President Donald Trump’s international negotiations adviser, Jason Greenblatt, arrived in Israel earlier this week for meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem and Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. Prior to his White House role, Greenblatt, an Orthodox Jew from Teaneck, N.J., worked as a real estate lawyer with Trump over the course of the past two decades. He also advised Trump on Israel during last year’s election campaign. The stated purpose of Greenblatt’s trip is to restart negotiations between Israel and the PA, and to explore new strategies for advancing Middle East peace. During his visit,…
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to Moscow last week to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. During the meeting, Netanyahu sought to further enhance the “enduring relationship” between the two countries and to “continue the ongoing link between Israel and Russia in order to prevent friction” in Syria. The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement that Netanyahu conveyed “Israel’s strong opposition to the presence of Iranian forces, and those of its proxies” on Israel’s northern border with Syria. Since becoming actively involved in the Syrian civil war in 2015, Russia has worked closely with Iran in support of…
Authorities believe that one person is primarily behind most of the ongoing bomb threats against Jewish community centers (JCCs) and other institutions since the beginning of the year. Commissioner of Intelligence and Counter-terrorism John Miller of the NYPD stated that they believe one man using a voice changer and phone-spoofing device is behind the bomb threats. “We have an offender with some technical prowess here,” Miller said. Miller also described the suspected main offender as a “typical coward.” “They hide behind the shadows. They work from a distance and their goal is to instill fear. And doing that behind the shadows…
President Trump is the first president since Congress passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act in 1995 to take seriously his campaign promise to return the US Embassy to the Israeli capital. And that is why an official Congressional delegation landed in Israel this past weekend to begin deliberations over the embassy move. A statement released by Israeli lawmaker Yehuda Glick (Likud) said that the Americans were arriving to “closely examine the issue of transferring the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, both from a practical standpoint, as well as politically.” Glick said that he would again impress on them the…
To the stunned approval of Israel and its supporters, Facebook last week shut down the official account of the ruling Palestinian faction, Fatah. Someone apparently felt Fatah had violated Facebook community standards by posting an old photo of its former leader, Yasser Arafat, posing with a rifle next to the group’s current leader, Mahmoud Abbas. On Wednesday, Facebook apologized for the “mishap” and reinstated the Fatah page. “The page was removed in error and restored as soon as we were able to investigate. We apologize for this mistake,” a Facebook spokesman was quoted. Sadly, Fatah’s years of posts inciting murderous violence…
US President Donald Trump has a lot of opposition to keep his promise of finally moving the American embassy back to Jerusalem. No one expected Israel itself to be among that opposition. But that’s precisely what US Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, suggested in an interview with The Global Politico podcast recently. According to Corker, Trump was ready to move the embassy the very minute after his inauguration. But Israeli ambivalence caused the president to stop and take a step back. A lot of Israel’s mixed feelings on the issue are seemingly connected to the Jewish…
American Jewish leaders are enthusiastically applauding President Donald Trump’s call on the Palestinian Authority (PA) to remove anti-Jewish hate material from its school books. At his press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Feb. 15, Trump said “the Palestinians have to get rid of” the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish material that appears in PA school texts. “They’re taught tremendous hate,” he said. “I’ve seen what they’re taught…it starts at a very young age and it starts in the school room.” Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman and CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, stated, “The…
You won’t hear about this in the international mainstream media that is determined to paint Israel as hostile toward all Arabs. In this month alone, Israel provided, free of charge, life-changing surgery to 16 Palestinian children who were born deaf. The children came from Judea and Samaria (the so-called “West Bank”), as well as from Hamas-ruled Gaza. They were each fitted with a special cochlear implant allowing them to “hear” sounds in their surroundings, and underwent special therapy to help them get used to the drastic change in their lives. The procedures took place at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital.…
Israel Public Security Minister Gil’ad Erdan stated that, with US President Donald Trump rewriting the rule of Mideast peacemaking, there was now a real chance for a genuine agreement between the Jewish state and its Arab neighbors. At his press conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump said he was not married to the two-state solution and would consider any reasonable proposal for peace, so long as Israel likes it. Speaking at a gathering of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations in Jerusalem, Erdan said that attitude from an American president is a game-changer: “We have an opportunity to…
To say that Israelis were glued to their televisions as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood side-by-side with US President Donald Trump to address the media would be a major understatement. For most Israelis, this first meeting between the two leaders since Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States was enormously fateful. And most Israelis were beyond pleased with the outcome, and the drastic improvement over relations during the Obama Administration. What most took away from the press conference was that Trump had effectively put Israel back in the driver’s seat when it comes to making…