IT’S TIME FOR BRITAIN TO FOLLOW TRUMP’S LEAD ON ISRAEL

MICHAEL FABRICANT

The UK should follow his lead and not only withdraw from the UN Human Rights Council but move its embassy to Jerusalem, too.

With Vice President Mike Pence looking on, US President Donald Trump gives a statement on Jerusalem, during which he recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House in Washington, US, December 6, 2017. (photo credit: REUTERS/KEVIN LAMARQUE)

It has now been a year since US President Donald Trump’s announcement that the United States would be moving its embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing it as the capital of Israel.

Over the past 12 months, the US has not only carried through this commitment, but it has also withdrawn from the notoriously anti-Israel UN Human Rights Council.

Sadly, the bold decisive steps taken in Washington have not been repeated in London.

In June, I raised the issue of the Human Rights Council in the House of Commons. While the government has been content to admit the Council’s flaws, it has so far opted against further action, with then-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson stating, “We are committed to working to strengthen the council from within.”

The problem with this approach, of course, is that the Council has proven time and time again to be beyond any kind of meaningful reform.

Since its inception in 2006, the Council has not only failed to promote human rights, but even indirectly aids the worst abusers allowing them to cover up their crimes. Currently, 47 member states serve on the Council, and all are elected onto it by the UN General Assembly.

The problem? Among its current members, the Council includes some of the most oppressive and illiberal countries in the world, including: China, Cuba, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. As recently as October, serial abusers such as Eritrea and the Philippines were elected to the Council to serve three-year terms. Clearly, the British position of “reform from within” is not working.

This farce would at least be partially admissible if the Council made a sincere effort to promote human rights; and took an objective stance on calling out gross rights violations wherever they occur.

But they do not. According to the NGO UN Watch, between 2006 and 2016 the Human Rights Council issued 68 specific condemnations of Israel, far more than any other country. Syria, whose government routinely massacres its own civilians, followed in second with 20 condemnations, while Burma and North Korea followed with 11 and 9 respectively.

A number of states didn’t receive a single condemnation, despite regular and extreme human rights violations. These included: China, Russia, Venezuela, Yemen and Zimbabwe. The issue here is not so much the criticism of Israel. The problem is that Israel is routinely singled out by the Council to a disproportionate extent, while countries that commit far worse acts often receive no criticism whatsoever.

How can Israel, a modern democracy with an independent press, judiciary and parliament – a country where LGBT pride parades are accepted and gay soldiers serve in the armed forces – be condemned several dozen times while Iran, a place where homosexuals are relentlessly persecuted up to and including execution, receive just six condemnations?

How can Eritrea, a country routinely ranked as one of the single most repressive nations on the planet, be condemned less than a tenth as frequently than Israel, the only full democracy in the Middle East?
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4,000 people from 60 nations sing as one in TLV

ISRAEL21c Video Crew

Voices join together under the baton of Israeli social music project, proclaiming ‘There’s no place I’d rather be.’

Four thousand people from 60 countries gathered in Tel Aviv in October for a mass singalong sponsored by Masa.
The event, inspired by Israeli social musical initiative Koolulam, included representatives of the Masa Israel Journey, participants of the Jewish Federations of North America’s annual General Assembly, which was held this year in Israel, and The Jewish Agency.

It was attended by MASA CEO Liran Avisar Ben Horin, Jewish Agency Chairman Yitzchak Herzog, Government Secretary Tzahi Braverman, and Masa Chairman Ilan Cohen.

The theme of the singalong, held at Tel Aviv’s Hayarkon Park, was unity.

Click on the video above to watch the latest singalong in Tel Aviv.

• Executive Producer – Jonathan Baruch
• Producer / Director – Haim Silberstein
• Editing – Shahar Beeri
• Camera – Ari Amit

PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH AND AN EMPTY CHAIR

MIKE EVANS

The Israelis were on edge during the peace conference. There was no doubt that an attempt was being made to brand Israel as the aggressor.

PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. Bush at the Madrid Peace Conference. (photo credit: KNESSET)

Te world is remembering President George Herbert Walker Bush this week. I, too, have a memory of Mr. Bush. It revolves around an empty chair. In October 1991, at the conclusion of the first Gulf War – Operation Desert Storm – Israel was again forced to the bargaining table at the Madrid Peace Conference. President Bush was there to preside over the greatest coalition victory since World War II.

Mr. Bush had been privileged to preside over the peaceful end of the Cold War, and was also a catalyst in the reunification of Germany. Several key allies were less than elated by that prospect. Bush understood that the move to reunite East and West Berlin would provide the best move forward based on the global political and geographic outlook. His next focus was on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

President Bush fought hard against the request of a right wing Israeli government led by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to receive $10 BILLION in loan guarantees from the United States. Israel had absorbed a massive number of Russian Jewish emigrants, and desperately needed help to house them. Mr. Bush demanded assurance from Shamir that the money would not be used for housing in the West Bank settlements. Shamir refused and the president urged the US Congress not to give Israel the guarantees.

The crisis escalated as President Bush and Russian President Mikael Gorbachev hosted the joint Madrid Peace Conference with the world powers present. I was sitting in the front row of the press pool. Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and the Palestinians had delegations there. When the conference convened on October 30, 1991, representatives of nation after nation mounted the podium to build a case for a Palestinian state.

During a summit press conference with Secretary of State James Baker, I was privileged to ask the first question: “If you truly want peace, why not begin by recognizing one of the oldest capitals in history – Jerusalem – as the capital of Israel.” Mr. Baker became very testy and made it clear that he would not engage in what he called the fruitless debate that the status of Jerusalem had to be determined by negotiations.

In another press conference, Ms. Hanan Ashwari, an activist and supporter of Yasser Arafat’s First Intifada, said that Jesus Christ was the first Palestinian Christian born in the Muslim town of Bethlehem. When I challenged her with the facts that Jesus was Jewish, not a Palestinian, and Bethlehem was a Jewish town. Her response was: “Don’t distort my reality and try to confuse me with facts. My mind is made up.”

The Israelis were on edge during the peace conference. There was no doubt that an attempt was being made to brand Israel as the aggressor. On Thursday afternoon, October 31, the Egyptian ambassador approached me, followed within minutes by Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Shara. He pulled a picture of Yitzhak Shamir from his pocket and told me to get the word out because on the following day he intended to accuse Prime Minister Shamir of being a terrorist. Shamir had been a member of the Stern Gang. The picture was a British Wanted poster from that era.

In the distance, I could see Shamir and his Deputy Foreign Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu whose eyes were locked onto me. Netanyahu held his hand up to his ear as a signal for me to call him. He wanted to know what the foreign minister had showed me. When al-Shara walked away, I borrowed a cell phone and called Netanyahu to relate to him what I had been told. The following day before the beginning of Shabbat, Mr. Shamir stood by his chair, thanked the leaders for inviting him to the conference, and said, “I have to leave now. I am an Orthodox Jew, and I leave these proceedings to my able delegation. I must be back in Israel before the eve of the Shabbat.” It was a shrewd move on Shamir’s part.

After Shamir departed, the Syrian foreign minister stood to make his accusations of terrorism against Shamir, but faced only an empty chair where Shamir had sat. It was a tactical blunder. Until that moment, international news sources had been focused on Israel’s intransigent prime minister. With the Syrian’s words, suddenly the global media focus changed to the Syrian display of aggressiveness towards Israel. It was obvious in the faces of those present, and especially that of James Baker that the narrative had just changed.

As a result of the Madrid Peace Conference and the loan freeze against Israel, George H.W. Bush was destined to be a one-term president. Others believe he lost the election over his “read my lips, no new taxes” comment. But I believe the evangelical pro-Israel vote might well have been a “red wave” for him as it was for Donald Trump.

The writer is a #1 New York Times bestselling author with 93 published books, including Pursuing God’s Presence. He is the founder of Friends of Zion Museum and Heritage Center in Jerusalem of which the late President Shimon Peres, Israel’s ninth president, was the chair. He also serves on the Trump Evangelical Faith Initiative.

OPERATION NORTHERN SHIELD EXPECTED TO TAKE WEEKS TO COMPLETE

JERUSALEM POST STAFF, TAL LEV RAM

The land by the northern border, unlike the south where Hamas tunnels are located, is very rocky, and the IDF’s engineering work to uncover and neutralize the tunnels is very complex.

Preparations for ‘Operation Northern Shield’ to destroy Hebollah terror tunnels . (photo credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON’S UNIT)

Operation Northern Shield, which was launched to to expose and destroy Hezbollah tunnels along the border fence with Lebanon, is expected to continue for several weeks and the state of high alert in the North will continue, according to Israeli media reports Wednesday.

Presently, the IDF estimates that the operations will remain in Israeli territory.

The work is being carried out by the IDF’s engineering forces and fighters from the Yahalom unit, an engineering unit designated for special missions, using heavy engineering machines and other technologies.

The territory by the northern border, unlike the South where Hamas tunnels are located, is rocky, and the IDF’s engineering work to uncover and neutralize the tunnels is complex. For example, the first exposed tunnel was some 25 meters deep, and its complete destruction requires many days.
“It is reasonable to assume that digging tunnels through rocks in the Galilee mountains, at a depth of 15 to 30 meters, takes years,” Dr. Maor Cohen, an expert on geography and the environment, told The Jerusalem Post’s sister publication Maariv.

“The land in the hills of Galilee is very hard and not conducive for digging tunnels. These are limestone rocks, not soft sandy soil like by the Gaza border,” Cohen explained.

“Digging in limestone can not be done using manual digging tools,” Cohen said. “It is reasonable to assume that the excavators used mechanical tools, which were apparently the source of the noise that residents of the communities on the Lebanese border had been reporting for years. In the Gaza border region, on the other hand, it was more difficult to hear the noise of the digging due to the use of manual tools in sandy soil.”

Cohen pointed out that there is a significant advantage to digging tunnels in the North, compared with digging in the South.

“In the Gaza Strip, the sandy soil crumbles immediately after digging and needs to be reinforced immediately before it collapses,” he said. “It’s also impossible to dig too deep in the Gaza Strip due to the groundwater.”

While Israeli defense officials have repeatedly denied the existence of cross-border Hezbollah tunnels, the military admitted that it has been aware of Hezbollah efforts to build attack tunnels stretching into Israel at several points along the border since the Second Lebanon War in 2006.

PASTOR JENTEZEN FRANKLIN – ONE OF ISRAEL’S BEST FRIENDS

MIKE EVANS

The Friends of Zion Museum recently surpassed 51 million members, making it one of the largest pro-Israel sites in the world.

Pastor Jentezen Franklin. (photo credit: FREE CHAPEL)

The State of Israel is not alone nor isolated but has 650 million supporters all over the world. There are millions of Christians and other non-Jews that are standing up for the Jewish people as well as telling the story of Israel, its challenges, its achievements and why all people, no matter what their creed is, should be friends of Israel.

Pastor Jentezen Franklin is one of those friends and the difference he has made in bringing millions of people to Israel and closer to its history and its people has made him one of Israel’s best friends. Since 2015, he has been working with Dr. Mike Evans and the Friends of Zion Museum to promote Israel.

He is the senior pastor of Free Chapel Worship Center in Gainesville, Georgia, home to more than 14,000 members. With locations also in California, Franklin is spreading his message of standing with Israel all across the United States and the world.

Franklin serves on the Trump Faith Initiative, actively advising President Donald Trump on his steadfast support for the US-Israel relationship. He was instrumental in helping to bring about Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital as well as relocation of the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
On Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), Franklin’s daily show Kingdom Connection speaks to millions about the importance of praying for the “peace of Jerusalem” and tells his viewers on every show to bless Israel and her people.

Since 2015, Franklin has been working with the Friends of Zion Museum in Jerusalem, a $100 million-dollar project that reveals the heroic stories of the courageous Christians and non-Jews whom have assisted the Jewish people throughout the Zionist movement, as well as in critical times like during the Holocaust. Franklin and his partners have donated more than a million dollars to the city of Jerusalem on behalf of the Friends of Zion Museum.

The Friends of Zion Museum recently surpassed 51 million members, making it one of the largest pro-Israel sites in the world. FOZ is currently building a think tank, research center, Ambassador Institute and an online university, all of which are being utilized to help educate pro-Israel supporters around the globe about Israel’s history, challenges and achievements.

The Friends of Zion has become one of the central institutions in the State of Israel, influencing the world and strengthening Israel’s relations globally, while fortifying the pillars of the Israeli society.