Prepared for the Conference of Presidents | |
| DAILY ALERT |
Friday, March 1, 2019 |
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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
Israel's attorney general Avichai Mandelblit announced Thursday he intended to indict Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust in a decision just weeks ahead of the April 9 elections. Mandelblit said he intended to charge the premier pending a hearing, where Netanyahu would be given a chance to defend himself before charges are filed. Netanyahu is not required to step down if indicted, only if convicted with all appeals exhausted. (AFP) See also Netanyahu Dismisses Corruption Allegations as Baseless (Reuters) See also Is Discussion of Positive News Coverage Bribery? - Avi Bell The hearings will take place after the election, and only in a year or so will Mandelblit be in a position to request that the Knesset lift Netanyahu's immunity or formally file an indictment. The idea that positive media coverage of public officials is a currency that can turn into bribery is a novel legal theory. The writer is a Professor of Law at Bar-Ilan University and the University of San Diego. (Tablet) See also Recommendation to Indict Netanyahu Shows Israeli Democracy Is Healthy - Yohanan Plesner The writer is the president of the Israel Democracy Institute in Jerusalem. (Washington Post) See also Voters, Not the Courts, Should Decide Netanyahu's Future - Alan M. Dershowitz The writer is Professor of Law, emeritus, at Harvard University. (Ha'aretz) See also Israel Attorney General Plans to Indict Five Others The attorney general said he would likely indict Bezeq telecommunications company and Walla news website owner Shaul Elovitch; his wife Iris; Stella Handler, the former CEO of Bezeq; and Amikam Shorer, former Bezeq chief strategy and corporate development officer. In addition, he said he would likely indict Yediot Aharonot newspaper owner Arnon (Noni) Mozes. (Jerusalem Post-Ynet News) Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Moscow on Wednesday for the first time since Syria accidentally shot down a Russian reconnaissance plane in September 2018, killing 15 Russian airmen. Putin said, "We have been planning this meeting for some time. Life moves forward and requires consultations at the top level." The issue of Iran - its regional ambitions and proxies in Syria and Lebanon - has dominated all of the 11 times the two leaders have met since 2015. The Israelis reportedly brought updated maps of Iranian positions in Syria to show the Russians. Netanyahu invited Putin to the opening of a special Jerusalem monument devoted to the victims of the siege of Leningrad during World War II. The 872-day military blockade undertaken by Nazi Germany against the Russian city - today Putin's native St. Petersburg - led to the death of 630,000-1,500,000 people, mostly from starvation. The Israeli initiative to build a monument to this event was greatly appreciated by Russia and Putin accepted the invitation. The writer is a non-resident expert at the Russian International Affairs Council. (Al-Monitor) See also Senior Israeli Official: Crisis over Downing of Russian Plane Behind Us - Itamar Eichner (Ynet News) A court in Argentina on Thursday convicted two former senior government officials for obstructing the investigation into the 1994 terrorist attack against a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that left 85 people dead and more than 300 wounded. In all, the court sentenced eight people accused of a cover-up, among them a former federal judge and a former head of the intelligence services, but it acquitted five others, including former President Carlos Menem. (New York Times) News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
Israel's Beresheet lunar spacecraft successfully completed a maneuver on Wednesday, Ido Anteby, CEO of SpaceIL, said. "Beresheet's main engine was activated for four minutes....We are on our way to the moon." Earlier in the week, Beresheet experienced some technical difficulties. Since then, SpaceIL implemented corrective measures. "All the spacecraft systems are working well," confirmed Opher Doron, general manager of the Space Division at Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). (Jerusalem Post) The Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson said Thursday: "Israel utterly rejects the report published by the Commission of Inquiry of the UN Human Rights Council. This report was born in sin, in a politically biased, one-sided resolution that determined the outcome before the investigation even started. This report was written by three individuals that lack any understanding in security matters, without relevant professional background." "Hamas has declared war on Israel and calls to kill Jews. Hamas is orchestrating the attacks and using civilians in Gaza as human weapons to assault Israel and Israeli civilians. Hamas exploits the civilians in Gaza as human shields for terrorists." "Israel has responded with restrained action taken only in defense of our civilian population. IDF procedures on the border accord with international law and the standards of other militaries worldwide. Independent military experts have affirmed this....Israel will continue to defend its citizens from these attacks, despite the Council's sentiment that Israel has no right to defend its borders." (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs) See also Where's Hamas? The Glaring Omission in the UN's Latest Anti-Israel Report - Tom Rogan (Washington Examiner) See also Observations - Former IDF Legal Expert: Hamas, Hizbullah "Hide Missiles in Children's Rooms" - Yaakov Lappin (JNS) Countries should help Israel fight "fake history" that seeks to disconnect a Jewish - and by extension Christian - connection to Jerusalem, Dore Gold, who heads the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, told the Conservative Political Action Conference near Washington on Thursday. Israel "needs your help to defeat the diplomatic assaults Jerusalem faces today. We need your help to fight the fake history. We need your help to fight for truth." Gold - a former Israeli ambassador to the UN and director-general of the Foreign Ministry - quoted Yasser Arafat telling former president Bill Clinton that there was never a Temple in Jerusalem, to which Clinton responded, "not only the Jews, but I too, believe that under the surface there are remains of Solomon's temple." "What is clear today, more than ever, is that the only force that will protect Jerusalem for all the great faiths is the modern State of Israel, which has not forgotten how its enemies sought to forcibly cut its connection with the Holy City in the past." (Jerusalem Post) See also Video: Protecting the Freedom of Jerusalem - Dore Gold (YouTube) Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:
Senior U.S. presidential adviser Jared Kushner is visiting the Middle East with a special emphasis on wealthy Arab states, where he is soliciting investment that he hopes will be the seed money for a new era of peace. But the Palestinian Authority has made it clear that it won't negotiate and there's no reason to expect that PA leader Mahmoud Abbas is capable of saying yes to any deal. The administration's assumption that Arab nations have the power to either persuade or bribe the Palestinians into giving up their century-old war on Zionism is mistaken. The Palestinians continue to view peace as a zero sum game in which any recognition of the legitimacy of a Jewish state, no matter where its borders may be drawn, is a defeat for their cause. If the Palestinians wanted to settle for a two-state solution, then they would have already accepted one of the previous Israeli offers. Kushner is right to think that an effort to promote economic development is a prerequisite for hope for a future solution. But the Palestinian governments of both the West Bank and Gaza actively discourage any effort or enterprise that is not controlled by them. The failure of former PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, an American-educated technocrat, illustrated just how difficult it is to encourage good government in a political culture where terror is still lauded. As the PA and Hamas have both made clear, any peace plan that is predicated on the Palestinians giving up their war against Israel for a better economy is going to be dead on arrival. The process of transforming the territories economically is not something that can be added on as a sweetener to a deal the Palestinians are not ready to make. (JNS-Israel Hayom) In 1967, there was only one functioning mosque on the Temple Mount - the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Golden Gate compound will be the fifth mosque that the Muslims have established at the site. There is no basis for constant Muslim protests against Israel for violating the status quo on the Temple Mount. It is the Muslims who have been eroding the status quo there over the past three decades. During the 1970s, the Muslims began using the Dome of the Rock building, which was not originally a mosque, as a site for regular Friday prayers. In 1996, they converted Solomon's Stables into the underground al-Marwani Mosque, causing serious damage to antiquities on the Temple Mount at the time. A short while later, the Muslims converted parts of ancient al-Aqsa, under the upper al-Aqsa Mosque, into a mosque. Over the years, the Muslims have paved extensive areas on the Temple Mount to be used for prayer services, especially on Muslim festivals and on Ramadan. Other Muslim changes to the status quo include closing the Chain Gate and the Cotton Gate to tourists and restricting visiting times by non-Muslims. The writer, a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Center, has documented events in Jerusalem for 30 years. (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) See also The Golden Gate in History - Moshe Dann Although Muslims claim the Golden/Mercy Gate as a Muslim shrine, the gate was built during the Second Temple period. It is the most important gate of the Temple Mount because through it, the High Priest on Yom Kippur led the red heifer to be sacrificed on the Mount of Olives and the goat of Azazel was led into the wilderness of the Judean Desert. The ornate double arches on the outside of the gate indicate that it is from the Second Temple period; the surrounding wall has typical Herodian-style cut stones. Turning historical and holy sites of other religions into mosques does not erase history. The writer is a PhD historian and journalist. (Jerusalem Post) Finally, the UK government has designated Hizbullah as the terrorist organization it is. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn objected to the move. He has called Hizbullah "friends" dedicated to "peace and social justice." It demonstrates that commitment to peace by carrying out genocide in Syria on behalf of Assad and destabilizing Yemen and Iraq, as well as Lebanon. And of course by digging attack tunnels under the Israeli border while building up a missile capability capable of reaching far beyond the Middle East. But within the EU, only the Netherlands and now the UK wholly ban Hizbullah. As Hizbullah carries out its global terror campaign, European countries are its enablers. By turning a blind eye, they allow this network of evil to run its crime empire of drug trafficking and money laundering completely uninterrupted. The U.S., the Arab League and the Gulf States have long proscribed Hizbullah. Does anyone seriously believe that these countries would have done so if Hizbullah only threatened Israel? Other European states need to follow Britain and get real about Hizbullah. The writer served as Israel's Ambassador to the UK and the UN. (Telegraph-UK) While domestically Iran is struggling, regionally it is pursuing an ambitious agenda to reshape the region in its image. The military-security-intelligence relationship between Iran and its regional proxies is the heart of its power projection. Less known are Iranian non-military efforts to create facts on the ground and extend its influence. As the great Shia Muslim power in a mostly Sunni region, Iran has often worked through non-Iranian co-religionists who serve as foot soldiers. These populations are rewarded with land and housing, leading to demographic shifts in places like Southern Syria and Damascus. In Northern Iraq's Nineveh Plains, the country's ancient Christian population is being pushed out by Shabak militia armed and supported by Iran. Iran's Revolutionary Guards are pragmatic and seeks to forge ties with non-Shia and even non-Muslims. In Lebanon Iran has its own pro-Hizbullah Maronites or Druze. In Southern Syria bordering Israel, Iran and Hizbullah are steadily at work in cultivating productive ties with Sunni Arab rebels who had been fighting the Assad regime. Iran also seeks to promote greater influence through cultural and educational ties. Iranian universities are now found in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates. By building relationships, cultivating proxies and allies, Iran embeds itself in the fabric of local societies and excels in the retail politics of diplomacy. Amb. Alberto M. Fernandez, a career U.S. Foreign Service member, is president at Middle East Broadcasting Networks, which owns and operates Arabic-language news and information television channels. (MEMRI) The leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad see Israel as one big settlement to be uprooted from the Middle East. For them, Tel Aviv, Ashdod, Haifa and Nazareth are all "occupied" cities. The Palestinian leaders say the conflict with Israel will end only when Israel is annihilated. In 2017, Hamas said it was ready to accept a Palestinian state on the pre-1967 lines without "giving up all of Palestine." In other words, Hamas would use these territories as a launching pad to "liberate the rest of Palestine." Hamas reaffirmed that it "rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea." Hamas and Islamic Jihad are not splinter factions that can be dismissed as irrelevant. The two groups control nearly two million Palestinians living in Gaza. They have thousands of militiamen in Gaza who consider themselves "soldiers" in the war to eliminate Israel and kill Jews. Any land that is given to Abbas and his Palestinian Authority in the West Bank will be used in the future by Hamas and Islamic Jihad as a base for launching rockets into Israeli cities. (Gatestone Institute) In 1994, when I was a middle school student in Kurdistan, I recall our history teacher saying, "Although the books favor Arabs over Jews, history indicates Jews lived in Jerusalem prior to Muslims." Kurdistan was by then outside the control of Saddam Hussein. Otherwise, the teacher could have easily been executed for making such a comment to students. Last month I was fortunate to visit Israel. At Ben-Gurion Airport I noticed many signs in Arabic. When I bought local currency, I was intrigued that the Israel shekel is printed in Hebrew, Arabic and English. All public signs are printed in Hebrew, Arabic and English. Arab media continuously accuse Israel of trespassing on Muslim holy sites. However, having witnessed many mosques in Tel Aviv, Haifa, Acre and Jerusalem, I saw nothing of the kind. And in Haifa, I heard the Islamic prayer call loudly from a nearby mosque. The writer is a Kurdish-American political analyst. (Jerusalem Post) We hear ad nauseum how the Palestinians are suffering under Israeli "occupation," yet neither the Palestinians nor their supporters were concerned during the 19 years that Jordan occupied the West Bank and Egypt the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians did not fight for "their" land during those years; they also never demanded statehood. Instead, they engaged in terror in the hope of seizing the Jews' land. The Palestinians have no interest in independence if it involves co-existing with a Jewish state. Does anyone seriously believe that Hamas would abandon its religiously-inspired commitment to conduct a jihad to drive the Jews from the Middle East if Israel treated the group more nicely? Wasn't it nice that Israel withdrew every Jew and soldier from Gaza? And what was the response? Hamas bombarded Israel with rockets, demonstrating that the idea that Israel could trade land for peace was a myth. The writer is executive director of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE) and the Jewish Virtual Library. (Algemeiner) Anti-Semitism There's nothing anti-Semitic about sympathy for the Palestinian cause or support of Palestinian statehood. But where anti-Zionism crosses into anti-Semitism should be obvious: dehumanizing or demonizing Jews and propagating the myth of their sinister omnipotence; accusing Jews of double loyalties as a means to suggest their national belonging is of lesser worth; denying the Jewish people's right to self-determination; blaming through conflation all Jews for the policies of the Israeli government; pursuing the systematic "Nazification" of Israel; turning Zionism into a synonym of racism. The denial of the millennial Jewish link to the Holy Land and the dismissal of the legal basis for the modern Jewish state in UN Resolution 181 of 1947 (Arab armies went to war against its Palestinian-Jewish territorial compromise and lost) as a means to argue for the abolition of the Jewish homeland and portray it as an immoral, colonial exercise in theft often flirts with anti-Semitism. It is at its most egregious when it issues from Europeans who seem to have forgotten where the Holocaust was perpetrated. Once in the gas chambers was enough for the Jews. The fundamental link between European anti-Semitism and the decision of Jews to embrace Zionism in the conviction that only a Jewish homeland could keep them safe is something contemporary European theorists of a demonic Israel prefer to forget. (New York Times) Anti-Semitism is like the flu: uncomfortable, sickly, occasionally deadly, but constantly with us. Every few decades, it mutates into an epidemic. As a British Jew, I kept on telling myself that it would pass. I kept thinking it is just not that important, unless I decide to live and work in Cairo or Tehran. I kept thinking that even after I was pinned to a wall, throttled, and punched in the head by supporters of George Galloway in 2015 shouting, "Get out, you f...ing Jew." I made a mistake. I felt a creeping horror when eight Labour MPs left their party, in no small part because of the protracted anti-Semitism crisis. I felt it again, stronger, when I saw the footage of the Jewish intellectual Alain Finkielkraut being mobbed by yellow-vested protesters who yelled, "France belongs to us" and "Dirty Zionist." A protest movement sparked by fuel prices was now all about the Jews. The days that European Jews could lead public lives not defined by anti-Semitism were over. We were back, not to the days of Hitler, but to the days when being a Jewish public figure was a constant struggle - a process of endlessly navigating an ever-mutating conspiracy theory against you. (Atlantic) Rupen Balaram-Sivaram of Toronto was found guilty on Monday of advocating genocide against Jewish people and homosexuals. Superior Court Justice Michael Brown said Balaram-Sivaram's Facebook and Twitter statements were intended to encourage likeminded people to commit genocidal actions. A tweet posted on Jan. 28, 2015, stated: "Time for Hizbullah to exterminate each and every men, women and children from that illegal state called Israel." An email sent to a Toronto MP called for bombs and viruses to be used against "rotten, defective, genetic garbage called Jews and homosexuals." (Toronto Star-Canada) A mural in downtown Los Angeles that depicts a Grim Reaper wearing a cloak covered with Stars of David, holding what appears to be a dead baby and a missile, was blasted by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti's office as a "shameful act of anti-Semitism." "Imagery like this should have no place in our city," said the mayor's spokesman Alex Comisar. "We're looking into the recourse that we have to have it taken down." The Anti-Defamation League on Tuesday called for the mural's removal. (Los Angeles Times) Weekend Features Spies of No Country, by Matti Friedman, tells the little known story of the origins of Israeli intelligence by following four young Jewish men from the Arab world who form the beginnings of Israel's spy network through the 1948 War of Independence. Friedman said they were "recruited by a small, ad-hoc intelligence outfit within the Palmach called the Arab Section, which encourages Arabic-speaking Jews to cross enemy lines and gather intelligence in the Arab world....At the onset of the war, the section was no more than 20 agents, only half of whom survive." "In Haifa they carried out a pre-emptive attack on a garage where the Arab militia was preparing a car bomb in the spring of 1948. And then when Haifa fell to the Haganah in 1948 and the Arabs begun to flee, the people in charge of the Arab Section realized that they have an opportunity to insert their agents into the Arab world by disguising them as refugees. They ran away to Lebanon and spent the first two years of Israel's existence as Palestinian refugees." "The roots of the Arab Section lie with the British....In the early years of the Second World War, when it looked like the German army was about to enter Mandatory Palestine through North Africa, the British and Jewish community in Palestine have a shared sense of panic. They realize they face real danger and plans are drawn up for a last defense of Haifa....Alongside those efforts, the British began using Jews as intelligence agents....They discovered in Palestine they had a Jewish population that came from across the world, who could pass perfectly for dozens of nationalities and they made use of it." "One of the first things the British did was to set up 'The German Section,' comprised of German Jews who were supposed to pass as German soldiers were the Germans to invade Palestine....At the same time they needed people who could pass in the Arab world, which was pro-German in orientation....This is how the Arab Section is born, and it is populated with Jews from Arab countries. Some of the most important roots of the Mossad lie with the British SOE in 1941." Matti Friedman is a former journalist for AP in Jerusalem (2006-11). (Fathom-BICOM) Ilan and Asaf Ramon International Airport just north of Eilat is a strikingly modern edifice that stands in stark contrast to its vast desert surroundings. The new airport was named after Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon (who died in the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia disaster) and his son Asaf, an Israeli Air Force pilot (who died during a training exercise). Much of the technical infrastructure was buried underground. This includes the area through which both public and private vehicles travel to drop off and park, as well as baggage handling and security processes. The architects needed to concoct a way to bring in natural sunlight without overheating the interiors from the desert sun. They also added white aluminum panels to the exterior to help reflect light away from the building and reduce the temperature. (Architectural Digest) Israeli biopharmaceutical company Kadimastem hopes to revolutionize diabetes treatment and make needles a thing of the past for insulin-dependent patients by creating an in-body device that creates insulin on its own. Overall, the global insulin-dependent population stands at over 100 million people. Implanting healthy islet cells in people with diabetes was found to free them from insulin injections, but it relied on organ donations and required the suppression of patients' immune systems so they wouldn't reject the new cells. Instead of having people waiting for organ donations, Kadimastem plans on independently creating the necessary cells from human embryonic stem cells. Kfir Molakandov, Kadimastem's diabetes project manager, says they have a device under development to prevent rejection of cells by the immune system. "It might be that they'll have to replace these devices once a year or once in two years." That's a far cry from current daily injections. (Weizmann Institute of Science) This year, six companies from Israel made Fast Company magazine's list of the world's 50 most innovative companies. Vayyar Imaging's low-cost 3D imaging technology can see through materials, differentiate between objects and people, and map environments in real time. Innoviz's LiDAR systems are the "eyes" in next-generation autonomous vehicles. SpacePharma helps pharmaceutical companies conduct tests in zero gravity, a great environment for bacteria to grow faster. ECOncrete developed a blue-green concrete that enhances the ecological value of urban and coastal infrastructure. Sight Diagnostics developed an AI-driven platform for blood analysis and the diagnosis of infectious diseases. Waze, the Israeli-founded, Google-owned crowdsourced traffic app, is now working with local government agencies (such as the New York Port Authority) to manage traffic and upgrade transportation infrastructure. (israel21c) Holocaust currencies include the notes printed by Nazi authorities and distributed in Jewish ghettos and the coupons or camp money used by prisoners in concentration camps. In 2015, a collection of bills and coins was donated by Robert Messing, an amateur numismatist, to the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. Messing had amassed a small collection of bills and coins printed by the Third Reich and distributed to interned Jews during the war - some twenty notes and coins from transit, labor, and concentration camps, as well as the Lodz and Theresienstadt ghettos. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., has more than 1,500 bills and coins from concentration camps and ghettos. Carol Manley, chief curator at the Holocaust Museum Houston, said they have about 500 pieces of currency from Jewish ghettos and concentration camps. Steve Feller, a professor of physics at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, has 200 pieces of Holocaust currency. At least 20 concentration camps across Europe were responsible for creating their own monetary systems. (Topic) Observations: Former IDF Legal Expert: Hamas, Hizbullah "Hide Missiles in Children's Rooms" - Yaakov Lappin (JNS)
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