Israel, Greece, and Cyprus Forming Eastern Mediterranean Alliance

 

 Israel, Greece, and Cyprus continue to establish a long lasting alliance in the Eastern Mediterranean. This week they agreed to build a $6 billion undersea cable, running from Israel through Cyprus, and reaching Greece.

While the excitement about the growing security and economic partnerships between Israel, Greece, and Cyprus can be felt in those countries’ leaderships, Turkey is not happy about what appears to be an alliance designed to thwart its dreams of Ottoman expansion.

Erdogan is now claiming that the route of the undersea cable runs through Turkey’s territorial waters. The problem with that theory is Turkey views Cyprus as part of its territory. Thankfully, no one else in the world actually agree

Archaeology in Israel is more exciting than ever before

 ‘Archaeology in Israel is a popular movement,” Amos Elon wrote in his 1971 book The Israelis: Founders and Sons. “It is almost a national sport. Not a passive spectator sport but the thrilling, active pastime of many thousands of people, as perhaps fishing in the Canadian Lake Country or hunting in the French Massif Central.”

Those words published a half-century ago, reverberated this week as dramatic archaeological finds hit the front pages of the newspapers, and squeezed into prime-time television and radio news shows.

Last week, the Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced a trove of finds from a wide-scale archaeological operation ongoing since 2017 in hidden caves in the Judean Desert, in cooperation with the Civil Administration’s Archaeological Department.

Among the finds were an ancient woven basket, believed to be some 10,500 years old, and the 6,000-year-old skeleton of a child. Those were the “universal” finds. Of more particular Jewish interest were the discovery of fragments of ancient scrolls of the biblical books of Zechariah and Nahum, as well as coins dating to the Bar-Kochba revolt in 132 CE.

And these findings come just a week after another archaeological story was highlighted in the media: an 11-year-old boy hiking with his family in the Negev discovered a figurine, believed to be a fertility amulet, dating to the First Temple period.

The findings announced from the Judean Desert were not just stumbled upon this week. The findings were announced on Tuesday, but the artifacts themselves were discovered over a year ago.

Why is that important? Because the IAA seem to have made a decision to announce the findings together – both those of a universal character and those particularly Jewish.

And why is that significant? Because Israeli archaeologists have often been accused of focusing on finds that would validate Jewish claims to the Land of Israel, at the expense of highlighting discoveries – such as the 10,500-year-old basket and 6,000-year-old skeleton – that do not have an “Israeli angle.”

It is only natural that a people, accused far and wide of being interlopers in a land not its own, would find comfort in artifacts testifying to its presence in that land going back more than three millennia.

From Masada to the City of David to Tel Shiloh, whenever Israeli archeologists make a startling discovery shedding light on biblical or Jewish history, they are accused of searching for and finding only Jewish artifacts in an attempt to whitewash the history of other peoples that historically roamed and resided in this land.

But finding Jewish artifacts – or even focusing on the discovery of Jewish archaeological sites – does not deny the presence of other civilizations here. What those finds are able to do, however, is to refute the arguments of those who deny that Jews were among all those people who did roam and reside here, including in Jerusalem.

By unveiling both Jewish and general archaeological discoveries on the same day, the IAA made a statement: we are interested and focused on both Jewish and general discoveries.

More on this at https://tinyurl.com/tcrzsjxb

Palestinian Activist Slams World For Lying About Israel And Vaccine

 https://www.israelunwired.com/palestinian-activist-slams-the-world-for-lying-about-israel-and-the-vaccine/

There is no better place to be an Arab in the Middle East than the State of Israel. Israel supplies all of the best medical care to all Jews and Arabs alike. One can argue that Arabs who claim to be part of a “Palestinian nation” should be able to set up their own State. One can even argue that the “Palestinians” have been oppressed. In my opinion, there was no such thing as a “Palestinian Nation” until the recent decades when the concept was created as part of a salami strategy to weaken the State of Israel and then fight to destroy it.

However, no rational person who lives or visits the State of Israel and walks into ANY hospital, would think that Israel does not take care of the medical needs of Arabs. Actually, hospitals are the best example of coexistence in the entire State of Israel. Not only hospitals, but emergency vehicles traverse the entire State of Israel every day and save Jews and Arabs alike. Who are the ambulance drivers and medics? Jews and Arabs alike. Who are the wounded? Jews and Arabs alike. Who treats them in hospitals? Jewish and Arab doctors alike. So, the entire argument of Jews not treating Arabs or vaccinating Arabs has absolutely no connection to reality. It is not just fake news. It is the exact opposite of reality.

As a matter of fact, when I recently was vaccinated, an Arab medic vaccinated me while right next to us, a Jewish medic vaccinated an Arab, and there was nothing odd about this. It happens every day, all across the State of Israel. Don’t believe the lies. Israel has been and continues to be the best place for an Arab to be in the Middle East, even if a fringe of the population complains about it.

Israeli Intelligence Cooperation with Arab Allies Thwarts Iranian Terrorism

From the BESA Center it is reported that the magnitude of the terrorist threat in the Middle East has grown steadily since the outset of the so-called “Arab Spring.” The need to modernize intelligence in the service of counterterrorism is a matter of particular concern to the Persian Gulf states, which share the common goal of impeding the spread of Iran’s transnational terrorist network and reducing the damage caused by Iran-affiliated Shiite militias. The newly formed intelligence cooperation between Israel and several Arab states has already thwarted Iranian attacks.

The new peace agreements between Israel and its new Arab allies in the region, which found common ground with Jerusalem over their common fear of the Iranian regime, did more than secure freedom of navigation in international waters. They opened the Persian Gulf to Israeli intelligence, a consequence that was a shock to the mullahs in isolated Iran. The regime is on a quest to be the regional hegemon, and it is going after that goal via terrorism and a dogged pursuit of nuclear weapons. Iran threatens freedom of navigation in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, and supports the operations of the Shiite transnational terrorist network it painstakingly constructed.

During the past two months, Israel’s Mossad alerted the intelligence communities of its new Arab allies to threats coming from Iran, and the Israeli embassy in Ethiopia was put on high alert. Iran, which targeted embassies in the 1990s with the help of al-Qaeda, was suspected of planning a similar terrorist spree at embassies, this time to send a message to the Biden administration that it has to make a deal with Iran and make it fast.

Mossad is believed to have conveyed the message to its Arab allies that Iran was planning a series of attacks on Israeli, UAE, and US targets around the world, particularly in Africa. On February 15, 2021, Ethiopian authorities arrested 16 suspects who were planning an attack on the UAE embassy in Addis Ababa. According to the Ethiopian authorities, the Iranian cell had planned an attack on the UAE embassy in Sudan as well.

For more on this read here

Stopping the PLO Incentive to Murder Once and for All

From Israel Behind the News their agency examined legal documents of the Palestinian Authority and discovered an unprecedented PA law which legislates that anyone who murders a Jew is going to get an automatic salary for the rest of his life and a salary for his family for perpetuity.
 
This is the first time in history that an entity has declared – as a matter of policy- that anyone who murders a Jew will be entitled to a salary.
 
Shortly before his death, Prof. Robert Wistrich, a leading expert on antisemitism and on Nazi Germany, was asked if there was a precedent for such an award offered for anyone who would murder a Jew.
 
The answer was an emphatic NO.
 
What the Palestine Liberation Organization (P.L.O) has done by way of the Palestinian Authority (P.A.), now funded and recognized by 75 nations, is thus without precedent.
Further the PA does not hesitate to update the murder reward policy.
 
No less a personage than the late PLO peace negotiator Saeb Erekat became an advocate of the “pay for slay policy.
 
No one doubts the accuracy of this report. Yet people think that a peace process is in progress.
 
The time has come to launch a new era where the PLO pays a price – a price in its public image and a price in criminal jurisprudence, for daring to enact a law which creates an incentive for murder, putting a fee on the head of every Jew- No matter where the Jew lives, no matter what age is of that Jew.
 
The time has come for a policy of no tolerance for an entity that enacts a law that creates an incentive to murder. One of the basic laws of humanity is that anyone who aids and abets someone an act of murder shares the guilt in that act of murder.
 
Whether or not the PLO and the PA will be will be given a new lease on life by the new USA administration will soon become apparent.
 
If the US and Israel turn a blind eye to the PLO and the PA offer of a gratuity to anyone who commits an act of murder, that is not only a policy of antisemitism. That is a crime against humanity.
 
In that context, anyone who provides unconditional funds to the P.A. must be held accountable and indicted for a war crime.
 
An employee of any foreign entity found to be aiding and abetting the PA a criminal entity must be criminally indicted.
There is there is no immunity for any employee of a foreign aid office which aids the P.L.O, let alone Hamas. Their crimes cannot go unanswered, or they will continue.
 
This is not a command of Mosaic law, the Torah, but of Noahide law – the law that affects all nations. Jews do not expect the nations in the world to keep the Torah. That would be inappropriate.
 
Jews expect the nations of the world to keep the seven Noahide laws. That includes the law against murder

Apartheid - Who are you trying to kid?

 My friend, who blogs at Grandma's Army, had the misfortune to spend some time in  hospital recently. This experience opened here eyes to the reality, that all who live in Israel already understand, the word apartheid applied to Israel is a total misnomer.

Here is her story:-

Last week I was a patient in one of the two Hadassah hospitals in Jerusalem. I was placed in a room with two beds in the senior citizen’s  cardiology department. The other bed was occupied by an Arab Christian woman from Bethlehem who was accompanied by her approximately 50 year old son. He slept next to her in a couch by her bed, and used the same facilities. There is a Palestinian hospital in Bethlehem but they preferred an Israeli hospital even though they had to pay privately. They were once part of a predominantly Christian Arab population.  Today, Bethlehem is almost devoid of Christians, as the result of persecution by their Muslim brothers – and not only in Bethlehem.

Israel’s public healthcare system is a model of genuine commonality between Arabs and Jews. In the government healthcare system, Arabs fill 12.4% of jobs; in nursing studies 42% of students are Arab; pharmaceuticals has become identified with the Arab community – 38% of druggists are Arab; at Superpharm, the largest drugstore chain, 62% of the pharmacists are Arabs. In medicine itself, the proportion of Arabs is roughly akin to their proportion in the population.

The village of Arrabeh, to the north of Nazareth, may look like just another quiet community in the Lower Galilee. But, if you take a closer look at the 24,000 residents, you’ll notice a lot of them preface their names with the title “Dr.” It boasts one of the highest numbers of doctors per capita in the world. The Israeli Arab community has more than six doctors per thousand inhabitants, according to a 2015 report by  community activist Makbula Nassar, a journalist and presenter of current affairs programs.

Describing her pioneering role as “a great responsibility, with a lot of pride,” Dr. Shaden Salameh is the first Arab female physician to head up a hospital emergency room in Israel. As director of the Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus Emergency Medicine Department, Dr. Salameh explains that the greater the challenge, the more motivated she is. As the mother of three young children under six, and married to a physician, she attributes part of her ability to juggle her demanding life, to the ability of women to multitask.