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1. ‘Beware Sweet-Talking Biden,' Says Caroline Glick
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
U.S. President Barack Obama is sending Vice President Joe Biden to Israel next week because the president is afraid that the lack of trust in him by the Israeli public “will negatively influence American Jews who support Obama,” journalist and think-tank researcher Caroline Glick told Arutz 7. Vice President Biden’s arrival next week follows this week’s visit by key Senator John Kerry, last month's trip by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen and frequent shuttle trips by U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell.
Vice President Biden is preceding his junket with talks with key American Jewish leaders, and he will deliver a speech next week to Tel Aviv University students and lecturers. Glick said he and Kerry want to make sure that Israel and the United States are on the same page concerning Iran, meaning that a military attack on the Islamic Republic's nuclear sites is not on the table at this time.
Kerry this week said Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was "very tuned in to not being rash or jumping the gun here or doing something that doesn't give those other opportunities a chance."
Glick said that Vice President Joe Biden will bring with him a message of “we love you” although, "despite his sweet talk," he has been the biggest defender of Iran. “Maybe he will talk about the 'American commitment to the security of Israel,' but this would be a gross lie,” Glick stated.
She added, “The journalists in Israel undoubtedly will be convinced and will call on our leaders to give Obama a chance.
Glick warned as far back as 2008 that President Obama’s choice of Biden as his running mate was a sign that the two could be trusted. During the campaign, Biden stepped up his rhetoric of supporting Israel and even said that the United States should not stand in Israel’s way if it wants to attack Iran as a matter of self-defense and prevent the Islamic Republic from obtaining nuclear weapons to annihilate the country.
"In my 34-year career, I have never wavered from the notion that the only time progress has ever been made in the Middle East is when the Arab nations have known that there is no daylight between us and Israel,” Biden stated during the campaign. "So the idea of being an 'honest broker' is not, as some of my Democratic colleagues call for, the answer. It is being the smart broker; it is being the smart partner.”
Glick pointed out that despite the pro-Israel talk, Biden was "a staunch supporter of an Israeli transfer of the strategically critical Golan Heights to Syria and…harshly criticized the Bush administration for its refusal to support Israeli negotiations with Syria. At the same time, he downplays the significance of Syria's strategic alliance with Iran and its sponsorship of terrorists in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority. Belittling those ties, Biden has claimed repeatedly and without a shred of evidence that the Syrians really want to put all of that behind them.
“Biden's positions on Iran are even more troubling. Over the past decade, since Iran's ballistic missile program and its nuclear program came into full view, Biden has distinguished himself both for his refusal to support tough U.S. diplomatic moves against Iran…. In 1998, Biden was one of only four senators to vote against the Iran Missile Proliferation Sanctions Act, a bill that punished foreign companies and other entities that sent Iran sensitive missile technology or expertise.”
The vice president also “was one of just a handful of senators who voted against a Senate resolution calling on the State Department to classify Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps a terrorist organization,” according to Glick.
2. Responding to Anti-Israel Apartheid Week
by Hillel Fendel
The annual climax of international anti-Israel propaganda, Israel Apartheid Week, has begun, and the Jewish Agency is stepping up its response on U.S. campuses.The anti-Israel campaign is centered around university campuses throughout the United States, and the Jewish Agency is using it as a trigger to greatly increase its force of PR speakers during the course of this year.
Israel Apartheid Week, accusing Israel of behaving towards Arabs as South Africa did towards blacks, features not only lectures at universities, but also public events and demonstrations in Europe and North America.
The Jewish Agency is interested in college graduates with experience in education and hasbarah (Israel advocacy). Together with the on-campus Hillel organizations, they are to bring Israeli perspectives to students, hold Israeli cultural events, initiate visits to Israel in the framework of programs such as Discovery, invite Israeli speakers to the campuses, and the like.
Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky denies the very premise of Israel Apartheid Week. “The comparison between Israel and the apartheid regime in South Africa is totally groundless,” he said, “and is an example of modern anti-Semitism [whose purpose is to] demonize Israel. With our enemies doing everything they can to distance young Jews abroad from Israel, the objective of the Jewish Agency is to bring them closer to Zionism and Israel, and to build up their Jewish national pride and solidarity.”
Sharansky noted that the Agency has “long identified American campuses as a main front in our enemies’ war against Israel and Jewish national awareness, and therefore we will double in the coming months the number of emissaries on campus dealing with hasbarah.”Sample information for hasbarah can be found here.
3. Netanyahu a Wanted Man for Killing Terrorist, Say Dubai Police
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
Dubai police chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim said he will ask state prosecutors to issue warrants to arrest Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for eliminating Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh last January. He also said that Meir Dagan, head of the Mossad, should be brought into custody.
His request comes one month after he warned that the Prime Minister might be guilty if it was discovered that Israel has been behind the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh at a Dubai hotel in January.
However, Hamas claimed on Tuesday that Jordanian and Egyptian spies also were involved in the operation. The terrorist organization told the London-based Al Quds al-Arabi newspaper that the two Arab countries, which have diplomatic relations with Israel, were worried about Mabhouh’s possession of sensitive information, some of it concerning Iran.
Dubai police since then have said they are fairly sure that Mossad agents carried out the counterterrorist operation with identity theft for the use of false passports, some of them faked as diplomatic documents.
Tamim said he is “almost certain" Israel was involved in the assassination of Mabhouh, a Hamas co-founder who was responsible for the kidnap-murder of two Israeli soldiers and who reportedly was in Dubai on a weapons-buying visit.
Dubai also wants the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to investigate charges that MetaBank, a regional American bank, issued credit cards to the suspects, who used them to buy plane tickets and rent hotel rooms in Dubai.
Quoting Dubai police, Dubai’s National newspaper reported, "Thirteen of the 27 suspects used prepaid MasterCards issued by MetaBank.”
Police in Dubai have reasoned that the method by which Mabhouh (pictured) was killed is similar to former tactics used by the Mossad, Israel’s secret international intelligence agency. The Mossad has not commented on the Dubai operation and usually does not deny or confirm reports of counterterrorist maneuvers.
Mabhouh was drugged and suffocated “so that it would seem that his death was natural,” according to police in Dubai, although previous reports have said an electronic device blew up in his face.
Abdul Aziz Abdullah Al Ghurair, the speaker of the United Arab Emirates Federal National Council said that the assassination of Mabhouh was a “terrorist act in the territory of a sovereign state.”
4. Golan Residents on the Alert
by Hillel Fendel
Though Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced that he “knows nothing” about reports of Syria’s “willingness” to accept the Golan in stages, Golan residents are taking no chances. Uri Heitner of the Golan Residents Committee says Israelis must be aware of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s true intentions: “It’s enough to see him walking arm in arm with [Iranian leader Mahmoud] Ahmedinajad and talking about a ‘new Middle East without Jews’ to know what he really wants. The State of Israel must realize that the choice is simple: Either we keep our sovereignty in the Golan, or we give it up to the axis of evil.”
Reports circulating on Tuesday stated that Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid Muallem recently expressed willingness to compromise on its demand for the entire Golan immediately. Muallem reportedly told British sources that Syria would announce an end to the hostility between Syria and Israel if it receives half the Golan, would agree to allow Israel to build an office in Damascus in return for another 25 percent, and would open a Syrian embassy in Israel in exchange for the whole thing.
Netanyahu’s office announced Tuesday afternoon that it knew nothing of such a plan.
Heitner lives in Kibbutz Or-Tal, in the northeastern Golan, just under ten kilometers from the Syrian border. “I don’t understand what there is to be excited about in this new plan,” he told Arutz-7. “It’s like saying that they are willing to kill us slowly and torturously instead of in one fell swoop.”
Israel took control of the Golan Heights from Syria after years of the area being used for attacks against Israeli farmers in the Hula Valley and on the eastern Kinneret shoreline below; 140 Israelis were killed in these attacks, and many more were injured. Israel freed its northern areas of this threat during the last days of the Six-Day War in June 1967, and the Golan was formally annexed to Israel in 1981. Over the years, 32 Jewish kibbutzim and moshavim have been built in the Golan, as well as the full-fledged town of Katzrin.
'Nation With the Golan'
Governmental talk of ceding the Golan in 1996 and 1999-2000 was repressed by widespread popular national campaigns against the idea. In the mid-90's, a million stickers and thousands of banners reading "HaAm Im HaGolan" (The Nation is With the Golan) graced porches, billboards and cars throughout the country; in January 2000, some 300,000 people took part in one of the largest demonstrations in Israeli history, calling on then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak not to agree to an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights.
Surveys have consistently shown that a majority of Israelis oppose a withdrawal from the Golan, for reasons having to do with security, Jewish history, water, agriculture, and more.
Regarding the situation today, Heitner says, “It is known that Netanyahu favored a withdrawal; he says this is not true, but the reports are well-known. I want to believe that there will never be a prime minister who will agree to sign an agreement with Assad – especially now that it is known that his father [Hafez Assad] refused to make a deal with [then-Prime Minister] Barak just because Barak refused to give him a few dozen meters near the Kinneret. I have to assume that Netanyahu will not agree to give away the entire store [and go further than Barak].”
“But if the worst happens,” Heitner continued, “we will resume the ‘Nation with the Golan’ campaign on a massive scale. Support for the Golan grows all the time, and if we have to wage another public campaign, we will do it in full force.”
5. BBC Promotes Pro-Syrian Image for British Students
by Hana Levi Julian
A new British television series called “Syrian School” now being screened in Britian is providing viewers with a pro-Syrian look into the lives of high school students living in Damascus. The program, comprised of five one-hour episodes, is being broadcast on Britain's TV digital channel BBC 4. It offers an invitation to British schools to twin with schools in the Arab world via an application form provided on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) website.
Syrian School tracks male and female students and staff in four schools over the course of a year and at first glance appears to be a typical documentary. But that analogy ends shortly after the program gets underway.
At least one scene includes a nod to the “party line” – the first episode introduces the viewer to Asma al-Assad, the wife of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The first lady is shown visiting a school to talk to the girls about the new project she is supporting, one that prepares youths to become entrepreneurs and to work in the private sector.
The teenagers come across as lively, good-humored, ambitious and independent-minded, and one segment is with "Palestinians" and their responses to Israel's war against Hamas terror.
The series itself tries to show that Syrian students are Western-oriented and casts a subtle but clear slant against Sharia education, although gender separation is strongly encouraged. Amal Hassan, the headmistress of the Zaki Al-Arsuzi Girls' School, for instance, announces that she wants her students to see “how strong I am, and how I am proud of myself, and how I am free from inside... to face all the problems of life they have to be like this.”
However, the same episode features a teenage girl who has transferred out of a religious Islamic school to attend Hassan's school for her final year. The student, Du'aa, memorized the Koran at age 14, viewers are told, but she makes it clear that Islamic religious observance does not preclude a good education. “We prize knowledge a lot,” she says. Du'aa wanted to be an astronaut as a small child.
Reflected throughout the programs are the typical themes of adolescence, the yearning to “be heard,” the need to be able to express one's inner reality, and yet remain within the safety net provided by family and society.
Not so typical are some of the more poignant issues faced by staff and extended family members who encourage students to advance their skills in extra-curricular activities despite risking the wrath of their parents.
One example is an 18-year-old discus champion who is encouraged by the school sports mistress to train for the national schools championships. She keeps her training secret from her father, who would firmly oppose the activity – but her father's mother, on the other hand, quietly accompanies her to the training sessions.
Directed and filmed by anthropologist Max Baring, the series was produced by Lion Television and is a joint project of the Open University and the BBC. It is slated to run during the BBC World News program slot in August.
6. 'Women Power' for the Sake of the Land of Israel
by Yoni Kempinski
Nationalist women activists throughout Israel gathered on Wednesday for the founding of NILI – Nationalist Jewish Women. The organization intends to unify forces with women from all walks of life to promote nationalist and Jewish ideals.
The organizers explain that women have a unique approach and a different access to media which must be utilized for the sake of the Land of Israel. Arutz Sheva TV attended the event and spoke with Oriah Amrani, Co-Founder of NILI who explained the necessity of a women's organization and with Miriam Bar Yosef, a participant of the event who disagreed and asserted that "it doesn't matter if it's male or female – everybody must do whatever he or she can"
7. Likud Central Committee to Discuss Freeze March 18
by Gil Ronen
The Likud party's internal court ruled Tuesday in favor of a motion by MK Danny Danon, who had demanded that the Central Committee be convened as soon as possible to debate the government's decision to freeze construction by Jews in Judea and Samaria for 10 months, until October.
The court ruled that the Central Committee will convene in 16 days' time, on March 18.
MK Danon's motion, which was made in accordance with Likud's constitution, called for an urgent session of the Likud Central Committee. Article 147 of the constitution determines special guidelines for motions to discuss and vote upon development of communities in Judea and Samaria: When such a motion receives the signatures of more than 20% of the Central Committee's members, the party must convene that discussion.
MK Danon was pleased. “The construction freeze is diametrically opposed to the positions of the Likud Movement. I will continue to act to call off the construction freeze and I am sure the Likud Center will give its unqualified support for the Jews of Judea and Samaria.
