LLX News

By: Adam Eliyahu – Breaking Israel News; breakingisraelnews.com

“And so, fear not. I will sustain you and your children.” Thus he reassured them, speaking kindly to them.” Genesis 50:21 (The Israel Bible™)

Egypt and Israel’s energy ministers announced on Wednesday the first transmission of natural gas from Israel to Egypt. The Biblical roots and prophetic implications of this modern energy deal are so clear as to be notable to political commentators.

The Leviathan gas field is a large natural gas field located in the Mediterranean Sea about 81 miles west of Haifa in waters 4,900 feet deep. Leviathan is one of the world’s larger offshore gas finds of the past decade and according to some commentators, the gas find has the potential to change Israel’s foreign relations with neighboring countries Turkey, and Egypt. Even by conservative estimates, Leviathan holds enough gas to meet Israel’s domestic needs for 40 years.

https://www.israel365news.com/143381/on-anniversary-of-ancient-egypt-feeding-israelites-during-famine-israel-returns-favor-with-natural-gas/

By: Eytan Halon – The Jerusalem Post; jpost.com

More than 2.32 million people passing through Ben-Gurion Airport in 2019 traveled to and from Turkey, a major and nearby aviation hub, representing 9.67% of all passengers.

More than 24.8 million passengers and nearly 168,000 flights passed through Ben-Gurion Airport in 2019, marking a record year for Israel’s leading aviation hub.

According to the airport’s annual report, international passenger traffic reached 24.04 million in 2019, an increase of approximately 7.5% since 2018. An additional 786,000 passengers traveled through the airport on domestic flights, up 32.73%, driven by the closure of Tel Aviv’s Sde Dov Airport in July.

https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Ben-Gurion-Airport-Passenger-traffic-climbed-to-248-million-in-2019-614043

By: Anna Ahronheim – The Jerusalem Post; jpost.com

10 years after the first interception test of the system, Defense Ministry boasts of over 2,400 successful interceptions

A decade since the first successful interception test of the Iron Dome system, Israel took a step closer to defending itself against heavy missile barrages with a series of complex, successful experiments for the advanced version of the missile defense system.

The complex series of experiments were carried out in the South by Rafael Advanced Systems and the Israel Missile Defense Organization in the Directorate of Defense Research and Development of the Defense Ministry.

https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Defense-Ministry-completes-trials-of-advanced-version-of-the-Iron-Dome-613933

By: Lahav Harkov – The Jerusalem Post; jpost.com

“As a child in a concentration camp, who lost his parents and family, I never imagined that one day I would speak to the world about the darkest era in the history of the Jewish people.”

Shraga Milstein, 87, a survivor of Bergen-Belsen and an Israeli, is set to address the UN General Assembly on International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27.

Milstein, a guest of Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon, will speak at the UN’s central memorial ceremony, which UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Ambassador Danon, US Ambassador Kelly Craft, the ambassador from Germany and others are expected to address.

https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Israeli-Holocaust-survivor-to-address-central-UN-remembrance-event-613694

By: Eyal Zisser – Jewish News Syndicate; jns.org

For Iran’s friends and foes alike, Qassem Soleimani was second only to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Tehran will struggle to find another strategist of his caliber.

For many in the Middle East, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force, the Islamic Republic’s elite extraterritorial black-ops arm, embodied Iran’s desires, aspirations and directives with respect to the country’s operations worldwide. He was also the man who controlled the purse strings with respect to funding the weapons that have so often ignited the region.

For Iran’s friends and foes alike, Soleimani was second only to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei—an ailing, elderly man who sits in an ivory tower in Tehran, detached from the harsh regional reality on the ground.

Little wonder then that Iran’s regional allies—Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, Syrian President Bashar Assad and the leaders of the pro-Iranian militias in Iraq and Yemen—have been left feeling orphaned by the U.S. drone strike that killed him in Iraq on Friday morning.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/not-just-another-iranian-general/

By: Dallas Morning News Editorial – dallasnews.com

Max Glauben survived one of humanity’s darkest chapters and shines as one of Texas’ brightest lights

We might say Max Glauben started becoming the 2019 Texan of the Year in 1941 when he wriggled into a cramped smuggler’s space under the false bottom of a horse-drawn wagon to sneak out of the Warsaw Ghetto in search of food. He had a homemade tool, a funnel with a sharp end, with which to siphon rice or beans out of burlap shipping sacks.

The war had started two years before. Four hundred thousand Jews had been corralled into a tiny corner of Poland the size of Central Park, living nine to a room, with insufficient food and sanitation. Glauben made these trips many times, each time finding a clever way to sneak past Nazi guards, each time returning with a little food, a new weapon, or a report that he had successfully delivered a missive to the Jewish underground. He was 13.

A few weeks from now, Glauben will be 92. At 5-foot-3 he’s still small enough, and probably spry enough, to fit into a smuggler’s hold. His preoccupation these days is not with hiding things, but with bringing them into the light. Glauben is one of a rapidly shrinking number of survivors who can remember what is arguably humankind’s darkest chapter. He is a tireless speaker, sharing his incredible story of survival with schools, museums and civic groups as often as he can. He is a key player in the creation of the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum.

https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/texan-of-the-year/2019/12/29/the-upstander/

By: JNS – Breaking Israel News; breakingisraelnews.com

“maker of heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them; who keeps faith forever;” (Psalm 146:6)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz traveled to Athens, Greece, on Thursday, where they are to sign a three-way gas agreement with Cyprus and Greece that sets the stage for the exportation of natural gas to Europe.

Under the prospective agreement, Israel and Cyprus will jointly export gas from their offshore wells through Greece and Italy to the rest of Europe. Though Italy will not attend the summit, it is expected to sign the agreement in the near future.

https://www.israel365news.com/142654/israel-cyprus-and-greece-are-signing-an-agreement-to-build-a-pipeline-that-will-bring-israeli-gas-across-the-mediterranean-sea-to-europe/

By: Sam Sokol – Jewish Telegraphic Agency; jta.org

Walk into an Israeli post office or one of the many local stores that have lately been serving as ad-hoc delivery centers and you’ll be confronted by a jumble of boxes sealed with the telltale black and blue packing tape from Amazon.com.

Orders from the American online retail giant have surged here in recent weeks, following the launch of the company’s Hebrew-language online storefront and the offer of free shipping from the United States.

American immigrants to Israel have long relied on sites like Amazon to purchase products unavailable to them in the Jewish state, but the available evidence suggests a surge in purchases of the kinds of everyday items that were previously not cost-effective to have shipped in from abroad.

“I bought toys for my grandchildren at a fraction of the cost, makeup, hair products. My friend bought saline,” Ronit, a resident of the Jerusalem suburb of Beit Shemesh, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “It’s good for my wallet because a lot of stuff is just so much cheaper: ziploc bags, shampoo, makeup.”

https://www.jta.org/2019/12/27/israel/launch-of-amazons-hebrew-storefront-offers-american-expats-a-taste-of-home

By: JNS – Breaking Israel News; breakingisraelnews.com

“I will bless those who bless you And curse him that curses you; And all the families of the earth Shall bless themselves by you.” Genesis 12:3 (The Israel Bible™)

In a Christmas greeting video published on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed appreciation for Christian support of the State of Israel.

“Merry Christmas to all our Christian friends in Israel and around the world,” he said, standing alongside his wife, Sara. “The State of Israel is the culmination of so many prophecies and our deepest held values. We share the common civilization, the Judeo-Christian civilization, that has given the world the values of freedom, individual liberty, the sanctity of life and the belief in one G-d.”

https://www.breakingisraelnews.com/142187/netanyahus-christmas-message-israel-has-no-better-friend-than-christians/

By: Jonathan S. Tobin – Jewish News Syndicate; jns.org

An effort to appropriate the holidays in order to delegitimize Israel denies Jewish history and ignores the truth about the fate of the Christian minority in Arab lands.

It used to be confined to an annual piece of theater staged by the Palestinian Authority every Christmas. The festivities in P.A.-governed Bethlehem are primarily aimed at promoting Christian tourism. But statements alleging that Jesus was a Palestinian have always accompanied the activities there, including a parade to the Church of the Nativity.

The efforts by the late terrorist chieftain Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, his successor as head of the P.A., to appropriate Christmas as a prop for their war on Israel have generally been dismissed as holiday nonsense by sensible people. But there’s more to this than just the desire of the Palestinian leadership to exploit the fact that the international press pays attention to events in the otherwise sleepy city in the Judean hills south of Jerusalem once a year.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/time-to-shut-down-the-palestinian-hanukkah-and-christmas-scams/