From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Cruz in presidential announcement says he will ‘stand unapologetically with Israel’
(JTA) — Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas criticized the current president’s relationship with Israel during a speech in which he announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination to run for president in 2016.
“Instead of a president who boycotts Prime Minister Netanyahu, imagine a president who stands unapologetically with Israel,” Cruz said during his announcement Monday at Liberty University, an evangelical Christian school in Virginia. He received a long round of applause for the statement. He was born in Canada to an American mother and a Cuban father. He renounced his Canadian citizenship last year, according to reports.
Cruz is the first person to announce his bid for the presidency in 2016.
Cruz, whose father is an evangelical pastor, evoked God and conservatives in his announcement. “God’s blessing has been on America from the very beginning of this nation, and I believe God isn’t done with America yet,” he said. “I believe in you. I believe in the power of millions of courageous conservatives rising up to reignite the promise of America, and that is why today, I’m announcing that I’m running for president of the United States.”
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From Russia Today
Israel, US ‘boycott’ UN session on Gaza conflict
Israeli and American representatives were conspicuously absent from the UN Human Rights Council session on the Palestinian territories on Monday. The session aimed to look into the Gaza conflict which killed 2,200 people in 50 days in 2014.
“I note the representative of Israel is not present,” Council President Joachim Ruecher said as the session kicked off Monday in Geneva.
Tel Aviv refused to comment as to why its representatives did not take part.
The US, however, said that one of the points on the UN session agenda – concerning human rights violations against the Palestinians – lacked legitimacy.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Thessaloniki Jewish leader wants German funding for Holocaust memorial
(JTA) — A Greek Jewish leader is requesting 20 million euros — nearly $22 million — in wartime reparations from Germany to fund the building of a Holocaust memorial.
David Saltiel, president of the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki, said the requested funds were to compensate for Greek Jews being forced to pay for their own forced train deportation to the death camps,Newsweek reported.
Nearly 60,000 Jews were deported from Greece during World War II, and 50,000 of them perished, Saltiel said.
“We think it’s a big opportunity that if the German government decides they want to help, it would be a very good coincidence that this money goes for this purpose,” Saltiel told Newsweek.
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From Russia Today
‘24 hours to disarm’: Kiev on verge of violence as oil dispute between govt, oligarch escalates
The Ukrainian government has given the private army of billionaire Dnepropetrovsk governor Igor Kolomoysky a day to lay down their weapons, after they occupied and erected a fence around the headquarters of the national oil company.
“We won’t have armed personal security forces of businessmen and politicians on the streets of our cities. This applies to every single one of them,” Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said on his Facebook page.
“All security forces have 24 hours to comply with the letter of the law.”
President Petro Poroshenko has also dispatched two battalions of the elite National Guard to Dnepropetrovsk, to diffuse “rising tension in the region.”
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From Russia Today
US House urges Obama to send arms to Ukraine
The non-binding resolution was approved by an overwhelming majority of 348-48.
Sending weapons to the Kiev government would not mean involvement in a new war for America, claimed US Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), a Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who sponsored the document. “The people of Ukraine are not looking for American troops,” Engel said. “They are just looking for the weapons.”
According to Engel, “this war poses the greatest threat to European security since World War II, and we shouldn’t take it lightly, and we shouldn’t be idle, and we shouldn’t sit back, and we shouldn’t let other countries tell us what to do.”
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From Russia Today
Terror threat ‘unprecedented,’ new attacks inevitable – French security officials
French security officials have warned more jihadist attacks are expected in the country as the level of terrorist threat has “reached a level without precedent.” Counter-terrorism officials described the threat as “permanent”.
“Not one day goes by without an alert, the discovery of a network trying to send people to Syria or Iraq, or an intervention (by the security services),” a high-level official from the Defense Ministry of France told AFP on condition of anonymity.
According to the source, there are currently around 4,000 people who are “identified or suspected of evil intentions” in France.
These aren’t just amateurs, they include some highly educated people – “pros, not drop-outs,” he added.
The French security services are forced to “play catch-up” with the terrorists as they “use the best encryption and concealment techniques,” the official stressed.
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From The Times of Israel
Israeli officials in France for last-ditch bid to sway Iran talks
Paris has been more hawkish than US ahead of nuclear deadline, but senior French source says Israel’s stances ‘unrealistic’
Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz flew to France on Sunday to try to influence the next round of talks on a deal over Iran’s nuclear program, his spokesman said.
Steinitz was “on a mission from Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] for a short visit to Europe in an attempt to influence the details of the emerging agreement on the Iran nuclear issue,” a statement from Eyal Basson said.
Steinitz traveled to the French capital with National Security Adviser Yossi Cohen for a closed-door diplomatic blitz to convince mediators to harden their positions on Iran, even at the expense of a breakdown in negotiations, Israeli media reported.
Steinitz was expected to meet French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and members of the French negotiating team in the Iran talks, the Haaretz daily reported.
The P5+1 group of world powers — the US, Russia, France, England, China and Germany — has been seeking a comprehensive accord with Iran that would prevent it from developing a nuclear bomb, in return for an easing of economic sanctions.
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From The Independent
Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former commanding officer at the Joint Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear Regiment, said the last two weeks in Syria and Iraq have seen the “most concentrated and deadly use of chemical weapons” since the 1980s Iran-Iraq war.
“It is very evident that Isis are putting much time and effort into training its jihadis in the use of chlorine as a terror weapon and in particular in IEDs (improvised explosive devices),” he wrote on2Paragraphs.
“Virtually every foreign jihadi who returns to the US or UK will have been exposed to training of this sort and will have a reasonable idea on how to use chlorine and other toxic chemicals as a terror weapon.
After returning from advising security forces in Baghdad last week, he told the Daily Mirror he feared a chlorine gas attack was “highly likely”, adding: “This could happen on a train or tube or even at a big football match.”
Mr de Bretton-Gordon examined the likelihood of such an atrocity on the 20-year anniversary of the Tokyo subway sarin attack, which killed 12 people and injured more than 1,000 more, causing chaos in the Japanese capital.
Japan’s emergency services treat commuters after the gas attack which saw the army decontaminate Tokyo’s subway cars
The Aum Shinrikyo movement used packets of the nerve agent, which they punctured with umbrella tips on the Tokyo subway during morning rush hour.
From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
White House: Looking to next Israeli government to recommit to two states
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Obama administration said it would look to the new Israeli government to recommit itself to the two-state solution.
“We will look to the next Israeli government to match words with actions and policies that demonstrate a genuine commitment to a two-state solution,” Dennis McDonough, the White House chief of staff, said Monday, addressing the annual conference of J Street, the liberal Jewish Middle East policy group.
McDonough’s comment, made to a friendly audience, was the first sign that the White House seemed ready at some point to put behind it Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s preelection comments last week repudiating a two-state solution.
McDonough made clear that Netanyahu’s comments were still an irritant to the relationship between the governments.
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From PressTV
Israel shuns UN rights session on Gaza onslaught
Israel has inexplicably shunned a UN Human Rights Council’s special session on the grim situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, and the Israeli military’s devastating offensive against the besieged Gaza Strip last summer.
A source close to the council said on condition of anonymity that Israel’s absence from the meeting in the Swiss city of Geneva on Monday clearly amounted to a boycott.
“We won’t comment on that,” a spokeswoman with the Israeli mission said. The United States also did not take part in Monday’s discussions.
Monday’s session had initially been organized to discuss a probe into Israel’s actions during last year’s war in Gaza, but the investigations were hit with a delay after the head of the team had to step down under pressure from the Israeli regime.
“The process cannot be rushed,” former New York judge Mary McGowan Davis, who has taken over as new head of the team, told the council.
Israel has expressed strong dissatisfaction with the inquiry into the 2014 Gaza conflict, calling for the entire process to be shelved. Tel Aviv claims that the UN Human Rights Council and its commission are adamantly biased against it.
Israel started its latest war on the Gaza Strip in early July last year. The offensive ended on August 26, 2014, with a truce that took effect after indirect negotiations in the Egyptian capital, Cairo.
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From PressTV
UNRWA begins building 1st school in Gaza after Israeli war
The United Nations relief and human development agency has kicked off the construction of the first school associated with the organization in the besieged Gaza Strip after the Israeli onslaught on the blockaded area.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) on Sunday inaugurated the construction of the Khuzaa Preparatory School in the town of Khuzaa east of the city of Khan Younis in the southern part of the besieged area.
It is one of the several schools that the UN body plans to construct in the blockaded area whose educational institutions suffered great devastation in the Israeli onslaught.
The commissioner general for the UNRWA, Pierre Krähenbühl, was also present during the inaugural ceremony where he called on the international community to fulfill their pledges to help reconstruct the besieged territory.
According to reports, in excess of two dozen schools were completely destroyed in the Israeli aggression and at least 232 others were damaged during Israel’s last war on Gaza.
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From Russia Today
Czechs told not to throw tomatoes, eggs at US military convoy
Czech people were told not to throw tomatoes and eggs at a US military convoy rumbling through Eastern Europe, the local media said, citing the laws of the land. Those in love with egg & tomato hurling may get up to three years if convicted.
“Should anyone emerge with the intent to attack the convoy, with [items] such as tomatoes or eggs, it would qualify as disorderly conduct according to Czech legislation (up to 2 years without parole, in recidivist cases up to 3 years) or damage to property (sentences in the range of 6 months to 3 years).”
This statement was aired on Czech TV Nova and cited by the Russian Insider last week, ahead of the planned US military convoy.
Operation ‘Dragoon Ride’, a convoy of US military vehicles, mostly IAV Stryker APCs, started on Saturday. The convoy will make its way through Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, the Czech Republic, with its final destination being Germany. It will cross the Czech Republic between March 29 and April 1 on its way to a base in the German city of Vilseck.
