Thursday, October 07, 2021
Eugene Kontorovich: Why the US really wants a Palestinian consulate in Jerusalem
The Biden administration is trying to partially undo one of Israel's greatest diplomatic achievements of recent decades - the recognition of Israel's sovereignty over Jerusalem. The U.S. is pushing to open a new diplomatic office in Jerusalem to the Palestinian Authority.Report: US 'quietly asked' PM to suspend settlement construction
The U.S. does not want to open a consulate merely to have a place for diplomatic liaisons with the PA. They could easily do this by opening a mission in Abu Dis or Ramallah - where most other countries conduct their relations with the PA. Instead, the purpose of the consulate is to recognize Palestinian claims to Jerusalem.
Since its creation, no Israeli government of any political inclination has allowed the opening of a diplomatic mission not to Israel. For Israel to allow this would cement the notion that "both sides" have legitimate claims to the city. Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid has expressed his opposition to such a move, making it clear that this is not about a diplomatic office - it is about the status of Jerusalem.
The Biden Administration recently sent a "quiet message" to Prime Minister Naftali Bennett asking him to suspend settlement construction in Judea and Samaria, Walla News reported Wednesday.Biden’s Anti-Israel Ally Demands White House Meeting
According to the report, as the issue of the settlement enterprise could potentially strain relations between Jerusalem and Washington, both the White House and the Prime Minister's Office are trying to reach understandings on the issue through back channels.
Israel National News said that last week, US Chargé D'affaires in Jerusalem Michael Ratney called senior officials in the Prime Minister's Office and informed them that the Biden administration would like to see "restraint or reduction" with respect to the planning and execution of new settlement construction projects.
Ratney also reportedly "expressed concern" over construction in the E1 area. The latter, which stretches across 7 kilometers (4.3 miles) east of the Jerusalem municipal boundary, between Jerusalem and Maaleh Adumim, has been the focus of conservancy, as the Palestinians claim it is essential for their future state.
Both news outlets noted that in the six weeks since Bennett met with Biden at the White House, the Civil Administration's Planning Committee, which oversees zoning and construction plans in Judea and Samaria, has not convened, nor has a future date been set for it to do so.
A senior Israeli official told INN that "there is a great deal of sensitivity at the moment with the Americans when it comes to settlements. That is why the promotion of new construction is delayed."
Rev. William Barber, who was arrested alongside Jesse Jackson during an anti-filibuster protest earlier this year, is asking the White House for a sit-down meeting with Biden, according to a letter first reported by the Religion News Service. Barber, who leads the radical George Soros-funded Poor People's Campaign, says in the letter he wants to help Biden pass the $3.5 trillion spending package being debated in Congress.Palestinians outraged over court ruling allowing Jewish prayer on Temple Mount
"For 140 million poor and low-income people in this country, it is incredibly disheartening to hear Democrats who ran on the platform you are advocating say publicly that they do not see the need or the urgency for more investment," Barber wrote in the letter. "We know that need intimately, and we are prepared to bring people to the White House to demonstrate the need."
"We cannot allow the filibuster, which has been used to stall even a conversation about so much important legislation, to block the action that is so desperately needed in this moment," Barber wrote.
The massive spending bill supported by both Barber and the White House does not have the votes needed to pass through the Senate, even if the filibuster was abolished, as Democrats only have 48 members of the Senate behind the bill.
Barber, who Biden has compared to Martin Luther King Jr., has a long record of controversial statements attacking the Jewish state. In 2018, he called Israel an "apartheid state" and said the notion that Israel was created as a response to the murder of millions of Jews during the Holocaust was a lie.
"It was never just purely about righting the terrible wrongs of the Holocaust," Barber said, arguing instead that it was about "expanding a global empire."
Palestinians expressed outrage and warned of an escalation on Thursday after a court ruling on Wednesday implied support for allowing quiet prayer by Jewish visitors on the Temple Mount, the first such official recognition of the practice which has gone relatively undisturbed for the past year and a half.
On Wednesday, the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court heard the appeal of Aryeh Lipo, a Jewish visitor to the Temple Mount who had been removed and distanced from the complex for 15 days after a police officer ordered him to stop praying during a visit on Yom Kippur.
After watching a recording of the incident, Justice Bilha Yahalom ruled that the appellant's behavior did not violate the law or police instructions on the Temple Mount, as he was praying without a crowd and quietly in a way that was not external or visible. The ruling stated as well that Israel Police did not dispute that Lipo, like many others, prays on a daily basis on the Temple Mount.
The justice additionally dismissed the notion that Lipo posed any danger or committed any violation with his quiet prayer, despite claims by police to the contrary.
While the High Court of Justice has ruled in the past that Jews do have the legal right to pray on the Temple Mount, police have cited security concerns to impose a blanket prohibition on Jewish prayer.
Jewish visitors to the site are informed upon entry that prayer and religious items such as prayer books or prayer shawls or forbidden in the complex, although, since late 2019, Jewish visitors have been able to pray quietly, in certain parts of the site, relatively undisturbed.
Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump to visit Knesset for Abraham Accords Caucus
Former US president Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, will visit the Knesset on Monday to attend the inaugural event of the Abraham Accords Caucus, co-chaired by MKs Ofir Akunis (Likud) and Ruth Wasserman Lande (Blue and White).Bahrain signed a treaty with Israel. Now it wants to make friends with American Jews.
The launch of the caucus will focus on economic and tourism potential, the deepening of relations with countries in the region and the possibility of new agreements with more states.
Kushner, who initiated and negotiated the agreements, is now chairman of the Abraham Accords Peace Institute, which he co-founded together with his wife and philanthropist Haim Saban. Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government made the deals, will attend the event, as will Knesset Speaker Mickey Levy, Defense Minister Benny Gantz, other ministers, MKs, ambassadors and mayors.
The Kushners plan to attend the launching of a new center on Monday night that will be headed by former US ambassador to Israel David Friedman. Former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo and former US treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin are coming to Israel for that event and will speak at Tuesday’s Jerusalem Post Conference at Jerusalem’s new Museum of Tolerance.
Sitting in front of a group of rabbis in New York City, the undersecretary for political affairs at the Kingdom of Bahrain’s Foreign Ministry explained that he first learned his country would be signing a diplomatic treaty with Israel on a Saturday.Israel hints Oman is next to join Abraham Accords
Except he didn’t say “Saturday.” He said “Shabbat.”
Likewise, the undersecretary, Shaikh Abdulla bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, told a story to the group about encouraging an Israeli official to wear his kippah at a conference in Manama, Bahrain’s capital, last year. And he chuckled about going diving this year with the director-general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry in an Israeli town close to the Lebanese border, just miles away from territory controlled by the terror group Hezbollah.
It was all part of a two-day trip meant to meet, connect with and charm leaders of the American Jewish community in New York City. The trip came against the backdrop of Bahrain’s normalization agreement last year with Israel, called the Abraham Accords, which also established full relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
Al Khalifa also made a direct pitch to American Jews: He wants them to invest money in Bahrain and travel to the country as tourists. In addition — following criticism of Bahrain’s human rights record and authoritarian government — he wants American Jews to spread the message of, in his words, “the values of coexistence and acceptance and tolerance that Bahrain has been upholding for so long.”
“Every one of you has influence over your Jewish communities — encouraging them to visit Bahrain, encouraging them to have investments in Bahrain, to get to know Bahrain,” he told the rabbis.
A top Israeli foreign ministry official suggested that Oman will likely be the next country to join the Abraham Accords, leading to full normalization between the countries.Profs Denounce Abraham Accords in the Name of 'Democracy,' Part I
Eliav Benjamin, the head of Israel’s foreign ministry’s bureau of the Middle East and Peace Process Division, met via Zoom with reporters on Tuesday to discuss the status of the accords reached last year between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.
Asked which country might be next, Benjamin singled out Oman as a country that Israel has sustained low-level relations with since 1991, when a round of peace talks were held in Madrid.
“With Oman, we have ongoing cooperation and plans,” Benjamin said, noting that it was one of a handful of Arab countries to allow Israel to establish an interests office after the 1993 Israel-Palestinian Oslo agreement. Those offices shut down after the launch of the Second Intifada in 2000, during which Palestinians killed nearly 1,000 through suicide bombings and other attacks.
Despite that setback, Israel remains involved in MEDRC, a freshwater research facility established in Oman in 1996, Benjamin said. “So we already have the relations with Oman,” he said.
He suggested that Oman might opt for full normalization sooner rather than later.
She wrote on one of her slides that "Democracy Promotion is a Political Cover for Military and Political Intervention Post-Cold War"—an unconvincing explanation for Bush and other policymakers' actions.Profs Denounce Abraham Accords in the Name of 'Democracy,' Part II
Aziz seemed to fantasize that free societies were the natural state for Muslim-majority nations. In one slide, she had written of "Middle East Exceptionalism, Not Islamic Exceptionalism" concerning a dearth of stable Islamic democracies, as if Pakistan or Indonesia were shining examples of liberalism. She instead ranted about "all of the Islamophobia that comes with discussions on democracy and the Middle East."
Whitson rejected the "pretense" that Israel "qualifies as a democracy."
Skewed political analysis also marked Sarah Leah Whitson, Roth's likeminded anti-Israel former colleague at HRW. She now directs the pro-Islamist, pro-Qatari think tank Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), where Hashemi is a non-resident fellow. "There is, in fact, no true democracy in the Middle East at all. We have seen now a coup in Tunisia," she observed in a pro-Islamist assessment of recent moves in that country against the Islamist Ennahda party. Her regional evaluation included the slander that Israel has "no more pretense that the mini-democracy within the expired Green Line qualifies as a democracy, given the apartheid rule over millions of Palestinians."
In keeping with her pro-Islamist ideology, she noted "some semblance of political competition" in Iran and Iraq, ignoring widespread corruption and the mullahs' tight control over candidate choices in Iran's elections. Meanwhile, the UAE has a "complete absence of democracy," she said, overlooking the UAE's relative liberalism in the region.
Hashemi and his co-panelists' preference for corrupt, authoritarian Islamist regimes over the signatories of the Abraham Accords lies in the latter's willingness to adopt pro-Israel, pro-Western, anti-Islamist policies. From their sinecures as unaccountable tenured academics or ensconced think-tank directors, they represent a discredited status quo ante that, if reborn, will replace recent diplomatic advances with hostility and chaos. As with so many of our professional class's policy prescriptions, this toxic one should be rejected.
As has become vogue in recent years, Seikaly presented Palestinians as members of a global intersectional struggle. Palestinians "inspire other people" across the world in "escaping the structures of oppression," she said.Israeli Firm NSO Ended UAE Contract Over Dubai Leader’s Misuse of Spyware
Yousef Munayyer, a nonresident fellow at the Arab Center in Washington, D.C., and a longtime anti-Israel activist, concurred that "Palestine has long been at the center of many revolutionary causes historically." The Palestinians are waging a "longstanding, unresolved liberation struggle that continues to touch people in the heart around the world," he said.
Hamas terrorists engage in "armed resistance" against Israeli "collective punishment."
International Crisis Group senior analyst Tareq Baconi, a Hamas apologist, also blathered clichés about how Hamas terrorists engage in "armed resistance" against Israeli "collective punishment."
The panelists' support of confrontation with Israel rendered unsympathetic Munayyer's complaint that U.S. President Joe Biden's administration had taken an "embrace of non-solutionism" towards Israeli-Palestinian peace. Preceding the panel, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Joey Hood had emphasized building upon the Abraham Accords' accomplishments during his address on "U.S. Policy Objectives in the Middle East: Official American Perspective." In response, Munayyer spoke of needing an "opportunity for my blood pressure to settle after hearing other remarks from our speaker earlier today from the State Department."
Yet again, Seikaly, Munayyer and their fellow panelists in academia and beyond demonstrated how peace efforts with such recalcitrant supporters of the Palestinian cause are futile. Anyone who celebrates the escape of terrorists as part of some imagined struggle for global justice is not interested in peace with Israel, but in its destruction. If any American intellectuals still embrace these views, solace comes from the Middle East's forward-thinking leaders who know to ignore them.
Israeli-based spyware company NSO Group pulled the plug on its contract with the United Arab Emirates after Dubai’s ruler misused the firm’s Pegasus software to spy on his ex-wife and those around her, Reuters reported.An Iraqi Perspective on Israel
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the UAE’s vice president and prime minister, ordered the hacking of phones belonging to Princess Haya bint Hussein of Jordan, her lawyers and security team, according to a ruling by England’s High Court made public on Wednesday.
The hacking occurred in 2020 as part of a high-profile custody battle over the couple’s two children.
Al Maktoum denied the allegations, saying the court’s conclusions were based on an incomplete set of facts.
“I have always denied the allegations made against me and I continue to do so,” he said in a statement, according to Reuters.
NSO Group reacted swiftly to stop the misuse of its software when it learned of it in early August of last year, according to the report. It immediately sent a warning to the princess through a high-profile British lawyer.
“Within two hours, the company shut down the customer’s system and then prevented any other client from being able to use Pegasus to target British numbers, a measure still in place today,” a source told Reuters.
Growing up in Iraq, I learned in elementary school that three things should not have been created: "Persians, Jews and flies."Egypt's President Sisi Hails Peace with Israel (Asharq Al-Awsat-UK)
Most Iraqis are Shiites. Because of animosity toward the Sunnis, Shiites rarely sympathize with the "Palestinian cause," which is viewed as a Sunni issue.
In fact, the holiest Islamic spots in Jerusalem, the Mosque of Omar and the Dome of the Rock, were both constructed by people that Sunnis revere and Shiites hate.
Popular opinion in Iraq is ripe for peace and normalization with Israel. Non-Arabs, such as most Kurds, who make up one quarter of the population, have been friends with Israel for decades.
But until Iraqis can enjoy freedom of expression, many of them will run for the exits every time the word Israel is mentioned.
Iraqis want peace with Israel, but are not willing to sacrifice their lives for it.
During a ceremony commemorating the October 1973 war, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi hailed the peace agreement signed with Israel in 1979.The Israeli Government Undermines Efforts to Stop Palestinian Authority Salaries to Terrorists
Sadat's initiative to reach a peace deal with Israel reflected his ability to move beyond the entrenched ideas and policies of his era, Sisi affirmed.
He urged rulers in the region to take Sadat's action as an example and pursue his steps.
The money promised by Defense Minister Gantz as a “loan” to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is a circuitous deal that makes Israel’s protests about the PA paying terrorists’ salaries ridiculous in the eyes of the world and Israeli law.UNRWA chief makes urgent appeal for funding, says agency risks ‘collapse’
The fear that the Palestinian Authority will collapse without financial assistance is, at best, an exaggeration.
Has Israel volunteered to solve the legal problem that prevents Americans from pumping aid into the Palestinian Authority?
Israel’s aid to the PA may be intended to appease the U.S. administration, which does not believe that it is possible, in the current circumstances, to promote a political settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, the Biden Administration feels it is important to appear attentive to the Palestinians, unlike its predecessor.
After Abbas received Israel’s pledge to help him financially and he hosted Defense Minister Gantz, Abbas used his annual address to the UN General Assembly to slander Israel. He called it a racist state that conducts ethnic cleansing, admitted that Palestinian textbooks promote the hostile Palestinian narrative against Israel, and insisted that he will continue to pay salaries to arrested terrorists and to the families of deceased terrorists.
United Nation Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) chief Philippe Lazzarini warned on Friday that due to a severe funding crisis, the organization faces collapse, AP reported.UN Grows Nervous Over How a Teacher It Backs Has Been Praising Hitler
“The financial situation is a real existential threat to the organization,” UNRWA Commissioner-General Lazzarini told reporters. “We should not underestimate this because it might force the organization to decrease services.”
UNRWA could “collapse very quickly” if services are cut, he added.
Lazzarini stressed the importance of the United States restarting aid to the agency (the Trump administration cut funding to UNRWA in 2018), but said that U.S. funding wouldn’t make up the shortfall in funding from other sources, due to COVID-19’s economic impact and a decline in Arab support, according to AP.
Arab support to UNRWA dropped from “$200 million in 2018 to about $89 million in 2019 and $37 million in 2020,” according to the report.
Sweden and Jordan will co-host a conference in mid-November in Brussels with the goal of ensuring “predictable multi-year” funding for the agency.
Yet, in a recorded speech to the General Aseembly from his Ramallah office on September 24, the Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, displayed a placard of a map, purported to document how his “state” (which America, for one, has never recognized as such) has shrank since its mythical “historic Palestine” days, before the establishment of Israel in 1948.Associated Press Whitewashes Hamas ‘Workshop’ That Ended With Call for Israel’s Destruction, Enslavement of ‘Educated Jews’
Similarly, in September 2012, Prime Minister Benjamin Netantahu famously brought an easel to the general assembly, using a magic marker on a cartoon bomb to illustrate what he called Israel’s “red line” on preventing Iran’s from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
So how “established” is the no-placard protocol?
“Today, the @UN tried to silence the truth,” Mr. Erdan tweeted Monday. “UN personnel prevented me from bringing in a photo showing the antisemitism and incitement that exists among @UNRWA teachers. Despite their best efforts, I will always continue to fight for the truth and defend Israel.”
Earlier in Geneva, during a typical Israel-bashing session on Saturday, the Human Rights Council’s president, Nazhat Shameem Khan, cut off a speech by Mr. Neuer shortly after he started unveiling his organization’s deep investigation into antisemitism at UNRWA.
Mr. Neuer took to Twitter, where he attached the incident’s videotape, writing, “No joke: The U.N. Human Rights Council just cut me off for testifying about UNRWA teachers who glorify Hitler. Chair says I made ‘derogatory, insulting & inflammatory remarks’ — by quoting their own Facebook posts. ‘This amounts to personal attacks. This statement is out of order.’”
In a separate tweet, Mr. Neuer called on the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, to publicly state “that the highest human rights body of the United Nations has just sent a dangerous message to the world” about blocking a speech. Yet, a mere couple days later, officials under Mr. Guterres blocked the Israeli ambassador from graphically making the same point.
UN officials admit the unwritten “protocol” barring placards at the General Assembly isn’t enforced across the board. “The rules are the rules,” Mr. Dujarric said, but “when it comes to heads of state or heads of government during the General Assembly session, the UN is obviously not in a position to intervene.”
The nefarious intentions of the US-designated Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas, which has ruled the Gaza Strip with an iron Islamist fist since seizing control of the enclave in 2007, are well-documented. In accordance with its antisemitic founding charter, Hamas’ foremost goal is to “obliterate” the only Jewish state and “raise the banner of Allah over every inch of [British Mandatory] Palestine.”PMW: 5 kids on PA TV children’s show praise terrorist murderer Dalal Mughrabi who led murder of 25 adults and 12 children
The terror group’s notion of what a “Palestine from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea” would entail for Israel’s nearly seven million Jews was elucidated on September 30 at a convention dubbed, “The Promise of the Hereafter.” The gathering in Gaza was funded and attended by Hamas’ top brass, who discussed preparations for the future administration of what they called “post-liberation Palestine.”
The Associated Press (AP) on October 6 briefly mentioned the conference in an article ostensibly devoted to economic hardship that was titled, somewhat ironically, Tens of thousands in Gaza line up for Israeli work permits:
Hamas recently organized a workshop to discuss the management of natural resources in what is now Israel once the militant group ‘liberates’ historical Palestine. Critics saw the event as evidence of Hamas’ disconnection from the daily hardships endured by Palestinians in Gaza, where employment hovers around 50%.”
While the author of the piece notes Hamas’ intention to “liberate” all of present-day Israel, he stops short of elaborating on the part of the “workshop” that focused on murdering, expelling and prosecuting millions of Jewish Israelis; that is, except for the “educated Jews” who would essentially be enslaved.
While the closing statement of “The Promise of the Hereafter” contained a paragraph about “securing Palestine’s resources” when the “campaign for the liberation of Palestine begins,” the document devotes significantly more space to plans to “purge” the territory encompassing Israel of “Jewish settlers” and “hypocrite scum that spread corruption in the land.”
In his own address to the conference, Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Al-Sinwar declared that the “liberation [of Israel] is the heart of Hamas’ strategic vision, that speaks of the full liberation of Palestine from the sea to the river.” Political bureau member Mahmoud Al-Zahhar likewise rejected any notion of a two-state solution, stating that Palestinians must not relinquish “a single inch of our land.”
Recently Palestinian Media Watch speculated whether new and positive role models – in particular for women - are emerging in the PA as an alternative to honoring terrorists like murderer Dalal Mughrabi. An episode of a PA TV children’s show, however, confirms that a change in the PA’s role modeling is still light years away.
On the show From my country, which is aimed at and hosted by children, several kids praised terrorist murderer Dalal Mughrabi, who led the murder of 25 adults and 12 children when she and other terrorists hijacked an Israeli bus full of civilians and killed many of the passengers in 1978.
The show is testimony to the result of decades of PA brainwashing. Today’s Palestinian children are well aware that mass-murderer Mughrabi led a “hijacking operation,” “died as a Martyr,” and was nicknamed “the Bride of Jaffa.” Official PA TV dedicated part of this children’s program to the terrorist, and in addition to interviewing children about her, they also had the child hosts teach child viewers details of murderer Mughrabi’s biography:
Child 1: “Dalal Mughrabi is a female Palestinian fighter who was called “the Bride of Jaffa” ... She took 30 soldiers (sic., civilians) captive on a bus and died as a Martyr during a hijacking operation.”
Child 2: “She took 30 soldiers (sic.) captive and died as a Martyr during the operation... Her family was from Jaffa and because she carried out this operation and died as a Martyr… they called her ‘the Bride of Jaffa.’”
Child 3: “Dalal Mughrabi is a female Palestinian fighter who received the title ‘the Bride of Jaffa’” …
PA TV boy host 1: “Dalal Mughrabi [was] a young female Palestinian fighter who was called ‘the Bride of Jaffa.’ She led an operation to hijack a bus of soldiers (sic.) in Israel in 1978, which led to the killing of more than 30 Israelis (i.e., civilians). She died as a Martyr during the operation, together with other resistance members…”
PA TV girl host 2: “When Dalal Mughrabi was 20, she was selected as head of the Deir Yassin squad that was comprised of 12 self-sacrificing fighters to carry out an operation planned for [them] by Martyr Khalil Al-Wazir - Abu Jihad which was meant to pressure the occupation to release a number of Palestinian prisoners. When Dalal came with her squad to the outskirts of Tel Aviv, the Israeli government charged a special unit in the army with stopping the bus and killing or arresting the self-sacrificing fighters... The squad got into exchanges of fire with the Israeli forces, and Dalal died as a Martyr together with her comrades, and one was arrested. The Israeli enemy lost dozens of killed people and the bus was burned together with those inside.”
[Official PA TV, From My Country, Sept. 22, 2021]
Palestinian kids delegitimize Israel's existence, saying Jaffa is “an occupied Palestinian city”
Deputy Chairman of PA Parliament criticizes Abbas' monopoly on power in the PA
Prisoners have turned prisons into universities with PA-supported study programs
"Palestinian Authority Official: ‘China Will Lead the World, and Is On Our Side’"
China will soon lead the world, and it supports the “Palestinian position, whatever it may be,” according to Fatah’s Central Committee member Abbas Zaki.
In a public address that aired on Palestine TV on Sept. 29, Abbas Zaki called on the United States to “reconsider its stance” with regard to Israel or risk becoming irrelevant. The Israelis, he said, were “sons of bitches,” “murderers” and agents of instability, while the Palestinians are “messengers of peace.”
“I know that there is serious change in Europe, and even in the United States,” said Zaki.
But, he added, “Do not forget the emerging camp, which is on your side—the Chinese camp. China is going to lead the world, and it proclaims: ‘There can be no stability and progress without the liberation of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital.’”
The Chinese, he continued, had said that they will accept whatever the Palestinians accept.
“In other words, if tomorrow we decide to be stubborn, and demand [Palestine from] the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea—it would be fine with them. But they know us, and they know that we are not suicidal, and that we want to make Israel swallow the poison one drop at a time,” he said.
“[The Israelis] claimed that their army is a defensive force—oh, the wretchedness!—and that [Israel] is an oasis of democracy, but it turned out that they are sons of bitches, that they [practice] apartheid and that they are murderers, while we are the oppressed ones. The world will once again discover that we are the messengers of peace, whereas [the Israelis] are the messengers of instability. America should reconsider its stance or it will become irrelevant,” he said.
A large group of Palestinians made their way to the chamber of commerce in #Gaza after a message was posted on Facebook that registration for permits to work inside #Israel had started. pic.twitter.com/K4IlTJfpWX
— Joe Truzman (@JoeTruzman) October 6, 2021
Why an Israeli Military Option Against Iran Is Back on the Table
Addressing the UN General Assembly on Sep. 28, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett made it clear that the Jewish state continues to view the Islamic Republic's persistent nuclear ambitions as a truly existential danger - and that it is prepared to take military action on its own in order to thwart them if it feels it has no other choice.Auchincloss: Any Iran deal should be sent to Senate as a ‘treaty’
Such a step has never been Israel's preference. Israeli policymakers have long maintained that diplomacy and multilateral pressure - or collective action - are preferable for containing Iran's nuclear progress. Moreover, after decades of development, Iran's atomic enterprise is simply too vast and too distributed to be eliminated outright by a targeted strike. Israeli strategic planners make clear that the best they hope for is to cause temporary setbacks and complications to Tehran's path toward the bomb.
Israel's prime minister told the UN: "There are those in the world who seem to view Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons as an inevitable reality, as a done deal - or they've just become tired of hearing about it. Israel doesn't have that privilege. We will not tire. We will not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon." If Israel ends up acting to prevent a nuclear Iran, it will be because the U.S. and its international partners did not take Iran's nuclear program, or Israel's concerns, seriously enough.
Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) called for any nuclear deal with Iran to be submitted to the Senate as a treaty, during an interview on Jewish Insider’s “Limited Liability Podcast” with co-host Rich Goldberg. “I may be old-fashioned, but I would expect the White House to get the approval of the Senate for a treaty, which is what it says in the Constitution,” the freshman representative from Massachusetts said. “And I know we did this work around where it became a majority vote in Congress in both houses for the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action]. But, I mean, it’s in the Constitution, you sign a treaty, you get the approval of the Senate.” On the podcast, Auchincloss, who represents Massachusetts’s 4th Congressional District, covered a range of policy topics, including the withdrawal from Afghanistan, applying a “nuanced approach” to dealing with Iran.
Top of mind: “We’ve had classified discussions with the White House on their approach to Iran. I’m confident they are being thoughtful, deliberative [and] substantive in their approach to Iran. Obviously, I can’t share all the details of those conversations, but I know that the president and his closest advisors have Israel’s security top of mind when they’re thinking about this issue. There’s at least three big domains that we need to be addressing when we address Iran. One is their ballistic-missiles program, which is, in some ways, actually the most near-term threat to Israel’s security. The other is their development of a nuclear weapon, of course. And the third is their funding of proxy terror groups throughout the region. And I know that there’s sometimes the aspiration, the conviction that we need to solve all three at the negotiating table, or take all three off the negotiating table. But really, those three things can be can be addressed in three different ways, [along a] spectrum from soft all the way to hard power, and what I have been raising to the administration and what I would like to see from the administration is a nuanced approach to how we’re going to deal with those three different issues and in continuing to keep Israel’s security top of mind as they do so.”
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