From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Biden: No major sanctions relief at front end of Iran deal
WASHINGTON (JTA) — An Iran nuclear deal will not include substantial sanctions relief at the front end, Vice President Joe Biden said.
“If at the front end they expect there to be total sanction relief or significant sanction relief, there will be no deal,” Biden said in an address in Cambridge, Mass., on Friday to a Democratic political action committee, Politico reported. “This will be, ‘You have to earn it.’”
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has said that there will be no deal between Iran and the major powers unless there is immediate total sanctions relief.
Iran and the major powers earlier this month announced the outline of a deal that would swap sanctions relief for strictures aimed at keeping Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Obama: Sanctions deal will have to allow Iran’s leaders to save face
WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Barack Obama said a solution on sanctions must allow Iran’s leaders to present an “acceptable” version to their public.
Obama was asked at a news conference on Friday what his position was on phasing out sanctions as part of a nuclear deal with Iran. The agreement would exchange sanctions relief for restrictions aimed at keeping Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
“How sanctions are lessened, how we snap back sanctions if there’s a violation, there are a lot of different mechanisms and ways to do that,” he said.
Obama then referred to the negotiators, including Secretary of State John Kerry and the P5+1, the acronym for the major powers in talks with Iran.
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From Ynet News
Arab stabbed in Herzliya: “He yelled ‘death to Arabs!'”
27-year-old Israeli lightly wounded in attack claims stabber with Russian accent was motivated by hatred. An Arab worker was stabbed in Herzliya on Monday. The 27-year-old resident of northern Israel sustained light wounds. He told detectives that the man who attacked him – who had a Russian accent – yelled “Death to Arabs!” before stabbing him and fleeing.
A Magen David Adom emergency team was deployed to the scene and treated the victim; he was evacuated to a hospital in Kfar Saba. Within hours of the stabbing, police said a suspect had confessed during questioning. Click here for the full story
From The Times of Israel
Sea of sorrows: Many migrants drown trying to reach Italy
Recent years have seen a seemingly unending stream of Africans risking death in hopes of a better life
ROME — Migrants seeking a better life in Europe have died by the thousands in the Mediterranean Sea in recent years while fleeing poverty and bloodshed in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
The precise figure of deaths is unknown. But the ill-documented toll is rising again Sunday as rescuers search for an estimated 700 passengers from a capsized boat north of Libya. The Italian Coast Guard has confirmed 24 deaths and 28 people rescued, but authorities expect the death toll to rise.
Authorities count only those bodies found in the sea, on shore, or aboard boats where migrants can die of thirst or exposure. Survivors often tell of fellow passengers who lost their lives at sea, but the bodies are never found.
Here is a list of the deadliest migrant boat events, based on bodies recovered or survivor accounts:
Christmas 1996: 300 believed drowned in the waters between Malta and Sicily.
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From The Times of Israel
After Israeli elections, US Zionists cast votes of their own
Liberal Jewish leaders see World Zionist Congress vote as means of showing discontent with Netanyahu’s return to office
NEW YORK (AP) — Call it the other Israel election. The World Zionist Congress — a global Zionist body that formed more than a century ago but retains significant influence in Israel — is holding elections for US delegates to its global assembly. At stake is leadership of an organization that helps manage agencies in Israel with budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
While past voting for the congress has attracted little attention beyond a small circle of American Zionist groups, liberal US Jewish leaders are hoping this time will be different: They are pointing to the election as a way their communities can register discontent with the direction of the Israeli government after Benjamin Netanyahu won re-election last month.
Hardline American Zionists are mobilizing as well to advance their priorities, including support for Jewish settlements on occupied land claimed by the Palestinians for their future state.
“This is a real election. It matters,” said Rabbi Rick Jacobs, head of the liberal Union for Reform Judaism, the synagogue arm for the largest American Jewish movement. “It’s a part of every public talk I’ve given for the last four months.”
“It’s important to vote because the World Zionist Congress decides where substantial moneys go,” said Morton Klein, national president of the hawkish Zionist Organization of America, or ZOA. “But nobody understands it.”
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From The Times of Israel
UK anti-immigration party looks ahead after Obama insult
UKIP eager to make gains, move forward after ex-candidate said Israel should hunt down US president like Eichmann
DOVER, England (AP) — Saul Webster enjoys a good tipple, and nobody begrudges him one. But that doesn’t make it good politics for the retired schoolteacher to pose for a campaign event with Nigel Farage, the UK Independence Party leader, while carrying a bottle of hard cider and a half-drained glass.
He looks crestfallen as a UKIP functionary discretely removes the drink from his hands before the gathered media horde starts snapping away at Farage and his backers in front of an anti-immigration billboard at the foot of the White Cliffs of Dover.
Farage — the bad boy of British politics — is trying to clean up his image ahead of the May 7 general election. His once surging party has started to languish in the polls and Farage himself admits he is in a dog-fight to try to win his first seat in the British Parliament.
So the UKIP leader is running a tightly focused campaign that relentlessly pushes a single message: opposition to continued membership in the European Union and the increased immigration that membership has brought. It’s a nationalist theme that is gaining momentum in other major European nations including France and Germany.
“I am the only person here saying what a lot of people at home are really thinking,” Farage said as he stood alongside other party leaders at a televised debate on Thursday.
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