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Hamas is rejecting the Arab Peace Initiative and calling on Arab countries to stop promoting it. Mahmoud Al-Zahar, a member of Hamas' political bureau, on Thursday said the initiative is a threat to vital Palestinian interests. In an interview with the Al-Arabi Al Jadid newspaper, Zahar called on Arab countries not to promote the Arab Peace Initiative, explaining that it is merely a mechanism that will eliminate the idea of ​​establishing a Palestinian state, due to the fact that negotiations with Israel have proven to be a failure. The Arab peoples, Zahar continued, should first and foremost be concerned about...

Thirty-one-years ago, Islamic terrorists murdered the president of the American University of Beirut. Tonight, his son coaches a Golden State Warriors team on the verge of an NBA championship. “The president of the American University of Beirut, Malcolm H. Kerr, was killed here today when unidentified gunmen fired two bullets into his head while he was walking to his office,” Thomas Friedman reported from Beirut on January 18, 1984. The New York Times correspondent continued, “Dr. Kerr, carrying his briefcase in one hand and an umbrella in the other, stepped off the elevator on the third floor and walked about...

British MPs on Tuesday debated their country's funding of radical anti-Israel NGOs, with several legislators questioning why the government's aid agency is spending so much on extremist organizations which undermine Israeli democracy. The debate on foreign aid at the UK House of Commons was prompted by a petition which garnered nearly a quarter of a million signatures - well over the 150,000 needed to force a nonbinding parliamentary discussion on the issue. That petition calls for the UK government to end its policy of spending a fixed 0.7% of national income on overseas aid, and was launched after an expose...

Tel Aviv’s Sarona Market bills itself as the “heartbeat of Israeli culinary art.” Dozens of small restaurants and shops offer cheese, wine, bread, fish, olives, pasta, burgers – pretty much anything you can imagine and quite a bit that you probably cannot. I had a nice lunch there the other day. Exactly a week later two Palestinian men sat down in a café, ordered dessert, pulled handguns from beneath their dark suit jackets and began firing at everyone in sight. Four civilians were murdered and more than a dozen wounded before the killers were stopped – one shot by a security...

A Preoccupied Western Media Fails to Appreciate the Historic Revival of Ties Between Russia and Israel Putin Netanyahu.JPG The recent meeting in Moscow between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin marks a milestone in the continuing rapproachment between Israel and Russia. The growing engagement between these former bitter adversaries has attracted limited attention in the Western media, obsessed as it is with Israeli-Palestinian issues. In its prior embodiment as the Soviet Union, the Russian government armed and abetted Israel's enemies and had a central role in the worldwide campaign to delegitimize the Jewish state. Ironically, while...

Russia is not ruling out using its veto power at the United Nations Security Council to thwart anti-Israel resolutions, an unnamed Israeli diplomatic official involved in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to Moscow last week told the Israeli news site nrg. However, the official did qualify his statement, saying that the chances of Russia wielding its veto power in such a manner were very low. The official noted that the high level of respect Russian President Vladmir Putin demonstrated toward Netanyahu and his traveling entourage last week was unprecedented and indicated Russia’s deep desire to bolster its relationship with Israel....

Tens of thousands of Russian dual nationals are being effectively stripped of their Russian citizenship via a quiet policy of Russian consulates worldwide refusing to renew their passports. Under new regulations the consulates are enforcing, anyone seeking to renew a passport who was not registered as living in Russia on February 6, 1992, will be rejected, even if his or her passport had been renewed on previous occasions. It is unclear just how many people this new policy will affect. But it will certainly apply to thousands of Jews who emigrated from Russia after July 1, 1991 — the date...

A senior commander in Hamas's elite commando unit has handed himself over to Israel, according to sources inside Gaza cited by Channel 2. Reports of his surrender to Israel have been circulating in Gaza ever since the commander - a member the elite "Nahba" unit of Hamas's military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades - went missing several days ago. The Nahba spearheads Hamas's tunnel warfare capabilities, and is specifically tasked with capturing IDF soldiers. The missing commander is reportedly from Khan Younis in southern Gaza, and the son of a prominent judge on Hamas's Sharia religious court. According to...

This is Donald Trump on the latest horror killing in Israel. Read it, and you realize it's not the Trump you thought you knew. ​​I condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the outrageous terrorist shootings that took the lives of at least four innocent civilians and wounded at least twenty others in Tel Aviv yesterday. The Israeli security forces' investigation is ongoing, but some facts have already emerged — and they are grim. Just as fast as the condolences arrive from the civilized world is the praise arising out of the uncivilized one. Hamas praised the attack, calling the attackers...

www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1080695.html Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's candidate for Israeli ambassador to Washington, Dr. Michael Oren, supports a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and an evacuation of most of the settlements. Oren, a visiting Georgetown University professor, said in a lecture there last month, "The only alternative for Israel to save itself as a Jewish state is by unilaterally withdrawing from the West Bank and evacuating most of the settlements." Oren, a Middle East expert and senior researcher at Jerusalem's Shalem Center, gave a 90-minute lecture entitled "The Gaza Crisis from an Historical and Personal Perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."...

The efficacy and threat level of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel has heightened after Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, Former Israeli Ambassador to the US Dr. Michael Oren stated Monday—and allegedly justifies a withdrawal from Judea and Samaria. Israel’s economic, political, and cultural status has already been damaged existentially across the globe, Oren warned, due to the constant campaigns for “Israel Apartheid Week” on college campuses and European divestment from the Jewish state. […] Hamas consciously declared victory in its PR campaign against Israel several weeks ago, after it encouraged ordinary Gazans to become human shields,...

TEL AVIV – A top Islamic State-tied jihadist in the Gaza Strip claimed in an interview on Sunday that he “knows” that Omar Mateen, the Orlando club shooter, was a member of a terrorist organization. Abu al-Ayna al-Ansari, a Salafist movement senior official in the Gaza Strip, claimed he was told that Mateen was a member of one of the groups that fall under the jihadiya Salafiya franchise, meaning the network of loosely-based Salafist jihadist groups such as the Islamic State, Al-Qaeda, and the Al Nusra Front. Ansari made the claim in a pre-recorded interview to air in full tonight...

In his weekly lesson, which is broadcast on the Jordanian Yarmouk TV channel, Professor Ahmad Nofal of the University of Jordan said that the Holocaust happened because of the "treachery" of the Jews and that "most of Hitler's ministers who perpetrated the Holocaust were Jews." Citing Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy, he said that the number of Jews killed had been 600,000, and not six million. "They added a zero," he said. Nofal further claimed: "We, the Palestinian people, are the victims of your Nazism... Your Holocaust lasted six months, but ours has been going on for 68 years."

The Israeli Left has a serious flag problem. Well, a problem with the Israeli flag to be precise. The one with the six-pointed blue star. Not the ISIS flag. The Left intensely dislikes people who wave Israeli flags, although I think it would be okay with those radical anti-Trump protesters waving Mexican and Iranian flags. At the Israeli Left's own rallies, like one widely reported recently, one sees oodles of Stalinist red flags, lots of PLO flags, and sometimes one may see Hamas flags, but no Israeli flags. In a few famous cases, the Left's contempt for the flag goes...

Russian Prime Minister Dmitriy Medvedev has whipped up a storm on Russian social media for an off-the-cuff comment he made to a Russian pensioner last month. Medvedev was caught on camera telling an elderly woman in Crimea, a region annexed by Russia from Ukraine in spring 2014, that there was "no money left" in Russia's budget when he was asked why the state pension of 8,000 Russian rubles a month (around $125 a month) was not higher given the rising cost of living. "There just isn't any money now. When we find money, we'll make the adjustment," Medvedev replied to...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met with Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman and Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot upon the Prime Minister’s return from a state visit to Russia, Wednesday night, to discuss Israel’s response to the terror attack in Tel Aviv’s Sarona Market which left four dead and five wounded. In the wake of the attack, the Defense Ministry has frozen work entry visas for some 204 members of the attackers’ extended family. The attackers, identified as Khalid and Muhammad Musa Mehamara, both 21-years old, are cousins from the village of Yatta, south of Hevron. The two terrorists reportedly entered Israel...

TEL AVIV, Israel — Two Israeli battalions were being sent to the West Bank Thursday after two Palestinians fatally shot four people at a Tel Aviv mall. The buildup would include hundreds of troops in "accordance with situation assessments," according to the Israel Defence Forces statement. They would not give any more details on the numbers involved. Israel also revoked 83,000 permits for Palestinians living in Gaza and the occupied West Bank to travel abroad and attend Ramadan prayers in Jerusalem. In the past, restrictions on access to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, the holy site in the heart of Jerusalem's...

He is the head of the snake. There will be the usual roundups after Wednesday's bloodshed in Tel Aviv - four dead, more wounded from the hands of Palestinian Arab terrorists. Two men are said to be responsible for this act of savagery against innocent civilians enjoying a day at the Sarona Market in the heart of town. This was Israel's mistake. The mistake was to grant respectability to a group of thugs. They were captured. They are in custody and Israel's law enforcement and security services are in the process of finding out who they are, where they came...

Three people were killed in a shooting attack in Tel Aviv’s popular Sarona Market Wednesday evening. Four others were seriously hurt, with another person said to be in critical condition. Police said two gunmen were involved in the apparent terror attack. One shooting was said to have occurred inside the Sarona compound while another was reported on the adjacent Ha’arba’ah Street. Officials said both gunmen were shot and disarmed by security forces. One of the gunmen had reportedly fled the scene and was then shot and neutralized.

An Arab activist of the radical leftist NGO B'Tselem who filmed Elor Azariya shooting a wounded terrorist in Hevron in March testified against the soldier at the Jaffa military court on Wednesday morning. ..... Activist's son arrested by Azariya Azariya's lawyer Eyal Baserglick then questioned the Arab activist, revealing a connection between the shoemaker and Azariya. "Is it true that your 17-year-old son Aouni was arrested by the accused (Azariya) and the deputy platoon commander on 2.2.16, even before the incident?," asked Baserglick, mentioning a date in early February predating the incident by just over a month. Abu Shamsiyeh did...