Earlier this week, I showed you the BBC's walk in the park in Jerusalem. Robin Shepherd has a practically line-by-line take-down of the biased special, which is well worth reading.
A bipartisan group of eight US Senators has sent a letter to President Obama urging him that the time has come to sanction Iran. Senators Evan Bayh (D-IN), Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), John McCain (R-AZ), Robert Casey (D-PA), Johnny Isakson (R-GA), Ben Cardin (D-MD), and David Vitter (R-LA) sent a letter to President Obama today, warning that his own year-end deadline for diplomacy with Iran has now expired, and that it is therefore time to impose "crippling sanctions" against the regime. Given continued Chinese obstruction to sanctions imposed at the UN Security Council, the Senators urge the President to make use of existing authorities under U.S. law to pursue "parallel and complementary" measures to increase pressure against Iran. The Senators also pledge their support for the swift passage of new, comprehensive sanctions legislation currently pending before the Senate, which includes sanctions on the sale of refined petroleum to Iran that 76 Senate cosponsors expect the President to promptly use.
Israel has assassinated a senior Hamas military commander, an official in the Palestinian Islamist group said on Friday.
Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was killed in Dubai on January 20, Izzat al-Rishq told Reuters in the Syrian capital Damascus.
Hamas sources said that Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was killed in Dubai on January 20, was one of the founders of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades and was the one behind the abduction of soldiers Avi Sasportas and Ilan Sa'adon in the First Intifada.
According to Hamas reports, the information appeared in its statement following al-Mabhouh's death last Wednesday. "He planned many heroic operations against the occupation," the statement noted. Earlier, a Hamas official claimed that Israel had assassinated al-Mabhouh.
The brother of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was killed in Dubai last week, told Haaretz on Friday that he was certain that Israel was behind the assassination, and that Israel had tried before to kill his brother.
Fayek al-Mabhouh said that the medical team that examined his brother determined that the latter had died following a massive electric shock sustained to the head, and also found evidence of strangulation.
Immediately after his body was found, his brother said, the family was notified of the ensuing autopsy, and blood samples were sent to France for further investigation. After the tests were complete, the body was transferred to Damascus, where al-Mabhouh's wife and four children reside.
Fayek went on to say that his brother, who would have turned 50 in two weeks, had been involved in Jihad activity for Hamas for many years. He said that several attempts had been made on his life before.
Al-Mabhouh traveled with no security or body guards, his brother added, explaining that he had taken other precautions. "Some six months ago, he was poisoned," his brother said. "He was unconscious for 36 hours."
The family has set up a mourners' tent at the Jabaliya refugee camp.
It shouldn't surprise anyone that 'moderate' 'Palestinian' President Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas said Thursday that the PA would not be satisfied with the Jerusalem area village of Abu Dis as the capital of a PA state – an idea that many politicians on the left have touted – but that the PA demanded all of eastern Jerusalem, including all of the Old City, as its capital. In an interview with a Russian TV station broadcasting in Arabic, Abbas said that he did not believe it was necessary to physically divide Jerusalem, and that arrangements could be made to allow free passage between the Israel and PA controlled areas of the city, but that "it must be clear what belongs to the Palestinians, and what belongs to Israel," he said.
Regarding Israel's demand that the PA recognize it as a Jewish state, Abbas said that this was only mentioned in the original UN partition plan, hinting that Israel would have to agree to that plan if it wanted such recognition.
Writing in London's Telegraph, Niles Gardiner complains that President Obama gave scant mention to foreign policy in his 77-minute State of the Union address on Wednesday night. But the scant attention paid in the State of the Union speech to US leadership was pitiful and frankly rather pathetic. The war in Afghanistan, which will soon involve a hundred thousand American troops, merited barely a paragraph. There was no mention of victory over the enemy, just a reiteration of the president’s pledge to begin a withdrawal in July 2011. Needless to say there was nothing in the speech about the importance of international alliances, and no recognition whatsoever of the sacrifices made by Great Britain and other NATO allies alongside the United States on the battlefields of Afghanistan. For Barack Obama the Special Relationship means nothing, and tonight’s address further confirmed this.
Significantly, the global war against al-Qaeda was hardly mentioned, and there were no measures outlined to enhance US security at a time of mounting threats from Islamist terrorists. Terrorism is a top issue for American voters, but President Obama displayed what can only be described as a stunning indifference towards the defence of the homeland.
The Iranian nuclear threat, likely to be the biggest foreign policy issue of 2010, was given just two lines in the speech, with a half-hearted warning of “growing consequences” for Tehran, with no details given at all. There were no words of support for Iranian protestors who have been murdered, tortured and beaten in large numbers by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s thuggish security forces, and no sign at all that the president cared about their plight. Nor was there any condemnation of the brutality of the Iranian regime, as well as its blatant sponsorship of terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As the example of Iran showed, the advance of freedom and liberty across the world in the face of tyranny was not even a footnote in the president’s speech. I cannot think of a US president in modern times who has attached less importance to human rights issues. For the hundreds of millions of people across the world, from Burma to Sudan to Zimbabwe, clamouring to be free of oppression, there was not a shred of hope offered in Barack Obama’s address.
Not surprisingly, given how little room he devoted to foreign affairs, the State of the Union address was more remarkable for what he didn’t say than for what he did. This was his message on Afghanistan: “We are increasing our troops and training Afghan Security Forces so they can begin to take the lead in July of 2011, and our troops can begin to come home.” Really? That’s why he sent an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, bringing our troop total eventually to some 100,000 — so they can come home? If that was the goal, why not keep them in the United States? Obviously there are pressing reasons why the lives of these soldiers are being risked in combat, but Obama did not spell them out. He should have, because his West Point address raised more questions than it answered about what end-state the U.S. is seeking and what specific policies should be enacted to achieve it. But he did nothing to dispel that confusion, which is prevalent among U.S. commanders on the ground, as well as among both our allies and enemies in the region.
Nor, predictably, did he offer any objective in Iraq beyond “responsibly leaving Iraq to its people.” He did say something commendable — “We will support the Iraqi government as they hold elections, and continue to partner with the Iraqi people to promote regional peace and prosperity.” But he said nothing more about the promise of Iraqi democracy, which so many Americans and Iraqis have sacrificed so much to bring about. Instead he reiterated his top objective, which is heading for the exits: “But make no mistake: this war is ending, and all of our troops are coming home.”
He then went on to plug his pet project — the utopian goal of eliminating nuclear weapons. He claimed without any evidence that “these diplomatic efforts have also strengthened our hand in dealing with those nations that insist on violating international agreements in pursuit of these weapons.” He suggested that North Korea “now faces increased isolation” — hard to imagine given that, if Pyongyang were any more isolated from the rest of the world, it would be located on the moon. He also claimed that Iran is getting “more isolated” and will face “growing consequences” that remain unspecified. The Green Movement in Iran, which offers the best chance of ending Iran’s nuclear program by overthrowing its despotic regime, got barely a mention — squeezed in between the (praiseworthy) effort to help Haiti and a puzzling reference to American advocacy on behalf of “the young man denied a job by corruption in Guinea.” Is corruption in Guinea really on a par as an American foreign-policy priority with Tehran’s repression of human rights and support for terrorism and nuclear proliferation?
Rather than offer any specific support for Iranian democrats or call for the overthrow of their oppressors, Obama devoted far more time to promoting “our incredible diversity” at home — including an effort to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which may make sense but is sure to bring him into conflict with substantial numbers of the soldiers under his command.
Last night in your State of the Union address, you spoke of America's support for human rights. Then, why have we not condemned Israel and Egypt's human rights violations against the occupied Palestinian people and yet we continue to support financially with billions of dollars coming from our tax dollars?
Obama blamed internal politics both in Israel and the Palestinian territories for constraining peace diplomacy. He cited problems faced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who the president said "is making some effort to move a little bit further than his coalition wants to go."
Netanyahu's right-leaning government includes pro-settler parties strongly opposed to ceding occupied land to the Palestinians for a future state.
Obama said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas "genuinely wants peace" but has to deal with Hamas, a militant group that refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist...
Earlier this week, I wrote about the Hamas 54, the 54 Democratic congressmen who wrote a letter to President Obama urging him to pressure Israel to lift the 'blockade' on Gaza to allow terrorists to enter and leave and to import weapons and ammunition.
'Israeli Arab' MK Mohamed Barakeh, leader of the mixed, Leftist Arab-Jewish Hadash party, was visibly shocked upon visiting the Auschwitz death camp on Wednesday. Hadash Chairman MK Mohammad Barakeh, whose decision to join the delegation has sparked an uproar in recent weeks had trouble concealing his shock upon visiting the extermination camp.
"I knew exactly where I was going," He said and added, "But being here, faced with the embodiment of human evil on the one hand, and the unperceivable misery of the victims on the other hand, things take on a different meaning. Everything is mixed into a human catastrophe."
Barakeh also commented on the piles of children's shoes displayed at the museum and said, "Any such shoe was once worn by a baby. Children are a nationality of their own, a nationality of innocence, and I cannot grasp how human beings could do such an atrocious thing."
The vast majority – 79% - of Israelis believe that the possibility of achieving a peace agreement with the Palestinians is next to zero. The poll, conducted by the Panels organization for the Knesset Channel, said that only 1% of Israelis believed that there was a "good chance" peace with the Palestinian Authority could be achieved.And to think that someone interviewed me this afternoon (more when it's up online) and asked whether I really believed that 67% of Israeli Jews wanted the IDF to go back into Gaza.
A similar number – 76% - believe that the current Palestinian leadership is not even interested in achieving peace with Israel, while only 17% believe that it is. The poll was released Thursday afternoon by the Knesset channel.
JPost publishes Alan Dershowitz's condensed summary of his 49-page magnum opus on the Goldstone Report. Here's part of what the Post published. THE CENTRAL issue that distinguishes the conclusions the Goldstone Report reached regarding Israel, on the one hand, and Hamas, on the other, is intentionality. The report finds that the most serious accusation against Israel, namely the killing of civilians, was intentional (and deliberately planned at the highest levels). The report also finds that the most serious accusations made against Hamas, namely that their combatants wore civilian clothing to shield themselves from attack, mingled among the civilian populations and used civilians as human shields, was unintentional. These issues are, of course, closely related.
If it were to turn out that there was no evidence that Hamas ever operated from civilians areas, and that the IDF knew this, then the allegation that the IDF, by firing into civilian areas, deliberately intended to kill Palestinian civilians, would be strengthened. But if it were to turn out that the IDF reasonably believed that Hamas fighters were deliberately using civilians as shields, then this fact would weaken the claim that the IDF had no military purpose in firing into civilian areas. Moreover, if Hamas did use human shields then the deaths of Palestinian civilians would be more justly attributable to Hamas then to Israel.
Since intentionality, or lack thereof, was so important to the report's conclusions, it would seem essential that the report would apply the same evidentiary standards, rules and criteria in determining the intent of Israel and in determining the intent of Hamas.
Yet a careful review of the report makes it crystal clear that its writers applied totally different standards, rules and criteria in evaluating the intent of the parties to the conflict. The report resolved doubts against Israel in concluding that its leaders intended to kill civilians, while resolving doubts in favor of Hamas in concluding that it did not intend to use Palestinian civilians as human shields.
Moreover, when it had precisely the same sort of evidence in relation to both sides - for example, statements by leaders prior to the commencement of the operation - it attributed significant weight to the Israeli statements, while entirely discounting comparable Hamas statements. This sort of evidentiary bias, though subtle, permeates the entire report.
Jeffrey Goldberg takes a look at some of the terrible things that happen to people who criticize Jews and Israel supporters (Hat Tip: Jennifer Rubin). Just look at what has happened to other critics who have gone where angels fear to tread and criticized Israel. Take, for example, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, the authors of "The Israel Lobby." Walt, as many of you know, is in hiding in Holland, under round-the-clock protection of the Dutch police, after the chief rabbi of Wellesley, Mass., issued a fatwa calling for his assassination. Mearsheimer, of course, lost his job at the University of Chicago and was physically assaulted by a group of Hadassah ladies in what became known as the "Grapefruit Spoon Attack of 2009." Now he teaches political science at a community college in Hayden Lake, Idaho, under police guard.
Lenny Ben David explains how his old IDF unit trained for its mission in Haiti. First, let’s look at the background of the IDF team in Haiti. That was my unit. As an IDF reservist, I served as a medic on the medical rescue team, and we trained hard working with the engineers who lifted slabs of cement while we practiced inserting infusions and assisting doctors performing emergency operations in the dark, dusty conditions. Over the years, the unit was dispatched to natural catastrophes in diverse places such as Turkey, India, and Mexico City, and assisted in rescue efforts after the terrorist bombing of the American Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1998.
The unit was originally formed after the first Lebanon war when an explosion in November 1983 pancaked a seven-story building in Tyre used by Israeli forces. Seventy-five Israeli soldiers were beneath the rubble, and the IDF was unequipped to rescue them. (Within a year, Hezbollah car bombs in Beirut brought down American and French barracks, killing some 300 soldiers.)
In my unit’s case, we were training for a contingency that we prayed would never come: Scud missiles raining down on Israeli cities. During the Gulf War 19 years ago, my unit was mobilized for the month-long war and bivouacked in an ambulance center. Whenever the sirens wailed, we threw on our chemical warfare gear and ran to the ambulances. Basically, our mission was: “If it’s bleeding, tie a tourniquet; if it’s breathing, stick it with atropine (to treat nerve gas), and then ‘scoop and run’ the victims to the hospital.” Our “front” was the Jerusalem area. No missiles fell in our sector, but 40 did fall, mostly on residential areas of Tel Aviv and Haifa. I will never forget the sense of terror while climbing into my ambulance and watching a Scud pass over my head as it headed toward Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport.
At home my wife responded to the sirens, scurrying the children into the shelter while putting gas masks on the older children and bundling the baby into a special sealed plastic coop. One son, who was in Jerusalem’s Old City at the time of one attack, recalls to this day the whistles and yelps of joy by Palestinians celebrating the fall of Saddam’s missiles on Israel.
...
The search and rescue unit was created to respond to attacks upon Israel’s homefront. They train for World Trade Center-type attacks on Israeli cities, or for a major earthquake, or an Iranian nuclear device that could deliver devastation on the scale of Haiti’s earthquake to hundreds of thousands of Israelis.
War may be the cruelest of man’s creations, but the IDF has harnessed its medical rescue unit for peace. If only it could be mobilized permanently for that purpose.
But if this section of the publicity brief is any indication, the debate may not be a fair fight: The hope among many governments has long been that an American administration would eventually impose such a peace on the two sides. This view seemed to underpin President Obama's landmark speech in Cairo last summer in which he sought to reach out to the Arab world by speaking of his sympathy for Palestinian "suffering" and the "humiliation" of occupation. In a major policy declaration, he also rejected the legitimacy of Israeli settlement in the West Bank saying: "It is time for the settlements to stop."
Obama's inability to shift Israeli policy on the issue has lost him credibility on both sides. Meanwhile Mahmoud Abbas, America's most important Palestinian ally, has been severely wounded by the US after he was persuaded to withdraw support for a UN report that accused Israel of war crimes during its winter offensive in Gaza. Facing uproar and fury from within his own party, Mr Abbas had to back down.
Now, at least, it is not Israeli policy that Obama is (apparently) trying to shift. Obama is trying to get the 'Palestinians' to come to the negotiating table. And the 'fury' at Abu Bluff over Goldstone (which I have also seen portrayed as the Israelis' doing and not as the Americans' doing) has long since died down. If Abu Bluff was ever wounded by his handling of Goldstone, he has long since recovered. It's his own weakness and unwillingness to compromise that has kept him away from the negotiating table.
Shmuel Rosner has more comments here.
The Jewish mind knows how to take advantage of every situation. This is El Al's latest ad... in the post-"tefillin bomber" era
The current crisis emerged when the European Union, one of the biggest donors to the Palestinian Authority, decided to scale back aid, including payment of fuel for the power plant.
Rafael Defense Systems Ltd. and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) teamed up in 2005 to develop lightweight micro-satellites that could be launched aboard a missile from an F-15 fighter jet and orbit the earth.
Israel already conducts missile defense interception tests with Rafael's Blue Sparrow missile that is fired from an F-15 into space and then reenters the atmosphere, impersonating a ballistic missile.
Micro-satellites, officials said, would provide the IDF with a new level of versatility and enable it to launch satellites for specific missions while leaving its main space assets - the Ofek 5, Ofek 7, and TecSar - for intelligence-gathering and strategic operations.
Hamas has 'investigated' itself and the other 'Palestinian' terror groups in Gaza and concluded that they did not target Israeli civilians when shooting rockets from Gaza. But Hamas, which along with other armed groups has launched thousands of makeshift rockets into southern Israel in recent years, said a committee it appointed to follow up on the report found no intention to harm civilians.
"The committee worked around the clock to uncover the facts, despite the certainty that there were no violations of international humanitarian law or international human rights law that amount to war crimes," said the committee head, Hamas justice minister Mohammed Faraj al-Ghul.
"The Palestinian government has on more than one occasion called on armed Palestinian groups to avoid targeting civilians," said the report by Hamas, which has claimed scores of deadly suicide bombings against Israeli civilians.
"(The armed groups) struck military targets and avoided civilian targets, and any accusations related to this concern errant fire."
"Hamas' claim that rockets were intended to hit Israeli military targets and only accidentally harmed civilians is belied by the facts," the New York-based group said.
HRW issued its statement after the Islamist rulers of the Gaza Strip said its investigations of allegations in a UN report on the Gaza war found that they and other Palestinian armed groups "struck military targets and avoided civilian targets."
HRW pointed out that most of the rocket attacks on Israel hit civilian areas. "Civilians were the target," the rights group said, adding that "deliberately targeting civilians is a war crime."
The UN report into the 22-day Gaza offensive published in September also said the firing of the hard-to-aim rockets at southern Israel deliberately targeted civilians and could constitute a crime against humanity.
Sever Plocker on why the 'Palestinians' refuse to negotiate with Netanyahu. The difficulty to explain the current Palestinian position has reached all the way to the White House. Those who carefully read the full Obama interview with Time Magazine realize that he has lost patience with the Palestinians’ elusive conduct. Officials around Obama have spoken harshly: They charged that the Palestinians humiliated the president and screwed up his policy.
What prompts the Palestinian leadership to adopt such stubborn refusal and shun the initiative of a US Administration that may be the most convenient for them? The Palestinians do not wish to negotiate with Netanyahu because they perceive him as a practical politician seeking practical solutions; this is the kind of mess the current Palestinian leadership wishes to stay away from. It doesn’t even want to get close to it.
Palestinian leaders did not mind talks with former PM Olmert, because they knew he had no mandate to finalize any deal, and certainly not a “final-status agreement” which the talks focused on. They in fact liked the futile talks and arguments. Yet when the possibility of a practical agreement first came up and they had to respond to it, they left the talks and did not return.
In the backdrop to the talks with Olmert and Livni was the Bush Administration, which the entire Arab world loved to hate, and whose involvement could be used to explain the failure. Yet with Obama and Bibi negotiations can take a different path. Both of them are politicians who seek results and who are unwilling to waste time on verbal and ideological quarrels.
Don't want to visit Gaza? Fear not. Soon, says terrorism expert Matt Levitt, Gaza may be coming to you. Groups such as Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade weave Palestinian nationalism and radical Islamism together but limit their operations to the Israeli-Palestinian front. Now, under the influence of more worldly jihadists, some Palestinian fighters are signing up for groups inspired by al Qaeda, fighting not for Palestine but for the whole Muslim umma.
Al Qaeda-inspired jihadist groups in Gaza have maintained a local operational focus on Israel and Gaza, but have tied their attacks to global issues like the Danish cartoon crisis or the incarceration of a jihadist ideologue in Britain. The fear among U.S. and Israeli intelligence is that such a "glocal" ideology is serving as a bridge between Palestinian nationalism and al Qaeda's global jihadist ideology. The former theoretically allows for a two-state solution; the latter requires adherents to wage violent jihad against all infidels and apostates until the creation of an Islamic state.
Hamas in Gaza -- by engaging in secular politics, failing to institute sharia law, and cracking down on fellow Palestinians who attack Israel or threaten its rule -- has created a vacuum that global jihadist groups, often populated by disgruntled Hamas operatives, have been keen to fill. Even so, membership in Gaza's global jihadist groups is estimated to be in the low hundreds. But while their capabilities are limited, they think big. In July 2008, Israeli intelligence successfully thwarted a plot against former British Prime Minister Tony Blair by one such group.
Mayanot brought over 300 Taglit Birthright-Israel participants and friends together into the beautiful open-air mall next to Jerusalems Old City, for this fun and unique event.
Join the fun in Israel this summer on your free ten-day trip with Taglit-Birthright Israel: MAYANOT.
Apply now at http://www.mayanotisrael.com and enjoy a high quality Israel experience that includes ten days jam-packed with activities and attractions with young Israelis and participants from diverse backgrounds.
Special shout out to Dave Lindenbaum and Jesse Friedberg for "My Shawarma" - you can download this song now:
http://cdbaby.com/cd/dlindenbaum
Sorry traffic has been slow today - I went to a seminar in Tel Aviv so that I can try to make a living.Did You know that the mayor of Malmö, Sweden - Yes that Malmo, Israel, tennis - in an interview on Holocaust memorial day said the following:
"We don´t accept neither zionism nor antisemitism. They are both extremes that pose them selves above other groups and regard those [groups] as inferior."
(The quote in Swedish: Vi accepterar varken sionism http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifeller antisemitism. Det är ytterligheter som sätter sig över andra grupper och anser att de är mindre värda.]
He also stated that in his view, the jewish congregation and jews as individuals have a responsibility for what others think of them:
"I would have wished for the jewish congregation [in Malmo] to take a stand against Israels violations of the civilian population of Gaza. In stead they choose to hold a demonstration at Stortorget [a big square in Malmo] that could send the wrong signal."
[Quote in swedish: Jag skulle önska att judiska församlingen tog avstånd från Israels kränkningar av civilbefolkningen i Gaza. I stället väljer man att hålla en demonstration på Stortorget, som kan sända fel signaler.
Will the Obama administration finally present a concrete plan for sanctions against Iran to the United Nations? US officials are telling The Associated Press that the Obama administration could circulate an outline of possible tough new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program as early as this week at the United Nations.
The proposed measures would target elements the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps under fresh penalties as well financial institutions under existing UN sanctions resolutions. The officials say the measures are being finalized and prepared for debate in the UN Security Council.
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