A Soldier’s First-Person Account of Devastation & Hope in the Philippines

Israel Defense Forces

Below is a first-person account of one of the soldiers taking part in the IDF's rescue delegation to the Philippines in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan.

For live updates on the rescue mission click here

Our journey to the Philippines began as we found ourselves in the Ben Gurion International Airport, awaiting for instructions and prepared to board a plane with more than 100 tons of equipment. We were a diverse group – 148 officers and soldiers, doctors, nurses, lab technicians, psychiatrists, social psychologists, search and rescue workers, etc.

IDF delegation for the Philippines at Ben Gurion Airport

After 12 long hours crossing the universe, we arrived in Sebu.

Zionists of America Arise

http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/11/14/zionists-of-america-arise/

Dovid Efune

When Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu publicly called out President Obama in a terse and direct statement last Friday, he did so only out of a deep sense of desperation and betrayal.
The Prime Minister criticized the proposed deal between Iran and Western powers over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. “This is a bad deal – a very, very bad deal,” he said. Throwing etiquette to the wind, Netanyahu’s public rebuke was a diplomatic last resort, perhaps the verbal equivalent of a military strike on Iran.
And understandably so. For months now, the Obama Administration has hung the specter of a nuclear Iran over Israel’s head to ply many a painful concession on the Palestinian front.
Israeli daily Ma’ariv reported recently that the U.S. has been pretty straightforward in impressing on Netanyahu that if Israel walks down the U.S. path of “peace talks” with the Palestinian Authority, “it will be easier for the U.S. to support Israel’s position” when it comes to Iran.

The CUNY school goes off the rails

By Tammi Rossman-benjamin / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Omar Barghouti, one of the anti-Israel speakers recently hosted by Brooklyn College.

Does Brooklyn College have a Jewish problem?
For the second time this year, the university's political science department has outraged the Jewish community by agreeing to co-sponsor events hosted by Brooklyn College Students for Justice in Palestine, an organization whose sole mission is to engage in campus activities that demonize and delegitimize the Jewish state.
In February, the department co-sponsored a Students for Justice event advertised as “a lecture by Judith Butler and Omar Barghouti on the importance of BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) in helping END Israeli apartheid and the illegal occupation of Palestine.”
Both Butler and Barghouti, who are major figures in the BDS movement, consider all of the State of Israel as part of the “illegal occupation of Palestine” and advocate for BDS as a nonviolent means of ending Israel as a Jewish state. In addition, virtually all of the 22 other organizations that joined the political science department in co-sponsoring the Students for Justice event actively promote BDS, many openly advocate elimination of the Jewish state and some — like Adalah-NY and Al-Awda, the Palestinian Right to Return Coalition — condone terrorism against Israel.

Dore Gold and Alan Dershowitz on the Emerging Geneva Agreement with Iran

Dore Gold, November 12, 2013 

• Eliminating Iran's 20-percent-enriched uranium, but allowing the Iranians to continue to produce 3.5-percent-enriched uranium is an unacceptable option if the goal of the West is to prevent Iran from advancing a nuclear weapon. Allowing Iran to enrich to the 3.5-percent level will not address the threat emanating from Iran's latest generation of faster centrifuges and the scenario of a fast dash by Iran to weapons-grade uranium, known as "nuclear break-out."

• President Obama's former aide on the National Security Council, Gary Samore, warned in October that ending the production of 20-percent-enriched uranium is not enough because Iran can also reach weapons-grade uranium using its stock of 3.5-percent-enriched uranium. Thus, any agreement must eliminate all of Iran's enriched uranium.

• If the Geneva talks produce a bad agreement and allow Iran to continue its drive for nuclear weapons, there will be accelerated nuclear proliferation in the Middle East among Iran's neighbors, like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey. A multi-polar nuclearized Middle East will in no way resemble the bi-polar superpower balance during the Cold War and is likely to be unstable. 

"We Have Legal Rights!"

It never ends: one crisis, one issue after another.  Perhaps you are familiar with the curse: "May you live in interesting times."

 

Yesterday, Housing Minister Uri Ariel (Habayit Hayehudi) announced plans for "evaluating potential" for 24,000 housing units in Judea and Samaria.  Please be clear on this: it was not, as some news sources had it, announcement of concrete plans for those 24,000 units.  It was initiation of a process to look into building in several places in Judea and Samaria. (Most controversial: 1.200 projected units in E1, an area between Ma'aleh Adumim and Jerusalem.) Some might have materialized, some might not have.  But even in cases where potential was positively assessed, it would have been a long time (years) until anything was built.  This sort of process goes on all the time.

 

Doesn't sound like a huge deal. 

Palestinian Negotiators Quit Peace Talks Over Israeli Settlement Plans

Diplomatic Crisis — Lasting Impact on Negotiations Unclear

getty images

By Reuters

Published November 13, 2013.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Wednesday his peace negotiators had resigned over the lack of progress in U.S.-brokered statehood talks clouded by Israeli settlement building.

The development would mark a new low point for the talks with Israel that resumed in July and which officials from both sides have said have made little headway.

In an interview with Egyptian CBC television, Abbas suggested the negotiations would continue even if the Palestinian peace delegation stuck to its decision.

“Either we can convince it to return, and we’re trying with them, or we form a new delegation,” he said.

It was unclear from Abbas’s interview when the Palestinian negotiators had quit, but Abbas said he would need about a week to resume the talks.

Nuclear Peace With Iran In Our Time

Alan M. Dershowitz
November 13, 2013 

Diplomacy is better than war...Nor is there much controversy for the preference of "jaw jaw" over "war war," as Winston Churchill once put it.
Were Iran to use the current diplomatic efforts as a cover to buy time to make a preventive attack unrealistic, this would be our "Chamberlain moment," a replication of the time three-quarters of a century ago, when the idealistic but naive British prime minister made a bad deal with the Nazis in a desperate but futile effort to avoid deploying the military option against Hitler's growing power.
The immediate choice for the world today is not between diplomacy and preventive war. We have a third option: to maintain or even increase the sanctions, while keeping the military option on the table. It was this powerful combination that brought a weakened and frightened Iran to the negotiating table in the first place.

The deal that has been offered to Iran—to soften some sanctions in return for a promise by the mullahs to preserve the status quo with regard to their nuclear program—does not serve the interest of peace. This is not to discourage further diplomacy and negotiations, but it is to underline what Secretary of State John Kerry has said: namely that a bad deal is worse than no deal. This is a very bad deal for America, its allies and peace.

What Happened to Christians in the Middle East this August?

Raymond Ibrahim

"After torching a Franciscan school, Islamists paraded three nuns on the street 'like prisoners of war,' before a Muslim woman offered them refuge." — Associated Press
While not all, or even most, Muslims are involved, the persecution of Christians in the Islamic world is on its way to reaching pandemic proportions.

The attacks on Egypt's Coptic Christians and their churches that began in July on the heels of the popular June 30 Revolution -- which saw the ousting of President Morsi and prompted the Muslim Brotherhood to scapegoat and incite violence against the Copts -- became even more brutal in mid-August after security forces cleared out Brotherhood "sit in" camps, where people were being tortured, raped, and murdered. Among other things, over 80 Christian churches were attacked and often torched. (Click here for a brief video of one of these many churches set aflame.)

Upper Egypt, especially Minya, which has a large Christian minority, was hit especially hard, with at least 20 attacks on churches, Christian schools and orphanages. "The Islamists," one resident said, "burnt and destroyed everything. Their goal was to erase all the traces of a Christian presence; even the orphanages were looted and destroyed." After storming the Prince Tadros el-Shatbi Church, Morsi supporters turned their attention to two homes for disadvantaged children located near the parish church; there, they stole church offerings, clothes, and children's games before torching the entire building in a fire that lasted over five hours.

The Al-Anba Mousa Church in Minya, Egypt, after being torched by Islamists. (Image source: Screenhot of Human Rights Watch video)

The attacks were not limited to inanimate objects. According to the BBC, 10-year-old Jessi Boulus, an only child, was walking home from her Bible class in a working-class area of the capital when a gunman killed her with a single shot to the chest. Her mother, Phoebe, devastated, believes Jessi was targeted purely because she was Christian.

Q&A ON HEZBOLLAH'S 'GLOBAL FOOTPRINT'

Featuring Matthew Levitt

Wall Street Journal

November 12, 2013

To view this item on our website, go to:
http://washin.st/1hDcMjd

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Samuel Rubenfeld interviews Washington Institute fellow Matthew Levitt about how Hezbollah raises and uses its money.

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Rubenfeld: Hezbollah is more than an anti-Israel militant organization, despite its perception as such in the U.S. What does its global footprint look like, and why should it concern Americans?

Levitt: What amazed me as I got into the research of the book (http://washin.st/13Zb5a4) was how global the footprint really is, spanning not only the Middle East but Africa, Asia, Europe, South America and even here in North America. Just [Friday], the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration got a Surinam counterterrorism official [Ed note: It's a son of the president] in a Hezbollah-related case. Until 9/11, Hezbollah was responsible for the deaths of more Americans than any other terrorist organization, and its history of targeting Western interests, including American interests, goes back 30 years.

IDF: Palestinian's Own Words Show Intent in Checkpoint Attack

IPT News  •  Nov 12, 2013 
http://www.investigativeproject.org/4208/idf-palestinian-own-words-show-intent-in

Israel's military is pointing to a series of Facebook postings by a Palestinian man to show that he wanted to die attacking Israelis.

Anas Alatrash was shot and killed last Thursday at a checkpoint near Bethlehem. Soldiers say Alatrash, 23, got out of his car and charged at soldiers with a knife. He was shot after ignoring warnings to stop.

The shooting angered Palestinians, who demanded an investigation. His father claimed the shooting was unprovoked: "They stopped my two sons at the checkpoint and they were waiting to be checked. Then the soldiers came to the car and opened the door and my son tried to get out and they shot him."
Dozens who attended Alatrash's funeral in Hebron threw rocks and firebombs at nearby troops.

Israel and Saudis Lose Trust in Obama

Steven Shamrak

No deal with Iran yet,

but US is already quietly lifting Iran sanctions.

Israel's most painful lesson from the two-day Geneva conference on Iran's nuclear program is that the man who guaranteed to defend Israel's security, President Barack Obama, is now marching hand in hand with Tehran towards a nuclear-armed Iran... At any moment, Tehran may decide to assemble those components and produce a bomb and has the capacity to do so before the US or Israel catch on to what is happening...

Some time ago, the Saudis took what they saw as appropriate preemptive action. On Jan. 1, 2013 , Crown Prince Salman, deputy premier and defense minister, traveled to Islamabad and commissioned Pakistan to build nuclear weapons for a multibillion fee. Those weapons were assembled in Pakistan and held ready for transfer to Saudi Arabia at a moment's notice.

ADL Rips Obama Admin. Over Iran Deal, Leaks, Calls for New Sanctions

Algemeiner Staff

ADL Iran Anti-Defamation League Iran Foxman Iran nuclear talks Iran Obama Iran Obama Mideast Sanctions Iran

ADL National Director Abraham Foxman. Photo: Justin Hoch.

Jewish human rights group, the Anti-Defamation League, sharply criticized the Obama administration on Monday over its support of the tentative deal under discussion in nuclear talks between Iran and world powers. The ADL also slammed “the U.S. government’s leaking of information about Israel’s defensive military actions in the area,” and John Kerry’s recent  “moral preaching to the Israelis on the Israeli-Palestinian issue,” as “counterproductive.”

Additionally, barely two weeks after agreeing to a “time out” on lobbying for further Iran sanctions, after being requested to do so by the White House, the ADL called for new sanctions on Iran to be implemented. The request for the suspension of lobbying activities came at a hurriedly arranged meeting at the White House between Jewish leaders and administration officials on October 29th.
“I wanted to give the Obama Administration a chance to demonstrate that they could make real progress on this issue,” said Abraham H. Foxman, the ADL’s national director.

To the attention of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry:

November 11, 2013  |  Eli E. Hertz

The following excerpt, stated in June 1979, is sadly still relevant 34 years later:

“A corollary of the inalienable right of the Jewish people to its Land is the right to live in any part of Eretz Yisrael [Palestine], including Judea and Samaria which are an integral part of Eretz Yisrael. Jews are not foreigners anywhere in the Land of Israel. Anyone who asserts that it is illegal for a Jew to live in Judea and Samaria just because he is a Jew, is in fact advocating a concept that is disturbingly reminiscent of the ‘Judenrein’ policies of Nazi Germany banning Jews from certain spheres of life for no other reason than that they were Jews. The Jewish villages in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza district are there as of right and are there to stay.

Op-Ed: Letter to American Jewish Leadership

Do not let history repeat itself.

Ted Belman

To: Mssrs:
 Alan Solow, Former Chairman, Conference of Presidents

      Abraham Foxman, National Director of the ADL

      Howard Kohr, Executive Director of AIPAC

      David Harris, Exec. Dir. of the Amer Jewish Committee

      Malcolm Hoenlein, Exec. Vice Chairman, Conf of Presidents

      Jason Isaacson, Dir. of Gov't & Int'l Affairs, AJC

      Robert Sugarman, Chairman, Conference of Presidents

     

At your White House meeting last week with Obama Administration officials, was it explained to you HOW  President Obama plans to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear capability; especially, at this extremely late hour? And, further, was it explained to you that Obama would take that action as long as Israel agreed to make suicidal concessions to the Arab-"Palestinians" during the current round of peace negotiations?

 

Gentlemen, I recently purchased an original March 7, 1941  issue of The Answer - Devoted to the WAR PROBLEMS of the JEWISH NATION.  This three-page newspaper was published weekly by The AMERICAN FRIENDS of a JEWISH PALESTINE, 185 Madison Ave. NYC.

The Technion: The Engine of a Young Nation

Richard Baehr

The modern day state of Israel celebrated its 65^th birthday this year.  Throughout this period of time, the nation has faced unremitting challenges to its security and existence.  Now  American President Barack Obama seems to be telling Iran, a nation that considers Israel an illegitimate nation that should be destroyed, and has been advancing its  nuclear program with impunity for many years, that if "you like your nuclear weapons program, you get to keep it."   

At the same time, the American Secretary of State John Kerry, unhappy that Israel is not caving to Palestinian demands, is blaming Israel for an impasse in peace talks, and there are threats of a heavy handed  American response  that will push for adoption of the Palestinian position in the negotiations in the months to come. With "friends" like these now in office in America, the country that has been Israel's strongest ally for decades, the ability of Israel to defend itself, and grow and prosper is hardly a settled question for all time. 

Obama Hinted A 2nd Administration Would Be Anti-Israel, So Why Are People Surprised Now?

During his trip to the Middle East to revive the struggling peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Secretary of State John Kerry agreed to joint interview with Israel's Channel 2 and the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation. Aired Thursday, Kerry took a one-sided and threatening tone toward Israel, including some very undiplomatic words which could be used to incite new violence against the Jewish State.

Failure of the talks will increase Israel's isolation in the world. The alternative to getting back to the talks is a potential of chaos. I mean, does Israel want a third intifada?

After his trip to the Middle East, the Secretary of State sped off to Geneva where he continued to negotiate a deal which would ease sanctions on Iran but would not take away their ability to enrich uranium to weapons grade.  

PM Netanyahu at GA in Jerusalem‏

IMRA:  "Bring me by speech" Netanyahu said in Hebrew as
he came up to the podium.  The first mike didn't work.  Neither did the
second one.  So Prime Minister Netanyahu, standing next to the lectern, used a third mike - starting his presentation without losing a beat.
 
So he stood there without notes and starting taking about Iran.  He only moved over to the lectern, where an assistant placed his notes, after he completed his message about Iran and moved on to greet people byname [from
"I know that there have been many times that we have stood together......"]
 
When I spoke with Americans at Binyanei Heuma in Jerusalem before PM Netanyahu's address there were those who were confident that Netanyahu would talk against Iran but avoid being confrontational with America ("after all," more than one observed, "we are a mixed crowd.").
 
But as our prime minister noted, "when it comes to the question of Jewish survival and the survival of the Jewish state, I will not be silenced, ever."

So its not the time to be pleasant or politically correct or worry about
offending some American Jews.

John Kerry: US not 'blind' or 'stupid' in Iran nuclear talks

By REUTERS, HERB KEINON

 

US secretary of state tells NBC that America remains skeptical of Iran's willingness to dismantle its nuclear program and will keep sanctions in place; meanwhile, Washington's top negotiator with Iran arrives in Israel.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry Photo: Reuters

WASHINGTON - US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday that the United States continues to be skeptical of Iran's willingness to dismantle its nuclear program and will keep sanctions in place as talks continue.

"We are not blind, and I don't think we're stupid. I think we have a pretty strong sense of how to measure whether or not we are acting in the interests of our country and of the globe," Kerry said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Government Gives Go-Ahead to New Hareidi City

Maayana Miskin

The government has given official approval to the construction of a new city in the Negev. The city, to be called Kasif, will be designed for – and marketed to – the hareidi-religious community.

Approval was also given to the construction of a second new community, a village, to be called Hiran, which will be home to a religious-Zionist population.

The new communities will form part of the government’s campaign to develop the region, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said. “This is in addition to the briefings on continued development, moving IDF bases to the south, building railroads and expressways, and turning Be'er Sheva into a global cyber center, which will expedite the development of the entire Negev, which Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, very much wanted to do,” he declared prior to Sunday’s Cabinet meeting.

Firebomb Victim: I Saw My Wife Burning

Maayana Miskin

On Friday, what should have been a routine drive turned into a nightmare for Zachy (Zakiel) and Na’ama Choory, a husband and wife from the Gush Etzion region south of Jerusalem. The couple was attacked by terrorists as they drove toward Jerusalem, and a firebomb hurled at their car during the attack caused it to become engulfed in flames.

Zachy and Na’ama narrowly escaped with their lives, and both were burned. Thankfully, their young children were not in the car, having just been dropped off at daycare.

Zachy recalled the attack in an interview Sunday with Galei Tzahal (IDF Radio).