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Prepared for the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
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To contact the Presidents Conference: click here In-Depth Issues:
PA Daily Portrays Israeli Foreign Minister with Blood-Stained Knife - Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook (Palestinian Media Watch/IMRA)
Poll: Palestinians Reject Two-State Solution (An-Najah
University-PA/IMRA)
Egyptian Ministry of Health Bars Israeli Drug - Roee Nahmias
(Ynet News)
U.S. Aims to Boost Aid to Jordan (AP)
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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel urged the UN on Monday to indict Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for inciting genocide rather than allow him to speak at the UN General Assembly. Wiesel spoke to thousands of people at a rally to urge world leaders to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. "President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran is a threat to world peace and he should not be here in New York. His place is in...a United Nations prison cell," Wiesel said. "He's not Hitler, nobody is Hitler, but he wishes to follow in Hitler's footsteps and that makes him an arch criminal." (Reuters-International Herald Tribune) See also Anti-Iran Rally Urges the Defeat of an "Evil Empire" - Bari Weiss (New York Sun) International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei said Monday that his inspectors failed to get Iranians to clear up questions related to documents allegedly showing that Iran engaged in a series of experiments and studies consistent with the operation of a clandestine nuclear weapons program. "Unless Iran provides such transparency...the agency will not be able to provide credible assurances about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran," he said. Documents show that Tehran conducted secret uranium experiments, tested explosives, and pondered bomb designs suitable for nuclear weapons. (Los Angeles Times) Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Egypt's most prominent exiled dissident, is lobbying members of Congress to attach conditions to America's $1.5 billion annual aid to Egypt to force the Cairo government to foster greater political and media freedoms and a more independent judiciary. In December, Congress passed a bill to withhold $100 million in military aid until Egypt stopped the smuggling of weapons into Gaza from Sinai, implemented judicial reforms and curbed torture by the state police. President Hosni Mubarak was enraged by the conditions. (Washington Post) News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
A Palestinian terrorist ran a car into a crowd of soldiers and civilians at a busy intersection in central Jerusalem on Monday evening, wounding at least 17 people. The terrorist, from eastern Jerusalem, was shot dead by an IDF officer. (Ynet News) An IDF soldier was wounded on Monday when a Palestinian woman threw acid in his face at the Hawara checkpoint near Nablus. Doctors fear he may have lost vision in one eye as a result of the attack. (Ha'aretz) One week ago, Suhayeb Saleh, 14, from the village of Assira al-Kabaliya, stabbed a 9-year-old Israeli boy and set fire to a home in the West Bank village of Yitzhar. On Saturday, Border Policemen thwarted a second attack after seeing the youth get out of a car and advance toward Yitzhar by foot, intending to throw a Molotov cocktail. The soldiers shot and killed him, and a subsequent search of his body revealed a knife. (Ha'aretz) French Justice Minister Rachida Dati, speaking Monday at Herzliya's Interdisciplinary Center, said: "When it comes to terrorist activity that threatens Israel's security, our stand is very clear: one does not talk to terrorists and to the ones that call for the destruction of Israel, one fights them." "The Palestinian people are entitled to have their own country, but that goes hand in hand with keeping the security of the State of Israel," she added. (Jerusalem Post) Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis (Best of U.S., UK, and Israel):
Tehran's scientists are getting ever closer to mastering the skills that are the hardest part of building a nuclear weapon. What is needed is a game-changing diplomatic initiative. For that, Europe and the U.S. must agree quickly on a more persuasive set of punishments and incentives. We don't know if any mix of sanctions and rewards can persuade Iran's leaders to abandon their nuclear program. But without such an effort, we are certain that Tehran will keep pressing ahead, while the voices arguing for military action will only get louder. (New York Times) A decade ago, it was former president Rafsanjani who personified the Iranian hard line. He green-lighted terrorist attacks on Jewish targets in Argentina; he refused to revoke the death sentence on novelist Salman Rushdie; a German court fingered him in the assassinations of Iranian-Kurdish dissidents in a Berlin restaurant. Now Rafsanjani is often spoken of as a "pragmatist" and a "moderate" compared to Ahmadinejad. (Wall Street Journal) If all goes well for Iran, it would be able to amass a sufficient quantity of low-enriched uranium (LEU) to enable it to further enrich it and produce a quantity of military grade uranium by the turn of the decade, sufficient for the production of a single nuclear explosive device. There is very little chance that Iran would cease its nuclear development agenda and start serious negotiations unless strongly and effectively pressured. Without strong, painful sanctions Iran will continue its game of playing for time. (Institute for National Security Studies-Tel Aviv University) There are schools in Belgium that not only serve halal food to Muslim and non-Muslim alike, but, according to a recent French magazine report, no longer teach authors deemed offensive to Muslims, including Voltaire and Diderot; the same is increasingly true of Darwin. According to press reports, the British government has quietly elevated five Sharia courts to the level of tribunal hearings, thus making their rulings legally binding. Among the first official verdicts were those upholding the Islamic belief in male supremacy. These included an inheritance decision in which male heirs received twice as much as female; and several cases of domestic violence in which husbands were acquitted and wives' charges were dropped. (Washington Times) Observations: Iran Slips Away - Editorial (Washington Post)
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