Israel Matzav: Military Intelligence Chief: Iran can already make a nuclear bomb

Military Intelligence Chief: Iran can already make a nuclear bomb

Israel's Military Intelligence Chief, Amos Yadlin, told the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv on Tuesday that Iran is already capable of making a nuclear bomb.

Speaking at a conference on security challenges in the 21st century at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, Yadlin said that Iran is extremely close to mastering the necessary nuclear technology and will wait on the threshold until it feels that the international community is too weak to stop them to move forward towards the bomb.

Iran, he said, already has enriched 1.7 tons of low enriched uranium at its facility in Natanz, which is enough for a nuclear weapon.

"They are also improving long-range missiles with solid fuel propellant, are also developing nuclear detonators and taking other steps that do not fit Iranian claim that its program is for civilian purposes," he said.

Yadlin said that it appeared that the diplomatic efforts to stop Iran had failed and that the time had come for the international community to impose tough sanctions on the regime. He rejected the claim that sanctions would unite the Iranian people behind the regime and said that the post-election demonstrations in June were proof that there was a deep rift between the people and the regime.

Yadlin also said that any weapons that are in the hands of Iran or Syria could eventually be delivered to Hezbullah in Lebanon.

Haaretz adds:

Speaking at The Institute for National Security Studies, Yadlin said that Iran had embarked on a "measured and sophisticated strategy for a solid nuclear infrastructure, by spreading out in facilities both overt and covert, while simultaneously developing a military capability that would allow a breakthrough when it so decides."

According to Yadlin, there are three clocks now ticking with regard to Iran's contentious nuclear program ? those of technology, diplomacy, and of the stability of the Islamic regime. Technologically, said Yadlin, time was almost up.

Meanwhile, the Times of London discloses the name of the man who heads Iran's nuclear program.

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh is the man everyone would like to reach to learn the secrets of Iran’s nuclear programme. No one outside Iran has succeeded so far. The Times has seen a memo signed by Mr Fakhrizadeh, identifying him for the first time as the chairman of the Field for the Expansion of Deployment of Advance Technology (Fedat).

Intelligence sources say that this is the most recent cover name for the organisation running Iran’s nuclear weapons programme.

The United Nations’ atomic watchdog has long believed him to be the head of Iran’s clandestine nuclear weapons programme, but Tehran, which jealously guards his secrets, has repeatedly rejected attempts to interview him.

Mr Fakhrizadeh, a physics professor and a former officer in the elite Revolutionary Guard, is no longer able to leave Iran because the UN Security Council imposed travel sanctions and an assets freeze on him. However, he is regarded as one of the regime’s most loyal servants.

In the old days, the Mossad would have found him and either killed him or captured him. Can that still happen? That remains to be seen.

Israel Matzav: Military Intelligence Chief: Iran can already make a nuclear bomb

Israel Matzav: Why Iran can't be 'contained'

Why Iran can't be 'contained'

The Obama administration has given up on stopping Iran from going nuclear, but still believes that Iran can be 'contained' much as the US contained the USSR during the Cold War. There's only one problem. Iran can't be contained. Danielle Pletka explains why.

Worse, the common notion of deterrence is ill-designed for the regime in Tehran. Perhaps it is unfair to suggest that today's Iranian leadership is fashioned from different cloth than the Soviets; after all, we are often reminded that the doctrine of mutually assured destruction worked with the Soviet Union for half a century. But even the most ardent hawks have serious doubts about U.S. resolve to "totally obliterate" Iran in the event of a nuclear attack on, say, Israel -- despite Hillary Clinton's threat, as a presidential candidate, to do just that. Rather, most see the usual hemming and hawing about "certainty," "provocations" and "escalation" as the far more likely rhetoric should such an event occur. And if we in Washington see it that way, why would the Iranians think differently?

Many also scoff at the notion that a responsible Iranian leader would risk using or transferring nuclear weapons or technology. We are told that Ahmadinejad (who most acknowledge is crazy enough to use such a weapon) won't make the final decision. But the regime is remarkably opaque, and shifting power centers ensure that even capable intelligence agencies have low levels of certainty about decision-making in Iran's nuclear program. If our intelligence community's prognostications about Iran's reaction to the Obama engagement policy are any indication (apparently they predicted that Iran was desperate to talk), then it seems safe to conclude that no one knows whose finger will be on Iran's nuclear trigger.

It is possible that Iran will amass enough fissile material to make a bomb and then choose not to fashion a weapon or test. But that is not the history of states that have clandestine nuclear programs, particularly those with advanced delivery systems and warheads. It's also possible that once it possesses such a weapon, Iran will neither use it nor share the technology. But there are few things Iran has not been willing to share, and it is certain to be tempted to use its nuclear weapons as a shield from behind which it can engage in adventurism in Lebanon, Iraq and Israel.

Advocates of a containment policy suggest that in the absence of effective diplomacy or sanctions that deliver results, the stark U.S. options are acquiescence or military action. Privately, Obama administration officials confess that they believe Israeli action will preempt our policy debate, as Israel's tolerance for an Iranian nuke is significantly lower than our own. But subcontracting American national security to Israel is an appalling notion, and we cannot assume that an Israeli action would not provoke a wider regional conflict into which the United States would be drawn.

Read the whole thing.

What could go wrong?

Israel Matzav: Why Iran can't be 'contained'

Israel Matzav: Hillary: We messed up

Hillary: We messed up

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted on Monday that the Obama administration's efforts to 'engage' Iran have been an abysmal failure.

The accumulating evidence of Iran's nuclear momentum emerges as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton conceded Monday that the White House has little to show for nearly a year of diplomatic engagement with Iran over its nuclear ambitions. "I don't think anyone can doubt that our outreach has produced very little in terms of any kind of a positive response from the Iranians," Clinton told reporters.

Very little is an understatement. The IAEA reports that Iran is now capable of producing a nuclear weapon pretty much on their own.

Iranian scientists must still rely on outsiders for certain components and materials, such as high-strength metals used in making advanced centrifuges and longer-range missiles. But the remaining technical gaps are shrinking, according to an internal memo drafted by top Iran analysts at the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog. Excerpts from the never-published draft were leaked to a nonprofit group in October.

"Iran has sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable implosion nuclear device," the memo states.

Iran may also have the capacity to make 'heavy water' by itself.

In late October, IAEA inspectors who visited Iran for a first look at the secret plant also made a surprise discovery of 600 barrels of heavy water, a toxic liquid used in making plutonium, during a routine visit to one of Iran's lesser-known nuclear facilities near the city of Isfahan.

A recent IAEA report called on Iran to "provide information on the origin" of the heavy water.

"It was a complete surprise," said a European diplomat who agreed to talk about the internal debate on the condition of anonymity. "We assumed that the Iranians had purchased it from elsewhere, but no one really knew. No one believes they could have made it at the existing plant" -- a small facility at Khonab that has been mostly idle since it opened three years ago.

In a closed-door session of the IAEA governing board on Thanksgiving, the head of one of the Northern European delegations asked the chief Iranian nuclear official, Ali Akbar Salehi, to explain how Iran had acquired such a quantity of heavy water.

"We made it," Salehi reportedly shot back, according to two diplomats in the room.

Read the whole thing. 'Engagement' has been an abysmal failure but it doesn't get all of the blame. Some of the blame goes to the ridiculous 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, which tied President Bush's hands during his last year in office. Of course, many of the people who were involved in that report are now connected to the Obama administration in advisory or other capacities.

When the history of this era is written, students will marvel at how the West stood on the sidelines and watched Iran develop nuclear weapons - and did nothing about it.

Israel Matzav: Hillary: We messed up

Israel Matzav: Gazans using painkillers to drown their sorrows

Gazans using painkillers to drown their sorrows

The 'Palestinian' Ma'an news site reports that Gazans have been taking painkillers - particularly Tramadol - to escape their reality. And although the article refers to the 'besieged Gaza Strip,' if the three stories cited are representative, they can't really blame Israel for this one (Hat Tip: Judeopundit).

Suad, 17, takes the painkillers secretly and without her family’s consent. She says she has been a Tramal-addict for over a year.

Suad’s first dose was given to her by a peer during a school break. “I feel I can’t do without Tramal, and I try to save any money I get so I can buy the pills. I fear the pills will suffocate me, and I bear a grudge against myself especially when I try to avoid my mother’s questions about my health and the obvious exhaustion and redness in my eyes,” Suad said.

Muna is a Gazan woman who took her first Tramal dose unwillingly when her husband dissolved the medicine in her tea. “My husband was a drug addict, and he spent a lot of money on drugs. After he was fed up with my demands that he give up drugs, he secretly dissolved Tramal and other drugs into my tea several times until I began taking the medicine myself.”

“Anyone who goes through what I went through will be forced to take painkillers even if they become an addict,” says Imam, a university student who was shot in the knee by masked gunmen during factional violence in 2007. He says he feels dizzy and lightheaded when he takes the pills, and that it hampers his studies.

I trust that most of you are not drugged by your spouses and haven't participated in 'factional violence.' And I hope that if you're a teenager, you're not taking anything without your parents' knowledge and permission.

The drug is even manufactured in Gaza, so they can't blame Israel for sending it there either. But that doesn't mean that they won't blame Israel anyway. You don't expect the 'Palestinians' to take responsibility for their own actions, do you?

Israel Matzav: Gazans using painkillers to drown their sorrows

Israel Matzav: Breaking: Russian jet nearly crashes at Ben Gurion

Breaking: Russian jet nearly crashes at Ben Gurion

A Russian commercial jet overshot the runway at Ben Gurion Airport within the last hour and nearly crashed onto the Jerusalem - Tel Aviv highway, which runs past the airport.

According to the report, the aircraft almost crashed into Route 1 - the road connecting Jerusalem and Tel Aviv - before air traffic controllers at Ben Gurion alerted the pilot to his mistake.

The passenger jet returned to its course and landed safely at the airport several minutes later.

An investigation was opened into the incident.

Israel Radio reports that the pilot did not understand the instructions that he was given by an air traffic controller.

Israel Matzav: Breaking: Russian jet nearly crashes at Ben Gurion

Israel Matzav: Hebrew media pulls Israelis left

Hebrew media pulls Israelis left

When I talk about Israel's Leftist media, those of you who read Arutz Sheva and JPost, even with an occasional smattering of YNet, may be wondering why I am so flippant about referring to our media as leftist. Well, here's proof that I am right.

Nearly 80 percent of the 500 people polled by the Tel Aviv-based Geocartography Knowledge Group believe that Israel's Hebrew media outlets influence their audience, rather than reflect its views, and 53% of those polled said that those outlets support and attempt to advance leftist viewpoints.

Abraham Sion, a law professor and chair of the Center for Law and Mass Media at the Ariel University Center of Samaria, which commissioned the study, believes that when taken together, those two statistics show that the Hebrew media is one of the main factors in forming the Israeli public's general political orientation.

"After all that we've gone through in Israeli society over the past 20 years, how can it be possible that there are many people that still believe that we can achieve peace with the Palestinians?" Sion said.

"There are many people that still believe that Oslo was the right way to go. And that, I think, is a direct result of the nature of the media's coverage of the past 20 years, and of the great deal of influence it has over the general public."

The percentages of Israelis who saw a left-leaning Hebrew media were higher among religious people (73%) and people aged 18-34 (60%).

The media bias is much greater here than in the US, because in the US there is (or is supposed to be) a separation between the editorial pages and the news pages. News is supposed to be 'just the facts.' In Europe they don't even pretend to have such a separation. In Israel too, there is mostly no separation.

[N]early all of the people polled said that they could routinely see journalists' opinions filtering through their work. These perceived biases have led, according to the study, to a certain level of distrust of the Hebrew media within Israeli society: 35% of those polled don't give credence to news reports at all.

Many of those polled also link the Supreme Court to the Hebrew media and see the court as having a Leftist bias, which I have also discussed on this blog many times.

The Supreme Court is also perceived as being intimately linked with the Hebrew media: 45% of those polled said the media and the Supreme Court influence each other, compared to only 19% who said that there was no connection.

Additionally, 43% said that the Supreme Court's decisions favor leftist viewpoints, compared to only 5% who believe that the decisions display a rightist agenda.

What could go wrong?

Israel Matzav: Hebrew media pulls Israelis left

Israel Matzav: Good luck with that!

Good luck with that!

On Monday, President Obama met at the White House with Lebanese President Michel Suleiman. Obama urged the Hezbullah-backed President to crack down on arms smuggling to Hezbullah.

United States President Barack Obama pressed Lebanon on Monday to crack down on arms smuggling into the country, saying the weapons posed a potential threat to Israel.

Obama said after a meeting with Lebanese President Michel Suleiman at the White House that there had been some progress in enforcing a United Nations Security Council resolution banning such shipments, but more needed to be done.

"President Suleiman emphasized his concerns with respect to Israel. I emphasized our concerns about the extensive arms that are smuggled into Lebanon that potentially serve as a threat to Israel," Obama told reporters. "It is in the interest of all parties concerned that enforcement is exerted with respect to such smuggling."

This guy is President of the United States and he just doesn't get it. Suleiman is not going to do anything that offends Hezbullah. Good luck with that!

Israel Matzav: Good luck with that!

Israel Matzav: A radioactive relationship

A radioactive relationship

In the Wall Street Journal, Brett Stephens worries about Iran's purchases of uranium from Venezuela and what Iran might be supplying in return.

But perhaps the most interesting Iranian venture is a supposed gold mine not far from Angel Falls, in a remote area known as the Roraima Basin. The basin straddles Venezuela's border with neighboring Guyana, where a Canadian company, U308, thinks it has found the "geological look-alike" to Canada's Athabasca Basin. The Athabasca, the company's Web site adds, "is the world's largest resource of uranium."

In 2006, Chávez publicly mocked suspicions of nuclear cooperation with Iran, saying it "shows they have no limit in their capacity to invent lies." In September, however, Rodolfo Sanz, Venezuela's minister of basic industries, acknowledged that "Iran is helping us with geophysical aerial probes and geochemical analyses" in its search for uranium.

The official basis for this cooperation seems to be a Nov. 14, 2008 memorandum of understanding signed by the two countries' ministers of science and technology and given to me by a credible foreign intelligence source. "The two parties agreed to cooperate in the field of nuclear technology," reads the Spanish version of the document, which also makes mention of the "peaceful use of alternative energies." Days later, the Venezuelan government submitted a paper to the International Atomic Energy Agency on the "Introduction of a Nuclear Power Programme." (Online readers can see the memorandum for themselves in their Farsi and Spanish versions. One mystery: The Farsi version makes no mention of nuclear cooperation.)

...

Finally, there are the political connections. What do Fadi Kabboul, Aref Richany Jimenez, Radwan Sabbagh and Tarek Zaidan El Aissami Maddah have in common? The answer is that they are, respectively, executive director for planning of Venezuelan oil company PdVSA; the president of Venezuela's military-industrial complex; the president of a major state-owned mining concern; and, finally, the minister of interior. Latin Americans of Middle Eastern descent have long played prominent roles in national politics and business. But these are all fingertip positions in what gives the Iranian-Venezuelan relationship its worrying grip.

Read it all. Stephens fears that the United States will awaken to another Cuba on its doorstep some day in the not-too-distant future. That fear is not far-fetched.

Related: US Treasury freezes assets of Venezuelan diplomat for helping Hezbullah

Israel Matzav: A radioactive relationship

Israel Matzav: Target Lieberman continues

Target Lieberman continues

Legal Insurrection reports that the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation has decided to retain Hadassah Lieberman, wife of Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, as its spokesperson. But that doesn't mean the battle is over. Far from it. The vicious attacks against both Joe and Hadassah Lieberman over Joe's principled refusal to support Obamacare's 'public option' and 'medicare buy-in' provisions continue.

Big Hollywood reports on one such attack. It asks what's the difference between a Hollywood Leftist and the Mafia? The Mafia doesn't go after your family. Firedoglake does.

And they're not the only ones.

Meanwhile, Joe himself is under attack by the Judaism is Liberalism crowd.

During the past decade or so, there has been a rising panic over the growing influence of fundamentalist Christian precepts on modern American politics, but no one has said very much about Joe Lieberman’s fundamentalist Judaism. Although he prefers to call himself an “observant” rather than an “Orthodox” Jew, he is in fact an Orthodox Jew. His approach to modern life is just as uninflected as that of his Christian counterparts.

Sure, he has proved himself flexible on issues like gun-control, gay rights and abortion—all instances where he has taken a standard liberal position. But these aren’t subjects that arouse Lieberman’s passions. What really sends him soaring are issues—health care, Israel—that are, at the same time, loftily resonant with moral meaning and directly related to his material self-interest. The advantage of a fundamentalist perspective is that you can clothe your basest motives in noble sentiments.

So Lieberman, the Orthodox Jew who ostentatiously walks miles to Capitol Hill on the Sabbath because of the Jewish prohibition against operating machinery on the seventh day, has provided himself with some very pious blinders. An American war in Iraq will be futile, wasteful, and ultimately destabilizing? This rational skepticism cannot hold a candle to the feeling that it would be just. A public health-care option, or a Medicare buy-in will solve the problem of unaffordable health care in this country? The rational proposition sinks under the weight of the feeling that it will increase the deficit, and if it doesn’t add to the deficit, it will set us on the road to single-payer serfdom, and if it doesn’t do that, well, you feel it’s wrong.

You don’t doubt the morality of your feeling, because you have used your strict, self-sacrificing observance of Jewish law to prove to yourself that you are a good man. And you are not a hypocrite, because your observance proves that not only do you profess a belief in God, but you act on your belief. God on one side, your obedience to God on the other—the result is an ironclad conviction that what you do is absolutely right.

...

I grew up surrounded by non-religious Jews who were guided by the principle of rachmones, meaning “compassion.” They were guided by feeling, too, but it was not the absolute certitude of fundamentalist feeling. Rather, it was the feeling that life changes fast, and that people are vulnerable. They were gentle and ironic people. They liked this Yiddish saying: “God loves the poor, but helps the rich.” They probably lost more than they won in life, but they never fooled themselves into thinking that they were doing good when they were merely doing well.

Let the professional Jews quote the Talmud at me, but the way Lieberman has derived his political morality from his religious fundamentalism, and used both as fig leaves to cover his thralldom to money, is ritually unclean. Some people—for example, the sick and the crippled—might say that it is really not Jewish at all.

What's wrong with this, aside from author Lee Siegel dragging Israel into an argument that has nothing to do with it, is his misconception that Jewish faith and observance ought to be congruent with modern notions of political liberalism. They are not and ought not to be. (The comparison between Orthodox Judaism and fundamentalist Christianity is also one that many Orthodox Jews will dispute, but I'm not going to get into that).

As was pointed out by Norman Podhoretz in discussing his new book Why Jews are Liberal (still waiting for a review copy of that one), if Judaism mandated liberalism, Orthodox Jews would be the most liberal of all Jews. But in fact, survey after survey shows that Orthodox Jews have the least identification with liberalism of any of the 'streams' of Judaism.

Israel Matzav: Target Lieberman continues

Israel Matzav: Obama lectures Jews but not Muslims

Obama lectures Jews but not Muslims

At Big Government, Stage Right points out a disturbing trend that is evident from comparing President Obama's holiday greetings to Jews and Muslims: Obama lectures the Jews about 'tolerance' while telling sycophantic lies about Muslims' contributions to the world. This is how Stage Right finishes up:

Do I think the President is Muslim? Of course not.

Do I think he is anti-Semitic? Of course not.

Do I think that he has an instinctive need to ingratiate himself to the Islamic world, despite the fact the extreme fringes of that world make up the most dangerous enemy our nation faces at this time in history? And, do I fear that he takes for granted the single ally we have in the region this enemy inhabits, publicly humiliating and insulting them with lectures for tolerance on their Holy Days? Do I think the President could truly serve our national interest by using his tremendous clout in the Islamic Community to lean on them and pry a little tolerance from THEM, (not to mention SERIOUS condemnation of the violence done in the name of their Faith)?

What do YOU think?

What do I think? I think that the answer to every question in the last paragraph is "yes." I think the President might be anti-Semitic (he's too discreet to let it come out into the open, but so was Jimmy Carter while he was President and there is little doubt today that Carter is an anti-Semite). And I think you should read the whole thing.

Israel Matzav: Obama lectures Jews but not Muslims

Israel Matzav: Targeting Sweden's ruling coalition

Targeting Sweden's ruling coalition

Writing at YNet, Michael Fenebock says that it's time to stop 'explaining' our positions to Europe and time to start fighting with our enemies there. Starting with the nefarious government of Sweden.

The Swedes hold a general election on September 19, 2010. All 349 seats in the Riksdag are up. [Prime Minister Fredrick] Reinfeldt’s tenuous coalition government is in deep political trouble. Recent polling has Reinfeldt’s government at 44% and the opposition at 50%. His party risks defeat in September.

Facing defeat and a loss of power and needing to neutralize threats from Sweden’s left wing, Reinfeldt and [Foreign Minister Carl] Bildt [pictured. CiJ] made a calculated political decision to use Sweden’s EU Chairmanship to improve their poll numbers, neutralize the Left, and buttress their political standing in Sweden.

Politics is a copycat business. If Reinfeldt’s “hammer the Jews” gambit succeeds every politician in Europe will copy the formula. If we do not fight back, if we do not cause Reinfeldt and Bildt to suffer political consequences in Sweden, it will have a bandwagon effect all across European politics.

All Europe is watching and learning. The stakes are nothing less than Jerusalem.

We can choose to fight. We can decide to push back. We have the means, the experience and skill to cause these guys political pain in Sweden. The question is do we have the will?

Do we have the guts to take them on, to make Reinfeldt, his political party and his pompous, anti-Israel Foreign Minister Carl Bildt pay a political price? That’s the question and the September 19 elections in Sweden are the test case.

Read the whole thing. I like this idea, although I'm a bit short on the specifics. If anyone (especially in Sweden) wants to get involved, I just happen to have Michael's (and his wife Daphne's) email addresses, and if you drop me a note, I will pass it on to them.

Clearly hasbara alone is not working.

Israel Matzav: Targeting Sweden's ruling coalition

Israel Matzav: US to test missile shield against Iranian attack

US to test missile shield against Iranian attack

Are Americans awakening to the fact that Israel is the canary in the coal mine and not Iran's ultimate target? Here are two indications that just might be happening.

Reuters is reporting that in January, the United States will test its 'core missile defenses' against the scenario of a long-range strike by Iran.

The United States will test its core missile defenses for the first time in January against a simulated long-range Iranian attack, a top Pentagon official said on Monday, amid tensions with Tehran.

Speaking at the Reuters Aerospace and Defense Summit in Washington, Army Lieutenant General Patrick O'Reilly, the head of the Missile Defense Agency, said the roughly $150 million test was a departure from the more standard scenario of a North Korean attack.

The second indication comes from an op-ed written by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla), the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs committee.

Many U.S. officials and congressional leaders seem content to engage in vague and open-ended talks with Iran, acting as though we have a reservoir of time to work with before the Iranian threat reaches critical mass. Yet, in June, the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, estimated that Iran had already amassed a stockpile of nearly 1,400 kilograms of enriched uranium, which it could use in a "dirty bomb" or pass along to extremist groups or other rogue states.

Just last month, the IAEA made the startling revelation that Iranian scientists may have tested advanced components of nuclear warheads. Nuclear experts note that such technology, once mastered, would allow for the production of smaller and simpler nuclear bombs, and would make it easier for Iran to put a nuclear warhead on a missile. This represents a step that few in the West believed possible.

Ros-Lehtinen advocates much stronger sanctions against Iran than anything currently under discussion.

That is why the United States must be prepared to act alone, if necessary, and with every weapon in its political and economic arsenal. The Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act is one such tool. This legislation, which I coauthored, has the support of more than 300 members of the House, and it is urgent that this bill reaches the president's desk before the end of the year. It targets one of Iran's major weaknesses -- namely, its dependency on foreign gasoline and other refined petroleum products. By placing financial sanctions on U.S. and foreign companies providing these crucial resources, Iran's economic lifeline would be severed and its already weak economy would crumble.

But these sanctions must be coupled with action on all fronts. The U.S. must also specifically reject Iran's claim to an inalienable right to produce nuclear fuel. We must strengthen existing laws to prevent the transfer of prohibited materials and technology to Iran. Responsible nations should impose a ban on travel by senior Iranian regime officials and their families to Europe and the U.S. We should strengthen bilateral and multilateral efforts to shut down accounts of those doing business with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps or its affiliated entities; deny Tehran access to euros and U.S. dollars; and freeze the assets of those who violate U.N. sanctions on Iran. Concurrently, we should offer our full support to the Iranian people and increase funding for Iran democracy programs.

Ros-Lehtinen is known as a long-time supporter of Israel and perhaps the impact of her words as representative of widely held views in the US is minimized by that knowledge. One could argue that her love for Israel is lurking in the background.

But perhaps not. If Ros-Lehtinen is able to follow up with additional legislation or 'sense of the Congress' resolutions (denying, for example, Iran's 'inalienable right' to produce nuclear fuel or to use nuclear energy at all), that might have an impact on the dawdling and indecisive Obama administration, especially in an election year in which the party in power stands to take a beating.

Is the sleeping American giant waking up?

Israel Matzav: US to test missile shield against Iranian attack

Israel Matzav: German government investigating Siemens sales to Iran

German government investigating Siemens sales to Iran

On Sunday, I blogged a German article about Siemens compressors being sold to Iran. Now, the German government has opened an investigation into Siemens' activities in the mullahcracy.

German authorities are currently considering the initiation of legal proceedings against engineering giant Siemens for violating export controls laws with two controversial deliveries of parts to Iran.

Customs officials at the port of Hamburg discovered a load of turbo compressors that investigators believe could potentially be used in Iran's missile program. The high-tech goods are valued at €16 million ($23 million) and are part of an €80 million shipment. The delivery had apparently been sent from a Siemens branch in Sweden and was destined for an Iranian company.

In a second case, British navy troops stopped a ship from China near Dubai that was carrying so-called Teleperm automation technology intended for the Iranian firm Kalaye Electric. The computers, which can be used, among other things, to help run nuclear power plants, had been delivered by Siemens to an address in China. The controversial shipments are currently being discussed by the German government's exports committee, where sources said the issue is highly contentious.

...

"Our business activities in Iran are exclusively for civil purposes and are in accordance with applicable international laws and regulations," a company spokesperson told SPIEGEL. The spokesperson, however, would not provide comment on the deliveries being probed.

Sanctions? What sanctions?

Israel Matzav: German government investigating Siemens sales to Iran

Israel Matzav: British court issues arrest warrant for Livni

British court issues arrest warrant for Livni

Al-Guardian confirms that a British court issued an arrest warrant for opposition leader and former foreign minister Tzipi Livni because of her role in Operation Cast Lead last year.

A British court issued an arrest warrant for Israel's former foreign minister over war crimes allegedly committed in Gaza this year – only to withdraw it when it was discovered that she was not in the UK, it emerged today.

Tzipi Livni, a member of the war cabinet during Operation Cast Lead, had been due to address a meeting in London on Sunday but cancelled her attendance in advance. The Guardian has established that Westminster magistrates' court issued the warrant at the request of lawyers acting for some of the Palestinian victims of the fighting but it was later dropped.

The warrant marks the first time an Israeli minister or former minister has faced arrest in the UK and is evidence of a growing effort to pursue war crimes allegations under "universal jurisidiction". Israel rejects these efforts as politically motivated, saying it acted in self-defence against Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza.

...

The Foreign Office, clearly deeply embarrassed by the episode, said in a statement: "The UK is determined to do all it can to promote peace in the Middle East and to be a strategic partner of Israel. To do this, Israel's leaders need to be able to come to the UK for talks with the British government. We are looking urgently at the implications of this case."

Livni's office said she had decided in advance not to come to the UK but lawyers seemed unaware of that when they approached the court last week. The judge refused to issue the warrant until it was clear Livni was in fact in the country, as he was erroneously informed on Sunday.

But here's the even crazier part. The Guardian goes on to report that ministers who wish to visit the UK are seeking to schedule meetings with British government officials to provide cover (i.e. a diplomatic mission that provides diplomatic immunity) so that they cannot be arrested. Ex-ministers like Ehud Olmert and Livni are not covered by meetings with British government officials and are still subject to arrest.

Why are we doing this? Why don't we just say no Israeli cabinet minister or MK goes to the UK (or Spain) until it passes a law repealing universal jurisdiction? Why should we treat visits to the UK any differently than visits to Syria or Lebanon (an Arab MK was indicted this week for visiting Syria two years ago)? If the British government feels a need to take part in the 'peace process,' let Gordon Brown or David Miliband get off his butt and fly here and announce to the Knesset that he wants to make peace. Hasn't the British government made itself as much of an enemy as Syria and Lebanon?

Perhaps the ministers feel a need to go to London because the theater is better than it is in Damascus or Beirut. If so, that's a lousy excuse.

Caveat: I happen to love London, but I'm not a government minister and no one has threatened (so far) to arrest me for my activities during Operation Cast Lead. I was last in London for real (as opposed to just changing planes) three years ago.

JPost adds:

Al-Jazeera had reported Monday that Livni declined a request to lecture in Britain due to fears of being arrested. The court reportedly issued the arrest warrant against Livni for alleged "war crimes" committed during Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip last winter, when she was foreign minister. It apparently annulled the warrant shortly afterwards upon realizing that Livni was not in the UK at the time.

Livni's office and the Foreign Ministry refuted the report, saying the Kadima leader had canceled the visit only due to her inability to obtain a meeting with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

A meeting with Brown would have given her a colorable argument for diplomatic immunity.

Israeli ambassador to Britain Ron Prosor met with officials in the British Foreign Ministry and Justice Ministry, who denied that there had been any warrant issued or requested for Livni's arrest.

Talk about the right hand not knowing what the left is doing.

On this issue, the coalition and the opposition are united.

At the the opening of the Knesset's winter session in October, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu responded to calls for the indictment of Israeli leaders and soldiers over Cast Lead, saying that Israel would not allow them to be tried at The Hague.

"We will not agree to a situation in which [former prime minister] Ehud Olmert, [Defense Minister] Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni, who sent IDF soldiers to defend cities and civilians, will be called to the defendants' benches at The Hague," Netanyahu said. "Israel's basic rights to self-defense and to exist as a Jewish state are under continued attack, which has become even stronger following the Second Lebanon War and Operation Cast Lead. Our first mission is to repel them."

Indeed.

Israel Matzav: British court issues arrest warrant for Livni

Love of the Land: Hamas Reascendant

Hamas Reascendant

P. David Hornik
FrontPagemag.com
15 December 09

“Brothers and sisters, we will not be satisfied with Gaza. Hamas looks toward the whole of Palestine.”

So said Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh on Monday as he addressed a rally in Gaza City to mark the 22^nd anniversary of Hamas’s founding as the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

As one report describes it,

“Tens of thousands of Hamas supporters thronged downtown Gaza City…. Gaza was decked out in Islamic green, with Hamas flags fluttering from roofs, lampposts and cars. Some parents dressed small children in combat fatigues and green Hamas headbands.

“The crowd packed an outdoor square where a huge banner draped over the wall of a building showed a picture of Jerusalem’s main Islamic shrine and photos of senior Hamas figures.

“Leaders made fiery speeches, bands played and scout troops marched in processions….”

At a time when both the United States and the European Union treat Palestinian statehood as one of the cardinal goals of international politics, seemingly these lines are worth pausing over. When one speaks of “the Palestinians”—the allegedly deprived group that receives more attention and assistance than all others—one is speaking in large part of supporters of an Islamic-fundamentalist movement whose proclaimed goal is the destruction of Israel pure and simple. The people willing to “dress small children in combat fatigues and green Hamas headbands” are—in considerable part—“the Palestinians.”

(Full article)

Love of the Land: Hamas Reascendant

Love of the Land: The myth of Jewish colonialism

The myth of Jewish colonialism

Point of No Return
15 December 09

In much discourse about the Middle East, there is a widespread myth that Jews are interlopers from Europe and the US - white westerners who came to ‘colonise’ and ’steal land’ from the ‘native’ Palestinian people to whom it rightfully belongs. This myth, drawing on Marxist terminology, gained increasing legitimacy after 1967 when Israel annexed East Jerusalem and ‘conquered’ the West Bank. The notion of 'occupation' and the use of the word ‘settlers’ reinforce the concept of Israeli ‘colonisation’ of ‘Arab’ land.

Aside from assuming that the Palestinians must be the true natives because they look authentically ‘brown’, the colonialism myth supports another myth: Jews are not a people, deserving of the right to self-determination, but a religion. Thus anti-Zionists habitually talk about of US citizens of the Jewish faith, Germans of the Jewish faith and even Arabs of the Jewish faith. At the time of the French Revolution, Clermont-Tonnerre said of the emancipation of Jews: “We must refuse everything to the Jews as a nation and accord everything to Jews as individuals.” The Jewish community would somehow disappear, leaving only French citizens of Jewish religion or ancestry.

Lately, the notion that Jews are not one people but a motley collection of converts has been given a boost by Tel Aviv Professor Shlomo Sand, whose bestselling book, The Invention of the Jewish People, is now out in English. Sand’s theories build on the work of Arthur Koestler, who popularised the idea that Ashkenazi Jews are descended from the Turkic tribe, the Khazars. Both men undermine the legitimacy of Israel by inferring that Jews have no link to Palestine. Genetic studies, however, discredit Koestler’s theory: they find that Jews from East and West have more in common with each other, and are genetically closer to non-Jews of Middle eastern origin – the Kurds in particular – than they are to the non-Jewish populations they lived amongst.

Last June President Obama articulated another myth: Israel was created as a penance for the Holocaust in Europe. This myth obscures the truth that every Arab state is equally a creation of western colonialism. It also ignores the fact that the institutions of a Jewish state-in-waiting were established decades before Ben Gurion read out Israel’s declaration of independence.

We often hear or read about Israel being populated by pork-munching non-Jewish Russians and settlers from Brooklyn. But these groups are marginal. We almost never hear that 40 percent of Israel’s Jews trace their ancestry from Muslim and Arab lands. The vast majority of these Jews merely moved from one corner of the ‘Arab’ world to that Middle Eastern coastal sliver known as Israel.

Until their expulsion 50 years ago, Jews had been settled in Iraq, for example, since the Babylonians exiled Jews from Jerusalem almost 3,000 years ago. In the early 20th century, Baghdad was the most Jewish city in the world, after Salonica and Jerusalem. The Jews can be said to have as legitimate a claim on Baghdad as Palestinians on Jerusalem.

(Full article)

Love of the Land: The myth of Jewish colonialism

Love of the Land: Hanukkah's Scrooge

Hanukkah's Scrooge

Robert M. Goldberg
American Spectator
14 December 09

Based upon his recent article in the Financial Times ("Israel must unpick its ethnic myth"), I know what Tony Judt wants for Hanukkah: The evaporation of a collective Jewish existence and the elimination of the Zionist entity -- the state of Israel -- which is essential to that dream.

In the FT article, Judt complains that when he was a lad in Israel his Zionist teachers told him a fairy tale that only a Jewish state could be an "alternative to persecution, assimilation or cultural dilution…. The Israel they wished me to join was therefore grounded, and could only be grounded, in an ethnically rigid view of Jews and Jewishness."

For this reason, Judt, a University Professor at New York University, regards the establishment and existence of Jewish state as a dangerous aberration and the major source of many of the world's ills. In fact, he hates being reminded he is Jewish and has concocted an ideology around that pathology unrelated to both history and fact.

So, for instance, Judt ignores the creation of Pakistan as Muslim state in 1947, a year before Israel was founded, or that many of the European states he regards a examples post-ethnic enlightenment have a "right of return" for ethnic Germans, French, Spanish, etc. or that their treatment of immigrants is more restrictive and selective than Israel or America.

Judt supported American intervention in the Bosnian conflict and the creation of the predominantly Muslim state of Bosnia-Herzegovina on humanitarian grounds. In 1999, " in defending the U.S.-led NATO effort, he wrote: "the extermination of minorities within national frontiers has many recent European precedents." There is precedent in the Middle East too where, as Victor Davis Hanson observed, "over half-million or so Jews… have been ethnically cleansed from (and sometimes murdered in) Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus, and almost every Jewish community in the Arab Middle East."

But to Judt the creation of the Jewish state is something unique to nature and politics; particularly in the idealized global village Judt's brain seems to wander. He has decided that its perpetuation depends largely on too many Jews around the world believing in the "fiction" that Israel is the restoration of a people to their ancient nationhood and that such a nation must play a transformative and positive role in human affairs.

(Continue article)

Love of the Land: Hanukkah's Scrooge

Love of the Land: License and only License: Words of Evasion and Dishonesty from Palestinian Christian Leaders

License and only License: Words of Evasion and Dishonesty from Palestinian Christian Leaders

CAMERA/Snapshots
15 December 09

If anyone had any doubt whatsoever about the intellectual, spiritual and theological bankruptcy of Palestinian Christian leaders such as Naim Ateek, Michel Sabbah, Mitri Raheb, and now sadly enough, Munib Younan, they need only look at the most recent “peacemaking” statement issued by these (and other) leaders.

The document (“A moment of truth: A word of faith, hope and love from the heart of Palestinian suffering”), issued in Bethlehem on December 11, 2009, includes all the shop-worn tropes offered by these leaders for the past decade: The conflict is all Israel’s fault the Palestinians are innocent. Israelis sin, Palestinians make mistakes. Palestinian violence is justified, Israeli violence is not. And yes, the fighting will miraculously come to an end once Israel ends the occupation. (Lutheran Bishop Munib Younan used to steer clear from such craziness, but apparently, not anymore.)

In sum, the document is a tour de force of dishonesty, self-pity and blame that has been the hall mark of Palestinian Christian commentary about the Arab-Israeli conflict for the past decade.

This should come as no surprise. The enablers of these pastors in the United States – mainline denominational leaders and activists in these churches – have given these pastors no reason to change their tune, but have instead publicized and defended statements like this as part of their “peacemaking” efforts in the Middle East.

One of the most obvious aspects of the document is the refusal of its authors to attribute any consequence to Palestinian behavior.

For example, the pastors condemn the security barrier built to stop suicide attacks from the West Bank. They also lament the Israel’s attack against Hamas in the Gaza Strip during last winter, making no mention of the years’ worth of rocket attacks into Israel from this territory. They also bemoan the checkpoints that make it harder for Palestinians to participate in Israel’s economy.

Is this suffering real? Yes. Of course it is. But at what point will leaders of the Palestinian Christian community start to address the role Palestinian violence played in bringing about the construction of the security barrier, the attack on Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the checkpoints?

Apparently, not any time soon. The document obliquely acknowledges Palestinian violence in the following passage:

(Continue reading)

Love of the Land: License and only License: Words of Evasion and Dishonesty from Palestinian Christian Leaders

Love of the Land: A Point of View

A Point of View

Marc Prowiser
Yesha Views
14 December 09

Many have asked that I give an update and my view of the Security situation in Yehuda and Shomron today. Not an easy task, due to the many mitigating factors that change every time a Government official - either here in Israel, an Arab or American - sneezes.

The simplest way to put it is that we are here in our communities in our heartland and there are many Arabs that want us out, (not all of the Arabs wish to see the Jews leave this area). It is important to remember, that the want and desire to be “Jew Free”, doesn’t apply just to Yehuda and Shomron, but all of Israel, this view is not held by all Arabs, but certainly most.

It is impossible to discuss the Security situation in Yehuda and Shomron without first reminding everybody that this conflict did not start yesterday. Whereas this is not the place to get into a history lesson, it is the place to remind everybody that ignorance regarding the conflict is the wrong foot to stand on. To quote a friend, “the Jewish –Arab conflict started when Jews decided to fight back”.

I will discuss the situation today. Since Oslo, we have witnessed the birth of a new Arab army in the Middle East, that of the “Palestinian Authority”, however this is not the only Arab Military body in this region. There are many branches to this tree, with each branch spreading out to even more factions. Fatah itself is divided into many factions based on regions and philosophies, i.e. Nablus, Ramallah and so on. The same principal applies to Hamas, of course from there we can add on the Jihad Islami, PFLP, Al Qaeda, the list goes on. Each of these “Units” claims their own agenda and “work load”, but they do work also in accordance to the strategical and political whims of the two (Fatah and Hamas) leaderships.

(Full article)

Love of the Land: A Point of View

Love of the Land: Guardian Ed: "In Israel They Murder Each Other a Great Deal"

Guardian Ed: "In Israel They Murder Each Other a Great Deal"

Honest Reporting

Media Critique
15 December 09

"The Israeli Defense Forces murder people because they don't like their political style..."

What does the IDF have to do with the recent assault on Italian PM Sylvio Berlusconi? Absolutely nothing. But that didn't stop The Guardian's Associate Editor Michael White from making the following comment during a discussion on BBC Radio London's Breakfast Show concerning the physical vulnerability of political leaders:

In Israel they murder each other a great deal. The Israeli Defense Forces murder people because they don't like their political style and what they've got to say and it only means that people more extreme come in and take their place.

(The full segment from the BBC Radio London Breakfast Show with Joanne Good and Paul Ross, 8am, Monday 14 Dec. can be heard by clicking on the icon below (3 mins 30 secs in) or here for a limited time only on the BBC website at approximately 1hr 16 mins in.)

These are extremely serious and baseless accusations and perhaps offer a disturbing insight into the mindsets of The Guardian's senior staff as well as those BBC presenters who simply grunted in agreement.

(Continue article)

Love of the Land: Guardian Ed: "In Israel They Murder Each Other a Great Deal"

Love of the Land: Goldstone, I too am a war criminal

Goldstone, I too am a war criminal

David Chinitz
Daled Amos
13 December 09

I moved to Israel from the United States in December 1981. It was the same day that the Israeli government officially annexed the Golan Heights. Hearing about it literally as me, my wife and our three month old daughter - now a lawyer in Tel Aviv - were about to board the plane, I mentally processed the issues: Is such a unilateral move legal? Is it wise? Is it just? To be honest, I pretty much just shrugged and got on the plane.

Over the last 28 years I have come to appreciate the shrug as the signature gesture of Israeli children. When an Israeli child has doubts about something on offer from an adult, the shrug is her way of signaling: "Sorry, that doesn't work for me." While the physical shrug disappears with age, the Israeli manner of shrugging things off is at one and the same endearing and off -putting. But given the environment of endless hostility in which Israelis live, their shrug is not the kind that reflects callousness but reconciliation to the fact that life in this part of the world is really messy, both morally and practically. There's not much choice but to carry on.

Consider the Golan Heights. Before 1967 the Syrians constantly shelled Israeli agricultural settlements that lay below the Heights, and not much else was going on there. Since Israel conquered the Golan in response to Syrian aggression in 1967, it has flourished under Israeli rule, providing a burgeoning tourist industry to Jews, Arabs and Druze who live there. Israelis cultivate Golan vineyards that have produced world class wines that even left wing Israelis enjoy. To be sure, some Golan inhabitants, in particular in certain Druze villages, still express a preference for Syria. In exchange for normal relations with Syria, I might be willing, subject to continued access and water sharing arrangements, to return the Golan to Syria. But I don't feel any moral compunction about vacationing there. Shrug.

I live on land in Jerusalem that was empty when I arrived, but who knows who owned it before 1948. Many of my friends live in Arab houses that were definitely owned by Palestinians in the past, and some have even looked them up to ascertain that the previous owners have no desire to make a claim. I have watched as Palestinians from the territories conquered in 1967 benefited from improvements in their quality of life that came from Israeli health and social services, all the while chafing, and often reacting with barbaric disproportionate violence including suicide bombings to what they call "occupation." I detest the minority of obnoxious, ethnocentric Arab-baiting Israeli settlers who place their obsession with physically living in certain areas of Jewish historical significance above any other consideration, including the rule of law.

But I don't feel any moral doubts about the main blocks of settlements inhabited by law-abiding hard-working citizens. Between the extremists on both sides who have acted persistently to thwart any accommodation, I judge the Palestinians as worse. Because even when Israel has made concessions and given up territory, the Palestinian extremists have responded with stepped-up violence to the detriment of both Israelis and Palestinians. So I shrug and take the position that as long as the Palestinians seem more interested in eliminating the Jewish state than in achieving a compromise, I'm off the moral hook.

(Continue reading)
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Love of the Land: Goldstone, I too am a war criminal