Category: Articles

AFSI looks forward to the appointment of Mike Pompeo as US Secretary of State, which was also welcomed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Pompeo has always held the position that the Iran nuclear deal does not guarantee that Iran has no pathway to developing a bomb.

While he was a Kansas congressman, Pompeo was among a group of American lawmakers who introduced legislation that would have prohibited then President Barack Obama from providing Iran direct or indirect access to the U.S. dollar or the American financial system.

Source: Arutz Sheva

In Caroline Glick’s Jerusalem Post OpEd today, Glick writes, “AIPAC’s mission to cultivate and maintain bipartisan support for Israel in the United States is an important mission. Unfortunately, the messages AIPAC’s leaders delivered during the organization’s annual policy convention this week in Washington indicate that they are at a loss for how to achieve their mission in the contentious political environment now prevalent in post- Obama America.”

The American Jewish leadership’s downward spiral has accelerated. This can be traced back to its cowardly silence when US president Barack Obama began treating Israel as a rogue state and applying moral equivalence to Israelis and Palestinian terrorists.

The leaders of the Reform and Conservative movements and the Anti-Defamation League have effectively become adjuncts of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. Many leaders in the Reform and Conservative movements, along with the Anti-Defamation League, have become so obsessed with hatred of US President Donald Trump that their bitterness supersedes their support for Israel.

Read more of Isi Liebler’s Opinion piece in the Jerusalem Post.

This year’s event was organized and sponsored by the YESHA Council in partnership with the State of Israel Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy and the Jordan Valley Regional Council. The event focused on solidifying Israel’s connection to her ancestral heartland and building bridges for peace by supporting the industrial zones of Judea and Samaria which employ thousands of Israeli and Arabs that work together in peace.

In sharp contrast to the betrayal last week of AIPAC’s Howard Kohr announcing support for a state and flag for the PA, the YESHA Council Conference was a breath of fresh air. This parallel conference drew HUGE support for Israel’s SOVEREIGNTY and for incorporating Judea and Samaria into a WHOLE ISRAEL. Speaking to a packed house Ambassador Dani Dayan, Consul General of Israel in New York clearly delineated why Judea and Samaria can never be turned into a Palestinian state. In fact,he affirmed that if we don’t have a claim to Judea and Samaria – the heart of Israel – then we do not have a claim to anything.

Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked (Jewish Home) filed a complaint against the Israeli judge investigating PM Netanyahu who coordinated her decision for an upcoming hearing with an investigator Tuesday.

“I’ll practice looking surprised”, replied Poznansky-Katz in a series of messages found on the WhatsApp chat program between Judge Ronit Poznansky-Katz, and Eran Shaham-Shavit, an investigator from the Israel Securities Authority in the PM Netanyahu case.

Arutz Sheva story HERE 

President Mahmoud Abbas authorized the 2018 PA budget on Sunday with a law that says 7% of each budget must go to paying terrorists, or to their families, if they’re killed in the act.

This is an increase in payments to terrorists and their families by nearly $56 million, Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Avi Dichter (Likud) said overnight Monday, when a bill to discourage the practice passed a first reading.

Jerusalem Post story HERE

Iran tested and deployed the Russian-made S-300 anti-aircraft missile system that has long worried U.S. and Israeli military officials because it gives the Islamic Republic a “generational improvement in capabilities,” the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency disclosed, according to Bloomberg.

Source: Artuz Sheva 

US Senator Marco Rubio spoke at the AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington D.C. Tuesday, to explain the importance of the US-Israel relationship.

“I think America standing with our allies is important.”

“I think Israel stands for everything we hope the Middle East will become: A free-enterprise democracy. If we had more countries like that in the Middle East our lives would be a lot simpler.

The United Nations discourages peace between Israelis and Palestinians by perpetuating an “illusion” that the existence of the Jewish state has caused the region’s conflicts, Nikki Haley, the US envoy to the UN, said on Monday.

Haley told the crowd that Israel “is not going away.” Realization of that at the UN is the key to ending Israel’s isolation there.