Members of the Bnei Menashe Jewish community celebrate Hanukkah, Dec. 8, 2015
One hundred and two members of the Jewish community in India, who trace their heritage to one of Israel’s lost tribes, are moving to Israel this week.
The immigrants, who hail from the northeastern Indian state of Mizoram — home to the second largest concentration of the country’s Bnei Menashe community, as they are called — will arrive in Israel on Tuesday and Thursday. The move is being facilitated by Shavei Israel, a nonprofit that seeks to connect “lost” and “hidden” Jews to the Jewish state.
David Friedman, President Donald Trump’s pick to serve as U.S. ambassador to Israel, will have his confirmation hearing in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this week.
The committee announced Saturday that the hearing is set for Feb. 16, a day after Trump is to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.
Should the committee cooperate on his nomination, Friedman could be approved by the full Senate within several days.
Qatar’s special envoy to Gaza, Muhammad al-Amadi, said that he maintains “excellent” ties with various Israeli officials, and that in some case it is Palestinian officials who are holding up efforts to better the lives of residents of the Strip.
“I am in contact with senior Israeli officials and agencies and the relationship is great,” al-Amadi told The Times of Israel in an interview last week, the first time an official Qatari representative has spoken with Israeli press.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back Sunday at ministers pressuring him to use his first meeting with US President Donald Trump to disavow his support for Palestinian statehood, telling the weekly cabinet meeting that only “responsible policy-making” would protect Israel’s interests.
“This is an extremely important meeting for the security of Israel, both for our increasingly strong international standing and for our wide international interests,” the prime minister said of his scheduled Wednesday’s sit-down with Trump at the White House.
Writing on Facebook Saturday night, Education Minister Naftali Bennett, who chairs the Jewish Home party, said the meeting with Trump would be “the test of Netanyahu’s life” and would determine Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians for years to come.
PM Netanyahu with New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Murray McCully
Israel is permanently downgrading its diplomatic ties with New Zealand and Senegal, punishing these countries for co-sponsoring an anti-settlement resolution in the United Nations Security Council last year, The Times of Israel has learned.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided this week not to return Israel’s ambassadors to Wellington and Dakar, who had been recalled after Resolution 2334 passed on December 23, according to a senior source intimately familiar with the issue.
By Peter Baker and Mark Landler: President Trump and his advisers, venturing for the first time into the fraught world of Middle East peacemaking, are developing a strategy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that would enlist Arab nations like Saudi Arabia and Egypt to break years of deadlock.
The emerging approach mirrors the thinking of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who will visit the United States next week, and would build on his de facto alignment with Sunni Muslim countries in trying to counter the rise of Shiite-led Iran. But Arab officials have warned Mr. Trump and his advisers that if they want cooperation, the United States cannot make life harder for them with provocative pro-Israel moves.
The White House seems to be taking the advice. Mr. Trump delayed his plan to move the United States Embassy to Jerusalem after Arab leaders told him that doing so would cause angry protests among Palestinians, who also claim the city as the capital of a future state. And after meeting with King Abdullah II of Jordan last week, Mr. Trump authorized a statement that, for the first time, cautioned Israel against building new West Bank settlements beyond existing lines.
By David P. Goldman: Iran is dying, and no one knows it better than Vladimir Putin, who worked successfully to raise Russia’s fertility rate, unlike Iran’s theocrats, who have failed to persuade Iranians to have children.
Russia’s relationship to the only Shi’ite state of significance is less an alliance than a dalliance, motivated by Moscow’s fear of Sunni radicalism and its desire to establish a strategic beachhead in the Middle East.
But Iran is a depreciating asset whose value will disappear within a 20-year horizon. The question is not whether, but at what price Russia will trade it away.
By Robert Farley: The technology that binds all of these other systems together is the Israeli soldier. Since 1948 (and even before) Israel has committed the best of its human capital to the armed forces. The creation of fantastic soldiers, sailors, and airmen doesn’t happen by accident, and doesn’t result simply from the enthusiasm and competence of the recruits. The IDF has developed systems of recruitment, training, and retention that allow it to field some of the most competent, capable soldiers in the world. None of the technologies above work unless they have smart, dedicated, well-trained operators to make them function at their fullest potential.
Since 1948, the state of Israel has fielded a frighteningly effective military machine. Built on a foundation of pre-independence militias, supplied with cast-off World War II weapons, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have enjoyed remarkable success in the field. In the 1960s and 1970s, both because of its unique needs and because of international boycotts, Israel began developing its own military technologies, as well as augmenting the best foreign tech. Today, Israel boasts one of the most technologically advanced military stockpiles in the world, and one of the world’s most effective workforces.
Here are five of the most deadly systems that the Israeli Defense Forces currently employ–the foundation of why Israel is a military power no one wants to mess with.
The West Bank’s Palestinian Authority (PA) has set up a committee to come up with worst-case scenario financial strategies that may unfold for Palestinians now that US President Donald Trump, who is sympathetic to Israeli interests, has entered office.
While one of former President Barack Obama’s last actions before leaving the post was releasing $221 million (£179 million) in aid to the PA, new White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer has suggested that Mr Trump could renege on the commitment.
Concern for Jewish students in Britain has grown since leaflets calling the Holocaust the “greatest swindle of all time” were found on campuses across the country, the UK’s Jewish News reported.
According to the report, the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) is working with the Community Security Trust (CST) and the colleges’ individual Jewish Societies “to ensure the welfare and safety of all Jewish students,” following the discovery of the fliers at University College London and the universities of Glasgow, Cambridge and Edinburgh.
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