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1. IDF Prosecutor Testifies, Defends Gaza Blockade
by Maayana Miskin
IDF Advocate General Avichai Mandelblit testified Thursday before the Turkel commission. Mandelblit defended Israel's naval blockade on Hamas in Gaza, and explained why the blockade is legal.
Both the Attorney General and the Supreme Court have agreed that the maritime blockade is legal, he said. The blockade began in 2007 after Hamas, which rejects Israel's existence and supports armed terrorist conflict against the Jewish state, took control of Gaza.
The blockade was imposed for military, and not economic, reasons, Mandelblit told the commission. He also noted that supplies were never imported to Gaza by sea prior to 2007. Goods have always entered and exited the area by land due to the fact that Gaza has no port.
“There was never a free maritime route to Gaza,” he stated.
The naval blockade remains necessary in order to ensure that Hamas does not import weapons for use against Israel, Mandelblit said. The IDF cannot know what is aboard Gaza-bound ships without boarding them, but cannot board ships for legal reasons, making a blockade the only way of keeping weapons out, he explained.
The Turkel Commission is examining the legality of the IDF blockade on Gaza and of the May 31 operation aboard the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish ship that, along with other foreign ships, attempted to break the IDF blockade. IDF commandos boarded the ship and were attacked by armed passengers, members of the Turkish pro-terrorist IHH group, leading to a violent clash in which nine passengers were killed.
Mandelblit defended the Mavi Marmara operation as necessary, but said that the ship had at no point been considered an enemy vessel. “This ship was not a target,” he said. The IDF never considered sinking the ship, Mandelblit said.
2. Wikipedia Battle Intensifies as PA Joins the Fray
by Maayana Miskin
Following the opening of the first-ever Zionist editing group aimed at defending Israel on Wikipedia, a group of Palestinian Authority journalists plan to join the fray and create their own Wikipedia editing program.
Palestinian Journalists Syndicate head Abdul Nasser An-Najar told the Bethlehem-based Maan news agency that his organization plans to set up editing groups to counter attempts to present Israel's view on Wikipedia. He called on the PA to take part in the initiative.
An-Najar warned that the next regional war would be a “media war.” Online information on the Israeli-Arab conflict shapes world opinion, he said.
Last week the Zionist “Yisrael Sheli” (My Israel) organization opened a course to address the problem of pro-Arab bias on Wikipedia. In a one-day seminar, lecturers taught dozens of participants how to ensure that Israel's view is presented on the online encyclopedia.
Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia that provides information based largely on anonymous contributions. Many Israelis who have attempted to change information on Wikipedia that they believe is inaccurate have found that their edits were rejected; last week's course strove to change that by teaching would-be Wikipedia editors how to make changes last.
3. Iran: Dimona is in Our Crosshairs
by Gil Ronen
An unnamed senior officer in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards warned Thursday that Iran would strike Israel if it is targeted, no matter who the attacker is.
According to the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Rai, the officer said, "Iran has thousands of surface-to-surface missiles, including improved Zelzal-2 and Al-Fatah 110 missiles, with which it will set alight all of the oil towns, facilities and infrastructures of the neighboring countries, if these serve as platforms for attacking it.”
Any attack upon Iran will lead to a massive missile attack on Israel, he said, including the nuclear power plant at Dimona, no matter where the attack on Iran originated from. This is taken as referring to a possible attack by the United States.
The Iranian officer boasted that the Patriot missiles that Kuwait intends to buy from the US will not be able to protect it from the Al-Kaim 1 missile in Iran's arsenal. He added that the torpedo boats that the Gulf states received from the West will be useless against Iran's small submarines, which will deploy sea mines against enemy ships.
Ali Fazli, Deputy Commander of the Iranian Basij militia, warned this week at a Basij conference in Tehran that his country would destabilize security in the Persian Gulf if it is attacked. Meanwhile, Iran's ambassador to Russia told Hizbullah's Al-Manar television that an attack on Iran would cause American interests in the region to be damaged and will endanger the existence of the “Zionist entity.”
Arab countries are as worried as Israel is by the Iranian nuclear weapons program. London-based A-Sharq al-Awsat reported Wednesday that Said Mashaal, Egypt's State Minister for the Security Industries, said that the nuclear weapons being developed by Iran pose a danger to the entire Middle East, and not just to Israel.
"Iran's push to develop missiles with a range of 3,000 km is causing all of the European nations to develop hostility toward it and to take action to prevent it from developing militarily," he added.
4. From Iran's Nuclear Ambitions to Online Hate
by Dan Verbin
Rabbi Abraham Cooper was in Toronto last week to address members of the Simon Wiesenthal Center on a range of issues of importance to the Jewish community.
Speaking with Shalom Life, Cooper, the Associate Dean of the center, noted that Toronto has 24,000 Simon Wiesenthal Center members out of a total of 400,000 worldwide.
“Canada’s grassroots support is very loyal. I wanted to give them a perspective and update,” he said.
One of Cooper’s biggest concerns at the moment is Iran’s nuclear program. He recently met with a senior official of the White House’s National Security Council to address a Congressional vote on the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty in which Israel was named for the first time, but Iran was not mentioned.
In terms of what to do to ensure Iran does not develop nuclear weapons, he said, “Everyone’s hoping and praying that the sanctions that are in place, at least on paper, will have an effect.”
He also believes that efforts have to “ratcheted up” to make sure that overseas subsidiaries of companies don’t use loopholes to continue trading with Iran. For instance, there was a recent report that German firms are continuing to help the Iranian regime even though they are not supposed to.
It’s perfectly understandable to focus on the existential threat of a “homicidal maniac like Ahmadinejad and the mullahs who want to do in Israel and the Jews,” said Cooper. However, he and his colleagues have visited the United Arab Emirates twice where they met with top government officials and the UAE is just as worried about Iran as Israel is. He explained how from the Atlantis Hotel in Dubai, you can see the three islands of Abu Moussa, Greater Tunbs and Lesser Tunbs, which are currently are under Iranian control (the UAE believes that these Persian Gulf islands belong to them).
Just across the water, the “Iranian threat is an existential threat to [the UAE’s] very nice world order where oil is an ATM machine to them and the United States has provided cover all of these decades.”
The message Cooper heard from UAE officials: If the bomb isn’t stopped, they are going to have to make a deal with the devil.
“They are not sleeping at night; this has nothing to do with Israel,” he said. “In fact, they are hoping that the United States and Israel and others will get together to take out that threat.”
According to Cooper, many American diplomats, journalists and experts are way off course when they say, “What would be so bad if Iran gets the bomb? It will make Israel behave and make the Arabs thank us so what’s the big deal?”
“This is an issue that much more profound because when they go nuclear, so does Egypt, so does Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the UAE will have no problem with their chequebook to do the same. Can you imagine a Middle East in which every zip code has nuclear weapons? Nobody there who we spoke to wants to do it, everyone there will do it. So the stakes are much higher and go far beyond our concerns for our families and friends in Israel. It’s the whole region.”
He would have liked to see President Barack Obama up the pressure on the Ahmadinejad government a lot earlier. Right now, however, he “seems to be on it.”
He also mentioned that the US government needs to do much more to support the pro-democracy movement in Iran, saying that in the past the American government has always used its power to support dissident movements – for example, with Voice of America broadcasts –in places like the former Soviet Union.
Cooper also touched on digital hate crime. Each year, the Simon Wiesenthal Center puts out a report on Digital Terrorism.
“The online battle between pro-terrorists and pro-democracy activists is raging,” said Cooper. “It may be a silent war but it’s a very real war.”
Cooper, who meets with Internet corporations such as Yahoo, Google and Facebook, explained that in the U.S. because of freedom of speech, they approach online hate by asking companies to take down offending sites citing violations of terms of usage.
“We’ve generally been very successful at that, taking offline thousands of websites and other hateful postings,” he said. “You and I both know that that doesn’t mean these groups and individuals don’t try to re-organize and find another way to come right back on, through another service. That’s a kind of ongoing guerrilla warfare.”
As far as he is concerned, Canada has the best approach in the world to such matters, especially with our anti-hate laws. Cooper, who deals with Canada’s IP association, said that it takes usually no more than a phone call or an email to a Canadian ISP for a hate site that has crossed the line to be removed.
He said that “Canadians reach for their best instincts” while Europeans are mired in bureaucratic minutia of the sort that generally makes dealing with the removal of anti-Semitic or racist content very tricky.
Social networking seems to be the new battlefront, with many serial haters using Youtube postings to spread their vile messages.
That said, Cooper is quick not to blame the Internet or technology for “spreading the poison.” It’s the other way around, with the hatemonger responsible, from the days of the mimeograph up to today with Facebook.“When we talk about Canada, we hold it up as an example because it’s really a combination of the private sector, law enforcement, the media and the public,” Cooper commented. “Overall, it works really well. I’m sure there is a lot of frustration about the offshore addresses that these people end up using. It’s a struggle.”
(Reprinted with permission from Shalom Life)
5. Peace Now Holds Freeze Rally in 'Frozen' Town
by Maayana Miskin
Peace Now held a rally on Thursday afternoon, calling to extend the prohibition on Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria. The location selected was Neria, a small Jewish town in the Binyamin region.
Neria, like other Jewish towns in Judea and Samaria, has been affected by the freeze. The hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jews living in Judea and Samaria have been unable to add to their homes, or build new classrooms for their schools, for several months. Families interested in building permanent homes in the area have also been unable to realize their goals.
The situation has exacerbated a national housing shortage that has seen prices rise by 15% in just one year.
The Peace Now protesters suggested that towns like Neria are the reason that the Palestinian Authority and Israel have not yet signed a peace accord, saying, “Build Peace, Not Settlements.” They argued that renewing Jewish construction would undermine chances to create a PA state in Judea and Samaria.
Israel announced a 10-month construction freeze last year in an attempt to draw the PA to the negotiating table. PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas agreed to hold negotiations in August of this year, in the ninth month of the freeze, but has now demanded that the freeze continue or he will withdraw from talks.
Earlier in the week a local guard attempted to block Peace Now from entering Neria to tour the site in advance of its planned rally. He informed police accompanying Peace Now that he would not open the town's gate for their van.
The guard was arrested. Police said they had suggested alternatives to arrest, but that the guard had refused. The guard does not have the right to refuse entrance to people who do not pose an immediate security threat, they argued.
6. US Sends Ross to Talk Freeze
by Maayana Miskin
United States diplomat Dennis Ross was in Israel Thursday, reportedly to discuss the Judea and Samaria construction freeze. The Palestinian Authority has demanded that Israel continue the freeze, while Israeli leaders say they will stick to their commitment to renew construction on September 26.
PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas sent letters to U.S. President Barack Obama, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, and European Union Representative for Foreign Policy Catherine Ashton earlier this week and insisted that Israel continue to ban Jewish building after the current 10-month freeze ends.
Israel activists have called on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu not to give in to Abbas's pressure.
Israel and the PA are to begin direct negotiations next week. Teams of Israeli and PA negotiators are scheduled to head to Washington.
Israel's team will be headed by Yitzchak Molcho. Another team member is Foreign Ministry official Yaakov Hadas. Sources close to Netanyahu say he is working with advisors to finish assembling the delegations.
Abbas is assembling his team as well. The PA leader faces challenges beyond selecting diplomats: Abbas is facing strong objections from minority PA political groups, including the DFLP, the PFLP, and Hamas, which reject talks and say any negotiations conducted by Abbas will not be legitimate. He also must deal with the topic of PA elections, which have been repeatedly postponed, leaving Abbas in the fifth year of a four-year term as Chairman, with opponents questioning his legitimacy.
7. 'Near Pogrom' at Shiloach
by Gil Ronen
Dozens of Arabs went on a rampage for over 90 minutes Thursday morning at Shiloach (Silwan), near Ir David, the site of King David's Jerusalem in ancient times.
Ir David resident Rabbi Amir Ben David called the event “a near-pogrom.”
"The event began at 4:20 AM when I was on my way to say Selichot prayers at the Kotel,” he said. “The mosques called on everyone to come out and within seconds there were dozens of Arabs at the entrance to the Pool of Shiloach, blocking the roads and setting Jews' cars on fire.”
The rioters pelted a Border Police truck with fire bombs and rocks, Ben David said – and the truck drove away. This behavior caused the Arabs to become more confident, he explained. “They began to draw near to my house and threw dozens of rocks at it, breaking the external roof and the solar collector panels.”
"I called the police and told them to send their forces in quickly because I do not want to have to use my weapon. So the policewoman asked me – 'How did you come to have a weapon at home?' This is what bothered her. I understood at that point that I was talking to a wall.”
"Rocks were thrown at all parts of the house. At that moment you are not sure what to do. We took the kids inside into a more internal room. The security guard was wounded in the head and taken to hospital.”
A full thirty minutes passed before Border Police arrived on the scene, Ben David recounted. They used tear gas and stun grenades to disperse the mob, at about 6:00 AM.
Ben David and other residents said the levels of violence were unprecedented in the neighborhood in the past 15 years.
Jewish residents said it was not clear what sparked the rioting. There was unrest before 2:00 AM, one said, but Border Police managed to quiet things down. Then, at 4:20, the large scale rioting began.
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