In-Depth Issues:
Iran-Controlled Missile Site in Syria Exposed - Maj. (res.) Tal Beeri ( Alma Research Center)
The area of Mount Muhammad ben Ali, north of Palmyra in eastern Syria, contains a compound equipped with medium- and long-range surface-to-surface missiles inside fortified shafts that can threaten almost the entire territory of Israel.
These missiles can also threaten the areas in eastern Syria where U.S. forces are operating.
The writer, director of research at the Alma Center, served for 20 years in IDF Military Intelligence.
Iran Has Supplied Palestinians in Gaza with Weapons for over Two Decades ( Israel Hayom)
Iran has been the "most relevant" sponsor to Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza for over two decades, supplying them with weapons and technology, Iran's Tasnim news agency reported on Wednesday.
The Quds Force - Iran's extraterritorial black-ops arm formerly headed by Gen. Qasem Soleimani - worked "closely with all these groups, regardless of their religious or political taste."
See also Hamas Leader Meets Iranian Foreign Minister in Qatar ( Jerusalem Post)
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh met on Tuesday with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in Doha, Qatar, state-run Iranian news outlet Al-Alam reported.
Haniyeh praised the Islamic Republic for its support for the "struggle of the Palestinian people fighting the Zionist entity."
Wanted Iranian Official Attends Inauguration of Nicaraguan President - Emanuele Ottolenghi and Toby Dershowitz ( National Interest)
Mohsen Rezaee, the former commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards and currently vice president for economic affairs, flew from Tehran to Nicaragua for the Jan. 10 inauguration of local dictator Daniel Ortega to his fourth term as president.
Rezaee helped plan the 1994 bombing of the Buenos Aires Jewish cultural center, AMIA, killing 85 and wounding 229 people.
In 2007, Interpol issued a red notice for Rezaee for "aggravated murder" after Argentina had issued an international arrest warrant for his role in the AMIA bombing.
His presence in Nicaragua has triggered condemnation from Argentina's government.
His journey back home needs to cross the airspace of numerous countries that are members of Interpol. Will they deny him transit rights or force him to land so that he can be arrested?
Mahmoud Abbas Begins 17th Year as Palestinian President - Salam AbuSharar ( Anadolu-Turkey)
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, 86, elected in January 2005 to succeed the late Yasser Arafat, is starting his 17th year in office.
During Abbas' presidency, negotiations with Israel reached an impasse.
Palestinian political analyst Mustafa Sawaf described Abbas as
"a dictator, and he doesn't believe in democracy and exchange of power, he doesn't believe in elections, and is never serious about national unity."
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Chinese Itzik Comes to Israel - Matti Friedman ( Tablet)
The most prominent face of China in Israel belongs to Xi Xiaoqi, 35, known here as Chinese Itzik.
He stars in hundreds of internet videos about life in Israel from a Chinese perspective, and about life in China made accessible for Israelis.
Some of these appear on his own YouTube channel, but sometimes he appears on Israeli outlets, where journalists are delighted to have a Chinese figure who speaks perfect, slangy Hebrew.
He'd never met a Jew or heard a word of Hebrew before arriving at university at age 18.
His grandfather told him that Jews were smart. Everyone thinks this in China, he said. So he started learning Hebrew in Beijing with an Israeli teacher and then at Tel Aviv University.
In 2009, he was selected to run the Hebrew desk at China Radio International, which doesn't actually broadcast radio, only videos.
The writer was an AP reporter in Jerusalem between 2006 and 2011.
Associated Press Injects "Occupation" into Story about Palestinian Workers Killed in Car Crash - Gidon Ben-Zvi ( HonestReporting)
The Associated Press ( AP) turned the death of eight Palestinians in a West Bank car crash into a broad indictment of Israel.
Most of the Jan. 6 piece, titled "Road crash in West Bank kills 8 Palestinians, injures 2," isn't even dedicated to the details of the accident.
AP notes that "Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared a day of mourning for the victims, who he described as 'martyrs'."
The story depicts Palestinians with the opportunity to earn a living outside of Palestinian Authority-administered territories as being subjected to alleged repressive Israeli policies.
But why are connections between West Bank Palestinians and Israel depicted as a bad thing given the decades-long effort by the international community to forge peaceful co-existence?
Such reporting reduces the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a grossly oversimplified, blame-Israel narrative.
Until the Palestinian Authority Stops Inciting Violence, Engagement for Peace Is Hopeless - Steve Postal ( American Spectator)
A look at Palestinian media compiled by Palestinian Media Watch since November shows that the PA is far from a good-faith peace partner.
The PA, the PLO and Fatah continue to endorse terrorism, spread libels against Israel, reject Arab normalization with Israel, and question the legitimacy of Israel itself.
In a recent phone call with a newly released terrorist, PA President Mahmoud Abbas tells him, "May Allah bless you," and that what he did was a "great and important part."
On PA TV, a girl recited a poem saying, "We will trample the necks of the Zionists and make a path out of them."
A song on PA TV included the lyrics, "This is the day that Jihad is needed. Pull the trigger."
The official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida claimed that Israel "exported" Covid-19 to the PA "as a new weapon."
Israeli to Play in Moroccan Basketball League - Yaakov Meir ( Israel Hayom)
Israeli basketball player Mohamed Abu Arisha, 24, has signed a one-year contract with Morocco's AMI basketball club in Ifrane that competes in
the national top-level league.
Abu Arisha played for Hapoel Beersheba, as well as on the Israeli national basketball team.
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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
- Iran Increases Its Naval Forces - Agnes Helou
In 2021, Iran's naval forces and Revolutionary Guard added the Alvand destroyer, four Martoob al-Sabehat 15 Type submarines, and 110 combat speedboats. Rear-Adm. Amir Rastegari, who heads the Iranian Defense Ministry's Marine Industries, said Iran has ambitious plans to build a 6,000-ton destroyer and giant submarines.
Experts say the buildup of naval forces in Iran represents a rising threat to neighboring countries. Iran operates three Soviet-built diesel-electric submarines, two smaller diesel-electric coastal submarines commissioned in 2019, as well as 23 mini-submarines based on North Korean technology.
Iran has two naval forces. The Iranian Navy consists of submarines, as well as frigates and corvettes obtained in the 1970s from the U.S., UK and France, while the IRGC Navy focuses on hit-and-run tactics and asymmetric operations using speedboats, missile boats, vessels equipped with torpedoes and remote-controlled ships.
"The Revolutionary Guard's Navy is entrusted with combat missions in the Arabian Gulf region in particular, while the regular Navy operates mainly in the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman and is trying to expand to the Red Sea," said Mohamed al-Kenany, who leads the military studies unit at the Cairo-based Arab Forum for Analyzing Iranian Policies.
(Defense News)
- Major Jewish Groups Urge Senate to Take Immediate Action to Replenish Israel's Iron Dome Interceptors
A dozen major Jewish organizations are urging the U.S. Senate to quickly approve funding for the replenishment of Israel's Iron Dome air-defense system.
The House of Representatives overwhelming approved (420-9) legislation last September to provide $1 billion in funds, but the legislation has since stalled in the Senate.
"As American Jewish organizations dedicated to maintaining strong support for Israel's security, we implore you to not allow any more needless delays in passing this legislation. Every day that goes by without this funding is one more day of danger and insecurity for the Israeli people," the groups said. Israel's Iron Dome system came under heavy use during the May 2021 conflict with Palestinians in Gaza, intercepting 90% of the 4,000 rockets fired on Israel. (JNS)
- German Court Finds Syrian Colonel Guilty of Crimes Against Humanity - Jenny Hill
Anwar Raslan, 58, a high-ranking security service officer under President Bashar al-Assad, was sentenced to life in prison by a German court on Thursday for crimes against humanity. He was charged with 58 murders as well as rape and sexual assault, and the torture of at least 4,000 people held in Syria's notorious Al-Khatib prison in Damascus between 2011 and 2012.
Raslan was arrested in Germany in 2019 after having successfully sought asylum there. German human rights lawyers used the principle of universal jurisdiction to bring the case to court. Fifty survivors gave evidence to the court in Koblenz. (BBC News)
- Neo-Nazi Gets 7 Years in U.S. Prison for Threats to Jewish Activists, Reporters - Gene Johnson
Kaleb Cole, 26, a neo-Nazi who was convicted in September of helping lead a campaign to threaten journalists and employees of the Anti-Defamation League in Washington state, Arizona and Florida in 2020, was sentenced Tuesday to seven years in federal prison. Seattle U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour heard from victims who spoke of lingering fear and installing expensive home security systems in response to the threats.
Cole expressed no remorse, which helped explain why his sentence was more than twice as long as that of the conspiracy's other leader, Cameron Shea.
Cole was a leader of a hate group called Atomwaffen Division and had been on law enforcement's radar since at least 2018. In 2019, Seattle police seized nine guns from his home. (AP-Washington Post)
News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
- Eyeing Iran, IDF Undergoing Largest Rearmament in Years - Judah Ari Gross
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Monday: "We are investing in security rearmament of the IDF and the entire defense establishment. I would say this was rearmament that we haven't seen for years. This rearmament is important to our survival."
A large chunk of the 2022 defense budget is earmarked for planning on military engagement with Iran, including upgrading or procuring ordnance. Bennett said Iran was "at the top of our list of challenges." (Times of Israel)
- IDF Soldier Wounded in Car-Ramming Attack in West Bank - Hagar Shezaf
An IDF soldier was wounded in a car-ramming attack near the community of Halamish in the West Bank on Tuesday. The Palestinian driver was arrested after crashing into a security barrier.
(Ha'aretz)
- Omicron Virus Spreads across Israel
The Omicron virus variant has raced across Israel over the past week, with 258,664 active patients. 165,550 Israelis are in quarantine. There were 283 serious cases as of Thursday morning, with 65 people on ventilators and 9 on ECMO (heart-lung) machines. Out of 280 localities, 226 are classified as "red." On Dec. 30, only 14 localities were classified as "red." (Times of Israel-Israel Ministry of Health)
Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:
Iran
- A Narrow Agreement on Iran Nukes Would Be a Disaster - Elliott Abrams
Under a narrow agreement with Iran, the U.S. would release certain sanctions - for example, allowing Iran to collect $7 billion in frozen accounts in South Korea - if Iran made certain moves, such as halting enrichment of uranium above a low percentage and exporting the uranium it has already enriched above that percentage.
From the Israeli perspective, such an agreement would be a disaster. It does not stop Iranian enrichment. It does not stop replacement of more primitive centrifuges with new generations of centrifuges that enrich far faster. It does not require Iran to account for the previous military work on a bomb it has clearly done. It does not require Iran to permit full International Atomic Energy Agency inspections, which Iran has prohibited for several years now.
Israel should continue to explain patiently, forcefully, and diplomatically why such an agreement is dangerous. Moreover, Israel should be very clear that it will not consider itself bound by such an agreement. It has said exactly that, retaining the right to act to protect itself. Israel was not represented in the diplomacy and will have to take care of itself.
The writer, a Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, was the State Department's Special Representative for Iran in 2020.
(Tablet)
- How Close Is Iran to Getting a Nuclear Weapon? - Colum Lynch
To acquire a fully functioning nuclear weapons program, Iran must develop enough highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium to fuel one or more nuclear bombs; construct a nuclear warhead capable of housing the fissile nuclear fuel; and develop a ballistic missile system capable of delivering a nuclear explosive to its target. Finally, it needs to conduct a test to see if the explosive actually works.
David Albright, founder of the Institute for Science and International Security, said that Iran has already acquired enough 20% and 60% uranium to produce at least 45 kg. of highly enriched uranium at 90% - enough weapons-grade fuel to produce a nuclear bomb. In several months, it could produce enough fuel for two more bombs. In six months, Iran may be in a position to test a nuclear explosive.
Yet the Iranians would still need to develop a working nuclear warhead. In 2009, an internal IAEA assessment concluded that before 2003, Iran had accumulated "sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable implosion nuclear device." The IAEA assessed "that Iran has yet achieved the means of integrating a nuclear payload into the Shahab 3 missile with any confidence that it would work. Nonetheless, with further effort it is likely that Iran will overcome problems." (Foreign Policy)
- Arabs Voice Growing Concern over Iran's Malicious Intentions - Khaled Abu Toameh
Syrian-born TV host Faisal Al-Kasim recently asked his 5.9 million followers on Twitter: "Which is better, Israel's reputation or Iran's reputation in the region?" 75% viewed Israel as having a better reputation as opposed to 25% in favor of Iran.
The next day, Al-Kasim, who hosts a popular debate show on Al-Jazeera, asked his followers: "Do you support the Israeli bombing of Iran and its militias in Syria?" 78% said they supported the Israeli military strikes, while only 22% voiced opposition. His findings did not come as a surprise to many Arabs, especially those living in the Gulf states, who express deep concern over Iran's ongoing meddling in their internal affairs.
Many Arabs are worried about the Europeans' and Biden administration's perceived appeasement of the mullahs in Tehran. On Dec. 23, the Saudi newspaper Al-Yaum questioned "the seriousness of American efforts to save the world from Iranian threats." On Jan. 6, Saudi political analyst Abdel Aziz Khamis noted that Iran has boasted that it occupies four Arab capitals: Baghdad, Beirut, Sana'a and Damascus - and that he does not understand the silence and indifference of the international community.
Former Jordanian Minister of Information Saleh Al-Qallab warned on Jan. 6: "What Iran is doing is tantamount to an open war against the Arabs." Former Kuwaiti Minister of Information and Culture Saad Bin Tefla Al-Ajami said on Dec. 31 that
"Iran is interfering in the region with the aim of dominating it" and expressed disappointment over the failure of the international community to "deter the Iranian intrusion." (Gatestone Institute)
Palestinians
- How the Deir Yassin Libel Helped Create the Palestinian Refugee Problem - Daniel Gordis
In March 1948, Arab forces successfully cut off Jerusalem. Menachem Begin's Irgun and Yitzhak Shamir's Lehi, two underground paramilitary groups, decided to help relieve the siege. With the knowledge of the Haganah, the "official" military force of the pre-state Jewish community of Palestine, they planned to take the town of Deir Yassin, from which Arab forces were shooting at the road to Jerusalem.
On April 9, the fighters encountered far more resistance than expected. The local Palestinians claimed that the Jews were butchering them and hoped to convince surrounding Arab countries to enter the fray, which they did after May 14. Later, both Israeli and Palestinian historians concluded that there was a heavy battle with heavy losses, but the horror stories of rape and hundreds dead were untrue.
A new book by Eliezer Tauber, a former dean at Bar Ilan University and an expert on the formation of Arab nationalism, has taken on the Deir Yassin story with painstaking attention to detail in The Massacre that Never Was: The Myth of Deir Yassin and the Creation of the Palestinian Refugee Problem. There was no massacre, he argues, but a hard-fought battle in which Palestinian combatants stationed themselves in residences and among family. Using both Arab and Jewish testimony, he was able to account for the circumstances of almost every Palestinian death in the village. With a handful of exceptions, virtually all those killed were killed as part of the fighting.
The Palestine Broadcast Service, Tauber shows, was instructed to say that there had been rapes, mutilation of bodies, murders and more. Many people believed the claims without question. That was what led the Arab population from across the land to flee. Hazim Nusayba, the Arabic news editor of the PBS, later reflected: "This particular strong communique... was one of the main reasons for the collapse of the armed resistance in Palestine. We did not understand the mentality of our own Palestinian people....This turned [out] to be the highest, most expensive mistake that we made." They fled as a result of accusations that Palestinians themselves had concocted.
The writer is a fellow at Shalem College in Jerusalem and author of 12 books.
(Israel from the Inside)
- Controversy in Gaza over Billboards Commemorating Iranian General Soleimani
Ahead of the second anniversary of his assassination, posters commemorating
Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Qods Force in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, were put up on billboards around Gaza. Majdi Al-Mughrabi, a Salafi sheikh from Rafah, called on the people of Gaza to tear down the posters, as he did last year. On Dec. 30, 2021, he wrote on Facebook: "Those who love and loyally follow the Prophet...must object to having this garbage hanging over their heads, and they should tear it down and trample it underfoot."
The following day he posted: "Although there are [Iranian] mercenaries in Gaza [Hamas and Islamic Jihad] who insist on putting up pictures of the dead Soleimani and of others like him from among the leaders of the Rafida [a derogatory term for Shi'ites], there are also devout and righteous believers here, of all streams, who will not agree to having these filthy pictures hanging in the skies of Gaza." After some pictures were torn down, Al-Mughrabi wrote: "Praise Allah, some Muslim youths, clean of hands and pure of heart, tore down several pictures of the dead warmonger and criminal Soleimani."
On Jan. 3, 2022, Al-Mughrabi wrote: "What resistance are these mercenaries speaking about?! Resistance by smuggling and by expelling, murdering and imprisoning the Syrian people?...Or perhaps they are talking about similar actions carried out in Iraq, which has been butchered, in Yemen, which has been plundered and destroyed, or in Lebanon?!" (MEMRI)
Other Issues
- The UN's Final Solution to the Israel Question - Clifford D. May
After his accession to power in 1933, Hitler began a campaign to demonize and delegitimize Jews, accusing them of imaginary crimes, conveying the message that Jews are a vile and guilty race, deserving of punishment. This laid the groundwork for the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question," the Nazi euphemism for the genocide of European Jews.
For decades, the UN has been at the forefront of a campaign to demonize and delegitimize Israel. That campaign is now set to sharply escalate with the approval of a new Commission of Inquiry (COI) - essentially a Grand Inquisition that will target and vilify Israel - under the auspices of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), a body dominated by such notorious human rights violators as China, Russia, Cuba, Pakistan, Qatar, and Venezuela.
The COI will be "dedicated to manufacturing charges and mounting a global chase to arrest and incarcerate Israeli Jews," Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, wrote in a paper for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
The ostensible inspiration for the COI is the 11-day conflict initiated by Hamas in May 2021, when it launched over 4,000 rockets against Israeli cities - an indisputable crime under international law - and the Israelis defended themselves.
The permanent drumbeat of anti-Israeli vilification by the COI is certain to energize the economic campaign against Israel (echoing the 1933 Nazi "Don't buy from the Jews" campaign) and perhaps lead to prosecutions of Israelis by the International Criminal Court, a politicized entity whose authority is recognized by neither Israel nor the U.S.
The UN campaign will make settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict impossible for the foreseeable future. Why would any Palestinian leader compromise so long as there is a possibility that what happened to the Jews of Europe could happen to the Jews of Israel with the assent of the "international community"?
The writer is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
(Washington Times)
Anti-Semitism
- Why People Love Accusing Jews of Genocide - Yair Rosenberg
Last week, David Bateman, a prominent Utah entrepreneur and political donor,
sent an email to his state business and political leaders. The subject line? "Genocide." The topic: Jews. Referring to the Covid-19 pandemic and its vaccines, Bateman wrote, "I believe there is a sadistic effort underway to euthanize the American people....I believe the Jews are behind this."
The libel that Jews are committing genocide has exploded in popularity across anti-Jewish discourse. It crosses ideological lines and is increasingly expressed in polite company.
People just love accusing Jews of genocide. "The Jews will use the vaccine to change DNA, making the person susceptible to designer viruses the Jews will create," wrote one poster on the neo-Nazi forum Stormfront in December 2020. Ishmael Muhammad, a student minister in Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam, referenced the "Synagogue of Satan" (an anti-Semitic reference to Jews) for allegedly promoting vaccines to sterilize Black people, in a live sermon from the organization's headquarters in Chicago.
False charges of Jewish genocide weaponize the greatest Jewish trauma - when two out of three European Jews were killed - against Jewish people. There is no better way to hurt someone than to fashion their own most painful experience into a club with which to beat them. Moreover, casting Jews as the perpetrators of a new, fictitious Holocaust frees non-Jews from the obligation to learn the lessons of the actual Holocaust. Fundamentally, the impulse to hang the Holocaust on the Jews is an attempt to return humanity to where it was before the Holocaust - which enables such things to happen again.
(Washington Post)
Weekend Features
- Georgia Police Captain Recounts Training in Israel - Bob Pepalis
After two weeks of training in Israel in November, Sandy Springs Police Capt. Norman Vik wants to use what he learned to improve his department. Vik was part of a 16-member delegation of senior law enforcement officials from Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina and Colorado in the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange's (GILEE) 28th annual peer-to-peer executive training program in partnership with the Israel Police.
He had classes with Israel's unexploded ordnance teams and learned that they guarantee to be on scene in 15 minutes. Israel has a national academy for police training, which ensures that all officers receive the same training specific to their positions. Vik wants to bring in operational readiness training like he saw in Israel. Annually every officer must participate in training that includes physical activity, defensive tactics and firearms.
On a trip to a town close to Gaza, he said, "You couldn't tell by driving through the city. People are out walking the streets, children are playing, and it was like day-to-day business going on....You don't notice it right away until somebody actually pointed out that every structure - playgrounds, bus stops - have a bomb shelter setup."
(Reporter Newspapers-Atlanta)
- Treasure Trove of Documents on Pre-war Jewish Life Goes Online - Judy Maltz
The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research completed on Monday the digitization of its entire prewar library and archival collection. The 7-year, $7 million project will provide the public with free access to 4.1 million pages of original books, artifacts, records, manuscripts - including many believed to have been destroyed and lost during the Nazi and Soviet eras. The materials were once part of the main YIVO collection in Vilnius, Lithuania, established in 1925.
In 1941, the Nazis ransacked the YIVO library and sent materials to the Nazi Institute for the Study of the Jewish Question in Frankfurt to "produce scholarship that would demonstrate why it was necessary to annihilate Jewish civilization and culture," said YIVO CEO Jonathan Brent.
In 1946, the U.S. Army recovered 1 million documents and 9,000 books in a warehouse outside Frankfurt and sent them to YIVO in New York. (Ha'aretz)
See also The YIVO Archives and Library
This is the largest and most comprehensive collection of materials on East European Jewish civilization in the world. (YIVO Institute for Jewish Research)
Observations:
- The U.S and some European nations continue to demonstrate an obsession with Israeli "settlements" and isolated incidents by small groups of radical Israelis, mostly wayward youths, while completely ignoring the much larger issue of Palestinian violence, incitement and terrorism.
This obsession was clear during a routine meeting several weeks ago at Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs between diplomats from 16 European countries and Aliza Bin Noun, the director of the European Affairs Department.
- Dore Gold, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, believes that "the obsession isn't with settlements; it's with Israel."
Gold explained that the legal basis of European objections to settlement activity is the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, which forbids an occupying power from evicting the existing population or forcibly transferring its own population into the occupied territory.
- "The two dimensions of the convention do not apply to Israel," Gold said, "yet the international community misinterprets international law and accuses Israel of violating the convention" while ignoring actual violations in other countries.
When Turkey occupied northern Cyprus, there was a massive sale of properties there to Europeans who wanted a cheap vacation home. The UN Human Rights Council ignored it.
- The one case "that really boils my blood" is what has been going on in the last decade in Syria.
Pro-Iranian Shi'ite militias there have evicted thousands of Syrian Sunnis in order to change the demographic balance. Families have come from Afghanistan and Pakistan to settle in the vacated homes.
In Israel's case, there has not been any forced eviction of Palestinians in Judea and Samaria. Yet the international community focuses on Israel and ignores Syria. "That is what I would call international legal hypocrisy. This is a glaring case of misapplying international law."
- Gold pointed to Khan al-Ahmar, a Bedouin outpost situated on the main highway connecting Jerusalem to the Jordan Valley, and recognized as illegal by Israel's Supreme Court as a potential security risk.
When he was director-general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Gold met with German officials and "made a very strong point" that if Khan al-Ahmar is allowed to remain, hundreds of Israeli families that travel on that road will be at risk. Gold told the German ministry officials that if Israeli families are killed on this road after Germany insisted that Palestinian construction in "Area C" is legal, they share responsibility in what happens.
- Foreign obsession with Israel and the settlements is not going away, "but it is imperative that Israel get its truth out," said Gold. "The Fourth Geneva Convention does not apply. Israel is in the right here."
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