2023 looks on track to be the deadliest year in Israel since 2015, under Obama, and the bloodshed is an eightfold increase in Israeli deaths since Trump’s last year in office.
The Biden administration restored Obama’s old policies and doubled down on them. And the death toll in Israel looks the way that it did under Obama. Under Biden, Israelis are dying at similar rates to the way that they did under Obama, but not at all as they did under Trump.
The Israeli PM’s decision to court China comes at a time of tension with the US. The stakes are high
China is engaging in an ambitious programme of diplomacy and peace initiatives, in the Middle East as well as Ukraine, in an effort to establish its credentials as a responsible global power and to exploit differences between the United States and its partners.
The latest object of Chinese attention is the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, who announced this week that he has been invited to make a state visit to Beijing at a time of tension between Israel and the US.
Israeli prime ministers are customarily invited to the White House within weeks of their election. But President Biden is keeping Netanyahu at distance because of the inclusion of far-right parties in his coalition and their attempt to pass laws that would drastically weaken Israel’s Supreme Court.
Both George Orwell and Mark Twain would have demanded that we take notice.
The results of a recent “trust index” survey, conducted in Israel, revealed far more than just the dry numbers they report — although of course they are important. Even more important are issues concerning public trust — the very core of democracy.
Mélanie Joly’s office upset over Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis and preacher Charles McVety’s plan to host Israeli minister
OTTAWA — Events featuring an Israeli cabinet minister alongside controversial Canadian preacher Charles McVety and a Conservative MP are ruffling feathers in Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly’s office.
Joly’s office only learned about Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli’s planned trip to Canada from other Liberal MPs, who raised questions about it when they received an invite to an event with Chikli on Parliament Hill next week.
One of the top candidates to take on the role of ambassador to Israel, now that Thomas Nides is on his way out, is Susie Gelman, who is retiring from her tenure as the chair of the Israel Policy Forum. Gelman professes to love Israel, but she considers its founding a catastrophe and is working hard to undermine its current government. In other words, hers is the “love” of a wifebeater.
On April 17-18, Israel observed Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day. Sirens sounded across the country while people stood for two minutes of silence in remembrance of six million Jews who had been murdered. Wreaths were laid at the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech calling on Israelis for unity.
On the 75th anniversary of Israel’s founding, the right to self-determination has fallen tragically out of favour.
Israel will start celebrating the 75th anniversary of its creation this evening. Given the hatred Israel evokes from Islamists, regional powers and Western leftists, it is remarkable it has survived for so long.
To be sure, Israel has also had substantial international support at times. From the late 1960s onwards, it could rely on America as an ally – although that backing seems to be waning today, particularly among Democrats. It is also often forgotten that left-wingers used to be staunch supporters of Israel. Indeed, from Israel’s foundation in 1948 through the 1960s, the left generally celebrated Israel as an expression of Jews’ right to national self-determination. This began to change in the 1970s, as sections of the left increasingly came to view Israel as an imperialist power. It was only in the 1990s, however, when Western elites started to reject the idea of national self-determination, that support for Israel on the left really began to erode.
Despite the strong relationship Canada maintains with Israel, Canadians have a mixed and uncertain opinion of the Jewish state, including on crucial, existential questions, a national opinion poll says.
… And while 36 per cent said the establishment of the State of Israel, which marks its 75th anniversary this month, was the right thing to do, 20 per cent said it wasn’t, but again, the largest response, at 44 per cent, was they didn’t know one way or another.
Those numbers suggest diversity is advancing …
As Israel continues to face daily threats and terror attacks from Iran and its militia proxies, fourteen Democratic members of the US Congress have joined the Jihad (holy war) against Israelis by urging the Biden administration to reconsider US military aid to Israel.
The appeal, included in a letter signed by Rep. Jamaal Bowman and Sen. Bernie Sanders, was made public shortly after Palestinian terrorists shot dead a Jewish mother, Lucy Dee, 48, and her two daughters, Maia, 20, and Rina, 15, as they were driving to the north of Israel to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Passover.
A debate raged throughout the day on Sunday about the veracity of what appeared to be a leaked classified US intelligence analysis saying the Mossad sought to promote protests against the government’s proposed judicial overhaul.
On the one hand, a New York Times report, based on what seemed to be authentic Pentagon intelligence, alleged that senior Mossad officials encouraged the nationwide protests.
On the other hand, The Jerusalem Post has indications that the American intelligence, even assuming it is an authentic classified document, might have misunderstood a number of complicated trends within Israel’s intelligence community.
Leaked US intelligence suggests spy agency opposed judicial reforms, though officials insist documents are ‘photoshopped fakes’
… Another leaked US intelligence document, which claimed Mossad supported major anti-government protests in Israel, was “false and absurd”, the spy agency said as the fallout from the massive leak of Pentagon papers reverberated among Washington’s allies.
According to the documents, classified as top secret, the Israeli agency “advocated for Mossad officials and Israeli citizens to protest the new Israeli government’s proposed judicial reforms, including several explicit calls to action that decried the Israeli government, according to signals intelligence.”
Since the start of the year, huge weekly protests have been held by people opposed to the government’s reform plans. The scale of the protests has escalated, with hundreds of thousands of people packing the streets in Tel Aviv – Israel’s commercial capital – and other towns and cities across the country.
Protesters have called for the reforms to be scrapped and for the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to resign. His political rivals have spearheaded the protests, though the fierce opposition to the reforms has cut across political lines.
Protests in Central Tel Aviv pic.twitter.com/yveHG9ctgr
— Amichai Stein (@AmichaiStein1) March 26, 2023
It has never been easy for Israel — the understatement of the century — from the moment of its establishment in 1948, when it was invaded by five Arab armies, to the present day, when it is facing multiple threats to its very survival. It suffers a history like no other nation in the world, surrounded by enemies, fighting wars on every front, infiltrated by terrorists, confronting the wetware dreams of genocidal regimes, in particular the prospect of a nuclear Iran sworn to the country’s annihilation, and subject to an international delegitimation campaign carried out via the United Nations, the World Council of Churches, spurious NGOs and “peace” organizations, labor unions, university campuses, and a hostile European Union.
European Union Special Representative for the Middle East Peace Process Sven Koopmans stated on February 17: “The EU wants build stronger ties with Israel, yet relations sadly remain burdened by the construction of illegal settlements on Palestinian land.”
What Koopmans forgot to mention that it is the Palestinians who have built literally tens of thousands of illegal structures in the West Bank, especially in Area C, which, according to the Oslo Accords, is under full Israeli security and civilian jurisdiction.
Koopmans also forgot to mention that the EU is helping the Palestinian Authority (PA) with the mass-scale illegal construction, paving the way for the de facto annexation of the territory.
The Movement for Quality Government (MQG) in Israel is the far-left organization at the epicenter of the Israeli left’s war against the Netanyahu government. MQG began its current campaign of delegitimization, subversion and demonization immediately after the Netanyahu government was sworn into office on December 29. The next day, MQG petitioned the Supreme Court to prevent Shas leader Aryeh Deri from serving as a minister in the government.
There was no legal basis for the petition. But that didn’t bother the lawyers at MQG.
