Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Yes, "journalist" Omar Nazzal works for the PFLP

The IFJ condemned the arrest yesterday of Palestinian journalist Omar Nazzal, member of the board of IFJ affiliate, the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, while he crossed the al-Karameh border.

According to the PJS his mobile was confiscated and he was allowed one call to his wife which he told her he was taken to the Etzion interrogation center.

Nazzal was on his way to Sarajevo, Bosnia Herzegovina, to attend the General Meeting of the European Federation of Journalists taking place on 25-26 April as part a PJS delegation invited to participate.

IFJ president Jim Boumelha will be writing to Israel Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu to demand that Nazzal is released forthwith and allowed to travel to Sarajevo to attend this general meeting.

“It was shocking to hear that a participant to a congress for journalists from all over Europe has been arrested by the Israeli authorities on his way to attend and banged in Etzion prison without any reason being given,” said Boumelha. “The 100 delegates representing over 320,000 journalists in 51 unions from all over Europe will be demanding that their colleague is released forthwith.”

From Times of Israel:

Israel’s Shin Bet security service on Monday accused a Palestinian journalist arrested this past weekend of belonging to a “terror group” after colleagues called for international support for his release.

Omar Nazzal, a member of the general secretariat of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS), was detained by Israeli officials on Saturday at the border between the West Bank and Jordan.

He was seeking to travel to a meeting of the European Federation of Journalists in Bosnia.

The Shin Bet said in response to an AFP query that he had been recently appointed a director of Palestine Today, a TV channel it declared illegal in February, and was active in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — a group Israel considers a terror organization.

“Omar has for years been known to be a Popular Front activist: he was arrested now because of his involvement in current Popular Front activities,” Shin Bet said in a written reply.

It said he was not detained because of his journalism but over “his involvement in terror group activities”.

Of course, the Shin Bet is right - Nazzal is a PFLP operative who uses his supposed journalism credentials to promote terror.

He has written several articles for the official PFLP website.

One has to wonder why the International Federation of Journalists are more upset over the arrest of a member of a terror group who masquerades as a journalist in order to travel to Europe than they are over the fact that terrorists cynically endanger all journalists by using them as cover.

Oh, and while the Times of Israel doesn't mention it, Palestine Today is an Islamic Jihad media organization, one that they proudly use as part of their "media war" division.

The IFJ should be condemning the clear violation of their ethics by so-called "journalists" who use that title as cover for their political and terror-supporting activities. But obviously ethics is something for them to accuse others of violating, not an issue for them.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

04/25 Links Pt2: The Jewish story is under assault; Marc Lamont Hill – How many must die for academic boycott of Israel?

From Ian:

Vic Rosenthal: The answer to globalized Jew-hatred

Israel’s public behavior needs to change. Our officials need to understand that neither the Arabs nor the West accept the existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East. They did not accept it in 1948, they do not today and they will not tomorrow. This is not based on a rational calculation of interests; it is a result of deeply felt anti-Zionism, which is globalized Jew-hatred. Our adoption of Western humanist values to an even greater degree than the West itself is never enough for them; and the Arabs rightly hold us in contempt.
Therefore there is no point in trying to hold off the pressure from the US and Europe by making concessions to the Arabs, on the grounds that these minor retreats aren’t dangerous and will make us look good. We cannot ‘look good’ to those who hate us, and the demands for concessions will never end.
There is no point in behaving humanely to those who would behave toward us as the Islamic State does in Syria, if we let down our guard. There is no point in giving up our honor as the owners of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount in order to keep the Arabs quiet. And there will be no point in not using artillery and air power, including even tactical nuclear weapons if appropriate, to shut down the missiles from southern Lebanon.
Zionism indeed changes the odds and makes it possible for the Jewish people to stand up and fight, and to win. But to realize the change we must use the power of our state and our army.
The world will not understand the need for a Jewish state, no matter how we behave. But it can be made to understand that there is one and that it will fight fiercely and without quarter against anyone that tries to destroy it.

The Jewish story is under assault

Last week, as Jews around the world prepared for Passover, the war against the Jewish people and its story — against the meaning of Passover itself — took a particularly ugly turn. A UNESCO resolution, sponsored by seven Arab countries, denounced Israel for supposed violations of Muslim rights to prayer on the site that Muslims call the Haram el Sharif and Jews call the Temple Mount. The resolution ignores the fact that the Israeli government enforces a ban on Jewish prayer at the holy site, granting Muslims exclusive right to pray there. Worse, the resolution implicitly denies the Jewish connection to the area by never actually using the term Temple Mount (only Haram el Sharif). It does refer to the Western Wall, but places that label in quotation marks while leaving the Muslim equivalent, Al Buraq, intact, as though that were the only authentic name.
Reading the resolution, one could conclude that there was no ancient Jewish temple on the Temple Mount, that the Mount isn't the holiest site in Judaism, that the Western Wall isn't the heart of Jewish prayer. One could conclude, therefore, that the Jews living in Israel today have no historic claim to the land, passed down through generations. Of all the attempts to destroy us throughout our history, the campaign against history itself is the most devious.
Passover suggests this definition of the Jews: We are a story we tell ourselves about who we think we are. The current assault on the Jewish story is so dangerous precisely because it strikes at that core idea.

Meet the godfather of Israeli experts on international law and war crimes

When the second intifada broke out full force, then-IDF chief of staff Lt.-Gen. Shaul Mofaz signed the order, stating that an armed conflict now existed. “On that day we went to war with the Palestinians, and I think in retrospect, we were right,” said Reisner.
Regarding where international law should go from here and how equipped it is to deal with fighting asymmetric warfare, Reisner has some nuanced views.
On the one hand, he expressed frustrations with what he views as randomness in what does and does not get on the banned-weapons list once you go beyond biological and chemical weapons.
He also said that the law of proportionality, deciding what attacks are permissible, is far too vague to be useful, and leads to experts on different sides talking past each other.
On the other hand, he does not think it is realistic for Israel to make an open push to change the rules.
“Any idea Israel comes up with will be converted, subverted and diverted by other elements. It’s not that I don’t think that international law has problems. It has a lot of problems.
But because of Israel’s complex diplomatic position, I don’t think it’s realistic that Israel could lead a change in international law that would make sense.”

There were new protests in West Bank UNRWA camps today, as "popular committees" decided to shut down UNRWA offices.

The reason seems to be that UNRWA is replacing the old food voucher system with one that uses magnetic cards.

I have not seen anything that says that the benefits have changed but these "popular committees" depend on regular outbursts of anger in order to justify their existence. So they are telling residents of the camps that their benefits are being reduced by UNRWA and that the "right of return" is being taken away, and calling on them to strike.

Of course, these regular outbursts against UNRWA are almost never reported in English-language media.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

It used to be that the worst insult that any Arab would hurl at any other was to accuse them of being Zionist, or of cooperating with Israel.

That is no longer the case.

Hezbollah media is in overdrive in claiming that Saudi Arabia is working together with Israel, and the news stories are not making any waves whatsoever.

Just last night, deputy secretary general of Hezbollah Naim Qassem claimed that Israel has trained dozens of officers from the Saudi army under a UK program.

Recently Hezbollah media also reported Israeli news claiming high-level secret meetings between Israeli and Saudi officials.

A discussion to be held next month at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy between former Israeli National Security Advisor Yaakov Amidror and Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal is being reported in Arab media but there is no real vitriol over it.

The idea that Gulf countries and Israel are in a de-facto alliance is being more and more accepted in the larger Arab world, and the mere mention of Israel is no longer effective at beating Arab states into submission.

All thanks to Iran.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

04/25 Links Pt1: Root causes and red herrings; Dershowitz: Obama owes Netanyahu an explanation

From Ian:

Root causes and red herrings

Separating 'red herrings' from 'root causes'
Over the last two decades, Israel has allowed itself to be manipulated into a perilous and potentially tragic situation. To have any hope of extricating itself from this unenviable position, it must be very clear as to what this conflict is really about -- and what it is not.
It must separate the "root causes" from the "red herrings." Mistaken diagnosis will result in mistaken policy choices which are liable to precipitate "terminal" consequences.
It is time to acknowledge the unpalatable fact that the enmity of Arabs towards the Jews and the Jewish state is:
Not about borders but about existence.
Not about what the Jewish people do but about what the Jewish people are.
Not about the Jewish state's policies but about the Jewish state per se.
And not about Jewish military "occupation" of Arab land but about Jewish political existence on any land.
Israel must internalize these truths and undertake a policy to convey them with conviction and vigor to the world. Otherwise Israel may well be "liberated."(h/t Elder of Lobby)

U.N. Watch: Palestinian pitch

Once again the indefatigable Palestinian Authority is drafting an Israel-bashing United Nations resolution condemning Israel's settlements. What's different this time? The Palestinians' hope that a lame-duck U.S. president, whose relations with Israel are strained, won't use the U.S. veto this time to quash the measure.
The United States customarily defends Israel and has nixed many half-baked Security Council resolutions that seek a back door to Palestinian statehood. These empty gestures are no path to peace but a short fuse to heightened hostilities.
Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riad al-Malki said President Obama, fresh from his “achievements” with Iran and Cuba, “may try to put a basis for a new era regarding the Palestinian-Israeli issue” by not vetoing the resolution. This latest resolution draft reportedly calls the Israeli settlements illegal and seeks a one-year timetable to reach “a final status agreement.”
A State Department spokesman said it has no position because the draft resolution remains in a “very early stage.”And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed it as another attempt to force a Palestinian solution. This, after peace negotiations have been idled since the last U.S. initiative collapsed two years ago.
The Palestinians may ultimately back off. Ineffectual resolutions served cold at the United Nations only further the divide with Israel. That much should be abundantly clear, regardless of Mr. Obama's lame-duck status.

Alan Dershowitz: Obama owes Netanyahu an explanation

Jewish American jurist Alan Dershowitz last week criticized U.S. President Barack Obama's "interference in British affairs" and the hypocrisy of having reprimanded Israel's prime minister for having done the same.
In an op-ed for Fox News, Dershowitz lamented Obama having defended his prior comments urging British voters to vote against leaving the European Union, following scathing criticism that he was meddling in British affairs.
"I don't believe the EU moderates British influence in the world, it magnifies it," Obama said at a joint press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron on Friday. He later warned British voters that it could take up to a decade to strike a trade deal with the U.S. once Britain leaves the union.
In his op-ed, Dershowitz pointed out Obama's argument that "in a democracy, friends should be able to speak their minds, even when they are visiting another country," and accused him of having a "short memory" recalling how "outraged the same President Obama was when the prime minister of a friendly country, Benjamin Netanyahu, spoke his mind about the Iran deal."

Christian-run newspaper calls Jews a "malicious and cancerous plant" (UPDATE)

Palestine News Network is funded by the Holy Land Trust*, which says that its goal is to "build a future that makes the Holy Land a global model for understanding, respect, justice, equality and peace."

It is headed by Sami Awad, who often tours Europe and North America with his messages of non-violence.

Here are excerpts of an article in the HLT-funded Palestine News Network:

After having eluded the Jewish problem in Europe during World War II, the Christian West's leaders decided to get rid of their [Jewish] problem with the biggest excuse and uglier than sin, through the implementation of the Balfour Declaration, the establishment of a national home for them at the expense of the Palestinian people, and through this they created a persistent problem and planted a malicious and cancerous plant in the heart of the Arab and Muslim world, which continues to bear bad and malicious fruit, which affected the whole world, and still strikes in all directions.

No reasonable human being, no matter his religion, whether Jewish or other, would want to live amid psychological disorders and obsessions of slaughter and death like bombings on buses, as happened a few days with the bombing of a bus in downtown Jerusalem which wounded 21 Jewish settlers and soldiers.

The occupying entity is a rabbit in the mouth of a sleeping lion, and soon the Arab lion will wake up and swallow the rabbit.

Does this sound like it is a "model for understanding, respect, justice, equality and peace?"

*UPDATE: I am told that HLT no longer has anything to do with PNN.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

When Israel sends teams of people and equipment to aid victims of natural disasters around the world, it is derided by haters as merely trying to distract the world from Israeli crimes.

The bigoted logic is that since the Jewish state is inherently evil, than anything good it does is also evil.

Last week, for the first time as far as I can tell, the PLO sent a team of doctors to a disaster area, in Ecuador.

The pan-Latin America Telesur network reports it this way:

Latin America sent three quarters of the world's rescuers to Ecuador, Europe the second-highest amount, and the United States zero.

Latin America far surpasses any region in sending humanitarian aid and rescue experts to Ecuador for earthquake relief, with Venezuela sending almost a third of all rescue specialists and Palestine sending 19—19 more than the United States.

Palestine is the only country outside of Europe and Latin America that sent rescue experts to Ecuador, though Russia sent 30 tons of humanitarian aid, and China sent a satellite and a 911 system, mobile hospitals and US$100,000 to the Ecuadorean Red Cross.

Latin America sent a total of 702 rescuers, with even impoverished and violence-ridden Honduras sending a rescuer. Cuba sent the most after Ecuador’s neighboring countries and Mexico, followed by left-wing Bolivia.

Europe also sent almost 200 rescuers, some collectively with most of the rest from France and Spain.

I don't know if any US aid workers have arrived yet, but certainly the US offered to send help immediately after the disaster.

And the Israel delegation was completely ignored by this article. As JPost reports:

The Israeli humanitarian aid charity IsraAid set up a field hospital in a village in Ecuador in the wake of a 7.8 magnitude earthquake that killed 654 and injured thousands.

The field hospital was set up in the coastal village of Canoa, where 98 percent of the buildings were destroyed in the initial April 16 earthquake that hit Ecuador’s Pacific coast. A 6.2 magnitude earthquake struck four days later, on Wednesday.

The American Jewish Committee is collaborating with IsraAid to provide the emergency assistance.

The mission includes veteran aid workers, a medical workers, and a psychosocial team, IsraAid said. The team will provide food and relief supplies; emergency medical assistance; and child friendly spaces and psychosocial support to the survivors of the temblor, with an emphasis on women and children. The field hospital began operating on Saturday evening, according to the Times of Israel.

The Israelis came at the same time as the Palestinians, so Telesur's omission (which was repeated in other news media) is curious.

Are the Palestinian Arabs engaging in "earthquake washing" to try to make themselves look good while they continue to cheer murderers of Jews back home?

The truth is a little different. They sent teams to Ecuador because Ecuador helped Gazans in 2014.

"We don't forget our friends, a deadly earthquake has hit Ecuador, there are many victims, we care for Ecuador and we will help the people of Ecuador no matter how moderate our capabilities are,” Faisal Abu Shahla, a representative of Fatah, stated.

But you know that the PLO has seen how the media coverage of Israel sending aid to disaster areas is positive, and they want to benefit from this as well.

Not that there is anything wrong with them sending help, even for PR purposes - if victims get helped, the motivations of the helpers really doesn't detract from the good things they do.

Except, according to the haters and antisemites, when Israel does it.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

From the official Petra News agency:

Jordan on Sunday warned of serious consequences to Israeli settlers and police storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram al-Sharif today. State Minister for Media Affairs, Muhammad Al-Momani, said in a statement to the Jordan News Agency (Petra) that the Israeli violations against worshipers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque/ Al-Haram al-Sharif are a violation of international laws and conventions, warning that such practices would lead to dangerous consequences.

The minister, who is also Government Spokesman, demanded Israeli occupation authorities to immediately stop such moves, deny entry to settlers and Israeli forces into the yards of the holy shrine and allow Palestinian worshipers to enter the mosque.

So what happened to prompt this strong rebuke to Israel for allowing a tiny degree of religious freedom?

Nothing, really. The number of Jews who visited the Temple Mount was higher yesterday than normal, because of the Passover holidays. As many as 13 of them were removed after allegedly trying to do that ultimate crime, praying.

But Al Jazeera aired a half-hour program about nothing but how Jews are "storming Al Aqsa Mosque" and published this video showing how awful they were acting:

Other Arabic news media devoted significant time to the story of Jews walking around.

Amazingly, no human rights or religious rights groups have come out in favor of allowing Jews access to their own holy site. On the contrary, they regard Jews walking around peacefully - or at worst, muttering a few Hebrew words - as being the criminals.

For fun, tweet Amnesty and HRW and Oxfam the question of whether Jews have the right to pray on their holiest site. These defenders of human rights will never answer you because they are, deep down, against Jewish rights.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

04/24 Links: PA TV: Prayer for genocide of “enemies” of Allah; Sanders Jewish outreach activist protests Passover

From Ian:

IsraellyCool: An Open Letter To Harvard Law School (HLS) About Husam El-Qoulaq And Tzipi Livni

Dean Minow-
Greetings and Salutations from the Daily Freier, reporting in concert with Brian of London, live from the Zionist Entity Known as Israel!
Dean Minow, our greatest fear is that Husam El-Qoulaq’s name somehow becomes attached to the antisemitic incident in question, where he told Israeli politician Tzipi Livni that she smelled bad in a public event. I mean, if his (Husam El-Qoulaq, Harvard Law. Sometimes spelled ‘Coolaq’) name was to be associated with this incident (antisemitic!), it may impact his Constitutional Right to make obscene amounts of money post-graduation in Corporate America. More importantly, associating Husam El-Qoulaq’s (Harvard Law) name with an Antisemitic (against Tzipi Livni) incident would send the dangerous message to your students that actions have consequences, and that words have meaning. And none of us want that.
In addition, we fear that Harvard Law may be unfairly tarred for hiding the name of the offending party (Husam El-Qoulaq, Harvard Law. Sometimes spelled Coolaq). Therefore, we implore you to continue to not release Husam El-Qoulaq’s name in association with the incident at Harvard Law on 14 April 2016 in which he used an antisemitic slur against Tzipi Livni. We applaud the fact that your organization has removed Mr. Husam El-Qoulaq’s anti-Jewish remarks from YouTube. Additionally, we applaud that you did not release the name of the offending party, you know, Husam El-Qoulaq…. Of Harvard Law. The one who publicly disrespected a visitor (Tzipi Livni!) in an Academic Setting.
We also want to provide honorable mention to Mr. Husam El-Qoulaq himself, who appears busy as a beaver (can we say that? Is that cultural appropriation against beavers?) scrubbing his online profiles of anything that could connect him (Husam El-Qoulaq, also spelled “Coolaq”) to an Antisemitic incident. Which is why we commend him for currently hiding online evidence of his (Husam El-Qoulaq!) BDS work when he was an undergrad at UC Berkeley. We also commend Mr. Husam El-Qoulaq for scrubbing the Internets and the Googles of any evidence of his Leadership position in Harvard’s BDS Movement…BTW, color us shocked (Shocked!) that Mr. El-Qoulaq was also a leader in Harvard’s BDS Movement. I mean, it’s just counter-intuitive that there would be, like, ANY overlap between the BDS Movement and Antisemitic speech! Who Knew????

PMW: Prayer for genocide of “enemies” of Allah, by PA TV preacher

Allah should "count" His enemies, the enemies of Islam, and "kill them to the last one," prayed the preacher on official PA TV on Friday. The PA TV preacher then singled out for punishment "the wicked Jews" and "the atheists who help them":
PA TV Preacher: "Allah, punish Your enemies, the enemies of religion, count their numbers and kill them to the last one, and bring them a black day. Allah, punish the wicked Jews, and those among the atheists who help them. Allah, we ask that You bestow upon us respect and honor by enabling us to repel them, and we ask You to save us from their evil." [Official PA TV, April 22, 2016]

Official PA TV preacher: “Allah… kill them to the last one... punish the wicked Jews"

When Amira Hass told the Palestinians not to make peace'

Radical leftist journalist Amira Hass of Haaretz in the past actively encouraged the Palestinians to reject peace treaties and not to agree to the 1994 Oslo Accords, according to a Palestinian journalist.
The journalist, Dr. Fayez Abu Shamala, revealed to the Hamas paper Palestine on Sunday the contents of a speech Hass gave during a visit to the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) during the period of the Oslo Accords.
Hass, who lives in Ramallah, has openly legitimized and supported Arab terror against Israeli Jews and recently cited the anti-Semitic forgery "Elders of Zion" in a UK university speech.
In her speech at the PLC during the days of Oslo, Abu Shamala reveals that Hass said, "I see it as an obligation to bring before you some of the facts supported in documents, which will help you make a decision."
"Look at this map. Look, where will your Palestinian state be established?," she said, indicating a map of Israel including Judea and Samaria.
"Do you not notice that these settlements can amputate the connection between cities of the West Bank at any given moment? Do you not notice that the Palestinians live in separation (from each other) in their cities?"
The Israeli journalist continued, saying, "I emphasize before you today that there won't be a possibility to establish a Palestinian state as long as the settlements remain in place."

04/22 Links Pt2: The Peace Process Is an Obstacle to Peace; U.S. Investment in - not Foreign Aid to - Israel

From Ian:

The Peace Process Is an Obstacle to Peace

And it always has been, because its premises are false
This Palestinian demand is in fact an assault on the sovereignty of the Jewish state and thus part of the century-old campaign against Zionism. It asserts that Israel should not be allowed to exercise the fundamental, indeed defining, prerogative of sovereignty—the control of its own borders. It would also deny to Israel another sovereign prerogative, deciding who has the right to citizenship. By flooding the country with people hostile to it, finally, the result of implementing the Palestinian “right of return” would be the destruction of Israel, which is surely the reason that the Palestinians insist on it.
In peace-process orthodoxy, the “refugee problem” is classified as one of the “final status” issues—problems so difficult that they can be addressed only after all the easier ones have been resolved. In fact, the insistence on a “right of return” assures that negotiations will fail, and thus should not be started in the first place, because they amount to the Palestinian insistence on achieving what is not negotiable: Israel’s disappearance.
If and when the Palestinians do signal their acceptance of Israel by abandoning this claim, it will become possible to address the issues that do require negotiation: the border between Israel and a Palestinian state, which may well require uprooting some Jewish settlements to the east of Israel’s eastern border of 1967, and the disposition of military forces between the new border and the Jordan River. As long, however, as the Palestinians make clear, by asserting their “right of return,” that they refuse to live peacefully side by side with a Jewish state, negotiations are at best a waste of time and at worst a way of perpetuating the conflict by encouraging the Palestinians to persist in their goal of eliminating Israel.
To be sure, the two necessary changes to the American approach to the peace process will not, in and of themselves, bring peace. Only the abandonment of the fundamental Palestinian attitude to Israel can do that; and the United States does not have the power to transform that attitude. The changes would, however, have desirable consequences. They would discourage the strategy of delegitimation by making it clear that the United States rejects the strategy’s premises, which would in turn reduce, although not eliminate, the constituency for that strategy in the United States and in the place where it is most popular, Europe. Reducing support for it would send to the Palestinians the message that, like a frontal military assault and terrorism, delegitimation will not succeed in destroying Israel. The two changes would also improve the moral tone of American foreign policy. Telling the truth about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict would affirm American support for international law, democracy, the peaceful resolution of international disputes, and the principle of equal rights for all peoples. It would also affirm American opposition to aggression and terrorism. It would, that is, put the United States—to use a term favored by recent administrations—on the right side of history.

U.S. Investment in - not Foreign Aid to - Israel

Israel is no longer a supplicant – as it was in its early years of independence – transformed from a net-national security and economic consumer to a net-national security and economic producer, generating substantial military and commercial dividends to the U.S., which exceed the highly appreciated $3.1 billion annual investment in Israel by the U.S.
The annual U.S. investment in Israel – erroneously defined as "foreign aid" (Foreign Military Financing) – has yielded one of the highest rates of return on U.S. investments overseas. But, Israel is neither "foreign" nor does it receive "aid."
A Partnership
From a one-way street relationship, the U.S.-Israel connection has evolved into an exceptionally productive two- way mutually beneficial alliance. The U.S. is the senior partner, and Israel the junior partner, in a win-win, geo-strategic partnership, which transcends the 68-year-old tension between all American presidents (from Truman through Obama) and Israeli prime ministers (from Ben Gurion through Netanyahu) over the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Palestinian issue.
According to the former Supreme Commander of NATO forces and Secretary of State, the late General Alexander Haig: "Israel constitutes the largest U.S. aircraft carrier, which does not require a single U.S. boot on board, cannot be sunk, deployed in a most critical region to the U.S. economy and national security. And, if there were no Israel in the eastern flank of the Mediterranean, the U.S. would have to deploy to the region a few more real aircraft carriers and tens of thousands of troops, which would have cost the U.S. taxpayer some $15 billion annually. All of which is spared by the existence of Israel."
Israel has been the most cost-effective, battle-tested laboratory of U.S. defense industries; the most reliable and practical beachhead/outpost of the U.S. defense forces; sharing with the U.S. unique intelligence, battle experience, and battle tactics. Thus, Israel extends the U.S. strategic hand at a time when the Pentagon is experiencing draconian cuts in its defense budget, curtailing the size of its military force and the global deployment of troops, while facing tough international industrial-defense competition and dramatically intensified threats of Islamic terrorism overseas and on the U.S. mainland.

Ben-Dror Yemini: An Israeli initiative is needed now

Fighting BDS is a right and good thing to do, but we can’t do it by merely reacting: Israel needs to be proactive in offering solutions.
The Washington lawyer and the IDF officer are both correct. The struggle against the anti-Israeli campaign on US campuses isn’t simple. The claims against Israel sound reasonable because there’s a perception that Israel isn’t doing anything. I’ve spoken in campuses in recent weeks, as well as in synagogues and community centers. I’ve listened to the various voices, including the worried ones. It’s not enough to say that the Palestinians have rejected every peace proposal so far and that and Israeli withdrawal could make things worse.
That’s all true, but it doesn’t counteract the tough queries. It wouldn’t be a mistake to say that 90 percent of US Jews have a hard time understanding the logic in the continued settlement project. And I’m talking about pro-Israel activists here.
The government’s determination in dealing with the anti-Israel campaign is a step in the right direction but PR alone, with all due respect, has a limited scope of influence. We need policy too. We need a show of good will.
The government has allocated NIS 100 million to combating the anti-Israel campaign, but that’s not very much at all. An Israeli initiative would cost $10 billion at least. Why the heck does the Prime Minister of Israel not understand what Israel’s supporters around the world understand very well? Why does he insist one doing nothing?
Why does he insist on helping the BDS movement?

Chag sameach!

I wish all of my readers a wonderful Pesach. May we all experience true freedom.

I will not be posting anything until Sunday night or Monday morning.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Analysts have been more and more alarmed by the US' increasingly untenable position with the Iran deal-that-is-not-a-deal.

Another major blow to the so-called agreement is happening this week.. The media has tired o fthis story but the worst predictions about the deal are all coming true.

From an email distributed to journalists by Omri Ceren from The Israel Project, an organization that works with journalists on Middle East issues:

Earlier this week Secretary Kerry held a private meeting with Iranian FM Zarif and announced afterward that on Friday - so tomorrow - he and Zarif will "sort of solidify" new sanctions relief for Iran [a]. The meeting came a few weeks after the Iranians began demanding access to the U.S. dollar and threatening to abandon the nuclear deal if they didn't get it. Kerry suggested that the concession will be sold publicly as something the Iranians were entitled to all along under the nuclear deal: "making sure that the JCPOA... is implemented in exactly the way that it was meant to be and that all the parties... get the benefits that they are supposed to get."

Kerry's spin makes good political sense. There are two explanations for giving Iran dollar access: either the nuclear deal is still open for negotiation or the dollar concession was there all along. For the last few weeks many people assumed the administration would claim the deal is still open, and the administration got absolutely hammered in that context [b][c][d][e]. So now it looks like Kerry will claim that actually the nuclear deal entitled the Iranians to dollars the whole the time.

This new pretext - that the nuclear deal entitled Iran to dollar access all along - may be more politically expedient than acknowledging that Iran is continuously coercing more concessions from the administration. But it still suffers from a number of flaws.

1st, as a matter of substance, it's false. Iran was cut off from the U.S. financial full range of its illicit activities, not just nuclear: money laundering, terrorism, ballistic missile development, nuclear work, etc. The official entry in the Federal Register from Treasury in 2008, explaining the cut off, was explicit: "The reasons OFAC is revoking this authorization include the need to further protect the U.S. financial system from the threat of illicit finance posed by Iran and its banks.... the Financial Action Task Force... in particular emphasized Iran’s lack of effort in addressing the risk of terrorist financing" [f].

2nd, as a matter of politics, it implies the administration deliberately hid the ball from Congress on concessions made to Iran under the deal. Administration officials assured Congress throughout the fall that the dollar prohibition would remain would remain in place after the deal, partly because it's critical to U.S. leverage over Iran and partly because those sanctions were a response to non-nuclear aggression, and so Iran wasn’t entitled to relief from them anyway [g][h].

3rd, as a matter of policy, it kneecaps any possibility of reimpoising financial pressure on Iran for at least the next decade. Giving Iran access to the dollar for any reason neuters financial pressure for as long as that access remains in place. Under normal circumstances the U.S. can respond to Iranian non-nuclear aggression directly, by restricting dollar access and therefore Iran's financing options, and indirectly, by using dollar restrictions to impose consequences on Iran's economy more broadly. Those options go away as long as Iran has access to the dollar for any reason.

But Kerry’s politically expedient pretext - that Iran was always entitled to dollar access as part of the deal - locks in that access for the whole deal, because it makes it part of the deal. Eric Lorber - a senior associate at the Financial Integrity Network and an advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies - unpacked all this weeks ago [i].

Let’s say that we give Iran access to U.S. dollars... and six months down the road Iran engages in a wide range of missile tests. And so we want to pull their access to U.S. dollars as a way to punish them for these activities and change their behavior. If we do that, Iran is going to say that the dollar access was granted as part of the nuclear agreement, as evidenced by the fact that the U.S., when it was saying that it needed to fulfill its obligations under the JCPOA, provided this general license. So Iran will basically say that if the United States tries to cut this dollarized access off, that’s a violation of the JCPOA, and they will walk away, or they’ll take countermeasures, et cetera.

The Iranians will leverage Kerry's claim that the deal provides dollar access to prohibit any future prohibitions on dollars, even and especially when U.S. policymakers would need those tools. Kerry's politically expedient spin for the concession - above and beyond the concession itself - will potentially disable U.S. financial pressure on Iran for at least a decade.

[a] http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2016/04/255977.htm[b] http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-04-01/the-iran-nuclear-deal-keeps-changing[c] http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/articles/2016-04-12/the-obama-administration-is-letting-iran-rewrite-the-nuclear-deal[d] http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/michael-j-totten/iranian-nuclear-deal-keeps-getting-worse[e] https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/04/18/the-imprecise-language-of-the-iran-deal/[f] https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Documents/fr73_66541.pdf[g] http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/uploads/Documents/other/SzubinTranscript20150916-v2.pdf[h] https://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/jl0129.aspx[i] http://www.foreignpolicyi.org/content/transcript-fpi-conference-call-implications-granting-iran-access-us-financial-market#sthash.G03Bi5N4.dpuf

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.