ISRAEL (IINO)
Exclusive Eyewitness Report: The Truth about “Attacks on Christians” by Israeli Police By Richard Abelson
Apr. 21, 2023 – Numerous media and activists have accused the new right-wing government in Israel of stoking hatred and violence against Christians – in reality, Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Christians are welcomed and the Christian population is growing.
While online videos claimed to show “attacks on Christians” by Israeli police, an eye-witness told Gateway Pundit what really happened.
On Orthodox Easter weekend, “Israeli occupation soldiers” attacked “Palestinian Christians and visiting pilgrims trying to get to the Church of Holy Sepulcher for the Holy Light ceremony”, PLO activist Nour Odeh claimed on Twitter. In Orthodox Christianity, the Holy Fire is a miracle that is said to occur every year at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem on Great Saturday, the day before Orthodox Easter.
The Ruling Class Must Regain its Senses Caroline Glick
04/21/2023 – A group of soldiers from a company of Israel Defense Forces’ reservists in the Golani Infantry Brigade abandoned their posts at their training base in southern Israel on Tuesday and went home. The reservists revolted because they didn’t accept their battalion commander’s decision to replace their company commander with a company commander from the Paratrooper Brigade.
As Yediot Achronot’s military reporter Yossi Yehoshua reported, the last time that Golani experienced a mutiny of this dimension was in 2007. Back then, the top brass responded immediately, sentencing all of the soldiers to 56 days in jail.
This time, their commanders took their time responding and then hit them with a wet noodle. The soldiers were given suspended sentences and remanded to their base for a weekend.
The IDF’s decision to let the reservists off the hook for inexcusable behavior surprised no one. They had no choice. In February, a squadron of reserve Air Force fighter pilots shocked the country when they signed a letter announcing they would not serve in reserves so long as the Netanyahu government proceeded forward with its plan to place minimal limits on the powers of the Supreme Court and Attorney General. That is, they used their flight wings to extort the government and the public that voted it into office.
Rather than court-martial the pilots on charges of insurrection and sedition, IDF Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi and Air Force Commander Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar opted to tolerate—and even coddle—the pilots in the hopes of getting them to relent.
The same cushy fate greeted the other leftist reservists from technology, artillery and other units.
Saudi policy toward Iran – the US and Israel factors Yoram Ettinger
April 19th, 2023 – Saudi-Iranian diplomatic relations
*Riyadh does not allow the resumption of the Saudi-Iranian diplomatic ties to befog the reality of the tenuous and shifty Middle East regimes, policies and agreements, and the inherently subversive, terroristic, anti-Sunni and imperialistic track record of Iran’s Ayatollahs.
*Saudi Arabia is cognizant of the 1,400-year-old fanatic, religious vision of the Ayatollahs, including their most critical strategic goal – since their February 1979 violent ascension to power – of exporting the Shiite Revolution and toppling all “apostate” Sunni Arab regimes, especially the House of Saud. They are aware that neither diplomatic, nor financial, short term benefits transcend the deeply-rooted, long term Ayatollahs’ anti-Sunni vision.
*Irrespective of its recent agreement with Iran – and the accompanying moderate diplomatic rhetoric – Saudi Arabia does not subscribe to the “New Middle East” and “end of interstate wars” Pollyannaish state of mind. The Saudis adhere to the 1,400-year-old reality of the unpredictably intolerant and violent inter-Arab/Muslim reality (as well as the Russia-Ukraine reality).
*This is not the first resumption of Saudi-Iranian diplomatic ties, which were previously severed in 1988 and 2016 and followed by the Ayatollahs-induced domestic and regional violence.
Zionism’s Moment of Decision LIEL LEIBOVITZ
The massive protests preceding Israel’s 75th birthday have resurrected a century-old question that now demands an answer: A Jewish state or state for Jews?
APRIL 19, 2023 – “What is going on in Israel now has passed from the realm of the political to the metaphysical, which means that compromise is not possible.”
To mark the 75th anniversary of the creation of the State of Israel, Tablet is publishing Zionism: The Tablet Guide, edited by Liel Leibovitz. The book features primary essays by Zionism’s utopian founders, modern commentary and reporting, and interviews with modern political leaders and critics alike.
Having just returned from Israel, the country where I was born and grew up, and of which I am still a proud citizen, I apologize for being the bearer of bad news: There will be no easy, sane, or rational end to the protest movement that erupted in response to the ruling coalition’s proposed judicial reforms. In fact, the content of those reforms has ceased to matter to anyone involved on either side. The government’s promise to temporarily halt the legislation and convene a broad-based committee tasked with finding a compromise under the supervision of President Herzog has barely registered with the protesters, and one major member of the opposition, the Labor Party, has already quit the negotiations. Nor did a string of gruesome terror attacks, coming on the heels of Passover, shift the collective focus away from taking to the streets. What is going on in Israel now has passed from the realm of the political to the metaphysical, which means that compromise is not possible. Instead, day by day, the arguments are getting louder and more cutting, and animosity is everywhere on display.
This is because Israelis realize, consciously or not, that they’re no longer arguing about a series of proposed bills designed to change the balance of power between the executive and the judiciary branches. Nor are they arguing about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition. Nor does it matter whether Netanyahu continues to lead his coalition, or steps down, or offers Benny Gantz the job of defense minister. Nor does it have anything to do with Jewish or Muslim demography, or with a future Palestinian state—whether or not such an entity ever exists, or doesn’t exist, in any part of the West Bank or Jordan.
Israelis aren’t arguing about politics anymore. They are fighting about the future, not only of Israel but of Zionism, the miraculous movement that, in the span of one century, freed the Jews from their respective houses of bondage, returned them to their indigenous homeland, taught them the spells of sovereignty, and powered their miniscule nation’s growth from embattled weakling to global powerhouse. And as a result, this is strictly an inter-Jewish affair, one pitting millennia of Jewish particularity against the promise of universalism once embodied in the Catholic Church, then in the Enlightenment, and now in the technocratic politics that unite the civilized right and the progressive left in the club of advanced countries that has, with increasing misgivings, included Israel among their number.
It’s a fight that isn’t going to end quickly, or with anything remotely resembling a compromise, because it’s about a question so central even the brave and prescient founders of the country avoided answering it. Israelis must now decide if they want a state for Jews, or a Jewish state.
