Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, March 30, 2015

03/30 Links Pt1: Apocalyptic Betrayals; Obama’s Middle East policy is ‘willful ignorance’

From Ian:

Jeffrey Goldberg: What to Worry About in an Iran Nuclear Deal

Here are a few questions that have, helped by various news stories about the talks, repeatedly crossed my mind in recent days. I would prefer to see a nuclear deal struck, of course, but unsatisfactory answers to these issues would be cause for real worry:
1) What will Saudi Arabia do in response to a deal? If the Saudis—who are already battling the Iranians on several fronts—actually head down the path toward nuclearization, then these negotiations will not have served the underlying purpose President Obama ascribed to them. The president has warned, in interviews with me and others, that a nuclear Iran would trigger a nuclear arms race across the Middle East, the world’s most volatile region. One goal of these talks is to assure the rest of the Middle East that Iran cannot achieve nuclear status. If Saudi Arabia (and Egypt and Turkey and the U.A.E.) does not believe that a deal will achieve this, then it will move on its own to counter the Persian nuclear threat.
2) If the underground enrichment facility at Fordow—which had been hidden from Western view for several years, and which the U.S. and Europe have repeatedly said needs to be closed—is allowed to run centrifuges, even to spin germanium and other elements that cannot be used in the manufacture of nuclear weapons, then doubt could legitimately be sown about the strength of this deal. Already-spinning centrifuges in a maintained, guarded, and fortified bunker can be retrofitted to handle uranium, should the Iranians choose to break their agreement. It would be better to see Fordow filled with cement, or otherwise crippled.

3) The Iranians have never answered most of the questions put to them by the International Atomic Energy Agency about the possible military dimensions—the so-called PMDs—of their nuclear program. These questions must be answered before sanctions are even partially lifted. Otherwise, the West will never get answers.
4) The proposed speed of sanctions relief is, of course, something to watch carefully. The Iranians want immediate sanctions relief, but the West should only agree to a stately pace of sanctions-removal, predicated on 100-percent Iranian compliance on intrusive inspections, among other issues.
5) The largest question in my mind concerns the matter of break-out time—how long it would take for Iran, once it made a decision to violate the terms of a deal and go for full nuclearization, to actually make a deliverable weapon. The goal of the Obama administration is to make sure that it would take Iran at least a year to cross the threshold. The assumption is that a year would give the West time to devise a response—including, if necessary, a military response. This will be among the issues of greatest controversy because this is an easily misunderstood and distorted matter, one that is both devilishly complicated and, in many ways, theoretical.

Elliott Abrams: President Carter and Israel -- again

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter writes about (that is to say, against) Israel once again in Friday's Washington Post, in a column titled "Rebuild Gaza, and avert the next war."‎
Why is Gaza not being rebuilt? Two reasons. First, Carter says, because Hamas and Fatah ‎are fighting and donors are not delivering: "The $5.4 billion pledged for rebuilding was ‎predicated on the Palestinian Authority asserting itself in Gaza. However, relations between ‎Hamas and its political rivals, Abbas' Fatah party, remain fraught. The authority has ‎proven unwilling or unable to govern in Gaza. As a result, the promised reconstruction ‎money has not been delivered." True enough. Unless and until donors pony up the cash ‎they promised, there will be little rebuilding. Carter's solution is international pressure "to ‎implement reconciliation agreements between Fatah and Hamas." (He does not seem to ‎realize that this "reconciliation" between the PA and a terrorist group would doom any ‎possible negotiations between Israel and the PA, but that's a different subject.)‎
Then Carter adds this second explanation for Gaza's troubles:‎ "The shortage of funds is the most immediate problem, but it is not the only one: Israel has ‎restricted access to Gaza."‎
So he calls for "sustained pressure ... to end Israel's closure of Gaza. It is incumbent on the ‎world to engage at the highest levels with the Palestinians, Egypt and Israel to push this ‎process forward."‎
That sentence is the sole reference to Egypt, and it shows what is wrong with Carter's ‎analysis. The fact is that Gaza has a border not only with Israel, but with Egypt, and that ‎border with Egypt has been closed by the government in Cairo -- for security reasons, as it ‎fights Hamas smuggling and terror in the Sinai.

Biden: American Jews Can Only Rely on Israel, Not US

Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg reveals in the April issue of The Atlantic how at a Rosh Hashana event in Biden's home last fall, the vice president told Jewish leaders and Jewish officials in US President Barack Obama's administration how he met former Prime Minister Golda Meir when he was a young Senator.
"I’ll never forget talking to her in her office with her assistant - a guy named (Yitzhak) Rabin - about the Six-Day War,” he recalled. “The end of the meeting, we get up and walk out, the doors are open, and...the press is taking photos. ...She looked straight ahead and said, ‘Senator, don’t look so sad...Don’t worry. We Jews have a secret weapon.'"
Biden states he asked Meir what the weapon was, noting "I thought she was going to tell me something about a nuclear program" - an ironic comment given the US's recent declassification of documents revealing Israel's nuclear program in a breach of understandings with the Jewish state.
But according to Biden, "she looked straight ahead and she said, ‘We have no place else to go.'" Addressing his guests at Rosh Hashana, Biden paused for effect and repeated, "we have no place else to go."
"Folks, there is no place else to go, and you understand that in your bones," Biden said. "You understand in your bones that no matter how hospitable, no matter how consequential, no matter how engaged, no matter how deeply involved you are in the United States...there’s only one guarantee."
"There is really only one absolute guarantee, and that’s the state of Israel," he stated.

Latest nutty Arab rumor: Jewish suicide bombers are coming!

Over the weekend a number of Arabic websites "quoted" Israel's Channel One website with a bizarre story.

The story supposedly said that there was a cell of 30 young Jews who are being incited by rabbis to carry out suicide bombings against Arabs in the West Bank. The story said that the Shin Bet warned about these impending attacks but didn't want to do anything about them because of political considerations.

The stgory goes on to say that those responsible for these attacks are rabbis and religious extremists in Jerusalem and the West who sow hatred among young religious Jews against Arabs and Palestinians and therefore try to persuade them to follow the methods of Palestinian terrorists.

Needless to say, no such story can be found on the Channel One website, or anywhere else. And if it was a real story it would be in the front pages of Israeli newspapers - secular and religious -within hours.

It is rare that Arabic stories are completely made up, so maybe there was a Purim spoof or something that someone read.

Or it is just an extreme case of Arab projection.

I did once find an Arab political cartoon of a Jew with a suicide bomb belt shaped like minarets to show how Jews like to attack mosques, apparently.

Former IAEA inspector details why the Iran deal is nearly worthless

This is the must-read article of this past weekend. I'm reproducing it in full:

With reports that Washington and its partners may reach a nuclear accord with Iran in the coming days, a former senior IAEA safeguards official answers the most pressing questions about Tehran's program and how the agreement might affect its capabilities.

This is the time required to produce enough weapons-grade uranium (WGU) for one nuclear weapon. To produce WGU, uranium needs to be enriched (e.g., with centrifuges) to more than 90 percent of its fissile isotope U-235. The amount of WGU required for one weapon is defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as about 27 kg of uranium. This amount is often called a "significant quantity" (SQ).

What is Iran's current breakout time?

Natural uranium has only 0.7 percent of the isotope U-235, and the effort required to enrich it to one SQ of WGU is about 5,000 Separative Work Units (SWUs). Iran currently has about 9,000 functioning first-generation IR-1 centrifuges, with another 9,000 not in operation. The IR-1s installed in the Natanz and Fordow facilities have been performing at an average per unit rate of 0.75 to 1 SWU per year. Using the 1 SWU/year performance of the latest IR-1 model, the breakout time with 9,000 machines using a natural uranium feed would be six to seven months. However, Iran also has substantial stocks of 3.5 percent enriched uranium hexafluoride (UF6) that can be used as an alternative feed, shrinking the breakout time to three months.

If Iran brought online its other nearly 9,000 IR-1s, breakout time would be about three months with natural uranium feedstock and four to six weeks with 3.5 percent UF6 feedstock. Iran has also developed the more advanced IR-2m centrifuge, rated at 5 SWU/year. If the 1,000 IR-2ms installed at Natanz were used in conjunction with all 18,000 IR-1s, the respective breakout times would be cut by a third.

According to media accounts, the proposed nuclear agreement would lower the number of operating centrifuges to around 6,500. In that circumstance, what would Iran's breakout time be?

Using IR-1s with natural uranium as a feed, the breakout time for 6,500 centrifuges would be about nine months. A crucial question will be how much 3.5 percent enriched UF6 will remain in Iran. Yet even if UF6 stocks are reduced from their current 7.5-8 tons to 500 kg, a breakout time of between seven and eight months would still be possible given the program's enrichment capabilities with natural uranium feed. Since these breakout times are less than the goals set by the U.S. administration, it is important to know what parameters Washington used for its estimates.

The administration says that one of the main achievements of an agreement would be to increase breakout time to at least a year. What else would have to be in the agreement to reach that goal?

The maximum allowed breakout time should be viewed as a combination of detection time and action time -- that is, the time required to get Iran back in compliance with the agreement. Both of these times are difficult to estimate precisely because administrative delays and efforts to resolve disagreements could easily take several months.

How long is the detection time?

Detection time depends on Iran's actions. If Tehran does not try to conceal what it is doing, the IAEA would detect a violation fairly quickly -- in the worst case perhaps two weeks. The agency would then confirm the finding with Iranian authorities, and the IAEA Board of Governors would need another one or two weeks to take any formal action such as referring the issue to the UN Security Council. This would leave a reasonable amount of time for the international community to act.

Yet if Iran tries to conceal what it is doing, much longer detection times are likely. As indicated in past IAEA reports, environmental samples play a pivotal role in confirming violations. Due to the large number of samples involved and the meticulous analytical process, the results would not be available for at least two months. And if samples show higher enrichment, additional samples have to be taken and analyzed. Although the second set of samples would certainly be fast-tracked, it is unrealistic to expect that process and subsequent clarifications by Iran to take less than another month. This would leave the international community with only three or four months to act, an extremely short time.

There are also plausible scenarios of misunderstandings or even differing interpretations of what constitutes a breach of the agreement. In such situations, Iran could drag the process out for many months.

Iran might also pursue a "creep-out" strategy, such as by slowly increasing its inventory of 3.5 percent UF6. This has already taken place under the interim Joint Plan of Action. When the JPOA was concluded in November 2013, Iran's 3.5 percent UF6 stock should have been below 7.5 tons; any additional material existing or newly produced should have been converted to oxides. Yet none of the IAEA reports released since then indicate that the stock has been below that amount. This demonstrates the need for the United States and its partners to maintain vigilance in getting Iran to comply with an agreement and not allowing it to widen the envelope of what is permitted.

The most difficult task is to detect a "sneak-out" violation in which Iran uses clandestine nuclear facilities. This scenario has several variants, including the possibility of an entirely separate, unreported enrichment cycle anywhere along the chain from uranium mining to enrichment. This scenario cannot be excluded because the IAEA has still not been permitted to verify the completeness of Tehran's declarations on nuclear materials and facilities.

A sneak-out could also involve both declared and undeclared facilities. For instance, Iran could produce low-enriched UF6 in a known facility and then take that material to a smaller undeclared location to produce WGU. Therefore, it is important that the IAEA be empowered to not only verify the completeness of Iran's inventory of nuclear material, but also establish as a baseline the total number and location of centrifuges inside the country.

If an agreement does achieve a one-year breakout warning time, is it possible to know whether this buffer could be maintained over the life of the deal? What would change that?

Perhaps the most important factor is the research and development on more advanced centrifuges such as IR-5 or IR-8. Making such machines operational on a semi-industrial scale would likely take at least three years. If they are ten to twenty times more efficient than the current IR-1 centrifuges as estimated, the breakout times would be much reduced.

Warning time could also be shortened if the IAEA is not allowed to fully exercise rigorous monitoring and verification procedures. These range from routine inspections to so-called "anytime, anyplace inspections" and full access to component manufacturing facilities, as well as efforts to follow the procurement of certain dual-use materials and equipment to confirm their end use.

Can centrifuges be used to enrich material other than uranium?

Media reports indicate that some of the centrifuges in Fordow will be dedicated to producing isotopes for medical and industrial use. A similar process is already in use at enrichment facilities in Europe and Russia. A key question will be which kind of stable isotopes will be produced. If the centrifuges are reconfigured to produce, say, xenon isotopes, the machines could be converted back to enrich uranium fairly easily. Yet if they are used to produce zinc or molybdenum isotopes, contamination could hamper any later attempts to resume production of nuclear-grade materials.

What is the international community's past experience with predictions of breakout time?

History shows surprises. The Russian centrifuge program went for years without detection despite tremendous intelligence efforts. The Iraqi and Libyan programs were not immediately detected, and South Africa, which manufactured nuclear weapons, ended up destroying its program before the IAEA saw it. The Syrian reactor in al-Kibar also came a bit out of the blue, as did North Korea's advanced centrifuge plant. There is always the element of the unknown or the uncertain that adds to the risk equation.

Iran has talented engineers and the necessary financial resources, and its nuclear infrastructure is much larger than what it actually needs. Therefore, a monitoring scheme that is merely "good enough" will not guarantee success in preventing Iran from breaking out and achieving a nuclear weapons capability.

Olli Heinonen is a senior fellow at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and a former deputy director-general for safeguards at the IAEA. Together with Washington Institute fellow Simon Henderson, he coauthored the recently updated Policy Focus Nuclear Iran: A Glossary of Terms, a joint publication of the Institute and the Belfer Center.

A matter of style (ElderToons)

From the NYT:

With a negotiating deadline just two days away, Iranian officials on Sunday backed away from a critical element of a proposed nuclear agreement, saying they are no longer willing to ship their atomic fuel out of the country.

For months, Iran tentatively agreed that it would send a large portion of its stockpile of uranium to Russia, where it would not be accessible for use in any future weapons program. But on Sunday Iran’s deputy foreign minister made a surprise comment to Iranian reporters, ruling out an agreement that involved giving up a stockpile that Iran has spent years and billions of dollars to amass.

“The export of stocks of enriched uranium is not in our program, and we do not intend sending them abroad,” the official, Abbas Araqchi, told the Iranian media, according to Agence France-Presse. “There is no question of sending the stocks abroad.”

Has anyone, even once, seen a story during the negotiations where the US seemed to outfox Iran on any issue?

I also updated an older political cartoon yesterday:

Virginia State Bar responds, denies boycotting Israel

EoZ reader Karin received another email from the Virginia State Bar in response to many complaints about their sudden decision to cancel a meeting in Israel:

March 29, 2015

Dear Fellow Members of the Virginia State Bar,

On Friday March 27th, we canceled the Virginia State Bar's planned Midyear Legal Seminar trip to Israel. The decision was based primarily on a U.S. State Department advisory:

http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/english/country/israel.html, "Entry, Exit & Visa Requirements." We were forced to conclude there were potential difficulties some of our VSB members might face in obtaining entry to Israel. Additionally, we were well short of the required number of confirmed attendees necessary for the trip to proceed.

President-elect Edward L. Weiner, chair of the Midyear Legal Seminar Committee, communicated with the Israeli Embassy. An embassy official expressed a desire to facilitate the trip but acknowledged that security protocols are strict and could lead to exclusion or restriction of some VSB members.

In the face of this information, we felt it necessary and appropriate to forego this trip. This was not a political decision and is not a "boycott." We are an inclusive organization and do not discriminate against any religion.

Unfortunately, some mischaracterized this decision as anti-Israel and anti-Semitic, even going so far as to mislabel it as a "boycott." Although the message was sent over the president's signature, we jointly drafted and approved what was sent Friday night. Apparently we could have done a better job of explaining the situation and decision. We are writing now to provide further clarity.

Our decision was not based on any political factors or influences. We understand that Israel is in a difficult position when it comes to security. We are not expressing opinions regarding Israel's border security measures. We are merely recognizing the reality that our very large and diverse membership, consisting of well over 40,000 members, includes individuals who may encounter lengthy examination and possible rejection in attempting to navigate the immigration security procedures in Israel.

You may recall that on March 25, 2015, we sent a message urging VSB members to sign up for both the Israel trip and the Annual Meeting in Virginia Beach. We very much wanted the Israel trip to be a success and were trying to reach the required number of participants for it to be a go. We deeply regret that a combination of circumstances led to the trip's cancellation, and we also regret that our good faith efforts and decisions may have been misinterpreted and misunderstood.

We remain committed to the core objectives of the VSB: public protection, access to justice and improvement of the legal profession. Thank you for reading and thank you for allowing us the privilege of serving.

Kevin E. Martingayle, President
Edward L. Weiner, President-elect & Chair, Midyear Legal Seminar Committee

Part of that US advisory that they used as proof that travel to Israel is too risky, while it emphasizes potential violence, also says "Although threat mitigation efforts by authorities are not 100 percent effective, hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens safely visit Israel and the West Bank each year for study, tourism, and business." It also says "Personal safety conditions in major metropolitan areas, including Tel Aviv and Haifa and surrounding regions, are comparable to other major global cities."

As far as the chances that individual VA State Bar members might be barred from entry into Israel, I'd love to know the specifics of the phone conversation where "An embassy official expressed a desire to facilitate the trip but acknowledged that security protocols are strict and could lead to exclusion or restriction of some VSB members."

Guess what? US airlines have a terror watch list, whose security protocols are also strict and could lead to exclusion or restriction of some VSB members!

In other words, it is important to know exactly what the question was that was asked, and the exact answer. There are scores of professional conferences in Israel every year where not a single attendee has a problem entering the country. The VSB knows this, and this letter is obfuscating the information.

Israel does limit or deny access specifically to the West Bank for Americans who hold Palestinian IDs. I am not sure what the restrictions are, if any, for them going into pre-1967 Israel.

I have never heard of any other organization suddenly cancel a planned event because of a last minute discovery of possible Israeli restrictions on some potential visitors, issues that can almost certainly be cleared up in advance.

The fact that they sent out a letter on March 25 urging people to go on the trip and then another letter only two days later canceling it supposedly because of not enough people signing up sounds ridiculous.

This is very, very fishy, and the letter does not seem to be on the level.

See also Legal Insurrection for lots more.

There have been countless articles about Binyamin Netanyahu's supposedly anti-Arab message on Election Day.

What he said that caused all the backlash is "The right-wing government is in danger. Arab voters are coming out in droves to the polls. Left-wing organizations are busing them out."

Joe Klein in Time takes this one sentence and concludes that "he won because he ran as a bigot."

His choice of words was definitely unfortunate, but in context he was more upset over the buses than over the Arabs voting. How do we know?

Because he said so only hours after the first message, while the polls were still open.

I want to clarify: there is nothing illegitimate with citizens voting, Jewish or Arab, as they see fit. What is not legitimate is the funding, the fact that money comes from abroad from NGOs and foreign governments, brings them en masse to the ballot box in an organized fashion, in favor of the left, gives undue power to the extremist Arab list, and weakens the right bloc in such a way that we will be unable to build a government — despite the fact that most citizens of Israel support the national camp and support me as the prime minister from Likud.

Did you see any of the media report on this message, released on the exact same platform and aimed at the exact same audience as the earlier one? Besides some Israeli media and The Blaze, I don't see it anywhere.

Because it doesn't fit the meme of "Bibi as racist."

As I've noted, none of the mainstream media reported that the community with the highest percentage of Likud voters was not a Jewish community or a 'settlement" but Arab al-Naim.

Druze Likud MK Ayoub Kara has said that no one said a word when Arab MKs told their communities that any Arab who votes for a Zionist party is "garbage."

United Arab List member Ahmed Tibi, in the forefront of accusing Bibi of being a racist, was the first one to call on Arabs to vote in droves. No one called that bigoted.

He raised the Palestinian flag on the holiest spot of Judaism in January. Again, the world media ignored his blatant insult to Judaism.

These sorts of statements and actions are expected from Arabs, according to the world media which does not regard it as newsworthy.

Which means that Joe Klein and all the others who insult Bibi while actively suppressing the truth about Israeli Arab extremists like Tibi are the real bigots.

(h/t Asher)

UPDATE: From The Forward, some Arab electoral racism that went unreported as well:

“Bibi, Buji, Zehava and Issawi: All of the Jews are the same,” noted leaders of the Arab Balad party at a recent executive meeting.

Balad Party activists are willing to lump together Netanyahu with Meretz Chairwoman Zehava Gal-On, who supports the Arab Peace Initiative and the division of Jerusalem. Even more offensive is the derision expressed toward Arab MK Issawi Frej of Meretz merely because he joined a Zionist party, despite being left-wing and promoting Palestinian statehood.

Why wasn't this reported in the mainstream media? Again, the Arab politicians are expected to be haters - so the media doesn't hold them to the same moral standards.

(h/t Adam L)

These 230 olive trees really WERE destroyed this weekend - by Arabs

As opposed to the bogus story reported earlier, this is one that really happened - along with video proof.

From 0404:

At least 230 olive trees were uprooted his weekend in Kfar Adumim, a comunity in the northern Judean Desert.

This morning, Boaz Ido, plantation owner, discovered the damage. This is part of a series of vandalism there that has taken place there.

Boaz told the news 0404: "Devastating damage, especially painful. Last three weeks there has been an increase in acts of vandalism here. The Bedouins living in illegal outposts in the area are doing this.

Once they cut the fence, another time they broke a solar panel. We once caught a suspect red-handed cutting the the fence. I called the police and they arrested him, but then he was released. I complained to the police but do not help and they do what they want. "

Boas went on painfully: "The financial damage is huge. Last week they took down 50 meters of fencing ... the police told me to 'leave us alone - we are not a security company.' "

The plantation owner tells of ongoing damage, almost on a daily basis, "solar panels, irrigation system, stealing windows, stones thrown at me out of their vineyard and other incidents. I feel really helpless and there is no one who will help me. Their goal to eliminate me as a Jew here."

The truth is quite a bit different from what you can find reported in the international media, isn't it?

(h/t Bob Knot)

03/29 Links: Bibi: Iran deal worse than Israel feared; Richard Kemp: The US must confront Tehran

From Ian:

Richard Kemp: The US must confront Tehran: Achieving cooperation through coercion

Namely, Iran must stop exporting terrorism; stop destabilizing the Middle East; and stop threatening other countries with annihilation.
Without Iran’s full compliance with those terms, America should not contemplate a deal. Given that existing sanctions caused Iran to capitulate, as regime survival became an increasing concern, intensifying, not removing sanctions will ensure a much better deal.
The talking points being advanced by Obama administration officials – that additional sanctions will deter a deal – are leitmotifs of regime propaganda and should be discounted, unless the US is willing to simply surrender.
As a presumptive Democratic presidential nominee in 2008, Barack Obama visited the Israeli town of Sderot, where he toured the “Kassam Museum” containing the remains of hundreds of rockets fired at that city, courtesy of Iranian sponsorship. Today, in addition to Gaza, Iran effectively controls four Arab capitals: Beirut, Baghdad, Damascus and Sana’a.
An Iranian weapons pipeline into Gaza poses a tactical threat to America’s ally, Israel, as well as to Egypt.
However, the impending Iranian choke-hold on major trade routes in the Middle East underscores a strategic threat to the entire West. It would be a grave mistake to ignore these alarming developments in the context of nuclear negotiations.
Based on US experience battling Iran in Iraq and Afghanistan and beyond, it is clear Iran will respond to the absence of American pressure with increased aggression. The question lawmakers must ask themselves is whether America will push back now or be forced out of the region later. To prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, the US must demonstrate strength, not flexibility.

Sides said to reach tentative nuke deal paring centrifuges

Iran and six world powers have reached provisional agreement on key parts of a deal sharply curtailing Tehran’s nuclear program, Western diplomats in talks in Switzerland said Sunday.
One of these diplomats said Iran had “more or less” agreed to slash the number of its centrifuge machines by more than two-thirds — to under 6,000 centrifuges — and to ship abroad most of its stockpile of nuclear material to Russia.
As negotiators in Lausanne raced to nail down by midnight Tuesday the outlines of a deal, due to be finalized on June 30, the diplomats cautioned, however, that things may change.
Members of the American delegation denied that the sides had reached an agreement on a draft, Israel Radio reported.
Iranian diplomats also denied that any tentative agreement on these points had been struck, saying that any reports of a specific number of centrifuges and exporting its stockpiles were “journalistic speculation.”

Iran deal worse than Israel feared, Netanyahu says

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Sunday against the emerging nuclear deal with Iran, as Iranian and Western officials in Lausanne, Switzerland were rushing to reach a framework agreement by an end-of-month deadline.
“After the Beirut-Damascus-Baghdad axis, Iran is maneuvering from the south to take over the entire Middle East,” Netanyahu said at a cabinet meeting, one of the last for his outgoing government. “The Iran-Lausanne-Yemen axis is dangerous for mankind and must be stopped.”
Netanyahu told ministers that he had spoken with Republican leaders in the US Senate and “conveyed our serious concern regarding the arrangement with Iran at the nuclear talks. This agreement confirms all our fears and exceeds them.
“While [world powers] convene to sign this deal, Iran’s proxies in Yemen are conquering large swaths of land in an effort to overtake the Bab al-Mandab straits, so that they can change the balance of power in shipping oil,” he said, referring to recent unrest in Yemen.

Defecting Iranian Journalist: U.S. at Nuclear Talks 'to Speak on Iran’s Behalf’

An Iranian journalist who defected from his country while covering its ongoing nuclear talks has revealed startling information regarding America’s position at the negotiating table.
Amir Hossein Motaghi, who reportedly was employed at Iran’s state-run Iran Student Correspondents Association, told a London-based Iranian opposition channel that the U.S. was shilling for Iran in the ongoing negotiations over the regime’s nuclear weapons program.
“The US negotiating team are mainly there to speak on Iran’s behalf with other members of the 5+1 countries and convince them of a deal,” Mottaghi told Irane Farda, according to UK’s The Telegraph.
Motaghi had previously worked on President Hassan Rouhani’s 2013 election campaign as his public relations manager, before moving over to working as a journalist in the tightly-censored country.
He is now seeking political asylum in Switzerland, after utilizing his opportunity to cover the talks in order to flee his home country.
The Telegraph reports that Motaghi was a friend of imprisoned Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, who remains under detention without being charged of any crimes. (h/t Yenta Press)

If you are smoking a cigarette, pondering your seven-deuce off-suit in the hole, and looking around the table wondering who the sucker is... you're the guy.

The Arabs and their western-left allies have the Jews hooked into a sucker's game.

One thing that should, by this late date, be absolutely clear to anyone who has been paying attention to the ongoing war against the Jews of the Middle East, is that the Arab governments, and their peoples, have no intention whatsoever of allowing the Jews to live in peace within our ancestral homeland.

The success in the Arab-Muslim approach to the conflict is due, in part, to the weight of sheer numbers and the heaviness of time. It is certainly not due to anything resembling finesse or sophistication. The Arab world is vast, with estimates ranging from between 300 and 400 million people pushing against a small, historically abused, Jewish population of around 6 million and a Christian minority that is being chased out everywhere in the region other than in Israel.

The Arabs, emphatically, do not want those Jews or Christians living there in freedom or in peace. This is due to millennia-old, Koranically-based anti-Jewish and anti-Christian prejudice and "racism" that is both rife and genocidal in that part of the world.

Given the size of the Arab population in the Middle East, however, it is not difficult for the Arab governments and peoples to place remarkable pressure on the Jews of Israel, or the Christians in the region, without suffering much in the way of uncomfortable blow-black for that hostility. This is particularly true given the fact that Christians authorities in the West are studiously unconcerned with the fate of the Christian minority in the East. Just why they are so unconcerned is anyone's guess, but that they are unconcerned is a fact.

Hostility toward Jews, however, is very convenient from a Muslim propaganda stand-point and in no way causes even a ruffle in Arab comfort, outside of the Palestinian-Arab community that, along with the Jews, bear the brunt of the burden. They can defame the Jews in any way imaginable - I mean, really, spy vultures? - and no one minds and they can use the "Palestinians" as front-line troops against the Jews while suffering no casualties or day-to-day inconveniences, whatsoever.

This, for example, is part of the EU-funded Hamas charter and represents an excellent example of violently-inclined Arab-Muslim anti-Jewish paranoia and hostility that is entirely ignored by their friends in the West:

They (Jews) stood behind the French and the Communist Revolutions and behind most of the revolutions we hear about here and there. They also used the money to establish clandestine organizations which are spreading around the world, in order to destroy societies and carry out Zionist interests. Such organizations are: the Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, Lions Clubs, B’nai B’rith and the like. All of them are destructive spying organizations.

They also used the money to take over control of the Imperialist states and made them colonize many countries in order to exploit the wealth of those countries and spread their corruption therein. As regards local and world wars, it has come to pass and no one objects, that they stood behind World War I, so as to wipe out the Islamic Caliphate. They collected material gains and took control of many sources of wealth. They obtained the Balfour Declaration and established the League of Nations in order to rule the world by means of that organization.

They also stood behind World War II, where they collected immense benefits from trading with war materials and prepared for the establishment of their state. They inspired the establishment of the United Nations and the Security Council to replace the League of Nations, in order to rule the world by their intermediary.

The only people that suffer from the never-ending conflict are the Jews in Israel and the Palestinian-Arabs... but the Jews get all the blame.

Year upon year, decade after decade, the Arab world encourages "Palestinian" youths to throw themselves, and their rocks, with murderous rage upon the Jews of the Middle East and every time they do so - every time that they fling themselves into yet another psycho-orgiastic anti-Semitic round of intifadan violence against Jews - sadistic western "progressives" pull their hair, raise their quivering fists, and scream from the hillsides that Jews are the New Nazis.

For Israel it is a matter of life and death.

For western progressives it is a matter of break-out-the-popcorn and watch them squirm and die while feeling morally superior.

The Jews of the Middle East are a people living under siege by a much larger hostile majority that honestly believes that Allah despises the Jewish people and that Muslims have every right to kill Jews because Jews are said to be the slayers of prophets and the starters of all wars.

Meanwhile, as the Arab world seethes with a crude and genocidal Medieval anti-Semitism, their western-left apologists condemn Israel as a violent, racist, apartheid, colonial, imperial monstrosity.

Within living memory of the Holocaust, the western Left tells itself that the Jewish State is the worst country in the world and deserves whatever beating that Muslims care to dish out, even as Islamists are slaughtering people throughout northern Iraq and Syria under the crazed Islamic State regime.

What this means, as should be obvious by now, is that there will be no negotiated two-state solution to the Arab-Israel conflict. Not any time in the near future, there will not be.

The Jews of the Middle East have agreed to an additional Arab state within the tiny Jewish homeland since at least the Peel Commission of 1937. From that day until this the Palestinian-Arabs have never accepted a state for themselves in peace next to the Jewish one, yet Barack Obama and the western Left continually and unjustly blame the Jewish people for Arab intransigence and hatred toward us.

There is no one on this planet who wants peace with the Arabs and the Muslims more than do the Jews of that part of the world. They are a tiny minority in a savage environment who want nothing so much as to be left the hell alone so that they can go about creating computer software and litigate against one another.

Despite this, the Obama administration, the EU, the UN, and their terroristically-inclined friends in the PLO and Hamas are ratcheting up pressure on Israel to accept what we Jews have always accepted, a "Palestinian" state carved out of the Jewish homeland, if it is willing to live in peace next to Israel. For some inexplicable reason they cannot seem to take "yes" for an answer and will continue to pressure Israel until such a time as it agrees to what it has long ago already agreed to.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration is endeavoring to wound Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, because Netanyahu dared to suggest that an Iranian nuclear bomb could very well be unhealthy to daisies and small children. He also suggested that given Arab intransigence there would not likely be another Arab state superimposed upon Judea and Samaria any time soon and this is correct. There will not likely be another Arab state because they refuse offer after offer for such a state, in peace next Israel, and then point the trembling finger of blame at the Jews.

Well, as my dear old ma used to say, enough is enough.

The Palestinian-Arabs have no intention whatsoever of coming to a negotiated conclusion of hostilities and this means that the only alternative is unilateral action.

I do not wish to conjure the ghost of Ariel Sharon, but Israel needs to declare its final borders.

What those borders should be is, in my view, entirely up to them.

Finally, while it is true that in the game of Texas Hold 'Em a seven-deuce off-suit is a terrible hand, it can only actually hurt you if you play it.

You do not have to.

Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.

Felesteen reports that last weekend PA prime minister Rami Hamdallah spent two days in Gaza along with an entourage - and that they weren't exactly parsimonious.

According to the article quoting PA sources, the delegation spent the two days in the five-star Movenpick (Al Mashtal) Hotel. It is the only five-star hotel in Gaza.

They took over 40 rooms and other parts of the hotel. The rooms cost $400-$600 a night and the suites go for up to $1400 a night, for a charge of $70,000 for room rentals. In addition, they spent $20,000 for food and $10,000 for transportation, for a total of about $100,000 for a two day stay. (I imagine that there were some additional security costs for them to visit Gaza.)

There is a bit of criticism in Arabic media from Arabs who have not been receiving their full salaries who are seeing the leaders of the PA spend money so extravagantly.

Palestinians accuse religious Jews of uprooting olive trees - on Shabbat

From Ma'an:

Israeli settlers on Saturday destroyed more than 1,000 olive trees near the village of al-Shuyukh north of Hebron, in the third such attack on the villagers' livelihood in recent memory.

Local activist Ahmad al-Halayqa told Ma'an that Israelis from the nearby settlement of Asfar, also known as Metzad, attacked the village and destroyed 1,200 trees.

He said that all of the destroyed trees had been recently planted following a similar attack by individuals from the same settlement which had destroyed trees in the area last month.

He said that the trees in the area belonged to local Palestinian farmer, Muhammad Abu Shanab al-Ayaydah as well as the children of Abd al-Qader Abu Shanab al-Ayaydah and Mousa Abu Shanab al-Ayayadah.

Al-Halayqa told Ma'an that the settlement of Asfar is located on land confiscated by Israeli authorities from Palestinian residents of al-Shuyukh, and now they hope to expand the land under their control by taking over the area where the olive trees were targeted.

Metzad is a haredi Jewish community. The idea that their members are uprooting olive trees on the Sabbath is beyond absurd.

And since "Local activist Ahmad al-Halayqa" is lying about that, he is probably lying about everything else.

As is nearly always the case, there are no photographs of these destroyed 1,200 olive trees, just as there weren't any photos of the 500 trees allegedly destroyed last month and 70 the week before that.

These numbers are now added to the absurd figure of 800,000 olive trees that the PA and an anti-Israel NGO have reported as being destroyed since 1967.

Of course, Ma'an reports the obvious lies as fact.

OCHA-OPT, which has its own problems with the truth, when in reporting on the alleged February incident, notes that the 500 "trees" were planted in a "donor-funded project," meaning that some Europeans had been paying for Arabs to plant these saplings in public lands illegally.

Virginia State Bar boycotts Israel

All members of the Virginian State Bar received this email early this morning:

Dear Fellow Members of the Virginia State Bar,

Certain members of the Virginia State Bar and other individuals have expressed objections to the VSB’s plan to take the Midyear Legal Seminar trip in November to Jerusalem. It was stated that there are some unacceptable discriminatory policies and practices pertaining to border security that affect travelers to the nation. Upon review of U.S. State Department advisories and other research, and after consultation with our leaders, it has been determined that there is enough legitimate concern to warrant cancellation of the Israel trip and exploration of alternative locations.

Undoubtedly, this news will disappoint some VSB members. But we are a state agency that strives for maximum inclusion and equality, and that explains this action. Fortunately, we still anticipate being able to find a suitable location for the November seminar trip, and we will send out further news very soon.

Finally, we are pleased that our members and citizens feel able to express concerns and look to us to protect rights. In the end, we are all part of the same team, and the VSB will continue to stay focused on advancing its primary objectives—public protection, access to justice, and improvement of the profession.

As always, I appreciate having the honor of serving as your president.

Best regards,

Kevin E. Martingayle,

President, Virginia State Bar

The Volokh Conspiracy blog in the Washington Post notes:

(1) The American Bar Association has recently held meetings in Israel, for example here and here [update: along with hundreds of international conferences that are held in Israel every year, including, for example, a conference on Arabic literature with Muslim attendees from abroad.] Virginia has a state agency called the Virginia Israel Advisory Board “that proactively serves as the bridge and facilitator between Israeli companies and the Commonwealth of Virginia.” The idea that either the state bar as an attorney organization or as a state agency has some obligation to avoid Israel is nonsense. Surely Martingayle and colleagues can’t be so naive and out-of-touch to think that the concerns raised are not part of the broader divestment, sanctions, and boycott movement meant to delegitimize Israel.

(2) If the Virginia State Bar is in effect boycotting Israel, I, and I suspect many others, will henceforth be boycotting the State Bar, in my case beyond what is necessary to assist my students, which is my professional obligation. I would hope that no Virginia attorneys who are supporters of Israel will attend whatever alternative venue the State Bar settles on.

(3) As near as I can tell, the only public discussion of all this before Martingayle’s letter was a petition circulated three days ago by anonymous“Concerned Members of the Virginia State Bar” that, as of this writing, has received a grand total of thirty-four signatures. It’s hard to imagine that the Martingayle and colleagues canceled a planned event that already had a hotel booked, a CLE program, and even optional tours set up based on those objections. Who are the “other individuals” mentioned by Martingayle who objected?

(4) Relatedly, as a state agency, the Virginia State Bar is subject to FOIA. If no enterprising journalist is already FOIAing the relevant correspondence that led to this decision, I’m sure somebody else will be.

Legal Insurrection adds:

This clearly was a well-planned, under-the-radar move, and it is odd that the email was circulated on a Friday night long after the seminar was planned.The VA State Bar already had a hotel reserved for the event, which was well-advertised, and had registration and travel procedures in place.There was a full brochure produced for the trip:Virginia State Bar Mid Year Legal Seminar Brochure Jerusalem.pdf

I have a feeling that many are going to quit the Virginia Bar Association after this debacle. (UPDATE: See comments; they can't without losing their ability to practice in VA.) But perhaps this publicity is what they want. As lawyer David Schraub comments on his blog, maybe Martingayle had no idea what he was supporting the antisemitic BDS movement, but just maybe - he did:

The second possibility, though, is that Mr. Martingayle is going in with eyes wide open. He knows the backlash that will emerge, and he fully expects it, and he fully expects it to win. Again, given what I know about Virginia and Virginia state politics, I do not believe that Mr. Martingayle has the political backing to take a stance like this and survive the fallout. But provoking an overreaction is a form of strategy too. A too-vitriolic response by the rest of the Virginia government -- a direct encroachment on the Bar's autonomy, for instance -- could have disastrous long-term consequences even if it ousts Martingayle in the short-term. And more generally, Mr. Martingayle benefits from the truth of any political controversy that has Jews at the center: If he wins, he's the man who boldly stood up to Jewish power. If he loses, he's the martyr who sacrificed himself before the unstoppable juggernaut of Jewish power. We still live in a polity where the exercise of Jewish political agency is presumptively illegitimate insofar as it clashes with gentile preferences. One reason that Jews Lose is that any situation where we don't lose is coded as a system failure. Jews losing means the system is working properly, Jews winning means we've successfully subverted the system. It creates a severe double-bind, and means that someone who comes in and is willing to play the martyr to demonstrate the malevolence of the big bad Jewish lobby will have little difficulty succeeding.

Finally, as Volokh Conspiracy notes, literally hundreds of thousands of Arabs have visited Israel in recent years without incident. Israel's profiling isn't against Arabs but against potential troublemakers - plenty of which are not semitic at all.