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Israel considers herself a "Jewish State" and is the only reasonably free and democratic nation in the Middle East. There are many "Islamic States," none of which approach the only Jewish State in freedom and democracy -- for all, not only for Jews.Here's a summary of the meanings of "The Jewish Question(s):" The Jewish question was the name given to a wide-ranging debate in European society pertaining to the appropriate status and treatment of Jews in society. The debate involved the civil, legal and national status of Jews as a minority within society, particularly in Europe. The debate started within societies, politicians and writers in western and central...

Arab foreign ministers on Sunday rejected Israel’s demands that the Palestinians recognize it as a Jewish state, saying such a move would undermine the rights of Palestinian refugees. In a resolution released at the headquarters of the Arab League in Cairo, the foreign ministers called the issue of Palestinian refugees an integral part of a comprehensive and just peace. It blamed Israel for the floundering of peace negotiations. The Arab statement offers strong backing to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who said publicly last week he will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state despite facing strong international pressure. Abbas did...

The U.S. focus on Ukraine has shifted attention away from this week’s remarkable set of exchanges, direct and indirect, between U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that speaks additional volumes about Obama’s take on prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace. That Obama has an unbalanced perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is hardly a new insight. That, from the start, he has pressured Netanyahu to make painful concessions while asking little of Palestinian leaders on the hot-button issues of anti-Israeli hatred and incitement also is well known. But, the timing, manner, tone and content of this week’s Obama-Netanyahu exchanges...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://www.frontpagemag.com - Obama Claims Terrorist Dictator is Israel’s Best Chance for PeacePosted By Daniel Greenfield On March 3, 2014 @ 12:37 pm In The Point | 11 Comments This comes from the Jeffrey Goldberg interview with Obama which hits all the same old notes.If Israel doesn’t make a deal with Abbas, it will be more isolated than ever and Obama won’t be able to “protect” it. Settlement growth is out of control, Obama claims, when it’s barely a blip on the radar.Obama criticizes Israel, but not the Palestinian Authority. Instead he praises Abbas. Obama made...

In an extraordinary—and I don’t use the word in a complimentary way—interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of Bloomberg, President Obama follows his secretary of state in warning Israel and its leader that a failure to “make peace” now with the Palestinians will have terrible consequences. Israel is “more isolated internationally,” and will become more so; there will be more Palestinians and Israeli Arabs as time goes on, not fewer, so Israel had better move now; and not to move now is to create the conditions for a “permanent Israeli occupation of the West Bank….there comes a point when you cannot manage...

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas left a two-day meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Paris last week fuming over Kerry’s proposals for a framework accord between Israel and the Palestinians, according to a Palestinian report. The top American diplomat reportedly offered for Abbas to form a Palestinian capital in the neighborhood of Beit Hanina, not all of East Jerusalem, as the Palestinians have demanded. Kerry also suggested that Israel keep 10 settlement blocs as part of any territorial exchange, according to Al Quds, the most widely read Palestinian daily, on Wednesday. The Jordan Valley would not be...

Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said Friday that U.S. attempts to forge an agreement on a framework for peace talks with Israel had so far failed but that the efforts are “extremely serious,” AFP reported. Speaking in Paris after talks this week with Secretary of State John Kerry, Abbas told journalists, “So far the Americans have not been able to put these ideas into a framework, even if the efforts are extremely serious.” …

President Shimon Peres on Monday hailed remarks by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas on the issue of the “Palestinian refugees”, AFP reported. Peres, who said Abbas’s comments showed his "seriousness about reaching peace", was referring to what Abbas said during a meeting Sunday with more than 300 Israeli university students at his Ramallah headquarters. At the meeting, the PA chief told the students said he did not want to "flood Israel" with so-called “Palestinian refugees” and that there was no need to "re-divide" Jerusalem. "I was happy to hear him," Peres's office quoted him as saying at the start of...

Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s suggestion that NATO forces be deployed in the future Palestinian state is not well-received by his rivals, the Hamas rulers of Gaza. A spokesman for Hamas said Friday that the faction would regard any international military presence within a future Palestinian state as "occupation" forces, reported the Ma’an news agency. During a rally in southern Gaza, spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said that any international forces stationed in “Palestine” as a result of a peace agreement with Israel would be treated the same as “the Israeli occupation.” Abu Zuhri called on Abbas to withdraw from...

Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has suggested that NATO would be left in charge of the future Palestinian state instead of an army. Speaking to The New York Times from Ramallah, Abbas said that he would agree to let Israeli troops remain in the Palestinian state for a transitional period of five years to work with Palestinian and Jordanian security forces and reassure the Israeli public that it is not going to get hit with thousands of rockets, as was the case after the “Disengagement” from Gaza. …

Israel’s “peace partner” will be invited to visit the country whose leaders refer to Israel as “the rabid dog of the region,” the Chinese Xinhua news agency reported on Thursday, citing an Arabic language newspaper in London. According to the report, Iran intends to invite Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to visit Tehran soon. The Al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper reported that Abbas’s visit to Tehran aims at rehabilitating the Iranian-PA official ties that have been frigid for years due to Iran’s support to Hamas, longtime rival to Abbas’s Fatah movement. …

Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, while in Russia on Thursday, was reported to be signing a $1 billion natural gas project in Gaza with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. While exact details of the deal or start-dates for the project remain unclear, the Russian state news agency ITAR-TASS reported that Russia's natural gas giant Gazprom intends to produce 30 billion cubic meters of natural gas off the Gaza coast. Further, Russia's Technopromexport engineering firm appears to be pursuing an oil development project near Ramallah. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who met with Abbas, said "relations between Russia and Palestine are...

The Fatah party of Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has posted threats to bomb Tel Aviv on its official Facebook page. The threats came in the form of a video by Fatah’s armed wing—the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade—which threatened to turn Tel Aviv “into a ball of fire”, as well as escalated rocket fire on Israeli civilians. […] The threats come despite the fact that the Palestinian Authority is engaged in “peace negotiations” with Israel, and bolster claims by Israeli leaders that the PA is not really serious about finding a peaceful political solution to the conflict. …

Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas told Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Monday that there will be no official Israeli presence in the future Palestinian state, reported the Ma’an news agency. "We want an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital that includes all the lands that were occupied in 1967 and that lives side by side with Israel in security and stability," Abbas said in a joint press conference with Harper in Ramallah. "Anything else said or interpreted on our behalf matters only to those who interpret it," he added, according to Ma’an, dismissing rumors that he...

Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas warned on Friday against Israel using peace talks as a “cover” to “expand settlements” in Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem, AFP reported. Abbas was speaking in Morocco at a meeting of the Al-Quds (Jerusalem) Committee. The meeting comes days after Israel announced tenders for construction of more than 1,800 new homes in regions which the PA claims for a future state. The U.S.-brokered peace talks must “not serve as a cover for the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories,” said Abbas, according to AFP. “There can be no peace without stability, nor...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told visiting U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Monday that recent comments by Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas were proof that he does not want peace. According to Kol Yisrael radio, Netanyahu made the comments during his dinner meeting with Biden at the Prime Minister’s Residence on Monday night. Netanyahu reportedly complained to Biden about Abbas’s comments on Saturday, in which he said that there will be no peace with Israel unless all his preconditions are met. These comments, Netanyahu told Biden, were proof that Abbas is not prepared to make the necessary decisions that...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told visiting U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Monday that recent comments by Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas were proof that he does not want peace. According to Kol Yisrael radio, Netanyahu made the comments during his dinner meeting with Biden at the Prime Minister’s Residence on Monday night. …

Documented evidence doesn't stand in the way of Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's claims regarding the attempted lynching of 25 Jewish residents of Samaria by an Arab mob from Kusra last Tuesday. In talks with Arab residents of eastern Jerusalem on Saturday, Abbas declared "the residents (of Kusra) caught settlers and besieged them, and they did it without tanks, rockets and planes. They gathered around them and told them: you won't leave here until the Palestinian liaison (officers) arrive." "They (the Arabs) didn't hit them," claimed the PA head, "for we have rights and culture, and aren't like them...

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas sent a defiant message to Israel’s leadership and U.S. mediators Saturday, telling cheering supporters that the Palestinians “won’t kneel” and won’t drop demands for a capital in east Jerusalem. Abbas’ unusually fiery speech highlighted the wide gaps between him and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the outlines of a peace deal. It also raised new doubts about the chances of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to bridge those gaps in coming weeks and come up with a framework for an agreement. Abbas adopted tough positions in the wide-ranging speech, saying that “there will be...

MK Ahmed Tibi (Ra’am-Ta’al), who was an adviser to former Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Yasser Arafat and keeps in close contact with his successor Mahmoud Abbas, is accusing Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of doing “everything he can” to prevent a peace agreement with the PA. “Netanyahu is not saying anything new. He is doing everything, absolutely everything, so that an agreement won’t happen. So why should anyone wonder why the Palestinian leadership is skeptical? It is closer to appealing to the UN institutions than to signing an agreement,”.... Tibi, who boasted that he speaks to Abbas “a lot”, also told...