Capturing the MidEast in short soundbites: poignant reflections by people who understand the complexities of the Middle East. My philosophy is: "less is more." You won't agree with everything that's here, but I'm confident you will find it interesting! Excepting the titles, my own comments are minimal. Instead I rely on news sources to string together what I hope is an interesting, politically challenging, non-partisan, non-ideological narrative.
Friday, February 27, 2015
Smashing Museums
ISIS Video Smashing Ancient Iraq Artifacts
The Islamic State released a video showing militants using sledgehammers to smash ancient artifacts at the Mosul Museum in northern Iraq. The artifacts destroyed included several large Assyrian statues which date back to as early as the 7th century.
(NBC News)
Islamic State Selling Looted Syrian Art in London - Daniela Deane
Almost 100 Syrian artifacts looted by the Islamic State have been smuggled into Britain and sold to raise money for the extremist group's activities, art crime experts and archaeologists have warned.
The items include gold and silver Byzantine coins as well as Roman pottery and glass worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, the London Times reported Wednesday.
(Washington Post)
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High Drama In Washington
Obama Left Netanyahu No Choice - Caroline Glick
[F]or the past six years Obama has undermined Israel’s national security. He has publicly humiliated Netanyahu repeatedly.
He has delegitimized Israel’s very existence, embracing the jihadist lie that Israel’s existence is the product of post-Holocaust European guilt rather than 4,000 years of Jewish history.
He and his representatives have given a backwind to the forces that seek to wage economic warfare against Israel, repeatedly indicating that the application of economic sanctions against Israel – illegal under the World Trade Organization treaty – are a natural response to Israel’s unwillingness to bow to every Palestinian demand. The same goes for the movement to deny the legitimacy of Israel’s very existence. Senior administration officials have threatened that Israel will become illegitimate if it refuses to surrender to Palestinian demands.
Last summer, Obama openly colluded with Hamas’s terrorist war against Israel. He tried to coerce Israel into accepting ceasefire terms that would have amounted to an unconditional surrender to Hamas’s demands for open borders and the free flow of funds to the terrorist group. He enacted a partial arms embargo on Israel in the midst of war. He cut off air traffic to Ben-Gurion International Airport under specious and grossly prejudicial terms in an open act of economic warfare against Israel.
But Netanyahu said nothing publicly in criticism of Obama’s destructive, dangerous policy. He held his tongue in the hopes of winning Obama over through quiet diplomacy.
And yet, today Netanyahu, the serial accommodator, is putting everything on the line. He will not accommodate. He will not be bullied. He will not be threatened, even as all the powers that have grown used to bringing him to his knees – the Obama administration, the American Jewish Left, the Israeli media, and the Labor party grow ever more shrill and threatening in their attacks against him.
As he has made clear in daily statements, Netanyahu is convinced that we have reached a juncture in our relations with the Obama administration where accommodation is no longer possible. Obama’s one policy that Netanyahu has never acquiesced to either publicly or privately is his policy of accommodating Iran.
Until Obama entered office, and to an ever escalating degree since his reelection in 2012, preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons has been such an obvious imperative among both Israelis and Americans that Netanyahu’s forthright rejection of any nuclear deal in which Iran would be permitted to maintain the components of its nuclear program was uncontroversial.
But now we are seeing that far from being an opportunist, Netanyahu is a leader of historical dimensions. For the past two years, in the interest of reaching a deal, Obama has enabled Iran to take over Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. For the first time since 1974, due to Obama’s policies, the Golan Heights is an active front in the war against Israel, with Iranian military personnel commanding Syrian and Hezbollah forces along the border.
Whereas Israel can survive Obama on the Palestinian front by stalling, waiting him out and placating him where possible, and can even survive his support for Hamas by making common cause with the Egyptian military and the government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, the damage Obama’s intended deal with Iran will cause Israel will be irreversible. The moment that Obama grants Iran a path to a nuclear arsenal – and the terms of the agreement that Obama has offered Iran grant Iran an unimpeded path to nuclear power – a future US administration will be hard-pressed to put the genie back in the bottle.
For his efforts to prevent irreparable harm to Israel Netanyahu is being subjected to the most brutal and vicious attacks any Israeli leader has ever been subjected to by an American administration and its political allies.
Every day brings another serving of abuse. Wednesday National Security Adviser Susan Rice accused Netanyahu of destroying US relations with Israel. Secretary of State John Kerry effectively called him a serial alarmist, liar, and warmonger.
For its part, the Congressional Black Caucus reportedly intends to sabotage Netanyahu’s address before the joint houses of Congress by walking out in the middle, thus symbolically accusing of racism the leader of the Middle East’s only liberal democracy, and the leader of the most persecuted people in human history.
Netanyahu is not coming to Washington next Tuesday to warn Congress against Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, because he seeks a fight with Obama. Netanyahu has devoted the last six years to avoiding a fight with Obama, often at great cost to Israel’s national security and to his own political position.
Netanyahu is coming to Washington next week because Obama has left him no choice. And all decent people of good will should support him, and those who do not, and those who are silent, should be called out for their treachery and cowardice.
[Jewish World Review]
Netanyahu is coming to Washington next week because Obama has left him no choice. And all decent people of good will should support him, and those who do not, and those who are silent, should be called out for their treachery and cowardice.
[Jewish World Review]
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America's looming capitulation to Iran - Charles Krauthammer, MD
News leaked Monday of the elements of a "sunset clause." President Obama had accepted the Iranian demand that any restrictions on its program be time-limited. After which, the mullahs can crank up their nuclear program at will and produce as much enriched uranium as they want.
Sanctions lifted. Restrictions gone. Nuclear development legitimized. Iran would reenter the international community, as Obama suggested in an interview in December, as "a very successful regional power." A few years — probably around 10 — of good behavior and Iran would be home free.
The agreement thus would provide a predictable path to an Iranian bomb. Indeed, a flourishing path, with trade resumed, oil pumping and foreign investment pouring into a restored economy. Meanwhile, Iran's intercontinental ballistic missile program is subject to no restrictions at all. It's not even part of these negotiations. Why is Iran building them? You don't build ICBMs in order to deliver sticks of dynamite. Their only purpose is to carry nuclear warheads. Nor does Iran need an ICBM to hit Riyadh or Tel Aviv. Intercontinental missiles are for reaching, well, other continents. North America, for example.
And regional hyperproliferation becomes inevitable as Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and others seek shelter in going nuclear themselves.
Wasn't Obama's great international cause a nuclear-free world? Within months of his swearing-in, he went to Prague to so declare.
Well, say the administration apologists, what's your alternative? Do you want war? It's Obama's usual, subtle false-choice maneuver: It's either appeasement or war. It's not.
True, there are no good choices, but Obama's prospective deal is the worst possible. Not only does Iran get a clear path to the bomb but it gets sanctions lifted, all pressure removed and international legitimacy.
There is a third choice. If you are not stopping Iran's program, don't give away the store. Keep the pressure, keep the sanctions. Indeed, increase them. After all, previous sanctions brought Iran to its knees and to the negotiating table in the first place. And that was before the collapse of oil prices, which would now vastly magnify the economic effect of heightened sanctions. Congress is proposing precisely that. Combined with cheap oil, it could so destabilize the Iranian economy as to threaten the clerical regime. That's the opening. Then offer to renew negotiations for sanctions relief but from a very different starting point — no enrichment. Or, if you like, with a few token centrifuges for face-saving purposes. And no sunset.
That's the carrot. As for the stick, make it quietly known that the United States will not stand in the way of any threatened nation that takes things into its own hands. We leave the regional threat to the regional powers, say, Israeli bombers overflying Saudi Arabia.
Consider where we began: six U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding an end to Iranian enrichment. Consider what we are now offering: an interim arrangement ending with a sunset clause that allows the mullahs a robust, industrial-strength, internationally sanctioned nuclear program.
Concerns that a final deal restricting Iran's nuclear program will "sunset" any agreement as early as 2025 have thrown a new jolt into Israeli officials. "Ten years is nothing. It's tomorrow from our point of view," said Yaakov Amidror, who served as national security adviser to Netanyahu. "It's a license for Iran to be a threshold nuclear state."
Speeches by foreign leaders to Joint Meetings of Congress are routine events, and often among the more forgettable. So it might have been with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's address to Congress next Tuesday. But leave it to the political wizards of the Obama Administration to turn it into the global diplomatic event of the year.
Such a deal makes the Cuba normalization look good and the Ukrainian cease-fires positively brilliant. We are on the cusp of an epic capitulation. History will not be kind.
[Jewish World Review]
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UPDATES:
- Barak Ravid
Israel's Washington embassy tweeted a fake New York Times front page, dated March 31, 2025, "reporting" how Iran had hoodwinked the world on the nuclear deal.
Future headlines include: "P5+1: We Have Regrets"; "Despite Inspectors, Iran Completes Arak Plutonium Reactor"; and "IRGC Test New Generation ICBM, Range to SF, LA."
(Ha'aretz)
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Why Israel Is Fighting Obama's Deal - Michael Crowley
Concerns that a final deal restricting Iran's nuclear program will "sunset" any agreement as early as 2025 have thrown a new jolt into Israeli officials. "Ten years is nothing. It's tomorrow from our point of view," said Yaakov Amidror, who served as national security adviser to Netanyahu. "It's a license for Iran to be a threshold nuclear state."
Critics say that after the expiration of any deal, Iran would be free to produce as much fuel for nuclear weapons as it likes. Citing reports of a 10-15-year sunset period at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing Tuesday, the panel's top Democrat, Robert Menendez, called that "a matter of time that is far less than anyone envisioned."
(Politico)
- Prof. Abraham Ben-Zvi
The future nuclear deal is about to grant Iran entry back into the heart of the international theater, without having to meet even minimal admission requirements outside the nuclear context. It will allow the Revolutionary Guards to continue their extensive terrorist activities, without inhibitions, restrictions, or supervision by any international forum.
The writer is a professor of international relations at the University of Haifa.
(Israel Hayom)
Speech of the Year - Editorial
Speeches by foreign leaders to Joint Meetings of Congress are routine events, and often among the more forgettable. So it might have been with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's address to Congress next Tuesday. But leave it to the political wizards of the Obama Administration to turn it into the global diplomatic event of the year.
This week the Administration unleashed a withering personal and political attack that is unprecedented against a close ally. National Security Adviser Susan Rice even said the speech is "destructive of the fabric of the relationship" between Washington and Jerusalem. That's some claim against one speech, and it's worth asking why the Administration has gone to such extraordinary lengths to squelch it. Mr. Netanyahu is expected to make the case against President Obama's looming nuclear deal with Iran, and perhaps the Administration knows how vulnerable it is to such a critique.
The Prime Minister did nothing more than accept an invitation from a co-equal branch of government, with its own important foreign-policy role. If there is partisanship here, it is from a president whose Iran policy is no longer trusted by much of his own party.
Israelis are naturally wary of becoming estranged from their most important ally. Then again, Israelis are even more wary of a nuclear Iran. The trashing of Mr. Netanyahu has done nothing but increase public interest in his speech. Recent polling finds Americans overwhelmingly in favor of giving the Israeli leader a fair hearing in Congress.
(Wall Street Journal)
The Struggle over Nuke Program - General Yossi Kuperwasser
Is the prime minister acting correctly? Having been closely involved in the campaign against the Iranian nuclear program from the beginning, I believe that the advantages of this course of action outweigh its disadvantages. Certainly the intervention in the decision-making processes of Congress represents a last resort, but in light of the seriousness and urgency of the threat, it would seem that the use of irregular means is justified.
There is not likely to be a second chance to get things right.
Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser was chief of the research division in IDF Military Intelligence, and until recently, director general of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs.
There is not likely to be a second chance to get things right.
Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser was chief of the research division in IDF Military Intelligence, and until recently, director general of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs.
(Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies-Bar-Ilan University)
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Israel Doles Out Mock Oscars - Vasudevan Sridharan
Israel has doled out mock Academy Awards for the geo-political drama. The Israeli foreign ministry gave Iran the Oscar for "best actor" - "For acting like a peace loving country while developing nuclear capabilities, denying the Holocaust and threatening the destruction of another member state."
The ministry bestowed the "supporting actor" award to Hizbullah, often seen as a long arm of Iran, "for its unrelenting support to the Assad regime in killing thousands of civilians." Israel also awarded the "best editing" award to the Palestinian Authority for "rewriting history."
(International Business Times)
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Israel Doles Out Mock Oscars - Vasudevan Sridharan
Israel has doled out mock Academy Awards for the geo-political drama. The Israeli foreign ministry gave Iran the Oscar for "best actor" - "For acting like a peace loving country while developing nuclear capabilities, denying the Holocaust and threatening the destruction of another member state."
The ministry bestowed the "supporting actor" award to Hizbullah, often seen as a long arm of Iran, "for its unrelenting support to the Assad regime in killing thousands of civilians." Israel also awarded the "best editing" award to the Palestinian Authority for "rewriting history."
(International Business Times)
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Friday, February 20, 2015
The Feud [with updates]
Why Netanyahu Broke with Obama - David Ignatius
- Yuval Steinitz, Israel's minister of intelligence, said in an interview that the public rift between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu over the Iranian nuclear issue has been building for more than two years and reflects a deep disagreement about how best to limit the threat of a rising Iran.
- He said that the nuclear agreement contemplated by Obama would ratify Iran as a threshold nuclear-weapons state, and that the one-year breakout time sought by Washington wasn't adequate.
- "From the very beginning, we made it clear we had reservations about the goal of the negotiations," he explained. "We thought the goal should be to get rid of the Iranian nuclear threat, not verify or inspect it."
- Netanyahu's skepticism reached a tipping point last month when he concluded that the U.S. had offered so many concessions to Iran that any deal reached would be bad for Israel. He broke with Obama first in a private phone call on Jan. 12.
- "The temptation [for Iran] is not now but in two or three or four years, when the West is preoccupied with other crises," Steinitz said. If Iran chose to "sneak out" at such a moment, it would take the U.S. months to determine the pact had been violated, and another six months to form a coalition for sanctions or other decisive action. By then, it might be too late.
- What the U.S. is saying to Iran, in effect, is "if you agree to freeze for 10 years, that's enough for us." But that won't work for Israel. "To believe that in the next decade there will be a democratic change in leadership and that Iran won't threaten the U.S. or Israel anymore, I think this is too speculative."
- "Iran is part of the problem and not part of the solution - unless you think Iran dominating the Middle East is the solution," Steinitz concluded. People who think that a nuclear deal with Iran is desirable, as I do, need to be able to answer Steinitz's critique.
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UPDATES:
Hear Out Israel's Leader - Joseph I. Lieberman
- I appeal to members of Congress to go hear what the prime minister of Israel has to say. Go because this is about determining how best to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons and not just another Washington test of partisan and political loyalty.
- Go because you know that the Constitution gives you, as a member of Congress, the power to "regulate commerce with foreign nations," "define and punish...offenses against the law of nations," "declare war," and "raise and support armies," and Netanyahu might say some things that will inform your exercise of those great powers.
- Go because you know that Israel is one of our closest and most steadfast allies and you feel a responsibility to listen to its leader speak about developments that he believes could threaten the safety, independence and even existence of his country, as well as that of our closest allies in the Arab world.
- Go because you worry that it is not just the security of Israel and the Arab nations but the security of the United States that will be threatened if a bad agreement is made with Iran that enables it to build nuclear weapons it could put on its increasingly capable long-range missiles.
- Go because you are concerned about nuclear weapons proliferation and believe that a faulty deal with Iran will not only put it on the road to becoming a nuclear power but will also lead some of Iran's Arab neighbors to acquire nuclear weapons as soon as possible.
- At this very unstable moment in history, we cannot and must not avert our attention from what remains the greatest threat to the security of America and the world.
(Washington Post)
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The Appalling Talk of Boycotting Netanyahu - Alan M. Dershowitz
As a liberal Democrat who twice campaigned for President Barack Obama, I am appalled that some members of Congress are planning to boycott the speech of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Under the Constitution, the executive and legislative branches share responsibility for making and implementing important foreign-policy decisions. Congress has a critical role to play in scrutinizing the decisions of the president when these decisions involve national security, relationships with allies and the threat of nuclear proliferation.
Congress has every right to invite, even over the president's strong objection, any world leader or international expert who can assist its members in formulating appropriate responses to the current deal being considered with Iran regarding its nuclear-weapons program. Indeed, it is the responsibility of every member of Congress to listen to Prime Minister Netanyahu, who probably knows more about this issue than any world leader, because it threatens the very existence of the nation state of the Jewish people.
Not only should all members of Congress attend Mr. Netanyahu’s speech, but President Obama—as a constitutional scholar—should urge members of Congress to do their constitutional duty of listening to opposing views in order to check and balance the policies of the administration.
The idea that some members of Congress will not give him the courtesy of listening violates protocol and basic decency to a far greater extent than anything Mr. Netanyahu is accused of doing for having accepted an invitation from Congress.
(Wall Street Journal)
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Now We Know Who to Believe on Iran - David Horovitz
- After anonymous sources in Jerusalem leaked in recent weeks the ostensible terms of the deal being hammered out with Iran, various U.S. government spokespeople contended that the Israeli government was misrepresenting the specifics and sneered that Israel didn't actually know what the terms were.
- Yet among the terms of the deal being reported by the Associated Press from Geneva on Monday are precisely those that were asserted in recent weeks by the Israeli sources. Iran is to be allowed to keep 6,500 centrifuges spinning, and there will be a clause providing for an end to intrusive inspections in some 10-15 years. There is also no indication of restrictions on Iran's missile development.
- Israel's most respected Middle East affairs analyst, Channel 2 commentator Ehud Ya'ari, noted that the isolation of Iran even by Israel's key allies was already cracking, with the firmly pro-Israel foreign minister of Australia, Julie Bishop, announcing an imminent visit to Tehran.
- Ya'ari also noted that the International Atomic Energy Agency has made clear that it lacks the tools to effectively monitor the kind of nuclear program that Iran will be allowed to maintain under the emerging deal.
- The P5+1 is about to legitimize Iran as a nuclear threshold state. From there, it will be capable of rapidly breaking out to the bomb, well aware that the international community lacks the will to stop it.
- The Obama administration would evidently like to believe that 10-15 years from now, the ayatollahs will be gone. But if the deal now taking shape is indeed finalized, the chances of the regime being ousted from within will drastically recede. This deal will help cement the ayatollahs in power, with dire consequences for Israel, relatively moderate Arab states, and the free world.
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Israel Safer Than US or UK
31 Countries Face More Terrorism than Israel
17,958 people were killed in terrorist attacks last year, 61% more than the previous year.
31 countries rank higher than Israel (ranked 32) in the 2014 Global Terrorism Index, including the UK (27) and the U.S. (30).
The GTI, published by the Institute for Economics and Peace, measures the direct and indirect impact of terrorism in terms of lives lost, injuries, property damage and the psychological after-effects.
(Institute for Economics and Peace)
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Thursday, February 19, 2015
The West's Tolerance of Palestinian Thugocracy
The West's Israel Obsession - Evelyn Gordon
The Jerusalem Post reported last week that a leading Palestinian hospital is at risk of closure because of a $30 million debt. A major reason for this debt is that for years, the Palestinian Authority has failed to pay Mokassed Hospital for many of the patients it treats, though the PA has ample funds to pay generous salaries to thousands of terrorists sitting in Israeli jails. It's a matter of priorities.
Another news report notes that thousands of Palestinians who bought homes in the new Palestinian city of Rawabi can't move in because the city isn't connected to the water system. Why? Because all West Bank water projects need approval by the Israeli-Palestinian Joint Water Committee, which the PA has refused to convene for the last five years. Evidently, it would rather deprive its own people of better housing than agree to meet with Israeli officials.
Almost 40% of the PA's budget consists of foreign aid, with the vast majority coming from Western countries. The West is therefore uniquely placed to pressure the PA to alter its priorities, but it has refused to do so.
(Commentary)
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Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Egypt Takes Lead Role in Counter-Jihad Efforts
al-Sisi leads Egypt with new vigor |
Egypt's Ambitious Anti-Terror Campaign - Hamza Hendawi
Beyond fighting militants in its own Sinai Peninsula, Egypt is trying to organize an international coalition against the Islamic State in Libya and helping Saudi Arabia defend its borders. This nation of 90 million people seeks to restore the leadership role that has eluded it since its influence waned under former President Hosni Mubarak.
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait have given Egypt an estimated $30 billion to rescue its damaged economy, in return for Egypt providing military manpower alongside its Gulf counterparts. A contingent of Egyptian troops is already deployed on Saudi Arabia's border with Iraq to help defend it against jihadi fighters. Egypt also has military advisers on the Saudi-Yemeni border. Saudi Arabia and the Emirates are bankrolling multibillion dollar arms purchases by Egypt, including jet fighters and naval vessels from France and Russia.
Egypt carried out two rounds of airstrikes in Libya, on top of secret strikes it conducted last year along with the UAE against Libyan Islamist militias. Egyptian troops briefly crossed the border into Libya to conduct search-and-destroy missions targeting possible surface-to-air missiles that could threaten Egyptian planes headed back from Libya.
(AP)
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UPDATES:
How Egypt Sees Islamic State Threat - Jane Kinninmont
Unlike its Western allies, Egypt's leaders emphasize the view that all forms of political Islam are a threat to international security. Since overthrowing Morsi, they have banned the Muslim Brotherhood, calling it a terrorist organization.
By contrast, the U.S. and Europe differentiate between forms of political Islam that they can potentially work with, and more radical violent groups.
Islamic State's targeted violence has prompted cross-border military action by Arab armies. This is a marked contrast with al-Qaeda, which was targeted primarily by international forces or, within specific countries, by the domestic security services.
The writer is Deputy Head and Senior Research Fellow, Middle East and North Africa Program, at Chatham House.
(BBC News)
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Dangerous Stalemate - Zvi Mazel
Egyptian President Sisi is fighting for his country's survival - and his own.
F-16 fighter planes and Apache helicopters have joined the campaign, security forces have killed or wounded hundreds of terrorists - but more keep coming.
Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis gunmen, who have pledged allegiance to Islamic State, continue making daring raids against police stations and other security targets, leading to loss of life. Islamic State dispatches terrorists and weapons to Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis in Sinai from Libya, where there is an unlimited supply of both.
The situation has reached a stalemate, though the army has managed to contain the terrorists in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula. However, there are still sporadic terrorist attacks in Cairo and other parts of the country.
Egypt is going it alone, still waiting for the West to understand that Cairo remains its best ally against the rising tide of terrorism.
The writer is a former ambassador to Romania, Egypt, and Sweden.
(Jerusalem Post)
Thursday, February 12, 2015
Test of Wills: Iran Sets Obama Up
Why the (toothless) Iran sanctions bill matters - Daniel Pipes, PhD
Nearly all the 54 Republican U.S. senators will vote in favor of the Kirk-Menendez bill requiring sanctions on Iran if the P5+1 negotiations fail. President Obama has promised to veto it. Now, the senate is gearing up for a high-drama vote; will Democrats provide the 13 to 15 votes needed for a veto-proof majority?
Lost in the shuffle is a little-noticed section of the bill that, if passed, guts it. The "Draft of Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2015," posted on the website of Sen. Mark Kirk contains a "Waiver of Sanctions." Designed to win the support of skittish Democrats, it also undermines the bill's goal of forcing Obama's hand in the negotiations.
What's the point, one might ask, of the pro-sanctions side struggling so hard to attain a veto-proof majority when Obama can negate its provisions at will?
[W]hy does the White House expend so much political capital stopping this bill when it could let it pass and then kill it by invoking the waiver? Why the major combat over what amounts to a symbolic resolution?
[A]s he explained in the State Of The Union, he passionately wants Kirk-Menendez defeated because "new sanctions passed by this Congress, at this moment in time, will all but guarantee that diplomacy fails … [by] ensuring that Iran starts up its nuclear program again."
In other words, the Iranian pseudo-parliament (the Majlis) is warning that the bill's passage – even if its sanctions are subsequently waived – in itself cancels the existing interim accord and ends the negotiating process. Iran's foreign minister also declared that the Majlis would retaliate against any new U.S. sanctions legislation by ramping up the nuclear program; and that new sanctions would damage the West's favorite Iranian politician, President Hassan Rouhani.
With this clever tactic, the Iranians have provoked a grand test of wills in Washington, turning Obama into their enforcer obliged to tame Congress; Majlis speaker Ali Larijani has warned that "If Obama can't solve his problems [with Congress], he himself will be responsible for the disruption of the negotiations." Rather than tell Tehran to take a hike, the administration (in keeping with its larger strategy) fell for this ruse, resulting in a forthcoming Senate battle royal.
Is this not reminiscent of the bazaar, where the wily merchant charmingly cheats the naïve tourist? The stake, however, is not the price of a Persian carpet but an apocalyptic rogue regime acquiring and perhaps deploying nuclear weapons.
And so, the toothless Kirk-Menendez bill actually does have real importance. It needs those 67 votes.
[The Washington Times]
Why Netanyahu Should Give His Speech - David Suissa
Like many other American Jews, I've had serious reservations about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to speak to Congress on March 3, against the wishes of President Barack Obama. If the most powerful man in the world is upset about something, you can't afford to just shrug that off.
And yet, as much as I've had my issues with him over the years, I don't feel like joining in the anti-Bibi frenzy.
What is Obama so afraid of? Is it possible that he's afraid to start a vigorous debate on his Iran strategy that will expose it as potentially harmful to America's or Israel's interest?
Let's put aside all the hysterics about politics and protocol. As sobering as those things may be, they pale in comparison to the strategic issue of how Obama deals with the Iranian nuclear threat. If he's about to sign an agreement that many experts agree is a bad one, don't we deserve a national debate, as an editorial in the Washington Post called for last week?
(Los Angeles Jewish Journal)
Rolling Back the Iranian Threat - Mortimer B. Zuckerman
- Just about every Western leader is consistently on record saying, "No deal is better than a bad deal." But the rhetoric does not match the reality. There are secret letters begging Iran for a compromise. No one is talking about dismantling Iran's program anymore. There is a sickening smell in the air, the harbinger of a bad deal.
- We cannot leave Iran with thousands of centrifuges to enrich uranium when it doesn't even need a single centrifuge to have peaceful nuclear energy.
- We also have to confront Iran's program for missiles. Iran doesn't need intercontinental ballistic missiles to reach Israel; they need them to reach Europe and the U.S. and the only thing to carry on an intercontinental ballistic missile is a nuclear warhead.
The writer is chairman and publisher of the New York Daily News.
(New York Daily News)
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Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Moderate Muslim Sect Goes to Israel
Shi'ite Muslim pilgrims from India clean a marble enclosure marking a shrine, located on the grounds of Barzilai Medical Center in the coastal town of Ashkelon February 8, 2015. The Israeli …more hospital, known mainly for treating the casualties of conflict in the nearby Gaza Strip, is home to a tomb where, in the view of some Shi'ite Muslims, the head of Hussein ibn Ali, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, lay interred for centuries following his death in battle. Picture taken February 8, 2015. REUTERS/Amir Cohen |
Tomb of Mohammed's Grandson Honored in Israeli - Rami Amichay
A Shi'ite Muslim shrine is located on the grounds of Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon [Israel]. The ancient tomb is believed to contain the head of Hussein ibn Ali, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed.
Members of the Dawoodi Bohra Shi'ite sect, which has a million adherents worldwide, come annually on pilgrimage to the ornate marble enclosure marking the tomb.
Hospital deputy director Dr. Ron Lobel noted: "This is one of the absurdities of the Middle East. Here we have a sacred place for...the Shia Muslims, and on the other hand, 12 km. south of here we have other Muslims that shoot rockets at us."
(Reuters)
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Tuesday, February 10, 2015
White House Embarresses Itself
Two astonishing videos, where Obama Administration spokespersons reveal a serious misunderstanding of Islamist violence and a bizarre refusal to identify the Paris attack on a kosher deli as anti-Semitic
ISIS Recruit Speaks
An rare video from an ISIS recruit speaking frankly about his experience
Hat tip: Aron Kay
Hat tip: Aron Kay
Monday, February 09, 2015
Book Burning Returns
I See Parchment Burning - Jeff Jacoby
The Associated Press reported that Islamic State fanatics have ravaged the Central Library of Mosul, the largest repository of learning in that ancient city. Militants smashed the library’s locks and overran its collections, removing thousands of volumes on philosophy, science, and law, along with books of poetry and children’s stories. Only Islamic texts were left behind.
“These books promote infidelity and call for disobeying Allah,” one of the ISIS jihadists announced as the library’s holdings were emptied into sacks and loaded onto pickup trucks. “So they will be burned.”
There was more book-burning soon afterward, when Islamic State vandals sacked the library at the University of Mosul. “They made a bonfire out of hundreds of books on science and culture, destroying them in front of students,” AP reported. Lost in the libricide were newspapers, maps, and texts dating back to the Ottoman Empire. UNESCO, the United Nations’ educational and cultural agency, decried the libraries’ torching as “one of the most devastating acts of destruction of library collections in human history.”
Perhaps the most chilling words ever written about book-burning were penned in 1821 by the great German poet Heinrich Heine: Dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen — “Where they burn books, they will in the end also burn people.” Today that axiom is etched on a plaque in Berlin’s Bebelplatz, the public square where more than 20,000 books deemed “un-German” and “decadent” were destroyed in a vast Nazi bonfire on the night of May 10, 1933.
There is something uniquely diabolical about setting books on fire, a lust to obliterate that almost ineluctably leads to even more dreadful evils. It is no coincidence that those obsessed with annihilating the physical expression of dangerous thoughts or teachings so often move on to annihilating the people who think or teach them.
ISIS will find that it is easier to slaughter human beings than to destroy ideas.
The Talmud records the death of Chanina ben Teradion, a 2nd-century Jewish sage killed by the Romans for violating a ban on teaching Torah. It was a terrible death: He was wrapped in the scroll from which he had been teaching and set on fire, with wet wool placed on his chest to prolong the agony. His horrified disciples, forced to witness his death, cried out: “Rabbi, what do you see?” He replied: “I see parchment burning, but the letters are soaring free.”
Any brute can burn parchment, or ransack a library, or blow up a mosque, or bulldoze cultural treasures. But not even mighty armies can destroy the ideas they embody. The Roman Empire couldn’t keep the letters from soaring free. ISIS can’t either.
[Jewish World Review]
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Friday, February 06, 2015
Turkey Can Crush ISIS...Obama Won't Let Them
Does the barbarism have a logic? - Charles Krauthammer, MD
What's missing are serious boots on the ground, such as Syria's once-ascendant non-jihadist rebels, which Obama contemptuously dismissed and allowed to wither. And the Kurds, who are willing and able to fight, yet remain scandalously undersupplied by this administration.
Missing most of all is Turkey. It alone has the size and power to take on the Islamic State. But doing so would strengthen, indeed rescue, Turkey's primary nemesis, the Iranian-backed Bashar al-Assad regime in Damascus.
For Obama, this is his ticket to Mt. Rushmore. So in pursuit of his Nixon-to-China Iran fantasy, Obama eschews Turkey, our most formidable potential ally against both the Islamic State and Assad. What's Obama left with? Fragile front-line Arab states, like Jordan.
But even they are mortified by Obama's blind pursuit of detente with Tehran, which would make the mullahs hegemonic over the Arab Middle East. Hence the Arabs, the Saudis especially, hold back from any major military commitment to us. Jordan, its hand now forced by its pilot's murder, may now bravely sally forth on its own. But at great risk and with little chance of ultimate success.
[Jewish World Review]
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Iran Nuclear Deal Raises Major Concerns - Editorial
As the Obama administration pushes to complete a nuclear accord with Iran, numerous members of Congress, former secretaries of state and officials of allied governments are expressing concern about the contours of the emerging deal. Though we have long supported negotiations with Iran as well as the interim agreement, we share several of those concerns and believe they deserve more debate now - before negotiators present the world with a fait accompli.
(Washington Post)
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What's at Stake with Iran? - Abraham H. Foxman
It is becoming more critical than ever to keep our eye on the ball. Whatever one's view of the decision by Speaker of the House John Boehner to invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak before Congress, this unnecessary brouhaha should not divert us from the real issue: Will we stop Iran from becoming a nuclear armed power?
The writer is national director of the Anti-Defamation League.
(Times of Israel)
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Turkey's price for entry was an American commitment to help bring down Assad. Obama refused. So Turkey sits it out.
Why doesn't Obama agree? Didn't he say that Assad must go? The reason is that Obama dares not upset Assad's patrons, the Iranian mullahs, with whom Obama dreams of concluding a grand rapprochement.
For Obama, this is his ticket to Mt. Rushmore. So in pursuit of his Nixon-to-China Iran fantasy, Obama eschews Turkey, our most formidable potential ally against both the Islamic State and Assad. What's Obama left with? Fragile front-line Arab states, like Jordan.
But even they are mortified by Obama's blind pursuit of detente with Tehran, which would make the mullahs hegemonic over the Arab Middle East. Hence the Arabs, the Saudis especially, hold back from any major military commitment to us. Jordan, its hand now forced by its pilot's murder, may now bravely sally forth on its own. But at great risk and with little chance of ultimate success.
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Iran Nuclear Deal Raises Major Concerns - Editorial
As the Obama administration pushes to complete a nuclear accord with Iran, numerous members of Congress, former secretaries of state and officials of allied governments are expressing concern about the contours of the emerging deal. Though we have long supported negotiations with Iran as well as the interim agreement, we share several of those concerns and believe they deserve more debate now - before negotiators present the world with a fait accompli.
(Washington Post)
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What's at Stake with Iran? - Abraham H. Foxman
It is becoming more critical than ever to keep our eye on the ball. Whatever one's view of the decision by Speaker of the House John Boehner to invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak before Congress, this unnecessary brouhaha should not divert us from the real issue: Will we stop Iran from becoming a nuclear armed power?
The writer is national director of the Anti-Defamation League.
(Times of Israel)
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Tuesday, February 03, 2015
Caged & Burned: Video of Jordanian Pilot [updated link]
Content Warning:
The very difficult to watch ISIS video, can be viewed at a separate link. Please consider carefully before viewing. The images are painful to view and hard to forget. If you really wish to view it click here. The actual execution begins at the 17 minute mark.
The very difficult to watch ISIS video, can be viewed at a separate link. Please consider carefully before viewing. The images are painful to view and hard to forget. If you really wish to view it click here. The actual execution begins at the 17 minute mark.
Torched to Death in a Cage
Militants fighting for the Islamic State terror group in Syria and Iraq have claimed to have burned alive captured Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh while he was locked helpless in a cage.
The chilling footage appears to show the captured airman being set alight as the militants - infamous for their barbaric murders - plunged new depths of depravity.
The expertly-edited footage, filmed from several camera angles, shows the pilot wearing an orange jumpsuit and seemingly doused in fuel, as a trail of petrol leading up to the iron bars of the cage is seen being set ablaze.
Flames are seen quickly spreading across the dirt to the cage where they completely engulf the helpless pilot in images that are far too distressing to publish. The release of the video has prompted Jordan to announce it will execute all six prisoners convicted of association with ISIS 'within hours'. Within an hour of the 22-minute-long video's publication, Jordan reportedly moved ISIS-linked prisoners to a jail in the south of the country which is usually used for state executions.
[Daily Mail - UK]UPDATES:
Jordan Executes Two Prisoners - Greg Botelho & Dana Ford
In Amman and in the pilot's hometown, crowds hit the streets calling for revenge. Tom Fuentes, a CNN law enforcement analyst, noted: "When was the last time you had a mob in the street of one of these Muslim countries that was not screaming 'death to America,' but in fact screaming, 'get revenge on ISIS.'"
(CNN)
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Muslim Outrage Against ISIS - Liz Sly & Hugh Naylor
Declarations of outrage swept the Middle East as the spectacle of an Arab pilot being burned alive in a cage triggered some of the harshest reactions yet. The pan-Arab daily al-Hayat headlined its coverage: "Barbarity," while Iyad Madani, secretary general of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, condemned the killing as an affront to Islam. "Most of the people executed by [the Islamic State] have been foreigners, but this time it was an Arab Muslim man," said Labib Kamhawi, a political analyst based in Amman.
However, Hisham al-Hashimi, an expert on ISIS who advises the Iraqi government, said, "The Islamic State has gained more from this than it has lost." In the Syrian city of Raqqa, the Islamic State broadcast video of the pilot's death on giant video screens as crowds shouted, "God is Great."
(Washington Post)
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Obama Continues to Flirt with Muslim Brotherhood
Sisi: Protecting Egypt More Important than Struggle Against Israel
- Zvi Bar'el
For the first time, an Arab leader, Egypt's President Abdel al-Fattah al-Sisi, is challenging the common view that "resistance" organizations that are fighting Israel necessarily serve Arab interests.
The "sanctity" of the struggle against Israel is no longer seen as justification for the existence of an organization that turns its arms against Egypt.
(Ha'aretz)
Egypt and the New Terror Onslaught - Zvi Mazel
Unfortunately Cairo's long-term ally, America, has yet to restore fully its military cooperation, and Egypt is not receiving the help it so desperately needs to maintain its stability.
The Obama administration still supports the Brotherhood. Just last week a delegation of members of the Brotherhood who fled Egypt was received at the State Department. When will America finally understand that a prolonged and bloody conflict in Sinai will affect all countries in the region?
The writer is a former Israeli ambassador to Romania, Egypt and Sweden.
(Jerusalem Post)
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UPDATE:
Egypt Outraged by U.S. Hosting Brotherhood
A delegation of Muslim Brotherhood members met with officials at the U.S. State Department on Jan. 27, 2015. The Egyptian regime, outraged by the visit, accused the U.S. administration of not respecting Egyptian law that defines the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, and of discounting the will of the Egyptian people.
It also claimed that this conduct flies in the face of U.S. policy, which champions the struggle against global terrorism.
(MEMRI)
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Abbas: Hypocrite
Abbas orders probe into Palestinian cartoon of Mohammad
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has ordered an investigation into a cartoon apparently depicting the Prophet Mohammad in an official Palestinian newspaper.
The move came less than a month after Abbas joined world leaders in a march for free speech in Paris following a deadly attack by Islamist gunmen on the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, which had caricatured Mohammad.
A drawing in the West Bank-based newspaper al-Hayat al-Jadidah showed a robed man standing astride Earth and reaching into a heart-shaped pouch to sow seeds of love around the world. The caption reads: "Our Prophet Mohammad".
Artist Mohammed Sabanneh, a Muslim, said he meant no harm.
[T]he official Palestinian news agency WAFA said Abbas had ordered "an immediate investigation."
It quoted him citing "the need to take deterrent action against those responsible for this terrible mistake, out of respect for sacred religious symbols and foremost among them the prophets".
[Jerusalem Post]
UPDATE:
Mahmoud Abbas Gets a Free Pass - David Keyes
"Moderate" Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas publicly hugged the genocidal leader of Sudan, President Omar Hassan al-Bashir; ordered an investigation into a cartoonist for publishing a drawing of Mohammed; and entered his 10th year of a four-year term of office.
Under Abbas' rule, the PA has arrested activists for Facebook posts and jailed atheists. Two weeks ago, a student was imprisoned for insulting the head of the Palestinian Football Federation. Torture is rampant.
Decades of propping up Palestinian dictators from Yasser Arafat to Mahmoud Abbas have not solved the problem of radicalism - they've actually strengthened it.
A modest solution is to begin using the West's immense political and economic leverage to encourage real democratic reform in the Palestinian Authority. Tyrants that stifle dissent are not moderates. The free world should stop pretending that they are.
The writer is the executive director of Advancing Human Rights.
(Daily Beast)
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