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Prepared for the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs | ||||||||
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Friday, November 20, 2009 | ||||||
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In-Depth Issues:
Major Hasan's Islamist Life - Daniel Pipes (FrontPageMagazine)
Israel, Egypt Squeeze Gaza Tunnel Business - Nidal al-Mughrabi (Reuters)
Iranians and Saudis Fight a Proxy War in Yemen - Ryan Mauro
(Pajamas Media)
New Report on Palestinian Internet Use - Oded Yaron (Ha'aretz)
Fighting Old and New Anti-Semites on Campus - Manfred Gerstenfeld
(Institute for Global Jewish Affairs)
See also Israel Campus Beat (Conference of Presidents-Israel on Campus Coalition-Jerusalem Center)
Mendel Kaplan Dead at 73 (Ha'aretz)
Search Key Links Media Contacts Back Issues Fair Use/Privacy |
News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
The U.S. and five other world powers will meet in Brussels on Friday to discuss what steps could be taken against Tehran for its refusal to accept a deal aimed at resolving the dispute over its uranium enrichment program. Hard-liners in Tehran have stymied a deal reached in Geneva on Oct. 1 that would have stalled Iran's ability to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon. Iran has raised various alternatives that the West considers unacceptable. (Washington Post) See also Israel Urging Iran Sanctions - Herb Keinon Following Iran's rejection of the latest international effort to prevent it from building nuclear weapons, Israel is urging the international community to impose sanctions aimed at denying Tehran any nuclear fuel cycle capabilities. Behind the scenes, Israel is arguing that Tehran's refusal to allow the export of most of its low-enriched uranium demonstrates that it wants to preserve that stockpile for non-peaceful purposes. Furthermore, Iran's failure to come clean about its Qom enrichment facility, buried deep inside a mountain and intended to hold 3,000 centrifuges, underlines its failure to act within legal international provisions. As a consequence, Israel believes, Iran should be penalized by the UN Security Council. It should be prevented from putting the Qom facility to any enrichment use. Moreover, the international community should insist on the cessation of all enrichment and all plutonium production. If more sanctions cannot be imposed via the UN because of insufficient support, Israel argues that they should be applied as soon as possible by a coalition of the willing. (Jerusalem Post) See also Iran Dissident Seeks More American Pressure on Regime - Jay Solomon Mohsen Makhmalbaf, spokesman for Iran's main opposition movement, called for President Obama to increase his public support for Iranian democrats and intensify financial pressure on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Makhmalbaf, who was the campaign spokesman for Iranian presidential challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi, said he believes the current Iranian leadership is incapable of cutting a deal with the West over its nuclear program. (Wall Street Journal) The Obama administration is shifting the focus of its Iran policy from talk to sanctions, but the prospect of winning early international support for toughened new penalties appears dim. Equally problematic is finding a set of sanctions that would have a significant impact on Iran's pursuit of an atom bomb. While diplomacy has been unsuccessful so far, it may improve the administration's chances on sanctions by demonstrating to the Europeans, Chinese and others that Washington has at least tried to find an accommodation with Iran. "Many of them are still instinctively against sanctions, but Iranian intransigence has put them in a bind," said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. (AP) Four years after cartoons of the prophet Muhammad set off violent protests across the Muslim world, Islamic nations are mounting a campaign for an international treaty to ban blasphemy that puts them on a collision course with free speech laws in the West. Such a treaty would require countries to limit free speech if it risks seriously offending religious believers. "Some claim that the best way to protect the freedom of religion is to implement so-called anti-defamation policies that would restrict freedom of expression and the freedom of religion," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said. "I strongly disagree." The U.S. is worried by the Islamic Conference campaign. Behind the scenes it has been lobbying hard to quash the proposal, dispatching a senior U.S. diplomat to Geneva last month for talks described as akin to trench warfare. (AP) 241 U.S. servicemen were killed in the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983, in what many consider the first major terrorist attack against the U.S. In 2007, a federal judge ruled that Iran was liable for $2.65 billion in damages to be shared by 150 families seeking restitution. But now, the Obama administration is going to court to try to block payments from Iranian assets that the families' lawyers want seized, contending that it would jeopardize sensitive negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. Despite legislation passed by Congress to make it possible to sue foreign governments that sponsor terrorism, in a filing in federal court, the Justice Department is arguing that giving the money to the victims "can have significant, detrimental impact on our foreign relations, as well as the reciprocal treatment of the United States and its extensive overseas property holdings." Over the years, Iran, which since 1984 has been designated a state sponsor of terrorism by the U.S. government, has been found liable for nearly $10 billion in damages for attacks on Americans attributed to the Lebanese Hizbullah and Palestinian terror groups including Hamas and Islamic Jihad that the U.S. says are financed and trained by Iran. (Boston Globe) News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
Israeli President Shimon Peres strongly opposes the new American demand to stop construction in the neighborhood of Gilo in Jerusalem. "There is no doubt that the Gilo neighborhood is within Israel's sovereignty and one cannot alter the realities of life presently in this place." (Yisrael Ha-Yom-Hebrew, 20Nov09) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is interested in a final-status agreement and not an interim one, if and when negotiations with the Palestinian Authority resume. Netanyahu said this week that if there was "courageous leadership" on the Palestinian side, a resumption of negotiations could lead to a final peace agreement, and that this was preferable in his mind to an interim agreement based on a Palestinian state within temporary borders. (Jerusalem Post) Khaled Mashaal, head of the Hamas political bureau in Damascus, said on Nov. 12: "We will not recognize Israel, we will not give up the resistance, we cling to every inch of Palestinian soil, other statements are political maneuvers." "Most of Hamas' funds and efforts are invested in the resistance and military preparations....We are intent on the resistance." Mashaal's remarks reflect Hamas' true priorities, the most important of which is rebuilding its military infrastructure in Gaza in preparation for the renewal of military-terrorist attacks against Israel, instead of relieving the distress of the Palestinian population. (Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center) Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis (Best of U.S., UK, and Israel):
David Makovsky, director of the Project on the Middle East Peace Process at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said in Toronto last week that Iran remains an existential threat to Israel. But he did not foresee an imminent Israeli strike aimed at degrading its nuclear capability. Makovsky noted that Iran appears to be "playing games," "making promises" and "stretching things out." Israel and the U.S. are onside when it comes to addressing the Iranian desire for nuclear weapons - for now. The U.S. appears to be pursuing a three-phase strategy of engagement/negotiations, punitive sanctions and a military option as a last resort, he said. "I think there's a high level of appreciation in the West that if phases one and two fail, phase three is inevitable, whether the U.S. favors it or not." Turning to the Obama administration's efforts to pressure Israel to freeze settlements, Makovsky said the administration is re-evaluating its Mideast policy, and he expected it to return to a more familiar approach that is less confrontational. "The real story," Makovsky said, "is the convergence of interests of Israel and the Palestinian Authority to ensure that what happened in Gaza [a Hamas takeover] does not come to a theater near you." (Canadian Jewish News) Mahmoud Abbas has reverted to an old political trick by saying he will resign and not run for re-election, and he only accentuates his own weaknesses and the dysfunctionalities of the Palestinian national institutions he heads when he engages in silly charades like his current tour of Palestinian towns and villages where the multitudes demand that he remain in power. The last thing the Palestinians need now is to be reminded that they are on track to become yet another Arab security state with a leader for life who basks in hero worship and personality cults and faces no serious forms of accountability. The Palestinians need honesty, humility, consensus-building and clarity from their leaders, and Abbas gives them none of these. (Daily Star-Lebanon) The Palestinian Authority is reportedly seeking international support for issuing another unilateral declaration of independence (UDI). This would not be the first declaration of "independence" the Palestinians have issued. In 1948, the Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini declared the independence of Palestine. In 1988, the Palestinian National Council issued a declaration of a state of Palestine. The Palestinians did not attain independence in 1948 or in 1988 and are unlikely to attain independence now if the PA goes ahead with another UDI. Over 100 states recognized "Palestine" in 1988. However, it lacks some of the most essential elements of statehood including effective control over its territory. The EU and the U.S. have cautioned Abbas from prematurely issuing a UDI. And their support is crucial. (Guardian-UK) Associate Professor Matthew Bunn, lead investigator for the Managing the Atom program at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, argues in a new policy paper that a new round of negotiations with Iran has virtually zero chance of getting Iran to stop all enrichment of uranium, however tough the sanctions become. Iran already has 8,000 centrifuges in place, so insisting on zero centrifuges would all but ensure there is no deal - raising the chances of a military showdown. Bunn says the best alternative is a deal that would allow Iran very limited enrichment in exchange for full transparency and strict controls on Iran's nuclear program. That would fulfill the ultimate Western goal of ensuring Iran does not pursue a nuclear weapons program. (Boston Globe) Read the Report: Beyond Zero Enrichment: Suggestions for an Iranian Nuclear Deal - Matthew Bunn (Belfer Center-Kennedy School-Harvard University) A UN "fact-finding report" written under a mandate provided by the UN Human Rights Council, which is dominated by members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (Libya, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan, Egypt, etc.), indicts the entire Jewish nation on false charges of "war crimes," deliberate killing and disproportionate force. Most of the Goldstone report's evidence repeats the claims and publications of more than 50 so-called civil society organizations that claim to promote human rights, but, as a careful look at their activities demonstrates, most of their work is ideologically determined. By any logical definition of proportionality, after 8,000 rocket attacks, on which Goldstone and his colleagues remained silent, Israel had the moral right to flatten all of Gaza. The writer is a professor of political studies at Bar-Ilan University and heads NGO Monitor. (Canadian Jewish News) Anne Bayefsky, an expert on human-rights law from Toronto and an accredited UN observer, delivered a two-minute talk at the UN earlier this month after the General Assembly had issued a resolution endorsing the Goldstone report, which levels war crimes charges at Israel for defending itself in the face of Hamas rockets. "The resolution doesn't mention the word Hamas," she said. "This is a resolution that purports to be even-handed; it is anything but." Whereupon Bayefsky was summarily stripped of her UN badge and evicted from the premises. "The Palestinian ambassador is very upset by your statement," Bayefsky says the UN security chief told her. For the record, the UN claims that Bayefsky was not entitled to speak where she did, though representatives of nongovernment organizations have used it in the past. The UN continues to bar Bayefsky from the premises, despite calls on her behalf by the U.S. mission and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel. We hear the UN's NGO accreditation committee, chaired by Sudan, will likely make the final decision. (Wall Street Journal) It has been years since I spoke to a single person in the Middle East who thinks the Arab-Israeli conflict will be resolved any time soon. Almost everyone knows, at least in their gut if not their head, that peace today between Israelis and Arabs is a fantasy. The Middle East will stop performing its "peace process" theater as soon as we stop demanding it. And as soon as we stop demanding it, time, resources, and energy can be spent on something that might be slightly productive. We can't solve this problem right now, but we can try to make it less deadly by isolating and even blockading the combatants instead of cajoling their paymasters into talks they don't take seriously. (Commentary) Weekend Features
A new Israeli invention allows cancerous tumors on the skin to be detected and examined before they become visible to the naked eye, Ben-Gurion University announced. The developer of the new instrument, Ofir Aharon, a doctoral student at the electrophysiological department at Ben-Gurion University, said the technology "allows manipulation of different light frequencies and adjustments to electric fields to examine skin lesions." (Ha'aretz) About 70% of all people with severe burns die from related infections. But a revolutionary new wound dressing developed at Tel Aviv University could cut that number dramatically. Prof. Meital Zilberman of TAU's Department of Biomedical Engineering has developed a new wound dressing based on fibers she engineered that can be loaded with drugs like antibiotics to speed up the healing process, and then dissolve when they've done their job. A study published in the Journal of Biomedical Materials Research - Applied Biomaterials demonstrates that, after only two days, this dressing can eradicate infection-causing bacteria. The new dressing protects the wound until it is no longer needed, after which it melts away. (Medical News) A team at Jerusalem's Hadassah University Medical Center has managed to separate platelets and adult stem cells from the blood and bone marrow of patients with fractures and inject them - causing the bones to meld in a quarter to third of the time and repairing some breaks that would have failed to heal. (Jerusalem Post) Israel's water technology sector has prospered despite the global financial crisis, largely due to global stimulus packages and penetration in developing countries, officials said on Wednesday. Water companies benefit from both infrastructure and cleantech spending, both cornerstones of stimulus packages. Water recycling company Aqwise, whose system breeds bacteria to break down organic waste, saw its sales increase 50% in 2009. (Reuters) Observations: Palestinians Start to Show Progress - Mortimer Zuckerman (U.S. News)
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