From Ian:
PMW: PA accuses PMW of incitement for exposing terror incitement of Jibril Rajoub
In its monthly report on so-called Israeli incitement, the Palestinian Authority's official news agency WAFA accused Palestinian Media Watch of incitement for exposing Jibril Rajoub's incitement to terror and murder.
In its monthly "incitement" report, WAFA extensively quoted an article from the Israeli paper Israel Hayom. That article was an in-depth story on PMW's report The Rajoub File, which documents that:
Jibril Rajoub, Chairman of the Palestine Olympic Committee
Promotes and glorifies Palestinian terror and incites murder of Israelis
Uses his title as Olympic committee chairman while glorifying terror
Prohibits using sports for peacebuilding
Violates the fundamental Olympic principles
Upon publishing the report, PMW sent it to the International Olympic Committee, calling for the committee to:
Demand Mr. Rajoub's removal from the position of Chairman of the Palestine Olympic Committee
Ban Mr. Rajoub from participating in any activities related to the International Olympic Committee, as well as meetings and events of the national Olympic Committees
Prohibit Mr. Rajoub from using the title "Chairman of the Palestine Olympic Committee"
Demand the appointment of a new Palestinian chairman who rejects terror, upholds Olympic values, and facilitates peacebuilding through sports
The International Olympic Committee has not yet responded to PMW's call or reacted to the contents of the report documenting Rajoub's support for terror and murder.
Justice over Terror Denied as PLO Escapes Responsibility
The PLO and PA were clearly responsible. Not only through planning, but through incitement. Official PA TV in 2000 encouraged viewers to “kill those Jews and those Americans who are like them, and those who stand with them.”
The appeals panel cared not. The decision acknowledged the attacks were “unquestionably horrific” — but claimed that the crimes were outside the law’s jurisdiction. Mass carnage was sought, said the court, but not necessarily of Americans.
Setting this standard would leave American victims of international terrorism and their families legally homeless in pursuing justice against their attackers — and effectively render the entire law in question moot.
This is especially dangerous when the Palestinian Authority continues to encourage attacks on innocents. Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas, sponsors bloodshed by paying millions in salaries to imprisoned terrorists.
The ruling offends the conscience. It must go to the Supreme Court, which cannot let it stand.
The Next War Will Be a Godawful Mess
Hezbollah has learned much in the ten years since it last fought Israel. The next war will likely be even more devastating.
Hezbollah remains the one Arab force to have denied the IDF a single decisive victory in the past three decades. It has done so by operating as a guerrilla force. However, pundits are now suggesting that when the Iranian proxy group initiates its next war with Israel, it will employ the conventional military experience it has gained in the Syrian Civil War, thus presenting a challenge to the Jewish state. Mistakenly, they ignore that Hezbollah would be exposing itself by operating as a conventional force, facilitating the IDF’s victory. Instead the group will revert to operating as a guerrilla organization, leaving Lebanon and its civilians to bear the brunt of the Israeli onslaught.
Hezbollah has been conducting itself as a regular army since the escalation of its role in the Syrian Civil War in 2013. Following the battle of Qusayr, Hezbollah has moved from insurgency to counterinsurgency. It has been fighting openly along established front lines in order to conquer and control territory so as to weaken and destroy its opponents. Its fighters have even acted as battlefield commanders of Syrian troops. Hezbollah’s weaponry in Syria also reflects a more conventional strategy. The group has operated Syrian tanks and artillery systems, jeeps with recoilless rifles, and is even rumored to have acquired its own 75-tank armored brigade.
Although Hezbollah has grown considerably stronger since the 2006 Second Lebanon War with Israel, it is far from closing the power gap with the IDF. Notwithstanding its bellicose propaganda, Hezbollah’s leadership recognizes the IDF’s continued military superiority. The group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, readily acknowledges that Israel is a “real power” to be reckoned with, and his deputy Naim Qassem has admitted that Hezbollah never envisioned fighting the Jewish state in “a classic war,” because it lacked the “sufficient numbers, equipment, and military capabilities” a conventional army enjoys. For their part, the Israelis have made it clear that their intentions are to exploit this “total asymmetry” to their advantage in the next war. They will aim to hit the group “in the most muscular way possible” and score the decisive victory that has eluded them in the past. Per what is called the Gideon Doctrine, Israel intends to quickly unleash its full force against Hezbollah, throwing it off-balance and dealing it a crushing blow before it can recover.
'Iran, aided by proxy terrorist groups, biggest existential threat to Israel'
Citing Iran and its proxy terrorist organizations, Hamas and Hezbollah, as the greatest existential threats to Israel, former Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) head and current chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Avi Dichter, said the Middle East is undergoing “tectonic movements.”
“We used to have three enemy countries: Syria, Jordan and Egypt,” said Dichter Monday during an international press briefing at The Israel Project’s headquarters in Jerusalem.
“We signed a peace treaty with Egypt and Jordan, and today we have four enemy countries – Syria, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, which has an army of terrorists, and Iran, an enemy state.”
While Israel has historically engendered a robust level of deterrence against hostile neighbors by winning several damaging wars, he contended that a recently empowered Iran, aided by its allies, now poses the most imminent danger to Israel’s security.
“I think that we all understand that Iran learned that the best way to gain support among the Arab countries in general, and the Arab people in particular, is by creating hatred, or launching attacks against Israel,” he said.
“They know that directly [attacking Israel] is very complicated. They have seen that it is a lot easier to do it by proxy.”
Iranian Report: Assad Forces, Hezbollah Coordinating Large-Scale Operation on Israel Border in Golan Heights
The Syrian army and Lebanon-based Iranian proxy terrorist organization Hezbollah are coordinating a large-scale “anti-terrorism” operation in southern Syria, near the border with Israel in the Golan Heights, the semi-official Iranian news agency Fars reported on Monday.
According to the report, the purpose of the operation is to “end militancy” in the area adjacent to the border.
Anonymous “sources” quoted in the report said, “Hezbollah has deployed a large number of its forces at the Quneitra passage, which has connected the Syrian territories to the occupied Golan.”
Fars is aligned with the regime of Islamic Republic, which backs Syrian President Bashar Assad against rebel forces — among them ISIS — in the country’s raging civil war. It claimed that late last month,
Fatah al-Sham (the newly-formed al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group previously known as the al-Nusra Front) suffered a heavy death toll and its military hardware sustained major damage in Syrian Army troops’ attacks on their centers in Quneitra.
Syrian army men targeted gatherings and concentration centers Fatah al-Sham near the village of Um Batna South of al-Ba’ath town, killing several terrorists and destroying three vehicles carrying a number terrorists and large volume of weapons and ammunition.
Netanyahu Vows to Imbue EU with "New Understanding" of Israel's Role in War on Terror
Israel is slowly trying to convince Europe that the Jewish state is a key player in efforts to stem a rising tide of Islamic terrorism, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday morning as he made his way to the Continent for a two-day visit.
“Europe as a whole is undergoing changes. It faces very great challenges over the spread of radical Islamic terrorism,” he said as he boarded his plane to the Netherlands.
Netanyahu plans to discuss with his interlocutors Israel’s “central role” as the “most stable and most stabilizing element in the Middle East,” one that contributes greatly to preventing the spread of terrorism, he added.
“This is a new understanding; it is important, of course, for Israel and the states of the region but it is also very important for Europe,” he said. “It is this understanding that we are working to instill gradually in all European countries.”
In The Hague, the prime minister will meet his Dutch counterpart, Mark Rutte, to discuss bilateral issues and regional developments. Netanyahu is also slated to meet King Willem-Alexander at the Noordeinde Palace. It will be Netanyahu’s first meeting with the monarch since he succeeded to the throne in April 2013.
Dutch ex-PM: ‘War criminal’ Netanyahu should be tried in Hague
Former Dutch prime minister and longtime pro-Palestinian activist Dries van Agt said Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal who should be prosecuted during his visit this week to the Netherlands.
Van Agt, who in 2012 said Jews should have had a state in Germany instead of the Land of Israel and who in 2008 spoke at rally in Rotterdam that featured a speech via satellite by Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh, spoke about Israel’s prime minister this Monday during an interview with the NPO 1 public television channel.
“There’s a war criminal coming to this country,” said Van Agt, 85, who presided as the Dutch prime minister for five years until 1982 for the centrist Christian-Democratic Appeal party.
“The occupation and expansion… building of settlements, of occupied territory, this is according to the Rome Statute, which is… the setup… the statute on which the international criminal court is based, in so many words, a war crime,” Van Agt said in a rambling television interview. “So why should we receive someone who continues with such things, we could have sent him right away to the international criminal court, that would have been better,” he said of Netanyahu.
Van Agt has fended off accusations that he was anti-Semitic after he said in 1972, while serving as justice minister: “”I am only an Aryan” in speaking to a journalist about his intention to bring about the release from prison of Nazi prisoners for health reasons. He later said that meant to say that the release would be difficult for him to achieve because his Jewish predecessor had, according to Van Agt, tried and failed.
Netherlands, Israel to build gas pipeline to Gaza
The Dutch government will assist Israel in improving water and gas supplies to energy-strapped Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday during a visit to the Netherlands.
Netanyahu said that while his government is in a conflict with "terrorists" in the occupied territories, Israel still wishes to improve the quality of life for most people living there.
"We have no battle, no qualms with the people of Gaza," he said. "The first step is to improve the supply of energy and water to Gaza, including laying a gas pipeline."
He said he was publicly committing to making it happen.
Gaza faces an energy crisis due to damage to its electric network from past conflicts, together with Israel's coastal blockade and other sanctions and restrictions.
PA officials deny report Abbas willing to meet Netanyahu in Moscow
A report that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas agreed to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Moscow was swiftly denied by senior Palestinian officials Monday.
Russia’s Interfax news agency earlier Monday reported that the Palestinian envoy to Moscow had conveyed Abbas’s willingness to sit with Netanyahu during a meeting with Russia’s Middle East envoy, Mikhail Bogdanov, in Amman earlier in the day.
Such talks would be the first public summit between the two leaders since 2010, and a sign of progress to jump-start moribund peace talks amid a flurry of international diplomatic initiatives, including an offer by Russian President Vladimir Putin to host face to face talks in Moscow.
But a senior Palestinian Authority source denied the Russian report to The Times of Israel, saying Ramallah has yet to receive a response from Israel to its preconditions — that Jerusalem commit to a settlement freeze and a prisoner release. Those preconditions, the source said, would have to be met before a direct meeting between Abbas and Netanyahu could take place.
The source emphasized the entire Palestinian leadership was united in its demand that Israel commit to the preconditions, and expressed “puzzlement” that the report of Abbas’s ostensible willingness to meet Netanyahu first appeared in Russian media, rather than a Palestinian outlet.
Abbas says he agreed to Moscow meeting, Netanyahu postponed
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Tuesday he was willing to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Moscow on Friday, but that the Israeli premier had asked to postpone the meeting.
“Netanyahu’s representative proposed to delay this meeting to a later date. So the meeting will not happen, but I am ready and I declare again that I will go to any meeting,” Abbas said at a joint press conference in Warsaw with Polish President Andrzej Duda.
According to the official PA news agency Wafa, Abbas said he was willing to meet anywhere in the world “because dialogue is important for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state living beside Israel in peace and stability.”
The comments by Abbas appeared to suggest that he has softened his longstanding insistence that any meeting with Netanyahu be preceded by an Israeli settlement freeze and the release of Palestinian prisoners.
Swedish FM Wallstrom, a vocal Israel critic, rejects BDS
Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom, a vocal critic of Israel, opposes the anti-Israel boycott movement, Swedish opposition leader Anna Kinberg Batra told members of Knesset Monday.
Kinberg Batra said in a meeting with Israel-Sweden Parliamentary Friendship Group chairman Eyal Ben-Reuven (Zionist Union) and MKs Stav Shaffir (Zionist Union) and Amir Ohana (Likud) that before she left for Israel, Wallstrom asked her to pass on a message that she opposes the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement and boycotts of Israel in general.
Earlier this year, Wallstrom sparked outrage in Israel by calling for an investigation to determine whether Israel is guilty of extrajudicial killings of Palestinians during the recent wave of terrorism. She made no such call following terrorist attacks in Europe this year, in which local police killed the terrorists.
Wallstrom also lamented the “disproportionate” number of deaths on the Palestinian side relative to Israelis.
Ben-Reuven responded that “Israelis who see the BDS movement in Europe, and in Sweden in particular, recoil and shut themselves off; therefore, we need support, not pressure.”
Swedish opposition head blasted for failure to praise Israel
Israeli officials on Tuesday accused Sweden’s opposition leader of failing to make any pro-Israel statements during her recent visit, arguing that she misled them in presenting herself as a friend who is visiting to counter the Stockholm government’s hostile stance toward Israel.
“We are disappointed with the visit of Swedish opposition leader [Anna] Kinberg Batra in Israel,” a senior official in Jerusalem told The Times of Israel. “Before the visit, she presented herself as a close friend and gave us to understand that she would use her visit as a platform for positive statements about Israel. She did not deliver the goods.”
Ties between Jerusalem and the current center-left government in Stockholm have been frosty ever since Sweden recognized a Palestinian state in 2014. They deteriorated even further as Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom made a series of controversial statements, including a call for a probe into Israel’s alleged extrajudicial executions of Palestinian assailants. In November 2015, she argued that a terror attack in Paris that killed 129 people was rooted in the frustrations of Muslims in the Middle East, including Palestinians.
In Israel, Swedish opposition head slams settlements as ‘unacceptable’
Israel’s policy of building settlements in the West Bank is “completely unacceptable,” Sweden’s opposition leader said Sunday in Jerusalem.
In an interview (Swedish) with the Expressen newspaper, Anna Kinberg Batra — whom official Jerusalem considers “balanced” regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — was asked what she would tell Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during their meeting on Monday morning.
She replied: “One must be able to meet in order to deliver criticism. Obviously there is criticism to deliver against the settlements, which are of course unacceptable. But if we want a better exchange and want to influence each other in the right direction and use the positive exchange we have, then one must begin to talk with one another.”
The Netanyahu-Kinberg Batra meeting went ahead as scheduled, but Netanyahu’s office had not issued statements or released photographs of it, as of Monday evening.
IDF troops come under fire near Gaza; army retaliates
Palestinian in northern Gaza fired across the border at Israeli soldiers overnight Monday, the army said, in the latest in a series of cross-border skirmishes.
In response, tanks fired at two Hamas posts in Gaza, the IDF said in a statement. Palestinian media sources reported the targets were buildings belonging to the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing.
No injuries were reported on either side.
In a separate operation, IDF troops arrested six alleged Hamas operatives throughout the West Bank and seized a weapons cache containing explosives in the village of Surif, north of Hebron.
The shots fired from Gaza are the latest in a series of minor clashes between Gaza based groups and the IDF. Two days ago a similar incident occurred at the same site.
Death toll rises to 4 in Tel Aviv car park disaster; workers still trapped
The death toll from Monday's construction collapse in Tel Aviv's Ramat Hachayal neighborhood rose to four on Tuesday as search and rescue workers found another body under the rubble and evacuated it around 3:30pm.
Speaking to the Post at the collapse site Col. Dudi Mizrahi said he was optimistic about the fate of the remaining three trapped. "No one would be here working this hard if they didn't believe the people are still alive," he said.
Numerous search and rescue workers were busy shoveling mounds of dirt.
Among those trapped in the debris was Muhammad Dawabsheh, a cousin of the Dawabsheh family that was firebombed in Duma in July 2015.
The relative of the Palestinian family that lost three members in the arson attack, was apparently stuck on the fourth floor of a parking lot that caved-in on Monday in the Ramay Hachayal neighborhood.
Rescuers pull fourth body from rubble of collapsed garage
Search and rescue workers pulled the body of a victim from the rubble of a parking garage in Tel Aviv on Tuesday afternoon, over 24 hours after the structure collapsed, killing at least three people.
As of Tuesday afternoon, another three people were still missing, and soldiers from the IDF Home Front Command’s search and rescue units were working around the clock to locate and free the trapped construction workers from the wreckage of the four-story structure.
The man was pronounced dead by medical personnel at the scene, the army said.
At least 20 people were injured when the structure collapsed Monday morning.
One fatality was identified as a 28-year-old Ukrainian national, another was a 34-year-old Palestinian from Bayt Rima in the northern West Bank. The identity of the other deceased victim has not been officially released.
Israel using new tech in efforts to rescue trapped workers
The Israeli rescue teams working at a collapsed Tel Aviv parking garage are using a mix of fiber-optic cables, cameras with voice and visuals, and new technology that tracks cellphones to pinpoint the location of trapped victims, Col. Ramtin Sabti, head of the Jerusalem and Central District of the IDF Homefront Command, said Tuesday.
A fourth body was retrieved from the rubble of a collapsed underground parking garage in the Ramat Hahayal neighborhood of Tel Aviv Tuesday afternoon, as emergency response personnel continued to search for three more construction workers believed to be trapped underground.
At least 20 people were injured when the structure collapsed Monday morning. The IDF said 500 soldiers and officers were involved in the rescue efforts alongside a number of civilian organizations.
The new technology to track cellphones, used for the first time in a real disaster area, helped save one of the trapped victims after the collapse Monday, Sabti said.
Produced by the Israel Aerospace Industries to specifications provided by the Homefront Command, the Res-Q-Cell cellular search and rescue system is in its final stages of development.
On YouTube, PLO mocks Netanyahu’s claim he cares about Palestinians
In the age when diplomatic disagreements are played out on social media and global stature is measured in “likes” and “hits,” Palestinian and Israeli leaders are taking to YouTube to publicly attack each other, and hopefully gain internet popularity at the same time.
In the latest attempt, the Palestine Liberation Organization released a clip Monday night mocking a video by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in which he claims to care more about the Palestinian people than do its leaders.
In its two-minute video titled “Netanyahu Uncensored,” the PLO Department of Culture and Information takes footage of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from last month, in which he slams alleged siphoning of millions of dollars from charity organizations to Hamas, adding canned laughter and splicing in images of heavy-handed Israeli soldiers.
Gaza-bound Turkish aid ship arrives in Ashdod
Some 120 containers of food and equipment arrived at Israel’s Ashdod port from Turkey on Sunday prior to entering the Gaza Strip, the second such shipment since a detente deal between Jerusalem and Ankara.
The containers will bring basic items such as rice, sugar, flour, clothing, school equipment, bicycles and children’s toys to the Strip, according to Channel 10 news.
The aid shipment was part of an agreement between Israel and Turkey to reconcile earlier this year after a six-year rift.
Relations between the former allies imploded in 2010 following an Israeli naval raid on a Turkish aid ship trying to breach Israel’s blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. The raid left 10 Turks dead and several IDF soldiers wounded.
The first shipment, in July, brought 10,000 tons of aid, including toys, diapers, clothes and food, into the enclave. Trucks entered Gaza after security vetting in Israel.
Ex-Gaza leader Haniyeh reportedly to replace Mashaal as Hamas head
Former Gaza prime minister Ismail Haniyeh is likely to replace Khaled Mashaal as head of the Hamas terror group’s politburo in upcoming elections, according to Arab media reports Monday
All other contenders for the position are said to have withdrawn, leaving Haniyeh as the sole candidate.
“There is almost an agreement inside the leadership of the political bureau that the two (other) expected candidates running for the presidency of Hamas would withdraw and therefore, allow Haniyeh to chair the movement,” an informed source told the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper.
Haniyeh, 53, left the coastal enclave via the Rafah crossing Monday en route to Saudi Arabia to attend the hajj, according to Hamas radio. He is also expected to visit Turkey before taking up residence in Qatari capital of Doha.
The head of Hamas’s political bureau is expected to live outside of Gaza, as traveling in and out of the Strip is difficult.
Mashaal has lived for the last several years in Qatar.
PreOccupiedTerritory: Palestinian Talmud Appropriated By Jews (satire)
Advanced Jewish scholars have been studying and claiming as their own an ancient work called the Palestinian Talmud, in what Palestinian activists say is yet another theft by Jews of everything Palestinian.
The Palestinian Talmud, compiled in the fourth century CE from earlier sources, has been studied and analyzed for many centuries in yeshivas, though much less than its later Babylonian counterpart. Pro-Palestinian advocates are railing against this prolonged act of appropriation, which they claim is an attempt to negate Palestinian culture and recast it as Jewish in the ongoing Zionist effort to displace the indigenous Palestinian people.
“They even call it the ‘Jerusalem’ Talmud, as if that somehow makes it Jewish,” charged Ali Abunimah, who runs the web site Electronic Intifada. “It’s not even written in Hebrew,” he noted, but Aramaic, the vernacular in the Holy Land when the Palestinian Talmud was developed.
Scholars note that even the content of the Palestinian Talmud has been Judaized. “It looks like all obvious references to indigenous Palestinian culture have been scrubbed from the text, and replaced with discussions of Jewish ritual and legal matters,” argued Dr. David Duke. “Under normal circumstances I would steer clear of anything called ‘Talmud,’ which everyone who’s anyone knows is the source of so much mendacity and violence, but here we’re talking about something we call ‘Palestinian,’ so it can’t be as bad as the other kind.”
Bye bye burka: ISIS bans burka in Iraqi city after killings by veiled women
The so-called Islamic State terror group has allegedly banned women from wearing the burka at security centers in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul despite harsh enforcement of a law requiring them to be worn, according to the UK's Daily Mail.
Following the murders of several commanders of the terror group by veiled women, the group has purportedly banned females from entering buildings in the city while wearing the full-body covering.
Women who have not worn conservative Islamic garments that cover their bodies or eyes have been beaten or killed in Syria and Iraq by ISIS's "morality police."
The Iran Front Page outlet was informed of the ban by a source in Iraq on Friday, according to the Daily Mail.
It is understood that women in the rest of Mosul and all other areas controlled by ISIS will still have to abide by the veiled dress code.
ISIS Supporters, Terror Experts Warn: Sleeper Cells in Europe Ready to Attack Civilians
And most frighteningly of all - terror experts have backed up the chilling claims.
During the migrant crisis it was feared jihadists could sneak through the European Union’s porous borders as thousands arrived into the continent daily from war-torn nations.
This included in July, Mohammad Daleel, a 27-year-old failed asylum seeker, who blew himself up outside a party in Ansbach, Germany.
ISIS later said he was a "soldier of the Caliphate".
There was doubt around the claims as the man was said to have mental health issues and had previously attempted suicide.
But now Express.co.uk has seen online material from ISIS supporters, claiming sleeper cells are waiting to attack.
One ISIS supporter boasted over Telegram app about upcoming attacks which he claimed would be as deadly as those in Nice and Paris.
JCPA: Iran Is Courting Hamas
With the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Hamas leader Khaled Mashal refused to take the side of President Bashar Assad, and Hamas’ political leadership found itself at loggerheads with Iran.
As a result, Hamas was forced to transfer its headquarters from Damascus to Doha, Qatar. Since then Hamas’ political leadership has kept a distance from Iran, claiming that it is “neutral” in the struggle between Sunnis and Shiites and that it does not take a side in the Iranian-Saudi conflict over Middle Eastern hegemony, including Saudi Arabia’s attempts to check Iranian expansion.
Notwithstanding the deep-seated dispute between Mashal and the Iranian leadership, Iran has continued to support the Hamas military wing, Izaddin al-Qassam – also at loggerheads with Mashal since Operation Protective Edge two years ago – with money and weapons.
Iran, however, is not sitting on its hands. It is now resuming its courtship of Hamas in an attempt to add it to the Shiite camp and restore its former ties with the movement.
‘US is ignoring Iran pushing the envelope on nuclear deal’
Iran is systematically testing the boundaries of the nuclear deal it struck with the West, and the Obama administration has repeatedly swept this under the carpet, acting as “Iran’s lawyers” instead, a senior Israeli security expert has warned.
Dr. Emily Landau, head of the Arms Control Program at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday that a string of incidents over the past six months has proven that “there is a continued struggle between Iran and the US. It is real, and is here. Iran is continuing to push the envelope, trying to get as much as it can, even within the confines of this deal,” she said, referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was reached last year.
The upcoming elections in the US represent an opportunity for Israel to establish a new dialogue with the next administration to formulate a response to Iran, Landau argued. While the US has stated that Iran is implementing its side of the deal, “Israel can’t be satisfied with that,” Landau said, due to a host of “worrying dynamics and other issues” that Washington is ignoring, as well as the fact that “the JCPOA is tremendously flawed.”
Landau referred to a report published last week by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), headed by former IAEA inspector David Albright, who has sought to maintain a neutral stance on the Iran nuclear deal, she said.
Congress Moves to Block Obama Admin’s ‘Ransom Payments’ to Iran
Congress is set to consider new legislation that would block the Obama administration from awarding Iran billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars in what many describe as a ransom payment, according to a copy of the legislation obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) will introduce on Tuesday new legislation that would prohibit the Obama administration from moving forward with all payments to Iran, according to the bill, which would also force Iran to return billions of dollars in U.S. funds that have already been delivered to Tehran by the White House.
Rubio’s bill—a version of which is also being introduced in the House by Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.)—would mandate that Iran pay American victims of terrorism some $53 billion in reparations for past attacks planned and coordinated by the Islamic Republic.
The legislation comes amid a growing scandal surrounding the Obama administration’s decision to pay Iran $1.7 billion earlier this year as part of an effort to free imprisoned U.S. hostages. The payment, details of which were kept secret from Congress and the American people, is expected to become the focus of several congressional investigations in the coming weeks.
“President Obama’s disastrous nuclear deal with Iran was sweetened with an illicit ransom payment and billions of dollars for the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism,” Rubio said in a statement provided to the Free Beacon. “The U.S. government should not be in the business of negotiating with terrorists and paying ransom money in exchange for the release of American hostages. Doing so puts more Americans in danger, as President Obama himself admitted.”
Iran shutters 800 clothing stores over ‘inappropriate’ attire
Iran’s state TV says police have shut down more than 800 clothing stores across the country for selling “unconventional and inappropriate” attire — believed to mean Western-style outfits and women’s clothing that doesn’t meet strict Islamic requirements.
Monday’s report says the raids took place over a 10-day span after authorities first sent official warnings to merchants in more than 3,600 shops.
Iranian police and state TV have in recent weeks campaigned against selling second-hand clothes, which are considered “unhygienic,” as well as clothes with English language print on them.
Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution brought Islamists to power in Iran, women are required to cover themselves from head to toe in loose-fitting simple overcoats that hide the feminine shape. They are also required to cover their heads with scarves.
Turkey Shuts Down Social Media after Spat with Iran over Israel (satire)
The Turkish government has blocked Facebook and Twitter after a public dust-up involving the Islamic Republic of Iran, Israel and a slew of attack fans.
“Real fans of martial law and mass arrests wouldn’t be throwing shade at my new friends,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan tweeted after supporters of his regime got hostile over a picture of him and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu together in a Turkish bathhouse in Istanbul.
Erdogan and Netanyahu have been spending a lot of time together lately, ever since their two countries mended relations. In the near future, Israelis will be able to purchase cheap high quality leather jackets, coats, bags, shoes, gloves and wallets. In return, stressed out Turkish citizens will able to get stoned by gaining access to the generic drug capital of the world, Israel.
Things really heated up once Iran joined the online party, commenting about the Turkey-Israel lovefest.
“Yo Recep, if you can’t handle the hate, stop posting pictures of your new girlfriend – lol. Netanyahu’s gonna love you and then throw your ass to the curb. He’s a playa. He got it on with seven African countries at once!” the Islamic Republic’s official Facebook page posted.
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