A Picture More Powerful Than Words

Hat tip: Atlas Shrugs

What World Leadership Looks Like

Canadian Prime Minister Harper

Harper Will Defend Israel, "Whatever the Cost"

[Canadian] Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he is prepared to suffer any political backlash that comes his way for speaking out against anti-Israel rhetoric.

Harper told an audience that while Israel is receptive to fair criticism, Canada is obligated to stand up for its ally when it comes under attack from others.

"Not just because it is the right thing to do, but because history shows us, and the ideology of the anti-Israel mob tell us all too well, that those who threaten the existence of the Jewish people are in the longer term a threat to all of us."
[CTV]
See video highlight above
*

Historian Pins Palestinians

Benjamin Morris, ace historian clarifies the Palestinian position

Historian Benny Morris: The Palestinians Are Not Interested in 2-State Solution
- Coby Ben-Simhon

• Benny Morris, a professor of history at Ben-Gurion University and one of the most prominent Israeli historians of his generation, declared:
  
  "The decades of studying the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict, which led to nine books, left me with a feeling of deep despair....I've written enough about a conflict that has no solution, mainly due to the Palestinians' consistent rejection of a solution of two states for two peoples."
• Regarding his book One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict, he says, "The objective is to expose the goals of the Palestinian national movement to extinguish the Jewish national project and to inherit all of Palestine for the Arabs and Islam."
• He asserts that unlike the Zionists, who consented to dividing the land between the two peoples living in it, since its inception the Palestinian national movement has never retreated from its demand to establish a single state in the disputed territory. "In the end, both sides of the Palestinian movement - the fundamentalists led by Hamas and the secular bloc led by Fatah - are interested in Muslim rule over all of Palestine, with no Jewish state and no partition."
• "Abbas currently refuses to hold negotiations with the Israelis because negotiations could lead to a resolution to the conflict. He has no desire or intention of reaching a solution of two states for two peoples."
• "In the Israeli education system, in general, there is no demonization of the Arab. He might not be described positively, but he's not the Devil. There [in the PA], the Jews are completely demonized."

(Ha'aretz)
*

UPDATE:


Fatah Reaffirms Option of Armed Struggle Against Israel
-Khaled Abu Toameh

The Palestinians have not abandoned the option of armed struggle against Israel, Mahmoud Aloul, a member of the Fatah central committee and former PA governor of Nablus, said.   
(Jerusalem Post)
*

Scholar Calls for More Cartoons

 

Mocking Muhammad Is Not Hate Speech -Daniel Pipes, PhD [pictured]

To stop Islamist violence over perceived insults to Muhammad, I argued in a FoxNews.com article on Friday, editors and producers daily should display cartoons of Muhammad "until the Islamists get used to the fact that we turn sacred cows into hamburger."

This appeal prompted a solemn reply from Sheila Musaji of The American Muslim website, who deemed it "irresponsible and beyond the pale." Why so? Because, as she puts it, "The solution to escalating violence and hate speech is not more hate speech."

That sounds sensible enough. But does mocking Muhammad, burning a Koran, or calling Islam a cult constitute hate speech? And what about the respectful representations of Muhammad in the buildings of the U.S. Supreme Court or the New York State Supreme Court? Even they caused upset and rioting.

Hate speech, legal authorities agree, involves words directed against a category of persons. Here's a typical definition, from USLegal.com: "incitement to hatred primarily against a group of persons defined in terms of race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and the like."

Attacking the sanctities of a religion, I submit, is quite unlike targeting the faithful of that religion. The former is protected speech, part of the give and take of the market place of ideas, not all of which are pretty. Freedom of speech means the freedom to insult and be obnoxious. So long as it does not include incitement or information that urges criminal action, nastiness is an essential part of our heritage.

Catholics, Jews, Mormons, and other faith communities in the West have learned since the Enlightenment to endure vicious lacerations on their symbols and doctrines.

If proof be needed, recall Monty Python's Life of Brian, Terrence McNally's Corpus Christi, Andres Serrano's Piss Christi, and Chris Ofili's The Holy Virgin Mary. Or the avalanche of antisemitic cartoons spewing from Muslims.

For an over-the-top recent example, The Onion humor website published a cartoon under the heading, "No One Murdered Because of This Image." It shows Moses, Jesus, Ganesha, and Buddha in the clouds, engaged in what the caption delicately understates as "a lascivious sex act of considerable depravity." As the Onion mock-reportingly but accurately goes on, "Though some members of the Jewish, Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist faiths were reportedly offended by the image, sources confirmed that upon seeing it, they simply shook their heads, rolled their eyes, and continued on with their day."

I asked for the cartoons to be published again and again to establish that Islamists must not chip away at the freedom to mock and insult by hiding behind bogus claims of incitement. Name an instance, Ms Musaji, when biting remarks about Muhammad, the Koran, or Islam have led to riots and murders by non-Muslims against Muslims?

I cannot think of a single one.

When attacks on Muslims take place, they occur in response to terrorism by Muslims; that's no excuse, to be sure, but it does indicate that violence against Muslims has no connection with lampooning Muhammad or desecrating Korans. Muslims need to grow thick skins like everyone else; this is one of the by-products of globalization. The insulation of old is gone for good.

To make matters worse, Islamists tell us Be Careful with Muhammad! and threaten those with the temerity to discuss, draw, or even pretend to draw the prophet of Islam, even as they freely disparage and insult other religions. I can cite many examples of actors, satirists, artists, cartoonists, writers, editors, publishers, ombudsmen, and others openly admitting their intimidation about discussing Islamic topics, a problem even Ms Musaji herself has acknowledged.

To cool the temperature, Muslims can take two steps: end terrorism and stop the rioting over cartoons and novels. That will cause the antagonism toward Islam built up over the past decade to subside. At that point, I will happily retract my appeal to editors and producers to flaunt offensive cartoons of Muhammad.
[Fox News]
*

Rushdie Reflects

The Satanic Video -Bill Keller

Salman Rushdie's new memoir recounts a decade under a clerical death sentence for the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses. The fatwa was dropped in 1998 and Rushdie is out of hiding, but he is still careful.


In his new book, Rushdie recounts being urged by the British authorities who were protecting him to "lower the temperature" by issuing a statement that could be taken for an apology. He does so. It fills him almost immediately with regret, and the attacks on him are unabated. He "had taken the weak position and was therefore treated as a weakling," he writes.
(New York Times)
*

Iranians Find a Needle in the Haystack

Spy Device Disguised as Rock Blown Up near Iran Nuke     

     A spy device camouflaged as a rock near Iran's Fordo underground nuclear enrichment plant exploded last month when Revolutionary Guards attempted to move it, the Sunday Times reported this week.

       Experts who analyzed remnants of the device found it had been able to intercept data from computers at the nuclear plant.
(Al Arabiya)
*

Sleeping as Iran Blazes Path to Genocide

Iran Has Taken 6 of 8 Steps on Path to Genocide -Mitch Ginsburg  

• Genocide is predictable and preventable, as long as you recognize the universal signs. And Iran, in its language and action, has taken six of the eight steps on the path to genocide, according to Dr. Gregory Stanton, founder and director of Genocide Watch.
• Talk of genocide, Stanton said - of removing a cancer or crushing a cockroach - is never just talk. "One of the best predictors of genocide is incitement to genocide," he said, "and I believe that is exactly what Iran is doing today."
• Encouraging genocide is a crime. The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, signed in 1948, states that incitement "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group" is illegal. Canada severed its ties with Iran on precisely those grounds.
  
• Recognizing the early signs, spotlighting them and prosecuting those encouraging the killings are some of the ways to prevent a genocide. Ignoring them, dismissing them as diabolical rhetoric or as a tactic meant to advance a different goal, is to enable the perpetrators, Stanton said.
• Over the years Stanton realized that all genocides follow eight stages. They are, in this order: classification, symbolization, dehumanization, organization, polarization, preparation, extermination and denial. Iran, he said, had:
• Classified and symbolized Israel through exclusionary ideology and hate speech;
• Dehumanized it - "overcoming the normal human revulsion against murder" - by portraying the potential victims as a "cancer" in need of eradication;
• Organized fanatical militias (the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps);
• Polarized the society by repressing dissent and arresting moderates;
• Prepared for the killing by denying a past genocide and by constructing weapons of mass destruction;
• And, through global terrorism, have even begun extermination.

(Times of Israel)
*

Obama's Cairo Doctrine Dead

Obama in Cairo, June 2009

 

Obama's 'Cairo Doctrine' In Shambles -Charles Krauthammer

In the week following 9/11/12 something big happened: the collapse of the Cairo Doctrine, the centerpiece of President Obama's foreign policy. It was to reset the very course of post-9/11 America, creating a profound rapprochement with the Islamic world.

In June 2009, in Cairo, Obama promised "a new beginning" offering Muslims "mutual respect," unsubtly implying previous disrespect. Curious, as over the previous 20 years, America had six times committed its military forces on behalf of oppressed Muslims, three times for reasons of pure humanitarianism (Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo), where no U.S. interests were at stake.

But no matter. Obama had come to remonstrate and restrain the hyperpower that, by his telling, had lost its way after 9/11, creating Guantanamo, practicing torture, imposing its will with arrogance and presumption.

First, he would cleanse by confession. Then he would heal. Why, given the unique sensitivities of his background — "my sister is half-Indonesian," he proudly told an interviewer in 2007, amplifying on his exquisite appreciation of Islam — his very election would revolutionize relations. And his policies of accommodation and concession would consolidate the gains:

• An outstretched hand to Iran's mullahs, a first-time presidential admission of the U.S. role in a 1953 coup, a studied and stunning turning away from the Green Revolution.

• Withdrawal from Iraq with no residual presence or influence.

• A fixed timetable for leaving Afghanistan.

• Returning our ambassador to Damascus (with kind words for Bashar al-Assad — "a reformer," suggested the secretary of state); deliberately creating distance between the U.S. and Israel.

These measures would raise our standing in the region, restore affection and respect for the U.S. and elicit new cooperation from Muslim lands. It's now three years since the Cairo speech. Look around.

The Islamic world is convulsed with an explosion of anti-Americanism. From Tunisia to Lebanon, American schools, businesses and diplomatic facilities set ablaze. A U.S. ambassador and three others murdered in Benghazi. The black flag of Salafism, of which al-Qaida is a prominent element, raised over our embassies in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Sudan.

The administration, staggered and confused, blames it all on a 14-minute trailer for a film no one's seen and may not even exist. What else can it say? Admit that its doctrinal premises were supremely naive and its policies deeply corrosive to U.S. influence?

Religious provocations are endless. Resentment about the five-century decline of the Islamic world is a constant. What's new — the crucial variable — is the unmistakable sound of a superpower in retreat. Ever since Henry Kissinger flipped Egypt from the Soviet to the American camp in the early 1970s, the U.S. had dominated the region. No longer.

"It's time," declared Obama to wild applause of his convention, "to do some nation-building right here at home." He'd already announced a strategic pivot from the Middle East to the Pacific. Made possible because "the tide of war is receding."

Nonsense. From the massacres in Nigeria to the charnel house that is Syria, violence has, if anything, increased. What is receding is Obama's America.

It's as axiomatic in statecraft as in physics: Nature abhors a vacuum. Islamists rush in to fill the space and declare their ascendancy. America's friends are bereft, confused, paralyzed.

Islamists rise across North Africa. Iran repeatedly defies U.S. demands on nuclear enrichment, then, as a measure of its contempt for what America thinks, openly admits that its Revolutionary Guards are deployed in Syria.

Russia, after arming Assad, warns America to stay out, while the secretary of state delivers vapid lectures about Assad "meeting" his international "obligations." The Gulf States beg the U.S. to act on Iran; Obama strains mightily to restrain ... Israel. Sovereign U.S. territory is breached and U.S. interests burned.

And what is the administration's official response? It denounces — a movie trailer! It asks Google to "review" the trailer's presence on YouTube. Deputies have a midnight "voluntary interview" with the suspected filmmaker. This in the land of free speech.

What else can Obama do? At the convention, Democrats endlessly lauded themselves on their one foreign policy success: killing Osama bin Laden. A week later, the Salafist flag flies over our embassies as mobs chant, "Obama, Obama, there are still a billion Osamas." A foreign policy in epic collapse. And, by the way, Vladimir Putin just expelled USAID from Russia. Another thank you from another recipient of another grand Obama "reset."
[Jewish World Review]
*


U.S. Buys Pakistani TV Time to Denounce Film -John Eggerton   

    The State Department confirmed that the U.S. government spent about $70,000 for ad time on TV in Pakistan to air a public service announcement from President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton disassociating the government from the movie trailer on YouTube that prompted Middle East demonstrations.        
(Broadcasting and Cable)


A Raw Salafist Power Play -Michael J. Totten
 
Something offensive to Muslims (along with something offensive to just about everyone else in the world) is posted on the Internet several times every second, yet massive international uprisings break out only periodically.

What we saw last week was a raw play for political power by radical Salafists. By ginning up an anti-American mob and forcing President Mohamed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood member, to send riot police after the demonstrators to protect the American Embassy, the Salafists were able to make him look like a tool of the West. Salafist preachers ginned up a similar mob in Tunisia.
   
Members of Congress are publicly questioning whether the Egyptian government deserves any more aid. This question is an excellent start. We certainly should make it clear to Morsi that we can make his job and his life a lot more difficult than the Salafists can.
(Gatestone Institute)
*

It's Not About the Video -Ross Douthat

The greatest mistake is to believe that what's happening in the Middle East is a completely genuine popular backlash against a blasphemous anti-Islamic video made in the USA. The mobs don't exist because of an offensive movie. Both the Egyptian and Libyan assaults look like premeditated challenges to those countries' ruling parties by more extreme Islamist factions.

Anti-Americanism remains a potent rallying point for popular discontent in the Islamic world. It's pointless to behave as if a more restrictive YouTube policy might have saved us from an autumn of unrest.
(New York Times)
*

Reflections on The 9-11 Anti-American Tornado

Muslim Rage & The Last Gasp of Islamic Hate -Ayaan Hirsi Ali

For a homicidal few in the Muslim world, life itself has less value than religious icons, such as the prophet or the Quran. The riots in Muslim countries—and the so-called demonstrations by some Muslims in Western countries—that invariably accompany such provocations have the appearance of spontaneity. But they are often carefully planned in advance.

Utopian ideologies have a short lifespan.

After the disillusion and bitterness will come a painful lesson: that it is foolish to derive laws for human affairs from gods and prophets. Just like the Iranian people have begun to, the Egyptians, Tunisians, Libyans, and perhaps Syrians and others will come to this realization. In one or two or three decades we will see the masses in these countries take to the streets—and perhaps call for American help—to liberate them from the governments they elected. This process will be faster in some places than others, but in all of them it will be bloody and painful. If we take the long view, America and other Western countries can help make this happen in the same way we helped bring about the demise of the former Soviet Union.

We must be patient. America needs to empower those individuals and groups who are already disenchanted with political Islam by helping find and develop an alternative. At the heart of that alternative are the ideals of the rule of law and freedom of thought, worship, and expression. For these values there can and should be no apologies, no groveling, no hesitation.

It was Voltaire who once said: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” As Salman Rushdie discovered, as we are reminded again as the Arab street burns, that sentiment is seldom heard in our time. Once I was ready to burn The Satanic Verses. Now I know that his right to publish it was a more sacred thing than any religion.
[Newsweek]


The Video Didn't Do It -Lee Smith

White House spokesman Jay Carney told the world that the violent protests in Cairo and Benghazi and elsewhere were "not a case of protests directed at the United States at large or at U.S. policy, but in response to a video that is offensive to Muslims."

Carney's comments send the message to America's enemies that if you kill our diplomats and lay siege to our embassies, the first move the American government will make is to tell other Americans to shut up.
   
Virtually every description in our media of the movie was attended by various aesthetic qualifiers - laughable, crude, amateurish - as if the mobs and their organizers were motivated by considerations of artistic craft. To debate the right of an American to criticize religion does not indicate sophisticated sensitivity to the feelings of others but a willingness to turn tail and abandon our principles at the first sign of a fight.
(Weekly Standard)


Can A Trailer Really Be that Potent? -Jonah Goldberg

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney insists the attacks in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere were a "response not to United States policy, and not to, obviously, the administration," but were rather a spontaneous "response to a video, a film we have judged to be reprehensible and disgusting."
   
It is simply a fact that Islamist radicals, the Arab street and the Muslim world have been angry at America for decades, under Republican and Democratic administrations alike. It's also true that demagogues and other opportunists have used things like this video as an excuse to attack America and the West for generations. But our public officials now treat attacks on Islam as especially offensive - more offensive than unremarked-upon near-daily attacks on Christianity, Judaism, Mormonism, atheism and just about every other faith and creed.
     
Muslim rioters get special treatment. And that's nuts. If these people are going to hate us, maybe we should just accept that fact and stand up for what we believe, without apology.
(Los Angeles Times)


Arabs Sense Weakness -Ron Ben-Yishai

• The wave of anti-West riots sweeping through the Muslim world will gradually subside, mostly because the regimes realize that this wave threatens them more than it does the West. When the riots erupted after the anti-Islam film was posted on YouTube with Arabic subtitles, the regimes in the Muslim countries displayed sympathy and understanding with the rage and violence of the masses. The street sensed that it had the government's support and went wild.
• Muslims have been experiencing a frustrating "cognitive dissonance" for the past 200 years. They are taught that Islam is a source of greatness and achievements in all fields - as was the case during the religion's golden age. The frustrating reality, however, is that despite their oil reserves, the Muslims cannot integrate into the modern world and succeed in it, while the heretics in the West boast unimaginable achievements in every field.
• Suddenly, the street became a dominant factor that imposes its will on the new Arab regimes, which are cautious not to anger it for fear they will meet a fate similar to Mubarak's. This is apparent in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Libya, Iraq, Jordan and even in the PA. In the aftermath of the revolutions, the Arab street imposes its will on the regimes.
• The White House and State Department condemned the insult to the Muslim religion's values, which in the Muslim world was interpreted as an admission of guilt by the U.S. which, from the Muslims' perspective, legitimizes violence.

(Ynet News)

UPDATES:

Insulted, Muslims Spread Hatred -Shaul Rosenfeld

The same Muslim society that turns violent whenever its holy figures are disparaged, revels in the horrific portrayals of Jews and Judaism in Arab media. Iranian movies and Egyptian television shows contain hateful anti-Semitic motifs, endorsed by respected Muslim academics, that the Muslim viewer "eats up" enthusiastically.

The people of the Levant can view an esoteric film as an excuse to launch a pogrom against the infidels from the West and at the same time accept fatwas describing Jews as the descendants of apes and pigs.
(Ynet News)


Redefining Freedom of Speech? -Alan M. Dershowitz
 
Religious fanatics who are easily offended by those outside of their religion who violate the rules of their religion cannot serve as censors in democratic societies. The threat or fear of violence should not become an excuse or justification for restricting freedom of speech.
    
People who have come of age in repressive regimes which do not permit any expressions disfavored by the government may not understand that by not censoring such speech, the American government does not place its imprimatur upon it. For example, when Iranian newspapers publish anti-Semitic diatribes, the views expressed in those diatribes are the views of the government. Not so with democratic states. It is probably true that more anti-Semitic material is published in the U.S. than in Iran, simply because so much is published and almost none of it is subject to any kind of censorship.
(Gatestone Institute)
*

The 9-11 Anti-American Tornado [with updates]

This bare-budget, poorly done trailer was used as a pretext by Islamists to attack American assets in Libya and Egypt on the anniversary of 9-11.  However, the video has been posted since 2011.  Rumors that the film was made by an Israeli were proven false. 

An American flag is torn from the Cairo's US Embassy...Egyptian police were suspiciously absent

Protesters Scale U.S. Embassy Walls in Cairo over Prophet "Insult"
-Kristen Chick

Protesters scaled the wall of the heavily-fortified U.S. embassy in Cairo, angry over a film that Egyptian media reported was produced in the U.S.
     
Some climbed over the wall and tore down the American flag, raising instead a black flag with an Islamic inscription that is often associated with Islamic extremists.
(Christian Science Monitor)


US. Embassy in Cairo Condemns Mohammed Video -Byron Tau 

"The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions," the embassy said in a statement published online.
(Politico)

Obama Administration Disavows Cairo Apology -Byron Tau

The Obama administration is disavowing a statement from its own Cairo embassy that seemed to apologize for anti-Muslim activity in the United States.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the film depicts the Muslim prophet Muhammed as a "womanizer, pedophile and fraud" — a depiction bound to offend many Muslims.
The embassy came under widespread criticism for failing to defend free speech in the face of threats of violence. Egyptian protesters rioted anyway, breaching the embassy walls and tearing down the American flag.
(Politico)
*

Diplomat Killed in Attack on Consulate in Libya
   
A large mob firing automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades burned down the U.S. consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, killing an American diplomat, the State Department said.
    
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a statement:
"The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others."
(AP-Fox News)
*

UPDATES:

Embassy Attacks: Days in the Making -Sara Lynch and Oren Dorell

Days of planning and online promotion by hard-line Islamist leaders helped whip up the mobs that stormed the U.S. Embassy in Egypt and launched a deadly attack on the U.S. Embassy in Libya. The protest was planned by Salafists well before news circulated of an objectionable video ridiculing Islam's prophet, Muhammad, said Eric Trager, an expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
    
The protest outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo was announced Aug. 30 by Jamaa Islamiya, a State Department-designated terrorist group, to protest the ongoing imprisonment of its spiritual leader, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who is serving a life sentence in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. 
(USA Today)
*
Manipulated Outrage and Misplaced Fury -Husain Haqqani

The attacks on U.S. diplomatic missions this week should be seen for what they really are: an effort by Islamists to garner support and mobilize their base by exacerbating anti-Western sentiments. When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to calm Muslims Thursday by denouncing the video, she was unwittingly playing along with the ruse the radicals set up. The U.S. would have been better off focusing on the only outrage that was of legitimate interest to the American government: the lack of respect for U.S. diplomatic missions.
   
Protests orchestrated on the pretext of slights and offenses against Islam have been part of Islamist strategy for decades. Iran's ayatollahs built an entire revolution around anti-Americanism. Islamists have a vested interest in continuously fanning the flames of Muslim victimhood.
(Wall Street Journal)


The Politics of Outrage -Issandr El Amrani

Protests and incitement about books, films or statements deemed insulting to Islam have for decades been a staple tool of Islamists.

The 2005 Danish cartoon crisis, when thousands took to the streets months after they had been published, was fomented in good part by the governments of Saudi Arabia and Egypt. In Syria and Gaza, governments apparently allowed several European embassies to be raided. The Danish embassy in Pakistan was also bombed.
(The National-Abu Dhabi)
*

 

The New Egypt to Host Hamas Office

Egyptian Dictator Mohammed Morsi meets Hamas' Ismail Haniyeh in Cairo, July 26th

Report: Cairo Agrees to Host Hamas Headquarters -Elhanan Miller

Less than one year after closing its headquarters in Damascus, Hamas' "outside" leadership has found a new home in the Egyptian capital of Cairo, Al-Hayat reported.

Al-Hayat also reported that Hamas agreed to hand over a number of suspects to Egypt in the August 5 border attack which killed 16 Egyptian soldiers.
(Times of Israel)
*

Netanyahu Spits Fire

Netanyahu: U.S. has no right to block Israel on Iran

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that if world powers refused to set a red line for Tehran's nuclear program, they could not demand that Israel hold its fire.

"The world tells Israel 'wait, there's still time.' And I say, 'Wait for what? Wait until when?' Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don't have a moral right to place a red light before Israel," he said.

"Now if Iran knows that there is no red line, if Iran knows that there is no deadline, what will it do? Exactly what it's doing. It's continuing, without any interference, towards obtaining nuclear weapons capability and from there, nuclear bombs."
(Reuters)


Sen. Lieberman: Obama Should Define How to Stop Iran -Hilary Leila Krieger

U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) encouraged President Obama to clearly define America's red lines on Iran's nuclear program. Lieberman told the Jerusalem Post that "the more the president can define what it means to support a policy of preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons, the more he will raise the confidence level of the government of Israel that it doesn't have to be forced to take action unilaterally."
(Jerusalem Post)
*

UPDATES:

Israeli official cites Syrian raid to justify attack on Iran

An Israeli official has cited a 2007 airstrike on a Syrian nuclear reactor — which Israel has never publicly acknowledged — to justify the Jewish state’s right to launch a unilateral attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities if the U.S. refrains from action.
[Washington Times]
*



In the clip above, Netanyahu appeared on television in the United States, continuing his efforts to put the Iran issue front and center. 

Holiday Message from Latma TV

An enjoyable High Holiday message from our friends at Latma TV
*
[Hat tip: Linda F]

Contrast: Canada Slams Iran, US Won't Set Red Lines

Clinton and Netanyahu

Clinton: US "Not Setting Deadlines" for Iran -Indira A.R. Lakshmanan 

The U.S. is "not setting deadlines" for Iran and still considers negotiations as "by far the best approach" to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in an interview.

Asked if the Obama administration will lay out sharper "red lines" for Iran or state explicitly the consequences of failing to negotiate a deal with world powers by a certain date, Clinton said, "We're not setting deadlines."

While the U.S. and Israel share the goal that Iran not acquire a nuclear weapon, Clinton said there is a difference in perspective over the time horizon for talks. "They're more anxious about a quick response because they feel that they're right in the bull's-eye, so to speak," Clinton said.
(Bloomberg)
*

Canada Closes Iran Embassy, Expels Iranian Diplomats -Bruce Campion-Smith

In a surprise move, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird announced that Canada was closing its embassy in Tehran and expelling Iranian diplomats from Canada as it formally declared Iran a state sponsor of terrorism. Baird branded Iran as the "most significant threat to global peace and security in the world today."

He cited a list of long-standing beefs with the regime in Tehran, including Iranian military assistance to Syria and its refusal to comply with UN resolutions on its nuclear program. "It routinely threatens the existence of Israel and engages in racist anti-Semitic rhetoric and incitement to genocide; it is among the world's worst violators of human rights," Baird said. He said the main motivation was an attack on the British embassy in Tehran nine months ago and worries that Canadian diplomats were in danger.
(Toronto Star-Canada)
*

Bridging the U.S.-Israeli Gap on Iran -Editorial

The disagreement conveys to Iran that there is no need to worry about a war; certainly, the country's leaders have been behaving as if they feel no pressure to compromise. It also creates the bizarre spectacle of senior U.S. military and diplomatic officials focusing their time and attention on trying to prevent an Israeli attack rather than an Iranian bomb.

If Mr. Obama really is determined to take military action if Iran takes decisive steps toward producing a bomb, such as enriching uranium to bomb-grade levels or expelling inspectors, he would be wise to say so publicly. Doing so would improve relations with Mr. Netanyahu and deter unilateral Israeli action - and it might well convince Iran that the time has come to compromise.
(Washington Post)
*

VideoBite: The Iranian Threat

A poignant video on the Iranian threat
*

Blood Money: Palestinian Authority Pays Terrorists

PA Paying Millions to Jailed Terrorists, Families of Suicide Bombers -Ilan Ben Zion

As of May 2011, the Palestinian Authority spent $4.5 million per month on compensating Palestinian inmates in Israeli prisons and a further $6.5 million on payments to families of suicide bombers, Israel's Channel 2 TV reported.

Last year Prime Minister Salam Fayyad tripled their monthly pay. The PA-funded salaries equally benefit members of Fatah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad, as well as Israeli Arabs jailed for security offenses.

Hamas terrorist Abbas al-Sayyeed, convicted of planning the 2002 Park Hotel massacre in which 30 Israeli civilians were killed, is paid $3,000 per month by the PA.
(Times of Israel)
*

US Rachets Up Tension with Israel over Iran

Report: U.S. Won't Back Israeli Strike If Iran Doesn't Attack American Assets in Gulf
-Shimon Shiffer     

The U.S. has indirectly informed Iran, via two European nations, that it would not back an Israeli strike against the country's nuclear facilities, as long as Tehran refrains from attacking American assets in the Persian Gulf, such as military bases and aircraft carriers, Yediot Ahronot reported. 
(Ynet News)


Israeli Leader Calls for "Clear Red Line" on Iran -Josef Federman

Israel's prime minister urged the international community to get tougher against Iran, saying that without a "clear red line," Tehran will not halt its nuclear program. Israel has warned that the Iranians are quickly approaching weapons capability and that the threat of force must be seriously considered. The U.S. says sanctions and international diplomacy must be given more time to work.

Netanyahu told his Cabinet that a new report issued by the UN nuclear agency showing progress in the Iranian nuclear program "confirms what I have been saying for a long time - the international sanctions are burdening Iran's economy, but they are not delaying the development of the Iranian nuclear program." "The international community is not drawing a clear red line for Iran, and Iran does not see international determination to stop its nuclear program," Netanyahu said.
(AP-Washington Post)


Official: Israel Increasingly Feels It Has No One to Rely on But Itself -Ilan Ben Zion

A senior Israeli official said the combination of Iran's progress toward the bomb, the failure of the U.S. to "set red lines" for Iran, and the increasingly critical comments by the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff have left Israel with "a sharpened sense that it has no one to rely upon but itself," Israel's Channel 2 TV reported.

Gen. Martin Dempsey said that he did not want "to be complicit" if Israel were to strike at Iran's nuclear facilities. A source in Jerusalem called Dempsey's comments "strange" and said they characterized the failure of the U.S. to take a determined position against Iran's nuclear drive.

"It is strange that next to the oaths and blood libels of [Iran's Ayatollah] Khamenei...and the IAEA report - which states that Iran is speeding up uranium enrichment under its nose - the American chief of staff decides to talk about [an Israeli strike] rather than giving a determined message to the Iranians," the source said.
(Times of Israel)


To Calm Israel -David E. Sanger & Eric Schmitt

Even if Mr. Obama set a clear “red line” now, its credibility may be questionable. According to a tally by Graham Allison, the Harvard expert on nuclear conflict, the United States and its allies have allowed Iran to cross seven previous “red lines” over 18 years with few consequences.
[New York Times]
*

UPDATE: 

U.S. Denies Report of Secret Iran Contacts -Mark Felsenthal

The White House denied an Israeli newspaper report that accused Washington of secretly negotiating with Tehran to keep the U.S. out of a future Israel-Iran war.
(Reuters)
*

Iran/Hizbullah's Training Base in Nicaragua -Philip Podolsky 

    Iran has established a training base in northern Nicaragua near the border with Honduras that is used by Hizbullah, Israel Radio reported.

     Sources estimate that the trainees, supplied from Tehran, are preparing for retaliatory attacks against U.S. and Israeli targets in the event of a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.
(Times of Israel)
*

Modern Miracle: Israeli Tech Helps Blind See

The video above illustrates a high tech modern miracle made in Israel
*