Hamas Is Ready for War with Israel

Gaza City, GAZA — The first thing you notice about Gaza: the donkeys. Attached to carts invariably driven by middle-aged men, they weave in and out of traffic, hauling fruits and vegetables through the city center.

Gaza still bears the scars of the 2014 war between Hamas and Israel. The 51-day conflict resulted in the deaths of 2,300 Gazans, with 10,000 others wounded; 66 Israeli soldiers and six Israeli civilians also lost their lives. Gaza’s infrastructure was decimated: A recent U.N. report stated that only 17 percent of the 18,000 homes destroyed during the conflict have been repaired, and an estimated 75,000 Gazans remain displaced.

Individual Terrorism: The Media Perspective

Israeli police investigate the scene of a shooting attack on an Israeli car on a road near Kokhav Hashahar in the West Bank, July 31, 2015. Photo: Thomas Coex / AFP

Israeli coverage of individual terrorist attacks has generally followed a set pattern, notable primarily for the lesser prominence assigned to most attacks by the media. Attempted attacks, rock and Molotov cocktail throwing, and tire burnings that do not result in casualties are rarely reported. Moreover, even when the topic does make it to the media, it remains on the sidelines; coverage is brief, not prominently placed, and is quick to leave the news cycle. In order to deal with the phenomenon of individual terrorism, a balance must be found between the intensive media response to selected isolated events – which may create pressure on decision makers to take severe action and thereby contribute to a cycle of escalation – and acclimation to a routine of daily attacks in the security arena. Highlighting individual terrorism without surveying possible solutions for the phenomenon is problematic in that it may leave Israeli citizens with a sense of personal insecurity. On the other hand, media reticence may help resist a tendency to inflate the phenomenon, which could spur the political leadership to order more offensive measures in an effort to foil attacks or in response to their occurrence.

What Kind of State Will Israel Be?

If you’re at all interested in the future of the State of Israel, you need to read the speech that Israeli President Reuven Rivlin delivered to the 15th Annual Herziliya Conference in early June on what he termed the “real Israel” — a country he argues is now divided into four tribes growing increasingly apart.

As far as I can tell, the speech received almost no attention in the U.S. media. I follow Israel closely, but I missed it, too. Why? Most likely because when it comes to Israel, the Iranian nuclear issue has sucked up all the available oxygen and maybe because everyone and his brother has been crying wolf on the demographic challenges Israel faces for a very long time.

"It is in Israel’s interest that the two-state solution will remain feasible and will be promoted"

Dr. Nimrod Goren is the Founder and Chairman of Mitvim - The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies and a Teaching Fellow in Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He holds a PhD in Middle Eastern Studies and Political Psychology from the Hebrew University, and his dissertation topic was "The role of external incentives in promoting peace: the cases of Israel and Turkey". After completing his doctorate, Nimrod was selected to take part in Public Policy training at Syracuse University as the Israeli participant in the 2009-10 US State Department's Fulbright Hubert Humphrey Fellowship Program. Nimrod is the former Executive Director of the Young Israeli Forum for Cooperation (YIFC), and in this capacity he was awarded the 2009 Victor J. Goldberg IIE Prize for Peace in the Middle East. In addition, Nimrod has worked at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, the Nehemia Levtzion Center for Islamic Studies, and the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace. He is a Board Member at MALI – The Center for Enterprising Citizens, and his areas of expertise include the Middle East peace process, Israel’s foreign policy, and modern Turkey.

The Amazing Decline of America’s Special Relationships

Most Americans have never heard of Edward Miliband. And given this week’s result in the U.K. elections it is very likely they never will. After a crushing defeat he has already resigned as leader of the Labour Party and is poised to return to the Wallace & Gromit animated films from which he seems to have been discovered. His electoral failure and that of his party once again proves the old electoral adage that unappealing leaders and incompetent campaigns often produce bad results.

The New Face of Israel’s Hard Right

Last summer, thousands of Israelis shared a Facebook post published in Hebrew by little-known right-wing lawmaker Ayelet Shaked.

An excerpt from an unpublished article written by pro-settler Uri Elitzur, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s onetime chief of staff, who passed away in May 2014, the post was published in English translation on a blog on the anti-Zionist website ElectronicIntifada.com. The author of the blog post claimed that the 631-word excerpt called Palestinian children “little snakes” and accused Palestinian mothers of raising their kids to become violent martyrs. And, the blog post said, it read as “a call for genocide” of the Palestinian people.

Israeli soldiers cast doubt on legality of Gaza military tactics

Testimonies provided by more than 60 Israeli soldiers who fought in last summer’s war in Gaza have raised serious questions over whether Israel’s tactics breached its obligations under international law to distinguish and protect civilians.


Israeli soldier testimony: ‘Most of our shooting was random... we didn’t think about civilian casualties’ – video

The claims – collected by the human rights group Breaking the Silence – are contained in dozens of interviews with Israeli combatants, as well as with soldiers who served in command centres and attack rooms, a quarter of them officers up to the rank of major.

An Israeli Lobby in China?

Image Credit: REUTERS/Baz Ratner

Earlier this year, StandWithUs (SWU), a pro-Israeli American advocacy group that coordinates its activities closely with the Israeli government, finally unveiled an SWU-China division for its organization in an event that marked a joint celebration of the Chinese New Year and Jewish Tu B’Shvat in Jerusalem (involving, interestingly enough, talks by three Israel Defense Force soldiers from China’s Kaifeng Jewish community).

Israelis go to polls as Netanyahu faces tough reelection race

Israelis began casting votes Tuesday after a bruising election campaign of clashing personalities that saw voters move away from anxieties about a nuclear Iran or terror groups to focus instead on domestic issues like rising grocery bills and soaring housing costs.

Netanyahu votes in Israeli election(0:49)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cast his vote in Tuesday’s election. Netanyahu is facing a stiff challenge from Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog. (AP)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking a historic fourth term in office, but he faces a surprisingly tough challenge from the head of the opposition, Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog.

Israel’s Arab political parties have united for the first time

A coalition of once fractious Arab parties is suddenly emerging as Israel’s newest power bloc, forcing the Jewish state to pay attention to its large Arab minority as never before.

A Joint List campaign billboard in the Arab Israeli town of Umm el-Fahm. Israel’s Arab minority is hoping to gain muscle after next week’s parliamentary election, with four Arab parties uniting under one banner for the first time. (Ammar Awad/Reuters)

If polls taken ahead of next week’s general election are accurate, Arab Israelis could end up heading the third-largest political faction in Israel’s next parliament, giving a voice to the often-sidelined Arab population.

Netanyahu’s Faulty Case to the U.S. Congress

Israeli Prime Minister  one true idol is Winston Churchill, Great Britain’s standard-bearer during the Second World War and a man that history has commonly credited with being one of the most impressive and rhetorically gifted statesmen of the 20th century. In fact, Netanyahu’s affinity for Churchill is so well-renowned that House Speaker John Boehner – the man who extended Bibi an invitation to speak at a joint meeting of Congress on the Iranian nuclear negotiations – reportedly gave the Israeli Prime Minister a bust of the former British Conservative Party leader as a gift before his address.

Image Credit: REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

By the time that Netanyahu finished delivering his speech to Congress on Tuesday, March 3, he shared a special bond with his icon: Like Winston Churchill before him, Netanyahu has addressed the United States Congress on three separate occasions. And, for all the controversy and politics that surrounded the roughly hour-long address to hundreds of U.S. lawmakers and hundreds of additional guests, Netanyahu’s third speech was a highly “Churchillian” effort. The prime minister was passionate throughout his address, seemingly humbled by being greeted so warmly as he walked to the lectern, and absolutely satisfied that his central message was heard across the United States: Iran is such a dangerous and unpredictable regime that even the most rudimentary of nuclear weapons programs on Iranian soil is a bridge to far for the State of Israel.

Netanyahu, Obama and the Geopolitics of Speeches

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is visiting the United States this week to speak to Congress on March 3. The Obama administration is upset that Speaker of the House John Boehner invited Netanyahu without consulting with the White House and charged Boehner with political grandstanding. Netanyahu said he was coming to warn the United States of the threat of Iran. Israeli critics of Netanyahu charged that this was a play for public approval to improve his position in Israel's general election next year. Boehner denied any political intent beyond getting to hear Netanyahu's views. The Obama administration claimed that the speech threatens the fabric of U.S.-Israeli relations.

Let us begin with the obvious. First, this is a speech, and it is unlikely that Netanyahu could say anything new on the subject of Iran, given that he never stops talking about it. Second, everyone involved is grandstanding. They are politicians, and that's what they do. Third, the idea that U.S.-Israeli relations can be shredded by a grandstanding speech is preposterous. If that's all it takes, relations are already shredded.

Kerry: Netanyahu Wrong on Iraq and Wrong on Iran

The nation’s top diplomat offered a decidedly undiplomatic take in describing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opposition to a potential nuclear deal with Iran.

“Israel is safer today with the added time we have given and the stoppage of the advances in the nuclear program than they were before we got that agreement, which by the way the prime minister opposed,” Secretary of State John Kerry said during a House Committee on Foreign Affairs hearing Wednesday. “He was wrong.”

Israel’s primary education needs work to stay ahead

According to an October 2014 study challenging the fairness of Israeli education, Israeli Arabs are disadvantaged relative to their Jewish peers when it comes to sitting standardized exams because Arabic is more difficult to both read and comprehend than Hebrew.

The study, published by Prof. Rafiq Ibrahim of the University of Haifa, focuses on standardized exams like the National Institute for Testing and Evaluation’s bagrut and psychometry – without which students cannot apply to institutions of higher learning.

When Netanyahu closed the door on peace talks

The following story probably won’t dispel the widespread notion among the Israeli public and 

leadership that since the Second Intifada there has been no partner on the Palestinian side. 

This is a notion that is based on statements from politicians from the right, among others, who 

claim that every time the moment of truth comes, PA President Mahmoud Abbas rejects peace 

agreements.

Quick Watch0:59

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres seen during a ceremony laying a founding stone 

for the National Memorial Hall for IDF victims of war on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem on April 30, 2014. 

(Photo credit: David Vaaknini/POOL/Flash 90)

But in at least one instance, that preconception proved unfounded, even false. Less than four 

years ago, it wasn’t Abbas who ran away from the table, but rather Prime Minister Benjamin 

Netanyahu, who declined to advance talks between Abbas and then-president Shimon Peres.

Did Israel's 'Hannibal Directive' Lead to a War Crime in Gaza?

The July-August war in Gaza drew international condemnation for a number of reasons, but one episode proved more deadly than any other: an Israeli air and artillery bombardment on Aug. 1 that killed 150 people in a matter of hours.

Six weeks on from the war, with the toll of destruction still being counted, there is deepening unease about what took place that day, especially over whether too much force was used. Some legal experts say a war crime may have been committed.

Mahmoud Abbas is 79. His hold on the Palestinian people is tenuous. The institution he 

governs from the dilapidated Muqata compound in Ramallah is a poorly managed dictatorship. 

He is in the ninth year of a four-year presidential term, overseeing a regime that arrests young 

Palestinians who criticize it on Facebook.





Yet all that is secondary to the most glaring indignity of his rule: he is kept in power not by his 

own political acumen or even police power, but by Israel’s efficient suppression of his 

opponents, primarily Hamas, in the West Bank.

Young Israeli cyberwarriors learn to duel in the dark

There are a lot of secrets kept in Israel’s intelligence community, but this is not one of them: Israel aims to become a cybersecurity superpower, and to do that, the Israeli military is launching an ambitious program to groom the next generation of cyberwarriors while they are still in high school.

Gal Londe, Alona Haimov and Edo Nahman, all high school students, in one of Israel's new cyber classrooms in the city of Holon not only learn how the Internet operates but how "bad guys" hack into systems to steal data, insert malware or eavesdrop on communications. (William Booth/The Washington Post)

The little Jewish state that prides itself on the sobriquet “Start-up Nation” has set cybersecurity as a national goal, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a prominent cheerleader.

The Military Reality of Israel's Operation in Gaza Sets In

Hamas and affiliate militant factions out of the Gaza Strip are so far rejecting an Egyptian-proposed cease-fire, having launched far more than 100 rockets since the cease-fire proposal. In exposing Israel's inability to stem the rocket flow, Hamas is trying to claim a symbolic victory over Israel. Hamas' spin aside, the military reality paints a very different picture.

Palestinian militants have launched more than 1,200 rockets, but their limited range and accuracy combined with Israeli defensive capabilities have led to only one civilian death, less than 100 further casualties and disruptions to daily life over the past week. Conversely, Israel Defense Forces have struck more than 1,500 targets in Gaza, inflicting much heavier destruction on the militants. On the surface, the exchange of fire might seem balanced, but conflicts are measured by more than aggregate numbers of casualties and explosions.

IDF deploys more Iron Domes, calls up air reserves

The IDF deployed two Iron Dome defense batteries near the cities of Beersheba and Ashdod 

Thursday night amid growing tensions in the country’s south, as rocket fire from the Gaza Strip 

persisted even after a ceasefire was declared between Jerusalem and Islamic Jihad.

Two Israeli soldiers stand near an Iron Dome battery near the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon on March 13, 2014. (photo credit:AFP/DAVID BUIMOVITCH)

Earlier Thursday, an emergency air defense reservists call-up was issued by the IDF.