Dr. Patrick Slattery’s News Roundup
A service of DavidDuke.com
From The Times of Israel
IDF ‘more ready than ever’ to strike Iran, security official says
Though military option is not likely at this point, army is constantly adapting and improving for possible attack, Walla reports
The Israeli military is readier now than it ever has been to carry out a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities should it be instructed to do so, a senior security official told Walla news Monday.
“Every year that passes, the IDF improves,” the unnamed official said. “We never stand still. The professional level increases. In the coming year we will receive another submarine, F-35 fighter jets and other platforms. Intelligence is improving as well,” he said.
He noted that Israel’s defensive capabilities against Iranian retaliation were also constantly improving.
But the news site noted that the military option had essentially been suspended in recent years and would not be easily reinstated unless there is a fundamental change in the political landscape, or a serious development in Iran’s alleged progress towards a nuclear bomb.
A strike is looking increasingly unlikely following July’s nuclear accord between Iran and world powers — the US, EU, Russia and China.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Withhold U.S. aid over Palestinian teens’ deaths, U.S. lawmaker suggests
(JTA) — A Minnesota congresswoman called on State Department officials to investigate whether the killing of two Palestinian teenagers by Israeli soldiers requires the withholding of U.S. military aid.
Rep. Betty McCollum, a Democrat, in a letter made public Monday sought the probe over whether the May 2014 deaths of Nadeem Nawara and Mohammad Daher constituted violations of the Leahy Law, which bars the State and Defense departments from providing military assistance to foreign military units that violate human rights with impunity.
If so, she wrote, the “38th Company of the Israeli Border Police should be ineligible to receive future U.S. military aid and training and all border police involved in this incident should be denied U.S. visas as stipulated by the law.”
The teens were killed hours apart in the same location during a demonstration in the West Bank town of Beitunia for the Nakba, Arabic for catastrophe, marking Israel’s successful bid for statehood.
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From PressTV
Gaza healthcare on verge of collapse: Health officials
Health officials in the Gaza Strip say a severe energy crisis is pushing the healthcare system in the blockaded coastal sliver to the verge of collapse.
Gaza’s Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra warned on Monday that some hospitals in the territory could stop operating within hours.
Al-Qidra said that the “Shifa Hospital, Kamal Adwan Hospital, the European Gaza Hospital, and Rantisi Hospital could stop offering services because they are about to run out of fuel.”
The official added that the situation in Gaza is at its worst point since the Health Ministry was established about two decades ago.
Gaza’s healthcare crisis has been fueled by Israel’s eight-year siege, which has deprived the residents of the most basic items like food, medicine and fuel.
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From The Times of Israel
Complaint claims US taxpayer dollars subsidizing Jewish terrorism in Israel
New York-based Honenu supports Jews accused of violence against Arabs. Now a Jewish human rights group wants it investigated
NEW YORK (JTA) — Taxpayer dollars in the United States and Israel are subsidizing Jewish terrorism against Arabs, a complaint filed with the New York state Attorney General’s Office alleges.
The accusations follow a recent expose by Israel’s Channel 10 about the work of the 13-year-old Israeli nonprofit Honenu, which provides financial support to Jews convicted of or on trial for violence against Palestinians, including so-called price tag attacks in the West Bank. The television program aired earlier this month in the aftermath of the July 31 firebombing of a Palestinian home in the West Bank village of Duma that killed an 18-month-old boy and his father. No suspects were arrested in the attack, but Jewish extremists are suspected. The attackers scrawled the Hebrew word for “revenge” at the site of the arson.
Since 2003, Honenu has operated a New York-based US fundraising arm. In 2010, the last year for which data is listed, the tax-exempt organization has raised $233,700 in the United States, according to tax filings.
Critics say Honenu’s activities are no different from those of Palestinian groups that provide material support to Palestinian terrorists.
“Honenu is doing exactly what Hamas and the PLO have been criticized for — providing personal support, if not incentives, for those who commit terrorist acts against others,” says the complaint sent Monday by T’ruah, The Rabbinic Call For Human Rights, to the charities bureau of New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Report finds BDS, pro-Israel activity increasing on U.S. campuses
NEW YORK (JTA) — Pro- and anti-Israel activity at U.S. universities increased in the 2014-15 academic year, with groups that support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel springing up on more campuses and employing new strategies.
Nonetheless, there were more than twice as many pro-Israel events as anti-Israel ones on campus, according to the Israel on Campus Coalition’s “Campus Trends Report” released last week.
The report found that the number of U.S. campuses with anti-Israel activity jumped by 31.2 percent from the previous academic year, with two groups that promote BDS — Students for Justice in Palestine, or SJP, and Jewish Voice for Peace, or JVP — both increasing their presence. SJP is now on 150 campuses and JVP on 14 campuses, according to the Washington, D.C.-based group.
BDS resolutions on campus increased, particularly on the West Coast and in the Midwest, with activists for the first time pushing referenda in which the entire student population, not just student leaders, is asked to vote on BDS resolutions.
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From Russia Today
Bulgaria to stage military drills near Macedonian border amid worsening refugee crisis
“The situation in the neighboring states of Macedonia, Greece and Serbia is quite complicated and we have to react preventively,” Defense Ministry chief of staff Valeria Kardashevska told Reuters.
She added that Bulgaria has “already sent 25 troops and the relevant equipment and we are ready to increase the number of troops if necessary,” and that the ministry is “in constant contact with the border police.”
From Russia Today
Israeli president says govt has ‘right’ to build West Bank settlements
Although the building of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank is illegal under international law, Rivlin believes that the “land of Israel” includes this territory.
“I love the land of Israel with all my heart,” Rivlin said, AFP reported. “I have never and will never give up on this land. For me, our right to this land is not a matter of political debate. It is a basic fact of modern Zionism.”
From The Times of Israel
Hammond says ‘perfectly normal’ Iran seeks to ‘turn a page’ with West
Visiting British foreign secretary says he was surprised to find Islamic republic a ‘bustling, dynamic’ place with ‘enormous potential’
British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said Monday he believed in Iranian’s genuine desire to “turn a page” with the West and develop better ties.
Hammon spoke at the end of a two-day visit to Tehran and a meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to mark the reopening of the two nations’ respective embassies after a break of several years.
While he stressed that the countries’ relations remained complex and difficult, he said Iran as a regional power was too important to ignore on Middle East issues.
“It’s hard to see what is the point of advocating dialog with someone who you know has a very different view of the world from you, unless you are anticipating some give and take,” he said, according to the UK’s Telegraph.
He added that the visit had changed his view of the Islamic republic.
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From The Times of Israel
Assad: First we’ll deal with the rebels, then Israel
Syrian president indicates there will be no immediate retaliation for last week’s cross-border clashes
Syrian President Bashar Assad on Monday said he would deal with Israel by combating Syrian rebels, whom he termed the Jewish state’s “emissaries,” in remarks that indicated he would not retaliate for airstrikes last week on Syrian territory.
Four rockets were fired on Israel’s Golan Heights and Upper Galilee on Thursday, prompting the largest Israeli assault on Syrian territory in decades. Holding the Syrian government responsible for the rocket attacks, Israel fired artillery shells and launched airstrikes against Assad’s forces, hitting 14 military posts in the Syrian Golan Heights.
On Friday, Israel said it carried out a new raid in Syria, targeting and killing members of the cell responsible for the rocket fire. Syrian state television said six people were killed and seven wounded in the strike on a vehicle some 10 kilometers from the Syrian-Israeli border.
However, on Monday, Assad sought to downplay the Israeli response and highlight the efforts to beat the rebels.
“The real tools Israel uses today, more important than the most recent strikes, are the terrorists in Syria,” Assad told the Al-Manar TV station, run by his Lebanese ally group Hezbollah. “What they are doing is far more dangerous than what Israel has done recently.
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From The Times of Israel
Obama caught between Clinton, Biden ambitions
With a family feud brewing, president and top political advisers find themselves in a tricky position
WASHINGTON (AP) — US President Barack Obama is the man in the middle, caught between the White House aspirations of two of his closest advisers: Vice President Joe Biden and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
For months, White House officials expected Clinton to be the Democratic nominee in the 2016 election. Some of Obama’s top political advisers moved to New York to run her campaign and Obama appeared to give his tacit approval, saying she would be an “excellent president.”
But that bet on Clinton suddenly looks less certain. With Biden weighing his own presidential run more seriously amid signs of weakness in Clinton’s campaign, the White House faces the prospect of a family feud over who will become heir to Obama’s legacy.
“Certainly he’s got something at stake here,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Monday of Obama’s interest in the 2016 election.
Biden’s recent overtures to donors and Democratic officials have led to palpable awkwardness in the West Wing as aides — many with close ties to Clinton, the vice president or both — try to maintain impartiality.
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