04/13 Links Pt1: Dershowitz: Sanders Must Clarify Where He Stands on Israel; Glick: Obama’s nuclear contrition ~ EoZ

From Ian:

Alan M. Dershowitz: Bernie Sanders Must Clarify Where He Stands on Israel

While the media has focused on Bernie Sanders' egregious overstatement of the specific number of innocent Palestinians killed in Operation Protective Edge, the more revealing aspect of what he told the Daily News is his generalization that Israel indiscriminately leveled hospitals and apartment buildings. Although he did not explicitly say that the Israel Defense Forces deliberately targeted civilians and civilian structures, his canard can certainly be understood that way by those Israel haters who are actively supporting his campaign.
The word "indiscriminate," especially applied to Israeli military actions, has acted as a code word among Israel-bashers for war crimes and even genocide. The reality is that the Israeli military efforts to stop Hamas from indiscriminately killing Israeli citizens with rockets and through terror tunnels has been the opposite of indiscriminate, as Colonel Richard Kemp and other military experts have attested. No other country in history has gone to such lengths in trying to distinguish between military and civilian targets, even in the face of an enemy that regularly uses its own population as human shields, and that hides military equipment in schools and hospitals. Israel's efforts to protect its citizens compare favorably to the U.S. and NATO led military bombing campaigns in Iraq, Syria, and other areas, in which civilians have also been used as human shields.
At best, Mr. Sanders' comments on Operation Protective Edge reflect a disappointing lack of interest in the specifics of what happened during the course of the seven-week war. As has been noted by several commentators, Senator Sanders is a long-term elected official who deals with some frequency with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and who should be expected to avoid gross misstatements on the topic. Mr. Sanders has done nothing to assuage these concerns: in two recent interviews, Mr. Sanders mistakenly put the number of civilians killed at "over 2,000" and again described the Israeli response as "disproportionate."

Bucking Sanders, PM says Israel would not hesitate to act strongly against Gaza again

Two days after Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders charged that Israel acted “disproportionately” during the 2014 fighting in Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that Israel would not hesitate to hit Gaza hard again, if necessary.
“Israel is surrounded by extremist Islamic radicals, and therefore we need to guard our borders, and this is also true regarding the communities surrounding Gaza,” Netanyahu said in Yeroham at the seventh annual Negev Conference.
“In another couple of months we will mark two years since Operation Protective Edge, and those who attacked us from the Gaza Strip took an unprecedentedly heavy blow. We will – of course – not hesitate again to act strongly against anyone who wants to endanger Israeli citizens.”
Netanyahu said that security is a precondition to all the development his government is promoting in the country’s South.

Meet the outspoken critic of Israel who is Bernie Sanders' new Jewish outreach director

Simone Zimmerman, the Bernie Sanders campaign’s newly hired national Jewish outreach coordinator, is quite familiar with the American Jewish establishment.
She is used to fighting against it.
During the 2014 Gaza war, Zimmerman was one of the leaders of a group of young Jews that held regular protest vigils outside the offices of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, reading the names of Palestinians and Israelis killed in the conflict.
She opposes Israel’s occupation, wants Hillel to allow participation by groups that support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, is against Jewish federation funding for Israeli projects in the West Bank and wrote favorably of the efforts of Jewish Voice for Peace, a pro-BDS group, to get “international corporations to stop profiting off human rights abuses.” (The Anti-Defamation League has called JVP one of America’s top 10 anti-Israel groups.)
“We’re paying attention to what’s happening in Israel — and we are angry,” Zimmerman said in a column on her fellow millennials in Israel’s daily Haaretz in February.

Bernie’s New Jewish Outreach Director: ‘F–k you, Bibi’

The Sanders campaign’s newly hired Jewish outreach director wrote an expletive-laden Facebook post last year that condemned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a mass-murderer.
“Bibi Netanyahu is an arrogant, deceptive, cynical, manipulative asshole,” wrote Simone Zimmerman, a former J Street student activist, in the March 3rd 2015 post. “F#ck you, Bibi … you sanctioned the murder of over 2,000 people this summer.”
At a later date, Zimmerman edited the post, replacing “asshole” with “politician” and “F#ck you” with “shame on you.” The Free Beacon obtained screenshots of the original and edited posts.

Bernie Sanders’ Jewish Problem

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) will likely in fact pay a price for supporting the linkage of American support for Israel to progress on the peace process, for dramatically overstating Palestinian casualties in the 2014 Gaza War, and for branding Israel’s responses to Palestinian violence as disproportionate.
According to the cross-tabs of the latest Quinnipiac Poll furnished to Breitbart, Jewish Democrats are backing the former Secretary of State by nine points, 49-40. By contrast, Clinton’s overall lead among white Democrats is a meager 50-45.
Apparently, being from Brooklyn won’t be enough to get Sanders to the finish line first ahead of Clinton. Sanders is down by 16 points in New York City and is getting trounced among Black Democrats by a whopping 37 percent. In a closed-primary state like New York, where cross-over voting is barred, Clinton’s overall 13 point advantage should prove to be insurmountable.
To be sure, Jewish Democrats do not appear to be enthusiastic about Clinton, but Sanders has done himself more harm than good by playing the Middle East Peace Card. In an op-ed that appeared in Haaretz, the left-leaning Israeli daily, the Reform movement’s Rabbi Eric Yoffie heaped critical praise upon Clinton by declaring that “Only Hillary Clinton Truly Understands What Being ‘pro-Israel’ Means.”

Clinton Campaign Panel Includes Muslim Leader Who Blamed Israel for 9/11 Attacks, Supports Terrorist Groups

Old habits die hard.
Hillary Clinton's associations are more than alarming. Just last month the Democrat presidential contender hosted a panel that included a controversial Muslim figure who openly supported Hezbollah in its 1983 bombing of a Marine barracks in Beirut and who blamed the 9/11 attacks on Israel.
Salam al-Marayati, president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), has long circulated Democrats' orbit. In fact, four years ago I included Marayati in a list of dubious figures tied to the Obama administration:
PJ Media's Patrick Poole writes about the terrorist-apologist and his ties to the Clintons in a detailed report here. An excerpt follows:
Under his continued leadership, MPAC continues to promote extremist conspiracy theories, including accusations published on the group's website in 2010 that Israel was harvesting the organs of Palestinians -- a claim that was denounced by the Anti-Defamation League as a blood libel.
But Marayati's appearance with Hillary Clinton is hardly unusual, as the relationship with the Clinton family goes back to 1996 -- when he served as a delegate for Bill Clinton during the Democratic National Convention that year.
Waves of controversy have not stopped Hillary Clinton from continuing to promote Marayati, including appointing him to positions during her tenure as Obama's secretary of State. So his appearance at the March 24th campaign panel held at the University of Southern California is no surprise.

Caroline Glick: Obama’s nuclear contrition

On Monday, US Secretary of State John Kerry visited Hiroshima. While there meeting with this G-7 counterparts, Kerry strongly hinted that his visit was a precursor to a visit to the site of the first nuclear bombing by President Barack Obama next month.
The irony of course is that for all his professed commitment to ridding the world of nuclear weapons, Obama is responsible for drastically increasing the chance of nuclear war. Indeed, Obama’s own actions lend easily to the conclusion that he wishes to do penance for America’s decision to attack Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear bombs, (and so end World War II with far fewer dead than a land invasion of Japan would have required), by enabling America’s enemies to target the US and its allies with nuclear weapons.
Obama views his nuclear deal with Iran – the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – as his greatest foreign policy achievement.
Unfortunately for his legacy building and for global security, for the past several weeks news stories have made clear that critics of Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran – who claimed that far from preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, the deal would enable Iran to develop them in broad daylight, and encourage Iran to step up its support for terror and regional aggression – were entirely correct.

Caroline Glick among Moskowitz Zionism Prize winners

The three "Oz Tzion" prizewinners, awarded as part of the Moskowitz Prize for Zionism, were announced on Wednesday after three outstanding Zionists living in Israel were selected by the prize committee.
Those honored by the $100,000 prize to be distributed between the three, which was established by Miami-based philanthropists Dr. Irving and Cherna Moskowitz, include former MKs Rabbi Benny Elon and Yehuda Harel, as well as senior journalist Caroline Glick.
Former Tourism Minister Rabbi Benny Elon was recognized by the prize committee as having a deep impact on the nationalist camp in Israel for the last several decades. He strengthened the Jewish presence in various parts of eastern Jerusalem and in Rachel's Tomb, adjacent to Bethlehem in Judea.
The former National Union party minister also helped unify the nationalist camp into a political force, and advanced an alternate policy approach to that of the 1994 Oslo Accords. He also has created a chain of parliamentary lobby groups unifying pro-Israeli parliamentarians worldwide.

Amb. Alan Baker: The indecisive and confusing state of the Palestinian leadership

Who is not utterly confused by the Palestinian leadership? Presumably the Palestinian public is no less perplexed than are the Israelis.
In all likelihood, the international community itself is even more confused and fatigued by the recent, unending Palestinian self-contradicting attempts to gain attention, faced as it is with the massive threats of ISIS terror, the ongoing war in Syria, tension between Russia and Ukraine and other major crises.
The Palestinian policy is curious.
One the one hand, PA Foreign Minister Riad Malki formally announces, while on a visit to Japan in February, that the Palestinians no longer intend to return to negotiations with Israel and prefer to urge the UN to impose a solution to negotiation issues.
On the other hand, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and his assistant Saeb Erekat, secretary-general of the PLO and head of the Palestinian Authority ‘negotiation’ department, initiate a draft UN Security Council resolution calling for resumption of the very negotiations that their foreign minister has declared to be dead.

As Palestinians head back to the UN, cause for concern in Israel

Unlike last time Israel faced a hostile resolution at the United Nations Security Council, in December 2014, this time there is virtually no chance that it will fail to garner the required majority.
That means that the key to fending off the latest Palestinian attempt to get Israel condemned at the UN’s most important body lies with US President Barack Obama. He will be in the awkward position of having to either veto a resolution despite agreeing with its content, or to abstain or support it, thus further alienating America’s staunchest ally in the Middle East and allowing political opponents at home to portray his party as anti-Israel.
The plan to bring another anti-settlement resolution to the Security Council is thus slated to become a veritable litmus test of US-Israel relations, nearly half a year before America elects a new president.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to use his trip later this month to the UN in New York — where is slated to attend a signing ceremony for the historic climate agreement reached in Paris in December — to launch yet another attempt to get the UN to condemn Israel’s actions in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

JCPA: Whitewashing Palestine to Eliminate Israel: The Case of the One-State Advocates

An increasingly fashionable position among self-styled “progressives” is to advocate the “one-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This “solution” envisions a single “secular, liberal, democratic state” encompassing the entire former mandate of Palestine, with a “right of return” for millions of Palestinian “refugees.” There is, however, a serious blind-spot in the argumentation of the one-state proponents having to do with their treatment of Palestinian political culture, both past and present. The one-state proponents systematically whitewash Palestinian political culture by denying, ignoring, or obscuring its Islamic, Islamist, and antisemitic aspects. Their goal is to distract their readers from the illiberal, undemocratic aspects of Palestinian society so as to keep the focus relentlessly on the real or imagined sins of Israel. They use propaganda as a tool of war to strip Israel of legitimacy and international support and to blind the well-meaning but uninformed readers to the very real risks that Jews would face as a minority living under an Arab and Muslim majority in a re-unified Palestine.
Introduction
The struggle to thwart the Zionist project has taken many forms over the past century, including terrorism, conventional warfare, propaganda, diplomatic pressure, commercial boycotts, and religious mobilization. Over the past decade, a new tactic among anti-Israel activists based mostly in the West has been to contrast the imperfect reality of Israel with the perfect utopia of a single, liberal, secular, democratic state in the whole former British Mandate of Palestine in which Jews and non-Jews would enjoy perfect equality. While advocating the idea of the single, secular democratic state had been part of the propaganda of the Palestine Liberation Organization since the mid-1960s and seventies, the proponents of the one-state solution have revived it with renewed vigor. Since any real society looks bad compared to a hypothetical utopia, this tactic allows anti-Israel activists to portray Israeli society in harshly negative terms. It also allows them to reject the “two-state” solution on the grounds that it does not achieve the perfect justice of their imagined utopia. In rejecting the two-state solution, they aim to keep the struggle against Israel alive indefinitely.

Israel Fumes as Draft of Syria Deal Designates Golan Heights as Syrian Land

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was reportedly furious on Monday over indications that an agreement intended to bring peace to Syria might specify that the Golan Heights, including the part held by Israel, is Syrian land.
According to a report by Israel’s Channel 10, Russia is the main party pushing to designate the Golan Heights as part of Syria. Apart from Russia, the U.S. and other major world powers are involved in talks intended to hammer out an agreement that would bring an end to the civil war in Syria.
Israel captured the Golan Heights in 1967 during the Six Day War. The territory was annexed in 1981, but the annexation is not recognized by most countries.
Israeli voices calling on Jerusalem to return the territory to Syria as part of a peace deal have faded since the collapse of Bashar Assad’s regime.

U2's Bono lobbies US Senate for 'Marshall Plan' in the Middle East

U2 lead singer Bono appealed to Congress on Tuesday for a "Marshall Plan" to provide aid to the Middle East much like the massive relief the United States provided to rebuild Europe and counter extremism after World War Two.
"When aid is structured properly, with a focus on fighting poverty and improving governance, it could just be the best bulwark we have against the extremism of our age," the rock star and anti-poverty campaigner [and tax dodger] testified to the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that oversees foreign aid.
Bono urged US lawmakers to act quickly to counteract "an existential crisis" in Europe, with nationalist parties rising in several countries and even Britain considering leaving the European Union.
The hearing took place as lawmakers put the final touches on a new spending plan that may include steep international aid cuts.

Kuwait pushes to expel Knesset from international parliamentary group

The Arab Inter-Parliamentary Union on Monday voted to move to expel the Knesset from the international IPU due to the “racist laws”’ it allegedly legislates.
The IPU is an international organization for parliaments from all over the world, which works in collaboration with the UN.
The Arab Inter-Parliamentary Union is a regional organization composed of Arab lawmakers as well as members of Shura councils in the Arab world. It was established in June 1974 to promote Arab collaboration through political institutions.
The anti-Israel resolution, submitted by Kuwait’s National Assembly speaker Marzouq al-Ghanim, was adopted during the 23rd conference of the Arab Inter-Parliamentary Union in Cairo on Monday, with the participation of lawmakers from all over the Arab world.
The closing statement of the conference included Ghanim’s proposal as well as a recommendation to form a parliamentary committee chaired by Ghanim to support the steadfastness of the Palestinian people.

U.S. May Replace Some Sinai Peacekeeping Troops with Sensors

Changing the MFO mission could be a sensitive proposition to both Israel and Egypt.
Cairo sees the MFO as part of a relationship with Israel that, while unpopular with many Egyptians, brings it $1.3 billion in annual U.S. defense aid, sweetening the foreign-enforced demilitarization of their sovereign Sinai territory.
For the Israelis, the MFO offers strategic reassurance, especially following Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's toppling two years ago of an elected Islamist regime hostile to the Jewish-majority state next door.
The White House stressed that the United States was not questioning its support for the mission.
"The U.S. commitment to this treaty and this mission has never been stronger, and that's evidenced by the fact that the United States government is prepared to deploy new equipment and new technology," White House Spokesman Josh Earnest said.
Among the options being considered are use of remote sensors or surveillance to do some of the work in the peninsula that lies between Israel, the Gaza Strip and the Suez Canal.

Furtive Jewish wedding held on Temple Mount

A Jewish couple’s furtive wedding on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem led one party leader to call for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday to choose between the “loony organization” that carried out the ceremony and public safety.
The announcement of the wedding came hours before Palestinian leaders, apparently unaware of the wedding, warned that Jews visiting the compound during the upcoming Passover festival will inflame tensions.
In a post — later deleted — on its Facebook page on Tuesday, the Temple Institute said that a couple asked Rabbi Chaim Richman to marry them on the Temple Mount, the Jerusalem holy site that has been a flashpoint for conflict between Israelis and the Palestinians.
The institute, a nonprofit organization that describes itself as “dedicated to every aspect of the Biblical commandment to build the Holy Temple of God on Mount Moriah [the Temple Mount] in Jerusalem,” said that part of the wedding ceremony was conducted earlier at the organization’s headquarters, after which the wedding party, including two official witnesses as required by Jewish law, headed up to the Temple Mount.

MKs call on Health Ministry to enforce laws against hospital room segregation

The law comes before patients’ preferences, Knesset Committee for the Advancement of the Status of Women chairperson Aida Touma-Sliman (Joint List) said in a meeting about segregated maternity wards in hospitals.
The meeting was called after Israel Radio reported last week that several hospitals acquiesce to mothers’ requests that they not be put in the same room as either Jewish or Arab mothers in maternity wards, even though doing so is illegal. MK Bezalel Smotrich (Bayit Yehudi) caused an uproar after he said his wife would not want to be in a room with an Arab woman, because he said Arab families are large and noisy and their babies could grow up to be terrorists. Smotrich claimed that most Israeli Jews agree with him, though polling days later showed 61 percent disagree with him.
“The debate about the phenomenon revealed a difficult reality,” Touma-Sliman said, opening the meeting. “Not only is there separation in hospitals, but there is separation based on nationality and race in other places, as well. The health system can and must be an island of sanity.”

IDF punishes soldiers involved in torching Palestinian flag at West Bank checkpoint

The IDF suspended the commander of a group of Israeli soldiers suspected of torching a Palestinian flag on Wednesday morning at the West Bank checkpoint where they were stationed near Nablus.
The IDF spokesperson's unit confirmed the details of the incident at the Awarta checkpoint.
During the incident, the soldiers apparently took the flag from a nearby parked car and threw it on the ground in front of hundreds of Palestinians who were in the area. Afterward, one of the soldiers ignited the flag with a lighter.
An IDF spokesperson said that the soldier's commanders were familiar with the incident and that an investigation has been opened into the events.
An official Palestinian complaint has been filed to the Foreign Ministry regarding the issue.

PreOccupiedTerritory: Sporadic Stabbings Mysteriously Fail To Cause Millions of Israelis To Flee (satire)

Palestinian strategists are scratching heir heads at the latest statistics showing that despite six months of stabbing attacks on Israelis, the six-million-strong Jewish population of the Zionist state has not abandoned the country for safer shores.
At a planning and analysis session of the Fatah Knife Intifada Higher Committee this morning, officials puzzled over the mystifying phenomenon of Israelis by the millions staying in their ancestral homeland despite occasional instances of Palestinians, mostly teenagers and young adults, attempting to kill and injure Israeli Jews by means of various sharp implements. The participants even heard from a representative of the rival Hamas organization, which is grappling with the similar, though longer-term, question as to why, despite decades of Arab terrorism, protests, and international opprobrium, Israel has only grown in population, economic strength, and military power.
“We came here to put our heads together and understand this strange development,” explained Committee Chairman Mashtin Baqqir. “After all, the Oslo, Gaza, and Lebanon precedents should tell us that when we keep trying to kill Jews, they eventually give up and leave. It might take years, perhaps decades, but it worked. From 1993 to 2005, the name of the game was Jews leaving various parts of the territory they controlled, after years and years of violence directed at them. But it’s been almost eleven years since the last such withdrawal, and three wars with Hamas have produced nothing more in that respect. So we went with a more grass-roots approach. But nothing.”

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians campaign for convicted terrorist Barghouti to receive Nobel Peace Prize

Palestinians in Ramallah launched a worldwide campaign on Tuesday to nominate jailed Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti for the Nobel Peace Prize – despite his life imprisonment for five terrorist murders.
The campaign is being sponsored by the Palestinian Commission for Prisoners, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club and members of the Palestinian Legislative Council.
Barghouti’s wife, Fadwa, told reporters that the move to nominate her husband for the prestigious award would draw international attention to the “plight” of some 7,000 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons.
The campaign will include organizing rallies and marches throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip in support of the nomination. Organizers said they are also planning a massive campaign in the local and international media to promote the idea of giving Barghouti the Nobel Peace Prize.

PMW: PA daily accuses PMW of “distortion” for correctly translating its crossword puzzle

In its attempt to find an example to support its accusation that Palestinian Media Watch “distorts” the Palestinian Authority media, the official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida had to search back 17 years to find what it claims is such an example. Hafez Barghouti, former editor of the PA daily, wrote last week that PMW’s “media monitoring distorts Palestinian statements and articles, takes them out of context.” The example he found to support this charge was something PMW reported in 1999.
Strikingly, the PA daily admits that PMW translated correctly back then, but claims that what the PA daily wrote in 1999 was a typographical error. According to the PA daily, PMW was "inciting" and “distorting,” because we failed to understand that the paper meant something other than what it had written.
The “distortion” that the PA daily is claiming is as follows. In 1999, PMW reported on the following crossword puzzle clue in the official PA daily, which denied the Holocaust, referring to Israel’s Holocaust museum as a center commemorating “the lie.”

PA readies to issue ‘State of Palestine’ passports

The office of Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas has reportedly informed Israel it intends to begin issuing “State of Palestine” passports to West Bank residents.
According to a senior PA official, the directive to change the official travel documents, which currently only feature the PA emblem, was announced without Israel’s approval, Army Radio reported on Wednesday.
Abbas announced the new passports during an official visit to Greece in December, saying his offices would “no longer accept from anybody to use the name Palestinian Authority.”

Abbas cuts funding to yet another PLO faction

A day after cutting the funding of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Palestinian Authority (PA) has done the same to the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), the Ma’an news agency reported Tuesday.
Sources in the DFLP, who spoke on condition of anonymity, condemned the decision, telling the Palestinian news agency it was due to its critical stance of PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
On Monday, Abbas ordered the cancellation of funds allocated to the PFLP in what was also speculated to be due to the group’s criticism of Abbas.
Kayed al-Ghoul, a PFLP leader, told Ma'an on Monday they believed the suspension of funds was related to recent remarks by some PFLP figures calling for Abbas to resign.

Haniyeh: The 'intifada' changed the balance of power

Hamas deputy leader Ismail Haniyeh considers the current wave of violence as a key factor in changing the balance of power between the Palestinian people and Israel.
Speaking at a gathering in Gaza this past Sunday, Haniyeh said that the “Al-Quds Intifada” – as the Palestinian Arab groups refer to the current wave of terrorism – proved that the current Palestinian generation is the “successor of the glory, honor and vitality, and our sons will not agree to Israeli plans in Jerusalem, the West Bank or anywhere else.”
Haniyeh added that Israel is dealing with the “intifada” through actions of suppression such as “settlement building” and house demolitions, and the Palestinian response must come in the form of the establishment of a national framework for the intifada in order to realize national goals and the “liberation of the land.”
At the same time, said Haniyeh, Hamas continues to improve its relations with Arab and Islamic countries as a response to the Israeli drive to implement its "racist" plans in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and thus “destroy the Palestinian problem.”

EXCLUSIVE - Source: Iran Resumes Funding of Palestinian Islamic Jihad Terror Group

Iran has resumed financial support for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement, months after it withdrew support in retaliation for the group’s reluctance to openly back the Islamic Republic [State?], an Islamic Jihad official told Breitbart Jerusalem.
The official said that the support is much lower than before. At its zenith, Iran gave Islamic Jihad tens of millions of dollars a year, but now will only allow the cash-strapped movement to balance its books for the foreseeable future.
The official would not disclose whether the resumed support is dependent on turning up the heat on Israel, only saying that the aid was renewed unconditionally. He also said that Iran remains a staunch supporter of another radical faction in Gaza, Al Sabireen.
“Iran made it clear that the smaller sums are a function of the fact that armed resistance against Israel is taking place on a smaller scale, and that much of the country’s outreach resources are invested in Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon,” he said. “There’s no doubt that the lifting of the sanctions is behind all this, but it’s nowhere near the sums we were used to.”

Amid Syria War, Iran arms Hezbollah for a deadly conflict with Israel, UK-based research group

Terrorist group Hezbollah is using the conflict in Syria to prepare for a war with Israel, reveals a report published by the UK-based research group BICOM. In 2015, Iran funnelled a billion dollars to the Lebanon-based terrorist group. According to a strategic analysis released by Britain Israel Communications & Research Centre (BICOM) on Monday, Iran-backed Hezbollah’s missile stockpile is now estimated to be around 100,000-150,000, with large portion of it hidden among Lebanon’s civilian population.
Hezbollah entered the Syrian civil war 5 years ago to fight on behalf of Iran-backed dictator Bashar Al Assad. Since then 5,000 of its 20,000-strong fighting force is pinned down in Syria. The terrorist militia now controls territory within Syria, creating a base for Iran — a fallback option in case Assad regime were to collapse.
The Obama-Kerry Nuclear Deal gave Iran a signing bonus of $150 billion. Flushed with fresh cash, regime in Tehran is making up for the past cuts it had to make in funding its proxy terrorist group across the Middle East including Hezbollah.

Police nab accomplice in Hyper Cacher attack

Spanish police said Wednesday they had detained a French national suspected of heading a weapons trafficking ring that provided arms to Amedy Coulibaly, who staged a deadly attack on a Jewish supermarket in Paris last year.
In a statement, police said Antoine Denevi, a 27-year-old originally from the northern French region of Pas-de-Calais, was detained on Tuesday in the southern Spanish area of Malaga at the request of French authorities, AFP reports.
He "left the neighboring country (France) weeks after the Paris attacks to escape police action, and settled in the province of Malaga from where he continued his illegal activities using fake papers," the police said.
"It's also been determined that his activities were linked with people of Serbian origin, who may have facilitated his access to arms and munitions."
Both Spanish and French police forces participated in Tuesday's operation, during which two other people were detained - one Serb and another from Montenegro.

Chilling ISIS weapons cache found buried in Spanish holiday hotspot linked to planned attacks on "crowded public spaces"

A deadly arsenal of weapons dug up at a tourist hotspot popular with Brits has been linked to a planned terror attack.
Two sub-machine guns, four handguns, several combat knives and an ISIS flag were discovered buried in Ceutan, a Spanish territory near Tangiers and just across the water from Gibraltar, a British Overseas Territory.
A spokesman for the Civil Guard, who made the chilling find, said they had received a tip-off about the buried weapons from another criminal organisation.
A statement released today by Spain's Interior Ministry says the guns and knives were connected to an operation in which four people were arrested in January.

Syrian Refugee Sets Shelter On Fire, Tries To Frame It On Nazis

A Syrian refugee confessed Saturday to setting fire to the German refugee shelter he was staying at in an attempt to frame it on nationalists.
The arson attack Thursday in the town of Bingen-Sponsheim was first reported as another nationalist attack on a migrant center in Germany. The basement of the building was sprayed with swastikas in an attempt to make it look like a political crime. Two firefighters and four residents suffered minor injuries.
The city quickly organized a rally against racism and xenophobia while police worked under the assumption the attack was committed by nationalists.
The 26-year-old Syrian later confessed Saturday to have ignited the fire, citing “a lack of hope for the future” as his motivation. the Local reports his fellow refugees turned him in to authorities after a reward was offered for leads in the investigation.

A German comic's joke insulted Erdogan and he may go to jail for it - in Germany

Turkey's Tayyip Erdogan has filed a legal complaint against a German comedian who recited a sexually crude satirical poem about him on television, embarrassing Angela Merkel who has only just enlisted the president's help in tackling the migrant crisis.
The poem, seemingly a deliberate provocation by comedian Jan Boehmermann, has exploded into a diplomatic incident that pits freedoms championed by Western Europe against recent moves in Turkey by Erdogan that critics say crack down on dissent.
Merkel, asked about the case, tried to separate the two issues and stressed her commitment to artistic freedom.
Prosecutors in Mainz said Erdogan had filed a complaint against Boehmermann for insulting him. Under the criminal code, he could, if found guilty, be imprisoned for up to a year.

Iranian president under scrutiny over execution of juveniles

The case presented by the Iranian judiciary was simple: In the southern province of Fars, Fatemeh Salbehi suffocated her husband after drugging him, a capital crime in the Islamic Republic.
What made the case controversial is that Salbehi was only 17, a minor by international legal standards, when she allegedly committed the crime. Her alleged confession also came during a series of interrogations where there was no lawyer present.
The case was retried but Salbehi was hanged in the Adel Abad prison in Shiraz last October.
The issue has come under scrutiny because of a scathing UN report on human rights in Iran last month which highlighted what it called the "alarmingly high" rate of executions in the country, including juveniles.

Iran Ranked 2nd in 2015 Executions; “We Have Higher Expectations for next Year”, Says Rouhani (satire)

Amnesty international recently reported that there was a 50% increase in executions during 2015, with over 1,600 officially counted. China had the highest number, with Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the US rounding out that top 5. Although not disappointed by a second place showing, Iran promises to come back in 2016 aiming for gold. “Listen, I won’t sit here and be all doom and gloom. Sure, we didn’t place first, but we came ahead of some stiff competition. I think most people would be pleasantly surprised to hear we were ahead of the Saudis. And beating the Americans is always a great source of pride,” explained President Rouhani. “Me and the Ayatollah, we really sat and had a heart-to-heart about it. We both believe Iran has what it take to be a champion. The first thing I suggested is to take an honest look at our laws.”
He went on to discuss various areas of potential improvement. “We are pretty strict on executions for insulting of Islam, so not much room to expand there but we haven’t really explored areas like executions for financial crimes or not chanting ‘Death to Israel’ at least once a day, or admitting Iran does actually have homosexuals, but at this point pretty much every option is on the table.”

Gay Air France Flight Attendants Refuse To 'Fly To The Death Penalty In Iran'

Air France’s gay flight attendants are refusing to work on flights headed to Iran, fearing execution from a country that puts homosexuals to death on a regular basis.
Led by a gay flight attendant writing under the pseudonym ‘Laurent M.,’ Air France flight attendants have started an online petition demanding they not be forced to work on flights destined for Iran. The group’s petition has garnered over 2,000 signatures since it was started some days ago, and is only around 300 away from its total goal.
“Sure, our sexuality isn’t written on our passports and it doesn’t change the way we work as a crew,” said Laurent M. in the open letter included in the petition. “But it is inconceivable to force someone to go to a country where his kind are condemned for who they are.”

Australian Islamist Al-Wahwah Calls to Lead “the Armies of Jihad That Will Conquer Europe, the U.S.”

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