Why Don't the British Like Israel?

From The Times of Israel, February 5, 2015, by Alexander H. Joffe*:

A recent poll shows that Britons regard Israel less favorably than any other country besides North Korea. The results came as a shock to Israelis and supporters of Israel, but they shouldn't have. 

After all, British supporters of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement are widespread, blood libels about the Palestinian 'genocide' and Israeli organ harvesting are heard from members of the peerage, and Israel remains one of the few countries the British royal family hasn't visited.

True, Jews are deeply integrated into British society and have felt secure for decades. But incidents of antisemitic violence have been escalating and even notables like the Jewish director of television of the BBC have expressed fear about the future of Jews in the country. Antisemitism, interwoven and often indistinguishable from anti-Zionism, has reemerged full force. New statistics on antisemitic incidents prove that the British climate is changing for the worse.

Why the animosity against Israel, which extends from the political left to the right, and across all social classes? Four sources may be suggested, each with roots in the 20th century.

1. The British Establishment arguably never recovered from the loss of the Empire.

First, the British Establishment, comprised of elite schools and universities, government and idea setting industries like the media, arguably never recovered from the loss of the Empire. This should not be understood as a lament for the Empire so much as the manner in which it was lost, and for what the upper classes have come to believe should have been the outcome.

Britain won World War II but quickly lost the peace. Bankrupt, Britain was only preserved by an enormous loan in 1946 from the United States. Britain's most important colony, India, became independent in 1947 and promptly split with Pakistan at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives and tens of millions of refugees. But it was Palestine, which at its peak was garrisoned by 100,000 British soldiers unable to keep the peace, which rankled most.

Losing the empire was bad enough, but losing Palestine to the Jews was a unique humiliation. Zionist anti-British violence, above all the destruction of the King David Hotel, resonated strongly for decades. It is also only now being understood that the British establishment had fought a covert war for decades against France in Syria and Lebanon, and had encouraged Arab states to invade the infant State of Israel. This strategy also backfired, helping usher in revolutionary regimes that overthrew British allies and reducing British influence still further. These multiple failures embittered the British Establishment for decades.

More recently, however, a wave of politically correct guilt has swept over the British Establishment. In this revisionist view the British Empire, unlike any other empire over the preceding 5000 years, was a singular source of evil in the world, and the impact in Palestine, uniquely so.
In this view, Britain's contradictory promises to Arabs and Jews, alleged favoritism towards Zionism and repression of local Arabs, and the British role in maintaining an international system that has permitted Israel to exist, are deep wrongs, yet to be righted. Little wonder that the BBC and British media focus relentlessly on Israeli wrongdoing, real and imagined, while glossing over those of its neighbors. In contrast, the British attitude toward Palestinians is marked by expressions of guilt and patronizing behavior.

2. The labor movement has become one of the centers of virulent anti-Israel bias in Britain.

A second reason for current British attitudes is the gradual conversion of the British labor movement to the Palestinian cause. Until the 1960s the British labor movement saw Israel as a fellow socialist state with anti-imperialist leanings. But in the wake of the 1967 and 1982 wars Israeli success (and alignment with the United States) became increasingly unpalatable to a labor movement that could only see Jews as underdogs or victims. Coupled with an orientation towards the Soviet worldview, implacably anti-Israel and pro-Arab, that grew from the 1960s onward, the labor movement has become one of the centers of virulent anti-Israel bias in Britain.
The dramatic changes in British Christianity must be counted as a third cause. Jews like to point to British Christian Zionism, but in truth this was a spent force even before the Balfour Declaration in 1917. Indeed, Anglicanism is deeply supersessionist and regards Judaism as retrograde, a community forsaken by God.

3. Anglicanism is deeply supersessionist and regards Judaism as retrograde, a community forsaken by God.

Though the Anglican Church has been in steep decline in recent decades, it has been reinvigorated in part by Palestinian Christians who have reinvented traditional Christian antisemitism, converting Israelis into Romans and themselves into the new Jews. The impact of this old/new Anglican theology is seen in the degree to which the church, like the labor movement, leads the BDS movement in Britain.

4. Finally, there is the role of Muslims in the United Kingdom. 
Until the early 21st century Muslims were a small minority. Now, in part thanks to the Labour Party's covert strategy of encouraging immigration under Tony Blair, including from backwards places like Pakistan, precisely to change the demographic and electoral composition of Britain, Muslims number around 5% of the total population. Muslims in Britain are at the forefront of antisemitic agitation in Britain and maintain a dizzying network of organizations to support BDS and the Palestinian and Islamist causes.

There are few reasons to think that Israel's position will become more favorable with Britons or other Europeans in the future. Ever increasing Muslim populations alone appear to ensure that political establishments will adopt voter-friendly anti-Israeli rhetoric and policies. And while local anti-Muslim sentiment is at an all-time high, the Establishment remains intent on repressing this officially through speech and thought codes, and unofficially, by denying such voices media access and legitimacy. The media in particular remains intent on making Israel the villain, regardless of the issue....

*Alex Joffe is a historian and archaeologist. He is a Shillman-Ginsburg Fellow of the Middle East Forum.

PA moves to join ICC have nothing to do with justice

From The Australian, February 11, 2015, by Einat Wilf*:

*Einat Wilf is a senior fellow with the Jewish People Policy Institute and an adjunct fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. 

RECENT Palestinian moves to join the International Criminal Court are one more step in the decades-long campaign to vilify Israel and brand it in world opinion as “evil incarnate”.

It is a direct continuation of the “placard strategy” of anti-Israel activism, whereby Israel and Zionism are equated — whether in demonstration placards, speeches or writings — with a series of words: colonialism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide. These words are not chosen because they somehow reflect ­reality but because they are universally considered evil.

The effect of the continuous repeating of Zionism/Israel = Evil is to create an intellectual environment in which physically ridding the world of Israel would be considered desirable, even noble.

The purpose of the Palestinian moves in the ICC is to achieve official international sanction for branding Israel with the term “war criminal”, thereby adding an internationally sanctioned legitimacy to the placards used to vilify Israel and Zionism.

The purpose is not to seek justice by bringing certain Israeli officials to trial before the ICC but achieving an officially sanctioned international consensus that Israel, as a whole, is a war criminal country. As such, the resulting implication is that its entire existence is illegitimate.

This is a process that renowned human rights activist and former Canadian ­justice minister Irwin Cotler has named “laundering”: the campaign to delegitimise Israel and Zionism is “laundered” through the international human rights ­institutions. Given that this is the deep purpose of the Palestinian ­efforts to join the ICC and ­prosecute Israel through it, any effective response must address this deeper issue, rather than the issue on the surface: the ostensible legal battle.

Israel has invested substantial diplomatic capital in trying to prevent the Palestinians first joining the ICC and now in trying to prevent the ICC from accepting their status as a full-fledged state.

The most common interpretation of the Israeli efforts to prevent the Palestinians acceding to the ICC is that Israel is afraid of being “found out”. Most people assume that if Israel had nothing to hide it would not be so concerned; ergo, it has something to hide from the ICC. The ICC tries war crimes, meaning therefore that Israel must indeed be a “war criminal country” if it is so concerned about it. The Palestinians are achieving the goals of their ICC campaign — to vilify Israel in international opinion — before they have even been accepted to the ICC.

But Israel’s concerns about Palestinian accession to the ICC are not about being “found out” but rather about the failure of the UN and international treaty system of human rights to give Israel a fair trial. This is one of the greatest failures of the UN and treaty-based system of human rights.
There is no justice for Israel in the UN. There is definitely no justice for Israel in the Orwellian-named Human Rights Council. And there will be no justice for Israel in the ICC.

Israel is concerned about Palestinian accession to the ICC because it knows that no matter what it has done, what it does and what it will do, it will be found guilty.

The UN system and the international judicial system are structurally incapable of fairly judging Israel because they are numbers-based systems: one country, no matter how vile, one vote.

Israel has one vote. The Arab League countries have 21, the Muslim countries have 56. They have voted, and will always vote, against Israel. With such a high share of the votes they get still more countries to support them.

The outcome of this simple maths is that in all the UN bodies where the US cannot exercise its veto power, Israel remains alone, unprotected, and is regularly ganged up on by the countries that have the preponderant numbers.

Half of all condemnations issued by the UN Human Rights Council have been against Israel, equal to the rest of the world combined. Moreover, the condemnations against Israel are always absolute, whereas condemnation against other countries is usually softened with caveats and commendations for their supposed efforts to do better.

The same is true of the UN General Assembly — half of its ­decisions historically have been directed against Israel. The ICC, which has failed to establish itself as an impartial and credible body, is likely to do no better if it were ­allowed to attempt to judge and punish Israel.

The tragic irony is that much of the UN and its treaty-based system of human rights was created to counter the darkness of the Holocaust, then grossly misinterpreted and abused against the world’s only Jewish state, ­Israel.

Time for EU hypocrites to shut up and play by the rules

From Commentary magazine, 6 Feb 2015, by Tom Wilson:

The European Union’s opposition to Israel’s West Bank settlements is well known. Preventing Jews from having homes on the biblical hills of Judea and Samaria is apparently a top foreign-policy priority for Brussels. Of course in attempting to justify their fixation with this matter the Eurocrats generally appeal to international law, making mention of its stipulations in the gravest tones.

But now it turns out that the EU has been flouting international law and backing illegal West Bank settlements after all. In fact, it’s been funding and building them directly. Only these West Bank settlements aren’t for Jews, they’re for [Arab]s. So apparently the rules don’t apply.



A report by the Israeli NGO Regavim has revealed that in recent years the EU has funneled millions of euros into constructing more than 400 housing units in 17 illegal settlements. Somewhat bizarrely these outposts fly the EU federal flag and are staffed by EU personnel boldly dressed in EU uniform. But unlike Israel’s West Bank settlements which have a disputed legal status, there can be no doubt that these EU settlements are in clear and open breach of international law.

The settlements in question have been built by the EU in Area C of the West Bank. Under the Oslo II agreement signed in 1995, clause 2 of article 27 gives Israel full and exclusive authority over all planning and construction within Area C of the West Bank. This is an agreement that not only the Palestinian Authority signed up to, but one that the European Union is a signatory of as well. As such, that treaty has the status of binding international law which the EU is obliged to uphold. Worse still, these illegal settlements are guarded by aggressive EU workers who have been caught threatening Israeli soldiers and onlookers with rocks.

So what does the EU have to say in its defense? Well according to Jake Wallis Simons who broke this story for the Daily Mail, Brussels spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic simply denied that any of the above is taking place. And when presented with the photographic evidence of the EU flag fluttering over the illegal hilltop outposts she refused to make any further comment. Welcome to the Orwellian world of Brussels federalism.

Unfortunately for Maja Koncijancic, her EU comrades on the ground are not so tight lipped. When Simons questioned a spokesperson for the EU in the West Bank and Gaza, this time the spokesperson not only accepted that the construction was taking place but openly justified it on political grounds as part of an effort to secure the territory for a Palestinian state.

A similar response came from Oxfam—a ...UK charity which like several others now seems to have gone rogue on the Israeli-Palestinian issue—which has also been involved with the EU’s illegal settlement project. An Oxfam spokesperson justified the illegal construction on “humanitarian” grounds. But it turns out that by humanitarian he actually just meant that in Oxfam’s opinion not enough construction permits were being issued to Palestinians in Area C. But if that counts as reason enough to break the law in Oxfam’s eyes, then every time there’s a construction freeze on Israeli settlements, the good people of Oxfam should be helping Israeli settlers build more housing units, all on “humanitarian” grounds.

It is of course baffling that at a time when Europe is so totally cash strapped and when a war rages in its own backyard (Ukraine), Brussels is funneling millions into illegal West Bank settlements. And all the while EU officials and European governments use accusations of settlement building to lambaste Israel.

But what this really exposes is that all of the EU’s highminded talk about international law is just an excuse and a means of dressing up contempt for the Jewish state in acceptable language. Its own illegal settlement project demonstrates that the EU cares nothing for international law in the West Bank.

For some time now there has been something very disconcerting about the European Union’s activities in the West Bank. Back in 2013 when a French diplomat was filmed attacking an Israeli soldier, one couldn’t help but think that with so few Jews left in their own countries, those Europeans with the urge are now having to make the arduous journey to the West Bank to get into scuffles with Jews. Indeed, Tuvia Tenenbom’s exposure of how Germany in particular is funding a vast apparatus of anti-Israel NGO activity in the West Bank makes one wonder why it seems to be so impossible for these people to just leave the Jews alone.

Europe has been accused of hypocrisy before regarding its obsession with the settlement issue. Allegations that the EU has failed to muster the same fierce opposition to Moroccan settlements in occupied Western Sahara have simply been shrugged off by Brussels. But now that it turns out the EU has its own illegal settlement project in the West Bank, the hypocrisy allegation should really be made to stick.

Make "peace" with this violent rabble?

From Gatestone Institute, 30 Jan 2015, by Khaled Abu Toameh:

The Palestinian Fatah faction, whose leaders are supposed to be working toward preparing Palestinians for an independent Palestinian state, is currently embroiled in a bitter and violent power struggle between Palestinian Authority [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas and his major rival, Mohamed Dahlan.

This is a power struggle, however, that casts doubts on Fatah's preparedness to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem.

The Fatah infighting is not new, as Abbas and Dahlan, a former PA security commander in the Gaza Strip, have been waging war against each other for the past four years.

More than a war of words. PA President Mahmoud Abbas (left) and Mohamed Dahlan. (Image sources: U.S. State Dept., M. Dahlan Office)

Abbas believes that Dahlan, who is currently based in the United Arab Emirates, has long been plotting to replace him as president of the Palestinian Authority. Abbas has taken a number of measures to undermine Dahlan, including having him expelled from Fatah.

Abbas has also accused Dahlan of financial embezzlement and murder – charges that the latter has vehemently denied.

But this is the first time that the dispute between the two men has spilled over into violence. In the past few weeks, the streets of the Gaza Strip have become scenes of violent clashes between supporters of Abbas and Dahlan, much to the delight of Hamas.

The latest crisis began when Abbas decided to cut off the salaries of some 250 Fatah officials in the Gaza Strip who he suspects are affiliated with Dahlan.

In response, Dahlan's men went on a rampage, torching cars and institutions belonging to Abbas loyalists in the Gaza Strip. One of the institutions targeted by Dahlan's men is the Society for Families of Prisoners and Martyrs, which has been forced to close down after its offices were set on fire in Gaza City.

Dahlan's men also assaulted a number of senior Fatah officials closely associated with Abbas. One of them, Mohamed al-Nahhal, was moderately injured during an assault at a physician's conference, in a hotel in Gaza City.

The violence has forced Fatah to suspend all its activities in the Gaza Strip -- again, much to the delight of Hamas.

Some Abbas loyalists are convinced that Dahlan and his supporters are working in coordination with Hamas.

Osama Qawassmeh, a Fatah spokesman affiliated with Abbas, said that Hamas was working hard to "encourage" Dahlan's men to attack their rivals. He also claimed that Dahlan has improved his relations with Hamas by channeling funds to the Gaza Strip.

Following the recent spate of attacks, Abbas loyalists in the Gaza Strip have gone on the offensive by threatening to "eliminate" Dahlan and his "gangs."

A leaflet, issued by a hitherto unknown pro-Abbas group called Protectors of Legitimacy, threatened to kill 80 Dahlan supporters. The group published the names of the supporters, claiming they worked for Israel.

"Your threats will not intimidate us," the group said. "You are beginning to play with fire. But we are made of fire, which will burn you. The language of dialogue with you has ended and as of today we will start talking to you with the language of weapons and skull-breaking."

In 2007, Abbas lost the Gaza Strip to Hamas [when Hamas seized control by brutal violence, including throwing Fatah supporters off tall buildings]. Now, he seems to be losing the Gaza Strip to his rivals in Fatah.

The violent events of the past few weeks are yet another sign of Fatah's failure to get its act together, especially in the aftermath of its defeat to Hamas in the January 2006 parliamentary elections.
Over the past few years, Abbas has repeatedly declared that there will never be a Palestinian state without the Gaza Strip.

However, the internecine strife among the Fatah leadership, as well as the continued power struggle between Abbas and Hamas, mean that the chances of creating a Palestinian state while he is still in power are non-existent. If in the past Abbas was unable to visit the Gaza Strip because of Hamas, now he knows that many of his former Fatah supporters have also turned against him.

Under the current circumstances, there is not much that Abbas could do other than remain in the West Bank, where he feels safer, largely thanks to the presence of the Israel Defense Forces there.

It is time for the international community to wake up and realize that the whole idea of establishing an independent Palestinian state is nothing but a joke. The last thing the Palestinians and the international community want is another Syria or Libya or Yemen in the Middle East.

Instead of working to help each other and rebuild the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians are busy fighting and threatening each other. This is not a fight over reforms, democracy or building a better future for Palestinians. ... it is all over money, ego and power.

Foreign Aid funds Arab terrorism in Israel

From A7, 8 Feb 2015, by Edwin Black*:

[US] Congressional legislators were astonished last year to learn that the Palestinian Authority was issuing monthly payouts totaling $3-7 million as salaries and other financial rewards to specific terrorists and their families. 

The money was channeled, in part, through the Ministry of Prisoners pursuant to the Law of the Prisoner. The law set forth a graduated scale, pegging monthly salaries to the length of Israeli jail sentences, which generally reflects the severity of the crime and the number of people killed and/or injured.

Thousands of documents, newly obtained by this reporter through a lawsuit to unseal court-protected files, demonstrate that these payouts are not blind automated payments. Rather, senior Palestinian Authority officials as high as President Mahmoud Abbas scrutinize the details of each case, the specific carnage caused, and the personal details of each terrorist act before approving salaries and awarding honorary ranks in either the PA government or the military.

Ministry of Prisoners spokesman Amr Nasser has explained, “We are very proud of this program and we have nothing to hide.” Nonetheless, in response to the international furor, the Palestinian Authority announced it would replace the Ministry of Prisoners with an outside PLO commission known as the Higher National Commission for Prisoners and Detainees Affairs.

The PA is dependent upon foreign donor countries to supply much of its budget, which now exceeds $4.2 billion annually. About ten percent of the PA budget, more than $400 million, is contributed annually by United States foreign aid. The US and many other countries have enacted laws forbidding any payments when the monies directly or indirectly support or encourage terrorism.

The interdepartmental bureaucratic notations the Palestinian Authority has recorded on each terrorist before approving the level of salaried compensation is extensive....

...hundreds of terrorists ...are rewarded for their actions - not in a blind, faceless program, but in a meticulous, exacting official process that can remain in place for years. The money is represented to donor countries as “government salaries.” Most taxpayers in donor countries have no idea that their well-intended money is actually financing the flames of terrorism.

From Times of Israel, 10 Nov 2013, by Edwin Black*:

Financing the Flames, by Edwin Black

.... Each year, [Foreign] aid and financial programs fungibly fund terrorist salaries paid by the Palestinian Authority. This astonishing financial dynamic is known to most Israeli leaders and Western journalists in Israel. 

It has been written about at least twice in The Times of Israel. But it is still a shock to most in [US] Congress, who are unaware that US money going to the Palestinian Authority is regularly diverted to a program that systematically rewards terrorists with generous salaries. These transactions blatantly violate American laws that prohibit any US funding from benefiting terrorists. More than that, they grandly incentivize murder and terror.

Here’s how the system works. When a Palestinian is convicted of an act of terror against the Israeli government or innocent civilians, such as a bombing or a murder, that convicted terrorist automatically receives a generous salary from the Palestinian Authority. The salary is specified by the Palestinian Law of the Prisoner and administered by the PA’s Ministry of Prisoner Affairs. A Palestinian watchdog group, the Prisoners Club, ensures the PA’s compliance with the law and pushes for payments as a prioritized expenditure. This means that even during frequent budget shortfalls and financial crisis, the PA pays the terrorists’ salaries first and foremost — before other fiscal obligations.

The Law of the Prisoner narrowly delineates just who is entitled to receive an official salary. In a recent interview, Ministry of Prisoners spokesman Amr Nasser read aloud that definition: “A detainee is each and every person who is in an Occupation prison based on his or her participation in the resistance to Occupation.” This means crimes against Israel or Israelis. Nasser was careful to explain, “It does not include common-law thieves and burglars. They are not included and are not part of the mandate of the Ministry.”

Under a sliding scale, carefully articulated in the Law of the Prisoner, the more heinous the act of terrorism and the longer the prison sentence, the higher is the salary. 

• Detention for up to three years fetches a salary of almost $400 per month. 
• Prisoners incarcerated between three and five years will be paid about $560 monthly — a compensation level already higher than that for many ordinary West Bank jobs. 
• Sentences of 10 to 15 years fetch salaries of about $1,690 per month. More severe acts of terrorism, those punished with sentences between 15 and 20 years, earn almost $2,000 per month. 

These are the best salaries in the Palestinian territories. The Arabic word ratib, meaning “salary,” is the official term for this compensation. The law ensures the greatest financial reward for the most egregious acts of terrorism.

In the Palestinian community, the salaries are no secret — they are publicly hailed in public speeches and special TV reports. From time to time, the salaries are augmented with special additional financial incentives. For example, in 2009, a $150-per-prisoner bonus was approved to mark the religious holiday of Eid al-Adha. President Mahmoud Abbas also directed that an extra $190 “be added to the stipends given to Palestinians affiliated with PLO factions in Israeli prisons this month.” Reporting on the additional emolument, the Palestinian news service Ma’an explained, “Each PLO-affiliated prisoner [already] receives [a special allocation of] $238 per month, plus an extra $71 if they are married, and an extra $12 for each child. The stipend is paid by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) each month.”

About 6 percent of the Palestinian budget is diverted to terrorist salaries. All this money comes from so-called “donor countries” such as the United States, Great Britain, Norway, and Denmark. Palestinian officials have reacted with defiance to any foreign governmental effort to end the salaries. 

Deputy Minister of Prisoners Affairs Ziyad Abu Ein declared to the satellite TV network Hona Al-Quds:

"If the financial assistance and support to the PA are stopped, the [payment of] salaries (rawatib) and allowances (mukhassasat) to Palestinian prisoners will not be stopped, whatever the cost may be. The prisoners are our joy. We will sacrifice everything for them and continue to provide for their families."

Even though many in Israel do not completely understand all the details and the schedule of compensation, the victims are wracked by a basic knowledge that a cruel system is at play.

Israeli security forces and others at the site of a terror attack at a bus stop at the Tapuah Junction in the northern West Bank, in which Evyatar Borovsky was stabbed to death. April 30, 2013. (Photo credit: Flash90)

...[The wife of one victim of terrorism] said of her husband’s killer,

“It is really useless to put him in jail, when one takes into account that he will be released in one swap or another, and will use his time there for academic studies free of charge, and the high standard of living that the State of Israel gives the murderers of its citizens. The continued court proceedings and jailing of the murderer until the next release of murderers, which will take place sooner or later, creates a false impression of justice, when the reality is that of a circus.”

*Edwin Black is the award-winning author of the international bestseller “IBM and the Holocaust.” This article is the second of two pieces — following Financing the flames from a mobile home in Florida — published by The Times of Israel drawn from his just-released book, “Financing the Flames: How Tax-Exempt and Public Money Fuel a Culture of Confrontation and Terrorism in Israel.”
Copyright 2013 Edwin Black
All Rights Reserved

Major concerns about the emerging Iran nuclear deal

From the Washington Post Editorial, 5 Feb 2015:


Jan. 14, 2015: US Secretary of State John Kerry, left, listens to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, as they walk in the city of Geneva, Switzerland, during a bilateral meeting ahead of nuclear discussions. (Martial Trezzini/AP)

AS THE Obama administration pushes to complete a nuclear accord with Iran, numerous members of Congress, former secretaries of state and officials of allied governments are expressing concern about the contours of the emerging deal...

The problems raised by authorities ranging from Henry Kissinger, the country’s most senior former secretary of state, to Sen. Timothy M. Kaine, Virginia’s junior senator, can be summed up in three points:

• First, a process that began with the goal of eliminating Iran’s potential to produce nuclear weapons has evolved into a plan to tolerate and temporarily restrict that capability.
• Second, in the course of the negotiations, the Obama administration has declined to counter increasingly aggressive efforts by Iran to extend its influence across the Middle East and seems ready to concede Tehran a place as a regional power at the expense of Israel and other U.S. allies.
• Finally, the Obama administration is signaling that it will seek to implement any deal it strikes with Iran — including the suspension of sanctions that were originally imposed by Congress — without a vote by either chamber. Instead, an accord that would have far-reaching implications for nuclear proliferation and U.S. national security would be imposed unilaterally by a president with less than two years left in his term.

The first and broadest of these problems was outlined by Mr. Kissinger in recent testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee. 

The talks... began as a multilateral effort headed by the European Union and backed by six U.N. Security Council resolutions intended “to deny Iran the capability to develop a military nuclear option.” Though formally the multilateral talks continue, “these negotiations have now become an essentially bilateral negotiation” between the United States and Iran “over the scope of that [nuclear] capability, not its existence,” Mr. Kissinger said.

Where it once aimed to eliminate Iran’s ability to enrich uranium, the administration now appears ready to accept an infrastructure of thousands of Iranian centrifuges. It says its goal is to limit and monitor that industrial base so that Iran could not produce the material for a warhead in less than a year. As several senators pointed out last month during a hearing of the Foreign Relations Committee, the prospective deal would leave Iran as a nuclear-threshold state while theoretically giving the world time to respond if Tehran chose to build a weapon. Even these limited restrictions would remain in force for only a specified number of years, after which Iran would be free to expand its production of potential bomb materials.

Mr. Kissinger said such an arrangement would very likely prompt other countries in the region, such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey, to match Iran’s threshold capability. “The impact . . . will be to transform the negotiations from preventing proliferation to managing it,” he said. “We will live in a proliferated world in which everybody — even if that agreement is maintained — will be very close to the trigger point.”

A related problem is whether Iran could be prevented from cheating on any arrangement and acquiring a bomb by stealth. Mr. Kaine (D) underlined that an attempt by the United States to negotiate the end of North Korea’s nuclear program failed after the regime covertly expanded its facilities. 

With Iran, said Mr. Kaine, “a nation that has proven to be very untrustworthy . . . the end result is more likely to be a North Korean situation” if existing infrastructure is not dismantled.

The administration at one time portrayed the nuclear negotiations as distinct from the problem of 

• Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism, 
• its attempts to establish hegemony over the Arab Middle East and 
• its declared goal of eliminating Israel. 

Yet while the talks have proceeded, Mr. Obama has offered assurances to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that the two countries have shared interests in the region, and the White House has avoided actions Iran might perceive as hostile — such as supporting military action against the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad.

For their part, the Iranians, as Mr. Kaine put it, “are currently involved in activities to destabilize the governments of [U.S.-allied] nations as near as Bahrain and as far away as Morocco.” A Tehran-sponsored militia recently overthrew the U.S.-backed government of Yemen. 

Rather than contest the Iranian bid for regional hegemony, as has every previous U.S. administration since the 1970s, Mr. Obama appears ready to concede Iran a place in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and beyond — a policy that is viewed with alarm by Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey, among other allies.

Former secretary of state George P. Shultz cited Iran’s regional aggression in pronouncing himself “very uneasy” about the ongoing negotiations. 

“They’ve already outmaneuvered us, in my opinion,” he told the Armed Services Committee.

While presidents initiate U.S. foreign policies, it is vital that major shifts win the support of Congress and the country; otherwise, they will be unsustainable. Yet Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggested in Senate testimony that the administration intends to postpone any congressional vote on a deal indefinitely, meeting its commitments to Iran by using provisions allowing it to suspend legislatively enacted sanctions...

Such a unilateral course by Mr. Obama would alienate even his strongest congressional supporters. It would mean that a deal with Iran could be reversed, within months of its completion, by the next president. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that Mr. Obama wishes to avoid congressional review because he suspects a bipartisan majority would oppose the deal he is prepared to make...

The speech Benjamin Netanyahu must give in US congre

From: The Wall Street Journal, February 04, 2015, by: Bret Stephens

EVEN friends of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are second-guessing his decision to accept US House Speaker John Boehner ’s invitation to address congress next month on the subject of Iran, over loud objections from the Obama administration. The prospect of the speech, those friends say, has sparked a needless crisis between Jerusalem and Washington. And it has left Democrats with an invidious choice between their loyalty to the President and their support for the Jewish state, jeopardising the bipartisan basis of the US-Israel relationship.

Sensible concerns — except for a few things.
Relations between Israel and the US have been in crisis nearly from the moment Barack Obama stepped into office. Democratic support for Israel has been eroding for decades. It was the US President, not the Israeli Prime Minister, who picked this fight.

Oh, and if there’s going to be a blowout in US-Israel relations, is now really a worse time than later this year, when the Obama administration will have further cornered Israel with its Iran diplomacy?
Because memories are short, let’s remind ourselves of the Ur-moment in the Bibi-Barack drama. It happened on May 18, 2009, when Netanyahu, in office for just a few weeks, arrived to a White House that was demanding that he endorse Palestinian statehood and freeze settlements, even as the administration was rebuffing Israeli requests to set a deadline for the nascent nuclear diplomacy with Iran.

The result: within a month of that meeting, Netanyahu duly endorsed Palestinian statehood in a speech at Israel’s right-wing Bar-Ilan University — roughly the equivalent of Obama going to a meeting of the Sierra Club and urging its members to get over their opposition to fracking. By the end of the year, Netanyahu further infuriated his right-wing base by agreeing to a 10-month settlement freeze, which even secretary of state Hillary Clinton acknowledged was “unprecedented”.

What did Netanyahu get in return from Obama? While the President stuck to his refusal to set “an artificial deadline”, he did concede in a joint press conference that “we’re not going to have talks forever. We’re not going to create a situation in which talks become an excuse for inaction while Iran proceeds with developing a nuclear, and deploying a nuclear weapon”.

The promise not to “have talks forever” was made six years ago. Since then, diplomatic efforts have included the 2009 “fuel swap” proposal; the 2010 Brazil-Turkey-Iran declaration; the 2011 Russian “step-by-step proposal”; the 2012 diplomatic rounds in Istanbul, Baghdad and Moscow; and finally the 2013 Joint Plan of Action, a six-month interim deal that is now in its 13th month.

Now Obama is vowing to veto the bipartisan Kirk-Menendez bill that would end the charade by imposing sanctions on Iran in the event Tehran doesn’t sign an acceptable nuclear deal by the northern summer — that is, after the third deadline for the interim agreement has expired. The President is also demanding that Democrats rally around him in his histrionic fit over the Netanyahu speech. This is from the same administration that, as Politico’s David Rogers reminds us, never bothered to consult Boehner on its invitation to South Korean President Lee Myung-bak to address congress in 2011.

This history is worth recalling because it underscores the unpleasant truth about America in the age of Obama. 

The President collects hard favours from allies and repays them with neglect and derision. He is eager to accommodate the political needs of authoritarian leaders like Iran’s Hasan Rowhani but has no use for the political needs of elected leaders like Netanyahu. He believes that it is for other statesmen to stake their political lives and risk their national future for the sake of a moral principle — at least as Obama defines that principle. As for him, the only thing sacred is his own political convenience.

Netanyahu also needs to speak because congress deserves an unvarnished account of the choice to which Obama proposes to put Israel: either accede to continued diplomacy with Iran, and therefore its de facto nuclearisation; or strike Iran militarily in defiance of the US and Obama’s concordat with Tehran. A congressional vote in favour of Kirk-Menendez would at least make good on Obama’s unmet promise not to use talks as “an excuse for inaction”.

Above all, Netanyahu needs to speak because Israel cannot expect indefinite support from the US if it acts like a fretful and obedient client to a cavalier American patron.

The margin of Israel’s security is measured not by anyone’s love but by the respect of friends and enemies alike. By giving this speech, Netanyahu is demanding that respect. Irritating the President is a small price to pay for doing so.

Israel Labor's anti-Zionism would make Ben Gurion turn in his grave

From Israel's Voice 29 Jan 2015, by Dr. Martin Sherman:

 

Tzipi Livni speaks with Labor head Isaac Herzog in the Knesset. 

(photo credit:MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)

The term “Jewish State” is totally misguided – Isaac Herzog, April 2014

We, members of the People’s Council, representatives of the Jewish community of Eretz-Israel and of the Zionist movement…. hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel – Israel’s Declaration of Independence, May 1948

...Were Ben-Gurion to witness what is happening in the party he led to hegemonic status and historic achievements; were he to see his name and image exploited to promote an agenda antithetically opposed to the beliefs he held and the ethos he stood for, he would indeed have good reason to spin in his grave.

Over the last week or so there has been much critical discussion over the “pearls of wisdom” attributed to several Knesset candidates from what has been perversely dubbed the “Zionist Union” – the latest political cross-breed comprising the flaccid Labor Party, headed by Isaac “Buji” Herzog, and the fading Hatnua faction, ditched by Tzipi Livni.

... their remarks reflected sentiments which are antithetical to the Zionist ethos ..

Anti-Zionism, not post-Zionism
...a party that purports to be the standard-bearer of Zionism, with Ben-Gurion’s portrait displayed prominently on its website, 

• can be headed by a man who proclaims the term “Jewish state” to be “totally misguided”; while
• another prominent candidate on its candidates list can besmirch the national anthem as a “racist song”; 
• still another confesses to feeling uncomfortable with the term “Zionism”; 
• another calls on Israeli mothers not to send their sons to serve in the army; and 
• yet another declares brazenly that his “Palestinian identity” is stronger than his Israeli one.

It can be said, with considerable accuracy, that the unlikely and unseemly “androgynous hybrid” of the “Zionist Union” is – with the possible exception of the Arab-majority parties in the Knesset – the most anti-Zionist party to emerge on the Israeli political landscape in decades.

And there should be no mistake: 
This is not post-Zionism – it is anti-Zionism.

Indeed, I can recall no other party fielding a candidate in an eminently realistic position on its list, who not only calls for the annulment of the Law of Return, but also for a joint day of mourning to commemorate the “Nakba” and the Holocaust.

Mourning the survival of Jews
It is difficult to overstate the far-reaching gravity of these proposals.

After all, more than anything, perhaps, the Law of Return symbolizes the bond between the Jewish people and the Jewish state. To suggest that the law be annulled necessarily suggests annulling this bond and discontinuing the status of Israel, not only as the nation-state of the Jewish people but as a haven for Jews under threat across the world.

But even more egregious is the idea of combining the commemoration of the “Nakba” and the Holocaust, thus creating cognitive equivalence between the “Disaster” of the Arab military defeat in the 1948 War of Independence with the horrific genocide of European Jewry during World War II. After all, the Arab armies made little secret of the fact that had they not been defeated, they would have slaughtered all the Jews in lands they conquered.
Thus, to mourn this defeat as a disaster is to mourn the success of the Jews in preventing their massacre at the hands of the Arabs.

In other words, to promote the notion that the remembrance of both the Holocaust and the “Nakba” should be combined into a single day of mourning clearly conveys that not only the slaughter of Jews should be mourned – but also their survival.

Unacceptable linguistic permissiveness
...When one prominent candidate proclaims that in her eyes, Zionism is “dividing the budget equally between all citizens, taking care of the weak, solidarity in everyday life,” she is clearly confounding the doctrine of egalitarian social democracy with that of Jewish nationalism. However laudable (or objectionable) one might feel those aims are, if this were Zionism, there would be little to distinguish it from the multi-cultural political philosophy that has led to the political, economic and ideo-intellectual bankruptcy of much of Europe.

“Zionism” cannot mean all things to everybody and anybody. If the ability to communicate and to understand one another is not to collapse entirely, a “valley” cannot be dubbed a “hill.” Linguistic permissiveness cannot transform diametric opposites into the indistinguishably identical.

Even though some may dismiss the petition by Bayit Yehudi candidate Ronen Shoval to the Central Elections Committee last week to disallow the “Zionist Union” from using the term “Zionist,” claiming that this would mislead voters, as little more than an attention- getting gimmick, it is not hard to understand the motivation behind it.

The demise of Israeli patriotism?
But perhaps most disconcerting is that several distinguished military figures have not only chosen to identify with the “Zionist Union” party, but have refrained studiously from confronting the anti-Zionists in it, from objecting to their inclusion, or from at least publicly distancing themselves from the views expressed by them.

Thus, when men like Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin, former head of Military Intelligence, and Col. (res.) Omer Bar-Lev, former commander of an illustrious special forces unit, affiliate themselves with a party list of which almost a quarter is composed of individuals expounding views that negate the vision of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, they should be made aware of the consequences of their decision.

By making the political choices they have, they are implicitly legitimizing, and effectively propagating, the very views that undermine the ideas they spent risking life and limb to defend.

The discordance between the values which they fought so valiantly to protect and those articulated by their fellow party members is so striking that one cannot but wonder whether we are on the cusp of the demise of Israeli patriotism.

Biggest election scam ever
As bizarre as the attempt by the Herzog/ Livni duo to don the Zionist mantle might be, the endeavor to present themselves as the unblemished representatives of clean politics is no less ludicrous.

Last week, The Jerusalem Post’s Sarah Honig wrote a masterful exposé of Herzog’s shady past, particularly during Ehud Barak’s 1999 election campaign, in which he played a pivotal role. Then-state comptroller Eliezer Goldberg described the shenanigans orchestrated by Herzog as the “greatest election scam ever.”

As Honig notes: “In his January 2000 report Goldberg revealed mega-infractions for which the heaviest fine recorded for electioneering offenses was levied on Labor (NIS 13.8m.). The report exposed a shocking, unprecedented network of nonprofit organizations – some falsely masquerading as charities – deliberately set up to funnel funds unlawfully into Barak’s campaign coffers.”

Honig gave a biting account of the reticence of the legal establishment to seek punishment for the egregious misconduct. Rather than accept responsibility for his misdeeds, Herzog refused to cooperate with the authorities in their investigation, invoking his right to silence – almost inexplicably escaping any penalty for the “mega-infractions” he played a part in.

When, four years later, Likud MK Naomi Blumenthal invoked the right to silence, over a far less serious offense of paying for overnight hotel costs for several party activists, she was castigated by the judge, fined and sentenced to an eight month prison term – later commuted to community service.

Treacherous Tzipi
And then there is Tzipi Livni.

In any country where public life was conducted with the minimum of decorum and where the barest norms of decency and logic had any sway, Livni would have found herself long-since banished to the outer realms of oblivion, with all the ridicule and disgrace she so richly deserves.

She has proved, beyond any shadow of doubt, that no debacle nor disaster, no matter what scale or scope, no matter whether on the international or domestic level, is too calamitous for her to cause.

On her watch as foreign minister, despite the fawning, self-effacing attitudes she adopted toward the international community, Israel’s diplomatic standing was reduced to one of its lowest levels in recent decades. Together with Ehud Olmert’s government, she managed to fritter away unprecedented international support – including from some “moderate” Arab states – that Israel had at the start of the 2006 Second Lebanon War.

At the conclusion of that war, she was responsible for the appalling UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which – entirely predictably – allowed Hezbollah to reestablish its status, replenish its arsenal and quadruple the threat it poses to Israel.

Incredibly, for a considerable period after the war, Livni would proudly enumerate this disastrous agreement as one of her “achievements.”

Likewise, it was on her watch that the infamous Goldstone Report was foisted on Israel, following its response to Hamas’s Judeocidal barrage on the South during Operation Cast Lead.

Yet incredibly, after a virtually unbroken record of failure and betrayal, after losing all public support, Herzog has now coopted Livni as a candidate for the highest office in the land…

You really can’t make this stuff up!!

...As some will recall, she was elected to the Knesset on behalf of the Likud in 1999 and was an avid supporter of Arik Sharon’s vehement opposition to unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, as proposed by his defeated Labor opponent Amram Mitzna, and urged voters to oppose such a withdrawal because of the unacceptable risks it entailed.

Yet, when Sharon reneged on his electoral promises, she too embraced what she pledged to oppose. Livni, who until then was among the most hawkish members of the Likud, threw integrity to the wind, forsaking principle to preserve position, privilege and power – and evicted thousands of loyal, industrious Israeli citizens, transforming them into traumatized, homeless refugees.

Of course, one might have found some utilitarian justification in Livni’s stunning ideological U-turn, if the policy she embraced turned out to be a spectacular success. As became painfully apparent, however, unilateral withdrawal proved, almost immediately, a crushing failure, exposing her as devoid of moral principle and political wisdom.

Moreover, Livni abandoned not only ideological positions but political affiliations as well.

In 2005, she skipped from the Likud to Sharon’s Kadima, which later, under her “skillful” leadership, shrunk from being the largest party in the Knesset to the smallest.

Having abandoned the sinking ship of Kadima, she established a new party (or rather quasi-party), Hatnua, which after two years, fared so well that it was in grave danger of being unable to pass the minimum threshold for the coming Knesset election. So Livni once again jumped ship, abandoning most of her Hatnua travelers to grasp the political lifeline Labor leader Herzog threw her...

Herzog vs Herzog
...So in conclusion, let me provide a portrayal of the stark contrast between the views espoused by Isaac Herzog today and by his father, Chaim Herzog, who served as UN ambassador prior to his election as state president. The contrast could hardly be more striking.

As seen from the introductory excerpt, on the eve of Passover last year, when Jews celebrate their freedom, Herzog Jr. declared:

“The term ‘Jewish State’ is totally misguided,” adding “because it creates a feeling that one [i.e. the Jewish] nation has excessive rights.”

Herzog Sr., in addressing the UN General Assembly in 1975 to rebut the resolution equating Zionism with racism (an allegation that numerous “Zionist Union” members seem to endorse today), declared defiantly:

“The reestablishment of Jewish independence in Israel, after centuries of struggle to overcome foreign conquest and exile, is a vindication of the fundamental concepts of the equality of nations and of self-determination.
To question the Jewish people’s right to national existence and freedom is… to deny to the Jewish people the right accorded to every other people on this globe.”

How far the apple has fallen from the tree.

The Five-Point Israeli-Arab Peace Plan

From FrontPage Magazine, January 29, 2015 by Mordechai Nisan:

The Oslo theory and policy was tested and failed.

• Inasmuch as the Israeli-Palestinian War has not been resolved, and the Oslo Accords could not overcome the multiple obstacles on the path to peace; Considering the adamant Palestinian refusal to recognize the legitimacy of the Jewish state of Israel, while demanding massive refugee return, terrorizing Israelis and murdering them, and spewing out hate education;
• Conscious of the repressive discourse of peace with its agenda for Israeli capitulation and destruction that camouflages a wicked scheme paraded as a vision of peace;
• Noting that the United Nations, the European Union, and other international forums serve as diplomatic arenas for pro-Palestinian political insurgency;
• While observing the Middle East aflame with Islamic barbarism, turmoil and warfare;

It is therefore a worthy enterprise to propose a paradigm shift that will challenge people to reject the old toxic political mantras and examine peace-making in a realistic fashion:

[1] Peace among peoples and states in the Middle East is constrained by the historical, cultural and religious features of the region.
A utopian Western version of peace habitually ignores the persistence and longevity of tribal/clan/ethnic/religious identities and loyalties in this part of the world, where group conflicts are never resolved. The profound chasm in historical memories and political claims between Jews and Arabs, or Israelis and Palestinians, creates intractable conflict which can, at the most, be managed or contained. Talk of a final and permanent peace between Israelis and Palestinians is one of the more foolish and dangerous political ideas in human history.

[2] The State of Israel is a national entity resonating with the return of the Jewish people to its homeland and the renaissance of its cultural and political life.
Palestinian rejection of Israel is essentially a declaration of war that leaves the two sides locked in confrontation. All international attempts to de-legitimize the State of Israel, consistent with Hamas and the PLO drawing maps of Palestine without Israel, is hardly less than a genocidal campaign to eliminate the Jewish state and its inhabitants. Strengthening and highlighting the Jewish character of Israel will enrage Arabs, yet clarify that it is with this special State alone that peace can be reached – or war launched.

[3] The political and territorial scope of Israeli sovereignty requires exclusive Israeli rule from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River to assure the viability of the state and its durability over time.
Israel’s geo-strategic interests in the land of Israel preclude any Israeli withdrawal from any part of the land, which would de-stabilize the already precarious relations with the Palestinians and foment warfare in the future. Thus the present territorial-political status quo in the eighty kilometers from Tel Aviv to Jericho must be preserved in the interests of peace. A visibly vulnerable Israel, like an internationally abandoned one, will always be tempting prey for Arab aggression and resultant colossal suffering and destruction.

[4] Israeli rule in the area west of the Jordan River will not transform the state into a bi-national Jewish-Arab entity.
In essence, Israel’s Jewish national demographic profile, though robust and growing, can allow Palestinians in Judea and Samaria to enjoy autonomy, but neither sovereignty nor Israeli citizenship; at the same time, the doors to emigration and migration eastward are open. Negating Palestinian sovereignty in Judea and Samaria is not validated by the contention that there already are nineteen Arab states, but rather because a rogue/irredentist/Islamist Palestinian state would be at war with the Jewish state, exposed to a narrow porous coastline on the Mediterranean Sea.

[5] The Kingdom of Jordan, in fulfilling a partisan family and tribal ambition for close to a century, must be a central component of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
It is in Jordan that the Palestinians, already a majority of the population, can acquire national self-determination, along with other Palestinians from Judea/Samaria/Gaza and Lebanon who can be resettled there. Jordan as the Palestinian state provides a reasonable political element in the peace plan which accords with a Jewish state west of the River and a Palestinian state east of the River. In 1948 Jordan defined itself as the Arab successor state to Palestine, and now Palestine east of the Jordan River will be the replacement state to Hashemite Jordan.

Last Word: 
Deeply entrenched conventional pieties[, such as] 

• "territories for peace", 
• "the two-state solution", 
• "legitimate Palestinian rights", [and]
• "ending the occupation and dismantling the settlements" 

fill the hollow and hallowed political discourse. 

The campaign to bludgeon Israel into surrender and emasculation underpins all this diabolical cant.

“Iran Has Been Killing Americans For More Than Three Decades”

From The Tower, 30 Jan 2015, by TheTower.org Staff:

UK Senator Tom Cotton (R – Ark.) presented an overview of Iran’s record in targeting the United States and its citizens in an op-ed published today in The Wall Street Journal (Google link). After writing that “Iran has been killing Americans for more than three decades,” Cotton offered some examples.

In 1983 Iran helped finance and direct the bombing of the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut, killing hundreds of American military, diplomatic and intelligence personnel. Iran has also been implicated in the 1996 Khobar Tower bombings, which killed 19 American troops stationed in Saudi Arabia.
More recently and personally for me, Iran has been responsible for the killing and maiming of thousands of American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. During my tour in Baghdad leading an infantry platoon, Iran supplied the most advanced, most lethal roadside bombs used against coalition forces. My soldiers and I knew that Iranian-supplied bombs were the one thing our armored vehicles couldn’t withstand. All we could do was hope it wasn’t our day to hit one. My platoon was lucky; too many others were not.

Cotton also referenced Iran’s support for terror, noting that the State Department described it as the “the worst state sponsor of terrorism.”

Cotton made similar remarks yesterday (embedded below) at the Senate Banking Committee hearing on the Nuclear Free Iran Act of 2015.


[Photo: Senator Tom Cotton / YouTube ]

Deceptive Iran Must be Forced to Comply

From Business Insider, 29 Jan 2015, by Emanuele Ottolenghi*:

In his State of the Union last week, President Barack Obama warned Congress that the threat of new sanctions on Iran would “all but guarantee that diplomacy fails – alienating America from its allies; and ensuring that Iran starts up its nuclear program again.” 

To many in Washington, the belief that American intransigence would scuttle a nuclear deal with Iran is appealing — it means, after all, that greater US flexibility could yield a grand compromise with Tehran and forestall a slide to war. But it's a fundamentally flawed analysis.

Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif, Tehran's chief representative in ongoing nuclear talks, addresses the media

The Iranian nuclear file remains unresolved not due to American obduracy, but because of Iran’s consistent refusal to transparently and fully account for its illicit nuclear program.

Iran’s deception and denial go back three decades, to 1984, when at the height of the Iran-Iraq war the late Ayatollah Khomeini ordered the nuclear program jump-started.

Iran’s scientists had deserted the country in 1979 at the onset of the Islamic Revolution. The country’s new leaders did not see the need for a costly nuclear program. But with Iraqi missiles falling on Iranian cities and thousands of Iranian casualties from Iraqi chemical attacks, Khomeini summoned the scientists back.

The current international standoff may be traced to 2002, when Iranian dissidents exposed extensive clandestine nuclear activities at the Natanz uranium-enrichment facility and the Arak heavy water reactor, which could be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium. Iran’s nuclear infrastructure was much larger than the regime had ever admitted.

Tehran’s subsequent maneuvers eventually led the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in September 2005, to declare it in non-compliance with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The following year, the IAEA referred the Iran file to the United Nations Security Council, whose six subsequent resolutions have underscored the country’s unwavering defiance of the international community.

Much of the sanctions regime — starting with UN Security Council Resolution 1737 in March 2007 but since strengthened by additional UN resolutions along with US and European measures – aims to interdict continuing Iranian efforts to buy nuclear and missile technology.

Additional international concerns emanate from what the IAEA describes as the Iranian nuclear program’s “possible military dimensions.” These include, but are not limited to, a third clandestine enrichment facility, Fordow, which Iran built deep underground. Fordow's existence was revealed only after Western intelligence services detected it in 2009.

A security official stands in front of the Bushehr nuclear reactor, 

1,200 km (746 miles) south of Tehran, August 21, 2010.

Raheb Homavandi/REUTERS

Today, Iranian deception continues even as the country's diplomats proclaim that Islam and Iran’s Supreme Leader both prohibit nuclear weapons. 
... Iran’s actions belie these proclamations.

As my colleague Benjamin Weinthal recently reported, German Customs’ criminal investigation unit noted in November 2014 that more than two thirds of all its investigations in 2012 and 2013 involved Iranian procurement efforts for sanctioned goods.

In late 2013, a German court sentenced three Iranian nationals and one German to prison for procuring valves for the Arak reactor. 

In another case still pending in an Italian court, a US-owned company is being charged with trying to deliver industrial-sized water chillers to the Islamic Republic to be used in deep underground facilities for the development and production of weapons of mass destruction.

The US Department of the Treasury, for its part, has used existing sanctions four times in 2014 to target Iranian sanctions evasion networks. These networks have provided Tehran with illicit nuclear procurement, money laundering, and transshipment channels. Treasury has used its powers sparingly, however, and there is little evidence that Iran’s efforts to circumvent sanctions are abating. Instead, Iranian entities targeted by Western and UN sanctions continue to operate under new names.

No agreement can guarantee that Iran’s nuclear program will be peaceful unless it includes stringent limits on the country’s nuclear activities as well as intrusive verification mechanisms for many years to come. It will not be enough (in the words of Ronald Reagan) to ‘trust, but verify’ the mullah’s nuclear promises.

Only permanent limitations on the scope and size of Iran’s nuclear program – and a lengthy period of verifiable compliance – can restore the international confidence that Iran has so assiduously betrayed.

*Emanuele Ottolenghi is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and its Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance.

Mourning dead Jews is easy. And cheap.

From The Washington Post, 28 Jan 2015, by Charles Krauthammer:

Amid the ritual expressions of regret and the pledges of “never again” on Tuesday’s 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, a bitter irony was noted: Anti-Semitism has returned to Europe. With a vengeance.

It has become routine. If the kosher-grocery massacre in Paris hadn’t happened in conjunction with Charlie Hebdo, how much worldwide notice would it have received? As little as did the murder of a rabbi and three children at a Jewish school in Toulouse. As little as did the terror attack that killed four at the Jewish Museum in Brussels.

The rise of European anti-Semitism is, in reality, just a return to the norm. For a millennium, virulent Jew-hatred — persecution, expulsions, massacres — was the norm in Europe until the shame of the Holocaust created a temporary anomaly wherein anti-Semitism became socially unacceptable.

The hiatus is over. Jew-hatred is back, recapitulating the past with impressive zeal. Italians protesting Gaza handed out leaflets calling for a boycott of Jewish merchants. As in the 1930s. A widely popular French comedian has introduced a variant of the Nazi salute. In Berlin, Gaza brought out a mob chanting, “Jew, Jew, cowardly pig, come out and fight alone!” Berlin, mind you.

European anti-Semitism is not a Jewish problem, however. It’s a European problem, a stain, a disease of which Europe is congenitally unable to rid itself.

From the Jewish point of view, European anti-Semitism is a sideshow. The story of European Jewry is over. It died at Auschwitz. Europe’s place as the center and fulcrum of the Jewish world has been inherited by Israel. Not only is it the first independent Jewish commonwealth in 2,000 years. It is, also for the first time in 2,000 years, the largest Jewish community on the planet.

The threat to the Jewish future lies not in Europe but in the Muslim Middle East, today the heart of global anti-Semitism, a veritable factory of anti-Jewish literature, films, blood libels and calls for violence, indeed for another genocide.

The founding charter of Hamas calls not just for the eradication of Israel but for the killing of Jews everywhere. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah welcomes Jewish emigration to Israel — because it makes the killing easier: “If Jews all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.’’ And, of course, Iran openly declares as its sacred mission the annihilation of Israel.

For America, Europe and the moderate Arabs, there are powerful reasons having nothing to do with Israel for trying to prevent an apocalyptic, fanatically anti-Western clerical regime in Tehran from getting the bomb: Iranian hegemony, nuclear proliferation (including to terror groups) and elemental national security.

For Israel, however, the threat is of a different order. Direct, immediate and mortal.

The sophisticates cozily assure us not to worry. Deterrence will work. Didn’t it work against the Soviets? Well, just 17 years into the atomic age, we came harrowingly close to deterrence failure and all-out nuclear war. Moreover, godless communists anticipate no reward in heaven. Atheists calculate differently from jihadists with their cult of death. Name one Soviet suicide bomber.

Former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, known as a moderate, once characterized tiny Israel as a one-bomb country. He acknowledged Israel’s deterrent capacity but noted the asymmetry: “Application of an atomic bomb would not leave anything in Israel, but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world.” Result? Israel eradicated, Islam vindicated. So much for deterrence.

And even if deterrence worked with Tehran, that’s not where the story ends. Iran’s very acquisition of nukes would set off a nuclear arms race with half a dozen Muslim countries from Turkey to Egypt to the Gulf states — in the most unstable part of the world. A place where you wake up in the morning to find a pro-American Yemeni government overthrown by rebels whose slogan is “God is Great. Death to America. Death to Israel. Damn the Jews. Power to Islam.”

The idea that some kind of six-sided deterrence would work in this roiling cauldron of instability the way it did in the frozen bipolarity of the Cold War is simply ridiculous.

The Iranian bomb is a national security issue, an alliance issue and a regional Middle East issue. But it is also a uniquely Jewish issue because of Israel’s situation as the only state on earth overtly threatened with extinction, facing a potential nuclear power overtly threatening that extinction.

On the 70th anniversary of Auschwitz, mourning dead Jews is easy. And, forgive me, cheap. Want to truly honor the dead? Show solidarity with the living — Israel and its 6 million Jews. Make “never again” more than an empty phrase. It took Nazi Germany seven years to kill 6 million Jews. It would take a nuclear Iran one day.