By P.R. Kumaraswamy.. Since their establishment in January 1992, Israeli-Indian relations have improved dramatically. Israel has emerged as a major Indian trading partner in the Middle East with bilateral trade rising from a meager US$100 million to over $6.6 billion. Cooperation in the military-security arena has similarly grown and there are widespread popular exchanges between the people of the two countries. The Israeli ambassador is the most sought after diplomat in New Delhi after his U.S. counterpart, and Indo-Israeli ties seem extraordinarily robust. Yet failure to acknowledge the limitations of this relationship would be costly. (more…)
Members of the opposition and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s own coalition are pressing the Israeli leader to accept a new Arab peace proposal as a basis for renewed negotiations with the Palestinians. On Monday (April 29, 2013), Qatari Prime Minister Hamad Bin Jassem Al Thani referenced the Saudi-authored Arab League Peace Initiative while visiting Washington. However, Al Thani seemed to suggest a softening of the proposal’s conditions, stating that the Arabs were ready to accept comparable, mutually agreed and minor land swaps between Israel and a future Palestinian state. (more…)
By Olivier Melnick.. I have had my doubts about President Obama’s true position on Israel and the Middle-East crisis from the start of his presidency. I often felt that the messages he sent were ambiguous at best and that his relationship with Prime Minister Netanyahu was less than appropriate for a head of state. But, in all fairness to both sides, and because I am not a political analyst by trade, I had to give it time, so I did. (more…)
By Israel Today Staff.. Continuing with the theme of debunking accusations that Israel imposes institutional racism anapartheid on the Arabs of the region is a story by the AFP (*) on a senior Bedouin tracker in the Israeli army. Lt.-Col. Magdi Mazarib, the highest ranking Israeli Bedouin army tracker, is featured in the story. He tells the news agency that compared with neighboring countries, the status and position of Arabs in Israel “is better…It’s a different league.” (more…)
By Michael Gottlieb.. Believe it or not… Israel’s Legal Right to Samaria is enshrined in International Law! A cold, hard look at the law reveals an undeniable if inconvenient (for some) truth: Israel and the Jewish People have full sovereign rights to Judea and Samaria. A fair and objective analysis of the various post-WWI agreements, decisions, conferences, treaties, declarations, covenants and conventions regarding the Question of Palestine (not to be confused with today’s made-up “Palestine” that the “Palestinians” claim as theirs) can only lead to this conclusion. (more…)
Last week international computer hackers operating under the umbrella group Anonymous threatened to “erase Israel from the Internet” in a massive coordinated attack scheduled for today. By mid-morning Sunday, that attack had largely failed, and Israeli hackers had scored some blows of their own against the foreign assailants. (more…)
By Ryan Jones.. US President Barack Obama’s visit to Israel was widely seen as a success, given that the primary goal was to win over the hearts of an Israeli public that had been, at best, suspicious of the American leader. But behind all the praise and admiration Obama heaped upon Israel, there was a gentle chiding that showed he still views the lack of peace in the region as primarily the fault of the Jewish state. (more…)
By Aviel Schneider.. In a scene reminiscent of the Bible, millions of locusts invaded southern Israel earlier this month, crossing the border from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Israeli farming communities in the Negev desert – including the biblical Kadesh Barnea – were attacked by the ravenous insects. (more…)
By Simon Plosker.. Referring to the impact of Israeli air strikes on Gaza during November 2012′s Operation Pillar of Defense the BBC’s Wyre Davis wrote: “In the BBC Gaza office, that feeling was most tangibly felt on the first day of this conflict when Omar, the 11-month-old son of our cameraman Jihad Misharawi, was killed when a missile hit his home. It was a pointless, terrible tragedy that deeply affected Jihad’s colleagues who live and work here in these testing conditions.” (more…)
