Israel Matters!

Israel’s First-Responders Form Kaleidoscope of Cultures An unusual hug caused thunderous applause at a recent Knesset ceremony saluting Israel’s emergency medical first-responders and search-and-rescue personnel. Parliamentarian Yehudah Glick, who survived an Arab shooting attack two years ago, spontaneously climbed onto the podium to embrace Kabahah Muawhiya, an Arab-Israeli volunteer EMT with the national volunteer emergency medical services organization, United Hatzalah of Israel. “United Hatzalah is not just about emergency first response and medical rescuing, but it is literally uniting people from different walks of life and different religions,” Muawhiya told Israeli lawmakers. “It is a uniting of peoples and a unity of hearts.” click Israel Matters! 105 to read the complete issue. Will open with the free Adobe Reader or equal.

Israel, Turkey Announce Reconciliation Deal Israel and Turkey announced a reconciliation deal that both sides claim will normalize relations that were ruptured more than six years ago when Israeli commandos seized a Gaza-bound Turkish ship, killing nine Turkish activists in the ensuing melee. The accord should put to rest years of hostility that began with Israel’s December 2008 Cast Lead incursion into Gaza and culminated in the May 2010 raid on the Mavi Mar-mara, part of a flotilla that aimed to bust Israel’s maritime blockade of the Gaza Strip. click Israel Matters! 104 to read the complete issue. Will open with the free Adobe Reader or equal.

Netanyahu: US, Not Moscow, Is the Cornerstone of Israeli Foreign Relations The U.S. remains Israel’s chief ally and can-not be replaced by Russia, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said recently before flying home after a two-day visit to Moscow. “It is not desirable or practical to replace the United States [with Russia]. The US is the cornerstone of our foreign relations,” Netanyahu told reporters. He had visited Moscow for the third time this year, and held his fourth face-to-face meeting with President Vladimir Putin. click Israel Matters! 103 to read the complete issue. Will open with the free Adobe Reader or equal.

Netanyahu Offers Jewish History Lesson to UN Diplomats Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently offered to personally host a lecture on Jewish history for local U.N. staff following outrage over a resolution adopted by the U.N. cultural agency that failed to acknowledge Jewish ties to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the holiest site in Judaism. click Israel Matters! 102 to read the complete issue. Will open with the free Adobe Reader or equal.

NGO Monitor: UN Agency Manipulates Data to Misrepresent Israel NGO Monitor has released a report highly critical of a UN agency deemed so biased in Jerusalem that the Foreign Ministry, according to diplomatic sources, stopped cooperating with it in any meaningful way several years ago. The organization is the Jerusalem-based UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OCHA oPt). NGOs are nongovernmental organizations. click Israel Matters! 101 to read the complete issue. Will open with the free Adobe Reader or equal.

Israel to Create an Egalitarian Prayer Plaza at the Western Wall Israel recently approved a plan that would dramatically change the layout of Jerusalem’s Western Wall plaza, one of the holiest sites in Judaism, creating a space for egalitarian prayer and mixed-gender ceremonies for non-Orthodox Jews. The new area, which will enable men and women to pray side by side, is to be adjacent to the existing plaza run by stringent ultra-Orthodox rabbis. That area is split into prayer sections for men and women, although women are not allowed to read aloud from the Torah, wear prayer shawls, or sing there. click Israel Matters! 99 to read the complete issue. Will open with the free Adobe Reader or equal.

New Mossad Chief: Iran Deal ‘Significantly Increases’ Threat To Israel The nuclear agreement signed between Iran and six world powers in July 2015 has “significantly increased” the threat to Israel posed by the Islamic republic, Yossi Cohen warned as he was sworn in as the new head of the Mossad intelligence agency. Still, he added, he was confident the spy agency would be able to formulate an “appropriate response.” click Israel Matters! 98 to read the complete issue. Will open with the free Adobe Reader or equal.

Netanyahu to UN: 44 Seconds of Silence For 40 minutes at the United Nations General Assembly in early October, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu eloquently articulated the challenges posed to Israel and to the international community by Iran and by Islamist fanaticism. He warned of the growing danger that Iran, “unleashed and unmuzzled,” will constitute in the wake of its nuclear deal. And he castigated the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for “libeling” Israel, from the same podium 24 hours earlier, by falsely asserting that Israel was seeking to harm religious freedom on the Temple Mount, when it was Islamic extremists who were desecrating the site by “smuggling explosives” into the Al-Aqsa Mosque. click Israel Matters! 96 to read the complete issue. Will open with the free Adobe Reader or equal.

Netanyahu: We Need Pact to Preserve Jewish Israel A two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian peace accord is desirable not because it will have any significant influence on the turmoil roiling through the Middle East, but rather because this will prevent the establishment of a binational state, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said while recently in London. Netanyahu, speaking to some 120 Members of Parliament and members of the House of Lords from parties across the political spectrum, said the solution to Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians was “a demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes a Jewish state, the nation state of the Jewish people.” click Israel Matters! 95 to read the complete issue. Will open with the free Adobe Reader or equal.