Hamas deplores Egyptian army for unfounded accusations against it
Palestine Information Center – 12/08/2013
GAZA — The Hamas Movement strongly denounced a senior Egyptian army commander for claiming that the investigations revealed the involvement of Hamas individuals in the Sinai events.
This came in response to recent remarks made by the commander of Egypt’s second field army in Sinai Ahmed Wasif, in which he accused Hamas, without stating any evidence, of what had happened in Sinai.
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri stressed that such accusations are blatant lies that include no numbers or names as usual.
“The Movement categorically denies that its members are involved in the Sinai events, and expresses its regret that such remarks were made in an attempt to reverse the equation and falsely convince the Egyptian people that the enemy is Hamas and not Israel,” Abu Zuhri underlined.
Netanyahu urges increased US pressure on Iran, Rouhani regrets “warmongering group” blocking constructive talks
Aletho News | August 7, 2013
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday evening urged increasing pressure on Iran relating to her nuclear program and warned that “if the pressure will drop, nothing would deter Iran from achieving its nuclear goals” according to Israeli media reports.
During a meeting with a delegation of 36 American congressmen headed by Congressman Steny Hoyer, Netanyahu claimed that though Iran’s president said pressure wouldn’t help, in the last two decades pressure was the only thing that helped.
Addressing Iranian President Hasan Rouhani’s speech regarding the nuclear issue, Netanyahu said in a Tuesday statement that pressure on Iran had, in fact, been effective.
“Iran’s president said that pressure won’t work. Not true! The only thing that has worked in the last two decades is pressure,” the prime minister stressed.
“And the only thing that will work now is increased pressure. I have said that before and I’ll say it again, because that’s important to understand. You relent on the pressure, they will go all the way. You should sustain the pressure”.
In its latest measure against Iran, the US House of Representatives last Wednesday approved a bill to impose tougher sanctions on Tehran’s oil exports and financial sector.
The bill, which must be approved by the Senate and signed by President Barack Obama to become law, seeks to cut Iran’s oil exports by one million barrels per day over a year.
Meanwhile, Press TV reports that in his first press conference since he took office on August 4, Rohani expressed regret that the “warmongering group” in the US opposes constructive Tehran-Washington talks by serving the interests of “a foreign regime.”
The Iranian chief executive said Iran is closely monitoring all measures taken by the United States and will respond properly to Washington’s “practical and constructive” moves. He further expressed the Islamic Republic’s readiness to hold talks with any country within the framework of Iran’s national interests.
Related articles
- Former IDF intel chief: US coming around on Iran strike (timesofisrael.com)
- Barring the IDF, Netanyahu’s last resort against possible Obama détente with Iran is US Congress (warsclerotic.wordpress.com)
- Netanyahu meets congressmen, urges increased pressure on Iran (ynetnews.com)
- Netanyahu hails U.S. Iran sanctions (dailystar.com.lb)
- PM to Visiting U.S. Congressmen: Keep Pressuring Iran (israelnationalnews.com)
Lebanon: Who Is Behind the Attacks on Hezbollah?
By Ibrahim al-Amin | Al-Akhbar | August 5, 2013
For 25 years now, Hezbollah has been engaged in a war with many powerful intelligence outfits from around the world. These intelligence agencies have devoted tremendous resources to collect information on the party, in addition to pursuing both its civilian and military activities, not to mention carrying out assassinations against its cadre and leadership.
Israel has played a key role in these efforts, but it is hardly alone. After the assassination of Rafik Hariri in 2005, Hezbollah was subjected to the most ferocious campaign against it, with former US ambassador to Lebanon Jeffrey Feltman admitting before Congress that Washington spent $500 million to undermine the party’s image.
After the outbreak of the Syrian uprising and Hezbollah’s open declaration of its involvement in the country’s fighting, the campaign intensified, with mounting threats to the party and its supporters that they may be subjected to revenge attacks.
First, the Resistance’s Dahiyeh stronghold was shelled with rockets. Similar attacks followed on many towns and villages in Baalbeck and Hermel. These were followed by roadside bombs targeting Hezbollah members on the main Lebanese highway to Syria, culminating in the massive Bir al-Abed blast in the heart of Dahiyeh.
Hezbollah is in a state of high alert due to the fact that it has been forced to fight simultaneously on two fronts. This has prompted Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah to tell the party’s cadre that they must be prepared for attacks that may involve both Syrian and Lebanese groups, without dropping their guard against their main enemy – Israel.
On the eve of Hezbollah’s engagement in the battle of Qusayr, it initiated a plan that involved:
– a series of practical steps to prevent the killing of Lebanese civilians held by the Syrian opposition in the north of the country;
– securing areas that may become targets of reprisals, including the border areas, Beirut, and South Lebanon.
The question today is: Who thought up an adventure of this kind against the Resistance? I wonder whether they thought about the party’s reaction.
Who are these people? Are they groups within the Free Syrian Army or the Salafi al-Nusra Front? Are they jihadi elements in Lebanon active in the North and Bekaa? Could they be Palestinians who have abandoned their cause to work as agents serving another agenda?
Who is helping them inside Lebanon? What are the Internal Security Forces (who take orders from the Future Party) doing about it? They seem to care little about people’s safety and are mainly concerned with collecting information on the Resistance.
In any case, Hezbollah has surprised friend and foe on more than one occasion in their intelligence capabilities. So, will the Resistance surprise us again by revealing who is behind these attacks?
Related article
Iran Alarmism and the “Time is Running Out” Canard
By Nima Shirazi | Wide Asleep in America | July 31, 2013
The following is the 76th update to my comprehensive, ongoing compendium of constant predictions and prognostications regarding the supposed inevitability and imminence of an alleged Iranian nuclear weapon, hysterical allegations that have been made repeatedly for the past three decades.
Citing the latest hysterical analysis of Iran’s nuclear program by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), David Albright’s Washington D.C.-based propaganda outfit, the Jerusalem Post exclaims that “Iran is expected to achieve a ‘critical capability’ to produce sufficient weapon-grade uranium by mid-2014, without being detected.”
While pretending to advocate merely for a stricter IAEA inspection regime and the limiting of the number of centrifuges Iran is allowed to install and operate, Albright & Co. cry that Iranian progress “is unlikely to be prevented simply by instituting better inspections, whether through increased inspection frequency, remote monitoring, or even implementation of the the Additional Protocol.” The report laments that, if the United States and Israel don’t launch an illegal, unprovoked military assault on Iran “out of fear of facing international opposition,” consequently “Iran could have time to make enough weapon-grade uranium for one or more nuclear weapons.”
Thus, the alarmists of ISIS conclude that “IAEA inaction or caution could make an international response all but impossible before Iran has produced enough weapon-grade uranium for one or more nuclear weapon.”
Meanwhile, a recent Al Monitor report exposes the agenda dripping from ISIS’ analysis. Earlier this month, IAEA Deputy Director Herman Nackaerts explained to reporter Barbara Slavin that “‘we would know within a week’ whether Iran was diverting uranium from declared sites and seeking to enrich it to weapons grade level.”
Nackaerts, who is also head of the IAEA’s Department of Safeguards, said that “[t]here are two to six IAEA inspectors on the ground in Iran every day…covering 16 Iranian facilities. On average, he said, that means that an inspector visits Iran’s enrichment plants at Natanz and Fordow once a week. If there are suspicions about any improper activities, they can go more often, he added.
In order to sufficiently hand-wring about the Iranian program, “ISIS has recommended that inspections should increase to at least twice per week at Iran’s enrichment facilities.”
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| Evelyn Gordon. Yes, really. |
As expected, neoconservative Likudnik warmongers over at Commentary Magazine are licking their lips and using Albright’s nonsense to bolster their calls for mass murder and war crimes. Writing today, contributing blogger Evelyn Gordon calls the ISIS report the “best argument I’ve yet seen for bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities imminently.” Gordon is an American émigré to Israel, former Jerusalem Post reporter and current Visiting Fellow at the extreme right-wing Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.
“Time is running out,” Gordon declares, echoing so many uninformed voices before her. In March 2006, NPR‘s national security correspondent Mara Liasson insisted on Fox News that “time is running out. Pretty soon, Iran is going to have the bomb.” By early 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claimed, “We have time, but not a lot of time.” The following year, a Weekly Standard opinion piece co-authored by Kristol declared, “Time is running out” and called “for Congress to seriously explore an Authorization of Military Force to halt Iran’s nuclear program.” Soon thereafter, Commentary Magazine‘s Jonathan Tobin warned that, without the United States issuing an explicit military threat, “time may soon run out on any chance for the West to stop Iran,” while this past March, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu eloquently stated that “whatever time is left, there’s not a lot of time.”
“In short,” Gordon concludes, “either military action is taken in the coming months, or a nuclear Iran will be inevitable. There is no more time to waste.”
In truth, it’s time to hit the snooze button.
Related article
- Nonproliferation Misinterpretation (nationalinterest.org)
Thousands of Syrian police who joined the rebels are on U.S. payroll
WorldTribune | July 25, 2013
WASHINGTON — The United States has been paying thousands of Syrian police officers who deserted the regime of President Bashar Assad.
Officials said the administration of President Barack Obama has approved tens of millions of dollars to pay the salaries of police officers who joined the rebels. They said the officers were working to maintain order in rebel-controlled territory, mostly in northern Syria.
“There are literally thousands of defected police inside of Syria,” Assistant Secretary of State Rick Barton said. “They are credible in their communities because they’ve defected.”
In an address to the Aspen Security Forum on July 19, Barton, responsible for State Department stabilization operations, did not say how many Syrian police deserters were on the U.S. payroll. He said the officers were receiving about $150 per month, a significant salary in Syria.
The address marked a rare disclosure of direct U.S. aid to Sunni rebels in Syria. Congress has approved more than $50 million for the Syrian opposition, much of which has not been spent.
Barton said the police officers remained in their communities despite their defection from the Assad regime. He said the U.S. stipend was meant to ensure that they stay on the job.
“We’d rather have a trained policeman who is trusted by the community than have to bring in a new crowd or bring in an international group that doesn’t know the place,” Barton said.
Barton said the rebel movement was awaiting a range of non-lethal U.S. equipment. He cited night vision systems and medical supplies.
Nasrallah: EU giving “legal cover” for an Israeli war on Lebanon
Al-Akhbar | July 25, 2013
The European Union is paving the way for Israel to justify a war on Lebanon, Hezbollah’s general secretary said late Wednesday, two days after the 28 member states issued a decision to put Hezbollah’s military wing on its terror list.
“EU countries should know they are giving legal cover for Israel to launch any war on Lebanon because Israel can claim it is waging war on terrorists,” Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised speech at the annual iftar ceremony held by the Women’s Committee of Islamic Resistance Support Association of Hezbollah.
“These countries make themselves undeniable allies during any Israeli aggression on Lebanon, on the resistance and on any target for the resistance [in the country],” Nasrallah added.
The EU 28-member bloc agreed Monday to blacklist Hezbollah’s military organization as a terrorist group following years of relentless US and Israeli pressure.
The EU cited accusations that the powerful Lebanese Shia movement was behind a bus bombing in Bulgaria last year which killed five Israelis and their driver, as well as the party’s involvement in the Syrian conflict.
Hezbollah has denied any involvement in the Bulgaria bombing.
Last month a new socialist-led Bulgarian government backed away from the claims of the previous administration, saying that the EU could not justify blacklisting Hezbollah solely based on the little evidence produced to implicate it in the crime.
“It is important that the (EU) decision be based not only on the bombing … because I think the evidence we have is not explicit,” Foreign Minister Kristian Vigenin had told national state radio BNR.
Nasrallah noted that the EU’s official statement will be issued within days and the party will see then what is to be discussed.
He also posed the question to the EU of why the union hadn’t considered placing Israel’s army on its terror list.
“[The EU] repeatedly admits that Israel occupies Arab land but hasn’t implemented international resolutions for ten years. The whole world has witnessed the Israeli massacres,” he said.
Nasrallah advised the member states to reconsider the decision, stating that it is doomed to fail and that “the decision wasn’t worth the ink it was written with.”
The EU’s blacklisting of Hezbollah’s military wing is merely the result of external pressure and interests, he said, instead of being based on values and principles. He added that the effect of the decision is nothing but psychological.
“In this country, resistance fighters fought the Israeli occupation, endured a lot of pressure and sacrificed martyrs. Then you come to those who are the sons of these people and say they are terrorists. This is abuse to fighters, to their people and to their successive governments,” Nasrallah stated.
“This decision aims at making us bow, at forcing us to step back and be afraid. But, I tell you that all you will get is failure and frustration,” he said, adding that anyone who thinks the resistance will be undermined by the decision is either “ignorant or delusional.”
The General Secretary hinted jokingly at having members of Hezbollah’s military wing in Lebanon’s new government, assuring viewers that the resistance has gained credibility among people in Lebanon and the Arab and Muslim world.
“The most important thing for the Lebanese resistance is to get the support of its people and to express their will, pride and view in defending their land and their sovereignty,” he said.
“The Resistance will remain and will be victorious by God’s will,” Nasrallah concluded.
How the Israel Lobby Trained a Diplomat
By Paul R. Pillar | Consortium News | July 22, 2013
David Rieff’s commentary on Samantha Power’s confirmation hearing is a trenchant account of some of the worst in what we see in the process of confirming nominees for senior positions. Even by the standards of such hearings, Power’s performance was notably obsequious.
This was an abuse of the process by the nominee, in the sense that in a proceeding ostensibly intended to learn more about the nominee we did not learn much at all except that she really, really wants the job of ambassador to the United Nations and is willing to shape her testimony in whatever way it takes to get the job.
Rieff cites the experience of Robert Bork as the master lesson for all subsequent nominees on the need to trim their views if they expect to get confirmed. That history is no doubt a factor, but to understand the pathologies of the confirmation process we should take note of the variety of ways in which that process gets abused. Many of those ways are not the work of nominees, but in at least one respect, as Power’s case illustrates, they induce from nominees’ behavior that only adds to the dysfunction.
A conspicuous and recent abuse was the attempt to cripple the work of the National Labor Relations Board and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by refusing to bring any nominees for those bodies to a vote in the Senate. Threats from the Senate majority leader about exercising a so-called nuclear option won a temporary reprieve from that tactic, although there is no assurance we won’t see it revived, and the chances are it will be.
One of the participants in that tactic, Senator Lindsey Graham, later acknowledged that the nominee to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau “was being filibustered because we don’t like the law. That’s not a reason to deny someone their appointment. We were wrong.”
Even when the objective is not to cripple an agency or effectively vacate the law that created it, it has become commonplace for the confirmation process to be the vehicle for pursuing policy agendas that have nothing to do with the nominee. This is at best an irrelevance and a drag on the process. It becomes abuse when confirmation votes may be determined by it.
The same Sen. Graham started crossing this line last week when he used questioning of Admiral James Winnefeld, nominated for another term as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to push the idea that the Iranian regime is still an awful and extreme beast despite the election to the Iranian presidency of Hassan Rouhani.
At one point Graham said “this will determine how I vote for you” before asking whether Winnefeld thought Rouhani is a “moderate.” Even setting aside the issue of the substantive validity of what Graham was harping on, why should a military officer’s view on this question determine his fitness to serve as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs?
Nominees, especially those already serving in the Executive Branch, have somehow to make their responsiveness to questions not run afoul of policies that have already been set by the president, and not to make it seem that they are getting ahead of the president, forcing his hand, or openly criticizing him. And yet senators repeatedly and knowingly put nominees in that difficult position.
At the same hearing last week of the Senate Armed Services Committee, John McCain did so with General Martin Dempsey, nominated for another term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs. McCain tenaciously tried to get Dempsey to say that the administration’s policy on Syria was one of “inaction.”
We should hope that the nation’s senior military officer is giving his best advice in private to the president on military aspects of an important problem such as Syria, and we should expect that officer not to offer discordant characterizations of the president’s policy in public. We should also hope that senior members of the Senate Armed Services Committee see the job of chairman of the Joint Chiefs in similar terms, regardless of their views about Syria or any other substantive issue.
The inherent vulnerability of nominees makes the confirmation process a vehicle for showing who’s boss. This is a form of abuse that goes beyond senators who do the voting, and it gets back to how Power conducted herself. Specifically, it gets to her comments about Israel, which as Rieff puts it were “so stridently one-sided as to be almost wholly indistinguishable from the talking points of Israeli diplomats.”
The now well-known background to this is an interview more than a decade ago, in which Power suggested that to quell Israeli-Palestinian violence at that time the United States should consider deploying a large protective force even though this might mean “alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import.” The constituency in question, as is its custom, denounced Power as anti-Israeli.
Power’s later means of retaining her confirmability in the face of such accusations was to disavow, totally and tearfully, her own observations. A key event was a meeting with American Jewish leaders at which, according to the meeting’s organizer, she “became deeply emotional and struggled to complete her presentation as she expressed how deeply such accusations had affected her.”
This sequence has made Samantha Power a more valuable commodity to the Israel lobby than if she had never made any comments to offend the lobby in the first place. Sustaining the lobby’s power depends on repeated demonstrations of submission to that power. The lobby could not have gotten a better demonstration of submission than to have the nominated chief U.S. diplomat at the United Nations abandon all evidence of any independent thought on the issues concerned and to make herself indistinguishable from Israeli diplomats.
Besides making for more dysfunction in the confirmation process, this kind of response from a nominee, as when Power said at her hearing that the United States has “no greater friend in the world” than Israel, badly distorts the larger public discourse on important issues. To appreciate how much it is distorted, we have to listen to distinguished and experienced people who are not up for a confirmation vote, do not expect to be in the future, and thus can voice their observations in an honest and untrimmed manner.
One such person is retired Marine Corps General and former Central Command head James Mattis, who last weekend explained some of the cost to the United States of the festering Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “I paid a military security price every day as a commander of CENTCOM because the Americans were seen as biased in support of Israel,” said Mattis.
Moderate Arabs “who want to be with us,” he said, restrict their support for the United States because they “can’t come out publicly in support of people who don’t want to show respect for the Arab Palestinians.”
US, Israel launch joint aerial drill
Press TV – July 21, 2013
The United States and Israel have begun a joint aerial drill. According to a statement by the Israel military the two-week “Juniper Stallion 13” aerial exercise began Sunday morning.
An undisclosed number of F-15 and F-16 fighter jets from both sides are participating in the training event. It’s held at Uvda Base in the southern Negev Desert, during which pilots will practice air-to- air combat maneuvers, mid-air refueling, bombing runs and other missions.
The United States European Command (EUCOM) is involved in the aerial war games which will focus air-to- air combat maneuvers, mid-air refueling, bombing runs and other missions.
The exercise comes after a two-day visit to Israel on July 14 by EUCOM’s Commander General Philip M. Breedlove.
“The combined exercise is designed to improve the interoperability and cooperation between the Israeli and U.S. air forces, and has been planned for more than a year,” an Israeli military source told Xinhua.
The U.S. is Israel’s biggest ally and international supporter. It supports Tel Aviv financially, militarily and diplomatically. Washington is providing billions of dollars of military aid to Tel Aviv annually.
During Fiscal Year 2013, the U.S. is providing Israel with at least $8.5 million per day in military aid.
Meanwhile Times of Israel has reported that “Israel would receive $3.4 billion in total military aid under the 2014 U.S. budget proposal sent to Congress by President Barack Obama”. The proposal is inclusive of “$3.1 billion in general military aid for Israel, similar to 2013, plus a separate request for $220 million to finance the Iron Dome anti-rocket defense system.”
“Obama’s 2014 proposal also allocates $96 million for joint U.S.-Israel research and development projects, including the David’s Sling and Arrow missile defense systems. The overall budget proposal that Obama submitted to Congress on Wednesday totalled $3.8 trillion.”
The If Americans Knew website (http://ifamericansknew.org/stats/usaid.html) reports that “Beginning in 2007, the U.S. has increased military aid by $150 million each year. Beginning 2012, we will be sending Israel $3.1 billion a year (or an average of $8.5 million a day) and will continue to provide military aid at that level through 2018. U.S. tax dollars are subsidizing one of the most powerful foreign militaries.”
In Israel’s last two wars on the Gaza Strip alone, Operation Cast Lead (27 December 2008- 18 January 2009) and November 2012, hundreds of civilians, including many women and children were killed.
In addition to financial and military aid, the U.S. has vetoed over 40 UN resolutions that have been critical of Israel and its policies towards Palestine.
Kurdish leader says Syria Kurds not after forming own government
Press TV – July 21, 2013
A senior Syrian Kurdish leader has rejected earlier reports that Kurds are planning to establish an independent Kurdish government in northern Syria.
China’s Xinhua news agency on Sunday quoted Salih Muslim, the leader of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), as saying, “There is no intention among the Kurds to form their own government, nor to secede from Syria.”
On Saturday, Qatar-based al-Jazeera news network quoted Muslim as saying that Syria’s Kurds were planning to create a “temporary autonomous government to administer their regions in the north.”
The Syrian government has granted the Kurds a certain level of autonomy since 2012 and they are now controlling security of the region.
In recent months, Kurdish fighters, who are opposed to foreign interference in Syria, have been battling foreign-backed militants in the north.
This comes as clashes continued between PYD-linked Kurdish militants and foreign-backed Takfiri militants around several villages in northeastern Syria near the border with Turkey on Saturday.
The Kurdish militants took control of a checkpoint and also seized light weapons, ammunition, a vehicle mounted with a heavy machinegun, and a mortar launcher.
On July 17, the Kurdish fighters took control of the town of Ras al-Ain in the border province of Hasakah, forcing out the al-Qaeda-linked militants.
Foreign-sponsored militancy has taken its toll on the lives of many people, including large numbers of Syrian soldiers and security personnel, since March 2011.
Western powers and their regional allies including the Israeli regime, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are supporting anti-Syria militant groups, including al-Qaeda-linked terrorists.



