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Does The European Union Actually Expect Radical Islamists to Reform Themselves? by Nils A. Haug

By on May 6th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21586/eu-palestinians-islamists

The European Union’s decision to grant the Palestinian Authority (PA) a sum of $2 billion to assist them to “reform themselves” can only be the result of wilful blindness, cognitive dissonance and what by now can only be ascribed to a proud European tradition of Jew-hate.

Israel’s warnings of the PA continuing to seize Israel’s land by phases — as planned by the PLO 10-Point Program of 1974 and advanced by former PA Prime Minister Salman Fayyad’s plan — to “create facts on the ground” with illegal buildings — are largely ignored by the West. So far, the PA, with the funding from the EU, has built more than 97,581 illegal structures on Israeli land that is still to be negotiated.

The Palestinian Authority also full-throatedly incites terrorism in its education system and bountifully funds terrorist acts. The total so far disbursed as remuneration for the PA’s “Pay-for-Slay” program and acts of terrorism reportedly exceeds $1 billion. This transaction has been in place for decades.

The EU’s naiveté (to be kind) is already bringing disaster upon many of its member nations by allowing unlimited Muslim migration, presumably in an unconditional desire for every vote imaginable.

Israelis are understandably against an untenable two-state solution — which they accurately see as no solution at all.

The European Union’s decision to grant the Palestinian Authority (PA) a sum of $2 billion to assist them to “reform themselves” can only be the result of wilful blindness, cognitive dissonance and what by now can only be ascribed to a proud European tradition of Jew-hate.

The PA, despite claiming to be secular, is saturated with an Islamist mentality in support of jihadists. The PA plays the West by displaying a veneer of reasonableness, victimhood and the bogus claim that it would, in an ever-extending future, accept some kind of peace with the Jews. This fiction is supposedly backed by an equally bogus claim that it would be willing — under conditions which would always be suicidal for the Jews to accept — to establish a two-state solution in Israel’s ancestral homeland.

This romantic fantasy persists in the face of the Palestinian Authority’s elaborate, extremely concrete programs with the European Union to appropriate land which, according to the 1993 and 1995 Oslo Accords, must still be negotiated, as well as a continuing jobs program that the PA offers, similar to Murder, Inc. The PA’s “Pay for Slay” program lavishly rewards Palestinians who murder Israelis. The more Israelis they murder, the greater the sum. A 2024 report notes that the PA disburses more than $16 million each month to the Palestinian murderers and their families.

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British reporter who exposed BBC documentary’s Hamas links faces vandalism David Isaac

By on May 6th, 2025

https://www.jns.org/british-reporter-who-exposed-bbc-documentarys-hamas-links-faces-vandalism/

British investigative journalist David Collier learned while in Israel last week that his car had been vandalized outside his London home.

He received a “frantic call” from his wife in the early afternoon of May 27 about the incident, in which a chemical, perhaps paint thinner, had been splashed on his vehicle in five or six places.

It’s not the first time his car has been vandalized. A few weeks ago, Collier discovered that someone had keyed the driver’s side of his car. Keying is when a sharp object is used to scratch a car’s exterior, damaging the paint.

Collier dismissed the first incident as perhaps the work of a drunk stumbling through the neighborhood. The second incident left no doubt in his mind that he had been targeted. The Metropolitan Police drew the same conclusion, “logging it as a racially aggravated attack,” he said.

Collier, still in Israel, spoke to JNS while waiting outside a store selling self-defense products in the hopes of finding something he could legally bring back with him. There are strict rules in Britain against selling such products. “No self-defense equipment is allowed in the U.K. I can’t even hold pepper spray in my own home,” he said.

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The Settlers: An Incomplete Portrayal By John Aziz *****

By on May 6th, 2025

https://quillette.com/2025/05/06/the-settlers-an-incomplete-portrayal-louis-theroux-settlers-israel-palestine/?ref=quillette-daily-newsletter

Louis Theroux’s new documentary suggests that he is unfamiliar with the complex history behind the Israeli occupation of The West Bank, and does not understand the political and ideological factors at stake there.

I watched the latest Louis Theroux documentary The Settlers with the same apprehension with which I approach most Western media output relating to the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. There is nothing quite like the capacity of well-meaning Westerners to grossly misunderstand and miss crucial pieces of the puzzle in regard to the history and context of why Israelis and Palestinians are fighting one another.

While the war between Hamas and Israel has dominated most headlines over the past eighteen months, this particular documentary focuses instead on Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank, and particularly on the growth in Israeli civilian settlements since 1967, when the Jewish state captured the West Bank from Jordan in the Six Day War. 

Today, there are over 700,000 Jewish Israelis living there, residing in upwards of 279 settlements, which range from what are effectively modern cities like Maale Adumim and Modi’in Illit, with tens or hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, to ad hoc hilltop encampments made up of tents, sheds, and tin-roofed shacks, housing just a few families.

I’ve had some personal experience of life in the West Bank, because the Palestinian side of my family is from there, and I have visited on multiple occasions, generally staying for months at a time. On my travels, I made excursions into Palestinian cities like Ramallah, Nablus, and Jenin.

Of course, I’ve only seen life from the Palestinian side of the fences. I have never been into an Israeli settlement. Palestinians and Israelis may live in the same land, but we inhabit different worlds, separated not only by fences but by language, religion, and culture—and that is part of the problem. By talking to each other and trying to understand one another, we might be able to build better relationships and forge connections that could transcend the conflict and ultimately end this tragic, horrific, nightmarish fight.

I would appreciate a documentary that gave me a window into a world that I have not been able to see in person and helped me empathise with the people on the other side. Louis Theroux’s documentary did not do that. Instead, it left me frustrated and deflated. Theroux’s settler interviewees were a selection of nasty extremists who lurched between denying the existence of Palestinians and expressing the desire to conquer more land and drive out the Arab inhabitants. Most bizarrely of all, the documentary contains a series of segments with settler leader Daniella Weiss which culminate in her physically assaulting Theroux by pushing and shoving him. Theroux tries to put this in context by interviewing Palestinian activist Issa Amro from Hebron, who explains, “They don’t see us as equal human beings who deserve the same rights as they do.”

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What Are Palestinians Really Interested In? by Bassam Tawil

By on May 5th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21589/what-are-palestinians-interested-in

“These fires put both Israelis and Palestinians at risk and are causing severe damage to the land these terrorists claim to be fighting for. These people are not pro-Palestinian, they are pro-terrorism against Jews.” — Bassem Eid, Palestinian human rights activist, X, April 30, 2025

Decades of anti-Israel propaganda by Palestinian leaders and media outlets are directly responsible for this hatred. For that reason, any talk about a peace process with the Palestinians has unfortunately become nothing but a sick joke.

Palestinians are far more interested in murdering Jews and setting Israel on fire than they are in “coexisting.” They do not want Israel “coexisting” on even one millimeter of the Jews’ own historical homeland.

The world needs to realize that the Palestinians have raised a whole generation that worships destruction and death for the Jews — and even for themselves — far more than a better and prosperous life.

As fires raged in central Israel in late April, many Palestinians celebrated, brazenly demanded more fires, and called for Israeli homes to be reduced to “ashes.”

All this happened on the day Israelis commemorated fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism and prepared to celebrate Independence Day.

“We ask God to protect our people and land. May these fires confuse the [Israeli] occupiers and their embattled settlers,” wrote Palestinian social media user Hana Barghouti.

“In the name of Allah,” another user, Umm Ibrahim, who posted images from of the blazes, wrote: “the Avenger, the Almighty.”

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The Commons foreign affairs hanging tribunal Parliament should be investigating its own deafness to facts about Israel Melanie Phillips

By on May 5th, 2025

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/the-commons-foreign-affairs-hanging

A recent hearing of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee demonstrated that Israel’s defenders and its critics appear to inhabit entirely different planets.

The committee, which was taking evidence on “the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”, had invited two of Israel’s doughtiest champions, the lawyer Natasha Hausdorff and the writer Jonathan Sacerdoti, to address it.

For the committee’s chair, the Labour MP Emily Thornberry, this appeared to be not so much a fact-finding exercise as a tribunal in which Hausdorff and Sacerdoti were in the dock.

Thornberry asked Sacerdoti: “How do you see ideally Gaza in ten years’ time? What would be a good outcome?” Sacerdoti replied that this would be a de-radicalised Gaza whose inhabitants were no longer committed to genocidal acts.

But as Thornberry’s subsequent challenges to him demonstrated, the only good outcome for her seemed to be a Palestinian state.

When it was Hausdorff’s turn, sparks really flew. “What’s the optimistic future for a Palestinian mother in Gaza, what’s the best thing that could happen?” asked Thornberry.

In any moral universe, the best thing that could happen to such a mother would be for her to stop telling her children that their duty was to murder Jews and martyr themselves in the process, as so many Palestinian Arab women boast of doing.

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POSITIVE NEWS FROM ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

By on May 4th, 2025

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

There is a cliché often applied to individuals who are held responsible for the circumstances or harm they experienced, rather than the actions or responsibility of others. Israel’s detractors are a prime example. In spite of the chilling and murderous rhetoric and action of its enemies, Israel is libeled and blamed. Michael Ordman details how, in spite of war, Israel’s researchers work 24/7 to develop technologies that bring hope and succor to billions of global citizens. Read it all.rsk

 

See the remarkable resilience of war-wounded Israelis.

Israeli fraud detection techniques exposed the proteins responsible for many diseases.

Israeli neonatologists are saving the lives of babies in Ghana.

Israel is the first country to provide an AI tutor to every 16-year-old student.

An Israeli physical security system will be protecting the Netherlands.

Israelis won multiple gold medals in four different sports.

Israelis celebrated Independence Day despite massive (arson) fires.

 

POSITIVE NEWS IN A WAR
 
Wounded doctor returns to work. Seven months after being severely injured in a Gaza helicopter crash and undergoing intense rehab, senior pediatrician Dr. Eyal Hayman has returned to work at Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/406627             https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/396323
 
After 16 years, wounded soldier returns to IDF.  Aharon Karov, the most critically-injured soldier in Operation Cast Lead 16 years ago, has re-enlisted in the IDF as part of a team creating the Disabled Soldiers Department. Following Oct 7 2023 he helped create the “Continuing Life” initiative, to support the injured.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/407428
 
Overcoming the odds at his wedding. Ziv, a 30-year-old Israeli engineer, overcame a Hezbollah missile attack that cost him his arm and spinal cord damage, defying odds to walk down the aisle and marry his bride Nitzan after intensive rehab.
https://worldisraelnews.com/watch-severely-wounded-idf-soldier-beats-the-odds-and-walks-down-the-aisle/
 
“Operation Hug” resumes. Operation Hug (see here previously) has restarted thanks to Nefesh b’Nefesh, JNF-USA and Friends of the IDF. It brings to Israel parents of lone IDF soldiers, to be reunited with their loved ones. The initiative aims to offer soldiers the unmatched strength and comfort of a long-awaited embrace.
https://www.jns.org/operation-hug-resumes-reuniting-lone-soldiers-with-their-parents/  https://hug.nbn.org.il/
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-851890
 
Young resilience awards. 26 children and teens, age 6 – 18) have received “Resilience Award for Children and Youth” for their actions promoting strength, persistence and determination during the Swords of Iron war. Half will also receive a personal scholarship. Three youth groups were also recognized.
https://www.jns.org/wire/resilience-award-bestowed-to-young-people-for-contributions-during-the-war/
 
Robotic bulldozers deployed in Gaza. The IDF has begun limited deployment in Gaza of the Robdozer – the robotic version of Caterpillar’s D9 bulldozer. These are used to clear roads and buildings of Hamas booby traps, plus to build defensive barriers around temporary IDF camps.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israels-new-unmanned-bulldozers-changing-the-paradigm-of-war-in-gaza/
 
 
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Identifying key proteins. Ben-Gurion University researchers have developed WGAND – an AI algorithm that can detect “anomalous” proteins that are associated with tissue-specific diseases. It involves “anomalous” behavior analysis, similar to methods that identify fraudulent financial transactions or suspicious user activity.
https://www.bgu.ac.il/en/news-and-articles/ai-algorithm-spots-hidden-disease-clues-in-protein-networks/
https://academic.oup.com/gigascience/article/doi/10.1093/gigascience/giaf034/8106436
 
Defibrillators installed on 150 trains. Magen David Adom and Israel Railways are installing defibrillators, for the first time, on more than 150 Israeli passenger trains to save lives in the event of cardiac issues. They have already equipped defibrillators at all 67 active Israeli train stations.
https://www.jns.org/magen-david-adom-and-israel-railways-install-defibrillators-on-150-trains/
 
Eye doctor saves heart patient on flight from Tbilisi. Dr Eyal Aloni, head of ophthalmology at Israel’s Barzilai Medical Center, saved a young man with a medical history of heart disease, who collapsed during a flight from Tbilisi, Georgia to Israel. He used medications that he carried, plus oxygen supplied by the crew.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/407449
 
Ex-supermodel is now a paramedic. Israeli ex-supermodel Michaela Bercu featured here previously when she founded the app Tribu, which connects volunteering needs with those who wish to help. She recently completed the Magen David Adom paramedic course, and works two 8-hour shifts a week as a medical orderly.
https://www.israel21c.org/ex-supermodel-reinvents-herself-as-volunteer-paramedic/
 
Chewable gummy synbiotics. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s TopGum (see here previously) has launched no-added sugar, synbiotic” Gummiotics” in two natural flavors: orange and strawberry.  They comprise probiotics and postbiotics, bound together in a natural, prebiotic fiber-based matrix, to provide gut-health benefits.
https://www.prnewswire.com/il/news-releases/topgum-unveils-its-latest-gummy-creation-fruity-chewable-synbiotics-302404255.html

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77 imperatives for an Israeli victory Ruthie Blum

By on May 4th, 2025

https://www.jns.org/77-imperatives-for-an-israeli-victory/

This year, Israel marked Yom Hazikaron and Yom Ha’atzmaut with an additional reminder of its enemies’ genocidal intentions. Before Memorial Day mourning made way for Independence Day celebrations, multiple wildfires spread across a large area between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Though an investigation into the initial blaze was inconclusive, with the conflagration being attributed to a combination of climate conditions and hikers’ negligence, there’s no question that arsonists stepped in to heighten the crisis. For one thing, some perpetrators were caught on video, and three suspects were arrested for questioning.

For another, Arab social media was abuzz with calls to go out and “burn Israel to the ground.” With jihad in the air, even the slightest desert breeze—certainly a dry heat wave with high winds—can wreak major havoc.   

And as the country’s firefighters, with the help of police and soldiers, battled the flames, the Houthis spent the days launching missiles at Israel from Yemen. Thankfully, neither led to a loss of life.

The same can’t be said about 19-year-old Israel Defense Forces Sgt. Niv Dayag from Ramat Hasharon, however. He was killed on Thursday in Gaza.

Meanwhile, the IDF was striking Hezbollah targets in Lebanon; tackling hostile activities in Syria; preparing for a confrontation with Iran; taking out terrorists in Judea and Samaria; and amassing troops to step up military pressure on Hamas.

This is how Israel marked its 77th birthday. Not with quiet reflection followed by cheerful fanfare, but under attack on all fronts, including that involving civil strife.

The latter, as usual, was characterized by a media chorus, echoed by a certain vociferous sector of the public, demanding an end to the war and ridiculing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for reiterating the goal of “victory.”

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The left claims Sen. John Fetterman is crazy because he supports Israel By Andrea Widburg

By on May 4th, 2025

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/05/the_left_claims_sen_john_fetterman_is_crazy_because_he_supports_israel.html

And when I say crazy, they mean in the literal sense, for they’re following the Soviet model of pathologizing opposing views.

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) is a leftist, make no mistake about that. It’s why I opposed his election to the Senate. Having said that, Fetterman has proven surprising in two ways: First, from the beginning, he’s been willing to moderate his views for the good of the country, and second, he’s pro-Israel, a viewpoint that’s increasingly out of step with the Democrat party. And now, the Democrats, like any good cultists confronted with an apostate, are trying to destroy him. More than that, they’re using the old communist playbook of contending that he’s insane.

As you may recall, Sen. John Fetterman was recovering from a serious stroke when he ran against Dr. Mehmet Oz to represent Pennsylvania in the United States Senate in 2022. Many, including me, felt that his verbal abilities were so limited that it was ridiculous to place him in Congress. I stand by that.

As it turned out, Fetterman seems to have recovered completely, but that recovery included checking himself into a psychiatric ward. It was a huge gamble on the part of Pennsylvania’s leftists to send to Congress a man who could have remained seriously impaired for the duration of his term (kind of like Joe Biden or the late Dianne Feinstein).

However—and this is a lovely reflection on the strength and plasticity of the human brain—Fetterman did recover. Moreover, his recovery has revealed a principled man who recognizes that, as between Israel, a liberal democracy in which all citizens have civil rights and that occupies a minute piece of land, and the Muslims arrayed against her, who are religious fanatics who believe that anyone who is not Muslim should be slaughtered, enslaved, or subordinated, Israel is on the side of the angels.

What Fetterman’s principles have revealed is that, while Democrats are good with brain damage, they’re not good with supporting Israel. So, Democrats are doing what they always do: Engaging in the politics of personal destruction.

According to the left, while Fetterman’s overt signs of brain damage from his stroke (that is, scrambled speech) are over, the real damage has revealed itself. And, in case you didn’t see where I was going, that “real” damage is that he is insufficiently hostile to Israel and solicitous of Hamas, a terrorist group that slaughters its enemies without regard to civilian status and uses its own civilians as human shields.

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Europe’s Illegal Land-Grab: Part II by Karys Rhea

By on May 3rd, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21491/europe-illegal-land-grab-part-ii

[T]he IDF tends to be… focused on immediate, critical threats from Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and Iran.

[Many in Israel] demand a zero-tolerance policy towards illegal construction, regardless of EU funding and lawsuits, and have called on the Israeli government to initiate a long-overdue diplomatic effort that will make it clear to the EU that it has established red lines that will be enforced.

It may even be that right-wingers such as [Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich and others have risen to power precisely because of growing Israeli frustration over fundamental threats such as this one having long gone ignored.

In 1967, Israel fought a monumental six-day war against neighboring Egypt, Syria and Jordan, who attacked the small country with the declared goal of wiping the Jewish state off the map. To the amazement of the international community, Israel unexpectedly emerged victorious, gaining control over multiple territories, including the West Bank. Historically known as “Judea and Samaria,” and before 1948 home to a thriving Jewish population, the West Bank was illegally occupied by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan without international recognition from 1948 to 1967. In that time, Jordan ethnically cleansed the Jewish residents and destroyed dozens of synagogues. It re-named the region the “West Bank,” meaning “west of the Jordan River,” to sever any Jewish connection to the land in an attempt to legitimize its occupation of territory that was never part of its internationally recognized borders.

When Israel wrested control of the West Bank from Jordan in 1967, it refrained from annexing the territory, immediately offering to exchange land for peace. This unprecedented overture was met with the resounding “Three No’s” at the infamous 1967 Arab League Summit in Khartoum: “No peace with Israel. No negotiation with Israel. No recognition of Israel.” Consequently, the West Bank came under Israeli military rule.

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Human-Rights Bodies Corrupt Human Rights To Vilify Israel Defending Israel against politicized human-rights attacks is vital to preserving both human rights’ integrity and America’s founding principles. By Peter Berkowitz

By on April 29th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/04/29/human-rights-bodies-corrupt-human-rights-to-vilify-israel/

The United States has a special interest in safeguarding the integrity of human rights because America is founded on the rights inherent in all persons, and the nation’s political traditions revolve around them. Ordinary Americans as well as Washington policymakers, therefore, should condemn prominent human-rights organizations’ abuse of human rights to defame Israel and to legitimate jihadists’ efforts to destroy the Jewish state. Correcting the record about the Middle East’s only rights-protecting democracy and the Islamist forces sworn to its elimination is crucial to restoring the good name of human rights.

The Declaration of Independence holds that it is self-evidently true that human beings are endowed with “unalienable rights” – the 18th-century term for human rights. The Constitution aims to secure them. Much of the nation’s history revolves around the struggle to ensure that all Americans enjoy the rights that are theirs in virtue of their humanity. While the Constitution does not grant government a roving mandate to protect human rights around the world, it does invigorate the nation’s interest in serving as a beacon of freedom for those who suffer under authoritarian regimes and in cooperating with countries that share America’s understanding of the dignity of the person.

Dictatorships reject human rights, which place individual freedom ahead of dictators’ ambitions and decrees. Dictatorships’ aversion to human rights is as characteristic of the Iranian Ayatollahs’ Islamist theocracy as it is of Putin’s imperial Russia and of the Chinese Communist Party’s synthesis of Marxism-Leninism and traditional Chinese nationalism.

In the 21st century, powerful human-rights organizations have played into dictators’ hands by politicizing human rights. While persisting in affirming human-rights’ universality, these organizations equate them with a tendentious version of the progressive agenda. They wield human rights as a propaganda tool, inflating the claims of favored groups and disparaging the claims of the disfavored. The politicization of human rights sends the pernicious message to those who differ with the progressive left’s political priorities that human rights are a sham and should be expelled from respectable political discourse.

Nowhere do human-rights organizations more crudely politicize human rights than in the case of Israel.

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