-
JPost Middle East- Analysis: Why has the West Bank been quiet? January 6, 2009
- Lebanon doubts Hizbullah will open second front January 6, 2009
- UNSC to meet on Gaza resolution January 6, 2009
- Hamas opens hospital for gunmen January 6, 2009
- Sarkozy urges Assad to press for truce January 6, 2009
- ynet - Updates for RSS
- Bush adviser: Iran, Pakistan key Obama challenges January 7, 2009
- Judge to ponder whether Bernard Madoff dangerous January 7, 2009
- Rice says US supports Mubarak proposal on Gaza January 7, 2009
- Saddam wouldn't have allowed Israel's Gaza raid, says aide January 7, 2009
- UK voices support for Egyptian ceasefire initiative January 7, 2009
- Haaretz.com - News
- Rice: U.S. backs Egypt proposal for Gaza cease-fire January 7, 2009U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Tuesday Washington backed a proposal by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. ...
- ANALYSIS / Israel must double, triple, quadruple its medical aid to Gaza January 7, 2009A few days ago, Physicians for Human Rights began soliciting $700,000 in donations for hospitals in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli humanitarian organization also provided a detailed list of the medical equipment Gaza lacks, including portable monitors, respirators, ultrasound and X-ray machines, wheelchairs, needles, dressings, catheters, oxygen, medical gases, endo-tracheal tubes, screws and plates for shattered limbs, and surgical gloves. According to PHR, Gaza also has a severe shortage of intensive-care beds, which cost about $50,000 apiece. Moreover, many Palestinian ambulances are out of commission. ...
- As truce efforts grow, Israel mulls expanding Gaza ground op January 7, 2009Israel's political leadership will meet in Tel Aviv on Wednesday morning to discuss expanding the ground offensive in the Gaza Strip at a time when most of the aims of the operation have been met. ...
- Venezuelan President Chavez: Gaza operation is a Palestinian 'holocaust' January 7, 2009Venezuela expelled the ambassador to Israel on Tuesday in protest over the offensive in Gaza only hours after leftist President Hugo Chavez called the attacks a Palestinian "holocaust." ...
- Israel to establish 'humanitarian corridor' for Gaza Strip January 7, 2009Israel will set up a "humanitarian corridor" to counter a crisis caused by its offensive in the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office ...
- Rice: U.S. backs Egypt proposal for Gaza cease-fire January 7, 2009
Israel won’t allow a nuclear Iran
Israel will not allow Iran to attain nuclear capability and if time begins to run out, Jerusalem will not hesitate to take whatever means necessary to prevent Iran from achieving its nuclear goals, the government has recently decided in a special discussion.
According to the Israeli daily Ma’ariv, whether the United States and Western countries succeed in thwarting the Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions diplomatically, through sanctions, or whether a US strike on Iran is eventually decided upon, Jerusalem has begun preparing for a separate, independent military strike.
Labor MK Ephraim Sneh.
So far, Israel has not received American authorization to use US-controlled Iraqi airspace, nor has the defense establishment been successful in securing the purchase of advanced US-made warplanes which could facilitate an Israeli strike.
The Americans have offered Israel permission to use a global early warning radar system, implying that the US is pushing Israel to settle for defensive measures only.
Because of Israel’s lack of strategic depth, Jerusalem has consistently warned in recent years that it will not settle for a ‘wait and see’ approach, merely retaliating to an attack, but will rather use preemption to prevent any risk of being hit in the first place.
Ephraim Sneh a veteran Labor MK who has recently left the party, has reportedly sent a document to both US presidential candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama. The eight-point document states that “there is no government in Jerusalem that would ever reconcile itself to a nuclear Iran. When it is clear Iran is on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons, an Israeli military strike to prevent this will be seriously considered.”
According to Ma’ariv, Sneh offered the two candidates the “sane, cheap and the only option that does not necessitate bloodshed.” To prevent Iran’s nuclear aspirations, Sneh wrote, “real” sanctions applied by the US and Europe were necessary. A total embargo in spare parts for the oil industry and a total boycott of Iranian banks would promptly put an end to the regime, which is already pressured by a sloping economy and would be toppled by the Iranian people if they have outside assistance, he said.
The window of opportunity Sneh suggests is a year and a half to two years, until 2010.
Sneh also visited Switzerland and Austria last week in an attempt to lobby them against the Iranian threat. Both countries have announced massive long-term investments in Iranian gas and oil fields for the next decade.
“Talk of the Jewish Holocaust and Israel’s security doesn’t impress these guys,” Sneh said wryly.
Hearing his hosts speak of their future investments, Sneh replied quietly “it’s a shame, because Ido will light all this up.” He was referring to Maj. Gen. Ido Nehushtan, the recently appointed IAF commander and the man most likely to be the one to orchestrate Israel’s attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, should this become a necessity.
“Investing in Iran in 2008,” Sneh told his Austrian hosts, “is like investing in the Krupp steelworks in 1938, it’s a high risk investment.” The Austrians, according to Sneh, turned pale.
In related news, a top official said Friday that Iran had increased the number of operating centrifuges at its uranium enrichment plant to 4,000.
Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Reza Sheikh Attar, who visited the Natanz plant last week, said that Iran was preparing to install even more centrifuges, though he did not offer a timeframe.
“Right now, nearly 4,000 centrifuges are operating at Natanz,” Attar told the state news agency IRNA. “Currently, 3,000 other centrifuges are being installed.”
Meanwhile, the pan-Arabic Al Kuds al Arabi reported Friday that Iran had equipped Hizbullah with longer range missiles than those it possessed before the Second Lebanon War and had also improved the guerrilla group’s targeting capabilities.
According to the report, which The Jerusalem Post could not verify independently, Hizbullah was planning a massive rocket onslaught on targets reaching deep into Israel’s civilian underbelly in case Israel launches an attack on Iran.
AP contributed to this report
WHO IS JOE BIDEN?
First, by all accounts, Biden is a wonderful family man who has endured a terrible personal tragedy. In 1972, just before Christmas and just weeks after being elected to his first term in the United States Senate, Biden’s wife and only daughter were killed in a horrific car crash caused by a drunk driver.
“Five years after this [trauma], no one man deserves one great love, let alone two,” Biden later recalled in an interview with David Brody of CBN. “I met and married my wife of 30 years who actually put my life back together again and put my family back together again. But you know, when something like that happens to you. It’s like there’s a big black hole in your chest, and you feel like you’re being sucked in to that black hole. You feel like there isn’t anything that will ever get better again in your life. But my mom has an expression, she said God sends no cross that you cannot bear, and she said, I remember literally the week of the accident her saying ‘Joey, out of everything horrible something good will come if you look hard enough.’ And I thought that was the cruelest thing in the world someone could say, but it’s true.
“Obviously I wished it never, ever, ever happened, but my sons and I, it’s like a steel belt that runs through our chest connecting us. My family is so strong, and I really believe and my wife Jill of 30 years believes that Neilia my wife, is looking down on us. You just never, it never leaves, but there comes a time and it happens earlier than you think, there comes a time when the memory brings a smile to your lips rather than a tear to your eyes. And so many people have gone through tough stuff, but I had family.
“When I went through it I had people helping me. It has taught me that I have such intense admiration for people who are alone and these things happen to and they fight. There are so many people right outside this library, this morning got up, put one foot in front of the other, dealing with crisis that were similar to mine and they do. And they do it for their kids and they do it for their family and they do it without the kind of help I had. I was really lucky. I just had an awful lot of people to help me and they were my family. I’m not very good talking about it as you can see, but I know there is a continuum. I know that God is — there’s a giant piece of my deceased daughter, a giant piece of my deceased wife that is in me and in my children and in my wife.”
Despite such immense pain, Biden emerged as a kind, funny, friendly and personally engaging leader, who has built strong personal and professional relationships with Republicans such as John McCain, among others. To his credit, he has been a good friend of Israel over the years. He has been good on expanding democracies around the world. He was also right on the Georgia crisis, having long encouraged the expansion of NATO to include fledgling democracies.
I like Joe Biden. I like his love of family and country. I like that I can disagree with him but would still enjoy a good policy discussion over dinner. But I do disagree with him profoundly on most important issues. He is, after all, the third most liberal man in the Senate, according to National Journal. And when it comes to most epicenter issues, he is just plain wrong. He reminds me in many ways of President Jimmy Carter in the mid- to late-1970s — kind, friendly, warm, engaging, but someone who often misunderstands the nature and threat of evil, particularly in the Middle East.
Consider a few of Biden’s positions:
* Voted against the Gulf war in 1991 to liberate Kuwait
* Voted against “the surge” in Iraq in 2007 to defeat the Jihadists [Told the Boston Globe in the summer of 2007: "The surge isn't going to work either tactically or strategically."]
* Opposes “regime change” in Iran. ["Instead of regime change, we need to focus on conduct change." -- speech on Iran at the Iowa City Public Library on December 3, 2007]
* Believes in direct negotiations with Ahmadinejad
* Voted against a bill to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a “terrorist” organization
* Strongly opposes taking preemptive military action to neutralize Iran’s nuclear weapons threat and has threatened to impeach President Bush if he bombs Iran
* Does not see Ahmadinejad’s End Times theology as a serious problem. ["My concern is not that a nuclear Iran some day would be moved by messianic fervor to use a nuclear weapon as an Armageddon device and commit national suicide in order to hasten the return of the Hidden Imam. My worry is that the fear of a nuclear Iran could spark an arms race in the Middle East, with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, and others joining in." -- speech on Iran at the Iowa City Public Library on December 3, 2007]
* “In 1979, he shared Carter’s starry-eyed belief that the fall of the shah in Iran and the advent of the ayatollahs represented progress for human rights,” writes Amir Taheri, the former editor of one of the largest newspapers in Tehran and a respected analyst of the current regime. “Throughout the hostage crisis, as US diplomats were daily paraded blindfolded in front of television cameras and threatened with execution, he opposed strong action against the terrorist mullahs and preached dialogue….For more than a decade, Biden has adopted an ambivalent attitude towards the Islamic Republic in Tehran, now emerging as the chief challenger to US interests in the Middle East. Biden’s links with pro-Tehran lobbies in the US and his support for “unconditional dialogue” with the mullahs echo Obama’s own wrong-headed promise to circumvent the current multilateral efforts by seeking direct US-Iran talks, excluding the Europeans as well as Russia and China.”
The Joshua Fund
18950 Base Camp Road
Monument, Colorado 80132-8009
Abdullah, Medvedev discuss cooperation
Russian-Jordanian cooperation received a “very strong push” with a visit conducted by King Abdullah II of Jordan to Moscow, the London-based al-Hayat reported Saturday.
The Jordanian king arrived Friday for an official visit to Russia after being invited by President Dmitry
Medvedev meets Assad
Medvedev. During his two-day stay Abdullah met with Russian Premier Vladimir Putin and discussed a number of subjects with him.
Russian sources were quoted by al-Hayat as saying that both sides are willing to sign a new collaboration agreement.
On Friday Abdullah toured a Russian military camp near Moscow, where he was treated to a presentation of Russia’s advanced weaponry. As part of the show, Abdullah watched the launching of a shoulder-held RPG-32 anti-missile rocket, still in experimental stages.
According to the report, the two countries plan to construct a model similar to the experimental rocket in Jordan. Jordanian officials said the rocket would provide for the country’s military needs and that Jordan would receive product marketing rights in the Middle East and other regions.
The Jordanian king also plans to travel to the Black Sea coastal town of Sochi, where a meeting with Medvedev is scheduled for Sunday. Recently Medvedev visited Sochi in order to meet with Syrian President Bashar Assad.
During the meeting, Assad offered Medvedev the right to deploy Russian missiles within Syrian territory, in response to US military involvement in Poland.
The Syrian president may have been referring to the Russian S-300 anti-plane missiles,
King Abdullah II
which could threaten US aircrafts in the Middle East. The missiles, placed on Syrian territory, would also make an Israeli air strike more difficult.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Thursday that his country is considering fulfilling Assad’s bid for new Russian artillery, but did not specify the type of weaponry Damascus has asked to buy.
Russia’s Itar-Tas news agency reported Lavrov said the weapons were defense related, and “would not harm the region’s strategic balance.” The foreign minister spoke about the matter after a meeting with Medvedev and Assa
NATO: Russia halts military cooperation
Western alliance says Russia’s Defense Ministry decided ‘to halt international military cooperation events between Moscow, NATO countries’
Associated Press
Russia has halted all military cooperation with NATO, the Western alliance said Thursday, in the latest sign of East-West tension over the invasion of Georgia.
NATO spokeswoman Carmen Romero said the alliance had received notification through military channels that Russia’s Defense Ministry had taken a decision “to halt international military cooperation events between Russia and NATO countries until further instructions.”
She said NATO “takes note” of the decision, but had no further reaction.
Rice Nato headquarters
On Tuesday, NATO foreign ministers said they would make further ties with Russia dependent on Moscow making good on a pledge to pull its troops back to pre-conflict positions in Georgia. However, they stopped short of calling an immediate halt to all cooperation.
Under a 2002 agreement that set up the NATO-Russia Council, the former Cold War foes began several cooperation projects. They include sharing expertise to combat heroin trafficking out of Afghanistan, developing battlefield anti-missile technology, joint exercises and help with rescue at sea.
Romero said she was unaware of any specific events under the cooperation agreement scheduled before early September.
NATO itself decided last week to suspend plans for a Russian warship to join NATO counterterrorism patrols in the Mediterranean Sea, deciding it was inappropriate in the wake of the eruption of fighting in Georgia.
Ahmadinejad says Israel will be removed soon
Associated Press
Published: 08.20.08, 19:55 / Israel News
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is calling Israel a “germ of corruption” that will be “removed soon.”
The comments were posted Wednesday on his presidential website. They appear to be part of an effort to defuse criticism by hard-liners over recent remarks made by a high-level official.
Last week, Iranian media quoted Vice President Esfandiar Rahim Mashai as saying Iranians were “friends of all people in the world - even Israelis.”
The comments were rare from a government official in Iran, whose president regularly calls for Israel’s destruction.
They sparked domestic criticism of Mashai, with some officials calling for his resignation.
In 2005, Ahmadinejad said he believed Israel should be “wiped off the map.”
Syria hopes to expand military ties with Russia
Syrian president says Russia’s conflict with Georgia underlines need for Moscow and Damascus to tighten their defense cooperation
Syrian President Bashar Assad said on Wednesday he will use a visit to Russia to expand military ties with Moscow, whose arms sales to the Middle Eastern state have angered Israel and the United States.
He told Russia’s Kommersant newspaper that Russia’s conflict with Georgia, in which Moscow says Georgia used Israeli-supplied equipment, underlined the need for Russia and Syria to tighten their defense cooperation.
Assad is expected to have talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev during his visit this week.
“Of course military and technical cooperation is the main issue. Weapons purchases are very important,” he said. “I think we should speed it up. Moreover, the West and Israel continue to put pressure on Russia.”
Russia’s military said this week Israel supplied military vehicles and explosives to Georgia and helped train its army.
Israel says it does not supply arms to other countries as a government but private firms conduct equipment sales and training with the defense ministry’s approval.
Assad said Israel’s role would only encourage countries like Syria – a US foe and ally of Iran – to step up cooperation with Russia.
“I think that in Russia and in the world everyone is now aware of Israel’s role and its military consultants in the Georgian crisis,” Assad told Kommersant.
“And if before in Russia there were people who thought these forces can be friendly then now I think no one thinks that way.”
Israel has long urged Russia not to sell weapons to Syria. Damascus was a Moscow ally during the Cold War and is now key to the Kremlin’s ambitions to reviving its Soviet-era role in the region.
The West and NATO have sharply criticized Russia over its military action in Georgia this month. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Russia was turning into an outlaw in the conflict and accused Moscow of targeting civilians in Georgia.
The conflict between Georgia and Russia erupted when Georgia tried to re-impose control over the breakaway, pro-Russian South Ossetia region earlier this month. Russia responded with a counter-attack that overwhelmed Georgian forces.
Russia then moved troops beyond South Ossetia and a second separatist region, Abkhazia, and deep into Georgian territory.
Again Joel C. Rosenberg is right!
Let’s pray for Israel and his goverment
Published: 08.20.08, 10:29 / Israel News
Russia claims pullback but forces move other way
Is Joel C. Rosenberg right?
Russia said Monday it had begun withdrawing from the conflict zone in Georgia, but it held fast to key positions and sent some of its troops in the opposite direction - closer to the Georgian capital.
A Russian soldier inspects weapons seized from the Georgian military, in Tskhinvali, South Ossetia.
Photo: AP
Russian troops and vehicles roamed freely around the strategically located central city of Gori, Russian forces appeared to blow up the runway at a military base in the western town of Senaki.
There were few signs Russia was following the terms of a cease-fire to end the short war, which has driven tensions between Russia and the West to some of their highest levels since the breakup of the Soviet Union.
In Paris, the French foreign minister said it appeared “we are witnessing the start” of a Russian withdrawal, but warned France would call an emergency meeting of the European Council to talk about consequences for Russia if that was not the case.
But US defense and military officials said they had seen no significant movement yet of Russian troops withdrawing from Georgia.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on her way to an emergency meeting of NATO foreign ministers, said Russia was playing a “very dangerous game and perhaps one the Russians want to reconsider.”
She said the United States and its allies would not allow Russia to draw a “new line” through Europe and intimidate former Soviet republics and former satellite states.
The foreign ministers were set to meet Tuesday in Brussels, Belgium, to consider whether to go ahead with upcoming activities planned with Russia, from military exercises to diplomatic meetings.
The European Union-brokered peace plan signed by both Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili calls for both sides to pull forces back to the positions they held before fighting broke out Aug. 7. Medvedev had told French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Sunday that Russian troops would begin pulling back on Monday, but stopped short of promising they would return to Russia.
Russia sent its tanks and troops into Georgia after Georgia cracked down on the separatist, pro-Russian province of South Ossetia. Fighting has also flared in a second breakaway region, Abkhazia.
In Moscow, the deputy chief of the Russian general staff, Col.-Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, told a briefing that “today, according to the peace plan, the withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers and reinforcements has begun” and said forces were leaving Gori.
But Russian tanks and troops roamed freely around the city and made forays toward the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, 55 miles to the southeast. Russia also kept control of the critical highway that slices through Georgia’s midsection.
AP reporters saw four Russian armored personnel carriers, each carrying about 15 men, rolling from Gori to Igoeti, a crossroads town even closer to Tbilisi, passing Georgian soldiers who sat by the roadside.
The Russians moved into Igoeti then turned off onto a side road. As the Russian vehicles rolled past a group of Georgian soldiers and policemen, one swerved and scraped a new Georgian police car. The Georgians looked down at their fingernails.
US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were discussing intelligence reports, said at least one Russian battalion equipped with more than a dozen SS-21 missile launchers had moved into South Ossetia, within range of Tbilisi. Nogovitsyn disputed the claim.
The RIA-Novosti news agency reported that the leader of South Ossetia, Eduard Kokoity, asked Russia on Monday to establish a permanent base there.
Nogovitsyn said the Russian troops were pulling back to South Ossetia, but the boundaries of the Russian presence remained unclear. He said “troops should not be in the territory of Georgia,” but it was unclear whether that excluded patrols.
Russian troops were restricting access to Gori, where shops were shut and people milled around on the central square.
“The city is a cold place now. People are fearful,” said Nona Khizanishvili, 44, who fled Gori a week ago for an outlying village and returned Monday, trying to reach her son in Tbilisi.
Georgia’s Rustavi-2 television showed footage of a Russian armored vehicle smashing through a group of Georgian police cars barricading the road to Gori on Monday. One of the cars was dragged along the street by the Russian armor. Georgian police stood by without even raising their guns as the Russian vehicle crushed through the roadblock.
In Senaki, a series of explosions were heard from the military base in the afternoon. Later, three separate blasts that appeared to destroy the airport runway shook the leaves on trees more than a mile away.
Georgian Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili said Russian forces had blown up the runway. There was no confirmation from Russian military officials.
Earlier, Russian troops had allowed displaced people to get to the base to retrieve their belongings. Cars emerged loaded with goods, including televisions and refrigerators.
A planned exchange of prisoners captured during the fighting fell through, with each sides blaming the other. It was not clear how many prisoners were to be exchanged. Georgian officials another attempt could take place Tuesday.
In Vladikavkaz, near the border with Georgia, Medvedev gave medals to 30 soldiers and servicemen involved in the conflict. He called them heroes and said they had fought “a cowardly aggression.
“I am sure that such a well conducted, effective peacemaking operation aimed at protecting our citizens and other people will be among the most glorious deeds of the Russian military,” Medvedev said.
While Western leaders have called Russia’s response disproportionate, Medvedev repeated Russian accusations of genocide.
“The world realized that even now there are political freaks who were ready to kill innocent people for the sake of political fashions and who compensated for their own stupidity by eliminating a whole nation,” he said.
An Associated Press cameraman was slightly injured outside Gori after four men in camouflage, possibly from an Ossetian militia, pulled up in a car and told him to stop filming.
When the cameraman resisted, the driver produced a pistol and started shooting at the ground. The cameraman, who sustained light ricochet wounds to his legs, handed over the cassette.
The Pentagon said that up to five C-130 aircraft are expected to fly into Georgia Tuesday with supplies, and that three had landed Monday as part of the relief effort. In addition to food, medical aid, tents and bedding, the U.S. is sending forklifts to help unload and move the supplies.
The United Nations refugee agency said more than 158,000 people had been displaced by the conflict, most of them within Georgia.
“I think the Russians will pull out, but will damage Georgia strongly,” said Givi Sikharulidze, who lives in Tbilisi. “Georgia will survive, but Russia has lost its credibility in the eyes of the world.”
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
TwitterCounter
-
Add / follow
-
