Standards.

Ever heard of Al-Aqsa TV? You may think you haven’t, but if you’re a longtime HA reader I’ll bet you have. They’re responsible for the charming children’s characters Farfour, the Jew-hating mouse; Nahoul, the Jew-hating bee; and Assud, the Jew-eating rabbit. Apart from their stellar children’s programming, they’re known for Holocaust revisionism and various forms [...]

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Plus, a gamechanger for Israeli energy independence?

After an unusually long break from rocket attacks and military responses from a five-month cease-fire, rockets again began shelling southern Israel from Gaza the last few days. Israel didn’t wait long to deliver a response, attacking “two extensive terror sites” with air attacks of their own. Gaza answered back with two more rocket launches, once [...]

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Influence.

You can thank Obama for this. Fresh off his visits to Theodore Herzl’s tomb and Yad Vashem, he decided to broker a detente between Netanyahu and a guy who told a UN conference less than a month ago that Zionism is a crime against humanity. But it’s okay: Erdogan later walked back the charge by [...]

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Fiasco.

The organizers insist he wasn’t kicked offstage for criticizing Obama, just for playing the same song over and over, but then they also said afterward that the concert was an “event celebrating innovation/startups” and that appears to be not quite the full truth either. Per their website, it was billed as an “Inaugural celebration … [...]

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Tenuous.

New violence flashed along the Gaza border today, with one dead and as many as 25 injured. Hamas claims that Israel opened fire on “farmers,” while the IDF reported that demonstrations on the border turned into attempts to breach it and enter Israel, despite at least one warning shot. So far, though, neither side seems [...]

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Status quo.

It’s in effect as of 2 p.m. ET. Whether it’ll still be in effect when this post publishes at a little after 3, who knows. Alternate headline: “Fat envelopes from Uncle Sam to Muslim Brotherhood to proceed as scheduled.” Under the ceasefire terms, Israel is to stop all aggression against the Gaza Strip from land, [...]

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Perspective.

The Daily Beast offers a perspective today that, while not entirely ignored, often gets overwhelmed in the action reports of war and terrorism: life on the streets of both Gaza and Israel.  In two different articles — one reportage and one a straight opinion piece — we get a glimpse of the human costs of [...]

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Moderates?

To be fair, Senator Feinstein said this last night, before Hamas took credit for their heroic attack on that bus full of unarmed civilians in Tel Aviv this morning. However, it’s not as if Hamas has suddenly taken up terrorism as a last resort. The rockets have rained down on southern Israel for years from [...]

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Killing the cease-fire effort?

“It’s a disturbing new dimension” in the Israeli-Hamas war this week, reports ABC’s N. J. Burkett on the scene of a bus bombing in Tel Aviv. The Al-Qassam Brigade, one of Hamas’ armed wings, took credit for the terrorist attack on civilians that resulted in at least 10 injured — and perhaps the crippling of [...]

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What would a ground war look like?

Two days ago, John McCain nominated Bill Clinton as a US envoy to the Middle East as a way to dial down the war that Hamas initiated with Israel.  Instead, the other Clinton will shortly arrive in the region as efforts to cobble together a meaningful cease-fire continue to fail.  Hillary Clinton — the actual [...]

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Escalation.

They’ve been holding off, partly to give Egypt time to try to broker a truce and partly because they know escalation will make the true believers in Cairo scream even more loudly about tearing up the treaty. But no truce is in the offing right now and they’re not going to sit by while Tel [...]

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Flames.

The IDF’s not messing around on either front. Shortly after they rolled out the video clip below, of Ahmed al-Jabari’s final moments, they posted this retweet-ready bon voyage on Twitter: Ahmed Jabari: Eliminated. twitter.com/IDFSpokesperso… — IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) November 14, 2012 They tried to kill him several times before but didn’t succeed until today. This appeared [...]

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Spring fever.

I saw something about this at Iran’s English-language house organ, Press TV, and figured it was propaganda aimed at driving the wedge between Israel and Egypt a little deeper. Not so. The AP reported it on Monday. It really happened. One year and one month after Mubarak was knocked over, this is what the vanguard [...]

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