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| DAILY ALERT |
Thursday, June 17, 2021 |
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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
Ebrahim Raisi, the favorite in Iran's presidential election on Friday, played a key part in the executions of thousands of opposition prisoners in 1988 when he was part of a four-man "Death Committee" that sent convicts to their death without a shred of due process, activists say. Since 2019, he has served as head of the judiciary. "Raisi's only place is in the dock, not the presidency," said Shadi Sadr, executive director of London-based Justice for Iran. Mahmoud Royaei, who was jailed in Iran from 1981 until 1991, said Raisi "made the utmost effort to execute everyone." When the U.S. Treasury sanctioned Raisi in 2019, it said he had taken part in the 1988 death commission and also was involved in "the brutal crackdown" on protests that followed the disputed 2009 presidential election that left hundreds dead. "Raisi is a pillar of a system that jails, tortures, and kills people for daring to criticize state policies," said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the New-York based Center for Human Rights in Iran. (AFP-France24) See also Iran Hardliner Headed for Presidency as Election Rivals Pull Out - Marc Jourdier and Frank Zeller Three of the seven candidates in Iran's presidential election pulled out on Wednesday, two days before the Friday vote in which a victory by ultraconservative cleric Ebrahim Raisi is seen as a foregone conclusion. (AFP-Times of Israel) Reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear accord will have to await the formation of a new Iranian government, Rafael Grossi, head of the UN nuclear watchdog IAEA, said in remarks published Wednesday in the Italian daily La Repubblica. "Everyone knows that, at this point, it will be necessary to wait for the new Iranian government," he said. The term of President Hassan Rouhani ends on Aug. 3. (Reuters) U.S. Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday that it is "appalling that the [UN Human Rights] Council has one standing agenda - and that's Israel - when there's so many other countries that are committing human rights violations." She added: "We've seen that countries that have put Israel on the agenda on a regular basis have expressed views that are anti-Semitic, and many of those countries are in the Middle East." "We will fight against every effort wherever it takes place to undermine or diminish or question Israel's right to exist," she said. "And we have committed to fighting those efforts at the United Nations when unfair resolutions have been raised targeting Israel." (Middle East Eye-UK) A Jerusalem-born Israeli woman, Ayelet Balaban, whose father is British, was shocked to discover that her new UK passport listed her birthplace as the "Occupied Palestinian Territories." A British Home Office spokesperson said: "We apologize for this error and are urgently investigating how this has occurred. We will contact Ms. Balaban about the issuing of a new passport showing the correct place of birth." Government sources confirmed that there had been no change in British government policy. (Jewish News-UK) On June 2, 2021, the American popular science magazine Scientific American published an "analysis article" that had been circulated as a petition by anti-Israel BDS activists on social media. Some readers responded with surprise that the publication's editors cast aside the scientific tradition of fact-based inquiry in order to present anti-Israel propaganda disguised as an analytic article. On June 14, the editors announced: "This article fell outside the scope of Scientific American and has been removed." (CAMERA) News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
Thomas Nides, President Biden's nominee as ambassador to Israel, has been described as both a friend of Israel and as an envoy who will likely be evenhanded and "won't go easy" on the Jewish state. During the Obama administration, he worked to oppose congressional efforts to limit U.S. support for the Palestinian refugee agency (UNWRA) and UNESCO. Nides is currently managing director and vice chairman of Morgan Stanley investment bank. He is married to Virginia Carpenter Moseley, senior vice president of newsgathering at CNN. (Times of Israel) Palestinians in Gaza launched a wave of incendiary balloon attacks on Israel on Tuesday, with 26 fires reported in the western Negev. In addition, an explosive device attached to a balloon exploded in mid-air above an Israeli kindergarten. In response, Israeli aircraft struck Hamas military compounds in Gaza on Wednesday. (Ynet News) A female Palestinian assailant attempted to commit a car-ramming and stabbing attack Wednesday against Israeli soldiers near Hizme in the West Bank before being shot and killed. Mai Afaneh, 29, from Abu Dis, east of Jerusalem, had written on Facebook hours before the attack: "I don't have much time left in life." (Times of Israel) Israel's Channel 12 reported Tuesday that U.S. President Biden had requested that the PA form a negotiating team to conduct talks with Israel. According to the report, the PA will demand that Israel return to the situation that existed in the West Bank in 2002 before the Second Intifada, which means the IDF would no longer enter Area A of the West Bank to arrest Palestinians involved in terror. The PA will also demand control over additional areas in Area C, which is administered by Israel. A senior PA official in Ramallah said the PA has informed the Biden administration of its readiness to return to the negotiating table with Israel under the umbrella of the Quartet (the U.S., Russia, EU, and UN). Talk about resuming Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations has drawn sharp criticism from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), as well as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. (Jerusalem Post) Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:
Iran Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid told the Foreign Ministry's staff on Sunday: "We have to work together as we face a new Iran deal. This is a bad deal....Israel will use every option at its disposal in order to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon." (JNS) See also "A Nuclear Iran Is the End of the Middle East" - Yair Lapid interviewed by Robert Satloff Israel's new foreign minister, Yair Lapid, discussed Israel and the Iran deal with the Washington Institute on March 1, 2021. "We have three options....The best option is a good agreement. A good agreement means a lot of things that didn't happen or were not there in the original JCPOA. It means an agreement that includes the ballistic missile program, much better supervision, and a much better sunset clause. Of course, it should discuss the fact that the Iranians are the largest spreader of terror all around the Middle East." "The second best option...is a continuation of the sanctions, because the sanctions, when enforced the right way, have achieved most of what we needed. Let me remind you that the Iranians moved to the JCPOA only because the Obama administration tightened the sanctions like never before. So if you don't have the right agreement, you should go on with the sanctions until the Iranians choke." "The third, and worst, option...is the wrong agreement, the wrong JCPOA, which is just a tool for the Iranians to go on with their policy of 'let's let the Westerners hear what they want to hear while doing what we want to do.' This is just the wrong approach toward the idea of a nuclear Iran. A nuclear Iran is the end of the Middle East as we know it, for sure, but it's also a new threat to the entire globe." (Washington Institute for Near East Policy) One of the things to trickle out of Monday's NATO summit was the U.S. president's determination to use the short window between Iran's presidential election on Friday and the actual inauguration of the new leader in August to agree to a more enduring nuclear compact. Biden wants U.S.-led statecraft on Iran to be a quick win, rather than let the issues fester through his presidency. For Iran, an accelerated deal might be acceptable if it leads to a complete removal of sanctions. The bargain could be struck by Iranian experts associated with the outgoing regime of Hassan Rouhani, and his successor would reap the benefit without necessarily taking ownership of it. He would, in other words, have a free hand to lie and cheat and press ahead with clandestine development of a military nuclear program. The new nuclear deal, if it comes, will be based on the same illusions as the first one: that on the back of an internationally brokered agreement Iran will not only give up its plans for a nuclear bomb but stop its malign interventions abroad. Iran gets 60 mentions in the latest annual threat report of the U.S. directorate of national intelligence. It is moving toward full domination of Iraq just as soon as U.S. troops withdraw. A Revolutionary Guard officer rules like a Roman consul from the Iranian embassy in Baghdad. Even a modified Iran deal won't be able to persuade Israelis that Biden has their backs. (The Times-UK) Iran is continuing to exploit the Palestinian issue to promote its expansionist schemes and meddle in the internal affairs of Arab countries, including Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Bahrain. During the recent war between Israel and Hamas, Iran went out of its way to make known that without Tehran's financial and military support, Hamas in Gaza would not have been able to fire thousands of rockets at Israel. The Arabs clearly see that Iran has ambitions not only to acquire a nuclear bomb, but also to aggressively export its "Islamic revolution" and terrorism. Saudi author Mohammed Hassan Mufti said, "There is no dispute among experts and political analysts that Iran is a direct cause of the complete destruction of at least four Arab countries." One of the missions of the Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force is to "liberate Jerusalem and Palestine," a euphemism for the elimination of Israel. Yet Syrian writer and journalist Faisal Al-Qassem noted that polls on Twitter have shown that more than 85% of voters do not trust the Iranian position on the Palestinian issue. Qassem quoted one Arab commentator who preferred keeping Jerusalem under Israeli control over its liberation by Iran. "Look at the capitals occupied by Iran: Baghdad has become, according to the United Nations, the dirtiest capital in the world, while Beirut has become the largest dumpster in the Middle East. As for Damascus, it turned into a ruin, while Sana'a returned to the Middle Ages." The Arabs are telling the Americans and other Westerners that appeasing Iran by reviving the nuclear deal, lifting sanctions or giving it money will only assist its regime in perpetrating more crimes and increasing instability and terrorism in the region. (Gatestone Institute) Palestinians Beginning in 2018, Qatar began delivering $30 million a month in cash to Gaza, but last week Israel refused to allow delivery of Qatar's monthly aid. The thinking was that Qatari cash would keep Hamas quiet - that it would essentially buy them off from firing rockets at Israel's cities. "Did the Qatari procedure work for us? We don't think so," said Col. Eran Lerman, a former Israeli deputy national security adviser. The Israelis are now determined to rework their strategy. Instead of cash for calm, it's now planning to use reconstruction funds as leverage against Hamas rearmament. There is support for such ideas among American policymakers, especially since the international community seems fatigued with investing in rebuilding Gaza's infrastructure if it is destined to be destroyed in airstrikes a few years later. American diplomat Dennis Ross said, "An equation needs to be created which essentially says: Reconstruction for no rearmament." (Foreign Policy) See also Radicals Cannot Be Bought Off with Economic Gains - Dan Schueftan Former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen told Israel's Channel 12 last week that he wrongly assessed that Hamas was looking for some sort of deal with Israel. "I thought we had an arrangement....[I] believed that if the residents of the Gaza Strip saw their wellbeing improve...their motivation for crises and wars would decrease. It seems I was wrong." Jews have been making this mistake for over a century. Yet it is an analytic and perceptual error that is prevalent among intellectuals who believe that pragmatic behavior indicates that the leaders are transitioning away from radicalism. Hizbullah, Hamas and the Iranian regime are radicals, even when they act pragmatically. Israel must deter them instead of believing that their aggressive and violent nature can be changed if their standard of living improved. Radicals are trying to persuade Jerusalem and Washington to grant them resources, such as rehabilitating the Strip and lifting sanctions on Iran, which would enable them to continue the war. The two governments must not be tempted to do so. The writer heads the International Graduate Program in National Security Studies at the University of Haifa. (Israel Hayom) A poll conducted on June 9-12 and released Tuesday by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that 53% of Palestinians believe Hamas is "most deserving of representing and leading the Palestinian people," while only 14% prefer President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party. Pollster Khalil Shikaki called it a "dramatic" shift, but said it also resembles previous swings toward Hamas during times of confrontation. Those all dissipated within three to six months. 77% of Palestinians believe Hamas emerged as a winner in the 11-day war in May, while only 1% think Israel came out a winner. (AP-Washington Post) See also New Palestinian Poll Finds Support for Armed Conflict with Israel, Opposition to Talks under U.S. Leadership - Dr. Khalil Shikaki The poll showed widespread public discontent with the performance of the PA government and leadership as well as Fatah during the confrontations and the war. 2/3 reject Abbas' decision to postpone the Palestinian elections and believe he postponed them because he was afraid of their outcome, not because of Israel. If a presidential election was held today, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyyeh would receive 59%, while President Mahmoud Abbas would receive 27%. If new legislative elections were held today, 41% will vote for Hamas and 30% will vote for Fatah. In the West Bank, support for Hamas stands at 38% and Fatah 32%. Support for a return to armed confrontations and intifada with Israel rose sharply to 60% (from 43% three months ago). 58% oppose and 39% support the concept of the two-state solution. 54% are opposed and 39% are supportive of a return to dialogue with the U.S. under President Joe Biden. 63% oppose and 29% support a return to Palestinian-Israeli negotiations under U.S. leadership. (Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research) With each round of escalation in Gaza, Hamas discovers secret agents cooperating with Israel. The Arabic Post website revealed May 18 that the Security and Protection Unit of Hamas in Gaza had arrested 43 people on charges of spying for Israel. News has circulated about the start of trials of the collaborators at a military field court. Mohammed Abd al-Wahhab of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights said that "after the advent of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, it has become customary that military field courts are established for the prosecution of police and security members only." Abd al-Wahhab noted, "If the trials before these courts fail to meet the conditions that guarantee the right of defense and the necessary procedures to prove the charges against the defendant, then they would fall under arbitrary trials classified as war crimes." He warned the authorities in Gaza against forming these military field courts, especially since Palestine acceded to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). By acceding to the ICC, all alleged war crimes and arbitrary trials occurring in the Palestinian territories are subject to the ICC's jurisdiction, and it could deem the ruling of a field court as a war crime. "We do not want the leaders of the Palestinian factions to be pursued by the ICC," he said. (Al Monitor) See also EU Condemns Six Death Sentences Handed Down in Gaza (EU Neighbours) Lebanese Christian politician Camille Dory Chamoun, chairman of the National Liberal Party, said that Israel solved the "Palestinian problem" for Lebanon when it invaded the country in 1982. He explained that "We took the Palestinians in as refugees, and they turned against us, in an attempt to turn Lebanon into an alternative Palestine." Many Lebanese factions applauded the Israeli invasion, which "relieved us of a major plague." He added that the South Lebanon Army, which cooperated with Israel, defended Shi'ites even more than it defended Christians. Chamoun also said: "The Israelis do not want war. If you do not attack them, they will not attack you. But when you allow acts of aggression against Israel to be launched from your land, you will surely encounter a painful strike in return." (MEMRI-TV) Other Issues Benjamin Netanyahu lasted in the Israeli Prime Minister's Office as long as he did because he was, in many ways, good at the job. Over his 12 continuous years in office, the Israeli economy roughly doubled in size. Last year's Abraham Accords brought the Arab-Israeli conflict to a near conclusion, even if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains unsolved. Despite periodic battles with Hamas, Israelis were more secure during the Netanyahu years than they had been in the decade prior. Against Iran, Israel conducted arguably the most successful covert-ops campaign in modern history. And Israel's Covid-19 vaccination campaign was the envy of the world. (New York Times) Former Lebanese foreign minister Elie Salem wrote: "The logic of victory and defeat does not fully apply in the Arab-Israeli context. In the wars with Israel, Arabs celebrated their defeats as if they were victories." Since 1956, military losses have hardly ever scathed Arabic-speaking rulers and sometimes benefited them. Hamas and its allies agreed that it won the May 2021 conflict with Israel. Just two days after the fighting began, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyah announced his organization had "achieved victory in the battle for Jerusalem." Six factors in Arab political culture help account for this attitude: honor, fatalism, conspiracism, bombast, publicity, and confusion. The writer is president of the Middle East Forum. (Middle East Quarterly) In the military battle in Gaza in May, Hamas fired rockets, Israel fired back; Hamas targeted Israeli cities; Israel bombed buildings in which Hamas hides and stores weapons. But there is a wider battle raging about narratives. In the age of the smartphone, wars are fought under almost total video coverage. Every bombed house and dead man, women and child in Gaza is seen globally. It doesn't matter that dead civilians are a staple of every war. It doesn't matter that in previous wars that killed even more children and destroyed even more cities, you couldn't see it. Now you can. It is this, and not the rockets, which most threatens Israel, because it affects the narrative war. Lose that fight and you might lose the political cover and military cooperation that come with it. (Spectator-UK) When visiting Belfast several years ago, the Protestant areas were flying Israeli flags and the Catholic areas had Palestinian flags, creating an eerie feeling that the Northern Irish conflict, supposedly ended in 1998, was still simmering. Catholics and Protestants alike described the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with intense emotion, which I realized had nothing to do with our conflict and everything to do with their own. My colleague Igal Ram once termed this a "Disneyland of Hate": For those outside the actual Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it was a safe - Disneyland - way of experiencing the intense emotions missing from their post-peace lives. In a world that is actually more peaceful than ever, and where negative, violence-related emotions, such as hatred of groups, are less legitimate than ever, the continuing acceptance of hatred for Israel endures. In the U.S., the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is cast as a mirror of race relations in America. Jews are bizarrely cast as "white," and Zionism as a movement of "white supremacy," while Arabs, who look exactly like Jews, are cast as "people of color." Since these analogies have nothing to do with Israel and everything to do with projections of domestic issues and animosities, the best response is simply to refuse to give them the respect of treating them as honest arguments. The writer, a former IDF intelligence officer and Knesset member, is the co-author of The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace (2020). (Sapir Journal) United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) will be voting on a resolution in September calling for the cessation of U.S. aid to Israel and an endorsement of "the international campaign for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against apartheid in Israel." The resolution claims that the IDF initiated the violence this past May in Gaza, ignoring the facts. One can't help but wonder why, given the myriad challenges facing public school education in Los Angeles, the teachers union is spending social capital and time addressing international issues that are far beyond its purview or expertise. And why is Israel, among all the nations in the world - including known human rights abusers like China, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran - being singled out for repudiation? Holding Israel to standards to which one doesn't hold other nations is a form of anti-Semitism. The writer is the Senior Rabbi of Stephen Wise Temple in Los Angeles. (Los Angeles Jewish Journal) Everyday reality when you are Jewish living in Ireland includes an existential threat that perpetually hangs over your head, especially whenever Israel is in the news, gnawing away at your sense of security, eroding and erasing your identity. The threat includes normalizing the politics of exclusion. Oh, and desecrating your grandparents' graves. Daubing Nazi-era graffiti on the gates of your places of worship. Generating tsunamis of filthy online vilification. There exists a sector of Irish society that includes people who attempt to cloak their anti-Semitism in a tissue of self-righteous justification. People whose Pavlovian response to conflict in the Middle East is to visit their ire upon Jews. Any Jews, anywhere. All Jews, everywhere. Always. Anti-Semitism is the ancient, visceral hatred that clings on and spreads within societies even when other forms of institutional racism are purged. The writer is a member of the Dublin City Interfaith Forum and the Holocaust Education Trust of Ireland. Hizbullah uses France as a safe haven for finance, radicalization, and recruitment for terror activity. Hizbullah has established a broad financial system to finance its activities, involving drug trafficking, money laundering, weapons trade, and other criminal activities. This report exposes extremist networks on French soil and the people who run them. (Institute for International Diplomacy-IDC Herzliya) See also Shiite Religious Centers in France: A Platform for Iran in Europe - Tal Beeri (Alma Research and Education Center) Israel Aerospace Industries is now leasing maritime reconnaissance drones to Greece, to be used primarily for border defense. IAI drones have already been leased to Canada, Australia, Spain and Germany. At one time they were also the most prominent unmanned surveillance system in Afghanistan. (Greek Reporter) Observations: The 2021 Gaza War: Hamas' Goals, Strategy, and Miscalculations - Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs)
The writer, Director of the Project on Regional Middle East Developments at the Jerusalem Center, was formerly Director General of the Israel Ministry of Strategic Affairs and head of the Research Division of IDF Military Intelligence. This article is part of the forthcoming study - The Gaza War 2021: The Iranian and Hamas Attack on Israel. |
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