Iran caught shipping deadly cargo to Hizbullah

3,000 Missiles Found on Seized Arms Ship -Aron Heller

At least 3,000 missiles were on board the Francop, a vessel stopped by Israel off the coast of Cyprus and towed to the port of Ashdod.

Containers with dark green missiles inside bore writing in English that said "I.R. Iranian Shipping Lines Group." Israel alleged that the shipment of hundreds of tons of rockets, missiles, mortars, grenades and anti-tank weapons - the largest it ever seized - was headed for Hizbullah in Lebanon.

The ship had departed an Iranian port for Syria. [T]he ship carried ten times as many weapons as the Karine A, a weapons ship captured by Israeli forces in 2002.
(AP)

Revolutionary Guard Behind Arms Shipment -Hanan Greenberg

Israel hoped the operation will deter shipping companies, European harbors and insurance companies from doing business with seemingly innocent Iranian vessels which can blow up at any time.
(Ynet News)


Ship Proves Iran Supports Terror -Yaakov Katz & Tovah Lazaroff

Prime Minister Netanyahu said:

"Whoever still needed decisive proof that Iran continues to send weapons to terrorist organizations received it today in a very clear and unequivocal way."
(Jerusalem Post)

UPDATE: Click here for a 6 minute IDF Video of the Francop freighter, documenting it's capture and its contents

Iranian protestors appeal to Obama

Dissidents Mass in Tehran to Subvert Anti-U.S. Rally -Robert F. Worth

Tens of thousands of Iranian opposition protesters [pictured above] braved police beatings and clouds of tear gas on the sidelines of a major, government-sponsored anti-American rally.

The protests in Tehran and other cities were the opposition's largest street showing in two months.

Protesters declared their impatience with President Obama's policy of dialogue with the Iranian government. Many could be heard chanting, "Obama, Obama - either you're with them or you're with us," witnesses said.
(New York Times)
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VideoBite: Israel's clean technology revolution

Israel One of Top Five Cleantech Countries -Shawn Lesser

Israel, the "Silicon Valley" of water technology, is fast becoming the cleantech incubator to the world.

Israel recycles 75% of its wastewater, invented drip irrigation, and is home to the world's largest reverse osmosis desalination plant. Israel is also the first test-market for a nationwide electric vehicle recharge network.
(Cleantech)
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The end of Yemenite Jewry

Yemen's Jews. The End

History will record that 2,500 years of Jewish life in Yemen is now over.

As The Wall Street Journal reported, the US State Department has completed a clandestine operation which brought 60 of the country's remaining Jews to America. The newspaper quoted Yeshiva University's Hayim Tawil, a Yemeni Jewry expert, as issuing the certificate of death: "This is the end of the Jewish Diaspora of Yemen. That's it."

The rescue illuminates an often overlooked aspect of the 60-year-plus Arab-Israel conflict. Whereas the Arab world has purposefully maintained the 700,000 or so Palestinian Arabs made homeless in the course of the 1948 war and their descendants as permanent refugees and political pawns, the State of Israel and world Jewry have worked hard to resettle a roughly equal number of Jewish refugees forced to flee Arab lands.

In 1947, Arab rioters in Aden [Southern Yemen] killed dozens of Jews to protest a two-state solution in Palestine. In 1949 and 1950 the bulk of Yemen's Jews, some 49,000 souls, were airlifted here in "Operation Magic Carpet."

[Jerusalem Post]
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Negotiating with Iran is like "playing chess with a monkey"

Iran Accused of Playing Games on Nuclear Deal -Richard Spencer

Britain and other EU nations were preparing to reject Iran's counterproposal on sending its uranium abroad for enrichment, raising the threat of a protracted confrontation and new sanctions. Britain, France and Germany believe Iran is trying to use the deal merely as a starting point for another protracted round of talks. During that time they think the Iranians could continue to enrich uranium and conduct more research on the scientific know-how necessary to turn it into a nuclear weapon.

"It's like playing chess with a monkey," said one diplomat close to the talks. "You get them to checkmate, and then they swallow the king."
(Telegraph-UK)


Iran Counters UN on Uranium Plan -Glenn Kessler & Thomas Erdbrink

Iran appeared to reject a key element of a UN-backed proposal aimed at quickly reducing its stockpile of enriched uranium...

The long-awaited Iranian answer appeared to dash hopes that Tehran would be willing to quickly embrace engagement with the West on its nuclear program.

Obama administration officials will now need to assess whether engagement has run its course - and whether to shift toward tougher sanctions.
(Washington Post)
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Palestinians kick sand at Hillary Clinton

Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu, appears to be dancing with Hillary Clinton at a press conference this weekend

Clinton Asks Abbas to Return to Talks -Mark Landler & Ethan Bronner

Dealing a blow to the Obama administration’s efforts to restart Middle East peace talks, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton failed to persuade the Palestinian leader [Abbas] to accept an Israeli proposal that would slow but not stop the construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
[New York Times]


Clinton: Israel's "Unprecedented" Concessions -Karen DeYoung & Howard Schneider

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had offered "unprecedented" concessions on West Bank settlement construction in an effort to restart peace talks, a departure from the administration's earlier criticism of Israel and a possible signal of impatience with the refusal of Palestinian leaders to join negotiations.
(Washington Post)


UPDATE:

PA Accuses Clinton of Taking Bribes -Itamar Marcus & Barbara Crook

The official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, which is controlled by the office of Mahmoud Abbas, accused Secretary of State Clinton of taking bribes from Israel.

"Why, Mrs. Hillary? How much did the Zionists pay you as a bribe?" taunted an article. Al-Hayat Al-Jadida also ran a cartoon reiterating the Palestinian claim that the U.S. is controlled by Jews.
(Palestinian Media Watch)
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The Threat Within: US jihadist killed

FBI agents take cover under a trailer during an operation outside a warehouse in Dearborn. A leader of an Islamist group was fatally shot while resisting arrest and exchanging gunfire with federal agents

FBI Kills Islamic Leader -Nick Bunkley

FBI agents fatally shot Luqman Ameen Abdullah, 53, described as the leader of a violent Sunni Muslim separatist group.

Abdullah, whom the agents were trying to arrest in Dearborn on charges that included illegal possession and sale of firearms and conspiracy to sell stolen goods, refused to surrender and began firing at them from a warehouse.

Abdullah trained his followers in the use of firearms, martial arts and sword fighting, and directed them to conduct an "offensive jihad" against the U.S. government.
(New York Times)
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Clinton receives warm welcome in Pakistan

An attack in a marketplace in Pakistan killed and injured mostly women and children

Clinton Arrival in Pakistan Met by Fatal Attacks -Mark Landler & Ismail Khan

Militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan punctuated Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's arrival here with deadly attacks, underscoring their ability to cause chaos even in the face of offensives on both sides of the border.

In Pakistan, a devastating car bomb tore through a congested market in the northwest city of Peshawar, killing as many as 101 people, many of them women and children. Pakistani authorities said the attack was the country's most serious in two years, and the deadliest ever in Peshawar, which has become a front line for Taliban efforts to destabilize the government through violence.

In the Afghan capital, Kabul, Taliban militants stormed a guesthouse, killing five United Nations employees and three other people in a furious two-hour siege. The attack was meant to scare Afghans away from voting in a runoff election on Nov. 7.

The violence cast a shadow over the visit of Mrs. Clinton.
[New York Times]
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Clinton finally presses Palestinians

Hillary Clinton preparing for her meeting with Abbas?

Clinton Tries to Persuade Abbas to Negotiate with Israel -Avi Issacharoff

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will arrive for a visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority during which she will attempt to persuade PA leader Mahmoud Abbas to reopen negotiations with Israel on a final peace agreement. Clinton will ask Abbas to restart the negotiations with Israel without a complete freeze of construction in the settlements.
(Ha'aretz)


Deadlock on Restarting Israeli-Palestinian Talks -Barry Rubin

What both the U.S. and Europe fail to see is that the Palestinians don't need or want rapid progress on negotiations or even a state. They believe that intransigence on their part actually brings more criticism of Israel.

If you believe that the world is about to condemn Israel as a pariah, war criminal state, why make compromises with it?
(Jerusalem Post)
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Palestinian Authority & Hamas keep tension high on Temple Mount, hoping for new Intifada

Abbas Aide Among Rioters Arrested on Temple Mount -Liel Kyzer

Some 100 Arabs hurled stones and firebombs at Israeli police on the Temple Mount, wounding three policemen, after Muslim leaders urged Arabs to defend Jerusalem against "Jewish conquest."

During the clashes, police arrested Mahmoud Abbas' adviser on Jerusalem affairs, Hatam Abd al-Qadir [pictured above].
(Ha'aretz/Ynet News)


Hamas: "Jerusalem's Fate Will Be Decided by War" -Jack Khoury

Hamas political leader Khaled Meshal declared that "Jerusalem's fate will be decided with jihad (holy war) and resistance, and not negotiations."

Israel Police Commissioner David Cohen said the leaders responsible for inciting the riots were on location at the Temple Mount, provoking the rioters. Cohen added that Israel's policy is to keep the Temple Mount open to both Jewish and Muslim visitors "today and on every other day."
(Ha'aretz)


Netanyahu: UN Gives Terrorists New Weapon -Lally Weymouth

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said:

There has yet to be a Palestinian leader who actually turns to his people and says - it's over....We recognize that Israel is the Jewish state just as we ask the Israelis to recognize the Palestinian state.

The Arabs fought wars and terror campaigns in the 1920s, '30s and '40s against any Jewish state, and then they rejected the [United Nations] partition.

Our presence in the territories is not the cause of the conflict but one of its results....[t]he cause is the persistent Palestinian refusal to recognize the Jewish state at any point.
(Washington Post)
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Chinese Jews arrive in Israel

Chinese Jewish Descendants Start a New Life in Israel

Seven young Chinese men wearing kippot arrived in Israel via Uzbekistan to make aliya, descendants of the Jewish community of Kaifeng.

At its peak during the Middle Ages, Kaifeng Jewry numbered about 5,000, and the community lasted until the middle of the 19th century.

Hundreds of people in Kaifeng still cling to their identity as descendants of the city's Jewish community and, in recent years, a growing number have begun to express an interest in studying Jewish history and culture.
(Jerusalem Post)
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Iran Double-Crosses Obama

Iranian Lawmaker Dismisses Deal -Robert F. Worth

Mohammad Reza Bahonar [pictured above], the deputy speaker of Iran's Parliament, appeared to reject a plan to have Iran ship its uranium abroad for processing. Bahonar said the terms of the deal were "not acceptable," the official news agency IRNA reported.
(New York Times)

Is Tehran Toying with the World - Again? -Peter Grier

Is Tehran just yanking our chain?
(Christian Science Monitor)


Iran Talks Finish Amid Doubts on Uranium Deal -James Blitz

Western diplomats expressed serious doubts that Tehran would sign up to an agreement to reduce its stockpile of enriched uranium.

One European official said: "The last two days in Vienna have been something of a reality check for Obama's officials on just how difficult and intransigent Iran really is."
(Financial Times-UK)
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VideoBite: UN trashed by HonestReporting

HonestReporting takes on the United Nations

UN Council's Anti-Israel Agenda -Adam Raskin

The UN Human Rights Council has become a shill for the international delegitimizing of a single nation: Israel.

Since its inception three years ago, 80% of the business of the Human Rights Council has involved the censure of Israel. For a country with a democratically elected government that enshrines freedom of speech and religion, protects the rights of women, gays and lesbians and minorities - a country that has 80 human rights organizations of its own - all this attention seems a bit strange.
(Dallas Morning News)
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Novel tackles Iran

Serendipity -John Clayton

[T]here's a little thing in the publishing business called serendipity, and it comes into play when you write a novel and your fictional premise suddenly becomes a shocking truth, a truth that results in global outrage, banner headlines and round-the-clock cable news coverage.

That's what's happening to [author] Joe Smiga. [T]he central storyline in "Behind the Lies," [is that] Iran has nukes [and] Hamas, Hezbollah and renegade Ayatollahs control Kilo-class submarines. Joe has scripted a cliff-hanger.

Talk about lucky timing.

"[T]he fact that my book has a black President who's in his first term in the book strikes a chord with readers," Joe said.
[Union Leader]
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VideoBite: Turkish TV spreads hate of Israel

The video above is the shortest I could find of this anti-Israel propaganda brought to you by a country that has formally been seen as Israel's ally.

Turkish TV Portrays IDF Soldiers as Murderers -Barak Ravid

[Israel's] Foreign Minister instructed the Foreign Ministry to protest to Turkey a new television drama airing on [a Turkish] state-sponsored television channel that depicts Israel Defense Forces soldiers as brutal murderers.

The show depicts multiple images of the IDF brutalizing the Palestinian population in Gaza by shooting children, kicking elderly people on the ground, and lining up Palestinians to be shot by a firing squad.

Israeli soldiers can be seen shooting a smiling young girl in the chest [and] steamrolling a tank through a crowded street.
(Ha'aretz)
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Jacoby: Obama's failure is predictable in the MidEast

Peace vs. the 'peace process' -Jeff Jacoby

Obama was right when he said there had been no progress toward Arab-Israeli peace under Bush. Nor had there been any under Clinton. Nor will there be any under Obama.

Why? Because the "peace process" to which all of them, their sharp differences notwithstanding, have been so committed, is not a formula for ending the decades-long war in the Holy Land, but for prolonging it.

Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shake hands at the White House in September 1993, launching the Oslo "peace process." What resulted was not peace but an intensified war.

Arafat called [then President Bill] Clinton in January 2001 to tell him what a great man he was, Clinton was bitter. "I am not a great man," he told Arafat. "I am a failure, and you have made me one."

Diplomacy cannot settle the Arab-Israeli conflict until the Palestinians abandon their anti-Israel rejectionism. US policy should be focused on getting them to abandon it. The Palestinians must be put on notice that benefits will flow to them only after they prove their acceptance of Israel.

Until then -- no diplomacy, no discussion of final status, no recognition as a state, and certainly no financial aid or weapons."
[The Boston Globe]
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Osama's cash flow problem

Al-Qaeda "Faces Funding Crisis"

Al-Qaeda is in its worst financial state for many years and has made several appeals for funds already this year, according to senior U.S. Treasury official David Cohen.

"We assess that al-Qaeda is in its weakest financial condition in several years and that, as a result, its influence is waning," Cohen said in Washington.

He also noted a trend in militant organizations turning to criminal activities to finance themselves. Hizbullah, he alleged, is involved in making and selling illegal copies of music and computer software, as well as cigarette smuggling.
(BBC News)
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Obsessive Compulsive Israel Disorder

VideoBite:
This short clip suggests the world's obsessive focus on the Arab-Israeli conflict, ignores other vital global problems

Conclusions about Israel's Guilt in Gaza -Zion Evrony

The Goldstone mission was mandated by the UN Human Rights Council, which has passed 20 resolutions censuring Israel in the three years since its founding, out of a total of 25 resolutions passed by the Council.

Yet the Council, which includes paragons of human rights values such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Cuba, currently has nothing to say about the 400,000 deaths in Darfur for which Sudan is responsible, or the 1,000,000 displaced civilians in Somalia.
(Irish Independent)
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Obama and the Internet: the dangers of giving up control of ICANN

Surrendering the Superhighway –Seth Mandel

We owe a debt of gratitude to Bangladeshi dissident Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury [pictured right], and many other[s], who have been able to, despite attempts to silence them, make important information public at great personal risk -- often using the Internet as their only line of communication with the outside world.

One way the United States has aided journalists like Choudhury in the past has been by simply retaining control over the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the nonprofit body that oversees and regulates Internet domain name registration, ensuring such voices weren't denied access to the World Wide Web.

The U.S. Commerce Department had control over ICANN and held veto power on its decisions to award domain names, but stayed away from any real involvement. America's veto power prevented despotic regimes and Islamic overlords from trying to prevent organizations they didn't like from registering domain names.

[T]he Internet flourished under America's watch, and the free flow of information enabled people like Choudhury to reach millions. It also prevented the world from taking punitive action against Israel, since the U.S. would never allow, for example, Israel to be stripped of its national Internet domain address (.il).

Until now.

"ICANN had previously been operating under the auspices of the American government, which had control of the [Internet] thanks to its initial role in developing the underlying technologies used for connecting computers together," explained the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper, in a story titled "U.S. relinquishes control of the Internet".

America had control until Sept. 30, when the Obama administration announced it was ceding that control to a more "international" forum. How, then, will decisions be made going forward? Who will have control, and how will it all function?

The Guardian adds:
"[This] will give other countries a more prominent role in determining what takes place online, and even the way in which it happens -- opening the door for a virtual United Nations, where many officials gather to discuss potential changes to the Internet."

Unfortunately, you know just how a "virtual United Nations" would rule. [W]e've surrendered the [internet to] the World Wide Web version of the United Nations.

We know what what the internationalization of the Internet means. It means the Choudhury’s of the world will be far less of a threat to their regimes. After all, in the last couple of years Russia has led "cyber-attacks" against its enemies in Georgia and Estonia, two post-Soviet democracies. Now it won't have to go through all that trouble.

The ICANN decision means the enemies of freedom can far more acutely silence the voices of opposition. But it also means [that dissidents who] don't have the free speech rights Americans enjoy, [will no longer have] America’s protect[ion].

A "virtual United Nations" is a nightmare.
[The Jewish State]
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PA rachets up rhetoric: compares Jews praying on Temple Mount to bombing; decries sharing Cave of the Patriarchs

Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs, has separate Muslim & Jewish prayer spaces

Jews Praying on Mount is Like 'Suicide Bombing'

Mohammed Dahlan [pictured right], a top Palestinian Authority official, told Israel Radio that Israel was aggravating the situation by sending Jewish worshippers to pray on the Temple Mount. According to Dahlan, Israel's purpose is to "split" the Temple Mount into Jewish and Muslim areas, much as the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hevron is shared by worshippers.

Dahlan said that Jewish worshippers on the Temple Mount were, as far as the Arabs were concerned, a tragedy as terrible as a suicide bombing was for Jews.
(IsraelNN.com)
[Note: Since Israeli law already forbids non-Muslim prayer on the Temple Mount, the PA seems to consider non-Muslims visiting as a provocation.]
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