“Armed struggle” against Israel is the majority’s favored option, and practically no one thinks the PA should run Gaza after the war.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The latest poll by a respected Palestinian center shows that a vast majority of Palestinians support Hamas and an “armed struggle” against Israel rather than a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority (PA) in charge.

The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that fully 67% of all Palestinians, including 57% in Gaza, think that Hamas was right to invade Israel on October 7.

An even more whopping 75% of respondents were “satisfied” with Hamas’ performance in the ongoing war, including 64% who actually live in the war zone.

Violence was the preferred option for Palestinians in their confrontation with Israel overall.

When asked to choose one of three best ways to establish a Palestinian state, over half (54%) selected “armed struggle,” which is a jump of eight percent from a poll asking the same questions three months ago.

The increased support for war was seen mainly in Gaza, which saw a rise of 17%.

Another 16% chose popular nonviolent resistance, although when asked specifically if this was a good policy to break the political stalemate with Israel, 49% expressed support for this measure.

Only 25% chose “negotiations” as the best way forward.

In general, only a minority (32%) support a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, which is the reason for such negotiations.

It is the only option that the West has backed for the last 50 years.

Over a fifth demand one state of Palestinians and Jews instead, an almost complete nonstarter in Israeli Jewish society, no matter where people are on the political spectrum.

The PA itself is hugely unpopular. While Hamas’ led all political parties with 40% support, Fatah, the primary party of the PA, was far behind at 20%.

A large majority of 63% want to see the PA dissolved, and a whopping 89% would like its 89-year-old president, Mahmoud Abbas, to resign. In Judea and Samaria, the number rose to 94%.

Abbas’ attempt to begin “revitalizing” the PA as the Americans want so that they can support it becoming a state, hasn’t changed Palestinian minds, even if the Biden administration took it as a good sign.

His March appointment of a supposedly technocratic prime minister, Mohammad Mustafa, received good marks from only 9% of the respondents. An overwhelming majority of 72% believe that the new government will not succeed in carrying out reforms such as combatting corruption, or holding legislative and presidential elections for the first time in well over a decade.

A similar percentage does not believe that it will succeed in pushing for reconciliation and unification of the “West Bank” and the Gaza Strip.

All this data seemingly contradicts several of the Biden administration’s most cherished ideas: that the Palestinians want the new PA put in charge of the Gaza Strip as part of a two-state solution favored by the people of the region, and that Hamas and its terrorist tactics does not represent the will of the Palestinian people.

The survey of 1,510 adults was taken between May 26 and June 1, evenly divided between Palestinians in PA-controlled areas in Judea and Samaria, and Gazans in areas where no combat was taken place, mainly in central and southern Gaza, including the humanitarian zones set up by Israel.

Its margin of error was +/-3%.

The post After October 7th, vast majority of Palestinians support Hamas, poll shows appeared first on World Israel News.

The criminal case ended with almost no punishment for the perpetrators, so the family sued them instead.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

A family has won 60,000 shekels in a civil suit against Palestinians who attacked them in the Old City of Jerusalem six years ago after the judge in the criminal case let them off with almost no punishment, Israel National News reported Tuesday.

On their return from prayer services at the Western Wall in September 2017, three male family members got into their car to drive away when an argument ensued with two Arabs who claimed that the Jewish worshippers had parked in a way that blocked the entrance to their store. The argument escalated into fisticuffs, with several Arabs throwing punches, kicking, and even one throwing a cup of boiling-hot coffee at their victims.

The men were bruised in the fight, and a Border Police unit arrested the two main assailants after being summoned to the site. Despite video evidence from street cameras, the case against them was closed in January 2018.

Honenu, the legal aid organization that helps Jewish victims of Arab assaults, then fought a years-long, successful battle to get the case reopened, only to see the court approve a sweet plea deal in March: One assailant received a two-month suspended sentence; the other was let off with 100 hours of community service.

The police defended their decision to offer the lenient deal, saying that it “fit the evidentiary difficulties and the passage of time from the commission of the crime.”

Honenu was angered by both the procedure and the slap on the wrist. They pointed out that the plea agreement had been made with the assailants’ legal representatives without notifying them as the victims’ lawyer, as required by law.

In addition, “the phenomenon of violence against Jews in Jerusalem is increasing all the time but the accused get off … without paying a price,” said Adv. Haim Bleicher, director of the Terror Victims Department. The decision was made to bring a civil suit “as the least we can do …. to deter others from repeating such actions.”

The Arab defendants never responded to the lawsuit, and when the time limit for a response passed, the court has ordered that they pay the full sum demanded in compensation – 60,000 shekels.

A satisfied Bleicher commented, “Civil lawsuits are the necessary supplement in the war on terror … especially where the criminal law is not adequately prosecuted.”

This tool, he continued, “gives back to the victims what they deserve for being harmed, but more than that, it deters those rioters who are forced to pay out of their own pockets to those whom they had tried to hurt. We will continue to make an effort to see that every rioter or terrorist who hurts Jews pays a heavy price.”

The post Israeli family wins monetary suit against Palestinian attackers appeared first on World Israel News.

This is not the first time police have questioned the Jewish victim under caution instead of the Arab assailants.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

A Jew who was beaten during Jerusalem Day festivities last month by Arabs and filed a complaint with the police was questioned on suspicion of attacking them instead, Israel National News reported Sunday.

The man, who had come to the capital’s Independence Park to celebrate the day the capital was unified during 1967’s Six Day War, was severely beaten by five or six Arab guards, said lawyer Ofir Steiner of Honenu, an NGO that offers legal assistance to Israeli Jews experiencing difficulty in receiving a fair judicial process after clashing with Arabs.

Guards had told him to leave an area of the park where a performance was being given, and he obeyed, explained Steiner in a letter to the police. The man then saw a group of guards running towards something and followed “from a distance,” Steiner emphasized, out of curiosity. One of the men grabbed him and then they all started punching him violently while shouting “Kill the Jew!” in Arabic.

The man tried to escape, to no avail, and was only saved when two Border Police officers arrived and had to physically break into the fight in order to release the victim from his assailants’ grip.

In the letter complaining of the authorities’ conduct, Steiner wrote that instead of arresting and questioning the Arab attackers after the man complained against them, the police subsequently interrogated the victim under warning. The Arabs had lied to the police, saying that he had attacked the whole group of them when they refused him entry several times, and they had had to respond to his violence.

“The version of the attackers has no basis or hold in reality,” Steiner charged, noting that the incident had not taken place anywhere near the complex where the event was being held, and flies in the face of the evidence the police already had in hand.

Their story, he continued, was only concocted “to cover up a racially motivated violent attack, by posing the investigation as if it were a case of one person’s word against another, or some kind of mutual altercation.”

“It is expected that the Israeli Police will compare the attackers’ far-fetched version with the rest of the evidence in the case and the victim’s version… complete the investigation of the violent attackers, and make sure that they will indeed be brought to justice for their actions,” Steiner added.

This is not the first time that Honenu has charged the police with blaming the Jewish victim of a nationalist Arab attack.

In January 2022, an Arab brutally assaulted a young Jewish man in the middle of Jerusalem, continuing to beat him even after he fell to the ground. When the police arrived, they arrested the victim while he was bleeding, and interrogated him under warning.

In May of that year, also in Jerusalem, an Arab deliberately hit a yeshiva student’s car, and then he yanked open the Jew’s door and started punching him, smashing his glasses. When the student went to the police station to file a complaint as the officers on the scene had recommended, he found himself being questioned under caution, fingerprinted and photographed.

In both cases the police responded to Honenu lawyers’ complaints by saying that the cases were “under investigation.”

Last June, a high school group was attacked in Lod by a mob of Arabs throwing rocks and the police had to escort the group to safety. Their tour guide was then arrested in the middle of that night and interrogated for several hours before being released under restrictive conditions, outraging Religious Zionism party head MK Bezalel Smotrich.

“Something very bad is happening to the Israel Police,” he said. “Again and again we hear how Jewish victims of crime are portrayed as those guilty of the offenses, in order to obtain artificial calm which will eventually explode in our faces.”

The post Arab guards attack Jew, police interrogate the victim instead of the perpetrators appeared first on World Israel News.

“What happens in the Negev doesn’t stay in the Negev,” NGO Regavim said, referring to the rampant Bedouin crime in the south.

By World Israel News Staff

In one of the bloodiest criminal incidents in Israel in recent years, five people were killed in the Arab town of Yafia, near Nazareth, on Thursday afternoon.

The same day, just hours earlier, a three-year-old girl and 30-year-old man were seriously wounded in a shooting in the Arab town of Kfar Kana in the Galilee. The child is in serious condition and the adult in critical.

“I was shocked by the terrible murder near Nazareth. We are determined to stop this chain of murders,” Prime Minister Benjamin said in a statement to media.

“We will do so not only by reinforcing the police but also with the aid of the ISA [Shin Bet – Israel Security Agency]. I am determined to bring in the ISA to assist the Israel Police against these criminals and the crime organizations, and these murders.

“Earlier this week, I held a series of meetings on this issue with security, legal and police officials and I intend to continue next week, and to achieve rapid results,” he said.

The idea to use Israel’s internal security agency with all its intelligence and surveillance methods that are applied to prevent terrorist attacks in order to fight the upsurge in crime in the Arab sector was first raised in 2021 by the Bennett government. Then-Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit ruled against it.

“As for the matter of the Shin Bet’s involvement in handling [Arab crime], it must be made clear that the handling of crime is not within its purpose and role according to the Israel Security Agency Law, even when it concerns the matter of serious crime in the Arab community,” Mandelblit stated at the time.

The government has vowed to solve the issue of rampant crime in Arab-Israeli communities, but so far, it has only been getting worse.

On Wednesday night, a woman in the mixed Arab-Jewish city of Lod narrowly escaped a bullet that flew through her window and landed just inches away from her bed. Police acted only after National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir told a station commander at 2 a.m. that he would come to the city himself if quiet is not restored, after fielding several panicked messages from Jewish residents who had been hearing gunfire near their homes for an hour.

“If the Shin Bet law to deal with Arab crime is not passed immediately, I will call for the toppling of the government,” Lod Mayor Yair Revivo said following that incident.

“Another horrific shooting took place today at a town near Nazareth; five people were murdered. Crime in the Arab sector continues throughout the country, highlighting how lawlessness and the loss of governance have terrible consequences for all Israelis,” NGO Regavim stated after the deadly Yafia shooting.

“What happens in the Negev doesn’t stay in the Negev,” the organization said, referring to the rampant Bedouin crime in the south.

Superintendent Natan Bozna, the police officer in charge of Arab sector crime, tendered his resignation Tuesday amid the upsurge in Arab-on-Arab violence that has swept the country.

The post Five killed in Northern Israel massacre, deadliest in years appeared first on World Israel News.

The attack occurred near Mamilla Mall, outside the Old City.

By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News

A young Arab woman who was mistakenly identified as a Jew was physically assaulted in eastern Jerusalem last week, the victim told the Hebrew-language Walla news site.

The woman, who does not want to be identified by name, said she was walking near Mamilla Mall outside the Old City when she was approached by a group of Arab men.

She told Walla that the attack occurred around 9:30 p.m., after she left work and was waiting for a taxi to take her home to her neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem.

“Suddenly, three young Arabs, [who appeared to be] in their 20s, approached me and tried talking to me. They asked ‘Are you Jewish?’ I answered them ‘What’s up?’ in Arabic, so they’d understand I’m not Jewish,” the woman told Walla.

Despite her reply in Arabic, the men rushed at her, began beating her, and threw her to the sidewalk. The victim said she tried to fight back, that one of the attackers was physically imposing and she felt that her “fist did not affect him at all.”

At the time of the assault, she was on the phone with her mother, who started recording the call when she suddenly heard her daughter crying out for help.

In the recording of the call published by Walla, the victim is heard repeatedly saying in Arabic that she’s not Jewish and begging the attackers to leave her alone.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the assault, the victim said, was that no passerby stopped to help her.

“I tried to scream for someone to help me,” she said, noting that “there were five Arabs nearby who just watched and did nothing.”

The victim called police immediately after the assault. Security forces were unable to find the attackers.

Although the victim suffered cuts and bruising, she was not seriously injured in the assault. But the incident has caused her significant mental distress, she told Walla.

“I’m traumatized,” the woman said. “My heart hurts. I want [the assailants] to be arrested and put in jail.”

The post ‘I’m traumatized’ – Arab woman, mistaken for Jew, brutally beaten in Jerusalem appeared first on World Israel News.

“We must strengthen the police and establish a national guard. We must be ready,” says Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

By JNS

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir on Tuesday announced his plan for police reforms, warning that an outbreak of riots in mixed Arab-Jewish cities such as occurred in 2021 is right around the corner.

At a press conference attended by Israel Police Commissioner Yaakov “Kobi” Shabtai, Ben-Gvir said, “Guardian of the Walls 2 is coming,” referring to the widespread Arab rioting that occurred in May 2021 during an Israel Defense Forces operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. “We must strengthen the police and establish a national guard. We must be ready,” he added.

“The reference scenario that I hear from most of the professionals in the ministry and the police and the Border Guard and the IDF is that a second ‘Guardian of the Walls’ is at the doorstep. In such a scenario there is only one solution: strengthening the police and establishing a national guard,” he said.

The key aspects of Ben-Gvir’s plan include:

– Creating a national guard.

– Increasing police salaries by 20% to 40%.

– Doubling the number of Border Police.

– Creating a special unit for the struggle against organized crime.

– Dramatically upgrading police cyber capabilities.

– Creating a national volunteer force comprising former IDF soldiers.

Ben-Gvir also sent a message to police officers who have resigned in recent years, asking them to “return home,” Channel 12 reported.

“In recent years there has been a painful wave of departures. I greatly appreciate my partner Kobi Shabtai, who works night and day for Israel’s security and stretches the police to the limit,” he said.

For his part, Shabtai said that the plan constitutes a “significant upgrade” to law enforcement, which will benefit the national security of all Israelis.

The post ‘Guardian of the Walls 2 is coming’: Ben-Gvir unveils new plans for police appeared first on World Israel News.

The right-wing MK has vowed that under his direction, the police will crack down on widespread Arab crime and violence – not only in Judea and Samaria, but also in the Negev and Galilee.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The appointment of right-wing MK Itamar Ben-Gvir as National Security Minister in the newly established government has had a positive effect in terms of discouraging criminal elements, a police spokesperson said Thursday on Israel Radio.

Asked several times by journalist Rina Matsliah on Reshet Bet if Ben-Gvir’s “new spirit” is already manifest, Commander Eli Levy first replied that police are implementing the new government’s regulations in general, “those of the political-security cabinet and the minister. We’re all partners in this and we’re all in a determined battle against violence and crime in the Arab sector.”

Pressed again, he responded, “I can say that there’s one thing, speaking as someone who’s out there, on the ground … that Itamar Ben-Gvir’s appointment has had a huge deterrent effect, primarily in the Arab sector. There’s a certain sense of caution since he arrived in government.”

According to a prerequisite for his Otzma Yehudit party joining the coalition, a law was pushed through the Knesset two weeks ago that gives the National Security minister authority over the police budget and its general policy, which could help him reorder the force’s priorities.

Ben-Gvir has long bemoaned the lack of governance on the ground, especially regarding the Arab sector in the Galilee and Negev, aside from dealing with Palestinian terror in Judea and Samaria.

This week, the minister focused on the Palestinian terror issue, announcing plans to limit MKs’ visits to jailed terrorists and instructing that Palestinian flags be removed from public areas, saying they constitute incitement to terrorism.

He also ordered an internal probe into a police failure to prevent the celebration of the release of a security prisoner in his Israeli Arab hometown, which he labeled “explicit support for terrorism.”

The post Seeing results: Ben-Gvir ‘huge deterrent’ against Arab violence, say Israeli police appeared first on World Israel News.

“Until terrorists get life sentences with no possibility of parole, they won’t be deterred,” said Matan Peleg, head of the Im Tirzu organization.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

An Arab Israeli who attempted to lynch a Jew last year in Acre during Operation Guardian of the Walls was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment Monday in Haifa District Court.

Adham Bashir, 25, was among dozens who attacked Mor Janashvilli during the riots that broke out in several mixed Arab-Jewish cities while the IDF attacked the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip in May 2021 for launching missiles into Israel.

The judges, who ruled unanimously, also gave Bashir a suspended sentence and ordered him to pay Janashvilli NIS 150,000 in compensation for his injuries.

The victim was in court for the sentencing, as he had been for much of the lengthy legal proceedings.

“Jewish blood isn’t forfeit,” he said in reaction. “All the judges in Israel need to follow the example of these judges. I teared up in joy.”

“I was very concerned that this wouldn’t be the message sent by the court,” he added. “I want to thank the people of Israel; my fight is for the Jewish people and I came to all the court sessions with the knowledge that the nation is behind me.”

Matan Peleg, head of the Im Tirzu organization that promotes Zionist values in Israel, who had accompanied Janashvilli to the court sessions, was less enthusiastic.

“Until terrorists get life sentences with no possibility of parole, they won’t be deterred,” he said. “A reality in which the terrorist who commits a lynching will get out of prison in seven years is intolerable. We will continue to accompany terror victims and make sure that there is a revolution in punishment and deterrence.”

Janashvilli, surrounded by a mob, was pulled from his car and beaten with rocks, wooden planks and iron bars.

Bashir – found guilty of committing an act of terror and aggravated assault – threw a rock that hit Janashvilli’s car and broke one of the windows with a club with the intent of causing the victim serious injury, disability or disfigurement, all motivated by a nationalist ideology, the court said.

Janashvilli was ultimately saved by a male Arab nurse who came upon the scene, and was taken to the hospital with hemorrhaging, several broken bones and three disc herniations. He still uses a walker and has said that he has yet to fully recover psychologically from the attack.

Seven other men have been arrested in all for the attempted lynching so far and are awaiting trial.

In related news, the Tel Aviv District Court convicted two Arabs Sunday for a nationalistically motivated attack on an IDF soldier in Jaffa during last year’s riots. In a plea deal, Mohammed Iyash (23) and Ali Masry (20) admitted involvement in the incident in which a group of men threw a block at the 19-year-old’s head, breaking his skull and injuring him severely.

Masry was convicted of aggravated assault under special circumstances, and prosecutors intend to ask for a five-year jail sentence and a fine as well as compensation for the soldier.

Iyash was convicted of incitement to terrorism and violence, and the prosecution will request that he be imprisoned for 22 months and a fine.

The post 10-year sentence for Arab Israeli who attempted to lynch a Jew appeared first on World Israel News.

A religious Jew on Wednesday night flees antisemitic Arab violence in Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish state.

This is not Germany in 1939. It’s Jerusalem 2022.

Jews are attacked by radical Palestinians. pic.twitter.com/oDRUyKWUOm

— Hananya Naftali (@HananyaNaftali) October 12, 2022

The post WATCH: This is not Germany 1939 – it’s Jerusalem 2022 appeared first on World Israel News.

Religious Zionism MK Betzalel Smotrich compares Jerusalem’s streets to a battlefield, calls for IDF troops to maintain order and clamp down on rioting.

By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News

After a night of violent rioting in Jerusalem that included Arab rock-throwers attacking the mayor’s car, widespread clashes between police and locals in the neighborhood of Shuafat, multiple acts of arson and the near-lynching of a Jewish family, right-wing politicians are calling for the government to take serious action to clamp down on the unrest.

On Wednesday night, Arab rioters launched fireworks at police officers, Jewish pedestrians and homes belonging to Jews; targeted passing motorists with Molotov cocktails and rocks. and lit fires in garbage cans throughout the eastern parts of the city.

In the Beit Hanina neighborhood, a Jewish family driving home was attacked by locals who threw rocks and other projectiles at their vehicle, shattering the windshield, according to Hebrew media reports. The family was not injured in the incident.

תיעוד | שוטרים סופגים ירי זיקוקים ממתפרעים בשכונת ראס אל עמוד במזרח ירושלים@VeredPelman pic.twitter.com/Iq5Dlvqf2C

— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) October 12, 2022

Mayor Moshe Lion’s car was also struck by rocks on Wednesday evening as it traveled through the Ras al-Amud neighborhood.

A video circulating on social media appeared to show an army vehicle set on fire in Issawiya. Hebrew-language media reported that two Border Patrol officers were wounded by shrapnel from improvised explosive devices in the neighborhood.

Religious Zionism party chair Bezalel Smotrich said that the IDF should be stationed throughout the city to ensure order, and he compared the streets of Jerusalem to a battlefield.

“This is not ‘disorderly conduct’ by civilians but rather a war against an enemy. And in war as in any war – IDF forces in large numbers must be brought in tonight to the neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem, [to] impose a general curfew on [rioters], stamp out the terrorist attacks with a heavy hand and shoot anyone who picks up a rock, a firebomb, a firework or a weapon,” Smotrich said in a statement on his Twitter account late Wednesday evening.

He added that Israel “cannot afford” to have riots “anywhere in the country, and certainly not in the capital city. The Arabs of this country will have to choose between a good life under the Jewish state while accepting its authority, and a war in which they will be beaten and defeated while paying heavy prices. We simply can’t go on like this.”

The post ‘This is war’ – Jewish family nearly lynched in Jerusalem riots appeared first on World Israel News.

An Israeli family driving in the Beit Hanina area was viciously attacked. The car was heavily damaged but there were no injuries.

By Aryeh Savir, TPS

Arab mobs rioted in several neighborhoods in Jerusalem on Wednesday night, and the Israel Police arrested 23 suspects for violating public order and violent riots as the violence seen in the city is almost unprecedented.

In the east of the city and around Jerusalem in Arab neighborhoods, there were sporadic disturbances in different locations throughout the day and night. A terrorist was killed by Israeli forces while shooting at a guard post near Qalandiya.

The police noted that contrary to false publications in the Arab media, the Shuafat checkpoint has been open since Monday under strict checks “carried out in accordance with the operational need,” as part of the hunt for the terrorist Udai Tamimi, who carried out a shooting attack at the site on Saturday night, killing IDF Sgt. Noa Lazar.

In the evening, violent disturbances began in a large number of neighborhoods and villages in the eastern part of Jerusalem, which included throwing Molotov cocktails and rocks, shooting fireworks, burning trash cans and tires, and blocking roads

The violent riots, carried out by masked rioters, were “aimed mainly at the police forces,” the police said. An Israeli family driving in the Beit Hanina area was viciously attacked. The car was heavily damaged but there were no injuries. The police have arrested two of the attackers.

During the disturbances in the neighborhood of Issawiya, two police officers were lightly injured and evacuated for medical treatment.

The violent disturbances also damaged the infrastructure, houses and property of the Arab residents of the area. A Molotov cocktail thrown at the forces led to the burning of a house in Issawiya.

The commander of the Jerusalem district Doron Turgeman directed the reinforcement of units in eastern Jerusalem on Thursday morning. The investigation of all the rioters was assigned to a special district task force.

“The Israel Police will continue to act with determination and with all the means at its disposal against the perpetrators of violence, rioters and troublemakers who have tried or will try to harm civilians or police officers in eastern Jerusalem,” it stated.

Muslims in Jerusalem are calling for a day of rage this coming Friday, and the Border Police have put 10 companies on standby, as Israelis are celebrating the Sukkot holiday.

The post Police arrest 23 Arab rioters in Jerusalem amid mounting violence appeared first on World Israel News.

“There is a danger that Ben-Gvir will convince young Jews of the righteousness of his path,” the prime minister said.

By Debbie Reiss, World Israel News

Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid on Sunday night claimed that right wing MK Itamar Ben-Gvir is “more dangerous” than the Joint Arab List’s MK Ayman Odeh, who has incited to violence against Jewish Israelis.

“Ben-Gvir is a dangerous man,” Lapid told the Kikar Hashabbat website. “He’s more dangerous than [Ayman] Odeh. There’s no chance that Odeh will convince an entire generation of Jewish youth of the righteousness of his path; there’s definitely a danger that Ben-Gvir will convince young Jews of the righteousness of his path.”

“Ben-Gvir hit on the correct thing: People are scared. He uses this fear. My question is, is he the solution? What has he done in life which makes him appropriate to deal with this issue?”

Ben-Gvir is head of the Otzma Yehudit party that has joined forces with the Religious Zionism party ahead of November’s election.

Ben-Gvir, whose fiery rhetoric has earned him a reputation as a provocateur, is likely to be the election kingmaker.

Odeh has a history of endorsing violence, including encouraging Arab rioters in Jerusalem, comparing Israeli terror victims to dead Arab terrorists, and participating in a joint Hamas-Fatah press conference in which the two rival Palestinian factions declared they would make amends in order to wage war against Israel together.

Earlier this year, Odeh physically assaulted Ben-Gvir in a hospital, where a convicted terrorist was hospitalized. Months later, lawmakers from his anti-Zionist Joint List party attacked Ben-Gvir again over his proposal to  implement the death penalty for terrorists.

Lapid also told Kikar Hashabbat on Sunday that he would have no problem sitting in a ruling coalition with Israel’s ultra-Orthodox parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism, so long as “they accept the basic principles of the government.”

“There is no reason not to sit with them. By the way, in the campaign for a ‘secular government’ – I was not the one who headed the party,” the caretaker prime minister added.

Addressing his relationship with UTJ’s MK Moshe Gafni, Lapid went on: “Between myself and Gafni there is a good relationship. By the way, even more surprisingly, between him and my father [late politician Tommy Lapid] there was not a bad relationship, surrounding the missionary law, and I continued this. I have a good personal relationship with him, I want to stop the damage that you are causing him now. There is such a thing as a good personal relationship, not everything turns political.”

“I say again: I do not rule out the ultra-Orthodox, there is only an issue of basic principles. People must understand, when something is very important to them, for religious people the principles are very important to them, I really appreciate that. They only need to understand that the things that I believe in are very important to me. We will need to find the middle ground. Compromise is not a bad thing.”

The post Lapid warns rising star Ben-Gvir is ‘more dangerous’ than Arab party’s Odeh appeared first on World Israel News.

Jerusalem court hands down one-year prison sentence to Arab supermarket employee who was filmed abusing handicapped haredi coworker.

By World Israel News Staff

On Sunday, the Jerusalem District Court fined Jerusalem resident Kamal Khamidan 10,000 shekels and sentenced him to one year in prison. Khamidan had been found guilty of abusing a handicapped haredi coworker.

Khamidan and two other suspects, one Arab and one Jewish, were arrested in August 2019.

Khamidan and the second Arab suspect were charged with abuse, while the Jewish suspect allegedly knew of the abuse but failed to intervene or alert authorities.

The perpetrators humiliated and abused the victim while being filmed. The videos were then uploaded to social media.

The abuse took place at a branch of the Shufersal supermarket chain in Gush Etzion, south of Jerusalem.

In one of the videos, the victim, Y. can be seen being wrapped in saran wrap, while one of the suspects slapped him in the face and neck.

The culprits denied accusations of abuse, claiming they were friends with the victim and that they videos were taken out of context.

“The video and an investigation into the incident revealed that the damage done to the victim was and remains substantial,” the court found in its ruling against Khamidan.

“The defendant has no mental or emotional disability; was he unable to comprehend, as a human being, the wrongness of his deeds? Does the defendant need guidance from his employer in order to refrain from wrapping cling wrap around a special-needs employee? Beating him, tying him up? And all while this was being filmed?”

MK Itamar Ben-Gvir (Religious Zionist Party), who represented the victim during the trial, said the court had sent an “important message” by handing down a prison term but lamented that the sentence was not for two years – the maximum typically given in such cases.

“This sentence handed down by the court sends an important message, but it should have been a harsher sentence. The Court has determined that the ballpark for such crimes is between 12 and 24 months in prison, and in this serious case of abuse it would have been fitting to hand down the maximum sentence possible.”

Over the past few years, there has been a marked increase in the use of social media outlets such as Youtube and TikTok to spread videos of Israeli Arabs and Palestinian Authority residents abusing, harassing, or assaulting Israeli Jews.

The phenomenon, dubbed “TikTok Terror,” has drawn the attention of Israeli police, which has vowed to combat the trend.

The post Jerusalem Arab gets year in prison for abusing haredi coworker appeared first on World Israel News.

The article calls on Biden to pressure Israel without mentioning the Palestinian Authority or Hamas. 

By Debbie Reiss, World Israel News

An oped published this week in the Washington Post by J Street founder and president Jeremy Ben-Ami is replete with misleading information. It essentially blames Israel for perpetuating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, watchdog site Honest Reporting claimed on Wednesday.

The Post opinion piece, titled, Biden needs to address the coming crisis between Israel and Palestine, calls on the visiting U.S. president to extend overtures to the Palestinians, including pressuring Israel to cease construction in Judea and Samaria and reopening the U.S. Consulate in eastern Jerusalem  – the de facto Palestinian mission that was shuttered by the Trump administration following the embassy move.

But Ben Ami’s article is riddled with facts that are either manipulated or come from questionable sources.

The article opens with a precursory line describing the left wing J Street as a “pro-Israel, pro-peace advocacy group.”

J Street supported the Ben & Jerry boycott of Israel, spoke out against an anti-BDS law in Arkansas, and this week expressed support for the nine European countries that have chosen to continue funding Palestinian NGOs that Israel has designated as terrorist organizations.

As Honest Reporting‘s Gidon Ben Zvi notes, the oped cites Israel 77 times but fails to mention the Palestinian Authority or Hamas at all, instead obliquely referring to them as “the Palestinians” — stripping the Ramallah government and the terror group in Gaza of any agency. As Ben Zvi writes, the omission suggests “Israel is to blame for the Palestinian terrorism that was unleashed against innocent civilians.”

Ben-Ami also takes pains to expound on Israel’s decision to build homes for Jewish Israelis in Judea and Samaria, as well as “settler violence” – fringe incidents that the J Street founder puts on par with a token mention of “Palestinian terrorism.” He doesn’t mention Palestinian incitement.

“By not being informed of the frequent Palestinian incitement that precipitated the latest wave of terror, Washington Post readers are likely to come away with a mistaken impression that Israeli policies are the root cause for the outbreak of violence,” Ben Zvi writes.

He cites the mob violence, instigated by both Hamas and the PA, on the Temple Mount that kicked off the 11-day conflict and 4,500 rockets in May 2021.

“Over one-tenth of Israel’s Jewish population now lives in occupied territory,” writes Ben-Ami. The statistic is taken from the anti-Israel Al-Jazeera, according to Honest Reporting.

Construction in those areas are “fueling instability in Palestinian politics and society,” Ben-Ami claims.

Counters Ben Zvi: “He fails to even reference the Israeli government’s repeated good-faith efforts to jump-start the peace process or the Palestinian leadership’s ceaseless intransigence.”

Ben Zvi denounces The Washington Post for “not checking Ben-Ami’s facts, [and] allowing its vast readership to be misled by J Street – a group with an evident anti-Israel agenda.”

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On Wednesday, a Jewish farmer received a report that Palestinian Arab shepherds entered his field in Har Hebron in Judea. The farmer came to drive them away from his field and the shepherds proceeded to throw rocks at him and beat him with a cane. The farmer had to be taken to hospital.

“Crime-breaking Arabs and radical anarchists have received a tailwind from the false ‘settler violence’ campaign that has been funded by foreign countries,” said Matan Jerafi, field coordinator of the Zionist NGO Im Tirtzu.

“This could have a very bad ending if we do not wake up. We must remove the rioters from the area and not allow them to instigate violence in the field.”

Video Credit: Im Tirtzu 

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A similar incident occurred in the nearby city of Kiryat Shmona a few weeks ago, when eight buses were torched.

By TPS

Eighteen buses parked at the central bus station in the northern city of Tzfat (Safed) were set on fire on Friday night, suspected to be the work of an Arab crime gang.

The buses were destroyed and several others were damaged, causing significant hindrance to the city’s already-strained bus schedule.

A similar incident occurred in the nearby city of Kiryat Shmona a few weeks ago, when eight buses were torched.

The police stated that they were investigating the incident in Tzfat and a possible connection between the two cases.

A gang from the Arab town of Tuba-Zangaria operates in the area, collecting racketeering fees under the guise of security companies.

The Shin Bet security service, which usually focuses on terrorism, is involved in the investigation, Ynet News reported.

Shimon Suissa, head of the Hatzor HaGlilit council in the north, sent a letter to Police District Commander Shimon Lavi, Minister of Public Security Omer Barlev, and Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai, in which he stated that the events of recent weeks, culminating in the burning of 18 buses in Tzfat, “indicate that crime families and various criminals have once again raised their heads, to threaten, intimidate, and to cause great damage to property and businesses.”

He said that the heads of the authorities in the area are requesting a meeting “as soon as possible so that we can be updated on plans and measures to eradicate this difficult phenomenon and work together to restore peace to the Galilee and a sense of security.

“All we request is security for our residents, and that business people can earn a decent living. This reality in which we live cannot continue to exist,” he wrote.

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