My Mideast Punchlines: happiness, happiness….

According to the 2019 World Happiness Report, Iran ranks 117th out of 156 countries on a report based off of life expectancy, freedom within the country, government corruption, social support, economic wealth and GDP per capita. Israel ranked 13th, while the United States ranked 19th and the Palestinian territories ranked 110th.

The report was conducted by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network in conjunction with the Ernesto Illy Foundation. The report uses data from the Gallup polling company to track how citizens of different nations see their own level of happiness. The data were based on surveys that asked respondents to rate their level of life satisfaction on a scale of one to 10.

Quelle surprise! Now, the next time I see that sickly grin on the avuncular face of in-out-in-again Foreign Minister Mohammad Jarad Zarif I’ll know that it’s fake. Er, hold on, I think I knew that already.

Now, sit back and enjoy true happiness, courtesy of Ken Dodd: https://bit.ly/2xMMztz

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My Mideast Punchlines: God moves in mysterious ways….

U.S. Secretary of State has Mike Pompeo suggested that President Donald Trump may have been sent by God to protect Israel.

Asked in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network whether he thought “President Trump right now has been sort of raised for such a time as this, just like Queen Esther, to help save the Jewish people from the Iranian menace” — a reference to the story behind the Purim holiday, and to the present-day relationship between Iran and Israel — Pompeo said: “As a Christian, I certainly believe that’s possible.”

Surely, it’s the other way round. The Donald sees himself as the Messiah who sends God to do his work for the Jewish People. Hallelujah!

My Mideast Punchlines: passing of a whippersnapper…

Rafi Eitan, the operations commander who captured Adolf Eichmann and former second-in-command to the prime minister, passed away on Saturday morning at age 93.

Eitan is most well-known for his service as an intelligence officer. After serving in the IDF in the Yiftach Brigade, he joined the Shin Bet and moved from there to serve the Mossad, where he served as a commander for an operational hybrid unit of the two organizations.

“Rafi was one of the heroes of the State of Israel’s intelligence service in countless acts for Israel’s security,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday evening. “There was no match for his wisdom, wit and endless commitment to the people of Israel and our country.”

If size was the prerequisite of intelligence, then Rafi Eitan would have been judged a moron. However, this pipsqueak of a man was the most cunning and intelligent of all the Mossad’s leaders. Just watch his inscrutable performance on Netflix’s “Inside the Mossad”. Frankly, his, and Israel’s, enemies never stood  a chance.

 

My Mideast Punchlines: bone-breakers…

A senior Fatah official in the Gaza Strip was reported to be in serious condition after being attacked by unidentified gunmen.

Atef Abu Seif, the Fatah spokesman in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, was reportedly kidnapped near his home in Bet Lahia on Monday afternoon, Fatah officials said. According to the officials, the gunmen who kidnapped Abu Seif broke his arms and legs.

It was not clear who was behind the attack on the Fatah official. However, Fatah officials accused Hamas of being behind the assault.

Some cynics would say that Abu Seif got off lightly. Hamas goons usually throw Fatah leaders from the tops of tall buildings, which is wont to break more than just arms and legs. And these, remember, are folks who Jeremy Corbyn makes no bones about labelling as his “friends”.

My Mideast Punchlines: a curse and a blessing…

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s president urged Iranians Monday to put a curse on the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia — blaming the US and its allies for his country’s ailing economy.

Monday’s televised remarks by Hassan Rouhani were meant to deflect criticism of his administration’s performance amid a plummeting economy after the Trump administration pulled out of the nuclear deal and re-imposed sanctions on Tehran last year, targeting Iran’s vital oil sector.

After cursing Israel repeatedly during the 39 years of Iranian revolutionary power, Rouhani would do well to replace those curses with a blessing: may God bless and keep Israel….far away from us!

My Mideast Punchlines: accidentally-on-purpose….

The growing assumption among Israel Defense Forces officials is that last night’s rockets were fired from Gaza toward Tel Aviv by mistake, a defense official tells reporters.

Low-level Hamas forces are believed to have been responsible for the launches.

Two rockets were fired toward the central Israeli city on Thursday evening. In response, the IDF hit more than 100 Hamas targets in Gaza.

Nine rockets were fired toward Gaza border communities overnight and Friday morning, with six of those intercepted. No Israeli injuries are reported

You won’t find a sniff of this on the BBC. Like most liberal-left news outlets, dead Palestinians is the only news in town. Well, following these “accidentally-on-purpose” attacks, I can foresee when the Beeb and their media cronies will be reporting with great sadness the deaths through targeted assassinations of Hamas’ leaders. They will shed a tear. I will not. Oh, and I almost forgot: you can expect Jeremy Corbyn to attend the funerals of his “friends”, although he’ll no doubt claim he wasn’t really there.

 

My Mideast Punchlines: scaredy-kat…

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Friday that Israel is “scared” of another war with his Lebanese terror group, and claimed the Israeli military is unprepared for any such conflict.

In a televised speech, Nasrallah, smiling smugly like a Cheshire cat, pointed to the US military’s deployment this week of the advanced THAAD missile defense system in Israel for joint exercises as proof of what he said was Israeli insecurity over the country’s ability to counter Hezbollah rocket fire in a future conflict.

“Every day you hear that Israel is not prepared for war in one way or another and this week you saw Israel began using the American THAAD system. They don’t even trust the missile defense systems they developed themselves,” he added, according to Israel’s Channel 13.

For someone who spends his life in an underground bunker for fear of assassination by Israel, the word “scared” is surely more applicable to the immodest Imam himself. Indeed, being of a branch of Islam that practises self-flagellation and is akin to a cult (kat in Hebrew), it is clearly Nasrallah who is the scaredy-kat.

My Mideast Punchlines: Callow Corbyn…

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn renewed his call for a British arms embargo against Israel after a United Nations Human Rights Council commission of inquiry said that IDF has likely committed war crimes on the Gaza border.

“The UK government must unequivocally condemn the killings and freeze arms sales to Israel,” Corbyn tweeted on Friday. Last year, the Labour Party approved a motion that called for an arms ban to Israel.

United States special envoy Jason Greenblatt attacked the UNHRC report on Gaza in a series of tweets.

“This [commission of inquiry] report is another manifestation of the UNHRC’s clear bias against Israel, which remains the only country that the Council dedicates an entire standing agenda item to targeting. When will the HRC speak the truth?” he wrote.

“Hamas behaved with reckless irresponsibility [and] disregard for human life when it incited VIOLENT (not ‘civilian’) protests, breaches [and] attacks at the Gaza fence-line,” Greenblatt wrote. “Hamas is directly responsible for the miserable situation of the people of Gaza.”

Callow Corbyn never lets facts get in the way of his visceral hatred for Israel. His mindset is fixed. Like the Wicked Witch of the West, he rides his Marxist broomstick on the prevailing wind, as long as that wind is blowing against the Jewish state. He resides in a permanent Ozian world, where small-minded dwarfs reign supreme and the yellow brick road towards yet another failed Arab state remains, for him and his ilk, a route to Nirvana.

My Mideast Punchlines: hollow words…

After the United Kingdom outlawed all of the terrorist entity Hezbollah last week, Germany’s government refused to ban the political wing of the Lebanese Shi’ite organization.

A spokesman for Germany’s interior ministry (BMI) wrote The Jerusalem Post: “The BMI does not comment on concrete prohibition considerations in general; this applies regardless of whether there is reason to do so in individual cases.”

According to 2018 German intelligence reports analyzed by the Jerusalem Post, there are 950 Hezbollah operatives in the federal republic who raise funds, recruit new members and spread Hezbollah’s lethal antisemitic ideology.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has described Israel’s security as “non-negotiable” for her government. With Iran-backed Hezbollah pointing more than a hundred thousand missiles at Israel and threatening to destroy the Jewish state, her words indeed have a hollow ring. With anti-Semitism on the rise, the echo of Germany’s shameful past sends a shudder down the spine.

My Mideast Punchlines: true to form…

True to form, Corbyn’s response to the government’s  long-overdue proscription of the entire Hezbollah organisation, both the political and military wings, was equivocal. While he didn’t oppose it, he allowed his MPs to not support it and said it wasn’t backed by “sufficient” evidence.

His refusal to take a stand against one of the world’s most vicious and murderous anti-Jewish groups took place, moreover, during the escalating crisis in the Labour Party over Corbyn’s reluctance to deal with the eye-watering antisemitism in its ranks.

As Melanie Phillips points out, the immediate problem is that Corbyn and his hard-left cadre have seized control of the party machinery, and like Corbyn himself, his most senior acolytes also have form in singling out Israel for double standards and irrational hatred.

In 2014, the current deputy leader John McDonnell suggested that any British citizens who served in the Israeli Defense Forces should be stripped of their British citizenship.

Now, that becomes personal, very personal. Would it mean that if, heaven forbid, Labour attained power, I could expect to be deported? While my IDF membership document is amongst my proudest possessions, having it does not imply disloyalty to the country of my birth. Neither does it make me guilty of war crimes. However, in the crossed eyes of the Labour leadership, this 72-year-old pensioner represents a clear and present danger.

 

(Yawn) Oy vay!