OPINION AND ANALYSIS
Week Ending 28 January 2015
1. Christians in the Holy Land: don’t call us Arabs
Aryeh Tepper, The Tower, January 2015
Long identified as part of the country’s minority Arab population, Israel’s Christian community has recently begun asserting its own unique identity—one that is deeply tied to the Jewish State of Israel. Meet the Arameans.
2. The delirium of anti-Zionism
Tom Wilson, Commentary Magazine, 25 January 2015
Last week many were quick to hail the United Nations conference on anti-Semitism as a hopeful step forward. The fact that just 37 of the 193 UN member states even bothered to send delegates should be demonstration enough of just how little many countries care about the modern-day revival of global Jew hatred.
3. Obama’s slap of Israel is shameful and dangerous
Editorial, Savannah Now, 25 January 2015
Mr. Obama’s leadership in the Middle East has been abysmal. Maybe he’s not openly hostile to Israel. Yet he’s not doing that nation — or, his own — any favours by snubbing Mr. Netanyahu or going soft on nukes. The only beneficiary is the country that’s gaining strength — Iran.
4. Iran doesn’t need nuclear weapons
Shoshana Bryen, American Thinker, 24 January 2015
In his State of the Union address, President Obama forcefully announced he would not accept “a nuclear-armed Iran.” This reflects his view that the only objectionable element of Iran’s behaviour would be acquisition and possible use of such weapons. This is conveniently narrow.
5. Time to take it to Iran
Dennis Ross, Eric Edelman & Ray Takeyh, Politico Magazine, 23 January 2015
It is time to acknowledge that we need a revamped coercive strategy, one that threatens what the Islamic Republic values the most – its influence in the Middle East and its standing at home. And the pattern of concessions at the negotiating table must stop if there is to be an acceptable agreement. Iranian officials must come to understand that there will be no further concessions to reach an accord and that time is running out for negotiations.
6. Islamic State deepens its grip in a future Palestine
Khaled Abu Toameh, Gatestone Institute, 23 January 2015
Hamas cannot afford a situation where another Islamist terror group poses a challenge to its exclusive control over the Gaza Strip. Since seizing control over the Gaza Strip in 2007, Hamas has successfully suppressed the emergence of rival forces, first and foremost the secular Fatah faction headed by Mahmoud Abbas. But if until recently it was Fatah that posed a challenge and threat to Hamas’s rule, now it is the Islamic State and its supporters in the Gaza Strip are openly defying the Islamist movement’s regime.
7. Iran’s new terror base against Israel
Yaakov Lappin, Gatestone Institute, 22 January 2015
The new base in Syria gives Hezbollah the option of attacking Israel and drawing Israel’s return fire away from Lebanon, where its most precious assets are hidden: well over 100,000 rockets and missiles that might be saved for a future battle over Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
8. Response to UN’s Ban Ki-moon from Amb. Alan Baker
Ambassador Alan Baker, JCPA, 21 January 2015
The ICC is rapidly and unjustifiably, – and doubtless against its own better interests – being manipulated to become a politicized “Israel-bashing” body, at the initiative of the Palestinian leadership which wrongfully perceives, and widely represents the Court as being their own private judicial tribunal, in order to conduct their political campaign against Israel.
9. The media take us for a walk
Yisrael Medad and Eli Pollak, Jerusalem Post, 21 January 2015
The duty of the Israeli government is to safeguard Jews wherever they are. Netanyahu feels that the most effective way to implement this basic tenet of Zionism is by advocating aliya to Israel. It is easier to safeguard people here than in the Diaspora. France’s political leadership did not like this call, but the Jews of France showered Netanyahu with praise and appreciation. The Israeli media, however, preferred to be negative.
10. Netanyahu can win re-election by fighting corruption
Daniel Doron, Weekly Standard, 19 January 2015
Coming on the heels of a spate of revelations regarding corruption in the Israeli government – as well as worrisome signs of dysfunction in Israeli governance, exposed during last summer’s unresolved campaign against Hamas – the Israeli public was shocked again recently by yet more revelations of pervasive corruption in high places. Now a dark cloud on the political horizon, corruption (as well as its neglect by the authorities) shows signs of developing into a major political storm. It could deeply affect the upcoming March elections, in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will have to defend his seat against a still fragmented – but very determined – opposition that will run on the slogan “anyone but Bibi.”
11. Hypocrisy after the Paris terror attacks
Deborah Lipstadt, Tablet Magazine, 16 January 2015
World leaders, including our own, have been decidedly reluctant to identify this problem. What needs to be said is that there is a problem in a segment of the Muslim world. It is extremism that justifies and celebrates killing individuals for angering them and Jews just for being Jews. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, however, insisted that the attacks had nothing to do with religion, characterizing them as “criminality.” If it was just criminality, then what happened at the Hyper Cacher supermarket was a hold-up, and not anti-Semitism.
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