Cross-posted from Asia Times Online.
Syria and Egypt are dying. They were dying before the Syrian civil war broke out and before the Muslim Brotherhood took power in Cairo. Syria has an insoluble civil war and Egypt has an insoluble crisis because they are dying. They are dying because they chose not to do what China did: move the better part of a billion people from rural backwardness to a modern urban economy within a generation. Mexico would have died as well, without the option to send its rural poor – fully one-fifth of its population – to the United States.

It was obvious to anyone who troubled to examine the data that Egypt could not maintain a bottomless pit in its balance of payments, created by a 50% dependency on imported food, not to mention an energy bill fed by subsidies that consumed a quarter of the national budget. It was obvious to Israeli analysts that the Syrian regime’s belated attempt to modernize its agricultural sector would create a crisis as hundreds of thousands of displaced farmers gathered in slums on the outskirts of its cities. These facts were in evidence early in 2011 when Hosni Mubarak fell and the Syrian rebellion broke out. Paul Rivlin of Israel’s Moshe Dayan Center published a devastating profile of Syria’s economic failure in April 2011. [1]

Sometimes countries dig themselves into a hole from which they cannot extricate themselves. Third World dictators typically keep their rural population poor, isolated and illiterate, the better to maintain control. That was the policy of Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party from the 1930s, which warehoused the rural poor in Stalin-modeled collective farms called ejidos occupying most of the national territory. That was also the intent of the Arab nationalist dictatorships in Egypt and Syria. The policy worked until it didn’t. In Mexico, it stopped working during the debt crisis of the early 1980s, and Mexico’s poor became America’s problem. In Egypt and Syria, it stopped working in 2011. There is nowhere for Egyptians and Syrians to go.

It is cheap to assuage Western consciences by sending some surplus arms to the Syrian Sunnis. No-one has proposed a way to find the more than US$20 billion a year that Egypt requires to stay afloat. In June 2011, then French president Nicholas Sarkozy talked about a Group of Eight support program of that order of magnitude. No Western (or Gulf State) government, though, is willing to pour that sort of money down an Egyptian sinkhole.

Egypt remains a pre-modern society, with nearly 50% illiteracy, a 30% rate of consanguineal marriage, a 90% rate of female genital mutilation, and an un- or underemployment rate over 40%. Syria has neither enough oil nor water to maintain the bazaar economy dominated by the Assad family.

Both were disasters waiting to happen. Economics, to be sure, set the stage but did not give the cues: Syria’s radical Sunnis revolted in part out of enthusiasm for the ascendancy of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and partly in fear of Iran’s ambition to foster Shi’ite ascendancy in the region.

It took nearly two years for the chattering classes to take stock of Egypt’s economic disaster. The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman, the benchmark for liberal opinion on foreign policy, gushed like an adolescent about the tech-savvy activists of Tahrir Square in early 2011. Last week he visited a Cairo bakery and watched the Egyptian poor jostling for subsidized bread. Some left hungry. [2] As malnutrition afflicts roughly a quarter of Egyptians in the World Health Organization’s estimate, and the Muslim Brotherhood government waits for a bumper wheat crop that never will come, Egypt is slowly dying. Emergency loans from Qatar and Libya slowed the national necrosis but did not stop it.

This background lends an air of absurdity to the present debate over whether the West should arm Syria’s Sunni rebels. American hawks like Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, to be sure, argue for sending arms to the Sunnis because they think it politically unwise to propose an attack on the Assad regime’s master, namely Iran. The Obama administration has agreed to arm the Sunnis because it costs nothing to pre-empt Republican criticism. We have a repetition of the “dumb and dumber”consensus that prevailed during early 2011, when the Republican hawks called for intervention in Libya and the Obama administration obliged. Call it the foreign policy version of the sequel, “Dumb and Dumberer”.

Even if the Sunnis could eject the Assad family from Damascus and establish a new government – which I doubt – the best case scenario would be another Egypt: a Muslim Brotherhood government presiding over a collapsed economy and sliding inevitably towards state failure. It is too late even for this kind of arrangement. Equalizing the military position of the two sides will merely increase the body count. The only humane thing to do is to partition the country on the Yugoslav model, but that does not appear to be on the agenda of any government.

Notes:
1. See Israel the winner in the Arab revolts, Asia Times Online, April 12, 2011.
2. Egypt’s Perilous Drift, New York Times, June 15, 2013.

Giulio Meotti, INN

Mention any biblical and historic site of the Jewish people. You won’t find one preserved and protected by the Israeli establishment.

Not only is the Temple Mount no longer “in our hands”, but its easier substitute, the Western Wall, has also been conceded by Israel’s government to a group of femminists and cultural extremists.

Judaism’s holiest place on earth today is the site of the most severe religious persecution of the Jews. Israeli governments have failed to stand up to wanton Palestinian acts of desecration. It’s the greatest crime of all – a religious and cultural crime of historic proportions.

Under pressure from Europe’s multiculturalists, United States, political Islam and Unesco, which are all trying to “de-Judaize” and “Islamicize” the most holy Jewish sites, the State of Israel seems top be giving up its sovereignty on sacred sites.

These Israeli “leaders”, leftist or rightist, seem proud that Dizengoff has replaced the Western Wall, that Herzliya is surrendering the Cave of the Patriarchs and that Holon is giving up the tomb of Rachel.

Israel is giving legitimacy to a fake Arabized geography which opens the Jüdenrein post-1967 areas, a de-Judaized “holy land”. When last January Benjamin Netanyahu visited the isolated “settlement” of Rechelim, it was called a “historic” visit. Why? Has Israel already forsaken these holy hilltops to the Sunni terrorists?

The Cave of the Patriarchs in Hevron and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem— the second most important Jewish holy sites — have been omitted from the list of Israel’s national heritage sites. If it’s “West Bank” or “Palestine”, as most of Israeli establishment believes, those are justifications for saying that “Jews stole it”.

The problem in fact is that Israeli mainstream has been persuaded to think that the Palestinian Arabs, whose members came to the holy land from the Arabian desert in the 7th century, are the descendants of the non-extant, disappeared “indigenous Canaanites” of the Bible.

Beit HaShalom in Hevron was purchased for a million dollars, but 16 holy Jewish families were evicted by a rightist Israeli government from the premises for no reason at all – as a court ruling issued later determined.

Joseph’s Tomb near Nablus, which is mentioned in the Book of Genesis, is an abandoned site which can be reached by Jewish worshippers only like thieves in the night, escorted by the IDF and only once in a month. It was Ehud Barak, not Hamas, that abandoned the site to the terrorists.

No Jew is permitted to set foot without military escort in the Shalom al Yisrael synagogue of the “city of palms”, Jericho. What is the difference between today’s segregation and that existing between 1948 and 1967, when Jews were denied access to it?

Who knows that the Tomb of Joshua bin Nun is in Kefel Hares?

A few days ago, Israel finalized the deal with the Vatican for the sovereignity over David’s tomb on Mount Zion, where some believe Jewish kings of Judea are buried. Tzipi Livni and Ehud Olmert wanted to turn over to the Arabs not only the Old City of Jerusalem, but also the Mount of Olives and the ancient excavated City of David.

Having accepted that east Jerusalem, where the real Jewish history took place, is “the Palestinian capital”, Israel gave the final ammunition to its enemies, including the liberal left, the Jewish self haters, large segments of Christianity and Islamism, which already justified the eradication of the Jewish people.

Israel’s materialism, self anti-Semitism, consumerism and relativism have turned Beit El (the site of the Holy Ark and Prophet Samuel’s court), Bethlehem (the birth place of King David), Shilo (the site of Joshua’s tabernacle and the Holy Ark) and Tekoa (hometown of the Prophet Amos) into symbols of “apartheid” and “colonialism”. It is Israel’s fault, it is the greatest Jewish betrayal.

In the eyes of Israel’s decision-makers, these holy sites, once sources of national pride, have become a “security problem”. That land can’t be called “Zion” without Jerusalem’s real city, Bethlehem, Hevron, Jericho, Beit El, Shilo and Shechem. These are Israel’s genetic code.

If Israel loses the sovereignty over these sacred dots on the map, the Jewish State becomes the Nazis’ Luftmenschen – the human beings of the air. And that state will go down like a castle of sand.

The writer, an Italian journalist with Il Foglio, writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author of the book “A New Shoah”, that researched the personal stories of Israel’s terror victims, published by Encounter. His writing has appeared in publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, Frontpage and Commentary. He is at work on a book about the Vatican and Israel.

Danny Danon declared that Netanyahu is not serious when he speaks of the two-state solution, meaning the prime minister is not rejecting his own principles and rightist promises. Netanyahu lost the elections, and barely managed to remain in power thanks to a losers’ alliance with Lieberman, who also feared a downfall.

Let us examine Netanyahu’s options. If he tries to please his new followers from the Left and enter into negotiations on a two-state solution, Habayit Hayehudi will leave the government. If he tries to replace Bennett’s party with Shas, Yesh Atid will quit. If Labor’s Yachimovich is asked to join the coalition, she will demand such a price that will split Likud and leave Netanyahu without a home. Unlike Sharon, the current PM will not be adopted by the Left.

There are only 20 Likud MKs because the Left did not vote for Netanyahu, despite the Bar-Ilan speech, while the Right ran away because of it. Netanyahu is heading a Tzipi Livni coalition that includes Tzipi Hotovely, Yaakov Peri and Orit Strock. How does he do it? By not rocking the boat. As long the “peace process” remains dormant, the fragile coalition remains in tact – albeit without any political, social or economic purpose (apart, perhaps, from the Iranian issue, although this appears to be the prime minister’s private project).

The coalition stands on two feet: The 31 Likud-Beiteinu MKs, who are connected to the coalition only by their desire to remain in power, and the 31 MKs from Yesh Atid and Habayit Hayehudi, who are joined together by the “equal share of the burden” ideal, or, in other words, the desire to keep the haredim away from positions of power. This alliance will hold as long as the diplomatic issue remains stalled. So what reason does Netanyahu have to take the “Palestinian bear” out of the woods?

Where can the peace talks take us when the Arab world is becoming more and more extreme and is soaked in blood? Can Abbas, who is far from being Sadat (who didn’t survive), really follow the peace path at such a time? Would he give up one stone in the Western Wall?

The peace camp takes comfort in the fact that “only” 150,000 settlers would have to be uprooted. Another 250,000 would remain in the “settlement blocs.” As part of the land swaps with the Palestinians, Israel would have to give up large parts of the Negev, the Lachish region and the Beit She’an Valley. Netanyahu has yet to confront the “settlers” from those areas. When he tries, he may miss the settlers from the West Bank.

And why should Netanyahu risk his premiership? In order to sit with Jibril Rajoub, who said he would have dropped an atomic bomb on us if he could? With Abbas, whose media outlets continue to deliver the message that Jaffa, Haifa and Beersheba are Palestinian cities conquered in 1948 and who names every square and school after terrorists who killed Jews?

Netanyahu swore he wouldn’t trust any agreement but would count only on the IDF forces that would be deployed in “Palestinian” territory. Does he really believe he will find an Arab partner who will agree to such an arrangement? When the entire concept of a Palestinian state seems so unrealistic, it is no wonder that Danon tried to assure us that our prime minister has not gone mad.

News emerged a few weeks ago in Arabic media that yet another fatwa had called on practicing Muslim women to travel to Syria and offer their sexual services to the jihadis fighting to overthrow the secularist Assad government and install Islamic law.Reports attribute the fatwa to Saudi sheikh Muhammad al-’Arifi, who, along with other Muslim clerics earlier permitted jihadis to rape Syrian women.

Muslim women prostituting themselves in this case is being considered a legitimate jihad because such women are making sacrifices-their chastity, their dignity-in order to help apparently sexually-frustrated jihadis better focus on the war to empower Islam in Syria.

And it is prostitution-for they are promised payment, albeit in the afterlife. The Quran declares that “Allah has purchased of the believers their persons [their bodies] and their goods; for theirs (in return) is the garden (of Paradise): they fight in His cause, and slay and are slain (Yusuf Ali trans. 9:111).

On the basis of this fatwa, several young Tunisian Muslim girls traveled to Syria to be “sex-jihadis.” Video interviews of distraught parents bemoaning their daughters’ fates are on the Internet, including one of a father and mother holding a picture of their daughter: “She’s only 16-she’s only 16! They brainwashed her!” pleads the father.

Most recently, the Egyptian-based news service Masrawy published a video interview with “Aisha,” one of the Tunisian Muslim girls who went sex-jihading in Syria, only to regret her actions. While in Tunisia, Aisha said she met a Muslim woman who began talking to her about the importance of piety, including wearing the hijab; she then went on to talk about traveling to Syria to help the jihadis “fight and kill infidels” and make Allah’s word supreme, adding that “women who die would do so in the way of Allah and become martyrs and enter paradise.” (According to mainstream Islamic teaching, dying in jihad is the only guaranteed way to avoid hell.)
Aisha eventually came to the conclusion that she was being exploited in the name of religion and left.

While news that Muslim girls in hijabs are prostituting themselves in the name of Islam may surprise some, Islamic clerics regularly issue fatwas permitting forbidden things-so long as they help the jihad. For instance, not only did the original “underwear bomber” Abdullah Hassan al-Asiri hide explosives in his rectum to assassinate Saudi Prince Muhammad bin Nayef-they met in 2009 after the 22-year-old Asiri “feigned repentance for his jihadi views”-but, according to Shi’ite talk-show host Abdullah Al-Khallaf, he had fellow jihadis sodomize him to “widen” his anus to fit more explosives.

Al-Khallaf read the fatwa that purportedly justified such actions during a 2012 Fadak TV episode.

After praising Allah and declaring that sodomy is forbidden in Islam, the fatwa asserted:

However, jihad comes first, for it is the pinnacle of Islam, and if the pinnacle of Islam can only be achieved through sodomy, then there is no wrong in it. For the overarching rule of [Islamic] jurisprudence asserts that “necessity makes permissible the prohibited.” And if obligatory matters can only be achieved by performing the prohibited, then it becomes obligatory to perform the prohibited, and there is no greater duty than jihad. After he sodomizes you, you must ask Allah for forgiveness and praise him all the more. And know that Allah will reward the jihadis on the Day of Resurrection, according to their intentions-and your intention, Allah willing, is for the victory of Islam, and we ask that Allah accept it of you.

While all these sex-fatwas may seem bizarre, they highlight two important (though little known in the West) points. First, that jihad is the “pinnacle” of Islam-for it makes Islam supreme; and second, the idea that “necessity makes permissible the prohibited.” Because making Islam supreme through jihad is the greatest priority, anything and everything that is otherwise banned becomes permissible. All that comes to matter is one’s intention, or niyya (see Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s discussion along these lines).

As for the intersection between sex and violence (jihad), it was once explored by the Arabic satellite program Daring Question, which aired various clips of young jihadis giddily singing about their forthcoming deaths and subsequent sexual escapades in heaven. After documenting various anecdotes indicative of jihadi obsession with sex, Egyptian human rights activist Magdi Khalil concluded that “absolutely everything [jihad, suicide operations, etc.] revolves around sex in paradise,” adding, “if you look at the whole of Islamic history, you come up with two words: sex and violence.”

Indeed, Islam’s prophet Muhammad maintained that death during jihad not only blots out all sins-including sexual ones-but it actually gratifies them:
The martyr is special to Allah. He is forgiven [of all sins] from the first drop of blood [that he sheds]. He sees his throne in paradise, where he will be adorned in ornaments of faith. He will wed the ‘Aynhour [a.k.a. "voluptuous women"] and will not know the torments of the grave, and safeguards against the greater terror [hell]. … And he will copulate with 72 ‘Aynhour (see The Al Qaeda Reader, p. 143).

This goes to one of the many seeming contradictions in Islam: Muslim women must chastely be covered head-to-toe-yet, in the service of jihad, they are allowed to prostitute themselves. Lying is forbidden-but permissible to empower Islam. Intentionally killing women and children is forbidden-but permissible during the jihad. Suicide is forbidden-but permissible during the jihad-when it is called “martyrdom.”

One may therefore expect anything from would-be jihadis, regardless of how un-Islamic the means may otherwise seem.

Even so, this uncompromising mentality, which is prevalent throughout the Islamic world, especially along the frontlines of the jihad, is the same mentality that many Western leaders and politicians think can be appeased with just a bit more respect, well-wishing, and concessions from the West.
Such are the great, and disastrous, disconnects of our time.

Raymond Ibrahim is author of the new book, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians (published by Regnery in cooperation with Gatestone Institute, 2013). A Middle East and Islam expert, he is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and associate fellow at the Middle East Forum

The European Parliament (EP) in Strasbourg passed two resolutions Thursday, each detailing a set of recommendations to protect the rights of journalists to speak and print freely.

“The EU, as a community of values, should aspire to lead in ensuring the free word, whether blogged or spoken, and information, whether researched or photographed, are protected. Journalists and a free, pluralist media, are essential for democracies and checks on power. Freedom of speech and freedom after speech are at the core of open and free societies,” said Marietje Schaake (ALDE, NL), rapporteur for press and media freedom in the world. The EP is the directly elected parliament of the European Union.

The first resolution (2011/2081(INI)), focusing on press freedom, “(r)ecognizes that governments have the primary responsibility for guaranteeing and protecting freedom of the press and media.” The resolution also “points out that governments also have the primary responsibility for hampering freedom of the press and media and, in the worst cases, are increasingly resorting to legal pressures in order to restrict that freedom, e.g. through the abuse of anti-terrorism or anti-extremism legislation and laws on national security, treason or subversion.” The EP endorses a “balance” between the concerns of national security and press freedom. The resolution goes further to deplore the fact that “journalists are frequently wounded or murdered or are being subjected to serious abuses throughout the world, often with impunity,” and stresses the “importance of combating impunity.”

The second resolution (2013/2082(INI)), centering on religious freedom, endorses the firm opposition of “any attempt to criminalise freedom of speech in relation to religious issues, such as blasphemy laws.” The EP predictably condemns “all forms of violence and discrimination,” but goes further to emphasize that “particular attention should be paid to the situation of those who change their religion or belief, as in practice they are subject in a number of countries to social pressure, intimidation or outright violence.”

Both moves by the EP stand in contrast to the more restrictive policies endorsed by the United Nations (UN) and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). The OIC hasendorsed ”blasphemy laws” — the same type of law denounced by the EP in today’s resolution. Although now blasphemy laws are often euphemistically referred to as laws protecting the “defamation of religion,” the concept remains the same — laws that punish non-incitement speech about religion. The UN has worked with the OIC to help codify this type of speech restriction as international law.

In recent years a number of religious and nationalistic extremists, seeking to insulate themselves from criticism, have sued journalists who report on their malfeasances for defamation. This tactic is often called “lawfare.” In 2012, with the help of the Legal Project, Hassan Daioleslam defended a defamation lawsuit from plaintiffs Trita Parsi and the National Iranian American Council (NIAC). The plaintiffs were not able to demonstrate defamation, and their case was dismissed on summary judgment. Further, the Court ordered NIAC and Parsi to pay the defense sanctions. Earlier this year the Spanish government charged Imran Firasat with “hate crimes” for a YouTube video he produced called “The Innocent Prophet.” Firasat has since been acquitted, but still faces possible deportation to Pakistan. Controversial journalists, bloggers, and other activists who seek to publish non-defamatory expositional material would likely favor the liberal standards of speech endorsed by the EP over the more restrictive policies of the UN and the OIC.

Some have already opined that the European Parliament, although ideologically praiseworthy, lacks the will to implement these resolutions as law, which now only exist as recommendations. Whether or not resolutions 2081 and 2082 are eventually codified in any way, the EP’s actions remain significant in the face of UN and OIC pressure to promote a more restrictive international speech code.

Nathaniel Sugarman is a Law Clerk at The Legal Project, an activity of the Middle East Forum. This article was commissioned by The Legal Project.

The greatest threat to Israel is not from Iran and its allies. Although these challenges are escalating, we have enough capabilities and experience to deter or defeat them.

Instead, the main danger is from westerners who exploit the language of democracy and human rights to wage a dirty political war aimed at wiping Israel off the map. This war is conducted in the United Nations, the media, universities, anti-Israel churches and, recently, in social media such as Wikipedia, Facebook, and Twitter.

The vicious nature of this assault and the banal thinking of its leading generals were exposed recently in a Facebook forum known as the “Vulture Club,” described as a “close-knit, but informal brotherhood” active in war zones that comes to life “when the blood is flowing.” Chatting among themselves, journalists from leading media platforms, such as the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse, repeated clichés on the manipulative power of the (Israeli and Jewish) “lobby.”

One of the main “vultures” is Peter Bouckaert, the “emergencies director” of Human Rights Watch. Bouckaert attacked a recent Israeli government report as “typical IDF lies” and lashed out at some journalists (not fellow vultures) for not censoring the evidence exposing huge holes in the story claiming that the Israel Defence Forces had deliberately killed a Palestinian boy, Mohammad al-Dura, in October 2000. Bouckaert displayed his underlying scorn, writing, “As usual, it takes them [Israel] a long time to really build up the falsehood.” In fact, the real “falsehood” was the al-Dura myth, created by the Palestinian propaganda machine and spread by Bouckaert and his journalist friends in the “Vulture Club.”

Bouckaert and Human Rights Watch have had years of experience in leading the anti-Israel war. They played a central role at the infamous 2001 NGO Forum of the UN anti-racism conference, and Bouckaert headed Human Rights Watch’s intense campaign to label IDF responses to Hezbollah terror (initiating the 2006 Lebanon War) as “war crimes.” In the process, the agency published hundreds of pages of pseudo-reports filled with contradictions and unsupportable allegations.

When these fictions, which transformed thousands of Hezbollah fighters into innocent civilians and heroic “civil defence workers,” were exposed, Bouckaert invented new ruses, disguised as “research methodologies,” such as counting graves marked with Hezbollah symbols. His journalist friends in the Vulture Club helped to transform the fiction into headlines.

From the al-Dura and Lebanon war myths to the discredited Goldstone report on the December 2008 Gaza war and beyond, these demonization campaigns feed the boycott movement and the “Israel apartheid” myths. This hatred is widely supported among European elites, building on traditional antisemitism as well as radical post-colonial ideology, and strong efforts are being made to spread the virus to North America.

The moral failure here isn’t limited to the war against the Jewish nation’s right to sovereign equality, but reflects the wider façade of “progressive” values, human rights and justice. Power is always subject to abuse, and all too often, those who gain power as liberal watchdogs end up becoming intolerant anti-progressive abusers themselves, like the “vultures.”

Professional and responsible journalists, as well as officials of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), are supposed to probe and expose abuses of power, rather than expand their own power to promote personal agendas and hatreds.

In order to defeat this dirty war, it’s necessary to expose the hypocrisy of the “vultures” and their funder/enablers, including major foundations as well as governments, primarily in Europe. Allies who understand the dangers from exploitation of core moral values are also important – this is not only Israel’s battle. The United States, Australia, or Canada are also falsely charged with “war crimes” or “violations of international law,” although the threats of isolation and boycotts are less significant.

The fact that Bouckaert and his fellow vultures are obsessed with Israeli self-defence, instead of travelling the world seeking some means to stop the hideous slaughter in Syria, speaks volumes. Their duplicity is obvious, and the sooner they’re discredited, the quicker the battered moral foundations of human rights will be restored.

- See more at: http://www.cjnews.com/columnists/vulture-club%E2%80%99s-dirty-war#sthash.v0hEqoIH.dpuf

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia’s foreign minister said Tuesday that Iran is willing to halt its 20-percent enrichment of uranium, which has been a key concession sought in international negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.

That is the highest level of enrichment acknowledged by Iran and one that experts say could be turned into warhead grade in a matter of months.

In an interview with the Kuwaiti news agency KUNA that was released by the Foreign Ministry on Tuesday, Sergey Lavrov said that “for the first time in many years” there are encouraging signs in international efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear dispute.

He said Iran has confirmed that it is ready to halt production of uranium enriched to 20 percent. He did not give details, but said the sextet of international negotiators should make “substantial reciprocal steps.”

In the interview, Lavrov did not say which Iranian officials had expressed the willingness to pull back on enrichment and when the position was made known. The interview was released a day after Iran’s president-elect Hasan Rowhani promised a “path of moderation” that includes greater openness on Tehran’s nuclear program and overtures to Washington.

But Rowhani also said Iran would not halt uranium enrichment. That could indicate Iran would be satisfied to continue the relatively low-level enrichment needed for fuel rods in the reactor at its atomic energy plant in Bushehr.

Over the past year, the international community has imposed heavy economic sanctions on Iran, hoping they would be so painful that the Islamic republic’s clerical regime would slow its nuclear program.

“The international community should respond appropriately to the constructive moves by the Iranian side, including step-by-step halting and cancellation of sanctions — unilateral ones and those enacted by the UN Security Council,” Lavrov said.

Any halt in 20-percent enrichment would be a significant concession by Iran, but it would not necessarily mean any drawdown in enrichment capabilities; the labs could concentrate on lower-grade fuel. The 20-percent enriched material is used in Iran’s research reactor and is many steps closer to warhead-grade uranium than the type used in energy reactors.

Dan Margalit’s writes about The high price of words

While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has taken a position that has minimized the damage caused by statements against the two-state solution uttered by several government ministers and deputy ministers, the problem is becoming worse, both in the domestic and international arenas.

Netanyahu’s position is clear. First, there must be negotiations. If an understanding is reached with the Palestinians, Netanyahu will then conduct a democratic battle to get his coalition members and the Israeli public to support the two-state solution, which rightist ministers in Likud-Beytenu and Habayit Hayehudi currently oppose.

It is also convenient for Netanyahu to present his situation in this light, as otherwise he would have to tell the Americans, and later the Palestinians, that he lacks a mandate to make peace.

There are three lines of thought being espoused by coalition members who oppose the two-state solution. The least burdensome of these is the assessment that negotiations with the Palestinians won’t go anywhere in any case. In past talks with prime ministers more moderate than Netanyahu (namely, Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert), Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas showed he was not seeking a peace agreement based on two states west of the Jordan River. Why would Abbas act any differently toward Netanyahu? This is the view expressed by representatives of the ministers and MKs who are part of the Knesset’s Land of Israel Lobby.

A more troublesome act is direct opposition to negotiations with the Palestinians. On Monday, it was Habayit Hayehudi leader Naftali Bennett’s turn to denigrate peace talks. Rather than saying that talks with the Palestinians would not succeed (a view that Netanyahu might think was reasonable), Bennett expressed his hope that Netanyahu’s efforts would fail.

It is appropriate for an opposition MK to make such a statement, but it is unacceptable for a coalition member to do so. Such an act exposes the government’s internal divides to the Israeli public and the international community. Parties such as Yesh Atid and Hatnuah must respond as Science and Technology Minister Yaakov Peri did on Monday when he criticized Bennett. The party vs. party and minister vs. minister battles are already underway.

The world, long accustomed to puzzling behavior within Israeli democracy, will be able to move on from Bennett’s words. But statements like the one made by Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon — that the Israeli government and its leader do not actually want to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians — cause real damage. This either falsely attributes views to Netanyahu that he does not hold or it reveals a diplomatic secret that undermines Israel’s credibility and its maneuvering ability with the Americans, Europeans and Arab states. Netanyahu is already suspected of not being interested in two states for two peoples, and Danon’s words harmfully reinforced that view.

Why are ministers and MKs talking in a way that is sawing apart Netanyahu’s parquet floors? Due to shortsightedness that also harms their desire to maintain the coalition.

Ultimately, they are cutting off the floor on which they stand. This is too heavy of a price to pay for a prominent, but passing, headline.

Unfortunately ISRAEL HAYOM didn’t see fit to publish an article on the high cost of participating in the two-state solution charade or why it is better to voice disagreement with the negotiations.

Margolit says Netanyahu wants the world to understand that he first has to make a deal and then sell it. To undermine his approach is to tell the US “that he lacks a mandate to make peace.” He certainly lacks a mandate to make peace on his minimalist terms and the sooner that this is made clear the better. And who enters negotiations on minimalist terms? Normally one sets out maximalist terms as Abbas is doing. But if Netanyahu has already promised Obama that he will accept such minimalist terms, then it is hard to now say otherwise. If he has made such a promise than we can’t fault Kerry in thinking he can produce a deal.

Netanyahu said in response to Bennett’s remarks,”I will seek a negotiated settlement where you would have a demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes the Jewish state”. Netanyahu may be satisfied with this but it is a certainly that the majority of his coalition isn’t and a majority of Israelis aren’t wither if a settlement requires Israel to return to the ’67 lines plus swaps and to divide Jerusalem. Margolit argues its better to present a unified view to the world to maintain credibility. I disagree. It is better to announce to the world that Israel is divided on the issue so if they want to arrive at a deal, they better support a better deal for Israel that Netanyahu signals he wants to accept.

Furthermore if Netanyahu will be content with achieving his read lines, is it not better for those opposing him to start the battle now rather than to wait for a deal they hate, to be arrived at.

The world should know that Netanyahu is not a dictator. He is the head of a parliamentary democracy and as such is subject to the will of his coalition and his party. He is not a free agent to cut any deal he wants. He is accountable or should be. He must be remained of this and so must the peace mongers.

By the way Pres Clinton is in town and argues that Israel has no choice but to embrace a two-state solution because “No alternative to two-state solution ‘No matter how many settlers you put out there, the Palestinians are having more babies than the Israelis’”. But he is wrong on the demographics. Therefore Israel can say no to the TSS.

Native Activist Fed Up with Anti-Israel BS Exploiting his Cause.

Ryan Bellerose has penned another epic piece of moral clarity. Not one to mince words, Bellerose, a Metis activist from Western Canada, has written a devastating op-ed in the Toronto Sun (and syndicated in 4 other Sun papers) taking the Palestinian propaganda machine to task for dishonestly using the native rights cause.

Money quote:

though Palestinian propagandists love to characterize Zionism (that is, Jewish nationalism) and the re-establishment of Israel in 1948 as colonial enterprises, it is the Jews who are aboriginal to the Holy Land. Alone among other nations, Jews’ language, history, culture and folklore were born and forged in the Holy Land. There is no statute of limitations on being indigenous. Accordingly, to claim the Jews are colonizers in the Holy Land delegitimizes all indigenous peoples because such attempts trivialize the unbreakable, maternal ties to the land that make us, like the Jews, indigenous.

Berllerose goes on to explain why conflating Palestinian issues with Native Issues is plainly dishonest and untenable.

This is not the first time Bellerose has spoken up against the appropriation of his cause and culture by irredentist Arab nationalists. A few months ago, he wrote in the Metropolitain an article entitled “A Native and Zionist” where he first explained the parallels between Jews and Native Canadians, and why he is so offended by Palestinian propaganda’s exploitation of his cause:

The Palestinians are not like us.  Their fight is not our fight.  We natives believe in bringing about change peacefully, and we refuse to be affiliated with anyone who engages in violence targeting civilians.  I cannot remain silent and allow the Palestinians to gain credibility at our expense by claiming commonality with us. I cannot stand by while they trivialize our plight by tying it to theirs, which is largely self-inflicted.  Our population of over 65 million was violently reduced to a mere 10 million, a slaughter unprecedented in human history.  To compare that in whatever way to the Palestinians’ story is deeply offensive to me.

Bellerose should be commended for his courage. As I have repeatedly stated and will continue to state, the Palestinians have an undeniable right to self-determination. That right, however, cannot be realized by rejecting all offers of peace and deliberately robbing the Jewish people of its history instead.

Only the truth will set Palestinians free.