US Generals Flood Israel for Exercise Against Specific Threats

An unprecedented number of American generals, along with 1,400 U.S. army soldiers, are participating with top IDF brass in the high-level Juniper Cobra military exercise that one U.S. Navy commander said is aimed at “specific threats.” Public affairs officials interrupted the naval commander in order to divert the conversation from the scenario of Israel attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities and defending itself from a counter-attack.

Source

US Senators Act to Force Recognition of Jerusalem as Capital

Seven United States senators have sponsored a bill that would abolish the “security” waiver that American presidents have used to prevent implementing a 1995 law declaring that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.

Kansas Republican Senator Sam Brownback, a long-time supporter of Israel, introduced the bill and said, “It is long overdue for America to recognize the sovereign right of Israel to choose Jerusalem as its capital city.”

The proposed Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act law, number S. 2737, is “a bill to relocate to Jerusalem the United States Embassy in Israel” and has six co-sponsors–five Republicans, from Kentucky, Texas, Arizona, and Louisiana and Independent Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut.

It would remove the current waiver, which gives the president authority to delay recognition of Jerusalem as the capital on the premise that doing so would endanger the security of the United States. Previous presidents, including George W. Bush, vowed during their election campaigns they would recognize Jerusalem as the Jewish State’s capital but they have failed out to carry out their election promise.

The senators introduced the bill following last week’s visit to the United States by Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, who said, “I believe moving the American embassy to Jerusalem will the first step towards other embassies moving to the capital, as in every other country in the world.”

Israelis Prepare for War with Iran

The postcard from the Home Front Command that recently arrived in my mailbox looks like an ad from the Ministry of Tourism. A map of Israel is divided by color into six regions, each symbolized by an upbeat drawing: a smiling camel in the Negev desert, a skier in the Golan Heights.

In fact, each region signifies the amount of time residents will have to seek shelter from an impending missile attack. If you live along the Gaza border, you have 15 seconds after the siren sounds. Jerusalemites get a full three minutes. But as the regions move farther north, the time drops again, until finally, along the Lebanese and Syrian borders, the color red designates “immediate entry into a shelter.” In other words, if you’re not already inside a shelter don’t bother looking for one.

The invisible but all-pervasive presence on that cheerful map of existential dread is Iran. If Israel were to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, Tehran’s two terrorist allies on our borders—Hezbollah and Hamas—would almost certainly renew attacks against the Israeli home front. And Tel Aviv would be hit by Iranian long-range missiles.

via Israelis Prepare for War with Iran.

If Israel Strikes Iran, U.S. Will Likely Join

The United States would find it difficult not to join an Israeli air strike in the event that Jerusalem decides to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, a former top-ranking U.S. Air Force officer told participants at a conference this weekend organized by a Washington think tank.

Charles F. Wald, former deputy commander of United States European Command, said a military strike on Iran could set back the Islamic Republic’s alleged nuclear weapons program by several years, but cautioned, “I don’t think Israel can do it alone.”

The former commander’s remarks were made at an annual gathering of financial backers of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who were joined by diplomats, journalists and analysts.

“They have a fantastic military, but not big enough for weeks or months of attacks – hundreds of sorties per day,” he said.

via Read Full Article.

Apocalyptic Storm Forming in the Middle East

Joel Rosenberg writes, events are moving so quickly in the epicenter it can be difficult to keep track of, much less understand the big picture. So here it is in a sentence: An apocalyptic storm is forming over the Middle East.

Consider the data points:

1. Iran has just been caught secretly building a 2nd uranium enrichment facility on a military base in the religious capital of Iran, a city known as Qom;

2. A growing number of Western military analysts say the design of this new facility — and its secrecy, and location — clearly indicates it was being built by Iran for the purpose of creating nuclear weapons;

3. Iran has thus been caught in its third lie since 2002 with regards to building secret nuclear development facilities in Natanz, Arak, and now Qom;

4. Ahmadinejad refused four times during his NBC News interview last week to rule out the building of nuclear weapons;

5. A.Q. Khan — the father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons development program – has just admitted selling advanced nuclear weapons blueprints years ago to Iran for millions of dollars;

6. The latest IAEA report indicates Iran has enough low-enriched uranium (LEU) to produce enough high-enriched uranium (HEU) by 2010 to produce two nuclear weapons;

7. Iran has just spent the weekend testing “its most advanced missiles” capable of reaching Israel;

8. Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad began his speech to the U.N. by praying for Allah to hasten the coming of the Islamic Messiah, which according to his theology requires the destruction of Judeo-Christian civilization as we know it;

9. Ahmadinejad spoke more openly about his End of the World theology during his U.N. speech than ever before;

10. Ahmadinejad was asked for the first time by an American reporter to describe his relationship with the “Twelfth Imam” and admitted on camera that he is communicating with this mystical Shia messiah.

Read More

Netanyahu Asks U.N. ‘Have You No Shame’

A very moving speech by Benyamin Netanyahu  – Earlier this afternoon, Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu gave a stirring speech in which he called the United Nations to task for legitimizing the Holocaust-denying Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and for sanctioning a report charging Israelis with war crimes for defending themselves against terrorism from Gaza.

Early in the speech, he held up a copy of the meeting minutes of the 1942 conference in Wannsee in which Germans made plans to exterminate the Jews, and asked, “Is this protocol a lie?” Then he held up the original construction plans from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, which he received on a recent trip to Germany, and asked, “Are these plans of the camp where one million Jews were murdered a lie too?”

Netanyahu commended those who walked out on or boycotted the Ahmadinejad speech to the chamber yesterday, then continued: “But for those who stayed – I say on behalf of the Jewish people, my people and decent people everywhere – have you no shame? No decency? What a disgrace, what a mockery of the charter of the UN.”

Read Full Article

Watch Video

Obama Goes After Israel In UN Speech

In declaring that it is time for Middle East peace “without preconditions,” President Obama used his speech to the U.N. General Assembly Wednesday to fire a warning at Israel that “America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.”Obama’s stark declaration, which drew applause, was coupled with a call for Palestinians to end their “incitement of Israel.

“But it was the use of the U.N. forum to carry the settlement message to Israel that drew the most enthusiastic response on the floor — and incredulous reaction outside its walls.Obama just put Israel “on the chopping block,” said former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton.

Source

Ex-Security Advisor: Shoot Down Israel Planes To Stop Iran Attack

The national security adviser for former President Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, gave an interview to The Daily Beast in which he suggested President Obama should make it clear to Israel that if they attempt to attack Iran’s nuclear weapons sites the U.S. Air Force will stop them.

Brzezinski, who served in the Carter administration from 1977 to 1981, is currently a professor of American foreign policy at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Maryland.

“We are not exactly impotent little babies,” Brzezinski said. “They have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch? … We have to be serious about denying them that right. That means a denial where you aren’t just saying it. If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not.

Source – Read Full Article


Additional Source

From ABC News

Daily Beast Article

Palestinians: State Within 2 Years With Obama’s Support

Following meeting with Mitchell in Ramallah, senior Palestinian officials say US committed to peace deal within two years. According to them, former President Bill Clinton’s plan again put on table

US special envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu twice on Wednesday. Senior Palestinian officials who met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas after his meeting with the American statesman Tuesday told Ynet that the US commitment to reach a peace deal within two years was clarified during the meeting.

The Palestinians estimate the Americans are adopting de facto the plan presented by Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayya

Read Full Article

Obama Is Pushing Israel Toward War

Events are fast pushing Israel toward a pre-emptive military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, probably by next spring. That strike could well fail. Or it could succeed at the price of oil at $300 a barrel, a Middle East war, and American servicemen caught in between. So why is the Obama administration doing everything it can to speed the war process along?

At July’s G-8 summit in Italy, Iran was given a September deadline to start negotiations over its nuclear programs. Last week, Iran gave its answer: No. Instead, what Tehran offered was a five-page document that was the diplomatic equivalent of a giant kiss-off. It begins by lamenting the “ungodly ways of thinking prevailing in global relations” and proceeds to offer comprehensive talks on a variety of subjects: democracy, human rights, disarmament, terrorism, “respect for the rights of nations,” and other areas where Iran is a paragon.

Conspicuously absent from the document is any mention of Iran’s nuclear program, now at the so-called breakout point, which both Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his boss Ali Khamenei insist is not up for discussion.What’s an American president to do in the face of this nonstarter of a document? What else, but pretend it isn’t a nonstarter. Talks begin Oct. 1.

via Bret Stephens: Obama Is Pushing Israel Toward War – WSJ.com.

Suddenly, Netanyahu Is Popular and Obama Is Not

Later this month, between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, U.S. President Barack Obama will take the podium at the United Nations General Assembly and, flanked by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, declare the resumption of the Middle East peace process.

He will set an ambitious goal: to achieve, within two years, a “comprehensive regional peace” that will end the Israeli-Arab conflict and replace it with new and friendly relations between the states and peoples of the region. In contrast to his immediate predecessor, George W. Bush, who instructed the parties to talk and asked only that they report to him on the results, Obama intends to be involved: His emissaries will sit in the conference room and put forward compromise proposals and solutions.

Obama will have to work hard to persuade people that with him it will be different, that peace is possible, that a Palestinian state will be established, that the Syrians will return to the Golan Heights and Israel will dwell in the region in safety – and all of this by September 2011.

Advertisement

After another decade of wars and disappointments, it’s tough to sell the “New Middle East” in a new wrapping to cynical populations that have long since lost all belief in impassioned speeches promising peace and change. But Obama’s declaration will have immediate strategic importance. By presenting a two-year timetable for the peace agreements, the president will make it clear that dealing with Iran is more urgent than establishing an independent Palestine alongside Israel.

That will be a major diplomatic achievement for Netanyahu. In his visit to the White House in May, the prime minister’s main aim was to persuade Obama of “Iran first and the Palestinians afterward.” It was convenient at the time for Obama to present a disagreement with Netanyahu in order to strengthen U.S. credibility in the Arab world. One hundred days later, it turns out that on the crucial issue – setting the foreign affairs agenda – Netanyahu’s view prevailed.

Read Article

Poll: 4% of Jewish Israelis Think Obama Is pro-Israel

The number of Israelis who see US President Barack Obama’s policies as pro-Israel has fallen to four percent, according to a Smith Research poll taken this week on behalf of The Jerusalem Post.

Fifty-one percent of Jewish Israelis consider Obama’s administration more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israel, according to the survey, while 35% consider it neutral and 10% declined to express an opinion. The poll of 500 people representing a statistical model of the Jewish Israeli population had a margin of error of 4.5%.

A much-cited Post poll published on June 19 that put the first figure at 6% had been cited by top officials in both the White House and the Prime Minister’s Office as the catalyst for recent American efforts to improve the American-Israeli relationship. But the new poll proves that those efforts have not improved Obama’s reputation among Israelis.

Source

Next Page »