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→ 29 January 2020
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Trump and Netanyahu just unveiled a PR campaign, not a peace plan | Stuff

Trump and Netanyahu

NZFOI:  A rather cynical view of the peace plan…

Every president in political trouble looks to foreign policy for a distraction, and US President Donald Trump is no different.

January began with the killing of Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani and ends with the release of a White House peace plan for Israelis and Palestinians. Surely it is no coincidence that all this is happening while the president is being impeached.

Trump is selling himself as both warmaker and peacemaker.

But while the president can undoubtedly order the killing of enemy leaders, he cannot snap his fingers and end a long-running conflict. Indeed, he is not seriously trying to do so. What was unveiled on Tuesday was a PR campaign, not a peace plan.

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→ 24 January 2020
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BBC slammed for linking Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to Holocaust complex | JTA

Orla Guerin, BBC

British Jews protested what they perceived to be a BBC reporter’s claim that the Holocaust has distorted Israelis’ perception of reality and the occupation of Palestinian land.

The rebuke Thursday by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Campaign Against Antisemitism and the editor in chief of the Jewish Chronicle was over Orla Guerin’s report Wednesday on the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Auschwitz Nazi death camp’s liberation.

Against the background of soldiers visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, Guerin, who has faced numerous allegations of anti-Israel bias, including by Israel’s government, said: “The State of Israel is now a regional power. For decades it has occupied Palestinian territories. But some here will always see their nation through the prism of persecution and survival.”

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→ 17 January 2020
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Qassem Suleimani’s Career of Trying to Kill Jews | Mosaic

Suleimani’s funeral procession

At the funeral of the Iranian general Qassem Suleimani, one of the few non-family members to deliver a eulogy was the Hamas chairman Ismail Haniyeh—a reminder that the elite Quds Force, which Suleimani commanded for over two decades, invested much in coordinating terrorist attacks against Israel. And not only against Israel, writes Yehudit Barsky, but against Jews wherever they might be found

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→ 17 January 2020
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Iranians defy Officials By Refusing To Tread On U.S., Israeli Banners | Radio Free Europe

Students walk around, instead of across, U.S. and Israeli flags at the Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran on January 12.

Chanting “Death to America” and trampling upon and burning U.S. flags have been part of state-sponsored, anti-American acts in Iran for the past 40 years.

Yet people’s opposition to that mantra and disrespecting the flag of the United States and others has increased in the Islamic republic in recent years — with some daring to publicly question the rationale behind such acts.

Amid the fury in Iran in recent days over the establishment’s mishandling of the downing of a Ukrainian passenger plane by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), killing 176 people, students at two universities were seen walking around U.S. flags painted on the ground by officials in public acts of defiance against the clerical establishment and the state propaganda that portrays the United States and Israel as Tehran’s biggest enemies.

Videos of the incident at Tehran’s Shahid Beheshti University — which has been blacklisted by the United States for its nuclear-research activities — showed a majority of students moving to avoid treading upon painted American and Israeli flags.

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→ 10 January 2020
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US President Donald Trump called Iran’s bluff and won | Stuff

US President, Donald Trump

US President Donald Trump is not a strategy man. He has made clear he doesn’t like to think too far down the road; he likes to govern by instinct.

In short, he is a tactical leader, a Twitter president. Tactical leaders tend to make mistakes, largely because they cannot see the long-term implications of their decisions.

On Iran, however, President Donald Trump has not made a mistake.

His tactical game has worked, at least for the moment. He has called Iran’s bluff, taken out one of its most valuable leaders and, so far, made the correct calculation that Tehran will not risk a wider war with the United States.

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→ 6 January 2020
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What the killing of the top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani means for Jews, the US and Israel | JTA

Crowds gather for Suleimani’s Funeral Procession

A U.S. strike on a vehicle near Baghdad airport early Friday morning killed Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s most influential military commander. Soleimani was the leader of the Iranian Quds Force, which had ties to American and Israeli enemies such as Hamas and Hezbollah, and was directly responsible for some of the actions against Israel in Hezbollah’s war against the Jewish state in 2006.

Washington has been gripped by talk about what comes next — a real war between the U.S. and Iran? Iranian strikes on Israel? a string reaction of chaos across the Middle East? — but little actual insight as to what may ensue.

Still, there are already signs that one possible outcome is being taken seriously: attacks on domestic targets, including Jewish ones, like the gathering this weekend of what could be thousands of Jews to protest anti-Semitism in New York City. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Twitter that he had spoken with top police officials about “immediate steps” the NYPD will take to protect key city locations from “any attempt by Iran or its terrorist allies to retaliate against America.”

Here’s what you need to know about the assassination, and what it means for American Jews and Israel.

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→ 22 November 2019
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NZFOI welcomes US announcement on Israeli Settlements

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

22 November 2019 CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND — NZ Friends of Israel welcomes the US announcement on Monday November 18, that acknowledges that Israel’s settlements in Judea and Samaria (also known as the West Bank) are not illegal.

Most international law opinions that suggest otherwise are based on a misapplication of the Fourth Geneva Convention which was never written with the Middle Eastern situation in mind.  The original convention expected that the land of a sovereign state was being occupied by another sovereign state. 

This is not the case with the lands of the Middle East.  Following the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the end of the Second World War, there was no legitimate sovereign over the disputed lands. 

The US announcement affirms the fact that Jews have always been indigenous to the region and are not foreign colonizers. 

With the resurgence of anti-Semitism in many countries of the world, the foresight and wisdom of the League of Nations in mandating the establishment of a Jewish homeland, is unfortunately being vindicated. 

NZ Friends of Israel (www.nzfoi.org, contact@nzfoi.org, ph 027 433 9745) is a registered charity that fights racial prejudice and intolerance by raising awareness of Jewish history and culture.

ENDS

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→ 19 November 2019
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Trump administration says Israel’s West Bank settlements do not violate international law | Washington Post

Mike Pompeo, US Secretary of State

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared Monday that Israeli settlements in the West Bank do not violate international law.

Pompeo said the Trump administration, as it did with recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and Israel’s sovereignty over the disputed Golan Heights, had simply “recognized the reality on the ground.”

In remarks to reporters at the State Department, he said the administration was overturning actions taken late in the Obama administration, which for the first time declined to veto a United Nations resolution calling for the dismantlement of West Bank settlements.

Instead, Pompeo said, the administration said it was returning to policy under the administration of Ronald Reagan, who declined to characterize settlements as illegal but called them “ill-advised” and an obstacle to peace.

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→ 14 November 2019
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Israel kills top Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant in Gaza | BBC

An Israeli air strike has killed a senior commander of the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza.

Baha Abu al-Ata died along with his wife when a missile hit their home, the group said. Four of their children and a neighbour were reportedly injured.

Israel’s prime minister said Abu al-Ata was a “ticking bomb” who was planning to carry out attacks on the country.

At least 150 rockets have been fired at Israel from Gaza since the killing, which PIJ has vowed to avenge.

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→ 5 November 2019
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Lone Soldier | Mishpacha

Youssef Haddad

Youssef Haddad is an Israeli Arab from Nazareth, he is the son of a Christian-Arab minister, and he has dedicated his life to defending Israel’s reputation on the world stage.

At 34, he’s in much demand among journalists in Israel and on news networks around the world.

After all, an Arab who’s become a champion of Israel, even as a good number of Israelis themselves are not shy about condemning their own country’s policies as they ally with avowed enemies, is newsworthy.

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