Zio-Watch News Round-up

Yemen conflict has pushed six million people to the brink of starvation: Zio-Watch, July 29, 2015

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From The Independent

Yemen conflict has pushed six million people to the brink of starvation, Oxfam warns

The UK is helping to arm Saudi planes attacking rebel targets in the country



From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Israeli Foreign Ministry: Sunni Arab nations are ‘allies’

NEW YORK (JTA) – The director general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, Dore Gold, called the Middle East’s Sunni Arab nations “Israel’s allies.”

Gold used the term twice in a presentation Wednesday in New York focused on the shortcomings of the Iran nuclear deal.

“What we have is a regime on a roll that is trying to conquer the Middle East,” Gold said of Iran, “and it’s not Israel talking, that is our Sunni Arab neighbors — and you know what? I’ll use another expression – that is our Sunni Arab allies talking.”

Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and a longtime adviser to Israeli prime ministers from the right-wing Likud Party, is also the author of a 2003 book on Saudi Arabia called “Hatred’s Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism.” Saudi Arabia has been one of the most vocal Arab opponents of U.S.-Iran rapprochement and the Iran nuclear agreement.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Israel reportedly strikes Syrian car, killing 5 militants

(JTA) — An Israeli surveillance plane reportedly bombed a car in Syria, killing five men with ties to a pro-Assad Druze militia and the Hezbollah terrorist group.

The attack Wednesday in Quneitra, near the Israeli border, was said to be targeting Samir Kuntar, a terrorist released from an Israeli prison in a 2008 swap with Hezbollah, according to several media outlets. It was not known whether Kuntar was killed.

According to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, three of the dead were members of the pro-Assad militia and two belonged to Hezbollah, the Times of Israel reported.

Kuntar, who served 29 years in Israeli prison, was responsible for the death of four Israelis, including a 4-year-old girl and her father in a 1979 attack in Nahariya. He is suspected of planning multiple attacks against Israeli soldiers in the Golan Heights.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Pollard’s wait not over: Fight to bring him to Israel will outlast his release

Israelis calling for the release of convicted spy Jonathan Pollard in Jerusalem on March 21, 2013. (Liar Mizrahi/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Barack Obama will not alter the terms of Jonathan Pollard’s parole once he is released, a signal that Israel’s struggle to bring him to the country whose citizenship he has assumed will outlast his November release date.

“Mr. Pollard will serve his sentence as mandated by statute for the very serious crimes he committed,” Alistair Baskey, a National Security Council spokesman, said in a statement emailed to JTA. “The president has no intention of altering the terms of Mr. Pollard’s parole.”

It is not clear what if any parole terms may be imposed on the convicted Israeli spy upon his Nov. 20 release after serving 30 years in a federal prison. His lawyers in a statement Tuesday said that Pollard would be required to remain in the United States for five years. Within minutes, however, Eliot Lauer and Jacques Semmelman issued a corrected release removing that sentence.

The corrected statement nonetheless suggested that Pollard would face travel restrictions.
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From PressTV

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says Israel’s decision for the construction of more illegal settler units in the occupied West Bank obstructs efforts for peace in the region.

“Settlements are illegal under international law, an impediment to peace, and cannot be reconciled with… Israel’s stated intention to pursue a two-state solution,” said Ban in a statement released in New York on Wednesday.

The UN chief also urged Israel “to halt and reverse such decisions in the interest of peace.”

The remarks came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved the construction of hundreds of illegal settler units in the West Bank.

Netanyahu’s office said on Wednesday that “the immediate construction of 300 homes in Beit El” settlement was authorized, adding that the planning for another 504 homes in Israeli-occupied East al-Quds (Jerusalem) was also approved.

Earlier in the day, the European Union also denounced the construction of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied territories.

“We urge… Israel to urgently reverse recent decisions and put an end to settlement expansion,” EU said in a statement released on Wednesday.

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) also denounced Tel Aviv’s decision.

“These settlement measures and war crimes are part of a plan by Israeli leaders to impose a ‘Greater Israel’ on historic Palestine and destroy … the chance for peace” in the region, PLO said in a statement hours after the announcement of the decision.

Israel has expanded its illegal settlement construction in the occupied territories in the past few years in defiance of international calls on the regime to end its expansionist polices.

Over half a million Israelis live in over 120 illegal settlements built since Israel’s occupation of the West Bank including East al-Quds in 1967.
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From Ynet News

Carter: Successful Iran nuclear deal better than strike

US defense secretary says deal might not be successfully implemented, and to that end ‘we are under instructions from the president to preserve, improve military option’.

WASHINGTON – Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Wednesday that the US armed forces stand ready to confront Iran, but told lawmakers that a successful implementation of the nuclear agreement with Tehran is preferable to a military strike.
Carter, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and three members of President Barack Obama’s Cabinet testified at a committee hearing as part of the White House’s aggressive campaign to convince Congress to back the Iranian nuclear deal, which calls on Iran to curb its nuclear program in exchange for billions of dollars in sanctions relief.
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From The Independent

Puerto Rico should close schools and sack teachers to pay back its debts, hedge funds say

Puerto Rico could default as soon as August 1

A group of billionaire hedge fund managers have called for Puerto Rico to sack teachers and close schools so that investors can recover some of the $72 billion in debt the country owes, even though over 100 schools have already closed in the country this year alone.

Three former International Monetary Fund economists were hired by a group of 34 hedge funds to write a report titled ‘For Puerto Rico, there is a better way’. They found that Puerto Rico should raise taxes, cut health benefits and sack teachers to shrink the size of the state rather than default and leave bondholders out of pocket.

The economists used data showing that while educational expenditure had increased 39 per cent, or $1.4 billion in the past decade, total school enrolment has declined 25 per cent. That suggested Puerto Rico “has room to lower expenses”, they said.

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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Munich upholds ban on Holocaust street memorials

(JTA) — Munich upheld a ban on small brass street memorials to Holocaust victims but will allow other kinds of memorials.

The City Council voted Wednesday to keep the ban on the memorials, known as stumbling blocks, ignoring a petition signed by 100,000 people calling for a lifting of the prohibition in the German city. Some local Jewish groups have joined the council in opposing the memorials, which are set into the street, saying they are disrespectful because they can be stepped on.

The council voted to allow plaques to be hung on the walls of houses where victims of the Holocaust once lived and is planning to create a city monument with the names of Munich victims.

The Stumbling Blocks memorial project was launched in 1993 by a Cologne artist, Gunter Demnig, and has been introduced in hundreds of cities in Germany and former German-occupied countries.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency

WATCH: Jack Black, Morgan Freeman urge Americans to support Iran deal

Actors Jack Black and Morgan Freeman join other big shots, including Queen Noor of Jordan, in a comedic video released Tuesday that plumps for the Iran deal.

The celebrities urge Americans to contact their representatives in Washington to encourage them to support the agreement between world powers and Iran, which Congress has until September to review. Congressional disapproval of the deal would likely scuttle it.

Morgan Freeman cautions in the video that in that case, the U.S. could be forced into war with Iran — “another dangerous, drawn out and expensive conflict in the Middle East with many lives lost.”

Produced by Global Zero, a group the advocates the elimination of nuclear weapons, the video starts with a star-dusted warning that if Congress “sabotages the nuclear deal with Iran,” Americans could be “totally fried by a major nuclear bomb dead.” Jack Black frets that he won’t be able to play frisbee with his sons, because “the frisbee will be melted.”

Queen Noor interrupts the hand-wringing, saying, “We’re not actually worried about Iran dropping a nuclear weapon on the United States.” But she and retired U.S. Ambassador Thomas Pickering agree that without a deal, there would be nothing stopping Iran from getting the bomb, and a nuclear arms race in the Middle East would be likely.
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