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1. US Admits Iran near ‘Breakout Point’ for Nuclear Bomb
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
The United States has confirmed long-time Israeli intelligence reports that Iran is close to achieving the ability to produce a nuclear bomb. Less than a year ago, American intelligence officials dismissed Israeli claims as inaccurate.
“Iran is now either very near or already in possession of sufficient low-enriched uranium to produce one nuclear weapon, if the decision were made to further enrich it to weapons grade,” said Glyn Davies, the U.S. envoy to United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) meeting in Vienna. This “moves Iran closer to a dangerous and destabilizing possible breakout capacity,” Davies added.
In his first meeting with the IAEA since his appointment by U.S. President Barack Obama, Davies stated, “We have serious concerns that Iran is deliberately attempting, at a minimum, to preserve a nuclear weapons option.” Iran has maintained that its nuclear program is intended for peaceful purposes, but Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also has stated more than once that the State of Israel should be annihilated.
Davies’ comments were perhaps the strongest ever to be used by an American official since Iran has gone full-speed ahead with its nuclear program, which remains unsupervised by the United Nations agency.
The U.S. government, prompted by increasing pressure in Congress, wants the U.N. to impose stiffer sanctions against Tehran to pressure it into cooperating, but Russia and China have objected. Both courtiers have invested billions of dollars in the Iranian nuclear plants, one of which is beginning to enrich uranium that can be used for a nuclear weapon.
In what may be a related matter, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu reportedly flew to Russia on Tuesday on a secret mission, apparently over Russian arms deals with Iran and Syria.
The international community has speculated for more than a year on whether Israel will attempt a pre-emptive strike on Iran. President Obama has maintained that diplomatic strong-arming, economic sanctions and offers of trade benefits can persuade Iran to drop its uranium enrichment project.
2. US: ‘Secret’ Obama Plan for PA State is ‘Nonsense”
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
United States government sources quoted by Politico.com dismissed as “fiction” and “nonsense” a continuing claim by a senior Palestinian Authority legislator that U.S. President Barack Obama has dictated terms for a new PA state.
The claim was published by Israel National News two weeks ago, based on a report in the Saudi newspaper Al-Ukaz, which quoted Hassan Harisha, a deputy speaker of the PA parliament. Harisha declared that the U.S. has handed over a draft of the peace proposal to the PA and other Arabs for their perusal.
Harisha, an independent legislator, spread the same claim to the Al Jazeera network and the Chinese news agency Xinhua on Tuesday.
He said the secret 10-point plan dictates terms for a new Arab state on the land of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, with Muslim sites in eastern Jerusalem under PA control while the rest of the city would remain under Israeli sovereignty.
He did not specify the status of the Temple Mount, which both Muslims and Jews claim as being essential to their people.
Harisha said that the plan includes deploying international troops in the Jordan Valley, transferring terrorist groups, called “factions,” not political parties. Israel officially would include large Jewish areas, such as Gush Etzion and Maaleh Adumim, and the status of smaller communities would be determined during three months of negotiations.
The PA would not be termed “demilitarized,” as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has demanded, but it would be forbidden to sign military pacts with Middle East countries and would allow Israel to control all air space.
The proposed state would be established no later than 2011 on the land of Judea and Samaria, with Gaza being incorporated later.
Harisha said that a limited number of Arabs claiming Israeli ancestry would be settled in the Jordan Valley. Israel also would release all PA prisoners and terrorists over a period of three years.
He blasted the plan for taking away Arabs’ "legitimate rights.”
3. 'UK Must Repent for Anti-Semitism'
by Hana Levi Julian
Members of "Love Never Fails" -- an alliance of pro-Israel Christian ministries in the United Kingdom -- this week called on the UK to repent for its anti-Semitic ways while attending a ceremony to mark the 1929 Hevron pogrom in which 67 Jews were slaughtered by their Arab neighbors 80 years ago.
The alliance, formed in order to express repentance and sorrow for two thousand years of anti-Semitism within the Church, presented a plaque to the Hevron community entitled "In Sorrow and Shame."
The plaque states the group's recognition that "officers of the British administration neglected their duty to protect the Jewish citizens of Hebron during the Arab uprising in 1929. 'Father, Forgive us,' we pray."
[weJe Email readers, please click here to view the video report.
Members of the group led by Roy Thurley said there was much repenting to be done about British anti-Semitism in the present, as well as that in the past. "We recognize that here in Hevron the British didn't just get caught by surprise but they actually colluded with the Arabs in the riots," said Thurley.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) was cited as one specific example of the "institutional anti-Semitism" the group said is felt across the United Kingdom, which they believe fuels the problems that currently exist in Israel.
"Just as important," noted documentary film producer Hugh Kitson, a member of the group, "the British mandate has left a legacy of violence that we still have in the Middle East today."
Members of "Love Never Fails" made their statements while speaking to Meir Indor, Chairman of the Almagor organization for victims of terrorism.
4. Olmert Blames Expulsion Victims for Remaining Homeless
by Maayana Miskin
Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert angered government expulsion victims Wednesday morning by blaming former Jewish residents of Gaza and northern Samaria for their own plight. Testifying before a Knesset committee working on behalf of Jews expelled during the 2005 “Disengagement,” Olmert defended expulsion as “the right thing at the right time,” and accused expellees of bearing responsibility for their own plight thanks to “misplaced hope.”
MK Zevulun Orlev (Jewish Home), who established the committee, slammed Olmert's testimony as “a disgrace to Israeli democracy.”
"Putting blame on the expellees themselves is a malicious and evil libel,” MK Orlev said. Olmert was wrong in blaming rabbis who encouraged “false hope” for telling Jewish residents of Gaza not to prepare for expulsion, he said, pointing out that the Jews who prepared for expulsion were left homeless and unemployed.
Putting blame on the expellees themselves is a malicious and evil libel, MK Orlev said
“It's a known fact that those who cooperated with the government prior to the expulsion, particularly the farmers, are in an even worse situation than the rest,” he said.
Former residents of Gush Katif also accused Olmert of attempting to shift blame. “He who bears the most blame for failing to rehabilitate residents of Gush Katif spent two and a half hours placing blame in a contemptible fashion, blaming the treasury, Members of Knesset, legal advisors, rabbis and the residents themselves, forgetting only himself,” stated the Gush Katif Residents' Committee.
Ketzaleh: Olmert, Do Teshuva
MK Yaakov “Ketzaleh” Katz (National Union) urged Olmert to repent prior to Rosh HaShanah, the day on which according to Jewish tradition all beings are judged for their actions over the past year. The Hebrew month of Elul is known as a month of tshuva (repentance), he noted.
"Instead of rubbing salt in the wounds of his own victims, Olmert should take the month of Elul to express regret for his horrible crimes four years ago,” MK Ketzaleh said.
Olmert's attempts to blame others will fail, and the Jewish people will remember him as bearing responsibility for the results of the Disengagement, said Ketzaleh. “The people of Israel live, and just as they did not forget those who expelled them from England, France, Austria and Spain, so too they shall not forget what Olmert and his partners did in destroying Gush Katif, expelling its 10,000 Jews and burning its synagogues.”
"Olmert is currently on trial for minor crimes,” he continued, referring to an indictment accusing Olmert of double-billing Jewish groups in order to pay for private travel expenses. “But when the day comes that Hebrew law is once again the law of the Jewish state, the People of Israel will put Olmert on trial for far more serious crimes.”
5. B'Tselem Backs Hamas Casualty Report
by Maayana Miskin
The B'Tselem organization has issued a report contradicting IDF casualty reports from Gaza. The group claims that 773 civilians were killed in Operation Cast Lead earlier this year, while only 330 of the dead were involved in fighting. A second report, from the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, backs the IDF.
The IDF, on the other hand, has reported that 1,166 Gaza residents were killed in Cast Lead, 709 of whom were involved in fighting. The IDF counted 295 civilian casualties, and an additional 162 men who may or may not have been involved in fighting.
In writing its report, B'Tselem considered 248 Hamas “policemen” who were killed in Cast Lead to be non-combatants, because, having been killed at the beginning of the operation, they took no part in combat during the three weeks of fighting. The IDF listed any armed member of Hamas as a combatant, including police.
B'Tselem's figures are similar to those issued by Hamas, which claims that over 1,350 Gaza residents were killed during the operation, most of them civilians.
The IDF and B'Tselem reports diverged dramatically when it came to women and children killed. The IDF counted 89 children under the age of 16 and 49 women as having been killed in fighting, while B'Tselem said that 290 children under the age of 16 and 111 women were killed.
In compiling its report, B'Tselem relied on testimony from Gaza Arabs and on documents provided by Gaza hospitals and the de facto Hamas government, primarily birth and death certificates. The report did not make use of IDF data. According to B'Tselem, the IDF refused to share its information.
B'Tselem counted nine Israeli casualties, ignoring four soldiers who died as a result of IDF “friendly fire.” No Arab casualties were attributed to “friendly fire.”
The B'Tselem report criticized Gaza-based terrorist groups for firing from within civilian areas, in violation of international law. By doing so, Gaza terrorists “demonstrate not only an intent to harm Israeli civilians, but also apathy to the safety of Palestinian civilians,” the group noted.
IICT Backs IDF
While B'Tselem has thrown its weight behind Hamas's claims of widespread civilian casualties, the IDF has support from the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya. In April, the IITC published a report using data gathered from Gaza organizations that concluded that most Cast Lead casualties were in fact terrorists.
The IITC report relied on demographic data. Based on the assumption that the names of casualties passed along by Gaza groups are accurate, the IITC did a demographic analysis and discovered that a highly disproportionate number of the “civilians” killed were men and teenage boys.
Further investigation showed that over 500 of the men and boys could not conclusively be determined to be non-combatants. Some of the “civilian casualties” claimed by Gaza human rights groups were also claimed by Hamas as martyrs who died for the sake of jihad (holy war).
Other civilians were found to be Fatah terrorists killed by Hamas during the fighting.
The report slammed the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in particular, for research claiming most of the deaths as civilian casualties. “Any black-and-white categorization scheme like theirs is bound to be ludicrously inadequate in characterizing a conflict where fighters do not wear uniforms, where combatants are intimately (and deliberately) commingled with noncombatant civilians, and where many unaffiliated civilians become actively involved in confronting invading forces and thus become 'ad hoc combatants',” IITC researchers wrote.
6. PA Calls Building for Jews ‘Incitement’
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
The Palestinian Authority official who oversees the “settlement portfolio” has charged that Israeli building of homes for Jews in Judea and Samaria is “incitement” and is like “fire under embers” that may spark renewed Arab violence.
The official, Shassan Daghlas, told the Chinese news agency Xinhua that the Israeli government’s announcement to allow approximately 450 more housing units for Jews will prevent a renewal of PA-Israeli talks on a new Arab state on the land in eastern Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and Gaza.
He warned that if the international community does not stop Israeli plans, further construction “would be an incitement for a popular uprising against Israel." Daghlas also served notice that PA Arab “protests and rallies would obstruct settlers from expanding settlements and practicing aggression on the land and the population."
Although the Netanyahu government plans to impose a building freeze on new homes after starting to build new housing units, PA negotiator Saeb Erekat said the new construction negates any freeze.
Another threat of violence, which the PA is required to halt under the American Roadmap plan, came from an Arab analyst of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.
Abdel Hadi Hantash, a PA-based expert on settlement issues, told Xinhua that there is unrest among Arabs after the international efforts "failed to convince Israel to halt or freeze the settlement activity in the West Bank."
"The chances of the eruption of another Palestinian popular Intifada against Israel are high," said Hantash, who warned that such a development could occur "at any moment after the Palestinian residents lose their patience towards the continuation of settlement and the settlers' attacks."
He threatened that a new Arab Intifada may be unarmed but that “many fatalities” will result if there are clashes with Israeli soldiers. He said that the new Intifada "will include popular protests, demonstrations and rallies…to provoke the international public opinion against Israel."
Under the guidance of Yasser Arafat, Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Gaza staged an Intifada, or uprising, from 1987 into the 1990s, beginning with massive rock and firebombing attacks and later evolving into use of live firearms and suicide bombings against Israeli civilians and soldiers.
Following the Oslo Accords in 1993, Israel handed over to the PA thousands of rounds of ammunition, which PA security forces later used to attack Israelis. After Arafat in 2000 refused an offer for establishment of a new PA state on almost all of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, with a base in Jerusalem, the Second Intifada, also known as the Oslo War, erupted in September, 2000.
One possible source of a new armed Intifada is the growing PA security forces, which are equipped with modern rifles and have been trained by American generals Jim Jones and Keith Dayton.
7. Photo Essay: 204 New Immigrants Answer Call to 'Come Home'
by Hana Levi Julian
More than 200 new Israelis -- 204, to be exact -- arrived home on Tuesday at Ben Gurion International Airport to the cheers of friends, family, and young IDF soldiers waving blue and white Israeli flags.
Gil Margulis makes Aliyah
The Land is Very Very Good
Yoseph Rabin - his brother Ben-Tzion made Aliyah today
Awesome Jew
America to Israel
The final planeload of 16 Nefesh B'Nefesh aliyah flights this year capped a season in which 3,000 new Western olim, or immigrants, made aliyah to Israel with the organization.
Lots of New Olim
Aliyah for Me
Fishman Family
To see the rest of this exciting photo essay and hear an intriguing interview with a new six-year-old "olah", click here!
