***The Truth About Israel***

The northern Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo. Israel’s decision to build 1,600 more apartments there has brought international condemnation, even from the US.

 Biden Embraces Then Condemns Israel

JERUSALEM - Vice President Joe Biden told Palestinian leaders in the West Bank, Wednesday, they deserve an independent state.

On day three of his Middle East tour, Biden also said the U.S. is committed to brokering a peace deal with Israel.

Yet, just hours after pledging that support, Israeli officials announced a new building project in East Jerusalem — putting a cloud over pending peace talks.

Israel’s decision to approve hundreds of new housing units drew sharp criticism from the U.S. and the Palestinians.

Biden condemned the building announcement in a statement saying it is “precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now and runs counter to the constructive discussions that I’ve had here in Israel.”

The Israeli move came this week after the U.S. announced indirect Israeli-Palestinian negotiations would begin after a 14-month stalemate.

Palestinian officials said they appreciated the strong U.S. condemnation of Israel.

“We appreciate the condemnation we had from the international community and hope they take the extra step, extra mile of having the Israeli government revoke these orders,” Palestinian Authority negotiator Saeb Erekat said.

Ramat Shlomo is an existing Jewish neighborhood in the eastern section of Jerusalem that Palestinians hope will one day become the capital of a future Palestinian state.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman Mark Regev said Israel has taken unprecedented steps to get the peace process moving.

“We’re currently in the middle of a 10-month moratorium and to get the peace process back on track,” he said. “But I want to be clear in the Israeli position. We make a clear distinction in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Jerusalem is our capital and it will remain as such.”

JERUSALEM - On the sidelines of an international conference on nuclear energy this week, Syria’s deputy foreign minister said his country is pursuing “alternative energy sources, including nuclear energy.”

“The peaceful application of nuclear energy should not be monopolized by the few that own this technology, but should be available to all,” Deputy Foreign Minister Faysal Mekdad said in Paris on Tuesday, without further elaboration.

But Syria’s nuclear aspirations, like Iran’s, are neither new nor necessarily restricted to energy production.

Israel believes that Syria has been building covert nuclear facilities, with technical and logistical support from North Korea and Iran, for several years.

The facility destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in September 2007 was a nearly completed nuclear reactor of North Korean design intended to produce weapons-grade plutonium.

The IAEA (International Atomic Energy Association) reported that the collection of uranium particles found at the site in June 2008 was evidence of nuclear activity there. Syria has not allowed the IAEA to return to that site or any other since then.

Iran also insists that its nuclear program is strictly for energy production, but neither its rhetoric nor the facts on the ground support its claims. The same is true of Syria.

By their own admission, the two countries are tightly aligned with one another.

“We are brothers. We have mutual interests, as well as common goals and enemies,” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said at a joint press conference in Damascus with Bashar Assad, his Syrian counterpart, on February 24.

Both countries would like to see Israel wiped off the map and both finance and support Islamic terror groups, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, which they refer to as the “resistance.”

“The Zionist entity will eventually disappear…With Allah’s help, the new Middle East will be a Middle East without Zionists and imperialists ,” Ahmadinejad predicted.

Other Middle Eastern countries, besides Iran and Syria, are increasingly interested in building nuclear power plants, which would provide them with the technology to develop their own nuclear weapons to counter a nuclear-armed Iran.

Last month, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak spent two days in Moscow shoring up details of a nuclear cooperation agreement with Russia. The visit followed an announcement last October that Egypt planned to build several nuclear power plants. 

French President Nicolas Sarkozy visited Morocco in February, where he promised to help them develop a nuclear energy program.

Syria and Turkey announced plans to develop a joint energy company, which would include nuclear power plants. Turkey is accepting bids for building its first plant and is laying the groundwork for a second one.

Since 2006, about a dozen Middle Eastern countries have decided to pursue nuclear power, with Saudi Arabia, Libya, Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, Bahrain and Oman jumping on board this past year.

And what about Israel, surrounded by a sea of less-than-friendly Arab countries?

At the Paris conference, Israeli Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau said Israel, which uses coal and natural gas to produce electricity, was also considering nuclear energy production.

“Israel has always considered nuclear power to partially replace its dependence on coal,” Landau said.  

Unlike its neighbors, all signatories of the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Israel has maintained a low profile for years, neither affirming nor denying its nuclear arms capabilities.

Nor has Israel caved in to pressure to sign the NPT, which would require disclosure and disarmament of any weapons it may have. Successive Israeli leaders have managed to convince their U.S. ally of the need to retain military superiority in the region.

D.C.-based political analyst Guy Ziv believes that Israel’s “policy of ambiguity has been a key factor in limiting Arab aggression.”

In a recent article entitled “Washington, Israel and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,” published in The Jerusalem Post, Ziv concluded that “the Obama administration has come to understand that, at least for the time being, Israel’s ambiguous nuclear policy, along with its refusal to join the NPT, is a force that promotes regional stability.”

(IsraelNN.com) The parents of American pro-Gaza activist Rachel Corrie have filed a civil suit against Israel over the death of their daughter in Gaza in 2003. Corrie died after sustaining injuries when she was hit by a pile of dirt and debris while lying down in front of a D9 bulldozer. The bulldozer was driven by IDF soldiers searching for terrorist weapons-smuggling tunnels.

The case opened this week in the Haifa District Court.

In its opening defense statement, the state asked that the suit be dismissed. Corrie deliberately put herself at risk, state attorneys argued. The incident has been thoroughly investigated, and it has been proven that the IDF soldier driving the bulldozer had no intention of injuring Corrie, but simply could not see her, they said.

“Rachel Corrie was injured as a result of her prohibited action, for which she is solely responsible, due to her considerable negligence and lack of caution,” the state argued. “She willingly took part in hostile and violent illegal activity, and intentionally and willingly put herself at risk, while she was in the Gaza strip in general, and along the Philadelphi Corridor, in particular, which were combat zones at the time and had been declared a ‘closed military zone.’”

The bulldozers used in Gaza had a limited field of vision, due to the need to protect drivers from snipers and other forms of attack. Polygraph tests showed that the driver who pushed debris onto Corrie was telling the truth when he said that he was unable to see her, defense attorneys said.

The driver stopped when Corrie’s friends ran into his field of view and signaled that someone had been hit, the state noted.

In an editorial this week, Professor Steven Plaut accused the extreme left of using Corrie’s death to further their anti-Israel agenda.

Internationals to Challenge IDF on Gaza Barrier
As the case opened, Gaza Arabs and international activists began another campaign aimed at challenging IDF security zones along the Gaza barrier. Groups of Arabs and internationals plan to walk toward the Gaza security barrier, into the no-go zones near the barrier, according to the Palestinian Authority-linked Maan news agency.

The IDF created the no-go zones in order to prevent terrorists from approaching the barrier and attacking soldiers or infiltrating Israel. The zones also aim to prevent terrorists from planting bombs along the barrier, or digging tunnels into nearby Israeli towns to carry out attacks.

Gaza Arabs say they want to use the no-go zones for agriculture.

‘4-8 weeks left for diplomacy on Iran’

Ashkenazi headed to US, expected to face protests

Biden, PM set to focus on Iran

Joe Biden arrives in Israel, as Palestinians honor terrorism

Palestinians invade Jewish settlement

Thousands protest return of Jerusalem neighborhood to Jews

Anti-Israel Activist Attacks Jewish Girl on Campus

 SJP leader Husam Zakharia
by Avi Yellin

Some three thousand left-wing Israeli and Palestinian Arab protestors gathered in the eastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah on Saturday night to oppose the return of local homes to their original Jewish owners.

Many of the demonstrators, including Israeli Jews, waved Palestinian flags in support of the notion that the eastern half of the city should be emptied of Jews and surrendered as the capital of a new Palestinian Arab state.

Sheikh Jarrah was originally a Jewish neighborhood, and is even the site of the tomb of the renowned Mishnaic rabbi Shimon Hatzadik.

But during the War of Independence in 1948, the Jews of Sheikh Jarrah were forced to flee ahead of the advancing Jordanian armies. Jordan subsequently annexed the eastern half of Jerusalem in violation of international law and settled Palestinian Arab families in the former Jewish homes.

Over the past six months, Israel’s Supreme Court has had no choice but to rule in favor of the descendants of the original owners and order the eviction of the Arabs living in several houses in Sheikh Jarrah. Two Jewish families moved into the neighborhood several months ago under heavy security. They were and continue to be attacked verbally and physically on a regular basis.

A group of Palestinian Arabs infiltrated the Samarian Jewish community of Yitzhar Sunday night and destroyed about $1,500 worth of construction equipment before fleeing undetected, reported Israel National News.

The infiltrators were believed to have come from the nearby Palestinian town of Ourif, which is under full Palestinian Authority control, meaning Israeli security forces cannot operate there.

Yitzhar has been infiltrated a number of times in recent years. The last incident occurred on Friday, when a young Palestinian Arab girl was found wandering the streets of the Jewish settlement. She was taken in by a local woman and given food and water until security officials could locate her parents.

Israeli officials later expressed concern that the girl was sent into the settlement intentionally in order to test its defenses.

A message sent from the Obama Administration to the Palestinian Authority last week promised that if indirect peace talks set to be launched between Israel and the Palestinians in the coming weeks do not bear fruit, Washington will call out the party it feels is at fault and take appropriate action.

The Palestinians and the Arab League agreed last week to a US proposal to oversee indirect peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians for a period of four months. Israel believes US President Barack Obama has decided to lower the priority of Middle East peacemaking due to his frustration over not getting the two sides to resume full-scale negotiations and his need to focus on upcoming congressional elections.

The indirect talks will be facilitated by US Middle East envoy George Mitchell. The Palestinians reportedly asked Obama how serious the US involvement would be, and if adequate pressure would be brought to bear on Israel.

Ha’aretz reports that it obtained a copy of Obama’s response, which read, “We expect both parties to act seriously and in good faith. If one side, in our judgment, is not living up to our expectations, we will make our concerns clear and we will act accordingly to overcome that obstacle.”

Washington has traditionally blamed the existence and continued growth of Israeli communities in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem for the lack of peace, while almost completely ignoring Palestinian violence, incitement and corruption.

Palestinian and Arab leaders were reportedly very pleased with the US response.

US Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Israel on Monday afternoon for a three-day whirlwind visit that will see him meet with Israel’s top leadership, minus controversial Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

Lieberman, the resident of a Jewish settlement in Judea, has been maligned abroad as a radical and a detriment to peace, though many Israelis see his views as far more realistic than those of other politicians more willing to continue making concessions for an elusive peace.

Jerusalem tried to explain that no meeting was scheduled between Biden and Lieberman because the foreign minister plans to travel to Washington next month anyway.

Biden will also visit Ramallah on Wednesday to meet with the Palestinian leadership. A day later, the Palestinian Authority will officially rename one of the town’s main squares after Dalal Mughrabi, a female Palestinian terrorist who in 1978 managed to massacre 37 Israelis, the most ever in a single terrorist attack.

There was no public statement of concern from Washington that the PA planned this event to coincide with Biden’s visit. Nor was there any criticism at all from the international community along the lines that honoring terrorists like Mughrabi violates the Palestinians’ peace obligation to stop encouraging violence against Israel.

Israeli commentators contrasted that to the international outrage, including from Washington, that was elicited by Israel’s decision to officially recognize the Jewish connection to the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem - burial sites of Israel’s patriarchs and matriarchs.

‘Iran developing massive launch site’

UN worried by Temple Mount clashes

Tamim to Dagan: We can break into your office

 6 dead in W. Bank car crash

 Israel’s Shadow War against a Nuclear Iran

January 18, 2007. Ardeshir Hassanpour, a nuclear physicist with extensive knowledge of Iran’s nuclear program is found dead in his apartment.

Reva Bhalla, a senior analyst with the private intelligence firm Stratfor, believes the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, was behind his assassination.

“Hassanpour was someone that we deemed as critical to the program and would have been a likely target of an intelligence service like the Israeli Mossad,” Bhalla said.
 
A month later in February. Ali Reza Asgari, a top general in Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, disappears while on a trip to Istanbul, Turkey. Some believe that he defected to the United States.

Iran’s Nuclear Sphinx
 
Meir Javedanfar is an Iranian-Israeli political analyst living in Tel Aviv. He’s the author of The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran.

“Ali Reza Asgari provided important information about Iran’s nuclear program, especially about Iran’s cooperation with Syria,” Javedanfar said.

According to a former German Defense Ministry official, Asgari revealed details about Iran’s financing of a covert nuclear arms program at the al-Kibar facility in Syria. The intel was passed on to the Israelis.

On the morning of September 6, 2007, seven months after Asgari’s defection, Israeli F-15 fighter bombers dropped 22 rockets on the al-Kibar complex.

“This is another example of Israel trying to undercut each and every one of Iran’s levers that it holds through militant proxies like Hamas, like Hezbollah, as well as within Iran itself,” Bhalla said.

Then in June 2009, Shahram Amiri, another scientist working for Iran’s nuclear agency went missing while on a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia. Iran accuses the Saudis of kidnapping and turning him over to the United States.

It was shortly after Amiri’s disappearance that the U.S. became aware of a secret nuclear facility near the Iranian city of Qom.

Israel’s Shadow War
 
Alex Vatakan is an Iranian specialist working for Jane’s Intelligence.

“Could it be a coincidence? Maybe, maybe not,” Vatakan said. “But the fact is that these defections are a huge value to the Western intelligence community.”
 
It’s all part of what analysts say is Israel’s attempt to decapitate Iran’s nuclear program, overtly and covertly.

“And that really shouldn’t surprise anyone,” Bhalla said. “Israel doesn’t have a whole lot of good options in trying to undermine the Iranian nuclear program. Trying to get military strike on its own is extremely difficult for Israel.”

“So for the moment Israel engages in a shadow war against the Iranian rulers and their militant proxies across the Middle East.”

“It’s about the assassination of people working for the Iranian government in the Palestinian Authority, it’s about the assassination of Hezbollah people with links to Iran,” Javedanfar said. “It’s about the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists.”

Psychological Warfare

And the psychological warfare continues. On Tuesday morning, January 12, 2010, Masoud Ali Mohammadi, a nuclear physics professor, was on his way to work when a motorcycle parked outside his home in Tehran exploded killing him instantly.

Eight days later on January 20, some 760 miles away from Tehran, a 27-member plus hit team walks into this luxury hotel in Dubai and assassinates 49-year-old Mahmoud al-Mahbouh. Mr.al-Mahbouh was a senior Hamas leader allegedly involved in smuggling Iranian weapons into the Gaza Strip. 

Both incidents have been blamed on the Israeli secret service.

“What we know for sure is that there’s a psychological war being waged against the Iranian nuclear program where the death of a scientist, even if it were of natural causes, is made into something mysterious in order to create fear among Iran’s nuclear scientists,” Javedanfar said.

High Level Defections

And the current political turmoil in Iran is only adding to fears in Tehran of additional high-level defections.

“We are seeing people from different paths of life in Iran either leaving the country or staying within the country but leaving the state machinery in opposition to the policies being pursued by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other hardline figures in that country,” Vatakan said.
 
Those policies are forcing the United States and other countries to consider tough new sanctions against Iran. The question now is whether covert or overt actions can stop the Iranians from going nuclear.

Terrorist shooting on road recently opened to Palestinians

(IsraelNN.com) IDF soldier Raviv Roth was unpleasantly surprised recently when he was asked not to enter an Arab-owned Haifa restaurant because he was in uniform. Roth said a waitress at Azad restaurant told him, “We don’t serve soldiers here.”

A spokesman for the restaurant said that Roth was not expelled, but rather was asked to return in civilian clothing. “We simply don’t want to have people come in wearing any kind of uniform,” he said.

Azad worker Fida Qiwan accused Roth of being unreasonable. “We asked him to leave politely. He didn’t take it very well,” she told the Hebrew-language daily Maariv. “But last week a young woman came here in uniform and we told her to leave. She went home, changed her clothes, and came back. Why make a fuss? This is a place that just wants to make money and give people a place to relax and enjoy themselves.”

Customers in uniform make other patrons “uneasy,” Qiwan said.

Following the incident, Facebook users started a group calling to boycott Azad over its policy of refusing service to customers in uniform. Thousands of people have joined the group.

Haifa city officials who looked into the incident found that Azad restaurant had been operating without a permit. The restaurant was issued a closure order, which will go into effect in April. The closure order has no connection to Roth’s complaint.

(IsraelNN.com) Two missile ships belonging to the Israeli Navy passed through the Suez Canal sometime during the last few weeks, according to reports on several internet sites. In the past, the passage of Israeli warships southward through the canal, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea, has been interpreted as preparation for a possible attack against Iran.

The IDF spokesman said in response to IsraelNationalNews’s inquiry regarding the reports that the IDF does not usually comment on military movements.

Two Israeli warships passed through the Suez Canal on July 14 last year in what was seen as an unusual show of cooperation between Egypt and Israel. The Hanit and the Eilat, both Sa’ar-5 class Navy torpedo boats, traveled from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, allegedly to beef up Israel’s military presence there.

One week earlier, an Israel Navy Dolphin-class submarine also traveled through the Suez Canal from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea and back, escorted by Egyptian navy vessels.  It was the first such drill for the German-made secret vessel, defense sources said.

Israeli navy vessels usually travel around the Horn of Africa in order to reach the Red Sea. The voyages in July were seen as a message from Israel and Egypt to Iran, which continues its nuclear program and threats against Israel in spite of United Nations sanctions.

Palestinian Arab terrorists fired several rounds from their automatic rifles at an Israeli army post on Highway 443 north of Jerusalem on Wednesday. There were no injuries in the attack.

Israeli soldiers combed the area, but the attackers were able to successfully flee to nearby Palestinian-controlled areas.

Highway 443 was only recently opened to Palestinian traffic, against the firm protests of Jews living in the area and Jerusalem residents who use the highway on a daily basis to reach their jobs in Tel Aviv.

In December Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that it could no longer keep the road closed to Palestinian Arabs for fear of appearing racist. The road was originally opened to all traffic, but was closed to Palestinians in 2000 following a series of shooting attacks against Israeli motorists

The international community demonstrated this week that it is not only the construction of Jewish homes in Jerusalem that it opposes, but rather any sovereign action at all by Israel in the city, including projects to benefit the capital’s Arab residents.

Many Arab residents of Jerusalem complain that they are neglected by the municipality when it comes to neighborhood upkeep and investment. So Mayor Nir Barkat this week had planned to officially announce a new project for the Silwan neighborhood on the southern edge of the Old City.

Silwan, known to Jews as the City of David, is an impoverished, mostly Arab neighborhood. In order to reclaim the area’s historic glory, Barkat had wanted to tear down one of its poorer neighborhoods and construct a new park with luxury apartment buildings surrounding it. The current residents of the area were to be temporarily housed elsewhere and moved back into the new apartments upon their completion.

But the Palestinian Authority took the plan as an opportunity to attack Israel, completely ignoring the fact that its primary aim was to benefit the local Arab residents.

“There is no way the Palestinians can accept the demolishing of houses in Jerusalem and the continuation of building settlements for the Jewish settlers,” Palestinian cabinet minister Mohammed Ishtayeh told reporters on Tuesday.

In typical fashion, the UN took the side of the Palestinians, and demanded that Israel halt Barkat’s “concerning” project.

“We’re trying to reduce tensions at the current time, not exacerbate them. Whatever the intentions behind such a project, Israel needs to understand that demolishing Palestinian homes in east Jerusalem demolishes confidence among Palestinians and frankly, also internationally,” read a statement released by the UN Special Coordinator’s Office for the Mideast Peace Process.

The pressure resulted in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu phoning Barkat on Tuesday to request that he postpone the official launch of the project. The call came just hours before the mayor had scheduled to hold a press conference to announce the project.

The Obama Administration expressed relief later in the day that Barkat had halted what it, too, for some reason viewed as a dangerous initiative.

Barkat told reporters that he is confident the Arab residents of Silwan will all sign on the project, giving him the backing he needs to finally rehabilitate this history-rich section of Jerusalem.