25 Tivet 5780
22 January 2020
The News on the Israeli Street
Palestinian terror in the last 24 hours . . .
In Judea and Samaria:
There have been two thwarted stabbings–both in Hevron. One occurred at the Cave of the Patriarchs where a knife-armed terrorist was captured, and the other at the Pharmacy Checkpoint nearby where another knife-wielding terrorist was taken into custody by Border Guards.
On the Gaza border:
*Following the infiltration attempt yesterday in which 3 Palestinian terrorists engaged in a firefight with IDF soldiers and were killed, three more terrorists were captured after crossing the security fence.
*More explosive balloons were launched into southern Israel.
A photo made by Hamas of a “balloon launcher” yesterday.
*Meanwhile, a Qatari representative began handing out $100 dollar bills to 70,000 Hamas families in Gaza, a total of $7 million dollars. You will recall that this monthly payment was supposed to be in exchange for Hamas ceasing all attacks on Israelis along the border.
What a joke.
Iranian Revolutionary commanders again . . .
Apparently, 90 commanders from the Revolutionary Guards who were “close” to Qasem Soleimani have been “detained” by Iranian intelligence as attempts are made to ferret out who betrayed Soleimani’s location to American forces.
Meanwhile, another Revolutionary Guard Commander was assassinated in the Khuzestan province of Iran yesterday.
Moving quickly on desalination and solar power . . .
Bids are now being sought for construction of the desalination plant in the western Galilee that will provide desalinated water to the Kineret.
At the same time, bids began being sought yesterday for the construction of the largest solar power plant in Israel. To be constructed in the Negev over an area of 3,000 dunams (almost 750 acres), it will ultimately generate electricity using 300 MW of photovoltaic technology. It is scheduled to be in operation by 2023.
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Israel and the U.S. Democrat Party: What Happened?
Birds of a feather: ultra left wing Meretz Party leader Nitzan Horowitz and U.S. House Speaker and leading member of the Democrat Party, Nancy Pelosi meeting in Jerusalem yesterday.
“We will restore relations with the Democratic Party . . For years, the Israeli prime minister, from his political considerations, eroded and destroyed the relationship with Democrats and U.S. Jewry.”
Nitzan Horowitz, Meretz Party Chairman after meeting with U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the sidelines of the International Holocaust Forum
PM Netanyahu may be responsible for many things, but he is most assuredly not to blame for “eroding and destroying” Israel’s “relationship with Democrats and U.S. Jewry.”
That blame belongs to U.S. Jewry and President Barack Obama.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that American Jewry has been drifting away from Israel for decades as it has increasingly embraced so-called “liberal progressive” values. According to some surveys, American Jews rank “support Israel” far down on the list of their priorities. For example, a Jewish Electorate Institute/Greenberg Research poll in May of last year asked prospective Jewish voters to rank 16 issues that were important to them when deciding whom to vote for, with 1 being most important and 16 least important.
Support for Israel was number 16.
In this context, it is no surprise that as American Judaism has become dominated by Reform Judaism, American Jewry’s support for Israel has eroded. Reform Jews do not look at Israel as being a foundation of their Judaism, and–as odd as it sounds–do not look as Judaism itself as being at the core of their being “Jewish.” They more readily identify with the Palestinians and their narrative of “occupation” and “victimhood.”
In terms of President Obama, we don’t need to recount here how that from the moment he was elected in 2008, he–and the American Democrat Party led by such people as Nancy Pelosi–began the process of throwing the traditional Israel support groups under the bus. By the time 2015 rolled around, Obama and his Secretary of State Kerry were wholly engrossed in establishing their legacy by throwing Israel itself under bus by signing the Nuclear Weapons Appeasement Agreement with Iran.
No amount of Netanyahu exhortations about the dangers of Iran could distract them from their mission. In the process of debate over the Agreement, heavily Democratic American Jews fully bought into the Obama-Kerry narrative and relegated Israel to a place even further down on their priority list.
In the context of all of the above, President Trump appeared on the scene recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, moving the American embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan, and most recently declaring that the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are not illegal. As you can imagine, most Israelis (except for those on the far left such as members of Meretz) welcomed these moves while many American Democrat Jews despised them as supposedly undermining peace.
And so, we come to today.
Will Jewish American Democrats ever embrace Israel again? Unfortunately, your humble servant doubts it.
Even if a left-wing government took over control of Israel tomorrow and conceded everything to the Palestinians, these Jewish Democrats will forever be wedded to the Palestinian cause as evidenced by the new generation of “progressive” leaders of the Democrat Party.
And as we all know, the Palestinians will never be satisfied until Israel no longer exists.
A student from Malawi, who had worked with an Israeli health volunteer in his country battling AIDS, came up to us as we walked down the street in the UC-Davis Picnic Day Parade and wanted to carry the Israeli flag.