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(IsraelNN.com) The self-proclaimed pro-Israel J Street lobby opened its nationwide conference this week, trying to survive a growing tide of American Jews who oppose its anti-Israeli government policies. Speaking at the opening of its three-day conference this week in Washington, the group's director, Jeremy Ben-Ami, declared that J Street is “defining support for the creation of a Palestinian state as a core pro-Israel position.” He claimed wide backing for its policies despite the boycott of the conference by Michael Oren, the Israel Ambassador to Washington. Also absent were dozens of Congress members, concerned with the organization’s pro-Arab position and its...

American Muslim leaders at the J Street Conference this week know exactly what J Street's real agenda is: bringing about a distancing in US-Israel relations and besmirching the mainstream Jewish community, under the guise of morality and justice. The pious spiritual claptrap that characterizes J Street's conference in Washington this week is both a conceit and a new form of Jewish apostasy. Conference speakers earnestly broadcast their "profound" Jewish and "spiritual" identities in order to besmirch the mainstream Jewish community and engender a distancing in US-Israel relations. This certainly does not fool the American Muslim leaders who are speaking at...

If world powers are not successful in efforts to contain the Iranian nuclear threat, an Israeli strike on Iran could become a reality, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said during a visit to Beirut, the Daily Telegraph reported Monday. The French foreign minister suggested that time was indeed short for a solution to the Iranian threat. "There is the time that Israel will offer us before reacting, because Israel will react as soon as they know clearly that there is a threat." "Israel will not tolerate an Iranian bomb. We know that, all of us," said Kouchner, adding that for...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran wants major amendments within the framework of a U.N. nuclear fuel deal which it broadly accepts, state media said, a move that could unravel the plan and expose Tehran to the threat of harsher sanctions. The European Union's foreign policy chief said on Tuesday there was no need to rework the U.N. draft and he and France's foreign minister suggested Tehran would rekindle demands for tougher international sanctions if it tried to undo the plan. Among the central planks of the plan opposed by Iran -- but requested by the West to cut the risk of...

(IsraelNN.com) Terrorists in southern Lebanon fired a Katyusha rocket on the Upper Galilee around 7 p.m. (1 p.m. EDT). No one was wounded and no damage was reported, but a fire broke out at the site of the explosion. Lebanese sources reported that the IDF retaliated with artillery fire, but Israel has not confirmed the report. The explosion occurred near Kiryat Shmona, and police and civil defense authorities are searching for the point of impact. Lebanese authorities confirmed that the rocket was fired from a village near the Israeli border.

[+] JERUSALEM, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Israeli authorities demolished two Palestinian homes near Arab East Jerusalem on Tuesday, ignoring international concern about the practice. Israel's Jerusalem municipality said the houses were built without permits. Palestinians say such permission is impossible to obtain and accuse Israel of using demolitions to tighten its hold on occupied territory in and around Jerusalem. "This is part of the Israeli plan to disrupt the demographic balance," Hatem Abdel-Qader, in charge of Jerusalem affairs in Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement. Jerusalem is at the centre of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, and the United States, seeking to...

It's a dilemma for mainstream Israelis: How to resist capitulating to Arab violence on the Temple Mount - driven by irrational fears of Zionist plots against it - while not encouraging marginal Jewish groups who feverishly yearn to make the Arabs' worst nightmares come true? Israel's "Third Templars" don't seem to care about the consequences of stoking an apocalyptic religious war with Islamic civilization - 56 countries, 1.57 billion faithful, most of them currently on the sidelines of the Arab-Israel conflict. Jewish tradition holds that the Mount, site of Solomon's Temple (and the Ark of the Covenant) and later the...

Major Adrian Agassi did not make the connection between the Bible, the land and the Jews when, fresh out of university, he left England for Israel in search of his roots. He was not even a practising Jew. But over the past quarter of a century, the Israeli army lawyer and then military judge at the forefront of arguably the most significant battle in the occupied West Bank – the confiscation of Palestinian land for the construction of Jewish settlements – has come to see himself as in service of a higher duty. In an unusually frank interview, which offers...

FROM WND'S JERUSALEM BUREAU Arab prof: 'Blowing oneself up' OK in Tel Aviv But asserts suicide bombings against Saudis not legitimate Posted: October 26, 2009 10:16 pm Eastern By Aaron Klein © 2009 WorldNetDaily JERUSALEM – Suicide bombings are OK in Tel Aviv, Israel, but not in Saudi Arabia, declared a Saudi professor speaking on Arab satellite television. "Someone who blows himself up amidst the enemy is different from someone who blows himself up in a safe place. Blowing oneself up in Tel Aviv is not like blowing oneself up in Riyadh," stated Saudi University professor Salman Al-Abdali on Iqra...

Actions and Consequences by Ari Bussel “Protecting evil and elevating it over good is the surest path to destruction. When civilization stresses the rights of the perpetrators more of those of the victims, the balance of humanity will be thrown off and civilization will crumble.” Norma Zager The current generation in Israel hardly remembers what its founders have known. Many do not even fathom the wisdom to study their own core values, dismissing their eternal code of ethics as archaic, lacking modern luster or being ultra-religious (thus possibly poisonous or infectious). Israel needs to go back to basics. It is...

The appointment of Senator George Mitchell as special envoy to the Middle East in January 2009 elicited great expectations for progress on the Israeli-Palestinian track, particularly since the new American president, Barack Obama, eloquently communicated his intent to renew peace negotiations and end them successfully within his first term in office. After nine months and many trips to the Middle East, a plethora of meetings with the leaders in the region and even an Obama-Netanyahu-Abbas summit in New York last month, Senator Mitchell seems unable to report success to his boss. There are several reasons for this outcome, some conjectural...

J Street's university arm has dropped the "pro-Israel" part of the left-wing US lobby's "pro-Israel, pro-peace" slogan to avoid alienating students. That decision was part of the message conveyed to young activists who attended a special weekend program for students ahead of J Street's first annual conference, which began on Sunday. Students are seen as a key component of the 18-month-old organization's constituency base and the conference itself. The multi-day event has incorporated new technology and interactive forums to harness their energy and garner feedback from the audience, which swelled to 1,500 on Monday and created overflow plenary and breakout...

The US will continue pressing for a deal to get Israel and the Palestinian Authority back to the negotiating table, despite concerns in Jerusalem that Friday's announcement of PA elections in January makes the likelihood of starting negotiations now even more remote. US Middle East envoy George Mitchell is expected back in the region by the end of the week, to continue, as one diplomatic official said, "pushing the rock." The US, he said, has made clear that it will do so until - perhaps because of a change of conditions - the rock actually moves. For the time being,...

TORONTO - Hasbara at York, a pro-Israel group at York University, announced on Wednesday that it will create a task force in response to an incident in February in which students at the school were forced to take refuge in the Hillel office as protesters banged on its glass doors, chanting anti-Semitic and anti-Israel slogans. The York University campus in Canada. Photo: Courtesy "Die, bitch, go back to Israel," and, "Die, Jew, get the hell off campus," they called out. That incident and others prompted the university administration to have a Task Force on Student Life, Learning and Community "review...

(IsraelNN.com) Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has sent multiple messages to United States President Barack Obama threatening to quit, Channel 10 news reported Monday night. Abbas blamed Israel and the U.S. for pushing him to desperation, saying negotiations with Israel were at a stand-still and Obama had “abandoned” him. Abbas also mentioned the serious hit to his popularity caused by the delay of a United Nations vote on the Goldstone Report. The report accused Israel of war crimes in connection with the three-week Cast Lead counterterror offensive in Gaza. Obama responded to the threats by calling Abbas and calming him,...

When America entered the war in Vietnam, Ho Chi Min said that it would be a long war and that the communists would win by using propaganda in the media and the universities. He was correct. It is time to take stock in the war between Israelis and the Palestinians and deal with some forbidden subjects. Israel is losing the propaganda war, hasbarah, and for a very good reason. Israel is not in the hasbarah game, unless one counts belated responses to the Palestinians' propaganda offensives. Pierre Rehov, a Moroccan French Jew, is a documentary filmmaker. He claims that the...

Iran's nuclear weapons development continues apace, threatening the security of its neighbors and the international community. According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, more than 60 percent of the American public believes preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons warrants military action.

Leah Rabin, the late widow of assassinated premier Yitzhak Rabin, used words such as "nightmare," "monstrosity," "corrupt" and "liar" to describe Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in letters she wrote over a decade ago that have recently been obtained by Haaretz.

Israel says PM did not consult Obama ahead of trip because meeting on peace process unnecessary. WASHINGTON – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's intention to visit Washington for the annual UJC General Assembly has surprised many on Capitol Hill and was apparently not coordinated with the Obama administration. An American source told Ynet Sunday that news of the visit had been received with reserved astonishment. The Obama administration has not yet responded to questions of whether a meeting with Netanyahu was forthcoming due to their surprise over the unscheduled visit. On the other hand, failure to invite Netanyahu to the White...

Following a day of clashes between security forces and Arab rioters in Jerusalem, Damascus-based Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal on Sunday evening stated that the fate of the capital would be determined by force, not negotiations. "The fate of Jerusalem will be determined only by confrontation and not by the negotiating tables," Mashaal said in a speech, according to Channel 10. "The Israelis want to divide al-Aqsa Mosque, and this is not all. They want to hold their religious ceremonies in the mosque … in preparation for demolishing it and building their temple there," he reportedly said. Israel is interested in...

Israeli police firing stun grenades faced off Sunday against masked Palestinian protesters hurling stones and plastic chairs outside the Holy Land's most volatile shrine, where past violence has escalated into prolonged conflict. A wall of Israeli riot police behind plexiglass shields marched toward young men covering their faces with T-shirts and scarves, sending many of them running for cover into the Al-Aqsa mosque, one of the Islamic structures in the compound known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. They remained holed up in the mosque with police outside for several hours until dispersing...

If, to paraphrase Carl von Clausewitz, diplomacy is war by other means, then just as armies are called upon to concentrate their efforts and resources where they can do the most good for their cause, so governments must utilize their diplomatic resources - whether plentiful or scarce - to advance their most important national interests. The Palestinians and the Iranians have formidable diplomatic resources at their disposal. Both the Palestinians and Iran can expect to receive the support of automatic majorities at the UN for everything they do. And today most international diplomacy is conducted under the aegis of the...

JERUSALEM – Israeli forces stormed Jerusalem's holiest shrine Sunday, firing stun grenades to disperse hundreds of stone-throwing Palestinian protesters in a fresh eruption of violence at the most volatile spot in the Holy Land. A wall of Israeli riot police behind plexiglass shields closed in on the crowd, sending many protesters — overwhelmingly young men — running for cover into the black-domed Al-Aqsa mosque. The mosque is one part of the compound known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. Dozens of protesters remained holed up inside the mosque for several hours, occasionally opening...

Israel is hoping to order two modern German-made warships without paying for them, daily Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung reported on Friday. Sources within the German government told the paper that Israel wants the Berlin to finance the MEKO corvettes, a sum that would reportedly reach hundreds of millions of euros. The paper reported that the government has not yet reacted to Israel’s request. But “influential politicians from northern Germany,” where the shipbuilding industry is suffering from the global economic downturn, are apparently supportive in the interest of keeping German shipyards in business.

BERLIN, Oct. 8 (UPI) -- Germany has been asked to help fund yet another submarine for the Israeli navy. Jerusalem plans to order another submarine of the Dolphin class from German Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft AG and has asked the German government to subsidize the order, German news magazine Der Spiegel reports. Berlin has helped Israel pay for five previously ordered submarines. The first two (named Dolphin and Leviathan) were a gift by Germany after it surfaced that German companies were involved with Iraq's chemical weapons program. To save the orders and jobs for the German shipyards, Chancellor Helmut Kohl decided to...

Stone-throwing Arab youths wounded three policemen on the Temple Mount on Sunday as Jerusalem police, firing water cannons and stun grenades, raided the holy site in a bid to quell repeated bouts of rioting. Police stormed the compound twice; the first time was in response to Arab youths who pelted officers with rocks and poured oil on them. Later Sunday morning, about 100 Arab youths renewed rioting at the Temple Mount, after which Border Police and regular policemen raided the site again, using stun grenades to disperse the rioters. Police were attempting to completely clear the compound of worshippers. Officers...

(IsraelNN.com) The Palestinian Authority, led by the Fatah party, admitted to a British newspaper that its security forces commonly use torture on prisoners, as charged by the Hamas terrorist organization. The PA is heavily funded by overseas contributions as well as taxes collected for it by the Israeli government. “This is a shame on the Palestinian Authority,” Haitham Arar, head of the human rights department of the PA Interior Ministry, told the Mail. She admitted that torture, beatings and extra-judicial murders have been common in the Abbas administration

(IsraelNN.com) Several Members of Knesset have proposed a law that would see imprisoned terrorists who belong to groups holding an Israeli hostage lose their privileges. Under the proposed law, which will be reviewed Sunday by the Knesset's legislative committee, the government would have the freedom to strip terrorists imprisoned in Israel of privileges in order to pressure terrorist groups to release Israeli citizens. The prisoners would still be granted the rights protected by international law.

Too healthy to die, too injured to rule, Israel’s legendary warrior and former prime minister lives in a comatose limbo—just like the Middle East peace process. The old soldier’s eyes are open. Sometimes he’s propped up in front of a TV, where images of nature and animals, especially cows, flicker across the screen. His family tells him the day’s news, the goings on at his beloved farm. They read to him, alternating between two books at a time, just as he used to do for himself. They play classical music. When his white hair grows long, they trim it. And...

Iran yesterday angrily denied Israeli media assertions that senior nuclear officials from the two countries held confidential talks last month in what was portrayed as the first direct exchange between the two arch enemies for 30 years. The reports sparked a flurry of official statements from Tehran and Tel Aviv which, unusually, agreed on many points. Both acknowledged sending representatives to an international conference in Cairo on nuclear disarmament. Each confirmed there were no direct, bilateral talks. The deliberations were meant to be confidential. But leaked accounts of the conference infuriated Tehran, which said the notion of any sort of...

  Dead Sea Power Project GREEN ENERGY: The Dead Sea Power Project (DSPP) is a tunnel and hydropower project that can produce 1500 to 2500 megawatts of clean and renewable electric energy. The value of such electric energy will be maximized by power generation during peak demand times. Planned operation of the project can fill the Dead Sea to the desired level within seven years of operation; after that, the continued operation of the hydropower plant will be enabled by the development of additional desalination capacity to supply the water needs of the region. SAVING THE DEAD SEA AND...

Never since the mid 1970s when the Watergate Congress insisted on abandoning our South Vietnamese allies after the war had been won have I seen defeat snatched from the jaws of victory in such a bold and decisive manner. As I survey the scene in America today I’m beginning to wonder if we would be in any worse shape if we’d lost the Cold War. From sea to shining sea Americans watch as the once greatest industrial nation on earth board up our factories and ship our manufacturing capacity to other countries. It seems like every other day the last...

It is a cynical but time-honoured practice in Middle Eastern politics: the statesmen who decry the political and humanitarian crisis of the approximately 3.9 million Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in Gaza ignore the plight of an estimated 4.6 million Palestinians who live in Arab countries. For decades, Arab governments have justified their decision to maintain millions of stateless Palestinians as refugees in squalid camps as a means of applying pressure to Israel. The refugee problem will be solved, they say, when Israel agrees to let the Palestinians have their own state. Yet in the two decades since...

The loyalty of most American Jews to the Democratic Party and their current leader President Barack Obama is not in question. Yet while the ideology of the majority of their members and contributors is no secret, most major Jewish organizations, not to mention synagogues, attempt to stay out of partisan controversies, even while often espousing liberal causes. Most sensible people understand that these days the Jews and Israel have friends on both sides of the aisle, and it is bad politics as well as bad policy to forget that. US President Barack Obama. Photo: AP But in the partisan rage...

Will Obama put the peace process on hold?By DOUGLAS BLOOMFIELD Nine months after US President Barack Obama made Middle East peace a centerpiece of his foreign policy, that goal appears more elusive than ever. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Mideast special envoy George Mitchell will present a progress report to the president next week, and the news won't be good. The only positive element of their report, said an administration spokesman, is that while progress has been scant, at least they're still talking. True - but not to each other. Palestinian and Israeli negotiators are expected to meet again...

An Israeli weapons company is opening a manufacturing plant in Rapid City that will create at least 19 new full-time jobs. TDI Arms, which specializes in military-grade weapons accessories, will receive a $50,000 grant from the Rapid City Economic Development Partnership to defray relocation costs. The funding will come from the Opportunity Capture Fund, a city 2012 project intended to financially assist economic development in Rapid City. Previous grant recipients include Northrop Grumman, Cabela's and South Dakota School of Mines & Technology

GENEVA, October 16, 2009 -- Today's emergency UN Human Rights Council debate on the Goldstone Report predictably saw a line-up of the world's worst abusers condemn democratic Israel for human rights violations. In a heated lynch mob atmosphere, Kuwait slammed Israel for “intentional killing, intentional destruction of civilian objects, intentional scorched-earth policy,” saying Israel “embodied the Agatha Christie novel, 'Escaped with Murder'.” Pakistan said the “horrors of Israeli occupation continue to haunt the international community’s conscience.” The Arab League said, “We must condemn Israel and force Israel to accept international legitimacy." Ahmadinejad’s Iran said “the atrocities committed against Palestinians during...

On Tuesday, October 20, 2009, a Ministerial Committee on National Security convened for the first time in Israel to discuss the implications of the Goldstone Report recently adopted by the UN Human Rights Council. A new unit will be established in the Ministry of Justice in coordination with the Attorney General and the Public Prosecutor to handle legal proceedings taking place overseas against the State of Israel, or against its citizens, which require legal handling and special coordination. A Jewish person headed the Goldstone Report and the investigation leading to its publication. The White House Chief of Staff is Jewish....

Founded "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war," today's United Nations is instead laying the groundwork for war galore. In the name of "justice," the U.N. handicaps democracies trying to defend themselves against tyrants and terrorists. That's the bottom line of the so-called Goldstone report, ... ... From this exercise Goldstone emerged to accuse Israel of "reprisals" and "collective punishments" and "war crimes." He also criticized "armed groups" in Gaza (where the major "armed group"--terrorist Hamas--runs the enclave). But in the U.N. universe, that is a nod to the appearance of impartiality, of no real relevance to action....

The Obama administration’s ambassador to the United Nations told Israelis on Wednesday that it was not enough to pay “lip service” to peace and urged the government to restart negotiations immediately, without preconditions, aimed at creating an independent Palestinian state. The ambassador, Susan E. Rice, in an address at a high-powered conference hosted by President Shimon Peres of Israel, also assured Israelis — many of whom are wary of President Obama’s Middle East agenda — that her government is committed to their security. “As President Peres always reminds us, being serious about peace means taking risks for peace,” Ms. Rice...

MOSCOW, October 21 (RIA Novosti) - President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin congratulated on Wednesday the Israeli premier, Benjamin Netanyahu, on his 60th birthday, a Kremlin spokesman said. Medvedev reiterated Russia's intentions "to contribute actively to the settlement of a fair and solid peace in the Middle East on the basis of equal and safe security for all states and nations in the region." Putin praised what he described as a "constructive and open dialogue" between the two countries. "I am committed to enhancing further the cooperation between our countries' governments," the Russian premier said.

Iran, Russia and America met in Vienna under the supervision of the IAEA.The meeting is to discuss the shipment of nuclear fuel with about %20 of enrichment to Tehran's research reactor which produces radioactive medicine for hospitals.IRI's representative in the IAEA Ali-Asghar Soltaniyeh is leading Iran's delegation. IAEA's director-general Mohammad Elbaradei is also attending the meeting.The Islamic Republic of Iran demands that up to %5 of enrichment for Tehran's research reactor to be done in Iran and then be sent to Russia, France or America for more enrichment.

If you haven't seen the movie Judgement at Nuremberg, you should. It was a movie of the trial of 16 Nazi Justices. One Judge in the dock, Schlegelberger, played by Burt Lancaster, was a good man who had reluctantly served the Nazi Regime until he resigned for reasons of conscience in 1942. He was found guilty. And in the end he agreed the verdict was a just one. This case is referred to by Ayal Rosenberg in GOLDSTONE : A CRITIQUE OF SELF-APOTHEOSIS. He begins with this introduction of it, The criminal culpability for crimes against humanity of judges enforcing...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told the presidential “Facing Tomorrow" conference Tuesday night that the world must end its dependence on oil "that strengthens terror and damages planet Earth.” He said that the dependence on “black gold” raises the price of oil and stunts economic growth in Africa and other poor areas of the world, as well as in developed countries.

The world is against Israel because of its own moral weakness and not because of alleged human rights violations, according to Rabbi Yaakov Medan, rabbi of Har Etzion Yeshiva, located in Gush Etzion, south of Jerusalem. “Islam is strong, and it is convenient for people to go with strength,” the rabbi explained in an interview with Arutz-7.

AS the founder of Human Rights Watch, its active chairman for 20 years and now founding chairman emeritus, I must do something that I never anticipated: I must publicly join the group’s critics. Human Rights Watch had as its original mission to pry open closed societies, advocate basic freedoms and support dissenters. But recently it has been issuing reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state.

The Report by Ari Bussel “What many could not understand was how an army which even some German generals considered the strongest in Europe could be defeated so quickly and easily. So staggering were the losses – 90,000 dead, 200,000 wounded, more than one and a half million taken prisoner – …” This is the story of France in 1939 (as told by Don & Petie Kladstrup in 2002). “The most important arena where we need to act … is in the arena of public opinion, which is crucial in the democratic world. We must continue to debunk this lie...

(IsraelNN.com) The world is against Israel because of its own moral weakness and not because of alleged human rights violations, according to Rabbi Yaakov Medan, rabbi of Har Etzion Yeshiva, located in Gush Etzion, south of Jerusalem. “Islam is strong, and it is convenient for people to go with strength,” the rabbi explained in an interview with Arutz-7. He added that the world’s preoccupation with individual rights, as well as the infiltration of Western culture into Israel, are “illnesses” that have led to “an erosion of obligations to the country and of the significance of Israel as a nation.”

(IsraelNN.com) An Arab driver who killed a little Jewish girl riding her bicycle near the synagogue in Kfar Tavor on Yom Kippur Eve in 2007 was sentenced to nine years in prison on Tuesday. His accomplice was sentenced to just two years in jail, longer than the time that has already passed since the event. On Yom Kippur eve, when the Kol Nidrei service began and the streets were empty, the two Arabs entered Kfar Tavor at high speed on the all-terrain vehicle (ATV) and headed directly for a group of children milling about near the synagogue on their bicycles....

According to the Jerusalem Post, as recently as six weeks ago, just 4 percent of the Jews of Israel regarded President Obama as pro-Israel. Even if exaggerated, it is likely the most negative Israeli view of an American president since Israel's creation. If you think Israelis are irrational in this matter, perhaps Tibet will help persuade you otherwise. Yes, Tibet. Whereas every Democratic and Republican president since 1991 has met with exiled Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama, when he visited the United States, President Obama has decided that he will not do so during the Tibetan leader's visit to the...