Thursday, July 23, 2015
Elder of ZiyonKasim Hafeez, a British Muslim Zionist, spoke at the Stop Iran Rally in Times Square on Wednesday. Here is his interview with me:
Thursday, July 23, 2015
Thursday, July 23, 2015
Elder of Ziyon
From TOI:
Parchin is a suspected nuclear weapons development center.
In March, 2012, examining Parchin was a high priority for the P5+1:
Then in May 2012, Iran bulldozed part of the Parchin complex...
...and then literally covered over other parts with pink tarp so they could not be seen by satellite.
So Iran is already known to be hiding evidence in Parchin.
And Kerry trusts Iran to take soil samples from a site that we know they want to keep hidden.
This is a slow-motion nightmare.
(h/t Yenta)
John Kerry rebukes fellow Democrat Robert Menendez for revealing what he says is a “classified” clause in the Iran nuclear deal stating that Iran will be the one to provide the UN atomic agency with samples from sites with suspected nuclear activity.HuffPo says that this is from Parchin.
“That is a classified component of this,” Kerry says when the New Jersey senator asks about the section of the deal. Menendez says it is “the equivalent of the fox guarding the chicken coop.”
Parchin is a suspected nuclear weapons development center.
In March, 2012, examining Parchin was a high priority for the P5+1:
Six world powers demanded Iran keep its promise to let international inspectors visit a military installation where the U.N. nuclear watchdog believes explosives tests geared to developing atomic bombs may have taken place.
The joint call was an unusual show of unity among the powers on Iran before a planned revival of high-level talks as well as widening disquiet about the nature of Tehran's nuclear ambitions, with Israel threatening last-ditch military action.
Heaping pressure on Iran to come clean, the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany used a U.N. nuclear watchdog governors' meeting on Thursday to urge Tehran to grant prompt access to its Parchin military facility.
They voiced concern that no deal was reached between Iran and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors at talks in January and February, "including on the access to relevant sites in Iran, requested by the agency ... We urge Iran to fulfil its undertaking to grant access to Parchin."
The message was reinforced by a remarkably blunt statement from IAEA director Yukiya Amano accusing Tehran of seeking to "tie our hands" and restrict inspectors during their last two rounds of meetings.
His deputy Herman Nackaerts told Thursday's closed session of the IAEA board of governors session, according to one participant: "Due to major differences between Iran and the agency, agreement could not be reached."
Nackaerts, the IAEA's chief safeguards inspector, said it had information from satellite pictures showing "the precise location where we believe an explosive chamber is situated".
Then in May 2012, Iran bulldozed part of the Parchin complex...
...and then literally covered over other parts with pink tarp so they could not be seen by satellite.
So Iran is already known to be hiding evidence in Parchin.
And Kerry trusts Iran to take soil samples from a site that we know they want to keep hidden.
This is a slow-motion nightmare.
(h/t Yenta)
From Ian:
J Street Fronts For Obama On The Iranian Deal
J Street Fronts For Obama On The Iranian Deal
New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief and often unrelenting critic of Israel, Jodi Rudoren tweeted the obvious about Israelis reaction to the Obama administration’s deal with Iran, “You know, 2 Jews, 3 opinions. Here you have 8 million Jews and nearly one opinion.”J Street defends Iran deal in full-page NYTimes ad
Israelis understood that their security, if not their existence, was being offered up on a platter of narcissism to promote President Barack Obama’s legacy and Secretary of State John Kerry’s quest for a Nobel Prize that will be as meaningful as the one given to the murderous thug Yasser Arafat.
Israeli Jews are indeed of one pessimistic mind with regard to Obama’s capitulation to Iran. Israeli Jews remember that in the period between the wars, among their European brethren, the pessimists fled to America while the optimists got a free train ride to Auschwitz. Misplaced optimism has its price.
For both Israeli Jews and nearly every major Jewish organization, this is not a time for optimism but a time to petition congress to block Obama’s surrender to the mullahs.
Not so for J Street, the anti-Zionist Zionists that have convinced “useful idiots” in the liberal Jewish community that Obama has effectively blocked Iran from a pathway to the bomb by releasing billions in Iranian funds, ending sanctions, and submitting to every demand the Iranians made with regard to inspections, which will require more notice than the Chicago police once gave Al Capone before a raid.
J Street’s president and founder, Jeremy Ben-Ami once described the organization as Barack Obama’s blocking back. So, it is not surprising that the organization proclaimed that the deal appeared to adhere to the criteria established by non-proliferation experts and it verifiably blocks Iran’s pathway to a nuclear weapon.
As high-stakes lobbying efforts kicked into gear on Capital Hill Thursday, the liberal Jewish American lobby J Street ran a full-page advertisement in The New York Times urging Congress to refrain from “sabotaging” the Iranian nuclear agreement.Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran: The Iran nuclear deal. Good deal or bad deal?
The “pro Israel, pro peace” advocacy group’s ad suggested that the Jewish state will be better off with the pact, and that Tehran will be stripped of its uranium, plutonium and centrifuges and undergo a 24/7 monitoring regime.
The deal “makes the US and Israel safer” and leaves the Islamic Republic with “zero pathways to the bomb,” the ad states, echoing US President Barack Obama.
J Street has found itself on the opposing side of the aisle as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Israeli ambassador to the US, Ron Dermer, try to persuade lawmakers that the nuclear deal with Iran endangers the Jewish state.
- Thursday, July 23, 2015
- Elder of Ziyon
I interviewed Caroline Glick at the Stop Iran rally right after her passionate speech against the Iran deal.
Here is her speech at the rally:
Unfortunately, when I introduced myself she mentioned that I "panned" her book. (My review wasn't exactly a pan, but I was honest about its flaws. As with Michael Oren's book, it is a worthwhile read but I had higher expectations because of my admiration for the author.)
Here is her speech at the rally:
Unfortunately, when I introduced myself she mentioned that I "panned" her book. (My review wasn't exactly a pan, but I was honest about its flaws. As with Michael Oren's book, it is a worthwhile read but I had higher expectations because of my admiration for the author.)
- Thursday, July 23, 2015
- Elder of Ziyon
media bias, NYT
It includes a lie and a libel.
The lie:
From 1910 to 2010, the number of Christians in the Middle East — in countries like Egypt, Israel, Palestine and Jordan — continued to decline.The number of Christians in Israel in 1948 was about 34,000. The number today is about 161,000. The percentage has gone down but the actual numbers have gone way up.
The libel:
Eshoo, the Democratic congresswoman, is working to establish priority refugee status for minorities who want to leave Iraq. ‘‘It’s a hair ball,’’ she says. ‘‘The average time for admittance to the United States is more than 16 months, and that’s too long. Many will die.’’ But it can be difficult to rally widespread support. The Middle East’s Christians often favor Palestine over Israel. And because support of Israel is central to the Christian Right — Israel must be occupied by the Jews before Jesus can return — this stance distances Eastern Christians from a powerful lobby that might otherwise champion their cause.
The NYT is insulting all Christian Zionists, claiming that they don't want to save the lives of Middle Eastern Christians because the persecuted are not pro-Israel. This is condescending, libelous - and wrong.
In fact, evangelical Christians have been working hard to help their Christian brethren in Iraq and Syria - and they have been stymied by the lack of coverage of their plight in, you guessed it, the New York Times.
The good news is that we seem to have learned from our mistakes.
One example is the outpouring of concern over the persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt. People who, a decade or so ago, may not have been familiar with the word “Copt” and unaware of Christianity’s long history in Egypt were expressing their solidarity with this ancient community.
This identification with ancient Christian communities has really taken off in the debate over intervention in Syria. As my good friend Rod Dreher has pointed out, “Somehow, the word is getting out to American Christians that they — we — have a particular stake in Syria, in that our brothers and sisters in the faith are facing mass murder and exile.”
Dreher notes that Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission has come out against U.S. intervention, specifically over concerns of the impact on Syrian Christians. Even more exciting is the fact that 62 percent of evangelical pastors polled by the National Association of Evangelicals oppose intervention. They fear that our involvement could make matters worse.
Evangelical voices have joined those of the Pope and Orthodox bishops in calling our attention to the plight of our Syrian brethren. It took a while, but we’ve finally realized that they are us.
That’s especially important because the mainstream media is doing a terrible job of telling Americans about the possible impact of U.S. intervention on Syrian Christians. As Rod pointed out, the day after Pope Francis addressed a crowd of 100,000 people during a day of fasting and prayer for Syria, the New York Times said nothing about the event. Nor have they mentioned the groundswell of American Christian opposition to intervention.
A similar pattern holds true in the rest of the media. We’re told a great deal about the push for congressional approval and the reasons for intervention. We’re even told that Americans oppose said intervention. But we rarely are told why many Americans oppose this intervention or even of the possible effects on Syrian Christians.
Thankfully, this time American Christians are listening and speaking out. Thankfully, we understand that these are our people — our brothers and sisters in Christ.
(h/t EBoZ)
UPDATE: I originally misstated the number of Christians in 1948 and today lower by a factor of about 4, it is corrected now. (h/t David B)
- Thursday, July 23, 2015
- Elder of Ziyon
- Vic Rosenthal
Vic Rosenthal's weekly column:
In Michael Oren’s new book, Ally, (which I like quite a lot), he expresses a sentiment that is often heard in Israeli discourse:
If the First Intifada was not sufficiently convincing, the Second thoroughly persuaded me that Israel had to change the status quo in the territories. Yes, these were our tribal lands. The Bible speaks of the West Bank cities Bethlehem, Shiloh, and Hebron, not of Tel Aviv or Haifa. And many of the settlements helped thicken our pre-1967 lines, which were as narrow as nine miles across. But Israel had to weigh its historic rights and security needs against [a] the moral and political costs of dominating another people. It had to reconcile its real fears of the West Bank becoming a terrorist haven similar to South Lebanon, with [b] its need to preserve its right to defend itself and its international legitimacy as a sovereign Jewish state. [p. 36, my emphasis]
I don’t reproduce this to criticize Oren in particular. It is a view that many Israelis share, and Oren has earned his right to think and say what he wants about his country, both as a public servant and as a combat soldier. But I think if we look at precisely what this statement means, we can see that it is wrong, even self-contradictory.
What he says is that Judea and Samaria are our historic homeland, we have a right under international law to be there, and withdrawal would seriously impact our security. But he adds that a) the continued conflict with the Arabs there damages us morally, and b) the international community will take away our sovereign rights if we don’t make them happy.
What’s wrong with this position is that places the burden for the immoral, even evil, behavior of the non-Jewish Nations on the backs of the Jewish people. It requires us to compromise our historic and legal rights, and even our existence, because the Arabs and the US/UN/EU are antisemitic. It implies that Arab and Western Jew-hatred is our problem, not theirs.
Arabs in Palestine lived for 400 years under the domination of the Ottoman Empire. Nationalist sentiments didn’t arise among them until the early 20thcentury when they began to consider the possibility of eventual Jewish sovereignty. The ‘Palestinian’ Mufti worked closely with Hitler, and today’s Palestinian Authority doesn’t hide its Jew-hatred. The murderous actions of the PLO and other terrorist organizations are intended to drive Jews out of the land that the Arabs believe is only for them.
So why should we think our security measures and our communities across the Green Line are morally and politically damaging? Why would it damage us to resist the murderous hatred expressed by these Arabs, who for racist reasons don’t want us to be here? Where does the sense of guilt for taking the actions needed to protect ourselves come from?
The answer is that it all comes from believing and internalizing the myth that the Zionists ‘stole’ the land from ‘indigenous’ Arabs. But in truth we are indigenous and they are trying to steal our land! Oren the historian understands this, and despite knowing better, falls into the trap of feeling guilty for ‘the occupation’. But as Naftali Bennett correctly said, you can’t occupy yourself.
How about our “international legitimacy?” Here the argument is that we need to behave toward the Arabs the way those great moral exemplars in London, Brussels or Washington tell us we must, or they will decide that we do not deserve to have a sovereign state here (but the Arabs do!). They will kick us out of international organizations, boycott and sanction us, help our enemies, etc.
What do they, those upon whose exploitative empire the sun never set and those who built the greatest economic power on earth on the backs of black slaves, want from us?
They tell us now that they would be happy with expelling a few hundred thousand Jews from their homes – remember, this is in order to enable Arabs to achieve their racist goal of a Jew-free state – placing the holiest sites of Judaism in the hands of those that would desecrate and destroy them, and returning us to the indefensible borders that they themselves admitted were unreasonable in UNSCR 242, back in 1967.
This would be enough to destroy our state. But they are lying. They want more. Read their newspapers and the position papers of their NGOs, listen to the debates in their parliaments, look at social media, and you will know that the world has moved on. They believe the Zionist state by its very definition oppresses Arabs that live under its control, even if they are citizens that can vote. The ‘modern’ point of view is that nationalism is unacceptable, although nobody seems to care unless it is Jewish nationalism. They see the creation of a Jewish state on a Zionist foundation as immoral, an ‘original sin’ that has to be undone.
Jewish self-defense is claimed to be ‘disproportionate’ unless as many Jews die as Arabs. No other nation or army has ever been held to such a standard. Just as Shari’a forbids a Jew to kill a Muslim for any reason, so does the UN. Amnesty International and the UN ‘Human Rights’ Commission make up facts and international law as necessary to prove us guilty of war crimes. “Israel has a right to self defense,” as President Obama said – in principle, but not in practice.
What would happen if we did everything necessary to please the ‘international community’? We would end up with our social fabric destroyed, living within indefensible borders, surrounded by enemies armed to the teeth, with terrorist missile launchers next door to our airport and big cities, forbidden to fight back. And then they would come up with something else that we need to do in order to be acceptable world citizens.
We can never do enough, short of cutting our own throats. Rather than try to appease the unappeasable, we should prepare to combat the negative effects of the expected economic and social pressure that will be exerted against us. We should develop economic and security relationships in other directions (e.g., India) and become less dependent on the US and the EU.
The reality is that they don’t want there to be a Jewish state. If they were honest they would admit that. They don’t care about the ‘Palestinians’, any more than they care about the Ukrainians, Syrians, Kurds, Copts, Yazidis or any number of black peoples in Africa that are getting the short end of the stick these days. It’s us that they are concerned about.
We can’t win against this stacked deck. Far better to stop playing, tell the ‘community’ to drop dead – and defend ourselves as ‘disproportionately’ as possible.
From Ian:
Israeli Leftist Nukes Iran Deal
Israeli Leftist Nukes Iran Deal
Journalist Ari Shavit is one of Israel’s most celebrated left-wing voices. He is celebrated in the United States as a voice for political change in Israel and an advocate for concessions to the Palestinians. His recent memoir, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, was fêted by the literary elite.Michael Oren: What a Good Iran Deal Would Look Like
Yet Shavit is shocked by the Iran deal–what he calls a “horror story.” In a brilliant but grim op-ed in Israel’s left-wing Ha’aretz, Shavit does a better job than virtually anyone else in summarizing exactly what is wrong with the disastrous Iran deal.
First, it removes sanctions and does not provide adequate monitoring:
The Iranian negotiating team succeeded in destroying completely the sanctions mechanism that had been activated against Iran. It also managed to prevent real, effective supervision of secret, unknown nuclear sites….The chance of its getting caught is low and the chance of reactivating the sanctions is slim. So the decision of whether to race or not to race toward the bomb in a new secret track will be very much up to Iran.
Second, Shavit writes,
…the international community commits to upgrading Iran’s nuclear capacity, which it will activate in due course: …the international community is not only enabling, but actually ensuring the establishment of a new Iranian nuclear program, which will be immeasurably more powerful and dangerous than its predecessor. In fact the Iranians are giving up an outdated, anachronistic deployment in order to build an innovative legitimate one, with the world’s permission and authority. “The joint comprehensive plan of action” will lead to Iran becoming in 2025 a muscular nuclear tiger ready to spring forward, with an ability to produce dozens of nuclear bombs.
Essentially, Shavit says, the world gave in:
The fact is that in each chapter Iran’s dignity is preserved, but the U.S. and Europe’s isn’t. The fact is that the Iranian Islamic Consultative Assembly, or Majlis, has a much higher status in the agreement than the American Congress. The fact is that Iran is unrepentant, does not promise a change of course and takes an almost supercilious attitude toward the other parties. As though it had been a campaign between Iran and the West, and Iran won and is now dictating the surrender terms to the West.
Could a better deal have been achieved? The answer — emphatically — is yes.Iran’s Win-Win…Win Win Win Nuke Deal
The biting sanctions enacted by Congress, and approved by President Barack Obama, halted the Iranian nuclear program. They also forced the Iranians to the negotiating table where they would have remained and made far-reaching concessions were the sanctions intensified or at least sustained.
These sanctions presented Tehran’s international customers with a choice: Either do business with Iran or with the United States. Russia, China and others might have protested continuing sanctions on Iran but, in the end, it is highly unlikely that they would have forfeited access to America’s $17 trillion economy to cut oil deals with Iran.
The Iranian military, with its mostly 1970s-vintage weaponry, posed no serious threat to the world’s largest and most sophisticated armed forces. A combination of robust sanctions and a credible military threat by the United States would have compelled the Iranians to make more far-reaching and substantive concessions than the few largely symbolic gestures contained in this deal.
These were the terms that Israel sought and communicated to American decision makers. We have the greatest interest in reaching a good diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear threat, and the most to lose from either a bad deal or a resort to force. After all, in any confrontation with Iran, Hezbollah and other proxies are poised to fire thousands of rockets at our homes.
Israel would have embraced an agreement that significantly rolled back the number of centrifuges and nuclear facilities in Iran and that linked any sanctions relief to demonstrable changes in its behavior. No more state support of terror, no more threatening America’s Middle Eastern allies, no more pledges to destroy the world’s only Jewish state and no more mass chants of “Death to America.” Israel would have welcomed any arrangement that monitored Iran’s ICBMs and other offensive weaponry. Such a deal, Israeli leaders across the political spectrum agree, was and remains attainable.
The alternative to this deal is not, as its supporters insist, war, but a better deal. Indeed, the present agreement will likely escalate, rather than avert, conflict. Already Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has pledged to continue Iran’s armed struggle against the United States. Iran Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan has sworn to prevent inspections of suspect Iranian nuclear sites. Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, the only Arab leader to celebrate the deal, can continue to butcher his own civilian population with impunity.
Why would the mullahs cheat on a deal as good for them as this one?Nuclear Creepout: Iran's Third Path to the Bomb
The Obama administration sent the Iran Nuclear Deal to Congress on Sunday, and on Monday the 60-day clock starts ticking for a largely hostile Capitol Hill to review all the elements, unclassified and classified. The big question, of course, is whether and how the Iranians can be kept from cheating.
The administration has gone to great lengths to ensure there are all sorts of technical bells and whistles. But President Barack Obama can’t use the most obvious and compelling argument in his arsenal. Simply put, this is one terrific agreement for Tehran. And Iran is likely to have no interest in violating it. Here’s why.
Money for Nothing: It’s the cruelest of ironies that Iran is reaping huge rewards for giving up something it wasn’t supposed to be doing in the first place. Iran has accepted constraints on a nuclear program that over the past 10 years illegally and illicitly produced fissile material for a possible nuclear weapon and engaged at secret sites in what the IAEA has described as possible military dimensions of a nuclear program. In exchange for accepting constraints on this nuclear enterprise, Iran will receive billions in unfrozen oil revenues, begin to ramp up oil production and over time attract foreign investment likely to attract billions more.
Legitimacy for its Nuclear Program: Having stood in violation of at least six UN Security Council resolutions over the past decade, it’s a testament to the skills of Iranian negotiators that the agreement they produced wasn’t about ending the Iranian nuclear program but restricting it. And these restrictions aren’t permanent.
Though much ink has been spilled about whether these two "paths" to the bomb have been blocked, both presuppose a decision by Iran to sacrifice its reconciliation with the world in the next ten to fifteen years for the immediate gratification of building a weapon (the purpose of a covert breakout is less to avoid detection before crossing the finish line than to make the process less vulnerable to decisive disruption).
Such an abrupt change of heart by the Iranian regime is certainly possible, but more worrisome is the prospect that Iran's nuclear policy after the agreement goes into effect will be much the same as it was before—comply with the letter and spirit of its obligations only to the degree necessary to ward off unacceptably costly consequences. This will likely take the form of what I call nuclear creepout—activities, both open and covert, legal and illicit, designed to negate JCPOA restrictions without triggering costly multilateral reprisals.
It is important to bear in mind that the JCPOA bars signatories from re-imposing any sanctions or their equivalents on Iran, except by way of a United Nations Security Council resolution restoring sanctions. "That means there will be no punishments for anything less than a capital crime," explains Robert Satloff. The language demanded by Iranian negotiators, and accepted by the Obama administration, makes small-scale cheating virtually unpunishable.
Moreover, the specific terms of the JCPOA appear to have been designed to give the Iranians wide latitude to interpret their own obligations. Two, in particular, should raise eyebrows.
- Thursday, July 23, 2015
- Elder of Ziyon
This conference was already planned well before the Iran deal.
The domain was registered in April.
300 business people have registered, and Salzburg.com adds:
(h/t Dian)
The domain was registered in April.
300 business people have registered, and Salzburg.com adds:
Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz said on Thursday morning to the APA and the "Wiener Zeitung" that the agreement is a "chance for the Austrian economy and intensification of relations" with Iran. "We have traditionally good relations with Iran and if the deal is implemented and the sanctions are lifted, it will help Austrian companies a variety of ways," said Kurz, who wants to travel in September together with Federal President Heinz Fischer and a large trade delegation to Tehran.There is so much pent-up demand from the EU to sell to Iran that the idea of "snapback sanctions" is nothing but a joke.
At around 400 million euros, exports from Austria amounted to Iran in 2004. Ten years later, they are only at 232 million euros. We are now ready to again significantly increase the volume of trade between Austria and Iran and to achieve the a billion euros, said the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber.
(h/t Dian)
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