From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Pelosi: Netanyahu speech ‘insult to the intelligence of the United States’
(JTA) — House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress nearly brought her to tears because it insulted the intelligence of the United States.
In a statement issued soon after Netanyahu’s March 3 speech, Pelosi (D-Calif.) emphasized the “unbreakable bonds” between the United States and Israel but continued, “That is why, as one who values the U.S.-Israel relationship, and loves Israel, I was near tears throughout the Prime Minister’s speech — saddened by the insult to the intelligence of the United States as part of the P5+1 nations, and saddened by the condescension toward our knowledge of the threat posed by Iran and our broader commitment to preventing nuclear proliferation.”
The P5+1 is the acronym for the six major powers negotiating with Iran: the United States, Russia, China, Germany, France and Britain.
After Netanyahu spoke, an Obama administration official told CNN that Netanyahu offered nothing new.
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From Russia Today
Video of Israeli soldiers using dogs against Palestinian boy sparks outcry
The video went viral after being posted to Facebook by former ultra nationalist Knesset member Michael Ben-Ari with the caption: “The soldiers taught the little terrorist a lesson.” The video has since been removed, but several copies were shared on the internet.
The Palestinian WAFA news agency reported that the attack took place on December 23, 2014 in the ‘buffer zone’ in the West Bank, between the town of Beit Ummar and the nearby Israeli settlement of Carmei Tzur, which is located south of the town.
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From Ynet News
UN envoy says Israel must investigate civilian killings in Gaza war
Makarim Wibisono, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, said Tuesday that Israel must investigate the killing of more than 1,500 civlians during summer war and make findings public. A United Nations envoy called on Israel on Tuesday to investigate the killing of more than 1,500 Palestinian civilians, one third of them children, during the 2014 Gaza war, and to make the findings public.
Makarim Wibisono, a former Indonesian ambassador, issued his first report to the UN Human Rights Council since becoming its special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories last June.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Netanyahu to Congress: Deal with Iran paves way to bomb
Netanyahu argued that the deal under consideration, which is being negotiated with Iran by the United States and other world powers, would let most of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure stay in place, including thousands of centrifuges. That would leave Tehran with a very short “breakout time” with which it could produce nuclear weapons, he said.
RELATED: Transcript of Netanyahu’s speech to Congress.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Portugal open to citizenship applications by descendants of Sephardic Jews
(JTA) — The government of Portugal published its procedure for handling applications for citizenship based on the country’s law of return for descendants of Sephardic Jews.
The new procedure, effective as of Sunday, is based on legislation passed in 2013 entitling the descendants of Sephardic Jews to the Portuguese nationality deprived of them due to religious and racist persecution as of 1492, the year that is widely accepted as the beginning of the Inquisition.
It forced hundreds of thousands of Jews to emigrate under duress.
“The following document will allow the realization of the right of return to Jewish Sephardic descendants of Portuguese origin who desire, through acquiring Portuguese nationality by naturalization, to integrate into the national community with all the inherent rights and obligation this entails,” reads the new decree of law, which was published Monday.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Rice: Inspections will continue after Iran nuclear restrictions expire
WASHINGTON (JTA) – A nuclear deal with Iran must include access to its nuclear facilities even after the expiry of restrictions, which would last at least 10 years, Susan Rice, the U.S. national security adviser, told AIPAC.
Rice, addressing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on Monday, the second day of its annual conference, said expectations that Iran would cease uranium enrichment altogether or that restrictions would be in place indefinitely were unrealistic. But she added that intrusive inspections would continue indefinitely.
“At the end of any deal, Iran would still be required to offer comprehensive access to its nuclear facilities and to provide the international community the assurance that it was not pursuing nuclear weapons,” she said.
Insisting on no enrichment would collapse the alliance built by the Obama administration to sanction and isolate Iran – factors that led Iran to agree to nuclear negotiations, Rice said.
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From PressTV
Israel destroys thousands of acres of crops in Palestine
Thousands of acres of wheat and other cereal crops have been destroyed by Israeli police in the Palestinian Bedouin village of Rakhama in Negev.
According to Ali Freijat, a local resident, as many as 14 Israeli tractors escorted by in excess of 50 Israeli police vehicles destroyed the agricultural products and leveled the land early on Tuesday, Ma’an news agency reported.
“This is vandalism through which they plan to displace the Bedouins from the Negev so as to create a Jewish state free of Arabs,” Freijat added.
He further noted that the Israeli regime forces have been trying to confiscate the land for many years.
“However, my message to them is that if you turn over the land a million times, and if you demolish our homes a thousand times we will continue to live on this land and won’t allow anybody to take it from us,” he added.
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From PressTV
Israeli forces shoot, injure young Palestinian in W Bank
A young Palestinian man has sustained gunshot wounds after Israeli forces opened fire during clashes with a group of Palestinian youths north of the occupied West Bank.
Palestinian security sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said 40 Israeli military vehicles rolled into the city of Qabatiya, located six kilometers (3.7 miles) south of Jenin, on Tuesday morning.
Israeli troopers then fired tear gas canisters, stun grenades and rubber-coated bullets at local Palestinians, who pelted them with stones and empty bottles in return.
A 20-year-old Palestinian, identified as Muhammad Ali Hithnawi, was shot in the left foot when Israeli soldiers started to use live rounds. Another young Palestinian man also suffered tear gas inhalation.
Both men were transferred to a hospital in the nearby city of Jenin to receive medical treatment.
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From PressTV
Palestinians in West Bank start boycott of Israeli products
Palestinians have begun a campaign to boycott Israeli goods sold in the occupied West Bank by means of confiscating and destroying the products.
On Tuesday, campaign leader Abdullah Kmail said activists will visit shops and target products from six major Israeli food companies in the coming days.
“We [have] entered the second phase of the campaign which is confiscating and damaging these goods,” he said.
Kmail further noted that activists drove a truckload of Israeli milk and yogurt to a main square in Ramallah, and dumped the dairy products to the cheers of supporters.
The campaign leader said 80 percent of the shops in the West Bank no longer have Israeli products in stock, and that shopkeepers were given extra time to sell the remaining goods and that no products were seized.
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From PressTV
Israel orders demolition of over a dozen Palestinian houses
Israel has ordered several Palestinian families in the occupied East al-Quds (Jerusalem) to destroy their houses as part of the regime’s settlement expansion policies.
The Israeli Civil Administration has told Palestinian families in the Khillet al-Raheb area to demolish their homes immediately or the Tel Aviv regime will do it at its own expense.
Palestinian officials say the move will displace up to 70 Bedouins, who are an ethnic Arab community.
A few days ago, dozens of Palestinians in a nearby region received similar demolition orders.
From The Times of Israel
Netanyahu’s devastating, irrevocable indictment of Obama
The PM knowingly sacrifices what remained of his relationship with the president in a bid to thwart ‘a very bad deal’ with Iran
It was widely suggested, ahead of Benjamin Netanyahu’s spectacularly controversial address to Congresson Tuesday, that the prime minister would have to deliver the speech of his life in order to justify the damage he would inevitably be causing to relations between his government and the Obama Administration. In the event, Netanyahu did deliver the speech of his life… and caused devastating, presumably irrevocable damage to his relationship with President Barack Obama.
On CNN, former administration official Martin Indyk called ties between the two leaders “toxic.” And that was moments before Netanyahu began his address. It’s hard to imagine the adjective that would best describe feelings in the Oval Office once the prime minister was done.
The next meeting between the two men will be fascinating to contemplate. And while Obama will hope even more fervently now that there will be no next meeting — that Netanyahu will fail to win reelection — the prime minister will not have done his electoral prospects any harm at all with this address. Many undecided Israelis will be asking themselves whether, in a moment of crisis, they can envisage Isaac Herzog holding the American parliament similarly mesmerized in support of a cause of passionate concern for Israel, and the answer will be no.
Although diplomatic in tone — and complete with deliberate Churchillian flourishes — “some change, some moderation,” he intoned of Iran under Hassan Rouhani — Netanyahu’s speech was in essence a devastating assault on Obama. He began, dutifully, with expressions of appreciation for the president, and for everything the president has done for Israel. But he continued, for the vast majority of his address, to explain the profound misjudgment of Iran — its ideology, its goals, and the immense danger it constitutes to Israel, the region, the United States, and the world — that lies at the heart of the “very bad deal” emerging from the US-led P5+1 negotiations. And thus, by extension, he was explaining the profound misjudgment of Iran at the core of Obama’s worldview and policies.
While Israelis broadly oppose the deal they see taking shape, and mistrust Obama when it comes to stopping a nuclear Iran, there was no consensus in Israel about the tactic of addressing Congress at this juncture, no little criticism of the move as an electoral gambit, two weeks before Israeli election day. And Netanyahu is indeed an ultra-sophisticated politician whose only regret about the timing of the speech was that it didn’t start two hours later — when it would have gone out live, albeit with the court-mandated five-minute delay, on the main 8 p.m. Israeli news broadcasts.
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From the Jewish Daily Forward
Ending An Ancient Jewish ‘Spitting’ Rite In Israel
By Judy Maltz (Haaretz)
Halitza shoe in the Bata Shoe Museum/Wikicommons
Responding to numerous complaints from women, a religious advocacy group in Israel is urging the Chief Rabbinate to regulate an obscure Jewish “spitting” rite.
The rite in question, performed in the Orthodox community, is known as “Halitza” and is required of women who have been widowed with no children and who wish to remarry. In ancient times, the brother of the deceased husband was required to marry the widow. The “Halitza” rite frees him of that obligation. In the ceremony, the woman removes or loosens her brother-in-law’s shoe and then spits in his direction to indicate her disgust with his refusal to marry her. She then recites the following words: “So shall be done to a man who refuses to build up his brother’s house.”
According to ITIM, a non-profit that advocates on behalf of individuals facing obstacles under Israeli religious law, about 20-25 women a year in Israel are subjected to this rite. Should they remarry without participating in the rite, according to Jewish law, their children would be considered bastards and cannot marry in a religious ceremony.
