How Netanyahu’s Speech Played in Israel and among Arabs

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By JTA. In America, pundits and politicians are wondering what Netanyahu’s speech will mean for the next few months, years, even decades of US-Israel and US-Iranian relations.

In Israel, everyone is focused on the next two weeks.

Since the speech was announced in January, Netanyahu’s critics have accused him of using the US Capitol stage to boost his polls ahead of Israel’s March 17 election. Supporters say his only intention is to defend his country from a looming threat . . .

“There’s no doubt that the pictures of Congress giving a standing ovation can have a positive influence on the voters,” said Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. “Israelis understand that the criticism of him was political. Israelis understand that Israel-US relations are strong.”

In Israel’s newspapers, responses to the speech, as always, fell along ideological lines. At the pro-Netanyahu daily Israel Hayom, Boaz Bismuth, under the headline “The speech of a historic moment,” wrote that Netanyahu succeeded in transcending politics, as “there are moments in which a leader does what he does not for votes, but for the children … There are moments in history that a leader makes happen.” (Read more about how the speech played in Israel HERE)

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Arab Commentators Back Netanyahu On Speech to Congress

By Yochanan Visser. On the eve of the Purim festival, Israel watched Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu deliver a historical speech to the U.S. Congress on Iran. The speech was broadcasted on all Israeli TV Channels, albeit with a five-minute delay to make sure there was no ‘electioneering’ in what Netanyahu told Congress. Israel will hold elections in another two weeks.

In his speech, Netanyahu evoked the upcoming Purim festival, when the book of Ester is read and Jews commemorate the first attempt to commit genocide on the Jewish people by the Persian King Ahasueres (Ahasveros), who acted on the advice of his personal advisor Haman. Netanyahu compared this attempt to annihilate the Jewish people to the vows to destroy the Jewish state made by contemporary Iranian leaders.


Netanyahu said that “even if Israel has to stand alone – Israel will stand.”

Right after Netanyahu’s speech, commentators on Israeli TV highlighted the Arab and Iranian response to the event.

Tzvi Yechezkieli, the Arab affairs expert of Channel 10, said that many Arab commentators supported the content of Netanyahu’s speech. He cited a commentator on Al-Arabiya TV, who had said that he could have written a large part of the speech.

Yechezkieli said that the Arab countries are convinced that Obama will not safeguard their security interests in the current negotiations with Iran and will not protect them against Iranian aggression. (Read more from this story HERE)

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US Ambassador Slashed in South Korea

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The U.S. ambassador to South Korea was slashed by a man screaming about Korean unification Thursday morning in Seoul, and his assailant was immediately detained.

Mark W. Lippert was rushed to a nearby hospital with cuts to his face and wrist, the South Korean news agency Yonhap reported, and appeared to be splattered with blood but was on his feet, TV images show. He was on his way to attend a morning lecture in central Seoul when the attack took place shortly before 8 a.m . . .

YTN TV reported that the suspect — identified by police as 55-year-old Kim Ki-jong — screamed during the attack, “South and North Korea should be reunified.”

Yonhap TV showed men in suits and ties piled on top of the attacker, who was dressed in a modern version of the traditional Korean hanbok, and Lippert later being rushed to a police car with a handkerchief pressed to his cheek. The suspect also shouted anti-war slogans after he was detained, police said.

It was not immediately clear what weapon was used in the attack. An earlier report said it was a razor, but a witness told YTN that a knife was used. Yonhap added that it was the first time a U.S. ambassador has been assaulted in South Korea. (Read more from “US Ambassador Slashed in South Korea” HERE)

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Iran Foreign Minister: We Believe We Are ‘Very Close’ to Nuke Deal [+video]

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Iran has no intention of building a nuclear weapon, and the sooner the world recognizes that, the sooner there will be a deal aimed at curbing its nuclear capabilities in exchange for the lifting of crippling economic sanctions, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told NBC News.

“Iran is not about building nuclear weapons,” Zarif said in an exclusive interview with Ann Curry Wednesday. “We don’t want to build nuclear weapons, we don’t believe nuclear weapons bring security to anybody, certainly not to us.”

Zarif said his country’s nuclear ambitions were solely in the pursuit of “scientific advancement” and boosting national pride. “Once we reach that understanding, once this hysteria is out, once this fear mongering is out, then we can have a deal, and a deal that is not going to hurt anybody,” he said.

He added: “We are prepared to work round the clock in order to reach an agreement. We believe that we are very close, very close and we could be very far.” He said “there are details that need to be worked out.”

“We are very close if the political decision can be made to get to yes, as President Obama said,” he said. (Read more about what the Iran foreign minister said HERE)

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British Man Says ISIS Fed a Mother Meat from Her Kidnapped Son’s Body

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By Peter Van Buren. A British guy who went to Iraq to fight ISIS says they are bad people. Specifically, he claims ISIS fed a murdered kidnap victim to his own mother after she went to their headquarters and demanded to see him.

Yasir Abdulla, a security guard from Yorkshire decided to go to Iraq and fight against ISIS after hearing they came within six miles of taking control of his home village in Kurdistan, which he left in 2000 . . .

He then joined hundreds of other Kurdish and Peshmerga forces who are trying to stop the spread of ISIS by patrolling a ten-mile frontline in Iraq. His dedication then extended to returning to the UK, where he told a local newspaper . . . how an elderly Kurdish woman, whose son was captured by ISIS and taken to Mosul, went to meet the jihadis to try and secure his release and was then fed his body.

The man said that “She was determined to find her son and went to ISIS headquarters and asked to see him. The ISIS men told her to sit down because she had travelled a long way and said she should have some food before they took her to meet her son. They brought her cups of tea and fed her a meal of cooked meat, rice and soup. She thought they were kind.” (Read more about the man saying ISIS fed his mother a victim HERE, and as originally published in the Daily Mail HERE)

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More than a Dozen ISIS Operatives in Libya, but No US Authority to Strike

By Catherine Herridge. More than a dozen Islamic State fighters from Iraq and Syria — some with direct ties to the group’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi — are now in Libya working on behalf of the terror group, according to U.S. and European sources.

And the U.S. has no authority to take them out.

The fighters are in addition to dozens of ISIS sympathizers in the country. The situation is raising fresh security concerns, as the U.S. and its allies struggle to keep tabs on the many arms of the ever-expanding ISIS network.


One source, who is not authorized to speak on the record given the sensitivity of the data, said they would not be surprised “if the next 9/11 came out of Libya.”

An ISIS presence has been flagged in Benghazi, Derna and Sirte, in addition to training camps providing a steady flow of recruits. But a State Department spokeswoman insisted U.S. policy is not to blame. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Netanyahu Goes Nuclear Before U.S. Congress

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Photo Credit: APBy Garth Kant. The deal President Obama is about to offer “doesn’t block Iran’s path to the bomb, it paves its path to the bomb,” declared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to one of many thunderous standing ovations Tuesday morning before a joint session of the U.S. Congress.

He delivered a forceful argument lasting 40 minutes [read the full transcript of the speech HERE and see the video below] against the agreement the Obama administration is striking with Iran over its nuclear program, insisting it has two major flaws:

It leaves Iran with a vast nuclear program; and

It would lift all restrictions on Iran in about a decade.
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And, to yet another roaring standing ovation, the Israeli leader thundered, “If Iran wants to be treated like a normal country, let it act like a normal country.”

Netanyahu said any deal must do three things:

Stop Iran’s aggression against neighbors in the Mideast;

Stop Iran’s support of terrorism around the world; and

Stop Iran from “threatening to annihilate my country, Israel, the one and only Jewish state.”

Netanyahu made clear Israel would act alone to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons, if necessary. (Read more from “Netanyahu Goes Nuclear” HERE.)

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Watch full speech here:

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Netanyahu Openly Sides with Obama’s GOP Critics During Speech

By Stephen Collinson. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Tuesday that a proposed agreement between world powers and Iran was “a bad deal” that would not stop Tehran from getting nuclear weapons — but would rather pave its way to getting lots of them and leave the Jewish State in grave peril.

In a dramatic address to the U.S. Congress at what he said was a “fateful” crossroads of history, Netanyahu openly sided with President Barack Obama’s Republican critics and sparked an immediate and furious reaction from the White House, as relations between Washington and Israel spun into their deepest chasm for many years.

“We have been told that no deal is better than a bad deal. Well this is a bad deal. It is a very bad deal. We are better off without it,” Netanyahu said, building a case that Iran was not just bent on developing nuclear weapons but was determined to “gobble” up defenseless countries in a wider play for dominance in the Middle East.

“We are being told that the only alternative to this bad deal is war. That is just not true. The alternative to this bad deal is a much better deal,” Netanyahu said to deafening cheers in the House of Representatives chamber, while issuing a firm warning that Israel would stand alone if necessary to defend the existence of the Jewish people.

The response from the White House was swift and did not even try to disguise anger at Netanyahu, who has been locked in a public tussle with Obama for almost his entire administration and has stepped up his criticism as talks between world powers and Iran on a deal reach a crucial final stage. (Read more about Netanyahu warning Congress about the deal with Iran leading to an Iranian nuclear bomb HERE)

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Read the full transcript of Netanyahu’s speech HERE.

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Global Warming on the Ropes: Antarctic Sea Ice Did The Exact Opposite of What Models Predicted

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Climate models can be good tools for predicting future sea ice levels — unless, of course, they are completely wrong.

In the case of Antarctica, the climate models were dead wrong, according to a new study by Chinese scientists published in the journal Cryosphere. The study found that most climate models predicted Antarctic sea ice coverage would shrink as the world warmed and greenhouse gas levels increased.

The opposite happened. Most climate models analyzed in the study predicted Antarctica would shrink between 1979 and 2005, but instead south pole sea ice levels increased during that time. Going a step further, sea ice levels have only increased since 2006, hitting all-time highs for sea ice coverage in September of last year.

“For the Antarctic, the main problem of the [climate] models is their inability to reproduce the observed slight increase of sea ice extent,” researchers wrote in their study.

“Both satellite-observed Antarctic [sea ice extent] and [satellite measured] Antarctic [sea ice volume] show[s] increasing trends over the period of 1979–2005, but [climate models’] Antarctic [sea ice extent] and [sea ice volume] have decreasing trends,” researchers added. “Only eight models’ [sea ice extent] and eight models’ [sea ice volume] show increasing trends.” (Read more about the Antarctic Sea ice HERE)

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US Senate Unanimously Defies Obama, Welcomes Netanyahu While Middle Eastern News Agencies Report Obama Threatened to Shoot Down Israeli Jets

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By Clyde. The Senate unanimously passed a resolution welcoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak before a joint session of Congress.

No Democrat senators sponsored the resolution but none caved to reported pressure from the White House to vote against it.

“The Senate warmly welcomes the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, on his visit to the United States,” the resolution reads, “which provides a timely opportunity to reinforce the United States-Israel relationship.”

The resolution goes on to vow that the U.S. will “strongly support Israel’s right to defend itself from threats to its very survival.”

The Obama administration has been working to sabotage the address, fearing that it may hurt its relationship with Iran. The White House has caved to Iran’s demands and is expected to allow the Muslim nation to retain the most controversial aspects of its nuclear program. (Read more from “Senate Welcomes Netanyahu” HERE)

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Netanyahu’s Address to Congress Will Be the Most Important Speech of His Life

By William Booth. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s upcoming address to a joint meeting of Congress will probably be the most important speech of his career — and one that has already jeopardized relations between Israel and the United States.

On Tuesday morning, Netanyahu will confront an American president and insist that the future of the State of Israel, and the world, is imperiled by a pending “bad deal” with Iran on its nuclear program.

Also hanging in the balance is Netanyahu’s own political future. Just two weeks after the speech, Netanyahu will either be reelected to a historic fourth term as prime minister or be out of a job.


Netanyahu has spent three terms as Israeli prime minister focused on the dangers posed by Iran. In his first address to Congress in 1996, he warned that an atomic Iran would “presage catastrophic consequences, not only for my country, and not only for the Middle East, but for all mankind.”

His supporters call him prescient; his detractors say Netanyahu has been warning for 20 years that “time is running out” on the Iran threat. His critics say Netanyahu is a broken record, a Cassandra obsessed, willing to deeply damage U.S.-Israeli relations in a futile confrontation with the United States that wins Israel nothing. (Read more from this story HERE)

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News Agencies in Middle East Report that Obama Threatened to Shoot Down Israeli Planes if They Attacked Iran

By Jeffrey Shapiro. President Obama threatened last year, according to Middle Eastern news outlets Sunday, to use the U.S. military to shoot down Israeli fighter jets if they attempted to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities — reports the administration denounced later Sunday as flatly untrue.

Mr. Obama’s threat reportedly deterred Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from dispatching warplanes into Iran after Israel discovered that the U.S. had entered into secret talks with Tehran and that the two countries had signed an agreement, according to Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida.

In a statement to The Washington Times early Sunday evening, a senior administration said “that report is totally false.”

Al-Jarida also reported Sunday that “well placed” sources confirmed an unnamed Israeli minister disclosed the plan to Secretary of State John Kerry, and that Mr. Obama replied by warning that he would foil the plan by shooting down Israeli jets before they could reach their target destinations.

“Netanyahu and his commanders agreed after four nights of deliberations to task the Israeli army’s chief of staff, Benny Gantz, to prepare a qualitative operation against Iran’s nuclear program. In addition, Netanyahu and his ministers decided to do whatever they could do to thwart a possible agreement between Iran and the White House because such an agreement is, allegedly, a threat to Israel’s security,” the report said. (Read more from this story HERE)

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“I’m a Dead Man Walking”: Jihadi John Tells of Paranoia Before Joining ISIS

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The Islamic State killer known as Jihadi John revealed that he knew British security services were closing in on him and that he was a ‘dead man walking’ in astonishing emails to a Mail on Sunday journalist.

His emails were sent before he left Britain to join Islamic State in Syria.

At the time, Mohammed Emwazi, the man now unmasked as the knife-wielding fanatic, was claiming to be an innocent victim of MI5 persecution.

Emwazi, who would go on to orchestrate at least six hostage murders in Syria, said the harassment affected him so badly he was contemplating suicide. ‘I’ll take as many pills as I can so that I will sleep for ever,’ he warned. His emails to Security Editor Robert Verkaik in December 2010 and 2011 offer a remarkable insight into his state of mind at a time when he was already deeply immersed in extremism.

Some verge on the paranoid, with frequent complaints that his every move is being shadowed by intelligence officers. (Read more from “Jihadi John Tells of Paranoia” HERE)

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“Tear to Pieces the Stars and Stripes”: North Korean Leader Tells Army to Prepare for War

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North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has urged his army to prepare for war with the United States and its allies, state media said Saturday, as Pyongyang ramps up the rhetoric ahead of US-South Korea military drills.

Kim’s comments came after South Korea and the United States Friday conducted a joint naval drill involving 10 South Korean warships and a US Aegis destroyer, ahead of the launch of large-scale military exercises that have enraged the North.

“The prevailing situation where a great war for national reunification is at hand requires all the KPA (Korean People’s Army) units to become (elite) Guard Units fully prepared for war politically and ideologically, in military technique and materially”, he was quoted by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) as saying.

North Korea regularly ratchets up hostile rhetoric at times of joint US-South Korea military exercises that spark a sharp surge in tensions on the divided peninsula.

Kim called on the military to train hard in order “to tear to pieces the Stars and Stripes”, in comments made while opening a new hall at the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum in Pyongyang, KCNA said. (Read more about the North Korean leader telling his army to prepare for war HERE)

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ISIS Fighter, Believed Dead, “Comes Back to Life” and Converts to Christianity

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An ISIS jihadist has recently converted to Christianity after being left for dead near the Eastern border of Syria where he was finally rescued by Christian missionaries from the region, reports the Aleppo Herald this morning.

The man, that has miraculously survived multiple gun shot wounds after an altercation between ISIS and Syrian Army forces, was rescued by members of the Saint Dominican Catholic Presbytery of Ayyash hours after the conflict had erupted.

The members of the Christian organization wanted to give the man a proper Christian burial and carried him over 26 kilometers before the man miraculously came back to life as he was believed to have died from his wounds.

As the man came back to his senses, he reported to priest Hermann Groschlin of the visions he had whilst in the afterlife, an event that profoundly changed the 32-year old jihadist and eventually led to his conversion to Christianity days later.

“He told me that he was always taught that to die as a martyr would open him the Gates of Jannah, or Gates of Heaven” recalled the priest. “Yet, as he had started to ascend towards the light of the Heavens, devilish entities, or Jinns he called them, appeared and led him to the fiery pits of Hell. There he had to relive all the pain he had inflicted upon others and every death he had caused throughout his entire life. He even had to relive the decapitations of his victims through their own eyes”, images the jihadist claims will haunt him for the rest of his life, admits the priest. (Read more from “Resurrected ISIS Fighter Converts to Christianity” HERE)