U.S. Officials: What Freeze Commitments? David Bedein Reports on Trip to the US

by Israel Behind the News

United States officials are unfamiliar with the commitments America is allegedly offering Israel in exchange for a ban on Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria, says investigative journalist David Bedein. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has told his ministers, and the Israeli public, that the U.S. has promised not to pressure Israel for any additional ban on construction in the future in exchange for a three-month building freeze now.

Bedein was in the U.S. last week and met with senior White House officials. He reports that he was surprised to hear them deny the promises reported by Netanyahu. The officials said they had heard of the alleged American commitments in the Israeli media but had not received confirmation from the Obama administration.

Bedein said he has filed an inquiry at the Prime Minister's Office regarding what he heard but has not yet received a response.

Meanwhile, Former United States ambassador to Israel, Dan Kurtzer, wrote in the Washington Post that Israel should not sign the agreement with Obama, calling it a "bribe" that will change the United States-Israel relationship to one of a political nature.

National Security Advisor Uzi Arad said Saturday that U.S. leaders had put one commitment in writing. In an interview with Channel 2, he said American officials had promised in writing not to pressure Israel again if Israel agrees to a second moratorium on building.

Arad also confirmed reports that the U.S. had promised Israel F-35 stealth fighter jets in exchange for the freeze, but said that contrary to some rumors, the jets would not be given as a gift. Israel will pay for the planes, he said, adding that details of the sale are not yet final. Minister Uzi Landau said several days ago that the jets are conditional on reaching an agreement on borders within the 90 day freeze period.

In addition to a commitment not to pressure Israel for a third construction freeze, U.S. officials had allegedly agreed that any freeze on Jewish building east of the 1948 armistice line would not include Jerusalem, and had assured Israel that America would veto anti-Israel resolutions in the United Nations Security Council.

An American official denied one of the alleged commitments on Thursday, tellingHaaretz that a construction ban would include Jerusalem. “If the moratorium deal goes through, we will continue to press for quiet throughout east Jerusalem during the 90 days, regardless of what Bibi [Netanyahu] is telling Shas now,” the official said. Shas is reportedly insisting that Defense Minister Barak commit himself to signing new building permits in Judea and Samaria after the freeze, which is the way new construction was prevented by him when the first freeze was over..

The U.S. is pushing for a three-month building freeze in Judea and Samaria in order to appease Palestinian Authority leaders who dropped out of negotiations with Israel when a previous construction ban ended. The PA is demanding a total building freeze east of the armistice line, including in Jerusalem.

Previously Jews living east of the armistice line had continued their lives as usual during negotiations with the PA, with the understanding that many of the Jewish communities in those areas will remain under Israeli control under a peace deal, making construction irrelevant to the talks. Jews in Judea and Samaria are allowed to build only within the bounds of existing Israeli communities, such that construction does not have an effect on the quantity of land available to the P[A].

Israel Behind the News

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Al-Qaeda AffiliateThreatens More Small-Scale Bomb Attacks

by Greg Miller

Al-Qaeda is threatening to launch a wave of small-scale attacks similar to the recent failed parcel bomb plot, which the terrorist group describes as a low-budget operation that caused fear and costly countermeasures in the West.

The new threat was published Saturday in the latest issue of the group's English-language magazine, Inspire. The online magazine, published by al-Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen, features glossy photographs of UPS delivery vehicles and asserts that the group spent just $4,200 on a plot aimed at blowing up cargo aircraft headed for the United States.

"We will continue with similar operations and we do not mind at all in this stage if they are intercepted," one article said. "It is such a good bargain for us to spread fear amongst the enemy . . . in exchange for a few months of work and a few thousand bucks."

The publication represents a new propaganda ploy for al-Qaeda, marking the first time that that the terrorist organization has provided such a detailed description of its planning in the aftermath of an attack.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, as the Yemen-based arm is known, has emerged as a top concern of counterterrorism officials over the past two years, in part because of its willingness to experiment with small-scale plots.

The United States has recently begun employing Predator drones in Yemen in an expanding hunt for AQAP leaders, include Anwar al-Aulaqi, a Muslim cleric who was born in the United States.

The package bomb plot was thwarted late last month when authorities in the United Kingdom and Dubai - acting on an intelligence tip from Saudi Arabia - intercepted two parcels that had been mailed from Yemen containing ordinary printer cartridges packed with the explosive compound PETN.

Authorities have said the parcels made it past cargo screening systems and contained enough explosives to bring down a plane. The parcels were sent to addresses for Jewish institutions in Chicago but appeared to have been designed to detonate in transit.

Al-Qaeda's core group in Pakistan has traditionally focused on staging elaborate, simultaneous attacks on multiple targets - a preoccupation with the spectacular that made the plots more difficult to execute and easier to detect.

The parcel bomb attempt was aimed at a familiar Al-Qaeda target: aviation. But AQAP has embraced a philosophy of probing for vulnerabilities with plots that are more streamlined and more frequent.

The magazine refers to the parcel bomb plot as "operation hemorrhage" and asserts that its main objective was to damage the multibillion-dollar air freight industry and trigger a costly security response.

Taking down a plane "would add to the element of fear and shock," according to one article, "but that would have been an additional advantage . . . not a determining factor of its success."

In the same article, AQAP itemizes the plot's ingredients: "Two Nokia mobiles, $150 each, two HP printers, $300 each, plus shipping, transportation and other miscellaneous expenses."

The cover of the magazine shows the sum $4,200 over the blurred image of a cargo jet. Inside, authors warn that they intend to share details of how to construct their device with followers in countries where mail-screening systems have not caught up.

The magazine offers explanations for some of the decisions involved in the plot. The names in the addresses were drawn from historical figures associated with the Crusades and attacks on Muslims. The packages were sent to synagogues in Chicago, "Obama's city."

The magazine also includes photos of the printers that were shipped, as well as a Charles Dickens novel, "Great Expectations," that was packed in one of the boxes to reflect the group's optimism "about the outcome of this operation."

Greg Miller

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Evidence Links Hezbollah to Hariri Death

by Colum Lynch

A Lebanese police officer and U.N. investigators unearthed extensive circumstantial evidence implicating the Syrian-backed Hezbollah movement in the February 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri, according to an investigation by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

The U.N. International Independent Investigation Commission's findings are based on an elaborate examination of Lebanese phone records. They suggest Hezbollah officials communicated with the owners of cell phones allegedly used to coordinate the detonation that killed Hariri and 22 others as they traveled through downtown Beirut in an armed convoy, according to Lebanese and U.N. phone analysis obtained by CBC and shared with The Washington Post. The revelations are likely to add to speculation that a U.N. prosecutor plans to indict members of Hezbollah by the end of the year.

The work of the commission, whose mandate has expired, has been handed over the U.N. Special Tribunal, which will carry out prosecutions. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah - who claims Israel killed Hariri - has made it clear that the group will not accept the U.N.'s prosecution of its members.

The CBC report says that the head of the U.N. tribunal, Daniel Bellemare, declined a request to comment, and other officials in his office did not respond to phone calls. A U.N. attorney warned the CBC that the organization would alert Canadian authorities that the news agency's had obtained privileged U.N. documents, according to a copy of the letter reviewed by The Post.

The latest findings mark a major development in an investigation that has played out for more than five years, and which initially had implicated Syrian and pro-Syrian Lebanese officials. In October 2005, the U.N.'s prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, a German, issued a report saying that Hariri's assassination "could not have been taken without the approval of top-ranked Syrian security officials and could not have been further organized without the collusion of their counterparts in the Lebanese security forces." Mehlis's successors, Serge Brammertz of Belgium and Bellemare, a former Canadian justice official, have revealed virtually none of their findings to the public, saying that the evidence will be presented in a court of law.

The CBC's reporting also uncovered an internal U.N. document indicating that a top Lebanese intelligence official, Col. Wissam al-Hassan, who serves as Lebanon's key liaison with the U.N. investigators, was considered by some U.N. sleuths as a potential suspect in Hariri's murder. Hassan oversaw security for Hariri at the time of the assassination but had taken the day off to take an examination at a university.

A confidential internal U.N. memo, dated March 10, 2008, prepared for the commission's top investigator, Garry Loeppky, said Hassan's "alibi is weak and inconsistent" and recommended that he be "investigated quietly" to determine whether he played a role in Hariri's killing. But the CBC report states that the commission's management "ignored the recommendation" to investigate Hassan.

Hassan declined a request to speak with CBC to discuss the allegations.

The report also faults the United Nations for misplacing a vital piece of evidence - a complex analysis of Lebanese phone records that allegedly pinpointed the phones used by Hariri's killers - in the early months of the investigation. It also criticizes the U.N. commission for failing to provide sufficient security for a key Lebanese officer, Col. Wissam Eid, who was killed after helping the U.N. unravel the crime mystery.

Eid, a former student of computer engineering, had conducted a review of the call records of all cellphones that had been used in the vicinity of the Hotel St. George, where Hariri's convoy was bombed. He quickly established a network of "red" phones that had been used by the hit squad. He then established links with other small phone networks he suspected of being involved in planning the operation. He traced all the networks back to a landline at Hezbollah's Great Prophet Hospital in South Beirut, and a handful of government-issued cell phones set aside for Hezbollah. "The Eid report was entered into the U.N.'s database by someone who either didn't understand it or didn't care enough to bring it forward. It disappeared," according to the CBC.

It would be another year and a half before a team of British investigators, working for the U.N., discovered Eid's paper and contacted him. Eight days later, Eid was killed in a car bomb. "Lebanon gave Eid a televised funeral and at the UN inquiry there was outrage as well," according to CBC. "But mixed with shame."

Colum Lynch

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Why Obama Should Commute This Life Sentence

by Morris Pollard and David Kirshenbaum


Twenty-five years ago this month, Jonathan Pollard, a civilian naval intelligence analyst, was arrested for passing to Israel classified U.S. data concerning Iraq, Syria and other Arab states, including evidence of Saddam Hussein's development of chemical weapons. Pollard was later sentenced to life in prison - the only person to receive such a punishment for spying for an American ally or neutral country. Lawrence Korb, an assistant secretary of defense at the time of Pollard's arrest, cited this dubious distinction in a recent letter to President Obama urging the president to commute Pollard's sentence to the 25 years served. Korb attributed Pollard's aberrational sentence to the "almost visceral dislike of Israel" on the part of Caspar Weinberger, who was then defense secretary.

In December 1993, The Post editorialized on a campaign seeking presidential commutation of Pollard's sentence. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was urging President Bill Clinton to commute Pollard's sentence to the eight years then served. That call was supported by members of Congress and a range of prominent religious and political figures. Longtime NAACP director Benjamin Hooks, who had himself served as a judge, wrote to Clinton: "I have rarely encountered a case in which government arbitrariness was so clear cut and inexcusable." While opposing Pollard's release at the end of 1993, The Post opined that "certainly a case can be made that a prison term ending when [Pollard] becomes eligible for parole in 1997 would be plenty long enough." Pollard has served more than double the 12 years The Post cited as sufficient punishment.

A little background on the case itself: The type of information Pollard transmitted was part of an intelligence flow the United States had previously shared with Israel but that was cut off after Israel destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981. Former deputy CIA director Bobby Inman has acknowledged that he was so disconcerted that American-supplied satellite photography had been used to carry out that operation that he ordered withheld all intelligence data covering areas more than 250 miles from Israel's borders. Thus it was a criminal action to transmit to Israel photographs of the eastern sections of Syria and Iraq, including chemical weapons plants in eastern Iraq. This became the basis of Pollard's life sentence.

This information is presented not in an effort to exonerate Pollard but to question the severity of his punishment. It is uncontestable that Pollard has been singled out among all Americans who spied for non-adversaries. Of the more than 20 Americans caught spying for friendly or neutral countries, before and after Pollard's arrest, none received a sentence remotely close to life. Of the more than 60 people caught spying for U.S. adversaries over the past quarter-century, many of whom caused massive and demonstrable harm to the United States, only a handful received life terms.

CIA agent David Barnett, who sold the Soviets the names of 30 American agents, was sentenced to 18 years and paroled after 10. Michael Walker, a key figure in the Walker family Soviet spy ring, was sentenced to 25 years and released after serving 15. William Kampiles, a CIA officer who sold the Soviets the operating manual to the KH-11 satellite, America's "eye in the sky," received a 40-year sentence and was released after 18 years.

Abdul Kedar Helmy, an Egyptian-born American, transmitted classified materials to Egypt used in a joint weapons program with Iraq to vastly increase the range of ballistic missiles, including Scud missiles, which were later fired on U.S. troops during the Persian Gulf War. Helmy received a prison term of less than four years. John Walker Lindh, an American who joined the Taliban terrorists fighting the United States, received a 21-year sentence.

In more than two decades, no evidence has been put forth of damage caused to the United States as a result of Pollard's actions. Nothing that could begin to justify a life sentence. Even Weinberger, the former defense secretary, acknowledged in a 2002 interview that, "The Pollard matter was comparatively minor. It was made far bigger than its actual importance."

The message of those still opposed to Pollard's release is that, apparently, we can wink at espionage on behalf of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and China; we can limit the punishments of those who expose American agents, compromise sophisticated U.S. electronic intelligence capabilities, advance the development of enemy weapons systems and even fight alongside enemy combatants - but that unauthorized transmittal of classified data about Arab states to warn Israel of existential threats is unforgivable. For that crime even 25 years in prison is not enough.

A petition for executive clemency for Jonathan Pollard sits on President Obama's desk. Will he bring the injustice in this affair to a long overdue end or be a partner in its perpetuation?

Morris Pollard, a professor emeritus of biological sciences at Notre Dame University and director of its Lobund Institute, is Jonathan Pollard's father. David Kirshenbaum is an attorney in Israel and New York.

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Averting Palestinian Unilateralism:

by Ambassador Dore Gold with Diane Morrison


- The Palestinian Authority's January 22, 2009, declaration to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court amounts to an official request to confirm that the PA can be considered as a state for purposes of ICC jurisdiction.

- Yet the 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement which created the PA established a fundamental principle: "Neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the Permanent Status negotiations."

- It is at least doubtful that the ICC would want to become involved in an attempt to effect a material breach of the only valid and legally binding framework that has governed, and continues to govern, the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians.

- If the Palestinian Authority, acting as a non-state entity, succeeds in achieving standing in the ICC, then any political community contemplating a move to political independence or statehood will be motivated to follow suit. The Chechens, Basques, Tibetans, Sudanese Christians, and Kurds immediately come to mind.

- While some academics try to argue that a State of Palestine existed following the demise of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of the British Mandate, the Palestinian Arab leadership at the time saw their country as part of Southern Syria and their demand was for the reconnection of Palestine with Syria rather than for an independent Palestinian state.

- The Principal Allied Powers that drafted the postwar Treaty of Sevres and the Mandate for Palestine in 1920 did not specifically assign political rights to the local Arab population, but clearly promoted the re-establishment of a Jewish "national home."

- To retroactively revise the political status and reinvent the area as an already existing Arab state or as a precursor to a would-be Arab state of Palestine would be tantamount to wiping out the historical and legal roots of the State of Israel and the internationally recognized rights of the Jewish people to a homeland in Palestine.

- Finally, inserting the issue of ICC jurisdiction into the present environment in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations is likely to fortify Palestinian intransigence at the peace table, since PA negotiators will feel that they can fall back on unilateralist options instead of compromising in order to reach an agreement.

(Click here to read the full article)

Ambassador Dore Gold with Diane Morrison

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Does the Freeze-Deal Make Sense?

by Yoram Ettinger

1. The complex nature of Jewish construction in the Settlements.
If Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria prejudges the outcome of negotiation, wouldn’t Palestinian construction in Judea and Samaria have the same effect?!

If the uprooting of Jewish communities advances peace, why would the uprooting of Arab communities undermine peace?!

The call for uprooting Arabs is immoral; Isn’t the uprooting of Jews just as immoral?!

If the 300,000 Jews, among 1.5MN Arabs, in Judea and Samaria constitute an obstacle to peace, how would one define the 1.5MN Arabs, among 6MN Jews, within pre-1967 Israel?!

If Jewish settlements/communities in Judea and Samaria (est. 1967) constitute the obstacle to peace, why was the PLO established in 1964?! Why did anti-Jewish Palestinian terrorism flare up during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s?!

Why did the Arab-Israel wars erupt in1948/9, 1956 and 1967? Why did an unprecedented Palestinian terrorism surge following the 1993 Oslo Accord and the 2005 uprooting of 25 Jewish communities in Gaza and Northern Samaria?!

Past freezes, slowdowns and dismantling of Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria intensified pressure and exacerbated terrorism – what would be the impact of another -freeze?!

2. White House promises, guarantees and commitments by US presidents are evasive and illusive.

They are replete with escape routes, ambiguity, non-automaticity, and always subject to US’ – and not the recipient’s – interests. Even the tightest US treaty – with NATO – allows the US to consider the activation of military force.

3. Precedents of US commitments raise doubts.
The 1954 US-Taiwan defense treaty was concluded by President Eisenhower and terminated by President Carter in 1979.

In 1957, Israel retreated from the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for President Eisenhower’s Executive Agreement, which committed US military deployment should Egypt violate Sinai’s demilitarization and blockade Eilat.

In 1967, Egypt violated Sinai’s demilitarization and blockaded Eilat, but President Johnson declared his predecessor’s commitment non-binding.
In 1975, President Ford sent an official letter to Prime Minister Rabin, declaring that the US shall give great weight to Israel’s position that the Golan Heights should remain under Israel’s control. In 1979, President Carter declared Ford’s letter non-committal.

In 1982, President Reagan stipulated – in order to overcome Congressional opposition – that the F-15s sold to Saudi Arabia would not be stationed in Tabuq, south of Eilat. In 2003, President Bush justified the Saudi deployment of the fighter planes to Tabuq by altered strategic regional circumstances.

In 1991 President Bush promised Prime Minister Shamir – in return for Israeli restraint in face of Iraqi Scud missiles – to favorably consider granting Israel $10BN loan guarantees for the absorption of one million Soviet Jews, and to dedicate 30% of the bombing in West Iraq to the destruction of the Scud launchers. Prime Minister Shamir kept his side of the bargain; President Bush did not!

In 2000, President Clinton promised Israel $800MN for the retreat from Southern Lebanon, none of which has reached Israel.

4. An American president is not omnipotent, and Congress has the capabilities to enhance US-Israel cooperation.

An American president represents one third of the US government, equal in power to the other third, the US Congress. Unlike the Parliamentarian system, a US president does not determine the list of candidates to the Legislature, the identity of congressional leaders, nor the slate of legislation to be introduced in Congress. A president is constrained by a robust system of checks and balances and by a complete separation of powers between the Executive and the Legislature.

It was Congress – sometimes in defiance of presidents – which terminated US military involvement in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Angola and Nicaragua, facilitated the Jewish Exodus from the USSR (the “Jackson-Vanik Amendment”), cut foreign aid to Turkey following the latter’s invasion of Cyprus, accelerated the fall of South Africa’s White Regime (overriding Reagan’s veto), etc.

In 1991, Congress forced President Bush to transfer to Israel $700MN worth of military systems, in addition to a $650 emergency grant and the refurbishing of the port of Haifa for the benefit of the Sixth Fleet.

5. Congress shares policy-making power, while possessing exclusive legislative power.

Congressional posture is bolstered during economic crises (e.g. currently) and presidential posture is enhanced during wartime.

In 1995 and 1999, Congress intended to force the president to transfer the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, but Israel’s prime ministers urged Congress to temper the legislation, thus dooming the effort.

In October 1998 – a few days before the convening of the Wye Plantation Conference – Democratic congressional leaders told Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: “When it comes to opposing pressure on Israel, we are with Newt [Gingrich].” However, an Israeli prime minister pulled the rug from under their feet….

The US Congress – equipped with the Power of the Purse – has the Constitutional capabilities to initiate, suspend, amend and rescind policies. Congress can direct presidents to exercise the veto power at the UN Security Council, supply Israel with vital military systems in face of mutual threats, etc.

Will Jerusalem learn from history by repeating – or by avoiding – critical errors?!

Yoram Ettinger, CEO, “Second Thought: US-Israel Initiative”

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Facing our Fears

by Caroline Glick

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton must have given Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu quite a reception. Otherwise it is hard to understand what possessed him to accept the deal he accepted when he met with her last week.

Under the deal, Netanyahu agreed to retroactively extend the Jewish construction ban ended on September 26 and to carry it forward an additional 90 days.

Clinton's demand was "Not one more brick" for Jews, meaning, no Jew will be allowed to lay even one more brick on a home he is lawfully building even as the US funds massive Palestinian construction projects. The magnitude of this discriminatory infringement on the property rights of law abiding citizens is breathtaking.

The 90-day freeze is supposed to usher in a period of intense negotiations between Israel and Fatah. But those negotiations will not get off the ground because PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas has no interest in talking, and will never accept any peace offer made by Israel.

But the Americans don't care. They aren't worried about the Palestinians accepting a deal.

What they want are more Israeli land surrenders.

And Clinton convinced Netanyahu to agree that the next round of negotiations will be devoted strictly to a discussion of the breadth and depth of Israeli land surrenders.

The Palestinians won't have to recognize that Israel has a right to exist. They won't have to dismantle terrorist organizations. They won't have to stop teaching their children to aspire to become suicide bombers. They won't even have to stop their negotiations towards reconciling with Hamas.

Netanyahu claims that the Americans agreed to continue respecting Jewish property rights in Jerusalem. The Obama administration has refused to confirm this claim. Yet rather than use the US demurral as a justification for walking away from a bad deal, reports indicate that Netanyahu told his lawyers to figure out fancy wording to hide the American refusal.

NETANYAHU BOASTS that he received three major payoffs from Obama in exchange for his agreement to ban Jewish construction and discuss land surrenders with a negotiating partner that refuses to peacefully coexist with the Jewish state.

First, he claims that Obama agreed not to renew his demand that Jews be denied their property rights. Second, he says the administration agreed to send Israel 20 more F-35s. Finally, he says Obama agreed to wait a year before signing onto anti-Israel resolutions in the UN Security Council.

The first payoff is nothing more than the foreign policy equivalent of buying the same dead horse twice. Obama led Netanyahu to believe he had set aside his demand that Jews be denied property rights last November, when Netanyahu announced the first construction freeze. Yet Obama repeated his demands even before the last freeze ended. Obama has no credibility on this issue. Demonstrating this, Obama is now refusing to put this pledge in writing.

The F-35 deal is simply bizarre. Israel needs the F-35 to defend against enemies like Iran.

Yet the administration claims that its agreement to send Israel the F-35s is contingent on Israel signing a peace deal with the Palestinians. In other words, the Obama administration is now giving the PLO power to veto American military assistance to Israel by continuing to say no to peace.

More than anything, the F-35 payoff exposes the degree to which Obama holds Israel in contempt.

This is a president who is fighting Congress tooth and nail to pass a $60 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia. The administration argues that the arms are necessary to enable Saudi Arabia to deter Iran from attacking it.

That would be the same Saudi Arabia that despite its massive arsenal, has never had the courage or the competence to fight its own battles.

On the other hand there is Israel - the US's most reliable, courageous and competent strategic ally in the region, and even more a target of Iranian aggression than Saudi Arabia.

Rather than arm Israel with all the means it requires to fight Iran, the Obama administration is downgrading military assistance by conditioning its transfer of the F-35s on an Israeli agreement to commit strategic suicide by surrendering its defensible borders and capital city to its sworn enemies.

Finally there is the administration's pledge to support Israel at the UN for a year. What this pledge actually means is that a year from now, the Obama administration will present the deal as an excuse to abandon what has been the policy of every US administration since Lyndon Johnson and stop blocking anti-Israel resolutions at the UN Security Council.

ACCORDING TO sources close to Netanyahu, it is his fear of US abandonment at the Security Council that has convinced him to capitulate so profoundly to an administration so weak that it couldn't even get South Korea to sign a free trade agreement with it. What most concerns Netanyahu these days is that the US will fail to block a Palestinian bid to have the Security Council recognize a Palestinian state in all of Judea and Samaria and in large swathes of Jerusalem even if the Palestinians refuse to sign a peace treaty with Israel.

Since this is what Netanyahu fears the most, it is important to consider what is at stake. While harsh, the truth is not as bad as he thinks it is.

If the Security Council recognizes a Palestinian state in all of Judea and Samaria, in Jerusalem and Gaza, it would be a diplomatic blow to Israel. But it would only be a symbolic step. The situation on the ground would remain unchanged.

What is more problematic is what might happen in the wake of such a resolution. The worst case scenario would be for the Security Council to pass a subsequent resolution deploying forces to Judea and Samaria to fight the IDF.

Given the political maelstrom such an effective US declaration of war against Israel would cause him domestically, it is very unlikely that Obama would support such a resolution. He would have to veto it despite the fact that Samantha Power, who holds the UN portfolio on Obama's National Security Council, called in the past for US forces to be deployed to Judea and Samaria to fight the IDF.

The other two possibilities are that Israel will become the target of economic sanctions and that Israeli citizens who live beyond the 1949 armistice lines or who have served in the IDF will risk arrest on war crimes charges if we travel abroad. The purpose of such sanctions would be to strangle Israel slowly, in a manner reminiscent of the economic and political warfare that brought down the apartheid regime in South Africa.

In both these cases as well, it is unlikely that Obama will risk the domestic outcry that administration support for such resolutions would provoke. And even if he enabled such resolutions to pass, Congress would likely block US participation in enforcing them. This is not to say that Israel should ignore the threat. But such hostile action is best deterred by working quietly with Israel's allies in the US to point out the dangers of a runaway UN campaign against a fellow democracy.

At the same time, these threats of economic and legal warfare should sound familiar, because they are already being implemented against Israel. The Palestinians do not need a new UN Security Council resolution to advance their political and economic war against Israel.

They just need the EU. And they have the EU.

The PLO has already convinced several EU member states to establish unofficial trade boycotts as well as military and academic boycotts of Israel. Israel has been required to remove goods produced beyond the 1949 armistice lines from its free trade agreements with Europe.

The legal war is also well under way. Today no senior military commander or politician is able to travel to Britain, for fear of arrest under trumped up war crimes allegations. Israeli officials have been similarly threatened in Spain and elsewhere.

The Palestinian Authority has filed war crimes complaints against Israeli leaders with the International Criminal Court at The Hague. It has done this despite the fact that the Rome Statute which governs the ICC only applies to states, and the PA is not a state. Europe's love for international institutions, and readiness to endorse nearly any diplomatic assault on Israel, has blunted European criticism of this perversion of law just is it has convinced the Europeans to support various UN bodies' unlawful campaigns against the Jewish state.

Clearly, a Security Council resolution is not required for the Palestinians to engage in the sort of activities that Netanyahu has just capitulated to the Obama administration to block.

What all this shows is not that Netanyahu is wrong to fear such a resolution, but that a resolution will be a symptom of an already existing problem and blocking it will not end the problem.

Pathetically, despite the fact that this campaign has been building for more than a decade, to date Netanyahu's only strategy for dealing with it is to beg Obama for short-term protection. Obviously, this is not constructive.

AN ALTERNATIVE strategy would be based on a three-pronged approach. First, Israel must attack the source of the problem - Europe.

Israel should begin making European nations pay a price for engaging in political and economic warfare against it. For instance, Israel should suspend the issuance of diplomatic visas to British officials while it "studies" the British universal jurisdiction statute. It should also pass a law permitting the filing of universal jurisdiction claims in Israel against citizens of states that allow Israelis to be sued, and quietly encourage its supporters to file war crimes complaints for the kinds of acts claimed to be criminal when done by Israel, such as Indian support for Indian settlements in Goa and Russian support for Russian settlements in the Kuril Islands. This would not only point out the double standard applied to Israeli communities, it would compel the British to amend their obnoxious law.

The second thing Israel should do is empower its supporters abroad by actively discrediting the UN, the International Criminal Court and advocates of boycotts and divestiture from Israel. There is ample grassroots support in the US for actions against the ICC whose statute places US servicemen and political leaders in its crosshairs and against the UN whose members seek to curtail US sovereignty and power.

Finally, Israel must actively pursue deeper economic and diplomatic ties with Asian nations like India, China, Japan and South Korea.

Enhancing relations with these states should be a top Israeli priority. Such a project would diminish Europe's capacity to harm Israel's economy and reduce Israeli reliance on the US at the Security Council.

Netanyahu made a horrible deal with Clinton.

Leaders like Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya'alon have acted as patriots by actively opposing it. It is true that the Obama administration could help us if it wanted to. But it doesn't want to. Happily, Israel has the power to help itself, if it dares.

Caroline Glick

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Muslim and Non-Muslim Thinkers Call for a Human Rights Revolution

by Phyllis Chesler

Yesterday I had the enormous privilege of delivering a lecture at Yale University’s Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism. In a few days, a video will be posted on their Web site. It was also a pleasure to be hosted by the very suave yet exceedingly sober Dr. Charles Small, the director, and to engage in dialogue with so many thoughtful, well-spoken faculty, retired faculty, students, and community members.

I had the additional pleasure of sharing the ride there and back with Professor David Menashri, one of Israel’s leading experts on Iran and the Chair of the Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University. Professor Menashri was born in Iran, left as a child, and returned to gather data there for his thesis in the 1970s, before Khomeini’s revolution.

My speech was titled: “How Scapegoating Israel Diminishes the Rights of Women in the Middle East.” One among many important questions concerned whether Western thinkers and activists are—or are not—connecting, influencing, being influenced by our counterparts in the Arab and Islamic world.

I responded at length. In essence, I said that this exchange was the most important bridge-building exchange imaginable, one that was being severely hobbled by our inability to read each other in our native languages. What is written in Arabic, Persian, and Kurdish is not being translated into European languages and what is being written in English is rarely being translated into Arabic, Persian, Kurdish, etc. I have desperately been seeking translators, funding, and distribution channels. I have been talking about this ever since a group of enterprising Iranians beamed my Senate Press Briefing speech via satellite right into Iran and had it simultaneously translated into Persian. That was back in 2005. I immediately saw enormous potential in such an exchange.

In 2009, in Rome, at a G8 meeting, I had the honor of bonding with a group of Muslim feminists, both religious and secular, over our shared concerns. They told me that they had felt abandoned by Western feminists who refused to take a stand on issues such as honor killing, forced veiling, the subordination of women—lest they be considered “racists” or ‘Islamophobes.” Many of these women were wearing hijab (headscarves) and they were all intellectually honest, brave, and fabulously feminist.

Yesterday, at Yale, I asked the group whether anyone had ever heard of the October 2010 Casablanca Call for Democracy and Human Rights? No one had. Actually, my dear friend Ibn Warraq had only just called it to my attention a few days ago. He had not heard about it either until someone sent him an email which led to his November 18 piece in The National Review. Hundreds of signatories from many Arab countries including Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Jordan, Kurdistan, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen, and from all over Europe and North America, signed a Call for “profound reforms that respect the rule of law…for the separation of powers…[and] respect for human rights and freedoms.” They demand the immediate release of all political prisoners and an end to political trials which involve both kidnapping and torture, the protection of an independent judiciary, the empowerment of women, a guarantee of freedom of expression, and the achievement of democracy.

No one was demanding the right to wear the burqa, the right to child marriage, the right to stone women to death, the right to Sharia law, or the right to practice polygamy.

Most important, the Call is “appealing to democratic forces in the entire world to put pressure on their own governments to refrain from supporting non-democratic regimes in the Arab world, and from adopting double standards in their relations with Arab regimes.”

President Obama: Are you listening?

No, they may not want our military intervention but they do want us to take moral stands, to apply international pressure, to dialogue with their governments—if only to give heart and hope to the dissidents within and at the mercy of tyrants.

This is an interesting progression. In 2007, in St Petersburg, Florida, I was privileged to chair the opening panel of the first-ever Secular Islamic Dissident Conference, which also yielded a declaration which stated, in part, as follows:

We affirm the inviolable freedom of the individual conscience. We believe in the equality of all human persons.

We insist upon the separation of religion from state and the observance of universal human rights.

We see no colonialism, racism, or so-called “Islamaphobia” in submitting Islamic practices to criticism or condemnation when they violate human reason or rights.

We call on the governments of the world to

* reject Sharia law, fatwa courts, clerical rule, and state-sanctioned religion in all their forms; oppose all penalties for blasphemy and apostasy, in accordance with Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human rights;

* eliminate practices, such as female circumcision, honor killing, forced veiling, and forced marriage, that further the oppression of women;

* protect sexual and gender minorities from persecution and violence;

* reform sectarian education that teaches intolerance and bigotry towards non-Muslims;

* and foster an open public sphere in which all matters may be discussed without coercion or intimidation.

The signatories included Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Magdi Allam, Mithal Al-Alusi, Shaker Al-Nabulski, Nonie Darwish, Afshin Ellian, Tawfik Hamid, Shahriar Kabir, Hasan Mahmud, Wafa Sultan, Amir Taheri, Ibn Warraq, Manda Zand Ervin, and Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi.

My talk at Yale, which I may publish separately, concerned the ways in which demonizing and scapegoating Israel made it very easy for the world to disappear Muslim-on-Muslim tyranny, torture, and religious and gender apartheid, and to render invisible Islamic imperialism and colonialism.

I need to have access—we all do—to books such as Zeyno Baran’s wonderful anthology The Other Muslims: Moderate and Secular in which anti-Islamist Muslims, both secular and religious, speak their diverse truths. More important: Those who read only Arabic, Persian, or Indonesian need access to this work even more.

We have the technology for such a spirited and vital exchange of ideas. We only lack the political will—and the funding.

No, I do not expect or desire Muslim countries to become exactly like Western countries. I hope that religious Muslims will be allowed to interpret and re-interpret the Qu’ran just as Jews and Christians have evolved our traditions and adjusted some ancient barbaric practices to more modern and humane ones. But yes, I do believe that the same wide world that is ready for cellphones and television is more than ready for a revolution in terms of individual human and women’s rights.

I wish to acknowledge the generosity of Abigail and Jerry Martin who subsidized the research and writing of the speech I delivered at Yale.

Phyllis Chesler

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

America's Surprisingly Rich History of Hizballah Prosecutions

by IPT News


(Part three of three) While the United Nations tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri is expected to indict members of Hizballah, the terrorist organization has had a surprisingly deep history with the American judicial system. In fact, Hizballah's interaction with the American criminal justice system pre-dates its 1997 designation as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

While the organization operates out of the suburbs of Beirut, the Bekaa Valley, and southern Lebanon, it has established a network of cells stretching across Europe, Africa, Asia, South America, and North America. Discussing the scope of Hizballah's reach, a recently declassified FBI memorandum from 1997 reported:

"Although Hizballah's operational headquarters are currently located in Lebanon, it has established a number of terrorist "cells" in other locations in the Middle East and throughout Europe, Africa, Asia, and South America, and a significant number of the leaders of Hizballah reside outside the United States."

Despite the vast network of supporters it has in place, court records show that Hizballah has come to rely upon its American support structure for all manner of aid, from white collar crimes committed for terrorist financing, to the procurement of weapons and other tactical equipment.

Hizballah's White Collar Terrorists

"There are two things a brother must always have for jihad: the self and money." So explained a captured al-Qaida operative. Hizballah is no different—before it carries out its murderous acts, the group must have the financial resources to do so. The United States is a prime location for Hizballah fundraising, according to a declassified threat assessment prepared by the FBI.

"Wealthy donors and sympathetic Lebanese merchants are solicited for funds," the FBI report said. "Individual Hizballah members are also known to engage in criminal enterprise. The profits from these endeavors are, for the most part, for personal gain; however, an unknown percentage appears earmarked for Hizballah activities."

Once the United States recognized that one front in the war on terror would be financial, the Departments of Justice and Treasury began cracking down on terrorist financing. One of the first such cases to be heard by a federal jury involved Hizballah, and a complex cigarette smuggling scheme that raised millions of dollars for the terrorist group.

In the mid-1990s Mohamad Youssef Hammoud—who had entered the United States on fraudulent immigration documents—moved to Charlotte, N.C., and set up a scheme that would funnel millions of dollars to Hizballah. Hammoud and a number of relatives purchased large quantities of cigarettes in North Carolina, smuggled them to Michigan, and then sold them without paying taxes on the cigarettes in Michigan. The cigarette smuggling operation took advantage of the fact that Michigan imposed a significantly higher tax on cigarettes, and the scheme cost the state an estimated $3 million in tax revenue.

During the same period, Hammoud was leading weekly prayer services for Shia Muslims at his home in Charlotte. At the services, Hammoud reportedly urged attendees to donate money to Hizballah, raising at least $3,500 for the terrorist organization.

In July 2000, Hammoud and 17 co-conspirators were charged with money laundering, trafficking in contraband cigarettes, immigration violations, and bribery.

Evidence at the trial revealed links between Hammoud and senior members of Hizballah, including Hassan Nasrallah, Sheikh Fadlallah, and Sheikh Abbas Harake. Prosecutors played excerpts from videotapes seized from Hammoud's home, including speeches by Hizballah leaders praising men who had martyred themselves and crowds shouting "Death to America," and "Death to Israel."

Jurors convicted Hammoud and his accomplices of 14 counts, including providing material support to a designated Foreign Terorist Organization. During sentencing, Hammoud admitted to the cigarette smuggling and related frauds, but argued that he was not a terrorist and had not been raising funds for Hizballah. Rejecting pleas for leniency, Hammoud was sentenced in 2004 to 155 years in prison.

While the massive cigarette smuggling scheme was the first major case of Americans attempting to surreptitiously funnel money to Hizballah, it would not be the last. Since breaking up Hammoud's ring, the Justice Department has charged dozens of individuals with transferring millions of dollars—often the proceeds of criminal activity—to Hizballah.

"Within the United States, Hizballah associates and sympathizers have engaged in a wide range of criminal activities to include money laundering, credit card fraud, immigration fraud, food stamp fraud, bank fraud and narcotics trafficking," FBI official John G. Kavanagh told a House subcommittee on Sept. 28, 2006.

In 2002, Mohammad Shabib was rounded up along with 36 other defendants as part of an international investigation into drug smuggling. Prosecutors would later charge that Shabib, a gas station owner, shipped nearly 3 tons of pseudoephedrine from Canada to California, sold it to Mexican drug cartels, and funneled the profits to Hizballah. The case ended with a plea bargain and sentencing filed under seal.

Most recently, authorities uncovered a plot to purchase stolen merchandise, including Sony PlayStation 2 systems, laptop computers, and cellular telephones worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and funnel the proceeds of their re-sale to Hizballah. According to an indictment, charging Sadek Koumaiha seven others, the group also purchased thousands of dollars worth of counterfeit goods.

The case has yet to go to trial.

Hizballah's American Arms Dealers

While those examples show the extent to which Hizballah's American support network has gone to move money to the terrorist group, some Americans have actively procured weapons and other tactical equipment.

"Hizballah leaders in Lebanon have shown interest in acquiring night vision and laser sighting equipment from the United States," the FBI's 1994 threat assessment said. The FBI said it did not know why Hizballah wanted the equipment, but "it is logical to assume that this equipment may be utilized in the group's military actions against the Israeli armed forces."

The first material support prosecution in U.S. history involved Hizballah and stemmed from an encounter between Fawzi Assi and customs agents on July 13, 1998, when Assi was preparing to board an international flight departing from Detroit Metropolitan Airport. Acting upon wiretaps which suggested that Assi was planning to transport tactical equipment to Hizballah in Lebanon, customs agents approached him at the airport and asked to see his passport. An ensuing search of Assi's luggage revealed two Boeing global positioning satellite modules, night vision goggles, and a thermal imaging camera. He was charged with attempting to provide material support to Hizballah.

After being released on bond, Assi fled to Lebanon where he remained a fugitive until surrendering to U.S. authorities in May 2004. He pled guilty and was sentenced to three years in prison.

The 1998 indictment of Assi for attempting to provide tactical equipment to Hizballah was the first in a long string of busts carried out by U.S. law enforcement officials against Hizballah's American arms dealers.

In September 2001, Ali Boumelhem of Dearborn, Mich., was convicted of attempting to smuggle two shotguns, 750 bullets, and assault weapon parts to Hizballah. He was sentenced to 44 months in prison.

More recently, federal officials uncovered a Hizballah support cell in Philadelphia. Two federal indictments (here and here) charged almost two dozen men in November 2009 with providing weapons, communications equipment, and money to Hizballah.

The investigation reportedly began in 2007 when an undercover FBI agent began transferring stolen cell phones and other electronic devices to Hasan Mahmoud Koumaiha and seven of his co-conspirators. From Feb. 1, 2007 to Nov. 1, 2008, the FBI provided the suspects with close to 30,000 stolen cell phones, PlayStation 2 game systems, and laptop computers—all destined for Lebanon, Hong Kong, and the United Arab Emirates.

Over time, as the men came to trust the undercover agent, they attempted to acquire weapons for transfer to Lebanon. In March 2009, Dani Nemr Tarraf requested that the undercover agent procure guided missiles for the purposes of "shooting down airplanes or helicopters." The suspects also sought night vision goggles, thermal imagining devises, military compasses, and military radios. Speaking after the announcement of the arrest, federal prosecutor Michael L. Levy explained, "these cases show the breadth of the criminal activity engaged in by those who oppose us."

To read the first two installments of our series on Hizballah's support in America, click here for part one and here for part two.

IPT News

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Israel to Syria

by David Green

We never wanted anything from you but good neighborly relations when we established our state in accordance with a U.N. majority decision.

Instead, we were obliged to fight three wars, two started by you (1948 and 1973) and one provoked by you (1967). In all these, you were soundly defeated. In the first, you failed in your objective of preventing the establishment of the Jewish State. You succeeded only in preventing the establishment of the Palestinian state - a dubious success. This succession of your defeats was compounded by the defeat in the cold war of the Soviet Union, leaving you with no patron or protector and a legacy of hate and fear with the free world.

We did not take advantage of this, as we might have done, because we still want nothing but good relations with our northern neighbors. So we responded gladly - under previous prime ministers and the present one - to suggestions for a "peace of the brave".

What you have given us is not a peace of the brave but a war of cowards, waged by proxies, while you sit safely at home, trusting our decency and moderation. Your Hezbollah proxies wage hit-and-run warfare, using innocent Palestinian and Lebanese civilians both as shields and as sacrificial victims.

Your logic is no better that your strategy or your morality. One may, or one may not, acquire territory by conquest. If one may not, your claim to the eastern shore-line of the Sea of Galilee is illegal; if one may, then your claim, after three defeats, is absurd. It is becoming painfully clear that, like other dictators, you are incapable of understanding the political processes of a democracy: of understanding -- still less of making -- a generous and humane gesture. You have demonstrated this in the surly bad manners of your diplomatic representatives, in the vicious and neurotic calumnies that fill your state-controlled press, and in your political behavior at home and abroad. When we approached you with courtesy, you responded with insults.

The same qualities appear in your treatment of your Lebanese neighbors, whose lands you have occupied, tyrannized, exploited, without a shadow of justification, and -- perhaps worst of all -- in your treatment of your own people, resulting in poverty and intellectual stagnation that you have inflicted on a once great and still gifted nation.

Through its long and glorious history, the Syrian nation has esteemed courage and honor, courtesy and intelligence. You have made your country - or rather your regime - a by-word for cowardice and trickery, boorishness and stupidity.

All this obligates us to undertake a thorough and painful reappraisal of our policies towards you, and notably of the methods which we must use to convey our meaning to you.

David Green

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.