Senior Obama administration official calls Netanyahu ‘chickenshit’
(JNS.org) A senior Obama administration official told The Atlantic magazine’s Jeffrey Goldberg that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “chickenshit.”
“The other day I was talking to a senior Obama administration official about the foreign leader who seems to frustrate the White House and the State Department the most. ‘The thing about Bibi is, he’s a chickenshit,’ this official said, referring to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, by his nickname,” Goldberg wrote Tuesday.
The insult follows the latest U.S. government criticism of planned Israeli construction—1,060 newly announced housing units in the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Ramat Shlomo and Har Homa. “Israel’s leaders have said they would support a pathway to a two-state solution, but moving forward with this type of action would be incompatible with the pursuit of peace, and that is certainly a message that we are conveying directly,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.
Reacting to the “chickenshit” remark, Israeli Economy Minister Naftali Bennett said, “Israel is stronger than any disparager. The prime minister is not some private individual. He is the leader of the Jewish state and the Jewish world as a whole. Vulgar remarks directed against an Israeli prime minister are hurtful to the millions of citizens of Israel and Jews worldwide.”
The “chickenshit” quote shows that “the current [U.S.] administration intends to throw Israel under the bus,” added Bennett.
In an address to the Knesset on Wednesday, Netanyahu said, “I’m attacked just because I defend the State of Israel. If I did not defend the State of Israel, if I did not determinedly protect our national and security interests, they would not attack me. Despite all the attacks I’m subjected to, I will continue to defend our country and the citizens of Israel.”
According to Goldberg, “chickenshit” was just the latest in a “running list” of harsh descriptors U.S. officials have used to characterize Netanyahu.
“Over the years, Obama administration officials have described Netanyahu to me as recalcitrant, myopic, reactionary, obtuse, blustering, pompous, and ‘Aspergery,’” Goldberg wrote.
Elaborating on the word choice of “chickenshit,” the Obama administration official told Goldberg, “The good thing about Netanyahu is that he’s scared to launch wars. The bad thing about him is that he won’t do anything to reach an accommodation with the Palestinians or with the Sunni Arab states. The only thing he’s interested in is protecting himself from political defeat. He’s not [Yitzhak] Rabin, he’s not [Ariel] Sharon, he’s certainly no [Menachem] Begin. He’s got no guts.”
Israeli Communications Minister Gilad Erdan said Wednesday, “It is ridiculous and even sad that officials in the Obama administration defame and curse the prime minister with expressions that they never use for mass murderers like [Syrian President Bashar] Assad. Such statements play into the hands of radical Islam, which draws strength from them.”
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Anti-IDF group Breaking the Silence barred from Israeli national service program
(JNS.org) Israel’s national civil service authority has rejected a request by the NGO Breaking the Silence—which brings together former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers dedicated to exposing alleged mistreatment of Palestinians by the IDF—to participate in the country’s national service volunteer program.
In its request to join the program, Breaking the Silence described its goal as “to expose the Israeli public to the reality of everyday life in the occupied territories.”
The committee charged with deciding whether organizations can join the national service program wrote in its ruling that the request was rejected “due to the fact that the organization deals distinctly with political activity and is not suited to any of the activities permitted by national civilian service regulations.”
“According to the request presented to the committee, the organization is upfront about the fact that it deals with controversial political activity,” the committee stated, Israel Hayom reported.
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U.S. and Iran in increasing alignment with each other, report says
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) The U.S. and Iran have “moved into an effective state of detente over the past year,” The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
The report, citing senior U.S. and Arab officials, said, “Recent months have ushered in a change as the two countries have grown into alignment on a spectrum of causes, chief among them promoting peaceful political transitions in Baghdad and Kabul and pursuing military operations against Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria.”
The report noted that the change “could drastically alter the balance of power in the region, and risks alienating key U.S. allies,” such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Israel.
According to the report, the Obama administration has also “markedly softened its confrontational stance toward Iran’s most important nonstate allies”—the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist groups. During Operation Protective Edge this summer, U.S. diplomats, including Secretary of State John Kerry, negotiated with Hamas leaders via Turkish and Qatari intermediaries.
The report, citing U.S. and Lebanese intelligence officials, said that U.S. intelligence agencies “have repeatedly tipped off Lebanese law-enforcement bodies close to Hezbollah about threats posed to Beirut’s government by Sunni extremist groups, including al-Qaeda and its affiliate Nusra Front in Syria.”
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Poland inaugurates museum dedicated to history of Polish Jewry
(JNS.org) Poland on Tuesday officially inaugurated the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which documents the 1,000-year history of Jewish life in the country.
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin (making his first foreign trip as president) and Polish President Bronslaw Komorowski both attended the ceremony, held at a nearby monument dedicated to the fighters of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
“It is not a museum of the Holocaust, it is a museum of life,” Rivlin, speaking in Hebrew, said at the opening ceremony.
Built with public and private money, the $96 million museum is located the grounds of the former center of the Warsaw Jewish Ghetto and uses state-of-the-art technology, illustrations, and murals to retell the millennium-old history of Polish Jewry.
Poland became a center of European Jewry around the 17th and 18th centuries when Jews, who were forced to flee from Western and Central Europe, were welcomed by Poland’s tolerant leaders. Around 750,000 Jews were living in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by 1764, growing to 3.3 million by 1939.
Essentially wiped out by the Holocaust and then by communism, Polish Jewry has seen a revival in recent years. An estimated 15,000-20,000 Jews currently live in the country.
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Vice President Joe Biden to address Jewish federations’ General Assembly
(JNS.org) The Jewish Federations of North America has announced that Vice President Joe Biden will address its upcoming General Assembly. Biden will the the highest-ranking U.S. official to ever address the federation umbrella’s annual conference.
The General Assembly, scheduled for Nov. 9-11 in National Harbor, Md., will bring together attendees from 124 different Jewish communities through North America, Israel, and Europe.
This year’s conference will highlight and discuss issues such as rising anti-Semitism in Europe, threats to Israel, Jewish education in North America, and Jewish life on college campuses.
In addition to Biden, a number of other prominent American and Israeli leaders are set to speak at the General Assembly, including U.S. Supreme Court Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, Israeli opposition leader MK Isaac Herzog, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer, and former U.K. Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks.
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British-Jewish ‘Harry Potter’ actress goes on anti-Israel rant
(JNS.org) Miriam Margolyes, a British-Jewish actress who played the role of Professor Sprout in the “Harry Potter” movie series, said that Israel is “stupid” for letting people “vent” about anti-Semitism.
“I don’t think people like Jews. They never have. English literature, my great love, is full of greasy and treacherous Jews. I’m lucky they like me… and one always needs a Jewish accountant,” she said in an interview with the British Radio Times.
“I loathe Hamas, but they were democratically elected and Israel’s behavior is not acceptable. There’s been a troubling backlash [against Jews],” added Margolyes. During Israel’s Operation Protective Edge this summer, the Community Security Trust reported that 302 anti-Semitic incidents took place in the U.K. in July compared to 59 such incidents in July 2013.
While anti-Semitism is “horrible and can’t be defended,” Israel is “stupid for allowing people to vent [about] it,” Margolyes said.
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U.N. to discuss Jerusalem construction, Israel plans to build Arab town
(JNS.org) While the U.N. Security Council plans to hold a meeting on Wednesday to discuss the newly announced Israeli construction of about 1,000 new Jewish homes in eastern Jerusalem, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly backed the building of a new Arab city to the east of Acre in northern Israel.
Ahead of Wednesday’s U.N. discussion, Netanyahu responded to critical statements regarding the planned Jerusalem construction from the U.N., EU, and the U.S., calling the comments “detached from reality” and defending Israel’s right to build in its capital city.
Israel’s National Council for Planning and Building will discuss the final approval for the Arab city next week. The city would house about 40,000 people and would be the first new non-Bedouin Arab city since the founding of Israel.
“This is a great idea,” Prof. Sammy Smooha, a sociologist from the University of Haifa, told the Jerusalem Post.
“New Arab towns and villages for the Arab population are highly needed,” he added.
Smooha also praised the choice to build the Arab city in the Galilee region, given that 60 percent of Israeli Arabs live in that area.
“Its proximity to highways is another advantage… The new city should serve as a precedent to other housing solutions, including state-supported new neighborhoods in Arab towns and villages, and in Jewish cities as well as new mixed Arab-Jewish towns,” he said.
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Poll: Palestinian support for Hamas increases after Gaza war
(JNS.org) Support for the Hamas terrorist group has increased among Palestinians following the summer war with Israel, according to a poll released Tuesday by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center.
The 1,200-person survey found that in Gaza and the West Bank, the percentage of Palestinian residents supporting Hamas rose from 17 percent before the war to 26 percent afterward, while trust for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party slipped from 41.7 percent before the war to 35.1 percent after.
A strong majority of Palestinians—57 percent—believe that Hamas was victorious in the war, despite the heavy Palestinian casualties and vast destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure. The survey also found that Palestinians are now more in favor of armed conflict against Israel, growing from 31.5-percent supportive in April to 42.7 percent in October.
Nevertheless, the poll revealed that a majority of Palestinians—52.4 percent—still believe in conducting peace negotiations with Israel.
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Egypt cracking down on Gaza tunnels following deadly terror attack
(JNS.org) Egypt has launched a new operation to crack down on Gaza smuggling tunnels in the wake of last week’s deadly terror attack that left 33 Egyptian soldiers dead in the northern Sinai.
On Sunday and Monday, residents of the Gaza-Egypt border city of Rafah could hear powerful explosions as homes suspected of containing tunnel entrances were being demolished as part of a plan announced by the Egyptian government to carve out a security buffer zone in the region.
“Efforts are continuing to deal with the danger of the tunnels, which are becoming more sophisticated. Criminal and terrorist elements are using homes and houses of worship as part of their operations,” an Egyptian defense official stated, Haaretz reported.
Egyptian authorities have also discussed erecting an eight-mile barrier along the Gaza border to prevent infiltration by terrorists, Fox Newsreported.
On Sunday, Egypt closed its border crossing with Gaza in response to the attacks and postponed its involvement in mediation between Israel and Hamas.
Egyptian authorities blamed terrorists from Gaza for carrying out the deadly attack by either using old tunnels that had yet to be destroyed or newly dug tunnels. Egypt has accused Hamas of aiding Sinai-based terrorist groups like Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, who have carried out dozens of terror attacks against Egyptian forces in the region.
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