Tsfat’s Rifka Ziv hospital. On November 25th an article by the BBC Jerusalem Bureau’s Kevin Connolly on that specific case and on the general subject of Syrian patients treated in Israel appeared in the ‘Features & Analysis’ section of the BBC News website’s Middle East page. The report also includes filmed footage broadcast on BBC television news programmes.

This year’s 21 UNGA resolutions against Israel (4 on rest of world)

The four that do not concern Israel are: one on Syria, a regime that has murdered 120,000 of its own people, and one each on Iran, North Korea and Myanmar.
There were will be zero UNGA resolutions on gross and systematic abuses committed by China, Cuba, Egypt, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Zimbabwe, nor on many other major perpetrators of grave violations of human rights.

French Jewish immigration to Israel up by 49 percent

Through September, 2,185 French Jews have immigrated to Israel, compared to 1,469 immigrants during the same time frame in 2012, according to Jewish Agency for Israel figures. The number of immigrants who arrived from France to Israel during the whole of 2012 was 1,907.
Of the immigrants to Israel this year, 3,188 Jews arrived from Western Europe — a 26 percent increase from the same period last year.

Julie Bishop says Australia's shift on Israel UN resolutions is a bid for balance

Australia this month abstained from two UN General Assembly resolutions; one condemning the expansion of Jewish settlements and another calling for the Geneva Convention to apply in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Under Labor, Australia had supported the resolutions.
Ms Bishop said the shift “reflected the government's concern that Middle East resolutions should be balanced”.
“The government will not support resolutions which are one-sided and which pre-judge the outcome of final status negotiations between the two sides,” she said through a spokeswoman.

Almost 2/3 of anti-religious crimes in US targeted Jews in 2012

The ADL criticized the report as faulty, charging that the drop in incidents was due, at least in part, to the failure of many government bodies to properly report hate crimes.
“Due to a deeply disturbing trend of under-reporting and under-participation by law enforcement agencies, including more than a dozen of the largest agencies in the United States, the 2012 Hate Crime Statistics Act report is seriously flawed,” National Director Abraham Foxman said in a written statement.

Point of No Return: Jews were targets before Israel's creation

Three popular myths surround the 870,000 Jews who left Arab countries after Israel was born. The first is that they departed of their own free will. Second, if they did flee as refugees, it was because Arab states lashed out spontaneously against their Jewish citizens like a bull to a red rag (and who could blame them?). Third, the Arab states took revenge on their Jews for the plight of Arabs driven out of Palestine.

India Marks 5 Years since Mumbai Massacre

Victims and government ministers laid wreaths at a memorial in south Mumbai dedicated to police and security forces killed trying to stop the Islamist gunmen during 60 hours of carnage.
Ten terrorists arrived by sea on the evening of November 26, carrying out a massacre at the Jewish Chabad center, hotels, a railway station and a cafe as terrified civilians tried to escape the bloodbath.
Six Jews were murdered at the Chabad House: Chabad emissaries Rabbi Gabriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivky, who was five months pregnant; Rabbi Aryeh Leibush Teitelbaum, Rabbi Benzion Korman, Norma Shvartzblat Rabinovich and Yocheved Orpaz.

One of the Most Remarkable Books About the Holocaust Was Just Published

“I think I can pinpoint exactly the hour and day when my childhood ended,” writes Slavko Goldstein near the beginning of 1941: The Year That Keeps Returning. The date was April 13, 1941, when Goldstein was 13 years old. That morning, he asked his father if he could go out to play with friends. His father, Ivo, was hesitant: Just two days earlier, German troops had marched unopposed into Croatia, and tanks were on the streets of their small city, Karlovac. But he gave his permission, and Slavko went off.
When he returned that afternoon, his father was gone: He was part of the first group of Karlovac citizens arrested by the new fascist regime. Ivo would never return home again, and by August he was dead, one of thousands of prisoners executed at the Jadovno camp that summer.

Israel hosts 4-nation warplane drill over Negev Desert

Israel began hosting its largest joint air force drill this week with pilots from the U.S., Italy and Greece over the skies of southern Israel.
The exercise, called Blue Flag, will take place in the airspace between central Gush Dan and the Negev Desert.

IAF Launches Largest International Military Exercise in Israel's History


Spotlight: From Iran to the IDF

"On television, Iran did not show good things about Israel, always only bad things," S. explained. "The government there does not like Israel, but the people themselves do not care. They just want to live well. People do not like that the government is investing a lot of money in the nuclear program."
S. says that since her childhood she wanted to move to Israel and join the IDF. "When I got to Israel they asked me to say my name to get an ID card. It was my first time ever using my Jewish name," she recalls. "For me it was a significant moment in my life."

After treating 2,600 patients, Israeli medical team leaves Philippines

The 148-person medical team vacated the IDF’s emergency field hospital in Bogo City on Monday after treating more than 2,600 patients, including 800 children. The team also conducted 52 surgeries and delivered 36 babies.
A European Union delegation replaced the IDF team, which left behind a range of medical supplies, including an X-ray machine and equipment for the delivery of newborns.

Meet the woman who coined the term ‘Thanksgivukkah’

At this point, it is tough to live in America and not know that Thanksgiving and Hanukkah fall on the same night this year. It is also tough to not know that this doesn’t usually happen. That popular wisdom has it we’ve got another 70,000 years to go before this comes up again. (Apparently popular wisdom is wrong.)
But a year ago, it wasn’t a cultural reference point. It was just an oddity Dana Reichman Gitell, a marketing specialist at Hebrew Senior Life in Massachusetts, had noticed on the calendar.

Nov. 28 Declared ‘Thanksgivukkah’ by Boston Mayor

In light of the once-in-a-lifetime convergence of Thanksgiving and Hanukkah, Boston’s retiring Mayor Thomas Menino has declared Nov. 28 to be “Thanksgivukkah” in the city.

Israel Daily Picture: The Chatham Library Photo Treasures Part 3, Jerusalem, Holy to All Religions

We express our admiration and gratitude to the archivists at Chatham University for digitizing these hand-colored slides dating back to about 1890.
The picture of Robinson's Arch published above is the base of a massive arch built by King Herod. Archaeologists believe it was the anchor for a large bridge or staircase from the top of the Temple Mount.

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Cornell BDS group justifies hypocritically using Israeli web technology

Last week, the ZF and I discovered that a number of groups that push boycotts for Israel are using WiX, an Israeli web technology, on their websites.

One of those was Cornell University's "Students for Justice in Palestine." People on Twitter made fun of them for their obvious hypocrisy.

Finally, Cornell SJP came out with a long, nonsensical, convoluted justification for their BDS inconsistency; 1500 words of hilarious attempts to make themselves look a little less idiotic:

BDS is a tactic, not a principle, let alone a call for abstention. The charge that any contact with Israeli products negates the logic of BDS can only be made by people who do not understand what BDS actually is, how it’s worked in the past, or why Palestinian civil society is calling for it now.

The idea that supporters of BDS must avoid contact with anything Israeli not only misconstrues the nature of BDS, but also contorts the idea of politics in general. Politics is about making change in the world, not shying from contamination to keep oneself pure. GWF Hegel explored—and put to rest—the idea of the political subject whose only options were abstention and total withdrawal from action. He called it the “beautiful soul” syndrome. We do not strive to be beautiful souls, and we resist a view of politics that demands total abstention. In the words of Built to Spill, “I don’t like this air / But that doesn’t mean that I’ll stop breathing it.”

Those who call us hypocritical for not adhering to a rigid logic of separation simplistically insinuate that if one believes in boycotting Israel one must do it absolutely and deprive oneself of all the innovative benefits of the “Start-up Nation”; since one is opposed to Israel, one must not be in contact with anything Israeli. This separation in turn supports the misguided idea of two clear “sides” to the conflict. It is a troubling binary: on the one side, Israel, a plucky, can-do Zionist spirit, innovation, technology, modernity; on the other, Palestine, poverty, backwardness, violence.

The entire piece is filled with similar straw men.

So, who's right? Is BDS a call to boycott all Israeli products or not?

Well, let's look at the original 2005 source of the BDS call, from BDSMovement.net:

Boycotts target products and companies (Israeli and international) that profit from the violation of Palestinian rights, as well as Israeli sporting, cultural and academic institutions. Anyone can boycott Israeli goods, simply by making sure that they don’t buy produce made in Israel or by Israeli companies. Campaigners and groups call on consumers not to buy Israeli goods and on businesses not to buy or sell them.

Pretty explicit, isn't it? No nuance, no exceptions for nice web technologies. Nope - a blanket call to boycott Israeli produce and goods and businesses. It is the BDS movement that advocates the "beautiful soul" syndrome, in Hegelian terms (!!!)

Cornell  SJP doesn't support BDS as it is officially defined, because - well, because it would be an inconvenience. They like WiX. They want to boycott Israel, but they only want to ban products that they would never use anyway! They are so moral!

Actually, they admit:

Let us be clear: BDS is not abstention, nor an absolute moral principle.

There's an understatement for you!

Sorry, Cornell SJP. All that hand waving and attempts to change the subject in your very funny screed didn't prove that you aren't hypocrites.

Quite the opposite.

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Another great speech by Ron Prosor at the UN

This speech was given yesterday by Israel's ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor:

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John Fitzgerald Kennedy said, “The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie... but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.”

This is the third year that I am standing before this Assembly to address this agenda item and once again, I experience a sense of déjà vu as I listen to a distortion of history. The greatest legends of Greek mythology cannot rival the fables and fabrications that have come to be associated with this debate.

This debate may take place only once a year, but anti-Israel bias pervades the UN system all year round. In 2012, this Assembly found the time to pass 22 resolutions condemning Israel – compared with only four that single out other nations.

The worst human rights abusers receive a fraction of the condemnation that Israel – the only democracy in the Middle East - receives. These irresponsible actions have irreversible consequences. The states that rubberstamp the anti-Israel resolutions every year, have given the Palestinians a false sense of reality and fed their culture of victimhood.

It has only been one year since this assembly voted to change the Palestinian delegation’s status at the United Nations. To all those who voted in favor of that resolution, I ask the following: What exactly has changed?

Did the resolution give the Palestinian Authority control over Gaza? Not in the least. Gaza comprises forty percent of the territory that President Abbas claims to represent, but he hasn’t set foot in the area in six years. It seems to me that the Palestinian Authority has been asserting more control over some UN bodies than it does over the Gaza Strip. Since 2007, Gaza has been in the hands of Hamas, a terrorist organization that rains missiles on Israel’s civilians.

Did the resolution passed last year motivate the Palestinian Authority to finally hold elections? Not at all. Perhaps someone in this Assembly should remind the Palestinian Authority that its mandate expired in 2009 – and one election doesn’t mean you can rule forever.

At the same time I have to wonder, where are all the countries that claim to stand for democratic values? They are quick to cast judgment on Israel, but fall strangely silent when the Palestinians don’t cast votes.

Did the resolution passed last year inspire the Palestinian Authority to prepare their people for peace? Not in the least. Rather than teaching their children tolerance and mutual recognition, the Palestinian leadership continues to foster a culture of incitement.

Palestinian Media Watch will soon release a report documenting hundreds of examples of Palestinian incitement since the peace talks began. One such example is football teams named in honor of terrorists responsible for some of the deadliest attacks against Israelis. Instead of teaching kids to score goals, the Palestinian leadership’s goal is to glorify murderers.

Israel recently made the difficult decision to release 26 convicted murderers as part of its commitment to advancing the peace talks. Shortly after, the Palestinian Authority announced that each of these 26 terrorists would be rewarded with $50,000 and some will earn as much as Palestinian ministers. The motto of the PA’s pension plan seems to be ‘the more you slay, the more we pay.’

As the PA sings praises to murderers, the international community tunes out and mysteriously loses its voice. I wonder how taxpayers in London or Luxemburg would feel knowing that their tax dollars are being used to reward convicted murderers?

The Palestinian leadership has yet to learn an important lesson. You cannot abuse others and call yourself the abused. And you cannot claim your history is being denied, while denying the history of the Jewish nation.

In Gaza, Hamas is poisoning the hearts and minds of the next generation. They recently published a textbook for 55,000 high school students in which page after page denies Judaism's historical connection to the land of Israel and describes Zionism as racism. Textbooks should be for education, but Hamas uses them for provocation, indoctrination and escalation.

These are just the most recent examples of the incitement targeting the next generation. Terrorism does not begin with an attack on a bus or in a pizza parlor. It begins in classrooms, mosques, and day camps where Palestinian children are being taught prejudice instead of peace; terror instead of tolerance; and martyrdom instead of mutual understanding.

This incitement is having deadly consequences. Between 2011 and 2012, the number of Palestinian terror attacks against Israel doubled. So far in 2013, there have been 1,163 terror attacks against Israelis and dozens of attempted kidnappings.

Just over a week ago, Eden Atias, a 19-year-old Israeli soldier, was stabbed to death while sleeping on a passenger bus. Eden was the latest victim of the escalating terror attacks against Israelis. In September, 20 year-old Tomer Hazan was murdered, two soldiers were injured in an attack near Nablus, and a 9-year-old girl was stabbed while playing in her front yard. In October, four Israeli civilians were injured in a stabbing attack and Sraya Ofer was brutally beaten to death outside his home in the Jordan Rift Valley.

All those who claim to advance peace must remind the Palestinians that there are no shortcuts. Peace is not achieved by changing your nameplate at the UN; it isn’t achieved by unilateral actions or by passing a string of anti-Israel resolutions; and it won’t be achieved in Manhattan, mid-town east, but rather in the Middle East. So long as the Palestinian leadership chooses symbolism over pragmatism, it will be harder to achieve peace.

In a few days, on November 29, the United Nations will recognize the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. Let me take a moment to remind this Assembly what really occurred on this day in history. On November 29 1947, the General Assembly adopted resolution 181, which came to be known as the Partition Plan. This resolution provided for the establishment of a Jewish state and an Arab state.

The Jews accepted huge compromises and gave up on dreams the Jewish people had carried for generations. But they welcomed the plan and joyously declared a new state in their ancient homeland. Chaim Weizmann, who later became the first president of the State of Israel, proclaimed: “It is now our primary task to establish relations of peace and harmony with our Arab neighbors.”

Rather than accept the partition plan, five surrounding Arab nations declared war on the newborn Jewish state. Their intentions were made clear by Azzam Pasha, Secretary-General of the Arab League, who said: “It will be a war of annihilation. It will be a momentous massacre in history that will be talked about like the massacres of the Mongols or the Crusades.”

The Arabs not only rejected the UN offer of a Palestinian state, they then declared war against the Jewish state. Since losing this war, the Arabs have perpetuated the Palestinian refugee problem and still have the audacity to demand solidarity.

Broadway may be down the street, but the real theater is here at the United Nations. In these halls, the Arab nations shine a spotlight on the Palestinian refugees, but back home in the Middle East, leave them in the dark. Since 1948, the Arab states refused to accept the Palestinian refugees into their societies, confined them to refugee camps, and passed discriminatory laws.

General Assembly resolution 181 passed in 1947 speaks of the creation of a “Jewish State” no fewer than 25 times. And yet today, 66 years later, have you heard Palestinian leaders utter the term ‘Jewish state’? Of course not.

Palestinian leaders call for an independent Palestinian state, but they insist that the Palestinian people return to the Jewish state. This is a euphemism for the destruction of the State of Israel and the single greatest hurdle to achieving peace.

Many in this room are convinced that the root of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the settlements. In fact, from the time that Israel gained its independence in 1948 until 1967, the West Bank was in Jordanian hands and Gaza was in Egyptian hands. Throughout this time, there was not a single settlement. Yet the Palestinians still sought our destruction.

Today, just 2% of the Israeli population lives in settlements, but they are blamed for 100% of the problems. The math simply doesn’t add up.

Israel is the ancient homeland of the Jewish people. It is the birthplace of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; the land where Moses and Joshua led the Jewish people and King Solomon built the Jewish Temple.

Israel is the place where the bible tells us about David, who was made king and laid the cornerstone for his palace in Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people. That is King David from Judea, not King David from the ‘West Bank’ – and certainly not King David from the so-called ‘occupied territories.’ After all, you can’t ‘occupy’ your own home.

For thousands of years, Jerusalem served as the capital of the Jewish people. Three thousand years ago, my ancestors walked the same streets that my children walk, spoke the same language that I speak, and prayed at the very same Temple Mount that Jews pray at every single day.

Yet all of these historical facts are brushed aside. Instead, in this Assembly all we hear are rants, rhetoric and biased resolutions. It doesn’t take a fortuneteller to predict the language in these resolutions. After all, the same text is copied and pasted each year – much of it dating back five decades. Yet country after country sees no problem in standing up and parroting propaganda. I’m reminded of President John F. Kennedy who said, “No matter how big the lie; repeat it often enough and the masses will regard it as the truth.”

The resolutions being voted on today have no relationship to the facts on the ground. Just last week the UN adopted nine resolutions condemning Israel. One of these resolutions condemned Israel’s treatment of the Syrian people. Condemned Israel’s treatment of the Syrian people? It is inconceivable that while Israeli hospitals are treating the Syrians who escaped Assad’s massacre; the UN is denouncing Israel’s treatment of the Syrians.

If that weren’t enough, the GA will soon vote on another resolution calling on Israel to hand over the Golan Heights and its residents to Syria. It is nothing short of absurd for the UN to demand that even more civilians be subject to Assad’s brutality.

At the United Nations, there are countless resolutions that delegitimize and demonize Israel. Why don’t I ever hear anyone speak about all the good work Israel is doing for the Palestinians?

While the Palestinians are busy condemning Israel at the UN, Israel is busy supporting the Palestinian economy and developing their infrastructure. Today, more than 100,000 Palestinians earn their living in Israel, making up more than 10% of the Palestinian GDP. Israel is also building four electrical substations and providing more than 1,400 million gallons of clean water annually.

Palestinians receive world-class healthcare services in hospitals throughout the country. In the first half of 2013 alone, more than 94,000 Palestinians received treatment in Israeli hospitals.

And we continue to give, even as our goodwill is knowingly exploited. While the IDF uncovers one terror tunnel after another, the flow of consumer goods continues into Gaza uninterrupted. Each day, the state of Israel delivers 400 truckloads to the Palestinian people via the Keren Shalom Terminal.

George Orwell said, “In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

The truth is that Israel is not just speaking about peace; it is demonstrating its commitment every single day. Peace is a central value of Israeli society and it has been the goal of the Israeli people and every Israeli leader since our state was re-established 65 years ago.

We will not be deterred from this goal. Israel has always extended its hand for peace and it will continue to do so for our children and for our grandchildren. When we faced an Arab leader who wanted peace, we made peace. That was the case with Egypt and that was the case with Jordan. We are committed to negotiating with our Palestinian neighbors so that our two peoples can live side by side in peace, dignity and freedom.

I call on my colleagues in this Hall not to be distracted by unilateral efforts and biased resolutions. Remind the Palestinians to take responsibility and that the only way to reach a comprehensive peace deal is through hard work and direct negotiations.

Working together, we in this room call all make history by making peace. Working together, we can author a better future - one where our people can live in security, free from violence; where the horizon is bright with opportunity; and, where our children can live side by side in peace.

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11/26 Links Pt1: Israel’s FM a Point-by-Point Review of Iran Deal, Hezbollah's 200 UAVs

From Ian:

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Israel’s Foreign Ministry, in Point-by-Point Review of Iran Deal, Sees Much Lacking

Israel’s Foreign Ministry said that with the deal, nuclear enrichment continues; the Arak heavy water reactor does not get dismantled; research and development on centrifuges used to enrich uranium continues; Iran’s stockpile of 7 tons of uranium goes untouched; the project is merely paused, not stopped, allowing it to resume at Iran’s convenience; international business ties can resume, and would be hard to roll-back in the future; the six-month deal could become permanent; and, finally, the military question over Iran’s right to develop nuclear weapons “are completely absent from an agreement that envisions restoring confidence in the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program as one of its major goals.”

Caroline Glick: The goal of Obama’s foreign policy

The culmination of this long process of delegitimizing Israel as a warmongering, ungrateful ally and its supporters as turncoats who are forcing the US to endanger itself for the benefit of the Jewish state was the administration’s hysterical campaign against Israel and its supporters in the lead-up to Saturday’s signing ceremony in Geneva. Everyone, from the White House to Kerry, accused Israel and its supporters of trying to force the US to fight an unnecessary war.
When we consider Obama’s decision to wait for a year to sign the deal that enables Iran to become a nuclear power in the context of his main activities over the past year, we understand his foreign policy.
His goal is not to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. It isn’t even to facilitate a rapprochement between America and Iran. The goal of Obama’s foreign policy is to weaken the State of Israel.

Abrams on Iran Deal: ‘This Is Not A Peaceful Energy Program’

Abrams noted that Obama has wanted a deal with since taking office in 2009, and the President’s desire to end the confrontation with Iran is what “really worries the Saudis, the Israelis, and others in the region…they’ve counted on us to defend them from Iran and now we’re not going to be doing that.”
“That’s the real problem here,” Abrams claimed, saying Iran’s enrichment of plutonium is “not a peaceful energy program.”

Melanie Phillips: World saved? Hardly. More a final countdown to nuclear blackmail and war

Journalists who would normally ask themselves ‘why is this lying bastard lying to me?’ if a western politician merely said ‘hello, nice day isn’t it’ (apart, of course, from The One) have suspended all independent powers of observation and thought over this risible farce of a deal.
Viewing it through the prism of ‘after-Iraq-don’t-give me-any-more-lies-about-Islamic-terror/anything-that-sounds-like-compromise-and-lets-us-put-our-heads-back-in-the-sand-must-be-good/war-with-Iran-is-sooo-much-more-terrifying-than-a-nuclear-Iran/new-Iranian-President-Rouhani-sounds-charming-and-moderate-so-phew!-we-can-believe-anything-that-he-says/anything-Benjamin-Netanyahu-is-against-I’m-for’, the chattering classes have apparently decided that yup, this really is peace in our time and any comparison with you-know-what in 1938 is well, just hysterical, and anyway we’ve had it up to here with Israel and they can just shut up.

On my Mind: From Tehran to Damascus

The six-month interim deal does not in itself guarantee an end to Iran’s nuclear-weapons quest, and that’s a lesson no doubt being absorbed in Damascus. Assad may well look at what Tehran got, after years of obstinacy and defiance, and conclude that if he, too, continues to say the right words, he can continue to hold on.
It worked for Assad on chemical weapons, averting an attack by the US and France after his regime murdered Syrians with those weapons of mass destruction. Prospects for the Syrian people are not encouraging. As The Wall Street Journal pointed out so aptly in an editorial, “The most lethal WMD in Syria today is Bashar Assad himself.”

Geneva: The abandonment of the Jews

The United States has recklessly rolled the dice with the fate of its closest ally in the Middle East, inexplicably placing its faith in a rogue regime, one that has repeatedly vowed to finish what Hitler began.
It was 29 years ago, in 1984, that historian David S. Wyman published a seminal volume, The Abandonment of the Jews, on America’s failure to stop the Nazi slaughter of European Jewry. Marshaling painstaking evidence, Wyman conclusively demonstrated that America and its leadership could have saved millions of Jews. In the preface to his book, Wyman concluded with a simple yet chilling question, “Would the reaction be different today?” Sadly, the agreement forged with Iran in Geneva gives us a glimpse of what the answer might be.

Iranian freedom cancelled

This is not a victory of diplomacy, it is a victory of political amnesia. Conflicts like this one can only be solved once and forever when there is a change of regime. Remember Libya? Remember how the world failed to prevent nuclear weapons in the hands of North Korea?
The American President has pushed forward with his appeasement agenda despite rightful Israeli security concerns. To me Barack Obama has entered history books as a US leader who not only let the Syrian genocide happen, but also sold out Iran’s civil society to cut a brief and shallow deal with an Islamist dictatorship.

Wife of imprisoned pastor says family devastated after Iran deal fails to secure his release

Saeed Abedini, an American citizen, has been imprisoned in Iran for more than a year for practicing Christianity. The talks over Iran's nuclear program were seen by his family and those representing them as one of the most promising avenues yet for securing his release.
But the White House confirmed over the weekend that Abedini's status was not on the table during those talks.

The Iran deal is a pacifist march to conflict

And so once upon a time when war was bad, the doves may have been singing from the hymn sheet of today’s more hawkish elements on the Iranian issue. Sanctions, not submarines. Pressure, not privates. Resolutions, not railguns. But where were they when the Iranian people sought to rise up in 2009? Where was Britain? Where was America? Where was the European Union? We all know: stuck in our sub-prime miasma – unconcerned with what would lead the headlines for months on end just four years later. This lack of foresight is indicative of just how poor long-term thinkers our leaders have become.
The ‘pacifist’ Peace Pledge Union urged appeasement of Nazi Germany in 1939, believing that giving Hitler a little would mean saving a lot in the long run. It is not just a figurative truth, but a literal one, that our leaders of late have been the sons and daughters of Peace Pledge Union activists.

Why Obama’s Iran Nuke Deal Is a Good Thing

Israel and Saudi Arabia have both issued statements making it clear that they will not accept an Iranian bomb. And unlike Obama, they actually mean it. What they will do about it is another question, but now they, and everyone on the firing line, knows that Obama will do nothing and that sets them free to act.
Iran is in the North Korean cycle of nuclear development, useless sanctions, pointed threats and worthless deals. If the cycle continues, Iran will detonate a nuclear weapon and then it will pass nuclear technology into the hands of terrorists. And the next step is the mass murder of millions.

Iran, North Korea Secretly Developing New Long-Range Rocket Booster for ICBMs

Several groups of technicians from the Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group (SHIG), a unit in charge of building Iran’s liquid-fueled missiles, traveled to Pyongyang during the past several month, including as recently as late October, to work on the new, 80-ton rocket booster being developed by the North Koreans, according to officials familiar with intelligence reports.

CNN poll: 53% of Americans think Obama is untrustworthy

Some 53 percent of the American public believes that U.S. President Barack Obama is neither honest nor trustworthy, a CNN poll conducted last week has found. The CNN/ORC International survey, released on Thursday, also found that just 40% of Americans believe Obama can manage the government effectively, a fall of 12 percentage points in the president's approval ratings since June.
According to the report, Obama scored lowest for honesty out of nine personal characteristics tested in the poll.

Senators writing new sanctions in case Iran cheats

The Kirk-Menendez bill demands the administration certify every 30 days Iran’s adherence to the agreement reached in Geneva this weekend, and that it’s not engaged in terrorism against the US.
The administration has promised Iran no new sanctions during implementation of the six-month interim deal.

Cantor: Since when do we trust Iran?

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor called the arrangement "dangerous" and said it brings Iran "closer to becoming a nuclear power." He said the deal "bodes very, very ominously for the region and U.S. security."
Speaking to "CBS This Morning" on Monday, Cantor said the terms of the deal were softer than those already in several U.N. resolutions. He said the deal was "not worth the paper it's written on. ... Since when do we trust Iran? I believe that the attitude should be mistrust and verify."
The remark was a twist on then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan's famous statement about arms control. Reagan said he favored arms pacts with the Soviet Union if there was a "trust-but-verify" standard.

2013 Iran Nuclear Deal Repeats Mistakes of 2003 Deal

After defying the E3 and failing to adopt the additional protocol (in addition to other cheating) Iran’s nuclear program is far more advanced than it was ten years ago. Instead of making a new deal with Iran the P5 + 1 should have been enforcing the previous deals.
The case of the “additional protocol” taught Iran that it needn’t observe its commitments and obligations. In the coming months when Iran and the West have a dispute over the meaning of terms of the Geneva deal or the discovery of something suspicious in Iran, Iran knows that it can bluff its way out of suffering any consequences for its bad faith.

Iran FM Zarif Strikes Different Tone in Tehran, Says Nuclear Activities To Go On as Normal

Despite an international treaty to the contrary, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, upon arrival at Tehran’s Mehrabad International Airport on Sunday, ”underlined that all Iran’s nuclear sites will go on their normal activities” and that “none of Iran’s nuclear programs would stop,” the semi-official Iranian FARS news agency reported on Monday.

Hezbollah Says Nuclear Deal a Victory for Iran

“What was achieved through this agreement is a major victory for Iran and to all the people of the region and it is a defeat for the enemies of these people,” Hezbollah said in a statement.
“(It is) a model victory and world class achievement which the Islamic state adds to its record which shines with victories and achievements.”

Hezbollah has fleet of 200 Iranian-made UAVs

Hezbollah has close to 200 Iranian-made UAVs. Part of the unmanned fleet is destined for kamikaze actions on strategic national targets in Israel or IAF bases during the next crisis which is bound to occur between the adversaries.
The options at Nasrallah's disposal include many models of UAVs, including kamikaze planes capable of low-altitude flights to evade detection by radar.

Egyptian officials defend law restricting protests

The law, issued by the interim president a day earlier, bans public gatherings of more than 10 people without prior government approval, imposing hefty fines and prison terms for violators. It also empowered security agencies to use force to break up protests.
The protest law has caused cracks in the loose coalition of secular and non-Islamist groups that rallied behind the military-backed government installed following the ouster of elected Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in July.

Report: Egypt nabs 17 suspected spies linked to Mossad

Egyptian security authorities have allegedly detained 17 people suspected of working as spies in connection with the Mossad, Kuwaiti daily al-Rai reported Tuesday.
According to Egyptian officials cited in the report, the detainees were members of three spy networks operating in Cairo and several other Egyptian cities gathering security and military information along with intelligence on the country's economic situation.

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Roger Cohen's malice towards Israel continues

Predictably, Roger Cohen in the New York Times praises the Iran nuclear deal in  glowing terms:

Let us be clear. This is the best deal that could be had. Nothing, not even sustained Israeli bombardment, can reverse the nuclear know-how Iran possesses. The objective must be to ring-fence the acquired capability so its use can only be peaceful.

Given that the UN and the US had previously insisted that Iran doesn't have the right to enrich uranium, caving on that technical capability is far from "the best deal that could be had." Essentially, Cohen is saying that since Iran would never agree to anything beyond its red line, that must be accepted as gospel. Meanwhile, US and Israeli red lines are flexible.

But beyond that, Cohen tries to conflate Israel's position on Iran with its position on allowing a terror state sworn to its destruction to be set up next door:

Israel is the status-quo Middle Eastern power par excellence because the status quo cements its nuclear-armed domination. Any change is suspect, including popular Arab uprisings against despotism. As changes go, this U.S.-Iranian breakthrough is big, almost as big as an Israeli-Palestinian peace would be.

Just as the United States has had to adapt to a world where its power is unmatched but no longer determinant, Israel will have to do the same. With enlightened leadership this adaptation could strengthen the Jewish state, securing the nation through integration in its region rather than domination of it. For now Israel is some way from this mind-set. Its overriding prism is military.

Cohen obviously does not inhabit the same planet as the rest of us.

In the real world, Israel has sought for 65 years to be integrated into the Middle East. It sought peace with its neighbors; and its main goal after peace plans are signed is full normalization with its neighbors, with free travel and economic cooperation on both sides. Hell,  Israel even values and integrates Arab cuisine and culture in its own state, which Arabs consider "theft." Nothing would please Israel more than to be able to cooperate with Arab states on issues like water conservation and desalination, deforestation of deserts, medicine and a host of other common issues.

Who is against such integration? One guess.

Security is uppermost in Israeli minds, not its military. Cohen is obviously too obtuse to understand the difference.

Diplomacy involves compromise; risk is inherent to it. Iran is to be tested. Nobody can know the outcome. Things may unravel but at least there is hope. Perhaps this is what is most threatening to Netanyahu. He has never been willing to test the Palestinians in a serious way — test their good faith, test ending the humiliations of the occupation, test from strength the power of justice and peace. He has preferred domination, preferred the Palestinians down and under pressure.

During Netanyahu's first term, he signed the Wye River agreement with Arafat, that transferred land from Israeli control to PA rule. Imagine that.

However, it is true that Bibi wasn't in office when Israel offered a Palestinian Arab state in 2001, and the Palestinian Arabs responded with a wave of suicide bombings. He wasn't in office when Sharon withdrew from Gaza which led the way to unprecedented rocket attacks on Israeli communities. He wasn't in office when another state was offered in 2007 only to be rejected again.

One would have to be either blind or maliciously biased against Israel to think that the Palestinian Arab good faith wasn't tested these multiple times - and they failed every single time.

Cohen isn't blind.

(h/t PC)

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Will a Qatari ship dock in Ashdod to provide fuel for Gaza?

Palestine Today reports that PA prime minister Rami Hamdallah is currently in Qatar to discuss options for easing the Gaza fuel crisis, since Hamas adamantly refuses to pay market prices for fuel for the citizens it supposedly is protecting.

According to the report, two options are being explored.

One is that Qatar will pay the PA to purchase fuel from Israeli sources and that fuel can be pumped into Gaza as it used to be.

The other is that a Qatari fuel tanker would dock in Ashdod and that fuel would be transferred by Israel to Gaza via Kerem Shalom!

Why would Qatar even consider such a move?

Last year, Qatar sent a fuel tanker to Egypt to provide a huge amount of free fuel for Gaza. Less than half of that fuel was delivered; the remaining fuel is sitting in storage in Egypt. Despite numerous diplomatic attempts by Qatar urging Egypt to deliver the remaining fuel, Egypt refuses.

Israel is now considered a more reliable partner to helping Gaza than Egypt - even by fellow Arabs!

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Arabs want to bring back "Palestine Pound" currency. They don't know much history. (update x2)

From Ma'an, by Alex Shams:

In markets across historic Palestine, tourists can buy old coins and bills emblazoned with the phrase "Palestine pound."

The bills often catch visitors off guard, a stark reminder of a world that existed prior to the partitioning of the Palestinian homeland in 1948.

Indeed, the Palestine pound gives lie to the oft-repeated Zionist mantra that Palestine was a "land without a people for a people without a land" as it demonstrates the existence of a shared currency used throughout the British Mandate of Palestine for nearly 30 years by Muslims, Christians, and Jews alike.

The Palestine pound is an inconvenient reminder for many Israelis that a cosmopolitan and tolerant society thrived in Palestine before its dismemberment and exile by the emerging Israeli state.

But the creation of the State of Israel on the majority of mandate Palestine and the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, alongside the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza by Jordan and Egypt respectively in response, put an end to the currency's usage.

After Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1967, all of historic Palestine came under the rule of the Israeli lira (and later the shekel), while the Jordanian dinar and eventually the US dollar circulated alongside.

One Palestinian researcher, however, is determined to bring the Palestine pound back, this time as the currency of the newly emerging State of Palestine.

This is the illustration of the Palestine Pound used in the Ma'an article:

Would the revived Palestine Pound include Hebrew?

Now, let's look at the bank name. Hmmm. "The Anglo-Palestine Bank Limited." What is the history of that bank?

It was formed in 1902 - as a subsidiary of the Jewish Colonial Trust, created at the Second Zionist Congress in 1899. Wikipedia notes "The bank opened its first branch in Jaffa in 1903 under the management of Zalman David Levontin. Early transactions included land purchase, imports and obtaining concessions. Branches were opened in Jerusalem, Beirut, Hebron, Safed, Haifa, Tiberias and Gaza. The Anglo-Palestine Bank offered farmers long-term loans and provided loans to the Ahuzat Bayit association which built the first neighborhood in Tel Aviv....During World War II, the Anglo-Palestine Bank helped to finance the establishment of industries that manufactured supplies for the British army. After the founding of the state of Israel, the bank won the concession to issue new banknotes. In 1950, the bank was renamed Bank Leumi Le-Israel (National Bank of Israel). "

The note illustrating the article is in fact the first currency of Israel, used for four years before the Israeli lira was established to replace it. It was not used by Palestinian Arabs who fled to Jordan.

The earlier Palestine Pounds, issued by the British - never by the Arabs - also featured Hebrew. This one had the Kever Rochel - an indisputably Jewish shrine - on the front:

The initials after the Hebrew "Palestine" stand for "Eretz Yisrael."

The adoption of a specifically Palestine currency was pushed not by Arabs, but by Jews, as early as 1917. Arabs complained when the first Palestine Pound notes were issued in 1927 and they wanted to continue to use the Egyptian Pounds that they were used to.

Indeed, the history of the Palestine Pound is nothing but a recent history of the Jews of Palestine, and it is what became the Israeli currency while Palestinian Arabs rejected it.

Alex Shams is a propagandist. The truth about the pound shows a slice of the history of Zionism, not of a "Palestinian people."

UPDATE: Shams is also the author of the bogus "Ukrainian girl claims to have killed kids as an IDF soldier" story. Ma'an must be proud to have hired him.

UPDATE 2: What a surprise - Ma'an silently changed the photo of the Palestine pound away from the one that was used in the new state of Israel and rejected by Palestinian Arabs.

Erasing history is par for the course for Palestinian Arabs. Literally.

They pretend they want to bring back "historic Palestine" but the Palestine they are talking about only thrived because of Zionists! Yes, Zionists created their sports leagues, orchestras, newspapers, tourism initiatives,  and a pavilion at the World's Fair all proudly named after Palestine. 

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SFSU's GUPS president explains that he wants to see all Israelis dead

The San Francisco Examiner wrote about the display of signs saying "MY HEROES HAVE ALWAYS KILLED COLONIZERS" at a San Francisco State University event earlier this month:

Uproar over what some are calling an anti-Semitic stencil that showed up at a Nov. 7 San Francisco State University campus event has prompted the school’s president to issue a stern statement against advocating violence and hate.

Tables had been set up close to the event by an array of organizations. One allowed people to make their own placards using a stencil that read, “My heroes have always killed colonizers,” noted the president’s statement.

The term “colonizers” may have been referring to Jews who came to Palestine in large numbers after World War II and subsequently founded the state of Israel in 1948 after fighting a successful war that caused the displacement of many Palestinians.

the General Union of Palestinian Students SFSU called the whole affair a smear campaign against their group.

“We are appalled at this blatant attack against the integrity and principled position that GUPS has maintained throughout its history. We are horrified by the baseless attack and allegations of anti-Semitism that have been leveled against GUPS and the Cesar Chavez Student Center, the organizers of the 6th annual anniversary of the Palestinian Cultural Mural honoring the late professor Edward Said,” wrote Mohammad Hammad, president of GUPS, on the group’s Facebook page.

Commenter and researcher Bob Knot looked a little more at the writings of Mohammad Hammad.

Hammad has three Tumblr accounts, which have all recently become password protected: palestinianliberator, canttouchthisnuhnuhnuh, and astrangerdanger. Between the time that the disgusting signs were publicized and the time that the GUPS realized that they have a public relations problem, Hammad described to his friends on Tumblr exactly who the target of the signs are - and his opinion does not refer only to to Jews who lived in Israel in the 1940s:

You know what?

Israelis ARE colonizers, there is literally no way around it

And you know what else?

My heroes HAVE always killed colonizers

I literally see nothing wrong with this

and my only regret is that not all colonizers were killed

HMM

Now re-read Hammad's defense the GUPS actions in the article quoted above. It sure looks like he says one thing in public and another thing to his friends on Tumblr, doesn't it?

More fun stuff from Hammad:

A photo he uploaded of (presumably) him flipping the bird to a US Marines office (with a "Palestine" banner):

Here is an essay Hammad wrote last April (again, from his recently taken down Tumblr account) where he explicitly calls for the destruction of Israel, with violence if necessary:

I will no longer support the two-state solution, and will vie for the liberation of Palestine through the reclamation of the lands that are rightfully ours through any means necessary. If the Israelis want to live in peace with us, so be it, but this peace will NOT be on their terms. It may be Palestinian freedom fighters who pull the triggers, but whatever lives are lost in the battle for liberation rest squarely on the shoulders of Israel.

Until return, and until liberation, one-state for Palestinians through any means necessary.

The president of GUPS has made it crystal clear, in his own words, that he interprets the "MY HEROES HAVE ALWAYS KILLED COLONIZERS" sign as a call to kill Israeli Jews (he is not calling to kill Israeli Arabs!)

Let's see GUPS try to spin this. I predict they will go on a wild attack, because misdirection is the last refuge for people caught with their pants down.

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11/25 Links Pt2: A culture of anti-Semitic poison at Al-Quds University, Video of the Fascist-style rally

From Ian:

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International law and Judea and Samaria: It’s time to return to the facts

In his November 21 article on “Humanitarian law vs. political choices,” Juan Pedro Schaerer, head of the local delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), repeats the longstanding point of view that Judea and Samaria, what some refer to as the “West Bank,” is “occupied territory.”
In fact, Mr. Schaerer is so certain of this opinion, he invites a public debate on the issue.
However, before stating a contrary point of view, it would be pertinent to begin by debunking Schaerer’s own statements. In the article Schaerer starts, as many opinions do, by quoting Article 42 of the Hague Regulations of 1907, writing: “The facts on the ground were such that they fell squarely into the definition of occupied territory, which is codified in Article 42.”

A culture of anti-Semitic poison at Al-Quds University

Nusseibeh is often described as a Palestinian “moderate.” But in a culture as poisoned with vitriolic anti-Semitism as the Palestinian Authority, moderation doesn’t go very far. It doesn’t even go as far as repudiating the Nazi-like salutes and tableaux of dead Israelis during a public rally on an East Jerusalem college campus. Not even to retain the goodwill of an institution as dovish and liberal as Brandeis, a Jewish-sponsored university that was proud of its relationship with Al-Quds.
The genocidal values of Islamic Jihad are no anomaly. They are the values of Hamas and the PLO. They are the values that led the Arab League to spurn the UN’s proposed two-state solution in 1947, and to announce that it would crush the newborn Jewish state in “a war of extermination and a momentous massacre.” They are the values that induced Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the leader of the Palestinians in the 1930s, to form an alliance with Adolf Hitler, eagerly collaborating with the fuhrer in the hope of importing the Final Solution to the Jews of the Middle East.

MEMRI: Nazi-Style Salutes and Glorification of Martyrdom at Islamic Jihad Rallies in Al-Quds University

Anti-Semitism is Rife Among America’s Far Left (REVIEW)

If you’ve ever wondered why “do-gooder” is a pejorative label, Stephen Norwood’s book on “Antisemitism and the American Far Left” will enlighten you. Rarely has there been a group of Americans so prone to mistake feeling good about what they are doing for actually doing good, as “far leftists.”
They comprise Stalinists, Trotskyists, Old Leftists, New Leftists, loyal readers of The Daily Worker, New International, PM, Labor Action, The Nation, Ramparts, Tikkun; members of the CP, SP, SWP, SDS, SNCC, and indeed the whole alphabet soup cooked up by the dissidence of dissent.

Egyptian Nazi Scandal Shows Clear Academic Bias

Had the conference organizers done their due diligence, they would have had a very clear idea of Jan’s toxic beliefs. After all, we’re not talking about a cloak and dagger espionage operation. A few seconds of Googling would have taken them to a video from 2011, in which Jan and other Egyptian Nazis explained their raison d’etre to a shocked Egyptian television host. Also, the Alwaleed Center has a Facebook account, as does Jan. Had the conference organizers paid a brief visit to the Facebook page of a man they were willing to fly to Washington, they would have discovered that he’d posted several pictures of Adolf Hitler alongside admiring tributes to the Fuhrer.

Terror-link group met in parliament

Separately, it can also be revealed that one of the Government’s police and crime commissioners will this week speak on the same platform as a man who has justified the killing of British troops and called for democracy to be replaced by Sharia.
The Commons events — held in March and September — involving the group with links to Hamas were organised by the Emirates Centre for Human Rights (ECHR), which says it is a moderate campaign against rights abuses in the Gulf. However, part of its agenda appears to be anticipating the end of the regimes in the region.

Harriet Sherwood misleads on UNRWA statement about Gaza construction ban

Whilst the language in her Nov. 22 report is not completely clear, if Sherwood is claiming that UNRWA characterized the recent Israeli restrictions on construction materials into Gaza as “illegal”, and as a form of “collective punishment”, it is clear that the outgoing UNRWA Commissioner General never in fact made such an argument.
Alternately, if Sherwood was merely attempting to characterize the Commissioner General’s opinion on the broader issue of the Israeli blockade, then she failed to reveal that this view was definitively contradicted by the UN inquiry which she herself reported more than two years ago.

Compare and contrast: BBC reporting on cross-border missile fire

On November 21st cross-border mortar fire hit an uninhabited desert area in Saudi Arabia’s eastern province. The attack was claimed by an Iranian-backed militia operating in Iraq. A report on the incident appeared on the BBC news website’s Middle East page on the same day.

BBC Monitoring puffs wind in the sails of professional anti-Israel campaigners

Interestingly, part of the BBC Monitoring article focuses on reactions to the amended map provided by the publisher.
Visitors who click on the link to Scholastic’s blog provided in the BBC article will soon realise that many of the writers of the comments there are not mere “readers” as they are described by BBC Monitoring, but veteran – and in some cases, professional – anti-Israel campaigners.
First off the mark is Greta Berlin of the flotilla-organising, Hamas-supporting ‘Free Gaza Movement’ – perhaps more memorable for her promotion of antisemitic material on the internet.
Also popping in to visit was International Solidarity Movement activist Paul Larudee, who was among the organisers of the failed 2012 ‘Global March to Jerusalem’.

Fire Friedman – forthwith

Tom Friedman has surrendered every shred of professional integrity in favor of defending an indefensible policy of an indefensible administration.
He has shown himself to be ill-informed and incoherent; either woefully misled himself or willfully misleading his readers.
But worse, he is exploiting his potent journalistic platform to incite against the Jews, to insinuate–indeed openly accuse – that they are disloyal to their country or, at least, have a greater loyalty to another.

Neo-Nazi’s victory in Slovakia spurs Jewish call for action

European officials must act to reverse the momentum of neo-Nazi political parties, the head of the European Jewish Congress said following a victory in Slovakia by a neo-Nazi candidate.
EJC President Moshe Kantor issued a statement Sunday in the wake of the victory by Marian Kotleba, the ex-chairman of the banned Togetherness National Party.

Egypt: New Book Deals with Jews in Cinema

The book, entitled “Jews and cinema in Egypt and the Arab world” was written by critic Ahmed Raafat Bahgat. It examines the role of Jewish cinema makers and artists in the Egyptian and Arab cinema, according to the report.
In its first chapter, the 490-page book discusses the Egyptian film industry in the context of a monopoly and the beginning of domination, studios, domestic production and distribution of foreign films.

10,000-Year-Old Home Found at Eshtaol

Settlement remains were unearthed at the site, the earliest of which dates to the beginning of the eighth millennium BCE and the latest to the end of the fourth millennium BCE.
The dig at Eshtaol, about 15 km (10 miles) west of Jerusalem, is being underwritten by the Netivei Israel Company. The ancient city of Eshtaol is mentioned several times in the Bible, in the books of Joshua and Judges.

'World's Oldest' Wine Cellar Uncovered in Galilee

Israeli and American archaeologists have uncovered what may have been the world's oldest wine cellar in the Galilee, Business Standard reports. The cellar is estimated to be about 3,700 years old and to have held up to 2,000 liters of strong, sweet wine.

Scientists Find 3,700-Year-Old Wine Cellar


Netanyahu to Meet With Pope Francis

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will travel to Italy next Sunday for the annual meeting held between the Israeli and Italian governments, part of Israel’s effort to strengthen ties with European nations.
During the trip to Italy, Netanyahu will meet with Pope Francis at the Vatican, Israel Hayom reported. It is expected that the prime minister will officially invite the pope to visit Israel. Netanyahu and Pope Francis will also discuss the Iran nuclear program and Israeli-Palestinian conflict negotiations.

The man who made DiskOnKey a household word

Equally inconceivable is that Moran considers his sale of M-Systems to SanDisk in 2006 for $1.6 billion as a kind of failure.
“I had thought it would be better to take the company to higher heights. But there was a constellation of factors that necessitated the sale, which benefitted the shareholders.
And when you’re the head of a company, you have to do what is right for them.”

Apple confirms $350m purchase of Israel’s PrimeSense

Last July, it was reported that PrimeSense and Apple were in intense negotiations over a possible Apple acquisition.
PrimeSense developed the Kinect 3D system for Microsoft. Since then, it has developed 3D sensors for consumer electronics, cars, game devices, digital signage, medical devices, and more. The company’s sensors are installed in over 20 million devices.

IDF Humanitarian Aid Team: Why We Came to Help in the Philippines

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