ISRAEL BREAKING NEWS

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  Palestinians Launch Nobel Peace Prize Campaign for Convicted Terrorist
Israel Daily News Stream3 hours ago
Today’s Top Stories

A Palestinian holds a portrait of Palestinian prisoner Marwan Barghouti during a rally in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails outside the Red Cross building in the West Bank city of Ramallah. March 27, 2012. Photo by Issam Rimawi/Flash 90.

1. Palestinians have launched a worldwide campaign to nominate jailed Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti for the Nobel Peace Prize – despite his life imprisonment for five terrorist murders.

According to the JPost, the campaign will include organizing rallies and marches throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip in support of the nomination. Organizers said they are also planning a massive campaign in the local and international media to promote the idea of giving Barghouti the Nobel Peace Prize.

As outlandish as it sounds, it wouldn’t be the first time a Palestinian terrorist has won a Nobel Peace Prize…

2. The US has notified Israel and Egypt that it is considering reconfiguring its mission in Sinai by increasing reliance on remote sensing technology so it can shift the number of troops from northern Sinai because of the growing threat there from ISIS.

The US soldiers are part of the Multinational Force and Observers mission that monitors compliance with the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty.

Muammar Gaddafi
Muammar Gaddafi

3. Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi reportedly asked for Israel’s help to stem Western coalition airstrikes on his country during the 2011 uprising that led to his downfall.

Perhaps not a great surprise that, according to the report, Israeli officials carried out a quick assessment and decided not to act.

4. Is Australia Guilty as Charged?: An op-ed by an Australian academic and BDS advocate charges Australia with being guilty of double standards on human rights because the country fails to consistently condemn Israeli settlements.

Israel and the Palestinians
• Palestinian Authority intends to begin issuing “State of Palestine” passports to West Bank residents.

• Ahead of the Passover vacation, Israel’s Counter-Terrorism Bureau issues travel warnings relating to credible threats against Israeli citizens in more than 30 countries.

• Revealed: The nuclear reactor in Dimona is involved in 65 joint research projects with agencies abroad, including the United States Department of Energy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the European Union and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Around the World
• A poll of British Muslims reveals that they are more anti-Semitic than the general population.

• Led by Kuwait, the Arab Inter-Parliamentary Union voted to move to expel the Knesset from the international IPU due to the “racist laws”’ it allegedly legislates.

Commentary/Analysis
• Would a Hillary Clinton presidency be better for Israel than the current administration? Jennifer Rubin thinks so in the Washington Post.

• Adam Milstein and Carlos Ortiz call for Christians and Jews to come together to defeat the hate and intolerance of BDS:

Many of the leaders of the BDS movement are linked to international terrorist groups that oppress Christians in the Middle East. Hatem Bazian – one of the chief architects of BDS and the founder of “Students for Justice in Palestine,” the largest on-campus BDS organization – has been connected to a range of groups shut down by the Justice Department for raising money on behalf of the Hamas terrorist organization and other radical Islamist groups. Bazian has called for a violent uprising, in his words “an Intifada,” not only in Israel but also in the United States, and vocalized support for attacks on American troops in Iraq.
 
Like Bazian, Purdue University professor Bill Mullen, one of the BDS leaders who lobbied the American Studies Association to adopt a boycott of Israel, also advocates for attacking American ‘imperialism,’ saying, “We can build a still-stronger BDS movement beginning in the name of Palestinian freedom and ending in a permanent blow against American empire.”
 
Bazian and others not only seek to destroy the Jewish State, but also the Judeo-Christian principles on which it is founded. We have a responsibility to stand up and speak out against this wave of hate, whether it erupts in the Middle East or in the middle of America. Christians and Jews must unite to battle against BDS for the sake of our values, our future, and our very way of life.
• Josh Block applauds the signing of an anti-BDS law in Florida:

The Florida Pro-Israel community agrees with the governor and Democrats and Republicans in the state Legislature: Boycotts, divestments and sanctions of Israel are counterproductive to the goal of peace, antithetical to freedom of speech and part of a greater effort to undermine the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in their homeland. We stand united in our condemnation of calls and campaigns to boycott Israeli institutions, products and companies that do business with Israel.
 
Florida’s new law is a major blow against anti-Israel bigotry and discrimination. We applaud Scott and the state Legislature for their leadership on passing this historic law.
 

Featured image: CC BY-NC-SA xeeliz with modifications by HonestReporting

The Boston Globe Presents President Trump’s America
“A Front Page in Donald Trump’s America” Raises Ire
By Abra Forman April 11, 2016 , 10:30 am
“Happy is the man that hath not walked in the counsel of the wicked, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of the scornful.” Psalms 1:1 (The Israel Bible™)
A satirical front page of the Boston Globe, from the future date of April 9, 2017, posited what America would be like under President Donald Trump – and the future did not look “great”.
“Deportations to Begin”, blasts the main headline, with the subtitle, “President Trump calls for tripling of ICE (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement) force; riots continue”.
Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/65420/the-boston-globe-presents-president-trumps-america-jerusalem/#1kGazTIY6fD2LJGW.99


Controversial MK: Segregate Jews and Arabs in Maternity Wards
“Wherefore she said unto Abraham: ‘Cast out this bondwoman and her son; for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac.'” (Genesis 21:10)
Habayit Hayehudi MK Bezalel Smotrich has been embroiled most of last week in a scandal over his and his wife’s Tweets that said, essentially, that while most Israelis won’t admit it, they would much prefer to give birth in segregated maternity wards, where Jews and Arabs promulgate separately.
Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/65390/controversial-mk-segregate-jews-arabs-maternity-wards-jerusalem/#DuOxJpemMd8zDJqM.99



Missionizing Hurts Jewish-Christian Relations - But Not the Way You Think
By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz April 11, 2016 , 2:30 pm
“He will be as a sanctuary, but a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense to both the houses of Israel, as a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.” (‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭8:14)
A new era of relations between Jews and Christians is just beginning, but an unexpected obstacle has arisen. Christians coming to investigate their  Jewish roots are facing pressure to leave their Messianic beliefs behind.
Spiritual mavericks crossing boundaries that have been sacrosanct for a millennium, the Bnei Yosef are on a spiritual journey that has led them out of the church in a search for their Jewish roots and a Jewish Jesus. Looking for affirmation that they are part of Israel, they are especially sensitive to any efforts to influence their beliefs. As canaries in the interfaith coal-mine, they feel they have encountered a religious ethnocentric arrogance in Judaism that makes it difficult to connect
Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/65446/the-conversion-issue-keeping-jews-and-christians-apart-jewish-world/#ZydJ2pwFk3yE56Ky.99


Israeli NGO Turns to Trump, Clinton for Help Extraditing Terrorist
Shurat HaDin Asks Trump, Clinton to Help Extradite Hamas Terrorist
By Ahuva Balofsky April 11, 2016 , 12:30 pm
“If a man be found stealing any of his brethren of B’nei Yisrael, and he deal with him as a slave, and sell him; then that thief shall die; so shalt thou put away the evil from the midst of thee.” Deuteronomy 24:7 (The Israel Bible™)
Giving up on the current administration, Israel legal advocacy NGO Shurat HaDin – Israel Law Center has turned to strong presidential candidates for support in its campaign to bring a leading terrorist to justice, The Jerusalem Post reported. Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri is responsible for numerous terror attacks, including the kidnapping and murder of Israeli-American Naftali Fraenkel and his two friends, Gilad Shaer and Eyal Yifrah, in 2014. According to the Torah, kidnapping is a capital offense, to say nothing of murder.
Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/65416/israel-advocacy-firm-turns-to-trump-clinton-for-help-extraditing-terrorist-terror-watch/#QRqSTrz7fEcVXLQ1.99

Mom, Apple Pie and Burqas?
By Dr. Phyllis Chesler
Madonna, three Kardashian sisters, Rihanna, Selena Gomez, Katy Perry and Nicole Richie have all recently posted photos of themselves in exotic Islamic “drag,” either on visits to Dubai, Abu Dhabi or Morocco or just because it suited their fancy.
Western women who don Islamist clothing for fun forget that Muslim women don’t have a choice in the matter.
The stewardesses of Air France are outraged and have just refused to don headscarves when they fly into Tehran, as the mullahs have demanded.
Viva La France!
The French stewardesses have more dignity, more sobriety, and more self-respect than many
Read more at http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/18684#.VwpH4Pl96M9#iFVfx56vwV4U1dDJ.99


 
Mystical Rabbi: Israel Will Be Safe From Effects of Nibiru
By Rivkah Lambert Adler April 12, 2016 , 9:30 am
“In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.” Genesis 7:11 (The Israel Bible™)
Whether you call it Planet X, Nibiru, a comet or a star, the forthcoming disturbance in the solar system is still hotly contested.
NASA claims, “Nibiru and other stories about wayward planets are an Internet hoax. There is no factual basis for these claims. If Nibiru or Planet X were real and headed for an encounter with the Earth in 2012, astronomers would have been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible by now to the naked eye. Obviously, it does not exist.”
Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/65481/rabbis-compare-devastation-nibiru-noahs-flood-jewish-world/#SIuLqg7LM2irR4sq.99

Is Super-Liberal Sanders Losing Jewish Support After Wildly Inaccurate Gaza Accusations?
By Abra Forman April 11, 2016 , 11:30 am
“The fool hath said in his heart: ‘There is no God’.” Psalms 14:1 (The Israel Bible™)
Following a painful gaffe in which Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders estimated the Gazan casualty count from the 2014 conflict with Israel at “over 10,000” and called Israel’s attacks “indiscriminate”, Sanders’ Jewish supporters are starting to take a step back from the self-proclaimed socialist.
Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/65434/clinton-bashes-sanders-inflated-gaza-casualty-count-middle-east/#kDmMFOMaz4cmFsxK.99

 Divine IDF Miracle on Gaza Border Reveals Passover Message
By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz April 8, 2016 , 11:23 am
“And the LORD was with Yehuda; and he drove out the inhabitants of the hill-country; for he could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.” Judges 1:19 (The Israel Bible™)
image: http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/IDF_Caterpillar_D9_in_action_-_2a.jpg
IDF D9 in Action (Photo by שועל, modified by MathKnight , via Wikimedia Commons)
An IDF D9 armored bulldozer was targeted by a massive Improvised Explosive Device (IED) on the border between Gaza and Israel Friday morning, but the vehicle and the two-man crew escaped unscathed in what Israeli news sites have called a “miracle on the Gaza border”.
The bulldozer was operating in the Sdot Negev Regional Council area, adjacent to the northern area of Gaza. The explosive was planted  west of the security fence, within Israeli territory but in a security perimeter area Gazans are forbidden from entering. This buffer zone prevents terrorists from approaching the fence. The vehicle reportedly drove directly over the IED, which was exploded remotely.
Commenting on the timing of the incident on the eve of the Jewish month of Nissan, Rabbi Lazer Brody told Breaking Israel News that “this miracle of saving Jewish soldiers is meant to remind us what the month of Nissan is all about – that God is protecting Israel and don’t ever forget it.”
Nissan, the Hebrew month in which Jews celebrate the holiday of Passover, began with sundown on Friday, mere hours after the incident. Nissan is known in the Jewish tradition as “the festival of our redemption”, when God redeemed the ancient Israelites from slavery. It is believed that God will once again bring salvation to Israel in this month.
READ MORE
 http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/65262/idf-bulldozer-and-crew-survive-ied-attack-in-a-miracle-idf/#mHVWiKpEP1S5YsH8.99


Israel vs. America:
Which Really Values the Bible?
“And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be upon thy heart.” (Deuteronomy 6:6)
Church-vs-State Struggle as Tennessee Moves to Make Bible Official State Book
By Abra Forman April 10, 2016 , 12:30 pm
Tennessee is poised to become the first state in US history to adopt the Bible as its official state book, with legislation proposing the measure on its way to the governor’s desk for approval.
Its sponsor, Republican senator Steve Southerland, quoted a Jewish friend when giving his reason for introducing the bill. “The Holy Bible is a history book,” he said, reported The Tennessean.
“The very founding of our nation – the very form of government that we have today – was put forth by men of faith, based on their faith, based on what they read in Holy Scripture,” said one of the bill’s supporters, Republican senator Kerry Roberts.
Roberts added that he was tired of those who are trying to make America into a secular nation, declaring, “This book has done more to bring us to where we are today than any other book in the history of mankind.”
They are not the only recent voices to emphasize the Bible’s role in the founding of the country. Last month, evangelical pastor Rafael Cruz, father of presidential candidate Ted Cruz, said in a speech that the American constitution was founded on the Torah, or Hebrew Bible.
READ MORE
 http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/65354/israel-vs-america-which-really-values-the-bible-biblical-zionism/#hLhbgM6T6hrqtOGI.99


“Zionism 101” Online Course Tells the Truth About Israel’s Past
“A Song of Ascents. When the LORD brought back those that returned to Tzion, we were like unto them that dream.” (Psalms 126:1)
David Ben Gurion announces the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 (Photo: Zionism 101 video screenshot)
In today’s fast-paced environment of online informational exchange, Israel is increasingly being vilified by her detractors. Her supporters are growing fewer in number as a new generation, less knowledgeable in the history of Zionism and the Jewish state, does not know how to respond to accusations. How does one address this challenge?
If you are David Isaac, the answer lies in Zionism 101, an online video course aimed at educating the public about Zionist history in an engaging manner. The project is currently running a crowdfunding campaign to complete the series.
Zionism 101 is a free program of seven- to eight-minute documentary videos arranged by topic, covering a wide range of subjects from the founding fathers and origins of Zionism to the revival of the Hebrew language. Thirty-seven shorts are available to date, with ten additional films planned. The videos contain archival photos and footage, some of which is quite rare, accompanied by music, animation and voice-over. All that is required to view the clips is registration to the website.
READ MORE
 http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/65324/zionism-101-online-course-tells-truth-about-israels-past-biblical-zionism/#4dGTeMLV53flbPJu.99




New Vatican Document Calls for Dramatic Shift in Attitude Towards Gays
By Abra Forman April 10, 2016 , 1:30 pm
“Then hear Thou in heaven, and forgive the sin of Thy servants.” II Chronicles 6:27 (The Israel Bible™)
image: http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/pope-francis.jpg
Pope Francis (Photo: Casa Rosada, Wikki Commons)
On Friday, Pope Francis made an official statement calling for Catholics worldwide to be more accepting of homosexuals, challenging an age-old position held by the Catholic Church, which has traditionally deeply condemned gay lifestyles and sexual activity.
While the Pope’s announcement did not signify a shift in official church doctrine, the 256-page document he released, an apostolic exhortation entitled “Amoris Laetitia” (“The Joy of Love”), outlined a significant change in attitude towards the Vatican’s stance on family matters, including same-sex relationships and divorce.
While the Pontiff did not condone gay marriage, he urged Catholics to be more tolerant of non-traditional lifestyles and those who practice them. “A pastor cannot feel that it is enough simply to apply moral laws…as if they were stones to throw at people’s lives,” said the document, as reported by CNN.
He discouraged such a stark worldview. “By thinking that everything is black and white, we sometimes close off the way of grace and growth,” he noted, adding that he believed Jesus Christ would have supported a similar perspective.
READ MORE
 http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/65386/pope-calls-for-greater-acceptance-of-gays-and-lesbians-jerusalem/#vBWbzCfoiLGdzXqd.99



Jerusalem UN Agency Twists Truth to Promote Anti-Israel Agenda
Watchdog Group Accuses U.N. Agency of Systematic Bias Against Israel
By JNS April 10, 2016 , 8:30 am
“Therefore the prudent doth keep silence in such a time; for it is an evil time.” Amos 5:13 (The Israel Bible™)

image: http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/anti-israel-bds-israel.jpg
Muslims protesting outside the American Embassy in Bangkok, Thailand, in 2012 (Photo: 1000 Words / Shutterstock.com)
A scathing report released Thursday by the NGO Monitor watchdog group reveals that the Jerusalem-based United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OCHA oPt) “regularly” misrepresents data to distort perceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict against Israel.

OCHA oPt “regularly presents data in a manipulative way that erases the context of terrorism and distorts law and morality,” by not distinguishing between Palestinian terrorists and regular civilians, and by amplifying Palestinian causality claims, NGO Monitor said, adding that the agency also falsely equates between legal Israel self-defense tactics and illegal Palestinian terror attacks on Israeli civilians.

For example, stated the report, the agency “presents pie charts purporting to show the number of ‘Palestinian fatalities by Israeli forces in the oPt.’ Yet, this data as presented does not provide any information as to how the fatalities took place, including how many of the fatalities occurred while Palestinians were attempting to murder Israeli civilians or engaged in violent confrontations with Israeli law enforcement. As a result, it is impossible to make any meaningful assessments from OCHA’s figures.”
READ MORE
http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/65319/watchdog-group-accuses-u-n-agency-systematic-bias-against-israel-jerusalem/#jiLiPpVUZytWgYr3.99




Why the Palestinians Are Calling to Overthrow Abbas
By Khaled Abu Toameh
Palestinians are not objecting to his dictatorial rule, or staunch refusal to bring democracy and public freedoms to the Palestinians. Nor is he under attack for failing to implement reforms in the Palestinian Authority, or to combat financial and administrative corruption. No, the trouble stems from a different corner entirely. Abbas has used the dirtiest words: Peace with Israel. Abbas, of course, was speaking to the Israeli public, and not to his own people. He has always sent a conciliatory message to Israelis, but this is the same Abbas who whips his people into a frenzy by telling them that Jews are “defiling the Aqsa Mosque with their filthy feet,” and the same Abbas whose media and officials glorify Palestinians who murder Israelis.
Abbas has only himself to blame for this morass. Like other Palestinian leaders, Abbas has become hostage to his own anti-Israel poison.
PErhaps this time, the international community can hear the truth: the Palestinian leadership does not educate the Palestinian people for peace with Israel. That is the real obstacle to peace.
Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas is reaping what he has sown. He is facing a firestorm calling for his resignation or overthrow.
The Palestinians are not up in arms about Abbas’s eleventh year of a four-year term in office. They really do not seem to care about that, especially as long as he is paying salaries.
Most Palestinians are not objecting to his dictatorial rule, or staunch refusal to bring democracy and public freedoms to the Palestinians. Nor is he under attack for failing to implement reforms in the Palestinian Authority, or to combat financial and administrative corruption.
READ MORE
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7781/palestinians-abbas-overthrow#TtsVuiV4flg04yZo.99

Incredible Gog and Magog Prophecy in Ezekiel Foretold Obama Claim Against Israel
By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz April 8, 2016 , 9:30 am
“When he is judged, let him go forth condemned; and let his prayer be turned into sin. Let his days be few; let another take his charge.” Psalms 109:7-8 (The Israel Bible™)
image: http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/obama-fire.jpg

(BreakingIsraelNews)
Last month, US President Barack Obama laid the blame for failed Middle East peace initiatives on the economic success of the Jewish State, saying, “Because Israeli society has been so successful economically, it has I think from a position of strength been less willing to make concessions.”

Speaking to a Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative at a town hall meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina, last month, Obama explained why the phenomenon of Israel’s prosperity was the greatest obstacle to negotiations between Palestinians and Israel.

“If [Prime Minister] Netanyahu wants peace, he’s got to make concessions to create a Palestinian state.  But he has to get elected, and he’s thinking to himself, if I make this concession, then somebody in my party, the Likud, may challenge me,” he said.

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) called the statement “an absurd anti-Semitic canard – which dangerously (and falsely) implies that ‘peace’ will ensue if the U.S. weakens Israel economically”. The ZOA suggested this was the strategy behind several recent Obama administration policies, giving as examples the US’s issuing of an anti-Israel labeling requirement in January and Obama’s attack against a pro-Israel section of a bipartisan trade bill in February.

image: http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/wp-content/uploads/useful_banner_manager_banners/214-IsraelBible-CompleteSet-600WIDE.jpg

Countering his own logic in the same speech in Buenos Aires, Obama claimed that economic weakness necessary for the Israelis to make progress in the negotiations was an obstacle for the Palestinians.

“The Palestinians, because of [economic] weakness, have not the political cohesion and organization to enter into negotiations and feel like they can get what they need,” the president said.

Obama’s comments were foreseen by the sages of Torah as part of the Messianic process.

In his prophecy about the days preceding the War of Gog and Magog, Ezekiel predicted that enemies would rise up against Israel’s after their return from the diaspora, attacking them for their economic success.

To take the spoil and to take the prey; to turn thy hand against the waste places that are now inhabited and against the people that are gathered out of the nations that have gotten cattle and goods that dwell in the middle of the earth.  Ezekiel 38:12

The Malbim, Meïr Leibush ben Yehiel Michel Wisser, a Torah scholar from the 19th century, explained this verse.

“Every one (of the inhabitants of the Land of Israel) will become a trader, trading there until it multiplies greatly, until they are sitting on the middle (umbilical cord) of the land and become the commercial hub of all nations, until the other nations come to them to cancel this trade which they claim is damaging to the world.”

In a global economy, each country’s success is dependant on having strong partners. The Malbim noted correctly that other nations attacking Israel for its financial prowess is like a fetus in the womb attacking the umbilical cord that connects it to the source of its sustenance.
Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/65272/obamas-hatred-for-israel-part-of-gog-and-magog-prophecy-jewish-world/#9iAtBfByL2WycdAL.99


Cruz and Jews Baking Matzot in Brooklyn
By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz April 8, 2016 , 10:26 am
“And though the Lord give you sparing bread and scant water, yet shall not thy Teacher hide Himself any more, but thine eyes shall see thy Teacher.” Isaiah 30:20 (The Israel Bible™)
With the primaries coming upon April 19th, Republican candidate Ted Cruz has upped his Jewish game by taking time from campaign speeches to bake matzot (matzahs) in Brooklyn and donning a kippah for a speech.
Cruz toured the Chabad Model Matzo Bakery in Brighton Beach while a group of three-year old children were learning the ancient art of baking unleavened bread for Passover. Cruz jumped in and tried his hand at rolling out the dough, announcing that he was familiar with the story of the Exodus and that he had been privileged to attend several Seders in the past.
To prove his point, he quoted, “Next year in Jerusalem”, the phrase that is recited at the conclusion of the Passover Seder. A bystander corrected him, pointing out that since Passover had not yet arrived, the appropriate phrase would be “this year in Jerusalem.”
Cruz remained adamant. “Next year in Jerusalem,” he said, “but hopefully I’ll need a bigger plane to get there.”
VIDEO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeA3CE_qTrs


It seemed especially poignant that a candidate with aspirations to sit in the Oval Office in Washington would choose that quote.

Speaking at an event of the Russian American Jewish Experience on Thursday, Cruz donned a bright red kippah with his name emblazoned in gold. He explained his personal connection to Israel and the Jews.

“Sometimes people ask why did this Texas Cuban Southern Baptist become one of the leading defenders of Israel in the Senate? And I think a lot of it has to do with being the son of an immigrant who fled Cuba, who was imprisoned, who was tortured.”

Cruz’s father, an evangelical pastor, is also an outspoken supporter of Israel.

“We are fortunate to enjoy tremendous support in the Jewish community here in New York and across the country,” Cruz told Jewish Insider. “I think that’s the result of having built a long record – fighting to strengthen our relationship with the nation of Israel and fighting to defend religious liberty.”

image: http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/wp-content/uploads/useful_banner_manager_banners/94-Store-PersonalFlags-600WIDE.jpg

Cruz told the religious crowd that he would support Israel regardless of any political payoff. “It the right thing to do so, regardless, but I would be grateful if it also earned the support of many people in New York and elsewhere.”

According to a new Monmouth poll, Trump is in the lead in New York with the support of 52 percent of Republican voters. 25 percent support Ohio Governor John Kasich, and Cruz is in third place with 17 percent.

Cruz always been a strong ally of Israel and should attract the Jewish vote, but New York’s large Jewish population has traditionally played a major role in keeping the state majority Democrat. However, Orthodox Jews are more strongly conservative, Republican, and pro-Israel than their secular counterparts.


Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/65255/cruz-and-jews-baking-matzot-in-brooklyn-jerusalem/#ZrvGTJ1zqh4syWI5.99

The Master Manipulator and Gifted Deceiver
By Earl Cox
It’s an understatement to say that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is playing world leaders as total fools. Both he and his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, learned that all they have to do is turn down every peace deal presented to them, throw in an intifada or two along with murderous car rammings and stabbings, and the media will label their crimes as part of their ‘struggle for independence’, making them seem oppressed and as if they are fighting for a noble cause.
It’s an understatement to say that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is playing world leaders as total fools. A long time ago he learned to use the Muslim tactic of patience which is something unknown to the West. Both he and his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, became PR experts as evidenced by their ability to stay in the news. Seems all they have to do is turn down every peace deal presented to them, throw in an intifada or two along with murderous car rammings and stabbings and the media will label their crimes as part of their ‘struggle for independence’ making them seem oppressed and fighting for a noble cause. Yes, Arafat and Abbas are two peas created from the same a pod.
By not negotiating for peace with Israel while the Middle East as a whole reels in turmoil, the world with its disinformation blames the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for all the troubles in the region. Never mind that the Arab Spring which sprung first in Tunisia spreading to Egypt and other countries in the Middle East began from a situation entirely different and completely separate from the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
READ MORE
 http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/Israel-Uncensored/The-Master-Manipulator-and-Gifted-Deceiver-449666#7iMhUXp20xKKYq6v.99
Read more at http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/Israel-Uncensored/The-Master-Manipulator-and-Gifted-Deceiver-449666#7iMhUXp20xKKYq6v.99


Israel’s Abu Ghraib?
By Ira Sharkansky
We’ve been obsessed with a soldier who shot and killed a Palestinian who had attacked and wounded other soldiers, but who had been injured, was laying inert on the road. It didn’t take long for the IDF Chief of Staff and the Prime Minister to condemn the killing, and for the military police to arrest the soldier on suspicion of murder.
Abu Ghraib was a prison in Iraq where sadistic US soldiers tormented and tortured Arab prisoners with no apparent purpose other than a gratification of what seemed like the Americans’ pathological desire to inflict humiliation, fright, and pain.
Israel’s current brouhaha is not the same, except in the nature of some responses generated.
We’ve been obsessed with a soldier who shot and killed a Palestinian who had attacked and wounded other soldiers, but who had been injured, was laying inert on the road.
It didn’t take long for the IDF Chief of Staff and the Prime Minister to condemn the killing, and for the military police to arrest the soldier on suspicion of murder.
The Chief of Staff said that the incident ‘doesn’t represent values of the IDF . . .The IDF will give full support to commanders and soldiers who make mistakes, but not for behavior that is against its values.”
The Prime Minister said, “What happened in Hebron doesn’t represent the values of the IDF.”
The former Chief of Staff and current  Defense Minister called the action, “in utter breach of IDF values and of our code of ethics in combat.”
According to the IDF spokesman, “This is not the IDF, these are not the values of the IDF and these are not the values of the Jewish people.”
READ MORE
 http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/Window-on-Israel/Israels-Abu-Ghraib-449669#HuY8uRltRhBU83dz.99



 
The Stench of a Rat
By Caroline Glick
On Tuesday the news broke that the police are investigating Interior Minister (and ex-con) Arye Deri and opposition leader (and former criminal defendant) Isaac Herzog. The two men are suspected of carrying out various forms of financial corruption.
 Because we understand that power corrupts, we limit the powers of our elected officials.
On Tuesday the news broke that the police are investigating Interior Minister (and ex-con) Arye Deri and opposition leader (and former criminal defendant) Isaac Herzog. The two men are suspected of carrying out various forms of financial corruption.
Judging from the reports, neither man has reason to sleep easy. But then again, the investigations are nowhere near completion.
Which raises the question, why did law enforcement officials decide to reveal the ongoing criminal probes now? In the past, prosecutors have leaked investigations to influence elections. For instance, ahead of the 2003 Knesset election, Leora Glatt-Berkowitz, a prosecutor in the state prosecution’s Tel Aviv office, anonymously leaked that then-prime minister Ariel Sharon was the subject of a bribery investigation.
Glatt-Berkowitz was prosecuted for the leak and received a slap on the wrist for her crime.
She told investigators flat out that she did it to diminish Sharon’s chance of winning the election.
Notably, the probe which was supposed to sink Sharon dragged on until 2008. It was officially closed two years after Sharon suffered a massive stroke and left political life. No indictments were filed.
In December 2014, shortly after last year’s Knesset election was called, the police announced investigators were in the midst of a massive corruption probe of then-foreign minister Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu party.
READ MORE
 http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Coumn-One-The-stench-of-a-rat-449928#jjSDaOf2yO6lZo6h.99

Ted Cruz’s Father Proclaims: Israel Has a Title Deed From God Almighty
By Abra Forman April 7, 2016 , 9:30 am
“I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before thee life and death, the blessing and the curse; therefore choose life, that thou mayest live, thou and thy seed.” Deuteronomy 30:19 (The Israel Bible™)
Pastor Rafael Cruz, father of Ted Cruz, speaks at a Proclaiming Justice to the Nations event. (Screenshot)
The foundation of America and the constitution was the Hebrew Bible, or Torah, declared the father of GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz in a speech given earlier in the year. Based on its religious values, America must “stand unconditionally with Israel,” he said firmly.

Pastor Rafael Cruz, who is an Evangelical Christian preacher, made the remarks to the pro-Israel Christian group Proclaiming Justice to the Nations (PJTN). In a video released by PJTN two weeks ago, Cruz is shown saying that America must stand with Israel because it represents the country’s roots.

“The foundation of America, the foundation of the constitution, was the Torah,” he said to loud applause. “The Torah is embedded within the constitution. That was the inspiration for the framers.”

Cruz said that the idea of America’s constitutional republic came straight from the word of God, in the Book of Exodus.

Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating unjust gain; and place such over them, to be rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens. And let them judge the people at all seasons; and it shall be, that every great matter they shall bring unto thee, but every small matter they shall judge themselves; so shall they make it easier for thee and bear the burden with thee. Exodus 18:21-22

“Many of the freedoms that we have today were enjoyed in that early Jewish state after Abraham came to the promised land,” he explained. “And God gave him a promise.

“As a matter of fact do you realize that Israel is the only country on the face of the earth that has a titled deed from God Almighty?”

He mentioned that Israel’s “deed” had originally been much bigger, stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates, as a counter to anti-Zionist arguments that the Jewish claim to Israel is illegitimate. “Don’t tell me that Israel does not have a right to the land. God himself gave Israel the title deed for the land,” he asserted.

Christians would not have the Bible without Israel, he pointed out, and all must realize that “we are one in Him, that both Christians and Jews worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”

The pastor took the opportunity to lambast replacement theology, calling it “heresy.”

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“How can you extrapolate all of the promises in the word of God that are specific for Israel, that talk specifically about the land of Israel and the Jewish people, and how can anyone with two ounces of sense think that ‘we are the new Israel’? That is heresy. Israel is the apple of God’s eye, it is the chosen people.”

He referenced the ancient Jewish concept of or l’goyim, a Hebrew phrase meaning “light to the nations” which teaches that the Jews were appointed by Heaven to shine as an example to others. Israel is “the chosen people to bring us the word of God, to bring us the ways of God,” said Cruz.

Cruz also took the opportunity to talk about his son’s connection to Israel, saying proudly that Ted Cruz was the “strongest supporter of Israel on Capitol Hill” and enumerating the ways in which the Texas senator would be a friend to the Jewish state if elected.

“My son has said not only that Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Israel, but he has promised in his first day in office, to begin the process to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem where it needs to be.

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Senator Ted Cruz (Wikimedia Commons)
“My son has condemned the Palestinian Authority for their refusal to accept Israel’s right to exist. My son has said, we will not fund the United Nations as long as they continue to promote BDS and anti-Semitism. My son is committed to continuing the physical, economical, and military support of Israel, unconditionally.”

The pastor drew his audience’s attention to the Bible verse on which much Christian support of Israel is based – Genesis 12:3. “God tells Abraham… ‘I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse those who curse you and in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’

“During the last seven years we have come very close to cursing the state of Israel,” he said somberly, referring to the Obama administration’s cool attitude towards Israel, which many believe has done serious harm to the Israel-US alliance.

“We need to move back to standing unconditionally with the state of Israel,” Cruz urged. “That is our spiritual heritage, and we will be blessed as we bless the nation of Israel. It is for God’s glory that we two become one.

“The hand of blessing upon Israel. We better stand on the side of blessing,” he concluded, ending his speech with a passionate call to action.

“Choose life! Choose the blessing! Let’s stand together for the peace of Jerusalem!”
Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/65152/ted-cruzs-father-america-was-founded-on-the-torah-biblical-zionism/#ggUIMKqoPBHesXrO.99

Palestinians: Presidents for Life, No Elections
By Khaled Abu Toameh
Best birthday wishes to Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, who turned 81 last week. The octogenarian appears ready to remain at the helm until his last day — free elections for Palestinians be damned.
By Khaled Abu Toameh April 4, 2016 , 9:00 am

We hear often that Mahmoud Abbas is keen on having Palestinians vote in a democratic election. Yet Abbas turned 81 last week and appears ready to remain at the helm until his last day — free elections for Palestinians be damned. That makes sense: Hamas could easily best Abbas in such an election.

Hamas and Abbas’s Fatah are still far from achieving any form of reconciliation. This, despite all the talk about “progress” that has been reportedly achieved in talks between the two parties taking place in Doha, Qatar.

Hamas is also cracking down on journalists, academics, unionists and even lawyers in the Gaza Strip.

Yet Abbas’s West Bank rivals Hamas in Gaza, in terms of a lack of human rights and freedom of speech. The idea of free and democratic elections there is a joke. Abbas will leave a legacy of chaos.

Best birthday wishes to Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, who turned 81 last week. The octogenarian appears ready to remain at the helm until his last day — free elections for Palestinians be damned.

Abbas has inherited a tradition of tyranny. His predecessor, Yasser Arafat, was also president for life. Both have plenty of company, joining a long list of African presidents who earned the notorious title of “President for Life” – in Uganda, Equatorial Guinea, Angola, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Chad, Eritrea and Gambia. And let us not forget the Arab dictators in these ranks.

One might hope for at least a deputy — someone to fill the impending and inevitable power vacuum in the PA. Not likely.

Abbas has fiercely resisted demands from leaders of his ruling Fatah faction to name a deputy president or a successor. His reasoning: the time is not “appropriate” for such a move. Palestinians should instead concentrate their energies on rallying international support for a Palestinian state.

The PA president acquired his “private fiefdom,” as it is called by his detractors, in a January 2005 election, when Abbas was given a four-year mandate.

Such mandate seems to have been rewritten by the standing president. January 2016 marked the beginning of the eleventh year of Abbas’s four-year term in office. But it is business as usual in Ramallah.

We hear on a monthly basis that Abbas is keen on having Palestinians cast their ballots in a free and democratic vote. Yet we have seen no evidence to this effect. That make sense: Hamas could easily best Abbas in such an election. Despite his advancing age, Abbas still has clear memories of January 2006, when Hamas was permitted to run in the parliamentary election and won.

Abbas is also acutely aware that Hamas, which holds hostage nearly two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, would never allow a free vote there — especially for Abbas loyalists who have been seeking to undermine its rule.

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Just a few days ago, a Hamas “military” court in the Gaza Strip sentenced two senior Palestinian Authority security officers, Sami Nisman and Naim Abu Ful, to 15 and 12 years in prison respectively, on charges of spying for the Palestinian Authority and plotting terror attacks against Hamas targets.

The verdicts are yet another sign that Hamas and Abbas’s Fatah are still far from achieving any form of reconciliation. This, despite all the talk about “progress” that has been reportedly achieved in talks between the two parties. Unconfirmed reports earlier this week leaked details of sticking points between Hamas and Fatah negotiators, have been meeting in Doha, Qatar, under the auspices of the Gulf state, towards forming a new unity government and holding new presidential and parliamentary elections. Qatar is the largest source of funds for the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoot, Hamas.

Abbas’s fear of holding elections in the Gaza Strip is not without justification. In addition to the crackdown on his loyalists and security officers there, Hamas is also cracking down on journalists, academics, unionists and even lawyers.

Last week, Hamas security forces raided the offices of the Palestinian Bar Association in Gaza City and confiscated computers. The raid came as a result of the controversy surrounding the Bar Association not submitting lawyers’ financial and administrative records, in addition to complaints filed by some lawyers against the Bar Association, according to a statement released by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR). The raid, some Palestinians claim, is in the context of Hamas’s effort to crack down on lawyers who are affiliated with the rival Fatah faction.

Yet Abbas’s West Bank rivals Hamas in Gaza, in terms of a lack of human rights and freedom of speech. The president’s security forces are in the midst of a massive and ongoing crackdown on political opponents of all stripes, making the idea of free and democratic elections there a joke. Abbas cannot tolerate the idea of having a deputy: how would he consider the establishment of a new party or the emergence of a potential candidate for the presidency.

Senior figures who have dared to challenge Abbas’s autocratic rule have already found themselves targeted by the president and his men. Ask former Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who had his organization’s bank accounts seized by Abbas, or Mohamed Dahlan, the former Fatah commander and minister who was forced to flee the Palestinian territories after falling out with Abbas and his sons. Perhaps deposed PLO Secretary-General Yasser Abed Rabbo, who overnight was stripped of his powers and thrown to the dogs for speaking out against the president, would have a word to say. In Ramallah, they call them the “Abbas victims.”

We would need a crystal ball to know what will happen the day after Abbas disappears from the scene. Perhaps, say some, we shall witness a scene reminiscent of the old days of the Soviet Union “Politburo,” with the next president chosen by a group of Fatah and PLO leaders who will meet in Ramallah. This seems the most likely scenario, in the absence of any chance of free and democratic elections, and in light of the continued split between the two Palestinian entities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

We do not need a crystal ball, however, to know that Abbas will leave a legacy of chaos. His adamant refusal to name a deputy or even discuss the issue of succession in public has already created tensions among the top brass of the PLO and Fatah. The Palestinian public, for its part, has precious little confidence in its leaders.

The behind-the-scenes power struggle that has been quietly raging in Ramallah for the past few months is likely to lead to a state of paralysis in the Palestinian arena and leave the Palestinians without an acceptable leader. Or, as senior Fatah official Tawfik Tirawi put it, Abbas will be the last president for the Palestinians.

Palestinians are plagued with leaders who desire one thing: personal power. The Palestinians are marching away from achieving a state, partly because they seem incapable of the fundamental political principle of free and democratic elections. The day after does not look promising.

Reprinted with author’s permission from Gatestone Institute

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Read more at http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7727/abbas-president-for-life#8H5IqMEJ8WVYUeu2.99

Father Gabriel Naddaf: Without Israel, Christianity Around the World Would Be "Nothing"
By JNS April 3, 2016 , 10:30 am
“There are friends that one hath to his own hurt; but there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” Proverbs 18:24 (The Israel Bible™)
Father Gabriel Naddaf addresses the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF) Texas Region gala on March 28 in Houston. (Photo: Alan Ross/JNS.org)
Father Gabriel Naddaf, who visited Houston to address the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF) Texas Region gala on March 28, is best known for his efforts to bolster Arab Christians’ integration into Israeli society through their voluntary enlistment in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). For Israeli Jews, by contrast, national service through the IDF or other avenues is mandatory.
Naddaf’s pro-IDF stance is often accosted by Israeli Arabs and Palestinians, so much so that the pastor’s son was physically assaulted for that reason in December 2013. Yet Father Naddaf has pushed on with his IDF recruitment efforts, and upon meeting him in person, it’s clear that he exudes Israeli pride. What language other than Hebrew, then, would have been appropriate for this interview?
When Naddaf co-founded the Israeli Christians Recruitment Forum in 2012, the average number of Arab Christians enlisting in the IDF was 35 per year. That number skyrocketed to 150 in 2013 and continues to increase annually, albeit at a slower pace year to year, Naddaf says.
Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/64870/speaking-two-languages-with-father-naddaf-christian-champion-idf-biblical-zionism/#RxIiv8pcY5Ovc2Td.99

Report: Germany Spied on Netanyahu
By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz April 3, 2016 , 2:47 am
“Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.” Psalms 146:3 (The Israel Bible™)
and Chancellor Merkel issue joint statement at the inter-governmental consultations. (Photo: GPO/Amos Ben Gershom.)
The German weekly news service, Der Spiegel, reported on Saturday that the Federal Intelligence Service of Germany (BND) has been spying on Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office for several years.
In 2013, the BND announced that it would stop spying on Europe Union (EU) member states and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members, but there seem to be many exceptions to that rule.
Der Spiegel’s recent report also claimed that BND has been spying on NASA, the US Air Force, the US State Department, and American diplomats across Europe. In addition, the interior ministers of Austria and Belgium, the British Ministry of Defense and the main headquarters of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were targeted. The list of victims of BND spying also include emails, phones and faxes of embassies and consulate belonging to the US, UK, France, Sweden, Spain, and the Red Cross headquarters in Geneva.
Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/64821/report-germany-spied-on-netanyahu-jerusalem/#P80QvjtIYCfegVbe.99


Surrendering to ISIS is the Only Way to Defeat It
By Daniel Greenfield
Tens of thousands of Muslim refugees make us safer. But using the words “Muslim terrorism” endangers us. The more Muslims we bring to America, the faster we’ll beat ISIS. As long as we don’t call it the Islamic State or ISIS or ISIL, but follow Secretary of State John Kerry’s lead in calling it Daesh.
If you’re keeping score, freeing Islamic terrorists from Gitmo does not play into the hands of ISIS. Neither does bringing Syrians, many of whom sympathize with Islamic terrorists, into our country. And aiding the Muslim Brotherhood parent organization of ISIS does not play into the Islamic group’s hands.

However if you use the words “Islamic terrorism” or even milder derivatives such as “radical Islamic terrorism”, you are playing into the hands of ISIS. If you call for closer law enforcement scrutiny of Muslim areas before they turn into Molenbeek style no-go zones or suggest ending the stream of new immigrant recruits to ISIS in San Bernardino, Paris or Brussels, you are also playing into the hands of ISIS.

And if you carpet bomb ISIS, destroy its headquarters and training camps, you’re just playing into its hands. According to Obama and his experts, who have wrecked the Middle East, what ISIS fears most is that we’ll ignore it and let it go about its business. And what it wants most is for us to utterly destroy it. Or as Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau said, “If you kill your enemies, they win.”
But maybe if you surrender to them, then you win.
Read more at http://sultanknish.blogspot.co.il/2016/03/surrendering-to-isis-is-only-way-to.html#fQ6iouj3rmZOeyD7.99



The Least Transparent Administration in History
By Roger Aronoff April 3, 2016 , 9:00 am
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For all of President Obama’s assurances that his administration would be the most transparent in history, it has been anything but. Yet the mainstream media fail to cover, again and again, evidence of a corrupt administration hiding regulations from Congress and controlling the press.

President Obama continues to lecture the press on how to do its job properly, criticizing the depth of reporting on the election. “I think the electorate would be better served if we spent less time focused on the he said/she said back-and-forth of our politics,” said President Obama on March 28 at the 2016 Toner Prize ceremony. “If I say that the world is round and someone else says it’s flat, that’s worth reporting, but you might also want to report on a bunch of scientific evidence that seems to support the notion that the world is round,” he continued. “And that shouldn’t be buried in paragraph five or six of the article.”

As we have often reported, the media bury information damaging to the Obama administration deep within their articles—if they publish it at all. Yet Obama criticizes the mainstream media for the very techniques that help him emerge unscathed from scandal after scandal.

As Accuracy in Media (AIM) chairman Don Irvine points out, members of the media have found Obama’s posturing insulting. “There’s a man lecturing the media on how to do their business,” Joe Scarborough responded, according to The Washington Examiner. “The man who has not sat down for an extended interview with The Washington Post in seven and a half years, and yet gladly submits himself to being interviewed by YouTube stars who sit in bathtubs with milk and Froot Loops.”
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Occasionally reporters acknowledge how far the administration has gone in stifling the free press. “This is the most closed, control-freak administration I’ve ever covered,” said David Sanger of The New York Times. Similarly, his Times colleague James Risen has called the administration “the greatest enemy of press freedom that we have encountered in at least a generation.”

It is one thing to block the press and public from accessing national security secrets or other sensitive information, but it is another to deny Congress the opportunity to review the regulations that the federal government is putting into effect.

“The Obama administration imposed over 1,000 new rules, one-third of all proposed in 2015, without first following the law and giving Congress a look and chance to kill them, according to a new report,” writes Paul Bedard for The Washington Examiner. “The Congressional Review Act (CRA) requires that agencies pass new rules by Congress before they are imposed, explaining the impact of each and whether they will have a major or minor economic impact.”

In other words, President Obama is using his executive discretion to hide many of his unilateral actions from Congress, making it all the more easy for him to wield executive powers by fiat with no real accountability.

“Under the CRA, ‘before a rule can take effect,’ every federal agency must submit a report to both Congress and GAO [Government Accountability Office] with a copy of the rule, a statement about whether the rule is ‘major,’ and the effective date of the measure,” states Sam Batkins for the think-tank American Action Forum, which issued the study. “Technically, a rule that fails to follow this procedure cannot take effect.” Also, regulations which were not marked “major” later received that label from the GAO.

Excluding reporting from The Hill and The Washington Examiner, this information, which shows that the Obama administration has been trying to fool Congress, was met with a mainstream media blackout. After all, it might embarrass Obama to show that, once again, he is not playing by the rules, or respecting freedom of the press or the will of the people by working with their elected representatives. Nor is he faithfully executing the laws of the land.

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But the administration has taken things even further, and is hiding information from average Americans. Not only is the Obama administration hiding regulations, it is also hiding data normally subject to Freedom of Information Act requests.

In response to Obama’s March 28 speech, one reporter tweeted, “Hey thanks Obama for your chill comments on journalism, maybe tell the FBI to fulfill a FOIA in less than a year while you’re at it.”

“For instance, in March 2015, the Obama administration rescinded a regulation requiring the administration to comply with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, thereby exempting itself from public scrutiny and oversight,” writes H. Sterling Burnett in an opinion piece for Forbes. “So much for transparency.”

Burnett, who is a research fellow for the Heartland Institute, argues that it is unsurprising that President Obama’s term has been marked by secrecy. He writes that over 250,000, or 39 percent, of FOIA requests were “either censored or denied.” The government found that approximately 200,000 requests were unreasonable or lacked responsive information.

The Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi (CCB), formed by AIM in 2013, has experienced the administration’s lack of transparency first hand. The administration has answered the CCB’s Benghazi FOIA requests with blacked out pages that contain little pertinent information. For example, the Department of Defense provided slides pertaining to a “Benghazi Timeline,” where everything but the title was redacted.

Sometimes, as with Judicial Watch, watchdogs have to take the administration to court to receive any information at all.

“To avoid having the names of environmental lobbyists appear on agency visitor logs, EPA employees met them at nearby cafes, parks and at townhouses,” writes Burnett. “After this practice became known, officials fought against disclosure in court, arguing the names and dates were immune to FOIA requests.”

The news that Hillary Clinton was using a private email address had to be broken through a congressional investigation by the House Select Committee on Benghazi, rather than FOIA requests.

All this helps illuminate why left-wing publications and pundits continue to claim that President Obama’s administration is “scandal free.” Administration officials simply fail to release information about their malfeasance.

Yes, the Veterans Administration scandal caused Secretary Erik Shinseki to resign, but there have been few repercussions for other VA staffers. The public also still awaits justice for the IRS scandal, Fast & Furious, and Benghazi. Now the administration faces its biggest challenge, which will determine whether the U.S. has become a banana republic: Will Hillary Clinton be indicted?

Mrs. Clinton is, of course, innocent until proven guilty—but the amount of evidence of criminal behavior is approaching Bernie Madoff territory.

The fact that the mainstream media have no interest in these latest revelations of how this administration is circumventing Congress and the rule of law is just another example of how they want to bury another Democrat scandal. If the Obama administration does bury the case against Hillary Clinton and her transmission of classified information on a private email server—or the other investigation into public corruption and pay-for-play—and the media play along, we will know that our country no longer stands for equal justice under the law.

Read more at http://www.aim.org/aim-column/the-least-transparent-administration-in-history/#6ftWejMqGTtETYop.99

Return of the Ten Plagues? Photo Shows Nile River Running Blood-Red
Book of Exodus Comes Alive as Photos Emerge of Blood-Red Nile
By Abra Forman April 3, 2016 , 11:30 am
“In this thou shalt know that I am the LORD–behold, I will smite with the rod that is in my hand upon the waters which are in the river, and they shall be turned to blood.” Exodus 7:17 (The Israel Bible™)
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A satellite photo taken of the Nile River, released on April 1, 2016. (European Space Agency)
The Ten Plagues seemed to make a return over the weekend as photos emerged of the Nile River in Egypt looking just as the Book of Exodus described it thousands of years ago:

And the LORD said unto Moshe: ‘Say unto Aharon: Take thy rod, and stretch out thy hand over the waters of Egypt, over their rivers, over their streams, and over their pools, and over all their ponds of water, that they may become blood; and there shall be blood throughout all the land of Egypt, both in vessels of wood and in vessels of stone.’ And Moshe and Aharon did so, as the LORD commanded; and he lifted up the rod, and smote the waters that were in the river, in the sight of Pharaoh, and in the sight of his servants; and all the waters that were in the river were turned to blood. Exodus 7:19-20

The incredible image, taken by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) new Sentinel-3A satellite, was released on Friday to worldwide wonder and awe. The photo, which shows the Nile and surrounding desert areas of northern Africa, Egypt, and the Middle East, reveals a sight many faithful have imagined, but never seen: the Nile River turned from its normal blue to bright, blood-red.

The timing has special significance as the holiday of Passover, which celebrates Moses leading the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, is fast approaching. Jews all over the world will pay tribute to the Ten Plagues during the special Passover meal, reciting the names of each plague in Hebrew.

Blood, or “dam” in Hebrew, represents the first plague which God sent to punish the Egyptians after Pharaoh refused to release the Israelites from slavery. According to the Bible, all of the water in Egypt turned to blood, not just the Nile.

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This time, there is a scientific explanation for the red color seen in the satellite photo: the river is rendered crimson by the vegetation surrounding the Nile, combined with the type of imaging used by the satellite. The satellite’s radiometer measures energy radiating from the Earth’s surface, and the heat emanating from the vegetation expresses in the infrared spectrum – resulting in the color red.

This type of data analysis helps scientists to better understand the state of vegetation, the ESA wrote on its website.

Along its orbit around the planet, the satellite will measure Earth’s oceans, land, ice and atmosphere to document global climate dynamics, providing real-time information on ocean and weather forecasting, wildfires, vegetation patterns, and the depths of rivers and lakes.

While the image of the blood-red Nile is certainly startling to the Bible-minded eye, it seems in this case that the color change is not the result of a heavenly mandate but a man-made camera orbiting the heavens.
Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/64877/nile-river-turns-blood-red-in-biblical-nature-phenomenon-middle-east/#tucJyLBGiutwhv7l.99


 Hamas Admits it is Holding Two Israeli Hostages and Two Dead Bodies
By JNS April 3, 2016 , 7:30 am
“Thy tongue deviseth destruction; like a sharp razor, working deceitfully.” Psalms 52:4 (The Israel Bible™)
Israel has promised “full force” agaisnt Hamas terrorists for the kidnapping of three Israeli teens on their way home from school. (Photo: Wissam Nassar/FLASH90)
The Hamas terrorist group on Friday admitted that it is holding two live Israeli hostages and two bodies of dead Israelis, while accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of lying about their impending release.

Netanyahu “is lying to his people” and “deceiving the families of the captive soldiers,” Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida said regarding reports that both sides are nearing a prisoner exchange deal.

“There are no talks or negotiations relating to the prisoners. The enemy will not get information about the four without paying a clear price before and after the negotiations,” Obeida added.
A report earlier this week in the U.K.-based Arabic daily newspaper Asharq al-Awsat said that international mediators were attempting to broker a prisoner swap for the two Israeli captives and the remains of the two dead Israelis.

The deceased Israelis held by Hamas are former IDF soldiers Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul, who were killed during Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014. The two live captives are Avraham Mengistu, an Ethiopian Jew, and an unnamed Israeli Bedouin. They are both believed to have crossed into Gaza on their own before being captured
Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/64850/hamas-admits-holding-two-israeli-hostages-two-dead-bodies-terror-watch/#7og0E2Ok0sl4FAsB.99

Why Belgium is Ground Zero for European Jihadis
By Soeren Kern
The terrorist attacks on the airport and metro in Brussels are casting a spotlight, once again, on Belgium’s ignominious role as a European haven for jihadists.

Growing numbers of Belgian Muslims live in isolated ghettos where poverty, unemployment and crime are rampant. In Molenbeek, the unemployment rate hovers at around 40%. Radical imams aggressively canvass in search of shiftless youths to wage jihad against the West.

“When we have to contact these people [European officials] or send our guys over to talk to them, we’re essentially talking with people who are… children. These are not pro-active, they don’t know what’s going on. They’re in such denial. It’s such a frightening thing to admit their country is being taken over.” — American intelligence official.

“Returned Syria fighters are a huge threat… It is absolutely unbelievable that our governments allow them to return… Every government in the West, which refuses to do so [lock them up], is a moral accessory if one of these monsters commits an atrocity. … Our citizens are in mortal danger if we do not restore control over our own national borders.” — Dutch MP Geert Wilders.

The terrorist attacks on the airport and metro in Brussels are casting a spotlight, once again, on Belgium’s ignominious role as a European haven for jihadists.

Several distinct but interconnected factors help explain why Brussels, the political capital of Europe, has emerged as the jihadist capital of Europe.
Large Muslim Population
The Muslim population of Belgium is expected to reach 700,000 in 2016, or around 6.2% of the overall population, according to figures extrapolated from a recent study by the Pew Research Center. In percentage terms, Belgium has one of the highest Muslim populations in Western Europe.

In metropolitan Brussels — where roughly half of Belgium’s Muslims currently live — the Muslim population has reached 300,000, or roughly 25%. This makes Brussels one of the most Islamic cities in Europe.

Approximately 100,000 Muslims live in the Brussels district of Molenbeek, which has emerged as the center of Belgian jihadism.

Parallel Societies
Belgium’s radical Islam problem originated in the 1960s, when Belgian authorities encouraged mass migration from Turkey and Morocco as a source of cheap labor. They were later followed by migrants from Egypt and Libya.
The factories eventually closed, but the migrants stayed and planted family roots. Today, most Muslims in Belgium are the third- and fourth-generation offspring of the original migrants. While many Belgian Muslims are integrated into Belgian society, many others are not.

Growing numbers of Belgian Muslims live in marginal districts — isolated ghettos where poverty, unemployment and crime are rampant. In Molenbeek, the unemployment rate hovers at around 40%. Radical imams aggressively canvass the area in search of shiftless youths to wage jihad against the West.

Salafism
As in other European countries, many Muslims in Belgium are embracing Salafism — a radical form of Islam — and its call to wage violent jihad against all nonbelievers for the sake of Allah.

Salafism takes its name from the Arabic term salaf, which means predecessors or ancestors — meaning of Mohammed. Salafists trace their roots to Saudi Arabia, the Mohammed’s birthplace. They glorify an idealized vision of what they claim is the true, original Islam, practiced by the earliest generations of Muslims, including Mohammed and his companions and followers, in the 7th and 8th centuries. The aim of Salafism is to recreate a pure form of Islam in the modern era.

This goal presents serious problems for modern, secular and pluralistic states. A recent German intelligence report defined Salafism as a “political ideology, the followers of which view Islam not only as a religion but also a legal framework which regulates all areas of life: from the state’s role in organizing relations between people, to the private life of the individual.”

The report added: “Salafism rejects the democratic principles of separation of state and religion, popular sovereignty, religious and sexual self-determination, gender equality and the fundamental right to physical integrity.”

Although Salafists make up only a small fraction of Europe’s burgeoning Muslim community, authorities are increasingly worried that many of those attracted to Salafi ideology are impressionable young Muslims who may be receptive to calls for violence in the name of Islam.

Sharia4Belgium
Before the rise of the Islamic State, the best-known Salafist group in Belgium was Sharia4Belgium, which played an important role in radicalizing Belgian Muslims.

Sharia4Belgium was outlawed in February 2015, when its leader, Fouad Belkacem, was sentenced to 12 years in prison. A partial archive of the group’s former website can be found at the Internet Archive. There Sharia4Belgium issues an invitation to all Belgians to convert to Islam and submit to Sharia law or face the consequences. The text states:

“It is now 86 years since the fall of the Islamic Caliphate. The tyranny and corruption in this country [Belgium] has prevailed; we go from one scandal to another: Economic crises, paedophilia, crime, growing Islamophobia, etc.

“As in the past we [Muslims] have saved Europe from the dark ages, we now plan to do the same. Now we have the right solution for all crises and this is the observance of the divine law, namely Sharia. We call to implement Sharia in Belgium.

“Sharia is the perfect system for humanity. In 1,300 years of the Islamic state we knew only order, welfare and the protection of all human rights. We know that Spain, France and Switzerland knew their best times under Sharia. In these 1,300 years, 120 women were raped, which is equal to 120 women a day in Europe. There were barely 60 robberies recorded in 1,300 years.

“As a result, we invite the royal family, parliament, all the aristocracy and every Belgian resident to submit to the light of Islam. Save yourself and your children of the painful punishment of the hereafter and grant yourself eternal life in paradise.”

A cache of the background image for the Sharia4Belgium website has the black flag of jihad flying above the Belgian Parliament. Until recently, the Sharia4Belgium YouTube page (also shut down) was used to incite Muslims to jihad. The group had posted videos with titles such as, “Jihad Is Obligatory,” “Encouraging Jihad,” “Duelling & Guerrilla Warfare,” and “The Virtues of Martyrdom.” Thus Sharia4Belgium paved the way for the Islamic State in Belgium.

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Belgian Jihadists
One of the smallest countries in Western Europe, Belgium has become Europe’s biggest per capita source of jihadists fighting in Syria and Iraq. According to data provided by Interior Minister Jan Jambon on February 22, 2016, 451 Belgian citizens have been identified as jihadists. Of these, 269 are on the battlefields in Syria or Iraq; 6 are believed currently to be on their way to the war zone; 117 have returned to Belgium; and 59 attempted to leave but were stopped at the border.

According to Jambon, 197 of the jihadists are from Brussels: 112 are in Syria while 59 have returned to Belgium. Another 195 jihadists are from Flanders: 133 are in Syria while 36 have returned.

Belgium is the EU’s leading supplier of jihadists to the Islamic State per capita: around 40 jihadists per million inhabitants, compared to Denmark (27), Sweden (19), France (18), Austria (17), Finland (13); Norway (12), UK (9.5), Germany (7.5) and Spain (2).

Official Incompetence?
During the past 24 months, at least five jihadist attacks have been linked to Belgium. In May 2014, jihadists attacked the Jewish Museum in Brussels. In August 2015, a jihadist with links to Molenbeek attacked an Amsterdam-to-Paris train. In January 2015, Belgian police carried out an anti-jihadist raid in Verviers, Belgium.

In November 2015, it emerged that two of the eight jihadists who struck Paris were residents of Brussels. Police on March 18 arrested Salah Abdeslam, a Belgian-born French national of Moroccan origin, for his role in the Paris attacks. He had been months on the run. On March 22, jihadists once again struck Brussels.

After the Paris attacks in November 2015, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said: “There is almost always a link with Molenbeek. That’s a gigantic problem. Apart from prevention, we should also focus more on repression.”

Interior Minister Jambon added:

“We don’t have control of the situation in Molenbeek at present. We have to step up efforts there as a next task. I see that [Molenbeek] Mayor Françoise Schepmans is also asking our help, and that the local police chief is willing to cooperate. We should join forces and ‘clean up’ the last bit that needs to be done, that is really necessary.”

The latest attack in Brussels, however, indicates that Belgian authorities still do not have the jihadist problem under control.

A Belgian counterterrorism official said that due to the small size of the Belgian government and the large numbers of ongoing investigations, virtually every police detective and military intelligence officer in the country was focused on international jihadi investigations. He added:

“We just don’t have the people to watch anything else and, frankly, we don’t have the infrastructure to properly investigate or monitor hundreds of individuals suspected of terror links, as well as pursue the hundreds of open files and investigations we have. It’s literally an impossible situation and, honestly, it’s very grave.”

An American intelligence official reportedly said that working with security officials there was like working with children:

“Even with the EU in general, there’s an infiltration of jihadists that’s been happening for two decades. And now they’re just starting to work on this. When we have to contact these people or send our guys over to talk to them, we’re essentially talking with people who are — I’m just going to put it bluntly — children. These are not pro-active, they don’t know what’s going on. They’re in such denial. It’s such a frightening thing to admit their country is being taken over.”

In November 2015, the New York Times published a scathing analysis of Belgian incompetence. It emerged that a month before the Paris attacks, Molenbeek Mayor Schepmans received a list with the names and addresses of 80 jihadists living in her district. The list included two brothers who would later take part in the November 13 attacks in Paris.

According to the Times, Schepmans said: “What was I supposed to do about them? It is not my job to track possible terrorists. That is the responsibility of the federal police.” The Timescontinued: “The federal police service, for its part, reports to the interior minister, Jan Jambon, a Flemish nationalist who has doubts about whether Belgium — divided among French, Dutch and German speakers — should even exist as a single state.”

An Artificial State
Belgium, nestled between France, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, was established in 1830 to serve as a neutral buffer state between the geopolitical rivals, France and Germany. Belgium’s role as a buffer state effectively came to an end after the end of the Second World War and the subsequent move toward European integration. Over time, Brussels emerged as the de facto capital of the European Union.

For the past three decades, Belgium has faced an existential crisis due to growing antagonism between the speakers of Dutch and French. One observer wrote:

“The country operates on the basis of linguistic apartheid, which infects everything from public libraries to local and regional government, the education system, the political parties, national television, the newspapers, even football teams. There is no national narrative in Belgium, rather two opposing stories told in Dutch or French. The result is a dialogue of the deaf.”

This dysfunction extends to Belgian counter-terrorism. The New York Times observed:

“With three uneasily joined populations, Belgium has a dizzying plethora of institutions and political parties divided along linguistic, ideological or simply opportunistic lines, which are being blamed for the country’s seeming inability to get a handle on its terrorist threat.

“It was hardly difficult to find the two Molenbeek brothers before they helped kill 130 people in the Paris assaults: They lived just 100 yards from the borough’s City Hall, across a cobblestone market square in a subsidized borough-owned apartment clearly visible from the mayor’s second-floor corner office. A third brother worked for Ms. Schepmans’s borough administration.

“Much more difficult, however, was negotiating the labyrinthine pathways that connect — and also divide — a multitude of bodies responsible for security in Brussels, a capital city with six local police forces and a federal police service.

“Brussels has three Parliaments, 19 borough assemblies and the headquarters of two intelligence services — one military, one civilian — as well as a terrorism threat assessment unit whose chief, exhausted and demoralized by internecine turf battles, resigned in July but is still at his desk.

“Lost in the muddle were the two brothers, Ibrahim Abdeslam, who detonated a suicide vest in Paris, and Salah, who is the target of an extensive manhunt that has left the police flailing as they raid homes across the country.”

The language issue also affects integration. As a Washington Post analysis explains, “Many jobs in Brussels require knowledge of French, Flemish or Dutch, and now sometimes English, too, while most immigrants speak mostly Arabic and some French. That has blocked integration.”

Open Borders
The so-called Schengen Agreement, which allows for passport-free travel throughout most of the European Union, has allowed jihadists posing as migrants to enter Europe through Greece and make their way to northern Europe virtually undetected.

In an interview with Breitbart London, Dutch Politician Geert Wilders, currently on trial in the Netherlands for free speech, said:

“Returned Syria fighters are a huge threat. They are dangerous predators roaming our streets. It is absolutely unbelievable that our governments allow them to return. And it is incredible that, once returned, they are not imprisoned.

“In the Netherlands, we have dozens of these returned jihadists. Our government allows most of them to freely walk our streets and refuses to lock them up. I demand that they be detained at once. Every government in the West, which refuses to do so, is a moral accessory if one of these monsters commits an atrocity.

“The government must also close our national borders. The European Union’s Schengen zone, where no border controls are allowed, is a catastrophe. The Belgian Moroccan Salah Abdeslam, the mastermind of last November’s bloodbath in Paris, travelled freely from Belgium to the Netherlands on multiple occasions last year.

Wilders concluded: “This is intolerable. Open borders are a huge safety risk. Our citizens are in mortal danger if we do not restore control over our own national borders.”

Reprinted with author’s permission from Gatestone Institute
Read more at http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7677/belgium-jihadists#HhdtXbY3Szm4EtfO.99

Hamas Ramps Up Incitement, Calls on Arabs to “Protect Al-Aqsa”
Hamas Tries to Fan Dying Flames of Incitement as Passover Nears
By Ahuva Balofsky March 31, 2016 , 8:30 am
“They have said: ‘Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name of Yisrael may be no more in remembrance.’” Psalms 83:5 (The Israel Bible™)
This image being circulated shows Temple Mount activist Yehudah Glick, circled in red as if he is a target. [Image: Official Twitter feed @eliorlevy]
Just as the wave of terror which has engulfed Israel in recent months appears to be ebbing, Palestinian leadership is ramping up its incitement. Ynet reported Wednesday that the increase in aggressive messages against the Jewish state is timed to peak for Passover, which falls on April 22 this year.
As the Psalm (83) indicates, Israel’s enemies incite one another towards Israel’s destruction. Hamas, the ruling party in the Gaza Strip, issued an official statement titled “al-Aqsa will remain the primary source of inspiration for the young avengers of the Jerusalem intifada”. Hamas called upon Palestinian and Israeli Arabs to “rally around the al-Aqsa Mosque and protect it from the mass invasion“, adding that Arab youth would not be be fazed by Israel’s attempts to “create a reality in which Palestinians are denied entry to the Temple Mount to pray.”
In addition, a short documentary claiming Israel has undertaken archaeological excavations in Silwan, leading up to the Mugrabi Gate and beneath the al-Aqsa Mosque, with the intent of damaging the mosque, has been circulating on social media. The accusations come from Sheikh Raed Salah, the head of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement, who is interviewed in the film. He demands “stopping the Israeli attacks on the al-Aqsa Mosque”, and calls on Jordan to launch a media campaign to reveal “Israeli aggression” towards the mosque.
READ MORE
 http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/64699/hamas-ramps-incitement-calls-arabs-protect-al-aqsa/#BLCOzWxC6FVxv3UI.99



Martial Arts Film Star Jean-Claude Van Damme Battles Anti-Israel Trolls in Jerusalem
By Ahuva Balofsky March 31, 2016 , 1:30 pm
“Pray for the peace of Yerushalayim; may they prosper that love thee.” Psalms 122:6 (The Israel Bible™)
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Screen capture of Van Damme’s controversial Facebook post. [Image: Facebook]
Belgian film star Jean-Claude Van Damme, known as the “Muscles from Brussels”, found it difficult to withstand the pressure from Israel haters when he posted a friendly message Tuesday from Jerusalem. Posing in a hat marked “Israel” in front of the Western Wall, Van Damme’s photo, which he posted to Facebook, was originally captioned “Shalom from Jerusalem, Israel!” However, intense backlash from fans prompted him to tone down his support for the Jewish state.
Van Damme was in Israel on a five-day visit when he uploaded the picture to Facebook. Almost immediately, Soufiane Benalla responded, “you should say salam from palestine ;-)”, garnering 1,357 likes so far. Isa Tubadan claimed, “Jeruzalem is not from israel But from Palestina,” with 879 likes
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http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/64735/martial-arts-film-star-jean-claude-van-damme-battles-anti-israel-trolls-jerusalem/#SM9Hh3lOgqDSXTJq.99

Arab Commits Hate Crime Against Himself, Blames Jews
By Abra Forman March 30, 2016 , 12:30 pm
“A false witness shall not be unpunished; and he that breatheth forth lies shall perish.” Proverbs 19:9 (The Israel Bible™)
Israeli soldiers walk pass ‘price tag’ graffiti in Hebrew reading ‘Death for Arabs and Jews will Rule’ in the West Bank village of Al Mughayir on March 5, 2014. (STR/Flash90)
A Palestinian man who claimed earlier this month to have been targeted by Jewish terrorists in an anti-Arab hate crime had fabricated the entire incident, police investigations found. The man now faces charges for lying to police.
The man, a resident of an Arab village in Judea located near Bethlehem, reported to police that a group of five Jewish settler youth had set fire to his home, graffitied “Death to Arabs” in Hebrew on a nearby wall, cursed him and attacked him personally with stones. His father confirmed the story, telling investigators he had seen the Jewish teens in the area on the previous day.

Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/64645/arab-victim-of-alleged-jewish-hate-crime-made-it-all-up-judea-and-samaria/#RTBI1xVxTk7y2g1W.99

In Historic First, UN's Ban Ki-moon Apologizes for Labeling Jerusalem "Occupied"
“Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city; ...” (Isaiah 52:1)
By JNI Media March 30, 2016 , 9:30 am
“Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city; for henceforth there shall no more come into thee the uncircumcised and the unclean.” Isaiah 52:1 (The Israel Bible™
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he regrets a “misunderstanding” over his use of the word “occupation” to describe Israel’s annexation of Jerusalem. The unfortunate comment has led to Israel expelling dozens of United Nations staff, Reuters reported.
Earlier this month Ban used the word “occupation” to describe Israel’s annexation of Jerusalem in 1968, when it took over the holy city from its occupier, Jordan. “His use of the word was not planned, nor was it deliberate, it was a spontaneous, personal reaction. We regret the misunderstandings and consequences that this personal expression of solicitude provoked,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters.
Ban said the word during a visit to refugee camps in Judea and Samaria where Arabs who claim to own eastern Jerusalem reside. Israel then ordered the United Nations to pull out dozens of civilian staffers and close a military liaison office for the UN peacekeeping mission. It said its decision was irreversible.
Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/64622/un-secretary-general-apologizing-using-occupation-reference-annexed-area-jerusalem/#UKl5eSujVWZwM3eT.99


Israel and China Commit To Completing Free-Trade Agreement
“And ye shall dwell with us; and the land shall be before you; dwell and trade ye therein, and get you possessions therein.” (Genesis 34:10)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed gratitude and appreciation to visiting Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong for her determination and commitment to complete a free trade agreement with Israel during a meeting at the Israeli Foreign Ministry on Tuesday, March 29.
“I was very glad to hear today from Vice Premier Liu that China is ready to start negotiating for free-trade with Israel,” Netanyahu remarked. “This is a significant development and we are ready to do it immediately.”
According to Netanyahu, a free-trade agreement would significantly improve bilateral cooperation in many different sectors.
“There is so much we could do together—in health, distance education, agriculture, aquaculture, information technology, in all fields,” said Netanyahu. “Cooperation with China could yield major results and we believe Israel can be the perfect partner.”
Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/64610/israel-china-commit-completing-free-trade-agreement-jerusalem/#iheoXAvpTpVqRgSA.99

Lindsey Graham Warns Israel Trump Would Be “Worse Than Obama”
By Abra Forman March 30, 2016 , 1:30 pm

“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.” Jeremiah 29:11 (The Israel Bible™)

Donald Trump (l) and Senator Lindsey Graham. (Breaking Israel News)
Israel should trust neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton in the upcoming presidential race, but ally itself with the US Congress, said conservative US Senator Lindsey Graham in Jerusalem on Tuesday.

The senator, along with five other Republican lawmakers, was visiting Israel as part of a Congressional delegation currently touring the Middle East.

“One thing I can say is that the Congress has historically had Israel’s back, and that presidents come and go,” Graham told the Jerusalem Post.

Republican frontrunner Donald Trump is not “a reliable Republican conservative,” he said, calling Trump’s foreign policy “ill conceived” and “dangerous for the entire world”.

In terms of Trump’s relationship with Israel, Graham referenced the billionaire mogul’s inconsistent campaign promises, saying, “If you can tell me what Trump is going to do, then you should write a book.”

“His foreign policy, to me, has been gibberish,” he added. “To me, it is worse than Obama.”

Graham strongly condemned Trump’s now infamous “neutrality” comment on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, arguing, “He doesn’t understand what the stakes are.”

“This is not a land deal, this is not a real-estate deal, this is the survival of the one and only Jewish state.”

Trump garnered heavy criticism when he asserted in February that he would be “neutral” in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

“Let me be sort of a neutral guy,” he said at the time. “A lot of people have gone down in flames trying to make that deal. So I don’t want to say whose fault is it. I don’t think it helps.”

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The comments outraged Jewish and pro-Israel groups and worried conservatives. GOP rivals Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio immediately condemned the stance, saying that US support of Israel was non-negotiable.

“If I’m president, America will stand unapologetically with the nation of Israel,” said Cruz.

Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, would represent “a third term of Barack Obama”, Graham predicted. US and Israeli relations have cooled under Obama’s administration. The US president’s loyalty to Israel has been notoriously patchy and his relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tense, leading many to believe that four or eight more years of a liberal president would be disastrous for Israel.

Clinton was part of an “antagonistic Obama administration” which has put disproportionate emphasis and pressure on Israel regarding the settlement issue, said Graham.

While Judea and Samaria are part of Israel’s ancient Biblical homeland and the right of Jews to live on the land is given over in the Bible, the Obama administration does not recognize God’s bequeathal. “Settlements”, or Jewish communities built in Judea and Samaria, are strongly condemned by the current president.

Dismissing the prospect of Obama successfully bringing his own peace proposal to the United Nations during his last few months in office, as reports have suggested, Graham warned that Congress’s reaction to such a move “would be violent”.

An attempt by the UN try to take control of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process would immediately put the international body’s funding in jeopardy, as the US pays more than 20 percent of the UN’s costs, Graham added.

When the Republican delegation met with Netanyahu on Tuesday, they discussed the upcoming military aid deal between the US and Israel – a package that is set to provide $10 billion of military funding to Israel over the next decade.

“We told the prime minister that we would try to be as generous as we could given our budget restraints at home, and that all of us recognize the threats” in the region, Graham told the Jerusalem Post.


Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/64659/lindsey-graham-warns-israel-trump-would-be-worse-than-obama-jerusalem/#AkhHMxkJWtyFacGK.99

More Palestinian Empty Threats
By Khaled Abu Toameh
PA officials are saying that their threats, which until now have been so much dust in the wind, will be realized next month. This sounds curiously familiar...
For Abbas, security coordination with Israel is indeed “sacred”: it keeps him in power and stops Hamas from taking over the West Bank.
Abbas cannot tell his people that security coordination with Israel is keeping him on the throne. That is a topic for Israeli ears only.
So what are the threats to end security cooperation about? Money. Here is Abbas’s take-home to the world: “Send more money or we will cut off security cooperation with Israel.”
Halting security coordination with Israel would spell both his end and that of the PA in the West Bank. The international community is simply hearing a new version of the old bid for yet more political concessions and yet more cash.
The Palestinian Authority’s endless threats to suspend security coordination with Israel are a carefully crafted bluff designed to extort more funds from Western donors, scare the Israeli public and provide a cover for its refusal to talk peace with Israel.
READ MORE
 http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7647/palestinians-threats#grzxTrYZkfsaRRVD.99    
 


After Brussels ISIS Attack, Obama Affirms Muslims, Not Jews, as Partners Against Terror
In the wake of deadly terror attacks in Brussels, US President Barack Obama stated that it was important to avoid measures that might “stigmatize” Muslims-Americans – but the Republican presidential candidates did not agree.
In his weekly media address, President Obama responded to the double attack in Brussels that left 31 dead and approximately 300 wounded. Two of the dead and 14 of the wounded were American citizens. The Islamic State (ISIS) took responsibility for the attack.
Obama said that targeting Muslims would be “counterproductive”.
“[Muslim-Americans are] our most important partners in the nation’s fight against those who would wage violent jihad. That’s why we have to reject any attempt to stigmatize Muslim-Americans, and their enormous contributions to our country and our way of life,” Obama said. “Such attempts are contrary to our character, to our values, and to our history as a nation built around the idea of religious freedom. It’s also counterproductive.”
“It plays right into the hands of terrorists who want to turn us against one another — who need a reason to recruit more people to their hateful cause,” Obama addded.
READ MORE
http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/64386/brussels-attack-obama-warns-stigmatizing-muslims-jerusalem/#ED2xhllwU8sQKCCS.99


Glenn Beck Details Cruz’s, Trump’s Biblical Qualifications for President
Radio talk show personality Glenn Beck, who on Thursday said that “no real Christian” could vote for GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, has taken a further step by declaring Trump’s rival Ted Cruz to be “anointed for this time.”
Beck said during a live studio show on Thursday that he would “take on” evangelical Christians who support Trump, as well as Jews, Lutherans, Catholics, and Mormons who vote for the real estate mogul.
He argued that evangelical Christians were divorcing politics from principles. “Principles over parties, principles over interests. We’ve got to shore these things up and somehow or another, our side didn’t catch that memo and there’s no chance of saving us unless we reunite with our principles and do it with our neighbors,” Beck said.
The radio host continued, “We’re not living our Christian faith because no Christian, no real Christian – I don’t mean a judgmental Christian, I mean somebody who’s living their faith – no Christian says, ‘I want that guy, that guy is the guy for me’.
READ MORE
http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/64433/glenn-beck-ted-cruz-is-anointed-for-this-time-jerusalem/#ej5zJsvpcqiraUqG.99


Is it the End of Times for ISIS?
Islamic State (ISIS) fighters are in retreat after beleaguered Syrian forces succeeded in rousting them from from Palmyra Sunday, reported The Times of Israel, citing military sources.
“After heavy fighting during the night, the army is in full control of Palmyra — both the ancient site and the residential neighborhoods,” the source said. ISIS forces have retreated to nearby towns of Sukhnah, Raqqa and Deir Ezzor to the east.
ISIS took control of the symbolic and historic site of Palmyra, a UNESCO world heritage site known as the “Pearl of the Desert”, in May of last year, putting its ancient landmarks at great risk. In the time it held the location, ISIS destroyed two of the city’s classical temples, its triumphal arch and a dozen tower tombs. It also used the ancient amphitheater as an arena for public beheadings.
In addition to its historical and symbolic significance, the Palmyra has strategic importance. According to analysts, it provides Syrian President Bashar Assad with control over the surrounding desert extending all the way to the Iraqi border.
READ MORE
 http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/64461/end-times-isis/#hVCYPtl3fVS1YrTx.99


Terror in Pakistan: 70 Christians Massacred in Easter Sunday Suicide Bombing
Christians were the target of Easter Sunday’s devastating terror attack at a Pakistani park, said the Taliban-affiliated terror group which claimed credit for the carnage. At least 70 Pakistani Christians were killed in the city of Lahore when explosives originating from Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban, detonated amidst hundreds of families gathered to celebrate the holiday.
The explosion is believed to be the work of a suicide bomber who entered the main gate to the park in the early evening. It took place only a short distance from a playground, killing 29 children and dozens of adults.
Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, which swore allegiance to the Islamic State in 2014 after splitting from the Taliban and then switched loyalties again in 2015, said it had perpetrated the attack in order to send a message to Pakistan’s leaders: Islamic terrorism has arrived.
“The target was Christians,” said faction spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan, Reuters reported. “We want to send this message to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif that we have entered Lahore.”
Lahore, the capital city of Pakistan’s richest province, Punjab, represents the power base of Sharif’s government and has a significant Christian population. The attack on the city’s Christians, which came on one of the most significant religious holidays of the year, was the deadliest assault on Pakistani Christians since the 2013 bombing of a Peshawar church which killed over 80 people.
In addition to the fatalities, which are still adding up, over 300 people were wounded. The nation quickly announced three days of mourning for the victims.
READ MORE
http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/64495/terror-in-pakistan-70-christians-massacred-in-easter-sunday-suicide-bombing-terror-watch/#vQwJCcVDFpVZ4gZU.99

Special Torah Scroll Written for Messiah Completed [PHOTOS]
Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz March 22, 2016 , 9:30 am
“Out of Thy temple at Yerushalayim, whither kings shall bring presents unto Thee.” Psalms 68:30 (The Israel Bible™)
Last week, Rabbi Yosef Berger, one of the rabbis in charge of King David’s Tomb in Jerusalem’s Old City, took an enormous step towards making his year-long dream a reality.
Rabbi Berger’s dream was to write a Torah scroll to present to the Messiah upon his arrival. Since David’s Tomb, the burial place of the Messiah’s ancestor, is located on Mount Zion, Rabbi Berger is uniquely positioned to personally present the Torah to the Messiah.
The Rabbi believes that by writing a Torah scroll which includes all of Israel, and keeping that scroll on Mount Zion, it will fulfill the requirements to usher in the Messiah.
READ MORE
 http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/64082/special-torah-scroll-written-messiah-completed-photos-jewish-world/#shZfoiEE3yrJftzQ.99


 
Trump: "Israel Will Forever Exist as a Jewish State" [WATCH]
“In that day shall the LORD defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and he that stumbleth among them at that day shall be as David; and the house of David shall be as a godlike being, as the angel of the LORD before them.” (Zechariah 12:8)
By Ariella Mendlowitz March 22, 2016 , 11:30 am
“In that day shall the LORD defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and he that stumbleth among them at that day shall be as David; and the house of David shall be as a godlike being, as the angel of the LORD before them.” Zechariah 12:8 (The Israel Bible™)
Donald Trump takes the stage at this year’s AIPAC conference March 20-22, 2016 (Photo: Youtube screenshot/AIPAC)
Donald Trump took the stage at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Conference on Monday afternoon in DC during which he expressed his unwavering support for the Jewish state.
Trump opened his speech declaring that he is a “lifelong supporter and true friend of Israel.” He continued saying that while he is “a newcomer to politics”, the term does not apply in regards to his relationship with the Jewish state. Trump then provided several examples of his pro-Israel sentiment, citing his financial aid and unequivocal support during Israel’s terror-ridden history.
Following his statements of absolute backing for Israel, Trump outlined his intentions for the future of “American relations with our strategic ally, our unbreakable friendship, and our cultural brother, the only democracy in the Middle East: the state of Israel.” His first priority will be to dismantle the “disastrous deal with Iran” which is “catastrophic for America, Israel, and the whole Middle East.”
The GOP front runner provided his plan to dismantle the Iranian Nuclear Deal in three
READ MORE
 http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/64118/watch-trumps-full-speech-aipac-pro-israel-conference-jerusalem/#mCiF3dpljKmKwIX0.99


Priests Practice for Third Temple in Authentic Reenactment of Biblical Temple Service [PHOTOS]
By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz March 21, 2016 , 8:30 am
“Also in the day of your gladness, and in your appointed seasons, and in your new moons, ye shall blow with the trumpets over your burnt-offerings, and over the sacrifices of your peace-offerings; and they shall be to you for a memorial before your God: I am the LORD your God.”Numbers 10:10 (The Israel Bible™)
A special ceremony was held in the Cardo in Jerusalem on Thursday,  March 10th. It was the beginning of the month of Adar, or, to be precise, the second day of Rosh Chodesh Adar Bet. In temple Times, the new month was considered a minor holiday and the ceremony, a reenactment of the Temple service, gloriously illustrated that.
On the day of the new month, special sacrifices were brought to the Temple: two oxen, a ram, seven lambs, wine libations, flour, and oil (Numbers 28:11-15). This is identical to the sacrifices offered on Passover and Shavuot, indicating the holy aspect of the new month. Special trumpet blasts were also added in celebration.
READ MORE
http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/64009/photos-priests-reenact-biblical-temple-service-celebrate-new-month-jewish-world/#dXLj5xoBz4F8C11u.99

Pro-Israel Conference Attendees Face Violent Crowds
By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz March 21, 2016 , 9:30 am
“O God, keep not Thou silence; hold not Thy peace, and be not still, O God. For, lo, Thine enemies are in an uproar; and they that hate Thee have lifted up the head. They hold crafty converse against Thy people, and take counsel against Thy treasured ones. They have said: ‘Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name of Yisrael may be no more in remembrance.’ For they have consulted together with one consent; against Thee do they make a covenant;” Psalms 83:2-6 (The Israel Bible™)
Normally accompanied by a substantial but modest amount of protest, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference opened on Sunday to violent crowds protesting against the Jewish State.
Hundreds of protesters blocked the entrances to the conference, preventing attendees from entering the building. The crowd held a mix of anti-Trump, pro-Sanders, and anti-Zionist Haredim. The protests got so turbulent that conference participants were asked to wait outside out of concern the situation would turn violent. In fact, conference attendees were seen on video fleeing angry protesters who shouted ferocious anti-Semitic cries such as “Burn in hell, you Zionist pig” and “baby killer”. Several arrests were made.
READ MORE
 http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/64032/pro-israel-conference-attendees-face-violent-crowds-jerusalem/#moWOEoAC1JWszHmZ.99


Were Israelis the Target of the Istanbul Suicide Bomber?
Turkish Official Tweets ”I Wish the Israelis Were Dead” After Suicide Blast in Istanbul Kills Four
By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz March 19, 2016 ,
Israeli soldiers carry the coffins holding the Israelis killed in yeterday's terror attack in Istanbul, Turkey. March 20, 2016. A suicide bomber struck a busy tourist area in central Istanbul yesterday, killing at least four people, Turkey's health minister said. (Photo: Amit Elyakam/IDF Spokesperson)
Israeli soldiers carry the coffins holding the Israelis killed in yeterday’s terror attack in Istanbul, Turkey. March 20, 2016. A suicide bomber struck a busy tourist area in central Istanbul yesterday, killing at least four people, Turkey’s health minister said. (Photo: Amit Elyakam/IDF Spokesperson)
Three Israeli citizens are among the dead after a suicide bomber killed four and wounded at least 35 more in Istanbul on Saturday.
Two of the murdered Israelis had dual American citizenship. Of the wounded, eleven are Israelis who were touring the country together with a group that totaled 14 members. Six more Israelis that were known to be at the scene are still missing. Four of the wounded were Arab-Israelis citizens. The fourth victim is an Iranian tourist.
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 http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/63913/were-israelis-target-istanbul-suicide-bomber-middle-east/#xxl8wpjyvjdfDWrX.99



UN Human Rights Rapporteur Candidate Calls for US and Britain to Bomb Israel
By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz March 20, 2016 , 10:30 am
“And moreover I saw under the sun, in the place of justice, that wickedness was there; and in the place of righteousness, that wickedness was there. I said in my heart: ‘The righteous and the wicked God will judge; for there is a time there for every purpose and for every work.’ I said in my heart: ‘It is because of the sons of men, that God may sift them, and that they may see that they themselves are but as beasts.” Ecclesiastes 3:16-18 (The Israel Bible™)
Children in the Gaza Strip hold up signs in support of the BDS movement against Israel. (Photo: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement Official Facebook Page)
The United Nations this week has appointed Professor Penny Green, a rabid anti-Israel activist, as the first choice for the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) for Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories.
If chosen, Green will join many others who embrace anti-Israel sentiments. One such example is Richard Falk, who served in the position from 2008-2014. Falk was a Princeton professor who called for US officials to be prosecuted for deposing Saddam Hussein. He also publicly theorized that the 9/11 attacks that killed almost 3,000 Americans were orchestrated by the US government and not by Al Qaeda.
READ MORE
 http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/63996/un-human-rights-rapporteur-candidate-bomb-israel-massacres-jerusalem/#j4zJHLdpgTjIqhkS.99



Echoing Biblical Esther,Jews Call Three-Day Fast for Salvation
By Rivkah Lambert Adler March 20, 2016 , 9:30 am
“Go, gather together all the Yehudim that are present in Shushan, and fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day; I also and my maidens will fast in like manner; and so will I go in unto the king, which is not according to the law; and if I perish, I perish.” (Book of Esther 4:16)
During this time of turmoil in the Jewish State, a grassroots Israeli group has organized a three-day fast leading up to the holiday of Purim, mirroring that of Queen Esther in the Biblical story. Thus far, over 22,000 people have agreed to participate in the fast, which they hope will overturn the continuous threats to Israel’s existence.
READ MORE
 http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/63932/quest-salvation-terror-jewish-group-calls-three-day-fast-jewish-world/#kdbzjzT5WA5J1ErC.99

http://supremepatriot.com/2016/03/18/graphic-2-terrorist-stab-female-israeli-soldier-but-make-one-fatal-mistake/
GRAPHIC: 2 Terrorist Stab Female Israeli Soldier, But Make One FATAL Mistake. By Brendan | March 18, 2016
FROM CONSERVATIVETRIBUNE:

It was a sadly familiar scene — an Israeli soldier stabbed by Palestinian terrorists. However, what started as another tragic case of Islamic jihadists getting the upper hand on the Israelis turned into a story of bravery, as the soldier managed to kill the terrorists.

Moreover, their death was caught on video and posted on the Internet. We must warn you that it is graphic, but it shows what the consequences for jihadists and their sick ideology are.

According to i24 News, the incident happened at Ariel Junction in the West Bank yesterday afternoon. The twoPalestinian terrorists stabbed and injured the female soldier near a group of Jewish settlements in the hotly-contested area. The stabbing took place as the soldier was disembarking a bus.

 However, while seriously injured, the Israeli woman decided to fight back. She shot the two terrorists, seen here in this video. (WARNING: GRAPHIC)
Those weren’t the only pictures of the terrorists, either.
Both terrorists were pronounced dead at the scene.

The attack was the latest in a series of attacks against Israeli soldiers or citizens by Palestinian terrorists. Many of them have used knives or cars as the implements of death, killing over 30 Israelis in the process.

Continue Reading…
http://conservativetribune.com/terrorists-female-israeli-soldier/


It was a sadly familiar scene — an Israeli soldier stabbed by Palestinian terrorists. However, what started as another tragic case of Islamic jihadists getting the upper hand on the Israelis turned into a story of bravery, as the soldier managed to kill the terrorists.

Moreover, their death was caught on video and posted on the Internet. We must warn you that it is graphic, but it shows what the consequences for jihadists and their sick ideology are.

According to i24 News, the incident happened at Ariel Junction in the West Bank yesterday afternoon. The two Palestinian terrorists stabbed and injured the female soldier near a group of Jewish settlements in the hotly-contested area. The stabbing took place as the soldier was disembarking a bus.

However, while seriously injured, the Israeli woman decided to fight back. She shot the two terrorists, seen here in this video. (WARNING: GRAPHIC)

Trump To Face Jewish Protests At
Pro-Israel Conference
“... I will gather all nations and will bring them down into the valley of Yehoshaphat; and I will enter into judgment with them there for My people and for My heritage Yisrael whom they have scattered among the nations and divided My land ...” (Joel 4:1-3
Several Jewish groups have announced plans to boycott and protest Trump’s participation at the AIPAC conference in Washington on Monday, indicating a deep schism in the Jewish community over the next presidential election.

AIPAC, The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, is a pro-Israel lobbying group and with more than 100,000 members, it is one of the most powerful lobbying groups in America, making it an important stop in any presidential campaign. As they do during every election, AIPAC invited all the presidential candidates to speak at this year’s convention. This year, the list included Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and John Kasich.

Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination, is scheduled to speak Monday night and several Jewish groups have announced their plans to boycott and protest his speech.

The Union for Reform Judaism, representing the largest Jewish denomination in America, does not endorse candidates as a rule since they are a religious organization. Nonetheless, they released a statement on their website, slamming Trump, comparing his rhetoric to anti-Semitism.

“His campaign has been replete with naked appeals to bigotry, especially against Hispanics and Muslims. Previous comments he has made – and not disavowed – have been offensive to women, people of color, and other groups. In recent days, increasingly, he appears to have gone out of his way to encourage violence at his campaign events.”

Read "Catch the Jew" - A True Laugh Out Loud Look Inside Israel
The violence referred to occurred at a recent Trump rally in Chicago in which several hundred protesters, organized by pro-Sanders MoveOn.org, arrived and violence ensued. Two police officers were injured and five people were arrested. Trump cancelled the rally as a result.

Rabbi David Paskin and Rabbi Jesse Olitzky organized a group called “Come Together Against Hate”. This is meant as a rejoinder to the theme of the of the AIPAC conference; Come Together. On their website, they call on “Rabbis, Cantors, Jewish professionals, and members of the Jewish community to repudiate the ugliness that Mr. Trump espouses” and to “shine a moral light on the darkness that has enveloped Mr. Trump’s campaign”.

Ameinu, a progressive Zionist organization whose stated goal is  to seek social and economic justice in Israel and the United States”, issued a statement, calling upon the conference member to  “raise a collective voice of Jewish outrage and make an unequivocal denunciation of Donald Trump’s bigotry.”

J Street, an extreme left-wing Jewish group that advocates the creation of a Palestinian state inside the borders of Israel, issued a statement to the press, claiming Trump is “unfit to be President of the United States”.

“Trump and his campaign, driven by racism and hate, are beyond the bounds of acceptability for the vast majority of Jewish Americans.”

Even if Trump is able to cope with the outside protesters, a non-committal platform on Israel will not win any followers from the AIPAC hosts. He has wavered on this in the past, in stark contrast to the other GOP candidates who express strong commitment to Israel.

Trump does have a personal interest in the Jewish community. His daughter, Ivanka, is an observant Jew and married to Jared Kushner.
Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/63873/trump-face-jewish-protests-pro-israel-conference-jerusalem/#Z4JJry0yEkh5suA3.99

http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/63469/chief-rabbi-it-is-a-mitzvah-to-kill-terrorists-jewish-world/#rA0dkqJblSMvdXjv.97
Chief Rabbi: Killing Terrorists is a Biblical Commandment
By Abra Forman March 13, 2016 , 
“How are they become a desolation in a moment! They are wholly consumed by terrors.” Psalms 73:19 (The Israel Bible™)
In a Sabbath sermon on Saturday, Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef said that Israelis should not fear punishment in civil courts or heed the warnings of IDF generals, but obey Jewish law and kill terrorists outright in instances of knife attacks or other assault.

“If a terrorist shows up with a knife, it is commanded [by Jewish law] to kill him,” Rabbi Yosef announced at the Yazadim Synagogue in Jerusalem during Saturday morning prayers, reported Kikar Hashabbat, an Ultra-Orthodox news site.

He cited an ancient rabbinic teaching which commands, “He who comes to kill you, arise to kill him [first].”

“You shouldn’t be afraid,” said Rabbi Yosef, adding that considerations of how judges would rule or what military officials would permit in such cases should not come into play.

“Don’t start worrying that someone will take you to the High Court of Justice, or that some [IDF] chief of staff will say otherwise,” he said, referring to comments made by IDF chief Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, who dismissed the Jewish teaching last month when he cautioned soldiers not to respond with “unnecessary force” to terror attacks.

image: http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/wp-content/uploads/useful_banner_manager_banners/7-LIBI-ShowSupport-Psalms-600WIDE.jpg

“The IDF doesn’t need to get swept up in clichéd statements like ‘Kill or be killed’ or ‘Whoever comes at you with scissors needs to be killed’,” said Eisenkot at the time.

The chief rabbi added in his sermon that in addition to neutralizing an immediate threat, killing terrorists would deter future attacks.

“As soon as the terrorist knows that [if] he comes at you with a knife he doesn’t return from that alive, it will deter them. Therefore it is a mitzvah [Biblical commandment] to kill him,” he said.

However, he said, one should not kill a terrorist if he or she were disarmed or no longer posed a threat. Rather, he said, the terrorist should be given a life sentence until a more appropriate Biblical punishment would be permitted in the times of the redemption, when the Messiah “tells us who is Amalek, and only then we can kill them.”

Rabbi Yosef’s injunction to kill terrorists joins that of Tzfat Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, who ruled at the beginning of the current wave of terror in October that it is “prohibited to leave an attacker alive after an attack”, and Knesset member Bezalel Smotrich, who argued in parliament that killing terrorists who go out to kill Jews is the “ABCs of morality”.
Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/63469/chief-rabbi-it-is-a-mitzvah-to-kill-terrorists-jewish-world/#3OwWQDH2pWj3lQg7.99

http://unitedwithisrael.org/opinion-isis-massacre-of-christians-not-genocide-obama-administration-insists/
Opinion: ISIS Massacre of Christians Not ‘Genocide,’ Obama Administration Insists
According to the Obama administration, the Islamic State is committing genocide against certain religious minority groups — excluding Christian minorities.

During a February 29 press briefing, White House spokesman Josh Earnest was asked: “Is the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL) carrying out a campaign of genocide against Syria’s Christians?”

He replied: “Well, we have long expressed our concerns with the tendency of — well, not a tendency — a tactic employed by ISIL to slaughter religious minorities in Iraq and in Syria. You’ll recall at the very beginning of the military campaign against ISIL that some of the first actions that were ordered by President Obama, by the United States military, were to protect Yazidi religious minorities that were essentially cornered on Mt. Sinjar by ISIL fighters. We took those strikes to clear a path so that those religious minorities could be rescued.”

Due to the obvious equivocation — it is unclear how Obama’s efforts “to protect Yazidi religious minorities” answers a question about persecuted Christians — the question was repeated: “But you’re not prepared to use the word ‘genocide’ yet in the situation [regarding Christians]?”

Earnest’s response: “My understanding is the use of that word involves a very specific legal determination that has at this point not been reached.”

What is this “very specific legal determination” that encompasses Yazidis but excludes Christians? The Islamic State’s treatment of Christians would seem to fit under the UN’s definition of “genocide.”

Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part…”

Persecution of Christians
ISIS brutality against Christians. (Hassan Ammar/AP)

ISIS is guilty of “killing members of the [Christian] group” and causing them “serious bodily or mental harm.” Although two separate videotaped mass executions (one of 21 Egyptian Christians and another of 30 Ethiopian Christians) were reported by the mainstream media, accounts of torture, rape, mutilation, crucifixion, and massacres of Christians are regularly reported on Arabic and alternate media.

The Islamic State has also been responsible for “deliberately inflicting on the group [Christians] conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” ISIS has placed these “conditions of life” — more literally known in Islamic doctrine as the “Conditions of Omar” — on Christians. They included a number of humiliations and debilitations — from the suppression of Christian worship to the extortion of money (jizya) — a “protection” tax designed to “encourage” Christians to convert to Islam or flee.

ISIS seems further committed to expunging all physical traces of Christianity in the areas it conquers. It has demolished dozens of ancient churches; at least 400 churches in Syria have been destroyed since the war, as well as countless statues and crucifixes. ISIS has also desecrated Christian cemeteries and ordered the University of Mosul to burn all books written by Christians and decreed that all schools in Mosul and the Nineveh Plain that bore Christian names (some since the 1700s) be changed.

Then there are the numbers. In Iraq, Christians, who totaled 1.4 million in 2003, are now down to about 300,000. In Syria, Christians, who totaled 1.25 million in 2011, are now down to about 500,000.

persecution of christians
Young Christians in the Middle East march in protest against persecution by ISIS. (AP)

Finally, ISIS is on record saying that its eradication of Christians is due to their religious identity.

Due to all these indicators, many groups and rights activists believe that ISIS’s treatment of Christians “fits the definition of ethnic cleansing,” in the words of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial. A European Parliament resolution adopted in April 2015 stated that “Christians are the most persecuted religious group. … according to data the number of Christians killed every year is more than 150,000.”

Most recently, on March 14, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a resolution that “pressures the Obama administration to officially declare the Islamic State’s bloodshed against Christians, Yazidis and other groups, including the Kurds, as ‘genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.'”

The resolution passed 393 to 0.

Even so, the Obama administration’s rejection of the word “genocide” fits a familiar pattern.

When asked about the plight of Christians under ISIS, Colonel Steve Warren said, “We’ve seen no specific evidence of a specific targeting toward Christians.”

Although Christians number 10% of Syria’s population, only 2% of refugees accepted into the U.S. from Syria are Christian. (The majority of refugees — almost 98% — are Sunni Muslims, the same sect to which ISIS belongs and thus are not persecuted.)

When inviting scores of Muslim representatives, the State Department has repeatedly denied visas to solitary Christian representatives.

When a few persecuted Iraqi Christians crossed the border into the U.S., they were thrown in prison for several months and then sent back to the war zone.

When persecuted Coptic Christians planned on joining Egypt’s anti-Muslim Brotherhood revolution of 2013, the Obama administration, in the person of Ambassador Anne Patterson, counseled them not to.

When persecuted Iraqi and Syrian Christians asked for arms to join the opposition fighting ISIS, D.C. refused.

Raymond Ibrahim, author of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War in Christians (a Gatestone Publication, published by Regnery, April 2013), is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and Judith Friedman Rosen Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Report: Israel is Happier Than US, UK, France, and Germany
By JNI Media March 18, 2016 , 8:00 am
“Happy is the man whose strength is in Thee; in whose heart are the highways.” Psalms 84:6 (The Israel Bible™)
The World Happiness Report is a measure of happiness that’s published annually by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network and the Earth Institute at Columbia University. Leading experts in economics, psychology, survey analysis, and national statistics, to name a few, describe how measurements of well-being can be used effectively to assess the progress of nations.

The 2016 happiness index ranks the Jewish State in 11th place, following Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, Finland, Canada, Netherlands, New Zealand, Australia, and Sweden.

The main innovation in the World Happiness Report Update 2016, write the Index authors, is its focus on inequality. “We have previously argued that happiness, as measured by life evaluations, provides a broader indicator of human welfare than do measures of income, poverty, health, education, and good government viewed separately. We now make a parallel suggestion for measuring and addressing inequality. Thus we argue that inequality of well-being provides a better measure of the distribution of welfare than is provided by income and wealth, which have thus far held center stage when the levels and trends of inequality are being considered.”

The 2016 happiness index shows that there is a wide variation among countries and regions in their inequality of well-being, and in the extent to which these inequalities changed from 2005-2011 to 2012-2015. In the world as a whole, in eight of the 10 global regions, and in more than half of the countries surveyed there was a significant increase in the inequality of happiness. By contrast, no global region, and fewer than one in 10 countries, showed significant reductions in happiness inequality over that period.

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But, according to the index, “people do care about the happiness of others, and how it is distributed. New research suggests that people are significantly happier living in societies where there is less inequality of happiness.”

Israel in 11th place is followed by Austria in 12th and the US in 13th. Germany is in 16th place, the UK in 23rd, and France is in 32nd, trailing the United Arab Emirate in 26th place. Surprisingly, Japan is in 53rd place.

The unhappiest country on the planet is Burundi, in 157th place, Syria is 156th, Afghanistan 154th and Yemen 147th.

Israel’s other immediate neighbors rank as follows: Egypt 120th, Jordan 112th, the Palestinian Territories 108th, Lebanon 93rd.

Incidentally, Israel also ranked 11th happiest in the 2013-2015 survey. Turns out Israelis are a happy bunch, with ongoing equal distribution of happy.
Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/63830/israel-worlds-11th-happiest-country-jerusalem/#lW7XHpdLqvtBWm8J.99