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Israel at a Sea Change: Experiencing Second Zionist Revolution

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Photo Credit: acroll

Photo Credit: acroll

In May, Dershowitz wrote in The Jerusalem Post and The Huffington Post: “I have now joined this distinguished company of people who get booed for advocating territorial compromise in the interest of peace. I was booed and jeered at the Jerusalem Post Conference on April 28, 2013 when I proposed an idea for restarting peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority … These same people cheered loudly when Glick, a right-wing opponent of any territorial compromise, announced that: ‘There are no competing narratives. There is only the truth.’ For her, the only truth lies in history and archeology.”

Briefly, here are four relevant voices today:

Dershowitz told Newsmax this week: “I think a lot of Israelis are today thinking — as many have thought in the past — that they can’t outsource the defense of their own people, that they have to make their own decisions, make their own judgments and take their own actions as they did when they destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981 and various Syrian reactors more recently.”

Glick wrote in a January blog: “Next week we’re going to vote and it is already clear that Israel is in the midst of the Second Zionist Revolution. The first Zionist revolution was a socialist revolution. The second Zionist revolution is Jewish. Israel is coming into its own. Judaism is flourishing, changing, living and breathing here like it never has anywhere since the destruction of the Second Commonwealth. The secular Left has been eclipsed by the Jewish Right. I don’t call it the religious Right because that is too limiting. What’s happening isn’t just about religion, it’s about everything and that is why non-observant hipsters in Tel Aviv are voting for the Jewish Home party. Non-observant and observant Jews are joining forces and the anti-religious are being left behind.”

Ted Cruz at the Conservative Political Action Conference in March, as reported by The Christian Post: “‘I commend everyone here for respecting the biblical admonition to stand with Israel,’” he said, praising their ‘commitment to speak the truth in an era when so many believe they know better than eternal truths. ‘The alliance between the United States and Israel must remain completely and entirely unshakeable.’”

Moshe Feiglin, Knesset member, wrote in his newsletter this week: “I demand, at the first stage, to close the Temple Mount to Moslems during the Sukkot holiday just as the Mount was closed to Jews for the month of Ramadan.”

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Bernie Quigley is a prize-winning magazine writer and has worked more than 30 years as a book and magazine editor, political commentator and book, movie, music and art reviewer. His essays on politics and world affairs have appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Daily News and other newspapers and magazines. He has published poetry in Painted Bride Quarterly and has written dozens of magazine articles. For 20 years he has been an amateur farmer, raising Tunis sheep and organic vegetables. He has written hundreds of columns for “Pundits Blog” in “The Hill” a political journal in Washington, D.C. He lives in the White Mountains with his wife and four children.

NSA Shares Raw Data on Americans with Israeli Spy Agency

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The Obama administration shares with Israeli intelligence the vast data dumps the National Security Agency vacuums up from the Internet without removing private information about Americans, even though Israel is one of the nations that spy most aggressively on the United States, according to leaked documents.

A copy of a top-secret deal inked in 2009 between the NSA and the Israeli Signals-intelligence National Unit (ISNU) was provided by NSA leaker Edward J. Snowden to the Guardian newspaper, which posted it Wednesday.

It reveals that the NSA “routinely” passed to its Israeli counterpart “raw” signals intelligence, referred to as “Sigint,” including the vast swathes of digital data traffic that the agency gathers under secret court authority from U.S. Internet providers.

So sensitive is this data that even before being disseminated to other U.S. agencies, the NSA has to subject it to a court-mandated process called minimization, under which the names of any Americans are removed unless they are essential for foreign intelligence interest.

But the U.S.-Israeli agreement states that the data shared with Israel “includes, but is not limited to, unevaluated and unminimized transcripts, gists, facsimiles, telex, voice and Digital Network Intelligence metadata and content.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Israeli Sources on Obama’s Syria Approach: ‘Not How a Superpower Acts’

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

While leading Israeli officials have publicly struck a tone of muted support for President Obama’s decision to seek congressional authorization for strikes on Syria’s chemical weapons delivery systems, in private, senior Israeli officials and foreign policy analysts are expressing grave disappointment with the conduct of their ally in Washington.

Well-placed Israeli sources told Fox News they “get it” as to why the president felt the need to cloak his planned military strikes in congressional legitimacy. But they regard the way he went about his decision-making in this instance as erratic, unnerving to them, and a bad omen for what the Israelis regard as the sine qua non of their foreign policy: the looming showdown with Iran over its nuclear program.

“The feeling is that something was wrong here, that this was not the way this should have gone down, that this is not the way a superpower should act,” said one former Israeli diplomat who has spent considerable time in the United States and enjoys close ties to the Netanyahu government. “We look at Syria, and we think Iran. … What conclusions should be drawn about how America will act in other circumstances? Here was a clear red line. It was breached a few times. This looks like a clever move; but America’s willingness to ‘walk the walk’ now is very questionable.”

Another senior official, presently in the Israeli government, told Fox News the president was right, in terms of domestic U.S. politics, to “look for cover,” and thereby force American lawmakers who would have criticized him for undertaking unauthorized action to “own it, too.” But this official said the Israelis, from their vantage point, see the Obama administration as detached from the Mideast and the president, in particular, as ill-equipped to shape events there.

Read more from this story HERE.

Leaked Documents Reveal US Sees Israel as a Spying Threat (+video)

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obama-israelThe Obama administration views Israel as one of the top spying threats facing its intelligence services, leaked documents reveal.

A secret budget request obtained by The Washington Post from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden lumps Israel alongside U.S. foes Iran and Cuba as “key targets” for U.S. counterintelligence efforts. The document suggests Israel does not believe U.S. assurances that its interests are aligned with Israel’s on crucial issues such as Iran and peace talks with the Palestinians.

“To further safeguard our classified networks, we continue to strengthen insider threat detection capabilities across the Community,” reads the FY 2013 congressional budget justification for intelligence programs. “In addition, we are investing in target surveillance and offensive CI [counterintelligence] against key targets, such as China, Russia, Iran, Israel, Pakistan and Cuba.”

The White House and the Israeli Embassy did not respond to requests for comment.

The revelations come as no surprise to Georgetown University’s Paul Pillar, who retired as the national intelligence officer for the Near East in 1995 after a 28-year career in U.S. intelligence. Israeli spying, he said, has remained a major threat since U.S. citizen Jonathan Pollard received a life sentence in 1987 in a massive spying case that gravely strained relations between the two countries.

Read more from this story HERE.

Sinai Missiles Fall on Israeli City as Desert Jihadists Wage War on Two Fronts

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Photo Credit: APA missile attack on Israel’s popular Red Sea resort of Eilat Tuesday morning prompted deployment of the military’s vaunted Iron Dome defense – and has raised new fears Egypt’s army can’t contain the violence in the increasingly lawless Sinai Peninsula.

Although no one was killed and one of the three missiles was intercepted, the attack is viewed as a significant escalation in the activity of Islamist terror groups in Sinai, many of whom are affiliated with Al Qaeda. Under the recently deposed Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, security in Sinai deteriorated, allowing groups such as Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis – which claimed responsibility for the Eilat attack – to flourish. They have been targeting the provisional Egyptian government, but now could be taking on Israel, too.

“This was a response to the latest crimes by the Jews, who used a drone to attack and kill four of our fighters in Sinai,” read a statement in Arabic from Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis. “The attack sowed fear among the criminal Jews, who were forced into underground bomb shelters.”

The jihadist group’s claim that an Israeli drone strike was responsible for the death of four of their fighters drew no comment from Israel. Ahmed Mohammad Ali, a spokesman for Egypt’s military, which has been trying to root out terror groups in the vast peninsula, denied that Israeli drones had been used for attacks in the area, which lies at Israel’s southern border and across the Suez Canal from the rest of Egypt. But he noted Egypt’s army has been active in the area.

“Since Saturday night, 25 terrorists have been killed or injured by the Egyptian Army, and ammunition supply depots had been destroyed,” Ali said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Destruction of Israel Guaranteed, Ayatollah Says

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Photo Credit: acrollIran’s supreme leader promises in a newly released audiotape the destruction of Israel and Palestinians’ return to that land.

Fars News Agency, an outlet run by the Revolutionary Guards, last week posted an audiotape of excerpts of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s speeches to Palestinian officials and others with a title “Palestine will surely become free.”

In the audiotape, which is partly in Arabic, Khamenei gives blessings to those who fight against Israel and says, “Peace be upon the children of our nation, peace be upon the brave jihadists in Palestinian and Lebanese resistance. Today the Islamic world and the whole world are witnesses to great revelations that show change in international affairs.”

The ayatollah promises a restructuring of the Middle East: “Palestine will be free, have no doubt in this. … Palestinians will return there and there will be a Palestinian government … and that is based on the truth revealed by God. A new Middle East will be … an Islamic Middle East.”

Khamenei attacks Israel for defending itself: “They attacked Lebanon – a mistake. They attacked Gaza – a mistake. They attacked those (Turkish) ships – a mistake. These mistakes, one after another, show that the murderous Zionist regime of Israel is reaching the final fall and destruction of its own non-existence.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Israel Raises Temperature in Runup to Middle East Peace Talks

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Photo Credit: Reuters In highly contentious moves heralding the renewal of Middle East peace talks this week, Israel on Sunday identified 26 long-term Palestinian prisoners to be released on Tuesday after authorising 1,200 new homes to be built in settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The apparently choreographed steps came three days before the first substantive negotiations for five years, aimed at reaching a historic settlement of the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict by next May. The outcome of intense shuttle diplomacy by US secretary of state John Kerry, the talks will resume amid widespread scepticism on both sides.

The list of names was published late on Sunday night to allow time for last-minute legal challenges from the families of victims. The group is among a total of 104 prisoners whose crimes date back more than 20 years who will be freed in stages over the next nine months. Those convicted of the most serious crimes are expected to be the last to be released.

A statement from the office of Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, said, of the 26 initially released, 14 would be deported or moved to the Gaza Strip and 12 repatriated to the occupied West Bank. All were convicted of murder or being an accessory to murder; one has been in prison for 28 years.

For most Israelis, the prisoner release is a controversial and painful price for the renewal of the peace process. Victims’ relatives and their supporters have protested against the move over recent weeks and told of their anguish and opposition in interviews and articles in the Israel media.

Read more from this story HERE.

Turkey Clears Bird of Spying for Israel

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Photo Credit: Alamy The kestrel was discovered by residents of Altinavya, a village in Elazig province, wearing a metallic ring stamped with the words “24311 Tel Avivunia Israel”. Suspicious that the bird may have been on a spying mission for the Jewish state, villagers turned the bird over to local authorities, according to Turkish media.

So great was the level of concern medical personnel at Elazig’s Firat University initially identified the kestrel as “Israeli Spy” in their registration documents. Intensive medical examinations – including X-rays – determined that the bird was, indeed, just a bird. There were no sign of microchips that might transmit information back to Israel, local media reported. The kestrel was allowed to fly off after authorities determined there was no need to press charges.

Yet the incident shows the degree of paranoia and xenophobia regarding Israel that exists among large segments of Turkish society. It comes as talks between Turkey and Israel over compensation for families of those killed in the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident have stalled.

Read more from this story HERE.

Secret Obama Plan Forfeits Temple Mount to Palestinians

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Photo Credit: WNDBy Aaron Klein. The Obama administration has quietly presented a plan in which the Palestinian Authority and Jordan will receive sovereignty over the Temple Mount while Israel will retain the land below the Western Wall, according to a senior PA negotiator speaking to WND.

The Temple Mount is the holiest site in Judaism.

The proposed plan is part of the basis for U.S.-brokered talks that are set to resume in Washington next week after Secretary of State John Kerry announced that both Israel and PA President Mahmoud Abbas have agreed to open negotiations aimed at creating a Palestinian state.

Israel has not agreed to the U.S. plan over the Temple Mount, with details still open for discussion, stated the PA negotiator.

The negotiator, who is one of the main Palestinian figures leading the Arab side of the talks, further divulged Kerry’s proposed outline for a Palestinian state as presented orally to Israel and the PA. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Uriel Sinai/APIsraeli-Palestinian peace talks’ resumption put in doubt by both sides

By Harriet Sherwood. Moves towards a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks were mired in rumours, rebuttals, criticism and confusion on Sunday in an indication of the political and diplomatic swamp facing key negotiators and their mediator, the US secretary of state, John Kerry.

In a high-profile dismissal of the embryonic process, Israel’s former foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, wrote on Facebook that there was “no solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, at least not in the coming years, and what’s possible and important to do is conflict-management”.

Naftali Bennett, economics minister, insisted construction on Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem would continue, regardless of talks.

The comments by two crucial partners in the Israeli coalition are a sign of deep hostility within the government over the agreement for preliminary talks forged by Kerry on Friday.

Meanwhile, a veteran Palestinian negotiator, Yasser Abed Rabbo, denied that a firm decision had been taken to enter talks, saying further clarification was needed on a framework and the Palestinians were still discussing terms with Kerry. According to a Palestinian source, Kerry had written a letter giving a US assurance that the basis of territorial talks would be the pre-1967 border, but it was not clear whether the letter had been delivered. Read more from this story HERE.

Was Israel’s Latest ‘Air’ Attack on Syria from a Submarine?

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Photo Credit: Weekly StandardAn attack two weeks ago that destroyed an advanced Russian missile shipment delivered to Syria’s Assad regime should also serve as a warning to Iran – and to those complacent Western diplomats who have (dangerously in my view) reconciled themselves to the idea of allowing Iran to go nuclear and then trying to contain it. For it seems that the July 5 attack on an arms depot near the Syrian naval base of Latakia, which has been attributed to Israel, came not from the air (as CNN and the New York Times reported last weekend) but from under the water.

Many Western officials who have apparently concluded that Israel could only destroy Iran’s nuclear program from the air – and that Israel does not have the capability to carry out such long-range air strikes in a decisive way – should take note. In recent years, Israel has greatly advanced its sea-based capabilities, and the geographical range of operations that Israel can mount from the sea, I am reliably told, now spans the entire globe. Israeli submarines are no longer confining themselves to the Mediterranean.

Last Saturday, the United States appeared to confirm that Israel was behind the July 5 attack on 50 Russian Yakhont anti-ship missiles in Latakia. Both the New York Times and CNN quoted unnamed U.S. officials as saying the strike was carried out by Israel from the air. The state-of-the-art Yakhont missiles have a range of 300 kilometers and are considered to be among the best of their kind in the world – for example, they can evade radar by flying just above water surface. They were of significant concern to both the U.S. and Israel because their range and sophistication meant they could neutralize the ability of both nations’ navies to patrol the region, and they could also complicate the ability of the U.S. or other states to enforce a future no-fly zone over Syria should they wish to implement one. Israel was also concerned that Syria would allow the missiles to fall into the hands of its arch enemy, the Iranian-controlled Hezbollah militia.

Read more from this story HERE.