U.S. Announces Withdrawal From UNESCO, Cites ‘Anti-Israel Bias’

Irina Bokova, UNESCO / Getty Images

 

As part of the decision, the U.S. notified UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova of its intent to withdraw and become a permanent observer of the body instead.

The EU: Undermining Israel under the guise of humanitarianism

Between 2012-2014, the EU financed the building of more than 400 illegal structures in Area C identified by an affixed EU flag. The EU claimed diplomatic immunity and refused to appear in court when sued for illegal construction. 

More than 70 years after the Holocaust, the European Union has been involved in demonizing and delegitimizing the Jewish State through actions inimical to Israel’s existence. They include indirect funding of terrorist activities, refusals to examine this misdirection of funds, assistance to build illegal Palestinian communities within Israel’s boundaries, and criticism of Israel’s attitudes towards Palestinians as “ethnic cleansing.”  These EU activities have gone on for the past 25 years, and represent a persistent undermining of the Jewish State under the guise of European humanitarianism.

Turkey: Erdogan’s Obsession to Take Jerusalem

Jerusalem, with the Temple Mount in foreground. (Photo by Lior Mizrahi/Getty Images))

 

• Simply put, Jerusalem’s Judaic history dates back to thousands of years before the birth of Islam, only in the seventh century CE.
• As an American friend delicately asked: “Isn’t Turkey supposed to be investing millions to help rebuild Gaza?”
• Not, it seems, when Islamist ideology is involved.

Less than a year ago, Turkey and Israel agreed to end their six-year-long diplomatic stand-off and officially “normalized” their relations. They appointed ambassadors Kemal Okem to Israel and Eitan Na’eh to Turkey, two prominent career diplomats, who, since then, have been struggling actually to normalize formally normalized ties. As some observers, including your humble correspondent, cautioned in 2016:

“Erdogan had pragmatically agreed to shake hands with Israel, but his ideological hostility to the Jewish state and his ideological love affair with Hamas have not disappeared; so the Turkish-Israeli ‘peace’ would not be easy to sustain”.

Iran Won’t Stop Till It Reaches Jerusalem

Caption: Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivers a speech in Tehran prior to Iran’s parliamentary elections on Jan. 20, 2016. ( Pool / Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

 

In a world where leaders rarely say what they mean, Iran’s supreme leader says exactly what’s on his mind.

ERUSALEM—It can be easy to allow the frequent Iranian diatribes against Israel to become cliché. Especially when headlines such as “Iran’s Supreme Leader Backs Holy Intifada to Destroy ‘Cancer’ Israel” or “Israel Is a ‘Cancerous Tumor,’ ‘Fake Nation’” appear so regularly in the news, as they did this week. This type of rhetoric from the Iranian regime has been used so often and for so long that we might be lulled into believing they are mere words. After all, after years of such hateful threats, Israel still exists.

However, every so often, it’s good to remember: This is not just rhetoric: the Iranians really do believe what they say. This is not mere hyperbole; the regime does believe in the destruction of the Jewish state. It really does believe that Israel is a cancerous tumor that it must literally remove from the Middle East. It really does believe that Israel needs to be wiped off the map. The only reason this has not happened already is not because Tehran lacks the will, it only lacks the means.

Israel readies for 1,500 rockets a day in next war

Israel’s army estimates that thousands of rockets could slam into the Jewish state in any future conflagration, military sources said Friday ahead of a nationwide civil defence drill.

“Total war on several fronts, destruction of essential equipment and infrastructure and heavy rocket bombardment” all form part of the scenario for the exercise, which runs from Sunday until September 21, the army said.

China Is Steering the World Toward War

 

Satellite imagery shows China taking over the South China Sea, as it is with other trade routes globally. Both history and biblical prophecy show why this is extremely dangerous.

Tensions are rising between China and America.

Ever since Xi Jinping took over as general secretary of the Communist Party of China, his administration has been militarizing the South China Sea and working to push the United States out of East Asia. In two island chains, the Paracels and the Spratlys, China is building a series of man-made islands, 800 miles from China’s shore. These islands are being installed with antiaircraft batteries and fighter jets are stationed on them.

The Spratly Islands are claimed by the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam. China is ignoring these nations’ territorial claims. China is being aggressive and provocative.

These militarized islands now function as forward bases for Beijing to challenge seven decades of American naval dominance in the Pacific Rim. This should alarm the world!

Iranian commander: We can destroy Israel ‘in under 8 minutes’

If supreme leader gives order, Revolutionary Guards ‘will raze the Zionist regime’ quickly, says senior adviser of elite al-Quds unit

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Ahmad Karimpour, a senior adviser to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ elite unit al-Quds Force, said if Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei gave the order to destroy Israel, the Iranian military had the capacity to do so quickly.

“If the Supreme Leader’s orders [are] to be executed, with the abilities and the equipment at our disposal, we will raze the Zionist regime in less than eight minutes,” Karimpour said Thursday, according to the semi-official Fars News Agency.

America: AWOL in the Middle East

Is the Middle East still strategically indispensable to the world in general and to the security interests of the United States in particular? Americans no longer think so. They have grown weary of the region after controversial and often inconsequential wars in Afghanistan (2001-2015), Iraq (1990-1991; 2003-2011), Libya (2011), and now again in Iraq against ISIS—and this is to say nothing of the “peace process” that has encouraged much Palestinian violence. Americans in surveys express a general uneasiness with the region. Most do not favor the proposed Iran non-proliferation deal; most do not support the Palestinians over the Israelis; and most do not favor America’s high profile in the Middle East. They oppose both military intervention in and foreign aid to almost all the countries of the region. At the same time, they have grown tired of Muslim jihadists and their barbaric violence.

Is Egypt About to Fall Into Chaos—Again?

The crash of a Russian airliner in the Sinai Peninsula is just the latest weight on the shoulders of Egypt’s beleaguered President Sisi.

For Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, it could not have come at a worse time.

On Saturday, October 31, a passenger plane carrying mostly Russian nationals fell from the sky over the Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 on board. Initially, the Egyptian government (as well as the Russian) did their best to quell any suggestion that terrorism was the cause. Yet within a week, the United Kingdom had halted flights in and out of the popular tourist destination of Sharm el-Sheikh, declaring that the crash was most likely the result of a bomb on board.

Israel losing edge in technology ‘war’ with Iran, IDF intel head warns

The country’s top army intelligence officer has reportedly said Israel and Iran are engaged in a technological “war,” with the Jewish state slowly losing its qualitative edge over the Islamic Republic.

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Speaking during a private lecture at a Tel Aviv conference, Halevi said Iran’s higher education system was leapfrogging Israel’s, churning out more new scientists, mathematicians and engineers.

Right now, Israel has the upper hand, he said. But “Iran is closing in on it,” he said. “Since the 1979 revolution, the number of universities and university students in Iran has increased twenty-fold, compared with three and a half times for Israel.”

Hizballah is creeping up on Israel’s Golan border, relying on Russian military cover

Essentially, intentional Russian support is paving the way for an Iranian foothold on Israel’s doorstep via terrorist group proxy. An earlier report shows pictures of Soleimani in Syria ‘rallying the troops’ but was likely laying groundwork down for future operations.

 

Wholly preoccupied with the ferocious Palestinian terror campaign washing over their country, Israelis have scarcely noticed that Hizballah forces, believing they are protected by the Russian military presence in Syria, are creeping toward Israel’s northeastern Golan border.

debkafile reports: The Lebanese group thinks it is a step away from changing the military balance on the Golan to Israel’s detriment and gaining its first Syrian jumping-off base against the Jewish state – depending on the Syrian-Hizballah forces winning the fierce battle now raging around Quneitra opposite Israel’s military positions.

Obama’s Subtle Undercutting of Israeli Self-Defense

This is precisely why Israel has been told to forget America and prepare for Armageddon.

The Obama administration has turned the United States into an unreliable nation for even its strongest of traditional allies.

 

The mullahs learned well the lesson that Saddam Hussein learned in 1981 when Israel bombed the nascent Iraqi reactor at Osirak. Days after that attack, then-prime minister Menachem Begin announced the Begin Doctrine – that Israel viewed the development of weapons of mass destruction as an existential threat regardless of the stage of development and would preemptively attack as a means of counter-proliferation.The Begin Doctrine also led Israel to attack and destroy a Syrian site in Deir ez-Zor in 2007. In his memoir, Decision Points, President George W. Bush wrote that then-prime minister Ehud Olmert asked the United States to bomb the site, but that the evidence was insufficient to warrant U.S. action. So Israel did it.

Iran on Israel: ‘We Are Going to Destroy Them’

Vows ‘this task will be done’

The commander of Iran’s army said on Tuesday that the Islamic Republic would destroy Israel at all costs despite the recent nuclear deal aimed at reining in the country’s rogue behavior, according to comments by these officials.

Ataollah Salehi, commander of Iran’s army, said that no matter how many weapons are given to Israel, “we are going to destroy them,” according to comments reported in Iran’s state-controlled press and independently translated from Persian for the Washington Free Beacon.

Khamenei: Israel won’t survive next 25 years

 

In a quote posted to Twitter by Khamenei’s official account, Khamenei addresses Israel, saying, “You will not see next 25 years,” and adds that the Jewish state will be hounded until it is destroyed.The quote comes against a backdrop of a photograph showing the Iranian leader walking on an Israeli flag painted on a sidewalk.

President Obama’s Iran nuclear deal is proof that we are living in Bible’s ‘End of Days,’ former Rep. Michele Bachmann claims

Bachmann, in an interview over the weekend on Jan Markell’s evangelical radio program “Understanding the Times,” said the controversial deal will help bring about the end of the world and the second coming of Jesus Christ.

“All the nations of the world signed an agreement that slams the door against Israel and opened it up to enriching and empowering the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world, whose ultimate goal is the annihilation of the Jewish State,” Bachmann, who unsuccessfully ran for President as a Republican in 2012, said on the program.