Assad could prevail in Syrian civil war, minister says
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) There is a “real possibility” that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “could survive Syria’s civil war and even prevail in it” against the rebels trying to topple him, Israeli International Relations and Strategic Affairs Minister Dr. Yuval Steinitz told a group of foreign journalists in Jerusalem on Monday.
Steinitz’s comments reflect the recent turnaround in Assad’s fortunes, with success on the battlefield thanks to immense military aid from Hezbollah, financial aid by Iran, and diplomatic cover by Russia. The assessment also underscores the changing nature of the Syrian conflict and Israel’s views on it. Israeli security officials were initially convinced that Assad’s demise was only a matter of time. Last July, then-Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the Assad regime was “at the beginning of its end.”
Cyberattacks against Israel by Iran and its proxies on the rise
(JNS.org) Cyberattacks against Israel perpetrated “directly by Iran and its proxies—Hezbollah and Hamas” are on the rise, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday at the annual international cybersecurity conference at Tel Aviv University.
“The attacks will increase in intensity and in quantity,” Netanyahu said, according to Israel Hayom. “Cyberwarfare is an integral part of today’s battlefield. This is not the warfare of the future; this is the warfare of the here and now.”
Dr. Eviatar Matania, head of the Israel National Cyber Bureau, said his bureau is “spearheading extensive work on advancing national cybernetic defense and suitable national preparation, which will soon be submitted to the cabinet for approval.”
The cyberattacks have targeted Israel’s water system, electric grid, and trains and banks, Netanyahu said.
“Every sphere of civilian economic life, let’s not even talk about our security, is a potential or actual target for a cyberattack,” he said.
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Dutch politician Geert Wilders: ‘What we need today is Zionism for the nations of Europe’
(JNS.org) LOS ANGELES—Europeans “need to follow the example of the Jewish people and re-establish their nation-state” to counter the growing Islamization of their countries, Dutch politician Geert Wilders said Sunday in Los Angeles.
“My friends, what we need today is Zionism for the nations of Europe,” Wilders, founder and leader of the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands, said at the “Europe’s Last Stand?” conference, organized by the American Freedom Alliance.
Wilders described that Europe’s inner cities “have come to resemble Northern Africa and the Middle East” because they are ruled by Islamic Sharia law, noting that Islamic areas border the European Union headquarters in Brussels and that “largely Islamic suburbs” surround Paris.
“Europe is in a terrible state,” Wilders said. “Bit by bit, European countries are losing their national sovereignty.”
Elan Journo, fellow and director of policy research at The Ayn Rand Institute of Irvine, Calif., said Europe’s history—including “real applications of communism and socialism,” feudalism, and the French Revolution—has led many Europeans to accept a collectivist mentality that closely resembles militant Islamic ideology and currently works in harmony with it. That collectivist mentality has also spurred anti-Semitism, Journo explained.
“What happens when you bring in an ideology like militant Islam or Islamic totalitarianism [into Europe], which by virtue of its religious creed divides the world into two groups—there’s the believers and the unbelievers—that magnifies an existing view, that the Jews are part of the unbelievers,” Journo told JNS.org.
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Paris museum depicts Palestinian suicide bombers as ‘martyrs’
(JNS.org) A Paris museum has drawn outrage from France’s Jewish community over a display depicting photos of Palestinian suicide bombers as martyrs.
The exhibit entitled “Death” by Palestinian photographer Ahlam Shibli at the taxpayer-subsidized Jeu De Paume Museum is described on the museum’s website as showing “how Palestinian society preserves the presence of the ‘martyrs.’”
According to CRIF, the representative council of Jewish institutions in France, the display features what it calls “martyrs” from Palestinian terror groups including the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
In a letter written on June 5 to France’s Culture and Communications Minister Aurelie Filipetti, CRIF President Roger Cukierman called on the French government to intervene.
“It is particularly regrettable and unacceptable that in the heart of Paris such a display should apologize for terrorism,” wrote Cukierman, according to a CRIF statement that was translated by JNS.org.
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Google to buy Israeli app Waze for $1.3 billion
(JNS.org) Internet giant Google is set to acquire the Israeli navigation and traffic app Waze for $1.3 billion after Apple and Facebook were also reportedly interested in buying the company.
Waze, which is based in the Israeli city of Ra’anana, is one of the most popular navigation, apps in the world with 50 million users. The Waze app provides drivers with information on traffic conditions, including police presence, accidents and roadwork, by collecting crowd-sourced information on its social network.
According to a report in the Israeli financial daily Globes, Waze resisted efforts by Facebook to buy the company because Waze “insisted that its Israeli employees should continue working in Israel, which Facebook did not accept.”
“Google has already made two acquisitions in Israel, and it has an office here, in contrast to Facebook, which closed most of the companies it acquired, including Israeli start-ups,” the Globes report noted.
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Former Lebanese president warns Mideast Christians face ‘existential crisis’
(JNS.org) Former Lebanese President Amine Gemayel warned that Middle East Christians face an “existential crisis” due the threat of “religious cleansing” in the region, at a speech sponsored by Christian Solidarity International.
Gemayel, a Maronite Christian who was president from 1982-1988 after taking over for his brother Bashir, who was assassinated during the bloody Lebanese Civil War, said Christians “are often victims of persecution by both the state and society in the Middle East.”
Gemayel specifically mentioned the ongoing civil war in his neighboring Syria, saying the abduction in April of two Christian archbishops in Aleppo highlighted the plight of Syrian Christians. Currently the leader of Lebanon’s Maronite Christian Kataeb Party (also known as the Phalange Party), Gemayel said that the international community must do more to help the Arab world.
“The international community can and must assist in the process of transitioning to democracy in the Arab world,” he said, especially in “critical areas such as democracy and human rights.”
“The challenge for Arab Muslims now is to prove to the world that the region is capable of achieving pluralist freedom,” Gemayel said. “Now is the time to formulate and implement solutions.”
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JNF withdraws from event where Bill Clinton will earn $500,000 speaking fee
(JNS.org) The Jewish National Fund (JNF) has announced that it is withdrawing from the upcoming gala honoring Israeli President Shimon Peres, where former U.S. President Bill Clinton will earn a $500,000 fee to speak.
An Israel Hayom investigation had revealed that JNF gave the Peres Academic Center, which is hosting the event to celebrate Peres’s 90th birthday, part of the money to cover Clinton’s fee, with the academic center covering the rest. The report sparked outrage in the Jewish community over the large sum for Clinton.
But in a letter sent to JNF board members on Thursday, JNF CEO Eli Spiegler wrote, “In order to remove any doubt, neither the JNF nor any of its members have ever had any contact with Clinton or his representatives” regarding the speaking fee, Israel National News reported.
Spiegler also wrote there were several inaccuracies in media reports about the Clinton fee, and that JNF has decided to pull out of the event out of respect for Clinton and Peres.
“The [JNF steering] committee decided that the atmosphere created does not allow JNF to pay the due respect to former president Clinton and President Peres and our friends and supporters abroad,” he wrote.
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Five Gaza Christian schools face closure after Hamas ruling
(JNS.org) Five Christian schools in Gaza are facing closure if Hamas, the Palestinian terror group that controls the Gaza Strip, follows through on a new law forbidding co-educational institutions.
“This will be a big problem. We hope they will not go through with it, but if they do, we will be in big trouble. We don’t have the space and we don’t have the money to divide our schools,” Father Faysal Hijazin, director-general of Latin Patriarchate Schools in the Palestinian territories and Israel, told the U.K.’s Catholic Herald.
The Gaza Strip has a small Christian community, numbering around 3,000 people. Most of the students in the five Christian schools are Muslim, but the schools are the only ones with mixed enrollment in Gaza. Under Hamas’s new law, male and female teachers would not be permitted to teacher classes of the opposite sex after the age of 10.
“It is a concern that in education things are getting more conservative,” Father Hijazin said. “It reflects the whole society. This is of concern to both Christians and moderate Muslims. It is not easy to be there.”
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Preceding provided by JNS.org