יום שישי, ד׳ תמוז תשפ״וFriday, June 19, 2026
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Vic Rosenthal created FresnoZionism.org to provide a forum for publishing and discussing issues about Israel and the Mideast conflict, especially where there is a local connection. Rosenthal believes that America’s interests are best served by supporting the democratic state of Israel, the front line in the struggle between Western civilization and radical Islam. The viewpoint is not intended to be liberal or conservative — just pro-Israel.
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Present Israeli deterrence is at its lowest point in years, and any US-brokered compromises with Hamas, Hezbollah, or Iran, will be disastrous to us.
In April, Iran launched an aerial attack. Israel should have responded with conviction to ensure Iran would never dare try it again. Instead, to maintain US support we made only a symbolic gesture, by bombing a radar station. And now here we are again.
The ancient Hebrews fought the Canaanites without mercy. There was no possibility of a two-state solution; for one tribe to live here, the others had to go. When Amalek attacked the people of Israel on their way to their land, bribing them to stop murdering us was not considered.
How can Israel use the consequences of human and societal evolution to help her overcome the massive propaganda assault, both in the West and in the Middle East?
Those in Israel who see the removal of Netanyahu as PM as a higher priority than the defeat of her enemies are idiots at best and traitors at worst.
We are in a bad spot, but there is one strategy that might succeed: that is to strike a massive blow at the Iranian regime and Iran’s infrastructure,
All these threats against Israel are real.
Our actual duty is to face the truth, which is that the price of a deal is far too high and endangers the existence of the state. The only option is to increase the military pressure.
Israel’s political, intelligence, and military elites have shown themselves incompetent. They failed to foresee, prevent, or even effectively react to the invasion of 7 October. They have turned the military successes of the war into what appears to be a surrender to all of Hamas’ demands.
Israel can’t continue on the path of subservience to the US, because American objectives in the region are inconsistent with the continued existence of a Jewish state.
In short, Israel has been and continues to be outgunned in the realm of information warfare.
It is with great sorrow – and trepidation – that I observe America taking the side of Hamas in what is nothing less than the first phase of a war against the existence of the Jewish state. Despite the declarations of “unbreakable bonds,” and “unconditional support,” the Biden administration is demanding that Israel not invade […]
Allowing this hit job on Israel and the IDF to be published was no less than editorial malpractice.
Has the “bear hug” already squeezed the freedom and sovereignty out of Israel?
What is the greatest danger facing Israel today? You may be very, very surprised...
The generals and the politicians forgot that we are not a large Western democracy, but rather a small country in the Middle East. They forgot that our enemies are not stupid. They forgot that honor and deterrence go together. They forgot that the more complicated a system, the more weak points it has, and that technology can fail.
We have a message to send to Hamas and to all our enemies: we can and will fight as brutally as necessary.
his is our last chance, after the disasters of Oslo, the withdrawal from Gaza, the Second Lebanon War, the Shalit trade, the ongoing loss of Area C, and countless other losses and humiliations, to end our slide to destruction.
There are ad hoc groups of former security officials, etc.--and then there is Ehud Barak.
During the late 1980s and 1990s, the legal establishment arrogated more and more power to itself
Palestinianism as an ideology is in a certain way like Marxism or Scientology. When Palestinianists are confronted with clear-cut facts, they nevertheless find it possible to deny or ignore them
Our conflict is a struggle between peoples for territorial dominance. Although we find it tremendously difficult to face the fact, it is a zero-sum game. One side will win, and the other will disappear from the region.
If we draw Venn diagrams of the minimum demands made by the PA and the maximum concessions that Israel could afford to make (and vice versa), the intersections will be empty. There is no “creative” way to solve this problem.
An overview of the top issues confronting us
I welcome the idea that Israel will be able to help the Europeans in their time of need... So I have prepared a draft of a letter that our government COULD send to the EU in order to get the ball rolling.
Her blood is on the hands of the terrorists, along with that of the Israelis they murdered.
I have a question for the Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, his cabinet, and indeed every member of the Knesset: What is your long-range plan to deal with Palestinian Arab terrorism, both by Palestinians from the territories and Israeli Arabs?
What the US gets out of an agreement with Iran is not certain. Biden can declare “peace in our time” while waving the new, even worse, version of Obama’s JCPOA. But I think that the main motivation is to continue a policy, going back to the 1970s, to reverse the outcome of the 1967 war.
Israel is no. 100 on the list of countries by population. Following it are Switzerland, Togo, Sierra Leone, Hong Kong, and Laos. I haven’t noticed pressure on these countries to take tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees.
It’s clear that we are back in Obamastan now, where the aspirations of the Palestinians have equal or greater weight than the security of the Jewish state; and where Israel must pay the price for the failures of the Arab leadership.
The Biden Admin. is Obama’s third term. Its foreign policy team, and especially those responsible for negotiations with Iran, are made up almost entirely of former Obama Administration people. Although I can’t prove it, I believe that Obama, Ben Rhodes, Susan Rice, and others are pulling the strings.
The ordinary Israeli sees Reform Judaism for what it is, a politically left-leaning, spiritually vacuous, non-Jewish religion. But it is the 800-pound gorilla of the non-Orthodox world, with money, clout, and people that it uses to project its influence here in Israel, where, in my opinion, it does not belong.
This morning’s paper discusses the plans being made for the possible aliya of the roughly 250,000 Ukrainians who are eligible for Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return. Several government ministries and the army are making preparations to bring them to Israel, provide identity documents, places of temporary residence, and financial aid for them, if […]
I want to be more specific about the meaning of Zionism today: I say it is the belief that the State of Israel is the state of and for the Jewish people, and not a “state of its citizens.”
Why does Israel permit her enemies to support a subversive fifth column inside the state? I don’t know. Big money corrupts. Maybe enough Israeli politicians have personal connections to these NGOs, and they or friends and family benefit from them, and that’s why the laws that have been passed to regulate foreign money are weak and toothless.
Whether or not it is true that more Americans hold antisemitic views than in the past, my guess is that American Jews are right to be concerned, because the fragmentation and disintegration of American society that is occurring now has released numerous demons, including antisemitic ones – and the demons are increasingly violent
So what’s my problem? Why do I insist that the state is in as much danger now as it was in 1948, 1967, or 1973?
The Israeli government does sometimes take action, often when prodded by Regavim, but equally often the thefts of land are simply ignored. I think this is because many Israeli officials, even ones that are supposedly “right-wing,” have internalized the idea that a Palestinian state of some kind is both benign and inevitable. It had better not be inevitable, because nothing about it is benign
Unfortunately, many Israeli politicians seem to have internalized the mindset that is promoted by the psywar campaign
I see a version of history being taught in which the US and the West in general are presented as the greatest of evils. Young people are learning to despise their own country and to want to destroy it, rather than to identify with it and improve it.
If we want to survive here, we need to regain the respect that we have lost as a result of our spiritual weakness. How do we do that? A step at a time. Start with executing terrorist murderers, then punish their families, their clans, their hometowns. Make terrorism more painful for them than for us
There is no contradiction inherent in the formulation “a Jewish and democratic state,” because all citizens, Jews and Arabs, have full civil and political rights. That is true, as far as it goes. But it’s our country, not theirs.
Cowering behind the walls of the ghetto is a poor idea both practically and psychologically. Rather, we must bring Hamas to total defeat.
Israel would be very foolish to put all her eggs in America’s basket today.
What prevents Israel from doing what’s necessary to regain her lost honor?
Both Bennett and Netanyahu are guilty of placing political considerations above national ones by bringing this enemy of the state into the government and empowering it.
Muslim minorities in non-Muslim states are particularly destabilizing. Israel is in a particularly difficult position, with an extremely large national minority of Muslim Arabs
Israel faces the "Big Lie assault," in which massive repetition of outrageous falsehoods stuns the mind into accepting them.
Israeli media reports that Foreign Minister Lapid – although he categorically denies it – promised American Secretary of State Blinken that the US could reopen the consulate.
I am not going to argue for the value of the existence of the Jewish people--And we don’t need to convince anybody.
The Arabs have a vision and have never stopped aggressively fighting for it. The Jews, on the other hand, seem to have lost theirs – it was called “Zionism”
Everyone in Israel is talking about the explosion of violent crime among Arab citizens. As of today there have been 95 murders of Israeli Arabs in 2021. Extrapolated to 12 months and divided by the Arab population of Israel, this comes out to an annual rate of 6 murders per 100,000 people. This does not approach Chicago’s murder rate of 29 […]
Unfortunately the increased crime, especially if it’s coupled with inefficient enforcement of laws, leads to its normalization in society. More and more, crime is seen as an option by young people in Arab towns. This is what is going on now, and it’s particularly noticeable with regard to the crime of crimes, murder.
I don’t want to be even more negative than I have to be, but there is a fundamental cultural instability in America that seems to be becoming more intense with time.
Yesterday, the day Sgt. Barel Shmueli was buried, Israel allowed “dozens of truckloads” of building materials into Gaza for the first time since the last mini-war. Today the government announced further loosening of restrictions. If I weren’t too embarrassed by the idea, I might say we are paying them for “protection.” Nice border you have there, we wouldn’t want it to experience a violent “demonstration.”
It’s tragic that he was assassinated before he had realized his potential as a leader. The contrast between his greatness and the smallness of his despicable murderer is palpable.
Bennett is very unpopular these days in Israel –Perhaps he thinks that if he throws Biden a news-cycle lifeline, Biden will be grateful enough to give him something in return.
And that is why a Jewish state, even though the fact of its existence does not itself prevent antisemitism, is invaluable in ending it. A stateless people is a powerless one, and the use of power is the best remedy for Jew-hatred.
Israel’s struggle with Iran has a physical and cognitive aspect. Every skirmish has components in these two realms. Israel often wins a battle in the physical realm while losing it in the cognitive one
Once it’s established that “Palestine” is a good cause, then the more that a person aspires to moral goodness, the more anti-Israel they become. It doesn’t hurt that preexisting antisemitic conditioning, subliminally present in both non-Jews and Jews, makes it easy to see Israel as evil.
It is shocking to me that one out of four American Jews thinks that Israel is an apartheid state and is committing genocide against the Palestinians.
It is an expression of the Antisemitic idea that Jews must always be held to the highest of standards – indeed, to a standard that is continually raised so as to ALWAYS be out of reach.
The solution is to employ a proactive, not reactive strategy; to attack rather than defend.
Every day, the paper – which publishes both a Hebrew print edition that few Israelis read, and an English internet edition that is read around the world by decision-makers in governments and businesses – pumps out its vileness. Every day its writers present a slanted version of events in which Israel and Israelis are oppressors, occupiers, murderers, racists, thieves, and liars.
In other words, Iran will be able to get the bomb with very little lead time for Israel to act, and the US will be obligated to prevent Israel from acting against Iran.
Imagine an Israel without its Zionist purpose (and very quickly, without its Jewish majority). How long would it survive? Why would anyone want to fight for it? Would Jews and Arabs make common cause in support of a liberal, democratic state?
One thing is absolutely clear: putting an Arab party in the coalition brings the question of the relationship of the Jewish state to its Muslim Arab citizens front and center in a way that it heretofore hasn’t been.
If you look at the ideologies of the various parties that ran in the recent election, it is clear that the great majority of Israelis prefer a right-wing government. If it were not for the question of Netanyahu, we would have a solid right-wing coalition of 70 to 80 mandates. Instead, we are getting a “unity” government that includes Meretz and Ra’am.
The recent explosion of Jew-hatred and misoziony in America, which has encompassed street thugs, pro-Palestinian demonstrators, college students, and now corporate executives, is unprecedented.
Do we, as Israelis, want to tie our survival to the USA? Or any other great power, like China for example? I don’t think so.
For the Jew-hater, everything bad, personal and political, can be explained with reference to the Jews. Facts and logical reasoning are irrelevant; indeed, the more unbelievable antisemitic beliefs may appear, the more this confirms their truth in the mind of the believer.
Do we, as Israelis, want to tie our survival to the USA? Or any other great power, like China for example? I don’t think so.
I see the continued existence of a Jewish state of Israel as a fundamental imperative. But if coexistence is impossible, and if divesting of the territories containing most of the Arabs is also impossible, what is the alternative?
It seems that we always act the same: retaliate in a measured way, being very careful to keep civilian damage to a minimum, after which we are pilloried by the UN, the EU, and the “human rights” NGOs, regardless of that fact. We don’t destroy Hamas, we simply “mow the grass” every few years. We keep supplying Gaza with water and electricity...Is this the best our government can do, we ask?
In the past one hundred years, nothing has changed except for the defendant.
Israel is not a large country and it can’t afford have several autonomous enclaves that don’t consider themselves part of the state. The lack of respect for the laws made by the national government is corrosive
None of the characteristics of South African apartheid can reasonably be applied to Israel. Everyone who knows anything about apartheid South Africa and Israel knows that. There is simply no resemblance
Why are there so many Jewish anti-Zionists? Why do so many Jews take the side of their enemies,?
One of the reasons that Israel has been so successful, despite the challenges it has faced from its external enemies and internal tensions and the complications created by its internal minority, is its sense of national purpose as the nation-state of the Jewish people.
Could there be an Arab consciousness that is truly accepting of the fact of a Jewish state, a consciousness that understands that there is nothing fundamentally illegitimate about the state, and one that can see the decision to live as a minority in a state that belongs to someone else as not shameful?
Biden’s people say that his move to return to Barack Obama’s JCPOA, the nuclear agreement with Iran, is the only reasonable path. After all, they argue that Donald Trump’s policy of “maximum pressure” failed
If Biden chose to continue Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign, along with supporting the regional alliance against Iran, Israel’s special operations, and the strong domestic Iranian opposition, it might have been possible to bring down the regime.
Bennett, whose party has a total of seven seats, is probably not going to be Prime Minister this time. I will go out on a limb and predict that Bibi will manage to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat once again.
“Friends” in Europe pour massive amounts of money into illegal Palestinian development in Area C – the part of the territory that is supposed to be under full Israeli control according to the Oslo Accords. Control of these areas is absolutely critical for the defense of the State of Israel, both against Palestinian terrorism and against invasion across our borders.
The politicians all like to say, in sepulchral tones, that nobody wants a (second, third, fourth, or fifth) election, but I don’t believe them
Leaving out the extreme Left and the Haredi and Arab parties, I believe most Israelis more or less agree that our important goals are prioritized as follows...
What is worrisome is that the people running these corporations are also products of the American university system. They share the revolutionary ideology that is popular there.
Trump and Pompeo’s sanctions were strangling the Iranian economy, and while there is no doubt that this caused significant hardship to ordinary Iranians, a military confrontation would be far worse for everyone. Had Trump been reelected, the pressure would have continued.
I can see one way out of the dilemma
There is no reason for Israel to subsidize these enterprises, which are explicitly or implicitly calling for its destruction.
Unfortunately Obama's ignorance of history and skewed ideology produced an equally skewed morality, in which there is no room for a Jewish state
All this requires a government that can pay attention to multiple issues at the same time, a coalition that can work together, and a PM that is not on trial for corruption.
Trump is blamed by many for damaging democracy. But I think far more damage has been and is being done by the reaction to Donald Trump. Trump and his movement are being used as an excuse to push the country down a path toward less free expression and less free thought.
The response of the world media to Israel’s relative success in fighting the epidemic has been more hostile than anything I recall since the last time Israel was forced to defend herself against deadly rocket attacks from Gaza. “What about the Palestinians,” they screamed. Why aren’t we vaccinating them, too? “It’s because Israel is an apartheid state!”
What was done to Trump by the Democratic media was unfair, even vicious. But his response was to throw a bomb at the US Constitution.
Pollard is a litmus test of some sort, but it is not either one for Right vs. Left or Orthodox vs. (religiously) liberal. It’s something else
The possibility of yet another deadlocked election, especially now when leadership is desperately needed, is unthinkable. But we’ve said that at least twice before.
