To mark what would have been Frank Sinatra’s centennial year, Duke University Professor Shalom Goldman explores Sinatra’s deep connection to Israel. [...] Goldman sat down with The Jerusalem Post to discuss the connection between Israel and American popular culture.

Hundreds of baby vests and T-shirts have been placed on a beach in Dublin this week, with each one representing a child who died during the 50-day conflict between Gaza and Israel last year. The installation was made by a group of artists who wanted to remember the children killed in the war last summer.

The Israeli government believes it is locked in an epic struggle to save Israel from the growing movement calling for an international boycott. Benjamin Netanyahu warns that Israel must “rebrand” itself to avoid pariah status. Ordinary Israelis are therefore being conscripted into an army of spin doctors in a campaign termed “hasbara”.

He urged Israel’s Arab population not to think of itself as a separate entity making a distinction between Arabs and Jews. “Let’s all be Israelis,” he said. [...] In a Jewish and democratic state, he said, there will be peace only when there is consensus on all sides on the issue of coexistence.

In a highly unusual move, Israel's leading figure in the Arab media has explicitly linked the group's militant wing to Wednesday's killings. Israel directly accused Hamas of aiding Islamic State, the organization behind Wednesday’s terror attacks on Egyptian security forces in Sinai that left 17 soldiers dead.

Apparently undeterred by the backlash over its last venture into cartoon diplomacy, Israel’s government released an animated video on Tuesday that equates the threat from Islamic State militants to that of a nuclear-armed Iran. The 28-second animation, uploaded to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s official accounts on social networks, attempts to erase the distinction between the Sunni Muslim extremists of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and their sworn enemies, the Shiite Muslim clerics who rule the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The Gaza-ruling Palestinian terrorist group Hamas has launched a new English-language website in an attempt to shore up its public diplomacy efforts. “We have launched our English website because we believe that communication matters,” the jihadi group said on its Twitter page. “And because we value your opinions and cherish diversity, we have also added a contact button,” the terror entity wrote in another tweet, adding a smiley face emoticon at the end of the message.