US President Barack Obama gave an interview with Israel’s Channel 2 news program which aired Tuesday as he prepares to leave office next week. In the interview, Obama flatly denied the Israeli assertion that his administration orchestrated the recent UN Security Council Resolution 2334 which harshly criticized Israeli communities in the West Bank and eastern neighborhoods of Jerusalem. On the same day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a visiting delegation of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in which he said there was “no question whatsoever” that the Administration had done what Obama denied it had done.

The US State Department on Tuesday released the unclassified portions of the memorandum of understanding (MOU) on $38 billion in US military assistance to Israel between 2019 and 1028 signed by the two governments in September 2016. Some analysts in Israel expressed alarm at the provisions.

The IDF released a report Tuesday showing, among other things, a growing trend of violent attacks by Palestinians against Israelis in the West Bank and Jerusalem. The majority of the attacks are carried out with crude but deadly weapons such as rocks and gasoline bombs, but there have also been several shooting attacks, even as the IDF confiscated a record number of illegal firearms in 2016, as well as discovering and demolishing 43 workshops where homemade firearms were being manufactured for use in terror attacks.

Mmusi Maimane, leader of the opposition in South Africa’s parliament, is in Israel this week for a quiet, personal visit in defiance of demand by South African President Jacob Zuma for citizens to avoid travel to the Jewish State. Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma also arrived in Israel on Tuesday for a four-day visit, during which he is scheduled to have meetings and visits with several government officials as well as business leaders and universities with projects related to his country.

Residents of the Bordeaux region of St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands, have begun to benefit from a wastewater treatment plant designed by Israeli water-tech company Emefcy. The plant serves around 200 households and uses only 10% of the energy used by more traditional forms of sewage treatment. Emefcy officials expressed hope that the small plant is only the beginning of opportunities to install similar systems throughout the region and serve as a gateway into the large US market.

The events in Iran and the Gulf during the last week have been a grim reminder that Iran remains the major threat to U.S. strategic interests in the Gulf and the Middle East, and that General James Mattis has been all too correct in singling out Iran as such a threat. Iran has the ability to trigger a major war in the region. There is nothing theoretical about this threat.

Boko Haram, ISIS, Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas. Why are there so many different radical Islamic groups? What do they have in common? And what do they ALL want to achieve? Watch and share widely.