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President Obama spent his first term pushing from power long-standing Arab allies in Egypt and Tunisia; seeking to engage the now blood-soaked Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad; pulling his punches against Iran’s nuclear program; and putting “daylight” between his administration and Israel. Now for his second term, he has nominated for the highest posts bearing on the Middle East three figures who give the strongest indication we can expect much more of the same – John Kerry for State, Chuck Hagel for Defense and John Brennan for the CIA. Kerry opposed Congress’ 2009 hold on appointing an ambassador to a regime...

Is the Middle East becoming less Arab? Hisham Melhem Saturday, 8 November 2014 President Obama’s letter to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in which he laid out the foundation of a new relationship emanating from a nuclear compromise, and stressed shared U.S.-Iranian interests in combatting the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), is emblematic of a gradual and subtle shift in Washington’s attitudes towards the region in general and its Arab actors in particular. In this rapidly changing Middle East, the U.S. sees a diminishing Arab influence brought about by the erosion of the state system, lack...

Turkish leaders have said protecting Islamic sites in the Holy Land is a sacred mission for them, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan bluntly warning any attack against the 8th-century al-Aqsa Mosque is no different than an attack on the Kaaba in the holy city of Mecca. “The Israeli administration has to stop this despicableness, this barbarity; what would it say if this kind of attack had been launched against synagogues? The Masjid al-Aqsa is not only a shrine for Palestinians, but is the shrine of all Muslims,” Erdogan was quoted as saying on Nov. 7 during an official visit to...

Egyptian armed forces are preparing for the execution of an extensive operation inside Libya in order to fight the revolutionaries and support the militias that are loyal to the UAE in Tripoli and Benghazi including troops commandeered by Brigadier General Khalifa Haftar, high ranking officials revealed. The operation may include a possible ground invasion in East Libya with French aerial cover and funding from the UAE in order to enable Haftar to decisively win the battle, the sources told the Asrar Arabiya website. The site said Libyan Prime Minister Abdullah Al-Thani's visit to the UAE on Tuesday last week came...

U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice ridiculed Israel’s Ambassador to Washington, Ron Dermer, for spending time with Republican casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, The Washington Free Beacon reported on Monday. According to the report, Rice was asked in a recent meeting with a top American Jewish leader why she had not held meetings with Dermer. She responded, “He never asked to meet me.” “Besides, I understood that he’s too busy traveling to Sheldon Adelson’s events in Las Vegas,” she added, referring to the major Jewish philanthropist who also owns Israeli daily Israel Hayom. Haaretz reported that Rice was referring to Dermer’s...

Hamas and other terror groups have found a new way of turning an every day item into a weapon. After three terror attacks in two weeks in which a vehicle was used as a weapon, Palestinian terror groups have launched a social media campaign encouraging others to carry out similar attacks. On the websites of Hamas and Fatah, the political party run by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, cartoons, photos, caricatures and instructions are popping up, telling people how to carry out terror attacks using their cars. On Wednesday, a Hamas affiliated terrorist from East Jerusalem ran into a group...

Israelis—along with all the other disappointed allies—are learning how little it pays to be on Barack Obama’s good side Israeli security fence on Egyptian border, and Hamas Terror Tunnels Let’s just say it up front and avoid tip-toeing around with politically correct language. President Obama and his administration are the most anti-Israel to have held office and likely the most anti-Semitic. Forget about his public declarations of friendship and support for Israel. For six years Obama has demonstrated his antipathy toward the only democratic nation in the Middle East, the Jewish state. That’s why an anonymous administration official felt free...

Ibrahim al-Akari, the suspected driver in Wednesday's deadly terror attack which saw one Israeli killed and at least 14 wounded, is a known Hamas operative, and his brother was serving a life sentence for murdering an Israeli police officer until he was freed in the Shalit prisoner exchange deal. Hamas has taken responsibility for the attack. Akari rammed his van into a group of Border Patrol forces and then continued to plow into a group of pedestrians, only to continue his attack on foot, attempting to hit pedestrians with a metal rod. He was then shot and killed by the...

Will the UN Security Council Impose a Palestinian State?Posted By Joseph Puder On November 3, 2014 @ 12:25 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 6 Comments January, 2015 does not bode well for Israel at the United Nations (UN). The UN Security Council (UNSC) will officially induct five newly elected non-permanent member-states replacing outgoing Rwanda, S. Korea, Australia, Argentina and Luxembourg, representing all the global regions. Unfortunately for Israel, the incoming states, particularly Venezuela and Malaysia, are hostile to the Jewish state. The other three, Angola, New Zealand, and Spain are pondering their position on recognizing Palestine as a full member-state...

In a dramatic development, Israeli cabinet members are warning that US President Barack Obama threatened Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the US may opt not to oppose future hostile UN Security Council votes, unless Israel accedes to American policy demands, Israel’s NRG News reported on Sunday. “The prime minister told colleagues in recent days … that his office’s understanding of the issue and the government’s take on it is that the Americans will not cast a veto against a resolution that reaches the Security Council,” Ariel Kahana, diplomatic correspondent for the Makor Rishon and NRG dailies, told The Algemeiner on...

Construction of a Coca-Cola factory in Gaza is set to begin this week after being green-lighted by Israel’s defense establishment. A major advantage of the new factory is that it will create jobs for thousands of Palestinians—first for construction builders, and then some 3,000 factory workers.The factory is to be built in the Karni industrial area. The construction period will take six months. …

An oil and gas group exploring offshore Israel said on Sunday it may have discovered a field that contains an estimated 2.5 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas and 255 million barrels of oil. About 30 tcf of gas have been discovered off Israel's Mediterranean coast in recent years, turning the country once dependent on energy imports into a potential exporter. The latest announcement, which was based on 3D seismic data from 2012, covers the Oz license some 50 km (30 miles) from the coastal city of Herzliya in water 1,150 meters (yards) deep.

The Pentagon brass placed in charge of implementing Obama’s war against ISIS are getting fed up with the short leash the White House put them on. Top military leaders in the Pentagon and in the field are growing increasingly frustrated by the tight constraints the White House has placed on the plans to fight ISIS and train a new Syrian rebel army. As the American-led battle against ISIS stretches into its fourth month, the generals and Pentagon officials leading the air campaign and preparing to train Syrian rebels are working under strict White House orders to keep the war contained...

A senior IDF commander on Wednesday acknowledged to Galei Tzahal (IDF Radio) that the Iran-proxy terror group Hezbollah in Lebanon has likely dug terror tunnels into Israel. IDF Northern Commander Maj. Gen. Yair Golan equivocated by noting on Hamas’s use of terror tunnels, saying “we have no positive information meaning that there are tunnels. The situation is not similar to what there was around the Gaza Strip,” reports Reuters. “That said, this idea of going below ground is not foreign to Lebanon and is not foreign to Hezbollah and so we have to suppose as a working assumption that there...

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Sweden's new left-leaning government on Thursday recognized a Palestinian state — a move that comes during increased tensions between Arabs and Jews over Israel's plans to build about 1,000 housing units in east Jerusalem. The European Union member became the third Western European nation, after Malta and Cyprus, to do so, reflecting growing international impatience with Israel's nearly half-century control of the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom said Sweden, fulfilling a promise it had made when the Social Democratic-led government took office earlier this month, made the move because Palestine...

Hezbollah is many times more dangerous than the terrorist organizations in Gaza, Maj.-Gen. Yair Golan, the outgoing head of the IDF’s Northern Command, told Army Radio on Wednesday. He warned Israelis not to expect the same level of air defense cover that the South and Center of the country received during the war with Hamas in Gaza City this summer...

Sweden on Thursday became the biggest Western European country to recognize a Palestinian state, and Israel swiftly reacted by withdrawing its ambassador from Stockholm in protest. Coming during increased tensions between Arabs and Jews over Israel’s plans to build 1,000 housing units in east Jerusalem, the move by Sweden’s new left-leaning government reflects growing international impatience with Israel’s nearly half-century control of the West Bank, east Jerusalem and its blockade of the Gaza Strip. …

On Thursday, Sweden finally solved all the problems in the Middle East by recognizing the State of Palestine. For decades all the instability in the region had been blamed on the lack of a PLO state. Foreign policy experts stood in line to tell us all that the only thing that could end terrorism in the Middle East was a terrorist state. .... It was a plan so crazy that it was bound to either work or kill a lot of people. Mostly it’s done the latter. .... Sweden’s new Palestine not only dispensed with elections, routing the business of...

One day after the Swedish government officially recognized the state of Palestine, members of the Parliament, Riksdagen, disagreed on whether this decision was right or “immature”. The leftist government, which took office only a month ago after winning national elections in September, on Thursday (30 October) became the first European country to recognize the state of Palestine. This prompted Israel to recall its ambassador to Sweden to Jerusalem on the same day. The country also threatened that further cuts to the two countries’ diplomatic relations can be expected. Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman said Sweden “needs to understand that relations...

And the schoolbooks are just one small part of the UNRWA/Hamas symbiosis in Gaza. “As usual, the question is – is anyone listening?” Apparently not Malala Yousafzai. “UNRWA-Hamas Symbiosis Detailed in New Film,” Arutz Sheva, October 29, 2014 (thanks to Inexion): In a new documentary video entitled UNRWA Goes to War, journalist David Bedein builds a seemingly incontestable case against UNRWA, showing the close symbiotic relations between it and the terror group Hamas. The video shows that not only did UNRWA schools serve as repositories for rockets in the last Gaza war, and not only were rockets launched from places...