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Kirk to Kerry: No Award for Anti-Semite

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Photo Credit: APSen. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) called on Secretary of State John Kerry to rescind Egyptian activist Samira Ibrahim’s nomination for a women’s courage award following a Weekly Standard report that Ibrahim had praised terrorist attacks against Americans and Israelis on Twitter.

“If the Weekly Standard report is accurate, I urge you to immediately rescind the nomination of Samira Ibrahim and instead grant the award to a more deserving candidate, such as Nasrin Sotoudeh from Iran,” Kirk wrote in a letter to Kerry Thursday.

The State Department said Thursday it would “defer” presenting the award to Ibrahim this year so that it could “look further into” her statements.

Ibrahim has made anti-American and anti-Semitic comments on Twitter on numerous occasions, according to the Weekly Standard.

“Today is the anniversary of 9/11. May every year come with America burning,” she wrote last September. Ibrahim reportedly tweeted, “An explosion on a bus carrying Israelis in Burgas airport in Bulgaria on the Black Sea. Today is a very sweet day with a lot of very sweet news,” after five Israeli tourists were killed in a terrorist attack in Bulgaria.

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Iran Orders Terrorists: Prepare For War

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Photo Credit: WNDIran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has ordered all of the Islamic regime’s armed forces to prepare for war, WND learned Tuesday.

According to a source in the Revolutionary Guards intelligence unit, the regime believes Israel is on the verge of an attack, which could then draw America into the conflict.

Hundreds of ballistic missiles are ready to be launched against Israel and U.S. military bases in the region, the source said, and all terror groups that have long been positioned in Europe and America are ready to act should war break out.

While the regime has called last week’s negotiations held in Kazakhstan “a turning point” between Iran and the 5-plus-1 countries – the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany – it is stalling for time to complete its nuclear weapons development, at which point it believes Israel and the West will have no choice but to accept a nuclear-armed Iran, the source said. However, regime officials do not believe Israel will wait it out and hence the preparations for war, he added.

WND reported exclusively on Feb. 28 about a warning by the regime’s armed forces deputy chief of staff, Brig. Gen. Masoud Jazayeri, that al-Qaida operatives will soon attack America and Europe, even as a second terror team sent by the Islamic regime is about to enter the U.S.

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Hamas Steps Up Threats On Obama’s Israel Trip

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Photo Credit: WNDDespite there being no information President Obama plans to ascend the Temple Mount on his upcoming trip to Israel, Hamas last night stepped up its threats regarding Palestinian rumors the U.S. president may visit the sacred site.

“Visiting of Obama with Israeli soldiers entering the Al Aqsa Mosque will actually touch the deep and the tender part of the Palestinian, Arabic and Islamic countries all over the world,” Mahmoud al-Zahar, Hamas’s senior leader in the Gaza Strip, stated.

Zahar apparently was alluding to previous Palestinian and Arab rioting instigated after then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount in 2000.

Zahar continued: “If he is looking to have this visit it means he is accepting Israel as a legitimate occupation, which is undermining his morality and his credibility. Jerusalem up to this moment and all of the Palestinian land is under occupation.” The Hamas leader was speaking Sunday night on WABC Radio’s “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.”

Zahar said his group doesn’t have “any hope of any results from his visit to the region.” Asked if his expects Obama to open dialogue with Hamas during the president’s second term, Zahar replied, “Up to this moment there is no indication about this.

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‘Israel Lobby’ Author Addresses State Department

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Photo Credit: APA controversial author and longtime critic of the U.S.-Israel alliance lectured at the State Department Friday on the eve of the AIPAC policy conference, Washington’s largest annual pro-Israel gathering.

Stephen Walt, coauthor of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy and professor of international affairs at Harvard University, was the featured speaker at the Secretary’s Open Forum on Friday afternoon. His topic: “Top reasons American foreign policy fails,” according to a copy of the event flyer posted in the hallways of Foggy Bottom.

It is unclear how high the U.S.-Israel relationship ranked on Walt’s list.

One State Department insider provided the announcement flyer to the Free Beacon and expressed concern that the Department would host such a divisive figure.

Walt’s speech, which took place as Secretary of State John Kerry traveled overseas on his first diplomatic tour, came days after the Senate confirmed Chuck Hagel as secretary of Defense on a sharply divided vote of 58-41. Walt emerged as a strong supporter of Hagel’s nomination, defending the former Nebraska GOP senator’s remarks that the “Jewish lobby” “intimidates” elected officials on Capitol Hill.

The Washington Free Beacon reported on a contemporaneous account, written by a Hagel supporter, of a 2007 speech the then-senator delivered at Rutgers University in which he is alleged to have said that the State Department was an adjunct of the Israeli foreign minister’s office. Hagel said he did not recall making that statement in a letter to Senators Lindsey Graham (R., SC) and Kelly Ayotte (R., NH) and disavowed its content.

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Israel: Iran Closer Than Ever To Nuclear Bomb

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Photo Credit: France24Iran is “closer than ever” to the ability to build a nuclear bomb, Israel said on Thursday, as a new UN report said Tehran has begun installing next-generation equipment at one of its main nuclear plants.

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s report said Iran started installing new and advanced centrifuges at Natanz, which would enable it to speed up the enrichment of uranium.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the report was “severe,” and “proves Iran is continuing to rapidly advance to the red line that the prime minister drew at his speech in the United Nations.”

“Iran is closer than ever today to obtaining enriched material for a nuclear bomb,” the statement read.

In a September address to the UN General Assembly, Netanyahu called for a “clear red line” to stop Iran getting a nuclear bomb.

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Graham Asks Hagel If He Said Israel Risks Becoming Apartheid State

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Photo Credit: APSen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) sent a letter to secretary of defense nominee Chuck Hagel Wednesday asking whether he made disparaging comments about Israel during a speech at Rutgers law school on April 9, 2010.

The Washington Free Beacon on Tuesday reported on a contemporaneous account of the 2010 speech written by former Rutgers law student Kenneth Wagner, who attended the event.

“I want to call your attention to and request a response to a story in the Washington Free Beacon on February 19th, which includes a contemporaneous account from an attendee at your 2010 Rutgers University lecture,” Graham wrote in the letter. “Senator Hagel, did you say this? Have you said anything similar? Does this contemporaneous email reflect your views?”

According to Wagner’s notes, which he emailed to a contact at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) during the speech, Hagel said Israel was at risk of becoming an apartheid state, that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was radical, that the Jewish state has violated UN resolutions and that Hamas should be included in any Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiation.

Hagel reportedly made the comments during the post-speech question-and-answer session. A spokesperson for Hagel did not respond to a request for comment as of press time.

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Israel On Alert: Israel Appears To Be Readying For Conflict With Lebanon

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Photo Credit: APSenior Israeli officials have indicated that the Jewish state is gearing up for a major “war with Lebanon,” according to sources close to the Israeli government.

The Israeli military has reportedly deployed missile defense systems to the northern part of the country, which sits near Lebanon, and has ordered all civilian aircraft to evacuate Haifa airport, the Jewish state’s northernmost air hub.

Senior Israeli officials have warned of an impending conflict in closed-door meetings in Washington, D.C., sources said.

The “world needs to be prepared for the next war with Lebanon,” a senior military adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently said during a private meeting with representatives of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a D.C. think-tank.

“All of Lebanon is now South Lebanon,” the official reportedly said, referring to Israel’s ongoing attempts to prevent the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah from replenishing its weapons cache.

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Airstrike Embroils Israel in Syrian Conflict

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Photo Credit: muffinnJERUSALEM — With the attack in Syria, Israel took its first overt military step into the “Arab Spring” unrest that has destabilized its neighbors and left Israelis feeling more vulnerable than they have in decades.

Israel’s goal was apparently to deny sophisticated weapons to Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, and may not have been intended to stir the pot in Syria. But whether by intent or circumstance, Israel has inserted itself into a civil war that thus far had very little to do with it — and which other Western nations, including the U.S., have kept at arm’s length out of concern that military engagement could only make things worse.

“Until now, Israel avoided becoming involved in this quagmire in Syria,” said Moshe Maoz, a former government security advisor and a Syria expert at Hebrew University. “Now this may be the first sign that Israel has decided to escalate actions to cause [President Bashar] Assad’s downfall.”

Other analysts disagreed that Israel was intending to undermine Assad, especially since any successor to the Syrian leader could prove to be even more hostile. Still, the Syria strike may signal a new willingness by Israel to intervene in the region’s problems.

Israel has not confirmed or denied the reported attack, which took place early Wednesday. News accounts based on anonymous sources from the United States and elsewhere suggested that Israeli fighters struck a military convoy with weapons destined for Hezbollah, which is closely allied with Damascus. The arms were said to include Russian SA-17 antiaircraft missiles, which could significantly boost Hezbollah’s defensive capabilities.

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‘Panicked’ Iran Makes Power Move After Nuke-site Loss

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Two days after WND’s exclusive report on the devastating explosions at Iran’s Fordow nuclear site, Tehran informed the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog it was going to install thousands of modern centrifuges at another of its nuclear facilities in an apparent move to restore its bargaining position.

In a Jan. 23 letter to the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA, Iran said it plans to install thousands of its upgraded centrifuges at the Natanz facility. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Moscow today that Iran has every legal right under its obligations to the IAEA to enrich uranium, even with the more modern centrifuges.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Moscow today that Iran has every legal right under its obligations to the IAEA to enrich uranium, even with the more modern centrifuges.

Iranian media viewed Lavrov’s remarks as supportive of the decision. But the Russian minister also urged the Islamic regime to “freeze enrichment operations” during the negotiations with the 5-plus-1 countries, the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany.

The White House this afternoon called Iran’s decision “provocative.”

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Ed Koch on Chuck Hagel Nomination: Obama’s Reneging on His Conveyed Support for Israel Has Come Earlier Than I Thought

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In an interview with The Algemeiner, former Mayor of New York, Ed Koch, a lifelong Democrat who supported President Obama’s recent re-election, expressed disappointment with the President’s decision to nominate former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense.

“Frankly, I thought that there would come a time when he would renege on what he conveyed on his support of Israel,” said Koch, adding, “it comes a little earlier than I thought it would.”

“It’s very disappointing, I believe he will ultimately regret it,” Koch said, “and it undoubtedly will reduce support for him in the Jewish community, but I don’t think he (the President) worries about that now that the election is over.”

The former mayor who is beloved among many in New York’s Jewish community, said that he believes the appointment will embolden Islamists and will be damaging to the U.S.-Israel relationship.

“It’s not good,” he said, “but fortunately, Congress, overwhelmingly both Democratic and Republican supports the Jewish state, so I’m sure they will defend it against the defense department when it ruptures the current good relationship which exists.”

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