Thursday, April 09, 2015
How I learned to stop loving Obama and worry about the bomb
Finally the Iran deal began to take shape. And with it several truths started to poke through the soil: The US did not view Iran’s Islamic revolution as a disaster that needed to be curtailed and combated globally, tirelessly, like communism. It saw Iran, under the regime of the ayatollahs, as a legitimate actor in the region, despite its annihilationist rhetoric. It did not believe former Israeli Military Intelligence chief Amos Yadlin when he said that a US strike against Iran would be, on the spectrum between the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the 1981 strike against the Osirak nuclear reactor, far more similar to the latter. “It’s one night’s work,” Yadlin said on several occasions, noting that the regime would not risk all-out war with the US, imperiling its very survival. Instead the Obama administration viewed the military option as a disaster; one it had no fortitude to pursue.State Dept Downplays Kissinger/Schultz Op-Ed as ‘A Lot of Big Words and Big Thoughts’
And so, after the sanctions brought the regime to the table, the lack of a credible military option brought the world the framework deal reached last week in Lausanne. From an isolationist American perspective, the deal makes a great deal of sense. This week, President Obama explained his rationale to The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman. He said that America’s size and strength enabled it to take chances, to engage with Castro’s Cuba and Khamenei’s Iran. “We are powerful enough to be able to test these propositions without putting ourselves at risk,” he said. Iran’s military spending is $30 billion; the US’s is $600 billion. “Iran understands that they cannot fight us.
The deal, he told NPR, is better than no deal because even if engagement produces no shift in the attitude of the people and the leadership toward western democracy, it rolls back the nuclear program and places it under a verification regime for 10-15 years. If 13 years down the line, Iran turns its back on the agreement and employs modern centrifuges, though, the president conceded, “the breakout time [to a nuclear weapon] would have shrunk almost down to zero.”
Harf sparred with AP reporter Matt Lee, interrupting him several times as he tried to get a reaction to the op-ed from the State Department.
“Really, you don’t think it’s nuanced?” Harf asked Lee.
“Is there a question or are you just commenting?” Harf replied. “I’m not going to go line by line.”
The Obama administration has repeatedly challenged critics of the deal to offer an alternative. This response has been used to rebut Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Republicans, foreign leaders, and even some from his own party.
“I didn’t hear a lot of alternatives. I heard a lot of–sort of a lot of big words and big thoughts in that piece, and certainly there is a place for that. But I didn’t hear a lot of alternatives about what they would do differently,” Harf said.
The same administration that asked questioners for their own solutions insisted that there are only three options in dealing with Iran: To bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities, leading to war, to negotiate a deal with Iran that will cap their enrichment capabilities, or to increase sanctions on Iran in hopes it will force them to accept a better deal.
Iran supreme leader: Nuclear framework no guarantee of deal
A framework nuclear deal reached with world powers last week is no guarantee a full agreement will be secured by the end of June, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Thursday.
“What has been done so far does not guarantee an agreement, nor its contents, nor even that the negotiations will continue to the end,” Khamenei, who has the final word on all matters of state, said on his official website.
In the first comments by the supreme leader since the Lausanne framework agreement, an evasive Khamenei said he was “neither for it or against it.”
The supreme leader also addressed the discrepancies between the US and Iranian accounts of the terms of the framework agreement, accusing the White House of lying.
Analysis: The risks Iran will face if final nuclear deal fails
Failure to finalize a framework agreement between Iran and the six major powers aimed at curbing the country's sensitive nuclear work could profoundly destabilize the Islamic Republic, analysts and politicians say.Khamenei: US fact sheet on Iran nuclear deal shows 'devilish' American intentions
Iranians' hopes of ending their international isolation have risen so high since the accord that failure to finalize it would generate levels of dismay that could hurt the authorities, even if the West was portrayed as the guilty party, analysts say.
"Finally it is over. The isolation is over. The economic hardship is over. (President Hassan) Rouhani kept his promises," said university student Mina Derakhshande, who was among a cheering crowd on Friday.
"Failure of the talks will be end of the world for us Iranians. I cannot tolerate it."
Managing popular expectations will be more difficult in Iran now, said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.
"If the deal doesn't come to fruition, most Americans won't notice, while most Iranians will be devastated," Sadjadpour said.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Thursday he neither backed nor rejected an interim accord with six world powers on Tehran's disputed nuclear program but demanded all sanctions be lifted immediately once a final agreement was concluded.Rouhani: No deal unless all sanctions removed ‘on the same day’
He added in a televised speech that the details of the accord would be decisive, and the publication of a US fact sheet showing terms that were at variance with the Iranian view of the agreement showed "devilish" US intentions.
"I neither support nor oppose it," he said. "Everything is in the details; it may be that the deceptive other side wants to restrict us in the details."
The tentative accord, struck on April 2 after eight days of talks in Switzerland, clears the way for a settlement to allay Western fears that Iran could build an atomic bomb, with economic sanctions on Tehran being lifted in return.
"The White House put out a statement just a few hours after our negotiators finished their talks...this statement, which they called a 'fact sheet', was wrong on most of the issues."
Iran’s president said on Thursday that Tehran would not sign a final nuclear deal with world powers unless all sanctions against the Islamic Republic were removed immediately.Nuclear Iran and the horse's mouth
“We will not sign any agreements unless on the first day of the implementation of the deal all economic sanctions are totally lifted on the same day,” Rouhani said in a televised speech.
He spoke during a ceremony marking Iran’s National Nuclear Technology Day, which celebrates the country’s nuclear achievements.
Iran and six world powers reached a framework agreement last week aimed at keeping Tehran from being able to develop a nuclear weapon. No text was signed or finalized, and there are major discrepancies over what was agreed, including over the process of sanctions relief. The deal is to be finalized by the end of June.
For those optimistic spirits out there, here's a Thursday morning cold-water-in-the-face snapshot of how Iran's Supreme Leader is tackling the marketing, right now, this hour, of the framework agreement his underlings entered into last week with the P5+1. Pleasant reading it's not, at least not if a person wants to feel that the whole peace-in-our-time thing is coming together.Iran Announces Film to Celebrate Israel’s Coming Destruction
The issues at stake are, of course, infinitely more complex than what can be shoe-horned into a string of Twitter tweets. But if this is the messaging that emanates from the highest authority in the land of Iran, the absolute Horse's Mouth, there has to be a basis here for reasonable, perceptive people to draw interim conclusions.
One of those might be, we think, that Iran is ready, willing and able to go to some lengths to humiliate the Americans. They did the same to Carter in the dying days of his presidency.
President Barack Obama has dismissed arguments that U.S. negotiators should demand that Iran recognize Israel and Israel’s right to exist as part of any final agreement. To do so would be too difficult, the president argues, and not relevant to the narrow goal at hand which is simply to strike an accord to constrain Iran’s nuclear breakout ability for a decade or so. Perhaps no statement better illustrates the moral and cultural equivalence that infuses President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry.Israeli minister: ‘Non-deal’ fails to fully freeze or inspect Iran nuclear activity
It is akin to saying North Korea seeks South Korea’s destruction and it would be too complicated to impede Pyongyang’s murderous intent. Russian President Vladimir Putin has expansionist intent? Well, let’s not let his imperialist ambitions toward the Baltics, Poland, and the rest of Ukraine get in the way of our diplomacy.
The Iranian regime’s character isn’t some inconvenient detail; it is the central problem. And as if to underline the problem, the Islamic Republic has announced a new documentary film which will celebrate the life of Qods Force Commander Qassem Soleimani. It’s bad enough lionizing a master terrorist responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the description of the film is even more telling: The film Commander will depict Iran’s and Soleimani’s strategic approach to destroy not only the Islamic State but also “the Zionist regime.” Importantly, the article describing the film was published after agreement on a nuclear framework between the P5+1 and Iran. Let’s hope that with their willful naivete, Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry don’t get credit for small but important bit roles.
Israel’s minister of intelligence and strategic affairs, Yuval Steinitz, is at the forefront of his government’s very high-profile effort to expose perceived flaws and close loopholes in the world powers’ new framework nuclear deal with Iran. There’s just one problem, he says: There is no deal. In fact, there isn’t even a written framework.Israel’s Cuban Missile Crisis
Asked for his overall assessment of a deal hailed by the US as “historic,” Steinitz responded with a sigh and the plaintive lament: “The deal? I don’t understand anything about it.”
He then suggested that the framework was foggy and marked a pitiful precedent for international diplomacy: “Usually there’s a signed document, and then the sides argue about the interpretation. Now, they’re not arguing about the interpretation, but over the text. Because nothing was agreed. There is no text. In Lausanne, they didn’t manage to reach an agreement. So, to an extent, they fabricated understandings. Some are less clear. Some are more clear. But they weren’t written. And so there are different narratives. I don’t think there’s been an international agreement in the past that wasn’t written and signed.”
Still, from what Steinitz can discern amid the vagueness and conflicting narratives, he has pieced together a bleak picture. Echoing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he said the non-written non-deal paves Iran’s path to the bomb — treating the regime “as though it can be trusted, like Holland or Japan.”
Americans barely remember the time they had their own nuclear crisis and how then US president, John F. Kennedy, dealt with it.Ari Shavit: Not on Obama’s watch
Reclining comfortably here in the United States, Americans are apt to wonder why the panic in Israel.
Americans, we love our games and distractions, we dote on our heroes, like Mantle.
But now it was time to pay full attention to John F. Kennedy, when in the most somber tones he told us about the nail-biter facing us upon the bitter days to come with a quarantine in force: “Neither the United States of America nor the world community of nations can tolerate deliberate deception and offensive threats on the part of any nation, large or small.
“We no longer live in a world where only the actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nation's security to constitute maximum peril. Nuclear weapons are so destructive and ballistic missiles are so swift, that any substantially increased possibility of their use or any sudden change in their deployment may well be regarded as a definite threat to peace.”
That was Kennedy. This is Netanyahu: “If a country [Iran] vows to annihilate us and is working every day with conventional means and unconventional means, if that country has a deal that paves its way to nuclear weapons, many nuclear weapons, it endangers our survival.”
Do we have the wisdom to appreciate the chilling similarities between then and now? Do we have the resolve?
It’s not the 21st century that the president is trying to save. It’s not the next 21 years that the president is promising to stabilize. All Obama is promising is that in the next 21 months Iran will not produce or assemble its first nuclear bomb.J Street's Problem with the Israeli Left
What are Israelis supposed to do with such a short-term commitment by the president? And what are the Saudis, Egyptians, Turks, Jordanians and Emiratis supposed to think? And responsible Europeans? And far-sighted Americans?
The Obama-Friedman interview doesn’t set off one alarm bell, it sets off a thousand. And when we add all the fateful questions about the Lausanne agreement, we get a strong feeling that something very dire is happening right before our eyes. We begin to suspect that the Obama-Khamenei agreement will not prevent Iran from going nuclear, but will only postpone the achievement by a few years.
The next 80 days are critical. History is watching us all closely. Where did we stand, what did we say and what did we do when the most important decision of our time was made? There will be no forgiveness for our mistakes. There will be no pardon for weakness, apathy or pettiness. The ordinary politics of left versus right is no longer relevant, nor is the love for Obama and hatred of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, or vice versa.
This is a time of trouble for Jacob — a time of trouble for every Israeli, Arab, European and American who favors stability and sanity. In the balance is the world in which our children will live or die.
The top political and intellectual leaders of the Israeli left are coming out against President Obama's capitulation to Iran. This development will impact the political dynamics in Israel, the American Jewish community, and the U.S.-Israel relationship. And it will leave J Street on the fringe, once again.Dore Gold: Can Congress get a better deal with Iran?
Israel's Labor Party opposition, known during the recent election campaign as the Zionist Union, issued an official press release on April 2 criticizing Obama's Iran deal. The head of the party's Knesset delegation, MK Eitan Cabel, elaborated on his Facebook page: “I refuse to join those applauding the agreement with Iran, because the truth is it keeps me awake at night. President Obama promises that if the Iranians cheat, the world will know, but isn’t that exactly what the Americans promised after the agreement with North Korea?"
The senior Labor Party official continued: "When a crazy religious regime with a proven track record of terrorism and cheating receives permission to get that close to a nuclear bomb, I am very worried. The fact that the man who is in charge of making sure the deal won’t be broken has a proven record of mocking his own redlines, makes me even more worried.”
Calling Prime Minister Netanyahu's efforts against the Iran deal "a correct struggle," the Labor Party MK emphasized that he is “standing behind Netanyahu" because "in the face of a nuclear Iran, there is no coalition and there is no opposition--we are all Israelis."
Is there any precedent for the U.S. government dropping a controversial nuclear agreement so that it can obtain a better deal? Is such a goal realistic? The answer to these questions is yes. This exact scenario once occurred, only it did not involve Iran, but rather the Soviet Union.Snapback
In 1979, the Carter administration had been negotiating a new arms control agreement with the Soviet Union, that was known as SALT-2. The SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) agreements did not seek to reduce the nuclear arsenals of the two superpowers, but only to place a ceiling on the extent of their future buildup of intercontinental weapons systems.
A huge campaign was waged against SALT-2 in which experts warned that because of the asymmetries between the force structures of the US and the USSR, SALT-2 would create an unstable nuclear balance and might leave Moscow with a first-strike option. In the meantime, the Soviets were intensifying their efforts to send proxy forces and advisers to Angola, the Horn of Africa and finally they themselves invaded Afghanistan.
All the illusions, delusions and deceptions embedded in last week's nuclear accord with Iran can be summarized by one newfangled, disingenuous phrase that President Barack Obama has been using to defend his pact with the ayatollahs: Snap back.Iran seeks to double oil exports in two months once sanctions lifted
According the White House document entitled "Parameters for a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action Regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran's Nuclear Program," U.S. and EU nuclear-related sanctions on Iran will be suspended after the International Atomic Energy Agency has verified that Iran has taken all of its key nuclear-related steps. But "if at any time Iran fails to fulfill its commitments, these sanctions will snap back into place."
In another place, the document says, "The architecture of U.S. nuclear-related sanctions on Iran will be retained for much of the duration of the deal and allow for snap-back of sanctions in the event of significant non-performance."
In his now-infamous New York Times video interview on Saturday, Obama repeated that if Iran violates the accord, the U.S. "preserves the ability to snap back the sanctions."
With or without a hyphen, written as one or two words, snapback is sheer fantasy.
Iran hopes to resolve differences with Chinese energy companies on oil and gas projects in the Islamic republic, as Tehran wants to be ready to raise output quickly after a potential lifting of sanctions this year, Iranian oil officials said on Wednesday.Iran to West: No Nukes for Us, or For You
The officials are in China this week to discuss Chinese investments in oil and gas developments in Iran, as well as oil sales, just days after world powers and the OPEC member reached a framework nuclear deal. The talks come ahead of a visit to Beijing by Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh, his first since assuming his post two years ago.
Iran, the world's fifth-largest oil producer, hopes to nearly double its exports from just over 1 million barrels per day (bpd) in two months once sanctions are lifted, although analysts say it will take longer.
Some of the production is expected to come from projects state companies China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) and Sinopec Group have contracted to develop. But the Chinese companies have stalled or scaled back on developments in Iran since late 2010 as Western sanctions tightened.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander: If nuclear weapons in the hands of his country is a bad idea, Iran's deputy UN ambassador Gholam Hossein Dehghani told the UN Disarmament Commission, then it's a bad idea in the hands of any country, and all the nuclear powers in the world should disarm.Atomic Scientist: Loopholes in Nuclear Understandings Undermine Effectiveness of Final Deal
In a speech at the UN on Wednesday, Dehghani accused the world's top nuclear powers, including the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France, of dragging their feet on prior commitments to reduce or eliminate their stockpiles of nuclear weapons.
Iran, he said, would demand a timetable for disarmament. A timetable, he argued, was a decade overdue.
Dehghani spoke just days after Western powers and Iran agreed on a framework deal that the US claims will reduce Iran's capability to produce a nuclear weapon.
Asculai also faulted the deal for failing to fully address the possible military dimension of Iran’s past nuclear work, noting that “[f]or almost two years, the agreement Iran signed with the IAEA on resolving outstanding questions on this subject submitted by the IAEA to Iran has been largely ignored by Iran.” He also noted that the understanding don’t address Iran’s missile development program at all, even though it is developing missiles capable of delivering a nuclear payload.Defense minister: Iran deal raises likelihood of war
In addition to these specific critiques, Asculai questioned more general omissions within last week’s understandings.
Some of the general provisions of the agreement are no less disturbing. The document notes the goal of prolonging the timeline for a breakout as one year. The calculation of this timeline is not a simple matter, and must come under a continuous review process. There has been, for a long time, an implied reliance on intelligence for the provision of timely information, critical for the success of verification of the compliance of any deal. Unfortunately, history is replete with cases of missed, overlooked or wrongly interpreted intelligence information. The verification mechanism denoted in the paper does not mention some essential activities that should complement the Additional Protocol ones: the access, anywhere at any time in order to search for concealed facilities, access to personnel and to documentation. These capabilities were at the core of the success of verification in Iraq after the first Gulf War.
This brings us to the issue of resolving future disagreements between the parties to the final, comprehensive, agreement. A mechanism will be set up to resolve these issues, and if resolution is not achieved, the UN sanctions could be re-imposed. Anyone familiar with the international dispute resolving mechanism must be aware that this could take years to complete, and the result could be very uncertain. This includes the possible use of the Security Council veto powers, rendering the renewed imposition of sanctions nearly impossible, depending on the international situation. Thus, the one year breakout time could be much too short.
World powers should pursue a better agreement with Tehran over its controversial nuclear program, one that will put an end to Iranian aggression in the region, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon wrote in a Washington Post opinion piece Wednesday.Ya'alon: No Iran Deal Would Be Better Than What We Got
Ya’alon, a former IDF chief of staff, also blamed intelligence failures for leaving two key Iranian nuclear facilities undetected, and hit back at critics who have said that Israel’s position on the agreement amounts to warmongering.
“The choice is not between this bad deal and war,” Ya’alon said.
“The alternative is a better deal that significantly rolls back Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and links the lifting of restrictions on its nuclear program to an end of Iran’s aggression in the region, its terrorism across the globe and its threats to annihilate Israel,” he said.
“This alternative requires neither war nor putting our faith in tools that have already failed us,” he added.
In an interview with the Washington Post, Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon asserted that claims by US President Barack Obama that the choice is either between his deal on limiting Iranian nuclear weapons, or war, were just untrue.Ehud Barak on Iran: Close the door and tell them ‘dismantle or else’
The objective of the deal for Iran, said Ya'alon, was to end Western sanctions on its economy. But the West should not be so quick to do so. “What about their being a rogue regime instigating terror all over the Middle East and beyond,” asked Ya'alon in the interview.
“They are not involved in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria or Yemen to serve American interests. This is not discussed. By rehabilitating the economy, they might feel confident to go on with these rogue activities, and at a certain point decide to break out from the deal and to have a bomb. That’s why our prime minister said that no deal is better than a bad deal,” he explained.
“We are concerned about the potential deal. Because the framework of this deal is about how many centrifuges should this regime have,” Ya'alon noted.
“Why should they have the indigenous capability to enrich uranium? If they need it for civilian purposes, they can get enriched uranium from the United States or from Russia. Why do they insist on having the indigenous capability? Because they still have the aspiration to have a nuclear bomb.”
In an interview with CNBC, Barak said the US should hold direct negotiations with the Iranians and send “a clear message.” He downplayed fears that a military strike on Iran would spark a full-fledged war, saying the operation would more closely resemble the assassination of Osama bin Laden than the 2003 Iraq war and could be carried out in one night.'Leftists, ex-security chiefs harming Israel's drive against Iran nuclear deal'
“It’s the [world powers’] last moment to stand firm and to make a position and to make sure that Iran will eventually understand, that either they dismantle their nuclear program or else,” Barak said.
“I think that what is really needed is a clear message — it’s not too late to send an authoritative envoy of the president to come to [Iranian Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei, [Iranian President Hassan] Rouhani, close the door behind and tell them: ‘Gentlemen, we fully understand you, we are not going to embarrass you, we’re not going to humiliate you, but you have to understand: either you agree once and for all to dismantle your nuclear military program – or else.’”
Barak suggested that the “blurring” of the military option doesn’t serve Western interests.
Bayit Yehudi chairman Naftali Bennett on Thursday accused “leftists and senior defense officials” of undermining the Israeli government’s global campaign against Iran’s nuclear program.Cheney says what we’re all thinking about Obama’s foreign policy
The economy minister posted an item on his Facebook page criticizing his political foes as well as former security officials - among them ex-Mossad director Efraim Halevy - for allowing themselves to “be used by the world to harm Israel.”
“Stop interfering,” Bennett wrote. “I must confess something that has been bothering me. During a recent interview on CNN during which I was advocating for putting a stop to the disastrous Iran nuclear deal, the interviewer told me, ‘The arguments are logical, but...’ before proceeding to cite quotes from Efraim Halevy, who was the head of Mossad 14 years ago.”
“Halevy portrays [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu as someone who is agitating for a military operation against Iran (not true), and as someone making illogical demands (not true),” Bennett wrote.
Still it won’t be that hard to at the very least start a conversation about America’s role in the world. On a recent episode of the Hugh Hewitt show, former Vice President Dick Cheney managed it in a 30 second soundbite:Honey, I Shrunk the Jews!
“I vacillate between the various theories I’ve heard, but you know, if you had somebody as president who wanted to take America down, who wanted to fundamentally weaken our position in the world and reduce our capacity to influence events, turn our back on our allies and encourage our adversaries, it would look exactly like what Barack Obama’s doing,” Cheney said when asked whether he thought the president is naïve or something else.
“I think his actions are constituted in my mind those of the worst president we’ve ever had,” he said.
Boom. Done. The worst.
Well, not exactly. Key Jewish community leaders did get a briefing—not from the president or the secretary of state or the national security adviser, but from Joe Biden’s National Security Adviser Colin Kahl. One participant told CNN that the call went smoothly. “There were definitely pointed questions,” said the source, “but it was very respectful.”US mimics Netanyahu’s cartoon bomb to sell nuke deal
Maybe CNN’s source was biting his tongue, or perhaps he just doesn’t get the joke. Kahl was the administration official who removed the recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel from the 2012 Democratic platform. And it was as a scholar at the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Center for New American Security that Kahl floated a 2013 trial balloon hinting that the administration’s policy was, contrary to President Barack Obama’s promises, not prevention of an Iranian nuclear bomb but containment and deterrence of it. As it turns out, this was the exact same policy Kahl outlined to American Jewish leaders last week, in what amounts in policy circles to a victory lap.
It’s a pretty nasty joke the White House played. But even if Kahl didn’t have a long personal history as the administration’s point man on the downgrade Israel beat, the fact that Obama sent the vice president’s aide to brief Jewish leaders on an issue of vital concern to them suggests how little the commander in chief now respects or fears the power of a community he once courted so assiduously. For instance, there was the famous 2009 conference call during which he told a gathering of community leaders that it was in the best interests of Israel as well as the United States to put some “daylight” between the White House and Jerusalem. Having been warned nearly six years ago, in person, it should hardly come as a surprise to those same American Jewish leaders that it’s now daytime.
The White House on Wednesday appeared to take a swipe at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in its attempt to promote the merits of the framework nuclear agreement with Iran, using an updated revamp of the Israeli leader’s diagram of the Iranian bomb to point out the virtues of the emerging accord.Soldier Prevents Large-Scale Attack in Samaria
With diplomatic sparring between Israel and the US over the worth of last week’s Lausanne deal in full swing, the White House published a sketch of a cartoon bomb listing the advantages of the agreement — a text-heavy lookalike of the prop used by Netanyahu in his 2012 address to the UN General Assembly.
The diagram posted to the White House’s official website, as well as its Twitter feed, compared two possible scenarios presented in bullet points beside the drawing: “Without the deal” and “With the deal.”
Earlier today, on the morning of April 8, three IDF soldiers were stabbed by a Palestinian while they were performing routine military activities in Samaria. One of them, an IDF soldier in the Home Front Command’s Tavor Battalion, thought quickly on his feet and killed the perpetrator. He recalls the dramatic events as they unfolded, and explains how the Palestinian stabbed him and his friends. Immediately after neutralizing the attacker, the soldier found a way to treat his critically wounded friend.Condition of soldier seriously injured in West Bank stabbing rapidly improves
Staff Sgt. Tomer was one of the soldiers from the IDF’s Home Front Command responsible for strengthening the security presence near the town of Shiloh in Samaria. While performing routine activity in the morning, a seemingly unsuspicious Palestinian man walked past the soldiers. After a few seconds, the individual turned around and started running and screaming with a knife in his hand.
Staff Sgt. Tomer was stabbed twice in the back and fell to the ground. The Palestinian then entered a military vehicle and proceeded to stab the two soldiers sitting inside. Staff Sgt. Tomer had to move quickly and says that he “got up, used my weapon, aimed, and killed the attacker.”
The soldier who was seriously wounded in a stabbing attack in the West Bank on Wednesday has experienced a rapid improvement in his health condition. His condition is now defined as moderate.Poll: Israelis think Holocaust will one day be forgotten
Two soldiers were attacked by a knife-wielding terrorist on Route 60 in the West Bank on Wednesday morning, before one of the victims shot him dead.
The soldier who sustained serious injuries to the hand and the neck was fully conscious and was communicating with his surroundings on Thursday morning. He is still in the Intensive Care Unit of Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem.
The other soldier who shot the Palestinian terrorist, Sgt. Tomer Lan, a combat medic from the Home Front Command’s Tavor Battalion, recounted the incident from his hospital bed on Wednesday.
Over 80 percent of Israelis think the Holocaust will one day fade from memory, although it still resonates and influences daily life in the Jewish state, a poll has found.Jerusalem Jane: Muslims Desecrate Temple Mount
The survey was conducted by The Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors ahead of Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, marked April 16, in an attempt to glean contemporary perceptions surrounding the Holocaust in Jewish-Israeli society, the NRG news site reported Wednesday.
Five hundred Jewish-Israeli adults were canvassed for the study.
Asked whether the Holocaust will lose its significance as the seminal catastrophe of modern times and fade into history as “just another event,” 36.6% of respondents said the matter was a certainty, 45% said that it may happen, and only 17.5% responded that such a situation would not transpire.
Asked, however, if the public memory of the Holocaust influences everyday decision making in the private and public spheres in Israel, 42.2% answered in affirmative. Ten point one percent said the memory of the Holocaust has personal resonance only, while 26.9% responded that it only dictates national policy. Just 15.5% of respondents said that the memory of the Holocaust has no influence.
Israel's Gaza War Losses Made Up by Gas Money
Israel took an economic hit from fighting Hamas terrorists in Operation Protective Edge, with the summer war causing an 0.3% reduction in the country's GDP (Gross Domestic Product).Druze Council Nominates Katz for Israel Prize; Leftists Protest
But no need to worry according to the Bank of Israel - the country made its lost fortune back thanks to the fruits of its offshore natural gas reserves, which contributed 0.3% to the national economy in 2014.
The data came from a report issued by the Bank earlier in the week on the activities of the companies responsible for extracting natural gas from Israel's offshore fields, how much they pay in taxes and royalties, and what the general economic impact of the gas stores are on the economy.
Thanks to the gas royalties, the Bank said, the country's current account balance – the amount of money spent on exports versus imports – was positive in 2014, with the country exporting $9 billion more than it imported, a figure that represents 3% of GDP.
Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz (Likud) experienced both extreme highs and lows Thursday as Druze leaders suggested Katz be awarded the Israel Prize and leftist protestors demonstrated outside of his home.PreOccupied Territory: Rabbinical Student Still Waiting For Part About How To Control World (satire)
The Druze Zionist Council, led by Atta Farhat, turned to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu asking him to please award Katz the prestigious prize, in recognition and appreciation for the "transportation revolution" Katz led in recent years.
In their application, Channel Ten reported, the Council reasoned that during his tenure as transportation minister, Katz "connected the periphery to the center with modern interchanges, widened roads and established new railway stations."
The Council also credited Katz for initiating the "open skies policy" which will bring about "reduced air fares," and for expanding the ports of Haifa and Ashdod.
"The land of Israel has never known a revolution in the transportation field of this scale," the Council praised.
A candidate for rabbinical ordination nearing the end of his course of study has yet to encounter the parts of the curriculum covering the methods and techniques for manipulating world markets and events, sources close to the student reported today.
Berel Weissman, 23, began pursuing training for the Rabbinate while he was 14, undergoing a grueling series of courses and both written and oral examinations to assess his grasp of Jewish law. For nearly ten years he immersed himself in the study of Talmud and the various ritual aspects of Judaism: liturgy, animal slaughter, kosher meat preparation, forbidden mixtures, Sabbath observance, synagogue procedures, and myriad other arenas in which Rabbinic knowledge may be sought. During that time he has also completed an entire cycle of Talmud study, covering both the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds. Not once, however, has Mr. Weissman been taught how to control the world, or even merely participate in the larger Jewish cabal that exerts that control.
For centuries, critics of the Talmud and of Jews have charged that the books contain instructions for mistreating, dehumanizing, enslaving, and exploiting non-Jews. So vehement did the opposition become at certain points that large-scale public burnings of Talmud manuscripts took place in medieval European cities. Weissman, whose teachers laud his proficiency in the material and his sharp analytical mind, has even mastered the complex sources that codify and expand on Talmudic law, but despite his extensive exposure to such material, has never been instructed in, for example, how to cheat a gentile out his life savings, or how to undermine economic stability in Europe through clever manipulation of interest rates and stock markets. Instead, the Borough Park resident has been trained, for example, to distinguish between a species of mammal whose blood requires covering following its slaughter and one that does not.
