In Israel Thursday morning, the politicians were the big story. Israel Beitenu chairman Avigdor Liberman was the villain who had held the country hostage for nearly a year as he fed his narcissistic personality disorder.
The left’s latest flagship, the Blue and White party is all the once vibrant political camp can put together now that it has lost its ideology. With its god of peace killed by suicide bombers and missiles, and its socialism statues crushed under the weight of bankrupt government companies, all the left has left is Blue and White. The party stands on two planks – destroying Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and eternalizing the regime of Israel’s unelected bureaucrats.
The day after he turned 100, Jozef Walaszczyk prepared to attend yet another Holocaust commemoration ceremony in his native Warsaw.
Walaszczyk is Poland’s oldest living Righteous Among the Nations – a title given by Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust museum to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust – and he attends several such events each year. But he was in for a different experience when a Ferrari pulled up to his apartment building Thursday to take him to the event.
By: Seth J. Frantzman – The Jerusalem Post; jpost.com
Documents leaked from the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence show that the IRGC was to be the muscle, while the Brotherhood provided the cover.
Leaked Iranian intelligence documents revealed that the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran sought to work together. Like an iron fist in a velvet glove, the IRGC would be the muscle and the Brotherhood could give it cover in the 85 countries it works in, members of the organizations discussed. They convened in Turkey in 2014 to discuss how they might work together and who to fight against. First target: Saudi Arabia. Other common enemies: Israel and the United States.
Newly released FBI data shows that Jews and Jewish institutions were the overwhelming target of religion-based hate crimes in the United States last year.
The 2018 Hate Crime Statistics reported 7,120 total hate crimes last year, compared to 7,175 in 2017, a decline of less than 1%.
Hate crimes motivated by religious bias accounted for 1,550 offenses, and the majority of those — 57.8% — were anti-Jewish.
By comparison, anti-Muslim hate crimes accounted for 14.5% — the second-largest target of religious hate. Anti-Sikh hate crimes accounted for 4.1% of the total.
U.S. Ambassador Friedman to ‘Post’: New policy advances the cause of Israeli-Palestinian peace
In a historic reversal of US policy, the Trump administration announced on Monday that it does not view Israeli settlements in the West Bank as illegal. The policy change was announced by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Washington.
“After carefully studying all sides of the legal debate, this administration agrees with President Reagan,” Pompeo said in reference to Ronald Reagan’s position that settlements were not inherently illegal. “The establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not per se inconsistent with international law,” Pompeo said.
By: Dr. Rivkah Lambert Adler – Breaking Israel News; breakingisraelnews.com
“Comfort, oh comfort My people.” Isaiah 40:1
Jerusalem Jane’s Roots
Growing up in the small town of Thisted in northwest Denmark, Jane Kiel could not have imagined that one day, God would weave the strands of her life together in such a way that she would become known as Jerusalem Jane.
Kiel traces her love for Israel to her “most amazing grandparents. I know for a fact that every night before they went to bed, they prayed for each of their children and grandchildren and for Israel.
“It has always been a part of my life and has given me the foundation of everything I believe in and what I stand for. It’s the main factor for why I’m in Israel today. My personal faith in God has followed me my whole life. All of this is what brought me here to Israel.”
In a U.N. General Assembly speech in September, however, Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas didn’t hint of that, saying he would call for “general elections” in the West Bank, Gaza and eastern Jerusalem.
Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas will not run for re-election, senior Fatah official Jibril Rajoub told Palestine TV on Monday.
Rajoub’s announcement contradicted Hussein al-Sheikh, who recently said that Abbas is Fatah’s only candidate in the next presidential election.
By: Jonathan S. Tobin – Jewish News Syndicate; jns.org
How do we avoid mistaking the current wave of anti-Semitism for that of the Nazi past without slipping into complacence?
This week Germany marks the 81st anniversary of Kristallnacht, “The Night of Broken Glass.” The nationwide Nazi pogrom against that country’s Jewish community took place on Nov. 9-10, 1938, and is chiefly remembered for the destruction of so many Jewish-owned stores, buildings and synagogues—debris filling the streets with shards of glass from shattered windows and doors.
By: Sophie Law – Mail Online & Associated Press; dailymail.co.uk
Melpomeni Dina, 92, wiped away tears during memorial to Jews at the Hall of Names in Jerusalem on Sunday
She was reunited with 40 family members of the siblings she hid, fed and protected during the Holocaust
The descendants, from Israel, hugged Ms Dina to whom they owe their existence on Sunday during reunion
A Greek woman who risked her life to hide a Jewish family from the Nazis during the war says she can now ‘die quietly’ after an emotional reunion with the children they went on to have.
Melpomeni Dina, 92, wiped away tears as she clutched the hands of the family she saved during World War II in a memorial to Jews at the Hall of Names in Jerusalem on Sunday.
The emotional encounter was the first time she had been reunited with the Israeli family of the Jewish siblings that she hid, fed and protected during the Holocaust as a teenager more than 75 years ago.
One by one, the 40 descendants leaned down and hugged Ms Dina to whom they owe their very existence on Sunday, as she sat in her wheelchair and as tears streaked down her wrinkled face.