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Education Minister Naftali Bennett (Jewish Home) has attacked Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beytenu) over their support for a Palestinian state and the need for a political process with the Palestinians. "We will take down the government over anything that would lead to a division of the Land of Israel and the creation of a Palestinian state. We will fight it," he said during an interview on Meet the Press. "There will be no Palestinian state here. I will do anything to stop it," he promised. "We are in a government whose basic principles include...

Recent comments by Opposition head Yitzhak Herzog (Zionist Union) and Shelly Yachimovich (Zionist Union) suggest that their party may still join the government coalition. On Saturday, both politicians said that they would reconsider joining a unity government, should there be any diplomatic initiatives. MK Herzog presented new conditions to joining. "If Netanyahu kicks the Jewish Home out of the coalition, we will meet as a party and we will consider the issue," he told Shabbatarbut in Modi'in. "Netanyahu chose to go with the extremists," he added. "It doesn't look like he is breaking up with them. I lead a strong...

Israel on Friday announced a series of gestures to relax restrictions on the movement of Palestinian Arabs during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The measures, similar to those of previous years, were announced by the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the unit which manages civilian affairs in Judea and Samaria under the auspices of newly-appointed Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman. Up to 500 people from the Gaza Strip will be allowed to attend Friday prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque over the holy month, set to begin on Sunday or Monday, according to AFP. In addition, 200 Gaza...

The White House and lawmakers on Tuesday refrained from condemning a deadly Israeli attack on Gaza-bound ships carrying humanitarian aid. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs would not go much further than a United Nations Security Council resolution that condemned the loss of life without criticizing Israel’s actions. Gibbs echoed the resolution calling for the U.N. investigation of the incident to be “prompt, impartial, credible and transparent.” At least 10 civilians were killed in the attack, and many were wounded. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was scheduled to visit President Barack Obama at the White House on Tuesday, but he...

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump stated that he sees Israel as the victim in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and he would “100%” come to its defense if it was attacked in an interview broadcast on Monday’s “Hannity” on the Fox News Channel.

Since the end of World War I, the Arabs of the Middle East and North Africa have been given independent states in 99.5 percent of the land they claimed. Lord Balfour once expressed his hope that when the Arabs had been given so much, they would "not begrudge" the Jews the "little notch" promised to them. The History and Meaning of "Palestine" and "Palestinians" Presented by: A Time To Speak (speak@actcom.co.il) "There is no such thing as a Palestinian Arab nation . . . Palestine is a name the Romans gave to Eretz Yisrael with the express purpose of infuriating...

A Palestinian-American activist asserted earlier this month that the United States and Israel share a common legacy of ethnic cleansing as the foundational basis of the two nations in a video posted to the online news outlet The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). In the clip Osama Abu Irshaid, the National Director of American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), claims that the "Zionists" have co-opted the "racist" narrative of the founding of America to mirror that of the establishment of the State of Israel in order to convince Americans that the two peoples have a similar history. "We came to...

Palestinian tries to stab Israeli soldier, shot dead: army AFP Mike Smith June 2, 2016 Israeli security forces inspect the scene of a stabbing attack at a checkpoint near the West Bank city of Tulkarem on June 2, 2016View photos Israeli security forces inspect the scene of a stabbing attack at a checkpoint near the West Bank city of Tulkarem on June 2, 2016 (AFP Photo/Jaafar Ashtiyeh) More Jerusalem (AFP) - A female Palestinian tried to stab an Israeli soldier in the West Bank Thursday and was shot dead, the army said, the latest in a series of such incidents...

A smuggling network has managed to sneak illegal immigrants from Middle East terrorism hotbeds straight to the doorstep of the U.S., including helping one Afghan man authorities say was part of an attack plot in North America. Immigration officials have identified at least a dozen Middle Eastern men smuggled into the Western Hemisphere by a Brazilian-based network that connected them with Mexicans who guided them up to the U.S. border, according to internal government documents reviewed by The Washington Times. Those smuggled included Palestinians, Pakistanis and the Afghan man who Homeland Security officials said had family ties to the Taliban...

How long is the EU going to keep shelling out large sums of money -- only to see the implementation of its noble objectives being continually subverted? The European Union (EU) possesses the financial levers to end 10 years of exploitative rule by the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in not holding any elections in the West Bank during that period. 95% of the West Bank Arab population live in Areas “A” and “B” under the total administrative control of the PLO. That population has been subjugated into silence by the PLO and given no opportunity to freely express their support...

The international movement calling for a boycott against Israel on Thursday said its website was repeatedly attacked earlier this year and raised suspicions that Israel was behind the attacks. The BDS movement released a report Thursday showing that its main website suffered six attacks in February and March. The denial of service attacks, which work by flooding a target website with bogus traffic, knocked out the BDS website for several hours at a time. The report, compiled by nonprofit online security service eQualit.ie, said the attacks had a level of “sophistication and commitment” it normally does not see. It also...

'Justice for Palestinians cannot be attained without the lifting of the occupation,' Cornel West was quoted as saying by 'The New York Times' on Wednesday. The Democrat party is facing a possible dilemma as supporters of the two candidates vying for the nomination gear up for a debate on what to do with its Mideast policy. The Israel issue is threatening to tear the party apart as Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator who has mounted a considerable presidential campaign that has earned him greater clout within the left-wing camp, has tapped two individuals to a key committee who seek to...

From Wafa: An estimated 80,228 guests stayed in West Bank hotels in the first quarter of 2016, marking a drop by 32% from the previous quarter and 20% lower than in the first quarter of 2015, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) said Monday. It said 33% of the hotel patrons were from European Union countries and 13% were Palestinian. The PCBS said room occupancy rate was 16.5% in the first quarter – 25% lower than in the previous quarter and 17% lower than in the first quarter of 2015. Nobody really talks about the financial hit that comes...

Bent on destroying Israel, and gripped by vicious anti-Semitism, Baghdad ‘pauperized’ its Jews and forced them to leave for the nascent Jewish state in 1951-2. It believed Israel would collapse under the strain. But the immigrants ultimately helped Israel thrive, and it was Iraq that suffered After Adolf Hitler’s defeat in May 1945, many Nazis melted away from the Reich, smuggled out by such organizations as the infamous Odessa group and the lesser-known Catholic lay network Intermarium, as well as the CIA and KGB. They ensured the continuation of the Nazi legacy in the postwar Arab world. Egypt was a...

BDS Flounders Amid String of Humiliating Defeats How anti-BDS legislation has neutered the group and hampered its ability to function. May 31, 2016 Ari Lieberman    It’s been a really bad month for the anti-Semitic BDS movement, a strange alliance of radical leftists and Islamists who advocate the destruction of Israel through economic and cultural boycotts.  The hate group suffered a number of major setbacks in recent weeks. Some of these reversals represent mere moral victories but others have far reaching consequences that may well spell doom for BDS’s future operations and ability to function.  In May, the Strasbourg-based...

UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness made sure to release this announcement at the end of last week: "Several media outlets have reported that UNRWA intends to close its headquarters in Gaza. These reports are false. UNRWA HQ Gaza is not closing. The Agency affirms categorically that there are no plans to do so and staff are not being let go." Puzzlingly, the panicky announcement seemed to have been circulated even more widely than the alleged reports of the UNRWA closure. In any event, Gunness took the opportunity to state that "UNRWA is fully committed to maintaining its presence in the Gaza...

On May 15, Al-Alam TV broadcast a report on the opening of the third International Holocaust Cartoon Contest in Tehran. The exhibition features caricatures of Israeli PM Netanyahu, comparing him to Hitler and to ISIS terrorists. The organizer, Shojai Tabtabai, said that the exhibition was "a response to the publication of cartoons by the French Charlie Hebdo magazine, which affronted the Prophet Muhammad, as well as an expression of [our opposition] to the massacres perpetrated against the Palestinian people." Reporter: "As a form of expression of the Palestinian cause, and in the context of the massacres, perpetrated by the Zionists...

White House hints that time for new Gaza policy is near. WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Wednesday that it had warned Israel's government repeatedly to use "caution and restraint" with half a dozen aid boats bound for the Gaza Strip before Israeli commandos raided the flotilla this week in an operation that killed nine people. In an interview with Charlie Rose broadcast Wednesday night, Vice President Joe Biden agreed that Israel had a right to inspect the cargo. "You can argue whether Israel should have dropped people onto that ship or not ... but the truth of the matter...

The family of Abedel Fattah al-Sharif, the Arab terrorist who was neutralized and later killed by IDF soldier Elor Azariya during a terror attack in Hevron in March, buried al-Sharif in Hevron on Saturday, amid demands for revenge. The body of al-Sharif was returned to his family on Friday, before it was examined at the Al Ahli hospital in Hevron. Relatives of the dead terrorist called upon Arab residents of Hevron to join in a mass demonstration during al-Sharif’s funeral, which included demands for revenge and the waving of Hamas flags. The body of al-Sharif was also wrapped in a...

Speaking on the 100th anniversary of the Sykes-Picot Agreement last week, President of the Iraqi Kurdistan, Masoud Barzani, declared that the old Middle East created by European imperialism was dead – and that an independent Kurdish state must be part of the emerging new order. Referring to the secret arrangement by the Allied Powers in World War I to divide the Middle East into “spheres of influence”, Barzani blasted the Sykes-Picot Agreement, saying that it denied the rights of the inhabitants and carved up populations with arbitrary lines. The agreement served as the basis for the establishment of the modern...