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1. Think Tank Says Israel would Strike Iranian Universities
by Gil Ronen
A British think tank, the Oxford Research Group (ORG), has issued a report that says Israel is poised to strike Iran's nuclear facilities and warns against doing so. The group is partially funded by the Ford Foundation and its analysts have, in the past, advocated negotiating with Iran and written articles that portrayed Hamas in a positive light.
“The potential for an Israeli military strike on Iran over its nuclear program has grown sharply, but its consequences would be devastating and would lead to a long war,” warns ORG's Paul Rogers in his report “Military Action Against Iran: Impact and Effects”.
The report analyzes recent developments and argues that Israel is now fully capable of attacking Iran, having deployed new systems that include long-range strike aircraft and armed drones.
Not just military targets
It predicts that a strike by the Jewish state would be “focused not only on destroying ‘military real estate’ – nuclear and missile targets – but also would hit factories and research centers, and even university laboratories, in order to do as much damage as possible to the Iranian expertise that underpins the [nuclear] program.”
Furthermore, the Israeli campaign “would not be limited to remote bases but would involve the direct bombing of targets in Tehran,” ORG conjectures. “It would probably include attempts to kill those technocrats who manage Iran’s nuclear and missile programs.”
Rogers says that there would be numerous civilian casualties, not just among people who staff Iran’s nuclear and missile programs, but also among their families – because living quarters would be hit – and the help staff in factories, research stations and university departments.
Iran’s nuclear and missile programs would be heavily damaged, the report says, but Iranian political unity would increase, making President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's hold on power more stable.
Missiles on Israel
In response, Iran could withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and take immediate action to develop nuclear weapons, using “deeply-buried facilities that are reported to be under construction.”
There would be missile attacks on Israel; actions to cause a sharp rise in oil prices by closing the Straits of Hormuz; paramilitary and/or missile attacks on western Gulf oil production, processing and transportation facilities, and “strong support” for militias in Iraq and Afghanistan that oppose the U.S. and its allies..
The report warns: “An Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities would almost certainly be the beginning of a long-term process of regular Israeli air strikes to further prevent the development of nuclear weapons and medium-range missiles. Iranian responses would also be long-term, ushering in a lengthy war with global as well as regional implications.”
2. Netanyahu has Outmaneuvered Obama, TIME Hints
by Gil Ronen
In his first 18 months in office, U.S. President Barack Obama has succeeded in humiliating Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on occasion and forcing a temporary freeze of construction for Jews in Judea and Samaria – but can he exert any more leverage on Israel now that the November congressional elections are drawing near? Obama's window of opportunity for pressuring Israel has closed, TIME magazine appears to say in an latest piece, and may not reopen until his eighth year in office, should he be re-elected.
While Obama may use his “powers of spin” to “sustain the appearance of progress” in his efforts to restart a "peace process" between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, his chances of success are slim, the article by the magazine's Middle East writer Tony Karon said.
Karon portrayed Israel as having “broadened and deepened” its hold on Judea and Samaria in the past two decades, but did not mention the complete withdrawal from Gaza and northern Samaria which Israel effected five years ago in an attempt to show the PA it was serious about making peace.
Domestic leverage
The magazine expressed doubts that Netanyahu had any serious intention of moving against “the hard-line settlers who claim a biblical duty to colonize” Judea and Samaria. In any case, it says, “with the White House's attention now on a difficult November congressional election – a focus that always works to Israel's advantage, given the far greater domestic political leverage its advocates wield in Washington – the Administration isn't likely to expend political capital on the issue anytime soon.”
“Observers on both sides in the Middle East concurred that last week's embrace of Netanyahu by Obama was a domestically driven vindication of the Israeli leader's defiance of Obama's earlier efforts to pressure Israel on the settlements issue,” TIME explained. People who hope that U.S. might pressure the sides into accepting a final-status solution dictated by the international community are “forgetting that the 2010 electoral season – followed by the 2012 presidential race – militates against the Administration's trying anything quite so bold in the Middle East.”
TIME winds up by hinting that there “may be a political logic to Obama's two predecessors' leaving their Mideast peacemaking efforts to their eighth year in office.” The magazine thus implies that the Democratic party's dependence on the pro-Israel lobby in the U.S. will prevent Obama from pressuring Israel any more, any time soon.
PA wants third party
Meanwhile, Palestinian Authority “foreign minister” Riyad Al-Maliki said on Wednesday that direct talks between Israel and the PA would only make sense if the international community were involved, according to AFP. "We have always said we need the presence of a third party. Without a third party intervention, a third party presence, this is a waste of time," Maliki said during an official visit to Bulgaria by PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
3. A Song for Israel a Big Hit on YouTube
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
Note to our readers: The following video is intended for women only. It features a woman singer and clips of her performing, which involves halakhic issues for men. Israel National News is posting this important statement by the performer in order not to deprive women viewers from seeing and hearing it.
Email readers: click here to watch the video.
A young woman from Gush Etzion, south of Jerusalem, has succeeded the Latma website's "We Can Con the World" spoof on the IHH flotilla terror activists as Israel’s best PR representative.
Yedida Freilich, a daughter of Australian immigrants, plays the piano and sings an original song that decries international hypocrisy towards Israel as the video shows scenes of terrorists and their attacks on Israelis. The video, produced by photographer Daniel Sass, also features screenshots of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit and retired South African Judge Richard Goldstone, who authored a scathing report on Israel’s self-defensive Operation Cast Lead against the Hamas terrorist infrastructure.
The lyrics were composed with the help of her father and brother, and the joint effort resulted from an assignment at the Rubin Academy of Music and dance, where Yedida, age 22, is studying.
The bi-lingual family wrote the lyrics in Hebrew and English, and Yedida sings the lyrics of “Only Israel” in both languages.
The following pictures are from the video:
4. Plane Crash Victims Brought to Rest
by Maayana Miskin
Thousands of people accompanied the bodies of young sisters Rikki and Racheli Menora to rest in the Etz Chaim cemetery in Beit Shemesh on Friday. The sisters, ages 16 and 15, were killed in a plane crash in Michigan along with their grandfather, Moshe Menora, and cousin Sara Klein, 17.
Sara and Moshe's funeral began in Jerusalem at 11:30 a.m. Sara lived in Har Nof, Jerusalem, while Rikki and Racheli lived in Beit Shemesh.
Rikki and Racheli's father, who is also Moshe's son, said of his daughters, “Rikki was a wonderful girl, who always wanted to give 100%... we just celebrated Racheli's fifteenth birthday.” Yehuda Menora, the girls' older brother, recalled Rikki as a talented young woman with many plans to make the world a better place, and Racheli as a quiet girl who smiled frequently and preferred action to words.
The girls' younger brother Yosef, 13, was in the crash as well, and was the sole survivor. Yosef was thrown from the plane, but suffered burns over most of his body. He is hospitalized in Michigan.
Doctors said Friday that his situation had improved somewhat, but that he remains in serious condition. Yehuda Menora appeared on Channel 2 news Thursday and asked the public to pray for his brother, whose Hebrew name has been changed to Netanel Yosef, ben [son of] Sima Simcha.
Volunteers with the ZAKA organization in the U.S. worked to identify the bodies and have them flown to Israel for burial. The wreckage of the plane has been shipped to Wisconsin, where it will be investigated in an attempt to determine what caused the crash.
5. US Congressmen Worried by Campus Anti-Semitism
by Maayana Miskin
Thirty-six members of the United States Congress have sent a letter to Education Secretary Arne Duncan expressing concern over anti-Semitism and intimidation on college campuses. They asked if the Department of Education is making use of the 1964 Civil Rights Act – and particularly Title VI, which bans discrimination in publicly funded institutions – to protect Jewish students from hostility.
"College campuses in the United States are meant to be positive, safe, and open forums for intellectual expression, conducive to learning,” they wrote.
"We believe that enforcing Title VI to protect Jewish students who, in rare but highly significant situations, face harassment, intimidation or discrimination based on their ancestral or ethnic characteristics – including when it is manifested as anti-Israel or anti-Zionist sentiment that crosses the line into anti-Semitism – would help ensure that we’re preserving the integrity of our higher education system by affording the same protection to all ethnic and racial groups on our college campuses.”
The letter was inspired by a briefing organized by Representative Ron Klein (D-Fl) given by Susan Tuchman of the Zionist Organization of America. Tuchman, director of ZOA's Center for Law and Justice, discussed anti-Semitic incidents on college campuses.
ZOA President Morton Klein praised the representatives who signed the letter. Congressman Klein brought attention to “a serious problem plaguing American college campuses: anti-Semitism that often takes the form of vicious anti-Zionist and anti-Israel sentiment, causing Jewish students to feel harassed, intimidated, and, at times, afraid for their physical safety,” he stated.
ZOA has tried in recent years to get the civil rights' office of the Department of Education to investigate allegedly anti-Semitic incidents on US campuses. The office declined to take action, arguing that the incidents were not based on students' “national origins.” The letter from Members of Congress aims in part to clarify that Jewish students should be granted the same protections that are given to racial or ethnic minorities.
6. Police Search at Perlman Family Home
by Maayana Miskin
Police raided the home of Jewish terror suspect Chaim Perlman's parents in the Judean Jewish community of Tekoa early on Friday morning, conducting an extensive surprise search that would be expected procedure for police except that Perlman's friends say the presence of the Shin Bet (ISA) indicates panic over Perlman's disclosures.
Accusations that Perlman murdered two Arabs in Jerusalem and attempted to murder others led to the exposure of Shin Bet incitement. In tapes released Thursday and posted on Arutz Sheva's Hebrew page, a Shin Bet agent can be heard encouraging Perlman to murder Islamic Movement head Sheikh Raed Salah and to carry out “a small fireworks display” in an Arab village. Perlman rejected both suggestions.
The agent also told Perlman that he would have killed activists aboard the flotilla ship Mavi Marmara, one of whom was MK Hanin Zouabi, and that he would be willing to sit in prison in order to "get" MK Taleb A-Sana.
The tapes seem to prove that the Shin Bet went beyond attempts to get Perlman to talk about himself, crossing into incitement to murder, sources close to Perlman said. Friends also accused the Shin Bet of taking advantage of Perlman's tenuous financial position by paying him money at each meeting, creating a situation in which he became dependent on his meetings with Shin Bet agents and told them what they wanted to hear.
Perlman denies the accusations of murder and attempted murder. .
Gilad Pollak, a friend of Perlman's, said it was clear before the affair broke that Perlman was facing some sort of personal crisis. “He had trouble looking us in the eyes,” he recalled. Pollak said Perlman told a friend, “Given my financial situation, I would even confess to murdering Arlozorov,” a reference to pre-state Zionist leader Chaim Arlozorov, who was assassinated in 1933.
The Shin Bet's Jewish affairs branch, seeks out Israeli Jewish extremists and terrorist cells, but has been criticized for alleged encouragement of extremist behavior through provocateurs.
7. Flotilla Group IHH May Earn 'Terrorist' Designation in US
by Maayana Miskin
The Turkish organization IHH, which took part in a Gaza-bound flotilla that ended in a bloody clash with IDF troops, may be designated a terrorist group in the United States, Fox News reported. The report was based on information from State Department spokesman Mark Toner.
Germany outlawed IHH last week, saying the group is affiliated with Hamas, which the European Union classifies as a terrorist organization.
IHH members were aboard the Mavi Marmara, which in late May tried along with other ships to dock in Gaza in defiance of an Israeli naval blockade on Hamas. When IDF soldiers attempted to board the ship they were attacked and wounded by the IHH men. Soldiers opened fire in self-defense, killing nine of the Turkish activists.
A majority of the senate signed a letter to US President Barack Obama asking him to stand behind Israel and describing the IHH's role in the attack. “We are deeply concerned about the IHH’s role in this incident," they wrote, "and have additional questions about Turkey and any connections to Hamas... The IHH is a member of a group of Muslim charities, the Union of Good, which was designated by the US Treasury Department as a terrorist organization.. We recommend that your administration consider whether the IHH should be put on the list of foreign terrorist organizations…”
Toner told Fox that any change in the IHH's status would take time. “I believe we are looking at the IHH, but it's a long process to designate something a foreign terrorist organization,” he said. Other sources said that efforts to investigate IHH and classify it a terrorist group had encountered some resistance from within the Obama administration.
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