08/22/2017
Should Jews leave Spain? Following last Thursday’s jihadist attack in Barcelona, Barcelona’s chief rabbi, Meir Bar- Hen, told a reporter that he is urging his community members to flee Spain for Israel. “I tell my congregants: Don’t think we’re here for good, and I encourage them to buy property in Israel,” he said. “This place is lost,” he warns, adding,…
08/18/2017
On Wednesday, President Reuven Rivlin sent a letter of support to the American Jewish community in the wake of the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, last Saturday. On the surface, his move made sense – the largest Diaspora community is concerned about the growing profile of viciously antisemitic forces on the Right. But at a deeper level, Rivlin’s move was detrimental.…
08/15/2017
Over the weekend, it was reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supports legislation that would change the procedure for declaring war. The bill, supported by the government as well as by Netanyahu’s opponent and former finance minister Yair Lapid, involves implementing lessons learned from past experiences. Under the suggested law, the government will provide the security cabinet with blanket authority…
08/11/2017
On Thursday morning, for the second time in so many days, North Korea threatened to attack the US territory of Guam with nuclear weapons. Taken together with Pyongyang’s two intercontinental ballistic missile tests last month, and the US’s Defense Intelligence Agency’s acknowledgment this week that North Korea has the capacity to miniaturize nuclear bombs and so launch them as warheads…
08/11/2017
PLO chief and Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas scored a victory against Israel at the Temple Mount. But it was a Pyrrhic one. Days after the government bowed to his demand and voted to remove the metal detectors from the Temple Mount, Abbas checked into the hospital for tests. The 82-year-old dictator has heart disease and a series of other…
08/04/2017
Last week, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his security cabinet caved in to the demands of the PLO and its partners in Hamas, the Islamic Movement, Jordan, Iran and Turkey by agreeing to remove metal detectors and other security screening equipment from the Temple Mount. The equipment was installed last month in response to Palestinian incitement and acts of jihadist…
08/03/2017
The Israel angle on McMaster’s purge of Trump loyalists from the National Security Council is that all of these people are pro-Israel and oppose the Iran nuclear deal, positions that Trump holds. McMaster in contrast is deeply hostile to Israel and to Trump. According to senior officials aware of his behavior, he constantly refers to Israel as the occupying power…
07/04/2017
This is a BETTER VIDEO QUALITY of this mornings live Facebook chat with Avi Abelow about what is happening including: Indian PM Modi’s visit to Israel, the Gulf Crisis, Syria and Iraq after ISIS, Hezbollah in Lebanon and what I’m about to do this summer! Tune in!
06/30/2017
There are four important aspects to the government’s decisions on Sunday relating to egalitarian prayer at the Western Wall and the conversion bill. The first is that by and large, the headlines of the stories distort rather than explain what the government decided. The second is the nature of the American Jewish community’s response to the government’s moves. The third…
06/28/2017
Should the United States pay Palestinian terrorists? For the overwhelming majority of Americans and Israelis this is a rhetorical question. The position of the American people was made clear – yet again – last week when US President Donald Trump’s senior envoys Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt met with Palestinian Authority chairman and PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas and repeated Trump’s…