Why Recognizing Israel as 'Jewish State' Is Key to Peace

Palestinians Must Finally End Resistance to Zionism

By David Hazony for Forward Mobile
It often happens in sensitive negotiations between longtime adversaries. At a certain point they start talking in code.

Silent looks, secret words, raised eyebrows — messages only they understand. The baffled mediator stops everything and says, “Hey, what’s going on between you two?”

That’s how you know the most serious issues are finally on the table.

We have reached that moment in the talks between Israelis and Palestinians, and it is taking place around the words “Jewish state.”

Seemingly out of nowhere, questions over Jerusalem, settlements, borders, security and refugees have been eclipsed by something that seems entirely symbolic: Will the Palestinians recognize that Israel is the national homeland of the Jewish people? The Israelis have declared it a deal breaker, while the Palestinians, with the backing of the Arab League, have rejected it outright.

What is the argument really about?

Symbols have a tendency to be, well, symbolic. In this case, accepting the Jewish state (rather than just a political entity called “Israel”) is understood by both sides to represent the ultimate, public and final abandonment of the long-standing explicit Palestinian goal of eradicating Israel, whether through violence or through the relocation of millions of people of Palestinian descent currently living in refugee camps around the Arab world.

To accept the Jewish state is to create the minimal conditions for an end to the conflict. It is to signal to the Palestinian factions, divisions, functionaries and public, as well as the whole global pro-Palestinian machine, that the era of “resistance” is reaching its end.

Both sides know it, and always have. Indeed, since the very beginning of the Zionist enterprise, rejection of the “Jewish state” idea — whether Jewish in character, in purpose, religiously or demographically, or any other reasonable definition— has always been the real core of the problem.

It was the core of the problem when murderous Arab mobs began attacking unarmed Jewish civilians in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, culminating in the slaughter of the Jewish community in Hebron in 1929.

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IDF Continues to Prep Iran Strike

 Israeli defense minister: ‘We have to look out for ourselves’

BY: Abraham Rabinovich for The Washington Free Beacon

JERUSALEM—Israel’s political leadership has ordered the Israel Defense Forces to continue preparations for a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities despite the interim agreement arrived at last November between Teheran and Western nations, Ha’aretz reported today.

Three Knesset members who attended parliamentary briefings by senior army officers said the order had come from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon. The cost of these preparations, whose nature was not spelled out, would be at least $2.9 billion this year, they said.

Ya’alon, who in the past had opposed an Israeli pre-emptive strike, said this week that Israel could not rely on President Barack Obama to lead an action against Iran if negotiations fail. He cited the Ukraine crisis as an example of the administration projecting weakness. “We have to look out for ourselves,” he said in a lecture.

Netanyahu, in an address before a pro-Israel lobbying group in Washington earlier this month, said that Western willingness to let Iran continue to enrich uranium “would open the floodgates” to its development of nuclear weapons. Said Netanyahu: “That must not happen. And we will make sure it does not happen.”

The Knesset briefing was given by deputy chief of staff Maj. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot and Brig. Gen. Agai Yehezkel, a planning directorate official.

Knesset members asked them whether there was justification in expending billions in view of the ongoing negotiations aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear program. In reply, the officers said they had a clear directive from the political leadership, namely Netanyahu and Ya’alon, to continue readying the armed forces for a possible attack on the nuclear sites regardless of the negotiations.

Meanwhile, Israel is urging the American administration and a number of senior congressmen to approve the sale to Egypt of 10 Apache attack helicopters. An Israeli official said the helicopters are crucial to Cairo’s fight against Jihadi fighters in Sinai.

Many in Congress oppose renewal of American military aid to Egypt until the army there transfers power to an elected civilian government.

There has been close cooperation between Israel and the military leadership in Egypt since the ouster last year of President Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood. A delegation of senior Egyptian officers and officials of the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs visited Israel last week for talks with Israeli counterparts.

The Woman Who Saved Syria’s Jews

From TheDailyBeast
Three decades ago, Judy Feld Carr started smuggling members of Syria’s minority Jewish community out of the country. She talks to The Daily Beast about her secret work saving people from slaughter under Assad.

In Syria's three-year war, which is becoming more sectarian by the day, much has been made of the fate of the country's minorities. Christians, Druze and Kurds in the country have enjoyed more column inches dedicated to their plight over the last three years than ever before. But one Syrian minority is almost never spoken of—the Syrian Jews.

“If they were there now, what would have happened? I know what would have happened. It would have been the slaughter of the Syrian Jewish community, that is for sure," says Judy Feld Carr matter-of-factly. Delving into why this slaughter never happened uncovers a story of spy-craft, subterfuge and tightly-kept secrets.

In the late 1970's, Feld Carr, a Canadian mother and musicologist, was reading a newspaper when she was struck by an article about 12 Syrian-Jewish men who tried to escape into Turkey overland from Qamishli, in the north of the country. They stepped on a land mine and Syrian border guards watched them die.

She was so moved by the story that she decided to track down members of Syria's Jewish community. She began cold-calling numbers in Syria until she eventually hit upon a contact. "I sent a telegram to the Rabbi in Damascus asking if he needed religious books and prepaid [for his response]." she explains. "Who would have ever believe, an answer came back with a shopping list! That was the beginning, the first opening since 1948."

In the decades following the creation of the state of Israel, Syria's Jewish community had become isolated, says Sarian Roffe, a historian of the Syrian Jewish community. "After Israel's creation that was it. They shut the doors because they didn't want people to go to Israel and fight against them," she says. "So the doors to leave Syria were closed and there was increased persecution."

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Abbas is a true partner for peace, says Peres

President Shimon Peres expresses sheer support for PA President Mahmoud Abbas, who will meet with US President Obama later Monday.

Noam (Dabul) Dvir for YnetNews

President Shimon Peres said on Monday that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is a "true partner for peace." Peres made the remarks upon an expected summit later Monday in Washington between Abbas and US President Barack Obama.

During a meeting Peres held with human right activist Rose Mapendo, the president stressed that Abbas is a man of principle who objects to violence and terror.

"We are at a crucial stage of the negotiations and we must do everything we can to ensure they carry on," said Peres. "There is clear majority and agreement on a solution of two states for two people."

Peres added: "We must continue working with the Palestinian Authority and Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas). He is a good partner and I am glad our government is negotiating with him. Disagreements are a normal thing and that is why there are negotiations – to solve disputes. There are also issues that we do agree on such as the war on terror."

The president also addressed the meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Obama earlier this month. "They had a good meeting and now we wait to see what the meeting between the American president and Abu Mazen will bring about. It is in everyone's interest to find a way to overcome the gaps and there are critical decisions we must make in the upcoming weeks."

To conclude his remarks, Peres said that "negotiations are a process of creation. We all await peace; it is the heart's desire for all Israelis and Palestinians."

Queen Esther: Patron saint of crypto-Jews

Faced with threat of execution for Jewish observance, Sephardi conversos created the festival of Santa Esterica to replace Purim

By Ronit Treatman for TimesofIsrael.com

According to tradition, around 1,900 years before the Spanish Inquisition, a baby girl named Hadassah was born in the Persian Empire. She was orphaned at a very young age and her cousin Mordechai assumed custody of her. Under his tutelage, she internalized the spark of her Jewish identity.

After a few years, an opportunity presented itself, and Mordechai placed her in King Ahasuerus’ harem. He told her that her name was now Esther.

Mordechai told Esther that she was still a Jew, but that she must not let anyone know. If she was lucky, one day she could be the queen of Persia. It is said that she was a vegetarian, to avoid eating non-kosher meat. Queen Esther seemed to be fully assimilated, yet she never forgot who she really was. She hid her Judaism, and eventually married King Ahasuerus.

When the Spanish Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella established the Spanish Inquisition in 1478, many Jews converted to Catholicism outwardly. Inwardly, they kept practicing Judaism in secret, becoming anusim, conversos, or crypto-Jews.

Queen Esther was an inspiration to the anusim in that she modeled a way for them to remember and retain their true, hidden Jewish identity while integrating into the society around them. The conversos implemented a strategy to be able to continue practicing Jewish customs while hiding their observance by inserting a Jewish tradition into a Catholic practice or “syncretism” — the mixing of rituals from different religions.

When the Roman Catholic Church formally recognizes a person as a saint, this person is canonized. A person who has not been canonized may, however, still be referred to as a saint if it is believed that they are “completely perfect in holiness.” The crypto-Jews took advantage of this loophole.

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Assad is starving Palestinians to death in a Syrian camp, and nobody cares

150,000 used to live in Yarmouk, now there are 20,000; Israel worries about the Golan, where Islamists control much of the border area

By Avi Issacharoff for TimesofIsrael

It’s been three years since the civil war broke out in Syria, and there is no end in sight. More than 120,000 people have been killed so far. Two-and-a-half million Syrians are refugees. The damage to the country’s infrastructure is estimated at $3 billion.

On the ground, a fragile equilibrium holds between the regime and its opponents. President Bashar Assad’s army manages limited gains in key regions, like the coastal area near Tartus and Latakia, and in major cities like Aleppo and Damascus. But the regime is far from defeating the rebels, and has, to some extent, come to terms with rebel control over certain areas, like the Kurdish region in northeastern Syria.

Assad’s opponents, for their part, continue to show weakness and fractiousness, as a motley assortment of groups — some radical Islamists, others secular — fight the regime and fight each other. The Syrian army today numbers close to 230,000 men. Facing them are 120,000 rebels, two-thirds of whom are considered Islamists — 10 percent are affiliated with al-Qaeda — and they’re all killing each other.

It is interesting to recall how this war started, with an incident so minor that no one would have paid attention to it if it happened today. A group of kids in the city of Daraa, near the border with Jordan, daubed some anti-Assad graffiti. Syrian policemen arrested the children, beat them, and took them to jail. The city’s residents demonstrated against the arrests, and from that point onward, the bodies began to pile up.

This week, too, and last week, and the week before that, shocking pictures came out of Syria, and it seems that everyone, even Syrians, has grown used to them. The killing of women, children, and the elderly has become a routine occurrence, so commonplace that the average news viewer in Israel and across the entire Middle East is no longer affected by it. Another village destroyed by aerial bombing, more refugees fleeing for their lives, more bodies strewn across the streets.

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Former FBI Agent Says Leading Muslim Group a 'Hamas Front'

Former FBI counter terrorism expert calls on Americans to pressure government to shut down Council on American-Islamic Relations.

By Orli Baruch and Ari Soffer for Arutz7Sheva

Former FBI Counterterrorism expert John Guandolo, known for his controversial calls for Americans to "expose Al Qaeda agents" in their neighborhoods, has reiterated his calls to the public to pressure officials to prosecute the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) for supporting terrorism.

In an interview with Arutz Sheva, the author of the book explained how CAIR - which claims to be a "civil liberties" organization representing moderate Muslims in the US - was established by Islamist leaders closely linked to the radical Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is an offshoot. The organization was set up specifically to provide propaganda and other forms of nonviolent support for Hamas, which is a designated terrorist group in the US.




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The Brotherhood first established a presence in the US in the 1950s, and by the 1960s had set up several front groups, including the US-Palestine Committee. Guandolo describes how the FBI documented a key meeting of the Committee in 1993 at which the two men who would later found CAIR - Omar Ahmad and Nihad Awad - were present.

At the meeting, "those two men specifically discussed with other Hamas leaders creating a public relations front for Hamas that wasn't affiliated with Hamas," Guandolo relates, "and less than a year later CAIR is created in Washington D.C."

Since then, he says, CAIR has actively supported Hamas in the US, and should qualify for prosecution for providing material support to a terrorist group as a result.

He points out that the organization is among several "unindicted conspirators" in the 15-year investigation surrounding the Holy Land Foundation, which in 2001 was shut down after being designated as a terrorist organization by the US government.

Faced with the evidence, Guandolo says he can't understand why the group is still operating legally.

"The question we as Americans need to be asking is: 'Why is this Attorney General and Department of Justice not indicting and prosecuting CAIR and its leaders?'"