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1. Abbas Calls Israel ‘Extremist;’ Netanyahu to Meet Mitchell
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said Wednesday that the Israeli government is “extremist” and must halt all building for Jews on land claimed by the PA before it agrees to American-mediated talks. Asked if he would sit down to talk if Israel continues to build Jewish homes on land claimed by the PA, Abbas said, “Certainly not. This is our land.”
The harsh words, stated in an interview with CNN a day after consultations with Saudi Arabia, came hours before Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is to meet with U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell in what so far are one-sided talks.
If the PA officially agrees to turn the discussions into a two-sided affair, the okay will not come before Saturday, when senior PA officials meet. Nevertheless, Mitchell is scheduled to meet with Abbas on Friday, after sitting down with Netanyahu Wednesday afternoon. At the same time, Abbas is in Egypt for consultations following a conference with Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah in preparation for presenting to Mitchell conditions for a PA state.
The "negotiations" that the Obama administration propose are theoretical because the PA has said the only subject on the table is for Israel to accept the Arab world's position. The PA probably will not refuse to approve the talks unless it is sure it can place a diplomatic failure on Israel’s shoulders for its refusal to accept its conditions.
Neither Israel nor the PA has wanted to take the blame for failure of the Obama administration’s latest Middle East diplomatic move, but each side has tried to paint the other as being guilty for not agreeing to meet in good faith.
IDF Intelligence officer Brig. Gen. Yosef Baidatz told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Tuesday, “Abbas is preparing the ground for the talks to fail. He believes the failure will expose Israel’s true face. He is pessimistic about the outcome and believes the ball is in Israel’s court.”
The mediated talks, if they take place in effect are between Israel and the Arab world, represented by the PA. The issue of a new PA country, including Jerusalem’s holiest sites, is at the center of an Arab strategy to force Israel to surrender all of the land that was occupied by Jordan and Egypt before the Six-Day War in 1967.
Since taking over the PA after the death of Yasser Arafat five years ago, Abbas has leaned heavily on the Arab world and its allies for advice and support. He told the Saudi Arabian newspaper Okaz on Tuesday, "The support of the kingdom to our cause springs from its strong belief that what it is doing for the Palestinian cause is a duty dictated on it by its conscience and its faith.”
2. Obama Feeds Elie Wiesel Lunch and Some ‘Pro-Israeli’ Charm
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
U.S. President Barack Obama hosted Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter Elie Wiesel with a kosher lunch Tuesday, and for appetizers, convinced him there is no tension between the United States and Israel. “There were moments of tension,” Wiesel said told reporters. “The tension, I think, is gone."
In what American media called the president’s “charm offensive,” his luncheon was the latest in high profile steps to cover up the recent public condemnation of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. The President’s hosting Wiesel for lunch followed several assurances, including a personal phone call to the Prime Minister this week, that the United States remains a friend of the Jewish State.
Wiesel, who last year escorted President Obama during a tour of the Buchenwald Nazi death camp, felt strong enough about the status of Jerusalem to publish a full-page advertisement in American newspapers calling Jerusalem “the heart of our heart, the soul of our soul. For me, the Jew that I am, Jerusalem is above politics. It is mentioned more than six hundred times in Scripture -- and not a single time in the Koran.”
He called on President Obama to stop pressuring Prime Minister Netanyahu to issue a building freeze for Jews in parts of Jerusalem that the Palestinian Authority insists will be its capital in a new Arab country that it wants to set up within Israel’s borders. Wiesel supports the "two-state" concept.
Relations between the president and the Prime Minister never have been warm since President Obama took office last year, but the acrimony spilled into the public arena when U.S. Vice President Joe Biden visited Israel several weeks ago.
At that time, a government ministry issued a routine announcement on progress in a seven-stage bureaucratic process for approving a housing project for Jews in an area of Jerusalem that the United States recognizes as part of a would-be Palestinian Authority country.
Washington analysts observed that the ensuing verbal whipping of Prime Minister Netanyahu spun out of control, and a large majority of Congress members hurried to warn President Obama he had gone too far, particularly in a mid-term election year.
Although President Obama is winning back some support from American Jews, his efforts may be wasted, according to former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk. He told The New York Times Wednesday, “The real charm offensive needs to take place in Israel. I would accept it was a charm offensive if he caught a plane and went over there, which he needs to do. He’s lost the Israeli public.”
Despite the friendly lunch with Wiesel, Israel still may be in store for a bitter dessert. Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) director Tom Neumann was quoted by the Jewish Forward Wednesday as saying that although defense ties with Israel remain strong, “Obama may yet put pressure on Israel through the transfer of arms” as a lever for his confronting Iran.
3. Austria Joins Iranian Axis, along with Indonesia
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
Austria’s warm welcome this week of Iranian’s foreign minister, along with its increasing trade relations with the Islamic Republic, signal Iran’s widening axis that already stretches to South America. Indonesia, which hosts the world’s largest Muslim population, also has embraced Iran’s “strategic ties.”
Austria’s friendliness with Iran is even more significant because the European country is one of the rotating members of the United Nations Security Council. It has paid only lip service to sanctions against Iran, Simone Dinah Hartmann, director of Stop the Bomb Austria and co-editor of "Iran in the World System," wrote in The Wall Street Journal this week.
“To what degree Austria…would actually support tough sanctions is more than questionable,” she stated, noting that trade with Iran has flourished the past several years in contradiction to policies of other European nations to distant themselves from Tehran.
On Sunday, Austrian Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger welcomed his Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki, who delivered the opening speech at Tehran’s Holocaust denial conference in 2006.
Hartmann pointed out the bitter irony of Austria’s aligning itself with Iran, which vows to “wipe Israel off the map. “Austria prefers to present itself as Nazi Germany's first victim when in fact it was Hitler's —born and raised in Austria—first collaborator,” she wrote.
The United States, Britain and France objected to the Austrian welcome mat for the Iranian official, which featured a friendly reception including hoisting the Islamic Republic flag along that of Austria and the European Union.
“Vienna has a long tradition of appeasing the Islamic Republic,” according to Hartmann. A former foreign minister and former president Kurt Waldheim were the first Western officials in their positions to visit Tehran in the 1980s and 1991.
She also charged that several Austrian companies are suspected of working with front companies that are associated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. "Bilateral business relations between Austria and Iran are excellent, but still expandable,” said the president of the Austrian Chamber of Commerce during a visit to Tehran last year. Austria was once described as the “gateway to the European Union” by an Iranian minister.
Indonesia
Indonesia also is in Iran’s sights. An Iranian deputy minister, Mohsen Pak-Ayeen, said says that ties with Indonesia “could serve as the main capital for planning strategic, deep and all-out ties," the Iranian Fars News Agency reported.
Jakarta as far back as 2006 labeled as ”lies” Western claims that Tehran is aiming for nuclear capability. Last week, an Indonesian official attending the observance of the 60th anniversary of Indonesia-Iran diplomatic relations at the National Museum said, "Indonesia believes that the Iranian nuclear project is for science and technology development.”
4. Venezuela: State-Sponsored Anti-Semitism in the West
by Hana Levi Julian
State-sponsored anti-Semitism has reared its ugly head in the West.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez appears to be leading a drive to make his nation Judenrein, according to a documentary by Nora Zimmett that was broadcast Wednesday night on the HDNet World Report.
Chavez expelled Israel's ambassador to the country during the IDF counterterror Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, conducted in the first three weeks of January 2009. Simultaneously, he drew closer to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has repeatedly vowed to wipe the Jewish State off the global map.
Zimmett expressed shock in her report, and not a little apprehension of her own, while documenting what local Jews had to say about their daily living conditions.
Venezuelan Jewish activist Sammy Eppel, for example, told her that he personally has been threatened. “Of course I'm afraid,” he said. “I have a family, I have children... But I hope that those things would never actually happen – those things that they promise me over the phone that they're going to do to me or to my family.”
The report cited a police raid on the Hebraica School, based on an alleged “tip” that the institution was involved in an assassination plot. “No evidence was ever found,” noted Zimmett.
Also documented were the frequent publications in the state-run media calling for the expulsion of the Jews, and the speeches by Chavez himself, comparing Zionists to Nazis on national television. The Venezuelan president also had other complaints about the Jews – “the descendants of those who crucified Christ” – implying they are the ones that have all the wealth in the world, another common libel.
Following Zimmett's Internet post about the documentary, and just prior to its broadcast, one of her sources in Caracas sent her a message warning that the Venezuelan government had told the Jewish community to “stop the transmission” of her program.
Less than a day later, Zimmett posted in a Twitter tweet, “I am hearing from my sources in Caracas that the government is instructing the Jewish community not to watch HDNet tomorrow.”
5. J Street’s European Copycat Runs into Detour
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
The left wing American-based J Street lobby has taken a virtual long walk and spawned a copycat “J Call” lobby in Europe, but the European Jewish Congress is up in arms.
J Call has spread a petition with nearly 4,000 signatures claiming that “our connection to the State of Israel is part of our identity” but that “systematic support of Israeli government policy is dangerous and does not serve the true interests of the State of Israel.”
The new European lobby, launched on Tuesday, alleged there is “the danger [that] lies in the ‘occupation’ and the continuing pursuit of settlements” in Judea and Samaria and parts of Jerusalem where the Palestinian Authority claims sovereignty.
In response, the European Jewish Congress (EJC) said it "is expressing its staunch support for the Israeli government on the purported eve of the renewal of negotiations with the Palestinians, albeit by ‘proximity talks.” The EJC noted it is “the democratically-elected umbrella organization which represents European Jewry [and] regrets the recently circulated petition by the so-called group ‘J Call’ as "divisive, counter-productive and unhelpful."
“In contradiction to the petition, the EJC commends the Israeli government’s actions to help build a more conducive setting for peaceful negotiations and applauds the very difficult concessions it has made, noting the increase in access and movement for the Palestinians by removing two-thirds of all roadblocks and the settlement moratorium," EJC stated.
Its president Dr. Moshe Kantor noted that “continued one-sided pressure on Israel does not encourage the Palestinians to engage in serious negotiations and only endangers the already unstable situation in the region.”
He said that the European Union should also pressure the PA “to end its incitement, rhetoric and hate education. It should worry those countries that fund the PA that in the last couple of weeks a road within the government compound in Ramallah was named after a Hamas bomb maker” and that “European taxpayers’ money should not go to activities that glorify mass murder."
Kantor charged that J Call represents a small minority opinion of European Jews as opposed to the EJC, which he said speaks for the majority that elected it.
6. University of Gaza ‘Greenhouse for Hamas Terror’
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
University of Gaza students affiliated with Hamas used chains and knives to attack Fatah supporters several days ago, sending several students to the hospital. The incident is a footnote in a long-standing atmosphere of Jihadist education at the university, which maintains that it is an academic institution like any other.
Using aid from the West and affiliation with international student bodies, the Islamic University of Gaza is a greenhouse for Hamas terrorists, according to the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC).
Founded in 1978 by since-assassinated Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, it has been described by The New York Times’ Steve Erlanger as "one of the prime means for Hamas to convert Palestinians to its Islamist cause.”
De facto Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh is one of many Hamas terrorist leaders who are graduates of Gaza U., where he studied Arabic literature. Senior Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar learned alternative medicine there.
The al-Qassam Brigades, the terror arm of the Hamas political machine, uses Gaza University laboratories to develop and produce explosives and long-range rockets, ITIC reports. “Students are involved in manufacturing weapons and are sent by Hamas to Iran, Syria and Lebanon for further training,” its researchers add. “The university is a warehouse for weapons and the venue for secret meetings of military leaders.”
Violent clashes between Hamas and Fatah supporters are common, and Hamas students used chains and knives several days in a violent confrontation with Fatah rivals, several of whom were hospitalized.
The University of Gaza maintains the profile of an academic institution and is a member of four international university groups, including the International Association of Universities. Although it “conducts lectures on its radical ideology and concentrates on hostility to Israel and the West," the terror researcher states, it is funded by Western and Muslim groups in the United States, Germany, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, among others.
It maintains links with respected academic institutions, such as the London School of Economics and Queen Mary College. Several years ago, international chipmaker Intel set up the Intel Information Technology Center of Excellence at the university.
However, inside its walls, lecturers emphasize the importance of Jihad and the Islamic code while teaching how to use the media for religious coercion. Its academic studies, including those for teachers in grade schools, are linked to Jihadist education and the value of suicide attacks.
Gaza University academics deny it is a Hamas institution. “Equally important for our American colleagues is to remove the false label that IUG is a ‘Hamas-controlled’ institution,” according to two of its lecturers. “IUG is a university like any other in Palestine that reflects the diversity of its population."
However, IDF intelligence has known for years that Hamas develops and stores Kassam rockets at the university, which was evacuated during Israel's Operation Cast Lead counterterrorist operation. The IDF bombed its weapons laboratories, but the United Nations “Fact Finding Mission” reported, “These were civilian, educational buildings and the Mission did not find any information about their use as a military facility.”
7. Hizbullah Scud Missiles are 'Just the Tip of the Iceberg'
by Gil Ronen
The Scud missiles transferred from Syria to Hizbullah recently are “just the tip of the iceberg,” a top IDF intelligence officer told the Knesset Tuesday.
Brigadier General Yossi Baidatz, Head of Research Division in Military Intelligence, gave a situation assessment Tuesday to the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
“Syria has a very prominent role in enlarging the arsenal of rockets in Hizbullah's hands,” he said. “Weapons transfers to Hizbullah from Syria are carried out in a regular manner and are arranged by the Syrian and Iranian regimes. Therefore this should not be termed 'weapons smuggling to Lebanon' – it is an organized, officially sanctioned process.”
Even without the recent Scud transfers, Baidatz said, “Hizbullah possesses an arsenal of thousands of rockets of all types and ranges including solid-fuel missiles with a longer range and more accuracy [than the Scuds].”
"The long range of Syria's Scuds makes it possible for them to position their missiles deep inside Lebanon, and they cover much longer ranges than what we were familiar with in the past. Hizbullah Model 2010 is different from Hizbullah Model 2006 as far as military capability, which has greatly developed.”
“Syria continues to march down two paths without being made to choose between them by the international community,” he said. “On the one hand, it is improving its relations with the West, with Arab states and with Turkey, and is going back to wielding influence in Lebanon; and at the same time it is deepening its strategic and operative cooperation with Iran. Hizbullah and Palestinian terror.”.
