Stands by new Mid East direction

The radical shift in US Middle East policies, marked by tough demands of Israel, was confirmed and highlighted by President Obama Barak Tuesday, April 14, in his comment that conflicts like the one in the Middle East ended up "costing significantly in terms of both blood and treasure." Reporting this, the New York Times noted that he echoed the recent suggestion by Gen. David Petraeus, OC Central Command, that American lives in Iraq and Afghanistan were imperiled by lack of progress in the Middle East implying Israel's policies on the Palestinians were responsible. (Petraeus later phoned Israel's chief of staff to say his remarks were misunderstood and taken out of context.)
debkafile's US sources see in the US president's remark his rejoinder to the alarmed accusations coming from prominent American-Jewish leaders that the US president has turned his back on Israel's security, although he has repeatedly claimed it was the bedrock of his Middle East policy. Furthermore, AIPAC, the pro-Israeli lobbying group publicized a letter to US secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed by 76 senators and 33 House members urging the administration to defuse tensions with Israel and voicing support for its security.

The World Jewish Congress president Ronald Lauder was to publish an open letter to President Obama in the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal which asks: "Why does the thrust of this administration's Middle East rhetoric seem to blame Israel for the lack of movement on peace talks when it is the Palestinians who refuse to negotiate?"
Former New York Mayor Ed Koch said he suspects the plan is "to so weaken the resolve of the of the Jewish state and its leaders so that it will be much easier to impose on Israel an American plan to resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict, leaving Israel's needs for security and defensible borders in the lurch."

For a report on their comments, click here.

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IAF searching for space to drill

By YAAKOV KATZ
16/04/2010 01:52

Army looking for options as Turkey no longer allows use of airspace.

Refused permission to fly in Turkish airspace, the Israel Air Force has its eyes on Europe and Asia as it searches for new training grounds for its fighter jets with an emphasis on long-range missions.

In recent years, due to the various threats it faces, primarily from Iran, the IAF has increased its long-range training missions. Most notable was in 2008, when 100 IAF aircraft flew over Greece in an exercise that was perceived as a dress rehearsal for a strike against Iran.

Until Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip last winter, the IAF frequently flew over Turkey, and it had participated in several annual exercises with the Turkish Air Force. Following the offensive against Hamas and the deterioration in Israeli-Turkish relations, Ankara has refused to allow Israel to deploy its fighter jets in Turkey.

"We are looking for new places where we can fly," a senior IAF officer said recently.

As a result, the Defense Ministry is looking to continue an agreement it signed in 2006 that allows Israeli fighter jets to deploy in Romania. The IAF has sent jets to Romania for training in 2007 and plans to deploy aircraft there again later this year.

Last May, the French newsweekly L'Express reported that the IAF had staged military exercises over Gibraltar, about 4,000 km. away from Israel.

It is possible that the flyover by two IAF Gulfstream reconnaissance aircraft in Hungary last month was also part of an air force exercise in Europe. The appearance of Israeli military aircraft in Hungarian airspace triggered a political controversy that culminated this week in the dismissal of the head of the air traffic department at Hungary's Transportation Ministry.

"Our ties with Turkey will never return to be the way they once were," a senior defense official said on Thursday. "It is unlikely that under the current government in Ankara we will be allowed to fly there again."

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Ya'alon No need ever to remove any settlements
By HERB KEINON
16/04/2010 01:49

"Jews should be able to remain in Palestinian entity under any peace accord," strategic affairs minister tells ‘Post'.

Israel should not have to remove any settlements in a peace agreement with the Palestinians, Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya'alon has told The Jerusalem Post, adding that just as Arabs live in Israel, so, too, should Jews be able to live in a future Palestinian entity.

"If we are talking about coexistence and peace, why the insistence that the territory they receive be ethnically cleansed of Jews?" Ya'alon asked during a wide-ranging interview that will appear in the Post's Yom Ha'atzmaut supplement on Monday.

"Why do those areas have to be Judenrein?" he asked. "Don't Arabs live here, in the Negev and the Galilee? Why isn't that part of our public discussion? Why doesn't that scream to the heavens?"

Ya'alon said that if Israel and the Palestinians were truly headed down the path of peace and coexistence, "Jews living in Judea and Samaria under Israeli sovereignty and citizenship" should be possible.

He stressed that "no settlement" should be removed, and that the country's previous withdrawals - from Lebanon and from Gaza - strengthened Hizbullah and Hamas, respectively.

"That is opposed to our strategic interest and to the strategic interests of the West," he said.

Ya'alon, who sits on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's top decision-making body, known as the septet, and is among those deliberating on how to reply to US President Barack Obama's reported demands for a construction freeze in east Jerusalem, said Israel must not give in on the issue.

"We cannot fold on Jerusalem. What is Jerusalem? It is Zion," he said.

"We disengaged politically in Judea and Samaria, and physically from Gaza," Ya'alon pointed out. "The policy of the Netanyahu government is that we don't want to rule over them . But not ruling over them does not mean we have to withdraw to the 1967 borders, which are indefensible borders; or that we have to divide Jerusalem in order to bring Hamas snipers into Jerusalem."

Ya'alon, like the other members of the septet, is very discreet about the discussions regarding the answers to be given to the Americans, and would not even discuss what it was exactly that Obama was demanding.

And while stressing that the US and Israel had a deep, strategic alliance, Ya'alon acknowledged significant conceptual gaps regarding how each side saw the region.

"In order for there to be a proper prognosis, you need a proper diagnosis," he said, adding that the US administration had misdiagnosed the root of the conflict here as territorial, when in reality it was about the failure of the Palestinians to recognize the right of the Jews to be here in any permutation.

"Those who want to continue the Oslo process, who want us to continue to give and give and give, without a Palestinian willingness to recognize our right to a national home, are cooperating with the phased plan for Israel's destruction," Ya'alon said.

Amid reports that Obama may, in a few months, try to impose a peace plan on Israel and the Palestinians, Ya'alon - who has accompanied the diplomatic process from up close since he was the head of Military Intelligence in 1995 - said that anyone who thought it was possible to "impose peace just like that" is "detached from reality."

The government must work closely with the Obama administration to prevent the imposition of any such plan, he said.

Turning to Iran, Ya'alon said that country's rulers must be faced with a determined West that placed the following dilemma before them: the bomb or regime survival.

Asked who in the West was showing the most determination against Iran these days, Ya'alon replied with France and Britain.

"Something has happened here that we haven't seen in the past," he said.

"Previously, the US led the aggressive line. Today, as I said, the president of France and prime minister of Britain are leading a more aggressive line than the president of the US."

Asked if there were people in Jerusalem charged with coming up with plans on how to contain Iran if it eventually got the bomb, Ya'alon replied, "By one way or another, the Iranian military nuclear project should be stopped. And we should not discuss any other possibility."

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Call to World Jewry in Face of Nuclear Threat
by Hillel Fendel
Veteran Israeli commentator Shaul Schiff declares that world Jewry has forsaken its obligation to stand up for its nuke-endangered Israeli brethren.
A veteran columnist for decades in the now-defunct HaTzofeh and in other publications, Schiff's latest column in the B'Sheva weekly newspaper is entitled: "The Silence Continues: Why is world Jewry silent in the face of the Iranian threat against the very existence of the country of the Jews?"
Perhaps it is time for world Jewry to wake up from its slumber and adopt the three lessons of Rav Soloveitchik?

The Three Lessons
Schiff quotes the late renowned Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik as having said that Jews must learn from the Holocaust never to stand idly by while other Jews are endangered. Asked what should be emphasized when teaching about the Holocaust, Rabbi Soloveitchik reportedly said:

"Three things. One, that we Jews in America did not help our brothers when they were being wiped out in Europe - not with emissaries, nor with enough help in the halls of US government and other organizations. Two, other nations are also guilty for not protesting or doing what they could to stop it… And three: that whenever and wherever Jews are in danger and need help, we must do whatever we can to help, using all the tools at our disposal."

Schiff wrote that he consulted with top political scientist lecturers and asked if it would be acceptable to say that the current U.S. president, deep down in his heart, is interested in having the Palestinian problem and Middle East tension solved via the disappearance of the State of Israel. "They answered that it would not be politically correct to say that," Schiff wrote, "and that it would be better to simply state that he would not be too upset if Israel would be mortally hurt by Iranian atomic weapons."

Not Long Ago...
"Not only are human rights organizations and champions around the world silent in the face of this danger", Schiff writes, ‘but even the Jewish leadership around the world, in its various forms, is silent in the face of Iran's threats to destroy Israel. It was not long ago that pillars of smoke rose from the crematoria in the Nazi death camps…"

Schiff quotes an American Jewish leader who once explained to him that American Jewry need not speak up about this threat "because a nuclear Iran is an American problem no less than it is for Israel. So why should we get involved?" The events of the past year belie this approach, Schiff claims, writing:

"Iran is now on the verge of attaining nuclear weapons, and whoever has eyes sees that Obama is not rushing to prevent them, and soon he will say it's too late to do anything, and that we must consider defensive options - while Hizbullah and Syria threaten us at our borders. Perhaps it is time for world Jewry to wake up from its slumber and adopt the three lessons of Rav Soloveitchik?" (IsraelNationalNews.com)
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PA Arab Terrorist Cell Shot at Jewish Motorist

by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
The IDF has arrested a terror cell near metropolitan Tel Aviv that shot at a Jewish motorist in Samaria Wednesday night. The army also arrested rock-throwing children in the same area, but soldiers still are looking for a rock-thrower near Hevron who wounded one person Thursday evening.

The army has intensified its efforts to protect Jewish motorists on the heavily-traveled road between central Samaria and Kfar Saba, north of Tel Aviv, following months of almost daily rock-throwing attacks.

Security officers in the areas told Israel National News that the army is more effective now than it has been in the past.

After the terrorism escalated into Wednesday night's shooting attack, the IDF hunted down the source and arrested the cell Thursday morning in an Arab village near the city of Kalkilya, where the Palestinian Authority is responsible for security. A driver and passenger in the car were not injured by the gunshots.

The IDF search also uncovered a group of youth who hurled rocks at Israeli cars Thursday morning, causing damage but no injuries.

A motorist between Hevron-Kiryat Arba and the Gush Etzion-Efrat area was less fortunate Thursday evening and suffered light injuries when he drove on Highway 60, the major artery connecting Jerusalem with Hevron and communities north of Be'er Sheva. The incident occurred at the village of Beit Omar, where rock, stones and foreign objects are thrown at Jewish motorists almost daily.

The attackers often cause serious damage, and sometimes death, by trying to break a windshield, resulting in the driver's losing control and ending up in a crash.

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Waking up to New Danger from North: Scud Missiles

by Hillel Fendel
The Syrian government claimed Israel is using the Scud ballistic missile transfer to try to create an excuse for launching a war. "Israel aims from this to raise tension further in the region and to create an atmosphere for probable Israeli aggression," the Syrian Foreign Ministry said in a statement

The U.S., however, is not happy with the Syrian transfer of missiles to Lebanon - and an expert says Israel will have to take action.

Prof. Eyal Zisser, head of the Dayan Center for Middle Eastern Studies in Tel Aviv University, told Arutz-7 that the news requires Israel to make some difficult decisions. "There's no question that the transfer of is an escalation," Zisser said. "These Scuds are more precise than those that Saddam Hussein launched at us in the Gulf War of 1991, and they have a longer range as well."

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the U.S. has relayed its concern to the Syrian government, Senator John McCain raised the issue at the hearing on Iran on Wednesday, and Under Secretary of Defense Flournoy said the U.S. is "very concerned" by these reports.

In addition, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters that any such missile transfer would put Lebanon at "significant risk," later adding - under a questioner's pressure - that other countries in the region, "including Israel," would also be endangered.

Crowley's remarks came a day after President Shimon Peres accused Syria of supplying Scud missiles to Hizbullah, and after Defense Minister Ehud Barak said it was a "blatant violation" of relevant U.N. Security Council decisions. Crowley did not confirm that Syria actually supplied the missiles, saying only that the "reports" are of concern.

The Syrian government claimed Israel was trying to create an excuse for launching a war against Syria."Israel aims from this to raise tension further in the region and to create an atmosphere for probable Israeli aggression," the Syrian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The Kuwaiti newspaper Al Rai Al Aam reported that the missiles transferred by Syria to Hizbullah can reach a range of 300 kilometers - nearly halfway between Be'er Sheva and Israel's southernmost point, Eilat.

Hizbullah Has Been Building Rocket Stocks for Years
In truth, Prof. Zisser said, the danger from Hizbullah is not new: "Ever since the Second Lebanon War [in 2006], Syria has given Hizbullah nearly 40,000 rockets, some of which are very similar to Scuds. Hizbullah now has another 40-50,000 rockets, most of them short-range that can reach Haifa; they are not the most precise, but they can cause great destruction. We destroyed their Iranian-supplied Zilzal long-range rockets on the first day of the war, but they have a few hundred new long-range missiles that they received from Syria… They have basically tripled their strength."

Despite this, the picture is not entirely black, Zisser said. "First of all, we can also cause terrible damage in Lebanon, and the other side knows this. We hurt them much more badly in the Second Lebanon War than they did us. In addition, as opposed to the last war, when they had rockets they could set up simply with a timing device and run away - the Scuds that they now have are much bigger and more easily detectable, and we can attack the launching teams much more easily. The Scuds are also interceptable with our systems."

In the long run, Zisser believes that though we dealt them a heavy blow in 2006, "they are getting stronger, and the rocket smuggling from Syria and Iran continues, and Israel will sooner or later have to deal with this. True, Nasrallah is still in the bunker, but he continues to pull the strings, and the government of Israel will have to set the time at which it will act. In the meantime, we're not hearing that this is being done." (IsraelNationalNews.com)