Hamas to create Palestinian ‘Defense Ministry’
JNS.org
(JNS.org) At a ceremony honoring Hamas terrorists, Interior Minister Fathi Hammad, who oversees Hamas’s police apparatus, announced plans to establish the first-ever Palestinian “Defense Ministry,” the Jerusalem Post reported. Hamas, designated as a terrorist organization by Israel, U.S., Canada and European Union, also operates as a political, social and paramilitary organization in Gaza. Despite attempts by Hamas to separate its various wings, most western analysts consider each to be inextricably linked as part of its overall terrorist infrastructure.
The Palestinian Authority (PA), which operates in the disputed West Bank in conjunction with Israel, controls its security and police forces through its Interior Ministry.
At the ceremony, Hammad praised his officers while condemning Israel’s actions in Operation Pillar of Defense. “Zionist analysts are still talking about their failure and the collapse of their security system in the face of ours,” Hammad said.
He also added that the next war with Israel will be “more fierce, but we are determined to liberate Palestine.”
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Bibi: Germany’s Merkel mistaken that Palestinian UN upgrade would foster peace
(JNS.org) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that German Chancellor Angela Merkel was mistaken to believe that the Palestinians’ upgrade to nonmember observer state status at the United Nations “would in some way foster peace.” “In fact the opposite is the case: after the UN vote, the Palestinian Authority under president [Mahmoud] Abbas is making plans to join with the terrorists of Hamas,” Netanyahu told the Die Welt newspaper upon visiting Germany. Germany abstained from the UN vote Nov. 29, rather than opposing the Palestinians’ move.
“I would be insincere if I didn’t say I was disappointed, as were many people in Israel, by the German vote in the UN,” Netanyahu said. “People know that there is a special relationship between Germany and Israel.” Additionally, at a news conference with Netanyahu in Berlin, Merkel said she and Netanyahu “agreed that we disagree” on Israel’s new construction plans in the E1 area near Jerusalem. Merkel said “the work on a two-state solution must be continued” and that “we must keep trying to come to negotiations.”
Her spokesman Steffen Seibert said earlier in the week that “Israel is undermining faith in its willingness to negotiate and the geographic space for a future Palestinian state, which must be the basis for a two-state solution, is disappearing.” Netanyahu, however, explained in his inetrview with Die Welt that the planned E1 construction was in parts of Jerusalem where the Palestinians had agreed during past talks would be Israeli territory in a peace agreement.
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Jerusalem water dispute serves as opportunity for Jewish-Christian cooperation
(JNS.org) Known as one of the holiest sites in Christendom, Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre has seen its share of disputes since it was erected in the 4th century on the site traditionally held to be where Jesus was crucified and buried. However, today a new dispute has arisen—who should pay the water bill? In November, a dispute between a private water company and the church almost led to its closure, WYNC.org reports.
For over a century, the Jerusalem municipality had waived the charge of water to the church. However, in 2003 the Israeli water company was privatized and began charging for the water. Over the nine years of non-payment the bill had grown to nearly NIS 9 million. “We are willing, in the future, to pay the bills of water. But the [debts before the] 9 million [are] not our problem,” said Father Fakitsas Isidoros, superior of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate.
The dispute eventually led the water company to freeze the patriarchate’s local bank account, complicating the church’s efforts to pay other bills, including electricity. Eventually the dispute was resolved when Israeli President Shimon Peres stepped in and waived the church’s debt.
Hana Bendcowsky, program director at the Jerusalem Center for Jewish-Christian Relations, said that the incident serves as an opportunity for Jews to foster relations with the Christian community in Jerusalem. “We used to be minorities among Christians, and suddenly we are the majority, and we have the responsibility over Christian minorities,” she said.
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Christian group encouraged by Rand Paul’s plans to visit Israel
(JNS.org) The country’s largest pro-Israel Christian group is optimistic about U.S. Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) recent announcement of plans to visit Israel in January. Paul has been criticized before over hanging up a vote in the Senate on Iran sanctions, and for statements he made against foreign aid that made him seem anti-Israel. “We’ve talked about [such a trip to Israel] for a long time,” Paul told the Washington Post, adding that he looks forward to “seeing our Judeo-Christian roots.”
According to David Brog, executive director of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), “Paul has thus far seemed oblivious to the reality that Israel’s military is fighting our battles for us and keeping us from having to send our own soldiers to do the job.” However, CUFI is still encouraged that Paul is traveling to Israel.
“We know that the facts are on Israel’s side,” Brog said. “And we know from long experience that there’s nothing like a visit to Israel to learn facts and change minds… If Senator Paul returns from his visit and demonstrates that he has become a true friend to Israel—in both word and in deed—then Christians United for Israel will be among the first to congratulate him and welcome him ‘home.’”
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Supermodel Refaeli, Pillar of Defense among 2012’s top Google searches by Israelis
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli was the woman Israelis searched for most on Google in 2012, according to Google’s annual Zeitgeist list, which surveys the search habits of users. The survey found that after Refaeli, the top-searched women by Israelis were singers Sarit Hadad and Adele, followed by model Natalie Dadon, actress-singer Selena Gomez, reality TV star Yana Yosef, British royal Kate Middleton, singer-songwriter Keren Peles and model-actress Esti Ginzburg.
The top five search terms in Israel in 2012 were: Golan Telecom, the Revivo Project, labor strikes, the Instagram application and Whitney Houston. The five most searched news topics were: Operation Pillar of Defense, the general economic strike of February, Moshe Silman’s suicide by self-immolation at a social justice protest in July, the London Olympics and Hurricane Sandy. The most frequently asked questions by Israelis were: how to make money, how to get sick days from the army, how to make babies, how to attract women and how to build applications.
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Israel’s budget deficit jumps after Gaza operation
(JNS.org) Economic paralysis in southern Israel during Operation Pillar of Defense in November contributed to Israel’s budget deficit jumping to a new high of 4.2 percent of gross domestic product, double the original target set in the 2012 budget, Israel Hayom reported. In November, tax revenues fell 5.6 percent compared with the previous November.
Tax revenues in November totaled only 17.4 billion shekels ($4.5 billion), causing the state to accumulate NIS 3 billion ($890 million) in debt during the month. Since the start of 2012, the state has accrued a debt of NIS 25.9 billion ($6.6 billion), even though the debt for the entire year of 2012 was supposed to be just NIS 18.3 billion ($4.8 billion).
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UN informs Cuba that detention of Alan Gross violates international law
(JNS.org) Josefina Vidal, head of North American Affairs at the Cuban Foreign Ministry, said in a press conference Wednesday that the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has informed Cuba that the country’s ongoing detention of Jewish-American contractor Alan Gross violates international law, the Associated Press reported. Dec. 3 marked the three-year anniversary of Gross’s arrest.
He was sentenced to a 15-year prison term for helping Cuba’s Jewish community access the Internet. The contents of the UN arbitrary detention group’s ruling in favor of Gross, despite Vidal’s admission of defeat, have not yet been publicly released by Cuba. Gross’s attorney, Jared Genser, in a press release called for Cuba to reveal the full UN judgment “so that the international community can see what the United Nations has itself said.”
Comprised of neutral experts from Chile, Norway, Pakistan, Senegal, and Ukraine, the UN working group issues opinions that are not binding or enforceable, but could still be significant, Genser told JNS.org in October. “Having an independent and impartial group in the United Nations saying that he’s been held in violation of international law provides a very strong political and public relations tool to put pressure on the government of Cuba to resolve the case,” Genser said.
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NY synagogue’s leaders celebrate Palestinians’ UN victory, angering congregants
(JNS.org) What many saw as a significant setback in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process was cause to celebrate for leaders of one New York City synagogue last week. The three rabbis, cantor, board president and executive director of Manhattan’s Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, reacting to the Palestinians’ upgrade to nonmember observer state status at the UN, sent an email to congregants lauding the move prior to Shabbat on Nov. 30, the New York Times reported Tuesday.
“The vote at the UN [Nov. 29] is a great moment for us as citizens of the world,” the email—which was signed by the synagogue’s three rabbis, cantor, board president and executive director—said. “This is an opportunity to celebrate the process that allows a nation to come forward and ask for recognition.” The synagogue’s email compared the Palestinians’ UN victory to Israel’s achievement of independence in 1948.
“Having gained independence ourselves in this way, we are especially conscious of this,” the email said. Additionally, the email expressed hope that the Palestinian UN vote would “mark the moment that brought about a needed sense of dignity and purpose to the Palestinian people, led to a cessation of violence and hastened the two state solution.” B’nai Jeshurun member Allan Ripp told the Times that he and his wife were “just sort of in a state of shock” due to the email. “It’s not as if we don’t support a two-state solution, but to say with such a warm embrace—it is like a high-five to the P.L.O., and that has left us numb,” Ripp said.
Eve Birnbaum, another member, said she was “very dismayed” that B’nai Jeshurun’s “rabbis and the board would take a position that is contrary to what many members believe, contrary to the peace process.”
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Preceding provided by JNS.org