Israel's alarm over Saudi arms sale; book disarms Jewish state's detractors
Israel raises alarm over US-Saudi arms sale as deal awaits congressional fate
By Ariel Ben Solomon and Yaakov Lappin/JNS.org
The high-profile U.S. arms deal with Saudi Arabia, which is awaiting congressional approval, raised alarm in Jerusalem due to the potential diminishment of Israel's military edge over regional foes. The $110 billion sale is meant to counteract the growing regional aggression of the Saudis' chief rival, Iran. While Israel shares Iran-related concerns with Saudi Arabia, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said he is "not at peace with the whole arms race in the Middle East." Yaakov Amidror, former head of Israel's National Security Council, told JNS.org the arms sale creates "an obligation to ensure that Israel's qualitative edge is secured, and to that end, there is a need to understand what exactly was sold to [the Saudis]."
Alberto Nisman and Sarah Halimi: the shared fate of 2 very different Jews
By Ben Cohen/JNS.org
For all their differences, Argentina's Alberto Nisman and France's Sarah Halimi had three things in common. They were proud Jews. They died because they were Jews. And in both of their cases, that latter fact has yet to be recognized, let alone acted upon, by the investigating authorities. Both cases demonstrate once again that violent anti-Semitism dehumanizes its victims in the very moment of death, writes JNS.org columnist Ben Cohen.
New book disarms Israel's revisionist detractors
By Paul Miller/JNS.org
No past is more under siege than the history of the Jewish people and their connection to the land of Israel. Replete with facts that the Jewish state's detractors don't want people to know, David Brog's recently published "Reclaiming Israel's History" is a nightmare for academics teaching revisionist history to impressionable college students, writes book reviewer Paul Miller.
Rapid population growth drives Israel's transportation revolution
Rapid population and economic growth has prompted the Israeli government to revolutionize the country's infrastructure and transportation systems to accommodate a flourishing citizenry. The average annual growth rate of Israel's population from 1990-2015 has been 2.25 percent, "among the highest rate of population growth in the Western world," said Prof. Yoram Shiftan, head of transportation research at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. During the same period, Israel's GDP averaged a 4.9-percent annual increase. These figures are directly reflected by parallel growth in transport activity, including in the number of vehicles on roads, cargo passing through seaports, air travelers and railway commuters.