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Democratic vice-presidential candidate, Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE), has a pro-Israel reputation and, in a recent interview with Shalom television, even identified himself as "a Zionist," but it is open to question what the late Menachem Begin would have to say about that designation for the Delaware senator. According to reports in the Jerusalem Post by Moshe Zak and another in Time magazine, Messrs Biden and Begin had a serious confrontation in the summer of 1982 in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the issue of Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. According to Mr. Zak, a former editor of...

When Israel’s Prime Minister Told Joe Biden: I Am Not A Jew With Trembling KneesPosted By Ronn Torossian On April 2, 2015 @ 12:20 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments While the Obama Administration continues their pressure on Israel, for at least Joe Biden, it is not the first time that there has been animosity with an Israeli leader.  The reality is that while some of the names change, this conflict is about Israel’s refusal to surrender to a Palestinian Arab enemy who seeks to destroy the Jewish nation.The United States is wrong to pressure Israel – yet,...

INSIGHT-Has Iran ended Israel's Begin Doctrine? By Dan Williams JERUSALEM Nov 7 (Reuters) - Menachem Begin did not pull his punches. In 1981, as work neared completion on an Iraqi nuclear reactor that Israel believed would produce plutonium for warheads, the Israeli prime minister dispatched eight F-16 bombers to destroy the plant. Begin later said that the raid was proof his country would "under no circumstances allow the enemy to develop weapons of mass-destruction against our people". The event defined a strategy that became known as the "Begin Doctrine" and is best summed up by the phrase "the best defence...

In a conversation with Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, after a sharp confrontation in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the subject of the settlements, Begin defined himself as “a proud Jew who does not tremble with fear” when speaking with foreign statesmen. During that committee hearing, at the height of the Lebanon War, Sen. John Biden (Delaware) had attacked Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria and threatened that if Israel did not immediately cease this activity, the US would have to cut economic aid to Israel. When the senator raised his voice and banged twice on the table with his...

Twenty-five years ago, the leaders of Israel and Egypt – Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat – signed a treaty that ended decades of warfare. The treaty and its implementation are far from perfect, but the framework of peace has been preserved despite differences between Cairo and Jerusalem. Advertisement In the intervening decades, a great deal has been written about this singular accomplishment. Unfortunately, some of these accounts are misleading or based on myths. As a result, the "Camp David formula," to which former president Jimmy Carter attributes the success of the negotiations, is often seen as the key to a...

On the 90th anniversary of Menachem Begin's birth - a fond recollection of Shabbat in his company The weather in Jerusalem was unusually warm and naturally breezy that Shabbat afternoon, adding spice to the smell of poplar and pine that always fills Rehavia in high summer. Under a blue sky streaked with tangerine wisps of cirrus that heralded the onset of sunset, tourists, soldiers, yeshiva boys, neighbors, and even casual passers by, lined up at the prime minister's gate waiting their turn to enter. Menachem and Aliza Begin were hosting an open house, a tradition they had maintained for the...

One of former New York City Mayor Ed Koch's last interviews before his death on Friday came in Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire. The most interesting part of the Q&A came when he was asked who was what living person he "most despise[s]." ... Which living person do you most despise? Former president Jimmy Carter.

This Friday marks the 15th anniversary of the death of Menachem Begin. He died of a broken heart on March 9, 1992, vilified as a warmonger by the Left and cast off by right-wing purists after he traded the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for a peace treaty with Egypt in 1979. The purists also berated Begin for his 1978 Camp David offer of five years of limited self-government to the Palestinian Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, to be followed by final-status negotiations between Israel and a Jordanian-Palestinian negotiating team - a proposal the Arabs rejected. Begin would have been...

Menachem Begin is today widely regarded as one of the most effective and far-sighted statesmen in Israeli history. At one end of the political spectrum, he is fondly remembered for surrendering the entire Sinai peninsula to Egypt and uprooting Israeli communities there. At the other end of the spectrum, he is hailed for taking strong action against PLO terrorists and Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor. But when he was first elected prime minister in 1977, Begin was the object of an unprecedented frenzy of hatred from the international news media. He was called a terrorist, a fascist, a lunatic. To explain...

A recent study conducted by the Jewish Electorate Institute found that 67% of American Jewish respondents planned to vote for Joe Biden and 30% for President Trump. Eighty-eight percent of those surveyed claimed to be pro-Israel and 64% said Israel is an important election issue. Most ranked Biden higher on U.S.-Israel relations, the handling of anti-Semitism, and ensuring the security of the Jewish community. The survey results are surprising, given Trump’s stellar record on Jews and Israel. American Jews must reconsider, for Biden’s record and positions on critical topics belie these perceptions. Record on IsraelBiden’s record should dispel any notions...

JERICHO, West Bank - Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Israel on Sunday for treatment of a worsening case of COVID-19, the Palestine Liberation Organization said. Witnesses said Erekat, 65, was on a stretcher when he was placed inside an Israeli ambulance outside his home in Jericho, in the occupied West Bank. Erekat, who is also secretary-general of the PLO, disclosed on Oct. 8 that he had contracted coronavirus. There is heightened concern over Erekat’s vulnerability to the illness because he underwent a lung transplant in the United States in 2017. “Following his...

About 1,000 members of Syrian militant groups deployed by Turkey to support the Azerbaijani advance in the Nagorno-Karabakh region have laid down their arms and refused to participate in hostilities, Armenian media outlets and military-affiliated sources claimed. They insist that Syrian militants were just used as cannon fodder and did not receive their promised money. According to sources loyal to the Syrian opposition, the number of Turkish proxies that died in the war with Armenia has exceeded 110. Earlier, reports appeared from Syrian sources , claiming that about 400 members of Turkish-backed militant groups deployed in Syria’s northwest had refused...

A convicted murderer who helped to stop the London Bridge terror attack last November will have his sentence cut after the Queen intervened. Steven Gallant, 42, was on day release at an event for reformed prisoners in Fishmongers' Hall when Usman Khan began his attack. Gallant, armed only with a Narwhal tusk, helped to restrain Khan, who was wearing a fake suicide vest and was armed with two knives.

A “major” cyber attack targeted at least two unspecified Iranian government agencies recently, announced Iran’s National Computer Emergency Response Team (Maher) on Wednesday, according to Iranian media. “The announcement was made after reports of a large cyber attack spread on social media. The team stressed that the relevant authorities are investigating the incident,” reported The Jerusalem Post. Maher denied that there was a widespread attack on any agencies so far, outside of the two that were mentioned. No party has claimed responsibility for the attack, and Iranian government officials have not said whether it was domestic or foreign.

A history teacher who had allegedly shown caricatures of the Prophet Muhammed in class was decapitated and his assailant shot dead by French police as they tried to arrest him on Friday, police and prosecutors said. French anti-terror prosecutors said they were investigating the assault which happened on the outskirts of Paris at around 5:00 pm local time near a school in Conflans Saint-Honorine, a western suburb of the French capital. Le Parisien and Reuters reported the teacher recently gave a class on freedom of expression and showed cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, which are considered by Muslims to be...

The Knesset voted to approve the normalization agreement with the United Arab Emirates Thursday night. The agreement was approved by a margin of 80-13. All 13 votes against approving the deal came from the Joint List. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu praised the agreement before the vote, saying that his foreign policy has changed the discourse on peace in the Middle East and brought Israel closer to the Gulf Arab states. “The new order says you don’t wait for the Palestinians to make peace,” Netanyahu said. “This deal brings Arab and Muslim countries closer to us, who have formed a united...

China has again put its military in a “high state of alert” after two US Navy warships recently sailed through the Taiwan Strait. Late last week the US destroyer John McCain sailed near the disputed Paracel Islands administered and militarized by China, upon which the PLA military warned the US to “halt its provocations”. The latest incident was Wednesday, when the Arleigh Burke class guided-missile destroyer USS Barry passed through the strait. Washington was quick to emphasize that it was a “routine transit” like others toward the purpose of peaceful ‘freedom of navigation’ operations, while Beijing once again denounced the...

Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s ties to a leading anti-Israel group are generating scrutiny among Jewish voters, particularly in Florida, a perennial swing state populated by a large number of staunchly pro-Israel voters. As California’s attorney general and then as U.S. senator, Harris forged a relationship with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), one of the nation’s top anti-Israel groups and advocates for boycotts of the Jewish state. CAIR advised Harris on community issues during her time in California politics, and she later offered the group her "gratitude and admiration" in a 2018 personal letter to the group. Harris’s association...

How about all the damage caused by the China virus and Islamic terror? “As a nation, we can only truly thrive when every one of us has the opportunity to thrive. Our painful history of slavery has evolved into structural racism and bias built into and permeating throughout our democratic and economic institutions.” That was California Gov. Gavin Newsom in a September 30 signing statement for Assembly Bill 3121 which “establishes a nine-member task force to inform Californians about slavery and explore ways the state might provide reparations.” For all its faults, California was never part of the Confederacy, and...

In a secret operation that took place last week and was made known to the public on Tuesday, IDF Special Forces crossed the border into the demilitarized zone between Israel and Syria and destroyed two outposts belonging to the Syrian army. The operation was carried out following Syria’s continued violation of the disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria from 1974, which determines that a designated buffer zone between the borders would only be occupied by a special UN force called the Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF). Recently, however, the Syrian military returned to the buffer zone in the Golan Heights and...