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The Palestinian flag was raised at the U.N. in a ceremony attended by President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas, who said it was "a most emotional and proud day..." ...Speaking to the crowd, Abbas dedicated the ceremony to “the martyrs, the prisoners and the wounded, and to those who gave their lives while trying to raise this flag”. Hundreds of Palestinians assembled in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, where they watched the flag-raising on a large screen set up in Yasser Arafat Square. “The mood is festive,” reported Al Jazeera’s Imtiaz Tyab, adding that “families sang along...

Demonstrating a new level of tension with Israel, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority declared Wednesday that it was no longer bound by the Oslo Peace Accords and subsequent agreements that formed the basis for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In his annual General Assembly speech, Mr. Abbas accused Israel of having violated these pacts, which date back two decades and outline security, economic and other arrangements in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel during and after the 1967 war. He asserted that there was no reason that the Palestinians should remain faithful to them as long...

His politics are that of principled rebellion. Between 2005 and 2010, when Labour was in government, Corbyn voted against party lines 25% of the time. Known for his anti-war politics, he has publicly supported both the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Irish republicans. In 1996 the Guardian editorialized that his ill-timed meeting with Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein made him “a fool whom the Labour Party would probably be better off without.” Now, with the party in disarray, Corbyn has come out of obscurity to become Labour’s next leader — and British Jewry is worried. In a recent Survation poll, 67%...

The United Nations voted in favor of allowing the Palestinian flag to be raised at its headquarters in New York. Unsurprisingly, the resolution passed with an overwhelming majority, with 119 countries voting in favor, 8 voting against, and 45 abstaining. Among the countries that voted against were Israel, Canada, and the United States. The draft resolution presented last week to the General Assembly would allow the flags of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and of the Holy See to be hoisted alongside those of the 193 member states. Both the Vatican and "Palestine" have non-member observer status at the United Nations....

President Reuven Rivlin said during talks with settler leaders on Monday that Israel had a "right" to build settlements in the West Bank, his office said in a statement. "I love the land of Israel with all my heart. I have never and will never give up on this land. For me, our right to this land is not a matter of political debate. It is a basic fact of modern Zionism," Rivlin said, For Rivlin the "land of Israel" includes the West Bank, where Jewish settlements are considered illegal under international law. "We must not give anyone the sense...

The United States said Thursday it was concerned by the number of illegal Palestinian residential structures Israel demolished this month in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. “We are also very troubled by the recent escalation of demolitions and evictions, which include the destruction of dozens of structures and the displacement of over 150 people in the West Bank and east Jerusalem this month alone,” US State Department Spokesperson John Kirby said on Thursday. “Such demolitions and evictions are harmful and provocative and indicative of a damaging trend, particularly given settlement-related activity and continued construction in the West Bank and...

File this one under “UN Sleaze,” or perhaps under “UNRWA’s Use of Dead Infants to Defend and Abet Terrorists.” Though even that may be putting it too mildly.In the run-up to next month’s annual opening of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, the latest Israel-trashing report from the propaganda mills of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has been released. This one’s a doozy, summed up by an UNRWA press release [1] dated August 8 with the headline: “INFANT MORTALITY RATE RISES IN GAZA FOR THE FIRST TIME IN...

Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken argued against the imposition of jury-awarded damages to the victims of Palestinian terrorist attacks in 2002-2004. The jury award of more than $200 million in actual damages to ten families with three dozen injured, maimed, or killed is vigorously opposed by the Obama Administration. Despite proclaiming its sympathy for the victims, the Administration seeks to void the damage award because, according to Blinken, “the amount represents a significant share of the Palestinian Authority’s annual budget. The loss of so large an amount would seriously infringe upon the PA’s ability to carry out its functions....

Western democracies supporting this disingenuous state of affairs should hang their heads in shame. Unless they engage in more straight talking and less doublespeak-- any negotiated two-state solution will remain pure fantasy The well-publicised “secret meeting” recently held in Jordan between Israel’s newest negotiations Minister Silvan Shalom and perennial PLO chief negotiator Saeb Erekat is but the latest in a 20 years old meaningless talkfest that has seen little tangible signs of ending the 100 years old Jewish-Arab conflict—despite two offers made by Israel in 2000/2001 and 2008 and rejected by the Palestinian Authority. Talks have been conducted on Israel’s...

UNRWA’s latest appeal for more than $100 million in special additional funding should be treated in the same way as the boy who cried wolf The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, which serves Palestinian “refugees,” is constantly complaining of budget deficits. No matter how much money it sucks out of the United States, European Union countries and other donors, it is never enough. It is always pleading for more money, which it is continuing to do today with another one of its special appeals. It is time to stop throwing good money after bad to this dysfunctional UN...

Article written by: Justin Amler is a South African born, Melbourne based writer who has lived in South Africa, New Zealand and Australia. Such is the truth about the way Israel is looked upon by the nations of the world - Read below: Israel does not have a right to defend itself. It has no right to protect its people. It has no right to freedom and it has no right to peace. It has no right to build houses. It has no right to use its water resources, and it has no right to grow crops. It also has...

JERUSALEM — Muslim militants, evoking a jihadist pretext and backed by rogue states, are attacking vital Western interests. The president of the United States fails to convince Europe to join a coalition to confront the aggressors. No, this is not President Bush versus Saddam Hussein, but Thomas Jefferson versus the Barbary pirates of North Africa, who were plundering Western ships and enslaving their crews. When Jefferson proposed creating a multilateral force to stop the pirates, Europe went on bribing them. "This is money thrown away," Jefferson concluded, before ordering the Navy into action. On Aug. 1, 1801, the first American...

Ein el Helwe Palestinian camp, Lebanon: This is one of the questions ricocheting between Palestinians in Syria and Lebanon, posed also by ISIS (Da’ish) operatives, as the hot summer months and plummeting quality of existence raise tensions in the refugee camps and social gatherings. With its resilience, on-the-ground “achievements”, adaptability, global franchising, copy-cat knock-offs, chameleon-like adaptations, combinations and permutations, and slick honing of medium and message, ISIS is offering oppressed and desperate populations in this region both hope and fantasy for escaping their deepening misery. The dream is to escape abject poverty and indignity by any means necessary, and joining...

In 2000, speaking in a mosque in Palestinian-held Ramallah, Yasser Arafat declared, “No one will succeed in removing us from our land, including Jerusalem, and the Palestinian flag will fly from the Temple Mount and from the churches in Jerusalem.” Arafat could say that because he had won the Vatican's support for his terroristic strategy. On June 26th, 2015, the Vatican signed its first treaty with the “State of Palestine”. It is the logical conclusion of a long path. When the pontiff John Paul II ascended to the Temple Mount in 2000, Judaism’s most holy site, he wasn’t welcomed by...

VATICAN CITY (AP) -- The Vatican signed a treaty with the "State of Palestine" on Friday, saying it hoped its legal recognition of the state would help stimulate peace with Israel and that the treaty itself would serve as a model for other Mideast countries. Vatican Foreign Minister Paul Gallagher and his Palestinian counterpart, Riad al-Malki, signed the treaty at a ceremony inside the Vatican.

Accusations of anti-Semitism were leveled against a Muslim preacher on Wednesday, who revived Medieval blood libels against Jews in a sermon he made on the Temple Mount earlier. The preacher, Sheikh Khaled al-Mughrabi, who teaches religious classes on the mount and is an employee of the Waqf Temple Mount oversight organization, was accused of being an anti-Semite for the comments he made to his congregants. Palestinian Media Watch translated a lecture that had been published online, in which Mughrabi accused Jews of the age-old European anti-Semitic claim of slaughtering gentile children and draining their blood for use in Passover matzot....

By Joel Leyden Israel News AgencyJerusalem, Israel — June 4, 2015 … US President Obama appeared in a prime-time interview on Israel’s Channel 2 TV, accusing Netanyahu’s government of acting too often out of fear of terrorism. “I think Prime Minister Netanyahu is somebody who’s predisposed to think of security first; to think perhaps that peace is naive; to see the worst possibilities as opposed to the best possibilities in Arab partners or Palestinian partners,” Obama said. “And so I do think that, right now, those politics and those fears are driving the government’s response.” As Obama was bashing Netanyahu...

President Obama took a step toward a tougher line with Israel in an interview released Tuesday, raising the possibility that the U.S. will allow a United Nations vote on issues related to the Palestinians if the two sides make no meaningful movement toward peace. In an interview with an Israeli television station, Obama noted that his administration has “up until this point” quashed such efforts at the U.N. while insisting that the Israelis and Palestinians must negotiate a resolution. But he said it is a challenge for the U.S. to keep demanding that the Palestinians negotiate in good faith if...

Let the shoot-off with the reluctant and recalcitrant Obama administration begin Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s appointment of former United Nations ambassador Dore Gold to head up Israel’s Foreign Ministry - ensures that Israel will be confronting President Obama as he continues attempting to deviate from the commitments made to Israel by his predecessor President Bush in a letter dated 14 April to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (Bush Commitments). The Bush Commitments acknowledged the risks involved in Israel unilaterally disengaging from Gaza and evacuating the 8000 Jews who had established 21 settlements there over the preceding 35 years whilst...

On Saturday evening, November 8, 2003, I addressed a free-standing feminist “networking” conference of mainly African-American and Hispanic-American women at Barnard College. The conference was sponsored by WERISE (Women Empowered through Revolutionary Ideas Supporting Enterprise), which was described as a grassroots, multi-cultural, multi-generational, and multi-disciplinary organization for women in the arts. The women ranged in age from 20 to 65 and were dressed in corporate business suits, colorful African and ethnic attire, and youthful jeans. A few days before the conference one of the organizers asked me about my most recent book and I told her it was The New...