The Islamic Jihad terror organization, responsible for firing the heavy barrage of rockets at Israel over the past 24 hours, published today (Mar. 13) a clip threatening Israel – in Hebrew, under the title “Al-Quds Brigades threaten the state of occupation in Hebrew from inside one of the tunnels.”

The terrorist is allegedly sitting under a rocket pad with rockets aimed at Israel.

“To the coward Zionist army, we at the Quds Brigades are ready for you invasion. If you come you have no choice – you are dead…”, the terrorists reads from a page in garbled Hebrew.

“To the government of Zionist terror, who wish that our rockets will cease [to be fired] against your rockets. Find the moderation.”

“To the Israeli public – do not put your lives as hostages to the rule of your leaders. We invite you to exit our country and find your own,” the terrorist offered the citizens of the State of Israel.

A large portion of the message was not intelligible.

The Saudi Arabia city of Qurayyat, located near the border with Jordan, went on high alert Tuesday after official discovered a local fruit market was selling persimmons that came from Israel.

Anything from Israel is considered evil in the kingdom, home of the holiest city for enlightened Muslims.

The Saudi Gazette reported that a local inspection team, acting on a tip, confiscated approximately 300 pounds of persimmon that had Israel stickers.

“The municipality team conducted a surprise inspection after the closing hours of the fruit market and confiscated the fruit boxes that originated from Israel,” said them municipality environment health department director Abdulaziz Al-Musaed.

The Ministry of Commerce and Industry was alerted at the chutzpa of someone daring to buy and selling fruit from the forbidden country of Israel.

The Saudi Food and Drug Authority also was notified. It seems every official agency was alerted except perhaps for the Air Force. Al-Musaed reminded Saudis that “such fruit is not allowed in the Kingdom, and he warned shopkeepers not to deal with fruit vendors without knowing the true origin of produce.

An investigation is underway to determine how the evil persimmons found their way into the holy Muslim country.

Al Qurayyat is located 19 miles from the border with Jordan.

If authorities catch the poor soul who violated the purity of the country by contaminating it with Israeli fruit, he will be lucky to get away with flogging instead of having his hands chopped off so he never again will be able to touch anything from Israel.

If authorities catch the poor soul who violated the purity of the country by contaminating it with Israeli fruit, he will be lucky to get away with flogging instead of having his hands chopped off so he never again will be able to touch anything from Israel.

In 2005, Saudi Arabia announced the end of its ban on Israeli goods and services, mostly due to its application to the World Trade Organization, where one member country cannot have a total ban on another. However, the boycott in practice still stands.

The truth is that there are many Israeli products in Saudi Arabia, but they have no labels that would divulge that they were sent from the enemy of darkness.

When I worked at a kibbutz plastics factory years ago, we made sure that the product being shipped to Saudi Arabia was sent in a box marked “Made in Jordan.”

Israeli ground and aerial attacks targeted 29 terror sites in Gaza in a quick and widespread retaliation Wednesday night, hours after Islamic Jihad said it was behind a massive missile and mortar shelling barrage of Jewish communities near Gaza.

The retaliation came two hours after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said, “If there is no quiet in Israel, there will be noise in Gaza, and that is an understatement.”

The IDF said that direct hits were confirmed in the artillery and aerial fire. IDF Spokesman Peter Lerner said that the barrage from Gaza towards sunset Wednesday involved 41 rockers, five of which exploded in populated areas and three of which were intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-missile system. No injuries were reported, and property damage was minimal.

It was the most serious retaliation for Gaza missile attacks since the Pillar of Defense counter terrorist camping in November 2012.

“This retaliation was precise and prompt. We targeted the infrastructure that serves the terrorists while they train, plan and implement their hideous attacks. They will not be permitted to conspire in the safety of their terrorist temples,” said Lt. Col. Lerner.

Islamic Jihad spokesman said that it unleashed the barrage in revenge for the Israeli Air Force’s bombing its terrorists, three of whom were killed in a strike on Tuesday following the shelling of Israeli soldiers on patrol near the Gaza security fence.

Regardless of whether the attacks were carried out with Hamas’ permission, it may help tighten the noose on Hamas.

The new Egyptian military regime has followed its ban of the Muslim Brotherhood bydeclaring an enemy.

The regime has destroyed hundreds of smuggling tunnels.

The Israeli Navy’s seizure last week of Iranian missiles destined for Gaza via Sudan exposed the Tehran-Gaza connection in capital letters.

Hamas has gone to the extreme to spit on the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and on U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, whose peace plans, worthless anyway, are even more of a sick joke without Gaza.

The U.S. State Dept. not only stated on Wednesday that Israel has every right to retaliate to defend its citizens, it also did not come up with the usual nonsense of pleading for a “proportional response,” although a true proportional response would be to flatten Gaza.

The Egyptian siege on Gaza, which has included the frequent closure of the crossing at Rafiah, the southern Gaza smuggling capital that straddles the Egyptian-Gaza border, has taken the wind out of the sails of the anti-Israeli chorus that condemns an Israeli siege that does not exist, except on the seas. The Iranian arms ship was clear evidence and support for the maritime embargo.

Hamas has been losing control of Gaza for the past year or so. Rival terrorist organizations are competing with Hamas, whose weakness is symbolized by its public executions and imposition of Muslim law on residents. The Bethlehem-based Ma’an News Agency added, “Three other Palestinian militant groups also claimed to have participated in the attacks on Israel, including the National Resistance Brigades, the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade.”

After Wednesday’s attacks on Israel, Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman called for invading Gaza and taking control.

That would be too good a solution for Gaza’s residents, whose younger generation does not even remember the days of economic prosperity and peace and quiet of the 1970s and early 1980s when Israel officially controlled Gaza but in fact gave local officials a free hand to run their own affairs.

Hamas has a lot more sweating to do before Israel saves Gaza from its Hamas executors.

The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) will be deciding at its annual spring session in Geneva this month on a replacement for Richard Falk, the body’s special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights who has a history of anti-Israel bias.

U.N. watchdog groups, the United States, and Israel are closely monitoring the selection process.

The applicant list has recently been reduced by the vetting committee from 10 to three, with the candidates perceived as being the most biased against Israel now out of the running, according to UN Watch. The council president, currently Baudelaire Ndong Ella of the Gabonese Republic, will select one of the candidates to be put for a vote in front of the entire council later this month.

Hillel Neuer, executive director of Geneva-based UN Watch, told JNS.org that usually, the president follows the vetting committee’s recommendation and picks the leading candidate, although he has no obligation to do so. The president may even choose a candidate already eliminated in the vetting process.

Appointed by the council to a six-year non-renewable term in 2008, Falk, a professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University who endorsed boycotts against the Jewish state, has been a perennial thorn in the side of Israel supporters, current U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice, and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Before becoming the special rapporteur, Falk was a member of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Inquiry Commission for the Palestinian territories.

The three remaining candidates for the job include Christina Cerna, adjunct professor at Georgetown Law School; John Cerone, professor at Boston’s New England Law School; and Christine Chinkin, professor of international law at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Of the three, both UN Watch and the Israel-based NGO Monitor regard Chinkin’s record as the most biased against Israel.

“Chinkin was in our ‘rogues’ gallery,” said Neuer, referring to a list his organization compiled to expose anti-Israel sentiments among the original group of candidates. “She co-wrote the Goldstone Report, so she has a record of being enormously biased, someone who’s so biased that she doesn’t even know when she has disqualified herself for a fact finding mission.”

Neuer was referring to Chinkin’s participation in the U.N. Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict in 2009, also known as the Goldstone Report for its chairman, South African jurist Richard Goldstone. She also signed a January 2009 letter in the British Sunday Times newspaper that condemned Israel for war crimes and declared it to be the aggressor in its conflict with the Palestinians.

“It was ridiculous that she continued to serve on the Goldstone commission [without recusing herself],” argued Neuer in referencing the letter.

“Goldstone had the courage and the moral backbone to renounce his own report and Chinkin was one of the main people who denounced Goldstone for that process,” added Gerald Steinberg, founder and president of NGO Monitor and a political science professor at Tel Aviv’s Bar Ilan University. “Goldstone acknowledged that they didn’t have the information, the evidence they presented was not convincing regarding Israel and Chinkin denounced him for that.”

The top two candidates currently do not rank on UN Watch’s “rogues list” nor do they have dossiers at NGO Monitor. But David Michaels, B’nai B’rith International’s director of intercommunal affairs, argued that on a certain level, it didn’t matter who occupies Falk’s position.

“The post itself, by its nature, is explicitly discriminatory against Israel. It’s meant to focus only on alleged violations of Palestinian rights with no consideration at all of violation of Israeli rights or of Palestinian misdeeds,” explained Michaels. “Whereas all other 192 member states of the U.N., including Iran, North Korea, Syria, China [and] Russia are all addressed under one item… Israel has its own permanent agenda item.”

Michaels said that there are NGOs and Human Rights Council members worried about the credibility that is lost within the organization when it appears as systemically against Israel as it currently does.

“It’s an offense against the only democracy in the Middle East, the only Jewish state, but also it just shows in a very stark way that the [U.N.] bodies neglect the most severe and heinous areas of human rights violations in the world,” he said.

At his position, Falk has made public statements against Israel and the United States, positions that Steinberg feels borders on anti-Semitism.

“I’ve been in meetings with him and he uses the ‘I’m Jewish, therefore I can’t be accused of being anti-Israel or anti-Semitic’” defense, said Steinberg, adding, “He uses that defense a lot and my challenge to him was, ‘In what other way are you Jewish other than in this hostility towards Israel and your Jewish connections?’”

Without taking a position on who should succeed Falk, the U.S. State Department seemed to welcome the end of the special rapporteur’s tenure.

“As we have stated before, we oppose his deeply flawed and one-sided mandate, as well as Agenda Item 7 under which it was created, the only HRC agenda item to focus on one specific country,” a State Department official told JNS.org. “Falk has repeatedly made biased and deeply offensive comments, including his most recent outrageous comments [accusing Israel of genocide] in an interview with Russia Today. His reports and rhetoric have done nothing to advance a peaceful settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

The UNHRC regular session in Geneva is expected to handle most of the Israel-related issues on its agenda on March 21. Despite advocacy from organizations like B’nai B’rith, UN Watch, and NGO Monitor, among others, few expect the UNHRC and its anti-Israel majority to take the Palestinian issue off its permanent agenda anytime soon.

Dmitriy Shapiro wrote this article for JNS.org.

Israeli army tanks led the inevitable retaliation Wednesday night after Islamic Jihad terrorists staged a massive missile and mortar shell attack on the Western Negev, firing at least 30 rockets according to the IDF and more than 60 according to the Islamic Jihad.

The army said eight missiles exploded in urban areas and that the  exploded in open areas or within Gaza and caused no casualties. Property damage was minimal, but one woman broke her hip while running to a bomb shelter.

Artillery fire from tanks destroyed at least two terror targets in central Gaza and the Israeli Air Force bombed underground missile launchers ion an effort to bring immediate quiet to Western Negev residents, who has been ordered to stay in their homes after the barrage began towards sunset.

In anticipation of a strong reaction, Islamic Jihad and Hamas commanders have abandoned their offices and posts, and the Hamas Interior Ministry advised Gaza Arabs to remain in their homes.

British Prime Minister David Cameron told the Knesset in his first official visit to Israel that he has Jewish ancestors going back five generations and therefore feels “just some sense of connection” with Jews and Israel.

Being Jewish or being connected to Judaism, without having to actually believe in the Torah, is politically correct these days. Maybe the world is beginning to understand it really can’t do without the Tribe even if it can’t quite accept Jews as Jewish.

Cameron practiced up on his Hebrew enough so that he could end his speech by saying in the native tongue,” We are together.”

It was enough to melt the hearts of the most liberal bleeding hearts who still believe that Britain is the God’s best gift to Israel outside of the United States of America, and let’s bury in the sand the White Paper and dozens of other anti-Zionist treacheries by the Brits who did everything they could to make sure the Arabs would keep Israel from becoming a state..

“From the lexicon of my great, great grandfather Emile Levita, a Jewish man who came from Germany to Britain 150 years ago to the story of my forefather Elijah Levita who wrote what is thought to have been the first ever Yiddish novel,” Cameron said to the joy of the media and most Knesset members.

United Torah Judaism MKs were sparred the agony of listening to the hypocritical rah-rah Israel chatter and walked out on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Cameron, but for the wrong reasons. The coalition passed the universal draft bill into law Wednesday, and what better way to show disapproval than insulting a foreign dignitary?

They missed a boring parade of the right words in the right place at the right time. If his ancestors had left the Old Country with the first settlers, pardon the word, and had become Americans, he might as well as come out in support of God, the flag and apple pie.

Kosher slaughter:

“The Jewish community has been an absolute exemplar in integrating into British life in every way but integration doesn’t mean that you have to give up things that you hold very dear in your religion…. On my watch Shechita is safe in the UK.”

Score one for kosher slaughtering and score one for promoting assimilation so long as the Jews don’t ever forget they are Jews. But no worry; the non-Jews will remind them.

But of course that does not mean Cameron tolerates hate.

“We said no to Zakir Naik. We said no to Yusuf Qaradawi. And we said no to Dieudonne M’bala M’bala whose abhorrent displays of anti-Semitism have no place in a tolerant and inclusive Britain,” Cameron told the charring MKs.

Holocaust:

What can a foreign dignitary say about the Holocaust except “we’ll never forget”?

“As a father, I will never forget last year visiting the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin with my children and for the first time trying to explain to them quite what had happened. I want every child in Britain to learn about the Holocaust and to understand just how vital it is to fight discrimination and prejudice in our world,” he said.

Pro-Israel:

Every Western country is pro-Israel. J Street is pro-Israel. Iceland is pro-Israel. Everyone is pro-Israel, It is the “in” thing to say “let’s shrink your country to indefensible borders” and call it “pro-Israel.”

Let me say to you very clearly: with me, you have a British Prime Minister whose belief in Israel is unbreakable and whose commitment to Israel’s security will always be rock solid. Delegitimizing the state of Israel is wrong. It’s abhorrent. And together we will defeat it,” Cameron stated, using the broken-record term “unbreakable” that has become part of the U.S. Constitution.

A major archaeology “discovery” of previously found but unexamined Dead Sea Scrolls has revealed nine new Biblical era documents, the Live Science and Absa Mediterranean website have reported.

Archaeologist Yonatan Adler said, “‘It’s not every day that you get the chance to discover new manuscripts. It’s very exciting.”

The documents have not yet been fully examined and it is not known, so far, what is written in the texts, which were sitting in three tefillin cases that were among the Scrolls pulled out of 11 Qumran caves in the Dead Sea area in the 1950s.

Adler announced his findings at an international conference in Switzerland on Qumran and the Dead Sea region.

The texts that he found in the tefillin cases may shed more light on religious observance in the period of the Second Temple, but they are unlikely to expose major texts such as were found in the Dead Scrolls that already have been examined.

Other tefillin parchments previously have been examined, and the nine newly-found texts, if they can be deciphered, probably will confirm previous findings and the content of several verses of the Torah are written on parchments in tefillin worn by Jews around the world.

Retired Supreme Court Edmund Levy, who headed a three-man committee that debunked allegations that Israel is an “occupier,” died Tuesday night at the age of 72.

He served on the Supreme Court from 2000 to 2011, capping a legal career that began with studies at Tel Aviv University several years after his family immigrated to Israel from Iraq.

Levy was the only dissenting justice who ruled in favor of petitioners against the expulsion of Jews from Gush Katif and four communities in northern Samaria in 2005.

Levy immigrated to Israel from Iraq as a child in the early 1950s. He studied law at Tel Aviv University and served as a military

The “Levy Committee” in 2012 wrote a lengthy document that supported the rights of Jews to live everywhere in Judea and Samaria.