Israel’s fourth-election-in-two-years : Bibi “facing for the first time two strong adversaries to his right”

Posted on December 20, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

JERUSALEM POST
Buckle up for the ugliest election Israel has ever known
by Yaakov Katz
December 22, 2020

Here is one thing that should be immediately clear: The next three months are going to be some of the ugliest in Israel’s history. It is true that the last two years were no picnic. Israel went through three election campaigns and two years of mudslinging and fighting between political parties that constantly failed to find a way to work together for the benefit of the true sovereign power in this country – the Israeli people. It is also true that Israel is divided like never before in recent history. The old Sephardi-Ashkenazi ethnicity card is thrown around once again, the Right continues to look down on the Left, and the Left continues to mock the Right. READ MORE

AL JAZEERA Israel to hold snap election in March, fourth in two years Israel’s parliament was dissolved on Wednesday after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fractured ruling coalition failed to pass a budget, triggering the country’s fourth election in two years amid public anger over Netanyahu’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Netanyahu and his former election rival, Defence Minister Benny Gantz, established a unity government in May in the wake of three inconclusive elections held since April 2019, but the coalition had been inching towards collapse for weeks, undermined by mutual acrimony and mistrust.

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“It is appalling that even before Biden takes office, Congress has passed a bill that found a way to indirectly but effectively assist the PA”

Posted on December 20, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

ZIONIST ORGANIZATION OF AMERICA
ZOA Appalled: Covid Relief Bill’s Fungible $250 Million for Palestinians May Benefit Terrorism, Anti-Israel Propaganda and Anti-Israel NGO’s
December 22, 2020

The long-awaited, massive $900 billion coronavirus relief bill, passed last night without giving Congress time to read all the provisions snuck into the bill’s thousands of pages, contained a dangerous, poison provision: Namely, $250 million of U.S. taxpayer dollars will be diverted from much-needed COVID relief to establish a so-called “People-to-People Partnership for Peace Fund” for Palestinian Arab investments and supposed peace programs. Rather than peace, this so-called “Peace Fund” is far more likely to abet anti-Jewish terror attacks, boycotts and propaganda. Because money is fungible, the new so-called “Peace Fund” will save the Palestinian Authority (PA) from having to spend money on projects for its people. The savings to the PA will enable, and in effect, help finance the PA’s heinous, continuing, hundreds of millions of dollars of annual “pay-to-slay” payments to Arab terrorists to murder Jews. READ MORE

JNS In COVID-aid bill scrum, Israel becomes a familiar scapegoat But somehow in the middle of all this naked power politics—and shameless lobbying and trading of favors for special interests—some activists found the time to single out Israel as the cause of the problem. Those who did so were either guilty of the most appalling ignorance of how the budget process works, as well as what aid to Israel entails in terms of benefits to the United States and its economy. Or call it outright simple bias. But no matter what the motive, they demonstrated anew just how irresistible a target the Jewish state is for those who always want to blame it and the Jews for the world’s woes.

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Esther Horgen, mother of six, went out for a walk on Sunday and never returned

Posted on December 20, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

CBN NEWS
Israeli Troops Reinforced after Murder of Woman in Suspected Terror Attack
by Julie Stahl
December 22, 2020

Security forces are still searching for the killer of Esther Horgen, who was murdered in an apparent Palestinian terror attack on Sunday. Horgen, 52, a mother of six, was buried on Tuesday, after her body was found a day earlier with signs of violence, in a forest near her home in the northern West Bank (biblical Samaria) settlement of Tal Menashe…Without a direct connection to the murder, the Israel Defense Forces nevertheless released a statement on Tuesday saying that according to its assessment of the situation, it had decided to “reinforce the Judea and Samaria Division in order to enhance the defense of communities and routes in the region.” READ MORE

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Mystery surrounds capture of Iranian dissident journalist #RuhollahZam, hanged last week for “spreading corruption on Earth”

Posted on December 20, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

JERUSALEM POST
Who betrayed Iranian journalist Ruhollah Zam?
by Jonathan Spyer
December 17, 2020

…Ruhollah Zam, who had been in captivity since October 2019, was the founder and director of a popular Telegram channel and forum called Amad News, which carried up-to-the-minute information on the demonstrations and protests that swept Iran in 2017 and 2018. The channel, which had 1.4 million followers, provided details regarding upcoming protests, and about officials who were challenging the regime. The reach and influence of Amad News appears to have led to the regime’s decision to target and eliminate Zam. The journalist had lived in Paris since 2011. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), according to the available evidence, put in motion a complex sting operation to lure Zam to Iraq, from where he was kidnapped and taken to Iran…READ MORE

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“Even if a peace agreement is not officially announced, relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia are at their peak, especially given the Iranian threat and concerns over other radical Islamic elements in the region”

Posted on December 20, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

JNS
The Saudi dilemma
by Shahar Klaiman
December 20, 2020

The peace deal with Morocco is the fourth accord between Israel and an Arab state to sideline the Palestinian issue. While the leaders of Abu Dhabi, Manama and Khartoum had all pledged their continued commitment to the Palestinians’ statehood aspirations, at the end of the day, none of them opted to place Ramallah’s interests ahead of their own. As with the peace deals with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, here, too, the United States, which brokered the accords, hinted that Saudi Arabia could very well be the next Arab power to normalize ties with Israel. The move may prove inevitable, but Riyadh’s path to peace with the Jewish state is anything but smooth. READ MORE

TIME MAG Saudi Arabia Is Scrubbing Hate Speech from School Books. Why That’s a Win for the Trump Administration The Kingdom’s latest batch of textbooks has for the first time removed sections calling for non-believers to be punished by death, and predicting an apocalyptic final battle in which Muslims will kill all Jews, according to a report released Tuesday by a Jerusalem-based think tank that analyzes global curricula for extremist and intolerant views. The “trend line is cause for optimism,” says Marcus Sheff, CEO of the nonprofit Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education.

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i24 features Lawfare’s Brooke Goldstein on Belgium kashrut ruling

Posted on December 20, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

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John le Carré remains a product of his time and an enigma. Was he on the side of the Jewish people — or their enemies?

Posted on December 20, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

JNS
The “antisemitism” of John le Carré
by Melanie Phillips
December 18, 2020

John le Carré, the acclaimed grandmaster of the spy novel who died last weekend at the age of 89, was dogged for years by allegations of antisemitism. The plot of his 1983 novel The Little Drummer Girl, which involves the Mossad recruiting an English actress with radical sympathies to infiltrate a Palestinian terrorist faction, presents Israel and the Palestinian cause as morally equivalent. But the media watchdog CAMERA UK, which has criticised The Guardian for identifying le Carré’s Palestinian sympathies as the source of the antisemitism charge, notes correctly that the accusation was more broadly based. READ MORE

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“A Bitter James Baker, Who Failed on the Western Sahara, Urges Biden To Rescind the Deal”

Posted on December 20, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

NEW YORK SUN
Moroccan Envoy Marks Hanukkah With Israel
by Benny Avni
December 18, 2020

As the Moroccan ambassador to the United Nations, Omar Hilale, lit candles Thursday alongside his Israeli counterpart, Gilad Erdan, some in Washington tsk-tsk’d about the Western Sahara. Like the Israeli-Palestinian territorial disputes, the fight over the desert tract of African land has for decades been a favorite plaything for Washington peace processors and their Turtle Bay counterparts. The more intense the diplomatic activity, the more entangled the Gordian Knot has become. Until, that is, the famous disrupter, Donald Trump, came with a diplomatic axe. As part of Morocco’s joining the Abraham Accords — Mr. Trump’s campaign to widen the number of Arab countries at full peace and diplomatic relations with Israel — America agreed to recognize Rabat’s sovereignty over Western Sahara. READ MORE

WALL STREET JOURNAL Eugene Kontorovich: The Middle East’s Dual ‘Occupations’  Many expected the Trump administration to recognize Israeli sovereignty over parts of the West Bank before Inauguration Day. Instead, last week it recognized Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara as part of a U.S.-brokered peace deal between Jerusalem and Rabat. The new U.S. position on Morocco’s borders has a sound basis in international law and diplomatic practice, and it makes the case even stronger for doing the same with Israel and the West Bank.

NEWSWEEK Ilan Berman: The Israel-Morocco Deal Is a Triumph for Trump—and Biden, Too For all of its import, the December 10 announcement by the Kingdom of Morocco that it was normalizing ties with Israel can hardly be said to have been a surprise. Contacts between the two countries span decades, and Rabat and Jerusalem have long boasted a vibrant (if informal) partnership built around cultural bonds, trade ties and political alignment.

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“California voters overwhelmingly rejected Proposition 16, which would have allowed the State to openly discriminate in favor of the “aggrieved” groups liberals pander to — which of course works to the detriment of people that are more qualified”

Posted on December 20, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

SPECTATOR
The Man Who Convinced California Voters to Reject Racial Quotas
by Pat Nolan
December 17, 2020

As Biden has frantically juggled potential nominees to placate each of the plethora of aggrieved special-interest groups that make up the modern Democratic Party, I must admit to having enjoyed a bit of schadenfreude. The far-left Democrats apparently believe that it is good politics to use a quota system in selecting his presumptive cabinet. I think they are flat-out wrong, both morally and politically. Leaving aside the immorality of their policies and just the politics of their issues, I suggest the Democrats take another look at the election results, because down-ballot results across the country show that voters soundly and consistently rejected candidates and issues pushed by the socialist orthodoxy of the national Democratic party. READ MORE

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“It’s a small shot for a person and a huge step toward the health of us all”

Posted on December 17, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

JERUSALEM POST
Netanyahu, Edelstein kick off Israel’s COVID-19 vaccination campaign
by Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman
December 19, 2020

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Health Minister Yuli Edelstein received the first doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine in Israel at an event that was live-streamed across Israel as part of the campaign to encourage the public to get the jab…The leaders were inoculated at Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer by the prime minister’s doctor, Dr. Zvi Herman Berkowitz…”This is a very big day for the State of Israel,” Netanyahu said before receiving the vaccine. “We have been experiencing for almost a year the worst pandemic that humanity has known in the last 100 years and this is the beginning of the exit.”READ MORE

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