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“NEWS IN REVIEW” ROUND-UP

 We welcome your comments to this and any other CIJR publication. Please address your response to:  Rob Coles, Publications Chairman, Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, PO Box 175, Station  H, Montreal QC H3G 2K7 – Tel: (514) 486-5544 – Fax:(514) 486-8284; E-mail: rob@isranet.wpsitie.com

 

MEDIA-OCRITY OF THE WEEK: “A good bad deal along such lines is still possible — and that will depend on the details now being negotiated at this 11th hour. Such a deal would enable the president to say to a skeptical Congress and Israel that he has gotten the best bad deal that an empty holster can buy, and that it has bought time for a transformation in Iran that is better than starting a war whose fallout no one can foretell. But beware: This deal could be as big, if not bigger, an earthquake in the Middle East as the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. And what both had in common is that we were totally unprepared to manage the aftershocks the morning after. The Arab world today has almost no geopolitical weight. Egypt is enfeebled, Saudi Arabia lacks the capacity to project power and Iraq is no more. An Iran that is unshackled from sanctions and gets an injection of over $100 billion in cash will be even more superior in power than all of its Arab neighbors. Therefore, the U.S. needs to take the lead in initiating a modus vivendi between Sunni Arabs and Persian Shiites and curb Iran’s belligerence toward Israel. If we can’t help defuse those conflicts, a good bad deal could very easily fuel a wider regional war.”— Thomas L. Friedman (New York Times, July 1, 2015)

 

WEEKLY QUOTES

 

“Given past behavior on the part of Iran, that simply can’t be a declaration by Iran…That’s going to have to be a serious, rigorous verification mechanism. And that, I think, is going to be the test as to whether we get a deal or not,” — U.S. President Barack Obama. As a high-level team of Iranian officials flew to Vienna on Tuesday for an intensive final week of negotiations for a comprehensive nuclear accord, Obama issued a warning that he was prepared to walk away from any agreement with a verification regime that consisted of “a few inspectors wandering around every once in a while.” (New York Times, June 30, 2015)  

 

“It’s an important symbolic turning point…All of a sudden, the amount of potential future targets are multiplied by 10, 20 or even 30 if you consider that there are thousands of company sites across the country.” —Claude Moniquet, CEO of Brussels-based think tank European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center. When gunmen killed 17 people in a string of attacks in Paris in January, France tightened security and cracked down on French nationals traveling to territory controlled by radical Islamist groups. But the attack on a relatively small-scale industrial gas plant in southeastern France last Friday, which left one victim decapitated, exposes the unpredictable threat France faces even far away from its capital. (Wall Street Journal, June 26, 2015)

 

“These attacks show that the ISIS threat is spreading well beyond Iraq and Syria…A continued safe-haven there means more attacks across the region, Europe, and even here at home. We must aggressively deny ISIS an area from which to unfurl their black banners of hate and death and plot their attacks.” —Ed Royce, a California Republican who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Terrorist attacks that killed dozens rattled three continents last Friday, sparking new fears over Islamic State’s influence and debate over how to respond to jihadists across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. (Wall Street Journal, June 26, 2015)

 

"The Human Rights Council has once again proven today its irrelevance and detachment from reality…As the world around us goes up in flames – a serious terrorist attack in Egypt, continued anarchy in Syria, millions of refugees fleeing their homes, the Council continues to condemn Israel," —Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon. The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) endorsed Friday afternoon a controversial report accusing both Israel and Hamas of possible war crimes. In a vote at the Council, 41 member states voted in favor of the resolution adopting the report. Among those voting for were EU countries France, Germany, UK, Ireland and the Netherlands – despite Israeli calls for the EU to vote against the "biased" report. Nahshon claimed the decision was "the product of Palestinian efforts designed to demonize Israel and tie its hands in its legitimate struggle against the terror of militant Islam…Israel is a law-abiding country, whose justice system is respected internationally," he added. (Arutz Sheva, July 3, 2015)

Contents

 

SHORT TAKES

 

EGYPT, STUNNED BY SINAI ASSAULT, VOWS TO ERASE ‘TERRORIST DENS’ (Cairo) —  Egypt’s military killed 23 militants in the northern Sinai Peninsula early Thursday, as the government sought to reassert control and eradicate what it called the area’s “terrorist dens” after the largest assault there by jihadists affiliated with the Islamic State. On Wednesday, terrorists belonging to a group calling itself Sinai Province launched coordinated attacks on military checkpoints in the northern Sinai before storming a town and occupying it for hours. A military spokesman said 17 soldiers had been killed, though other estimates put the toll much higher. Also in Egypt, a powerful bomb killed the country’s top prosecutor, Hisham Barakat, as he drove to work on Monday. (New York Times, July 2, 2015)

 

KUWAIT OFFICIALS IDENTIFY SUICIDE BOMBER AS SAUDI ARABIAN MAN (Kuwait) — Kuwait identified the suicide bomber behind its worst terrorist attack as a young Saudi and said it had detained the driver of the vehicle that took him to a Shiite Muslim mosque where he killed 27 people. The disclosure of the bomber’s Saudi nationality is likely to focus the attention of authorities investigating last Friday’s suicide bombing on ties between Islamists in the small Persian Gulf state and those in its larger, more conservative neighbor. Kuwait’s Interior Ministry named the bomber as Fahd Suliman Abdul-Muhsen al-Qabaa and said he flew into Kuwait’s airport at dawn Friday. This was hours before a man detonated an explosives-laden vest at Kuwait City’s Imam al-Sadeq mosque. (Washington Post, June 29, 2015)

 

SAUDI GOVERNMENT FUNDING PRIVATE ISLAMIC SCHOOLS IN CANADA (Ottawa) — The Saudi government is donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to help finance the expansion of private Islamic schools in Canada, according to newly leaked documents. The documents, involving cables between diplomats at the Saudi embassy in Ottawa and government officials in Riyadh, contain conversations about a $211,000 donation to a school in Ottawa and $134,000 to a school in Mississauga. Foreign donations to private schools are legal. But Riyadh is frequently accused of spreading a puritanical form of Islam. (Globe & Mail, July 1, 2015)

 

I.S. THREATENS HAMAS, FATAH AND "STATE OF THE JEWS" (Jerusalem) —The Islamic State has produced a video threatening Hamas, Fatah and what it calls “the state of the Jews”. The video targets “Hamas dictators” in Gaza. Tensions between Hamas and ISIS supporters in Gaza have been on the rise. Last month, an ISIS supporter was killed during an attempted arrest, leading to a spate of bombings against Hamas, as well as rocket fire on Israel. Although ISIS does not have an operational presence in Israel, it has many supporters in Gaza among those who feel Hamas is too “soft” on sharia law and on the Jewish state. Last week, the ISIS flag was seen flying on the Temple Mount and fliers signed “ISIS Palestine” were posted around Jerusalem. (Breaking Israel News, July 2, 2015)

 

ISLAMIST GUNMEN STORM SOMALIAN ARMY BASE WITH BOMBS, THIRTY DEAD (Lego, Somalia) — Islamist from the al Qaeda-linked al-Shabab group attacked a remote African Union base in Somalia, beheading women and killing at least 30 people, officials and witnesses say. Al-Shabab says its fighters have taken control of the base but that has not been confirmed. Lego residents reported seeing terrorists burning vehicles, carrying off weapons and removing the bodies of their fighters killed in the attack. Al-Shabab, which vowed it would step up attacks during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, claimed responsibility for the attack. (Fox News, June 26, 2015)

 

ISRAEL INTERCEPTS GAZA-BOUND AID SHIP IN MEDITERRANEAN (Jerusalem) — Israeli naval commandos intercepted a protest ship at sea bound for the Gaza Strip on Monday and diverted the vessel toward a port in Israel. The Israelis said no one was injured in the operation. The Swedish-registered Marianne of Gothenburg was attempting to enter Israeli-controlled waters in the Mediterranean Sea and deliver aid packages to Gaza. Aboard were crew members, journalists and activists. The activists were protesting Israel’s maritime blockade of the coastal enclave. Other protest ships have attempted similar runs to beat the blockade, including a Turkish-organized vessel, the Mavi Marmara, in 2010 that was intercepted at sea by Israeli commandos in a raid that left nine activists dead and soured once-close relations between Israel and Turkey. (Washington Post, June 29, 2015)

 

VATICAN SIGNS FIRST TREATY WITH 'THE STATE OF PALESTINE' (Rome) — The Vatican has signed its first treaty with the "State of Palestine" and called for a two-state solution, in a move that drew immediate anger from the Israeli government. Israel warned that its future diplomatic relations with the Vatican could be damaged by the treaty, which it said "damages the prospects for advancing a peace agreement". The Vatican’s previous agreement had been with the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), signed in 2000. The new treaty represents the Holy See’s upgrade in the status of Palestine to a state, which it recognised in 2013. However, Israel argues that according to the Oslo Accords, only the PLO, not any state of Palestine, has the capacity to sign treaties. (Telegraph, June 26, 2015)

 

WORLD JEWISH POPULATION NEARS PRE-HOLOCAUST LEVEL (Jerusalem) — The world's Jewish population has grown to be nearly as large as it was before the Holocaust, according to an Israeli think tank. The think tank said there were currently 14.2 million Jews in the world. When factoring in individuals with one Jewish parent and others who identify as part Jewish, the figure approaches 16.5 million – the Jewish population on the eve of the Second World War. The report said the rise has been due in part to natural growth, mainly in Israel, which has about 6.1 million Jews and one of the Western world's highest fertility rates. But it also linked the growth to "changing patterns of Jewish identification." It said that 59 per cent of adult children in the US who have just one Jewish parent now identify as Jewish, a majority "for the first time in memory". (Telegraph, July 2, 2015)    

 

 

THE WORST AGREEMENT IN U.S. DIPLOMATIC HISTORY                                                                          

Charles Krauthammer                                                                                                   

Washington Post, July 2, 2015         

 

The devil is not in the details. It’s in the entire conception of the Iran deal, animated by President Obama’s fantastical belief that he, uniquely, could achieve detente with a fanatical Islamist regime whose foundational purpose is to cleanse the Middle East of the poisonous corruption of American power and influence.

 

In pursuit of his desire to make the Islamic Republic into an accepted, normalized “successful regional power,” Obama decided to take over the nuclear negotiations. At the time, Tehran was reeling — the rial plunging, inflation skyrocketing, the economy contracting — under a regime of international sanctions painstakingly constructed over a decade.

 

Then, instead of welcoming Congress’ attempt to tighten sanctions to increase the pressure on the mullahs, Obama began the negotiations by loosening sanctions, injecting billions into the Iranian economy (which began growing again in 2014) and conceding in advance an Iranian right to enrich uranium. It’s been downhill ever since. Desperate for a legacy deal, Obama has played the supplicant, abandoning every red line his administration had declared essential to any acceptable deal.

 

Inspections. They were to be anywhere, anytime, unimpeded. Now? Total cave. Unfettered access has become “managed access.” Nuclear inspectors will have to negotiate and receive Iranian approval for inspections. Which allows them denial and/or crucial delay for concealing any clandestine activities.

 

To give a flavor of the degree of our capitulation, the administration played Iran’s lawyer on this one, explaining that, after all, “the United States of America wouldn’t allow anybody to get into every military site, so that’s not appropriate.” Apart from the absurdity of morally equating America with the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism, if we were going to parrot the Iranian position, why wait 19 months to do so — after repeatedly insisting on free access as essential to any inspection regime?

 

Coming clean on past nuclear activity. The current interim agreement that governed the past 19 months of negotiation required Iran to do exactly that. Tehran has offered nothing. The administration had insisted that this accounting was essential because how can you verify future illegal advances in Iran’s nuclear program if you have no baseline?

 

After continually demanding access to their scientists, plans and weaponization facilities, Secretary of State John Kerry two weeks ago airily dismissed the need, saying he is focused on the future, “not fixated” on the past. And that we have “absolute knowledge” of the Iranian program anyway — a whopper that his staffers had to spend days walking back. Not to worry, we are told. The accounting will be done after the final deal is signed. Which is ridiculous. If the Iranians haven’t budged on disclosing previous work under the current sanctions regime, by what logic will they comply after sanctions are lifted?

 

Sanctions relief. These were to be gradual and staged as the International Atomic Energy Agency certified Iranian compliance over time. Now we’re going to be releasing up to $150 billion as an upfront signing bonus. That’s 25 times the annual budget of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Enough to fuel a generation of intensified Iranian aggression from Yemen to Lebanon to Bahrain. Yet three months ago, Obama expressed nonchalance about immediate sanctions relief. It’s not the issue, he said. The real issue is “snap-back” sanctions to be reimposed if Iran is found in violation.

 

Good grief. Iran won’t be found in violation. The inspection regime is laughable and the bureaucratic procedures endless. Moreover, does anyone imagine that Russia and China will reimpose sanctions? Or that the myriad European businesses preparing to join the Iranian gold rush the day the deal is signed will simply turn around and go home?

 

Nonnuclear-related sanctions. The administration insisted that the nuclear talks would not affect separate sanctions imposed because of Iranian aggression and terrorism. That was then. The administration is now leaking that everything will be lifted.

Taken together, the catalog of capitulations is breathtaking: spot inspections, disclosure of previous nuclear activity, gradual sanctions relief, retention of nonnuclear sanctions. What’s left? A surrender document of the kind offered by defeated nations suing for peace. Consider: The strongest military and economic power on earth, backed by the five other major powers, armed with what had been a crushing sanctions regime, is about to sign the worst international agreement in U.S. diplomatic history.

How did it come to this? With every concession, Obama and Kerry made clear they were desperate for a deal. And they will get it. Obama will get his “legacy.” Kerry will get his Nobel. And Iran will get the bomb.    

                                                             

Contents                                                                                      

      

‘BRITAIN’S SCHINDLER’ NICHOLAS WINTON, SAVIOUR OF 650 JEWISH                       

CHILDREN FROM THE HOLOCAUST, DEAD AT 106                                                                                                  

Naomi Koppel                                                                                                                              

(National Post, July 2, 2015)                                           

                  

“Is there anyone in our audience tonight who owes their life to Nicholas Winton?” asked the presenter of the popular BBC magazine program “That’s Life”. Around the elderly man, sitting with his wife in the front row of the audience, more than 30 people got to their feet. The man stood to acknowledge them, wiping tears from his eyes. It was 1988, some 50 years since young stockbroker Nicholas Winton found himself in Prague as the Nazis marched on Czechoslovakia and all around him Jewish parents desperately looked for a means of escape, if not for themselves then at least for their children.

 

Virtually single-handedly, Winton saved more than 650 of those children from almost certain death in the Holocaust. But he didn’t talk about it for decades, until his wife discovered documents in their attic that revealed the story and for the first time allowed the rescued children to know and thank their saviour. “There are all kinds of things you don’t talk about, even with your family,” Winton said later. “Everything that happened before the war actually didn’t feel important in the light of the war itself.”

 

Winton’s death Wednesday at the age of 106 brought tributes from leaders and Jewish groups in Britain, the Czech Republic and Israel. “In a world plagued by evil and indifference, Winton dedicated himself to saving the innocent and the defenceless. His exceptional moral leadership serves as an example to all humanity,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netayahu said Thursday. “Winton knew how to correctly read the harsh reality and chose to leave his comfortable life and follow the voice of his conscience,” added Avner Shalev, chairman of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.

 

The story of Winton’s exploits led former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to dub him “Britain’s Schindler”, in reference to the German businessman Oskar Schindler, who famously saved Jewish lives during the war. Returning to Britain and finding there was no one working on the problem of how to get the children out, Winton borrowed the headed paper of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia and underneath typed the words “Children’s Section.” He approached the British government, and eventually got a promise that it would let the children in, provided he had a foster home arranged for each of them, and upon payment of a guarantee — the substantial sum of 50 pounds per child.

 

He drew up lists of some 6,000 suitable children, publishing their photographs to try to encourage British families to agree to take them. He arranged trains from Prague to the Netherlands, ferries to take the children across the North Sea. Eight trains and one plane carried 669 children to Britain in the months before the outbreak of war. The largest evacuation was scheduled for Sept. 3, 1939, the day Britain declared war on Germany. That train never left, and almost none of the 250 children trying to flee that day survived the war.

 

“At the time, everybody said, ‘Isn’t it wonderful what you’ve done for the Jews? You saved all these Jewish people,”‘ Winton said. “When it was first said to me, it came almost as a revelation because I didn’t do it particularly for that reason. I was there to save children.” The children from Prague were among some 10,000 mostly Jewish children who made it to Britain on what were known as the Kindertransports (children’s transports). Few of them would see their parents again.

 

Though many more children were saved from Berlin and Vienna, those operations were better-organized and better-financed. Winton’s operation was unique because he worked almost alone. “Maybe a lot more could have been done, but much more time would have been needed, much more help would have been needed from other countries, much more money would have been needed, much more organization,” Winton later said. He also acknowledged that not all the children who made it to Britain were well-treated in their foster homes, and some foster parents used them as cheap domestic servants. He also faced criticism in some quarters for placing Jewish children with Christian families. “I wouldn’t claim that it was 100 per cent successful, but I would claim that everybody who came over was alive at the end of the war,” he said, quoted in the book Into the Arms of Strangers.

 

After the story came to light, Winton’s wife Grete persuaded him to talk about what had happened, and many of the children — now parents and grandparents themselves — contacted him to thank him for saving their lives. Among the well-known people saved by Winton were American scientist Ben Abeles, British film director Karel Reisz and Canadian journalist Joe Schlesinger. A film about his heroism by Slovak director Matej Minac, “Nicholas Winton — The Power of Good,” won an International Emmy Award in 2002. Minac made a second documentary, “Nicky’s Family”, in 2011…                                         

[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]   

 

CIJR Wishes All Our Friends & Supporters: Shabbat Shalom!

On Topic Links 

 

Egypt Still Trying to Find a Fitting Answer to a Complex Situation: Zvi Mazel, Jerusalem Post, July 2, 2015  —Fighting broke out Wednesday morning in the northeastern section of the Sinai Peninsula as the local branch of Ansar Beit al-Makdis, an organization that has sworn allegiance to Islamic State, simultaneously targeted a number of military targets in what was undoubtedly the largest attack ever in the region.

Will Iran Enter the Oil Market With a Bang — or More of a Whimper?: Yadullah Hussain, Financial Post, July 2, 2015 —U.S. oil companies are unlikely to rush into Iran anytime soon, even if Tehran secures a deal with global powers this summer regarding its nuclear program, according to analysts.

Café Central and a Coffee with Viennese Ghosts: Intellectuals, Dictators, and Zionists: Lee Smith, Weekly Standard, June 29, 2015 —With Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif’s one-day trip back to Tehran for consultations with supreme leader Ali Khamenei, it was a slow day for the nuclear talks here in the Austrian capital.

Answering Pope Francis’s Question About Auschwitz: Dr. Rafael Medoff, Breaking Israel News, June 29, 2015— “The great powers had photographs of the railway routes that the trains took to… Auschwitz,” Pope Francis remarked this week. “Tell me,” he asked, “why didn’t they bomb them?” The pontiff’s question is not merely a matter of historical curiosity. It raises issues of morality, diplomacy, and American foreign policy with profound implications for our own times. 

 

 

 

 

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