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Purveyor's JournalIsraeli Defense Minister Says Israel And US Disagree On Timetable For Effective Iran Action
Source: ASSOCIATED PRESS
By Associated Press,
JERUSALEM — Israel and the U.S. disagree on what would be a realistic timetable for stopping Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, Israel’s defense minister said Thursday, but he stopped short of threatening unilateral Israeli action.
Ehud Barak reiterated concerns that Iran is trying to make its suspected nuclear weapons program immune from attack before taking a decision on assembling atomic bombs, and said Israel “cannot afford” to wait in such a situation.
However, Barak told Israel Radio that the Jewish state could hold off for several more months to allow sanctions and negotiations to work. During this period, it would become clear “if the Iranians intend or don’t intend to stop their nuclear weapons program.”
In the interview, Barak argued that superior U.S. military capabilities and Washington’s position as a world power account for its different stance toward perceived Iranian nuclear threats. The U.S. has urged Israel to give sanctions time to work.
Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/israeli-defense-minister-says-israel-and-us-disagree-on-timetable-for-effective-iran-action/2012/03/22/gIQArjFBTS_story.html
Iron Dome Bill Presented At US Congress
WASHINGTON – The US Congress' response to Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren's article was instantaneous. After Oren published an opinion piece discussing the growing need to invest in 10 more Iron Dome batteries, two House Representatives introduced legislation Wednesday that would allow the Obama administration to give more missile defense systems to Israel.
The proposed bill does not include specific figures, but it recognizes the operational success of Iron Dome, and its strategic significance in anti-missile defense. It also secures the budgeting of 10 more Iron Dome batteries, regardless of expected cut in security funding. The cost of one Iron Dome battery is $50 millions, not including the costs of the missiles and infrastructure.
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http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4206579,00.html
Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood Considers Change In Policy _ Running Candidate For President
CAIRO (AP) -- The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's most powerful political group, said Wednesday it is considering running its own candidate in upcoming presidential elections, dropping its previous decision to avoid direct participation in the race.
The group appears to be playing one of its last cards in a power struggle against the ruling military council, after it failed to force the military to replace its Cabinet with a new one appointed by the Islamist-dominated parliament.
If a Brotherhood fields a candidate and wins the presidency, the group would control the two main branches of power. In parliamentary elections, the first since a popular uprising unseated President Hosni Mubarak last year, it won nearly half the seats.
Since then, the Brotherhood has sought to allay fears of local liberals as well as Egypt's Western allies about an Islamist takeover by saying it would not field its own candidate for president. Elections are set for May 23-24.
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http://www.newser.com/article/d9tl3sg00/egypts-muslim-brotherhood-considers-change-in-policy-running-candidate-for-president.html
Fury in Israel at Remark Linking Gaza to Toulouse
By ISABEL KERSHNER
Published: March 20, 2012
JERUSALEM — Israel’s leaders on Tuesday strongly censured the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, for remarks made a day earlier in which she was perceived as having equated the killing of three children at a Jewish school in France with the death of children during the fighting in Gaza.
Speaking at a conference on Palestinian refugees in Brussels on Monday, hours after the attack in Toulouse, France, Ms. Ashton spoke of remembering “young people who have been killed in all sorts of terrible circumstances.”
In the transcript of her comments released by the European Union, she continues: “The Belgian children having lost their lives in a terrible tragedy, and when we think of what happened in Toulouse today, when we remember what happened in Norway a year ago, when we know what is happening in Syria, when we see what is happening in Gaza and in different parts of the world — we remember young people and children who lose their lives.”
A recording of her comments and a transcript later released by Ms. Ashton’s office show slightly different wording and include a reference to children in Sderot, Israel, a target for rockets fired from Gaza. She finishes by saying, “When we see what is happening in Gaza and Sderot, in different parts of the world — we remember young people and children who lose their lives.”
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/21/world/middleeast/israel-criticizes-eu-official-for-comments-on-french-school-attack.html
Pentagon Finds Perils for U.S. if Israel Were to Strike Iran
Source: New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI and THOM SHANKER
Published: March 19, 2012
WASHINGTON — A classified war game held this month to assess the American military’s capabilities to respond to an Israeli attack on Iran forecast that the strike would lead to a wider regional war, which could draw in the United States and leave hundreds of Americans dead, according to American officials.
The officials said the war game was not designed as a rehearsal for American military action — and they emphasized that the exercise’s results were not the only possible outcome of a real-world conflict. But the game has raised fears among top American planners that it may be impossible to preclude American involvement in any escalating confrontation with Iran, the officials said. In the debate among policymakers over the consequences of any possible Israeli attack, that reaction may give stronger voice to those within the White House, Pentagon and intelligence community who have warned that a strike could prove perilous for the United States.
The results of the war game were particularly troubling to Gen. James N. Mattis, who commands all American forces in the Middle East, Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia, according to officials who either participated in the Central Command exercise or who where briefed on the results and spoke on condition of anonymity because of its classified nature. When the exercise had concluded earlier this month, according to the officials, General Mattis told aides that an Israeli first-strike would likely have dire consequences across the region and for United States forces there.
The two-week war game, called “Internal Look,” played out a narrative in which the United States found it was pulled into the conflict after Iranian missiles struck a Navy warship in the Persian Gulf, killing about 200 Americans, according to officials with knowledge of the exercise. The United States then retaliated by launching its own strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/world/middleeast/united-states-war-game-sees-dire-results-of-an-israeli-attack-on-iran.html
To Save Israel, Boycott the Settlements
By PETER BEINART
Published: March 18, 2012
TO believe in a democratic Jewish state today is to be caught between the jaws of a pincer.
On the one hand, the Israeli government is erasing the “green line” that separates Israel proper from the West Bank. In 1980, roughly 12,000 Jews lived in the West Bank (excluding East Jerusalem). Today, government subsidies have helped swell that number to more than 300,000. Indeed, many Israeli maps and textbooks no longer show the green line at all.
In 2010, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel called the settlement of Ariel, which stretches deep into the West Bank, “the heart of our country.” Through its pro-settler policies, Israel is forging one political entity between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea — an entity of dubious democratic legitimacy, given that millions of West Bank Palestinians are barred from citizenship and the right to vote in the state that controls their lives.
In response, many Palestinians and their supporters have initiated a global campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (B.D.S.), which calls not only for boycotting all Israeli products and ending the occupation of the West Bank but also demands the right of millions of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes — an agenda that, if fulfilled, could dismantle Israel as a Jewish state.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/19/opinion/to-save-israel-boycott-the-settlements.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all#h[]
German Jews Slam ‘Israel Apartheid’ Comment
By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL AND JERUSALEM POST CORRESPONDENT
03/17/2012 23:26
BERLIN – Sigmar Gabriel, the chairman of Germany’s second biggest political party who last week called Israel an “apartheid regime,” is slated to meet with the head of Germany’s Jewish community and the new Israeli ambassador.
Gabriel, 52, who will likely run for chancellor in 2013, wrote on his Facebook site Wednesday following a visit to Hebron, “It’s a zone without legal rights for Palestinians. It is an apartheid regime, and there’s no justification for it.”
Dieter Graumann, head of the Jewish community, told the German media that “what Gabriel said is completely screwed up.”
It is morally imbalanced to call for negotiations with Hamas, which openly seeks to destroy Jews worldwide, and at the same time to denigrate Israel as an “apartheid regime,” Graumann said.
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http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=262250
Guest Lineups For The Sunday TV News Shows
ABC's "This Week" — Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum.
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NBC's "Meet the Press" — Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.; actor George Clooney.
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CBS'"Face the Nation" — Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus; David Axelrod, adviser to President Barack Obama's re-election campaign.
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CNN's "State of the Union" — Santorum; Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis.
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"Fox News Sunday" — Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney; Clooney; John Prendergast, co-founder of the Enough Project, an advocacy group that does work in Sudan.
SWIFT Severs Iran Ties, Cuts Tehran Off From Global Financial System
Source: ASSOCIATED PRESS
BRUSSELS — Iran was effectively cut off from global commerce on Thursday, when the company that handles financial transactions said it was severing ties with many Iranian banks - part of an international effort to discourage Tehran from developing nuclear weapons.
The action enforces European Union sanctions because global financial transactions are impossible without using SWIFT, and it will go a long way toward isolating Iran financially.
The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT, is a banking hub crucial to oil, financial transactions and other trades.
"Disconnecting banks is an extraordinary and unprecedented step for SWIFT," said Lazaro Campos, chief executive of SWIFT. "It is a direct result of international and multilateral action to intensify financial sanctions against Iran."
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/74064.html
Three of Four American Oppose Israeli Strike on Iran
By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan on March 13, 2012
An Israeli military strike against Iran’s nuclear program is opposed by three out of four Americans, according to a poll by the University of Maryland and the Program on International Policy Attitudes.
The findings reflect Americans’ preference for a negotiated resolution and doubts that an Israeli strike would thwart any Iranian ambitions for nuclear weapons, according to the survey released today.
“One of the reasons Americans are so cool toward the idea of Israel attacking Iran’s nuclear program is that most believe that it is not likely to produce much benefit,” said Steven Kull, director of Washington-based PIPA.
Seven in 10 Americans favor the U.S. and other major powers pursuing negotiations with Iran to resolve concerns over its disputed nuclear program, according to the poll. That position is taken by 58 percent of Republicans, 67 percent of independents and 79 percent of Democrats.
MORE...
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-03-13/three-of-four-american-oppose-israeli-strike-on-iran
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