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JERUSALEM, Israel -- What does the Presbyterian Church USA and Pink Floyd's Roger Waters have in common? They both support boycotting Israel, a sweeping movement that's trying to delegitimize the Jewish state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says a great struggle and international campaign is being waged against his country to "blacken its name." "It is not connected to our actions; it is connected to our very existence," Netanyahu said. "It does not matter what we do; it matters what we symbolize and what we are." Just this week, the CEO of French mobile phone giant Orange said he'd cut...

By Ariel Kahana Israel News AgencyJerusalem, Israel — June 5, 2015 … President Barack Obama recently accused Israel of failing to live up to the high standards of Jewish moral responsibility. So for his benefit, here is a list of Israel’s contributions around the world that show its incredible moral responsibility. Jewish values “in many ways came to be my own values,” U.S. President Barack Obama told a sympathetic Jewish audience two weeks ago, eliciting enthusiastic applause. Anyone who saw Obama’s address at the Adas Israel congregation in Washington on May 22 could have easily thought that the American president...

Rocket alerts sounded in Ashkelon and the Hof Ashkelon Regional Council on Saturday evening. Residents reported hearing at least one explosion. The Israel Defense Forces deployed Iron Dome missile defense batteries in several locations in the south this week following several incidents of rocket fire from the Gaza Strip toward Israeli territory.

Jewish Home party chairwoman MK Ayelet Shaked responded Monday morning to reports that the Egyptian government had offered the Palestinian Authority a state extending from Gaza through the Sinai Peninsula, and called on Prime Minister Netanyahu to take it seriously. Aiming a barb at the Israeli Left, she said the initiative proved how out of touch they were. "If the report is indeed correct, the president of Egypt has managed to understand what the Left in Israel has refused to understand for decades." She asserted that the solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian "needs to be regional,...

At least nine Islamist militants have been killed in a major offensive by the Egyptian army in Sinai, security officials have said. Eyewitnesses told the BBC that tanks and troops, backed by Apache helicopters, had struck the militants in towns along the Gaza Strip border. The operation is said to be the biggest of its kind in recent years in Sinai. Meanwhile, Egyptian soldiers defused mortars and other explosives found on a railway line near the Suez Canal. There have been frequent attacks on pipelines and security forces since the uprising that toppled former President Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak set off an explosion Thursday, launching an ambitious and controversial plan to make the Western Desert bloom with water channeled from the Nile River. When the canal is done, if all goes according to plan, water will wind its way 190 miles (310 kilometers) across the Western Desert to irrigate 500,000 acres (200,000 hectares) of virgin land. And, if all goes according to plan, the newly irrigated land will be populated by hundreds of thousands of people. The explosion Thursday was the first step in the construction on a pumping station that Egypt claims will be...

Israelis urged to return home for fear that peninsula will become launching pad for terror attacks as police abandon posts, facing increasing violence. Concern is mounting in Israel over reports that the Egyptian police force has abandoned the Sinai Peninsula in face of growing Beduin violence, and that the territory will turn into a breeding ground for global jihad. According to information that has arrived in Israel, Egyptian police authorities have abandoned dozens of police stations throughout the peninsula after they were attacked by Beduin armed with missiles and assault rifles. This concern was behind Israel’s decision two weeks ago...

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt plans to build a $1 billion tunnel under the Suez Canal at Port Said and will begin seeking finance as soon as the designs are completed, Al-Akhbar newspaper on Monday quoted the investment minister as saying. The tunnel, to be built 19 km (12 miles) south of the Canal's northern entrance, will have 3 passageways, one for rail and two for cars, the newspaper quoted Mahmoud Mohieldin as telling a conference in Dahab in the eastern Sinai Peninsula. The conference was called to discuss investment in the cities along the canal and in the Sinai, which...

Egypt Attacks May Indicate Emerging Sinai Bedouin Insurgency By Chris Zambelis Egypt appears to have scored a number of successes in recent weeks in its war against Islamist militants. Counter-terrorist units and police converged on an olive grove in the mountainous area known as Gabal al-Arish on the outskirts of the northern Sinai coastal town of al-Arish last week after receiving a tip that members of the obscure Tawhid wal-Jihad (Monotheism and Struggle)—one of the main groups implicated in the deadly April attacks in Dahab and other strikes in Sinai—were hiding from the authorities (al-Sharq al-Awsat, May 9). After a...

JERUSALEM — Israeli military intelligence chief, Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin told the Cabinet last week that an air force strike killed several Iranian, Lebanese and Syrian instructors sent to improve Hamas's military and missile capabilities. An Israeli soldier in an armored army vehicle after an operation in the Gaza Strip on March 2. AP/Sebastian Scheiner Yadlin said the death of the instructors marked a serious blow to the Hamas regime. The air force strike took place on Feb. 28 in which five people were killed in a truck filled with more than 100 missiles in the Gaza Strip. Officials said...

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Israel's defense establishment knows that the recent "trickles" of rockets fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel must be stopped before it becomes a routine occurrence. But while Israel has officially placed the responsibility for Wednesday night's rocket fire on Gaza's leadership, Hamas is having a hard time reining in Salafi and jihadist groups in the Strip. Minutes after Wednesday night's rocket fire, Hamas operatives rushed from their headquarters to find shelter, fearing Israeli retaliation strikes, which came early Thursday morning with as three militant training camps were targeted. A senior Hamas official sent...

ISIS fighters reported today that the ISLAMIC STATE has Attacked Israel.

â—¾Fatah is afraid that Hamas's chances of winning the elections, especially in the West Bank, are very high. Hamas is not willing to relinquish control over the Gaza Strip, certainly not to Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, who were expelled from there in 2007. â—¾Each party cares only about its own interests, while at the same time lying to the world that it is all Israel's fault. Hamas continues to invest enormous resources in digging new tunnels, in preparation for a new war with Israel. â—¾All this is being done with the help of anti-Israel governments around the world, and...

A French municipal council has approved a proposal to name a newly built street after Palestinian Liberation Organization leader and arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat, the Nice Matin newspaper reported Tuesday. The proposal was adopted by a large majority of elected representatives of of the south-western town La Seyne-sur-Mer. According to Mayor Marc Vuillemot, the proposal was brought forward by the town's residents and only a handful of representatives voted against it. Those who opposed the measure were reportedly unhappy with honoring a "controversial figure" or, as others described Arafat, a "terrorist." "There is also a Yitzhak Rabin-street in the district. To...

President Obama and his administration continue to support the global Islamist militant group known the Muslim Brotherhood. A White House strategy document regards the group as a moderate alternative to more violent Islamist groups like al Qaeda and the Islamic State. The policy of backing the Muslim Brotherhood is outlined in a secret directive called Presidential Study Directive-11, or PSD-11. The directive was produced in 2011 and outlines administration support for political reform in the Middle East and North Africa, according to officials familiar with the classified study. Efforts to force the administration to release the directive or portions of...

TEL AVIV – If Hamas does not cease its crackdown on ISIS supporters in Gaza, the backers of the movement that has taken over half of Syria and one-third of Iraq will violate a truce with Israel and carry out more rocket attacks against the Jewish state, a leader of the jihadist organization that represents ISIS in Gaza told WND. Tuesday, supporters of ISIS in the Gaza Strip provided WND with a video they say proves they launched a rocket from the Gaza Strip that hit central Israel last week. The video, with an ISIS flag in the upper left...

Kristen Martin recalls her time as an intern for Bernie Sanders, in a contribution to the left's discussion of Sanders' campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.TO THOSE who have spent any significant amount of time in Vermont, it is clear that Bernie Sanders is widely beloved by his constituents. The support for "Bernie," as his supporters fondly call him, was clear on May 26 as thousands flocked to Sanders' presidential campaign kickoff rally on the edge of Lake Champlain in Burlington, Vermont. The "People's Assembly," organized by a group including former Occupy Wall Street activists and environmentalists, spoke to a...

In a February 22, 2015 article in the Saudi daily Al-Riyadh, Sheikh 'Adel Al-Kalbani, the former imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, attacked the extremism of the Islamic State (ISIS) and groups like it. He said that it takes more than mere words, condemnation, and even fatwas to halt the spread of ISIS's ideas and prevent young people from joining its ranks – it requires reform in Islam that will restore its original tolerant character. Stating that Islam is fundamentally tolerant and that the Prophet and his Companions were lenient with those who disagreed with them, Al-Kalbani added that...

The impoverished Gaza Strip is a “powder keg” at risk of exploding, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on Monday during a visit to the war-torn territory. […] “We shall only be able to decisively reduce the risks of a fresh escalation if we allow economic development in the Gaza Strip in addition to humanitarian aid and reconstruction,” he said on a visit to Gaza City’s fishing port. That would only be possible “with open borders”—a reference to the tough restrictions on the movement of goods and people that have been imposed by Israel and Egypt. “But none of this will...

It is hardly surprising that many Americans see ISIS as a vastly more brutal, more threatening version of Al Qaeda -- especially given the many Republican presidential candidates climbing over each other with plans to obliterate the group. But the perception is mistaken. While Al Qaeda’s strategy focuses on catastrophic attacks against the United States, ISIS seeks to capture and hold territory for its caliphate and to stoke a sectarian conflict between Sunni and Shia. The group has no known experience carrying out long-distance covert operations, and no senior federal official has yet pointed to any ISIS plotting against the...