Showing posts with label JCPOA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label JCPOA. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 22, 2023




Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

                                                                     --1--

If it were you, my child, husband, brother, sister, mother, grandmother, grandfather, aunt, uncle, grandchild, friend. If it were you I would fight like hell to set you free, to bring you home and into my arms. Safe.

Then we would deal with the aftermath. The nightmares, the poisoned minds of the children raised to hate themselves and what they came from. The massive, multi-level trauma of it all, from beginning to the something that will never end.

Still, from a distance so far away that I don’t want to see it, I know that procuring your release has broader implications. You are a Hamas bargaining chip, or rather an Iran bargaining chip for use with Joe Biden, along with a cascade of other evil actors across the globe who will use human beings—use you—to get what they want. Hamas randomly keeps you alive—if you are alive—to get concessions; to retrench and regain strength to hurt the Jewish people; to score a victory; to wound Israel and live to kill, maim, and destroy more Jews another day.

                                                                    --2--

Every day since October 7th, we have heard Israeli officials say, all the hostages or no ceasefire. It was  clear from the start—Israel had been quite clear from the start.  Or rather, the objective was clear until it wasn’t, and Israel began to speak of a “partial ceasefire,” when just to speak of this even in a fuzzy sort of way, already put Israel. at a distinct disadvantage. It must be said and taken into account, that while the hostage deal may save the lives of some of the hostages, it will put an untold number of other lives at risk, for example, just now, our dear Israeli soldiers. To breathe life into Hamas is to wreak havoc with the future. This Amalek must be stopped. Hamas must be obliterated, completely.

Ain breira. There is no choice. It's all or nothing. There is no other way. All the hostages or no ceasefire, partial or otherwise. Israel must hold firm, because a deal with Hamas is Obama’s deal, Biden’s deal, a deal with the devil, Iran. For Hamas, this deal translates to Jews ceding victory and paying the jizya, even unto releasing 300 felons back onto the streets of their natural hate-infested society.

We have certainly learned something here: the going rate for a handful of Jews is 300 felons for Hamas to parade as trophies. "How stupid is the Jew?” you might hear from the laughing crowd as they watch the 300 go by, and slap each other on the back. "They turn Gaza into rubble, then cry to us, 'You won!'"



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Wednesday, November 01, 2023


Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

How much money has the United States given to Iran over the years, either as outright gifts, or through the lifting of sanctions and unfreezing Iranian assets and revenues? The exact amount may be impossible to determine, but the thawing of $6b in Iranian revenues a month before the Hamas atrocities in Israel, obligates us to look closer and ask hard questions. How much money are we talking about? Was the latest thaw a greenlight to Iran to do as it wished with Israel? Which presidents gave money to Iran and why did so many Jewish Americans vote for them?

A recent Newsweek “fact check” article attempts to pin down the exact amount of money that flowed to Iran from the Obama administration. The article is slanted, focused on the irrelevant fact that at least much of the money was not a gift because it already belonged to Iran, and stressing that conditions had been placed on how the money could be spent (emphasis added):

As tensions simmer, conservative commentators shared claims that President Barack Obama's administration had given $150 billion to Iran, effectively, they argued, funding Hamas.

A post on X by Jack Posobiec, posted on October 16, 2023, referenced a Charlie Kirk tweet from September 11, 2015, which stated "Iran funds Hamas. Hamas kills Americans and Jews. Now we give Iran $150 billion. Where do you think that money will go? #IranDeal"

Posobiec wrote "Charlie warned us and now people are mad at him."

Kirk, founder of conservative student group Turning Point USA, was likely referring to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which granted Iran access to frozen assets.

This was not funding given to Iran. The amount quoted refers to foreign assets that belonged to Iran and were frozen by sanctions imposed to impede its nuclear program. The JCPOA was also an international agreement between Iran and a number of major world powers, including the U.S.

Despite the facts of this "fact-checking" article, there’s always a workaround. Two things can be true at one and the same time. Perhaps the thawed Iranian foreign assets could not be used to fund terror, but there was zero reason to imagine that a similar amount of money could not be drawn from elsewhere, for example from schools, hospitals, and government subsidies for healthcare to fund the Iranian terror machine. Then all Iran has to do is use its unfrozen assets to make up the difference, and voilà—no thawed assets were used to fund Iranian terror!

The Iranian windfall may not have paid for nuclear weapons production or to sponsor its proxy Hamas, but it might as well have done so, because here is another fact: Money can always be shifted around to balance a budget and make things work. That’s because money is fungible:

Back in 2015, Charlie Kirk, as cited by Newsweek, said the United States, under President Obama, gave Iran $150b. How did Kirk arrive at this figure? Does he have some kind of inside track? Nope. Kirk was only repeating the words from the man himself, Barack Obama:

How much these assets were worth has not been released, but $150 billion is the highest estimate provided by U.S. officials. The figure was mentioned in passing by Obama in an interview with The Atlantic in 2015, when questioned where the money could end up.

"The question is, if Iran has $150 billion parked outside the country, does the IRGC automatically get $150 billion?" Obama said.

Was the $150b referenced by Obama meant as an exaggerated hypothetical? It seems unlikely. If this astronomical sum had been far off the mark of the thawed Iranian foreign assets, surely the former president would have added context. He might have said, for example, “Not that the Iranian revenues we freed came to anything near that amount.”

Newsweek goes on to offer the reader other estimates for the Obama-thawed Iranian funds beginning with the far lower figures cited by a corrupt Iranian bank official:

In 2015, the former governor of Iran's central bank, Valiollah Seif, said in a state television address that the value of the frozen assets had been exaggerated.

Seif was sentenced in 2021 to 10 years in prison on corruption charges, reported Reuters.

The former official said that there were $29 billion of unlockable assets: $23 billion in foreign exchange that belonged to the bank and $6 billion of the Tehran government's money, The Times of Israel and Arabic news channel Al Arabiya reported in July 2015. The $29 billion Seif quoted was also reported by The New York Times.

Further figures are cited from a variety of sources to suggest that we are, indeed, speaking of much lower sums, which anyway, cannot be accessed by Iran, and certainly not for the purpose of funding terror:

Voice of America reported in January 2016, after the deal was signed, quotes from Seif saying Iran had gained access to $32 billion in assets.

Then U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told Congress in July 2015 that Iran gained access to $56 billion via the agreement, a fact check by PolitiFact in 2018 noted.

In an August 2015 written testimony, Adam J. Szubin, then-acting Under Secretary of Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, said that while estimates suggested the Central Bank of Iran had foreign exchange assets between $100 billion to $125 billion, the usable "liquid assets" after sanctions were lifted would be around $50 billion.

Newsweek wraps things up by telling us unequivocally that the U.S. did not give Iran $150b in 2015, and anyway, the not-a-gift was at no cost to the American people:

False.

The U.S. did not "give" $150 billion to Iran in 2015. In 2015, as part of an international deal with Iran called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iran agreed to cut back on nuclear enrichment programs in exchange for the unfreezing of its own assets.

The U.S. taxpayer paid nothing toward this, as might be implied by the post, and the value of the assets was said by some, including the U.S. Treasury, to be less than $150 billion.

Even should we stipulate that the non-gift to Iran was far less than $150b, Newsweek leaves out a most salient, and quite relevant fact. In addition to thawing Iranian revenues, Obama gave Iran $1.8 billion in cash, from The Hill, back in 2020:

Iran is indeed a dangerous terrorist state that not only has a powerful standing army, air force, navy and advanced weapons systems — including ballistic missiles and a growing space program — but also controls multiple proxy terrorist organizations responsible for killing and injuring hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children.

Included on that list of victims are thousands of American military personnel and contractors.

These were facts that former President Obama knew when he deliberately chose a policy of appeasement and cash payoffs instead of strength and accountability as the way to deal with Iran.

President Trump spelled this out in no uncertain terms on Wednesday when he addressed the nation while seeking to dial down the imminent threat Iran may pose to our nation, the Middle East and the world.

Said the president in part, “Iran’s hostilities substantially increased after the foolish Iran nuclear deal was signed in 2013 and they were given $150 billion, not to mention $1.8 billion in cash. … Then, Iran went on a terror spree, funded by the money from the deal and created hell in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq. The missiles fired last night at us and our allies were paid for with the funds made available by the last administration.”

As we have seen and heard, some — especially Democrats, their allies in the media and Obama supporters — chose to challenge or quibble with Trump’s statement. That said, [author Douglas Mackinnon] spoke with a former senior intelligence official who said that much of the $1.8 billion cash payoff from the Obama administration was used explicitly to fund terrorism as an additional “screw you” from the leaders of Iran — including Soleimani —  to the United States. The rest of the money, [Mackinnon’s] source believes, ended up in the bank accounts of corrupt Iranian leaders and terrorists.

This money was not not-a-gift Iranian monies thawed, but an actual gift, or rather, according to Mackinnon, a payoff Obama thought he could hide from the public (emphasis added):

The cash payment authorized by Obama is one of the most disgraceful and shameful “negotiations” in the history of our nation. It was a payment the Obama White House first denied, then ignored and then grudgingly acknowledged.

We paid in cash, but not U.S. currency. Wary of using U.S. bills for a variety of reasons involving concealment, the Obama White House had the money converted to untraceable Euros, Swiss francs, and other foreign currencies. More troubling than those initial denials and deceptions was the fact that $400 million of that all-cash payment was used to pay a ransom to the government of Iran for the release of four American prisoners, in violation of standing U.S. policy.

In a pathetic attempt to hide behind semantics, the Obama administration finally did acknowledge that $400 million was delayed as “leverage” until the Americans were allowed to leave Iran.

While the Obama White House hid from the true definition of the word “leverage,” Iran’s state-run media was more than happy to brag that Iran had just forced the United States to pay a ransom.

Thawing Iranian revenues is one thing, even to the tune of $150b, but from where, you might reasonably ask, did Obama get $1.8b in cash? Was this gift on the taxpayer’s dime? Mackinnon gives us the skinny:

What many Americans don’t realize is that the Obama White House took the ransom money from something called the “Judgment Fund,” which is administered by the Treasury. That little-known account is entirely paid for by American taxpayers and was set up in such a way that Obama could bypass congressional approval to pay the cash to Iran.

Those who continually praise and defend Obama often describe him as “brilliant.” There is no doubt the former president is an intelligent person, certainly bright enough to realize — and admit, at least to himself — that the cash he turned over to the murderous regime leading Iran to ruin was not used for altruistic purposes.

Any honest assessment would conclude that at least part of that secretive, massive payment was used to finance terrorist attacks against Americans, our allies and innocent civilians . . .

 . . . For that reason, Obama should apologize for the thousands wounded and killed in terrorist attacks since Iran took possession of that tainted cash. That is his debt to pay.

In 2021, CNN reduced the amount of the Obama cash gift to Iran from $1.8b to “about $1.7b”. We also learn that in 2021, there was a $7b thaw in the works, suspiciously close to the $6b that President Biden unfroze in September:

Then-President Barack Obama faced steep opposition from Republicans when it was revealed that his administration had transferred about $1.7 billion to Iran in early 2016 . . .

 . . . Pro-Iranian media reported last weekend that the US had agreed to unfreeze $7 billion in Iranian funds and arrange a prisoner swap as part of the negotiations, but the State Department rejected the prisoner swap reports as false and a senior official told reporters on Thursday that those responsible for the leak were guilty of “unspeakable cruelty.” The department did not weigh in on the reports that the US would unfreeze funds, but a source briefed on the talks said the $7 billion figure was incorrect.

The White House is at the same time facing pressure to tread cautiously from Israel, which sent a delegation to Washington last week to discuss, among other things, the ongoing Iran deal talks. In a brief meeting with Biden last week, Israeli top intelligence official Yossi Cohen reiterated what Israel has been saying publicly, said one person familiar with the meeting: namely, that it believes Iran cannot be trusted and that the US should not return to the nuclear deal.

Biden reiterated his commitment to the US-Israel relationship, the person said, and reassured Cohen that the US views a return to the deal only as a jumping-off point for further discussions about lengthening and strengthening its terms, to ultimately include limits on other areas of Iran’s malign behavior in the region.

Going back to the issue of irrelevant facts and the echo chamber, the Newsweek article cited earlier managed to side-step the issue of Obama’s $1.8b cash payments to Iran. It did so by pushing a flurry of irrelevant facts on the reader: that the 2015 money was not a gift; that it was nowhere near $150b, and the money was not used to directly fund terror. A US News article piles on further irrelevant facts to obscure the truth, this time regarding the recent $6b in Iranian revenues thawed by Biden one month before the October 7 Hamas terror attack.

We are told that no one serious believes the $6b was used for the attack on Israel (so what—money is fungible); the attack was long in the planning (so what—they planned it a long time ago but needed the money to make it happen); and there is “no evidence” that Iran funded the attack because Iran denies responsibility (as if Iran were a trustworthy source to be believed in regard to whether or not it funded Hamas):

No serious observer believes the money ordered released by the administration – accumulated oil revenue withheld from Tehran under a Trump administration financial restriction – was used for that purpose. Iran is known to play a major role in funding, supporting and training the militant group and has for decades, but U.S. officials have said early intelligence does not indicate Iran helped Hamas plan, train or otherwise carry out the assault and added that it appeared to have taken some senior Iranian leaders by surprise. While a Hamas spokesman told the BBC that Iran did assist in the attack, officials in Tehran have denied responsibility while praising the outcome. So any direct link remains tenuous.

With regard to the money, planning of the sophisticated operation appears to have been underway for far longer than the funds were available to Iran, for one thing. For another, Treasury Department controls mandate that the funds cannot be drawn down by Iran for anything other than humanitarian needs provided by third-party vendors. But mostly – as the administration’s one-note response emphasizes at every turn – the most obvious indication it wasn’t used for the attack was because Iran hasn’t yet touched the money after it was sent from South Korea to a bank in Qatar.

“None of the funds that have gone to Qatar have actually been spent or accessed in any way,” Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said on Thursday, speaking from Tel Aviv, where he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as part of a multi-country diplomatic deployment across the Middle East.

Instead of focusing on the $1.8b cash payment (or $1.7b as CNN would have it), Mark Langfan, in 2020, did the math for us on the $150b figure cited by Obama in the Atlantic interview. At the same time, Langfan appears to place the onus for this dirty “deal” on then Vice President Biden (emphasis added):

Despite the fact that VP Biden knew that the Defense Department had already conclusively found by July 9, 2015 that Iran had directly murdered a minimum 500 US soldiers with Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) in Iraq over the past seven years, a mere five days later, on July 14, 2015, VP Biden cheerled the Iran Nuclear deal that handed Iran $150 Billion dollars.

Do the math. That means that in 2015, VP Biden paid Iran $300 million for each US soldier Iran murdered.

The echo chamber is slimy. It tells us about thawed Iranian revenues, but it doesn’t tell us about the large cash gift or that the American taxpayer paid ransom to Iran. Instead, the echo chamber peppers us with irrelevant facts, smug in the belief that wool can be pulled over the eyes of the American public. The tactic has demonstrated its efficacy over the years, with Americans amplifying whatever irrelevant talking points they are supplied. Is it a case of intellectual laziness or are they simply too trusting?

Richard Goldberg, senior advisor to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), and Rep. Darrell Issa, instead of irrelevancies, offer us a shocking piece of information. The recent $6b not-a-gift to Iran was only the tip of the iceberg and it’s far worse than Obama with his sneaky $1.8b cash payment. As it turns out, Biden enriched Iran by more than $50b and he did it via backchannels to avoid public scrutiny:

In May, White House Middle East Coordinator Brett McGurk secretly traveled to Oman to pass a message along to Iran: America will pay the Ayatollah’s price to keep Tehran from producing weapons-grade uranium. Later that month, the Sultan of Oman traveled to Iran to broker the deal while the governor of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) — an institution subject to U.S. sanctions for its role in terror financing — unexpectedly departed for Washington.

In June, leaks to Israeli media revealed the extraordinary concessions Biden made to the Ayatollah: Iran would “stop the process of enriching uranium to high levels” in exchange for sanctions relief.

The Biden administration then issued a sanctions waiver to provide Iran with at least $10 billion frozen in Iraq – and allow the money to be deposited in Iranian bank accounts in Oman.

Unnamed officials would soon admit the U.S. had already stopped enforcing oil sanctions on Iran – tacitly approving a million barrel per day increase in exports from Iran to China and generating tens of billions in annualized revenue. By the time the administration authorized the much-discussed $6 billion from South Korea, a full-blown appeasement and enrichment effort towards Iran had been underway for months.

In effect, explain the authors, the $6b in thawed Iranian revenues was a smokescreen for a far greater cash infusion from yet another dirty president (emphasis added):

[Fixating] only on the $6 billion obscures how Biden has financed Iran’s nuclear protection racket, emboldened its murderous regime, and enabled the mullahs to focus their resources on destroying Israel, the one country conducting operations to stop Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons.

The Biden message sent to the ayatollah is that the U.S. fears escalation and will pay any price to avoid a direct confrontation. That was a green light for Iran to activate its terror subsidiaries and commence the kind of barbaric slaughter we witnessed [on October 7th].

To add insult to injury, Biden is even now strengthening the Iranian terror machine:

While Biden’s words condemn Hamas’ heinous crimes against humanity, he continues to enrich Hamas’ parent company, Iran. And while Biden is correctly giving Israel the time, space, and resources it needs to prepare for Hamas’ destruction, he’s simultaneously giving Iran the time, space, and resources it needs to rebuild that which Israel destroys.

Having discussed the thawed, not-a-gift Iranian revenues, it makes sense to then explore how the re-imposition of sanctions by President Trump in 2018, drastically drained Iran of resources to fund its terror activities. In 2020, Lindsay Graham and Morgan Ortagus outlined Iran’s dire economic situation, and described how the lifting of sanctions by President Biden would represent a $90b bailout to Iran (emphasis added):

The JCPOA infused Iran with cash. Right before the United States reimposed sanctions in 2018, Iran’s central bank controlled more than $120 billion in foreign exchange reserves. U.S. sanctions locked tens of those billions away in escrow accounts, and financial pressure forced Iran to draw down the accounts that remained open. After only two years of the maximum pressure campaign, Iran was down to a meager $4 billion in reserves. Meanwhile, U.S. energy sanctions cut Iran’s oil exports by more than 2 million barrels per day, depriving the regime of $70 billion that typically funds its budget.

The massive reversal of fortunes left Iran with barely any economic options, and the regime was forced to cut payments to its regional terror proxies. While Iran fended off collapse, much of the rest of the Middle East breathed a sigh of relief. Several countries in the region made historic peace with one another. Progress made by the Abraham Accords—which were struck in August 2020 by Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States—were contagious.

Alliances with Iran threaten to undo much of the progress made.

Right away, the regime could receive a payday of around $90 billion the moment Biden ends sanctions. After all, U.S. sanctions tied up $40 billion of oil and condensate sales in Asia and the Middle East while another $50 billion in funds remain inaccessible to the regime. Meanwhile, the restoration of the JCPOA would likely reinvigorate Iran’s oil exports, adding nearly $50 billion per year to the regime’s coffers at today’s market rate. Other economic sanctions would be lifted as well, bolstering the regime’s metals and petrochemicals sectors that are crucial to funding the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) foreign adventures. Iran’s economy will start to grow again, and it will not take any time for the suitcases of cash to find their way to Hamas or Hezbollah.

Those billions of dollars would go a long way for the leading state sponsor of terrorism. Iran’s entire military budget has been reduced to less than $20 billion a year. But historically, Iran spent more than $16 billion supporting allies in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen since 2012 and sent $700 million a year to Hezbollah.

There’s not much need for speculation regarding what Iran would use its sanctions relief for. Instead, just look to six years ago. Instead of spending funds on cancer research or infrastructure like promised, the regime’s defense budget reached record highs. The IRGC spread mayhem and death across the region, and the same thing could happen again.

Only this time, under the terms of the original JCPOA, nuclear restrictions on Iran are almost up. Within the decade, Iran will have no cap on nuclear enrichment quantity or quality, no cap on the number of centrifuge sophistication, no ban on the import and export of ballistic missiles, and the expiration of more than a dozen other prohibitions.

In 2022, Nikki Haley criticized Biden’s intention to lift the sanctions. But Haley goes further, offering a tie-in between the thawed Iranian money and Biden’s support to the PA and Hamas regimes (emphasis added): 

Haley [criticized] Biden’s recent trip to the Middle East, including Israel, where he announced a $300 million cash infusion to the Palestinian government. The Free Beacon exclusively reported last week that a large portion of this cash is funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, known as UNRWA, which has a history of inciting violence against Jews.

"The money has no conditions, no strings, nothing. The Palestinians can keep stoking hatred of Israel," Haley said of the renewed funding. "They can keep paying the families of terrorists, which encourages more suicide bombings. Basically, the Palestinians can use America’s money to attack America’s ally. It’s a disgrace."

In examining the events of October 7, it is important here, to consider the role played in the atrocities by Rob Malley, the recently-suspended envoy to Iran who allegedly mishandled classified material (emphasis added):

“Rob Malley deserves extensive scrutiny — yesterday, today and tomorrow,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) told [the New York Post] after the Wall Street Journal reported that officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps planned and signed off on this weekend’s atrocity that killed at least 900.

“These reports could not be more concerning, and they hint at what could be the worst State Department scandal since Alger Hiss,” Issa added.

“Malley and others created an incredibly permissive environment for Hamas, for Iran, to do all these things,” added Gabriel Noronha, a former special adviser on Iran at the State Department.

Noronha, who served under former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, said Malley and his negotiating team “purposefully funneled billions of dollars to [Iran] through lack of sanctions enforcement and provision of sanctions relief that has given them somewhere between $50 [billion] and $80 billion over the last two and a half years.”

A senior House Republican aide told The Post that the cash influx followed an even more generous payout of $1.7 billion that the Obama administration made to Iran in 2016, eventually contributing to Saturday’s attack that triggered the Jewish state’s first declaration of war in 50 years.

In 2022, Michael Rubin said that all told, thanks to Malley, the Biden administration planned to give Tehran, in total, twice the amount of Biden’s recent “non-gift” to Iran (emphasis added):

In May 2021, Malley was offering Iran relief equivalent to $7 billion, nearly equal to the budget of Iran’s entire conventional military for 2022. As Iranian negotiators stonewalled — they have not sat down with Malley or his team but instead insist on talking through intermediaries — Malley’s team upped the ante. Today, the Biden administration appears poised to provide Tehran with $12 billion, equivalent to a quarter of Iran’s total budget at the real exchange rate. This does not include, of course, the windfall Tehran seeks to gain from increased oil sales already augmented by lack of sanctions enforcement. This fund does not include off-budget spending, such as the oil revenue directly allocated to the Revolutionary Guards or the additional billions that Iran’s national oil company allocates for national stabilization and development but in actuality flows into Revolutionary Guards’ coffers.

Should Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei accept Malley’s offer, the regime will receive an infusion of over $20 billion over the following year, essentially doubling the Revolutionary Guard’s budget. To put that conservative estimate in perspective, a suicide belt costs just $1,500, and the bombing of the Hebrew University cafeteria that killed five Americans cost only $50,000.

Nor does the money now offered to Iran account for the billion-dollar ransoms that the Iranians expect for hostage releases. After all, ever since Jimmy Carter’s administration acquiesced to release Iranian funds in exchange for hostages and Ronald Reagan traded arms for hostages, the Iranian regime simply seizes new hostages to use as chits in their negotiations.

Lee Smith, writing for Tablet, describes how Malley brought an Iranian agent into the State Department and the Pentagon, where she served in sensitive positions related to United States defense (emphasis added):

The Biden administration’s now-suspended Iran envoy Robert Malley helped to fund, support, and direct an Iranian intelligence operation designed to influence the United States and allied governments, according to a trove of purloined Iranian government emails.

The emails, which were reported on by veteran Wall Street Journal correspondent Jay Solomon, writing in Semafor, and by Iran International, the London-based émigré opposition outlet which is the most widely read independent news source inside Iran, were published last week after being extensively verified over a period of several months by the two outlets. They showed that Malley had helped to infiltrate an Iranian agent of influence named Ariane Tabatabai into some of the most sensitive positions in the U.S. government—first at the State Department and now the Pentagon, where she has been serving as chief of staff for the assistant secretary of defense for special operations, Christopher Maier. . .

The contents of the emails are damning, showing a group of Iranian American academics being recruited by the Iranian regime, meeting together in foreign countries to receive instructions from top regime officials, and pledging their personal loyalty to the regime. They also show how these operatives used their Iranian heritage and Western academic positions to influence U.S. policy toward Iran, first as outside “experts” and then from high-level U.S. government posts. Both inside and outside of government, the efforts of members of this circle were repeatedly supported and advanced by Malley, who served as the U.S. government’s chief interlocutor with Iran under both the Obama and the Biden administrations. Malley is also the former head of the International Crisis Group (ICG), which directly paid and credentialed several key members of the regime’s influence operation.

What should we make of these efforts by Presidents Obama and Biden to enrich not only Iran, but the PA and Hamas regimes in the wake of the depraved Hamas massacre of October 7? For one thing, it clarifies for us that these men, and the men who work(ed) for them, are dirty almost beyond belief. Also: they really hate Israel.

However inconvenient it is to consider who put these men in office, we must talk about this. While American Jews are a miniscule percentage of the American voting public, a large majority of them voted for Obama and Biden. They put domestic issues like healthcare ahead of Israel. They failed to register the possible impact of the JCPOA on the Jewish people and on the world at large.

The world has undergone a drastic change in the short few weeks since October 7. Pogroms now threaten Jews in Russia and in France. American college campuses have never been more dangerous for Jewish students. We are on the verge of a world war. This state of affairs is due to the machinations of Obama, Biden, and all those who ever worked for them (and voted for them).

There is a lesson to be learned here: you don’t vote for the guy who wants to give money to Iran, echo chamber notwithstanding. It doesn’t matter whose money it is, or how they propose to get it to the mullahs. The stipulations they promise to put on that money also do not matter.

It is evil to make funds available to the evil, period.

On October 21, 2012, just before Obama was reelected, I reviewed Obama’s intentions to plow through with the JCPOA and what this might mean for the world, something perhaps akin to the horrors of the Holocaust, for lack of a better description. I then asked my readers a simple question: “If you could have saved the 6 million by pulling a different lever, would you have done so?”

Eleven years later, my question is no different, even though the alternative candidate is a man reviled by the majority of Jewish American voters. “If you could have saved the Jews who were massacred on October 7th by pulling a different lever, would you have done so?”

Jewish voting patterns. The middle column represents the percent of Jewish votes received by each candidate (screenshot from the Virtual Jewish Library)

This writer is not afraid to stipulate that Trump is an unpresidential ass. I don’t like his crassness and the way he insults his competition. I don’t like the way he speaks about the Jewish people, and I don’t like what he says about my prime minister. In spite of all this, I know that that there’s always a trade-off: Trump would never have given money to Iran, or unfrozen its revenues.

In fact, it was Trump who re-imposed the sanctions on Iran. The Iranian war machine was nearly bankrupt when Biden assumed office. The evidence leads to an obvious conclusion: Had Donald Trump won the election, the events of October 7th would not have occurred.

And I hate like hell that my prediction of a Holocaust came true. 



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Wednesday, October 25, 2023


Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

On or around September 7, President Biden unfroze $6b in Iranian revenues. One month later, there was a massacre in Israel, sponsored by Iran. No less than a Hamas spokesman affirmed that Iran lent its assistance to Hamas as its proxy to murder Jews.

Was Biden’s generosity to Iran in September responsible for the war crimes committed by Hamas in October? While White House officials say that none of the $6b went to Hamas, they have yet to relate to accusations that Biden’s munificence served as a green light to Iran to do what it always says it will do: murder Jews.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, speaking from Tel Aviv, pretended that money was not fungible. The money, he said, had been sent from South Korea to a Qatari bank, and Iran hadn’t even had a chance to touch it, yet. “None of the funds that have gone to Qatar have actually been spent or accessed in any way,” said Blinken to Netanyahu during his diplomatic blitz of the Middle East in the wake of the atrocities.

Yes, dummy. We know that. But when there’s money in your future, you can take money from elsewhere to fund what you like. Iran likes to kill Jews. Tony Blinken knows this, because in reality, Blinken is no dummy. He is, however, a Biden hack.

Look (as Biden likes to say), it’s called “robbing Peter to pay Paul.” While Iran could not give the $6b straight into the hands of Hamas, there’s always a workaround. It’s called creative accounting. You take money away from a hospital or a school, whatever, and send it to Hamas. Wherever Iran took the money from, it used it to fund the massacre, secure in the knowledge that there would be $6b to cover the difference.

This really is not complicated, yet we can expect Blinken will continue to deliver the same unsatisfactory message each time he is called upon to answer for the October 7th war crimes. These were acts of war against Israel, against America and others, with various nationals among the hostages. What is now happening was brought to us by Iran, directly after they received a windfall from Joe.

Yes, we know the $6b is not a gift. We know that the money technically belongs to Iran. This is, however, an irrelevant factoid. Funds have been freed, released to madmen. Whether the money is a gift or just a case of restoring it to its rightful owner “in good faith,” matters not. The end result is the same: money in the pocket to buy weapons and pay savages to kill Jews.

One could write off the $6b as a miscalculation, a mistake by the Biden Administration. But not really. Joe Biden has been around a long time (cough). He has an equally lengthy history of browbeating and bullying Israel’s leaders, in spite of his intimate knowledge of the relevant actors in the region. President Biden knows that Iran and Hamas are evil. And he knows that Israel is not.

Israel is Joe Biden’s sacrificial lamb. Perhaps Biden reasons that everyone would like the Jews to be gone. Whatever his excuse, it is Joe Biden who strengthened the hand that fed us tragedy, in his final coup de grâce to the Jews.  

We may never know all the ways in which Biden tied Israel’s hands to keep the Jewish State from defending itself. We don’t know what went on between Biden and Netanyahu behind the scenes. Rest assured, however, that Joe is using everything at his disposal to stall Israel as long as he can, from launching its inevitable ground incursion into Gaza. In so doing, Biden continues to strengthen the hand of the enemy. Each day that passes without the ground incursion gives the enemies of Israel that much more time to prepare, more time to get ready to slaughter the Jews (they will be sorry they tried).

We can see some of what Biden is doing against Israel, for example, forcing Israel to allow aid to go through to the “innocent people of Gaza,” unimpeded. Joe Biden himself is providing $100m to Gaza for humanitarian aid.

What does it mean to give $100m to “Gaza?” It means to give $100m to Hamas, the rulers of Gaza. The humanitarian aid, as well, is the opposite of that. Sure, the hundred mil is ostensibly to be used only for things like water, food, and electricity, but that will never happen. Thanks to yet more “creative accounting,” the money will not go to civilians. The $100m is right now literally funding Hamas, funding murder and inciting the world to war—whether we can see the actual transactions, or not.

Here too, a Biden hack offers an irrelevant response to criticism of Biden for sending aid and comfort to the enemy. This time it is Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesman who pretends that money is not fungible. "Not a penny has been spent, and when it is, it can only go for humanitarian needs like food and medicine," says Miller.

Habibi, you are not fooling us. The hundred mil can only go to Hamas, the government of Gaza. And even if this filthy lucre is channeled through UNRWA, it will still go to Hamas. One way or another, wherever it lands in Gaza, that $100m will be lining the pockets of Hamas’ worst, the dutiful proxies of Iran.



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Sunday, March 05, 2023




The Institute for Science and International Security wrote an article summarizing Iran's violations of nuclear agreements with the IAEA. 

It's even worse than the media are reporting. There is little doubt that Iran is actively hiding its nuclear enrichment program, and there is no non-military reason to do what Iran has now been proven to do.

Excerpts:

Iran can now break out and produce enough weapon-grade enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon in 12 days, using only three advanced centrifuge cascades and half of its existing stock of 60 percent enriched uranium. This breakout could be difficult for inspectors to detect promptly, if Iran took steps to delay inspectors’ access.

Using its remaining stock of 60 percent enriched uranium and its stock of near 20 percent enriched uranium, Iran could produce enough weapon-grade uranium for an additional four nuclear weapons in a month. During the next two months, Iran could produce two more weapons’ worth of weapon-grade uranium from its stock of less than five percent enriched uranium, meaning that Iran could produce enough weapon-grade uranium for five nuclear weapons in one month and seven in three months.

The IAEA detected uranium particles enriched to 83.7 percent from environmental sampling taken during a monthly interim verification (IIV) at the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant (FFEP) on January 22. Iran’s answers about this anomaly did not satisfy the IAEA, which has continued probing Iran for more credible answers.

The IAEA took the environmental samples that detected the presence of near-84 percent enriched uranium a day after inspectors detected an undeclared interconnection between two IR-6 cascades at Fordow, which Iran should have informed the IAEA about under its safeguards obligations. That change likely led the IAEA to take environmental samples at the product sampling point.

This development amplifies concerns that Iran is undertaking covert experiments that add to its ability to more rapidly break out. Worrisome possibilities include that Iran tested a way to produce near weapon-grade uranium without IAEA detection, or to syphon off a small amount of near 84 percent enriched uranium.

If the high enrichment level was unintentional, as Iran claims, Iran should have reported the unprecedented enrichment level following the interconnection of the two IR-6 cascades, in line with its reporting of previous fluctuations in the enrichment levels encountered by Iran with the advanced centrifuge cascades dedicated to enriching to 60 percent at the pilot plant. If Iran did not know that the enrichment level reached almost 84 percent, it appears to be operating cascades in a dangerous way, somewhat oblivious to criticality concerns.

Despite the increase, during this reporting period, in the amount of uranium enriched between two and five percent, Iran has not prioritized stockpiling of this material, during the last two years. This is at odds with its contention that its primary goal is to accumulate 4-5 percent enriched uranium for use in nuclear power reactor fuel. Instead, Iran has used this stock extensively to produce near 20 percent and 60 percent enriched uranium, far beyond any of Iran’s civilian needs.

Iran is now reported to be willing to cooperate with the IAEA, although they have made that promise before and lied. And, the Institute notes that this wouldn't help at all for undeclared Iranian sites:
Another risk is that Iran will establish additional centrifuge manufacturing sites unknown to the IAEA. Iran is fully capable of moving manufacturing equipment to new, undeclared sites, further complicating any future verification effort and contributing to uncertainty about where Iran manufactures centrifuges.
...
Concern about Iran’s installation of advanced centrifuges at an undeclared site is magnified as its 60 percent HEU stocks grow. Such a scenario becomes more worrisome and viable, since it requires a relatively small number of advanced centrifuge cascades to rapidly enrich the 60 percent material to weapon-grade. This hybrid strategy involves the diversion of safeguarded HEU and the secret manufacture and deployment of only two or three cascades of advanced centrifuges. With greater uncertainty about the number of advanced centrifuges Iran is making, there is a greater chance of Iran hiding away the requisite number of advanced centrifuges to realize this scenario.





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Saturday, December 31, 2022

From Ian:

Dore Gold: Where is the Middle East heading now?
Dr. Ebtisam Al-Ketbi, who heads the leading research center in Abu Dhabi, the Emirates Policy Center, pointed out that the overlapping crises afflicting the Middle East have made strictly bilateral solutions completely ineffective, which drew the major players in the region to try the Baghdad II mechanism. Perhaps they were thinking about a Middle Eastern version of the Helsinki Process that drew in members of NATO and the Warsaw Pact in 1975 at the height of the Cold War.

But Iran was glued to a policy of exploiting its Islamic Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) units as its chosen instrument for spreading its regional influence – not multilateral mechanisms that the strongest party in the room was prepared to ignore. Over the last few years, Iran effectively employed its Houthi allies in Yemen to successfully strike the heart of Riyadh, shutting down for a period of time a significant percentage of Saudi Arabia’s oil production.

Indeed, a Houthi drone attack knocked out half of Saudi Arabia’s oil production in 2019. Iran did not pay a price for this bold action. Clearly, it had little incentive to restrict its behavior, given the tepid regional reaction. In fact, Jordan’s King Abdullah disclosed on CNN in July 2021 that Iranian drones had attacked Jordanian territory in increasing numbers.

For years, Tehran had built up a military presence in Lebanon and Syria. Now, Iran had been showing its interest in spreading its influence into Jordan as well. Jordan was known to be the locale of a number of Islamic holy sites that were significant to both Sunni and Shi’ite Islam. Iran sought to expand its tourism in Jordan to these areas. Some had been battlefields for early Islamic armies when they had their first military engagements with the Byzantine Empire. They were located near what is today the Saudi-Jordanian border.

Some Middle Eastern leaders hoped that today the Iranians could be placated. That might have been another reason to invite the Iranian president to the shores of the Dead Sea in Jordan. Israel will have to monitor very carefully what is happening with its eastern neighbors – both Iraq and Jordan. Israel has intercepted convoys of weaponry crossing from the Iranian border, by land, to Syria and Lebanon.

It is logical that Tehran redirects its efforts to create an alternative route via Jordan. If Middle Eastern states can block this axis as well, they can assure the security of the region. But it is not clear at this stage that they will be able to achieve this goal.
To combat antisemitism, collaboration is needed - opinion
With growing displays of hatred for Jews evident among extremists across the ideological spectrum, the space and passive support for antisemitism seem to be growing. Jews are feeling this on the streets of their communities around the world, with record-high levels of antisemitic incidents recorded in 2022.

What has the US done as a result?
In the US, this has prompted Jewish institutions to adopt a European model of stricter security, including armed guards, higher walls and increased surveillance.

These measures, while necessary from a safety perspective, serve as a demoralizing daily reminder to Jews about the concrete threats they face. To identify publicly as a Jew means putting themselves on the frontlines of a battle they did not seek.

Nevertheless, amid this darkening reality, there is also light. While hate against Jews increases, many allies are stepping up to the plate and being counted.

As CEO of the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), a global coalition engaging more than 650 organizations and nearly two million people from different religious, political and cultural backgrounds in the common mission of fighting the world’s oldest hatred, I have witnessed the power of partnership over the past year.

Recently, in Athens, we had more than 60 mayors and other top municipal officials from all over the world convene with the singular purpose of sharing and learning best practices about how to fight antisemitism. One key speaker, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, lamented the fact that antisemitism had become “normalized” and “popular,” and he called out its perpetrators.

Also last month, at the height of the Kanye and Kyrie furor, CAM helped organize the second annual awards ceremony of the Omni-American Future Project, a collaborative partnership strengthening ties between the black and Jewish communities in the US. These are just two recent examples of how prejudice can be countered with the fostering of cross-communal understanding and harmony.

However, this may have been best exemplified by CAM’s final event of 2022, when on the first night of Hanukkah, in the heart of Manhattan, a non-Jewish street artist painted a massive mural of Tibor Baranski, a courageous Hungarian-American who brought light to the world at the darkest moment in human history by rescuing more than 3,000 Jews during the Holocaust.

Of course, the Jews are not facing a Holocaust today, but we are under attack from an expanding number of hostile sources. To beat this network of hate, we must build, joined by our friends and all good people of conscience, an unbreakable web of togetherness, fraternity and comradeship.

Our enemies are gaining in strength, but so are our allies, and we must remember this. To turn the tide of rising hatred, we must reach more people who will stand by our side and say, “Enough!”

This is how we combat antisemitism.
Happy 50th anniversary of the Dry Bones cartoons
Yaakov Kirschen drew his first Dry Bones cartoon for The Jerusalem Post’s January 1, 1973, edition, and he never stopped. For 50 years, Dry Bones cartoons have been a beloved part of the Anglo Jewish world. Many children of English-speaking olim (immigrants to Israel) grew up in homes with faded Dry Bones cartoons that their parents had taped to the wall. Dry Bones cartoons have been mailed, shared, quoted, and forwarded between English-speaking Israelis, Christian Zionists, and our far-flung and embattled Jewish communities in the Diaspora.

Kirschen has made the lives of Anglo olim easier and more meaningful, and to his fans all over the world he has spread a deeper and stronger feeling for Israel and Zionism.

The Dry Bones cartoonist, who has been called a “national treasure of the Jewish people,” has received many awards, such as the Nefesh B’Nefesh Bonei Zion Award and The Golden Pencil Award.

Thursday, November 17, 2022

From Ian:

Alan Baker: Palestinian leadership venturing into international legal field
In addition to their regular, annual shopping list of false and flawed political allegations directed to the court against Israel, the Palestinians are now requesting that the court, by means of a resolution that they initiated in the UN General Assembly’s Special Political and Decolonization Committee to weigh the legal consequences of prolonged annexation of what they claim to be Palestinian territory.

This is despite the fact that there has never been any internationally accepted legal determination that there exists Palestinian territory, as such. Similarly, this question remains an agreed negotiating issue by the Palestinians themselves, pursuant to the internationally endorsed Israeli-Palestinian Oslo Accords (1993-95).

In addition, the Palestinian leadership is also asking the Court to examine Israel’s alleged crime of altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem, claiming the city to be solely Palestinian.

But more curiously, in this request to the world court, they are attempting to invent what they believe to be a new, curious international status of prolonged occupation. They are asking the court to determine the extent to which such a non-existent status of prolonged occupation has legal consequences for states and the UN.

In fact, no such status is recognized by international law.

Even the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which is universally acknowledged to be the ultimate arbiter of what constitutes international humanitarian law, has never determined a time limit for the occupation of territory.
Netanyahu: Israel-Saudi Normalization Could End Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Israel and Saudi Arabia reaching a formal peace agreement would “effectively end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu predicted in a new interview with “Call Me Back” podcast host Dan Senor.

“Understand that the Abraham Accords, the peace treaties that Israel had with four Arab states: the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco — that didn’t happen without Saudi approval, because at least some of these countries like to know what their big neighbor, Saudi Arabia, is thinking about [the agreements],” Netanyahu, who is likely to head Israel’s next government following elections earlier this month, said. “And I assure you, [Riyadh] wasn’t negative about it.”

Normalization with Saudi Arabia would “open up all sorts of possibilities,” Netanyahu told Senor, the co-author of Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle. The current opposition leader cited the physical results of such an agreement — ”connecting the Saudi rail system” — as well as the business perks — giving Saudis “direct accessibility to Israeli innovation and technology” — as benefits of a negotiated agreement between Jerusalem and Riyadh.

Netanyahu also addressed his previous government’s coordination with Russia in Syria, where Russian forces are on the ground — and where Israeli military units have often targeted Iranian and Syrian facilities and weapons transfers.
David Singer: MBS & King Abdullah keep Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine alive
The HKoP solution also offered the Arab populations of Gaza, the 'West Bank' and Palestinian Arab refugees in other locations:
· “a legal identity—a globally respected citizenship that allows a person to operate in the modern world. Labor in this day and age is mobile and having citizenship in a country that facilitates such mobility is critical to human development.”
· “Palestinians in Arab countries like Lebanon can then become citizens of this enlarged kingdom while also getting full residency rights in Lebanon, equivalent to what an EU citizen has in the European Union outside his or her home country. This would allow the Palestinians to gain full civil rights as legal foreign residents without impacting the local political or sectarian balance in these countries. The GCC, the EU, the US, Canada, and others can also help support this solution by granting this Jordanian–Palestinian passport easier access to their labor markets.”


The Saudi proposal’s author - Ali Shihabi – is a confidant of MBS and a member of the Advisory Board appointed by MBS to report to him on the building of a new US$500 billion mega city – Neom - in northern Saudi Arabia bordering Israel.

Shihabi had lamented on the absence of a response from any Israeli politician to his plan on 14 August.

This lack of Israeli interest was ongoing when the 21 September meeting agreed:
“to work with regional and international partners to shed light on the tragic situation of the Palestinians in light of the deadlock in the peace process and the absence of any glimmer of hopeand to urge them to take practical steps to support the resumption of dialogue on the basis of the Arab Peace Initiative, United Nations resolutions and relevant peace references, in addition to reviving the diplomatic track to overcome the despair and lack of a vision toward achieving the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and establishing their state with Jerusalem as its capital.”

MBS was not at this meeting but was subsequently appointed Saudi Arabia’s Prime Minister on 27 September.

MBS, King Abdullah, PLO Leader Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas Leader Ismail Haniyeh have not rejected the HKoP solution.

MBS and King Abdullah’s non-participation at Algiers offers the glimmer of hope that the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine can soon become a conflict-ending reality.

Sunday, September 11, 2022

From Ian:

Anti-Israel boycotts masquerade as social justice - opinion
Nineteen US states sent Morningstar, the financial services giant, a clear message last month: its attempts to sweep its anti-Israel bias under the rug are not fooling anyone.

On August 17, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt announced that 18 states had joined Missouri in investigating the Chicago-based corporation’s apparent support for Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. Schmitt promised to investigate whether Morningstar’s Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) tools amounted to “consumer fraud or unfair trade practices.”

ESG investment is a huge industry, accounting for $17 trillion in assets in the US alone. While ESG is designed to incorporate ethical considerations into investment, the industry’s subjective standards have allowed anti-Israel activists to impose their agenda on unwitting investors. Former US State Department special envoy for monitoring and combating antisemitism Elan Carr has called it “BDS dressed up as social-justice investing.”

Matters only got worse on August 25, when top financial authorities from 17 states called on Morningstar to reverse course on Israel. This followed Arizona State Treasurer Kimberly Yee’s warning to Morningstar’s CEO that he had 30 days to prove his company was not violating Arizona’s anti-BDS law. Otherwise, Arizona would add the company to the state’s prohibited investments list. Morningstar uses “anti-Israel and antisemitic sources to negatively impact companies doing business in Israel and Israeli-controlled territories,” Yee wrote.

Arizona’s threat may only be the tip of the iceberg: ESG firms must contend with anti-BDS statutes on the books in more than 30 states. These laws have created real consequences, including prohibitions on investing state funds, for companies engaging in discriminatory boycotts of Israel.
The Use of False NGO Apartheid Claims to Support BDS Resolutions
Over the past few years, a network of anti-Israel, pro-BDS non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have been promoting artificial definitions of apartheid in their ongoing efforts to delegitimize and demonize Israel. By deploying emotionally-charged rhetoric related to one of the worst manifestations of racism in modern history, NGOs seek to deny the legitimacy of the Jewish State, and advance BDS and lawfare against Israel.

In order to gauge the salience of the NGO apartheid campaign, NGO Monitor examined 28 divestment resolutions by student groups, trade unions, churches, and other institutions since September 2020 (see table below). We found that, in order to support their demands for BDS, 25 of the 28 resolutions mention apartheid. Eighteen explicitly quote or cite politicized NGOs and their manufactured claims of apartheid.

The “apartheid” rhetoric was accompanied by accusations of genocide and ethnic cleansing, as well as fundamental opposition to Zionism. Some call for the end of Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. A number also referenced the UN BDS “blacklist” of businesses operating across the 1949 Armistice line, another initiative resulting from NGO lobbying.

Apartheid Rhetoric
As noted, the vast majority of the examined BDS resolutions invoked a variety of terms and phrases associated with the NGO network’s apartheid campaign. Many resolutions made direct reference to NGO apartheid reports, including those by Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International, and Israeli NGO B’Tselem.
Jewish Agency chairman Doron Almog returns to Ethiopia
During the visit, Almog will visit the historic sites where Ethiopian Jews walked in the 1980s on their pilgrimage to Israel. He will also review the preparation activities for the aliyah process carried out by representatives of the Jewish Agency in community centers in Gondar and Addis Ababa and will meet with the immigrants before they immigrate to Israel.

Almog will arrive in Ethiopia together with a senior delegation of leaders of the Jewish communities in North America, on behalf of the Jewish Federations of North America.

“The true heroes of the Ethiopian aliyah are the olim themselves who have waited so long for this moment, yet never lost ‘hatikvah’ – the hope – that they would one day reach the Land of Israel,” The organization’s president and CEO Eric Fingerhut said.

“It is a tremendous privilege to know that for decades, our federation system has played an instrumental role in the aliyah journey of these men, women and children, as well as in supporting their first steps in Israel.”

Operation “Tzur Israel” operates by virtue of a government decision led by Aliyah and Integration Minister Pnina Tamano-Shata.

In the first phase of the operation, which began in December 2020 and ended in March 2021, about 2,000 olim arrived in Israel. The second phase was launched in June 2021, when the government decided to bring an additional 3,000 more immigrants.

So far, about 1,250 immigrants from Ethiopia have immigrated to Israel during the second phase of the operation. Of the 200 immigrants on the upcoming flight this week, 40 are children and toddlers who will be integrated into the Israeli education system upon arrival.

Most of the olim aren’t considered to be entitled to aliyah according to Israel’s Right of Return law, but are instead offered citizenship as first degree relatives of Israeli citizens. Many will begin a process of conversion to Judaism after arriving in the Jewish state.

Sunday, August 28, 2022



Haaretz is perplexed:
In addition to dealing with the progress toward a new nuclear agreement with Iran and the talks aimed at preventing a teachers’ strike September 1, Israeli decision makers had another matter to ponder this week. Much time and other resources were devoted to trying to figure out what Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is up to. The answers, so far, have been very partial.

There seems to be no logic to Nasrallah’s frequent threats to strike Israeli drilling platforms in the Mediterranean, risking war, if a final agreement is not reached on the Israel-Lebanon maritime border. Lebanon is in the midst of a severe economic and political crisis, and if war were to break out Hezbollah would likely be widely blamed for embroiling the country in an unnecessary and very costly military adventure.

Nevertheless, throughout the summer Nasrallah has spoken out the dispute over natural-gas drilling rights, growing increasingly extreme in his statements. What’s worrisome, especially to Military Intelligence, is the difficulty of analyzing his views and intentions. Despite the high likelihood of an eventual agreement, with U.S. mediation, there is still genuine apprehension about possible surprises from Hezbollah.
It still amazes me that serious analysts think that Hezbollah leader Nasrallah makes any real decisions on his own. His loyalty is to Iranian leaders, and no one else. The well-being of Lebanon is not one of his goals, it is an impediment to his goals.

Even UNIFIL, which is reluctant to publicly criticize Hezbollah, has called out its increased militarization and violations of the buffer zone in southern Lebanon.

Nasrallah's increasing bellicosity must be seen in context of what is happening with other Iranian proxies. For example, this story today says that Syria asked Iran and its proxies not to conduct attacks against Israel from its territory - which means that Syria is aware of such plans.

Not to mention the Islamic Jihad mini-war earlier in August, which was prompted by an attempt for a major terror attack against Israel. That was all orchestrated by Iran, seemingly against Hamas wishes for stability in Gaza. 

See a pattern?

There was also an intriguing story of a possible Israeli strike at a Houthi camp in Yemen on August 7, during the Gaza fighting, where six Iranian and Lebanese advisers were killed. The Houthis, using Iranian technology, have been increasing their ballistic missile and cruise missile ranges to reach Israel and have directly threatened Israel as well. 

From all indications, Iran is gearing up for a major escalation of fighting against Israel, but it is not ready to directly attack. It wants its proxies in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and seemingly Yemen (maybe even Iraq) to overwhelm Israeli missile defenses with thousands of rockets from all directions. (One must also assume that Iran is working with some Israeli Arabs to create a fifth column of terror attacks within Israel itself in the case of any war.) 

The escalation of threats by Iran and its proxies is almost certainly linked with the nuclear negotiations. The billions of dollars that Iran would gain from an agreement would help fund these proxies, a basic fact that the West is consciously overlooking in its zeal to close out a bad deal with Iran. Iran understands the West much better than the West understands Iran, and the mullahs have already proven that they can gain far more leverage with militancy than with confidence building measures.  

And they know quite well that the West, after finally sighing with relief at an agreement, will not have the will or desire to threaten new sanctions in response to an Iranian-directed proxy war against Israel. 






Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Sunday, January 16, 2022


Is the US Holding Israel’s Iron Dome Hostage to an Iran Nuke Deal?

While President Biden, Senate, and Congress slow-walk and bicker over replenishing Jerusalem's dwindling defensive missile shield supplies, PM Bennett says his country won't be bound to any rickety renewed nuke deal - nor stand idly by to Iran's increasingly genocidal threats

By Dave Bender, northern Israel

Administration and Capitol political horse-traders and ideologues are holding hostage the lives of some two million Israelis -- specifically the Gaza Envelope and northern border areas. Their domestic foot-dragging endangers Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze, and Bedouin citizens, alike.

This, while P5+1 group (US, UK, China, France, Germany, Russia, and the EU) reps wrangle with Iran in Vienna through - so far - no less than eight contentious sessions over terms of restarting the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

But Jerusalem doesn’t trust the Viennese diplomatic waltz nor Iranian double-crossing promises; they’re preoccupied with Tehran’s ruling and military leaders’ incessant, bellicose threats to “turn Tel Aviv and Haifa into dust,” “wipe Israel off the map,” and taking note of videos of simulated strikes against Israel’s cities, military targets, and reputed nuclear facilities.

“...the Zionist regime has forgotten that Iran is more than capable of hitting them from anywhere,” the Tehran Times histrionically boasted in a December 2021 front-page article, entitled, “Just One Wrong Move.” https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/tehran-times-publishes-targets-iran-will-attack-in-israel-688785

On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, told the Knesset parliament’s crucial Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee that, “Israel is not a party to the agreements,” and warned that the Jewish State “is not bound to what will be written in the agreements if they are signed,” according to a JNS report. https://www.jns.org/bennett-sends-message-to-iran-vienna-talks-wont-tie-israels-hands/

And so, Israel is “investing in security rearmament,” to the tune of an immense NIS 60 billion ($19.2 billion) due to what Bennett called an “[Iranian] octopus that constantly threatens Israel.”

Military analyst Seth Frantzman at The Jerusalem Post breaks down the tentacled threat matrix:

“Both Hamas and Hezbollah maintain large stockpiles of ballistic rockets, in addition to mortars, anti-tank missiles, and other munitions. While Hamas does have Iranian-made weaponry, a significant amount of its arsenal has historically been indigenously made, as a result of the ongoing blockade against the Gaza Strip. Hamas has produced several types of rockets, notably the Qassam series. Hezbollah’s stockpile has in the past consisted of former Soviet models, including Grads and Katyushas, but, like Hamas, now has Iranian-made heavy and long-distance rockets like the Fajr series.

“Estimates of Hezbollah rocket stockpiles vary from 150,000-200,000, while Hamas’ is estimated to be around 10,000.”  https://www.jpost.com/tags/rocket-attack-on-israel

Additionally, the Alma Research and Education Center, reports that Iran has deployed a wide array of medium-range and long-range surface-to-surface missiles inside fortified shafts,” at a site near Palmyra, in eastern Syria. https://israel-alma.org/research/

The missiles we mentioned above can threaten almost the entire territory of the State of Israel: Northern Israel (distance of about 186 miles, about 300 kilometers, from Mount Muhammad Ben Ali by air), Haifa area (distance of about 223 miles, about 360 kilometers), Tel Aviv area (distance of about 261 miles, about 420 kilometers) and even threaten the area of ​​the city of Beer Sheva and south of it.

But while last summer's unfulfilled promises to resupply crucial defensive measures remains a vital concern to Israelis, the regional conflagration the delay could yet ignite apparently remains - seriously and serially - misjudged and maybe even selectively ignored by the US Administration and its cohorts.

The May conflict with Gaza saw over four thousand rockets fired at metropolitan areas, and some 16 Hamas-Hezbollah rockets fired south out of southern Lebanon into civilian areas later in the year, with the Iron Dome successfully downing some 90 percent of them.

However, 12 Israeli civilians and an IDF soldier were killed, and over 300 wounded, and millions of dollars in economic damage was sustained in the 11-day operation, according to Israel’s Foreign Ministry https://mfa.gov.il/MFA/ForeignPolicy/Terrorism/Palestinian/Pages/Operation-Guardian-of-the-Walls-10-May-2021.aspx

In Gaza, the IDF said some 460 misfired rockets fell short within the coastal enclave, killing and maiming an unclear number of reported non-combatants. Hamas-affiliated medical officials reported some 260 deaths to the UN and Human Rights Watch, although Israeli researchers say almost 50 percent of them were affiliated with terror groups.

So without freeing up funding (which is invested in American jobs to design and construct the strictly defensive interceptors), recalcitrant US lawmakers need to plainly know: your foot-dragging is likely to get many more people killed.

We in Israel see you and we hear you, and the results, if not intent, of your deeds - and misdeeds - are clear to us:

If the State of Israel is hit in any future conflict by volleys of even more thousands of incoming rockets or payload-carrying UAVs and cannot respond sufficiently due to a lack of Tamir interceptors, the government and IDF will have no other choice but to respond with far more kinetic firepower than anything seen so far - and at targets very near and very far - in order to suppress and stop the deadly salvos aimed at heavily-populated civilian areas and strategic facilities.

And even at that, despite the “standalone measure that passed with overwhelming bipartisan support,“ but still withheld in the Senate, rebuilding the supply of interceptors takes time, due to the relatively slow manufacturing process, with cost (and likely Covid) being an inhibitor.

On the other hand, Hamas and PIJ [Palestinian Islamic Jihad] use less sophisticated - but no less deadly - rockets that are manufactured quickly, at a much lower cost.

In order to stop them before they are even launched, the sanctimonious caterwauling over previous IDF pinpoint strikes on terror targets on and cross-border will be deafened into silence by the unleashed fury out of Zion.

Speaking as a nearly-two-decade IDF artillery NCO and infantry grunt (St.Sgt.- ret.) who served in and around Gaza, and as a two-decade reporter in Israel please understand: the howling existential threats uttered by Iranian-financed, trained, and led regional proxies and their determination to eradicate us will not deter us, but the countdown to the next steel rainstorm is ticking very loudly in our ears these days.

So forgive us for being distracted by the growing chorus calling for our demise; beyond the virtuous, virtual moral Disneyland of “knowing what's best for us" hectoring, "America first!" jingoism, and unrequited "tough love" missives penned from six thousand miles away - we’ll bleed real blood and treasure due to those withheld projectiles.

And so, in order to defend our families and the sole Jewish homeland against sworn foes bent on our collective destruction - despite an unspoken defensive arms embargo - don’t be too surprised by the justified ferocity and extent of Israel’s response.

And our lack of apology for stopping our would-be killers and their murderous plans.

---

Dave Bender is a US-born, four-decade Israeli immigrant and self-described, two-decade “ever-recovering reporter,” in Israel, and was an award-winning reporter at two NPR affiliates in the States. Since then, he’s developed a photography/videography career and would, mostly, just as soon be beekeeping with his wife, and enjoying his kids and grandkids.







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