• After San Bernardino Attack, President Obama Addresses the Nation on Terrorism - David Nakamura
  President Obama addressed the nation from the Oval Office on Sunday night: "On Wednesday, 14 Americans were killed as they came together to celebrate the holidays....I want to talk with you about this tragedy, the broader threat of terrorism and how we can keep our country safe."
      "So far, we have no evidence that the killers were directed by a terrorist organization overseas or that they were part of a broader conspiracy here at home. But it is clear that the two of them had gone down the dark path of radicalization, embracing a perverted interpretation of Islam that calls for war against America and the West. They had stockpiled assault weapons, ammunition, and pipe bombs. So this was an act of terrorism designed to kill innocent people."
      "The threat from terrorism is real, but we will overcome it. We will destroy ISIL and any other organization that tries to harm us. Our success won't depend on tough talk, or abandoning our values or giving into fear....Instead, we will prevail by being strong and smart, resilient and relentless. And by drawing upon every aspect of American power."
      "ISIL does not speak for Islam. They are thugs and killers, part of a cult of death. And they account for a tiny fraction of more than a billion Muslims around the world, including millions of patriotic Muslim-Americans who reject their hateful ideology. Moreover, the vast majority of terrorist victims around the world are Muslim."  (Washington Post)
• California Attack Has U.S. Rethinking Strategy on Homegrown Terror - Peter Baker and Eric Schmitt
  In the deadliest terrorist attack in America since Sept. 11, 2001, homegrown, self-radicalized individuals operated undetected before striking one of many soft targets that can never be fully protected in a country as sprawling as the U.S.  Jeh Johnson, the Secretary of Homeland Security, said Saturday that terrorists have "in effect outsourced attempts to attack our homeland."
      Some administration officials said they needed to escalate efforts to stimulate contrary Muslim voices to counter extremist propaganda by the Islamic State. "Frankly, we've got to do a better job of approaching this in a way that allows us to...break the brand of ISIL's message," said Lisa Monaco, the president's counterterrorism adviser.
      Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, the couple identified as the attackers in San Bernardino, seemed to have been inspired by the Islamic State but were not acting directly on its orders. (New York Times)
• Knife Attacker Slashes Man in London "Terrorist Incident" - James Davey and William James
  A knife attacker slashed a man at the Leytonstone Underground station, about six miles (10 km.) east of central London, reportedly screaming "this is for Syria," in what police described as a terrorist incident. The man was arrested after police used a Taser to subdue him. (Reuters)

• Netanyahu Rejects Kerry's Warning that Israel Will Become a Binational State - Yoni Hersch
  After U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told the Saban Forum in Washington on Saturday that "current trends are leading [toward] a one-state reality," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Cabinet on Sunday: "I want to make it clear - Israel will not become a binational state. But in order for there to be peace, the other side needs to decide that it also wants peace. Unfortunately, that is not what we are seeing. First of all, the Palestinian Authority's incitement continues. This must stop."
      "I saw that the chief Palestinian negotiator paid a condolence visit to the family of a terrorist who tried to kill Jews. So not only did [Erekat] not condemn the attack, he expressed his condolences to [the terrorist's family], thereby giving encouragement and support for terrorist actions. Whoever wants peace needs to condemn these things unequivocally."  (Israel Hayom-Prime Minister's Office)
• Palestinian Wounds Three Israelis in Jerusalem on Sunday
  On Sunday night in Jerusalem, Amar Yasser Skapi, 21, from Beit Hanina, first tried to run over a child, then drove his car into a pedestrian, and then exited his vehicle brandishing a knife and stabbed a police officer before being killed by security forces. (Jerusalem Post)
• IDF Finds Dozens of Pipe Bombs in West Bank Village
  IDF soldiers uncovered dozens of pipe bombs in an underground hideout on Saturday in the West Bank Palestinian village of Beit Ummar, north of Hebron. Earlier Saturday, a Palestinian woman was arrested at the entrance to the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron after pulling out a knife.
      On Friday, a Palestinian driver plowed his car into two soldiers near Silwad, north of Ramallah in the West Bank. The driver, Anes Hamad, 21, was shot and killed at the scene. A short time earlier, a soldier was injured in a stabbing attack near Abud, northwest of Ramallah, by Abdel Rahman Barghouti, 26, who was shot dead at the scene. (Times of Israel)

• President Obama's Liaison to the American-Jewish Community: We Can Disagree But Respect Each Other's Opinions - Matt Nosanchuk
  As President Barack Obama's liaison to the American-Jewish community, I had a front seat in the national debate over the Iran nuclear deal. I and other colleagues had the opportunity to interact with members of the Jewish community, all of whom care deeply about the future of Israel and the Jewish people. I was inspired by their passion even when we disagreed on policy, and appreciated when they took the time to hear us make the president's case.
      At the heart of our surface-level disagreement is a core-level consensus. The strength of the Jewish community derives from our passion, our commitment to rigorous advocacy and our deep concern about important issues. It is a community whose members may disagree with each other on those issues, but who can express those differences with mutual respect and devotion to shared values. The writer is associate director of the White House Office of Public Engagement and the White House liaison to the American-Jewish community. (Ha'aretz)
• Lighting Candles for Liberty - Ruth R. Wisse
  Those who light the candles for Hanukkah beginning Sunday night are involved in a struggle for freedom. Today's defenders of Israel fight not only for their own restored political and religious freedom but for the right of all nations to freedom from increasingly violent and maddened enemies. Hanukkah celebrates not war but the self-rule that was unattainable without it.
      Arab and Muslim leaders who fomented anger, grievance, blame and aggression against the State of Israel unleashed a violence they can no longer contain, one that has spread across the globe. Israel applies its ingenuity and resources to helping to stave off the resulting carnage and safeguard the civilized world. The writer, a former professor of Yiddish and comparative literature at Harvard, is the author of Jews and Power (2007). (Wall Street Journal)

Netanyahu: The Terrorists Are Attacking in California, Israel, and Paris (Prime Minister's Office)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Saban Forum by video on Sunday:

• "The terrorists are attacking in California or in Israel, or for that matter in Paris. They are attacking the very values that we hold dear - freedom, tolerance, diversity. All the things that define the value of life and society in our eyes, they find anathema and that's why they attack us....They think that we are hedonistic and weak; we're actually very strong societies, very resilient, because of the very values that they despise so much."
• "Many used to say that the core of the conflicts in the Middle East, and from there the rest of the world, were rooted in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That was never true, but it's now demonstrably false. And what we see is the old order established after the Ottoman Empire collapsing and militant Islam, either of the Shiite hue led by Iran, or the Sunni hue led by ISIS, rushing in to fill the void."
• "Insofar as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is concerned...people have long said that the core of this conflict is the acquisition of territories by Israel in the 1967 War. That's...not the core of the conflict. In Gaza...we gave territory and got 15,000 rockets on our heads. We took out all the settlements; we disinterred people from their graves; and did we get peace? No. We got the worst terror possible."
• "In the West Bank...in order for us to ensure that it doesn't happen again, we have to address the root cause of the problem. Why has this conflict not been resolved for a hundred years? Why has it not been resolved after successive Israeli prime ministers, six in fact after the Oslo Agreement, have offered to make peace, have offered the Palestinians the possibility of building a state next to Israel? It's because the Palestinians have not yet been willing to cross that conceptual bridge, that emotional bridge, of giving up the dream not of a state next to Israel, but a state instead of Israel."
• "Ultimately the only workable solution is not a unitary state, but a demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes the Jewish state....But the Palestinians...refuse to recognize a nation-state for the Jewish people in any boundary. That was and remains the core of the conflict. Not this or that gesture or the absence of this or that gesture, but the inability or unwillingness of the Palestinian leadership to make the leap."