Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Soldier, 19, stabbed to death in his sleep by Palestinian on bus
An Israeli soldier died after he was stabbed multiple times in the neck Wednesday morning by a Palestinian youth on a bus at the central bus station in Afula.Likud hardliners call to stop peace talks after suspected terror attack
The soldier, 19-year-old Eden Atias of Nazareth Illit, was evacuated to the city’s Haemek Hospital. Doctors operated on him in an attempt to stabilize his condition but he succumbed to his injuries a few hours later.
Eyewitnesses said Atias was sleeping in his seat on the bus when he was attacked.
"The talks are deluding both the Israeli public and the Arabs," Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon said. "We must stop this predictable crash course immediately."Alan Baker: Kerry is mistaken on settlements
Danon also called to stop the release of Palestinian prisoners.
Deputy Transportation Minister Tzipi Hotovely said "the Palestinian Authority's well-oiled incitement system continues to claim victims."
"[PA President] Mahmoud Abbas has a tactic of indirectly harming Israel. Jews aren't killed by PA officials but by the 'Palestinian street,' which is fed each day by anti-Israel propaganda. We cannot continue talking peace while the PA is talking terror," Hotovely added.
In fact, the express purpose of the permanent status negotiation continues to be to determine, by agreement, the status of the territory, to which Israel has a longstanding legitimate claim, backed by international legal and historic rights.Secretary of fate
Notably, Israel is the only country in the 193 member UN General Assembly whose rights to sovereignty in the territory west of the Jordan river were twice affirmed last century, first as part of the Mandate for Palestine by the League of Nations and then by its successor organization, the United Nations, via its founding charter.
The second critical point related to Kerry’s comments concerns the low esteem in which he holds the Palestinians.Report: Netanyahu Played Arab Incitement Footage for Kerry (VIDEO)
He did not suggest that failed peace talks might lead to Gandhi-like civil disobedience or mass fasting in protest; no, he suggested the one thing he associates with Palestinians: violence.
Secretary Kerry, like a dozen or so of his predecessors, will fail unless he holds the Palestinians to accepted international norms of behavior and treats Israel as an ally and not as a member of his protection racket. He might take some time to also explain to the Palestinian people that if they want an internationally recognized state, then violence against civilian targets is “illegitimate” and will not be tolerated.
The footage was from a classroom in Balata, near Nablus, and showed the teacher indoctrinating the students on “martyrdom” and echoing the claim that all of Israel belongs to Arabs. “Palestine is an Arab land from the River to the Sea,” she is seen saying. The phrase was repeated by the schoolchildren.Aiming to calm critics, Netanyahu cancels massive settlement plan
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered plans for new settlement construction pulled back late Tuesday, saying the move to push forward tens of thousands of new units over the Green Line was a “meaningless step” that would create pointless tension with the international community.Netanyahu: Gaza war caused 98% drop in rocket fire
In addition, Netanyahu said, Hamas was still stockpiling weapons and storing them in civilian areas.Mufti: Jerusalem is 'Islamic'
“Hamas is manufacturing and storing missiles and rockets that are concentrated in residential buildings and aimed at Israeli citizens,” he said. “Israel will continue to strictly uphold international law, but will not sit on its hands while terrorists perpetrate two war crimes at the same time: They are prepared to fire at Israeli cities and are hiding behind civilians in the Gaza Strip. It is our full legal and moral right to direct fire that is as accurate as possible at those who fire indiscriminately at our people. The responsibility for any collateral damage that is liable to be caused to the residents of Gaza lies squarely on Hamas’s shoulders.”
He accuses Israel of trying to take over the mosque.Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinian Authority police arrest Bethlehem journalist George Canawati
"The radical settlers continue the daily damage to the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque,” Hussein wrote in a statement. “They burst into the territory of the Al Aqsa Mosque and pray in it.
"The city of Al Quds [Jerusalem – DH] has an Islamic character and the occupation will not be able to take away its character and identity, even if it continues commiting crimes and forging the facts.”
Palestinian Authority police on Sunday arrested Bethlehem journalist and broadcaster George Canawati on suspicion of “slander” and “insults.”Single-minded Islamic Jihad grows in Gaza's shadows
Canawati, director of Radio Bethlehem 2000, appeared on Monday in court with a black eye and torn shirt. He announced that he had gone on a hunger-strike in protest against his arrest and beating.
He complained that PA policemen physically assaulted him before and during his interrogation.
Hamas, with robust political and military wings, rules the Gaza Strip and is clearly the senior Islamist party. Islamic Jihad has no ambition to govern, but it is quietly putting on muscle and has become the go-to group for both Iran and Syria.Missing Peace: Experts: Netanyahu is right on Iran
This makes it increasingly dangerous for Israel and a possible threat for Hamas on the Palestinian militant landscape - although the group's exclusive focus on fighting the Jewish state means it is not challenging Hamas for control of Gaza.
History is a great teacher, but not everyone pays attention. In “The Guns at Last Light,” Rick Atkinson’s chronicle of World War II, the author recalls President Franklin Roosevelt’s view of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin following their meeting at Yalta in February 1945: “‘Stalin doesn’t want anything other than security for his country,’ the president said. ‘He won’t try to annex anything and will work for a world of democracy and peace.’”Alan Dershowitz: Nuclear Peace With Iran In Our Time Is This Our Chamberlain Moment?
Winston Churchill similarly misjudged Stalin, writes Atkinson, telling his war cabinet, “‘Stalin I’m sure means well to the world and Poland. … He will not embark on bad adventures.’ He added, ‘I don’t think I’m wrong about Stalin,’ whom he had called ‘that great and good man.’”
Times and dictators change, but human nature remains the same. Roosevelt and Churchill were wrong about Stalin and the Obama administration is wrong
about Iran.
This is the time when the entire pro-Israel community must stand together in opposition to the deal being offered the Iranians—a deal which is bad for the United States, for the West, and for Israel. The Israeli people seem united in opposition to this bad deal. The American Congress is doubtful about the deal. This is not a liberal/conservative issue. Liberals who view military action as a last resort should oppose this deal, and conservatives who fear a nuclear Iran above all else should oppose this deal. Indeed all reasonable, thinking people should understand that weakening the sanctions against Iran without demanding that they dismantle their nuclear weapons program is a prescription for disaster. Have we learned nothing from North Korea and Neville Chamberlain?Daniel Pipes: The silver lining of Obama's weak America
That the socialist French government of François Hollande just blocked a bad deal with Tehran, emerging as the hero of the Geneva negotiations, is on one level a huge surprise. But it also follows logically from the passivity of the Obama administration.Zero Hour: Israel Must Choose Between Attack and Enslavement
American foreign policy is in unprecedented free-fall, with a feckless and distracted White House barely paying attention to the outside world, and when it does, acting in an inconsistent, weak, and fantastical manner. If one were to discern something so grand as an Obama Doctrine, it would read: "Snub friends, coddle opponents, devalue American interests, seek consensus, and act unpredictably."
Regarding the legality of such an attack, if there is an imminent threat against another state, then a preemptive strike is technically lawful under the UN Charter.Netanyahu: Iran Being Given Legitimacy to Become Nuclear
Israel, like any other nation, is under no legal obligation to sit back passively and quietly await annihilation at the hands of a country that remains determined to destroy it.
Should Israel strike at Iran, the world will undoubtedly howl. Let it: this too shall pass. Guided by the rightness of its cause, Israel will be acting for the advancement of shared regional and global interests, which happen to dovetail with its own.
"Israel prefers the diplomatic option over any other option. But we want a genuine diplomatic solution that dismantles Iran's military nuclear capabilities,” Netanyahu said in remarks at the Bloomberg Fuel Choices Summit.Iran's nuclear drive has cost $170 billion, say Israeli sources
“The proposal that was put on the table, the details of which we are familiar with, is a bad deal. It leaves Iran with nuclear capabilities for military objectives, and provides it with a significant easing of sanctions. The additional danger is that it gives Iran legitimacy to be a nuclear threshold state. That goes against the interest of the international community,” he stressed.
Of the $170 billion price tag, $40 billion was "invested over the past 20 years in the construction and operation of nuclear infrastructure," the sources told AFP.Vive la France!
They said Iran had "lost $130 billion because of sanctions put in place since 2012," including $105 million linked to the oil sector and $25 billion to banking, trade and industry, development and investment.
The P5+1 talks brought us perilously close to accepting a very bad deal. There was one nation, however, that refused, France. French Ambassador Laurent Fabius told French journalists, "We will not be part of a fool's deal."Obama uses nonexistent fatwa as basis for Iran talks
Nature abhors a vacuum and France has swept in to fill the vacuum in moral leadership. Viva la France!
In September, the U.S. president told the U.N. that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei "has issued a fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons," but it turns out no such edict exists. In 2012 Khamenei specifically said it was premature to rule on the matter.How al-Qaida split the Syrian opposition
The Syrian-based branch, ISIS, unlike its main al-Qaida-linked rival, al-Nusra Front, is mainly comprised of non-Syrians and instead of fighting the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad directly, has focused its efforts on taking over areas already controlled by the multitude of rebel factions in the northern and eastern parts of Syria near Iraq and along the Turkish border.IAF Syria Strike 'Hit Russian S-125 Missiles'
Satellite photos of the site, on Syria's northern Mediterranean coastline, prove that the alleged IAF strike targeted S-125s that were in the process of being upgraded from a less sophisticated system. The photos were taken a few hours before the site was hit, by a firm providing satellite services to the US defense system.Russia negotiates its biggest arms deal with Egypt since the Cold War after Barack Obama cuts defence aid
Egypt is seeking as much as US$2 billion in Russian weaponry, including MiG-29 fighter planes, air-defence systems and anti-tank missiles, said Ruslan Pukhov, a member of the Russian Defence Ministry’s advisory board and head of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies in Moscow.
