Naftali Bennett takes on and takes down Al Jazeera, and what a great job he did of it.

“Your owner, Qatar, funds the daily murder of children in Israel and Gaza.”

Journalists around the world are expressing outrage in the wake of an Egyptian court’s decision to sentence three Al Jazeera journalists to prison for seven years.

The three were taken from their hotel room in Cairo in December 2013 and charged with conspiring with the Muslim Brotherhood to tarnish Egypt’s international reputation. Australian ex-BBC reporter Peter Greste, Canadian-Egyptian ex-CNN journalist Mohamed Fahmy, and local Egyptian producer Baher Mohamed were among 20 accused in connection with the charges.

Al Jazeera has denied the accusations and journalists around the world have condemned Egypt for conducting what is seen as a direct campaign by Egypt’s new president to snuff out freedom of speech.

In the United States, the issue was also perceived as a diplomatic slap to the White House, which condemned the sentence. Secretary of State John Kerry phoned Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri to express his government’s “serious displeasure” over the matter.

The court decision had come just one day after Kerry’s unannounced visit to Cairo in which he announced that Washington had unfrozen billions of dollars in military aid to Egypt. He also vowed during his visit that the U.S. would deliver 10 Apache attack helicopters for use in the fight against terrorists in the Sinai Peninsula.

Newly-elected President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi refused to “interfere in the judicial verdict,” setting off an international firestorm.

“Egypt should review its unacceptable sentences against Egyptian and international journalists, and show commitment to freedom of the press,” said British Foreign Secretary William Hague, Al Jazeera reported.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott added that his government would work to get the imprisoned journalists out of the country “quickly.”

Leaders from various other international groups said that they, too, would work to free the journalists.

The Al Jazeera network aired a 25-minute program weed that was a bald-faced commercial for boycotting Israel under the guise of a supposed news program that featured two pro-Arab interviewees and, just to make an uneven program seem half-legitimate, Danny Dayan of the Yesha Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria.

Throughout the entire program, Al Jazeera flashed subtitles that were totally biased against Israel, stating. “Israel accused of violating the rights of Palestinians” and “BDS movement has increased boycott moves against Israel.” Just in case someone does not know what BDS means, Aljazeera thoughtfully spelled it out – “Boycotts, divestment and sanctions.”

It interviewed a Palestinian Authority economist and none other than Avraham Burg, former Israel Knesset Member who went off the deep end a few years ago, left the country and constantly preaches anti-Zionism.

Al Jazeera’s token nationalist was Dayan, who spoke while a sub-title flashed “Israeli settlements in West Bank illegal according to international law.”

The entire “Inside Story” program was so amateurishly biased that Al Jazeera should be embarrassed.

The Arabic channel of Al Jazeera ran this debate recently, with the moderator asking without hesitation how come the Syrian army is using tanks to slaughter children, while the IDF, like the French Mandate government of Syria decades ago, acts with restraint and respect to civilians and holy places.

It’s amazing that Al Jazeera is already saying openly, even heatedly, what Haaretz hasn’t yet gotten around to saying. I’m dropping my subscription to Haaretz today, and getting Al Jazeera instaed.

You will enjoy this.

H/T to Sarit Oprichter

French experts have ruled out any possibility that Yasser Arafat died of poisoning, as his widow Suha and the Palestinian Authority have charged, with the finger pointed directly at Israel.

The Israeli government reacted to the latest development in the blood libel with a simple “no surprise” statement.

The French report does not necessarily put an end to the accusations, backed by Swiss scientists and blown up last year by an Al Jazeera investigation that covered all the bases to blame Israel. Its  47-minute report, which can be seen below, left the clear impression that Israel poisoned Arafat with plutonium, and that if results prove otherwise it would only because of a cover-up to prevent the end of the peace process and the catalyst for a regional explosion.

Today, Al Jazeera published the French news agency AFP’s report on the conclusion of the French experts without fanfare, excuses or apologies.

“The report rules out the poisoning theory and goes in the sense of a natural death,” a source told the news agency. That contradicts last month’s statements from Swiss scientists that there is evidence to “suggest” that the terrorist who won the Nobel Peace Prize was killed by plutonium.

The Jewish Press carried here out a report three months ago that totally debunked the idea as being ridiculous on the basis of simply chemistry.

The French experts’ conclusion puts an end to criminal charges because it was France that launched a formal investigation into his death following the Al Jazeera documentary.

Swiss and Russian scientists also participated in the probe, with a team from each country taking samples from Arafat’s remains last year, eight years after his death.

Now that French has torn apart the possible of poisoning and the Swiss team has left it open for question, the ball is in the court of Russia, which has not yet issued its findings

A Russian medical agency in October denied it has made any statement after Interfax quoted its official as saying that Arafat “could not have been poisoned by polonium.”

The Palestinian Authority has not commented on the French report.

Al Jazeera suggested in its document last year that the Palestinian Authority was careful to keep its investigation secret, and the news agency directly suggested that officials wanted to hide the “truth” that Israel killed Arafat.

The contradictory reports leave the Palestinian Authority, which whose oxygen comes from foreign money and domestic propaganda, with the possibility of being able to use the inconclusive Swiss report  to hang Israel as an eternal suspect in the death of its “father,” Arafat  the “Palestinian,” who was born in Egypt in 1929.

His father was originally from Gaza and his mother was Egyptian.

During the years of Mubarak’s rule, he had only three true supporters: his wife Suzanne and his sons Gamal and Alaa. All of the other figures that surrounded Mubarak were politicians and sycophants who took advantage of their proximity to the president to extract favors as long as he was able to grant them. The moment that they felt that he was weak, they abandoned him to the fate of dismissal and the defendant’s cage. In contrast, in Mursi’s case there were, and still are, tens of millions of supporters who are ready at a moment’s notice to fight to the end, in order to return him to power. This is the reason for the contrast between the ease with which Mubarak was taken down and the difficulties that the army has been experiencing in its attempts to stabilize the state since Mursi was thrown out of office about three months ago, at the beginning of July of this year (2013).

The most important and sensitive indicator of the current state of political stability is what is happening in the educational system: If the schools open on schedule, students go to school as usual and studies in all of the institutions are conducted normally, it is a sign of a stable state, and a functional government, based on legitimacy and wide public acceptance. When life is disrupted, the first thing to be harmed is the educational system because parents don’t send their children out into the streets in a situation that they consider to be dangerous.

The Egyptian school year was supposed to begin these days. But despite the fact that many of its leaders are behind bars, the Muslim Brotherhood came out with the rhyming slogan: “La Dirasa wala tadris hata yarga al-Rais” – “No school and no instruction until the president’s return”.

The universities are more than just institutions of higher learning, because they also serve as a meeting place, a place to express solidarity and a field of activity for the young guard, the energetic ones of the Muslim Brotherhood, who are quite aware that after they successfully finish their academic studies, there will be several years of searching for work in their field, and many frustrations and disappointments stemming from the widespread protectionism that exists within the Egyptian job market, and certainly within the governmental job market.

Today, when the average age of marriage has risen to over thirty years of age because of economic difficulties, the young men and women channel their energies, their frustrations and their aggression into the political arena, in the absence of any other legitimate channel in a conservative society such as Egypt’s.  Because of their age and family status, the pupils and students do not yet need to submit to the need for bribery and flattery that family heads have to, in order to maintain their livelihood, and this allows them to say, and even to shout, truth to power and its henchmen.

In high schools, colleges and universities throughout Egypt, and especially those in indigent and traditional areas, there are many demonstrations these days. Although these demonstrations are mostly peaceful in character, they express the emotions of the masses, who are enraged that the revolution has led to the downfall of the Muslim Brotherhood. Some of the youths are armed, mainly with knives and handguns, and there is high potential for violence to break out.

In parallel with the teachers’ strike there have been attempts to organize commercial strikes, but these attempts have failed because many of the unemployed in Egypt are street vendors who are not unionized, so it is difficult to get them to cooperate, since their income will suffer.

As of this writing, the UN Economic Council in New York is currently conducting activities, where Egypt is represented by Nabil Fahmi, the army-appointed Foreign Minister in the current military government. This is another reason for ferment among the supporters of the deposed president, Mursi, and they have been organizing protest demonstrations in front of UN representatives in Egypt. These demonstrations, should they become habitual, might bring about a violent response from the army, similar to the violent evacuation of Rabia al-Adawiya Square last month (August, 2013), which cost the lives of dozens of people.

Egyptian ministers announced that al Jazeera’s channel in Egypt is a national threat.  They have banned the affiliate and arrested four of its journalists.

In their statement, the Egyptian ministers of investment, telecommunications and information accused al Jazeera Mubashir Misr of spreading lies and rumors damaging to Egyptian national security and unity.

The statement read: “Al Jazeera Mubashir Misr does not have a legal basis for its presence in Egypt, and it has been shown that it does not possess any of the licenses and permits that it requires to conduct its operations on Egyptian territory.”

The Egyptian government took this step the day after Al Jazeera Mubashir Misr broadcast a message from the Muslim Brotherhood’s spokesman Mohamed El-Beltagy.

Beltagy, speaking from an undisclosed location, criticized the interim Egyptian government. The Brotherhood’s spokesman also emphatically denied that his organization is a terrorist organization.

While it may be fine for an American politician from the Republican party to go on the air and criticize U.S. President Barack Obama, things don’t go down quite the same way in Egypt, or, for that matter, in any Muslim country in the Middle East.

Although they cannot actually block al Jazeera from its communications satellite, Egypt’s ministers of investment, telecommunications and information issued a public statement banning the channel for using satellite transmitters without an official license.

In addition to making the announcement banning the Qatari channel, the offices of Al Jazeera’s Mubashir Misr were raided and four of its journalists were arrested. Correspondent Wayne Hay, cameraman Adil Bradlow and producers Russ Finn and Baher Mohammed were detained on Tuesday, the network said on Thursday, calling the arrests “a campaign against al Jazeera in particular,” the Guardian reported.

In addition to the detention of the al Jazeera journalists, Egyptian officers also located and arrested Mohamed el-Beltagy, as well as the  former Labor minister Khaled al-Azhari.

The arrests, in turn, prompted the Muslim Brotherhood to ramp up calls for nationwide protests against Egypt’s military-backed government. The Egyptian government immediately responded to the call by warning that live ammunition would be used against protesters who attack public institutions.

Friday will be another day of violence in Egypt.