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Every Jew has been to Israel By Norma Zager A recent comment by an Israeli diplomat had me thinking. He was amused by the fact I write so often and passionately about Israel despite never having visited the country myself. At first I agreed it was odd perhaps, yet after some consideration, I decided it was not at all extraordinary. Every Jew is a citizen and resident of Eretz Yisrael and whether present in body or spirit, has shed blood for the Jewish Homeland. I need not stand on a mountain to know the Golan Heights is a paradise, fertile...

Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer said on Thursday the world has to accept a weaker U.S. dollar in order to ensure the global economy recovers soundly. "We also have to realize, what is hard to get across, there has to be a global rebalancing. Either the U.S. runs a very long period of recession, which is a really bad idea, or the dollar has to weaken, so that balance of payments can be straightened out," Fischer said in response to a question during a business breakfast in New York. "So we have got to accept, as do other people,...

Israel's foreign minister met with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Friday and called for closer ties and economic cooperation between the two countries. Avigdor Lieberman, leader of Israel's right-wing ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, was born in the former Soviet Union, and he spoke with Putin in flawless Russian, throwing in a few words of English. Lieberman was visiting Moscow for a session of a Russian-Israeli Intergovernmental Commission, which mainly focuses on economic ties. He lauded the commission for establishing a visa-free system between the two countries last year. He said the measure will likely to double the number of...

President Barack Obama is delaying moving the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. A 1995 US law recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital and ordered that the embassy be relocated there. But the law also permits the president to delay the move for six-month periods, based on national security grounds. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush invoked the clause during their presidencies. Obama notified Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton of his decision on Thursday. He first delayed moving the embassy in June. The location of the embassy is a sensitive issue in efforts to negotiate peace...

Ever since 1977, the United Nations has sponsored the “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People” to mark November 29th, the date in 1947 when the UN General Assembly approved its partition resolution. Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called November 29th a “day of mourning and a day of grief.” It takes place every year at UN headquarters in New York and at the UN Offices at Geneva and Vienna and elsewhere. This year it was observed on November 30th since the 29th was a Sunday. In honor of this year’s “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian...

As Sarah Palin begins what at least appears to be a testing—if not a parting—of the waters in anticipation of a potential presidential run, she has waded into the murky stuff that is the Israel/Palestine quagmire. One of the stops on her “Going Rogue” book promotional tour last week was ABC’s “Good Morning America.” Noting that the Obama administration doesn’t want Israel to build any more settlements on what it considers Palestinian territory, interviewer Barbara Walters asked the former Alaska governor/Vice Presidential candidate for her view. Palin’s response. The politician responded, “I disagree with the Obama administration on that. I...

Stories appearing on several Ukrainian Web sites claim Israel has brought around some 25,000 Ukrainian children into the country over the past two years in order to harvest their organs. The claim, which was made by a Ukrainian philosophy professor and author at a pseudo-academic conference in Kiev five days ago, is the latest expression of a wave of anti-Semitism in the country. It comes a few months after a Swedish tabloid ran an article alleging that Israel Defense Forces soldiers have killed Palestinian civilians for their organs. Jews, Israel and anti-Semitism have become a major motif of the presidential...

JERUSALEM -- Israel last year revoked the Jerusalem residency of more than 4,500 Palestinians, far more than in any other year since Israel took full control of the city in 1967, according to government figures obtained under the country's freedom of information act by a local human rights group. In what an official for the group on Wednesday called a "frightening" escalation in the enforcement of Jerusalem residency laws, the Interior Ministry said that a sweep of its files last spring turned up thousands of names of Palestinian Jerusalemites who had left the country for longer than the allowed seven...

In an eye-opening interview, Lieutenant Colonel [Allen] West (ret.), US commander in both Afghanistan and Iraq wars, harshly criticized the US administration’s handling of the “War on Terror.” Moreover, West, who is a candidate for US Congressional seat in Florida, insists that Israel has no choice but to unilaterally destroy Iran’s nuclear program ...

The Persian Community by Ari Bussel In Israel there are jokes from every conceivable origin, for Israel is a country made up of a diversity of Jews. They returned from the Diaspora and joined the few that have been here throughout time. The Persian community is thus no different than any other. These jokes have a grain of truth and help us laugh at ourselves and at the variations we all bring to this melting pot of Israeli society. The Persian community is characterized, in my mind’s eye, by three traits: close-knit, the value it places on education and its...

A promising, independent Palestine is quietly being developed, with Israeli assistance. It is difficult to turn on a TV or radio or pick up a newspaper these days, without finding some pundit or other deploring the dismal prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace or the dreadful living conditions of the Palestinians. Even supposedly neutral news reporters regularly repeat this sad tale. "Very little is changing for the Palestinian people on the ground," I heard BBC World Service Cairo correspondent Christian Fraser tell listeners three times in a 45 minute period the other evening. In fact nothing could be further from the truth....

About quarter of a million Palestinians and Israeli Arabs live in East Jerusalem Israel stripped a record number of Palestinians of their right to live in East Jerusalem last year, an Israeli rights group has said. Some 4,570 people had their residency rights removed, more than a third of the total number since Israel took control of East Jerusalem in 1967. Palestinians fear an attempt to reduce their presence in Jerusalem, which both they and Israel claim as their capital. Israel says most of those stripped of their rights were living abroad. Palestinians living in East Jerusalem were offered Israeli...

JERUSALEM — oA Jewish settler could face criminal charges after he was filmed repeatedly driving his car over a Palestinian man who had stabbed the Israeli's wife in a West Bank settlement, police said Wednesday. The knife and axe-wielding Palestinian stabbed and wounded two people in the settlement of Kiryat Arba last Thursday before being shot and wounded by a civilian security guard and an off-duty Israeli soldier, police said. The amateur video broadcast on Israel's Channel 2 TV showed a silver Mercedes driving over the Palestinian, who was lying on the ground after he was shot. The car ran...

BEIRUT (AFP) – Prosecutor of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon Daniel Bellemare said on Wednesday his investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri was moving at "full pace." "The investigation is making progress and is proceeding at full pace," said a statement released by his spokeswoman, Radhia Achouri. ... Earlier, Bellemare met President Michel Sleiman on his first trip as prosecutor to Beirut, where he arrived on Tuesday for a seven-day visit during which he also will meet members of the new government. The Hague-based tribunal was set up by a UN Security Council resolution in 2007...

ZOA Criticizes J.N.F. For Donating 3,000 Trees To Palestinian Authority November 30, 2009 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Morton A. Klein Phone: 212-481-1500 www.zoa.org/sitedocuments/pressrelease_view.asp?pressreleaseID=1752 The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has criticized the Jewish National Fund (JNF) following reports that the organization, established by Jews and for Jews to rebuild Jewish national life in the biblical home of the Jewish people, has donated 3,000 trees to the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA) of Mahmoud Abbas for a new city near Ramallah. Benny Kashriel, the mayor of Maaleh Adumim who also is a member of the JNF board, said today that he will...

Of the many luxury housing projects rising up in southern Tel Aviv, one - named "The Village" - takes its inspiration from a curious source. A group photo of the original Jaffa colonists. In 1866, a small band of American Christians established a tiny colony on the empty sands outside Jaffa's city walls. Led by a controversial and charismatic preacher, they believed they could hasten the Second Coming of Jesus Christ by encouraging Jewish resettlement of Palestine. Today, all that remains of the tiny colony - located between Jaffa and the Florentin neighborhood - are four and a half wooden...

The Nov. 28 New York Times article about the efforts of a few pro-Israel activists to shut down the Daily Planet for its publication of reader contributions critical of that nation's policies provided a fair introduction to the story but failed to fully elucidate the nature of the campaign. Though the first stirrings of this censorship campaign began several years ago, it did not begin in earnest until this year, when PR professional Jim Sinkinson began a more organized and deliberate campaign to intimidate advertisers. The Planet first alerted its readership to Sinkinson's efforts in a March 19 editorial. The...

Hamas: 1 Israel Soldier Equals 1,000 Soldiers From Palestine By Herb Brandon Israel News Agency Jerusalem ---- December 1, 2009 ..... The Israel State Prosecutor’s office confirmed today that Israel will free up to 980 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. Though the news was excellent for the Shalit family, it did very little for the pride of the Islamic terror group Hamas and those seeking to live in a state called Palestine. "Sadly, we must beg of those in Israel for over 1,000 of our brave brothers to return to Gaza," a Palestinian journalist told...

One Palestinian militant was killed and three were wounded Monday night in a mysterious explosion in a car that drove west of Gaza city, eyewitnesses and medics said. The witnesses said that four militants were riding in a minibus in Shatti refugee camp west of Gaza City when the explosion wrecked the bus. Sources said that the dead militant was a member of Islamic Jihad (Holy War) and that the minibus was full of explosives which detonated due to technical problem Gaza emergency chief Mo'aweya Hassanein confirmed the casualties, adding that the four were taken to Shifa Hospital in Gaza...

Israel, December 1, 2009 by Ari Bussel Israel’s Prime Minister has a viral flu, prompting his doctor to order cessation of activities for a second day in a row. The prevalent attitude is expressed in the following remark: “What type of flu does PM Netanyahu have? The Shalit Flu (about to exchange close to a thousand terrorists to bring a soldier back home to his family and country), the Swine Flu (to which several high-risk patients with other illnesses succumbed in recent days) or the Iranian Flu?” Shalit, Swine Flu, Iran – and Israel’s Prime Minister is busy, so it...

Sweden, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, is pushing the EU to make an official statement next week backing both a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood and also the division of Jerusalem, a draft resolution obtained exclusively by Israel’s Haaretz newspaper shows. EU foreign ministers may now make a declaration along such lines at a meeting on December 7. It would be the first significant foreign policy initiative following the creation of a de facto EU foreign ministry under the terms of the Lisbon Treaty which came into effect today. Israel is still reeling from the...

This week a senior respected Israeli analyst asked me to look back and decide, "Are we seeing the worst crisis in US-Israel relations? Is this the worst ever administration from Israel's perspective?" Also this week an Israeli minister termed President Obama's administration "awful," and an Israeli political activist was quoted in Israel's largest circulation paper as saying, "The Obama regime is anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic." To all, I respond with the strongest possible retorts: balderdash, tripe, silliness and stupidity! There are other serious ideological problems with this US administration which results in rock-bottom popularity for the US president in Israel but...

  Being a leftist Anti-Zionist means not only never having to say you are sorry, such as when you get your facts all wrong.  It also means that you have an obligation to represent yourself as a victim of harassment.   Armchair martyrdom is as fundamental a part of leftist ideology as anti-Americanism and hatred of Israel.In his now-famous essay from July, 1976, “The Intelligent Co-ed’s Guide to America,” Thomas Wolfe wrote about how desperately American academics wish to feel persecuted.  A pretense of being persecuted today seems to do wonders both for their ego and for their web traffic.  The...

WASHINGTON – The UN is currently marking the historic date of November 29 1947, the day in which it approved the partition plan separating Israel into two states – Jewish and Arabic. But while in Israel the date is celebratory, as it marks the end of the British mandate and the beginning of independent rule, the UN headquarters in New York and Geneva are holding ceremonies of mourning and solidarity with the Palestinian people.

The Foreign Ministry warned Tuesday morning that a Swedish-led attempt to have the European Union recognize eastern Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian Authority will backfire. The draft proposal, expected to be placed on the EU table next week, would damage efforts to reach peace with the PA and damage the EU’s standing as a trusted entity, ministry spokesman Yossi Levy said.

Israel is sticking to its guns on a demand the United States allow it to integrate its own electronic warfare suite in Lockheed Martin's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, even though the Americans have given the green light to install other Israeli systems in the jet. Israel wants to buy an initial batch of 25 F-35s, enough for one squadron, in fiscal 2012 and would like to acquire another 50. The U.S. Department of Defense and Maryland-based Lockheed Martin, the prime contractor in the program, want to finalize a contract with Israel as soon as possible. The main holdup has been...

Growing up in Kuwait, I had the best of everything. My father owned a successful construction company, and provided us five children with amenities like piano lessons, swimming, calligraphy and trips all over the world. Although we were Muslims like everyone else, we were totally secular and my father always aimed to shield us from religious people whom he described as crazies. I grew up being told that Israelis and Jews were the lowest type of creature in existence, put on Earth only to kill us Arabs. In math class the teacher would say, “If one rocket killed X number...

Jerusalem – Dr. Neve Gordon of Israel’s Ben Gurion University is known as one of the most radical academic Palestinian sympathizers. However, his activities appear to have peaked this year with a call for an anti-Israel boycott, and revelations that he hosted a convicted Palestinian sentenced to house arrest. Despite being the chairman of the political science department at Israel’s Ben Gurion University, Gordon wrote an L.A. Times op-ed calling for a worldwide boycott of Israel, including Israeli universities, to achieve what he calls “ending our apartheid.“ Gordon’s call was widely seen as an anti-democratic attempt to undermine Israeli democracy...

Mohamed ElBaradei caps his contentious and ultimately failed 12-year stint as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency today, having spent many years enabling Iran's nuclear bids only to condemn them in his final days in office. Mr. ElBaradei combined his rebuke of Iran with his familiar calls for more negotiation, but we'll take his belated realism about Iran as his tacit admission that Dick Cheney and John Bolton have been right all along. Let's hope the education of the Obama Administration doesn't take as long. As if to underscore the point, yesterday the Iranian government ordered up 10 additional...

A Call for Help by Ari Bussel The Reform Movement in Israel looks to its American counterpart for help. In America, Reform Judaism is acceptable and prevalent. For anyone vaguely familiar with American Jewry, diversity is not surprising, stemming from the core foundations of America, its tolerance and freedoms it affords. Being a religious Jew has different meanings to different people. Jews can generally be divided between three main streams: Reform, Conservative and Orthodox. Even within a group, there are different shades. Things get further complicated since some Jews are not practicing, others inter-marry, yet others are removed by generational...

The fight against the muezzins - the pre-dawn, loud, mournful calls to prayer by Islamic prayer leaders, or recordings thereof - has reached the Knesset, where MK Aryeh Bibi (Kadima) is promoting a bill to silence them. Bibi says that the 4 a.m. call to prayer “wreaks havoc in Jerusalem,” awakening people in the middle of the night for no apparent reason. “There is no reason why they can’t do what they do in Turkey, Egypt and elsewhere,” Bibi told Arutz-7’s Hebrew newsmagazine, “and that is to have a ‘silent radio station’ which ‘awakens’ every day at 4 o'clock with...

After the Obama administration voiced "dismay" earlier this month at the decision by the Jerusalem municipality to approve 900 new housing units in the Jewish neighborhood of Gilo, straddling the Green Line, former housing minister Meir Sheetrit quipped that the White House seems to think that Jerusalem has been the capital of Israel since Camp David, not King David. US President Barack Obama. Photo: AP [file] Criticisms of Obama's earlier Cairo speech - which urged Arabs and Muslims to accept the reality of the Holocaust but not the Jews' historic claim to Jerusalem or the modern Zionist movement's century-long connection...

Many shook their heads in disbelief when senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat recently declared that if Israel didn't agree to a total settlement construction freeze, the Palestinians would seek UN recognition of a Palestinian state within the borders of the 1948 armistice lines. Even the European Union chairman said the process doesn't work that way. A state has to exist before it is recognized, not the other way around. And Israel still controlled the disputed areas. Similarly, while Palestinian insistence on a total freeze of settlement construction in advance of a resumption of negotiations may be viewed as a multi-layered...

Would Islamic activists really donate to a true "pro-Israel" organization?... For a growing Jewish political lobby group that claims to represent Americans “who support Israel and its desire for security as the Jewish homeland,” J Street seems to be advocating the very opposite of those sentiments. A look into J Street’s donor list and a quick perusal through the organization’s website clearly reveals a very questionable pro-Israel policy. According to the U.S. Federal Election Commission, donors to J Street’s political action committee (JStreet PAC) hail from forums aligned against Israel. J Street’s donors are affiliated with the National Iranian American...

It is an interesting exercise to question all the assumptions of American foreign policy for the last sixty years -- that is, for as long as we've provided the defense umbrella for Europe, the free countries of Asia, and for our allies in the Middle East, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia. That's after all the meaning of Pax Americana. We do the work, they do the bitching. Obama and the Left don't have the least inkling of the vital peace-keeping role of America as the cop on the world beat for the last six decades. They hardly understand the idea...

Last week, Oliver Miles, Britain’s former ambassador to Libya and a pillar of the country’s foreign policy establishment, put his thinking cap on, put pen to paper and came up with the following thoughts in a column in the Independent newspaper about the presence of the esteemed historians Martin Gilbert and Lawrence Freedman on the board of the UK’s latest Iraq Inquiry: “Both Gilbert and Freedman are Jewish, and Gilbert at least has a record of active support for Zionism,” he said. “…if and when the inquiry is accused of a whitewash, such handy ammunition will be available. Membership should...

...the president’s promising [Middle East] peace initiative has unraveled... Peacemaking takes strategic skill. But we see no sign that President Obama and Mr. Mitchell were thinking more than one move down the board. The president went public with his demand for a full freeze on settlements before securing Israel’s commitment. And he and his aides apparently had no plan for what they would do if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said no. ...What has President Obama learned from the experience so he can improve his diplomatic performance generally?...

Member of Netanyahu's party: Obama regime is 'worst ever' for Israel; Vice PM cancels lecture after rightist protest. Rank-and-file Likudniks and lawmakers in the ruling Likud party lambasted the Obama administration at a gathering on Saturday, in response to Israel's decision to temporarily freeze construction in West Bank settlements. MK Dani Danon organized the meeting after Culture and Sports Minister Limor Livnat (Likud) launched a verbal attack over the matter on U.S. President Barack Obama's administration, which she branded "terrible." While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately distanced himself from her comments, the activists at Saturday's conference leveled further criticism at...

Lebanese-born activist Fadi Madi says he started the groups Lebanon View and Palestine Intifada to garner support for a new "intifada," or uprising, against Israel... "As an international movement ... our faith in our common humanity leads us to call on all parties to respect and uphold international law and fundamental human rights to bring an end to the Israeli military occupation of Palestinian territories since 1948 and pursue a just and lasting peace. The march can only succeed if it arouses the conscience of humanity."

<p>President Obama's new anti-Semitism czar serves on the board of a controversial Israel-lobby group accused of working against the Jewish state, while her writings suggest Israel's policies are to blame for anti-Semitism... She previously headed the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, an umbrella U.S. Jewish organization... serves on the board of J Street, a lobby group that is mostly led by left-leaning Israelis and that receives funds from Arab and Muslim Americans... also supports talks with Hamas... [J Street] opposes sanctions against Iran and is harshly critical of Israeli offensive anti-terror military actions... Powerline blog previously documented how far-leftist Israelis are influential in [its] leadership, including former Knesset Speaker Avrum Burg... [and] Mideast expert Henry Siegman [who] has compared Israel to apartheid South Africa... Rosenthal had also... claimed a mainstream Israel-solidarity rally in Washington, D.C., was being "dominated by narrow, ultraconservative views of what it means to be pro-Israel." In a letter criticizing Rosenthal's depiction of the event, Anti-Defamation League chairman Abe Foxman noted that rally, which took place at the height of the Palestinian intifada, or terrorist war, included speakers Sen. Harry Reid, New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Israeli minister Natan Sharansky. Foxman pointed out the speakers lobbied for peace... The Weekly Standard, meanwhile, took note of quotes in which Rosenthal seemed to imply Israeli policies were to blame for anti-Semitism. "I'll tell you point-blank: I have two grown daughters, and I didn't think that my kids were going to have to deal with some of the same anti-Semitism that I did as the daughter of Holocaust survivors," Rosenthal said. "It's a scary time, with people losing the ability to differentiate between a Jew, any Jew, and what's going on in Israel."</p>

World powers united in condemnation of Iran's nuclear activities yesterday in a rare show of international consensus on the threat posed by Tehran's continued nuclear defiance. China and Russia joined the United States, Britain, France and Germany in backing an International Atomic Energy Agency resolution censuring Iran and ordering it to halt construction of a secret uranium enrichment plant. The resolution, the first since February 2006, passed with 25 votes and six abstentions. Only Malaysia, Venezuela and Cuba supported Iran. ...China, which has shared Moscow's reluctance to take a hard line with Tehran, was reportedly persuaded to support the resolution...

"Another symptom of the U.S.' political collapse, [also linked] to our burning region... "Abu Mazen counted on his friendship with the U.S. when he [tried to] persuade its leaders to pressure Israel to at least freeze the Zionist settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories... "Another collapse was in Somalia... The Somali president, whom the U.S. considers [politically] desirable, promised that he would regain control of the capital Mogadishu from the armed Islamic movements. This is a news item that should be noticed, because it is a man-bites-dog situation. It makes sense to see the end of the attacks by these...

Ray Hanania is a compassionate and, in fact, delightful person, with rare insight into the aspirations and failings of Palestinians and Israelis. In the eyes of many, that alone ought to disqualify him from consideration as a leader in the Holy Land. Add to that, the fact that the acclaimed journalist also happens to be a first-generation Palestinian-American married to a Jewish woman, as well as a stand-up comedian who has appeared alongside Jewish comics, and the self-destructively polarized electorate of the Holy Land will need to expend not a whiff of thought in dismissing him out of hand. Which...

Tags: Israel News, Jewish World "And the Rat Laughed" is an exquisitely wrought meditation on the present and future of Holocaust memory in Israel after the survivors are gone. Integrating story, legend, poetry, dream, science fiction and diary, Semel's novel begins in 1999 and pivots on testimony given by a nameless Tel Aviv grandmother to her 12-year-old granddaughter interviewing her for a school project. When she was 5, the grandmother was hidden in a potato pit by an anti-Semitic Polish couple who were paid to do so. The eponymous rat whom she befriends is her sole companion in the darkness...

Despite the fragmented and incomplete historical record, experts pretty much agree that some popular beliefs about Jewish history simply don’t hold up: there was no sudden expulsion of all Jews from Jerusalem in A.D. 70, for instance. What’s more, modern Jews owe their ancestry as much to converts from the first millennium and early Middle Ages as to the Jews of antiquity... Books challenging biblical and conventional history continually pop up, but what distinguishes the dispute over origins from debates about, say, the reality of the exodus from Egypt or the historical Jesus, is that it is so enmeshed in...

"We feel at home here and among our brothers ... we're going to be together until the end," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez during a visit to Latin America on Wednesday. Both leaders roundly denounced US "imperialism," and Chavez also called Israel "a murderous arm of the Yankee empire."

Vienna - Iran will limit its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in reaction to a resolution the organization passed censuring the Islamic Republic, the country's ambassador at the IAEA said in Vienna on Friday. Iran will limit its cooperation to a legally mandated minimum and stop granting voluntary access to nuclear sites, Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh said. "This is the minimum consequence," he said, without elaborating on further steps Tehran might take. The IAEA Board of Governors earlier Friday censured Iran for secretly building a new enrichment plant, calling for Iran to halt construction and answer open...

A day after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced that the security cabinet had approved a partial moratorium on building in the West Bank, Sports and Culture Minister Limor Livnat launched an unprecedented attack on US President Barack Obama. Speaking at a Likud activists' meeting in Beersheba, Livnat said that Israel had "fallen into the hands of a horrible American administration." Minister of Culture and Sport Limor Livnat. Photo: Ariel Jerozolimski SLIDESHOW: Israel & Region | World "The administration isn't what it once was; it is harder [on us]," she added. Livnat offered her spin on Netanyahu's decision to freeze the...

There are two possible explanations for the housing construction freeze Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu just announced: The freeze could be Israel's "pound of flesh" to facilitate the launching of a critical operation to thwart Iran's nuclear weapons program. Or the freeze could no more than an attempt to appease the international community in general and the Obama Administration in particular. I fervently hope that the former is the case. Then again, I also hoped that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was retreating from the Gaza Strip as part of a secret plan worked out with America to act against Iran rather...

(IsraelNN.com) The Zionist Freedom Alliance of California has been circulating a video on the internet this past week exposing former Member of Knesset Azmi Bishara denying the existence of a “Palestinian” nation. The video was recorded years prior to Bishara entering Israel's parliament in 1996 as head of the Arab Balad party. Bishara, who resigned from the Knesset and fled the country in 2007 just when Israeli Security Services were ready to arrest him on charges of treason and espionage, is shown in the video reiterating his Arab nationalist position that there is no such thing as a “Palestinian” people....