Prepared for the Conference of Presidents | |
| DAILY ALERT |
Friday, December 14, 2018 |
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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
The U.S. Senate on Thursday voted 56 to 41 to end U.S. participation in the Saudi-led war in Yemen and then unanimously approved a measure blaming Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi on Oct. 2 in Istanbul. The Yemen resolution was put forward by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah); seven Republicans joined all Senate Democrats to back the measure. The House is not expected to take up either measure this year. (Washington Post) A French police unit in Strasbourg on Thursday came across Cherif Chekatt, the man who attacked the city's Christmas market on Tuesday, and killed him after he opened fire. On Tuesday, Chekatt opened fire close to the Christmas market, then escaped after commandeering a taxi. As he fled he came into contact with four soldiers and began firing at them. The soldiers fired back, hitting him in the arm. The attacker boasted to the taxi driver that he had killed 10 people, and also said he had been injured during a firefight with soldiers. The three victims killed in the market attack included Kamal Naghchband, a Muslim originally from Afghanistan and the father of three; a retired bank worker, 61; and Anupong Suebsamarn, 45, a Thai tourist. (BBC News) Iranian hackers sought to break into personal emails of more than a dozen U.S. Treasury officials tasked with enforcing economic sanctions on Iran, AP has found. Also on the hackers' hit list: Arab atomic scientists, Iranian civil society figures, and D.C. think tank employees. (AP) Israel is advancing plans for a 25-acre diplomatic compound to house embassies it expects will move to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv following the relocation of the U.S. mission in May, Israel's Construction and Housing Ministry said Wednesday. (Bloomberg) A bipartisan group of new members of Congress were given a security briefing by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a trip to Israel this week. They include Congressmen-elect David Trone (D-Md.), Susie Lee (D-Nev.), Elaine Luria (D-Va.), Dan Crenshaw (R-Tex.), Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), and Denver Riggleman (R-Va.). Riggleman said, "When you look at the distances they deal with, you have to be very impressed with the Israeli people. Everything is so close here. They're worried about ISIS and Gaza, but at the same time they have a priority towards Iran." (Washington Free Beacon) All ten chancellors in the University of California system have reaffirmed their opposition to the academic boycott of Israel. In a statement shared on Tuesday, the chancellors said their "commitment to continued engagement and partnership with Israeli, as well as Palestinian colleagues, colleges, and universities is unwavering." The boycott of Israeli universities and scholars "poses a direct and serious threat to the academic freedom of our students and faculty," as well as to the free exchange of ideas and perspectives on campus. (Algemeiner) The U.S. Army will buy Israel's Iron Fist active protection system for a brigade of its M2 Bradley armored vehicles. The U.S. Army is already buying the Trophy active protection system, also Israeli, for four brigades of M1 Abrams heavy tanks. (Breaking Defense) News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
The two Israeli soldiers killed in a terror shooting in the West Bank near Giv'at Asaf on Thursday were identified as Staff Sgt. Yovel Mor Yosef, 20, and Sgt. Yosef Cohen, 19. Both were members of the Netzah Yehuda infantry battalion for religious soldiers. A third soldier was critically injured in the shooting and a civilian woman was also seriously wounded. (Times of Israel) See also Netanyahu Warns Hamas that Israel Won't Have Gaza Truce alongside West Bank Terror - Noa Landau Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Hamas on Thursday that Israel won't have a Gaza cease-fire if terrorism in the West Bank continues, a senior official said. (Ha'aretz) According to a senior IDF officer, a "large part of the [Arab] population in the West Bank is very violent and wants to carry out attacks. Only this year we succeeded in thwarting hundreds of terrorist attacks and we have arrested more than 2,700 people, but every month between four to eight attacks are successful." Dr. Barak Ben-Zur, former head of the Israel Security Agency's Intelligence and Research Division, said recent incidents are "a part of the new initiative of this organization [Hamas] that decided to open a new front in the West Bank." (Jerusalem Post) Israeli defense officials estimate that the violent wave of Palestinian attacks in the West Bank and Jerusalem will continue and perhaps even worsen over the coming months. Hamas has a clear motive to create a wave of terrorism in the West Bank: to remedy the damage to its image after it agreed to take Qatari money and in return end the war of attrition it has waged against Israel in the months of rioting since March on the Gaza border. (Ynet News) Shira Ish-Ran, 21, the pregnant woman who was severely wounded and lost her baby boy in a West Bank shooting attack earlier this week, vowed on Thursday, "I will prove to them, I will show them. I will bring many more babies into this world. Am Yisrael chai [the people of Israel live]," Hebrew media reported. At the baby's funeral on Wednesday, his grandfather Refael Ish-Ran said that despite the baby's short life, he had "managed to unite the nation of Israel." (Times of Israel) U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman accused the Palestinian Authority of encouraging terrorism. Noting a string of attacks over the past week, Friedman assailed the PA's policy of paying stipends to the families of Palestinian assailants caught or killed committing "heinous acts" of terrorism against Israelis. (Times of Israel) The UN Security Council is expected to convene on Wednesday to discuss Hizbullah's tunneling operations, an Israeli official said. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and "demand" he condemn Hizbullah's "violation of Israeli sovereignty." "We must use every measure against Hizbullah to silence it and destroy its military and terror apparatus," said Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon. The meeting was officially requested by France. (Jerusalem Post) Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:
Iran When my late father, Sen. Ted Kennedy, led the effort to place sanctions on South Africa, the apartheid government insisted it would only hurt the people. But Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu assured him they wanted the sanctions because they wanted to speed up the end of Apartheid. The Senate, led by Senators Kennedy and Lowell Weicker, overrode a presidential veto to impose the restrictions. The story is much the same with Iran. The protests and strikes in Iran's cities have made it clear that the people recognize their economic hardships are rooted in the self-serving priorities of the mullahs. "The enemy is right here," protesters are chanting. "They lie when they say it is America." The experience of sanctions relief has left Iranians with no doubt that foreign wealth is not about to reach their homes, meaning that international pressure affects only the regime. Only intense pressure, from at home and abroad, can compel the regime to accept comprehensive change or be driven out of power. The Trump administration has accordingly set meaningful change as its goal, which is clearly what the Iranian public also wants, though it is more likely they will demand, and achieve, regime change. The Iranian resistance has no expectation of, or desire for, direct outside intervention in the conflict between the regime and its people. However, the resistance would clearly like Western policymakers to agree that sanctions and diplomatic pressure will harm the regime alone, not ordinary Iranians. As they did in South Africa, sanctions will impede an unwanted regime's ability to stave off an uprising by a long-suffering people desiring freedom and democracy. Former Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2011. (National Interest) The Europeans have been doing everything in their power to undermine U.S. efforts to recreate pressure on Iran as a starting point for a new negotiation that would cover its nuclear, missile and regional activities. France, Britain and Germany envision an alternative payment system that will enable them to continue trade with Iran despite U.S. sanctions. But do the Europeans not recognize that there are serious flaws in the nuclear deal and that it would not prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear state? Don't they see that it is in everyone's interest to try to strengthen the deal, especially since Iran has become an even more aggressive regional actor since the deal came into force? The horror of the Islamic regime is clear to see: the war crimes in Syria, the transport of weapons and advanced technologies to Hizbullah, the testing of missiles that can carry a nuclear warhead, and the steadfast refusal to allow the IAEA to inspect non-nuclear facilities (especially those revealed in the nuclear archives), to name a few. Iran made only minimal nuclear concessions to secure maximum sanctions relief. It has given no indication of a strategic U-turn in the nuclear realm, and continues to threaten Israel with destruction. Moreover, the deal itself ensures that Iran can continue with its nuclear program, allowing R&D work on an entire range of advanced centrifuges. It excludes Iran's missile program, which it continues to advance virtually unhindered. Finally, the deal has an expiration date, so it is at best a temporary arrangement. It flies in the face of reason that the Europeans don't see what a dangerous nuclear proliferator Iran still is. The writer heads the Arms Control and Regional Security Program at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). (Jerusalem Post) Iran has infiltrated into the refugee camps in Lebanon, primarily through the group Usbat al-Ansar. In its most recent messages, the group has only cited Hamas and Islamic Jihad as legitimate forces within the refugee camps, but it ignored Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah. The writer, a Middle East analyst at the Jerusalem Center, is a leading expert on the Arab world and Islam. (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) Palestinians Little Amiad Yisrael Ish-Ran perished Wednesday, just four days after his delivery by emergency Caesarian at 30 weeks, after his mother, Shira, was badly wounded in a West Bank shooting. Hamas took "credit" for the attack, calling it a "heroic and qualitative operation." Its rival, Fatah, called the killer a "heroic martyr of the homeland." As with all Palestinians who commit the political murder of any Israeli, the late killer's family will qualify for a substantial stipend from the Palestinian Authority. You don't have to support Israel to find this beyond barbaric. (New York Post) It is clear by now that Hamas is behind some of the recent terror attacks against Israelis in the West Bank. Hamas and its allies have a plan to ultimately to take control of the West Bank and they are openly encouraging the eruption of a new anti-Israel uprising there. They have been emboldened by the recent failure of the UN General Assembly to adopt a U.S.-sponsored resolution condemning Hamas and other Palestinian groups for firing rockets at Israel and inciting violence. Hamas is not interested in ruling only Gaza. It wants the West Bank, Jerusalem, and all the land "from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea." Hamas does not believe in negotiations. Rather, it believes that the only way to "liberate" Muslim land is through jihad. This is why Hamas celebrates and applauds every terrorist attack against Israel. The Hamas-engineered attacks in the West Bank are not only a threat to Israeli civilians and soldiers; they also undermine the Western-funded Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas. Each "successful" attack carried out by Hamas earns it more popularity in the West Bank, at the cost of Abbas and his regime. Every dollar and every concession that is being made to Hamas will only increase its appetite to continue its plan. (Gatestone Institute) The UN General Assembly narrowly defeated a resolution last week that would have condemned Hamas for its terror campaign against Israel. The vote actually illustrated that the world is losing patience with the Palestinians. 87 nations voted to condemn both Palestinian rocket attacks on Israeli cities and towns, as well as its use of civilian infrastructure to mask its ability to commit such war crimes. It was only because of a last-minute vote to require a 2/3 majority for passage that it failed. But a majority of nations still voted yes. Despite the pro-forma support for the Palestinians in such settings, most of the world has lost interest in their century-old war on Zionism. Moreover, Abbas and Hamas know that even many of those Arab nations that voted with them at the UN are dealing with Israel in private. (JNS) Other Issues Why is Hizbullah digging tunnels between Lebanon and Israel? Does it really believe that a war between Lebanon and Israel could possibly end with a victory that would obliterate the "Zionist entity"? Or is the whole affair about a message that Iran wants to send to the world - that Lebanon is a card in Iran's hand and that it can use it as it pleases? It is not surprising that Israel would tell the world that there is no state in Lebanon and that the real state there is Hizbullah, which is just a brigade of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. With Israel's disclosure of the tunnels, Lebanon has entered a new phase of slow escalation at a time when Iran simply cannot emerge victorious from its confrontation with U.S. President Donald Trump. Iran does not have the resources to go the full length of the game to end this confrontation, especially if the U.S. administration escalates its economic sanctions on Iran. Therefore, this affair of rockets and tunnels can only turn out to be disastrous for Lebanon. (Arab Weekly-UK) See also Lebanese Journalist: Hizbullah Is Incapable of Governing - Ali Al-Amin Hizbullah masters the art of destroying countries and has flawlessly accomplished this task. Hizbullah's strength lies in its ability to obstruct and destroy and not build, to create crises and not find solutions, and to divide societies and deprive them of their vitality and innovation and not to establish an attractive model free of fanatic and sectarian ideologies. (Al Arabiya) Through my college experiences as a Jewish American, I am coming to see that many just do not really care to understand or sympathize with the Jewish struggle for liberation, independence and self-determination. Jewish people are constantly told our history and identity are illegitimate. In conversations surrounding the upcoming Women's March in 2019, it has been made increasingly clear that in order for Jewish Americans to be welcomed, we have to denounce our narratives and hide our heritage. And I am not interested in the politics of permission. According to 2018 data in Moment Magazine, 70% of American Jews have an emotional attachment to Israel. Zionism is a political philosophy that advocated for and aided in the liberation of the Jewish people after thousands of years of statelessness, pogroms, exiles and genocide. It was created by Jews for Jews, and it is simply not the place of a non-Jew to have an opinion. The writer is news editor of The Ithacan. (The Ithacan-Ithaca College) Contrary to conventional wisdom, the Jewish state is not facing an Arab demographic time bomb. It benefits from a robust Jewish demographic tailwind of births and net immigration. From 1995 to 2017 the number of Israeli Jewish births surged by 74%, from 80,400 to 140,000, while the number of Israeli Arab births grew by 19%, from 36,000 to 43,000. Moreover, the trend of Israeli emigration has slowed down. In 1898 Simon Dubnov, a leading Jewish historian and demographer, projected 500,000 Jews in the Land of Israel by 1998, defining Theodor Herzl's Zionist vision as "messianic wishful thinking." In 1944 the founder of Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, Prof. Roberto Bachi, projected 2.3 million Jews in Israel in 2001. In 2018 there are seven million Jews in Israel. In 2000, the CBS projected a decline in the Jewish fertility rate from 2.6 births per woman to 2.4 in 2025. However, by 2017 the Jewish fertility rate had risen to 3.16, and 76.5% of all Israeli births were Jewish, compared to 69% in 1995. The rise of Jewish fertility reflects enhanced optimism, patriotism, attachment to roots, and communal responsibility among Israel's secular population. In 2018 there are 1.85 million Arabs in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) - and not 3 million as claimed by the Palestinians, 1.6 million Israeli Muslim Arabs, 130,000 Israeli Druze, 130,000 Israeli Christian Arabs, and seven million Jews - a 65.5% Jewish majority in the combined area of pre-1967 Israel, Judea, and Samaria. The writer is a member of the American-Israel Demographic Research Group. (Jewish Political Studies Review) Anti-Semitism Re: "Anti-Zionism Isn't the Same as Anti-Semitism," by Michelle Goldberg (New York Times, Dec. 7): If anti-Zionism isn't a form of anti-Semitism, what is? To deny the Jewish people, of all the peoples on earth, the right to self-determination surely is discriminatory, all the more so 71 years after the UN General Assembly voted to recommend the creation of a "Jewish" state. And if the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement isn't another form of anti-Semitism, what is? To single out Israel, the only liberal democracy in the Middle East, for demonization and isolation, while ignoring egregious human rights violators aplenty, once again smacks of anti-Jewish hatred. Nor does it take into account the many efforts by Israel to forge a peace deal with the Palestinians, beginning 70 years ago, only to be spurned time and again. Treating Israel differently from any other country in the world is at the core of the anti-Zionist and BDS outlook. The writer is chief executive of the American Jewish Committee. (New York Times) Sammy Ghozlan, head of the National Bureau for Vigilance Against Antisemitism (BNVCA) in France, said Wednesday that recent protests over taxes are giving rise to anti-Semitic rhetoric, and that "the 'Yellow Jackets' movement has an anti-Semitic base that repeats conspiracy theories about Jews and power." Some protesters have been filmed carrying signs and chanting slogans describing French President Emmanuel Macron as a "puppet" of the Jews. France has seen a 69% increase in anti-Semitic incidents in 2018 over the previous year. (JTA) Weekend Features Part 1 - Israel and the Arab States (4:19) "We found enormous common language with Sunni Arab states against the danger of Iranian encirclement." Part 2 - Does the Palestinian Leadership Want Peace? (2:33) "Mahmoud Abbas is going to have to do a lot of work to convince people that he is in the deal-making business." Part 3 - Diplomacy Means a Search for Common Ground (2:16) "It's important to give people an ideological basis for talking to you, to find common ground. It's not enough to offer them a new water desalination system at a bargain price." Part 4 - Bipartisan Diplomacy and American Jewry (3:19) "You reach out to Democrats, you reach out to Republicans, and you don't get caught playing partisan politics in the United States....Part of our problem with our American Jewish brothers is that they may not be fully informed about what Israel does." Amb. Dore Gold, former director general of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Israeli ambassador to the UN, is president of the Jerusalem Center. These are from his presentation at the Hudson Institute on November 27, 2018. (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) Aidoc is saving lives through medical imaging. It applies proprietary artificial intelligence to the millions of images generated every year by CT scans in order to catch serious issues before a human radiologist even has a chance to review the results. Aidoc reviews CT results as soon as they come out of the machine. If an abnormality is detected, an alert appears on the radiologist's screen immediately. Aidoc is now used in 50 medical institutions in the U.S. and Europe, as well as in Sheba Medical Center in Israel. Nearly 300,000 patient scans have been analyzed. Aidoc software detected 140,000 abnormalities and prioritized 46,000 cases. In addition to CT scans, regular X-rays as well as high-tech MRIs will be added in 2019. (Israel21c) In an Israeli study published this week in Nature Human Behaviour, researchers trialed "neurofeedback training" in 180 recruits undergoing stressful military combat training. The researchers say this training gives soldiers tools to deal with stressful situations and may prevent them from developing psychiatric disorders like post-traumatic stress disorder. The recruits were trained to change their own brain activity through neurofeedback. Since most neurofeedback routines rely on expensive imaging equipment like fMRI, the researchers used a less costly EEG-based neurofeedback routine designed to target brain activity in the amygdala, a region known to be involved in emotional processing. (SCIMEX-Australia) Reservists on Duty (RoD), established in 2015 by reserve soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces, deploys reservists living in the U.S. to counter the anti-Israel narrative on college campuses. Amit Deri, the group's CEO, explained that RoD members can effectively communicate the experiences of living in Israeli culture and serving in the military. Speaking to the success of the initiative, Deri explained that "on college campuses and communities, we cannot meet the demand" to cover all the invitations. (JNS) In December 1938, an elderly Aboriginal activist, Yorta Yorta elder William Cooper, led a small delegation from his home in a Melbourne suburb to the city's German consulate to protest the Kristallnacht attacks on Jews in Nazi Germany that occurred less than a month earlier. Over the past 15 years, that protest march has been celebrated as a symbol of solidarity between Aboriginals and the Jewish diaspora. The writer is an Aboriginal reporter and columnist for Guardian Australia. (Guardian-UK) A thousands-year-old love story between a people and their home. (StandWithUs) Observations: When Anti-Zionism Tunnels Under Your House - Bret Stephens (New York Times)
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