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Opposition leader and Zionist Union chief Isaac Herzog agreed to far reaching concessions on the eve of the 2015 election, a report by Channel 10 on Sunday revealed. Herzog, who prior to the election was seen as a viable candidate for Prime Minister, signed a secret letter of understanding with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, agreeing to a number of long-standing Arab demands. Among the subjects covered in the letter are the division of Jerusalem, the future disposition of Judea and Samaria, and the so-called “right of return” for Arabs who left the country in 1948. According to the agreement,...

Opposition leader and Zionist Union chief Isaac Herzog agreed to far reaching concessions on the eve of the 2015 election, a report by Channel 10 on Sunday revealed. Herzog, who prior to the election was seen as a viable candidate for Prime Minister, signed a secret letter of understanding with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, agreeing to a number of long-standing Arab demands. Among the subjects covered in the letter are the division of Jerusalem, the future disposition of Judea and Samaria, and the so-called “right of return” for Arabs who left the country in 1948. According to the agreement,...

Zionist Union chief Isaac Herzog’s spokesman Ofer Newman stirred up controversy Saturday night with provocative comments posted on Facebook targeting Jews living in Judea and Samaria. The post came after the airing of the TV special “The Settlers”, inspiring Newman to publicly air his feelings on the Jewish communities over the Green Line. Launching into a typed tirade, Newman labelled Jews in Judea and Samaria as “lowly murderers” who “built swimming pools on the blood of murdered children.” The special, said Newman, “is painful and terrifying proof of this simple fact: the people who are destroying our future have won...

The Saudi prince who seems to have won a family power struggle is meeting with U.S. officials this week -- some of them the same officials who are concerned his reign could be ruinous and hurt the regional security U.S. officials crave. Officials in the national security establishment believe Saudi Arabia is at a crossroads, and that if the prince doesn't succeed, now and later as king, there could be chaos in the Kingdom. "It's him or it's ISIS," said one Saudi expert who asked that his name not be used. Mohammed Bin Salman, Saudi Arabia's 30-year-old deputy crown prince,...

The Guards, particularly the Quds Brigade, now numbering about 15,000, are in the forefront of projecting Iranian influence. __ Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have been much in the news in the past few years. They are at various times presented by Western media as a paramilitary force rampaging in a disorderly Middle East, entrepreneurial businessmen who may be useful allies of President Hassan Rouhani as he attempts to open up the economy, and a zealous ideological force helping Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in his quest to sustain the Islamic Republic. A look at the Guards from their inception reveals that all...

An Egyptian court has sentenced former Islamist president Mohamed Morsi to life in prison in an espionage trial in which six of his co-defendants were handed death penalties. The court acquitted Morsi of charges of having supplied Qatar with classified documents but sentenced him to life for leading an unlawful organization, his lawyer Abdel Moneim Abdel Maksoud said. The ousted president was also convicted of having “stolen secret documents concerning state security” and handed another 15-year jail term, the lawyer added. …

TEL AVIV – As the debate over Donald Trump’s proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border continues to dominate the presidential race, Israel is reportedly planning to move ahead with a massive above and underground concrete barrier along the entire border with the Gaza Strip. The barrier was revealed on Thursday in a story splashed across the cover of Yedioth Aharonot, Israel’s largest daily newspaper. The story was published with the approval of the country’s defense ministry. Yedioth’s affiliated website, Ynetnews, has the details:

A video-clip, titled "Thirst Has Gone, the Veins Are Moist, and the Reward Is Certain, If Allah Wills," dramatizes the preparations leading up to the June 8 terror attack in Tel Aviv. A young man is shown in his home, breaking the Ramadan fast with dates and dressing as a Jewish orthodox man, prior to arming himself with a submachine gun and spraying bullets in the restaurant. As the man lies dying, the words "Reward is certain, if Allah wills it" - part of a hadith associated with Ramadan - appear on the screen. The video was posted on the...

Last fall, amid concerns that the Iran deal would result in a financial windfall for Iran’s proxy terror organization, Hezbollah, Congress passed the Hezbollah International Financing Prevention Act. It mandated new, stringent sanctions against banks and other financial institutions doing business with Hezbollah.The bill passed unanimously in both the Senate and the House, leaving President Obama little choice but to sign it into law on December 18.Though less in the spotlight recently than the Islamic State, Lebanese-based Hezbollah has killed more Americans than any terror organization except al-Qaeda; has a vast global reach encompassing Europe, Africa, and Central and South...

Green cards, or Lawful Permanent Residency, puts immigrants on the path to citizenship and allows for lifetime residency, federal benefits, and work authorization. Included in the totals are refugees, who are required to apply for a green card after one year of residency in the U.S. Unlike other types of immigrants, refugees are immediately eligible for welfare benefits including Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), food stamps, and Medicaid Green Card Totals, FY09-FY14: Pakistan (102K), Iraq (102K), Bangladesh (90K), Iran (85K), Egypt (56K), Somalia (37K), Uzbekistan (30K), Turkey (26K), Morocco (25K), Jordan (25K), Albania (24K), Afghanistan (21K), Lebanon (20K), Yemen...

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."...