“Israeli Foreign and Defense ministries unite in long-simmering dispute with Treasury over bid to retroactively cut envoys’ expense stipends; no consular services for Israelis abroad”

Posted on October 30, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

TIMES OF ISRAEL
Israeli embassies around the world shut as diplomats, military attachés strike
by Staff
October 30, 2019

All Israeli embassies and consulates around the world shut down early Wednesday as diplomats and military attachés went on strike in a long-simmering dispute with the Finance Ministry over expense stipends paid to envoys. The move, coordinated by the Foreign Ministry, the Defense Ministry and the Histadrut Labor Federation, came after the Treasury reportedly backtracked on previous understandings and said it would force the envoys to pay back thousands of dollars that they had been reimbursed for expenses. The closure came into effect at 1 a.m on Wednesday morning Israel time. READ MORE

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American Jews aren’t threatened by their synagogues turning into fortresses, they’re threatened by armed anti-Semites walking in through open doors

Posted on October 29, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

TABLET MAG
It’s Time to Lock Your Synagogue’s Doors
by Jacob Siegel
October 29, 2019

…Rather than looking for metaphors to express or quell their anxieties, American Jews might stop fetishizing open doors and acknowledge the less dramatic and more practical realities that pertain to public gatherings: Locked and guarded doors make you more secure. Entry points that are clearly secured and protected create the appearance of a “hard target,” which alone can deter attackers who just want to kill defenseless people and would rather run and not have to fight for the chance. In the event an attacker does try to force entry, a secured door buys time to send out alerts and initiate an emergency evacuation plan. READ MORE

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“There is no case we can find anywhere in the democratic world where positive coverage has ever been considered a potential bribe”

Posted on October 29, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

JEWISH PRESS
Netanyahu Won’t Be The Only Victim
by Caroline B. Glick
October 27, 2019

The ongoing criminal probes against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are reaching their climax. By the end of the month, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit will reportedly decide whether or not to end Netanyahu’s political career by indicting him on corruption charges. If Israel’s attorney general does indict Netanyahu, however, he will have done far more than overthrow a political leader. He will have embraced a legal doctrine that rejects the very essence of democracy. This truth has been largely ignored till now. It was only sounded in a significant way during the final half-hour of Netanyahu’s four-day, 15-hour-a-day hearing two weeks ago. READ MORE

JNS Alex Traiman: Attorney for Netanyahu: What if the prime minister never received a bribe? Professor Avi Bell, a member of the Faculty of Law at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan and the University of San Diego School of Law, and one of the lawyers who submitted the brief challenging the tentative charges against Netanyahu, told JNS that “prosecuting a bribery charge in these cases is a mistake. Pursuing these charges is unprecedented in the democratic world, dangerous to the fabric of Israeli democracy and ill-advised.” 

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ADL: “Yet another example of SJP’s antisemitic practice of marginalizing Jews and reducing their identity to their connection to Israel”

Posted on October 29, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

JEWISH JOURNAL
ADL Condemns Benedictine SJP Member for Urging Holocaust Survivor to Denounce Israel
by Aaron Bandler

Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt condemned a member of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Benedictine University for asking a Holocaust survivor to denounce the Israeli government’s “ethnic cleansing.” The member Ayah Ali asked Grinnell College Religious Studies Professor Dr. Harold Kasimow during his Oct. 24 speech on campus, “Do you support or do you condemn the establishment of the Zionist Israeli state, and whether it’s okay to exile and completely — the complete ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, the way that the Jewish people were exiled and ethnically cleansed?” READ MORE

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Nikki Haley: Just when you thought Bernie Sanders couldn’t get any more radical, he outdid himself

Posted on October 29, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

ARUTZ SHEVA
Haley: Sanders wants to give Israel’s money to terrorists
by Elad Benari
October 29, 2019

Nikki Haley, the former US Ambassador to the UN, on Monday fired back after Senator Bernie Sanders called the Israeli government “racist” and suggested that the US should redirect its aid to Israel and give it to Gaza instead. “Just when you thought Bernie Sanders couldn’t get any more radical, he outdid himself. He wants to take money we give to Israel to defend itself from terrorists, and give it to Gaza, which is run by terrorists?? Unreal. Why isn’t every other Dem pres candidate saying he’s wrong?” tweeted Haley…He also addressed the close friendship between US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and ridiculed the two, saying, “One is on the way to being ousted and the other may be sent to prison.” READ MORE

JNS Jonathan S. Tobin: Bernie’s Gaza aid farce exposes J Street’s false front In a competition to see which Democratic candidate can pander more to the far left by undermining Israel, the Vermont Socialist wins by a landslide…The Vermont Socialist has always used his Jewish identity and his stay on a kibbutz more than half a century ago as a license to attack Israel with impunity. 

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“Iran’s Islamic Penal Code allows girls as young as 9 and boys as young as 15 to be executed”

Posted on October 28, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

GATESTONE
EU Supports Iran – World’s Leading Executioner of Children
by Majid Rafizadeh
October 28, 2019

…European leaders, of course, who seem never to tire of sanctimoniously posturing on behalf of human rights, are meanwhile pursuing appeasement policies with a government that is the world’s leading executioner and torturer of children — and others. Some of the children who have been executed are as young as 12. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran, Javaid Rehman, recently pointed to the alarming issue of executions of children and adolescents…Two 17-year-old boys, who apparently did not even did not even know about their death sentences, were flogged before being executed. READ MORE

NATIONAL INTEREST Ilan Berman: The New Faces Of Iranian Protest In the summer of 2009, tens of thousands of Iranians took to the streets of Tehran and other major cities in what became months of sustained demonstrations against the Iranian regime…A decade later, that dissatisfaction runs deeper than ever. For nearly two years now, renewed grassroots protests have taken place throughout Iran. While more modest in size and scope than those that characterized the Green Movement, these demonstrations have proven to be more diverse and more enduring

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NYT’s Michelle Goldberg at J Street conference: “Some Democratic candidates are so pro-Israel as to be considered “far Right”

Posted on October 28, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

ELDER OF ZIYON
Even J-Streeters realize that being pro-Israel nowadays is associated with the Right and Leftists are anti-Israel
October 27, 2019

J-Street likes to pretend that it is pro-Israel and that the people on the Right who claim to be pro-Israel are really anti-Israel by considering parts of the West Bank to be part of Israel in any final status agreement. But as this excerpt from the J-Street Conference indicates, Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times thinks that any Democratic candidates who are “too” pro-Israel are also “far-Right.”…Even subconsciously, she associates being pro-Israel with the political right and being anti-Israel with the political Left, at an unabashedly anti-Right conference that claims to be “pro-Israel.” READ MORE

TOWN HALL Ben Shapiro: The J Street Democrats This week, four of the top candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination — Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Julian Castro and Bernie Sanders — gathered at the J Street Conference to explain why the United States ought to pressure the state of Israel to make concessions to terrorists, why the Obama administration was correct to appease the Iranian regime and why American Jews ought to value the opinions of Bernie Sanders over those of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the future of Jewish safety.

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Kidney donations are on the rise among Orthodox Israelis

Posted on October 28, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

TABLET MAG
To Save a Stranger’s Life
by Sara Toth Stub
October 28, 2019

…Koplovich is among the growing number of religiously observant Israelis who are volunteering to donate kidneys to people they have never met, ultimately doubling the number of kidney transplants taking place in the country each year. Officials credit the increase in living donors to improved surgical techniques, increased social welfare benefits, and the work of a nonprofit organization called Matnat Chaim, which raises awareness about and facilitates live kidney donations, especially among Orthodox Israelis…Rabbinic authorities, whose often stringent definitions of brain death have led to Israel’s relatively low rate of organ transplants from deceased people, are now actively encouraging live donations of kidneys…READ MORE

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“For us Israelis the threat from ISIS is secondary,” Amos Yadlin said. “We would like to see the US act in a similar way against Soleimani, and Nasrallah”

Posted on October 28, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

JERUSALEM POST
Ex-intel chief praises Baghdadi hit, says Iran, Hezbollah should be next
by Herb Keinon
October 27, 2019

The purported US killing of shadowy Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is an “impressive” US intelligence and operational feat, but it is important to remember that Iran – not ISIS – is the main threat in the Middle East, a top Israeli security analyst said on Sunday. Amos Yadlin, a former head of military intelligence who today heads the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv, wrote in a Twitter thread that ISIS ceased being a territorial entity two years ago when it lost Mosul and Raqqa. “For us Israelis, the threat from ISIS is secondary,” he said…READ MORE

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“Although Israel has no formal relations with Saudi Arabia, ties are gradually warming up, in part due to shared concerns over Iran’s growing influence in the region”

Posted on October 26, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

BLOOMBERG
Mysterious Private Jet Flight From Israel to Saudi Arabia Has Media Guessing
by Alisa Odenheimer
October 24, 2019

A private jet took off from Ben-Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv on Tuesday evening, landed for a few minutes in Amman, then proceeded to the Saudi capital, Riyadh, leaving Israeli media guessing who was on the plane. Yossi Melman, who writes for the Maariv daily, tweeted that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Mossad spy chief Yossi Cohen may have been on board the flight to the Arab kingdom, which has no diplomatic ties with Israel, possibly to discuss the situation in Syria. READ MORE

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