Finance Minister and Religious Zionism Party head Bezalel Smotrich holds a faction meeting in northern Israel, May 19, 2024. Photo by Ayal Margolin/Flash90.
Judea and Samaria leaders on Tuesday applauded Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s announcement earlier this week that major steps had been taken to transfer administrative authority in the area from military to civilian hands.
Israeli soldiers during Gaza ground operations, March 19, 2024. Credit: IDF.
On Yom Ha’atzmaut (Independence Day), Israelis celebrate the bravery and heroism of those who fought in the 1948 War of Independence to ensure the survival of the fledgling Jewish state.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has declared that a Rafah operation will happen regardless of whether Hamas accepts the new hostage deal offered by Israel. But how much longer will Israel wait to go in? How much of this rhetoric is public diplomacy and how much can be trusted as actual policy?
JNS CEO Alex Traiman and Middle East correspondent Josh Hasten analyze this story in all its angles as well as top stories happening in Israel
– ICC threatening arrest warrant against Netanyahu
– Biden administration accusing whole IDF units of human rights violations
– Violent anti-Israel protests across campus
– Antony Blinken’s Middle East trip and much more!
Don’t miss up-to-the-minute news on JLMinute!
Binyamin Regional Council head Israel Ganz (in black T-shirt) and IDF Central Command Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fox (on Ganz’s left) during the search for 14-year-old shepherd Binyamin Achimeir. Credit: Binyamin Regional Council Spokesperson.
The more than half a million Israeli residents of Judea and Samaria are no strangers to terrorism. In 2023, the region saw a 350% increase in terrorist attacks compared to the previous year. There were 300 shooting attacks last year, the most since the second intifada in the early 2000s.
President Biden announced that the US Navy is opening a port to deliver aid to Gaza. Can this be successful or even properly inspected? Does this shift scrutiny away from Israel? Is this part of a larger effort by the Biden administration to isolate and undermine Netanyahu and the Israeli government?
JNS CEO Alex Traiman and Middle East Correspondent Josh Hasten break this down along with
– Biden’s come-to-Jesus Netanyahu comment
– Ramadan violence
– The Haredi draft crisis and much more!
A Jewish settler rides his horse near the outpost of Ramat Migron on Sept. 8, 2023. Photo by Chaim Goldberg/Flash90.
This week, the United States sanctioned another three Israeli residents of Judea and Samaria, accusing them of “undermining peace, security, and stability in the West Bank.”
A Jewish resident of Judea and Samaria herds sheep near his community, Aug. 20, 2023. Photo by Chaim Goldberg/Flash90.
For the second time in as many months, the U.S. State Department, in coordination with the U.S. Treasury, is again issuing financial sanctions against Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria.
Soldiers and families of soldiers who fell in battle against Hamas pray at the renovated synagogue at the Lamed-Hey IDF base in Gush Etzion on Mon., March 4, 2024. Photo: Josh Hasten.
Family members of 16 soldiers from Gush Etzion and Efrat who fell defending the State of Israel since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre gathered on Monday at a military base in the Gush’s western foothills to dedicate the base’s newly expanded synagogue in memory of their loved ones.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on a phone call with U.S. officials, including the president, about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s strategy against Hamas on Oct. 11, 2023, in the Oval Office. Credit: Adam Schultz/White House.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday appeared to reverse the Trump administration’s “Pompeo doctrine,” which stated that civilian Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria were not necessarily illegal according to international law.
The International Court of Justice courtroom at The Hague. Photo by Ankor Light/Shutterstock.
Leaders of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, along with Zionist Israeli NGOs, have expressed their ire about the hearings currently taking place at the United Nations’ International Court of Justice in the Hague (ICJ) regarding Israel’s legal right to maintain a presence in those often-politicized regions of the country.