Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to have dominated former army chief Benny Gantz on Tuesday in the third election to determine the future of Israel&#8217;s government.
All the major Israeli television networks reported that Netanyahu had secured 60 seats in the Knesset, one seat short of securing a majority.
&#8220;The numbers are expected to change overnight,&#8221; The Jerusalem Post <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Israel-Elections/Benjamin-Netanyahus-Right-bloc-wins-majority-exit-polls-619513">reported</a>. &#8220;The votes of IDF soldiers, who tend to lean to the Right, have not yet been counted and the Joint List tends to go down a seat when the soldiers’ votes are added.&#8221;
&#8220;The outright victory in the third election in under a year is expected to enable Netanyahu to quickly form a right-wing coalition after having headed a caretaker government since December 2018,&#8221; The Post added. &#8220;Netanyahu spoke to the heads of the parties in his camp immediately after the exit polls were announced and agreed to form a strong nationalist government as soon as possible.&#8221;
Netanyahu&#8217;s win over center-left Blue and White candidate Gantz came after an audio recording aired over the weekend that showed Gantz&#8217;s own staff trashing him.
The Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/secret-recordings-roil-israeli-election-on-final-weekend-of-campaigning/2020/03/02/e5bf0302-5c94-11ea-ac50-18701e14e06d_story.html">reported</a>:
<blockquote>On Thursday night, an Israeli television stationed aired a recording of Israel Bachar, Gantz’s chief campaign strategist, talking candidly to Tel Aviv rabbi Guy Habura. Bachar, who seemed to be speaking his own mind and quoting others, derided Gantz as a danger to Israel and said he did not believe Gantz would have the courage to attack Iran, according to Israeli media reports.
“She says he’s stupid, a total loser, and must not become prime minister,” Bachar was heard saying, quoting Omer Yankelevitz, a lawmaker from Gantz’s Blue and White party.</blockquote>
<a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/276733">Israel National News</a> quoted Defense Minister and Yamina chairman Naftali Bennett, who spoke at a Yamina party event on Monday evening:
<blockquote>The right-wing camp won! And we will make sure that the way of the right-wing will win as well. With God&#8217;s help, today an Israeli government of sovereignty was established. Prime Minister Netanyahu called me minutes after the exit polls and we congratulated each other. I&#8217;m glad we brought victory to the right without attacking each other.&#8221;</blockquote>
Bennett added:
<blockquote>Ayelet Shaked, the best Justice Minister, will make sure she also comes back [to that role] &#8230; We will act as a joint faction in the upcoming Knesset and, as promised, we will do everything possible to turn into one large party. Tomorrow we will convene a joint faction meeting of all of us and start working for the people of Israel, the Land of Israel, the Torah of Israel and IDF soldiers. As we promised, we will recommend to the President that Prime Minister Netanyahu establish the government.</blockquote>
Reports <a href="https://twitter.com/LahavHarkov/status/1234626006968864768">later indicated</a> that Netanyahu&#8217;s coalition might wind up with 59 seats, one short of what was initially posted. If that remains the same, it  would necessitate him looking to bring Avigdor Lieberman&#8217;s Yisrael Beytenu party into the coalition. Lieberman is avowedly hostile to Israel&#8217;s religious parties, which align with Netanyahu, but also a hawk regarding Israel&#8217;s defense.

Israel Votes in Their General Election

Netanyahu Dominates In Third Electoral Showdown, Reports Say

Benjamin Netanyahu

The tide has turned back toward Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as two new polls show his Likud party taking back the lead from leading opponent Benny Gantz’s Blue and White Party.
According to <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/276390">Israel National News</a>, “A Channel 12 poll conducted by a sample institute and published this evening (Sunday) shows the Likud leading the Blue and White Party for the first time since a third round of Knesset elections was announced. If elections were to be held today, Netanyahu&#8217;s party would come in with 34 seats while Blue and White would receive 33 seats, the Joint Arab list 13, and the Labor -Gesher-Meretz would come in with ten. Shas and United Torah Jewry would each receive eight seats, Yamina would end up with seven, and Lieberman&#8217;s Yisrael Beytenu seven seats.&#8221;
A Kan News poll found that Likud would gain 35 seats, the Blue and White Party 34, the Joint List 14, Labor-Gesher-Meretz nine, Shas 8 seats, while UTJ and Yisrael Beytenu would each collect seven.
The <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/week-to-election-likud-pulls-ahead-of-blue-and-white-for-first-time-polls/">Times of Israel</a> noted, “It shows that despite Likud’s slight bump, the pro-Benjamin Netanyahu coalition of Likud, Yamina and Haredi factions Shas and UTJ still garner just 57 seats, four short of a 61-seat parliamentary majority needed for an outright victory by the right. Blue and White’s allies also do not have a majority, with its most likely coalition partners of Labor-Gesher-Meretz and Yisrael Beytenu bringing it to just 50 seats.
Channel 12 asked respondents whom they preferred as prime minister; Netanyahu led Gantz 43% to 33%.
On Monday, <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Netanyahu-and-US-Ambassador-Friedman-tour-West-Bank-Ariel-settlement-618607">The Jerusalem Post</a> reported that Netanyahu stated that the US-Israeli mapping process to mark territory in Judea and Samaria for the application of Israeli sovereignty has begun. Speaking in Ariel, the fourth largest settlement in Judea and Samaria, Netanyahu said:
<blockquote>The joint mapping process of the Israeli team and the American team is underway here in Ariel. This is a major mission. The area has an 800-km. perimeter. There is serious work, but we will work as quickly as possible to get it done. There is no artificial impediment. For the mapping process, one must consider every valley, every section, every nook and every line. This is serious. We are determining here lines that have historic implications.</blockquote>
The Post continued that the mapping process would “allow for the application of Israeli law [sovereignty] on these areas and later American recognition as well,” according to Netanyahu, who added that after the work is done, “sovereignty can happen immediately.”
The Post noted, “Under US President Donald Trump’s peace plan, Israel can annex 30% of Area C of the West Bank, including all the settlements, once the mapping process is completed.”
Ariel Mayor Eli Shaviro asserted, “The sovereignty ship is under way. As I have said in the past, I believe that the prime minister will advance the ‘Deal of the Century’ with President Trump and US officials. I believe that the application of Israeli law in the Jordan Valley and in the communities of Judea and Samaria is closer than ever.”

President Trump Welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu To White House

Tide Turning For Netanyahu: Polls Show Him In The Lead

Israel

The Trump administration secured a key victory yesterday at the hostile United Nations, as Holocaust-denying, kleptocratic, jihad-subsidizing Palestinian Authority (PA) chieftain Mahmoud Abbas failed to rally sufficient support to merely force a U.N. Security Council vote on a Palestinian draft resolution that would have rejected the Trump administration&#8217;s recently unveiled <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trumps-deal-of-the-century-for-israel-palestinians-a-realistic-plan-with-arab-states-backing-it">&#8220;deal of the century&#8221; peace plan</a>.
The Security Council vote assuredly would have been vetoed by the United States, a permanent member, but the failure to even successfully garner support to stage a symbolic vote represents a monumental embarrassment for Abbas, the PA successor to unrepentant terrorist Yasser Arafat — himself a mentee of <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/full-official-record-what-the-mufti-said-to-hitler/">Hitler ally Haj Amin al-Husseini</a>, the former grand mufti of Jerusalem. The diplomatic effort to stymie the symbolic vote, halting it dead in its tracks, thus also represents a clear win for the Trump administration&#8217;s United Nations diplomatic team. The United Nations, of course, is a body <a href="https://unwatch.org/2019-un-general-assembly-resolutions-singling-out-israel-texts-votes-analysis/">infamously hostile to the Jewish state</a> and infamously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/pro-palestinian-frauds-unrwa-called-out-lying-josh-hammer">mollycoddling of the Palestinian-Arab cause</a>.
Abbas is speaking today at a special meeting of the U.N. Security Council. He had initially hoped to stage a Security Council vote on the &#8220;deal of the century&#8221; to follow his speech.
&#8220;This is a significant setback for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas,&#8221; Barak Ravid <a href="https://www.axios.com/palestinian-mahmoud-abbas-security-council-vote-81c12553-d692-4a77-a122-10dd7cc141ff.html">opined</a> yesterday for Axios. &#8220;The postponement follows efforts from Jared Kushner and other administration officials over the last few days to dilute the text of the resolution and prevent a vote.&#8221;
&#8220;U.S., Israeli, and Palestinian officials say the text had to be softened because several Security Council members wanted to avoid a confrontation with the U.S.,&#8221; Ravid continued. &#8220;Several sentences that referred directly to the Trump plan were removed.&#8221;
According to Ravid, PA officials still hope to bring the condemnatory resolution up for a Security Council vote later this week.
&#8220;There was immediate speculation that the delay was a backhanded way of pulling the resolution because it lacked the requisite support of nine members for passage,&#8221; The Jerusalem Post <a href="https://www.jpost.com/International/US-suggests-amendments-for-UNSC-resolution-on-Trump-peace-plan-617115">reported</a>. &#8220;Otherwise, it would have been considered that the resolution had failed. The delay comes amid U.S. pressure to soften the language of the resolution towards the U.S. and Israel. A U.S. source with direct knowledge of the negotiations between the members of the Security Council told the Post earlier on Monday that if the resolution would get a vote, a number of countries are expected to abstain.&#8221;
&#8220;The softening of the language comes after U.S. special envoy Jared Kushner’s briefing with [Security Council] members last Thursday,&#8221; the Post continued. &#8220;Kushner was accompanied by Trump&#8217;s assistant and special envoy for international negotiations Avi Berkowitz, and U.S. envoy Brian Hook. The source added that &#8216;there are numerous countries who are considering abstaining&#8217; if the wording is not changed.&#8221;
The U.S. has historically often used its permanent seat the Security Council to veto anti-Israel measures — a trend <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/choosing-not-to-veto-obama-lets-anti-settlement-resolution-pass-at-un-security-council/">notably bucked in December 2016 by the outgoing anti-Israel Obama administration</a>, with respect to U.N. Security Council Resolution 2234.
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RELATED: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-at-pairagraph-trumps-israel-palestinian-peace-plan-is-fair-and-just-part-1">Hammer At ‘Pairagraph’: Trump’s Israel-Palestinian Peace Plan Is Fair And Just (Part 1)</a>
RELATED: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-at-pairagraph-trumps-israel-palestinian-peace-plan-is-fair-and-just-part-2">Hammer At ‘Pairagraph’: Trump’s Israel-Palestinian Peace Plan Is Fair And Just (Part 2)</a>

United Nations Building

Abbas Embarrassed: Trump Admin Secures Key Victory At Hostile United Nations

Foreign Policy

Jared Kushner

Mahmoud Abbas

Middle East

Palestinians

Trump Administration

United Nations

American Jews are now embroiled in an important election battle over the U.S. seats at the World Zionist Congress (WZC) for the next five years. Record numbers of Jewish U.S. residents have been casting votes in this <a href="https://www.zionistelection.org/election/2a3b7a80-ba00-42ec-957e-c0375167a065">online election</a>, which ends on March 11.
The World Zionist Congress has a major impact on both Israel and Diaspora Jews. It helps control Israel’s major national institutions’ polices and funding priorities for a $1 billion annual budget.
This election is so important that Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu just called on every eligible Jewish U.S. resident to vote for our slate, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) Coalition (slate #11). Watch the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBtQ4wfTsaY">video of Netanyahu&#8217;s endorsement here</a>. In addition, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz, Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein, Justice Minister Amir Ohana, several other cabinet ministers, and numerous other Knesset member have all publicly endorsed the ZOA Coalition.
The ZOA Coalition includes 27 of the strongest pro-Israel groups and is leading the battle at the World Zionist Congress to defend Israel, sovereignty, and the safety and well-being of the entire Jewish people.
At the 2015–16 World Zionist Congresses, ZOA Coalition led a difficult, successful two-year battle to pass an anti-&#8220;Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction&#8221; (BDS) resolution to combat boycotts against all Jews, including Jews living in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria. The ZOA Coalition also initiated a WZC program to encourage buying Israeli products, as well as promoting other anti-BDS efforts.
At the most recent (2019) World Zionist Congress, the ZOA Coalition initiated every single pro-Israel and pro-Jewish resolution.
Because rapidly rising anti-Semitic violence in Europe and elsewhere is a major threat, the ZOA Coalition initiated and obtained passage of a WZC resolution giving highest funding priority to rescuing and bringing to Israel Jews who are endangered by global anti-Semitism.
But, despite anti-Semitic murders and frequent attacks on Jews in France, other slates blocked the ZOA Coalition’s efforts to also establish an emergency Aliyah program for endangered French Jewry. If ZOA Coalition obtains more votes in the current election, this won’t happen again. The safety of endangered Jews will always come first.
ZOA Coalition initiated and obtained passage of resolutions condemning UNESCO for denying the Jewish people’s connection to Jewish sites in Jerusalem and Hebron, as well as requiring use of the proper names “Judea and Samaria” — instead of the de-Judaized name “West Bank.” ZOA Coalition also led the 23-year battle to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
We’re extremely concerned about what will happen if the ZOA Coalition does not do well in this WZC election.
Our opponents used the power they obtained in previous WZC elections to stop Israel’s national institutions from purchasing lands in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and even in the Negev. This anti-Jewish discrimination could become even worse.
Shockingly, at the most recent World Zionist Congress, our opponents tried to pass a resolution smearing Israel’s tolerant, multi-faceted society as replete with “institutional racism.” We were only able to defeat this resolution — which reminded us of the notorious 1975 United Nations “Zionism is racism” resolution — by one vote.
An opposition group now openly says that it is running in the WZC election to “divert” the $1 billion per year of Israel’s national institution funding “away from the entrenchment of the occupation.”
“Occupation” is a false propaganda term used to attack Jewish persons’ rights to continue living on historic Jewish lands designated for the Jewish homeland <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-the-trump-administration-is-absolutely-correct-to-call-israeli-settlements-legal">under international law</a>. Anti-Israel boycott groups use the term “occupation” to demonize Israel.  It is frightening that groups running in the WZC election are using the same rallying cry.
The ZOA Coalition (slate #11) needs many more votes now, so that the next attempt to use the World Zionist Congress to smear Israel has no chance of passing. The full slate includes the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), Aish HaTorah, Students Supporting Israel, NORPAC, The Lawfare Project, American Friends of Likud, Dov Hikind’s Americans Against Antisemitism, One Israel Fund, Young Jewish Conservatives, Z Street, American Friends of Ateret Cohanim, American Friends of Likud, Chovevei Zion, Eretz Israel Movement, National Conference on Jewish Affairs, major Russian-Jewish and Persian-Jewish and Ukrainian-Jewish groups, Beta Israel, and more.
Make sure to cast your vote; you have the chance to determine the Jewish future for the next five years. <a href="https://www.zionistelection.org/election/2a3b7a80-ba00-42ec-957e-c0375167a065">Vote Here.</a>
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Mort Klein (<a href="https://twitter.com/mortonaklein7">@mortonaklein7</a>) is national president of ZOA. Mark Levenson is national chairman of ZOA.

United States and Israel flags, Jerusalem, Israel

KLEIN & LEVENSON: Netanyahu Makes Endorsement In American World Zionist Congress Election

Anti-Semitism

Judaism

Zionism

Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer, who frequently opines on issues pertaining to Israel, Zionism, and anti-Semitism, has agreed to take part in a <a href="http://www.pairagraph.com/dialogue/b155455f1bf04a71a596bf1b8cb0cf13">debate</a> about the Trump administration&#8217;s new Israeli-Palestinian peace plan at the new website <a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.pairagraph.com">Pairagraph</a>, which <a href="http://www.pairagraph.com/about">describes itself</a> as &#8220;a platform for written dialogue between pairs of notable individuals&#8221; and &#8220;an online meeting place for the world’s most prominent figures across government, industry, academia, religion, and the arts.&#8221;
Here is Hammer&#8217;s <a href="http://www.pairagraph.com/dialogue/b155455f1bf04a71a596bf1b8cb0cf13">opening salvo in his debate</a> against Palestinian-Arab activist <a href="https://twitter.com/Issaamro">Issa Amro</a>. The Pairagraph debate format consists of dueling 500-word entries.
In the entire history of human civilization, there has never, ever been an independent Arab state situated between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Never.
At the same time, there has been a continuous Jewish presence in the historical Land of Israel — including the biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria, which &#8220;international community&#8221; ignoramuses nonsensically call the &#8220;West Bank&#8221; — for thousands of years.
The modern 20th/21st-century history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not difficult to grasp. The Balfour Declaration of 1917, San Remo Resolution of 1920, Article 22 of the League of Nations Covenant, and the Peel Commission all laid the pre-World War II positive law foundation for what we all already knew from Genesis: The Jews are entitled to our land. In November 1947, the U.N. Partition Plan for Palestine proposed a pro-Arab partition that would have given the Jews a tiny, unworkable state. The Jews accepted; the Arabs rejected and instead launched a genocidal war to kill the Jews. The Arabs lost. The Arabs tried in 1967 and lost again. They tried in 1973 and lost yet again. The unrepentant terrorist Yasser Arafat and his Holocaust-denying kleptocratic Palestinian Authority successor, the brutish Mahmoud Abbas, have similarly never been nearly as interested in negotiating peace as they have been in killing Jews and inciting bloody jihad. In a sign of good will, even after Arafat&#8217;s Second Intifada murdered over 1,000 Jews and grievously maimed many thousand more, Israel in 2005 unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip — forcibly uprooting its own citizens en route. Jihadist outfit Hamas took over and turned the Strip into an Iran-subsidized terrorist enclave.
Again, the history is not difficult to understand. As Dennis Prager has said, if the Israelis were to lay down their guns, Israel would be destroyed tomorrow. But if the Palestinian-Arabs were to lay down their guns, there would be peace tomorrow.
All the Palestinian-Arabs have to do is accept Israel as a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders, pursuant to U.N. Security Resolution 242, and there will be immediate peace. But they have not done so because the sprawling Arab world, with devastating rapacity, has never abided a Jewish state that is smaller than the state of New Jersey.
The Trump administration soberly recognizes that under properly construed international law, Israel has (by far) the best legal claim to all of Judea and Samaria. Jordan illegally occupied the territory after the failed 1948 Arab war of aggression, after all, and Israel won it back only in the defensive war of 1967. Israel has always been willing to make political concessions of the land for peace, as no less conservative a prime minister as Benjamin Netanyahu&#8217;s acceptance of the Trump peace plan demonstrates.
The Trump plan deals with the reality on the ground — the reality of inveterate Palestinian-Arab intransigence, rejectionism, and glorification of jihad. The U.S. cannot be &#8220;neutral&#8221; as between stalwart moral/strategic ally Israel and a thuggish Palestinian Authority. Good for Trump for recognizing that.

Western Wall, Jerusalem, Israel

Hammer At ‘Pairagraph’: Trump’s Israel – Palestinian Peace Plan Is Fair And Just (Part 1)

Donald Trump

Hamas

In the United States, “The Cognitive Campaign to Co-opt Zionism” is in full force. This is a movement, sometimes intentional, sometimes unintentional, consisting of one simple goal: The complete separation of Judaism and <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/a-definition-of-zionism">Zionism</a>, which is the belief in the right of the Jewish people to a state in the territory defined as the historic Land of Israel.
But what exactly is a cognitive campaign?
In the information era, war is often not waged in any physical space. Instead, the battlefield lies inside peoples’ hearts and minds — where influence is the weapon of choice. As Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser and David Siman-Tov of Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) <a href="https://www.inss.org.il/publication/the-cognitive-campaign-strategic-and-intelligence-perspectives/">explain</a>: “The purpose of the cognitive campaign is to cause target audiences to adopt the perception of reality held by the side wielding the effort, so that it can more easily advance the strategic and/or operational objectives that it sees as critical.”
Campaign activists accomplish this via a wide array of tools, ranging from traditional diplomacy, mass media, social media, grassroots efforts, and so forth. Cognitive campaigns have become such powerful weapons in both domestic and international affairs that governments have created entire agencies to operate exclusively in the field of public perception.
However, the cognitive campaign to co-opt Zionism is one that is seldom discussed, likely due to the sensitivity surrounding the subject within the Jewish community. Jewish identity has many different characteristics. Some emphasize the community aspect of Judaism, others the religious aspect, and others the Zionist aspect. And in a society that puts such an emphasis on personal identity, it is galling to see broad swaths of the public, Jews included, disparage Zionists because of their beliefs. Many American Jews simply do not see Zionism as a legitimate component of Jewish identity. Unfortunately, it is often Jews themselves who take prominent roles in the campaign against Zionism.
The cognitive campaign to separate and redefine Zionism from Judaism is longstanding. For decades, Zionism has been compared, in some quarters, to colonialism, imperialism, and white supremacy. In 1975, a shameful <a href="https://mfa.gov.il/MFA/InternatlOrgs/Issues/Pages/40-years-since-UN-resolution-equating-Zionism-to-racism-10-Nov-2015.aspx">resolution</a> was passed at the U.N. declaring that Zionism is racism (it was later reversed in 1991, but by then the damage was done). Today, this cognitive campaign is led by anti-Israel activists, such as <a href="https://ukmediawatch.org/2016/08/25/guardian-again-whitewashes-the-extremism-of-students-for-justice-in-palestine-sjp/">Students for Justice in Palestine</a>, <a href="https://www.camera.org/article/jewish-voice-for-peace-jvp-what-the-media-is-concealing/">Jewish Voices for Peace</a>, and BDS supporters, who relentlessly promote misinformation that Israel is a non-democratic, oppressive, apartheid state.
In the digital age, almost everyone spends time on social media, where cognitive campaigns thrive, and where people live in echo chambers that oftentimes expose them to only one perspective on a given issue. When combining this one-sided social media exposure with the blatant lies constantly told about <a href="https://israelforever.org/israel/reading/industry_of_lies_media_academia_and_the_israeli_arab_conflict/">Israel in the media and academia</a>, people fall victim to the <a href="https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/illusory-truth-effect/">“illusory truth effect,”</a> which causes them to believe misinformation due to repeated exposure. If someone ignorant of the facts were to stumble upon all the terrible things said about Zionism and Israel, it’s no wonder he might distance himself.
This brings us to President Donald Trump’s recent Israel-related moves. Part of the controversy surrounding the president’s actions is that they amplified the already fraught tension inside the Jewish community about the connection between Judaism and Zionism.
Take, for example, the Trump administration’s <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/full-text-of-pompeos-statement-on-settlements/">declaration</a> that Israel’s &#8220;settlements&#8221; in Judea and Samaria do not necessarily violate international law. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hit the nail on the head when he <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Benjamin-Netanyahu-Mike-Pompeo-speak-at-Kohelet-Policy-Forum-WATCH-613535">stated</a> that the declaration “establishes the truth that we are not strangers in our land.&#8221;
Then there’s President Trump’s <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-combating-anti-semitism/">executive order</a> (EO) combatting anti-Semitism on college campuses — an EO that many <a href="https://www.heritage.org/religious-liberty/commentary/trumps-executive-order-against-anti-semitism-will-protect-us-jews">erroneously claimed</a> would &#8220;redefine&#8221; Jews as a race or nationality. In fact, the EO merely enshrines that Jews will enjoy the same protections under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act as other racial, ethnic, or national groups. It also implicitly links Zionism with Judaism, by relying on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s <a href="https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/working-definition-antisemitism">Working Definition of Anti-Semitism</a>, which stipulates that “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination” (i.e., Zionism) is inherently anti-Semitic.
Of course, one cannot forget President Trump’s statement regarding the American embassy move to Jerusalem, when he <a href="https://il.usembassy.gov/statement-president-trump-jerusalem/">reminded the world</a> that Jerusalem was “the capital the Jewish people established in ancient times” — a fact which he reinforced in his newly unveiled vision for a <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/peacetoprosperity/">comprehensive peace agreement</a> between Israel and the Palestinians.
All these actions by President Trump not only reaffirm the connection between Jews and Zionism, but also subvert decades of the cognitive campaign’s attempt to separate the two.
Make no mistake — the cognitive campaign to co-opt Zionism is consequential for the Jewish people. Will large sectors of Jewish society continue to distance themselves from Zionism? Or will they re-embrace it?
The most effective way to combat this campaign is through what can be described as a “Counter-Cognitive Campaign.” Obviously, this campaign must spread some much-needed truth about Zionism as a legitimate national movement. Equally important, the campaign must clarify that although Judaism and Zionism need not always be conflated, they must not be disassociated from each other. Of course, not every Jew needs to consider Zionism a core part of his individual identity. We do, however, need to recognize that every Jew enjoys the right to identify as a proud Zionist — and nobody can demonize him or her for that.

Israeli flag

FISCHBERGER: The Cognitive Campaign To Co-Opt Zionism

Students for Justice in Palestine

After the unveiling of President Donald Trump’s proposed peace plan in the Middle East, numerous Senate Democrats took time out of their busy schedule to lecture him about Middle East politics. <a href="https://www.vanhollen.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Van%20Hollen%20Letter%20MidEast%20Peace%20Plan.pdf">The letter they wrote</a> is historically ignorant and dangerous, which is compounded by the fact that it was signed by three leading current presidential candidates; Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN).
“Dear President Trump,” the letter begins, “We write to express our profound concern regarding your decision to release a one-sided Israeli-Palestinian plan forged without any Palestinian involvement or support.”
Right off the bat, Senate Democrats ignore the fact that the Palestinians have been invited to the negotiations on numerous occasions. The most prominent one was June 2019, when there was a U.S.-led peace conference in Bahrain that was boycotted by the Palestinians. They thought that a boycott would stop the conference, but Jared Kushner, the point-man for the Trump administration in this process, pushed forward.
Trump&#8217;s peace plan would ultimately give the Palestinians a state, as well as funds to help get that state up and running. The 1947 U.N. partition plan, which the Arab world outright rejected in choosing instead to declare all-out war on the nascent Jewish state, did not include $50 billion. In fact, the world mostly stood by and watched while the Jewish state was attacked from every direction.
Senate Democrats&#8217; letter espouses significant falsehoods, claiming that this plan “paves the way for full or partial Israeli annexation of the West Bank.” But there has never been much support for a call to fully annex Judea and Samaria, as that would include giving citizenship to millions of Palestinian-Arabs — many of whom call for the destruction of the state of Israel.
Senate Democrats also, un-ironically, claim that this plan “undermine[s] existing U.S. policy regarding the unilateral annexation of Crimea, eastern Ukraine.” In case the Democrats forgot, Russia invaded Crimea when the Obama administration withheld crucial military aid to the Ukranians. That was not a defensive war; it was an attack by Russia. Comparing that act with Israel winning territory in the 1967 Six-Day War, which was a defensive war, is patently insane. Additionally, Russia immediately annexed Crimea, whereas Israel limited its annexation to the city of Jerusalem — the eternal capital of the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hill-the-jewish-nation">Jewish nation</a>. Contrast that to 1948, when Jordan took over that same territory, annexed it, and left the Palestinian people in refugee camps to linger and suffer until Israel militarily defeated Jordan in 1967&#8217;s defensive conflict.
Senate Democrats also conveniently ignore the last 73 years of history when they claim that “this proposal violates the Palestinians’ right to self-determination.” The Palestinians could have asserted their right to self-determination any time from 1947 through today. They can declare a state and nobody will mind. In fact, many Israelis would welcome it. In 2000, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to Yasser Arafat the Gaza Strip, 95% of the West Bank, 5% of Israel, half of Jerusalem (including the Temple Mount), and Israeli citizenship for 50,000 Palestinians. Arafat walked away without a counteroffer and instead <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-vox-lies-about-israel-again">launched the Second Intifada</a>. Democrats ignore that the Palestinians could have exercised their “right to self-determination.” Instead, they are choosing to stay as they are.
The Democrats complain about the proposed borders, referring to it as a “disconnected series of Palestinian islets.&#8221; They claim that this “would betray the vision of a sovereign Palestinian state.” Again, Palestinians could have had a say in this process. They chose not to. Additionally, the only “vision” that the Palestinians have of a Palestinian state is one that encompasses all of Israel and does not include any Jews.
The Democrats then have the audacity to accuse President Trump of interfering in the upcoming Israeli election, claiming that the timing “raises disturbing questions about [Trump&#8217;s] intention to intervene in the Israeli election process.” This accusation is audacious for multiple reasons. First, the Democratic Party at-large is currently in the middle of an impeachment of President Trump that <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/democrat-impeachment-manager-admits-that-impeachment-is-about-2020-election">Democrats themselves claim</a> is intended to prevent him from winning re-election. Second, this is the third Israeli election in the last year, so this wouldn’t affect much of anything. Third, Benny Gantz, Netanyahu’s chief political rival, endorsed this plan and <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/gantz-says-hell-bring-trump-peace-plan-before-knesset-for-vote-next-week/">is bringing it up for a parliamentary vote</a>. Finally, it is ironic that Senate Democrats are accusing Trump of interfering with Israeli elections when <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/international/236565-netanyahu-pollster-obama-role-in-election-larger-than-reported">Obama did that</a> in 2015 — and nobody cared.
Democrats continue their letter with their old and tiresome “President Trump isn’t a normal president” routine. “Your administration has already reversed decades of bipartisan U.S. policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” it reads. “Previous presidents of both parties successfully maintained the respect of both Israelis and Palestinians for the United States’ role as a credible player in difficult negotiations.” But policies that haven’t worked for 50 years should be changed. Democrats think that if they try the same thing over and over — that &#8220;thing&#8221; being caving to terrorists — there will be different results. That is the definition of insanity. Trump’s only change from the standard “two-state solution” is that it recognizes the fact that Israel is the only actor that actually wants peace.
The Democrats are making the same mistakes with the Palestinians that they did with the Iranians: The assumption that everyone wants the same thing. They do not. Palestinian leadership wants to destroy Israel. Democrats either don’t know that, or simply don’t care.
 
Moshe Hill is a political analyst and a Chovevei Zion Fellow. His work can be found on <a href="https://www.ahillwithaview.com">aHillwithaView.com</a>, <a href="https://facebook.com/aHillwithaView">facebook.com/aHillwithaView</a>, and on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/TheMoHill">@TheMoHill</a>.

President Trump Meets With Israeli PM Netanyahu At The White House

HILL: Senate Democrats’ Response To Trump’s Peace Plan Is Historically Ignorant

Amy Klobuchar

Bernie Sanders

Democratic Party

Elizabeth Warren

It turns out that multiple top people surrounding former Israel Defense Forces Chief of General Staff Benny Gantz, who has emerged over the past politically tumultuous year as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu&#8217;s top domestic rival, apparently believe <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/why-jerusalem-matters-ben-shapiro">historically pro-Israel</a> U.S. President Donald Trump is a Nazi.
&#8220;Blue and White leader Benny Gantz’s campaign strategist Joel Benenson, who also served as chief strategist for Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential campaign in 2016, has made a number of inflammatory comments against U.S. President Donald Trump on social media, claims that the president is using Israel to cover for his &#8216;blatant racism,&#8217; and drew comparisons between him and Adolf Hitler,&#8221; Jewish News Syndicate (JNS) <a href="https://www.jns.org/second-top-gantz-aide-compared-trump-to-hitler-says-president-using-israel/">reported</a> earlier today. The outlet also noted that Benenson also served as a campaign strategist for Barack Obama in both the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections.
JNS then highlighted a number of Benenson&#8217;s problematic tweets.
&#8220;Maybe someone should have told [Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT)] that the Anti-Defamation League CEO [Jonathan Greenblatt] condemned [President Trump&#8217;s] racist attacks as well as his use of Israel as a cover for his &#8216;blatant racism,'&#8221; the leftist tweeted last summer.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Maybe someone should have told <a href="https://twitter.com/SteveDaines?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SteveDaines</a> that the Anti-defamation League CEO <a href="https://twitter.com/JGreenblattADL?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@JGreenblattADL</a> condemned <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@realDonaldTrump</a>’s racist attacks as well as his use of Israel as a cover for his “blatant racism.” <a href="https://t.co/ZptcTZYQOw">https://t.co/ZptcTZYQOw</a>
&mdash; Joel Benenson (@benensonj) <a href="https://twitter.com/benensonj/status/1150943498373386242?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 16, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Going back further to October 2018, Benenson drew a direct parallel between Trump and Hitler. &#8220;It was Hitler’s speeches,&#8221; Benenson began. &#8220;Given to him by Marvin Davis. It’s also where he would have learned Hitler’s demonizing term for the press: &#8216;lugenpresse.&#8217; Trump’s translation is &#8216;Fake News.'&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
It was Hitler’s speeches. Given to him by Marvin Davis. It’s also where he would have learned Hitler’s demonizing term for the press: “lugenpresse.” Trump’s translation is “Fake News.” <a href="https://t.co/woKD471fri">https://t.co/woKD471fri</a>
&mdash; Joel Benenson (@benensonj) <a href="https://twitter.com/benensonj/status/1056341092004700160?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 28, 2018</a></blockquote>
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In September 2018, Benenson seemed to call Trump &#8220;deranged, narcissistic, lying, ignorant,&#8221; and a &#8220;bigot.&#8221; He tweeted a link to a Washington Post article with the following caption: &#8220;What’s the big deal here? Hasn’t there been a secret resistance inside the White House every time in history when we’ve had a deranged, narcissistic, lying, ignorant, bigot as President?&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
What’s the big deal here? Hasn’t there been a secret resistance inside the White House every time in history when we’ve had a deranged, narcissistic, lying, ignorant, bigot as President? <a href="https://t.co/hZdWiCH8FP">https://t.co/hZdWiCH8FP</a>
&mdash; Joel Benenson (@benensonj) <a href="https://twitter.com/benensonj/status/1037503359274700800?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 6, 2018</a></blockquote>
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The prior month, Benenson overtly called Trump a &#8220;bigot&#8221;: &#8220;The [president] is a bigot. And any Republican who continues to remain silent about what Trump is, is either a political coward or a co-conspirator promoting his bigotry. Show some character for a change [GOP].&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
The <a href="https://twitter.com/POTUS?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@POTUS</a> is a bigot. And any Republican who continues to remain silent about what Trump is, is either a political coward or a co-conspirator promoting his bigotry. Show some character for a change <a href="https://twitter.com/GOP?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@GOP</a> <a href="https://t.co/03ejknEOEs">https://t.co/03ejknEOEs</a>
&mdash; Joel Benenson (@benensonj) <a href="https://twitter.com/benensonj/status/1025524193734078466?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 3, 2018</a></blockquote>
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As JNS also noted, Benenson is not the first prominent figure very close to Gantz to compare Trump to the Nazis.
&#8220;The discovery of Benenson’s tweets follows a <a href="https://www.jns.org/senior-gantz-adviser-called-u-s-president-donald-adolf-trump/">report</a> on Monday that Ronen Tzur, another senior Gantz adviser, who accompanied the Blue and White leader to Washington, D.C., for talks with Trump ahead of the reveal of the U.S. Mideast peace plan, had called the U.S. president &#8216;Donald Adolf Trump&#8217; and insinuated that he colluded with Russian President Vladimir Putin,&#8221; JNS wrote.
As The Daily Wire has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trumps-deal-of-the-century-for-israel-palestinians-a-realistic-plan-with-arab-states-backing-it">reported</a>, President Trump this week unveiled a peace plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that is, without any doubt, the <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/The-Trump-Plan-How-Israel-Should-Respond-615681">most pro-Israel peace plan ever offered</a> by an American president. On Monday, the day before formally unveiling the plan in the White House&#8217;s East Room with Netanyahu standing alongside him, Trump separately hosted both Netanyahu and Gantz at the White House.
&#8220;The president was fulsome in his praise of Israel, pleased that Israel had agreed — for the first time — to produce a map of what two states would look like,&#8221; wrote Shoshana Bryen, who was in the East Room for the unveiling, in a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bryen-donald-trumps-vision-for-the-middle-east">Daily Wire op-ed</a> published yesterday.
Alas, Gantz&#8217;s senior staff members are hardly &#8220;fulsome&#8221; in their return &#8220;praise&#8221; of the president.

Benny Gantz Tours The Magilot Dead Sea Area For The Blue And White Campaign

Top Advisers For Netanyahu’s Election Rival Apparently Think Trump Is A Nazi

Adolf Hitler

Barack Obama

Israel Defense Forces (IDF)

Nazis

Perhaps the sole silver lining of the otherwise-harrowing capitulation to fundamentalist jihadist evil that was President Barack Obama&#8217;s Iran nuclear deal was the fact that the leading Sunni Arab states — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Egypt chief among them — began to warm up to the Jewish state of Israel. The enemy of my enemy, as the venerable maxim goes, is indeed my friend. And these Sunni stalwarts have found common cause with Israel in opposing the Islamic Republic of Iran&#8217;s decades-long hegemonic ambitions, which were only augmented by the capitulatory cash influxes provided by the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
To date, however, the thawing of relations has generally taken a clandestine form — mostly on the intelligence and counterintelligence level. But the unveiling yesterday of President Donald Trump&#8217;s &#8220;Deal of the Century&#8221; peace proposal for Israel and the Palestinian-Arabs represents the clearest public sign yet of just how far this thawing has progressed.
It is nothing short of remarkable just how far we have come, when considering the &#8220;Three No&#8217;s&#8221; of the infamous 1967 Khartoum Resolution, decreed in the aftermath of Israel&#8217;s miraculous Six-Day War victory: &#8220;No peace [with Israel],&#8221; &#8220;no recognition [of Israel],&#8221; and &#8220;no negotiations [with Israel].&#8221;
For starters, as The Daily Wire&#8217;s Hank Berrien <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trumps-deal-of-the-century-for-israel-palestinians-a-realistic-plan-with-arab-states-backing-it">reported</a> yesterday, &#8220;Ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba of the UAE, Ambassador Abdullah bin Rashid Al Khalifa of Bahrain, and the Ambassador Hunaina al-Mughairy of Oman <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Bahrain-UAE-envoys-come-to-White-House-for-Trump-Deal-of-the-Century-615706">were in the East Room</a> of the White House on Tuesday as Trump announced his plan.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Three great friends of peace &#8211; you, your countries &amp; your leaders are courageous. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for being at the event at the <a href="https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@WhiteHouse</a> today &amp; thank you for your encouragement &amp; support! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/UAE?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#UAE</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Bahrain?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Bahrain</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Oman?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Oman</a> <a href="https://t.co/N3LvtQufvz">pic.twitter.com/N3LvtQufvz</a>
&mdash; Jason D. Greenblatt (@GreenblattJD) <a href="https://twitter.com/GreenblattJD/status/1222227819033518083?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 28, 2020</a></blockquote>
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It is unprecedented to have such leading representatives from Sunni Arab governments effectively recognizing Israel&#8217;s right, under U.N. Security Council <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-meaning-of-un-security-council-resolution-242">Resolution 242</a>, &#8220;to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.&#8221; It is even more unprecedented for such Arab governments to effectively recognize this international law right in the context of what is quite clearly, on the underlying merits, the <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/The-Trump-Plan-How-Israel-Should-Respond-615681">most pro-Israel peace plan ever offered</a> by an American president — and one that is offered by a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/why-jerusalem-matters-ben-shapiro">historically pro-Israel American president</a> and a conservative Likud party Israeli prime minister, no less.
Numerous Arab governments, furthermore, have offered public endorsements of Trump&#8217;s plan that invariably refer to it as a welcoming or promising development.
From the <a href="https://www.spa.gov.sa/viewfullstory.php?lang=en&amp;newsid=2027848#2027848">Kingdom of Saudi Arabia</a>, home to the Islamic holy city of Mecca and the centuries-long epicenter of the Sunni Muslim world: &#8220;The kingdom appreciates the efforts of President Trump&#8217;s administration to develop a comprehensive peace plan between the Palestinian and the Israeli sides, and encourages the start of direct peace negotiations between the Palestinian and Israeli sides, under the auspices of the United States, and to resolve any disagreements with aspects of the plan through negotiations.&#8221;
From (<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-al-jazeeras-disgraceful-holocaust-denying-josh-hammer">deeply problematic &#8220;ally&#8221;</a>) <a href="https://news.qna.org.qa/lang/en/w/article/1580250375011598800">Qatar</a>: &#8220;The State of Qatar welcomes all efforts aiming towards a longstanding and just peace in the occupied Palestinian territories. It also appreciates the endeavors of President Trump and the current U.S. administration to find solutions for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, all solutions should be consistent with international law and the relevant U.N. resolutions.&#8221;
From <a href="https://www.facebook.com/1452664425061142/posts/2592875164373390/?d=n">Egypt</a>: &#8220;The Arab Republic of Egypt appreciates the continuous efforts exerted by the U.S. administration to achieve a comprehensive and just settlement of the Palestinian issue, thereby contributing to the stability and security of the Middle East, ending the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.&#8221;
From the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/1021964141227620/posts/2670012913089393/">Kingdom of Morocco</a>: &#8220;The Kingdom of Morocco expresses the wish that a constructive peace process be launched from now on, with a view to a realistic, applicable, equitable and lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian question, satisfying the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, for an independent, viable and sovereign State, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and enabling the peoples of the region to live in dignity, prosperity and stability.&#8221;
Contrast that with the leading 2020 Democratic Party presidential candidates, who have <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/democratic-candidates-censure-trump-peace-plan-warn-against-annexation/">all assailed</a> the plan. Or contrast it with Hamas/Hezbollah-loving Jeremy Corbyn of Britain, who calls it a &#8220;<a href="https://twitter.com/jeremycorbyn/status/1222303875593637891">travesty</a>.&#8221;
The Arab world is desperately trying to move on and finally resolve the Palestinian issue once and for all. But the American and European Left will not let them do so.
Kudos, nonetheless, to the Trump administration and the main actors/former actors there responsible for crafting the plan — including but hardly limited to Jason Greenblatt, Jared Kushner, and Avi Berkowitz — for their work in this very <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/eugene-kontorovich-trump-israeli-palestinian-peace-plan-is-fair-and-just-but-palestinians-wont-compromise">fair and thoughtfully devised</a> peace plan.

Donald Trump at White House with Benjamin Netanyahu

HISTORIC: Arab States Welcome Trump’s Israeli-Palestinian Peace Plan

Egypt

Iran

Islam

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps

On a recent trip to Israel, I met a Palestinian student who studies at a diverse international school. I asked her if any of the Palestinian groups believe in Gandhian non-violence to redress their grievances. She knew of only one group — the small communist party to which she belonged. Only one.
If this sounds like an exaggeration, it is not by much. Nor is it surprising. The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) has inculcated a culture of violence and hatred of Jews in each successive generation of Palestinians since it was founded by Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1964.
Israeli journalist Eliezer Whartman <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/When-Egypt-was-in-Gaza">wrote</a> that when he visited Gaza in 1967, after Israel had driven out the Egyptian army, he found that:
<blockquote>&#8220;Indoctrination to hatred of Israel started at the very tenderest years. I saw pictures which children had drawn, with the encouragement of their teachers, depicting themselves killing Israeli children. The textbooks dripped venom. One text for the third grade, entitled Arabic Islamic History read: &#8216;The Jews are always the same, in every time, every place. They live only in darkness. They secretly plan to do evil; they fight only from hidden places because they are cowards. We must purify holy Palestine from their filth in order to bring peace back to the Arab homeland.'&#8221;</blockquote>
This trend has continued, unbroken, to the present day.
In Lebanon in 1982, Israel encountered hundreds of preteen and early teenage Palestinian boys specially trained by the PLO to use rocket-propelled grenades.
In 2016, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of this phenomenon:
<blockquote>&#8220;I want you to imagine a day in the life of a 13-year-old Palestinian boy, I&#8217;ll call him Ali. Ali wakes up before school, he goes to practice with a soccer team named after Dalal Mughrabi, a Palestinian terrorist responsible for the murder of a busload of 37 Israelis. At school, Ali attends an event sponsored by the Palestinian Ministry of Education honoring Baha Alyan, who last year murdered three Israeli civilians. On his walk home, Ali looks up at a towering statue erected just a few weeks ago by the Palestinian Authority to honor Abu Sukar, who detonated a bomb in the center of Jerusalem, killing 15 Israelis.&#8221;</blockquote>
&#8220;Imagine your child undergoing this brainwashing,&#8221; Netanyahu said. &#8220;Imagine what it takes for a young boy or girl to break free out of this culture of hate. Some do but far too many don&#8217;t. How can any of us expect young Palestinians to support peace when their leaders poison their minds against peace?&#8221;
The PLO has signed peace agreements before, each time with forked tongue. One notable occasion was the 1993 Oslo peace process, which earned PLO head Yasser Arafat the Nobel Peace Prize. While he spoke of peaceful coexistence at the White House, he was singing a very different tune to Arab and Muslim audiences. On May 10, 1994, Arafat was secretly recorded speaking at a mosque in Johannesburg, South Africa. He <a href="https://iris.org.il/arafats-johannesburg-speech/">said</a>:
<blockquote>&#8220;This agreement, I am not considering it more than the agreement which had been signed between our prophet Mohammed and Koraish, and you remember the Caliph Omar had refused this agreement and [considered] it a despicable truce.
But Mohammed had accepted it and we are accepting now this peace offer. But to continue our way to Jerusalem, to the first shrine together and not alone. We are in need of you as Moslems, as warriors of Jihad.&#8221;</blockquote>
(The treaty with the Koraish, known as the Treaty of Hudaybiya, was a peace treaty Mohammed signed with the Koraish tribe of Mecca at a time when his army was not strong enough to conquer the city. Two years later, however, Mohammed&#8217;s forces had gained in strength, so he abrogated the treaty and conquered Mecca.)
A few years later, when Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Arafat everything he asked for as part of the agreement, Arafat rejected the offer and subsequently launched one of the bloodiest waves of terrorism in modern Israeli history.
In 2015, Palestinan Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas said: &#8220;We welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem. This is pure blood, clean blood, blood on its way to Allah. With the help of Allah, every shaheed (martyr) will be in heaven, and every wounded will get his reward.  &#8230; Al-Aqsa is ours, and the (Church of the) Holy Sepulcher is ours, everything is ours, all ours. They (the Jews) have no right to desecrate them with their filthy feet and we won&#8217;t allow them to.&#8221;
The PLO is poison. It has destroyed the prospect of peace and it holds hostage the aspirations of the Palestinians. If there is to be peace someday, it will be when the legacy of the PLO is undone.

Mahmoud Abbas at U.N.

MITSOTAKIS: The PLO’s Poison

Yasser Arafat

President Donald Trump’s Middle East &#8220;Deal of the Century&#8221; peace plan — The Vision — is 180 pages long and meticulously detailed. <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/peacetoprosperity/">Read it</a> if you like. But the president and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu covered the high points Tuesday before an enthusiastic, pro-Israel audience at the White House.
Regardless of how future negotiations go, the president’s management of The Vision and meetings with the prime minister and, separately, with Netanyahu’s chief political rival (Benny Gantz), were masterful in two ways. First, it allowed the Israelis to demonstrate that there are areas in which their two major political parties can agree, and that both can agree with Mr. Trump. Second, it allowed the president to erase the mistaken assumption that the United States has to be neutral between Israelis and Palestinians in order to make progress.
The United States can only be an “honest broker” if it eschews neutrality, which accepts all the positions of both parties as equally compelling. The Vision, and the East Room ceremony, address American interests, the first of which is that Israel is a friend and ally by its very nature. Human rights, rule of law, free elections, freedom of religion and the press, security interests, and a high-tech, open economy are built in. While the president was extraordinarily sympathetic to the Palestinian people — particularly young people whom he lamented are “growing up with no hope” — there are some things the Palestinian Authority (PA) does that are unacceptable not only to Israel, but also to the United States.
Giving up those unacceptable things before the U.S. will support Palestinians&#8217; desire for an independent state is what some people call “preconditions.” Yes. Precisely. Neutral parties don’t do that — honest brokers do. The PA has to be an acceptable interlocutor and at the moment, it is not. But, said the president, “It is never too late. It is time to rise up and meet the challenges of the future. If they do it, it will work.”
What, exactly, does the president require?
In exchange for recognition of Palestine as the nation-state of the Palestinian people with a capital in Jerusalem (which will remain undivided and under Israeli sovereignty), “where the U.S. will proudly open an embassy,” plus massive international investment, he asked them to “meet the challenges of peaceful coexistence.”
<ul>
<li>Adopt basic laws ensuring basic human rights and protecting against financial and political corruption;</li>
<li>Stop malign activities of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad;</li>
<li>End incitement against Israel; and</li>
<li>Permanently halt financial compensation to terrorists</li>
</ul>
Let’s face it, these constitute a very low bar for civilized behavior. If the Palestinians can’t or won’t do those things, how much “peace” will any “process” provide? (One Twitter used asked, “Anyone think the Kurds would reject a deal that gave them a path to a state and $50 billion if they just behaved like human beings?”)
In addition, the president changed the timeline.
Life/conflict for Palestinians and Israelis did not start with Israel’s acquisition of Judea and Samaria in the course of defending itself from a combined multi-national Arab attack in 1967. “It is time for the Muslim world to fix the mistake it made in 1948, when it chose to attack instead of to recognize the new state of Israel. The Palestinians are the primary pawn in this adventurism, and it is time for this sad chapter in history to end.” By recognizing that the Palestinians were left hanging by their Arab brothers between 1948 and 1967, he made the solution to the Palestinian plight the Arab states&#8217; responsibility, as well. Three Arab ambassadors were in the room.
Trump noted that Qassem Soleimani’s organization, the Quds Force, was, translated in English, the Jerusalem Liberation Organization. “To have Jerusalem be free [Soleimani said] we have to be at war with Israel. But, in truth, Jerusalem is liberated. Jerusalem is a safe, open, and democratic city.”
The president was fulsome in his praise of Israel, pleased that Israel had agreed — for the first time — to produce a map of what two states would look like. It would be useful to ask the Palestinians to produce a map with THEIR proposed settlement — but not until they come to the table.
And he was clear in his determination to ensure Israel’s security. “There will be no incremental risks to the state of Israel.” “Peace,” he added, “requires compromise, but we will never ask Israel to compromise its security.”
That is a far cry from prior administrations that demanded Israel take “risks for peace.” Those risks resulted in the so-called “intifada” after Israel signed the Oslo Accords and allowed the PA to have an armed security force; the entrenchment of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon after Israel departed there in 2000; and the rise of Hamas after Israel departed the Gaza Strip in 2005. Trump will not ask Israel to take more of those risks.
The Israelis know how rare it is to have an American president who sees the world the way they do. The Palestinians can take advantage of a president who wants to improve their future.
“America,” said the president, “cannot care more about peace than the stakeholders,” but he also was careful to mention that “this part of the world is forever connected to the human soul and the human spirit.”
Amen.
&nbsp;
Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/">The Jewish Policy Center</a> in Washington, and Editor of inFOCUS Quarterly.

BRYEN: Donald Trump’s Vision For The Middle East

On Monday, President Donald Trump, who is hosting at the White House today both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his leading political foe at the moment, former Israel Defense Forces Chief of General Staff Benny Gantz, confirmed that he will unveil tomorrow his administration&#8217;s much-anticipated &#8220;Deal of the Century&#8221; peace plan proposal for Israel and the Palestinian-Arabs.
&#8220;It’s something they should want,&#8221; Trump said following a meeting with Netanyahu, Fox News <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-touts-upcoming-mideast-peace-plan-following-meeting-with-netanyahu-despite-palestinian-objections">reports</a>, while adding that Trump confirmed he will announce the plan on Tuesday. “They probably won&#8217;t want it initially. I think in the end they will. I think in the end they&#8217;re going to want it. It&#8217;s very good for them,” Trump continued.
“We&#8217;ll see what happens,” Trump speculated. “Without them, we don&#8217;t do the deal. That&#8217;s OK. &#8230; We think that there is a very good chance that they&#8217;re going to want this.”
“This is an opportunity for peace,” Trump also said while standing alongside Netanyahu, as <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Trump-to-unveil-Israeli-borders-map-for-first-time-in-peace-plan-rollout-615541">noted</a> by The Jerusalem Post. “We’ll show a plan that has been worked on by everyone. We’ll see if it catches hold. If it does, that’d be great. If it doesn’t, it’s okay.”
Trump &#8220;said he invited Gantz to the White House so that the timing of the plan’s release wouldn’t be seen as political, in order to help Netanyahu win the upcoming election,&#8221; the Post reported. &#8220;He called Netanyahu and Gantz &#8216;two good competitions, fighting it out.'&#8221;
The Post, which is very well-sourced on this issue, also speculated on the contours of the soon-to-be-rolled-out plan: &#8220;The plan is expected to include the annexation of all Israeli settlements to Israel, along with most of the Jordan Valley, in a way that would allow for maximum territory with minimum non-Israel residents, such that the Palestinians would live in their own, demilitarized state.&#8221;
As <a href="https://www.jewishpress.com/news/eye-on-palestine/settlers-launching-deal-of-the-century-pushback/2020/01/26/">reported</a> by the Jewish Press over the weekend, some so-called &#8220;settlers&#8221; — otherwise known as Jews <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-the-trump-administration-is-absolutely-correct-to-call-israeli-settlements-legal">legally</a> living in the biblical Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria — have already launched a preemptive pushback against the fact that the &#8220;Deal of the Century&#8221; is reputed to include an independent Palestinian-Arab state.
&#8220;Samaria Regional Council Chairman Yossi Dagan left for Washington, D.C. Saturday night to meet with members of Congress and GOP officials who are close to President Donald Trump, as well as with evangelical leaders he has befriended in recent years,&#8221; the Press wrote. &#8220;His goal is to present to these allies of the settlements enterprise the red lines of the Jewish settlements which must not be crossed in any future arrangement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.&#8221;
&#8220;[W]e should also pay attention to the asterisks and small print [in the plan],” Dagan said, as the Press noted. “We must be careful not to allow the words ‘applying sovereignty’ become a smokescreen that covers our eyes from seeing the true meaning of the Deal of the Century, according to the spirit of those parts of the plan which have already been published. The plan is also rife with danger.”
In a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-yes-palestinian-state-far-more-dangerous-josh-hammer">Daily Wire op-ed</a> last August, I wrote strongly against the creation of any new, independent Palestinian-Arab state:
<blockquote>The “two-state solution,” the misbegotten Oslo Accords-initiated process by which the liberal Jewish state of Israel is expected to carve an Iran/Muslim Brotherhood-funded stronghold out of its tiny New Jersey-sized nation-state, has always been nothing other than a left-wing Ivory Tower fairy tale. According to the (<a href="https://mosaicmagazine.com/response/israel-zionism/2019/07/the-many-incoherences-and-hypocrisies-of-international-law-on-jerusalem/">legally meaningless</a>, under settled international law) “1967 borders,” around which Oslo is effectively based, the Jewish state is to be nine miles wide at its narrowest point — a wildly indefensible result that has led many in Israel’s military and political establishment to deride it as “Auschwitz borders.” Moreover, Judea and Samaria — the biblical Jewish heartland which would be transferred to the terrorist PLO (and thereby made fully Judenrein), pursuant to Oslo — is geographically indispensable for the Jewish state’s security. The hilly terrain of Judea and Samaria provides a direct means to look down upon Jerusalem and Israel’s Tel Aviv-centric coastal plains alike.</blockquote>

Trump Confirms Much-Anticipated Middle East Peace Plan Will Be Unveiled Tomorrow

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Visiting Jerusaelm for the World Holocaust form, French President Emmanuel Macron used the site of a holy church to <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/macron-yells-at-israeli-security-to-leave-french-church-during-jerusalem-visit/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.timesofisrael.com/macron-yells-at-israeli-security-to-leave-french-church-during-jerusalem-visit/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1579878466728000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGd1lyLaA_FJ-ZMS6QNqiuEPliWKw">yell at the Israeli Police</a> who were protecting him.
This is just another episode of French antagonism to Israel’s presence in Jerusalem. In 2016, France supported a ludicrous UNESCO resolution that implied Jerusalem has no Jewish or Christian historical connection. The French prime minister at the time, Manuel Valls, subsequently expressed regret for his country’s action, but it did not stop France from doing it again: A year later, it abstained on a similar UNESCO resolution.
The following year, when President Trump announced that the United States will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move its embassy, France was at the forefront of the passionate and angry European opposition — itself more aggressive than the Palestinian and Arab reactions. Macron repeatedly claimed that the recognition would have negative security repercussions well beyond Jerusalem, stating that “the status of Jerusalem is a question of international security which concerns the entire international community.&#8221;
Such European position is based on a 1949 U.N. resolution that designated Jerusalem and Bethlehem as a “corpus separatum” to be placed under an international legal regime — essentially a European colony.
Macron did not stop there, and tried to link the May 2018 Hamas-led &#8220;Nakba day&#8221; Gaza riots to the opening of the new U.S. embassy: “Experience shows that whether you like it or not, things like that provoke violence in response. … This leads to people dying.” He said.
French disruptive meddling in the Middle East is not new. In 1920, French actions triggered the first shots in what became the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. France invaded Syria in order to dethrone the pro-Zionist Arab Emir Faisal and to instill a French regime instead (nominally posing as a League of Nation mandate). While Jews attempted to stay neutral in the French-Arab conflict, local Arab commanders suspected French soldiers were hiding in the Jewish village of Tel-Chai and a deadly battle ensued.
The residue of French colonialism was very much on display in Macron’s visit to Jerusalem on January 22. Indeed, it traces back as far as the inter-colonialist dealings of the 1850s, when the Ottoman Empire gave the Church of Saint Anne to France as a reward for France’s support in the Crimean War.
“Get out,” Macron yelled at Israeli Police as they entered that church with him. Analysts view this as an orchestrated show directed at Macron’s Muslim and far-left anti-Israel voters. Previous French President Jacques Chirac pulled a similar stunt during his 1996 Jerusalem visit. Walking through the narrow alleys of the Old City — a venue of multiple stabbings and other terrorist attacks — Chirac confronted his Israeli security detail for their tight protection.
What is alarming about the January 22 incident is not that Macron, like Chirac, decided to take a shot at Israel for seemingly internal political grains, but that he chose to do so in one of Christianity’s holy sites, located right on the Via Dolorosa. As Macron ordered Israeli Police out, he yelled at them that those rules have been in place for centuries and “that will not change with me.” Macron got it wrong. This colonialist-era arrangement could have only been in place for one century and a half.
While Macron might wish for Jerusalem and Bethlehem to be taken away from the locals and given to the “international community,” this particular part of Jerusalem should apparently belong to France. His spokesperson even clarified this point. Israeli Police stated that Macron’s team later apologized for the incident, and Macron went on to shake the hands of his security detail as they continued their tour of the Old City.
Notwithstanding the apology, one cannot ignore the disturbing pattern. This week’s actions come just a year after Macron outraged the world in announcing his plans to honor Marshal Petain, murderer of the Jews of France and head of the collaborative Vichy government, for his role in World War I. Macron later retracted the plan. Symbolically, the Macron incident occurred as he gathered along with 45 world leaders in Jerusalem to remember the Holocaust — a genocide for which France is still in the early stages of recognizing its previous occupied government&#8217;s complicit guilt. For example, a recent <a href="http://www.claimscon.org/france-study/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.claimscon.org/france-study/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1579878466728000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEVIoRCH-fCTziIpPRiSTN_v0QSVQ">study</a> showed that 45% of French millennials are unaware of the occupied French government’s collaboration with the Nazi regime during the Holocaust.
Let us be clear — France is an important ally of both Israel and the United States, and Macron is a friend. He is a courageous fighter against anti-Semitism, including in his repeated proclamation that there is no difference between anti-Zionism and anti Semitism. But friendship requires honesty and France should be told that it is time to take a deep look inside.
France’s repeated episodes of opposition to Jerusalem should not be taken lightly, even if followed by some sort of retraction or apology. Moreover, anti-Semitism in France is rising yet again and trickling up into the mainstream of French society. This was just as it did in the 1890s during the Dreyfus Affair — a stunning case of state-sponsored anti-Semitism spanning multiple levels of French government and society — and just as it did in the 1940s with the Vichy government&#8217;s collaboration with the Nazis.
Rather than yell at Israeli Police that things &#8220;will not change with me,&#8221; it is time for Macron and France to enact radical changes that will put an end to the French government&#8217;s stance against Jerusalem. This should not be done to please Jews or Christians. It should be done for the sake of France itself.
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Gol Kalev analyzes trends in Zionism, Europe and global affairs. For more of his articles: <a href="http://europeandjerusalem.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://europeandjerusalem.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1579878466728000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFitK7ujW6YkWYwdOOdDlab9h_iRg">europeandjerusalem.com.</a>
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Emmanuel Macron

KALEV: Macron Must End France’s Colonialist-Like Stance Against Jerusalem

France

Jerusalem

In an interview with TBN that airs in full Tuesday night, a preview of which has been released exclusively to The Daily Wire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed President Trump’s decision to target Iran’s top military leader, Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force. The removal of Soleimani, said the Israeli leader, is a “tremendous achievement” that accomplished two key priorities at once.
Asked how Soleimani’s death will “change the Middle East,” Netanyahu told TBN Television Networks President Matthew Crouch that he believes that, first of all, &#8220;it sends a message of American determination and American strength — it’s a deterrence, a very powerful one.&#8221;
“Secondly, Soleimani himself was the architect and the generator of Iran’s empirical [goals], the Iranian empire,&#8221; Netanyahu continued. &#8220;Iran is predominantly Shiite. [Soleimani] would go into a neighboring country, say Iraq, and he would find Shiites and would create Shiite militias … manned by Iraqi Shiites but commanded by his own officers, Iranian officers. The same he would do in Syria, same he would do in Yemen.&#8221;
“He was beginning to choke the Middle East,” the prime minister stressed. “He wanted to conquer the entire Middle East, the Arabian Peninsula and ultimately destroy Israel. He was beginning to push his forces right next to Israel in Syria — and we responded to them very forcefully, we hit back.”
“But it is important to understand that Iran’s expansion into this horrible empire that brings misery and death to untold numbers of people in the Middle East—by the way, Jews and Arabs alike, Christians Muslims Jews, everyone,” said Netanyahu. “This man was an engine of destruction and conquest and subjugation. And his removal, I think, helps roll back these forces of tyranny.”
“It’s a tremendous achievement,” the prime minister added. “It both strengthens American deterrence but also pushes back Iran’s aggression.”
Video of Netanyahu’s comments below (full interview airs on TBN Tuesday night at 8/7c):
<iframe title="PRAISE | Israel Special Report | Tomorrow Night at 8/7c" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vb-rj7OwANU?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
According to a press release issued by TBN Monday, in the 24-minute interview Netanyahu discusses a wide range of topics, including &#8220;Israel’s role as the Middle East’s sole democracy, its determination to aggressively defend itself against Iran and others intent on its destruction, and the important commitment of President Trump and America’s conservative and Christian community to stand in solidarity with Israel and the Jewish people.&#8221;
In response to the Trump-ordered strategic airstrike that took out Soleimani, Iran targeted two Iraqi bases where U.S. personnel were stationed. The next day, President Trump gave a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-trump-addresses-nation-after-attack-no-lives-lost-iran-appears-to-be-standing-down">televised address</a> in which he announced that the strikes resulted in no U.S. or Iraqi deaths and that Iran had signaled that they were “standing down.” In the address, Trump reiterated his commitment to pushing back against Iran’s aggression in the region, particularly as orchestrated by Soleimani.
“As long as I am president of the United States, Iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon,” Trump declared. “I am pleased to inform you, the American people should be extremely grateful and happy: No Americans were harmed in last night’s attack by the Iranian regime. We suffered no casualties, all of our soldiers are safe, and only minimal damage was sustained at our military bases. Our great American forces are prepared for anything. Iran appears to be standing down, which is a good thing for all parties concerned, and a very good thing for the world.”
“For far too long, all the way back to 1979, to be exact, nations have tolerated Iran’s destructive and destabilizing behavior in the Middle East. Those days are over,” Trump stated. “Iran has been the leading state sponsor of terrorism, and their pursuit of nuclear weapons threatens the civilized world. We will never let that happen.”
&#8220;As the head of the Quds Force, Soleimani was personally responsible for some of the absolutely worst atrocities,&#8221; the president explained. &#8220;He trained terrorist armies, including Hezbollah, launching terrorist strikes against civilian targets. He fueled bloody civil wars all across the region. He viciously wounded and murdered thousands of U.S. troops, including the planting of roadside bombs that maim and dismember their victims. Soleimani directed the recent attacks on U.S. personnel in Iraq that badly wounded four service members and killed one American, and he orchestrated the violent assault on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. In recent days, he was planning new attacks on American targets, but we stopped him.&#8221;
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/iran-sent-messages-through-three-back-channels-to-u-s-after-attack-to-say-they-were-done">Iran Sent Messages Through ‘Three Back Channels’ To U.S. After Attack To Say They Were Done</a>

WATCH: Netanyahu On Trump Taking Out Soleimani: ‘A Tremendous Achievement’ That Accomplished Two Key Goals

Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps

Qassem Soleimani

On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu won an overwhelming vote of confidence from members of his Likud party, as he <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7829267/Benjamin-Netanyahu-gets-boost-scores-landslide-victory.html">decisively won</a> 72% of the vote in the Likud party primary and rival candidate Gideon Saar won 28% of the vote.
On Friday morning, as <a href="https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/273726">Israel National News</a> reported, Netanyahu celebrated his victory, stating:
<blockquote>Yesterday I received a renewed and powerful mandate from the Likud.  Now is the time to unite to bring about a landslide victory for the Likud and the right in elections. The final and sweeping decision in the primaries was an expression of great faith in my path and in our path. Most of the nation supports the right, and most of the nation supports me as prime minister. This is a great victory, because we were victorious over the weather. We were also victorious over those who spread fake news, who are already trying to downplay the victory. This is a great victory because almost all media outlets joined together against me.</blockquote>
Netanyahu added, &#8220;Last night, we proved that we are able to win big, and we will win big because of the amazing achievements we will yet bring the State of Israel. In the coming years, I will bring more historical achievements — American recognition of sovereignty applied to the Jordan Valley, northern Dead Sea area, and all the towns in Judea and Samaria. [There will be] the historic defense treaty with the U.S., to put a final stop to Iran, bring about a normalization of relations, treaties, and later, peace treaties with our neighbors.
By winning the primary, Netanyahu could form a new government after the March election, which would be Israel’s third in less than a year.
Saar congratulated Netanyahu, adding he would support him in the national election. He wrote, “I am absolutely comfortable with my decision to run. Whoever isn&#8217;t ready to take a risk for the path he believes in will never win.”
Netanyahu has been a fixture in Israel for decades; the longest-serving prime minister in Israeli history, he is the first to be born in Israel after the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Declaration_of_Independence">establishment of the state</a>. Netanyahu was a leader in Israel’s special forces unit; fought in several of Israel’s wars, and led a commando assault deep into Syrian territory. He obtained Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees from prestigious MIT in Cambridge, MA.
Netanyahu’s stewardship of Israel during his second term as prime minister, which began in 2009, (his first occurred during 1996-1999) displayed his skill, as he had to deal with an overtly anti-Israel Obama administration. As Jackson Diehl noted in <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/03/obama_and_netanyahu_pointless.html">The Washington Post</a> of Netanyahu’s meeting in 2010 with Barack Obama:
<blockquote>Obama has added more poison to a U.S.-Israeli relationship that already was at its lowest point in two decades. Tuesday night the White House refused to allow non-official photographers record the president’s meeting with Netanyahu; no statement was issued afterward. Netanyahu is being treated as if he were an unsavory Third World dictator, needed for strategic reasons but conspicuously held at arms length … A new administration can be excused for making such a mistake in the treacherous and complex theater of Middle East diplomacy. That’s why Obama was given a pass by many when he made exactly the same mistake last year. The second time around, the president doesn’t look naive. He appears ideological &#8212; and vindictive.</blockquote>
Additionally, Obama emboldened the Iranian theocratic regime, which has said it will destroy Israel, with the Iran nuclear deal, was <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/US-strategists-Obama-campaign-interference-backfired-395105">accused</a> of trying to interfere in the Israeli electoral process in order to remove Netanyahu in 2015, and just before Obama left office, his administration <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/12/28/obamas_attack_on_israel_132657.html">refused to veto</a> a U.N. resolution denying the Jewish connection to the holiest spot on earth for Jews: the Temple Mount.
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Likud Leader Netanyahu Attempts To Thwart Gantz  Alliance With Arab Parties

Netanyahu Gets Overwhelming Display Of Support From His Party

On Wednesday night, a rocket launched from Gaza seemingly targeted Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu while he was speaking at a Likud primaries conference in Ashkelon, Israel. Netanayu was taken off the stage to a bomb shelter, but returned later to speak to attendees, where he told them, “The last terrorist who ordered the rocket fire toward Ashdod when I was there is not with us anymore; the one that ordered this attack should pack his bags quickly.”
The <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Rocket-sirens-sound-in-Ashkelon-area-612138">Jerusalem Post</a> reported, “A similar incident happened in Ashdod in September when rocket sirens were fired as Netanyahu held a campaign event in the city … Gazan reports indicated that Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) leader Khalil Batanai is the one behind the rocket fire on Wednesday night, according to Channel 12. The rocket fire in September was ordered by former PIJ official Baha Abu Al Ata, who was assassinated in November.”
Blue and White leader Benny Gantz, Netanyahu’s chief opponent for the position of prime minister, took advantage of the rocket attack to attack Netanyahu, tweeting, &#8220;The situation in which the citizens of Israel are given to the grace of terrorists and the prime minister of the Israeli government can&#8217;t tour part of his country is a badge of shame for the security policies in the south and the loss of deterrence that no sovereign state can allow. We will flip the government, change the policies and return the deterrence and quiet to the residents of the south.”
Ashkelon is only 26 miles from Gaza. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/gazas-homemade-rockets-still-stretch-israels-sophisticated-defenses/2019/05/06/2ca3a46a-700c-11e9-9331-30bc5836f48e_story.html">The Washington Post</a> reported last May, “ … experts who track the weapons arsenals of Hamas and Islamic Jihad estimate that they have managed to stockpile between 5,000 and 20,000 rockets. Over the weekend, the militant groups fired a tiny fraction of them toward Israel — nearly 700 rockets and mortars, according to the Israeli military — and the unusually ferocious barrage at times overwhelmed Israeli air defenses. The key to the weapons’ effectiveness is not their sophistication in terms of range or precision but just the opposite. Many of the rockets are so cheap and easy to manufacture, in some cases requiring little more than metal casing and an explosive, that the groups have been able to accumulate them in significant numbers.”
Boaz Ganor, director of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, commented, “When it’s not a precise missile, it’s quite easy to prepare a rocket if you don’t really care where it’s going to fall.” Last May four Israelis died under rocket fire from Gaza, the Post noted. A rocket that hit Tel Aviv last March had a range of 75 miles. Hamas has been manufacturing rockets in Gaza since 2001, during the Second Intifada, when a bloody rampage by Palestinians that included myriad bombings that murdered hundreds of Israelis.
After the rockets last May, former ambassador of Israel to the United States Michael Oren stated, “Hamas must go. Right after our holidays and Eurovision, Israel must evict Hamas from Gaza. The U.S. should back us militarily and diplomatically and, together with Arab states, commit to Gaza’s renewal.”
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Gaza Rocket Targets Area Where Netanyahu Is Speaking. Netanyahu Has A Message For The Terrorist Launching It.

Last week, Israeli prosecutors charged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with three counts of corruption. At the core of the indictment is an accusation that Netanyahu accepted bribes in the form of positive press coverage (or more precisely, reduction in negative coverage). In exchange, Netanyahu allegedly advanced the interests of two powerful Israeli media organizations.
The unprecedented designation by prosecutors of press coverage as a currency for bribery has far-reaching implications on the freedom of the press, and could curtail journalists’ ability to report the truth.
For example, the morning after Netanyahu’s indictment, several prominent journalists and editors called for Netanyahu&#8217;s immediate resignation, thereby creating public pressure for his removal. If Netanyahu resigns, and one of those journalists later receives some sort of benefit from the new government, such as an exclusive interview, then according to last week’s precedent, that journalist could be exposed to charges of bribery.
Another challenge to freedom of the press that arose from last week’s indictment relates to journalists’ complex, multi-layer relations with their sources — a process that certainly includes a lot of give and take. A journalist&#8217;s interaction with sources, including politicians, is now suddenly under scrutiny — criminal scrutiny! With such restrictions, it is possible that many journalists&#8217; headline-grabbing exposures, such as Watergate, would have not been uncovered.
There are those in Israel who dismiss this by arguing that the indictment has nothing to do with freedom of the press, but rather with Netanyahu’s corruption. For decades, alas, Israeli prosecutors and investigators sought to find wrongdoing by Netanyahu and his <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/ag-to-handle-sara-netanyahu-s-bottle-deposit-scandal-1.5366779">family</a>. “This is the best they could come up with,” explained one commentator about the prime minister&#8217;s indictment. Decades of searching for misconduct now resulting in such a bizarre charge could paradoxically be interpreted by some as a testament to Netanyahu’s integrity. Indeed, many around the world were quick to condemn the Israeli prosecutor’s action. For example, Mark Levin <a href="https://twitter.com/marklevinshow/status/1197644963061882882">tweeted</a>: “I’ve carefully reviewed these charges and they’re outrageous. This is an assault on freedom of the press and the investigation was corrupt.”
But there is also another side to the story. Israel is a hub for global innovations: Turning air into water, saving lives through medical breakthroughs, generating cutting-edge ideas that alter long-held beliefs. In this realm, perhaps the revolutionary treatment of press coverage by Israeli prosecutors, who are revered around the legal world for their high professionalism, awakens the issue of the power of the press and brings it for debate in the global public square.
After all, the media shape people’s minds. Why should it not be held accountable? Should journalists and media outlets be investigated about what really motivates their coverage? For example, the BBC, which influences millions of British citizens, has long been perceived to have a positive bias toward the European Union (EU) and to give negative coverage to the Brexit campaign. It was then revealed that the BBC has <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/02/06/bbc-faces-brexit-bias-accusations-4m-eu-funding/">allegedly been the recipient</a> of millions of Euros from the EU. Similar realities exist with other news outlets around the world. Some are open about their bias — and are even proud of it.
Decisions by journalists and editors can make or break the careers of politicians and influence the outcomes of elections. Nowhere is this more paramount than in the case of Netanyahu, who, along with his family, has been a subject of a smear campaign by the Israeli media for over 25 years now. The negative press has been so extreme that even Netanyahu’s arch-rival, Arab Joint List Knesset Member Ahmed Tibi, who was a close associate of PLO leader Yasser Arafat, came to Netanyahu’s defense in 2010. Tibi denounced what he labeled the “inhuman treatment” of Netanyahu’s wife. In an emotional speech from the podium of the Knesset, he stated: ”I will do whatever it takes to unseat you, but will never use attacks on your wife and family to do so.”
With media outlets deploying their enormous power to achieve their objectives, such as to unseat Netanyahu or to reject Brexit, perhaps Israeli prosecutors taking the lid off the sanctity of the freedom of the press should not be brushed off so quickly. Granted, there are other problematic aspects of Netanyahu’s indictment, such as the allegation of selective enforcement (many politicians received positive coverage, but none were indictment). Alan Dershowitz, for example, argued earlier this year that “to bring down a duly elected prime minister on the basis of an expansive and unprecedented application of a broad and expandable criminal statute, endangers democracy.&#8221;
No matter what one thinks about the merits of the indictment, one thing is clear: A historic debate about the freedom of the press has been launched.
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Gol Kalev analyzes trends in Zionism, Europe and global affairs. For more of his articles: <a href="http://europeandjerusalem.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://europeandjerusalem.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1574865012618000&amp;usg=AFQjCNE0a1_7ZfpExUVJPpsBaQ_UwuzfLw">europeandjerusalem.com.</a>

KALEV: Netanyahu’s Indictment Could Be A Game-Changer For Freedom Of The Press

Freedom of the Press

Media

<a href="https://jstreet.org">J Street</a> has long been one of the most pernicious anti-Israel groups operating in the open. Untold amounts of ink have been <a href="https://www.chicagomaroon.com/article/2013/12/3/letter-j-street-liberals-fundamentally-misunderstand-pro-israel/">spilled</a> revealing the self-described &#8220;political home of pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans&#8221; for the <a href="https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/222366-j-street-pro-progressive-not-pro-israel">highly biased</a>, anti-Israel, <a href="http://www.thetower.org/article/anti-zionism-of-j-street/">Palestinian-Arab apologist</a> organization that it is.
For years following its 2007 founding by leftist activist Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street operated on the outermost fringes of the institutional pro-Israel and Jewish communities. But the years-long success of the <a href="http://www.thetower.org/article/open-hillel-is-a-much-bigger-problem-than-you-think/">insidious</a> &#8220;Open Hillel&#8221; movement helped to ingratiate J Street, which routinely assails Israeli governmental policy and never seems to find any fault with Islamist terror acts committed against the Jewish state, within some more mainstream elements of the American Jewish community. And as Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro recently wrote, the modern Democratic Party feels more at home within the J Street fold than it does within the ambit of the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-what-exactly-current-role-aipac-josh-hammer">moderate</a> pro-Israel group AIPAC:
<blockquote>[T]he heart of the Democratic Party has moved against Israel. &#8230; So the Democrats built up and gave credence to J Street, a Trojan horse group dedicated to undermining American support for Israel and justifying left-wing hatred of the Jewish state. J Street was founded by Clinton operative Jeremy Ben-Ami and Israeli far-left political figure Daniel Levy in late 2007. One of its chief sources of funding — a source obscured in the early years by its founders — was anti-Israel radical George Soros.</blockquote>
Accordingly, four candidates for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination — South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Rep. Julian Castro (D-TX), and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) — spoke last month at the <a href="https://jstreet.org/conference/">J Street National Conference</a>. By contrast, not a single 2020 Democratic Party presidential candidate spoke at the <a href="http://www.policyconference.org">AIPAC Policy Conference</a> last spring.
Now, the indispensable Legal Insurrection website has <a href="https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/11/j-street-radicalization-conference-speaker-compares-netanyahu-to-louis-farrakhan-and-stands-by-tamika-mallory/">highlighted</a> a particularly vile and irksome exchange that emanated from the bowels of the conference. It appears that April Baskin, who has the titles of &#8220;Racial Justice Director, Jewish Social Justice Roundtable&#8221; and &#8220;Founder/Principal, Joyous Justice Consulting,&#8221; defended noted <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-womens-march-president-suggests-jews-are-ryan-saavedra">anti-Semite Tamika Mallory</a> and expressly compared infamous <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1984/07/17/us/farrakhan-again-describes-hitler-as-a-very-great-man.html">anti-Semite</a> Louis Farrakhan to longtime Israeli Prime Minister <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-after-much-electoral-fanfare-israelis-once-josh-hammer">Benjamin Netanyahu</a>. Per <a href="https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/11/j-street-radicalization-conference-speaker-compares-netanyahu-to-louis-farrakhan-and-stands-by-tamika-mallory/">Legal Insurrection</a>:
<blockquote>[P]anelist April Baskin said that white supremacy is &#8220;woven into Jewish life in America.&#8221; She also said there are things she &#8220;hates&#8221; about the Jewish community — including her belief that Jews have a &#8220;propensity&#8221; to &#8220;complain.&#8221; &#8230;
Later in the session, Baskin declared her support for the disgraced Tamika Mallory. Mallory’s downfall culminated in early 2019 when when it emerged that she maintained a close relationship with the anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist and Nation of Islam leader, Louis Farrakhan. Mallory, the ex-Women’s March leader, refused to condemn Farrakhan and even posted a picture calling the anti-Semite &#8220;the GOAT (greatest of all time).&#8221;</blockquote>
Perhaps most egregiously of all, Baskin compared infamous Jew-hater Farrakhan to Netanyahu: &#8220;Tamika Mallory being pictured with with Louis Farrakhan, honestly, isn’t that different to me than my former boss, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, being seated with prime minister Netanyahu. In both cases, they both largely don’t agree with their politics, but in both cases, those are leaders who are connected to a large body of people.&#8221;
As of publication time, it seems that none of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates who spoke at last month&#8217;s J Street National Conference have condemned Baskin&#8217;s vicious smear. Surprise, surprise.

Netanyahu election night

J Street Conference Speaker Compares Benjamin Netanyahu To Louis Farrakhan

American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)

J Street

Leftism

Louis Farrakhan

Progressivism

Last week, Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer, who frequently opines on issues pertaining to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/44424/hammer-stark-choice-facing-jewish-democrats-josh-hammer">Jewish politics</a>, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/43388/hammer-anti-semites-ilhan-omar-and-rashida-tlaib-josh-hammer">anti-Semitism</a>, and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/50850/hammer-yes-palestinian-state-far-more-dangerous-josh-hammer">Israel</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9hH2jloilc">joined</a> &#8220;Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler&#8221; on One America News Network to discuss the revelation that 2020 Democratic Party presidential <a href="https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/3633/Who-will-win-the-2020-Democratic-presidential-nomination">statistical frontrunner</a> Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is now <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/elizabeth-warren-could-pull-military-aid-israel-settlements-1466680">threatening</a> to withhold U.S. military aid to Israel if Israel does not make the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-yes-palestinian-state-far-more-dangerous-josh-hammer">&#8220;two-state solution&#8221;</a> land concessions that a President Warren might envision. As The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-elizabeth-warren-says-shes-open-to-cutting-off-aid-to-israel">reported</a> last week, Warren said that &#8220;everything&#8221; — meaning aid — would potentially be &#8220;on the table.&#8221;
Hammer began his segment with Wheeler by explaining how clearly Warren telegraphed her <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/schachtel-elizabeth-warren-completes-her-total-jordan-schachtel">hard turn</a> against Israel — including her hiring of ex-<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-israel-bashing-group-ifnotnows-recent-josh-hammer">IfNotNow</a> co-founder Max Berger as a high-ranking <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/ifnotnow-co-founder-max-berger-brings-progressive-fight-to-warren-camp/">campaign staffer</a>:
<blockquote>Elizabeth Warren is now running for the Democratic presidential nomination in a year in which the Democratic Party has just gone crazy. &#8230; [Warren] hired someone named Max Berger as one of her progressive campaign outreach chairs. Max Berger is a co-founder of a despicable, far-left, self-hating, Jew-hating group, IfNotNow. IfNotNow is so radically left that they <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hellenized-jews-ifnotnow-protesters-disrupt-josh-hammer">protest Shabbat services</a> — for Jews observing Sabbath. They&#8217;ve been known to say Kaddish, the traditional Jewish mourners prayer, for Hamas jihadists who have been fired at or had been killed by IDF rocket fire.
She surrounds herself, much like Bernie Sanders, with Israel-hating, I would say Jew-hating, anti-Semites. And this is honestly very sad, but it&#8217;s hardly unexpected. As soon as I saw that she hired Max Berger this summer, I thought, okay, we&#8217;re gonna get to exactly where we now see that she&#8217;s gotten. Well, the only positive thing — the only silver lining here — is that we at least are seeing her true colors before it&#8217;s too late</blockquote>
Wheeler continued by additionally pointing out that Warren&#8217;s narrative is factually misleading, to boot, because it is simply dishonest to objectively view the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and conclude that Israel is the barrier to peace. Hammer agreed:
<blockquote>My friend David Brog, who used to be the executive director of Christians United for Israel and now runs a group called Maccabee Task Force, he did a really wonderful <a href="https://www.prageru.com/video/why-isnt-there-a-palestinian-state/">video for PragerU</a> &#8230; where he really nicely goes back to the history to the beginning of the 20th century and he systemically shows, over and over again, that it is the Palestinian-Arabs who are the obstacles for peace. They have turned down Israeli offers for peace as far back as the United Nations&#8217; original two-state partition in November 1948, where the Jews accepted a tiny sliver of land — barely enough to sustain a civilization — and the Arabs said no and then tried to kill the Jews the very next day. The same thing happened in 2000 at Camp David, it happened in 2008 when Ehud Olmert [offered two states, much like Ehud Barak in 2000].
And then also, in 2010, Prime Minister Netanyahu, as a sign of goodwill to Barack Obama, did exactly what Liz Warren wants Israel&#8217;s to do: A <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/06/world/middleeast/06mideast.html">10-month freeze</a> on so-called &#8220;settlements.&#8221; The so-called &#8220;settlements&#8221; are actually <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYZBjoeeehg">legally fine</a> — the Left is wrong, but we can talk about that perhaps another day — but he actually froze so-called &#8220;settlements&#8221; for 10 months and you know what? Mahmoud Abbas, currently in the 15th year of his four-year term &#8230; he did not even come to the negotiating table after a 10-month full-on &#8220;settlement&#8221; freeze from Netanyahu. So the Palestinians, over and over again, Liz, show who they really are. &#8230; They have no interest in peace. All they want are dead Jews.</blockquote>
WATCH:
<iframe title="Elizabeth Warren Threatens To Withhold Aid To Israel" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qyMOT_2sZ4Q?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Hammer OANN 10.22.19

WATCH: Hammer On ‘Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler’: Elizabeth Warren Is An Israel-Hater

2020 Election

On Thursday, Sarai Idan, who was Miss Iraq, lauded Israel for its commitment to help the Kurdish people in the face of what Turkish dictator Recip Erdogan’s brutal assault on them. Israeli prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted Thursday morning, “Israel strongly condemns the Turkish invasion of the Kurdish areas in Syria and warns against the ethnic cleansing of the Kurds by Turkey and its proxies. Israel is prepared to extend humanitarian assistance to the gallant Kurdish people.”
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Israel strongly condemns the Turkish invasion of the Kurdish areas in Syria and warns against the ethnic cleansing of the Kurds by Turkey and its proxies. Israel is prepared to extend humanitarian assistance to the gallant Kurdish people.
&mdash; Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) <a href="https://twitter.com/netanyahu/status/1182268451269857281?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 10, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Idan commented, “And people wonder why I stand with Israel … heard many countries say ‘They condemn’ but not a single one said they will extend assistance to #Kurds.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
And people wonder why I stand with Israel&#8230; heard many countries say “they condemn” but not a single one said they will extend assistance to <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Kurds?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Kurds</a> <a href="https://t.co/xsPEgpXlRD">https://t.co/xsPEgpXlRD</a>
&mdash; Sarai (Sarah Idan) Miss Iraq (@RealSarahIdan) <a href="https://twitter.com/RealSarahIdan/status/1182359755517358081?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 10, 2019</a></blockquote>
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As <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/miss-iraq-posed-miss-israel-then-radical-muslims-hank-berrien">The Daily Wire</a> reported in December 2017, at the Miss International Beauty Pageant, Idan <a href="https://www.jta.org/2017/11/14/life-religion/miss-israel-and-miss-iraq-pose-together-on-instagram">posed for photos</a> with Miss Israel, Adar Gandelsman, for their respective Instagram accounts. Idan’s caption read: “Peace and Love from Miss Iraq and Miss Israel.” Gandelsman <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/peace-and-love-as-miss-israel-and-miss-iraq-pose-together-on-instagram/">wrote</a>on her Instagram post, “Get to know, this is Miss Iraq and she’s amazing.” She added on Facebook, “Practicing bringing world peace.”
The backlash from parts of the Muslim world targeting Idan, 27, was so fierce that she posted a defense on Istagram, writing in Arabic on Instagram, “I want to stress that the purpose of the picture was only to express hope and desire for peace between the two countries,” but adding that the photo did not indicate support for the Israeli government and offering an apology if the photo was harmful to the Palestinian cause.
It didn’t help; as the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Culture/Family-of-Miss-Iraq-flee-country-after-photo-posted-with-Miss-Israel-518090?utm_source=dlvr.it&amp;utm_medium=twitter">Jerusalem Post reported</a>. Gandelsman, who had become good friends with Idan, told Hadashot that Idan’s family, which still lived in Iraq, had been forced to flee the country after receiving death threats for Idan’s photos with Gandelsman as well as Idan’s posing in a bikini.
Gandelsman added that Idan said she did not regret posting the photos. She said, “She did it to so that people can understand that it’s possible to live together. In order for people to see that we can connect, in the end we are both human beings.”
Seven months later, months after they had posted the selfie together at the Miss Universe competition Miss Israel and Miss Iraq <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5839563/Miss-Iraq-visits-Miss-Israel-Jerusalem-fury-selfie-together.html">reunited in Jerusalem</a>. Idan joined Gandelsman, for dinner in Jerusalem, then posted a picture online captioned, “Sister&#8217;s reunion.” The two also posted a video in which Idan told her followers “Shalom” while Gandelsman told her followers, “Salaam.” Idan told Israel’s Channel 2 News, “I don&#8217;t think Iraq and Israel are enemies; I think maybe the governments are enemies with each other. There&#8217;s a lot of Iraqi people that don&#8217;t have a problem with Israelis.” She told <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/13/middleeast/miss-iraq-miss-israel-reunited-selfie-controversy/index.html">CNN</a>, “When I posted the picture I didn&#8217;t think for a second there would be blowback. I woke up to calls from my family and the Miss Iraq Organization going insane. The death threats I got online were so scary. The director of the Miss Iraq Organization called me and said they&#8217;re getting heat from the ministry. He said I have to take the picture down or they will strip me of my title.&#8221;

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