יום שני, י״ד תמוז תשפ״וMonday, June 29, 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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Although it was widely claimed in the press that this child died in an Israeli strike, none appears to have taken place at the time of his death.
Today, the IDF announced that it had “accomplished its pre-determined objectives for Operation Pillar of Defense, and has inflicted severe damage to Hamas and its military capabilities.” It is embarrassing to read this statement.
Israel’s leaders know that there isn’t a diplomatic solution. But what can they do? Over the years, Israel has become so dependent on the U.S. — for advanced weapons, spare parts, etc. — that it is almost impossible to say no to US demands.
I can’t see any way to complete the operation against Hamas without a ground invasion.
The only thing that can prevent Israel from winning this mini-war and neutering Hamas is outside intervention.
When something outrageous goes on for a long time, people stop being outraged. It is boring to hear or read about things like genocidal wars in Africa, Europe’s collapse into poverty, or the complaints of Israelis about being the targets of thousands of rockets, day in and day out. I’m in Israel now, so a few words about the rockets. Everyone I talk to says the same thing: how can this be allowed to continue?
On Tuesday, three IDF soldiers were wounded by a bomb planted near the border fence between Israel and the Gaza strip. On Thursday when soldiers were trying to repair the fence, a huge explosion occurred when a tunnel packed with explosives was detonated. Luckily only one soldier was lightly injured, but it could have been catastrophic. Then last night an IDF jeep in the area was struck by an antitank missile. Four soldiers were wounded, at least two seriously (reports vary), and Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.
Could there be an Israeli politician more cynical than Ehud Olmert? Yesterday he accused PM Netanyahu of alienating President Obama — as if Obama could dislike him more — by ‘intervening’ in the US election.
Somewhere between 68 and 70% of American Jewish voters went for Obama, depending on whose exit poll you believe. Israelis that I talk to are mystified. “Are they crazy? What were they thinking?” they ask. It’s not really mystifying. Here are some general facts about non-Orthodox and secular (the large majority) American Jews.
There it is: four more years of Barack Obama. What does it mean for Israel? The bilateral talks with Iran run by Valerie Jarrett will continue. One can hope for the best, but it is very unlikely that an agreement will be reached that will include the effective dismantling of Iran’s bomb-building capability. It’s not at all comforting to think that Israel’s security will be in the hands of Jarrett, Obama’s Chicago fixer. One can speculate what Romney might have done differently, but that is not an option now.
An interview with Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak — thinly disguised as “the decision-maker” created a sensation in early August, when he suggested that an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities was imminent. Barak explained that Israel could not depend on an American commitment to destroy the program in the future, even if it were made today. Suddenly, last week, Barak began to sing a different tune.
Part of my job — not my paying job, the one I do for the sake of shamayim — is to talk to my Jewish friends and try to explain why the existence of a Jewish state is essential for all Jews, wherever they live, why a good relationship with the US is essential for Israel, and why the support of American Jews is in turn essential for such a relationship. I meet a lot of resistance, which is unsurprising when you consider that if you leave aside Arabs and other Muslims, the worldwide movement to end the Jewish state is disproportionately led by people of Jewish descent.
Yes, Israel affords civil rights and freedom of worship to its many minorities; but it makes no attempt to deny that there is one specific people, one particular narrative, one religion to which is it most centrally committed. The State of Israel is, to paraphrase Lincoln, “by the Jews, of the Jews and for the Jews.” How could those who labored to create the European Union not consider the very idea of a Jewish state anathema?
Hamas is nourished by a worldwide network of governments, Islamic charities and individuals that support its goal of killing or dispersing the Jews. But the existence of the sources of nourishment isn’t enough. Since Hamas is a recognized as a terrorist organization and sanctioned by the US and other nations, there are impediments to transferring funds to it which can be translated into weapons, ammunition and jihadist expenses. Sometimes this is facilitated by ‘respectable’ enterprises that are officially opposed to terrorism and murder, but in fact do whatever makes them a buck. Like the Bank of China, according to the Israel Law Center — Shurat HaDin, which has filed a $1 billion lawsuit in a New York court accusing the bank of materially supporting Hamas terrorism.
News item: Muslim Brotherhood leader Ahmed al-Hamrawy resigned from the group and its Freedom and Justice Party to protest a letter introducing the new Egyptian ambassador to Israel. The letter was addressed from President Mohamed Morsy to Israeli President Shimon Peres. Hamrawy, former secretary general of the Lawyers Syndicate in Alexandria, described the letter as […]
In my last blog, I called attention to a report that the US and Iran had made a secret agreement to end sanctions in return for a halt or pause in uranium enrichment. I suggested that this could be an “October Surprise:” the Obama campaign could claim that the President’s policy of partial sanctions and “tough diplomacy” had forced the Iranians to back down from their march toward nuclear weapons.
Can we expect an October Surprise this year? We may already have one brewing. A former CIA operative calling himself “Reza Khalili” and claiming to have been an agent inside the Iranian Revolutionary Guards organization, who has previously made skeptically-received claims that Iran had already produced 90% enriched uranium, is now saying that the Obama Administration has struck a deal with the Iranian regime that will shortly be announced:
The so-called “Jenin Massacre” of 2002 — a massacre that never happened — is emblematic of the way the truth is violated, over and over in this conflict. The most shocking aspect of the affair, for me, was the cynical way in which many were comfortable with inverting reality for ideological reasons.
This is one of those issues that ought to be shocking, but about which nothing is done. For years — I’ve written about this before — the Muslim waqf that controls the Temple Mount has been systematically destroying archaeological artifacts of Jewish provenance at the site.
Many of you have been shocked by the story of Malala Yousafzai, a 14-year old Pakistani girl shot in the head by a Taliban terrorist because of a blog she wrote and interviews she gave starting in 2009, criticizing the Taliban and calling for the education of women. This lovely, self-possessed girl, who speaks and writes on a level far above her age, and who planned to enter politics (video), may or may not survive. If she does not, it will be an enormous loss for Pakistan and for the world.
While events — the Hamas takeover of Gaza, the Second Intifada — have convinced the great majority of Israelis that a practical two-state solution is a fantasy based on wishful thinking, this has generally not penetrated the US media or political establishment. So Mitt’s remarks in May came as a breath of fresh air. Unfortunately, it seems as though Romney has now changed his mind.
I am a Zionist. That means that I support a Jewish state in its historical homeland. I oppose efforts to change it into another Arab state, or to kill and disperse its Jewish inhabitants. It does not mean that I think that Jews are superior to Arabs or anyone else.
Unfortunately, ‘respectable’ voices in our society, even — especially — among Jews, are unable to understand what the deliberately outrageous, over-the-top Geller sees clearly.
As Israel comes closer to a confrontation with Iran, we should note that Iran’s primary strategy is unlikely to be direct conflict with Israel. Iran’s air and missile forces, despite their bragging, are not sufficiently well-developed to support such a conflict. Instead, I expect that they will depend on their main proxy, Hizballah.
In the article on The New York Times interview with Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, the Times wrote that the Camp David Accord "called for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the West Bank and Gaza to make way for full Palestinian self-rule." this is quite false.
Imagine Jews reacted to slights the way Muslims reacted throughout the Middle East and Europe.
Israel, of all nations, can’t let the Arab street set policy for it.
The "Innocence of Muslims" film was a pretext to boost radical Islamists. The media are downplaying this angle, because it suggests that the administration policy toward the Muslim world expressed in the President’s Cairo speech of 2009 is dangerously wrong-headed.
The Western media are not the only ones who fail to see the symbolism of raising al-Qaeda’s banner on 9/11. Our President missed it as well.
Unwilling to issue an ultimatum, the U.S.will go no further than to repeat that “we will not allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon,” but it will not say — publicly or to Israel — how far it will allow Iran to go.
We need to understand that a universalist civilization will not survive a contest with a tribalist one. If we don’t value our civilization, who will?
Students are drawn into psycho-political cyclotrons and are insulated from all other voices. What begins as a concern for human rights is amplified by contact with more and more extreme expressions of anti-Israel ideology.
Fein is wrong. The corruption of the Jewish soul did not begin in 1967. It began with the adoption of the idea that surrender is pro-Israel.
A strategy of stopping Iran by getting the US to promise to enforce red lines is only a promise; and nations — the US is not alone in this — do not keep promises when doing so is not determined to be in their interest.
My pro-Obama friends tell me that nothing’s changed, that this administration is as pro-Israel as any previous one, Democratic or Republican, and I needn’t fear that a reelected President Obama will punish Israel. With all due respect, they are full of it.
The interesting question is “why did they change it?” A platform is not a binding document; it is intended as a general statement of a party or candidate’s positions. Its planks are generally written to appeal the broadest possible constituencies. Most voters never read platforms or care about them. Is the change is intended to send a message to the leadership of the Muslim nations that Obama has been courting since his 2009 speech in Cairo that he is taking concrete steps to weaken the bond between the U.S. and Israel?
In March, President Obama said "when the chips are down, I have Israel’s back," but U.S. actions since have shown otherwise.
Evergreen State College, where Rachel Corrie attended college, is a paradigm of the progressive cause-based model of education and has produced a high number of the anti-Israel International Solidarity Movement's activists.
You have chosen to honor your daughter's memory by taking her side. That's understandable, but it doesn’t validate the ideology that got her killed in order to further its goals of still more death and destruction.
Survival of a Jewish state requires both geographical and demographic domination of the area between the river and the sea
By effectively making their nuclear program appear to be primarily a threat against Israel, Iran sends a message to the Europeans and the US that they are safe.
The center of Jewish culture — spiritual, scientific, entrepreneurial, artistic — is today, as it should be, Israel. This was not the case in 1948 or 1967, but it is true now, and I can only expect it to become more true as time goes by.
Israel can theoretically negotiate a compromise with the Arabs in which it gives up land for an end to belligerency. There is a flavor of extortion here, but nevertheless Israel has a position from which to negotiate. But if Israel begins negotiating from the position that it is occupying someone else’s land, then the only thing there is to negotiate is the timetable for withdrawal.
Right now the Obama administration is being very, very careful about saying what it thinks about Israel, not wanting to upset the electoral applecart. But the New York Times isn’t afraid to let it all hang out, as it did in today’s editorial on Israel and Iran. The Times is important because its positions are so closely correlated with those of the administration. At least on foreign affairs, the Times is Obama’s Pravda.
Focusing on the relations between Israel and the Palestinians turns the conflict inside out. In fact it is driven by the absolute rejection of a Jewish state in the Middle East by all the Muslim nations in the region, which dates back to the beginning of Zionism, before the founding of the state of Israel, before the development of specifically Palestinian nationalism, and long before the 1967 war.
“Israel’s moral standing” is not necessarily enhanced by failing to stand up for its legal rights and by, in effect, selling out the Jewish people.
All of Israel’s wars involve the US as a silent ally or silent not-so-much-ally. The question of “what will the US allow Israel to do?” is almost as important as “what is Israel capable of doing?” And the timing of any action with regard to the upcoming election is very relevant to US behavior.
Let’s explain what is usually considered a major paradox: the US provides billions in military aid to Israel, enabling it to keep its enemies at bay. But at the same time its diplomats claim that they don’t know what the capital is, and the major thrust of US policy since 1973 has been to force Israel to withdraw to indefensible boundaries, despite the obvious damage to its security.
So today there is a Palestinian culture which defines itself by opposition to Israel and Jews. Its heroes are Arabs who kill Jews because that is the culture’s highest value. It can express itself in religious terms, as in the Hamas charter‘s inclusion of a Islamic injunction to kill Jews “wherever you find them,” or in pan-Arab or Palestinian nationalist ones.
As'ad Abu Khalil, tenured Professor of Political Science at California State University, Stanislaus: My favorite Zionist delusion is the notion that the Arab people don’t hate Israel but that the Arab governments incite the people to hate Israel, when it is the other way round.
One must ask what, exactly, is the aim of Israeli spying against the US? It is certainly not — as with Soviet and contemporary Russian espionage — to weaken us diplomatically and gain a military advantage in a possible conflict. Nor does it, as is the case with Chinese spying, also include a massive component of industrial espionage to erode America’s competitive advantage in world markets.
No nation is perfect, and they all have skeletons in their closets. But the US does have a commitment to such things as individual rights, equality of opportunity, social mobility, democracy, rule of law, etc. Many other nations — perhaps most of them — don’t even pay lip service to these ideals, much less exemplify them.
As the Levy Commission recently found, Israel is not in violation of international law, and it is not occupying or colonizing “Arab lands.” Jewish Voice for Peace's ideas of the ‘fundamental rights’ of Arab citizens of Israel goes far beyond what we normally think of as civil rights — for example, these ‘rights’ are said to be violated by Israel’s being a Jewish state — and UN resolution 194 does not require Israel to admit the grandchildren of refugees.
No matter what, some people simply cannot face the brute fact that there is no possibility of peace with the Palestinian Arabs and the larger Arab world in the foreseeable future. They have convinced themselves that yet another partition of the land of Israel will end the conflict. It won’t. It will only damage Israel’s ability to defend herself while providing a platform for more demands. Soon we will be hearing about “Arab Haifa, Yafo and Acco,” and then perhaps “Tel Arabiyya.”
The concept of a ‘belligerent occupation’ does not apply here. What country owned the territory that Israel ‘occupied’? Not Jordan, which was there illegally, nor Britain, whose Mandate had ended, nor the Ottoman Empire, which no longer existed. The nation with the best claim was Israel, the nation-state of the Jewish people, who were the intended beneficiaries of the Mandate. Judea and Samaria are disputed, not occupied, and the Jewish people have a prima facie claim.
Unfortunately, Israeli governments have not taken the correct line from the beginning. By not vehemently opposing Arab claims, insisting that the territory was disputed rather than occupied, and asserting Israel’s own rights under the Mandate, they allowed the PLO — with the willing connivance of anti-Zionist forces throughout the world — to make its point of view part of the conventional wisdom.
The half-life of Polonium-210 is 138 days. This means that after 8 years, only about 4.3 x 10-7 — 0.00000043 — of the original amount of Polonium would be left. So even if Arafat’s iconic underwear had been loaded with the stuff after his death, it would be undetectable, or at least at much lower levels than the Swiss laboratory found.
It's strange that it took more than a week for State to notice, and that the statement was not made by Secretary of State Clinton. After all, since June 26, Ms Clinton had time to comment on the Solomon Islands’ and Venezuelan independence days, the national days of the Congo, Rwanda, Somalia and Burundi, and of course Canada day; speak at the Climate Clean Air and Green Embassy event in Helsinki, Finland; and much more.
Absurd, isn’t it - Israel should take a loan to support an organization that officially considers Jews the offspring of apes and pigs and venerates ‘heroes’ like Samir Kuntar and Dalal Mughrabi whose heroism consisted of murdering Jewish children?
In a democratic state where freedom of expression is cherished, can we place limits on expression when the very foundation of that state is attacked? Is there a point at which the state can say “if that’s how you feel, go live somewhere else?”
Suddenly, sometime after the 1973 war and succeeding oil price spike, there was an explosion of concern for the Palestinians. The UN has since then established what seem like dozens of agencies and functionaries relating to their ‘plight’, despite the fact that Arab citizens of Israel and those “under occupation” have fared much better economically and have more individual freedom than Arabs anywhere else in the Middle East.
The former 'journalist' for The Independent, who put out a series of sensational articles about the ‘Jenin Massacre,’ found himself a perfect new home - NPR.
Given that Israel is on the frontline fighting terrorist threats, having been subjected to terrorism on an almost daily basis since its birth, one would expect that Israel would be among the founding members of the GCTF. Nope. Israel was not included among the membership, and is not even permitted to attend its meetings as a non-member.
The irrational, obsessive, unbalanced, excessive, fanatical hatred of a nation that characterizes a person like CSU-Northridge Mathematics Professor David Klein is a form of mental illness that attacks and destroys the moral sense found in a normal individual. En masse, it is a mass psychosis. In academia, it is an endemic mass psychosis.
Israel's return of the bodies of 91 Arab terrorists was supposedly a “humanitarian gesture,” which is intended to make the PA more likely to negotiate with Israel. But what it really did was provide a photo-op for the Palestinians to pretend that the terrorists were actually soldiers, and that their actions were warfare and not murder.
If you were PM Netanyahu and were deciding whether you could entrust the West in general, and this US administration in particular, with the physical survival of your country, what would you do?
There is good reason to think that the Mavi Marmara affair was orchestrated at the highest levels of the Turkish government, in order to embarrass Israel and to weaken, if not break, the blockade. And in this it was successful, insofar as the US response was to force Israel to weaken the embargo on goods into Gaza, ending Israel’s attempt to bring down the Hamas regime by economic means.
As an American I’m envious of Israelis, who have a leader who was a combat soldier and is also an intellectual, who actually knows something about history, war, economics and yes, even politics. We, on the other hand…
The current round of negotiations between the P5+1 and Iran will not enhance Israel’s security. Rather, they will do the opposite. They represent a strategy of appeasement rather than the use of power. What should happen is that the West should deliver a credible ultimatum to fully dismantle the program or face sharply increased sanctions — or, ultimately, military action.
New sources of oil and gas found in the US, Canada and South America are expected to make the Western Hemisphere energy self-sufficient by 2030. Even Israel has new sources of natural gas. And the rest of the world’s energy supply will no longer be hostage to the Mideast-dominated OPEC cartel. So at long last we can say goodbye to the ‘oil weapon’ and to the use of surplus oil money to buy politicians and academics.
Palestine exists in the Gaza Strip, sometimes called Hamastan. It is a well-developed Islamist state, with an army, a court system and a real economy. With the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the implosion of the Syrian regime, it has been immeasurably strengthened in the region.
You will recall that over 1000 prisoners, including some multiple murderers, were released in the ‘exchange’ for kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit. Many of the ones that are left were not part of the deal because they were considered more dangerous or because their crimes were more vicious.
A unity government, which would give Netanyahu a massive 96 Knesset seats out of 120, would certainly clear the decks for military action against Iran. Early elections in September, on the other hand, carry a burden of uncertainty, even though Netanyahu’s Likud party is leading by a large amount in the polls. In any event, they would be disruptive.
Barack Obama and many of his appointees share a New Left sensibility, which includes the ideas that colonialism and imperialism — particularly ‘US imperialism’ is the root of all evil, that it is meaningless to suggest that one culture could be morally superior to another, and that national interests should be subordinated to multilateral cooperation.
There is a reason that “the average Israeli” elected the son of Benzion Netanyahu, a man who shares his father’s values — because they too share his view of history. This is precisely why they believe that he would not sell out their interests.
Contrary to the statement in the NY Times obituary for Benzion Netanyahu that "ultimately, Israel was created as a result of the partition the revisionists opposed," Zionist Jews in the Land of Israel created the state, and not any UN resolution.
I would like to see the vandals who desecrated Ammunition Hill and thereby spat on Jewish sovereignty banished to a place where it doesn’t exist. They have made their statement, let them live by it.
These people are in effect combatants in the Arab war against Israel, albeit without guns. They do their best to disrupt operations and protect terrorist fighters, who do have guns and explosives.
One can argue that the status of eastern Jerusalem is in dispute, but all of Jerusalem? Apparently the US State Department thinks so. In the wake of the US Supreme Court's decision in the case of Menachem Zivotofsky, State Department Spokesperson Victoria Nuland tried to wiggle and dance her way out of some expert questioning by AP reporter Matt Lee.
The actual question has almost nothing to do with the Palestinian Arabs and whether they have a state. It has to do with whether the Jews can continue to have one. There is a huge amount of human energy and financial resources that are being wasted in support of the Palestinians. It wouldn’t be necessary if the world could simply get used to the idea of a Jewish state.
I am not particularly interested in writing another post excoriating the UNHRC or the UN itself, which is a vile institution, far less than worthless. Rather, I want to summarize some important issues about ‘West Bank settlements’ — that is, Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria — and why I support them.
It has been widely reported that Merah, the young Islamist terrorist who killed three French soldiers two weeks ago, and four Jews at the Otzar HaTorah school in Toulouse, murdered Jews “to avenge the deaths of Palestinian children.” But NPR went one better, reporting — in the words of “All Things Considered” host Robert Siegel — that “the gunman told officials that he killed his victims in part to avenge slain Palestinian children.”
It is impossible to rely on defense alone, because Israel simply isn’t big enough to absorb the damage when the defensive systems are not 100% effective. More importantly, a strictly defensive posture has zero deterrent ability. Why not fire rockets at Israel if the worst that can happen is that they will get shot down?
A war between Israel and Iran is not something that may or may not occur in the future. It is in progress now.
It is chilling to watch Ahlam Tamimi smile as she is told that she murdered not 3 children, but 8. But it is important to understand that this woman is not a psychopath. She is the true face of the Palestinian cause.
Perhaps you can’t really define a people without also defining its enemies. Certainly many believe that if the Jews could get rid of the idea of peoplehood, then they wouldn’t have enemies.The experience of the 19th century assimilationists and post-Oslo Israel tells us that this strategy doesn’t work in the real world. Even if we refuse to remember Amalek, he remembers us. And if we don’t have the support of self-conscious peoplehood (and its concrete representation, the Jewish state), how can we fight him?
Countries whose immediate danger from Iranian bombs is far less than Israel's are remarkably hypocritical and insulting when they warn Israel against a military strike. Telling Israel that it should not defend itself is like saying “just die, but don’t make a mess.” When have Jews heard this before? It’s become a cliché, but one that still resonates. The difference is that then they had no choice because they had no power to defend themselves. Today there is a Jewish state, which should not be expected to act as though it is as powerless as the European Jews of WWII. All this is part of the “Israel is expected to…” syndrome.
There is a place for what Hunter Thompson called “Gonzo journalism,” but it isn’t a wire service news report, where the ancient Five Ws are still appropriate.
The hoax in question has been developed over the past 40 years or so and is calibrated to be effective on people like you. Its objective is to make you believe that in a particular context, black is white, evil is good, lies are truth and genocide is justice.
June 26, 2026 
