Peace With Saudi Arabia??

 Video Of The Week - Netanyahu with Pompeo in Saudi Arabia - https://tinyurl.com/yx8fmq7a

 From JP 23-11-2020 by Iahav Harkov

 For the full article go to- https://tinyurl.com/y573a9d9

 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Neom, Saudi Arabia, on Sunday, Israeli sources have confirmed.

 Netanyahu, along with Mossad chief Yossi Cohen, National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat and Netanyahu’s Military Secretary Avi Bluth, used a private plane belonging to businessman Udi Angel, which the prime minister has used for past diplomatic trips. The plane left Israel at 5 p.m. on Sunday and returned after midnight.

 The Israeli and Saudi sides discussed Iran and normalization, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing a senior Saudi adviser.

Netanyahu said in a Likud faction meeting that “for years, [he] never commented on these matters and will not start now. For years, I have spared no effort in strengthening Israel and expanding the circle of peace.”

 Still, Education Minister Yoav Gallant confirmed that the meeting in Saudi Arabia took place, calling it an “amazing achievement” and “a matter of great importance” in an interview with Army Radio.

 Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan denied that the crown prince met with Israeli officials during the meeting with Pompeo, saying, “the only officials present were American and Saudi.” However, he did not deny that any meeting between MBS and Netanyahu took place.

 Farhan’s denial is likely a reflection of Saudi King Salman’s continued reticence to make his country’s warming ties with Israel official.

US President Donald Trump mentioned the possibility that Saudi Arabia would join the Abraham Accords Israel signed with other Gulf states in recent months, but reports came out immediately afterward of a generational divide, with the 84-year-old king remaining loyal to the traditional Saudi position – that peace with a Palestinian state must come before normalization with Israel – while the 35-year-old crown prince supports open ties with the Jewish state.

 The trip was kept tightly under wraps in Israel as it was being planned for more than a month, and neither Defense Minister Benny Gantz nor Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi were informed before it took place. IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi was also uninformed, though Netanyahu’s military secretary did participate in the meeting.

 On Sunday, however, Prince Faisal told Reuters that normalization with Israel would only come after “a permanent and comprehensive peace agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis including the establishment of a Palestinian state on 1967 borders.”

The minister said his country has “supported normalization with Israel for a long time,” pointing out that they authored the Saudi Peace Initiative that would have the Arab world establish ties with Israel in exchange for their vision of a two-state solution.

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al-Masri’s Killing to aid Biden-Israel relations?

 Video Of The Week - Israeli Arab Yoseph Haddad On BDS. https://tinyurl.com/y4ajt3g7

For The Full Article go to JP, by Seth j. Frantzman  15.11.2020 https://tinyurl.com/y5h7qf8a     

  Initial reports said Abu Muhammad al-Masri was killed at the “behest” of the US. He was killed in August, so why did the information only come out in November?

 The reports of the killing in Tehran led to important questions about Iran’s role in accepting global terrorists, former Israeli ambassador to the US Michael Oren said.

 “No one is asking why Iran is hosting al-Qaeda commanders and why the United States should renew a nuclear deal that gives tens of billions of dollars to those who harbor the murderers of 3,000 Americans,” he said.

 The operation to track and kill Masri took place earlier this year, the Associated Press reported Sunday, and was facilitated by “bold intelligence operations by the two allied nations.” The US provided the intelligence on where Masri was living and his alias, and “Israeli agents carried out the killing,” the report said.

 Masri was killed by “Kidon, a unit within the secretive Israeli spy organization Mossad allegedly responsible for the assassination of high-value targets,” the report said. Masri’s daughter, the widow of Hamzah bin Laden, the son of Osama bin Laden, was also killed, it said.

 The killing of this al-Qaeda senior leader could help Israel with the new US administration, according to reports. This is important because the Biden team is considered close to Israel but is also critical of the Trump administration’s foreign policy.

 Regarding Iran, there was deep divergence between the Trump administration and those who preferred to stay within the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, known as the Iran deal. There is also a lot of discussion about Iran’s role in the region.

 Some depict Iran as more moderate, a regime the US can work with to reduce tensions. Others see the regime as seeking regional hegemony. Iran’s development of ballistic missiles and drones, and its role in supporting proxies in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, are often a threat to US allies.

 The timing of the reports on the killing of Masri creates two converging narratives. First, it provides evidence of the close relationship between the US and Israel and showcases Israel’s capabilities in the region and why it is such a key ally of Washington. That means the relationship between Israel and the US is not just one of Washington supporting Jerusalem; it goes both ways. Israel provides key capabilities in the region for the Americans.

 Second, the revelation that al-Qaeda operatives are being hosted in Iran shows that Iran not only works with Sunni extremists against the West; it specifically harbors those who killed Americans. Iran could have ejected these terrorists as part of the Iran deal to show it is moderating. But it did not.

 This illustrates what many experts in the region have been saying about Iran: Its threat is not just about the nuclear program but is the sum of all of the threats it poses, including its willingness to work with al-Qaeda.

 This bursts the bubble of the simplistic narrative that portrays Iran as only a Shi’ite Islamic theocracy, incapable of working with Sunni jihadists.

 Iran is also a cynical country that does everything it can to oppose the US and US allies. It has never altered that course, despite opportunities to do so.

 The operation in August revealed that. The timing of the reports on it suggest important ramifications.

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Rabbi Sacks on the connection between Judaism and Israel

Video Of The Week"Why I am a Jew" by Rabbi Sacks https://tinyurl.com/y4wjzdq8

For the full article go to Jonathan Sacks- https://tinyurl.com/y33f6ogl

 How can Anti-Zionism be the new Anti-Semitism? Surely there’s no connection between them. Anti-Semitism is hatred of Jews as a people, a race, an ethnic group. Anti-Zionism is objection to a country, a nation, a state. What’s the connection between them?

 Anti-Semitism is a virus that mutates, so that new anti-Semites can deny they are anti-Semites at all, because their hate is different from the old. In the Middle Ages Jews were hated for their religion. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century they were hated for their race. Today they are hated for their nation state, Israel.

 What then is the connection between Jews as a people, Judaism as a religion, and Israel as a state? The connection between the Jewish people and Israel goes back long before the birth of either Christianity or Islam. Jews created a society there in the days of Joshua, a kingdom in the days of Saul, and a nation with Jerusalem as its capital in the days of King David: all this more than 3,000 years ago.

 Jews are the only people who ever created a nation state there. At all other times in the past 3,000 years it was merely an administrative district in an empire whose centre was elsewhere: the Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Alexandrian, Roman and Byzantine empires, the Crusaders of the Holy Roman Empire, the various Muslim empires such as the Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, Mamluks and Ottomans, and finally the British. Jews are the only people who have maintained a continuous presence in the land. They are its indigenous, original inhabitants.

 The November 1947 United Nations vote to bring Israel into existence was a momentous reversal of imperialism. It gave back to the Jewish people the home taken from them by empire after empire. Israel was the only non-artificial creation in the Middle East after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The rest ­– among them Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Yemen – were artificial creations that hadn’t been states before, which is why most of them still exist in a condition of ethnic, religious and tribal strife. Only Israel had previously existed as a nation state.

 That’s the unbreakable connection between Israel and the Jewish people. The connection between Israel and Judaism is equally ancient and fundamental. It is more than just as Robert Frost said, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” Read the Hebrew Bible and you’ll see immediately that it isn’t about the salvation of the soul. It’s about creating in the holy land a society based on the biblical ideas of justice, welfare, the sanctity of life – and caring for the stranger “because you know what it feels like to be a stranger.”

 Judaism began with two journeys to the land, one by Abraham and Sarah, the other by the Israelites in the days of Moses. At least half of the 613 commandments of the Bible are only applicable to the land of Israel. And though in the centuries of exile and dispersion Jews lived in almost every land under the sun, Israel has remained a focus of their prayers and the only place where they have been able to do what every other nation takes for granted, construct their own society in the light of their own ideals.

 Judaism differs from the other Abrahamic monotheisms, Christianity and Islam, in that it is the only one of the three that never created or sought to create an empire. It was the imperialism of the Roman emperor Hadrian that led him in the 2nd century to change the country’s name to Palestine, one of the first, but certainly not the last, deliberate falsifications of history by those who seek to deny the Jewish people’s right to their land.

 There are 56 Islamic nations, and 159 in which Christians form the majority. There is and only ever has been one Jewish state, tiny and vulnerable though it is and always was. That is why Anti-Zionism, denying Jews the right to their one and only collective home by misrepresenting Judaism, is the new anti-Semitism, every bit as virulent and dangerous as the old.

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The Real Enemy of Islam

Video Of The Week - Jeremy Corbyn Suspended https://tinyurl.com/y3mftt7v

For the full Article from Gatestone by Khaled Abu Toameh 3-11-2020 https://tinyurl.com/y3t3krk2

a)     "The beheading of the French history teacher proves that political Islam has become a real threat to world peace in light of its expansionist tendency, which is currently embodied by Erdogan's project, which not only targets the societies of Muslim countries, but also other societies that incubate important Islamic communities." — Al-Habib Al-Aswad, Tunisian journalist, Al-Arab, October 28, 2020.

b)     He wants to represent himself as a defender of Islam. Which Islam does he speak for? Erdogan has committed crimes in Libya, Syria and all Arab countries. He is the one who is offending Islam." — Mustafa Bakri, Egyptian media personality, Al-Dostor Studio, October 30, 2020.

c)     The reactions of many Arabs and Muslims show that they view Erdogan as a more serious threat to Islam than Macron or others in the West.

Turkish President Erdogan is not authorized to speak on behalf of the Muslims, especially regarding the current controversy surrounding France's attitude toward Islam and Muslim terrorist attacks. That is what many Muslims are saying these days in the aftermath of Erdogan's attempt to present himself as the grand defender of Islam in a conflict that recently erupted between Muslims and France.

According to several Muslim political analysts and writers, Erdogan is trying to take advantage of the anti-France campaign in the Muslim world for his own political gain. The message the Muslims are sending to France and the rest of the world is that Erdogan is a hypocrite and opportunist, who is acting from personal interest and not out of concern for Muslims or Islam.

Last week, France condemned Erdogan for comments he made about French President Emmanuel Macron's mental health and treatment of Muslims. Erdogan had suggested that the French president needed "some kind of mental treatment" because of Macron's attitude toward Muslims in France. "What else is there to say about a head of state who doesn't believe in the freedom of religion and behaves this way against the millions of people of different faiths living in his own country?" Erdogan said in a speech at a meeting of his Justice and Development Party. He also called on Muslims to boycott French goods.

Erdogan's remarks came in response to Macron's pledge to crack down on radical Islamism in France after a Muslim terrorist beheaded history teacher Samuel Paty on October 16. Paty had taught a class on freedom of expression during which he used cartoons of the Islamic Prophet Mohammed from the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. Even before Paty was murdered, Macron defended the right to caricature the Prophet Mohammed. In September, he described Islam as a religion "in crisis" and announced that he would present a bill to strengthen a law that separates church and state in France.

Some Muslims see Erdogan's attacks on France as an attempt to divert attention from the growing criticism in the Arab world toward Turkey's meddling in the internal affairs of a number of Arab countries. Saudi Arabian activists have called for a boycott of Turkish products to protest Erdogan's repeated attacks on Arab leaders and countries.

"Erdogan's statements and his defense of Islam do not bear in their essence any religious dimensions, but rather an attempt to win the friendship of the angry street and also to save his country's economy, which is suffering badly after the success of the Arab boycott of Turkish goods."

Noting that Arab business executives and others have called for a boycott of Turkish products to protest the "hostile policies of the Erdogan regime," the newspaper quoted Egyptian political analyst Tareq Fahmi as saying:

"Erdogan's talk about adopting the defense of Islam has become unacceptable after everyone realized that the matter is purely political and has nothing to do with the religious dimension. The issue is also related to addressing Arab and Islamic public opinion so that Erdogan appears in the image of the great Arab and Islamic leader. Erdogan aims to ride the current wave and try to employ and invest it politically in his battles against Europe and France."

Lebanese journalist Joseph Abu Fadel scoffed at Erdogan's call for the protection of Muslims in France:

Abbas pointed out that Erdogan was also motivated by his concern over the decline of his popularity in Turkey:

"The beheading of the French history teacher proves that political Islam has become a real threat to world peace in light of its expansionist tendency, which is currently embodied by Erdogan's project, which not only targets the societies of Muslim countries, but also other societies that incubate important Islamic communities... When the Turkish president incited against France and President Macron, his primary concern was not religion or the Prophet Mohammed, but rather his geopolitical struggle with the French in the eastern Mediterranean, Libya, and generally North Africa and the Sahara region. Erdogan is convinced that Macron is a declared ally of countries that Ankara considers its enemies."

Egyptian media personality Mustafa Bakri said that Erdogan was taking advantage of various crises and cannot be sincere in his defense of Islam. Erdogan, he added, "is not an honest man."

"He took advantage of the situation against France and claimed to be defending Islam. He wants to represent himself as a defender of Islam. Which Islam does he speak for? Erdogan has committed crimes in Libya, Syria and all Arab countries. He is the one who is offending Islam."

"Some populist politicians think only about achieving their personal victories by using powerful and extremist rhetoric... What Erdogan came out with cannot be considered an endeavor to defend the interests of Muslims and the Prophet Mohammed, and he knows more than others what the consequences could be for the Muslim communities living in Western societies."

The reactions of many Arabs and Muslims show that they view Erdogan as a more serious threat to Islam than Macron or others in the West. The voices of Erdogan's critics, however, rarely find their way to the mainstream media.

Ironically, Erdogan, who is currently calling for a boycott of French products, is himself being boycotted by a growing number of Arabs and Muslims. It is Erdogan, bemoaning the "insults" to Islam made by Westerners, who is himself being accused by Muslims of killing Muslims and occupying their lands.

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