12/06 Links Pt1: FM summons UN Mideast envoy over sympathy for Palestinian attacker; Saudi Arabia wants to normalize ties with Israel - report

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Herzog's Abraham Accords trip and the Palestinian elephant in the room

Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani said as much speaking to reporters Sunday night, saying the Abraham Accords will ultimately only succeed if a two-state resolution to the conflict is achieved.

Hamad also made sure to speak of the Palestinians in his public remarks at the start of his meeting with Herzog. There is firm support in Bahrain for “achieving a just, comprehensive and sustainable peace that guarantees the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and that will lead to stability, development and prosperity for both the Palestinian and Israeli people as well as for the people of the region,” Hamad said.

The incoming Israeli government needs to take those words seriously. The status quo of continued terrorist attacks on Israelis, as well as Palestinians acting against Israel being shot by security forces on an almost daily basis, might be manageable on a military basis, but it is unsustainable for the long-term stability and future of the Israeli and Palestinian people.

The Palestinian issue is likely to be number 999 on the to-do list of the Benjamin Netanyahu-led coalition, due to the obvious reasons of the coalition partners having no interest in pursuing any kind of negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.

Granted, during both Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid’s tenures there was little to no movement with the Palestinians, with the strategy seeming to punt the issue down the field for later.

That’s likely what the Biden administration surmised as well, knowing the tenuous makeup of the “change” government in which there was no consensus for engagement with the Palestinians.

With the likely new government, there will be a consensus, and it will not be about jump-starting negotiations about a two-state solution. It’s unclear if US President Joe Biden will push back now that Netanyahu is back in power.

Even if he doesn’t, it behooves Netanyahu to take the Bahraini comments to heart. Taking the Abraham Accords for granted, and ignoring the Palestinian issue, will only come back to hurt Israel in the end.

Foreign Ministry summons UN Mideast envoy over sympathy for Palestinian attacker

Wennesland later tweeted that he was “horrified by today’s killing of a Palestinian man, Ammar Mifleh, during a scuffle with an Israeli soldier near Huwara in the o[ccupied] West Bank.

“My heartfelt condolences to his bereaved family. Such incidents must be fully & promptly investigated, & those responsible held accountable,” he added.

Wennesland’s comments were lambasted by Israeli officials.

Prime Minister Yair Lapid backed the officer who shot the attacker.

“Any attempt to distort reality and tell false stories to the world is simply a disgrace,” tweeted Lapid. “Our security forces will continue to act determinedly against terror wherever it raises its head.”

Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon also slammed Wennesland’s statement, calling it a “total distortion of reality.”

“This is NOT a ‘scuffle’ — this is a terror attack!” he added.

Defense Minister Benny Gantz also said he “strongly condemned” Wennesland’s remarks.

“I want to praise the police officer who neutralized a terrorist yesterday. I strongly condemn the attempts to present the event in a false and manipulative manner, and the statement of the UN envoy to the Middle East against the [officer], who acted with determination and professionalism,” Gantz said on Twitter. Injuries caused to a police officer following a stabbing attack in the northern West Bank town of Hawara on December 2, 2022. (Israel Police)

Huwara Mayor Moein Dmeidy and others on Saturday cited secondhand accounts that said there had been an altercation between Mifleh and an Israeli motorist after a car accident, but Associated Press journalists were unable to find witnesses to the events that led up to the shooting.

Dmeidy argued the officer had no justification to kill Mifleh after he had already overpowered him. Mifleh was “killed in cold blood,” said the mayor, who arrived at the scene moments after the shooting.

Dmeidy said a Palestinian ambulance arrived minutes after the shooting but security forces prevented the medics from administering aid. Dmeidy said Israel has not handed over Mifleh’s body for burial.

Border Police said that the officer with stab wounds was subsequently taken for medical treatment, as was the officer who subdued the attacker. A knife used by an alleged Palestinian attacker in the West Bank town of Huwara on December 2, 2022 (Israel Police)

Images of the officer who killed the stabber were posted to social media on Saturday, some including threats against him.

The officer himself said it could have been a “more significant attack” had the attacker managed to grab his gun.

“During a struggle with the terrorist I understand that if he succeeds in stealing my rifle, there will be a more significant attack here. I manage to pull out my handgun and I shoot the terrorist until he is neutralized,” he said in a video published by police.

The Palestinian UK Ambassador eulogises a dead terrorist.

To his English audience, Husam portrays Omar Mana' as a 'young baker'.

To Arabic audiences, Omar was a PFLP terrorist killed fighting the IDF.

Source: PFLP Telegram.https://t.co/eEFDke9gOD pic.twitter.com/dkgjBFrEVo

— Israel Advocacy Movement (@israel_advocacy) December 6, 2022

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11/11 Links Pt1: How to defeat the PLO and UNRWA; Pro-Israel watchdog alleges ‘sham hearings’ by controversial UN commission; Iranians protest nationwide, mark "Bloody Friday"

From Ian:

How to defeat the PLO and UNRWA

Below is a list of doable steps that will make all the difference:
1. Recognize the new paradigm: Fatah can no longer be defined as a "partner for peace."
2. Neutralize COGAT (Israel's Civil Administration), and its blind protection of the PA and UNRWA.
3. Present PA and UNRWA Indoctrination as a primary factor in the war on Israel.
4. Since the PBC (Palestine Broadcasting Corporation) continues to incite, close all Israeli government frequencies used by the PBC.
5. Define PA and UNRWA schools as warlike entities that deserve no support.
6. Reinstate? oversight of all texts and teachers? in PA/UNRWA education.
7. Advocate the repeal of "Pay for Slay" legislation as a condition for aid
8. Disarm all Palestinian Arab entities, including the PSF, trained by US and Israel.
9 Arrest anyone who pays killers who have ?carried out acts of murder.
10. Encourage confiscation of all funds set aside by the PA to pay salaries for life to anyone who kills a Jew.
11. Organize conference of the descendants of the Dalal Mugrabi 1978 terror attack, where 35 Jews were murdered. Dalal is lionized by the PA and in UNRWA education.
12. Advocate harsh conditions in jails for terrorists, because current terror cells have turned into summer camps and universities.
13 Commission new films of UNRWA and PA SCHOOLS. Seeing is believing.
14. Oversee all funding to PA and UNRWA: Demand accountability for cash allocations ?to PA and UNRWA. Hold all PA funders criminally responsible for PA transgressions (NGOs have no diplomatic immunity).
15. Create a new think-tank to monitor and fight Arab terror.
16 Hire a community organization social worker to create a new Arab health and social welfare system, one that is independent of ?the corrupt PA and UNRWA. 17. Transform "victims of terror" into an effective organization to present the human face of those who have suffered the consequences of Arab violence. 18. Launch inquiry into private investments in the PA. 19. Foster an effort for UNRWA policy change - Counter "Right of Return by Force of Arms". Instead, advance the resettlement of Arab refugees from 1948 and their descendants.

That's all it takes, folks.

Israel's democracy is its strength over Gaza -opinion

A good friend drew my attention to the article by the Palestinian publicist Dr. Ibrahim Abrash. A resident of the al-Breij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, formerly the Minister of Culture in the Palestinian government.

Abrash has an education in law and lectures on law and political science. He is a veteran Fatah member, who lives and operates in the ruling districts of Hamas, and despite this, he is known for his independent views and his critical writing.

On Sunday, he published on one of the Palestinian news sites his take on the election results for the 25th Knesset. "You can talk at length about Israel as an imperialist, racist and terrorist entity. You can also talk about the right-wing tendency of Israeli society, and say that the election contest is mainly conducted within the extreme right. Benjamin Netanyahu's return to the prime ministership, in a coalition with extremists like him, portends difficult times."

"But we must recognize that in everything related to the organization of internal politics and the management of the affairs of the regime and the government, a positive thing happened that must be credited to them: the insistence on returning to the public five times over the course of four years to decide who will rule the country, and this without Netanyahu or another political leader, not even the army, contemplating a coup or casting doubt on the election results," Dr. Abrash continued.

In the opinion of the Gazan writer, democracy is one of the reasons for Israel's strength and advantage over others in the region. "This is a card they use to promote themselves in the world," Dr. Abrash explained.

JPost Editorial: Israel's defense diplomacy is just what the Jewish state needs

Reports emerged Wednesday afternoon that the United States has given Israel its approval in principle to export the advanced Arrow-3 ballistic missile defense system to Germany. America has asked – as it has for years – that some battery production be in the US.

These talks came just one week after Defense Minister Benny Gantz held discussions with his American counterpart, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, to discuss the deal.

The Arrow 3, developed by Israel Aerospace Industries as a joint Israeli-US program, is one of Israel’s most advanced air-defense systems. It is capable of intercepting ballistic missiles at altitudes of over 100 kilometers, with a reported range of up to 2,400 kilometers.

This deal – and the hype surrounding it internationally – represents something far greater than any previous defense deal for Israel.

Something far greater than any previous defense deal for Israel
Germany began to eye Arrow-3 earlier this year in March, just as the Russian invasion of Ukraine was in full swing and it therefore increased its budget for defense spending. The concern in Berlin, and in much of Europe, is that the missiles landing on Ukraine could one day land in Germany.

In September, just a few months later, Prime Minister Yair Lapid met in Berlin with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and said that “the future possible deal [on the Arrow 3] has to do with our total commitment to the safety of Germany.”

Although no deal has been signed yet, Germany has requested that the first Arrow system be operational in the country by 2025.

The deal is supposedly still on the table and being negotiated, as both Israel and the US have to approve it in order to move forward.

Nevertheless, the fact that this has reached an advanced stage shows, above all else, that Israel has made itself a leader of the pack in terms of the development of defense systems.

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10/13 Links Pt1: How to Lose Friends and Influence Over People; Lebanon's Bait-and-Switch Treaty; Israel Passing Intelligence to Ukraine on Iranian-Made Suicide Drones

From Ian:

Yeah, Buoy!!!

The government’s new pitch was that this would be the real benefit of the deal: preserving and enhancing Israel’s security interests through the now-famous buoy line. Barak Ravid, the local Israeli journalistic mouthpiece of the Obama-Biden policy team from the Iran deal days, relayed that government officials who briefed reporters on the deal said that anchoring the “line of buoys” was “very important” because “in the last 20 years the Israeli military operated along this line unilaterally and the Lebanese side had international legitimacy to challenge it.” The deal, however, “will allow Israel to treat it as its northern territorial border.”

In other words, in the two decades up to this moment, Israel has had total freedom to operate in the area to ensure its security against Hezbollah. However, without the deal, the terror pseudo-state to its north would suddenly have enjoyed “international legitimacy” to challenge Israel. That sounds very serious—and certainly warrants ceding territory with potential energy resources under threat of force to a terrorist group that is stockpiling and pointing tens of thousands of rockets at you.

Needless to say, the Lebanese side disagrees with the Israeli reading. Instead, it claims another point on land farther south at Naqoura. Squaring this circle, probably with some creative language, is what the U.S. mediator likely has been busy figuring out.

Meanwhile, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz was spit-balling another set of talkers: “This is an agreement whose essence is economic,” Gantz said last week. “And if it is signed, we, as well as Lebanon and its citizens, who are suffering from a severe crisis, will enjoy it for years to come.” The logic here was that if Lebanon gets its rig in its Block 9 opposite Israel’s rig at Karish, then Hezbollah will have a stake in maintaining calm and smooth operation of both rigs. So, in the future, if Hezbollah attacks Israeli energy infrastructure, Israel can target a gas rig owned and operated by France’s Total—putting France on Hezbollah’s side.

This pretense of hard security and pseudo-deterrence posture rang even more hollow as it clashed with another key government talker: that Israel had to conclude this awful deal ASAP if it wanted to avoid a new war with Hezbollah. An IDF official sent out to make this pitch put it this way: “There is an urgency and a necessity to reach an agreement in the near future and without delay, in order to prevent an escalation of security [dangers], which is [otherwise] highly likely, and to utilize the unique window of opportunity to reach an agreement.”

The logic here was itself unique in the annals of deterrence: If your psychopathic neighbor keeps slashing the tires on your shiny Mercedes, the solution is to buy him a spanking brand-new Mercedes of his own that you can then pretend to hold hostage.

The source of this weird pitch was again the Biden administration. As a senior U.S. administration official relayed through Ravid, the reason Biden wanted Lapid to wrap up the deal within weeks was “because the issue has become urgent and the lack of an agreement could lead to dangerous consequences for the region.”

Yet when U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz tweeted that he was troubled by how the Biden administration “pressured our Israeli allies” into a comically terrible deal, the Washington arm of the Obama-Biden messaging machine sprang into action. The progressive lobbying group J Street put out a brief that “fact checked” Sen. Cruz’s ignorant partisanship. Daniel Shapiro, Obama’s former ambassador to Israel who is intimately familiar with the communications environment in Israel, weighed in, regurgitating the same exact talkers and asserting that it was “definitely NOT” American pressure that pushed Israel into this deal.

Yet the reason the Biden administration announced that a gas deal was a key priority was precisely because it’s a deal with Hezbollah. Stabilizing and investing in Iranian regional “equities” is at the core of the Obama-Biden doctrine of realignment with Iran. It’s how you achieve “regional integration”—by publicly showcasing your ability to pressure your allies to prop up Iranian assets, even as the Iranian people are being mowed down in the streets.

How to Lose Friends and Influence Over People

Americans have a reputation, with others and in their own national literature, for being careless and breaking things. Often this is because they are so admirably creative, dynamic, and unattached to the past. But for the last two decades, the epicenter of American carelessness has been the Middle East, an area of the world that seems to encourage fantasies among all Westerners, yet where real-world margins for error are small. The result has been a series of disasters for the peoples of the region and for American prestige. This week brought what looks like another unforced error in policymaking, fed by hubris, fantasy, airy talk, and a refusal to acknowledge reality.

On Tuesday, White House national security spokesman John Kirby announced that President Joe Biden will be reevaluating America’s relationship with Saudi Arabia after OPEC+ announced the previous week that it would cut oil production. Kirby’s announcement followed a statement by Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., claiming that Saudi Arabia is helping to “underwrite Putin’s war” through OPEC+. “As Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” Menendez said, “I will not green-light any cooperation with Riyadh until the Kingdom reassesses its position with respect to the war in Ukraine.”

As a Saudi who loves the United States, and believes deeply that our two countries need each other, the only word that comes to mind regarding the contemporary “reevaluation” of our relations is: obscene.

It was the Obama administration that decided to give Vladimir Putin a foothold in the eastern Mediterranean, which it sold to the American people as a way to “deescalate” the civil war in Syria. As the United States romanced Putin, offering him Crimea and warm water ports in Syria in exchange for pulling Iran’s irons out of the fire over the past decade, U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, and Israel have had no choice but to cope. Last month, while Russian-operated Iranian drones and missiles were pounding Kyiv, Riyadh used its diplomatic leverage to obtain the release of American and British POWs from Putin.

America saddled us with the reality of a neighboring country controlled by Iranian troops and the Russian air force. Worse, as part of its Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Obama administration sent tens of billions of dollars flowing into Iranian coffers—money that was used to demolish Iraq, crush Syria, create chaos in Lebanon, and threaten Saudi territory from Yemen. Iranian rocket and drone strikes on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia are now routine. In response to the barrage of missiles on Saudi infrastructure last year, the Biden administration withdrew U.S. missile defense batteries from Saudi territory.

Having watched Russian forces support or directly commit atrocities against innocent civilians and facilitate the use of chemical weapons for seven years in Syria, the Saudi government was quick to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Unlike many in the West, who expected a short, parade-ground war, the Saudis understood full well what Putin was capable of. So did the Israelis.

Why Jerusalem Is the Right Location for the UK's Embassy

Up until 1948, the world generally referred to "Palestinians" as the Jews who lived in what was to become modern Israel. The "Palestinian" flag until 1948 contained a Magen David, the Palestine Post was the region's Jewish newspaper and Palestinian football teams comprised Jews.

Jews were ethnically cleansed from the Old City and eastern Jerusalem by the invading Jordanian and Arab armies in 1948. Jews were the majority of the population of the Old City. Synagogues were desecrated and destroyed and the vibrant Jewish community erased. The Jewish neighborhood of Simon HaTsadik (Simon the Just) became the Muslim area of Sheikh Jarrah.

The default position for the location of an embassy is a country's capital city, and it is for the country itself to decide its location. Israel has declared that Jerusalem is its capital city and this must be respected. The UK already has a consulate in eastern Jerusalem to serve the local Arab communities. Why, therefore, should there not be an embassy in Jerusalem to serve Israeli citizens?

The Abraham Accords and the immense benefits for the region flowing from them has shown that the relocation of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem has had no adverse effect. Neither would the relocation of the British embassy.

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Does Israel already have the technology to destroy Iran's new spy satellite?

From Space.com:

Iran will soon have access to sharp orbital imagery, thanks to a newly launched spy satellite.

That spacecraft, called Khayyam, lifted off atop a Russian Soyuz rocket today (Aug. 9) at 1:52 a.m. EDT (0552 GMT) from the Russia-run Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. 

Khayyam, which is named after the famed Persian poet and mathematician Omar Khayyam, is a Russian-built Kanopus-V Earth-observation satellite that can resolve features as small as 3.9 feet (1.2 meters) on Earth's surface, The Washington Post reported last week.

"Potentially the most significant benefit," the newspaper added, citing unnamed Western security officials, "will be Iran’s ability to 'task' the new satellite to conduct continuous surveillance on locations of its choosing, including military facilities in Israel, oil refineries and other vital infrastructure in neighboring gulf states."

This is a major danger to Israel. Iran can relay military positions (or civilian positions) to Hamas and Hezbollah in real time. 

Can Israel do anything about it?

No one has been speaking about this, but when Israel first started designing the Arrow-3 anti-ballistic missile system back in 2009, an article in Space News said that it could be adapted to become an anti-satellite weapon relatively easily - and it anticipated this exact scenario from Iran 13 years ago:

Israel’s planned Arrow-3 high-altitude ballistic missile defense system could relatively easily be adapted to destroy Iranian spy satellites if and when Tehran manages to deploy high-resolution orbiting vehicles, military space experts here say.

“At the moment, Israel enjoys tremendous superiority in space vis-à-vis its Arab and Islamic neighbors. But it is worthwhile to address ASAT (anti-satellite) technological and political issues in case such operations will be needed in the future,” said TalI Inbar, head of the Space Research Center at the Fisher Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies.

The agile, exoatmospheric, hit-to-kill Arrow-3 interceptor being developed by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) of Lod, Israel, and Chicago-based Boeing Co. is inherently multirole, and could be adapted, if needed, for A-Sat roles, said retired Maj. Gen. Yitzhik Ben-Israel, chairman of the Israel Space Agency.

“If there’s a threat from space, a logical answer is the Arrow upper tier” system, said Ben-Israel, a former director of Israeli military research and development.

In a rare public acknowledgement of Israeli interest in the A-Sat mission, a Tel Aviv University workshop, co-sponsored by Israel’s Ministry of Defense and leading de-fense firms, included a presentation on space warfare that alluded to Israel’s ability to blast orbiting spacecraft much in the way that the United States in early 2008 used an Aegis ship-based Standard Missile-3 interceptor to destroy a wayward U.S. satellite. The Nov. 3 workshop was entitled “Israeli Space: Crisis or Opportunity.”

“It’s proven that an anti-ballistic missile system capable of operating at higher altitudes like the SM-3 also will have the ability to shoot down low-Earth orbiting satellites,” Yair Ramati, IAI’s corporate vice president for marketing, told participants at the workshop.

Ramati, a leading Israeli missile engineer and former Arrow program director, told workshop participants that security restrictions prevented him from discussing how Israeli systems, such as the Green Pine radar, could track satellites. “Most of the radars used to track surface-to-surface missiles are also capable of tracking objects in space,” he said.

I have not seen much about these ASAT capabilities in the intervening decade, but this article from January about a successful Arrow-3 test sure seems in retrospect to be talking about exactly this satellite threat:

Israel conducted a successful test of its Arrow 3 anti-ballistic missile system on Tuesday morning

outside the Earth’s atmosphere, the Defense Ministry said.

The trial tested a number of “breakthrough” capabilities for the missile defense system, which can be used immediately by the Israeli Air Force, the Defense Ministry’s Missile Defense Organization head Moshe Patel told reporters on Tuesday.

“We have made a breakthrough in every part of the system, in the detection arrays, in the launches, even in the interceptors themselves, so that they match the threats that are expected in the region. There were highly, highly significant technological breakthroughs here that were assessed and can be used by the air force in its operational systems immediately,” Patel said.

Boaz Levy, the president and CEO of the Israel Aerospace Industries, which manufactures the Arrow 3, said the breakthroughs were principally in the area of “algorithms,” the ways in which the systems detect incoming threats and calculate launch trajectories for interceptors.

“I won’t elaborate, but it gives the system more capabilities in dealing with threats,” Levy told reporters.

If Israel attacks Iran's satellite, it would be a game changer for the entire world - war would enter space.

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