Iranian Hackers Shut Down UK Power Plant - Tony Diver (Telegraph-UK)
    Iran shut down a British power plant for four days last month in an unprecedented cyber attack.
    The attack took place at the same time as a series of attacks on dozens of U.S. wastewater treatment plants in 12 states, causing flooding and a loss of pressure from taps, and forcing some authorities to advise customers to boil their water before drinking it.

Ex-Mossad Official: Turkey Unlikely to Risk Military Clash with Israel despite Erdogan's Ambitions (103FM-Jerusalem Post)
    Former Mossad counterterrorism division head Oded Ailam told 103FM on Friday that a military confrontation between Israel and Turkey was highly unlikely despite Turkish President Erdogan's long-term strategy of regional expansion.
    "Neither side is interested in a military confrontation, certainly not at the present time. That is completely contrary to Erdogan's outlook and to his strategy of creeping annexation."
    "Erdogan is not nostalgically longing for the Ottoman era. He has an organized plan of action. His plan is a multiyear one that says, 'I am going to pursue the creeping annexation of entire areas across the region, in Libya, Somalia and Africa, and of course, in Gaza.'"
    "He is not going to jeopardize it through a confrontation with one of the greatest powers in the region, Israel, and therefore the chances of a military confrontation are extremely slim, virtually zero."
    "Israel did well to draw a clear line in the sand for the Turks. There is a very blatant violation of the status quo here by the Turks. This is an attempt to bring in an advanced system that would have disrupted Israeli Air Force flights to Iran."

U.S. Ambassador to Israel: Turkish Military Was Further South than It Was Supposed to Be - Tobias Holcman (Jerusalem Post)
    Israel "saw the Turkish military moving at a level far further south than they were ever supposed to be," U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee told Al Arabiya on Thursday.
    "When Israel sees a military start to build up closer and closer to them, and that the leadership of the country has said, 'we're going to rebuild the Ottoman Empire and take over Jerusalem,' it takes that seriously."

Iran Tells Iraqi Militias Not to Disarm - Elfadil Ibrahim (Responsible Statecraft)
    Esmail Qaani, the commander of Iran's Quds Force, the branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps responsible for backing armed allies abroad, met in Baghdad on Aug. 10 with Iraqi militia commanders and officials from the Iran-aligned Shia parties that dominate Iraq's parliament.
    Qaani reportedly pressed the militants to keep their weapons rather than hand them to the government.
    The Iraqi government, under intense American pressure, has set a Sep. 30 deadline for all militias operating outside state authority to disarm.
    Two factions said they would place their weapons under state authority. However, Iraqi media reported that the handover ceremonies involved mostly scrap weapons, and that no independent mechanism exists to verify that heavier weapons, like drones and missiles, have actually changed hands.
    Asharq al-Awsat reported that Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf - one of Iran's chief negotiators with the U.S. - visited Baghdad Wednesday and pitched a plan to conceal the factions' heavier weapons or relocate them to Iran.
    Complete disarmament of the hardline factions requires two things not currently on offer: Iran deciding the militias are no longer worth protecting, and the Iraqi state actually using force against members of its own governing coalition. The former is unlikely, and the latter could be disastrous.

Iran Can't Expect to Threaten Its Neighbors and then Do Business with Them - Editorial (The National-UAE)
    Years of confrontation, belligerence and revolutionary rhetoric have deepened Iran's international isolation.
    That isolation worsened last week, with the UAE - the Arab world's second-largest economy - suspending trade and financial transactions with Tehran.
    This development is a direct consequence of Tehran's actions. For years, the Emirates maintained commercial links with Iran even during difficult periods characterized by political tensions.
    Pragmatism, however, has its limits. Iran's leaders cannot expect to threaten their neighbors while maintaining the benefits of economic relations with them.

How's the Palestinian Resistance Going? - James Delmore and Walter E. Block (JNS)
    How is the Palestinian resistance going? Is everyone pleased with the results? Has it benefited Palestinian Arabs?
    After decades of war, the Palestinian people remain stateless and impoverished. Gaza now lies in ruins after the Palestinians regained control of it in 2005.
    With offers of statehood in 1947, 2000 and 2008 turned down by the Palestinian leadership, the Arab world has largely moved on, normalizing relations with Israel without first securing a Palestinian state.
    The Palestinians may have won the PR war, but how has that translated into any real accomplishments on the ground?
    The uncompromising resistance strategy has been one of history's most expensive strategic failures.
    Since 1993, more than $50 billion in international aid has flowed to the Palestinian cause.
    The U.S. alone provided UNRWA more than $7.3 billion from 1950 to 2016. Private charities devoted to Palestinian relief collectively raise hundreds of millions more annually.
    There are now thousands of careers, institutions and funding streams whose existence depends on the Palestinian crisis remaining unresolved.
    The definition of strategic failure is pursuing the same approach, decade after decade, and watching it produce more destruction, more poverty, more displacement and more death than the alternatives you refused to consider.
    One definition of mental illness is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result each time. The strategy of perpetual resistance has produced perpetual suffering.

New York Isn't the Same for Jews - Tevi Troy (Wall Street Journal)
    When I was growing up in Queens in the 1970s, about 2,000 Jews would worship on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur at my synagogue.
    If there were police outside, they were there only to direct traffic, not to provide protection.
    This year, every synagogue in New York has a security committee; police presence is a necessity - not because of traffic.
    While Jews once felt safe walking the streets of the city - or at least only as threatened as everybody else - now they feel, with good reason, as if they have targets on their backs. In July, 70% of hate crimes in New York targeted Jews.
    The pervasive threat is a constant topic of conversation. Why don't comparable non-Jewish institutions need the same layers of security?
    What's happening in New York is about more than one mayor running an administration oddly focused on demonizing Israel.
    The atmosphere is changing the character of what was once America's most Jewish city and making it simply another place.
    The writer is a senior fellow at the Ronald Reagan Institute and a senior scholar at Yeshiva University's Straus Center.