Saturday 6 March 2010

Israel Matzav: Iran gives Russian pilots two months to leave

Iran gives Russian pilots two months to leave

Iran has given Russian commercial pilots working in the Islamic Republic two months to leave the country as it has no need for them, Transport Minister Hamid Behbahani was quoted as saying on Saturday.

The move is a further sign of strains between Iran and Russia, which has indicated it could back new sanctions against Tehran over its disputed nuclear work. For its part, Iran has voiced frustration over Moscow's failure to deliver a defence missile system.

Maybe. If it were really a sign of strains, why wouldn't they have told them to leave immediately?


Israel Matzav: Iran gives Russian pilots two months to leave

Israel Matzav: Guess who's a 9/11 troofer?

Guess who's a 9/11 troofer?

I guess it should come as no surprise to anyone that Holocaust-denying Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a 9/11 troofer (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Saturday called the September 11 attacks on the United States a "big fabrication" that was used to justify the U.S. war on terrorism, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Ahmadinejad, who often rails against the West and Israel, made the comment in a meeting with Intelligence Ministry personnel.

...

Ahmadinejad described the destruction of the twin towers in New York on September 11, 2001 as a "complicated intelligence scenario and act," IRNA reported.

He added: "The September 11 incident was a big fabrication as a pretext for the campaign against terrorism and a prelude for staging an invasion against Afghanistan." He did not elaborate.

All we need now is for Barack Obama to agree with him.

Israel Matzav: Guess who's a 9/11 troofer?

Israel Matzav: The Gaffester won't change anything

The Gaffester won't change anything

The gaffetastic Joe Biden will be visiting Israel for three days starting on Monday during which he will be making what is billed as a 'major policy address' at Tel Aviv University. Like John Kerry before him, Biden is coming here to try to convince the Israeli government to get behind the Obama administration's ineffective Iran policy. But Biden is also trying to resurrect Israel's Left, says Caroline Glick in her weekly column in the JPost, because Netanyahu is not likely to go along with a policy that includes exempting China from sanctions against Iran's energy industry. Biden is being sent here because he's seen as the most 'pro-Israel' senior member of the Obama administration. In the process of explaining why Biden's mission is unlikely to succeed, Glick also takes a swipe at Biden's 'pro-Israel' reputation.

In light of the gaping disparity between the Obama administration’s policies and those of the Israeli government, the apparent goal of Biden’s address is to shore up the position of the Israeli Left as an alternative to Netanyahu. Apparently, the picture emerging from all of the senior US officials’ meetings with Netanyahu is that Israel’s leader still feels comfortable defying them. Presumably, they now believe that the only way to force him to toe their line is by making him believe that the price of defiance will be his premiership.

This of course is a difficult task. The Left after all was roundly defeated in last year’s election. Making it a credible alternative is no mean task.

The Israeli Left for its part is doing its best to tie its own fortunes to the administration. Opposition leader Tzipi Livni placed herself squarely in the Obama camp this week during her confrontation with Netanyahu at the Knesset. Belittling the results of last month’s Gallup poll that showed that Israel enjoys the support of two-thirds of Americans, (and 80 percent of Republicans vs 53% of Democrats), Livni blamed the premier for Israel’s international standing. By not bowing to Obama’s demands and ending all Jewish construction in Jerusalem and accepting the radical peace proposals she and former prime minister Ehud Olmert made to the Palestinians during their tenure in office, Livni claimed that Netanyahu is ruining Israel’s diplomatic position in the US and throughout the world.

...

Biden was selected for the job because he is widely perceived as the most pro-Israel senior member of the administration. The fact that before becoming vice president Biden had one of the most pro-Iran voting records in the Senate has done nothing to mitigate this perception. Indeed, despite the fact that Biden voted repeatedly against sanctions on Iran, claimed that Iran’s quest for nuclear bombs was understandable and called for the US to sign a nonaggression pact with the mullocracy while threatening to move for president George W. Bush’s impeachment if he were to order a military strike against Iran’s nuclear weapons programs, Biden continues to be viewed as a solid supporter of Israel.

And indeed, in line with this perception, he can be expected to declare his undying love for the Jewish state several times during his speech at Tel Aviv University. Yet still, and sadly for the Israeli Left and for the Obama administration, his charm offensive will fail to get the girl. The most his visit is likely to yield is a momentary rise in support among Israelis that will quickly recede. And there are four reasons this is the case.

Read the whole thing.

Scott Johnson adds:

Glick notes that during his trip Biden will give what is being billed as a major policy speech at Tel Aviv University. She also gives four good reasons why Biden's mission is a lost cause. The fact that Joe Biden is a pompous buffoon doesn't make Glick's list, but it also deserves consideration.

Heh.

Tel Aviv University is possibly the most Leftist campus in the country (Haifa University is probably as Leftist, but they're off the map), so if Biden is going to meet up with a less-than-hostile audience, that would be the place to find it.

It's looking more and more like Israel is going to have to go it alone on Iran. All the simulations to date assume that if Israel succeeds in striking Iran, it will then be reined in by the US. But what if we're not? Hmmm.


Israel Matzav: The Gaffester won't change anything

Love of the Land: Obama Talks, Syria Mocks

Obama Talks, Syria Mocks


Elliot Abrams
The Weekly Standard
06 March '10

The Obama administration has from the start seen Syria as a leading case for engagement. Barack Obama said so during his presidential campaign (announcing he would meet Bashar al Assad without preconditions) and repeated this policy view again last summer:

We’ve started to see some diplomatic contacts between the United States and Syria. There are aspects of Syrian behavior that trouble us, and we think that there is a way that Syria can be much more constructive on a whole host of these issues. But, as you know, I’m a believer in engagement and my hope is that we can continue to see progress on that front.


The engagement with Syria continues apace. Here are the key elements.

* High level envoys have been sent to Damascus: Under Secretary of State William Burns visited Syria in mid-February, the highest ranking U.S. official to set foot there in more than five years, and Middle East envoy George Mitchell has visited three times. High-ranking Central Command officers have been sent to Damascus to discuss cooperation against terrorism.

* President Obama has now nominated an ambassador to Damascus, the first since Margaret Scobey was withdrawn in 2005 after the murder of former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri in Lebanon (which was widely blamed on the Assad regime).

* The president has also removed the American block to Syria’s attempt to join the World Trade Organization.

* The United States has eased some export licenses for Syria, mostly in the area of aircraft.

* Syria’s deputy foreign minister was invited to Washington in October, the first such visit in several years.

So there is certainly “progress on that front,” to use the president’s words. But when does “engagement” become “appeasement”? The case of U.S. policy toward Syria suggests that, here at least, the two approaches may not be far apart.


Love of the Land: Obama Talks, Syria Mocks

RubinReports: Yitzhak Rabin's Vision and the Direction of Middle East Politics

Yitzhak Rabin's Vision and the Direction of Middle East Politics

By Barry Rubin

I’ve long been a big Yehuda Avner fan. He writes terrific articles about his personal experiences as advisor to many Israeli prime ministers and as a high-level diplomat. But nothing prepared me for the story he tells in his new book, The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership, published by Toby Press (of which I’m also a big fan. I urge you to look at their catalogue, much of which consists of translated novels avialable nowhere else).

On November 1, 1995, just three days before Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, Avner asked him why he made the Oslo agreement deal with Yasir Arafat. Rabin’s answer is extremely close to my own analysis fifteen years later: that the great issue of this era in the Middle East is the battle of nationalists versus Islamists; that this factor offered a chance to reduce or eliminate the Arab-Israeli conflict; but that if the Islamists won things would be much worse.

Rabin explained that the Middle East was characterized increasingly by growing instability in many states. Of special importance was “Iranian-inspired (and financed) Islamic fundamentalism” which threatened most of the area’s countries and had already brought the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

According to Avner, Rabin continued that this situation had brought common interests between most Arab states and Israel since their “long-term strategic interest is the same as ours””and they recognize “they have less to fear from Israel than from their Muslim neighbors, not least from radicalized Islamic powers going nuclear.”

The triumph of the Islamists would make resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict impossible (not that it was so easy before) since they would turn it into a solely religious conflict. “And while a political conflict is possible to solve through negotiation and compromise, there are no solutions to a theological conflict. Then it is jihad – religious war: their God against our God. Were they to win, our conflict would go from war to war, and from stalemate to stalemate.”

Rabin concluded:

“And that, essentially is why I agreed to Oslo and shook hands, albeit reluctantly, with Yasir Arafat. He and his PLO represent the last vestige of secular Palestinian nationalism. We have nobody else to deal with. It is either the PLO or nothing. It is a long shot for a possible settlement, or the certainty of no settlement at all at a time when the radicals are going nuclear.”

If Rabin had lived five years more he might well have (I think probably would have) concluded that a comprehensive political settlement with Arafat was also impossible. He already suspected that. But it was still better to work with the PLO’s heir, the Palestinian Authority, then to watch Hamas take over. Indeed, it did take over the Gaza Strip. And Islamism produced two wars for Israel, with Hizballah in 2006 and with Hamas in 2009. Today, too, Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons is a far more visible factor than it was fifteen years ago.

The nationalists in general were unwilling or unable to make a comprehensive peace with Israel, though one should not forget Egypt and Jordan making at least a treaty, but the rest of Rabin’s vision came true. May his memory be even more blessed.


RubinReports: Yitzhak Rabin's Vision and the Direction of Middle East Politics

Israel Matzav: Anti-American incitement in the Middle East

Anti-American incitement in the Middle East

Do you have any idea how much American assistance goes to countries that incite anti-American violence? Unfortunately, an awful lot. Here's a presentation that was made to the US House last week.

Let's go to the videotape.



I guess most of the Congress didn't find this very interesting, did they?

Israel Matzav: Anti-American incitement in the Middle East

Israel Matzav: Good riddance

Good riddance

Signing onto the Gaza 54 was apparently not an aberration for the People's Republic of Massachusetts' William Delahunt, who has recently announced his retirement after a case he messed up as District Attorney in 1986 came back to haunt him.

Liberal Massachusetts congressman Bill Delahunt may be announcing his retirement from Congress now, but this race ended on January 19. That’s when Scott Brown carried the 10th congressional district with 61 percent of the vote, winning in nearly every town — including the capital of Camelot, Hyannisport.

If Delahunt dreamed of clinging to his congressional seat after that, those hopes were dashed by the nightmare of the Amy Bishop shooting scandal, which broke a few weeks later. And in a way, it’s a fitting end to a forgettable career.

Bill Delahunt entered Congress under a cloud and he’s leaving amid scandal.

He was not exactly known for doing much heavy lifting. The AP reported the following when Delahunt announced his candidacy: “News reports about his campaign finances revealed that he has vacationed at Hedonism II, an adult-oriented resort in Jamaica.”

His 1996 “victory” in the Democratic primary was the original hanging-chad story. In a very close primary, the first two vote counts went to prominent Democrat Phil Johnson. But a judge with ties to the Delahunt campaign reversed those vote counts and declared Delahunt the winner.

As a congressman, he “represented the ‘hack’ wing of the Massachusetts Democratic party,” says longtime GOP consultant Charlie Manning. “If he’s done anything of note, I can’t think of it, other than hanging out with third-world thugs.” The Wall Street Journal called Delahunt a “Venezuelan subsidiary in Congress.”

Read the whole thing. He sounds totally despicable. And we here in Israel will be quite happy if he never comes back here. Good riddance!

Israel Matzav: Good riddance

Israel Matzav: Obama bows to China again

Obama bows to China again

The Obama administration is so desperate to gain a consensus in the UN Security Council - even if that consensus means that nothing is done to stop Iran - that it is now trying to undercut the United States' own effort to stop countries from doing business with the Mullocracy. With sanctions against Iran's energy industry having overwhelmingly passed both houses of Congress, Obama is now seeking to gain an exemption from the US's unilateral sanctions against Iran for the P - 5+1 group, which principally means for China.

Among other things, the legislation tightens existing U.S. sanctions on Iran by targeting sales of refined petroleum products to the country and the administration would want it to include an exemption for the six countries seeking to negotiate with Iran on its nuclear program. The six are the five permanent members of the Security Council -- the United States, France, Russia, China and Britain -- and Germany. The most controversial, by far, would be China.

"Given the Chinese-Iranian relationship, it's hard to imagine a meaningful cooperating country exemption that China would fall into," said a Hill staff member involved in the issue.

One foreign official complained that the administration's efforts would encourage China to water down U.N. sanctions on Iran as much as possible and then push Chinese firms -- should the U.S. law pass -- to invest more in Iran's oil and gas sector.

Similar behavior has been seen in Chinese companies before. Over the course of the past decade, Japanese firms, under U.S. pressure, have divested significantly in Iran's oil and gas industry. As they have pulled out, China has moved in.

Today China has commitments of more than $80 billion in Iran's energy sector. Japan, which once had a 70 percent interest in the Azadegan oil field, has reduced it to 10 percent. Last August, a Chinese consortium led by the Chinese National Petroleum Company signed a memorandum of understanding to invest $3 billion in the field.

As you might imagine, America's (former?) allies are furious.

"We're absolutely flabbergasted," said one senior official from a foreign country friendly to the United States. "Tell me what exactly have the Chinese done to deserve this?" Japan and South Korea, which are U.S. allies, have raised the issue with the Obama administration.

President Obama seems determined to ensure that Iran becomes a nuclear power. What could go wrong?

UPDATE 11:15 PM

More on this from Jennifer Rubin here.

Israel Matzav: Obama bows to China again

Israel Matzav: SNL Weekend Update, Israeli style

SNL Weekend Update, Israeli style

Yes, it's another video from Latma, Caroline Glick's humor network, with English subtitles, featuring the 'Palestinian Minister of Uncontrollable Rage.'

Let's go to the videotape.



Heh.

Israel Matzav: SNL Weekend Update, Israeli style

Love of the Land: Why the Palestinians Don't Want a State

Why the Palestinians Don't Want a State


David Gutmann
American Spectator
05 March '10

President Barack Obama will soon be entering the lion's den of Middle East politics with the same conviction that has guided all his predecessors -- that the solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict lies in the Two-State Solution, leading to the early establishment of a Palestinian state.

The received wisdom has it that the Palestinians wish above all things to have a state of their own, but that their fervent wishes are frustrated by Israeli delaying tactics, such as endless arguments over West Bank settlements, security fences, water rights, and the like.

While the Israelis probably do not want a Palestinian state on their borders, an entity that could easily become Hamastan II (and yet another missile launching platform), there is increasing evidence that the Palestinians themselves are of two minds about the prospect of their own statehood.

The first piece of evidence is the unchallenged observation that Palestinian leaders have rejected or sabotaged every proposal for statehood since 1947. In that year the Palestinians rejected the UN-sponsored division of the former British mandate into Jewish and Arab states on the grounds that they did not want to share Palestine with the infidel Jews. Instead of developing trheir own state, they tried through armed conflict to eradicate the nascent Jewish state. Their leaders took this big step just two years after the end of the Holocaust; and, guided by Hitler's associate Haj Amin Al-Husseini, their implicit goal was to continue the slaughter. But if you start a war of politicide plus extermination you had better win it; otherwise, like Hitler, or Tojo, or the Palestinians of 1948, you will very likely end up with a bombed-out wasteland, or -- in the Palestinian case -- as a defeated rabble of landless refugees.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Why the Palestinians Don't Want a State

Love of the Land: Heralding Israel's heritage

Heralding Israel's heritage


Aron U. Raskas
The Baltimore Sun
05 March '10

The nation must defend its historical ties to the land against those who deny them

JERUSALEM--The Israeli government adds two culturally rich, millennium-old historic sites to a list of national treasures, and riots break out, followed by international condemnation. Yet, it is precisely this cynical, albeit predictable, response that demonstrates why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was right to add the Tomb of Rachel and the Cave of the Jewish Patriarchs and Matriarchs to Israel's National Heritage Sites.

There is no nation with firmer roots in a land than the Jewish people in the greater land of Israel. Yet, that great heritage has been under assault by Arab protagonists and their pusillanimous patrons for the longest time, and this has intensified in recent years.

As the Arab people began to recognize their inability to defeat the Jewish people on the battlefield, they began to cleverly craft a strategy of burying Israel's legacy in the arena of world opinion. This strategy seeks to eradicate the Jewish connection to the land and erode the support for Israel's legitimacy and very existence. Indeed, the increasingly global campaign to delegitimize Israel has been bolstered significantly by the reticence of past Israeli governments and other Jewish opinion leaders to assert the great Jewish legacy in this land.

The arrogation to itself of the "Palestinian" mantle was the first formidable success for the Arab population that shared with the Jewish people the land that came to be known as Palestine. Likewise, 50 years ago, there was nary a reference to a "West Bank" until that term was introduced by Palestinian Arab propagandists to eliminate further references to the time-honored titles of Judea and Samaria, as the land had been routinely referred to in maps, travel guides, newspapers and even U.N. resolutions.

(Read full article)


Love of the Land: Heralding Israel's heritage

Chesler Chronicles » The Goddess That Failed

Chesler Chronicles » The Goddess That Failed

Love of the Land: An Arab land

An Arab land


Sarah Honig
Another Tack/JPost
05 March '10

Were Israelis to unconditionally submit to ever-mutating Arab historiography, all attachments to the Western Wall and Mount of Olives would have to be abjectly relinquished.

Who says we’re not winning the war for the world’s hearts and minds? Even Arabs seem swayed by the argument that the oldest ties to this land are the ones that bind.

Apparently they were converted to the view that everything boils down to who was here first, who left all the place names of all this country’s towns and villages (including those which conquistador Arabs took over), who embedded this unlikely location in world consciousness and rendered it a cultural/religious byword in the farthest climes, whose national cradle this was, the hub of whose beliefs and aspirations this arid little territorial tract had been from time immemorial.

The Arabs, obviously, haven’t become overnight lovers of Zion. But despite their unabated enmity to the Zionist project – Israel – they commandeer Zionism’s logic and Zionism’s case and put these to their own use with a set of preposterous counterclaims that go spectacularly unchallenged in our postmodern existence. With moral-relativists throwing history to the wind, any absurdity can be propagated with colossal impudence and impunity.

The latest example was just furnished in the Knesset by Israeli-Arab MK Taleb a-Sanaa (Ta’al-Ra’am). In a plenum debate he embraced the premise that the land belongs to its earliest claimants: “You say that Abraham purchased Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs, but the man who sold it to him was a Palestinian Arab. Consequently, we were here first and Hebron is eternally ours.”

Thereby a-Sanaa made a huge leap from traditional Arab portrayals of Abraham as an Arab. A-Sanaa now categorizes him as the Israelites’ father and stakes Arab claims on real-estate vendor Ephron the Hittite (although the mosque which Arabs constructed over the second-holiest Jewish shrine is called the Ibrahimi Mosque – Ibrahim being the Arabic pronunciation for the Hebrew Avraham).

THIS ISN’T an irrelevant frivolous footnote. A-Sanaa isn’t the first Arab to reinvent the past to suit current interests. Indeed, this is a long-established vogue. Way before the homicidal agitation of British-appointed Jerusalem mufti Haj Amin el-Husseini, it was a widespread Arab sport to hurl human excrement from atop the Temple Mount at Jews praying below. But Husseini decided to usurp the wall’s sanctity for Islam, decreeing it to be the hitching-post where Muhammad tethered his super-steed al-Buraq. That presumably overrode and erased all Jewish associations to the site.

(Read full article)


Love of the Land: An Arab land

Love of the Land: Canadian Leaders Standing Tall Against Israel Apartheid Week

Canadian Leaders Standing Tall Against Israel Apartheid Week


Barbara Kay
Pajamasmedia.com
04 March '10
Posted before Shabbat

In the aftermath of what emerged, against early predictions, as a wildly successful Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, Canadians are basking in an uncharacteristically bullish glow of national pride. With a stunning fourteen gold medals to the USA’s nine, Canadians are relishing their moment in the sun.

The road to this overflowing pot of Canadian gold was paved with a costly and therefore somewhat controversial “Own the Podium” funding program for athletes’ development and expenses. But $66 million of taxpayers’ money now seems a small price to pay for a formerly unassuming nation’s long-deferred sporting honor.

Hard on the winged heels of an inebriating Olympics that sought to ennoble the ideal, for two weeks anyway, of a mature global polity, with nation rivaling nation through positive, amicable achievement, there slouched into Canada (amongst other countries) a rough beast that shames the very idea of man as political animal: the annual eight-day immiseration known as Israel Apartheid Week (IAW).

IAW is something like a multi-site Olympiad itself, except that in this cheerless, failure-glorifying anti-Olympiad, the world does not come together. Instead, it is prised apart in a scapegoating orgy of thinly disguised Jew-hatred.

On this front, ironically without spending a cent, by dint of political courage and real leadership, Canadian politicians have begun in earnest to take ownership of a long-empty moral podium by addressing the escalating pathology of anti-Semitism fueling IAW and reaffirming Israel’s legitimacy — and more, Israel’s importance to Western interests.

Israel Apartheid Week (IAW) has for some years now been a well-oiled engine of hate belching toxic black smoke as it chugs in full-throated spate across a good part of the academic globe. It may have reached a tipping point of its own making in Canada (whose University of Toronto campus “boasts” the dubious distinction of having provided the venue for this continent’s first IAW).

(Read full article)


Love of the Land: Canadian Leaders Standing Tall Against Israel Apartheid Week

Love of the Land: Smoke and mirrors over 'lawfare'

Smoke and mirrors over 'lawfare'


Melanie Phillips
The Spectator
04 March '10
Posted before Shabbat

The Israeli paper Ha’aretz , along with the Kadima leader Tzipi Livni, appear to have been taken in by Gordon Brown’s noisy but misleading announcement in today’s Daily Telegraph that he will change the law to prevent the abuse of ‘universal jurisdiction’ through threats to arrest visiting Israeli dignatories for ‘war crimes’, an abuse which has caused the cancellation of a number of high-profile visits by Israelis to the UK of which the latest was the planned visit by Livni. Brown wrote:

There is a case now, therefore, for the evidential basis on which arrest warrants can be allowed to be tougher and for restricting the right to prosecute the narrow range of crimes falling under universal jurisdiction to the Crown Prosecution Service alone.



Livni and Ha’aretz naively take this at face value to assume that the UK is to change the law. But this is not so. Brown has merely said he intends to change the law and will consult on the best way to do this. But with a general election to be held by June at the very latest, and with no legislation actually being tabled, there is clearly no time for any such change in the law to occur.

(Read full post)


Love of the Land: Smoke and mirrors over 'lawfare'

Love of the Land: In Israel: Liquor, Not War

In Israel: Liquor, Not War


Nomi Abeliovich
The Atlantic
04 March '10
Posted before Shabbat

In a region so complicated that anything is possible, local gastronomy seems to be extracting the better side of a messy situation. This is how a group of former Lebanese militiamen has found themselves producing the "milk of lions"—arak, an aniseed-flavored liquor made from grapes or other fruits—in Israel.

It all started in the late 1970s. As a result of the Lebanese civil war, the South Lebanon Army (SLA) was set up to combat various groups, and it was no longer under the direct control of the main Lebanese army. The SLA was closely allied with Israel, and after Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, it turned over an occupied ''security zone'' in the south of Lebanon to the SLA, which mainly fought the Lebanese guerrilla forces led by Hezbollah. In return, Israel supported the organization with arms, uniforms, and equipment.

When the Israeli Defense Forces withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah guerrillas took control of the areas previously controlled by the SLA, the SLA collapsed, and its members were declared traitors and collaborators by the Lebanese government. Some surrendered and stood trial in military court while others sought emergency refuge, along with their families, in Israel.

(Read full story)


Love of the Land: In Israel: Liquor, Not War

Israel Matzav: What sanctions are there going to be anyway?

What sanctions are there going to be anyway?

Rick Richman reports that on Thursday, State Department Assistant Secretary P.J. Crowley was asked for some specifics about sanctioning Iran.

QUESTION: Speaking of the UN and a resolution, are you circulating a draft or is – are any of the P-5+1 circulating a draft at the moment?

MR. CROWLEY: There’s no draft resolution. We are working within the P-5+1 and with others on – sharing our ideas on possible steps. I think there’s a growing understanding that Iran should face consequences for its defiance of international obligations. We’ve having very serious and high-level conversations, but there is not, as of yet, a draft resolution text.

...

QUESTION: When do you think there will be [a draft text]?

MR. CROWLEY: We don’t have a timetable. We want to move as rapidly as possible, but at the end of this, we want to have action that is effective, sends the right signal, puts the right pressure on Iran, and we hope ultimately secures Iran’s compliance under the NPT and UN Security Council resolutions.

What could go wrong?

Israel Matzav: What sanctions are there going to be anyway?

Love of the Land: Rambam restoration will not lead to dialogue

Rambam restoration will not lead to dialogue


Bataween
Point of No Return
05 March '10
Posted before Shabbat

Dignitaries from all over the world are flooding in for the official inauguration on Sunday of the Maimonides Synagogue in Cairo. Egypt has spent up to $2 m rebuilding it, but does not want its Jewish heritage to be a vehicle for dialogue and 'normalisation' with Israel. The Jerusalem Post reports:

After a year-and-a-half of careful restoration work by the Egyptian authorities, the Maimonides Synagogue in Cairo is set to be rededicated on Sunday.

The 19th-century synagogue and adjacent yeshiva, which stand on the site where Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, the Rambam, worked and worshipped more than 800 years ago, was restored by the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA).

According to the Egyptian press, the restoration of the synagogue is part of a plan by the SCA to restore all the major religious sites in Egypt, including 10 synagogues.

The rededication ceremony will be attended by members of the Cairo Jewish community, the Egyptian diplomatic corps, former Israeli ambassadors and representatives of the state. A group of Chabad Hassidim will also attend the ceremony and help in rededicating the synagogue.

(Read full story)

Love of the Land: Rambam restoration will not lead to dialogue

Elder of Ziyon: Latest from the Dubai police circus

Elder of Ziyon: Latest from the Dubai police circus

Love of the Land: Age isn’t paranoid, Youth is blind

Age isn’t paranoid, Youth is blind


Fresnozionism.org
04 March '10
Posted before Shabbat

Today a friend directed my attention to an op-ed in the Boston Globe, “The New American Jew on Israel” by Jesse Singal. Singal asks why Jewish college students are less supportive of Israel than in the past, in the context of a talk at Harvard’s Hillel house by J Street’s Jeremy Ben-Ami. He does not discuss the question of J Street’s lack of legitimacy as a pro-Israel organization, its funding from sources that are anything but pro-Israel, or its recent embarrassment when Israel’s Ambassador Michael Oren refused to attend its convention because he found J Street’s policies to be damaging to Israeli interests.

But according to Singal, its position meshes closely with that of many students. Here’s one horrifying example:

…when asked about the prospect of Iran destroying Israel, Harvard Divinity School student Kenan Jaffe, 26, said he thought it was “unlikely.’’

“I also don’t think it’s directly related to the Palestinian question,’’ he said, “and it is only to the extent that if Israel comes to a final status solution with the Palestinians, Iran will have nothing to say about Israel and no reason to make threats against it.’’


Whether or not the Iranian regime will succeed in its oft-stated goal of bringing about an end to the Jewish state by means of its Lebanese and Palestinian proxies or even directly is certainly moot — it won’t happen if Israel has anything to say about it — but the idea that a ’solution’ of the argument with the Palestinian Arabs, if such were possible, would end the Iranian threat is ludicrous. Iran’s quarrel with Israel has to do with its desire to push out Western influence from the region, its desire to dominate the conservative Sunni states (and their oil), and to unify the Mideast under a Shiite caliphate. There’s clearly no room for a Jewish political entity in this picture.

(Read full post)


Love of the Land: Age isn’t paranoid, Youth is blind

Israel Matzav: US vows to 'assign blame' if 'proximity talks' fail

US vows to 'assign blame' if 'proximity talks' fail

Shavua tov, a good week to everyone.

Just before the Sabbath started, Haaretz reported that the United States has sent a letter to the 'Palestinian Authority' indicating that it will be an active participant in the 'proximity talks' between Israel and the 'Palestinian Authority,' and that it will 'assign blame' in the event that the talks fail.

The U.S. government sent the document to the Palestinians responding to their inquires regarding the U.S. initiative to launch indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

"We expect both parties to act seriously and in good faith. If one side, in our judgment, is not living up to our expectations, we will make our concerns clear and we will act accordingly to overcome that obstacle," it was written.

This commitment by the U.S. was a determining factor in the Palestinians' and the Arab League's decision to agree to the U.S. proposal on indirect talks.

The document also reveals that U.S. involvement will include "sharing messages between the parties and offering our own ideas and bridging proposals."

The U.S. also emphasized that their main concern is establishing a Palestinian state.

"Our core remains a viable, independent and sovereign Palestinian State with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967," the document read.

Regarding the settlements, the U.S. noted its continued commitment to the road map, which dictates that Israel must freeze all construction in the settlements, and dismantle all outposts erected since March 2001.

In 2000, Bill Clinton blamed Yasser Arafat for the failure of the Camp David talks, telling Arafat that he had made Clinton a failure.

But this administration is unlikely to blame the 'Palestinians' regardless of what happens - they have been biased against Israel from Day One (and even before). And you can bet that a finding that Israel is at fault will not be glossed over the way that Clinton's accusation against Arafat was a decade ago.

What could go wrong?

Israel Matzav: US vows to 'assign blame' if 'proximity talks' fail
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