Channel 2 screenshot of Nazareth mayor Ali Salem yelling at MK Ayman Odeh.

The kneejerk response in Israel’s Arab sector is to declare general strikes to underscore what is hyped as “popular anger.”

The latest expression of such “anger” took place last week when throughout Israel’s Arab communities businesses shut down for a day. Doubtless many were forced to do so but the truth is that many others were willingly swept up in the well-orchestrated volatility.

What did they aim to achieve? Whom did they aim to hurt?

Surely they realized that they are only shooting themselves in the foot. Their strikes simply and serially fail to awe the mystified Jewish majority. The only effect strikes have, if any, is to hone even further the already deeply ingrained impression that this country’s Arabs side unequivocally with Israel’s existential and implacable foes.

To resort to extreme understatement, this in no way contributes to the cause of coexistence. Continue reading →

The aftermath of Hassan Manasrah’s handiwork in Pisgat Ze’ev.

Directly inflaming passions, Nabil Abu-Rudeina, spokesman to Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas, declared on Tuesday that 15-year-old Hassan Manasrah (who gravely wounded an Israeli 13-year-old and stabbed another passerby in Jerusalem’s Pisgat Ze’ev neighborhood) had been “cold-bloodedly executed” by Israelis.

PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah chimed in: “Israeli occupation forces assassinated in cold blood the child Hassan Manasrah and his innocence and calls for help did not help.”

PLO Secretary-General Saeb Erekat vowed to seek the prosecution of Israel’s leaders at the International Criminal Court for ordering “extrajudicial executions.” He embellished his accusations with provocative descriptions of martyred Palestinians being shot in the streets “like dogs” for no reason and left to bleed while they are cursed and brutalized.

The PA media similarly spins tales about every single stymied terrorist attacker of recent days – whether the attacker was killed to halt the killing spree or disabled in the act. Continue reading →

Here clearly are comprehensive statistics that illustrate exactly how the PA uses its resources.

One of the most significant recent scoops came from Israel Radio’s Palestinian affairs correspondent, Gal Berger, who managed to lay his hands on actual Palestinian Authority spreadsheets that show precisely which convicted terrorist behind-Israeli-bars is subsidized and to what tune by the Palestinian Authority.

Normally rows and columns of financial data hardly make for a riveting read. But this case constitutes a striking exception.

Here clearly are comprehensive statistics that illustrate exactly how the PA uses its resources – including moneys handed over monthly by Israel as well as contributions the PA solicits from international donors. The analysis of the figures is singularly enlightening despite the fact that the general bottom line is hardly astonishing or unanticipated.

It has long been known that the PA rewards the perpetrators of some of the most heinous atrocities against Israeli civilians for their deeds. Continue reading →

Adele Banita after help arrived

Foreign news purveyors tend to sanitize terrorist crimes against Jews – when they at all bother to report them. They also dehumanize Jewish victims when referring to them by generic designations with distinct derogatory nuances.

The heartrending tragedy of Adele Banita offers a stark case in point.

She, her husband and two babies were attacked by a knife-wielding Arab terrorist on Jerusalem’s main Old City route to and from the Western Wall. Aharon Banita was stabbed to death and one toddler was slashed. Adele escaped the murderer’s grasp – and with his blade still stuck in her neck – ran to raise the alarm, to save her children.

It was the stuff of nightmares, of sadistic horror flicks. Continue reading →

Syria’s territory – that until recently domiciled a purportedly bona fide nation – has now been reduced to a proverbial chessboard upon which foreign powers play a cynical realpolitik game.

So far the superior maneuvering is indisputably that of Russian President Vladimir Putin. It’s far from clear which long-term strategy, if any, is pursued by his American counterpart Barak Obama.

Again, after an extended absence, Russia looms as the Mideast’s imposing hegemon – one whose self-interests determine who will prevail and who will fail.

Historically the now-defunct Soviet Union used to describe this region as “adjacent to our southern borders.” This contention presumably facilitated the claim that the Mideast is essential for the USSR’s security and thus may be annexed to Moscow’s sphere of pseudo-legitimate influence. It’s still the same. Continue reading →

Why would “peaceful worshipers” stockpile weaponry and in a holy site at that?

Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas vowed to prevent Jews from “defiling al-Aksa Mosque with their filthy feet.” Was there no-nonsense condemnation of such incitement from the UN? Not a hint thereof.

The UN never ceases to blow our minds although the organization’s barefaced bias shouldn’t realistically surprise any reasonable Israeli. Yet somehow we compulsively continue to assume that abundant incontrovertible evidence before all eyes would finally even the skewed international scales.

Invariably however, time and again we are shown that no absurdity is too absurd for the UN.  Continue reading →

This lone windswept island – astride the juncture-point of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans as well as the North American and European tectonic plates – is as far-removed from the Jewish people, the Jewish state and the entire Mideast as can be.

The boycott which the Reykjavik municipal council declared on all Israeli products (and then clumsily backpedalled therefrom, to include only “occupied-territory” goods) was always meaningless in practical terms. But its meaning was mega-distressing on the moral plane.

Iceland is chillingly emblematic of phenomena greater than its own minuscule role in world affairs.

This lone windswept island – astride the juncture-point of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans as well as the North American and European tectonic plates – is as far-removed from the Jewish people, the Jewish state and the entire Mideast as can be. Continue reading →

German early bird Sigmar Gabriel catching worms in Tehran.

In business, the early bird really does catch the worm and, mindful of that, European firms are rushing with headlong alacrity to do deals with Iran – even though pro-forma the sanctions against the ayatollah regime hadn’t yet been lifted.

Speediest and most impatient of all are the Germans, who cannot contain their zeal to profit. They dispatched a high-level 60-member delegation topped by Angela Merkel’s second-in-command along with representatives from such industrial giants as Linde, Siemens, Mercedes-Daimler, Volkswagen, et al.

To be sure, while the Germans are keenest to rake in the benefits of dealing with the genocidal enemies of the Jewish state, they have special incentives to appear righteous. Continue reading →

Kirill Petrenko

Even before it was officially announced that Russian-born Kirill Petrenko was appointed to take over in 2018 from Sir Simon Rattle as conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, Petrenko’s Jewishness became a hot issue in Germany.

His very candidacy sufficed to bring to the fore supposedly extinct Judeophobic maliciousness. It most likely lurked all along behind the veneered semblance of impeccable decorum.

In her commentary for Northern German Radio [NDR], Sabine Lange described Petrenko in the Wagnerian idiom as “the tiny gnome, the Jewish caricature.” Continue reading →

Cops at Damascus Gate soon after the recent stabbing

Presumably all Israelis are expected to take heart from officialdom’s line that the recent spate of terror attacks comprises nothing but unforeseeable products of “personal initiative.” Presumably the accumulation of deadly and near-deadly terror outrages is nothing but an apparently incidental buildup without a guiding hand pulling strings behind the scenes.

Presumably such learned opinions – both from the top brass and self-appointed experts – are supposed to calm our anxieties.

But those with longer memories will quickly note that such was also the soothing conventional wisdom when the first intifada was at its height and when the second erupted. Indeed, it is always individuals who carry out attacks, except in the case of bombings – suicide or otherwise – where clearly group collusion is required. Continue reading →