By DAVID RUBIN— Anyone who travels through Israel sees the many brand new SUV vehicles of UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Its main activity in Israel is providing assistance to the Arab residents of Judea and Samaria, the so called West Bank. These residents are commonly known as “the Palestinian refugees”. In…
By REZA KAHLILI, WND— Iran’s newly elected president, Hassan Rohani, attributed his victory in the June 15 voting to the 12th Imam, Mahdi, a statement with ominous overtones in the Islamic regime’s quest for nuclear weapons. The Shiites believe that at the end of times, the 12th Imam, a 9th-century prophet, will reappear with Jesus…
By ISRAEL HAYOM— Israel Air Force jets attacked targets in the Gaza Strip on Monday morning in response to five rockets fired into Israel overnight. They were the first rockets fired from Gaza to hit Israel in 40 days. The Iron Dome anti-missile defense system intercepted two rockets headed for the coastal city of Ashkelon,…
By YOSSI ALONI, ISRAEL TODAY— At a time when the Israeli government is struggling to get ultra-Orthodox Jews into the army, a record number of Israeli Arabs are volunteering for national service. Despite calls from leaders in the Arab community to shun national service, 3,000 young Israeli Arabs answered the call this year, a 76…
By MOSHE YAALON, WASHINGTON INSTITUTE— Israeli Defense Minister Moshe “Bogie” Yaalon believes that Israel’s recent period of relative peace could be shattered by conflict and instability spilling over from its neighbors. Speaking to a standing-room-only audience at The Washington Institute on June 14, he provided a sweeping assessment of the risks confronting Israel today, from…
By BETH KANOPSIC, inCONTEXT— On Monday, a high-ranking Hamas official called on Hezbollah to withdraw from Syria and focus on fighting Israel. Reports of a rift surfaced after a round of reconciliation talks between Hamas’s leadership in Lebanon and local Hezbollah politicians. Hamas’s reaction to the violence in Syria shows the deepening divide in the…
By SASHA BOGURSKY and JEREMY KAPLAN, FOXNEWS— A carved pillar discovered near Bethlehem may be linked to the Biblical King of Kings, David himself, or perhaps validate the scope of wise Solomon’s majestic kingdom. If they ever get around to digging it up, that is. Israeli tour guide Binyamin Tropper, who thought he was the…
“Early Zionist Settlement: First Aliyah” looks at the first wave of Zionist immigrants, who began arriving in 1882. The young idealists who made up this immigration, or aliyah, wanted to pave the way for a national rebirth. As Zeev Dubnow, a member of Bilu, the very first group of Zionist immigrants, wrote: “The ultimate aim…
By MAAYANA MISKIN, ISRAEL NATIONAL NEWS— The Oslo Accords, not Israeli “settlements,” are the real drain on Israel’s budget, MK Moshe Feiglin (Likud Beytenu) said Monday night, speaking from the Knesset podium. Feiglin poked fun at Yesh Atid head Yair Lapid’s “where’s the money” election slogan, and at Lapid’s suggestion that Israeli communities in Judea…
1. THE SYRIAN CIVIL WAR This is a sectarian conflict largely between the two main Islamic factions of Sunni and Shiite. The Iran, Assad, and Hizbullah coalition are the Shiite arm of the battle. The Sunni portion of the fighting force (the opposition/rebels) consists largely of local Sunnis, supported by Muslims of Saudi Arabia,…