Two top Israeli leaders, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and ex-IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, called for further sanctions on the Tehran regime on Tuesday, the same day three European powers triggered the dispute mechanism in the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
In a video statement posted on social media, Netanyahu said, “We know exactly what’s happening with the Iranian nuclear program. Iran thinks it can achieve nuclear weapons.”
“I reiterate: Israel won’t allow Iran to achieve nuclear weapons,” he pledged. “I also call on all Western countries to impose snapback sanctions at the UN now.”
Earlier, Gantz — the head of the centrist Blue and White party who is seeking to oust Netanyahu in the upcoming March Knesset elections — said, “The Europeans are beginning to understand that there is no other choice, that the attempts at conciliation with Iran are ineffective, and they are therefore moving toward sanctions, which I applaud.”
PM Netanyahu: "We know exactly what's happening with the Iranian nuclear program. Iran thinks it can achieve nuclear weapons.
I reiterate: Israel won't allow Iran to achieve nuclear weapons. I also call on all Western countries to impose snapback sanctions at the UN now." pic.twitter.com/NWzpNYIqR4
The IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate issued its annual assessment for 2020 on Tuesday, warning that Iran might have enough enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb by this spring.
According to the Israeli news site Mako, the report stated that the US assassination of Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani earlier this month would have a deterrent effect, though the situation still required close monitoring.
Despite Soleimani’s death, however, without intervention, Iran could succeed in enriching enough uranium for one nuclear weapon by spring, according to the report. But it will take another two years to be weaponized sufficiently to be placed in a warhead, the report noted.
The report nevertheless theorized that Iran did not actually want to build a nuclear weapon, but rather to obtain better “cards” for negotiations with world powers, within the framework of its primary goal — spreading the “Islamic Revolution.”
Regarding Israel’s other strategic challenges, the assessment held that on the northern front, Syria would continue to be a destabilizing and potentially explosive force. Turkey would further its involvement in the northern arena and Russia would consolidate its power there.
The assessment stated that the ruling Assad regime would decide this year on how to deal with the continuing presence and influence of its ally Iran in Syria. Israel has vowed to prevent Iran from becoming entrenched in Syria and has taken military action against the Tehran regime’s attempts to do so.
For them, the problem is Trump, not the ayatollahs. The statements that they do make are mainly on lifting the Iranian sanctions.
One has to ask how it is that the West produces so many useful idiots, willing propaganda agents of the dark regime, while in Iran itself there is a generation of young people who are fighting against this reign of terror and for freedom and human rights.
Why the hell are Western progressives turning their backs on the brave young people of Iran?
We are used to this phenomenon when it comes to Israel, where progressives support a boycott of the Jewish state and the removal of sanctions on the Hamas regime in Gaza.
And they are not operating in isolation. They receive funding from the European Union as a whole and European countries separately.
This is the paradox of the radicals: progressives supporting the black-hearted and the racist.
They oppose those who are fighting evil elements, and now they are turning their backs on the Iranian protesters.
[Many] Arabs have claimed that they cannot understand why Hamas and Islamic Jihad are mourning an Iranian general responsible for the killing and displacement of thousands of people in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Some Arabs scoffed at the two Palestinian groups for labeling Soleimani as the "martyr of Jerusalem" at a time "when most of his rockets and bullets were being used to kill Arabs and Muslims to implement Iran's scheme of expanding its control to Arab and Islamic countries."
Without Iran's financial, military and political support, Hamas and Islamic Jihad would not have been able to maintain their control over the Gaza Strip.... Hamas and Islamic Jihad have demonstrated that they care nothing for the thousands of Arabs and Muslims killed by Soleimani's Quds Force. As far as these groups are concerned... [t]he end goal for Hamas and Islamic Jihad remains the elimination of Israel....
The ongoing cooperation between Iran and the Gaza-based groups poses an imminent threat not only to Israel, but also to the PA, Egypt and other Arabs who are opposed to Tehran's expansionist schemes in the region.
TEHRAN — Iran’s Judiciary spokesman said on Tuesday that the Islamic Republic will file lawsuits against U.S. President Donald Trump and the U.S. government for the assassination of Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s top anti-terror commander, in Iraq earlier this month.
“We intend to file lawsuits in the Islamic Republic, Iraq and The Hauge [sic] Court (International Court of Justice) against the military and government of America and against Trump,” Gholamhossein Esmaeili said during a press conference, according to Mehr.
“There is no doubt that the U.S. military has done a terrorist act assassinating Guards Commander Lt. Gen. Soleimani and Second-in-Command of Iraq Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis... and Trump has confessed doing the crime.”
“The firmest reason for accusing an individual is his confession,” he added.
“We will initially file a lawsuit in Iran, which is legal under the Islamic Penal Code,” he said.
“Then we will do the same in Iraq and The Hague Court against Trump and the U.S. military,” he added.
In his Tuesday remarks, Esmaeili said the next step in Iran’s tough revenge will be taken as well in order to end the illegitimate presence of the Americans in the region.
I'm sure the US is especially afraid of lawsuits filed in Iran itself.
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Old libels against Israel never die. They always come back, zombie-like.
The lie that Israel steals the organs of Palestinians has returned in recent weeks and has been published in a few Arab media outlets, including in English.
And the lie that Israel has dams in the Negev which are opened to flood Gaza has been re-appearing in Muslim media as well. It appears to have started with the Gaza Ministry of Agriculture, run by Hamas, making the false accusation. Anadolu published it, UK Muslim News published it, Kuwait's news agency published it. And now, it is again the official position of the Palestinian Authority, as its Wafa news agency "reports:"
The occupation forces opened one of the dams of stolen water that reaches the Palestinian underground reservoir in the Gaza Strip, flooding hundreds of acres of land east of the Al-Shujaiya neighborhood, which resulted in severe damage to agricultural crops.
"The Israeli occupation forces have built dams along the border of the Gaza Strip, to prevent the natural flow of rain water into the Palestinian territories, and divert it to pour into the Israeli underground reservoir within the territories of 1948, thus depriving the Palestinians of the most important source for the underground reservoir which is rain water. "
"When the amount of water exceeds the capacity of the dams to seize and transfer it, they are opened, which leads to a rush of water in large quantities that will flood farmers' crops and inflict heavy damage on them," Al-Sharif added, referring to the repetition of the process of opening the dams in recent years during winter months.
The accidents caused by the flooding of agricultural lands, as a result of the opening of the Israeli dams, are mostly concentrated in the Gaza Valley and East Shujaiya.
No, there are no dams or floodgates in the Negev. AFP even debunked this claim five years ago. But Palestinians are so used to blaming Israel for everything that they feel compelled to find a fairy tale that they can tell themselves to explain this disaster as well.
Iran's PressTV even made a video pushing the flood libel:
Here is the 2015 AFP story that showed that there are no dams in the Negev:
Even when libels against Israel are thoroughly debunked, there is no compunction in anti-Israel media to resurrect the stories. People forget and a new generation of readers eager to lap up the lies is always coming up.
Sounds a lot like how antisemitism works.
(The funny thing is that Palestinian media eagerly published the story that Israeli fighter jets were damaged in the floods as well. Why didn't they just build dams?)
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Left Alliance MP held in Israel over arms trade criticism The MP said she resisted pressure to sign documents in Hebrew about her alleged offences.
Israeli authorities detained Left Alliance MP Anna Kontula on the Israeli-Gaza border on Monday, according to reports first published by daily Helsingin Sanomat.
Kontula was a member of an international group of activists on the Gaza border, as they attempted to organise a demonstration to draw attention to the situation in Gaza, Kontula said in a statement.
She said that the background to the protest action was the arms trade between Finland and Israeli companies, which Kontula said must be stopped. Kontula said that Finland’s arms exports to Israel promote continued Israeli occupation and military activities in the region.
"Last autumn we received a great deal of information that led us to anticipate that the arms trade between Finland and Israel is growing and not declining as should be the case with a violator of international law," she declared.
Kontula told Yle that she had been detained for more than 10 hours until Monday evening. The Left Alliance MP said that for the most part, she had been treated well during her detention.
"Attempts were made to pressure me into signing a document in Hebrew, in which I would have acknowledged various suspicions, such as endangering security, in addition to other suspected crimes," Kontula said.
She added that she did not sign the document. Kontula is expected to return to Finland on Tuesday.
One gets the impression that Israel arrested Kontula merely for being part of a peaceful demonstration on the border, and that she was pressured to sign a document where she would admit a baseless claim that she was endangering security.
Practically all the Finnish coverage of the incident is similar. But one outlet, Ilta-Sanomat, adds a crucial detail:
Kontula intended to cut a hole in the Gaza fence to allow Hamas members to freely come into Israel.
The purpose of the activist group was to challenge the blockade by cutting a hole in the barbed wire. However, the police stopped Kontula's entourage in a roadblock and the group was taken to the police station.
Isn't that the definition of endangering security?
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Since this is behind The Wall Street Journal's paywall, here is the entire article:
Hypocritical attacks on Israel are common, but Sarah Leah Whitson takes them to a new level. As Middle East and North Africa director of Human Rights Watch, she is one of the sharpest critics of the Jewish state’s presence in the West Bank, promoting boycotts and international prosecution for the supposed crimes of occupation and settlement. Yet elsewhere Ms. Whitson strongly supports settlements in occupied territories—suggesting that she and her colleagues don’t take their own legal claims against Israel seriously.
The settlements Ms. Whitson supports are in Nagorno-Karabakh, an area that was within the borders of post-Soviet Azerbaijan until 1994, when Armenia occupied the region after a protracted war. Since then, the Armenian leadership in Yerevan has actively encouraged the movement of settlers into the area. Many Armenians regard Karabakh as their historic homeland. But the United Nations, international courts and the U.S. all consider it occupied Azeri territory.
Ms. Whitson, who is from an Armenian family, served as master of ceremonies at a 2018 fundraiser for the Armenian National Committee of America, a pro-settler charity that views Karabakh as an “integral part of the Armenian homeland.” Even as Ms. Whitson led Human Rights Watch’s campaign to boycott Israeli economic activity in the West Bank, she took to Twitter to promote Armenian wines, including from the occupied territories. Asked about the inconsistencies between her positions, Ms. Whitson responded by email: “My personal support for Armenian diaspora organizations pertains to their charitable and educational work in Armenia and their efforts to advocate for recognition of the Armenian Genocide.”
This explanation is at odds with HRW’s approach to Israel, where the group calls for boycotts of entire companies—including unrelated divisions—because some of their work is in settlements. It is also at odds with the record: Ms. Whitson’s fundraising appeals for pro-settlement groups are in no way limited to educational issues. She has celebrated the work of the Armenian General Benevolent Union, which supports new settlement construction to encourage “young families to set down their roots.” She specifically praised the group for helping Syrian Armenians who have “resettled in Armenia”; many or most such refugees have been resettled in the occupied territory.
Ms. Whitson is fully within her rights to support Armenian settlements. Nothing in international law requires boycotts or sanctions against such communities. But if HRW were serious about its opposition to “settlers” and “occupation,” it wouldn’t have a supporter of them heading its Middle East division.
Ms. Whitson isn’t alone in opposing occupation and settlements only in Israel. Nancy Kricorian, leader of a Code Pink boycott campaign against Israel, also turns out to be an Armenian settler activist. Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib urges a boycott of Israel while co-sponsoring a bill to normalize relations with Armenian settlements.
The European Council on Foreign Relations has led efforts to restrict connections between Europe and Israeli activities in the West Bank. The think tank claims this is the clear and impersonal command of international law. Yet it has recently emerged that some of its largest corporate donors have significant and direct business interests in Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara and Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus. The council doesn’t seem bothered by connections to those occupied territories.
Similarly, the revelations about Ms. Whitson will almost certainly not compromise her position at HRW or in the “antisettlement” movement. This shows that there is more than a double standard at play. The acceptance of settlement activity by supporters of sanctions on Israel suggest they know that the international law they claim to enforce against the Jewish state is not international law at all.
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As he looks at pictures of his parents and sisters who perished in Auschwitz, Szmul Icek begins to tremble, tears clouding his eyes.
It may have been 75 years ago, but for this survivor of the Holocaust the memories of life and death in the Nazi extermination camp remain painfully fresh.
More than a million Jews were killed at Auschwitz, in then occupied Poland. The last survivors, now all elderly, still live with the physical and mental scars of the horrors of that time.
Since their liberation three quarters of a century ago, their skin has wrinkled with the march of time and the numbers tattooed on their left arms have faded — much in the same way that the collective memory of the Holocaust is blurring.
These survivors are the last witnesses to traumatic events that, now in the 21st century, are often called into question by anti-Semitic revisionists.
So as Israel prepares this month to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the camp at a ceremony to be attended by a host of world leaders, AFP reporters met with about 10 survivors to hear their testimonies.
Images of what the Allies found when they liberated the first Nazi death camps towards the end of World War II brought the horror of the Holocaust to world attention.
Many of the ghastly pictures were at first held back from the broader public, partly out of concern for those with missing relatives.
The concentration and extermination camps were liberated one by one as the Allied armies advanced on Berlin in the final days of the 1939-1945 war.
The first was Majdanek in eastern Poland, which was freed on July 24, 1944, by the advancing Soviet Red Army.
But it was only the following year that media coverage was encouraged by the provisional government led by general Charles De Gaulle set up after the liberation of France.
The fight against the resurgence of antisemitism is being taken to social media in an effort to broaden awareness of the problem and create a modern and relevant dialogue about this ancient scourge.
The “Stop this Story!” campaign initiated by the European Jewish Congress (EJC) has secured the support of global celebrities and influencers, including Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli, actress Vanessa Kirby of the hit Netflix show The Crown, sex therapist and Holocaust survivor Dr. Ruth, former NBA player Omri Casspi and President Reuven Rivlin, to help spread the message.
The campaign, conducted on Instagram, YouTube and other platforms, utilizes Instagram’s 3D-effects capability. The personalities involved in the project have created images of themselves holding up their hands bearing the words: “Stop this Story!”
In addition, a time-lapse video project, featuring Dr. Ruth Westheimer, 91, the world-renowned sex therapist, media personality and Holocaust survivor, will be posted on Instagram and other social-media platforms in a series of stories. The video highlights the never-ending story of antisemitism, utilizing impressive visual techniques.
I noted in early December that Fatah spokesman Osama al-Qawasmi met with two delegations of US lawmakers from California and Wisconsin, apparently unaware that he is a blatant antisemite.
Qawasmi is on video quoting the "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" as if it is a real Jewish document on how to rule the world. He says Israel controls America. He has said that Israel is worse than Hitler, the Nazis and fascism.
Yet a stream of American delegations continue to go on pilgrimages to meet with this Jew-hating piece of filth.
Does no one Google who they will be meeting any more?
Or is meeting an antisemite not considered as bad as meeting with other types of bigots?
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One of the people that Abbas honored is Salah Khalaf, known as "Abu Iyad," a founder of the Black September Organization. In his memoir, he said that he had hand-picked the gunmen for the Munich Massacre of Israeli athletes at the Summer Olympic Games, as well as having transported the assault rifles and grenades used in the attack. Abu Daoud has said that Abu Iyad was his partner in organizing the terror attack.
The Palestinian authority has named a school after Khalaf in Tulkarem.
At the ceremony, attendees stressed that the blood of the three "martyrs" will not be wasted.
Anyone who says that Abbas no longer supports terror isn't reading his own official media.
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If this all seems unbelievable, it’s because it is—and also because you’re probably still imagining that Obama’s goal was to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. But once you understand the real purpose, these moves become much clearer. To wit: Why did Obama give the regime enough uranium to make 10 nuclear bombs? To pressure the incoming Trump administration to stick with the nuclear deal. If Trump chose to leave the JCPOA, he’d have to deal with the fact that with 130 tons of uranium already on hand Iran had an easier path to the bomb. In effect, the last president handed the Iranians a loaded gun to be pointed at his successor.
The press corps was crucial in helping Obama deceive the American public. There were some journalists at the time who asked important questions about the JCPOA; most of them on the State Department beat, like the AP’S Matt Lee and Bradley Klapper. The media echo chamber, on the other hand, who helped sell the deal, consisted largely of reporters covering the White House and national security beat who were accustomed to being hand-fed by the Obama inner circle. This group would later form the core of the media operation pushing the Trump-Russia collusion narrative.
For the Iran deal, the task of these correspondents was to drown out anyone who challenged the wisdom of Obama’s fire sale, including senior Democrats, like Sens. Chuck Schumer, Ben Cardin, and Bob Menendez. They were smeared as dual loyalists in formerly prestige press outfits like The New York Times, aghast at the “the unseemly spectacle of lawmakers siding with a foreign leader [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] against their own commander in chief.” The administration also spied on Democrats and pro-Israel activists critical of the deal.
Cory Booker was the one candidate among the field of Democrats running in 2020 who understood the nature of the JCPOA. He backed it at the time but said in a June debate that he wouldn’t necessarily reenter the deal. On Monday Booker announced he was dropping out of the race. And what about the Democrat leading the polls? Obama’s Vice President Joe Biden is proud of his role pushing the JCPOA, even if he’ll have to manage the consequences of the deal if he defeats Trump in November. As for the rest of the field, they’re making their opinions known with their silence regarding the Iranian protesters.
Now three years after Obama left the White House, it’s clear why the former president’s party is worried about the fate of his signature foreign policy initiative. By killing the Iranian commander Obama officials were sending messages to, Trump has shown his fiercest critics to be right—he’s nothing like Obama.
The smoke had not yet cleared above the crater in which the body of Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps commander Qasem Soleimani’s languished before the American press pronounced its verdict. “Trump’s Iran war has begun,” pronounced Vox.com’s Zack Beauchamp. Donald Trump’s “actions put the U.S. on a new path of escalation,” McClatchy reported. The president had “miscalculated,” in the view of the Independent’s deputy political editor Rob Merrick. “This is a massive walk up the escalation ladder,” the New York Times quoted the Middle East Institute’s Charles Lister as saying. “With Soleimani dead, war is coming.” Trump sought to “bully” Iran by appealing to the “Jacksonian logic of sudden and terrifying force as a first and last resort,” New York Magazine’s Ed Kilgore opined. Soleimani’s “assassination,” as New Yorker’s Robin Wright characterized it, was “tantamount to an act of war.”
In the ten days that have elapsed, these reactions to the Trump administration’s strike seem more than a little hyperbolic. But that hyperbole was not a product of the fog of war. Those who adopted a cautious response to the president’s actions were informed by the months of preamble leading up to this confrontation, to say nothing of the basics of international relations.
Before Trump’s strike on Soleimani, Iran had engaged in a campaign of attacks on American interests for which it faced no proportionate consequences. When the United States finally did proportionately respond to the killing of a U.S. contractor and the wounding of three service personnel in one of the regular rocket attacks on American positions by Iran-backed militias in Iraq, Iran’s proxy forces mounted the siege of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad that put the U.S. diplomatic presence in Iraq in jeopardy. As I wrote at the time, this was not escalatory but de-escalatory. The administration’s attempt to impose unacceptable costs on a reckless adversary while degrading its capacity to execute attacks on American interests and those of its allies was an effort to step back from the precipice of direct, conventional conflict.
If observers were shocked by Iran’s attempt to take the temperature down with a face-saving volley of rockets into Iraq (which were self-limited, and those limits were communicated to Iraq and the United States), they should not have been. These events might have represented the best-case scenario for the Trump administration, but the administration did not luck its way into a textbook method for deterring an aggressive and revisionist adversary. To recognize the strategy, you need to have read the textbook.
Hundreds of protesters in Iran refused to trample US and Israeli flags and denounced others who did as rallies continued against the regime for the downing of a Ukrainian passenger jet that killed all 176 people on board.
Videos and reports emerged Sunday showing the crowds deliberately walking around the edges of the massive flags painted on the pavement of a university in Tehran.
Those who did walk across the Stars and Stripes and the Star of David were immediately pointed at and booed, with the crowd chanting “shame on you.”
Many of the protesters shouted, “Our enemy is Iran, not America.”
Hillel Neuer, the executive director of the human rights group UN Watch, tweeted out a video of the crowds taking pains from treading on the flags on Sunday.
“These courageous Iranian students who refuse to trample the U.S. & Israeli flags represent the hope for a better Middle East. Engage with and promote them instead of their oppressors, and maybe Iran-backed wars & terror across the region will end,” he posted.
The unrest surged across Tehran and other Iranian cities and towns for a second day on Sunday after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard admitted mistakenly shooting down the Ukrainian airliner on Wednesday.
Trump on Sunday continued to show his support for the protesters as he did Saturday in a series of tweets.
Over a week has passed since the US operation that took out Qasem Soleimani, and during that time the media -- both social and mainstream -- has featured opinions, both pro and con, as to how to interpret what happened.
Those who think Trump deserves a medal, or at least another 4 years in office, see the operation as a major success in the fight against terrorism in general and against Iran in particular.
o Hamza bin Laden, the son of Osama, who had been taking a more prominent role in al-Qaeda, but may have been killed any time in the last 2 years o Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS o Abu Hassan al-Muhajir, the likely successor to al-Baghdadi o Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the leader of Kataeb Hezbollah or the Popular Mobilization Forces, which was responsible for the attack that killed an American contractor, leading to the storming of the US embassy and the US operation that took out both Soleimani and al-Muhandis in the same strike.
I'm inclined to think it's a less important event than most people. In the first place, Soleimani was an operative, not a decision-maker; he carried out instructions, he didn't develop those instructions. He was clearly very competent at it, but operators are not that difficult to find. And there have been prior cases where an operator has been taken out, and then someone else replaces him and is about as good, or maybe even better. So, I don't think the killing has enormous consequences for Iranian capabilities.
...It makes sense strategically if it's followed up. If it's a one-time thing, it doesn't make much difference. But if it is followed up, this means that after 40 years of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the U.S. government has finally decided to respond to its aggression not just economically, but militarily: to Iran's building nuclear weapons, to its jihad, to its more or less taking over four countries – Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq – and to its ideological aggression. If this means a such a profound change, then yes, it's big. But if it's a one-time killing of an operative, no, it's not very significant.
But let's evaluate Trump's decision to kill Soleimani in the context of past presidents and the measures they took -- or didn't take -- in response to terrorist attacks against US citizens.
In September 2004, Norman Podhoretz, form editor-in-chief of Commentary Magazine, wrote World War IV: How It Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to Win. In comparison with World War I and World War II, Podhoretz sees the Cold War as World War III and the threat subsequent to 9/11 as World War IV.
He writes that starting with Richard Nixon back in 1970 and continuing with Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and up to "the pre-9/11 George W. Bush" -- US did not respond to terrorist attacks. For example, during both the Nixon and Ford administrations, from 1970 to 1975, several US diplomats were murdered in Sudan and Lebanon and others were kidnapped, all by factions of the PLO.
And there were no reprisals.
We know what happened to US citizens in Iran in 1979 during the Carter administration.
We also know that just hours after Reagan became president in 1981, Iran released the hostages, apparently out of fear of what the hawkish Republican president might do.
But neither Iran's supposed fear nor Reagan's hawkishness lasted for long, according to Podhoretz's list of US appeasement under Reagan, where there was no retaliation for terrorist attacks:
o In April 1983, Hezbollah exploded a truck in front of the American embassy in Beirut, Lebanon --killing 63 employees, including the Middle East CIA director. 120 were wounded.
o In October 1983, a Hezbollah suicide bomber blew up an American barracks in the Beirut airport, killing 241 U.S. Marines in their sleep and wounding another 81. This time, Reagan approved plans for retaliation, but Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger convinced him to cancel it because it might damage US relations with the Arab world. Soon after, Reagan pulled the Marines out of Lebanon.
o In December of that year, the American embassy in Kuwait was bombed.
o In March 1984, the CIA station chief in Lebanon, William Buckley, was kidnapped by Hizbullah and then murdered.
o Buckley was the fourth American to be kidnapped in Beirut, and many more suffered the same fate between 1982 and 1992 (though not all died or were killed in captivity).
o In September 1984, the U.S. embassy annex near Beirut was hit by yet another truck bomb, also traced to Hezbollah. In this case, Reagan did approve covert proxy retaliations by Lebanese intelligence agents, but then pulled the plug when one operation failed to get its main target and unintentionally killed 80 other people.
o In December 1984, a Kuwaiti airliner was hijacked and two American passengers employed by the U.S. Agency for International Development were murdered.
o In June 1985, Hezbollah operatives hijacked still another airliner, TWA flight 847. An American naval officer aboard the plane was shot, and his body was hurled onto the tarmac.
o In October 1985, an Italian cruise ship, the Achille Lauro, was hijacked by a group under the leadership of the PLO's Abu Abbas, with the support of Libya. An elderly wheelchair-bound American passenger, Leon Klinghoffer, was thrown overboard. Klinghoffer's murderer was apprehended and sent to prison in Italy, but the Italian authorities let Abu Abbas go. The US protested the release of Abu Abbas, but Italy let him go anyway.
o In December 1985, Rome and Vienna airports were bombed and 20 people were killed, including 5 Americans. In April 1986 a discotheque in West Berlin frequented by American servicemen was bombed. In this case, when US intelligence tied Libya to both bombings, an American air attack in retaliation hit one of Qaddafi's residences -- and in retaliation, Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal executed 3 US citizens who worked at the American University in Beirut.
Not exactly the kind of record we would have expected of Reagan, whose promise to restore US pride was one of the reasons for his landslide victory over Carter.
In 1987, President Reagan ordered the reflagging of Kuwaiti tankers. Shortly after, the SS Bridgeton, a reflagged tanker, struck an Iranian mine. Mir-Hossein Mousavi, today considered a reformist leader, commented it was “an irreparable blow on America's political and military prestige.” Iranian blustered increased until, the following year, President Ronald Reagan ordered Operating Praying Mantis after the Samuel B. Roberts struck a mine. That skirmish escalated into one of the largest surface naval engagements since World War II and led to the decimation of the Iranian Navy and Air Force. Iranian leaders blustered then as now, but refrained from attacking the United States directly for years after until the generation of military officials who experienced that day slowly rose through the rank and retired.
An aerial view of the Iranian frigate IS Sahand burning on 18 April 1988
after being attacked by aircraft of U.S. Navy. Public Domain
The Washington Post at the time reported US Sinks or Cripples 6 Iranian Ships in Gulf Battles, describing it as "the sharpest hostilities between the United States and Iran since the fall of the shah in 1979":
The United States sank or crippled six Iranian ships and fired at Iranian warplanes yesterday during a daylong series of fierce sea and air battles that erupted across the Persian Gulf after the U.S. Navy destroyed two oil platforms in a retaliatory strike ordered by President Reagan.
...U.S. estimates of Iranian ship losses as of last night were one Combattante II high-speed missile boat sunk; one Boghammar patrol boat sunk and two others believed crippled, and two Vosper Mark 5 frigates severely damaged, if not sunk.
President Reagan said, "We aim to deter further Iranian aggression, not provoke it. They must know that we will protect our ships, and if they threaten us, they'll pay a price." There was wide bipartisan approval in Congress of the president's action. [emphasis added]
And the fight between the US and Iran did not end there.
Both sides appeared before the International Court of Justice, where both the US and Iran argued that the other was in violation of the 1955 Treaty of Amity between the 2 countries.
For all the strength embodied in these 2 measures during the last years of the Reagan administration, they are still not typical of the US response to Iran, let alone to terrorist attacks against Americans.
Taking out ships and oil platforms is not the same as taking out terrorists that murder your citizens. Then again, today, Iran's ambitions in the Middle East -- and beyond -- has grown in proportion to its growing number of proxies.
Iranian-backed terror isn’t a stubborn, unchanging fact of the international landscape, except to the degree that we made it so. The policy of appeasement that began in 1979, with the embassy takeover, culminated in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) when the Obama administration flooded Soleimani’s war chests with hundreds of billions of dollars and legitimized Iran’s “right” to a large-scale nuclear weapons program. In line with the decadeslong U.S. policy of augmenting the Iranian threat in order to avoid taking action against it, Obama said the only alternative to giving Iran the bomb was war.
And to the extent that he broke the rules whether in moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem or recognizing the legality of Israeli settlements -- Trump is the bull in the china shop that is the Middle East when it comes to Iran:
It was perhaps to be expected that an outsider who often doesn’t know when to keep quiet, and can’t stay off Twitter, would be the one to sing out like the boy in the fairy tale. It’s true, the emperor has no clothes.
Like Reagan, Trump too has seemed been reluctant to get too heavily entangled in Middle East power struggles. But now that he has actually drawn that red line, will he, like Reagan, be willing -- and able -- to maintain it?
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On Saturday, President Trump tweeted a message in support of the Iranian people - in Persian.
به مردم شجاع و رنج کشیده ایران: من از ابتدای دوره ریاست جمهوریم با شما ایستادهام و دولت من همچنان با شما خواهد ایستاد. ما اعتراضات شما را از نزدیک دنبال می کنیم. شجاعت شما الهام بخش است.
This tweet has so far gathered over 365,000 "Likes," making it - by far - the most liked tweet ever written in Farsi.
The importance of the President supporting the protesters in Iran cannot be underestimated. During the Obama administration, Iranian protesters received essentially no moral support from the US and were crushed. Now the president of the United States is quite publicly supporting them.
So it is no wonder that Iran is very upset at this tweet.
Iran has called President Donald Trump's bluff on expressing support for Iranian protesters in Farsi just after he threatened to attack their cultural heritage, asking the US president not to defile the Persian language.
"Hands and tongues smeared with threatening, sanctioning and terrorizing the #Iranian nation, are not entitled to dishonor the ancient #Persian_language,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi tweeted late Sunday.
Hands and tongues smeared with threatening, sanctioning and terrorizing the #Iranian nation, are not entitled to dishonor the ancient #Persian_language.
By the way, are you actually "standing by" millions of Iranians whose hero you just assassinated or "standing against" them?! https://t.co/sfmT0qLXJqpic.twitter.com/6IwJL1uYUh
Trump's tweet came after dozens of people protested outside a university in downtown Tehran to denounce officials' belated confirmation of a Ukrainian passenger plane unintentionally downed outside the Iranian capital.
It was a few more than "dozens."
And as was widely reported, the protesters avoided stepping on the flags of the US and Israel:
Except for a few, who were yelled at with the same word in the video above, "Besharaf" - "Shameful!"
Students in Tehran University take pains to avoid walking on the flags of U.S. & Israel—as the regime forces people to do—and when two Basiji regime agents then make a point of trampling the flags, the crowds shout "Besharaf!" #بیشرف — the regime is shameless, dishonorable. pic.twitter.com/BLr5QKztr8
Psychologically, this is a heavy blow to Iran's leaders. It has raised its youth for over 40 years to hate Israel and the US, and here these same youth are saying that they prefer those two nations to Iran.
The PressTV article goes on to justify their arrest of the UK ambassador:
Meanwhile, the Iranian media is abuzz with reports of British Ambassador Rob Macaire monitoring the protest from a safe distance.
Macaire was briefly arrested by security forces over his presence at the site of a protest.
He later acknowledged his brief detention in Twitter messages posted in Farsi, but denied that he had taken part in demonstrations.
"Can confirm I wasn't taking part in any demonstrations! Went to an event advertised as a vigil for victims of #PS752 tragedy," he wrote, adding that he left the site immediately after a number of people started chanting slogans, but was arrested half an hour later.
The following is footage released by Iranian police of the UK envoy's presence at the protest site:
The Foreign Ministry said it had summoned the British ambassador to protest his unconventional behavior and participation at an illegal rally, and to remind him that such conduct on the part of a foreign ambassador runs counter to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961.
Which is very funny because the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations explicitly says that diplomats have immunity from arrest in their host country. It is Iran that broke the protocol.
Iran tried to organize a "Death to UK" protest outside the British embassy in response, and it saw more police in attendance than the few dozen unenthusiastic protesters.
Iranian propagandists are spinning as much as they can, but their lies are obvious - especially to Iranians themselves.
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Jordanian media report that the head of the Palestinian Parliamentary Committee in the Jordanian parliament, Yahya Al-Saud, announced "that the right of return is sacred and cannot be forfeited by statute of limitations or through agreements concluded with the Israeli enemy."
He called for a campaign to collect one million signatures refusing to drop the "right of return."
Now imagine how this news is received by Jordanians, both those of Palestinian descent and those who aren't. A committee in their own parliament is saying that Palestinians are not true Jordanians, but different second-class citizens who is expected to "return" to Palestine as soon as Israel can be pressured to admit them.
How can Palestinians build their lives in Jordan when they are constantly reminded by their own rulers - and even the political opportunists who are of Palestinian descent themselves - that they are not real Jordanians. That the only "right" Jordan supports for them is their right - to leave Jordan.
Combine this with the history of Jordan taking away citizenship of thousands of Palestinians against their will, and you can see that the supposed Arab love of Palestinians is really a giant excuse to get rid of them.
For their own good, of course.
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Trebek never figured to be at the center of controversy. Generations grew up with him. He’s been a comforting presence; the older brother always there with a pat on the back.
He may well be the most trusted, and the most beloved public personality in America. All that, through some 36 years on the job. That’s something.
He is originally from Canada. Maybe that explains it; they turn them out polite and non-confrontational over there, eh?
Alas, his term may be coming to an end, due to poor health.
We will assume that his legacy won’t be touched by the current tempest, and that the show itself will move forward intact, since, as we noted, from March 30, 1964.
Well now, that makes Jeopardy older and more “ancient” than the “Palestinians” – doesn’t it.
They were designated as a “people” for the first time, by the Arab League, June 2, 1964, when the League approved the PLO, and an Egyptian, Arafat, as its leader.
Before that, before 1948, the Palestinians were the Jews living there, including the Jewish leadership, and that means David Ben-Gurion as well, as all the records will show, from The New York Times to the BBC. We can understand the current “Palestinians” trying so hard to concoct for themselves a history and a heritage, because they have neither.
In an earlier column, we presented the case for the Beatles, how even they preceded today’s “Palestinians” as a “people” on the world stage.
That was Feb. 7, 1964, on Ed Sullivan’s Toast of the Town.
Other than all that, it is good to know that terrorist/Jihadist leaders are watching Jeopardy. Very good. Might learn something.
The word “colonialism” brings to mind many things. Most notably, it is a term associated with European imperialist adventures in the “New World” and all of the attendant horrors that followed. It invokes, in specie, mental images of white-European settlers, armed with Bibles and bayonets, dominating “less advanced” (and typically non-white) indigenous populations, leading to some of the worst human rights atrocities in history – the massacre at Wounded Knee, the African slave trade, the racial segregation policies of South Africa, the reservation schools, and the extirpation of countless native cultures throughout the world.
And since nearly all of these and other more infamous examples of colonialism were specifically white-European, the concept itself has come to be seen as coterminous with white supremacism. In other words, it is perceived as an exclusively European vice, whereas the colonial histories of non-white nations are (in almost all cases) ignored or summarily dismissed. It is under this rubric, and in conjunction with the postmodern progressive fixation on racial justice (and the very recent re-formulation of Ashkenazi Jews as “white-European”), that Zionism has been cast as a “colonial” movement, while the ongoing Arab effort to reverse the gains made by the indigenous Jewish people in 1948 is championed as “anti-colonialism”. Many have even gone as far as to describe Israel as the “last remaining settler colony in existence”.
Zionism, however, is not colonialism, but the polar opposite thereof. To understand why this is so, it is important to clearly define both of these concepts.
Colonialism is, at a baseline level, the practice of expropriating foreign territory and incorporating it into a metropole, or “mother country” (e.g. the British Crown). This process typically entails occupying these new lands with settlers, suppressing local indigenous populations, and enforcing the tongue, culture, and lifestyle of the metropole on the aforementioned indigenous inhabitants. It is, to quote Wikipedia (which I am loathe to do), the relationship of domination of an indigenous population by foreign invaders, with the latter ruling in pursuit of their own interests.
It can also, in a more rudimentary sense, mean “building a town or a city”. That is how Ze’ev Jabotinsky used it in his famous Iron Wall essay, which anti-Zionists were quick to pounce upon. But for the purpose of this article, I will use it in the former sense.
PALESTINE POSTS: AN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT OF THE BIRTH OF ISRAEL By Daniel S. Chertoff is an amazing book. Chertoff found a collection of his father's correspondence written between 1947-1949 when Mordecai S. Chertoff (his father) was here witnessing the end of the British Mandate and the beginning of the State of Israel.
Mordecai Chertoff came to "Palestine" officially to study in Hebrew University but was quickly drafted to the staff of the English newspaper, The Palestine Post, now called The Jerusalem Post. In addition, he joined the Haganah, and later after the establishment of the State of Israel, he became a citizen and was subsequently drafted into the IDF.
The letters Daniel found were from his father to the family in America and letters sent to him from them. Besides the correspondence, Daniel had an incomplete memoir of the time, his father had once started writing. Besides all that, there are many of the articles Mordecai had written for the Post and other publications. Daniel's job was to weave these all together along with a historical narrative informative enough for those less knowledgeable to follow and not too simplistic for those who already know the history. He did a very good job. I can recommend the book to all.
I had a personal need to read the book very carefully. My Uncle Izzy, Israel Shanks "Red" Shankman, was also here in Palestine-Israel at the time. He was in the Palyam, the naval branch of the Palmach as high level crew, medic plus, on some of the ships that defied the British in an attempt to bring Jewish immigrants to safety. It's very possible that they had been acquainted, though my uncle isn't mentioned. My uncle also left Israel for New York, around the same time.
Mordecai's letters are invaluable in describing what life was like in Jerusalem during the long, difficult siege. There was rationing, since water and food were almost impossible to find. The only road Jews could take to Jerusalem, for deliveries of all sorts, went through enemy Arab territory. Attacks were frequent. It's amazing that people survived on such small quantities, but they did.
James Stavridis, the retired U.S. Navy admiral and former supreme allied commander of NATO, wrote an op-ed that was published in various newspapers over this past week:
This tactical success is not matched by an articulated strategic approach from the administration of President Donald Trump. Think of chess, a game the Persians refined: Trump has taken one of the opponent's most powerful pieces off the board. Good. Yet there's no reason to think he has a plan to ultimately defeat a clever opponent who still has many capable moves available.
And perhaps most concerningly, there are an increasing number of unintended consequences beginning to emerge -- several of which could have a disproportionate impact on global events. The effects of Soleimani's death will ripple from Baghdad to Tel Aviv to Nairobi to South America.
I agree that there should be a strategy and that there are always unintended consequences for any action. I disagree that the unintended consequences only happen when there is not a sound strategy - they happen all the time.
Stavridis' examples, though, seem a bit half-baked themselves.
Let's start with Venezuela. Over the past couple of days, there has been an apparent inflection point as the corrupt regime of Nicolas Maduro has attempted to unseat the legally elected leader of the National Assembly, Juan Guaido. Maduro has used the typical heavy-handed techniques, including physically blocking Guaido and other anti-regime elected officials from the assembly, while supporting a regime puppet to lead it. Why is Maduro suddenly emboldened? In part, no doubt, because he knows the U.S. administration is focused on Iran, not watching events in Latin America closely. Unintended consequence.
Are the US foreign and defense establishments really so incompetent that they are "focused" on only one area of the world and helpless in all others? If that is the case, this isn't a case of unintended consequences - it is a case of the US being unable to walk and chew gum at the same time. Whether this was part of Maduro's calculus has nothing to do with whether the US can handle it.
How about East Africa? On Sunday morning, three Americans were killed in Kenya, the latest of a string of attacks against U.S. interests by the terrorist group al-Shabab. Members of the group, which is associated with al-Qaeda, stormed an air base shared by U.S. troops and Kenyan forces and damaged American aircraft in addition to killing one U.S. service member and two civilian contractors. Al-Shabab watches CNN like every other terrorist group, and is well aware that the "unblinking eye" of U.S. intelligence collection has shifted its gaze to Iran. Unintended consequence.
Interesting theory. Here's another: On December 29, the US struck at Al Shabab terrorists, killing 4, in retaliation for a deadly attack that killed 79 shortly beforehand.
Why does Stavridis assume that this attack had more to do with Soleimani than revenge for the US attack in Somalia? His theory seems like a stretch, to put it mildly.
Then there is Israel, which faces an enormous threat from Iran's Lebanese proxy force, Hezbollah, which has tens of thousands of surface-to-surface missiles directed against America's closest friend in the region. While most Israelis are happy to see Soleimani dead, there is understandable concern about whether Iran will energize the Hezbollah missile force against Israel. The Israelis have many tools at their disposal to degrade that threat, but a massive rocket attack on Israel would change the strategic calculus of the Middle East significantly. Unintended consequence.
If anything, this was an assumed consequence - the very reason why Trump gave Netanyahu a heads up about the strike. Yet this consequence hasn't happened yet, and Lebanese turmoil makes it seem unlikely at this point. Why is something that hasn't happened considered an unintended consequence?
New drama unfolding in the Iraqi parliament will probably lead to the departure of the last 5,000 American troops from that very divided nation. At one time, of course, the U.S. had more than 180,000 troops in Iraq. The final tranche of military ground power is there primarily to destroy the Islamic State, but its secondary purpose is to be helpful in countering the strong Iranian influence in Iraq. One of the principal goals of Iran -- and of Soleimani himself -- was to ensure that the U.S. left the region generally, and especially that it depart Iraq. It will be ironic in the extreme if Soleimani's death ends up ensuring his key goal: the U.S. finally exiting Iraq after so many years and so much blood and treasure lost, squandering its ability to shape events across the Middle East. Unintended consequence.
Again, this does not seem nearly as likely a consequence as Stavridis assumes.
On Iraq's western border, important operations against the Islamic State have been "paused." Why? Because U.S. forces are taking defensive measures to keep people and assets safe against the inevitable Iranian response. This is prudent on the part of the Defense Department, of course, but it gives the terrorists a breather. And make no mistake, the embers of ISIS are still quite capable of flaring back up in both Iraq and Syria. Unintended consequence.
If the hit on Someimani had been part of a brilliant strategic plan, wouldn't this have happened anyway? And, again, nothing has actually happened.
A consequence is something that actually happens as a result of another action, and Stavridis has not shown a single one.
Then the article becomes a bit bizarre:
Based on what information has been made public and my own experience, I support the administration's decision to take out Soleimani.
But the consequences, especially the unintended ones, are going to set back U.S. efforts in the Middle East and around the world. You can't escape the law of history.
If he supports killing Soleimani, then the consequences are by his own definition not as consequential. If he thinks that it is going to set back US interests, then why support the hit?
Beyond that, there is a problem with his basic assumptions. The Obama administration did have a strategy for Iran - a strategy that was terrible, based on wishful thinking and inaccurate assumptions, a strategy that had a direct line to allow Iran to build nuclear weapons, albeit delayed for a few years.
Which means that not all strategies are good.
I have no idea if Trump has a real strategy for Iran, but my guess is that he has the outline of one: pushing for regime change. Soleimani's death fits nicely with that strategy. But no matter how good one's strategy is, you can't guarantee the results you want.
The irony is that the supposed unintended consequences of Trump's moves have not come to fruition. How many times can we say that about well-developed strategies?
This is a truly bizarre op-ed, all the more so because Stavridis always seemed to be a level headed person.
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According to Arabic media, Major General Hussein Salami, the (current) commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, told the Iranian parliament on Sunday that Iran will announce in the coming days a "great victory" over the United States.
Salami said, "In the coming days we will talk about the great victory over the United States," adding, "The Ukrainian plane crash has not yet allowed us to reveal the full dimensions of the victory that we achieved by bombing the two American bases in Iraq."
Will they announce that they killed 800 soldiers instead of 80? Perhaps they destroyed hundreds of fighter jets? Maybe Trump secretly visited and they killed him!
I can't wait to find out what the Iranians can come up with.
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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
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Wednesday, January 15, 2020
