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Israel’s Foreign Ministry Chief: Sunni Arab Nations Are Our ‘Allies’

The director general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, Dore Gold, called the Middle East’s Sunni Arab nations “Israel’s allies” . . .

“What we have is a regime on a roll that is trying to conquer the Middle East,” Gold said of Iran, “and it’s not Israel talking, that is our Sunni Arab neighbors — and you know what? I’ll use another expression – that is our Sunni Arab allies talking.”

Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and a longtime adviser to Israeli prime ministers from the right-wing Likud Party, is also the author of a 2003 book on Saudi Arabia called “Hatred’s Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism.” Saudi Arabia has been one of the most vocal Arab opponents of US-Iran rapprochement and the Iran nuclear agreement.

The presentation, which was organized by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, also featured Amos Yadlin, a former chief of Israeli military intelligence who now heads Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies. Yadlin ran unsuccessfully for the Knesset in March on the center-left Zionist Union list.

Both Yadlin and Gold warned of the perils of the Iran nuclear agreement. Gold called Iran a major force of instability in the Middle East, and Yadlin said that while the deal gets a B+/A- on its short-term accomplishments of rolling back and freezing Iran’s nuclear program, it’s a “disaster” when it comes to the long-term implications of where it leaves Iran in 15 years. (Read more from “Israel’s Foreign Ministry Chief: Sunni Arab Nations Are Our ‘Allies'” HERE)

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Op-Ed: Obama Knows Iran Will Use Its Nukes on Israel

At first, Obama said we couldn’t talk about his Iranian Nuke Deal unless it was finalized. Then, Obama said we couldn’t talk about his Iranian Nuke Deal unless we read it all – and simply didn’t disclose all of his side-deals. Now, he says Mike Huckabee’s comparison of shipping the Jews of Israel to the new ovens of the Iranian Auschwitz-Nuke is “ridiculous.”

Perhaps Obama wants to wait until Iran nukes Israel for it to be politically correct to call Iran’s wiping Israel off the map a “Holocaust.” But, make no mistake, Obama knows full well that Iran intends to wipe Israel off the map with its Obama-blessed Nukes.

Come on, does anyone (except the American left-wing cool-aid drinking Jews) really believe that Iran will abide by their “voluntary” protocols under the Vienna announcement? Of course not! Are Obama or any of the European Union leaders so rank stupid and naïve that they think Iran won’t build a bomb just like North Korea? Does anyone not know that one of Iran’s first targets will be to annihilate Israel?

Of course Obama knows Iran will seek to annihilate Israel, so that must be what Obama wants. (Read more from “Op-Ed: Obama Knows Iran Will Use Its Nukes on Israel” HERE)

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Spy for Israel, Jonathan Pollard, Finally Granted Parole

Convicted spy for Israel Jonathan Pollard has been granted parole and will be released from an American jail on Nov. 21, his lawyer announced Tuesday.

Pollard’s release — exactly 30 years after his arrest — could help ease the tensions between the United States and Israel that have grown over the Iran nuclear deal, which President Barack Obama supports and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vehemently opposes.

Both the Justice Department and Pollard’s pro bono attorneys, Eliot Lauer and Jacques Semmelman, confirmed his release date Tuesday.

“Mr. Pollard is looking forward to being reunited with his beloved wife Esther,” his lawyers said in a statement.

“Mr. Pollard would like to thank the many thousands of well-wishers in the United States, in Israel, and throughout the world, who provided grass roots support by attending rallies, sending letters, making phone calls to elected officials, and saying prayers for his welfare. He is deeply appreciative of every gesture, large or small,” his lawyers said. “We look forward to seeing our client on the outside in less than four months.” (Read more from “Spy for Israel Jonathan Pollard Granted Parole” HERE)

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Iran Deal Will Set off Middle East Nuclear Arms Race, Warns Top Israeli Official

The new nuclear deal with Iran gives Tehran full legitimacy to engage in further atomic work and will set off a regional nuclear and conventional arms race, a senior Israeli official warned on Friday.

Ram Ben Barak said Iran was plainly still determined to break out to the bomb at a time of its choosing, and that its insistence in the deal on preventing inspectors from gaining instant access to suspect facilities, and on winning the right to continue R&D on fast-enrichment centrifuges, demonstrated that the regime remains committed to attaining nuclear weapons.

Ben Barak, who is director general of the Strategic Affairs Ministry and a leading candidate to be the next head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, told Channel 10 that the 10-year deal between the US-led P5+1 world powers and Iran signed Tuesday, which is aimed at curbing Tehran’s nuclear ambitions in exchange for lifting harsh international sanctions, is “very bad.”

Ben Barak is one of three candidates vying for the coveted position of Mossad chief, contending with current National Security Council chair Yossi Cohen and an unnamed deputy to current Mossad chief Tamir Pardo. Pardo is slated to step down in January 2016.

“This is a very bad deal,” he told Channel 10, “mainly because it gives Iran legitimacy to engage in nuclear work. Also, in 10 years from now, Iran will be able to enrich uranium to whatever grade it wants and however much it wants, without any limitations.” (Read more from “Iran Deal Will Set off Middle East Nuclear Arms Race, Warns Top Israeli Official” HERE)

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Israel Building Billion-Dollar High-Tech Anti-ISIS Fence on Jordan Border

Israel has resolved to take yet another step to strengthen its national security. In this case, it calls for an 18-mile-long fence that will close off the gap in it’s already impressive network of border fences. The border that Israel shares with Jordan is the last area that is totally open to the neighboring country. Their borders with Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon have already been fenced off.

This fence will be similar to Israel’s other high-tech border fences. They’ll be armed with surveillance cameras, razor wire, and an electronic detection system. Though, instead of being only 5-feet-tall like the barrier against Egypt, this new wall will reach 16-feet-high. Deal with that ISIS!

“This is important. It is part of our national security,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “It joins the fence that we built along the length of our border with Sinai, which blocked the entry of illegal migrants into Israel and — of course — the various terrorist movements. This step also joins the fence that we built on our border on the Golan Heights.”

This fence is part of a program that hopes to completely circle the allied nation and will cost just under $1 billion. The fence will be built within Israel’s borders and Netanyahu said that it will not interfere with “the sovereignty of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and its national interests.” (Read more from “Israel Building Billion-Dollar High-Tech Anti-ISIS Fence on Jordan Border” HERE)

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This UN Report Shamefully Equates Hamas and Israel

Photo Credit: Alalam The latest UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) report on Israel (hereafter “the report”) is poorly reasoned and downright bizarre in many ways. This article focuses on one of its glaring flaws and botched legal analyses: Purporting to analyze the legalities of Israel’s actions while ignoring the basic criminal nature of Hamas and its attacks.

Hamas is an extremist Islamic terrorist organization, similar to Al Qaeda and ISIS, committed to annihilating and replacing Israel with an Arab-Muslim theocracy. The Hamas Charter advocates the next Jewish genocide, and Hamas attacks Israeli civilians by numerous means, including indiscriminate rocketings of nearby towns and villages. Israel conducted military operations to stop the rocketing. Gazans were killed because Hamas embedded its operatives within densely populated areas.

The report mostly ignores these basic facts, and places Hamas on the same footing legally as the State of Israel, treating each as “lawful combatants.”

This is wrong. Hamas rocket attacks are criminal, as is the purpose of the organization: to commit genocide. International law authorizes all nation-states to prevent and punish such crimes. Hamas is an international criminal organization, like Al Qaeda or the Colombian Drug Cartel. Characterizing Hamas’ crimes as “military” grants Hamas unwarranted legitimacy.

Worse, the report sidesteps the issue of criminal aggression. Even if it is a “lawful combatant,” Hamas remains liable for all the consequences of its attacks. When examining any conflict for war-crimes, the first issue is identifying the aggressor. All other questions are secondary. Ignoring Hamas aggression renders the report trivial. (Read more from “This UN Report Shamefully Equates Hamas and Israel” HERE)

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One Year After Protective Edge, IDF Set to Launch New Detection System for Gaza Tunnels

Photo Credit: Reuters The IDF will activate in the coming days a new detection system for underground tunnels running between the Gaza Strip and Israel, a senior Israeli military official said on Tuesday, according to Israel’s Channel 2 news.

Marking one year since the launch of last summer’s Operation Protective Edge, the IDF official told reporters that the new system had recently been deployed along the Gaza Strip . . .

Hamas has long used smuggling tunnels between the Gaza Strip and Egypt’s Sinai to smuggle weapons and other goods restricted by Israel’s security blockade. Since the end of hostilities last summer, the group has been seeking new smuggling routes, especially as Egypt has recently ramped-up efforts to stymie smuggling along the Sinai border, the IDF official said.

The source also made note of ties between Hamas and Islamic State-affiliated groups in Sinai, which recently launched a series of deadly attacks against Egyptian forces. He said Hamas had provided training for the Egypt-based terrorists and assisted them in smuggling weapons into Sinai. (Read more from “One Year After Protective Edge, IDF Set to Launch New Detection System for Gaza Tunnels” HERE)

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Will Samantha Power Be the First American UN Ambassador to Abandon Israel?

Last week, mega-philanthropist Michael Steinhardt, co-founder of Birthright Israel, which has brought 500,000 young Jews to Israel, joined with our organization The World Values Network, in a full-page New York Times ad about Ambassador Samantha Power. In the ad Mr. Steinhardt reminded the Ambassador of her commitment at her Senate confirmation hearings, “I will stand up for Israel and work tirelessly to defend it” at the United Nations.

At the AIPAC Annual Policy Conference in Washington, DC, in March, Samantha avowed, “It is a false choice to tell Israel that it has to choose between peace on the one hand, and security on the other. The United Nations would not ask any other country to make that choice, and it should not ask it of Israel.”

Ambassador Power, of course, was correct – security is the foundation of any sustainable peace framework in the Middle East. To its credit, the United States has long stood for justice and served as an essential check against overreach, anti-Semitism, and double standards by Arab and European nations at the UN.

Yet statements in April by Ambassador Power refusing to rule out supporting UN resolutions that target Israel, added to recent claims by Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah, have raised serious questions about the specter of betrayal by the United States and Ambassador Power during the UN General Assembly in September. Reports have emerged that France plans to put forth a resolution before the UN Security Council that will call for an immediate resumption of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority with a hard-cap of 18 months for a final deal. Under the French proposal, if no deal is reached in 18 months, the UN would recognize the Palestinian state, effectively granting legitimacy to an organization that has consistently proven incompetent, corrupt, hostile to democratic values, and openly supportive of terrorism. While the global Jewish community has come to expect little from France, Hamdallah said that France and the U.S. are “coordinating” together on the diplomatic catastrophe. There also exists the possibility that should Israel refuse to accept a UN Security Council Resolution authorizing a timetable for the unilateral creation of a Palestinian State, economic sanctions could be levied against the Jewish State.

For starters, the very notion of this process – which rewards the Palestinian Authority for failure – is patently absurd. In practice, if Israel doesn’t entirely capitulate to every demand of the Palestinian negotiators, the Palestinians are granted statehood. There is zero incentive for Palestinians to even pretend to negotiate in good faith. The mortifying results of the American discussions with Iran on nuclear weapons lowered the world’s estimation of the State Department’s ability to negotiate, but this framework would be a historic nadir. (Read more from “Will Samantha Power Be the First American UN Ambassador to Abandon Israel?” HERE)

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Rockets Land in Israel, Egypt’s ISIS Affiliate Claims Responsibility

Militants in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula fired rockets into southern Israel on Friday in an incident that caused no casualties but appeared to be linked to fighting between Islamist insurgents and Egyptian security forces.

Islamic State’s Egypt affiliate, Sinai Province, said in a statement posted on Twitter by supporters that it had launched three Grad rockets toward “occupied Palestine”. Reuters could not immediately verify the authenticity of the statement.

An Israeli military source earlier said the rockets had been fired from Sinai, which borders Israel, the Gaza Strip and the Suez Canal.

Israeli police said they had so far found remnants of two rockets in an open area. No damage or casualties were reported.

It was possible the launch was linked to the fighting in Sinai, the military source said, where militants of the Sinai Province group launched their biggest assault in years against Egyptian security forces on Wednesday. (Read more from “Rockets Land in Israel, Egypt’s IS Affiliate Claims Responsibility” HERE)

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Mother of Israeli-Arab Zionist on Master Chef Has This to Say About Her Religion

The mother of Israeli-Arab Israel supporter Muhammad Zoabi expressed pride in being a Zionist as she appeared as a contestant on the latest season of the popular cooking show MasterChef Israel.

Sarah Zoabi introduced herself to viewers as an “Arab, Muslim, Israeli, proud Zionist” from the northern city of Nazareth. When one of the show’s judges asked her to elaborate on her nationality and beliefs, she said, “I believe in the right of the Jewish people to have their own country, which is the state of Israel, the holy land.

“I’m sure that the people who hear me will say: ‘what, have you lost your mind? How can you say you are a Zionist?’ I want to say to all the Arab [citizens] of Israel to wake up,” she continued. “We live in paradise. Compared to other countries, to Arab countries – we live in paradise.”

The contestant also elaborated on her loyalty to Israel, saying she doesn’t have “another state” or “another flag” with which she identifies. She added, “With all due respect to [the Arab] nation, this doesn’t imply treason. I never harmed anyone.”

Praising the Jewish state, she said there is no other country where she could receive the same freedoms as in Israel. She asserted that 100 percent of Israeli Arabs would prefer living in Israel over Palestinian rule, if given the choice. (Read more from “Mother of Israeli-Arab Zionist on Master Chef Has This to Say About Her Religion” HERE)

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