Israel Desk – March 2023

Arab media around the Middle East now say it is time to pressure Israel, while it is vulnerable due to internal strife. The Syrian newspaper Al Watan which is affiliated with President Assad’s regime, wrote that “dozens of soldiers have announced that they will not participate in military training,” and added that “the legal amendments are dismantling the Israeli occupation army.”

Israel’s internal crisis encourages its enemies

With just one month until Israel celebrates its 75^th anniversary, former Mossad director Tamir Pardo says ‘the country is on the verge of collapse’ as the first reading of PM Netanyahu’s proposed judicial reforms was passed in the Knesset. He said,

Around 500,000 Israelis have taken part in mass demonstrations against the government, there are growing calls for IDF soldiers to refuse to serve and opposition leaders have called for civil disobedience to topple Netanyahu’s government. 

Arab media around the Middle East now say it is time to pressure Israel, while it is vulnerable due to internal strife. The Syrian newspaper Al Watan which is affiliated with President Assad’s regime, wrote that

Arab media outlets highlight “the statement of 37 fighter pilots in the Israeli Air Force who refuse military service, in protest of the controversial legal reform plan.”  This poses serious damage to the Israeli security system and especially to the Air Force and Unit 8200, which play key roles in Israeli strikes on Iranian targets in Syria. They also note: “Iran understands that no one will attack it in light of the turbulent situation in Israel.”

They also quoted the words of Israeli protest leaders, particularly those calling on reservists to refuse further service. Remarks by President Isaac Herzog and former prime ministers Olmert, Bennett and Lapid are carefully selected as if to confirm predictions by Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah that Zionism is bound to collapse on itself.

Time for Israel to stop this madness and unite in the face of those who seek the destruction of the Jewish state.

Iran planning to kill Jews in the Diaspora

The Jewish Chronicle carried an article claiming that Iran has been “mapping” the Jewish diaspora for an assassination campaign that will be triggered if Israel attacks its nuclear facilities. The chilling plan involved setting up hit squads to identify key Jewish figures and determining “how to strike and where”.

The revenge plot was revealed to Catherine Perez-Shakdam, one of the few Westerners to be granted an audience with Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. She said Khamenei only seemed scared of one thing – an Israeli attack, she said, adding: “He believes Netanyahu’s threats and he knows that, for now, Israel is militarily superior.”

Unbeknown to the despotic regime, Ms Perez-Shakdam, a Middle East analyst and research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society think tank who contributed to pro-Iranian websites and the Russian propaganda TV channel, RT, was also a Jew. She said she gained the high-level access via the man she called “Iran’s Dr Goebbels”, Nader Talebzadeh, who led propaganda campaigns and cultivated her as a friend and ally. She said, he was explicit that the mapping was preparation for murder to make: “the diaspora pay a price”. “He said all Jews are really Zionists, even those who claim not to be, so they have to be targeted, and ultimately destroyed. It was very clear he was talking about murdering Jews,” Perez-Shakdam said. 

In her meeting with Ayatollah Khameini, she revealed that he began talking about the End of Days. He said he had a divine mission to usher in the return of the Mahdi [the Islamic messiah figure who will herald the apocalypse]. His said how al-Aqsa (the mosque on the Temple Mount, Jerusalem) had to be liberated for the Mahdi to return to save humanity.

He talked about the wars Iran was fighting in Yemen and Syria as a herald of this process and that it does not matter how many people die as long as his version of Islam triumphs and Zionism is destroyed. 

She concluded,

In an interview with current Iranian President Raisi before he became president, she reveals that he told her he didn’t care if Iran went to war when he became president. “I don’t care if Iran burns, so long as our project succeeds.” He said the influence of the Zionists would be brought to an end.

Britain and America against Israel

America and Britain claim to be allies of Israel. There is no gainsaying the deep links between them of military assistance, intelligence and trade. Israel is the invaluable strategic asset for America and Britain in the Middle East, a crucial bulwark in the defence of the West. And yet, both America and Britain undermine Israel’s security and defence against existential attack by sanitizing, promoting and funding Palestinian Arabs, whose active cause remains the destruction of the Jewish state.

A recent event illustrated this particularly sharply when British diplomatic officials in Jerusalem effectively endorsed the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) agenda to eradicate Israel. Palestinian Media Watch has revealed that at the “Palestine Marathon” held by the PA on 10^th March, seven British officials taking part as “#TeamUK” wore marathon T-shirts displaying the PA’s map that erases Israel and represents the whole country as Palestine.

The team consisted of the UK’s Deputy Consul General Alison McEwen and Foreign Office colleagues. A picture of the team was tweeted from the official account of the British Consulate in Jerusalem, hailing

Palestinian Media Watch observes that this hashtag was conceived to support the PA’s demand that Israel remove the security measures it has adopted to prevent the flow of Palestinian terrorists from PA-controlled areas into Israel’s cities.

According to the Jewish Chronicle, the marathon was organised by a group called “Right to Movement,” which campaigns against “the many obstacles that we live daily under fascist racist occupation.” The race was held under the auspices of the Palestine Liberation Organization Supreme Council for Youth and Sports headed by Jibril Rajoub, a man who has been convicted of numerous terrorist offenses and who persistently glorifies Palestinian terrorist murderers.

So these British diplomats took part in an event supervised by a terrorist sympathiser; openly supported the Palestinian Arabs’ lie that Israel is subjecting them to “fascist racist occupation”; openly opposed Israel’s measures to protect its citizens against attack; and openly endorsed the eradication of Israel altogether.

The consular bodies run by both Britain and America in Jerusalem, which provide assistance to the Palestinian Arabs in the east of the city, the disputed territories and in the Gaza Strip, have long been viewed by the Israeli government as working against Israeli interests.

Although former President Donald Trump shut down the US consulate in 2019, the Biden administration effectively restored and upgraded America’s diplomatic mission to the Palestinians when it opened the US Office of Palestinian Affairs last June and installed Hady Amr as “special representative for Palestinian affairs.”

Amr, who had previously worked as national coordinator of the anti-Israel Middle East Justice Network, had said that he was “inspired by the Palestinian intifada”; that the Arabs

At last month’s summit in Jordan ostensibly aimed at calming the violence between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, which has produced a rising number of Israeli murder victims and near-daily Arab attacks, Amr promoted an American plan requiring Israel to sharply curtail counter-terror operations by the Israel Defence Forces while providing 5,000 Palestinians with commando training as security personnel.

This was despite the fact that Palestinian security forces have been repeatedly involved in attacks on Israelis—hardly surprising since the PA is controlled by the Fatah terrorist group whose chairman is the PA’s own president, Mahmoud Abbas.

None of this is acknowledged by the Biden administration, which continues instead to sanitise, ignore and even incentivise the Palestinian Arabs’ murderous rejectionism of Israel.

Melanie Philips – Israel Today

Despite it all Israel is the 4^th happiest country in the world!

Israel is the fourth happiest country in the world, according to a report produced by the U.N.-affiliated Sustainable Development Solutions Network.  Based on Gallup World Poll data, the study leverages six key factors to help explain variation in self-reported levels of happiness across the world: social support, income, health, freedom, generosity and absence of corruption.

The report was released on 20^th March to mark the International Day of Happiness, which was established when the U.N. General Assembly adopted Resolution 66/281 in June 2012. The report named Finland the happiest country in the world for the sixth consecutive year, followed by Denmark, Iceland, Israel and the Netherlands.