The Return of the Ottoman Empire, In Miniature: Turkey Continues to Spread Its Tentacles

*The regular Friday attacks took place yesterday when the 1:00 pm “sermons” at various mosques ended. Riots took place across Judea and Samaria with the worst one being at Qadum where two IDF soldiers were wounded. On the Gaza border, a terrorist who tried to infiltrate Israel was shot and killed.

*In the evening, various attacks were staged including IEDs being thrown at an IDF force near Jilazon; early this morning, a bus was hit near Beit Ummar in Gush Etzion.

One other word about the events at Qadum. About six months ago, your humble servant went to Qadum and saw first hand how the mayor of the town incites violence and encourages international “human rights” advocates to come to Qadum every Friday afternoon to attack IDF soldiers. Who wounded the soldiers yesterday? Palestinians? German or Swedish internationalists? Who knows.

One last word in praise of Indian PM Narendra Modi . . .

PM Modi has ended his visit to Israel, and by all accounts it was a smashing success. Modi and Netanyahu seem to have hit it off on personal level as was evident from the pictures that were made of their trips around the country.

Modi and Netanyahu hold a discussion in the surf (picture: Netanyahu).

Numerous agreements were signed which should help both countries.

But the striking fact to your humble servant was that not only did Modi not go to Ramallah as every other world leader thinks he or she has to do every time when visiting Israel, Modi did not use the word “Palestinian” one time while he was in Israel.

No Ramallah, no “Palestinian”, no “two-state solution”, just a focus on Israel.

How refreshing . . . just as was the barefoot walk in the surf.

A new “National Law” emerges . . .

Once again, the power of the ultra-Orthodox here can be seen, this time in the preliminary draft of the long-awaited and delayed National Law. As you may remember, the Law as first formulated would have declared that “Israel is a Jewish and democratic state.” In its new formulation, it reads “Israel is a Jewish state with a democratic government.”

Whereas the original version of the Law would have removed Arabic as one of the national languages of Israel, in the new draft, the status of Arabic is unchanged. On the other hand, in recognition of the meritorious contributions of the Druze to Israel, the Druze will be given special status.

The “news” about Israel’s Channel 10 news . . .

As you may not know, Israel has 3 major television channels: Channel 1, Channel 2, and Channel 10.

And, whereas all three of these channels are ultra-left wing, Channel 10 is the furthest to the left. The majority owner (51%) is RGE Media Group (which is owned by Leonard Blavatnik, Aviv Giladi, and Udi Recanati).

In recent years, Channel 10’s entire mission has been to take down the Netanayhu government. In pursuing this goal, it has failed miserably, but that does not stop it from producing an endless stream of “news” articles accusing the Prime Minister and his family of every conceivable “crime.”

More than this, however, is the fact that Channel 10 now attacks everything “Israeli”. We mention this today because we applaud Naftali Bennett’s statement two days ago:

“The New Israel Fund Channel (Channel 10) leads an all-out war against every Jewish and Zionist characteristic in the country. Kiddush is primitive. Jerusalem Day is nationalistic. A resident of the settlement enterprise is violent and uprooting olive trees. The Israeli flag is fascist.”

Bennett called on all Israelis to stop watching Channel 10.

In your humble servant’s house, we did so two years ago.

With “moderate friends” like Jordan and Egypt, who . . .

Your humble servant cannot help but shake his head in bewilderment every time he hears that Jordan and Egypt are “moderate” Muslim states. The fact that both signed peace agreements with Israel after Israel made major territorial concessions to each seems to have eternally cast them as “moderates.”

Because they are considered as “moderates”, every anti-Israel step they take is simply ignored.

First, think about Jordan. Hardly a day goes by that the Jordanian Parliament does not attack Israel. Demonstrators on the Jordanian street regularly burn Israeli flags, and it was just a few months ago that the hideous murderer of the Israeli schoolgirls was granted an early release from prison.

Yesterday, Jordan rejoiced when UNESCO accepted its ludicrous proposal that designated the Cave of the Patriarchs as a Palestinian world heritage site. This is after Jordan rejoiced earlier when the same fraudulent UNESCO accepted another Jordanian proposal that the Temple Mount in Jerusalem is Palestinian.

Your humble servant is not going to waste time today discussing why the UNESCO decisions were fraudulent, but I merely want to emphasize that Jordan is in no way “moderate.”

Jordan is an egregiously extremist country that does everything within its power to delegitimize Israel.

Which leads me to Egypt.

No one seems to be paying any attention to the massive military buildup taking place next door.

Except perhaps President Trump.

You may have missed it yesterday, but Trump call President Sisi and asked him to seek rapprochement with Qatar, and to cut off his contacts with North Korea.

His contacts with North Korea? 

Yes, by all accounts, Egypt has North Koreans in the country working on ballistic missile development.

What in the world, you may ask does Egypt need ballistic missiles for? I leave it to you to answer that question.

Also yesterday, Egypt announced that it is procuring (either from Russia or from Russian-supervised factories in Egypt) 1000 advanced T-90 tanks.

What in the world, you may ask does Egypt need 1000 T-90s for? I leave it to you to answer that question.

And all of this coming from another country that the world likes to characterize as “moderate.”

TODAY’S BLOG

The Return of the Ottoman Empire, In Miniature:

Turkey Continues to Spread Its Tentacles

Israelstreet has regularly blogged about the evil triad of Iran-Qatar-Turkey.