From Ynet News
Nasrallah calls on region to fight ISIS: They are no stronger than Israel, US
Hezbollah leader mocks US-coalition effort against Islamic State, saying they conducted less strikes in several months than Israel did in Gaza and Lebanon in less time.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah called on regional states to join the fight against the Islamic State group on Sunday, saying “they are not stronger than Israel and the United States, and the nations of the region have already defeated Israel and the United States.”
He explained that “one of the reasons for the Israeli position of power over the years is the partition plan the region has adopted,” and noted that the danger the Islamic State poses was no lesser than that posed by Israel.
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From The Times of Israel
Hezbollah may call ‘general mobilization’ against IS
As Lebanese terror group fights against jihadists in Syria, leader Nasrallah warns extremists pose existential threat to his country
May 23, 2015, 12:00 pm
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned Friday that the Islamic State posed an existential threat to Lebanon and said his organization may soon be required to call for a general mobilization to fight the group.
“Now is the time for everyone to enlist, anyone who can take part,” Nasrallah told senior organization commanders in a speech. “The danger that threatens us is an existential threat similar to 1982,” he added, referring to the Lebanon War and the Israeli military invasion of Lebanon.
Nasrallah warned that Lebanon now faced an invasion by IS militants, who have taken control of large swaths of Syria and Iraq. If Hezbollah hadn’t sent its forces to Syria in recent years to support president Bashar Assad’s regime in its fight against rebel groups, Nasrallah said, it would today be fighting Islamic State on Lebanese soil.
The Hezbollah chief vowed to “use all our strength and all our capabilities to cope with extremist groups.
“In the next phase we may declare general mobilization to all people,” he said.
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From Russia Today
ISIS kills 400, mostly women & children, in Palmyra – Syrian state TV
Islamic State militants have killed at least 400 people in Syria’s ancient city of Palmyra, mostly women and children, Syrian state television said Sunday, citing residents.
According to Reuters, opposition activists on social media claimed that hundreds of bodies were in the streets of the city.
“The terrorists have killed more than 400 people.. and mutilated their bodies, under the pretext that they cooperated with the government and did not follow orders,” a Palmyra resident told Syria’s state news agency.
State employees were among hundreds killed in the massacre. Among them was the head of of nursing department at the hospital and all her family.
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From The Times of Israel
Walker promises pre-emptive strikes to prevent attacks on US
Wisconsin governor, just back from Israel trip, says radical Islamist terrorists planning assaults on American soil
May 22, 2015, 8:07 am
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is doubling down on his promises of pre-emptive strikes to prevent what he says are certain future attacks on American soil.
As he prepares for a likely 2016 presidential run, Walker told a multistate Republican gathering in Oklahoma on Thursday that he’s convinced “radical Islamic terrorists” are planning to attack the US
Walker offered no evidence for his claims at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference. He also didn’t say who most threatens the United States or what military actions he’d authorize in response.
As a governor, Walker has no access to intelligence briefings like those available to President Barack Obama and certain congressional leaders.
Still, Walker said, “It’s not if another attempt is made on American soil, it is when.” He said he’d “take the fight to them before they take the fight to us” and that struggle would be protracted.
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From PressTV
Protest held in Palestine to slam death penalty against Egypt’s Morsi
People have held a demonstration in northern occupied Palestinian territories to condemn the death penalty recently handed down to Egypt’s ousted President Mohamed Morsi.
The protest was staged on Saturday in the town of Kafr Kanna. The organizers said about 5,000 people participated in the protest.
They chanted slogans against the administration of Egypt’s current President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. “We won’t rest till the murderer Sisi is executed,” the protesters shouted. They also carried signs that read, “Cut the rope of penalty.”
On May 16, an Egyptian court sentenced Morsi, who was Egypt’s first democratically-elected president, along with over 100 other defendants to death over national security charges.
Morsi was elected the country’s president in 2012 but was ousted only a year later in a military coup in July 2013 led by then head of the armed forces Sisi, who was also oversaw the crushing of massive pro-Morsi protests by security forces.
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From PressTV
Israel offers Iron Dome technology to Saudi Arabia: Report
A report says Israel has offered to provide its Iron Dome missile system technology to Saudi Arabia in order for the Saudi military to employ it on the border region with Yemen, amid the kingdom’s ongoing deadly military aggression against the impoverished neighbor.
According to a Saturday report by the Arabic-language newspaper Rai al-Youm on Saturday, the offer was made last week during meetings between Saudis and Israelis at the US embassy in the Jordanian capital of Amman.
A report, published on May 19 by the Arabic website of Israeli radio station Voice of Israel, said diplomats from certain Arab counties that do not have open diplomatic relations with the Tel Aviv regime had a secret meeting with Israeli officials in Jordan.
During the purported meeting, the Arab representatives expressed their relevant states’ interest in cooperating with Israel over “security” matters in the Middle East.
According to the UK-based Rai al-Youm, Saudi Arabia has purportedly rejected the Israeli offer.
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From The Times of Israel
Hezbollah focuses PR on Israel, to deflect from its killing of Muslims in Syria
Deeply embroiled in Assad’s fight for survival, Shiite group uses 15th anniversary of Israeli withdrawal to show off its battle readiness in south Lebanon
May 24, 2015, 1:12 am
As it gears up this week to celebrate 15 years since Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon, Hezbollah is in a very different place.
The IDF’s departure from the south Lebanon security zone in 2000 was seen as a military victory for Hezbollah, one that crowned the Shiite organization as the vanguard of Islamist fighters. Nowadays, by contrast, its primary battles are against fellow Muslims, and that fact cannot be separated from the recent wave of revelations about its ostensible military readiness to wage war against Israel.
On Friday, the Hezbollah-affiliated As-Safir newspaper launched a flattering portrayal of the organization’s battle-readiness in south Lebanon. The report discussed in colorful detail the combat-ready bunkers and tunnels built by Hezbollah in south Lebanon: they are ensconced in concrete, kitted out with electricity and ventilation, and lined with rocket launchers. (This is an underground infrastructure inside Lebanon, it should be stressed, rather than Gaza-style cross-border tunnels dug into Israel.)
The border is watched day and night, the enemy’s movements noted.
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From Russia Today
Polish president Komorowski faces conservative challenger in runoff vote
Published time: May 24, 2015 15:40
From Ynet News
The Talmud will save Judaism
Op-ed: The sooner Jewish and rabbinical establishments understand that teaching Talmud is key to Jewish continuity, the more successful are efforts to draw Jews back to Judaism bound to be. Jewish institutions exert an inordinate amount of effort to draw secular Jews to Judaism. There is no other religious community that subsidizes religious learning on such a massive scale and that offers so many online and offline programs to ensure that it does not succumb – to secularization in Israel and to intermarriage and assimilation abroad.
Orthodox Jews hope to buck these trends by teaching that the Torah and Talmud encapsulate God’s will. Conservative groups believe the Torah is God-given and the Talmud is a historical composition. Reform Jews view the Torah as somehow divinely-inspired, yet consider the Talmud a folkloristic family heirloom.None of these approaches does justice to Judaism’s genius.
From The Times of Israel
One year on, still no president for Lebanon
Since May 25, 2104, government has failed 23 times to meet two-thirds quorum required to hold electoral session
May 23, 2015, 6:49 am
Every few weeks for the past year, Lebanon’s parliament has met, exchanged pleasantries, and made the same announcement: that it has again been unable to elect a president.
Pluralistic but divided Lebanon has now been without a head of state for 12 months, the longest time the post has been vacant since the devastating civil war ended in 1990.
But analysts say that regional conflicts, particularly the raging war in neighboring Syria, make a presidential election in Lebanon unlikely in the near future.
“As long as the region is in constant turmoil, as we are experiencing now… Lebanon will have a difficult time agreeing on a president,” said Imad Salamey, professor of political science at the Lebanese American University in Beirut.
Sahar Atrash, analyst at the International Crisis Group, told AFP that Lebanon, which is influenced heavily by regional powerhouses Iran and Saudi Arabia, “is not a priority” for now.
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From The Times of Israel
Expert: State has failed ex-Soviet would-be converts
Amid decline in conversions, Israel Democracy Institute’s Netanel Fisher says more must be done to remove obstacles
May 22, 2015, 3:18 pm
The number of Jewish conversions through state religious institutions is declining, according to an unpublished report by Dr. Netanel Fisher of the Israeli Democracy Institute.
The report details that since 1995 there have been over 80,000 conversions in Israel, but the average number of converts per year has declined slightly to just 1,800 since the year 2000, meaning since the turn of the century there has been a drastic reduction in successful conversions.
About 45,000 of the 80,000 conversions have been Ethiopian Jews, who are required to undergo a conversion process amid debate about their Jewish status. The next largest group is 24,000 Israelis from the former Soviet Union. According to Dr. Fisher, these numbers represent success for the Ethiopian program, but a failure regarding Israelis from the former Soviet states.
“Promoting the conversion of the immigrants from the former Soviet Union has failed thus far, because the public discourse focused largely on the politicization of the issue — while the road to success in this work lies in a bottom-up approach,” Fisher said in a statement. “Civil society must be mobilized to support the converts, educational bodies need to be encouraged to open classes and recruit students, and community leaders ought to be making the issue a priority.”
The issue is complicated by concerns that Jewish Israelis will marry immigrants and their children who qualified for citizenship under the Law of Return but were not Jewish by maternal descent as defined in Orthodox interpretations of Jewish law. According to Fisher’s research, 7-8% of all Israeli marriages meet this definition.
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From The Times of Israel
Senior Likud MK: Obama’s criticism of PM ‘hypocritical’
Netanyahu confidant Tzachi Hanegbi hits back at US president, says comments against Israeli leader ‘totally unjustified’
May 22, 2015, 11:00 am
A senior Likud Knesset member and confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hit back at US President Barack Obama on Friday after an interview the American leader gave to The Atlantic in which he slammed Netanyahu.
“It’s amazing that the US president, the president of Israel’s most powerful ally, thinks it’s appropriate to voice criticism against us [Israel] when not a word of criticism is heard [from him] on neighboring countries on various issues, like the country with the most executions — Iran, with whom he is making great efforts to reconcile. He needs to see things in proportion,” Tzachi Hanegbi told Israel Radio Friday morning.
Hanegbi said Obama’s comments were “discomfiting” in nature as he tries to navigate the battle to “win over the admiration of US Jews ahead of the Iran issue [the emerging nuclear deal being negotiated between the P5+1 and Iran].”
“I think his approach is totally unjustified and there’s no small measure of hypocrisy,” Hanegbi added.
Hanegbi is coalition chairman and Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman.
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From The Times of Israel
In interview, Obama tries to set terms for US-Israel ties
In a trial run for Friday’s address at a Washington synagogue, US president offers little reassurance to doubters
May 21, 2015, 10:55 pm
WASHINGTON — A day before a major address to America’s Jewish community, President Barack Obama’s interview with the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg set the tone for the coming outreach effort meant to soften the impact of any Iranian nuclear deal among skeptics. After months of acrimonious back-and-forth between top officials in Washington and Jerusalem, Obama set out his parameters for US-Israel relations – retaining his right to criticize Israeli policies, but asserting that even publicly aired discord did not preclude support for Israel and the Jewish people.
The interview with Obama was published one day before the president is set to give a major speech directed at American Jews. The address will be delivered at Washington’s Adas Israel Congregation, a Conservative synagogue that counts among its members numerous Washington heavy-hitters, including Goldberg himself.
Although Obama’s speech is officially timed to mark Jewish American Heritage Month and is slated as a tribute to former senator and Holocaust survivor Tom Lantos, Obama is expected to use the opportunity to try to calm the waters over the impending nuclear deal with Iran and his administration’s frosty relationship with the Netanyahu government.
Obama’s interview was at times defensive, arguing that criticism of Israel’s policies did not constitute a lack of support for Israel and the Jewish people as a whole — and, for that matter, that he was not “bifurcating” the American Jewish community. Obama’s opponents have pointed to his pursuit of an Iranian nuclear deal as linked to his very public run-ins with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over topics that include both Iran, the two-state solution, and the status of Israeli Arabs.
If, as Vice President Joe Biden said last month, the US and Israel fight like a family, Obama sees it as a family whose fight extends past the closed doors of the house, and into the street, no matter what the neighbors think
