DAILY ALERT

In-Depth Issues:

Erdogan Threatens to Sue U.S. Diplomats over Leaked Claims (Hurriyet Daily News-Turkey)
    In response to diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks, Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan said Wednesday that he would file legal action against U.S. envoys he accused of making false claims against him.
    "Those who have slandered us will be crushed under these claims, will be finished and will disappear," he said.
    One leaked cable claimed that Erdogan had eight secret accounts in Swiss banks. Other documents accused him of reaping personal gain from a billion-dollar privatization.

A Nuclear Standoff with Libya - Max Fisher (Atlantic Monthly)
    In November 2009, six years after the government of Libya first agreed to disarm its nuclear weapons program, Libyan nuclear workers wheeled the last of their country's highly enriched uranium out in front of the Tajoura nuclear facility, just east of Tripoli, to ship this final batch of weapons-grade nuclear material to Russia, where it would be treated and destroyed.
    On November 20, the day before the plane was to leave for Russia, Libyan officials unexpectedly halted the shipment. For one month and one day, U.S. and Russian diplomats negotiated with Libya for the uranium to be flown out of the country.
    On December 21, Libya finally allowed a Russian plane to remove the casks, ending Libya's low-grade game of nuclear blackmail.
    The month-long crisis, never revealed by the Obama administration or reported in the press, is recorded in U.S. State Department documents obtained by The Atlantic.

Israeli Firms See Global Market for Anti-Terrorism Know-How - Edmund Sanders and Batsheva Sobelman (Los Angeles Times)
    As the threat of terrorism spreads, Israel has turned domestic security technology into one of its biggest exports.
    More than 400 Israeli companies export about $1.5 billion annually in domestic security goods and technology, including biometric devices, tear gas canisters, anti-intrusion systems, airport screening machines, explosives detectors and remote-controlled vehicles.
    Among the offerings at a recent security expo in Tel Aviv was document-scanning software from IntuView that not only translates Arabic text but also searches for key words and phrases, including names, dates and Koranic verses commonly cited by extremists. Software engineer Amit Seker said the U.S. Army has bought the software.
    "The proximity of Israeli culture to Islamic culture produces a better understanding of the issues," said Doron Havazelet, director of the new Homeland Security Institute at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
    See also Israel Discloses Technology to Deal with Rockets - Daniel Estrin (AP-Washington Post)

Israeli Life Expectancy for Men Now Above OECD Average - Judy Siegel-Itzkovich (Jerusalem Post)
    The Israel Health Ministry reported Wednesday that in 2009, local women lived an average of 83.5 years, and men lived 79.7.
    This marks an increase of 2.6 years and 3 years, respectively, since 2000, and is better than the OECD figures for men.

News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:

Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis (Best of U.S., UK, and Israel):

Observations:

Palestinian Revisionism Is the Only Obstacle to Peace - Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon (Jerusalem Post)

• The recent Palestinian Authority report stating that the Western Wall has no religious or historical significance to the Jewish people is sadly yet another attempt at political historical revisionism. As the recent UNESCO report on Jewish sites in Judea and Samaria exposed, the Palestinian rejectionist narrative is foisted on the international agenda and is supported by an automatic majority in multilateral forums.
• The PA Ministry of Information claims on its website that "according to the Jewish Encyclopedia, published in 1917, the Western Wall became part of the Jewish religious tradition around the year 1520 AD, as a result of Jewish immigration from Spain, after the Ottoman conquest the year 1517." In fact, the entry in the Jewish Encyclopedia of 1917 provides historic references to the Western Wall from antiquity and certainly before the Arab invasion, conquest and occupation of the Middle East.
• The recent UNESCO report that Rachel's Tomb near Jerusalem is the Bilal ibn Rabah Mosque is an even greater scandal. It also disposes of hundreds of years of Muslim tradition. According to an Ottoman document found by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, in 1830 the Turks issued a firman (royal decree) that gave legal force to Rachel's Tomb being recognized as a Jewish holy site.
• In 2000, talks between former Prime Minister Ehud Barak and PA Chairman Yasser Arafat at Camp David in the presence of U.S. President Bill Clinton broke down over similar historical revisionism. After Barak had made an overly generous offer about splitting sovereignty of the Temple Mount, Arafat claimed that he could not concede an inch of this "Islamic territory" because the Jewish Temple never existed.
• While the Palestinians claim to be the original residents of our land, history and fact stand in their way. While the majority of the Jewish people had to endure a two millennia exile from our land, the stones of our Temple, the burial sites of our forefathers, our ritual baths, ancient cisterns and synagogues remained. And 2,000 years of foreign occupation and attempted negation of Jewish history could not prevent the return of the aboriginal people to our land.
• The real obstacle to peace is Palestinian rejection of Israel and the self-determination of the Jewish people. The PA brainwashes its people to disallow Israel's legitimacy and falsifies Jewish, Christian and Muslim history in the process. This rejectionism has been at the heart of every failed peace effort for more than 70 years. Palestinian hate and intolerance, more than all the other issues combined, will doom the region to many more years of conflict.

      See also Rachel's Tomb, a Jewish Holy Place, Was Never a Mosque - Nadav Shragai (ICA-Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs)