A second statement by AIPAC following review of the Iran agreement brings a strong thumbs down on the deal. 'A new, better deal is needed'
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee says in a statement that Obama's Iran nuclear deal falls short on all five areas it had concluded were critical: inspections, possible military dimensions, sanctions, duration and dismantlement.
The deal, AIPAC told its membership, “would facilitate rather than prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and would further entrench and empower the leading state sponsor of terror.”
AIPAC concluded that the deal would further destabilize the Middle East, including encouraging an arms race in the region.
In contradiction to what the negotiators and President Obama told the nation, AIPAC insisted that the alternative to the proposed deal is not war.
Calling on its members to inform their legislative representatives, AIPAC said the agreement must be rejected and sanctions on Iran must be maintained while efforts are made to negotiate “a better deal that will truly close off all Iranian paths to a nuclear weapon.” (Lori Lowenthal Marcus in the Jewish Press).
Co-sponsor of Iran sanctions legislation, Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) explains Iran is following the North Korea playbook and that sanctions must be used to bring Iran's regime to its knees. Rep. Royce discusses Senate Democrats carrying water for Pres. Obama's stalling for duplicitous Iran at the 30 Years After Civic Conference in Beverly Hills. Vice President Joe Biden will head back to Capitol Hill on Thursday to urge Senate Democrats to support the nuclear deal with Iran. (AP)
The White House says Biden will discuss the deal with the Democratic members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the committee, invited Biden to brief his party's senators.
The meeting will come a day after Biden made a similar pitch during a meeting with House Democrats. Biden has also been calling lawmakers, including Senate leaders, to discuss the deal.
Congress will have a 60-day window to review the deal and could pass legislation stopping Obama from lifting sanctions on Iran. The White House is focusing its outreach on Democrats in hopes they'll provide enough votes to stop Republicans from overriding Obama's likely veto.
“For the first time in nearly a decade we have halted parts of Iran’s nuclear program” announced a jubilant Barack Obama after the news of the just-signed Geneva six-month interim agreement with Iran.
But the American goal for the accord was that the Iranians not “advance their program” of building a uranium nuclear bomb (and perhaps a plutonium bomb too); the apparent deal exactly permits such advancement, plus sanctions relief to Tehran worth about US$9 billion.
This wretched deal offers one occasion when comparison with Neville Chamberlain in Munich in 1938 is valid. An overeager Western government, blind to the evil cunning of the regime it so much wants to work with, appeases it with concessions that will come back to haunt it. Geneva and Nov. 24 will be remembered along with Munich and Sep. 29.
Barack Obama has made many foreign policy errors in the past five years, but this is the first to rank as a disaster.
Aaron Klein reports in WND.com "Israeli personnel in recent days were in Saudi Arabia to inspect bases that could be used as a staging ground to launch attacks against Iran, according to informed Egyptian intelligence officials.The officials said the U.S. passed strong messages to Israel and the Saudis that the Americans maintain and control radar capabilities around the skies of Iran and that no strike should be launched without the permission of the Obama administration.
The officials said Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and other Arab and Persian Gulf countries have been discussing the next steps toward possible strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites.
Ben Shapiro analyzes why the P5+1 Geneva agreement to de-nuclear-weaponize Iran is "Worse than Munich" in Breitbart.com
"President Obama’s cowardly deal with the Iranian regime – a regime dedicated to the destruction of Israel, pursuing nuclear weapons in violation of multiple United Nations resolutions, and the persecution of Christians – marks the most ignominious moment in western foreign policy in decades. The easy comparison is to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler in Munich in 1938, when he signed allowed Hitler to consolidate his gains in the Sudetenland on the bare promise of no further aggression in Europe.
But in truth, the west’s appeasement of Iran is significantly worse than its appeasement of Hitler in 1938, for a variety of reasons. First, as of 1938, Hitler had not yet made clear his plans to exterminate European Jewry. He was still attempting to ship European Jews out of Europe; the Final Solution was not formally adopted until 1941. Iran has made clear its desire to wipe Israel off the map. Its current leader, supposed moderate Hassan Rouhani, has refused to acknowledge the Holocaust as historically accurate, participated in a rallycalling for Israel’s destruction, and according to Iranian press reports, stated, “The Zionist regime is a wound that has sat on the body of the Muslim world for years and needs to be removed.” Yet the Obama administration wants to pretend he is a moderate.
Video: Dr. Mordechai Kedar: "Obama sells Iranian nuke-maker Ayatollah Khamenei's "taqiya-trap" to appeasement-amnesics"
... Both Israel and Saudi Arabia are militantly opposed to the western sellout of its allies in the Middle East in favor of paper promises from a lying regime.
Finally, Chamberlain’s foolishness was a combination of myopia and fear. President Obama’s foolishness is a combination of malice and egotism.
Desperate to misdirect from his failing signature program, Obamacare, and eager to earn his diplomatic laurels in his second term to placate his ego, President Obama’s Iran solution is just a convenient piece of a larger cowardly foreign policy. President Obama’s foreign policy over the last six months has “won” America the diplomatic victory of leaving a weapons of mass destruction-using dictator in power in Syria while shifting Russia into the Middle Eastern driver’s seat and donating American stockpiles to al Qaeda. Obama has undercut the secular Egyptian military regime in favor of the fascistic Muslim Brotherhood. American power in the Middle East has been effectively minimized.
Prof. Mordechai Kedar: Iran's Rouhani threat? Is Obama setting-up Israel to confront Iran on nukes?
But most of all, he (Obama) has successfully vented his anti-Israel malice. How else to read an administration that has repeatedly leaked Israeli national security secrets in order to stop an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities? How else to interpret an administration that has made it safer to be an anti-Israel dictator seeking nuclear weapons than a free and prosperous democracy? How else to understand an administration that insists that Israel apologize to Turkey for confronting a terrorist flotilla aimed at helping Hamas, insists that Israel building homes in its capital city of Jerusalem is more flammable than Iran building nuclear weapons, and suggests that the Israel-Palestinian issue lies at the heart of all Middle Eastern conflict?
Israel is on its own. Obama’s deal now makes clear that if Israel hits Iran, it does so at the risk of losing American support, even should Iran retaliate against Israel militarily. More than that, Obama’s deal makes clear that America will never take action against Iran under his administration, or greenlight action from others. After all, President Obama is not a man who declares that he has been duped. Just as in Syria, Obama will assume away any problems arising from his diplomatic blundering.
Netanyahu tells U.N. General Assembly, "He (Iranian President Rouhani) fooled the world once. Now he thinks he can fool it again. You see, Rouhani thinks he can have his yellowcake and eat it too! . . . But I will never compromise on the security of my people and of my country of the one and only Jewish state." Remarks by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu During General Debate of the 68th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, October 1, 2013 "I feel deeply honored and privileged to stand here before you today representing the citizens of the State of Israel. We are an ancient people. We date back nearly 4,000 years to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We have journeyed through time, we've overcome the greatest of adversities, And we reestablished our sovereign state in our ancestral homeland, the Land of Israel. The Jewish people's odyssey through time has taught us two things: Never give up hope. Always remain vigilant. Hope charts the future. Vigilance protects it.
Today, our hope for the future is challenged by a nuclear-armed Iran that seeks our destruction. But I want you to know: that wasn't always the case. Some 2500 years ago, the great Persian King Cyrus ended the Babylonian exile of the Jewish people. He issued a famous edict in which he proclaimed the right of the Jews to return to the Land of Israel and rebuild the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. That's a Persian decree, and thus began an historic friendship between the Jews and the Persians that lasted until modern times. But in 1979, a radical regime in Tehran tried to stamp out that friendship. As it was busy crushing the Iranian people's hopes for democracy, it also led wild chants of "Death to the Jews!" Now, since that time, Presidents of Iran have come and gone. Some presidents were considered moderates, others hardliners. But they've all served that same unforgiving creed, that same unforgetting regime – that creed that is espoused and enforced by the real power in Iran, the dictator known in Iran as the Supreme Leader, first Ayatollah Khomeini and now Ayatollah Khamenei. President Rouhani, like the presidents who came before him is a loyal servant of the regime. He was one of only six candidates the regime permitted to run for office. Nearly 700 other candidates were rejected. So what made him acceptable?
The original supposed intent of this whole Syria exercise–punishing Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons–has achieved zero. In fact, it has backfired.
“Russian credibility is not in question,” my colleague Dr. Jonathan Spyer pointed out, American credibility is in question.
“The Russian weapons lifeline to the dictator is buzzing with increased activity,” Spyer continues. ”The arms ships that make their way from the Ukrainian port of Oktabyrsk have increased in number in recent weeks, shipping analysts say. They are bringing the vital spare parts for Assad’s planes and tanks.”
But there’s more.
Was this a pay-off for the Putin-Syria deal to get Iran to agree? Was it an advantage that the Kremlin grabbed in order to show that Russia can do anything it wants now? If so, it was a heavy one indeed. Pay close attention.
Russian media reported Moscow is selling Iran five batteries of S-300 missiles for $700 million. The sale was frozen three years ago when the UN imposed sanctions. Russia will probably claim the weapons are for defense.
And of course, it is for defense, presuming Iran needs to defend a nuclear reactor or missile bases from Israel.
This step tightens the Iran-Russia alliance, presumably a way to make Iran feel more secure as it backs Syria. Russia may also have made an agreement to build a second nuclear reactor in Bushehr.
In other words, the Russia-Iran alliance is stronger; America is weaker; Syria is more secure, though it is still a very long way to win the civil war. But Iran—where the Obama Administration is cutting the sanctions—is more powerful and further away from any effective containment.
Here is Ammar Abdulhamid, who is an honorable and sincere Syrian supporter of moderate rebels but knows he isn’t finding any:
“So the Russians have put on the table a plan whose implementation requires thousands of peacekeepers and experts working together over a period of several years to dismantle Assad’s chemical supplies and production capabilities. In practice, this requires cessation of all hostilities by all parties, in other words, an end to the civil war.”
”End the civil war and the Russian plan can work. But how do we end the civil war? Well, how about a limited strike against Assad’s military and security establishment to convince him to cease hostilities? There you go, we’re back where we started: in order to make Russia’s plan work we need to strike Assad, and in order to strike Assad, we need an American President who is willing to do it and does not go into convulsions each time we get to this point.”
I unfortunately don”t agree with Abdulhamid, but I would if he had received the moderate opposition he wanted.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth O’Bagy, who became famous overnight by being quoted as the rationale for saying Syrian rebels are moderates by Kerry, McCain, and the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, was fired by her pro-rebel lobbying group for faking her PhD.
Turns out she DID lie about her PhD, BUT they had to get rid of her without pointing to the real scandal that the Syrian rebels are notmoderate.
Did anyone learn anything? Again, they really fired her for embarrassment, because it showed that State Department just bought intelligence it wanted–saying Syrian rebels are moderate–by Kerry, McCain, theWashington Post and Wall Street Journal. A few months later she said the opposite.
The real issue–they are lying and faking intelligence–became disguised as a technical issue. Read more
Familiarize yourself with the various Arab weapons of mass destruction ("WMD"), biological, chemical, and nuclear, which Western military and political strategists cope to deal with.
Richard Perkins of AIPAC demonstrated and discussed the issues in this original DemoCast video from the annual AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, DC. Recorded on March 5th.
Former Republican Presidential Candidate, Gov. Mike Huckabee, slams Obama's unwillingness to challenge Iran for nuclear weaponizing during his re-election cycle, at the expense of loyal U.S. ally, Israel.
A DemoCast exclusive interview filmed at the NAMM Musical Instruments Show in Anaheim, California.
Is Netanyahu manuevering to attack Iran?
(Photo: Globalhood news)
The Washington Times has published an analysis by Abraham Rabinovich from Jerusalem which theorizes that that Israel's prisoner swap of Gilad Shalit for 1,027 sentenced terrorists may be prelude to attack on Iran.
JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to execute a 1,000-for-1 prisoner exchange last week despite his frequently voiced opposition to such lopsided deals is seen by several Israeli military commentators as an effort to “clear the deck” before possibly undertaking an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Amir Oren, the veteran military analyst for Ha'aretz newspaper, took note of Israel’s exchanging 1,027 Palestinian convicts for army Staff Sgt. Gilad Schalit, who had been captured by Hamas in 2006. Mr. Oren wrote that the price paid by Mr. Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak “can be interpreted only in a context that goes beyond that of the Gilad Schalit deal.”
He noted that Israeli leaders in the past have shown a readiness to absorb “a small loss” in order to attain a greater success, generally involving “some sort of military adventure.”
Mr. Oren offered another insight that he says may point Mr. Netanyahu toward military action against Iran.
Although the prime minister failed to make any enduring mark on history during his previous term or so far during his present term, Mr. Netanyahu may see Iran as an opportunity to achieve his Churchillian moment, Mr. Oren wrote. “The day is not far off, Netanyahu believes, when Churchill will emerge from him.”
Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, an architect of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, declared that Pakistan’s nuclear bombs are “the property of a whole ummah [worldwide
Muslim community],” so that some Muslim nations or groups could use
them on infidels to bring about “the end of days” and lead the way for
Islam to be the supreme religious force in the world. A.Q. Khan, the
former head of Pakistan’s nuclear program, proliferated nuclear
bomb-making technology exclusively to Islamic states such as Libya or
Iran with just one exception: he transferred this technology to North
Korea in exchange for its missile technology for Pakistan. . . .
The root cause
of the WMD attacks lies in the longstanding pattern of hateful
indoctrination and funding of the communities from which WMD attacks may
originate. In a 2005 speech,
the U.S. Treasury secretary made this observation about the Saudi
export of terrorist ideologies:
“In addition to the export of terrorist
funds, we are extremely concerned about the export of terrorist
ideologies. These teachings are as indispensable to terrorists as money,
and possibly even more dangerous.”
Mohamed ElBaradei ran IAEA '97-'09
For instance, the funding and
indoctrination of Muslim communities throughout the world carried out by
Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Iran have given rise to the likes of
al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Hezbollah, and many other terror entities. The
point couldn’t be overstated: without this root cause, the desire for
and ability to wage jihad and, hence, the intent to acquire and use WMD
are very unlikely.
A massive earthquake, similar to the one that hit Japan recently, is set to hit Iran and might reach the Arab Gulf states as well, a Kuwaiti expert said, without forecasting she expected such natural disaster to take place.
"A destructive earthquake, centered in Iran, is likely to strike, according to all scientific and historical facts that we have," Dr. Ferial Bu Rabei, an expert in earthquakes at the University of Kuwait, was quoted as saying by the Kuwaii al-Watan daily on Thursday.
She urged the importance of giving up on all the nuclear projects in the region, even if those projects were aimed at producing electricity.
Next quake in S.E. Iran could devastate w radiation, tsunamis
Bu Rabei expected that the quake might have a magnitude of 8 on the Richter scale and could trigger a huge tsunami in all directions that could reach as far as the Arab Gulf states.
The Kuwaiti expert sounded alarm over the presence of Iran's Bushehr nuclear plant as it might cause a huge catastrophe in the whole region.
Bu Rabei wondered whether the Arab Gulf states have taken the needed precautions to limit the risks of possible future earthquakes.
The Kuwaiti expert explained that the expected massive earthquake will hit south-east Iran at any moment and will have destructive outcomes in Iran, Kuwait and most countries overlooking the Arab Gulf.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks with Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday, which aired on July 11th. In these videos, they discuss Israel's readiness for direct peace negotiations, but the Palestinians' unwillingness to negotiate peace directly with Israel; whether Netanyahu has been dissatisfied with U.S. policy on nuclear resolutions; and issues surrounding Iran's nuclear weapons program. He cautions on the U.S. administration's notion of that a nuclear Iran can be contained.
This warning, along with an announcement that Iran would join the world's nuclear club within a month, raised the pitch of Iranian anti-US rhetoric to a new high Tuesday, April 13, as 47 world leaders gathered in Washington for President Barack Obama's Nuclear Security Summit. The statement published by Kayhan said: "If the US strikes Iran with nuclear weapons, there are elements which will respond with nuclear blasts in the centers of America's main cities." For the first time, debkafile's military sources report, Tehran indicated the possibility of passing nuclear devices to terrorists capable of striking inside the United States.
Without specifying whether those elements would be Iranian or others, Tehran aimed at the heart of the Nuclear Security Summit by threatening US cities with nuclear terror.
Debkafile's Iranian sources report that Tehran is playing brinkmanship to demonstrate that the Washington summit, from which Iran and North Korea were excluded, failed before it began, because terrorist elements capable of striking inside the US had already acquired nuclear devices for that purpose.
Although Iran has yet to attain operational nuclear arms, our military sources believe it does possess the makings of primitive nuclear devices or "dirty bombs."
In an interview ahead of the summit, President Obama warned: "If there was ever a detonation in New York City, or London, or Johannesburg, the ramifications... would be devastating."
In another shot at the summit, Behzad Soltani, deputy director of Iran's Atomic Commission, announced Tuesday: "Iran will join the world nuclear club within a month in a bid to deter possible attacks on the country." He added: "No country would even think about attacking Iran once it is in the club."
Click to see the Program for 10th Annual Herzilya Policy Conference Monday 8:30 am - 21:30 Israel time, 10:30pm Sunday - 11:30 am Pacific time Tuesday 8:30 am - 21:30 Israel time, 10:30pm Monday - 11:30 am Pacific time Wednesday 8:30 am - 20:45 Israel time, 10:30pm Tuesday - 10:45 am Pacific time Watch Live Video from 2010 Herzliya Conference during session hours. Highlights are available here a short while after the session finishes. Full archived sessions should be available a the day after they air.
'The greatest task for the United Nations is preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.'
Israeli statesman, Prime Minister Netanyahu's speech cuts through this week's bloviating at the United Nations' General Assembly like a knife. He exposes the hypocrisy of member governments sacrificing their integrity to scapegoat ethical Israel in order to enhance their status in business and power.
Nearly 62 years ago, the United Nations recognized the right of the Jews, an ancient people 3,500 years-old, to a state of their own in their ancestral homeland.
I stand here today as the Prime Minister of Israel, the Jewish state, and I speak to you on behalf of my country and my people.
The United Nations was founded after the carnage of World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust. It was charged with preventing the recurrence of such horrendous events.
Nothing has undermined that central mission more than the systematic assault on the truth. Yesterday the President of Iran stood at this very podium, spewing his latest anti-Semitic rants. Just a few days earlier, he again claimed that the Holocaust is a lie.
Last month, I went to a villa in a suburb of Berlin called Wannsee. There, on January 20, 1942, after a hearty meal, senior Nazi officials met and decided how to exterminate the Jewish people. The detailed minutes of that meeting have been preserved by successive German governments. Here is a copy of those minutes, in which the Nazis issued precise instructions on how to carry out the extermination of the Jews. Is this a lie?
A day before I was in Wannsee, I was given in Berlin the original construction plans for the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Those plans are signed by Hitler’s deputy, Heinrich Himmler himself. Here is a copy of the plans for Auschwitz-Birkenau, where one million Jews were murdered. Is this too a lie?
This June, President Obama visited the Buchenwald concentration camp. Did President Obama pay tribute to a lie?
And what of the Auschwitz survivors whose arms still bear the tattooed numbers branded on them by the Nazis? Are those tattoos a lie? One-third of all Jews perished in the conflagration. Nearly every Jewish family was affected, including my own. My wife's grandparents, her father’s two sisters and three brothers, and all the aunts, uncles and cousins were all murdered by the Nazis. Is that also a lie?
Yesterday, the man who calls the Holocaust a lie spoke from this podium. To those who refused to come here and to those who left this room in protest, I commend you. You stood up for moral clarity and you brought honor to your countries.
But to those who gave this Holocaust-denier a hearing, I say on behalf of my people, the Jewish people, and decent people everywhere: Have you no shame? Have you no decency?
A mere six decades after the Holocaust, you give legitimacy to a man who denies that the murder of six million Jews took place and pledges to wipe out the Jewish state.
What a disgrace! What a mockery of the charter of the United Nations! Perhaps some of you think that this man and his odious regime threaten only the Jews. You're wrong.
History has shown us time and again that what starts with attacks on the Jews eventually ends up engulfing many others.
This Iranian regime is fueled by an extreme fundamentalism that burst onto the world scene three decades ago after lying dormant for centuries. In the past thirty years, this fanaticism has swept the globe with a murderous violence and cold-blooded impartiality in its choice of victims. It has callously slaughtered Moslems and Christians, Jews and Hindus, and many others. Though it is comprised of different offshoots, the adherents of this unforgiving creed seek to return humanity to medieval times.
Wherever they can, they impose a backward regimented society where women, minorities, gays or anyone not deemed to be a true believer is brutally subjugated. The struggle against this fanaticism does not pit faith against faith nor civilization against civilization.
It pits civilization against barbarism, the 21st century against the 9th century, those who sanctify life against those who glorify death.
The primitivism of the 9th century ought to be no match for the progress of the 21st century. The allure of freedom, the power of technology, the reach of communications should surely win the day. Ultimately, the past cannot triumph over the future. And the future offers all nations magnificent bounties of hope. The pace of progress is growing exponentially.
It took us centuries to get from the printing press to the telephone, decades to get from the telephone to the personal computer, and only a few years to get from the personal computer to the internet.
What seemed impossible a few years ago is already outdated, and we can scarcely fathom the changes that are yet to come. We will crack the genetic code. We will cure the incurable. We will lengthen our lives. We will find a cheap alternative to fossil fuels and clean up the planet.
I am proud that my country Israel is at the forefront of these advances - by leading innovations in science and technology, medicine and biology, agriculture and water, energy and the environment. These innovations the world over offer humanity a sunlit future of unimagined promise.
But if the most primitive fanaticism can acquire the most deadly weapons, the march of history could be reversed for a time. And like the belated victory over the Nazis, the forces of progress and freedom will prevail only after an horrific toll of blood and fortune has been exacted from mankind. That is why the greatest threat facing the world today is the marriage between religious fanaticism and the weapons of mass destruction.
The most urgent challenge facing this body is to prevent the tyrants of Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Are the member states of the United Nations up to that challenge? Will the international community confront a despotism that terrorizes its own people as they bravely stand up for freedom?
Will it take action against the dictators who stole an election in broad daylight and gunned down Iranian protesters who died in the streets choking in their own blood? Will the international community thwart the world's most pernicious sponsors and practitioners of terrorism?
Above all, will the international community stop the terrorist regime of Iran from developing atomic weapons, thereby endangering the peace of the entire world?
The people of Iran are courageously standing up to this regime. People of goodwill around the world stand with them, as do the thousands who have been protesting outside this hall. Will the United Nations stand by their side?
Ladies and Gentlemen, The jury is still out on the United Nations, and recent signs are not encouraging. Rather than condemning the terrorists and their Iranian patrons, some here have condemned their victims. That is exactly what a recent UN report on Gaza did, falsely equating the terrorists with those they targeted.
For eight long years, Hamas fired from Gaza thousands of missiles, mortars and rockets on nearby Israeli cities. Year after year, as these missiles were deliberately hurled at our civilians, not a single UN resolution was passed condemning those criminal attacks. We heard nothing - absolutely nothing - from the UN Human Rights Council, a misnamed institution if there ever was one.
In 2005, hoping to advance peace, Israel unilaterally withdrew from every inch of Gaza. It dismantled 21 settlements and uprooted over 8,000 Israelis. We didn't get peace. Instead we got an Iranian backed terror base fifty miles from Tel Aviv. Life in Israeli towns and cities next to Gaza became a nightmare. You see, the Hamas rocket attacks not only continued, they increased tenfold. Again, the UN was silent.
Finally, after eight years of this unremitting assault, Israel was finally forced to respond. But how should we have responded? Well, there is only one example in history of thousands of rockets being fired on a country's civilian population. It happened when the Nazis rocketed British cities during World War II. During that war, the allies leveled German cities, causing hundreds of thousands of casualties. Israel chose to respond differently. Faced with an enemy committing a double war crime of firing on civilians while hiding behind civilians - Israel sought to conduct surgical strikes against the rocket launchers.
That was no easy task because the terrorists were firing missiles from homes and schools, using mosques as weapons depots and ferreting explosives in ambulances. Israel, by contrast, tried to minimize casualties by urging Palestinian civilians to vacate the targeted areas.
We dropped countless flyers over their homes, sent thousands of text messages and called thousands of cell phones asking people to leave. Never has a country gone to such extraordinary lengths to remove the enemy's civilian population from harm's way.
Yet faced with such a clear case of aggressor and victim, who did the UN Human Rights Council decide to condemn? Israel. A democracy legitimately defending itself against terror is morally hanged, drawn and quartered, and given an unfair trial to boot.
By these twisted standards, the UN Human Rights Council would have dragged Roosevelt and Churchill to the dock as war criminals. What a perversion of truth. What a perversion of justice.
Delegates of the United Nations,
Will you accept this farce?
Because if you do, the United Nations would revert to its darkest days, when the worst violators of human rights sat in judgment against the law-abiding democracies, when Zionism was equated with racism and when an automatic majority could declare that the earth is flat.
If this body does not reject this report, it would send a message to terrorists everywhere: Terror pays; if you launch your attacks from densely populated areas, you will win immunity. And in condemning Israel, this body would also deal a mortal blow to peace. Here's why.
When Israel left Gaza, many hoped that the missile attacks would stop. Others believed that at the very least, Israel would have international legitimacy to exercise its right of self-defense. What legitimacy? What self-defense?
The same UN that cheered Israel as it left Gaza and promised to back our right of self-defense now accuses us –my people, my country - of war crimes? And for what? For acting responsibly in self-defense. What a travesty!
Israel justly defended itself against terror. This biased and unjust report is a clear-cut test for all governments. Will you stand with Israel or will you stand with the terrorists?
We must know the answer to that question now. Now and not later. Because if Israel is again asked to take more risks for peace, we must know today that you will stand with us tomorrow. Only if we have the confidence that we can defend ourselves can we take further risks for peace.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
All of Israel wants peace.
Any time an Arab leader genuinely wanted peace with us, we made peace. We made peace with Egypt led by Anwar Sadat. We made peace with Jordan led by King Hussein. And if the Palestinians truly want peace, I and my government, and the people of Israel, will make peace. But we want a genuine peace, a defensible peace, a permanent peace. In 1947, this body voted to establish two states for two peoples - a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jews accepted that resolution. The Arabs rejected it.
We ask the Palestinians to finally do what they have refused to do for 62 years: Say yes to a Jewish state. Just as we are asked to recognize a nation-state for the Palestinian people, the Palestinians must be asked to recognize the nation state of the Jewish people. The Jewish people are not foreign conquerors in the Land of Israel. This is the land of our forefathers.
Inscribed on the walls outside this building is the great Biblical vision of peace: "Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. They shall learn war no more." These words were spoken by the Jewish prophet Isaiah 2,800 years ago as he walked in my country, in my city, in the hills of Judea and in the streets of Jerusalem.
We are not strangers to this land. It is our homeland. As deeply connected as we are to this land, we recognize that the Palestinians also live there and want a home of their own. We want to live side by side with them, two free peoples living in peace, prosperity and dignity.
But we must have security. The Palestinians should have all the powers to govern themselves except those handful of powers that could endanger Israel.
That is why a Palestinian state must be effectively demilitarized. We don't want another Gaza, another Iranian backed terror base abutting Jerusalem and perched on the hills a few kilometers from Tel Aviv.
We want peace.
I believe such a peace can be achieved. But only if we roll back the forces of terror, led by Iran, that seek to destroy peace, eliminate Israel and overthrow the world order. The question facing the international community is whether it is prepared to confront those forces or accommodate them.
Over seventy years ago, Winston Churchill lamented what he called the "confirmed unteachability of mankind," the unfortunate habit of civilized societies to sleep until danger nearly overtakes them.
Churchill bemoaned what he called the "want of foresight, the unwillingness to act when action will be simple and effective, the lack of clear thinking, the confusion of counsel until emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong.”
I speak here today in the hope that Churchill's assessment of the "unteachibility of mankind" is for once proven wrong.
I speak here today in the hope that we can learn from history -- that we can prevent danger in time.
In the spirit of the timeless words spoken to Joshua over 3,000 years ago, let us be strong and of good courage. Let us confront this peril, secure our future and, God willing, forge an enduring peace for generations to come."
Iranian insider confides totalitarian, Islamist Iran's threat to Westerners in this 50-minute admission to Democracy Broadcasting.
This prinicipled, Iranian refugee to America (who for security reasons chose to remain anonymous) explains the apocalyptic, Iranian regime's mentality, global ambitions, and the threats to Westerners through their global network of lobbyists, operatives, and spies.
He explains that the totalitarian Islamists exploit Islam as a means to attain their meglomaniacal goals of global, political domination (using Muslims to weaken and conquer the West from within to spread the Caliphate).
In this March, 2007 interview, he explained to DemoCast the need for the West to save the Iranian people through strangling and destabilizing the Mullah regime financially. He compares Washington's hopes of negotiating stopping the regime's hidden nuclear weaponization to 'taking an aspirin for the headache will not rid one's brain of a cancer.'
Analyst, Charles Krauthammer (in "Obama Misses the Point with Iran Response," published today in the Washington Post) admonishes President Obama's administration's failure to speak in support of this week's Iranian election demonstrators.
This incipient revolution is no longer about the election. Obama totally misses the point. The election allowed the political space and provided the spark for the eruption of anti-regime fervor that has been simmering for years and awaiting its moment. But people aren't dying in the street because they want a recount of hanging chads in suburban Isfahan. They want to bring down the tyrannical, misogynist, corrupt theocracy that has imposed itself with the very baton-wielding goons that today attack the demonstrators.
This started out about election fraud. But like all revolutions, it has far outgrown its origins. What's at stake now is the very legitimacy of this regime -- and the future of the entire Middle East.
This revolution will end either as a Tiananmen (a hot Tiananmen with massive and bloody repression or a cold Tiananmen with a finer mix of brutality and co-optation) or as a true revolution that brings down the Islamic Republic.
... Our fundamental values demand that America stand with demonstrators opposing a regime that is the antithesis of all we believe.
And where is our president? Afraid of "meddling." Afraid to take sides between the head-breaking, women-shackling exporters of terror -- and the people in the street yearning to breathe free. This from a president who fancies himself the restorer of America's moral standing in the world.
Is Washington's failure to support anti-Jihadist demonstrators (against Ahmadinejad and the enemies of Zion) actually just misguided (or possibly malevolent) policy-making?
Might the Obama adminstration's Islamist affinities (or Islamists having infiltrated his administration) be inhibiting America's ability to lead the free world to defeat Jihadism in Iran and at home?
Eye on the UN's Anne Bayefsky feels that one criteria trumps all the others in selecting a new, free-world leader:
Since the time of Hitler, civilization has never been so close to the brink of total catastrophe. This American election will decide whether civilization as we know it will survive. As much as economic questions are currently front and center, with blame to go all round, this is not an election primarily about corporate greed, or individuals living beyond their means, or government neglect of economic oversight. Nor is it about whether we should have gone into Iraq where, like it or not, American boots on the ground have begun to create an emerging democracy. This election is about whether there will be a nuclear holocaust.
When you cast your ballot this election, make no mistake: you are voting for or against a nuclear holocaust. Not because Barack Obama wants such a horror, but because he will not prevent it. He will still be talking when the point of no return in Iran’s nuclear program is reached. And the balance of power in the world will — with terrible consequences — have changed forever. (Pictured, Iran Pres. Ahmadinejad inspects nuclear energy plant with Military Chiefs).
The hard-line views expressed by the Iranian president at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday are informed by a Messianic religious belief.
Mohebat Ahdiyyih, writing in The Middle East Forum's Middle East Quarterly, explains the ideological influences of Iranian President Ahmadinejad.
Ahmadinejad seeks an Islamic government in Iran that is free from democratic pretenses and devoid of modern concepts of human rights and the equality of the sexes; that seeks the acquisition of nuclear weapons, the elimination of Israel, the destruction of liberal democratic states and Western capitalism, and an end to the United States as a superpower, which is perceived as the greatest threat to the Islamic Republic's survival and the main obstacle to the accomplishment of its objectives. The achievement of these preconditions, Ahmadinejad believes, will enable Shi‘i domination and the establishment of a world government.[31]
It is an attractive idea for the masses, nurtured on more than two decades of state-sponsored incitement. Khomeini, after all, called for the Islamic world to "rise up and destroy Israel,"[33] and said of the United States, "We will fight them with all our might until the last drop of our blood."[34]
Further coloring Ahmadinejad's world-view, even if not his Mahdism, has been German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Iranian intellectuals react favorably to Heidegger's real or perceived anti-American sentiments, anti-Semitism, and his criticism of traditional Western thought. His grand theory of existence and his objection to attaching great significance to logical reasoning and intelligibility, as well as his theories of the value of nothingness, are concepts that have made him the darling of many Iranian intellectuals.
Critics in Iran – many of them clerics – charge that Ahmadinejad's conviction that the "end of times" is near has brought Iran dangerously close to war with the US and Israel.
"Nothing connects with the audience like the vocabulary of imminence," says Kurt Anders Richardson, an expert on Shiite theology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
"It's great to live with imminence if you believe. It changes everything: it supercharges politics, it supercharges ethics and collective feeling.
"Also it's a great antidote to worldly distractions. Instead of fear instigated by morality police, you have euphoria, a profound enticement," says Dr. Richardson, speaking in Tehran during a recent conference on Mahdism doctrine. "Clearly these people are motivated by the belief they will be privileged to see the return of the Mahdi in their lifetime." ...
Critics found voice in a July article about "deviant" claims of the president's proximity to the divine. "Do you believe that these speeches can excuse the government of its mismanagement, inflation, increasing prices, dissatisfaction, and the protest of people?" wrote Rasoul Montajabnia, a cleric and opposition politician.
Few believers in Iran doubt that the "ultimate savior" will come one day. Ahmadinejad says the Mahdi will destroy unjust rulers who "are not connected to the heavens [and are separated] from the almighty prophets" – meaning those of the United States, Israel, and the West.
Iran has carried out missile tests for what could be a plan for a nuclear strike on the United States, the head of a national security panel has warned. (Kenneth R. Timmerman reports in NewsMax)
In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee and in remarks to a private conference on missile defense over the weekend hosted by the Claremont Institute, Dr. William Graham warned that the U.S. intelligence community “doesn’t have a story” to explain the recent Iranian tests.
One group of tests that troubled Graham, the former White House science adviser under President Ronald Reagan, were successful efforts to launch a Scud missile from a platform in the Caspian Sea.
“They’ve got [test] ranges in Iran which are more than long enough to handle Scud launches and even Shahab-3 launches,” Dr. Graham said. “Why would they be launching from the surface of the Caspian Sea? They obviously have not explained that to us.”
Another troubling group of tests involved Shahab-3 launches where the Iranians "detonated the warhead near apogee, not over the target area where the thing would eventually land, but at altitude,” Graham said. “Why would they do that?”
Graham chairs the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack, a blue-ribbon panel established by Congress in 2001.
The commission examined the Iranian tests “and without too much effort connected the dots,” even though the U.S. intelligence community previously had failed to do so, Graham said.
“The only plausible explanation we can find is that the Iranians are figuring out how to launch a missile from a ship and get it up to altitude and then detonate it,” he said. “And that’s exactly what you would do if you had a nuclear weapon on a Scud or a Shahab-3 or other missile, and you wanted to explode it over the United States.”
The commission warned in a report issued in April that the United States was at risk of a sneak nuclear attack by a rogue nation or a terrorist group designed to take out our nation’s critical infrastructure.
"If even a crude nuclear weapon were detonated anywhere between 40 kilometers to 400 kilometers above the earth, in a split-second it would generate an electro-magnetic pulse [EMP] that would cripple military and civilian communications, power, transportation, water, food, and other infrastructure," the report warned.
While not causing immediate civilian casualties, the near-term impact on U.S. society would dwarf the damage of a direct nuclear strike on a U.S. city.
“The first indication [of such an attack] would be that the power would go out, and some, but not all, the telecommunications would go out. We would not physically feel anything in our bodies,” Graham said.
As electric power, water and gas delivery systems failed, there would be “truly massive traffic jams,” Graham added, since modern automobiles and signaling systems all depend on sophisticated electronics that would be disabled by the EMP wave.
“So you would be walking. You wouldn’t be driving at that point,” Graham said. “And it wouldn’t do any good to call the maintenance or repair people because they wouldn’t be able to get there, even if you could get through to them.”
The food distribution system also would grind to a halt as cold-storage warehouses stockpiling perishables went offline. Even warehouses equipped with backup diesel generators would fail, because “we wouldn’t be able to pump the fuel into the trucks and get the trucks to the warehouses,” Graham said.
The United States “would quickly revert to an early 19th century type of country.” except that we would have 10 times as many people with ten times fewer resources, he said.
“Most of the things we depend upon would be gone, and we would literally be depending on our own assets and those we could reach by walking to them,” Graham said.
America would begin to resemble the 2002 TV series, “Jeremiah,” which depicts a world bereft of law, infrastructure, and memory.
In the TV series, an unspecified virus wipes out the entire adult population of the planet. In an EMP attack, the casualties would be caused by our almost total dependence on technology for everything from food and water, to hospital care.
Within a week or two of the attack, people would start dying, Graham says.
“People in hospitals would be dying faster than that, because they depend on power to stay alive. But then it would go to water, food, civil authority, emergency services. And we would end up with a country with many, many people not surviving the event.”
Asked just how many Americans would die if Iran were to launch the EMP attack it appears to be preparing, Graham gave a chilling reply.
“You have to go back into the 1800s to look at the size of population” that could survive in a nation deprived of mechanized agriculture, transportation, power, water, and communication.
“I’d have to say that 70 to 90 percent of the population would not be sustainable after this kind of attack,” he said.
In his recent congressional testimony, Graham revealed that Iranian military journals, translated by the CIA at his commission’s request, “explicitly discuss a nuclear EMP attack that would gravely harm the United States.”
Furthermore, if Iran launched its attack from a cargo ship plying the commercial sea lanes off the East coast — a scenario that appears to have been tested during the Caspian Sea tests — U.S. investigators might never determine who was behind the attack. Because of the limits of nuclear forensic technology, it could take months. And to disguise their traces, the Iranians could simply decide to sink the ship that had been used to launch it, Graham said.
Intelligence reports on the launch were “well known to the White House but have not been disseminated to the appropriate congressional committees,” I wrote. Such a missile “could be used in a devastating stealth attack against the United States or Israel for which the United States has no known or planned defense.”
Few experts believe that Iran can be deterred from launching such an attack by the threat of massive retaliation against Iran. They point to a December 2001 statement by former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, who mulled the possibility of Israeli retaliation after an Iranian nuclear strike.
“The use of an atomic bomb against Israel would destroy Israel completely, while [the same] against the Islamic only would cause damages. Such a scenario is not inconceivable,” Rafsanjani said at the time.
Rep. Trent Franks, R, Ariz., plans to introduce legislation next week that would require the Pentagon to lay the groundwork for an eventual military strike against Iran, to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and EMP capability.
“An EMP attack on America would send us back to the horse and buggy era — without the horse and buggy,” he told the Claremont Institute conference on Saturday. “If you’re a terrorist, this is your ultimate goal, your ultimate asymmetric weapon.”
Noting Iran’s recent sea-launched and mid-flight warhead detonation tests, Rep. Franks concluded, “They could do it — either directly or anonymously by putting some freighter out there on the ocean.”
DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources report that an explosion Monday, June 30, at Bidganeh near the town of Shahriar 40 kilometers east of Tehran occurred at a military installation, not a civilian building as Tehran claimed.
At first, the Iranian authorities reported 15 people were killed, correcting this later to no casualties. The precise function of the targeted facility is not known. While Iran claimed the blast was caused by a gas leak, Western military sources are skeptical and believe the authorities are trying to cover up some sort of sabotage.
In separate news, Iran sentenced an Iranian electronics distributor to death for allegedly spying for Israel.
Ali Ashtari, 43, of Tehran, who was found guilty of spying for the “Zionist regime” for money, may appeal the death sentence handed down by a Iranian Revolutionary Court Monday, June 30, the Fars news agency reports.
According to his “confession,” Ashtari was a salesman of telecoms equipment which he used to help the Israeli Mossad access information from Iranian officials. He is said to have been given $50,000 to buy Internet cables and satellite phones and then sell them to “special customers” to enable Israel to hack into their communications.
The condemned man is cited as admitting he had meetings in Thailand, Turkey and Switzerland with Mossad agents “Jacques, Charles and Tony,” who gave him equipment including a laptop for sending encrypted emails.
DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources report Iranian official circles have beome obsessed with suspicions of Israeli and American undercover infiltrators preparing impending attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities. There have been claims in the past of spies hiding in strategic places ready to guide incoming heavy American bombers to targeting those facilities. Iran also fears enemy agents have penetrated its nuclear research centers to gather “crucial” strategic data.
These alarms have raised concerns for the safety of the 4,000-years old Jewish community of Iran, whose numbers have dwindled to 17,000 to 20,000.
BBC World's "This World" addressed the free-world's threat of "imagine a world without Zionism," Islamic-imperialist, Iran's developing nuclear weapons in 2006. It's still essential viewing. (Parts 2 through 6 are accessible through the on-screen menu appearing at the end of Part 1. Courtesy Dat1111 on LiveLeak).
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee says in a statement that Obama's Iran nuclear deal falls short on all five areas it had concluded were critical: inspections, possible military dimensions, sanctions, duration and dismantlement.
