Getting the Saudi-Israel Formula Wrong
by Cal Thomas
The Biden administration is once again employing the wrong formula in the Middle East. On a recent visit to Saudi Arabia, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Israel would have to make considerable concessions to the Palestinians if a deal brokered by the US with Riyadh were to succeed. Many observers believe that had Donald Trump been re-elected that deal with the Saudis would have been made because Riyadh wants to shore up its defenses against what it considers a threat from Iran. The Abraham Accords seemed a major motivator for Saudi Arabia to join other countries making peace with Israel.
Now that Secretary Blinken has reverted to an old and failed formula, promoted by former President Barack Obama and some of his predecessors, the Saudis apparently think they can appease their fellow Arabs by appearing to squeeze Israel into making new concessions. This is despite the fact that previous concessions have not changed the minds of Palestinian leaders who regularly affirm their desire, not just for a state of their own, but for a state that replaces the Jewish state.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote about a meeting he had with then-Vice President Joe Biden. He quotes Biden as saying, “You don’t have many friends here, buddy. I’m the one friend you do have. So, call me when you need to.” Friends don’t try to lead their friends into peril as the administration appears willing to do. (President Joe Biden has clearly shown his kind of ‘friendship’ to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and to Israel.)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at Bar-Ilan University during which he said a successful conclusion to any negotiations with the Palestinian leadership would require two elements: “a public, genuine and binding Palestinian recognition of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people” and “The Palestinian areas would have to be demilitarized with solid security arrangements for Israel.”
To this day the Palestinian leadership has agreed to neither condition, so it is difficult to fathom why Secretary Blinken believes an old and potentially explosive formula would work now, when it hasn’t before.
Israeli Delegation in Saudi Arabia at UNESCO Conference
An official Israeli delegation arrived for the first time in Saudi Arabia for a meeting of the UNESCO on Sunday. The Saudis had signed a “host country agreement” with the UN body, allowing officials from all member states to attend the 45th session of the organization. In a 2016 resolution, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee registered the Tomb of the Patriarchs, located in Hebron, in the name of the “State of Palestine” on its “List of World Heritage in Danger.” UNESCO passed 47 resolutions between 2009 and 2014, 46 directed against Israel and one that criticized Syria. Israel withdrew from UNESCO in 2019, after the US made a similar announcement, over the agency’s anti-Israel bias, but remains a party to the World Heritage Convention.
Shana Tova - Happy New Year!
Shana Tova U’Metuka - Have a good and sweet year!
Shana Tova Tikateivu - May you be inscribed in the Book of Life for a good year!
Food for Thought. by Steven Shamrak
Any concessions made in the past by Israel has not changed the fact that the enemies of Israel want to destroy the Jewish state. Only a strong Israel, led by a self-respectful government, will be able to have lasting and true peace with its Arab neighbours, not a fake peace - like after the previous agreements with Egypt and Jordan.
Mossad vs Iranian Terror Strikes
Mossad Chief David Barnea said that the spy agency disrupted 27 attempted terror strikes by Iran, against Israelis and Jews around the world, in the past year.
The US to Advance Economic Corridor
The US will hold talks with Israel regarding the advancement of a massive project to connect India, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Israel, and the European Union - even without a normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The new project will include train tracks, shipping lines, fast communications cables, and pipes for energy transfer. (Although, Israel was not invited to the G20 meeting.)
ADL Policies Dangerous to Jews and Israel
Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) head Morton Klein said that the ADL’s “tendentious policies” as “harmful and even tremendously dangerous to the Jewish people and Israel.” “The ADL almost never condemns left-wing antisemites yet has defended radical left-wing Israel-hater and ADL-funder George Soros and praised Jew-hating Israel-basher Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) for ‘her commitment to a more just world,’” he noted. (Quite often, Jewish self-haters and appeasers the enemies of the Jewish people are our own worst enemies.)
Israeli Arab School Set on Fire
A new Arab school in the Kafr Aqab neighbourhood of northeastern Jerusalem was set ablaze, just days after Arab terrorists, from Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, shot at the institution in response to its announcement it would be teaching the Israeli curriculum. Of roughly 110,000 Arab students in eastern Jerusalem, 85% follow the Palestinian Authority curriculum. The PA, which is frankly the enemy of Israel, pushes the Palestinian narrative. (Why does government of Israel allow enemy curriculum in Israel’s schools?)
Israel officially opened its embassy in Bahrain three years after both sides normalised ties, as part of the US-brokered Abraham Accords. The foreign minister, Eli Cohen, arrived in Bahrain accompanied by a business delegation of more than 30 companies working in high-tech, logistics and real estate. Under the accords, Israel also established ties with the United Arab Emirates and Morocco. Despite now having steady ties with Israel, Bahrain and the UAE have joined other Gulf Arab states in issuing a series of condemnations against the Jewish state this year. However, Cohen’s trip coincides with growing speculation about an impending normalisation deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which is not a signatory to the Abraham Accords.
No Palestine in Hashemite Kingdom
Jordan’s King Abdullah and PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas have broken their 15 months long silence by finally rejecting the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine solution - first published in Saudi Arabia on 8 June 2022. The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine solution called for the merger of Jordan, Gaza and part of Judea and Samaria ('West Bank') into one new territorial entity with Amman as its capital, mirroring a model that existed between 1950 and 1967, when Transjordan and Judea and Samaria were merged and renamed “Jordan” – after 10,000 Jews, who were living in Judea and Samaria, had been forcibly expelled during the 1948 War of Independence. (It did not work then, and will never work.)
Israel will start withholding tens of millions of shekels per month from money it is obligated to transfer to the Palestinian Authority (PA), in order to service a debt to the Israel Electric Company (IEC) that has grown to two billion shekels ($527 million) over the last three decades. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (Religious Zionist Party) has now signed off on the first monthly deduction, which will be transferred straight to the IEC. The amount is expected to range between NIS20-30 million each month. The Oslo Accords allows Israel to deduct the PA's debts, millions each month, from the funds that it passes to the Palestinian Authority. (Next step is to make the PA pay for medical treatment of its members, and compensate Jewish victims of terror attacks, as well as contribute to the Israel's defence budget.)
Quotes of the Week:
"I know what a refugee really is, and these are not refugees. There are no real refugees in Israel. Because those people are work immigrants who want to earn a year's salary in a month here compared to their country. I know what they say among them because I live among them; they hate Israel and the basic right of the Jewish nation to exist. When their children say they wish that Hitler would finish us and that Israel belongs to Palestine, you know where they get this education." - May Golan (Likud), Minister for the Advancement of the Status of Women, a resident of south Tel Aviv, spoke about the African infiltrators in Tel Aviv and Israel's immigration policy.
Israel Ready to Send Rescue Teams to Morocco
Magen David Adom sends two rescue teams to Morocco after an earthquake there. One team will set up a field hospital to begin providing medical treatment to the thousands of people injured in the disaster. The second team will oversee search and rescue along with the IDF. The devastating earthquake that killed over 2,000 people. (This is not reported by 'Israel-loving' media!)
The Israeli aid delegation to Morocco is on hold.
Israel has the best search and rescue teams in the world.
The offer has not yet been accepted by the government of Morocco,
which puts anti-Israel political games above the lives of its own people.
Mentality of the Former Masters
by Steven Shamrak
The following communication reveals the deep-seated hatred of ‘the master’ toward the former slaves. This attitude and twisted mentality toward Israel and Jews can be easily observed in the behavior of the French, Russians, Turks… and even some Americans.
These former rulers of the Jewish people appear unable to accept Jews as equals; thus, they are incapable of taking an objective view on the Arab-Israel conflict and allowing Israel a free hand in dealing with her enemies. They are not willing to accept Jews, nor are they able to accept Israel as a free and equal nation. They have been doing everything possible to sabotage and minimize our successes both before and since Israel declared her independence.
Unfortunately, many Jews are still not ready to be free. We must stop bowing down to those self-centered, egotistical, puffed-up idiots who still think that they are the rulers of the world. We have no choice but to truly accept our freedom which is long overdue! We have to start doing what is right for Jews first - right now!
I recently received an email from a Turkish man who is on my mailing list. His correspondence started with a semi-polite assertion, saying that Israel’s aggression is the cause of Arab antagonism and terror. The following is an extract of the communication after my initial reply:
Turkish ‘Friend’: “Mr. Shamrak, all I can say is you are impossible man (because I stood up to his initial non-factual, anti-Israel conjectures), now I can understand why you will never have peace on Middle East… I am proud of who I am and what I am. We are the conquerors (Turks), now somebody else is turn (it goes around). USA will go down sooner or later...”
Reply: You wrote: "I am proud of who I am and what I am." - But, Jews must not be?
Turkish ‘Friend’: Yes, I am proud, because we were never slaved to any nation, can you say the same thing? Just look at yourself in the mirror you will see the white wash.
Reply: You wrote: "we were never enslaved" – You still are enslaving millions of Armenians and Kurds. You still deny the genocide of the Armenians in 1915. You are not only denying freedom to the Kurds in Turkey, but invaded Northern Iraq not long ago (Syria now) and have been killing them over there, so do not preach morality to anyone, and in particular to the Jews!”
Turkish ‘Friend’: People like you deserves what Hitler did. And now I understand why he did. Who knows may be it was a mistake saving you Jews from Spanish torture and killing. You have no morality.
Reply: I guess, this is an 'apology' for the genocide of up to 1.5 million of Armenians. The genocide that opened the door to the Holocaust! If you want to see the face of evil, please, look in the mirror at any time.
I have received no more messages from him. Anti-Semitic bigots do not like hear facts of their own historic and even current cruelty toward others! They only like and able to deal with subservient Jews!