For Palestinians, the Nakba is every day, not just once a year

At the start of his cabinet meeting on Wednesday, President Donald Trump discussed his announcement Tuesday afternoon that he is removing the US from his predecessor Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran and reinstating the nuclear sanctions that were suspended with the deal’s implementation in January 2016.

European and other international leaders responded angrily to Trump’s move. The EU’s foreign policy commissioner Federica Mogherini was downright indignant.

Apparently unaware that the US is a more important EU ally than Iran, Mogherini insisted, “The European Union is determined to preserve it. Together with the rest of the international community, we will preserve this nuclear deal.”

The liberal US media outlets were also aghast. Commentators joined the chorus of former Obama administration officials condemning Trump and insisting his move will isolate the US from the international community.

Trump brushed off his critics by noting, “You saw [Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu get up yesterday and talk so favorably about what we did.”

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By Caroline Glick

Last week Israelis began a series of events in celebration of 70 years of statehood since the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

While New Zealand’s relationship with Israel has in recent years been frosty, history reveals a relationship that was not always so fraught. Indeed, this region of the Middle East has held a special place in the Kiwi imagination.

From as early as 1903, groups were established in New Zealand to support the “upbuilding of Palestine”, as it was then known. The land was under the control of the Ottoman Empire and although there had always been Jewish presence there, from the 19th century Jews began returning in greater numbers, largely in response to the persecution they were suffering in Russia and Eastern Europe.

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JERUSALEM (AP) — Is Israel a success as it turns 70? As Israelis commemorate the milestone this week, satisfaction and a grim disquiet share the stage.

It has a standard of living that rivals Western Europe, though it lacks significant natural resources. It can boast of scientific achievements and military and technological clout beyond its modest size. It controls most of biblical Israel, and despite widespread criticism of its policies toward the Palestinians, it has cultivated good diplomatic ties with most of the world.

But it’s also a country that is weary from decades of conflict with the Palestinians. It is riven by religious, ethnic and economic divisions. It is still seeking recognition in a region that has not fully come to terms with the presence of a Jewish state.

Israeli leaders have described it as a “light unto the nations,” but the country still is regularly accused of war crimes against Palestinians, millions of whom it has controlled for decades without the right to vote. There is no end in sight to its occupation of the West Bank, or to its crippling blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza.

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Seventy years since the establishment of the modern State of Israel is a fitting moment to remind ourselves of a mystery at the heart of Judaism.

Why Israel? Why does the Hebrew Bible so resolutely and unerringly focus on this place, what Spinoza called a mere ‘strip of territory’? The God of Abraham is the God of the whole world, a God unbounded by space. Why then does He choose any particular space, let alone one so small and vulnerable?

The question, ‘Why Israel?’ is the geographical way of asking ‘Why the Jews?’ The answer lies in the duality that defines Jewish faith and constitutes one of its most important contributions to civilization. Judaism embodies and exemplifies the necessary tension between the universal and the unique, between everywhere in general and somewhere in particular.

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Prince Mohammed bin Salman

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman made history after telling The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg that his country recognized the right of the Jews to “their own land.”

Though he added that the Saudis also care about the rights of Palestinians and the fate of “the holy mosque in Jerusalem,” the message he was sending to Muslims and Arabs was loud and clear. As far as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia—the state that has styled itself the defender of Islamic holy places, and thus the self-styled moral leader of the Arab and Muslim world—the long war against Zionism is over.

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