Israel – Page 3 – praag.org

US headed for a collision with Israel

Patrick J. Buchanan says the US is headed for a collision with Israel as serious as Suez ’56, and they are about to see what Barack Obama is made of.

In November 1956, President Eisenhower, enraged he had not been forewarned of their invasion of Egypt, ordered the British, French and Israelis to get out of Suez and Sinai. They did as told.

How far we have fallen from the America of Ike and John Foster Dulles has been on painful display this March.

An Israeli leader told a joint session of Congress that President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran is stupid and dangerous and must be rejected. Congress gave him 40 ovations.

Bibi Netanyahu then went home and told the world there will be no Palestinian state, and was re-elected in a smashing victory.

“Perhaps it’s time for Americans, especially those in the White House, to recognize this new reality of Israeli politics,” says The Wall Street Journal. We should restore “Israeli confidence in U.S. support.”

Excuse me? Who is the senior partner here? Who needs whom more?

Israel is entitled to choose its own leaders, who are entitled to make their own policy. But that goes for us as well.

We are today headed for a collision with Israel as serious as Suez ’56, and we are about to see what Barack Obama is made of.

The days of self-delusion are over. For was there ever a doubt where Bibi stood? In 1994, he denounced the Oslo Accords in a speech interrupted by chants that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was a “traitor.”

Did anyone think Bibi, who opposed Ariel Sharon’s withdrawal of Israeli settlers from Gaza, was going to withdraw tens of thousands of Jewish settlers from Judea and Samaria, share Jerusalem with a Palestinian state, or allow the return of Arab refugees to what Bibi says is the “Jewish state”?

“Arab voters are coming out in droves to the polls. Left-wing organizations are busing them out,” said Bibi on his Facebook page in Hebrew, according to a translation by Haaretz.

That’s the real Bibi. We have clarity now.

What should Obama do?

Drop the petulance, call and congratulate Bibi on his election and tell him we are proceeding with the Iran deal — if we conclude it accords with our interests. And if he attempts to sabotage or scuttle the deal, he should expect political and economic retaliation.

Bibi is looking out for Israel first. America needs a president like Ike who will start looking out for America first.

It appears we are at a moment of truth worldwide.

[…]

The Chinese are launching an Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank as a rival to the U.S.-dominated World Bank. Despite our pleas, Britain, France, Italy and Germany are rushing to sign on as charter members. South Korea and Australia may follow.

Our allies are looking to pick up contracts for the construction projects for the new Chinese “silk road” from Asia to Europe.

The AIIB will have $50 billion in startup cash, a pittance to a China sitting on a hoard of $3 to $4 trillion in cash reserves, from decades of huge trade surpluses run at the expense of the United States.

Virtually all our Asian allies do a larger share of their trade with China than with us. They want to buy from and sell to China, and stay in Beijing’s good graces. But if menaced by China, they want the United States obligated by treaty to come and fight for them.

One understands why this is in their interests. But why is it in ours?

Nor is the Middle East any different.

US turns to UN to hold off ICC case against Israel

The White House is about to turn to the UN to help force a deal between Israel and the Palestinians. The development also reflects deepening pessimism over the prospect of negotiations delivering peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

After years of blocking efforts to pressure Israelis and Palestinians into accepting a lasting two-state solution, the United States is moving toward supporting a UN Security Council resolution that would call for the resumption of political talks to conclude a final peace settlement, according to Western diplomats.

The move follows Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decisive re-election Tuesday after the incumbent publicly abandoned his commitment to negotiate a Palestinian state — the basis of more than 20 years of US diplomatic efforts — and promised to continue the construction of settlements on occupied territory.

The prospect of direct negotiations appeared to evaporate with Netanyahu’s pre-election declaration that he would never allow the creation of a Palestinian state.

The comment completely reversed the Israeli leader’s previous support for an independent Palestine as part of a permanent peace deal between the two sides.

On Wednesday, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s top diplomat in the United States told Foreign Policy the Palestinians would move forward with plans to use the ICC to try to hold Israel accountable for alleged war crimes during last summer’s war in Gaza.

“The fact that we have a government in Israel publicly opposing a two-state solution just reinforces our position that this conflict must be handled by the international community,” Maen Rashid Areikat said.

The United States would actively seek guarantees from the international community to hold off on ICC activity in exchange for a Security Council resolution outlining international standards for a final peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians.

‘Israel should nuke Germany and Iran’

An Israeli newspaper, Israel National News, published an opinion piece on Tuesday in which it called for Israel to attack Germany and Iran with nuclear bombs. The article claims that only through the nuclear annihilation of Germany and Iran, with 20 or 30 nuclear bombs, can Israelis prevent destruction of the state.

„If Israel does not follow the way of the Torah, it will be almost completely destroyed by a severe punishment and only a few will survive“ writes Chen Ben-Eliyahu, the author of the piece, in Hebrew.

Israel must respond in kind in order to prevent this. “We must answer an existential threat with an existential threat”; he writes, “not with speeches to the US-Congress. We must make it clear to the Iranians that Israel will wipe out their nuclear program and Teheran and Isfahan as well.

“If an enemy sets out to destroy you, then you must destroy him first. Twenty or thirty nuclear bombs will get the job done”, he explains.

He reminds the Israelis of their near destruction at the hands of the Nazis and calls for revenge on Germany, although the German government is now, next to the US, Israel’s biggest supporter.

Ben-Eliyahu demands a turnaround of the „Final Solution“ and writes „twenty to thirty nuclear bombs on Berlin, Munich, Nuremberg, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Dresden, Dortmund and so on will ensure obliteration.” And in allusion to the “Thousand Year Reich” he continues, “afterwards the country will be quiet for a thousand years“.

The editors of the newspaper „Israel National News“ refused to react to queries about why this opinion had been published in the first place. For it is a racist’s expression of pure hate and it incites genocide.

His reasons are anyway based on the lie that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. Such a person should be accused, convicted and imprisoned for sedition and sanctioning nuclear war.

What Chen Ben-Eliyahu admits with his demand for an attack on Iran and Germany with „twenty or thirty nuclear bombs“ is that Israel possesses a nuclear arsenal, a fact which Israeli government has hitherto vehemently denied.

Translated from German

Source: Alles Schall und Rauch

American, Israeli military advisors aiding ISIS terrorists in Iraq

American and Israeli military advisors were arrested while aiding Islamic State terrorists in Iraq.

Iraqi counter-terrorism forces arrested four foreign military advisors from the United States and Israel who were aiding the Islamic State, Iranian Tasnim News Agency reports.

Three of the arrested military advisors are dual citizens of the United States and Israel, while the fourth advisor is from a Persian Gulf country, Iraq’s Sarma News Agency said.

The foreign military advisors were captured in a headquarters, from where the Islamic State organized its military operations in Iraq’s Northern Province of Nineveh.

The arrests were made during the Operation, codenamed “The Sting of a Scorpion”. A number of other Islamic State fighters have been killed during the assault. The detained foreign advisors have now been transferred to Baghdad.

Source: sputniknews.com

Bibi warns US Congress on Iran

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned the US Congress Tuesday that an international deal on Iran’s nuclear programme could threaten the survival of his country.

Dozens of Democrats chose to boycott the speech after Speaker of the House John Boehner, the top Republican in the lower chamber, invited Netanyahu to speak without consulting the White House. It was Netanyahu’s third address to US lawmakers.

Obama will not meet with Netanyahu while the premier is in Washington, with the White House noting the visit’s proximity to Israeli elections later this month.

Netanyahu said Monday that the address was not meant as a sign of disrespect to Obama, but rather intended to “speak up about a potential deal with Iran that could threaten the survival of Israel.”

Iran is negotiating a deal with Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States and Germany to curb Tehran’s uranium enrichment and other parts of its nuclear programme in return for ending economic sanctions on Tehran.

Iran and the six powers aim to work out the main points of the deal by the end of the month, but they still disagree over how much and for how long Iran has to scale back its nuclear activities, and how fast the economic sanctions can be lifted.

US threatened to shoot down Israeli war planes

The Bethlehem-based news agency Ma’an has cited a Kuwaiti newspaper report Saturday, that US President Barack Obama thwarted an Israeli military attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities in 2014 by threatening to shoot down Israeli jets before they could reach their targets in Iran.

Following Obama’s threat, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was reportedly forced to abort the planned Iran attack.

According to Al-Jarida, the Netanyahu government took the decision to strike Iran some time in 2014 soon after Israel had discovered the United States and Iran had been involved in secret talks over Iran’s nuclear program and were about to sign an agreement in that regard behind Israel’s back.

The report claimed that an unnamed Israeli minister who has good ties with the US administration revealed the attack plan to Secretary of State John Kerry, and that Obama then threatened to shoot down the Israeli jets before they could reach their targets in Iran.

Al-Jarida quoted “well-placed” sources as saying that Netanyahu, along with Minister of Defense Moshe Yaalon, and then-Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, had decided to carry out airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear program after consultations with top security commanders.

According to the report, “Netanyahu and his commanders agreed after four nights of deliberations to task the Israeli army’s chief of staff, Benny Gantz, to prepare a qualitative operation against Iran’s nuclear program. In addition, Netanyahu and his ministers decided to do whatever they could do to thwart a possible agreement between Iran and the White House because such an agreement is, allegedly, a threat to Israel’s security.”

The sources added that Gantz and his commanders prepared the requested plan and that Israeli fighter jets trained for several weeks in order to make sure the plans would work successfully. Israeli fighter jets reportedly even carried out experimental flights in Iran’s airspace after they managed to break through radars.

Brzezinski’s idea

Former US diplomat Zbigniew Brzezinski, who enthusiastically campaigned for Obama in 2008, called on him to shoot down Israeli planes if they attack Iran. “They have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch?” said the former national security advisor to former President Jimmy Carter in an interview with the Daily Beast.

“We have to be serious about denying them that right,” he said. “If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not. No one wishes for this but it could be a ‘Liberty’ in reverse.’”

Israel mistakenly attacked the American Liberty ship during the Six-Day War in 1967.

Brzezinski was a top candidate to become an official advisor to President Obama, but he was downgraded after Republican and pro-Israel Democratic charges during the campaign that Brzezinski’s anti-Israel attitude would damage Obama at the polls.

Source: israelnationalnews.com

Israel turns off power to Palestinians

The Los Angeles Times reports Israel cut the power to more than 700,000 Palestinians in two of Palestine’s largest urban areas, Nablus and Jenin, for more than 45 minutes “and warned that more outages are coming if Palestinian officials don’t pay millions of dollars in outstanding debt.”

Citing Yiftah Ron-Tal, the director of Israel Electric Corp. (IEC), the Times reports:

“Customers who do not pay electric bills are disconnected; yet here we have an entire population that doesn’t pay while we continue to supply electricity,” he said. “The Palestinian Authority owes the IEC — meaning the paying consumers — nearly 2 billion Israeli shekels [about $500 million]. A year has passed since I said this last and nothing has changed. Starting today, we will begin restricting electricity.”

The irony here, of withholding the months of tax revenue while demanding payment of a debt, on top of occupation policy preventing Palestinians from being self sufficient, is not lost on anyone. More from the Times:

“This is clearly collective punishment against the Palestinian people,” [Ghassan Shakaa, the mayor of Nablus and chairman of the board of the North Electricity Company, which supplies Nablus, Jenin] said. According to Shakaa, the IEC cut power shortly after notifying his company that it owed more than $10 million, and did not wait for an answer or for payment……

Rashid Fadda, who lives in Nablus and works as a technician for the local electric company, said the power cuts came as a surprise.

“We heard the Israeli company threatening to cut power supply to the West Bank but no one really thought it will happen,” he said. “My work depends on electricity and so when the power was cut off, we had to stop work.”

In more winter news, IMEMC reports settlers from the Gilo settlement have “opened its barrages, throwing all excess rain and melted snow water” flooding Aida Refugee camp near Bethlehem.

Israel opened dams near the border of Gaza on Sunday morning, flooding the valley causing hundreds of Palestinians to evacuate their homes.

Source: mondoweiss.net

Spy leaks: SA’s disdain for Israel’s cynical African policies

Secret documents obtained by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit expose a deep disdain by South Africa’s spies for their Israeli counterparts, with intelligence assessments accusing Israel of conducting “cynical” polices in Africa that include “fuelling insurrection,” “appropriating diamonds” and sabotaging Egypt’s water supply.

A secret analysis from South African intelligence also dismisses a tour of African countries by the Israeli Foreign Minister in 2009 as “an exercise in cynicism.”

It says Avigdor Lieberman’s nine-day trip to Ethiopia, Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda and Kenya laid the groundwork for arms deals and the appropriation of African resources, while hiding behind “a philanthropic façade”.

South Africa’s “Geopolitical Country and Intelligence Assessment” of October 2009 accused Israel of pursuing “destructive policies” in Africa that include:

Compromising Egypt’s water security : Israeli scientists, the report claimed, “created a type of plant that flourishes on the surface or the banks of the Nile and that absorbs such large quantities of water as to significantly reduce the volume of water that reaches Egypt.” The report offers no additional evidence for this claim.

Fueling insurrection in Sudan: Israel is “working assiduously to encircle and isolate Sudan from the outside,” the report wrote, “and to fuel insurrection inside Sudan.” Mossad agents have also “set up a communications system which serves to both eavesdrop on and secure the security of presidential telecommunications.” Israel had long been at loggerheads with Khartoum, and supported the secessionist movement that eventually broke away and created South Sudan, with which it has diplomatic ties. Khartoum continues to accuse the Israelis of being responsible for attacks in Sudan.

Co-opting Kenyan intelligence: “As part of Mossad’s safari in Central Africa it had exposed to the Kenyans the activities of other foreign spy networks”. In return, the report wrote, Kenya granted permission for a safe house in Nairobi and gave “ready access to Kenya’s intelligence service”.

Arms proliferation : Israel has been “instrumental in arming some African regimes and allegedly aggravating crises among others, including Somalia, Sudan, Eritrea and South Africa”, according to the document. Today it “is looking for new markets for its range of lightweight weapons” and covertly supplies armaments to “selected countries inter alia India” including “nuclear, chemical, laser and conventional warfare technologies”.

In one of the document, obtained by Al Jazeera’s Investigative unit, it reveals how SA spies hid the fact that Israel had obtained stolen weapon plans.

According to one of the cables two men were caught red-handed trying to sell stolen missile blueprints, software and components from Denel. Police launched a sting operation, posed as Russian buyers, and made their arrests outside Johannesburg in 2010.

Somehow, Israel’s Mossad had got hold of the anti-tank missile blueprints. It sparked a behind the scenes battle between the two nations spies. South Africa wanted the blueprints back, which Israel agreed to provided that a citizen, Yitzhak Talia, would not be prosecuted, the cable shows. Court documents suggest that a “Yitzchak Talyah aka Edward Henry Taljaard” was involved.

Acquiring African mineral wealth : Israel “plans to appropriate African diamonds”, the South African spies alleged, as well as “African uranium, thorium and other radioactive elements used to manufacture nuclear fuel”.

Training armed groups: “A few Israeli military pensioners are on the lookout for job opportunities as trainers of African militias,” the reported said, “while other members of the delegation were facilitating contracts for Israelis to train various militias.”

Reports in the Israeli and Nigerian media last month said the US had blocked Israel’s planned sale of military helicopters to Nigeria. Israeli media hailed Israel’s deepening ties with President Goodluck Jonathan for putting an end to a December 30 UN Security Council resolution setting a timetable for Israeli withdrawal from occupied Palestinian territories. Nigeria had signaled it would support the Palestinian-backed resolution, but its switch to an abstention denied the resolution the necessary majority in the Council.

The Times reported on Wednesday that “a group claiming to be former agents of Mossad threatened to unleash a devastating cyber-attack on SA unless the government cracked down on the growing campaign to boycott Israel.”

The United States has meanwhile rubbished claims in recently leaked intelligence documents that it opposed African Union commission chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma’s bid for the position in 2012.

Speaking at a press conference broadcast live across the continent, US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the claims contained in the leaked intelligence documents, obtained by Al Jazeera, were “absolute rubbish”.

She said the US worked with the AU and with Dlamini-Zuma, and this partnership was growing. “I don’t know where those claims come from,” she said.

Thomas-Greenfield said the AU summit she attended last month was her fourth one, and she commended efforts by the AU to fight Boko Haram in Nigeria and she was pleased with the session on Ebola.

She said the summit theme – women in development – was an issue that mattered a lot to the US.

Jew secretly films Parisian reactions to his religion

A journalist wearing a religious skullcap in Paris had the French public’s reaction filmed by a hidden camera.

Zvika Klein, a reporter for Jewish news outlet NRG, walked in the city for ten hours wearing a kippah – also known as a yarmulke – on his head as well as knotted ritual religious tassels.

Posting the video on YouTube, he wrote: ‘Welcome to Paris 2015, where soldiers are walking every street that houses a Jewish institution, and where keffiyeh-wearing men and veiled women speak Arabic on every street corner.’

He spent a day in Paris with a bodyguard while a photographer secretly documented reactions of the public using a GoPro camera hidden in his backpack.

He wandered through Jewish neighborhoods, around the Eiffel Tower, and then through mostly Muslim neighborhoods.

In an article accompanying the video, he said tourist attractions were ‘relatively calm’ – ‘but the further from them we walked, the more anxious I became over the hateful stares, the belligerent remarks, and the hostile body language,’ he wrote.

Boys shouted ‘Viva Palestine’ and as he passes a group of youths, one remarks: ‘I’m joking, the dog will not eat you’.

Fingers were pointed at him in a cafe – and moments later, thugs awaited him on a street corner, he adds.

A little boy was shocked at his appearance in his neighbourhood, he reports. ‘What is he doing here Mommy?’ he asked. ‘Doesn’t he know he will be killed?’

Israeli premier Netanyahu said Europe was no longer a safe haven for Jews following attacks in Paris and Copenhagen, adding that Israel is now the only country in the world where Jews can feel safe.

His comments sparked fury from Jewish groups and were promptly refuted by the leaders of France, Germany and Denmark.

But Mr Klein’s video shows, in Paris, Jews ‘are barred from entering certain areas’.

Source: Daily Mail

Bibi urges EU Jews to move to Israel

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday urged European Jews to move to Israel after a Jewish man was killed in an attack outside Copenhagen’s main synagogue.

“Israel is your home. We are preparing and calling for the absorption of mass immigration from Europe,” Netanyahu said in a statement, repeating a similar call after attacks by jihadists in Paris last month when four Jews were among the dead.

Two police officers were also wounded in Sunday’s attack in Copenhagen, one of two fatal shootings in the normally peaceful Danish capital on the weekend.

In the first attack on Saturday, a 55-year-old man was killed at a panel discussion about Islam and free speech attended by a Swedish cartoonist behind controversial caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.

“Extremist Islamic terrorism has struck Europe again… Jews have been murdered again on European soil only because they were Jews,” Netanyahu said in the statement.

The Israeli prime minister said his government was to adopt a $45 million (39.5 million euro) plan “to encourage the absorption of immigrants from France, Belgium and Ukraine”.

“To the Jews of Europe and to the Jews of the world I say that Israel is waiting for you with open arms,” Netanyahu said.

He had made a similar call after three days of bloodshed in Paris that started with the January 7 attack on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo where 12 people were gunned down, followed the next day by the shooting death of a policewoman just outside the city.

On January 9, the gunman who killed the policewoman took hostages at a kosher supermarket in Paris. He killed four Jewish hostages before police shot him dead when they raided the store.

The bodies of the four were later flown to Israel where they were buried.

Officials in Copenhagen described the weekend attacks as an act of terror and said the man believed to be behind the shootings was shot dead after opening fire on police at a rail station.

The Palestinians also condemned the attack “in the strongest terms,” with PLO official Saeb Erakat calling the Copenhagen attacks “absolutely unjustifiable.”

“Terrorism knows no religion or nationality, and our opposition to such violence must be firmly united. We stand in solidarity with the Danish people,” Erakat said in a statement.

Source: AFP

Terrorists celebrate 20 years of terror

Former Palestinian terrorist Leila Khaled’s visit to Soweto on Sunday turned into a celebration of violence, armed terror and crime “for a noble cause”.

Posters of Nelson Mandela adorned the walls of the Donaldson Orlando Community Centre in Soweto with the words: “The belligerent attitude adopted by the Israeli government is to us unacceptable.” Mandela however had welcomed armed terror in South Africa.

One of the main reasons why Mandela had lingered in prison for 27 years, was because he had refused to call off the ANC’s armed struggle campaign against innocent civilians.

The Deputy Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform Mcebisi Skwatsha reminded the audience that weapons were an essential part of the struggle: “You are told it’s a matter of life or death, but the cause is a noble one. It was a matter of being inducted into the use of an AK47.”

“Two people stood out for us young ones. It was that picture of comrade Leila carrying an AK47. And it was also a pic of comrade Che Guevara carrying an AK47.

Without irony Skwatsha said Khaled, like Nelson Mandela, had been labelled a terrorist.

“The chief terrorist became the president of a liberated South Africa. Look at the difference the terrorists have made in our country in the last 20 years.”

Since Mandela’s release South Africa has become a criminal paradise, making it one of the most dangerous countries in the world and a child rapist’s dream.

Max Ozinsky, a national executive committee member of the MK Veterans Association, said Israel and apartheid South Africa had worked together to fight the ANC and its “armed struggle against apartheid and its supporters”.

Skwatsha said he had been involved in terror against civilians in South Africa. He joined the ANC’s military wing Umkhonto we Sizwe “at an early age in the 1980s”.

Deputy Minister of Defence and Military Veterans and Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans’ Association chairman Kebby Maphatsoe meanwhile declared war on the EFF, saying it was “in parliament because of our sweat and blood”.

He told a raucous crowd at the Centre: “They’ve declared war on us and we’ve been left with no choice but to defend ourselves.”

The mostly ANC crowd chanted struggle threats against EFF members, promising violence.

Khaled, who has reportedly had no less than nine facial plastic surgery interventions, leaves for Jordan today.

Her visit was to raise funds for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Against Israel in South Africa.

“Now you’re enjoying the streets of Soweto. I feel I’m with my family. You’re sisters and brothers. We [Palestinians] were celebrating in 1994 when you got your elections. Freedom is important because it is dignity. Why don’t they [Israelis] admit that occupation is terrorism?”

Russian, Turkish media hint at Paris false flag

Conspiracy theories are swirling around last week’s terror attacks in Paris, and beyond the customary fringe websites, they are being aired by Turkish politicians and mainstream Russian and Iranian media outlets.

Those making – or hinting at – the claims would have the world believe that U.S. or Israeli intelligence services were behind the attacks on the offices of the Charlie Hebdo newspaper and a kosher supermarket, which together with a street shooting left 17 victims and three terrorists dead over three days.

A mass circulation Russian newspaper, Komsomolskaya Pravda, ran a front-page headline Monday asking whether “the Americans” were behind the Paris terror attacks.

In the related story, a political analyst, Col. Alexander Zhilin, linked his theory to differences between the U.S. and European Union over sanctions against Russia in response to the Ukraine crisis.

Zhilin, who heads a body called the Moscow Center for the Study of Applied Problems, said immediately after French President Francois Hollande on January 5 raised doubts about continuing with the sanctions, he – Zhilin – had predicted that terror attacks could now be expected in France.

The U.S. needed a way to consolidate U.S.-E.U. unity over the sanctions, he said, and planning a terror attack was a “cheap and effective” option.

Separately, Komsomolskaya Pravda interviewed Russian economist Mikhail Khazin, head of a consulting firm called Neoconomics. He wondered who benefited most from the Paris attacks, and concluded that the primary beneficiary was the United States.

“Let me add that in the elite of the United States there are several groups, each of which has its own opportunities to promote and organize such attacks,” he was quoted as saying.

Khazin went on to list others who, in his view, could also benefit from the attacks, including Britain, Saudi Arabia and “Islamic State, al-Qaeda and so on” – although he added that the latter possibility was “the least likely.”

Other reports in the paper highlighted skepticism expressed by some quarters over the attacks, with one headline highlighting a comment by an Arab café waiter in Paris: “Someone needs a war between Muslims and Christians …”

In Iran, the Press TV broadcaster ran on its website an article by Paul Craig Roberts, a columnist, former U.S. Treasury official, and 9/11 conspiracy theorist, who wrote that one way of seeing the attack on Charlie Hebdo “is as an attack designed to shore up France’s vassal status to Washington.”

“The suspects can be both guilty and patsies,” said Roberts. “Just remember all the terrorist plots created by the FBI that served to make the terrorism threat real to Americans.”

On Roberts’ own website, he also highlights reports from other sources suggesting that the Paris attacks were a “false flag operation” – that is, a covert operation designed to point a finger at a purported perpetrator, while the actual mastermind’s identity remains hidden.

“Whether or not it is a false flag operation, the shootings are being used for a wider purpose or purposes,” he said.

Those purposes could include “bringing France back into Washington’s orbit,” stifling “the growing European sympathy for the Palestinians,” and countering “the rising opposition in Europe to more Middle Eastern wars,” Roberts charged.

‘A plot against the Islamic world’

Meanwhile Melih Gokcek, the veteran mayor of the Turkish capital, Ankara, raised the specter of the Mossad’s involvement, while speaking at a youth congress of the Islamist ruling Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) on Sunday.

According to a report by the official Anadolu news agency, Gokcek laid the blame on Israel’s security agency, charging that Israel was angry by a recent vote by French lawmakers supportive of Palestinian statehood.

“Israel certainly doesn’t want this [pro-Palestinian independence] sentiment to expand in Europe,” he said. “That’s why it is certain that Mossad is behind these kinds of incidents. Mossad enflames Islamophobia by causing such incidents.”

Turkish lawmaker Ali Sahin, a senior AKP member, was quoted as saying in Twitter messages that the attack on Charlie Hebdo was “staged like a scene from a movie,” by forces determined to discredit Islam.

The most senior figure to insinuate that all was not as it appeared in the Paris attacks – although he did also condemn them – was Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“Take note that the acts of terror are not carried out in a vacuum,” he said during a joint press conference in Ankara with Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas “The acts follow a predetermined script and we should be alive to a plot against the Islamic world.”

Erdogan, an arch-critic of Israel and key supporter of Hamas – a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization – also used the opportunity to slam Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s participation with other leaders in a mass anti-terror rally in Paris on Sunday.

“I also hardly understand how he dared to go there,” Anadolu quoted Erdogan as saying, accusing Netanyahu of carrying out “state terrorism by massacring 2,500 people in Gaza.”

Source: CNS News

‘Racist’ Israeli group campaigns against Jewish-Arab marriages

A far-right Israeli group that agitates against Arabs in the name of religion and national security is forcing the Jewish state into a legal and political balancing act as it tries to contain sectarian violence.

Among their activities, Lehava activists yelling “Death to the Arabs” picketed the wedding in August of a Muslim to a Jewish woman who converted to Islam. Now three members have been charged with an arson attack on a cross-faith school in Jerusalem last month.

Members of Lehava protesting outside an Arab-Jewish wedding

Communal tension has been rising following last summer’s Gaza war, in which more than 2,000 Palestinians died, and feuding over access to Jerusalem’s holiest site. This has spilled over into Palestinian street attacks on Jews, including the killing of four rabbis and a Druze policeman at a synagogue.

Illustrating the risk of sectarian violence, a Palestinian youth was burned to death in July by Israeli assailants in alleged revenge for the killing of three Jewish teens by militants in the West Bank.

The authorities are under pressure to deal with anyone encouraging Jewish retaliation against Israeli Arabs and Palestinians. Efforts to tackle Lehava, however, may be complicated by guarantees of free speech and sympathy for the group among a minority of Israelis.

Lehava, whose name means “flame” but is also a Hebrew acronym for “Preventing Assimilation in the Holy Land,” denies wrongdoing and says it is the target of a political witch-hunt.

Police rounded up 21 Lehava members, including its leader Benzion Gopshtein, after the attack on the school where Jewish and Arab children study together. The raids suggest a crackdown on Lehava, and maybe a ban, is in the works.

The three men charged with the arson attack have yet to enter a plea, while Gopshtein argues he is being targeted for what he says, not what he does.

“I’m being investigated for public comments I made about co-existence, even though I never advocated violence,” he told Reuters after being released from police custody. Lehava’s policy was to stay within the law, he said, but he declined to condemn the school attack.

Gopshtein, who put the number of Lehava members at 5,000, said the authorities “are bothered that we have such broad support, which is why they’re carrying out arrests.”

An Israeli official described the Lehava arrests as part of a drive to stamp out hate speech. Among those facing charges are eight Palestinians from East Jerusalem accused of encouraging attacks on Israelis over social media. But the official said securing convictions against Lehava activists on possible charges of inciting racist attacks would be harder.

“Their public statements have been less unequivocal,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “It is a complex matter, especially as we do not want to intrude on legal rights to freedom of expression.”

Incitement to violence on racial or religious grounds carries a 5-year prison sentence in Israel, 20 percent of whose citizens are Arabs. When felonies are committed as a result of such incitement, hate-crime legislation empowers judges to double the standard penalties.

Hard-core views

Lehava’s core cause is discouraging romances between Jews and gentiles, saying it is campaigning to preserve Judaism.

While such relationships are rare in Israel, the group has disseminated names and pictures of Arabs suspected of courting Jewish women, and critics accuse it of using vigilantes to threaten the men with violence.

Lehava has also urged Israeli businesses not to employ Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, branding them as “tomorrow’s terrorists.”

Gopshtein was a disciple of the late Meir Kahane, a U.S.-born rabbi who advocated the expulsion of Arabs from Israel and the Palestinian territories. Gopshtein, 45, said he had previously had run-ins with the police for disorderly conduct while active with Kahane’s movement Kach, which was banned from Israeli politics as racist in 1988.

Asked whether Lehava might similarly be outlawed, the Israeli official said: “That possibility will be examined.”

Mainstream Israeli leaders have condemned the arson attack and other racist incidents. The arrests were led by a police taskforce set up last year to tackle violent far-right Jews.

Tamar Hermann, a sociologist and pollster with the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI), said state action against Lehava had only followed repeated complaints by left-leaning petitions and media commentators.

Such pressure on police, Herman added, may be offset by the growing ranks of Israelis who sympathize with Lehava. An IDI poll to be published next month found 21 percent of Israeli Jews identify themselves as “religious nationalists,” she said, while about three percent hold “hard-core” views against gentiles.

“The rise of extreme religiosity that we are seeing in the Middle East, and even in Europe and the United States, is happening in Israel, too, and I don’t see it as merely a counter-reaction to Arab hostility,” Hermann said.

Menachem Landow, a retired official of the Shin Bet security agency, argued against banning Lehava, saying its ideology “would simply morph and find a new legal home.”

“The trouble-makers here are generally from a certain sector of Israeli society, dislocated young men from pious backgrounds, who simply hate Arabs as part of a race theory and are looking for a framework in which to act on that hatred,” he said.

“They have to be tackled individually,” Landow added, noting police had used these tactics against Israeli soccer fans whose anti-Arab taunts have at times escalated into race riots. – Reuters

Russia demands explanation for Israeli strikes

Russia on Monday demanded an explanation for Israeli airstrikes on two areas near Damascus, while the Syrian and Iranian foreign ministers called it an act of aggression that proves Israel is “in the same trench” with extremist groups fighting the Syrian government.

Israeli warplanes struck near Damascus’ international airport on Sunday, as well as outside a town close to the Lebanese border.

The attacks are unlikely to have a big impact. Israel has already struck inside Syria on several occasions in the course of the country’s chaotic civil war, including a series of airstrikes near Damascus in May 2013.

Those strikes, according to Israeli officials, targeted shipments of Iranian-made Fateh-110 missiles bound for the Lebanese Hezbollah militant group.

Syria’s reaction has been relatively mute; in previous cases, Damascus has vowed to retaliate without actually doing so.

The Syrian government said Sunday’s attacks caused only material damage. Israel has not confirmed the strikes, which Syrian activists said had hit weapons depots.

Appearing on Israel Radio on Monday, Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz would neither confirm nor deny the news.

“We have a very potent defense policy that is oriented toward safeguarding the country and wherever possible preventing the upgrading of weaponry that gives terrorist organizations game-changers or unusually sophisticated means of attack,” he said.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem claimed Israel was trying to compensate for losses incurred by Islamic extremist groups in Syria at the hands of the Syrian army. He did not elaborate.

He spoke Monday at a joint news conference in Tehran with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said Moscow “is deeply concerned about this dangerous development which requires a detailed investigation.”

In a statement, he said that the use of force is “unacceptable in international relations and deserves an outright condemnation.”

Russia, along with Iran, is the Syrian government’s chief international ally, and has been trying to convene a dialogue among the warring parties in Moscow.

Russian deputy foreign minister Mikhail Bogdanov, who visited Lebanon last week, said his country is trying to arrange a meeting between Syria’s warring sides without preconditions. He then flew to Turkey to meet with the head of Syria’s Western-backed opposition group, Hadi Bahra.

Proposed local cease-fires starting with Aleppo as a building block, is seen as a wider solution to end the Syrian war.

Source: AP