Report: Suspected Mossad agent arrested over Dubai assassination: Haaretz
Uri Brodsky arrested in Warsaw for allegedly obtaining forged German passport involved in Hamas strongman hit, AFP reports; Foreign ministry confirms Israeli citizen arrested in Poland.
An alleged Mossad spy from Israel wanted in connection with the hit-squad slaying of a Hamas agent in Dubai has been arrested in Poland, officials said Saturday.
The man, using the name Uri Brodsky, is suspected of working for Mossad in Germany and helping to issue a fake German passport to a member of the Mossad operation that allegedly killed Hamas agent Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in January, a spokesman for the German federal prosecutor’s office told The Associated Press.
Brodsky was arrested in early June upon his arrival in Poland because of a European arrest warrant issued by Germany which is now seeking his extradition, the spokesman said, declining to be named in line with department policy.
The spokesman had no estimate of how long it could take for Brodsky to be extradited from Poland to Germany, saying the matter is now in the hands of the Polish authorities. “If Brodsky agrees, the extradition could take a few days, but that isn’t likely,” the spokesman said.
In Warsaw, Monika Lewandowska, a spokeswoman for Polish prosecutors, confirmed that the suspect, identified only as Uri B., was arrested at the city’s international airport on June 4. She told the AP that the arrest warrant was made in connection with the murder of a Hamas member in Dubai.
“The suspect appeared before a Polish court on June 6, and was ordered to remain in temporary arrest for up to 40 days,” she said. Lewandowska had no information on his possible extradition.
In Israel, the Foreign Ministry said without elaborating that it was aware of the man’s fate. “At the moment, we’re looking into that like any other Israeli who has been arrested, and he’s getting consular treatment,” spokesman Andy David said.
Police in the United Arab Emirates said the elaborate hit squad linked to the Jan. 19 slaying in Dubai of al-Mabhouh – one of the founders of Hamas’ military wing – involved some 25 suspects, most of them carrying fake passports from European nations.
Dubai’s police chief, Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim, has said he is nearly 100 percent certain that Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, masterminded the killing.
The brazen assault in a luxury hotel and its alleged perpetrators were widely captured by security cameras. Some footage, released by Dubai’s police, showed alleged members of the hit squad disguised as tourists, wearing baggy shorts, sneakers and baseball caps, and carrying tennis rackets.
At the time, Israel said it didn’t know who was responsible for the killing but welcomed it, claiming al-Mabhouh was a key link in smuggling weapons to Gaza and a possible middleman with Israel’s archenemy, Iran.
The German news weekly Der Spiegel reported that the arrest in Poland already has led to some diplomatic friction. The Israeli Embassy has urged Polish authorities not to extradite Brodsky, the magazine reports in its issue to be published Monday.
Germany’s Foreign Ministry had no comment on the case and referred to an ongoing judicial investigation by the federal prosecutor’s office. The country’s top investigating unit deals with all cases affecting internal or external security, including terrorism or espionage.
After a German passport was used by a person linked to the Dubai slaying, the prosecutor’s office in February started investigating a possible connection to a foreign intelligence agency.
Authorities in the western city of Cologne had issued a passport to a man named Michael Bodenheimer. “A man using that name was among the assassins who killed the Hamas operative,” according to Dubai police.
In February, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle urged a thorough investigation and said German authorities would do everything possible to support their counterparts in the U.A.E.
If Brodsky’s extradition goes through, however, it could put the government in Berlin – a staunch Israeli ally – in a difficult diplomatic position.
Israeli wanted over Dubai killing ‘held in Poland‘: BBC
Page last updated at 15:02 GMT, Saturday, 12 June 2010 16:02 UK
E-mail this to a friendPrintable version Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was killed in his hotel room in Dubai on 19 January
Polish authorities have reportedly arrested a suspected Israeli agent in connection with the murder of a Hamas operative in Dubai in January.
German prosecutors say the agent was arrested in early June. Media reports named him as Uri Brodsky.
Germany is seeking his extradition over a forged German passport used by one of the killers, the prosecutors say.
Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, one of the founders of Hamas’s military wing, was found dead in a Dubai hotel on 20 January.
Dubai police have said they are 99% sure Israeli agents were involved, but Israel says there is no proof.
On Saturday, German prosecutors said the agent had been arrested on a warrant issued by Germany, as he arrived in Poland.
“It’s now up to the Poles to decide if they are going to hand him over,” a spokesman for the federal German prosecutor’s office told AP news agency.
There have been no comments so far from the Polish or Israeli authorities.
Forged passports from Britain, the Irish Republic, France, Australia, and Germany were used in the Dubai operation, leading to diplomatic rows between those countries and Israel.
The UK and Australia have expelled Israeli nationals over the forgeries.
A nightmarish experiment: Haaretz
Israel gave itself a nice present to celebrate the 43rd anniversary of losing its borders. The raid on the Gaza flotilla in international waters is like the first Lebanon War – as if in a nightmarish experiment, we seem to be examining the question: What happens when a country has no borders?
By Sefi Rachlevsky
Israel gave itself a nice present to celebrate the 43rd anniversary of losing its borders. The raid on the Gaza flotilla in international waters is like the first Lebanon War – as if in a nightmarish experiment, we seem to be examining the question: What happens when a country has no borders?
Israel’s maritime attack did not happen by chance. A border is one of the fundamental factors that defines a country. Decades without one have distorted Israel’s thinking.
It is self-evident that, just as a person cannot build in an area that he does not own, a country cannot build settlements outside of its borders. And yet Israel has settled hundreds of thousands of its citizens in areas that, according to its laws, are not part of the State of Israel.
It is self-evident that any couple can marry “without regard to religion, race or gender.” And yet in Israel a Jewish man and a non-Jewish woman cannot legally marry. It’s self-evident that there is no arbitrary discrimination, and yet it’s enough to use the magic words “I’m a religious woman” or “I’m an ultra-Orthodox man” and the obligation to serve in the military evaporates.
It’s self-evident that the education provided to children be based on democracy and equality. And yet in Israel, 52 percent of first-graders defined as Jews study in various religious school systems that teach students things like “You are considered a human being and the other nations of the world are not considered human beings.”
They are taught that a non-Jew is not a human being, and that anyone who kills a non-Jew is not supposed to be killed by human hands; that women are inferior, and it is an obligation that males and females be separated; and that secular people, or anyone with secular family members, cannot enter these schools.
It is self-evident that racist education cannot be funded by the government and is illegal. And yet most of the country’s first-graders receive such “compulsory education” from their government.
The results of this nightmarish experiment are self-evident. In the most recent elections, 35 percent of voters defined as Jews cast their ballots for avowedly racist parties – Yisrael Beitenu, Shas, National Union and their friends.
Critics in the Israeli media wake up only when mistakes are made. That is why – after initially cheering the declaration that “the flotilla will not pass” – they changed their tune following the imbroglio, turning into advocates of the twisted logic “be smart, not right.” But what justice is there in an attack on civilians by soldiers on the open seas?
Like the territories, international waters are not Israel; they are outside its borders. A Turkish ship on the open sea is, in effect, a floating Turkish island. An Israeli attack on such an island is not all that different from sending the Israel Defense Forces to take on demonstrators at the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris. There, too, unpleasant people who are not friends of Israel can sometimes be found.
Turkey, which is a member of NATO, was not in a state of war with Israel before the attack. Attacking its citizens on territory that is by definition Turkish is another expression of the Israeli lunacy that lacks any kind of boundaries.
An attack beyond the border must be reserved for extreme cases involving a military target that represents an entity fighting against the country and when citizens are in danger. But civilian ships, that are not carrying weapons, but are bringing civilian aid to a population that is denied chocolate, toys and notebooks, are not nuclear reactors in Iraq, Syria or Iran.
A person who grows up without external borders tends to create distorted internal borders. That is the reason for the attack on Arab MK Hanin Zuabi and her colleagues. While there were certain Arab public figures who went too far in their statements, joining a civilian aid flotilla is one of those legitimate acts which are supposed to be self-evident.
And yet, what was self-evident became betrayal. And citizenship, one of the unconditional foundations of existence, has turned into something that can be revoked – in this case on the basis of ethnicity, a tactic used in fascist regimes. The street has returned to the atmosphere that prevailed under “responsible” opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu and led to the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin – and the next murder is in the air.
The Israeli deed at sea is liable to reach The Hague. The problem is that Israel has genuine enemies who want to destroy it. A country that does not do everything in its power to accumulate legitimacy, along with turning Iran into an entity that is losing legitimacy and can therefore become a target of activities to undermine it, is a country losing its basic survival instinct. Without borders, it turns out, you lose even that.
Young Israelis who have grown up without borders are now dancing and singing “In blood and fire we will expel Turkey” and “Mohammed is dead.” If this keeps up, Israel will not make it to The Hague. The entity gradually replacing the State of Israel is liable not to exist long enough to get there.
At CICA summit, Israel faces further isolation: The Hindu
AP Delegates walk after posing for a group picture inside the Ottoman-era Giragan Palace, the venue of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia in Istanbul, Turkey. Photo: AP
As this rain-soaked city hosted the third summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA), it was clear that Israel, at the receiving end of global condemnation for last week’s attack on an aid ship trying to sail to the Gaza Strip, faced further isolation for its “brazen act” that killed nine peace activists.
While the Gaza attack dominated the conference that concluded on Wednesday, challenges and threats such as terrorism, organised crime, elimination of weapons of mass destruction and curbing of drug trafficking and trans-boundary crimes also figured in the speeches of leaders and Ministers from 20 countries that attended the three-day summit.
As Turkey took over the CICA chairmanship from Kazakhastan, the grouping welcomed into its fold Vietnam and Iraq and granted the observer status to Bangladesh. The CICA also provides a platform for the nations in the high-tension regions of Asia that have become “hotspots” — be it Korea, Afghanistan, Israel or Iran.
There was an unforgiving mood towards Israel at the summit for its act of brazen aggression. The attack on the aid ship “cannot be forgotten” by his country, Turkish President Abdullah Gul said at the end of the summit, which brought together Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
A final declaration of the grouping, however, omitted any reference to Israel, which as a fellow member objected to it. But a separate declaration said: “All member-states, except one, expressed their great concern for and condemnation of the actions undertaken by the Israeli defence forces against an international civilian flotilla transporting humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.” The leaders also stressed the immediate need for lifting the four-year-old blockade.
As pointed out by Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, the tragedy of Gaza should remind the international community of the need for highlighting the plight of the people due to the lack of food, electricity and freshwater. “Like Afghanistan, Gaza is a test case before us,” he told the conference on the opening day.
Iran’s nuclear programme and the Iran-Turkey-Brazil deal on the proposed exchange of Iran’s low-enriched uranium with nuclear fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor were also discussed. “Given the already volatile situation in the region, there is no other viable and lasting solution, but a diplomatic one. We have intensified our efforts to promote a negotiated solution through diplomacy,” Mr. Davutoglu said.
Almost all the leaders agreed that most challenges to global security were emanating from Asia, and the top issues were the situation in the Middle East, Iraq and Afghanistan. They also agreed that they had a stake in a sovereign, democratic and stable Afghanistan.
Acknowledging the tough task ahead for the international community in rooting out terrorism, India pointed out that terrorists adapted themselves to countering the cooperative efforts of the States at tackling terrorism. “Distinctions among the terrorist organisations have become blurred, given the ease with which they blend together, both operationally and ideologically,” said Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma, who attended the conference as the Prime Minister’s special envoy. India has been a CICA member since the grouping came into being in 1992.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi called for an international cooperative approach to tackling terrorism through real-time intelligence sharing and addressing its root causes that were being exploited by terrorists to radicalise the youth.
Though CICA has so far been a low-key platform, the Istanbul summit, which came after the Gaza attack, saw the multi-national forum becoming a global talking point. It also provided Turkey with a greater role and profile in hosting it and forging solidarity among the CICA members in denouncing Israel.
The CICA members are Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, China, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, Palestine, the Republic of Korea, Russia, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan.
The observers are the United Nations, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the League of Arab States.
Palestinians welcome Turkey involvement in Gaza, Fayyad says: Haaretz
Lebanese newspaper reports Ankara may supervise Gaza crossings as part of a deal to repair ties between Israel and Turkey.
The Palestinians would support any move that would lift the Gaza blockade, including Turkey’s possible involvement, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said Saturday.
Fayyad’s comments came after the Lebanese Ad-Diyar newspaper quoted an Arab diplomatic source earlier Saturday, saying that Turkey could be given a central role in supervising the border crossings with the Gaza Strip as part of a deal to repair ties between Israel and Turkey.
The relationship between Israel and Turkey has deteriorated dramatically since the IDF raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla on May 31 in which nine people, including eight Turks and one Turkish-American, were killed.
“The Palestinian Authority welcomes any mediation that would lift the siege off Gaza,” Fayyad told reporters, saying that alleviating the Strip’s condition was “a general Palestinian interest, and doesn’t strengthen this or that faction.”
The Palestinian PM also said that according to “international agreements, all of Gaza’s border crossings should be opened, and not just the Rafah crossing,” thus referring to the temporary opening of Gaza’s southernmost border crossing announced by Egypt in the wake of the flotilla raid.
According to the Ad-Diyar report, a new deal could see Turkey supervising all humanitarian aid entering Gaza, as well as committing to the blocking of weapons and money destined for Hamas.
In this position, Turkey would play a meaningful role in lifting the blockade of Gaza and a central figure in the Middle East which will enable the Islamic country to mediate between Israel and the Arab world in the future, as Turkey has sought in the past.
The report has not yet been validated by Turkish or Israeli officials.
In his talk with reporters, Fayyad also expressed his hopes that the proximity peace talks with Israel would lead to direct negotiations which would, eventually, lead to the declaration of an independent Palestinian state.
The top PA official responded to criticism over the PA’s boycott of settlement goods, saying that it was not an attempt to hurt Israel but a confiscation of goods produced in the settlements, who he said were considered an obstacle to peace.
On Friday Turkish President Abdullah Gul told the French daily Le Monde that Israel must make amends to be forgiven for a commando assault on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, including apologizing for the attack and paying compensation.
Gul added that if Israel made no move to heal the rift, then Turkey could even decide to break diplomatic relations.
In an interview published on Friday, Gul said the Israeli attack at the end of May, which killed nine activists, was a “crime” which might have been carried out by the likes of al-Qaida rather than a sovereign state.
“It seems impossible to me to forgive or forget, unless there are some initiatives which could change the situation,”Gul was quoted as saying by Le Monde.
Asked what these might be, he said: “Firstly, to ask pardon and to establish some sort of compensation.” He added that he also wanted to see an independent inquiry into the botched raid and a discussion on lifting Israel’s blockade of Gaza.
Asked if Turkey might break relations with Israel if they did nothing, Gul said: “Anything is possible.”
Will Flotilla tragedy bring change in Israel?: The Electronic Intifada,
Miko Peled, 11 June 2010
Is it possible to be shocked and yet not be surprised? Israel’s stupidity and disregard for human life is nothing new. It is a recurring theme in the life of the Jewish state from its very inception. Surely as the destruction in Gaza remains untouched 18 months after the murderous attacks that began on 27 December 2008 there can be no surprise at Israeli brutality. Yet as the news unfolded and the images of the Israeli assault on the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza began to unravel a sense of shock was expressed everywhere.
Israel too is shock stricken. Not by the sheer brutality of its forces, or by the injustice of the siege on Gaza but by the public relations blunder and fact that this “military mission” was a failure. Once again Israeli commandos are shown to be weak and helpless. How could the decision-makers not see that this would damage Israel’s image in the eyes of world and even worse, in the eyes of Israel’s enemies?
Israeli foreign ministry officials claim that Europe and the rest of the world have increased their diplomatic assault on Israel. They claim the world is emboldened by the fact that the American stand in support of Israel has weakened. This they will say is the fault of US President Barack Obama, a president Israelis never cared for anyway. The notion that the world is coming to a point where it is unable to bear the racism and brutality of Israel as a state never enters the conversation. Israeli talking heads will not apologize, will not stray from the official line: we, Israelis are right and they, everyone else are wrong; we are good and they are evil; we are victims of age-old anti-Semitism and they are hateful, violent Muslims intending to kill innocent Jews.
Lives were lost due to a cowardly reaction of trained assassins who were sent to a mission for which they were clearly unprepared, so in a way one can claim that the killers themselves are not to blame, those who sent them are. In the murky relations between the military and the civilian government in Israel it is quite common to fault the lowest person on the totem poll and more often than not it is the military. In this case the mission was an act of piracy aimed at a very determined group of activists who had no intention of backing down. The fact that this particular group of activists took on this difficult and dangerous mission should have in itself been a warning to the Israeli officials that they would not back down and would put up a fight.
There can be no argument as to the courage displayed by the activists aboard the ships as armed pirates with an overwhelming military power attacked them. The pirates, trained Israeli commandos who are known for their brutality and total lack of regard for human life, were armed to the teeth and had the support of the Israeli navy, air force and ground forces. Yet as they boarded the ships they were met with a justifiably angry and clearly determined crowd who were not willing to let go of their boats and cargo. Tragically some of them paid for this determination with their lives.
Will this tragedy bring any change? Clearly the only thing that can bring change is a strategic decision by President Obama to divorce the United States from the dysfunctional relationship with Israel. When the president decides that it is time to end the Israeli war on Palestinians he will engage in a head-on collision with Israel and its American bully, the influential pro-Israel lobby group, AIPAC. It is no secret that advisers with Zionist prejudice surround the president and naturally one is forced to wonder if a strategic shift of such magnitude is possible. Still, if one judges by the fear expressed in Israel perhaps there is some change, some outrage among the president’s men.
It is not unlikely that when Americans get tired of paying $10 million per day of their hard-earned money to the State of Israel that the president will act. The question is how many innocent Palestinian lives will be lost until that happens.
Miko Peled is a writer and Israeli peace activist living in San Diego. His father was the late General Matti Peled, his grandfather Avraham Katsnelson signed the Israeli declaration of independence and his niece Smadar was killed in a suicide attack in Jerusalem. He is the co founder of the Elbanna-Peled Foundtion. For more information or to respond, go to mikopeled.wordpress.com
Report: Saudi Arabia gives Israel air corridor to bomb Iran: Haaretz
Saudis practiced standing down anti-aircraft systems to allow Israeli warplanes passage for attack on Iranian nuclear sites, the London Times reports.
Saudi Arabia has practiced standing down its anti-aircraft systems to allow Israeli warplanes passage on their way to attack Iran’s nuclear installations, a British newspaper reported on Saturday.
The Saudis have allocated a narrow corridor of airspace in the north of the country that would cut flying time from Israel to Iran, the London Times reported.
“The Saudis have given their permission for the Israelis to pass over and they will look the other way,” the Times quoted an unnamed U.S. defense source in the area as saying. “They have already done tests to make sure their own jets aren’t scrambled and no one gets shot down. This has all been done with the agreement of the [U.S.] State Department.”
Once the Israelis had passed, the kingdom’s air defenses would return to full alert, the Times said.
Despite tensions between them, Israel and Saudi Arabia share a mutual hostility to Iran.
“We all know this. We will let them [the Israelis] through and see nothing,” the Times quoted a Saudi government source as saying.
According to the report, the four main targets for an Israeli raid on Iran would be uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz and Qom, a gas storage development at Isfahan and a heavy-water reactor at Arak.
Secondary targets may include a Russian-built light water reactor at Bushehr, which could produce weapons-grade plutonium when complete.
Even with midair refueling, the targets would be as the far edge of Israeli bombers’ range at a distance of some 2,250km. An attack would likely involve several waves of aircraft, possibly crossing Jordan, northern Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
Aircraft attacking Bushehr, on the Gulf coast, could swing beneath Kuwait to strike from the southwest, the Times said.
Passing over Iraq would require at least tacit consent to the raid from the United States, whose troops are occupying the country. So far, the Obama Administration has refused this.
On Wednesday the United Nations passed a fourth round of sanctions against Iran in an attempt to force it to stop enriching uranium. But immediately after the UN vote, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed the nuclear program would continue.
Israel hailed the vote – but said sanctions were not enough and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to rule out a raid.
Netanyahu’s predecessor, Ehud Olmert, is believed to have held secret meetings with high-ranking Saudi officials over Iran.
Mad Israelis section
Obama threatens our future: YNet
President threatens Israel’s security with his statements, acts, and silence
Yiron Festinger
Published: 06.12.10, 12:27
While tens of thousands of Turkish protestors chant anti-Semitic Nazi-style battle cries, on top of Prime Minister Erdogan’s wild incitement (which even outdid Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric,) and while all Muslim world radicals join forces in a venomous, unprecedented anti-Israel campaign, the deafening silence of the Obama-led United States is especially conspicuous.
This is the same US Administration that only months ago raised a hue and cry over the “grave insult to America” as result of the declaration of Ramat Shlomo construction, a neighborhood in no-man’s land that is not even located in east Jerusalem, turning the affair into a direct, hypocritical, deliberate, and ugly confrontation with the Israeli government.
Islamic Terror
Yet as it turns out, the calls for Israel’s destruction in the wake of the Turkish incitement campaign do not constitute an “insult” for America. They are merely a great “success” for Obama’s policy of currying favor with radical Islam; in the president’s view, as long as the protestors burn Israeli flags rather than American flags, his “success” is proven beyond any reasonable doubt.
Ever since he emerged from the radical margins of the American Left and managed to win the presidency on the strength of his rhetorical talents, Obama had been acting methodically in order to undermine America’s status as the world’s lone superpower. He has been doing it by neutralizing the use of force, utilizing international institutions, over-legalization, endless chatter about human rights, and so on and so forth. This delusional liberal policy views the US as the reason and cause for the globe’s problems, rather than as the most successful enterprise in human history, as historian Paul Johnson noted.
A side observer could examine the madness that has overcome America’s leadership with curious consternation, yet we Israelis do not have the privilege to play the role of side observers. Every Obama move has a significant effect for us and undermines our very existence. This ranges from statements defining terror as a manmade disaster, to the observation that there is no such thing as radical Islam and that it has no connection to attempted attacks in the US, as declared by Obama’s Attorney General, Eric Holder.
Meanwhile, the president’s counter-terrorism advisor argued that Jihad is a “legitimate tenet of Islam” and that terrorists are “victims of political, economic and social forces.”
On top of this, we see the US Administration’s denial and the turning of a blind eye to actual terror acts. This happened in respect to the doctor who murdered 13 US soldiers and wounded dozens of others, while shouting “allahu akbar”; officials claimed he is no terrorist, even though he maintained ties with al-Qaeda, and that the attack was motivated by rage; if that’s the case, Israel’s prisons are full of enraged people who aren’t terrorists.
Most hostile president in US history
Then there is the desire to bring to justice CIA investigators for using harsh interrogation techniques against the masterminds of the Twin Towers attacks – that is, ticking time bombs who revealed further conspiracies of that sort during their interrogation. Where does this leave our Shin Bet investigators then, and who will be finding themselves in the International Court of Justice in The Hague first?
In the pathetic, miserable speech delivered by Obama in Cairo, where he embarrassed the Egyptian government by demanding that the Muslim Brothers – the spiritual father figures of al-Qaeda – also be invited to hear him wax poetic, the president in adopted fact Ahmadinejad’s thesis: The Jews suffered in the Holocaust and the Palestinians have been suffering ever since then. Israel was established because of the Shoah.
The only thing left shrouded in fog is the conclusion that stems from this distorted view, expressed by Ahmadinejad and accepted by European Union leaders behind closed doors: Israel’s establishment was a historical mistake, and it is not too late yet to turn back the wheel.
All of the above was further supplemented by the weak policy vis-à-vis Iran’s nuclearization effort, to the point where even Syrian President Assad dared say that America no longer exists in the Middle East, and is being replaced by Turkey, Iran, and Syria. Meanwhile, the US Administration allowed repeated UN votes against Israel, as well as the calls for the Jewish State’s nuclear disarmament.
Prime Minister Netanyahu should not be envied over the challenge posed by the most hostile president in US history; a president who makes the anti-Semite Jimmy Carter look like a Righteous Gentile. However, we should be calling a spade a spade and informing the public of the truth, even if this truth is disturbing, painful, and bitter.
We must make it clear to our many supporters in the US that this president, by viewing America and its ally Israel as the reason for all the world’s problems, threatens our very existence here. We should not be surprised to see the anti-Semitic franticness and ecstasy that has taken hold in the Muslim world, to the point where even moderate Arab states headed by Egypt feel threatened by America’s policy, prompting Vice President Biden to arrive for a reassuring visit.
Top Bush Administration official Elliott Abrams argued that another Islamist attack on US soil may change Obama’s policy somewhat. Yet the only change we can expect in such case would be blaming Israel as the direct cause for the “justified Muslim rage” against the US,” thereby only radicalizing the hostile policy of the serving president.
Israel has tens of millions of mostly non-Jewish supporters in the US, Abrams said. It would be good to make the grave results of his actions clear to them immediately, as well as the kinds of grave dangers that threaten our very existence because of his policy.