The founding of the State of Israel was “one of the greatest accomplishments of the 20th century,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in an interview on Wednesday.
Speaking with Robert Costa of The Washington Post, the 17-term Democratic congresswoman from California called the Jewish state “our most serious friend in the Middle East.”
“Israel’s security is very, very important to us,” she emphasized.

Police in Berlin were facing criticism over their handling of antisemitic hate crimes on Thursday, after a prominent local politician claimed that officers were assigning right-wing extremist motives to a large number of offenders without sufficient evidence.
Marcel Luthe — a member of Berlin’s state parliament for the liberal FDP Party — disclosed earlier this week that up to 60 percent of antisemitic offenses had been incorrectly blamed on the far right, thereby diminishing the role played by Muslim extremists and militant anti-Zionists in attacking Jewish targets.
Luthe said that government figures for 2018 showed there had been 324 antisemitic acts recorded in Berlin, of which 253 were classified as having come from the extreme right.

Two dozen Spanish city councils are facing legal action for promoting “antisemitic discrimination” by endorsing the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, a Madrid-based group behind the lawsuits said this week.
ACOM said the city councils in questions have approved measures describing themselves a “Space Free of Israeli Apartheid,” in support of BDS. The declarations amount to discrimination “for reasons of race, religion, beliefs or national origin,” in violation of the Spanish constitution, according to the group.

 
As Israel turned 71 on Thursday, an ex-top defense official gave his assessment of the evolution of the country’s security doctrine.
Speaking with Israel’s Channel 13, a former head of the National Security Council, Maj. Gen. (ret.) Giora Eiland, said, “On a strategic level, Israel has always been defensive, a policy according to which you live with the current situation and do not initiate a war to change it.”
This led Israel to adopt a policy of only fighting a “war of no choice.” That is, a war in which the very existence of the state was threatened by the enemy.
In the 1956 Sinai Campaign and the 1967 Six-Day War, Eiland noted, “we fired the first shot, but it was out of a sense of no choice, because of the actions of the other side.”

Majority leader Sen. Mitch McConnell reacts to the Senate Intelligence Committee issuing a subpoena to Donald Trump Jr.
WATCH:

Rav Moshe Zorach Eidelitz of Prague, author of Ohr La’yeshorim, Berurei Hamiddos, and Meleches Machsheves, and Ohr LaYeshraim (1780). Orphaned as a youth and raised by Rav Yonasan Eibeshutz, Rav  Zorach grew to become a dayan and darshan in Prague. His great, great-grandson, Rav Eliezer Eidletz of Los Angeles, is one of the leading authorities on kashrus in the world.
Rav Yeshaya Pick of Breslau, author of Haga’os to Mesores Hashas and She’ailas Shalom (1799).

 
Law enforcement officers in Los Angeles seized more than 1,000 guns from a Bel Air mansion on Wednesday after receiving an anonymous tip.
The source alleged that an individual living in Holmby Hills, a ritzy Los Angeles neighborhood, was “illegally manufacturing and selling guns,” Los Angeles Police Department spokesman Mike Lopez said.
Early Wednesday, the LAPD and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives executed a search warrant at the North Beverly Glen Boulevard home and discovered the cache of guns. They arrested Girard Damien Saenz, 56, an LAPD spokesperson told The Washington Post on Wednesday
Aerial images show stacks of weapons including hundreds of rifles, pistols, ammunition and manufacturing equipment.

Forty six million of Australia’s new $50 notes have been printed with a typo, the Reserve Bank has confirmed.
The “new and improved” $50 banknote was rolled out in October last year, with a host of new technologies designed to improve accessibility and prevent counterfeiting. But the yellow note also contains a typo that misspells the word “responsibility”.
The note features the Indigenous writer and inventor David Unaipon on one side, and Edith Cowan, Australia’s first female member of parliament, on the other – as it has since 1995. The small error occurred on Cowan’s side, in the text of her speech.
“It is a great responsibilty [sic] to be the only woman here, and I want to emphasise the necessity which exists for other women being here,” it says.

President Trump said on Thursday he could not rule out a military confrontation with Iran given the heightened tensions between the two countries, Reuters reported.
The president also urged Iran’s leadership to sit down and talk with him about giving up Tehran’s nuclear program.
At an impromptu news conference at the White House, Trump declined to say what prompted him to deploy the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier group to the region over what was described as unspecified threats.
“We have information that you don’t want to know about. They were very threatening and we have to have great security for this country and many other places,” he said, according to Reuters.
Read more at Arutz Sheva.