Why Isn’t the World More Thankful to Israel?

David Gerstman   

Israel is a world leader in humanitarian aid yet it is rarely recognized for this great quality.

The Israeli delegation has just returned from the Philippines after nearly two weeks of providing emergency care to the island nation’s survivors of Typhoon Haiyan. According to the Jerusalem Post the first baby delivered by the Israeli medical teams was named “Israel.”
In fact Israel – the IDF particularly – has been one of the world’s great first responders in recent years, helping countries across the globe deal with the results of man made and natural disasters. The IDF has a map on its blog, with links to many of its notable accomplishments.

View #IDFWithoutBorders in a larger map
Japan, 2011, Earthquake/Tsunami
According to the IDF:

The majority of the medical equipment taken to Japan by the IDF, including x-ray machinery and lab equipment, will remain in Japan in order to benefit the physicians and local authorities providing care to the community of Minamisanriku and its vicinity. …

The IDF Aid Delegation departed for the disaster-struck zone two weeks ago, and included a team of medical specialists from the Medical Corps, Home Front Command Search and Rescue experts, as well as logistics and communications personnel.
During their stay, IDF Medical Corps physicians treated 220 patients.

Poll: Majority of Israelis Believe Settlements to be Legal

In center is retired Israeli Supreme Court judge Edmond Levy, who is now in the news for heading the Commission to Examine the Status of Building in Judea and Samaria. Photo: Kobi Gideon/Flash90.

Algemeiner Staff

A strong majority of Israelis believe Jewish settlement in the West Bank to be legal under Israeli law, a new poll shows.
The survey, conducted by New Wave Research on behalf of Regavim, found that 60 percent of Israelis view the settlements to be legal, while only 16 percent consider them to be illegal. 24% were unsure.

When respondents were asked about the legality of settlements under international law, the results differed substantially. A slight majority of 36% said they were legal and 35% said they believed them to be illegal. 29% said they didn’t know.

The poll also measured how the public’s attitude towards settlements and settlers would be impacted if views regarding the legality of settlement activity were to change.

Egypt's Latest Fatwas from Salafis and Brotherhood

Raymond Ibrahim
Gatestone Institute

http://www.meforum.org/3684/egypt-salafi-fatwas

As the full ramification of the Muslim Brotherhood's year in power continues to be exposed, a new study by Al Azhar's Fatwa Committee dedicated to exploring the fatwas, or Islamic decrees, issued by the Brotherhood and Salafis -- the Islamists -- was recently published.
Al Azhar, in Cairo, is considered by many to be one of the oldest and most prestigious Islamic universities in the world. The study, written by Al Azhar's Dr. Sayed Zayed, and entitled (in translation), "The Misguided Fatwas of the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis," reveals a great deal about how Islamists view women.
The Egyptian newspaper Al Masry Al Youm summarized some of the Al Azhar study's main findings and assertions on November 15 in a article entitled (in translation), "Muslim Brotherhood fatwas: A woman swimming is an 'adulteress' and touching bananas is 'forbidden.'"

Mutuality and Unity Equates Solutions

Nurit Greenger

Teachers or politicians are not the key to changes; the profound understanding of the issue that requires the change, a common sense approach to it, followed by the right action is.

Respect is a mega key to commonality.

Clear understanding of both sides of the issue's spectrum is a solid base to bring about a resolution.

Feeling the pain and the happiness and the fear of the other side brings the sides closer.

The Obama Who Stole Thanksgiving

Daniel Greenfield

Progressives have already tried to ruin Thanksgiving by condemning it as a genocidal holiday commemorating European colonialism or by giving snippy little speeches about consumerism.

But they didn’t have a way to actually get into living rooms to ruin the holiday until now.

Not content that the price of a whole frozen turkey went up 37% under his economic policies, Obama decided to completely ruin Thanksgiving dinner by turning it into an angry debate about ObamaCare.

If you were hoping to eat your turkey in peace; forget about it. Michelle Obama not only wants to control your menu; she also wants to control the topic of your family dinner conversation by exhorting your more impressionable relatives to sell you on her husband’s substandard ObamaCare junk plans.

The “Health Care for the Holidays” page on BarackObama.com, promoted by his wife, urges his remaining devoted followers to “pledge” to push ObamaCare on family members and advises “integrating the talk into family time.”

No Agreement on Starting Date for Iran Deal

(AP-Washington Post)
    The UN will probably not begin expanded inspections under the Iranian nuclear deal until early next year, officials said Wednesday.
    Even then, they will be limited to sites the Iranians have confirmed and not those critics suspect may exist secretly.
    Officials involved in negotiating the Geneva deal say there is still no start date. They say the IAEA must verify that Iran is keeping its end of the deal before the clock starts ticking down on the agreement's six-month time frame and the start of sanctions relief.

The Light of Chanukah

Sultan Knish

A candle is a brief flare of light. A wick dipped in oil burns and then goes out again. The light of Chanukah appears to follow the same narrative. Briefly there is light and warmth and then darkness again.

Out of the exile of Babylon, the handful that returned to resettle and rebuild the land faced the might of new empires. The Jews who returned from the exile of one evil empire some twenty-six hundred years ago were forced to decide whether they would be a people with their own faith and history, or the colony of another empire, with its history and beliefs.

Jerusalem's wealthy elites threw in their lot with the empire and its ways. But out in the rural heartland where the old ways where still kept, a spark flared to life. Modi'in. Maccabee. And so war came between the handfuls of Jewish Maccabee partisans and the armies of Antiochus IV’s Selecuid empire. A war that had its echoes in the past and would have it again in the future as lightly armed and untrained armies of Jewish soldiers would go on to fight in those same hills and valleys against the Romans and eventually the armies of six Arab nations.

Turkey, Pumpkin Pie, and Religious Freedom

Rob Bluey

November 28, 2013

Religious freedom is as much a part of Thanksgiving as turkey and pumpkin pie. From 1621, when the Pilgrims arrived in the New World, to 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln declared it a federal holiday, thanking God and practicing religion were of paramount importance.

Nearly 400 years after that First Thanksgiving at the Plymouth Plantation, America finds itself confronted with a new challenge to religious freedom — one that should be a conversation at every dinner table across this great land.
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear two cases from family businesses that are challenging Obamacare’s mandate requiring employers to provide health coverage of abortion-inducing drugs — even in violation of their moral or religious beliefs.

These cases are among the more than 80 lawsuits seeking to overturn the mandate for violating both the First Amendment and Religious Freedom and Restoration Act.

FBI stats again belie "Islamophobia" myth

Jihad Watch

Commentary is a wretched publication that generally marches in dhimmi lockstep with dreary predictability, retailing complacent half-truths and outright falsehoods about the jihad threat, but on the trumped-up propaganda term "Islamophobia" it breaks ranks here, as it has done before.
"FBI Stats Again Belie Islamophobia Myth," by Jonathan S. Tobin in Commentary, November 26:

When it comes to the question of America’s alleged Islamophobia, there is a consensus in the American media: American Muslims have been under siege since the 9/11 attacks.

What to talk about this Thanksgiving

theoptimisticconservative 

I agree wholeheartedly with Libby Sternberg, Kevin Whiteman, Jim Geraghty, and others that it is creepy and fascist of leftist policy advocates to put out guides on how to discuss the specifics of programmatic and regulatory proposals with your nearest and dearest over the holiday weekend.*
I assume most of you out there don’t actually need instructions on what to talk about over Thanksgiving.  But what fun would it be to write a post on this topic and not offer some suggestions?  So here goes.

New breed of radical Islamists in West Bank worries Israel, PA

YAAKOV LAPPIN

Extremist Salafi jihadists threaten to exploit a power vacuum in the territories.

A crowd waves Hamas flags during an Islamist's funeral Photo: REUTERS

A day after special forces killed three members of a Palestinian Salafi-jihadi terrorist cell near Hebron, senior security sources said Wednesday that the extremist movement that drove the gunmen to act remains a marginal force, but one that could grow in scope and danger if it exploits a power vacuum in the West Bank.
The terror cell that was intercepted and found to be in possession of explosives and firearms on Tuesday night was planning a kidnapping attack on IDF soldiers, according to security sources.

The armed men, from the village of Yatta, also planned on attacking the Palestinian Authority, security sources said.

“Salafi jihadism is an idea, not an organization,” one source said. “According to this idea, everything that is a state but not ruled according to Islamic law is an infidel entity. For them, this holds true of the Palestinian Authority and Israel,” he said.

America as the Protector of Putin, Assad, and Khamenei

Shoshana Bryen

When protests broke out in Syria in late 2011, Russia hoped for a short, nasty war as a matter of Russian national interest -- just enough to put the Muslim Brotherhood and assorted Sunnis in their place.  Violence from its own Sunni Muslim population has plagued Russia for decades.  Saudi Arabia took over the defeated nationalist Chechen rebellion in the late 1990s, infusing it with money and Islamist overtones, prompting the second Chechen war.  More recently, there has been open fighting and rioting in Moscow between Muslims and Slavs. 

The Iran Deal and the Future of the Middle East

Abraham H. Miller

Critics of President Barack Obama's Middle East policy should begin with a new set of premises:  Obama is not stupid.  No one believes Iran will dismantle its nuclear program.

Of course, the Iran agreement will not work.  But that's the idea.  No one really expects it to work. 

In politics, when you can't control outcomes but you need to extricate yourself from the situation, you create charades, rituals, and symbolic victories totally absent of reality. 

In the Cuban Missile Crisis, we did not go eyeball to eyeball with the Russians and they blinked.  The Russians gave up Cuba, and we gave up Jupiter Bases in Greece and Turkey. Only in an American television series do the Russians blink.

Bearing Witness: Survivor Describes Nigerian Islamist Terror

Andrew E. Harrod
Special to IPT News

"Are you ready to die as a Christian?" asked Habila Adamu's AK-47-armed assailants from Nigeria's Boko Haram (BH) Islamist terrorist organization. During a recent visit to Washington, D.C., Adamu recounted surviving a massacre of Christians, in an effort to focus American attention on the bloody turmoil BH poses for Nigeria.
Adamu described surviving a head shot for professing his Christian faith before a congressional hearing held Nov. 13. BH gunmen came to Adamu's house in Nigeria's Yobe state late one November night a year ago. They announced that they "were here to do the work of Allah." They seized money and cellphones from Adamu and his wife while asking whether Adamu worked for government security forces.
And then when asked about his religion, Adamu professed his Christian faith. "Why are we preaching the message of Mohammed" yet "you refuse to accept Islam?" the gunmen asked. Christians are "preaching the gospel of true God," the "good news to other people that do not know God," Adamu said.

EU: Sure BDS us and don't make use of the following for your ailing citizens

Israel:  Noninvasive Brain Surgery

Medical history was made at Rambam Health Care Campus last week when an Israeli essential-tremor patient successfully underwent targeted surgical ablation of deep-seated brain tissue through an intact skull, a radical therapy made possible by the marriage of MRI-guidance and ultrasound-ablation technologies.

It has been years since Mr. Sami Zangi, 73, of Jerusalem, could bring a cup of coffee to his lips, tie his shoelaces, or most frustrating of all for this hardware store owner, use the simplest tools. A week ago, when Mr. Zangi asked to communicate something in writing to his Rambam doctors, his hand shook so badly that he could only produce an illegible scrawl.

Mr. Zangi suffers from essential tremor, a slowly progressive movement disorder whose cause lies deep within the brain. Last week, after MRI-guided Focused Ultrasound Surgery (FUS) at Rambam Hospital, Mr. Zangi got up from the MRI table tremor-free, smiled, and again requested paper and a pen. "Remember what I tried to tell you a week ago?" he asked. Surrounded by his wife and family, he wrote in a steady and beautiful hand, "If you will it, it is no dream" (ed. note: Theodor Herzl).

First Time Ever in Israel: Noninvasive Brain Surgery

ExAblate Neuro is the trade name for the noninvasive surgical treatment that Mr. Zangi underwent. The procedure, which targets and ablates brain tissue through an intact skull, has been made possible by the marriage of MRI-guidance and ultrasound-ablation expertise. 

San Francisco State University Update: Kudos to California State Legislators for Condemning Campus Antisemitism

Nine California legislators have taken a brave and honorable stand in acknowledging and condemning antisemitic activity at San Fransisco State University.  On Monday, these assembly members and senators sent a letter to SFSU President Leslie Wong congratulating him for speaking out against a campus event glorifying the murder of Jews.

Today AMCHA co-founders sent the following letter to these nine legislators, thanking them for their strong stand against campus antisemitism:

The Daily TIP: State Department: Interim deal with Iran allows continued construction on Iran plutonium facility‏

State Department: Interim deal with Iran allows continued construction on Iran plutonium facility Reports: Iran talks pushing Saudi Arabia to acquire nuclear weapons State Department: Interim deal with Iran not final, Iran currently allowed to continue nuclear activity Amid Hezbollah diplomatic offensive, British sources reveal secret indirect U.S.-Hezbollah talks Reports: Iran talks pushing Saudi Arabia to acquire nuclear weapons What we’re watching today:

Canada, the only sane country on earth

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/iran-nuclear-deal-gets-deeply-skeptical-response-from-canada-1.2438467

 

Iran nuclear deal gets 'deeply skeptical' response from Canada

Iran agrees to halt nuclear program in historic deal with 6 world powers

CBC News 

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird says he is "deeply skeptical" of the newly brokered nuclear deal with Iran and says Canada's sanctions will remain in "full force" against the country.
"We will evaluate the deal reached not just on the merits of its words but more importantly, on its verifiable implementation," Baird said at a news conference in Ottawa on Sunday.
He said that because of previous Iranian leaders had made hostile comments toward Israel, “we're deeply skeptical of the deal and the work that's brought us to this stage.”

Obama reassures Netanyahu

U.S. President Barack Obama attempted to reassure a skeptical Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday and said he wants to begin consultations with Israel immediately.

"Giving Thanks"

Tonight begins Chanukah, which marks two events. 

 

The victory of the Maccabees over Hellenistic forces that were destroying Judaism. 

 

And the miracle of the oil in the rededicated Temple that lasted for eight days when it should have been enough for only one day. Thus the lighting of candles for eight days and the use of oil in cooking foods, such as sufganiyot (donuts) here in Israel.

 

Credit: Kohenari

 

~~~~~~~~~~

Bearing Witness: Survivor Describes Nigerian Islamist Terror

Andrew E. Harrod
Special to IPT News
November 27, 2013
http://www.investigativeproject.org/4226/bearing-witness-survivor-describes-nigerian

"Are you ready to die as a Christian?" asked Habila Adamu's AK-47-armed assailants from Nigeria's Boko Haram (BH) Islamist terrorist organization. During a recent visit to Washington, D.C., Adamu recounted surviving a massacre of Christians, in an effort to focus American attention on the bloody turmoil BH poses for Nigeria.

Adamu described surviving a head shot for professing his Christian faith before a congressional hearing held Nov. 13. BH gunmen came to Adamu's house in Nigeria's Yobe state late one November night a year ago. They announced that they "were here to do the work of Allah." They seized money and cellphones from Adamu and his wife while asking whether Adamu worked for government security forces.