Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring you greetings from Jerusalem. The city in which the Jewish People’s hopes and prayers for peace for all of humanity have echoed throughout the ages. Thirty-one years ago, as Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, I stood at this podium for the first time. I spoke that day against a resolution sponsored by Iran to expel Israel from the United Nations. Then as now, the UN was obsessively hostile towards Israel, the one true democracy in the Middle East. Then as now, some sought to deny the one and only Jewish state a place among…
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In the name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful H.E. Mr. Mogens Lykketoft, President of the General Assembly, H.E Mr. Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, Excellencies, Heads of Delegations Ladies and Gentlemen, I come before you today from Palestine, compelled to sound the alarm about the grave dangers of what is happening in Jerusalem, where extremist Israeli groups are committing repeated, systematic incursions upon Al-Aqsa Mosque, aimed at imposing a new reality and dividing Al- Haram Al-Sharif temporally, allowing extremists, under the protection of Israeli occupying forces and accompanying ministers and Knesset members, to enter the Mosque at…
Recent news from Iceland and the European Union has drawn attention once again to the BDS movement. But what is it? BDS is an acronym used by anti-Israel activists to promote Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel. The supposed justification for this move to boycott the products and people of Israel is the “illegal occupation of the West Bank” and other imagined injustices against the Palestinian people. But the movement is not about helping the Palestinians or making the world a better place. It is simply ill-disguised hate of the Jewish people. BDS has a strong foothold in European countries…
Israeli customs officials prevented a huge shipment of weapon-making materials from falling into the hands of terrorists when they inspected a suspicious cargo of “paint thinner.” Closer inspection revealed 15 tons of sulfuric acid, which is banned from import to Gaza because it is a main ingredient in explosive substances such as TNT. The amount of sulfuric acid in this shipment would have been enough to create 3 tons of TNT, and produce hundreds of deadly Qassam rockets. Qassam rockets are the missile of choice for Hamas and other terrorist groups to launch into Israeli communities adjacent to Gaza. Hamas…
The international BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement against Israel is alive and well. In the last few weeks, Iceland’s capital city of Reykjavik made headlines around the world when the city council voted to boycott ALL Israeli products. The largely symbolic gesture lacked the legal power to enforce the ban, and would have had little impact even if implemented. Iceland only does about $4 million in business with Israel, so the impact to Israel’s economy would have been minimal. Yet the disturbing display of animosity towards the Jewish State prompted immediate outrage. Iceland’s own national government harshly condemned the action,…
Israel knows all too well the pain of terrorism. For Americans, the tragedy of September 11, 2001 was a heartbreaking moment in history. For 14 years, Israel has stood in solidarity with America’s pain and resolution to fight the evil that spawned these terrorist attacks. Others have forgotten, but Israel will never forget. Each year on the anniversary of September 11th, Israelis hold a ceremony at the 9/11 Living Memorial Plaza in Jerusalem. The bronze sculpture of a waving American flag is the only memorial outside the United States to list the names of all 2,977 lives lost in the terrorist attacks of…
It seems the President of the United States and his entire administration have a case of amnesia. For two years leading up to the final agreement between Iran and the P5+1 nations (United States, Britain, Germany, France, Russia, and China), President Obama and John Kerry and multiple White House and State Department officials all agreed: No deal is better than a bad deal. Then we get to July of this year, and suddenly the opposite is proclaimed with a straight face as the gospel truth. Suddenly, we hear that even a bad deal is better than no deal because no…
Yesterday, a story that could have ended in tragedy took a surprising turn. Five American yeshiva students were on their way to the Cave of the Patriarchs, a Jewish holy site located in the West Bank city of Hebron. The students were misdirected by their GPS, and ended up driving through a Hamas-affiliated neighborhood. The neighborhood was already engulfed in a riot, and as soon as the crowd saw the Jewish boys in their Israeli car they attacked. The enraged mob surrounded the car and hurled rocks at the passengers. A firebomb found its target and set the vehicle ablaze,…
Rockets from Syria fell in the Galilee region last Thursday, and Israel responded to the intentional attack with a deadly strike against the Iranian-led Islamic Jihad terrorist cell that launched it. The exchange of fire threatens to rupture a 42-year cease-fire between Syria and Israel and ignite full-blown war. Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011, fighting between the Assad regime’s forces and Syrian rebels has occasionally spilled over into Israeli territory. Errant sniper fire and missiles have hit Israel before, but usually these incidents are not intentional. However, the four rockets launched into Israel on Thursday…
In the first two weeks of August, several “lone wolf” terrorist attacks across Israel have injured ten innocent people. The frequency of the attacks has alarmed many people, but security forces are on constant alert. Because of their diligence, no fatalities of innocent Israelis have occurred as a result of these attacks. Two separate stabbing attacks took place on Saturday. The first took place at a checkpoint in the West Bank, where a Palestinian man approached an IDF soldier to ask for water and then stabbed him when he turned to get the water. The attacker was subdued and taken…