Author Netzach Yisrael

Next week, after three challenging years, 36 students will complete the prestigious Air Force pilot course.

This coming Wednesday, Major General Norkin will give the cadets their flying wings on the parade ground, when he received his wings exactly thirty years ago as part of his flight course, which was the 113th pilot course.

Author Netzach Yisrael

Lian Najami, Israel’s first Arab Rhodes scholar, is the kind of person who can be optimistic about just about anything — including having a needle stuck in her spine.

As she waited in a Haifa hospital Wednesday morning for a lumbar puncture, Najami expressed hope that the procedure would finally put a name to her degenerative neurological disorder. After that, she said, anything was possible.

Author Netzach Yisrael

President Trump’s announcement that the United States would recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital changes everything, and nothing. On the one hand, it is simply a recognition of reality and U.S. law. More than two decades ago Congress enacted a law requiring the State Department to recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, and to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv, the Israeli commercial capital, to Jerusalem.

The law had never been implemented. Each presidential administration has simply issued a waiver of congressional instruction every six months, delaying the move of the embassy. Indeed, President Trump has issued the waiver twice himself. But now he has now made it clear that U.S. policy is changing: Mr. Trump says he will do what several presidents before him only said they would do what Congress required. In so doing, Mr. Trump is fulfilling a major campaign promise. This was a bold and right redemption of a promise.

Author Netzach Yisrael

By: Yoram Hazony. For nearly seven decades, the state of Israel has endured an unusual humiliation: Alone among the nations of the world, it has been denied the sovereign right to determine its own capital. Israel has regarded Jerusalem as its capital since its War of Independence in 1948. It is the seat of Israel’s president, prime minister, Knesset (parliament), Supreme Court and most government ministries. Yet for the better part of a century, the U.S. has led what is effectively an international boycott of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, keeping its embassy in Tel Aviv as part of a fiction that the status of Jerusalem remains undetermined.

The roots of this policy go back to the first half of the 20th century, when European diplomats set their sights on making Jerusalem an “international city”—a kind of second Vatican, controlled by responsible Europeans rather than by Jews or Arabs. When Jewish forces took the western half of the city in 1948, and especially after Jerusalem was united under Israeli rule in 1967, this fantasy of a Euro-Jerusalem disappeared forever. But rather than recognizing Israeli sovereignty, the international community decided to leave Jerusalem’s status for “future negotiations.”

Author Netzach Yisrael

For perhaps a quarter of the world’s population, President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem on December 6 was humiliating. Just for that reason it makes Middle East peace more probable. More than President Jimmy Carter, who brokered the Israeli-Egyptian peace deal of 1979, President Trump is likely to be remembered as the American president who contributed most to peace.

Wars end not when the loser is defeated, but rather when the loser is humiliated. Throughout history, as I argued in a 2016 survey of ancient and modern wars, losers have fought on until they lack the manpower to fill their depleted ranks. Typically that occurs after 30% of military-age men are dead, as in France during the Napoleonic Wars, the South in the American Civil War, or Germany in the Second World War. The losing side will not abandon hostilities until all those who want to fight to the death have had the opportunity to do so — unless it is humiliated before the physical exhaustion of its resources has run its course.

Author Netzach Yisrael

WASHINGTON — Defying dire, worldwide warnings, US President Donald Trump on Wednesday broke with decades of US and international policy by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Despite urgent appeals from Arab and European leaders and the risk of anti-American protests and violence, Trump declared that he was ending an approach that for decades has failed to advance the prospects for peace. He also for the first time personally endorsed the concept of a “two-state solution” for Israel and the Palestinians, provided both sides agree to it.

Author Netzach Yisrael

The UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to disavow Israeli ties to Jerusalem as part of six anti-Israel resolutions it approved on Thursday in New York. The vote was 151 in favor and six against, with nine abstentions.

The resolution came as the Trump Administration was rumored to be actively considering relocating its embassy to Jerusalem.

Author Netzach Yisrael

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shakes hands with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, at the Los Pinos Residence in Mexico City, on September 14, 2017

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted a message of gratitude to Mexico following its announcement that it would not vote against the Jewish state in upcoming votes at the United Nations.

“Thank you President of Mexico @EPN and Secretary of Foreign Affairs Videgaray for refusing to go along with one sided anti-Israel resolutions at the UN. Deeply value your friendship,” Netanyahu tweeted last week. The tweet included emojis of the Israeli and Mexican flags. EPN stands for Enrique Pena Neito, Mexico’s president.

Author Netzach Yisrael

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir addresses a joint press conference with his French counterpart in the Saudi capital Riyadh on November 16, 2017. (AFP PHOTO / Fayez Nureldine)

Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir on Thursday called on the Hezbollah terrorist organization to disarm, warning the group that regional efforts were underway to oust them from the Lebanese government.

At a press conference in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, al-Jubeir denounced Hezbollah as “a tool of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards” and “a first-class terrorist organization used by Iran to destabilize Lebanon and the region.”

Author Netzach Yisrael

The Palestinian reconciliation deal was driven by a number of factors: Hamas’s new leadership; its failure to govern Gaza; the respective roles played by two arch-rivals Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and former senior Fatah official Muhammad Dahlan, who each tried to make use of Hamas’ strategic weakness to advance their own interests; the role of Egypt, which utilised its close relations with all the relevant parties to prise Hamas away from ISIS in the Sinai; and the upcoming launch of a US-initiated peace process.

Hamas is being pragmatic but the unity deal with the PA does not represent a change of ideology. Hamas is not going to give up its military wing, forsake its Islamist character or agree to recognize Israel.