Prepared for the Conference of Presidents | |
| DAILY ALERT |
Friday, November 23, 2018 |
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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
Iran has not declared all its chemical weapons capabilities to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague, in violation of an international non-proliferation convention, U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Ward told the organization on Thursday. He said Iran had failed to report a production facility for the filling of aerial bombs and maintains a program to obtain banned toxic munitions. Ward cited the discovery of chemical-filled artillery projectiles, mortars and aerial bombs of Iranian origin as proof. "The United States is also concerned that Iran is also pursuing central nervous system-acting chemicals for offensive purposes," he said. (Reuters) Lawyers launched a class action lawsuit in Jerusalem District Court on Thursday against Airbnb after it withdrew listings of Israeli communities in the West Bank. Ma'anit Rabinovich from the West Bank community of Kida, who offers guest room rentals, said through her attorneys that the move "represents especially grave, offensive and outrageous discrimination." It is "part of the long war being conducted by organizations (of which a clear majority are anti-Semitic) against the State of Israel in its entirety, and against Israelis living in settlements in particular." (Reuters) Nearly four times as many Sunni Islamic militants are operating around the world today as on Sept. 11, 2001, despite nearly two decades of American-led campaigns to combat al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, according to a new study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. There are as many as 230,000 Salafi jihadist fighters in nearly 70 countries, with the largest numbers in Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan. "This indicates that terrorism is alive and well, and that Americans should be concerned," said Seth G. Jones, director of the center's transnational threats project. (New York Times) See also The Evolution of the Salafi-Jihadist Threat (Center for Strategic and International Studies) News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
The Israel Security Agency has thwarted an attempt by the heads of Hamas in Gaza to establish terror infrastructure in the West Bank to plan and carry out bombings in Israel, the agency said Thursday. The Hamas high command in Gaza recruited fighters in the West Bank, taught them how to build bombs, and instructed them to find crowded places inside Israel to target - such as a large building, mall, restaurant, hotel, train or bus. Hamas communicated with the West Bank through messages passed on by Gaza patients allowed into Israel to undergo life-saving medical treatments, as well as Gaza residents who had business contacts in the West Bank. The terror infrastructure was uncovered following the Sep. 23 arrest of Awis Rajoub, 25, a Hamas militant from Dura, who asked some of his relatives and friends for help in purchasing materials to build bombs. Gaza operatives sent videos instructing Rajoub how to build remotely-detonated bombs. He also had video chats with an explosives expert. (Ynet News) European countries and the EU are providing millions of euros to organizations promoting the BDS movement, Israeli Public Security and Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan will say during his current visit to Germany and Italy. State funding from Europe for organizations involved in BDS is "one of the main funding sources of the movement," his office said. He will call on European leaders to stop all official funding to NGOs that promote BDS or have links with terrorist groups. (Jerusalem Post) France worked closely with the Palestinian Authority during the late 1990s and 2000s, including during the Second Intifada against Israel, providing training and delivering "sensitive intelligence" to the PA's security services, Pierre Martinet, a former French secret service officer, told i24News on Wednesday. "France, via its secret service, trained Palestinian agents in France," he said. (i24News) Gaza sources report growing animosity between Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh to the point where the two no longer speak to each other, Israel Hayom learned Wednesday. Haniyeh's camp includes top political officials, while Sinwar's camp hails from the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades. A senior Hamas official said the rift has undermined Egyptian-led efforts to strike an agreement between Hamas and Israel that would allow for the economic rehabilitation of Gaza. Sinwar "is perceived as much more hawkish than Haniyeh...but the truth is he is far more pragmatic than Haniyeh," the official said. The rivalry has escalated recently, with cells loyal to the opposing camps firing warning shots at officials' homes and planting explosives under their cars. (Israel Hayom) The Israel Air Force's elite Airborne Combat, Search and Rescue Unit 669 has just completed a 10-day international rescue exercise together with units from the U.S., Italy, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Canada and the Netherlands, a senior air force officer said Tuesday. The unit is trained in combat medicine, parachuting, scuba diving, counter-terrorism, rappelling, rescue under harsh conditions and navigation. Initially charged with extracting Israeli pilots who were shot down in enemy territory, it later began undertaking rescue missions of injured or stranded Israelis, both at home and abroad. (Jerusalem Post) Israel's national high school debate team won the EurOpen debate competition last Wednesday in Stuttgart, Germany, marking the first win for Israel in the competition. The Israeli team outperformed 37 of the best debate teams in the world, including those of Germany, China and the U.S. They were unbeaten throughout all 12 rounds - a rare achievement in debate, and even more so for a team comprised of non-native English speakers. (Jerusalem Post) Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:
Iran In the middle of the night of January 31, 2018, Mossad agents broke into a secret vault on the outskirts of Tehran, while their commanders watched from afar. The large room contained 32 huge Iranian-made safes, each 2.7 meters in height. The safes were loaded onto heavy container-like installations, on wheels that can carry massive weight. The documents were secreted behind two different doors - a heavy iron door inside the facility and another iron door equipped with an alarm system and cameras at the facility's exterior wall. Only a handful of people in Iran even knew that the Iranian nuclear archive was inside this warehouse. The agents knew how to disable the alarm system and break through the iron doors, but they did not have time to break into all the safes. The two dozen agents who took part in the break-in retrieved about half a ton of intelligence material. When the break-in was discovered, about 12,000 Iranian security personnel went on the pursuit. In the end, the material was extracted from Iran and no one got caught. The biggest surprise was the massive amount of information stored on 182 CDs. The Iranians documented everything: the equipment, the construction of secret plants and sites, the experiments, detailed presentations on the project's progress, goals and stages, and even themselves, during nuclear experiments. It was a mega-scam. For two decades, Iran denied having a military nuclear program. But the contents of the safes tell a completely different and undeniable story. For years, Iran has been engaged in a covert nuclear project. The documents also demonstrate the weakness of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which Iran signed and the IAEA failed to enforce. Under the UN agency's nose, Iran succeeded in conducting a secret military nuclear program over a long period of time (and Israel claims Tehran continues to do so today). If Iran is not violating or planning to violate the nuclear deal, why keep such a detailed archive allowing it to resume its nuclear effort from where it left off (assuming they actually stopped)? (Ynet News) Palestinians If someone came up with an idea for destroying Hamas that could be executed quickly and with minimal casualties, Israelis obviously would support that, but nobody has. The only plan with proven capability to suppress terror over the long term remains the one Israel executed in the West Bank in 2002 in response to the Second Intifada: The army goes in, and it never leaves. That's how Israel has kept West Bank terror within tolerable limits ever since. During the Second Intifada a wave of suicide bombings and other attacks throughout Israel killed 452 Israelis in 2002. In today's situation, Gaza has made life hell for residents of communities near the border for the last seven months, but it isn't causing most Israelis enough pain to make them willing to reoccupy the territory. Hamas understands this very well. That's why it deliberately confined itself to bombarding the south earlier this month. It wanted to cause as much pain as possible without crossing the threshold that would provoke Israel into war. Hamas will eventually become overconfident and cause Israel enough anguish to provoke it to reoccupy Gaza. But the political reality is that there isn't enough public support for such an operation today. (JNS) Since Israel's 2005 disengagement from Gaza, the residents of Israel near Gaza have been living under fire, with rockets, terrorist tunnels, booby traps, and burning fields and tires. Israeli children living near Gaza haven't had a day or night without fear of Red Alerts, fear of being killed in their homes by rocket attacks or infiltration of terrorists into their communities. These Israeli children are denied all basic rights: the right to a normal life, the right to security, the right to go to school and the right to play outside without fear, the right to sleep peacefully in a regular room, not in a shelter, the right to live without missile alerts on a daily basis and the right to breathe fresh air and not the thick smoke of burning tires. Nov. 20, Universal Children's Day, marks the anniversary of the day that the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1959 and the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989. While we identify with the suffering of children all over the world, the international community should care for all children equally - Israeli children as well as Palestinian children. The writer, an Israeli diplomat and former ambassador, directs the Israeli School for Young Ambassadors. (Jerusalem Post) Palestinian leaders have radicalized their people against the Trump administration to a point where no Palestinian would dare to be seen in public with a representative of the Trump administration. Palestinians who recently met with special envoy Jason Greenblatt in Jerusalem asked that their names not be published. All Palestinian factions refer to the "deal of the century" as a "conspiracy aimed at liquidating the Palestinian cause and rights." It is hard to see how Abbas or any other Palestinian would be able to accept anything that comes from the Americans. Rather than building state institutions and imposing reforms, democracy and accountability, the Palestinian Authority leadership is now focusing its energies on foiling the U.S. peace plan. This move is precisely parallel to the one the Palestinians have taken with Israel. Abbas has radicalized his people against the Israeli government to a point where meeting or doing business with any Israeli official is tantamount to treason. (Gatestone Institute) Israel lives in a tough neighborhood. In recent fighting, Hamas pounded Israel with rockets and Israel replied with airstrikes. The entire affair reminds us how difficult it will be to secure a long-lasting peace. Israel is a responsible actor, and it exercised tremendous restraint last week, as always. Hamas, in contrast, responded with massed, indiscriminate rocket fire on civilian targets - war crimes. It only backed down when faced with the realistic prospect of another punishing war. There can be no peace until Israel has a serious partner with which it can actually negotiate. Hamas isn't that partner. It never will be. (National Post-Canada) Other Issues Anyone remotely familiar with Israel's geographical and political landscape knows that the notion of Israel giving up the Golan Heights is laughable. The area is a vital strategic asset. That's why last Friday's vote by the U.S. to oppose for the first time the UN General Assembly's annual call on Israel to return the Golan to Syria is so welcome. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the U.S. vote "important and just," adding that "Israel will remain forever on the Golan Heights, and the Golan Heights will forever remain in our hands." We can only thank U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley and the U.S. administration for appreciating and finally acting on this resolution. The world should not be condemning Israel for annexing the Golan - it should be grateful to Israel for providing a bastion of stability in a region that could explode at any time. (Jerusalem Post) Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has become an icon of the West's rapprochement with Islam and its openness to Islamic values. Trudeau has defended the right of Muslim women to wear a niqab that covers the entire body and head with a slit for the eyes. He often visits mosques and Islamic centers, including those identifying with the Salafist movement and the Muslim Brotherhood, and he has praised the values of Islam as compatible with Canadian values. Trudeau ended Canada's air combat role against Islamic State (ISIS or Daesh) in 2016 and instructed the government only to use the term "Daesh" instead of "Islamic State." Canadian nationals who joined the ranks of the Islamic State were allowed to return to Canada without being prosecuted. The Canadian Muslim community is believed to number one million or 3.2% of Canada's population. Trudeau has taken on the role of the great reformer of Islam, who successfully incorporates liberal values in Islam. Aligning themselves with Canadian values, two senior members of the Canadian Council of Imams (CCI) publicly retracted their anti-LGBTQ statements. However, the Muslim leadership will soon have to deal with a growing number of critics in Salafist circles who warn against the danger liberalism poses to the Muslim community. The writer is a senior researcher of the Middle East and radical Islam at the Jerusalem Center. (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) In my judgment, critics who warn against Chinese ambitions involving Israel overstate the magnitude of the threat - perhaps because they neglect to take fully into account the broader scope of Israel's interests in the Middle East and Asia. Those interests, in fact, coincide with and reinforce the national interests of the United States. When it comes to Israel's narrow economic concerns, China offers both a vast domestic market for high-end Israeli goods and a source of investment in the Israeli economy. For a country fully dependent on its high-end trade, these are not trivial matters. But equally pertinent is the potential role of China as a stabilizing strategic presence in the region. For example, few things would be as harmful to Israel's prospects of survival as the collapse of Egypt. Fortunately, Egypt's importance as a node in the One Belt One Road project is recognized in Beijing, and Chinese firms already hold the principal contracts for the new "administrative" capital being built east of Cairo. It is very much in the interest of both Israel and the U.S. that China continue to be a long-term strategic investor in Egypt's growth and stability. Moreover, Israel's security-related efforts in Asia are in fact directed at the range of nations seeking to build a counter-balancing strategic capacity to China's bid for hegemony. Within the last few years, Japan has dropped its traditional reservation about security cooperation with Israel, Vietnam and the Philippines have emerged as markets for Israel's defense sector, coordination with Australia has intensified, and, above all, Israel's two-decades-old relationship with India in the realm of military hardware has become even more extensive and intimate than ever. Once again, this sensible strategy ultimately serves U.S. interests as well. The writer, vice president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies, held senior posts in IDF Military Intelligence for over 20 years. (Mosaic) On Oct. 31, 2018, the IMF released to Egypt the fifth of six $2 billion aid tranches agreed upon in 2016. The IMF's positive assessment of Cairo's economic reforms reflects President al-Sisi's willingness to enact painful financial restructuring. The 2011 revolution triggered an economic crisis after Egypt's traditional revenue streams from foreign direct investment and tourism fell dramatically. After Sisi overthrew a Muslim Brotherhood-led government in 2013, he accepted an IMF austerity program to increase revenues through tax reform and slash expenses by cutting energy subsidies. Since then, the country's financial health has largely returned to pre-revolution levels. The IMF projects growth to reach 5.3% this year and 5.5% in 2019. The number of foreigners visiting Egypt had increased by 40% from Sept. 2017 to Sept. 2018. (Washington Institute for Near East Policy) With Iran's regime entrenched through its proxies in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza, Israel now faces a genocidal enemy on three simultaneous fronts. In the face of these dangers, the resilience of ordinary Israelis is astonishing. There can surely be no other country which, despite its state of permanent embattlement, remains so cheerful and full of hope about the future. This is because, despite the manifold divisions in Israeli society, the people pull together against their foes. Israel is able to defend itself in the way it does because it sees itself as a nation, governing itself in a land with which it has an unbreakable bond. The writer is a columnist for The Times (UK). (Jerusalem Post) Weekend Features Maj. A, 29, and Maj. Y, 30, who serve in the Joint Cyber Defense Division (JCDD) Tech Center in the IDF Cyber-Communications and Defense Division, were recently honored for their "outstanding work" in fortifying the IDF's combat systems. With their teams, they specialize in attacking the IDF's own systems and networks to weed out gaps and weaknesses before the enemy finds them. "We are the red team of the IDF," said Maj. A, referring to an independent group whose task is to launch realistic cyber-attacks in a bid to improve the IDF's security and effectiveness in foiling such attacks. "Our job is to fix weaknesses." "We must always be one step ahead of the attacker," said Maj. Y. "The challenges we face on a daily basis are far more complex than what gets published in the press or even what we see in the civilian world." "While salaries are higher in the civilian world, the work in the IDF is extremely challenging, varied, and also for the defense of our country. The aim is clear - defend our nation - and that is the biggest reward we can get." (Times of Israel) Israel Aerospace Industries and U.S. company XpressSAR have signed a memorandum of understanding on the purchase of three advanced radar-based surveillance satellites that work in tandem. The satellites will make it possible to gather intelligence at any hour of the day, including in cloudy weather and sandstorms, which make intelligence gathering using optical spy satellites difficult. IAI will manufacture the satellites in its space plant in Yehud and provide support services for launching, putting them into their predetermined orbit, the ground stations at which the output will be received, and more, until they are fully operational. "We are glad to cooperate with IAI, which offers a complete intelligence system using SAR satellites," XpressSAR CEO Wolfgang Biedermann said Tuesday. "The advanced proven technological capabilities of these satellites will enable us to provide our future customers with the best-quality intelligence products." SAR technology is regarded as the cutting edge of spy satellites. Satellites utilizing SAR technology identify objects that optical satellites have trouble identifying, such as metal objects and objects obstructed by darkness, providing observation of any point of interest at all hours of the day or night. "They include the ability to detect changes in ground contours and the arrival of vehicles at a given point, and they do all of this automatically," says IAI space division general manager Opher Doron. (Globes) Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) has developed a "next-generation" version of its Drone Guard ground-based systems for detecting, tracking, and disrupting unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), IAI announced Wednesday. The enhanced system adds communication intelligence (COMINT) for more precise detection, classification, and identification based on broadcast frequencies. In addition, 3D radars, electro-optical and jammer systems have all been upgraded. "The [COMINT] system can effectively jam or disrupt the drone's control channel and navigation by supporting an array of communication protocols that can fend off a single drone or even a swarm of drones from the guarded premises," IAI said. (Jane's International Defence Review) Argentine media report that Buenos Aires has purchased four advanced Shaldag-class patrol boats from Israel for $80 million and has spent an additional $5.5 million on cyber defense software, as well as $2.75 million on a radar system that jams drone signals. The patrol boats were delivered earlier this year and are fully operational. (Israel Hayom) Israel has become a leader in one of the most promising frontiers in the technology world: computer vision. Applications across dozens of industries have one thing in common: the need for computers to figure out what their cameras are seeing, and the need for those computers to tell them what to do next. The biggest success story is Mobileye, which uses a dozen cheap cameras to see the traffic around prototype autonomous cars and then guide them through traffic. In 2017, Intel paid $15.3 billion to acquire the technology. Computer vision slides into a broad range of different civilian industries, spawning companies in agriculture, medicine, sports, self-driving cars, the diamond industry and even shopping. In Israel, this lucrative field has benefited from a large pool of engineers and entrepreneurs trained for that very task in a little-known group in the military - Unit 9900 - where they fine-tuned computer algorithms to digest millions of surveillance photos and sift out actionable intelligence. Zebra Medical uses artificial intelligence to scan millions of MRI and other images from around the world, guiding radiologists to the slightest sign of disease. At medical diagnostics start-up FDNA, engineers are figuring out how a picture of someone's face could reveal rare genetic disorders. Physimax uses a bank of cameras to analyze the posture of athletes, then suggests changes to their exercise routines and techniques. It is already being used by the U.S. military, the Indiana Pacers, a professional basketball team, and Brazil's Flamengo soccer team. (Financial Times-UK) The Nevada Highway Patrol says a yearlong partnership between public safety agencies and Israeli startup technology firm Waycare resulted in a 17% reduction in crashes along a portion of northbound Interstate 15 just west of the Las Vegas Strip, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. The crash prevention pilot program uses in-vehicle information, cameras, sensors and other traffic data to develop prediction models to understand road conditions in real time. When an area at high risk for an incident is identified, Waycare alerts traffic agencies when and where to take preventive action. Waycare has carried out a similar program in Tel Aviv, and it started a crash prevention program last year in Tampa, Florida. Tina Quigley, general manager for the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada (RTC), said, "We are identifying accidents up to 12 minutes faster with the Waycare platform. (AP) Druze news anchor Gadeer Mreeh, who reported news at the Arabic desk at the Israel Public Broadcasting Corporation, has become the nation's first non-Jewish woman to anchor the Hebrew news broadcast. After her appointment, she said, "The spiritual leader of the Druze community in Israel, Sheikh Moafaq Tarif, called me and I cried. He said, 'I'm proud of you. You symbolize a Druze woman who tried and succeeded in her career while continuing to maintain your unique identity.'" "The Druze are a success story of a minority in our integration into Israeli society. We have the highest percentage of people enlisting in the army, 80%....We have people holding very high-ranking positions in security units, in the IDF, the Prisons Service, in the Border Police. The coordinator of government activities in the territories is Druze. We have a Druze communications minister....Today, we have 1,000 Druze females who do national service." (Media Line-Jerusalem Post) Cecylia Roszak, a Polish Catholic Dominican nun who was honored by Israel for helping to hide Jewish resistance fighters in her convent during World War II, died last week aged 110. In 1938 Roszak traveled with a group of nine nuns to Vilnius in Lithuania to set up a new convent. According the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial page dedicated to Anna Borkowska, the mother superior of the convent, the sisters took in 17 members of a Jewish underground movement that formed to fight back against the extermination of the Vilna ghetto's residents. Borkowska smuggled the first hand grenades into the community. Borkowska was arrested in 1943 and the convent closed down. She and Roszak both survived the war. In 1984 Yad Vashem gave the members of the convent, including Borkowska and Roszak, its Righteous Among Nations award, which honors non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. (Times of Israel) Observations: Airbnb's Ban on Israeli Communities in West Bank Is Shameful - Brendan O'Neill (Spectator-UK)
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